How to Start Budgeting Without Restriction

Money Files

When most people think about budgeting, they think about saying “no” to the things that bring them joy: their daily Starbucks run, getting their nails done, brunch with friends. But when you restrict your spending at the expense of your happiness, you set yourself up for an unhealthy relationship with money. That’s why I teach budgeting without restriction.

Budgeting without restriction isn’t about the numbers. It’s about learning to spend and save in alignment with your needs, wants, and goals.

Today, I’m walking you through my five-step process for budgeting without restrictions and creating a healthy, happy relationship with your money. I’m sharing how we’ll use this process to create a spending plan that aligns with your desires, and I’m also sharing some of the incredible results my clients have achieved in just a few months of working with me.

In this episode, you’ll learn…

How transforming your relationship with money goes way beyond budgeting [1:36]
The four most common thought errors my clients struggle with and how to recognize them in your own mindset [6:45]
How your financial life affects your mental health and self confidence [9:25]
Why your current system for improving your finances isn’t working [11:08]
How to use my five-step process to transform your relationship with money [14:27]
Why it’s important to ask yourself simple questions about your money and your desires [20:38]
How an aligned spending plan is key to releasing yourself from money guilt and stress [21:36]
Why budgeting isn’t about math, but instead about your wants and needs [23:55]
Why it’s important to spend quality time looking at your numbers and making adjustments [37:13]
How we’ll reframe the thoughts you have about money and build your money confidence [38:35]
Why this five-step process works for everyone, even those who don’t have a traditional job or paycheck schedule [40:38]
How this five-step process can help couples learn to manage and talk about money together [45:37]
How to know when it’s time to start improving your financial situation [48:27]

Tune in to this episode to learn my five-step process for budgeting without restriction and transforming your relationship with money.

In the episode…

When most people think about budgeting, they think about restrictions: eating out less, canceling plans with friends, saying “no” to the small things that bring them joy. But budgeting doesn’t have to be restrictive. If you really want to improve your financial situation today and in the long run, you need to learn to manage your money in a way that aligns with your goals and desires.

That’s why I teach a five-step process for budgeting without restrictions. In my coaching program, I guide clients through a total transformation of their relationship with money. Using this process, they learn how to create a spending plan that doesn’t feel restrictive and adjust it as their wants, needs, and goals change.

Here’s the five-step process we’ll use to start budgeting without restriction:

STEP 1: Identify your why.

Why do you want to improve your relationship with money? Do you want to travel more? Worry less? Save for your future family? Understanding your why lays a foundation for all your money decisions down the line.

STEP 2: Set goals.

Once you understand your why, we can start setting concrete goals that align with it. These goals will serve as milestones along the way to your long-term vision, and they’ll give you something to celebrate.

STEP 3: Create a spending plan.

Next, we’ll create a spending plan that aligns with how you want to use your money. This is where my process deviates from the advice you might see online from more restriction-focused budgeting. Instead of following a template and budgeting for what you think you should prioritize, you’ll get to create a spending plan that allows you to spend money on the things you truly desire and value.

STEP 4: Evaluate.

A budget is a working document, so we’ll evaluate your spending plan as you start using it. You’ll start to see patterns in your spending habits, like where you’re most likely to go over budget or where you could be saving more.

STEP 5: Adjust.

Finally, we’ll adjust your spending plan. This plan is designed for your life, and your spending might vary from week to week or season to season. You’ll learn how to evaluate and adjust your spending plan on a weekly basis so you’re always prepared for the unexpected.

So here are the takeaways that I want you to remember from this episode…

Improving your money management skills isn’t about numbers. It’s about transforming your relationship with money and choosing how you think and feel about it.
No matter your job, salary, or current financial situation, this five-step process can help you develop true financial confidence and reach your money goals.
You don’t have to wait for the “perfect” time to start improving your relationship with money. Sometimes, the best time to start is when things feel the most hectic.

If you’ve been waiting for the perfect time to start working on your money management skills, here’s your sign: The time is now. Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.

BOOK A CALL

Want to hear how my clients learned to start budgeting without restriction? Listen to Taviana’s story here!

Transcript for “How to Budget Without Restriction & Transform Your Relationship With Money:

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 to another episode of Money Files. So today’s episode is a little bit different. It is actually the masterclass that I read last week called how to budget without restriction. And it was a powerful masterclass if you were there. You can tune into it again. If you weren’t there, then this will be your first time actually hearing how you can budget without restriction. I am going to break the money code for you so you can experience financial freedom, peace of mind and clarity, and you don’t have to do it by telling yourself that you can’t have certain things. As a coach, I want you to be able to create a both-and lifestyle. I want you to be able to give money purpose in your life. I want you to have thoughts that bring you joy about your finances, and I want you to experience joy because you actually know your numbers. So get ready. Help hope you have a pen and paper. Tune in and catch all the thoughts.

Hi, my name is Keina, and I am the founder and coach at Wealth Over Now. Thank you so much for joining me. If you signed up for How to Budget Without Restriction, you are in the right place and you’re in the right place as well. I am an expert because I have been in the same seat that you are sitting in and wondering how I can change my relationship with money and the process that I use with my clients is also the process I’ve used with myself to pay off student loan debt, get out of consumer debt, buy a home. It’s what I’ve used to increase my salary to six figures. I left a full time job and I’ve currently created a multiple six figure business. So the process, like I said, that I’m going to share with me today is up and I used it for my clients. You are in the right place if you desire to transform your relationship with money and if you’re overwhelmed by your finances and you think that you have to give it all up in order to be good with money and to be good with budgeting, then you’re also in the right place.

