I'm Not Going to Yell at You

I told a recent acquaintance that I’m a financial coach and she said, “Are you going to yell at me? Because I feel like I need someone to yell at me.”

No, so sorry to disappoint, but I am not going to yell at you. What I will do is help you figure out if you are spending your money in line with your priorities.

If going out to Starbucks a few times a month (or even a week) is important to you, then budget for it and stop feeling guilty about it. If you realize that it’s more important to you to save up cash for your next car or take an amazing dream vacation with your honey or have a big safety net because your life feels a little unstable right now, then all I want you to do is make a conscious trade-off.

If you spend another $9.72 at Starbucks this week, that’s $9.72 that cannot be going to those other things. It’s not going to waste, it’s just not able to do two jobs at once. 

Our culture is nearly always multitasking. (Pretend I'm not eating popcorn while typing this.) But the things is, our dollars can only do one job at once.

$1 = 1 job

One dollar equals one job. Either that dollar is for your latte, your library, or your liberation fund (sometimes known as an emergency fund).

Why Shame Doesn't Work

I won't yell at you for a few reasons:

• it's not my money
• I don't care what you do with your money
• shame leads us to avoid the thing, not get better at it

Financial shame leads us to delete our banking app, completely ignore it, or eventually separate ourselves from our spending decisions and pretend we don't care.

So let's skip the shaming session, shall we?

If you look at what you spent your money on last week and think "Goodness, that's a lot of groceries/gas/golfballs" and you realize that's not really how you wanted to spend your money, then celebrate. You learned something about yourself. You figured out what you don't want to spend your money on (or you uncovered a previously unknown threshold for your spending). It's okay to regret a purchase. It is entirely possible that last week I bought terrible colored pencils and now I have sworn to always and forever buy Crayola from here on out. This regret is actually helpful. That "ouch" moment helps us learn from our mistakes but only if we keep shame out of it.

I'm not your drill sergeant. I'm not your mom. I'm not here to yell at you. I'm here to help you figure out how to spend your money in line with your priorities. Let's figure out your priorities, build a spending plan that honors your values, and go give every dollar a job.

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