Just a little bit about (spending) money
I haven’t written much publicly about money — though I coach on it quite a bit.
After all, many important life decisions (career shifts, pursuing dreams, reducing energy debt) eventually involve…money.
I find it a little intimidating to write about money in public. One-on-one with my clients, I know a bit more about the specifics of a person’s situation.
And yet, I’ve noticed a few things that I’ve said to several clients recently, and I wonder if it would be useful to say to you, as well:
Our money decisions are often more emotional than logical.
Once money comes up, many of my clients get a bit righteous about where the “truth” is. Katie, it’s just a FACT that spending money in X way is extravagant, they say to me.
And yet, I’ve found over and over that our decisions about when it is ok (or even good!) to spend money are wildly emotional, influenced by our family-of-orgin in ways we are often not aware of, and…frankly…kind of arbitrary.
“Arbitrary” as in: another person could very easily believe the opposite.It may be very expensive to be stuck.
Many of my clients are putting off a financial expense because, well, it costs money. It’s too expensive to change jobs/get help/try this, they tell me.
I often remind them that staying stuck is often also expensive.
A recent client was taking a break between careers to recover from burnout + attend to her parents’ estate; sadly, her second parent passed away recently.
On one hand, getting some help to do so (having someone else to project manage much-needed repairs to her parents’ house, hiring a property management company who was not the cheapest to rent it out, among other things) seemed expensive. And it did certainly cost money.
But wasn’t it also expensive for her to be too exhausted to pursue her next career move? What about the lost income there?The thing that gets you unstuck may not be the logical thing.
When money is involved, we want to be logical. I get it.
And also, the funny thing about getting unstuck is that we sometimes just need to let our personal snowball gather momentum.
And the thing that gets the snowball rolling…might not be logical.
A different recent client needed to answer some big, tricky life questions (what will her next career be? Where will she live?). She was making some progress, but everything felt hard. Her snowball didn’t have momentum yet.
In one session, she told me, in an offhanded way, that she dreamed of taking a trip.
Ideally: New York, but she would probably pick Toronto. Toronto would be more affordable.
Ideally: an airbnb in a cute neighborhood. But she would probably stay with family she didn’t know well, instead, somewhere far from the city center. That would be more affordable.
Her energy was so much more bogged down, closed, as she described the affordable options.
So I said: Girl, you haven’t taken a trip like this in years. What if you just took exactly the trip you wanted to take?
(Not just because it sounded more fun to her — though it did. But also because I wanted her to remember what rightness felt like, in her body.)
She booked the trip. And wow, has the snowball picked up momentum.
…
My hesitancy about writing about money, publicly, is that I never want to say: Just spend the money and everything will work out!
Most of us — me included, my clients included — do not have infinite financial reserves.
And yet.
And yet — there are times when we need to question the “facts” in our brains about money (which are actually emotional, old beliefs that we could revise).
And yet there are times when we need to spend the money — and sometimes on things that don’t make logical “sense”. Because staying stuck is also expensive.
(And what we need to spend might cost $30 just as easily as it costs $3,000 or $30,000.)
I hope this lands. As always, I’m rooting for you.
Katie
p.s. Many of us get a little set in our ways as we get older; coaching is one of those rare opportunities to reset — reset how we see ourselves, reset how we move through the world, reset what is possible for us. I sometimes call it “moving around the furniture” inside of ourselves.
If this appeals, you can learn more about coaching (What is the process like? How long does it take? How much does it cost?) + schedule a free consultation with me, here.
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