Speaker 1: Episode one seventy six is episode ninety two, zero waste
Speaker 1: Ish Cooking with Debt Kicking Mom. Welcome to the Frugal
Speaker 1: Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, rights,
Speaker 1: and liver with your life. Here your host Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen,
Speaker 1: my name is Jill, and today we are playing another
Speaker 1: one of our listener favorites from nineteen and that is
Speaker 1: our interview with debt Kicking Mom about reducing food waste.
Speaker 1: We love to talk about food, how to cook it,
Speaker 1: when and why to cook it, how to make the
Speaker 1: most of everything you've got in your kitchen, how do
Speaker 1: not waste it? So, yeah, it's good. And then and
Speaker 1: then pair that with interviews being our favorite thing to do,
Speaker 1: bringing in a third person, so it's not just Jen
Speaker 1: and I talking at you. So it's a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's a reason this is one of our most
Speaker 1: downloaded episodes because Angela just drops so much wisdom in here.
Speaker 1: And so we also have an update from her because
Speaker 1: she hasn't been on Instagram for a while. I know
Speaker 1: a lot of you have followed her, and so I
Speaker 1: will share that right after our sponsors also brought to
Speaker 1: you by What's for Dinner? All the kids everywhere gathered
Speaker 1: together to sponsor the show with their favorite question. Happens
Speaker 1: to be the very same question that parents and other
Speaker 1: adults everywhere are asking themselves. Well, here's the answer. Whatever
Speaker 1: is in the pantry? Okay, kids, what's for dinner? Sometimes
Speaker 1: the most difficult question we will ever be asked and
Speaker 1: will rarely have an answer for, and when we do,
Speaker 1: everyone is still not very happy about it. Absolutely, this
Speaker 1: is also sponsored by husbands, um, not just kids answered.
Speaker 1: We all we all asked the question. That's probably what
Speaker 1: makes the most frustrating because I don't have an answer
Speaker 1: to it. I don't know. I have to think about
Speaker 1: dinner absolutely. Hopefully deck Kick and Mom can help us
Speaker 1: with that. Yes, So I emailed Angela the other day
Speaker 1: because we obviously haven't heard from her on Instagram or
Speaker 1: YouTube for a while, and she responded very quickly. So
Speaker 1: she is alive and healthy, She says, I'm doing well,
Speaker 1: thankfully and gratefully. It's been an interesting year, but I
Speaker 1: really cannot complain about any of it. I may be
Speaker 1: making a comeback to social media before the end of
Speaker 1: the year. Lord willing, take care and hope to see
Speaker 1: you soon. So that is from Angela Debt kick and mom.
Speaker 1: And she taught hybrid last year. Um, she's a teacher
Speaker 1: and so I we have many friends who taught hybrid
Speaker 1: last year and it was just a cluster cost. So
Speaker 1: if you are a teacher, shout out to you. And
Speaker 1: if your take out bill was bigger the last year,
Speaker 1: you're doing okay, don't beat yourself up about it because
Speaker 1: it was hard. Hard teachers. Man, you guys really did it.
Speaker 1: Hopefully with this new back to school season, you're finding
Speaker 1: it a little easier, so we can start talking again
Speaker 1: about optimizing the food in your pantry and fridge. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, let's get back into our interview with
Speaker 1: Angela from Depth Kicking Mom. Welcome Angela to the Frugal
Speaker 1: Friends podcast. We are so stoked to have you on. Uh,
Speaker 1: it was such a pleasure to meet you in October
Speaker 1: um at Ramsey's Lucien's like in person, so it's going
Speaker 1: to hang out again. Yes, it was so nice to
Speaker 1: meet you and I'm so excited to be on your podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan, so we are, and we are
Speaker 1: big fans of you. And your YouTube channel. I love
Speaker 1: what you're doing, so glad to have you, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure our listeners will enjoy what you have to say
Speaker 1: to You bring such a good perspective. Thank you. That
Speaker 1: is awesome. While this is great, I'm glad I can
Speaker 1: be considered one of the frugal friends. So it's not
Speaker 1: that hard, but you're in awesome. So for people that
Speaker 1: don't know about your debt free story, can you can
Speaker 1: you give us the rundown on that? Because I love
Speaker 1: your story and I think it's so many people are
Speaker 1: where you guys were and are feeling hopeless and you
Speaker 1: have You've just given a story of inspiration to so
Speaker 1: many people. Oh well, thank you, and that means a lot.
