You’re Not Bad With Money, You’re Patterned
If you think you have erratic, emotional, or unmanageable spending habits, it’s tempting to blame a lack of discipline.
But most often, it’s not.
It’s about patterns, patterns that were set in place well before you were earning your first paycheck, paying your first bills, or making your first financial decisions.
The role that money played in your childhood didn’t just touch your environment. It affected how you deal with money as an adult, how you spend it, or how you don’t spend it, or how you control it.
And the change is not about changing your whole personality.
It’s about becoming conscious enough to change.
What Childhood Money Trauma Looks Like
Most money trauma doesn’t come from dramatic circumstances. It’s more likely to come from a series of experiences that created a sense of safety or danger.
This might include having parents and caregivers who lived with money scarcity, uncertainty, and anxiety. It can include hearing parents fight over money, seeing your parents in distress, or feeling like money was a taboo subject.
In some families, money was taboo. In others, it was a constant source of tension.
Over time, these experiences develop into beliefs:
- Money is stressful
- Money goes fast
- I don’t have control
- I shouldn’t think too hard about it
You may not think these things explicitly today, but they might inform your behavior.
How Does It Affect Your Spending Today?
If you ever think, “I don’t do what I say I will with my money,” this is likely why.
You may find yourself spending a lot as soon as you receive your pay cheque, when you know you need to save money. Or feeling anxious about looking at your bank account. Or spending money to lift your mood, only to be disappointed.
These actions are not accidental. Their responses.
For instance, if money was insecure to you as a child, you can see how you might feel it is now: spending before it’s gone. If you felt stressed about money, you could avoid it. If you didn’t feel in control, you might use spending to temporarily feel like you are.
None of this makes you a bad person. It means you learned to be this way – you can learn to be different.
Why “Trying Harder” Doesn’t Work
Here is where women struggle.
You start budgeting, decide you really want to change, and perhaps even stick with it for a month or so. But then you slip up, go off the rails, or get thrown off track.
The easy thing to think is that you failed.
But what that means is this: you are trying to change behavior without changing the habit. Budgeting is useful. It gives structure. But it doesn’t change the emotional response to money. So when you are bored or stressed and pressured, you go back to the pattern.
- You don’t need more pressure.
- You need more consciousness and systems.
How to Change the Pattern
You don’t have to overhaul your habits to change your spending. It begins with some small, deliberate changes that help you take control of your spending.
The key is to notice your patterns. Not judging them, just observing. Take notice when you are tempted to buy, and particularly when it’s unplanned. Rather than acting impulsively, take a pause.
This can take a simple form. Giving yourself 24 hours to think about something. Thinking about what you want and why. Ask yourself how you feel. This adds distance between feeling and doing – and this distance is opportunity.
And replace the function of spending.
Taking shopping out of the mix while not replacing it with something else won’t help if it has been your coping strategy, reward system, or a sense of control. You’ll need to find ways of doing this that don’t cost as much.
This might involve:
- Setting up a “guilt-free” spend category in your budget
- Setting up a ritual that will reset you without spending
- Doing little things that reinforce your financial control, such as checking your accounts each week
It’s not about deprivation, it’s intention.
If you want something you can return to daily, the Affirmation Cards help reinforce new beliefs and keep you grounded as you build better financial habits.
Creating Habits That Work For You
As you begin to change your behaviors, look for small habits, not excessive ones.
Progress is better than perfection.
This could involve making your process less complicated. For instance, having tools that keep you connected to your spending without the overwhelm can be helpful.
For instance, tools like Credit Sesame can help you stay engaged with your financial journey, while tools like SoFi give you a one-stop shop for managing your money and improving your financial habits over time.
If avoidance has been part of your habit, just making small moves toward awareness, such as monitoring your accounts, can help you recover.
And if you are trying to get your finances back on track while breaking these patterns, tools like Skip can help you keep on top of bills and keep life moving forward.
You’re Not Starting from Scratch; You’re Starting Differently
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is this:
- You’re not behind.
- You’re not starting over.
- You have awareness.
- And awareness changes everything.
The habits you have now are formed by your experiences. The habits you develop in the future are those you choose.
You don’t need to solve all your problems right away. You don’t need to get it right. You just need to make the next decision and then make the next decision and so on.
Where to Go From Here
If you want to put some structure around it and really change your money mindset and not just the money habits, then take the first step.
The 32 Questions to Move Your Mindset from Flawed to Flawless is designed to help you understand your patterns, challenge the beliefs behind them, and start building a healthier financial foundation.
Because real change doesn’t come from knowing more. It comes from doing things differently—and sticking with it.
