In this episode of Money Files, I break down the concept of “financial grazing”—a common habit where small, unplanned expenses sneak into your budget and start to derail your progress. It’s easy to justify these little splurges when you’re feeling good about your finances, but over time, they can add up and pull you away from the habits that helped you succeed in the first place.
I explore the reasons behind financial grazing and how you can get back on track. Awareness is key to regaining control, and if you’ve found yourself slipping into this habit, you’re not alone. Listen in for practical tips to refocus on your financial goals and stay on course.
Tune in to explore the concept of financial grazing …
- [02:20] What is financial grazing?
- [04:40] How financial grazing shows up
- [07:56] Identifying why it’s happening
- [13:30] Actionable steps to address financial grazing
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn what financial grazing is, how to identify it, and what to do about it so you can reach your financial goals.
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 loved the discussion about financial gazing, check out my episode, The Power of Micro Habits for Financial Success!
Transcript for “Financial Grazing: How Little Habits Can Derail Big Goals”
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 I want to talk to you today about a concept that I’ve been talking with my clients about who are in different stages of their financial journey. I think one of the things that I love about working with clients is because I work with them for five months, I get to celebrate with them. I get to call them out on things, like we are locked in together forever. Even clients that have worked with me years ago, I am still able to connect with them in different ways and talk to them about their financial progress and the things that they’re celebrating. I always want people to know that when it comes to your finances, like this is a journey, like you are on a continuum. There’s always going to be something to learn. Maybe in the beginning you’re like, Keina I’m just trying to learn how to budget.
I’ trying to get my bills paid on time and then eventually you’re going to be like my client Lynae and she’s like, I bought an investment property and I am fixing up my investment property. Or you’re going to be a client of mine that started a business and you have started to make six figures, like those are the things that can happen for you. So where you are right now is not always where you’re going to be. So even with that, I always want to provide you with things just so you can check yourself because as I told one of my clients this week, I said, I need you to take a pregnant pause when it comes to your financial decisions. I actually did another podcast episode back in 2024 about pausing before you make decisions. And as a coach I want to provide you with skills. That’s what I think about when I named my podcast Money Files, which I thought it was really catchy, I’m like, oh my goodness. I was thinking about the fact that you could file things away to have in your toolkit so that way when you’re experiencing different financial hurdles or obstacles, that you have a tool and a resource to be able to help you.
So today we’re actually going to be talking about a concept that I call financial grazing. And financial grazing is really, really tricky. And when I was thinking about financial grazing, I was actually thinking, I relate everything back to nutrition, but one of the things that I have to watch myself with because I count macros and I can make a plan for what I’m going to eat for the day. So I have an allotted budget, which are my macros, and I can make that plan for the day. What I should do is honor what my plan says and eat what I say I’m going to eat. But what can happen is I can start to like pick things up. My coach calls them BLT, so bites, licks and taste. I can find myself, especially when I’m making progress, I will give myself permission to be like, oh, it was just like an extra pretzel, it was just an extra orange and it could even be when I’m not making progress, I’m like, well since I’m not making progress I might as well go ahead and eat this extra thing.
But I give myself permission based off of the results that I have in front of me to not follow my plan. And the same is true with finances. You have a budget, you have a plan. And you can give yourself permission to do things based off of if you are or are not making progress. And I call it, like I said, I’m calling it financial grazing. Actually one of my clients, we hadn’t met in a couple of weeks and the reason I knew that she had been financially grazing is because she was just telling me some things that she was spending money on that she hadn’t really accounted for in her plan. She like hadn’t done her money date. And this client, since we’ve been working together, she’s paid off like $5,000 on her credit card. She saved about $6,000, like she’s been doing a really, really good job. So she has this momentum from us working together. And that momentum also has led to what I’m going to, for lack of a better word, just call like some complacency. So I’m going to just tell you how financial grazing the perfect conditions and how it shows up.
So I like to think about financial grazing really showing up when you are, and like I said, it could be also when you’re not doing well with your money, but I want to talk about when you’re doing well with your money. And so you’re making progress like your bills are paid on time, your credit card balance, it’s going down, your savings account, it just hit $2,000 or maybe it hit $20,000. Your taxes are paid in full, like you have a new financial zero in your account so instead of seeing zero in between paydays, like you are used to seeing money in your account and it could be, three, four or even five figures that you’re used to seeing in your account. So all in all, I would say like you are on an upward trend with your finances. Like my clients when we get out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle, like that is a huge win. That’s momentum. Their brains are like, oh okay there’s something that’s working and your brain is like, girl, look at us doing so good. You’re getting that feedback because you may not have been in a place where you’ve been doing really well.
