202 | Rewind: Overconsumption and Emotional Spending

Spending money is not a remedy for negative emotions. Although spending may provide some immediate relief from the negative emotion, it only leads to more negative emotion in the long term when you end up overspending and creating a financial mess.

In this episode, let’s talk about overconsumption and emotional spending, including how to handle those negative emotions we so desperately want to avoid.

• • the connection between lawyers wanting to lose weight and improve their finances
  • why both issues are common for lawyers
  • the loop that emotional spending triggers
  • the effect of giving in to immediate gratification
  • what to do when you feel negative emotions
  • why it’s great that we’re not happy all the time
  • the positive impact of feeling your negative emotions

You’re listening to Wealthyesq. We are a community of lawyers who believe that true wealth is having control of our time. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you’re doing well and having an amazing day so far. Today I am bringing you a rewind episode. I’ve had a number of conversations over the past few weeks with lawyers who wanted help with emotional spending. So they’re spending because they feel sad or they’re spending because they feel stressed or things like that. And so I thought that this episode would be helpful for any of you out there who are dealing with emotional spending and want some tips on how to make it better, how to stop doing that. So this episode talks all about spending to feel better and how to stop doing that. So let’s get into the episode, overconsumption and emotional spending.

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Today we are talking about overconsumption and chasing happiness. I have had a number of conversations over the last few weeks with clients who are working to improve their finances, but also trying to lose weight or live a healthier lifestyle. So they’re on this financial journey but also on a weight loss or health journey as well. And as I was thinking about it, I realized it’s not a coincidence that so many people are experiencing this because both of these problems stem from overconsumption. So generally speaking, and I know there are some exceptions to both of these, but generally when you are struggling to finances, it’s because you spending too much money. And when you’re struggling with your weight, it’s because you’re eating too much food. And I think both of these are issues for lawyers, or they’re so common lawyers because the legal profession can be stressful and we often choose to cope with that stress with food or with spending. So you’re juggling all the deadlines and dealing with different partners. Or if you’re not in a firm setting a different boss, or maybe you’re dealing with difficult colleagues or difficult clients and then whatever else you have going on in your personal life, so you’ve got a lot on your plate and many lawyers will use the spending or the food to escape what’s happening in life if only for a moment right to make themselves feel better momentarily. And I don’t purport to be any kind of authority on the food and weight loss. I’ve never struggled my way over eating or any of that. But I know from talking to my colleagues who do work in that area, that there are so many parallels between weight and money and our relationship to our we and our money. I’m gonna focus in this episode on the my side, but if you’re struggling with your weight, think about how what I’m saying applies there too. So as we just talked about lawyers often feel stressed, maybe overwhelmed at times at work, and my clients have told me about having a stressful day at work and then going on J. Crew or Sephora and buying a bunch of stuff. And it’s a common pattern, right? You’re feeling the stress of overwhelm or whatever that emotion is for you. And you go spend money to make yourself feel better. The issue though, is you put yourself into this loop like it’s a spiral almost, you’re feeling stressed and you spend to make yourself feel better. But then you end up not only feeling stressed about work, but eventually you start feeling stressed about your finances, and you’re beating yourself up about where you are financially and then you end up spending more money trying to feel better again, and you end up feeling more stressed about your finances so you spend more to feel better, and it just goes in this cycle. I’m planning to call this episode overconsumption chasing happiness because we are often spending just to avoid feeling of emotion and trying to feel good again. We are so unwilling to feel our negative emotions and we just want to plow over them and make ourselves feel better as quickly as possible and get back to feeling happy. Spending gives us that immediate gratification, that instant hit of pleasure. So we don’t feel that negative emotion in a moment, but it’s not sustainable. And actually it ends up causing us to feel negative motion for a more prolonged period. Because spending every time you feel bad leads to overspending, which will eventually lead to you feeling bad about the overall state of your finances. Giving into the gratification might be a quick fix. But it comes at the risk of your long term gratification. So you get this immediate pleasure, that immediate sense of feeling better, but then you go into that spiral that we were talking about. And the tricky thing is you’re spending to feel happier. But ultimately, you’re not happier when you end up overspending in your finances, RMS. And so what I encourage you to do when you feel an urge to buy something on impulse is to check in with yourself and how you’re feeling because most likely you’re trying to escape some emotion that you just want to feel. So checking in with yourself will help you figure out what it is that triggers that desire to spend when it’s not something that you’ve planned so similar to what I was talking about with the clients via their favorite store because it stressful day and notice how you’re feeling when you want to spend money, if you can just allow that feeling to be there. Just allow yourself to feel that emotion. It will eventually pass. I heard someone liken it to a guest coming to your house. So this negative emotion is knocking at your door and currently you’re just ignoring it. So it just keeps knocking keeps knocking keeps knocking and if you just let it in, it might stay for a little while but eventually it will leave. If you allow yourself to experience the negative emotion you get to the other side of it. We are often chasing happiness, buying more things to feel better. But if we can be more in touch with what we’re feeling and be willing to sit with and feel those feelings rather than spending to avoid them, then it would undoubtedly help with your finances. For some reason in our society, we think it’s not okay to not be happy all the time. But part of being human part of being alive is experiencing what we might call negative emotions. And those negative emotions provide a contrast for you to feel the positive ones. We know happiness because we’ve experienced sadness. We know excitement because we’ve experienced disappointment. Each of those negative emotions allows you to be able to experience the positive ones, and you’ll have a more positive experience with your finances. When you’re not trying to push the emotions away by spending money when you are experiencing the emotion and allowing it to just be there and allowing yourself to sit with it and recognizing that you may feel better in the short term if you spend but ultimately, it leads to a negative experience when you’re overspending and your finances are all out of whack. Versus if you can stop chasing happiness and practice delayed gratification and focus on that long term game. Right if you can experience the emotion and not give into the spending and you can stick to your plan. You end up with a positive on the back end. You end up not overspending and you have money available for the financial goals you have. Happiness is not something that you can buy, right it doesn’t come from buying new things or otherwise overconsuming happiness comes from within and it’s one of many emotions available to us. So if you’ll allow yourself to feel all of the emotions, even the negative ones, and if you recognize that you are the one who’s in control of your emotions, and who was able to make yourself feel better then you’ll inevitably improve your finances and your weight and any other area where you’re over consuming.

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All right, I hope you enjoyed that episode and that you find it helpful if you are in a place where you’re dealing with emotional spending and you want to stop. So that is it for this week’s episode. Please take a second share the episode with a friend or two who you think might find it useful because that helps us to get this information in the hands of more lawyers. And as always, I appreciate your support. As we close out friend I pray that you take the information you learn here apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently. Week after week. You’ll continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.