198. Everything Feels Urgent When You’re in Transition

Why does moving make money feel so much harder than it really should? In this episode, Laura unpacks why transition seasons — especially moving — make every decision feel urgent, every purchase feel important, and every want start dressing up like a need. From lawnmowers and mattresses to DIY dreams and new-house pressure, this is a real conversation about what happens when life feels unsettled and money starts to feel heavy. 

Using her own family’s cross-country move as the backdrop, Laura talks honestly about disrupted routines, emotional spending, decision fatigue, and the temptation to create a whole new life all at once. She also shares why every transition season — new baby, new job, summer, reset, or hard season — can trigger the same kind of financial stress, and what to do instead. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why moving throws off your rhythm and makes money feel harder 
•  How wants start dressing up like needs in stressful seasons 
•  Why vision without a plan can drain your budget fast 
•  How to separate what’s urgent from what’s ideal 
•  Why you cannot do everything at once — and why that’s okay 

Laura also shares how to create a budget for transition seasons, make decisions in phases, and protect your family from pressure-driven spending. And when you need help building a plan, this is exactly the kind of thing she helps families sort through inside her Money Mastery coaching program. 

Learn more about working with Laura Sexton

.        Join the Facebook group Legacy Builders Network.

·        Become a master with your money. Learn more here!

·        Checkout the resource library here!

Want to ask a question Laura can answer on the podcast? Connect with her here!

Want to receive a live money or career audit? Apply Here

Send an email to Laura@AccelerateYourLegacy.com or send a DM on Instagram @accelerateyourlegacy

Elevate your coaching with daily devotionals and prayers from 'Seasoned with Salt.' Get your copy HERE!