And so you can adopt a treat yourself mentality and start to build in some like treat yourself moments. Also on the flip side, the same could be true if you feel like, oh my goodness, I’ve been going on a downward spiral, it could just be I’m going to treat myself so how bad is it really going to be if I add something extra? But with my clients, what I see is that they might start to pull from one area of their budget to like buy a plane ticket, but they’re not actually pulling from their travel money. They’re like pulling from money that they like save for home repairs or that they save for auto maintenance or maybe they’re pulling money from their medical line in their budget to cover an online shopping spree. And I would say that when you’re doing this act where you’re like sneakily and I’m saying sneakily because I think it happens subconsciously that you start to move money around, you tell yourself like, oh this little spend, it’s not going to hurt me. This little spend, it’s not going to be bad.
And generally what happens is that the little spends they add up over time and the little spends are also happening. They’re like void of you tapping into your financial habits that have actually gotten you to the place that you’re at. So what I see when someone’s financially grazing, like I said, they’re slowly ignoring the habits that have actually helped them achieve the results that they actually have. The reason that they’re out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle, the reason that they can save for taxes, what I notice is that when someone’s financially grazing and hopefully this can help you identify why this is happening, why you see yourself working outside of your plan. Because you have a plan, like I told you, I have these macros that I’m supposed to follow. So you have a plan, you have a budget that you set for yourself and where are you allowing yourself to go outside of that budget, even if it technically fits within the budget. Because you can still go outside of the budget even if it technically fits within the budget.
I think that’s one of the dangerous things, because you can be losing sight of like the vision of where you actually are going because you’re telling yourself, oh this is just like a little thing. And so you have a different flavor of robbing Peter to pay Paul. So going back to why you financially graze, one of the reasons I see that people financially graze is because of overconfidence. So you think that you can put the things that you’ve started to do with your money on autopilot and so you’ve achieved the results that you have. And so you want to put those on autopilot. And when I say you’ve achieved the results that you’ve had, you are forgetting about the fact that you actually have habits that have helped you achieve the results. Whether that’s how you talk to yourself about what you purchase, whether that’s your weekly money dates, whether that’s making sure you plan your weeks in advance, any of those things are habits and so you’re overly confident with how you’ve achieved your results.
And so you are slowly pulling away from the habits that have actually helped you make sure that you can continue the process and continue growing and improving on your results. So that’s one reason you might be financially grazing. The other reason you might be financially grazing is that you have a desire for freedom and you want to break from feeling like you have to manage every single dollar. I see this a lot, especially if I am working with a client that may have like five figures of credit card debt or they feel like they have no savings or maybe they want to buy a car or they’re looking to buy a home, like maybe their goal feels really far off. We’ve been working together for six weeks and their goal seems really far off and so they want to break from feeling like they have to manage every single dollar. And so that’s where they can start to try to like color outside the lines and start to graze and start to spend money on things that they haven’t really accounted for and that we would just call like little spends.
The third thing would be mislabeling celebration. So mislabeling celebration is those moments in time where you have made financial progress. And so because you’ve made progress, because you no longer are losing sleep at night because you have money in the bank and you have more money than you’ve ever had before and your chest isn’t tightening when you open up your bank accounts. So you feel good and I want you to feel good about your finances, but being in that place of feeling good is also giving you a little bit of the I deserve mentality that has you going to treat yourself to celebrate versus finding other ways to celebrate your financial progress. So you are not able to call out the fact like, oh I’m actually, I’m like spending money because I think I deserve to spend money because I’ve been doing so well.
And then the last one, I would say the reason that people financially graze is because of busyness. So you might just be in a season of life where you feel really, really busy and because you feel really busy and your busyness could be real, but you are not actually making time to look at your money. So you’re doing things, you are just kind of, you’re going off fields and you’re just kind of riding the wave and just hoping that things will clear up when they clear up. And I think great examples of that might be when kids go back to school, it could be a big life change if you’re welcoming a baby. It could be during the holidays. Like all of those times are when busyness might get in the way of you actually checking in with your finances.
So if you are listening to me right now and you’re like, oh my goodness, Keina, I feel like I have been financially grazing, I want you to know that nothing has gone wrong. You were very normal. And I think it’s very common for all of us to financially graze. I can even do it. And just knowing that I’m like, oh, I might be overly confident in what makes me financially sound and I’m just not checking in with my numbers or busyness might be something that even gets in the way. I would also say, I think for me it would be like an emotional piece that gets in the way where you feel really exhausted. You guys probably have heard me talk about it a lot. I’m very aware of how my like boredom or being tired can make me spend money. So if you’re in a place, like I said, where you feel like I’m financially grazing, I want you to commend yourself for having the awareness that you are actually in that place.
