Culture Study Podcast - The Enduring Myths of Budget Culture

00:00:00.620 That's definitely the attitude that I grew up with in a working class community was this idea that using debt is irresponsible.

00:00:09.100 And I think it's tied to that never wanting to be taken advantage of. 0.70

00:00:13.660 And I imagine it's because we spend our whole lives, largely as Americans, but I think in particular in working class communities, that we spend our whole lives with the culture just taking advantage of us constantly, making us pawns and suckers and things.

00:00:29.780 And so we're always looking for ways to avoid that humiliation a little bit.

00:00:39.080 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:00:42.960 And I'm Dana Miranda, the author of You Don't Need a Budget and creator of the Healthy Rich

00:00:49.360 Substack. So this episode is basically a follow-up on an interview I did with you in the

00:00:54.580 newsletter, and that interview spawned more than 300 comments. A lot of them really wrestled with

00:00:59.900 concepts that we talked about in the newsletter, but I want to start from scratch here because not

00:01:04.700 everyone who listens to the podcast is a newsletter reader. What is your framework for thinking about

00:01:09.760 money and personal finances, just generally? So I try to question a lot of what we see

00:01:17.780 in traditional personal finance media and education. And what I see as sort of the

00:01:24.700 conventional approach is something I call budget culture, which is kind of the money parallel to

00:01:31.620 diet culture, where we sort of default to individual responsibility, restriction,

00:01:40.600 and feel a lot of shame for when our financial circumstances are not what we'd like them to be.

00:01:46.540 And so the work that I do is to try to name that and show that to people and also to question the

00:01:52.920 kind of advice that's coming through budget culture and question a lot of the assumptions

00:01:57.040 that are being made. I think that sometimes people mistake anyone talking about money

00:02:01.580 and money advice on the internet as people who are like financial advisors. And you are always

00:02:07.400 very keen to note, I am not a financial advisor. I am giving you some questions to work through

00:02:13.920 in order to think through what you want your financial outlook to be.

00:02:18.880 Yeah, absolutely. I'm a financial educator. That's what my certification is. My background

00:02:23.380 is really in journalism. So I write about money, basically. And so I share information to help

00:02:29.540 people make decisions for themselves but without like actually being able to talk to someone

00:02:34.980 individually and look at your finances like dig into your bank account and things like that

00:02:39.920 it's really hard to give individualized advice and that's a problem that i see in financial

00:02:46.640 media and education in general is a lot of stuff is presented as advice as sort of like universal

00:02:55.140 advice, which with something as personal and individualized as money, there's really no way

00:03:02.060 to give general advice because everybody's situation is so different. But when we hear

00:03:06.940 things in that way, it feels like, well, I'm supposed to just be able to do this because

00:03:11.280 that's what they said is like the baseline advice, like making a budget is sort of treated

00:03:15.700 like it's something that everyone can do and something that will work for everyone to improve

00:03:22.060 whatever your financial situation is. Yeah, and when I introduced our interview, I really tried

00:03:27.920 to encourage readers to think of American budget culture in particular, as an ideology that has

00:03:35.180 been really thoroughly normalized. There's nothing natural about you must have a 401k, right? Like,

00:03:42.600 there's nothing natural about like, debt is bad. Like, why is debt bad? So like, what we're trying

00:03:49.160 to do today is work through some of those questions and interrogate like some things

00:03:53.760 that have become normalized. And some of them have been normalized even in like the last half

00:03:58.620 century. I was reading a piece of yours this morning that I loved about the 401k. And I think

00:04:04.820 we'll get to this in the questions. But like the shift from certain types of jobs offering pensions

00:04:10.820 and the risk of the pension and the risk of allocating money for future retirement like

00:04:17.020 that used to be on the employer. And it is only since the early 80s that we have shifted that risk

00:04:23.940 onto the individual. And I think that like, sometimes like we, like, I was born the year

00:04:30.800 that a lot of these changes started to take place. So it's within our lifetimes that it has changed.

00:04:36.940 Yeah, yeah. It's kind of amazing to think that, especially as millennials, like,

00:04:40.340 these things we have always talked about as natural and normal and the way things that

00:04:45.780 always are. But actually, they're only about as old as we are a lot of these economic changes.

00:04:51.180 Okay, so let's start with the questions. And I think we'll get to work through

00:04:55.340 a bunch of different ideas as we go. Our first question today comes from Kaylin.

00:05:00.560 So first, I'd like to ask, where does basic bookkeeping and understanding your monthly

00:05:05.680 cash flow to keep your checking account out of overdraft and budget culture begin? Second,

00:05:12.260 And I'd love to hear more on challenging budget culture in the context of budget tools marketed to white urban liberal types like You Need a Budget, YNAB, or Remit Sethi's advice, as opposed to Dave Ramsey budget culture.

00:05:27.600 I think there's a really valuable conversation to be had about the former, the liberal budget tools, let's say.

00:05:35.400 But the framing in that first interview with Dana seemed to be more about the latter, the Dave Ramsey budget culture.

00:05:42.260 And I think that just generated a lot of not all budgets type objections in the comments.

00:05:48.840 First of all, very perceptive comment from Caitlin.

00:05:51.960 I want to compliment it because I think that that did generate some of the tension in the

00:05:56.240 comments is like people being like, wait, you're saying I should never look at my credit

00:06:00.360 card statement, which I don't think is why you're saying it all.

00:06:05.140 And then also that tension between those two types of budget tools, like you need a budget

00:06:10.220 and like Dave Ramsey.

00:06:11.300 So where do you want to start here?

00:06:13.640 I'll start with the first part of the question.

00:06:16.240 Where does basically like understanding your monthly cash flow and and budget culture begin?

00:06:23.240 Because I think that is the biggest kind of point of tension when I'm having conversations

00:06:28.340 with people.

00:06:28.980 And a lot of it is semantics about how you're using the word budget.

00:06:33.720 It's similar to the word diet.

00:06:35.460 budget can just refer to the money that you're using and that you have coming in and out.

00:06:41.660 But the way that it tends to be used in the personal finance space is this spending plan,

00:06:50.060 which inherently has restriction and discipline built into it. And that's generally what I'm

00:06:57.840 talking about. So when I say you don't need a budget or I'm working on budget free or I'm

00:07:02.260 anti-budget, it's because I want to counter the restriction and discipline that budgets tend to

00:07:11.100 have built in and the shame then that comes from that. And I also think making a spending plan

00:07:17.820 is part of that. Even though it sounds just inherently responsible, it is something that

00:07:24.360 by its nature has restriction built in because you're deciding ahead of time what you're allowed

00:07:29.300 to spend money on. And if you change that, then that's kind of where the shame comes in because

00:07:33.840 you stray from your spending plan. And then when your finances aren't what you want them to be,

00:07:38.840 then you have something that's kind of easy to blame and it just comes around on you. Well,

00:07:43.160 I didn't stick to my spending plan. It tends to not be very practical. Budgets are unsustainable

00:07:49.240 just in the same way that diets are. They're very hard to stick to because they're so restrictive

00:07:53.280 and just rely on human discipline, which is hard to have in everyday life.

