88 | Shifting Your Money Mindset

Money is a topic that either excites or intimidates, yet it’s central to so many aspects of our lives. Today, I’ll share two powerful perspectives about money that I hope will expand your thinking and challenge your beliefs around finances. 

I'll share personal stories, including a significant financial risk I took at the age of 19, and how my husband and I have navigated our financial journey together for over two decades. These experiences illustrate how our emotional responses to money and numbers are shaped by context and our personal money stories.

Understanding your money story is key. It influences how you spend, save, and view debt. These foundational scripts are often inherited from previous generations and impact your daily financial decisions. By examining these scripts, you can gain a clearer understanding of your past choices and create more empowering financial habits.

Press play to learn how to reframe your financial beliefs and embrace an abundance mindset. 

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Transcript

Intro: Welcome to A Pleasant Solution, Embracing An Organized Life. I'm your host, certified life coach, professional organizer, and home life expert, Amelia Pleasant Kennedy and I help folks permanently eliminate clutter in their homes and lives. On this podcast will go beyond the basics of home organization to talk about why a clutter-free mindset is essential to an aligned and sustainable lifestyle. If you're someone with a to-do list, if you're managing a household and if you're caring for others, this podcast is for you. Let's dive in.

Amelia: Welcome to Episode 88, “Shifting Your Money Mindset.”

Hey y’all! Happy Fall! These past few weeks I’ve been on the road. First, I went to Minneapolis for the annual conference for the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (or ICD for short). This past week I traveled to Savannah for the annual retreat for Black Girls Who Organize. Because I’m often working solo – coaching from home at my desk – connecting with others at events lights me up. There’s something special about sitting down with colleagues who speak the same professional language and have similar client experiences. I’ll be sharing more in the future about chronic disorganization, which is the primary focus of ICD.

This week, I thought I’d speak a bit about money mindset. It’s a great compliment to last week’s discussion with Germaine Foley, and it’s the topic I presented on at the Black Girls Who Organize Retreat. Money is one area folks either love to discuss or shy away from, yet it’s central to so many aspects of our lives. I’m aware that even within homes, individuals don’t always speak openly with their partners or housemates about money, and this can lead to layers of tension and mistrust. So, in today’s episode I’m going to share two powerful perspectives about money. My hope is that these takeaways lead you to expand your thinking and question your own rules and beliefs around finances. I believe each of us (me included!) can always learn more and deepen our education around handling money. And it all starts with mindset.

I met my husband at age 19. When we moved in together, I had to bet on the future of our relationship up front. You see, I attended an all-women’s college, and my financial aid funding was dependent on my living on campus. By moving off campus, the college made clear that I had to forfeit my funding. It was a big risk. My intuition (and youth) told me I was headed in the right direction, so I chose love over money. Twenty-five years later we’re still together. Conversations around money and finances were transparent and open from the start. Collectively, we decided to live off of one income from the start of our relationship and took turns through the years trading who was in the lead. We’ve carried large amounts of debt at various times and have had our fair share of tense conversations. We’ve also followed a series of adventures over the last two decades and been willing to challenge the norm when it comes to the more traditional financial path.

I share this to broadly illustrate my first point which is that money and numbers don’t have feelings. You do. When my college reached out with documentation about how the financial aid line item would be $0 and the total tuition bill due would increase, they were numbers on a page. It was accounting. Subtract here. Add here. It could’ve been $10,000. It could’ve been $20,000. (And pause here for a moment to feel your reaction to those numbers. Notice your thoughts of what you might’ve done in my situation.) From the college’s perspective, nothing had changed except where the dollars would be coming from to cover my expenses. At that time it was my brain – and most likely also my father’s – that was pinging with all types of responses to the numbers I was reading from the college.

Again, money and numbers don’t have feelings. You do. I do. We all do. Two important elements play a role when that number lands in front of you: the context of the situation and your own money story. At that moment, the context was my day-to-day experience. I was doing well in school. I’d met someone for whom I cared deeply and had that feeling reciprocated. I was making the decision in conjunction with folks I loved. My money story, on the other hand, had me all over the place. Internally, I swung from the blindness of youth and my blindness around the long-term financial impact of having to pay those dollars to deeply believing that we’d figure out the money no matter what.

My mindset was one of abundance rather than scarcity. Each of us has a foundational set of scripts that shape how you spend, save, view debt, view self-investment, view your belongings. The topics of money, clutter, and time are intricately interwoven and oftentimes when we’re discussing clutter, there’s layers of emotions about past purchases and the financial impact.

