Financial Feminist - 267. The 3 Mistakes You're Making with Your Money Resolutions (Personal Finance Cheat Sheet Pt. 1)

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

If your New Year’s financial resolutions already feel shaky, you might be sabotaging yourself without even realizing it. In this episode, I’m breaking down the three biggest ways people wreck their money goals before January is even over, from setting vague, emotionally disconnected goals to falling into an all-or-nothing mindset and failing to track progress. This is the first episode in our brand-new Personal Finance Cheat Sheet series, and I’m giving you practical, realistic tools to finally follow through in 2026 — without burnout, perfectionism, or shame.  Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE quiz and get your personalized money plan: ⁠https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod⁠ Science Backed Goal Setting Episode: https://play.megaphone.fm/vtgw675btq6fuky50hmoeg 00:00 Intro 01:57 Why New Year’s Resolutions Often Fail 03:56 Mistake 1 08:44 How to Anchor Your Financial Goals 13:34 Reflection Prompts for Goal Setting 15:35 Mistake 2 24:14 Shiny Object Syndrome & Chasing Novelty 27:54 The Power of Consistency and Bare Minimums 30:08 Free Personalized Money Plan Resource 31:54 Mistake 3 36:34 How to Track Progress & Build Motivation 41:06 The Money Date Practice 43:46 Building Self-Trust and Accountability 47:06 Closing Thoughts & What’s Next in the Series Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You are sabotaging your financial goals and New Year's resolutions already. Here's how to fix it. But first, a word from our sponsors. You all have heard me say that my partner signed his first client with his business, his brand new business, and literally talked to him the other day. He is in talks about landing his second big client. And all of that happened because of his Squarespace website. Squarespace is so easy to use.

I literally built him his website in a weekend. I don't know how to code, I don't know anything, but I can drag and drop, and you can drag and drop too. So if you're trying to design a beautiful website, Squarespace is the place to be. The other thing he's doing on Squarespace is that he can send emails to anybody that signs up who's interested through their email campaign tool, and he can also take payments directly through Squarespace. So he doesn't have to use and pay for, like, another payment processing service. It's already baked into Squarespace.

Head on over to Squarespace.com slash ffod for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, you can use offer code FFPod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This is literally the code that I told him to use, and he saved 10% off his website. Welcome to the Personal Finance Cheat Sheetsheets series here on Financial Feminist. This is a brand new series we're launching. It is three episodes, including this one, about how to get started fresh financially and how to be better with money finally in 2026. If you're new to the show, my name is Tori.

I help women be better with money. We've helped over 5 million women save money, pay off debt, start investing, and start businesses. And I'm also a multimillionaire and New York Times best selling author. Before we get into all of the ways you're sabotaging yourself already, and I know, you're like, I'm like two seconds into January. It can't already be happening. It is. Let's talk about all of the pressure you're feeling around the new year. First of all,

I'm pissed off about the fact that, like, the new year happens when it gets dark at 4.30 and it's freaking cold outside, because it really should start in spring. It would be really nice to say, ah, as all the flowers are blooming and it's getting warmer outside and I actually have daylight, I'd love to now set goals about the person I want to be. However, that's not how New Year's resolution works. They start apparently in January when it's the most inopportune time for you to motivate yourself to make changes. But that's why I'm here. We know statistically, and I'm not going to harp on it too much because you know it too, that most people don't fulfill their New Year's resolutions and people give up by week two. But you're not one of those people. This episode today is the

foundation for the rest of this series to give you very specific ways to actually impact your financial goals this year and to actually set you on the path to success so that you don't have yet another year of making promises that you're not keeping. So if you're done self-sabotaging, you are over not actually having control over your money, then you're in the right place. Let's talk about the first mistake I see people make when setting New Year's resolutions. This mistake alone is probably the biggest reason why you have not been successful in the Okay. When people set their New Year's resolutions and specifically their New Year's resolutions around money, they tend to be something like, I want to get better with money this year.

