If you feel like your spending is out of control, it’s time to revisit your budget. An effective budget isn’t about restriction; it’s about aligning your money goals and values with your spending habits. Getting intentional with your spending will shift your financial taste buds and change the way you think and feel about money!
In today’s episode, I share how a client has progressed from uncertainty around her finances to drama-free spending. I share a situation where she felt like she had overspent and how we worked together to overcome feelings of judgment and shame. In just a few months, this client has gained clarity and control over her finances and developed a healthier relationship with money. Now, she is empowered to spend money on things that really matter to her without destroying her budget.
Are you ready to change your financial taste buds and save thousands of dollars without feeling restricted? Tune in to learn how intentional budgeting and mindful spending will radically change your finances!
Stay tuned for insights on these topics:
- [01:45] Helping clients through feelings of failure
- [06:20] Financial taste buds change
- [15:00] Impact of intentional spending
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to shift your financial tastes buds and spend intentionally!
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON, SHIFTING YOUR FINANCIAL TASTE BUDS: THE POWER OF INTENTIONAL SPENDING, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW BRENT DITCHED PERFECTIONISM AND GOT INTENTIONAL WITH HIS SPENDING!
Transcript for “Shifting Your Financial Taste Buds: The Power of Intentional Spending”
Intro: 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.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. So today I actually want to share with you like a candid moment that I had with a client and if you’re on my email list, you’ve seen this in an email. But I wanted to do something a little bit more formal because sometimes I’m like the things that happen on my client sessions, they need to live somewhere and I want to be able to tell them, or I want to be able to share them with you in ways that can be really impactful. So I’m going to just let you know right now I’m going to tell you something about nutrition and it’s going to relate to money because there are so many parallels. But I was talking to one of my clients on a recent coaching session and we have been working together for about six weeks and on one of our recent sessions she was telling me like, oh my goodness, Keina I’ve messed up everything and let me also let you guys know that my clients, they can be super dramatic and I hold space for the drama.
So if you are scared of like, oh my goodness, I need to have it all together to work with Keina, you really don’t. But yes, my clients come in with a lot of drama and we are able to sift through the drama that after that 45 minute coaching call the drama is far less than it was. So my client, she comes onto the coaching call, she’s like, oh my goodness, I’ve like spent all of my drama-free spending money, like things are just really bad. I don’t know if I can do this, like I’m not sure. And I was like, okay, can we actually take a step back and let’s look at the facts. It had been 13 days since our last coaching call, 13 days since her husband had gotten his paycheck. And I was like, can we actually look at like what has actually happened?
I know that your little squirrel brain is going back to being in this place of fear where you think that you are going to mess everything up because that I think is one of the number one fears that people have working with me is like I’ve tried budgeting so many times before and it’s never worked. And my client, she’s been married for almost 30 years this year and she’s like I’ve just never been good at managing money the entire time that I’ve been married. And since we had been working together, she had gotten a glimpse of like what her future could look like. She saw money saved. And she’s feeling really good and she just had a down moment in the fact that she felt like her spending had gotten out of control.
So after we actually looked at the facts, I’m like, hey, can you actually tell me what is making you feel like everything has gone awry. She’s like, oh my goodness, my hair appointment costs more. And then something broke in the house and then this happened. So basically what she’s telling me is like life happened, which that’s what happens with life. And so my perspective being her coach is that what really had happened was like your hair appointment came sooner than we had actually anticipated. And so because you had just actually started the process of getting the cycles of your money into a flow where you always have the money available, it just like we kind of fell into the middle of the cycle, totally normal.
Something broke in your house, also normal, but you had something in your home repair fund already which helped you offset the costs. Like we literally were able to talk through everything that had happened that made her feel like her spending had gotten out of control. And what I was able to do was really just help her normalize what was happening, like nothing has gone wrong. Yes, you probably spent a little bit more money than you anticipated, but also you still have more money in the bank than you’ve ever had before and payday hasn’t hit. So let’s actually like let’s celebrate what’s working, like that is one of the things that I’ll always bring people back to is like, can we actually talk about what’s working for you and what looks different this week than would’ve looked, three months ago or six months ago, but just kind of bringing them back to the shifts in the changes that they’re actually experiencing in the container.
