Hi and welcome to the Deeper Than Money podcast. I am your host, Chloe Elise. I'm a millennial money

coach speaker, dog mom, and a seven on the enneagram, and I am on a mission to prove to you

that finances can be fun and easy. On the Deeper Than Money podcast, we will dive

into all things millennial finance, debt, saving mindset, and how to have financial freedom

to enjoy life in your 20s and 30s. I want you to leave this podcast with more confidence around

your Moolah and the belief that your biggest financial dreams are

possible for you. So let's talk money. I'm so excited for today's episode. You're going to want maybe a pen, maybe a piece of paper. If you're driving, I hope you have a good memory because you are going to want to write some of these things down. I will also put them in the show notes,

but just make sure that you are taking down these tangible tips because today we're talking

all things optimizing over sacrificing. So basically, how to cut your expenses without sacrificing.

So let's first start at the basics.

There's all this like fancy, shmanshy secrets of finances.

But the basics of finance are, in order to reach your goals faster, you need to up your income. So increase your income,

increase the money coming in, or decrease your expenses. So decrease the money going out,

being spent. Those are the two ways. And we're going to talk about both ways on this podcast, but here's a really big problem

that I've faced on a personal level, but also I see my client struggle with a lot too.

People, a lot of times, especially millennials, think that in order to cut expenses, it means

you have to sacrifice what you love to do.

That's not true.

That is not true.

So I like to say optimize over sacrifice because of this fact, like because I believe that you

can optimize instead of having to sacrifice things.

So for me, for my own personal journey, when I first started getting into the finance game

...