Our Money Stories. Ep 72

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkam. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing physician and blogger. On the side, 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. This is episode seventy two. Today we're going to be talking about our money stories, always something that people are thinking about around the holiday finances and end of year, sort of reckoning of how the year has gone, thinking about the next year as well. So this is you know, post Hanikah, right before Christmas, Right, Sarah, what are the dates this year? Hanikah begins on December second. Yeah, okay, we began. I guess as we're talking about it, the past tense herenic is actually over by the time, so I hope it went well. As we're recording this, we're both in shopping mode, which maybe one reason we're thinking about my So what did you guys decide to do? What's on the we Honestly, I didn't have a lot of I keep using the word bandwidth with josh Oh like I still have the bandwidth for that. I didn't have a lot of bandwidth for for Hanukah this year, and I kind of put him in charge to some extent. We did a very minimal gift summit last night where we just sort of decided which big things we want to order, and he had actually already purchased bikes for Annabel and Cameron, which is definitely the, you know, the big ticket item of the year. Annabel had asked for roller skates, so we just got that for both kids as well. Now, I know it seems a little crazy in most parts of the country, it's like why are you buying this stuff now? But actually for us, this is our outdoor time. Outdoor season is like the best from now until Mayor's so it actually makes sense to buy those kinds of things. And then I think we're going to do winter coats one day because we're going up north and we had to buy them anyway. And if we get ones that they'll like, that counts and then we're going to fill in a lot of family gifts and friend gifts and yeah, so I'd say we're keeping it fairly minimal, in part out of laziness, in part because we don't have a lot of space, and in part because we as we're moving, we realize our kids have so much stuff and they're just always getting more. And birthday seasons come quickly after Hankah for us in February and then April. So just not trying to go too crazy. What about you guys, Well, I say, Genevieve like overlaps with Hanaka. Oh yeah, well and this year Genevieve right in the middle of it. J Deeviev is not getting like dedicated Hanukah gifts because she doesn't know. Well that's true, she does not know. And you get the big what day do you get the big gift? On? No? Sometimes the first I think we'll probably I may use is this bad If I'm like, I'll tell the kids like, if you're really good, you know, I may use it as a bribery tactic for them to get their biggest gift, which I think they suspect what it is. Or I may try to time it with a weekend because that will give them the most time to use it. Since there's true I think the bike is the kind of thing you want to open like on the Friday night, right, and then yes, yeah, that would make sense they can play it all weekend. Yeah, So did you like take advantage of Black Friday sales? How did you? Or did you know you plan farther ahead than that? Don't you? Not? Really? I have gotten I did get a fair number of things relatively early, just you know, sitting there over Thanksgiving weekend and making a list in my planner, which is just the notebook from Target, because that's how I am, but I have everyone's names on it, and then try to figure out what what am I getting? What have I already gotten? Just try to keep it relatively similar in terms of people's happiness levels with what they're getting, you know, sort of size under the tree for the children who are into physical size of gifts. You know, the older too definitely understand more that certain things are expensive versus other things, and so they're okay with smaller gifts not being quite as big under the tree or from Santa. But yeah, it's it's a kind of all this triaging of stuff. I would prefer not to be at the end like buying stuff randomly to make it even like I want to get the stuff that they like and not get a whole lot of stuff that they don't care as much about. I would like to have it be a more mindful, thoughtful experience this year than it has been for some years in the past. But we shall see. I mean it's already tough, like the I took Alex shopping with me at Barnes and Noble, and he wanted everything, and he was pulling everything out and I wound up having to get him something small because I was shopping for his siblings that he you know, opened anyway. And then he's trying to find where their presence are because he wants to know where they are hidden in the house. Oh, it's just gonna be hard. We can't put anything under the tree. We won't be able to put anything under the tree until Christmas because it would be it would be ripped open. Yeah, he does it. He lacks He totally lacks all self control. And not that I mean he's three, Like why would he Yeah, I think that's normal. So, yeah, nothing can go out until until Christmas anyway, so it all has to be concealed around the house. And yeah, but we're gonna get there's a lot of cool stuff. We're getting some blocks. I've always like playmobile stuff. You know, there's some lego Harry Potter that's really really cool. Hogwarts expressed it's pretty fun. You know, we're just uh, the the eleven year old asked. Jasper asked for a trip again this year, which is, oh, that's so cool. Yeah, he likes experience stuff. I mean he sort of realized there's nothing big he wants. He's not into video games, so uh, you know, Sam on stuff like the Xbox or whatever. But Jasper wants experience of the issue. He wants to go to California, which is gonna be hard to pull off. I mean it's a weekend like well that a weekend three three day. We got to find a day that is off Mourning cou weekend. I don't even know if we have it there. It is so oh man, even if we just use miles and stuff. So it's not really the expense, it's more the parental time. So it's the time, it's the time, well maybe the tail end of spring break or something. Yeah, we'll see. That's true. Then you want that time with the other kids with the other kids. So yeah, we'll see how that one pulls up. Because last year he went to the Georgia Aquarium, is what he requested. But that was pretty easy in and out because you just fly, you know, two hours down Saturday morning, came back. He and my husband went two hours you know, fly down Saturday morning, come back Sunday evening. They used miles, stayed in like a place where Starwood points, so it's like the trip itself was practically free. And then it was over the weekend, so it was just me, you know, covering for the weekend. But four days is going to be a bit more intense for I think next year he's going to ask for like Italy. Yeah, i'd be like, wait, I'm not sure if yes, maybe these are things I need to start asking for for Christmas or something. But yeah, we'll see, we'll see. Well that's a good that's a good uh segue into our topic of the day, which is money. Which is money, And we wanted to talk about why we wanted to do this episode because I know we are going to get certain amounts of feedback about Laura wanted to do this episode, and I'd be grudgingly, now