2026 Money Traps Everyone Is Falling For (Have You Noticed Them Yet?)

Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify, especially designed to help you start, run, and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scale-ups, online, in-person, and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. 2026 money traps everyone is falling for. Have you noticed them? Welcome to the Frugal Friends Podcast where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a rich life. Here are your hosts, Jen and Jill. Welcome to Frugal Friends. I'm Jen. And I have over the last year, so stop eating out at restaurants as frequently because I feel like yes, the prices are more, but the quality of food is less, the amount of food is less, even the service at places is less, and there are so many things involved in the experience. And I have gone out time and time again and just felt like this experience was not worth the money I paid for it. And the amount of time it takes me to earn that money because I'm not earning $1,000 an hour, so for what I'm taking in, and it's just felt like it's across the board at a lot of different places. Yeah, it's not just restaurants. I feel like services and entertainment kind of across the board feel like they're relying on the reputation that they built in our youth, but now continuing to provide subpar experiences. And unfortunately a lot of us aren't noticing. Yeah, and so we wonder if you listening or watching have experienced the same thing. And so I took to the internet to see where else is this happening? Is it in my mind? And it's not. We found that time and time again, there's a lot of places where this is happening in our last episode, or maybe not last, but last week. We talked about skin population, which is the declining quality. And so of like consumer products. And so today we're focusing more on kind of services and things of that nature. So definitely you don't have to have watched that to enjoy this one, but it's definitely going to be one you'll want to queue up for after this. If this episode makes you as angry as it made me while I was writing the outline. And as you've started with restaurants are the first one for us to highlight. They've got this whole pay more get less blueprint going on. And let just let me know in the comments if you feel like you have been to this restaurant that we are about to show you. Here's our $37 burger. It's made with Chuck Short Rib and Sirloin. Please enjoy. Yeah, the menus right there on the QR code. These are our Truffle Duck Fact fries from the side of RTA Holy. Does anybody here need an IPA? You scan the QR code with your phone. You look really uncomfortable over there. You're not vibing with the small metal chairs. This is a $37 burger. And if the QR code's too confusing, you can look up on that chalkboard up there. Oh yeah, wait till you try that special sauce. We got a Google Squire weed on draft. Yeah, it's a hazy. You like my black gloves. Just a couple college dropouts with a crazy idea to start a gastro club. I made this burger. You like how hard this burger is to eat? Don't you dare cut it in half. I've been growing out this man bun since 2007. This is a homemade spicy ketchup. We don't have any other regular stuff. I wear the same red-checked flannel in apron work every single day. I feel so uncomfortable. And I feel like I've been, I like I know this restaurant. Yeah, I've been here. It's all right. It's so hard to eat. I know. It's all gastropubs. It's all burgers. Yeah. And in this case, it feels like sometimes people are just trying to do too much. When it's just give me the burger and the fries and don't charge me $37. $7. Or worse, they are giving just a burger and fries and still charging $27. So true. So a menu price inflation study from as recently as November 2025 showed that restaurants have raised their menu prices up to 29% year over year. And a lot of that is actually labor costs. So it's not as much food costs. Labor costs have increased 23% in 2025 after climbing 33% in both 2024 and 2023. So that means prices obviously are increasing, but also they're cutting costs. And so they're offering fewer burgers, fewer choices, and just the scaling back of service because with increased labor costs, you can't have as many people working. Yeah. Just cutting corners on all of the things from service to food to portion sizing. All of it's happening. Meanwhile, prices are still increasing. And I get, you know, the video kind of pointed out the QR code thing. And some of this has rolled over from COVID made sense then, but at the same time, all that it's doing by doing your own checkout and scanning your own menu is them saving money, which is great. But then when we don't also get to experience some of those savings, it's like, what the heck? Can't ever go out for a burger. Yeah. And not to mention the tip fatigue that is happening after having to place your own order on on the computer. And like, get your own menus with the QR code. Yes. 72% of US adults are saying tipping expectations have expanded into more places than there were five years ago, even when service clearly isn't necessarily improved and best practices on tipping are still really unclear. But I know I've talked about this in other episodes, but in other service industries, even where maybe 5, 10, 15% would have been the norm. A lot of places on their point of sales are starting the minimum at 20%, 20%, 25% or 30% are now the options that like the nail salon or the hair salon, all these different other services. Yeah. It's, it sucks because it's, we feel like we're getting less. So we feel like, why am I tipping the same amount? And I'm, I'm seeing my server less, right? But that server is working just as hard because they have fewer servers in the entirety of the restaurant. So a site, like when I was a server, I