The 5 Hardest Money Habits to Break (and How to Finally Break Them) | 537

Today we're coming to you with the top five hardest financial habits to break. Yeah, we can't wait to dive into these and we're gonna also, we're not just gonna tell you what they are, we're gonna hopefully give you some solutions and ideas on how to break them and maybe encourage you along the way. Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt-free but you don't want to live on beans and rice? When you don't want to give up this pumpkin spice latte? Hey, it's okay if you don't already know how to budget or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it's okay if you want to seem like you have your finances all together or you're not on the same page with your spouse when it comes to finances. We know what you're doing probably isn't working but guess what? You're in for right place. We're Shayna and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019 helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck and know exactly what to do with their money. In this podcast we'll share with you everything we know plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages and even bring your kids in on a conversation. We can help you no matter where you're at whether you're the single mom who's never had $500 in their savings account or the millionaire who's paid off four real estate loans. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. One of the biggest financial habits that people have a hard time breaking that we did a poll, we pulled this from our Facebook group and it is shocker eating out. It just keeps coming up over and over and we know you're busy. We know for example you quote unquote hate to cook and so eating out but and then oh my gosh and then some people are like doing the delivery and I have something to say about that. I have so much to say about that. I was just thinking like how much like my husband would say okay I make this much per hour. How am I so I worked a whole hour to get Taco Bell delivered or whatever you're going to I'm hoping it's not Taco Bell but because we did DoorDash while we were at our retreat and it was so expensive to get it delivered like you're just doubling whatever you bought you just double it was all the fees. Anyway that's just obviously it's expensive. Yes I agree with that. Yeah it is. I will say my neighbor they both work and have very good very successful jobs and my son is actually the one that noticed that they probably get DoorDash three times a day. Like all three. So Saturday morning we saw it. We saw it when the daughter comes home from school Monday through Friday. She gets DoorDash for herself and in the evening it is a revolving door we see next door all the time and I was just thinking you make all this money you have such good income for what. So that you can invest in DoorDash's future. Yes. Like you're investing in there and them and like you're you believe in them instead of yourself. Okay so what we're not saying what does that lie Vanessa don't hear what we're not saying. We're not saying we don't want you to eat out. We're not saying whatever we want you because you're saying it's the hardest habit to break. We want to see what can we do differently. Yeah. So you're saying it's going over on the budget. It's not eating out a thousand percent fast food. There was a lot of emojis in here that you guys use that you hate to cook. We even see one that says eating out and then they say it's so expensive. So it's like they know that they're doing it and they know that at the same time they're like I don't want to do this. Yeah. And I think how have you know how have we curved eating out for example. What do we do. I think that one thing that we will you would hear us tell our clients is make the food that's going to be at home something you want to do as well. Make it as easy as possible. Make it as yummy as possible. We're not going from OK we're eating out to all you have is salad. That's it. Oh no. Like we can have fun food at home too and we can have it convenient and we can have it easy. That's all very possible. We just got to figure out how to flip that. Yeah. And I think that's a good point because I will tell you when the kids were little you guys I made everything from scratch. I made my own laundry soap my own deodorant. Like I just had so much spilled in. Was it my car or your car. What's your car. So sad. I think I made you a whole five gallon bucket. Yeah. Oh it's so bad. So yeah. We had so much time. I made like the Amish bread like whatever. OK. Love that time in my life. Right now the time that I'm in. I have no time. My kids are in sports. We are busy. We are never home. And but we're still eating from homes. But all the food that we have decided to bring in the house or cook is faster. Right. So we have gone to a lot of frozen healthy clean stuff that we can just throw on the grill or throw in the oven or throw in whatever. Right. So you just have to figure out what season of life you're in. What is convenient for you. And you can still do this from home but in a different way. You don't have to cook five star gourmet meals at home and think that's the only way that that works. Yeah. And there's other options too. I've been seeing there's so many different meal delivery. I remember our friends said that they do Hello Fresh because anybody