Are Your Spending Patterns Still Serving the Life You Want? - S2E3

You may be able to afford a purchase and still wonder why it keeps showing up without your intending for it to.

Repeated spending often buys more than the item or service itself. It may create ease, offer relief after a demanding day, reinforce how you see yourself, or provide something you have not found another way to ask for.

In this episode, you’ll focus on one spending category and look at the pattern behind it: when it happens, how often it happens, and what may be influencing the choice. Then you’ll use three questions to explore what that spending may be providing beyond the purchase itself.

This is not an exercise in cutting what's unnecessary or judging how you use your money. The goal is to understand what your spending is doing so you can decide whether you want to keep it, plan for it more intentionally, adjust it, or direct some of that money toward something that matters more to you.

You’ll also practice using the awareness and regulation skills from Season 1 to stay present when financial information feels uncomfortable. Rather than pushing through or backing away, you’ll use the skills we've developed together to remain engaged with it.

In this episode:

• How to examine one spending category without turning it into a judgment about yourself
• What timing and repetition can reveal about a spending pattern
• Three questions for understanding what a purchase may be providing
• The difference between being able to afford something and choosing it intentionally
• How to turn greater awareness into one practical financial decision

Next week, we’ll use the same approach to look clearly at debt and organize what you owe without shame or panic. That clarity makes it possible to replace vague unease with a deliberate strategy and decide how debt fits alongside the rest of the life you’re building.

The Rhythm of Money
Living Your True Note

No financial advice is offered or implied. For guidance specific to your situation, consult a licensed financial professional. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to the Rhythm of Money. This episode is for the woman who's capable in a lot of areas of her life. You may manage a career, a household, employees, complicated family responsibilities, or all of those at once. You may be earning well, you may have savings, investments, a home, and a life you've worked hard to build. And still there may be one area of your spending that feels less clear and intentional than the rest of your life is. And it's not necessarily disastrous, it's not something that's putting you in a financial crisis, but it is a category you don't look at very closely, maybe because you're not entirely sure what you're gonna think or what you're gonna feel about yourself once you do. Maybe you already know which category that is for you. Today we're gonna do three things with it.

Finding the patterns, payoffs, and decisions

SPEAKER_00 0:59

First, we're going to find the pattern. Then we're going to ask what that pattern may be doing for you. Now, what's the payoff? And finally, we're going to decide whether it's still how you want your money to serve your life. All right, so one category, one month, one honest look. Now, over the years, when I've worked with women with their finances, there's a moment that has happened many times. Again and again. Usually it came the first time that I was going over someone's finances with them. There would be a pause. And then often an apology. It's embarrassing, she might say. You know, I don't want to tell you, she might say, before I'd even seen a transaction. What always struck me was that most of these women were perfectly competent people. They had careers, they made decisions all day long, they were responsible for other people and for things that mattered. But when it came to their own spending, they assumed I was about to see evidence against them. And I really, rarely, rarely did. What I usually found was a capable woman who had never been taught how to look at her spending without turning it into a character assessment. And that's where the nervousness and therefore the avoidance and therefore the lack of competence was coming from. So let's start there. Your spending is information, useful information. It can tell you where your money has been going, how often it goes there, and under what circumstances. It cannot tell you whether you're intelligent. It cannot tell you whether you're disciplined. And it cannot tell you whether you're a good person. A map shows you where you've been. It doesn't decide what kind of person took the route. And once you can see the route clearly, you get to decide whether you want to keep following it. Now, if you were with me during season one, this is where the work we did together begins to become very practical. One of the areas that we can use that. We

Meeting resistance successfully

SPEAKER_00 3:10

practiced noticing the money flinch. We practiced pausing before automatically reacting. And we practiced recognizing what was happening in the body without treating every feeling as either a warning to stop or a compulsion to push past. This is what those skills were for. You know, one of the things. Not simply to help you feel better about money in the abstract, but to help you remain present when you're looking at something real and deciding what to do with it. And if this is your first episode, you know, you don't need to go back and complete anything before you can begin. It will be like a deeper understanding if you've had the chance to do some of it before, but I'll walk you through what you need here. So start by choosing a category. So go ahead and do that now. If you need to

