The 5 Hardest Money Habits to Break (and How to Finally Break Them) | 537

0:00Today we're coming to you with the top five hardest financial habits to break. Yeah, we can't wait to dive into these. And we're going to also, we're not just going to tell you what they are. We're going to hopefully give you some solutions and ideas on how to break them and maybe encourage you along the way. Do 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.

0:31Hey, 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? You'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.

1:07We want to help you take the guesswork out of your budget, improve your marriages, and even bring your kids in on the conversation. We 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 marries. 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. One of the biggest financial habits that people have a hard time breaking that we did a poll, we pulled this from our Facebook group, and it is shocker, eating out.

1:42Oh yeah. It just keeps coming up over and over. And we know you're busy. We know, for example, you quote unquote hate to cook. And so eating out, but, and then, oh my gosh. And then some people are like doing the delivery. And I have something to say about that. I have so much to say about that. I was just thinking like, how much, like my husband would say, okay, I make this much per hour. How am I? So I worked a whole hour to get Taco Bell delivered or whatever you're going to, I'm hoping it's not Taco Bell, but because we did DoorDash while we were at our retreat and it's one time so expensive to get it delivered.

2:14Like you're just doubling whatever you bought, you just double it with all the fees. Anyway, that's just, obviously it's expensive. Yes. I agree with that. Yeah, it is. I will say my neighbor, they both work and have very good, very successful jobs. And my son is actually the one that noticed that they probably get DoorDash three times a day, like all three. So Saturday morning, we saw it. We saw when the daughter comes home from school Monday through Friday, she gets DoorDash for herself. And then in the evening, it is a revolving door we see next door all the time. And I was just thinking, you make all this money.

2:45You have such good income. For what? So that you can invest in DoorDash's future. Yes. Like you're investing in them. And like you believe in them instead of yourself. Okay. So what we're not saying, what is that line, Vanessa? Don't hear what we're not saying. We're not saying we don't want you to eat out. We're not saying whatever. We want you, because you're saying it's the hardest habit to break. We want to see what can we do differently. Differently. So you're saying it's going over on the budget. It's not eating out a thousand percent. Fast food, Eber Eats. There was a lot of emojis in here that you guys use that you hate to cook.

3:19We even see one that says eating out and then they say it's so expensive. So it's like they know that they're doing it and they know that at the same time they're like, oh, I don't want to do this. And I think how have we curbed eating out, for example? What do we do? I think that one thing that you would hear us tell our clients is make the food that's going to be at home something you want to do as well. make it as easy as possible make it as yummy as possible we're not going from okay we're eating out to all you have is salad that's it oh no like we can have fun food at home too and we can have it convenient and we can have it easy that's all very possible we just got to figure out how to flip that yeah and i think that's a good point because i will tell you when the kids were little you guys i made everything from scratch from scratch i made my own laundry soap my own deodorant like i just had so much spilled and was it my car or your car i think it was your car oh so sad I think I made you a whole five-gallon bucket.

4:11Oh, it's so bad. So, yeah. Let's move on. We had so much time. I made, like, the Amish bread, like, whatever, okay? Love that time of my life. Right now, the time that I'm in, I have no time. My kids are in sports. We are busy. We are never home. But we're still eating from homes. But all the food that we have decided to bring in the house or cook is faster, right? So we have gone to a lot of frozen, healthy, clean stuff that we can just throw on the grill or throw in the oven or throw in whatever, right? So you just have to figure out what season of life you're in, what is convenient for you.

4:42And you can still do this from home, but in a different way. You don't have to cook five-star gourmet meals at home and think that's the only way that that works. Yeah. And there's other options too. I've been seeing, there's so many different meal delivery. I remember our friends said that they do HelloFresh because anybody in the house can make it. So the ingredients are pre-portioned and then the instructions are right there. And I was like, that's great too. And it's still going to be so much more affordable than eating out. It's not like the cheapest option. So if we're over – that's a different discussion.

