The Power of Saving and Suffering a Little – Shang Saavedra

 

Airdate: April 9, 2025

Julie Rose: Are you struggling with money stress? This episode will shift your mindset — and maybe your future.

Shang Saavedra: And that's when I was like, "Okay. I don't want to be in this situation forever, and if financial freedom is the way out, so be it. Let's, let's do the sacrifice, to do it because I believe that it will buy me a better future."

Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And I know you're probably wondering, "Why would anybody choose to be uncomfortable?" But I know from personal experience, and you probably do too, that sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can manage to stay open and curious in those moments. So, that's what we're here to explore. Let's get Uncomfy.

I'm joined by Shang Saavedra. She's the founder and CEO of the personal finance website SaveMyCents. She's author of a new book called Wealth is a Mindset: Change Your Mind, Change Your Money. And it's my pleasure to have her. Shang, hello.

Shang Saavedra: Hi, Julie. So excited to be here.

Julie Rose: So, you write in your book and you talk about in your personal story, how you set out from an early age to be very wealthy and to be a CEO. Like, you wanted to be extremely successful, uh, and it worked out for you. Like, you did. You, you know, talk to us a little bit, though, about some of the uncomfortable realizations that you had along that process.

Shang Saavedra: Well, I would say now with a little bit more wisdom in my life, that the original reason to be really rich probably wasn't the healthiest reason, to be honest. I grew up being bullied very severely, uh, in part because I was the nerd and also because I was small and super easy for people to pick on. And this happened for years in middle school, in high school in particular, and it gets to you, it hurts your self-confidence, and I knew that I was too small to fight back, so I kind of wrote in my diary at the time, I kept my diary so angsty, that, uh, "You know what? I'm going to show them, I'm going to show my bullies by being successful in the financial sense," 'cause I was like, "At least I could try to use my brain to fight back." And that kind of driver drove me for many of my early, like, earning years until at one point I was like, "But who, do you even know who your bullies are anymore? I don't remember their names. I don't even know how to get in contact with them, even if I were to be successful," and, and that led to me realizing I kind of need to live for like a greater cause and meaning in my life.

Julie Rose: Yeah. I mean, it's a double-edged sword because that drive really did drive you someplace pretty impressive, right? You went to Harvard, uh, you ended up then going to business school. Is that where you met your, you met your husband?

Shang Saavedra: Yeah, we met at the University of Chicago.

Julie Rose: So, take us to the, those first earning years where you, uh, you had a very successful corporate job and you were making a lot of money, but you were also saving really intensely. What, tell us what, what the motivation there was.

Shang Saavedra: Yeah, and it was increasing in savings after we got married. So, before I would say I saved well, only because I was imitating my parents and I just knew mathematically if you save a lot, you'll have a lot. But it wasn't until my husband and I met and got married that it became so much more intentional because he raised a problem and he's like, um, we knew that both of us wanted to be parents one day.

We also knew that that's a big economic decision. And he said, "Look, what if you wouldn't feel as much anxiety over the added costs of becoming a parent and also the potential, uh, impact it could have on your career because you're now doubly busy as a parent, by right now, learning to live off of the lower of our two incomes," while living in New York City, which is a challenge. So, that was the gauntlet that he threw down when we got married, and that was when my extreme frugalism had to start.

Julie Rose: Yeah. Talk to us a little more about what that looked like then. So, you were both, had pretty good salaries though, right? Over $100,000?

Shang Saavedra: Yeah, because we went to business school, we did start out with decent salaries, but even so, that doesn't go super far in New York, especially when you want to save an entire salary. Meaning we were trying to save and invest over $100,000 a year. So, we got a rent stabilized apartment, not rent controlled because our income didn't qualify, but rent stabilized. I mean, it is amazing, but it was also a really, really tiny, poorly maintained apartment. Things broke all the time. Uh, outside of the food that our companies comped for because we worked really late hours, I cooked all of our breakfasts and lunches, essentially, and we tried to limit our eating out on the weekends, though it was difficult being social people in New York.

Then for entertainment, find ways to have fun for almost next to nothing. And clothing, basically we didn't buy anything new for, like, a couple of years, um, bought consignment and also kept a really small, uh, wardrobe, and travel got super creative with various ways to save on travel. Basically, we studied every aspect of our expenses and tried to squeeze as much out of it on a limited budget as possible.

