Kathi Lipp (00:09) 

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And we are talking money today. We are talking money, money, money. And I am here talking money with my friend Tonya Kubo, who, you know, we just have so much of it. We don’t know what to do with it. That’s the problem, right Tonya? Yes. 

  

Tonya Kubo (00:33) 

Right, right. That money 

  

tree in the backyard is like worse than a lemon tree. 

  

Kathi Lipp (00:37) 

It’s been so… 

  

Now, okay, did watch, speaking of trees, I watched a video last night of somebody talking about, he’s in construction and somebody, they were working on their house and they said, ? you should probably tell your workers not to eat the apples off of that tree. And he said, my goodness, I’m so sorry. 

  

Normally when we go and work on people’s houses, they have no problem with it. And she said, no, it’s no problem. It’s just that those have not been processed. And he said, well, what do you mean? She says, well, those are like backyard apples, but they’re not store apples. he’s like, so tell me what’s wrong with them? And well, they haven’t been processed like as if they were going through a store and we just don’t want any of your workers to get sick. 

  

And so she honestly thought that the apples at the store were a different kind of apple, like a different variety than the one. And he’s like, well, why would you have an apple tree? And she says, it just looks pretty. And first of all, I’ve had apple trees before. Those are the messiest trees in the world if you’re not constantly eating them. OK, so that was a tangent that we didn’t need to go on. But you know, 

  

Tonya Kubo (01:42) 

Hmm. 

  

They are super. 

  

Kathi Lipp (02:04) 

Because apple tree, well, don’t we all wish that we had an apple tree in our backyard now because we know some prices are gonna be going up here pretty soon if they haven’t already gone up for you. And we had a challenge in our Clutter Free for Life, which is our paid group. this was an impromptu challenge, but it was based on something I’ve been working on, I would say for the past five months. And. 

  

Tonya Kubo (02:10) 

Yeah. 

  

Yeah. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (02:31) 

I just realized it’s very easy for me. We have become the this is the decade of the subscription. I know there were subscriptions before. I know there will be subscriptions in the 2030s, but this is where people said you can’t start a business unless it’s subscription based. Maybe it’s been longer than this, but this is where like I can. I have noticed that subscriptions keep. 

  

Tonya Kubo (02:41) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (03:02) 

I anything I want to buy they want it. I was trying to buy socks the other day. They wanted me to buy a subscription to socks. I’m like, yeah, I’m not doing that. Like I’m not changing out my feet. I don’t wear that many socks. It’s nutso we want to be subscribed to our food. We want to be subscribed to delivery. We to be subscribed to our television. And that was not all the unnecessary expenses in my budget, but it was a lot of them. 

  

Tonya Kubo (03:09) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (03:32) 

And I don’t know about other people who are listening, but I do feel like I have some insight after doing this experiment in Clutter Free for Life. Because I challenge people, just for the moment, could you save $1,000 a year just by going through your budget and canceling subscriptions, canceling things that are coming up that you are no longer using? And while I feel like I crushed this, 

  

You crushed it like a tin can. And I was able to eliminate about $2,500 worth of reoccurring expenses for the year of our Lord 2025. And some of it was through canceling things, some of it was renegotiate. There were so many different varieties. But Tonya, how much did you end up cutting? 

  

Tonya Kubo (04:14) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

So by the 28th of February, we actually landed at just shy of 5,000. I think it’s like 4,994 or something or other. Like ridiculousness. 

  

Kathi Lipp (04:37) 

It’s crazy. 

  

Oh my gosh, did you so, when I find 

  

$6 more and just, yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (04:46) 

Well, was Brian and I was like, what if I cancel this? He’s like, Tonya doesn’t count if you cancel it this month and then live to regret it and restart it next month. 

  

Kathi Lipp (04:54) 

Right, right. Well, okay. 

  

You know what? This may be my first time that I ever disagree with Brian Kubo because we all know that I’m a Brian Kubo fan. But if you cancel something to see if you can live without it and you realize, yeah, no, this is really important to me. I think that’s a victory, but I understand his premise. So I don’t disagree with him, but I do think that there 

  

Tonya Kubo (05:10) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Yeah. 

