July 2, 2025 • 24 mins
Kristen, aka "The Frugal Girl," shares her strategies for reinvention
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they have for the rest of us. So today I
(00:25):
am delighted to welcome Kristin, who goes by the name
The Frugal Girl online, to the show. So Kristin is
known for her widely read blog, The Frugal Girl, where
she talks about cheerfully living on less. So Kristin, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, well, why don't you tell our listeners a little
bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
All right? This always feels a little like an elevator pitch,
but for yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
It is more or less.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I am forty seven years old. I have four adult
children that I homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. I
am a blogger. I have been blogging at The Fouco
Girl since two thousand and eight, so I'm kind of
a dinosaur in the blogging world, and in the last
couple of years, my life has taken some turns that
I did not expect. In twenty twenty two, I made
(01:15):
the difficult but good decision to leave a twenty five
year marriage that was not good for me, and my
divorce was finalized in twenty twenty four. And also during
that time, I decided to go back to school, so
I started the nursing program and I just graduated this spring,
and I will start a new nurse job in August
of this year.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
That is so exciting. People who read Christen's blog have
been following her journey. It's like we all went to
nursing school with you.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's so true. I feel like I have the biggest
support network of anybody in all of nursing school, because
I have supporters from all over the world who've been
cheering me on.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. Well, it's just so many specifics, like I love
learning new things, Like I had no idea like what
you know, obviously you're having to learn the skills nursing,
but what that would look like on a day to
day basis. And then I'm getting the reports from Kristin
of what exactly she's doing, So you know, it's great
to have that community. So why did you start The
(02:12):
Frugal Girl so many years ago?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So initially it was for some personal accountability despite a
lifelong obsession with saving money. I found myself throwing food
away on a regular basis, and I thought it would
help me if I posted a picture on the Internet
of everything I threw away each week. So I started
a blog with an embarrassingly long url. It was called
Confessions of Recovering Food Waster dot blogspot dot com. And
(02:39):
after I blogged there for a few months, I was like,
you know, I really liked this blogging thing, but I
kind of want to expand my topic. So I moved
on over to The Frugal Girl, which is a great
decision for many reasons, not the least of which is
an extremely more manageable URL than what I started with.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yes, you can tell people that one and they'll remember it.
So true.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I didn't know any think about blogging when I started
back in two thousand and eight. It was just so new,
So I'm thankful that I transitioned from such a long
blog name to something a little more concise.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, and so you were just chronicling your experiences of
trying to save money in various ways. I was yep, yep,
And you know what, seems you've been doing this for
so long? What are people's favorite posts?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
What do people really love reading on a blog like this?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Every week I do a five Frugal Things post, which
was inspired by my friend Katie who blogs at an
I'm Consumer Advocate, where I just share five things that
I did that week to save money, and then people
also chime in the comments and share their own. Another
thing is a feature called Thankful Thursday that we started
during the pandemic because all of us were in lockdown
and we were having a little trouble finding things that
(03:52):
were good in our lives, so we started making thankfulness
Every week, I post mine and then people post theirs
in the comments, and people found to do be so helpful.
We've just kept up the practice, and here we are
five years later, still doing this. I've also written a
lot about my nursing school journey, which people have enjoyed,
and then I've also written about sort of the process
(04:12):
of navigating these changes in my life in the last
couple of years and just being kind of vulnerable about that.
People have really appreciated that, I think, just the realness
of that. And then Also a lot of people have
message me to tell me that they've been inspired to
see how I've been kind of picking up the pieces
and making something beautiful out of my life, even though
(04:36):
it hasn't gone the way that I expected it to go.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, well, I don't think anyone's life goes exactly how
they expected to, So you're in good company. And in
that regard, was it hard to stick with it? I mean,
what's made you stick with it all these years?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I think it's really that the topic that I chose
is something I could talk about forever and not get
tired of it and not run out of things too
talk about. I've been writing five plus a week since
two thousand and eight, and I still enjoy it. I
still don't have trouble coming up with things to write about,
and so that's how I know that I am in
the right niche. And I also really like the community
(05:14):
and social aspect of it. That I have a really
busy comments section and so there's lots of discussion that
goes on there, and I feel like I know my
readers and my readers feel like they know me, and
so it's a very social experience. It's not just me
putting my words out into the world.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean for people who should you know,
everyone should go check it out. But there's I mean,
there's really like celebrities within the comments section at this point.
I mean there's people who are there, you know, at
least once or twice a week commenting, and you get
to know them over the years. Yeah, and so I
imagine on some level talking with those people it becomes
(05:50):
its own kind of self reinforcing cycle. Then it does.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
It does, Yes, yes, it's I know people say internet
friendships are really real friendships, but but I really do
enjoy the interaction that I have with my readers, and
I am humbled and honored to hear from them that
the things that I write make a difference for them,
and that is really fulfilling and that makes me want
to keep writing too.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, do you have any advice for any you know,
aspiring content creators out there. That's such a funny phrase,
and when you started in two thousand and eight, no
one use that phrase.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So true.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So I'm very curious if there's something you would tell
anyone who is thinking, like, you know, I have a
point of view, I have something I want to share.
