Do you want to gain control of your spending? No matter how much money you earn, now is the right time to start building financial awareness and creating healthy spending behaviors. If you are someone who wants to gain control of your spending because you are tired of being up at night thinking about your finances, this episode is for you!
Today, I share the process I use during coaching sessions to help clients who feel like they are out of control with money. My judgment-free method focuses on how you think about your finances so that you can start shifting your spending habits so your spending is in alignment with your financial goals. . I will take you through how to complete these exercises at home so you start feeling more confident about how you manage your money.
During this episode, I share comprehensive steps to start gaining control of your spending habits:
[02:06] Why do you think you aren’t in control of your spending?
[04:40] How would you know if you were in control?
[06:35] Track your spending for the next five days
[07:57] Observe your spending habits
[11:35] Continue the habit & create a plan
[13:40] Evaluate your purchases
If you are ready to take back control of your spending, tune into this episode of Money Files!
Are you ready to change your relationship with money to be more intentional? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON HOW TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR SPENDING, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW BRENT DITCHED PERFECTIONISM AND GOT INTENTIONAL WITH HIS SPENDING!
Transcript for “How To Take Control Of Your Spending”
Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. So today I want to talk to you about a topic that I feel like is always top of mind for my six figure earners, and that is how do you control your spending? I read about this like in terms of my client intake forms. People that book consoles with me, they’re like, how do I control my spending? And so I want to dive into this topic today because I want you to be a six-figure earner who feels like you have control of your spending because it’s going to create a level of freedom for you. And I also want to let you know that you can start being in control of your spending today. You don’t have to wait for any magic tool. You don’t have to wait until you make more money. You don’t have to wait until you have some money saved, like you can be in control of your spending right now today.
So I am also as a coach, very, very, very in love with asking you to reflect on where you are. Money is emotional, it’s not just about math. Like so many people think that they’re not good with money because they’re not good with math. Being good with money does not mean that you’re good with math. You have the fundamental skills to be good with money right now. And some of that is being able to build just your own financial awareness by asking yourself questions about the things that you do with your finances that maybe you haven’t considered. So thinking about like being in control of your spending, first I want to know like why do you think you’re not in control of your spending, right? Like we say we’re not in control of our spending, but what does that actually mean for you? Does that look like you being in the paycheck to paycheck cycle?
Did I have to dip into my savings to make a payment? Maybe you’re really frustrated that you have like that you save a different amount of money each month, or you feel like, oh my goodness, my debt, it keeps increasing. I can’t seem to get my credit card balance down or maybe you’re scared to check your bank account and that’s why you feel like you’re not in control of your spending because if you were in control of your spending, you would be able to check your bank account. Or maybe when you look around your house you’re like, oh no, this isn’t good. I’ve engaged in too many sales this year and I have a lot of clothes in my closet that I have a lot of tags and so I just have acquired too much stuff, which maybe is like your note that you are not in control of your spending or maybe you’re in the midst of like a spending hangover.
So when I think about a spending hangover, I think about just, I mean kind of like a food coma that you have, like you had too many greasy foods the day before, and so the next day you’re like, oh my goodness, I feel like super groggy. But maybe you’re having a spending hangover because of back to school shopping or like you’re transitioning into this fall season. You’ve bought too many clothes and you just like your credit card is screaming at you like, girl, you need to go sit down somewhere. But identify for you what is making you think that you are not in control of your spending. Is it a long-term pattern that you’re seeing? Is it a short-term pattern that you’re seeing? Is it maybe some spending that happened this weekend or maybe it’s something that you notice every single quarter.
It’s really important for you to identify that because it’s also going to help you to address the root of the issue or to actually have a different conversation with yourself about your spending. Like I think about the fact that if I were to tell you that I’m not in control of my spending, I’d probably fall into the category of like, oh my goodness, I’m having a spending hangover, where you’ve gone on a trip and you told yourself you weren’t going to spend over $500 while you were there, but then you get back and you’re like, oh my goodness I have spent like a thousand dollars and I don’t even know how I spend a thousand dollars, like that might be my example for not feeling like in control of my spending. So identify where you are and then I want you to flip the coin. I want you to flip the coin of like how would you know if you were in control of your spending, like what would be the sign?