  

Kathi Lipp (05:23) 

there is value in saying, I’m gonna pull back, nope, I’ve decided this is worth the $12 a month. So I wanna get into this because I think it’s really, I think it’s a great challenge to see, could you eliminate $1,000 of reoccurring expenses in your year? And you think, well, $1,000 over an entire year doesn’t feel like very much, but. 

  

Tonya Kubo (05:26) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (05:51) 

Could you use an extra $80 a month? I know I can. And maybe if you haven’t been paying attention to your budget, maybe you could eliminate $2,000. It’s not that you’re not paying attention, but at one point in your life, at least for me, at one point in my life, Brit Box was very important to me. And then it became not so important to me. At one point in my life, I was helping, I bought a subscription for my kids. 

  

Tonya Kubo (06:03) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (06:20) 

that 

  

was very important to them. Well, they don’t use it anymore. So why am I paying for it? So these are some things. why, I really believe that clutter and finances go together. Okay, so tell me what you think about that because it’s important to me. 

  

Tonya Kubo (06:24) 

Right. Right. 

  

they totally do. Totally do. 

  

Well, feel 

  

like clutter and finances go together for a few things, right? So we know that we cluttery people really struggle with overwhelm, we struggle with decision fatigue. you you sign up, subscriptions are the bane of our existence, because you sign up and then they’re just like out of sight, out of mind. And then you, you know, in some cases, and this was something that Brian had figured out a few months ago, 

  

Kathi Lipp (06:53) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right. 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:10) 

you’re subscribed to the same thing in three different ways. So that sort of stuff though, like the cluttery person’s overwhelming decision fatigue, I think leads to a lot of overspending, duplicate spending, also just unintentional spending. Like if you knew that was coming out of your account every single month, you would have canceled it long time ago, right? So there’s that piece, but then there’s the other piece where it just, I think it just weighs on our mind. I mean, 

  

Kathi Lipp (07:27) 

Great. 

  

Right. 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:39) 

Ten charges coming out of your account every month are ten different things to keep track of. 

  

Kathi Lipp (07:46) 

It’s so true. this is why it’s so much like clutter, because it’s very easy to mindlessly have things come into the house and then they accumulate. You have to take care of them. instead of being intentional about what comes in, it’s very easy. Subscriptions are just habits that are unexamined habits sometimes. 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:52) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right. 

  

Kathi Lipp (08:14) 

I know, you know, when I was in my first marriage, when I first got married and we were paying bills, you you’d sit down with your checkbook and you had your stack of envelopes and you had your stamps. And I think it was 13 cents at one point. I mean, like, you know, we’re talking back in the olden days and you knew every dollar that was going out of your account. That’s just not the case anymore. 

  

Tonya Kubo (08:23) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right. 

  

Kathi Lipp (08:40) 

And 

  

so it’s very easy to let those things build up without doing it. So Tonya, I told people was go through your bank account and see, you what are those reoccurring charges? What are those things that are coming out that maybe you’re not paying attention to? But you took it to a whole new level because you realize they’re getting money from us in ways that we may not even be aware of. 

  

Tonya Kubo (08:50) 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

  

yeah. Okay. So I feel like here’s what’s really important is to understand that I have my own business. So part of why I could save almost $5,000 a year is because I did this in my business account in addition to in my personal account. But what we’re, it’s all real money. It affects how much I get to pay myself. Right? So that, that counts too. But to your point, you know, on my business side, there’s only like 

  

Kathi Lipp (09:17) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Yeah. 

  

Witcher is all real money, by the way. It’s all real mo- Yeah. 

  

Exactly. Yes. 

  

Tonya Kubo (09:40) 

one way things come in or two ways, right? I either use my business debit card or I use PayPal. That’s it. That’s how I get charged on things. But I was not prepared for this, Kathi, but you’re right. I figured it out really fast. On the personal side, there are the bank account charges, right? The things that use your debit card. But then if you have credit cards, there’s the things that you put on a credit card and forgot you put on the credit card. 

