- Do you have a good side?
You wanna sit on this side?
(laughing) Okay, is this a real thing?
Move in just a little bit closer.
That's good right, you can see us both.
How's everybody doin, my name is Jarrad.
And on this channel we like to talk about personal finance.
So, in this video I actually have
one of my beautiful sisters here
to kind of talk about some frugal living tips
that she might have.
So I grew up and lived with both of my sisters,
not just in our parents' house, but in another house.
So, her and my other sister are extremely frugal
in certain areas, so I wanted to get her tips
to help you out with being just a little bit more frugal.
And then towards the end we'll also talk about
maybe some areas where we're not willing to be frugal.
Where she's not willing to be frugal.
Where I'm not willing to be frugal.
Well did I even introduce you?
This is, her name is, can I say your name on the internet?
Okay, this is Marrissa.
She is, we're like, there's four of us,
and I'm the second oldest and she's the third oldest,
and then we have one younger and one older obviously.
So we're like the two middle siblings.
And we're probably, I'd say the most alike out of all four.
Right? - Yeah.
Cause we grew up, growing up her and I
were probably like the really,
really wild ones in our family. (laughs)
Like, we always got in trouble and yeah,
got into a lot of trouble.
Compared to like the oldest and the youngest
they were like kind of,
I don't want to say, goody goody two shoes, but like.
- But they were.
- Yeah, they were.
We were the bad ones.
But I think we turned out okay so far.
- Yeah. - Okay,
the first frugal living tip Marrissa has, is what?
- Is washing your plastic baggies.
- Okay so, I think this is a little,
it can be ridiculous sometimes.
So growing up with her and my other sister in this house,
you'd always like go into the kitchen
and you would see like plastic bags,
hung upside down, and like you would put them in cabinets.
- Yeah so they would dry.
She'd like rinse them out and flip them upside down.
So you walk into the kitchen
and there are all these plastic baggies hanging.
I think it was ridiculous.
She finds it very frugal.
Which I guess, and that's another thing with being frugal
is what works for one person,
I mean might not work for someone else.
You know, and it might like make someone else happy
or really work for them, but other people would see that
and be like, I don't know about that.
That's kinda strange, right?
- Yeah, I've been doing it for so many years
that it's not odd to me,
but I find that if I live with someone else
and they see me and my habits and what I do
they question them at first,
but I've been doing it for so long
that it's doesn't even phase me.
It's just a normal thing.
So, I think one year I actually, I wanted to do a test
to see how long I could make one bag of,
I think it was one hundred like Zip Lock bags.
See how long I could get them to last.
And they lasted a year and a half.
- A hundred bags.
- Were they just like the big ones or little ones or both?
- No they were just the sandwich size bags.
And you know, I might not put like, if it has like,
peanut butter or jelly in there, which, I don't eat jelly
so it would have just been peanut butter.
If it has like that remnants on it, like I'll throw it away.
I'm not that bad.
But like, if it just has like nuts or maybe some fruit
or some veggies in them.
Easily you could wash that out.
- Yeah, I guess that's true. - And hang it up.
- But if you put like, cause I was making chicken today,
and I was putting some into plastic bags.
And I was thinking about her, and I was like,
when I go to thaw these chickens out of these bags
I mean, is this something Marrissa would do,
is like throw soap in the bag and wash it out.
Would you do that with that kind of thing, or no?
That's like too far.
- Yeah, that's too far I wouldn't do that.
- Just throw that out.
- I would just throw it out.
I would call that one a loss.
And for that situation, I would put it in
like maybe a Tupperware container
and then put it in the freezer.
Because then I can wash that Tupperware container out.
- And you're not wasting a plastic bag.
- And I'm not wasting a plastic bag.
- Okay, makes sense.
Hey, real quick make sure to Hulk smash
that thumbs up button.
I tried to tell my sisters
that I'm kinda popular on the Internet.
But none of them believe me.
The only way they'll believe me is if I get a bunch
of likes on this video.
So I'd greatly appreciate that.
The second frugal living tip from one of my sisters is:
- Meal prepping.
- This is huge, I do this too.
And I think this is something that a lot of people
should be doing.
This is like the basic level of being frugal I think.
So how do you do it, like how do you go about meal prepping?
Do you do it like once a week?
Do you do it kind of a couple of times a week?
- Well, my schedule is really hectic so,
I try to do it on Sundays, that's my goal.
That doesn't always happen.
Sometimes it leaks into Monday
and I have to end up doing it Monday.
But I'm really good about making, you know,
lunches all week and you know, something for breakfast.
Always taking breakfast, never eating out during the week.
That's like, that's huge for me.
