Howdy guys and welcome back to the next installment of our 30-something series here on TFD. Now we've talked about a few subjects at this point. We've talked about the choice to have children, the secrets of building wealth, my best

purchases, and today I want to talk about something a little bit more, let's just say mental, psychological, emotional, and that is being cheap. But before I get into it, I just wanted to say a quick but very meaningful thank you to our partner for this series, Advisor.com. So for those

who don't know, we have been creating this series in partnership with Advisor. So I personally have worked with a financial advisor for years, and I am being very sincere when I say it has been a total game-changer for my money, not just because they help you with like

how to invest and and do all the more sort of high-level financial stuff that I don't always necessarily want to expend the brain power to manage myself, but also because they help you just kind of map out your entire life financially, and in the case of, for example, like the

election we just went through, one of the first phone calls that we had was with our financial advisor to get as much of a sense as possible of how this impacts our immediate goals, how it impacts, you know, our investment allocations and all of the kind of really important

high-level financial stuff. For a long time, financial advisors were only really available to essentially the really, really wealthy, but now there are increasingly companies like Advisor that offer a much more affordable flat fee model, which means that their advisors work for you and and not for commissions.

and just make financial advisory much more accessible if you're moving through your 30s or into your 30s and you want to get a little bit more serious about building long-term wealth and also really having a partner and, you know, a level of accountability in matching your

finances with your overall goals, I hugely recommend speaking with a financial advisor. If you go through our link below, you will get $500 off of your first year with an advisor. Also, you know, the introductory calls with them are totally free so you know, it's just worth

checking out if you're curious. But anyway, they're our partner for this series. We very much hope you'll check them out at the link in the description, but otherwise, let's get into the video now. I am someone who has spoken at length on here and on my personal social

media about my very fundamental belief that cheapness is really a completely separate concept from frugality and that often those two things are conflated, especially when people are trying to get good with money, but I think that's ultimately to our detriment. So I really

wanted today to just kind of unpack the concept of cheapness and really talk about how in my own life I moved away from, or at least I feel like I moved away from, I'm sure there are still, there's definitely always going to be some like cheap residue in my life, no

matter how much I move past that mentality, um, but really talk about some of the ways in which I have unpacked my cheapness and kind of how I got into that place and how I moved out of it. Now first I want to talk about what

cheapness really is and how it differs from frugality so similarly to what we're going to talk about in our December video essay which is all about the concept of scarcity I really do believe that at its core being cheap is really choosing to exist in a scarcity

mentality now this can manifest in a ton of ways it can be in hypercompetitiveness and comparison like for example feeling like when someone else gets something it came at the cost of you getting something even if it literally didn't but it can also be

things like not not investing in better quality even when you could afford to because you're most focused on paying the least amount possible in the moment which often just manifests in robbing yourself of either future quality or future opportunity it's also often denying yourself permission to go for

things attempt things learn new things try new things either because you think it's a waste of time to do so or because you're afraid of the possibility of rejection or embarrassment or any of the many things that can happen when we put ourselves out there and being cheap

often means being cheap with other people not just with ourselves whether that's literally devaluing someone's money or time not contributing your fair share to something or even just not treating them with the same level of care that you would want to be treated I

think for example we can be very cheap with our energy and we're often talking especially now on social media about ways in which we are creating boundaries and saying no and cancelling and not being expected to do things and we're not as much talking about how we

go out of our way for others, how we create community through those shared bonds, how we show up for other people. Being cheap, again, fundamentally comes down to a sense of competition or a sense of scarcity rather than a sense of abundance. Now, this to me is completely

different from frugality, which is all about not just living below your means whenever possible, but thinking about the most financially intelligent way to go about any given decision. You can have an enormous amount of money and still be very frugal, but you can also have a lot

of money and still have a very cheap mindset. Ultimately, those two things and the differences that they represent are pretty completely removed from how much money we actually do or don't have. And in fact, there are lots of really good studies that show that it is often

people with the least amount of money who, for example, give the most generously to charity based on their income level, who are most generous to other people in their communities and who generally rely on each other on a much higher level, which to me is the opposite of a cheap

