Budget Better Bonus Series | Step 3: Plan for the Future

Summary

Frugal Friends Podcast Episode Summary
Episode: Budget Better Bonus Series | Step 3: Plan for the Future
Release Date: December 30, 2024
Hosts: Jen Smith & Jill Sirianni
Produced by: Eric Sirianna

---

Introduction

In the third installment of the Budget Better Bonus Series, hosts Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni delve into Step 3: Plan for the Future. This episode focuses on creating a sustainable and flexible spending plan that aligns with personal values, ensuring financial stability and personal fulfillment.

---

Redefining the Budget

Jen and Jill begin by addressing the common negative perceptions surrounding budgets. Jen shares her personal struggles with traditional budgeting methods, highlighting the guilt and shame that often accompany rigid financial plans.

Jen (03:38): "I spent years making these perfect budgets and never being able to spend in the way that I budgeted. I knew what was coming in. I made the budget to dictate what was going out. And for some reason, I couldn't do the things I said I wanted to do."

Jill echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that budgeting shouldn't feel like deprivation but rather a strategic plan for allocating resources.

Jill (05:42): "It really can feel like deprivation sometimes. It can feel like the point of a budget is to get you to spend as little money as possible... We need to have the skill sets to implement that plan and know how we're spending the money."

---

Values-Based Spending Plan

The hosts introduce the concept of a spending plan as an alternative to traditional budgeting. This approach prioritizes personal values and ensures that spending aligns with what truly matters to individuals.

Core Values – The Four Fs:

1. Family
2. Faith
3. Friends
4. Fulfilling Work

Jill (06:24): "We really love to interchangeably call it a spending plan so that we can feel a little bit less shame and guilt about the fact that it will include spending money. That's the whole point of it."

By categorizing expenses under these core values, the spending plan becomes more flexible and meaningful. Jen explains how this method transforms budgeting by grouping expenses into broader categories, making it easier to manage and less restrictive.

Jen (08:48): "Instead of having categories like groceries, takeout, restaurants... we've got just big groups. Makes it much more flexible."

---

Integrating Time and Resources

A unique aspect of their spending plan is the inclusion of time budgeting alongside financial planning. Jen and Jill discuss how allocating time effectively can enhance both income generation and personal fulfillment.

Jen (19:13): "We're involving the budgeting of our time in this too. So we want to be budgeting some of our time to either be increasing our income or... creating a more balanced budget overall."

This holistic approach ensures that not only money but also time and other resources are optimally utilized to support one's values and goals.

---

Practical Implementation

The hosts offer actionable steps for listeners to create their own spending plans:

1. Identify Core Values: Determine what the four Fs mean personally.
2. Allocate Resources: Assign funds and time to each value-based category.
3. Flexible Planning: Allow room for spontaneity and unexpected expenses.
4. Regular Review: Continuously assess and adjust the plan to stay aligned with evolving goals.

Jill highlights the importance of incorporating tools like a 90-day transaction inventory or a 30-day no-spend challenge to better understand spending habits before crafting a spending plan.

Jill (08:48): "Where we begin is identifying how am I spending time in these four F categories, what is getting me more of that? Where can I see gaps?"

---

Adapting to Changes and Learning from Imperfections

Jen and Jill emphasize that financial planning is an evolving process. They encourage embracing imperfections and learning from financial setbacks to refine the spending plan over time.

Jill (20:27): "When we're planning for the future, I think we can expect as usual for it not to go perfectly. And that is okay."

This mindset fosters resilience and adaptability, allowing individuals to adjust their financial strategies as circumstances change.

---

Real-Life Examples

To illustrate their methods, Jen and Jill share personal anecdotes:

• Jill's Plan: Reducing the miscellaneous category to allocate more funds toward housing repairs post-hurricanes.
• Jen's Adjustment: Reallocating savings from a reduced childcare bill to bolster investing, leveraging automatic contributions to maintain financial growth.

Jen (27:12): "In March, our childcare bill will go down $50 a week and I will be changing up our budget to allocate that towards investing."

