Permission Spending: The Hidden Reason You Feel Broke With a Six-Figure Income

Have you ever said yes to something that felt so good in the moment and then later you’re looking at your accounts like, “Wait. Why did I do that?” 

That’s permission spending.Permission spending is spending from a feeling instead of a plan. It’s when you say yes, without seeing what your money is already responsible for.

In this episode, I’m walking you through the difference between permission spending and permission budgeting, and why tracking your expenses, even with a budgeting software, is not the same thing as having a real plan for the life you’re living. 

You’ll learn the three jobs your money needs to do, how my three money bucket system creates clarity, and why budgeting is not meant to restrict you, it’s meant to enable you to say yes to the things that ​make ​life ​feel ​good ​for ​you, without guilt, stress, or regret afterward.

Episode Highlights:

• [03:10] What permission spending actually is and why it feels so justified
• [05:00] Where money shame comes from after the “yes”
• [06:25] Why tracking isn’t budgeting and what gets missed when you only plan monthly bills
• [08:40] Permission budgeting and the 3 jobs your money must do
• [10:00] The three money buckets that protects money for your needs, your future, and your fun
• [16:10] What we do in coaching and how to budget for the last time

Press play on this episode of Money Files to learn how permission budgeting stops the “I’ll figure it out later” cycle, so your needs are covered, your future is funded, and your spending is intentional.

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 this hit home and you want to go deeper into permission budgeting, check out Episode 179: Permission Budgeting: How to Overcome Overwhelm and Take Control of Your Finances and Episode 190: Lisa’s Story: How Lisa Stopped Using Her Planner To Budget.

Transcript for “Permission Spending: The Hidden Reason You Feel Broke With a Six-Figure Income”

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 start today with a moment that made me actually create this podcast. And it was in a coaching session this last week. I think it captures something I see all the time with people who make good money and they still feel stressed about it. So I was on a call and we were doing what I love to do. We were looking at my client’s numbers, we were looking at her biweekly paycheck. She had some bonuses and we were in the midst of what I call like my money table and really looking, okay, like let’s lay it all out. Let’s put the pieces all together. My first goal for her was to get her out of the paycheck to paycheck cycle and to help her see exactly when that was going to be.

And I think for the first time she could see like how things were going to clear up and she was going to have more ease with her money, be able to put things on autopay, not like playing financial Tetris. Maybe about 24 hours after that session, she sent me an email and she told me like, Keina, I forgot that I commissioned a necklace for $1,500. And in her email she was like, I don’t know why I did that. And she’s like, I do know why I did that. At the time I didn’t have home repair so I thought that I could pay for it. And I remember thinking the necklace isn’t the problem, the timing isn’t even really the problem. The real question is, who was she when she said yes to that necklace? Because when she said yes, she didn’t feel irresponsible, she felt excited, she felt like herself.

She probably thought I’ll just use my next bonuses, it’s fine. And then life happened. Her home repairs, other expenses she didn’t plan for and all of the other expenses that come with adulting. And suddenly that necklace wasn’t just a necklace, it was sitting in the place as her need to pay for her house, her need to get caught up on her bills and her need for financial safety. And that’s what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the difference between permission spending and permission budgeting. So permission spending is when something shows up in your life that feels really good, it might be a trip, like a treatment, like a facial treatment, a big purchase, something for your kids, something that makes you feel like yourself again. And in that moment you say, yes, you think I deserve this. I’ve been working really hard.

I’ll figure it out. I’ll just use my bonus. I got some extra money coming in next month or even, I’ll clean it up next month. And that’s what I call permission spending. And here’s the part most people don’t want to hear. When you say yes to something, without knowing what your money is already responsible for, you are making a decision. You’re just making it in the dark. You’re deciding that the thing in front of you matters more than the things you can’t see yet. And sometimes that’s okay, but when it happens over and over, it keeps you stuck. In your head you’ve paid for it, you have a plan, you have future money, you had an intention. But that same money is also supposed to be your car repairs, your house maintenance, your dental work, your savings, your buffer when something goes wrong and your money can’t do multiple jobs. You can’t ask $1 to be a necklace and a new transmission and an emergency fund.