you're going to do this whole thing. Thank you, Sarah hanging me out on the line to dry here. Now what it was so when in our previous episode where we were talking about, you know, career setbacks and things like that, and I'd mentioned that very few people had bought my money book, All the Money in the World, and I swear over the next few weeks I must have heard from everybody who purchased a copy of All the Money in the World. It was just like, well, I liked it. I wanted to I'd love to hear you talk more about that. I like it too, Okay, there before I knew you it's where you do it so but more the approach of thinking about, you know, our money stories and what we are telling ourselves about money, and where these stories come from, and how they shape our lives, and how we can use money as a tool to build the lives we want. And I of course understand that the sheer idea of using money as a tool implies that there's you know, some of it sitting around right that you're in a space where you have some disposable income and that you know, it doesn't apply to everyone, and we know we have listeners who are in all sorts of situations. But I think we all have stories we have grown up with that we have developed over the years, Things we tell ourselves, things we believe about money, and it's interesting to sort of explore those and see how they affect our lives and our happiness and all that. So we wanted to do that. Well. I thought we could have a good discussion of talking about, you know, our money stories and how we grew up thinking of it and how we've sort of trained ourselves to think about it over time. No, I agree and Laura's defense, I do think it is an interesting topic to explore, one that I'd like to listen to different perspectives about. And I mean just in the way that this episode isn't going to apply to everyone. When I listen to a podcast that is aimed at someone who stays home or has a flexible schedule that doesn't necessarily apply to me, sometimes it means I turn it off. Sometimes it means that I sort of listen and glean what I can. But I guess my disclimmers is like we can we may have a personal finance expert on the blog someday that would be actually really fun. And if you have a specific person to suggest, we have a few from the survey, but if you have another one, that's great. But we also know that you like it when we share our stories, and the only stories we have are our own experiences. So as much as that we know we're going to get some people who who feel that this is not applicable to all, I totally agree it's not, but it probably is to some. And we do have a good number of families with two fairly high earners that we'll get to. And there are things there's that there are stories we tell ourselves about money that I think deserve a little bit more delving into. So I actually think it is a good idea, despite the fact that I thought it first, like why are we even going here? Although there's various other angles of money beyond sort of like this, the budgeting, you know, frugal like personal finance stuff like I think would be great to talk about negotiating salaries and you know, pushing for raises and things like that, which I know that a lot of our listeners are women and maybe less likely to do. There's some interesting research about that and why that is that women are less aggressive about going for raises, for instance, when you know, taking on new jobs and things like that. But so, Sarah, let's let's talk about what we learned about money growing up. We found out that both of us are from pretty frugal homes. Right, yes, here, why don't you go first order? We wrote it in there's we're sort of incrementally that way. There's there's that people have heard the phrase Dutch treat, which means that you both pay your own way. Right. There's sort of a joke there, and the people know my last name Vanderkam is like that, you kind of grow up with this sort of stuff. And my parents didn't have a whole lot of money when we were growing up, certainly, you know, none when my brother was born and my father was still in graduate school. I mean, there was h you know, WI coupons involved in that time period of their lives. By the time I came around, he was gainfully employed, so that was slightly better. But you know, we we certainly never had a whole lot of money growing up. And I have all sorts of memories of my going to the grocery store with my mother, and she had her envelope for the coupons, you know, which is like a recycled envelope that you stick. I later learned that not everybody writes their grocery list on an envelope and sticks the coupons in there. That's our unique way of going to the grocery store in this family. The upside of that sort of frugal background is that I have always always lived within my means. You know. There was my first year out of college, I was working a year long internship that I lived on my own, you know, earnings like that nobody was supporting me so and I earned about like my salary was something like eighteen thousand dollars a year, which I lived on and it was fine, Like it wasn't actually that bad. I you know, carefully grocery shopped, I took public transportation, all that stuff. And you know, being able to do that, which I know is a skill that a lot of my college classmates would never have had, made it easy to then, you know, actually build up savings when I was freelancing on the side during the internship, and then I could you know, finance pretty much my move to New York and have a couple months where I didn't know if I would be earning anything before I realized that I could actually earn serious money writing. So you know, there's there's upsides of that. Of course, the downsides that I find out I'm still you know, cheap for unknown reasons at times. How about you. You see, it's so interesting because I feel like I maybe had some parallels and then like but had none of the same results. I mean, my parents listened to this podcast and they're wonderful people, so obviously I'm not going to be throwing them under the bus, but they are very frugal, in my opinion, sometimes more frugal than is necessary. Like there were no Wick coupons, but there was never a purchase me that wasn't like Hemden had about you know, how can we do this cheaper? All of our family trips, most of them, parents will probably correct me and point out like one that wasn't were like my dad's work trips that we would tag along so we could stay free in the hotel, which meant I got a taste for really nice hotels, but we didn't pay for any of them. And then my dad would have to work, so that was not really a great you know, family togetherness experience. So I don't know, like I probably, if anything, rebelled against this up bringing. I don't know if I would say that I was resentful but was not the most responsible with money as soon as I had any and that includes like credit cards, I sort of, I mean, I never got into too much trouble, thankfully. It was more like, you know, I would just empty my bank account while I was at college, and my parents were generous enough to be completely paying for my college experience and so you know, their savings did pay off. They did that, and they also you know, bought me a car with cash at the end of college. So I sound horribly ungrateful, and I'm not. I'm I they are great parents. They