Let's do it now together

SPEAKER_00 3:57

pause while you think about that, do I'm gonna, of course, keep moving. Now, this is not necessarily the category where you spend the most. So choose one that creates maybe a little uncertainty or at least curiosity. It could be restaurant meals or delivery services, or it could be clothes or travel upgrades or wellness services, purchases for the home, subscriptions, convenience services, gifts, whether for adult children or young children, or an amount that you just give to other people. It could be any any reason you're giving to others, whether it's donations to causes, groups, or individuals. Now, none of those categories is automatically a problem. You're simply choosing one that you suspect may be operating with less intention than you'd like. So pull up one month of transactions in that category right now. And again, if you need to pause, pause. Now, before you begin reading what you've pulled up, pause again and just notice what's happening in your body at the very thought of looking. Yeah, maybe there's a little tightening in the chest. Maybe you notice yourself holding your breath. Maybe your mind immediately starts explaining or defending the spinning before you've even examined it. Make sure your feet are making contact with the floor. Just notice that they are and move them there. If they're not, take one ordinary breath and just notice that you're breathing. And remind yourself, this is information you're looking at. Then look, really look. Notice patterns of how often a certain kind of spinning occurs. So we're again we're looking for a certain category. So whichever one you picked, I'm gonna keep maybe using restaurant meals for a bit when I use an example, but whatever one you picked, and just you know, how often is that happening? Is it clustering on particular days? Notice what day of the week it tends to happen. Again, you may need to pause periodically because you're gonna look for the patterns. I'm just naming some patterns that might be there. Notice whether it happens more often after work or you know, workdays or on weekends. Or does it happen more when you're traveling or when you're around certain people? Where are those big expenses happening? What else is going on on those times? Notice whether the individual purchases are planned or whether they tend to happen quickly, almost before you've consciously decided. Now you're not trying to build a case against yourself. You're learning the shape of the pattern. And if looking at an entire month feels like too much, don't use that feeling as a reason to skip the exercise altogether. Just make the task smaller, right? We talked about this last week when we talked about microhabits. So instead of a month, just look at one week's worth of transactions. Or just look at three transactions, okay? And we've learned already, we're not forcing ourselves through this comfort. We're learning what you can and making sure that we stay in contact. So we're doing what we need to do in the body to stay in contact with the mind. Okay. So if it has to be one transaction that you examine with awareness, that's more useful than an entire month that you're gonna just avoid doing, okay? Yeah. And and again, restaurant spending is a good one. So let's talk about. I'm thinking of a particular woman in mind as I say this, so I'm gonna use that as my example. So she wasn't unable to afford restaurants, okay? That definitely was not the issue. She was doing well professionally. You know, her bills were paid, she was saving money, but she had begun to feel that she was ordering dinner far more often than she consciously wanted to. And she had quietly started describing herself as an undisciplined person. Now, when she looked at a month of transactions, the pattern appeared very quickly. Nearly every order happened on one of the three evenings each week when her husband worked late. Not on the weekends, not necessarily on her busiest work days, on the evenings when she came home to an empty house. Once she saw that, the spending stopped looking like proof that she lacked willpower. Ordering dinner had been making those evenings easier. It gave her something to anticipate. It filled part of the silence, and it meant she didn't have to prepare a meal for one when she was already feeling tired and kind of disconnected. That didn't mean she needed to stop ordering dinner. It meant she finally had enough information to make a real decision. She decided to keep one delivery night because she genuinely enjoyed it. On another evening, she began making plans with a friend more regularly. And on the third, she kept a few simple meals available that didn't require much effort. Her spending changed somewhat, but that wasn't the only result. She also stopped using the category as evidence that something was wrong with her. She could see what it had been doing that was useful. And once you know what a repeated behavior is doing, you have more than one way to respond. And that brings us to the second part of the exercise. When you notice a repeated spending pattern, there are three useful questions you can ask. The first is what need might this be meeting or soothing? Maybe the spending gives you comfort, ease, rest, pleasure, connection, or the feeling that someone is taking care of you for a change. That doesn't make the purchase wrong or right. It simply tells you that the money is providing more than the object or service itself. Okay? So that's the first question to ask yourself. The second question is what identity or belief might this be reinforcing? Sometimes we spend in ways that help us feel like the woman we want to be, or like the woman we believe we're supposed to be. I have bought many a handbag as that person. With nowhere to wear that bag. So professional clothes, for example, may help you imagine yourself