I’m A Recovering Emotional Spender — Here’s How I Budget

I grew up thinking that like,

having credit card debt is just part of being an adult.

I owe about $30,000 in consumer debt.

I bought myself this beautiful like Louis Vuitton Masters designer bag with uh the

matching wallet,

which is like so cute, so chic.

Problem is, I spent $3,000 on those things,

and I was making $15 an hour part-time.

At least for me,

I grew up with an idea of what I thought my life would be

like,

you know?

I thought it was a given

that I would get a house

and have kids and like kind of white picket fence American dream,

the whole spiel.

I may never own a home, sure,

but I don't find it particularly sad anymore,

cuz I don't think it has to be.

I think financial freedom looks different for everyone.

Hey guys, it's Chelsea, founder of The Financial Diet,

here to welcome you to our new little mini series on the channel called

the No Fuss Budget.

We are always listening to what you guys want to see more of on

TFD,

and probably the number one thing you guys tell us is

that you want more real,

relatable budgets from real people.

Uh so, we reached out to the TFD community

and we're lucky enough to find several people who are willing to welcome us

into their literal homes

and share all of the numbers of their budget.

They live in different cities, they work different jobs, they spend different amounts,

they have different financial problems and goals,

but each of these episodes is going to deep dive into their individual budget

and how they do money.

This mini series is also brought to you by Monarch,

which is the budgeting app

that I personally use

and have used well before we even started working with them here at TFD.

Um I cannot recommend it enough.

It is an incredibly easy-to-use app.

It works well for individuals, for uh couples, for roommates.

Uh it makes your money super easy to understand and visualize.

It helps you work toward your goals.

Uh it doesn't have ads, it doesn't sell your data.

It is just all around, to me, the perfect budgeting app,

and I actually reached out to them to see

if they wanted to work with us

because I loved using their app

so much.

It's basically the only thing I trust with my money after Mint,

and I check it probably upwards of five times a day.

I literally just checked it like five minutes ago.

So, if you are someone who's been thinking about getting the right budgeting app

and just sort of starting to get a hold of your money

and understand it better,

we highly recommend Monarch.

They are the brand who is producing this show with us.

But, all of that said, let's get into today's No Fuss Budget.

Hi, my name's Stephanie Janelle.

I work at a top university

as an events I make about $85,000 a year.

That comes out to, after taxes, $5,000 a month.

And I live in the Bay Area, basically in California,

so very high cost of living.

My total debt picture, uh in essence,

is I owe about $30,000 in consumer debt.

That's buy now, pay later loans, that's credit cards, that's, you know,

all that jazz.

How I got into that position is kind of a multi-faceted issue.

Uh there's basically three things that put me on the path toward that position.

One, what when I got my first job,

and this was at like Chipotle at 19, I was making $9 an hour.

My parents who I was living with were like, well,

you make your own money now, you can buy your own things, you know?

And once I went to college,

I basically never asked my parents for money again.

I lived off of money that I would make from my part-time job,

and even the loans, like the student loans,

I would take out the maximum amount

that I could and pay whatever I had to for school

and for,

you know, dorm and a food plan,

and then everything else was like >> >> my spending money.

So, I developed the habit very young that like,

I would live primarily off of like my part-time job,

but then the rest on debt, and, you know,

that was just like the thing for me.

I also learned like there's two things.

One, when I was 16,

I had a very personal like uh close family member to me die,

and it put me in a very like YOLO mindset.

Like, you only live once, you know,

he was 20 years old when he died,

and like didn't even get to drink really,

and it affected me deeply uh to the point where the the thought of

depriving myself now in my youth to like maybe be a millionaire at 65

like was just ick,

bro.

Miss me with that.

Like, it's not motivational at all.

I was very much like, I want to have fun now, I want to,

you know, go out

and do stuff with my friends

and all that kinds of stuff

and like that also leads to putting money on credit cards cuz I certainly

like couldn't afford to do those things.

And then lastly, and this was like a huge one for me,

because this is what has made debt for me really hard to get out

of,

I incorporated almost like this belief, which I think is, you know,

prevalent in a lot of like United States culture,

what you buy is like what determines or, you know, who you are,

what what informs who you are.

You put your money where your mouth is, kind of.

So, I, when I was younger,

like was really getting into sustainability and like ethical consumption, and, you know,

I wanted to support small local businesses and like buy from ethical companies,

and nine times out of 10, that's like the more expensive option, you know?