Alright, so the way you think about the prices you encounter each day – the price of gas, your recent grocery run or takeout order, or your credit card bill – is heavily influenced by the messages you received growing up. Oftentimes, these scripts are more than one generation old. The way you think about money now is rooted in how those around you spoke about or cared for money as you were growing up. This is important because it affects whether you’re open to receiving, your spending and saving patterns, and ties into the attachment you have to what you currently own.

Again, money and numbers don’t have feelings. You do. For example, you have an internal metric about what you think is a “good deal.” You have an internal metric about the value a service offers for a set price. Yet, without reference point or context, dollar amounts (and numbers) are tricky. Without a reference point your brain doesn’t have enough information to determine whether the number stated is “a lot” or “a little.” Take the number 5. Typically, you’d default to thinking this is a small number. Yet, if I mentioned there was a five-inch spider crawling on the floor next to you, you may change your mind. Similarly, if I said the number $50,000, you may default to thinking that’s a decent amount. Yet, if I mentioned that’s the going rate for homes on the next block over, you might not be eager to move into the neighborhood. It’s all relative.

I remind myself often that money and numbers don’t have feelings. I’m always the one putting value on the items in front of me. Money and numbers are subjective, and the reason they’re subjective is due to our past experiences. So, what’s your money story? You absolutely may have more than one. Have you ever considered how it colors your perspective around spending, saving, and the objects or commitments in your life? Taking time to better understand what you’ve learned about money is empowering. It creates choice. The more you get curious about what you believe about money, debt, or savings, the more you can understand your past choices. It helps to explain the internal reactions you may have when someone quotes a price to you.

It's something I’m quite mindful of when a prospective client joins me for a consultation. I’m aware that they have a pain, a need, and a desire to change. I’m aware that they also bring with them a money story about what it may cost in order to reach their goal. I’m aware that they bring their parents’ money stories about “the importance of saving” and their partner’s money stories about “not spending frivolously” all woven together with their own.

However, what’s often missing in our thinking (me included) is the opportunity cost of continuing life as it is. How do you quantify the cost of tension in a household around clutter and belongings? How do you quantify the amount you’ve spent on organizing bins and boxes, time spent trying to implement solutions on your own, and the internal mental + emotional clutter that comes from beating yourself up time and time again? Again, money and numbers don’t have feelings. You do.

I get it. I’ve felt the trepidation of talking about money with a service provider. I’ve wondered whether I have the ability to extract the value out of the relationship. I’ve questioned whether their solution would work for me. And I’ve found that when I step forward and choose with intention how I want to think and feel about money, my money mindset shifts from scarcity into abundance. This ultimately leads to better results.

So, the second takeaway I want to offer today is… since money doesn’t have feelings, you get to decide how you want to think and feel about money. And yes, I recognize how steep of a mindset shift this could be if you’re not able to make basic ends meet. In that instance, I’d highly recommend seeking support from a qualified financial education or debt reduction specialist. Deciding how you want to think and feel about money is a strategy to regain your sense of control over your choices and your accounts. It’s a way of opening yourself up and being radically honest about your expenditures and savings.

Automatic thoughts from your past money scripts may sound like, “I’ll never have enough. Money is hard. I have so much debt that I can’t handle it. This is too expensive.” It can be hard to make positive choices for the future (for example spending less or spending intentionally on support) from this type of energy. Yet, at any point, you can choose to drop these automatic money statements and instead practice shifting into the possibility of abundance. This may sound like, “I will always have enough. Money is easy to figure out; it’s math. My debt serves a purpose.” Hmmm? How does that feel?

It's okay if it feels a bit impossible at first. Yet, remember – no one can hear your thoughts. You don’t need cluttered thoughts that weigh you down or hold you back. You are free to believe whatever you want in your head. Why not intentionally create a money dialogue that feels much better and more supportive instead?  A mindset of abundance looks differently for us all. For me, it’s trusting that I’m making the best financial decision with the information that I currently have. Setting the bar higher for myself feels ridiculous. When I chose moving off campus with my husband over the financial aid package, I was making a commitment to make our relationship work. When you reach out to me for a consultation conversation, you’re deciding whether you’re making a commitment to change for yourself. You’re more organized than you think and being willing to be honest with yourself about the feelings you have about spending, savings, and debt, there’s less clutter all around. It can’t hide in the corners of your closet or your budget because you’re choosing not to turn away or shame yourself for any longer. It’s just one other way you’re embracing an organized life. Talk to y’all soon.

Outro: If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast and want to stay up to date on what’s happening each month in A Pleasant Solution, I invite you to join my email community. I share relatable stories, post upcoming events, and offer a weekly mini solution. Click on the resource in the show notes or visit apleasantsolution.com to learn more.