184. We Make Good Money… So Why Do We Still Feel Broke?” (The Real Fix: Spending vs. Systems)

Ever looked at your tax return and thought, “We made THAT much… so why do we still feel broke?” If you’re earning good money but living paycheck to paycheck (or constantly feeling stressed, behind, or confused about where it all went), this episode is for you.

Here’s the truth: most of the time it’s not an income problem—it’s a systems problem. When you’re only tracking your spending after the fact, money leaks quietly through subscriptions, extra meals out, “we’ll pay it later” moments, and the little comforts that slowly become normal. And when surprises hit, panic pushes us toward quick fixes that add penalties to our pain.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through the simple framework that creates real peace: a proactive budget, true expense planning (sinking funds), and rules for margin—plus a weekly money rhythm that helps you catch problems early, lead your family on purpose, and model calm, confident money habits for your kids.

You’ll also hear practical ways to talk about money with your children without fear or shame—and a simple next step you can take this week to feel more steady fast.

Want a fun way to start money conversations at home? Join the waitlist for my children’s book Rosie Earns It Herself at accelerateyourlegacy.com/rosie.

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Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants-31: 0:00

The big question here all the time is why do we make good money and still feel broke? We're stressed all the time. Are you one of these people? Are you living paycheck to paycheck and you look at your income? We just had tax time. We're in the middle of tax time. Have you filed your taxes yet? I looked at our income for the year and was one of these people was like, we made that much this year. My business is growing. I love what I do. My husband loves what he does. We have five children. We make really good money. Thankfully, we're not stressed out like we used to be, but I remember when we used to look at our tax documents and go, we made that much. We're still this broke. Is that something that you've said to yourself recently? Because, Ooh, it's not the most fun thing in the world to feel, so why is it that you're feeling that way? Well, it's one of two things. It's a spending problem or it's a systems problem. Now, if it's a spending problem, spend less. That's the easiest thing in the world to say and one of the hardest things in the world to do because you have grown accustomed to your spending we don't like to make changes backwards. Anything that we're doing and we're changing forwards and we're growing and we're spending more, and we're getting more and more comfortable. That's one of those things that's easy to creep into. However, it's very difficult to creep backwards. You have to be very intentional about changing the way that you spend money. So most of the time it's not an income problem, it's a systems problem. Now, if it's an income problem, we need to get your income up. And regardless of what we're doing, if you're looking to pay off debt, if you're looking to build wealth, raising your income is probably a good idea anyway. But maybe you have a system problem where instead of creating a budget where you tell your money where to go, you're just tracking it and seeing where it's come from. Where did I spend it already? That's how I used to budget. I used to be somebody that would look back and see how I spent my money instead of being proactive in deciding where my money is going to go. What you need to do is decide where you're at right now. Figure out your starting line. Decide where you wanna go. It's your goal, and then we have to work towards it. Your actions need to be reflective of who you want to be and what you want to achieve. You are going to learn if you listen to me for any amount of time that your money tends to leak and you're not even realizing it. So where does it keep leaking to? Well, a lot of times it's, those comfort, those creature comforts that I was just talking about, where we accidentally fall into the comfortableness. We have to be very mindful about that. It's very easy to get a new subscription and then forget about it. It's very easy to. Add an extra day of going out to eat or just picks up food on the way home from school, or let your kids all do another sport. Those things are easy to do if you're not paying attention, and especially if you're using a credit card and you swipe it and you come up and you're like, oh, I'll just pay this later. And you forget that you put something else on there that you were like, oh, I'll just pay this later. And we get till later and you're like, oh, I can't pay this. The simplest way to create peace with your money is to have a budget. Decide one day when you are calm and you have eaten and you are in good emotional regulated state, that is the best time for you to make a decision about where you want to purposely put your money. The simplest way to create peace with your money from week to week is to decide in advance where you want your. Money to go sit down when you are feeling calm and collected and you've eaten. Sometimes it's great to do this with a snack, sometimes great with a glass of wine and decide where you want your money to go. When you are in a good emotional state, this is the perfect time to make the decisions ahead of time as opposed to when you're dysregulated. When I'm coming home from school and everybody's yelling at me in the car and everybody's going, I wanna go to Chick-fil-A, guess what? Me too. It's easier. That's what I want too. I want easy, I want calm. I don't wanna have to deal with things, but that's not what I want ultimately for my family. I don't want to be a family where my children think