  

Kathi Lipp (09:47) 

Right. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (10:08) 

And 

  

if you don’t max out your credit cards, how would you really pay any attention? It’s like if your credit cards are always at zero, you’ll notice. And if your credit cards are always maxed out, you’ll notice. But if it’s anywhere in between, you wouldn’t. But then what we also discovered was PayPal subscriptions. So I had subscriptions hiding out in PayPal that I had no other record of that had to be canceled in PayPal, couldn’t be canceled anyplace else. 

  

Kathi Lipp (10:16) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right. Hmm. Okay, yeah. 

  

Mmm. 

  

Yeah. Right. 

  

Tonya Kubo (10:36) 

which then led us on the trail of Google Pay or Apple Pay. Sometimes you have subscriptions directly through those. anybody who has done any of those, like if you do a lot of online shopping, right, you’ll notice that some, there’s shop accounts and they collect, they’re the ones who are facilitating your subscription service. There’s links. 

  

Kathi Lipp (10:45) 

Mm. 

  

Guess. 

  

my goodness. 

  

Tonya Kubo (11:04) 

So Kathi, I found subscriptions hiding in like six different locations just on my personal site. 

  

Kathi Lipp (11:12) 

It’s insane, right? 

  

Tonya Kubo (11:13) 

Right. And part of how I noticed was a couple hit that I wasn’t expecting. So the PayPal thing was I had an Evernote subscription. I started using Evernote in 2016 when my mom died. I’m like, no, no, it would have been 2015. So when my mom died, I needed a way for us to have all the information associated with her death and I needed to be able to access it at my computer. 

  

Kathi Lipp (11:21) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm, right. 

  

Okay. 

  

Tonya Kubo (11:41) 

or on my phone and I needed Brian to be able to access it. And Evernote at that time was the easiest way to do that. So did you just hear me say my mom died in 2015? Yeah, so I haven’t actually accessed Evernote for anything else since then. And yet I got this notification from PayPal that they had processed a charge. And I’m thinking like, I don’t have anything coming out of PayPal. And it’s $120. And I go and look. 

  

Kathi Lipp (11:47) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right? Ten years ago? 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:11) 

And it’s like, I’m still paying for Evernote? 

  

Kathi Lipp (12:16) 

Wow. 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:17) 

Why would I think about it? I haven’t touched it in years. But so that’s a charge that got canceled. 

  

Kathi Lipp (12:20) 

Right. That’s insane. 

  

Yeah. it’s heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking. And you think about the money that has been wasted. But here’s we’re going to reframe it. The money that will no longer be coming out of your account. Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:28) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Exactly. Exactly. 

  

And you know what? I know that we have a lot more to talk about on the savings front, but we should probably take a break, pay some bills, and then we’ll come right back. 

  

Kathi Lipp (12:43) 

Yeah. Okay. Yep. 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:51) 

And we’re back and we are talking about how we are saving. So Kathi, I just shared how I cut expenses that I kind of didn’t even realize I was spending for maybe a decade or so. How about you? 

  

Kathi Lipp (12:52) 

Okay. 

  

You know, so a lot of things I did I realized a lot of my things were hidden inside of Amazon So, you know like Brit box and thing Acorn TV, you know things that you’re like, I’m totally into this show Well, I’m into that show and then I never use it again. So that was a problem and I I had to 

  

Tonya Kubo (13:14) 

Mmm. 

  

You 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (13:34) 

I had to reframe some of my thinking from, know, when it’s clutter, it’s like, do I need this to with subscriptions? Do I use this? Not will I use this? Because and you know, they they really play with our mentality saying, well, if you cancel it now, if you resubscribe later, it’s going to be more expensive. 

  

Tonya Kubo (13:43) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

was hoping you 

  

would address this because I think that holds us, Cluttery people in bondage, Kathi. 