gave me a lot, but their philosophy always graded on me a little bit. And maybe still does they know we get in you know, little TIFs about it, and so I don't feel that way. I'm probably you know, there are people who are under buyers, and Laura, I know you count yourself as one of them, and then there are people who are, if anything, over buyers. I don't think I'm an overbuyer either. I think I really tend to be very intentional with at this point. But when I was younger, I was pretty dumb, including I took a trip to Europe right after graduating from college, and I'm not sure how I thought I was paying for it, like I didn't have any real jobs or any real savings. And then I got home and was like, well, I've got a few thousands of credit card debt. And my parents were like, we're bailing you out for one last time in your entire life, and we will never do it again. And I remember how bad it felt to think that I would actually like like I had no way of paying the debt, like I was about to, you know, start medical school. I was mdphd, which came with like a small stipend, but it was not going to be enough to you know, pay any extra bills. And that was it. I was never in debt again, So that that is good. Yeah, but I have I have a different philosophy, and my husband is also certainly not an underbuyer either, So as we'll talk about, we have other strategies to keep ourselves in check because we're not naturally we don't naturally lean to frugal I don't think. Yeah, I think my husband and I both do. Like we're both very very temperamentally oriented that way, which has been you know, led to certain things. So we don't really budget because we both earn good amounts of money and then our set expenses are a low enough percentage of that by design that then little things sort of daily spending or whatever, it just doesn't matter as much, you know, because it's it's such a lot. And that's one of the things I actually talk about in all the money in the world that you know, if you set your I mean sometimes you can't obviously that you need to live in a safe place with good schools, and that's going to require a certain amount, you know. But if you have a choice, you know, what you choose to spend what proportion of your income on things like housing and cars for instance. If you choose to spend less, then that's money that's there all the time every month that you can you know, spend and yet still have savings as well. And so you know, that's kind of been our philosophy, is that if you set but you know you have your means, and if you set your expenses at a low enough percentage of it then you don't have to worry as much of that. But you guys, budget, you're you're like my time tracker, only when you're with your U need a budget, right, It is true. I mean I could like tell you, like what we spent for parking on you know, February third, twenty fifteen or some which I could tell you how I spent every time time, tell what you were doing. Yeah, So it's crazy and it's funny because like while you're time tracking, you know, is a is a big Well maybe it does. It, Maybe it's such a hat because to me it's such a habit that it doesn't feel like a big thing. But for us, I think part of it is, you know, we went from residence salaries abruptly to attending salaries, which was like, you know, a really really big and sudden increase. And it was kind of like, okay, initially that that seemed great, but then all of a sudden it felt like, oh my god, it was like flowing out as fast as it was coming in. And we've read so much about actually doctors being notoriously poor managers of money, and like, you know, assuming that they're going to work forever and have a higher earning potential forever. And we didn't want to be like that. So we started tracking on wine app just so we could see exactly what was coming in, exactly what was coming out, to give us the freedom to enjoy spending on certain things without stressing about it. So I guess, to some extent, even though I'm not an underbuyer, I might I'm gonna not have joy about a purchase unless I know that I can afford it in a kind of planned manner. So by tracking and having sort of amounts that were allowed to spend on travel or ourselves or our kids or whatever, I think it helps us got to, you know, use our money smarter and more intentionally, and also enjoy spending it more because when I spend my allowance, I don't feel guilty. I don't feel like questioning whether I should really be doing it because I've already earmarked that money. And I think that, unlike you, if we were to just naturally do whatever. Well. Number one, I think Josh and I might fight with each other, Like if he buys another guitar, I might be like, hey, you know, you just bought two guitars but instead it's like, oh, it's his a long. It's like that's okay. He's only allowed to spend what's in there, and I'm allowed to spone what's in mind. So I think it helps us not fight about it. But I also think it helps us keep things just more reasonable. Yeah, I guess we just don't buy stuff, like wonder what was that. I don't know what we buy to be honest. Like that's the funny thing is, like I don't think of us as material I mean, you heard our Honka list, Like, we're not super materialistic. But I think I guess it's just more like the vacations and the experiences and the childcare, it just it just all adds up. And cost of living is fairly expensive done here, although it's about to become a little cheaper for us. Yeah that's true out of Miami Beach. So yeah, well that could be an interesting things. You may change our margins a little bit. You may ponder like what you're you know, what kind of house and what you're looking for, and especially as you're looking at a different neighborhood which isn't quite as pricey as Miami Beach, you know, it'd be interesting to see how you wind up optimizing the different angles of that purchase. Well, I can say right now that like the homes we're looking at, or many of them, are like one and a half times the size for half the price. So it's it's not like a thing. Yeah, it's not a subtle it's not a subtle gradation. No. No, although that's assuming that our house sells. I mean, you're in a place where it's it's tightly and like you want to live in Miami Beach. You you got to be there, so's hope you need a budget. Right, Why did you ask chose that one? Is Well, at the time when we bought it, it was a one time purchase rather than a subscription model, and we're still using that old one. So it was like a one time investment of like fifty bucks or something like that. If I looked on wineup, I could, I could, I could find out exactly because I'm sure I put that into wine up, the purchase of wine up, because that's super meta. Anyway, I just liked the fact that it was easy to use, that it SYNCD up with our phone, so it's easy to put on things on the run if they've now moved to a subscription model that eventually we may have to switch to just because they don't have tech support on the old one. I imagine that at some point it's just going to not work anymore. But it's user friendly. I don't know, it's just it's a good program. And actually I like that it's not automatic. You have to manually tell it every time you're spending, so it's not like it uploads a bunch and you have to like fix it or not. I think that's too tempting to kind of have it