5:09It's a different topic. And we're not experts on like how to eat the cheapest. That's not – if you came for us, we're over here being bougie. We're not beans and rice, okay? So sorry about that. We're not the$5 meal experts. But the other thing I was going to say is simply taking some of your bad, more expensive habits and changing them. I remember when Celsius came out. I didn't know what this was, but I have – and somebody else here was a truck driver. He was a truck driver and he said, I get my waters at the gas station every – or truck stop. It was probably a truck stop, right? And I was like, oh, okay, waters.

5:37And I'm like, how much are these waters? And I don't know. They were like three bucks or something. I was like, can you get them at Sam's? Whatever kind of water they are. I didn't know they were. Buy those babies in wholesale. These like energy drinks that you're sitting, sir. Like we would have had a conversation if I had known what he was drinking at that point. But he just told me it was water. Find out in Celsius. And you're sitting down all day, friend. I love you so much. And I know you need to stay alert. But anyway, just health wise. Anyway, long story short. Just buy the same thing. You can get the same thing in half by eating or buying it in bulk and just having it that way instead of the quote unquote convenient of having to go into a truck stop.

6:10A lot – or the gas station. A lot of your things can be that. Everything these days, every restaurant has their food in the Walmart or the Publix or the whatever. Oh, yeah. Like you can just get that. You've been the frozen section. And so, again, the goal here is like Vanessa's talks about. The one family that she had that was – they were doing$5 ,000 for their restaurant budget a month. And then they were like, we're going to go to$1 ,000. You're going to go from$5 ,000 to$3 ,000 maybe. The goal here isn't to go from eating out all the time to eating super healthy gourmet like Vanessa from scratch meals at home.

6:40That's not what we're saying. The bridge here is like, what can we make super easy, convenient at home? If it's breakfast for dinner every single night, go. Let's go. And get your kids involved. What do you want? My kids know if they don't ask for it, they're not getting it. And then they're going to starve, except for they really won't starve. But what do you want? What can I have here that you'll be like just as happy to grab that as you would to go out to eat? Have that be at home. And that's like the first step. Yeah. And listen, we are not wanting you to cut everything out. Put it in the budget.

7:08If you're saying this month, our budget is$500 to eat out, then that's your budget. Don't go over that. We don't want you to cut everything out and have no fun. And like Shannon said, we're not for this beans and rice and frugal living off of a dollar a meal, whatever. That's not what we're doing. We're just saying plan for it. We don't want you to look at the end of the month and know that all your money was spent on going out to eat and none of your goals were reached. So we are excited for you to figure this out in a fun, healthy way that fits your lifestyle, that fits your goals, whatever you have going on in your life.

7:37Yes. Okay. I think that we beat that horse dead or whatever the saying is, Vanessa. So let's move on to the second hardest financial habit to break, which you guys told us is shopping and impulse buying. And here we're talking like Amazon, clothes, home decor, stuff for the kids, all that kind of stuff. Amazon comes up quite a bit there, don't we? Yeah. Yeah, it's literally just that buy now, add to cart, you're scrolling, maybe you're bored, maybe you're at your kid's soccer practice or whatever, and you're just on your phone. Maybe you're in the bathroom like my husband and you're on the phone, whatever.

8:09Maybe you're just, you're literally scrolling and you see something and you're like, oh, I'll buy that. Okay, but listen, guys, is that reaching your goals? Is that what you want? Is this, is buying those things making you happy or is it like, it's like masking a problem? Obviously, it's a problem because they said they want to break it. So how do you break it? You guys, what you said is your personal spending and home stuff, a lot of decor, a lot of overspending on clothes. I don't want to be patronizing, but this is actually really simple to solve. This is very simple. The very simple solution here is to have a spending budget for Amazon, have a spending budget for home decor, or have a spending slash savings bucket for clothing.

