The Better Budgeting Podcast

Episode 89: Align Your Money With Your Priorities

• Danielle Reese • Episode 89

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Feeling pulled in every direction by money “shoulds”? We’re cutting through the noise to help you build a budget that matches your real life, not someone else’s highlight reel. I share the simple, repeatable steps I use with clients to uncover true priorities, choose smart trade-offs, and fund what actually matters in this season.

We start by naming the pressure—milestones, trends, and the endless scroll that says you’re behind—then flip the script with a Priority List exercise that brings clarity in minutes. Couples do it separately and compare; singles rank their top ten. The overlaps show where your first dollars should go. From there, we make alignment real: if staying home with a baby leads the list, you may choose older cars and fewer takeout nights. That’s not deprivation; that’s intention. You can have anything, not everything—and that’s the path to peace.

Next, we read your bank statement like a values report. Frequent drive-thrus might signal time constraints; steady online orders might point to comfort, convenience, or a cozier home. When spending matches values, keep it and plan for it. When it doesn’t, redirect to savings, debt payoff, and time freedom. We also set boundaries to protect your mind space: unfollow accounts that trigger FOMO and ask, does this align with my season of life right now? Priorities change, and your budget should move with them.

By the end, you’ll have reflection questions to spot misalignment fast and practical ideas to make the long game feel doable. Every no becomes a yes somewhere better: no to subscription creep is yes to breathing room; no to a flashy upgrade is yes to more time with your family. When your daily choices line up with your values, anxiety fades and confidence rises. If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who needs budget calm, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.

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.