What do you do with that.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I think the thing that has helped me the most,
like I said, is picking a topic that I could
talk about forever. I am not bored of talking about
saving money. I'm not bored of talking about being content.
And I think that's part of the reason that I've
just been able to keep going for all this time
is that I am in a niche that I really
really like.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, absolutely, all right, Well We're going to take a
quick ad break and then I will be back with
more from Kristin of the Frugal Girl. Well, I am
back talking with Kristin, who is known online as the
Frugal Girl has been blogging under that name since about
(07:16):
two thousand and eight. So you took this pivot a
couple of years ago to go back to school. What
you know, nursing and frugal blogging and homeschooling are sort
of different things. What why nursing? Like why this is
the career you went to for the second part of life.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So when my kids were younger, I always used to,
like herdedly, say, oh, if I had a second lifetime,
I would go back to school and become a late
brand delivery nurse. And at some point it occurred to me,
I was only going to be forty five when my
youngest kid graduated from high school, and given an average
life span, that sort of does still offer you a
second lifetime. So I thought, you know, I really could
(07:57):
do this. Why nurse. I am fascinated with the human body,
and I also really love people. I love talking to people,
I love meeting people, I love helping people, I love
taking care of people. So nursing is a good fit
for that. And also I am nigh onto impossible to
gross out, which is.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
A big moving at the hospital because.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Benefit, yes, we see things every day that would probably
turn most people's stomachs, and for whatever reason, it just
does not bother me. So that makes sense to go
into nursing if you if you cannot be grossed out.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, absolutely, yes, you need both the empathy and the
not grossed out part of it, the two skills that
are that are key there. So when you were looking
at this though, I mean, it's one thing to say, yeah,
I'd like a second career as a nurse, but this
was a long project you had to map out because
you know, you had to. You can't just like show
up tomorrow and go to nursing school. There's things you
have to do first, right.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yes, there's a whole bunch of prerequisite classes that you
have to do before you can join up nursing program.
So I looked at the path that was laid out
for that, and I started doing my prerequisits while my
youngest child was still in high school. So I just
did one class per semester because I was still homeschooling.
So I knocked all of those out while she was
still in high school, and then when she graduated, then
(09:17):
I was all ready to jump into the nursing program.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And did you really sort of plot out like how
many years it would take and what you'd need to do.
I'm curious as you were thinking about this, what was
the thought process there?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I did? I did. I went onto my community college's
website and they have the whole path laid out there,
and I figured if I just kept up that one
class of semester kind of thing, I could knock out
everything I needed to get started as soon as she
graduated from high school?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Was it hard to start taking things like college math
and biology and all that.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I was a little scared before I went back to
school because I always tell people I took twenty five
gap years, and I was like, oh, man, I don't know,
can my middle aged brain keep up with all these
young classmates. But I think something that helped me is
that I've been homeschooling for all of these years, and
so even though I wasn't the learner, I was a teacher,
(10:14):
and so I've just been in this learning environment for
so long. I did actually find it that hard to
do my college classes, and I did successfully keep up
with all of the young brains that I was surrounded by.
So it is possible to do this in middle age.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, well, I imagine. I mean the fact that you
were helping, you know, like high school students do math
for instance, meant it was at least somewhat more fresh
in your brain than these, you know, somebody who has
not done high school math since high school.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh? Absolutely, yes, Yes, homeschooling was a happy accident for that.
I didn't know that it was preparing me for nursing school,
but as it turns out, it was so.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Once you started full time school, I'm curious what your
schedule tended to look like because you have kept up
with your blogging, which it's not just writing a post
every day. It's all so the interaction with the people
who come there and keeping that community going. So how
are you combining both of these? What did your schedule
look like?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, not every nursing school is like this, but mine
had a zero routine to it. For normal college classes,
you have lecture on a predictable day at a predictable time.
But my nursing school, we didn't have any weeks that
were the same as the previous one, so that required
a lot more flexibility than I'm used to. So I
actually used one of your tips, which is to sit
(11:29):
down on Friday and plan my week out just the
next seven days. So I just lived in seven day increments.
Would I have been able to tell you what was
happening three weeks from that day, No, But I knew
what was happening the next seven days. I were right
down my labs and lectures and clinicals, my workshifts, my
daughter's workshifts, my daughter's classes, and then I would fill
in other things like what I was going to make
(11:50):
for dinner, when I was going to go to the gym,
and then things like blogging, responding to comments, and studying
that I'll just fit in the cracks of all that
other stuff. Living the seven days at a time really
helped me.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, because the schedule was really all over the map.
