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Ways to Spend Less on Food · Cash Confident with Brie Sodano

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cash Confident podcast.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm Brie Sedano, your fearless host, personal finance expert and the visionary behind the revolutionary Cash Confident community.
• 0:10
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• 0:22
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• 0:32
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• 0:43
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• 0:55
  Speaker 1: We believe that true financial power begins with knowledge, and that is exactly what we deliver.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So buckle up, my fierce and ambitious friends, as we embark on this transformative journey to becoming Cash Confident together.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: One of the biggest reasons that people decide to work with me is to get their spending under control and to be able to redirect that money to other places, and one of the biggest places that everybody spends money on is around food and eating and going out to eat and fast food and bars and restaurants and grocery shopping, and it's one of the places where we do have quite a bit of control.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So in today's episode, i want to teach you a few of the things that I do when I work with clients to help them to get some of their food spending under control.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: All right, so we're just going to go ahead and get right into it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I have five main things to teach you today, and one of them is kind of nuanced and will probably go on a little bit.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: All right, But the first thing that you want to do is declutter your pantry, and the reason that I say this is because when we have too much of something, it really creates the feeling of not enough, and it's because we can't find what we're looking for.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Stuff's not organized, and a lot of times we're carrying a lot of canned food from like 2007 or we have spices, you know, from our first marriage or their first house or the time that we had that baby, but now that that kid moved out of the house, right, clearing out your pantry.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I think it helps on a couple of different ways.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: One it takes some of the clutter out of your cabinet, so that way you can see what you're working with, which provides so much space and ability to see for like inventory management as you start to make these shifts.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The other thing is you can see if you make a pile of all the stuff that's expired or old or nobody likes or whatever else.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: You can kind of see how much excess there is, like how much you don't actually need, and there's something about that that really helps to shift perception.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: So I would encourage you to just clear out, you know, your cabinets, or reorganize them if need be, but really get rid of anything that's old, that's expired, that nobody likes things like that.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So that's generally not the hugest of projects but it may be, especially if you have like a freezer downstairs in your basement full of meat from four years ago, right.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: So decluttering really helps to see the truth of how much you need.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we get used to seeing things so super chock full that when there's a less, it looks like we don't have enough, even though if we took all the clutter out, we could just be working with less, and I think that's really an important mindset, chef, to make.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: The second thing that you want to do is shop less.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Now this goes flying in the face of a lot of mainstream money advice, which is to like pay the lowest dollar amount, right, and I'm going to tell you a story to ground this.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: So I had a client once who was in my office and she was busy, she was broke, she was exhausted, she was shopping all the time.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: She had small kids and she was going to three or four different grocery stores every single week.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: She would go to all these to buy the kid's snacks because it was the cheapest there.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: She would go to the meat market to buy discounted meats.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: She would go to the regular grocery store for produce and things that she couldn't get at all these, and then sometimes she would go to Costco or BJ's or like bulk shopping stores.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: So what we were do, what she was doing, was she was doing her best to get the lowest dollar amounts on all of her items, but what she was really doing was using her gasoline, her time, her energy to do all of these things And then, after you go to four different grocery stores in a day, that's like a five, six hour process and she was exhausted.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: So she wasn't doing food prep, she wasn't getting her meals ready, and then she would end up ordering takeout during the week because she because the day that she had to do her food prep, she spent the whole day shopping.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: And so when I talked to her as like, why don't you just go to one grocery store one time a week And you know she had some resistance to this She was like, yeah, but the snacks that stop and shop are so much more expensive than the snacks at all these.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Then I get better deals on me and that's it.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: And when I was looking at her full grocery store expenditures in comparison to some of my other clients who were in a similar area with a similar sized family, i was like you're spending $75 a week more than people who do less shopping.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, let's just give it a try and we'll see what happens, right?
