You know you should budget. You might even want to budget. But somewhere between knowing you should and actually sitting down to do it, something stops you. The thought of putting all of your numbers in a spreadsheet scares you because you are afraid of what the numbers will say. Maybe you think they will affirm that you have never been good with money.
In this episode I want to kindly challenge your spreadsheet fears because avoiding the trade-offs in your finances does not actually eliminate them. It just makes them invisible. And invisible trade-offs are exhausting, because now you are constantly asking yourself whether you can afford something, whether you saved enough last month, whether you should book the trip, whether you should put more toward your credit card. You can make really good money and still live in that constant state of uncertainty, and that is exactly what I want to change for you.
Today I am introducing what I call the financial tripod, a framework for building a balanced approach to your finances that invites you to look at your money from a completely different perspective. Instead of asking how much you should save or what you have to give up, I want you to start asking how you can manage your money well, spend your money well, and save well all at the same time. I also walk through a real client example where she came in thinking she spent $200 a month eating out and we discovered together that the real number was closer to $600, and why that kind of awareness is not about restriction but about finally being able to make choices that are actually yours.
In this episode you’ll learn…
[00:04:30] Why the real reason most people avoid budgeting is not the spreadsheet itself
[00:09:15] What the financial tripod is
[00:14:40] What true balance looks like in a budget
[00:24:45] Why the spreadsheet doesn’t actually matter
[00:29:10] What intentional spending and values-based budgeting actually look like in practice
Tune in to this episode of Money Files to learn how the financial tripod reframes what budgeting actually is so you can stop avoiding your numbers and start building a financial life where you are managing your money well, spending your money well, and saving well all at the same time.
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 episode on the financial tripod and finally understanding what budgeting is actually about, check out Episode 231 | The Three Numbers Most Likely to Be Wrong in Your Budget Right Now.
Transcript for “The Financial Tripod: The 3 Things Your Budget Is Missing ”
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’m excited to talk to you today because I have been thinking about you. And today I’m just thinking about why you may or may not want to budget. The thing that came to my mind was this fear of being uncomfortable. What if I can’t get this right? What am I going to have to give up? Just think about all of the reasons that you’re like, I know I should budget, but I don’t want to budget. And generally, the reason that we don’t want to do something isn’t because we don’t want the results. It’s that we don’t want to feel a certain way. And I think this might resonate with you, especially if you can tell me, I want to budget, Keina. And I know that I would feel better if I had a better handle on my money. But for some reason, I just can’t fully commit to actually looking at everything.
So that results with you having a list of bills or downloading an app, and maybe you use it for a little bit, but you don’t go back to it. Your car payment, your 401k, but things are just a little fuzzy when it comes to actually understanding your numbers in a way that gives you peace of mind. So what I think that you are scared of when it comes to budgeting, I know that you want the results, and I hear this all the time on consult. People say, Keina, I want to have peace of mind and know that I can pay all my bills on time. Or I want to know that I can talk about money with my partner, or I want to know that I can be the person that my partner depends on. Keina, I just want to actually feel like an adult. These are all things that I hear people say. But I think the number one thing that you are scared of is what budgeting might ask you to give up.
And I think that’s a really important distinction because, like I said, you want the result. You want the money in the bank. You want to stop using your credit card for emergencies. You want to know that you can get new tires for your car and that you have money for the tires. You want to be able to take a vacation without wondering if you’re going to regret it when you get home. You want to be able to save for retirement. You want to be able to spend money and actually enjoy it. You want all of those things. But then there’s this little voice that says, okay, but what is this budget going to make me say no to? What am I going to have to give up? Do I have to stop going out? Am I going to have to stop traveling? Do I have to stop buying clothes, getting my hair done?
Am I going to become that person that doesn’t spend any money? And that fear is where I see a lot of people get stuck and not actually move into action because you don’t want to feel restricted. Maybe you’ve even budgeted before and that’s the experience that you had is that you couldn’t do anything. And you didn’t like the discomfort of that. That wasn’t an enjoyable life for you. And you don’t want somebody or even yourself to tell you no. So instead of actually looking at the numbers, you are avoiding them right now. But here’s the thing that I’ve been thinking about for you. Avoiding the trade-offs doesn’t actually eliminate them. It just makes them invisible.
