Digital Communication Done Right & Buy What You Love Without Going Broke

Beer should be served ice cold. Bottled beer is better than canned beer. These are just 2 incorrect assumptions people have about beer. This episode begins with a look at common beliefs about beer that just aren’t true – and what the real story is. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61195/11-common-misconceptions-about-beer You have a lot of options when it comes to communicating with others. You can text, video chat, email, phone or speak face-to-face. What you may not realize or think about is that the method of communication you choose itself sends a message. Choose the wrong method and you send the wrong message. Here to discuss the fascinating research behind all this is Andrew Brodsky. He is a management professor at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin and author of the book PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication (https://amzn.to/41h5fQH). Have you ever really examined what you spend your money on in say, the last 90 days? When you do, you just may learn some fascinating things about yourself. That is why it is one of several recommendations you will hear from my guest Jen Smith. She reveals how once you are clear on what is truly important to you, you can stop wasting money on things that don't matter and buy what you really love. Jen Smith is a personal finance expert and co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast (https://www.frugalfriendspodcast.com/) who has written for and been featured in Forbes, Money Magazine and Business Insider. She is co-author of the book, Buy What You Love Without Going Broke (https://amzn.to/41dBBM9). What is the best way to deal with a hostile boss? Perhaps using a little hostility in return. Listen as I reveal how a little passive-aggressive hostility may be the perfect way to manage that belligerent boss. https://news.osu.edu/news/2015/01/20/hostile-boss-study-finds-advantages-to-giving-it-right-back/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off QUINCE: Indulge in affordable luxury! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, some things you probably believe about beer that just aren't true. Then, how electronic communication can help or hurt your message. For example,

• 1:41Speaker 01

  If you're engaged in a potential conflict with a friend or acquaintance, and you're doing it over text or email, it would sometimes be really beneficial to say, "Hey, it seems like we're not reading each other correctly. Can we have a quick phone call?" But people tend not to do that.

• 1:55Mike Carruthers?

  Also, a great way to handle a hostile boss, and an insightful glimpse into how we spend our money.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  So there's a disconnect on what we love and what we spend money on. I think when we ask people, "What is most important to you?", they usually have these answers of like family and friends. But then when we talk about like, "What do you love to spend money on?", we jump straight to things.

• 2:22Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

  I imagine most of us shop for clothes online at least some of the time. And there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures. But when they arrived, eh, not so beautiful. Cheap looking, disappointing. And that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good and the prices are surprisingly reasonable.

• 3:06Mike Carruthers?

  I've bought their cashmere sweaters, which are gorgeous, and they start at just $60 for cashmere. My wife buys tons of stuff from Quince and we keep coming back. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, offering prices 50% to 80% less than similar brands. And with the holidays coming, that's a pretty compelling combination. Beautiful clothes and gifts without spending a fortune or wondering what's really going to show up at the door. I really do recommend Quince. It's one of those companies that has earned our trust. Give the gift of quality this holiday season.

• 3:46Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  And we're gonna start today with some practical advice you can use in your life if you're a beer drinker. Hi and welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. We drink a lot of beer in this country, yet there are some misconceptions about beer and how to drink it. For example, people believe that beer should be served ice cold. Actually, it should be served at 44 degrees. The reason is that taste buds become dead to the taste of the drink when it's served any colder than 44 degrees, which means you're really not getting the most enjoyment out of the beer. Drinking from a bottle is best. Well, not really. Much of the taste of beer or anything else is smell.

• 5:05Mike Carruthers?

  When you drink out of a bottle, the aroma doesn't make it to your nose because the bottle opening is too small. Many people believe that canned beer is cheap beer. But cans are actually a great way to protect beer. In the old days, beer in a can could sometimes take on an aluminum taste. But today, most cans have a water-based liner, so the beer isn't actually touching the aluminum. You might think that all beer bottles are the same, but they're not. Clear bottles, or green bottles, might be pretty, but they don't do much to protect your beer from light. Light interacts with the hops in beer and can make it go bad.

• 5:47Mike Carruthers?

  Dark beer bottles work best to help retain its flavor. Now, you might think beer causes a beer belly, and maybe it does, but beer is not the worst offender in the alcoholic beverage category. Many cocktails are much more fattening than beer. Margaritas are probably the worst. And that is something you should know.

• 6:13Mike Carruthers?

