RPF0375-Recovering_Spender_with_Lauren

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:06.040 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:11.400 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:14.080 | My guest today is Lauren Groupman.

00:00:15.760 | Lauren, welcome back to a reprise performance on Radical Personal Finance.

00:00:19.800 | Thank you so much.

00:00:20.800 | I'm happy to be back as always.

00:00:22.840 | You were last back with your husband, excuse me, you were last here with your husband,

00:00:26.200 | Mark, on episode 108.

00:00:29.000 | So back in the early point of the show.

00:00:30.880 | And now you're back to show off your new book, The Recovering Spender.

00:00:34.600 | Yes, definitely.

00:00:35.600 | I can't believe it's been that long since the first time I was on.

00:00:38.800 | It has been quite a while.

00:00:40.720 | So we're going to primarily talk about the book and primarily talk about some of the

00:00:43.440 | tools and tactics and techniques that you have learned and are now sharing with others.

00:00:48.200 | But go ahead and give us a brief intro story of your and Mark's story, especially as it

00:00:52.680 | relates to personal finance.

00:00:54.080 | Yeah.

00:00:55.160 | So my husband and I, we've been married for 14 years.

00:00:59.120 | We got married young.

00:01:00.120 | Actually, we were still in college and we got married.

00:01:02.600 | We got married in between our junior and our senior year of college.

00:01:06.200 | And we both, you know, I didn't have very much luck with money in my teen years and

00:01:12.040 | in my college years.

00:01:14.440 | And so it was just it was just a train wreck right away financially.

00:01:18.680 | I ended up getting us into $40,000 with the debt.

00:01:21.600 | I handled the money and paid all the bills and I did a poor, you know, very terrible

00:01:26.880 | job at it back then.

00:01:28.880 | And so Mark didn't really know a lot of, you know, what was going on behind the scenes.

00:01:35.480 | So one day, just, you know, after we had a car towed away and we just were like running

00:01:41.080 | a thousand dollars short every single month, I decided, you know, I've just got to like,

00:01:46.560 | I've got to stop spending money and getting us into more debt.

00:01:49.120 | And I've got to come clean with Mark about what's going on and, you know, how terrible

00:01:54.400 | I am with money.

00:01:55.400 | And so I came clean to him and told him about our debt.

00:01:57.760 | And so that was back in 2006.

00:02:02.600 | And so or 2007, I'm sorry.

00:02:05.440 | And so we were debt free two years later.

00:02:07.480 | And I've just taken what I've learned as a spender and decided to teach others, you know,

00:02:15.880 | how to get out of debt if you're a spender.

00:02:17.560 | And that's why I wrote the book, The Recovering Spender.

00:02:20.200 | Why did you guys come to this arrangement to handle your financial affairs early in

00:02:24.320 | your life?

00:02:25.320 | Yeah.

00:02:26.320 | So it's kind of odd, right, that the woman I think is like, I'll take care of the money

00:02:30.480 | and like they don't work together.

00:02:33.080 | But for me, I always grew up with my mom doing the bills.

00:02:37.080 | Like I remember her, you know, watching her sitting in our dining room table, writing

00:02:41.840 | down the money.

00:02:43.280 | And so I always remember that, like that, you know, in my mind, the woman does the bills.

00:02:48.840 | And so that's kind of, you know, I took over, you know, thinking that's what a wife is supposed

00:02:54.600 | to do.

00:02:55.600 | When we first got married, you know, Mark had the job, I wasn't working.

00:02:59.160 | So I would handle the family finances and take care of the home.

00:03:02.720 | And you know, I was just a complete mess.

00:03:06.360 | Like I just I was very disorganized and I was missing bills all the time and overdraft

00:03:11.800 | fees, and it just got to be really unmanageable for me.

00:03:16.640 | So how has that changed in the way that you handle money together?

00:03:22.240 | What does it look like now?

00:03:23.400 | Yeah, so now we do it together.

00:03:27.600 | What makes this even kind of humorous, I guess, is that my husband is an actuary.

00:03:32.640 | And so he loves numbers, he loves budgeting, he loves spreadsheets, he loves talking about

00:03:38.680 | money.

00:03:39.680 | And so we really are polar opposites.

00:03:41.520 | Like he was at work number crunching while I was at home getting us into debt.

00:03:47.360 | And so we had to really come together and really, you know, make sense of our strengths

00:03:53.920 | and how we could work together.

00:03:55.640 | And so now we we call it the budget night.

00:03:58.640 | And the last Sunday of every month, we sit down and we plan the entire month out.

00:04:03.880 | That's going to come up.

00:04:05.180 | We plan it out before it even happens.

00:04:07.760 | And so Mark usually manages the tool.

00:04:11.360 | We have a budgeting tool on our website.

00:04:14.200 | He manages that as we go through the budget.

00:04:16.480 | I write it down in my paper planner because I prefer paper.

00:04:20.960 | And we talk about what the month looks like.

00:04:24.520 | And we're on the same page.

00:04:25.800 | But it wasn't always that way.

00:04:26.880 | And it was hard to learn how to not fight over money all the time.

00:04:31.880 | So that was difficult.

00:04:32.880 | Yeah. So you went from having no budget to and let's walk back to 2006, 2007, 2008 for

00:04:42.720 | now and then we'll come to today.

00:04:44.680 | And you took on kind of a very proactive, we're going to only spend $4,000 this next

00:04:50.160 | month.

00:04:51.160 | And what tactically did you do?

00:04:52.760 | Did you use envelopes?

00:04:53.800 | Did you use a checkbook register?

00:04:55.200 | What did you do at that time that allowed you to get out of debt in two years?

00:04:58.080 | Yeah.

00:04:59.080 | So, well, the first thing that we did is we really sat down and figured out where we were

00:05:04.960 | spending the most of our money.

00:05:07.040 | And at that time it was on food.

00:05:09.120 | We were spending probably $1,000 a month on groceries like at the grocery store.

00:05:15.040 | And then we were spending probably another $600 to $700 eating out because our food had

00:05:19.800 | gone bad or we didn't plan or we just were lazy.

00:05:23.560 | And so that was around $1,600 we were spending at the grocery store.

00:05:28.280 | So we really learned how to meal plan.

00:05:31.040 | That was like the biggest thing.

00:05:32.040 | I learned how to use coupons.

00:05:34.000 | I learned how to save money if we were eating out, how to save money on that purchase.

00:05:41.040 | But we kind of like cut eating out altogether because we realized like we just can't afford

00:05:45.800 | it.

00:05:46.800 | Like we're $1,000 short every month and that's just going down the drain with our grocery

00:05:53.120 | bill and all that.

00:05:54.400 | So that was a really practical thing.

00:05:57.080 | I learned how to cut our grocery bill.

00:05:58.600 | So in a couple months, I cut that grocery bill from $1,000 a month down to $200 a month.

00:06:04.680 | And so I fed us on $50 a week for about three years.

00:06:08.840 | And let's bring things current because last interview we talked a lot about couponing.

00:06:11.680 | I don't want to labor there, but as we record this here in the beginning of August, July,

00:06:17.280 | do you remember how much you spent on food in July?

00:06:19.800 | Yes, $550.

00:06:22.360 | And that was for a family of six.

00:06:24.160 | Yep.

00:06:25.160 | Right.

00:06:26.160 | Yep.

00:06:27.160 | That's impressive.

00:06:28.160 | Oh, well, thank you.

00:06:29.160 | Yeah, we do a lot of meal planning and freezer cooking and we shop at Aldi.

00:06:34.280 | It's like a big thing of ours, but we plan out everything that we eat.

00:06:38.160 | And so that really, you know, I don't use a ton of coupons anymore.

00:06:41.560 | Why not?

00:06:43.280 | Honestly, it got to the point where it was just, I had to choose.

00:06:48.240 | I can't do everything right.

00:06:49.720 | So I'm running my website full time.

00:06:52.640 | I'm working full time now doing that with Mark and I have four kids and I have a house

00:06:57.000 | to clean.

00:06:58.120 | And so I thought to myself, okay, I still coupon for things like toilet paper and toothpaste

00:07:03.760 | and you know, all those kinds of things.

00:07:05.640 | But I don't do the kind of extreme couponing that I used to just because my time has to

00:07:10.320 | go somewhere else and I can't be everywhere all the time.

00:07:14.320 | So I've had to say no to a few things.

00:07:17.320 | And honestly, I can shop at Aldi and save a lot of money and then coupon for the things

00:07:22.800 | that are really expensive and I'm spending around the same amount of money just with

00:07:27.040 | less stress.

00:07:29.280 | One of the things I've always wanted to do, and when I read your book last time when you

00:07:34.320 | were on episode 108, you sent me a copy of the book and I looked at the couponing book.

00:07:39.240 | I always wanted a coupon because I always was impressed by, look at this, you know,

00:07:44.760 | money jujitsu.

00:07:45.760 | Right.

00:07:46.760 | And so I came to that thought.

00:07:47.760 | I was like, man, this is a ton of work for a small amount of turn.

00:07:53.240 | And the challenge, well, let me not say that.

00:07:56.680 | This is a lot of work and it takes a lot of time.

00:08:00.440 | And the challenge is what is the alternative use of my time?

00:08:03.720 | What's the opportunity cost?

00:08:05.740 | And I've often come to the point where I have other things that are important for me to

00:08:11.120 | be doing with my time.

00:08:13.440 | And so I've always felt a little guilty that I've never become a master couponer.

00:08:17.560 | Like I should be this frugal expert.

00:08:20.760 | But what I do now is I do probably the bulk of the shopping for our family, including

00:08:27.320 | the food shopping.

00:08:29.020 | But I joined the local restaurant warehouse store and so I get a lot of good deals there.

