We've been doing this podcast for a little over a year, and today Paula Christine puts Producer Jon in the hot seat. We've talked a lot about managing your money over our first 56 episodes. But what has Jon taken away? How has he saved money?
Jon talks about his top 5 takeaways, including:
But Jon's not going to let Paula off the hook. He asks her how SHE is saving. She mentions gym memberships and streaming services. Who knew we'd spend part of this episode talking about yoga and Ted Lasso?
Email Paula Christine at Paula@PaulaChristine.com. You can also learn more online at www.PaulaChristine.com.
Need help with your podcast? Reach out to Jon at jag@jagindetroit.com or through his website, https://jagindetroit.com/
Paula: Hi, and welcome to Beyond The Paycheck. I'm Paula Christine. We've been doing this a little over a year. I asked Jon, my producer, to tell me what he's learned, some of the saving tips, if he's taken advantage of them, and how he's implemented them into his life. I'm going to put you on the hot seat there, Jon.
Jon: [laughs] Yes, I feel like you do that to me about once a month or so, Paula.
Paula: I try to do it every time I talk to you, but--
Jon: That's fair.
Paula: You deserve it.
Jon: I've got a list of five things that I've saved money on since we started doing the podcast. First one, real simple, bottled water. I love me some bottled water. I won't say the brand names, but the ones that are made by the soft drink companies are typically the ones that I will buy the most.
Paula: Don't think anybody can't figure that out.
Jon: Yes, but I just didn't say it. Plausible deniability, Paula.
Paula: Oh, is that how it works?
Jon: Yes. Not buying bottles of water, using a filter at home, which if I could convince my parents to do one thing, it'd be that, because they still buy the bottles and have the plastic bottles delivered, and pretty sure they're killing the rainforest by themselves. Bottled water, just using the filtered one, and the pitcher in my fridge. A lot of savings there.
Paula: I did, as for Mother's Day, my kids asked me what I wanted, and I happened to be watching this morning show on TV. We won't say what morning show, I guess. You know how they'll rate different things. They were rating those. What are those things called? Do you know where you put your water in it, Thermos? Not Thermos.
Jon: Oh, yes, like the Yetis.
Paula: I was listening, they text me, "What do you want?" I texted them that I wanted this one, and I'm telling you, I love it. I don't buy bottled water anymore and I just use this thing.
Jon: On top of saving, I think it comes out to $360 a year, $1 bottle of water a day, or $1.50. It's way more than that now I think. The other thing too is, it's healthy. If you have this whole thing of water in front of you, you've got to force yourself to drink it. That reminds you to get your water in every day. Speaking of beverages, coffee. This has been a huge one for me. We've talked about this in the show before.
I love my coffee. I am a caffeine addict and if you go out to, whether it's a local coffee shop or one of the national brands, if you get a little something other than plain black coffee, you're talking $4, $5, $6 a shot, which is insane when you add that up, it comes out like $1,300 a year. I did the math on that. I buy the coffee at Costco, and I make it at home. I've got all the coffee accouterments at home.
My wife likes the coffee I make, and I can't tell you how much money that has saved, by making it at home. I can make just about anything at home, that you can buy in the fancy store.
Paula: You won't name the bottle of water, but you'll name Costco.
Jon: Yes, I'm not going to be consistent at all today.
Paula: Okay.
Jon: It's your show, so as long as you don't feel like we're getting sued, we'll just roll with it.
Paula: Oh, I think Costco's going to appreciate the fact that we mentioned Costco. I don't drink coffee, so I don't have that to relate to. That's not something I can cut back on. I've just never started drinking coffee, and I likely never will.
Jon: The moral of the story is you have saved way more money than I have on coffee.
Paula: I wouldn't say that I don't have other vices.
Jon: When it comes to just coffee, your spend is zero, so you win this round.
Paula: Yes. Even though I do have a Keurig. Oh, there we go again, with little pods for when guests come over.
Jon: Oh, well, see, that's because you're such a great host.
Paula: I know, I am. I'm actually a wonderful host. Okay. Enough about me. What's your next?
Jon: This one has been big in the last few months in my house, and that's eating out because of no dinner plans. I love my wife very much. We've been married for-- Coming up on six years next month.
Paula: She must be a saint.
Jon: It's so funny, my friends have nicknamed her Saint Ellen because she puts up with me.
Paula: I'm sure.
Jon: The number one thing we get into an argument about is the stupidest thing. It's-- What do you want for dinner tonight? I don't know. What do you want? I don't know. What do you want? You pick, okay, I picked this. No, I don't like that. It goes both ways, we go back and forth with it. We end up saying, "Okay, well you know what? We couldn't make a decision, we didn't take chicken out of the freezer, beef out of the freezer, or shrimp out of the freezer."
