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So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.
Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Oh, I know.
Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 am delighted to welcome Kristen, who goes by the name The Frugal Girl online to the show. So Kristen is known for her widely read blog, The Frugal Girl, where she talks about cheerfully living on less. So Kristen, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Yeah, well, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? All right. This always feels a little like an elevator pitch, but for yourself. It is. It is more or less. Yeah.
I am 47 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 Fruko Girls since 2008. 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 2022, I made the difficult but good decision to leave a 25-year marriage that was not good for me. And my divorce was finalized in 2024.
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. That is so exciting. People who read Kristen's blog have been following her journey. It's like we all went to nursing school with you. 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. Yeah. 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 of nursing, but what that would look like on a day-to-day basis. And then I'm getting the reports from Kristen of what exactly she's doing. So, you know, it's great to have that community. So why did you
start the frugal girl so many years ago 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 a recovering food waster.blogspot.com
After I blogged there for a few months, I was like, you know, I really like 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. Yes. You can tell people that one and they'll remember it.
So true. I didn't know anything about blogging when I started back in 2008. It was just so new. So I'm thankful that I transitioned from such a long blog name to something a little more...
concise. Yeah. And so you were just chronicling your, your experiences of trying to save money in various ways. I was. Yep. Yep. And, and, you know, what seems, you've been doing this for so long now. What, what are people's favorite posts? Like, what do people really love reading on, on a blog like this? Um,
Every week I do a five frugal things post, which was inspired by my friend Katie, who blogs at the non-consumer advocate, where I just share five things that I did that week to save money. And then people also chime in 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
we were having a little trouble finding things that were good in our lives. So we started making thankful lists every week. I posted mine and then people post theirs in the comments and people found it to 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
written about sort of the process of navigating these changes in my life in the last couple 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 messaged 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 it hasn't gone the way that I expected it to go. Yeah.
well, I don't think anyone's life goes exactly how they expect it to. So you're in good company in that regard. Was it hard to stick with it? I mean, what's made you stick with it all these years? 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 to talk about. I've been writing five posts a week since 2008, 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 and social aspect of it, that I have a really busy comment 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.
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. 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 its own thing.
kind of self-reinforcing cycle then? It does. It does. Yes. Yes. I know people say internet friendships aren't 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. 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 2008, no one used that phrase. So true. So true.
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? 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. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, we're going to take a quick ad break and then I will be back with more from Kristen of The Frugal Girl. ♪
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Don't miss the You Versus You podcast. Join Lex Borrero every week as he sits down with some of the biggest names in entertainment to talk about the real stuff, the struggles, the doubts, and the breakthroughs that made them who they are. They go deep, covering childhood trauma, family, overcoming loss, and the moments that shaped their journey.
These honest conversations are meant to take the cape off our heroes with the hope that their humanity inspires you to become a better you and therefore set you free to live the life of your dreams. Here's a sneak peek.
I'm trained to go compete. I'm trained to be like harder. But sometimes that mentality stops you from stopping and smelling the flowers in your own garden. It's wrong to want more. We migrated. Our family migrated here. I'm like second generation. Listen to You Versus You as part of My Cultura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, I am back talking with Kristen, who is known online as the frugal girl, has been blogging under that name since about 2008. 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 changed?
Why nursing? Like why this is the career you went to for the second part of life? So when my kids were younger, I always used to lightheartedly say, oh, if I had a second lifetime, I would go back to school and become a labor and delivery nurse. And at some point it occurred to me, I was only going to be 45 when my youngest kid graduated from high school. And given an average lifespan, that sort of does still offer you a second lifetime. So
I thought, you know, I really could do this. Why nursing? 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...
A big boon at the hospital. That is a big 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 cannot be grossed out. Absolutely. You need both the empathy and the not grossed out part of it, the two skills 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? Yes, there's a whole bunch of prerequisite classes that you have to do before you can join a nursing program. So I looked at the path that was laid out for that and I started doing my prerequisites 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 I was all ready to jump into the nursing program.
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? I did. I did. I went on to 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 a semester kind of thing, I could knock out everything I needed to.
to get started as soon as she graduated from high school. Was it hard to like start taking things like college math and biology and all that? I was a little scared before I went back to school because I always tell people I took 25 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 the teacher, 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. Yeah. Well, I imagine, I mean, the fact that you were helping, you know, like high school students do math, for instance, meant that 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. - 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 once you started full-time school, I'm curious what your schedule tended to look like, 'cause you have kept up with your blogging, which it's not just writing a post every day, it's also 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? Well, not every nursing school is like this, but mine had 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 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 date? No, but I knew what was happening the next seven days. I would write down my labs and lectures and clinicals, my work shifts, my daughter's work shifts, my daughter's classes. And then I would fill in other things like what I was going to make for dinner, when I was going to go to the gym, and then things like blogging, responding to comments and studying that all just fit in the cracks of all that other stuff. But
living that seven days at a time really helped me. 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 hospital because you had to work at the hospital as well for a chunk of this time. Yes, yes. So my life was very unpredictable from week to week. So...
Well, I guess that's a good thing, though, about a flexible job like content creation is it could fit in. 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. Yeah. But and you did a very good job. I hear, Kristen, that you graduated with a 4.0. I did. I did. So.