00:07:58.900 So that's kind of the difference that I see.

00:08:00.960 But when you say like, you know, I'm not saying don't ever look at your credit card statement

00:08:04.540 or your bank account, like mindfulness and awareness about what's going on with your

00:08:09.460 money is really important.

00:08:11.720 And I think it's important to name budget culture and to start to question a lot of

00:08:17.620 these conventional rules and ideas that we have about money, because it allows you to

00:08:22.400 do those things like look at your bank account, look at the money you have coming in and out

00:08:26.560 without the shame that gets piled on top of it because of your ability to meet or inability to

00:08:33.500 meet the rules that you think you're supposed to be following. Yeah, like, oh, I spent too much on

00:08:39.400 books in my book bucket of money. And like, that's a failure on my part. One thing that I

00:08:44.980 i think about with my own finances is well two things one and this is maybe similar to like some

00:08:52.540 of the conversation around like quote-unquote intuitive eating is that like how much of the

00:08:58.880 spending practices that i do without thinking consciously are things that were passed down

00:09:07.540 to me by growing up in a middle-class household where debt was okay and spending was okay but also

00:09:17.280 we had the means to to accommodate both and we had the privilege of of good credit and that sort of

00:09:22.900 thing so like how much is it is just stuff that like I learned through observation or absorption

00:09:29.640 or whatever and then also like sometimes my partner makes fun of me because I still go to

00:09:36.520 grocery store, like I'm a graduate student, like I'm always looking for the slightly cheaper olive

00:09:41.960 oil, like always. And we actually got in a big fight one time because I was like, you have never

00:09:46.420 learned to look for the slightly cheaper olive oil because he has never had to really watch his

00:09:51.860 money in the way that especially when I was in grad school, I did. And sometimes I'm like, I like

00:09:57.540 that I have those tendencies. But then also I'm like, oh, that's like, you know, the fact that I

00:10:03.360 still sometimes I'm like, oh, well, I shouldn't get like that club salad because bacon is fatty.

00:10:09.060 You know what I mean? Like things that I still have leftover residually from

00:10:12.460 absorbing so much diet culture when I was in my teens and 20s. So what does that make you think

00:10:18.020 of? I think it's exactly the same as trying to sort of transition to intuitive eating after a

00:10:26.520 lifetime of being embedded in diet culture that trying to spend mindfully without you know just

00:10:34.420 sort of flip that switch is pretty tough if your entire life you are hearing these budget culture

00:10:40.180 messages and especially because there's not a big conversation about it and there's not there's not

00:10:46.480 a ton of places to turn to kind of work out these questions for yourself so you just think like

00:10:52.260 that finding the cheaper option is just the better way to go um there's also the flip side of just

00:10:58.680 thinking well getting the thing that i want is the better way to go right like there's that's also a

00:11:04.340 positive thing and that's also an important lesson that people need to know i think just like with

00:11:08.780 intuitive eating that because of the culture that we're in under capitalism and the consumer culture

00:11:14.520 that we're part of that there's probably no perfect mindful spending no that anyone can ever

00:11:21.840 do you know you're always like why do you have 35 options for olive oil yeah there's you know

00:11:26.120 you're going for the cheaper one but is it really that different from the five next to it

00:11:29.820 and that's not our fault that's that's not the fault of your money management that's a much

00:11:35.400 bigger issue that we need to deal with and so I think it's impossible to ever be perfect with

00:11:40.980 any of that stuff but it's good to question the kind of advice that you're getting that is

00:11:46.420 rooted in restriction and shame and start to pull away from that as much as you can so if you're

00:11:52.360 seeing yourself make the decision to get the cheaper olive oil just take a moment and ask

00:11:58.440 why that is is it because you feel like you don't deserve the indulgence of the better one I think

00:12:03.180 that's a really big thing to start to question yeah or is it because you just don't think that

00:12:07.580 there's a difference and you could do something else with the extra two dollars that you save

00:12:11.780 And so much of this is psychological, too, right? Like, I just think of a lot of people in the comments or people that I've heard from who have a lot of money trauma from when they were growing up. And sometimes it's that their parents often got into credit card debt. And like, they were just like, having to answer the phone and deal with collectors when you're 11 years old, is going to change the way that you think about money.

00:12:34.320 so it's hard to sometimes acknowledge I think just how complicated naughty with a k like how

00:12:43.480 difficult money is in terms of like its psychological weight like people think like

00:12:49.260 oh yeah like money is what every like makes everything everything in our lives but at the

00:12:53.740 same time like there's a ton of trauma around it there's a ton of like class privilege just

00:12:58.420 in the way that we can even approach talking about money yeah there's so much and it's really

00:13:03.600 just as complex and nuanced as any other relationship that we have in our lives our

00:13:09.180 relationship with money just like again our relationship with food and it's one of those

00:13:13.320 things that's just ever present it's part of everything that we do and the one of the big

00:13:19.360 beefs that i have with personal finance media and education is that it attempts to strip all that

00:13:24.620 nuance out of our relationship with money and talk about it as if it can just be siloed into

00:13:30.980 numbers and spreadsheets and financial goals and, you know, optimizing investments and things.

00:13:38.140 And that doesn't work for people because they have to try to fit that into all those complex

00:13:45.540 experiences that we have with money. So let's drill down a little bit on this difference between

00:13:51.040 like you need a budget and Dave Ramsey. So I think some people don't know actually enough

00:13:58.780 about Dave Ramsey to understand the philosophy or how pervasive and how popular this philosophy

00:14:08.060 is, especially amongst Christians. If you grew up evangelical, the chances that you are acquainted

00:14:14.860 with Dave Ramsey is incredibly high. So give me an overview. Yeah. So for a lot of people,

00:14:22.520 Dave Ramsey is the first introduction into talking about personal finance. And he was very early in

00:14:33.140 the space and doing that coming in in the early 90s with Financial Peace University. And he did

00:14:39.940 something actually very good. I always feel like I have to credit him with this because I don't like

00:14:45.320 pretty much anything else about his philosophy. But he came in at a time when financial media

00:14:52.440 was for people who already had money. And it was just about how to invest better and grow your

00:14:59.680 money more. And Dave Ramsey came along and spoke to people who just needed everyday money management

00:15:06.440 guidance. And that was a huge thing. He kind of created the personal finance space that we see

00:15:12.500 now. And so that was really helpful for people because he spoke in a way that kind of made sense

00:15:17.540 and came up with some things that were about like motivating you to pay off debt

00:15:21.580 rather than, you know, just assuming you could use credit cards

00:15:25.040 and pay them off at the end of the month or something.