00:08:34.520 | And then also a Costco membership.

00:08:38.440 | And I've worked out just the simple basics of I know what prices things can be.

00:08:43.520 | And one of the best, my little best tools is by joining the restaurant warehouse store,

00:08:47.640 | I can get food that they often put on clearance where they're trying to get rid of things.

00:08:52.120 | So yesterday, as an example, I bought 10 pounds of chicken drumsticks for 30 cents a pound.

00:08:59.920 | And so some of those types of things, I look at them and I say, this is a better way for

00:09:04.920 | me at this stage of my life than couponing.

00:09:06.960 | Yeah, and I think that's where I got to where I was couponing with one kid, and I wasn't

00:09:11.840 | working a job.

00:09:12.840 | So that was kind of like my job.

00:09:13.880 | I saw it, like what you said as a, you know, an opportunity cost.

00:09:17.680 | So like for me, I could either go out at that time and get a, you know, minimum wage job,

00:09:23.320 | or I could sit at home and clip coupons and make enough money.

00:09:27.800 | And to make, you know, $100 or $50 an hour, you know, if I spent two hours and saved 100

00:09:33.120 | bucks in the grocery store, that was a better use of my time.

00:09:36.200 | But I'm at the point now where I'm running a business with my website and, you know,

00:09:40.600 | all the media stuff that I do.

00:09:43.280 | And it just got to be too crazy where I'm like, I could better spend my time either

00:09:47.880 | with my kids or, you know, I can make more money doing this.

00:09:54.680 | Did you figure out what your hourly rate probably was when you were focusing heavily on coupons?

00:10:00.040 | It was about $50 an hour.

00:10:02.040 | So I do want to emphasize this because one of my frustrations with modern schooling is

00:10:08.600 | that there's no emphasis placed on the study of home economics.

00:10:17.800 | And I'm convinced that home economics, I'd love to write just an entire course about

00:10:21.040 | it, but home economics is an incredibly valuable area of focus that where a stay-at-home mom

00:10:29.640 | can make a huge difference in the family budget.

00:10:33.120 | And so I don't want to dismiss the value of couponing.

00:10:35.960 | If you could get the equivalent of $50 an hour of savings, you have to remember that,

00:10:41.320 | number one, that's a six-figure salary.

00:10:43.200 | $50 an hour, if you were working that at 40 hours a week, comes out to be $100,000 a year

00:10:48.080 | salary when projected forward.

00:10:50.560 | So that's an incredible value.

00:10:52.200 | Plus, when you recognize the fact that this is savings, so $50 an hour is money that's

00:10:56.760 | being saved, not being earned.

00:10:58.640 | So the equivalent, if you were to add back in employment taxes, if you were to add back

00:11:03.600 | in some of the costs of actually going and earning $50 an hour, you're probably more

00:11:09.080 | saving like the equivalent of $65 an hour because it's savings and not earned income.

00:11:15.980 | So if a stay-at-home mom with a couple of kids where she's got some time during the

00:11:20.640 | day to actually do this, if a stay-at-home mom can focus on this, that can be a huge,

00:11:25.360 | huge benefit to the family budget.

00:11:28.420 | And when that's expanded out onto other areas, not just groceries, but onto other areas,

00:11:33.760 | home economics is incredibly valuable.

00:11:37.200 | And I hate to see what a short shrift it gets in today's world.

00:11:41.480 | I totally, totally agree with you because we have all these moms that are going out

00:11:47.640 | to in the workplace making $30,000 a year, but then they're too busy to eat at home and

00:11:56.120 | they're eating out all the time.

00:11:57.840 | And they could probably make more money or be richer if they stayed home and focused

00:12:03.340 | on getting their budget low, making their food at home.

00:12:06.980 | If you think about taxes and all of that, and that's where we were at when we were in

00:12:10.140 | debt.

00:12:11.220 | We had to sit down and it's like, "Okay, I can go out to work right now and make this

00:12:15.900 | minimum wage job, or I can work at home and work my tail off to spend as little money

00:12:21.660 | as possible."

00:12:22.960 | And we even got so crazy that we sold our huge custom built house and moved into a townhouse

00:12:29.440 | because we were just like so sick and tired of being broke all the time and really focused

00:12:35.080 | on the home economics, like what you said.

00:12:37.720 | And that's really, a lot of what I teach online is that.

00:12:42.920 | And through my book, I have a book, a chapter in the book calling "Declutter Your Life,

00:12:47.480 | Regain Your Joy."

00:12:48.480 | And it's all about how you can go through your home and find hidden, like thousands

00:12:52.820 | of dollars worth of hidden stuff in your home and how to sell it and where to sell it.

00:12:56.700 | And that's part of the whole home economics that you were talking about.

00:13:00.300 | Give us some more practical examples from the "Declutter Your Life" section.

00:13:04.660 | Okay.

00:13:05.660 | So I did a little experiment probably about six months ago.

00:13:08.460 | Because I go through my house probably once a year and we usually do a yard sale.

00:13:11.940 | But this year I'm like, "You know what?

00:13:12.940 | I don't want to do a yard sale.

00:13:14.660 | Let me go through my house and find some things that I can sell online on eBay."

00:13:19.480 | And so I found a few things that were like old, like a company sent me, what was it?

00:13:27.480 | Like a pretty expensive bottle of perfume as a gift.

00:13:31.580 | And I didn't have any use for it because I didn't want to.

00:13:36.840 | It was, I was like, "This is too expensive to spray."

00:13:38.920 | Like it was a really expensive bottle of perfume.

00:13:42.520 | And so I sold that on eBay.

00:13:44.600 | I had a whole bunch of old iPhone accessories.

00:13:47.640 | I sold those on eBay.

00:13:49.240 | So anyway, I'm going through my house and I'm finding all this stuff and I ended up

00:13:51.800 | making $1,200 in two weeks just by selling things on eBay.

00:13:57.920 | And so one of the things that I actually have taught a lot of people in my area, especially

00:14:02.360 | my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law works full-time for us now.

00:14:07.000 | And then my sister-in-law runs an eBay business where she goes to thrift stores on their like

00:14:12.480 | half price days and buys like name brand clothing, like special brand labels that you have to

00:14:18.480 | find and then sells them on eBay.

00:14:20.160 | And she makes like a thousand to $1,500 a month doing that from her house.

00:14:23.960 | And she has four kids too.

00:14:26.320 | And so, so there's so many ways that you can go through and like declutter and go yard

00:14:31.040 | selling and find stuff to sell, you know, find clearance sales at stores.

00:14:39.320 | And there's just so many ways.

00:14:41.360 | So that's like one way that I think, you know, declutter your life, regain your joy that

00:14:45.040 | like clutter steals your joy and it kind of clutters your mental space, right?

00:14:51.160 | If you have so much junk around and you're like, "Oh, it's just so dirty all the time."

00:14:54.720 | I don't know.

00:14:55.720 | For me, it kills my productivity if like I'm just around clutter.

00:14:59.480 | And so people are like, "Oh, I can never make enough money or whatever," but they don't

00:15:03.760 | realize that they're sitting, you know, literally sitting on stuff that they can sell online.

00:15:08.760 | Yeah.

00:15:09.760 | I keep telling my wife, I said, "If you wanted to, you can make us a thousand bucks a month

00:15:13.560 | from your curb diving."

00:15:14.560 | My wife is the world's greatest curb diver.

00:15:17.080 | And she's just awesome at finding stuff on the side of the road and bring it home.

00:15:21.200 | And she enjoys cleaning stuff up.

00:15:22.880 | So she'll get this thing that's dirty and she'll scrub it up and she gives the stuff

00:15:26.040 | away.

00:15:27.040 | I keep telling her, "You can make a thousand bucks a month if you just want to turn around

00:15:30.000 | and sell the stuff."

00:15:31.000 | But she never wants to actually do it.

00:15:32.000 | Seriously.

00:15:33.000 | She should because even with like, I don't know if you guys have in your area, but we

00:15:36.800 | have, you know, Facebook buy/sell groups for your area.

00:15:40.320 | And I've done that before where I've gotten something for free and, you know, put some

00:15:44.440 | chalk paint on it and scratched it up a little bit and sold it for $75.

00:15:47.920 | Awesome.

00:15:48.920 | You know, I'm always thinking about fun ways because I enjoy that.

00:15:52.600 | I really enjoy, you know, redoing furniture and stuff like that.

00:15:57.360 | So that's always fun.

00:15:58.360 | Yeah.

00:15:59.360 | And my hope, I think hopefully as our oldest son gets a little older, I think it'll be

00:16:02.760 | a good way, a good project for him because she's good at finding the stuff and she enjoys

00:16:06.480 | fixing it up.

00:16:07.660 | So if we can get him making the Craigslist ad or putting it in the Facebook group, et

00:16:12.720 | cetera, I think that'll provide a good little business opportunity for him when he's five

00:16:16.040 | or six years old is my hope.

00:16:17.400 | Oh, definitely.

00:16:18.400 | We'll see.

00:16:19.400 | But I mean, our dining room table found on the side of the road, I refinished it and

00:16:24.800 | it's an awesome table.

00:16:26.240 | She finds all kinds of stuff.

00:16:27.640 | It's just amazing some of the stuff that she pulls off the side of the road.

00:16:29.960 | Oh, I love that.

00:16:30.960 | I love that.

00:16:31.960 | So you in your book go through these 12 recovering spender steps.

00:16:36.160 | Right.

00:16:37.160 | And I want to get to those and have you walk through them.

00:16:39.840 | But before you do that, talk a little bit about shopping.

00:16:44.400 | In your book, you talk about the triggers for shopping.

00:16:48.480 | You talk about an emotional shopper and a trophy shopper and an image shopper and a

00:16:51.400 | bargain shopper and a codependent shopper and a bulimic shopper and a collector shopper.

