Carl Richards is a Certified Financial Planner™ and creator of the Sketch Guy column, appearing weekly in The New York Times since 2010. The following article is reproduced with permission from his weekly newsletter and his website can be found here.
Greetings, Carl here.
Boots, solar panels, a cheesy dog (it’s an Aussie thing), a vanilla latte, and donuts with the kids… are just a few things you all spent money on last week.
Isn’t that interesting?
It was great to hear from so many of you!
As a reminder, I am sharing a series called The Spending Practice, and this is part 3. (Read part one here and part two here.)
This week, I want to make a very simple and narrow point:
Awareness drives behavior change.
Awareness will drive behavior change even when behavior change is not the goal.
So let’s continue with The Spending Practice and go a little deeper.
Here’s this week’s practice:
Just like last week, I want you to pick one thing and spend money on it. This time, I want you to pay attention to two things:
1- That you spent the money. Just use the secret phrase I taught you:
“I just spent [insert amount] at [insert place] on [insert item]. Isn’t that interesting…?”
2- How it felt.
Spending money generates feelings. Those feelings can range from excitement to regret and satisfaction to shame. You might also notice that you feel nothing, indifference, or apathy. Well… that’s interesting as well.
A huge part of The Spending Practice is developing awareness of how we feel when we spend because it turns out that we make most of our financial decisions based on how we feel, not on how we think.
To develop a better relationship with money, we have to learn to pay attention to how we feel when we use it.
Everything else we’re told to focus on (investing, budgeting, etc.) is just hacking at the branches unless we get to the root of the issue, which is how we feel about money.
Spending just happens to be the easiest place to start that practice because you do it so often.
So this week, pick one thing, buy it, and:
1- Notice that you spent money.
2- Notice how you felt.
Oh, one last thing.
It is very important to continue to avoid judgment. You are not trying to change anything BUT the practice of awareness.
No shame. No blame. No bad or good. It is super important to not judge how you felt—just notice it.
This might be hard. For example, imagine you spent some money, used the secret phrase, and noticed that you felt “guilt”—the last thing I want you to do is feel “bad” about feeling “guilt.”
Just notice it and say the same thing:
“I just spent $27.43 at the bookstore on a book, and I felt guilty. Isn’t that interesting…?”
And I want to hear about it.
Last week, a ton of you emailed me about your spending, and I loved it.
As of right now, I have read and replied to everyone… so let’s do it again!
Do the spending practice and email me. Here’s the text you can use to fill in the details and send:
Yo Carl!
I did The Spending Practice today.
I spent [insert dollar amount] at [insert place] on [insert thing] and I
felt [insert feeling].
Isn’t that interesting?
You’re the best Carl! (okay, you can change that if you must)
– [Insert your name]
Can’t wait to hear from you! We will wrap up this series in a few more emails and get back to a sketch per week and as few words as possible.
-Carl
