Speaker 1: Hey, frugal Friends, this is Eric Sirianni, producer of this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I'm here to let you know that we have
Speaker 1: four bonus episodes that will be releasing over the next
Speaker 1: four Tuesday's starting today. But wait, there's more. These podcasts
Speaker 1: are actually videos that we recorded at Think two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen in d C, and they're also available on YouTube
Speaker 1: by searching Frugal Friends thin Con two thousand nineteen or
Speaker 1: by clicking the link in the show notes Where's that beat?
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
Speaker 1: save money, embrace simplicity, rights, and liver with your life.
Speaker 1: Here your host Jen and Jill. Okay, cool, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: Welcome to in front of two Mike's with your frugal friends.
Speaker 1: I'm Jen, I'm Jill. And a big question that many
Speaker 1: people had in our Facebook group is what or our
Speaker 1: biggest frugal failed bump bump bump, And we're gonna answer
Speaker 1: that for you. Yeah, Jen's gonna answer it because I
Speaker 1: never failed, so yeah, and I yeah, I had a
Speaker 1: lot of failures, So I think my biggest um was
Speaker 1: an RV that we purchased. We had a really novel
Speaker 1: idea that we were going to just like Jill and
Speaker 1: Eric who never failed, we were going to get an
Speaker 1: RV and renovate it and then sell it for profit.
Speaker 1: And we got this like super great deal on a
Speaker 1: really large fifth wheel UM. But for our first project,
Speaker 1: it was Uh. The reason it was a deal is
Speaker 1: because it was so large nobody could house it and
Speaker 1: it was so old like r V parks wouldn't take it.
Speaker 1: So it was a great deal but not ideal for
Speaker 1: reselling UM. So we didn't lose money on it, but
Speaker 1: it was a case where frugality, our fruality, really did
Speaker 1: not serve us well in that purchase. The thing is,
Speaker 1: so this is what I want to say about that.
Speaker 1: I'm not discounting what you're saying in your story, but
Speaker 1: you guys made it beautiful. You really did do a
Speaker 1: good job with it, and you did not lose money, right,
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're calling it a fail but yeah, it
Speaker 1: didn't meet the expectation I had UM, so that's why
Speaker 1: it was a failure. But still we didn't lose money,
Speaker 1: So we learned from our failures. We do what would
Speaker 1: you say you would do differently or that you've taken
Speaker 1: away from that experience, Um, we would have spent a
Speaker 1: little more money to get something newer that needed less work.
Speaker 1: So that's where spending more money really would have served us. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe start small, starting smaller. Yeah, so maybe we
Speaker 1: didn't even have to spend more money. We just would
Speaker 1: have thought and you know, maybe we haven't done this,
Speaker 1: so like maybe we should start small. We did an
Speaker 1: episode on Frugal Flipping, which I think you talk about
Speaker 1: this story and it's worth checking out because that is
Speaker 1: one of the tenants of just starting small, that if
Speaker 1: you think you want to do something, you think you're
Speaker 1: going to enjoy it, do that thing to the smallest
Speaker 1: degree possible to get your feet wet, to gain excitement.
Speaker 1: Because I think you guys very very well could flip
Speaker 1: r vs. But that experience seems to kind of take
Speaker 1: in the wind out of your sales. You might jump
Speaker 1: on the bandwagon again at some point with the lessons
Speaker 1: that you've learned, but my motivation is waning at this point.
Speaker 1: I won't be I'm not good with my hands, like
Speaker 1: I'm good behind a computer things your hands, and this
Speaker 1: is my like extent of making things with my hands,
Speaker 1: typing on a laptop yea, So how about you. So
Speaker 1: I do have frugal fails. I joke when I say
Speaker 1: I never failed, that's fully a joke. I'm sarcastic. You'll
Speaker 1: learn this about me. So back when I was planning
Speaker 1: to get married, it was quick. We knew we wanted
Speaker 1: to get married. I wasn't concerned about what color that
Speaker 1: napkins we're gonna be. I just wanted to be married,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to take I wanted to make it
Speaker 1: short to also take away some of that decision fatigue,
Speaker 1: like I don't need all these choices in front of me.