And one of the things I really want you to understand is that I am thinking about completely transforming your relationship with money. It really goes beyond the budget. It’s about tapping into financial possibilities that you probably don’t even know are possible for you right now. And when I’m working with my clients, like they’re coming to me, they’ve experienced the cycle of being in debt, they’ve experienced the cycle of having their head in the sand with their finances, and we create new possibilities. And that looks like paying off $9000 worth of credit card debt for the last time, not paying it off in a lump sum and then getting right back into debt. It looks like going from $1000 a month to $10000 a month in your business. I just had a client message me this week and she’s like Keina. I just had my first $10000 a month and we were working together for three months when she hit this. It looks like automating your monthly bills. Maybe right now you can’t fathom automating your bills because you’re worried about something being pulled from your account and you’re not having the money to actually be able to pay for that bill. It looks like being able to leave a corporate role. Maybe you want to work for yourself. You maybe also have a side hustle right now and you’re like, How can I make that transition from actually leaving my job to fully working for myself? Like, these are the things that my clients are doing. They’re having money conversations with friends, families, partners, bosses, anybody that controls money or has money in a bank account. They’re having conversations with those people and they’re confidently having those conversations. They’re able to check their mailboxes with ease, their inbox with ease. They’re not worried that if Bank of America sends them an email that they’re saying like, Hey, you owe us money, and if they do say you owe us money, they’re questioning whether or not, like whose math is wrong, it’s looking like having clarity about financial decisions. A lot of my clients are in different seasons right now, like they might be getting ready to travel a lot because the world opened back up or I’ve had clients that are in the middle of planning a wedding. They’re moving or negotiating salaries, maybe even leaving a role. And because of the process that I teach them, they’re able to have clarity about where they want to stand financially, regardless of what’s happening for them. Also, clients are asking for and receiving raises like I had a client, you heard Brett talk about getting like an eighteen thousand dollar raise within like four months of us working together that other clients get $50000, raises $20000 raises because it’s really about going beyond the budget, paying yourself consistently. If you’re a business owner, you know what it feels like to be able to pay yourself. You want to be able to pay yourself. Your business is created to be able to pay you. And this is maybe a new possibility for you, but it’s definitely one that my clients create for themselves. But also like having five figure bank accounts and working with a couple right now, they consistently have $10000 in their bank account at all times, like that’s their new financial zero. If they see their bank account go below $10000, they’re questioning what’s wrong. And in a good way.

So any one of these possibilities that I shared is available to you. Like right now, not tomorrow, not next week, but any of those possibilities is available right now. And if you’re thinking Keina, are you sure that that’s available to me right now? Because I don’t know if you’ve seen my money situation, it’s only because you’re thinking like, I need to make more money or I’m going to have to give up a lot in order to create one of those possibilities. I want to be able to have fun and create results. So maybe you look at those possibilities and you think in order to create any one of those things, then I’m going to have to give up something. Hence, budgeting without restriction.

So I’m going to invite you to do something that maybe you’ve never done before. But as we go through this next hour, I want you to listen for new thoughts. The way that I talk about money and the way you think about money I can tell you are very different. So I want you to think about things like, Oh wow, that’s a new thought that I’ve never thought of, right? Because so much of budgeting without restriction is also reframing how we think about money. I want you to write down results that resonate with you as I share those results, I’m going to share more results as we’re going on like, Oh, I want this result. Like, I basically want you to be like, Ooh, I’m claiming that result. I’m claiming that result because anything I’m talking about is a possibility for you. You are able to create it, and I want you to envision yourself with the result right now. Maybe you feel extremely overwhelmed. You feel extremely stuck because you’ve gone two decades, three decades, four decades, five, six, maybe even seven, and you’ve experienced the same result. But today I want to invite you to really envision yourself with a new result so we can reframe what it means to be good with money. Remember, I just gave you three things. So like we were in a coaching relationship, I gave you three pieces of work: you’re going to listen for new thoughts, you’re going to capture results and you’re going to envision yourself with the results.

So this hour is like the first day of forever and being able to shift your relationship with money. So when you’re thinking about this hour, I want you to limit your distractions, have a notebook so you can capture what resonates with you because I don’t want you to leave experiencing money in the same way that you came to this class. But for now, we’re going to go ahead and get into the learning. So the four most common thought errors that I see from clients and people that are following me, people in my community is that they’re commonly telling themselves, I don’t know where to start. They’re telling themselves, I just need to make more money. They’re telling themselves, I’m not good with math. I hear this one a lot and I used to be a math teacher, and I’m like, That’s not true. And I also hear it’s like, got to be all or nothing. So these are the four most common thoughts that I hear people talking about, and it may not be as discreet as this. Like, you may not be like, Oh yeah, I’m that’s the exact thing. It can be a variation. But if you’re experiencing these four thoughts, here’s how you can know if you have one of those four thought errors is that maybe you’re already making more money, but you have nothing to show for it. So if you were to look at the timeline of how you’ve made money in your life, there was a time in which you made me be like me $30000 a year and then you made $80000 a year and then you maybe you made one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year, but you still feel stuck. One of those things is happening. It’s that error of like, I just need to make more money. You have, yet you’re experiencing the same result. Maybe you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul, so you commonly are negotiating with yourself. Your debt may feel really stagnant, like you make big lump sums, or maybe you make your own time payments every single month, but your debt never seems to decrease. Maybe you are actually traveling. You’re doing that. You are living life. But when you get back home, there’s an immediate stress like whether you feel it in your stomach, you feel it in your chest, but you only enjoy those pleasures while you’re there. And then when you come back, it’s all about the financial stress. Your credit card balance. Maybe it feels like a monthly surprise, so you were able to pay it off at the end of the month. But like now, you’re not always able to pay off your credit card and you have to dip into savings. If any of these resonate with you, then you have one of those for thought errors like you don’t know where to start. I just need to make more money. I’m not good at math. It’s got to be all or nothing. And you might tell yourself that like, things are OK because, you know, I’m not in the red. I can pay all of my bills. But you’re not really challenging yourself about going from good to great with your finances, and you might also lack integrity with your money. So maybe you have started like maybe at work you have an opportunity to make extra income, or maybe you have a second job. Whatever it is, there’s some kind of way that you get extra money, but when you make extra money, it always goes like playing catch up. And so you feel like, Oh, I was supposed to get an extra thousand dollars, but you don’t actually know where the thousand dollars is because it’s already paid for past things that you’ve done. So it never actually gets enacted to the plan that you like. We’re just thinking about it.