You might have had a class at night or in
the morning, and then working at the hot because you
had to work at the hospital as well for a
chunk of this time.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yes, yes, so my life was very unpredictable from week
to week.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So well, I guess that's a good thing though, about
a flexible job like content creations, it could fit in.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Oh my goodness. Yes, yes, I have been so thankful
for my blogging job as I've been going through nursing school,
because trying to maintain any sort of regular work schedule
with this crazy nursing school schedule would have been so tough.
Blogging was the perfect job for me.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah. Well, and you did a very good job. I
hear Kristin that you graduated with a four point zero.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I did. I did.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So maybe you could talk about like how you studied,
like how you prepared for tests for instance. I mean,
I know you've helped kids with homeschooling, but you hadn't
done this for a while, and there's just all sorts
of study skills that are necessary to get a four
point zero. Why don't you talk a little bit about
(13:08):
your studying process.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Sure, so, one thing that I did was I did
not ever put things off to the last minute. I
made it through nursing school without bowling any old lighters.
I started studying for the next exam as soon as
the previous one was over. I helped other classmates, because
if you can teach something to somebody else, you usually
learn a lot in the process yourself. And then I
(13:33):
also did a lot of pairing a body task with
a head task. If you try to pair two head tasks,
that does not work very well, Like if you try
to write a paper while you're talking to somebody on
the phone, that's not going to be productive. But if
you were doing something that requires mostly body energy and
not a whole lot of brain energy, is folding your laundry,
going for a walk, cleaning your house. If you do
(13:54):
something that also engages your brain, that is a really
good use of time. So when I was doing things
like that, I would put in a YouTube video about
enquxt questions, or I would listen to recorded lectures, and
that way I could pick up bits and pieces of
things while my body was busy doing something else. And
also my textbooks they had on audio version that I
(14:17):
could listen to. It was a really bad computer voice
reading the book.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
But not enjoyable audio BIK posting.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, But I persevered, and I figure anything that I
pick up while in doing those body tasks is a
nice bonus as compared to what would happen if I
was just folding my laundry in silence or cleaning my
house in silence. So that's a great way to be
a little more efficient and add some learning into some
time of doing tasks that I needed to do anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, I love that phrasing a head task and a
body task. I think everyone can write that down because
it's a great way to multitask that doesn't just make
you crazy. Yeah, and combining these two wonderful things here
of nursing school and frugal living. I hear you also
never purchased food at your school or at the hospital
(15:08):
while in the course of doing this.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It is true I did not sit out to maintain
a streak, but I made it through all of my
time at nursing school and my workshifts at the hospital
and my clinical shifts at the hospital, and I think
the only thing I ever bought was a cookie on
my last day of clinical.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So you just don't did questing, That's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
So mainly I did this because I don't like to
spend money and I also like to feed my body well,
and the best way to make both of those schools
happen is to bring food from home. So I did
establish your gay habit of that, and I will carry
that into my nursing practice too.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So how did you do that? Did you make your
lunch in the morning before going, I mean, or did
you make sure you made enough to have leftovers?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Like?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
What were the logistics here of making that happen.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
I was always preparing the night before, because generally speaking,
nursing shifts start early in the morning and I do
not have time in the morning to pack my lunch,
so I usually prep things ahead of time. If I
knew I had a couple of workshifts coming up or
a couple of school shifts, I would make sure that
I cook some things and prep them and pack them
so that we were in my fridge just ready to go.
I'll have to do is grab them in the morning
(16:15):
and throw them in my lunch box and off I
go to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And do you have a particular kind of lunch box
lunch containers that work really well that you would recommend
for somebody thinking about doing this if.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
You don't need to microwave something, I really like stainless
steel containers because they don't take up a whole lot
of space and they're not that heavy. But if you
need to bring something that you have to microwave, obviously
that will be a shocking experience.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I would let them. Don't collect cut yourself.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So if I bring something I need to heat up,
I usually use like a glass Pyrex container, But for
cold things, I really love stainless steel containers. And I
love them too because they don't absorb any smells.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Always also good, you know, and you don't want to
be the person who's got smelly lunches all over the
place when you're when you're working. All right, Well, we're
gonna take one more quick ad break and I'll be
back with more from Kristin from the Frugal Girl. So
I am back talking with Kristin, who is known online
(17:18):
as the Frugal Girl. So, Kristin, obviously you said with
nursing school, things were never the same week to week.
But I'm curious in sort of more your regular life
and as you're thinking about, you know, working and going
in the future, do you think you're going to establish
any sort of daily routines that that might make you
more productive? Like are you a morning routine person? You
like to exercise in the morning. I believe I do.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I would say that the things that I do routinely,
I have learned to be very flexible about them over
the last couple of years. So the things I do
to take good care of myself, I put myself to
bed on time so that I get eight hours of sleep.
I prioritize movement, going for a walk every day. I
usually break out at the gym four times a week,
(18:01):
and then I also try to prioritize feeding myself well.
But in terms of exercising, I'm pretty flexible about it.