That is super well-intentioned. And I love that for you. I love that you have that goal. It's probably why you're here watching this video or listening to this episode. But when doing that, it's not specific and it does not give you a reason to care, right? I want to be better with money is not a goal, it is a wish. It is a fantasy, right? I want to get better with money has no quantifiable conclusion. You do not know if you've actually done the thing. And more importantly, you have no skin in the game. A lot of people set goals and they say, I want to do this specific thing. And it's maybe something that they want to do because their parents told them it's important or because society convinced them of its value. But they don't really care about that

thing. They don't really give a shit about whether that thing happens for them or not. And then they get two weeks into the new year and they've already given up. And then they ask themselves why. I know why you've given up. You've given up because you don't care. And that's not because you're a bad person. It's not because you don't have willpower. It's because you don't have a goal that sticks with you. Goals without an emotional anchor point are not going to be helpful. They're not going to actually motivate you to do something, right? Because if you are just saying, oh, yeah, that would be nice, that's not a goal. That's a fantasy. That's a wish. And if you can't link it to something that you actually care about, the moment things get hard, and I'm not even talking

like terrible life things. I'm just talking like, ah, I don't have motivation today. Which, which is going to happen pretty quickly, you're going to give up. So you have to link your goals, especially your financial goals, with something that feels sticky. So what do I mean by this? I'll give you an example of a goal that's not going to be helpful, a la, I'm going to get better with money this year, okay? Something like, I'm going to pay off my debt. Great goal. That's even more specific than I'm going to get better with money this year, right? But why does it matter to you to be debt-free? Why does it matter to not owe anybody money anymore? What is your life going to look like if you are no longer in debt? How are you going to be able to make certain

decisions that are more flexible, that are more aligned with your values, that are more attuned to building the life that you want when you no longer have death. These are the questions you want to ask yourself. How would my life change for the better if I was successful in achieving this goal? So her first 100K started because I was trying to save my first 100K at 25. If you're watching on YouTube, we will link a video down below. I walk you through exactly how I did that, how I saved my first 100K at 25. If you're listening to the podcast on one of your podcast platforms, we will link it down below in the description. But one of the things that was so crucial,

and I think was the biggest reason I was able to actually stick to that goal even when I had to quit a job, even when I spent months unemployed, even when I had setbacks, was because I knew why I was doing it. My 100K was not just a number. My 100K was not just seeing that number in the bank,

although that was pretty cool. It was the permission slip I needed to leave a job I didn't like anymore to run her first 100K this business full time. So this was back in 2019. I was working towards my 100K. I had been at it for a couple years at this point. And any time things got difficult, any time I had a roadblock or a setback, I then could remember, why this was important to me. Not why this was important to somebody else or not why I should do this, but specifically why it mattered to me. And that is what you are missing from your goals. You're missing your why. So for me, my 100K at 25 was not just the number. It was the permission slip I needed to be my own boss. And so I started envisioning what my life would look like if I

was my own boss. What time I woke up in the morning? Did I have a commute? No, I did not because I got to work from home. Did I have to work with people I didn't respect? No, because I was running my own business. Did I get to travel when I wanted to? Where was I traveling? What seat was I sitting in? Right? Oh, I was working from home and running my own business so I could take an hour lunch and cook the lunch from scratch if I wanted to. I got to do work that really mattered to me that made a big impact for people. I didn't have to sit at a desk and work for eight hours, even if my work was done hours ago, right? I got really crystal clear as to what that why was, but specifically how my life was going to change if that goal happened, if I was successful. So that when shit hit the fan,

I could remind myself, this is why you're doing this. You're doing this for time flexibility. you're doing this to do impact-driven work, you're doing this to fulfill your dream of being your own boss. So whether that goal is becoming debt-free, saving for a big goal like a wedding or a vacation or a home, or it's just saving that initial emergency fund. Remind yourself why we're doing this. Anchor it to something that matters to you. Maybe for the emergency fund, that anchor is just, I want to have less stress in my life. I want to know that if shit hits the fan, I'm going to be okay. If it's at vacation, right? Maybe it's going to Tokyo. Start to envision what the ramen's going to taste like, right? Visualize and feel how your life will change. And I promise you that goal will

immediately become easier. You're less likely to sabotage yourself. You're less likely to give up when you remind yourself why you're doing this. So my reflection prompts for you are not only what is your why, why are you doing this, but what would this change? make possible for me? What is the concrete thing that makes life better when I have achieved this goal? My second prompt for you is how would my life look and feel specifically if I were to achieve this? If I were to make this change, how does my life actually look and feel on a day-to-day basis. Goals feel so much easier when they are rooted in things that you care about rather than somebody else's dream for you or the thing you should do. And if you want more on this, we have an

incredible episode about goal setting from an expert goal setter, episode 207. We will link it in the description as well. This newly independent podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I was literally talking to someone this morning who has an in-person business and is trying to do more with her digital business. She has crazy goals for this year. She wants to make $250K for her business this year. And I was like, oh, then you need Squarespace. You need Squarespace. Squarespace is the best place to design a website, but also to sell things, especially if you're selling digital goods or things that need shipping. I love that you can use Squarespace to offer service. and get paid. So consultations, courses, events, experiences, all of that can happen inside

