Think you need the perfect plan to start managing your money? You don’t. You just need permission.
In this episode of Money Files, I’m sharing 10 powerful questions you can bring to your next money date to stop the cycle of avoidance and finally feel in control. If you’ve been waiting for the “right time” to get better with your finances. This is it.
We’ll talk about why perfectionism and procrastination are costing you more than you think, how a 10-minute weekly check-in can rebuild your trust with money, and how to get curious instead of judgmental about your spending.
This episode is for you if:
- You’ve been avoiding your bank account.
- You feel behind financially, even though you earn well.
- You keep telling yourself you’ll figure it out… later.
I’ll walk you through the exact process I use with clients who go from overwhelmed and avoidant to clear and confident about their numbers. These 10 questions are simple, but they will shift how you think about money and how you think about yourself.
Episode Highlights:
[00:57] Why waiting for the “perfect time” is keeping you stuck
[03:15] The power of permission in your financial life
[05:30] Why money dates matter and how to start without a plan
[07:44] 10 questions to ask during your next money date
[14:00] How these questions build clarity, trust, and financial ease
If you found these 10 money date questions helpful, be sure to check out Episode 179: Permission Budgeting: How to Overcome Overwhelm and Take Control of Your Finances. These two episodes go hand-in-hand in helping you build real financial confidence.
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
If you found these 10 money date questions helpful, be sure to check out Episode 179: Permission Budgeting: How to Overcome Overwhelm and Take Control of Your Finances. These two episodes go hand-in-hand in helping you build real financial confidence.
Transcript for “10 Money Date Questions That Will Change How You Manage Your Finances”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work everyday with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. So today I want to talk to you about something that is probably showing up in your life, but maybe you haven’t named it. And I enjoy being able to name things for you that you haven’t named yourself. And I’m naming things for you because I’m also like, girl, listen, you over here waiting. You don’t need to wait to work with a coach. You need to work with a coach right now, someone who understands you, someone who gets you because you really are going to be better for it. I can’t express that enough. And I know making the decision to invest working with a coach can feel overwhelming at times or like, but what if I mess up and all of these things? And I just want to let you know that when you just jump in and it may feel a little bit messy, you are definitely going to be better for it.
But one of the things I want to talk to you about today is something that I think is keeping you stuck with your money. And it’s something called permission. So often when I’m coaching clients, especially high achieving women type A women, dare I say perfectionist, they’re high earners. I find that especially when it comes to money, they’re waiting on permission. They might be waiting on permission to let things be messy before it gets better. They’re waiting on permission to spend money on things on themselves without feeling guilty. They’re waiting on permission to get it wrong and adjust what they see and still be on track. They’re waiting on permission to ask for help. They may be waiting to actually save and pay off debt at the same time or waiting on permission to start, even if they don’t know all the answers. And if you’ve been listening for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about something I call permission budgeting.
It’s episode 179, which is last week’s episode. And today’s episode builds on this idea of permission because we’re not just talking about giving yourself permission to dream or to want more, but we’re talking about giving yourself permission to show up as you are financially. And here’s what I hear from people all the time and why I’m talking about this is I hear people say like, I want to get better at money, but I haven’t been consistent. I know I need to look at my account, but I keep avoiding it. Or I’ll do it once I finish my budget. Or once things calm down or once I know what I’m doing. And I want you to notice that every one of those thoughts is really about delaying and it’s disguised as like being responsible. You’re telling yourself you have to wait before you can get better.
You’re actually not taking action and you’re waiting for like circumstances to feel just right before you decide that you can move on. But what if I told you that growth doesn’t happen after the system is built, like your growth actually is going to happen because you’re going to start right now before everything feels perfect. And this is one of the things, one of the reasons that I teach money dates is because a money date gives you permission to look at your numbers. And I want you to be looking at your numbers because your money’s love language truly is quality time and quality time doesn’t mean that you have to sit with your money for hours? A money date can be a 10 to 15 minute check-in with your finances. It doesn’t need to be you with highlighters looking at old credit card statements and old bank account statements.
It’s not about getting everything right, it’s really about setting an intention to meet with your money every single week. It’s building a rhythm for yourself and ultimately it’s going to help you build a relationship, a better relationship with your money. Just like you would check in with a friend or you would check in with a partner. A money date is how you’re going to build connection with your numbers, with your goals and with yourself. And the beautiful part of money dates, if, wherever you’re listening in terms of where you might be in your life right now, is that you don’t actually have to have a budget to start having money dates. You don’t necessarily need to have the perfect plan or the perfect financial goals to have a money date. You don’t even need a spreadsheet to start having a money date. You just have to give yourself permission to start looking at your numbers.
So when my clients come to me, generally they haven’t built the habit of having money dates. They may not have a system, they feel definitely behind. And when we first meet, they’re scared to even open their bank accounts. My clients are all oftentimes financially avoidant. And what we do together is like we actually look at the numbers and so we’re looking at the Amazon, we’re looking at the Chipotle, we’re looking at the DoorDash, we’re looking at the Athleta, and we look at all the stuff that you used to use as evidence to say that you were bad with money. We look at that stuff and we use it as data. We use it as data to help them rewrite their story and to help them actually craft a plan for them to think about how do I actually want to spend money moving forward? So when we actually looked at our numbers and we were starting to notice our financial patterns, what did we see?
What do we need in a real money plan that’s going to take care of us? So if you can stop waiting for permission, like my clients have, they’re working with me. So I’m going to tell you that they’re not waiting for permission anymore, that they’re in the space where they’re allowing themselves to go through this process. If you can give yourself 10 minutes, if you can show up messy and not know exactly what to do, you can actually start to build financial trust with yourself and it’s going to be with you as a person, but it’s also going to be with your money because you are going to be able to talk to yourself about the judgment you’re feeling or talk to yourself about what’s happening from week to week with your finances. You’re going to have a greater level of clarity instead of just kind of guessing about what’s going on with your numbers, you’re going to have more insight and being able to have more insight is going to give you more confidence.
