Speaker 1: Episode nine two, Paying off debt and reducing food waste
Speaker 1: with Debt Kicking Mom. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast,
Speaker 1: where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live
Speaker 1: with your life. Here your host Jen and Jill. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, I'm Jill,
Speaker 1: and we have a fantastic chat with Angela from Debt
Speaker 1: Kicking Mom. You're excited, Oh my gosh, this is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite episodes we've ever done, and you will
Speaker 1: see why as soon as she opens her mouth. She
Speaker 1: has a powerful story, great actionable tips, and you will
Speaker 1: be engaged every single minute of the episode. Mm hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's just really good. And we're recording this intro
Speaker 1: after we've had the interviews. That's why we're so confident
Speaker 1: about it. But let's let's get into it right first.
Speaker 1: Our sponsors, of course, also brought to you by Basic.
Speaker 1: One of the best things we can aim at in
Speaker 1: our financial lives. Want to reduce spending, save some money
Speaker 1: just by the basics. Get back to the basics, food, clothing, bills,
Speaker 1: really anything basic. We know we've reached the pinnacle of
Speaker 1: frugality when yeah, basic becomes a compliment. Oh man, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're basic. That's my life for sure. You know, it
Speaker 1: seems it seems like an insult, and then you realize, hey,
Speaker 1: it's the best thing you could say about a Yeah, Jack, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I live in a trailer. I'm getting back to the basics.
Speaker 1: Every time he brings some beans, I'm back to the basics.
Speaker 1: Every time we bring kind to the pediatrician, he is
Speaker 1: always on the fiftieth percentile. And so we're just so
Speaker 1: thankful that he's so average. We're like, yes, basic, like us,
Speaker 1: we are so basic, yes, so vanilla. So so that
Speaker 1: ties in perfectly to this interview because Angela and her
Speaker 1: family were just being basic. They were being super normal
Speaker 1: and over a decade, accumulated seventy seven thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of every debt you can think of because they were
Speaker 1: being normal, and they were able to pay it off
Speaker 1: on mostly um a single income for two and a
Speaker 1: half years and then the last five months two incomes.
Speaker 1: And so they have a fantastic story, and she's going
Speaker 1: to go into it more in her own words, but
Speaker 1: this is a story that everyone can relate to in
Speaker 1: some capacity. And so I am I'm excited for her
Speaker 1: to share it with you. Listen up. Yeah. So, without
Speaker 1: further introduction, UM, here's our interview with Angela, debt kick
Speaker 1: and mom. Welcome Angela to the Frugal Friends podcast. We
Speaker 1: are so stoked to have you on. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: such a pleasure to meet you in October um at
Speaker 1: Ramsey Solutions, like in person, so it's going to hang
Speaker 1: out again. Yes, it was so nice to meet you
Speaker 1: and I'm so excited to be on your podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan, so we are, and we are big
Speaker 1: fans of you and your YouTube channel. I love what
Speaker 1: you're doing, so glad to have you, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: listeners will enjoy what you have to say to You
Speaker 1: bring such a good perspective. Thank you. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: While this is great, I'm glad I can be considered
Speaker 1: one of the Frugal Friends. It's not that hard, but
Speaker 1: you're in awesome. So for people that don't know about
Speaker 1: your debt free story, can you can you give us
Speaker 1: the rundown on that because I love your story and
Speaker 1: I think it's so many people are where you guys
Speaker 1: were and are feeling hopeless and you have You've just
Speaker 1: given a story of inspiration to so many people. Oh well,
Speaker 1: thank you, and that means a lot, and that is
Speaker 1: why I continue to share it because so many people
Speaker 1: resonate because the fact of our story is that we
Speaker 1: were just very very very normal for a very very
Speaker 1: long time, and that caught up to us financially. So um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can, I'll give the condensed version, but
Speaker 1: they basically me and my husband got married pretty young,
Speaker 1: like I was twenty one and twenty three, and we
Speaker 1: were fresh out of college, and you know, we started
Speaker 1: a family really young, and basically our entire twenties was
Speaker 1: spent like having babies, playing house and going into debt,
Speaker 1: and we just I mean, the truth is is that
Speaker 1: we got married young. We weren't making a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but we were just kind of doing what you normally do.
Speaker 1: You get married, you have kids, you buy a house.
Speaker 1: And we had no clue about personal finance because like
Speaker 1: most people, you don't really talk about it. You know,
Speaker 1: you may talk about budging a little bit with your parents.
Speaker 1: You know, they may teach you that money doesn't grow
Speaker 1: on trees and whatever, but they don't. I mean, we
Speaker 1: just personally didn't get that upbringing where we were taught,
Speaker 1: you know, how to how to handle personal finance, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's so normal because most people I
Speaker 1: talk to don't even feel comfortable talking about personal finance, right, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of that's that's our story. So basically,
Speaker 1: we spent almost a decade of our marriage having babies,
Speaker 1: being house poor and trying to survive off of one
Speaker 1: income because we had this family and we were just
Speaker 1: being like trying to just do what we thought was normal. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you have you get a job. My husband
Speaker 1: was making not very much money fresh out of college, Um,
Speaker 1: got a job, started having kids. I wanted to stay
Speaker 1: home with my kids. So we were living off of
Speaker 1: one income, and we were just always broke and always
Speaker 1: living paycheck to paycheck, and it was fine. We didn't
Speaker 1: graduate school with UM at this point, we didn't have
Speaker 1: student loan debt, so we kind of were just paycheck
Speaker 1: to paycheck, just managing. But slowly but surely, we started
Speaker 1: racking up that credit card debt. And then I'm talking
Speaker 1: over the course of like a decade, you know, an
Speaker 1: emergency would come up and we could never save money.
Speaker 1: We just weren't disciplined. We didn't know how to live
Speaker 1: life on a budget. We couldn't have a really saved money,
Speaker 1: so anytime an emergency came up, we were using that
Speaker 1: credit card. We would get like a tax return and
Speaker 1: be able to pay it off, but then the next
Speaker 1: emergency would come up. And we just kind of lived
Speaker 1: this cycle. And then the biggest thing is when we
Speaker 1: bought our first house. We are from California. We don't
Speaker 1: live in California now, we live in South Carolina now,
Speaker 1: but we bought our first house. We became house poor.
Speaker 1: Like we bought this house. It was just too expensive
Speaker 1: for us. We couldn't afford it. We're on one income,
Speaker 1: but um, we wanted it, and we wanted what we
Speaker 1: wanted now, you know, and even though we're paycheck to paycheck, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how we got approved for our mortgage.
Speaker 1: Like I look back and I'm just like, this is
Speaker 1: crazy time, Like I don't get it, but we did.
Speaker 1: And that's when things got really out of control. You
Speaker 1: look at the statistics. And this is why I shared
Speaker 1: this story because I talked about it and I kind
Speaker 1: of get embarrassed where I'm like, gosh, we were always
Speaker 1: so broke, but yet we kept buying things, you know,
Speaker 1: in our lifestyle. We never modified our lifestyle to live
Speaker 1: below our means, but statistically, like it's what is it
Speaker 1: like sevent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck like most
Speaker 1: people live exactly that we were living for a decade. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, we just spent our twenties
Speaker 1: having kids, growing our family, and getting into debt, and
Speaker 1: it caught up to us and basically we found ourselves
Speaker 1: where we could not make it anymore. We were like
Speaker 1: drowning in debt payments. It was so hard to live
Speaker 1: off of my husband's income because even every time he
Speaker 1: would get a raise and we'd have more income, somehow
Speaker 1: we managed to spend it all right, because we still
Speaker 1: didn't know how to budget. We didn't understand how to budget,
Speaker 1: how to save. I mean, we understood it, we just
Speaker 1: when it practice it. We couldn't put it into practice.