be very inaccurate, like programs like Mint, although maybe they've gotten better since we've So it doesn't just go straight from your credit card or debit cards. You have to actually tell it every time I buy something on Amazon or every power bill that comes in, I just take two seconds and throw it into wine app. So it's all manually entered. And then every month I do an audit interesting and to see if you're over or under on the different cod well it serves two things. I go through and make sure I didn't like miss any purchases, because it's certainly possible for out to eat, we just forget to put it in. So I like look at especially the big things on our credit card bills and make sure I put them into wine app. And then I also create the next month's budget and sort of make sure that we're on track and not you know, overspending what's in each bucket. So it kind of keeps us doing what we're doing. That's cool, that sounds yeah, it's funny. I actually that was one of the things I like about my time tracking is that I'm manually entering how I spend my time to People often ask me, well, why don't you just have an app that will then, you know, be automatic, which there are some that are developing that technology that you have your phone with you all the time. It just like follows you around and it knows where you are right you're at your kids' school, like so that it puts, you know, two forty five to three fifteen at school would be automatically on the timelog, and then you just go in afterwards and correct the record if it you know, in fact, you were at like the library next to the school for that time. But you know, it's it. I actually like putting it in because of that mindfulness aspect of it that it forces you to pay attention and to acknowledge that this is what you did with your time. So I can see that it would be the same thing with money, that that would be one of the upsides of manually entering it. So we have a question here about our proudest money moments. So I like yours. Yeah, I like both of them. So my you know, I'm a self employed person. I actually been working for myself since age twenty three, which is is kind of nutty to have gone that long without a regular paycheck. But you know, at the beginning it was it was very much a hustle. And there have been plenty of times where it's a hustle and you try to make a certain amount and you know, somebody offers you work. It's you always want to take it, right my husband, and my husband's a consultant, so he sort of describes it the same way, like you're you're a hunter. You see a mammoth, you want to get the mammoth. Like if it's an easy mammoth to get, You're like, I'm going to go after that mammoth, right, Like you're The idea of not going after the mammoth is just like, wow, would I not do that. But my proud as many moments, are every time I turn down work. And I have learned to do this over the years that saying yes to something that you don't particularly enjoy doing or find like career advancing, or doesn't pay enough to compensate for those two aspects, A, you're gonna be like resentful doing it, and but more importantly, it takes time and mental energy that you could spend going after something better. So saying yes to too much little stuff means you don't have the capacity for the big stuff. You won't have the ability to go after a new opportunity, or if somebody proposes something, you won't be able to take it on. I've seen this, like you know, very clearly with stuff that you know. If I'm giving it a speech and it's a date that somebody wants far in the future, but they don't want to pay sort of what I'd like to earn. If I say yes to a lower rate, it's highly likely that I'll get another option that would have paid more for that date that I will then have to turn down because I said yes to this other thing and committed to it. So I've learned the hard way on speaking like, don't get on a plane for something that's not paying what you want to earn, you know, for a date six months in the future, Like say no, because something will come up. So every time I turn down work, I'm like, that was hard to do, Like it's not my tendency to turn down work because I love to earn money. Like I'm amazed at how much I like to earn money and how much that is kind of associated with my mental picture of myself. But you know, when I do it, it's it's good. I guess. My one other proud money moment was was negotiating for my car. So I never had a car until I was thirty when we moved to the suburbs. I've always I'd lived in Washington, d C. And then I lived in New York, so we never had cars. So you know, you don't need them on public transportation as such that it's really not necessary. And so I bought my first car when we moved out to Pennsylvania, and it was a negotiation. The dealer deemed the negotiation aggressive, but I got my car for for a lot less than a you know, and it's a point of pride, is a point of pride that I was. I was aggressive about this car negotiation. We're like the worst negotiators, see, I mean I think I think it partly has to if you don't find spending money all that painful, then you like you're like, it's not really worth I don't know, it's it's we're not. It's a different philosophy. And in fact, we actually hired a car broker to buy our last car, so you like, pay somebody a chunk of money and then they know all the dealers, so theoretically they can get a good enough price and they do the negotiating for you, but mostly just takes the workout and you probably aren't going to get a terrible deal. You probably aren't going to get an aggressive deal either. Well do you think they earned you enough back versus what you will try to negotiate on your own. Well never know. Although we did do something okay frugal car tip. We wanted leather seats, and we did get the cloth seats and put the leather in like did an aftermarket and it looks just as good and it costs like two thousand dollars less, So there you go. It wasn't a negotiating but it was another strategy. Yeah, that's true. A lot of the sort of packages on the cars, you know, it's non transparent pricing. Then on stuff that you know, if you actually put it out on, Like what would it cost a guy to put leather on this seat? The answer is probably a lot less than it would cost the end that the dealer is going to try and charge you for. Yeah. Oh interesting, Okay, and I think it was our car broker that gave us that Ideakay, but that is not your proudest money moment. I mean, I'm sure it's great, but you hired somebody negotiate, But what is your privue money moment? Every time I like have a big bill, do like, you know, giant property tax bill or school tuition, and I look and y M, and I have it like all added up like in that little budget pocket, like it's got you know whatever, fifteen thousand or twenty thousand dollars in there, and I can just go click. I love that. That's a great feeling because you know, until we had real jobs, we could never do that. And a lot of times when you do that, you sometimes get a discount, like our property tax for every month you pay early you get one percent off and that's that's like a few hundred bucks, Like that's a lot of money. Yeah, so yeah, that's my proud money moment. Yeah, we have that too. If you pay your real estate tax bills immediately and in full, like you get two percent off or something