Budgeting without real numbers is just expensive guesswork.
In this episode, I’m diving into one of the most common habits I see with high earners: fake math. That’s the guessing, rounding, and “I’ll figure it out later” mindset that keeps you stuck in financial stress, even with a six-figure income.
You’ll learn how fake math creates a false sense of security, why confronting it feels so vulnerable, and how facing your real numbers is the first step toward overcoming financial shame, finding clarity in your budget, and long-term financial freedom.
Are you ready to stop guessing and start understanding your numbers? It’s time to call out the fake math that is sabotaging your budget. Tune in to learn how to take back control of your bank account.
Listen to learn how to call out fake math in your budget…
- [02:08] Why it is scary to call out fake math
- [04:04] Dealing with discomfort now to lay the groundwork to say yes in the future
- [10:50] Inviting curiosity to combat the shame
Tune in to stop relying on fake math and start making confident, clear financial decisions.
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 learning how to find financial freedom by calling out fake math, check out my episode, How Fake Math Is Killing Your Budget!
Transcript for “The Fear of Fake Math: What Happens When You Finally Face It”
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. I hope that you are having a great month. I just can’t believe we’re like five months in. Summer is approaching us and I mean 2025, we are in it, right? But today I want to talk to you about my favorite topic, which is fake math. I was actually talking to a friend the other day and we were talking about fake math and I was thinking about you and I always think about you, but you’ve probably heard me talk about fake math. If you haven’t and you are like Keina, this is the first episode that I am popping in and listening to you, I’ll just give you a little bit of background about fake math, but fake math are, if you are in a position where you have identified like, I want to feel better about my money, and then you start trying to figure it out. You start trying to think about like, how much do I spend on groceries? How much am I spending on gas?
And you are thinking about how much money do I bring in each month? You start with some guesstimations. The problem is that you never go back and check whether or not your guesstimations are correct. And so fake math, it’s not your real numbers. If we actually really sat down and we looked at your numbers, you would see that there was a discrepancy in between probably what you think you make, definitely when we talk about what you think you spend. So fake math is dangerous because it doesn’t allow us to be honest with ourselves about our finances. And so my friend and I, we were talking about fake math and one of the things I thought about is that once you actually, like you’ve maybe been listening to my podcast, you may even be a client and you’re like, Keina, I actually know what fake math is.
But now something that might creep up with you is the fear of actually calling out fake math in your life. Because once someone has given a name to the thing that you’re doing and you’re aware of it, you feel exposed, you feel naked, you feel vulnerable. And that can be a place that you kind of want to retreat. Like if you think about a turtle, you’re like, let me go back, let me go back into my shell or let me put my head back into the sand. But I just want to tell you today that realizing that you’re doing fake math and being in that space of vulnerability, that’s normal, it is very normal to feel vulnerable and to identify, like, to start feeling some other feelings once you realize like, oh my goodness, I’m not doing as well as I think I’m doing or I’m bad with money, like there’s a whole bunch of things that can come up for you once you realize that you’ve been doing fake math and you feel exposed.
What I want you to hear from me today is that it is a totally normal experience, especially once you are in this space of vulnerability. What I want to help you think through is how do I befriend my vulnerability? How do I befriend this next stage where my head is out of the sand and I am actually aware of what’s going on, like Keina has given me the knowledge that I’m doing fake math and what can I do next? How do I support myself? How do I not go backwards? And I don’t want you to hear going backwards in the sense of like not messing up, but I want you to hear not going backwards in the sense of putting your head back in the sand and starting to ignore things because it might feel uncomfortable for you because what I need you to understand intellectually, if you will, is that fake math makes you feel comfortable right now because it kind of delays this sense of knowing, it’s helping you say like, I can figure it out later. This really just isn’t that much money. Oh this is just something I have to do. I will pay off my credit card at the end of the month.
Fake math allows you a level of comfort, but the trade off is that you only feel safe for a short time and your long-term peace of mind, whether that’s 30 days from now, a year from now, five years from now, that’s the thing that’s in jeopardy. Because if you decide to say like right now is not the time that I actually want to tackle the fake math in my life and I just want to continue to comfort and soothe myself with fake math, what’s happening is you are saying no to things that you don’t even know about in the future. I would say in the 30 day, the immediate 30 day future, what you’re saying no to, is like, I am saying no to not having money in my account. And when I say money in my account, like not being worried about payday and 30 days, you are saying no to being able to sleep better at night. A year from now, you’re really saying no in all seriousness to at least a four or five figure savings account because you might not be willing to be vulnerable with yourself right now about where you are.
Once you understand that feeling exposed, once you understand that fake math is present in your life, you can begin to be comfortable with that exposure. You can start to talk to yourself about why you are actually going through this process. Why do I actually want to know my real numbers? How is knowing my real patterns and how I like to spend money, how is that going to support me? And sometimes it might feel really uncomfortable to tell someone like, actually, I’m not going to go on the trip, I’m not going on the trip because I have a plan for where I want to be three months from now. I have a plan of where I want to be six months from now. But with that no that you might have to give right now, it’s actually building you up for a yes. When you want to be able to take a spontaneous solo trip or when you want to be able to give a gift to a friend or maybe you want to help a family member out.
You may have some immediate trade-offs that you feel or you’re even thinking about and you’re experiencing, but they are laying the foundation and they’re laying the groundwork for you to be able to say yes more. When I’m working with clients and we are working through not using fake math and really going into using real math and being honest with our numbers, there are definitely, like I said, those initial trade-offs. But 30 days from now, 90 days from now, six months from now, clients are able to truly, truly have peace of mind about how they’re spending money. If they come into more money, they have the confidence that money is not going to slip through their fingers because right now, like I said, you might have comfort with not calling a fake math out in your life, but you have anxiety about filing your taxes, you have anxiety about how you’re going to pay your tax bill.