These examples demonstrate the practicality and effectiveness of a values-based spending plan in real-life scenarios.

---

Conclusion and Upcoming Resources

The episode wraps up with an invitation to listeners to pre-order their book, "Buy What You Love Without Going Broke," which delves deeper into the principles discussed. Additionally, a free class on creating a one-year spending plan is offered to those who pre-order by January 10.

Jen (23:12): "We're actually for everyone who pre-orders Buy What You Love Without Going Broke before January 10, we are doing a free class on how to make a one year long spending plan."

---

Notable Quotes

• Jen (03:38): "I spent years making these perfect budgets and never being able to spend in the way that I budgeted."
• Jill (05:42): "It really can feel like deprivation sometimes. It can feel like the point of a budget is to get you to spend as little money as possible."
• Jen (08:48): "Instead of having categories like groceries, takeout, restaurants... we've got just big groups. Makes it much more flexible."
• Jill (20:27): "When we're planning for the future, I think we can expect as usual for it not to go perfectly. And that is okay."

---

Takeaways

• Flexible Spending Plans: Transition from rigid budgets to flexible spending plans centered around core personal values.
• Holistic Approach: Incorporate time and other resources into financial planning to enhance overall life satisfaction.
• Embrace Imperfection: Accept that financial plans may not always go as expected and use setbacks as learning opportunities.
• Continuous Evaluation: Regularly review and adjust your spending plan to stay aligned with your evolving goals and circumstances.

This episode provides a comprehensive guide to planning for the future by aligning financial strategies with personal values, fostering both financial health and personal fulfillment.

Transcript

[Subaru Representative]

The holiday season is back, which means it's a time for giving. Subaru and its retailers believe in giving back to those who need it most. For the past 17 years, Subaru has made the act of buying a Subaru during the holiday season an act of love. When you purchase or lease a new Subaru during the Subaru Share the Love event, Subaru and its retailers donate a minimum of $300 to charity. By the end of this year's event, Subaru and its retailers will have donated nearly $320 million to national and hometown charities. To learn More, go to subaru.com/subaru More than a Car Company.

[State Farm Representative]

Sometimes life can seem hard and tough to navigate. But what may seem like the smallest task, such as getting out of bed or even brushing your teeth, should be celebrated as a win. And State Farm is here to help you celebrate all your wins. The State Farm Personal Price Plan helps you create an affordable price just for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the Personal price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

[T-Mobile Representative]

It's better over here at&T customers Switching to T Mobile has never been easier. We'll pay off your existing phone and give you a new one free all on America's largest 5G network. Visit t mobile.com carrierfreedom to switch today. Pay off up to $650 via virtual prepaid MasterCard in 15 days. Free phone up to $830 via 24 monthly bill credits plus tax qualifying port in trade and service on go 5G next and credit required. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance and required finance agreement is due.

[Subaru Representative]

This is Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab. Many people have questions about how to improve levels of happiness. Living a healthy lifestyle is one sure way of increasing happiness, and a good place to start is with your oral health. Just a few small changes to your oral care routine, such as changing your toothpaste to Colgate Total, can lead to beneficial changes in your oral health. Colgate Total helps stop oral health problems like gingivitis and cavities before they start, because preventing oral health problems is a lot easier than treating them. Be dentist ready and get colgate [e-mail].

[Disney Cruise Line Representative]

Total Sail to breathtaking destinations in Alaska or Europe with Disney Cruise Line. Discover where onboard magic meets onshore adventures where beloved characters Hiya pal. Meet alluring landscapes, where Broadway quality shows meet historic cities, where imaginative dining meets amazing wildlife and where exciting experiences await the whole family. Book an adventure filled summer Disney cruise to Alaska or Europe.

[Jen]

Budget Better bonus Series Step 3 Plan for the Future.

[State Farm Representative]

Welcome to the Frugal.

[Jill]

Friends Podcast where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity and live a richer life. Here are your hosts, Jen and Jill.