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: So she decluttered her pantry and she started to go shopping one time.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And now this client also really enjoyed the BJs and the bulk bulk shopping.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: So instead of making that a weekly trip, i think we got that down to once a month And then eventually I think she took it down to once a quarter.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: But shopping less, it helped her to save money on gasoline.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: It helped her to spend her Saturday, some of her Saturdays and Sundays relaxing rather than just shopping.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: It helped her to be able to get her food prep ready.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: So that was a pretty good example of in an attempt to save money.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: What she was really doing was she was not really squandering her money per se, but she was spending much more money, along with more time and more energy, and then that caused other problems during during the week.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: So when she was able to shop less, she actually spent less money, and this is a, this is a trick for for all of the times.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: It's like, if you want to spend less money, go shopping less often.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: If you want to spend less money, don't shop as much.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Don't.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Don't go shopping, you know, like as entertainment, right, although I don't think too many people are going grocery shopping as entertainment.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, a lot of times when we're trying to save money, we do.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: We're trying to save money, we do more shopping, and it's like shopping is an activity that you spend money at.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So if you want to spend less money, you should do less shopping, right, it's like if you were, you know, trying to eat less food, going to more buffets would probably not be the way to eat less food.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: If you were trying to like I don't know.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: All right, i think I talked long enough.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: You guys are with me, you get me.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: All right, and I also want to.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you a different story about shopping less.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: So I had another client who was spending almost $500 a week grocery shopping for a family of three, and one of which was a toddler, and she was at the grocery store, i would say, anywhere between five and 12 times a week And they were all small purchases, you know, $20 here, $40 here, maybe a big grocery shop once a week, right, $200, you know, for a big grocery shop.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And we talked about her getting her grocery shopping down to once a week, which was going to eliminate many, many trips to the store.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: And she again, i had, she had some resistance on this.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: She was telling me things like well, this is part of my self-care routine.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I like to go and touch the lemons, like sniff my fruits.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, but this is like really low quality self-care, like it's really a chore that you enjoy some parts of It's.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: You know, i don't want to say it's not self-care, because if you really love the smell and feel of lemons and the produce aisle, i mean like I'm not going to stop you.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: But with this client I was like, well, let's again.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: I was like let's just give it a try.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: So she committed to it for eight weeks because there were a lot of habits to break there, and so she ended up being able to get her grocery budget down from like almost 500 to about 250.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Then that extra money she was able to redirect towards something else that really helped to free up time and energy in her life.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So it's less times and less stores.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: So here's what I suggest to clients generally.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: So I know some people like bulk stores like Costco or BJs.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I promise you you're not saving any money.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: You're not, because if you make one impulse purchase at those stores, it's like $20.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: So any money that you would have saved on, you know, less expensive strawberries, you know you're.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: If you make one impulse purchase, you've you've lost all of your gains.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: That being said, i realized that those stores are quite wonderful and that they do have a different selection of goods and items.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So we don't hate.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Like, if you want to go to Costco, go to Costco.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: But what I do suggest is getting your Costco.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: You probably want to go one time per month And then if you get really good at Costco, you want to go one time per quarter, depending on, like, your freezer space and the kinds of stuff that you're going going for.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Doing general weekly grocery shopping at Costco does not save money, it just doesn't.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: You may save money on like an individual item, but if you look at your transactions, you're very likely not saving money.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: All right, so for your bulk stores once a month, once a quarter, if, if you're super organized and like inventory queen, right, then you want to pick you know another grocery store for all of the rest of your shopping and go there one time per week.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: And if you forget something or you don't have something, i would encourage you to just do your best to to do without it, because it's all of those little transactions where the stuff really really adds up.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I know, for example, like let's just say, i forget taco shells at my house and I send my husband to the store for taco shells.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Is he coming back with with one item?
