Outsourcing. Ep 8

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of two and soon to be three and a practicing physician. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. Today, Sarah and I are going to be talking about outsourcing, a perennially popular topic among our readers and listeners. We're going to talk about how to outsource like a pro fring out time without creating more headaches, because that could happen too. But before we get into that, speaking of outsourcing, we were talking earlier about the things that people outsource, and one thing that it doesn't occur to most people that they are outsourcing is food, and not just restaurant meals, which is a form of outsourcing. Pueing your food at the grocery store is in fact outsourcing tool. To say unless you are grinding your own wheat or churning your own butter, you are outsourcing something. We are not churning our own butter here. But we were talking earlier about what our kids are willing to eat, butter being a cute component overheer of things my kids are willing to eat, Sarah, what have your kids been happy about eating lately? My kids seem to change depending on the direction of the wind. There is not a lot of consistency. I had really, really non picky toddlers who would basically eat anything in sight, and they have morphed into much more choosy preschoolers. And I'm not gonna take any fault on that. I think that's just sort of natural evolution of palate. But yeah, it really tends to vary, and what they might choose one night won't go over well another night. There are some perennial favorites. The burrito bowl always a hit for some reason. Rice and beans, like they think that's the best thing ever. And anything customizable, you know, so if there's rice and beans and then they can decide how they'd like to add their cheese or avocado or salsa or other vegetables. They're much more likely to do it versus being given something all mixed together, which is usually a fail. How about you guys, just looking on your list, you gave me of things your kids eating salmon burgers, like seriously, well that was like a new one this week. So after the hurricane, we often have fish on Monday. It's like part of our routine and we may do a more in depth meal planning discussion in the future, because there were some listeners that asked for it. But we almost always eat fish on Monday. But after the hurricane, there was like very little choices. So our nanny who does the shopping for us, picked up salmon burgers and it turned out to be like a sleeper hit, like they devoured them. They wanted more. Josh got home and was eating dinner, they were trying to eat his like who knews. So it's very unpredictable because if you put like one green pepper on a pizza, it'll be like completely rejected, and yet they're eating salmon burger. So I don't know, there's just like not a lot of rhyme or reasons. I would say that it is my experience with small children as well as that is totally and completely random. I mean, the thing about having four kids is that I also can see that children are incredibly different. Some of my kids are far more willing to try new foods than others. Some are more anxious about their food. Some really love to eat food, some don't. There is absolutely nothing I did differently with any of them, and so it's not that I was a good mother for some and a bad mother for others. It's just that they are different. And you know, we see this with adults too. I mean, there's some people who really love their food. Some people are really into their comfort food, but then other people love to try all sorts of new food. And I'm one of those people who loves to try new food. And oddly enough, my little brother is now too, which is hilarious to everyone who knew him, because he was a definite pizza only kind of kid growing up. And in fact, I have this memory of going to a restaurant once with him and they had pizza on the kid's menu and he refused to eat it because it didn't come in a box, and bless the kitchen staff, they went and found a box and put his pizza in it, and then I guess I assumed the story was he was willing to eat it, then, I hope. So it's not a good story if he didn't. But of course, like now, like my parents were joking on you know, a couple of years ago whatever, they turned on FaceTime to talk with him, and he was making kale chips like what on earth? But of course there was like a young lady involved, right like, And that was what it came too, is that as he became an adult and you know, wished to make friends and sometimes friends of the opposite gender, it turned out that not all women like to be taken out for pizza and beer constantly. So next thing, you know, there's kill chips, there's sushi, there's Ethiopian food. So I think that's a heartwarming story in the sense of whatever your kids don't eat now, like they may totally eat different foods as adults. I mean, we do a lot of the kid friendly food around here, but they like the customizable stuff too. They like make your own pizza night. For whatever reason, my daughter likes to put strawberries on her pizza, and so why not, Like if she wants strawberry pizza, go for it. And that sounds kind of edgy. It's a little edgy. Even if it'd be like I would say, what if it be like goat cheese and strawberry and bisamac, that would actually be it would work. She not, you know whatever one kid does bisomac kind of salads but not the others. And then you know, make your own tacos. So you know, one kid loads them up with tomatoes and the other kids would prefer the tomatoes never appear on the table. So you know, it's just all all like that. But I mean