like that. So we've always and certainly more you know, that's off the number, and then if you paid over time, you pay even more. Right, So it's it, Yeah, definitely the way to go, I mean, because it's not like you aren't going to not pay it eventually, so yes, if you have the cash on hand, it's it's definitely worth to advantage of something like that. So what do you like least? Like, what money story do you tell yourself that you'd like to change yours? Okay, yeah, so, as we've been telling you, I find spending money incredibly painful, and it's it's not a great There are upsides to that, right, you know the fact that you're living within your means and stuff like that. But I won't replace stuff, I won't get stuff fixed. Partly it's just my physical environment doesn't bother as me as much. So I you know, was going around for several months with the clock in my car being an hour and thirty seven minutes off, which apparently I just found it easier to add an hour and thirty seven minutes to whatever it said versus actually change it. But it's the same thing. I'm walking around with my handbags literally held together with dental floss. That this was a way I could fix the hand to it right the straps the strap came off, so I got this. It's it's Coach, which is a nice, you know brand leather handbag. But I got it at the outlet store and then got it at sales, so I got it for about twenty five percent of what you would normally pay. Maybe that's why it fell apart. I don't know, Maybe it's not, maybe it's fake, who knows, but anyway, it's uh. It you know, lasted for about a year of heavy daily use, and then one of the straps came off, So I have guivered it with duck with dental floss because it came apart at a time that I think this might be the picture for our instagrams exactly of wine carrot. So you know, why haven't I gone and bought a new handbag. I don't know, can I buy you a handbag? You could? Why don't you? Maybe it's just the mental you are ready, I should buy a low tough bag. They're beautiful and it's a small company. You're supporting an American small company, and their stuff is holding up really well for me, definitely more than a year. So okay, well I will I will look into that. I probably do need a new bag. But I wrote of my texts, I was like, OMG, Laura buy a bag already. She needs to buy a bag. I need to. That's just you know, dental floss doesn't probably look the most professional. That's true. Yes, here, I am your speaker about how to have a more productive effect of life. Walk around with my bag. Maybe it's part of your negotiation strategy. You're like, look, I need this. You've got to know you, I actually don't want to. You don't want to ever go into a negotiation being that you need it. Right, you know, it's the best negotiation is that I do not I don't need I don't need it. I don't need it. I will walk away, I will walk away. I do not need this. I do not need anything. And actually, when you when you have that, it's one of the negotiators. I've learned this year. I've actually earned a reasonable chunk. I've been keeping track of it. From places that tell me they don't pay their speakers. I said, well, then I won't do it, and then they find a budget that magically they do in fact pay some of their speakers, but apparently only the ones who think to ask, So you know, that's uh it just never hears like I'm not doing it, you know, and or that I can't do it for X and sorry, we're not gonna be able to make this work. And sometimes people come back and have more budgets. Sometimes they don't, but you know, and some of that I have my I'm doing sending a lot of this over those speakers bureau now anyway, because they're just more holding the line on that. But uh, you know, negotiation, like I said, that's all that. That's awesome. So what story do you like least? I don't. I don't know. I just I, oh, I like least that I find investing like super intimidating and too complicated, because that's a story. It's actually not that complicated. I actually really enjoy listening to Planet Money, so I can't be that bad. But I feel like neither Josh nor I take as active roles as we probably should in sort of managing the long term savings side of things. You definitely can totally do that yourself, proud. I mean, that's that's you know. I know a lot of people like will pay other people to do it. I just don't really see why. I mean, it's very easy to like set up an account and then buy mostly you know, index funds. Not that we're giving any no, it's not investment advice, but like you don't need somebody else to buy index funds for you, and now you should be in any way because market long term, So that's what you should. That is what I have learned from Planet Money and Freakonomics more than anything else. So it's like you should. It is something you should diy And we're not necessarily doing that at this point, but at some point we'll take the reins. We'll see what happens. Yeah, so what are you teaching your kids about money? Yeah? So we we do do the allowance thing. We certainly buy them stuff other times as well. It's not like Cameron, you need new clothes, use your allowance. I don't think if three dollars a week would get involced, you might just never buy clothes, like, I don't want to do do that. Good point. Good point. I want full control over the clothing buying actually, because yeah, but we do. We do give them a three dollars a week. I think it's three dollar. I'm actually non charge of it. Josh is in charge it. He puts it into wine app, which actually is a great system because otherwise it's very easy to forget to pay your kids and then you're like, oh, I don't know how many weeks it's been, but we can actually look back and be like, oh, no, we put it in wine app. You've been paid up to October thirteenth. And sometimes we'll pay them a few weeks at a time, And for example, if we're at a museum and we weren't planning on getting something, we can say to them, if you really want something, use your money. And I think it helps because they do kind of start to understand, oh, I can't get this because I don't have enough money for this, And so they're understanding the value of different things. And I think they're also getting starting to understand, hey, if I use my allowance, I won't have it to spend later. So I think it's been good and we don't tie it to anything thus far, we haven't done any like behavior or like jobs for them to well, well, no, I take it back. I've like paid Annabella dollar to watch Genevieve before for like ten minutes. But generally we're not. We're not paying them for things. We just that's like their unconditional thing that they get each week. Okay, And did you have a debate about this or was that how you guys grew up? And that was sort of the way. It was, like, you know, the whole tying it to chores versus not time to this as I learned writing all the money, my parents were quite consistent. I don't really remember. I feel like sometimes they would just like offer it, and then other times it was like they would offer it, but then if you don't do this, you don't get it. So it was like sort of like a negative reinforcement kind of a situation. I don't I don't really remember, and I don't know what my husband's side, but that's just kind of what we decided together. We may have read something about it, Yeah, sure, and you