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: He's coming back with $64 worth of stuff.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: So now I spent $64 to get taco shells when I could have just made taco salads, all right.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: So that's, that's the next tip.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: All right, so the next thing we want to talk about is going out to eat.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: That's another place where, a lot of times, grocery is may or may not actually be the issue, but a lot of times my clients are are, you know, getting coffee and fast food and going up to the restaurants and going up to a bar, and you know there's just a lot of money to be spent on delicious prepared foods.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: So let's just talk about that.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So that's another area where where there is some places that we can do our best to reduce the expenditures but also keep what's really important to us, because going out to eat is more than just about buying a deli sandwich.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Like, when you're going out to eat, you're generally getting maybe some time or some energy or social interaction or a celebration.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Like, generally, food purchases that are made out to eat are more than about just being hungry.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you some tips to evaluate what's important to you for your going out to eat.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you a story to bring this like grounded, just to ground this.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: So I had a client once who was a single lady and she was spending a lot of money out to eat Probably like more than $1,000 a month out to eat And she wanted that money to be redirected toward vacations and travel and other more enjoyable things like bigger picture things for her life.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And so we started with reviewing her transactions and I started to separate all of her out to eat purchases into like separate habits.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So we could see that on the days that she was going to work, a lot of days there was a Starbucks purchase that was coffee and breakfast, generally around $17.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So we have $17 anywhere between like three and five days a week.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Then I could see that there are lunch purchases at work.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Then I could see that most afternoons there was a little coffee shop purchase in the middle of the day.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Some days there was takeout like that would be delivered to her house, and sometimes there were bars and restaurants.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: So when we started evaluating these habits, we started to look at them separately.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Because if I just said, hey, you're spending about $1,000 a month out to eat, how does that feel for you?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: And she was like, no, i want to spend much less.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, great, reduce that by $800.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: That advice doesn't give her any sort of specific instructions and it doesn't.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: There's not enough clarity there.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So when we started with her habits, we started by breaking them down.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: So upon our discussion, we discovered her Starbucks habit was a literal hunger.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: She would not have time to cook something before she would go to work because there was a lot of traffic where she lived And so by the time that she was driving to work she would drive by Starbucks close to her office and she would stop because she was literally hungry.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: There was no social value and she didn't enjoy the food nor the transaction all that much.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So that was easy.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: So in this case she started looking for things that she could keep in her car to eat in her car.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: So we're not trying to change the whole habit loop, but we see that the habit start is like literal physical hunger and that she just needs food and that there's not a lot of extra value beyond the egg bites in this transaction.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: So that was easy for her.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: She didn't.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: She's like that doesn't feel like a sacrifice at all, easy peasy.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: So she ends up with like almost $100 a week back, so $400 a month we save on Starbucks just by putting some.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I think she kept almonds and granola and like pop tarts and things like that in her car, right, okay.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So then we start looking at her office lunches.
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: Now she tells me that her office lunches on Fridays.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Generally she goes to lunch with her co-workers and that is important to her because that's where her social interaction says.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: But she was like when I go to the deli by myself, she says it takes a lot of time.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: She's like I actually add stress to my day because I only have this much time, you know, for my lunch break.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: So by the time I get to the deli I order the food, i wait for the food, i pick it up.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: A lot of times I have to eat while I'm working and it just adds like a layer of time urgency to her day.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: So we start looking at this.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: So she tells me she doesn't really have have time in her day to day to do like lunch prep Because this woman also worked a good distance away from her house and there was a lot of traffic where she lives.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: So she, even though her work day might go eight hours, her out of the house time was, you know, more than 10, maybe 12 on a tough day, right with traffic.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: So she, she just wasn't getting home ready to like food, prep her lunches for the next day.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So for this client, what we did was we talked about her just buying a bag of stuff to make lunches with and then keeping it in the fridge at her office.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Now she had a fridge and a microwave at her office, which I'm sure not everybody has, but well, it's all right, we're just going for the idea here.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So she sometimes she would pack up sandwich supplies, sometimes she would make salad supplies, sometimes she would get things like a lean cuisine for a day that she, you know, only had a couple minutes, and so this helped her to actually get a break in at work, because when she was able to make her food at her office it saved her all of that travel time back and forth to the deli And so she could eat and then have time for like a little walk or, like you know, move her body a minute.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: I mean she wasn't like going to the gym or anything, but it makes a really big difference to step out of that time urgency.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So that was what she did most of the days of the week for work, for her work lunches, and then on Fridays or when there was like a special occasion she would go out to that office you know lunch and enjoy that time with her coworkers.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Then we started looking at takeout, so order in food to her house.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: So for her, a lot of these takeout transactions were because she didn't like to cook for one.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: There was something that bothered her about that.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: So we started looking at what we could do with this.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: So this was another place but this was a little trickier for her to solve.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: But she did, you know, but she did.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: So we had the emotional challenge of not wanting to cook for one And she said that the takeouts are generally like a really low joy purchase for her because she doesn't really care about the food.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: She's just hungry, she's just looking to eat something.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's like an element of like avoiding loneliness and the cooking for one.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: So what we started to talk about was well, if she the other thing was, she was like, if I cook big, big meals, then I have to eat the same food all week And she was like and I don't really like to do that, right, so we were kind of layering in these challenges.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: So what we decided was once a week she would order takeout And then what she would look to do is do some food prep on weekends and make herself like things that could go into the freezer So that way you know she might be, instead of eating the same thing from the fridge all week.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: She could put them in the freezer and then take it out, like you know, a couple weeks later, right?
