Daniella’s Finance Journey: Getting Real About Spending

Daniella’s Finance Journey outlines the financial experiences that CGS member @daniellacoin is going through as she works with the CGS Financial Consultant to get on financial track. Daniella has graciously offered to share her journey to help inspire and motivate others to take control of their financial lives!

Daniella’s Share:

You ever play one of those Candy Crush type of games and you get stuck on a level? It’s been weeks and you just cannot seem to move on? Then it suddenly clicks, you have used too many moves trying to create power ups to beat the level quicker. You refocus your energy and just concentrate on the objective of that level. All you do is strategize and move with a purpose and voila, the level you were stuck on for days, weeks, months, even years—you have surpassed.

I have been stuck on a level for all of my adult life. It has been self-control. Sleeping when I was supposed to, eating a damn salad on occasion, working out, keeping up with my planner, staying on a spending fast… all of these things that require discipline and self-control have been a struggle throughout my life. However, when I want to do it, I can. I recently stopped being a vegetarian after the past 3 years because I had to admit my body wasn’t responding as well as it was in the beginning. Yet, it did not matter how tempted I was, I refused to eat meat and a lot of meat byproducts for years because I told myself that’s what I wanted to do.

Now, this spending fast was going great the first week, then it got old. I lost sight of what I was doing it for. I’m at one of the busiest times at work right now, so it’s overtime in abundance. It was fine to cook and prepare food and be an adult for a week, but when I stopped doing an 8:30-5:30 schedule and the projects started piling on and things just needed to get done I slacked off. I didn’t cook which meant on a daily basis I scrambled for food, started re-downloading apps, and started back up with carrying my debit card. In all, I let go of all of my progress in favor of laziness.

The success stories we are seeing here on City Girl Savings are amazing. They are motivating and awesome to read. I love them, but I started writing these blogs because I wanted people to open up more about the journey to financial freedom. So that means openly talking about my struggle with finances and my bills and self-control. That becomes very vulnerable because I want to be a success story too and with how I have fallen off of the band wagon it seems a little far away right now.

The spending fast is such a drastic change from my habits that I lost interest in doing it for another month. So for me to be successful I am going to have to ignore the end date and focus on getting back on it. Tomorrow I am focused on making it a no spend day. That’s it. I am only focused on doing my best tomorrow. More importantly I want to tell you all that if you mentally told yourself you wanted to do the spending fast but you couldn’t keep up, it’s okay. This is hard for me too. It’s years of bad habits and it won’t change overnight. Just take a deep breath, stop trying to create these crazy power-ups and just focus on winning the level.

Comment Below: Have you fallen off of the spend fast? Be real with me. Am I the only one struggling?

xoxo
Daniella
 

About Daniella…

Daniella is a 25 year old working millennial living in Dallas, TX. Daniella is originally from New York and has moved to Dallas to start a life of adulthood on her own. She currently works as an administrative assistant and has a passion for make-up! Feel free to leave a comment with any thoughts or questions for Daniella.