Financial Sobriety Tools

What tools do you think of that you could use with your money?

Right away I think of using a tracking program, mindfulness and working out. 

These might not be tools you think of when you think of your money. 

Financial Sobriety Tools is the second foundation of Financial Sobriety School. I reach into my toolbox every single day for my Financial Sobriety. Tools can help you grow in your relationship with your money and your Financial Sobriety. Keep you grounded. Get you excited. Connect with your money. 

Let’s start building a relationship with our money that is no longer something that is happening outside of us and something that is happening within. 

The tools that I use the most in my Financial Sobriety are: 

• Creating a spending plan
• Tracking my spending
• Daily mindfulness
• Journaling
• Celebrating my money
• Only using my debit card and not credit card
• Having a money date with myself and also with my husband
• Window of...

What is holding you back from Financial Sobriety?

We can often feel completely paralyzed when it comes to starting to work on our Financial Sobriety. 

I often hear people when they tell me that they are feeling “stuck” with their money. Something is holding them back from starting. 

Instead of thinking that you are stuck, or that something is holding you back I would love for you to ask yourself “ What am I afraid to look at?”. 

Fear is real when it comes to our money. 

When was the last time you heard a conversation when someone talked about how good they are feeling about their money? When was the last time you heard a conversation when someone complained or said negative things about their money? I’m pretty sure that it was more recent that you heard someone using negative language about their money. 

The society that we live in has an overall negative narrative about money, other than consumerism telling you what will save...

There are so many parallels to addiction of spending and alcohol. This was my story. When I stopped drinking and started my sobriety from alcohol the addiction of spending came on strong. Different substance, same outcome. 

In recovery we have a saying, we peel the layers of the onion. When we start our recovery from one substance or situation we can often pick up something else in its place. Often if you are recovering from alcohol use disorder it can be replaced with food, sugar, spending, gambling, sex etc. I like to call it same sh*t, different pile. It’s all the same. We are reaching outside of ourselves to escape. We use something else as a coping mechanism. Some call it a really fun game of whack-a-mole. 

This is completely normal. 

In Lesson 4 we talked about understanding our financial feelings. This is where the parallels are really seen. The feelings. The things we are trying to numb out on. The void we are trying to fill. 

Part of my story is...

Welcome to lesson four of Financial Sobriety School. Today is going to be all about the first foundation of Financial Sobriety, Understanding your Financial Feelings.

One thing I know to be so true is that when people are having a hard time with money, when negative stuff is coming up about money, when there's negative feelings, when there's narrative kind of happening in the background with the money, most of the time, it has nothing to do with the money, it has to do with the behaviors and patterns behind the money.

It has to do with the patterns, it has to do with the feelings that we're trying to push down, that we're trying to numb out. We try to replace the feelings with numbing out on our spending and buying things that we think are going to make us happy.

Think when you have been in a space where you have felt really emotional, really stressed out, anxious, and what is one of the first things you reach for? Maybe your phone for example. There's an impulse that happens...

Welcome to lesson three, my favourite subject, Sober Spending. This is the fourth foundation in the seven foundations of Financial Sobriety School. I'll go through each foundation as the week's go on but  I wanted to start with Sober Spending, because as of today, you can actually register for a three-day class that I'm going to be hosting called Sober Spending, you can register for that today! It is at www.lindaparmar.com/soberspending. We're going to be having the class from April 19th -21^st 2023.

I'm going to be hosting this time for you to be able to do some Sober Spending, have some experience with it, learn the foundation of Sober Spending, I'm so excited!  I wanted to tell you a little bit about what Sober Spending is. It's one of the biggest pieces overall with our money. Dealing with the emotions and dealing with the numbing out. All of this is a core foundation of Financial Sobriety. How we spend our money, how we plan to spend our money, and being able to...

Welcome to Lesson 2 of Financial Sobriety School.

This lesson I wanted to tell my story. I have told my story before but what's really beautiful this time when I tell my story is that my story has come full circle, for now. What I mean by that is, I have come from a place of being close to bankruptcy close, losing my home, close to losing everything. 

I've been working on my financial sobriety now for over five years. When I say working, I literally mean working on my financial sobriety, to get to a place where I was able to pay off my credit cards. As you'll read in my story today, it took a long time to do that, because the addiction to spending money was so, so strong and I accumulated a lot of debt.

I'm going to start my story when I was just a wee baby. My parents were babies raising babies back in the day. My mom was pregnant with me at 15 and my dad was 18. My mom was 16, when she gave birth to me. SO YOUNG! When I think about that statistic in general all I can say is...

I am so excited to announce

the launch of Financial Sobriety School!  

My mission is, is to help people stop overspending stop impulse spending stop addictively spending money on stuff that they don't need, and starting to build daily habits, starting to build systems, and being able to come to a place where you're making clear sober decisions with your money. This is Financial Sobriety.

One of the key foundations is sober spending. And what does that look like? What I think sober spending is, is making clear, aligned, conscious decisions. My story is that I was completely addicted to spending money. And I was obsessed with being able to buy things. I thought credit cards were my money, I thought that the limit on my credit card was permission to buy whatever I wanted and I had no consciousness about it. I just went for it. And I know that there's a lot of us out there who struggle with the addiction of spending money, the obsession, the impulses, the compulsion to spend money...

Have you been waiting for tomorrow to stop a certain habit you have with money?

Overspending

Charging everything on a credit card but can’t afford to pay it off

Avoiding looking at our money (online banking, statements, bills)

Eating out too much

Mindlessly spending

Amazon orders

Impulse purchases

Robbing Peter to pay Paul

Numbing out on online shopping

 And soooooooo many more! Did any of these resonate with you?

Journaling prompt: What habits are no longer serving you with money?

In a perfect world we would feel ready. Sometimes we just need to take one small step.

When I first started working with my money, I did not feel ready. It felt like one of those things that I just needed to get going on because I just kept saying “tomorrow I will deal with it”.

Tomorrow never came but my excuses and avoidance did, every single day.

I avoided money for so long. The main thing that I was avoiding was my debt. I just kept spending and...

I am in recovery from an addiction to spending money.

I am in recovery from addiction to alcohol.

When I first got sober from alcohol my addiction to spending money got out of control.

I almost lost my home because of my spending addiction. That was my rock bottom.

The impulses I felt about drinking had now manifested into overspending.

The parallels between sobriety and money is fascinating to me and see it in women every day.

When we are active in our addiction it is often us trying to cope with an internal struggle with external things.

My drinking was fueled by anxiety, stress, overwhelm, burnout and so many other things.

Getting sober my spending was fueled by all the same things. When I was stressed (and all the other feelings), I went to the store to purchase things to make me feel better. Even when I felt happy, it was an excuse to go spend money.

When we are in recovery there is a term called addiction transference. What this means is that you can transfer your...

Ok, I know what you are thinking. What is a spending plan? It is a term I use instead of saying budget. I don’t love the word budget as it feels kinda icky to me. It feels like a term I used to use when I tried to get my money figured out and I always failed at it.  If you love the word budget, please use it! I want you to use the term that works best for you.

Term’s like, “it’s not in my budget”, “just did my budget and I won’t have any money this month”, “we can’t afford that, it’s not in the budget” were things I sometimes heard growing up and even said myself as an adult.

I like to refer to it as a spending plan because my thinking has turned around to “I get to CHOOSE what I spend my money on”, as opposed to “My budget is so depressing, I have to spend too much money”. Sometimes the difference in how we perceive things can make such a HUGE difference.

First and foremost,...