in the house can make it. So the ingredients are pre portioned and then the instructions are right there. And I was like that's great too. So it's and it's still going to be so much more affordable than eating out. It's not like the cheapest option. So if we're over that's a different discussion. It's a different topic and we're not experts on like how to eat the cheapest. That's not if you came for us. We're over here being bougie. We're not beans and rice. OK. So sorry about that. We're not the five dollar meal experts. But the other thing I was going to say is simply taking some of your bad more expensive habits and changing them. I remember when Celsius came out. I didn't know what this was but I have and somebody else here was a truck driver. He was a truck driver and he said I get my waters at the gas station every or truck. I was probably a truck stop right. And I was like oh OK waters. And I'm like how much are these waters. And I don't know they were like three bucks or something. I was like can you get them at Sam's whatever kind of water they are. I had no they were either his babies in wholesale like energy drinks that you're sitting sir. Like we would have had a conversation if I had known what he was drinking at that point. But he just told me it was water. Find out Celsius and you're sitting down all day friend. I love you so much. And I knew you say alert. But anyway just help wise anyway long story short just by the same thing you can get the same thing in half by eating or buying it in bulk and just having it that way instead of the quote unquote convenient of having to go into a truck stop a lot or the gas station. A lot of your things can be that everything these days every restaurant has their food in the Walmart or the Publix or the whatever. Oh yeah. Like you can just get that. You've been in the frozen section. And so again the goal here is like Vanessa talks about the one family that she had that was they were doing $5,000 for their restaurant budget a month and then they were like we're going to go to a thousand. You're going to go from five thousand to three thousand maybe the goal here isn't to go from eating out all the time to eating super healthy or made like Vanessa from scratch meals at home. That's not what we're saying. Let's the bridge here is like what can we make super easy convenient home if it's breakfast for dinner every single night. Go let's go and make get your kids involved. What do you want my kids know if they don't ask for it they're not getting it and then they're going to starve except they really won't serve but you need what do you want what can I have here that you'll be like just as happy to grab that as you would to go out to eat have that be at home and that's like the first step. Yeah and listen we are not wanting you to cut everything out put it in the budget. If you're saying this month our budget is $500 to eat out then that's your budget. Don't go over that we don't want you to cut everything out and have no fun and like Shannon said we're not for this beans and rice and frugal living off of a dollar meal whatever that's not we're doing. We're just saying plan for it we don't want you to look at the end of the month and go to know that all your money was spent on going out to eat and none of your goals were reached. So we are excited for you to figure this out in a fun healthy way that fits your lifestyle that fits your goals that when whatever you have going on in your life. Yes okay I think that we'd be that horse dead or whatever the saying is Vanessa so let's move on to the second hardest financial habit to break which you guys told us is shopping and impulse buying and here we're talking like Amazon clothes home decor stuff for the kids all that kind of stuff. Amazon comes up quite a bit there don't. Yeah it's literally just that buy now add to cart we are scrolling maybe you're bored maybe you're at your kids soccer practice or whatever and you're just on your phone. Maybe you're in the bathroom like my husband and you're on the phone whatever maybe you're just you're literally scrolling and you see something and you're like I'll buy that okay but listen guys is that reaching your goals is that what you want is this is buying those things making you happy or is it like. It's like masking a problem. Obviously it's a problem because they said it's they want to break it so how do you break it. You guys what you said is your personal spending and home stuff a lot of decor a lot of overspending on clothes. I don't want to be patronizing but this is actually really simple to solve this is very simple the very simple solution here is to have a spending budget for Amazon have a spending budget for home decor or have a spending savings bucket for clothing. Those and to our point about grocery or eating out it's not that we don't want you to have it it's that you want to set an amount that allows you to reach all of your other goals and you can still do it that's the easiest simple way to do it and I feel home decor is a big one. I run into with my clients and I usually have you have them sell set a house budget and just have a little money there so that when you want to or think you had or somebody had a client where it's like a. TJ Max once a month they just put so much money in that and I get to go and have a good time at the Max and I do it once a