Five Awesome Questions From You

We get a lot of great questions from listeners and readers. And if one of you asks a question, dozens of other people have the same question. In order to reach you all, we like to do five questions episodes. So here they are, five awesome questions from you!

Is there such a thing as being too frugal, Betterment or Vanguard, how can you save money in college, what should you do with an IRA, where should your emergency fund live? We’re going to find out.

Question 1

I just discovered your podcast yesterday and have been bingeing it at work ever since. A little about me, I’m a recently graduated 23-year old that just got my first full-time job four months ago.

I’m really into budgeting and keep track of every dollar I spend in an effort to save money in case of a surprise expense (medical bills, lawsuit, car accident, accidental child (lol), etc.). I wanted to pick your brains about a few things because I feel conflicted about my spending. 

* I spend as little as possible, I now go out maybe twice a month, and feel guilty about it after. I stopped buying things that I enjoy consuming as well. I hate “impulse buying” because I did that a lot in college and I would always feel stressed about the lack of funds in my account. My question for you guys is how do you decide what to buy and spend money on and what is your justification every time you pull out your wallet for non-essentials?

* Sometimes I feel like my frugality caused stress in my relationship. You guys are both married or have girlfriends from what I heard on your show, how do you balance being frugal and showing your significant others a good time?

Hope to hear back from you, keep making awesome content.

-Tanner

Are you paying yourself first; maxing out your 401k if your employer offers one, investing with Betterment, do you have an IRA? Do you have credit card or student loan debt? Do you have an emergency fund?

If you answered yes, no, yes, relax! The level of angst you have surrounding money is understandable in people who answered no, yes, no but if you have a solid grasp on your finances, you shouldn’t be this stressed out.

Life would be pretty grim if we only worked to spend money on essentials. What is the point of working hard if you don’t get some pleasure out of the money you worked so hard to earn?

We can understand your fear of impulse spending because you’ve had a problem with that before. An easy way to address that is to write down any purchase you would consider an impulse buy or over a specific dollar amount on a 30-day list. If you still want the item after 30 days, it’s not an impulse buy.

Figure out what your spending priorities are. Some people don’t care so much about fashion and are happy with clothes from Target but absolutely must have the latest iPhone. Fair enough. You can have more of some and less of something else. More iPhones and fewer clothes.

Romantic partners, those worth having anyway, won’t mind frugality but no one likes a miser. You can be frugal but don’t be cheap. Most people won’t object if you choose a flight with a stopover for your vacation because it’s $100 less expensive than a direct flight. But most people will object to a 24-hour Greyhound ride because it’s even cheaper than flying non-direct!

You also don’t have to spend a lot or any money to have a fun date. We wrote an article that will give you 16 fun, cheap date ideas.