Speaker 1: You know, you can write numbers down, but it's actually
Speaker 1: that is exactly right. Or we were just in denial,
Speaker 1: you know, about how much we were spending when we're
Speaker 1: tracking spending so many little pieces of it that we
Speaker 1: just weren't doing. That seemed like common sense, and it
Speaker 1: is common sense, but we know the majority of people
Speaker 1: don't do that, and that's why debt is such an
Speaker 1: issue for so many people. And um, it caught up
Speaker 1: to us about after when I was pregnant with my
Speaker 1: third child. We were at probably the rough one of
Speaker 1: the roughest parts financially. We'd always lived paycheck to paycheck,
Speaker 1: but my husband had a new job and we now
Speaker 1: we didn't have health insurance, and we ended up having
Speaker 1: two babies without health insurance, paying for it out of pocket.
Speaker 1: And now we had all this medical debt on top
Speaker 1: of our credit card debt, our mortgage, just you know,
Speaker 1: the rat race, right, And at that time, I realized, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this life, this life of me being a
Speaker 1: stay at home mom and having you know, my kids
Speaker 1: in my house, we can't keep up with it anymore.
Speaker 1: And I realized I was going to have to in
Speaker 1: order to keep up with our debt payments, I was
Speaker 1: going to have to go back to work. So I
Speaker 1: started going to school. Well, my mindset was so like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to school. Well, how the heck am
Speaker 1: I going to pay for that? So I take out
Speaker 1: over the course of about four or five years of
Speaker 1: being a stay at home mom, and going to school
Speaker 1: at night. I took out forty dollars in student loans
Speaker 1: on top of like already thirty thousand dollars in debt
Speaker 1: that we had. I took out the loans so that
Speaker 1: one day I could make enough money to pay off
Speaker 1: that debt. You know, So now here we are, I'm
Speaker 1: about to graduate. We have four small well I graduate,
Speaker 1: we have four small kids, and but now my loans
Speaker 1: are coming out of deferment. Still stay at home mom,
Speaker 1: I still have small kids. And the reality is just
Speaker 1: like what in the heck we have seventy seven thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of consumer debt on top of our mortgage, student loans,
Speaker 1: car car loan, credit card debt, medical debt, personal loan,
Speaker 1: like just all this stuff like and it just became like,
Speaker 1: I we can't even afford the minimum payments even if
Speaker 1: I do work. It's like it's for nothing. It's just
Speaker 1: to pay for the debt. And this is going to
Speaker 1: be our life for the next at least debt gate
Speaker 1: of student loan debt, but probably even more because we're
Speaker 1: still not going to pay off our other debt. So
Speaker 1: it just you know, you can just see how it
Speaker 1: took time to get where we were at. It feels
Speaker 1: like so stuck, suffocating or hopeless. And I can just
Speaker 1: feel people listening to this just nodding. I can see
Speaker 1: them in my head there in their car, and they're
Speaker 1: because they are doing the same exact thing, or they've
Speaker 1: done the same exact thing. Well, And I love how
Speaker 1: you call it normal. We were living normal lives. You're
Speaker 1: not talking about going to the salon every day and
Speaker 1: living a luxurious life. You're having babies and living in
Speaker 1: a house. Yes, yeah, oh my gosh. And I've always
Speaker 1: said that, And that was part of my mindset too,
Speaker 1: is I was like, we don't live this extravagant life.
Speaker 1: We've always driven used cars like I don't. Well, I
Speaker 1: had a shopping problem. But it wasn't like a name brand.
Speaker 1: I wasn't yeah anything. It was very We live of
Speaker 1: what we felt was a modest life. But like you said,
Speaker 1: it's life. It's just expensive, you know. And it was
Speaker 1: just all these things happening, um and yeah, I always
Speaker 1: the picture that I get is just suffocating, like just
Speaker 1: slowly the weight of it. The weight of it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: just suffocating to us, which can make us immobile, That
Speaker 1: can paralyze us to do anything about it, which then
Speaker 1: repeats the cycle. So true. So so what was the
Speaker 1: breaking point? Yeah, so the breaking point and was we
Speaker 1: So this is there was lots of things that happened
Speaker 1: right over the years where I was like, we this
Speaker 1: is not working. This not working, but you're in survival
Speaker 1: mode and like you said, you're paralyzed by it, You're
Speaker 1: in denial. Is just what are we gonna do? It
Speaker 1: feels hopeless? Um well, we ended up going on a
Speaker 1: vacation and it ended up being kind of like our
Speaker 1: sick entire moment. We took all of our kids on
Speaker 1: this vacation, but we couldn't affordification. So I was like
Speaker 1: looking for deals and ended up finding this deal. But
Speaker 1: there's totally a cat she had to listen to a
Speaker 1: timeshare sales. I know, everybody just like it was. I know.
Speaker 1: So this is just this is just where we were at,
Speaker 1: like emotionally, I was just like, we just need to
Speaker 1: have a break. And so we end up going on
Speaker 1: this vacation and it's super cheap. We stay like two
Speaker 1: nights in the mountains at this nice resort, but the
Speaker 1: catches we have to go to this time share sales pitch,
Speaker 1: and that was my first time ever doing anything like that.
Speaker 1: I had heard people say, like, oh, just go, you're
Speaker 1: not you know, don't buy the time share. Of course,
Speaker 1: like we were too broke to even consider buying a
Speaker 1: time share. We knew that that wasn't going to happen,
Speaker 1: but you know, we thought it wouldn't be that big
Speaker 1: of a deal. Well, it ended up being the most
Speaker 1: horrible experience ever. This timeshare salesman, Like I didn't know
Speaker 1: how I would react in that situation, but he is
Speaker 1: a real person and he's trying desperately to get us
Speaker 1: to buy this time share, and we told him from
Speaker 1: the get go, like, you know, we're here to get
Speaker 1: the deal. Um. And I just learned something about myself
Speaker 1: on like a human level, Like I had gotten to
Speaker 1: a point where I was wasted, Like we were so broke,
Speaker 1: we needed this vacation so bad. We find this budget vacation,
Speaker 1: and like I just felt like we were taking advantage
Speaker 1: of this guy whose job was to sell us something.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, if he wasn't
Speaker 1: going to sell us a time share sales pitch, he
Speaker 1: doesn't get that commission. He starts talking about his family,
Speaker 1: and I could almost hear like a desperation in his voice,
Speaker 1: you know. And it was just this really human moment
Speaker 1: where I connected with this timeshare salesman, the fact that
Speaker 1: we were taking advantage of this deal, and I just
Speaker 1: felt gross. You know, it's right after Christmas. We put
Speaker 1: Christmas on a credit card, like we put this vacation
Speaker 1: on a credit card. Here's this timeshare salesman trying to
Speaker 1: get us to help him get his commission, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're like, no, no, no, we don't mean to
Speaker 1: be rude. But now he's talking about his family. He
Speaker 1: starts bringing up his you know, his time in the military.
Speaker 1: My brother was in the military here, and it's just like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is our real life. And um it just the
Speaker 1: whole thing felt sleazy and gross. And that night, UM,
Speaker 1: I end up getting a text message. So we went
Speaker 1: to this time shot sales pitch, went out to dinner,
Speaker 1: go back to the resort room, and I get a
Speaker 1: text message on my phone from my bank telling me
Speaker 1: that we maxed out our last credit card from the
Speaker 1: dinner that we had put on it, like we had
Speaker 1: overdrawn the credit card. And it was like it's canceled.
