90: 5 Money Habits to Leave Behind in 2026

In this episode, we’re unpacking why money avoidance is so common (and why it’s not a personal failure), how your nervous system plays a role in financial stress, and how awareness, not perfection, is the first step to taking your power back.

You’ll hear why:

• Avoiding your bank account is actually making the problem worse
• Your brain is trying to protect you, but it’s often lying to you about danger
• Simply looking at the numbers (without judgment) can start breaking the negative money cycle
• Grocery spending is the fastest, least overwhelming place to create real financial momentum
• More money won’t fix money problems without a system in place
• All-or-nothing thinking is one of the biggest budget killers for busy moms

We also talk about why restriction, no-spend challenges, and perfectionism don’t work long-term, and what does work instead: flexible systems, realistic habits, and progress you can actually sustain in real life.

If you’re heading into 2026 feeling overwhelmed, behind, or stuck in a cycle of stress with money, this episode will help you slow things down, reconnect with your body, and start moving forward—one grounded step at a time.

✨ Plus: I’m sharing details about my upcoming free Money Reset for 2026 workshop, where we’ll break down the 5 pillars busy moms need to stop overspending, get out of debt, and finally feel in control. Without shame or spreadsheets.

👉 Links to the free workshop and my grocery savings classes are here:

www.heyrachelcoons.com/class

You are not starting over.
 You’re leveling up.
And you’re more capable than you think. 💛

xoxo,
Rachel

Where to find me:
Instagram: @heyrachelcoons

Join me for my free training to cut your grocery bill by $600 every month: Register HERE

