What do weight loss and your finances have in common?

So often people have a New Year’s Resolution to lose weight and/or a New Year’s Resolution to manage their finances better.

Now, at first thought, you might not think they have very much in common. But actually, there’s a lot of similarities between losing weight and managing your finances.

For each, there are some quite straightforward rules. For example, to lose weight, you need to eat less and exercise more. And, for managing your finances, you possibly want to spend less and save more.

But actually, knowing this is not enough.

So often you’ll hear about someone who’s been on a diet, who has been doing really well. And then something happens. They have a bad day. Maybe they have an argument with a family member. Maybe their boss or their co-worker, tells them they’re not happy with them. Maybe they lose an important client.

Under these circumstances, it wouldn’t be unusual for that person to maybe have a bit of chocolate cake, biscuit, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, or whatever the goodie is that will cheer them up.

Now at this stage, the person does not believe for an instant that the chocolate cake or Ben & Jerry’s is helping them to lose weight. They’re well aware that it is not part of their diet programme. But they choose to eat it anyway because that’s what they want at that specific time.

It’s the same thing with looking after our money. Although we know how we should look after our money, there may be many reasons why we don’t.

We might intentionally go out and splurge on something and do a bit of retail therapy if we’ve had a bad day. We may be bored with budgeting and just decide to splurge.

We’re well aware that doing it is not helping our future finances. But actually, there’s a thought in our head encouraging us to do it, telling us we’ll feel better afterwards.

Looking after your money and growing your wealth is so much more than just knowing the rules. A lot of what is preventing it is from growing our wealth is happening in our heads.

It’s what we tell ourselves: our limiting beliefs, maybe the things we learned at a very young age, which we still carry around as though it’s the truth.

I don’t specialise in helping you to lose weight. But I do specialise in helping you to look after your money.

If you know what you should be doing but actually for whatever reason you’re choosing not to do it, why not book a Possibility Call to discuss it. This may be something I can help you with to discover what it is that’s causing you to self-sabotage. 

Let’s get this sorted for 2022 to make this the year you take control of your finances.