Money mindset is a b*tch. For all the work I have done on myself over the past three years on personal growth, it's the one area that still repeatedly trips me up. Granted, it is a helluva lot better than it was three years ago but there is still a long long way to go.
Last year, Watson and I splurged on a romantic New Year getaway. We booked a luxury eco-lodge in the South of Wales, somewhere off the beaten track to unwind after the hustle and bustle of Christmas with our families, complete with wood-fired hot tub. We left booking until quite late in the year and as a result, were left with fairly limited options. We quickly found that we wouldn't find a 3 night stay anywhere (anywhere we would want to stay that is) for much less than a whopping thousand pounds. Everywhere put their prices up around Christmas and New Year (who can blame them?) and our choices boiled down to; pay the hefty price tag and have a gorgeous getaway to remember or, find somewhere "cheap and cheerful". But Watson has a saying: Cheap is never cheerful.
And so, after much deliberation we decided to go for it. As a one-off, we would treat ourselves to a fancy New Year retreat, just the two of us, to celebrate him changing jobs and no longer working shifts. Christmas could finally be spent with family instead of at work and we were excited about what our future would look like now that we weren't limited to only spending every other weekend together. Once it was booked and paid for, any misgivings I'd had about spending that much money on a holiday were quickly forgotten and were immediately replaced with excitment for our lodge. And it didn't disappoint; it was every bit as gorgeous and luxurious as the pictures had promised it would be, even if wood-fired hot tubs are something of a science to master.
But this year, my money mindset has had more to say on the matter.
As someone who loves New Year almost as much as she loves Christmas, spending it with my favourite human and seeing it in in style is something that is becoming increasingly important to me. For years I went to bed before midnight and didn't welcome in the New Year, which when I think back to it now, is because I didn't have something in the upcoming year to look forward to. Back when my life was stuck in a rut, I didn't know, let alone believe, that I had the power to create my ideal life. I felt as though my fate was already decided and that I was meant to follow the path that opened up in front of me. But nowadays, everything is different and I am excited for the life I am creating; an excitement which culminates each New Year as I celebrate the goals I have acheived in the year that has been and look ahead to the even bigger goals I am setting for the year to come. So going away for New Year to celebrate is something that I want to keep on doing and after the success of last years getaway, I was keen to do it again this year. Except, it wasn't quite as simple as that.
The first "issue" my delightful brain conjured up for me this year was that of dates. With New Years Day being a Monday this year, that meant that I would mostly likely be going back to work on the Tuesday, unless I took more time off. Christmas and New Year is actually the one time of year that I take time off completely guilt-free; as someone whose previous jobs have required her to work Christmas Day (and yet magically never actually working it) now that I'm my own boss, I have vowed never to work between Christmas and New Year ever again. But on top of my usual weeks off next year, I have also booked a special SAD-preventative week off in February, as an antidote to the winter blues. With this extra week off in mind, taking more time off into the New Year felt like too much and so I have made peace with only having one week off at Christmas this year. (Previously, I have been known to take off two weeks guilt-free.)
Like most people, I like to have a day at home after a holiday before going back to work but with New Years Day being a Monday, that wasn't going to be possible unless I didn't go back to work until Wednesday. But on top of that, I also didn't want to leave our holiday on New Years Day, because New Years Day is as important to me as New Years Eve. There's something about the first day of the year that needs to be marked for me. I like to spend it by having a long dog walk to clear out the cobwebs and then curling up in my pyjamas with either a board game, a puzzle or a film. I don't want to spend it packing up and driving back home. So that means if we went away for New Year, we wouldn't come home until the Tuesday, after which I would still want a day at home before going back to work, which would mean not going back to work until Thursday, which as I already said, felt like too much time off ahead of my additional week off that I've planned for February. Can you see what it's like inside my head?
Still adamant that I wanted to go away for New Year, I began looking at places anyway and despite last years experience, was still stung by how much a stay away was going to cost. Coupled with the imperfect dates of this year I found myself less and less enthused by the idea and while Watson doesn't mind whether we go away or not, I eventually decided that the dates were too inconvenient and the prices were too high so this year, we wouldn't go away and would have a lovely time at home instead. Introducing the week-long Christmas plan...
Having made my peace with not going away for New Year, our thoughts turned to Christmas logistics. This is our first Christmas living together and this year we plan to spend Christmas with Watson's family, although seeing as my mum lives ten minutes down the road from his parents I would actually be staying with her. Still wanting to spend New Year just the two of us, I asked if we could come home for New Year which Watson agreed to until he remembered that his brother's birthday is the day before New Years Eve and if we were all going to be together, then he wanted to see his brother on his birthday. As much as I love my mum, I don't want to spend an entire week staying at her house but I also want us to see Watson's brother on his birthday, so what other option was there?
It was while I was on my way to my niece's third birthday party that I suddenly had an excellent idea; what if we went away between Christmas and New Year?! We could spend Christmas with our parents, then have two or three nights away and be back in time for the birthday! Enthusiasm renewed, I began searching for a Twixmas getaway all over again and quickly found the very thing; a cosy cabin in a forest, with log-burner and hot tub. Perfect. By this point I was mentally prepared for the pricetag and while I still wasn't thrilled about spending so much on three nights away, I also knew that that is how much it costs to go away at Christmas and there's nothing you can do about it. With Watson onboard, I prepared to book it. Cue the money midset gremlins.