And if that didn’t resonate with you, I know these will because you’re feeling some type of way about your finances, like you feel frustrated, you feel overwhelmed, you feel fearful. I hear this one a lot like, just like, if I don’t change something, what’s going to happen? You feel out of control. You may feel defeated because you’ve tried over and over, but you get the same results. You’re probably tired. You feel tired for sure. You’re insecure and you feel undeserving. These two are actually really sneaky because it shows up for my clients as not feeling worthy of actually changing your relationship with money like you feel like I haven’t gotten it together. So like, this is just going to be my plot in life and I’m going to have to figure it out. So all of these things make sense because you’re telling yourself these four things, whether you are saying it out loud or whether this is just kind of the constant hum that’s in your head, you’re thinking, I don’t know where to start. I just need to make more money. I’m just not good at math. It’s got to be all or nothing. And so it’s just the way you experience money because. This is what you’re thinking all the time. And so when you’re thinking this, you also are thinking like, OK, I just need a really quick fix. I guess this is just life like you teeter totter in between these two kinds of thought bubbles. And so you’re creating the same results like you have that extra hundred dollars and you’re like, Oh, I can use this hundred dollars to do this, this, this and this. But you actually have spent like $400 because you spent the same hundred dollars four times. You may also just because you’re like, This is just life. You think about, OK, I’m just going to put this on a credit card. I’ll figure it out later. Like, there’s a complacency there when you think about managing your finances. And so I know that you don’t want to feel this way and you don’t actually want these results because here’s where you are right now. You’re frustrated, overwhelmed, fearful, insecure and out of control. And this is true whether it’s personal or business finances and what you want is you want to feel calm, you want to be really confident, you want to be clear, you want to be aware, you would love to feel powerful. I think this is my favorite one to hear from, from clients. You want to feel aligned and you want to feel free when it comes to managing your finances. And so like, you want to make the jump from here to here because you recognize that something needs to shift. But here’s how you’re currently trying to make the jump. You’re like, All right, I got the savings that I’m going to use. Keep the change. I’m going to use Digit and it’s going to save money for me. I know that this is going to work. Oh, I saw this social media post. It’s a No Spend Challenge and we’re going to do No Spend April and that’s going to work. Oh, OK, I’m getting a tax refund really soon. And so I’m going to use this large sum of money to pay down my debt. Maybe you like to take on client work in your business. That’s not actually from your best clients because you just need cash flow. Maybe you have, like all these crazy payment plans in your business that actually complicate your cash flow. But you feel like if I can let somebody pay for X number of months once, I’ll know that I have money too, because I have a client so like you do these weird negotiation things, you get a second job for extra money, but once again, you don’t know where the money goes. You make decisions from your bank account balance. You probably have some type of relationship with PayPal or Klarna to float expenses like you don’t have the money in your account, but you think you could pay the twelve ninety nine for four months to get the thing.

And here’s the thing. You’re taking all of these actions from the four thoughts of like, I don’t know where to start. I just need to make more money. I’m not good with math. It has to be all or nothing. And so you create the same results for yourself. You’re creating temporary solutions. You never actually fix the root of the problem. And what happens is like, you live in these short money cycles. I see this all the time. If you listen to Damon’s podcast episode, we talk about this and I work with him where it’s like you were only thinking about like, OK, what do I need for the next seven days? What do I need for the next 30 days? You’re not thinking about what is what. I want to be in a year. Where do I want to be five years from now? You’re thinking about what can I do with the next paycheck or what can I do with my next client payment? And so these are called what I call short money cycles. You’re not thinking beyond what’s actually here in front of you. You also have a false belief that, like, financial progress needs to be linear. I think this one is something very common for people where like, if you have tried to budget before and you say you’re going to spend like $300 on groceries and then you go and you spend three hundred twenty dollars on groceries, you’re like, Oh, my goodness, it’s not working. And so you give up the budgeting because you went $20 over your three hundred dollar goal or you feel like I have to save before I can pay off debt or I have to pay off debt before I can say, like, you have this very rigid sense of what financial progress should look like. And right now, you’re not even aware that there’s anything for you to financially celebrate. Once again because you have the four thoughts. I don’t know where to start. I just need to make more money. I’m not good with math. It’s got to be all or nothing. It’s OK, though, because I can help you and you come here to budget without restriction.

This right here is a five step simple process that changes everything for my clients. It’s the thing that helps my clients create new possibilities with their money. First, I help my clients understand like, what’s your why? Why is this journey easy and important to you? You know, what’s the why in your business? What’s the why in your personal life? I help them identify things like, what are your goals and what are your values? And I’m not talking about the goals we hear on TV that are like, Oh yeah, you should have a goal to retire by sixty five. Like, that which doesn’t attach to our brains is like something as the here and now, unless maybe you’re 60 years old, right? But if you are 28-30 to whatever it is, retirement may not seem like something that you can work at the moment. Your goals might be, you know, I want to actually have a plan that I can follow. I want to make sure that I understand how to manage my money in my business. I can pay taxes, pay myself, have money to pay my expenses, and so I am helping people break down and figure out things like, What are your goals? What are the things you value? What do you actually want to spend money on? Maybe you value experiences or family is really important to you. And so like, how do we make sure that your money is in alignment with the things that you value and your goals? Then step number three is to create a spending plan, whether it’s personal, whether it’s in your business. We want to be able to create a spending plan that is a direct reflection of how you desire to spend money. How I desire to spend money. But how you desire to spend money in a way that is in alignment with your goals and your values and your why. And then what we’re going to do is you’ll learn how to evaluate and you’ll learn how to adjust. These are the only five steps you need in order to experience more ease with your finances and to budget without restriction. You do not have to have this, like an all or nothing approach. So when you learn those five steps, what happens is you get new thoughts and the new thoughts are, I can have this both and lifestyle. I have a financial foundation. My money is in alignment with my goals, my values and my desires. So every time you’re looking at your finances, like this is what’s coming up for you and you’re not talking about what you can’t do. You’re talking about what you can do.

