9 ways I’m not “frugal”

okay so let's talk about a few areas that i actually like to splurge hey everyone i hope you're having a really good day so i often talk to you about places where i save money you know meal planning making sure you're saving money on things like your homeowner's insurance and that you're taking advantage of tax breaks and things that are going to save you big money as well as things that are going to save you little money like switching from k-cups to a reusable cup and just the little things that over time can add up and so i talk a lot about ways that i save money but i don't often talk about the places where i spend money and so today i wanted to break down a few of the places where i like to splurge and i would love to hear some of the places where you like to splurge leave me a comment below and tell me also if you're new around here hello my name is lydia sen and i make videos on frugal and simple living we're a debt-free family of six and i talk about how i manage my time as a work at home mom and how i balance our budget so if that is something that interests you join our community hit that like button and let's go to me the point of frugality is to save on things that you don't really care about so that you can spend money on the things that you do and however sometimes you do want to spend money on things and the money just isn't there which is why i practice daily frugality so that i can enjoy those things in my life that i want to and as our income has changed and our debts have gone down the the places where i spend my money have changed also if you are not in a position where you have a lot of extra spending money i know that feeling i have been there when my husband and i were getting out of debt we had a very small income and it was just hard so stay and stay with it stay with it it's going to get better number one is skin care now i don't go overboard with the skin care products i really just stick to products that i need and i don't try a lot of new things and i will ask for comparable items at a lower price so for example yesterday i went to ulta i had gotten a sample of a moisturizer that i instantly fell in love with when i went to ulta it was 65 for a one and a half ounce tube i'm sorry what i just doesn't i i really don't want to pay that price for an spf moisturizer can you please direct me to one that's just as good but less expensive and she did the girl totally understood she was super helpful and so i ended up walking out with a moisturizer that was far less expensive that will still do the job but i do the hyaluronic acid and the retinol and the different types of moisturizers and those things do add up but it's important to me to take care of my skin number two walking shoes so i used to dance and my feet are jacked they are jacked up and i just can't wear inexpensive shoes and i have tried to buy shoes there's i'm not knocking walmart walmart has some cute stuff they have stuff to their game i'm not knocking target my dress is from target but i cannot buy shoes from walmart or target i have to buy a brand that is supportive and so i buy sketchers they're a little bit pricier um but their walking shoes are very comfortable it's like walking on a cloud they have some cute little flats that you can wear also that you can wear what what else were you going to do with them lydia wave them around the car window they have some cute stylish ballet flats that come in lots of different patterns that i like my walking shoes i'll be honest with you i think they're ugly but when i tore up my foot in south dakota a few weeks ago i was glad that i had those shoes um when i got home those were the only shoes that i could wear and my foot has gotten a lot better i had a midfoot sprain so like i tore a ligament right here in my foot it was very painful i couldn't wear any of my cute shoes when i got home and i had to wear my ugly black walking sketchers but every time i put them on my feet they felt good so quick this is weird but now that i'm thinking about i want to say hi to wendy if you're watching i met wendy at mount rushmore in south dakota i had a little my little purple walking stick my my cane that i had to use um and she took a family photo for us so thank you wendy it was so nice to meet you there speaking of this brings me to trips so we went on a road trip this summer it was two weeks we went to 15 states eight national parks it was awesome i got to see parts of the country that i had never seen before and we went back to yellowstone which my kids had never been to i went five years ago you know there are disney adults and then there are yellowstone adults and i'm a yellowstone adult i love it so much so jason and i are training to hike in a couple years um and we're already planning the trip we're actually planning our next two two week trips so we're going to go on one it's our plan every summer we'll actually go after labor day moving forward we're not sure where we're gonna go next year we already have our trip in two years planned based on our kids age we do plan early [Music] there are some things that we do to make these trips a little bit less expensive we don't eat out very often we take a lot of our own food we stay in places where there are kitchens we grocery shop while we're there we don't do touristy things we got a national parks pass so that made a lot of our trip less expensive so next year we'll have the free every fourth grader in a park pass so anyway there are lots of things that we do and we also don't pay for it all at one time so we start planning months in advance and pay for it in phases so that's how we budget for it but it's still expensive it's several thousand dollars it's still expensive to go on these trips um but it's important to us it's good family bonding time we want to see this country that we live in we want to give experiences to our kids it's it's a great teaching opportunity and totally worth the money and in my opinion okay another thing that i splurge on is bras bras um i i want the support why am i suddenly nervous talking about this i want the support they're not cheap the cheap ones don't last spit spend your money on a bra so there are lots of good brands out there your your body is a unique wonderful butterfly pick braziers based on it one's going to be weird but patreon so i've got a few creators who i love they're podcasters and i want to support them and so i subscribe to their monthly patreon so the next one is going to be really weird but it is patreon so i love the popcast with knox and jamie it's one of my favorite podcasts i really look forward