Now you don’t get to let yourself all the way off the hook, but the work that you need to do to get out of financially grazing is I actually need you to reinvest yourself in your why. Like why have you decided that managing your finances are important? What’s the why? And maybe your why is even just 30 days from now, you want to make sure that you can pay all of your bills and not be worried about a payday. Maybe your why is six months from now that you promised yourself in six months from now, if you follow your plan to pay off your credit card, that you would be credit card debt free or maybe your why is like, I don’t ever want to stress about taxes and so I have committed to saving for taxes. But like really thinking about what your why is, I’m okay with you having an immediate why.
Some of you may have a why in terms of, I have a lot of clients that we start talking about how managing their money is going to help them be a better mother or it’s going to help them be a better partner and it’s going to be an opportunity for them to actually extend self-care and to feel like they’re worthy. So you can have different forms of whatever your why is, but I want you to connect to what your why is. When you’re connecting to that, why, it’s going to reinvest you in being able to honor the plan that you’ve set. So we want to know like, okay, I’ve been financially grazing, I know why it’s happening. And so I want to think about like what are the things that I’ve lost sight of so I can get back on track. I want you to get back to your weekly money dates.
I want you to get back to asking yourself on a weekly basis, like, okay, what am I noticing about my spending? What patterns do I have and where do I maybe need to actually allow more room for play so I don’t feel deprived and feel like, I need to financially graze. I also want you to set non-negotiables with your money. If you are someone, I tell my clients, I’m like, you realize you’re like siphoning off your savings. So every time you’re like taking a little money from here and taking a little money from there, which sometimes you have to do that. But when we do that too often and we are not paying attention to it, then you are saying that whatever category that you’re taking out of, you’re telling me that’s not important and not really me, but like you’re telling yourself that’s not important.
And so I want you to be able to set non-negotiables for your money. And sometimes that does mean that you’re going to have to set out on the sidelines and be able to say like, that’s not a financial priority for me right now because this other thing is a financial priority and it might be something connected to your why. If I imagine that you are looking to pay off credit card debt in the next six months, well if you’ve told yourself, my minimum is $300, but I’m going to pay $500 and you are constantly taking from the extra, or you don’t have the extra to pay towards your credit card debt, well that’s signaling to me that you don’t actually want to pay off your credit card debt. And there are other things, other motions and things that can be under that. But I remember listening to a podcast once by Brooke Castillo and she said like, if you are going to quit on your goals, say them out loud.
So in that case, I’m like, just tell yourself I actually don’t want to pay my credit card off in six months. Like if you’re going to quit doing that and you’re not going to pay it off at $500 a month for the next six months, say it out loud. And I think that makes your brain actually realize like, oh, I’m doing this thing to myself that I’m not really realizing that I’m doing. Because on the flip side of that, when you are released from having a credit card debt over your head and that $500 a month goes away, you get $500 a month back in your budget to use however you want. But I want you to be able to honor, whatever goals you set for yourself, I want you to be able to consciously observe how you’re making progress towards them or consciously observe how you’re hindering yourself from making progress towards those goals.
That’s why it’s really important to know whether or not you are financial grazing. And if you work with me, this is something that I definitely call out, not from a place of shame, but from a place of awareness because sometimes it’s those little habits that we don’t know are holding us back from the dreams that we have. And then once we’re actually able to give a name to it and kind of like provide some color to it, then you could be like, oh, I see what’s happening and I see why it’s happening. For a client that’s actually like dealing with financial grazing I would be going through and we’re going to talk about like, why is this happening? Where does it continue to happen? And is this a place where we need to like reinvest in your habits? Or is there an area of your budget that’s like an oversight for us, or an area of your budget that feels like undernourished or you feel like you don’t have any space in?
And so we can kind of tinker with the timeline of goals without feeling like we’re always sacrificing what’s going on. So maybe, we extend paying off, I’m just giving the example of debt. If we’re paying off debt in six months, maybe we actually extend it to eight months because it gives that person a little bit more breathing room from month to month to not feel like they’re deprived. Those are the things that we get to talk about when you actually hire me as your coach and we get to walk through what it looks like to have that accountability and support when someone’s walking with you through this journey to help make sure that you have a surplus of money and that you can actually spend money drama free. So I realize I was probably talking really, really fast in this episode, and I always think of my mother when I find myself speaking fast because she says, Keina, you talk really fast, but hopefully you’re not listening to me on anything other than one time, the speed. So thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s episode and I look forward to talking and chatting with you 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.