00:15:27.180 But what his advice has turned into,

00:15:30.900 and I suspect just from kind of like a media and content standpoint,

00:15:36.340 it happened this way because it was entertaining for people,

00:15:41.260 is that especially on his radio show, he's just very harsh with people.

00:15:45.500 So it's very black and white.

00:15:47.540 People will call in for advice and just be kind of chastised about how they're using money. 1.00

00:15:54.420 He's just a dick. 0.99

00:15:55.340 Thank you, Melody. 1.00

00:15:56.980 I'll say it.

00:15:58.820 It's very true.

00:16:00.080 He's just not kind, which is something that really kind of drives me crazy when I speak to people who are Christian or evangelical and follow Dave Ramsey that I think he's just not a kind person.

00:16:11.480 And so I don't understand how that brand kind of jives in that space.

00:16:16.040 Well, I think some people want to feel the shame, right?

00:16:18.640 They're like, I'm a bad person because of my spending habits.

00:16:22.920 Here's this like daddy who's going to shame me for it.

00:16:25.860 And then I'm going to reform.

00:16:27.920 Right.

00:16:28.120 It's very like, to me, like it's inextricable from some of like the shame and guilt that

00:16:35.920 accumulates around evangelical culture.

00:16:37.780 But or even just the idea that like the more you can restrict yourself is always good, right?

00:16:45.380 Yes.

00:16:45.980 And the struggle, there's like this inherent kind of need for struggle.

00:16:49.180 I think also just like a set of rules is really appealing to a lot of people.

00:16:55.940 And so when you just kind of lay out like black and white rules of exactly what you should be doing with your money, that's really appealing for people who are used to having a set of rules to follow.

00:17:06.360 But also, it's just appealing in the financial space where things are so nuanced and complex, and there's so much that we don't understand. And money is something that has so much impact on our lives, that if we can break that down and feel like we have a little bit of control because we're just following the right rules, that's very appealing.

00:17:26.980 And so what others have done, like You Need a Budget, YNAB, Ramit Sethi with I Will Teach You to Be Rich and a lot of other personal finance educators and influencers in the years since have sort of followed Dave Ramsey's blueprint on talking to more, you know, sort of the average person about personal finance, but taken out the religious dogma to it and stepped outside of that.

00:17:56.980 But they still kind of keep that focus on finding the right set of rules for people.

00:18:04.040 And that's the thing that I find challenged, that I see is kind of the same across the board and why I put YNAB in the same bucket as Dave Ramsey and Ramit Sethi.

00:18:14.980 Even though a lot of times they're using different language, they're not being as harsh with people about, like, here is the right kind of life you should be living and exactly the things you should be doing with your money.

00:18:25.920 Almost nobody takes as hard a stance on debt as Dave Ramsey does, which is basic.

00:18:30.760 It's just don't you cannot have debt, like pay off debt as fast as possible and don't accumulate anymore.

00:18:37.660 Almost no one does that. But everyone lays out some new set of rules that they say, like it doesn't have to be this particular budget that everybody is critiquing now.

00:18:49.140 but try this new budget or spending plan or method of money management, and this will be

00:18:55.100 the right one. And it continues to kind of take that approach of trying to find a universal set

00:19:03.820 of best practices for people. Melody, do you want to share your experience with Dave Ramsey?

00:19:09.080 Well, this is super interesting to me because I went from Dave Ramsey to you need a budget,

00:19:14.320 and I'm like a big YNAB head but yeah I took a Dave Ramsey class as a newlywed through my church

00:19:23.180 at the time and from like day one I was like this assumes that you have like extra money this assumes

00:19:32.380 that you have a job that pays you fairly this assumes that you've never had a medical crisis

00:19:38.040 in your life and I when I would like ask these questions the facilitator would kind of be like

00:19:44.140 yeah no I hear what you're saying but like just you know don't worry about that right now and

00:19:49.720 but the thing that was like appealing about it was like data was saying here is a step of rules

00:19:56.980 and if you follow these steps you will get to financial freedom two things that I remember

00:20:02.640 it's also very like fear based um and if you just do these things like nothing bad will ever happen 0.80

00:20:09.200 to you or you'll be ready for the bad thing when it happens one was like look at this woman like

00:20:14.960 because she made smart choices for life insurance when her husband tragically died at 27 or whatever

00:20:22.440 like she didn't have to work for two years and actually like still think about that all the time

00:20:27.640 and then the other one that i was just like so outrageous was you know they show these little

00:20:35.540 testimonials of people who followed all the rules and now their lives are great. And there was this

00:20:39.860 one family like with children and they're like, you know, we had so much debt. And so in order

00:20:45.800 to get out of debt, we sold all the furniture in our house. We didn't have a couch for seven

00:20:51.860 years. But because we made those sacrifices, we were able to become debt free. And like now we're

00:20:58.720 so happy and I remember like my husband and I were just like that what like you can never have

00:21:05.800 anyone over like why why would you sacrifice like comfort and being hospitable and all of these

00:21:14.980 things just for the sake of like not having debt and so it encourages this like really extreme

00:21:21.100 behavior and is also very fear-based. Yeah, that is wild. I think one thing that YNAB, that people

00:21:29.160 who do move to YNAB really evangelize about it, and what I see from Ramit also, is that

00:21:36.600 they intentionally build in some more flexibility, which is really important. But again, in addition

00:21:45.440 to kind of they're still trying to find like the right set of rules, you know, you're just sort of

00:21:49.640 moving to a new set of rules, but also almost no one is acknowledging the context that we're doing

00:21:58.900 any of this in. Almost no one is acknowledging the financial system that we're dealing with

00:22:04.460 that puts us in the precarious situations that we're in. Like if someone wasn't able to buy a

00:22:09.580 couch for seven years because they use money to pay off debt, like that's a very precarious

00:22:14.620 financial situation you know right you can but it's their fault pretty cheaply but yeah yes 0.99

00:22:20.180 his big thing is like that's just stupid like them buying a couch when they had debt to pay 0.99

00:22:27.420 down would just be stupid right well and like and that's the thing that like i think when we 1.00

00:22:32.620 you focus on individual behaviors within this larger system instead of coming back over and 0.98

00:22:37.580 over again to the structural like i understand why people do it because it's the thing they can

00:22:42.360 control right like I live in within precarity like I live in a precarious capitalist society

00:22:47.880 what can I control my own budget but sometimes it's so easy to focus so much on the budget and

00:22:56.020 on other individuals and their budgets that you lose sight of the larger structural critique and

00:23:01.740 you don't vote that way right like you don't advocate for change in that way because you are

00:23:06.100 so focused on the individual just like with diet culture it creates a bias so you know everyone

00:23:12.220 might think, well, budgeting works for me, so that's what I will continue to do. But if you

00:23:17.060 continue to believe that and you don't take the time to question that larger structure, then you

