Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to episode 149 of Outnumber the Podcast, Job Loss and Financial Difficulty. We understand that the past year and a half have been really difficult financially for so many of us, and so today we're talking about how to make things a little bit easier on your family, even when you struggle economically. We'll be talking about improving your mindset during these challenging times, how to decrease your spending, increase your income, and also how to get out of your own head by serving others. Let's do it.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Speaker: Welcome back, friends. Today's episode is a little bit more of a serious nature. We're going to be addressing some of the hardships that some of us are facing in these kind of weird economic times. A lot of us have struggled through COVID and some job loss, reduced income, et cetera. So we thought it'd be a great time to talk about this, some strategies for coping when things get unexpectedly hard.
Speaker: Yes. And before we start, I wanted to share this sweet review that we got on iTunes. We appreciate every review that we get because it helps other moms find the podcast. And we think that this episode especially could be poignant for a lot of people at this time. So please leave a review. We really appreciate it. This one is from Mandy Marr. It says, love this podcast. This is my favorite podcast. These ladies are so helpful and relatable. I love the positive attitude and perspective from moms who have just as many kids as I do.
Speaker: My kids even like listening to them. My furlough says, is this Audrey and Bonnie? That's adorable. That is so cute. And I feel like in a perfect world, we would host a giant outnumbered play date at like some awesome park right in the middle of the country, right? And everybody could come and we'd all share wisdom and advice and laugh about the ridiculous things our kids do and they could all play. That would be so fun. That would be so fun.
Speaker: Okay, so we're gonna cover a handful of things on this topic today The first is that we are going to talk about our mindset surrounding this you guys know We'd love to to dive deep on the thoughts and how that creates our result for us As well as how to decrease our expenses if we find ourselves economically Struggling what one of the very first things that we look at is how to spend less, right? yes, and then we'll cover a few ideas for increasing our income as well as how to get a
Speaker: how to get out of our own heads and even start giving back to others who are struggling. We wanted to say one thing right at the outset here that we are very blessed to live in a country that will help people who are struggling, people who are hungry. So we don't have this anywhere in the episode, but we did want to say right at the outset that if your family is hungry, if your family is struggling, we encourage you by all means to take advantage of some of the assistance that our country offers.
Speaker: Yes, what a blessing and not available everywhere, so we're grateful for that. So the reason we are starting this episode with the mindset aspect of things is because how we think controls so much of how we view the times we're going through. In fact, just the fact that we think about it or describe it as, quote unquote, hard times says something about our mindset, right? That's totally a thought that we can choose to think or not think.
Speaker: So my first challenge to all of us in this scenario would be to change our line of thinking. So for example, let's say you're going through a hard time. Let's say it's an unexpected job loss or really reduced income. Start thinking, have we had other similar experiences where we've had maybe some unexpected blessings or good come out of it? Right? Just shift that mindset a little bit instead of, oh my gosh, what are we going to do? Life is so scary now. How are we going to put food on the table? Just start to twist your thinking a little bit about what good can come out of this.
Speaker: And then also maybe brainstorm some replacement thoughts that you could come up with that would help shift your attitude. Yeah, those those are awesome suggestions because
Speaker: When you start realizing, when you start thinking about your thinking and realizing that your thinking is not helping you and it's like the first step toward changing your thoughts. It's just acknowledging that you're in a negative thought cycle. And it is almost impossible to come up with solutions. The stuff we're going to talk about in the rest of this episode, when you're in a negative mindset, your brain just shuts down. It stops looking for answers that you can't.
Speaker: You can't move. You can't go beyond because you're stuck. It feels very stuck. And like maybe we can share this with so much authority because we've been there. We've thought those things. We've been in that negative loop. And so we just encourage you to try to find some alternative thoughts. So start asking questions. When you ask a question, your brain automatically starts looking for an answer. So a question could be, what are we supposed to learn from this unique situation?
Speaker: Um, there's a solution out there. What is it? And when you pose questions to your brain, your brain will start looking for answers. It hates unanswered questions. So that's something we have working in our favor. Ask it a question. Right. Totally. One thing that has helped us recently, cause we have struggled through some reduced income this past year or so, um, was saying, making it kind of a challenge, like how little could we live on?
Speaker: Right? Like we think we like to, you know, have these, we have these preconceived notions of we have to have X in order to do Y. Well, let's just play a game. Let's just see how cheap we can live. Right? And you can get your kids involved, your husband involved, kind of just coming up with a fun way of looking at it instead of this doom and gloom way, which is a very easy way to look at it for sure.
