More Money Podcast - From the Archives: Relistening to My First Ever Podcast Episode - Jessica Moorhouse

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

As we get closer to the More Money Podcast’s 10-year anniversary this June, I wanted to bring back some of my favourite and most popular episodes from the archives to celebrate the show’s decade-long run. And there’s no better episode to start with than my very first one! I share my comments at the end of the episode after listening to it again and wow, it’s wild how much can change over the years! Also, a big thanks to all of you listeners who have been with me from the beginning. You’ve literally changed my life and given me the best career ever.To find the original show notes for this episode with https://jessicamoorhouse.com/1Follow me:Instagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica Moorhouse Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse, and this is season 20 of the More Money Podcast. And like I shared on some previous episodes, this season is going to be a bit special for a few reasons. First, we're leading up to our 10-year anniversary of me starting this podcast. but also this month is, well, my book came out, Everything But Money, The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom is officially on bookstores, bookstands, bookstores out in the world. It's out there. It's a real thing. And so I'm kind of spending this month doing a ton of book promo and wanted to kind of give myself a little bit of a break by not killing myself and finding new guests right

off the bat for this season. There will be some new guest interviews throughout this season, but for the kind of first month, what we're going to do is I am going to drop two episodes this week and next week. And last week I dropped one episode, which is me reading an excerpt from my book. So you get a little taste, but also we're going to do a bit of a re-listen this season. I'm going to bring back some of my favorite episodes of the podcast and also some of the most popular episodes of the podcast. But it only made sense to kind of kick this re-listen season off with episode

one, how it started, my personal finance journey. That's literally the title of that episode. And it's, I can't wait. I'm going to listen to this and give you my thoughts at the end because I want to know who was that girl 10, almost 10 years ago. It's a lot has happened. I am not the same person, let me tell you. So really excited about that. And because I did just mention my book, if you wanted to support me

and grab a copy and take read, because it's a pretty darn good book, you can check it out at JessicaMoorHouse.com slash book or literally everywhere that sells books. That's where you can find everything but money. So without further ado, because I want to get listening to what the hell I had to say for episode one, let's get to that episode. Hello and welcome to the first episode of Mo Money Mo Houses, the personal finance podcast with a dash of sass. I'm your host Jessica Morehouse and if you're unfamiliar with me or my blog, don't worry.

This whole episode is about getting to know me and what this podcast is all about. So I'm going to start from the beginning just to give you a little idea of where I came from and why I'm so interested in money and personal finance and all that fun stuff. So probably like most of you, I grew up in the suburbs. I grew up in Coquitlam, which is a suburb about 30 minutes outside of Vancouver. And although we were never poor, technically, my parents got married young and they had kids pretty much right away. There wasn't a heck of a lot of money to be spread around.

We always got everything we needed, but there was definitely times that it was evident that we didn't have something that someone else at school would have. I remember just a random memory popping into my head right now. There's a girl I went to school with and in my mind, she was like the rich girl in school. She had a beautiful two story house near school that she could walk to. Her parents had a BMW and whenever we went to her house, she always had like chips and pop and candy and basically anything. And it's funny kind of looking back now, like I don't think she actually was rich. I think she just was, they probably just spent more than they could afford

because now I know what her parents did. I think her mom was just a stay-at-home mom and her dad just had a trades job. I think they just spent their money differently than my family. My family was, has always been and still is frugal and thrifty and always made sure that they didn't spend money when they didn't need to just in case something happened. And I think a lot of that has to do with their upbringing, quite honestly. My mom has three siblings and my grandparents are originally from Quebec. And they were a military family. And I think they just always lived very simply

and it kind of translated to my mom's life. And same with my dad, he grew up in Northern BC and I think he also had a very simple, you know, small town life. And that's kind of how they raised me, you know, never, you know, it's always good to kind of shoot for the stars and be ambitious and all that, but when it comes to money, materials don't really matter. It's all about love and family and friends and that's it. That all being said, because I did grow up sometimes feeling like I was lacking something,

it definitely did put this fire in my belly that I wanted to have what my parents didn't have or they couldn't provide for me. Not that they, you know, I felt, I don't know how to say it in a way that I don't feel like I necessarily needed more to be happy growing up because I was a very happy kid and had a very wonderful childhood. But I just think when I have a family, I want to provide some extra things, some additional things to my kids, if that makes sense. For instance, me and my sisters, I have two sisters, we never got an allowance. And that's kind of fine.