So you know right now that you don’t feel in control and maybe that’s because you’re overwhelmed and you’re frustrated with your finances, but paint the picture for yourself. Like how would you know if you were in control of your spending? Maybe for you right now, it’s like I wouldn’t be up at two in the morning thinking about how much credit card debt I have, or I wouldn’t be worried about like how much money I’m spending at the grocery store, or I wouldn’t be underneath the table at brunch, like looking at my banking account and making sure that I have enough money to pay my bill or maybe you’d be able to save money or you’d be able to pay off your credit card at the end of the month.
But like how would you know if you were in control of your spending? I want you to know the markers for yourself because this is going to help you actually understand what does success look like for you. And even in the example that I gave of like, if I told you that I went on a trip and spent a thousand dollars instead of $500, maybe my marker of success is that I would be able to travel and stay within my budget or stay within a hundred dollars of my budget or maybe your market of success would just be knowing how much money you actually spent while you were traveling. So think about how would you know if you were in control of your spending. So I’ve asked you to kind of do two different points of reflection right now and that’s to identify what makes you think that you’re not in control of your spending and then also to flip that coin, so the other side of that is like how would you know if you were in control of your spending? So I just want you to paint those two pictures that if somebody asks you actually know like where you want to move your needle to feel in control of your spending.
Now I’m just going to walk you through two exercises that you can do to be more in control of your spending. The first exercise that I want you to do is to track your spending for the next five days. Ideally, I feel like you should start this maybe on a Thursday or Wednesday. You can actually just start it, you’ll hear this podcast on a Tuesday, you could also start it on a Tuesday. The reason I want you to start it like maybe not on a Monday is because I want you to have some weekend time and I want you to have some during the week time because your money moves differently during the week versus on the weekends, like during the week, I feel like I have the same routine. I go to the gym, I come home, I work, I make dinner, I might go on a walk and I go to bed. Like that’s the things I do. Versus on the weekends it’s like I don’t have the same agenda, I don’t have work. So I might find myself going out to dinner or going to the movies. So money moves differently for me on the weekends than it does during the week, and that’s probably true for you as well.
But I want you to track your spending for the next five days. In the note section, I’m going to link my financial habit tracker. You can use that or you can just use the series of questions that I’m going to give you and you can like write it down on a sheet of paper, keep the notes app in your phone, whatever it is, whatever makes it simple for you. But I want you to be an observer of your own spending habits. So first I want you to think about like, or not even think about, I want you to write down like what did you buy? How much was it? How did you pay for it? So track like did you use cash, credit, debit, maybe used a a gift card. How are you feeling when you made the purchase? And then I want you to identify was the purchase planned or unplanned? So you may be able to do this in the moment while you’re actually buying something or you could even just set aside five minutes at night to be like, I’m going to look at my banking app or I’m going to look at my credit card and look at your purchases.
This is actually a really great opportunity to look at your finances every single day and just seeing how your money’s moving because I know and I guarantee you there are some automated payments that you don’t even know about or you just use your debit card throughout the day or you use your credit card throughout the day and you just don’t have an awareness of like the $1.78 you spent at Whole Foods plus the $10 you spent at Sweet Green and then like the $15 you spent at [08:55 inaudible]. And so you don’t have that awareness because you’re not thinking about it. But this will actually make you like slow down to see where your money is going. So doing it at the end of the day, putting five minutes on the clock to just write it down is actually a really great exercise for you. But if you do this for five days, you’re going to get to observe your spending habits. You’re going to be able to think about like when you think about being in control or being out of control because right now maybe you don’t feel in control of your spending, this is going to give you insight on what you’re doing.