00:16:56.240 | These things, my guess is that the radical personal finance audience skews male and it

00:17:03.640 | probably skews heavily to these intellectual type of people who say, "I don't make emotional

00:17:08.600 | decisions with money.

00:17:10.080 | I'm perfectly content and I'm a human calculator when it comes to money," which is nonsense,

00:17:15.240 | of course.

00:17:16.240 | But I don't really relate with this shopping gene.

00:17:21.120 | The stuff you do, the Today Show, kind of the feminine, "Oh, you can just say no to

00:17:25.520 | the mall," I don't connect with that.

00:17:27.600 | So I don't know how to speak to that.

00:17:29.400 | So talk about people who do have that habit built up of being a shopper and how to break

00:17:34.560 | free from that.

00:17:35.560 | Yeah.

00:17:36.560 | So I think you bring up an interesting point, first of all, that I think that there are

00:17:42.040 | mostly women who deal with this problem.

00:17:44.200 | But there are a lot of men, but they just shop in different ways.

00:17:47.080 | Just different stores and different stuff.

00:17:48.600 | Well, different stuff, right?

00:17:50.040 | Guys typically spend more money on hobbies and sneakers and things that they really enjoy

00:17:56.480 | like golfing or if they like to fix up cars or Mark's really big into craft beer right

00:18:03.600 | now.

00:18:04.680 | So men tend to overspend or spend more money on those kinds of things, whereas women are

00:18:10.280 | more emotional shoppers.

00:18:12.240 | But I think what's really important as we start talking about this to people that are

00:18:16.080 | listening is that if you're, let's say you're a financial advisor and you're dealing with

00:18:21.760 | people, the common thing that I get all the time is that I need somebody who understands

00:18:27.520 | the mind of a shopper or a spender because people just don't realize that they have a

00:18:32.600 | problem and they're spending so much money.

00:18:35.660 | And so this book is really, I think, helpful not just for shoppers to spend, but to get

00:18:40.960 | into the mind of maybe other people's, of your clients who you're like hitting your

00:18:46.040 | head up against the wall because they are getting into debt more and more and more and

00:18:49.120 | you can't stop them.

00:18:50.600 | And so that's just like a little side note with that.

00:18:55.280 | I think that with women specifically, they a lot of times, I'll talk from my personal

00:19:02.520 | experience is that I was an emotional shopper.

00:19:05.960 | I think I changed a lot of times over the years, but I would get depressed about something

00:19:11.640 | and then I would go shopping and it would make me feel better.

00:19:14.400 | But then I would feel sad that I just shopped and that would make me depressed so that I'd

00:19:18.080 | go shopping again and then I'd feel better.

00:19:20.440 | And it was just kind of this whole cycle.

00:19:23.400 | But I think a lot of people do image shopping too.

00:19:26.560 | You know, they're trying to keep up with the Joneses.

00:19:28.320 | Everybody has this.

00:19:29.320 | They go to the mall together as friends.

00:19:30.560 | They don't want to look less than.

00:19:32.660 | They wear expensive clothing and nice cars.

00:19:37.160 | And a lot of times guys are image shoppers as well.

00:19:40.360 | You know, the guy that always picks up the tab at the bar is wearing flashy clothing.

00:19:44.960 | You know, he's a spender.

00:19:48.120 | So it's different in, I guess, classifying guys versus girls.

00:19:53.720 | But there's also, I said the bulimic shopper, the person who goes and buys something and

00:19:59.540 | then gets a home and doesn't like it, so returns it and buys something else and gets a home

00:20:03.260 | and doesn't like it.

00:20:04.260 | And it just happens over and over and over again.

00:20:07.020 | A lot of people are like, "Oh, I do that all the time.

00:20:09.220 | I didn't realize that that meant that I was a spender."

00:20:13.240 | And the collector shopper, that my son is a collector, like big time.

00:20:18.740 | So I look at this and I'm like, "Oh, he's like, I just know I've got to work on him

00:20:23.740 | harder with this."

00:20:24.740 | But he always, it's the thrill of having a collection.

00:20:27.320 | You know, baseball cards or having the same, you know, jersey or whatever you want to think

00:20:34.860 | about, you're the collector shopper and you're a spender.

00:20:38.660 | And so I think that when spending becomes a problem, it's when your spending starts

00:20:45.060 | to become more important than your true values in life.

00:20:48.800 | So if you're spending despite being in credit card debt or you're spending despite not being

00:20:53.020 | able to afford your mortgage or you're spending money on a credit card not knowing where that

00:20:57.000 | money is going to come from, you're sacrificing your value, which my guess is to have, you

00:21:02.020 | know, live a happy, fulfilled, debt-free life.

00:21:04.820 | And when your spending becomes opposite of that, that's when I feel like you really got

00:21:09.900 | to kind of take a look at it.

00:21:10.900 | And that's what happened to me.

00:21:12.500 | I was, you know, I remember one story that I went shopping and I went to the mall and

00:21:21.980 | hid the clothes in the trunk of my car and then went inside.

00:21:26.040 | And then the next day when Mark went to work, I brought the clothes inside and hung them

00:21:29.700 | up in my closet because I didn't want to get in an argument about it.

00:21:33.020 | Like I was like so over him being like, "What did you spend money on, Lauren?"

00:21:36.380 | So I didn't want to deal with it.

00:21:37.700 | And so, you know, this we were probably married like five years then or something.

00:21:41.580 | And so I hid it in the closet and I realized that, you know, my marriage was way too important

00:21:47.980 | to be lying about this kind of stuff that I wanted a marriage that would last.

00:21:54.340 | And in order to do that, it couldn't be based on secrecy.

00:21:58.220 | And so I really had to kind of take a look at my value system and realize that like I

00:22:01.660 | couldn't keep spending that way because, you know, it was just getting worse and worse.

00:22:06.380 | So I think that's kind of was a wake up call for me.

00:22:10.860 | How did you come to talk about it as far as what was it if you were in that situation

00:22:15.980 | where you were hiding things from your husband in order to compress through?

00:22:20.980 | What brought the point?

00:22:23.220 | How did you actually overcome that to be able to communicate about it?

00:22:27.100 | Well, I have this saying and I talk about it in the book and it says that when the pain

00:22:32.740 | of being broke is greater than the pain of changing your spending habits, that's when

00:22:37.300 | you're going to make a change.

00:22:39.180 | And so I was so sick and tired of being broke and being so stressed out over money that

00:22:44.380 | it was I was more afraid to stay in that spot than I was to talk to Mark about it, if that

00:22:51.500 | makes sense.

00:22:53.020 | And so I just got really, really...

00:22:55.420 | Oh, hold on.

00:22:57.380 | My daughter just started knocking on my door.

00:23:00.140 | Hold on.

00:23:01.140 | Sorry, Josh.

00:23:02.140 | Sorry.

00:23:03.140 | I figured it's one of the joys of a home-based business.

00:23:07.900 | No, I'm not going to edit it out.

00:23:09.140 | It's fantastic.

00:23:10.140 | Hi, everyone.

00:23:11.140 | My daughter is knocking on my door.

00:23:12.140 | My dog's bark in the background in my show.

00:23:17.740 | It's normal.

00:23:18.740 | Yeah.

00:23:19.740 | So I got four kids.

00:23:20.740 | Somebody always needs me.

00:23:21.740 | Right.

00:23:22.740 | You hear the little knock on the door?

00:23:24.060 | She's like, "Hello.

00:23:25.060 | Hello."

00:23:26.060 | My daughter, so my one-year-old daughter does that, but she does it unintentionally.

00:23:29.340 | And so my kids know when I close the door and I have some soundproofing curtains that

00:23:34.020 | helps to cut down most of the noise between my office and the living room.

00:23:37.580 | But my little one-year-old daughter, she likes to totter around.

00:23:41.580 | And so she comes up to the door and she loves to bang things with her hands.

00:23:44.500 | She'll go, "Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang."

00:23:46.140 | And often I have to hit pause on my recording and go and say, "Okay, Tiffany, please take

00:23:52.340 | her away.

00:23:53.340 | Let's go to the other room.

00:23:54.340 | I need to get the show done."

00:23:56.340 | Oh, man.

00:23:57.340 | That's funny.

00:23:58.340 | So when the pain of being broke exceeds the pleasure that you get from shopping, that's

00:24:02.340 | what you were saying.

00:24:03.340 | Right.

00:24:04.340 | Yeah.

00:24:05.340 | So the pain of being broke was suddenly greater than the pain of changing and talking to Mark

00:24:08.860 | about it.

00:24:09.860 | And I was like, "Okay, it's easier for me to talk to him about it than it is for me

00:24:13.540 | to continue to keep spending like this because I'm just so at my wits end."

00:24:18.020 | And so we sat down and I kind of just laid it all out.

00:24:21.340 | I actually literally laid my credit card bills out on the bed and just he came in and I just

00:24:26.860 | blurted it out because I'm like, "I don't know how to casually say this, but we're in

00:24:31.740 | $40,000 with the debt."

00:24:32.820 | And I was waiting for him to scream at me or something like that.

00:24:36.540 | And he just kind of looked at me in shock for a while and then he said, "I forgive you.

00:24:41.380 | We're going to move through with this together."

00:24:43.900 | And that was really healing for me.

00:24:46.140 | And so we, from that day, started working towards getting out of debt.

00:24:50.980 | So what are the rules that you have in place for you now?

00:24:52.900 | In your book, you go over kind of you learned your triggers.

00:24:55.540 | Tell us about some of the triggers that you observed and the rules that you put in place

00:24:58.380 | to control your spending.

00:24:59.740 | Yeah.

00:25:00.740 | So some of them are kind of funny.

