Shannon Lee Simmons - Worry-Free Money: Stop budgeting, Start Living

For Mom,

because this book would not have been possible

without your endless support, love and motivation.

Contents

How do you feel about your money situation? Im not asking for the answer you give your friends, family or colleagues, but for the truth. At three a.m., when you wake up and cant sleep, how do you feel about your finances?

I run a financial planning firm and I hear the above statements every day when I meet with clients. Over the past 10 years Ive had thousands of conversations as I sat down with everyday people to talk about their money. And we get it all out on the tableevery financial secret, embarrassment, fear, win and loss. The process can be cathartic, enlightening and truly amazing.

I get to cut right to the chase with people. Hi, nice to meet you. How much down payment did you put on your house? How much money do you make? What are your hopes, dreams and fears? Do you lease or own your car? (Im lots of fun at parties.)

People dont lie or sugar-coat their finances when they talk to me. I get to peek behind the curtain into their financial lives and realities. Like a financial confession booth, I am privy to the true financial story, not simply whats posted on social media or spoken in person at dinner partiesYeah, things are great or We spent more than we wanted but it was worth it. They trust me with the real deal, the nitty-gritty numerical details, and its not a responsibility I take lightly. I love that Im able to create a space where it feels safe to disclose things like these:

Sound familiar? When you allow yourself to be honest, the words you might find yourself using to describe your finances include frustrated, exhausted, scared, resentful and guilty. All these are just other words for feeling broke. Feeling broke means youre worried about money. Youre convinced there just isnt enough. You believe that if you just had a bit more money, surely youd be less stressed, more fun, healthier, a better partner, a better parent. Happier. Successful. Less anxious. Safe. Maybe you could slow down, safe in the knowledge that you have the things you need. And maybe you could breathe. If you just had more money.

A decade ago, my clients didnt feel as squeezed, hopeless and frustrated with their financial lives as they do now. The drastic increase in the use of the word broke caught my attention a few years ago. People in urban centres, the suburbs, the country; single, married, with or without kidsit didnt matter. Client after client was saying to me, I feel broke. They all had this feeling of financial frustration and unease.

The interesting thing is that, on paper, these people are not actually, numerically broke. But being broke and feeling broke are two different things.

Let me be clear. In this bookand most of the time in my officeIm not talking about the finances of individuals and families who dont have enough to pay for basic necessities like food, shelter and health care. That situation, while still hopeful, requires a different set of financial solutions, financial planning and support that we wont dive into here. In this book Im talking about the financially frustrated middle class, those who earn a living wage right up to the downright privileged, but who all feel like they cannot get ahead. They feel stuck and they worrya lotabout their financial future.

So whats actually happening when youre feeling broke? The real problem is that you dont truly know if you are on track or not. Are you going to be okay financially? Or are you actually falling behind? It feels like theres no real way of knowing. Just because you have some credit card debt doesnt mean that youre never going to be able to retire. And just because you have savings doesnt mean youre financially okay either. When you dont know if youre on track, you never know what you can afford.

If you dont know what you can and cannot actually afford, every purchase feels terrifying. Was the $40 takeout a bad financial decision that you should beat yourself up for, or was it okay? Will an extra $100 in rent really push out your dreams of home ownership for years, or will it make no difference at all? How guilty and afraid should you actually be when you spend money? This constant sense of vague guilt makes it feel as if theres no plan and no strategy to your finances.

And it doesnt stop with spending. That guilt spills over into your savingsor lack thereoftoo. Im sure you know the benefits of saving and Im sure youre already worried about saving enough. How can you not be when low wages, rising home prices and the creeping fear that robots could take over your job dominate the modern economic reality and populate every news cycle? It starts to feel as if every single dollar you earn should be stored away, protected and saved for a rainy dayhell, a rainy decade. But life costs money and you have to spend money at some point. Its a trap. You worry if you spend and you worry if you dont. As a result, you find yourself worried about money, and often.

In the past when things felt financially scary, you may have turned to hardcore budgeting to gain control of your finances, but this type of budgeting simply does not work. Its not the answer. Budgeting makes you feel truly broke, which leads to overspending, under-saving and general anxiety about the future.

Being both a certified financial planner and a certified life coach, I often make the joke that in my financial planning practice I use my life-coaching skills 80 percent of the time and that the rest is just an Excel spreadsheet. But there is truth to this. I listen. I hear you and people like you, and Ive seen the mounting guilt, anxiety and frustration when it comes to money. I know whats making you worry and I know how to help, so you can stop budgeting and start living life without financial worry.

Its about changing your financial perspective and learning to say no. And it came to me years ago after I got into a massive fight with my then-future husband in an IKEA store.

An IKEA Fight

It was a Saturday afternoon. I was staring intensely at a Billy bookcase as if it were a piece of art that I needed to appreciate, terrified that an IKEA sales associate would ask me ever so cheerfully if I required assistance. If that happened Id have to speak, and if I had to speak, Id cry. A public IKEA cry. Ugh! The worst. Thankfully it was busy and the sales associates were swamped as they helped other people: people buying new kitchens, planning for babies, sprucing up bedrooms.

Only 30 minutes earlier Matt and I had been laughing in the car as the radio blared a Kim Mitchell song. We were driving to IKEA because we needed a new couch. Simple enough, right? But that couch took on a life of its own.

Our current couch was a 25-year-old hand-me-down. It was starter furniture. The statement piece of a couple who had moved in together right after postsecondary and gratefully accepted whatever they could scrounge from friends and family. In our small apartment it fit right in with our camp chairs, a folding picnic table and a mattress lying on the floor as our bed. Back in those early days Id stumble home from my Bay Street job every night and wed cook up a stir-fry or meatballs, and then wed curl up on that couch to watch