One of the common challenges I see as my clients make more money is an unintentional shift in focusing on their numbers.
Most of my clients would tell you they had a budget when they were making less money – because they felt like they needed to budget. But now that they’re making six figures or even multiple six figures they no longer feel the need to budget.
This is simply because their thoughts about money and the need to budget has changed. There is an underlying belief that budgeting is only for managing money that can barely meet your needs. Instead of thinking about budgeting as a tool to create a life you love.
In today’s episode, I want to invite you to shift your relationship with your finances by teaching you a simple financial decision making protocol that you can use at any income level.
This protocol will shift your beliefs about spending money in a way that will allow you to feel in control of your finances.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
[00:01:24] How lifestyle creep leads to a sense of entitlement and you feel entitled to unintentionally spend money that you have.
[00:02:13] The importance of creating a healthy financial decision making protocol for yourself.
[00:05:19] The benefits of building an awareness of how you spend money.
[00:18:18] Why you should plan in advance on what you want to be able to say yes to.
Tune in to this episode of Money Files to learn how to create a healthy financial decision making protocol for yourself.
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 CONVERSATION ON HOW TO USE FINANCIAL DREAMS TO PAY OFF DEBT AND SAVE MONEY, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW TO CULTIVATE FINANCIAL SELF-TRUST!
Transcript for “Establishing A Healthy Financial Decision Making Process”:
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 overwhelming 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. So today I want to talk to you about financial decision making. I definitely want to talk to you if you are in a position right now where you’re like, I have made more money than I’ve ever made before. You’ve hit six figures. You’ve arrived. What I notice is that there’s a shift in how you think about money when you’re barely making it being, I got this job, I’m making like $35,000 a year in a space where you kind of feel like I’m struggling. And then you get in a position where maybe you’re making 90,000 or you’re making 150,000, even $250,000, whatever that looks like for you, where you’re making more money than you’ve ever made before. And you don’t necessarily have all of the same thoughts you had about money when you were making less money.
But now that you are making more money, something has come with you that I call lifestyle creep. You have different thoughts about money that push into like entitlement. You think that you’ve arrived at a specific place. You have dictated what this place is by the amount of money that you make. And so you feel entitled to spending money that you have. And I am saying this as someone who could also raise my hand, but doing this work continually for myself as well. And I want to remind you of two things. Just because you have the money doesn’t mean you need to spend it. And just because it’s more expensive doesn’t mean you need to buy it.
I was having a conversation with one of my friends. She was telling me about buying this coat and she was telling me how much she spent on the coat and I was like, could you have gotten a cheaper coat that would’ve done the same thing for you? And she’s like, I mean, I could have, but like I had a budget for my coat, which we won’t even talk about her having a budget because I’m using budget in quotes here. Then I shared a story with her about buying a coat like years ago. It was a Cole Haan coat that I had to have. It was black, it had this leather detailing on it and it was like an $800 coat. I think I saw it on sale for like $600 when I actually bought it.
And I love the coat. However, I remember thinking this coat isn’t even worth $600. And one of the reasons I said that was because it peeled underneath the arm. I ended up having to take it to the dry cleaners. Like it just required a lot of upkeep. And I remember thinking when I bought the coat that because it was more expensive that it was going to be better quality. So I really didn’t have a filter for my buying decision versus anything other than it’s more expensive, so it should be better quality. But that one decision I think about oftentimes because when I go back and think about how I desire to spend money or even thinking about how I desire to spend money in the future, I want to have some type of financial decision making process that isn’t just based on how much money I make or how much money is in my bank account.
And I do not just want to be giving myself permission to spend just because I have money. There’s like a false urgency there and a false reason to be compelled to buy that’s not really grounded and rooted in anything other than our emotions and other than our thoughts. So you’re always going to desire something, but if you’re being really honest or candid with yourselves, think about the things that you’ve spent money on that have led to regret. Then on the flip side of that, you could also think about things that you’re like, oh my goodness, I would totally buy that again. But think of the things that have led to regret. Like I think about the people that bought Pelotons during the pandemic. They didn’t use them, they’re dusty.
But they spent probably upwards of $2,000 on a Peloton, not including the subscription, but they had the money, they felt entitled and they just went ahead and did it. Or I think about girlfriends that have bought red bottom shoes, they’ve worn them once or twice, they bought them as a status symbol and their feet hurt and they don’t enjoy wearing the shoes. Like they’re not even a pair of shoes that they love. Or on the flip side of that, buying something on sale, like I just was telling you, I bought this coat on sale. I bought other things on sale just because I’ve created this urgency for myself that is a false urgency.
So when I am working with clients in my five month partnership, one of the things I’m always pushing them to think about is to build an awareness of how they spend money. And not from a judgmental place, but from a place of just truly knowing like, what are my spending habits and how do I relate emotionally to the things that I buy? Because ultimately I want you to spend money with ease, but I want you to also be spending money on things that are a hell yes for you and things that you love. And that takes being reflective about how you desire to spend money. It takes being reflective on how you’ve spent money in the past and really being able to build a protocol for yourself.
Like I can tell you one of the things that I’ve spent money on in the last year was a home organizer. I would spend money on this person over and over and over and over and over again because that was a return on investment that brought me peace of mind. It helped me be more productive in other areas of my life. It created systems in my life. There’s just a wealth of return investment there. I will tell you that I’m always going to spend money on a really good coffee. That’s always going to be a hell yes for me. So I would invite you in this episode as you’re thinking about creating healthy financial decision making for yourself, I want to invite you to think about the purchases you’ve made in the last three months. If you can go back to like the last year, think about the purchases that you’ve made, but what purchases would be a hell yes for you right now and why?