00:23:23.220 just have that bias built in and start to believe that other individuals should be able to control

00:23:27.900 their financial circumstances too. It's interesting to see this dynamic play out in the YNAB subreddit

00:23:34.500 because you have people from all walks of life in there and you'll have a 22-year-old who's like,

00:23:41.840 okay here's my budget and like i still am barely paycheck to paycheck like what do i need to be

00:23:47.880 doing differently and the advice is always just like well you just need to make more money like

00:23:53.480 why don't you do doordash on the side or some you know side hustles and um the individual examples

00:23:59.560 right pushing back against the set of rules is like very eye-opening yeah um okay so we're going

00:24:06.280 to switch gears just slightly and one of the things that you talked about in the interview

00:24:10.260 that I love is broadening your idea of resources. And I think this is particularly pertinent

00:24:15.960 right now because a lot of people are freaking out about what's going to happen, what are they

00:24:22.520 going to do, who are we going to depend on, all that sort of thing. So can you talk a little bit

00:24:27.360 about that just general idea of broadening your resources and then we'll get to the question?

00:24:32.600 Yeah. So, and Melody kind of mentioned it with YNAB too, is a lot of people just look at your

00:24:38.780 income and your spending and just compare it to that. And so they say, if you are not able to

00:24:44.800 spend what you want, you just need to earn more income. And I want to broaden the way that we

00:24:50.220 look at resources to include not just income that you earn from working, because you might just be

00:24:56.780 tapped out on that, or you might for some reason not be able to earn income from working, but also

00:25:01.280 look at any assets that you have. So that can be things like a retirement account or a home

00:25:06.940 or anything that you could sell for money or tap into to earn more money.

00:25:12.240 Also community and government resources, which we often connect a lot of shame to using like

00:25:18.760 nonprofit services in your area, government benefits, things like that, and debt resources.

00:25:24.140 And that's probably the most controversial because it's also something we attach a lot

00:25:27.600 of shame to.

00:25:28.200 But when you look at what you have available to spend, I always encourage people to include

00:25:34.140 what is your credit limit what loans do you have access to what home equity do you have access that

00:25:39.760 you could tap into because that can drastically change the cushion that you have before you

00:25:48.400 actually like run out of money and don't have access to things and it can really change your

00:25:52.880 position if you realize that you have access to those kind of resources yeah i think oftentimes

00:25:58.960 with something like even like a home equity loan or something like that like it's like well if i'm

00:26:03.740 paying like a percentage on this home equity loan like that would otherwise be money like that i

00:26:09.820 would be saving and somehow like i like there's an imagined self who can save all of this money

00:26:15.740 and who reaches this point on the graph at this point in their lives right and like you are falling

00:26:20.580 short of imagined wealth person yeah and so every choice is not a really great way to look at that

00:26:27.500 Every choice is like not weighed between like what is actually going to make my everyday life manageable and survivable for me and my family for the next two years.

00:26:38.900 It's instead like, well, but what if I have $10,000 less when I'm 67, right?

00:26:45.840 Right.

00:26:46.840 And that's hard.

00:26:48.040 Like I understand why our thinking goes to that place, but also like really mean to your present self and family.

00:26:56.640 Right.

00:26:57.240 And not as practical, I think, as it sounds.

00:27:02.260 Yes.

00:27:03.420 Okay, so the question itself, let's hear from Letty.

00:27:06.160 How do you approach talking with friends about shifting from a more individualistic

00:27:10.080 to the more community-oriented perspectives on money discussed in your interview?

00:27:14.740 So I love this because it's about like, okay, how do we actually have these conversations

00:27:18.020 with each other?

00:27:18.860 I would love to hear your thoughts here.

00:27:20.880 I love that.

00:27:21.880 I'd actually love to hear your thoughts because I feel like you've actually been doing some

00:27:25.340 research on like interpersonal relationships that is outside of my wheelhouse. But I think

00:27:31.220 the starting place is shifting this conversation about resources. So shifting your understanding

00:27:38.720 of what counts as resources. And, you know, we've talked a little bit about giving and generosity

00:27:44.480 too. So shifting your understanding of ownership and accumulation and starting to think of anything,

00:27:53.260 whether it's in your possession or it's money that you're earning through work or whatever,

00:27:57.260 to start to think of resources as more communal so that as you have conversations with people,

00:28:03.060 that's the point that you're starting from rather than a lot of times we think about sharing and

00:28:09.960 giving and even mutual aid as looking at the resources that I have and finding somebody who

00:28:15.940 needs something. And there's always this kind of imbalance there of trying to find who's needier

00:28:22.340 than me that I can give money to or something? Or am I needy enough to require assistance or

00:28:27.800 something like that? But starting to think of it as just there's a communal pot of resources that

00:28:34.260 we all kind of steward in our own ways. I think that's a really important starting point. And

00:28:39.820 probably finding people who are already thinking that way, too, is a good start. It's going to be

00:28:45.860 a big step to try to convince, you know, people like I live in a rural, conservative, small town

00:28:51.960 I'm not having those conversations with people here because that's such a huge shift to start to talk about like community resources and mutual aid and things like that.

00:29:00.900 Finding the people who are already in that mindset is going to be an important place to start.

00:29:06.880 So I actually think that's pretty interesting because I think sometimes people who live that way are actually more used to thinking about both your time and your possessions as things that are available to others.

00:29:19.260 like even the idea of like um this is going to sound weird to people who aren't familiar with

00:29:25.320 this but like hunting in a lot of places you just figure out whose land it is like it's like a big

00:29:31.360 swath of land and if you want to go look for deer on that land or if you want to go bird hunting on

00:29:36.160 that land like you just call up that person and you say hey can i hunt on your land and they almost

00:29:41.420 always unless they're a huge curmudgeon would be like yes right like and this is the way that it

00:29:45.980 works. But on a different scale, I would say that what I see come up a lot in the culture study

00:29:52.500 comments threads, like the advice threads in particular, is a couple of things. One is people

00:29:58.360 are very self-conscious, especially as they get into their 30s and 40s about growing discrepancies

00:30:03.920 in income and how to talk to their friends about it. And often the way that this gets resolved is

00:30:10.560 it doesn't get resolved at all. And the people with more resources just start like doing things

00:30:15.300 without the people without resources because they feel awkward like oh well that person can't afford

00:30:21.720 it so we probably shouldn't like invite them and make them feel bad or whatever and i think the

00:30:26.600 advice that i've seen and which i i think is good advice is just pay for that person's plane ticket

00:30:33.120 right like if you have enough money to go on like a girl's weekend to a place that requires a plane

00:30:38.780 ticket you probably have enough money to pay for that other person's plane ticket too right don't

00:30:43.640 make it a big deal. Just be like, I got this. Yeah. I think it can be tough if you start to

00:30:49.480 sort yourself, like you said, but also if that income and resource discrepancy is persistent

00:30:56.480 throughout your relationship. That's actually a pretty simple thing for me to do with my

00:31:01.560 friends because a lot of the people around me are freelancers. And so our incomes are constantly

00:31:07.280 in flux. So sometimes one person will be struggling and sometimes another person will.

