Category: Episodes

Many people in the personal finance / FIRE community have a complicated relationship with the concept of consumer spending.

They may see family, friends and neighbors demonstrate one extreme — they’re profligate spenders who will buy anything — and, in an effort to be nothing like them, they may overcompensate by becoming extreme penny-pinchers. (I see this often at the start of a person’s FIRE journey, when the pendulum is swinging sharply in the other direction). 

The reality is that neither extreme is healthy.

There’s a middle ground between being so gullible that you’ll buy anything vs. being so cynical that you build a wall that shuts real value out of your life and hampers your growth.

In recognition of that balanced middle path, today’s PSA Thursday episode focuses on five questions that you should ask yourself before making a purchase.

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Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Today, we’re tackling one of the biggest line-items on your budget: food.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019, Americans spent just over $8,000 on food.

If you’re on a tight budget, slashing your grocery bill is one of the easiest ways to spend less. But what if you don’t want to compromise on healthy eating?

Today’s guest, Rosemary Fotheringham, is a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (FNTP) who’s also on the path to financial independence. She and her husband slashed their monthly grocery bill from $1,200 down to $300 – without eating pasta every night.

In this episode, Rosemary explains their framework for healthy eating and shares her best tips for eating well on a tight budget.

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Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Paula Pant and Andy Hill broadcast from Dallas, where they’re part of a bare-bones skeleton production crew that’s hosting the 10th annual FinCon, a conference for a community of personal finance podcasters, YouTubers and bloggers.

On the evening before the event, they reflect on the importance of community, especially when it comes to learning about money management. Enjoy this behind-the-scenes glimpse.

Paula and Andy discuss:

• Why FinCon is a great resource for discovering others in the personal finance space. For example, content creators who cover Canada, student loan debt, parenting, etc.
• Why you shouldn’t hand your critical thinking over to someone else
• The philosophy of Afford Anything, and why that and the community come first
• Paula’s worldview on being an “expert” or a “guru” and how you can present yourself differently
• Paula puts Andy in the hot seat: how does he see himself as a content creator?
• Leading from behind

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Welcome back to PSA Thursday, a weekly-ish segment in which we talk about how to handle money, work, and life in the year that is 2020.

Many of us have experienced disconnection from our loved ones this year, especially with older family members. It can be difficult to stay in touch when parents and grandparents aren’t technologically savvy. They might not know how to text, how to use their cell phone to place a call, or how to initiate a video call.

We hope that can change after you listen to this episode.

To help us learn how we can stay connected with the senior citizens in our lives, we brought on Bria Sullivan. She works for a company that owns more than 300 senior living care facilities, and her role is to provide materials to teach those seniors how to use technology — anything from making a Zoom call to setting up a Chromebook to sending a text message. For the past six years, Bria has also had a supplemental side hustle teaching seniors how to use technology.

Today, she shares her best tips on how we can do the same with the elders we love.

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