You're listening to the decluttered mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, diana Renee, and in 2017, i had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, i got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show. Welcome to this week's episode of the decluttered mom podcast. This week, we are continuing our interview with Carly from Debt Free Mom on Instagram. If you have not listened to the first part, please go back to last week and listen to last week's episode, which is the first half of our conversation all about contentment and budgeting and ADHD budgeting and all sorts of things like that And then come listen to this second part, because it's the second half of that same conversation And please, if you resonate with anything that she is saying in these episodes, i'd love if you could reach out to her on Instagram. We'll link her Instagram below and just let her know, just say hi, let her know She is someone who is a joy to follow on there and has very valuable resources, both free and paid. So without further ado, let's jump into the second half of the interview with Carly from . So several of the questions that came through are people who follow you also And they were along the same lines of, like Carly mentioned recently being diagnosed with ADHD. You were diagnosed with ADHD in the last year So, like you, both were like late plumbers for diagnosis right And a lot of questions about just general or big tips that you have when it comes to money or budgeting for someone with ADHD.

That's a good question. It's been interesting to me. So my diagnosis was only like a little over a month ago. So I feel like for me at this point it's more like in retrospect, trying to pick apart the things that I already do that already work well for me and trying to figure out like, does that just work well for me because it works well for anybody? You know, like I had a moment of crisis when I made like when I had the diagnosis, and then I'm here like talking to people on Instagram all the time and making a course and making budgets for people And I'm like am I doing something that will only work for them if they also have ADHD? But so it's been. It's as I piece it or as I kind of pick it apart and try to look at it. I think the things that work for me with money are I have always loved the budgeting by pay period And now, if I can think back to that with in in light of what I know about ADHD, it's such a shorter period of time. So, with our struggle to understand the concept of time and the idea like pacing myself if I get all of my money at the beginning of the month and I have to make it last for 30 days. I'm not going to make it last like I'm just 30 days feels like an eternity away And it just feels like there's no consequence to what I do today on anything 30 days from now. But two weeks is the length of pay period that I worked with for many, many years And for some reason, there was just something about the idea that everything that I was looking at was either this week or next week felt short-term enough that I was like I have to stay focused on what our plan is and pay attention to this, because everything that I'm looking at is happening within the next 13 days. And so for me, that concept, for people listening and unfamiliar, one of the big things about ADHD is wrapping our heads around time and the passage of time, and so a book that I've read called ADHD 2.0, written by two doctors who are MDs who both themselves have ADHD. I remember listening to this audio book like six months ago, before I was diagnosed, but I had been talking to Diana forever about it. Like I know I have it. But he explained something where I was like, yes, i could have never put it into words. He said for people with ADHD, there are two times there's now and not right now, and that's really the only conceptualizing of time that we can really have, and so that's why we're late or we're rushing out the door. We do everything procrastinated, because now it went from not right now to now, and so, with budgeting, having that shorter window of time allowed me to care about the things that I was doing, where, if I tried to put it into such a long timeframe 30 days felt so long that I just didn't care what was going to happen 30 days from now, because it felt like abstract, like it just felt like it was just too far away. So that's a big one for me. I think having to be the one that's managing our budget is actually very helpful for my ADHD, like if I can imagine not being the one that's looking at the numbers, that's actually having to pay attention to where things are going. I feel like then I would get us into deep trouble with the way I spent, because it would just feel like there was no consequence to what I was doing, that I, like you mentioned with the dopamine, hits with purchasing things. That's totally how I feel, so I would be out there living my best life, swiping every card imaginable, because it just didn't feel like it would. You know, if I wasn't the one aware of our numbers, aware of what goals we were trying to accomplish, it would be so easy to just blow through whatever was available to us. So I do think that, actually being the you know like, i think that might feel a little backwards of like, oh well, you're prone to overspending and you're prone to not being on top of the details, so maybe you shouldn't manage the money. But I do think that, like, being the person who looks at it, it you know, in the day to day kind of stuff, and makes a plan for how we're going to use it, then helps me not to leave the house and just go wild with buying whatever I see.

Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned that you had talked to me for a long time about the possibility of you having ADHD And I just remember I don't remember what you put in stories one day, but you put something in stories like over a year ago, and I DM'd you and I was like Carly, have you ever considered having?

ADHD. I'm trying to I remember that happening. I'm trying to think of what it was, because I know that, yeah, I remember I can't remember And it was something this happened so often in the last year And often it was you that was telling me. it was like mentioning things that were so fundamental to how I behave that I assume that, I assume that everyone acts that way. And then I, yeah, I remember you saying something like that, where I was like Okay, not every like everybody is not out there doing this. My whole life is a lie. I know exactly like I have been told a lie and somehow I'm here like a functioning adult.

When you were talking about like having the whole month be a hard thing for someone with a PhD when they're budgeting. I remember when I had my consultation with you and we so my husband gets paid once a month, i pay myself once a month as a business owner And so we were. We've just always sent. For as long as I can remember, we have done monthly budgeting because the first of the month we have all the money for the entire month in our bank account And we just it wasn't working. Basically is what I'm saying. And you had said why don't you just pretend that you only get paid, you know, twice a month? and then we took it even further. We said why don't you just pretend you get paid once a week? so like you're budgeting one week at a time? And that is how I've budgeted ever since then and it has made such a big difference. It's the same amount of money, it's the same bills, it's the same everything, but it's like I tricked my brain into like being able to actually track it and actually stay on track with it.

Yeah, Yeah, and I think it is that that ADHD thing of care. We care about the things that are that are happening right now and that are about to happen, and that we just like that anything that's beyond the about to happen feeling it just doesn't exist, it's just a dark void. Yeah.

Absolutely. Another big question for you from that question box was like if you're just getting started with budgeting and you are overwhelmed with debt, what is like the most common or common area or areas that you would first look at to start spending less or to cut costs?

So food is a big one, but that has a bottom. It has a floor that we hit, that we can't spend zero. So food Especially now Yes, especially now. And more specifically, instead of just saying food, what I like to do is look at the food category holistically, adding groceries and restaurants together, and often, like when I'm building custom budgets for people, what I first do is just set up the numbers exactly the way they give them to me, and then I create a suggested budget off of that, and a lot of times what I end up suggesting is adding money to their grocery budget and reducing their restaurant budget, so which still has a net effect of decreasing the amount of money that they're spending on food. So it is pretty widely accepted and known, especially among like restaurant owners and things you can look up about this, that the exact same food will cost three times more in a restaurant than it will in a grocery store. So buying a meal at if you go to Chick-fil-A and your lunch is $15, it means that you could make that lunch at home for $5. And now it doesn't mean that each individual ingredient, that if you bought chicken and there's it, but it means the amount of food that you actually used, that you're actually eating, would equal about $5. So I use that metric a lot when I'm helping people with their budgets to say, hey, if you're spending a ton eating out, if we dial back just to keep brown numbers, if we dial back your restaurant spending by $60, we can add $20 to your restaurant budget or to your grocery budget. I'm sorry, we can add $20 to your grocery budget, subtract $60 out of your restaurant budget And that's the same amount of food and you've saved $40. So that's something that I do, that I recommend people looking at first is on the whole, not just in groceries, because a lot of times people are really upset about how much they spend in groceries and not as concerned about how much they spend eating out. But groceries go, they just stretch so much farther than anything we can get at even the lowest tier fast food restaurant. So look at your food spending as a total and ask yourself, if I add some money to my grocery budget, can I take some away from restaurants? that then results in spending less on food overall. Other common ones to look at are insurance and cell phone. Those are two big ones that a lot of times people are so like they've been with the same company for 25 years or they've had the exact same plan for this long, so they don't even shop around. But especially in the last five to 10 years, the number of insurance companies and the number of cell phone providers has just skyrocketed, and the more competition there is, the lower prices go. So just taking I mean even just setting a reminder in your phone for once a year to just run online, i'm gonna run two or three car insurance quotes and just make sure that what I'm paying for the exact same policy is at least competitive, is at least in the ballpark, like I'm not gonna switch insurance companies to save $50 over an entire year, but if it's like $600, then yeah, i might look at switching. And same with cell phone. So we've done Google Fi, we've done Mint Mobile, which Mint Mobile works in certain areas and not in others. So, like the town next to us, my phone always worked phenomenally. In my little town it did not at all. So we switched from Mint Mobile to Verizon Prepaid where we buy our phones outright and we pre-pay just a set amount. So it's not a contract plan basically but it's still Verizon And so with both of our phones paid off, we pay $64 a month for me to have 15 gigs a month and Kyle to have five gigs a month. So sometimes I build budgets where cell phone plans are like upwards of 200 plus And I'll usually highlight that like, hey, at least chop around and see, because those are some nice ways to lower your spending without lowering anything in your lifestyle. Right, like if we lower our takeout budget, that means we are actually eating out less and we're experiencing life differently. If we can lower our insurance or our cell phone bills while keeping our plans the same, then we're just spending less for the exact same thing.