Speaker 1: And that is why I continue to share it because
Speaker 1: so many people resonate because the fact of our story
Speaker 1: is that we were just very very very normal for
Speaker 1: a very very long time and that caught up to
Speaker 1: us financially. So um, I mean I can I'll give
Speaker 1: the condensed version. But basically, me and my husband got
Speaker 1: married pretty young, like I was twenty one and twenty three,
Speaker 1: and we were fresh out of college, and you know,
Speaker 1: we started a family really young, and basically our entire
Speaker 1: twenties was spent like having babies, playing house and going
Speaker 1: into debt, and we just I mean, the truth is
Speaker 1: is that we got married young. We weren't making a
Speaker 1: lot of money, but we were just kind of doing
Speaker 1: what you normally do. You get married, you have kids,
Speaker 1: you buy a house. And we had no clue about
Speaker 1: personal finance because, like most people, you don't really talk
Speaker 1: about it. You know, you may talk about budging a
Speaker 1: little bit with your parents. You know, they may teach
Speaker 1: you that money doesn't grow on trees and whatever, but
Speaker 1: they don't. I mean, we just personally didn't get that
Speaker 1: upbringing where we were taught, you know, how to how
Speaker 1: to handle personal finance. And I think that that's so
Speaker 1: normal because most people I talk to don't even feel
Speaker 1: comfortable talking about personal finance, right, So yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: kind of that's that's our story. So basically, we spent
Speaker 1: almost a decade of our marriage having babies, being house poor,
Speaker 1: and trying to survive off of one income because we
Speaker 1: had this family and we were just being like trying
Speaker 1: to just do what we thought was normal. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you have you get a job. My husband was making
Speaker 1: not very much money, fresh out of college, UM got
Speaker 1: a job, started having kids. I wanted to stay home
Speaker 1: with my kids. So we were living off of one
Speaker 1: income and we were just always broke and always living
Speaker 1: paycheck to paycheck, and it was fine. We didn't graduate
Speaker 1: school with UM at this point, we didn't have student
Speaker 1: loan debt, so we kind of were just paycheck to paycheck,
Speaker 1: just managing. But slowly but surely, we started racking up
Speaker 1: that credit card debt. And I mean I'm talking over
Speaker 1: the course of like a decade. You know, an emergency
Speaker 1: would come up, and we could never save money. We
Speaker 1: just weren't disciplined. We didn't know how to live life
Speaker 1: on a budget. We could never really save money. So
Speaker 1: anytime an emergency came up we were using that credit card.
Speaker 1: We would get like a tax return and be able
Speaker 1: to pay it off, but then the next emergency would
Speaker 1: come up, and we just kind of lived this cycle.
Speaker 1: And then the biggest thing is when we bought our
Speaker 1: first house. We are from California. We don't live in
Speaker 1: California now, we live in South Carolina now, but we
Speaker 1: bought our first house, we became house poor. Like we
Speaker 1: bought this house, it was just too expensive. For us,
Speaker 1: we couldn't afford it. We're on one income, but um,
Speaker 1: we wanted it, and we wanted what we wanted now,
Speaker 1: 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 like statistically, like it's what is it,
Speaker 1: like sevent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, Like most
Speaker 1: people live exactly the way that we were living for
Speaker 1: a decade. So, like I said, you know, we just
Speaker 1: spent our twenties having kids, growing our family, and getting
Speaker 1: into debt and it caught up to us and basically
Speaker 1: we found ourselves where we could not make it anymore.
Speaker 1: We were like drowning in debt payments. It was so
Speaker 1: hard to live off of my husband's income because even
Speaker 1: every time he would get a raise and we'd have
Speaker 1: more income, somehow we managed to spend it all right,
Speaker 1: because we still didn't know how to budget. We didn't
Speaker 1: understand how to budget, how to save. I mean, we
Speaker 1: understood it, we just wouldn't practice it. We couldn't put
Speaker 1: it in practice. You know, you can write numbers down,
Speaker 1: but it's actually sticking to it that is exactly right.
Speaker 1: Or we were just in denial, you know, about how
Speaker 1: much we were spending. When we're tracking spending, there's so
Speaker 1: many little pieces of it that we just weren't doing.
Speaker 1: That seemed like common sense, and it is common sense,
Speaker 1: but we know the majority of people don't do that,
Speaker 1: and that's why debt is such an issue for so
Speaker 1: many people. And um, it caught up to us about
Speaker 1: after when I was pregnant with my third child. We
Speaker 1: were at probably the rough, one of the roughest parts financially.
Speaker 1: We'd always lived paycheck to paycheck, but my husband had
Speaker 1: a new job and we now we didn't have health insurance,
Speaker 1: and we ended up having two babies without health insurance,
Speaker 1: paying for it out of pocket, and now we had
Speaker 1: all this medical debt on top of our credit card, debt,
Speaker 1: our mortgage, just you know the at race, right. And
Speaker 1: at that time, I realized, like, you know, this life,
Speaker 1: this life of me being a stay at home mom
Speaker 1: and having you know, my kids in my house, we
Speaker 1: can't keep up with it anymore. And I realized I
Speaker 1: was going to have to in order to keep up
Speaker 1: with our debt payments, I was going to have to
Speaker 1: go back to work. So I started going to school. Well,
Speaker 1: my mindset was so like, okay, I'm gonna go to school. Well,
Speaker 1: how the heck am I going to pay for that?
Speaker 1: So I take out, over the course of about four
Speaker 1: or five years of being a stay at home mom
Speaker 1: and going to school at night, I took out forty
Speaker 1: dollars in student loans on top of like already thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in debt that we had. I took out
Speaker 1: the loans so that one day I could make enough
Speaker 1: money to pay off that debt. You know. So, now
Speaker 1: here we are, I'm about to graduate, we have four
Speaker 1: small I graduate, we have four small kids, and but
Speaker 1: now my loans are coming out of deferment. Still stay
Speaker 1: at home mom, I still have small kids, And the
Speaker 1: reality is just like, what in the heck we have
Speaker 1: seventy seven thousand dollars of consumer death on top of
Speaker 1: our mortgage, student loans, car car loan, credit card debt,
Speaker 1: medical debt, personal loan, like just all this stuff like
Speaker 1: and it just became like we can't even afford the
Speaker 1: minimum payments even if I do work. It's like it's
Speaker 1: for nothing. It's just to pay for the debt. And
Speaker 1: this is going to be our life for the next
Speaker 1: at least decade of student loan debt, but probably even
Speaker 1: more because we're still not gonna off our other debt.
