Uncensored Money Season Three: Do Your Finances Need a Detox?

Melissa Browne: Ex-Accountant, Ex-Financial Advisor, Ex-Working Till I Drop, Now Serial Entrepreneur & Author, Financial Wellness Advocate, Living a Life by Design | 09/03/2022

Show Notes

In this second episode of Season Three, Mel talks about an important financial habit she adopted over a decade ago called the 30 Day Financial Detox and how it will help you break up with money and become a conscious and mindful consumer again. Mel shares ideas on how to structure your detox, switch behaviours, set boundaries and create an action plan.

During this episode, Mel mentions a download you can use to design your own financial detox: https://www.melissabrowne.com.au/30daydetox

If you know you need more help with your finances make sure you sign up to the waitlist to be first to know when we launch the next round of the My Financial Adulting Plan.

If you're not already, come play over at insta at MelBrowne.Money and make sure you are signed up to Mel's Money Musings and Monday Money Moments (yep, we love us some alliteration) for more tips, tricks and ideas on how to best work with your money.

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Transcript

So in series three, we thought we'd do something different.

And that is that some of the conversations I will still have with Lawsie. Some of the conversations I'll have with my hubby, Tony. I'm trying to con Lawsie and her husband Adam to have a conversation with me as well. But also I'm also just gonna have chats with you about things that I think you need to know about.

And one of those things is a habit I've been doing for a decade now. So obviously since I was 12, and that is something called the 30 Day Detox.

Now I first wrote about this eight years ago for the Sydney Morning Herald in the age when I had a fortnightly money column, and I talked about how twice a year I have 30 days without sugar. And I couple that with 30 days of no spending.

And part of the reason is the sugar thing is an unconscious thing. And I know that I'm ready for a detox when I've had my breakfast and I'm about to reach for chocolate, and it becomes this unconscious habit that I just do without any forethought. Not because I'm hungry, simply because it's a habit. And it's 30 days without chocolate, and the idea is to reset me to great eating patterns. And I do spending at the same time because, and I've said this here before, our finances don't sit in a silo in the same way that exercise doesn't sit in a silo, or food doesn't sit in a silo, or our relationships don't sit in a silo.

So I know that when I'm reaching unconsciously for sugar, or usually for me chocolate, I'm also reaching unconsciously to spend a little bit more online. And that might surprise you that someone like me does that who really, I feel like I really have my financial shit together. I have the decision to choose to work or not. And I don't have kids. I don't have any massive obligations. So you might look at me and go, well, why can't you just spend when you feel like it? But for me, I don't believe it's good to be unconsciously spending. I don't want a marketing company or an influencer or anything but me to be in control of my spending.

Plus, I want to sustainably spend, and that's why twice a year I go 30 days without chocolate and 30 days without spending to this day. Now the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age when I wrote about it back in the day for them, they thought that they'd never heard of this before. And really no one was really writing about this or talking about this concept.

So they called it Thriftober. And they decided to make October that year, the month, and they put out this concept of a 31 day challenge. And I now know people have adopted this and implemented it and it's been called everything from Frugal February through to Miserable March and so much more.

But the thing is, it doesn't matter when you do it so long as you do. And here's the reason why I think it's important. Part of it is yes, to move us to being back to a conscious consumer again, cause I believe too much of us are living a life by default where we're not actually challenging or questioning why we're making the decisions that we are.

And certainly when it comes to our finances, we have declining financial literacy and there's so many stats that support that. And we're in a period of time in history where we are fearful and we're perhaps confused and we're anxious. And what a lot of people do when that happens is move to things that maybe isn't necessarily good.

We know during the pandemic that meant that we were grabbing wine more than we normally would, or alcohol. I also know that we were leaning on spending more than we normally would, and online spending went through the roof. So what this is about is a reset. It's about moving money back simply to be a tool again.

Cause for many people, I call it that we need to break up with money. That money has emotion tied to it. That money has feelings tied to it, and that can be feelings of anxiety, feelings of fearfulness, feelings of lust, feelings of boredom, but it can also go to that worthiness aspect. I did a speaking gig for Asana recently, and I was asked the question about generational poverty and how can you move past that with feeling worthy to not wanna just spend everything or hoard everything again.