So we can really like, wrap a warm blanket around the part of them that’s scared that everything is going to blow up in their face, which under my watch things don’t blow up and even not under my watch, like things aren’t blowing up. Like you’ve heard my clients on the podcast talk through the things that they are able to do and manage on their own even though they’re not working with me anymore because I’m teaching my clients also how to think and care for their finances. So it’s not just about a spreadsheet, it’s about so much more than that. But one of the things that had happened is I think she had about $1,200 that she had newly put into a savings account, which she hadn’t saved money before in the past and she had spent some of the money in her savings account, but also like I told you, she had a hair appointment that cost her more than she thought it was going to cost.
So like the savings was there, she had money available and it was more so her needing to be okay with not being perfect. We’re just working the system and learning how to work the system. So there’s going to be shifts that happen in the beginning. So I’m going to fast forward. So that was like one session we had and we just had a session a couple weeks ago by the time this recording comes out and she was reflecting on, she’s like Keina, one of the purchases that I made and I realized that I wouldn’t do it again is that I went to the antique store, which is like one of the places I love to spend money and I took money out of my savings to purchase something at the antique store. And I realize now that wasn’t even worth it.
And she’s like Keina, you don’t even have to tell me that that purchase wasn’t worth it. And what I was telling her is I was like, your financial taste buds are shifting. And this is what I want to talk to you about today is this idea about financial taste buds and you’re probably like Keina, what are you talking about? How did you get to taste Buds? Well one of the stories that I was sharing with her was that years ago, I mean gosh it’s probably been like 15 years ago, which is crazy to say out loud, 10 to 15 years ago I did a whole 30 and I remember after I did a whole 30, which a whole 30 is like you eliminate like all processed foods and sugars and beans and all this stuff. But I did a whole 30 and I remember after the whole 30 I couldn’t tolerate sugar.
It was like not something that I could stand anymore. And what I realized in my coffee that I really enjoy is cream over the sugar and since in the past like 10 to 15 years, my taste buds have literally changed when it comes to sugar. I just can’t tolerate sugar at the same level that I used to be able to, like I used to love orange juice. I don’t really care for orange juice anymore because it tastes overly sweet to me. I don’t really buy juice unless it’s like not simply Lemonade, there’s one that like barely has any sugar in it and so I can like drink that one. But it’s to the point where I could probably drink unsweetened tea, I can drink unsweetened tea, I can drink coffee that’s black because literally my taste buds have changed when it comes to sugar.
But I wouldn’t have discovered that I could do or live without sugar or my taste buds wouldn’t have shifted if I hadn’t have like gone through the whole 30 process. And granted I think Whole 30, like it’s not a sustainable lifestyle if you just are living off of Whole 30. But because there was a shift that happened in the eating habits that I had, it caused me to be more aware of what I actually can do with or do without. So like I told you, I was like, I really love cream. I could do without the sugar. That became apparent for me. And so I was telling her about that shift that happened with my taste buds because I think, like as she was explaining to me her antique purchase, I was like your financial taste buds will change during this process.
And I want to share this with you because I think that one of the biggest misconceptions, especially with working with a coach is that I’m going to tell you to stop spending money on things. Some of you haven’t reached out to work with me because you think I’m going to tell you that you can’t buy clothes, you can’t buy the furniture, you can’t go shopping, you can’t buy cosmetics. You think I’m going to dictate those things for you and I’m not, I actually want to know how you want to spend money because I think that’s one of the things that we leave out of budgets the most and that’s why your budgets don’t work because they’re just focused on paying bills.
I want to know how you want to spend because I want to create a drama free lifestyle around that. And what’s happening for my client, because we actually have her budget in place and it is not just including her bills, but it includes like the things that she likes to spend money on. Like she has supplements that she takes, she enjoys being able to go shopping. She spends like $300 every probably like six to eight weeks to get her hair done. We’ve named the things that she wants to be able to spend money on, she wants to be able to take a vacation with her husband. We’ve put all of those things in. So her financial goals and the things that she values financially, they’re in front of her and because they’re in front of her, it is going to clarify some of her other purchases.
And when she was looking at her antique purchase, what she realized is she’s like, I spent $300, technically I have the money to spend the $300 on this antique purchase, but is it really valuable? Is this how I want to spend my money? So what happens during the five month coaching process and when you really get clear on the things that you value financially and you value your goals, is that you are able to look at your spending habits in a different way. Like right now you’re probably looking at your spending habits out of shame. You feel ashamed because you had to use your credit card to pay for your tires. You feel ashamed because on your credit card are the clothes that you bought and you knew that you couldn’t pay your credit card each month or like pay it off each month.
