Holiday shopping has a way of making even a reasonable budget feel inadequate. Between gifts, gatherings, school events, and all the little things that pop up between now and December, there's almost always something you forgot to account for.

And while there's no shortage of advice about how to spend less during the holidays, we're interested in something a little different – how to make the money you have go further. So this week, we're talking about a few ways to get ahead of holiday spending before the season gets away from you.

We get into:

• why budgeting gets harder when buying something barely feels like a financial decision anymore
• the browser extensions and price-tracking tools that can do the comparison shopping you absolutely do not have time to do yourself
• how to tell whether that “30% off” holiday deal is actually a deal
• why you should keep watching prices even after you buy something
• how retailer price-adjustment policies can give you more flexibility around when you shop
• the mistake we make when a $100 gift only costs $70…
• why finding a discount and actually saving money are two completely different things
• why only focusing on “finding” some mysterious extra $500 is a version of scarcity thinking
• and why the smartest way to fight increasingly sophisticated spending technology might be to use technology right back

Links:

• Download our free Financial Technology Toolkit

Connect with Julien and Kiersten on our website, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Join our email list to get updates from us, opportunities for discounts, freebies and a quick rundown on the relevant financial and career news impacting your life.

Get our book Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away, named 2023 best overall book about investing by Business Insider and one of the best personal finance books by Forbes

If you would like to learn more about investing, check out our newest class, Making Money Grow

Isn’t it funny how we’ll side-eye Netflix over a $2 price increase, but somehow let a credit card quietly charge us $500, $700, even $895 a year without asking nearly as many questions? This episode is about why we give those increases so much more grace, and whether we should.

Once you’ve convinced yourself you’re the kind of person who knows how to “maximize the benefits,” the annual fee can start feeling less like spending and more like proof that you’re good at money. So this week, we’re asking those cards to prove themselves.

We discuss:

• why we scrutinize unused gym memberships but let credit cards ride on decisions we made years ago
• the difference between a perk being worth $600 on paper and being worth $600 to YOU
• how rewards programs turn into a part-time job of credits, portals, transfer partners, expiration dates, and rules
• why some of the fanciest benefits only make sense if your actual life matches the customer they were designed for
• what credit card companies know about breakage, unused rewards, and why making every benefit easy to redeem is not exactly the business model
• how nostalgia, status, and the feeling of being “financially savvy” can keep you paying for a card long after it stops fitting your life
• and the 3 choices you actually have before the annual fee renews

Links:

• Episode 5 - Credit Card Points hacking…is it worth it?
• Episode 180 - Decoding Consumerism with Dr. Marcus Collins
• Episode 32 - What’s new with credit

Connect with Julien and Kiersten on our website, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Join our email list to get updates from us, opportunities for discounts, freebies and a quick rundown on the relevant financial and career news impacting your life.

Get our book Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away, named 2023 best overall book about investing by Business Insider and one of the best personal finance books by Forbes

If you would like to learn more about investing, check out our newest class, Making Money Grow

Groceries are expensive, eating out is expensive, and somehow the advice for spending less on food is still “make a list.”

Meanwhile, feeding yourself has gotten weirdly strategic these days. Between higher prices, smaller packages, busy schedules, food waste, and recalls, the smartest grocery strategy is simply getting better at buying for the life you actually live.

So in this episode, we’re sharing 5 questions to ask before you even head to the grocery store so you can spend less, waste less, and make eating at home feel a whole lot easier.

We get into:

• Why shopping hungry changes what “enough” looks like
• The pantry food you already paid for and why whatever keeps getting left behind is useful feedback
• How your freezer quietly becomes a graveyard for food waste
• Why a $20 frozen lasagna can be a better financial decision than buying all the ingredients from scratch
• What actually deserves “staple” status in your house
• How to build different levels of cooking into your routine so the only choices aren’t “make a whole meal” or “order $100 worth of takeout”
• And the bonus question we probably all need to start asking before we toss something in the cart: is this currently recalled?

Links:

• 3 reasons your food doesn’t turn out the way you want
• Catch up on our Eat Better cooking series, then leave a comment with what you want Julien to tackle next. He’s open to anything from a technique or ingredient, to a meal, shortcut, or cooking problem you want help with
• For the bigger picture behind what we eat and why, watch Taste the Impact, our mini doc on the food system itself

Connect with Julien and Kiersten on our website, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Join our email list to get updates from us, opportunities for discounts, freebies and a quick rundown on the relevant financial and career news impacting your life.

Get our book Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away, named 2023 best overall book about investing by Business Insider and one of the best personal finance books by Forbes

If you would like to learn more about investing, check out our newest class, Making Money Grow