Speaker 1: Were just we're just gonna do it. However, the dress
Speaker 1: turns out was important to me. I realized that later.
Speaker 1: So here's what happened. I was searching online. I was
Speaker 1: never one of those people who planned my wedding since
Speaker 1: I was a little girl. I didn't want to think
Speaker 1: about it until it was a reality. So I for
Speaker 1: the first time in looking up wedding dresses and learning
Speaker 1: what I like, and I find this amazing designer online.
Speaker 1: I'm not a designer person, but the dress that she
Speaker 1: made was fantastic. So then I so then of course
Speaker 1: prog on me or maybe cheat me back then, was like,
Speaker 1: all right, how do I find this dress or a
Speaker 1: similar dress like it? You know, so that designer and
Speaker 1: knockoffs or dresses like this that I can find in
Speaker 1: expensive places. Well, I happen to stumble upon this dressmaker
Speaker 1: in China who promised that they would be able to
Speaker 1: make this very dress to look very similar to what
Speaker 1: I see online for only one hundred dollars shipping included.
Speaker 1: There were no red flags, right, I was just like,
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars, I'm gonna do it. How bad could
Speaker 1: it be? At worst? I'm sure I can work with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course people were like, You're probably not gonna like it,
Speaker 1: but I I said no. At the end of the day, though,
Speaker 1: I will have only spent a hundred dollars, so if
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, then I'm not out that much and
Speaker 1: I'll wear my sister's wedding dress. Us curse. I had
Speaker 1: tried it on, it fit, I didn't love it, but
Speaker 1: that was my backup plan. I said, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I know that I'll be fine wearing my sister's dress.
Speaker 1: So try this thing out for a hundred dollars. The
Speaker 1: thing comes in the mail. It comes in a package.
Speaker 1: Oh this is the nice thing about video on podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't do this package literally like this big. And
Speaker 1: I was in college at the time. My mom calls me.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, I think your dress is here, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, and I was like, I okay, open it.
Speaker 1: I guess open it. And I didn't have a smartphone.
Speaker 1: I couldn't get pictures sent to me. You know, we're
Speaker 1: not like there was no video call time that ancient,
Speaker 1: but technology has advanced a lot. So she pulls it
Speaker 1: out and all I hear her say, it's just okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: well maybe anyhow, long story short, it looked nothing like
Speaker 1: anything like the picture online, and that's when reality set
Speaker 1: in that I actually don't want to wear my sister's
Speaker 1: wedding dress. I thought that it would be fine, but
Speaker 1: I realized I had put all my hopes in this
Speaker 1: one hundred dollar dress from China that didn't work out.
Speaker 1: So then what ended up happening was I went to
Speaker 1: a dress shop and found a dress off the rack
Speaker 1: that I ended up paying four hundred dollars for, and
Speaker 1: that equal amount to get it altered because it was
Speaker 1: so last minute that I couldn't order my size with
Speaker 1: how quickly our wedding was happening, So it ended up
Speaker 1: being about an eight hundred dollar dress. I thought I
Speaker 1: was being frugal still in the grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: I guess that's not a super expensive dress. But when
Speaker 1: I thought that I was going to be spending a
Speaker 1: hundred waiting for that last minute just cost me a
Speaker 1: whole lot more. That's a that's a fail. That is
Speaker 1: one fail. There's no way of slicing that one different.
Speaker 1: Just don't trust one hundred dollar dresses online from China
Speaker 1: to be your wedding grass when they promise they can
Speaker 1: make it exactly like the multi thousand dollar dress for
Speaker 1: a hundred dollars questions, it's a lie, it's a scam.
Speaker 1: So that's anyhow. We love your frugal fails and you
Speaker 1: can connect with us on our Facebook community group. We've
Speaker 1: got a super active following and engage with us because
Speaker 1: we all here about it. Yeah, hang out with the
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends community on Facebook and we'll see you there.
Speaker 1: That's been another episode of in Front of two min
Speaker 1: Front of two mins. What we came up with that.
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Sherrian