Speaker 1: So it just, you know, you can just see how
Speaker 1: it took time to get where we were at. It
Speaker 1: feels like so stuck, suffocating or hopeless. And I can
Speaker 1: just feel people listening to this, just nodding. I can
Speaker 1: see them in my head there in their car and
Speaker 1: there because they are doing the same exact thing, or
Speaker 1: they've done the same exact thing. Well, And I love
Speaker 1: how you call it normal. We were living normal lives.
Speaker 1: You're not talking about going to the salon every day
Speaker 1: and living a luxurious life. You're having babies and living
Speaker 1: in a house. Yes, 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 ye anything. It was very We lived what
Speaker 1: we felt was a modest life. But like you said,
Speaker 1: it 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 cannot us immobile, that can
Speaker 1: paralyze us to do anything about it, which then repeats
Speaker 1: the cycle. So true. So so what was the breaking point? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the breaking point? And was we So this is
Speaker 1: there was lots of things that happened right over the
Speaker 1: years where I was like we this is not working.
Speaker 1: This not working. But you're in survival OD and like
Speaker 1: you said, you're paralyzed by it. You're in denial. It's
Speaker 1: just what are we gonna do? It feels hopeless. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: we ended up going on a vacation and it ended
Speaker 1: up being kind of like our sick entire moment. We
Speaker 1: took all of our kids on this vacation, but we
Speaker 1: couldn't afford a vacation, so I was like looking for
Speaker 1: deals and I ended up finding this deal. But there's
Speaker 1: totally a cat she had to listen to a time share,
Speaker 1: So I know everybody was 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 wasn't going to happen, but
Speaker 1: you know, we thought it wouldn't be that big of
Speaker 1: a deal. Well, it ended up being the most horrible
Speaker 1: experience ever. This timeshare salesman, like I didn't know how
Speaker 1: I would react in that situation, but he is a
Speaker 1: real person and he's trying desperately to get us to
Speaker 1: buy us time share, and we told him from the
Speaker 1: get go, like, you know, we're here to get the deal. Um.
Speaker 1: And I just learned something about myself on like a
Speaker 1: human level, Like I had gotten to a point where
Speaker 1: I was wasted, Like we were so broke, we needed
Speaker 1: this vacation so bad. We find this budget vacation, and like,
Speaker 1: I just felt like we were taking advantage of this
Speaker 1: guy whose job was to sell us something. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, if he wasn't going to
Speaker 1: sell us a time share sales pitch, he doesn't get
Speaker 1: that commission, he starts talking about his family and I
Speaker 1: could almost hear like a desperation in his voice, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was just this really human moment where I
Speaker 1: connected with this timeshare salesman, the fact that we were
Speaker 1: taking advantage of this deal, and I just felt gross.
Speaker 1: You know, it's right after Christmas. We put Christmas on
Speaker 1: a credit card, like we put this vacation on a
Speaker 1: credit card. Here's this timeshare salesman trying to get us
Speaker 1: to help him get his commission, you know, and we're like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't mean to be rude. But now he's talking
Speaker 1: about his family. He starts bringing up, you know, his
Speaker 1: time in the military, and my brother was in the military,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, wow, this is our real life,
Speaker 1: and um it just the whole thing felt sleazy and gross.
Speaker 1: And that night, UM, I end up getting a text message.
Speaker 1: So we went to this time show sales pitch, went
Speaker 1: out to dinner, go back to the resort room, and
Speaker 1: I get a text message on my phone from my
Speaker 1: bank telling me that we maxed out our last credit
Speaker 1: card from the dinner that we had put on it,
Speaker 1: like we had overdrawn the credit card, and it was
Speaker 1: like it's canceled, you can't use that. We're in the
Speaker 1: mountains with four babies, and honestly, like I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't even know how we're going to get guests to
Speaker 1: go home. Do we have enough in the checking account
Speaker 1: because I was kind of relying on the credit card
Speaker 1: until my husband gets paid next because there's nothing in
Speaker 1: the checking account. And it hit me and I get
Speaker 1: emotional every time, but it hit me like a ton
Speaker 1: of bricks. And at this time I was handling all
Speaker 1: the finances. My husband was earning the money, but he
Speaker 1: was okay with me. Just kind of handling it, and
Speaker 1: I knew the gravity of the situation. He did not.
Speaker 1: He went to bed that night, put my kids to bed,
Speaker 1: and I could not sleep. And I was in this
Speaker 1: resort hotel room on this vacation, looking at my phone,
Speaker 1: you know, broke and real and after this whole experience
Speaker 1: with the salesman you know and all that, I just
Speaker 1: felt like wow, and that was our sick entire moment.
Speaker 1: And I ended up staying up that night pulling up
Speaker 1: all my accounts, every debt payment that we owed, like
Speaker 1: I just started writing it down on the hotel notepad
Speaker 1: and just listing. I was like that, wow, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was just I looked at everything and I said,
Speaker 1: the thing is is we cannot keep doing this. And
Speaker 1: it was this broken point. So then the next day,
Speaker 1: um well, we ended up going home the next day
Speaker 1: and it was that night that I was like, I
Speaker 1: told my husband, I was like, I need to talk
Speaker 1: to you. He knew we had debt, you know, but
Speaker 1: he didn't understand the the magnitude of it. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand the magnitude of it until that night when I
Speaker 1: sat down and started writing everything out and what prompted
Speaker 1: me to write everything out was because I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we massed out our credit card. Can
Speaker 1: I get another one? Can I get another credit card?