  

Kathi Lipp (13:59) 

It’s so true because but I I had to think about okay, but if I cancel it and I resubscribe a year later That will cover me forever. That will cover me forever so and I am not paying for anything that I’m not using and so one of the things that I did was what are the alternatives so One thing that ended up being so interesting 

  

Tonya Kubo (14:18) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (14:28) 

was I was looking over all my subscriptions. This is something that’s really interesting. The subscriptions you actually use, are there other benefits that come with that subscription? So one of them for us was we were paying for Paramount Plus, which is like CBS. Because we use it all the time. Well, come to find out, our Walmart subscription had free Paramount Plus. 

  

Tonya Kubo (14:37) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

includes it. 

  

Kathi Lipp (14:57) 

It included the one with the commercials, which Roger, every time we watch commercials says, we should pay for the, and I’m like, no, stop that, stop. You can sit through a commercial. Go to the bathroom, go put some more ice in your drink. that’s right, and I’ll scream, it’s coming back on! But what are the alternatives? 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:05) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Yeah. Go do what we did in the 80s, Roger. 

  

Kathi Lipp (15:23) 

we have become very impatient and I blame social media and I know you love social media, but I’m gonna blame social media here for something because it used to be a movie would come out and yeah, you talk about it with your friends, but you could see it. You could wait six months until it was out on VHS or on disc or whatever like that. But social media makes you feel like you are missing the most important thing in the world if you’re not at Wicked on opening night. 

  

You know, it comes to find out you will live. You probably will live. Now there are things that will be exciting for you and you’ll want to go see, but you know what? It’s okay if you don’t do that. What are some alternatives? Can I wait to read that fiction book until it’s available at my library? Because there I can get it for free. What free apps could I use? Do I really need another subscription? 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:58) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (16:22) 

Or should I go investigate what’s actually on YouTube? Because there’s a lot of stuff on YouTube. Tubi, T-U-B-I, is a free streaming service. And if you’re like, yeah, but it doesn’t have this thing that I want to watch. One of the things that we are doing is we canceled our Apple subscription. We canceled a few other subscriptions, and we’re using the free versions, or we’re not using anything. But I will go back and subscribe. 

  

Tonya Kubo (16:27) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (16:50) 

You maybe every six months for a month and I’ll watch on Apple the morning show and Severance and like, you know, all the things I’ve been waiting for is going to be an awesome month. But, you know, for right now I can watch things on Paramount Plus. We do have Max, which has a lot of great shows. So we’re using that. But when it comes time for me to go to Apple, I’ll cancel my Max subscription for three to nine months. 

  

Tonya Kubo (16:57) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Yeah. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (17:20) 

and 

  

wait till the things that I wanna watch are on there and it’s okay. I probably will not die. So I wanna let people know that every July we do something great in our Clutter Free Academy group and we do a Low by July. And so can you give us a little glimpse into what we do in our free group in the Low by July? 

  

Tonya Kubo (17:24) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Yeah, so Low By July is simply about paying attention to your spending. So it’s not a spending freeze. It’s not, my gosh, I can’t drive across town because I’m not allowed to fill up my gas tank. It’s simply trying to minimize the impulse purchases we make, right? So it’s really looking at, you know, do I need to go to Starbucks every day? 

  

Kathi Lipp (18:05) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (18:17) 

Do I need to go to Starbucks once a week? Are there alternatives that maybe I want to explore? And if ultimately you say, get so much joy out of going to Starbucks once a week compared to making coffee at home, then hey, that’s okay. So it’s really just figuring out how can you be more intentional with your spending and really focus on what makes sense for you and your family. And we do it in the free group because we know that the biggest… 

  

Kathi Lipp (18:30) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (18:45) 

contributor to clutter is what we bring in the house. So if we can minimize what comes in the house, then our in-home decluttering efforts have a greater impact. 

  

Kathi Lipp (18:48) 

Mm-hmm. Great. 