You have the pleasure of being able to go with your girlfriends overseas and maybe you guys are going to Bali, but then you have to come back and you got to face that credit card bill and you have to face the things that build inside of you, the anxiety that bills inside of you about how you’re going to pay off that credit card, how you’re going to provide groceries for yourself. So it’s really a matter of where do you want to be uncomfortable? I think it is better to be uncomfortable in identifying the real math in your life because calling out fake math in your life is really one of the kindest things that you can do for your money. When you stop guessing and you stop panicking, you’re going to stop avoiding and you’re actually going to start planning. The reason that you’re overwhelmed right now is because you are telling yourself you don’t know where to start. And starting is a matter of you just willing to be uncomfortable.
My clients, I tell them all the time, especially when they’re on a consult with me and I will say this to you especially, listen, I know you because you’ve opened up the form to like apply to work with me several times and you keep closing it down. You may have even booked a call with me and you’ve canceled it. The kindest thing you can do for yourself is to show up as you are. Because when you show up as you are, I am going to show you how to start. And what that’s going to mean is you’re going to be able to stop avoiding your bank account. You are going to be able to check it with confidence. You’re going to feel better about sleeping at night. You are going to not fear getting a phone call or getting a bill in the mail and thinking like, oh my goodness. Here’s another thing. Those things are going to come because you are an adult and it is life, but you are going to be able to roll with the punches of life. And I think we all want to be in a position where we can roll with the punches of life.
I had a client who, she actually messaged me on Instagram and she had a friend who had something happen in her family and she was like, Hey Keina, I was like able to hop on a plane and go there and be present for my friend. Like that’s what I want you to do and I want you to be able to do it with confidence. Knowing my client, she probably still would’ve done this prior to working with me, but it would’ve been at what cost? At what cost to her finances, at what cost to her own life because she’s not sure if she can show up for a friend financially. And so in order to take the fear out of looking at the fake math in your life, I want you to be able to invite curiosity in. I don’t want shame to be the thing that’s talking to you and telling you all the things that you’re doing wrong. I really want you to be curious. And when we’re curious about how you’re spending money, when you’re curious about how you are spending money, you’re going to end up building things that are what I call non-budget victory.
So you’re going to be able to talk to yourself about the things you’re doing well, like guess what? I filed my taxes on time or I was able to check my bank account balance and it felt really good to check it. I was able to actually talk to my partner about money. Like those are the things that happen when we start to embrace the fact that yes, it can feel uncomfortable to engage with looking at the fake math in our lives, but we’re going to start looking for the positive trade-offs for what it means when we actually start to look at the real math because the real math is a thing that is going to be liberating. And as you start to look at more real math in your life, it is going to decrease the amount of shame that you have. If you’ve heard me describe shame before, especially with financial shame, I think of it as this big shadow. And it is the shadow that is in the room. And if you think about a little kid who’s calling, for mom or dad, I’m like, oh my goodness, there’s a monster in the room and then mom and dad flip on the light. There’s nothing there, right?
And that’s exactly what’s happening with your money when we start to look at real math, is that every time we look at some real math, we are flipping on the light. And eventually that monster, that shame, it goes away. If you do see it, you actually know how to like walk to the light and flip it on. And you can speak to the financial shame in your life with confidence. And being able to speak to financial shame with confidence means that it’s going to dissipate, it is going to get smaller. So it might start out as something that feels really big, but it is eventually going to scale down. It’s going to become smaller and smaller and smaller. Something that you can hold in the palm of your hand and be able to be in a space in which you can coexist with your financial shame, but also you can exist there with your new life of being able to experience this financial ease, being able to be someone who saves money, being able to be someone who is paying down their debt, who can spend comfortably.
And like I said, that shame, it can become something that’s just in the palm of your hand and you’ll be able to speak to it and tell it to go away. I was talking to a client and a friend and they were talking about gift giving. And my friend said, before working with you, Keina, I’d be like, oh, whatever, I’m just going to like figure it out, right? Like, I’m going to figure it out. But since I’ve adopted the Keina ways, I am much more intentional. I’m much more thoughtful about how I’m spending money. And this, friend that I’ve been working with for several months now, this year, has just been able to like sleep better. They’re able to check their accounts, they have four figures in three different bank accounts, and my friend has a varying work schedule, so not always making the same amount of money, but my friend hasn’t missed a beat in terms of how they’re managing their finances. And it all started with being comfortable with calling out the fake math, being willing to be vulnerable and knowing and holding space for, that on the other side of calling out fake math and replacing it with real math in their life, that they’re going to experience this level of freedom that really results in how they get to show up in the world.
So if you’ve been listening and maybe you’re afraid of what happens when you call out the fake math, I truly, truly get it. And I understand that risk of being vulnerable with yourself, but I want to just invite you to think about what if naming fake math is actually your like very, very first step towards releasing your financial shame. What if this is the day that you get to be kind with yourself when it comes to your finances and the things that I would tell you to do in terms of inviting in real math in your life, like look at the last 30 days of your spending and just see like, where is my money going? Finally, open up your bank app and see, what’s actually happening in my account. I think the kindest thing you can do for yourself, especially if you’re someone who’s like, Hey, I’ve tried this over and over again, is apply to work with me, apply to work with me in my five month coaching partnership.
We get to spend an hour talking to each other. I get to learn more about you and I’ll tell you more about coaching, but specifically how it applies to you because not everybody’s situation is the same.
And I want you to have a tailored opportunity to be supported. So that’s what I want for you. I want you to identify some non-budget victories and I want you to know that it’s okay to call out fake math and it’s okay to feel scared when you call it out. And thank you so much for tuning in and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
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.
