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
55: Why You’re Still in Debt (Even Though You Know What to Do)
Nearly half of Americans are trapped in credit card debt, but chances are it's not because they're lazy, irresponsible, or lacking knowledge. If you've downloaded every budgeting app, created detailed spreadsheets, and still can't seem to make progress, you're not alone. The real culprit might be what I call "chaos mode" – a state where your nervous system operates in constant financial survival.
The path out of chaos mode begins with awareness, not action. Before jumping into yet another budgeting attempt, take time to notice your emotional responses to money and regulate your nervous system. Learn to build safety with money before implementing systems, focus on small wins over dramatic restriction, and surround yourself with supportive community.
Ready to dig deeper? Join my free training in mid-May where we'll work on mindset, strategy, and creating the support system you need to transform your financial life. The link is in the show notes – because healing your relationship with money wasn't meant to be a solo journey.
xoxo,
Rachel
Where to find me:
Instagram: @heyrachelcoons
TikTok: @heyrachelcoons
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Hey there and welcome to another episode of the Money Mom podcast, and today we're talking about something that might hit a little bit close to home and I know can be a real emotional burden for so many people, because when I start to talk about debt, I know it brings up a lot of visceral reactions where you know you feel that pit in your stomach, you feel called out, you feel like this is something that you've tried to deal with for forever and it's just always weighing on your shoulders. I know this because we know the statistics of how many people are in debt, and when I say debt, I want to talk specifically to high interest debt, debt that is above, let's say, like 7% or 8% interest, and mainly this tends to be things like credit card debt, high interest loans, things that, once you're in the debt, is really hard to pay off because of that high interest rate. And we know that about 47% of Americans are in credit card debt Almost half of our nation is stuck in credit card debt. So if you're someone who feels like you're in the trenches with this, you haven't figured out how to get out and you really want solutions, this episode is for you, especially if you feel like you have downloaded all the budgeting apps, you have the spreadsheets, you've watched the YouTube videos, you've saved the Instagram posts and yet you still can't seem to make any progress. This is for you.
Speaker 1:I wanted to do an episode specifically for that person, and before we jump into solutions, I first off just want to acknowledge you and where you're coming from, because I've worked with a lot of women who are in this space, and I want to let you know that I am coming from a place of love and understanding. I know that most people are not in credit card debt because they're irresponsible. I know that you're not in credit card debt because you're bad with money, and I don't even think it's because you're lazy or because you put yourself in that problem. I think there are a lot of external things that can force us to use our credit card, and when we know better, we do better, and so what I want to talk to you today is how you can do better, but not only just doing, because a lot of people know what to do. They have a hard time being better. They have a hard time embodying what a person who gets out of debt and stays out of debt is, who that person is, and chances are, if you're stuck in debt, there's a deeper issue. There's a root cause to this. It's not just the little mistakes that you make here and there. There's a deeper issue of how you look at money, and it's something I call chaos mode. You are probably in chaos mode with your finances if you are in debt high interest debt and chances are no one's ever talked to you about this before. No one's ever brought up this deeper issue, and so that's what I want to do on this podcast.
Speaker 1:If you are in chaos mode, you are in a constant state of survival. You are always trying to play catch up. We are trying to stay on top of the debt, and what happens when we are in chaos mode is we also tend to self-sabotage. Chaos mode is we also tend to self-sabotage, where it's really hard to get ahead because you were making mistakes along the way that you don't even know you're making. That's what self-sabotage is you don't even know you're making. So today we're going to get really honest. I'm going to get really honest with you. I'm a pretty blunt speaker. I say it how it is, and I want to unpack some of the things that you may be doing that you don't even know you're doing and try and get you out of this chaos mode. Because it isn't until we can get out of the chaos that we can see our finances as a whole with peace and we can look at the numbers for what they are and not place emotional meaning on them, and then we can make progress. Let's start with this truth bomb. I'm going to get right to the point.
Speaker 1:Chances are you know how to budget. If someone says how do you budget, you could probably give them an answer. You could say I know that I need to track my numbers. I know I need to hit certain amount in certain budgets and if I go over that budget, then I am, you know, being bad with my money. And if I stay under the budget, then I'm being good with my money. If we were saying what a budget is, most people know what that looks like and you know that you have to pay off the minimum balance on your credit card every month. You know that if you spent less, you would have more. Everybody knows that. And if you don't know that, you probably should go out and learn how to do that.