So, like if I had the choice between I could buy this thing from

Amazon or buy it from a small local business

and pay $10 more,

$20 more, I would always pay the higher cost.

The reason I I say

that that's really important is

because it made spending more money

and getting into debt feel really good for me.

Like, I felt it felt like a morally righteous choice.

And that kind of created a feedback loop of like,

I feel really good about spending more money consistently,

even if I can't afford it,

because I feel like it's the right thing to do.

I feel like I'm living within my values.

Over the years, like it's it's always been very difficult for me to logic

my way into being more frugal

because frugality often times is equated with being cheap

and giving up on like the things

that I really,

you know, want to to support.

I want to support these things

and and buy from these places

and buy these items,

these kinds of items.

I don't want to buy the plastic cheaper version.

I want to buy like the bamboo, zero waste, whatever,

and like the all of those things combined really just led to me getting

myself into a lot of debt.

My financial background is like barely anything.

Money was not talked about when I was growing up.

I grew up in a culture >> >>

that is very like you kind of show your wealth,

even if it means you go into debt.

Everyone in my family, I'm pretty sure, is in debt.

My parents were in debt.

It was very normalized for me.

It's funny, without any shame around credit, cuz everyone has it.

So, I grew up thinking that like,

having credit card debt is just part of being an adult.

It didn't really set me up well to be financially responsible as an adult,

cuz I was just like, you know,

I pay a credit card bill just like you pay an internet bill

or a phone bill,

you know?

Like, there's no shame in that.

It's just like what you do.

Having watched TFD and a lot of other adjacent like financial channels,

or I've read like different books on finances, things like that, I I've considered,

you know, when it comes to budgeting,

like what would work for me

because I am the way I am with money,

you know, I don't want to feel like I'm depriving myself of joy,

but I also want to be doing the right thing

when it comes financially for me.

So, like I've considered the different methods of like the avalanche method,

the snowball method, etc.

And at least for me,

the biggest things that I decided were just to simplify the numbers.

Like, I had so many variety of like little debts, so many credit cards,

so many pay monthly or like buy now, pay later loans.

Consolidating them into just, okay, I have this one big payment that has everything,

and I can more aggressively pay down like,

if I have an extra $300 at the end of the month,

I can put it toward that big payment,

and that pays that big consolidated loan down.

And I just do

that for like the big chunks of loans

that I have.

That's been, at least for me, the way that I prefer it,

like that works for me in terms of paying off debt.

The picture of my budget is as follows.

Like, my take-home pay is $5,000 a month, every, you know,

2 weeks, uh I get half, right?

So, for rent, I pay $1,420 a month.

That is because I rent a room in a house with multiple people.

I have two roommates.

I think the household rent is 4,000, and we split it, you know,

depending on the size of the room, things like that.

I think utilities are not included in that,

so that's like an additional $200 to $250 a month.

Gas, luckily, I drive a cute little Prius.

With these gas prices, like that's super huge for me,

so like I basically spend on average $30 every 2 weeks,

$60 a month on gas.

On my dog, cuz I do have a dog, his food,

he's like super picky, I spend like $70 a month on his food.

I think for food for me,

I probably try to stay around $300 a month.

Sometimes I go over because, you know,

I like like Olipop and things that are, of course, more expensive.

I have Mint Mobile,

so I pay like a plan that is 6 months at a time,

but that comes out to about $25 a month for my phone.

My car is $260 a month.

My insurance is $181 a month.

And my debt, basically, is broken down to all these different loans.

So, for, you know, paying for loans like Affirm and things like that,

I calculated it, and I spend around $415 a month.

This is usually for payments that like big things,

like my mattress that I bought that's over the course of a year I'm

paying,

you know, $100 or something like that.

And like my desk is another one.

I almost always use the buy now pay later stuff for like big chunks

where I don't want to spend $1,000

and I just break it up.

And so it it that adds up to like 400 and something a month.

And then I have multiple loans

that I took out to pay off my credit cards.

I have not one, not two,

but three of those loans

because I have been trying for almost a decade now to pay off this

debt.

So, the first one I took out initially was $10,000.

Now, um I have about like three,

$4,000 left on it and that payment is $236 a month.

I have another loan that I took out more recently.

That was for $20,000 to pay off credit cards.

Um and that one is my biggest one.

It's $552 a month.

And then I have the most recent loan

that I took out for my 401k

because it's a really low interest rate for of 7%.

That's like a $10,000 loan and that's $201 a month.

I also have my private student loan from Sallie Mae

that is $180 a month.

