Loving Yourself Can Save You Money 💚

We’re constantly being targeted by social media and marketing messages aiming to get us to purchase something that will make us “like” ourselves- robbing us of our dollars and self esteem.

Here are 3 ways that your lack of self love could be crushing your financial confidence.

You Spend to Feel Better 💅

Of course we’re all for self care, you deserve it! But- there is a fine line between taking care of yourself and purchasing things in hopes you’ll “like” yourself again.

Bad day? Buy something. Feel “fat”? Buy something. Got a new pimple? Buy something. Losing hair? Buy something. This can translate into a form of happiness - getting fixated on the fact that if you buy something you’ll feel worthy again. However - most of the time all you’ll gain is another thing you won’t use and a few hours of your pay is down the drain.

This type of spending is way more unconscious than you think. Your underlying sadness and low self esteem is subconscious, paving the path for accidental spending to go on for far too long.

We never feel like we have enough, but often it’s not that we don’t have enough, but we’re not allowing ourselves to feel like we do.

You Don’t Know Your Worth 💚

A lack of self love translates into a lack of confidence. When you don’t love yourself, you don’t know your worth. Self-worth isn’t based on what others think of you, how others look at you, the things you have/haven’t accomplished, but how you feel from within. It can be really easy to forget that our worth isn’t just determined by outside forces. Amy Morin, psychotherapist, explains that we constantly measure our worth, but we’re not aware of how we do it.

So often, what we use to measure our worth exists outside of our control. We measure our worth by how many things we cross off our to-do list, the number of likes on a dating app, the promotions we receive at work, the likes on our latest Instagram post - the list goes on. How we measure our worth affects the kind of life that we live, and sets up a roller-coaster of emotions outside of our control.

When we determine specific things that we can control (confidence, connectedness, competence, etc) and let them be our “measuring stick” of our worth - you’ll boost your self esteem, stop spending money on things that don’t matter, get that extra confidence boost you need at work, and most importantly feel more fulfilled.

You Think Confidence Can Be Bought 💳

When you’re purchasing things, those things should be carefully selected to move you closer to the best version of yourself, not someone else’s. The truth is that new haircut, shoes, and a workout plan won’t change who you are, and it shouldn’t. These things can add to all of the wonderful things that already exist about you. Where you can go wrong is buying things with the thinking that they’ll erase your self-perceived flaws, because they won’t. They’ll just erase some 0’s off of your bank account.

Overcoming A Lack of Self Love & Gaining Self-Worth 🙌

If you’re nodding your head to any of these, you’re probably thinking - ok so how do I love myself? Truth be told, there is no concrete answer or plan for how to gain that.

That being said, focus on actively unpacking your thought processes. As much as we don’t realize it, mental health ties to everything we do. Physical health, financial health, spiritual wealth, social wealth, so on.

Next time you’re thinking about falling for that marketing message, or buying that product you see on Instagram-  ask yourself the 3 Why’s.

1. Why do I want to buy this?
2. Dig deeper: Why is ___ important to you?
3. Dig one more time: Why is ____ important to you?

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If you want to get a big deeper into these questions, check out our free money psychology course by signing up for the Debbie app. It's filled with exercises, guides, and money tools like goal setting and payment tracking.

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