And so I want to give you 10 questions that you can bring to your next money date. You don’t have to answer all 10 of these questions. You can choose three this week. You could choose one this week, you could choose all 10 if you want to. But I want you really to just establish a place in your life where you are looking at your money and you are building a relationship with your money, which is ultimately also helping you build a relationship with yourself. And it’s going to shift your financial self-concept. So the first question I want you to ask is, what money wins am I celebrating this week? If you listen to my podcast on non-budget victories, you can come up with so many money wins. You could be talking about the fact that you only used your groceries and you didn’t DoorDash. Maybe that’s something that you’re working on or maybe you ask a friend to pay you back for something that you covered for them or maybe you set a boundary with a family member.
Like all of those things are money wins that you could celebrate and they help you have a better relationship with your money. It doesn’t just have to be about paying off debt. It doesn’t just have to be about saving money. I really want you to explore what are you celebrating with your money this week? The second question is, where did I spend in alignment with my values? So thinking about, what do you value? How did you spend money in that way? The third question is, what’s coming up on my calendar that I need to prepare for? This is like with a whole premise of my permission budgeting episode because I wanted you to be thinking about what is coming up for me. And if you could ask yourself that question every single week, you’re going to start to see the things that you need to plan for. You’re not going to feel like your money is just happening to you. You’re going to to start to notice how you start to think and you start to be intentional where you’re like, oh, you know, maybe this week I have a whole bunch of meetings. They’re going to be outside the house and so I’m going to actually be eating outside of my house all week.
I don’t really need to go to the grocery store, so I’m not going to be wasting groceries and eating out. Like that’s what this could pinpoint you to. This could also pinpoint you to recognizing quarterly bills that are coming up and you realize, oh, this is the month that bill comes up. So then that way a year from now, that’s not something that you feel like you got caught off guard with. Next question is, what do I want my money to do for me this week? So looking at your money that you have, maybe you have an amount of money that you said you’re going to spend. Think about what you want that money to do for you this week.
Fifth question is, what have I been avoiding or putting off financially? This can just be a great brain dump to think about the little things that you haven’t wanted to do. Maybe you need to cancel a subscription. I needed to pay a parking ticket this week and I was like, Ugh, I got to like pay a parking ticket. So like that would be the thing that I would tell you I was avoiding and then I went and I did it. That’s something that you could put on your list, but it’s going to spark you into action so that parking ticket doesn’t become something that doubles, right, doesn’t become something that you forget about.
The next question. Number six is, where am I feeling anxious or confused about money right now? This is a great question that you could use to get coaching, to get support or just to let yourself think about where do I feel anxious or where do I feel confused? Maybe you just want to call it out into the open and it’s something that you want to watch. Number seven, what story am I telling myself about where I should be? This is just a great question to recognize what you think about your money, what thoughts you have swirling around. And if you did this every single week or once a month, it would be so interesting to watch, like how you go about your year and to see your growth even.
Number eight, what am I learning about myself through my money habits? I love this question because I think it’s so important to watch our own habits and to watch our own patterns. Maybe you had a really stressful week and this is the second time this month that you’ve had a stressful week and you realize how it impacts your money. Or you know, maybe you haven’t had an awesome week and you can also recognize how that impacts your money. And so those are great. Just a great question to dive in and kind of understand the why behind some of the things you do.
Number nine is, what’s one small thing I can do this week to feel more in control? So I want you to be more in control this week. What’s that thing that you can do? What would make you feel better? Is there a conversation you need to have? Is there a number you need to look at? Is there a plan you need to make? And lastly, the last question is, what do I want to be true the next time I check in with my finances? So just future casting, right? If you set a goal maybe to not overspend on your groceries or you want to make sure that you don’t wake up from going to the club one night and you get home and you realize that you spent way more than you thought you spent because you were rich when it was, you know, 1:00 AM in the morning, it could be a great place to call yourself out.
So remember, you don’t have to answer all 10 of these questions and you don’t need to do this every day. I just want you to create a rhythm that makes you comfortable with sitting down and asking yourself questions about your finances. And notice all of these questions aren’t like, you know, how much did you spend? How much debt are you in? I really want you to be able to approach your finances with a level of curiosity. You might have questions that you develop on your own to put into your money date that are just helpful for you to catch yourself when you’re in different cycles. So I hope that this episode is really encouraging you to allow yourself to have permission to start having money dates, even if you feel like, you know, I don’t have everything together.
And you feel like you need to get something together. But also if you’ve been listening to me and you’re like, Keina, I’ve been listening to you forever. I actually had a podcast with someone who told me or not a podcast, a consult with someone who told me they’d been listening to me for years, which at this point, it’s a real thing that you could have been listening to me for years, or you’ve been on my email list for years and maybe every week you’re like, oh my goodness, this is so good. Yes, Keina, yes, Keina, I’m giving you permission to apply to work with me. I want you to take yourself off the sidelines. I know that my podcast can be valuable, it can make you feel really great, you feel encouraged, but I want to give you permission to ask for help.
And I know that is something that can feel like a really, really scary thing. But we’ll have an hour to talk on a consult and I just want to know like, well, hey, tell me what’s happening with your money. I’ll make you a plan for where I think you can go and how I think I can support you. And then from there we’ll talk about what it actually looks like to work in my five month coaching container. So you can just go to wealthovernow.com and you can go to apply to work with me, or you can go to the show notes and grab the link there to also apply for a spot in my one-to-one coaching. So thank you so much for tuning in and I will chat with you guys next week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