8:44Those, and to our point about grocery or eating out, it's not that we don't want you to have it. It's that you want to set an amount that allows you to reach all of your other goals. And you can still do it. That's the easiest, simple way to do it. And I feel home decor is a big one I run into with my clients. And I usually have them set a house budget and just have a little money there so that when you want to, or I think you had, or somebody had a client where it was like a TJ Maxx once a month. They just put so much money in that. And I get to go and have a good time at TJ Maxx. And I do it once a month and I'm done.

9:15Yeah. I love how this one person said, I just don't need any more Amazon or random that I see on the internet. So it is so easy to just see something and click and buy. But Shayna said, if you don't have a budget for it, then you don't know. So you're just buying. And normally the people that this is happening, they have that one whole, like one account, random transactions going through all the time. So they think that they have more money than they do. And then by the end of the month, they have no money because they spent it all on Amazon or going out to eat or whatever. And it's all gone. So listen, we have that separate account.

9:46Trust me, like 90 % of all the problems I think that we have with our clients can be solved with a separate spending account. And if you can do that in budgets for each amount. So some people want it very specific where it's, okay, this is my Amazon budget. This is my TJ Maxx budget. This is whatever budget, or they will have their spending money. And they're saying, okay, this is my spending money that I'm mixing with maybe nails or hair or Starbucks. But I also know that this is the amount of money that I have to spend to do get whatever I want. And when you do that, which you can give yourself some guardrails, you do stop overspending naturally.

10:15Yeah. And I'm going to borrow John Acuff. It's really funny because he's on my planner quote today. He said, don't be, don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. That was his quote that's on my planner today, but that's not what I'm borrowing from him. But what I am borrowing is he said, he has, I think two older-ish girls and people ask him all the time, how does he help or keep them off their phones or keep them not addicted to screens or whatever. And his answer was to always they always have better things to do and i think that is a it's important little lesson that we can all take here we want you to have better things to do than to buy random beep on the internet that you see because and we know that you don't necessarily need all of that like you don't it's you probably could do literally anything else with your time and feel better about it you could do a puzzle okay i was talking to my people at church yesterday and we're i think we're gonna have a puzzle i think we're gonna have a puzzle meeting okay oh fine and i'm like i need to do that.

11:09You need to slow down and just do something like that. But what we want for you is to have better things to do than spend money. That doesn't mean like we love to take our girls on a little shopping trip, a little girls day or whatever. Those are different. But just randomly scrolling, what else could you be doing with that time that you would feel better about in the future? Like it would pay a better ROI to do that. If you have better things to do, then that would be something that I would want for you and for me and for both of us. Yeah. And I would also think about the amount of stuff you want in your home too.

11:39And I know some people, they'll buy stuff, they get rid of stuff, but think of how much time that takes in itself as well. So if you're constantly having to get rid of things because you're buying stuff and, or if you're the type of person that wants to sell it, like that is a lot of time, energy, and mind space that you probably don't have time for that you don't need. And I love my mom so much, but when we first got married, she tried to buy me like an avocado peeler or a slicer and then like a potato slicer and then like a carrot slicer. and I'm like, or I could just use one for everything, right?

12:11One knife for everything. And think about that when you're buying stuff. Do I already have something that I can use? And I'm the prime example too. Guys, I had the same hairdryer since I was in high school. It finally caught on fire. Was that last year, Shana? That was your warning. Yes. I was like, okay, it's time for a new hairdryer. But if you have something that works fine, don't even just think about really, do you really need to replace it or do you just want to replace it? Yeah. Okay. Okay, so just real quick, I do want to reiterate all of these things. So somebody else said booking trips and concerts and gifts to my grandchildren.

12:40All of these, budget for them specifically and then stick with that guardrail. Because once you put it all on paper and I'm paying extra on debt or all my bills are covered and I'm saving and I'm investing or whatever your goals are, as long as those things are met, have that. Have yourself a little fun budget for all of those different things. That's what we want for you. What we don't want is the random spending. and then all of a sudden you have, you've invested in DoorDash, you've invested in Amazon, you've invested in your grandkids, but you haven't invested in you. Like you haven't saved for your life.