guys you read one side of the literature and not the other side. Certainly possible. Yeah, but because you guys had like a we had a we had one of our biggest fights ever about this. I sort of assammed, we'd give our kids allowed. So my parents gave us a small allowance growing up every week, and yeah, I paid for various things out of that, and babysitting money and so forth. You know, I remember like being the person who had to have you know, I wouldn't go to a sleep away camp in the summer that was out of college campus, and I was always responsible for my own spending money for that, which would have come out of saved allowance and babysitting money and things like that. So I sort of assume that's what we do. And I kind of mentioned that to Jasper at one point, like, oh, yeah, you know, we could give you a couple of dollars a week. And then my my husband, I was talking about it with him and he just like blew up, like in a way that I have not seen any other way, shape or form in my life. He is a pretty calm guys, because of his childhood experiences or something. Don't know, well, I assume it was touching on something like because you don't you know, that's not a normal reaction to like I'm going to give my kid three dollars. So I think, you know, they didn't do allowances growing up. And I'm not sure that produced one way or the other, because he and his siblings have very different approaches to money and money stories they are telling themselves. So it's not that one way of being with your children and then produces a certain outcome at all. So I'm not quite sure what his argument was and in that way, but anyway, he was adamantly opposed to giving the children an allowance. He thinks that we can pay for things for them if they ask and have a good reason, but that they should come to us because he, like, I think he doesn't like the idea of them having income that they can then use that he wants to keep maintain the improving or disapproving you know, just stuff like if we you know, if we go to you know, we went to Dutch Wonderland recently. The amusement park has a holiday thing where you can go and you know, if the kids thought that they could use their own money to like play those stupid games, for instance, like he likes to be able to stop them. I think, you know, we would totally let them, would you like them money? And then that's a lesson, and we do a week on trips, we give them like a special I forgot, so like we'll give them forty dollars or something if we go on a week long trip, and then they can buy a big thing or a couple of small things. So that's almost like another an extension. So I guess we're kind of like super into the allowance thing. Well, we'll do something like that in oc like if we've gone on a trip, we'll say, well everyone can get you know, one souvenir from this trip up to twenty dollars and then they sort of look around the gift store and figure out how, you know, to add. That's kind of like allowing okay, so but somehow that doesn't seem to cause a problem. I don't know anyway, we have not. Yeah, so at this point we just you know, if they ask us for the thing is they honestly, they don't ask us for a whole lot of stuff. So we'll see how this evolves over time, because this can't last. I mean, and at some point they're going to be doing stuff with their friends on their own. I mean, am I going to give them money every time they go out? I think there needs to be some sort of personal kind of control over it. But I also don't think that, you know, I particularly think it would be a great idea for them to be trying to like do lots of jobs right during you know, high school, for instance, which is something that you might do if you were I think we both did. Yeah, well I did. I mean I did jobs, and I baby said, I like worked at the video store, did like all kinds of dumb not dumb. I don't know. I guess I learned things I loved being a camp counselor actually really well, I think could be fine. I just I don't know. I think probably that time might be better spent on like studying and all that, like during the school year, and so who knows, during the school year. Definitely, definitely, Yeah, we have got to sort this out at some point. So far, it's been okay to just kind of be the reins of it that they haven't asked to spend their money on stuff much. But we'll see, we'll see how that that develops. We'll update this in a year, an update in a year. All right, so you know the let's let's just go over because we're this is gonna be a long one yard Yeah, this is it's gonna be a two part let's go. Let's let's move to the earning question. Okay, because I think that, I mean, you knew going into medicine that that it was a fairly high paying career other than you were choosing. Were you evaluating specialties at all based on and come out and high school work? Was Josh? No, And I know, no, definitely not. That's neither of I mean, I felt in medicine or at least maybe compared to my upbringing. I mean, even if I had been a family met you know, it didn't matter what specialty. They're all like a decent wage. They're all. It's pretty hard to actually not make six figures. I'm sure there are exceptions, like like an academic pediatrician. Uh, some of my colleagues actually Impede's ENDO is one of the lowest paying of the pediatric subspecialties. So if you go to an academic center, you could possibly find a non six figure job, but that would be hard to do. So I knew that no matter what I picked, it was going to be decent, and I might as well pick something that I thought was really fun and rewarding. So I did not have financials figure and in fact, you know, in retrospect sometimes I wonder if that was smart I had. I'm got a brag. I had great test scores, like I'm a good test taker, and like on my boards. You know, pediatrics doesn't usually have great board scores, like you don't need high board scores like I had the kind of board scores. If I had been interested in something like dermatology, I could have done it where I probably could work like two days a week and earn like a lot of money six figures. You know, I didn't do that. I ended up instead doing something that's not as high paying, but it's still pretty well paying, especially the type of job that I took and in the market that I took. So no, it didn't go into it. Maybe it could have more, but I'm pretty happy how it turned out. And same with Josh. I mean, he enjoys the procedural subspecialties which tend to pay more, but that was not a conscious decision made on payment and a phrase that my husband likes to say, is I just want to take care of patients, Like that's what he used to say, and he'll say that even to the point where it's like, so I'm not going to really negotiate my salary. But at some point I was like, listen, this is our family, this is our kids, this is your time. So you have to actually stop saying that you can take care of patients and I can pay you what you're worth, Like these things are not at odds, Like you're going to take care of your patients both ways. So I made exactly exactly so, but no neither of us factored in our specialty choice at all. No, that's a you know, I when I wrote I'm very interested in this question of like women and money and earning and all that, because I think women don't necessarily grow up with stories of what they need to earn to support