Monday, 4/26/21: Talking about your tips for budgeting and a feeling of languishing

Happy Monday!

It’s a new week, which means it’s time for your next Monday motivation newsletter. Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday, a short story and a roundup of positive thoughts to get your week started.

Three Steps to a Happier Monday

Each newsletter starts with three prompts to inspire gratitude and simple intention setting. Take a moment and jot down answers to these three questions. To give an example, I share my answers below.  

Step 1: What are three things I appreciated from the weekend? 

Step 2: What is one thing I can be excited about today?

Step 3: What is my intention for this week? 

GRATITUDE: From my weekend, I am thankful for conversations with my mom, the sun coming out yesterday, and long walks outside on Saturday. 

TODAY: There’s warmer weather on the horizon for me this morning, so today, I’m most excited about my run outside! 

INTENTION: My intention this week is to get back into a morning journaling practice. I’ve let the habit slip this past month and want to get back into it. 

Okay, your turn! And if you want to share your three steps, I am all ears. 🙂

Meaningful Musings: Tips for More Enjoyable Budgeting 

It’s the last Monday of the month, which means it’s time to share reactions and feedback gathered from the second installment of the Lighter & Brighter series. 
 
The Lighter & Brighter Series is like a monthly book club… but sans books and focused on making everyday parts of life more enjoyable. Every other month, a new topic will be introduced on the last Monday of the month with some ideas on how to make said topic more enjoyable and lighter. If any of it resonates with you, we’ll experiment together for the next month and share feedback on how it’s going. Then, in the month that follows, the reactions and any new ideas will be featured in a newsletter (like today!), so we can all learn from one other.
 
The result? We’ll end 2021 with a tangible takeaway: our very own joy toolbox, filled with a variety of strategies, hacks, tips and tricks for bringing lightness into six different areas of our life.
 
At the end of last month, I wrote about budgeting and posed the question of, what tips do you have to make budgeting more enjoyable? I received a lot of great suggestions (thanks to all who shared!), and I’m excited to pass along the ideas this morning. 
 
So, without further ado, here are some crowdsourced tips and tricks for more enjoyable budgeting – enjoy!:

Lighter & Brighter Series 02: Tips to Make Budgeting More Enjoyable 

• “I recommend the book from the Broke Millennial. She does a great down breaking down budgets, savings, and paying down debts like personal and student loans. I’m also reading her book on investing now. Investing my money is the next step for me!”
• “My old style of budgeting was to check my bank account and make sure there was still money in it. I was an intuitive spender. I’m really good at talking myself out of spending my money, so that by-and-large worked for many years. I’ve been tracking my spending for about a year now, and it’s nice to know that I’m generally good with my money, and to know what I can afford.”
• “I’ve learned that my money can unlock my values. I have set aside a certain amount of money to donate to charity each month. Rather than indiscriminately give to whatever charity caught my attention at the moment, I know exactly how much money each month I am giving. This is way helpful with taxes, too. One goal I had this year was to become a monthly donor to a local non-profit. I think of philanthropy as a lifelong relationship between you and your community. Can you tell I was raised by a fundraiser?“
• “Set up automatic savings in your bank account. I use PNC’s Virtual Wallet, and have a certain amount that goes to my ‘Growth’ savings account each paycheck. You can also set up sinking funds in your ‘Reserve’ short-term savings, which is very similar to your friend weekend scenario. You can make a rule to put $10 or $1 or whatever from every paycheck into this account until your goal is funded.”
• “Don’t underestimate how small shifts at the grocery store can add up. When possible, I buy frozen vegetables over fresh (you can roast frozen vegetables directly from the freezer!). Frozen is often cheaper than fresh and they don’t go bad. My grocery store also has a butcher counter and I always have the butcher ‘butterfly’ my chicken breasts to create two thin chicken breasts out of the one. Cheaper and cooks faster!”
• “Create a budget using ‘Mint,’ I have used it and I don’t see any down side. It’s free, and since I use a credit card (ALWAYS paid off monthly) it loads all my expenses in automatically. I also have manually populated a spreadsheet from Mint so I can see monthly expenses easier.”
• “I use an app called ‘Fetch Rewards‘ where you upload your receipts to gain points and then they give you gift cards in return.”
• “I’ve found I learn the most about how I want to spend money by learning how others spend money. I like listening to podcasts about budgeting to get inspired and learn new ideas for optimizing my cash flow. My current favorites are Jean Chatzky’s HerMoney podcast and The Financial Diet’s The Financial Confessions podcast. I also love reading Refinery29’s Money Diaries series.” 

Thanks again to everyone who submitted an idea! If you have a tip or if you try out something from the above, I’d love to hear about it!

Hope you have a great Monday 🙂 

On My Monday Radar

Sometimes we just aren’t ready to jump into our Monday to-do list right away. In case you want some content to procrastinate with, here is a roundup of a few positive things on my radar:  

• Article about the name for the “blah” feeling you might be experiencing right now. Last week I mentioned that I’ve been in a bit of a rut. So, when I read this article last week, I really identified with the idea of feeling a sense of “languishing.” As the author (Adam Grant – one of my faves!) writes, “It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.” Sharing this morning in case it helps you too.
• Can you “buy happiness”? I always love Arthur C. Brooks’ “How to Build a Life” column in The Atlantic, and this article felt particularly timely for today’s theme. While we know money can’t directly buy happiness, it was interesting to read his argument about how certain things – like experiences, buying time and giving money away to help others –  are things that can be bought and can help increase happiness. The central theme of the article though is that if the focus is on increasing happiness, the purchases should involve other people in some way. As he writes in the article, “if you buy an experience, whether it be a vacation or a dinner out, you can raise your happiness if you share it with someone else.” 
• Do you have ideas for the next Lighter & Brighter series topic? I love a theme, so I’ve been having a lot of fun with this monthly series! I hope you are getting something out of it too. So far, we’ve discussed creating happier Mondays and, as mentioned many times today, making budgeting more enjoyable. But what should we focus on next? Do you have any ideas for topics? Maybe suggestions for how to improve? I’d love to hear!

That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this! 

Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan

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