would have like a three to four section table or a table section. Whereas now you can have six to 12 tables. And so you're, it's kind of like, it stinks for the server because I, they're working more, but the perception of service is less. So you can typically earn less. But then you've got all this tipping fatigue and you're a bad person if you're not tipping 25 to 30%. And so it's like, it is this weird place and nobody wants to go out to eat anymore. There are restaurant like videos on YouTube where people are looking at social media videos and it's like these crazy $22 for a subway sub empty restaurants at dinner time on a Friday night. Yeah. Like it's insane. Restaurants are feeling it and they're accommodating. And one of the explanations that I heard is that you've got this bigger wage disparity, right? So you've got more people earning more. And then at the bottom, people are earning less and less. But everybody only eats one dinner a night. So even if you have these, you know, more affluent people that have more money to spend, you, they can't be spending as much as if they was a consumer good. They can buy a lot of consumer products at once, but they can only buy one dinner every day. So you have to have this price point for people who are essentially wage stagnated because they all have one dinner as well. And there's just everyone is trying to focus more on the higher quality $37 burger. And you're taking you'll see it in other places, especially in our next episode, whereas they're kind of cutting out these economy versions. And they're just focusing on the more the luxury, the more feature heavy versions. Yeah, it does feel that way for sure. So again, it's not just with restaurants. Here's another place that we see it. Something called shrink flation. This person wrote that from April to May, they thought that their premium plus Salteans had gotten smaller. And so they compared them. This person went in one week and got large fries and then went in the next week and got large fries. So for those of you still getting this one when you order large, this is what you have to look forward to. Simply orange from 52 ounces down to 46 ounces. And it was not that long ago that these were a proper half gallon at 64 ounces. Now we're at 46. This one on the left was purchased May 8th in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. This one was purchased May 23rd, same place, same price, but 100 grams less chicken. Pringles 2012, Pringles 2025. Look at the actual chip. Look at that. This pizza now weighs 20 grams less. But look how they changed the packaging to make it seem like this is a very large pizza compared to the size of this pizza. But if you look at the actual packaging, you're missing out 20 grams of pizza. These chips used to be seven and a half ounces, went down to five ounces, same price. Shout out to the people still holding on to like their Pringles. Can you tell me how to do this? I know. To be able to spot like this. Yeah. It is, I think, we because we throw away so easily and so much, it is hard to spot things like this. And it's 100 grams here, 20 grams here. Yeah. It is so insidious. Like it's so nearly all perceptible. Yeah. But still like shrinking and trim, and again, we talked about skimplation last week, where that is a declining quality. And honestly, like if you give me between shrink flation and skimplation, I'm still going to go with as long as your quality is better, I'll pay the same for a lower amount. But it still is like a trap, right? Like that mindset, that line of thinking allows companies to do this. Yeah. Where can we cut corners? There was actually a report done from Capital One shopping that found that some major brands reduced product sizes by over 30% in 2025 without adjusting prices, which has contributed to up to 10.3% of reported grocery price inflation. Yeah. Which is, that's a wild reduction of sizing. 30% is massive when it comes to you're not going to get this size, you're going to get this size, but you're going to pay the exact same amount. Yeah. And it reported that shrink flation could be contributing to up to 10% of reported grocery price inflation because you're looking at the price per ounce. So it's it's like we are, even if we're spending the same amount of groceries, like on groceries, but feeling like it's not going as far, like that's not in your head. Like it's not just my kids are, I mean, my kids are eating more. They're like eating like 14 granola bars a day. Well, they're growing. So good. The granola probably getting smaller. That's why you're eating. That's why they're eating 14 and 10 kids are recognizing shrink flation for sure. Got it. Is insane. And this was the, this was the sickest one to me in 2023. One brand of insulin shrank 10%. So 10 fewer syringes per box without changing the size of its packaging. So it's not just groceries where we're seeing shrink flation. Prescription medications is insane. Yeah. So we just know that that's going to mean you're paying more for less when it comes to even your medicine that's needed. That's craziness. And so that kind of that something that grocery stores have been doing. And I just got this in my Walmart plus app is you can subscribe to certain groceries and save like 15 percent on them. And so I think this and specifically with like prescriptions where you're typically having to get them right. Yeah. So this kind of leads into our next money trap, which is subscription creep. I'm losing my mind over this. Here's what's happening. My partner, I got a new printer. It was an HP. It seemed fine. And I went to print like a packing label or something. And it just wouldn't print at all. And I couldn't, there's no message on my computer that was explaining it. And the ink is completely full. I replaced it like last week. And the reason it's not printing