Why Does Saving Feel Like Losing?

Speaker A00:00:37

Balance you see, that means danger. That low balance means late payments. And that low balance means you're falling behind.And the beautiful part of it, that lesson kept you alive financially. But now you're almost at the finish line, maybe just weeks away from being debt free. And instead of feeling proud, you're feeling scared.And you've done the hard work. You've got that automatic transfer set up. The money is moving into the right place. But every time you check your balance, you start to worry.Your brain still seals low and screams danger because it doesn't know the war is over. And today is not about a money problem. This is survival mode, lying to you. And today we're going to help you with the truth of the situation.Hello and welcome to Financially Confident Christian. I'm Ralph and I'm so glad you chose to join me today. We've got a great listener question today.Someone who spent over a decade digging out of debt and they're just weeks away from being completely debt free except for their home. They're doing everything right but that automatic savings that they know the next step is triggering some anxiety.They're watching their checking account balance drop and they're scared. They know the money's going for somewhere good, but they're worried about it.That tension they're feeling between knowing is we're talking them through today. So today it's what we're going to talk about.We're going to talk about where the anxiety comes from, how to build trust in a new system without white knuckling it every month. Let's get right to today's listener question.Hi Ralph, I've been on more than a decade long journey from feeling very financially insecure to to building a career and finally getting my head above water. I paid off my debt and at the end of the year I'll be completely debt free except for my mortgage.Now I want to stop paying everyone else and start paying myself. I want to set up some automatic transfers to savings and investments. But here's the problem.I'm so used to seeing a certain amount hit my checking account and I'm using it for bills and loans. The idea of leaving less sitting in my bank account is giving me a lot of anxiety.Even though I know the money's going somewhere good, it still feels like I'm losing something.Ralph, do you have any tips on getting comfortable with automatic savings without constantly freaking out that my checking account isn't as full as it used to be? What a great question. And I want to say something bold right Here from the start. That's not a money problem. It's a trust problem.Because the truth is, you spent years learning to fear a low balance, and now you've got to teach yourself something different. That low checking balance with a funded savings isn't the same of that fear that you lived in. But how do we make it practical?Because I hear what you're saying. You're like, ralph, I'm looking at this balance, and it makes me nervous. But let's talk about what's happening here.We got to start by name, naming what's happening and setting a floor. You're like, ralph, where are you going with this? The anxiety that you're feeling wasn't some random set of anxiety triggers.Your body, your mind was trained because you lived in survival for so long. And you remember those days. You remember those days when you checked that balance, and it meant big problems. It meant you were missing payments. It.It meant that you were overdrafting your account. And yes, it meant that you were falling behind.And that association with that low balance in your checking doesn't magically disappear just because the circumstances changed. You got to refire your system. Your nervous system is running in the old code. If we were coders, we would say it's running old code.That's a code that kept you safe, but now it's misfiring. And that fear that you're feeling, I'm not diminishing it. I'm not putting it aside. That's real. That is a real fear. But here's the best part of that.The threat is not real anymore. You're not broken. You're just running a script that hasn't been updated yet. So here's a quick fix before we even get deep into today's show.Give yourself a floor. Pick a number that feels like breathing room, and keep that in your checking. I'm not talking about zero. I'm not talking about whatever's left over.Whatever that number makes you, you feel Safe. Maybe it's $500, maybe it's $1,500. There's no wrong answer. I remember as a kid, I've shared this on this show many times, that I was kind of.My mom's like a person at home that helped her with everything financially.And I remember being about 8, 9, maybe 10 years old, and my mom sitting at the dining room table, and she had one of those old check registers, and she would make all her notes in it. And she called me over one day and she said, I got to show you Something she goes, I am so proud of where I am.She says, I have $2,000 in my checking account. And I could just see the pride on her face. That was her security blanket.But what you're doing right now is okay, but set a floor that works for you and say, look, I'm not going to transfer any money to savings until that floor is covered. Like my Mom's floor was $2,000. She never wanted to go below that. After time, as time goes by, you're going to see that, okay, I'm cool with this.And maybe that floor comes down a little bit because giving yourself a floor isn't weakness. My mom wasn't weak because she had that floor in her mind. It was a way to make habits sustainable. And that's what I encourage you to do.But you've also got to do something else. You got to separate your accounts and watch the right number because right now you're hyper focused on that checking account balance.But opening a savings account is different than that. One of the things that I'm going to encourage you to do is open a savings account at a different bank altogether.You know what they say, out of sight, out of mind. That doesn't mean it's out of existence. But you don't see it and focus on it all the time. You got to change the outlook of your picture.You know, maybe a high yield savings account. It may give you a little delay in accessing the money, but it removes that temptation to check it daily.But then bigger than that, you've got to retrain what you're measuring. Your current instinct because it's been surviving for you has been to check that account every single day.I can just picture you, you're getting on your phone, you're checking that checking account. I'm good for today, I'm good for today. But you've got to start changing the dynamic here because it's not just the checking account balance.As you develop these financial skills, you got to start adding some things together. Think of it like a sandw. You've got to put all