I’m going to say that again. Avoiding the trade-offs doesn’t eliminate them. It just makes them invisible. And invisible trade-offs, they are exhausting because now you’re constantly wondering, can I afford this? Should I be saving more? Did I spend too much last month? Should I book this trip? What about my credit card? What about retirement? So you’re stuck in this space where you’re trying to figure out, am I doing the right thing with my money? And let me be really, really clear. You can make really good money and still live in this constant state of uncertainty. And that’s what I want to talk about today because I don’t think the answer is that you need to be more restrictive.
I actually think you need to find the middle. And I’ve been thinking about that middle as what I’m calling the financial tripod. So if you think about a tripod, it has three legs. And you know that the whole thing has to be balanced. It’s designed for balance. If one of the legs is missing, then the other legs are going to have to compensate. And the tripod is going to be, like it’s eventually going to fall over. And I’m thinking about that for your financial life. If you don’t have the three legs that I’m getting ready to talk about, if you aren’t paying attention to them, then if something is consistently underfunded, then your financial life is going to also topple. It’s going to fall over.
And I don’t want to confuse what I’m talking about today as my three money bucket system. I want to reframe how you’re thinking about budgeting because I know that so many people associate budgeting with just being restrictive. And it can go to extremes. Some people can be really restrictive in terms of meaning they need to save everything. Some people can think about, I am just going to make sure that I pay what I need to pay and I’m going to make sure I go all in on fun because that’s what’s really important to me. But let me just introduce these three legs to you and I want you to think about how they apply for you.
So the first leg of your financial tripod is that I want you to support your life. And this is the money required to make your life function. So I want you to think of that as your mortgage or your rent, your utilities, your groceries, what’s ever associated with transportation, healthcare, insurance, your bills. These are the things that allow you to be an adult and have your life actually function. And part of supporting your life is also having money in your bank account when those bills come out that you’re not wondering, do I have enough money? We want to know that we have enough money to support our life, so that leg, and that you can put your bills on auto pay, that you’re not checking your account every single time something comes out, that you’re not wondering whether or not something is overdrafted. This is what it looks like to support your life. That’s one leg of the financial tripod.
The other leg of this financial tripod is to enjoy your life because I don’t believe that you work hard, that you earn money, and then your reward is that you get to save every single dollar and never enjoy anything. I think you deserve to enjoy your money. You deserve to travel. You deserve to go to dinner. You deserve to buy yourself something you want. You deserve the nice hotel, the massage, all of those experiences that you like. And so that’s also part of your financial life. We can’t have an imbalance. When we have imbalances in enjoying our life, that’s where we can go on spending sprees. And we’ve been so restrictive. And then when we have an opportunity to spend money, we can overspend because we never have that play and that joy in our finances.
And then the last leg is to build your life. And this is where you are building financial security. So think of this as your emergency fund, you paying off debt, retirement, investing, you putting away money for future goals. This is giving your future self something to work with. And I want all three of these legs to exist. I want you to support your life, enjoy your life, and I want you to build your life. And here’s something that’s really, really important. So balance doesn’t mean equal. So I’m not saying, take your paycheck and split it into thirds, like put some towards bills, put a third towards fun, put a third towards savings. It’s not that.
But what I’m talking about is that balance means that all three of these legs, they function together and they intentionally support one another. Because you can have a situation where you’re really good at building your life, but you’re not enjoying your life at all. So you’re saving everything, you’re investing everything, you’re paying off debt, and you’re sitting there thinking, when do I actually get to live? And so that isn’t balance. You could also really be good at enjoying your life. You’re traveling, you’re eating out, you’re shopping, maybe you upgraded your car. You’re doing all the things, but you have no financial security.
So one emergency and the whole thing is going to get knocked over. So that’s also not balance. And then you could also make really good money and have your lifestyle completely disorganized. You could be paying your bills, you’re taking trips, you’re contributing to retirement, but maybe you’re constantly moving money around. You’re using your credit card for things that you haven’t actually planned for. And you’re wondering, why is your checking account like sometimes lower than you feel like it should be or it could be? That’s also not a balanced life when it comes to your finances.
So when I think about budgeting, I’m not thinking about how do I make you spend less? I’m thinking, how do we get these three legs working together? How do we support your life? How do we enjoy your life? And how do we build your life? So when I’m saying we, I’m talking also from the standpoint of having worked with over hundreds of clients in the last years that I’ve been in business is like, we are having a we conversation. We are going through the numbers together to figure out how do we make sure that these legs are balanced? How are they balanced for where you are right now? And then how are they balanced as you make more money?