Speaker 1: So I'm like, well, what all credit cards do I have?
Speaker 1: And I'm writing them all down? How much is my debt?
Speaker 1: You know? I just started pulling up all these different
Speaker 1: accounts and then it was like, oh my gosh, this
Speaker 1: is way worse than I thought. You know. I stared
Speaker 1: the monster in the face the first time that night,
Speaker 1: and then I had to talk to my husband about
Speaker 1: it and be like, you can't be in denial anymore.
Speaker 1: I can't do this on my own anymore. And we
Speaker 1: got to do something different. And that is literally where
Speaker 1: it all started. I was right after Christmas. It became
Speaker 1: our New Year's resolution to start getting out of debt. Yeah. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I feel happy 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 like processes 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 sounds 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: back up out for what you've experienced? Oh? Absolutely, So
Speaker 1: when me and my husband had that talk, uh, we
Speaker 1: actually had ended up having a great resource because my
Speaker 1: mother in law she taught financial peace University, like Dave
Speaker 1: Ramsey's Financial Peace University. She taught that at her church
Speaker 1: and she had mentioned it to us before. Now you know,
Speaker 1: not in any sort of way like you need it.
Speaker 1: She had no idea what was going on. She talked
Speaker 1: about how she hosted that so much so, and we
Speaker 1: kind of looked. I was like, I think that's the
Speaker 1: get out of debt guy or the budgeting guy, right,
Speaker 1: the Financial Peace guy, and I was like, man, peace
Speaker 1: sounds really nice, well titled peace, So call your mom
Speaker 1: and ask her about that. And without telling his mom
Speaker 1: anything about our situation, he just said, Hey, what's that class?
Speaker 1: And could me and Angela take it? And you know,
Speaker 1: we're interested in it. And she was like, I will
Speaker 1: buy you a Financial Peace University kit tonight and it'll
Speaker 1: be it'll be in the mail. She was like, didn't
Speaker 1: ask any question. She was so excited that he had
Speaker 1: asked a lot for us gift. We ended up getting
Speaker 1: it a few days before the New Year, because this
Speaker 1: all happened in that short little time frame after Christmas,
Speaker 1: you know, before New Year, and we ended up getting
Speaker 1: that Financial Peace University and we got the online version
Speaker 1: of it and took the whole course in like nine days.
Speaker 1: Like not, you know, we just would binge watch Dave
Speaker 1: Ramsey and it was intense. It was a lot, but
Speaker 1: it definitely got us on that track of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to have a budget. It needs to be
Speaker 1: you know, we need to give every dollar a name,
Speaker 1: we need to be very intentional, we need to cut expenses.
Speaker 1: And it basically just gave us all the building blocks
Speaker 1: of where to start. You know, the whole idea of
Speaker 1: like you know, having a small starter e vergency fund
Speaker 1: and then paying off debt, okay and pay him off
Speaker 1: from small Stolar just gave us a plan, So we
Speaker 1: asked the plan and we just started. We just started budgeting,
Speaker 1: cutting expenses and it was and when I say we
Speaker 1: just started, I mean yes, almost felt like overnight. It
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we're done spending money, We're budging. But
Speaker 1: it definitely took some time to like work that all out,
Speaker 1: figure out how much we were spending. I would took
Speaker 1: us a good like ninety days to really kind of
Speaker 1: get it figured out. And then over the course of
Speaker 1: three years, we paid off seventy seven thousand dollars a debt.
Speaker 1: We paid off all of our consumer debt in three years.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing is that it was mostly on
Speaker 1: one income two and a half years. So that was
Speaker 1: on my husband's uh he was at an entry level
Speaker 1: engineering position. So that kind of gives you an idea
Speaker 1: on our income. You know, definitely middle class, but one income.
Speaker 1: And um, I started teaching, so you know, part of
Speaker 1: my stories that I went to grad school, got my
Speaker 1: master's in teaching, but I still had young kids at home,
Speaker 1: and we started the journey before I went back to work.
Speaker 1: About five months before we paid off our last deet
Speaker 1: is when I started teaching, So the majority of our
Speaker 1: debt free journey was on one income. So it really
Speaker 1: was about not raising our income for us in order
Speaker 1: to pay off that day. It was about cutting expenses,
Speaker 1: where my mindset before had always been like when we
Speaker 1: raise our income, we'll finally get caught up. But we
Speaker 1: made the decision to like, we're going to start now,
Speaker 1: and we just cut expenses. So frugality was definitely something
Speaker 1: that I embraced, especially being in the position where it
Speaker 1: was a stay at home mom. I felt like, you know,
Speaker 1: that was a blessing for me. I had some time
Speaker 1: I was home. I could do a lot in the home.