How are you actually spending your money? The biggest shift you need to make in order to be in control of your spending is to actually know where your money is going. And so tracking your money for five days is going to give you this insight on like, where is my money going? You’re going to be able to reflect on your emotions, which is another big component of knowing where your money is going because you might notice that like, oh my goodness, I have like a lot of Amazon purchases in those five days and I noticed that I was like feeling really overwhelmed when I made those purchases or I noticed that I ate out like eight times in five days and I would’ve told you that I only eat out like twice a week and so that might be a level of awareness that you have.
So it’s going to allow you to think about how you’re spending money in relation to one, why you think your spending is out of control. And two, to identify what would need to shift in order for you to feel like you’re in control of your money. So that’s the first activity that I want to walk you through is tracking your spending for the next five days, understanding what are your aha moments if you do this, definitely like find me on instagram@wealthovernow.com or send me an email at Keina@wealthofnow.com and I just want to hear your takeaways. I do this exercise with my clients and it is one of the most fascinating exercises I think that I take them through in the very beginning of working with them one-to-one because generally speaking, I think when we think about tracking our expenses, we’re not tying it to an emotion. We’re not tying it to whether it’s planned or unplanned, but it gives them insight on like, oh wow, I didn’t realize I spent that much money, I just was completely unaware.
And exercise is like non-judgmental. We’re not judging ourselves for where we spent money, how much money we spent, but it’s just in order to enlighten yourself to see where your money is going. And then the next exercise I would tell you to walk through is after you’ve done this five days, I want you to continue the habit so you know what you want your plan to be in order to feel in control of your spending, right? And so if it’s like you don’t want to be thinking about money at night or you want to be able to save money or you want to be able to pay off credit card debt, you need to have a plan. If you want to be able to pay off your credit card debt, like if you went through tracking your spending for five days, you probably want to be using your credit card less, right? Or if you are thinking about not thinking about money at night, maybe you want to actually create a budget so you know where your money is going.
If you actually want to be able to save money, you probably want to institute some automatic savings transfers every single time you get paid. But one of the things that I teach within my five month coaching partnership and something that I really value as a coach is to have weekly money dates. Like you work 40 plus hours a week, you dedicate a lot of your time to earning your six figure income and I want you to pay attention to where your money is going. Like when I talk about money dates with my clients, I’m talking about them reconciling their budget, but also I want them to be doing like the mental work to notice trends in their spending or what’s happening, the shifts that they see in their spending, are they actual shifts or are they not actual shifts in their spending? And so what I mean by that is like, oh my groceries have gone up this last month. Is that because you are buying more groceries? Is it because people were in town? But like I want them to be able to evaluate what’s happening with their spending.
If it’s like a matter of a circumstance because there are may be more people around or is it just because groceries are going up and they need to actually alter their grocery budget. So by committing to weekly money dates, they’re asking themselves these questions every single week because it becomes a part of how they think about managing their finances. But as a part of a weekly money routine for you, what I want you to do is build in a spending evaluation. So you could do this on a Sunday night. You could do it on a Monday because you would’ve had an entire week. And I want you to just think about and actually write it down. I think there’s a lot of power in putting pen to paper and I want you to think like, what did I spend money on this week? So you could open up your app and scroll through, you could open it up on your computer, open up your credit card statement and look at what did you spend money on this week.
And I actually want you to evaluate your purchases. So I want you to be thinking about what purchases did I love and why did I love them? So maybe you bought a gym membership and you’re really excited about that because it allows you to move your body. And so that was a purchase that you loved this week or maybe you took a friend out for lunch and it’s something that you loved because you were able to really invest in community in that time. And then the next question I want you to think about is what purchases would you want to rethink? So if you redid this week and you’re looking at your spending, what purchases would you want to rethink? Maybe you notice that you bought lunch every single day this week and it’s not judgment, but you just notice that you bought lunch every single day this week, but you also bought $300 worth of groceries, but you never actually packed your lunch even though you told yourself you were going to pack your lunch.