  

Yeah, it’s so easy to just do the same things out of habit You know, this is gonna sound ridiculous But I have been buying too much asparagus. Let me just be honest. Let me let me confess here There has been too much asparagus buying in my life. I’ve been buying the Costco size asparagus it’s just me and Roger and while we enjoy asparagus we don’t enjoy it that much and 

  

Tonya Kubo (19:16) 

Mmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (19:24) 

What I’ve also come to notice in my patterns is we tend to eat a ton of asparagus when we’re grilling. But we’re not grilling right now because it’s March. And so to just take a step back and look at some habits that maybe you have that has been causing you to spend money. And so Tonya today, I’m gonna throw away some asparagus and I’m gonna do it guilt free. But what I’m not gonna do is put it 

  

Tonya Kubo (19:31) 

Hmm. 

  

Right. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (19:53) 

back on my Costco shopping list, I’m gonna put it back on there with a little parentheses that says May, because Mother’s Day is when we can pretty much guarantee we’re not gonna get more snow. And so this is the same thing. I’m gonna ask you to look at your habits. so a couple of things I wanna encourage you to do. Go over to the Facebook group, which is Clutterfree Academy, Kathi Lipps Clutterfree Academy. 

  

Tonya Kubo (19:55) 

Right. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (20:24) 

and join us. So when July comes, you’ll know when we do our low by July, you’ll be you’ll already be a part of the group. You’ll already know. But I also want you to do something else. I would love this is my challenge to the people who are listening. Do a quick audit. What subscriptions or services are you paying for but not using? And we had somebody in our paid group, Clutter Free for Life, who said, I’m not doing this. 

  

Tonya Kubo (20:41) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (20:53) 

I’m not doing it because I grew up without a lot of money and I don’t want to be told what I can and cannot do and I want to enjoy these little luxuries in my life. Can I tell you that’s the exact opposite? I don’t want you, I don’t want you canceling things that bring you joy. I think many of us could eliminate a thousand dollars just by getting rid of the things that we are literally not using. 

  

Tonya Kubo (21:11) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (21:24) 

Or the next level is maybe we’re using it sometimes, but it’s not worth the amount of money we’re paying for it in proportion to the joy that we’re getting from it. And that’s what I want you to think about. if you’re willing to take the challenge, what I would encourage you to do is get into, just keep a little Excel spreadsheet or even on a notepad and go through your bank statement. 

  

Tonya Kubo (21:36) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (21:53) 

and figure out what those charges are because they do a really good job of calling them different things so you don’t know what you’re actually being charged for. So one of things I would encourage you to do is just take that name and put it into Google if you can, you know, if it’s, you know, Starbusters. Okay, what’s Starbusters? Is that a Starbucks, you know, sign off? Is it Starlink? I don’t know. 

  

Tonya Kubo (22:15) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right. 

  

Kathi Lipp (22:22) 

but find out what it is. Somebody else will have Googled that and they can tell you what you’re paying for. And get rid of the things that are not actively improving your life. I wonder if many of our people could be saving 200, 500, $1,000 a year. Guys, so do the quick audit, get rid of some of those big ticket items. Next time, what we’re gonna be talking about, 

  

Tonya Kubo (22:29) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi Lipp (22:51) 

we’re gonna talk to Tonya about how she renegotiated some of her bills. And I did one too. Let me just tell you, my savings were less than yours, but they all count. then cutting down on some of those reoccurring charges that are not bringing joy to your life. This was a great episode. Thank you so much, Tonya. 

  

Tonya Kubo (22:55) 

? yes I did do that. 

  

Hahaha 

  

? thank you for having me. This was great. 

  

Kathi Lipp (23:16) 

Okay, well. 

  

Tonya Kubo (23:19) 

And I think we are about at time, Kathi, but I want to say that I really hope that everybody listening takes that next step to do a quick audit. You are going to be amazed. And please make it judgment free. Don’t be like me. Don’t be all sad and feel like you have to go to confession in order to talk about the Evernote subscription that you had for a decade and you didn’t know about. Just judgment free, shame free. Just do that audit and see what you find. 

  

Kathi Lipp (23:32) 

Yeah, yeah, right. 

  

You 

  

Tonya Kubo (23:46) 

And we will see you next time when we talk about those big ticket savings. So you have been listening to ClutterFree Academy. Now go create the ClutterFree life you have always wanted to live.