Speaker 1: I can control a lot of these budget categories and
Speaker 1: save money. So that is where everything starts for me,
Speaker 1: as far as like my message and what I share
Speaker 1: when it comes to you know, how I've been able
Speaker 1: to cut expenses and learn to live below our means
Speaker 1: and and and you know, kind of get out of
Speaker 1: that cycle of consumerism and spending money mindlessly. That was
Speaker 1: our story. That's how we paid off our debt in
Speaker 1: three years, so yeah, three years later, yes snapper, yes, yes, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's crazy and it's so free. So we've been
Speaker 1: debt free for a year now. Um. Yeah, we just
Speaker 1: celebrated one year free and we have over a six
Speaker 1: month emergency fund in the bank. We have started retirement investing,
Speaker 1: we have started college savings for our kids, and likely
Speaker 1: done yeah, be done. Yeah, and four years ago you
Speaker 1: were at your breaking point? Yeah, like what anyone can
Speaker 1: think back, like where was I four years ago? And
Speaker 1: where am I now? Like what has been the transformation
Speaker 1: that I've made in four years? And could I have
Speaker 1: done more? And it sounds like it keeps building upon
Speaker 1: 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. Know that you've probably learned so
Speaker 1: much in your debt payoff and then your year out
Speaker 1: of debt. But what prompted you to start focusing on
Speaker 1: 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: I mean, how to save money and cut expenses. And
Speaker 1: one thing that really struck accord with me when we
Speaker 1: were looking at our budget was that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: these major budget categories like housing, transportation, food, and there's
Speaker 1: probably what there's probably another one, but there's like these
Speaker 1: major you know, these major budget categories that like those
Speaker 1: are the majority, that's the bulk of your income. And
Speaker 1: if you can lower any one of those, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be able, you know, significantly, you're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: pay off more debts. So it really it was about
Speaker 1: creating a debt snowball. And we're a family of six
Speaker 1: and our grocery budget could be astronomical. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: were are. So we started looking at how much we
Speaker 1: were spending on food, and we're spending about a thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on food every month and then probably more on
Speaker 1: eating out. So it's just like our grocery bills a
Speaker 1: 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 desk 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 some how I was always able to put plenty
Speaker 1: of food on the table for my four kids and
Speaker 1: my 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 overbuying food. I had
Speaker 1: food on hand that I wasn't using. I don't need
Speaker 1: to buy more. Um, So I realized how much I
Speaker 1: was overbuying, and then started realizing how much I was wasting.
Speaker 1: And once I and I'm a researcher by just like hobby, right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm it's my hobby to research, yes, right, So
Speaker 1: I kind of I'm like, wow, you know how much
Speaker 1: do people waste? You know, I can't be the only one.
Speaker 1: And very quickly you do an internet work on food waste,
Speaker 1: and and there's so much resources out there, and the
Speaker 1: statistics just blew me away. Right. Um, there's a website
Speaker 1: called Save the Food dot com and I love that website.
Speaker 1: And that website you log on and it gives you
Speaker 1: so many tips for you know, reducing food waste and
Speaker 1: all that. But anyways, the statistics is what stuck out
Speaker 1: to me. It was that forty of food in the
Speaker 1: United States is wasted. And and you might think, like,
Speaker 1: okay of food, but consumers on on the consumer and
Speaker 1: we contribute mostly to that. Like a lot of people
Speaker 1: will say like, oh, you know it happens because you
Speaker 1: know in the in the farms or in transportation. Yes,
Speaker 1: but that statistic factors in mostly consumers who are wasting food.
Speaker 1: And then there's this at the bottom of that website.
Speaker 1: There's a calculator that you can do where you can
Speaker 1: see your your family size and what on average the
Speaker 1: amount of food that people waste. And for a family
Speaker 1: of six, the average family of six will waste almost
Speaker 1: two is a week in food. A hundred eighty six
Speaker 1: dollars was the average according to this website. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how they get there. I knew
Speaker 1: that we were wasting food. I knew how much we
Speaker 1: were wasting, and I was just like, oh, my gosh.
Speaker 1: You know that came out to like over two thousand,
Speaker 1: like two thousand, two hundred a year that my family
Speaker 1: was probably just throwing food away. Or the average family
Speaker 1: of six, that's a family of six, family of four
Speaker 1: waste about fifteen hundred dollars a year in food, but
Speaker 1: just by throwing it away, according to our website. So
Speaker 1: the statistics just shocked me, and I realized that it
Speaker 1: was like a huge problem, and I thought, wow, you know, like,
Speaker 1: so many people want to lower their grocery budget, are
Speaker 1: they 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 couldn't
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 we can think but it's
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal, but then actually look
Speaker 1: at it and realize, no, this is actually an area
Speaker 1: where you could save significantly based on how much you're
Speaker 1: not using or throwing away that it could make a
Speaker 1: big dent in that budget and debt payoff journey. It
Speaker 1: requires so much self awareness. I mean, the whole debt
Speaker 1: free 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 my
Speaker 1: set and especially in our you know, our culture is
Speaker 1: very visually based, right, Like you know, I think about
Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram a lot, right, so I think about
Speaker 1: just how people want to fill their feeds with things
Speaker 1: that are just beautiful and abundant, and I think we're
Speaker 1: kind of you know, we think of having enough as
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 lie isn't good 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 right, you know know,
Speaker 1: it's like are you throwing it away? And doesn't look
Speaker 1: beautiful when you take a picture of your fridge, or
Speaker 1: but how sad does it look when it's going in
Speaker 1: the trash. That's a real thing, like talking about image
Speaker 1: right it Actually I've realized this, And it took my
Speaker 1: husband to point it out to me that I care
Speaker 1: how 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 gonna eat that rhubarb but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty purple. Yes, No, I I totally get it. And
Speaker 1: I still kind of feel that way sometimes when I'm
Speaker 1: putting my stuff up on the belt at aldi and
Speaker 1: I'm like, do I have I have a frozen pizza?
Speaker 1: Do I have enough spinach to counteract this? Right? Spinach?