It just doesn’t work like that. So when life shows up, when something breaks, when a surprise bill comes, that’s when you start relying on your credit card. That’s when your savings account gets drained. That’s when your goals get delayed. And now the thing that you are excited about becomes some source of stress or it becomes some source of shame for you. Not because it was wrong, but simply because you never protected your ability to say yes to that thing. This is where so much money shame comes from. You get the thing, you feel good for a minute and then something else happens. A bill hits, a repair shows up, a child needs something, life does what life always does. And now you feel like you’re in a space where you’re juggling different things. So you tell yourself, I shouldn’t have done that. I can’t be trusted, I’m bad with money.

But what’s actually happening is that you don’t have a system that separates your wants, from your needs, from your future. I’m going to say that again. You have never had a system that separates your wants from your needs, from your future. And the reason you don’t have that is you are most likely anchored in a list of bills, you might even have what you call a budget. This client that I was working with, she actually used Ynab, like she was tracking her expenses. But tracking and budgeting are not the same thing, not in the way that I think about it. Just because you use a budgeting software doesn’t actually mean you’re budgeting. When I am thinking about budgeting, we are planning ahead. We are thinking about what are the patterns that keep me stuck and how am I putting those into my day-to-day considerations?

So if you are using a tracking system or you’re using list of bills, you’re not going to capture your annual expenses, you’re not going to capture irregular cost. The things that will absolutely come up, but they don’t show up neatly each and every month. So people think that they’re doing fine because the bills are paid, but underneath that, there’s no solid financial foundation. That’s why people can make $150,000 a year, $250,000 a year, even $500,000 a year and still feel like living paycheck to paycheck. It’s not because they’re not earning enough money, but it’s because they lean into permission spending, with every increased dollar, whether it comes through a bonus, whether it comes through a raise, they give themselves permission to spend. They spend on nicer trips, they spend on better clothes, more convenience, more lifestyle, but they don’t actually make sure that they have a stronger structure or a better financial system to make sure that they are separating their wants, they are protecting their needs and they’re protecting their future.

So they end up with bigger lifestyle expenses and a very weak financial foundation. And this is where when I’m thinking about permission spending, I want to disrupt it with what I’m going to call permission budgeting. So permission budgeting is when you decide ahead of time what your money is allowed to do. And there are three jobs that your money should be doing. First, there’s money that has to be protected. This is your mortgage or your rent, your utilities, your annual bills, your food, the things that actually keep life stable for you. The things that we need to know. Second, there’s money that has to be saved because if you are an adult with any form of property, a car, a house, even children, I know children aren’t property, but if you have any of these things in your life, any of these assets, then you want to make sure that you are building future savings to take care of the expenses that come with owning a car, having kids, your own medical needs, your desire to travel.

So that needs to be the second job for your money. And the third job is that there’s money that gets to be spent. This can be for joy, this can be for fun. This can be things that feel like enhance your identity. This is the stuff that just makes life feel good for you. And when you have these three clearly separated, you don’t have to wonder if you’re allowed to spend, the answer is already in the system because you have money that’s protected for your needs, you have money that’s protected for your future, and you have money that’s protected for your fun. So that means that you don’t have to feel guilty, you don’t have to steal from your future, you don’t have to use your credit to spend on something that needs to be done right now or even something that you desire right now.

You can just spend what’s actually meant to be spent. And that’s what a permission budget does. It’s not going to tell you no, it’s going to tell you this is what you can say yes to. And I’ve got your back on the other things that you don’t even know are coming up, but we got you, we got a buffer for you. Like that’s what I want your money saying to you. I want your money to say like, hey boo, I got you. And I don’t want that to come from your offer letter. I want that to come from the structure that you have set up for your finances. So I want to tell you about one of my clients and she’s on my podcast as well. I can link it in the show notes. I think the podcast came out last year. And Lisa, she is a single mom.

