Struggling to Save? Here’s Why Your Money Doesn’t Stay Put

0:05Hey there and welcome to Wealthy After 40. I'm Daylene Higgins, your podcast host and financial coach. If you're a Gen X woman or couple who's worried about retirement, maybe you feel like you're starting late or don't have enough saved, you're in the right place. This show is all about ditching the financial stress and creating a retirement plan that works for your life now and later. So grab your favorite drink, settle in, and let's figure this out together.

0:44Welcome to today's episode. I'm so excited to talk about savings. Savings definitely is the trigger or the pivot point of creating what you need or solving the problems that you need with your money. So I hope you will find today's episode helpful. And if you do, come shoot me your thoughts over on Instagram, elevate underscore finances, or you can search Dalene Higgins and let me know what you thought or let me know what questions you still have. So let's dive into this. You have a little extra money, right? You find you have $1 ,000 left over or spending didn't seem as great this month. And you're like, perfect, I can put this into savings.

1:35And then as you go to do it, you think, if I put that into savings, I know I'm just going to have to immediately yank it out because that is what always happens. Sure enough, you go through the motions because you know you're supposed to be saving. And within two or three months, sure enough, you have to pull that money, yank that money right out of there. And so the money goes in and it comes right back out. But as you repeat this over and over, you begin to wonder, why does saving money feel so temporary? I'm sure there's other thoughts. We'll get into those later. But why does saving money feel so temporary?

2:21Why does it feel like this yo-yo effect? Okay. I loved the yo-yo. I know it's from our generation. I watched somebody on TikTok doing yo-yo and I thought, oh man, maybe I need to get me a yo-yo. I don't even know if they sell them. A lot of fun. However, I have digressed. Let's come on back. So this money goes in, money comes out. I call it the yo-yo effect of saving. So no matter how many times you try, your savings is never building. You might not to plead it completely, although sometimes you do, but it's never building, it's never growing, and it's not giving you that feeling that you know you're supposed to have.

3:05You feel like you are trying. You're making every effort just like you're supposed to, but you're not getting ahead. You're not making that impact that you want. Then you start thinking, I'm not good with money. That's what it is. Or I don't make enough money. If I made more money, I could save. Or I know this as well, I spend too much. So I'm spending my savings. And so these thoughts, this yo-yo effect, it creates your hesitation whenever you think about saving again. So if this is happening to you, and I know probably most of you because I hear it from my clients, potential clients, people I'm chatting with, I want you to hear this.

3:56You are not bad at saving. You are not lacking discipline. We've talked about that on the podcast before. It doesn't mean that you need to be more restrictive. Those are all places of scarcity, which creates its own problems, its own beast of an animal later. I just want you to know that this is a very common place to be. And this helps get you into where you're very frustrated. This is why people give up on budgeting. And all of these feelings are very normal. home. So why do you feel so stuck? Why do you feel so stuck? Why do you feel like you can't, you know, yes, you had those ideas. Those are not true.

4:50And if you're not lacking the discipline and you don't need to be more restrictive, then why are you stuck? You're thinking, so what? So what? You know, what do I do now? Sometimes we move money into savings just because we think we should. And I'm sure that's true for you. And as I kicked off this episode, I said, savings is going to be the pivot of everything. But are you moving it just into savings? And there's no real plan for what that money is for. I'm just going to put the savings over here. It's going to be here just in case. I'm just going to save it for a rainy day. Yes, we have rainy days, but that's not how I teach my clients to, quote, save their money.

5:40Because that's too broad. It's too, it's not descriptive. It's not supportive. When something comes up and you've set money aside like this, yeah, it feels very available. So you reach right in, take it to solve whatever problem you have. Another reason you feel stuck is because life happens. Life is a roller coaster. It happens in many different ways. And honestly, it doesn't happen the same every 30 or 31 days. So when we are told to budget for the month or save for the month, month, there's a little bit of a struggle with that because life doesn't happen in those windows. So when an expense shows up that doesn't fall within the 30 days that didn't happen last month or the month before, such as your annual bills, your car repairs, or oh heck spring break, We've just had that.

6:51When those things have not been planned for, this money that you stuck aside for the rainy day becomes your fallback. So it's unplanned in your mind. You didn't set it aside for those things. And so you feel unsuccessful. Maybe you did set it aside for that, but you don't like using it for that. That's a different animal and a different beast. The other thought you may have is that savings is not to be touched. In you, you're like, okay, if I'm doing things right, my savings will just sit there and grow. Okay, there's a bucket that's going to do that. But in reality, some of your savings is meant to be used.