[Jen]

Welcome to the Frugal Friends Podcast. My name is Jen.

[Jill]

My name is Jill and this is.

[Jen]

Is our third installment of the Budget Better bonus series where we are finally actually diving in to budgeting in step three of the process. That's how you budget better. You just have a better, more solid foundation before you start.

[Jill]

You know, we don't love to start with the math. There's so much that needs to happen before that. And to catch you all up if you're just jumping in now, we've been giving some bonus short episodes just 20 minutes long, which is what you can expect from this one today, where in the past two we looked at the past, then the present, and today we're at the future. This is kind of our little Christmas Carol Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Just to be cute, this is the.

[Jen]

Most ominous one, I would say, in the Christmas Carol story, but it is not ominous here. We we do love a good budget and we think it can be customized for everyone. And the first way we customize it is that we don't typically refer to a budget as a budget. And the reason why is because that word has a lot of negative connotations for a lot of people. If you love the word budget, we encourage you to keep using it. But if you're like me who has been personally victimized by the word budget, I spent years making these perfect budgets and never being able to spend in the way that I budgeted. I knew what was coming in. I made the budget to dictate what was going out. And for some reason I couldn't do the things I said I wanted to do. And that cycle at month after month created a lot of guilt and shame around budgeting. So even that was before my husband and I paid off $78,000 of debt while we were on that debt payoff journey. We used a budget every month and stuck to it very strictly. And I came out of that having shame and guilt about spending money. Even when I budgeted money for something that I had, I felt guilty spending on it because it wasn't the most efficient or best way way to spend that Money, according to financial experts.

[Jill]

Yeah, it really can feel like deprivation sometimes. It can feel like the point of a budget is to get you to spend as little money as possible. And we really like to view it as, yes, we do need to have a plan, but we need to have the skill sets to implement that plan. And we need to know how we're spending the money. Really, that's what it is. It's a plan for where your money's going to go. And I think sometimes reshifting the language can help us to understand the purpose of it a little bit better. So you'll hear us still use the word budget, because everyone knows what that means.

[Jen]

Obviously, Budget Better Bonus Series is the name of the series, but we also.

[Jill]

Really love to interchangeably call it a spending plan so that we can feel a little bit less shame and guilt about the fact that it will include spending money. That's the whole point of it. And what we also want with this spending plan is for it to be values aligned. So we talk about values based spending a lot on this podcast. It's essentially what our entire book Buy what yout Love Without Going Broke is about and what we mean by our values and how we want to spend on that is recognizing the core values that exist for most of us while also knowing that many times we can get after these values without spending money. So we'll kind of connect all these dots here in this quick little episode, but for a refresher for all of us, we have found that for the majority of us, we share common core values. The things that are most important to us can be summarized in the four Fs so family, faith, friends and fulfilling work. We love alliteration. We love a good F word. And so what we find is that most of us, with all of our spending, our spending with our energy, our spending of our time, our spending of our emotional, mental, physical resources, spending of our money often goes towards these areas that usually what we most want more of is meaningful time with friends and family. We want to be able to engage in faith practices and spirituality that is life giving to us. We want to engage our hands and our minds in fulfilling work and being able to make a plan for our money and our time around these things can be a really helpful place to start and then fill in the gaps with all of the math. So we love to start here. And when it comes to a spending plan, of course, you know the 90 day transaction inventory and the 30 day no spend challenge is going to help you to identify how am I Spending time in these four F categories, what is getting me more of that? Where can I see gaps? Where could I get more fulfilling interactions with these four Fs will be where we begin. And then start identifying, okay, then with the money that I do have, how.

