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How-To: Make Financial Lemonade Out of Lemons
You Are a Badass author Jen Sincero instructs us on how to get our funds flowing and achieve financial freedom.
Nearly every aspect of our regularly scheduled lives was disrupted over the last year, and that includes how we saved, made, and formed habits around money. Whatever your financial situation may be, there’s no time like the present to reflect on your identity, reconnect with your goals, and get back into metaphorical money shape. We asked Jen Sincero, author of You Are a Badass Every Day, You Are a Badass at Making Money, and Badass Habits, to help get our bank accounts feeling less bad and more badass.
- Find the Silver Linings: One of the few perks to our recent reclusiveness for some is that we’re saving money by not doing all the costly things we used to do: going out to dinner, shopping, traveling, etc. Even the seemingly little things like your morning latté or happy hour beer add up, so figure out what you’re not spending and save it.
- Get Specific: How much do you want to save? What are you saving it for? Getting clarity around these questions will help you make the commitment needed to follow through with your plan. Without specificity, goals can seem really daunting, so figure out a number, find a reason, and tie an emotion to it—something to excite and motivate you—and saving will start to feel more manageable and real.
- Ask the Experts: Once you’ve figured out what you’re saving for, you’ll want to carve out a specific place to put that money. Saving for retirement, a house, or a vacation are all admirable reasons to reserve your funds, but not every savings account is the same. Calling a financial advisor might seem nerve-wracking, but that’s why they exist—they are smart people who know what they’re doing. And you’re a smart person for using them!
- Change the Conversation: Like all of the things that wake us up in the middle of the night, worrying about money is very personal and we all carry around individual mantras related to it. In my new book, Badass Habits, I include an exercise to help you consciously create powerful mantras that will help relieve that midnight insomnia. See below for an abridged version to get you started.
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Find Your Money Mantra
- Step 1: Listen to Yourself. For better or worse, we voice our worries over and over again. Listen to how you talk about money, but specifically how you bitch and moan about it, and write all of that down. The number one complaint you come back to is the beginning of your mantra. In my own life, my old internal mantra was: “I can’t afford it.”
- Step 2: Flip the Script. Once you’ve identified the specific negative money phrase your brain keeps on repeat, figure out what the opposite of that phrase might be. Keep it positive, in present tense, and short. Add in words that make it even more impactful—you need to really feel the emotion tied to your mantra to make it real. My negative mantra turned into: “Money flows to me easily and freely.”
- Step 3: Repetition Is Key. Don’t worry if it’s hard to believe your mantra at first—as long as you can feel a ping of thrill (which is your higher self doing a cartwheel), you’ll know you’re on the right track. Write it down and say it every day, all the time. Simply decide to believe it, and one day, you actually will!
Further Reading
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