says payment method needs updating. Cannot print the installed cartridge. As you could see this page is printed fine. That's infuriating. I would be so mad if I'm trying to print something out. And my printer is like keeps printing out a page that says I can't print. I won't print. I won't print exactly. Maggie's brand new printer had been working normally for six months before it suddenly refused to print. She did some digging and realized HP had enrolled her in their ink subscription service called Instant Ink. Get ready to ink differently with HP Instant Ink. Your printer anticipates when you're low and sends you the writing right on time for less. But Maggie's printer still had ink in it when it stopped working. It turns out that when your instant ink subscription expires or if you cancel it, HP remotely kills your cartridges. That's when I started googling it and figuring out like that's a problem other people were having. The ink that you paid $122 some dollars for that's in your printer right now you you can't use that. I have two full cartridges that I don't have access to because I canceled HP Instant Ink monthly service that they want to fuck everybody with. That is that seems illegal honestly. I think it probably is. It feels like a documentary like calling them out. This feels illegal. But it is everything is becoming a subscription life. Let us know in the comments if there's something that is a subscription now that like wasn't before. We had this sense when you bought something you owned it. Right. And now the shift is towards a subscription like a borrowing mindset. We are renting this and if you stop paying monthly you no longer get that own it. Yes. I think there's a car brand. It's something like Mercedes or some some vehicle where your auto start and like heated seats need to be on subscription. So you only have access to your auto start for as long as you're paying them monthly. Treadmills. They are doing it with treadmills. There are a lot of treadmills where you can't access pretty much like any of the screen part unless you pay for the subscription. Like the screen is kind of like pointless. Yeah. Clearly there's a lot of money in it. That's why corporations are doing it is because they are guaranteed monthly money on top of planned obsolescence. They're going to make sure of a thing breaks and that you're paying them monthly. They're just going to make sure there's like a constant sucking of your money. Not just draining it. Literally sucking it from you. Yeah. Literally like there are new healthcare subscriptions that are outside of your insurance. Auto maintenance. Auto functioning. Yeah. Mail kits. All of this. We've signed up for it too. Right. We want the convenience. We want to be able to have we recommend for people to put things on auto pay because then it's one last decision that you have to make when it comes to your investing strategy or bill pay. That kind of a thing. But it also means a set it and forget it and companies know that too. So if they can make it super convenient and efficient for you where they're just constantly charging and you're forgetting about it, right? That's the main reason that they make money is because you forget about it because we're not doing the 90 day transaction inventories that we recommend doing and canceling these subscriptions. But then when they're trapping you like with this example of printers, what to be done? What do you do? Yeah. What do you do if you bought a printer and now you cannot use the $122 thing? You do fight back because I'm pretty sure that that is really cool. So we fight back but also no better time than now honestly to be following channels like this feel free to subscribe. Books, podcasts, wherever you can learn how to be as wise as possible with money because we're not just trying to be Debbie Downers and doom and gloomers. We want to point these things out but also recognize how do we do well with money and that's the type of thing that we talk about all the time. Yeah. Because if we don't, these companies think they have the audacity to be able to turn off your cartridges in your printer. And they're just going to get away with it. They're just going to get away with it. Yeah. We cannot stand bank fees, overdraft fees, monthly fees, minimum balance fees. It's like getting punished for using your own money. That's why chime is such a game changer. It's fee-free, smarter banking built for you. The new chime card lets you build credit with your own money and earn rewards while doing it. No strings attached. With qualifying direct deposits, you get 1.5% cash back on eligible purchases. This is the card my younger self would have needed and loved. It's banking upgraded. Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com-fruckel. That's chime.com-fruckel. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services, a secured chime visa credit card, and my pay line of credit provided by the bank or bank NA or stride bank NA. My pay eligibility requirements apply and credit limit ranges $20 to $500. Optional services and products may have fees or charges. See chime.com-frees-info, advertised annual percentage yield with chime plus status only. Otherwise 1.00% APY applies. No main balance required. Chime card on-time payment history may have a positive impact on your credit score. Results may vary. See chime.com for details and applicable terms. Honestly, one of the best things we can do for our wallets and our health is cook more at home. There's just nothing like it. That's easier said than done, which is why we love HelloFresh. It makes it simple to eat at home even on a busy weeknight. Plus, they offer over 100 recipe options every week with portions big enough to actually satisfy everyone. And here's what actually happens. You get options that fit your goals. There are more than 35 