00:31:11.380 And so we kind of just are comfortable sharing those resources as we need to.

00:31:16.700 It's like it just kind of makes sense because we know exactly what that looks like.

00:31:20.060 But yeah, if one person is like consistently kind of growing in their career or something

00:31:25.500 and another is not, I can imagine that that becomes tougher.

00:31:29.240 And that's because of our culture of money, right?

00:31:31.920 It shouldn't be.

00:31:32.680 It should be easy to share resources among friends so that you can enjoy your life together.

00:31:37.440 but it's not because there's so much shame attached to not being able to pay for things

00:31:42.460 yourself there's a post that i'll link in the show notes um from a writer i really love who

00:31:47.040 writes about like um essentially like how to live in community with one another and she says that

00:31:52.780 we are afflicted with venmo brain where it's like oh we went and got drinks or we got coffee or

00:31:59.520 whatever like okay let's split it exactly down the middle and i'll venmo you and that sort of thing

00:32:03.520 and trying to like always create this equity which I think like the the mindset is in the

00:32:10.260 right place where people who um you know maybe don't spend as much at a restaurant or something

00:32:15.640 like that are like well okay well I can divide out the bill and like we can make sure that everyone

00:32:20.540 like all of this is equitable and what she suggested is like when you have any sort of

00:32:26.820 relative abundance and that doesn't mean you have to be rich right it can be like you feel rich which

00:32:32.540 like feeling rich can mean so many things right can just mean that you are comfortable

00:32:37.380 with the money that you have um right that's why i like the word abundance more even though it's

00:32:44.200 like got a kind of a religious tinge but i feel it has a little more room for interpretation yes

00:32:50.120 and like just be like i got it whatever you don't have to be so exacting with these things

00:32:55.600 that make it so that you always are trying to like even out all of your expenditures between

00:33:01.680 everyone that you know. Obviously, this is different if it feels like you're constantly

00:33:05.600 being taken advantage of or something like that, like that's an unhealthy dynamic. But I think

00:33:09.880 when people are bringing something to a potluck, bring more, bring something that you could leave

00:33:15.500 at that person's house, not in an annoying way, but like, I got extra of this food item that

00:33:22.300 will last you for the rest of the week. Just practicing abundance in that way. If you have

00:33:27.540 something like part of your property or part like I don't know some like a lot of people that I've

00:33:32.860 interviewed for my book talk a lot about how they are very transparent about like anytime you need

00:33:38.880 a food processor come get my food processor like every item that is in my home is also essentially

00:33:44.720 in your home and that's especially with people that I've interviewed who are living close to

00:33:49.440 one another like some of them have a google sheet actually that has like every outdoor implement so 0.97

00:33:54.740 like if you need a hoe you don't need to go buy a hoe like we can share this hoe do you know what 0.99

00:34:00.220 i mean um or so we have this little shack um on our property that i was like oh i'm gonna use it 0.98

00:34:08.160 for dahlias and some friends of ours live in a really small space where they don't have any like

00:34:13.800 place where they could do it like a weight lifting routine away from their kids but then they also

00:34:19.460 had from the place where they used to live they have like a lot of weight lifting materials and

00:34:23.980 And so a bunch of people, a bunch of our friends, like, came together and DIY'd the space.

00:34:28.880 They, like, put down gravel on the bottom and flattened it and put down some cheap plywood and then, like, painted all the interior.

00:34:35.700 And now, and it has, like, a space heater. 0.82

00:34:38.260 And now it's the Shred Shed.

00:34:40.000 And, like, anyone can come use it.

00:34:42.180 Like, I meet, like, I was at a party the other day talking to, like, a friend of a friend who lives on the island.

00:34:47.200 And I'm like, yeah, if you want to use it, just come by.

00:34:49.200 Like it is an actual friendship space, which sounds weird for a shred shed, but like thinking about that and like, yeah, we pay the electricity for it.

00:34:58.900 But who cares?

00:35:00.460 Even just the way you're saying it, where you're just talking to someone about it and saying, if you want to use it, come by.

00:35:05.500 Like I do think that is kind of a way into those conversations is truly just to like start bringing things up.

00:35:11.860 just if someone's talking about gardening, just be like, I've got a ton of gardening tools that

00:35:16.080 I am not using 24 seven. So you should come over and use those like I would love and I always when

00:35:22.680 I'm trying to be generous to like, I try to really make a point of it because so many people say,

00:35:28.500 make offers and say things that they aren't really comfortable following through on. So

00:35:33.200 like, I will really say like, and I mean it, I would really love if they would find a home like

00:35:37.520 that kind of thing and it just helps people feel more comfortable doing that i also try to take

00:35:44.140 like i i kind of got this advice from people who talk about like helping people who are grieving

00:35:49.820 is think of something that you can do for someone or that you can give to someone

00:35:54.960 and just essentially offer it without a way for them to turn it down yep um like i think like

00:36:02.720 And also think about what you can offer that is truly helpful.

00:36:06.440 Like my sister has four kids and she and her husband both work full time.

00:36:10.320 She does not have time for things, right? 0.96

00:36:12.500 So one of the biggest things that anyone can do to help her is to make a meal for her family.

00:36:18.240 So when I have an opportunity to do that, like I'll just say, can I bring over, you

00:36:22.460 know, what time are you free tonight?

00:36:24.180 I want to bring over a casserole or whatever that my Midwest just came out because that's

00:36:31.100 what it is.

00:36:31.480 It's a big family.

00:36:32.720 But instead of saying like, hey, it seems like you're really busy right now.

00:36:36.580 Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

00:36:38.320 Yeah.

00:36:38.580 Like we just people don't know how to ask for that help.

00:36:40.840 So just pay attention to what the needs are and start to offer that.

00:36:45.200 And you can start to kind of model that sharing of resources for people and sharing of time.

00:36:52.020 The other last thing that I'll say that people often say in the threads is like, it is totally

00:36:56.140 okay to just give your friends cash.

00:36:57.700 and I think that we are often told that like oh that would be weird for them I once needed a

00:37:05.820 plane ticket to go to a funeral and the family of the person who died knew that you know I was

00:37:12.540 a grad student like I didn't have a lot of money and they gave me actually a cashier's check they

00:37:17.920 were like if you don't spend this like you have to spend this like essentially like you cannot say

00:37:22.840 no to us and I think about that a lot like if someone's telling me about like they're in

00:37:27.340 like things are hard like and if I have abundance at that moment in some capacity like why can't I

00:37:34.260 just give and like it could be alone it could not be alone like whatever it is if you have those

00:37:38.200 means like it is not weird in fact it is loving to give money to friends so right um okay so next

00:37:45.860 question is very up your alley. It's about whether budget advice is one size fits all.