one thing we do. We offer a lot of fruits and veggies at our meals. We ask them to try five bites. They don't have to be huge bites, but have five bites of everything. And that you know, I actually have my older boys buy lunch at school. You know, it's it's not necessarily a time savy thing for me. And that my my nanny makes lunch for my daughter who doesn't have a cafeteria. So it's not even about like I'm trying to save myself time right here. I kind of like the idea of a them having hot lunch and be making their own choices and learning how to do that. I give them guidelines. I'm like, I can tell I can see what you have bought, like there is a digital record of what you have bought. I don't know what you ate, obviously, but the next wave of test, the next wave of my children will be chipped and I can see what they ate. But in fact they you know, I can tell if they're not you know, if they're eating too much junk, if they're buying too much junk, or they're not taking fruits and vegetables from y all the cart stuff. So then we have a discussion about it, and I say, well, if you're not taking fruits and vegetables, I will not let you buy lunch. And so I you know, I have something I want them to learn. That's I mean, you professionally are opinions about this. I mean, I am right though, that you got to teach children to make healthy choices. Yes, you do. And of course that degree of independence is going to increase as they get older. We're not quite there yet. My daughter just started kindergarten. We do pack her lunch still. That's partly because I think, honestly, she's picking up that she may not eat anything on the line, but it's also because I like to kind of control the content to some extent. I also outsource this, so I don't make the lunch, but I like kind of knowing what the ingredients are and what the contents are, and knowing that there's not like fifty additives and all that kind of stuff, and I will say sorry just if I can jump in. The school lunch has gotten a lot better. Yes, that is true. That is true, but it does vary from school to school, and ours certainly is not perfect yet from what I've heard from some of the older kids. Plus at five, I don't know that she'd have this sense to pay like. I think she might end up just sort of picking, like, you know, a pile of cheese and like that's it, which I guess is fine, but in fat right, I just don't know. Yeah, we try to keep it pretty healthy. We're certainly not like no cake, no candy ever, But we do find that if we just don't keep certain temptations in the house, then you don't have to have the battles about them. And then when it is a special occasion, you know, we really do let them kind of do what they want. And it seems to have worked out thus far. I love if anybody's struggled with kind of getting your kids to make healthier choices or trying to figure out where to set boundaries and where not to ellen sadder. E. L. L y N. S att Er is a dietician with a great series of books on this, and her philosophy is you can decide what and when the kids eat, and they decide if they want to eat and how much. So we actually don't even have like a specific bite policy. It's like, Okay, this is dinner, and we do try to make sure that there's something there that they will eat. And again, remember I'm not always there for dinner, but when we are, and they can eat of it what they would like or not. Yeah, and so far, so good. I mean, yeah, I think I think so. I mean they're they they're reasonable with their choices. Hey they eat salmon burgers, but no, they certainly don't eat everything. Both of them have I think, you know, very normal They were really big as toddlers, but then both of them have kind of grown into very normal sized children. So you know, the growth is really important. What I do all days look at growth charts, so I can't help but be somewhat cognizant of what's going on there, but no, they I think I think it's worked pretty well. Yeah, the growth thing is is interesting because I'm now seeing that from the preteen boy side of it, and you know, it's like the hollow leg the food just disappear. And that's that's harder because you want to talk about like filling our bellies with healthy things. Yeah, like if you're gonna be eating five, let's hope it's something decent. But it's hard, I mean because obviously they like snack stuff too, and you know, he's hungry like you. I mean, absolutely, we have a big energy requirement at that age. But yeah, we're definitely in a society where this is not easy. And we're not going to answer this on our podcast, but I would I would say, I mean, Sarah obviously has you know, sees professionally when things go wrong on the eating front with with her work with some children who have some serious issues with that. But I mean, I think you know a lot of families, you're probably within the normal range. Like if you're not you know, feeding your kid's cake at every meal, like you know, you're not putting coke in their baby bottles. You're I'm sure you've seen that too, but it's uh, you know, I think there could be a lot of stress and anxiety for a lot of moms about their kids and food if you understand that some kids are just pickier than others, and you probably don't want people to have such negative feelings about food. From arguments that agree, I think the intensity needs to be kept at a moderate level with this concern because I've actually sort of seen it backfire too. Yeah, it's it's it's hard. It's interesting too, because things have definitely changed in the last ten twenty years with the availability of all kinds of food. But I agree keeping things low key, keeping