Julie Rose: Okay, so how did this feel for you, Shang? Like, how over the moon were you?

Shang Saavedra: Uncomfy.

Julie Rose: You're not, okay, all right. I'm glad you're not, I mean, sometimes I think a lot of it, but I don't know. We've seen, or we know people who are like, "I only shop at thrift stores, and I never eat out, and I make everything from scratch." And we're just like, "Oh, I mean, it seems like you're enjoying yourselves, but that also seems really, really, really hard a lot of the time," so, so be honest with us. What was it like for you?

Shang Saavedra: It was super hard in the beginning, but actually got easier over time. And now, you know, more than 10 years after the fact, we got married 12 years ago, I still retain a lot of those same habits. But getting into it, when I came from a, you know, a single life where nobody told me what to do, like, yes, I saved, but it wasn't 50%, coming down was the hard part. And I remember just feeling a lot of shame. It was self imposed, but it was shame because I was like, "Based on social media," obviously, we all know these days, social media can be a lie. "Based on social media, all my friends seem to be living it up!" Like, they were flying everywhere, they had bigger vacations than I did, seemed to eat out a lot more often than I did, they looked nicer than I did, they had brand name handbags, I was, I'm still into brand name handbags, it's like, it's like this thing that I have.

And I was like, "And I'm not doing any of that, so I look kind of poor." Like, I, I knew intellectually that wasn't true, but it's so hard to change your mind and bend that, that like false narrative to yourself when, you know, you're still in, in the beginning of this financial journey, and nobody else is doing what it is that you're doing, nobody understands it, and also you get into some interesting mishaps along the way, um...

Julie Rose: Oh really? Like, what? Do tell.

Shang Saavedra: Like, my Craigslist moving story.

Julie Rose: Oh, tell us. Yeah, what happened?

Shang Saavedra: And I talk about it and, in, um, I think the first chapter of my book. So, I moved to New York to be with my husband. We were long distance before we got married. I was in San Francisco. He was in New York and, um, didn't have a lot of stuff other than my clothing and, like, books and small, I mean, basically I knew we were going into, it's actually a 420 square foot apartment, so it is small and it's a one bedroom. Upon surveying the place, um, I had some time before I started working, so I was like, "I'll furnish our first apartment together."

And uh, I saw that our bedroom fits a full-size bed, not a queen size, so I'm like, "All right, we're gonna go down to a full-size bed," and I was like, "We got to do this on cheap." And, uh, so I found, and this was a big risk, I found a banker who claimed that he rarely slept at home and therefore had a pretty nice bed that he'll offer up for free as long as I can move it. I knew it was a risk, bed bugs always, you know, in the back of my mind. I'm like, "But if he truly is a banker, then it is true. He doesn't sleep in that bed." Then I was like, "How do I transport this thing?" It's about, like, at least 30 blocks, so you need a car. You need a van. Um, so on Craigslist, there were a lot of, a lot of advertisements for what's called "Man with a Van service," and so I wrote one of them.

I was like, "Hey, I need um, uh, to move a bed. What's your rate?" Um, and they quoted me a price. I'm like, "Cool, let's do it." And on the day they show up at the place, it was two men and a van, so I thought I had booked the two guys, but only one guy came up with me. I was like, "Where's your partner?" He's like, "Oh, you only booked one man with a van. To do two men with a van, it's double the price." And I was like, "But how are we gonna move the bed by one person?" He's like, "Well, you'll have to figure it out." And I was just like debating, debating. I was like, "We have such a limited budget for furnishing this, and the bed is practically free," so I'm like, "What if I just did the other half?" Like, it, I, the immediate thought wasn't, "I'm going to pay," it was, "Let's see how cheap I can go," and it was a struggle bus getting the bed. Down was easy because there's an elevator, but getting it back up in our place, we were on the, uh, technically the fourth floor of a walk-up, so I carry one of it.

Julie Rose: And it's you and this other guy. Like, you're...tiny little

Shang Saavedra: and mattress, two trips. So, first trip was the frame, which was actually a folding metal frame. That was the easy one. It was the mattress that nearly knocked me out. I had to ask for breaks.

Julie Rose: Meanwhile, there's a dude sitting in the car. Like,

Shang Saavedra: probably laughing at me, probably laughing at me the entire time going, "This is such a crazy woman. She decided to move, do our job for us, essentially."