So you have a lot of shame attached to your spending. But when you are able to switch to what I call wealth budgeting and being able to create space for how you want to spend money drama free, not just paying bills, bills are important. But when you’re able to actually create space for how you want to spend, you will ask yourself like, do I actually want to be spending my money this way? It’s a very different question and it is not attached to feelings of judgment or to shame, like you’ll be able to look at your purchases based off of a value that they create in your life.
One of the examples that I love to share from the past is like my client, Martha, I remember that she wanted to go out to lunch once a week and she uses this lunch to be able to cowork with a friend and she uses the working time to actually be able to get ahead on work so she can be present and be at home with her kids and with her husband. And so the value of that 15 or $20 lunch is that she’s able to build a relationship with someone, she’s able to pour into herself. She’s able to get ahead in her work so she can be more present with her kids. So that 15 to $20 has an ROI for her that’s like, I’m not going to shame you to be like, oh my goodness, you could be putting that $15 into your savings.
That’s why I don’t teach that like latte principle, like your latte is not making you broke. If you decided to give up your daily latte habit, it’s going to be in service of something else that you said you valued or some other financial goal that you said was important to you. And you are going to be asking yourself like, does spending this money in this way, is it actually serving me in a way that feels good to me? But when I’m talking about like your financial taste buds changing, you’re just not going to have the same type of cravings, for lack of a better word, as you would’ve had in the past.
The client that I was telling you about with antique shopping, we were talking through some of her other purchases and she’s like, oh my goodness, Keina like in the past, she’s like I can already start to see and this is in six weeks. She’s like, I can already start to see how I’m thinking about my spending differently. She’s like, in the past I would go and there are like three lipstick colors that I have to buy and the colors are probably like within shades of one another. But I’m feeling like I just have to have it and she’s like, I can see myself not needing to buy the three lipsticks. I can choose to buy one if I actually need the lipstick or I can choose to buy zero because I’m just thinking about like, is that how I actually want to spend my money right now?
And I would say that in the past she’s buying the three lipsticks because she doesn’t know when she’s going to be able to do that again, because her money, before she started working with me, her money was just like leaving her bank account and she didn’t know why it was leaving her bank account or how it was leaving her bank account. And so she felt like she needed to spend and buy things before her money was out of her bank account, because everything is going everywhere and she’s making purchases. Now she’s in a place where she’s like, I’ve had more money than I’ve ever had before. It feels really good to have a lot of money, but because she’s also not in constant fear that she’s not going to have money, she actually has the space to be able to think through purchases.
She has the space to be able to think through whether or not her purchase is actually something that’s going to be meaningful for her. And it’s just from a completely different space than even one that you may be in right now. Like I said, where it’s attached to shame, it’s attached to judgment because you feel a constant lack in your life. And you don’t actually have a wealth budgeting framework that helps you actually sift through how you want to spend money. And once again, like the process that I teach isn’t restrictive, you are going to shift your financial taste buds over time. And the single impact of being able to shift your financial taste buds is going to save you literally thousands of dollars in the next six months, in the next year, in the next five years. I’m thinking about my client and like I said, she said she spent, I think about $300 is what she took from her savings to buy this antique purchase.
And the frequency in which she was spending $300 at the antique store, let’s just say she was doing it once a month. That’s $3,600 a year that before working with me, she didn’t know where it was going. She like literally had no clue where it was going. Whereas now she is more aware of her money and she’s not just going to be losing $300 every single month on just purchases that she’s spending on mindlessly because she has a framework to be able to filter her purchases through. And this also is not telling you that she’s never going to go to the antique store. I can tell you she’s going to go to the antique store because she’s like artsy and like that’s her thing. But when she spends the $300 the next time she’s going to be really aware of it and the impact of the $300 she’s going to know it came out of this category.
I know exactly, how this is going to contribute to my life and she’s going to shift to a place where she feels really good about her purchases, like she’s not hiding behind her own back making purchasing decisions, like she gets to make them out in the open. And so when you’re able to recalibrate and think about what do my financial taste buds, like what are the things that I always want to be able to spend money on? What are the things that don’t actually feel that good to me when they’ve gotten into my home and I’ve spent money on them, like I can even just tell you for myself, there are some things that I will buy on sale, but it has become less and less and less and less that I feel like I have to take advantage of a sale.