  When you choose to communicate with someone miles away, or just in the other room, you have a lot of options. You didn't used to, but now you can telephone, or text, email, FaceTime, there's all kinds of apps, or you could, you could just walk over and talk to the person. What's interesting is that which mode of communication you choose to use sends its own message, which I don't think most of us think about. Some means of communication are much more effective than others depending on the circumstance. Here to dig a bit deeper into this and explain why it's important to understand is Andrew Brodsky. Andrew is a management professor at Macomb School of Business at the University of Texas

• 6:58Mike Carruthers?

  at Austin and CEO of Ping Group. Andrew is author of a book called Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. Hi Andrew, welcome.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on, Mike.

• 7:11Mike Carruthers?

  So let's start here because I remember years ago when I first saw this happen and it just bothered me. And that is how people will use electronic communication, meaning text or FaceTime or even just the phone function on their phone, to communicate with someone who is 10 feet away. For example, my son might text me from his bedroom, "What's for dinner?" And he could easily get up and talk to me, but he doesn't. And I see this a lot.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  So when your son texts you from the other room, for instance, that's showing low effort. And when people purposely choose less rich technology that's easier for them, in many ways, it sends a signal like, "I can't be bothered to walk the five feet away to ask you that question." And so, understanding what we're telling the other person by which mode we choose is really important.

• 8:06Mike Carruthers?

  But I'm not sure he sees it that way. I doubt he would say, "Yes, I'm using low effort to ask what's for dinner." I think he sees it as the most convenient, efficient, and yeah, takes less effort, but he doesn't see it as low effort. He sees it more as an efficient way to get the message to me.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  And that's a great point. I actually did some research. And what I was looking at this set of studies is how do we evaluate effort or authenticity based on the mode of communication that others choose? There's two kinds of authenticity. There's the true authenticity that I really feel what I'm saying. And then there's a second type of authenticity that I also talk about, which is you want to seem like you're authentic and you care, but you don't necessarily actually care. And there's a lot of reasons for this. So maybe you had a really bad day. Then you're going out to lunch with one of your friends and they're telling you some really exciting news. And you're not excited because you're so upset about what happened earlier in the day.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  But it wouldn't be good for you to tell them about that when they just announced that they're engaged or something like that. So that's what we call surface acting, where you engage in this. In business, they call it service with a smile. But it's this idea that you're putting on a good face for somebody else, even if you might not be feeling that underlying emotion. So first, what my studies found is when you are being truly authentic, you actually are feeling what you want to express, choosing the richest mode of interaction, whether that's in person or whether that's a video call, that's best because that is seen as the highest effort and it lets your authenticity shine through. But when you're engaging in the surface acting,

• 9:55Speaker 01

  so you're faking your emotions, potentially for the other person's benefit, it's a little bit tricky because when you choose the richest mode of communication, in person or via video, yes, it's seen as the highest effort. But the downside is that your cues of underlying emotion can sneak through and other people can tell. And I found that when people were not being truly authentic, you know, they were trying to fake it, that they tended to be more likely to end up using text or email. But that also backfires because text-based communication is just seen as so low effort that it doesn't seem like they care. What I did find, though, is that audio serves as this interesting sweet spot,

• 10:40Speaker 01

  where it is much higher effort than email, text messaging, instant messaging, but you don't have to worry about all your nonverbal behaviors that happen in face-to-face interactions, that happen in video. So all you have to worry about is your words and your tone of voice, so you don't end up having that inauthenticity leak through. So in that way, audio can be this kind of sweet spot.

• 11:04Mike Carruthers?

  And so when you say "audio," you mean a phone call?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, phone call, voice note, or video call with cameras off. You know, there's more ways, but yeah, the most common one is still phone call for audio.

• 11:17Mike Carruthers?

  Well, to me, that's the big aha here, because I don't think people think about, "What message am I sending by the method I choose to send it?" That the means of communication in itself is sending a message.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is this default bias, that we just tend to default to whatever we normally use. So if we're in the middle of an email conversation, we don't think to switch modes. Or if we always do something in person, we don't think to switch it otherwise. There's some downsides to this. So if you're engaged in a potential conflict with a friend or an acquaintance, and you're doing it over text or email, it would sometimes be really beneficial to say, "Hey, it seems like we're not reading each other correctly. Can we have a quick phone call?" But people tend not to do that. So there's a lot of these times where it would be really beneficial to switch or to change what we normally do, but we don't put in the effort or the time to think about, "Is this actually the best approach to this communication?"