Speaker: I also want to say though about the mindset that changing your thoughts about a scary situation doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be happy about it, right? It's totally okay to feel some grief, to be upset, feel frustration, feel some sorrow or some anxiety about the future because you don't know what it holds. But accepting where you are and expecting to find a solution are the key to this. You don't necessarily just have to wake up and be happy about the fact that you don't have as much money as you'd like.
Speaker: Yes, that is, that is so true. Sometimes acknowledging the pain, um, is, it's just the most helpful thing you can do. Yep. This feels bad. It's okay. And that's okay. And then you're like, Oh, okay. Now I can move on. Okay. Let's talk about decreasing expenses. Um, that's the first place to do when you're on reduced income, dealing with job loss. So identify the necessities, food, shelter, clothing.
Speaker: and you're gonna be really surprised how little this encompasses. Anything beyond food, shelter, clothing, and income to support that may have to go by the wayside for a little while.
Speaker: So how many cars does your family have? Can you get by on one car for a little while? Is that an option? What about a smaller home? We do actually have a whole episode that talks about living in a small home and all the ways that you don't even think about outside of a house payment that your income is reduced by living in a smaller home. Cheaper food. There's a very popular financial coach
Speaker: that has a byline, rice and beans, beans and rice. And that's because they're cheap. They're cheap and they're failing. Yeah. And then clothing. Hey, we have a whole episode specifically on how we clothe our kids and you can pick up tons of tips in there for saving money. Um, actually you can listen to a lot of our different episodes.
Speaker: and start with the thought of decreasing in expenses. And you can see, you can just start picking up a lot of tips. It's just, yeah, identify those necessities. And something that helps here is if you say, you know what, this is a temporary situation. And so, you know, like explaining it to kids. So for a while, we're not going to A, B, and C. And it's just a temporary thing. And kids can kind of swallow. Well, you know, us adults, we can swallow better when we know it's a temporary thing.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And don't forget to also check out our episode on how to afford kids, one of our top episodes. Everybody loves that one. And we'll link all these that we're mentioning in the show notes. But there are a lot of great ideas for being frugal, even with little ones around, because everyone automatically thinks that as soon as another child enters the picture, right, all the expenses go up. And yes, that may be true to a certain extent, but there's a lot of ways to save as well.
Speaker: So, for our family, just as our own personal experience over the last, I guess, almost two years now of being on a little bit of a reduced income, is that it's been important for our family to maintain certain aspects of our quality of life because we didn't know when this was going to end. If we had had a predetermined time for living frugally and then we knew that our income would be back, we probably could have cut back more, but there were certain things we weren't willing to give up for several years, right?
Speaker: Um, but everything else we had, we decided to let go. So for example, one of the things we held onto that is, that is definitely considered an extravagance was a gym membership for me, because for me, exercise time is sanity time and going to a gym is like the only thing that works for me. So I chose to keep paying that $40 a month because that was really essential for me. Um, another thing was an Amazon membership. We buy a lot of things on Amazon and saving that shipping.
Speaker: membership was important for us. We also kept paying for swim lessons this summer because we have a pool and we have a couple of little ones who couldn't swim and that was a non -negotiable for me. I really needed to see them safe.
Speaker: Other things that we'd given up on were like lots of eating out. We just don't eat out hardly ever anymore. Lots of unnecessary shopping. I just didn't go to Target for like a year because every time I went to Target, I overspent, right? And on things that were not really necessary. So professional haircuts, we started doing haircuts at home. So you can get creative and sit down with your family and decide what are the things that we are not willing to give up and what are the things that we can give up. And for you, it might be completely different and that's totally okay. You guys get to decide.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that is such a good idea. You know, one random tip I have here is when you go to the grocery store or to a store or anywhere where you need to purchase something, make sure you have a list before you go in and be disciplined enough to stick to that list. Like, no impulse buys, nothing that you needed or, you know, nothing that you thought you needed or, you know, whatever. Same for kids. I think I have explained my method how I do that with kids, you know.
Speaker: to get them to stop asking, mommy want this, mommy want that. Everything they see in the store, just don't take kids. I mean, that saves money too, right? You got to get groceries and they're going to see their favorite brand of XYZ and want it. You just save money by not taking them and then just have the discipline to stick to a list and not get anything that's not on it because that's where you're at right now.
Speaker: Oh, along those lines I just have to share that we have done grocery delivery, almost exclusively for probably three years now, and the benefit to that is that there are very few impulse purchases because I don't see the end cap displays and I don't see this and that you know and you can still see what's on sale and use their coupons on the app, but I'm not.
