Hello everyone and welcome back to my special six-week series, The Grown Women's Guide to Life, where we are talking about all things navigating your 30s and just kind of adulthood generally with financial grace and ease. And while at TFD we are often talking about things

not to buy or ways not to spend your money, today I want to talk about 13 things that I have purchased that have changed my life. Some are really big, super serious financial things, some of them are small and frankly kind of silly, but all of them have truly impacted my

life in one way or another and have allowed me to become a person who I think overall makes not only good money choices but feels pretty contented with her life. The key here is to remember that my purchases are not going to be the exact same as yours, but I do think

from time to time it's really healthy to look back on how we've spent our money and think of the things that have made the biggest differences and what we can learn from each of those purchases. And on that note, I'd love to hear some of

your best purchases or life-changing purchases down in the comments below. And as with every episode in this series, this video is brought to you by Advisor Now. I started working with a financial advisor several years ago and we'll talk about that a little bit more in this

video, but I knew that they were the perfect partner for this series because not only is finding a really good financial advisor truly a game-changer for when you are looking to step up to that higher level in your financial planning and wealth building, but I am

also a huge believer in the advisor transparent flat fee model which means that their advisors work for you and not for commissions no matter what they recommend they get paid the same so if you are ready to step up your financial planning game both in investments and a

360 view of your money and life goals check out advisor at the link in our description and if you use our link you will get an exclusive $500 discount off of your first year but anyway on to my 13 purchases that have changed my life starting with number one simply put my

LLC for the Financial Diet now I technically have three LLC's I have the Financial Diet I have one for all of my publishing stuff and I have an old one that I used for all of my regular general interest freelance stuff back when I was making some of my money as a

freelance writer now this is not to say that the LLC in and of itself was the life-changing aspect because to be fair what really becomes life-changing about starting a small business or going freelance is the work that you put into it but committing to the idea and

setting up a proper legal and financial structure that also meant opening a business bank account to keep my finances separate opening a QuickBooks account to manage all of my expenses associated with the business the LLC for the Financial Diet which to be clear we started a few months after I wrote the

first blog post for TFD and shout out to Hank Green was actually opened with the money from a grant that we received from Hank and John it gave a level of structure and commitment to the business that not only made me take it more seriously but also ensured that if and

when we would start earning money, which we did, it would be properly categorized from day one. Whenever we do our entrepreneur classes and boot camps, we always talk about making sure that you set up the proper legal and financial structure for a small business or solopreneurship at the beginning.

because trust me, you will miss it when it's gone. If you get far into the business operations and your finances are a complete mess with your personal ones, but I do also think that it is a mental commitment. And if you are not ready to go through the process of

setting up your business, it's usually a good indicator that you're not quite ready to start investing in that business yet, whether financially or just in terms of the work you're putting into it. Which is no big deal, it just means we maybe have to let it cook a little bit.

And on a similar note, my second purchase is an investment account. Now I want to be clear that an investment account, I just opened one using a robo advisor, it's not technically a purchase in the way we think of a purchase. It's not like I exchanged money for the account. The

account in this case is really just a fund, a bucket that holds a bunch of different investments. But making the decision to open up an investment account, and for context, this was before TFD had a 401k. Now I also have my employer-backed retirement account, was

the first time I'd ever done something for my money that felt like it was beyond just getting by. It had taken so long to do things like get out of credit card debt, pay off my collections, start working on my credit score and build up an emergency fund that it felt

at the beginning of my financial journey, like I would never actually be doing anything proactive with my money, that it would all just be damage control. So the day that I opened up my first investment account felt like the day that I was actually finally investing in myself and

since then, between my husband and I, we have several different investment accounts and like I said, I do have a 401(k) through TFD, but that very first one still is very special to me even though at the beginning I could barely afford to put any money in it because it

represented the potential of something beyond just survival mode, which had been the framework I was existing in for my entire financial life to that point. Now, on the less strictly financial, SL professional front, I have number three, which is Mona. Now, Mona, my dog, who's currently taking a nap in the other room

and we're not going to bother a queen while she's sleeping, was not a purchase in the sense that I didn't get her from a breeder or God forbid, a puppy mill. She is indeed an adopted dog. Her mom accidentally got pregnant out in Queens,

which happens in many such cases, but we have put a lot of money into her over the years, just in the care and keeping of Mona. She's 10 years old as of October, which means that over the years we've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on

this little tiny being. Now, I could go on forever about the ways in which a dog has really changed my life. Now, I always grew up having dogs, so I was just very used to the concept, but interestingly enough, I always had 'dog dogs' in the

context of living in a home with a yard, so I was just always used to you just let your dog run around and they pretty much just live in the confines of your home and property. But here in New York City, you have to take your dog outside

on a regular basis. You go to parks, you go on walks together. They don't have a yard you can just open up the door and let them run into. So kind of by default, dogs really give such a level of structure to your life, which in my mid