00:25:03.420 | I don't go to home-based business parties.

00:25:06.980 | That's a big no-no for me.

00:25:08.540 | So I don't go to Mary Kay parties or 31 parties or any, whatever kind of party.

00:25:14.260 | I don't go to them because I am a sucker for a good deal.

00:25:19.820 | And I hate saying no to people when they're asking me to buy something when I know they're

00:25:23.380 | right there with it.

00:25:24.380 | So I just know that that's a big no.

00:25:27.100 | So I never go to those.

00:25:28.940 | I haven't been to one in maybe seven years.

00:25:31.420 | And I get invited all the time and I always say no.

00:25:34.580 | I don't go to the mall alone.

00:25:38.300 | That's a big no-no for me.

00:25:39.300 | I don't go into Target without one person.

00:25:43.500 | Usually it has to be an adult.

00:25:44.860 | So usually I won't go to Target without Mark or like Hobby Lobby, like all of those stores.

00:25:49.580 | I feel like when I'm walking into them, I'm like walking into heaven.

00:25:52.540 | It's like, like the music is coming down.

00:25:55.840 | So any store that gives me that feeling of like, "Oh, this is amazing," that I just can't

00:26:00.060 | go into because I get like sucked in.

00:26:05.500 | I don't do a lot of extravagant parties.

00:26:10.260 | I see on Pinterest, like a lot of my friends are throwing these amazing birthday parties

00:26:15.860 | with like all of these hand-crafted balloons or whatever.

00:26:21.420 | I don't do those.

00:26:22.420 | I'm just really simple and not trying to spend money.

00:26:26.100 | And I only use cash most of the time.

00:26:28.860 | I don't use credit cards at all.

00:26:31.020 | I have one credit card for my business that I use to pay business bills.

00:26:35.900 | They get paid off right away.

00:26:38.440 | And that is only for security because I travel so much right now.

00:26:44.580 | But I use cash on pretty much everything.

00:26:47.020 | So those are kind of the boundaries that I've set for myself.

00:26:52.500 | I can talk about, do you want me to talk about like the fence analogy?

00:26:57.020 | So I think this is really important when a lot of spenders, like you say the word budget

00:27:02.220 | and it makes them cringe because it makes it like literally years ago when we were starting

00:27:08.340 | to learn how to budget, like it would make me almost nauseous.

00:27:11.260 | Like the thought of budgeting was so overwhelming to me.

00:27:15.220 | And so I would have all good intentions and I would make a budget and then I just could

00:27:18.620 | never stick to it.

00:27:19.620 | And I did that over and over and over again.

00:27:21.500 | And one day I was kind of watching my kids play outside and we have a fenced in backyard.

00:27:26.940 | This is when we had two kids and we had a fenced in backyard and a swing set and they

00:27:31.580 | were back there playing.

00:27:33.540 | And for some reason it just kind of, I was doing my budget on the back deck for like,

00:27:38.100 | you know, updating it.

00:27:39.300 | And the idea just kind of came to me that, you know, as a spender, I'm always so afraid

00:27:46.100 | of budgeting, but it's really there to keep me safe from whatever, you know, triggers

00:27:52.740 | I have or things in the world that I just shouldn't be taking part of.

00:27:58.340 | So what I mean by that is that when you have a fence, like so my kids have a fenced in

00:28:02.100 | yard so it keeps them safe.

00:28:03.460 | It protects them.

00:28:04.460 | They can still have fun within the yard.

00:28:05.980 | They can still play, but they're safe and secure.

00:28:10.000 | But if they were to go on the outside of the fence, they might get run over by a car or

00:28:13.100 | a dog could attack them or they get lost or something like that.

00:28:16.440 | And so I kind of started looking at budgeting as a fence around my money that I can still

00:28:20.860 | have fun with my money, but the fence just gives me a boundary.

00:28:24.740 | The budget just gives me that boundary to say, you know what, this is what you can do.

00:28:28.500 | And so every month we sit down and we figure out where that fence is going to be for the

00:28:31.620 | month.

00:28:32.620 | You know, what are we going to spend our money on?

00:28:33.940 | And it gives me as a spender a sense of freedom because now I feel safe from all of those

00:28:39.140 | outside things.

00:28:40.140 | I feel safe to say, I'm sorry, but I can't come to your party tonight.

00:28:44.020 | Or I'm sorry, I can't go to the mall today because I have that boundary.

00:28:48.620 | Whereas before when there was no boundary, it was like I could go play in the road and

00:28:53.340 | get hit by accident and use a credit card and go into debt.

00:28:59.020 | And so when I started looking at it that way, that it actually was there to give me freedom,

00:29:04.020 | that it really changed the way that I saw spending money.

00:29:07.820 | Yeah.

00:29:08.820 | If you, I mean, my opinion on the shopping spending thing is if you look at how people

00:29:14.980 | view spending, if you view spending as meeting a need that you have, whether it's an emotional

00:29:22.300 | need or, it's often an emotional need.

00:29:26.060 | It could be an emotional need for soothing.

00:29:28.540 | It could be an emotional need for release.

00:29:30.180 | Maybe you have relationship stress.

00:29:31.980 | It could be an emotional need for self-confidence.

00:29:33.460 | As you said, I need to buy this certain thing so that I appear this certain way.

00:29:38.980 | The only way to, well, one way to overcome it is to adjust how you view it.

00:29:42.920 | And if you view it as, for me, what I think is really powerful is get a goal that's more

00:29:48.100 | compelling.

00:29:50.020 | Like you said, nothing, your quote that you said that I didn't write down where I wasn't

00:29:55.860 | born to pay bills, but rather have this compelling vision of what's positive, it adjusts the

00:30:01.900 | conversation.

00:30:03.360 | And then once you see that and you put some limits on it, whatever those limits are, you

00:30:06.980 | can create them for yourself, then you can do it without it hurting other aspects of

00:30:14.980 | your life.

00:30:16.540 | Back to your question like fences and triggers, I do think this is extremely valuable for

00:30:21.180 | people to do and to consider the things that you consume in your life.

00:30:25.900 | I do think it's unfair, although it seems to me that the kind of the extreme emotional

00:30:32.340 | reflexive spending does often come from women who might go to the mall or go to Target or

00:30:40.220 | something like that.

00:30:42.660 | Men it's just a little bit more disguised.

00:30:45.060 | So usually I always make fun of my friends.

00:30:48.020 | They make fun of, I always call out my buddies who want to talk about, "Oh, that girl spent

00:30:53.220 | $350 on a pair of high heel shoes."

00:30:55.340 | And I say, "You see these $300 boots you have over here?"

00:31:00.340 | You see this Cabela's catalog that you have here on your table?

00:31:03.740 | It's no different, buddy.

00:31:05.180 | You just don't care about high heels.

00:31:06.660 | You care about something else.

00:31:07.900 | So don't give me that nonsense.

00:31:08.900 | Exactly.

00:31:09.900 | It's just the way that you put it, where you spend it.

00:31:13.140 | Right, right, right.

00:31:14.140 | Yeah.

00:31:15.140 | I need this tricked out $3,000 gun.

00:31:17.020 | Yeah.

00:31:18.020 | The one you don't shoot?

00:31:19.020 | Of course you do.

00:31:20.020 | You know what's funny, Josh?

00:31:21.220 | I just was part of, so part of kind of, I did a video project for my book and what I've

00:31:27.620 | been doing the past three months, I've been flying to Cincinnati to help a family who,

00:31:31.980 | the woman was a spender, right?

00:31:33.780 | And so the past three months, once a month I've been there and I've been helping them

00:31:37.980 | and we've had a film crew come in and film it and everything.

00:31:41.380 | And what's funny was by month two, when Bridget started, you know, stopped spending money,

00:31:47.980 | then all of the sudden, Andy, her husband's spender, spending came out.

00:31:52.700 | And then it was interesting because now he couldn't blame it on her anymore.

00:31:57.980 | Because he was going and spending $50 at the casino every once in a while.

00:32:02.100 | And he was going and playing golf with his buddies and then going out drinking afterwards.

00:32:05.980 | And he had a $1,000 beer cooler in his basement that he was unwilling to give up because he

00:32:13.620 | had plans for in the future.

00:32:15.420 | And so it's totally different.

00:32:17.620 | But so many times the girl gets the rap and there's plenty of guy spenders out there.

00:32:25.460 | So it's a good point that it's just different, you know, the way that guys spend money.

00:32:29.620 | That's where the numbers don't lie.

00:32:31.360 | Another one that I do have done sometimes is, you know, the husband's griping about

00:32:36.420 | the money that his wife spends at the mall.

00:32:39.780 | But meanwhile, okay, here's this brand new F-150 that you have no need for.

00:32:44.260 | Hey, let's calculate how much that thing's costing you every month.

00:32:46.980 | Ah, you're getting about $270 depreciation a month.

00:32:50.460 | So is this $100 over here at Target really the key?

00:32:53.300 | Or is this $270 depreciation something that we should also take a look at?

00:32:57.180 | That's good.

00:32:58.180 | I like that.

00:32:59.180 | You got to look at the actual numbers.

00:33:03.900 | But I think we all should assess and understand our triggers.

00:33:07.500 | So here are a couple for me.

00:33:09.260 | I don't get connected to the mall or Target, things like that.

00:33:15.060 | But I learned years ago that I had to unsubscribe from things like men's magazines.

00:33:20.140 | I used to really enjoy magazines like Men's Journal or some of the kind of the male-focused

00:33:27.020 | magazines.

00:33:28.020 | But I was always lusting after some new $1,200 kayak or some new $2,000 thing.

00:33:32.300 | And I realized the entire purpose of this thing is to sell me stuff.