month and I'm done yeah. I love how this one person said I just don't need any more Amazon or random. I see on the Internet so it is so easy to just see something and click and buy it but Shayna said if you don't have a budget for it then you don't know so you're just bought. And normally the people that this is happening they have that one whole like one account random transactions going through all the time so they think that they have more money than they do and then by the end of the month they have no money because they spent it all on Amazon or going out to eat or whatever and it's all gone. So listen we have that separate account trust me like 90% of all the problems I think that we have with our clients can be solved with a separate spending account and if you can do that and budgets for each amount so some people want it very specific words. Okay this is my Amazon budget this is my TJ Max budget this is whatever budget or they will have their spending money and they're saying okay I this is my spending money that I'm mixing with maybe nails or hair or Starbucks but I also know that this is the amount of money that I have to spend to get whatever I want. And when you do that which can give yourself some guardrails you do stop overspending naturally. Yeah. And I'm going to borrow. John A cuff it's really funny because he's on my planner quote today he said don't be don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. That was his quote that's on my planner day but that's not what I'm borrowing from him. But what I am borrowing is he said yes I think two older ish girls and people ask him all the time how does he help or keep them off their phones or keep them not addicted to screens or whatever and his answer was to always they always have better things to do. And I think that is a. It's important. Little lesson that we can all take here. We want you to have better things to do than to buy random beep on the Internet that you see because and we know that you don't necessarily need all of that like you don't it's you probably could do literally anything else with your time and feel better about it you could do a puzzle. Okay I was talking to my people at church yesterday and we're I think we're gonna have a puzzle I think we're gonna have a puzzle meeting. Oh fine. I need to do that. Yeah slow down and just do something like that but we what we want for you is to have better things to do than spend money. That doesn't mean like we love to take our girls on a little shopping trip little girls day or whatever those are different but just randomly scrolling what else could you be doing with that time that you would feel better about in the future like it would pay a better ROI to do that if you have better things to do then that would be something that I would want for you and for me and for both of us. Yeah and I would also think about the amount of stuff you want in your home to and I know some people like they'll buy stuff they get rid of stuff but think of how much time that takes in itself as well. So if you're constantly having to get rid of things because you're buying stuff and or if you're the type of person that wants to sell it like that is a lot of time energy and mind space that you probably don't have time for that you don't need and I love my mom so much but when we first got married she tried to buy me like an avocado peeler or a slicer and then like a potato slicer and then like carrot slicer and vegetable or I could just use one for everything right one knife for everything and think about that when you're buying stuff. Do I already have something that I can use and I'm the prime example to guys that I had the same hairdryer since I was in high school. It finally caught on fire was that last year Shayna. That was your warning. Yes I was like okay it's time for a new hairdryer but if you have something that works fine. Don't you mean just think about really do you really need to replace it or do you just want to replace it. Yeah okay so just real quick I do want to reiterate all of these things could so somebody else said booking trips and concerts and gifts my grandchildren all of these budget for them specifically and then stick with that. Guard rail because once you put it all on paper and I'm paying extra on debt or all my bills are covered and I'm saving and I'm investing or whatever your goals are as long as those things are met have that have yourself a little fun budget for all of those different things. That's what we want for you. We what we don't want is the random spending and then all of a sudden you have you've invested in DoorDash you've invested in Amazon you've invested in your grandkids but you haven't invested in you like you haven't saved for your life right and we don't want that for you. Yeah and also go for a walk if it's like emotional or if it's boredism or whatever that is go throw a ball with your kids go outside go for a walk go to the beach. Puzzle. Puzzles do something else besides scrolling on your phone. All right budget besties it's time for surreal talk. You don't need another budget you need a budget system. Our simplified budget system is what you've been looking for. It's going to allow you to be bougie on a budget. You'll be able to easily set up a system that runs automatically and shows you exactly where your money is going and it's going to give you