The Better Budgeting Podcast

Episode 87: Why We Sabotage Our Money and How to Stop

• Danielle Reese • Episode 87

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We explore why smart people sabotage their money and how to stop it with simple tools that lower impulse, calm fear and build self-trust. We move from feelings versus facts to practical friction, root causes, and one action you can take this week.

• feelings versus facts and how to separate them
• fear of failure and fear of success shaping choices
• childhood money scripts driving adult habits
• dopamine spending and the doomscroll trap
• self-trust, broken promises and accountability
• common sabotage loops with debt, savings and goals
• pause, reframe, add friction with the 24-hour rule
• addressing root causes, connection and therapy
• a personal reframe on a tempting trip deal
• one clear action to break the pattern this week

Schedule a free 30-minute consultation using the link in the show notes to talk through your goals, struggles, and if coaching is right for you. Join our free Financial Freedom Society on Facebook—link in the show notes. Grab the free bank statement exercise in the show notes.


Danielle is a money coach helping those who have been trying to figure out their finances FINALLY create a clear plan so they don’t have to worry about waiting to refill their bank account the next payday.

She is the founder of The Financial Freedom Society on Facebook and her signature money coaching program, The Better Budgeting Playbook. You can sign up for her newsletter by clicking here.

Take the first step towards financial freedom and sign up for a complimentary assessment call with me, Danielle Reese.


Grab your copy of "Let's Talk Groceries" Your Guide to Reducing Your Grocery Bill" This is an ebook with over 30 pages of tips, tricks, and guidance to help you save hundreds on your grocery bill!

Sign up for The Better Budgeting Blueprint for $99.

Grab your free copy of The Bank Statement Exercise.