Squarespace so you're not paying like a different payment platform to handle it for you. You can also buy a domain on Squarespace. It makes it easy to find the best name for your business. And you can make sure to sell anything from products to content to time all on your Squarespace site. Had on over to Squarespace.com slash ffod for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch your brand new website, use FFPod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website. website or domain. Mistake number two. This, oh, this one, this one is so, so common.

I see it with the women. I coach in our Stock Market School program. I'm in there every day. My team's in there. And so many of the questions come down to feeling financially behind, right? So in Stock Market School, when people are investing, there is so much shame. about not having started sooner and there's that feeling of I haven't done enough, right? I feel like I'm behind. And the conclusion that they have come to before they start working with me or before

they start listening to this show is that, okay, I have to go balls to the wall. I have to do everything and anything to actually achieve my goals. And it must be perfect. So let me walk you through a real-life example of this. For many, many years, me on my fitness journey, okay, me trying to go to the gym more and get healthier and fulfill the promises I made to myself, I told myself, Tori, you need to go to the gym every single day. You need to work out every single day, no matter what, because that's willpower and that's commitment. And that's what all of the people on TikTok are yelling at me about is discipline.

So I went to the gym every single day. And then I told myself, not only do you have to go to the gym every single day, but you have to be there an hour every time. You got to go seven days a week and it's got to be an hour. And if you do not walk out of the gym looking like a drowned rat, meaning I'm so sweaty and I'm so tired. and I've done my peak level of physical performance, then I internalized that it was a wasted effort. If those three things didn't happen, if I wasn't going every day,

if it wasn't an hour, if it wasn't my absolute maximum effort to the point where I was dripping in sweat every time, no matter what, that I was a failure, that I had failed, on my pursuit of this goal. No wonder I hated my life during that time.

No wonder that was not sustainable. No wonder I gave that up really, really quickly. We did an entire episode on what I call the all-or-nothing mindset. We will link it down below. We always want to give you resources to turn to after this. But the TLDR, the Too Long didn't read of that, is that everybody, especially women, feel like they must be perfect or there's no point in doing it at all. I either do everything to the maximum all the time,

or I may as well sit on the couch. That's it. There was no in between. What we see with the women in our communities when they come in is they're thinking, I need to save a thousand dollars every day or whatever that looks like to them, right? I need to have that million dollars for retirement or there's no point in doing this at all. Oh, I'm not making sick. plus, you know, multiple six figures. So there's no point in trying to get raises. Oh, I'm already 10K in debt. So what's another 5K or 20K or 30K? Because it's already fucked, right? Oh, no wonder you're not achieving your goals. No wonder it's not happening because you're deciding that it is not worth any effort unless it is absolute peak optimization, peak result, right?

and it's not your fault. Again, a lot of the content that is online that we consume is about, yeah, discipline and all of this. And like, discipline's fine. Yes, but like you are a human being. You are going to have days where the thing you had planned for doesn't happen. And that doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It just means you're human. And I know what you're thinking. Okay, I'm going to call you out. You're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, but not me, though. Like, oh, yeah, I tell my friends and the people I love, yeah, take a break, rest, make sure you're taking care of yourself, but not me. I have to go out there and hustle really hard, and I have to go out there and do everything correctly, or there's no point in doing it

no, no. So, you know what, started changing? Because when I realized that was unsustainable, I just said, you know what, we're going to go walk around the block, okay? We're going to go on a 10-minute walk, minimum a day. It was the same thing with journalism. I wanted to start journaling more, and I would sit down and be like, okay, you have to write two, three pages. I was so tired at the end of the day. That sometimes was not going to happen. So my bare minimum journaling is I have to do two things.

I have to write down three things I'm grateful for and three affirmations. That's it. And I almost never miss a night of journaling because I have kept the bare minimum, a bare minimum. I've kept it realistic. If you want to grow from there, great. But so many people get into this burn it all down energy of January, right? Where you're like, this is the year. I finally fix it my life.

