I don’t know about you, but I am tired of opening up my social media and being overwhelmed with posts about New Year’s resolutions. It is great to set goals, but the pressure to establish an intention for 2023 seemed stronger than usual to me. It got me thinking about how you might be thinking about your finances this year and what those goals or intentions look like.
I often see clients bring a diet mentality to their budget goals. They force themselves to be super restrictive with their spending. While there are little wins here and there, no-spend challenges end in failure. It is not sustainable. I am here to tell you budgeting doesn’t have to be about restriction.
I can help you map out a plan that you will stick to long term. You can reach your money goals without missing out on things you enjoy doing like traveling and going out with friends. I encourage you to ask yourself how you really want to feel about your finances and what would make you feel confident when looking at your bank account.
I invite you to join me Wednesday, January 18 at 12:30 PM Eastern standard time for my money class called, ‘How to Budget Without Restriction.’ Registration is available on my website. Come learn with me and take control of your money and reach your goals. I am excited to support you in 2023 in creating a system that allows you to manage your finances drama free.
While listening to this episode, I want you to think about…
[00:11:10] What type of money system you desire to have that is in alignment with your lifestyle
[00:16:09] How do you desire to experience money, long-term and what feelings are you trying to generate?
If you’re ready to map out a financial plan that you will stick to long term, tune in for this week’s episode.
Are you ready to shift your relationship with money? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS EPISODE ON HOW TO BUDGET WITHOUT RESTRICTION, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON SETTING, REACHING, & EXCEEDING YOUR FINANCIAL GOALS!
Transcript for “Setting Sustainable Money Goals for 2023”
Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day 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.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Money Files and Happy New Year. I haven’t done a solo podcast this year. So this is the first solo podcast of 2023. And as we open up the New Year, I know that we all set intentions or resolutions, like there’s a big culture around that. And so I want to invite you to attend a special money class that I’m hosting on January 18th at 12:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. And the money class is going to be about how to budget without restriction. So I want you to mark your calendars, reserve that hour from 12:30 to 1:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and come learn with me and learn how to budget without restriction. We want 2023 to be your year that you’re able to create a system that feels easy for you, that doesn’t feel restrictive and helps you reach whatever financial goals you have.
So you can go to www.wealthovernow.com/masterclass and that will get you signed up for this special money class. So speaking about New Year and whatever goals you have or whatever thoughts you have about your finances, I feel like January 1st hits, and I don’t know about you, but I was really tired of opening up my social media and I felt very overwhelmed by all of the things. I feel like the last two weeks of the year are so calming to me. And you start to think and dream about all the things you want to do. And for whatever reason, January 1st, the first couple days of the year, it just seems like all the posts in my feed are kind of along the new year, new me and people setting really big goals. And I love for people to do all those things, but for me personally, it feels very overwhelming.
And just social media in general, it’s like everybody is screaming at you about what they’re going to do. So I use social media as a tool in my business, but it is not something where I want to live or spend my time. I like to kind of be in my own head. So that’s been a lot, but the reason I’m talking about that is because I’m thinking about how you might be thinking about your finances this year. And as you think about setting goals or intentions or what you desire to be true, what I often see is that people burn out and they fail. They don’t actually achieve the results they desire to achieve because what I see is that people bring what I call, what I’m calling like a diet mentality to their budget. And so when I talk about a diet mentality, I think a lot of you will probably be able to relate to this, but if you think about like diet culture, diet culture is usually about being restrictive.
Diet culture is about just name a fad diet. There’s the keto plan and you’re cutting out certain things in your diet, or I remember growing up and everybody was on like cutting out carbs or they’re cutting out sugar, they’re doing a lot of like drastic things at times in diet culture, that might get you like some immediate wins, but it’s not sustainable long term. And I’m sure if we pulled anyone, it’s not like the lifestyle that you desire to create for yourself. You want to be able to enjoy chocolate, you may want to go out and have a drink with your friends or you just want to be able to eat four slices of pizza, whatever that is.
