How Oversaving and Underearning Can Affect Your Business

Have you ever considered how your personal money behaviors affect your business? Oversaving and underearning can have drastic effects on your personal finances, but they can also affect your business. 

If you are a solopreneur or small business owner, it’s important to consider the ways these behaviors might transfer into how you interact with your business finances. Let’s take a look at some possible ways your business can be affected, and what you can do about it:

Restriction 

Underearning and oversaving can deeply limit your business from growing. Both can limit the amount of cash on hand to work with, which on its own can have challenging effects on a business. 

With both underearning and oversaving there is often a deep sense of financial anxiety. This anxiety can bring an edge of fear into the way you handle your business. This fear can be deeply restricting, and limit what you feel comfortable doing in your business, while also taking a toll on your mental health. If you identify with this, I encourage you to read my piece on reducing money stress in your business and my article on working with affirmations to influence your mindset. 

Missed Opportunities 

The restriction and anxiety that come along with underearning and oversaving can cause you to miss key opportunities in your business. Web designer and business mentor Yarrow Magdalena often talks about how perfectionism could be costing you money, and my observation is that the same anxiety underlying perfectionism often dovetails with anxious financial patterns. When we block ourselves from trying something new, taking a chance, or accepting a new project in our business, we can miss valuable opportunities to grow and find success. 

One key to overcoming these behaviors can be to think about the opportunities that spending can help you open up to. In my interview with digital marketing consultant Tracey Lee Davis of ZingPop Social Media, she shared that the way she makes spending decisions in her business is by considering the question “Will this investment ultimately save me time in the long run or make my life easier in some way?” She reported that making changes in her business by hiring a bookkeeper, VA, and CPA have all made a huge difference in her business because they’ve freed her up to do client work. This type of investment also gives business owners time to work on their businesses, not just in them. This can create space for strategic decision making and more opportunities for growth, change, and fulfillment in your work life. 

Embrace the Flow

I’d like to share my own personal experiences with oversaving and underearning. My childhood consisted of a fair amount of financial instability, so anxiety around money became something that felt natural to carry around. I would often feel guilty spending money on things that felt “frivolous,” but through the years with all my work around finances, I have been able to neutralize those fears. 

I noticed this one day when booking a massage with Liz Di Guilio of Myomotive (who I highly recommend if you are in the San Jose Area). I realized that instead of feeling guilty and scared because I was spending money, I was thinking, “I’m grateful to be able to support this business owner.”

This thought immediately brought me back to Lynne Twist’s book Soul of Money and the ideas she shares about embracing the flow of money. If you’re curious about her ideas, read my book review here! Embracing the flow can be a great antidote to the fear and insecurity that mark oversaving and underearning.  

If you enjoyed this blog post, you’ll probably really like my free e-Book, 9 Secrets for Financial Self Care. Click here or below to grab your copy today. 

Underearning and Oversaving: The Mindset Behind these Financial Habits

Are you saving too much money? Is your financial life bracketed by scarcity and insufficient funds? Do you identify as an oversaver or underearner? Then I invite you to take this post as an opportunity to explore your emotions and mindset which may be underlying these financial habits.

This post is inspired by Barbara Stanny’s excellent book, Secrets of Six Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to up Your Earnings and Change Your Life. Explore the ideas below and see if they’re helpful for you to explore your own financial behaviors.

Check In

Barbara interviews six-figure earners and contrasts them with women she dubs underearners.  One of the contrasts that is ever present between the two is a difference in mindset.  In her workshops with underearners, she uses a great exercise that I would encourage you to explore for yourself.  She asks them to complete this sentence:  People with money are _______________.  If this as well as the title of this book bring up negative emotions, you will need to change this story before you are able to change your relationship with your earning potential. 

I don’t believe that we all need to strive for a six figure income, or even that money is a measure of our success. But as business owners, if we are not able to support ourselves through our work, we will find it impossible to continue sharing the gifts that we have to offer. 

Similarly, oversavers are hemmed in by their fear of scarcity. Looking at both of these financial behaviors, I am reminded of Lynn Twist’s ideas in her book, The Soul of Money. The author also remarks on how, when we let go of scarcity and stop going after things we don’t really want or need, this “frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.”

Make the Shift

I believe that we need to shift to an abundance mindset. What do you think of when you think of the word abundance?  I feel that this word includes many things: being grateful for what we have now, for what the future holds for us, for the gifts and talents we are able to share, the connections that we have to other people and the money that our society uses as a measure of exchange. 

Including money in our desire for abundance makes it possible for us to increase our earnings and feel deserving of them. An abundance mindset also helps us to navigate the fear of scarcity that often guides oversaving.

My Mindset

I have been exploring my own money mindset recently. While I thought I had a positive relationship with money, I still found that I had some blocks as well.  Because our society seems to measure a person’s value by their salary, it is easy to base your self-worth on your income.  In our household, my husband earns the money that we base our lifestyle on. When I truly began exploring my mindset, I found that I was seeing my earnings as “insignificant” in comparison to his.  When I began to separate the value that I deliver to my clients from my worthiness as an individual, my outlook on my potential impact also changed. 

The Deciding Factor

The path to making this mindset shift towards abundance includes gratitude, affirmations about your worth, and a decision to make a change.  Many of the six-figure women interviewed by Barbara started out with negative feelings around money, but they recognized that fact, made a decision to change and then put their new attitudes into practice.  The fact that you are reading this blog about money already shows your willingness to change. That is a great start!  

Why Your Finances are the Key to Self Care

We know that self care is important. We know it’s important to do things like unplug from electronic devices, get exercise, and treat ourselves. But oftentimes the conversation about self care can leave out one important aspect: financial self care.

Financial self care is the foundation of all other self care in your life, so it’s a shame that it gets forgotten! By financial self care, I mean doing the routine maintenance and occasional projects to keep your finances in good order. Things like reviewing your spending plan on a weekly basis and planning for irregular expenses are key to other aspects of your life. When your money is in order, it is so much easier to care for yourself. Your physical, spiritual, and mental health benefit when you are confident in your financial situation.

What are some areas of your life that need more care? Take a moment to really think about this. Perhaps you want to be able to purchase organic food or pay for a medical treatment. Maybe you want the ability to work less and turn down certain engagements. Or maybe you would benefit from seeing a therapist or spiritual worker.

Underlying all of these self care actions is a financial decision. When you engage in a regular financial self care routine, these decisions get easier. When you know whether you’ve met your spending limit for a category, deciding whether or not to spend the money to get that massage is much more simple. Regular financial self care takes that guesswork away and helps you get clear.

Financial self care involves engaging in a process of setting financial goals and working out what you actually want to spend your money on. When you’ve got this worked out, it makes it much easier to decide what to spend money on in order to take care of yourself. This process can illuminate what you really need and want. Therefore, it can deeply assist your overall journey of self care.

9 Secrets to Financial Self Care Book Cover

I created a full e-Book on the concept of financial self care, which you can download by clicking here. This e-Book goes into depth on many different strategies to infuse your days with financial self care and build a solid routine for yourself. If you are interested in exploring how financial self care can support your life, I recommend giving it a read!

☮

Angela

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