20s when we got her was something I desperately needed, but also really gave me the feeling that I could care for something, be responsible for something. And since then, we have traveled the world with her, we've been through some health scares with her, and we have just

generally gotten so much love and joy and meaning out of having her in our life. Now, I can only speak to owning dogs, I can't speak to cats or birds or reptiles or any of the other pets that we own, although I know all of them can

be very meaningful and life-changing. But I can say if you are someone who has been considering or debating getting a dog, first of all, I would look into fostering as a first step because I think that not only is it a good way to understand how a dog could fit into your

life, it's also a really important thing to do for dogs who are in need of adoption. But I would also say dogs, especially again in a city where you have to be very proactive in how you take care of them, a good question to ask yourself is, am I looking for a higher

level of accountability in my life and do I feel prepared to offer that accountability because ultimately dogs do need a pretty high level of maintenance, especially if you get a dog that's more active, needs more exercise, size, all of those kinds of things. And to be fair, I think some people do get dogs

when they are not ready or capable or in the right headspace to take care of them. But if you're someone who's been looking for that externally enforced structure and accountability on top of all of the love it can give you, I think dogs are a really, really great option.

Now on another not quite as financial note, we have number four, Kelly Cutrone's memoir, *If You Have to Cry, Go Outside*. Now the TFD historians in this chat will remember that we interviewed Kelly Cutrone uh in one of our earlier episodes of the Financial Confessions. It's still

to this day one of my favorite episodes. We'll link you to that in the description so you can check it out, but I was beyond thrilled to have her on the show, not really because I was a fan of hers from the MTV, uh, *The Hills* days,

although I do remember watching that and thinking that she came off as like quite villainous in the show, which I think was definitely what they were going for. I actually was mostly just a fan of her book, *If You Have to Cry, Go Outside*. 

Listen, is it a controversial title? Absolutely. I would not necessarily say that today in 2024 that it would pass in quite the same way that it did when it was first published, but I found it to be a life-changing read for me personally. I

I first read it when I was just starting out as a business person, when I was just starting to rehab my finances and come into my own as a young adult woman. And kind of similarly to getting a dog, it felt really transformative in the way that I looked at accountability

and what I was capable of. It was the first time I had read a memoir by a woman that I found to be so unapologetic in the sort of 360 view of her as a person. It is by turns not very flattering to her, like she doesn't come

across as a perfect or even great person throughout the entire thing. It's really, really honest. Um, she talks about a lot of super personal experiences, things that are very traumatic, very vulnerable, and again, sometimes kind of unlikable, but I found that to be incredible

because at the time I had only ever really seen men, and especially businessmen, who were able to have that kind of full range of humanity and didn't always need to be likable in order to be respected or to invest in themselves or to take themselves

seriously. And I actually remember I read the book primarily at a park with what was at the time my new dog that I was like taking out and taking care of. Um, and my dog had made me feel like, "Ooh, I'm like, I'm turning into a little grown

woman here. Like, I have something to take care of that depends on me." And I just remember reading the book and seeing the way that she related not only to her professional life, but also to her life choices, to the people who depended on her. And it was the first time that I had

felt like okay there is maybe a version of being an adult woman now I'm not here to say that I was trying to emulate her 100% or I would make all the same choices or anything like that but that there was a way to own your imperfection

without being ashamed of it or covering it in qualifiers and she had such a radical sense of accountability towards her self and who she was that I found to be just frankly incredibly fascinating and really interesting to watch and ever since then I've really kind of been

obsessed with like imperfect flawed unlikable protagonists and heroines because I just think it is not something that we see enough in fiction or in non-fiction um and that there's always such a pressure on women to do things perfectly in order to talk about them or

to put themselves out there so Kelly Katron if you have to cry go outside huge GameChanger for me and the fact that that book came into my life and sort of that way of viewing things came into my life at the same time um as the

first thing I was like responsible for in my dog uh just felt like a very fortuitous time now taking it back into my home number five is my Dutch oven now I know that this is probably not lifechanging for some people in the way that they perceive it like I'm sure for

some people lifechanging has like a much higher barrier to qualification but for me my Dutch oven it's a like cast iron large Dutch oven uh by the brand Staub I bought it years and years ago almost a decade ago it's one of the very first

like true investment pieces that I got from my kitchen, it was several hundred dollars um, by now the cost per use is like probably under a penny because I use it literally constantly. I use it for braising, making soups, pastas, deep frying, you can bake bread in it, uh which I

don't, but my husband has. Um, you can do so many things with it. But also, I just found that it was one of the first times that I had made an investment in wanting to do something more frequently, in this case, um, cooking more in my home, that it