So we’re reframing the thoughts which cause different experiences and different results. And part of the results is that you’re going to be giving yourself permission. Hello. We love permission to spend on things that you love and you’re going to have things that make you an amazing adult as well. This is just what I call hashtag adulting. Yes, you gotta pay the rent, you gotta pay the mortgage. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t travel. That doesn’t mean that you can’t go to brunch with your friends if you like designer clothes. I have one client, Chelsea. She literally is a stylist for people and she loves to buy clothes. We figured out how to put clothes into her budget because that’s what she loves. And I have other clients that are like, Hey Keina, I want to spend ten thousand dollars a year on travel. I’m like, Great, let’s leave it in the plan and we’re giving yourself permission to spend on those things. We’re also taking into account, you know, what adulting responsibilities do you also want to take into account so that way you can have this both in lifestyle. You’re also going to start to illuminate the things you want to spend money on. So naturally, what happens when you go through this five step process is that you also start to see like, Oh, I get joy when I spend money on these things. I don’t have joy when I spend money on these things. Or maybe you even find, like a lot of my clients and thinking about my client, Kim, she immediately when we started working together, I think she found like five hundred dollars worth of like subscriptions that she was spending money on in her business and personal life, that she was like, Oh, I want to cancel these. These things don’t bring me joy. And so now we have another five hundred dollars that we can use towards something else that frees up money to then go back to being able to spend money on the things that you enjoy. And then you’re also going to learn how to evaluate and adjust when things catch you off guard or you learn more about your habits. This right here is fundamental. This is what we don’t see people doing when it comes to managing their finances. We’re not going back and evaluating and adjusting how we’re spending or what’s actually happening in my bank account when we go back and we have this neutral approach, which is to evaluate and adjust. We can take the emotional side of money out, like money is really, really emotional. We use money to solve problems. We use money to make us feel better when we have a bad day. And like, you know, we think that money will make us happy when we’re sad about any of these things. So what we want to do is learn how to evaluate and adjust because it takes the emotional side out of money.

Money also causes us to judge ourselves when we’re looking at our bank account number. And so we’re able to say things like, Oh, I’ll give you a perfect example. This week I had a subscription come out of my account. I think it was. It was for thirty dollars for an app called All Trails that I bought last year when I was hiking. I honestly forgot when the date was supposed to be. But if I’m in this, evaluating an adjustment cycle, I could judge myself that I paid thirty dollars or had to, like, pay $30 that I wasn’t aware of. But honestly, I’m like, Oh, OK, that’s something that I buy now. So to put it into my plan and I have zero thoughts about it, I was talking to my client, Brent, recently and he was saying, like, you know, he’s looking at getting a new job and he has some new priorities. He’s like, Oh yeah, I just went in and I like to change my budget. And yeah, I had zero thoughts about it, which is not where he was a year ago when we were working together. So when we’re going through that five step simple process of knowing your why, identifying your goals and values, creating a spending plan, I’m evaluating and adjusting what that helps us do is detach from your numbers. Remember, I said money is emotional and I want you to detach from your numbers. Not like, not knowing your numbers, but I don’t want your numbers to be something that you think that, oh my goodness, this is a judgment on my value and my worth or any of those things, because of how your numbers currently are. And aren’t really a reflection, you just need new thoughts and you need this five simple step process to change your relationship with money. So when you go through this process, you’re also going to learn how to ask different questions right now. You might be asking like, Oh, I wonder if I should invest in crypto or like, do I need to be investing? Should I do something like paying off debt savings? Like, there are these big, really, really big questions that you’re asking. So you kind of get paralyzed. But I’m going to ask you two questions like What do you want to spend your money on? Tell me, tell me all the things you want to spend your money on. How does this align with what you value? Where do you want to be six months from now, one year from now, five years from now? Like, we’re going to be changing the conversation about what you desire, what results you want to create. Like imagine asking yourself what you want to spend your money on. When you think about it this year, then you also don’t have to feel guilty when you go spend your money on that thing because you know you planned for it. And you can also prepare for it, whatever that looks like, because you thought about it and you didn’t just keep it as like a I’ll figure it out later kind of point in your head.

So this is what budgeting without restriction really means. It’s about changing your thoughts about asking different questions when you have a financial plan. So like, we’re going to create that spending plan that’s uniquely aligned to you, then you get to be in alignment with the things that you actually desire. It’s not about you can’t do this, you can do this. It’s like, this is what I want to do because this is what I value. These are what my goals are, and I’m going to be really intentional about my spending and not even really intentional. I don’t mean to say, like, it’s hard to be intentional, but I’m actually thinking about my client, Martha. And remember, when we started working together, we were talking about her like eating out allowance or her eating out line item in her and her spending plan. And we were saying that she was saying like once a week, she goes out to lunch with one of her coworkers and she was like, I love that time because as a mom, it helps me have time for myself and also allows me to develop a relationship with my coworker, whom I love and I enjoy developing relationships. And I also get a lot of work done because I’m not at home. It’s a change of environment. So let’s say lunch is $15. That lunch was like $15. The results that it creates for her and her life is totally worth it. We’re not cutting that out. We’re going to make sure that you have the $15 every single week to eat lunch at that spot because of all the things that that creates for you. And so she was able to be intentional in that way. She also talked about how, you know, her and her husband kind of work different shifts. Her husband owns a restaurant, and so, you know, he may have a night shift and she has a day shift and then she has the kids and he’s not home. So she’s kind of managing a different being. So we also talked about how, how does that impact you ordering out or the food that you buy in terms of groceries? And so we really thought about like, OK, maybe we want a little bit higher eating out budget. You want to lower the grocery budget. Let’s talk about maybe how you plan meals for the week. So we really got into thinking about, what does budgeting without restriction look like for you? And what results do you want from how you spend your money? What results do you want to create in terms of how you want to show up for your kids, how you want to shop for yourself? And so I mean, it’s helped her cut back on food waste. It’s helped her be a better mother because she can say, I know that I’m going to be able to spend money going out to eat. I’m not going to have food in my house that I wasted. Yeah, budgeting isn’t about math. So if you’re telling me that you’re not good at math, that actually has nothing to do with math because you are a very smart person. I know that you are. And plus there’s like formulas and stuff like that, but I can read for you so you don’t have to be good at math.