We were just expected to help around the house and that was it. The only money we ever really got was for birthdays from relatives and Christmas. So for years, I would just save up whatever I got for birthdays and Christmas and try to make that tiny bit of money, sometimes just like a hundred bucks, try to make that last throughout the year. It was fine, honestly. If I ever needed something, my parents would help me out like clothes or food or whatever. But when it came down

to just like buying fun things for me like candy or toys or whatever, I would have to pay for that. And so I would just like started budgeting. I want to say at like probably age 11 or earlier, I don't know. So I never necessarily, yeah, I didn't need an allowance to be happy. I feel like I got everything I wanted, but it kind of would have, I feel like there would have been less awkward situations sometimes. Like I have these big memories of being a kid and like going in the pool and some of my friends being, oh, we're going to the cafeteria and get some fries. And I like did not have enough money for fries. I had enough money to go to the pool, but I didn't. So I just

pretend like, oh, I don't want any. I'm fine. But you know, maybe that's fine. I mean, it definitely helped me become the person that I am today. But I don't know. It's just something that I kind of don't want my kids to experience, I guess. Now, along the same lines, because you know, we didn't get an allowance, we also, also because my parents got married really young, they never set up an RESP for us. So we never had a college fund like most kids have. And again, that's fine. It made me who I am.

And I'm really proud to say that I'm the one responsible for putting myself through university. I think that's awesome. It's a great feeling to know that not only did I get into university, do well in university, get that diploma, but I also got to pay for it. It's a pretty remarkable thing. But the other side of the coin, I know that I was very lucky. I went to a university that was very close to my house and I lived at my parents' house for five years.

It took me to do my degree. Not everyone has that opportunity or that freedom. Some people have to, they come from a small town or whatever and they have to go somewhere else to go to university. So that means they have to move, they have to pay for their living expenses plus tuition and all that stuff. And I also want my kids to have the freedom to be able to choose what university they want to go to.

I went to Simon Fraser University in Vancouver and it's a great school, but I kind of had to go to that school because I felt like the only way I could afford to go to university and pay for it is if I stayed at home. And the other kind of local university was UBC, but it was just a bit too far for me to travel. It would have been an awful commute for like four to five years. So I chose like the best closest school for me. I wish, you know, when I eventually have a family and have kids

that are going to go off to college that they could not just choose the best closest school, but the best school. And so I want to be able to pay for that for them. I'd still not just be like, here's a free trip to school. Good luck. Don't fail. I would definitely make it so I'll pay for your tuition, but you have to pay for your living expenses. Because I don't believe that anyone should get just a free pass. I don't think kids will learn about money if they don't have to deal with it, if everything's just paid for them. And I know that because I met a lot of kids like this at university and they're, they were just terrible

with their money. They'd make terrible choices because it wasn't their money. It didn't matter. Or they'd have their parents' credit card or a credit card that their parents gave them and they just... What would you do if you're an 18, 19-year-old on your own for the first time and you get unlimited money. You're going to spend it. You're not going to save it for a rainy day or to eventually have a retirement fund or buy a house. You're just going to spend.

And eventually if you do get cut off, what do you think is going to happen? You're going to maybe get a job, start making your own money, but you're going to have those same terrible money habits. You're just going to waste your money. You're going to rack get a job, start making your own money, but you're going to have those same terrible money habits. You're just going to waste your money. You're going to rack up your credit card. And what do you think? So I'm very firm in my idea and same with my husband that when we have kids, we will pay for their school, but they need to have a job. I think it's a ridiculous notion that you cannot do two things at once.