And that’s really just come from over time watching my spending habits. I posted a long time ago, I don’t even know if it’s in my current Instagram feed, but I remember buying a pair of shoes at Ann Taylor and I bought a pair of shoes. I’ve bought so many pairs of shoes because they were “on sale.” And then what has happened is that I’ve never worn the shoes, but I almost have like this fear that if I don’t get them then I won’t have shoes for that one random occasion that I don’t even know what the occasion is. So my financial taste buds have shifted in terms of like how willing I am to take advantage of a sale. It’s different if I’m taking advantage of a sale on something that I know I’m going to use. So for instance, I use Aveda hair products and they have sales periodically throughout the year.
And so Mother’s Day is generally one of the times of the year that they may have a sale. And so like I feel good about taking advantage of that sale and it’s kind of like the thing that I do annually. I can get like my leader of shampoo conditioner or whatever, but it feels really meaningful and purposeful. Whereas like going and just like looking aimlessly at a website, at shoes, especially when I don’t actually know what I’m looking for, I am less prone to take advantage of a sale in that respect because what’s happened is that I bring things into my house that I never take the sticker off of and then they end up going to Goodwill or like to a friend. So I just know for myself that sales aren’t really in my financial taste buds.
They have to appear in a certain way and it’s generally I’ll take advantage of a sale on things that I always know that I’m going to not always see, that was extreme, but things that I know that I’m going to use in my life. Brent will be listening to this podcast, I’m going to call him out, but another sale that I’m like, oh, Keina, you don’t need to take advantage of this sale all the time is Bath and Body Works. Guys, can I just tell you, just do this, if you are a sale person, if you have like a thing that you always find yourself buying when it’s on sale, I want you to say no to the next time it’s on sale. And then I want you to track when it’s on sale again, because you can start learning some of the cycles for some of these companies.
Bath and Bodyworks would be one of them. Bath and Bodyworks has a sale on their like hand soap and their fragrances, their like plugin fragrances. They have a sale all the time. So you don’t have to feel like you need to pull the trigger on a sale immediately when you see it. And that goes, like that speaks to your financial maturity and a shift in your financial taste buds when you’re able to see those things and be like, hey, guess what? You’re not missing out on anything because they’re going to have a sale literally in another three weeks. And actually if you put it in your cart, they’re going to send you something that’s like, hey, you have a missed cart opportunity. Here’s a 15% opportunity to be able to buy the thing.
But you can’t have that level of clarity if you don’t have a structure and system around your finances because you haven’t actually had a filter for how to think through how you want to spend money. And so just going back to my client, like it’s going to be so much fun in the next like three and a half months that we’re together watching her shift her financial taste buds to see what does she value spending money on? What are the goals in which she wants to lean on? And this is where, like for me, budgeting isn’t restrictive. It’s about helping you get to a space where you can spend money drama free. And part of like me promising to help my clients have like 25% more money in their budget, is also this subtle shift that’s going to happen with their financial taste buds. Like in the beginning, they’re going to have a lot of numbers that may feel a little inflated in their budget and then in a month they’re going to be like, okay, now I realize I actually don’t want to spend money in this way. I want to repurpose that money and put it here in my budget. But literally the wealth budgeting process helps you get clearer and clearer and clearer and more in control of how you want to spend money.
So thank you for listening to my musings. I literally just turned on my mic today and I was like, I need to record this because I think that it’s important for you to be able to take this new thought into your life about your financial taste buds and really thinking about like, regardless if you worked with me or not, but like think about some of the things that maybe you would’ve spent money on in the past that now you don’t spend money on. And if you are in my coaching container and you’re like going through this process or you’ve been in my coaching container in the past, you can just like, just question like what are some of the shifts you’ve noticed in and how you spend, because I think it’s really important for you to capture them for yourself and you can keep, just kind of like a running log because it’s also going to help you for future expenses to be able to decide like how do I know if something is a hell yes for me?
And how can I decide if something is like a not right now? And once again, it doesn’t mean that you’re being restrictive, but you’re being able to be more intentional and more purposeful with how you spend money day to day, month to month, year to year. And it’s going to help you ultimately be able to build wealth and be in a place where you can spend money, more money drama-free. So thank you so much for tuning in. And if this resonated with you and you’re like Keina, yes, yes, yes. And you want to do this work in a container with me, go to my website or you can go to the show notes. If you go to my website, it’s Wealthovernow.com and at the top it says like, book a call, but just go ahead, like book the call, apply to work with me and we will work together for five months. And you’ll see like, oh my goodness, my financial taste buds are changing. Keina did not lie to me and she’s helped me create a lifestyle that allows me to spend money drama-free. So thank you so much for tuning in and until next time, have a great 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.