But when you follow this five step process, you will also start to, like I said, you’re going to start to ask yourself different questions. You know, what’s happening next week, what’s happening next month? What’s happening in the next six months? And this just is going to become the way that you think about money. You’re never going to know that you thought about money in any other way than the way that this five step simple process teaches you. You’re going to experience joy with your finances. My number one goal as a coach is to get my clients to say, Oh my goodness, Keina, I love budgeting. I like to sit down with my numbers and it brings me joy, and I have a really, really, really good success rate with that because people start to see how their numbers are working for them and they’re not experiencing that overwhelm. They’re feeling really powerful. They’re seeing how money has purpose in their life, like they’re able to see, OK, this is what’s working. Here’s what I love. Here’s what I desire to shift like. They’re able to define success in their own terms like, I know what I want to do. You know, let’s say, for instance, I’ve had clients that the dog needs to go to the cardiologist. They can tell me, I know what I want to do. I know I have this money saved over here. I have this money saved over here. And here’s the plan. Like, it’s just confidence. They also, like, are able to talk through. I wonder what? I wonder what it would be in my retirement with contributions. Let’s play around with that number. I wonder what an extra fifty thousand dollars in my salary would that actually do for me? So we don’t when we talk about making more money, when clients are working with me, we don’t just focus on the number.

We actually one thing I love to do with clients is create a dream budget so that they actually see, like, what is the purpose of that extra money that you’re creating so we can nail the number that they want to go in and create, whether that’s the business owner or in their personal finances? And like I said, just knowing exactly how to update your spending plan like that, right, is a really good win for clients. They love that they know exactly how to plan for a trip. They know exactly how to plan for Christmas. They know exactly how to plan for the holidays, which is that time from November to January that is really, really expensive. So one of the other things that I feel like I hear in thinking about this process, right? It’s like, Oh my goodness, I’m going to have to have discipline in order to go through this process. And yeah, true discipline is having a plan whenever people say, like discipline to me, I’m like, That sounds like a little bit too much, and I want you to know that managing your money well is about having a plan. It’s about being able to celebrate, like having a plan is going to allow you to celebrate. Well, can I cancel the bill and save some money or I called and I negotiated my auto insurance and I saved $20 a month. Keina, I followed up on my invoice because I’m really confident about my prices and my people paying me on time because I know the purpose of money in my business. It’s about recognizing a pattern with your spending. I think a lot of the time, especially with recognizing patterns like what’s happening? Maybe there’s times during the month when you’re a little bit sadder or maybe you’re like, Honey, I’m recognizing that I haven’t been outside in two years, and so things are a little bit more expensive or gas prices have gone up. And so I’m recognizing that I need to increase the amount of money I spend on gas. It’s being able to file your taxes without feeling like, Oh my goodness, I’m scared of what the IRS is going to tell me, how much I owe them any of those things, or I’m not going to be able to pay them. It’s being able to celebrate saying not right now to something which sometimes my clients are like. Yeah, I just told myself not right now, because that wasn’t a part of my priorities that I’m okay with, that it’s paying for your next vacation in cash. You’d celebrate that. It’s seeing five figures in your bank account. Like, my clients have what I call a new financial zero. So when they look at their bank account, they don’t expect the number to be zero. They might say, Oh, I always expect to see six thousand dollars in my account. And it said five thousand three hundred dollars. I’m trying to figure out why, because they’re used to new numbers in their account. They’re not worried about living within that paycheck to paycheck cycle, invoice to invoice cycle because their money is planned out there. They’re really clear.

So it also looks like being able to adjust your plan when you realize you didn’t account for an expense like this goes back to step number four and five, like when you’re evaluating and adjusting. And I teach that through money dates, it’s understanding like, Oh, OK, I just need to adjust my plan to account for the thing that I want to do. Like, I’m noticing this. This is huge. This one, these five steps, what it creates is really sinking self judgment. There are so many of my clients that are judging themselves. And when I’m on calls with people, especially in the beginning, they’re like ready to try to explain away things. I’m like, What are you going to judge? You don’t need to judge yourself. Like, That’s not why we’re here. I’m celebrating the fact that you’re recognizing that this is happening and I want you to extend yourself grace. A great example is like my client, Lisa. She is the very beginning of us working together. She was going through a separation, and just got a new job. She went on a shopping spree. She was like, I’m buying all these clothes is worth it. She came to the call. And definitely like if you think about a puppy with its tail in between its legs, she wanted to be like, OK, well, here it is. I was like, No, it’s not happening again. We’re going to recognize, like, what were the emotions that caused that for you? Also, you have this stuff. If you don’t want to keep all of it, we can send some of it back. And I think it might be natural that you actually want clothes. So let’s make sure that you’ve actually planned for clothes in your budget, like let’s actually have a different type of conversation. But it’s like being able to read what she was doing and what we did was realigning after that emotional spend and having this like positive self-talk. When your brain says like, well, you should be further along, you should know how to do this. You should, you should. You should. And it’s like, No, actually, here’s the win. Here’s what’s happening. Nothing’s gone wrong. I can have it both in lifestyle. I have a financial foundation. My money is in alignment with my values and my goals. Just last week, you know, I got a raise. Just last week I said, not right now or something. So you’re going to be able to pinpoint financial milestones for yourself and realize that everything doesn’t have to be linear. And you can still see progress.