Speaker 1: You can't use that. We're in the mountains with four babies,
Speaker 1: and honestly, like I'm like, I don't even know how
Speaker 1: we're going to get guests to go home. Do we
Speaker 1: have enough in the checking account because I was kind
Speaker 1: of relying on the credit card until my husband gets
Speaker 1: paid next because there's nothing in the checking account. And
Speaker 1: it hit me. And I get emotional every time, but
Speaker 1: it hit me like a ton of bricks. And at
Speaker 1: this time I was handling all the finances. My husband
Speaker 1: was earning the money, but he was okay with me
Speaker 1: just kind of handling it, and I knew the gravity
Speaker 1: of the situation. He did not. He went to bed
Speaker 1: that night, put my kids to bed, and I could
Speaker 1: not leap. And I was in this resort hotel room
Speaker 1: on this vacation, looking at my phone, you know, broke
Speaker 1: and really and after this whole experience with the salesman,
Speaker 1: you know, and all that, I just felt like wow,
Speaker 1: and that was our sick entire moment. And I ended
Speaker 1: up staying up that night pulling up all my accounts,
Speaker 1: every debt payment that we owed, Like I just started
Speaker 1: writing it down on the hotel notepad and just listing.
Speaker 1: I was like that wow wow, you know, and it
Speaker 1: was just I looked at everything and I said, the
Speaker 1: thing is that we cannot keep doing this, and it
Speaker 1: was this broken point. So then the next day, um well,
Speaker 1: we ended up going home the next day and it
Speaker 1: was that night that I was like. I told my husband.
Speaker 1: I was like, I need you talk to you. He
Speaker 1: knew we had debt, you know, but he didn't understand
Speaker 1: the the magnitude of it. I didn't understand the magnitude
Speaker 1: of it until that night when I sat down and
Speaker 1: started writing everything out. And what prompted me to write
Speaker 1: everything out was because I was like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: we maxed out our credit card. Can I get another one?
Speaker 1: Can I get another credit card? So I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what all credit cards do I have? And I'm writing
Speaker 1: them all down? How much is my debt? You know?
Speaker 1: I just started pulling up all these different accounts and
Speaker 1: then it was like, oh my gosh, this is way
Speaker 1: worse than I thought. You know. I scared the monster
Speaker 1: in the face the first time that night, and then
Speaker 1: I had to talk to my husband about it and
Speaker 1: be like, you can't be in denial anymore. I can't
Speaker 1: do this on my own anymore, and we got to
Speaker 1: do something different, and that is literally where it all started.
Speaker 1: I was right after Christmas. It became our new year's
Speaker 1: resolution to start getting out of debt. Yeah. Thanks, I
Speaker 1: feel happy to like experiencing that story. Yeah, you told
Speaker 1: it so well that there's such for me like an
Speaker 1: emotional connection with your story. Right now, we all need
Speaker 1: to process this together. Now. It's good. It's good because
Speaker 1: it's real life, and I think so many people find
Speaker 1: themselves in that place. I think what is so powerful
Speaker 1: is how normal your story is and sound, and how
Speaker 1: many people could connect with it at different points. And
Speaker 1: we say it could feel so immobilizing, so paralyzing, and
Speaker 1: yet you can almost get to this point of enough,
Speaker 1: which then can propel you towards something different. Not that
Speaker 1: I would ever say to somebody like make sure you
Speaker 1: get to absolute rock bottom and buy everything that you
Speaker 1: want so that maybe you get like motivated after that,
Speaker 1: but yeah, can you can you tell us then briefly
Speaker 1: what happened from there and and how are you out
Speaker 1: of debt now? Right? Like for our listeners, like can
Speaker 1: you give us the update to like bring us back
Speaker 1: up out for what you've experienced? Oh? Absolutely so when
Speaker 1: me and my husband had that talk, uh, we actually
Speaker 1: had ended up having a great resource because my mother
Speaker 1: in law she taught Financial Peace University, like Dave Ramsey's
Speaker 1: Financial Peace University. She taught that at her church and
Speaker 1: she had mentioned it to us before, you know, not
Speaker 1: in any sort of way like you needed. She had
Speaker 1: no idea what was going on. She talked about how
Speaker 1: she hosted that so much so and we kind of looked.
Speaker 1: I was like, I think that's the get out of
Speaker 1: debt guy or the budgeting guy, right, the financial peace guy.
Speaker 1: And I was like, man, peace sounds really nice, well
Speaker 1: titled peace. So call your mom and ask her about that.
Speaker 1: And without telling his mom anything about our situation, he
Speaker 1: just said, Hey, what's that class? And could me and
Speaker 1: Angela take it? And you know, we're interested in it.
Speaker 1: And she was like, I will buy you a Financial
Speaker 1: Peace University kit tonight and it'll be it'll be in
Speaker 1: the mail. She was like, I didn't ask any question.
Speaker 1: She was so excited that he had asked for us
Speaker 1: gift and he ended up getting it a few days
Speaker 1: before the New year. Because this all happened in that
Speaker 1: short little time frame after Christmas, you know, before New Year,
Speaker 1: and we ended up getting that Financial Peace University and
Speaker 1: we got the online version of it and took the
Speaker 1: whole course in like nine days. Like not you know,
Speaker 1: we just would binge watch Dave Ramping and it was intense.
Speaker 1: It was a lot, but it definitely got us on
Speaker 1: that track of like, Okay, we need to have a budget.
Speaker 1: It needs to be you know, we need to give
Speaker 1: every dollar a name, we need to be very intentional,
Speaker 1: we need to cut expenses. And it basically just gave
Speaker 1: us all the building blocks of where to start, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole idea of like you know, having a small
Speaker 1: starter emergency fund and then paying off debt okay and
Speaker 1: pay him off from small Stolar just gave us a plan.
Speaker 1: We asked the plan, and we just started. We just
Speaker 1: started budgeting cutting expenses. And it was and when I
Speaker 1: say we just started, I mean yes, it almost felt
Speaker 1: like overnight. It was like Okay, we're done spending money.
Speaker 1: We're But it definitely took some time to like work
Speaker 1: that all out, figure out how much we were spending.
Speaker 1: I would it took us a good like ninety days
Speaker 1: to really kind of get it figured out. And then
Speaker 1: over the course of three years, we paid off seventy
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars a debt. We paid off all of
Speaker 1: our consumer in three years. And the crazy thing is
Speaker 1: that it was mostly on one income two and a
Speaker 1: half years, so that was on my husband's uh he
Speaker 1: was at an entry level engineering position, so that kind
Speaker 1: of gives you an idea on our income. You know,
Speaker 1: definitely middle class, but one income. And um, I started teaching,
Speaker 1: so you know part of my stories that I went
Speaker 1: to grad school, got my master's and teaching, but I
Speaker 1: still had young kids at home, and we started the
Speaker 1: journey before I went back to work about five months
Speaker 1: before we paid off our last stet is when I
Speaker 1: started teaching, So the majority of our debt free journey
Speaker 1: was on one income. So it really was about not
Speaker 1: raising our income for us in order to pay off
Speaker 1: that day. It was about cutting expenses, where my mindset
Speaker 1: before had always been like when we raise our income,
Speaker 1: we'll finally get caught up. But we made the decision
Speaker 1: to like, we're going to start now, and we just
Speaker 1: cut expenses. So frugality was definitely something that I embraced,
Speaker 1: especially being in the position where I was a stay
Speaker 1: at home mom. I felt like you know, that was
Speaker 1: a blessing for me. I had some time I was home.
Speaker 1: I could do a lot in the home. I can
Speaker 1: control a lot of these budget categories and save money.
Speaker 1: So that is where everything starts for me as far
Speaker 1: as like my message and what I share when it
Speaker 1: comes to you know, how I've been able to cut
Speaker 1: expenses and learn to live below our meetings and and
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of get out of that cycle
Speaker 1: of consumerism and spending money mindlessly. That was our story.
Speaker 1: That's how we paid off our debt in three years.
Speaker 1: So yeah, three years later, yes, yes, no, it's it's
Speaker 1: crazy and it's so free. So we've been debt free
Speaker 1: for a year now. Um yeah, we just celebrated one
Speaker 1: year free and we have over a six month emergency
Speaker 1: fund in the bank. We have started retirement investing, we
Speaker 1: have started a college stay means for our kids and
Speaker 1: like it done, Yeah, be done. Yeah, and four years
Speaker 1: ago you were at your breaking point? Yeah, like what
Speaker 1: anyone can think back? Like where was I four years ago?