I worked sometimes 30 hours a week while going to school full-time. It made me a hard worker. It made me good at multitasking and understanding that, guess what? Life is hard. And it also helped me when I was finished university because I honestly had this ridiculous idea that once I eventually got a full-time job, moved down my own, oh, then I could relax because working and going to school, that was tough. But then, you know, if I'm just working full-time, wow, all the free time I'll have. Yeah, that was before I actually moved out, I think, that I had that idea.

It probably took me about a good month, maybe. Nah, I'd say month, not even more than that, that I realized, oh wow, yeah, I have more free time, but stuff's expensive. I need more money. I don't really want to reveal how much I made my first job because it was really, really low. It was basically just above the poverty line, but I hardly made anything and it was really hard to save. So I'll get to this a bit later on in the program. When I finished university, I was actually unemployed for eight months. So during that time, I was a on-call teleprompter for the news. Thanks, Dad. I got that job through my dad and it was the most random job I'll

probably have ever done. I don't know if I'll ever do something so random and if none of you are familiar with what a teleprompter does, they're the people that literally scroll the script on the teleprompter machine for the anchors. So when they're talking live on the news, there's literally someone controlling the style, making the script go up. I'm not sure if that is even a job anymore because I actually didn't even quit that job. They kind of just phased me out and replaced me with a foot pedal. How sad is that? Now the news anchors just do with foot pedal. But when I had that job for those eight months, I was considering quitting it once I got my

full-time job. But then I started realizing how expensive things were and maybe it'd be nice to have a little bit of extra money. And so I'm like, you know what? I'll just keep this on call gig for the time being to make a bit of extra money. But maybe after six months or a year, then I'll quit. And I kept that job for three and a half years. being to make a bit of extra money, but after maybe after six months or a year, then I'll quit. And I kept that job for three and a half years.

That's how much I realized I needed a second stream of income, basically starting out. Things are expensive. Starting out at zero is no fun. I needed that second job. So I think definitely working and going to school definitely prepared me for real life because guess what? It never ends. You'll always need more than one stream of income.

So that's kind of a, I guess, brief glimpse of me growing up and going to school. I feel like I should actually mention what I went to school for because I feel like it definitely reveals a lot about me. You probably think that I would have gone to university for accounting or business or marketing because that's what I work in right now. But actually, I was an artiste. I thought I was going to be a filmmaker or film editor or something like that. And yeah, well, things just don't really turn out the way you plan them when you're like 17, do they?

Anyway, I went to Simon Fraser for film and I really loved it. I don't regret my decision to go to film school. Thank God I didn't go to a private film school where it's like 20,000 years or something like that and I actually got a legit fine arts degree from a really good institution, but five years later I graduated in 2009. I'm definitely not a filmmaker. I'm actually working in marketing. So it's interesting to see where life will take you.

Anyway, so after I graduated and I graduated in 2009, which you'll remember was, you know, big time recession, great time to be a new grad, I had, you know, all these dreams of what I would do. And I was very lucky. A professor of mine helped me get this job at the Vancouver Film Festival, which was literally my dream job. Like are you kidding? Like all these independent movies. I'm really

in this, you know, the Vancouver film scene. This is amazing. And I got it. It was just a four month contract job. And it was awesome. It was like a lot of work and I learned a ton. I'd never worked in an office before that, but it was a great experience. And after that the contract was over in mid October. I just kind of assumed I'd get a job within at least a month. And well, it took me about eight months to find another job. Probably the hardest eight months of my life, especially since I'd spent five years of my life preparing for this, I don't know, this career, this, you know, I will finally can move out of my parents' house, start my real adult life and nothing. I was unemployed, living in my parents' basement

for eight months at like 23 and I literally thought my life was over. I was just horrified of what was happening to my life. I just, I'm like, this is not me, this is not real, this is not what I had planned the hell. But the good thing that did come out of it actually was I had a lot of free time and I read a lot of blogs and books about money and personal finances. Actually, I'll give credit to my older sister. She's the one who introduced me to the world of personal finance because she was reading a couple blogs and she's like, oh, you should read this. And I just got hooked. I'm like, this is perfect for me. I'm always thinking, like I was always thinking about money and I was always so, you know, conscious of my relationship with

money and budgeting and making more money and just, It was just always on my mind. So I'm like, this is perfect. And eventually, after the period ended, I got my first real full-time job that allowed me to finally move out of my parents' house and get my own apartment with some roommates and just finally start living like a real adult. And I honestly stupidly thought, okay, yeah, awesome. Everything's gonna be fine. I don't have to read about personal finance anymore.

