January is a popular month for No Spend challenges. But temporary financial restriction is not the answer to better money habits. Let’s ditch the challenges and focus on a budgeting plan that fosters financial clarity and allows us to spend purposefully.
In today’s episode, I expose the pitfalls of short-term money challenges. We are not doing No Spend challenges in 2024! Instead, we will create a sustainable system that aligns with our desired lifestyle. By shifting away from a scarcity mindset, we pave the way for a positive and drama-free approach to spending.
Say goodbye to restrictive money challenges and welcome the freedom that comes with a structured and mindful approach to our finances!
Stay tuned to hear insights on these critical topics during this episode:
[02:00] Why no spend challenges are problematic
[07:00] Creating a system to spend money drama-free
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn why no spend challenges don’t work and what to do instead!
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, SKIP THE NO SPEND CHALLENGE – LEARN HOW TO SAVE & SPEND MONEY DRAMA-FREE CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR SPENDING!
Transcript for ”Skip the No Spend Challenge – Learn How to Save & Spend Money Drama-Free”
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 I’m just going to go ahead and tell you all, today I want to talk about no spend challenges. And so no spend challenge, which I feel like so many people do it in January, you may be guilty of having done a no spend challenge. But your no spend challenge is that you’re going to tell yourself that you’re not going to spend any money for the whole month of January. And your belief is that is going to help you reign your finances in, recover from Christmas and restricting your spending is the thing that you need to get yourself in a good place with your money. And you need something that feels quick, that feels fast, that potentially makes you feel like you have some sense of accomplishment. So you’re telling your friends about how you’re using everything at home and you haven’t spent any money at Target. “Girl, I ain’t been on Amazon.”
But what happens is on February 1st, after you’ve done your 31 days of no spending, the whole world is open, your wallet’s back open, your Apple pay is back open, your bank account is back open, your Amazon is back open. And because you’ve restricted yourself for 30 days and you’ve denied yourself from what you like to do, you are increasingly curious about how you can spend money on February 1st and you want to spend money on February 2nd. You want to spend money on February 3rd. And so the progress that you think that you made in February, which was like to restrict yourself, is that you wipe all of that progress away with your February spending. So you went from spending $0 in January to maybe spending $2,000 in February.
And so that can just put you into a space where you’re talking to yourself about your habits again and you see yourself as, you know what, I’m never going to be able to fix my current money habits unless I tell myself that I can’t spend, I’m going to say that again. I’m never going to be able to fix my spending habits unless I can’t spend. And so you can put yourself in a space where you just feel defeated, you feel frustrated, you feel deprived. I think a no spend challenge, it’s the diet equivalent of like Whole 30, oh my goodness, like doing some kind of fast and I’m not necessarily coming for y’all that do intermittent fasting. But you’re like, I’m not going to have any sugar. I’m not going to have any bread. And so if we step away, it’s like, what do you actually want?
There’s a lifestyle you’re trying to create for yourself. And so you’re using all of these tools to get you there really quickly. And so if you’ve ever done like the whole thirties, and don’t get me wrong guys, I’ve done a whole 30, that’s why I can talk about it. But if you think about it, if you’ve restricted yourself and you told yourself you can’t have it, then when you do see it, your face, especially in the dieting sense, just face plant into whatever you told yourself that you can’t have and you’re not able to actually build a system that’s going to create the lifestyle that you want, which is maybe to feel good in your body.
With finances what you want when I think about the lifestyle, is like you want to be able to spend money without having to check your bank account. You want to feel like you’re in a really good place to help you build wealth and you want to feel good about retirement. Maybe you’ve had a situation where like parents, you’re watching them right now and you’re like, I cannot end up like that. But when you go back to thinking about how to get there, you can’t get there with a no spend challenge. A no spend challenge isn’t going to help you build wealth. A no spend challenge isn’t going to help you spend money drama free. A no spend challenge is going to create drama. It’s going to create drama for your mind because it feeds a scarcity mindset that you have. You already think that, oh my goodness, like I can’t, oh I can’t do anything if I like put myself on a budget.
Those are the things like you’ll probably have a whole body reaction if I tell you, oh my goodness, I want you to have a budget. Your brain can tell me a million reasons why you don’t want to have a budget. It could go back to your childhood, it could go back to the year that you made $40,000. It can maybe go back to when you were bankrupt, it could go back to a lot of different things. And it’s going to tell you, you make way too much money to be on a budget. That’s what happens. And so you try to fix and cure your current situation with these no spend challenges. I need you to stop because the root cause is that you don’t have any systems for your money. I’ve never done, never ever done a no spend challenge.