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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. Welcome back to the Better Budgeting Podcast. I'm so happy to have you here today. Today's episode is one that I think every single one of us needs to hear, especially in the world that we're living in right now. And we're going to be talking about getting our priorities straight. And just as importantly, learning how to stop getting caught up in everyone else's. Because listen, let's be honest, there's a lot of noise out there. A lot of noise. And that noise can make us feel like we're behind, like we're not doing the right thing, we're doing something wrong, or we're missing out. But I'm going to tell you that real peace doesn't come from living everyone else's lives. It comes with living in alignment with your priorities. And that's what we're going to talk about. Commonly, when I talk to clients and they first come into the better budgeting playbook, we talk about where they are, where they want to be. And a lot of the times I hear, I'm so far behind. I feel like I don't have the house. I don't have a great retirement. I don't have all these things by now. I should be investing in Bitcoin. I should be maxing out this. I should be driving the Tesla or the nice car, whatever it is. We've all been there at some point of our lives. It might be something large, like, oh, I should have this much in retirement. I should have my finances figured out. Or it could be something small. I shouldn't be making this mistake every time. I shouldn't have to like burn the grilled cheese every single time and make the second grilled cheese. I've been making grilled cheese for 17 years, 20 years. I know how to make a dang grilled cheese. Why do I always burn this first grilled cheese? I don't know if you know that, but like that's my problem. That's my inner critic. Like, dang it, why am I always building like burning that first grilled cheese? But the truth is, there's just so much information being shoved down our throats every day that it's hard to even know what we really, really want anymore. Think about it. We're constantly told what we should do with our money, how much we should have saved, how much we should be making, what our milestones should be by a certain age. And listen, all of that pressure makes it real easy to lose sight of what your version of success is. And here's the problem with the shoulds, okay? When you build your life around shoulds, you stop living intentionally. I should have that house by 30, I should travel more, I should have a nicer car, I should be investing in everything under the sun. But here's the things: shoulds are sneaky, okay? They sound responsible, but they're often rooted in someone else's values. We just got caught up in it. So what if instead of chasing the shoulds, we start asking ourselves, what actually matters to me right now? Going through the better budgeting playbook with clients, this is an exercise that we do. It's called a priority list. And if it's a couple, I have each of them write their top 10 priority in that order. If it's single person, you're just gonna write your top 10 in that order. And then especially with a couple, you're going to write your list by yourselves and then you're gonna come together and look at those lists. Amazingly, you're gonna notice that there's a lot of similarities. They might not be in the same slot as the other persons, but they're on that list because it's a priority, it's something important. And if you're a couple, more than likely you have similar values, right? Because you married the person. And I think it's just so important to get back to those priorities. What are we valuing as a family so that we can put our money there? So, like, let's make this real for a minute, okay? If your number one priority is staying home with your baby, amazing. I love that. I did that for the last year and a half, loved it. A lot of crying, to be honest. A little bit of chaos, but it was a great experience for all of us. It's a beautiful goal, but that choice comes with trade-offs. It might mean that you don't have the newest car. You might not go out to eat often. You might skip the daily coffee run or that trip that everyone else is taking. That's not deprivation, okay? That is alignment. If you feel like it's deprivation, then we've got some alignment out of whack. You are choosing what matters most, even if it looks different from what everyone else is doing. All right. On the flip side, if you're spending and your lifestyle are saying something completely different, like traveling every month, daily Amazon hauls, like the constant upgrades, then your real priorities might be comfort or convenience, not freedom or family time. And there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. That's just where your priorities are right now. That's totally cool. Listen, when I was in my young 20s before I got married, before I had kids, my priority was a career. It was going up the career ladder, like making something of myself. And now I'm like, dang it, I do not want to go back and punch a time clock ever again. I can't imagine going back to corporate life. Priorities will change, but you need to be living in the alignment of where your priorities are now. And here's where the danger comes. Okay. It's when we say one thing, but we live another. When you're constantly torn between what you say you want and how you're living, that's where the stress, the guilt, and the frustration live. Think about it. We all know that person where they say they want to do this, they want to go on this vacation, they want to do that, they want to, they want to have more time with their kids, they they want to get the new car, they want the big house, they want all these things, but they're not living in alignment with that. Maybe they're spending a lot, maybe they're treating people a lot, you know. There's there's this out of alignment that they're living, and that's why they're not getting to it. And maybe, maybe, just saying, maybe that's you too. And here's the truth that I want you to hold on to. All right. Buckle up, girlfriend. You can have anything you want, you just can't have everything you want. And someone's listened to the podcast right now in their car, and they're like, oh, Danielle, that's not what I wanted to hear. But it's actually really great news because when you get crystal clear on those true priorities, you stop wasting energy on things that just don't matter. You stop comparing your chapter two with someone else's chapter 10. You stop scrolling and thinking that you need to buy, invest, or do more just to feel like you're enough. You start finding freedom in the simplicity of living your own values. Let me make this real personal, just like I did the grilled cheese situation, okay? Uh, I have a friend of mine, wonderful friend. She was a client and then they became friends, and they are constantly busy. They are always doing something every single night of the week. And on the weekends, they are with friends, family. They are just always doing something. And she texted me and she's like, Well, what are you gonna be doing? And I was like, nothing. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be sitting in my house that I paid for that I love dearly, and I'm gonna snuggle up with my heating pad and my warm blanket because that's what I value. I I value peace and serenity and not chaos. And that's me. And I'm not saying what she's doing is wrong at all. I just can't keep up with it. It's out of alignment with my values. But for her, that breathes life into her. She loves being able to be around her family and her friends and every weekend doing all kinds of activities with her kids and stuff. And that's okay. That's where their money needs to go then, right? And my money is spent at home making it a space that I like to be in. Think about, I mean, if you've seen my series on um Facebook or Instagram, my deck series from this summer. I redid my whole deck. I should have just actually rebuilt a whole dang deck with the amount of money that I spent on this dang deck, but uh I ended up repainting the whole deck. And um, I spent a lot of time on that. But man, I love that deck. I love that deck. We spent the rest of the summer on that deck. I love being out there. I love doing my watercolor painting out there. I just love being in that space. And that's where my money was spent. So, where your values lie is where your money needs to be spent. And I'm gonna share again about the better budgeting playbook. And if you haven't even talked with me about your finances yet, and you're just at all just a little bit curious, listen, go schedule a session with me, 30 minutes, and let's figure out what we need to do to help you with your finances and help you get towards your goals. I'm accepting clients throughout the end of this year. Now is a really awesome time, October, to get in there any time of the year, but specifically October, because there's just enough room before Christmas, before we go and we spend a ton of money. Like, could you imagine doing debt-free Christmas this year? How amazing would that be? Absolutely amazing. And then starting the new year with no Christmas debt, like ready to go, know exactly what the blueprint is for your finances specifically. Yeah, get into the show notes, schedule a session with me. Let's get you into the better budgeting playbook. But whenever people come into the Better Your Budgeting playbook, I have them fill out a bank statement exercise. I believe that's in the show notes. If not, I'll definitely grab it because it's a free resource for you all. And this is the first activity I do because here's the thing: if I look at where you are spending money, I know what matters most to you. If you and your husband is spending a lot of money at convenience stores and fast food and restaurants and stuff, I know one of two things. One, there's a time management issue that we are constantly on the go and we need convenience, or you really value having um a good meal, right? So specifically like restaurants, sit-down restaurants and things. You value date nights, maybe. Um, those are two things that kind of pop out the most. If I see that you do a lot of spending online, such as like Amazon or just like little trinket kind of stuff, I know that you value things such as a warm home, right? Or like you value your kids or you value, you value having things to either make your life easier or make it feel more comfy and cozy. Those are usually the two that pop out the most. But I'm gonna give you the free bank statement exercise. You can go through there and you're gonna be surprised and be like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I spent this much money. On the opposite side of that, if you're spending a lot of money eating out, and it's like McDonald's and Burger King, and you just don't really love those things, but you're doing it because you know it's quick and it's easy and we're going from school to practice and then back home and kind of stuff, then you get to evaluate, like, oh, is that really my priority? Is that really where I want to be spending my money? Because your spending tells a story of your choices. If peace, freedom, and family time are your top values, then your budget should reflect that. So, what might it look like if we are trying to reflect that? It might mean cutting out subscriptions, it might say no to a big purchase, it might be redirecting money into savings and debt payoff for the time freedom. It's not about restriction, it's about being intentional. And yeah, it's gonna feel iffy and like and yick and all these other things because you haven't done it before, right? If you're used to every weekend going out to eat, and the first weekend you're like, I don't really want to go out to eat to spend my money there. I'd rather be able to save some cash so that next year I can stay home with my babies. It's not gonna feel fun. Okay. But it is the long game that matters, okay? It's about intention. Every dollar is a little vote for the kind of life you're building. And when those votes line up with your priorities, that's when you start to feel aligned and confident and at peace with your finances. So, how do we stop getting caught up with the Joneses, with all of these trends? You start by creating boundaries. Okay. And not just with your finances, but with your mind space. And that's really important because it might mean that we need to unfollow some influencers who they're making us feel like we're always behind, or they always have like the best things, or they're doing things that we want to do. Like, nope, they gotta get cut off. Okay. Maybe it means just taking a step back and you need to ask yourself, does this align with my season of life right now? Does it you don't need to keep up with the market, the headlines, you don't need the internet's latest definition of success. Like you just need to keep up with you. So let me give you a couple words of encouragement to close out this episode, right? You can do anything you want. You just have to decide what's worth that trade-off. Every no is a yes for something better. No to the daily coffee runs is a yes to breathing room in your budget. No to the new car is the yes to staying home longer with your baby. No to keeping up with everyone else is yes to your peace. The goal isn't perfection, it's alignment. And I'll tell you, over the last six weeks, I've had a lot of downtime in my life, especially during the day when my kids are at school, because that was filled with a lot of chaos when they were homeschooled. And I've really been trying to figure out what the heck am I supposed to do with all this time, right? And I needed to figure out who is Danielle, who is Danielle? What does Danielle love to do? And that's why I took up watercolor art. And I've also picked up my Bible a lot more these days. And if you haven't listened to the previous episode, episode 88, it talks about stop being busy, stop being busy, and then when you have that space, don't be filling it with other things. And this is kind of uh alignment with this episode and that episode. It's just so important to figure out what do you want? What are your priorities? And are you living in alignment for it? So as you go about your week, I want to challenge you to pause and ask, what are my priorities right now? Are they truly mine? Or are they borrowed from someone else's expectations? And if my bank account could talk, what story would it tell me? What would it say out loud to me? It'd be like, girlfriend, you eating too much at Chick-fil-A. Or nope, them Amazon, you and the Amazon delivery driver are too close of friends. Because when you're spending your time and your energy reflect what actually matters to you, that's where the financial peace begins. Okay, that's where the anxiety fades, the comparison stops, and your confidence really starts to grow. And when you live like your priorities, you don't have to chase freedom anymore. Like you're you're truly living it, girlfriend. And that is an amazing place to be. All right. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. I'll talk to you again soon. Bye bye.