Money Files: Money Mindset & Personal Finance

You have money in savings. You contribute to your 401(k). Your bills are on autopay, and your credit card gets paid off every month. From the outside, and honestly from the inside too, things look pretty good.

But if someone sat down with you and asked what your savings is actually for, whether you are on track for retirement, or what you would do if you needed to rebuild your emergency fund from scratch, you might not have a clear ...

This may feel familiar. You have financial goals, you can talk about them, you’ve written them down somewhere. You’ve explored building your emergency fund, retiring early, buying a home, paying off your debt. Your list has all of the “right” moves you think someone responsible should do with their money. 

But if you’re being honest with yourself, there’s still a gap in between what you say y...

You have been telling yourself the same story about money for a long time. Maybe it has been ten years, maybe twenty, maybe longer. And somewhere along the way, the experiences piled up—the overdrafts, the debt, the decisions you wish you could take back—and they started to feel like evidence that you are just who you are with money. That this is how it is always going to be.

But here is what I want you to sit with today...

What if avoiding your money does not actually look like avoiding your bank account?

You can make six figures, own a home, contribute to your 401k, take vacations, and still have parts of your financial life that you do not want to look at. Maybe you keep saying you will deal with the credit card balance next month. Maybe you move money between accounts to cover the same gap every single month. Maybe you know how much is in savings b...

Last week I introduced the say do gap the space between what you say you want financially and what your actions are actually supporting.

This week I want to give you a framework for understanding why that gap exists and what it actually looks like in your day to day relationship with money. Because the gap does not look the same for everyone, and understanding your specific pattern is what makes it possible to actually close it.

In t...

You have set the financial goal. You have done the math. You know exactly how much you need to save every month to get there. And then you watch yourself not do it, not because you do not want it badly enough and not because you are bad with money, but because wanting something and doing something are two completely different muscles. And most people have never learned how to check whether their actions actually align with what the...

You know you should budget. You might even want to budget. But somewhere between knowing you should and actually sitting down to do it, something stops you. The thought of putting all of your numbers in a spreadsheet scares you because you are afraid of what the numbers will say. Maybe you think they will affirm that you have never been good with money.

In this episode I want to kindly challenge your spreadsheet fears because avoidi...

A listener asked me a question that I know has crossed your mind too, especially if your birthday is coming up or you are someone who loves to celebrate. The question was this: Keina, how do I treat myself for my birthday while also honoring my financial goals? And I love this question because it gets to something I think about a lot, which is that treating yourself and being intentional with your money are not two opposing things....

You know that moment in the shower when something crosses your mind and you want it, but you have no idea how you would ever get there? Maybe it is a house, a baby, a retirement that looks a certain way, or a business you have been thinking about building. And before that thought even gets a chance to breathe, your brain shows up with a list of reasons it is not possible for you right now. You have debt. You do not make enough. Tha...

If you have debt and a dream, you have probably told yourself at some point that you have to choose between the two. That you have to be debt-free before you buy the house, before you start a family, before you invest in your future. And on the surface that feels like the responsible thing to believe. But what I have watched happen with so many of the people I work with is that waiting for the debt to be gone before the dream can s...

There is a moment most people know well, the one where you have a general sense that something is off with your money but you do not want to look closely enough to find out what it actually is. You tell yourself you probably overspent, you are not sure by how much, and because you do not know the number you cannot do anything about it. So you wait, and the week passes, and the record keeps skipping.

That is what financial avoidance ...

The holidays are not a surprise. Christmas comes every single year. Thanksgiving comes every single year. New Year's Eve comes every single year. And yet most people walk into November completely unprepared, spend the entire season figuring it out as they go, and start January carrying a credit card balance they are going to spend the next several months trying to pay off. If that cycle sounds familiar, this episode is going to cha...

You told yourself this was going to be the year you paid off debt. Maybe you have made some progress, maybe you have not, or maybe the debt you paid off earlier this year has quietly started creeping back up. If you are sitting in July wondering why nothing has really changed yet, this episode is for you.

Here is what I want you to understand before we talk about any numbers. Paying off debt quickly is not the same thing as paying o...

If you have ever paid off your credit card balance and watched it creep right back up within a few months, you already know that paying off debt and getting out of debt are two completely different things. In this episode I am sharing my own debt story because I think it is important for you to hear that the cycle you are in right now is one I have lived myself, and I want you to understand exactly what it took to break it.

For year...

Have you been telling yourself you'll start when things calm down? Maybe when the debt drops a little, when the new job comes through, when the kids settle in, when you finally feel ready? I want you to sit with that for a second, because if you are honest with yourself, that future start date has already moved more than once.

In this episode I am talking directly to my Keina lurkers. You know my work. You have been following along ...

You set a goal to get your finances together. You had a solid week or two. Then life happened and you missed your money date. Now you're telling yourself the whole thing is ruined. In this episode, Keina talks directly to the high achievers and recovering perfectionists who can only start something if they're going to do it perfectly. She introduces the concept of C-level work: the small, consistent actions that keep your financial...

Are you spending money to feel better? Just sit with that question for a second before we dive in, because if you had to answer it honestly, the answer is probably yes. And that is not a bad thing on its own, but what I want you to think about today is whether the spending is actually delivering what you are looking for when you reach for your wallet.

A few weeks ago I had one of those stretches where the weather in DC was gray and ...

You have a budget, or at least a list of bills you have been working from, and somewhere along the way the economy shifted, prices went up, and your budget stayed exactly where it was. So now you are getting to the end of the month wondering where your money went even though you feel like nothing has changed about the way you spend.

This episode is about the gap between what you think you are spending and what you are actually spend...

You started this year with an intention. Maybe it was January 1st, maybe it was sometime before the new year even started, but at some point you told yourself this was going to be the year you finally got out of debt, started budgeting for real, or stopped living paycheck to paycheck. And now we're in the middle of the year and if you're being honest, you're somewhere between "I made some progress" and "I honestly don't know what h...