And part of the answer, I believe, is to break up with money and to move it to simply being a tool. Again, and I explained it like this in that I can't have a relationship with my car. I guess you could, we're not gonna go there today though.

But for me, a motor vehicle is just simply something to get me from A to B.

I don't have emotions attached to it. I don't have feelings attached to it. Now, some people would argue that they love their car, but I think it's a different sort of twisted relationship that we have with money than we have about with our vehicles. But we recognise that a car's job is to get me from A to B.

I want you to rewire yourself and to rethink about the possibility that money's job is simply to get you from A to B. From where you are now to where you wanna go. Yet what is abundantly clear to me is not only do many of us feel uncomfortable thinking about money or talking about money, but many of us don't have a great relationship with money.

You know, it's really difficult to have a relationship with money if you're not willing to talk or think about someone for a start. But for many of us, money is something that we just have this awkward, uncomfortable, 'it's not me, it's you' relationship with. And that financial detox is simply a way of moving it from a relationship that we really can't have, that we shouldn't be having, moving it to just being a tool again, just like anything else.

And I see a 30 day detox as kind of being like a trial separation. Yeah. It's not me, it's you. And I appreciate that that's easier said than done. You know, if we compare money to another of our daily requirements food, we can often see another toxic relationship.

Many of us spend our life thinking about food. What we are gonna eat, when we're gonna eat it, whether we can start eating now. And in most Western countries, this is meant an ever-expanding waistline. Or maybe we spend our time trying not to think about food, which means food can be as big a problem for the intentionally underweight.

As it is for the overweight, we reward ourselves with food when we are good. We deny ourselves when we're bad. We're constantly trying to break up with it or normalise it. Yet, if we're honest, we behave like little children let loose in a snack cupboard most of the time. Little wonder, we don't have a relationship with food.

And yet over the years, I can see that there's been a move to reign that in, to break up with the food that we've been eating to forge a new relationship with food and with food that's actually good with us. People like Jamie Oliver and his Ministry of Food, Dr. Frank Lipman and his book Spent, Alexx Stewart and her Low Tox Life program and books where we are mindful about where our foods come from.

We wanna know how the animals we eat have been treated. We're conscious of what food we've put into our bodies, and we are careful to eat food. Many of us, it's free from chemicals and preservatives and other nasty. And all I'm suggesting is that we start to behave consciously and carefully and mindfully with money as well.

Now, I'm not suggesting that many of us have a great relationship with food or the relationship that we want. What I'm suggesting is that that can be a battle for many of us in the same way that money can be a battle, and that's why there is a massive diet industry. That's why there is now a massive money mindset industry and why there's so many financial planners out there and people peddling seven step plans where people are desperate to say, just tell me what to do to fix this. And yet the problem is in the same way, there's no silver bullet for having a great relationship, for exercising, for food, and many of the other complexities in life. It's the same for money. This is why this twice a year financial reset I think is really important.

So what does it look like?

Hopefully I've convinced you that it's worth considering if you were someone where that you've just been feeling a little bit sick as I've been talking. You absolutely freaking completely need to do it.

So what does it involve? Well, the easy thing is it involves 31 days without spending, but what not spending on is up to you.

So, for example, all of your needs you would still spend on. You'd still spend on shelter and food and electricity and all those essentials. But it's the non-essentials that I want you to choose what you are going to spend on or not. So for example, when I do it, it's books, it's magazines, it's clothes and shoes.

It doesn't include things like makeup or coffee or eating out cause those things just aren't an unconscious spend for me. When hubby does it, he detoxes from buying his lunch every day. He absolutely still gives himself his daily coffee, cause for him he loves that. It's mindful and he really enjoys that social interaction.

And he has a daily croissant. But that's it. He then says to himself, I need to be mindful. I want to really enjoy that. And after that, that's it. Yours will be different. For some of you, you'll resonate with me and go, yep, it's clothes and shoes and books and mags. For others, it'll be eating out and drinks with friends and all those sort of things. Entertainment. For other people, it might be online courses. For others, it will be experiences.