Transcript

Laura 0:00

Why does moving make money feel so much harder than it really should? 'Cause you see, it's not just that moving is expensive, it is, but it's also that everything suddenly feels so important. The mower? That's important. The table? Important. Rugs, washer and dryer, decorating it just perfectly. It all feels important, and not just important, but urgent. Because when you're moving, you're not just paying for what you need. No, no, no. You're fighting the pressure to create a whole new life at once. And honestly, even if you're not moving right now, this episode is still for you because there are a lot of seasons in life when everything feels important: a new baby, new job, summer, a back to school time, a new house, yes, a hard season, a reset. And in those moments, wants start dressing up like needs real fast. That's where people get into trouble. Because when life feels unsettled, it gets really easy to spend for function, for comfort, for emotional relief all at the same time, and if you are not careful, you'll spend everything trying to make life feel finished before you've even had time to settle in You are listening to the Money and Legacy Podcast with Laura Sexton. I'm helping families pay off debt, grow wealth, and build a legacy without sacrificing what matters most. This is where money feels easy. Hey, legacy builders. Welcome back to the podcast. It's gonna sound a little bit different here because I'm not in my normal setup. We haven't got our furniture delivered yet, which is adding to why money feels extra stressful right now. But I wanted to join the podcast today and talk to you about when things feel stressful, how we can calm the waters. So let's start with why moving makes money specifically feel stressful. It messes everything up. Moving, just by the very nature of it, is going to throw off your rhythm. You used to have things in one place, and it may be that same bookshelf is moved to your new house. But, it's in a different place, in a different building, and, going to that still feels weird. Your whole rhythm is off. Even if you try to make it exactly the same and the exact same setup, everything feels off. And anytime that your rhythm is off, your money will feel harder. You see, this is not just about the moving, it's about any season in your life where you feel things have been disrupted. You all know last year I had baby number five. It's insanity to add another person to your life, but it's also insanity anytime there's a new big transition. You get a new job. Maybe you're making more money than you were before Oftentimes when we're making more money than we were before, we're like, "Yes, we're good. We're solid." And then we start making extra decisions that we should not be making because the money is different, our rhythm has changed Any season that you're in where life feels disrupted, money will feel messy. And when life is unsettled, your money decisions get heavy. And so that's what I wanna talk to you about today. When it feels heavy, we have to take a step back and look and see what we can do to make a change. So for me personally, this last week, I've been thinking about things that I want for the house. I'm so excited. If you guys wanna join me on Instagram over at Accelerate Your Legacy, you will watch all of the new ups and different deciding pieces that are going in the house. I have a lot of DIY projects that I wanna try. There's something about moving to the South where everything is slower and simpler, where I'm like, "I just wanna try it myself," which may be crazy. It may be absolutely insane, but we're gonna do it 'cause that's me, and I need to try it before I make a decision. So For me specifically right now, I have 9,000 things that I would like to do, and I, I can't make good decisions in the moment, especially not right now. I don't have my stuff delivered yet. We are still waiting on new things to come in. We're still trying to decide what's most important to purchase, to obtain. What are the things that we need in order to make everything happen? One of the most important things, though, that we need to make happen, we have to have a budget. We have to have a plan for our money, and right now, to be completely honest, we don't. Today that I'm recording this, it is June 1st, so you will have it come out tomorrow, June 2nd. And I have not made the budget for June. This is completely unlike me. Well, to be fair, I have the budget for June made. It's just packed on a box because I do everything by hand. That is just the only way my brain works. And for a lot of my clients, I then put it on a spreadsheet and I create it for them because that's how their brain works. But for me specifically, I have to write it out, and I have multiple years' worth of data to say, "Okay, this is what I tend to spend in June. These are the things that are coming up for me. This is how we make the decisions." I have to stop at some point and say, "Okay, what is June gonna look like? How much money do we have? What is our plan?" And it looks like me sitting down and doing that. Right now my kids are also off their rhythm, so it's very difficult to find time and space, and that means tonight when I put my kids to bed, I have to make the whole plan for June. Ugh, that's heavy, but it's so important because right now not having a plan, everything feels like a heavy weight. Everything feels like an impossibility. I'm never gonna get to a place where I can buy this, or I'm never gonna get to a place where I can get new clothes. I'm never gonna get to a place where I can fill in the blank. All of the decisions that are in my head right now, they all feel important. During a move, every decision feels urgent because you don't know what you have, you don't know what you need, you don't know what you need to put in place. It's any transition season that you're in. We're also in the transition season of being in the middle of summer where there's no school. There are camps that I can sign the kids up for, but how much money do I have to spend on camps, and how do you prioritize it? What can you set? I don't know. So that is, I have to sit down, I have to make that decision. In a stressful season, your wants will dress up like your needs. We want a brand-new lawnmower for our yard because we finally have a yard that we get to mow, that we're in charge of. And my husband is just so excited about mowing the lawn, and so I was like I'm looking, I'm looking. We're shopping around. We're figuring things out. I went on Facebook Marketplace, which is a great place if you have a want that is dressing itself up like a need. Go on Facebook Marketplace. Buy it secondhand. And I happened upon just the exact, almost the exact thing that he wanted. He was so excited about it. But I didn't find it until after we had set up a lawn mowing service I know. It always happens that way. It's like we purchase a potty training book, and then the kids potty train themselves. It's that kind of thing. Any time you spend money on something, the situation rectifies itself. A couple months ago, we paid for a library book, and literally the next day my kid goes, "Oh, here's that library book you were looking for." It always seems to happen like that. It's like your keys are always in the last place you look. To be fair, the keys are in the last place you look anyway Your vision can get expensive very quickly. During a transition, you don't just want things to work, you want things to feel settled quickly. And you feel like in order to get those things settled quickly, the best thing to do is to go out and spend money. You want comfort, you want beauty, you want control, and that pressure gets expensive very quickly. it's not just in a move too, it's in any heavy emotional season. Like a vision that you have, and I'm thinking, "Guys, I can't wait to show you the house that I'm going to create" because if it could just look like it looks in my head, it's gonna be amazing. But your vision without a plan drains your budget very quickly. We went out, we bought that lawnmower. I'm so excited about it. My husband is going to love mowing the lawn, after we finish our fully paid up month of lawn mowing services. What I forgot was in this