00:33:36.320 | And so as soon as I just got rid of it and dumped the subscription and quit reading it,

00:33:39.660 | all of a sudden I wasn't feeding that desire to have this certain thing.

00:33:44.340 | Same thing with cars, car magazines, all of that type of content.

00:33:48.580 | What you focus on becomes where your attention goes.

00:33:52.420 | And we make those choices intentionally, or at least we should be making those choices

00:33:57.140 | intentionally.

00:33:58.140 | And so in the same way that you intentionally choose to consume a certain type of media,

00:34:03.020 | which is built into creating this dissatisfaction in you, because one of the key hallmarks of

00:34:08.780 | sales and marketing is to create dissatisfaction.

00:34:12.580 | You have to create dissatisfaction in your prospective customer and then show how your

00:34:18.740 | product or service meets that dissatisfaction.

00:34:22.220 | So once you cut out all the sources that are creating dissatisfaction, all of a sudden

00:34:25.580 | you have less things to spend your money on.

00:34:27.660 | Mm-hmm.

00:34:28.660 | That's so true.

00:34:29.660 | And I think everybody needs to know what makes them overspent.

00:34:34.620 | That's a really great point because if you're overspending, you don't need to be spending

00:34:37.460 | that money anyway.

00:34:38.460 | You could be putting it towards retirement or something else.

00:34:40.300 | Lauren, you guys have these four beautiful children.

00:34:42.380 | I'm curious, have you changed anything with what you've allowed into their lives or how

00:34:47.540 | you've chosen to spend or not spend money on them and their desires?

00:34:52.500 | Yeah, actually.

00:34:53.940 | So there's been a few ways that we've changed.

00:34:59.080 | So my son is 11.

00:35:01.460 | Actually today is his 11th birthday.

00:35:03.700 | And so then I have seven, five, and three-year-old daughters.

00:35:09.540 | And the younger girls weren't raised during my spending time.

00:35:12.900 | So they don't really know any different.

00:35:14.380 | But my son was kind of there at the most difficult time or I guess the time when I was spending

00:35:20.860 | the most amount of money.

00:35:22.300 | And so I really, I feel like, you know, he has a natural spending tendency.

00:35:26.940 | And I feel like when I was spending money and I would buy him whatever he wanted, when

00:35:31.940 | we'd go into Target and it was like, I was a collector.

00:35:34.780 | So we needed to collect all the Lightning McQueen cars because this was when like the

00:35:37.540 | Cars movie first came out.

00:35:39.220 | You know, we had to collect all those.

00:35:41.500 | So he's a little bit harder and I'm continuously having to work with him.

00:35:45.180 | But that being said, there's many situations where they wanted to borrow money from us.

00:35:49.140 | And we have the saying, you know, in our house, I'm not your credit card.

00:35:52.840 | And so we'll make them do chores or certain things to earn money to get the item that

00:35:58.020 | they want.

00:35:59.020 | But also, you know, we're just not, we're not a stuff family.

00:36:03.380 | We don't, we don't buy a lot of stuff.

00:36:05.940 | We don't go to malls.

00:36:07.160 | We don't go on elaborate vacations.

00:36:10.540 | And so actually yesterday, what happened yesterday?

00:36:14.820 | We went to the grocery store and my daughter asked me for two things and it was like crackers

00:36:19.620 | and something else.

00:36:20.620 | And I said yes to both of them.

00:36:21.740 | And she looked at me and she's like, "Why are you being so nice today?"

00:36:27.500 | Because in the store, I'm usually like, I have a list and don't ask me to deviate from

00:36:31.780 | the list because I have a budget.

00:36:33.300 | You know what I mean?

00:36:34.300 | Right.

00:36:35.300 | And I'm like, "Okay, I'll ask her."

00:36:36.300 | And so they're just used to like us saying no to them a lot when it comes to money.

00:36:40.820 | But our son actually works for us now.

00:36:45.180 | He's our office cleaner.

00:36:47.140 | And so he makes $10 a week, you know, spending 45 minutes to an hour to, to wash or to clean

00:36:55.660 | our office.

00:36:56.660 | And then we make him put that in a savings account.

00:36:59.020 | He has to tithe off of it first and then he has to put it in savings.

00:37:02.400 | And he hates us for it, but we're working with him.

00:37:05.520 | We're working with him on it.

00:37:06.560 | But we, we do a lot of, you know, teaching our kids when I do coupon, they cut them for

00:37:11.640 | me.

00:37:12.640 | They know what I'm using them for.

00:37:14.600 | They are very familiar with me looking for good deals.

00:37:18.000 | They're used to wearing used clothes.

00:37:20.540 | And we talk a lot about budgeting and about money and about financial freedom and even

00:37:25.680 | compound interest with my 11 year old.

00:37:27.480 | He, you know, he understands that now.

00:37:29.000 | So yeah, we just really, you know, I didn't get that financial training.

00:37:33.760 | And so we work really hard to, to instill it in our children.

00:37:36.800 | I think it makes all the difference in the world.

00:37:39.160 | I look at young men and women and the ones who go into a ditch financially are usually

00:37:45.520 | trying to satisfy something that their parents didn't teach them.

00:37:49.800 | You know, buying expensive athletic shoes is often a way of appearing cool.

00:37:55.080 | But if you can adjust those goals and give a different, better goal, you can, you can

00:37:58.720 | set your children on a strong course.

00:38:00.480 | Exactly.

00:38:01.480 | All right.

00:38:02.480 | You've got 12 steps.

00:38:03.480 | Give us your 12 steps as a brief overview.

00:38:04.960 | I mean, tons of content in the book, but I've got a listener who says, Hey, I'm frustrated

00:38:09.680 | with my spending.

00:38:11.040 | I, you know, I connect with what you're saying, Lauren, that, that I also am a spender.

00:38:15.360 | What are the 12 steps that I need to, to overcome my addiction to spending?

00:38:19.120 | All right.

00:38:20.120 | So step one is to admit that you have a problem.

00:38:23.760 | Wait a second.

00:38:24.760 | I've heard this somewhere.

00:38:25.760 | You stole these 12 steps.

00:38:26.760 | No, actually, you know, I, I, I saw this 12 steps of like a spenders anonymous or whatever.

00:38:34.520 | And I thought, you know what?

00:38:35.680 | Like I like step one and I like step two.

00:38:38.920 | So we're going to use those two, but then the rest of them are a little, are a lot different.

00:38:42.920 | So so step one, admit you have a problem.

00:38:45.320 | I think the biggest thing for me was to be an admit that like, I can't use credit cards.

00:38:51.320 | I can't, um, you know, I know my weaknesses and I really want to be, uh, transparent with

00:38:58.760 | that so that I don't overspend.

00:39:00.560 | So, um, so number one is to admit that you have a problem.

00:39:04.480 | And I actually have, um, so let me read you these, these 20 questions.

00:39:09.960 | And, and I say, I talk about this in this chapter of the book too, but I want to share

00:39:13.840 | it and kind of get into depth of that with you on here that most, most spenders will

00:39:18.200 | answer yes to at least five of these questions.

00:39:20.880 | So I'm going to read these 20 questions to you.

00:39:22.360 | So if somebody says yes to five of these, then, you know, my guess is that you have

00:39:26.960 | a spending problem.

00:39:27.960 | Okay.

00:39:28.960 | So number one, um, is your spending making your family unhappy?

00:39:32.640 | Even you unhappy could do that.

00:39:34.240 | Um, do the feelings of being in debt cause you to lose sleep at night?

00:39:38.360 | Does the pressure of getting out of debt distract you from daily living or work?

00:39:42.120 | Um, have you ever borrowed something and failed to give it back?

00:39:46.000 | Now this is interesting.

00:39:47.120 | A lot of people don't think about this, but it shows a disrespect for money and that shows

00:39:52.240 | that you don't have empathy for other people's money if you constantly borrow things and

00:39:56.200 | give people back.

00:39:57.200 | So if you don't have empathy for other people's money, how can you have empathy for your own?

00:40:01.320 | Uh, number five, are you afraid that your friends will, you know, work, coworkers, church

00:40:07.600 | will find out about your spending.

00:40:09.000 | Uh, number six, do you pray for someone to give you a large sum of money to pay off your

00:40:13.040 | debts?

00:40:14.040 | I can't tell you how many times I did that.

00:40:15.040 | I was like, God, just let a $10,000 check show up in my mailbox, right?

00:40:18.880 | That it never happens.

00:40:19.880 | Um, cause he wanted me to do the work.

00:40:21.880 | Um, number seven, do you make a, do your debts make you feel bad about yourself or giving

00:40:25.760 | you a low self-esteem?

00:40:27.680 | Number eight, do you find yourself shopping because you feel bad about your debt?

00:40:31.720 | Number nine, have you ever lied to somebody about how much debt you're in?

00:40:34.740 | Number 10, have you ever borrowed money without taking into consideration how you pay it back?

00:40:39.520 | So that's the same thing as using a credit card without knowing where your money's going.

00:40:43.840 | Uh, number 11, have you ever promised something to a creditor that you know you will not be

00:40:48.720 | able to fulfill?

00:40:49.720 | Number 12, do you continue to spend as if you have plenty of money and no debt despite

00:40:54.600 | having no money and being in a lot of debt?

00:40:57.320 | Number 13, do you continue to do everything your friends do for the fear of being found

00:41:02.240 | out?

00:41:03.240 | Uh, okay.

00:41:04.240 | The last six, have you tried fail?

00:41:06.520 | Have you tried to budget in the past but failed over and over again?

00:41:10.120 | Number 15, have you ever lied about spending money?

00:41:12.600 | Number 16, have you hidden a purchase or failed to mention it because you knew it would trouble

00:41:17.680 | someone?

