How to Stop Overspending at Target: Decluttering + Boundaries That Actually Work with Emily McDermott | 539

0:00Emily McDermott:I teach something and it's called the container concept. So really it is that having that artificial boundary around a certain item. And so that way, when you're making the decision about how much I'm keeping, and it can be kind of agonizing because you're like, well, I might need this someday, or, oh, I spent so much money, or we have all of these stories that we tell ourselves in our brain as to why we want to keep something. instead of that you're just looking at the boundary and you're like okay this is my bookshelf I am going to keep enough books that fit on the bookshelf they're not going to be on the floor and on the table and on the nightstand and all the other places because I don't want to have to think about all the different places where the books are in this house I just want to know that they are on the bookshelf and so being able to then pick the boundary based upon your desire and capacity to manage that category is really important.

0:55Do you make good money but have nothing to show for it? Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck? Do you have big dreams for your financial future? Do you want to get debt-free but you don't want to live on beans and rice? When you don't want to give up those pumpkin spice lattes? Hey, it's okay if you don't already know how to budget or if you're using credit cards to get through the month. Hey, it's okay if you want to seem like you have your finances all together or you're not on the same page with your spouse. when it comes to finances. We know what you're doing probably isn't working, but guess what?

1:24You're in the right place. We're Shana and Vanessa. We're best friends, business partners, and master financial coaches trained by Dave Ramsey. We've been in business since 2019, helping hundreds of amazing people like you create budgets, get out of debt, stop living paycheck to paycheck, and know exactly what to do with their money. In this podcast, we'll share with you everything we know plus everything we're working on with our clients so that you have the best chance at reaching your financial goals. We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation.

1:56We can help you no matter where you're at, whether you're the single mom who's never had$500 in her savings account, or the millionaire who's paid off four real estate workers. And we're not going to shy away from the tough love. We'll tell you what you need to hear and encourage you at the same time. This is the Financial Coaching for Women podcast. Emily, thank you so much for coming on Financial Coaching for Women. We are so excited to have you. You have a wonderful podcast called Moms Overcoming Overwhelm, where you help women declutter their homes, their heads, and their hearts. So welcome to the show.

2:26Emily McDermott:Thank you guys so much for having me. I've been familiar with you guys because I'm also a StephGas student. And so just like super pumped to be talking about all things, intentional spending and decluttering and all the things. So thanks for having me. We are excited to have you. You were just telling us, you know, one of the things that you do is in-home decluttering and you're like completely booked because we all need this stuff out of our house. Like, you know, and I showed Vanessa, I was like sneaking on your Instagram this morning and you had just a wonderful post. Like you have, your closet is full.

2:58You have nothing to wear. Your schedule is full, but you feel lonely. Like all of this stuff. I feel like that's resonates with, with people so much. So we're really excited to have you on. And like, you can just help us all speak life over our audience. So yeah. So tell us a little bit. You just, you just mentioned it. We met through Steph Gass through Podcast to Profit, but tell us a little bit about you, where you got started, and then we're going to jump in. We have a really juicy question for you to start, but let's start there.

3:24Emily McDermott:Okay, sure. So I'm a wife, a mom of two boys, eight and nine. They're very rambunctious and energetic, and it's really - It's very positive. It's very positive. I know. I got into all of this actually through infertility. So when my husband and I were struggling to have children, and I was just very overwhelmed in all senses of the word. And then learned about decluttering and simplifying and minimalism and those types of things. And really starting with my home, but then looking at my schedule and having those emotional clutter things that come up too. And so really it's been over a decade now that I've been on this journey.

4:00Emily McDermott:Love it so much. Love serving women, helping them declutter all aspects of their lives. And just living with less and being able to enjoy the benefits of that has really served me in all seasons of my motherhood. And I'm just very grateful for the opportunity to share what I know with others. I love that. I love how you say that you're not just decluttering their home, but you're decluttering their heads and their hearts as well. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I love it all coincides. And I think it's not just one area. It's all of it. So can you kind of speak to how it all works?

4:33All works together.

4:35Emily McDermott:Yeah. Well, for women, and especially I work with a lot of moms, there's a lot of identity shifts that go on as you are maybe having to leave behind some activities that you used to do or like the crafting projects that you don't have time for anymore or the dresses that hang in your closet that you used to wear when maybe you were working outside of the home or went on date nights and that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of emotional stuff that is wrapped into the things that we own. And a lot of times I always say if there's stuff in your closet or things in your home that are speaking to you or like mocking you, like, why haven't you used me?

5:10Emily McDermott:Why haven't you warned me? Why doesn't, you know, why can't you fit into me? You don't want things surrounding you that remind you of previous seasons of your life. You want it to support the life that you're living right now. And so that's why I think that it really impacts women and moms, because we have so many identity shifts through our lives and so many different seasons, that it just all comes back to, okay, how can the things that surround me really support my life right now, but then also speak life into the season I'm in and not make me feel bad about like what I'm going through right now.