to it and i am a best friend of the show so they have a couple tears in there patreon and best friend is the higher one it's seven dollars a month and you get a bunch of extra shows every single week and i absolutely love it and i look forward to it and it's like the best seven dollars i spend every month i know the next one is coffee both take out coffee and coffee you know ground coffee at home i do not want first of all going to the coffee shop is my treat when i have to take my kids to an appointment all of them together this is how my friend um carly from the debt free mom talks about this you work from home you create your own break room so there's not a break room where i go to and i have a coffee machine there's not a break breaker that i go to where somebody brought in doughnuts or we're celebrating phyllis's birthday and there's a cake and as a work-at-home mom i create my own break room and that is a iced coffee from my local coffee shop which by the way the lady who owns our coffee shop i'm friends with her and i saw her today and they now sell a bottled version of one of my favorite drink at the local grocery store well she was getting in her car and she went here and she handed me a cold bottle of the coffee through the window she was like it's love in a bottle but i also splurge on the ground coffee that i buy from home for home so i don't really care for folgers and maxwell house i will buy name brand it's the only thing where i buy like a name brand coffee and i really enjoy dunkin donuts or chock full of nuts when we're traveling i hit up trainer joe's their camera what it's called it comes in the blue bag also their fair trade ones are really good and then seasonally they have i think it's maple it's really good too so there you go next thing that i and this isn't really a splurge but it is something that i am willing to spend money on and that is my kids extracurricular activities now they only do two activities right now piano and karate and piano we take from a dear friend of ours we adore her and both of my kids take for 100 a month which i think is perfectly reasonable and then karate my kids go twice a week two of them twice a week is 175 dollars a month and again i think that's really reasonable i break it down based on the price per lesson so that's eight lessons to be less than 11 a lesson because it's 16 total divided by 175 175 divided by 16. i can do math which comes out to be like 10 90 something so yeah in my opinion that's worth it so have child care one day a week now and that's a splurge for me and it's something that i budget for and i pay for out of my business account but um i started this last fall when i would take my one of my sons to his speech in occupational therapy i didn't want to bring all my other kids everything was closed so there was nowhere for me to take them and so the baby was sitting in the car [Music] 30 minutes in one direction so an hour of just driving and then an hour of just sitting in the parking lot and i felt like that's not fair to her to have to spend two hours strapped in her car seat and so i hire i called her sitter to see if she could come in so that's been a huge blessing but it is a splurge um i know a lot of families child care is a huge issue and a huge portion of their monthly budget and so i feel very blessed to be able to just have that hour a week where i don't have to worry about all my other kids while my son is getting the therapy that he needs and then finally this is a new one and i almost didn't talk about it but i'm going to cbd gummies they're expensive at the house of smell oh my gosh they smell so bad um but i've started taking cbd to help with anxiety i am a big believer in therapy so yeah let's add therapy to the list of um splurges so i was in therapy last year to help me through some grief that i was dealing with um i'm not something that i've talked about a whole lot but my daughter was a twin and i lost her twin sister and so it it was a lot to process and i really never did and so last year i was ready to talk about it and my therapist helped me so much and she also was like by the way don't know if you know you have anxiety um yeah that yeah i do know thank you though for like actually giving me a diagnosis and so i do believe that if you need medication you need to take medication but i'm not there however i have been looking at other ways to help with my anxiety through diet cutting out sugar um i've been going on a lot of walks a lot of like just being out in the world in the sunshine and recently i have incorporated cbd gummies into that routine they are expensive though i found a place in town i joked with my husband that the eastern shore in where we live there's an area called the eastern shore that show about the girl it was the actress from the oc and she was a doctor and she moves to the small town in alabama heart of dixie not my vibe but it's about the eastern shore i live like right there like very close to the eastern shore and i joked to my husband that like all of the eastern shore is either a cbd store or a um herbalife pretending to be a smoothie shop that's all that's down there now but i went to one of the cbd stores the lady was very helpful and walked me through what i needed i had research before i went anyway it was 42 though for one bottle of gummies but i think it's helping that remains to be seen i've rambled enough anyway so that's it that's what i splurge on i would love for you to leave me a comment below and tell me what are some things that you splurge on where do you where where is your money providing you value i feel like that's a good way to look at it because what's a splurge to some person because what's a splurge to one person is not a splurge to another and things that i may view as a waste of money are things that you may absolutely feel are vital to you and that's okay we don't money shame around here we don't look at other people how they're spending money and think well that's like a total waste here's the thing you earned that money and you get to spend it however the heck you want and you shouldn't feel ashamed of it okay but leave me a comment below and tell me how is your money adding value to an area of your life i would love to know thank you for being here and i'll see you soon

Channel: Lydia Senn

Views: 8,503

Rating: 4.970552 out of 5

Keywords: Lydia Senn, five4fivemeals, Frugal debt free life, frugal, save money, debt free, dave ramsey, frugal living, how to be frugal, how to save money, spend less money, how to spend less money

Id: 5x4FRn82IRc

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021