So I do prefer to go in the morning, but
sometimes during school that didn't work, so then I would
go to the gym at three pm. And I'm hoping
to be able to be a little more consistent about
it as I move into a nursing life. But nursing
(18:24):
life is also a little bit less predictable than a
Monday through Friday nine to five, because usually you work
three shifts a week, but the days that you work
those is not the same. Sometimes you have to do
night shifts and sometimes you have to do weekends. And
so I think the flexibility that I learned in nursing
school is going to be helpful as I move into
a nursing life, even though a nursing life is not
(18:45):
quite as crazy as a nursing school life is.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, well it seems that. I mean, it would just
be a different sort of mindset because if you've got
three twelve hour shifts a week, the days you're doing that,
you're probably not doing a whole lot else, right, I mean,
because it's by the time you get up, get ready,
drive yourself there, drive home, like we've consumed most of
the day.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
But then we have four days where that's not the case.
Or even if you were covering for somebody shift on occasion,
you know you'd still have three days where you were
able to do whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yes, yes, so yes, you are correct. On the days
when I work at the hospital, I pretty much just work,
eat and sleep and that's it. Especially if you work
multiple days in a row, you just have to go
home and go to bed if you want to get
eight hours of sleep. So yeah, when I'm working, that's
usually pretty much all that I'm doing. But I feel
confident that I will be able to make the most
of my four days off. And some of that is
(19:37):
probably because of the time management skills that I had
in nursing school, learning to be flexible and move things
where they need to be and fill in the available space.
So I think it's going to be much easier than
what I've been doing for the last couple of years.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, And do you see the Frugal Girl
the blog evolving as at all as you are, you know,
entering a reasonably well paid profession where you plan to
be working full time, I mean, is that going to
be sort of a different mindset.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I do still plan to blog. People have wondered about that, like,
are you going to quit blogging once you start nursing?
But I really like blogging. I love the community there,
I like sharing my life there, so I don't really
want to stop blogging. And my schedule going forward is
going to be easier than it has been the last
couple of years, So I don't think there's going to
(20:33):
be a time constraint keeping me from blogging. So I
think I'm just going to keep writing about my life
there and sharing with people as long as people are
willing to read it. So I will be a blogging nurse.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
A blogging nurse who's writing about ways to save money,
even if if life is you know, looking financially reasonable
at that point too. Yeah, yeah, well you know it's
it's good. I'm a lifelong frugal person. Doesn't really matter
what I earn, it's always a It's kind of temperamental,
don't you think.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I do think a lot of it is just inborn.
And then also with having gotten divorced in my forties,
that's a pretty big financial reset. So I will be
happy for the opportunity to kind of rebuild my financial life.
And part of that is having a good paying job
and combining your frugal skills with that, because you can
(21:29):
have a high paying job and still not be making
any financial progress if you just are spending all the
money that you are making. So my plan is to
earn the money and keep it, keep it.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
That sounds good, That sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
So Kristin.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I always ask people what is something you have done
recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
So last Saturday, I had a shift at the hospital
that went from seven am to seven thirty pm. I
work as a patient care tech there and that's a
pretty exhausting shift. I had an invitation to a friends
graduation party that I could go to after work, and
I almost didn't go because I was tired. But you
popped into my head, you know how you say people
(22:11):
are a good use of time, And I thought, you
know what, I'm probably not going to regret it if
I go, even though I'm a little tired. So went home,
got out of my scrubs, did a quick cleanup, and
went to my friend's party. And It's true, I did
not regret going, and I feel like it took my
workday from great to awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, it wasn't just a day you worked twelve hours.
It was a day you worked twelve hours and saw
your friend yep, and had it.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I'm glad I could be in your head there, Kristin.
What I am for? What are you looking forward to
right now?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
If you asked me this a couple of months ago,
I definitely would have said graduating from nursing school, but
I already did that. So I'm looking forward to having
my end CLEX, my licensing exam behind me. I take
that in the beginning of July, and then I'm looking
forward to starting my job as a new nurse in August.