00:37:52.760 Let's hear from Haley. I have a 22 year old friend who is completely on her own. 0.97

00:37:57.540 She was in foster care and is now estranged from her adoptive parents. She's working full time and

00:38:02.520 wants to start college soon, but she can't figure out how to afford to live. I've tried helping her

00:38:07.300 with my 30 something year old person budget tricks, but I was naive to think that the same

00:38:11.740 tricks would work for someone who's barely holding on. What advice do you have for someone

00:38:16.000 who doesn't have a lot of earning potential, has little community support, and no higher education?

00:38:21.800 Okay, so let's do this in two parts. I know that you are not a specific advice person,

00:38:25.740 but someone in this situation, what would your advice be?

00:38:30.720 So first, I want to say, like, good for you for recognizing, like, learning that what worked for

00:38:37.820 you is not going to work for someone else. Like, that's a really good lesson to learn.

00:38:40.920 But I think a situation like this is really tricky to give advice for because part of what this person is dealing with is probably all of these systemic things that we're talking about, like it being difficult to get a job without a college degree, not being paid enough money for the work that she's doing full time, the cost of housing and the kind of strain that that's putting on those resources.

00:39:07.040 So some of it is like there might not be something you can do individually to feel more comfortable. Just let go of as much shame as you can and understand that this is something that's being put on you because of the system that you're part of.

00:39:25.220 And I do think that's important just to help people like relieve a little bit of that stress

00:39:30.220 and shame.

00:39:31.360 Yeah.

00:39:31.520 But also Haley mentioned that she's has little community support.

00:39:37.200 And so I don't know exactly what that means.

00:39:39.160 I'm going to take it to mean that like there's, you know, not like friends and family around

00:39:44.020 that could support.

00:39:44.780 And so what I would recommend is looking at community and government resources, like I 0.99

00:39:50.000 mentioned, to expand what she's able to do with her resources. So if a ton of money is going 1.00

00:39:56.900 toward housing, maybe she can look into a food bank or the SNAP program to get help with buying

00:40:03.400 food, maybe housing vouchers or something or low income housing, you know, nonprofits in the area 0.70

00:40:10.060 that can help with some of those costs that are kind of pulling from her resources. A lot of that

00:40:15.560 is, you know, it's stuff that's in flux. I know the response I'm seeing from people a lot now is

00:40:19.800 like do you think those programs are still going to exist under the administration right so that

00:40:24.460 is important too and so i don't want to say it lightly like just use government resources um and

00:40:28.760 those programs have never been sufficient either they're they're hard to access um but some things

00:40:34.560 like depending on where you live um you know i lived in berkeley california and used a food bank

00:40:40.300 at that time and there it was like just walk up and they give you a bag of food there was no

00:40:45.320 income restrictions, anything. So depending on where you live, something like a food bank is a

00:40:49.940 really good resource if you can get to it. And so find the things that do work for you and that

00:40:56.240 don't put a bunch of extra strain on your life because you have a bunch of government paperwork

00:41:00.520 to fill out or something. And I would also recommend that depending on her financial

00:41:06.540 situation, if she's not already using debt resources to consider how she could use those 0.60

00:41:12.100 in her life. And since she's young and she's kind of just getting started, I would say also take the

00:41:17.120 time to essentially study those a little bit, like understand how credit cards work, understand how

00:41:23.240 the interest works when you get charged fees, how the balance kind of rolls over and can grow

00:41:29.440 so that you understand what you're dealing with. But if it's something like she's trying to get

00:41:35.020 into school, she's trying to just sort of get to that next phase, something like that could be

00:41:40.340 really helpful. And she could, I had a friend who called it planned irresponsibility when she was in

00:41:44.760 grad school, used a lot of credit card debt, knowing that when she left, that she was going 0.64

00:41:50.420 to be facing a big balance and was just okay with that because she knew she would be in that next

00:41:55.160 phase. And that can be something that's really helpful. So first of all, I know that Haley did

00:42:01.940 not ask for advice on how she could help. But one thing, if she has some resources on her side,

00:42:07.860 is that she could help navigate some like the paperwork portion of this, because sometimes it

00:42:13.820 is purposely frustrating because it's trying to get people not to use it. So if you have someone

00:42:19.680 who is beside you, who's like, okay, let's figure out this paperwork. I have the endurance to figure

00:42:25.940 this out and I'm going to help you. Again, you want to have a conversation and have that person's

00:42:30.680 consent and all of that sort of thing. But I think that that could be like, and also like a time to

00:42:35.820 spend with one another. And then the other thing I would say, well, there are in many states,

00:42:41.660 not all, but in many states, there are resources as well for people who are coming out of foster

00:42:45.540 care, who are still in the transition period, the young adulthood period. So that might be

00:42:50.540 something to look into. And again, Haley, that's something you can kind of Google around and see

00:42:54.160 if it's available. The other thing is, if this person is interested in college, there is a reason

00:42:59.080 why there is an incredible pool of money that is out there for people to have that there are not a

00:43:04.740 lot of barriers to access. And yes, interest rates are not low right now, but they are exactly what

00:43:11.080 they were when I consolidated all of my loans. And also you the loans include most of the time,

00:43:18.040 like you can access funds that will also cover your cost of living, because there is not an

00:43:22.820 expectation that everyone who is going to school will also somehow magically have money to pay for

00:43:28.000 housing. So that is one option. And I think, you know, whether it's community college, whether it's

00:43:33.320 a four-year college, like whatever it is, those options are available. And there are also many

00:43:37.800 programs that waive fees for people, like application fees to, you know, get into school

00:43:44.340 if you are at a certain income threshold. So I think that's another thing that I would recommend

00:43:49.880 if this person is interested in higher ed. And also stay away from predatory for-profit colleges

00:43:55.760 that offer a ton of money. Like they just dangle, like you won't have to pay anything for four

00:44:02.060 years like those are the programs that you want to try to avoid but anything that like an actual

00:44:07.400 community college um anything that is state sponsored in some capacity there are going to

00:44:12.120 be really cool programs there to do to to guide you and also resources in most of them again these

00:44:18.460 are things that might be cut so we can't say that they're going to be there but most of them have

00:44:22.160 resources for people who are first generation college students coming from backgrounds where

00:44:29.020 they don't have a lot of support, all sorts of things. So those things are available.

00:44:33.460 A big part of it too, like you mentioned, she's working full-time, 0.98

00:44:36.300 barely making enough to live. I think a lot of times people in that situation who are like

00:44:39.980 just able to scrape by enough to pay for things themselves, a lot of what you need is just that

00:44:46.900 mindset shift to understand that you can use those resources that are available to you.