And so you want to rethink how you’re spending money on food. And so that’s how you’re rethinking because The question is like what purchases do I want to rethink and why? I know sometimes that can happen for me where I look at the fact, I’m like, oh my goodness, I’ve spent so much money eating out this week and that actually wasn’t my intention to spend money on eating out. Like I want to evaluate why I spent so much money eating out and I want to shift my habits for next week. And that actually leads me into the third reflection point in evaluating your spending is asking yourself how do I want to be intentional about my spending this week? I think this is the most powerful thing you can do to be in control of your spending, is to name how you want to be intentional about your spending this week. This is not grounded in shame, it’s not grounded in judgment. It’s grounded in you looking at the fact that you have more awareness on how money is moving.
You know the purchases that you loved, you know why you loved your purchases and you know what the purchases that you want to rethink. So it’s going to help you move closer to your goal of being in control of your spending because you know for yourself what that marker looks like. And so if you’re able to rethink how you’re spending money at the grocery store or how you’re spending money eating out, guess what that’s going to mean? It’s going to mean more money in your bank account. It’s going to mean less money on your credit card. It’s going to mean more money in your savings because you’re not going to be adjusting and modifying for those things at the end of the month because you have this practice that you’ve built in to evaluate your spending on a weekly basis.
So in my five month coaching partnership, I help my clients dial in their spending. And so the first step of this process is helping them create a budget and then they learn how to actually use their budget as a tool to make financial decisions. So each week they’re able to refine their budget, which I always tell my clients, your budget is a working document. It’s not something that we set and forget. We’re always adjusting it as you learn more about yourself and what you want to include in your budget or what you want to take out of your budget because it doesn’t serve you. And so on a recent coaching call with one of my clients which definitely tell you like, I want to get in control of my spending. But my client Elle, through our coaching calls, she’s been able to identify that she was spending more than she wanted to spend on eating out.
And she’s like, oh my goodness, here’s a DoorDash, here’s another DoorDash and I also went grocery shopping. So we’ve been able to use her budget as a guide, but we’ve also been able to use my overspending framework so that she can coach herself on her spending habits. Remember, I want you to have your budget, which is a tool, but I also want you to be able to shift your mindset and so I want you to learn how to self-coach and really be aware of how you’re thinking about money because a big component of being in control of your spending habits is bringing in a level of financial awareness and then also reshaping how you talk to yourself about money. So in coaching, I use a process similar to the one that I laid out for you in this episode, and we are able to work together to help you reshape how you think about money.
So many of the behaviors that we have with money, they’re learned, you maybe learned because you saw how your parents were spending money or they’re just like societal things. You’ve picked up that you’re supposed to buy all of the Lululemon attire to be cool at the gym, but you’ve never actually asked yourself, do I like Lululemon or would I rather have Athleta? Whatever that is, right? But you’re not actually questioning your spending habits, you’re not questioning your mindset because you haven’t actually slowed down enough to reevaluate your own habits. So this is truly the power of coaching, like having a coach that’s in your corner to talk about your habits or things that are making you feel like you’re out of control with your money is going to help you move the needle. You’re also going to be able to move the needle in a way that’s nonjudgmental.
So in my coaching partnerships, when I’m working with clients for our 45 minute coaching calls, I’m really helping them reframe the habits and identify like maybe where a certain habit was picked up. And then most importantly, I’m helping them actually make progress towards their goal of saving money and paying down debt through the process. So here’s the beautiful part. You can feel out of control with your money while working with me, but you could also be saving money and paying down debt at the same time because we are making shifts each and every coaching call to move you closer to your goal. You are not going to start as the same person that came and applied to work with me as the person that comes out of this five month coaching partnership. So if you are someone who’s looking to gain control of your spending because you are tired of being up at night thinking about your finances, or you want to actually feel like the six-figure earner that you are, I would invite you to apply to work with me.
It’s September right now at the time that I’m recording this podcast episode. And we will have five dedicated months to work together one-on-one, which means that going into 2024, you’re already going to have a crystal clear plan for how you want to manage your money and you’re going to feel the most in control of your money that you’ve ever felt before closing out this year and going into next year. So you can head to my website@wealthovernow.com at the top, you can click to apply to work with me, or you can just go to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment. I look forward to hearing from you and working with you for five months so you can create a financial system that allows you to spend money drama free. Have a good one.
Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