00:41:18.960 | That's like me, hold, you know, hiding the stuff in the trunk of my car.

00:41:21.920 | Um, do you find yourself living around chaos or drama when it comes to your money?

00:41:25.600 | You're always bouncing checks, missing payments.

00:41:28.360 | Number 18, do you live paycheck to paycheck?

00:41:30.720 | Number 19, do you have a hard time passing up a good deal?

00:41:33.720 | And number 20, do you have little to nothing in savings?

00:41:38.320 | So those are good questions.

00:41:40.440 | If you answered five yes to five of those, um, then that those are warning signs.

00:41:45.040 | And um, so, so that's, that's the first step.

00:41:49.840 | Step two, step two, get help from the one above.

00:41:53.560 | Um, this was a step.

00:41:56.800 | This is a step in common, you know, 12 step programs.

00:41:59.800 | Um, but I really had to realize that I was not doing a very good job on my own.

00:42:07.560 | Um, I really needed to find, uh, something else that was bigger and outside of myself

00:42:12.720 | to help me.

00:42:13.720 | And so, um, I really started going back to church and reading my Bible and learning how,

00:42:19.200 | um, God could help me, you know, get, get better and, uh, have somebody else to rely

00:42:24.200 | on.

00:42:25.200 | Yeah.

00:42:26.200 | I think this is a, an area where many people gloss over and, uh, I know your book is not,

00:42:31.720 | uh, necessarily intended as a religious text.

00:42:35.600 | But if we do not see the way that we handle our money as an extension of our faithfulness

00:42:42.560 | to God, it leads to a much less of an importance on it.

00:42:46.800 | And many people have this perspective, well, I can just do whatever I want.

00:42:49.600 | Well, you're going to be held to account for the way that you handle your money.

00:42:54.000 | And so if you've been faithless with the money that's under your stewardship, if you don't

00:42:59.440 | start with repentance of that faithlessness, you're not building on a, on a very solid,

00:43:04.640 | uh, on a solid foundation.

00:43:06.720 | It's not just a matter of, oh, you made some mistakes.

00:43:08.720 | It's a, it's, it's, you've been a faithless steward.

00:43:11.400 | Uh, and the Bible has something to say about being a faithless steward.

00:43:15.020 | And one of the great things about it is that if you begin with this foundation, uh, if

00:43:19.480 | you can begin with the foundation that you're a steward of the funds and that God is actually

00:43:23.640 | willing and able to help you to live on, on, on what you have, it transforms everything.

00:43:29.940 | In your book, you briefly quote, um, one of the favorite scriptures that I love to talk

00:43:34.660 | about with people, scripture Philippians 4.13.

00:43:37.020 | It's one of the most quoted that probably, probably about five Bible verses.

00:43:42.140 | I always laugh when people are like, here's my favorite Bible verse.

00:43:45.220 | About, uh, I would guess there's five Bible verses that probably account for, uh, 80%

00:43:52.020 | of the time when people say, here's my favorite Bible verse.

00:43:54.700 | And what's fascinating to me about each of those Bible verses is that they're usually

00:43:58.740 | not put into context.

00:44:01.140 | So for example, um, one of the favorite ones, uh, that people say, Jeremiah 29, 11, for

00:44:06.060 | I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, you know, plans to prosper you and plans to

00:44:10.060 | give you hope in the future.

00:44:11.500 | I always tell the people, have you read the 29 chapters before that?

00:44:15.260 | Because if you read the 29 chapters before that, you might not quote that verse so readily.

00:44:21.300 | Another one though, is this is the verse Philippians 4.13.

00:44:24.860 | Uh, and what happens is, is that Christians have this terrible disease of quoting Bible

00:44:29.260 | verses out of context.

00:44:31.020 | And so you'll often see the verse Philippians 4.13, I can do everything through him who

00:44:34.540 | gives me strength, quoted and applied to all kinds of things.

00:44:38.940 | And you get it and people get really kind of strangely mystical, uh, at some point.

00:44:42.780 | And we ask people, what can you do through him who gives you strength?

00:44:45.580 | I can go through cancer, you know, I can lift a car off of, wait a second, at some point

00:44:49.900 | in time, we have a question, uh, about that.

00:44:52.300 | But what's so fascinating is if you actually look at that verse and you actually look at

00:44:56.980 | it in context and you go back and you say, what can you actually do through God who strengthens

00:45:04.380 | you?

00:45:05.380 | And I don't deny that, that God can strengthen you to go through a cancer diagnosis.

00:45:08.300 | I don't deny that God can strengthen you to go through these things, but that's not what

00:45:11.980 | that verse is actually talking about.

00:45:14.300 | What that verse actually applies to when, when the Bible says I can do all things through

00:45:18.540 | him who strengthens me, that verse is being applied to living on your income, whatever

00:45:25.540 | it is.

00:45:26.540 | It's a hundred percent about money management.

00:45:28.140 | It's not about this mystical sense of I can go through cancer, I can face this difficult

00:45:32.260 | relationship, I can deal with my drinking problem.

00:45:34.500 | Well, you might be able to deal with those things, but you can't take this verse and

00:45:38.260 | just make it a blanket statement that you can do all things through him who strengthens

00:45:41.460 | me.

00:45:42.460 | And the context of that verse is where, I'll read it just for listeners who are interested,

00:45:49.820 | but the context of that verse, Paul says this in Philippians, "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly

00:45:53.700 | that now at length you have revived your concern for me.

00:45:57.740 | You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity.

00:46:01.220 | Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am

00:46:07.900 | to be content.

00:46:09.260 | I know how to be brought low and I know how to abound.

00:46:13.300 | In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance

00:46:21.700 | and need.

00:46:23.060 | I can do all things through him who strengthens me."

00:46:26.380 | And when you put the verse into its proper context and you don't take it as this mystical

00:46:30.220 | let me wave a Bible verse at life, but you actually say, "Oh, I can live on my income."

00:46:36.340 | It makes it so much more powerful.

00:46:38.620 | So one of my biggest frustrations when people misquote and misapply scripture, and so I'm

00:46:43.180 | glad to see that verse actually spoken about in the context of living on your income, because

00:46:47.460 | that's what it's talking about.

00:46:48.460 | Exactly, exactly.

00:46:49.460 | I'm glad you brought that up.

00:46:50.460 | Did I steal your sermon?

00:46:51.460 | No, go ahead.

00:46:52.460 | I'm loving it.

00:46:53.460 | Bring it on.

00:46:54.460 | I'm loving it.

00:46:55.460 | A little pet peeve of mine.

00:46:56.820 | And I encourage all of, the majority of my audience is a mixture of secular and partial

00:47:03.580 | Christianity, but I encourage you, if you know a Christian who misquotes scripture,

00:47:07.140 | someone quotes John 3.16 to you, ask him what John 3.15 says and ask him what John 3.17

00:47:12.060 | says.

00:47:13.060 | If someone quotes Jeremiah 29.11 to you, ask them to describe the context of the first

00:47:17.420 | 29 chapters of Jeremiah and explain to you why God is saying what his plans are for you

00:47:22.820 | in your future.

00:47:23.820 | Right.

00:47:24.820 | And help them to be a little bit more diligent with understanding what their Bibles say.

00:47:28.140 | Oh, I totally agree with you.

00:47:29.620 | And you know, it's interesting because in my book I talk about my experience with Mary

00:47:35.380 | K. and that was one of their Bible verses that they promoted all the time.

00:47:41.060 | Yes, it was about finances, but it was all about like growing bigger in the company and

00:47:45.860 | all of that.

00:47:46.860 | And it was just totally, in my opinion, the opposite of what the verse was supposed to

00:47:53.020 | mean because they were all about, you know, recruiting and getting more people and more

00:47:58.780 | debt and, you know, sharing the opportunities that their company can grow.

00:48:02.220 | And I don't know.

00:48:03.300 | So I break that all down for you.

00:48:04.620 | And, you know, some people might be upset that I kind of rag on MLM, you know, multi-level

00:48:08.460 | marketing companies, but it's my experience and my truth that, you know, they're not all

00:48:12.940 | good.

00:48:13.940 | Yeah, definitely not.

00:48:14.940 | All right.

00:48:15.940 | Step three.

00:48:16.940 | Step three, admit your spending to someone else.

00:48:20.860 | So for me, I needed to kind of just talk about, you know, what was going on.

00:48:27.380 | And so for Mark, I told him first and then I told a bunch of my other friends.

00:48:32.340 | But I think one of the strange things is that when being vulnerable, it actually, you know,

00:48:38.180 | a lot of people think like vulnerability.

00:48:39.740 | If I tell my friends, what are they going to say that actually looks at as weakness.

00:48:45.040 | But I talk about it as vulnerability is actually the most accurate measurement of courage.

00:48:51.140 | And so when people come out to talk about, you know, I might not be able to go to this

00:48:55.300 | mall, you know, tell your friends if you have a spending problem or if you think that you

00:48:58.940 | need to just get out of debt or, you know, that vulnerability is a sign of courage that

00:49:04.980 | you want to get help.

00:49:05.980 | And so that's my step number three.

00:49:09.340 | It's really hard to do things alone.

00:49:10.740 | And especially if it's going to involve a significant life change, it is hard to do

00:49:14.500 | things alone.

00:49:15.500 | And the key is to recognize that when you're doing something positive, I mean, if you're

00:49:19.260 | saying I'm going to go become a drug addict, you probably don't need to tell other people

00:49:22.300 | that because they're not really going to encourage you.

00:49:24.980 | They'll probably figure it out anyway.

00:49:27.080 | But if you're saying, "Hey, I'm going to stop using drugs by enlisting the help of

00:49:31.440 | other people," or "I'm going to stop spending so much money," or "We're getting out of

00:49:34.060 | debt," you can do two things.