in a larger role. Generous gifts may reinforce the identity of being the person everyone can count on. Premium travel may represent freedom, success, or finally enjoying what you've worked for, you know, that upgrade to first class. Again, none of that automatically means the spending should stop, but it helps you know whether you're buying something because you genuinely value it, because it supports who you are, or because you're hoping that the purchase will prove something you're not yet convinced of without it. The third question is: what feeling or pressure might this be helping me release? Some purchases create a quick shift in how we feel. After a difficult workday, an upsetting family conversation, or a period of boredom, buying something may provide a few minutes of relief, movement, or control. The object may be useful, you may enjoy it, but the timing may show you that the purchase is also helping you put down something you were carrying, meeting a need, reinforcing an identity, releasing pressure. Now these aren't diagnoses, they aren't the only reasons people spend money. Sometimes you buy groceries because you need groceries. Sometimes you book a massage because you want a massage and can comfortably afford it. Maybe there's a pain that you'd like to have go away that you think the massage will help with that. Sometimes there's no hidden emotional explanation to uncover. The point is not to make every purchase suspicious. The point is to become curious when a pattern feels stronger, more automatic, or less satisfying than the purchase itself would seem to explain. And you may notice something as you ask these three questions. Being understood can feel surprisingly similar to being exposed. You may recognize yourself in one of these patterns and feel a quick flush of embarrassment, almost as though someone has caught you doing something wrong. That reaction doesn't mean you've uncovered wrongdoing. It means you've recognized something that has been operating outside your full awareness. Recognition is not judgment. It's simply the moment when you've finally made enough information available to yourself to choose. So here is the in the moment practice. So we we've reflected on what has happened, and now we are moving forward into the future. The next time you feel the pull toward that category, pause for one breath. Notice where the impulse is showing up in your body. Maybe it's restlessness somewhere, maybe in your gut, in your chest, your legs. Maybe it's a lift of anticipation, yeah, sort of energy. Maybe it's tension that just wants somewhere to go, somewhere to get released to. Something that doesn't feel good, you want to get off, right? You don't have to analyze it for like 10 minutes. Just ask, what might this be meeting or soothing? You know, what need might this be meeting? What might this be reinforcing? What might this be helping me release? Then decide. You may choose to make the purchase. You may decide it's worth every dollar. You may realize that you want to keep the spending but plan for it more deliberately. You may choose to reduce how often it happens. You may try another way of meeting part of the same need. Or you may decide that you need another month of information before changing anything. The goal is not to become a woman who never orders dinner, buys a blazer or a handbag or books a trip or helps her adult child. The goal is to become a woman who knows what her money is doing and chooses whether she wants it to keep doing that. Now there's a meaningful difference between being able to afford something and deciding that it's the best use of your money. And there's also a meaningful difference between cutting an expense automatically and deciding with full awareness that something genuinely belongs in the life you're building. So this week, keep the exercise small. Just choose one category, look at one month or even a smaller portion if that helps you stay present with the whole thing, and find the pattern. Ask what the spending may be providing beyond the purchase itself. Then make one deliberate decision. You might keep it, you might plan for it better, you might adjust it, you might try one alternative. You don't have to redesign your entire financial life this week. You're practicing the skill of looking clearly and responding intentionally. And that skill matters well beyond spending. We're going to apply that skill in many different areas as we move forward and really reshaping things to give you the resilience and financial strength that can weather the winds of fate that we all sometimes face and keep you going strong and keep you on path and keep you in your thriving. Now, sometimes when we begin looking more closely, we also notice that some purchases have been carried on credit. That doesn't necessarily mean someone is in financial distress. A woman can earn a good income, own assets, and still carry balances she's never approached with a clear strategy. And debt doesn't come from only one kind of circumstance. It may be connected to spending patterns, but it may also come from education or medical cost, caregiving, divorce, a business, home repairs, helping family, or simply years of making payments without stepping back to create a real payoff plan. Next week, we're going to look directly at what you owe and how to organize that information without letting shame or panic take over. We'll use the same skills we use today. We'll stay present, we'll gather the facts, and we'll make the next decision from what's true, not from what you fear the facts might say about you. From there, in combination with what you did this week, it starts giving us real options to start making deeper strategies that are actually going to work for everything else we're going to do. This is the rhythm of money. And you are living your true note in this very moment.