permission to spend everybody loves that. Yeah it's straightforward pretty and packed with walkthrough videos that break down the exact methods we use with our clients to get out of debt set up a bills account separate spending bill savings buckets and end the paycheck to paycheck feel. If you're new to budgeting this is the perfect way to jump in and if you're already a budget nerd like us you're about to meet your new obsession. This is the upgrade to your finances that you need right now. Yeah so head on over to budget besties dot com forward slash budget and grab yours. Now back to today's show. So the third hardest financial habit to break is credit cards Vanessa. Okay so we did see people wanting to use them for convenience points and cash back so those are probably the three big reasons why they're using them. Yeah so here we got some people were saying you using them for convenience for the point like you said freaking credit cards for my go to with somebody's freaking eating out and using credit cards to stop using my credit card. Here you go. Take that ish out of your wallet take it what is capital one say they like what's in your wallet. How about you not using. No like that will help take them off your wallet take them out of your auto pay things like Apple or whatever your wallet on your phone and all that take them out that's like step number one. Yeah and I will say when we start coaching with people and they say I haven't used a credit card all month or I have promised myself I'm not using any credit cards like they are so proud and to know that they can actually fund their life in cash and start paying for their future instead of paying for their past. Remove them if you're really serious about doing something different let me read it with this. You're listening to this podcast because what you're doing isn't working you want something different for your life you want something better and you may be thinking yeah what I'm doing is fine okay but how much better could it be if you tried something different and you leveled up. Not using credit cards is part of that we don't want you to rely on credit cards okay we've got a whole conversation about points and whatever interest or whatever. This is about relying on credit cards because you don't know what's happening with your money and you're just swiping your card because it's easy it's there it's convenient. Okay we want you to remove the temptation get it off of your Apple Pay like Shayna said PayPal Amazon all of it and start paying and using cash. Even if you're like these people that that use it all month and pay it off like you're behind them and you don't know what you're spending on what like it's allowing you to live in this gray area where you have no idea what's really going on with your money. We would say pause that for a while see really get in control get take ownership understand what's going on understand that everything's happening and if someday you want to go back to it that's your choice but give it a try. Try our way which our way is for you to set up your budget you need to go to our boot camp and watch it budget besties.com forward slash start watch it figure out how to set it up how to separate the accounts and then automate it. And then you'll have a budget for everything that you're using your credit cards for you'll have and you'll know how much money you have for eating out you'll know how much money you have to get gas or to get groceries or whatever so that you don't have to rely on them. So the step is the first step is get them out of your wallet get them off of the things and then move and then get your budget set up make sure you move all of your bills off the credit cards wean yourself off start using your own actual money. And here's the thing too is if you're not making a realistic budget you're going to go back to using your credit cards so we have a lot of people that try we said earlier my eating out budgets $5,000 or was that's how much you were using and now I want to use a thousand you're not going to you're not going to go from 5,000 to 1000 in one month. No you're going to stair step it down so figure out what your realistic grocery budget is what you're realistic going out to eat budget is all of that you're. Figure it out and know your number so that way when you put it in your budget and you're actually stay within those numbers you can feel good not feeling like you need to go rely on a credit card. Yep. Okay so groceries is the number four hardest habit to financial habit to break which I feel is unfair tell me more about how that's a financial habit that you have to break. The trees convenience and want rocking keeping within the budget for going there. Okay I think this is an easy fix it's have that separate account don't have an account strictly for your gas and groceries or just for groceries however you want to do it doesn't matter. Yeah, you don't know how much you can sit on groceries so therefore you do go out and the other part of that I believe is that you're not budgeting the right amount for your groceries so then you end up going over can you think that this doesn't work I can't do this I'm not good at money. No it's just because you keep low balling yourself on how much you think groceries cost so you're over spending you quote unquote you think you're over spending. Yeah, that's a