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: So things like that.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So that was how she started to shift that habit.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Then we looked at her bars and restaurants And when she was going out to dinner with her friends or her family, like out someplace, she said that that was a very high social engagement.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: That was like a really high value activity for her.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: So we left that alone.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: When she got invited out to dinner, she would go out to dinner.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: So what we're starting to see here is that she needed to increase her grocery spending So that way she had some snacks on hand.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: She had some food at her house, because that was another thing.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: She was like grocery shopping for one, like all of this.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: Honestly, we had to do some work on like the feelings around some of these things because she did live by herself.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: So you know, if you're not willing to eat by yourself, but you live by yourself, you're going to have a very expensive lifestyle because you're always going to be ordering out or ordering food in or whatever.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: So there was a little bit of work on just the feelings around that.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: But it was like the.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: So the breakfast habits saved her like quite a bit of money a month.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Then we reduced her lunch spending by quite a bit.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: So then there was the coffee shop, which she actually really valued the coffee shop interactions.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: It was like she could walk to it from her office.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: She would go, she would generally, you know, have an interaction and she liked that interaction and those transactions were very small, you know, like a few dollars here and there.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: So that's that stayed fully intact.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: We didn't address that habit.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: So really where we saved the bulk of the money was on the breakfast, the lunches and the takeouts, leaving the coffee shop transactions and leaving her out to dinner transactions intact.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: So we had to, like I said, also, we increased her grocery budget so that way she could have the snacks for the car, the food for the office and have some things that she liked on hand that didn't require too much cooking at the nighttime, right, so like after she got home she could, instead of cooking for one she could eat, like vegetables and hummus or something that she enjoyed.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: That was also, you know, less expensive and probably healthier and lighter than, like you know, delivery pizza or Chinese food or like you know, whatever was getting delivered to her house.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: All right, so that's the.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: That's to evaluate the habits.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: And so the thing that I want to just reiterate is, when we're evaluating these habits, we want to be looking at, like, how many times a week?
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: is there a certain time that this is happening?
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: What's the trigger?
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Is it straight hunger?
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Is it boredom?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Is it loneliness?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Is it like desiring to get out of the house?
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Are you looking for fun, you know?
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: are you having a high quality social interaction with these these, these foods?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: And the reason why this is important is because if you just decide that you're going to stop spending money but you don't replace a way to get a high quality social interaction like if you were somebody who goes out to dinner with a friend and you're like I'm not spending money, well, you have to the the reward that you were getting for going out to dinner wasn't the food necessarily, it was the high quality social interaction, and that's a really important distinction, because you can get that same high quality social interaction in different ways.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: But if you just decide to stop spending the money and you also stop having that high quality social interaction, the impact to your wellbeing is going to be much bigger than just the food.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: And I think this is really important nuance for people to understand, because there's so much more out of going out to eat than just you know, than just the chicken parm, you know, or just the noodles or just whatever.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: It's like.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: It's a night, it's getting ready, it's going out and hanging out with their friends.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: So that's a really important thing to look at.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that you shouldn't adjust your habits, but if you're getting a lot of high quality social interaction going out to eat, you're still going to require that high quality social interaction.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: So you're going to have to get a little creative in how you're going to get it.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: You know which is.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: You know you could invite a friend over and cook dinner at home.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: You know you could go out for a walk instead of going out to dinner.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do it, but it does need to be taken into consideration.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: So sometimes it's hunger, sometimes it's these other things.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, where I'm going with this is you want to understand what else you're getting besides the food and make sure that that habit loop you're still getting the actual things that you need from those purchases, even though you're not going to be making the purchases in the exact same way, all right.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: And the last thing that I want to say is sometimes to spend the less money on food, we have to look at buying the highest level of support that we can actually afford.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell you another story, because I think this is what grounds it.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: So I was working with a client super smart lady, single mom, teenage kid and she's spending a lot of money on on takeout, right On fast food, on takeout and on all of the food.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: And so when I look at her transactions, i'm like well, we could probably cut your food by, like you know, 800 to $1,000 a month, and then you'd probably be a little bit better on track.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: So, for this client, the truth of why she was buying so much takeout and so much fast food was because she was pressed for time and exhausted.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: So if I started adding in solutions for her that require a lot of time or a lot of, you know, energy, it's not gonna work.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: She'd already tried that, she's, she's.