Speaker: you know, pushing my cart by the Oreos and decide to grab a pack because they're just not in front of me. So that has been a huge tip for us. And sometimes we will say, okay, we'll go to the store and we'll allow one thing off the list. So we all get to decide what treat we want to buy together or what special thing. But otherwise, yeah, really stick to the list helps a lot.
Speaker: Yeah, it's really important to be realistic about your spending. We do all have priorities when it comes to quality of life. So be honest with yourself, your spouse, your family about what you're willing to give up and what you're not. One thing that we will cut other areas of the budget for, to be able to have enough gas money to travel, we like to travel to
Speaker: are some of our religious services are a little farther away and we just like to have enough money to go in the budget. Because that's for us, that's like a quality of life thing. We just love that so much. Yeah. And if you haven't yet listened to our episode with Emily of Mosul Money that aired a few weeks back, go listen to that. One of her things
Speaker: that she loves to teach people about is this being realistic about your spending, to not try to gloss over it because then you're just going to go spend like you normally spend and it's never going to work out on your budget. She has some awesome free tips as well on her website. Go check her out. Once we've worked on whittling down what we spend, the next logical step is to try to increase our income. You might still look at your budget and go, we still need some extra income to make things work.
Speaker: Thankfully, right now the job market is full of opportunities. Everyone is hiring. It's crazy. Everywhere I go, there's a sign up. But even if you don't have the time or the capacity for a full time nine to five job, there are so many other options to do part time or around a family like DoorDash or Uber. You could start bringing some kids into your home to do some childcare along with watching your own kids. So many different ideas if you get creative.
Speaker: Yes, that is so true. The job market right now is, yeah, if you have a business and you're hiring, you're like fighting everybody else to get the people out there. Some other options I thought of. So think about your and your spouses. Let's say your spouse has a nine to five. There are, let's say early morning options, say a papery route or a grocery store stockist or other things that
Speaker: or after they come home in the evening. So, you know, delivering pizzas like, you know, they stay home and watch the kids and you go do one of these other things that are kind of the off hour.
Speaker: things that helps bring in some more income. There's also online options. Those also abound. Things you can do while you're at home with your kids. We do have a pretty good episode about stay -at -home moms and another episode about working moms. And we talk about a lot of this kind of stuff in there. But you can write articles, guest articles, and get paid for them. That's something you're an expert on.
Speaker: One area of this that Bonnie and I are familiar with is sewing. So we love to sew and we have some knowledge and expertise and we can write up a tutorial for this or that other company and they'll pay you a little bit of money to do that.
Speaker: You can be a virtual assistant. You can start your own business with a caveat that it's probably going to take a little bit of time and often resources to get started. So those are some more options. Another thought I had here, and it's kind of counterintuitive, but getting yourself some more education. So higher education is usually equivalent to higher pay.
Speaker: And it doesn't have to necessarily be the traditional route. You go to college and you get a degree. There are so many options right now, especially in our post -COVID world that we're living in. You can do school online. You can
Speaker: YouTube is just a plethora of information that you could get trained on, you know, say the Adobe suite, and then you could start, you know, doing Photoshop for people or Adobe Illustrator or any of the Adobe products. I mean, you just go start watching tutorials and educate yourself. And pretty soon you're, you know, you're one of the experts and then you can do it for people. And so that's another thing, maybe a little bit counterintuitive because when you think higher education, you
Speaker: I think that's going to be a higher money input and it could be some classes you do pay for but there's a lot of ways to educate yourself for free out there and then usually along with oh you can take a test or get some certification or some sort of thing and then you have
Speaker: That, you know, when you bring certificates or degrees or whatever with yourself, then that automatically equals higher pay as well. And, you know, same option for your spouse. If they have the option or the ability to go back to school and get a higher degree or a higher level of training education skills that also translates into higher pay.
Speaker: Right, and we love talking about education, but not just college education, there's so many trade options right now, right? What if you took some time each week to go to hair school or something, you became a stylist or any number of things? In fact, side note, that's how I learned how to cut my kid's hair when we decided to stop paying for professional haircuts is YouTube. I just started watching stuff and figuring things out. So there are so many options, like we said, when you're creative and you leave your brain open to those solutions, solutions come.
Speaker: I also wanted to say that if you do choose to go back to school or your spouse, there are so many options for getting financial assistance, especially if you are on a reduced income right now. So there are grants, scholarships, so many places that offer a helping hand for someone who has a little bit of a reduced income, especially if you have kids at home, you might be able to tap into some of those funds and be able to take classes for free. Yeah, many companies will also pay for their employers to get a higher level of training or education. Right, right, totally.