Speaker 1: That nobody in my house is right exactly? So that
Speaker 1: is I mean, that's about being self aware, is realizing yes,
Speaker 1: pro I mean our family, you know, with my kids,
Speaker 1: you eat at least one fresh produce every for breakfast, lunch,
Speaker 1: and we got to have some sort of produce and
Speaker 1: we have an abundance of it for snacks, but not
Speaker 1: an over abundance that's going to get wasted. We just don't.
Speaker 1: I'm acutely aware and intentional about how much produce I
Speaker 1: bring into my house, and I bring in just enough
Speaker 1: that is either gonna that we're gonna 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 produce away,
Speaker 1: And sometimes that means that I'm not bringing I'm not
Speaker 1: bringing in abundance of it in my house. I'm bringing
Speaker 1: in only what we're going to eat. That's a great
Speaker 1: segue because I wanted to hear your tips for reducing
Speaker 1: food waste, so only bringing in what you were realistically assume.
Speaker 1: That's a great one. Do you have any others? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean when I think of every time somebody asked
Speaker 1: me for tips on reducing food was like, how did
Speaker 1: you do it? I'm like it goes back to like
Speaker 1: maybe what you learned an elementary school about wasting anything right,
Speaker 1: reducing waste across the board, it's those three rs, like reduce, right, reduce, reuse, recycle,
Speaker 1: and 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 the refrigerator, everything that I need
Speaker 1: to use up, and I kneel plan around what I
Speaker 1: have 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 being 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 apply 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: it 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 reused 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 pot lick style and
Speaker 1: then we use up the food that we have. So
Speaker 1: I 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 disclaimer out 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 those are really the ways that
Speaker 1: you are going to stop throwing food away, which will
Speaker 1: absolutely lower your grocery bill. Yeah, excellent tips and UM
Speaker 1: taking notes on it so we'll have it in our
Speaker 1: show notes for people who are like, wait, okay, what
Speaker 1: are all these different things? What applies to me? We
Speaker 1: touched on this already a bit, but I'm curious to
Speaker 1: pick your brain a little more on how do you
Speaker 1: 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, meal
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. It's 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'm baked some to
Speaker 1: go with our soup. Those are easy. But like I
Speaker 1: am not a good cook. And I created a cookbook
Speaker 1: called Simply Frugal just to like prove to people how
Speaker 1: basic it can be learned how to cook. Because I'm
Speaker 1: talking like when I'm cooking from scratch, Like I learned
Speaker 1: how to boil a pot 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 the 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, like, 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 the food await, 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've allue 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
Speaker 1: relegated my grocery bill is just going to be high
Speaker 1: because there's so many things I can't eat. 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 and be and take that self
Speaker 1: awareness and reducing what you buy in food waste and
Speaker 1: be able to reduce your grocery bell. It's totally doable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that that kind of plays into the
Speaker 1: other thing that we're talking about with like image and
Speaker 1: like feeling like you want to have a visual abundance
Speaker 1: of variety, right, but you don't, like, you know, if
Speaker 1: somebody needs to give you permission today to not have
Speaker 1: a super very diet if you don't want to, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have to have a huge variety.
Speaker 1: You don't have to have thirty different meals for the months.
Speaker 1: You know, you can eat the same meal on rotation
Speaker 1: and it's okay if if you like it, eat it.
Speaker 1: Most of the world lives off of the basics, and
Speaker 1: it's fine, is yeah, right now. If you want to
Speaker 1: get creative, then use your herbs and spices in a way.
Speaker 1: But if you're happy with having a rotation of four meals,
Speaker 1: do it. Yes, yes, yeah, that's in our mantra too.
Speaker 1: And that's been, that's been, I mean, and it's so
Speaker 1: there's so much freedom when it comes to that, Like
Speaker 1: it's so free to just be like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if this is what I like, it's okay that I
Speaker 1: eat it once every week, you know, once or twice
Speaker 1: every week. Like there's so much freedom, is so much
Speaker 1: less pressure. Like me as a mom of four, that's
Speaker 1: like your dinner on the table, you know, And I'm
Speaker 1: just like it's you know, I don't want to downplay it,
Speaker 1: but but definitely like reducing our variety of meals and
Speaker 1: just sticking to what my family loves that I know
Speaker 1: is nutritius has been so free for me. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a mom hack to like just give
Speaker 1: yourself permission, just keep it simple, Like you're doing a
Speaker 1: good job by feeding them, and your kids are so
Speaker 1: simple and you're also teaching them that it's okay to you,
Speaker 1: I'll eat nutritious foods regularly, like you know, like keep
Speaker 1: it simple, permission to So, speaking of Freda, many of
Speaker 1: the best time of the week. It's time for the
Speaker 1: bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the
Speaker 1: best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was
Speaker 1: born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off
Speaker 1: your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to
Speaker 1: not have to pay that bill anymore. Bill Buffalo Bills,
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton. 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 just kind
Speaker 1: of disappointing you. No, No, their gyms there, little gyms.
Speaker 1: So that's why we get so excited about it. That's
Speaker 1: so funny. I'm gonna like keep it super basic because
Speaker 1: well this isn't basic. This is huge for us. The
Speaker 1: bill of the week for me, is definitely our mortgage
Speaker 1: bill because y'all, we just paid so we became debt
Speaker 1: free a year ago and spent the last year building
Speaker 1: up those retirement accounts, um college savings, emergency fund and
Speaker 1: all that, getting like all that in order, and now
Speaker 1: we're working on paying off the house. And just this
Speaker 1: past Friday we put our first principal payment. That principal
Speaker 1: payment that we put on the house was put an
Speaker 1: extra two thousand dollars on the house. That took down
Speaker 1: the life of our mortgage. I'm using one of those amororitization.
