Building a Frugal Culture in Your Community

It’s important to have friends - especially when setting and reaching goals. Our friends can either support us or derail us, and while we would never advocate kicking anyone to the curb - we will give tips on how to surround yourself with a community that will assist you on this frugal journey!

Sponsors:

Master Your Money Super Bundle: This one’s not a sponsor but an amazing deal and every purchase supports the show. The Master Your Money Super Bundle is a collection of 45 courses, ebooks, printables and videos to help you do better in all areas of your money. Whether that’s budgeting, paying off debt, investing, making more money, whatever. The bundle has over $1200 worth of resources in it but you can get it for only $49.97 when you visit frugalfriendspodcast.com/masteryourmoney

Friendship: That’s right - it’s friendship that brings you this podcast today. Obviously. Because friends are the ones you can laugh with, get angry with (as in alongside :)), make bracelets with, start podcasts with, and so much more! Friendship leads to so many great things - try it today! Friendship; the best kind of ship.

Notable Notes:

What the Internet has to say:

• This article from Living Well Spending Less gives tips on how to maintain friendships while becoming debt free!

What Jen and Jill have to say:

• Refine how you spend time with others. Good rule of thumb:

“If a night out on the town for the two of you costs more than the GDP of a small country, it’s time to scale back your quality time.”

• Have a heart-to-heart - explain your goals to your friends and how this may impact relationship and make suggestions for how to spend quality time together going forward!

• Make hard decisions. We like this quote:

“You should never kick a friend to the curb over money. However, if you are tempted to overspend or go into debt merely by having a relationship with someone else, you may want to identify whether or not you’re allowing a friend to have too much power over your finances and life.”

More from the Internet:

This article from Our Next Life takes a different look on this topic and discusses how to build a frugal community, and make new friends based on the common ground of frugality!

More from Jen and Jill:

• We like the tip to look for thematically appropriate meet-ups
• Send signals through your actions - by living frugally you will most likely attract like-minded individuals

BILL OF THE WEEK - Thank you Amarylis for sharing your bill with us!

• If you want to submit your bill of the week visit frugalfriendspodcast.com/bill to leave us a bill

Lightning Round

We thought it was important to offer four ways to lose friends and make enemies!

1. Assume they don’t care about their finances - don’t ask them, just assume that because they spend money, it’s not because they feel overwhelmed by their finances, but rather they just don’t care

2. Shame them when they make a purchase you don’t approve of - don’t consider you probably would have made the same purchase several weeks ago, just let everyone know you wouldn’t do it now.

3. Talk only about Dave Ramsey - seriously, only topics from the latest radio show, book, Financial Peace University class, that’s it. Occasionally you can mention Rachel Cruz or Chris Hogan but don’t go crazy.

4. Only advertise your successes - Did you bust your budget? Did an unexpected expense cut your student loan payment? DON’T TELL ANYONE. Only post on social media about how well you’re doing and that God is obviously smiling on you because of your choice to become financially secure

Frugal Friends Book Club:

We’re finishing up The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist for book club!

If you want a free copy, leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, screenshot the review and send it to frugalfriendspodcast@gmail.com. We’ll select the winners at the end of the month.

See you next week!