[Jen]

Can I allocate so tangibly? How this transforms how the budget looks is two ways. First, instead of having categories like groceries, takeout, restaurants, non gro, like non food, groceries, coffee, and all these very specific budget line items, we essentially have five budget line items and we start them with the values. So one budget line item is family, the next is friendships, relationships. The next is faith, spirituality, self care, that sort of thing. And then finally we have fulfilling work, so passion projects, continuing education, all of this stuff. And then we have like a miscellaneous, because 80% of our expenses are going to be able to fall under that, but there's going to be some that don't. So then we've got a miscellaneous. So instead of having just the small miscellaneous category and these, all these other big specific, like tiny specific categories, we've got just big groups. Makes it much more flexible. And so the second way it changes it is that we are not just budgeting money in this spending plan. We are budgeting how we spend all of our resources, mainly our money and our time. So we also want to put our time in there. Because there's a lot of ways when we are first pursuing our higher needs and we can do it with time, we can do it creatively without money, then we feel the need to impulse, spend or pursue these things with money less frequently. So we are creating a more flexible, open spending plan. And we are not just budgeting our money, we're also budgeting our time and sometimes other resources too. So like mental energy, physical space, getting creative with all of your resources and seeing how, like I want to budget, like part of my time and part, you know, my living room to have coffee with a friend at my house, that's just like a high level example. But you get creative in how you do this and it is going to feel much less restrictive than the old way of budgeting.

[Jill]

This doesn't necessarily mean that you need to have a super complicated spreadsheet. Like we're not saying come up with an entirely new way of allocating your money, but that when we look at allocating our money and spending it, that we are considering, considering all of these other ways that we're able to get after the things that we value. So it could even be a separate document. The things that we know we want to be doing with our family and friends and with our spiritual practices so that we can kind of know I'm going to get some fulfillment of my needs here so that here's where I can then put some of my money.

[T-Mobile Representative]

Into yeah, even if you think it's a bit overhyped. AI is suddenly everywhere from self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it is coming fast, but AI needs a lot of speed and computing power, so how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or oci OCI is a blazing, fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database and application development plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, including MGM Resorts, Specialized Bikes and Fireworks AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to oci for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends December 31, 2024. See if your company qualifies for this special [e-mail] strategic that's oracle.com strategic now. @t mobile get four 5G phones on us and four lines for 25 a line per month when you switch with eligible trade ins. All on America's largest 5G network. Minimum of 4 lines for 25 per line per month with auto pay discount using debit or bank account, $5 more per line without autopay plus taxes and fees and 10 device connection charge phones via 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers. Contact us before canceling entire account to continue bill credits or credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement due bill credits end if you pay off devices early.

[Disney Cruise Line Representative]

CT mobile.com sail to breathtaking destinations in Alaska or Europe with Disney Cruise Line. Discover where onboard magic meets onshore adventures, where beloved characters Hiya pal. Meet alluring landscapes, where Broadway quality shows meet historic cities, where in imaginative dining meets amazing wildlife and where exciting experiences await the whole family. Book an adventure filled summer Disney cruise to Alaska or Europe.

[Subaru Representative]

This is Dr. Laurie Santos from the Happiness Lab. Many people have questions about how to improve levels of happiness, and there are a lot of different ways. Happiness is unique to each individual, but living a healthy lifestyle is one sure way of increasing happiness. And a good place to start is with your oral health. Just a few small changes to your oral care routine, such as changing your toothpaste to Colgate Total can lead to beneficial changes in your oral health. Colgate Total helps stop oral health problems like gingivitis and cavities before they start. Before they start is an important part because preventing oral health problems is a lot easier than treating them. So for a happier, healthier, you use Colgate Total and actively help prevent oral health problems like gingivitis and cavities. You'll be happy you did. Be dentist ready and get colgate [e-mail].