Speaker 1: I probably said that word wrong. Um, so somebody just
Speaker 1: can't somebody say that word right. I don't know. Yes,
Speaker 1: you knowation schedules. So I plugged that and that that
Speaker 1: extra two thousand dollar principal payment took four months off
Speaker 1: the life of our loan, just that one extra payment
Speaker 1: and saved us over twenty four hundred dollars in interest. Okay,
Speaker 1: just that one. So if we do this every month,
Speaker 1: it's gonna we're gonna have our house paid off in
Speaker 1: just a matter of about five years. So that was
Speaker 1: definitely that was huge for us because four years ago,
Speaker 1: at Christmas time, we were broke and broken and just
Speaker 1: financially suffocating. And today at Christmas time, this right, you know,
Speaker 1: right around Christmas time, we are working on paying off
Speaker 1: our house and it's what we're doing now is returning dividends.
Speaker 1: So it feels like all the years that we lost
Speaker 1: being financially irresponsible, um, we're making up for that now.
Speaker 1: And I hope that your listeners can hear that, hope that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of shame that comes from
Speaker 1: being very irresponsible with money like we were, but like
Speaker 1: let go of that shame and move forward because it
Speaker 1: is never too late to earn everything around. And now
Speaker 1: we're just in a completely different spot, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: the future is bright because of that. But you've got
Speaker 1: to do something about it, you know, you got to
Speaker 1: put in the work. But yeah, that so that is
Speaker 1: my bill of the week, putting that extra mortgage principal
Speaker 1: payment towards my mortgage. So good. So yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Thanks for sharing, Angela. How exciting and how much can
Speaker 1: be done in such a short amount of time in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things like that's going to seem
Speaker 1: in four years from now, who knows, you might have
Speaker 1: your house paid off four more years. Very close. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you have a bill that you want to submit
Speaker 1: to us, whether it's your mortgage or you actually know
Speaker 1: a bill calls, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash bill.
Speaker 1: That'll connect you to our speak pipe and you can
Speaker 1: leave us a bill right there and we will play
Speaker 1: it on our show. And now it's time for bill
Speaker 1: Lightning Round. 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 that again,
Speaker 1: even though I see it a bunch of times, I'm
Speaker 1: alway always gonna skip it. So, Angela, do you have
Speaker 1: any of those in your home? Oh goodness, that was
Speaker 1: a hard one. That that's a hard one because I
Speaker 1: basically I just skipped whatever I don't have on hands.
Speaker 1: Like if I'll make recipes and skip whatever I don't
Speaker 1: have on hand, and I find that like, you know,
Speaker 1: just add a little bit of salt, right everything. 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 skip. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that the Asian chicken noodle soup that I made was bomb.
Speaker 1: I mean, but barely anything in there, but good still calm,
Speaker 1: and Google search for me is substitution for I'm always
Speaker 1: looking up such and it actually works out fine. Yes,
Speaker 1: it only you try to substitute, like vinegar for milk.
Speaker 1: Are you not gonna probably do right thing there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Uh 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. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the big one. Or I was making am a
Speaker 1: recipe the other day that called for tamarin and I
Speaker 1: had to Google. I was like, substitution. Hey, I don't
Speaker 1: know what this is. I'm not going to buy it
Speaker 1: at all. And lime juice. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love how you guys mentioned Google, like Goo, Google
Speaker 1: the substitution. That's that's where we do every episode. We
Speaker 1: started with the Google search, and then we just help
Speaker 1: people like if they were going to google whatever, the
Speaker 1: subject of whatever, the headline of the episode, that's the
Speaker 1: Google search, and then we go through what you will
Speaker 1: find on Google. Said that. Yeah, I don't think we've
Speaker 1: actually ever like stated like that's what this show is.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're just helping you explore Google now as
Speaker 1: we are. That is amazing because it's so it's been huge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's huge and everything that I've learned too. So it's
Speaker 1: that researcher, that researcher. Yeah, friends to help weed through Google. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So for me, it's fresh herbs, like every time fresh,
Speaker 1: partly fresh, this fresh that unless it's the summertime and
Speaker 1: I got it growing out in my garden. Oh, you
Speaker 1: better believe I'm doing some dried herbs that I've had
Speaker 1: in my pancho for five years and then just fi
Speaker 1: they're never too old, they're always there. And you just
Speaker 1: keep in mind that if it calls for half a
Speaker 1: cup of fresh parsley, that's like one tablespoon of dried parsley.
Speaker 1: Just be careful you're not doing a half dried parsley
Speaker 1: on that one. Yeah, you're gonna have to google the ratios,
Speaker 1: but it's it's always fine. Yeah, that's such a good one.
Speaker 1: I also freeze, like if I do buy fresh, freeze
Speaker 1: them like something else that you can do. But I'm
Speaker 1: with you. I could have said that one. I could
Speaker 1: have also said I'd never use fresh herbs like like
Speaker 1: you said. Maybe in the summer I grew some or them,
Speaker 1: but they are rarely do I use freshers. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, yeah, Well, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: hanging out with us today. This has been truly one
Speaker 1: of my top ten episodes. Like good, I had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun today. We're just going to keep you
Speaker 1: on the line. We're gonna stop recording. We're going to
Speaker 1: That's what happens with friends when you just have I
Speaker 1: love it. Y'all are the best rule friends were. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're lucky to be here. Where can people find more
Speaker 1: about you and what you're doing in your awesome cookbook
Speaker 1: that's got some really yummy recipes in it. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I have a website, have a Debt Kicking Mom and
Speaker 1: Kicking without the G so Debt Kicking Mom dot com. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then where I started sharing was just on Instagram.