Speaker 1:But if you're living in a constant financial chaos mode. Your brain and your body is flooded with stress, you're flooded with shame, you're flooded with guilt, you're flooded with fear, and logic and understanding takes the back seat. So you don't have a knowledge problem. You probably have a nervous system problem, and your nervous system is in survival mode. It's in chaos mode and in that state you're literally just trying to get through the day, you're trying to get through the week, you're trying to get through the month with your finances and when we sit in that survival mode, we don't have the emotional energy or capability to plan or to strategize or to optimize your money. We're just surviving.
Speaker 1:And if you think about this as like if I am being chased by a lion, the one and only thing I am going to worry about is not dying and not getting eaten by the lion. If I'm just out walking on the road or taking a walk through a grassy field and I'm not being chased by a lion, I have opportunity to stop, smell the roses, enjoy the blue sky and my nervous system is in a state of safety. The second that lion starts chasing me, I switch over into fight or flight and I forget everything else around me. All I'm focused on is not getting eaten by the lion. Now that's a really extreme case of what may be happening with you and your money system. But if you're in survival mode, you forget about everything else and you're solely focused on making it through the month, making it through the next paycheck or the next credit card payment, and this also leads to feeling, maybe, like you're always playing catch-up. You're just constantly a little bit behind and then unexpected expenses come in and they ruin everything for the rest of the month.
Speaker 1:Or you're constantly trying to start over, but nothing is sticking. Like you're trying the new budgeting apps. You're trying to to start over, but nothing is sticking. Like you're trying the new budgeting apps, you're trying to track the spending, but nothing is sticking. Or it could look like you're making a little bit of progress, where you're actually starting to make some headway, but then something happens an unexpected expense, a family vacation, something happens and then you fall back into that hole again. And if this is happening, it's not because you're broken, it's not.
Speaker 1:Then you fall back into that hole again, and if this is happening, it's not because you're broken, it's not because you're stupid, it's not because you don't know what to do. It's because your money habits and the way that you look at your money is being run by your subconscious. It's being run by something deeper than you have access to at this moment. It's not being run by the spreadsheet, it's being run by something deeper and that is this chaos mode and you know what I'm talking about. If you are in this chaos mode, you're probably sitting to yourself right now thinking, yeah, I probably am in chaos mode. That is, us tapping into that self-conscious and bringing that self-consciousness consciousness.
Speaker 1:Now, if you are in this mode, chances are you may be self-sabotaging and I'm not going to talk about self-sabotaging in like a blamey or shamey way. I don't believe in that but I want to talk about some hidden behaviors that you may not even know you're doing that is sabotaging your progress. Some of those are including impulse buys, where you head into the store to buy a couple things and then you find something else that maybe you wanted to purchase and hey, I deserve it. I had a hard week, I'm going to treat myself to this one thing and that ends up in your cart. Now I would say impulse buys are not the underlying issue for most people, but they definitely are a way that we can self-sabotage.
Speaker 1:One of the main ways I see self-sabotage happen is avoiding the numbers. We avoid the bank account, we avoid looking at the interest rate, we avoid looking at how much we owe, because it gives you anxiety, it stirs up those emotions and if you are in that state of ignorance is bliss. We have to remove the emotional stimulus that you are feeling when you check your bank account and you're like great, how do I fix the emotional stimulus? Well, first you have to believe that we cannot change anything unless we know where we currently are at. We cannot make progress if we don't know where we're starting right. That's like starting a race with no end point in mind. No start point, no end point. How are we even supposed to know what the race looks like? We have to have fixed starting points and fixed end points so that way we can see when we're making progress and we can see when we're not making progress, because the numbers don't lie. The numbers don't care how you feel. The numbers don't care if they grow or if they shrink. It's the meaning that we place on the numbers that actually changes everything. I'm gonna say that again. It's not the numbers that change our situation, it's the meaning we give to the numbers.
Speaker 1:Because if I talk to someone and I said you're in $15,000 of credit card debt, I want you to think about how does that make me feel? What would that create in my system, in my body, when I hear that number? Now People feel different things when they hear that. Some people would hear you're in $15,000 of credit card debt and they would instantly go into solution mode. What do I need to do? Okay, that means I'm gonna have to pull money from this account. I'm gonna have to cut this budget. I'm gonna have to do things differently for the next couple of months so that I can pay off that debt.
Speaker 1:One person might feel that way. Another person might hear that and literally shrink and go into that fight or flight mode and feel like the world is ending. And then another person might be a mixture of the two, where you're like well, I have the tips and tools that I know how to get out of debt, but that also feels really overwhelming and chances are you're probably somewhere on this scale of either you take the number for what it is, you go into action, you change the number, or you go into this self-sabotage, anxiety, stress moment. But the further we can get from that emotional impact, the better we are. And not because somebody is better if they take emotions out of money, but because they can look at it as a whole with a game plan. Another way that we self-sabotage is by using spending to mask uncomfortable emotions. Uncomfortable emotions we all know what emotional spending is, but if you are someone who has a bad day and then feels like they need to run to Target to mask the feelings of having a bad day, this might be some way that you are sabotaging your money goals.
