If you’ve ever said, “I just need to be more disciplined with money,” this episode is for you.
In this episode of Money Files, I introduce you to The Money Rhythm which is the third step in my coaching framework, following The Money Table and The Money Edit. While the first two steps are about clarity and structure, The Money Rhythm is about sustainability and putting your plan into motion and learning how to trust yourself with money.
This is where my clients stop chasing perfection and start finding flow. We look at how their plan actually works in real life: the grocery trips, the forgotten birthday parties, the unexpected car repairs, the promotions, the slow months, and everything in between. The Money Rhythm is about building flexibility into your system so you can respond to life instead of reacting with guilt or shame.
Through real client examples, you’ll hear how we catch fake math, make realistic budget adjustments, and create systems that help clients make confident, proactive money decisions. This is the stage where coaching truly pays for itself, not just through the dollars saved, but in the peace, control, and confidence you gain.
Listen in to learn:
[01:15] What The Money Rhythm is and why it matters
[03:50] How to build sustainability into your money system
[06:45] Why perfection isn’t the goal and honesty is
[10:10] How to stop fake math and create realistic numbers that work
[13:25] Client stories: adjusting for real-life expenses without shame
[17:40] Why discipline isn’t the answer. What you need is rhythm
[19:00] How finding your rhythm builds confidence and trust in yourself
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how to create a rhythm with your money that helps you sustain financial peace, build consistency, and finally feel in control.
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 hearing about The Money Rhythm, check out Episode 195:The Money Table: How to Create a Real Budget (and Stop Fake Math) and Episode 196: The Money Edit – Stop the Leaks and Create More Choice With Your Money. Together, these episodes will help you see how to build a financial system that’s flexible, realistic, and built to last.
Transcript for “The Money Rhythm: Finding Your Flow for Sustainable Financial Health”
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 am excited to talk to you this week and over the last few weeks, last week I did a client episode, but I’m back to sharing with you the process that I walk clients through and it is a four step process. So the last two episodes prior to this I introduced you to two parts of the framework that I walk clients through and that’s the money table and then the money edit. And that’s where we lay everything out and we make intentional adjustments so you can start seeing opportunities for you to actually feel like you are keeping more of what you earn. But today I want to step into what I call the money rhythm. And the first two steps I see really being about clarity and structure and the money rhythm is really about you putting the plan into place, you experiencing what it feels like to have a three money bucket system to know here’s how much I’m putting into bills, here’s how much I’m putting into savings, here’s how much I’m putting into my spending account.
Because I think a lot of you who are listening to me right now can relate to the fact that in the past I have put a plan into place. But what happens after you do it for one week or you may be the person that you check in with a plan at the end of the month and then you’re like, oh my goodness, I’ve overspent and here we go again. Now I don’t know how to budget. I think that’s the common space where people end up when it comes to managing their finances and they just feel like, I don’t know why I’m creating a budget because a budget never works for me. And so this four step process that I’ve developed is not just about the budget and putting the numbers on paper but really helping you create sustainability for yourself. And so the money rhythm is where we are starting to create sustainability.
If you think about things in your life, when you have a rhythm, it just feels like things are working. It’s like when you’re morning routine, it finally clicks or maybe you get into the flow of your new job or you actually stick to the gym routine, then you start to find yourself in a place where you’re like, oh, things are just moving smoothly. Like this is just what I do. It’s the rhythm. But also I want to acknowledge that before you get to that smooth space, there are some things that are a little bumpy because you’re trying something new, you’re creating some new habits, you’re still figuring out like hey, what’s working? That’s exactly what happens in the money rhythm when we’re working with your money. So yes, in the money edit and through the money table we lay out things and we make the edits.
But the money rhythm is about putting in the practice and figuring out like what’s the rhythm I need to develop so I can actually trust myself with my money?
And so with the money rhythm, that’s where you’re going to actually start living out if you will, your financial plan. And it’s where we get into like the nitty gritty of the things that you are Googling at 2:00 AM in the morning or that you are thinking about while you’re supposed to be enjoying your family or enjoying your vacation. But you can’t necessarily enjoy those things because you do have this financial hum that is just constantly, it can be constantly present. So in the money rhythm, I think like this is where the coaching really starts like the coaching relationship really starts because we are moving with your life and not that we’re not moving with your life and the other two portions of the process, but like I work with clients for five months because I want to go through life with people. And so that’s about half of the year. There are a lot of things that happen.
We’re in October, I think this podcast is actually going to come out in November. But just think about what you’ve experienced already in the last like five months. Like where were you five months ago? Where were you in June? Where were you in May? And think about the things that have changed. For many of my clients that I’m working with, like that last five months, I’ve been with them through every financial decision that they’ve made. And we’re learning how to respond to what happens when the car breaks down, what happens when we forgot that like oh my goodness, we have this birthday party. Or oh, I forgot that I promised that I would take the kids to the amusement park, whatever that is. Like those are the things that we are going through. And I’ve even worked with clients while they’ve lost a job, maybe they’ve started a new job, they’ve ended relationships, they’ve started relationships, they’ve had babies.