mentality. But it is often true that especially as you have less, you are sort of forced to be frugal even if you don't want to be, or it takes you a long time to get there like it did for me. And when you're just sort of getting into the

concept of frugality, which again doesn't mean you're not buying anything, and in fact, in some cases it could mean that you're paying more upfront for things because you're buying higher quality and focusing on long-term investment and cost per use when you're trying to get

to that healthy sense of frugality of living below your means of being really financially thoughtful often times we can tend to conflate being cheap for being frugal and we can make a lot of cheap decisions in an attempt to be frugal which in the long term end up

costing us more financially and otherwise for me as I've always been really open with I definitely grew up in a huge sense of financial scarcity we were very low income and as I've mentioned I don't have a college degree I'm the only person from my family who

earns anywhere close to what I currently earn and just in general I was never prepared for a life where I was outside of just like day-to-day survival mode and especially going into my early adulthood when I had gotten myself into tons of credit card debt when I was

you know being chased around by collections when I had all of these huge financial problems I couldn't even get a phone plan I got my license suspended I got arrested like when I got myself into such a level of financial chaos I realized looking back that often it was

just a manifestation of me being cheap with myself first and foremost whether that meant not saving my money from the paychecks because I was still working full-time while going to community college or always opting for the thing that was right in front of me because let's be clear you can be very cheap

with yourself while still buying lots of stuff I think fast fashion is a great example of where we can be extremely cheap with our purchases and with our overall financial mindset while still collecting a ton of items and that really defined me like I went into credit card debt buying a bunch of

mindless garbage things that I don't even remember buying, most of it was like, you know, random meals out at restaurants I wanted to go to or clothes I wanted to afford and couldn't, or just generally trying to live beyond my means in a way

that didn't even really have meaning for me and was more about social acceptance. And I thought at that time because I was spending money that I was living more abundantly and I was like, kind of YOLO-ing it and being sort of in the

present, I really wasn't. I was, if anything, avoiding the present because I was using money as a way to kind of avoid my feelings and assuage my anxieties and insecurities, which is what we'll talk about in our last video in this series. But I was ultimately being

very cheap with myself. And when I started first trying to get better with money, I actually in some ways leaned further into those cheap impulses. For example, like I would just buy the least expensive item. I think a lot about home furnishings in this particular situation.

Like I shopped exclusively essentially at like Ikea, Amazon, Temu didn't exist back then, but like I would have shopped there if it did. And I was kind of that way about everything. I was almost only buying fast fashion. Like I never even considered the possibility that there

were sometimes reasons to invest more long term or that B, there were plenty of other places you could be shopping at lower cost without necessarily buying those super low quality and frankly destructive products. I was also often declining opportunities, and for example, I stayed in a job that was really wrong

for me for a long time that was not paying me nearly enough because I was really terrified of the prospect of trying to go somewhere else. I didn't even look for another job. I kind of just happened into starting the financial diet, but if I hadn't done that, I think I

would have stayed at my previous job for a really long time despite the fact that it didn't pay me nearly enough to live in New York City. In so many ways, I just switched into this hyper-conservative way of thinking about money that ultimately just resulted in me being

very cheap and again didn't serve me long-term, and even in my mentality. So one of the ways in which I think I felt I had the most cheap mentality was how I looked at other people's success and other people's finances. It used to be

extremely triggering for me when someone would have a professional achievement that I wanted or when someone bought something that I couldn't afford. I was still very much in that like hyper-comparison mode that I was growing up when I, you know, was really when we were in a really

tough position financially. What initially led me to spend was that need to keep up and prove myself to other people via what I was able to buy, and it took me a while to realize that even if I wasn't buying the things, even if I

wasn't just like filling my life with stuff I couldn't afford the way I used to, I was still ultimately coming from that fundamental mentality of their success, their achievement, their money etc. comes at the expense of me. And to, to be fair, in some cases like I don't think

It's totally irrational to feel frustration, you know, even today being a high earner, it is very different to earn a certain amount of money when you come from a financially healthy, prosperous background and when you do not, and you have responsibilities to other people in

your family or in your life. And so there are even today ways in which I can sometimes experience some frustration about the disparities and, you know, how just generally kind of unfair things are, especially in America where everything is so expensive and we have so few opportunities for class mobility.