I give myself one day out of the week that I eat out
with my work friends on Fridays.
And every other day I'm strict
about going to the grocery store.
And prepping a healthy, healthy meals.
- Now do you like freeze stuff,
cause you saw my freezer today
and my freezer is, I'm one of those people
where I meal prep for a whole month, like all the meat.
And so, she saw my freezer today.
I have just plastic containers all in there
so all I have to do is just go in there, grab a container,
thaw it out and I'm good for the week.
Do you do anything like that or do you just do it by week?
- Yeah, that's a bit excessive for me
I don't meal prep for the month.
Because I'm traveling and I'm going a lot of places.
That I'm not home often enough
to be able to make that work for me.
Cause I eat a lot of fresh vegetables,
like I eat salads during the week,
hard boiled eggs, I make my own bacon bits to put on salads.
And so I'm basically just eating mostly fruits
and vegetables during the week.
- Fun fact, Marrissa worked on an organic farm.
For how long?
- Just one summer.
- One summer, she went and like donated her time.
They basically, you didn't get paid right?
- Nope. - They just gave you a place
to stay and then you worked on the farm.
- Yeah, and I learned a ton.
- Yeah. - It was awesome.
Great experience. - That's awesome.
Next frugal living tip is more for people
who are very outdoorsy.
So, Marrissa is a very outdoorsy person
does a lot of camping, hiking.
She's way more of an outdoorsy person than I am.
I like to kind of pretend like I am.
But I'm definitely, I can't hold a candle to her
cause she's done all kinds of things.
You've hiked the Appalachian trail.
You've gone and worked for the National Parks System.
Which we might talk about in a little bit.
And yeah, you go hiking and camping all the time.
So this next frugal living tip is around kind of that.
So what is it for you?
- So I do a lot of camping and hiking
so my gear can wear out rather quickly.
I discovered a second-hand consignment gear shop
where I live and started frequenting there.
And coming across various camping items that I need
for a less amount of money than buying brand new.
So that way you're not putting more trash into the landfill
you're reusing something
that still has plenty of life back to it.
It just may not be the latest and greatest.
- Is it like a Play-It-Again Sports type thing?
- Yep. - But just
for like camping gear?
- Camping gear, they have stuff for biking,
hiking, for dogs, workouts,
you know, boots, shoes.
Anything you might need to be outdoors.
- How'd you find that place, just Google it?
- Yeah, actually I had one of my friends,
one of my other outdoors friends kind of tell me about it.
- Really? - And just went there.
- Cause she lives in North Carolina.
Did you ever find one up here in Ohio or no?
- No I didn't.
- Okay, did you not really look?
- I never really thought about it then, yeah.
- Okay, so there you go.
- I'm sure they're around. (inaudible)
- Cause camping gear it can wear out, yeah, very quickly.
And it can be very expensive,
even if you get like high quality stuff.
It's just a matter of how often you use it.
Like, it's gonna wear out. - Yeah.
- And if being outdoors and that kind of stuff
is very important to you then it's one of those things
where you kind of like have to do to feel like happy.
Like, I know for me to feel happy
I have to go outside and do something in the woods
where there is like trees on a regular basis
or else I freak out and I'm like what's going on, so.
The next frugal living tip that I guess we used to do
when myself, Marrissa, and our other sister lived together,
was, and this was them, I didn't have any say in this.
Cause when you live with your sisters they say what goes.
And, so they would always leave,
in the winter time here in Ohio,
they would leave the heat down
and in the summertime they would leave the air
basically off unless it got really hot.
And, that was like their thing, right?
- Yeah, it was and now I've totally changed that
and I hate to be cold.
So, I crank my heat up in the wintertime,
and I stay very comfortable in my apartment.
That is now not something that I'm willing to change.
- Yeah I was gonna say that's, now that they're gone
I kind of realized I am not gonna do that.
And I don't know why do you think we did that?
Or I should say, why do you think that you and Sierra
did that at that point in time?
We weren't like really poor or anything, right?
- No, we weren't.
But I think we wanted to push the limit
to see how low we could get our utility bills.
And like how much we could tolerate.
And now I'm just not willing to part with that comfort.
- How about you guys?
Let us know in the comments, I don't know,
Do you kind of do that with your heat and air?
Do you like kind of go to the extreme
and let yourself deal with the really cold
or really hot outside or warmth.
Yeah, I don't like doing that anymore.
Plus, I feel bad about my dog cause when it's really cold
if I have the heat down and she's like freezing,
she's like shivering and I'm like this is awful.
It's like abuse to a dog.
So, actually you know what,
let's talk about areas where either of us
are not willing to be frugal.
This might be a little bit fun.