And so we are able to build a rhythm that goes beyond like what we did at the money table, but to actually say like, yes, these were the numbers that we said we wanted to use, but do they actually make sense now that we are enacting the plan that we created? So when you work with me, we have what I call money dates. And those dates that we have are dates that you’ll eventually do by yourself, but we start doing them together first. And we look at what’s actually happening in your bank account. Like I’m talking, hey, share your screen. Let’s actually look at your last week of transactions on your credit card and your bank account. And it’s not from the place of judgment. So I’m not looking at the fact that you were on Amazon and you had five orders come in through Amazon. I’m not looking at the number of times you went to the grocery store.
What I’m really looking at is how is your money actually moving based off of what we decided? Because there’s the decision that we’ve made and then there’s actually what’s happening. So I want to make sure that your plan is aligned with the numbers that sounded good when we were together, but then what’s actually happening in your life. And so it’s not to say like, oh my goodness, she’s out there overspending, she don’t even know. It’s not that. But we’re constantly looking to catch fake math and fake math just being the fact that we made some guesstimations when we first started and now let’s actually see what’s happening.
So we might find that your grocery budget isn’t realistic or we might find that you actually, you said that you fill up your tank every other week, but maybe something has happened and you are now going in the office more frequently and so now you are filling up once a week instead of once every other week. And those are things that we need to be able to respond to. And so we’re able to do that in the money rhythm. One of my clients, we actually have been looking at her spending during this process during the money rhythm and we’ve been looking at her spending because she’s identified that the money we’ve put in her spending account, she’s like Keina, I feel like I’m running out of money before the two weeks are over. And what is happening in her life right now, she’s a caregiver and so some of the money that she has been spending out of her spending account is also to make sure that her mom who lives with her has what she needs.
And so just in our coaching call this week, we’ve kind of observed some things and I said, well let’s just change the numbers and let’s change the numbers so that the plan better reflects your life. But also so we’re not in this cycle where you just feel a bunch of shame because you feel like you’re always overspending. Sometimes it’s overspending and sometimes it’s just like we picked the wrong number and we said, you spend $800 on groceries, but actually what’s more realistic for what groceries cost is that you’re spending a thousand dollars on groceries. And so that’s a really easy shift and it’s also something that’s common. And I would rather that we are shifting the 800 to a thousand dollars and it being more realistic because it also is going to take the emotion out of you, feeling like every week you’re overspending because it ignites a different story within you where you start to talk to yourself about, see like this is why budgets never worked. All I do is overspend and we don’t want that to happen.
We really want to create a plan that honors what you actually do and we can tighten up where we need to tighten up. But let’s be realistic. My whole thing is for you to be honest because when you’re honest it’s going to actually help you pay off more debt. It is going to help you save more money than to think like, oh I only spend $200 a month on groceries, knowing that’s like a 1995 rate for groceries and that you really spend more than $200 a month. So that small shift, this is going back to my client, I know is going to give her some breathing room and completely change how she sees her ability to honor her plan even in the next week and over this next month. So when I’m talking about a rhythm, it’s getting to the point where your plan adjusts to you, instead of you constantly trying to feel like you need to chase perfection, but you being able to be responsive and create sustainability.
Sustainability is my number one thing in coaching because I want the coaching that we do together to be something that impacts you for the rest of your life. And I have so many client stories that come back to me where people are like, Keina, I’m still using your process, I’m still using this spreadsheet. And people have literally been through a wealth of different life circumstances. So during the money rhythm, the other thing that we are disrupting is fake math. And fake math really shows up in this way where it’s the voices. It’s a conversation that you’re having with yourself where you talk to yourself about needing to be more discipline, needing to be perfect, needing to not mess up. But the goal isn’t for you to be disciplined. The goal is for you to have a rhythm that you actually look at your numbers, that you are able to make proactive decisions, that you’re able to have a conversation and say like, oh that’s actually financial grazing. You can go listen to that podcast. It’s a good one.
But the goal is for you to know how to make adjustments when life shifts. And that’s a skill that you can take with you long after coaching. And so my goal is to be able to release my clients even if, like I have some clients that work with me for 10 months and not just the five months because there are multiple things that we want to work on, but eventually I would say my clients leave me. Sometimes, they may come back for a little refresher, but the goal is that you are able to do this on your own. And if you’re coming back for refresher, you’re not coming back in the same place that you started. You’re coming back to be like, Hey, there are some new things happening and I want a fresh set of eyes on my numbers to make sure that I am looking at things in the correct way.
So as I was telling you earlier, like I’ve coached clients through job loss, divorce, cross country moves, like everything. And one client realized that during our rhythm phase that she had been helping her adult son more than she thought. And it wasn’t something that I wanted her to feel bad about, it was just something that I wanted her to actually plan for. So once we actually adjusted the numbers, again during this money rhythm, she could give and support her son without feeling guilty, but also making sure that she was able to stay on track with her savings goals. Another client realized like her car expenses were eating up more than we’d expected. And instead of her being in this place of like, okay, here we go again, here’s why I can’t save money. We were able to just build in an auto maintenance fund and put more money towards that fund so she didn’t feel like she was being thrown off her plan.