5:47Emily McDermott:So, cause you know, we already have enough stress and anxiety in our lives. We don't need our stuff making it worse. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know if this speaks for everybody, but for me, I feel like it's your, your head is down and, and so you don't notice as much that all of these things have changed or a new identity is happening. And then you look up all of a sudden, you're like, oh, things are different. And so you do want your home and your life to reflect that. Now, here's the juicy question that I want to get to. Because Emily, our fun friends, our fun budget besties, they have some problems with Target.

6:24Okay. Let's just put it that way. And I feel them. You feel a certain kind of way. And like, I don't, because I don't have like time to go to Target. Yeah. If you just don't go. Like that's the only, that's my only like, and that's not better. That's not necessarily better you guys, but that is, but I, but it's our fun friends that it's in their budget. It's in their, our Facebook group all the time. So tell us what, how can we help someone who says they feel like we have no self-control at Target?

6:52Emily McDermott:Yeah, that is a biggie. And I hear that a lot as well. And so I think that anytime that we recognize that we're feeling that out of control feeling in a certain environment, whatever that might be, we have to understand like, why are we going into the environment in the first place? So perhaps we go to Target because there are specialty things there that we can't get anywhere else, like Cat and Jack fits our kids better than any other clothing type or something like that. But more likely, it's not that Target has brand specific things that other places don't have. It's that we're going in for a certain experience and a certain feeling.

7:29Emily McDermott:or perhaps it might be that when we're shopping there, we feel like we can control part of our lives, whereas other parts of our lives feel completely out of control. And so we're like, oh, but I can go and purchase this thing. That's something I can do that I have agency over, even though my kids are completely out of control and I can't get them to behave. So we have to understand kind of our motivations and our reasons. And if you know, okay, once I go in there, I don't have control because I'm just going to go to like the bullseye section. I think that still exists, right? I never actually, it's where you get all like the stuff.

8:08Emily McDermott:Yeah. When you first come in, like all the seasonal stuff and maybe that's like sort of the trigger or whatever the trigger might be. So the options could be, okay, I'm going to experiment with just doing target pickup for a couple of weeks and like see if that helps and how I feel about that. Or perhaps it's just like, I can't go there. It's a trigger store. And I really have to find an alternative. I have a friend, Amy Slanker Smith, she's in the same space, but it was such a trigger for her that she literally does not go back in, because it is just so hard for her. So really recognizing like, is Target special because of the product?

8:48Emily McDermott:Or is it because of the experience that they're kind of selling to us, especially as women. And, you know, can I recognize that for what it is? And perhaps I have control over my life in other ways, rather than I can go in with my Starbucks in hand and like get this thing. Yeah, the experience I think that that is big, that speaks to a lot of people. So we want to try to have that experience where it doesn't cause us to overspend and over really it's not the it's not just the overspending with target or amazon what are you doing with all that stuff that you're buying because we know you don't have room for it friend we know you don't like you don't have room for it you don't even know where it's going to go what are you going to like what are you going to get rid of and like that's a lot of decisions you don't want to have to make well and this reminds me of when i was when we had purchased our the house that we're in now the faster the the faster that i could get it decorated the that meant i I would not go into Hobby Lobby anymore.

9:48Like I knew that if I could just put everything on the walls and get everything in place that I wanted it, like, you know, where then I didn't have the desire to go decor shopping anymore because I had nowhere to put this stuff. And I think that was the part for me that was like, oh, you know, cause I'll have my mom was like, you want to go to Hobby Lobby? I'm like, no. She's like, why? Because I will get distracted and I'll want to buy something and know that I have nowhere to put it. And then it just becomes clutter in my home and I just can't. So I think that idea of just knowing, like, like Shana said, that's fine.

10:18Like we can go into these stores and want to buy things, but then what are you doing with it afterwards? So if you can maybe take that half a second and think about where is this going? How am I going to use this? Am I actually, is this going to make my life better? Is it going to hinder me? Is it going to be a nuisance? Like all that. Then you can really probably help your overspending problem. Well, and I, I, so when you said, why do we go to target? Well, I'll tell you because it's six miles from my daughter's volleyball practice. That's what I sometimes why I go now. and I would like to speak to the experience thing that's not necessarily the worst thing ever like if you like especially if I'm sans kids right and I want to just go browse that's fine but I think part of the problem too Emily is it's like a everything store and I don't know like I I came maybe I came in because I needed socks and now I am here left with a whole basketball things and so I just really have to if I want the experience it doesn't mean I have to buy like I can just like you know the other thing it's it's decluttered it's organized by color it's pretty like that is part of the experience which by the way your house can look like if you if you let emily help you but you know like it's you can have the experience maybe without buying all the things

11:26Emily McDermott:yeah and it's so true like i appreciate going to target without children but i do go with a list And I stick to the list because it is not a triggering store for me to have an impulse type of buy. And I think when we talk about the idea of impulse or whether you were talking about like compulsion or like those types of things, I see it as trying to lengthen the space between the stimulus and the response. Okay, so the stimulus is that I'm in a certain environment or something happens to me or my kids do something and it triggers me or whatever. how am I lengthening that space between the stimulus and the response so that I can make a choice that's based upon my prefrontal cortex actually making the decision rather than kind of like, as we say, I say to my kids, the upstairs brain and the downstairs brain, like the animalistic response, like, oh, I'm going to do this.

