Budgeting That Lets You Breathe

We reframe budgeting from a rigid diet into a freeing plan that gives permission to spend, sets a balance you choose, and helps you enjoy money without guilt. Through simple stories and practical steps, we map how a proactive plan turns stress into calm and intention.

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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl

Chapters

• 0:00 Budget Myths And Mindset Shift
• 1:14 Permission To Spend Without Guilt
• 3:13 Beating Avoidance With Intentional Breaks
• 4:40 Choosing Your Financial Balance
• 7:02 Enjoying Money Through Planning
• 8:52 Disney Trip As Planning Metaphor

Transcript

Budget Myths And Mindset Shift

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you feel like your budget is restricting you, you're probably doing it wrong. My name is Craig, and I'm the owner of Daisy Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money, and serves more people. This is the Therapy Business Podcast. Now, a big part of financial peace of mind is budgeting. And I know a lot of people don't like that word. They feel like a budget is just this anchor on fun, right? It just ruins all the fun in life. It makes it to where you can't spend money, you can't enjoy anything because you just have to be on this tight budget. I think we all relate it to almost like being on a diet, right? I can't eat desserts, I can't eat any sugar or anything salty. I have to just eat vegetables and bland foods and make sure that I'm not consuming anything delicious. And that's what a budget can be for some people. It's like I'm not gonna be able to spend money on anything fun. It just means I just have to pay the bills and live a boring life inside of this box. Well, today I want to talk you through why I truly believe a budget isn't restrictive, it's actually freeing. And I'm gonna give you three reasons why that is to hopefully change your perspective and then also maybe even change how you practically approach budgeting because there's a chance that you've been coming at it the wrong way, and that's why you haven't enjoyed it or why it hasn't worked for you in the past. Number one is you it gives you permission to spend. That's how I view a budget, the exact opposite of what you would think, that it's restricting your spending to make sure that your money is going in the right places, it's actually giving you permission to spend, and that's because you get to decide how much you want to spend in other areas, and you can do it without the guilt. I think that is the biggest problem that we have when it comes to our finances is the guilt. And a lot of times the guilt comes from just not knowing if it's okay to have spent that money. So you go out to the store and you buy something, and next thing you know, you've spent$200 at the store and you're just racked with buyer's remorse, going, Oh, I shouldn't have done that financially. That was just a terrible decision. Versus if you in advance say, you know what, I'm this month, I'm gonna go shopping. I'm gonna give myself$200 to spend at the store. I'm gonna make sure that we have enough money going towards savings, we're gonna put X dollars towards that, we're gonna put X dollars towards our bills, our groceries, et cetera. Then all of a sudden you have permission to spend that$200. You've given yourself the space, knowing all the other areas are covered. Versus if we just go and react and we just are at the store and we start filling up the basket and we spend$200, we haven't proactively made sure that all the areas are covered. And so in our brain and our body, it just can sense that discomfort of did I just make a mistake? Did I just make another terrible financial decision? Did I totally ruin everything? And are we going to overdraft a week from now? It's all of this mixture of things and it comes from just no lack of clarity. So a budget gives you permission to spend. I think back to when I first started working for myself. I'd always worked traditional jobs. I was a teacher for a long time in the classroom. And then when I started working for myself, I found days where I was doing monotonous tasks that I would avoid them, right? So there's no easier way to say it. Maybe I'm supposed to be working on this thing and I start reading articles or a YouTube video or something. And the next thing I know, an hour or two has passed, and I just haven't even started the task or I didn't make any progress on it. And I would beat myself up about it. I'm like, you're lazy, you need to get focused, you need to make this a priority, all of the things that you can tell yourself. Then when I started shifting it and catching myself in those moments and just getting curious about it and saying, okay, what's causing me to maybe avoid this task? Is it I need a brain break? Am I tired? Is it uh I need some rest? I need to refresh. So I would proactively schedule, either schedule in time to take breaks, whether it's every Thursday afternoon, I don't take meetings and I create free space to do certain things, or whether it's even just a man, I'm I I'm catching myself avoiding, I'm gonna go take a 30-minute walk. And by taking a 30-minute walk, I come back even more ready to get the work done. And I haven't wasted it, even