Transcript

Welcome And Year-End Mindset

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Money Mom Podcast, the show where we empower moms to take control of their finances, break free from money stress, and build a life of freedom, confidence, and abundance for their families. I'm your host, Rachel Coons, mom, money mentor, and your personal cheerleader on this journey. Whether you're here to save money, pay off debt, or dream bigger for your family's future, you're in the right place. Here, we believe that being a mom is already a full-time job. But your role in shaping your family's financial success is just as important. And the best part, you don't need to sacrifice everything to start winning with money. Let's get started. This is the Money Mom Podcast. Hello, and welcome back to the Money Mom Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Coons, and if you can believe it, we are already wrapping up the end of 2025. And that just feels like this year has gone by so stinking fast. I myself love the end of something and the beginning of another thing. I love closing out chapters and be and starting fresh on a new page, a blank slate, if you will. And I feel like that's what happens at the end of the year and moving into a new year. You evaluate what went well for the year, what goals did you set at the beginning of the year? What goals did you accomplish? Where did you miss the mark on certain things? And what things do you want to create in the next year? I love this idea that we are always creating our reality. And that sometimes the most powerful ways to change your reality is by just believing that something is going to be different or just creating an intentionality behind our thoughts of 2026, I want this and this to happen. And just by bringing that into the body and bringing that into the mind, you are literally shaping what is possible in your new year. And so while I'm somebody who actually used to always hate setting goals, I felt like goals were just empty and they put a lot of pressure on me that I didn't enjoy. I've really come to believe that all you're doing with a goal is you're setting an intention. And it's okay if you don't accomplish the goal because the magic isn't in accomplishing it. The magic is in creating it in and of itself and the journey of accomplishing it. We're not always trying to get to an end goal. What we're trying to do is better ourselves and continue to progress in whatever way that looks like. And sometimes not hitting your goal is part of the journey. And we learn things along the way that you wouldn't have learned had you not set that goal in the first place. And so now I look at a new year and I look at a fresh start so much differently than I have in the past. And I believe that I'm making more progress in life because of that. So while endings can be hard, and while reflection can be hard, and while setting new intentions can be hard, I think it's really important to take some time away from this busy season that we've just had Christmas and we're coming into the new year to set aside some time to really evaluate what went well this year, what can I congratulate myself on? What kind of progress did I make? And then where do I want to change for 2026? What kind of areas of my life am I lacking or are causing me stress? And how can I better myself this next year? And how can I set new goals to further my progress? I like to set goals in different areas of my life, relationship goals, social goals, physical goals, and financial goals. And so in this episode today, I want to talk specifically about money habits that I see moms making that I think are sabotaging their financial progress. And what kind of habits could you create for the new year that are gonna start you off on the right foot? Now, the thing about habits, the unfortunate thing about habits is that they are usually so ingrained in you, physically and mentally, they are just part of what you do naturally. And that's what a habit is, something that you most of the time you don't even cognitively think or know that you're doing. And so in order to rewrite a habit, we have to first cognitively address that the habit is there. And then we can start to rebuild or break down that habit and rebuild with new habits. But the first step in creating new habits is finding out if we have habits that we need to change right now. And so there are five money habits that I see the most often. And as you're listening to these five habits, I want you to think: is that me? Is that happening in my life? Some self-reflection, some self-awareness is necessary here. And then to diagnose where that shows up in your life. And then we can start to say, okay, if you are struggling with this specific thing, what can we do to combat that or to replace that habit with something new? Okay, habit number one is using spending as an emotional band-aid. What I mean by that is where you are hurting emotionally and you're using the dopamine hit from purchasing something, try to heal the wound that is deeper than buying something can achieve. This is the type of person who will have something happen, a stressful day, something went on at work, you got in a fight with your husband, and you end up going to Target and buying yourself whatever it is. It doesn't, it actually doesn't even matter what you buy or how expensive it is. Just the act of swiping the credit card is what helps you feel better. Or you are buying yourself deserve this purchases where you're like, I deserve this because I had to deal with this and this this week. Everybody deserves everything. There's no such thing as like deserving a purchase. We all deserve it. It's a matter of are you taking care of the emotional, I don't want to call it baggage, because it's not baggage, but the emotional turmoil that's happening in your body and is it manifesting in a way where you are sabotaging your finances due to that dopamine hit that you need. The unmet needs are being filled with money. And if you have an unmet emotional need, no amount of money is going to fix that. And in fact, most of the time when we do this emotional type of spending, it actually creates more stress on the back end because first, you didn't meet the emotional need, whatever it was that you were having. And second, it creates more stress in the bank account, on the credit card, the debt that piles up and it creates another emotional need. So we're actually making that wound even deeper. And so if you are summoning this is a big problem and everybody emotionally spends at some point or another. I'm guilty of this too. I don't want somebody to think that this is like something you can completely overcome. But what is really important is to diagnose the habit, if it's there, if it's something that's happening once a week or you're doing it more often than you want. Or if you're somebody who's really stuck in debt and you can't get out of it because this is blocking your way, this is a habit that we have to address. And what you can do instead is go a little deeper. And a lot of times this requires a coach. This requires somebody external to you. This requires a therapist, somebody who can help you evaluate your own needs that are not being met, that then comes in the form of emotional spending. So one of the things that I like to do is I always give myself a 24-hour window. If I'm feeling upset about something and I want to go buy something on Amazon for myself, I give myself 24 hours. So that way I can really