00:49:36.100 | Number one, you can involve them in your journey and that will adjust their behavior.

00:49:41.020 | They'll invite you to a potluck or they'll invite you to come along with them to the

00:49:44.020 | beach instead of to the mall.

00:49:46.120 | And it will help and be a positive influence on their lives.

00:49:49.140 | And most of us have been influenced by somebody else who's losing weight, somebody else who's

00:49:53.740 | getting out of debt.

00:49:54.940 | And that can help you to impact their life.

00:49:57.860 | And you know what?

00:49:58.860 | There's a TED Talk that I quoted in the book that by, I believe it's Mr. Brown.

00:50:05.540 | And he says that if you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow, secrecy,

00:50:10.580 | silence, and judgment.

00:50:12.140 | If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can't survive.

00:50:17.300 | And so, you know, by keeping your shame of spending or whatever you're dealing with and

00:50:23.660 | keeping that secrecy and the silence and judging, maybe judging yourself or somebody else judging

00:50:27.580 | you, you know, that's going to make it even get worse.

00:50:30.180 | And so empathy is super huge.

00:50:32.740 | You know, if you're listening to this and you might know a spender, you know, judgment,

00:50:37.140 | shame, secrecy, that's going to make it worse.

00:50:40.180 | Douse it with empathy and they're going to get better.

00:50:42.180 | They're starting, you know, starting and that worked for me.

00:50:44.500 | You know, if Mark had yelled at me and said, "You're never going to do better.

00:50:47.460 | This is just the way you are."

00:50:48.820 | You know, it would have been harder for me to stop spending and to get us out of debt,

00:50:53.820 | you know?

00:50:54.820 | Yeah.

00:50:55.820 | Step four, make a list of all the people to whom you are in debt.

00:50:59.220 | Right.

00:51:00.220 | So this just, you know, kind of helps put everything, you know, into, you know, a list

00:51:07.100 | of what you have.

00:51:08.780 | So you kind of get it all on paper, helps you not have as much stress because a lot

00:51:13.620 | of times we're trying to juggle all this stuff in our brain.

00:51:16.380 | So that's step number four.

00:51:17.860 | Yeah.

00:51:18.860 | And if you don't have a list, you don't know what you're working on.

00:51:21.380 | Exactly.

00:51:22.380 | And you can't even create an intelligent plan of attack if you don't know what the amounts

00:51:25.820 | are, if you don't know what the interest rates are.

00:51:28.060 | Generally, when people get out of hand, and I'm guilty of this just like anybody else,

00:51:32.860 | when things get out of hand, it's due to lack of attention.

00:51:35.060 | When your weight goes up, it's because you're not paying attention.

00:51:38.020 | When your debts grow and all of a sudden you wake up and say, "I owe $40,000 in debt.

00:51:41.420 | How did that happen?"

00:51:42.420 | Well, it's because you weren't paying attention.

00:51:44.220 | So make a list and detail and even detail what's the amount, to whom do I owe it, what

00:51:50.500 | are the interest rates, what are the terms.

00:51:53.060 | And then there's an episode in the podcast in the archive of Radical Personal Finance.

00:51:56.660 | I'll look up the number in just a moment where it says, "Here's how you intelligently order

00:52:00.200 | that list and figure out in what order to pay off those debts."

00:52:05.020 | Rule five, take an inventory of your spending.

00:52:07.100 | Right.

00:52:08.100 | So this is kind of as a spender, it's a good starting point.

00:52:12.040 | Similar to weighing yourself before you go on a diet, you want to know what your starting

00:52:15.120 | point is.

00:52:16.120 | And so one thing that I did is took inventory of the past three months of my spending, took

00:52:20.840 | an average, and then that was the number that I started with a budget so it didn't feel

00:52:24.740 | so shocking to me.

00:52:26.240 | And so I needed to know where I was overspending because that helped me figure out those triggers

00:52:31.240 | of mine as well.

00:52:32.240 | The episode I was referring to was episode 32 of Radical Personal Finance.

00:52:36.800 | It's titled, "In What Order Should I Pay Off My Debts?

00:52:39.400 | A Rational Guide to the Debt Snowball, Debt Avalanche, and Other Considerations."

00:52:43.800 | So I encourage listeners who are doing this step to go back through there.

00:52:48.400 | Step six and seven.

00:52:49.760 | Step six is set your new budget.

00:52:53.680 | And step seven, as I'm scrolling down through here, because I don't have my book in front

00:52:57.920 | of me.

00:52:58.920 | Create your boundaries.

00:52:59.920 | Create your boundaries.

00:53:00.920 | There you go.

00:53:01.920 | That's a good one.

00:53:02.920 | So explain the budgeting process and boundaries that you teach people in the beginning.

00:53:06.320 | Yeah.

00:53:07.320 | So the budgeting process is take that summary that you just did of the past three months

00:53:11.800 | of your spending and you're going to use those numbers to create a budget for the first time.

00:53:16.040 | You're going to figure out what you want, what your needs and your wants are.

00:53:19.480 | You start with your wants, putting them into the budget when you run out of money.

00:53:22.200 | Or I'm sorry.

00:53:23.200 | You start with your needs in the budget and as you're going through, once you start running

00:53:26.640 | out of money, those wants you have to get rid of.

00:53:28.960 | So if you have to get rid of DirecTV or because you just can't afford it, you have to learn

00:53:33.440 | how to do that.

00:53:35.080 | And then the goal is to stick to the budget for the first month.

00:53:37.960 | So the goal is not to dramatically reduce the money that you have been spending in that

00:53:41.520 | first month.

00:53:42.520 | The goal is to stick to the budget because as a spender, we need to be able to feel empowered.

00:53:46.960 | And so I always teach people to do that.

00:53:49.120 | Just use what you have been spending.

00:53:51.080 | You know, we have time to get out of debt.

00:53:53.440 | But for right now, you need to feel empowered to start moving forward.

00:53:56.860 | So do you prep people for, do you expect you will be good at budgeting in the beginning

00:54:01.880 | or do you prep people for failure?

00:54:03.400 | Oh, no.

00:54:04.400 | I expect that it's going to take about three to six months for us to get this figured out,

00:54:09.240 | to be able to stick to it, to get the numbers right, to give them a little wiggle room so

00:54:16.200 | that they have some sort of play money.

00:54:17.840 | Because I think that's really important.

00:54:19.160 | You know, whether it's $5 or $50 a month or whatever, you know, I think that that's really

00:54:25.400 | important.

00:54:26.400 | And so I think it takes, you know, a good three to six months for us spenders to really

00:54:31.160 | kind of get under control.

00:54:32.160 | I just want to emphasize that because budgeting is a skill.

00:54:36.400 | And if you do not have that skill, which you obviously don't because you're saying I'm

00:54:40.800 | a spender and I'm trying to change, then to expect to go from no skill to perfect skill

00:54:45.520 | is illogical.

00:54:46.520 | And there's going to be a process.

00:54:49.360 | And so I think it's much safer to view it and say, "Over the next six months, I'm going

00:54:53.320 | to learn to become skillful with budgeting."

00:54:55.240 | That's a doable thing.

00:54:57.960 | And you can build the skills to plan because budgets get messed up, budgets get thrown

00:55:03.240 | off and it takes time to build those skills.

00:55:06.920 | And I think it's really important too because most spenders have budgeted and failed and

00:55:11.000 | budgeted and failed and they just feel like they can never get it.

00:55:14.200 | And so by setting the precedent that, you know what, like we're going to do this, it's

00:55:18.240 | going to take us like probably three months to get these numbers right.

00:55:21.800 | So let's just expect that we're going to have some wiggle room.

00:55:24.760 | You're going to need to try your best.

00:55:26.280 | Like I'm expecting you to stick to this, but we're going to wiggle with these numbers a

00:55:31.000 | little bit.

00:55:32.000 | And you know, in three months, you're going to be doing great.

00:55:33.720 | But I think to encourage them because they're so used to failing at it, that to encourage

00:55:38.280 | them that like, "We can do this and this is what's going to happen."

00:55:41.160 | Next, declutter your life to regain your joy.

00:55:45.560 | Step eight.

00:55:46.560 | Yeah.

00:55:47.560 | So we talked about a little bit about that earlier, about decluttering your life, regaining

00:55:50.560 | your joy, going through your house, finding things to sell, using that money to pay down

00:55:55.720 | debt or put it aside in an emergency fund.

00:55:58.840 | And then, you know, learning how to just kind of declutter your house and declutter your

00:56:03.920 | brain so that you can move forward with joy again.

00:56:07.720 | What do you mean by step nine?

00:56:08.960 | Declutter your finances.

00:56:09.960 | Okay.

00:56:10.960 | So declutter your finances.

00:56:12.160 | Like this was really hard for me at first because I had things that were coming out

00:56:17.400 | of my bank account that I didn't realize it.

00:56:19.640 | Like you know, all of a sudden all these like iTunes things would pop up and you know, Netflix

00:56:25.360 | was coming out and I just didn't know what we were spending money on because I would

00:56:30.000 | sign up for a free trial and then all of a sudden, you know, what happens when you don't

00:56:33.720 | look at your checking account because I wasn't.

00:56:35.840 | I wasn't looking at my checking statement like ever back then is that I had cluttered

00:56:40.080 | finances.

00:56:41.080 | I had stuff going on that I didn't know and things would come out and checks would bounce.

00:56:44.800 | So I talk about decluttering your finances that you need to, you know, figure out all

00:56:50.200 | the details about your money.

00:56:51.440 | You need to write down your credit cards.

00:56:52.920 | What are the interest rates?

00:56:53.960 | When are the due dates?

00:56:54.960 | What are the minimum payments?