Speaker: So our final step in this journey of, you know, accepting where we are, I guess, and improving our lives is to talk about the best way that Audrey and I have found to both change our mindset about these hard times and increase our joy even when finances are tight. And that is giving service to others.
Speaker: also sounds a little bit counterintuitive, right? You kind of try to hunker down and like do everything you can to fix your problems. But this has very little to do with actual money and everything to do with changing our hearts. So I have noticed that when we give service to others, it helps, number one, us recognize our own blessings. All of a sudden we're like, wow, we really do have so many things going for us and privileges, right? And then number two, feel
Speaker: gratitude for what we have instead of just always focusing on what we don't. If we're always looking outward in envy, it's like, oh look, we don't have that and we don't have that, or even thinking about what we used to have and we don't anymore. But if we're looking outward in a Christ -like way, trying to lift others up, then we realize, oh, we have all these opportunities to help other people. Oh my gosh, we have this that we could offer. We have this we could offer. And then all of a sudden the gratitude comes more easily.
Speaker: Yeah, that is so true. If you think you've got a bad look around you and you'll find someone else who has it worse, who is having a more difficult time than you are, it's definitely, definitely people out there and that just makes you appreciate more what you have.
Speaker: You may be feeling a little overwhelmed with what you already have going on as a busy mom. So what do you do? Well, a couple ideas we had for busy moms is watching other moms' kids making meals. For somebody who's struggling, you're already making a meal for your family. Maybe you can make a little extra for someone who's struggling or someone who's alone, spending time with an elderly person who's in need of company that doesn't cost you any money.
Speaker: more than likely they would be delighted to spend time with your kids as well. Some other thoughts, write an encouraging note. That doesn't take much, just a stamp to send it. It's old -fashioned, but because most people don't write letters anymore or notes, it's very
Speaker: sweet when you do get one in the mail, a phone call, same. Um, you know, I know maybe after the kids go to bed and it's quieter or you step outside or something. And then I am a huge proponent of doing service with your kids right along beside of you and beside you. And they are learning by your example and by your service and, um, and you do it together. So, you know, you go slower, the kids beside you, but you know, maybe,
Speaker: a couple packets of seeds in a community garden for someone else. Kids can certainly help with that kind of activity. And if they see you doing it, and if it's cheering and encouraging you, it can cheer and encourage them as well. So I love service right with my kids beside me.
Speaker: Yes, absolutely. And it's especially beneficial if they get to sacrifice something of their own. And sometimes that's time. Like for my older kids, sometimes time is more valuable than anything for them. But if they were able to like help with a food drive or something and they get to pull a wagon around the neighborhood and drop off flyers or knock on doors or
Speaker: you know that it requires a little bit more of some of them than just showing up that's where the magic really happens right we've noticed when we actually sacrifice when we actually give something that we feel like we need or want that's when you know things really really get great so as a again as a busy mom with little kids what are some other ways that you can help well
Speaker: I love the idea of connecting with a local charity and asking them what they need instead of just trying to come up with the ideas yourself. Specifically asking about family with kids. How can we volunteer as a family with kids? We can't go, say you have three little ones and you can't really go a lot of places and they just make a mess when they get there anyway. Say, what can we do at home? So a few options that we've done or we've seen done are things like packing lunches or hygiene bags for homeless shelters. We've done both of those things. One time we helped prep for a baby shower.
Speaker: for a crisis center for pregnant moms. Also donation drives for these sorts of places. And like Audrey was saying, bringing your kids along is great if they're older and capable, but if they're not, they can just stay home and do the same kind of service. Maybe you can watch a few videos on YouTube about your distribution for these kinds of kits and
Speaker: and lunches, just get them a little bit of awareness. Or you can drive to a part of town you don't normally drive through and say, look, it seems like there's a lot of homeless people here. How do you think we could help them? How do you think we could benefit this part of society? What can we do? And kids are so, so cute when they start thinking outside of themselves. They always have so many great ideas. And then finally, JustServe .org is one of our favorite websites to check out. They have opportunities almost
Speaker: worldwide that you can just kind of enter your zip code and they will tell you opportunities of service and what's required so you can know if it's a good fit for your family or not.
Speaker: Yeah. That just brings to mind something my parents did with us as a kid. We had a strip of roadside that we kept maintained and kept the trash picked up off of it. And that was, you know, these kids, you just throw on a pair of gloves and then grab a trash bag and you just pick up the trash. That's a great idea. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: So I think now we're both going to share a little bit of our own personal experience. We've talked about it through various podcasts, but I don't know, maybe just condense it into one place about our experience with job loss and hard times. I know everybody right now probably has a story they can share.
