2025 doesn’t need you to make another restrictive budget
Can you stop striving this year and start listening to your gut?
A new year is a big opportunity to reflect on what you’ve done so far and what you want to do next. That’s a worthy exercise… but it inevitably opens the door to self-judgment that’s often more about critique and punishment than about self-improvement or living a better life.
We’ve, diabolically, instituted an entire cultural tradition to sanction this self-critique: hello, New Year’s resolutions!
And money is always a major target: Pew Research found three out of five goal-setters set a money-related resolution last year.
Specifically, “save more money” is perennially among the top New Year’s resolutions. One Statista survey this year found it to be the most popular resolution, with more than one in five respondents setting this goal. Another one in 10 said they want to reduce spending. This — along with eating “healthier,” exercising more and losing weight also topping the charts each year — is a clear reflection of our culture’s insistence on discipline and restriction in pursuit of elusive perfection.
What “save money” means to respondents is never quite clear in these casual surveys. I imagine for some it means to spend less and for some it means to set aside more for the future. Some for the near future, some for the long-term. Some want to learn more about investing, some simply want to bulk up a bank account.
That lack of clarity is kind of the point (as is the lack of nuance in “eat healthier”). Most people won’t follow through on this desire in any meaningful way; naming it at the beginning of each year is just a way to acknowledge that you know you’re not living up to budget culture’s standards of financial perfection. Because not naming it would mean you’re content with your current lot, and that lack of striving is simply not acceptable.
You don’t need another restrictive budget
Just like the new diet so many people commit to every January, a fresh New Year budget — or extreme no-spend challenge, i.e. cleanse — is a popular strategy to kickstart the quest toward unclear, elusive financial goals.
But budgeting — just like dieting — almost inevitably fails.
Budgets are unsustainable by nature, either because they’re too restrictive or because the act of tracking your spending sucks all the joy out of life and (imagine this) you don’t want to live a joyless life.
Even if you muster the discipline to maintain a budget, they don’t tend to deliver the results they promise: You won’t spend less, save more, pay off debt or stress less about money. (I talked about the research that finds budgets lacking in this Healthy Rich post, in this TIME essay and a bunch in my book, if you want to know more!)
Could you stop striving this year?
What if you didn’t take this annual opportunity to judge and shame your financial circumstances? What if you didn’t give in to the fruitless pursuit of perfection no one can achieve?
Instead of attempting to root out your imperfections each January to work toward a goal our culture set for you, you could take this moment of reflection to listen to yourself, notice what you want to do next and consider how money can (or cannot) support that.
What’s the life you want to be living?
What’s the day-to-day experience you want to have?
What’s working in your life that you want more of?
What’s not working in your life that you want less of?
How do you want to show up in the world?
This kind of reflection — rather than asking “what can I do better?” — can encourage you to tap into your innate wisdom to guide your money moves, instead of looking to an outside set of rules to determine what you “should” want and the “right” ways to get it.
People have lots of names for this wisdom — your inner knowing, inner voice, gut, highest self, God, Holy Spirit, Self, universe, Source, intuition. I like “inner voice,” because it gives you agency and feels like a distinct opposition to all of the noise coming at you from the outside. Whatever characterization feels right for you, your inner voice/intuition/wisdom/etc. is the part of you that knew what you wanted and needed before the world drowned it out.
Divesting from budget culture expectations requires learning to listen to that inner voice and trusting it knows what’s best for you better than the voices shouting at you from the outside (because it is you).
Instead of resolving to strive harder for perfection this year, could you take more time to listen to your inner voice?
What is the life you want money to support?
“Listening to your inner voice” sounds like a bit of cheesy self-help nonsense, doesn’t it? Maybe it is, a little. But it’s at least not worse than telling you a fresh budget will solve all of your financial struggles. If you’ve tried budgeting in the past and you’ve ended up at this money-misfit newsletter, I’m guessing you’re ready to try something new.
Discovering how money can support the life and experience you want looks different for everyone — because the life and experience we each want and the way we’ll each make it happen is unique. There’s no explicit formula for this approach.
Instead, here are some examples to get you thinking about how this could work in your life:
If you know this year you want to live in a new state for protections against fascist rule, you might look at your finances and notice a higher portion of your income will go toward housing. Maybe you accommodate this by finding a new job, picking up a side gig, using credit cards more, applying for housing assistance or borrowing money from family.
If you know this year you want to buy a fishing boat, you might look at your finances and notice you don’t have the cash on hand to do it anytime soon. Maybe you accommodate this desire by making a plan to set aside money periodically, and you’ll buy the boat whenever you do have the cash. Or maybe you don’t want to wait, so you’d like to finance the boat, but you notice your credit score won’t get you a loan. Maybe you research loans for bad credit or ways to raise your score.
If you know this year you want to go hiking more often, you might look at your finances and notice you have to work a ton of hours to stay afloat, so you don’t have much time for self-care or recreation. Maybe you accommodate your hiking urge by asking for a raise, negotiating a long lunch break, transitioning to freelancing or dropping some bills.
None of these are financial goals, but everything you want has financial implications.
Consider the experience you want and need, notice how it might affect your finances and make a plan to accommodate it.
Too often, we think first about rigid goals to optimize toward unfair financial expectations and fit the rest of our lives into whatever those goals can accommodate. Instead, lead with the experience you want, and the let the money follow. You don’t have to “save more money” if it does nothing to support the life you want, for example.
Instead of contorting your life to fit a set of money goals, this year ask: What is the life you want to live, and how does money fit into it?
How is it I keep getting stuck at question 1: what is the life you want to be living?? 😩
This feels like such a refreshing way to look at money, budgeting and how they intersect with our current life circumstances and how we desire to live.
Thank you!