Guess we got to run out and pick something up and go to X, Y, Z fast food place, or whatever five or six restaurants we rotate through. Good lord. We've spent a lot of money on going out to eat. Planning our meals out, and on Sunday, saying, "Okay, let's pick four or five things for the week, and know what days we know we need to cook dinner, what days one of us is going to be out," that sort of stuff. I can't even quantify the amount of money we've saved by planning out our meals and eating at home.
Paula: Yes. I want to say that I'm getting better at it and I am, but it sucks being single and having to cook for yourself, and it's not so exciting. I tried the food delivery stuff and that was good for a while. Then I got bored of that.
Jon: Us too.
Paula: Now I'm just eating a lot of breakfast for dinner. I don't know, I'm trying not to eat out and I have cut it down to once a week, which really has saved me money.
Jon: Yes. That's what we do. For the social aspect of it, going out once a week, we keep it to once a week. It's either Friday night or Saturday night, and we eat at home the rest of the week. That has been a big money saver.
Paula: Yes, I know with my girlfriends, I texted them this week and I'm like, "Hey, doesn't this chicken thigh-- Well, it looks delicious. Chicken thigh dinner look good. Come on over next week, we'll have it." I'm still getting that social aspect, just not going out.
Jon: When you talk about it being hard to cook, for one, I was single for a long time. I know how that is. If you invite people over, you can kill two birds one stone that way.
Paula: Yes. It works out great. I get the social aspect, and lots of times, we'll just say, "Bring what's in your fridge, and we'll just potluck it together and see what we come up with."
Jon: Absolutely.
Paula: What number was that, four?
Jon: That was 3 or 5. I got two more for you.
Paula: I don't know how to count today.
Jon: That's all right. Expedited shipping. We live in an instant gratification society and we are so used to having things the second we want them. I have Amazon and most stuff comes within a day or two when I order. If I'm ordering something from a store or online, and it can't get it here within a day or two, I used to think, "No, no, no I want this in a day or two. I'm ordering this last minute, I need it now. I'll pay the extra $10, $20, whatever it is, for shipping."
When I stopped to think about it, wow, there's a lot of money that can be saved by not paying for expedited shipping, and very similarly to that, some of my clients in my podcasting business pay me by PayPal or Venmo. Whenever you get money, in your PayPal or your Venmo, you've probably seen this, and you go to transfer it to your bank, you can transfer it to your bank for free in three days, or instantly, for a fee of-- I don't know, 1%, 2%, 3%, whatever it is.
Paula: Oh, you can't wait three days.
Jon: I have started waiting three days, because when you start adding that up, times however many transactions--
Paula: I know, it's expensive.
Jon: That's probably how PayPal and Venmo make their money, is by people who don't want to wait and they get that little 1$, 2% every single time.
Paula: Yes. I don't do the expedited shipping. I wait.
Jon: Yes. Patience is a virtue and it will save you money.
Paula: I'm working on the patience. I was just laughing, me being patient, you know me well enough to know that-
Jon: After a year, that's fair.
Paula: -patience is not my virtue. Is that what it's supposed to be, or something like that?
Jon: We can work on being more virtuous in year two. How's that?
Paula: I don't think so, but I'll try.
Jon: The last one, and this is more of a longer term thing for me, I've mentioned this on the show before, when I was in my 20s and 30s and I was single, I spent a lot of money on credit cards. I was living on credit cards, cause I wasn't making a lot of money when I was younger, and I was traveling to visit friends and spending beyond my means. The idea that I now pay my credit card off every single month, in full, I don't get charged a diamond interest.
Yes, I get the airline miles and I get all the benefits, but having that bill paid off every single month in full, if you don't do that, the interest is going to negate any benefits you get in terms of miles, perks, percentage back, or any of that stuff. By paying it off in full, I can't tell you how much money I've saved. I couldn't even count that high.
Paula: Yes, I do that. If you have a $1000 balance on your credit card and just pay the monthly payments, you'll pay $200 a year for interest.
Jon: It's insane.
Paula: Yes. It's crazy. I get it. We all get in that situation where things happen and we have to use our credit card, and maybe can't pay it off that month, but you need to get it paid off as soon as possible.
Jon: That interest compounds, it's like a runaway freight train, if you're not careful about it. Paying it off every month and finding the right card to get the right benefits. We've got one card that gets me airline miles on one airline. I've got another card that offered me 6% back on groceries. With what we spend on groceries every week, we're doing that. There's a bunch of different ones that we use for different things, but we make sure that the balance is paid off every month, and each card, the perks are more than the annual fee, if there is one.
Paula: I was just checking on how many points to go to Portugal and Spain next year, for my business class ticket today. I got a little more ways to go, but I'm getting closer.