00:44:52.300 Those student loans could be really valuable, the community and government resources that you

00:44:57.240 might qualify for that without realizing it because you kind of imagine it to be

00:45:02.400 just aid for the people living in abject poverty but it's made to help people in this situation

00:45:09.800 get out of this situation in theory and get get to that next level so and also like you don't have to

00:45:17.480 meet some moral standard to qualify you know like just if if you can get your hands on those

00:45:23.980 resources, use them. So our next question is related, and it's going to bring up a lot of

00:45:28.080 feelings. It's about another thing that we've been talking about in the last question too.

00:45:32.740 This comes from Danielle, and Melody's going to read it. I still struggle to see debt as a resource

00:45:38.240 rather than a problem, especially with current interest rates. I have a credit card and mortgage,

00:45:43.180 so I see how I benefit from this. But as a former Dave Ramsey-er, it's hard to not see it as very,

00:45:49.060 very bad are there any tips to shift my mindset a bit okay so can we first talk about how like

00:45:55.040 why is debt bad like why does dave ramsey hate debt can you from your perspective melody can

00:46:02.060 you share why dave ramsey says debt is so bad um basically because then you're still paying

00:46:11.360 more to be able to spend money.

00:46:15.700 Does Dave Ramsey believe in mortgages?

00:46:17.800 You are allowed to have a mortgage.

00:46:20.220 That's debt.

00:46:22.600 But you should pay it down as fast as possible.

00:46:26.280 He also says the FICO score is an I love debt score. 1.00

00:46:30.540 And how stupid is that? 0.97

00:46:32.840 If you have a good credit score, it just means you have a lot of debt. 1.00

00:46:36.360 Oh, wow.

00:46:37.620 Or something.

00:46:38.640 Wow.

00:46:39.000 Does he believe in car payments?

00:46:41.960 No, you should only buy a car in cash.

00:46:44.900 When I bought my car, granted, this was in 2017.

00:46:48.540 Like, it was like the total amount of interest that we ended up paying over the course of the five year loan was like $250.

00:46:57.380 Doesn't matter. That was stupid. 1.00

00:47:00.020 It could have been less. 1.00

00:47:01.280 You should have done what I had to do when I was in D.C., which was to find the crappiest Toyota available.

00:47:08.760 And I paid $1,300 cash and I drove it for eight years or something.

00:47:16.040 That's what everyone should do.

00:47:19.220 I just I bought a new car, but it was like a good cheap car that still is alive.

00:47:24.020 You should never buy a new car. 1.00

00:47:25.780 That's extremely stupid. 1.00

00:47:28.860 This is all very enlightening. 1.00

00:47:31.280 just melody i love too that the accent goes in and out like because sometimes it's melody like

00:47:38.160 that's her voice like she's like that's that's my internal voice versus yeah but basically he

00:47:45.700 frames debt as like a prison and that you'll never be able to he wants everybody to get to

00:47:52.560 well allegedly he wants everybody to get to a place where you have no payments other than like

00:47:58.560 your electric bill and that's true financial freedom is that you're not paying for anything

00:48:03.740 well and a lot of this is like rich people debt good like right like like rich people are allowed

00:48:09.240 to like leverage themselves in all sorts of capacities but poor people debt very bad right

00:48:14.920 yes and i think there's there are a couple of philosophical things i think that are important

00:48:20.240 to understand like from one point of view and if dave ramsey were talking about it this way i would

00:48:26.620 be like on his team to rail against debt which is it's ridiculous that we have this like elite

00:48:32.320 class of a few people and institutions in our country that hoard all of the resources and then

00:48:39.160 charge us money to access them yeah that like that discrepancy is is ridiculous so if we were

00:48:45.100 looking at it that way and saying that it's absurd that if i use my credit card to buy food for my

00:48:50.540 family, I have to pay money to U.S. Bank or whatever. Right. Yeah. Like that we can be mad

00:48:55.760 about. But on the other end, philosophically, I think it's also a little bit silly to look at

00:49:02.200 something and say, if you pay interest, then you're you're just paying more for the things

00:49:08.600 that you're buying as if the price that you would pay in cash is the correct price for it.

00:49:15.280 You know, right. You can if you're using a credit card to live, you can just consider that the

00:49:19.740 interest that you pay is part of the price that you're paying for the thing there's no correct

00:49:24.140 price right right so it's almost like he's using again or tapping into this feeling that like

00:49:30.640 people who have debt are suckers right because they are somehow paying like they're paying the

00:49:36.220 full price whereas like i only pay the sale price like this this attitude i think infuses so much 0.89

00:49:42.440 in america that like you must always be getting a deal and if you don't get a deal then you're a 0.99

00:49:47.660 sucker, right? And I'm like, no, but I want to buy those pants from the gap now. I don't want 0.97

00:49:52.540 to wait until they go 40% off in like four months or whatever. Right. Or until I've saved up the

00:49:57.500 money to buy them in cash. Yeah, that's definitely the attitude that I grew up with in a working

00:50:02.680 class community was this idea that using debt is irresponsible. And I think it's tied to that

00:50:09.500 never wanting to be taken advantage of. And I imagine it's because we spend our whole lives

00:50:16.020 as largely as americans but i think in particular in working class communities that we spend our

00:50:21.840 whole lives with the culture just taking advantage of us constantly making us pawns and suckers and

00:50:27.540 and things and so we're always looking for ways to avoid that humiliation a little bit yeah i

00:50:34.700 also think that one way like some people i think are so conditioned to think of like okay if i do

00:50:41.700 take out any debt, I need to keep it as small as possible. And I answered a question in the

00:50:46.960 comments on our original interview, where someone was like, what's an example of like taking out

00:50:52.800 more debt is good. And I pointed to the example of I took out a lot more debt than I strictly

00:50:59.760 needed when I went to graduate school, because I took out enough to live. And when I say I took

00:51:05.300 out enough to live, like, I was not living extravagantly. Like, again, I was buying the

00:51:09.600 cheapest olive oil and most meals I had like beans and like zucchini and a fried egg on top

00:51:16.900 but I also always took out enough to pay for plane tickets to like go to my friend's weddings

00:51:23.460 right like I didn't go to all the bachelorette parties like I couldn't participate in everything

00:51:27.600 but it was important to me to not like become this ghost for the eight years of my graduate

00:51:35.420 career right like I knew that if I want those friendships to still be there like I need

00:51:40.360 and it's not that I need to like spend exactly the same way that my friends are spending but I

00:51:44.440 need to also have the capacity to be there and I bitch about my student loan debt all the time

00:51:50.840 because I think that like graduate programs should be funded and that graduate students should be

00:51:55.580 paid more than $700 a month for like the work that they do but at the same time like I don't

00:52:01.020 regret taking out that debt because it allowed me to be a participant in my friendships and so to me