I'm gonna have so much more money. I'm just gonna live my life and have an awesome time. And not soon after did I realize, okay, I guess I've got to keep that teleprompting job. I can't do all that awesome stuff that I thought I'd be able to do. And I guess I'm going to be eating a lot of Ishii Van Noodles. It was not an easy first year, I'm telling you. And I don't want to freak out any, you know, almost new grads out there, but you know, maybe I'm hoping that it's not as hard anymore. Maybe this was an isolated incident because it was a recession and I had no money when I moved out. I don't know, but

it was it was a hard year. It was probably one of my hardest years. I really wanted to prove to myself that I could be independent in all ways possible including financially independent and that meant keeping a second job while working full time and also not spending anything. I literally do like I need to almost find some of those old receipts so I can see like how little I spent that year. I remember like I even wrote about this in one of my posts about some of the most cheapskate things I did. One of the things I did to save just like a few dollars really but I did this on like a weekly basis was I would get milk and there you can get like a one liter of milk at this one grocery

store that was in a glass bottle and it cost two dollars but if you brought back the bottle you'd get a dollar back so it'd be half off essentially. I and it was ridiculous I didn't have a car at the time so and this grocery store wasn't necessarily super close to my house, but maybe every two weeks or however long it take me to finish the milk, I would clean it and then bring it back to the grocery store to return just to get that dollar back. Like that's how like every little dollar counted for that first year. But the thing was, even though that sounds kind of awful and probably no one

would want to even think of doing that themselves, it taught me a lot about budgeting and saving and just living off what you need, just buying what you need and not focusing all that stuff that you want, but it actually doesn't add any value to your life. Anyway, so you know based on that first year, because my mind was so wrapped up in money and personal finance, I got the bright idea to start my own personal finance blog. Mo Money Mo Houses was born on December 13th, I think, 2011. if any of you are wondering how the heck I came up with that ridiculous name for a blog, let me... there's a few reasons. It's like an onion, there's a bunch of layers. Okay, so the first reason is my old roommate, one of my

first roommates, she came up with the idea. She thought it was a ridiculous, hilarious name for a personal finance blog because it's a bit cheeky, but silly, and also it references one of her and my favorite, uh, hip hop songs, which is Mo Money, Mo Problems, right? Anybody? Anybody? Okay. Um, and the second is it kind of involves my last name, Morehouse. Um, and uh, I guess the third layer would be, I want to include my last name, not just to kind of have a double entendre, but just because when I grew up, you know, in elementary school, you know, kids used to make fun of your last name.

Well kids used to always make fun of my last name, Morehouse, and you know, used to taunt me being like, oh, Jessica, you have more houses. No idea what that means, honestly. I don't think they knew what it meant at the time, but he used to always really irritate me just because I'm like, stop it. I don't know. I just have one house. And it's just a stick in my mind. And I think as I grew up, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to show them. I'm going to show them. I'm going to have more houses than all y'all. And yeah. And okay, the fourth layer, the last layer, who knew Mo Money Mo Houses had so

much depth? The last layer is because I read so many personal finance blogs that a lot of them focused on income property, one of my dreams, and still is, is to eventually own a bunch of properties and be a landlord and make a bunch of money by, you know, renting out places. So having Mo Money for more houses. Alright so that is how I chose my blog's name and now I'm gonna get into a bit about what my blog's about but what also this podcast is about. It's basically another extension of my blog. I love having my blog, I love having an outlet to write

all my ideas and thoughts and whatever, but I do feel like sometimes I need another way to express myself and my personality. I think I am funny, I don't know, and sometimes I don't know if that comes across in my writing. In addition to that, I do feel like my blog is about me and I just talk about me, which I think is relatively interesting to lots of readers out there, but my podcast is about me and I just talk about me, which I think is relatively interesting to lots of readers out there, but my podcast is not going to be that. I'm not going to just be talking for 20 minutes by myself full on monologue style. I'm going to be interviewing people.