things accepting, you know, generally having healthy stuff in the house. I think I see the more casual families are the ones that kind of do the best. Maybe we should do a whole segment on that episode, but because we're already like a third of the way through our episode just on that. But here, let's go to the mag segment. Sorry I got to introduced this. Yeah, well, they're definitely related because we're going to talk about how a lot of our outsourcing, well some of it definitely relates to that. But yeah, we got a lot of listener questions about outsourcing and a lot of people want it specifics. You know, what do you do yourself, what does your nanny do? How have you arranged that with her? And so we're going to read one of our questions and then kind of talk through how we decided what to outsource. So here we go. I have so many questions as a full time working mom of two, but my number one is exactly what do you outsource? And how we are constantly feeling bogged down and behind on life slash chores, slash household things, and never seem to have enough time to work out my husband and I didn't write this, by the way, my husband in particular struggles with this because his job is very full time and no nonsense surgeon, and he is dedicated to being a present parent and helpful at home when he's not working. That's why I had to say I didn't write it because it could be confusing. And then there's another one from another listener who said, I love the references from your books, Laura's books regarding smart outsourcing, and I'm wondering if you could walk through some of the possibilities particularly any that we might not think of beyond childcare, and any insights and advice into where to find good help and the practicalities of employing others. Yeah, I mean it's a great question because obviously, the more you can get off your plate that is not what might be a core confidency, something that you do best and others can't do nearly as well. There how efficient your life can be, and the more effective your life can be, And many of us know to do this at work. Sarah and I are not the ones producing this podcast, for instance, We've got somebody who does that for us. And because we didn't know that it would work for us to figure out how to load on iTunes and all that good stuff, do professional audio things, it's not in our skill set and it wasn't really worth it to spend the time learning. And you know the same thing. If you've got an assistant at work, she deals with lots of stuff for you on the administrative front. You know, I outsourced a lot of publicity and marketing help. So it's the exact same thing at home. You need help to do the things that maybe aren't the best use of your time if you have limited times that then you can do other things with your time. One thing, you know, and as I'm explaining my philosophy or just say, hey, that everybody outsources. So sometimes we've gotten emails from people being like, why don't outsource anything because I want to what ever, do it all myself? Or I pride myself on doing it all myself, or I am you know, I've judged people who don't do it all those because whatever the form of the email tape, and the truth is that you don't like again, unless you are sowing all your own clothes, you have chosen to outsource that to factories that make clothes. Unless you are growing all your food from scratch, like on a farm, you are outsourcing to farmers. You are probably outsourcing your package delivery, like you are not taking your letter yourself and driving it to Wisconsin. Like everybody outsources stuff. It's just that we have more issues around outsourcing stuff within the house. And I think that's often because that is perceived as women's work. If you look at the things the household tasks that are most commonly outsourced, it is lawn care. And again I think that's the reason is that's traditionally men's work. Right, and so men are more allowed to do that, whereas women are told that if you are not doing it, you are somehow failing. So you know, that's my philosophy is that it's all just a matter of degree, and so you have to figure out what works with your family. What I would always say is look at how you're spending your time. To keep track of your time for a week or two weeks and see where the major time sucks are and then figure out what you could do. So for me, if I look at what would take the most time, a couple of things. You know, laundry obviously takes a lot of time for the kids, the cooking on weeknights, the grocery shopping, running errands for like one off items, and so almost all of those where you have outsourced. I do my own laundry, and you know, my husband and I trade off we doing each other's laundry. But our nanny does the kids. We put that as part of the job. She what also negotiated her doing a lot of the cooking on weeknights. And we order pretty much everything online. Clothes, birthday gifts, I mean, God blessed Amazon Prime right, Yes, definitely a very popular service for everyone, And so how about you, like, what did you decide what to? Yeah, well is that your whole list? Come on? No, I mean I agree. I think I think there's like a shame factor here and no one wants to kind of admit it. But I think if if everybody is a little bit more honest, then maybe that would take that away for something, you know, and I'm I'm I'm pretty upfront about it. You are, I can tell you comments I have got that. I must be one thing we don't out we get our lawn mode. But I have tried, unsuccessfully, and my husband has tried unsuccessfully to get like a lot a yard guy, like a gardener type person to come and do a