As we head into the home stretch of March Money Madness, I’ve been thinking about how I want to approach this going forward. But first, as an update, this week was much the same as the previous weeks. I stuck to our meal plan, I didn’t go shopping other than for groceries, and I haven’t added anything else to my Amazon shopping cart.
I think this is all excellent because it’s given me the confidence to believe this is a sustainable lifestyle change. Maybe not quite as drastic as avoiding shopping all together but rather evolving into a . . . mindfulness . . . about spending money. While I’ve become more aware of where the money goes and how it’s sometimes wasted, I’ve also put a lot of thought into my relationship with money. I think, like many people, that my thoughts about money are complicated. Because, so often, we just don’t talk about money. It’s not polite to ask how much someone makes or how much debt they have. It’s rude to comment on spending habits or ask how much something cost, and it all just feels so secretive to me.
Now, this could be because of my childhood. We did not have money, but there was an illusion that we did and appearances were very important to my mother. I had stylish clothes and we lived in a nice house. Of course, no one knew that we ran out of oil when there wasn’t money to fill the tank, the lights would be turned off because the electric bill wasn’t paid, and my mother used food stamps at the grocery store. I’m trying to break free from the weird relationship I’ve always had with money, to rid myself of the shame I associated with the lack of money as a child, and to open myself up to opportunities for more money to come into my life.
I think money mindfulness will help me change my thinking from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. I will continue to focus on this and will update you monthly on the progress I’m making in the hopes that it might help you, too.