• 12:18Mike Carruthers?

  And I find it interesting that this is so not on people's radar. Like, I know people who will have very important, potentially...

• 12:31Mike Carruthers?

  Minefield kind of conversations that I can't imagine doing any other way than in person and they'll do it on text and I think wow, I mean that you're there are so many things that could go wrong here and this is way too important to be texting about it, but they do, they do, that's and that just that floors me.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  When I teach my students, one of the classes I teach is negotiations, what students will often tell me is I prefer to negotiate via email, it gives me time to think about it, it feels safer and one of the first things I point out is engaging in these kind of conversations, whether it's high conflict, but just between friends, whether it's a negotiation, oftentimes text-based communication is absolutely the worst way you could go for a few reasons. One, it's really hard to read the other person over text-based communication, especially when you don't know them well. And secondarily, let's just say you think the conversation's going well and suddenly

• 13:36Speaker 01

  they indicate that it's not for some reason and let's say you manage to figure it out over text-based communication. The problem is if it's texting, minutes have probably already passed. If it's email, potentially hours have already passed and you've lost that opportunity to immediately correct it. So if you're talking over a video call or in person and you see them suddenly frown, you realize, uh-oh, something I said didn't come across as I meant and you have that immediate opportunity to fix it and that's lost when you use less rich communication.

• 14:07Mike Carruthers?

  There does seem to be like a timeline where these things become acceptable over time, it seems. There was a time when, God, you can't have that kind of conversation in a text, but it gets normalized because I guess so many people do it, that then it becomes the, you know, the standard and for better or for worse.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  There's some research to indicate that it's not necessarily always for worse either. There's this theory called channel expansion theory, which is simply what it says is that when you're more familiar with a communication technology, the topic of the conversation, or the person you're interacting with, the differences between modes matter less. So for an example, if I get an instant message, or text message, or email from a stranger, or someone I barely know, there's a good chance I'm going to misinterpret their underlying meaning. But alternatively, if I were to just get a text message from my wife, I know exactly what she's saying.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I can fill in the gaps in between the lines with all the information I know about her. So the idea being that when you have a really strong relationship, you know about the person, and or you're just really, really good at the technology, those differences between them start to shrink. They definitely don't disappear, and there's definitely strengths and weaknesses for each, but there are certain situations where that choice is much more meaningful than others.

• 15:35Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about the different methods of communication we use and what message it sends. My guest is Andrew Brodsky, author of the book Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years, and yet there they hang, taking up space.

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• 17:01Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:16Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:42Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:54Mike Carruthers?

  So Andrew, is there a hierarchy of, for me, an in-person conversation beats every other kind, and text is probably at the very bottom of that list. But is that an objective list, or is that a subjective list?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. So for instance, this conversation you and I are having now. I'm someone who's fairly talkative, so each of my answers to you are multiple paragraphs long, and you've got a bunch of questions for me. If you emailed me these questions, and each of my responses were five paragraphs long, this would have taken me, you know, a long time to write. And so here's a time when, you know, having this conversation is much quicker than text. But let's push it in the other direction. When is text better than having the face-to-face or the synchronous interaction that we're having? Well, an example is, let's just say we're trying to brainstorm something.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  There's a lot of limitations for a group brainstorming, whether it's you're in a business team, or whether you're a bridal party trying to come up with ideas for the party. And what happens when you're in a group is a few things with brainstorming. Only one person can talk at a time when you're engaging synchronously. We tend to be more concerned that other people are going to judge our ideas negatively. And we tend to anchor on to other people's ideas. So someone says an idea, and then all of a sudden, all of our ideas are kind of sticking to, close to their ideas. But research shows that when you engage in brainstorming the initial stages separately and virtually, you tend to come up with more novel ideas because, A, everyone can do

• 20:35Speaker 01

  it all at once, and B, you're not anchoring each other on your ideas here. So there are a lot of situations where less-rich modes of communication can be really useful.

