Money Mom Podcast
Welcome to The Money Mom Podcast—the ultimate guide for moms who want to take control of their finances, crush debt, and create a life of financial freedom and abundance. Hosted by Rachel Coons, a budgeting expert and mom of three, this podcast is your go-to resource for practical tips, mindset shifts, and empowering strategies to help you manage your money with confidence.
Whether you’re navigating grocery budgets, tackling debt, or dreaming of building wealth for your family, each episode offers bite-sized, actionable advice to make money management simple, stress-free, and even enjoyable. With relatable stories, expert insights, and a dose of mom-to-mom encouragement, you'll learn how to transform your finances—one small step at a time.
Tune in every week to discover how to save more, spend smarter, and feel empowered to create the financial life you deserve. Because when moms thrive financially, families flourish.
Money Mom Podcast
39: 5 Money Habits to Leave Behind in 2024
Can you imagine starting 2025 without the anxiety of financial burdens or the guilt of past money mistakes? Discover how to transform your financial habits and embrace a healthier relationship with money as we wrap up the year and prepare for a new one.
As we prepare for 2025, it’s time to cut out the harmful financial habits that hold us back. By eliminating impulse shopping, financial avoidance, guilt, unnoticed subscriptions, and the isolation of trying to do it all alone, we can create a healthier financial landscape for ourselves.
xoxo,
Rachel
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Hello and welcome back to the Money Mom podcast. I am having a really hard time stomaching the fact that we're already to the end of 2024. I feel like this year went really fast in some ways and really slow in others, but it just feels like 2025 is here and it's time to reset, to make some big goals and what you want to accomplish in a year, and I'm really really big on sitting down and thinking about what worked, what didn't and making sure you have a game plan to move ahead and how can we improve. And I know right now we're in this interim between Christmas and New Year where time doesn't exist. You're probably with family or wrapping up the holidays, getting ready to celebrate the new year. So I know that this is a busy time, but it's also a time where we can really start to make good progress and changes, and so, as we head into the new year, it's good to reflect on what's working, what's not, what we're going to leave behind, what we're going to include in this next year, and so today I want to talk about five money habits that need to stay in 2024. We're not doing them in 2025 if we really want to improve our financial situation, because these habits that we're going to talk about might feel harmless at the time, but secretly they're draining your bank account, they're draining your energy and they may even be draining the way that you show up in confidence and feeling secure in your finances. So letting go of them, letting them stay in 2024, will make 2025 a blank slate and it'll help you truly empower yourself to control your finances. I know what it feels like to do all of these things and make all of these mistakes, but when I started to recognize some of these habits and replacing them with better ones, that's when things started to shift for me emotionally, physically, with my finances, and I know that they can do that for you too.
Speaker 1:So let's dive in right away. The first habit habit one is the good old impulse shopping. Now we're going to kick things off with habit number one, with the queen of the budget busting, and that is impulse Buying. Shopping, all the things. You know the drill. You head to the grocery store for bread or milk, or you need to get a birthday present for a birthday party and somehow a cute throw blanket ends up in your cart, or a pack of scented candles, or a box of cookies that you want to try and they all end up in your cart and when you head to the checkout you end up spending a lot more than you had originally planned. Impulse shopping often feels like we're feeling something emotionally Either you're stressed or you're tired, or you're just looking for a little bit of joy. You just want that slight dopamine hit. But the problem with this is that that high is temporary, that experience is temporary, and sometimes the financial regret lasts much longer than the actual experience, the joy that we feel, especially when you're checking your bank account and you're realizing you don't have enough money at the end of the month.
Speaker 1:There are ways that stores create environments so that you impulse shop. They want you to impulse shop, whether it's grocery shopping or just shopping at your local Target or Walmart or whatever it is. They're doing everything they can to get you to purchase more while you're in the store. And one of the things I actually learned I don't remember where I learned this, maybe it was on a podcast with someone else but that drinking caffeine while you're shopping actually increases your buying average by like something like $50. And that was news to me. I had no idea that something as simple as like sipping on a Diet Coke or drinking a coffee while you're perusing Target like. Hence the reason that every single Target has a Starbucks in the front of the store. That was smart tactics. They use the research to find out that if people had caffeine while they were shopping, they were going to purchase more in the store. Just little things like that where you when you realize that you can be really smart about how you approach your shopping experience so that you don't impulse shop and that you don't spend more than you wanted to.