And just in general, I am excited about the future
(23:06):
because nursing school has been so all consuming it's been
hard to do anything else or think about much of
anything else. So I'm excited about the improvement in schedule
flexibility that's coming up, Like I could actually take time off,
I could sure things which have been sort of impossible
for the last couple of years. So I'm just really
(23:27):
looking forward to all the possibilities that this opens up
for me.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Awesome, awesome, And where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I am the frugal Girl everywhere. My website is Thefrugalgirl
dot com and you can find me on social media
under the frugal Girl. If you google the Frugal Girl,
you will find me. I'm consistently branded.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
That's good. That's good, and she's been at it for
a long time. So lots to wade through with the
history of the Frugal Girl as well. So Kristin, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone
for listening. If you have fee back on this or
any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
at Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime, this
is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
(24:09):
most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
(24:33):
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice
they have for the rest of us. So today I
(00:25):
am delighted to welcome Kristin, who goes by the name
The Frugal Girl online, to the show. So Kristin is
known for her widely read blog, The Frugal Girl, where
she talks about cheerfully living on less. So Kristin, welcome
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, well, why don't you tell our listeners a little
bit about yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
All right? This always feels a little like an elevator pitch,
but for yourself.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
It is more or less.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I am forty seven years old. I have four adult
children that I homeschooled from kindergarten through high school. I
am a blogger. I have been blogging at The Fouco
Girl since two thousand and eight, so I'm kind of
a dinosaur in the blogging world, and in the last
couple of years, my life has taken some turns that
I did not expect. In twenty twenty two, I made
(01:15):
the difficult but good decision to leave a twenty five
year marriage that was not good for me, and my
divorce was finalized in twenty twenty four. And also during
that time, I decided to go back to school, so
I started the nursing program and I just graduated this spring,
and I will start a new nurse job in August
of this year.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
That is so exciting. People who read Christen's blog have
been following her journey. It's like we all went to
nursing school with you.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
It's so true. I feel like I have the biggest
support network of anybody in all of nursing school, because
I have supporters from all over the world who've been
cheering me on.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah. Well, it's just so many specifics, like I love
learning new things, Like I had no idea like what
you know, obviously you're having to learn the skills nursing,
but what that would look like on a day to
day basis. And then I'm getting the reports from Kristin
of what exactly she's doing, So you know, it's great
to have that community. So why did you start The
(02:12):
Frugal Girl so many years ago?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
So initially it was for some personal accountability despite a
lifelong obsession with saving money. I found myself throwing food
away on a regular basis, and I thought it would
help me if I posted a picture on the Internet
of everything I threw away each week. So I started
a blog with an embarrassingly long url. It was called
Confessions of Recovering Food Waster dot blogspot dot com. And
(02:39):
after I blogged there for a few months, I was like,
you know, I really liked this blogging thing, but I
kind of want to expand my topic. So I moved
on over to The Frugal Girl, which is a great
decision for many reasons, not the least of which is
an extremely more manageable URL than what I started with.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yes, you can tell people that one and they'll remember it.
So true.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I didn't know any think about blogging when I started
back in two thousand and eight. It was just so new,
So I'm thankful that I transitioned from such a long
blog name to something a little more concise.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, and so you were just chronicling your experiences of
trying to save money in various ways. I was yep, yep,
And you know what, seems you've been doing this for
so long? What are people's favorite posts?
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Like?
Speaker 1 (03:24):
What do people really love reading on a blog like this?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Every week I do a five Frugal Things post, which
was inspired by my friend Katie who blogs at an
I'm Consumer Advocate, where I just share five things that
I did that week to save money, and then people
also chime in the comments and share their own. Another
thing is a feature called Thankful Thursday that we started
during the pandemic because all of us were in lockdown
and we were having a little trouble finding things that
(03:52):
were good in our lives, so we started making thankfulness
Every week, I post mine and then people post theirs
in the comments, and people found to do be so helpful.
We've just kept up the practice, and here we are
five years later, still doing this. I've also written a
lot about my nursing school journey, which people have enjoyed,
and then I've also written about sort of the process
(04:12):
of navigating these changes in my life in the last
couple of years and just being kind of vulnerable about that.
People have really appreciated that, I think, just the realness
of that. And then Also a lot of people have
message me to tell me that they've been inspired to
see how I've been kind of picking up the pieces
and making something beautiful out of my life, even though
(04:36):
it hasn't gone the way that I expected it to go.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Yeah, well, I don't think anyone's life goes exactly how
they expected to, So you're in good company. And in
that regard, was it hard to stick with it? I mean,
what's made you stick with it all these years?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
I think it's really that the topic that I chose
is something I could talk about forever and not get
tired of it and not run out of things too
talk about. I've been writing five plus a week since
two thousand and eight, and I still enjoy it. I
still don't have trouble coming up with things to write about,
and so that's how I know that I am in
the right niche. And I also really like the community
(05:14):
and social aspect of it. That I have a really
busy comments section and so there's lots of discussion that
goes on there, and I feel like I know my
readers and my readers feel like they know me, and
so it's a very social experience. It's not just me
putting my words out into the world.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean for people who should you know,
everyone should go check it out. But there's I mean,
there's really like celebrities within the comments section at this point.
I mean there's people who are there, you know, at
least once or twice a week commenting, and you get
to know them over the years. Yeah, and so I
imagine on some level talking with those people it becomes
(05:50):
its own kind of self reinforcing cycle. Then it does.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
It does, Yes, yes, it's I know people say internet
friendships are really real friendships, but but I really do
enjoy the interaction that I have with my readers, and
I am humbled and honored to hear from them that
the things that I write make a difference for them,
and that is really fulfilling and that makes me want
to keep writing too.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, do you have any advice for any you know,
aspiring content creators out there. That's such a funny phrase,
and when you started in two thousand and eight, no
one use that phrase.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
So true.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So I'm very curious if there's something you would tell
anyone who is thinking, like, you know, I have a
point of view, I have something I want to share.
