161. Why You Keep Sabotaging Your Budget (and How to Finally Stop)

If you’ve ever made a budget but still find yourself overspending, you’re not broken—you’re human. In this Question of the Day episode, Laura unpacks why smart, capable people often sabotage their financial goals and what it really takes to build lasting change. Learn how your identity, emotions, and mindset shape your spending—and how to retrain your brain to work with your budget instead of against it.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why budgeting is logical but spending is emotional
• How self-sabotage points to an inner conflict (comfort vs. growth, fear vs. freedom)
• The 3 mindset traps that derail your budget—and how to overcome them
• How to align your budget with your values and create space for small “yeses”
• Why mindset work is money work—and how to start shifting yours today

💡 Join the free 7-Day Money Mindset Shift Challenge inside the Legacy Builders Network Facebook group
to stop sabotaging and start building financial peace.

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Transcript

0:00

hello, and welcome to the question of the day series here on Money and Career Mastery, where we tackle real questions from real people who are trying to make money, feel less chaotic and work feel more meaningful. Think of it like chatting with a friend. If your friend also happened to be a money coach. Okay, let's jump in to today's question.

Laura: 0:25

Accelerators, welcome back. Today's question comes from Amanda in California. She writes, Laura, I know how to make a budget. I've done it before I even have it written out right now, but every month I still find myself overspending, especially on things I didn't plan for. It's like I know better, but I keep sabotaging my own goals. What's wrong with me? Oh, Amanda. Nothing. There's nothing wrong with you. You're absolutely. The same place that most people are. You're not alone. This is so common, especially among people who are smart and capable and deeply aware that they want change. You're not broken, but your brain is probably working against your goals right now, so let's train it otherwise. Budgeting is logical, but spending is emotional. Two totally. Separate parts of your brain are working on this right now. Your habits so far have been identified by your identity and not just by information. So what do I mean by that? I can know that buying, a Snickers when I leave Target is a poor financial choice and also not a good health choice. But my identity as a person who can afford that, that was a big deal for me when I first was at a place where I could afford to buy myself a candy bar when I was leaving the store. Because growing up, that wasn't really an option. And so you hear no enough times, you're like, oh, we can't afford it. Right. When I started buying things for myself, I became a person that just got a nice little treat for myself, and that was the one that I would choose. And so now I have to remember that my habit is driven based on somebody that I identify as. I identify as somebody who can buy those little luxuries. It's not just about the information. And self-sabotage often points to an internal conflict. Okay, so it's the comfort versus the growth. It's fear versus freedom. It's scarcity versus security. So one of the things I think that you need to look at is what's coming up inside of me when I am self-sabotaging. When I put myself in a position to where I'm starving at 6:00 PM and I am just exhausted and I don't want to go out and I don't wanna make anything, so I want to order it right? What. What is happening, what is coming up inside of me at that point, that's a comfort thing. I'm, I'm more focused on comfort than I am on growth. Maybe it's a situation where something comes up and you're like, I have to do this right now, because if I don't do it right now, I may never get it. That's scarcity. It could also be fear. I'm so afraid that I'm not gonna have this, and so I have to do it right now. That could be a fear thing instead of looking at the freedom. So I do want you to look at three different mindset traps to see if any of these help with your budget sabotage. All or nothing thinking, this is where I got into that big spiral when I first started working on it. And I would go, well, I messed it up. The whole thing's messed up, and I'm never gonna be able to do it again. I would go out to eat, blow up my going out to eat budget and say, well, I'll try again in a couple of weeks. You're never gonna get there because a couple of weeks are gonna happen. You're gonna make another mistake. Mistakes happen. This is not all or nothing. Do we make mistakes? Yes. That doesn't mean we blow everything else up. Do not allow yourself to spiral. If you do find yourself spiraling, please reach out to me. Amanda, I have been there. Spiraling is what I do really well. And so now that I know and I can see the signs, I can help you stop the spinning because we're going to stop when we're feeling that emotion and we're gonna work through it. I also want you to reward. I also want to work with you on a reward mindset. So this came up for me a lot when I was in my spending era. I work hard, so I deserve