So the discipline that you may desire for yourself financially comes from the commitment to yourself, and it comes from the commitment to your why. It’s not about anybody else. It’s not about what a man on social media said. It’s not about what people around you say it’s about. Like, What is your why? Why are you committed to this for yourself? And when you go through this process, you’re going to create that skill, like being able to monitor your thoughts about financial decisions, honoring your decisions, planning ahead, proactively adjusting for your money that you’ve created and the money that you spent. And ultimately, what that’s going to create for you is that you have this healthy relationship with your credit card or that you’re able to reduce your debt. You’re spending more on the things that you love and that you have confidence in how you spend your money day to day, like you are going to be able to create that peace of mind for yourself.

So I want you to know that this is budgeting without restriction. I want you to be able to ask better questions for yourself. I want you to be able to shift the thoughts where you’re not thinking, I don’t know where to start. I just need to make more money. I’m not good at math, but you’re really thinking like I can have a built in lifestyle. I have a financial foundation. My money is in alignment with my goals and that my money is like in alignment with my values and my desires.

So that is the end of the class. I am going to ask questions, but I also want to encourage you that, like right now, is the time that if you are thinking about Keina, I actually want to have peace of mind with my finances. Like right now is the time that I’m offering for you to work with me. I do a five months coaching partnership, and in this five month coaching partnership, we work one to one. It’s me and you being able to focus on what financial possibilities do you desire to create? We’re going to go through this simple five step process. You do not need to be good at math. You don’t need to make more money, although you probably will, because all of my clients do. And you are going to be creating this like both a lifestyle for yourself, you’re going to figure out like, OK, this is my why. Here are my values and goals. Here’s my spending plan. I’m going to be able to evaluate. I’m going to adjust, and you’re going to use these five steps, no matter what, like the financial season you’re in in your life, because these are the only five steps you need to budget without restriction. These are the only five steps you need to create financial peace for yourself and the only five steps you need to be in control of your finances.

So in your inbox right now, or if you’re on the computer, you can actually go to WealthOverNow.com/Appointment and you can apply to work with me. We will hop on a call. It will be 45 minutes. We’ll hop on a call and I will hear more about your financial situation. I’m going to help you make a decision about coaching. I mean, those decisions should be like, you know, this is the most important thing for me right now, and this is what I want to prioritize because I really think that managing your finances is a form of self-care. Every single moment that you wait and you delay the decision to actually get your finances in order, you are leaving thousands of dollars on the table. When we talk , a common question that I get from people is, Well, Keina, let me pay off my debt first, and I’m like, Listen, you’ve paid off your debt before. That actually isn’t the problem. You don’t know the root of why you’re in debt, so you’re going to continue to use lump sums of money to pay off your debt and get right back into debt where we can fix it, like why you were actually in debt. I’m thinking about my client. If you were on my email list, you probably have heard a little bit of her story. But my client, Lanny, came to me. She had $10000 in consumer debt and she was actually in education at the time. And by way of education, she’s a 10 month employee, not a 12 month employee. So she used to get a lump sum in May of every year. That was supposed to be money that she could use for the summer. She never made it and was able to use it for the summer. And then she also likes using her credit card in between her paychecks to, like, make ends meet. And she was definitely when we hopped on the call. She was scared that, you know, can I get results? I’m not sure, but also I’m tired of experiencing this pain. And so by way of that pain, that financial pain, she came to me and we paid off ten thousand dollars worth of debt. She learned how to use that lump sum of money that she would get in the summer. And so we actually issued it out to her like it was a paycheck. So she still got that financial pleasure of being paid. And then what also happened is, I think within the first three months, she paid off $1400 of her debt. She had, at the time, a business that she kind of just started. We were able to look at her business numbers. We increased her prices in her business and she made more money in her business. We developed a plan to actually go from full time in her job to part time, so it decreased to part time. We looked like she wanted time freedom because she wanted to be able to travel. Someone, if you were following her Instagram, you would think she’s never at home because I don’t think she is. And so, you know, we planned for all of those things together. But ultimately, I want to say within a year of us working together, she went down to part time in her role at the school and started taking her business not more seriously, but making her business actually pay her. And by the way, right now, she’s still working part time. She’s transitioning to just being able to fully work in her business, but she doesn’t use her credit card anymore, where she paid off $10000 worth of debt. She recently just paid for her sister to start working with me, which, by the way, guys, when we first started working together, I don’t know if you heard me or not. She had $10000 worth of debt, and she was not able to even fathom the idea of being able to give a family member money to be able to do things. But that was actually one of her goals, that she wanted to be able to give her family money if they ever needed money, and she wanted to be able to be in that position. And so the way that that showed up for her was that she gave her sister a loan. And so now her sister and her sister’s husband, they’re working with me and we are getting their finances in order.

I tell you that because, like, it’s not about waiting for the perfect moment and you are leaving thousands of dollars on the table with this particular client like we pay down debt. We saved money at the same time and shrieked that she created more money. She did all of those things while working together, and she has this financial confidence and clarity that she didn’t have prior to working with me within these five simple steps. So like, maybe you’re wondering like, OK, well, what happens kind of within some of these things? Well, when we’re doing this evaluation and adjustment phase, the thing that was beneficial and very crucial, I would say to all of my clients is to have money dates. And I like to say that your money’s love language is quality time. And so your bank account wants you to spend time with it. And so when we’re doing a money date, we’re really sitting down and evaluating, Okay, well, what? What happened with my spending in terms of what money went out, what money went in? Do I need to shift anything for this upcoming week? So we’re taking this proactive approach. And you’re going to learn to take a proactive approach to actually managing your finances so that everything doesn’t feel reactive because oftentimes what happens is you make a budget, you don’t look at it again and you just hope for the best. And you’re like, Oh, I don’t know why I overspent, and you look at it at the end of the month, right? And so it just becomes something that you can’t fall in love with because it doesn’t inform your life. It’s not. It doesn’t feel intentional for you in any particular way. Like I said, you want to go and apply with me right now at WealthOverNow.com/Appointment. You can grab an appointment and we will have a consultation. We will talk about what coaching looks like for you. We’ll talk about exactly, you know, what you need in order to get started and you’ll learn these five simple steps.