What do you do with that.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I think the thing that has helped me the most,
like I said, is picking a topic that I could
talk about forever. I am not bored of talking about
saving money. I'm not bored of talking about being content.
And I think that's part of the reason that I've
just been able to keep going for all this time
is that I am in a niche that I really
really like.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Yeah, absolutely, all right, Well We're going to take a
quick ad break and then I will be back with
more from Kristin of the Frugal Girl. Well, I am
back talking with Kristin, who is known online as the
Frugal Girl has been blogging under that name since about
(07:16):
two thousand and eight. So you took this pivot a
couple of years ago to go back to school. What
you know, nursing and frugal blogging and homeschooling are sort
of different things. What why nursing? Like why this is
the career you went to for the second part of life.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So when my kids were younger, I always used to,
like herdedly, say, oh, if I had a second lifetime,
I would go back to school and become a late
brand delivery nurse. And at some point it occurred to me,
I was only going to be forty five when my
youngest kid graduated from high school, and given an average
life span, that sort of does still offer you a
second lifetime. So I thought, you know, I really could
(07:57):
do this. Why nurse. I am fascinated with the human body,
and I also really love people. I love talking to people,
I love meeting people, I love helping people, I love
taking care of people. So nursing is a good fit
for that. And also I am nigh onto impossible to
gross out, which is.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
A big moving at the hospital because.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Benefit, yes, we see things every day that would probably
turn most people's stomachs, and for whatever reason, it just
does not bother me. So that makes sense to go
into nursing if you if you cannot be grossed out.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Yeah, absolutely, yes, you need both the empathy and the
not grossed out part of it, the two skills that
are that are key there. So when you were looking
at this though, I mean, it's one thing to say, yeah,
I'd like a second career as a nurse, but this
was a long project you had to map out because
you know, you had to. You can't just like show
up tomorrow and go to nursing school. There's things you
have to do first, right.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yes, there's a whole bunch of prerequisite classes that you
have to do before you can join up nursing program.
So I looked at the path that was laid out
for that, and I started doing my prerequisits while my
youngest child was still in high school. So I just
did one class per semester because I was still homeschooling.
So I knocked all of those out while she was
still in high school, and then when she graduated, then
(09:17):
I was all ready to jump into the nursing program.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
And did you really sort of plot out like how
many years it would take and what you'd need to do.
I'm curious as you were thinking about this, what was
the thought process there?
Speaker 2 (09:29):
I did? I did. I went onto my community college's
website and they have the whole path laid out there,
and I figured if I just kept up that one
class of semester kind of thing, I could knock out
everything I needed to get started as soon as she
graduated from high school?
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Was it hard to start taking things like college math
and biology and all that.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I was a little scared before I went back to
school because I always tell people I took twenty five
gap years, and I was like, oh, man, I don't know,
can my middle aged brain keep up with all these
young classmates. But I think something that helped me is
that I've been homeschooling for all of these years, and
so even though I wasn't the learner, I was a teacher,
(10:14):
and so I've just been in this learning environment for
so long. I did actually find it that hard to
do my college classes, and I did successfully keep up
with all of the young brains that I was surrounded by.
So it is possible to do this in middle age.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah, well, I imagine. I mean the fact that you
were helping, you know, like high school students do math
for instance, meant it was at least somewhat more fresh
in your brain than these, you know, somebody who has
not done high school math since high school.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Oh? Absolutely, yes, Yes, homeschooling was a happy accident for that.
I didn't know that it was preparing me for nursing school,
but as it turns out, it was so.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Once you started full time school, I'm curious what your
schedule tended to look like because you have kept up
with your blogging, which it's not just writing a post
every day. It's all so the interaction with the people
who come there and keeping that community going. So how
are you combining both of these? What did your schedule
look like?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, not every nursing school is like this, but mine
had a zero routine to it. For normal college classes,
you have lecture on a predictable day at a predictable time.
But my nursing school, we didn't have any weeks that
were the same as the previous one, so that required
a lot more flexibility than I'm used to. So I
actually used one of your tips, which is to sit
(11:29):
down on Friday and plan my week out just the
next seven days. So I just lived in seven day increments.
Would I have been able to tell you what was
happening three weeks from that day, No, But I knew
what was happening the next seven days. I were right
down my labs and lectures and clinicals, my workshifts, my
daughter's workshifts, my daughter's classes, and then I would fill
in other things like what I was going to make
(11:50):
for dinner, when I was going to go to the gym,
and then things like blogging, responding to comments, and studying
that I'll just fit in the cracks of all that
other stuff. Living the seven days at a time really
helped me.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, because the schedule was really all over the map.
You might have had a class at night or in
the morning, and then working at the hot because you
had to work at the hospital as well for a
chunk of this time.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yes, yes, so my life was very unpredictable from week
to week.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
So well, I guess that's a good thing though, about
a flexible job like content creations, it could fit in.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Oh my goodness. Yes, yes, I have been so thankful
for my blogging job as I've been going through nursing school,
because trying to maintain any sort of regular work schedule
with this crazy nursing school schedule would have been so tough.