She loves to travel, like that is her thing. And she would tell you like, I’m not buying a lot of clothes. I’m not really trying to even, I’m not buying bags, like I want to travel. That is a thing that lights her up. I feel like I didn’t count, but I feel like she probably took at least five trips while we were working together during the five months. And when she came to me, she was in this cycle of booking trips. She would feel excited and then something else would end up on her credit card. And it wasn’t, once again, not lavish spending, but because she was booking the trips with the money in her bank account because that felt responsible, what would happen is later on down the road, she would need that money for something else. Like something that you couldn’t have predicted, if you will. If you’re not actually thinking about the assets in your life that you need to protect. 

So the trips seemed to be paid for, but they weren’t paid for because that money was supposed to be funding something else, like that money should have been going towards savings. So prior to working with me, she would use a planner and she’d write down all of her dates and she was very diligent about updating her planner. We switched her to my three money bucket system and everything changed. She was finally able to pay off debt. I want to say we paid off two credit cards while we were working together and had a very clear plan to pay off the rest of her debt. She started saving money for the first time, like money went into an emergency fund that she wasn’t touching, money went into a trip fund. We also saved money for things that we also knew were coming up like her son needing tutoring in school. Like those are the things that we started to save for and not just waiting for when they are due again, which if I know you, that’s what you like to do. 

And she was able to still travel while we were working together. Like I told you, she took, I want to say at least five trips. Either she took them or she planned them while we were working together. And one of the trips she actually took, she booked it while we were working together, she took it after we worked together, was she took her son on a Disney cruise. And I remember getting an email from her that she’s like, I love coming back Keina and I don’t have to be scared to look at any of my bank accounts. I don’t have to be scared to open up any of my statements because I knew that I had the money for this trip.

And so she had permission budgeting, she was able to say yes where she wanted to say yes. Something that was important to her as a mom, was that she was able to give her son also these opportunities to be able to travel. And she was able to do exactly that. So she also went on a trip for her 40th birthday. And I would say the biggest transformation for her around travel was that she was able to come back from all of these different excursions and not feel guilty because they were funded by her permission budget. They weren’t funded by her emergency fund, not by her future money, not by credit cards, but they were funded by literally a bank account, that name at the top was travel. And that was one of her goals. That was her vision and we put that into her plan.

You might have the thought that budgeting is restrictive, but when you don’t have a budget, that doesn’t actually mean that you have more freedom. Like you have the evidence of your life right now, that’s not freedom, that’s not you feeling financially safe. It actually delays. It has like delayed consequences because you say yes to something and you may feel great about that thing right then, but then a month from now, a week from now when you are trying to figure out how to pay for something, that’s when you experience the consequence of not having a budget, the restrictiveness of actually not having a budget. I want you to have a budget that doesn’t actually take away from you saying yes, I want your budget to protect your yeses. And I want your budget to allow you to say yes to the things that bring you joy.

And I want your budget to provide peace when something comes up that you didn’t feel like you could have predicted, or when you want to show up for someone and maybe you want to be generous or maybe you feel like I want to be able to help my parents, or I want to be able to help a sibling. I want your budget to allow you to do that without taking away from the things that you’ve said are important to you in your life. So that’s exactly what we do in one-to-one coaching. We’re not making your budget something that’s restrictive. I want you to budget for the last time. I want you to have a budget that you’re like, Keina, this budget took me through 2026 and it’s preparing me for 2027. 

I have clients that I worked with in the very beginning of my business that are still using their budget because they learned to budget for the last time and their budget is supporting them in different seasons of their life. So I’m going to help you build a permission budget that’s going to protect your bills, your savings, and still leave room for the things that make life feel good for you. You don’t have to stop doing things that you want. You just need a financial system that allows you protect the things that are important, like your bills, to be able to protect your savings so you have free space to be able to spend without second guessing whether or not your spending is going to get you in trouble down the road. 

So if you are tired of your permission spending constantly competing with your ability to have safety, that’s what we work on in coaching. So apply to work with me, go to the link in my show notes and grab a spot on my calendar. We have an hour for a consult. You just get to tell me about, what are the challenges, what have you tried, and then I can tell you how I think I can help you in my five month coaching container. Thank you so much for tuning in and I look forward to just talking to 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.