41. Budgeting Part 2
In the previous budget episode, we discussed how creating a budget is a tool. One that is value neutral, that you can leverage in creating a relationship with your money. In this episode, I want to revisit budgeting. Just because it is value neutral, doesn’t mean you have a neutral relationship with it.
Listen to the previous episodes mentioned in this one:
11. Intimacy with Money – The Budget Episode
04. The one tool I use over and over again in my journal – the Money Mindset Assessment
38. “I shouldn’t have bought that!” – How to deal with impulse spending
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Transcription
Welcome to Episode 41 of the Money Mindset Shift! And also, welcome to Budgeting Part 2!
If you remember, in the previous budget episode, number 11 titled “Intimacy with Money – the Budget Episode,” we discussed how creating a budget is a tool. One that is value neutral, that you can leverage in creating a relationship with your money.
In this episode, I want to revisit budgeting. Just because it is value neutral, doesn’t mean you have a neutral relationship with it.
In recent conversations with a dear friend and client, we discussed the possibilities of a budget for her. She is a contractor, and recently one of her contracts ended, and she has some padding money-wise, but had some concerns about when she would absolutely need to bring in a new contract by.
Thus budgeting. Seemed reasonable to both of us for her to look at her bills, her income, and her savings to look at a timeline that she felt comfortable with.
However, practice is different than theory.
For her, a budget wasn’t a value neutral tool that she could leverage in her situation, it was a tool that she had used with strict control in order to make ends meet during times of financial struggle.
Every penny had to be accounted for, and use prioritized according to basic survival needs.
While she is no longer in that position, it doesn’t mean that her experience with budgeting was suddenly different.
So, she desired to change that relationship and she received some homework.
She isn’t alone though.
Whether learned through similar experiences or different ones, budgets and budgeting can be very heavy and full of landmines. And just because financial circumstances have changed, doesn’t mean the relationship itself has changed.
For example, think of winning the lottery. Just because somebody wins the lottery doesn’t mean that their relationship with money has changed. They will play out the same patterns.
Why?
If the relationship itself doesn’t change, then the same patterns keep playing out.
So how do you go about beginning to change your relationship with budgeting?
Do you remember the Money Mindset Assessment from Episode 4? Or when we applied the Evaluate part of the framework to impulse spending in Episode 38?
It’s all the same thing!
The Money Mindset Assessment is part of the Evaluate, Shift, Heal framework. In fact, it is the first part, Evaluate. And if tweaked, it can be used for pretty much any situation!
Here’s what that looks like for changing your relationship with budgeting –
- How do I feel about budgeting? (Describe your current relationship with it – how it feels, what situations/circumstances/things come up around it.)
- How do I want to feel about budgeting? (Describe your ideal relationship with budgeting – what it feels like, your feelings towards it, what thoughts you have about it, etc.)
- On a scale from 1-10, how satisfied am I with the relationship I currently have with budgeting? (1 being not at all satisfied, 10 being completely satisfied.)
- On a scale from 1-10, how close do I feel to my ideal relationship with budgeting? (1 being not close at all, 10 being I’m living it!)
These two scaling questions (3 and 4) are helpful because they not only help you to see – with #4 – where you are at on your pathway to getting towards your ideal relationship, but #3 also helps to create a discrepancy. It helps you to understand that maybe you’re not as satisfied, and can help to provide some motivation for moving forward, even when you don’t feel so close to your ideal relationship with budgeting.
Once you’ve answered those questions – journal on them, think them over, talk with a friend or a trusted loved one – you can begin to look at the patterns or thoughts and beliefs that uphold your current relationship with budgeting, and what could be more supportive in shifting your mindset towards budgeting so that you can have that ideal relationship.
You can begin imagining, “what could this be like?” And creating that vision in reality. So in your life.
As I’ve said before, a budget is just a tool. How you use it, to what purpose, and how you approach it – they all impact your relationship with it. So as you begin to change these things, your relationship does too.
And remember where the blame really lies (we’re harkening back to episode 11 here), not with you, but with the systems that are creating economic and financial oppression.
So take care of yourself. Use what tools you have available to you. Change your relationships with them, and do what you need to do to not just survive, but thrive.
<3
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