And so I think that people bring the same thinking in terms of diet culture to budgeting. And when I’m talking about the same type of thinking, I’m thinking about messages that are within the finance industry about cutting out your latte or no spend challenges or let’s try to do a buy nothing month. And not to say that any of those things are innately bad, but what is the structure that’s beneath that, that actually helps you create a lifestyle that you enjoy? Most of the times when I’m talking to people, people want to be able to spend money without thinking about their bank account. They want to know like, I’m going to have the money available to go on the trip. They want to know that they are doing a good job or they want to feel responsible about how much they have saved. What they really want is clarity about the steps that they’re actually taking, or they want to actually be able to manage their money in a way that feels sustainable.
And so when I talk to clients, talking to you right now, if you’re listening to the words that are coming out of my mouth, I want to let you know that budgeting doesn’t have to be about restriction. And I think wherever you are right now, especially looking at six figure earners, or if you’re in a seat where you’re like I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made before, you probably have thoughts about budgeting being restrictive because at some point in your life you made $30,000, $40,000, you were in grad school, you didn’t have a lot of money. And so when it came down to managing your finances, it really was about nickling and diming the money that you had. I just had a conversation the other day where someone told me when they were in grad school, they didn’t have a problem saying like, no, I don’t have the money. And now that they’re making more money than they ever had before, they don’t want to say, no, I don’t have the money. And they’re afraid on missing out.
And so like, that’s why they’re not budgeting because they don’t want to miss out. But literally you’re taking the mentality that you had at $30,000 or $40,000 and you’re bringing that to your current lifestyle. That’s why it feels uncomfortable when you think about budgeting, because for me, budgeting is really a tool for you to have for you to build. It’s a tool for you to be able to actually have peace of mind for you not to be worried about finances. If you’re someone in your family where you’re like, hey, I’m the first person in my family to make multiple six figures, and I am like wanting to create a generational change, like budgeting is going to keep you on track for whatever that generational change is that you want to create, like you actually get to map it out and you can map it out in a way that you can clearly see, okay, here’s how I feel really comfortable with my five figure savings account, or I feel really comfortable with how much money I have to travel.
I’m able to say yes to hosting my friends at my house for brunch. Like for me, budgeting is about helping you say yes to more. Budgeting is about helping you be able to know that you have the money available and not keep you in the mentality that budgeting is restrictive. So you will know that, if you’re someone who maybe you overtly think like, I’m not going to budget because I make too much money, or I’m not going to budget because budgeting is restrictive, but what I want you to be able to identify, like if you are bringing what I’m calling diet culture to your budget, one of the things that you may do is engage in a no spend challenge or you might decide like, hey, for the next three weeks I’m not going out to eat. Or you might look for ways to decrease your expenses, or you think that I’m just going to earn more.
So instead of shifting a spending habit, I’m just going to earn more. And I would say if I was equating this to diet culture, this is people that do the two days to earn their food. So when you’re engaging in these actions, I want you to know that this can trigger your thoughts and it can trigger your past experiences, bringing up past experiences that you’ve had with budgeting when you earn less money and you had to say no, or it’s going to cause you to put your head in the sand and just not want to look at your numbers at all. And that’s not what we want because we know that you want to feel a certain way about your finances, and I want you to know that regardless of how much money you make, money does not discriminate in terms of bringing up emotions for you.
So yes, you could be making $700,000 this year, but however you felt about money when you are making a hundred thousand dollars or $30,000, those same feelings are going to come with you because you haven’t actually addressed the emotional side of money. You haven’t addressed, like the relationship you desire to have with your finances. And so you’ve tried a lot of quick fixes, but you haven’t actually thought about why the work is important to you. So what I want you to do is really sit down and ask yourself like, what do I want to be true when I think about my finances, like this year, what do I desire to be true? How do you want to feel? What do you want to think when you open up your bank account?