The first area I know for a fact both of us
are not willing to be frugal on
and we came to this realization
when we were all living together,
is you do not cheap out on toilet paper.
- No, never.
- Never, never.
I don't know who bought cheap toilet paper
when we were all living together.
But at some point I was like, listen, we can't do this.
Cause I don't know if you guys remember like in school,
they would always give you like the tissue,
I don't know like the tissue paper toilet paper.
- Yep, the one ply Scott's.
- Yeah, not to be disgusting but you wipe
and then its like oh hey there's my bare hand.
I mean it's awful, that was one thing we could all agree on
when we lived together.
It was no toilet paper, tissue,
or no tissue paper toilet paper.
Does that make sense?
- Only high quality toilet paper.
- Yes, pay the extra cash for it.
Because that's disgusting.
The second area we are not willing to be,
or she's not willing to be frugal on, is?
- Food.
- Food, I would agree with this too.
Food's I think very important,
I think it depends on where you're at
in your financial life too.
Cause not a lot of people can afford
like higher quality food you know.
But if you can, which we're actually able to now,
it's like, no, I don't want to do that.
- Yep, not willing to make that sacrifice.
- Yeah, I guess I'm the same way too.
And some of you, let me know in the comments,
I'm curious if you're willing to,
to kind of cut back on the quality food.
I guess that depends on what kind of quality food
people think is quality.
Because some people think that certain foods
are good food and quality food.
But it's actually not.
- Right.
- And I like I hate telling people
like hey that's not good for you.
Even though it says healthy cuisine or something like that.
- Yeah. - It's not.
And so I think it just depends on the person
and maybe trying to realize what's actually quality food.
So what would you consider quality food?
- So if we're talking meat,
we're talking we'll say beef for example,
when we had all live together we used to buy
a quarter of a cow.
I had a friend that's a farmer that had cows
that he raised grass-fed and finished.
And we would buy that quarter of a cow
once a year and split it between the three of us.
And it was very affordable.
- Yeah, that actually is kind of frugal.
- Yeah. If you think
about it right?
And it's quality food. - Very high quality.
- But see I don't ever go to the grocery store
like to get meat, so I don't even know
what the prices for meat at the normal grocery store.
Because I know that it's usually not quality meat but.
- Right. - Okay so food,
yeah I'm the exact same way.
I'm not willing to cheap out on food.
I'm willing to spend the extra money.
Cause we actually grew up pretty poor
so like, we were on food stamps and welfare
and all you can get on that kind of thing
when we were younger is the food
that's not actually good for you.
- Government cheese.
Did we ever even get government cheese?
I hear about government cheese but I don't know
if it's an actual thing. - Yeah.
- But it seems like on food stamps and welfare
the food that you're able to get it's not good for you.
- No.
- It's a bunch of processed food
that's just horrible for you.
So it's kind of like bass ackwards and yeah, I don't know.
So, I guess maybe cause we grew up in that extreme
now we're kind of to the point where
we're not necessarily poor anymore
because we have our own like careers.
And we're like okay we've seen the other side
and we don't like it.
So yeah, food willing to be frugal on.
- No. - Sorry, not sorry.
This next one that Marrissa has for you
is a little bit of frugal, and not frugal at the same time.
So I'll let her explain.
- Yeah, so I love to travel.
I travel a pretty decent amount.
And I do a lot of like international trips.
I do a lot of camping and backpacking trips.
And I have some friends I'll travel with,
and we went to Greece, for example, last September.
And it was a beautiful vacation, absolutely amazing
and we got it for dirt cheap
because we bought this vacation on Groupon,
- Really. - With a coupon code.
Yeah, so it was ridiculously cheap.
When I tell people the amount of money I spent
they can't believe it, so,
I had a little bit more money in my pocket
to be able to spend on food and drinks and excursions
and various things there so.
- So she's like not necessarily frugal
when it comes to wanting to travel a lot,
but that's something that's very important to her.
But, so you're saying when you do go travel
you try to be as frugal as possible.
- Absolutely.
- Yeah, you are like out and about.
As much as you possibly can it seems like.
Which is good, and like I said
you could almost even consider you being frugal
by working for the National Parks System.
And just being able to travel that way too.
And almost for basically free, right?
- Right. - So that's another way
to even be frugal, yeah is doing that.
You went to a lot of places when you were doing that.
- Did a lot of fun stuff, as fringe benefits.
- Yeah so if you ever like single
and you wanna do some traveling
go work for the National Parks System.
You just like Google it right?
- Yeah. - You Google everything, okay.
- Jobs.gov
- Yeah, I mean she did it and she loved it.
She has so many stories.
Okay that is it.
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