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: She'd already tried budgeting, she'd already tried plans.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: She'd already tried a zillion different ways to cut down this food budget.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Like, when she came to see me, she knew she was overspending on food.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't surprise her when I was like, hey, you're spending a lot of money on food.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Like she came to me fully aware that she was spending too much money on food and all of what she'd tried going to multiple grocery stores wasn't working.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: You know, willpower wasn't working.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Food prep would work for a little while, but then it wouldn't because also her teenage son sometimes wouldn't want to eat what she cooked, right.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: So then there was like the layer of having to just fight with him when she was already exhausted.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: And I don't know if any of you have kids, but they do have a way of wearing you down a bit, right.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: So for this client.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So, first thing, she decluttered her cabinet so that way she could see what was it, just clearing out the space, just getting rid of anything unnecessary.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: This woman was also going.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Her food shopping habits were wild.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Like she was really, really doing a lot of shopping because she would go to BJs and Costco.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: She would order some stuff online.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: There were some things that would come in the mail.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Then there was grocery stores, and then there was multiple grocery stores.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So again we started to work on her shopping list.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: So she decided that she would go to the bulk stores one time per month.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: One bulk store, and she usually would go to two or three.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: So she put them on rotation.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: So she would go to BJs sometimes, she would go to Costco sometimes, and then there was like a third one that was local to her that I don't actually remember the name of.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: So she put those on rotation.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Then all of her grocery shopping we got down to one store, with the commitment of that being once a week.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Then what we were looking for was a way for her to have dinners prepared.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: So she found a local service that she could buy.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: She could buy a week's worth of dinners prepared and it was meals for four, and so it was just her and her son living together.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So the meals for four would then give her growing boy a double portion and then she could take one for lunch the next day.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: So the reason she knew about this food service, but she thought that when she was spending the money, that it was too expensive because she was spending all of the money at once.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: So it was like $250 a week or whatever.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Seems like a ton of money when you're doing it all at once, but she was spending more than that on takeout and fast food and the grocery shopping.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: So when we just looked at like, the truth of the situation was, she required a higher level of support than what she was letting herself have previously.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: That money that she was spending on the food service ended up saving her a ton of money because it was one trip to go pick up a whole week's worth of food, rather than five or six different trips to takeout.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: It was one transaction.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: She was able to reduce her grocery spending budget.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: She was able to take lunch to work And in addition to that, she didn't have to food prep, and so her grocery shopping went from like 16 hours a month to like four hours a month.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So she got all of that time back, and that was daytime, week and hours is what she got back.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: So that was allowing her to like relax and enjoy and spend good quality time with her kid rather than just like doing chores together.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: So a lot of times, women today are working a lot.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: We're working, we're keeping our house up, but we're keeping our marriage.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: We're mothering the kids, we're trying to drink enough water, be sexy on top of it, and a lot of times it's really just too much.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And sometimes we have to really look at the truth of how much money am I spending on time leaks and how much money am I spending on my energy, and is there a better way for me to get this?
