Five things I could do without (and five things I couldn't)
Identify your priorities before your backs are against the wall.
You don’t need me to tell you how unstable the world feels.
We can try our best to focus on the things we can control, we can keep our heads down and stick with our plans, and we can dissociate into our coping mechanisms of choice. We can do all the things (I am doing all the things). But no matter what we do, it may not insulate us from the adverse financial impacts of the moment we are right now.
Layoffs are abundant. Student loan repayments are resuming. Costs are set to rise.
In the final section of our book, which is all about risk, we write that you never actually know what’s going to happen. You can’t. None of us do. We get in trouble when we try to convince ourselves otherwise. This is why it’s better to prepare for uncertainty than focus on predicting outcomes. It makes us nimble. We begin to imagine the multitude of ways to not only reach a goal but weather a storm when times become unexpectedly hard.
Right now, the Boneparths are in a risk on moment in our lives. I left my corporate law job two-and-a-half years ago to help Douglas grow and manage opportunities for our wealth management firm. In 2023, we embarked on a book project knowing we wouldn’t reap benefits from it for several years. Going into this risky professional season, we felt good knowing how much financial runway we gave ourselves. But we know, we are not immune from everything going on. The economy impacts our clients, it impacts the firm, and it impacts us.
I was lying in bed by myself all last week. (Douglas brought home a viral souvenir from spring break, so I cordoned him off in the guest room.) While flicking through the news channels much later than usual, I started thinking once more about being prepared. Though neither of us anticipate needing to make dramatic changes to our plans, at this very moment in time, there exists a window of opportunity to consider the changes we’d be willing to make before we actually need to make them.
What are you willing to pull back on?
What do you want to stay the same?
In practice, we all know this isn’t as clean as running lists of expenses to just “keep” or “cut.” Along the spectrum of hardship, any couple can experience a range of outcomes that require leaning much deeper into these lists than anyone would ever want to. Nevertheless, thinking through your priorities and memorializing them can help you be sure you have them straight for when things might need to change—a little or a lot.
I’m going to share mine with you now, along with a short description of why I feel the way I feel. These aren’t Douglas’s priorities, and they don’t need to be yours. They quite literally are a 2025 reflection of what really matters to me and what matters less to me.
No judgment, please :)
What I would pull back on:
Clothing: I love to shop and express myself through personal style. But I am not so obsessed with the pursuit of leveling up my wardrobe that I would ignore the reality that this is an area I have full financial control over. If we need to spend less, I can shop less. I can shop more affordable brands. I can shop on sale. It’s fine.
Babysitters: This is a great example of something we viewed as indispensable when our daughters were younger but has become less important over time. The girls are much more independent now. We can multitask when they’re home after school, and even though we love getting out for date night on the weekends, it’s not quite as critical to our sanity as when they were babies. We love spending time as a family.
Travel and experiences: We’ve travelled with and without our girls a lot over the past few years, and it’s been wonderful. But it’s not the most important thing. In the years after we got married, Doug and I went almost nowhere unless one of our jobs subsidized the trip for a business purpose. We are very good at staycations and regional road trips. I know we’d make fun wherever we go.
Subscriptions: I know I’m not alone in admitting I’ve got too many subscriptions, between digital magazines, online memberships, and streaming services. We really do use them all, but do we use them all the same amount? Definitely not. I could edit if I had to.
Personal care: I had this goal entering the last year of my Thirties that I really wanted to enter my Forties looking my personal best, but the price of beauty and “self-care” adds up. Hair color and style, manicures, waxes, and facials all make me feel great, but I could easily slip back into “maintenance mode” and give this the bare minimum (no pun intended).
What I want to stay the same:
Home service providers: Our time has value, and the time we would spend handling some of these around-the-house agenda items would be a real loss elsewhere in our business and our lives. I’m talking about our bi-weekly housekeeper, our weekly lawn trimming, our quarterly visit from the exterminator, and our bi-annual gutter cleaning.