Julie Rose: But also, you had the money, Shang.

Shang Saavedra: Yes, I probably did have the money, push and shove, but our budget, the budget that my husband and I agreed upon to furnish the apartment was so tiny, it was less than a thousand dollars, less than a thousand dollars to furnish the entire apartment, kitchen, eating, bath, and, and bedroom. I was like, "It, I cannot break it." In my mind, I said, "I couldn't break it," um, so moved the whole thing up.

Julie Rose: So, Shang, if we could, I just want to settle on this for a moment and kind of think through, um, first of all, I mean, your, your initial, um, drive to sort of have a lot of money, uh, was rooted in wanting to show, show your bullies, right? And, at a certain point, did you realize that that wasn't gonna, like that that wasn't a good enough justification? Um, and, and so how did that recognition come about and then pivot to a better, a better, you know, sort of relationship with money that, that was sustainable for you?

Shang Saavedra: I mean, it's a, it's a huge journey, and this bed moving, um, experience was probably in the middle of it. Um, I, I came to realize in myself, both during the end of college and also the beginning years after college, that, um, my high school revenge story was actually making me into a really unpleasant person to be around. Like, I was always competitive, trying to prove myself to be better than other people, and it just didn't make me a joyful person to be around. And so I changed that, and that was when, when I changed my attitude and I met my husband, then for the first year or two of our really, really tight budget, it was going along with his plan, but I was like, "Okay, rationally, it made sense. Yes, uh, living off of one income will release a lot of freedom later on in life, but it wasn't," I wasn't fully bought in 'cause I was like, "It makes rational sense, and I didn't have a direction to go." And I think,

Julie Rose: you felt, did you feel resentful in that, in those moments then,

Shang Saavedra: yeah, because it,

Julie Rose: at him or like?

Shang Saavedra: It wasn't my idea. My idea of moving to New York and getting married was having my designer handbag, taking that designer handbag to my fancy job, and traveling a lot more, and getting to eat out a lot more, and doing more things that I, that I felt I could at the time, yeah.

Julie Rose: So, so why did you stay, stay in the discomfort of all that frugality then, like, lean into this? How did that become something that you were bought into?

Shang Saavedra: Well, as it turns out, work got toxic, um, and it got toxic very quickly. Um, I don't name them, but I did work for the largest lingerie company at the time in fashion, and they're very well known for their toxicity. And once I realized, "Wait, if I'm giving so much of my time each day to work, to be so belittled and manipulated every day, that's not pleasant, and what can get me out of that? Financial security. And that's when I was like, "Okay. I don't want to be in this situation forever, and if financial freedom is the way out, so be it. Let's, let's do the sacrifice, to do it because I believe that it will buy me a better future." And when that thought entered my mind, it's like, "It's not a sacrifice forever," and my husband never said it was going to be forever. "Um, there can be a better future? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it now. Let's try it for real."

Julie Rose: So, then you were all in on, "I'm gonna save every single penny because there's a way out of this." And by, what, the age of 30, you were able to retire? Like...

Shang Saavedra: 31. I had, according to calculations based on the classic rule of retirement, which is your net worth is 25 times your annual expenses, which at the time, yes, it happened because we were super frugal beings, um, without children, but we also knew that it wouldn't be like this forever because we wanted children. So, both of us did continue to work because we're like, "We're going to have kids. They're going to raise our costs," so finishing saving retirement for us, great, but not the end point, and we kept going. Um, so it wasn't until age 38, well, after having my second child, where we're like, "Okay, there really isn't much point to me working anymore, like I can," and at that time, I had another negative corporate experience, so I'm like, "You know what? Yeah, I'm gonna leave and focus on, on being the mom," and so my default job now is I'm the work from home mom in that anytime my children need me, I'm there, and then in the time that my kids are at school, I run Save My Cents.

Julie Rose: And so, now you coach people, and you also have an Instagram account, and you have this new book that you've, you've written, and so what is your, I mean, what is your message to people? Like, what is it that you are trying to encourage people to do? I mean, not everybody is going to, I think a lot of people are probably, might hear the story of somebody who managed to do this intense frugality for, like, 15 years, and you know, and is now really a lot more financially stable than most of us, you know, are able to not work. And we're like, "Well, good for her, but that, that would never happen for me. None of this is applicable to me. I, I just want to, you know, eventually be able to retire." What is, what is the thing that you bring to the table that you think helps, helps, people?