a family in the same way that men do. That there is you know, certainly many women wind up going into not not as many as you might think. I when I did the research for I know how she does it because I was looking into writing about women in six figure careers, only like four percent of women and these are US figures. By the way US dollars, Only about four percent of women earn six figures a year. I mean, it's really low for you know, and it's more than that for men. I mean it's not a huge amount more than that, but it's definitely The proportion of six figure earners who are women is relatively low for various reasons. I mean, because a you generally have to choose certain careers, you know, and I know that this is one of the feedback we get. Obviously, you know, once you've chosen a career, it's sort of harder to move out of a range of what the salary is, and so then that all this stuff about you know, what you can spend on various things is sort of less relevant. But you know, when you're making these career choices going in, I think women often don't think about it with the same urgency that men might, because a lot of women do not grow up thinking I might need to support a family on my own, and men are more likely to think that that might be a scenario that would happen at some point in their lives, and so it affects what you go into. But you know, it's I think that it's something that it would probably help if more women did grow up thinking that way, A because a lot of women will wind up supporting their whole family on their own at some point, you know, whether through your choice or because of circumstance. And also just you know, the big jobs are often more family friendly, I would say than one might anticipate, partly because as you move into sort of these professional jobs or higher up the ladder of various things, you have more autonomy and control over your time, which gives you more flexibility, and then you have the cash to make certain aspects of balancing work in life far more doable, like if you need an extra hour of babysitting because you've got a meeting that's running late, it's not you know, a huge deal, right, which it could be, and other circumstances, And so you know, I think I didn't necessarily grow up with anyone telling me I needed to earn a lot of money and and I did, you know, marry a guy who was earning more than me. But I've been I've been pretty you know, gung ho about doing it. It's it's a side of my personality. I guess. I decided to find myself and have been you know, kind of cool to see what you can do to to you know, raise your income over time. So you know, I think that we're talking about how to sort of think about your earning potential. I think one of the real big things that would be important for women is if you are scaling down or taking some time out to be very serious about thinking about your earning potential for getting back in Like, you don't want to get yourself to a place where you can't earn you know, a reasonable amount in the future. And you've you've thought about this a lot. So I mean, medicine is good, this and that when you scale down a little bit, you can often scale right that guy, right, yep, you can scale right back. But if you could tell your person tomorrow, schedule me for a full week and they would do it, Yes, yes, one hundred percent. And you know, going back a little bit about how having a job that earns a decent salary is helpful in making work in life fit together. I mean that's something that we've gotten a lot of you know, feedback, positive or negative on this podcast. But it is true. It's an undeniable truth. And you know that doesn't change the fact that it's it is difficult for some people who have already kind of gotten settled in lower income tracks. But that said, I think nowadays there are more and more people doing creative things with their skill sets, whether that be a side hustle or looking to see how they could, you know, use those skills in a related field that's not the same like maybe you're a teacher, but then you're going to start your own tutoring business or become a consultant for a like exactly the things you could do differently. Yeah, So I think it's I think it's just a valid approach as any And you know, I was just thinking, you know, there's there's only two ways to make things easier on the money side. There's spend less and earn more. And I think earn more has its value and doesn't always get it's due, especially with women on the spend less side of things. I will admit that I enjoy reading those things too. Uh, Laura and I both I think from time to time read The Frugal Girl's blog. She's she comments on on Laura's blog as well, and it's so interesting because I feel like I'm coming from a different world. And yet I think her tips are fascinating and I think there's value to how she does things with her family, even though it's like a completely it's just entirely different from from the Way with you. Yeah, it's a great blog The Frugal Girl. Definitely check that one out. She's got lots of cheerful tips on living frugally, which is better than the sort of gosh, the what's his name mister money mustache, which is you know, all about wanting to you know. But she clearly finds joy in the creativity and thriving so angrily aggressively spend less money. Yeah no, no, totally on that. So but you decided it was worth it for you to go down a little bit. I mean, partly this podcast exists because you're you're, you know, looking to do other things with at least one day a week of your life. Yeah. For me, I just the difference between having some wiggle room in my schedule and none was so vast. And because to be honest, I can still earn a decent living working four days a week and still feel like I'm contributing stanifinitely to our family. It kind of was once we kind of thought about it. It was an easy decision to make. Yeah, I could see doing more later. In fact, depending on what happens with my work responsibilities, it's possible I may have some more flexibility. So I thought, well, maybe that means I could add more time. Josh is sort of against it, because I think he likes that I have a whole day that I could go to the parent teacher conferences or do podcasts or you know whatever. So we'll see what happens. But it is certainly true that I could could scale up at any moment should we need or want to. Well, that's good. That's good to make sure that that is there. And I mean the sort of a thing I sort of take for granted with self employment because it's always possible, is sort of scale up in the sense that you just market yourself more aggressively, right like reach out to all the people you've worked with in the past and be like, hey, we'd love to do more, and then there you are. Something will usually come back. But you know, it's a question of how much you're putting into that at any given point. All Right, what do we love to spend money on? Yeah, this is lightning long. We could we could skip a question. I leave that up to you if you want. I like this, Okay, well what do you What do we love to spend money on? So I do like eating in good restaurants. I find that that is something I enjoy spending money on. I have also taught myself to buy books with slightly less of that pain factor, like the physical pain of spending money, because you're supporting. I've