13:07Right. And we don't want that for you. Yeah. And also go for a walk. If it's like emotional or if it's boredism or whatever that is, go throw a ball with your kids, go outside, go for a walk, go to the beach. Puzzle. Puzzles. Do something else besides scrolling on your phone. Yes. All right, budget besties. It's time for some real talk. You don't need another budget. you need a budget system. Our simplified budget system is what you've been looking for. It's going to allow you to be bougie on a budget. You'll be able to easily set up a system that runs automatically and shows you exactly where your money is going.

13:41And it's going to give you permission to spend. Everybody loves that. Yeah. It's straightforward, pretty, and packed with walkthrough videos that break down the exact methods we use with our clients to get out of debt, set up a bills account, separate spending, build savings buckets, and end the paycheck-to-paycheck feel. If 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.

14:14Now back to today's show. So the third hardest financial habit to break is credit cards, Vanessa. Okay, so we did see people wanting to use them for convenience points and cash back. So those are probably the three big reasons why they're using them. Yeah. So here we got – so people were saying using them for convenience for the point, like you said, freaking credit cards for my go-to with somebody's – Freaking. Eating out and using credit cards to stop using my credit card. Here you go. Take that ish out of your wallet. Take it. What does Capital One say? They're like, what's in your wallet? How about using nothing?

14:50No credit cards. Like that will help. Take them off your wallet. Take them out of your auto pay things like Apple or whatever, your wallet on your phone and all that. Take them out. That's like step number one. Yeah. And I will say when we start coaching with people and they say, I haven't used a credit card all month or I have promised myself I'm not using any credit cards. They are so proud and to know that they can actually fund their life in cash and start paying for their future instead of paying for their past. Remove them. If you're really serious about doing something different, let me reiterate this.

15:20you're listening to this podcast because what you're doing isn't working. You want something different for your life. You want something better. And you may be thinking, yeah, what I'm doing is fine. Okay. But how much better could it be if you tried something different and you leveled up? Not using credit cards is part of that. We don't want you to rely on credit cards. We can have a whole conversation about points and whatever interests and whatever. This is about relying on credit cards because you don't know what's happening with your money and you're just swiping your card because it's easy, it's there, it's convenient.

15:50We want you to remove the temptation, get it off of your Apple Pay, like Shana said, PayPal, Amazon, all of it, and start paying and using cash. Even if you're like these people that use it all month and pay it off, like you're behind the month, you don't know what you're spending on what. It's allowing you to live in this gray area where you have no idea what's really going on with your money. We would say pause that for a while, see, really get in control, take ownership, understand what's going on, understand that everything's happening. And if someday you want to go back to it, that's your choice.

16:18But give it a try. Try our way, which our way is for you to set up your budget. You need to go to our boot camp and watch it, budgetbesties.com forward slash start. Watch it, figure out how to set it up, how to separate the accounts and then automate it. And then you'll have a budget for everything that you're using your credit cards for. You'll know how much money you have for eating out. You'll know how much money you have to get gas or to get groceries or whatever so that you don't have to rely on them. So the first step is get them out of your wallet, get them off of the things, and then get your budget set up.

16:47Make sure you move all of your bills off of the credit cards. Wean yourself off. Start using your own actual money. And here's the thing, too, is if you're not making a realistic budget, you're going to go back to using your credit cards. So we have a lot of people that try, we said it earlier, my eating out budget's$5 ,000 or was, that's how much we were using, and now I want to use$1 ,000. You're not going to go from$5 ,000 to$1 ,000 in one month. No, you're going to stair-step it down. So figure out what your realistic grocery budget is, what your realistic going out to eat budget is, all of that.

17:14Figure it out and know your numbers. So that way when you put it in your budget and you actually stay within those numbers, you can feel good not feeling like you need to go rely on a credit card. Yep. Okay, so groceries is the number four hardest financial habit to break, which I feel is unfair. Tell me more about how that's a financial habit that you have to break. Groceries for convenience and want-racking. Keeping within the budget. They're going over. Oh, I see what you're saying. They're going over. Okay. I think this is an easy fix. It's have that separate account. Don't have an account strictly for your gas and groceries or just for groceries, however you want to do it.