I'm going to be interviewing real people that I know, mainly millennials, and talking about real money issues that they're dealing with. Like maybe they're planning an expensive wedding. I went through that so I could totally, you know, give some advice or we could talk about it. They have student loan debt. That's almost everyone I know. They have crippling debt and they're trying to figure out how to pay off their debt, but also how to put money in the bank and start saving for retirement. Yeah, stuff like that. I've got a bunch of ideas, but I am totally open to anyone out there who wants to give me some helpful criticism, some comments, some ideas that you would like to hear on

this podcast. Or if you even have some people in mind that you think would be great to talk to me on this podcast, I would be totally open to that. So if you do want to contact me, make sure to go to mo money mo houses dot com and on the contact page there's my email but feel free if you don't email me you can contact me on Twitter or Facebook and I'd be happy to listen to your thoughts and ideas. So on that note I I'm going to wrap things up. Thank you so much for listening to the first ever episode.

Well there you have it. That was episode one of what is now the More Money Podcast, but was originally called the Mo Money Mo Houses because that was the same name that I had for my blog, which I still technically have. I still technically have a blog on jessicamorehouse.com. I just maybe put like four blog posts up per year. If you ever want to check it out, jessicamorehouse.com slash blog. And yeah, I'm so glad that I changed the name back in 2020

for a number of reasons, because what was I thinking, honestly? What was I thinking? But also what was so apparent was my voice sounded a little bit higher, which makes sense. I think over time, you know, our voices get a little bit lower, but my vocal fry was off the charts. Like I wasn't even trying to hide it. And yeah, I have a vocal fry when I just generally casually talk, but my God, hurt my ears. So sorry for that. Sorry to you for listening to all that.

Hopefully I don't sound like that anymore. I know sometimes I have a vocal, I don't think I sound like that anymore. My God. Other things, so while I was listening, I was making some notes because there were some things that I'm like, oh my gosh, it's crazy just to see where I ended up

and where I thought I was gonna end up. The most apparent one was I kept on saying, when I have kids, when I have a family, and which makes sense because I think at that point when I was doing the podcast, I think it was about 28 years old. Yeah, 38, no kids, not in the cards for me and my husband and really happy about it. Yeah, 38, no kids, not in the cards for me and my husband.

And really happy about it. Like this was a life choice and I'm happy about the choice that we made. I'm a very happy, proud aunt to my niece and I'm good with that. But it's wild to think that at 28, I thought I was gonna have kids. But I also know that deep down, but I didn't wanna reveal it really to myself or anyone else else because there's a lot of judgment being a woman, especially

in your twenties and I was newly married. I didn't want to admit that honestly, I didn't want kids. I've never wanted kids. It just was never, there were some people out there, like honestly, like my sisters, my mom, they always want to be a mom. And that's beautiful. I never, I never had that feeling. There was never a moment where I'm like, oh yeah, I just thought there was an expectation that I had to one day until I realized I don't. And my husband didn't really want kids either. And so there we are. So yeah, I can't believe I talked about, oh, when we have family. Well, surprise, no, no kids. Now the other kind of things that I noted down was I didn't realize, well, I mean,

it makes sense looking back and I've done a lot of work on myself over the past couple years, especially writing this book, was how judgmental I was. And you may not think so, but I can pick it up so easily. For instance, the fact that I said, oh, when I have kids, I'm going to expect them to to get a job when they're in school and I'm probably not going to pay for it. I want them to basically have the same experience that I did, which I put myself through school and was very proud of that. And I'm so glad I did.