actually gave me a reason to lean into doing that. I think that often we tend to make the extravagant purchase for the thing that we want to do more of or be better at before we've put in the work to practice it, um, thinking that that purchase will encourage us to want to

make up the difference by doing the thing. So, for example, getting extremely expensive running shoes even though you don't run because you think it will make you want to train for a marathon and feel guilty if you don't. That almost never works right. But if you have

started to put in the effort to do something with subpar products or with just what you have around and then you invest in the item that is going to make that easier or better, typically that is a much better way to make a purchase. So, in the case of my Dutch oven, I had been

using a really, really basic heavy bottomed pot that I had gotten from I think like TJ Maxx when I first moved here. Nothing wrong with it. It was just a lot less nice, a lot less versatile, um, than the Dutch oven. And after using that a ton, I upgraded and it really did

inspire me to want to cook more in the home not only because I loved it as a piece but because I felt proud of myself that I had really put in the work to prove to myself that I was someone who cooked at home frequently before I went

ahead and invested in the piece so it's not just something that has had a hugely beneficial cost per use it's also something that in the way that I bought it and in the way that I decided to make that purchase uh really was the right

way to frame how I make those purchases in my mind and was one of the first times as a young adult that I had the patience to actually wait to make that investment when it was the right time similarly number six is a language tutor now I've talked about this a million

times on the channel but it's because it's one of the things I'm most passionate about in this life I truly do believe that learning languages is just a transformative and in some ways almost radical human act not only do I think that it makes us just more thoughtful

worldly interested and interesting people like when I meet people who speak six seven languages like I'm like I will pay just to be in your presence and soak up your atoms like this is so cool this is so interesting like how did you learn them where did you go who did you meet

who did you speak to like it adds such a depth and richness to a person's life that I think even just purely on the surface it's very cool but I think especially in a world that is increasingly isolated increasingly xenophobic increasingly nationalist

there is something really powerful about taking a step out of your own linguistic comfort zone and learning someone else's way of viewing the world. There's tons of really interesting research that people who speak different languages actually think differently; they perceive reality differently, they experience emotion

differently. And so getting to relate to other people in that way is a profound thing. Also, being a native English speaker for us Americans, Canadians, uh, English people, British people, whatever the case may be, we are so used to the world being defaulted to us, to

English being sort of like the the general language of World Travel, of Tourism, of you know, business and commerce. We're used to being accommodated to, so we don't often have to experience the struggle and embarrassment of having to be not very

good at communicating, which I think also is very beneficial because it really teaches us as adults to overcome that fear of not automatically being good at something, which is something that adults really just tend to avoid uh, out of habit. But lastly, there's also incredibly

good research on how transformative language learning throughout life can be to the human brain, particularly for saving off things like dementia and just keeping us more mentally and intellectually flexible as we age. So those are some of my biggest reasons for being hugely passionate about language

learning. But I will say as someone who decided, cuz I had only spoken English and then spoken French from a young age, so neither of those were, I don't even remember when I started learning French, so I didn't really have to kind of go through it as an adult. Um, but when I

decided to learn Spanish a few years ago as an adult I made the investment to work with a tutor um which was a total game-changer right because it allowed me to not only sort of practice in a very sort of native natural way with a native

speaker and she was also a woman my age so I could really kind of speak to her in a fun friendly way and relate to her it also allowed me through that investment similar to the purchase that I was talking about before want to make good use of it because unlike some of

the apps or more sort of passive ways of learning language which I find can often be easy to sort of pick up or put down depending on what mood you're in when you have another human being in front of you there is a sense of accountability and a sense of investment and it made it

so much easier to then travel to countries where I was immersed in Spanish go to Spanish language meetup groups or activities and just generally feel much more at ease when I was in a situation where it was not just about understanding but about speaking extemporaneously so if you have ever

been interested in learning a language as an adult not only do I encourage you beyond all measure and by the way this is not to say that apps aren't good I have also used Duolingo and things like that for countless hours I've used

Rosetta Stone I've used like name a language app I've probably used it I just think that also a language tutor can be a game-changing investment for so many reasons and when it comes to external accountability number seven for me is a financial advisor now I am not going to

spend too much time on this because we talked about it in the intro and I've mentioned it in each video, but I started working with a financial advisor several years ago and it has genuinely really, really helped not only my investment strategy but also just kind of

understanding the way that money fits into my bigger life goals. I am at a place now where I am a higher earner. I have my own business, I actually have multiple businesses. I have multiple sources of income. I live in a dual-income household. We don't have

children, but we do have other things we want to allocate for other family members, uh, people in our lives that we want to uh, help provide for and other things that we want to accomplish. You know, we maybe don't want to wait until official retirement age to retire. We

would maybe want to live somewhere else or own a different piece of property throughout our lives. Like, there are a lot of things that we want to do and it's just really interesting to be able to sit down with someone who is kind of a, you know, a neutral third party who can