Speaker 1:When I first started helping people save money on groceries, I talk a lot about staying out of the grocery store and how shopping in the grocery store is a real easy way to overspend on groceries, and so if we can stop going to the grocery store, we can start ordering our groceries online. We can save so much money just by doing that one thing, because it decreases impulse buys. It helps you be more cognitive of the things that you're adding to the cart all the things and one of the most popular responses that I got when I said to stay out of the grocery store was people that would say well, the grocery store is my happy place. Like I like grocery shopping. I understand that people like being in the grocery store.
Speaker 1:But if that becomes your happy place, if going out and shopping becomes a mask for the emotions that you're feeling, you need to find another happy place. You need to find something else that is going to help you process emotions and feel happy. And for me, I used to be that person. I used to love going to the grocery store. It was so fun and I think part of it was because I got to buy things and not feel bad about buying things at the grocery store because I have to feed my family. But when I then decided, hey, instead of walking the aisles of the grocery store, I'm actually just going to take a walk outside, I was able to feel that same peace and comfort that I felt shopping, but I wasn't spending money doing it. Or if you're shopping to hide emotions, maybe instead of shopping you could go journal or go dance to some fun music or go out with your girlfriends or do something else that's going to help you process emotions instead of buffering that with shopping we can get that high. We can get that excitement somewhere else. We don't have to use spending and shopping to mask those emotions.
Speaker 1:And then another way that we may self-sabotage is we use time as a barrier to doing it, to planning, to setting the budget, to running the numbers and making sure that we're staying on top of it, and we're just saying I'm too busy, I can't do it, I don't have enough time in the day, this is something that's going to take too much time and energy and it's overwhelming to me. Well, here's the truth. Our brains love to keep us stuck. Our brains are hardwired to keep us comfortable. Favorite quotes that I heard recently is that we are much more comfortable staying in the hell that we know versus the heaven we don't know yet. So what that quote is saying is we are much more comfortable sitting in the known, even if it's really really sucky, even if it means we're having to deal with credit card debt and the anxiety and the guilt and the shame that comes along with it. We are way more comfortable with that than we are with changing and going into something unknown, even if that unknown will make us happier and will make us feel more peace in life and will make us have more financial freedom that is unknown to us.
Speaker 1:So our bodies are trying to keep us safe in the area that we know, even if it's a hell, that you don't like, your brain is hardwired to stay there, and so this is not just about bad habits, this is not just about actions that you're doing. They're protective habits. They're literally protecting you from something that you may not even know you're afraid of, and we went through a coaching call recently with our Money Mom Club members about this exact thing and working through what is it that you are afraid of? What is it that you may not know? Your subconscious is telling you that is making it so you don't want to make progress, is telling you that is making it so you don't want to make progress, because if you're having issues making progress financially, there's something stopping you, and it could be different for every single person, but we want to try and figure out what that fear is, what is stopping you, and let go of that fear so that you can make progress, because then, over time, you can thrive instead of survive. So if you are in chaos mode and you're somebody that wants to get out of chaos mode, I'm going to give you some steps to move forward with Right here, right now. Let's get you out of this chaos mode. And the first one is the easiest one because you're already here and we're already doing some of the work. You're on this podcast.
Speaker 1:It is about starting with awareness. We don't need to take action right away, we just need to become aware. And what that awareness is is sitting with the body, sitting with our emotions and acknowledging what emotions are there. How do I avoid money? What am I telling myself about my situation? That's beyond the numbers. What emotional triggers am I putting on that story? And maybe what emotional triggers are causing me to spend more money than I have? What are those things? And just sitting in those emotions. We are really afraid to sit with our emotions as human beings. It's scary, it can be a really scary place, but something as simple as sitting down, acknowledging the emotion, maybe even journaling a little bit about that emotion, will help you understand it, because you can notice patterns over time of where these emotions pop up, how they show up in your life, and then we can take tools to fix those emotions. So that's number one Start with awareness, don't start with action, don't jump into action right away. Sit with those feelings and then the second thing on the back end of that is, before you start to plan, before you start to try and build a budget, if you're noticing that your chest is tight or your brain is spiraling or you're feeling that knot in your stomach, don't go into it, don't do it. Stop yourself, take a walk, do a meditation, breathe, play music, go exercise. You can pray even.