Do not buy into the lie that because you're buying experiences or travel that you are better than someone that's buying things. It's still spending. So once you've identified what you're going to not spend on, the next thing is to set a date and simply start.

And I believe 1st of March is a beautiful time to do it. We're far enough away from Christmas. You've bought all the stuff you need for the school year. I think it's a beautiful time to start. And then during the 30 days, I want you to be really conscious I want you to don't just grit your fingers and try and get through it.

I want you to understand how you think and feel about money. Cause this is how we become a conscious consumer. This is how we move money to simply being a tool that gets us from A to B again. So in the same way, you may be an emotional eater, you may be an emotional spender. I want you to think about the emotion behind your spending.

Are you bored? Are you angry? Are you anxious? Are you fearful? Are you happy? Are you excited? Keep a diary on your phone, keep it a diary on your computer or whatever makes sense. And note, when that happens, is it when you're sitting there binge-watching and you're bored and so you are scrolling and it's, you just unconsciously click to buy.

I want you to be really aware of how you do it, and then I want you to make a note of it. So that you stop doing that after the 30 days so that you say to yourself, you know what. If ever I have a drink, I'm not allowed to spend. Start to put rules in place. I know that sounds silly or doesn't sound like fun, but there's reasons why we wanna set this up because we wanna set it up for our success.

The other thing I want you to be aware of is what behaviour can you swap for spending? So if you are fearful or anxious, it might be, how can I get a dopamine hit from something other than spending? So we can get dopamine hits from a good poo, from sex, from exercise, from laughing, so going and swapping behaviour instead. It might be going for exercise. It might be punching bags. It might be going out in the sun or taking our shoes off and feeling the grass. It might be ringing a friend and having a really good laugh. But it's asking the question, what are you gonna swap that behaviour for?

But then another great thing to do during the 30 days is, as you are aware of your online environment, as you're aware of your offline environment, you might start to put boundaries in place so that after the 30 days, you can keep up these great habits. Boundaries like if you notice that your friends are always meeting to spend money, whether that's drinks, whether that's shopping, suggest some non spending money ways instead.

And there's so many free things we can do. So go and search for those and do those instead. Or it might be that you are figuring out other things about yourself. It might be online is the thing that's triggering you. So you spend the 30 days unfollowing, unsubscribing, and unfriending from anyone that's causing you or to overspend. So it's just really curating you so that you have success after.

Now, a helpful thing is to invite your friends or family to take part. Often it's your social circle that will put you non-spending month in jeopardy. So recruit them and to get them to do it with you. Other things to help set up you for success is to take your credit card out of your wallet if you suspect you'll be tempted.

Undo it from your phone. I don't have my card attached to my phone cause I wanna be able to leave the house and not spend money. And that seems really silly. But that for me is a really important thing.

If you're online spending, have a rule that it has to sit in your shopping cart for 24 hours and maybe that's the thing.

if you suspect you're gonna slip up, maybe consider a system of fines. If you and your friends and family are included, that could be kind of fun. And the fine might be during the washing up or cooking dinner or giving foot rubs to everyone. Or you might create a shirt or a hat to wear for the person that's slipped up during the day.

But just know that you potentially gonna slip up and don't beat yourself up when you do. It's just recognising that, oh, okay, that's what happens. Recognising it, asking the question of what's the behaviour and the emotions behind it? What's the behaviour you're gonna swap to next time? And then simply starting.

You know, I think the thing with money, as I said at the very beginning, is that it's often the unconscious behaviour that does us in. Often it's the emotion that's behind us that we haven't recognised. So the 30 day financial detox is my gift to you.

And to help you on your way I've included a download that I'll pop in the show notes that will just explain a little bit more of what I've talked about today and give you a one-pager where you can actually write out and hang up somewhere what you are going to include in this detox.

And then get you thinking about what are your emotions behind it, and then what are you gonna swap out. Make sure you let me know if you're doing it so I can cheer you so I can support you and tag me and let me know how you go. I'm on Insta at @moremoneyforshoes, or email me at hello [at] melissabrowne [dot] com [dot] au

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