Speaker 1: And where am I now? Like what has been the
Speaker 1: transformation that I've made in four years? And could I
Speaker 1: have done more? And it sounds like it keeps building
Speaker 1: upon itself for you, Angela, of the things that you're learning,
Speaker 1: and I know a big thing that you talk about
Speaker 1: and you help your viewers with is food and food
Speaker 1: prep and reducing food waste. And we love to pick
Speaker 1: your brain on this. I know that you've probably learned
Speaker 1: so much in your debt payoff and then your year
Speaker 1: out of debt, But what prompted you to start focusing
Speaker 1: on specifically reducing food waste as part of your journey? Yeah? So, um,
Speaker 1: it all started with my journey in frugality, right, like
Speaker 1: learning how to save money and cut expenses. And one
Speaker 1: thing that really struck accord with me when we were
Speaker 1: looking at our budget was that, you know, there's these
Speaker 1: major budget categories like housing, transportation, food, and there's probably
Speaker 1: there's probably another one, but there's like these major you know,
Speaker 1: these major budget categories that like those are the majority,
Speaker 1: that's the bulk of your income. And if you can
Speaker 1: lower any one of those, you're gonna be able, you know, significantly,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to pay off more debts. So
Speaker 1: it really was about creating a debt snowball. And we're
Speaker 1: a family of six, and our grocery budget could be astronomical. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were are. So we started looking at how much
Speaker 1: we were spending on food, and we're spending about a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on food every month and then probably more
Speaker 1: on eating out. So it's just like our grocery bill
Speaker 1: as a thousand dollars and you know, um, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, if I can control this, we could contribute
Speaker 1: a lot more to our death snowball. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of where it started, like just totally selfish frugality. I
Speaker 1: need to save money, we need to pay off debt reasons.
Speaker 1: And it all kind of started with this challenge to
Speaker 1: myself to lower my grocery budget, and that started with
Speaker 1: some pantry challenges, you know, like I started thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: well we can just not spend money at the grocery
Speaker 1: store this week and just eat up the food that
Speaker 1: we have. We're going to save money. So started doing that.
Speaker 1: And as I started doing these pantry challenges and you know,
Speaker 1: lowering my grocery budget, not buying as much at the
Speaker 1: at the store, I started to become just acutely aware
Speaker 1: of how the abundance of food that I had on hand,
Speaker 1: when before my mindset was that we didn't have enough
Speaker 1: or I can't really make anything out of what I've got.
Speaker 1: But these pantry challenges would force me to get creative,
Speaker 1: and somehow I was always able to put plenty of
Speaker 1: food on the table for my four kids and my
Speaker 1: husband and myself. And it just changed everything for me,
Speaker 1: Like I started seeing like, wow, what visually looks like
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you don't have enough. If you are creative
Speaker 1: and resourceful, you have plenty. And then I started just
Speaker 1: I mean really aware of how much food I was
Speaker 1: throwing away or I guess how much in the past
Speaker 1: I was overbuying. I was just over buying food. I
Speaker 1: had food on hand that I wasn't using. I don't
Speaker 1: need to buy more. Um, So I realized how much
Speaker 1: I was overbuying, and then started realizing how much I
Speaker 1: was wasting. And once I and I'm a researcher by
Speaker 1: just like hobby, right, Like it's my hobby to research
Speaker 1: on that girl. Yes, right, So I kind of I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know how much do people waste? You know, I
Speaker 1: can't be the only one. And very quickly you do
Speaker 1: an internet on food waste, and there's so much resources
Speaker 1: out there, and the statistics just blew me away. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a website called Save the Food dot com and
Speaker 1: I love that website. And that website you log on
Speaker 1: and it gives you so many tips for you know,
Speaker 1: reducing food waste and all that. But anyways, the statistics
Speaker 1: is what stuck out to me. It was fort of
Speaker 1: food in the United States is wasted and and you
Speaker 1: might think like, okay, of food, but consumers on on
Speaker 1: the consumer and we contribute mostly to that. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of people will say like, oh, you know what
Speaker 1: happens because you know in the in the farms are
Speaker 1: in transportation, yes, but that statistic factors in mostly consumers
Speaker 1: who are wasting food. And then there's this at the
Speaker 1: bottom of that website. There's a calculator that you can
Speaker 1: do where you can see your your family size and
Speaker 1: what on average the amount of food that people waste.
Speaker 1: And for a family of six, the average family of
Speaker 1: six will waste almost two hundred dollars a week in food.
Speaker 1: A hundred and eighty six dollars was the average according
Speaker 1: to this website. And I mean, I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: how they get their stat I knew that we were
Speaker 1: wasting food. I knew how much we were wasting, and
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh my gosh, you know, that
Speaker 1: came out to like over two thousand, like two thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred a year that my family was probably just
Speaker 1: throwing food away. Or the average family of six, that's
Speaker 1: a family of six, family of four waste about fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a year in food, but just by throwing
Speaker 1: it away, according to our website. So the statistics just
Speaker 1: shocked me, and I realized that it was like a
Speaker 1: huge problem, and I thought, wow, you know, like so
Speaker 1: many people want to lower their grocery budget, are they
Speaker 1: aware of how much food that they are throwing away?
Speaker 1: So that I just kind of started sharing with people
Speaker 1: how we were reducing food waste and that was saving
Speaker 1: me hundreds of dollars, and so that kind of became
Speaker 1: my goal. I could save the most money if I
Speaker 1: could reduce the most food waste, and also you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: buying frugal foods and learning that kind of stuff could
Speaker 1: reduce it even more. You could save a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a week by just not throwing stuff away, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of where I started sharing with people,
Speaker 1: like are you aware of how much you're buying and
Speaker 1: how much you're actually eating and that sort of thing. Again,
Speaker 1: it's the awareness piece of can think but it's not
Speaker 1: that big of a deal, but then actually look at
Speaker 1: it and realize, no, this is actually an area where
Speaker 1: you could save significantly based on how much you're not
Speaker 1: using or throwing away that it could make a big
Speaker 1: dent in that budget and debt payoff journey. It requires
Speaker 1: so much self awareness. I mean, the whole debt free
Speaker 1: journey requires self awareness, and food waste is no different.
Speaker 1: It's like look in that person in the mirror and
Speaker 1: being like okay and just not being in denial, but yeah,
Speaker 1: being self aware of how much food you're wasting, how
Speaker 1: much food? I mean, you know, we have this mindset
Speaker 1: and especially in our you know, our culture is very
Speaker 1: visually based, right, Like, you know, I think about I'm
Speaker 1: on Instagram a lot, right, so I think about just
Speaker 1: how people want to fill their feeds with things that
Speaker 1: are just beautiful and abundant. And I think we're kind
Speaker 1: of you know, we think of having enough as being
Speaker 1: as having like an abundance of something, But if you're
Speaker 1: not actually you know, like talk about produce. The number
Speaker 1: one wasted thing is produced, right, I mean it is
Speaker 1: because it doesn't the shelf life isn't going and that
Speaker 1: that's the number one wasted thing produced. So but produce
Speaker 1: is the healthiest thing, right. We want to fill our
Speaker 1: cart with this abundance of produce, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you fill your fridge with the rainbows of
Speaker 1: produce and you think it's healthy. But if you're self aware,
Speaker 1: it's like, it's not healthy to have a bunch of produce.
Speaker 1: It's healthy to eat a bunch of you know, it's
Speaker 1: like are you throwing it away? And doesn't look beautiful
Speaker 1: when you take a picture of your fridge? Or but
Speaker 1: how sad does it look when it's going in the trash?
Speaker 1: That's that's a real thing, like talking about image, right.
Speaker 1: It Actually I've realized this and it took my husband
Speaker 1: to point it out to me that I care how
Speaker 1: my grocery cart looks. And he's like, don't fool yourself.