And so the rhythm is there so that you don’t feel like you have to panic, but for you to know like I have my own back and I know exactly what to do next. And this is also where I would say coaching pays for itself. Not just with like the money that you’re saving but also with your growth. When you are not frozen, when you are not overwhelmed with your finances, you are going to be able to make decisions. I can’t tell you the number of conversations I have with clients where I’m like, dang, imagine if we hadn’t been working together how you would’ve handled this. And they like laugh because they know exactly how they would’ve handled it beforehand versus how they would’ve handled it now. A client just this week was telling me, because her washing machine started leaking. She said, Keina, I was rolling my eyes because my washing machine was leaking, but I bought a new wash machine, I was able to pay for it in cash. I didn’t charge it on my credit card. And that felt so good. But she said, man, I can see how much I’ve changed. because the old version of me, I would’ve got a new washer and dryer, like I would’ve gone for the prettiest and the fanciest thing.
And I was able to just talk to myself to say like, there is nothing wrong with your dryer. Your dryer actually works. The stand you have your washer and dryer on. They’re okay. She’s like, so I just got what I needed. And she’s like, that just felt really good because in the past I would’ve pushed myself and I would’ve gotten the $2,500 washer dryer combo because that’s just what I would’ve done. And so that just speaks to the transformation that she’s experienced during this time as she’s finding her own rhythm. She is also adjusting the way in which she thinks. She’s adjusting the way in how she spends. And she’s very, very thoughtful and she’s intentional. That is not the same as being restrictive. So when you are thoughtful and you’re intentional, you’re taking moments to pause before you make a decision, even when you’re in an emergency.
That same client, actually, she has a pet, two dogs and she was saying, we were at the vet and any of you all who have pets know that pets are expensive, they can get really expensive. And so she’s like, I ask like, Hey, can you write down everything and tell me what my dogs need? And so she’s been able to just advocate for herself in different ways versus just feeling like I have to do this thing and I have to make a decision right now. She doesn’t have the same pressure that she had prior to working with me. And I think so many of my clients could relate to that same thing where they feel less pressure and they feel like they can give themselves some breathing room because they actually have space to mentally think about what they desire to be true with their money. So during the money rhythm, my favorite part for clients as they’re going through this part of the process and I think the money rhythm is an ongoing thing because you’re always going to be adjusting like kind of what’s happening with your numbers.
But I think my moment as a coach that I’ve had people literally quote this back to me because they put it in other podcast, is I want people to be able to tell me like, Keina, I love looking at my accounts, I love looking at my numbers. And if you’re listening to this and you don’t love your numbers, you may be thinking I’m crazy, but I promise you on the other side, it makes me smile so big every single time I hear someone say, Keina, I had fun. I had fun looking at my numbers, like there was money across my account. So if you don’t get joy looking at your numbers, I want you to know that having joy is a possibility when you are not just in that space of overwhelm. And I want you to have joy. I want you to have the same joy that I have talking about money and looking at my own numbers regardless of what’s going on in life and to just know that things are fixable and things are solvable, like that is a different level of confidence, it’s a different level of trust.
And it’s something that all of my clients will tell you that they’ve been able to experience. Because by this point when they are talking about loving their numbers, honestly, they’re not even listening to me anymore, like there is a whole level of ownership that they have and being able to manage the money that they have in their account, being able to know here’s how much money I have, here’s exactly how it’s going to help and support me. And they have new goals, they have new challenges, but the challenges are about growth at that point and accelerating some of their financial goals. So if you are in a space where you’re like, Keina, I just need to be more disciplined or I need to get it together, I would definitely invite you to apply to work with me because you don’t actually need more discipline. I just want you to have, you need a rhythm, you need to have a rhythm with your money that fits what’s going on with your life right now that doesn’t require you working extra shifts, that doesn’t require you making more money.
We can make changes with the money you have right now. And my goal is like, then when you make more money, you’ll know exactly what to do with it. So don’t wait for this like perfect time. You’re like, oh Keina, let me get these things in order. We can get those things in order together and we’re going to walk through this exact process that I’m talking about so that you don’t have to do this alone. And I know this sounds very cliche, but if you could do it by yourself, you already would have. The hardest part for you right now is going to be to say, okay, let me build up the courage to just apply to work with Keina. So don’t let like another podcast episode go by. Don’t let another day go by. Just apply. Like you are going to fill out a list of questions. There’s, I don’t know, I think there’s about five questions. We talk for an hour, I get to know a little bit more about you. That consult is going to change everything for you because you’re actually going to be able to release some of the things that you have been thinking about. Like you woke up last night and you were thinking about your money. You’re going to be able to tell me about those things and I’m going to tell you how I can help you. And then we can talk about what it looks like to work together and we can walk through the money table, we’ll be able to walk through the money edit, and then we’ll get to the money rhythm. So thank you so much for tuning in and have a great week. Until next time, I will chat with you later.
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.