You can connect with her on Facebook or Instagram.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the Better Budgeting Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Reese. I'm a money coach and the founder of the Better Budgeting Playbook, and this is my one-on-one coaching program for women and couples who have been trying to figure out their finances, finally create a clear plan so they don't have to worry about waiting on payday anymore. I became a money coach in 2020 after paying off over$60,000 in debt, rekindling my marriage, becoming financially free, and wanting others to experience the same. If you'd like to work with me, you can check out the link in the show notes there. Also, we have the Financial Freedom Society on Facebook. It's a free Facebook community focusing on debt payoff, saving strategies, budgeting, and money mindset. You can find the link to that community in the show notes as well. Hey, welcome back to this week's episode of the Better Budgeting Podcast. I'm so happy to have you here. In this episode, we're going to talk about self-sabotage in our finances. So this is what this can look like, okay? You're overspending after a stressful day or even a big win. Like, I deserve this. Have you ever heard that phrase or or even said it to yourself, right? Like, I deserve, I've been working so hard. Okay. Or maybe you avoid opening the bank statements or your checking accounts, or you are making a big emotional purchase that just doesn't align with the goals that you have going on right now. Or we're starting a new system, like a budget or debt payoff plan, and then we're quitting the moment that it feels too restrictive, or that maybe you just don't have time. Or maybe even self-sabotage could be feeling guilty after spending and giving up completely, right? Like I already messed up, so why even bother? So we're gonna walk through this today on why do we self-sabotage our finances? Why the heck do we do that? And I have a couple reasons why. So we're just gonna go ahead and jump into it. Number one, feeling over facts. Feelings over facts. And I've shared this a lot with my clients. That is this a fact or is this a feeling? Is this purchase really necessary? Is that a fact or is that a feeling? A lot of the times we get those crossed, and then it leads to financial sabotage where we're using the credit card, we're taking out of savings, we are, you know, trying to reduce our grocery budget as much as possible so that we have more money to go eat out. Like there's many ways that we're self-sabotaging, and it's because we are truly thinking that the feelings are actually the facts. Number two would be the feeling of failure or the fear of failure. And then also, like, that's two A. Two B, I would say, is the fear of success. Now, interestingly, you don't as a society, we as a society, not you, but we as a society don't necessarily always think of fear of success, right? Flashy lights and you know, being able to make money from home and or as little as 15 minutes a day, or you know, all these things. We see success all over and we don't really talk about the fear of success. Like we keep ourselves in a box because what if we do make a lot of money and I don't manage it well? If that's the case, I'm I'm not gonna touch it. I have a client right now that she got an inheritance, um, I think it was years ago, and she had her uncle, who was a financial advisor, put it away in a brokerage account because she's like, if I have it, I I won't, I won't spend all of it. Uh it will all be gone and I'll have nothing to show for it. And that is the fear of success, right? The fear of trying to do our finances, but knowing deep down inside I'm not good at it. So I'm just gonna take it away from me, or I'm going to just kind of muffle out my potential because I don't want to be successful because I know I'm just gonna fail at managing the finances anyway, right? Fear of failure is like, what if I can't keep this up? What if I can't do it? So I might as well just not start, all right? Both of those are financially sabotaging you. Number three would be like unresolved childhood money stories. Okay. Um, these beliefs of like money doesn't last, money doesn't grow on trees, oh, you're wasting this and this costs money. Like all of those phrases we've probably heard as a kid, or even, you know, if you didn't grow up in a financially unstable family, maybe you grew up in a more stable family where money was not a problem, but it was used freely. And now we've got this self-sabotage of like, well, I can just always make more money, so I'm just gonna spend it however I want because later on I'll just I'll just make more money, right? That is definitely financial sabotage as well. And I've got number four here: the nervous system overload. Okay. This is using spending as a dopamine hit to like regulate our emotions, all right? I think of someone just doom scrolling through TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, whatever. And we are buying things because we see the first ad and we're like, oh, that's a really great, great choice, or that's really gonna solve a problem right now. And then we just keep seeing it and keep seeing it and keep seeing it. And then we just end up buying it, and then we're like, oh, we got a package in the mail. Yay, let me open it up. Yeah, I got this new exciting product. And then, like, literally two days later, we forget about the dang product, right? Um, sometimes I'll ask this question when new clients come to me and it's um, you know, they fill out a bank statement exercise, which is free. Go in the show notes and you can get your own um big statement exercise. It's the very first thing that I do with my clients, and we're basically categorizing your last month of purchases. And one of the questions that I ask clients is, you know, hey, what was what was this that you bought from Amazon? And they're like, I'm not really sure. And it's not to degrade that person whatsoever, it's to help them see that without intentionality of spending, it's so easy just to buy things to to regulate some emotions, to get the dopamine hit and this just like move on. And then the last one is the lack of self-trust. Yeah, like you've broken the promise before. I'm gonna get my finances figured out. I'm gonna, I'm gonna figure this out, I'm gonna do better for my kids, I'm gonna pay off this debt. And and you've done it over and over. You've said those words over and over, and maybe