Yeah, so I'm really curious I know you said that like they're. You know they have studied the difference between food restaurant cause or food at restaurants versus food and grocery stores is being three times more. I would be very curious to see what it would be with like a food delivery like Uber Eats and those types of things, because sometimes I will use Uber Eats and I will look at like I will hit submit and then it will show me what I paid And I'm like how is that? How is that possible to have paid that? Like I ordered a Dairy Queen Blizzard and it was a small Dairy Queen Blizzard, so the actual Blizzard was like under $5. Yeah, and I paid. I think it was like $27.

I was going to guess in the 20s. Yeah, and I was like that.

I mean, it was a really good Blizzard, but I don't know if it was worth it $27.

Yeah, Those services for sure are, because they would have to be a multiplier above three, because they're taking the exact same restaurant menu and prices and then adding on their own service fees, their own overhead, their own, you know, tipping and all that stuff. So I, if I I haven't looked at anything, but if I had to venture, I guess I would say that those are more like five to six times what you could get in the restaurant. And and the other thing too, the thing that I like to remind people is that there's a big convenience factor for those, but there's not always a time saving factor. So, like, like, we like to tell ourselves, oh, like, we'll just get fast food because we're super busy. But, if you like, I had a friend one time I've said that over and over on Instagram And so she finally was like, okay, I'm going to this fast food place And I'm going to time from the time I leave my driveway, I'm going to go, I'm just going to use the drive-thru and then I'm going to come back home and I'm going to end it. And it was like it was a. It was a fast food place in our town and it was like 38 minutes, I think. But from the time she left her house to the time she waited in the drive-thru, got her food and drove home And I was like, yep, like you for sure can put together a simple dinner in less than 38 minutes. Yeah, So I I say that as someone who, like ate Chick-fil-A two days ago, So like I'm not at all saying I'm not saying never do it, but I'm saying sometimes the excuses we have about why we do it all the time aren't always valid excuses.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I have one more question for you. This I thought this was a really good one because it's kind of the opposite of a lot of the questions, and it's basically saying that they try, they really try hard to make do and live with less, don't spend as much money, but now it's gotten to the point where they have a hard time justifying spending money at all. And so her question was basically like is there a mindset shift that could help us not get out of control with our spending, but like not feel guilty if we do buy something that we absolutely can afford?