OK, one of the questions. There are some things that I find really challenging, like paying taxes, even though I have money in my accounts, and I feel proud of saving it and I feel embarrassed about that. Is that the kind of thing I can get coached on? Definitely. So what’s really interesting is when we look at these five steps, right? What we’re going to go back and do is look at like, what’s your why? What are your values and your goals? Why would it make sense for you to have money in your account to pay for taxes? Why is that something that is in alignment with something that you value and in alignment with a goal are in alignment with your why? So we’re going to reframe the thoughts that you have about money. I had a client recently that I worked with who actually liked what we weren’t actually talking about. We weren’t actually talking about how much debt she was in or her paying off money. She was feeling really guilty that she had money. Her husband has a really good job and she was just stuck like this. In this place of like, I should always have to struggle for what I desire to create financially. And because she was in this place about and thinking about like, you know, is there something that I like? I don’t feel deserving of this money, I would say, if it was her predominant thought. Then we were able to work through that and find these like counter narratives and counter stories so that she could start to reframe her money scripts. Because what happens is that all of us have different money narratives, money stories that we learn and it comes from, you know, childhood things that we didn’t know that we were even experiencing. But it’s shaped. It’s shaped how we view money and how we view receiving money, whether or not we feel worthy of the money that we do desire. And so we want to be able to build this new framework where you feel really confident in your why you feel confident with your values and your goals and within this. You are going to be able to identify what you like, money ceilings and what are the truths that you actually have about your finances?

OK. One of the other questions is curious on your thoughts about independent contractors who don’t have regular income and how you suggest budgeting for this. So the same thing. We walk through this five simple step process and we really look at like, OK, well, we’re looking at your spending plan. How do you actually make money in your account? And so when we’re looking at how you make money, whether I mean, independent contractors are the same as business owners, and so we’re actually going to go through evaluate how money comes into your business. We’re going to make a plan for what you need to create for what you actually need to spend money on, whether it’s on your independent contractor side, if you like, you actually have expenses as a contractor. And we’ll also look at what you need in order to be able to pay yourself? What am I? A few of my clients are on here, and they can attest to what it looks like to actually be able to pay yourself as a business owner. But what we do and establish for you is actually what I call flatlining your expenses. You would ever, never want to be flatlined in a hospital, but you do want your expenses to be flatlined. You want your income to be flatlined. And so what we actually go through and do is think about like, OK, well, how much money am I making on average? How do we actually plan for that? And then we would walk through this evaluation and adjustment cycle. So as you make more money, we would be able to adjust how much you spend as you make more money. We would also be able to adjust like, you know, how much are you spending in your business? How much are you actually spending on yourself? And it’s the same simple five step process as independent contractors. The thing that I often see is that people don’t understand that a dollar is not a dollar. When you’re in business for yourself because you have to pay taxes, you have expenses. You want to make sure that you have savings for months that may be higher or lower than normal. And so by way of that, we are always evaluating and adjusting, and we’re also going to be setting new goals for your income so that you actually have a clear purpose for the money in your life. And you feel like, OK, money is just something that I can easily manage. It’s not something that I have to be financially stressed about.

Someone says you don’t need to be embarrassed to ask. I haven’t filed taxes in three years. Deferred student loans for 10 years. Basically, a mess. You’re not a mess. You have a starting point. And am I a person that could be worked with? Yeah. So guys, I work with a lot of different people with a lot of different situations and I’m working with people I’ve worked with. You know, my client, Karen, who gosh, I think Karen’s in her late 50s, early 60s and anybody’s name that I’m saying guys there. Their stories are on my podcast. Like, I know that money can be very touchy, a very touchy subject and very private. But any stories that I’m sharing, it’s because like it is also public on the podcast, which I should also say is a win because my clients actually love talking about what has shifted for them with their finances. And the coolest thing in listening to the podcast and being able to interview my clients is that they actually are like, this memorializes my work. So if I ever have a down moment where I think I can’t do something financially, they go back and listen to themselves and I’m like, Oh, was that me talking? And so it helps them re engage with the work that we’ve done, but it also solidifies like this is the last time you’re going to learn how to budget because you have everything you need. And it’s not a matter of like if you mess up, but it’s like when and when you do. You know exactly how to get back on track, but to answer your question? Yeah. So in being able to go through this five step process, right? Like sometimes I actually have a client right now. I’m like our first to do our in like the five month coaching calls. It’s like she actually has to file, I think, two years of back taxes. So we’re pulling our head out of the sand and we’re doing that. So we actually know what are the numbers we have in front of us and what do we need to tackle? Oftentimes, it’s not as bad as what people think.

My client, Jackie, who’s on the podcast, had a similar situation and we filed their taxes. I want to say she, like, got money back from one of the years of returns, so it wasn’t as bad as she actually thought that it was. And now she doesn’t have that weight off of her shoulders. So a lot of the coaching container that I provide for people is also just providing that space for you to do the things that your brain is saying. Like, I don’t know where to start. This is going to be really hard. This is going to be really overwhelming. And so we’re going to be able to break things down into bite size pieces so you can accomplish what you actually develop, what you desire to develop financially for yourself. And then you also ask me about people that apply for business or personal finances. We’ll talk about it on the call. You can apply for either one. I know that business and personal finances generally go hand in hand, especially when people are using their business to pay themselves on the personal side, and we’ll just talk about where we want to start first. So we can make that an area of your life that feels very calm and then we can tackle the other side of your finances as well.