lot of our planting and weeding and you know, the landscaping stuff. You know, it's it's it's not a small yard. It's about three quarters of an acre, and so there's kind of a lot of stuff, and my husband does I would say, you know, ninety five percent of it. And I've really been trying to get that to not be the case because I feel like it takes a big chunk of his weekend. And then he there's a funny interplay with that because I think, you know, it takes a lot of his weekend, which he may not always want to do, but sometimes he does because it's an excuse to like get out of the house with all the shrieking children. And then I'm like, well, wait a minute, I don't want to be in the house with the shrieking children either, but somebody has to be. So is that I read a post recently it's sort of like fake martyrdom, like, oh, I've got to do this task, and like, admit it, you want to build that Ikeia shelf in silence or with you like your music going by yourself? Yeah, I know. At one point I was like, I swear you're going to the hardware store and returning with one bag of mulch at a time because it was like a way to get away on the weekend, which you know, then he started to like often now he will take the two year old with him, and if he wants to take the two year old with him on any year end, he can do whatever he wants, Like I don't care. He could go all day if he wants to take the a two year old with him. But yeah, there's that which we have not really outsourced. We have a cleaning service. Othough, let's let's talk about that. So how does your cleaning happen? By the way, because there's some efficiencies here involved in this question we used to have. Okay, so let me actually take a step back and talk about what our amazing nanny does for us and how we you know, discuss that and kind of work that out because that will answer a lot of these questions. So we you know, we employ her full time. She works from seven thirty am to six pm, so it's pretty long hours. There are definitely days that are earlier and days that are off, and we know we'll make trades, but that's her general hours. But our kids are in school for like six hours of that a lot of the time, so she she has a lot of time. And basically, you know, we talked about it and I'm sort of like I would love it, and actually she took a lot of the initiative. And again this is you know, pure luck in that we we have a really, really wonderful person working with us. You know, she's basically being me what I would be doing if I were home having dropped off my children all day. So she does the everyday straightening up. She currently does like a once a week deep clean now once we have the baby, and when our kids were not in school, we actually had a separate cleaning service come once a week to do that. But right now she feels like she has plenty of time to do it, so she does. She does the grocery shopping. She does all of our laundry, which is actually I didn't initially kind of ask for that, but it's just sort of evolved that way because she kind of hangs out and she watches shows and like folds a laundry and it sounds great, and if I were home, I'd be happy to do that too, but I'm not so exactly. She does do the laundry when I come home, She preps the kids lunches. She cooks usually three times a week, so I do all the meal planning. I read a grocery list. She'll go on Monday. She'll cook a very simple dinner on Monday. Often it's fish because just because the fish is fresh, and then usually something on Tuesday and something on Thursday, and we're thrilled and happy to eat leftovers on Wednesday and Friday. So really a lot of that sort of stay at home mom type, stay at home parent. Sorry, type of things that people need to do for household management are done for me during those hours when the kids are in school. Once the baby comes, you know, we may have to kind of rework things. But you know, what we have learned is that period really is quite temporary. By the age of two, I'm going to be sending our third to at least some degree of preschool, just like I did with the other two. So even if we have a slightly different situation for a little while, I don't think things are going to change that much in long term. Oh and by the way, the reason her hours like kind of need to be that long partly just have to do with my work commute, because I have to begin seeing patients at eight thirty in the morning and I have to leave it about seven forty five for that to happen. So that means that she really does need to be there for school drop off. There's not really an easy, workable way around that. And then Josh is a little bit more unpredictable. He actually does take the kids to school sometimes on his days when he can, but his hours vary a lot more so we can't necessarily rely on on that I'm consistent and so the way you're doing it, then it really does take work off your plate. And this is one thing I want to caution people when a lot of the time, when people are thinking about outsourcing, you know, beyond childcare, the first thing they think about is, oh, I should hire a cleaning service, and that can work. But the thing is, what I've found happens for a lot of people at the cleaning service is that they have a cleaner house, but it doesn't actually save them time because what you know, the cleaning service will do if they're there, you know, once a week or once every two weeks will do a deep clean of the house. And that's great. But if you weren't vacuuming every room all that often anyway, or dusting all the base boards that often like, then you're not saving time. Again, it's just a cleaner house, which could be great, but