the components in.You've got your checking account, you've got your savings account and you've got your investments. One of those that checking account might number may be getting lower, but the overall number is getting bigger.That's what tells you actually how you're doing.It's not that, well, here's how much is in my checking, how much is in your savings, how much is in your investments, how much is in that high yield savings account. Or that high yield, whatever that is for you, maybe a simple spreadsheet, maybe some software.But when you start to measure things right, that anxiety is going to start to lose its grip. But I'm going to give you one more thing I'm going to encourage you to do, because right now it probably feels hard.The first month of this is the hardest. I get it. The second month, it's going to feel a little easier. And by the third month, I'm going to promise you something right now.You're not even going to think about it anymore. So say to yourself right now, I'm going to set it and forget it. I'm going to start with that floor.I'm going to start moving money to savings, and I'm not doing anything for 90 days.Because if you stop doing it every time you feel anxiety, every time you look at that check account balance and go, man, there's not as much as there used to be, you're never going to get to that third month. You're never going to prove it to yourself. I'm going to encourage you to do one more thing as well. Write down why you started this.One of the things that really encouraged me, you said, ralph, I'm going to be debt free here. It took you a decade to do that, but now you want to do something more. So write down what you want that money to do next.And when you start to fear that, when you start to feel that anxiety, start to feel that, that fear coming back up, go look at that. That anxiety that you're feeling isn't a signal to stop. It's actually a signal that you're doing something new and it's okay to do new things.I just want to focus on something new because I think people can miss this. You spent 10 years building. You spent 10 years disciplining yourself. And now I think you're kind of scared of success.Now, this is a show about faith and finance. Faith doesn't promise you won't feel afraid. I get the fear. It doesn't promise that doing the right thing will feel comfortable.And it doesn't ask that you trust a system you can't fully see. That's different than a faith posture. Let's look at Proverbs 21:20. We're going to talk about this in a second. For our Bible verse today.It says, the wise store up, but a fool gulps it down. What you're doing right now is being very wise. And when you're doing wise things, it doesn't always feel good. In the moment that you're doing it.But here's what I know about God and money. He's not asking you to be reckless. He's asking you to take the next step even when it feels scary. You spent 10 years learning to survive.That's no small amount. But now you're in a new phase. You're learning to build something. And those are completely different skills.And it's going to take time to rewire yourself. So give yourself some grace during that time. As I said earlier, and it's worth repeating. The anxiety is not a warning sign. It's just a growing pain.But the best part about growing pains, it means that you're actually growing. Because you spent 10 years doing very hard things with your money. The next steps going to be hard as well.But friend, you already know how to do hard things. So it's going to be easy for you. So here's your win for today. I want you to go ahead and figure out that floor for you.Like we'll call it Ralph's mom's floor. What's that Minimum checking account floor that right now you got to do before anything else and go work towards that.What's that balance that makes it so you don't feel anxiety, you can breathe. Like I said, maybe it's 500, $1,000. There's no wrong answer to that. Don't judge yourself. To say this is what makes this work.That number becomes the rule. And then once you've got amount in there, then the savings happen after the floor is covered. It's not about slowing down.It's about building a system you'll actually stick with. Which leads us to the Bible verse we mentioned a few minutes ago. From Proverbs 21:20. The wise store up choice food and olive oil.But a full goal sits down. As I said a few times, saving is a form of wisdom in scripture. It's not just a financial strategy. A lot of people don't get that.Savings is very scripturally based. This is what the the verse is telling us today. Setting money aside even when things feel scary is a deliberate faithful choice.And what makes it hard isn't laziness, it's rewiring years of survival. You've got years of survival that you've got to break free. That's real work. But friend, God honors the work you're doing. How about we pray together?Heavenly Father, I just want to thank you for this listener. This listener really encouraged me today.Encouraged me because of decades of discipline, making those hard choices paying down that debt and they're nearly at the finish line. Lord, we know that took real faith and real grit. So we thank you for that. And now they're at a new threshold and it's scary in different ways.So Lord, I just ask that you would bring peace that are anxiety that they feel when their bank account balance drops. Help them to really take a step back and see the whole picture, not just the number on their screen.And Lord, give them patience to let that new system prove itself over time. Remind them that wisdom and fear can coexist and that moving forward is what faith looks like from the inside.I ask that you would guard their progress, protect what they built and help them trust that they're doing that. What they're doing now is the next right step. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen, friend. You've already done the hardest part. You really have.Now you're learning to trust a system that's actually working for you. That anxiety comes from years of survival mode and it's not a sign you're doing something wrong.So separate that savings, set that minimum checking floor and then start looking at the total picture. But give that system 90 days before you judge whether it's working or not. And I'm going to encourage you it's going to work.Now maybe you've got a question that you'd like me to work through with you. I'd love to hear your voice.You can send me a voicemail by going to financiallyconfidentchristian.com/voicemail we'll put a link in the show notes but again it's financiallyconfidentchristian.com/voicemail thank you so much for your question today. Thank you so much for joining me as well. I want to encourage you to stay financially savvy. Keep up the hard work.May God bless you and you have a great day today.