Uh and I have YouTube Premium, which I think is so worth it.

Uh and that's $8 a month.

And I have Patreon cuz I there's a YouTuber

that I a podcast I like to support

and that's $5 a month.

I calculated it.

All of the debt,

if I include like the consolidated loans

and the paying for

or like buy now pay later stuff,

comes out to $1,600 a month I'm spending just on debt.

Yeah, and the amount

that I have left over

if I calculate like the total of all those expenses,

I basically spend about $4,100 a month.

My take home is 5K.

So, I have let slightly less than a thousand to work with.

And the ideal is I can save 500 of

that and then the rest is kind of like for

if I end up wanting to go out,

you know, with friends to like eat and buy little thing here or there.

Like it's like the living expenses that just come up, right?

So, just to emphasize, the 5K a month is after taxes,

after my 401k contributions cuz I am still doing that.

I have an employer match that I, you know, match.

And so like that is just my take home, you know,

money to spend for the month for bills and all that.

>> >> My biggest spending regrets are almost exclusively just the things

that I have bought to to soothe my insecurity of like I want to

feel pretty.

I want to feel cool.

I want to feel hip or whatever.

I would buy things that I saw other people and I was like,

"Oh my god, they're so cool."

And like maybe if I owned the thing, I could be cool.

So, like a lot of these dresses you see here

that are like pretty prints are Reformation dresses.

Each one of those >> >> is like definitely over $100,

but I would say the long maxi dresses are like 218 usually

and the shorter dresses are like $160 each

and I have too many.

Behold my Boulevard of broken dreams, okay?

These are my dresses that I have from Reformation.

Reformation had me in a chokehold in the 2010s.

I don't I don't know what to tell you.

And I've sold a bunch, too.

Like this is not even including the amount

that I bought and

then sold or bought

and returned.

You know, I have plenty

that have still tags on them

because I told myself like,

"Well, when I wear it, I'll take the tags off."

And if I end up not wearing it and I end up selling it,

it'll be worth more with the tags on.

So, I always keep the tags.

And like my half of not not half,

maybe like a third of my closet is literally just like someone can shop

it.

It look it's like almost a store.

But perhaps the biggest spending regret that I have,

which is funny because it's like regret is it it's retroactive.

I don't I love having the item,

but I regret not having the money I spent to purchase this item.

So, I when I graduated college was like, "Oh, I'm going to treat myself.

I'm an adult now.

I just graduated."

And I bought myself this beautiful like Louis Vuitton Masters designer bag with uh

the matching wallet,

which is like so cute, so chic.

Problem is I spent $3,000 on those things

and I was making $15 an hour part-time.

Did not have the money to spend.

And also, looking back, I don't know what I was thinking.

This is bag is like way too big for me.

I only ever wear small cute little crossbody bags.

It doesn't have a strap.

It's like I have to hold it with my hands.

I hate I can't even put it on my shoulder.

Like it's so annoying to actually wear.

It's so it was so expensive.

I'm scared to like wear it out and damage it.

So, it's like I don't know who I thought I was,

but I it's honest it's the prettiest one of the prettiest decorations in my

room.

I'll put it that way.

It's like my holder of scarves and like I still have it.

I go back and forth every year of like, "Should I sell it?

Should I send it to like Rebag or one of those websites?"

And I always don't because I'm just like,

it's I kind of get its own right of like this is a moment

in time when I was delulu,

truly.

If I could go back, I would keep the $3,000 that I spent.

Or at the very least just get the wallet.

I don't know, man.

I don't know who I thought I was,

but that probably that all of the items

that I just bought for this fantasy version of myself

that doesn't exist,

those are the purchases that I regret the most.

Hands down, easy.

In South Florida, which is where I grew up,

there at least when I was growing up.

I don't live there anymore, so I don't know what it's like now.

But I I don't like the the keeping up with the Joneses type,

you know, attitude around people.

I I disagree with my family heavily on, you know,

they don't acknowledge that they have debt,

but they try to like The One of my aunts has this enormous house

that I know they're like up to here in debt

that they can't realistically afford,

but they host all these elaborate parties, you know,

with my extended family coming from like the Dominican Republic

and things like that to like show off.

Like look how we've made it.

And it's just not one the kind of person I am,

nor the kind of people I want to be around.

You know, I I very much want, at least for myself,

more of a quaint like cute little I would even like a one-bedroom apartment

that is just I can decorate myself.

Like I just want my cute little space where I can just have people

that I like love

and care about over

if I want.