that, oh, I asked for it so I can get it. I don't wanna be a family that eats fast food more than they eat at home. I don't want to be a family where we don't pay attention to our money, so I can't leave anything to my children. Every time I make a decision ahead of time, I'm teaching my children to make decisions ahead of time. Sometimes it's really good to make decisions in the moment, and sometimes it's imperative. But in a society where impulses rule and how you feel is more important than everything else, I really wanna set my children apart and let them know that your feelings are not your dictators. You can make decisions that are outside of your feelings. On days where I feel like just going to Chick-fil-A and I choose not to. I feel like that's a really beautiful thing to share with them and to show them. Now they're not necessarily at a developmental level where they're going to understand that cognitively, but they're going to be watching me do that, and I know that my kids are always playing follow the leader. So I know beyond a shadow of doubt that the best way to create peace in my home is to continue to shepherd them well. And to show them that even when your biggest feeling is telling you to do something, we're not gonna follow that big feeling. It's like my five-year-old right now. He has been having a hard time not lashing out with his hands. He hit his sister this morning. Now I, don't say this to shame him, but she had something, he wanted it, he hit her. Turns out that didn't actually get him what he wanted. And I was like, did did it make you feel better? He's like, yeah, for a second. That's fair. That's honest. Yeah. For a second it did, but then it got me in more trouble and that was not good. He's getting it, but I have to show him through my actions that I don't respond with those impulses. I made a plan ahead of time. This is ways for me to make peace with the way I choose to operate inside my home. Both of those could be true. Now, let's say that you're like, great. I made a budget perfect. What happens when a surprise pops up? Because I always panic when a surprise pops up. Whenever we get desperate, we get dumb. That's when we pull out the credit card and we go to those quick fixes that end up adding penalties to our pain. If you don't want to panic because of a situation, you need to give yourself a defense to that, and that's gonna be an emergency fund. That means we're going to plan for the unplanned things to happen. We can have sinking funds for things like car repair. We know the car's gonna need repairs. Why don't you just start setting money aside for that? We know Christmas is going to come in December. We set money aside for that. We know we're gonna have to buy clothes for the kids in August. We set money aside for that. We have those sinking funds and whenever we need it, we can pull it out. Now that said, we also know that emergencies are going to happen that are not part of these sinking funds, so we wanna have an emergency fund set up and ready to go. We are planning ahead. We are expecting the unexpected. By setting those up, you are going to allow yourself to be calm in your cash flow. We don't have to react to everything. We can respond, but we don't have to react. Now, I did just say that the kids are playing follow the leader, and they're absorbing all of the emotions that I'm sharing. Can your kids tell that you're stressed about money even if you never say it out loud? Absolutely. They live in the same house as you. Anytime I asked my mother about money growing up, or I wanted something, most of the time I was shooed away. The few times that I remember, I remember my mom swiping a credit card and like turning away. I didn't know if it was fear or shame that made her turn away while it was swiped. I do remember a couple times where things got declined and we had to pull out another card. But for the most part, I was given the impression that we just didn't talk about money, and that was not something that I needed to concern myself with. I thought she was just brushing me off. Turns out, now that I'm talking to her as an adult, she's like, no. If you had found it in the budget, we would've done it. There was no room in the budget. You would've never found it, but if you had found it, we would've done it. It is like when we try to get my nonverbal brother to say Disneyland, my mother said, if you can get him to say Disneyland, we'll go to Disneyland. We worked really hard on that that summer, but he still doesn't say anything, so that's a bummer. You have to remember that they are learning money habits from you whether you want them to or not. What I learned about money is we don't talk about it. When I got my first credit card, I didn't know I had to pay it back. And when we don't talk about these things in our home and we can feel the stress, like anytime money came up the first of the month, I didn't wanna talk to my parents because we just went through the end of the month where. Everything was super tight. We didn't have money for anything, and now we're at the beginning of the month where they're having to pay all the bills. Like it was just super stressful and it was no good. Did I feel it? Yes, absolutely. Was I willing to have the conversation? No, because I had learned that that was not something that we talk about. And so now with my kids, it's very important that we have these conversations often because I don't want them to ever feel shame. I don't want them to ever feel confused. I don't want them to ever be stressed about money. Now, stress happens and stress is required for us to grow. Sometimes it's not like stress is a bad thing, but it can be bad. When you're worried or you're anxious, or you're ruminating on money all the time because it's just a negative feeling for you, your kids are gonna pick up on that. That doesn't