high protein recipes each week plus Mediterranean inspired dishes. The ingredients are wholesome too, like sustainably sour seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone-free chicken. The quality is so noticeable. There's now three times the seafood with no upcharge and you can get grass fed steak or rib eyes. Plus seasonal produce like pears, apples and asparagus. We've used HelloFresh and thank everyone should give it a try, especially those who struggle to eat at home more. Go to HelloFresh.com-fruigal10fm to get 10 free meals plus a freeze-willing knife. $144.99 value on your third box. Offer valid wall supplies last free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. All right, so the next money trap that a lot of people have been paying for and has truly become normalized. It's part of our society and honestly, I have been called weird for not partaking. Oh, is this convenience culture? I think it's crazy that I doodash like six or seven times a week and I deliver to the same house like six or seven times. Every time I'm out, I deliver to the same person. You tell him you don't cook at all. You spend this much money on a door dash. Now be looking at the receipt. I'm just like, oh my god, you not willing to cook nothing for yourself. The meat thing, the ominous meat thing. I hope we don't get copyrighted for that, but it is so perfect. You can't cook anything for your little. I love that. But you know, like when I go out or not when I get food, I never get it delivered. Always have to pick it up. Yeah. I won't pay extra. I respect you for this. I won't I won't pay extra. I don't have door dash or Uber Eats. Like I have used it before. I'm you know, I don't hate myself. I'm out of town and I can't drive somewhere to get it. Like, I'm not going to walk miles with like a bunch of food in my hands. But in a normal everyday setting, it shouldn't be the norm. This is a great like convenient service that should be used sparingly. And I feel like unfortunately, this is the money trap that that most gets people in some of the like lower income brackets, like medium to lower income. Probably because we're so tired of working three jobs and not getting paid a fair wage, even though all of these companies are charging so much money, make it make sense. I don't know. And so at the end of the day, what are we going to do? Just get food delivered. And so this is where so much money gets drained from our pockets just to be able to like have a sandwich at the end of the day. And it's not just food. It's Amazon Prime. It's paying extra for free today shipping. You are paying for that shipping. And having the access to it on a subscription, it causes people to buy more. That's another thing I've never paid for Amazon Prime. I don't want to because I have tested the 30 day trial of Amazon Prime. Like I get that maybe every other year. I don't know how often they offer it. But I'll do it when it comes up and get and watch literally every show like bank, all the Amazon Prime video shows and like make a list. And in that 30 days, it's like just non-stop watching. So I really have to time the 30 days well. I don't have a lot of stuff going on. But then it also I have a lower barrier to entry to just buying something on Amazon because I know I'm going to get it free shipping, whatever the cost in two days. And I get that with Walmart Plus. It has less variety. So I don't find myself like falling prey to the impulse spending as much. It's more like, oh, I ran out of pull ups. Like got a you know, I get free shipping next day for those. Right. But like on Amazon, I will find myself maybe not following through. But the thought comes up. It's like, Oh, I could just buy this and have this in two days. Like no sweat off my back. Yeah. That's a good way to kind of like cut, cut yourself at the knees where it's just not going to be one of the conveniences that you partake in. And I really think collectively we all need to decide that Uber Eats is for when you're sick right after you had a baby. If you're in the middle of renovations and if you are a renovation of your kitchen and if you are absolutely too far gone and he created to be able to drive, but you're going to starve because there's literally no food in your house. Like if you turn on your oven, you might set it on fire. Those are those are traveling. If you're traveling like without a car. You're in a hotel. You don't have a car. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There's five like for work. You know, reasons go out for getting food delivered to your house. And those are great reasons. And we'll do it when those one of those five things has happened. Let us know if there's a different reason. And we'll fight you on it. I'll give you a reason why it's not right. No, I'll probably agree with you because I don't like comforts me off the dome. Who knows? There's probably more reasons. Yeah. That's all I can come up with. But I'll say Uber also instead of, you know, like in addition, Uber Eats like Uber, like there are some specific reasons why you could take Uber instead of public transportation. Like you're so inebriated, you will they won't let you on. You have been kicked off public transportation indefinitely. That's the only two reasons. That's it. And if you're getting inebriated too often that you're always oombering and dorkdashing, then we're going to have to do another. Then you'll need to get a different kind of subscription. And you know, I'll let somebody close to you in your life to tell you what that is. It's not my place. All right. Another funny drain is returns returning is getting harder to do. Yeah. Turning things. Turning things. Companies are now going to be charging you a return fee for the items that you bought. And these are just some of the return fees that we're seeing from these