And I'm a better person because I did that. Yet now I had to literally if I couldn't really apply for student loans, I just wouldn't get enough to cover the tuition and my books and all the costs because of my parents' income. However, there was actually still like, it was very annoying. It's like, I couldn't get student loans really to pay for school. And there was no savings. My parents didn't have any college savings for me or my sister. They just didn't have any. They couldn't afford to do that. And so they said, if you want to go to school, you have to pay for it. Sorry. And so that's what I did. And then I rationalized it that, oh, well, I'm so glad I did. I'm a better person for it. No, I had to. That was just the situation. And it

was kind of crappy. And if I had kids today, if I changed my mind and I want kids, my gosh, of course I would start an RESP. I would not expect them to pay for school because also it's going to be a million dollars in the future, right? So that was something that was interesting. I know what I'm doing there. I'm rationalizing some struggles I went through to say, oh no, I'm glad I went through that. No, no, I'm not. I wish I had a college fund.

That would have been amazing. It would have made my life a lot less stressful, that's for sure. And I felt like I did a lot of that rationalization of some of the financial struggles that we had as a family growing up because I didn't want to sound ungrateful. And I also didn't want to blame my parents because they did do the best that they can. I 100% believe that they did the best that they could. But yeah, did sometimes we go without and did we have less than others? Sure, we did.

Did that affect me and my relationship with money in my adult years? Yes, it did. You will find out all that in my book. It sure had a really big impact. Things that I had to learn and then unlearn because they were unhealthy things I held onto because I would not let myself go there and acknowledge that those experiences were

true and they weren't the easiest and it's okay and I think part of it was I didn't want to sound yeah again ungrateful because there's always someone in the world there's someone out there who has it worse than you so how dare you even complain you're so lucky and privileged? Absolutely. And I think I've been pretty, even back then, I was pretty upfront about I knew I was privileged. I came from relatively low income, but we were in the suburbs, we're white, we had pretty much no difficulties in lots of situations that other people probably do confront a lot

of difficulties. We were very lucky. We really, really were. However, it wasn't always easy and I should have allowed myself to acknowledge that because that's the only way that we can heal and move forward. We need to show ourselves empathy and I did not allow myself to do that. And luckily through the process of writing my book and going to therapy, I was able to do that finally. So I feel kind of bad for that girl 10 years ago who didn't allow herself to, you know, accept that those experiences were true. And both things can be true that you are privileged and someone has it worse than you and you should be

you know, very grateful for the situation you're in. However, you also maybe had some struggles and it wasn't always the easiest. Both things can be true. Now, another thing that's so apparent and again, it may not be as apparent to you as it is to me, but the amount of kind of talk of shame or just implications of shame in the episode, for example, you know, there's a part where I mention, you know, the first job I had out of university, I was earning a very low income. It was like basically the poverty line. And that's why I had to have a second job because it's very expensive to live in Vancouver and support myself. But I did not want to reveal the number. And I know why I didn't reveal that number is because it wasn't that long ago that I earned that income. There's like a, it's like three years difference from that point when I was earning that income. So I was still very ashamed and embarrassed for earning that low income because I had a lot of friends and people

in the personal finance space who I knew earned a lot more. And I was embarrassed for them to ever find out how little I earned because I thought they would judge me and think that I was less valuable as a person or just, you know, oh, that's so, you know, cringe that you weren't that much and, you know, lived so frugally because you had to not because you wanted to save money and reach financial independence. No, I literally had to work two jobs and barely put any money into savings throughout most of my twenties because life is expensive and I didn't earn that much. And that's the truth. But I'm happy to reveal how much I earned in that first job at the Georgia straight,

which RIP no longer exists, went bankrupt. I earned $30,500 the first about two years of that job. And then finally got the, you know, balls basically to ask for a raise. I asked for a $5,000 raise. And I believe I got half that. No, I think I got $34,500. That was the bump up in salary. They didn't even give me the full fricking $5,000.