As I was checking that the cabin was still available, I was filled with excitement. It was fully booked throughout December and January with the exception of that one window between Christmas and New Year so what if someone else had booked those dates while I was hesitating? As the page loaded slowly, for a moment it looked like the cabin was gone and we had missed out. I felt sorely disappointed and in that moment knew that treating ourselves to special occassions like these aren't a waste of money, they're a way of making memories. Just then the page sprang to life and there the cabin was, still available! I pounced on the Book Now button and began filling out our details but as questions about breakage cover and flexible amendment came up, my inner critic saw an opportunity to ask some questions of her own. What if we have to cancel and we lose all this money? What if the dogs break something? What if it isn't lovely and relaxing afterall but actually really stressful? In the time it took to me tick a few boxes, I went from being giddy with excitement, to filled with doubt about whether I was doing the right thing. In the end, it took me seven hours of hesitation and Watson holding my hand to book the cabin.
Throughout my life, I have struggled with spending money. As a child, a limiting belief I picked up was "If you don't have enough money, you can't have nice things" and it has coloured my relationship with money ever since. I wouldn't let people spend money on me as a teenager because I thought we didn't have enough and as a student I budgeted so strictly that I became incredibly stressed whenever I had to pay for something unexpectedly. I have realised more recently that I had been operating on the belief (and sometimes still do) that money is finite. I thought that how much I have available to me today is how much I will have available to me next week, next month, next year, but that simply isn't true.
Everything is temporary and we never know what is round the corner and that applies to our finances as much as it applies to everything else. I sometimes wonder why, as someone who worries so much about money, I chose to start my own business and live without a reliable income. On the one hand, I am keeping myself in a cycle of feast and famine and so repeating the familiar pattern that I grew up with. On the other, I have provided myself with the means to work through my money mindset demons by challenging my limiting beliefs about money and proving to myself that there isn't a finite amount of money available to me. If there is one thing that running my business has taught me, it's that everything ebbs and flows. Cycles of feast and famine occur everywhere and dry spells are always eventually replaced by periods of great abundance, you just have to ride it out.
As I have come to accept that, my attitude toward spending money has changed. Whereas I used to hold onto my money as tightly as possible, I now have a "spend it while you've got it" policy. I can't tell you how many times I haven't bought a pair of shoes, or a new coat, or booked a massage because I thought I'd be better off keeping that money "just in case". Inevitably, something unexpected comes along like a flat tyre or a vet bill that I have to find the money for and at no point have I ever thought "thank goodness I didn't have that massage last week otherwise I wouldn't have this £40 spare". No, every time I have thought "oh, I wish I had booked that massage while I could justify spending the money on it because now I definitely can't". I started flirting with this idea of "spend it while you've got it" and while at first it felt alien and scary and even reckless, it is now my go-to money mindset and I believe it has made me richer in the long run, in both money and experiences. A classic example of this happened just last month when I finally plucked up the courage to buy a KitchenAid. I have wanted one for ever and while the vast majority of it was an early Christmas present, I still had to contribute towards the cost and on the morning that I finally picked a colour and placed my order, we had to rush Barney to the emergency vet. £500 to the vet later, I wasn't thinking to myself "oh I wish I hadn't just spent £100 on that KitchenAid", I was thinking wholeheartedly "I am so glad I already paid for that KitchenAid because if I hadn't, I would really struggle to justify it now!" The end result: Barney is fine and I have a pink KitchenAid.
What's more, there are going to be times in mine and Watson's life when we genuinely can't afford to pay for a holiday like this and in those times, I want to be able to look back on the memories we make this Christmas and think "I'm so glad we did that when we could". It was these thoughts that reminded me to look back on the times when I haven't bought the coat / the shoes / the massage and to consider my limiting belief that money is finite and that the amount I have available to me today is the amount I will always have available to me. In that reflective mood, I saw how far I have come in the past few years, how much I have grown and most importantly, how good times have always followed the bad and how periods of feast always follow periods of famine. For all the times I tell myself that everything is temporary, it suddenly sank in and I was able to fully accept that this current period of "famine" that I think I'm in will soon pass too and will be replaced by a period of great abundance, because it always does! I was able to look ahead to what next year has instore for me and the business and feel hopeful for what's coming. This less abundant season won't last forever and as soon as I realised that, I booked our cabin with confidence.
I was telling the women in Biz Club about this and kept using the word "splurge" when one of them said "it isn't a splurge, it sounds like it's first aid for you". I am so grateful to her for that because it really made me stop and think about how I have framed this holiday. Even with the language that I have used in this post, I have felt the need to justify spending money that I have earned and saved on something nice for myself and Watson. It's that kind of spending with reluctance and resistance that prevents money from flowing to you. I have come to believe the theory that money is energy and the more you let it flow away from you, the more flows back to you. I have certainly seen it in my own life and that every time I hold onto it too tightly, it stops flowing altogether. When you spend with confidence and from a place of love, you're sending the message out to the Universe that you are a conduit for money to freeley flow through and thus more money flows to you, not to stay with you, but for you to send on again and so the cycle continues. It's a hard lesson to accept when it's not how you were raised, but it's one that I am learning, slowly but surely.
Comments