So when I was thinking about this financial tripod and thinking about a budget, it’s like, what if a budget is to actually help you find a way to manage your money to maintain? So it’s not really about how little you can spend. It’s not how much can I save? It’s not what am I allowed to buy? But what if it’s actually, what does my life actually require? What do I need to support my lifestyle? And what do I want to be able to enjoy? And what do I want to put aside to build financial security? I think that those are valuable questions to be asking yourself because it changes your relationship with budgeting.
Budgeting isn’t just about whether you’re good or bad at managing your money. Budgeting is about creating this balance with these three facets of your financial tripod to bring you into a space where you can say, I actually know my trade-offs. I know what my, dare I say, boundaries are when it comes to enjoying my life, when it comes to building my life, when it comes to supporting my life. Like I have a really clear map and I have a clear financial vision for what I need to do.
So one of the other things that I also hear on calls is like, Keina, I’m so scared of spreadsheets. And I will tell you, I use a spreadsheet with clients, but it’s not because I want you to be stuck in the spreadsheet. I use a spreadsheet because I want us to get clear on what your money needs to do for you. I want us to be able to make decisions on the things that we can see. Right now you there are so many hidden ways that you spend money that you don’t think about. Keina, how do you know? Because I have worked with over hundreds of clients and I see it all the time. I tell clients, they’re like, Keina, no, I really don’t spend that much eating out.
I’m like, alright, I’ll see you in a week and we’ll talk about it. And they’re like, girl, these are the things that we put into the spreadsheet. And it’s really to just get a blown up version of what you could do with your money. So when I am working with clients and we’re doing this deep expense audit, we are going in and I don’t want to assume what your bills are. I don’t want to assume what you’re spending on groceries or travel or what you’re spending on eating out because that’s where fake math is going to start overriding your budget. I see this all the time.
One of my clients, she recently just came back to work with me, her and her fiance. And she was telling me, she was like, Keina, I spend like $200 a month eating out. And on our call, she was actually eating lunch and she had gone out to lunch. I was like, you have lunch today. Like how much do you spend on lunch? She’s like, Keina, but I had a coupon. So we were just diving into the numbers. I said, alright, well, give me like the average amount that you spend on your lunch. And she was telling me that she might spend like $20 for lunch. And I said, how many days a week do you do it? She said three to four. So I went ahead and took the higher number of four days a week.
So you’re going to do this math with me. $20 times four days a week, that’s $80. If every month, which some months have five weeks, but let’s just go with four weeks. So if you’re spending $80 a week for four weeks, that’s $320 a month. Even though she was telling me I spend $200 a month on eating out. So we hadn’t talked about dinner. We hadn’t talked about her going out to eat with her friends. We hadn’t talked about her going out on date nights with her fiance or just the random times on a Saturday where you bought all your groceries, but you don’t want to cook and so you order out. And suddenly now we’re not talking about $200 anymore.
And so this is exactly why I use a spreadsheet because I just want to get everything out there. And the spreadsheet isn’t the thing that gets it out there. Like my conversation, my observations with clients and listening to them helps me build out a budget for them because whether it’s paying attention to their hair being done, their nails being done, like things that you do, but you don’t consider it a bill. Because maybe you don’t do it that often or you just assume because there’s money in the bank account and you can take care of it.
We’re putting that into the spreadsheet to actually see what does your financial tripod need to actually function? So after we’re like looking at her number, it was probably, we got to the point where we decided that her eating out number, I think it was like closer to like $600 than it was to the $200 that she had actually put in. But here’s why we want to know that. It’s not to say don’t ever eat out. That’s not the goal. The goal now that we know, oh, you’re spending $600 a month on eating out. Now we can ask questions like, do you actually want to spend $600 a month eating out? And that’s a completely different conversation because you’re now not saying no because somebody told you you had to, but you’re saying no because you looked at it and you’re like, girl, I’m spending $600?
Like how, right? And this happens all the time. I want to normalize the fact that we don’t realize how much we’re spending. Even for myself, sometimes I’m like, Keina you have been doing a lot. Like you’re moving around a lot or prices are just rising like with groceries so you’re not paying attention. I like to think about, sometimes people are using numbers from like the early 2000s and not numbers from 2026. So in this conversation with my client, we can talk about, well, if we know that you’re spending $600 eating out, do you want to use that for one of the other legs in your tripod? Do you want to put that into your emergency fund? Do you want to save it for a trip? Do you want to pay off your credit card? Do you actually need to beef up your auto maintenance fund?
