Chelsea and Lauren answer your questions in this (not-so-rapid-fire) Q&A
Hi i’m chelsea and i’m lauren we are the financial diet and today we’re going to be doing something superduper fun we think we hope which is answering some of our reader questions we really get a ton of questions on the website as well as in the comments here on our channel and i actually have a regular column that i do on the site where people write in and ask
Me stuff and a lot of the questions are really much more like quick and don’t require some like long thought-out answer so we thought we’d take some of those questions and just do kind of like a rapid-fire confessional q&a and we actually haven’t prepared answers to these questions so you guys are going to get the real honest answers from us so let’s just hop
Right into it we’re both going to be answering each question so hopefully neither one of us has some really embarrassing answer number one what is something you learned about money this year that you wish you’d known sooner so for me probably figuring out how much the accountant costs like i didn’t realize how expensive that was then you get to bill for and you’re
Just like wow this was totally unprepared for that being said we should also say that like the accountants expensive depending on what he’s doing or she’s doing but usually they’ll save you like twice as much money as your pain it’s true it’s worth it it just feels like super shitty to have to pay that upfront but in the end it’s totally worth it so this year was
Probably like a big year for us for the site doing a lot of like diy projects and doing a lot of things ourselves and i think we’re all used to thinking of diy as automatically being the cheaper option and pretty much every like circumstance and i feel like this year i really learned that like sometimes it is cheaper both in terms of money and also in terms of like
Not losing an entire day’s work worth of work on it to just go out and buy something it’s not always cheaper to do diy like definitely way out of way out the cost because like the raw materials plus you know often like paint and tools and the time it will take you sometimes it’s worth it yeah the second question is what is the best change you’ve made with how you
Handle money since starting tfd for sure the biggest one is put all of my bills through a credit card and then just pay off the credit card so that you know you get all the points and the miles and no you basically are getting free stuff just for doing the spending that you have to be doing already and for me the biggest money change i’ve made is probably being really
Diligent about going through each credit card statement every month usually i would just kind of pay and really kind of not look through but now i go through every expense and say okay i remember that charge so that there’s nothing that would come up that i’d pay for and like it was fraud or sometimes it’s like self frauds yeah like you really convinced yourself you
Needed that and you did not number three what is it big treat yourself purchase that you totally regret making and why did you make it so the biggest treat yourself purchased that i ever made and i’ve written about this on the site before was i spent $1,600 to fly to meet friends in my orca when i was like 21 and it completely drained my savings account and i had
Basically no money left after that and it’s just something that i would never do again and i would never do that nowadays like it’s just the most destructive financial choice you can make so my biggest treat yourself is definitely when i sold my first book i was like overwhelmed with just how exciting it was and i made two purchases one was i took like my closest
Friends out to this nice dinner to thank them and i don’t regret that at all but the other thing was i went to like this really really bougie department store i was living in paris it’s sort of like the equivalent of like you know bergdorf goodman or whatever and i like bought a designer purse because i’d never owned one before and i bought it and it’s like this
Big and it’s barney purple i mean honestly with the right outfit it’s a cute purse but the right outfit for that purse is like few and far between so i have worn that purse like a grand total of four or five times in my life and it was like five hundred dollars so i hugely regret that but it was like i was just overwhelmed with my success and i was like i’m gonna be
The girl that owns a bright purple designer purse so number four is have you ever had a relationship and because of money or a friendship end because of money so relationships long story short no i’ve had as i’ve mentioned before on the channel like relationships where like we had a bad like dynamic with money but it was never like the end it like it always ended
For other reasons but the friendship thing sort of like i don’t have people that like i like a void and i’ve like cut them out of my life but i do have people that like i won’t socialize with like i don’t like ask them to go out i don’t invite them to a lot of things because it’s like they have a very awkward relationship with money like they will agree to things
And then be really like complain about it while we’re out or like they’ll like make a really big deal at the table about like splitting a cheque or like they won’t want to like they’ll go to things and then sort of like guilt you for having paid like they just have a bad relationship with money themselves so it makes socializing awkward and so i just don’t socialize
As much with them so yeah i would say probably no to the relationship but the friendship thing kind of along the lines that you were describing like you have certain group of friends that you’ll do certain things with like you have your friends that you’ll go out to a fancy restaurant with frenzy travel with like not every friend you’re having in your life will do
All those things so i wouldn’t say that the friendships end but they change as you get older and you figure out what people around you consider like worth spending money on number five what has been the hardest thing about starting your own business so i think the hardest thing is probably just needing to do a bunch of different tasks well like you know you have
To be a really good multitasker you have to do things like fix the coffee pot if it breaks like find a printer also like do your normal job for me it’s designing but then also like photographing aiming videos so me videos exactly you want but i think that it’s just a much more difficult balance when you own your own business because there is no other layer of
Like up or upper level management that’ll take care of things for you at it like a normal 9 to 5 job where you’re kind of insulated from the more unsavory aspects of a job for me i would say it’s like coming up with protocols for things as you develop them like every time we add a new person to the team it’s like oh like this person needs some sort of guide book
Or some sort of instruction but that person didn’t exist before so like how do you create that out of nothing it’s really hard also to decide like you don’t realize you need something until you’re like we needed this yesterday you know like and then you’re like ah let’s have an accountant now so it’s you know it’s really just figuring out things as you go along