[Disney Cruise Line Representative]

Total are your lingering depression symptoms getting in your way? If you're on an antidepressant for major depressive disorder and you've made some progress but your unresolved symptoms leave you feeling stuck, it may be time to ask your doctor about Vraylar Cariprazine Vralar is a prescription medicine approved for use with antidepressant medicines to treat MDD in adults. Adding Vralar to an antidepressant is clinically proven to help relieve overall depression symptoms better than an antidepressant alone. Results may vary. Build on the progress you've already made. Ask your doctor if adding on Vralar to your current antidepressant could help give you a lift in relief. Vralar is not approved in elderly patients with dementia related psychosis or for people under 18. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Report unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. Antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. Report fever, stiff muscles or confusion as these may be life threatening or uncontrolled muscle movements which may be permanent High blood sugar which can lead to coma or death Weight gain and high cholesterol may occur Difficulty moving, tremors, slow or uncontrolled body movements, restlessness, feeling like you need to move around, nausea, constipation, insomnia, dizziness, increased appetite and fatigue are common side effects. Side effects may not appear for several weeks. For a lift in relief, ask about adding Vralar V R A Y L A R. Visit vralar.com or call 1-877-6-vlar to learn more.

[Jen]

And if you're looking at your budget and you like having the different categories very specific, then by all means keep it and then just create notes to the side that tell you like which values you're meeting with each of these expenses. So it can be done either way depending on who you are. But again, like Jill said, you could also have a separate one because maybe you are married to a person or in a relationship with a person who is more flexible and you're more categorical and maybe you need the same budget presented two different ways to make it make sense. That is fantastic and great and can be done.

[Jill]

We still have these core tenants that need to be a part of a spending plan. We did do an episode on the holy trinity of money management and that includes the three things of income, spending and investing. So these are still going to be important components that you're considering when it comes to allocating where your money goes and knowing how much money you even have to allocate. So we've got to take into consideration the reality of our take home pay and that does fluctuate for many of us. What we bring home month to month can shift. So we are going to recommend creating a spending plan based off of your lowest months. The other months will just be bonus and you can allocate, you know, the extras and the ways that are going to be necessary for you. But take into consideration what am I bringing in, what am I earning each month and how do I then want to spend that? So some of that course is going to be on your basic necessities, your bills and your utilities and your housing. What is left over and how can I filter that into these higher values? In what ways can my discretionary spending align with the goals that I have to get at these four Fs in more fulfilling ways? And how am I also considering my investing and savings goals? So we're still considering having a fully funded emergency fund and other goals of paying down debt and investing. We love to encourage you to put investing on autopilot so that this is not something that needs to be taking up a ton of time and energy for you. Your mind doesn't need to be going to this constantly, but you've been contributing monthly automatically to a Roth ira. You're having contributions taken out of your paycheck for your 401. You're getting the match. So that's something that we definitely need to look at, but it doesn't need to be a part of our spending plan. That is taking a lot of our time and energy to think about.

[Jen]

Yeah, so time, again, we're involving the budgeting of our time in this too. So we want to be budgeting some of our time to either be increasing our income or we need to be looking at our spending and saying, do I need to budget less of my time to creating income to create a more balanced budget overall. So these are two sides of the coin that two different people may need to look at and it may just be seasonal Too it may I need to take time and make less income right now so that I can do some other experiential job or learning so that in two years I increase my capability of earning, but the debt I take on doesn't negate that increase. So again, it's looking at, at the math for spending, we already talked about that. And then also for investing or saving your emergency fund, whichever one you're on is when you put that on autopilot, you don't need to budget as much time. You really only need to budget time once a year to reallocate, to make sure you're in a good alignment with your risk tolerance.

[Jill]