• 20:45Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, like if I'm at the store, and my wife wants me to pick up eggs, a text is probably fine, but only if I have the ringer on to hear the notifications, because it's happened plenty of times where she's texted me to get something, and I didn't think to check my phone, I didn't hear the text come in, and I forgot. And maybe if she had called, there would have been a better chance for me to feel the phone ring, or hear the phone ring, and get the eggs.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And that gets to one of the core pieces of advice about making the implicit more explicit when it comes to communication. The researcher on this started in email. And what they, these researchers found is that there's this email urgency bias. In that, when we receive an email, we think the other person wants a response much sooner than it turns out they actually do. So, Mike, if you sent me an email, I'd be like, okay, Mike's, you know, it's a really important guy, I gotta respond real quickly, I bet he, you know, is expecting me to respond. But in reality, you're like, I don't care if Andrew doesn't respond for a couple of days. And the problem with this misunderstanding is that can create a lot of stress, because everyone's potentially checking their phone all the time.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  And what these researchers found is that when you're explicit about response expectations, it ends up taking away that stress. So if you say, hey, could you respond within a couple of days? That ends up really decreasing people's stress, their need to constantly check these things. And then taking that a level up, what I generally recommend in people's relationships, on their teams, is actually having conversations about, hey, you know, what response speed should we have for text messages? What about phone calls? How should I get in touch with you if there's something urgent? As opposed to just leaving people wondering. And this relates to all those stories about, you know, you're early in a relationship and you text someone and they don't respond for five hours and you think they must hate you.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  But the other person really just generally doesn't respond to texts for usually a day. And by having those conversations more openly, you don't end up making these false assumptions that can undermine relationships, that can stress you out, and really just make everything worse.

• 23:00Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't there sort of a hierarchy of methods depending on how urgent it is? Like, if you need to talk to me right away, call me. If you maybe need to talk to me pretty soon and communicate pretty soon, text me. If it can wait a little longer, email me. If it can wait even longer, send me a letter in the mail. But like, there is this kind, at least that's the sense I have of those methods.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there definitely are these norms associated with different modes. One of the examples that I like to use is instant message or chat versus email. In theory, they're both text-based communication, but we feel like texting and instant messaging should get quicker responses than email because we have these associations tied to it. That said, you can't assume that everyone has the same hierarchy as you. Particularly for younger generations now, they really hate phone calls and voicemails. Although they're OK with voice notes, which is kind of funny when you consider how it's not all that different from voicemail. But there are these norms that are associated with different things for different people depending on what they're used to, where they grew up,

• 24:12Speaker 01

  how old they are, what technology they're used to. So it's not always aligned. And even if you have the same hierarchy as someone else, they may expect quicker response times to everything. They have the same ordering, but they expect response times in half the time that you do. And just by having these open conversations and getting on the same page, at least for those important relationships that matter, can really avoid those awkward situations where people are misreading the situation.

• 24:38Mike Carruthers?

  So talk about video meetings, Zoom meetings, which have become pretty normal since COVID, where people, six, eight people, will be on a Zoom call and everybody can see each other. And there's something about that that makes it more stressful than, say, just a phone call. And yeah, I suppose you can turn your camera off or not turn it on in the first place. But I think that sends a message. I think it sends a message of either that you don't care as much or maybe you had a bad night and you look like hell or something. But so you can't turn your camera off if everybody else's is on.

• 25:21Mike Carruthers?

  What do you think?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  When it comes to video, I always get this question. Should we have video on, video off, calls or meetings? And this gets to the idea of the best mode or the best choice depends on your goal in the situation. So as you noted, having videos on can be useful for showing you're engaged. So in the conversation. So imagine you're interacting with someone who maybe you don't think is that good a friend or that hard worker. If you don't see them in an interaction, you may assume that they're doing something else. Maybe they're looking up recipes on their phone or doing emails to somebody else. But when you see them, it creates the illusion that they're more engaged.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  And I say illusion because it doesn't necessarily mean that they are because they could still have their emails up instead of your face on the screen. But we interpret it as, okay, they're looking at us a little bit more. But less somewhat irrationally, let's say, seeing the other person is also useful for building trust. We trust those that we feel familiar with. So if we understand what someone looks like, if we understand their mannerisms, then we tend to trust them more. If we've never met someone or we've only barely seen them, having that opportunity to gather more information about them so we feel more familiar with them can help build that trust. But now let's go to the other side of things.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Video off. There's a lot of good research on what's called Zoom fatigue or video conferencing fatigue. And the idea behind this is that having your camera on can be really fatiguing. It can be really exhausting. There is some research that shows that we spend a good chunk of the video calls just staring at ourselves during the call. And that's correlated with our negative emotions during the call. So if your goal is to conserve energy, then video off. If your goal is to show that you're engaged, to try and build trust, then video on.