you just haven't walked that walk. And you believe that you're not going to stick with it. Like even before you start, you know it's not going to work. You know you're not gonna stick with it. And I think that's really why I have my coaching program, the Better Budgeting Playbook, and it's to help people to get over that, to move to the next phase, right? Like, let's get past this stopping, starting, stopping, starting and have accountability so that we can get to the other side. So that if you lack that self-trust and that you think that you aren't gonna get to the finish line, guess what, girlfriend? I'm here. I'm ready to, you know, jog alongside you and help you make decisions so that you can get to that finish line, so you can get those big dreams out there. I'll never forget, I was talking to a client one time and and she was like, Danielle, I I had asked the question, hey, like what are your ultimate goals, like big financial goals? And she's like, I can't even see past a paycheck. I can't. And sometimes we need help seeing that big picture because that's gonna create some hope. And if that's you, please go to the show notes, schedule a consultation with me. They're free, they're 30 minutes long. Um, we'll talk about what you've been doing with your finances, what you want to accomplish, what you're really struggling with. And then if I can help you, we're gonna talk about coaching and what that looks like, or if I can give you resources for someone else or something else that is a better suit for what you're doing and what you want to achieve. Like, I'll do that too. I'm not gatekeeping over here. There's no gatekeeping. Now that we've talked about why we self-sabotage financially, let's talk about those common patterns for the people that do financially self-sabotage. Okay. So what this looks like is we pay off debt on the credit card, but then we're still using the credit card. So then it just comes back up, like the balance just creeps up again. Um, you're saving up for a cushion and then you find a reason to like borrow. And I know you can't see this, but quote unquote borrow from it, like, oh, I'm just gonna, you know, pull the money out of savings and I'll pay it back. Yeah. Do you use that phrase? I know that um some clients of mine, they've used that before when we started working. Okay. Um, you're setting goals, but they're unrealistic, right? And then you're giving up when it doesn't go perfectly. That's a big red flag, okay? And then we're letting shame stop the progress. So you might say something like, Oh, well, I've already failed, so I'll just start next month. You know, today is October 6th when this is going to be airing, and it's only six days into the month. And if you failed six days in the month, guess what? We still have some godly number. What is that? October 6th minus 31, 25 days. We've still got 25 days of the month left. You can make good financial decisions over the next 25 days. Listen, I'm not even going to edit that bad math out. I am not very good at quick, easy math. I just takes my brain a moment to process, okay? So how do we stop this? Like, how do we stop this financial self-sabotage? All right. We are going to pause and we are going to identify whatever trigger it is that we are engaging in. Okay. If it is I'm doom scrolling and I notice that I'm doom scrolling, guess what? We're going to back out of that app real quick. Okay. If it is avoiding the bank accounts, we're going to log into the bank accounts. That's what we're going to do. Just this past Friday, I met with a client and he was like, listen, Danielle, I've really struggled to like look at this thing over the last two and a half weeks, and I'm really worried. And you want to know something? We were only like short, like$100. Like only$100. And for some of you, you're like, oh my gosh, that's a lot of money. But in perspective to their income and their expenses, that is like 0.0%. All right, not 0.0, but 0.01%, okay, of the grand scheme of things. And I was like, see, it's it's not too bad. When we pull our head out of the sand, and I don't mean this in any negative way, but like literally when we pull our head out of the sand and we start looking around and we're like, all right, let's just face this sucker head on. It's just numbers on a piece of paper, if you really think about it. If we just look at these numbers and we're like, all right, let's figure out these numbers, we can make progress. So we're gonna pause and we're gonna identify. And then we're gonna reframe these mistakes, all right? Instead of saying, well, I blew the budget, we're gonna say, what did this show me? What happened here? What did I face during that time where I had to make that decision? Did I have three kids in the background at six o'clock at night saying, Mom, I'm starving. I can you stop at McDonald's? And so I gave in and I did that. Instead of saying, hey, like I made this, you know, terrible decision. I'm gonna be like, all right, well, I know that the baseball game starts at this time, it's gonna end at this time. Somebody's gonna be hungry. Maybe I should figure out like have dinner ready for when we get home, or I'm gonna pack snacks so that, you know, we have something on the way home. So when we get home, I can make dinner and and we're gonna be, we're gonna be fine. What did we learn from it? All right. Next one is add friction to these habits. Okay, add friction. I talk a lot about habit stocking with clients, but also adding friction is my favorite. And my favorite add friction moment is the 24-hour rule. And we'll even implement the 12-hour rule. But the 24-hour rule is we wait 24 hours before we buy that thing. Okay, so if we're doom scrolling and we're gonna put it in the cart, and then we're gonna just leave it in the cart because you're probably gonna forget about it tomorrow, right? You're you're gonna forget about it, or you're gonna add something else to the cart, you know, later that night or the next day, and then you're gonna go look at the cart and you'll be like, oh, I forgot about that thing. That's why we implement it. That's why we implement the 24-hour rule. We're adding friction, we're adding another layer of protection, some guardrails to help us slow down, pause, reframe, and really think through this so that we're not financially sabotaging ourselves. And then we are going to address the root cause. Now, this might be a little shaky for some of you, okay? If we are doom scrolling, and I