Speaker 1: So I find me on Instagram same thing, Debt Kicking
Speaker 1: mom um. And then I also have a YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: The YouTube channel kind of came when I started sharing
Speaker 1: more recipes and sharing more tips and I just wanted
Speaker 1: like a longer video segment than Instagram Stories. So I
Speaker 1: also have a YouTube channel with the same name, Debt
Speaker 1: Kicking Mom. So between those three resources, you'll be able
Speaker 1: to find lots of tips, frugal grocery shop, frugal groceries,
Speaker 1: frugal recipes, how I save on grocery and household items,
Speaker 1: all kind of like my frugal tips. Um, and also
Speaker 1: all about our story. So if there's bits and pieces
Speaker 1: of our story that you know, I know, I shared
Speaker 1: a ton today and gave you really the meat of it,
Speaker 1: but I share a ton of our story. I've been
Speaker 1: documenting our journey through the baby steps of paying off
Speaker 1: debt and now financial freedom paying off the mortgage. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where you can find me. Yeah. Well, I hope
Speaker 1: our listeners go and hang out with you on Instagram
Speaker 1: and everywhere else because you are a delight Oh thank you.
Speaker 1: You ladies are too. I feel so fortunate that you
Speaker 1: had me on the show, so thank you. We hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed hearing Angela again and all of the great
Speaker 1: tips that she shared. They really are like, just choosing
Speaker 1: one or two will make such a big difference in
Speaker 1: the amount of money you spend on groceries and take out.
Speaker 1: And if you've got more tips to add or want
Speaker 1: to keep the conversation going about what you've just heard today,
Speaker 1: feel free to join us in our community group on
Speaker 1: Facebook Frugal Friends Community on Facebook. We are growing over
Speaker 1: there and having a blast, so love to find more
Speaker 1: frugal friends there. Absolutely, and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: sharing these episodes with your friends and leaving us kind
Speaker 1: reviews on iTunes kind of like this one from Jenna
Speaker 1: Odid the job Dot and Ninio Good Just thank you.
Speaker 1: Uh it happens to be five stars and says changed
Speaker 1: my life. Saying that name changed my life. Listening to
Speaker 1: change though, is this is the podcast I didn't know
Speaker 1: I needed. I liked the idea of Dave Ramsey, but
Speaker 1: being that I am human, those ideals were admittedly hard
Speaker 1: to pull off. I needed the happy medium outlook. Now
Speaker 1: I'm a work in progress and I'm loving it. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean labeling myself a failure if I spend money, but surprisingly,
Speaker 1: this more lax look on life has made me much
Speaker 1: less likely to splurge unnecessarily. My family is living a
Speaker 1: more affordable and eco friendly life that's fueled by common
Speaker 1: sense and the love for healthy living. Thank you, ladies
Speaker 1: for helping to improve the mindset of my entire household.
Speaker 1: God bless oh beautiful Dungeon. You know who you are.
Speaker 1: So this one was in the Facebook group and you
Speaker 1: specific asked me to read the name, so I did it.
Speaker 1: Sounds like you practiced, and I'm impressed, and I'm also
Speaker 1: so grateful for the review. We also want to thank
Speaker 1: our friends who share these episodes on social media. So
Speaker 1: when you share the latest episode and tag us on
Speaker 1: Facebook or Instagram, we're adding you to our monthly drawing.
Speaker 1: For every five tags and reviews we get each month,
Speaker 1: we're giving away a copy of the original Frugal Friends workbook.
Speaker 1: Who so keep leaving us reviews on iTunes or Stitcher
Speaker 1: with really long and confounding names so that you can
Speaker 1: laugh at us when we read them and send the
Speaker 1: screenshot to Frugal Friends podcast at gmail dot com. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to tag us on social even if we don't
Speaker 1: reply immediately, we do see it and see you next week.
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Syrian. Yeah, um, Jen,
Speaker 1: what's for dinner at your house? Um? I have a
Speaker 1: pork loin defrosting. I don't know if it will be
Speaker 1: defrosted enough for dinner tonight, but it is defrosting. Anything
Speaker 1: frozen can go in the pressure cooker and just become magic,
Speaker 1: so it's probably what will happen to it. I'm so
Speaker 1: impressed by you. Thank you. What are you eating for
Speaker 1: dinner tonight? No, I don't know, Jen, whatever's in the Pandrea.
Speaker 1: You can't just give me that question and then not
Speaker 1: have an answer. Well, I'm hoping to have like get
Speaker 1: ideas from you. You know what, I'll probably that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. I should probably pull something on the freezer.
Speaker 1: We just went away and just came back from being
Speaker 1: out of town, so we've got hardly anything. But I
Speaker 1: do I you actually have some stuff in the freezer
Speaker 1: that if I think, I head and defrost it. All right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do that. I make this really good.
Speaker 1: They call it like Korean beef and rice bowls. We'll
Speaker 1: be easy, I'll do it. Yeah, we'll go pull it
Speaker 1: out of the freezer right now. Okay, Bye,