• 27:26Mike Carruthers?

  And there's just always the issue of, you know, you gotta make sure, you gotta look at what your camera sees before the call, make sure nobody sees your socks on the floor, or, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, how's your hair look and all that, and what are you wearing? And it just seems like a lot of, I would just rather not.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I feel the same way too. And there's research that shows that, at least in work contexts, being able to wear more casual clothes can make you feel more authentic during these interactions. And it's just, it's stressful to have to engage in this kind of impression management. And it's even worse on video, because at least in person, you're not staring at yourself in the mirror as you're engaging in a high importance conversation. Whereas on video, you see every little thing you're doing. And that can be really stressful in conversations where you're trying to make a good impression on somebody.

• 28:20Mike Carruthers?

  So I know you say that things like typos actually send a message, send emotion. Talk about typos.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  We found that typos can relay emotion. So it's kind of like putting your fist up in the air, where it's not clear what emotion you're showing by doing that, but it can amplify emotions. So if your fist is up in the air, it can make you seem more proud, or more angry, or more excited. Typos act the same way. So in an angry email, they make you seem angrier. In a happy email, they make you seem happier. Because the idea here is that by showing that, hey, I wasn't overly proofing this message, I was just so excited or so angry that I wrote it, people interpret that as your emotions being stronger. But there's an interesting finding in this set of studies as well.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  So first, there was the obvious finding that typos generally make you look less intelligent. But we found that in the context of emotional emails, the senders were penalized less for typos. They weren't seen as less intelligent as much. And the idea here is that when we're receiving messages, we're looking for reasons why something happened. So if there's a typo, we say, oh, the person's often not as intelligent. But there's some alternative explanation. Oh, they're emotional, or, oh, they're in a rush. Then we tend to lean that interpretation on something more favorable. And there's other research that shows that when you have sent from my iPhone in your signature, typos are penalized less.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  So a key thing to take away from this, aside from we're sending more emotion cues, and we realize is that sometimes giving the other people a little more information, like, hey, I just wanted to get back to you ASAP, I just heard, I'm really excited, as opposed to being overly professional or overly scripted in your communication, can be really useful for helping to make sure that any mistakes you do make are attributed to something that makes you look good, as opposed to something that makes you look bad.

• 30:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this is great, because we all use some or all of these modes of communication you're talking about. And I don't think most of us think about, wait a minute, this would be better on a phone call, this would be better in a text. And it really does make a difference. Andrew Brodsky's been my guest. The name of his book is Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Andrew. Really enjoyed having you on.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Of course. It was a great conversation.

• 31:27Speaker 03

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• 31:45Mike Carruthers?

  You understand enough about money to know that you can't buy everything you want. That would be crazy. But maybe you could buy everything you love. Really love. It's a unique way to look at how you spend your money and opens up a conversation you have probably never heard before. But you're about to hear it now as I discuss this with Jen Smith. Jen is a personal finance expert and co-host of the Frugal Friends podcast. She has written for or been featured in Forbes, Money Magazine, Business Insider, and others. And she is co-author of a book called Buy What You Love Without Going Broke. Hi Jen, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Hey Mike, thanks so much for having me.

• 32:32Mike Carruthers?

  So start by explaining the philosophy here because you're not saying buy what you want, but buy what you love.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Well, the title Buy What You Love Without Going Broke was very intentional. We say love because so often we think about what we buy between want versus need. And really the lines are so blurred. So often we will buy things and we will justify them as a need. Even, so a house, for example, is a need on the surface. But for plenty of decades, families of four and five lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath house and they considered that to be enough, to be a need. Whereas, you know, I live in a 2,000 square foot house with, and there's just four of us, and I love that, but I don't need all of it.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  I want the other 1,000 square feet. And so there's no shame in that. But then also, there are needs that we have as humans that we don't always think about. There are the things money can't buy, yet money is still required to pursue them. Like deeper relationships with family and friends, spiritual practices, fulfilling work. And so, we're really trying to get away from what common practice in society and just like long, a long time of referring to want and need and kind of rebranding it, starting fresh

• 34:04Speaker 02

  with figuring out what you individually love, what you love aside from what everybody is trying to tell you to love.