though I've taken that time off. Even if I were to take two hours and go to the gym or two hours to uh go to a movie and then come back, that is intentional. It's it's a I'm gonna take this break because otherwise I'm gonna spiral down this thing and it's gonna be even longer before I get back on task. So money is very much the same way. The second reason, so we have permission to spend, the second reason is you get to decide your balance with your finances. It's it's empowering. You get to decide what money looks like for you. What does life look like for you in your family? If you're married, what do you and your spouse want money to be? What are your values? Where do you want money to go? You get to decide that. Again, without a budget, it's we always say you're being reactive. You're looking at the bank account, you're spending. Oh, a bill is due, we're gonna spend it. Oh, we need groceries, we're gonna spend it. Oh, we didn't thaw meat tonight. Let's go to the restaurant. It's just constantly reacting versus being proactive. And that's what you get to decide. You get to sit down and say, How much do we want to spend? How much do we want to go to restaurants? What kind of restaurants do we want to go to? Do we want to go to nice ones? What do we want to do? What do we want life to look like? What sporting events are important to us for the kids? What how many date nights do we want to go out to? And how what do we want to spend on those? You get to choose all of these things. What are we saving money for? What are things in the short term, long term? Are we talking about vehicles? How much do we want to allocate to that? You get empowered to decide how are we going to spread our money so that when you look at your bank statement, it is a reflection of your values, it's a reflection of your priorities, it's showing you exactly what's important to you in life. You're being proactive instead of being reactive. You are planning it out versus just letting life happen and the money just goes out the window. And that's what leaves us frustrated. That's what leaves us feeling like we're living paycheck to paycheck. It's just because we don't have that plan and we're not empowering ourselves to decide what our balance is and where it goes. Not having this proactive decision making, this balance that you choose, if you don't have that, that's when we feel out of balance. That's when we feel like we can't do fun things, we can't afford to go out to eat, we can't afford to do X, Y, and Z. And maybe when you sit down and create the budget, you will discover that you genuinely do have an income problem and you can't do those things. But then right there, it empowers you to make a decision or make some changes. How short are we every month, and what needs to be different in order for us to live this life that we are wanting to live and to live the balance that we want to live? The third thing for budgeting, the third reason budgets are not restrictive. They're freeing is they will allow you to enjoy money more. They're gonna allow you to enjoy money more. Just going back to that first description of the guilt that we feel, uh, the anxiousness, the constantly checking our bank balance before making purchases, all of those things are not enjoyable. But when we have a plan, we can enjoy it more, we can enjoy life more. I mean, when you go to that restaurant, you're not stressing about money. You're just ordering it and swiping the card and enjoying the meal. I'm thinking too, as we, my family, we are uh getting ready for a trip to Disney World, right? We're gonna take the kids here in November. They don't know about it. So please, if you know my kids, don't tell them. It's a surprise. But we are planning it out now. Me, I am not a planner. Well, my ideal vacation is you show up somewhere that has a beach and some uh a cocktail and you just lay there for seven days and don't do anything. That's that's my idea of a vacation. When you're going to Disney, I don't know if you ever you've ever been there, you that just doesn't work. You can't just show up for a few days and just wing it and try and experience Disney. You might get to do some things, but you are not going to thrive. It's going to be probably a miserable experience. My kids will be real mad because we won't get to do X, Y, and Z that you have to plan for. That's why they have Disney planners. And that's why my amazing wife, who is a planner, has been taking it upon herself to do these things and to say, okay, here's what park we're going to on each day. Here's what activities do we want to do, which ones need the reservations, all of these things so that when we show up, we have a plan and we're not going to miss out on those things. So it's that idea of in that moment, we're not going to be stressing about what we need to do. Oh, we need to hurry up. Is there, are we going to be able to do everything we want to do? It's having that game plan is going to allow us to enjoy that trip even more. And the same is true with our finances. Having a plan with your money is going to allow you to enjoy your money even more. Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a practice owner that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspod.com to learn how we can help.