Somebody else asked, You know, how do you work with couples? Yes, I do work with couples. I know a lot of my marketing talks about working with single women and solopreneurs, which is true. And I have some couples that have, like, snuck in there, and I actually love working with couples. I think that couples are special because of the fact that I get to help couples communicate about money and money, not to be something that’s frustrating for them. I have a couple right now that I was telling you like the new number in their account this week, they have like fifteen thousand dollars in their account. That’s just what we expect to see or ten thousand dollars is what we expect to see. They had a little bit more money this time. But like, that’s their new zero. And when they originally started working with me, one person in the relationship was like managing the numbers. That was very stressful. The other person was like, Oh, you know, we’ll figure it out. And they, as a couple, have a very much alike YOLO lifestyle like we only live once they’re like, Know, you can’t tell us we’re not going to be able to do it. I was like, OK, that’s fine. But by way of working together, like they have just been able to chart out a ton of different goals. One person in the relationship actually just recently left their job. They’re getting ready to make a cross-country move. But we were just celebrating this week and we’ve actually worked together in my five month partnership. We work together twice. So we’re in our second cycle and probably going to go in for a third round to focus on business finances. But in that we are not 15 months, it will be fifteen by the time we get working to get it done, working together. But in the five month partnership, we’ve just like they are now working as a couple and working as a team, and they’re having many conversations. One of the things that they actually recently celebrated, which for anyone who’s thinking will continue to let things settle in my life before I get started. One of the things that they were celebrating is they had some illness in the family. There were a lot of stressors outside of just their day to day norm, and they said, Tina, the most amazing thing. They’re like, we haven’t had our money date, so don’t ask us about that. But you know what? We’re not stressed about our finances. And so for a couple to be able to recognize that, like we can actually be able to have any individual, not just a couple, we can actually be able to handle life right now because we’re not worried about our financial situation.

And so if you are thinking like, well, Keina, I got to wait on this. I need to wait on that, but let me just get this thing in place. There isn’t any perfect time, except for the time that you made perfect right now. Like for you to decide. It’s about like it’s kind of like jumping in the pool and you’re like, Oh, it’s going to be cold. I don’t want to jump in, but you and you like, sit there and negotiate the entire time. We’re like, You just jump in. Your body will get used to it and then you can actually have fun and do the things that you would desire. That’s the same way that I feel when it comes to people often asking, like, you know, will I? How will I know if I’m ready to start? If you are tired of experiencing you’re like your current financial results and you’re willing to feel uncomfortable for a little bit, maybe even a little like naked because you’re like, Oh my goodness, I’m happy to show all this stuff that’s going on with my finances, which, by the way, I create a very non-judgmental environment. Then you’re ready, like, you just have to decide I’m ready to jump in the pool because I’m going to be there to create the structure that you need. I’m going to be there to celebrate with you. I’m going to be there to tell you, it’s OK. I’m going to be there to remind you, you’re learning a new muscle. You are creating new thoughts that you have. You know, you’ve practiced these other four thought errors for two, three, four or five decades. And now we’re going to be practicing. I can have it both in life. So I have a financial foundation. My money is in alignment with my goals, my values and my desire. So we’re going to be building that up as you experience, you know, some things that scare you, whether it’s like, you know, here I am again and I’m emotionally spending, I’m going to be there to talk you through it and to help you build a framework for yourself. And here’s the thing. Emotional spending may never even go away completely, but what will happen is that it will. It’ll become something that you can manage, that you can be intentional about, that you can potentially plan for. And it doesn’t have to be something that feels like it derails everything that you’re doing. Sorry, I was also talking about getting started now. So if you’re waiting because you think you need to wait on this perfect moment, and I was telling you to just jump in the water because it’s cold, whatever. If you’re thinking about something like, Oh, you know, I have a wedding coming up or I just like, need another month, there will always be something in your life that gives you a reason to not start and your brain is protecting you from feeling discomfort, even though, the thing that you want to feel is in control, you want to feel aligned, you want to feel powerful, you want to feel free. And so you just have to tell yourself like life is always going to life. There is no better time to live than when everything is just up in the air. Because if you can manage your finances when everything is up in the air, imagine what it’s going to feel like when things are calm, right? Like things are going to be. And I kind of secretly think there’s no better way to learn or time to learn than when life is all up in the air.

My client, Viviana, also on my podcast, like she got married while we were working together. Wouldn’t you be like, that’s the dumb time to get started because you’re going to spend a whole lot of money and then what’s going to happen? No, she I mean, she knows how to plan for a wedding. Now she and her husband are talking about buying a house. And so we’re taking the same skills that she used for the wedding. To plan for buying a home like her skill set is impeccable. She knows how to budget. She’s confident, she’s clear. So it’s not about waiting. It’s about like. You’re my coach. I want to work with you. I know you can help me. I’m willing to do whatever it takes, like I’m willing to invest the time. I’m willing to invest the money. I’m going to walk over now. I’m going to the email and I’ve already booked my appointment. That’s that’s what it is. That’s what it’s about. And so this is budgeting without restriction. It’s getting out of your own way. Seeing that this is a form of self-care and that this thing that you’ve been thinking about for so long. Like, here’s your sign that now is the time to get started. So that is our masterclass for today, and I thank you so much for joining me. I look forward to being your coach and working with you. And I can’t wait to share your results with you and help you see those financial milestones that maybe you didn’t even know to look for and for you to see like, oh my goodness, my results don’t have to be linear. That is so exciting that I can do this and not be perfect because we’re going to be focusing on progress. We’re not going to be focusing on perfection. And also just so you guys know, I love spending money, so I’m definitely not going to tell you what you can’t spend on because I enjoy spending money and I want you to do it. And I also want you to love your numbers and for money to be the thing that opens up so many doors for you, for you to see budgeting as a way to create more of what you want and for you to also see like, Oh my goodness, because I started budgeting. It has touched every other area of my life in the most impactful way, and I’m able to show up as the best version of myself. So right now, go to Wealth OverNow.com/Appointment. And I look forward to seeing you on my calendar. I hope that you feel so filled up right now, and I will talk to you soon.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Money Files, and it’s not by chance that you’re here. You’re in the right place if you want to change your relationship with money. And I am ready to work one to one with you in my five month partnership. You can go to www.WealthOverNow.com/Appointment and book a call with me. This call is going to change your life. We are going to spend forty five minutes talking about you, your problem, your experience, and I’m going to give you the solution to learn how to budget for the last time. I’m going to help you create a both-and lifestyle with your finances so you don’t want to miss out on that opportunity, because today is the day that changes everything for you financially.

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.

How to Start Budgeting Without Restriction & Transform Your Relationship With Money