Speaker 1:So the ways that we can tackle impulse shopping first thing, make a list when you walk in. If the thing that you want isn't on the list, chances are you're being sucked into consumer culture, you're getting tricked by the store or something that you need. That's a really easy way to do it. But another way to do it is like I'm going to go into Target, I have a list, but I also have $50 to spend, so I'm going to get the items that I need, and if I do not need an item, or or I want it, is it going to keep me under my spending threshold? You know what your bank account can handle. You know what your credit card can handle, so don't go above that limit.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I really like to do is I set a 24 or 48, 24 to 48 hour cooling off period. So if there's something I want to purchase, especially if it's something above like the $25, $30 mark, you know, and I'm just grabbing like little things it's not that big a deal. But if you're going in and you're purchasing big items and you're not thinking about those purchases before you put them in your cart, I highly recommend walking away. It's a muscle that you have to really engage and learn and grow. But walking away from a purchase and letting that purchase stew before you actually go to the checkout counter is a great tool to realize that you don't actually need it. You may be just wrapped up in this need for this emotional void that we're filling when we're purchasing items. So I always like to do the 24 to 48 cooling off period. It's really easy to go on after 24 hours. If you're still like I should have bought that thing, I really wanted that thing, great. Then maybe chances are you probably do need that thing. Order it online Super easy to just go, add it to your cart and pick it up the next time you're in store or get it sent to your door. And another thing that I like to do is to shop online for any essentials or anything that you need. Obviously, we teach this big time in Grocery Budget Boot Camp with our grocery shopping, but this is an easier way to do it with other like little things, household items, whatever you need. Just if you can shop online, you won't even be tempted. You'll be avoiding temptation altogether if you do it online. So impulse shopping is really sneaky, but just with a little intention you can take back control in 2025.
Speaker 1:And habit number two that we're leaving in 2024 is avoiding your finances, avoiding your budgeting. This is a habit that we hate to admit. It's that little voice in your head that says that if I don't look at my bank account, or if I don't look at the credit card statement, or if I don't look at the purchases that I'm making, the problem doesn't exist. Ignorance is bliss. I remember a month early on in our marriage when Brad and I were just didn't want to talk about money at all, like we hadn't kind of gotten on the same page. We were trying to purchase a brand new mattress. We were worried about finances. We were in college, so we didn't have a lot of money and we actually sat down and looked at the numbers and we realized we actually had the spending money, like we weren't as strapped as we thought, and so actually sitting down and doing that, processing the information, it ended up being better than we had expected. Now, if it's worse than you expected, that's great. That means that you have now hit rock bottom, but you're taking the steps in order to improve the situation.
Speaker 1:Avoiding your budget is like just ignoring reality. It's ignoring everything that your situation is telling you to improve it. So we have to look at the numbers. We have to come clean. There's nothing wrong with your financial situation right now and I want to be a place of non-judgment for yourself. If you can't be that for yourself, you sitting down and looking at your finances and trying to budget is the easiest thing you can do to start to control it. If we don't know what's going on, we can't fix it. So here's how you can shift this habit really easily in this next year Start small Instead of trying to budget everything all together, start with just your grocery budgeting.
Speaker 1:Don't think about anything else. You don't have to overwhelm yourself. Just start with the groceries. To overwhelm yourself. Just start with the groceries and, as you do that, make a goal date by the end of the month or by the next two months. This is the amount that I want to spend, and sit down with your partner and get on the same page. Make sure that you are on these goals together and you have really evaluated what's important. We smart small, we create the experience together where we can set the goals. And then you may need extra tools. You may want some easy spending apps like Rocket Money or YNAB, which is you need a budget, or like a simple spreadsheet or something easy to make it simple. But remember that knowledge is power. When you know where your money is going, you can redirect it to what matters most.
