Why You Feel Broke Even When You Make More Money (2026 Edition)
Frugal Friends Podcast
Jen Smith & Jill Sirianni | Backyard Ventures
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Society has shifted so much that even earning more doesn’t always feel like enough. This isn’t a personal failure but a pressure baked into the system. Jen and Jill walk through the psychology behind feeling broke and share practical ways to move forward with clarity and grace.
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Transcript
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| 0:22.9 | entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. |
| 0:29.8 | Why you feel broke, even when you make more money. |
| 0:46.0 | Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a rich life. |
| 0:49.7 | Here are your host, Jen and Jill. |
| 1:01.1 | Welcome, Frugal Friends. I'm Jen. I'm Jill. Is it just me? Or do we all feel broke? |
| 1:03.7 | We're all. We're all actually. Are we all broke? That's what we want to talk about in this episode. Are we broke? If we are broke, |
| 1:14.6 | why? Why do we feel broke? If we're not, we want to dive into that feeling. We want to dive |
| 1:22.1 | into the reality and just talk about what's normal and what's being normalized that's maybe not reality, but is |
| 1:31.8 | psychological. And psychological feelings, like things that are having psychological are real, |
| 1:38.0 | but we have to recognize that so that we can operate differently in the real world. |
| 1:44.2 | Grounded in reality. So before we talk about why you feel broke, let's consider if you actually are. |
| 1:51.8 | So we're going to show you some charts and graphs. That's real fun. We all love visuals. |
| 1:56.2 | You have been requesting more charts and graphs, right? We've heard you. |
| 2:03.4 | So here's the reality. |
| 2:11.9 | The real median household income is around $83,000 a year. And that does vary a lot by age. |
| 2:16.3 | So if you're watching us on YouTube, you're going to see this graph that takes a look at the different age brackets and kind of what is |
| 2:20.3 | the median household income per age bracket. The people making the most money out here are between |
| 2:27.1 | 45 to 54 years old and otherwise it's just kind of like a mountain from there. |
... |
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