And having to set up an infrastructure where there was none yesterday so number six what is your biggest insecurity when it comes to money so my biggest insecurity when it comes to money is more like about how i earn it than anything else like long story short nobody thinks that working on the internet is a real job particularly not like extended family members
And especially not like my partner’s french and like his family like try talking to like an 82 year old french farmer about like digital ad revenue like they’re there it’s not it’s just not gonna have no common ground there right even when i was at my old job which was also an internet job even then they’re like chelsea just like writes words on the internet and
People would like like when you say you run a site people be like i have a blog too it’s like you know kittens and hats tumblr.com or living thing and the fact that like i feel like i need to prove to people that i earn money and that i do it myself and that i’m that this is an actual job and not just like us getting together every day to have fun on the internet
Is really big and like i know i should be over it it’s like it doesn’t matter what another person would think about it but it’s hard to get over that you know so my biggest insecurity is probably like not saving enough i do save money but i always feel like every birthday that comes around and like damn like i want to reach this milestone that like people around
Me are reaching and i know that it’s important to not compare yourself to people especially with your financial situation because everyone’s on like a different path but i think that’s probably the biggest insecurity is not having like a mountain of gold like to my name at this point i yeah oh is it like donald scrooge mcduck like diving into coins so number seven
Is what is something you accomplished financially that you didn’t think would be possible for me i probably feel like the biggest financial accomplishment was moving into new york city actually because i had wanted to do it for so long and it required saving up like a pretty big chunk of money because you had to pay for a broker’s fee moving costs stuff like that
So it really did feel like when i finally got in here like i made it like big girl in the city like finally living and working felt like a huge accomplishment how am i biggest one was from years and years ago when i paid off my defaulted credit card like i didn’t think that i would ever do that because of you know before that i had been so reckless with money that
The idea of like you know writing that big cheque or whatever seemed ridiculous and when i did it so many more things started to seem financially possible because i was able to like make the good decision and now i have like a good credit score which is also something that like hoo boy like at 20 years old i was like i’m gonna live you know in the woods like i’m never
Gonna have credit please it like i really thought i would like live off the grid because i would just never be possible enough and now now look at us now look at a juice look at me number eight what is the most surprising thing you’ve learned since starting tft for sure for me it’s how like freaked out people get when you talk about money in real life i talk about
Money all the time now and in a very candid way until like my closest friends and family and stuff it’s like they’re used to it so they they’re they don’t mind but like i have a lot of like more acquaintance level friends that like if i bring up money stuff you know they’re not going to like leave the restaurant or whatever but they’ll like they’ll get tense about
It and this could be someone with whom like literally 30 seconds earlier we were talking about sex you know like so it’s not a question of like you know there they can be totally open about things that to me might feel more personal but people get freaked out about money especially in a place like new york where everything’s so expensive i was honestly shocked at
How many people wanted to learn about personal finance and we’re interested in reading about it before head started at tf d i really didn’t read a lot of personal finance on the internet but over the last two years that’s totally changed for me and i think that it’s really interesting to get you know people writing in with questions they really want specific advice
They’re they’re super passionate about it lots of me lots of articles being sent in yeah so for me that has been like the most surprising thing i’ve learned since starting number nine what is something you still do really badly with money so for me this is such a guilty pleasure but i still buy coffee out like several times a week which is terrible it’s so bad but
It’s just something i have to break it’s like a bad have it because it feels so good to just pop into a coffee shop and get an iced coffee once in a while and it’s like i knew that it’s bad once in a while but i know that it’s objectively like a waste of money it’s like the ultimate i never saw alliance and it’s like not aligned by me and you’ll be a millionaire
Now mine is amazon prime to be honest with you like i shouldn’t have it because it’s just so great you can buy something in two days later it just arrives magically at your door and it’s addictive and you can do it while lying in bed eating oreos so i need to use amazon prime the less number ten what are your biggest financial goals you know uh like obviously i’d
Like to own a house and stuff like that like i’d like to have a certain amount of savings like all that stuff but really for me the most important thing financially like i’ll know i’m doing really well when i can travel freely between france in the us because with my partner we’ve always been either completely away from one side of our friends and family or the
Other and we don’t get to see all of them very often and its really taxing and it really makes you feel like you know what does any of this worth if i can’t even see the people i care about so to me you know my ultimate goal would be to be at a place we’re going back and forth several times a year is totally fine and it’s something that we can manage really easily
And don’t really have to consider as much but that’s you know it’s a lot it’s a it’s a lot to ask so we’ll see if it happens so for me one of my biggest financial goals is probably being student debt free which is something that’s going to take a really long time to pay off but once that happens i think that that’s going to be like one of the happiest days of my
Life because it’s not just me either it’s also my husband who has a lot of student loan debt so once that’s gone i’ll feel like totally satisfied and really happy so those were our ten rapid-fire questions that are maybe a little less rapid-fire than we thought they might be but this is something that we’re going to do again so if you have questions like this that
You’d like to see answered send them to lauren at the financial diet calm and we’ll collect them all in a little pile for another video so as always thanks for watching and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and go to the financial dicom for watching and don’t forget to hit
Transcribed from video
Rapid-Fire Q&A! | The Financial Diet By The Financial Diet