Jon: We are going to take my best friend, my goddaughter, and his wife to Disney World in February, and so we've been socking away the airline miles so we can take them as our treat. That's what we're saving up for.
Paula: Wow. Where are you going to take me?
Jon: I don't know. It depends how many podcasts we do. How do you feel about doing three a week?
Paula: Our friendship is based on the revenue you generate for me.
Jon: Yes.
Paula: Wow, that's really kind.
Jon: Let's change the subject. Let me flip the tables around on you, Paula. Let me put you back in the hot seat. Give me a couple of things, for as long as we've been doing the show now, over 12 months, that you have changed with your spending habits, that have made a difference for you.
Paula: I'm very careful about my gym memberships, because in the past, I would join something and not necessarily use it the way that I was intending. I think we all do that. We have the best intentions of going--
Jon: When you say use it not the way you're intending, you mean you go in January when you make the resolution, and by February, you're done.
Paula: Well, kind of. I'm a little bit better than that, but signing up with a trainer for 12 sessions and you don't show up, you still get charged for it, that kind of stuff. Now I'm very diligent about showing up and making sure that whatever I'm going to spend on my gym memberships, that I actually follow through, which is a huge health benefit for me. I'm stronger than I've ever been in my entire life.
Jon: I think that's really important too, because now you're getting two benefits. You're double motivated because you want to be healthy and you don't want to waste money. I think that can be really helpful, in terms of framing it that way.
Paula: I just signed up for yoga and I bought, I don't know, six weeks for $100, which is really cheap for yoga. I get unlimited for those six weeks. Now I'm trying to figure out, I can't go every day, but if I could, I would. Just trying to make sure I use that unlimited as much as I can.
Jon: My wife has gotten really into yoga, doing just on the app on her phone. Every day she does about a half hour of it, and it's mindset, it's flexibility, it's strength, it's all these things. It's one of the best things you can do for physical exercise.
Paula: I think my upper body strength has gotten-- Even though I was working out, weight training, which I am not, now I'm doing yoga and just regular gym on my own, but I feel my upper body strength, just in the month or so that I've been doing yoga, is so much stronger than it was when I was doing weight training.
Jon: It's funny, with that flexibility, you can do an exercise and say, "Oh, you know what? I really struggled with this a month ago, and now I have a much easier time with it." You actually see that progress.
Paula: I know. It's crazy. I'm glad I started it now. Likely, when my six weeks is over, I'll go to an app and do it from home. I just wanted to be able to learn how to do the yoga correctly, and then once I know it, I can do it myself.
Jon: Form is so important, and I get confused, because every pose is a different animal. There's cobra, there's dog, there's snake. I don't know. I'm trying to do what the instructor's doing
Paula: Then you end up all in a pretzel anyway.
Jon: Exactly.
Paula: One of the other things that I have-- I thought long and hard about this one, is streaming service. Well, first of all, I was at my daughter's Netflix. Of course, I got kicked off of that, but I wasn't the only one in the world doing it. When you think about it, you've got Netflix, Disney, Hulu, HBO, you just name a ton of them. Hulu, for me, right now, there's nothing on. Yet, I'm still paying for it.
I've decided in my head that if there's four different streaming services out there that I like, they may not like to hear this, I pay for one for three months, watch everything I need to watch or want to watch, cancel that, pay for the next one for three months, and then continue down the road. What do we mostly do when we're watching a series, anyway? We binge-watch it.
Jon: I can totally vouch for that, because my two favorite shows in the last probably year or two were Ted Lasso and Succession.
Paula: Oh, I love that.
Jon: Ted Lasso was on Apple Plus, I believe, and Succession was on HBO Max, or now just Max. When Succession ended, there goes HBO Max, when Ted Lasso ended, there goes Apple TV, and I think they rely on us to just forget about it. It's $5, $10 bucks a month.
Paula: You keep paying.
Jon: Doesn't sound like a month. It's a lot. You just keep paying it. Keep paying it. If you're not really watching right now, too bad, so sad. Cut that bill out of your monthly budget.
Paula: Did you cry at the end of Ted Lasso?
Jon: I didn't cry, but I was bummed and I was like-- Okay. It seemed like they left it open. They could have done another season, but it seemed like it ended just the way it was supposed to end, with no spoilers for our listeners.
Paula: I know. I cried. The whole emotion of it.
Jon: The best description I've ever heard of that show is relentless positivity. It's just a show that makes you feel good about yourself, unlike anything else on TV.
Paula: That's how I love my life. Drives people nuts. Seriously. They're like, "God, do you have to be always so positive?" I'm like, "Yes, I do."
Jon: #believe.