companies. But like, what if I'm returning something that's below this amount? Do I now the company like Sam returning a five dollar shirt? I'm going to TJ Maxx. Do I now owe them like six dollars to return an item? How is this even going to work? Because I saw for Best Buy. It's not a flat 45 dollars. I've heard that the restocking fee is 18% of the value of the item you are returning. So somebody did like the price of a PS5. It was going to cost you 75 dollars to return it. Because we all know these these companies are all owned by one parent company. So who in their right mind was like, you know what? The average person. Now you got to pay us to return the items that you bought that you messed up on. No more freebies. Wilds. Yeah. I will clarify that most of this is regarding return fees on things that you ordered online. That is like that you want picked up from your house. Right. So if you go in store, we're not seeing this. But who knows maybe someday we might end up seeing this. I will say I can't understand needing to charge something for the transit that needs to happen. I still don't understand how much we can return things specifically on Amazon for free. It does just it worries me for our own consumption practices that is so easy to get something so quickly to decide we don't want it. Return it. And it's like no skin off our back. So in some ways, I'm a little grateful that something like this, the penalty like this might help us to think through a purchase a little more. I think the frictionless return causes us to potentially overspend. So there's a part of me that has like a little bit of differing opinion on those are like, okay, then don't buy it in the first place cuts. Yeah. You know what? I will say this is my favorite money trap on list. And here is also this story again. Let me know if you've heard it. I was in a coffee shop a couple months ago. Go off. I love that you're going to highlight this about yourself. Oh, right. Well, it's not about me. It was about like these two influencers that were sitting across from me. So I was like, you know, like facing the camera and these influencers were like where Jill is, but on a couch kind of facing me, like talking to each other, but like in my direction. And I'm like, I don't want to be in this conversation. It was insufferable, but they were talking about, you know, influencing, but then also how they were just buying things like all the things whenever they want, whatever they want, all the things they were buying, they spent an hour just talking about buying things online and being like, oh, I can return it. One of them was saying, oh, you should buy it. You can just return it. Like I return things every week. I buy things all the time because I just I buy and return and I was like, I literally inside my brain was I was like twitching like thankfully, I wasn't facing them so they could see me, but like their conversation was making me twitch. And for that reason, I'm in on returns getting harder, increase the barrier to entry to buy things. You have to be so sure about your purchase. One of the insidious things is that they want to incentivize people buying higher priced items too. They want people to rethink buying lower priced items for this reason. I think that's maybe part of the incentive to increase the average, like amount per transaction. But yeah. And so we're seeing this mostly on like shipped returns, but even target has updated its return policy to explicitly state that it may deny returns, refunds or exchanges if it suspects, froward or abuse. So the people who are buying things for the Graham and then just returning them willy nilly are knocking me and I love that. Right. Honestly. Yeah. But it is it is kind of it's where we should have been all along. Yeah. And most in Home Depot are there in a real way because I think there was a lot of froward and abuse happening, but it is very hard to return things to post stores. No, we just returned a bunch of like old stuff to Home Depot that was not used. I got money back to the seat. It's just brought like all the cards that we could have. We're like, this could have been any of these cards. Which is again, yeah, you know, you have to have a receipt of the receipt or the card you made the purchase on. Yeah. So true. Okay. Last but not least. And this one is a real to the state infuriating stick with back to me and be here and sit in this with me. Stue in this with me. A dynamic pricing. Annouting that starting next year, menu prices will fluctuate during the busiest times of day. Wow. Okay. So apparently they're doing dynamic price changes or the price of these meals are going to fluctuate throughout the day. So apparently it'll be more expensive during lunch rushes. Come here. Couple of questions. I won. Why? Two, does that mean that the workers get fluctuated paid? Do they get paid more when lunch rushes happen? Because that would that should probably happen. You know, and three is just a shame. It's a shame because you know, if only we knew how to make Wendy stuff at the house, right? Where prices don't change if you make it in the daytime or the nighttime, we'd be able to do it at home. But there's just that have to be a book filled with secrets to be able to share those recipes and too bad. We just don't have that. If you're listening to this and not watching it, he's literally holding up the book where he has written down all of these Wendy's recipes. Yeah. Yeah. Dynamic pricing truly infuriates me. And you can even see it in grocery stores or at least the opportunity for doing it because they've switched to digital price tags. Yep. So they can more easily change the price. Did we talk about that on an episode recently? I remember watching clips of a documentary about this where they had to people literally stand there different things like, but all the