keep using this because this is the most common one that I hear from clients and even people that just message me, which you can do that by the way. Just go ahead, send me a message, send me an email, whatever you want, everything's in the show notes. Um, and talk to me about your financial situation. But let's get down to the root cause of really what's happening. So if we're doom scrolling, why are we doing that? Okay. I don't feel connection to my spouse. I want to avoid cleaning the house. I don't know where to start in cleaning the house. So I'm just like gonna sit here on the couch until I figure that out. And but now I'm an hour and a half deep into TikTok. Okay. Um, why else are we doom scrolling? Uh, we've had a really long day. I'm trying to dissociate. My kids are arguing. I'm trying to dissociate. There are many reasons for this, and we gotta we gotta figure that out. Okay, and we gotta go fix that problem, not the doom scrolling. The doom scrolling is a symptom of the other problems, okay? So we need to get down to this root cause. That might mean that you come to me and we work together and we figure that out. Sometimes that means going to a therapist. And I'll be honest here, sometimes I've had clients where I'm like, hey, I feel like we've done everything that we can do here together. I think maybe the next step for you all is marriage counseling or even individual therapy. Because if we can't get to this root cause, it's just gonna keep happening. Everything's gonna keep happening. There's also a level of desire, right? Like we can't fix the root cause, but then there's no desire after it. When my husband was in some AA, um, you know, he had said to me, you know, when people get off of addiction, it usually kind of morphs or shifts to something else. That's why you'll see a lot of people doing, you know, drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes, like it kind of just shifts to something else because it's never been dealt with. The root cause hasn't been dealt with, right? And and, you know, if you are in those rooms and you are dealing with addiction or you're trying, you know, you have for many years, you might even see that. And it's it's no shame to you. I'm not, I'm not, you know, telling you that you you shouldn't be doing these things or anything. But if you notice that if we don't actually solve the addiction, it morphs to something else. It morphs to, I'm a caffeine junkie, I'm smoking cigarettes one after the other, I'm using tobacco, I'm, you know, whatever it is. I was about to say alcohol, but you're there to get rid of the alcohol, right? Um, it's the same thing with our finances. Same thing. Not as severe, right? Like, you know, alcohol can ruin lives, you know, health-wise, financially, um, spiritually, emotionally, all of these things. Finances also can ruin all of these things too. And if we don't get to the root cause, it does morph into other things. So let me share with you a more recent example for me and my life and self-sabotaging, because I'm human and you are human, and I still do that, even though I've known all the tricks and the things, I still, I still have these moments, okay? And my husband and I are going to be sharing our 10-year anniversary next year, um, next June of 2026. And I would love to take an all-inclusive trip somewhere warm and tropical and beautiful, and just the two of us for three or four days, just, you know, have our fun time and and be together and do all these things. So I'm starting to look and I'm starting to plan this stuff out. And I found a really fantastic deal. It's it's so beautiful, right? And I was like, okay, I don't have that money right now, but the deal is only until like 36 hours or something like that. And I was like, oh, this girl starts looking at affirm payments, and I'm like, no, no, we're not doing this. We're not. Because I started looking at affirm payments, I'm like, 14%. No way. I'm not paying that. Uh-uh. No. Um, and I also didn't want to take it out of my savings, right? Like, I have savings saved for certain things, and then also an emergency fund. And um, I don't know if you know this. I can't remember if I shared it on the podcast or if I shared it just in social media. But over the last like four months, we've spent seven thousand dollars out of our emergency fund, and it's not been fun. So I'm like, uh no, I can't do that either. Um, and then I I went through this list again. Like I paused and I identified what the heck is triggering me. Okay. I am adding friction. So I'm like getting out of that app and I'm, you know, see you later, right? And I am trying to address the root cause. So what I was really feeling in that moment was I really just wanted some deep connection with my husband. Right. Like that's that's really what it came down to is intentional deep connection with someone that I care about and love. And I don't have to do that in a tropical island in, you know, for our 10-year anniversary. Is it nice? Absolutely. But what was I desiring in that moment when I was seriously considering affirming? Affirming. Is that even a verb? You understand? Like using affirm to uh pay for it. And it was the chaos that we have been going through with going back to school and sports and activities and trying to find our our footing and the schedules right now. Like there's been a lot more time apart than there has been together. And I was like, oh my gosh, what I'm searching for, I can just have by having meaningful intentional connection now versus spending all this money for this trip that is uh, you know, nine months down the road. Okay. So even myself, I have these moments where I'm like, oh, I'm gonna I'm about to sabotage the heck out of my finances. And I need to pause, I need to reflect, I need to come back down, and I really got to get down to that root cause. And so that's what I'm gonna encourage you to do this week. I want you to identify what is something that you are doing in your finances that you're self-sabotaging right now. What is that thing? And I want you to take action, okay? What is one step that you're gonna take to break that pattern this week? All right, and you can leave a comment here on the episode, you can send me a message, whatever it is, if you want that extra level of accountability, I'll give it to you, honey. No problem whatsoever. All right. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of the Better Budgeting Podcast, and I'll see you again soon. Bye bye.