think about the purchase and make sure it isn't an emotional purchase that it actually is very intentional. Even if you don't want to wait 24 hours, even waiting 10 minutes, put the thing in your cart and walk away from the computer. Put your phone down and do something else because sometimes it's in those like little reset minutes that we can then come to cognition of, oh, this is not actually something I needed. I'm totally doing this to fill a void that I don't have. Another thing that can really help with this is if you need to scratch that itch, right? If that's if you're learning how to get over emotional spending, let yourself swipe the credit card. Do it, but it needs to be under a$10 purchase. So I can go buy myself a candle from Trader Joe's if I want to help me feel a little bit better. I've had a rough day and I need to feel better. That's fine. It just shouldn't be something that's really expensive. And if it's under a certain amount, and you can decide what that amount is, I'm I don't need to decide that for you. But if you decide, okay, if it's under$15, then I can buy it. It's under$10, I can buy it. And then it's like it's not gonna really affect your finances long term and it may help you get out of the rut that you're in. Again, there's money is emotional. And it's not like we can like completely separate, like you're never gonna do any emotional spending ever again. That's not just not feasible and that's not real life. But if you find yourself doing this often and you find yourself trying to get out of this cycle, creating rules for yourself and that I'm not gonna buy right away. I'm gonna give myself a window and I'm gonna make sure it's not a bunch of money. I'm gonna just do what is necessary to get out of the cycle that I am currently in. So that's habit number one. Habit number two is the opposite of a habit. We want to create a habit here is ignoring the numbers where you are avoiding the credit card statements, you're avoiding looking at your bank account, you're avoiding even thinking or talking about money with your partner. And this is like you don't do it until there's so much chaos, until there's so much pain that you are then forced to address it. And avoidance is not a character flaw by any means. It's literally a means of survival. Your brain is trained to keep you alive. And anything that's going to cause you pain, stress, or literally a response in the body that feels like you are in fight or flight, your brain is going to say, no, don't do that. Stay away from that. It's not safe. And the unfortunate thing about our brains is that they lie to us a lot of the time. And so what your brain is telling you and what is actual reality is not the same. And so when we can learn to say, no, actually avoiding my money is what's causing the problem in the first place. I have to start to feel comfortable with money in my body. I have to feel like I can trust myself with money before I can actually improve the situation. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to your financial situation. And most of the time, it's as simple as I'm going to face the numbers and I'm going to do it as often as I possibly can. I'm going to open my bank account at least once a day or once a week or whatever you're going to start with. And I'm going to face this head on because avoidance is making the problem worse. It becomes a cycle where I avoid the money, it gets worse. Then I want to avoid the money more, and then it gets worse. And so it's like this negative feedback loop where if we can break the feedback, we can break the loop and we can say, okay, check the bank account. It's all you have to do. You actually don't even have to change anything. You don't even have to move forward or take action. It's the simple act of becoming aware that will then start to give you back your power, start to take ownership of where you are. And guess what's going to happen? The lion isn't going to attack you. You're not going to fall off a cliff. You're going to sit at your computer and you're going to feel a lot of emotions. There's going to be probably some shame, some judgment, some internal dialogue that you're going to have to address, but it's going to be there, but nothing is actually happening to you, right? There's no external source of danger. Even though you're feeling that in the body, there it's not reality. And so we just look. We there's what do they do this on social media? We look and we don't judge. We say and we don't judge. This is exactly what we need to do is we need to just look at the numbers. No judgment, no shame, just awareness. And it can start as simple as I'm gonna check my bank account once a day. That's it. Just gonna check it and look at the credit card once a day. And I promise you it'll start to bring that positive feedback loop back in. Okay, habit number three. Obviously, I feel very strongly about grocery shopping and having a system in place for your grocery shopping. So many families are running on chaos mode when it comes to shopping, planning, cooking dinner for your family. There is no system involved. And if you are someone who wants to have the year 2026 be a different year for your family, you're overwhelmed with budgeting, you're overwhelmed with the numbers, you're overwhelmed with the debt or whatever it is. Don't look anywhere else other than your grocery spending. First off, it's gonna be much easier than having to overhaul all your spending or to run the numbers and the spreadsheets. And second, it's going to give you fast results. And I'm talking within weeks, you can cut your grocery spending by$600. But you need a system and you need a framework to work with. If I'm gonna go try and lose weight in 2026, I'm not just gonna willy-nilly like cut calories. I don't know how much I'm gonna cut. I don't know how often I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm going to create a system. I'm going to create a plan, a framework to follow so that way I know where there's progress and I can make sure I'm doing the right thing. That's exactly what it is with your grocery shopping is if you want to be able to save money, if you want to be able to have extra money at the end of the month, start with your groceries because it's the fastest and easiest way to combat all of those things. And I do have a free workshop that we're running in it's like a week and a half. You can look in the show notes. I'll put the link here, where we're gonna talk about the five pillars that you need in order to reset your money for 2026. And one of the biggest ones that we're gonna talk about is grocery shopping. It's obviously a big passion of mine because I see families sabotaging their financial goals. And one of the things that they are doing is they're overspending$800 every single month on their groceries. I have a method, it's called the shop method. If you follow me on Instagram or you are on my email list, you've heard all about it. But it is the one and only system that I have seen that works for all families, no matter if you have dietary restrictions, if you have health priorities, if you're a working mom, if you're busy, it will help you save time and it'll help you save money. And I have a free class for that as well that you can grab in the show notes. Okay, habit number four. Believing that more money is going to fix your problem. There is a level of necessity when it comes to money. We need to have enough money in our life to survive, where we can have a roof over our