same stuff. So like each person bought the exact same stuff from the same store, but got different pricing per person. I did not. Okay. So that wasn't on here. Okay. I'll have to share it on your other podcast. My nighttime podcast at Cosmore. Or nighttime podcast at the park. A wall. So sorry. Yeah. So people were starting to wonder are they're different pricing. And so they had this like group of people, all of them from kind of like different demographics. And I think at different stores, even, but they all got now it wasn't crazy amounts of changes. But we are talking like total cost a few dollars more or less from one another. And so they could even base pricing off of whatever data they've been able to collect off of you, whatever demographic they perceive you to be in your annual income, which we know we've given that information to plenty of people. They could just decide what what amount they're going to charge you for that bag of Brussels sprouts different from somebody else bagging that buying that same bag. Well, it's been speculated that door dash drivers, depending on the types of dashes they pick up, can be segmented into like more desperate or more like will only take higher value. And so that changes which dashes that these different drivers will see. Whoa. Yeah. And the company, it's probably of the speculation of like the bad things that that company is doing for drivers. Like that one seems to be the most likely. Yeah. So it is well. And like even we see like I am going to Disneyland in like a week and a half now to run the half marathon. And prices are we're going, yeah, prices are different per like depending on the day you want to go on a busier day, you're going to pay much more to go to Disney or Universal than you will on a different day. It sounds like hotels. Yeah, it's not an entirely new concept, you know, that that does make sense. So flights are that way, hotels are that way, rental vehicles. Like there's a lot of places where that's true. It's just wild to start to see it creep into the groceries that you buy. Right. The shared that we buy. So I don't want to end on like a crazy awful note in all of this. I do think that we have choices in it. Everything that we've listed out, there are still alternatives to each one of these things. And so I think at the end of the day, our kind of constant of get plugged into your community, spend time with people, learn skillsets, identify where your money is going, where you'd rather have your money going. What are the needs that you're trying to meet with your purchases? And are there alternatives to be able to meet those needs before just immediately pulling out our wallet and library? Okay. Library exists to solve most of these problems, including a touchatory, cook at home problem, go get a cool cookbook, and work your way through it, and learn the kitchen skills to be able to make some of the knockoffs of your favorite restaurants. Do it with a friend. Like identify what the alternatives are and do those things and guarantee you're actually going to live a fuller, more rich life as a result. Hey, man, and figure out what's been normalized in your life, in the lives of people around you that doesn't have to be normal. Getting door dash whenever you get takeout. You can still get takeout without having it delivered. You can still go out and take public transportation instead of fresh or like what is, what can you do that's weird? Like do something a little bit different, a little bit weird that will save you money and just see what happens. Do you know what's weird and a little bit different and every week we've all got to just see what happens? And I love what happens. That's right. It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Buck's bills, buffalo bills, bill cleanse. This is the bill of the week. Hi, Jen and Jill. My name's Kelly from Invercoggle in New Zealand, the Southern most city in New Zealand. And I just wanted to share my bill of the week, which is a $5 bill or she is for my son. In New Zealand we have a platform called Sheezy's, which is like an app you can download on your phone and just do every day and be staying and you can open an account for your child and there's no minimum so you can put in as little as you have or as much as you want. So even $5 a week, which is what we put in for my son hoping that you know a little bit at a time will accumulate to a lot one day and might mean something big to him. And it's a bill that I am very happy to pay. I just want to say thanks for everything that you guys do. I really love your podcast. I work from home and I put your podcast on while I'm working and it's like I've got friends in the room keeping me company. So I just want to say thanks and keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, Kelly. This is awesome. I'm so so much. So glad to be hanging out with you in New Zealand. Guys, I'm great. You see that we get to go all over the world from our little couch. We had a, in the YouTube comments, a hello from Finland the other day. Wow. To hear from where you guys are listening or watching from blows my mind. This is, it feels like so lovely. So let us know in the comments where you're watching or listening from love to hear it. And well done, Kelly. These are the small incremental steps that can seem insignificant, but I think you're onto something that over time this will add up to something. Saving $5 weekly isn't a small thing. And who knows what that amount weekly could even grow into. Like you, you start with $5, but then eventually you could do more or decide that there's other buckets you want to be saving to. There's just, there's so much that can happen when you just start start small. Yeah. Or whatever amount you have. Yeah. Yeah. Get your, your child into that habit of thinking about saving. Yeah. It's so powerful. Well