I don't feel like I need a lot,

but um I don't want to do things disingenuously like that.

Part of the reason I wanted to do this video, I'm very open about,

you know, where I stand uh financially and like just in life.

I'm, you know, again,

31 and nowhere near like reaching these milestones

that traditionally in adulthood you would reach.

And I I feel no shame in that personally,

but I don't really want to live a life constantly in debt

and certainly not for appearances like

that.

Even though my debt situation is like on the more extreme side, perhaps,

I stand with many millennials in

that like I've resigned myself

that I may never own a home.

I probably won't.

With this situation, I'm even going back

and forth on like whether

or not I'll even afford to have kids cuz like I do I want

to have kids if I can't have a house,

if I'm constantly going to be, you know,

like moving when the landlord raises the rent or something like that.

Like it has impacted my long-term financial goals in

that I just find it really difficult to like plan long-term my life uh

in terms of like the big milestones.

Having a house, having kids,

all that kinds of stuff just feels like not possible with this much debt

and,

you know, like the the number,

at least in my head for me is is

so is large enough

that it's like,

"Well, at the very least it's going to take me five years, maybe,

to like maybe longer, but to pay all of this off.

And by the time I'm debt-free

and finally in a position where like maybe I can entertain those things,

I'm 31.

I'm going to be 36.

Uh I also, like I said,

I live in a very high cost of living area where I just I

don't know if it's feasible.

It's The biggest impact more is just it changes the trajectory of how my

life is going to pan out

because I think if I didn't have this debt,

I would be more I would be in a much better position to actually

be saving up for a house

or saving up for kids

if those were things I decided I wanted to do.

But now that I have this,

it feels like almost the decision is made

or it's like heavily skewed towards one direction of like,

"Well, if I want to still achieve my like adult, you know,

dreams of traveling and, you know, going out, just having like fun experiences,

I I have to choose either or, basically.

Like that's the biggest impact is it it really narrows down the options I

feel like I have in life."

At least for me,

I grew up with an idea of what I thought my life would be

like,

you know?

>> >> I thought it was a given

that I would get a house

and have kids and like kind of white picket fence American dream the whole

shebang.

And when I kind of like

when I realized it's not actually feasible for me,

there probably was a small period of grief.

I am generally a very optimistic person,

so I don't like to focus on the negative and what I'm losing.

I focus a lot on, "Well, if I don't have those things,

what possibilities open up to me?"

Uh and that gives me a lot of strength because, you know,

I may never own a home, sure,

but that maybe that just means I can travel more.

Maybe I can, you know, do more community might like community things.

I can spend more on family and be more generous with friends.

I can do other things that bring me joy.

Like I don't know.

I I don't find it particularly sad anymore cuz I don't think it has

to be.

Financial freedom looks different for everyone

and I think freedom for me comes out to like really spending money in

a way that makes me happy,

that aligns with me and with my goals and you know,

there's a part that of like the door is not totally closed,

but I'll be happy either way.

I don't know.

I just I it's very easy for me to see the paths in

which I can be happy regardless of

if I have those things

or not.

My money situation never really affected my friends.

I never really let it.

I am a generous person

or like that's at least a part of myself

that I feel very strongly.

I want to be a generous person

and so I act in such a way sometimes to my own detriment.

Like I will put things on a credit card to get the gift

that I know my BFF really wants

because that brings me joy even

if it technically like hurts me a little bit in the process.

I have a partner who I have been with since I was 16

and he and I are complete opposites in terms of like the financial spectrum.

I'm obviously an emotional spender and I'm like very oh my god,

let's do the thing.

Like who cares?

Money come like I make money.

It comes in every month.

It's fine.

Whereas he is like no, he want he's like a fire person.

He wants to retire early.

He's like he you know,

I live in the Bay Area like in Silicon Valley.

So we were talking about our childhoods

and and talking about our parents

and kind of like how those times were

and how they changed

and like how those finances affected our lives.

Money came up.

One of his parents didn't land in a financial place after the divorce

that they were really comfortable with

and so that led to a lot of verbage for him about how he

should be with money,

which was very different from how I learned I should be with money.

It eventually got to a point in our relationship, especially after COVID.

We had moved in together.

One of the biggest things

that kind of woke me up in terms of like I've always passively kind

of,

you know, I watch TFD

and I have read like Beyond Getting By

and things like I I have a general knowledge of like okay,

I should maybe do this with money

and I should be a little bit better

and I'm making like progress.

For the longest time it was like snail progress.