But having this awareness, by putting all of your numbers in one place, it gives you an opportunity to say, is this how I actually want to live? So the spreadsheet, when I’m working with clients in my five month coaching partnership, it’s to give you information because that information is going to give you choices. I’m going to say that again. I give you information, the spreadsheet gives you information and that information gives you choices. And that’s where the relief comes from. When you tell me you want peace of mind with your finances, is you having that awareness, even sometimes in the beginning, you can be like, oh my goodness, this is a lot going on. And maybe it is, but we get to make those choices together.
So that way, like the tension you feel in your shoulders, you can just release that because now you know what you’re actually looking at because maybe you’ve been thinking that the budget is going to make your life harder. But what if the budget actually makes your life easier because you can stop wondering what you need to be doing with your money. Like you can have certainty with knowing that your bills are covered. You can know how much you can spend. You know how much you can save. You know where you are in relation to your financial goals. You’re going to actually know what your trade-offs are. And here’s the thing about trade-offs. Every yes has a trade-off and every no has a trade-off. If you say yes to another dinner out, you might also be saying no to putting money into your savings.
Or maybe, in your budget, after we work together, it’s like, oh, I’m saying yes to that dinner, but maybe I’m just like not getting my nails done. But you’ve made that conscious decision. So maybe it’s not impacting your savings. Or maybe if you say no to that dinner, you can reframe it as you’re like not depriving yourself. You’re like, no, I’ve already spent like $300 this month eating out. And yes, would I love to go eat out again? Probably, but I’m going to wait until next month. So I’m saying yes to building my future life instead of enjoying my life right now. But it’s not like you never get to enjoy your life. You’re more aware of what your trade-offs are and you’re able to state them out loud.
It’s what I call intentional spending or even values-based budgeting. You’re spending money in ways that you value. And I think that’s where we have to change the way that we think about budgeting. A budget isn’t about making you say no. It’s about helping you decide what you’re saying yes to. And that changes your conversation where you start talking about, I deserve this. And usually what follows is I work so hard, so I deserve to buy this. I deserve the vacation. I deserve the nice car. And I agree with you, you deserve the things. But I want to expand what you believe you deserve because you deserve to enjoy your money. Absolutely. But you also deserve to have money in savings.
You deserve to pay off your credit cards. You deserve to have cash available when something unexpected happens. You deserve to feel the impact of your bonus. You deserve to give money to your future self. You deserve to be able to handle a flat tire without wondering which credit card you’re going to put it on. You deserve to have money for the things you enjoy. And if you deserve all of those things, then you have to make room for all of those things. And sometimes making room means that there will be trade-offs. Maybe you get the massage once a quarter instead of every month. Maybe you choose the tissue massage instead of the hot stone massage.
Maybe you travel twice a year instead of four times. Maybe you decide to spend $400 eating out instead of $800. This doesn’t mean that you are shrinking your life or that you haven’t made it financially. It means that your money got more intentional. And I think that’s what I really want you to take away from this episode, that if you’ve been avoiding budgeting, I don’t want you to shame yourself. I don’t want you to say I’m bad with money. I want you to get curious. Maybe you’re not avoiding the spreadsheet. Maybe you’re avoiding what you think the spreadsheet would tell you. And maybe you’re afraid it’s going to tell you that you can’t have the life that you want.
But what if it doesn’t? What if it simply just shows you what your life actually costs? What if it shows you what you actually value? What if it shows you where you’ve been doing fake math? What if it shows you that some of the things you thought you had to give up are actually things you don’t even want anymore? And what if, instead of restriction, you find your middle, the place where you’re supporting your life, you’re enjoying your life, and you’re building your life? This is what I want your financial tripod to do.
I don’t want you standing on one leg, swinging back and forth with different extremes. I want you to have confidence with how you’re spending your money. I want you to feel like you have something to show for the fact that you make $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, even $500,000 a year. This episode isn’t just for a certain income bracket. I know sometimes people are like, oh, well, I make $60,000 a year. And Keina’s talking to people that make six figures. And so if I made six figures, I wouldn’t be struggling either. Because you think that if you made more money, all your problems would go away. That’s not how it works.
This financial tripod works regardless of where you are. Maybe you don’t get to build your life as much. You don’t get to save as much. But we want to pay attention to that. And maybe enjoying your life looks a little bit different. But we want to pay attention to that. So as you make more money, you’re going to know, how am I being intentional with my finances? So thank you so much for tuning in. And if you’re listening, you’re like, Keina, I need help. My money, especially my money this year, just feels like I don’t know what I’m doing. I need some guidance. I would invite you to apply to work with me. You can go to my show notes and you can apply to work with me there. Or you can go to my website at Wealthovernow.com. Thank you.
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.