done. And if you all are listening, have a bill that you want to share with us. If it has to do with a bill that you are saving every week, if it's a bill that you don't mind paying, your name is bill, or you just want to talk about something bill related coming from another country other than the United States. We love to hear about it. Leave it for us at frugalfriendspodcast.com slash bill. You've heard us talk about bill as a loyalty program that lets you earn points on rent wherever you live and they just leveled up even more. As of 2026 homeowners can also earn up to 1.25 x points on their mortgage payments. This is thanks to builds three new credit cards, the palladium card, obsidian card, and blue card. All three turn your housing payments rent or mortgage into flexible rewards. So you can choose the card that fits your lifestyle without missing out on points and exclusive benefits. Built points can be redeemed at top airlines and hotels, Amazon.com purchases, future rent payments, and more. Built points have also been ranked by top publications as the industry's most valuable point currency. Your housing payment is already your biggest expense. Make it your most rewarding. Find the card that fits your lifestyle and apply today at joinbuild.com slash frugal. That's j-o-i-n-b-i-l-t dot com slash frugal. Make sure you use our URL so they know we sent you. Terms and limitations apply subject to approval and eligibility. Built cards are issued by column and a member FDIC pursuant to license for Mastercard International Incorporated. These days I'm all about quality over quantity, especially in my closet. If it's not well made in versatile, it's not worth it. That's why I love quins. They make high quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen, 100% silk, and organic cotton poplin. Quins works directly with safe ethical factories and cuts out the middle man. So you're not paying for brand markups, just quality clothing. Their 100% European linen is breathable, the cotton poplin is crisp and holds its shape, and everything is built to hold up season after season. That quins washable silk mini dress has become my go-to. It's perfect for dressing up, dressing down, or layering it feels luxe and didn't cost what I thought quality silk would. Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want. You don't need more clothes, just better ones. Right now go to quins.com slash frugal for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last, go to q-u-i-n-c-e.com slash frugal for free shipping and 365 days return. Quins.com slash frugal. And now it's time for okay just last minute to change this one because I love it. I really good idea. Love it. When's the last time you got money trapped? You got trapped. And you had to pay money that you did not want to pay. You go first. Okay. I would say none. Oh, I know it. I know it. I think I know you're still. Oh my gosh. Let's do it. Okay. The mom group at school. I'm trying to get in with the mom group. And so the mom's wanted to go out to dinner. And they wanted to go to this very nice expensive restaurant. And I'm the low mom on the totem pole. So what does that mean? Oh, what's that mean? I have a first grader and their kids are all in third grade. So they've like known each other much longer. But they have a couple kids in first grade and kindergarten too. So I'm starting where their second kids are. Okay. So I'm like, okay, I will go and I'll just get like an appetizer or something. And this place is notorious for being overpriced. And it's more fancy. It's at a hospital, which makes it sound like, oh, it's a cafeteria. No. This is the, this is the like restaurant for the doctors and the surgeons like for lunch, right? Like this is not for normal people. Yet here I am a normal person there. And I get there. And I can't be trusted. When I get there. They're getting their get naps for the table. And I get a salad with some chicken. And I wanted the regular house salad, but it's got like spring mix and I hate a rucola. So I asked the server, can you just swap out for like romaine? Like I don't need your fancy lettuce. Give me your cheap lettuce. Yeah. And I get the bill and I have spent an exorbitant amount of money, enough money to feed my family for a week. Maybe not a whole week. It felt like that inside. And do you know that they upcharge me $3 to switch from the nice lettuce to the cheap lettuce? No. I resist. I hate. No. I am angered. We know romaine is not more expensive than the spring mix. We all know this. Yeah. I am so mad for you and with you. Still angry about this. And we'll never go back there again. And these women have, it's just, they're blissfully ignorant. They didn't care. No kidding. Wow. Okay. I had an example and it left me. He's so sorry. No. I was so wrapped up in your story and so mad about the romaine. There's so much anger. I'll go with this one, although I don't think it's my best, most recent one, but traveling back from Pennsylvania to where we live now in Florida at the holidays, our flight got canceled. And the next available flight that they could put us on was two and a half days later. And we're like, no way are we staying here for another two and a half days. Just see the sights of the Lehigh Valley of, I mean, yeah, like, poster to filly. But so anyhow, we did a quick pivot and just rented a car and drove ourselves back down. That was actually relatively a reasonable price to take a car from one state to another. Wasn't that much money. We did get reimbursed for the flights, but incurred all these other costs of rental car, needing a hotel overnight, all the food on our way. To be fair, this is still like a to be continued kind of a lightning round, but we did I paid for it all, including the original flights on our credit card that has travel insurance, but baked in. So I have submitted a claim for reimbursement for those extra incurred expenses. So we'll see. I'm hoping that this didn't end up being a money trap, but for right now, it feels like a trend. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I, for the amount you pay for that card, they should, they should get you your money. They should. Yeah. That'll be great. Bye. Well, thank you so much for listening, watching. We love reading your comments, your reviews of the show and your reviews of our book by what you love without going broke. You haven't heard of that or checked it out by what you love book.com. It's officially a year old and we love still hearing what you guys have to say about it like this one from Jean says filled with Easter eggs. Oh, fun. I'm deep in chapter eight, curate your community. I am friend of verse. People always want something that I cannot always give, but this chapter is a wake up call after the passing of my husband. God has clearly reminded me of the importance of community. So after two years, I sold our farm and moved to San Antonio and got provided the perfect neighborhood. Not only do they have a beautiful park for a backyard and my sanity, but I have never lived in a community so welcoming. What does that have to do with money? Jen and Jill explain about friendship currency, how it fills our emotional bucket while giving us some place to share and to borrow. It's a place with those able and willing to help in an emergency or who need to borrow your vacuum. We save money with sharing and keep items out of the landfill by giving freely to our neighbors. This book is full of Easter eggs. I'll be reading it after I finish it the first time through. Thanks Jen and Jill for being vulnerable and providing such a great resource. Amazing. This is so beautiful, Jean. Thank you so much for such a kind and thoughtful review. This is not the first time that I've heard someone talk about rereading the book, which is very fun. And I think one of our hopes that in different seasons of life, we're going to need different parts of it. And that's kind of the way that it was written. When you need to focus on impulse spending, there's this. When you focus on community, there's this. So thrilled to hear it. Thanks so much. If you've also enjoyed the book, like Jen said, please leave us a review. Amazon helps us the most, even if you didn't get it for Amazon, you can review it there. If you're liking the show, we would be so grateful if you subscribe. Honestly, building our YouTube channel is our biggest goal in 2026. So this is where we want to give you the most of the free content. So that would really help us out, leaving us reviews, all the free ways of supporting us are so grateful. Yes. And definitely catch last week's episode why everything is worse quality now, because it's not just you. Bye. Forb of friends is produced by Eric Seriani. Yeah, these money traps, man. I am. I had forgotten about that restaurant. Yeah. And I was in a better place. But now I'm back there. And you know what? I had two espresso martinis. They probably wouldn't have let me on public transportation. Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't have gone on public transportation. Yeah. You're fine. You're fine. I have seen that. Yeah. Oh, I remember my other one. This was actually yesterday. Eric and I decided to go out for Korean barbecue, which is like one of our delicious one of our loves, right? We don't do that often. But when we do, we get down with it. But we only ever go at lunchtime because it's like $12 less per person to go at lunchtime. Well, we get there and it's a holiday when we went. So they were doing a holiday. I'm sorry. They were doing, no, it was a holiday. I don't want to say which one because it is going to go whatever. We're at the work because it was on Monday, not Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. It was on MLK days. But I'm supposed to be on a nose-bend challenge in January. But you know what? I'm not powerful. Unbelievable. She had a busy weekend. She was the best made of honor. She was the best man on the minimum. She should have been. She was that good at it. So she really did. And honestly, I'm hard to believe. And you ate that entire weekend. Usually weddings bring out a lot of food. It's because you ate in other ways. I did not. Yeah. We're so good looking. Like such a good made of honor. Wow. Thank you. And so I just needed meat. I needed so much protein. And so that's what we did. But we went at lunchtime thinking, okay, this is great. Well, wouldn't you know it? This Korean barbecue spot tries to spin a holiday as it's all day dinner. Yeah. How great is that all day dinner? You get all of the upgrades that come along with dinner. No, what you get is the price thing that comes along with dinner. I like it. Well, what does that? I was like, but we could still choose lunch, right? And they're like, no, you can't. And I did have a little powwow with Eric. I was like, give us a minute. Now we got to talk about this. And so she like walked away and we commiserated for probably like a full three minutes where I'm like, okay, I do need to eat. I need to eat soon. It was like two thirty. We were past my lunch. Yeah, we were hungry. We had art. We were already there. Our minds are blanking on like, where else can we go that we ended up just being like, we're here already. It's fine. We can do it. This is not what's going to make us go broke. But what bummer I got on the trap. Yeah. Man, I didn't even enjoy it. Like I didn't even take the upgrades. Like all I really like are the beef bowl goki and the pork belly. I did get the steak, but that was my least favorite of all the meats. And it's on a kimchi. I load that plate up with kimchi. That is so funny. I hate kimchi. Oh, I love it. Oh, but I do. I love the bowl goki. All right. Well, yeah.