But there is a big difference between being lucid about that and letting that resentment kind of overtake you and letting that really sort of color your worldview and make you very cynical and again ultimately put you back into that cheap mentality. And I'm lucky that I

made it through that transitional time with, you know, fairly little damage. You know, I'm still very lucky to have my business, most of my co-workers I worked with for, for many years, my husband, all of these things. But I look back at, you know, the way I navigated a lot of my

choices in life and relationships, and I see that even as I was coming out of my most destructive times financially, I was still ultimately living with that extremely cheap mindset. I think for me the two key things that allowed me to really move away from that and into a

place of frugality as it pertains to my finances, but ultimately abundance as it pertains to my worldview, which I do fundamentally believe is kind of the opposite of that cheap mentality, are really twofold. So as it pertains to my

finances I am very aggressive about the pay yourself first method I don't love the feeling of a really segmented budget personally I definitely needed it for the first few years of my like financial rehab but it's been a long time now that I am just more focused on I do what I

need to do each month I pay my bills I you know put into retirement and savings like I do that automatically and then I know that whatever I'm left with is mine and I I have found personally that that budgeting method actually often results in me not spending up to the maximum of

what I could because I don't feel constrained whereas when I have like okay you have X amount of dollars for this and x amount of dollars for that I found that it often kept me feeling deprived and really anxious about my money even when I did have enough of it

and that is not to say that the pay yourself first method of budgeting is necessarily the best one for you some people love a really really structured budget it's just more about finding the budgeting method that allows you to have a sense of peace and calm about your

monthly expenses so that it's not just constantly on your mind because essentially once you reach the budget that is sustainable and that you don't have to actively think about all the time I find that even subconsciously it really removes that obsession with

the individual sticker price of things and allows you to just focus more on what really has value for you what you're actually interested in or motivated by and just generally let life take the driver's seat and let money just kind of be the gas in the car um

rather than the reverse, which was my case for a long time, which was just obsessing over dollar amounts. And again, I want to stress there are times when we need to obsess over dollar amounts, and I certainly did for a long time, but I kept

doing it for a much longer time than I needed to. And similarly, I think kind of on that note, for the frugality bit, is really trying to understand the difference between inexpensive and cheap. Something being cheap to me now, I really think of in terms of quality and value, but

something can be very inexpensive and still have a ton of value. I have pointed this out a few times in this series, but it's worth repeating that a few years ago, I made the switch to really trying to only buy mostly secondhand furniture and home furnishings, and that's been a

complete game-changer, like the amount of options and opportunity there are if you're willing to be a bit more patient. And the same can be said for a lot of clothing, the same can be said for a lot of things that we think we need to buy

new, um, and that is not to say I don't ever buy things new, I certainly do. The more you sort of separate out quality and cost, and you understand how often those things are conflated when they shouldn't be, or how often you're sacrificing quality, you really kind of

just completely shift your mentality of what is actually worth spending on. And for me, like, so I would not today shop fast fashion if I could avoid it, and I generally don't. And this is not to say that that's always an option for everyone to always make that choice, but

I do think it's worth being honest with ourselves that we often do have more of a choice in terms of the products that we bring into our lives and that often getting something of higher value for that same low price is a matter of, you know, patience and finding the right

piece and all of that which can take longer, but ultimately I think is also in and of itself a really good lesson to learn because part of that cheapness is that really strong sense of urgency that everything is like, you know, that it's all or nothing, that you have to

get it and you have to get it now, which you know again is understandable coming from scarcity, but still I think worth considering. But on a personal level, when it comes to switching to an abundance mentality, so one of the things that I really have tried to do in the past few

years is really diversify my identity, um, as much as I can. For so long, I was really just defined by the Financial Diet because it's my business and it still is, but it was also like the majority of my waking hours and it was a really, it was a

struggle and it was, you know, I was in hustle mode and it was, it dominated my life and we were, you know, on book tour and making and doing all of these things all the time, so it really felt like the thing that completely defined me. And so