season, you have to pay for the things that are important first, not just the things that you want most. And what I forgot was that the first thing we should have done was go to the store and buy a mattress for my son. Now, all of the girls have mattresses because they all had beds, but my son had been displaced when we moved the baby into the crib. The crib is convertible, so it was a toddler bed for my toddler, who is now a big girl, so she has a big girl bed. Everybody had a bed except for my son, and he needed a mattress. Well, I spent our mattress money on a lawnmower that we didn't need until next month. But it felt like we're never gonna get this deal again. This is gonna get sold on Marketplace, and we're not gonna be able to get it. And we got it for a steal. We got a lawnmower, a weed eater, and a blower for less than we would've paid just for the lawnmower. I wanted everything to feel settled, and what I did was I drained my budget before I had the money to spend on the important thing. You have to prioritize. You have to decide what's most important. You can't do everything at once. Moving makes this obvious. I can't unpack all of the boxes at once. I can't snap my fingers or twitch my nose and all of it go exactly where I want it to be. I'm not a wizard. Any life transition will force you to make choices, and it's not easy. It's not for me, it's not for you, I understand. But I am going to remind you that it is very important to choose peace in this season. You can't buy peace. You have to choose peace, and then solve for peace. 'Cause you can't solve discomfort with nonstop spending, because you're going to add discomfort to your life along with penalties. You spend what you have to spend, and then you stop. We spent the money on the mower, and we don't have anything extra to buy the mattress, and that's fine. My son's gonna sleep in our room. I have plenty of room in my bed for him to come and cuddle up with me for a couple weeks until we get our next paycheck, and then I'll be able to get him his mattress, or he can stay at grandma's house and be, like, the only one on this great grandma adventure Here are the key points to this whole thing that I'm hoping that I'm preaching to myself as much as I am to you, that you know that I am in this with you. For the record, there were people calling me out of touch on Instagram this week because there's no way that people can pay for a house. There's no way people can live debt-free. You're so out of touch. You don't know what it's like to have a normal American, da, da, da, da, da. Friends, I work with hundreds of clients a year. I talk to so many of you on Instagram DMs. I talk to so many of you on Facebook. I talk to more, quote-unquote, "normal Americans" than most people And all of you have the ability to be the victor in your own life. Every single one of you has the ability to win with money. Somebody has lied to you and told you that people like you don't get ahead. Somebody has lied to you and told you that people like you can't buy a house. Somebody has lied to you and told you that you're never going to be able to live without a credit card or a car payment. Someone has lied to you because they want to keep you small, and I will have none of it. You, my friend, are a victor. You have the ability to create whatever life you want to live. I promise you, you can. It may take some hard work up front. We may have to create new rhythms and new systems for you, and that's fine. I'm an expert at creating new rhythms and systems for you because I can see it without the emotion that you have inside of it. So that is why I really want you to hear me say you 100% have the ability to create the life that you want to live, but you cannot do it all at once What you should do instead is first slow down. You cannot do everything at once. You have to slow down. Separate what's urgent from what is ideal. You just need to make it through the next season. You don't have to have the perfect plan in place. Set things up in phases. Phase one is the downstairs or just the kitchen, or just having the pots and pans that you want. That's it Phase two is all of downstairs. Phase three is the kids' room. Phase four is my room. Phase five is my office. Guys, I have the best vision for my office, and I can't wait for you to see it. You'll get to see it on YouTube videos when I'm finally doing this live from my office. I'm so excited The reason we set it down like that is because we have to protect what's most important, and that's our family If you are so worried about your money, you are hurting your family. So let's create a system so you don't have to worry. My whole thing is I want your money to feel easy. I want money to feel easy. You're gonna win with money, and it's going to be easy. That's what I do here. So we're protecting your family. Everything's broken down in phases. We're going slow, and you have to accept for this season imperfection. I know it's really hard, especially for my Type A friends. Sometimes it needs to be imperfect, and it's still okay. Whether you're moving or just living through chaos, the principle is always going to be the same. You do not have to finish the whole picture right now. This is very hard for me because in my head I'm already living in the perfect house, which is crazy 'cause I haven't even got my boxes delivered yet. They come on Thursday. It's going to be a bomb going off in my house that still smells like sawdust and paint, which is lovely. I went and bought some new candles so it can change the flavor inside the house. Right now it still smells like sawdust and paint You don't have to finish the whole picture today. Things are going to change and fluctuate, and you can't do everything at once. But how do we eat an elephant? We eat it one bite at a time, and that is what you are going to do, my friends. So sit down. When you are listening to this, hopefully it is June the 2nd or sometime in the future. Hello, friends in the future. Sit down and make a budget Sit down and decide what is important and what just feels urgent, or what just feels ideal. What is your top priority? And I'm going to need you to create a red line budget for the fun things. My friends, if you're in the summer season and you're like, "I need to sign up for all the camps for your kids," you can't do it all. Set a budget for how much we're gonna spend on summer activities, and list out all the activities, and when you spend all the money, you draw a red line, and everything below it cannot happen. I do that a lot with people that have too much debt. We gotta make some progress. What are we gonna do? We're gonna put this much money towards the first one. We're gonna spend minimum payments on as many as we can until we get to our line. Say, "Sorry, these below here, we cannot finish." And trust me, it's hard because the creditors, they're gonna call you and they're gonna ask, "Where's my money?" You're gonna have to say, "I'm so sorry. Ran out of money. I can't do it this month. I will get to you next month." Sometimes that just has to happen We do not open a box with a puzzle inside and lay it out and it's all put together. One, that wouldn't be any fun. Two, there wouldn't be any challenge in it. But three, that's not how puzzles work. So for you, my friend, do one piece at a time. Go ahead, build out the border, that's your budget. And then fill in the color, spend the money, do the fun things. But you can't do it all at once Piece by piece, you are going to get to exactly where you want to go. If I can help you in any way, if you need me to show you the map, show you the picture on the puzzle, what it should look like, let's sit down and have a call. All you have to do is scroll down in the show notes and click the Work With Me button. Learn more about Money Mastery. That is what I call my coaching program. I call it the Money Mastery program, and we are going to make sure that you become the master of your money, and in everything we do, we're gonna make your money feel easy. All right, friends, that is it for this week. Thank you so much for joining me. I will see you again next week here on the Money and Legacy Podcast. This week, I would like for you to go out and make a difference