And when we're doing this after a 90 day transaction, inventory, and maybe even in conjunction with a no spend challenge or after a no spend challenge, we have those tools, we have some of that understanding of ourselves and how we can make this plan that's going to work for us and a plan that incorporates this new skill of spending that we are continuing to refine and helps us to know. What goals should I even be setting here with my income and my earning and what goals should I be setting with my habit and impulse spending and just all of my different types of spending? What goals should I be having with some negotiation efforts on bills and where do I want to be seeking ways to lower some of my expenses and where are there categories where I see, oh, I'd love to increase this, what do I know is coming up for the future that can inform the ways in which I want to set money aside. What I set aside into different sinking funds year over year will change based on what's coming up that year, my goals for that year, who I plan to be seeing, how I plan to be meeting some of my family and friend core values. So that's the reason we talk about doing these things beforehand, because this is just going to be the implementation then for the skill set and what to expect with this part of our budget. Better bonus series. When we're planning for the future, I think we can expect as usual for it not to go perfect perfectly. And that is okay. In fact, it's great when we're not perfect because we can learn from those things and we can have grace and permission on ourselves and we can create maybe even more flexibility. Maybe we realize with the next month's spending plan, I am much more of a spontaneous person than I even realized. And how do I include that then in my budget? Where can I make shifts so that I can have more room for some of these last minute activities or invites that I love, love engaging in. But I think what we can also expect here is that it will go in tandem, that our plan will also help us to refine our skill set and our skill set of spending will help to inform the plan that we will get better at this over time, but expect to have to continue to keep a regular pulse on this, especially in the beginning, that we are checking this potentially with every pay period, definitely at least every month that we're looking at our transaction, we're looking at our plan, we're considering our four Fs and what needs to continue to be refined.

[Jen]

Yeah. And this is a plan. Just because it's flexible doesn't mean it's not intentional. And so we're actually for everyone who pre orders Buy what yout Love without going broke before January 10, we are doing a free class on how to make a one year long spending plan where we're going to use these principles of budgeting time. We're budgeting our money, we're being flexible so that you can make sure that you are getting everything you want in 2025 in a way that you can afford it and feel full. So that is happening January 29th. So head to buywhatyoulovebook.com to pre order that and submit your proof of purchase so that you can get in on that. Live with us.

[Jill]

Do you know what I love to get in on? Live with you?

[Jen]

Not the bill of the week.

[Jill]

Nope. The lightning round. Okay. We're keeping the vulnerability around for these bonus episodes. I got it. But we're not doing the bill of the week. So. So sorry, there's just not enough time.

[Jen]

Yeah. So are there any changes you're making to your spending plan next month or maybe in 2025?

[Jill]

So for me, I'll answer this for next month. So for January, I'm realizing that we can reduce our miscellaneous part of our budget. And I keep my spending plan really simple. It's mostly food related. I actually parse out two types of food. There's groceries and there's eating out like restaurants or takeout or any type of eating out food. Then I've got miscellaneous and gas and parking. So those are my categories for my discretionary spending. Of course I've got my bills and insurances and all of that. But as far as discretionary goes, that's what it looks like. So miscellaneous includes everything from paper products to clothing to just whatever I want to buy that month. That kind of hits that need of spontaneity and Being able to kind of be a little bit flexible with what those things look like and recognizing that I had a pretty high miscellaneous plan kind of month over month. Most of this is still carrying over, believe it or not, from when we were doing renovations. And we've done renovations for eight to nine months now. And I did use our miscellaneous or our renovations sinking fund for that, but I still kind of kept it a little bit higher so that we could kind of buy, you know, the extra handles or the caulk or, you know, kind of the smaller things that I wasn't going to be pulling out of our renovation sinking fund. But now we're just not buying a lot. I don't need the amount of money that I have allocated, but what I do need is to re our housing sinking fund. So we are still recovering from the hurricanes that hit us in October. And while we've gotten some of our projects done, we've got more projects coming up of needing to redo the roof on our garage. We'd like to add stucco to the exterior of the house, which would just help to make it more waterproof because this is where our minds are at now, is how to protect ourselves from, from future flooding. So needing to increase that sinking fund. So making this plan to reduce miscellaneous spending so that I can allocate more to this sinking fund and hopefully within the next few months be ready to start moving on the next projects for the house. What about you?

[Jen]

So in March, our childcare bill will go down $50 a week and I will be changing up our budget to allocate that towards investing. So we took a drastic drop in our investing in tandem. We had a second child and Travis took a lower paying job. So that meant we had to stop investing altogether for a time. And really the check in with our budget, our annual transaction inventory is what kind of tells us, okay, we've banked money, we can put this towards investments. And again, that's not the way people should start doing it. Investing should be on autopilot. We have a very good nest egg right now, so we can afford to like do it the other way around. But we were able to max out last year's 2023's IRA kind of like at the last minute where we had stopped, right? But then we were like, okay, we check in, we do have the money. Let's just, you know, finish it off and max it out. So we're going to do something again similarly to that. I don't think we will max it out this year, but we could I think possibly for the 2025 year.