Speaker 1: You like waffles too, Like you're just worried about what
Speaker 1: the cashier is gonna think. But then we get home
Speaker 1: and you're not going to eat that rubar But it's
Speaker 1: a pretty purple Yes, No, I I totally get it.
Speaker 1: And I still kind of feel that way sometimes when
Speaker 1: I'm putting my stuff up on the belt at Aldi
Speaker 1: and I'm like, do I have I have a frozen pizza?
Speaker 1: Do I have enough spinach to counter that? Nobody in
Speaker 1: my house right exactly? So that is I mean, that's
Speaker 1: about being self aware, is realizing yes pro I mean
Speaker 1: our family. You know, with my kids, you eat at
Speaker 1: least one fresh produce every for breakfast, luncheon, dinner. You
Speaker 1: got to have some sort of produce, and we have
Speaker 1: an abundance of it for snacks, but not in over
Speaker 1: abundance that's going to get wasted. We just don't. I'm
Speaker 1: acutely aware and intentional about how much produce I bring
Speaker 1: into my house, and I bring in just enough that
Speaker 1: is either gonna that we're gonna get is gonna get eaten,
Speaker 1: or it's if there is excess, I figure out ways
Speaker 1: that I can freeze it or reuse it. But I
Speaker 1: just am like, I am not going to throw pro
Speaker 1: dose away. And sometimes that means that I'm not bringing
Speaker 1: I'm not bringing in abundance of it in my house.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing in only what we're going to eat. That's
Speaker 1: a great segue because I wanted to hear your tips
Speaker 1: for reducing food waste, so only bringing in what you
Speaker 1: were realistically assume that's a great one. Do you have
Speaker 1: any others? Yeah? Well, I mean when I think of
Speaker 1: every time somebody asked me for tips on reducing food waste,
Speaker 1: like how did you do it, I'm like, it goes
Speaker 1: back to like maybe what you learned an elementary school
Speaker 1: about wasting anything right, reducing waste across the board, it's
Speaker 1: those three rs, like reduce, right, reduce the recycle, and
Speaker 1: that's like the most basic way to think of it.
Speaker 1: So we just talked about reducing, reduce the amount of
Speaker 1: food that you are bringing into your home. And I
Speaker 1: do this by mainly, and I talked about it on
Speaker 1: my YouTube channel. I have like a whole video where
Speaker 1: I walk you through the steps of my zero food
Speaker 1: waste meal planning because it's this process that I use
Speaker 1: where I always take inventory of what I have before
Speaker 1: a meal plan or make my grocery list. I always
Speaker 1: take inventory of what I have, like everything, what's in
Speaker 1: the freezer, what's in refrigerator, everything that I need to
Speaker 1: use up, and I kneel plan around what I have
Speaker 1: because that means when I'm going to the grocery store,
Speaker 1: I'm not buying things that I don't need. Um, not
Speaker 1: only am I not buying things that I don't need,
Speaker 1: but I have a plan for the things that I
Speaker 1: do have to get used up. So I'm reducing how
Speaker 1: much I bring into my home. And if you're not
Speaker 1: buying it, then you're saving money, right, and you're also
Speaker 1: not going to waste it. So reducing is honestly the
Speaker 1: number one way that you can reduce waste. And that's
Speaker 1: across the board for anything. Reducing your consumption. So you know,
Speaker 1: yes we need food to eat, Yes we need lots
Speaker 1: of healthy, nutritious food to eat, but be realistic, be
Speaker 1: self aware of how much you actually eat. How much
Speaker 1: is actually an appropriate portion size for you and your
Speaker 1: kids and your husband and all that, Like how much
Speaker 1: you actually need, and stop over buying, stop over buying,
Speaker 1: and stop worrying about that image. You know, and it's
Speaker 1: not helping an image for anybody else. It might just
Speaker 1: be your own image, Like I want that's yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: I want to eat more healthy food and all that,
Speaker 1: but you probably are eating enough. You're eating what you know,
Speaker 1: So anyways, that that's the number one thing is to
Speaker 1: reduce and um that is really and even when we
Speaker 1: get more on like a you know, really thinking about
Speaker 1: the food waste epidemic, that's what experts would recommend. They
Speaker 1: would recommend reducing the amount that you purchase in order
Speaker 1: to not have to throw it away. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: because it's about supplying demand too. If we are buying
Speaker 1: for you know, twice as much produced as we actually need,
Speaker 1: they're going to keep supplying twice as much produced then
Speaker 1: we actually need and the way the food waste cycle
Speaker 1: is going to continue. So we can make a difference
Speaker 1: by reducing our consumption and just decreasing that demand because
Speaker 1: we don't really need it right. So and then you know,
Speaker 1: you go into the other idea, which is to reuse.
Speaker 1: So I t this to food waste. Reuse food in
Speaker 1: different ways, so reusing leftovers, um, preserving food. I really
Speaker 1: love my freezer. I freeze everything. Most things can be
Speaker 1: frozen if you walk down the freezer aisle and kind
Speaker 1: of take a look at all those convenience foods or
Speaker 1: prepackaged foods, anything that is an ingredient, and one of
Speaker 1: those things can be frozen in your own freezer by yourself.
Speaker 1: Like you don't have. You know, there's not some magic
Speaker 1: potion that enables you to like, you know, freeze a
Speaker 1: green beans, like you can freeze your fresh green beans,
Speaker 1: you know, so just I freeze food. Preserving food when
Speaker 1: you can, UM and reusing leftovers is um so important
Speaker 1: and that takes some creative thinking. It takes some resourcefulness,
Speaker 1: that takes some trial and air. But if you have
Speaker 1: that that mentality of I'm gonna waste as little food
Speaker 1: as possible, I'm gonna meal plan around the food that
Speaker 1: I have, You'll figure out ways to use what you
Speaker 1: have on hand. And UM that's that use portion. Figure
Speaker 1: out ways to use food in different ways and keep
Speaker 1: it simple. Like you don't have to be coming up
Speaker 1: with some like you know, extravagant meal from leftovers. It
Speaker 1: could just be that maybe you just have like a
Speaker 1: pot leck night at home where you take out all
Speaker 1: the bits and scraps and put it on the table
Speaker 1: and tell everybody to just have a little bit of everything.
Speaker 1: I do that like two or three times a week
Speaker 1: in my house because with six people there, you know,
Speaker 1: I might have a little bit of chicken left and
Speaker 1: a little bit of you know, pasta left or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's not enough to feed everybody the same meal, but
Speaker 1: everybody can kind of do a potle style and then
Speaker 1: we use up the food that we have, So I
Speaker 1: do that all the time. So that's that reused portion.
Speaker 1: And then there is the idea of just when it
Speaker 1: comes to reducing waste, maybe that recycle portion. If there's
Speaker 1: food that you just cannot you know, eat anymore, but
Speaker 1: you don't want to throw it away, Especially with produce,
Speaker 1: you can recycle those produced scraps into composts something like that,
Speaker 1: you know, but I do always put this disclaim around there.
Speaker 1: It's composting or regrowing food is like kind of like
Speaker 1: a trendy thing and you see a lot of it,
Speaker 1: but actually it only UM will reconcile about one percent
Speaker 1: of the resources that it took to produce that food.
Speaker 1: So keep that in mind. The best way to reduce
Speaker 1: food waste is to reduce the amount that you're bringing
Speaker 1: in and to read it, those are really the ways
Speaker 1: that you are going to stop throwing through the way
Speaker 1: which will absolutely lower your grocery bill. Nice excellent tips
Speaker 1: and UM taking notes on it so we'll have it
Speaker 1: in our show notes for people who are like, wait, okay,
Speaker 1: what are all these different things what applies to me.
Speaker 1: We touched on this already a bit, but I'm curious
Speaker 1: to pick your brain a little more on how do
Speaker 1: you stay healthy while saving money on groceries? Yeah, well, actually,
Speaker 1: so the crazy thing is that when I started this
Speaker 1: whole journey of reducing our food waste, you know, me
Speaker 1: planning differently and um, trying to buy frugal ingredients, um
Speaker 1: that I could make stretch across the board for my family,
Speaker 1: I ended up buying a lot more like wholesome ingredients.