Yeah for sure. So I think a few things. Money the thing that comes to mind first is that money is not an end unto itself. So like we don't save money for the sake of having money, we don't build investment funds for the sake of having investments, they're a vehicle by which we're able to do other things. So if we stop treating it like a vehicle that enables us to do other things, then we've missed the point entirely. So I think we need to like for that person. I would ask, like why do you have that money and savings? or why did you have such a long period of time of being frugal? Was it because your income was low or was it because you were avoiding debt or whatever? And so sometimes realizing that the mentality that can get us out of a situation, out of debt or out of low income is not going to be the mentality or the approach that will serve us once we've actually gotten past it. So I definitely relate to that because if I think back to like the first you know, eight to 10, five to eight years of my marriage, of lots of kids, back to back low income My husband worked in a nonprofit and I was a stay-at-home mom. So I was like penny pincher, really on top of this, like on all of these things out of necessity, and we're not in that phase of life anymore. But it's hard to let go of those things because at the time they really were the things that you needed to do to survive and thrive. So I think having to talk through to myself like those served you well at the time and you can be grateful for those skills and those you know that self-discipline because they served you so well at the time. But you're not in that time anymore. So now we have to go about finding the approaches that serve us well in this new season of life And, based on what that person's describing, the approach that now serves you is to ask yourself, not how can I hold on to this, but how can this money do the most good? And so you know if I think about it. I'm reading the book The Psychology of Money, and one of the very first things that the author Morgan Howsell, one of the first stories he tells, is about this janitor who worked as a janitor during the day and at a convenience store at night, had a couple of step kids and a very small home, and when he passed away, it was the very first time that his step kids realized that he was like a multi-multi-millionaire, because he had been just taking whatever difference he had between his job and its expenses and investing it for like decades and decades and decades. And he donated a ton of it, like in his will post after he died, donated tons of it to hospitals, split it up among his kids and stuff. And I that story you know. People are like, oh well, that means like anybody can invest and get to whatever. And the author of the book says, like I think the guy missed the point, like he, he didn't ever use any of it. And so having having a balanced approach to like we, we don't want to have a YOLO mindset of like spend whatever and go into debt because you could die any day And so just blow it all. But at the same time, people are just as prone to the opposite extreme of the what ifs, like the fear of needing all of it all the time And so then never getting to enjoy it. So I would just tell that person that, like, what served them well to get them to that point is not going to be what continues to serve you while moving forward. So ask yourself where this money can do the most good, so that you can enjoy it and be be grateful for all the hard work that you put in up to that point and realize that you don't have to keep doing that forever.

Yeah, i like that. That goes along with the motto I have used in my business since the very beginning And I got it from James Wedmore and it was what got you here, won't get you there. And it's the same concept right Of like. Whatever you did to get to this point is not going to work. To get you to the next point that you're wanting to get, yep, awesome, Yeah, carly, thank you so much for talking to me. I didn't say this before, but she and I decided to have like a later evening. I think it's what? 10 o'clock there.

It's, yeah, a little after 10 here. I'm an eye doll, though, just like you.

Yeah, this is that. This is when our brains work the best. We're like why don't we just take care of the ideas of it?

Yeah, when we were first talking about doing this, we were like talking about like 5pm, 4pm, and I'm like, hey, like we are both really late night people, let's just do it late at night, right.

It probably would have been even better if it was like midnight, oh yeah.

Yeah, I would have been even more succinct and on top of my answers two hours from now.

Where can people find you and how can they work with you if they are wanting to learn just more about budgeting or just taking control of their personal finances?

Yeah, so they can find me. Most the time I spend on Instagram, i'm at debtfreemom, and then my website is debtfreemomco. I have a very broad range of ways that people can work with me. I'm super conscious of the fact that I'm drawing people who are self-identifying as being in a tough spot with their money, so I have things all the way, starting at free. The budget template that I use for myself and that I recommend for other people is only $9. And then I have all the way up to a full course called Pay Period Budget Academy, where people can learn the full process for not just making a budget but actually making it come to life in their real life. And then, if people don't want to take the DIY approach to doing it themselves and they'd rather have some expert advice and have their budget set up by me when they're starting out, then I also offer custom budgets where you send me all of your numbers, you fill out a worksheet I have, and I will send back to you a fully completed budget for your next six pay periods, along with my suggestions on how to approach your goals in order.

Yeah, i love it. We're going to link her Instagram below in the show notes also, but I have everything that she just mentioned. I have the template, i did the one on one, i did the course and all of it is wonderful. So definitely check her out and send her a DM on Instagram. if you're listening to this And if anything resonated with you, i am speaking for you, but I'm guessing that you would love to hear it. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.