For almost my entire life, I tried really hard to never, EVER spend a penny I could avoid spending. I generally had not quite enough money to cover basic needs. Sometimes I could cover them and sometimes I couldn't. How you define "basic needs" varies, too. We went without having air conditioning for a few years because I couldn't afford to pay for a service call. AC is, obviously, a luxury. You can do without it and I often have, but it felt wrong to have the system but not to be able to use it. The viral article I wrote last year has allowed me to spend a little more this year but I struggle to do so. Decades of having insufficient funds broke me. Worse, I passed this problem onto my son. As a single guy with no kids, he has no problem paying his bills. But he has trouble spending money on ordinary things like new jean and socks. He certainly can afford to live much better than he does. I don't know how to encourage him to live a little.
Thank you for this. I'm trying to teach my daughter healthy spending habits. She's already restricting her food and spending. Her father shames me for my debt and always speaks of spending above your means. I want to break the shame cycle for her and not keep her safe from the shaming messages from her father. 🙂
I love this post. I think I’ve been practicing intuitive spending this year without even realising and it’s changed how I feel about money. And that came out of getting a 0% credit card and just letting myself use it without guilt. It’s changed how I feel about debt too, but the seed was sown by your book.
I really love the idea of intuitive spending! As a lifelong chronic dieter who used intuitive eating to help recover from disordered eating patterns that morphed into two eating disorders, I can totally see how spending would work the same way. Intuitive eating doesn't cause me to binge-eat—quite the opposite. When you allow yourself to have whatever you want, you realize what you actually do and don't want because there's no longer a constant feeling of scarcity, just like you mentioned. And I think I've already been seeing this to some extent with money. For example, my insistence on waiting until I could buy my dream house kept me out of the housing market for years. But many converging factors caused me to end up "settling" for less than I thought I wanted. Here's the kicker, though: Now that I have the smaller house, my "dream house" feels too big and like something I probably didn't want anyway. In fact, I'm sure that desire probably came from spending too much time on Pinterest. :) Intuitive spending is exactly how I want to approach money from now on. Thanks for this!
I got so much out of this , although I don’t have experience with diet culture, I certainly have experiences with budget culture. I agree there is shame associated with spending money and I think for women it is much worse. The main lesson I got out of your post is to let go of that shame , it does not serve me, and to trust inner intuition. I will start by admitting that buying certain things brings me little bouts of joy. These are some of the things I have bought in the past month: a dress , some flowers (just because ) , a book for my daughter, a gift for my friend’s 40th, baskets for the clutter of toys . I am happy with the purchases and they better my day to day 😊
I love your articles. It’s the only time I get a perspective that doesn’t make me feel irresponsible. I keep going back and forth on whether I should pay for a career coach who I have been following for 4 years now to help me get unstuck in my career. This is the first article that makes me feel like it wouldn’t be a bad or selfish decision for doing it when finances aren’t great (spoiler alert, they never are).
There’s so much to think about but I want to keep experimenting with it!
That’s all we can do!
For almost my entire life, I tried really hard to never, EVER spend a penny I could avoid spending. I generally had not quite enough money to cover basic needs. Sometimes I could cover them and sometimes I couldn't. How you define "basic needs" varies, too. We went without having air conditioning for a few years because I couldn't afford to pay for a service call. AC is, obviously, a luxury. You can do without it and I often have, but it felt wrong to have the system but not to be able to use it. The viral article I wrote last year has allowed me to spend a little more this year but I struggle to do so. Decades of having insufficient funds broke me. Worse, I passed this problem onto my son. As a single guy with no kids, he has no problem paying his bills. But he has trouble spending money on ordinary things like new jean and socks. He certainly can afford to live much better than he does. I don't know how to encourage him to live a little.
Thank you for this. I'm trying to teach my daughter healthy spending habits. She's already restricting her food and spending. Her father shames me for my debt and always speaks of spending above your means. I want to break the shame cycle for her and not keep her safe from the shaming messages from her father. 🙂
❤️❤️
I love this post. I think I’ve been practicing intuitive spending this year without even realising and it’s changed how I feel about money. And that came out of getting a 0% credit card and just letting myself use it without guilt. It’s changed how I feel about debt too, but the seed was sown by your book.
That's amazing! I'm so happy to hear this, Keris 💖
I'm filing away this tip, too: 0% credit card is a good tool to experiment with intuitive spending if you're just getting started!
I really love the idea of intuitive spending! As a lifelong chronic dieter who used intuitive eating to help recover from disordered eating patterns that morphed into two eating disorders, I can totally see how spending would work the same way. Intuitive eating doesn't cause me to binge-eat—quite the opposite. When you allow yourself to have whatever you want, you realize what you actually do and don't want because there's no longer a constant feeling of scarcity, just like you mentioned. And I think I've already been seeing this to some extent with money. For example, my insistence on waiting until I could buy my dream house kept me out of the housing market for years. But many converging factors caused me to end up "settling" for less than I thought I wanted. Here's the kicker, though: Now that I have the smaller house, my "dream house" feels too big and like something I probably didn't want anyway. In fact, I'm sure that desire probably came from spending too much time on Pinterest. :) Intuitive spending is exactly how I want to approach money from now on. Thanks for this!
I got so much out of this , although I don’t have experience with diet culture, I certainly have experiences with budget culture. I agree there is shame associated with spending money and I think for women it is much worse. The main lesson I got out of your post is to let go of that shame , it does not serve me, and to trust inner intuition. I will start by admitting that buying certain things brings me little bouts of joy. These are some of the things I have bought in the past month: a dress , some flowers (just because ) , a book for my daughter, a gift for my friend’s 40th, baskets for the clutter of toys . I am happy with the purchases and they better my day to day 😊
I love your articles. It’s the only time I get a perspective that doesn’t make me feel irresponsible. I keep going back and forth on whether I should pay for a career coach who I have been following for 4 years now to help me get unstuck in my career. This is the first article that makes me feel like it wouldn’t be a bad or selfish decision for doing it when finances aren’t great (spoiler alert, they never are).