really good point a lot of you are still thinking it's like I told my kids when my husband I got married beef in Texas was a dollar a pound. Yeah. And now it's five or six I don't even know how much it is or seven or 10 like it's not you it's the prices of groceries so you have to raise it and we understand that's uncomfortable but the most like the most important thing that your money does for you is to provide. Food and then like shelter I think seems like we need that I heard like those are important or whatever you're going to have to be more realistic which is going to which is an eye opener and we understand that that but that usually you're not allotting enough money and then you don't know how much you have and I said because you don't have it separated and then once those two are done then that will give you something to start systemizing and hopefully being able to save money and by using different different sales or different meal plans or whatever but first you've got to separate it and know exactly what you've got going on as far as groceries. Yeah and it's 2026 guys if your grocery budget has an increase since COVID. Yeah you're wrong. You might want to take a look at that like we're not this isn't like Shayna said this is not the old days. There are new prices for things they're not going down they're already getting the price that they want right now what makes you think that they're going to lower them. Okay. And labor has gone up all of it you have to adjust for it. Yeah and then the last thing I'll say is groceries for convenience. Why groceries for convenience if you find that maybe it's not budget as budget friendly for you. You can be the convenience or right which is not fun but if you can system again getting it separated first and systemizing it once maybe once you get home everybody pitches in and washes everything cuts everything up separates it makes it super easy for everybody to get and that took an hour and everything is set up for the week or whatever. Maybe that's what you need to do instead of it being the other people doing it and charging you more but there is a way to do it again first is separating and then we'll move on from that to systemizing. All right. The fifth habit that people are having a hard time to break is living within or below their means. Yeah so I'm spending more than I make having so much for hobbies and and I know one person that answered this and look if you have the budget the budget is going to write you're going to do income minus debt minus bills minus spending equals how much you can save slash pay extra on debt. Okay so if you're doing if you're aren't looking at that then you definitely have no idea but if you set that all up and then obviously like we tell you to automate it you will automatically be living on less than your means is what that what those savings buckets are what is less than your means right so if you can set money aside or if you're living according to how much you're making. Most of you don't even know how much you're making you don't know how much you cost you just know that you're out of money all the time. Yeah and so that's the problem that we want to solve. I think that's my first take as soon as I read this like then you don't know how much you cost. Yeah like you don't know what living below your means looks like because you maybe probably don't even have it on paper and if you can like Shayna said set it up that the budget up simplify so this is the three steps that we talk about. Simplify your budget set it up one page five columns it's super easy and then you separate which is having those separate accounts for your different spending and having those debit cards available so that way you can easily spend within your means in those mini budgets for those categories and then you automate everything it's happening for you it's totally hands off. You literally it's foolproof you can't mess it up it's making you live. Yeah because you set it up that way and again really not knowing is your first problem but the solution is what Vanessa just said you guys you if you're using credit cards is another way that you're living above your means and so you just and we have found that once you set this up it becomes easier. Instead of you guessing instead of you just being frustrated with yourself and spending money anyway or whatever now you know exactly what's happening and it just makes it easier for you to do the thing that you want to do stick to the budget that you set because it's all happening for you automatically. Yeah so we hope that you guys have gotten some great information from this we talked about the five biggest financial habits people having a hard time breaking and we gave you some solutions to those. If you're tired of feeling like your finances are all over the place and you're ready for a simple set it and forget it way to budget we have something special for you. Watch our automate your budget masterclass at budgetbesties.com forward slash autonomy. We'll show you step by step how to finally organize your money how to set up your account and put your budget on autopilot so your bills are saving and spending for my country. Imagine less stress and more savings and the freedom to spend money without having to track every dollar or babysitter banking. Go to budgetbesties.com forward slash automate to start today.