Speaker 1: So I was making beans and lentils from scratch. I
Speaker 1: was making soups from scratch. I was making chicken broth
Speaker 1: from scratch. Um. I was eating up more produced because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to throw it away. Um, you know
Speaker 1: I was. I realized that, Wow, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: buying convenience food because convenience foods are expensive. I'm not
Speaker 1: buying a lot of processed food because there they can
Speaker 1: be more expensive as well. So there's kind of this
Speaker 1: thing where people are like, oh, you know, cheap food
Speaker 1: is unhealthy food, and that's not really the case. The
Speaker 1: cheapest food in the grocery store is going to be
Speaker 1: like your beans. Your dry beans is gonna be your
Speaker 1: flower to make your own bread if you want to.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can get really where if you're only
Speaker 1: using holonger. It's gonna be those whole chickens you know
Speaker 1: that are like cents a pound or whatever. Um, those
Speaker 1: are all very very healthy foods and uh, and produce
Speaker 1: that's in season and all that. Those are all very
Speaker 1: very healthy foods. So I found that I actually ended
Speaker 1: up losing I mean not that weight was never losing
Speaker 1: weight was never a goal for me. But I ended
Speaker 1: up losing weight when we started at Free Journey. I
Speaker 1: think it was, um, me just having being super intentional
Speaker 1: about you know, we were we weren't eating out at all,
Speaker 1: so we were eating all home cooked meals. I was
Speaker 1: cooking from scratch mostly, and um and when I say
Speaker 1: cooking from scratch, I don't want you guys to think that.
Speaker 1: Like I hear that, and I'm like, don't. I don't
Speaker 1: bake bread or anything like that. I might bake some
Speaker 1: to go with our soup. Those are easy, but like
Speaker 1: I am not a good cook. And I created a
Speaker 1: cookbook called Simply Frugal just to like prove to people
Speaker 1: how basic it can be learned how to cook, because
Speaker 1: I'm talking like when I'm cooking from scratch, Like I
Speaker 1: learned how to boil upon out of beans and you know,
Speaker 1: put that on a thing of rice with some lettuce
Speaker 1: and you know, And that's what I mean by cooking
Speaker 1: from scratches. You don't have to be some amazing cook.
Speaker 1: Is like cooking very simple ingredients, just learning how to
Speaker 1: cook those staples, those basics, and it's it's healthy food.
Speaker 1: It's nutritious food that I cook. I cook very little
Speaker 1: processed food because that's just more expensive. It doesn't use
Speaker 1: So I found that eating out less, you know, cooking
Speaker 1: mostly wholesome ingredients with it helped me too. You know,
Speaker 1: I kind of lost the last of the baby weight,
Speaker 1: not that that was really even a goal of mine
Speaker 1: at the time. I wasn't even focused on that, but
Speaker 1: I lost that last of the baby weight, and I've
Speaker 1: maintained a healthy weight for the last almost four years now,
Speaker 1: um without ever going on a diet or trying to
Speaker 1: buy any sort of diet food or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, just go back going back
Speaker 1: to the basics of just intuitive eating, you know, eating
Speaker 1: when you're hungry and stopping eating when you're not hungry.
Speaker 1: So that's something that we practice in our house. I
Speaker 1: never make my kids clear their plate, but because we
Speaker 1: are zero food waste home, that that's what we strive for.
Speaker 1: If they don't eat their dinner, I just put some
Speaker 1: seran wrap over it and put it in the fridge,
Speaker 1: and if they get hungry, that's what they're eating later on.
Speaker 1: But it allows them to still eat intuitively. They don't
Speaker 1: have to clear their plate because we're zero food waste family, Like,
Speaker 1: oh my mom won't let me throw food a way, No,
Speaker 1: you're just gonna eat it later. Yeah, And so we
Speaker 1: end up, you know, we end up being able to
Speaker 1: balance this idea of eating intuitively, eating when we're hungry,
Speaker 1: not really having a bunch of food rules, but because
Speaker 1: we value um not throwing food away and and being
Speaker 1: resourceful and being grateful for the food that we have,
Speaker 1: it all kind of plays together, and our family I
Speaker 1: think is very healthy nutritionally because of that. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely you know, a lot of frugal foods can
Speaker 1: be very very inexpensive. I'll just say that the staples
Speaker 1: in our house, and this might not work for everybody
Speaker 1: everybody has a different diet, but some staples in our
Speaker 1: house would be like sweet potatoes, black beans, and pinto
Speaker 1: beans that I boil from scratch and you know, just
Speaker 1: it's very easy to boil beans, and you know, um,
Speaker 1: whole chickens because that's just good protein. And those would
Speaker 1: be like some staples, and those are all high in
Speaker 1: protein and fiber and they're filling and they're super affordable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's encouraging for a lot of people with
Speaker 1: maybe food allergies, because I was in a Facebook group
Speaker 1: the other day and someone was saying, like, I've just relegated.
Speaker 1: My grocery bill is just going to be high because
Speaker 1: there's so many things I can't eat, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: but the cheapest things are all things you can eat
Speaker 1: according to the allergies you just stated you have. So
Speaker 1: I think that people with different dietary restrictions should definitely
Speaker 1: take this into consideration. Yes, um, and be and take
Speaker 1: that self awareness and reducing what you buy in food
Speaker 1: waste and be able to reduce your grocery bell. It's
Speaker 1: totally doable. Yeah, And I think that that kind of
Speaker 1: plays into the other thing that we're talking about with
Speaker 1: like image and like feeling like you want to have
Speaker 1: a visual abundance of variety, right, like you don't, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if somebody needs to give you permission today
Speaker 1: to not have a super very diet if you don't
Speaker 1: want to, like, you know, you don't have to have
Speaker 1: a huge variety. You don't have to have thirty different
Speaker 1: meals for the months. You know, you can eat the
Speaker 1: same meal on rotation and it's okay if if you
Speaker 1: like it, eat it. Most of the world lives off
Speaker 1: of the basics, and it's fine right now if you
Speaker 1: want to get creative and then use your herbs and
Speaker 1: spices in a fun way. But if you're happy with
Speaker 1: having a rotation of four meals, do it? Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: in our mantra too. And that's been, that's been, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it's so there's so much freedom when it comes
Speaker 1: to that, Like it's so free to just be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if this is what I like, it's okay
Speaker 1: that I eat it once every week, you know, once
Speaker 1: or twice every week. Like there's so much freedom, is
Speaker 1: so much less pressure. Like me as a mom of four,
Speaker 1: that's like your dinner on the table, you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like it's you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: downplay it, but but definitely like reducing our variety of
Speaker 1: meals and just sticking to what my family loves that
Speaker 1: I know is nutritious has been so free for me.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a mom hack to like
Speaker 1: just give yourself permission. Just keep it simple, Like you're
Speaker 1: doing a good job by feeding them and your kids
Speaker 1: are so simple, and you're also teaching them that it's
Speaker 1: okay to you know, eat nutritious foods regularly, like you know,
Speaker 1: like keep it simple, permission to So speaking of right,
Speaker 1: every freedom of the best time of the week, it's
Speaker 1: time for So that's right, it's time for the best
Speaker 1: minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born
Speaker 1: and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage.
Speaker 1: Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have
Speaker 1: to pay that bill anymore. Build buffalo bills, Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: this is the bill of the week, all right, Angela.
Speaker 1: Every week we have this one, and we never get
Speaker 1: tired of it. We invite our listeners or our guests
Speaker 1: to give us their favorite bill for this week or
Speaker 1: for their life of any time. So do you have
Speaker 1: a bill for us. Oh my goodness. I wish I
Speaker 1: knew somebody really cool named Bill to like mix it
Speaker 1: up for you guys today, But I don't. It's kind
Speaker 1: of disappointing you. No, No, hardly any phil out their gyms,
Speaker 1: their little gyms. That's why we get so excited about it.
