How Money Mindfulness Can Help You Travel More Next Year – Episode 149

Danielle Desir Corbett: The other day, someone asked me what's the most important thing that fuels my ability to travel. I gave it some thought, and one word came to mind. And in full transparency, if you would have asked me the same question a couple years ago, my answer would have been completely different. But today, I'm pretty confident that this one thing unlocks the ability to travel more. And that thing is money mindfulness. So stick around until the end of the episode, because we're going to be covering what it means to be financially mindful, the benefits, and also ways we can embrace money mindfulness in our everyday lives at home, and especially when we're on the road traveling. But first, if you haven't yet, check out today's sponsor. Our sponsors play a really big role in keeping the show going, so please take a moment to click on the link in the episode description to learn more and, of course, to sign up. 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Click the link in the show notes or visit aura.com slash savvy to get started. Again, the link will be in the show notes or you can visit aura.com slash savvy to get started. Welcome to The Thought Card, a podcast about traveling money where planning, saving, and creativity leads to affording travel, building wealth, and paying off debt. We are the financially savvy travelers. So what does it mean to be financially mindful? And as financially savvy travelers, why should we even care? I would define financial mindfulness as being fully present in your financial choices and aware of your thoughts, attitudes, and emotions around money. Mindfulness will prompt you to pause and reflect and consider making decisions aligned with your values and your goals. Some of the words that may come to mind when you think of mindfulness include self-awareness, intentionality, mindful spending, engaged, and attentive. But on the contrary, the opposite of mindfulness is probably living on autopilot, being absent-minded, inattentive, and maybe even a little reckless with our finances. Embracing the concept of money mindfulness can help you to have direction for your money. It can reduce financial stress. It can help you feel empowered and even hopeful about your financial situation. It can improve decision making, like making better choices about your spending and your saving and investing. On a personal note, I feel like money mindfulness has helped me increase my financial literacy and knowledge on personal finance in general. For a lot of us, personal finance is not taught in school. It's not actually something that maybe your family may teach you either. I feel like I'm very fortunate to be in the position where I had a lot of money discussions, honest money discussions, but I know plenty of people who don't have that financial background. whether in school, at home, or like formal training. And I think that's one of the things that I love about mindfulness. And in episode 131, math coach Christina Cardozo really went in depth and shared with us why we don't have to be good at math. to manage our finances and ways we can develop our basic financial education skills and even tips for like teaching children about money. So I think that mindfulness can play a big role in understanding our personal finances, different concepts, our knowledge, and just overall increasing our financial literacy. It can also help you to reduce debt and even avoid debt completely. feel empowered again and in control of your finances, and just push you to achieving your goals and feeling fulfilled. So there are lots of benefits to being mindful. And as financially savvy travelers, mindfulness can come in all different shapes and sizes. Here are some specific ways that financially savvy travelers can be more mindful. Number one is knowing your strengths and also your weaknesses. understanding what you are naturally really good at. So personally, I'm really good at creating systems for myself. I know how my money moves from income, I get it in a paycheck to this bank account, that bank account, this goal to that goal. So I call that like my financial system. And I have one that's really solid. I had one when I was working a full-time job, And I have one now today as an entrepreneur. So I feel like I'm really good at creating systems, but I'm actually not so good when it comes to feeling tight a little bit. Like when I feel I'm becoming broke or when I feel like I'm a little bit anxious about money, I just avoid everything. I try to like avoid bills, which is not great. but I avoid bills. I just avoid thinking about it. And I think having this awareness is part of being financially mindful. It's knowing like, hey, when things are tight, I run and I try to avoid. Despite my systems, despite my strengths, I still have weaknesses, right? So whatever those are for you, I feel like as financially savvy travelers, if we understand who we are, our strengths and weaknesses, we can excel really well at the things that we're good at and address our weaknesses. Whenever I'm feeling financially stressed or anxious, I know avoidance is coming right behind it. So I do things differently so I can avoid avoidance. I know, super meta, but it's true. It's really true. So again, knowing your strengths and weaknesses is one way that we can be more mindful when it comes to our personal finances as travelers. I talk about this a lot, but defining your travel style is another way for you to be money mindful. When you define your travel style, you are acknowledging your travel preferences and you are intentionally aligning your spending with what brings you joy and intentionally reduce everything else. Eliminate, reduce everything else. Now, if you're wondering what a travel style is and how you can define yours, in episode 102, we talked all about how every traveler has a unique travel style and the way they travel reflects their interests and values. And that's going to help you to determine what you should be spending money on and finding true fulfillment while you're traveling. Again, understanding your travel style will better align your finances with what you value and will help you to have even more fulfilling trips and vacations in the future. Another way financially savvy travelers can be more mindful is by financially preparing for a trip. Whether you have a pre-trip financial checklist, you have