12:25Emily McDermott:I'm going to get this and have like the dopamine hit and the whole thing, rather than just taking that moment to understand like, so why, like, why do I feel compelled to get this right now in this place? Is it environmental? Is it habitual? Like, what's driving this actual behavior? And that pause, and I know you guys talk about this just with on the financial side, but that pause is everything. And it actually gives you power, you can say like the pause gives you power, right? To be able to make a decision that is coming from a place of agency and choice, rather than coming from a, well, this is what I've always done, or this feels good in the moment, even though I don't know where I'm going to put this thing when I get home.

13:05Emily McDermott:And that's really where it comes to what it comes down to when we're talking about trying to break some of these habits around like impulse buying and impulse shopping. Yeah, and I think all of it, like we said, it all goes together and organizing is organizing our the way we teach our budget system, you know, you might have a home outfit or a saving spending bucket or a savings bucket. You might have a kid spending your savings bucket. So if you can come up with that list, I think that that's a great option for people. Come up with that list. If it's a triggering place, like let, or if it's something that you're like, don't go so much.

13:41It's that simple. Go once a month, make it on purpose, make it without your kids, get your Starbucks, have your spending budget, have your list, enjoy yourself. Yeah. Make it an experience, like make it your experience, but let's go once a month with that list intentionally. what we found, Emily, is, and I'm sure it's the same with everything else, if they have money separated and they know, okay, I have a hundred bucks that I set aside to get stuff for the house every month, right? And I'm going to my Starbucks and I get to combine all of that. I have some boundaries with spending. I know I'm doing this because I enjoy being in Target.

14:14Nobody's throwing oatmeal at me or whatever. I'm just kidding. I don't know what's happening. But we could do it all on purpose and maybe that will help the overspending, all of that on purpose. Well, and I love how you said the power and the pause, because I think that that is, that's huge of figuring out why is this place triggering? What is like, okay, I want to buy this thing, but for what? What reason? And just asking yourself, taking a minute to ask yourself some questions and pause and thinking about some stuff can really help you walk through that. I was trying to think of like, is there a store that's triggering for me?

14:45And I don't know, maybe it's just because we have our money under control so well in our savings buckets. I just, I don't know if that has ever been a problem for me because we've done this system for so long that, you know, we talk about this all the time, get your money organized and separate and you'll stop your overspending problem. And people really sometimes don't believe us, but I really believe that that's where I'm at. And it's been there for a really long time and I'm not trying to gloat or anything, but I'm just saying it works. Like being able to have a certain amount of money that you know that you're going to spend somewhere every so often, then allows you the control to know that you're not overspending for nonsense reasons.

15:22Emily McDermott:Yeah. And what I teach is more on the physical side, but it is freedom within the boundary. So you're going to pick the boundary, like perhaps that I'm going to have this part of my closet devoted towards dresses. And within that boundary, I can go and I can pick some really cute outfits and it's fun and I'm not restrictive, but I have set a boundary for myself, not only based maybe financially, but then also how much time and energy I want to spend managing it, right? So having the freedom within the boundary means that you can enjoy that freedom side of it, but it's not feeling that out of control feeling, because at least for me, that out of control feeling, I felt it more, not so much as spending with like parenting and relationships and some of those things, it's not a good feeling.

16:10Emily McDermott:And especially afterwards, you know, if you buy certain things, and then you kind of have that buyer's remorse, or you say something, and then you wish you hadn't said it, and then you're feeling remorse and guilt about that. It's just really kind of a cycle, because then you're feeling bad. And so what are you going to do, you're going to, you know, maybe go back to Target and buy something else. So it's just, you know, I love that, that approach with having like those buckets. And then that's the same as how I recommend you approach your space. All right, budget besties, it's time for some real talk.

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17:15If you're new to budgeting, this is the perfect way to jump in. And if you're already a budget nerd like us, you're about to meet your new obsession. This is the upgrade to your finances that you need right now. Yeah. So head on over to budgetbesties.com forward slash budget and grab yours. Now back to today's show. What do you say? Like if there was a trigger store, I would say maybe we don't live by one, but the container store. Okay. We went in there and we're like, we love everything, but also we can't, I don't know what to do. There's too many things. So, so also like it's a good thing in that way.