Speaker 1: That's so funny. I'm gonna like keep it super basic,
Speaker 1: because well, this isn't basic. This is huge for us.
Speaker 1: The bill of the week for me is definitely our
Speaker 1: mortgage bill, because y'all, we just paid so we became
Speaker 1: debt free a year ago and spent the last year
Speaker 1: building up those retirement accounts, um college savings, emergency fund
Speaker 1: and all that, getting like all that in order, and
Speaker 1: now we're working on paying off the house. And just
Speaker 1: this past Friday we put our first principal payment. That
Speaker 1: principal payment that we put on the house was we
Speaker 1: put an extra two thousand dollars on the house. That
Speaker 1: took down the life of our mortgage. I'm using one
Speaker 1: of those amoritization I probably said that word wrong. Um,
Speaker 1: so somebody just kids, somebody say that word right. I
Speaker 1: don't know, yes, you know theorization schedules. So I plugged
Speaker 1: that and that that extra two thousand dollar principal payment
Speaker 1: took four months off the life of our loan, just
Speaker 1: that one extra payment and saved us over twenty four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars in interest. Okay, just that one. So if
Speaker 1: we do this every month, it's gonna we're gonna have
Speaker 1: our house paid off in just a matter of about
Speaker 1: five years. So that was definitely that was huge for
Speaker 1: us because four years ago at Christmas time, we were
Speaker 1: broke and broken and just financially suffocating. And today at
Speaker 1: Christmas time, this right, you know, right around Christmas time,
Speaker 1: we are working on paying off our house. And it's
Speaker 1: what we're doing now is returning dividends. So it feels
Speaker 1: like all the years that we lost being financially irresponsible, um,
Speaker 1: we're making up for that now. And I hope that
Speaker 1: your listeners can hear that, hope that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shame that comes from being very
Speaker 1: irresponsible with money like we were, but like let go
Speaker 1: of that shame and move forward because it is never
Speaker 1: too late to earn everything around. And now we're just
Speaker 1: in a completely different spot and um, yeah, the future
Speaker 1: is bright because of that. But you've got to do
Speaker 1: something about it. You know, you got to put in
Speaker 1: the work. But yeah, that so that is my bill
Speaker 1: of the wet that extra mortgage principal payment towards my mortgage.
Speaker 1: So good. So yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing, Angela.
Speaker 1: How exciting and how much can be done in such
Speaker 1: a short amount of time in the grand scheme of
Speaker 1: things like that's gonna seem in four years from now,
Speaker 1: who knows you might have your house paid off four
Speaker 1: more years yea very close. Well, yeah, if you have
Speaker 1: a bill that you want to submit to us, whether
Speaker 1: it's your mortgage or you actually know a bill, call us.
Speaker 1: Visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill. That'll connect
Speaker 1: you to our speak pipe and you can leave us
Speaker 1: a bill right there and we will play it on
Speaker 1: our show. And now it's time for Bill Lightning Round,
Speaker 1: so normal because we're talking about normal things today. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so good. Um, So for this Lightning Round, I thought
Speaker 1: it would be fun that we all go around and
Speaker 1: share one or several ingredients you always skip in the recipe,
Speaker 1: you know, when you find that recipe and you see
Speaker 1: some non there and you're like, I'm never going to
Speaker 1: use that again. And then it just keeps coming up,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I'm still never going to use it again,
Speaker 1: even though I see it a bunch of times, always
Speaker 1: going to skip it. So Angela, do you have any
Speaker 1: of those in your home? Oh goodness, that was a
Speaker 1: hard one. That that's a hard one because I basically
Speaker 1: I just skip whatever I don't have on hand, Like
Speaker 1: if I'll make recipes and skip whatever I don't have
Speaker 1: on hand, and I find that like, you know, just
Speaker 1: add a little bit of salt right every thingum. But
Speaker 1: now recently, um, I was making I wanted to make
Speaker 1: I had like these rice noodles, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: make kind of like an Asian spin of chicken noodle soup,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have so I looked up a recipe
Speaker 1: and oh my gosh, like all these different Asian spices,
Speaker 1: like I can't even it doesn't I can't even think
Speaker 1: of them off the top of my head. But it
Speaker 1: was all these different like vinegars and Asian spices that
Speaker 1: I just did not have. Because but I made that soup,
Speaker 1: I think the only thing that I had on hand
Speaker 1: was like some peanut oil like that I had and
Speaker 1: some rice, a little bit of rice vinegar and it
Speaker 1: totally gave it that. That was enough to give it
Speaker 1: kind of the authentic Asian taste for me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't cook authentic Asian food, but I was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't need all those other spices. So yeah, anytime
Speaker 1: I am making a new recipe and it's calling for
Speaker 1: something that I don't have on hand, I skipped it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that the Asian chicken noodle soup that I
Speaker 1: made was bomb. I mean, but barely anything in there.
Speaker 1: But it was good. Still. And Google search for is
Speaker 1: substitute should for? I'm always looking up stally works out fine? Yes,
Speaker 1: it only you try to substitute like vinegar for milk.
Speaker 1: Are you not gonna probably do the right thing there? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: So for me, it's always bay leaves. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I just do not carry bay leaves and every time
Speaker 1: and I feel like I don't understand them. I don't
Speaker 1: understand bay leaves because they go in and then they
Speaker 1: come out and I don't know what they've done. Maybe nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the one. Yeah. Or I was making a
Speaker 1: recipe the other day they called for tamarin and I
Speaker 1: had to google. I was like, substitutions, I don't know
Speaker 1: what this is. I'm not going to buy it at all.
Speaker 1: And lime juice. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love how you guys been in Google, like Goo,
Speaker 1: Google this substitution. That's that's where we do every episode.
Speaker 1: We started with a Google search, and then we start
Speaker 1: we just help people like if they were going to
Speaker 1: Google whatever, the subject of whatever, the headline of the episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to find that's the Google search, and then
Speaker 1: we go through what you will find on Google. Said that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think we've actually ever like stated like that's
Speaker 1: what this show is. But yeah, we're just helping you
Speaker 1: explore Google now as we are. That is amazing because
Speaker 1: it's so it's been huge. Yeah, it's been huge and
Speaker 1: everything that I've learned too. So it's that researcher researcher
Speaker 1: friends to help weed through Google. Yeah. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's fresh herbs, like every time fresh arstly fresh, this
Speaker 1: fresh that unless it's the summertime and I got it
Speaker 1: growing out in my garden. Oh you better believe. I'm
Speaker 1: doing some dry herbs that I've had in my pancho
Speaker 1: for five years and then they're never too old, they're
Speaker 1: always there. We just keep in mind that if it
Speaker 1: calls for half a cup of fresh parsley, that's like
Speaker 1: one tablespoon of dried parsley. To be careful, you're not
Speaker 1: doing a half dried parsley on that one. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to google the ratios, but it's it's always fine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a good one. I also freeze, Like if
Speaker 1: I do buy fresh, freeze them. I need something else
Speaker 1: that you can do. But I'm with you. I could
Speaker 1: have said that one. I could have also said I'd
Speaker 1: never use fresh herbs, like like you said. Maybe in
Speaker 1: the summer I grew some or them, but very rarely
Speaker 1: do I use fresh erbs. That's a good one. Yeah, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for hanging out with us today.
Speaker 1: This has been truly one of my top ten episodes. Like,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of fun today. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: keep you on the line. We're gonna stop recording, We're
Speaker 1: going to keep That's what happens with friends when I
Speaker 1: love it. Y'all are the best frule friends. We are,
Speaker 1: so we are lucky to be here. Yeah, where can
Speaker 1: people find more about you and what you're doing in
Speaker 1: your awesome cookbook? That's got some really yummy recipes in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I have a website. I have a debt
Speaker 1: Kicking Mom and Kicking without the G so debt Kicking
Speaker 1: Mom dot com. Uh. And then where I started sharing
Speaker 1: was just on Instagram, So find me on Instagram same thing,
Speaker 1: debt Kicking Mom. Um. And then I also have a
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. The YouTube channel kind of came when I
Speaker 1: started sharing more recipes and sharing more tips and I
Speaker 1: just wanted like a longer video segment than Instagram stories.