Maybe you could talk about 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 4.0. Why don't you talk a little bit about your studying process? 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 pulling any all-nighters. 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 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, such as folding your laundry, going for a walk, cleaning your house,
If you do 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 NCLEX 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 an audio version that I could listen to. It was a really bad computer voice reading the book. Yeah.
Not enjoyable audiobook listening. No, but I persevered. And I figure anything that I pick up while I'm 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. Yeah, I love that phrasing, a head task and a body task. I think
I think everyone can write that down because it's a great way to multitask that doesn't just make you crazy. 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 while in the course of doing this. It is true. I did not set out to maintain a streak, but I made it through all of my time at nursing school and my work shifts 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. You just don't take
That's what I thought. 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 goals happen is to bring food from home. So I did establish a good habit of that and I will carry that into my nursing practice.
too. 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? Like what were the logistics here of making that happen? 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 workshops 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. All I have to do is grab them in the morning and throw them in my lunchbox and off I go to the hospital. 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? Oh,
If 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. Don't electrocute yourself. 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.
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 going to take one more quick ad break and I'll be back with more from Kristen from the Frugal Girl. Who needs headphones when you have glasses? Ray-Ban Metaglasses, where style meets cutting edge tech. With discreet open air speakers and built in microphones, you can play your favorite tunes. Hey Meta, play hip hop music. And tune in to the world around you.
But listening is just the beginning because you can stay in the moment while your phone stays in your pocket as Meta AI provides answers to questions on the fly. Hey Meta, what's the weather tonight? Tonight will be clear with temperatures ranging from... Capture and share moments. Hey Meta, post this video on Instagram. You can even get Meta AI to make recommendations based on what you're looking at.
Hey Meta, what can I make for dinner with what's in the fridge? You can make a delicious spinach and chicken salad or add the baby spinach to pasta with some garlic shrimp. Cool. Ray-Ban Meta Glasses. Choose from a variety of classic Ray-Ban frames, all with Meta AI at meta.com slash AI dash glasses. And don't forget to say, hey Meta, play iHeart Radio to enjoy your favorite radio stations, artists, and podcasts on the iHeart app. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again.
That's 844-844-IHEART.
Don't miss the You Versus You podcast. Join Lex Borrero every week as he sits down with some of the biggest names in entertainment to talk about the real stuff, the struggles, the doubts, and the breakthroughs that made them who they are. They go deep, covering childhood trauma, family, overcoming loss, and the moments that shaped their journey.
These honest conversations are meant to take the cape off our heroes with the hope that their humanity inspires you to become a better you and therefore set you free to live the life of your dreams. Here's a sneak peek.
I'm trained to go compete. I'm trained to be like harder. But sometimes that mentality stops you from stopping and smelling the flowers in your own garden. It's wrong to want more. We migrated. Our family migrated here. I'm like second generation. Listen to You Versus You as part of My Cultura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
So I am back talking with Kristen, who is known online as the frugal girl. So Kristen, 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 might make you more productive? Like, are you a morning routine person? You like to exercise in the morning, I believe. I do. I'm a morning routine person.
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 work out at the gym four times a week. And then I also try to prioritize feeding myself well. But in terms of exercising, I...
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 3 p.m. And I'm hoping to be able to be a little more consistent about it as I move into a nursing life. But nursing 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 quite as crazy as a nursing school life is. Yeah. Well, it seems that, I mean, it would just be-
be a different sort of mindset because if you've got three 12-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. But then we have four days where that's not the case. Or even if you were covering for somebody's shift on occasion, you know, you'd still have three days where you were
able to do whatever. 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 yeah,
I feel confident that I will be able to make the most of my four days off. And some of that is 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. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And do you see the Frugal Girl, the blog evolving 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? 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 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. A blogging nurse.
Who's writing about ways to save money, even if life is, you know, looking financially reasonable at that point, too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's good. I'm a lifelong frugal person. It doesn't really matter what I earn. It's always it's kind of temperamental, don't you think?
I do think a lot of it is just inborn. And then also with having gotten divorced in my 40s, 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 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. That sounds good. That sounds like a good plan. So Kristen, I always ask people, what is something you have done recently to take a day from great to awesome?
So last Saturday, I had a shift at the hospital that went from 7 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. I work as a patient care tech there, and that's a pretty exhausting shift. And I had an invitation to a friend's 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 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 I 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. Yeah. It wasn't just a day you worked 12 hours. It was a day you worked 12 hours and saw your friend. Well, I'm glad I could be in your head there, Kristen. What I aim for. What are you looking forward to right now?
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 NCLEX, 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'm looking forward to it.
I am excited about the future 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 go on a trip. Things which have been sort of impossible for the last couple of years. So I'm just really looking forward to all the possibilities that this opens up for me. Awesome. Awesome. And where can people find you?
I am the frugal girl everywhere. My website is thefrugalgirl.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. 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 Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you have feedback on this or any other episode, you can always reach me at Laura at LauraVanderkam.com. And in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening. And here's to making the 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 LauraVanderkam.com. Before Breakfast 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. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.
Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Oh, I know.
Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Do you remember Vine? It changed the internet forever, and it vanished in its prime. I'm Benedict Townsend, and this is Vine: 6 Seconds That Changed the World. The untold story of genius, betrayal, and the app that died so that TikTok could thrive. From overnight stars to the fall that no one saw coming, we're breaking down what made Vine iconic.
Listen to Vine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.