Speaker 1:Habit number three is we're going to let go of guilt. We are going to let go of the guilt of not doing enough, of doing too much, of spending too much. There's so much guilt around your spending. This one hits close to home for me because I understand it. I know what it feels like to feel bad around money, to feel like I'm not doing enough and I'm not on the same page as my partner, but that guilt is driving nothing. I'm going to say it again the guilt that you feel is not doing anything. What we think guilt actually does. We think it puts us into action, but it doesn't actually put you into action. It keeps you stuck. So, if we let go of the guilt and we allow, allow ourselves some grace, allow yourself some mercy in this experience. Motherhood is hard, running a family is hard, controlling your finances is hard it's all hard and we're overwhelmed and that's why we feel so guilty. So I'm going to be the first one to say you have to let that go. Once we let the guilt go, then we open up space for empowerment. We open up this idea that, like I could feel really good around money and I could feel really good around budgeting, but if you're stuck in this guilt shame trap, you're never going to be able to get there. So in 2025, let go of the guilt.
Speaker 1:Habit number four is what we call the leaky faucet. That is, ignoring your subscriptions and ignoring your auto renewals. Those things add up over time and if we don't know about all of the little tiny sneaky faucet, leaky faucet, we could be spending close to $200 a month on things that you don't use. You know what I'm talking about? The gym membership that never gets used, the Netflix account that's only used once or twice a month. You have four different subscriptions for TV things and all of that combined maybe lead up to like only $100 or $200 a month, but that adds up over the annual cost. That's over $1,000 wasted every single year. So what you could do really simply is sit down and audit your accounts, go through your bank statements and make a list of every subscription that you have and then go through it and cancel or downgrade any subscriptions. If you haven't used it in three months, it's time to get rid of it. It's time to cancel it.
Speaker 1:And do you actually need every single streaming service? Could you just get rid of four of them and keep one for the month and then the next month maybe add on a different one and cancel the one that you had the month before so that you can constantly watch your shows that you want to watch, but then focusing on one subscription a month. There is no reason to be paying for multiple memberships and multiple subscriptions, really focusing on that and track your renewals. So set calendar calendar reminders If I like, sometimes I'll subscribe to an app right, and the app renews monthly. Let's say I want to cancel that app before the next renewal. I'll put a reminder in my phone, an alarm in my phone the day before go cancel this app or the subscription or whatever it is. So I use my calendar to give me those alarms because I don't want to be charged every month for things that I don't even know about. Subscriptions are really small but they do add up, so cutting the ones that you don't need is a really easy way to free up cash this next year.
Speaker 1:And habit number five is thinking you have to do it all alone. This is one of the most isolating habits of all. Is that thinking you have to do it all alone? This is one of the most isolating habits of all. Is that thinking you have to handle everything on your own? You don't have to handle it all on your own. There are communities, there are people out there who are trying to do the same things you are. So just even talking more about money, whether it's with your spouse, a friend or a community like the Money Mom Club, opens up the conversation so that you're not doing it alone and that you're not sitting in this guilty and shame cycle.
Speaker 1:Asking for help is really an empowering thing to do If budgeting feels overwhelming. Look for resources that can help you. You don't have to do this on your own. There's people out there who want to help you, and when you're with a community, you can celebrate together. You share your wins and you feel progress better than when you're doing alone, so that you can track yourself. You're held accountable because it's with other people. You don't have to be a lone warrior in this journey. We know that we're stronger together, so it's really important to find that community, find that tribe that is going to help you, and stick with it.
Speaker 1:There you have it. Those are the five money habits I want you to leave behind in 2025. And I hope you feel empowered and ready to say goodbye to impulse shopping. Stop avoiding your budget, stop feeling guilty around money. Don't forget about those subscriptions and the pressure to do it all alone. I would love to hear about which habit you're leaving behind first. Share it with me on Instagram at heyrachelcoons, or tag a friend who needs to hear this episode. Every small step that you make leads to big changes in the future, and I'm so excited for the financial winds waiting for you in 2025. I'm going to be there to cheer you on, and I can't wait to see you next week. Happy New Year.