Speaker 1: So I also have a YouTube channel with the same name,
Speaker 1: debt Kicking Mom. So between those three resources, you'll be
Speaker 1: able to find lots of tips, frugal grocery shop, frugal
Speaker 1: groceries for goal recipes, how I save on grocery and
Speaker 1: household items, all kind of like my frugal tips um.
Speaker 1: And also all about our story. So if there's bits
Speaker 1: and pieces of our story that you know, I know,
Speaker 1: I shared a ton today and gave you really the
Speaker 1: meat of it, but I share a ton of our story.
Speaker 1: I've been documenting our journey through the baby steps of
Speaker 1: paying off debt and now financial freedom paying off the mortgage.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, that's where you can find me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I hope our listeners go and hang out with you
Speaker 1: on Instagram and everywhere else because you are a delight.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you. You ladies are too. I feel so
Speaker 1: fortunate that you had me on the show. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Who that was a jam packed interview. Yeah, so many
Speaker 1: good tips and relatable stories. We we got emotion, we
Speaker 1: got information and that's all I mean, that's all you
Speaker 1: can ask but you and that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: bring you more of in because when we asked in
Speaker 1: our Frugal Friends community on Facebook, that's what you said
Speaker 1: you wanted. You want more debt free stories, and we
Speaker 1: are going to keep bringing them to you. It's going
Speaker 1: to be the year of debt freedom on the Frugal
Speaker 1: Friends podcast. What a good year for it, clean, fresh start,
Speaker 1: none of these odd numbers. We're done with the hindsight
Speaker 1: and foresight is and so we're doing new things this year.
Speaker 1: That means we're doing new things. So um, we are
Speaker 1: retiring our book club. We're doing something a little new
Speaker 1: because we want to thank you for your kind reviews
Speaker 1: on iTunes and Stitcher, like this one from Countdowner in
Speaker 1: d C. It happens to be five stars. She titled
Speaker 1: it Real Friends and Real Solid Content. I've been listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast for months now and have steadily worked
Speaker 1: my way through the back catalog. Jen and Jill are
Speaker 1: fun to listen to you and keep me motivated to
Speaker 1: live frugally and well. Jill's got a background in counseling
Speaker 1: and therapy and Jen's a personal finance writer, so I
Speaker 1: love that they balanced the technical side of finances with
Speaker 1: the human side to that is that's what we're going for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a good summary of what to expect in the podcast.
Speaker 1: I like that. We also want to thank all of
Speaker 1: our friends who are sharing the podcast with their friends,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing frugal friends like more than more frugal friends.
Speaker 1: So we have a new way to enter our monthly
Speaker 1: giveaway in We're doing New Things, were Changing it Up.
Speaker 1: If you share this episode on social media or Facebook,
Speaker 1: tag us in it, we will pick one winner for
Speaker 1: every five tags at the end of the month. Yes,
Speaker 1: and instead of books, we are giving away ten dollar
Speaker 1: Amazon gift cards, so still unlimited. If you tag us
Speaker 1: in an episode ode if you share it tag guess,
Speaker 1: that's going to be your entry and we will pick
Speaker 1: one winner for every five tags we receive at the
Speaker 1: end of the month. And you can still um still lift.
Speaker 1: It's a review to enter as well on iTunes or Stitcher.
Speaker 1: Screenshot the review and send it to Frugal Friends podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. And we're just adding a new
Speaker 1: way to win. That's it. Adding a new way to
Speaker 1: win and new things that you're winning. So I'm excited
Speaker 1: about the gift card, can I most honesty? I'll tell
Speaker 1: you all of the winners of the book club have
Speaker 1: actually been winning gift cards for the price of the
Speaker 1: book because it's just easier. That's amazing. So that's a
Speaker 1: secretum that if you've won a book, you know that.
Speaker 1: For the first few months, I was trying to send
Speaker 1: books and it was just difficult because international people were
Speaker 1: winning and I it was hard. So yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: been going on for a while. So I'm just making it.
Speaker 1: I'm just being transparent about it. Now. You can spend
Speaker 1: it on whatever you want if you want to get
Speaker 1: a book, that's great, right, So it's it's up to you.
Speaker 1: We're giving you that freedom. You just need some new toothpaste,
Speaker 1: that's fine too. Yeah, clean those teeth, nave that dental bill.
Speaker 1: Oh you guys, it's been fun. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode. We'll be here doing it again next week.
Speaker 1: See you then. Herugal Friends is produced, edited and mixed
Speaker 1: by Eric Syria. Jill. Yeah, say it to me. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about this new thing we're doing. I'm
Speaker 1: excited about it. I love new things. I like it
Speaker 1: when our voices don't keep repeating ourselves. Yeah up, you're
Speaker 1: good at that. We can't just keep being predictable. You've
Speaker 1: got to spice it up in life. Yeah, I you
Speaker 1: be a little spicy. Usually I'm vanilla, but sometimes I'm spicy. Yeah. Basic, yeah, basic,
Speaker 1: basic with all the dried herbs. Um, yes, I do
Speaker 1: have quite a lot of dried herbs though, so do
Speaker 1: you have bay leaves? I do? I do? And here's why.
Speaker 1: I had this soup one time, which I'm not even
Speaker 1: a real big fan of soup, but it tasted phenomenal
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is the secret here? This
Speaker 1: is so good? And the girl said, my secret ingredient
Speaker 1: is bay leaves. So I got a chuckle to myself
Speaker 1: when you said that, because I get it. You just
Speaker 1: throw it in and you take them back out. You
Speaker 1: can't eat them. But anything that I've had that has
Speaker 1: had bay leaves simmering in it has had really fantastic flavor.
Speaker 1: So I was like, I gotta get me some of those. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: I actually haven't used any of the bay leaves. I
Speaker 1: still have this like thing of bay leaves in my
Speaker 1: herb her basket, but uh, yeah, I do love the
Speaker 1: flavor of them. What is the flavor? Can you pinpoint?
Speaker 1: It is? Bay leaves? Is bai leaves, baby, It tastes
Speaker 1: like Baileys, like your bad bay in his flag, there's
Speaker 1: leaves and it's it's the bay. I live on a
Speaker 1: bay and they're on the leaves there, and so I
Speaker 1: just I couldn't describe the flavor, but I could describe
Speaker 1: that it gives it, um what's the word depth? Two
Speaker 1: the experience in your mouth. Okay, all right, I believe you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes Maybe I will get these bay leaves. You know,
Speaker 1: we're coming down to you and we're gonna bring our
Speaker 1: home to your home, and and together we could make
Speaker 1: something with with my bay leaves that I leave it
Speaker 1: and we can report, Oh we could even since two
Speaker 1: is better than one, make one without the Baileys and
Speaker 1: one with the Baileys and really decide is this worth it?
Speaker 1: The bottle of Bay leaves the Bailey off off. The
Speaker 1: baibleiaf challenge doesn't create the depth of flavor for your
Speaker 1: palette that they claim it does. I'm surprised it's never
Speaker 1: in one of those boxes on those cooking challenges that
Speaker 1: you have to use, like you have to use this fruitcake. Well,
Speaker 1: these babies. The thing is, it's usually in something that
Speaker 1: would simmer, and those cooking things aren't usually a simmer process.
Speaker 1: Usually it's like you'll be done in twenty minutes. Babies
Speaker 1: require some time an effort. M So that's probably also
Speaker 1: why you don't buy them, because you want your twenty
Speaker 1: minute meal. So true, I support that because you're basic,
Speaker 1: get back to the basics. It's a compliment you frugal