What’s the legacy that you desire to create? Like ask yourself that question. Then I want you to get curious and think about like, why is this work important for you right now? What comes up for you and what are the things that you want to be able to include in your lifestyle, in your budget? And so the reason I want you to ask yourself these three questions is because I want you dreaming about the lifestyle you desire to create. I want us to undo the narrative that you have about needing to do a no spend challenge or that budgeting is just for when you don’t have a lot of money. I want you to be really thinking about what type of money system you desire to have, that is in alignment with your lifestyle. Because whatever it is that you’re saying and you’re writing down or you’re thinking about, like those things are all possible for you.
I see this all the time when I’m working with clients in my one-to-one coaching partnership, I just got a message from my clients, Jennifer and Amy, if you listen to their podcast, we worked together for 10 months and when we first had a consult, like I remember Amy was on the fence about wanting to engage in the work because she had thoughts about me coming in as a coach and telling her what she couldn’t do with her money. And Jennifer was gungho all in in the beginning. But they ultimately didn’t want a lifestyle that centered around them being restricted. They wanted to be able to have a system for them as a couple that allowed them to spend money in the ways that they desired. They had a lot of different things going on as 2021 was ending and 2022 was approaching. And so we engaged in this work over a year and a half ago now, and like in December of 2022, they actually just messaged me and they were telling me like they, I mean, you’ll hear in the podcast that they moved to Colorado.
Jennifer quit her job. Amy has a new job, but like in 2022, in December of 2022, they messaged me about, we just bought a home that we love in Colorado. We feel so confident about our decision. The price that we got on the house we were able to negotiate because that was something that we worked on with you. But Jennifer and Amy haven’t missed a beat in how they’re managing or what they’re able to do, even though they’ve decided to manage their money intentionally, they were able to plan in things that were important to them, whether that was how they wanted their kids to experience holiday travel or experiences around the holidays, or thinking about going to a spa is really important to me, or I want to have money for educational expenses.
But what we did was we created new feelings, we created new emotions around typical experiences that they would have, whether it was their car needed to be repaired, or while we were working together, Jennifer’s father passed away. And so just even being able to experience managing an estate, what would have been something that they feared in the past, they were able to approach this situation with ease and clarity and confidence. They were able to feel powerful in that situation and actually be present, mentally present for their family members because money wasn’t the thing that they were worried about. And so it is why I am doing this podcast episode today because I want you to be thinking about where might you be bringing in this like diet culture, this mentality when it comes to budgeting and you’re trying to get some really quick wins, but you’re not actually thinking about how you desire to feel with your finances long term.
And you may be getting quick wins, like you may have done a no spend challenge and lasted a week. But ultimately what that ends up doing and can’t end up doing for you is that you end up going to spend more because you felt so restricted. So you may be the person who’s actually restricting yourself just because of how you’re approaching things. So ask yourself the questions, how do I want to feel doing this work? How do I want to feel managing my money? How do I want to feel when I open up my bank account? Why is this important to me? And what type of life am I building towards? What type of life are you creating? But I want you to be centered on the lifestyle that you desire to create. I want you to be centered on expansion.
We’re not talking about restriction. We’re talking about expanding the space that you take up in the world with how you manage your finances and the things that you desire to create. As a coach one of my like underlying principles I would say in working with clients is I want them to be able to see themselves doing more regardless of where they are financially. Because whatever amount of money you’re making right now, this is like the minimum amount of money that you’re going to make. So we want to prepare you for the different financial seasons that you’re going into. And so that takes you getting your head out of the sand and gaining clarity on where you desire to be financially. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode. I just wanted to share my thoughts as we’re coming into the new year. And if you’re one of those people that’s like, I signed up for the no spend challenge, I want you to think about, I mean, finish your no spend challenge, but I also want you to think about how you desire to experience money long-term.
What feelings are you trying to generate? What results are you trying to generate? Like what is the impact of this no spend challenge on your life? What do you desire to be true? And how can we recreate that result for you and make that a consistent result that you have? That doesn’t mean that you have to take drastic measures like not spending money. So join me next Wednesday, January 18th at 12:30 PM Eastern Standard Time for My Money Class, how to Budget Without Restriction. You can register at www.wealthovernow.com/masterclass, and I am excited to support you in 2023 in creating a system that allows you to manage your finances drama free. So I will talk to you later. Have a good one.
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.
