The Ultimate Self-Care Practice: Paying Attention to Your Money

What you pay attention to determines who you are and what you become. For that reason alone, paying attention to your money matters.

When you’re thinking about your money — how you earn it, how you spend it — you’re thinking about life. You’re thinking about how you contribute to society – what you take from it, and what you give back. 

Questions about how you spend money are really questions of what you value. What’s important to you? What do you deem worthy? What services or experiences are worth the monetary value of your labor? 

The reason you have to pay attention to your money is because no one else will.

Sure, your bank may ping you when you make a purchase it deems unlike you. (This is what happens to me every single time I buy gas in Pennsylvania.) But your bank definitely wouldn’t mind if you missed your credit card payment this month. In fact, they’d be thrilled – more profit for them!

But starting a practice of paying attention to your money isn’t easy. It’s simple, but that’s not the same as easy. Understanding the best way to set up a budget, or decide where to park your vacation savings, or even just determine what you’re spending on right now – these are things most education and financial systems don’t prioritize teaching us.

So many people, maybe even you, have deep-seated beliefs about money, or their relationship to it, that bring up feelings of shame, embarrassment, anxiety or confusion.

Believe me when I say this: the problem is not you.

Most of us out here are just doing the absolute best we can in a system designed by and for the privileged few. Inequity and inequality are real, and when I talk about “the system”, I’m talking about a financial system built by and for the most privileged among us. About a structure of working that no longer works for more and more people. And media that tell you that if you could only cut your daily latte habit, you’d have enough money to buy a house.

And while there is little we can do individually to solve the inequities in our society that lead to jobs that don’t pay a livable wage, in a country where vital necessities like health care are tied to our ability to work, there *are* things we can do to work within that system and make our lives as good as they can be.

Getting to a good place with money looks different for everyone – and that’s what I call real wealth. When you achieve a specific mindset, not a specific number, about money. When you achieve your personal goals, not anyone else’s. For some people, that means having a certain amount saved for emergencies. For others, it’s maxing out their 401(k) every year. For some, it means the ability to grab a $7 latte on the way to work completely guilt-free.

Money is a powerful tool to build the life we want.

It can be used as forms of expression, activism and freedom. No matter how much or how little of it you have, or how much or how little you think about it, there is no escaping the fact of it. It’s time we started to change the way we talk and think about money so that we can build real wealth in our lives.

I became a certified financial coach to help people achieve their own version of real wealth. Whatever your vision of that is, I hope you reach out so we can build it together.