Create an abundance allowance to change your relationship with money
I don’t know about you, but the Puritans seemed to have had an undue influence on my childhood. I was raised never to pay full price and that anything not practical was well, frivolous. Deciding to leave behind a focus on paucity for one of abundance wasn’t difficult at all, but doing it seemed nearly impossible. It was such a well worn groove that I knew it couldn’t happen over night so I gave myself an abundance allowance; a weekly amount of money that I had to spend by the end of the month on ‘frivolous’ things. Just like a monetary allowance helps kids learn about saving, budgeting, and responsibility an abundance allowance helps adults learn about letting go, playing, and loving yourself by not putting you last on the list of too many things.
Finding a sense of abundance can be a challenge made worse when the news, your checkbook, and neighbors are all reiterating that there is now less to go around. That only makes it more important to feel a sense of possibility and prosperity in your daily life. Have you noticed that when you worry about money, you seem to have less of it? Even if it’s just from subtracting it so many times in your mind that you simply feel poorer.
When I set out to overcome this I determined to run the experiment for a full year. My inner Scrooge was able to mostly let go because I set the money aside at the beginning of the year in a fixed amount so that it wasn’t interfering with other parts of my budget. The amount of money doesn’t really matter, so even if all you can justify to yourself is $1 a week that can still be very effective (and that’s only $52 for a full year).
What you spend it on is really what appeals to you – even the shopping trips can turn into an adventure although if you’re like me you may have to be firm with yourself to actually spend it and spend it on something you really want rather than just getting it over with. The rule is that you budget the money evenly for each week. It can accumulate for a few weeks but no longer than the given calendar month (so the money needs to be gone for March before the allowance for the first week of April starts.) If you start feeling like you need to save for longer than that then either readjust the amount down (it may be taking too much from your household budget) or consider that what you’re saving for is really a necessity and not an abundance item.
Try for things that make you feel happy when you see it or use it: a perfect coffee cup, glitter crayons, a book on a topic you’ve wanted to learn about, snazzy gold paperclips, a movie you want to see that’s not part of your regular entertainment budget. If you have a little more cash to spare consider a class at the community college or dance studio, an item that you formerly would never spend that much on that you really love or an luxury upgrade to something practical like a fountain pen for your journal instead of the usual office-supply variety.
If you find yourself feeling really guilty over spending just on yourself, give a matching amount to charity. But I think you’ll find that you are more generous with others both in time and money if you know how to be generous with yourself without guilt or expectations.