heads, where we can have food on the table, and where we can just function in a day-to-day world. Now, that number, once you hit that number, money doesn't change above that. And it's not going to change your life once we've had our needs taken care of. So many people think that if I just, if my husband or I just made$100 more thousand dollars, everything would be fine. And the truth is that if you don't have a money system in place right now, if you are not handling money correctly right now, what makes you think that more money is going to help you do that? What makes you think that if you don't know how to correctly spend, to correctly budget, to correctly invest for your future, that you're gonna be better with money with more money? What if the one thing that was holding you back was not the amount of money that was coming in? It's how you actually handle the money that is coming in. Because I've seen it so many times. There are people making millions who are broke, and there are people who are making so little money that are millionaires. So it doesn't actually matter how much money is coming in. What matters is how you, how much capacity you have with what you already have, practicing intentional spending, practicing an abundance mindset and learning how to follow the winds, learning how to make micro progression, learning how to be positive thinking when it comes to how you spend your money. That's what's gonna make the difference. I love to see when our money mom club members are feeling so strapped. I don't love to see that, but you'll get where I'm going. I love to see when someone is, we are living paycheck to paycheck, and I'm so sick of living in this cycle and I want to be better because you're at like the baseline and now we get to create a foundation, right? And then we can grow that foundation from there. But we need to create the foundation of how to handle money correctly so that, because it's going to happen, so that when more money does come in, or so that when you do get the pay raise, or you do end up with more money, that you actually know what to do with it. And sometimes our biggest pain, the biggest pains we have in our life, the hardest things that we go through are the best teachers, because there are so many people that were never taught correctly how to deal with money. And so they never figure it out correctly and they're always running on chaos mode. So if you're someone who's really struggling, use it as a time to say, oh my gosh, this is when I need to figure it out the most. And this is where I can build those really good foundations and principles around money. So that way when the more money does come in, then I will know what to do with it and I'll know how to handle it. Okay, our number five last habit is all or none thinking. And this is something that shows up probably in every aspect of your life if you are an all or none thinker. But specifically with budgeting, it's where you decide you're gonna overhaul everything. You decide that you're gonna be better. I put that in air quotes, you're gonna be better with money. And then you start over and you overwhelm yourself and you get in too deep or too hard, and you make one mistake, or don't pay off the credit card as fast as you wanted, and then you feel like a failure. And then that leads to more mistakes, which then leads to you feeling more like a failure. And this is perfectionist tendencies, and it's also one of the biggest budget killers out there because we have to look at money in a holistic approach where money is not just numbers. It's not, it's emotional, it creates a lot of emotions in marriages, friendships, parent-child relationships. It's just it's in it's pervasive in every area of your life. And if we look at it with all or none thinking, then we're gonna start to create this black and white approach where we can't take into account the emotional part of it or where we feel like a failure all the time. And one of the best things that you can do when it comes to money is not let the emotions of it run how you show up for it. And what I'm saying is like when there is a negative experience with money, you have to be able to separate that from your actions with money. We have to build flexible budgets. We have to build realistic budgets. When you are like, you, we all know these people that decide they're gonna go on a diet and they're like, I'm only gonna eat 600 calories a day and I'm gonna lose 10 pounds in three weeks. And we all sit back and we're like, yeah, that's never gonna work. You're never gonna be able to sustain that. Why are you doing that with your money? I I actually really hate no spending challenges. People will do, I'm doing a 30 day no spend challenge where I'm never gonna spend any money that I don't have to. And While that's really great for 30 days, and I'm sure you're gonna save some money doing that, you're not learning the correct principles on how to be an intentional spender and how to live in real life. Eating 600 calories a day is not sustainable in real life, neither is restricting yourself and never buying anything. It's not sustainable. So we have to start to look at our money differently, where we can say, it is okay for me to go buy a pair of shoes that I want to buy that maybe is more expensive than I normally would because I really want those shoes and I'm gonna work it into my budget. It is okay for me to spend money on myself. It is okay for us to take a family vacation because building memories is really important for my family. And it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay, and I'm gonna forgive myself for the mistakes I've made in the past, and I'm going to allow myself to learn the process and be on the journey. Just like I said at the very beginning, it's not about the end point of the goal that's important. It's about the progress of who you become while you try to reach that goal. And if you're someone who drops into all or none thinking often, try to take a different approach and take it as a step-by-step approach. Instead of I'm going to take one big leap into the future, into the progress, I'm just going to take one next step. What's then one next action that I could take that could further our progress towards whatever goals I may have? So you are not starting over in 2026. You're not. You're actually just moving forward and you're leveling up. And we want to say that we're going into it's new year, new me, da-da-da-da. Yeah, it is a new year, but it's not a new you. You are coming into 2026 with stories, experiences, progress in the past. And what we need to do is we need to continue learning how to show up for our money better. You're walking into a new year, and hopefully you have more awareness, you're going to have more clarity, and you're going to create habits that are building on the habits that you created in 2025. Or maybe you're shifting some of those habits where you're like, I don't want to do this anymore and I want to create new ones. And if that is you, come to my free class in two weeks, register for it, show up. I'm giving away some amazing bonuses at the very end, which I'm not going to give anywhere else. And so that is where you want to be. Join me there. And hopefully we can start 2026 off on the right foot where you believe you are capable of changing your financial trajectory, where you are capable of shaping a new reality different from what the past has been. Okay, that's all I have for you today. I'll see you in the next episode.