17:47It doesn't matter. Yeah. You don't know how much you can spend on groceries. So therefore you do go out. And the other part of that, I believe, is that you're not budgeting the right amount for your groceries. So then you end up going over. Can you think that this doesn't work? I can't do this. I'm not good at money. No, it's just because you keep lowballing yourself on how much you think groceries cost. So you're overspending. You quote unquote, you think you're overspending. Yeah, that's a really good point. A lot of you are still thinking. It's like I told my kids when my husband and I got married, beef in Texas was a dollar a pound.

18:16Yeah. And now it's five or six. I don't even know how much it is or seven or ten. Like it's not you. It's the prices of groceries. So you have to raise it. And we understand that's uncomfortable. But the most important thing that your money does for you is provide food. And then like shelter, I think. Seems like we need that. I heard like those are important or whatever. You're going to have to be more realistic, which is going to – which is an eye opener. And we understand that, but that usually you're not allotting enough money and then you don't know how much you have because you don't have it separated.

18:45And then once those two are done, then that will give you something to start systemizing and hopefully being able to save money by using different sales or different meal plans or whatever. But first you've got to separate it and know exactly what you've got going on as far as groceries. Yeah, and it's 2026, guys. If your grocery budget has an increase since COVID. Yeah, you're wrong. You might want to take a look at that. Like we're not, this isn't like Shana said, this is not the old days. There are new prices for things. They're not going down. They're already getting the price that they want right now.

19:14What makes you think that they're going to lower them? Okay. And labor has gone up all of it. You have to adjust for it. Yeah. And then the last thing I'll say is groceries for convenience. You can buy groceries for convenience. If you find that maybe it's not as budget friendly for you, you can be the conveniencer, right? Which is not fun. But if you can system, again, getting it separated is first and systemizing it. once maybe once you get home everybody pitches in and washes everything cuts everything up separates it makes it super easy for everybody to get and that took an hour and everything is set up for the week or whatever maybe that's what you need to do instead of it being the other people doing it and charging you more but there is a way to do it again first is separating and then we'll move on from that to systemizing all right so fifth habit that people are having a hard time to break is living within or below their means yeah so spending more than i make having so much for hobbies.

20:02And, and I know one person that answered this and look, if you have the budget, the budget is going to write, you're going to do income minus debt, minus bills, minus spending equals how much you can save slash pay extra on debt. Okay. So if you're doing, if you aren't looking at that, then you definitely have no idea. But if you set that all up and then obviously, like we tell you to automate it, you will automatically be living on less than your means is what that, what those savings buckets are, what is less than your means, right? So if you can set money aside or if you're living according to how much you're making, most of you don't even know how much you're making.

20:35You don't know how much you cost. You just know that you're out of money all the time. And so that's the problem that we want to solve. I think that's my first take as soon as I read this. Then you don't know how much you cost. Like you don't know what living below your means looks like because you maybe probably don't even have it on paper. And if you can, like Shana said, set it up, set the budget up, simplify. So this is the three steps that we talk about. Simplify your budget, set it up one page, five columns. It's super easy. And then you separate, which is having those separate accounts for your different spending and having those debit cards available.

21:01So that way you can easily spend within your means in those mini budgets for those categories. And then you automate everything. It's happening for you. It's totally hands off. You literally, it's foolproof. You can't mess it up. It's making you live beneath your means because you set it up that way. And again, really not knowing is your first problem. But the solution is what Vanessa just said, you guys, you, if you're using credit cards, That's another way that you're living above your means. And so you just, and we have found that once you set this up, it becomes easier. Instead of you guessing, instead of you just being frustrated with yourself and spending money anyway or whatever, now you know exactly what's happening and it just makes it easier for you to do the thing that you want to do, stick to the budget that you set because it's all happening for you automatically.