#MoneyStory #4: Spending in Circles

By Kate Phillips August 1 abundance and prosperity

Continued from “MoneyStory #3: The Floodgates Open.”

As I shared recently in a training, contrary to popular belief, it’s not the past that shapes the future.

It’s the power we give the past.

It’s our expectation for the future, based on a past that has no power other than what we give it.

Unless we interrupt the patterns that run our lives, little actually changes. Perhaps nothing drives this home as much as this part of my money story. It comes from my life as a 30-something realtor who was earning much more money in a new career.

In my last Money Story post, I shared about tripling my income in a year. 💰💰💰

I went from struggling to get by in restaurant work to becoming a realtor who could:

Eat out whenever I wanted
Take myself and my daughter on vacations
Invest in myself
Buy a home by myself
And GIVE in generous and fulfilling ways!

I was now earning a LOT more money. I had worked to shift my beliefs about myself, money, and people with money.

But ONE thing, unfortunately, hadn’t changed at all.

My basic behavioral pattern around money was, essentially, the same.

When I was a waitress earning perhaps $1500 or $1800 a month, I spent every penny.

Now here I was, earning many times more. And I was STILL. Spending. Every. Single. Penny.

Everything was “fine.” My credit was good, my bills were paid. There was no “emergency” and no real pain around finances. And yet—I had NO investments and virtually NO savings!

Finally, I started doing the REAL “work” of money.

I became willing to grow up, financially. I got really honest. And I faced my mindset, beliefs, habits and results.

It was then that I realized the true power of my “Money Story.”

My attitude, my career, and my income had all changed for the better. Those were great changes! But my old story that “Money isn’t important” was still hanging on.

And if something isn’t important to you… Would you bother to KEEP much of it?

If having four Swiss Mountain dogs wasn’t important to you, would you have them? Of coure not! How about three motorcycles, two horses or a second home on the waterfront? Nope.

The people I know who HAVE these things CARE about these things. They consider the dogs, the motorcycles, the horses or the second home important enough to prioritize.

Judging by results, money still wasn’t all that “important” to me. My story and my HABITS were largely unchanged. Now I just made—and spent—more money! 😯

This spending habit is actually much more common than you might think. When people get a raise and a promotion, or perhaps get married and graduate to a two-income family, the increased income is often simply absorbed into new expenses:

A new car payment 🚘
A bigger home 🏠
Nicer vacations ✈️
College tuition 🧑‍🎓
Repairs or remodeling 🛁

…and so on.

There’s even a name for this phenomenon: lifestyle inflation. That’s when people make more money… then just spend more, erasing their gains or perhaps even taking on larger debts!

With my new higher income, I ended up in DEBT when I dramatically underestimated my income taxes. (I didn’t realize self-employed people paid a LOT more taxes. And it wasn’t fun paying the IRS $1200/month to catch up!)

Once again, it was time to make a change. Because it didn’t really matter how much money I was making if I wasn’t KEEPING it! It was time to get honest and admit, I was only “spending in circles.”

(Continued in “MoneyStory #5: The Miracle, Part One.”)