• 34:14Mike Carruthers?

  But if you were to ask a bunch of people, what do you need? What do you want? And what do you love? That people are pretty clear about what's in those individual buckets?

• 34:26Speaker 02

  I think when we ask people, what is most important to you? They usually have these answers of like family and friends. But then when we talk about spending money, like what do you love to spend money on? We, we jump straight to things. Like, I love to spend money on coffee. I love to spend money on eating out. So there's a disconnect on what we love and what we spend money on. So, we're trying to create systems and kind of a framework so that when we think about spending money, we have at least in the back of our head, this motivation to spend it in most alignment with what we truly value.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Like when I buy coffee, am I just going through the drive-through because it's a habit? Or am I getting coffee with a friend? Is it connected to something that is one of those higher needs?

• 35:21Mike Carruthers?

  Well, where in the equation though is like, how much do you have? And you've got to afford all this.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Right. And so that's where the not going broke part comes in. And so we prioritize. We can't, we can want anything, but we can't usually want everything. We don't want everything. So it comes first to honoring what season you're in. There are going to be times in your life where you may not be able to make as much as other times. And hopefully, those are just seasons. Hopefully, we can reframe and believe that it's not a permanent thing. It's a season. And we're always working to, to be content without being complacent.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  And then we prioritize like what is most important in our lives and just work on those biggest, highest values, most important values there.

• 36:17Mike Carruthers?

  So I get the philosophy, but maybe you could, could give like an example, some, an example of some of, plug some things into those holes of what you're talking about. So for like example, this instead of that, or this, to get a, a better sense of like how somebody would go through this process.

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Right. So before I had kids, something that was really important to my husband and I was traveling. We paid off $78,000 of debt in two years and we decided to celebrate, we wanted to take a trip to Bali. And, and we did it. We saved and that was super important. We were at the time, living in a house we had just bought and we had moved from a 1-1 to a, to, to a 3-2 and had bought no extra furnishings for it. So two of the bedrooms, most of the living room, one of the bathrooms completely empty. But we decided it was more important

• 37:17Speaker 02

  to us at that time. We wanted to take the trip. We wanted to travel and we knew it wouldn't be forever, that it was a, a unique season in our lives. Now that we have kids.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Putting systems into place that make life easier is much more important. All the way down to like buying the pre-cut veggies at the grocery store. So I spend a little bit more money there on those things. So it makes my life easier. I could some for somebody else, it could be house cleaning every week or every other week. So it's honoring the season I'm in in my life and knowing that it's not forever. And choosing the things that I want to spend my money on versus feeling like almost a societal pressure to be doing and spending on everything.

• 38:07Mike Carruthers?

  When you like, when you just gave that example, so maybe you buy the cut vegetables. But, but is there a goal there? Like, I mean, how much are you going to save doing that? And how do you know that's worth it? I mean, there must be some sort of barometer or something.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  It's checking in with my financial goals. So everyone is going to have different financial goals. Looking at your financial goals and figuring out what is the thing that I can do now? Instead of doing everything, there are so many good things you can do financially. What's the one thing that I can do that makes future financial goals and future things easier or unnecessary?

• 38:49Mike Carruthers?

  We all know people who seem to lead a simpler life. They're not driven by getting all the latest gadgets and the newest car and all that. And they seem quite content that way. And maybe it's a personality driven thing, but then there are people who really want to have everything and are very, you know, let's call them materialistic. How do you decide whatever personality you are? How do you decide what it is right now with all the things that I would love to have? What should I have right now?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  I don't always think it's a personality thing. Marketing has been so carefully crafted to make it so easy to buy. And they've crafted these problems that never existed before, just so they can sell their product or service as a solution to these created problems. So the way that we're consuming isn't always a needs versus wants versus personality issue. So I think part of it comes down to knowing how you're being marketed to. And knowing that, so you can take a pause before you buy something. So if you want a good baseline to start out at, we call them the four Fs.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Family, faith, friends, fulfilling work. And so you can start there and you can usually tie a lot of your purchases back to something like that. But really taking the time to ask yourselves, to get curious with yourself. And doing, starting with like a 90 day transaction inventory. And looking at your transactions and saying, and asking, what was I trying to get at when I made that transaction? Not why, because if you ask yourself why questions, it kind of puts you on the defense. So getting really neutral, taking out the judgment and just looking at your transactions with curiosity.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  And looking at what was I trying to get at by making this purchase?