Like slowly chilling.

There's no rush, whatever, but my for my partner,

it affected our relationship in

that eventually we got to a point where he was like I I need

you to take this seriously.

And that's when I really started to take it more seriously.

It's why I consolidated all my credit cards into loans

that are easier to pay off,

things like that.

We came up with this idea together of like we're going to do this

debt first and then this debt

and then this debt.

That's probably the the biggest impact for sure

that it's had in my personal relationships.

I think the conversation started like we didn't outright decide to talk about money.

We kind of realized

that our values are not entirely different in terms of the kind of life

we would like to have,

but how soon that needs to come was different.

It was a process.

He wanted this future much sooner than I really was thinking about it

and that really sped up the conversations of like we had plenty of fights

about it.

This was like over I would say years.

We would watch sometimes TFD videos together.

He would show me a podcast like a financial podcast.

We had to consciously both for us approach like I had to listen to

his side and how he viewed things

and he had to listen to my side

and how I viewed things

and how I viewed spending money

because for the longest time

and even still a little bit to this day saving can sometimes feel like

deprivation,

you know, like if he wants me to save this amount of money

and he's like oh,

just cut, you know, your YouTube subscription or cut your this subscription, whatever.

It feels like I'm taking a a source of joy out of my life

and that feels like deprivation

and I had to really get him to understand

that because for him not buying those things is

so easy.

So it was just a lot of like over

and over back and forth conversations of like okay,

I'm going to hear you out.

You need to hear me out.

And eventually we reached the point where like I think I really understand where

he's coming from now.

He really understands where I'm coming from

and there's like a lot of empathy on both sides.

But it didn't start out that way.

It is a process.

It is difficult and you have to both really be open to listening to

the other person,

I I would say.

Cuz I I luckily I've always been a very open-minded person.

I've never had the mentality of like no,

I'm for sure right and you're wrong.

You should spend more money if actually.

That was never me.

>> >> Changes I'm making.

There's mainly two big ones.

One is you have to address the problem at the root.

So seeing as I'm somebody who is very susceptible to like FOMO

and YOLO stuff of like you only live once

and this is going to be limited edition gone in like a year.

It part of my brain wants to get it and have it, you know.

And I have to like fix that.

So one way that I do that is honestly just investing like the hobbies.

I took up sewing last year in 2025

and I've also taken up like needle felting

and like crochet like just making things

because I will say especially with sewing

because my problem area tends to be fashion

and clothing.

It has been phenomenally helpful to see something

that I want and especially now I will say this is like a slight

tangent,

but the fact that clothing nowadays is made

so much more terribly than it used to be.

Has radicalized me.

I spent last year about $300 on this beautiful raincoat

that I love that is like from some big designer

that is supposed to be really high quality

and I get it in the mail

and the now that I know sewing like the binding on the inside is

of the most like

if picture one ply toilet paper in a public bathroom,

that's what it feels like.

That's the fabric that they used to line the inside of the seams of

this jacket and it's scratchy

and I hate it

and I was like this is a $300 garment.

What do you mean that this is what you used?

That radicalized me and made me kind of like open my eyes to like

I literally I could have this item way nicer

and better if I just made it myself.

I am very much a beginner.

So I have basically started with like the first thing I ever made,

I made these cute little like linen dinner napkins,

which highly recommend if you're like into home decor

and you want to you know,

I a pair of like a full set of six linen napkins goes for

like $40 or something.

Like it's kind of a lot.

And I was able to get this linen fabric.

It was like a shirt

that I thrifted that I broke down into like little squares

and I made them

and like it's so scrunchy,

but like you can do it.

You know what I mean?

Like it's pretty cool.

I've also really gotten into just altering clothing

that I have rather than like going out

and buying a bunch of new stuff.

So an example would be this little shirt that I love.

I it's a graphic tee

that my favorite streamer wears

and I like to wear cuz he's from Arizona.

Um but I it was like it's a men's shirt.

So it was like way too long on me.

I'm like 5'3.

It was I was swimming in it

and I cropped it to literally the perfect length.

And when you look like you can't really tell it's homemade.

If you look at the back maybe you can kind of see,

>> >> but if you look really closely especially when I wear it,

like it's not obvious and I have worn this shirt so much since then.

Um I have here on my mannequins like this one is a jumpsuit

that I cropped.

You can't super see, but I'm in the process of cropping this one.

This is on my dress form.

But like I have the pins there

and I highly recommend like I feel like a tailor.