Speaker: But we'll go ahead and share some of ours with you. So when we were expecting our fifth child, my husband was laid off. It was, let's see, I think it was during the, when the tech bubble burst and he was part of that, that people that got laid off in that. And so we were expecting a child and that's always an interesting time with all those pregnancy hormones going on.
Speaker: to be facing it and thinking about it. So he got some, I believe if I remember correctly, he had some severance pay and the next job came along really before his severance pay was up. We felt like at that time, and every time we've gone through some things, we felt like that because we tried to raise our kids in a godly Christian manner.
Speaker: that our God was watching out for us and he just brought an opportunity into our realm of possibility and it happened and so my husband had a new job even
Speaker: without too much time in between. And then currently, we're also facing some potential job loss. We don't do politics here on this podcast, but with the current political mandate that's in place, my husband will be losing his job. And so we are currently doing all these things that we talked about in this podcast, looking for future opportunities, decreasing expenses, expanding our repertoire and our ability
Speaker: And I don't know, it's a time of change. It's a time that makes us very thankful for what we have had up to this point. Gratitude is definitely a huge part of what we're doing right now. And it's actually a little exciting for there to be a change. And like your brain just starts working on these problems and trying to solve it creatively. And you do what you can and keep your kids fed and safe.
Speaker: happy and comfortable. And again, like I said, with our previous time when my husband was laid off, we just feel like our God is watching out for us and he will take care of us and we're doing what we can to help ourselves too. So that is our current and past experience with Job Loss. And Bonnie and I decided to do this episode because it's,
Speaker: a place of authority that we can speak from because we have so much experience with it. Yeah, that is so great. We thankfully have not had a ton of experience with job loss or reduced income until 2020 hit. And my husband happens to be in travel, super fun. So we've had a lot of interesting challenges. And I will say one thing that I have noticed more than anything else over the past couple of years is that I feel like when life is very easy and there's not a lot of challenges, especially financially,
Speaker: that it's very hard to see your blessings sometimes. It's very hard to see what's going well because everything is going well, right? You've had periods of time where your life is like pretty easy, so you're not really, really, truly recognizing what is happening right. As soon as things go wrong, then it's like you notice everything that goes right. So, for example, when our
Speaker: We hit this kind of period of reduced income. Every time we got some unexpected income, I was so grateful. Just the random check in the mail from the insurance company that was like, you overpaid this statement. Oh my gosh, an extra couple hundred dollars. That's so great. Or a tax refund.
Speaker: And they seemingly came out of the woodwork. And I don't know if they were always coming like that, if those kinds of things popped up all the time. Because like I said, when life is simple and relatively easy, it's so much harder to recognize that. So I am really grateful for those times when things get tight because all of a sudden our eyes are opened. And like you said, Audrey, we
Speaker: we just start to see God's hand everywhere. And we are so much more grateful for those unexpected blessings that rain down. Our family also, we pay tithing, so 10 % of our income we pay back to the church to build the church and help others come up to Christ.
Speaker: And we have felt like that has been a very, very important aspect of our financial security as well. And maybe if you're not a believer, that might not make sense to you. But to me, it has definitely been evidence that when we give back, you know, we believe everything we have comes from God. So when we give a portion back that he continues to give us what we need. And we have always been able to feed our kids. We've always been able to take care of the necessities. And I'm so grateful for that.
Speaker: Yes, that has been our experience as well that because we're taking care of others, we are very well taken care of ourselves. And I just like, I don't ever want to choose this kind of situation, but I just love to look back on situations like this. And I'm trying harder as we go through them, like,
Speaker: you know what we're talking about with changing our mindset, to be thankful for them as they're happening because we can just feel the hand of God helping us and it's such a beautiful thing.
Speaker: Yes, totally. So that's kind of our challenge that we want to end this episode with is if you find yourself in a similar scenario to just look around, right? Go back to that mindset part and try to reframe your thoughts in a more positive way and think where are the solutions hiding? How are we going to get out of this? What does God have in store for us? Let's look for it. Let's find it. It will bring so much more joy and happiness than the constant anxiety over
Speaker: How are we going to get grocery money, right? So we are going to include all those episodes that we mentioned in the show notes as well as a blog post that I've written. I wrote last year about surviving these hard economic times. So hopefully you will find some help in some of those. And please feel free to share this episode with anyone who might also benefit. We'll talk to you guys next week.
Speaker: Thanks for listening friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