a travel budget, and you are tracking your expenses and sticking to it, these are all mindful practices. And also discipline, too, as well. Discipline plays a big role. I feel like mindfulness, discipline kind of go hand in hand for some of these. And then lastly, starting a travel fund, which we talk about in depth in episode two, for me personally, has truly transformed my ability to save for travel a little each month and be able to go on those epic vacations. So there are lots of benefits and also lots of ways that as financial savvy travelers, we can be more mindful. But more generally, mindfulness can look like checking your bank account balance daily and making note of how you feel. Do you feel anxious or stressed? Shame? Regret? Avoidance? Are you calm when you're looking at your bank account? Do you feel at ease? Are you hopeful or are you hopeless when you go in and log in? I think checking our bank accounts is one of those things that we can do. It's a small action that we can do daily. And being cognizant and aware of how you feel can really, really help you to, again, be more mindful and tap into that next level of fulfillment. Setting a weekly money date and reviewing your finances where you pay your bills and you plan ahead and adjust as needed is another way that even if you're not traveling right now, that you can be a little bit more mindful. Now, as a day trader, my husband journals and reviews his trades on a daily basis. So I'm going to put financial journaling on this list. If you're one of those people that enjoys journaling in life, then journaling about your financial journey can also be very empowering. Preparing for the future with an emergency fund, that's mindfully thinking ahead and saying, OK, I'm going to have money stashed away for emergencies and just in case situations. Having honest conversations about money with your spouse is another mindful practice. So, so, so important. And something that I found myself doing more and more every year as our marriage continues to grow, we talk about money more regularly. And I think that's amazing and a testament to not only our love, but also our commitment to excelling in our finances. Mindfulness can also look like learning more about the areas that you lack or need improvement on. For example, I want to get better at managing my 401k. I've kind of left it off to the side, especially when I was in corporate, I kind of like, I had the practice of putting money in, but I really want to get better at understanding like the different vehicles within my 401k and maximizing that. And then another area of lack that I know I would like to improve upon is getting better at maximizing travel reward redemptions. So I feel really confident in my ability to earn points and miles, but I'm not always using it to the best of my ability when it comes to maximizing the rewards. redemption. So that's somewhere that I can improve. And I think taking a look honestly and saying, hey, I'm good at these things. I need areas of improvement. I don't know all the things I can improve is being mindful. So commit to learning about some areas that you know you need improvement. For me, again, that's 401ks, but for you, it could be something different. I know I have a friend who wants to learn about more mutual funds and passive investing. And like I said, my husband is a day trader and he spent the better half of two years learning about trading in the stock market. So there's always areas of improvement and being mindful again can bring it all to light. Now lastly, another way that we can be mindful is by expressing gratitude. Being grateful for where we are right now and seeing how much we've achieved and progressed over time. I know for me, since starting a family and having a baby and becoming an entrepreneur, it's been a bumpy ride. I'm still a new baby entrepreneur learning on the fly. And I have so many lessons and mistakes I've made, and I'm turning those mistakes into lessons. but I'm also grateful for all those lessons because I know I will never do that again. There are many things I will never do again. And yeah, so mindfulness just comes in many different shapes and sizes. And I hope this episode brought to light how we can be mindful as financially savvy travelers who love to travel, but also just as regular individuals who may not be traveling right now, but may still have an interest in keeping our finances super tight. Now, before we head out, I want to leave you with this one important note, that money mindfulness may not come naturally. It takes effort and a willingness to prioritize and take purposeful actions. And don't beat yourself up over the fact if you're not 100% perfect, because this is a journey. And even sometimes when you feel like you've arrived and you've unlocked a new level of success and financial fulfillment, something may happen which just transforms your whole life and you have new lessons to learn. Again, this is something I'm learning right now as a new mom and also entrepreneur. So what's one area where you can be more mindful with your finances? Leave a comment with your thoughts over at thoughtcard.com slash money mindfulness. I'd love to hear how this episode inspired you or maybe fueled you to really think about how you can use money mindfulness to travel more in the coming year. Remember, it's all about acknowledgement and aligning your financial choices with your passions and goals. And in my new book, We Are Financially Savvy Travelers, there's an entire section dedicated to mindful spending, where I break down the questions that you can ask yourself to be more intentional with your travel savings and your spending. You can find We Are Financially Savvy Travelers anywhere where books are sold, like Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and more. All righty, Financially Savvy Travelers, that's all that I have for today. And I hope that you'll join me for the next episode, where we're going to be chatting all about how to make informed decisions. As Financially Savvy Travelers, we're going to continue on this series. So make sure you're following on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, any podcast player, any of your preferred podcast players, so that you can tune into the series. And of course, we have over 170 episodes of the Thought Card Podcast. So there's tons of content to binge and listen to. Now that's all for now. I'll see you in the next one.