Kids’ lifestyles: This is a tricky topic, but I think a lot of parents can relate. I would cut so much from my own life before changing anything that belongs to the kids. Truly. I would stop spending on every single item above before pulling my daughters out of dance class or summer camp. Maybe this is the end result of interviewing people about their money memories, many who pointed to their parents’ challenges or sacrifices as pivotal starting points of their own financial lives. On a much more superficial level, maybe it’s just because our children’s lifestyles are very visible extensions of our own. Realistically, it’s a mix of both, but this is where I stand. Let’s deep dive on this another time.
Quality groceries: What we eat matters to me. I’ve been this way ever since I learned how to cook. I don’t want to sacrifice the quality of the proteins and produce we put in our bodies, which is why I started making Sad Girl Lunches™ and showing my followers how to use what’s in your fridge and keep food waste to a minimum.
Health insurance: I want good health insurance for my family, and I want a lot of it, even if it means I am paying higher premiums to offset the risk of an uninsurable event taking place. There’s a piece of me that suspects I think too emotionally about this—I’ve been healthy for years—but I’ve had years where I’ve really leaned on my quality coverage to see a host of specialists that could have cost thousands on a slimmer plan. Even in years where the math doesn’t math, I lose sleep over the what if’s pertaining to my family’s health. This sits low on the list of things I’d be willing to compromise on.
Physical health: See above. Are you sensing a trend? I’m realizing as we all get older that health is the most important thing we’ve got. Sure, fate works in evil ways sometimes, but there’s a lot we can steer the ship on when it comes to our personal health. A gym membership, training sessions, my beloved Peloton bike, and always being sure I’ve got the right sneakers for the occasion. We’ve found fitness later in life, and it’s truly a blessing I don’t consider an expense (even though it is).
Above all, thinking this through will help you compromise with each other. In sharing your lists with your partner, you might realize that yours look nothing like theirs, or they look alllmost the same, and now you can have a conversation around the rest.
I don’t think the goal is for you to have the same exact ideas—we are individuals with our own motivations. The point is to better understand each other’s priorities in a level-headed moment before your backs are ever against a wall. That’s when conflict begins: when fights about expenses morph into larger tension points about whose opinions get to matter the most.
Give it a shot and let us know how it goes. Are your priorities are pretty much the same? Where are they not?
My dad turned 70 last week. For his birthday, we wanted him to truly feel the love; not only from us but from the entire Jersey Shore town where he lives and volunteers so much to make it an amazing place. So, we put together The big ED-Venture (that’s his name), a town-wide scavenger hunt touching some of the most important places and people in his life.
Between our growing firm and getting our book to print, we’ve been on absolute overdrive. But when Doug and I come together on things like this, we always end up pulling through, and we all have so much fun. It also serves a reminder that you don’t need to spend a gazillion dollars to show someone how much you care about them.
TJA in the news
PROUD WIFE ALERT! Douglas has been a busy boi, with lines in The Wall Street Journal cautioning about the financial influencers popping up during market turmoil, as well as two CNN articles about these rocky times impacting the spring housing market and protecting your money. But best of all, Think Advisor wrote a feature on how Douglas uses humor to make uncomfortable topics like personal finance easier to talk about :)
And I was SO excited to contribute my thoughts on intentional spending to
’s newsletter, Unflattering, right here on Substack. Ladies, you will LOVE her work, go check it out.Shameless plugs
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The content shared in The Joint Account does not constitute financial, legal, or any other professional advice. Readers should consult with their respective professionals for specific advice tailored to their situation.
loved having you!
So I do understand the need to cut back, and I know these decisions are deeply personal. but the problem to me is then folks who work in these industries (childcare, aestheticians, etc) will all suffer as a result of our not spending. It all ends at the bottom and other peoples livelihoods become less manageable. We can’t forget that we’re all interconnected in this economy that is faltering because someone hasn’t read an Econ textbook since 1980.