this. That's me in the Snickers bar. It's an impulse purchase. I deserve this. No, you don't. You deserve freedom. You were allowing little choices and little sabotages to take away your freedom. And a lot of times, yes, you do work hard and I want you to work hard because working hard, there's so much dignity in that. So work hard. But remember that everything we're doing has a forward focus. It's going to affect our future in some way. So plan on. I work hard. So I deserve a future me that will get to rest. I promise you future Amanda will. Thank you. And the third mindset trap would be avoidance. I don't wanna feel restricted. Because your budget doesn't tell you what to do until after you tell it what you want it to tell you to. The only person putting a restriction on you is yourself. Sometimes that's hard. Sometimes it's like, I don't wanna tell myself what to do. I don't wanna be in charge. If you are putting your head in the sand, though, you are making your own choices. Whether your choice is to be restricted now or restricted later, you are making your own choices. So instead of. Allowing everything to blow up in your face. I need you to get curious what's triggered your choice. Is there one instance you can point to if we were coaching together, I would ask you give me one or two instances where you feel like you've self-sabotaged, and then let's look at. What are the circumstances around that choice that you made? What made you feel like that was the best decision? Because something made you think that that was really smart and so you went with it. It's possible that you have built yourself a budget that is impossible to live with. You have to build in some small yeses in your budget. So sometimes we build in those small. Yes to a candy bar. We build in those small, guests to going out to eat, you know, picking up fast food one time in a two week period. We have to build in those small things. But you know what else You need to build into your budget margin. You need a miscellaneous category for when stuff comes up. You know what else you need. You need an emergency fund. Your emergency fund will cover the bigger things that you weren't expecting. Another thing you need with your budget is a long time horizon. You need to be able to look back. This time last year, what came up for me, so in October of last year, was there something in particular that I need to be planning for so I can be prepared for that. If you haven't been making a budget for over a year, what you can do is pull up bank statements from a year ago and you can go ahead and look through those and that's gonna give you a bigger focus, a bigger time horizon, something to look at and go, okay, the what's the same and what's different, and you can adjust based on that. You also want to focus on values-based budgeting. If you are a person who is building wealth and peace for your family, how do the items in your budget reflect that? Because sometimes what happens is we have a value that's not reflected in our budget, and so yes, we're gonna go over if one of your values is that you only shop at Whole Foods because you have a desire for this top-notch ingredients, if that's a value that you hold that this is where I will be shopping. I'll only do organic and I'm only gonna do top, top of the line qualities and I only order steak. But you have a$200 grocery budget for six people. That's not gonna work out. Also, if you have a$200 grocery budget for six people, you need to increase that dramatically. When you have a values-based budget, you are able to build for yourself a budget that you can stick with. But if your budget does not follow along with what you value, you going to find that you cannot stick with it. You're not self-sabotaging because you're weak, Amanda, you're sabotaging because your current system does not support who you are becoming yet. Your mindset work is your money work, and this is exactly the kind of work that we are going to be doing in the seven day money mindset shift, challenge happening. Today in the free Facebook group that I have called the Legacy Builders Network, we will help you stop sabotaging and start aligning your thoughts with your goals. So Amanda, I've already reached out to you, but come join us. The link is down in the show notes. If you have a friend that you wanna do this with, if anybody listening wants to come join us on the seven day Money mindset shift challenge, please do. It's gonna be amazing. I'm still working on how we're gonna have winners because a breakthrough is kind of difficult to to measure. But I know that we can do it. I know that we can figure it out. So Amanda, I hope that this was helpful. I hope that we were able to look at sabotaging a little bit differently. Maybe you and I need to sit down and have a conversation, and I'm happy to do that either through the group or one-on-one. Feel free to reach out to us there that's it this week, accelerators. Thanks for joining me for this quick question of the day. If you have a question of the day that you wanna submit, you just do it over at hello@accelerateyourlegacy.com. Shoot me an email and I will be happy to respond to that on air. Thanks, accelerators. Go out and make a difference.