And then you go super hard, super quick. And it's not realistic. You gun it. And no wonder you have to give up two, three weeks in. It's an unrealistic overhaul of your life, right? This is why diets don't work. 99% of diets don't work because it's not willpower. It's just when you make something restricted,

or hyper-specific are brains, no matter who you are, that doesn't work. And you're talking to somebody who is probably one of the most self-motivated people you'll ever meet. Like, I hit my 100K at 25, I became a multimillionaire at 27, I became a New York Times bestselling author at 28. I have done a lot. And there's also things I know where if I go too hard and make too many commitments too early, even if they're well-intentioned, it's not going to happen. So I also see this with like the shiny object syndrome of this, where it's like, first it's all or nothing.

It's either I do it perfectly. I do it maximum effort and energy all the time or nothing, which again is not sustainable. because you will not have maximum effort and energy all of the time, or and or you get into feeling like, oh, there's this new thing or there's this new hack or there's this new budgeting app or there's this like novel thing I can do that's going to fix all of my problems. Brains like novelty. I get why that happens.

But very similar to the way that advice around being healthy has not changed, right? you eat whole foods mostly vegetables and fiber and things like that you move your body whatever that looks like for you and you try to have good relationships and take good care of your mental health those are the three things you need to do to be healthy like that's it but when i say that's it those three things are not complicated in the theory of them right i just explained it in like two sentences. It is the showing up all of the time that's hard. It is the doing it even when it feels inconvenient. Saving money, again, is not, the principle is not hard, right? Transfer your money from your checking account to your savings account every time you get paid. That's not difficult.

Like the logic of it is not difficult. But the consistency, the showing up every time, the doing it even when it feels inconvenient is the part that's hard, which is why we, can't say, I'm going to do it at maximum effort because you're not going to have maximum effort all the time. And chasing the new thing, chasing the new fitness craze, the new money hack, the new novel thing is also not sustainable, even though no wonder your brain loves it. Of course it does. It's like this new shiny thing. So I need you to think about being consistent of saying, I'm going to show up in this very specific way. It can be very small, but this is the bare minimum that I'll do.

And if I feel like it, if I have more energy, I'm going to do more. But this is the bare minimum. This is the amount of money I want to save every single month. This is what I know I can do, right? So you have to get away from that shiny object syndrome. You have to get away from making things all or nothing. because you will sabotage yourself remarkably quickly by chasing the shiny new thing or by going so hard, so fast that you burn out.

Cue the John Mullaney bit where he says, we've all made a happy birthday sign. We've all gone too big and too fast and run out of room, right? He talks about how you're writing happy birthday and you didn't trace the lines and then suddenly you're out of space. You don't have any more space to put the P and the Y and happy. That's what we're talking about here. Avoid making a happy birthday sign without tracing. And I don't want to leave you hanging.

So I've created a free resource for you to help avoid the shiny object syndrome, to help you avoid this all or nothing mindset. It is a free personalized money plan for wherever you're at in your journey. So if you go to her first hundredk.com slash ff pod, we will send you a personalized money plan straight to your inbox. You're going to answer six questions, just six. There's no pass or fail here. There's no getting anything wrong.

it is you answering questions about where you're at in your journey for us to give you the best resources possible. So again, it's entirely free. No reason not to do it. Herfirstenderk.com slash ffodd. Being a business owner is very overwhelming. There are a lot of things to think about all of the time between payroll and your competitors and just making enough revenue to survive. Being an entrepreneur is stressful. But it can become less stressful with NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite is the number one AI Cloud ERP, and it is trusted by over 43,000 businesses. It is helpful because it brings your financials, your inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into

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And if you own a business, especially a business doing significant revenue, this is a tool you should look into as well. Right now, get our free business guide to mystifying AI at net suite.com slash ff pod. The guide is free to you at net suite.com slash ffpod. net suite.com slash ff pod. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that help support this independent podcast. If you like me are starting the year needing a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered. I love everything Quince has.

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So you're getting that luxury feel on a budget, and we know we love saving money here on this show. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com slash FF Pod for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. And they're now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash F-F-P-POD to get free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash F-F-Pod. You are not tracking your progress. You're not. You're not tracking your progress.