look at everything and say, 'Hey, listen, like if this is what you want to do in two years, five years, 10 years, like this is how I would recommend going about it. This is what I think you could be doing better.' Um, and also kind of walks through

all of the different, you know, risks and benefits associated with a given financial strategy because especially as you get beyond the very basics of financial health, like having your emergency fund, putting money into your retirement account, etc., there are a lot of different options for how you can

manage things like your investments, allocate your portfolio, etc., and they can have hugely different impacts on, you know, the short, medium, and long term of your financial goals. So working with an adviser has been a game changer for me. You do have the link down below if you

want to work with one. Number eight is going to be Community College. Now I paid a few thousand dollars to go to Community College back in, I think, 2008 is when I started going. Um, I ended up going for two years. I did not finish my

associate's degree, but I am still so, like, of all of the mistakes that I made in my life financially and otherwise, like, and all the trouble that I got myself into, the one thing that I'm so grateful that I never did uh was go to university, that

would have put me in a lot of debt, and I actually did get accepted to several universities out of Community College that I desperately wanted to go to. My parents would not co-sign on the loans, um, which looking back, I mean, at the time I was ready to burn their house down, um,

but looking back, I would have been somewhere between $110,000 and $260,000 in debt uh from those educations depending on where I would have gone and what I would have studied. Now I was only applying to like private schools in Washington DC and New York, so

I don't know what I was thinking, but yeah, like I was like, why can't I go get a degree in international relations from George Washington University with only $5,000 of merit-based scholarship for a $60,000 annual tuition like at the time?

that seemed like a solid plan, but I do understand looking back why it probably wasn't. But either way, a lot of people hate on community college, and I understand why, because so much of what keeps the for-profit higher education industrial complex afloat is the

perception of, uh, education only being really valuable when you're paying for it, or you're paying a lot of money for it, and that anything that is accessible or open access is inherently lesser. But as I've gotten older, I have become more and more convinced that education, um,

self-improvement, uh, learning skills is first of all not just a question of college, it is something that should be happening throughout your life regardless of what stage of life you're in. And secondly, it is so much less about where you're going and so much more

about what you are putting into it. Um, first of all, not only are an enormous amount of Ivy League level classes available at all times literally for free on the internet right now, but also there are plenty of people who go to very prestigious institutions and kind of just dick around and don't really get

anything out of it. For me, I enjoyed the hell out of community college. I was like super active in tons of student groups. I was the Rachel Berry of our theater department for sure. I, uh, had a lot of great friends. I made really lifelong memories, and I really, really enjoyed my

classes. I got good grades, and I just loved showing up every day. Um, you know, I went to Anacapa Community College, shout out, uh, which is actually a very good community college as far as they are ranked. Um, but in general, I think

learning to embrace what accessible education can do for you and learning that education is entirely about what you put into it is such a game-changing mind shift, especially in a world where education is so closely tied up with mountains of debt, which are not necessary. Sometimes it can be very

beneficial, but first of all, are not a one-way ticket to financial success, and B, can be extremely not worth it if you are not ready to actually put in the work necessary, which many of us are simply not at 18 or 19 years old. So

shout out Community College! I loved it. Honestly, I might mess around and go back to Community College because I'm going to start learning another language now that I'm pretty much, I consider myself mostly done with Spanish, and uh, yeah, I don't know, watch out Manhattan Community

Colleges, cuz you might have a new student soon. Number nine is not just one purchase but an ongoing purchase, which is things like tailor, cobblers, upholstery repair, etc., basically anything that is about maintaining, improving, repairing what you already have rather than buying something new. Now, as we

covered in our October video essay, especially in our generation, Millennials and Gen Z, behind me, there is an enormous problem with treating things as disposable, even when they are not intended or don't need to be. For example, in many cases, you reach the end of a

winter with a pair of boots, they're looking a little beat up, they're a little worse for wear. In the world that we've grown up in and the way that we are marketed to often, the logical next step would be, get a new pair of boots.

but for not only many generations prior to us but also with many of the current products we have, the better and more sustainable answer would be to get that boot resold and repaired, and it will be good as new next year. Now, often that does mean having to invest in a higher

quality piece to begin with, which is why especially for things like leather goods, for example, it can often be much better to shop secondhand. But let me tell you, there is not a single pair of boots in my closet that hasn't been resold or repaired at least once, and I have kept

them all for years. I actually have one I'm about to take to the cobbler this weekend. But similarly, as we've discussed before, doing things like buying jeans a size up and then getting them tailored to fit you properly, having small repairs made on things like outerwear at the end

of a season, repairing or even reupholstering a piece of furniture, especially if it's one that you maybe got at a flea market or secondhand or even found on the street as has happened to me in the past. Essentially, the life-changing aspect of these purchases

The 13 Best Things I Ever Bought

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