To me, that's life-changing money. They literally shorted me $500. Ridiculous. Yeah. So whatever it is, what it is, but $34,500. Wouldn't even give me the extra $500. I'm still bitter about that a little bit, but hey, doesn't matter because that company literally doesn't even exist anymore. So maybe they needed the $500 more than I did. But yeah, I'm not ashamed to say that I worked my butt off working two jobs. So that was my full-time job. And then I worked

nights and weekends at that teleprompter operator for the news job and did my best to just survive. And I'm so glad that I'm no longer there. And that's the one thing I can be so, so thankful for that. I'm glad I didn't give up. And I kept on pushing through as hard as I knew it really was to live on that kind of income with my expenses and try to put money in the bank and all that kind of stuff, because I'm in a much better position now. And it's like, if I could go back in time, like everything's going to get better. And also too, I was still working my marketing job at that law firm. My gosh, I hated it. I was so miserable there. And I, that's why part of the reason I started the podcast, I needed another outlet. And I think I was also thinking forward,

maybe this could be successful and I could leave my job and hey, was able to do that. Eight years ago, I quit that job and I've been doing this full time. So this podcast literally gave me a new career. So thank you for supporting me. If you're just, you know, just joined the podcast or you've been supporting me from the beginning, thank you to you because again, life changed because of this podcast. Okay. Just a few other notes. It's funny that I mentioned that one of my dreams, and I feel like that was up until probably 2019 of becoming a real estate investor. I wanted that one of my dreams, and I feel like that was up until probably 2019 of becoming a real estate investor.

I wanted to own a bunch of properties and be a landlord. I remember, I was very serious about that. Oh my God, no, not for me. I own my home and that is all I wanna own. I am not interested in investing in any other properties. I realized I much prefer just indexing and chilling, buying my little index funds and living that life. I'm good with the one property.

I know a lot of people who are landlords. It sounds awful. I mean, again, there's also successful people who do it. That's great. Not for me, not for me. So glad I didn't do that. Not for me. And the other thing is, gosh, I really talked about how cheap I was in my early 20s.

And talk about financial trauma I didn't realize. I thought I was wearing that as a badge of honor. Oh, I learned so much. I'm so glad I went through that experience. No, I really, I wish I didn't have to experience that. I wish no one has to experience that kind of frugality. It was not healthy and it caused me to, it still has some lingering effects on me on how I perceive spending, how judgmental I am on myself when I spend money. That's for a want instead of a need. So yeah, Jessica, from 10 years ago, you can let that go. That's not something you should be thankful for. That's something that you went through and survived,

but it's not something that you need to be so grateful. I mean, life experience. I mean, yeah, sure. It's good to be positive, but no, it's okay to let that go in the past. No, thank you. Never want to go back to that time. And, and yeah, that's kind of it. The only other thing I noted was like, it's so funny that I'm like, if you want to hang out with, or, you know, catch up with me or stay in the loop with me, follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Well, that's, that's neat. Well, I was aged well. Facebook and Twitter's technically still exists, but I, I mean, I just,

the only things that are on my Facebook are what I post on Instagram. And it's just like automated. I don't post anything independently on Facebook anymore. And my personal Facebook, gosh, I don't post anything. I think lately I've been posting some book stuff, but that's it. And Twitter, nah, garbage, like on fire over there. It's like a trash pile on fire that I am scared to go to, so I don't go there anymore. And I will not call it the new name because it's stupid. So anyway, sorry if I offended anyone who loves X. I'm just kidding. So yeah, hope you enjoyed that episode and I had a really good time just revisiting the past a little bit. Right after this, if you want,

you can listen to an excerpt from my book to get a little sense of what's it about, what it sounds like if you want to get the audiobook, because I do narrate the audiobook and just what you can expect there. But I do go more in depth about my money story, which I just like, just the tip of the iceberg, I was talking about my money story in this episode. So I think you're gonna really like the book. So check that out. And then next week, got another great re-listen episode

and excerpt that I'm going to be reading. So come back next week for those things you can look forward to. But with that, thanks for listening and I will see you next week. The More Money Podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of podcast producer Matt Rideout, who you can find at mravcanada.com.