Shang Saavedra: The unfortunate news is most people think that they can work a lot longer than they actually want or are capable of working. Like, your body just gives out eventually. You don't want to be working at the same intensity as you do in your younger, higher earning years. And also, for, for those who choose to become parents, like it is another mouth to feed and is a lot of time required to care for somebody.

Um, and then further than that, I think right now, economically, people are feeling a lot of struggle. You have inflation, you have the threat of tariffs and how it's impacting the stock market, um, you have record, you know, layoffs with very, very low chance of getting a new job very quickly. The best way to get through all of these changes is to have financial security, and I'm not saying that you need to have your retirement funded, but at the very least you need security, and that does come with in times of when you have a lot, saving some of that to carry you through the times when you're not going to have a lot, and that can happen to the best of us. And so, I think even, not even thinking about retirement, I'm like, "What if you could release yourself from the cycle of always depending on that next paycheck from somebody else who can fire you at any point in time by sacrificing? Even giving up just a little bit now will buy you increasingly more more freedom when it matters."

And when I speak to people with, mostly people over age 40, um, when they, when they approach me to work on personal finances, I often hear a lot of regret, too, because they're like, okay, something happened in their lives that finally led them to realize they need to change their personal finances, but they've, you know, had about 20 years of work experience at this point. Lots of people say, "Oh, I hate the mistakes I made when I was younger. I'm, I'm so ashamed of that, I wish that never happened," and that's also not a great place to be in, 'cause, yes, it's a tough conversation and realization, but you can't stew in it forever. You can't be, like, hating yourself. Like, that, that is, um, a very tough spot to operate out of, and so I also have to ask people to say, "Forgive yourself. Like, forgive your past, forgive your younger self, because sometimes it wasn't a mistake, sometimes it's you had to do it out of survival to get out of whatever situation you needed to get out of." And just say, "You know, I'm going to do the best going forward, but I'm going to love both the past version and also the future version of myself because this person, you know, deserves that." And I think a lot of people are very afraid to even step into that mindset.

Julie Rose: In the front pages of your book, you have Philippians, a scripture from the Bible, Philippians 4: 13, noted there, which is, "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." Is being wealthy something that a good Christian can do?

Shang Saavedra: The Bible talks a lot about money. In fact, it's one of the most often mentioned topics, more so than faith. And, uh, the reason is this: money in and of itself is neither good nor evil; it's the love of money that is evil, and that's also a part of the reason why I had to move away from my, like, "I'll show them," you know, anti-bullying kind of manifesto.

These days, my husband and I view ourselves as God's portfolio managers. It just so happens that we were lucky that He chose to give us high paying careers, but you can have a choice: do you want to take that money and just spend it in one way, or do you want to take that money and do good with it? So, we still keep a relatively frugal, you know, not flashy lifestyle because we believe a lot in our philanthropy and our money in helping more people than ourselves. So, in this way, yes, we have a lot of wealth, but ultimately, the wealth is not ours. It's God's, and what would God want us to do with it? That's kind of how we frame things.

Julie Rose: Shang Saavedra is the founder and CEO of Save My Cents, her new book is called Wealth is a Mindset: Change Your Mind, Change Your Money. You can learn more about her work at savemycents.com, and also @savemycents on Instagram. Shang, thank you so much for chatting with us today and sharing your story.

Shang Saavedra: Thank you, Julie.

Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. Have you had an uncomfortable or challenging experience around money? I'm sure you probably have, right? I'd love to hear how it went for you, what it taught you, what happened when you came through the other side. You can email uncomfy@byu.edu to reach me or connect with us on social media to keep the conversation going. 

And in the meantime, if you love diving into thought-provoking discussions, check out my other podcast. It's called Top of Mind with Julie Rose. Every episode tackles one tough topic in a way that will push us to grow and think deeper and feel more empathy. In fact, I'm working on an episode right now about what we get wrong about credit card debt. There's a lot to chew on there, so be sure to watch for that in the coming weeks. Just look for Top of Mind with Julie Rose on your favorite podcast app.

Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Jake Hasleton, James Hoopes, Isabella Sosa, and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.