it's not what took your time. A lot of the stuff that takes the time is gonna have to be outsourced to a person, and so the things like laundry, cooking or shopping, watch day, the daily pick up, the cleaning the kitchen, you know, things like that if that is what is taking most of your time, and I'm guessing if you are a normal person running a normal household, that is what is taking your time. That has to be sort of outsourced individually to a person. Now, there are ways you could do that. Obviously, if you have a full time caregiver looking after your kids, that maybe something that you could negotiate as part of their work, especially if your kids are in school as in Sarah's case, or if they are napping for considerable periods of time. It could be that, for instance, if you have an after school sitter. If your kids are in school and you have an after school sitter, maybe you could find somebody who's willing to come an hour to ninety minutes before your kids get home from school, and then they could do that stuff during that time, right, and then you'd again have somebody there frequently in the house doing it. When we had not had that as part of our nanny's job descriptions, I mean, when we had more like little kids at home, we had hired a separate housekeeper who had come twice week for four hours and do all that stuff. Now that got you know, the house clean and the laundry done and the kitchen sparkling twice a week. It did not obviously get the kitchen cleaned up then the other days of the week, and so that was, you know, still something that was taking some time. So the situation we have now is our Nanni does a lot of that and then we have a cleaning service come every two weeks to do the deep clean and that's wound up mostly taking that off our plates having to do the cleaning. And if you like doing some of these things, and I'm not joking, because you know sometimes I actually do kind of like doing laundry. If I actually have the time for it, and there are definitely men and women who like cleaning, then that's fine. It's just that if you don't, or you feel like there's a better use of your time and it's feasible for you because likely you're doing other work elsewhere, then I just I think we have to give ourselves the permission, and even if it's not necessarily in the cultural I don't know zeitgeist, and I may get a lot of kind of hate comments for this list, but but I really think it's improved the quality of our lives drastically and I am willing to sacrifice in other areas, particularly in the areas of stuff and tangible items to make my lifestyle workable. I was gonna say, I want to complete the list because there's like we also out because I'm just gonna be real here. We also outsourced the yard work pretty much all outdoor work. As I said, grocery shopping or nanny does that so you can get groceries delivered. If people are listening to this, that can be groceries delivered. And with the meals, a lot of people are doing those really cool meal kits, which I would be all over if we didn't have our current situation because I think they just look really fun. We order almost every gift online and a lot of it is not signed up for like Amazon Prime. Who is listening to this, I would highly recommend. It's like a game changer in terms pays in dividends and dividends for itself because often you would have it wouldn't have been two days till you could get to the store anyway to get some random item, and like it pays for itself if it keeps you out of target, because like as soon as you go to target, you know you're spending like eighty bucks on something you didn't need anyway, right, Like this is the reality of the target run. And then you know your time, Like if you're spending two hours on a weekend going shopping somewhere, that's two hours you're not like having fun. You're not playing with your kids outside, you're not reading them stories, like you're just pushing your cart around Walmart. And you know, I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that, it's just if your time is limited during the week, you may want to spend your weekend time doing different things. And it's very true. Like one of the biggest boosts or bonuses I guess about having all this stuff done, is it when I come home, I'm hanging out with the kids and my attention is completely on them. I'm not thinking the house, i am not thinking about the laundry. I'm really focused on them until they're asleep, and then I'm able to focus on them in the morning and generally on weekends. So it really the idea that you're somehow doing your family a disservice by having others do household chores doesn't quite add up for me, especially if you do have limited hours to spend with your kids anyway, because it actually kind of works the other way around. I mean, we want to get through Sarah's list here, but I think I'm almost through. But that's an important point because one of the notes both of us have getten about what you know we're talking about here to get emails from people who read our blogs. They say, well, what is it teaching your kids? Is it teaching them that they don't have to do work? Well, that's not true. I mean, Sarah works many hours per week in her position stuff, So they're certainly not learning that you don't have to work. They're not learning that you don't do anything ever in the house because again there's still some stuff that gets sent. But the thing is this stuff what when? I feel like that question should never be asked unless in a household where the adults are splitting things absolutely evenly in the that trauma would never be made. If dad is, you know, an