00:52:07.340 that's an example of like wielding debt wait can I ask a question about that yeah how were you

00:52:12.460 confident that you would then make enough to be able to pay it back in a way that wasn't

00:52:20.300 devastating like I asked this because I got into really bad credit card debt as I'm saying this I

00:52:26.520 still feel the shame I got that into credit card debt a few years ago and it got to be where I

00:52:30.800 couldn't afford the monthly payment and I had to go like do one of those programs where they like

00:52:36.960 debt renegotiate yeah um which is a great program and people should take advantage of them yes

00:52:42.880 highly recommend it will save your life it saved us uh but yeah like how did you how were you able

00:52:50.140 to take out quote-unquote extra knowing you would be able to afford to pay it off well this is

00:52:56.660 actually this is something that people rail against with graduate loans is that there is

00:53:01.000 that capacity to take out extra um and so they were still debts like these were still loans with

00:53:07.040 the federal government and so i knew that at the end of my time i could consolidate them into one

00:53:12.320 payment and then that payment would go on income driven repayment so which meant it would always

00:53:17.980 be a percentage of my income and it was actually it was a real struggle when i first moved to new

00:53:22.100 York because there is no calculation. There's no calculator that takes cost of living into account.

00:53:28.420 So like my payment was manageable when I lived in Walla Walla and made $50,000 a year. And then

00:53:35.040 when I moved to New York and made $65,000 a year, which is what I was making that first year, like

00:53:39.760 the payment was not manageable, right? It was a significant portion. And eventually BuzzFeed

00:53:45.220 started paying me more. But I also knew that if I paid on income driven repayment, even though I

00:53:50.540 was no longer eligible for public service loan forgiveness, that if I did my payments for 20

00:53:55.460 years, then the remainder would be forgiven. And so that's why people talk about student loan debt

00:54:00.540 is like, good debt. That's kind of my basis for understanding debt, because that one has so many

00:54:08.200 relief options. But I think you can apply that to other types of debt. So that's my biggest response

00:54:13.080 for Danielle is to shift that mindset from thinking of debt as very, very bad. What you need to do is

00:54:20.080 understand how your debt product works. So all of the answers you gave are exactly that. So you

00:54:27.420 understood that you could put that into a consolidated loan and do income-driven repayment.

00:54:32.120 So you knew that you weren't just going to have this $900 a month payment hanging over your head.

00:54:37.620 So it wasn't about knowing that you had enough money to pay it off. It was about knowing what

00:54:42.920 your options were going to be and that you had a way to reduce the burden of that debt on essentially

00:54:49.040 your monthly costs. Yeah. Rather than thinking about how am I possibly going to pay this debt

00:54:56.460 off? And that's when we start to kind of moralize it is thinking that you're planning for forgiveness

00:55:02.300 after 20 years of income driven repayment instead of thinking, how can I pay back this money

00:55:07.660 to the banks that lent it to me? I should also note that I used my federal student loan money

00:55:13.600 to pay off a private loan that I had to take out my first year of graduate school to cover dental

00:55:18.580 work. So like sometimes you use that debt to pay off like because I knew that that private debt,

00:55:25.660 I couldn't fold it into the income driven repayment. So I wanted to get rid of that and

00:55:30.680 then take care of the other one. So right. I did the same with a credit card when I was in college

00:55:35.840 to use student loan debt because then I had 20 years to pay it off and it became much more

00:55:40.720 favorable debt. You could do the same using like a home equity loan or home equity line of credit,

00:55:46.780 which usually has a much lower interest rate and gives you like that 30 years of repayment.

00:55:52.040 So it makes the impact really small for you. You could do it with a debt consolidation loan to deal

00:55:58.300 with credit card debt, which could do the same thing, extend the time that you have to pay and

00:56:02.040 reduce the interest rate. So just understanding that these options exist can help you then decide

00:56:08.760 which types of debt can be beneficial for you. And also sometimes, like I did all that when I

00:56:16.740 was in college, like I just took the maximum student loan refund that was available to me

00:56:21.060 and use that to live because I needed it at the time. I wasn't, I didn't know what my options were

00:56:26.260 and I'd learned them later. So you can also do that retroactively. If you're dealing with this

00:56:31.020 kind of mountain of credit card debt, that feels like it's going to be suffocating for you rather

00:56:36.440 than burying your head because it feels so shameful to look at that and it feels like

00:56:41.040 it's just going to be overwhelming no matter what, start to look into your options on how

00:56:45.240 to deal with whatever kind of debt that you're dealing with.

00:56:48.820 There's probably more than just paying whatever the creditor or lender is asking you to pay

00:56:54.340 on any particular bill.

00:56:56.520 Okay, we're going to dig into even more questions for our paid subscribers about whether or

00:57:00.700 not you have to buy a house, whether it's a wise financial idea to be a stay-at-home

00:57:05.220 parent whether the things we learned about saving money make any sense and whatever's up with the

00:57:10.440 no spend trend on social media so if you want to continue thinking about budget culture head on

00:57:15.840 over to culturestudypod.substack.com and sign up today dana i cannot thank you enough for spending

00:57:23.780 so much time with me working through these questions yeah um i but we got so many questions

00:57:30.720 And when Melody first sent them to me, she like I texted her back and I was like, all

00:57:35.320 of these are good.

00:57:36.160 Like we could do all of these questions.

00:57:38.180 So which is why we had so many and we didn't even get to all of them.

00:57:42.800 Well, feel free to direct people because I do an advice podcast through Healthy Rich

00:57:46.700 too, that I'm always open to new questions.

00:57:49.340 So tackling stuff like this, I can do like a whole episode on someone's question too.

00:57:54.100 So if we didn't get to it, we can check that out.

00:57:56.580 Do that and also subscribe to Healthy Rich, the newsletter, which is one of my favorite reads.

00:58:02.180 And where else would you like to direct people?

00:58:04.880 Yeah, so you can find the newsletter through Substack or healthyrich.co and subscribe.

00:58:09.740 And then you can learn more about You Don't Need a Budget at youdontneedabudget.com.

00:58:15.040 Amazing.

00:58:15.760 Thank you again.

00:58:17.100 Thank you.

00:58:20.160 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

00:58:22.120 Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts because we have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you don't want to miss any of them.

00:58:30.200 If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that surrounds you, or submit a question for our subscriber-only advice time segment, go to our Google form at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod or check the show notes for a link.

00:58:44.560 and if you want to support the show and get all of the bonus content like today's full episode

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00:59:12.280 you need to click on the link in the show notes in order to receive that deal it's not

00:59:17.440 automatically applied the culture study podcast is produced by me ann helen peterson and melody

00:59:23.000 rowell our music is by poddington bear you can find me on instagram at ann helen peterson

00:59:28.340 melody at melodious 47 and the show at culture study pod

Culture Study Podcast - February 26, 2025

The Enduring Myths of Budget Culture

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