Speaker 1:We want to settle the nervous system before we do this. If you find that budgeting with a partner and a spouse leads to higher anxiety and more emotion, you both need to settle your emotions, you both need to calm that nervous system before you go, sit down and make a plan, because we don't want to bring in those emotions, those heightened emotions, to your money. Money already has enough emotions. We don't need to bring in other emotions. If you're stressed about an upcoming bill, if you're feeling weighed down by money in the moment, don't go plan, don't do it. Moment don't go plan, don't do it. Give yourself space and time to heal that emotion, to heal that energy before you sit down to make a plan, and doing that will help you be able to look at your money and your numbers with much more clarity and not hold so much emotion to it.
Speaker 1:Then we've done the awareness, we've done regulation. And then we want to build safety before building systems. You need to feel emotionally safe with money before you can stick to a system. You need to feel like money is not your enemy and it is your friend before you actually want to treat money correctly through a system. That means we have to set aside our past money experiences. We have to set aside the judgment that we feel to ourselves to somebody else and we have to practice compassion and tell ourselves that we are learning how to deal with our money. Maybe we didn't learn how to do it correctly in the past, but we're learning how to do it now. Because then, when you can show up with safety, systems are a tool to get you there. They're not the answer, they're not the final solution. It's just one of the tools that we have and it's going to help you feel like you can actually make progress without sabotaging that progress along the way.
Speaker 1:And then another thing that I love to do that I think is so highly overlooked when it comes to progress is focusing on the win. Don't try to fix everything right away. Don't try to overhaul and pay off all your debt and live in scarcity and restriction for the next five months. Don't do that, just make little steps. We know that habits take a long time to build and if we want to make long-term progress we can't just go out of the gate sprinting. We have to slow down because this is an endurance race, it's not a sprint. And when we can focus on those small little wins along the way, like maybe checking your bank account without feeling anxiety, or maybe it's just paying off $20 of debt in a week but being able to finally face those numbers and see the progress that you're making builds that momentum. The small wins build momentum for the future and they kind of compound along each other.
Speaker 1:It's like imagine a little snowball starting at the top of the hill and that snowball starts to roll down the hill and it might start slow a little bit and just picking up a little bit of snow as it goes down. But then once it reaches the bottom of the hill, how much snow does it have on that snowball? It picks up more and more snow as it rolls. And that's the same thing with you and your progress. We've got to start small, we've got to acknowledge what we're picking up and it'll build and build as we go. And then the final thing that really, really helps get us out of chaos mode is surrounding yourself with these new beliefs and creating a new environment for yourself. Getting with people who treat money the same way you do helps us shift out of chaos mode and into safety.
Speaker 1:You listen to mindset podcasts, like you're doing here. Replace old stories with new truth. How are you wanting to believe your money situation now? How are you wanting to show up differently? And we have to change our external environment to change our internal environment as well. They kind of coincide with each other. So if you're on this journey to learning about money and making changes and making progress, we can't just change the internal world. We actually have to change our external world too, which is why we've created Money Mom Club, so that you have access to that community and that environment. That will celebrate progress, will help you make the tools, the mindset, all of that is available in that as well.
Speaker 1:And I just want to close with this idea that I know the emotional pain and stress money can put on you. I know what it feels like to be worrying about that next payment or to wonder where the money is going to come from. I know what it feels like to say I just need to try harder. Like to be living in chaos mode, but I also know what it's like to feel safe, and I know what it's like to get out of that survival mode and into that safe mode. You are not failing with your money.
Speaker 1:I want you to believe that, that you are in a constant state of progression and you're either moving closer to your goals or you're farther away from them with every action that you take. You are a functioning body and your brain is hardwired to keep you in chaos, but you don't have to stay there. There is a way out, and it starts with getting honest, getting calm and then taking one small step at a time. And if you're ready to break out of that chaos mode, I want to invite you to join me on my free training that I'm going to be doing in just two weeks time, in the middle of May, where we're going to do some deeper work. We're going to work mindset, we're going to work strategy, and we're going to offer support for you, because you don't have to do this alone.
Speaker 1:This isn't something that I think is meant to be done alone. I believe that if we create space for each other where we can show up as authentic as we possibly can. That's where we create progress, and so, if you're wanting to join, it's a free training that I'm offering. We'll put the link in the show notes, and if this episode helped you in any way, I would love to hear about it. Tag me on Instagram, share it with a friend. You can leave a review below. I'd love to keep this conversation going, where we can make sure that you feel worthy of the peace and where you feel worthy of change and that you know you are not behind. That's all I have for you this week. I will see you next week.