attorney or whatever and goes to work all day and mom does everything, nobody would say, well what do you What are you teaching your sons? But you are teaching you something which is that exactly and the same thing if you know and you're in a two income family and mom does the majority of her or whatever. Because often this saying well you shouldn't outsource because that teaches your kids the wrong things. Well, what you're teaching your kid is that the woman in your life is supposed to do all of this for you automatically without any compensation. And whereas if you're outsourcing it, you're showing that it's a valuable thing because you're paying for it, right and and so again it's the economics you're teaching that you know, mom's labor isn't valuable if she does it, whereas you know, obviously if you are paying somebody else to do it, you're showing it's a job. And it is a real job. In many cases, it's something that should be valued a lot more than it is. And I think in a lot of families where mom just does it, it isn't valued. So there we go. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, almost through my list. Okay, Well we were both gonna mention clothes shopping, so though I'm pregnant right now, and how to take a little hiatus. I love Trunk Club, which is sort of Nordstrom's virtual personal shopping. I guess. So you know, you have a stylist and you're able to kind of give them an idea of what you want and they ship you a box and then you ship back what you don't want. And again this is non sponsored, but both Laura and I have enjoyed that service. And then there's also stitch Fix, which is really popular. And then I have a lot of friends who will just every few months if they feel like they need a refresh, make an order, thinking that they're probably going to keep twenty percent of it. So you can kind of do the same thing on your own as well. But I really rarely spend any time in actual clothing stores anymore, although after having kids again, you know with the post you know, when your body is not in a stable place, it may necessitate an actual visit to the store, which I'm not excited about. That's okay, let's see what else. So a lot of the driving like taking, as I said, taking the kids to school and activities. One new thing I learned is that Walgreens will deliver your medications, so not having to go to the pharmacy or send somebody to the pharmacy, and then packing school lunches and I think that's that's all I could think of. But that's a lot. Yeah, but then there's many things you don't. I mean, because you do bedtime with your kids every night, and you do you and Josh more time we do the mornings. I go, no, we don't. I mean, there are families that do use tutors and such. I don't. You know, who knows what the future will bring, but right now I enjoy going through Annabel's homework with her. I don't outsource planning, so I'm never gonna I love it too much, so I can't imagine like a travel agent, like I want to do it myself. I want to figure out what we're going to do. I don't have somebody quote unquote managing my calendar because I don't feel like anybody could do it as well as I do. I pay, I pay the bills. We don't outsource kind of financial stuff. To this point, we go to the gas station. A lot of our neighbors have started outsourcing that, which I think is interesting because it really doesn't take very much time. I didn't even judgment then it exactly, Well, what else can you think of? Any Yeah? I know, I know we're like getting long into this. But any exotic things you can think of that we haven't mentioned yet, well, you know, I can't really think of any right now. But I mean even if you just think yourself like outsourcing your kid's birthday parties in the sense of if you go to one of your local places that does eighteen birthday parties, they are very turnkey about it, like they give you everything, like you don't have to think about it. We have definitely done it. I mean there was one year where all three two of the bigger children had their birthday parties at this place called Bounce. You I was like, I don't know what percent of Bounce to us revenue I am responsible for this year. It's something, but you know it's so easy and like that's not something I do well, Like I would never I'm not the kind of mom who can plan like great craft activities for the backyard and games and have the wonderful decorations and if you are awesome, like some people love doing that. But you know, if it's not you, it's not you. So one thing I want to get to. As we're getting to our love of the week. Moving on out of the second, Sarah mentioned that paying bills is obviously something that you know, financial tasks can be outsourced too, But you guys have a different solution. So that's your love of the week, right. Oh well, actually it's not a different solution, but it's certainly along that vein. My love of the week this week is a program called You Need a Budget, And it actually started as a software program where you just had to do a one time purchase and then you could download the app and it would sink to your phone and you actually use this dropbox and basically it allows you to very easily log every single purchase. And I'm not all that savvy financially, but we've been using this since two thousand and I think the end of twenty fourteen, and knowing where every single dollar goes has actually been really freeing. Like I love it. I have like my own sort of bucket for every little thing we want to save for for my allowance. It'll help me tell I call it my allowances allowance, Like it's my own allowance, like that like determined by me. Like I'm