Blogging was the perfect job for me.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah. Well, and you did a very good job. I
hear Kristin that you graduated with a four point zero.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I did. I did.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
So maybe you could talk about like how you studied,
like how you prepared for tests for instance. I mean,
I know you've helped kids with homeschooling, but you hadn't
done this for a while, and there's just all sorts
of study skills that are necessary to get a four
point zero. Why don't you talk a little bit about
(13:08):
your studying process.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Sure, so, one thing that I did was I did
not ever put things off to the last minute. I
made it through nursing school without bowling any old lighters.
I started studying for the next exam as soon as
the previous one was over. I helped other classmates, because
if you can teach something to somebody else, you usually
learn a lot in the process yourself. And then I
(13:33):
also did a lot of pairing a body task with
a head task. If you try to pair two head tasks,
that does not work very well, Like if you try
to write a paper while you're talking to somebody on
the phone, that's not going to be productive. But if
you were doing something that requires mostly body energy and
not a whole lot of brain energy, is folding your laundry,
going for a walk, cleaning your house. If you do
(13:54):
something that also engages your brain, that is a really
good use of time. So when I was doing things
like that, I would put in a YouTube video about
enquxt questions, or I would listen to recorded lectures, and
that way I could pick up bits and pieces of
things while my body was busy doing something else. And
also my textbooks they had on audio version that I
(14:17):
could listen to. It was a really bad computer voice
reading the book.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
But not enjoyable audio BIK posting.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, But I persevered, and I figure anything that I
pick up while in doing those body tasks is a
nice bonus as compared to what would happen if I
was just folding my laundry in silence or cleaning my
house in silence. So that's a great way to be
a little more efficient and add some learning into some
time of doing tasks that I needed to do anyway.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, I love that phrasing a head task and a
body task. I think everyone can write that down because
it's a great way to multitask that doesn't just make
you crazy. Yeah, and combining these two wonderful things here
of nursing school and frugal living. I hear you also
never purchased food at your school or at the hospital
(15:08):
while in the course of doing this.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It is true I did not sit out to maintain
a streak, but I made it through all of my
time at nursing school and my workshifts at the hospital
and my clinical shifts at the hospital, and I think
the only thing I ever bought was a cookie on
my last day of clinical.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
So you just don't did questing, That's what I thought.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
So mainly I did this because I don't like to
spend money and I also like to feed my body well,
and the best way to make both of those schools
happen is to bring food from home. So I did
establish your gay habit of that, and I will carry
that into my nursing practice too.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
So how did you do that? Did you make your
lunch in the morning before going, I mean, or did
you make sure you made enough to have leftovers?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Like?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
What were the logistics here of making that happen.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
I was always preparing the night before, because generally speaking,
nursing shifts start early in the morning and I do
not have time in the morning to pack my lunch,
so I usually prep things ahead of time. If I
knew I had a couple of workshifts coming up or
a couple of school shifts, I would make sure that
I cook some things and prep them and pack them
so that we were in my fridge just ready to go.
I'll have to do is grab them in the morning
(16:15):
and throw them in my lunch box and off I
go to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
And do you have a particular kind of lunch box
lunch containers that work really well that you would recommend
for somebody thinking about doing this if.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
You don't need to microwave something, I really like stainless
steel containers because they don't take up a whole lot
of space and they're not that heavy. But if you
need to bring something that you have to microwave, obviously
that will be a shocking experience.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I would let them. Don't collect cut yourself.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So if I bring something I need to heat up,
I usually use like a glass Pyrex container, But for
cold things, I really love stainless steel containers. And I
love them too because they don't absorb any smells.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Always also good, you know, and you don't want to
be the person who's got smelly lunches all over the
place when you're when you're working. All right, Well, we're
gonna take one more quick ad break and I'll be
back with more from Kristin from the Frugal Girl. So
I am back talking with Kristin, who is known online
(17:18):
as the Frugal Girl. So, Kristin, obviously you said with
nursing school, things were never the same week to week.
But I'm curious in sort of more your regular life
and as you're thinking about, you know, working and going
in the future, do you think you're going to establish
any sort of daily routines that that might make you
more productive? Like are you a morning routine person? You
like to exercise in the morning. I believe I do.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I would say that the things that I do routinely,
I have learned to be very flexible about them over
the last couple of years. So the things I do
to take good care of myself, I put myself to
bed on time so that I get eight hours of sleep.
I prioritize movement, going for a walk every day. I
usually break out at the gym four times a week,
(18:01):
and then I also try to prioritize feeding myself well.
But in terms of exercising, I'm pretty flexible about it.