It's so good and it's saving me so much money.

>> >> And it's been really beneficial

because it like puts me out there in the world.

I go to like a sewing lab

that my local library has

and I rent like a machine from them

and I've met people who are into sewing

and like I've made friends

that way.

It's been like very good in a multitude of ways,

but like one huge thing is investing in hobbies.

Another thing and this is huge in terms of like managing my money consciously.

I really really really at least for me believe you have to keep my

like your your money situation front

and center.

The only way that I can really like keep a handle on my money

is doing the tedious thing of every single time I spend money,

I write it down.

I log it.

Whether that could be in a spreadsheet for other people,

that could be for me it's like physically in my book.

I have I got of course this was years ago,

but I I got this like cute little notebook

that is for money management

and I've been they have like an expense tracker built into it.

And so I just every single time I spend money, I log it.

I log what it is.

I log how much I spent.

This is for February.

This is for March and at the end of the month I total it.

And the first time I did that,

which was last year it was mind-boggling to me

because if you would ask me point-blank like oh,

how much do you think that you spent on like disposable, you know,

kind of like fun money stuff.

I would have been like $200 maybe, 300.

And then I calculated at the end of the month

and literally it was like double.

It was like $600 cuz it's like $40 here, $20 here, 15 there.

Little Amazon purchases of like oh, I need this thing.

You know, it it adds up so quickly.

So me logging it

and also just keeping kind of a running total going physically where I have

to I don't forget anything.

>> >> Um keeps me on track because if I set a budget of like okay,

literally I only want to spend $300 in like fun going out things with

friends maybe or like take out.

I approach that usually I by like the second week of the month.

Then I realize wow.

Okay, so I just now like I'm done for the rest of the month

and it just it keeps it

so front of mind.

That has been like the hugest game changer

and really the only way

that I can stick to my budget.

Cuz if I don't do that,

I have done test months where I don't do that cuz I'm like, "Oh,

I have a handle on it.

I'll do better."

I still end up going over budget and I spend like $400 or $500.

And I don't, you know, I I laid down my budget earlier.

I don't have that much wiggle room.

So, it's like I really That's really what I have to do to stay

on top of it.

The biggest money lessons that I've learned from this whole journey,

which is going on I think a decade now of trying to get better

with debt and have a better relationship with money,

is really, at least for me, buying is not becoming.

That is number one.

I am very much the person

that like will try to buy my way into a hobby

or into a community.

I have so many cute workout outfits

that I don't wear

because I don't go to the gym like

that.

But like I figured I was like, "Oh, if I have these,

then like when I eventually go, like I'll I'll look like I belong there."

You know what I mean?

But I have to remind myself, lesson number one, buying is not becoming.

Do not confuse the two.

Only buy what you actually use.

And I guess this is like the second thing of don't buy for your

fantasy self.

Cuz that is a huge one for me.

I have to realistically look at what my life is

and look at how I live day-to-day

and see if the thing

that I want actually aligns with this.

And if it doesn't,

if it's let's say I want to start a new hobby

that I don't actually do,

but there's an upfront cost,

really you have to like look into either borrowing from a friend

or renting it and like you have to do the hobby first.

And then see if it's worth buying the stuff.

That's key.

I cannot stress enough.

But that's probably the the second lesson.

And then like the final one, they're all kind of tangentially related.

But happiness, at least for me, comes from doing and not consuming,

like not buying.

I have bought so many things. genuinely,

I lived one of the apartments I lived in once with my partner

that had three closets

and they were awful.

And I still was buying more.

Like I I can tell you from experience, buying things doesn't bring happiness,

no matter what it is.

Rather than focus on consumption, which I know social media, but tangential thing,

I went off of social media

because the ads on social media really make this difficult.

I implore anybody who's in a similar situation to me to like take a

break from social media

and see how it feels.

You know, when you kind of like unplug,

I feel very much like the Matrix.

You get out of

that mindset and just I wake up every day

and I tell myself like I'm just not going to buy anything today.

I'm not going to buy anything I don't absolutely need today.

And I do that every day.

>> >> And it works most of the time

because I it feels at least

that feels very manageable.

If I want something or I want to like I want to feel something,

I have to do a thing rather than buy a thing.

Those are like I think the biggest lessons I've learned.

It's just They're all kind of emotional because at least for me,

I'm an emotional spender.

So, they're rooted in those things,

but if there's anybody else that is like me,

those are like the biggest lessons that I've learned.

And like try to learn from me.

Don't don't get in debt like me.