mean you're doing the wrong thing. It does mean that you wanna bring them into the conversation. Now, I don't want you to stress them out. I don't want you to go to them and be like, we're gonna lose the house if we don't make this payment. Like they don't need to know that, but you can bring them in on, Hey guys, like things are really tight right now. We're having to make some changes. We're having to let go of some things, and by doing that, we're gonna make things easy for us. In the long run, things are all gonna be okay. You are hearing me tell you to not be reactive and instead be responsive, right? So how do we do that? I'm gonna give you three money habits so that you can come from a clear space so that you can map. Perfectly your peaceful money, okay? A weekly money rhythm. This is your first money habit. Have a weekly money rhythm you want to implement a family business meeting. This is where you're gonna look at what's coming in, what's going out. You're gonna decide what the next seven days look like. Plan to say yes to your kids on. Something, expect to say no to your kids on some things and decide what your one next step is, and then because you're in this family business meeting rhythm, you're gonna catch the problems early. You're gonna catch'em early before they become fights with your spouse. You're gonna catch them early before the kids are like, but mom, but mom, but mom. But mom, you're already gonna know that these things are coming up. This is going to create clarity for you. You stop hoping that it works out and you start leading your family on purpose. The second money habit that I want you to implement is a true expense planning or your sinking funds. Parents will often feel reactive when surprises keep showing up that weren't actually surprises. So birthdays they're coming, holidays they're coming, car repairs, tires, school expenses, medical copays. You know, the medical copays are coming. We tend to, sweep it under the rug and pretend like we don't have to pay anything'cause we have insurance or we're paying insurance all the time, but the copays happen. We have to cover that. Plan to have your entire medical deductible and a sinking fund travel. What are you planning on doing this summer? You need to go ahead and have that money set aside so that you can plan for summer travel. You plan these things on purpose with small, regular, monthly amounts. That way you don't have one giant bill in the middle of the year. Now this is gonna create clarity because it turns panic into a category that you're on top of. Things aren't gonna pop up and they're not gonna surprise you because you already have a sinking fund for that. Home repairs, that's another great sinking fund. This is true expenses that you know are coming and we're planning for them. The third money habit. I want you to have a rule for margin. You need a buffer, and you need boundaries. That's kind of how margin works. You have to know where your boundary lies. This is the habit of protecting the space in your cash flow. You keep a buffer in your bank account, that means you don't go below$500, you keep a buffer in your budget. Go ahead and set one to two boundaries that you are going to maintain that will allow you to keep margin. Right now in our family, we have a hard boundary, but we're not going out to eat. This allows us to maintain margin, decide in advance what you do when the week goes sideways. When I decide in advance what we're going to eat, I don't have to worry about going out to eat when I decide in advance what I will say yes to financially, I don't have to worry about it later when I decide in advance, I have margin, so I want you to have that as well. So if you're looking for one small change that's gonna make this week feel calmer, I definitely recommend going ahead and setting up your family business meeting. But let's say, Laura, it's Tuesday. There's something else I can do this week. Yes. Have a conversation about money with your children. You don't have to have the whole, I'm feeling really stressed. We're buckling down. We are gonna pay off debt. That doesn't have to be the conversation. Ask them where money comes from. Ask them what they would like to do around the house. If there's something that they would like to buy, ask them. If you had a hundred dollars that you could give away, what would you want to give it to? Find out what kind of things, light them up and figure out how you guys can work together to either go buy something or go give something away or save up for something. Having these conversations with your children just allows you, it allows you to enjoy them and it allows you to. Learn about them and it allows you to learn about yourself. It's super fun to have conversations with our children, and one of the simplest ways to start teaching money, confidence to your kids without making it weird, would be to read books about money. And one of those is my book that I'm so incredibly excited about, called Rosie Earns it herself. This is going to be a great way for you and your family to have these money conversations openly without it being weird. You have picture time and read aloud time with your kids all the time. Just let it be a book about watching a little girl. Decide she wants to buy something, and then working with her family to figure out how to earn the money, learn the dignity of work, learn how exciting it is to earn things yourself. These are great conversations to have with your kids, and so I highly recommend

16:13

Going to accelerate your legacy.com/rosie so you can get on the wait list to pre-order your copy of Rosie Earns it herself.

Audio Only - All Participants-31: 16:23

I cannot wait for it to get in your hands. And I hope that this episode was helpful for you, legacy Builder. All right, that's it for this week. Go out and make a difference.