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: So look at in this example, she had been paying like $750 a month for a low quality support of McDonald's and Taco Bell and order in Thai food and things like that, and then we started to switch.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: What's the highest level of support that I can actually afford?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: So when we have $750 a month, that was going toward that low grade level of support and we were able to get $250 for a very high level of support with one trip, healthy food, enough portion for her to be able to take the next day.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: That really really helped these changes to be sustainable, because when it comes to reducing your overall food budget, we have to really look at things that are sustainable, because you're going to be physically hungry a lot of times when you're buying food And when you have an immediate need like that, it's going to trump your budget.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It's going to trump your plan.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I could tell you all day that I'm not going to spend money on snacks, but then when I'm hungry, i'm for sure getting a snack.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, looking at the highest level of support that you can reasonably afford And sometimes we have to do some work on ourselves to feel deserving of that or to feel worthy of that, or to feel not guilty Sometimes my clients will feel guilty when they're paying somebody to do their food prep, when they are fully capable of doing their food prep.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: But the truth is sometimes we need a higher level of support and that when we just buy it at the highest level, it ends up being less expensive than buying the Band-Aid solutions and then our lives gets better.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: So for this client, for example, the $250 a week that she spends on that food service helped her to get back so many hours, it helps her to feel like a better mom, it helps her to be rested and rejuvenated for her work week And it helps her with her body and fitness goals.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: So there's so much more that she got for being able to pay for that higher level of support than what she was doing with the takeout.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: And so a lot of times the pushback I get on this is people are like I can't afford high levels of service, i can't afford a housekeeper, i can't afford a food prep, i can't afford these things.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: And what I would encourage you to do is really look at your transactions and seeing what you're already spending on those things and seeing if that could be redirected.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of times we're like I don't want my money to go to this or that, i want it to go towards something new and exciting which is cool, but if the truth of the matter is you actually need a higher level of support like if the truth of the matter is you don't actually have the time or energy to be able to actually execute on all the things that you'd like to do, sometimes being kind to yourself and actually just buying the level of support that you need is really important.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: And I'm going to add one last thing.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: This is not really one of the five core things that I wanted to teach you today, but it's like I know for myself.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I have definitely been a real domestic goddess at the grocery store, buying all sorts of things that I'm going to cook from scratch and whatever.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: Because on Sunday I don't have anything to do, i'm relaxing, i'm scrolling Pinterest, i'm finding these things And I'm just having a great day off.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: But on Tuesday night I'm not wanting to cut a butter nut squash, i'm just not.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: That's the truth.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: And so I had to reconcile the difference between domestic goddess at the grocery store self And Tuesday night.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: Hair is a mess, everybody's hungry And I'm out of patience self.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: So sometimes at the grocery store and when we're planning our stuff, we have to really look at the truth of what we think our week is going to be like and plan to be compassionate to our self on Tuesday night when we know that there's not a ton of time.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And so another thing that I see a lot of money tips around is like buy the whole butter nut squash instead of the cut butter nut squash to save 54 cents.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, and I will confess this to you all right now, all my podcast listeners If I buy a whole butter nut squash, the chances of me throwing it away incredibly high, but if I buy pre cut butter nut squash, the chances of it going into a soup or something much higher.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And it's just because, at the end of the day, sometimes I'm like I don't want to wrestle with that butter and squash to get its skin off.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Like I just don't.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: That's the, that is the imperfect truth of Brie Sedano, right?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: Like I just don't have it in me.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: So I had to do a little bit of work to get over some of that stuff because, like, am I capable of cutting a butter and squash?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Of course, and it is buying a whole butter and squash probably better and healthier and then better for a million ways than buying the pre cut.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe, but like the truth is, is I'm going to throw a whole butter nut squash away and I'm not if I get the pre cut one?
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: So sometimes, like you know, buying a prepared dinner, having a frozen pizza in your freezer for an emergency, having some prepped food, is just a really thing, like it's just a kind way to treat yourself when you're when you're busy and when you've got a lot going on.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: So those are some tips to spend less money on food.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: I hope this was helpful.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I hope you can apply some of this stuff and save, save some money and be able to redirect it to vacations and home upgrades and more fun things than just snacky snacks, and be able to buy this and enjoy the snacks that you do buy even more, because you know that you can afford it and you don't have to eat them with any guilt or trepidation.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: All right, i love you, i appreciate you and I will see you or I will talk to you next week.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: It was my pleasure and joy to talk with you today.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening.
• 33:18
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• 33:25
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• 33:30
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• 33:39
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• 33:41
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• 33:45
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• 33:55
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• 34:04
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