In fact, I love spending. If y’all saw my Apple Pay or you saw my Amazon, you would be like, oh, Keina hangs out at the grocery store a lot and she goes out to eat. I go and do those things. I’m not challenging myself not to spend money. I might be challenging myself to spend money in a way that brings me joy, but I am not challenging myself not to spend money. And so this has shown up for a lot of people, especially because during Covid there are people that “saved a lot of money,” but then they feel like, gosh, you know what happened when the doors opened back up to the world, my wallet opened with it.
And the reason that they were able to save $10,000, which was really covid, was just this extended no spend period was because they weren’t going outside. But what they weren’t doing is they weren’t building systems that would allow them to go outside and allow them to save money. And so I want you to know that we’re not doing no spend challenges in 2024. We want to have a system and we want to have a structure in place to be able to spend money drama free. And so I want you to know what are the things that you like to spend money on when you have done it? What actually, you can ask yourself is like, when I’ve done a no spend challenge in the past, what did I find myself having to say no to? Those are the very things that we want to make sure are in your plan to spend.
So if you had to say no to being on Amazon, if you had to say no to going out with your friends, if you had to say no to going into Target, those are the things that we want to put in your drama free spending account. Why? Because I want to teach your brain how to spend money and save at the same time. And so we learn how to spend money and save at the same time by practicing that. And what my clients find to be true is that when we create space for these things, where we’ve created space for the things that we may generally have shame about spending money on, is that it actually helps them feel really clear about how they want to spend money. And it’s like freeing. One of the things that I love, love, love is when we get everybody’s numbers that one of the first things they do is they tell me what they spend their money on.
So I give them a budgeting template. It is in the client profile right after they start working with me. And so they have, this is like the first opportunity to face the numbers that you haven’t been wanting to face. And this time, what’s great is that you have this accountability, you have support. And you might not know that you had three Hulu subscriptions, but guess what? You know it now because Keina has asked you to look at your credit card statements. She asked you to look at your bank statements. And so you’re putting all your numbers in one place. And when we go over their numbers on a call, it’s so fun. Yes, fun to look and be like, oh, I didn’t even know I was spending money on that. I don’t want to spend money on that. Ooh, I definitely want to spend money on that.
And even I’m in there and I’m like, hey, I noticed you didn’t give yourself money to spend like personal allowance. I noticed your hair is done. And we didn’t put hair in there. And so I’m even pushing and leaning in as a coach to be like, let’s put money aside for the things that you want to spend. And especially when clients come to me and they’re like Keina, I have already planned a couple of trips and I need to take the trips. As a coach, I’m not taking the trips away. We plan that in. And so as a result of not challenging ourselves to not spend, we end up being able to spend money drama-free and we create wealth at the same time because we have a bucket of money that you can spend, but then we also have a bucket of money that’s there for you to build wealth.
And so it doesn’t have be an either or it can be a “both” “and,” and that’s my goal. So remember 2024, we’re not doing no spend challenges. And I know that you may have done a no spend challenge in the past because you wanted to quick fix, or you feel like, oh my goodness, I’ve just been so out of control and I have spent so much money. No, when you have a plan like the one that I create for my clients, even if you find yourself in a place where you’re like, oh my goodness, I’ve been so out of control, you don’t have to restrict to get back on the path that you desire to be on. You just go back to the plan and you do the next best step.
So what do I need to do to put myself back on track? You’re much nicer to yourself. You give yourself a lot more grace. And can I tell you the honest truth? When I’m working with my clients in those first few weeks, there are so much overspending, I tell my clients all the same thing. I’m like, oh, don’t worry about it. It’s okay. It’s okay. And I’ll even tell them, I’m like, you’ve been managing your money for years without me. It’s okay. And that’s because their brain is adjusting to the fact that they can actually spend money, like they have permission to spend money. And so when their brains understand, oh, I have permission to spend money, they find these out of control periods to be a lot less and a lot fewer and they are a lot less and a lot fewer because one, they understand how to talk themselves, but then also they start having like these little pockets of money that they can use to enjoy spending money on.
And like I said, it doesn’t have to be an either or. They get to create a relationship with their finances that becomes a “both” “and.” So that’s today’s episode. We’re not doing no spend challenges because it really just feed your scarcity mindset. So if you are ready to get rid of your scarcity mindset and you want to dump no spend challenges in 2024, I would encourage you to apply to work with me in my five month coaching partnership. And by encourage, I mean girl, go right now to my website. Go to Wealthovernow.com/appointment. You don’t even need to do the backslash you can just do Wealthovernow.com and book a call and let’s get on a consult. We have an hour where we’ll get to talk about like what are your challenges and what’s the transformation you want to see in your life? And what result will just blow your mind? And I will lay out a specific plan for you and tell you exactly how we can get there. So go ahead, book your call and I will talk to you next week. 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.