So I do prefer to go in the morning, but
sometimes during school that didn't work, so then I would
go to the gym at three pm. And I'm hoping
to be able to be a little more consistent about
it as I move into a nursing life. But nursing
(18:24):
life is also a little bit less predictable than a
Monday through Friday nine to five, because usually you work
three shifts a week, but the days that you work
those is not the same. Sometimes you have to do
night shifts and sometimes you have to do weekends. And
so I think the flexibility that I learned in nursing
school is going to be helpful as I move into
a nursing life, even though a nursing life is not
(18:45):
quite as crazy as a nursing school life is.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Yeah, well it seems that. I mean, it would just
be a different sort of mindset because if you've got
three twelve hour shifts a week, the days you're doing that,
you're probably not doing a whole lot else, right, I mean,
because it's by the time you get up, get ready,
drive yourself there, drive home, like we've consumed most of
the day.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
But then we have four days where that's not the case.
Or even if you were covering for somebody shift on occasion,
you know you'd still have three days where you were
able to do whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yes, yes, so yes, you are correct. On the days
when I work at the hospital, I pretty much just work,
eat and sleep and that's it. Especially if you work
multiple days in a row, you just have to go
home and go to bed if you want to get
eight hours of sleep. So yeah, when I'm working, that's
usually pretty much all that I'm doing. But I feel
confident that I will be able to make the most
of my four days off. And some of that is
(19:37):
probably because of the time management skills that I had
in nursing school, learning to be flexible and move things
where they need to be and fill in the available space.
So I think it's going to be much easier than
what I've been doing for the last couple of years.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, And do you see the Frugal Girl
the blog evolving as at all as you are, you know,
entering a reasonably well paid profession where you plan to
be working full time, I mean, is that going to
be sort of a different mindset.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
I do still plan to blog. People have wondered about that, like,
are you going to quit blogging once you start nursing?
But I really like blogging. I love the community there,
I like sharing my life there, so I don't really
want to stop blogging. And my schedule going forward is
going to be easier than it has been the last
couple of years, So I don't think there's going to
(20:33):
be a time constraint keeping me from blogging. So I
think I'm just going to keep writing about my life
there and sharing with people as long as people are
willing to read it. So I will be a blogging nurse.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
A blogging nurse who's writing about ways to save money,
even if if life is you know, looking financially reasonable
at that point too. Yeah, yeah, well you know it's
it's good. I'm a lifelong frugal person. Doesn't really matter
what I earn, it's always a It's kind of temperamental,
don't you think.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I do think a lot of it is just inborn.
And then also with having gotten divorced in my forties,
that's a pretty big financial reset. So I will be
happy for the opportunity to kind of rebuild my financial life.
And part of that is having a good paying job
and combining your frugal skills with that, because you can
(21:29):
have a high paying job and still not be making
any financial progress if you just are spending all the
money that you are making. So my plan is to
earn the money and keep it, keep it.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
That sounds good, That sounds like a good plan.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
So Kristin.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
I always ask people what is something you have done
recently to take a day from great to awesome?
Speaker 2 (21:49):
So last Saturday, I had a shift at the hospital
that went from seven am to seven thirty pm. I
work as a patient care tech there and that's a
pretty exhausting shift. I had an invitation to a friends
graduation party that I could go to after work, and
I almost didn't go because I was tired. But you
popped into my head, you know how you say people
(22:11):
are a good use of time, And I thought, you
know what, I'm probably not going to regret it if
I go, even though I'm a little tired. So went home,
got out of my scrubs, did a quick cleanup, and
went to my friend's party. And It's true, I did
not regret going, and I feel like it took my
workday from great to awesome.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, it wasn't just a day you worked twelve hours.
It was a day you worked twelve hours and saw
your friend yep, and had it.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Well.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I'm glad I could be in your head there, Kristin.
What I am for? What are you looking forward to
right now?
Speaker 2 (22:44):
If you asked me this a couple of months ago,
I definitely would have said graduating from nursing school, but
I already did that. So I'm looking forward to having
my end CLEX, my licensing exam behind me. I take
that in the beginning of July, and then I'm looking
forward to starting my job as a new nurse in August.
And just in general, I am excited about the future
(23:06):
because nursing school has been so all consuming it's been
hard to do anything else or think about much of
anything else. So I'm excited about the improvement in schedule
flexibility that's coming up, Like I could actually take time off,
I could sure things which have been sort of impossible
for the last couple of years. So I'm just really
(23:27):
looking forward to all the possibilities that this opens up
for me.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Awesome, awesome, And where can people find you?
Speaker 2 (23:33):
I am the frugal Girl everywhere. My website is Thefrugalgirl
dot com and you can find me on social media
under the frugal Girl. If you google the Frugal Girl,
you will find me. I'm consistently branded.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
That's good. That's good, and she's been at it for
a long time. So lots to wade through with the
history of the Frugal Girl as well. So Kristin, thank
you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone
for listening. If you have fee back on this or
any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura
at Laura vandercam dot com. And in the meantime, this
is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making the
(24:09):
most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
(24:33):
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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Laura Vanderkam
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