You're not actually looking at the progress you've made. You are not checking in and looking at your money or checking in to see if you're getting stronger or checking in to see if you're progressing in your career, you're not looking. And I know, you're like, I'm busy. I can't. You will not actually stick to a goal if you do not see the progress you're making. So when I say you're not tracking progress, yes, I'm talking about it from like an optimization standpoint, right? Like, we need to be looking at our money because we need to see if we're on track and if we're, you know, there's things we need to tweak, blah,

but the thing that nobody talks about is that you need to track. your progress so that you don't give up. You are likely to give up to self-sabotage, to say, I'm good. I don't actually care about that thing. My final mistake I see people make. This is why, and yeah, I'm bringing everything back to fitness today because I think everybody understands this, it's why you take progress photos before you start working out. Because when you live in your body every day, you don't see that you're making changes. You don't see that you're getting stronger. You don't see that, oh yeah, progress was made, even just a little bit. And we expect there to be such a dramatic change in such a small amount of time. We set these unrealistic

expectations. And then we get frustrated when nothing's happening, right? It's like, again, all or nothing. I didn't save a million dollars in a month. Come on. And then you give up. So you have to track your progress. You have to start seeing these wins or else there's no reason. You're going to be like, nothing's getting better. So why am I doing this? We have to introduce these like small tracking habits, whether that's your weekly wins list, your money date check-ins that we've talked about before, sitting down and looking at your money, seeing your progress, rewarding your tiny milestones, your brain needs proof that you're changing. Your brain needs proof that you're making progress. If you do not give your brain proof that you are making progress, you're going to give up.

You're going to give up. Celebration acknowledgement helps build this most. motivation, it helps you remind yourself, again, I'm doing this thing. This is why I'm doing this thing. And my life, I can see these changes that I am making. And that way, your brain can create these pathways of neural reinforcement. Yep, things are working. I am motivated to keep going. I am excited because I'm seeing changes. This is why we have to check our progress. Yes, we're tracking our progress to optimize and to make updates, but we're really tracking our progress. So we have continual buy-in. We have that feeling of, oh, I can do this because I've been doing this. This is where accountability can be really, really helpful. Accountability with yourself,

accountability with somebody else. Bring somebody else into this equation and make sure that you are tracking this level of progress. Keep that accountability with your yourself, because as soon as you fall off, as soon as you're not tracking progress or checking in with a friend to talk about everything you've been doing, you're not going to be motivated anymore. You're going to give up. You're going to give up week two or week three. Of course. So the easiest way to do this is through the money date practice that I created. It is sitting down at least once a month and looking at your money. Chapter 7 in my book, Financial Feminist has this in great detail about what to do during these meetings.

But you're basically just sitting down and you're looking at your money and you're looking at your financial goals and you're seeing that progress. And it's something you then start to look forward to as opposed to something you're dreading. As opposed to, oh, my God, I've got to look at my money and I don't want to look at my money and I feel shame every time I open my bank account and I realize there's nothing in there. And like that shame cycle starts. Instead, it's actually something that builds self-trust. It is like, oh, yeah, okay.

You know what? The progress, it's not dramatic, but it's happening. And that's the feeling we want to get continual buy-in for ourselves, for our brains as we continue in the progress towards this goal. I want to make sure that you feel supported through the rest of January, through the rest of this like first couple months of 2026. So as a reminder, this is the first episode of our financial cheat sheet series. We want to make sure that you are locked in and loaded. and excited to finally get better with money this year in a very concrete way. So you're going to come back for episodes two and three. And if you don't want to wait, if you're ready to take more

action, if this episode has gotten you fired up, you're going to go to her first hundredk.com slash ffpod. Her first hundredk.com slash ffpod. I want to make sure you have those resources and you feel supported in this journey. If this is an episode that you know would be helpful for somebody else. You know somebody out there trying to progress towards a financial goal. You might know somebody, maybe it's yourself, but you might know somebody out there who always has New Year's resolutions. And then you ask, how's that New Year's resolution going? And they're like, I abandoned it. This would be a great episode to send to them. Not an accusatory way, but just in a way of like, hey, I'm thinking about you. I think this would be really helpful for you. You sharing this

episode is a great way to open that conversation with someone you care about, about accountability, right? It is your nice way of kind of asking them to be your accountability, buddy, and vice versa. So somebody in your life needs this episode. Share it with them. I know I'm sending this episode to multiple people in my life. And it's the easiest way you can make a little bit of connection with somebody else, but also support what we're trying to do here at Financial Feminist, and we appreciate it. We can't wait to see you back here for episode two of the Financial Cheat Sheat Series, and we're excited to guide you along this journey in 2026. We'll see you back here soon. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, produced by

her first 100K. If you love this show and want to keep supporting Feminist Media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you're looking for resources, tools, and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to her first hundredk.com slash s.spotid.