00:56:56.480 | I always tell people to set up what I call a money flow center so that everything has

00:57:00.040 | a place.

00:57:01.040 | So you know, I have a basket and in the basket is all of like our checks, stamps, pens, envelopes

00:57:10.080 | for all of our bills.

00:57:11.680 | So everything is in one place in our house and everybody knows that that's where all

00:57:15.600 | of the money stuff goes.

00:57:17.520 | And so, you know, just making sure that your finances are decluttered for everybody so

00:57:23.440 | that they know where everything is as well.

00:57:25.360 | Yeah.

00:57:26.360 | And also with regard to decluttering your finances, I encourage people minimize the

00:57:31.080 | number of accounts that you have.

00:57:32.640 | Minimize the number of things that you're tracking.

00:57:35.000 | Oftentimes people have very complicated financial lives.

00:57:37.800 | I got three credit cards that I'm using.

00:57:39.360 | I've got a couple of checking accounts.

00:57:40.840 | I got a savings account.

00:57:42.320 | And then they go from having no money management system to trying to have a money management

00:57:46.000 | system for five accounts.

00:57:47.800 | That's hard to do.

00:57:49.840 | Start simple.

00:57:50.840 | Just minimize, downsize down to one checking account and do everything out of one checking

00:57:56.040 | account.

00:57:57.040 | Try to keep things very, very simple.

00:57:58.880 | The simpler you have things, the better it will be.

00:58:02.960 | Right.

00:58:03.960 | Exactly.

00:58:04.960 | Exactly.

00:58:05.960 | So step 10 is do an expense audit.

00:58:10.360 | This is just a careful examination of your day to day, you know, day to day spending.

00:58:15.480 | Free up more money for your emergency fund and just really make sure, you know, this

00:58:20.880 | is when you take a look at like, do I really need to watch cable?

00:58:24.040 | You know, if I took that same money for cable and I put it aside, then I would have, you

00:58:28.880 | know, almost enough cable or enough money to pay for my son's college, you know, when

00:58:32.840 | he was born.

00:58:34.280 | And so, so those kind of things to kind of look at the big picture stuff and cancel things

00:58:40.200 | that you don't need.

00:58:41.200 | Yeah.

00:58:42.200 | Next 11, which is get out of debt now.

00:58:44.640 | I'm like, what is that now?

00:58:45.640 | I don't have my, I forgot my book at the office.

00:58:48.760 | I'm scrolling through the manuscript on my computer and I'm not going fast enough, Josh.

00:58:52.800 | Get out of debt now.

00:58:53.800 | Get out of debt now.

00:58:54.800 | So this is all about strategically paying down debt.

00:58:56.640 | And I know you have a podcast on it because I listen to it because I like, I love your

00:58:59.680 | podcast.

00:59:00.680 | So I listen to it almost in every flight I'm listening to, Josh.

00:59:02.880 | Just so you know.

00:59:04.760 | So, so I love, I love talking about this part and I actually in a book, I have a little

00:59:09.240 | chart that shows the difference between paying off the lowest, the lowest balance versus

00:59:14.880 | the highest interest rate first.

00:59:16.720 | And so, you know, a lot of people are, there's two different, I mean, you know, there's two

00:59:20.320 | different fields of thought on this that people think that paying down the highest interest

00:59:24.880 | rate is better.

00:59:27.760 | But I did a scenario where I took $1,200 in credit cards.

00:59:33.080 | And so if I paid off the highest interest rate first, it actually ended up getting paid

00:59:38.600 | off one month sooner, I believe.

00:59:41.840 | And we had one month sooner.

00:59:44.120 | But, but you didn't have those small wins along the way.

00:59:46.720 | So it just gives you some questions about, you know, how do you pay off your debt strategically?

00:59:52.040 | Which, which order do you want to do it?

00:59:54.400 | You know, personal loans, credit cards, car loans, friends.

00:59:58.440 | And so I break that down in that chapter as well.

01:00:02.000 | Yeah.

01:00:03.000 | The key, the key to this question, which has very simple answer, it's called looking at

01:00:07.240 | an actual individual situation and running the math.

01:00:09.680 | But the key is the makeup of the debt and how aggressive the payoff plan is.

01:00:14.960 | There's no question mathematically that if you're paying the same amount of money to

01:00:20.000 | a higher interest rate debt, that you won't have, that you'll have a better mathematical

01:00:25.280 | outcome.

01:00:26.280 | It's, it's very simple.

01:00:27.600 | The question is, are you actually going to be paying that amount of money?

01:00:31.480 | There's also, in my mind, no question that if you have somebody with a few small debts

01:00:35.840 | and a couple big ones, that you can get a big psychological win by getting rid of a

01:00:40.000 | few small ones and by having your mental energy focused.

01:00:43.920 | So, but in terms of applying it, you have, in order for there to be a significant, like

01:00:49.720 | in order for them to be comparable, you got to recognize that, that you're, you're going

01:00:53.680 | to be paying off the debt in a short period of time.

01:00:56.520 | That's the goal is paying off the debt in a short period of time.

01:00:58.480 | And if you're really hustling, you're paying off debt in a couple of years, then there's

01:01:01.760 | not going to be a huge impact of interest rates.

01:01:04.480 | And you have to look at the actual makeup of somebody's debt.

01:01:08.280 | I got an email a few days ago from a listener who said, "I got one debt, I think it was

01:01:12.360 | $15,000 at this higher interest rate, and I got another debt that's $17,000 of a lower

01:01:15.680 | interest rate," or, or vice versa, excuse me.

01:01:18.680 | And is there going to be a big psychological win for that person?

01:01:21.680 | I don't know, maybe not, not so much as there is if somebody has a Target card with $300

01:01:27.160 | on it, a Pet Boys card with $400 on it, you know, et cetera, and then a big debt over

01:01:32.240 | here of $12,000.

01:01:33.240 | Well, yes, there's going to be a big psychological win.

01:01:35.920 | So no problem with that.

01:01:37.960 | Details on that discussion in episode 32 of Radical Personal Finance.

01:01:41.400 | Finally, step 12, curb your spending and define your values.

01:01:44.920 | Yeah, so this goes back to what people value in life and what people are chasing.

01:01:49.800 | You know, are you chasing retirement?

01:01:51.960 | Are you chasing being able to travel when you're older?

01:01:54.960 | Are you chasing, you know, financial security right now?

01:01:58.120 | And we have to learn always how to make your spending a reflection of that value system.

01:02:02.400 | And so part of, of helping spenders, and I think anybody can, can really relate to this,

01:02:07.520 | is that you, we really have to be spending our money according to the values that we

01:02:11.440 | hold really dear in life.

01:02:12.800 | And you know, when I was spending, I wasn't doing that.

01:02:15.920 | I was, I was doing what I wanted then, but I wasn't doing, you know, what I wanted for

01:02:22.080 | the long run.

01:02:23.320 | And so I, that's why I put it as the last chapter is I feel like it's so important for

01:02:27.520 | us to really put our money where our values are.

01:02:32.080 | Yeah.

01:02:33.080 | And recognize that you, only you are going to know the place that you are in life.

01:02:38.400 | You might see somebody who's able to, to drive to the mall in a Mercedes and go around and

01:02:42.800 | do some impulse shopping and walk away with a few thousands of dollars worth of stuff

01:02:46.120 | in a bag.

01:02:47.400 | And for that person, it may make zero impact to their financial life because they have

01:02:52.880 | millions of dollars of income coming in from the dividends of their stocks and you don't

01:02:56.240 | know anything about their history.

01:02:58.280 | But if it's putting you in a place where you're stressed out and it's causing your relationships

01:03:02.160 | to suffer and you're suffering from depression and, and, and, and, and fear about the future,

01:03:09.400 | well you might want to face it and recognize that your values probably don't include depression

01:03:15.000 | and fear about the future and that a few simple decisions in, in your spending decisions can

01:03:20.880 | make a big difference.

01:03:21.880 | Yep.

01:03:22.880 | So true.

01:03:23.880 | So true.

01:03:24.880 | Well Lauren, I want to compliment you on writing the book.

01:03:25.880 | I've been impressed very much with all the progress that you've been making on the business.

01:03:29.080 | I Am That Lady and all of the associated, all the associated businesses.

01:03:34.280 | You're getting some tremendous press, tremendous.

01:03:36.920 | Thank you.

01:03:37.920 | Your public relations work is, is fantastic.

01:03:40.160 | And so I'm just thrilled to see all of the success that you and Mark are enjoying.

01:03:44.960 | And I recommend if anybody is, is suffering from spending, this book is very targeted

01:03:50.420 | towards people who are spending.

01:03:53.520 | And Lauren's, Lauren's experience is an experience that many, many people share of being high

01:04:00.840 | consumption and the stress that comes with it.

01:04:03.600 | It's not a book on investing.

01:04:04.680 | It's not a book on, on, on how to get rich.

01:04:06.560 | It's a book on how to adjust spending.

01:04:08.320 | The title is The Recovering Spender, How to Live a Happy, Fulfilled, Debt-Free Life.

01:04:13.320 | And so this would be a great book for you to pick up if that's you or if you've got,

01:04:16.600 | if you're looking for a present or a gift for somebody who's struggling with it and

01:04:19.880 | would like to hear it firsthand, this would be a great, a great book for somebody in that

01:04:24.760 | situation.

01:04:25.760 | Thank you.

01:04:26.760 | And when does the book launch?

01:04:27.760 | September 13th, but people can pre-order it now at therecoveringspender.com.

01:04:32.040 | Great.

01:04:33.040 | Thanks for coming on, Lauren.

01:04:34.040 | Thanks so much, Josh.

01:04:35.040 | Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance.

01:04:38.240 | If you're interested in building financial freedom for yourself and your family, please

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