Paula: Yes. Correct. We were talking about eating out less. My girlfriend and I started doing this. You know how you get those huge amounts of food, unless you go to a really expensive restaurant and you only really get a taste.
Jon: Yes.
Paula: A huge amount of food. You can't eat that. What we're doing is ordering appetizers instead of ordering a meal, and then sharing the appetizers.
Jon: The appetizers as your main course.
Paula: Correct.
Jon: Do you get side-eyed from the server?
Paula: They don't care. As long as you tip them well, they don't care.
Jon: That's fair.
Paula: You think about it. If there's three of us, maybe we're ordering four or five different appetizers and we're still having cocktails. They're not upset. They're still earning money,
but we're not each ordering an entree, which we sometimes don't eat all of it.
Jon: The time you're done with the appetizer, the worst is-- I'm guilty of this, is going to a Mexican restaurant when they give the chips and salsa, and just housing the chips and salsa, and then my meal comes in, I'm like, "Oh, I just ate like eight pounds of chips. Don't think I'm going to finish this meal."
Paula: I know. I'm the same way when it comes to Mexican food. It's so delicious. I think it works, especially when you think about portion size, trying to limit the amount that you do eat, and then with ordering the different appetizers, you get a variety and you get to try something that you normally wouldn't maybe try. It works out quite well.
Jon: If there's a few of you and you're all ordering different appetizers, it's almost like you're eating family-style at that point.
Paula: It just works out really well. Then if you still want to order dinner after that, you can, and then either take it home or-- It works out well, but it's actually cut down a lot on food costs.
Jon: That's like I was saying about the gym. You've got two benefits in one because you've got the cost savings. Then it's also probably a little bit healthier when you think about all the junk that's in food when you get takeout, or when you order stuff. If you're eating, not that main course or less of that main course, it's probably a little healthier for you too.
Paula: Correct. The last thing I think that I did is alcohol. These craft cocktails, which are yummy, but they're $15 to $20 a cocktail. That's expensive. You add on if you had two plus your dinner, that's a ton of money.
Jon: When my wife and I were on a cruise a few months ago, for some reason, we both just kept ordering mojitos the whole cruise. Obviously, it's in the package or whatever. We got home and she bought a mint plant, we bought a bottle of rum in Puerto Rico, when we were on our cruise, and I've been making mojitos at home and it's been fantastic. I've got the recipe just about down.
Paula: Mojitos are yummy. What I do now is, when I go out, we try to go to places that have like happy hour specials. Then we do the happy hour and the appetizers, or some restaurants will have maybe half-off bottles of wine. Then share a bottle of wine. If I don't have that, the least expensive thing that I've found is, I'm going to say a brand name out here, but Tito's, and I drink Tito's because I'm gluten-free, but Tito's and water. One, I cut back on my calories, and two, I can drink two of those for the price of a glass of wine.
Jon: Wow. That is true. I'll just slide out and say it. I'm a fan of Tito's as well.
Paula: Tito's is good. Gluten-Free.
Jon: There you go. Now, I think it's really been great to think about all these different practical things in life that, maybe, some of our listeners can take a few notes from this as well, Paula, things that they can do to save money. Just little things, because boy, do they add up.
Paula: They do. You know what'd be fun, is to-- Maybe not fun, but don't change anything for 30 days, and carry around a notebook. In that notebook, write all that down. Every time you stopped at Starbucks, you write that down. Every time you bought a bottle of water, you write that down, and then, at the end of the month, total it all up and see how much you're spending on all the things that we just talked about.
Jon: An even easier way to do that, if you don't want to carry a notebook around, is put it all on the same card and then you can just look at it right on the screen in front of you at the end of the month. You can't fudge those numbers because they're black and white on the screen, right in front of you. Oh, that's a big number. That gives you the baseline, and then, from there, you start pairing back and you really can see how much it saves. It becomes addictive to start saving money. It adds up.
Paula: Take the money that you're saving to pay off any debt that you have, or better yet, save for retirement,-
Jon: Or both.
Paula: -or build your emergency account.
Jon: If our listeners have any questions about how to do any of those things, Paula, how do they find you?
Paula: They can check out my website, at paulachristine.com or they can email me at paula@paulachristine.com.
Jon: I'm so good at segues.
Paula: You are, but you know what? We should segue to you. If anybody wants an awesome producer for their podcast, how can they reach you?
Jon: I appreciate you asking. My website is JAG in Detroit, J-A-G-I-N detroit.com. I'm on all social media platforms, @JAGinDetroit. I can edit your podcast, I can record a podcast with you, like I do with Paula, or if you're just looking for some consulting or questions about podcasting, I'm your guy.
Paula: Thank you, my guy.
[00:18:52] [END OF AUDIO]