anytime other people in my industry, the personal finance industry, they would get this opportunity or this accolade or, quite honestly, because this industry is so full of scam artists, I would be like, 'Not this person continuing to succeed despite being an open scam artist.' I mean

half of those people on TikTok selling like real estate tips should honestly be in jail if if I'm being totally honest but anyway it used to really really really bother me and similarly when I would see people doing things that I really wanted to do but wasn't

necessarily giving myself permission to do it made me really jealous too and it made me feel like they had taken something from me and it made me feel very triggered if I'm being honest so you know whether it's you know writing romance novels or learning other

languages or biking in the city or all of these things that I try to integrate into my life now that are some are work oriented some are not some are creative some are not the point is though that it's just a lot of different areas where I'm giving my time energy and attention

and where I draw a sense of identity so that I'm not so hyperfocused on any one part of myself um and therefore I feel less threatened if I perceive any kind of competition in that area I think we really exist in a culture that drives us

to hyperfocus our identities and then become very competitive within those identities and I think work is the number one example of that like it's very natural to look at other people's success or achievements in an industry as a threat to your own or as an

indictment of your own but I would challenge us all to step back from that and say okay sometimes that's true like sometimes you're like you and one other person are going up for like I don't know a post and a some sort of office or

school or hospital or whatever the case there's only one job and one person gets it and you don't like there are some situations where it's like that literally competitive but often it's not at all and I would really suggest that the bigger question to ask yourself is

why is my work identity so central to my self-worth that even someone else succeeding in that area is a threat to me? It was definitely a question I needed to ask myself and similarly when I do because I still do experience those feelings of like well damn that is

killing it, I'm envious, I would like to kill it in a similar way. For for a few years now my response to that feeling is I'm going to reach out, I'm going to follow her, I'm going to say I love what you do, I'm going to celebrate her, I'm

going to rather than just sit in my feelings of competitiveness and envy. I'm going to be honest and say I really admire this, this inspires me, this motivates me, this is really impressive to me. And half the time you would be shocked like people are like that's

amazing and they'll have a conversation with you or or at least just you know it gets it out of your system in a healthy way. You know ultimately some of these things are totally financial and some of these things are not. And especially when it comes to things like friendships and

and relationships where we are constantly being pushed toward a sort of zero-sum worldview where you know you doing something for someone else is taking something away from you. I think it's so important to really interrogate that framing and ask ourselves like is

This is a cheap way of looking at our life, at our relationships, at our communities. Is this miserly? Is this counting every penny in a way that doesn't even serve us and then extrapolating it out to our money? Similarly, are we so focused on the

immediate, every single day dollar amount that we're losing the bigger perspective of our long-term financial health, our long-term goals, long-term investments in quality? That was definitely my case. I used to be a very cheap person in so many aspects of my life, and again, I

still have to sometimes fight against those impulses, like I have this, like random, but I have certain items in my life that like when I tell you my, my hair styling tools have been on death's doorstep for 12 years and I just like won't replace them, um, because it seems

wasteful to me. It's honestly, my hair straightener is a fire hazard at this point. It is so not safe for, for use anymore. So there are certain areas where I'm still really cheap about certain things, but for the most part, it's not something that I

think holds me back, and I feel distant enough from the most cheap impulses that I had that I'm able to focus on other things, like growth, like opportunity, and in giving myself permission to try more things and to diversify what I'm willing to attempt. I find that with each time

not only are the results usually positive, but it gives you so much more ability to try the next one. It feels really intimidating to try for something the first time because we are ultimately being cheap with ourselves and our own aspirations, but once you start working that muscle, baby, you realize that life

can be as abundant as we want it to be, but it has to start by realizing that frugality is core to a life well-lived. Being smart and intentional with money is core, but that has nothing to do with being cheap. And being cheap will often completely sabotage the things that are

most important to you. That's just my take, but I'll see you guys next week. Bye.

How To Stop Being Cheap

The Financial Diet helps you rethink your relationship with money, culture, and class.

Education & commentary on the systems we interact with every day, from influencer culture, to economic systems, to financial privilege.

Talk to us at hello@thefinancialdiet.com

How To Stop Being Cheap

Scripts