• 40:57Mike Carruthers?

  Something that I think happens a lot is that people convince themselves that if I buy this thing, this car, this house, this computer, whatever it is, that that's what's going to make me happy. And they convince themselves of that, so they justify buying it. But in a short time, it's just a house. It's just a car. It's just a computer. It does what it does. We get used to it. Now you need something else because now something else is going to make you happy because that thing that you bought didn't make you happy for the rest of your life. And that that's what drives a lot of what people buy.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  The way I see it happen most is when we're trying to buy our self-esteem. So I see so often people will go out and buy new cars because their car, it's, they do, they need another car because the other car is breaking down. That's a good decision to go buy another car. And we'll justify buying a brand new car because they need it. Or the safety features, or I deserve it. And in reality, of course, yes, you want to be safe. And yes, of course, you deserve it. But can, does it financially make sense to you to get a brand new car, which has, it's

• 42:21Speaker 02

  $200 more a month, or get a three-year-old car, which saves you that maybe a little bit more in interest, but it still saves you overall in, in the long run? And we, we go out and we buy these new cars or these shiny new cars because they, we think, I deserve it. When people see it, they're going to have more respect for me because they're going to think that I, you know, I have a job and I'm a functioning person in society versus driving a beater. And we're trying to buy our own self-confidence, feeling good, driving in, you know, a shiny new car, and buy other people's respect. And then we quickly find it doesn't work like that.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  And so then we're off to the next thing. And so if we truly knew what we were trying to get at in the first place, then we could much more easily justify saving the money on the car and investing our time and maybe even our money into things that truly increase respect of others and self-confidence in ourselves. But we don't. We just, we just so easily fall into the cycle that has been given to us by Automobile marketing, makeup marketing, skincare marketing, fitness marketing, what have you. And, and it just doesn't take, we don't think critically about that downfall,

• 43:49Speaker 02

  that, oh, it didn't work. So maybe I, maybe I should think deeper about myself and what I'm really trying to buy. No, instead we'll just think, okay, what's the next thing I can buy? This didn't solve my problem. What's the next thing I can buy? And maybe that'll solve my problem.

• 44:05Mike Carruthers?

  So how do you monitor your spending? How do you keep track of this so you can make those right decisions?

• 44:12Speaker 02

  So it starts with that 90 day transaction inventory. When you're finding patterns, you're going to see transactions on there that just did not get you what you wanted at all. For me, the first time I did it, I realized it was, it was beer, like breweries. That was a thing that my friends were doing very frequently. And I realized I, I don't like beer enough to keep doing that. I would much rather, right? Meet with my friends somewhere else and even spend my money elsewhere than keep going to breweries and drinking a beverage that I don't

• 44:53Speaker 02

  really like. And so for me, beer and breweries became the first thing on my easy no list. If people are going there, then I can easily say no, or if I really do want to meet the need of connection, then I can go there and just not buy anything. Nobody looks at you weird. It's totally fine. Nobody's going to like criticize you for sitting there not buying anything because everybody else is buying something. So that's kind of how you can come to this easy no list. And there should be at least, looking through that inventory, you could pick three to four things right off the bat that you can put on your easy no

• 45:35Speaker 02

  list. And then you can also pick three to four things you can put on your easy yes list. Those are, it's just as important to have both of those lists. And the more you do it, and the more you get acquainted with what you value and what you don't, your no list becomes longer.

• 45:54Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I love that idea. I mean, whoever stops to think like you did, you know, I don't really like beer. Why am I doing this? And you just go along with the crowd, or you go along because, you know, that's just, it's something to do and so why? And why? Why do that? Why not do something you want or just stay home and read a book? But it makes so much sense and yet I don't think people really stop and think, yeah, let's rethink this whole thing.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's not an inherently bad thing to go to a brewery with your friends, especially since connection is one of those big, higher needs. But when you can think about these higher needs and prioritize getting them first, and then you don't become like at somebody else's whim in how you achieve your higher needs.

• 46:52Mike Carruthers?