read one of my friends and if everyone felt that it was painful to buy books, we'd have an issue in terms of my livelihood. So yeah, I like to buy books and feel happy spending money on that. How about you? I like to buy everything. You know, I'm not I mean like a sort of tongue in cheeic, but like I take pleasure in buying things for the most part, even and when it's like I'm paying or nanny or I'm paying for camp, I just like like, oh I can do this. I save for it, and I did it. So I like it. In terms of like indulgences, I like buying nicer sunscreen and bath products and like, I don't know, like make up that kind of a thing. Maybe because during childhood I felt like even our Suave conditioner was like rash, and so it's a rebellion thing. I love buying stationary products and I actually you said you you do Target for your kids clothes. But I love Tea collection and Boden and really enjoy spending a little bit on our kids. We've add we add water to the conditioner at the end the shampoo to get it out, which I probably is what you grew up with, right, Like, so that's your kids. Your kids are gonna have some expensive cosmetic habits. Possibly you shall see, all right, what is it? Pain? Money? Everything? We're having this this conversation, I don't know for some reason, like shopping at Costco in particular, it fills me with dread, you know, and I like to go for sometimes because they they have good deals. And yet you're still like buying a lot of stuff, and it's always expensive all where they are buy like you even if per paper towel roll it's cheap, like you're you're spending a lot then on paper towel. But we use it. We use it. We use all that toilet paper, we use all that parbasan cheek to stack this stuff. Dishwasher detergent, tied laundry. Yeah, you are so underby is so interesting. The only things I can I could think of to answer this question yours was like everything. I was like wind insurance because the deductible, that's like nobody wants. It's a lot. So I'm like, we're really never going to get anything out of this. But anyway, and then also that that horrible letdown if you do splurge on some super expensive dinner and then it wasn't that good. But I mean, who doesn't. Yeah, that's right. You never love spending money on things that you don't feel like you're getting your money's worth out of. That's always said, all right, let's go to the question. Let's get through this. So our listener wrote that her husband and her live about fifteen hundred miles from his family and almost four thousand miles from her family. Any tips for how to use our vacation time so that both of us can see each other's family. Only a few members of each family are able to visit us, so that we can take some trips to other destinations. We often each visit our own family separately, but it would be nice to take more trips together. I was sort of wondering from this if they don't have children, but maybe they do, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, you're right, because if they're taking trips separately, unless they're like breaking up the children, like each takes the children and leaves the others, I don't know, because the other can't get on work. Maybe that's how they're doing. But we'll answer it with both options. I think the biggest thing is that frequency matters more than the duration, and I have found that in my life, like I you know, if I take a weekend, it can be just as fulfilling as taking two weeks. So I think they need to make use of three day weekends or paid time off to take short trips to visit the ones they love, you know, short but intense can work. I also think they could build in some traditions there, like I believe this came from the Happier podcast, but like you know, Memorial Day is the time that they all go and visit, you know, the aunt and the parents go too. You know, if they start to have some no brainer destinations that they do every year, then they don't have to think about it. It's built in and it doesn't necessarily have to be a super long thing, but it'll become kind of an institution if they're doing it all the time. Yeah, I mean you can certainly travel, like even plane trips, you don't have to go for that long. I mean sometimes it seems like, well I've since I've gotten on the flight, I may as well stay for a long time. But as I've learned from work travel, that's not the case. I mean, you could be in and out of, you know, someplace in a very quick amount of time. So, you know, we're thinking about doing budgeting more for that and sort of less for other things. Or maybe they have jobs where they travel and get frequent with hire miles for that could use it for family travel too. But yeah, you know, I think using some of the longer weekends and so then that they could commit to taking a family vacation not to visit other family, you know, once a year, would would be helpful for at least feeling like, well we do this sometimes that not our entire you know, paid time off budget is used up through only family travel. I think that would help with this perspective as well. I'm surprised that they do this separate thing. I wonder if that'll. Yeah, that's why I was wondering about the kids, because I just don't see that being that's true. Something true would but maybe maybe because that could actually be, you know, take one kid to go visit grandma and the other takes the other kid to go visit the other grandma and then hey, you've done your thing. I don't know, maybe switch off the next year. I hadn't really pondered that could work. Well, somebody listening to this is that's what they do with their family, then please write in and let us know how you do it. All right, Sarah, your love of the week. We've been talking some other loves, but we'll get this one in. Yeah, this was not super budget. I have these really pretty, sparkly badgly Mishkas shoes that I just wore. And the first time I'd wore them, I was pregnant, so they weren't very comfortable, but this time it wasn't and I was like wow, for like three and a half in cheels, these are great and they were so pretty, and yeah, so those are my lovely I'm going to go with a Dutch Wonderland, which I mentioned earlier in this episode was our amusement park place we went, but some a lot of places, I mean Sesamme Plice does this too, Like during the winter, they'll open up for holiday weekends before Christmas, and you know, they don't have all the rides running. Obviously, the water rides are not running because it's a frozen outside. But if you can go on a day that's like forty degrees, it's actually relatively pleasant. And then you see all the lights and you know, you can ride some rides and it's a fun family active thing to do that. You know, in winter it starts being a lot of indoor stuff and gets boring going to the same children's museum over and over again. So just something to switch up. And in terms of this money episode, it was it was very cheap. Like as I mentioned, it was, you know, because not all the rides are open. They were charging a lot less than they were for the summer visit, so we wound up having a rather frugal family fun day, which I'm always a fan of. Anyway, this has been best at both worlds. We've been talking our money stories, so tune in next week for more on making work in life fit together. 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.