actually the one who like gives Josh and I like a certain amount that like we should just not worry about if we want to buy sling for ourself each month, like if it's within whatever, then great, just like we do for our kids. Annabell gets three dollars a week. It's a very big deal. Instead of kind of worrying like oh, are we spending too much on this or that, you can see it at any given moment exactly where you are and you can plan ahead for big purchases or vacations. So anyway, I highly you know a lot of people use Mint, which is very different because it's not it doesn't get you that sort of micro level. The people who are devoted to you need a budget. Like if you kind of you have to be a little bit type A because you have to be willing to put in the time to enter everything. But then once you do, it's just it's like incredibly sort of freeing to know exactly what's happening, at least for me, Like I like think about it less in a way, looking at it more. I don't know how to explain that, but oh and I was gonna say, it's no longer a one time purchase. That's the only sad thing. It's now a monthly service. I'm grandfathered in and anybody who had bought the prior version is but now I believe it's like fifty dollars a year. Just kind of annoying to add like a budget item to a budget that But honestly, if I had to switch to that, I would, I mean, I definitely would continue it, even if they get rid of the grandfathering and I started having to pay the monthly fee. So check it out. Yeah, I checked my time, But I gotta say I wouldn't want to chart my money. I think I have more weird feelings about money, so I probably wouldn't want to do that, which interesting because I'm terrible bullet tracking my time. Even though I always try, I like fail. So we'll have to discuss that later exactly well, because I mean, so my issue is I'm a chronic under buyer. I don't like spending money. I pretty much find it painful, which may be interesting if you think about all the things that we've talked about outstoirs sing and that I'm easy. I find it easier to pay for services, I guess than things, which my love of the week is when I conquered that feeling. This past week, I have been sitting on an office chair that has a giant hole in it for the past several years, and so I just covered the hole with a blanket and it was almost It was pretty embarrassing because my keyboard is in my office and the kids do their piano lesson on the keyboards. When the piano teacher comes, he moves over my desk chair, so he was having to sit on this chair with a giant hole in it as well. Like finally, I was like, if not for me, for Patrick, I will get a new chair, and so I did. I went graduate site and I ordered a new chair. This shipping was ridiculous because they have this like flat rate shipping thing, and so I could have got a whole dining room table and eight chairs delivered to the same price as one chair. I needed the chair, so I did it. I'm sitting on I have my new office chair now, and it's awesome. Sometimes it's just so awesome to check one of those things off the list that's been sitting there forever. Yeah, but wow, that is very exciting. That was progress. So our listener question for the week, This one was definitely for Sarah So our listener wrote that she loves our podcast even as someone without kids. So thank you very much for that. The question that I have, she writes, is whether or not wanting kids ever made you think twice about becoming a physician. I have for a long time considered medical school, but the absolutely intense journey has deterred me, especially because I want to have a family. I know you make it work, but I was just wondering if having kids with ever something you thought might not be a possibility considering your workload or the workload required to get to the point where you are now. So what do you think. I always knew I wanted kids, so that was never something that I considered, like, you know, moving forward with my career and not having children. But on the other side of things, I actually really didn't consider future children in my plan as I headed towards med school either. And I think, you know, as a twenty two year old or even in your mid twenties, that's appropriate for most people because you can always modify later, but embarking on an intense path at that age is probably going to open up a lot of options for you later on. And I was single at the time. I was twenty two. I entered med school. I actually entered as an MDPHD. So I had like a planned seven year road ahead of me, and as time unfolded and my goals changed, I changed that. I actually left the PhD, got a master's and finished med school and then, as you know, went down a much more clinical path. But you can kind of always downgrade later on. I think it's much harder to kind of intensify your career later, especially after having said kids. And remember, you know, there's a lot of years between college and when you might want to first start a family. And we started kind of at a moderate time. I was thirty one, but there are plenty of people who start in their mid thirties, which gives you a lot of time to really build a lot of career capital before moving forward. So yeah, I would encourage people, especially younger people, to just go for what you want to do, and you can you can always you can always modify later, like we have. All Right, Well, this has been best of both worlds. This episode, we've been talking about what our kids eat, outsourcing, and our various loves and why Sarah thought it was just fine to become a physician and a mom as well. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.