  But like you say, it is always a moving target. I mean, it's never like you do this once and now your life is fine. It's always shifting and changing and you just, you gotta kind of stay on top of it. And your needs change, your desires change. I mean, what I wanted in my twenties is not what I wanted in my forties. You know, it's, it's, it's, everything changes.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  You're always living in a season and sometimes it's a short season. Sometimes it's a longer season, but so it's just a great idea to do an annual check in.

• 47:24Mike Carruthers?

  What happens when you throw into the equation the fact that you have debt to pay off? You have credit card debt and, you know, you also have to live your life and you want to do things that are important to you, but you also have that nagging debt that you need to attend to?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, we felt that, my husband and I did, because we paid off, we were paying off $78,000 of debt with an income of around $88,000 combined. So we went very, very hard and I don't necessarily recommend that to other people. It was a miserable time for most of it, but I learned a lot. And it's where I started to figure out this idea of values-based spending. Because I had essentially cut out all discretionary spending in order to achieve this one goal. And because we only had one goal, we were able to achieve it much faster

• 48:25Speaker 02

  than if we had had competing goals. But I realized on the journey that what I wanted wasn't the coffees I gave up. It wasn't the dinners I gave up or anything else. But it was the reason I was going to those places. It was the connection with friends. And as a newlywed with no kids, that was really the most important value to me at that time. And it was what made me most hesitant to pay off my debt, too, because I didn't want to give those things up. I didn't know why. But I just, I was like, I don't want to like live under a rock. I want to go to happy hour. I want to do all these things. So when I realized what it really was that I was missing after giving up all of that, then I was able

• 49:09Speaker 02

  to pursue that instead of the happy hours and the dinners. And so I started inviting friends over to my house. And we would all, you know, bring a bottle of wine, which obviously isn't free, but far less than happy hour. Or we would do coffee at home. We would do game nights. We would go, we would find free events on our city's website. So free movies in the park, fun runs at the running store, stuff like that. And that, when I started doing stuff like that, when I was engaged in that, it made paying off debt not as miserable. I was still sad when I would see my friends on social media buying new cars, buying like

• 49:54Speaker 02

  houses, all of this stuff that I had decided wasn't my current goal. But I was getting what I actually wanted. And that made it better. And so I would say to anybody else that has a lot of debt, Look first to your needs, your higher needs, your core values, and see if you can get those without spending as much money as you currently are. And then whatever you're saving is money that you can afford to put towards debt. And if you made debt pay off your only financial goal for the next year, what could you accomplish?

• 50:34Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I love this, and I really like that idea of the 90-day review of your spending. And you discovered, you know, you're spending all this money on beer that you and you don't even like beer. So it became very easy to cut it out of your budget. But unless you actually do that kind of review, you never know. I've been talking with Jen Smith. She's a personal finance expert, host of the Frugal Friends Podcast, and she's author of the book Buy What You Love Without Going Broke. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Hey Jen, thanks for coming on and talking about this.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  Yes, thank you so much, Mike.

• 51:13Mike Carruthers?

  If you've ever had a hostile boss, you know, it can be very stressful because you just don't know how to deal with them. Well, there's some interesting research that says the best way to deal with a hostile boss may just be be hostile right back to them. Not by yelling or insulting the boss, that's not going to work, but rather doing things like ignoring the boss or acting like you have no idea what he or she is talking about or putting in a half-hearted effort. While these are passive-aggressive forms of retaliation, they do seem to work on several levels. In some interesting studies, they found that people who did not retaliate this way had higher levels of distress and less job satisfaction,

• 51:58Mike Carruthers?

  as well as little commitment to their work. People who did retaliate in these passive-aggressive ways didn't seem to have those negative consequences. They also didn't feel that retaliating hurt their careers either. Plus, those employees who fought back gained the admiration of their coworkers. We tend to respect people who fight back and don't take the abuse, according to the researchers. And having the respect helps employees feel more committed to their work. Even if the boss is a jerk. And that is something you should know. Well, this is one of those episodes where I certainly learned a lot. And I hope you did too. And if you would like to share this knowledge with some people you know,

• 52:41Mike Carruthers?

  that would really help us by helping to grow our audience. And somewhere on the player that you're listening to this on, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Castbox or wherever, there's a button somewhere that you can share this episode easily with other people and help us grow our audience. It's probably the best thing you can do to support this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 53:10Speaker 04

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