[Jill]

Yeah. But that was the benefit of you in your earlier years being able to have this investing on autopilot so that now you can be more flexible now with that higher need of fulfilling work, being able to pursue that for both of you. So that's excellent. Thank you everybody for joining us for this little bonus series. We hope you liked it. Feel free to give us some feedback on it. If you want other little bonus extra series kind of short little snippets, feel free to let us know, leave reviews if you liked this that would be helpful for us as well. This rounds out this bonus series so there won't be more, but we will continue with our regularly scheduled full length episodes through the rest of the week. So enjoy that and we'll see you.

[Jen]

In the new year and head to buywhatyoulovebook.com to order buy what yout Love Without Going Broke. We talk about all these things more in depth and hopefully it will help you and inspire you to have a really fantastic 2025 financially and just in life in general.

[Jill]

See you next time.

[Jen]

Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianna.

[Subaru Representative]

The holiday season is back, which means it's a time for giving. Subaru and its retailers believe in giving back to those who need it most. For the past 17 years, Subaru has made the act of buying a Subaru during the holiday season an act of love. When you purchase or lease a new Subaru during the Subaru Share the Love event, Subaru and its retailers donate a minimum of $300 to charity. By the end of this year's event, Subaru and its retailers will have donated nearly $320 million to national and hometown charities. To learn More, go to subaru.com/subaru More.

[Disney Cruise Line Representative]

Than a Car company Are your lingering depression symptoms getting in your way? If you're on an antidepressant for major depressive disorder and you've made some progress but your unresolved symptoms leave you feeling stuck, it may be time to ask your doctor about cariprazine. Vralar is a prescription medicine approved for use with antidepressant medicines to treat MDD in adults. Adding Vralar to an antidepressant is clinically proven to help relieve overall depression symptoms better than an antidepressant alone. Results may vary. Build on the progress you've already made. Ask your doctor if adding on Vraylar to your current antidepressant could help give you a lift in relief. Vralar is not approved in elderly patients with dementia related psychosis or for people under 18. Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Report unusual changes in behavior or suicidal thoughts. Antidepressants can increase these in children and young adults. Report fever, stiff muscles or confusion, as these may be life threatening or uncontrolled muscle movements which may be permanent High blood sugar, which can lead to coma or death Weight gain and high cholesterol may occur. Difficulty moving tremors, slow or uncontrolled body movements, restlessness, feeling like you need to move around nausea, constipation, insomnia, dizziness, increased appetite and fatigue are common side effects. Side effects may not appear for several weeks. For a lift in relief, ask about adding Vralar V R A Y L A R. Visit vlar.com or call 1-877-6-vralar to learn more. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. We all know that old saying about teaching a man to fish. And as parents, we want our kids to learn the things that will set them up for success. So this holiday season, give kids money skills that will last well beyond 2024 with Greenlight. Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families where kids learn how to save, invest and spend wisely with parental controls built in. Sign up [e-mail] iheart greenlight.com iheart hey.

[T-Mobile Representative]

There, it's Scott Patterson from I Am All In Again Podcast Life Short Talk Fast Stream Gilmore Girls on Hulu that's right, grab your coffee and get cozy because all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls are now on Hulu. Stream all the witty, banner, heartwarming moments and awkward Friday night dinners with Lorelei, Rory and the eclectic mix of characters. Whether you're re watching or going Gilmore for the first time, Hulu has you covered. It's a show. It's a lifestyle. It's now streaming on Hulu. Right now get up to 25% off select online storage solutions put heavy duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid impact resistant design prevents cracking and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select online shelving and tote storage up to 25% off at the Home Depot. To organize every room in your home from your garage to your attic, visit homedepot.com how doers get more done.