17:48But what do you say to the person who's like, okay, it's time to organize. I'm so excited. But first let me go get the bins and the pretty baskets and all the labels. And I'm going to go get all of that. And then I'll be ready. What do you say to that person?

18:01Emily McDermott:Don't. Check. Hold on. Yeah. For many things in life, like the tool helps, but it doesn't actually solve the problem. Like I could want to get my time under control and buy a planner and it's like the prettiest, best planner. But then if I never actually like use it or like be able to interact with it or have it be part of my life, like it's not going to do anything. So what I find with the people that I work with, they say they are quote unquote disorganized when really 90 % of the time they just have too much stuff, like flat out, they just have way too much stuff. And based upon not my decision, not that like, oh, you have too much stuff.

18:40Emily McDermott:And so I think that's bad. No, it's based upon their capacity to manage it. If you are overwhelmed by the stuff in your home, or if your kids are overwhelmed by the stuff in their home, in their rooms or whatever, then you are not able to manage it, you are exceeding your capacity. So 90 % of it is that I'd say about 5 % is that we don't have specific purposes for spaces. And so they become catch-alls. So if you have kind of like a bin, but you haven't talked about like the purpose of the bin, it's just going to be a catch-all for anything anyone wants to throw in there. And then the other 5 % of the habits of actually having to tell your kids, like I say kids just because I'm sorry, that's my role, but saying to your spouse or partner or whoever, like this doesn't go here.

19:24Emily McDermott:I'm trying to keep this counter clean because of such and such but I do have a space for you to put it or instead of putting your coat on the floor can we put it on the hook or just like the floor wait that's how it's go I know it's so it's crazy right multi-purpose place for things yeah I know but yeah so like mostly it's not that you need to go right out and get the bin because the bin's not going to solve your problem we need to first worry about volume where the intentional spending comes in because if you're bringing in too much stuff, you can't manage the volume. And then also working on the purpose and your plan for where things go and why, and then the habits to support you being able to functionally live your life without having clutter in the way.

20:12I love this because it's organizing clutter. What is that going to do? You're just rearranging things at that point. There's no progress being made. So I love how you're talking about the volume of stuff that you have and just making sure that you love it. Like, do you, are, what do you have? Do you actually love it? And do you use it? Well, and like, to your point, the definition of clutter is stuff that hasn't been put away. So we can't like, and, and, and, and, you know, what we found is like, if, if it's not put away, it's probably because it doesn't have a home. And, and then also there's probably no room for it anywhere.

20:45Like, and let's just, you know, it's way easier to Vanessa's point to organize less stuff. Like, let's go for that. And then, And then you're going to, that's when you'll be able to have that target like home where everything feels like it has a nice spot and it's all pretty. Like that could be you. But I think, yeah, the bins don't solve the problem. They actually make it worse in some cases. I think that's a great point. Okay. So do you have any, like maybe you should have some tips or like a quick reset for someone who's thinking right now, like, I have all this clutter. I'm not going to go get the bins.

21:19Emily told me that's not the solution. and they feel behind, like what, what would you tell them?

21:23Emily McDermott:Yeah, sure. So I teach a method called the transform method, but because that's a long acronym, I'm just going to focus on the first three, which is the low hanging fruit. Okay. So TRA, trash, anything that is like obvious trash, just do a trash sweep around your space. And this can also be, if you do have kids that are overwhelmed by cleaning their rooms, just like, where is the trash? Let's find the trash. Okay. R is relocate. Now this is important especially for my friends that have ADHD or they get easily distracted because you're going to find something in the space that doesn't belong there and you're going to go oh this belongs in the basement let me go downstairs and put it in the basement.

22:05Emily McDermott:No don't do that don't do that. You're going to have just a bin for things that do not belong in that space. They belong somewhere else in your home but just not where you're at. You're just going to have a bin where you collect those things and at the end you'll put them away. And then A is anything you know that you want to get rid of. This is like you're not really making a hard decision here. It's the, oh, I meant to give that back to my sister-in-law. Oh, my kids grew out of this, you know, pair of snow pants. And so I'm going to go ahead and donate those. Anything that's like the super easy decisions.

22:37Emily McDermott:And those three things generally, that's about like 30 % of what is in that space. And that gives you like that quick win where you're like, oh, I can actually see like what's in here and actually see what is supposed to stay in here and then be able to kind of get into those more, more, not, I wouldn't say difficult, but where you actually have to start being like, oh, how much space do I want to devote to this? And then making decisions within that space. Well, and I think that those are really good tips for, like you said, a quick reset, being able to immediately make progress. So that way you feel like you've accomplished something.

23:14And then hopefully you can, if you do that in each one of your rooms, you can immediately feel like the relief from that.