So I gave you the example for me of the home organizer. Spend money hands down on a home organizer because that was a one-to-one service that really helped me organize my life and get some things straight. I would spend money on her before I would spend money on a housekeeper because a housekeeper seems like a temporary fix. Getting my home organized was like a fix that I can go back and do and ultimately something that I wanted. And then I want you to think about what purchases would be a hell no for you right now. Like if you think about the last three months to the last year, what purchases would be like a hell no. You’re like, I spent money on that and I just wouldn’t spend money on that again. It could be like that coat purchase that I just told you about, but what comes up for you in your life?
Now what I want you to do is I want you to think about when you’re spending what emotions, what feelings cause you to spend money without intention. Like you don’t take time to pause. I know for me, boredom is one of them. Overwhelm is another one that causes me to spend money without intention. So I’m like trying to solve a problem and I think money can solve it or spending, like you get a dopamine hit from spending money. And then what emotions caused you to give yourself permission to spend money? So they could be similar, they could be different, but even giving the example of like, oh yeah, I deserve to have this pair of shoes. I deserve to go on a shopping spree. But that’s more so the thought driving it. But think about what the emotion is that drives this I deserve.
And it may even be a money story for you that drives giving yourself permission to spend. What I oftentimes see in that scenario is that clients in that scenario, they have had some form of scarcity where they’ve had to tell themselves no or someone has told them no. And so because of that, they give themselves permission to spend money because now they’re at this place where like I make enough money that I should be able to spend. And so it’s really more of a thought than an emotion that drives everything. But just think about, you can do thoughts, you can think about emotions, but what causes you to give yourself permission to spend money?
And here’s where I want to teach you to have your own back. So you have this list of emotions or thoughts that encourage you to spend without intention or they give you permission to spend money. But when you’re feeling or thinking in this way, what do you want to do about it? Because I just also ask you to think about what purchases would be a hell yes and what would be a hell no. And some of those hell nos have come because of the fact that you weren’t able to track your thoughts, you weren’t able to track your emotions at the time. And so when you’re feeling or thinking in a certain way, like how do you want to have your own back?
Do you want to go on a walk? Do you want to give yourself a 24 hour pause? Do you want to call a friend? Do you want to open up an account that you’re saving for a trip to Europe and look at the balance of it, whatever that is? But how do you want to shift your brain to think about what you truly desire? And it’s not even that you can’t afford it. So I want to talk to you. It’s like not about affordability. Not even talking about affordability, but it’s just about being in control because you can technically afford something and you can regret it later on because it becomes something that you waste money on. And I think all of us here would say that we do not want to waste money on something, we want our money to feel like it’s purposeful and that we made a really good investment.
So as you think about your hell yes, you think about your hell nos, how you’re going to have this decision making protocol for yourself so that you have a way in which you make financial decisions. I want you to wrap this up by thinking about for yourself, what will I allow myself to spend money on? Like what are my passes to spend money on and what will I allow myself to pass up? Part of this is planning in advance on what you want to be able to say yes to or what you want to be able to pass up. And then I want you to think about, okay, here’s what I want to spend money on. Here’s what I’d want to be able to pass up. And then I want you to answer the question, does this fit with the current version of myself that I’m creating?
So we’re all in a different financial season. We’re all building and working towards different goals. And so I want you to think about as you’re thinking about what you’re giving yourself permission to spend on intentionally, because we’re talking about what you’re going to allow yourself to spend money on, what you’re going to allow yourself to pass up. Does that fit with the current version of yourself that you’re creating? So mind you, in this episode, I am not telling you that you shouldn’t spend money on this or you should spend money on this. I’m not telling you those things because I want you to learn how to have your own back financially.
And this is where you can actually stop and pause and think about what those things are. And if you wanted to take it a step further, when you think about these are the things I’m going to allow myself to spend money on, and these are the things I’m going to pass up. The things that you said you wanted to allow yourself to spend money on, I would then say like, if you’ve been working with me, let’s look for how those things are in your spending plan. If you haven’t been working with me, I need you to book a consult right now so we can get this together. But also you can download my spending plan and start building a spending plan for yourself and incorporating these things that you want to be able to have money for.
So if there’s a certain type of shoes that you always love to buy or you are a purse person, like that’s your thing. Like making sure that within my spending plan, I’m allowing money to be able to spend money on clothes. Or maybe you’re an experienced person and you’re like, oh my Keina, I traveled so much this year and that was a thing that I always want to be able to say yes to. Great. Like how do we help build a robust travel fund for you? If you said Keina, I love dining experience is great. Like how do we put these things in your plan so that as we think about the version of yourself that you’re creating and we think about the version of yourself that is spending money intentionally, what are you spending money on? And what’s the plan that aligns with that?
Remember, I believe that a budget is a tool to help you make financial decisions. A budget is not a tool just to help you out of a hard place in your life. A budget is really about helping you create that next financial version of yourself. And it’s that ability to help you keep on dreaming for where you desire to be. So thank you for tuning into this week’s podcast. If you are ready to take this work deeper, go and apply and work with me at www.wealthovernow.com/appointment. And I look forward to talking to you soon. Alright, bye.
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.