7:43If you've heard me say it before, savings is just future spending. And putting a tag on that is crucial, is crucial. That's where we get this unclearness, get rid of that unclearness in our mind. So I think a lot of the challenges of where you're stuck is that there's really common advice. And I think at some point, the personal finance world was trying to make savings simple. So I got to commend them for that. But the advice to just pay yourself first can be a problematic gesture. Now, if it works for you, great, because you've got other things going for you. It's not just because of this. And if you're like, well, yeah, I've tried to do that and it's not working for me.

8:43That piece of advice is incomplete. Just pay yourself first. Just set it aside and then spend the rest of your money. That is lacking in full complexity of what that's supposed to do. And like I said, if it's working for you, it's because you've got something else going on. it's incomplete because if you don't know what that money is for or when you will need it or when you can use it and how it fits your life it's not going to stay saved it's not going to stay saved i don't know how many times i tell my daughter she's like well i just have this savings over here and i'm like you have to put a label on it what is the label and so then she tells me and I'm like, okay, we have to label these.

9:32So as we've talked about savings, the struggle, the yo-yo effect, I'm sure you have tried to solve this problem by thinking, why can't I save money? That is a question of blame onto you. That right there is not going to be solved. It's not you. We've already talked about that. It's not because you're bad with money. It's not because you don't make enough. Maybe 5 % of you. So I have three questions that I want you to start asking yourself about savings to help you get away from the why can't I. The first one is, what do I want my savings to do for me right now? Why are you saving? What do you want it to do for you?

10:27What is it? What purpose is it going to serve? And I know that's a very broad, but we've got to start there. What do I want my savings to do for me right now? And you might quickly say, well, I want financial security or I want retirement. Great. That's a perfect idea to start thinking about savings. The second question then, what keeps happening that has you pulling your money back out. So at the point that you're like, oh, I got to go get that money. I want you to back up one or two steps. What happened? What showed up? What, you know, problem there? Not because you can't save. What's this thing back here?

11:23and as you think about that, it's going to probably lead you to the third question, which is what isn't being planned for? Remember that month to month, which is hard. I get that because our money comes weekly, every other week, or once a month, but we've got to go beyond that, and that's the difficulty, but start thinking about what isn't being planned for. think through that. Because once you start to see that pattern, once you start understanding like where the actual challenge is arising, you will realize this isn't about being more disciplined, making more money, or that you need to try harder.

12:12And if you can take those two steps back, you're not going to want to just throw your hands up in the air and think that it's never going to work. It's really dialing into what is that challenge? What is that problem at that step? And how can I now start taking action differently? So if you're looking for support in making savings more simple and easy and personalized, because that is key, there's a reason it's called personal finance, I created something to help you get started. It's a seven day email savings challenge, and it's designed to help you build a system over the seven days without the yo-yo effect.

13:03This is the exact system I use in my coaching program that I use to help clients save up to$11k in 90 days. So if you're tired of guessing and you're done guessing, I want you to head over to elevatefinances.us backslash savings and sign up for that challenge today. It is not overwhelming. It is a little task that you do for seven days to build a savings system complete from how much do I have to where does it need to go and all of the steps in between. Because saving money isn't supposed to feel like a constant reset. And if it does, it's not because you're failing. It's a sign that something in your system needs attention.

13:55That's why I talk about money systems. And there's several pieces that come together to build a complete system to help your retirement happen, to help your purchasing that house happen, whatever it is, whatever that goal is, these systems have to be designed for you. So I hope you'll go grab that seven day email challenge, seven small steps. You can take action one in literally 10 minutes every day, if that. And by the end of the week, you'll have a complete system hoping to get you building and growing and creating that wealth that you need and moving towards the retirement that you want. Thank you for listening and I hope you'll join me next week.

14:45Thank you for spending this time with me. If you're not already following the show, be sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And I'd love to hear from you. Come hang out with me on Instagram, send me a message, tell me what clicked for you or what you're currently struggling with. You can find me at elevate underscore finances or by searching the name Dalene Higgins. I'm over there having real conversations about money and retirement. And remember, retirement isn't just a dream, it's a plan and you get to make it possible.

15:25We'll see you next time.