Finding Budgeting Success: Reframing Goals Into Weeks
Finding Budgeting Success: Reframing Goals Into Weeks
I recently had a friend show me a poster she had purchased from 4k Weeks which was customized to her age. It showed a projection of how many weeks she’d be likely to have in her lifetime (and how many she’d already lived) as a series of small boxes on a poster. I have to say, my first response internally was, “shit, when you see it laid out like that, it’s not very many weeks.” Somehow, to my brain, the 4,576 weeks I saw on that calendar felt like a lot less time than 88 years.
Seeing her poster felt a bit synchronistic with the other thinking I’ve been doing this year, about how to help clients who struggle with their budget think more about spending accountability in weeks rather than months.
And since this is the time of year, historically, when most people tend to slip out of their January-driven New Year’s enthusiasm, it seemed like a good topic to take on for this time of year.
Ultimately, this post isn’t necessarily about weeks being the right way to structure or measure the goals you set, but rather, about the importance of considering the unit of time we’re structuring and tracking our changes around.
Annual Plan, Weekly Budget:
One of the things we’ve found in practice, is for people who are trying to reduce spending habits, structuring their spending around weekly rather than monthly goals is a small, but impactful change.
Realistically, most of our bills recur monthly (or even less often than that), and many of us get paid only once or twice per month. So logically, it feels natural to center our budgeting around months. The problem we run into as humans with monthly budgeting is that 1) some months are more expensive than others due to non-monthly expenses, and 2) if we only pay attention to our spending monthly, it’s hard to course correct if we’ve overspent early in the month.
The change we’ve encouraged our clients to make, then, is to plan annually – accounting for all the expenses that come up through the year, not just the recurring monthly ones, but to allot their budget weekly.
The annual plan is important. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know how much you really have available for weekly spending, and you might give yourself too high of a budget per week because you’ve forgotten to set money aside for those bigger, irregular expenses or savings goals.
But when it comes to implementation, the weekly budget is an accountability game-changer for many folks. If they think of their spending in terms of a week, it’s easier to foresee expenses as they approach, and easier to make slight course corrections and adjustments. It’s mentally and logistically a really different ask to realize that you’ve spent all your funds for the week and need to go a day or two without spending, than it is to realize you’ve spent all your money for the month and need to go 10 days without spending.
Weeks work well for habit-changing goals.
I think the week tends to be overlooked as a metric for measuring goal progress because we tend to encourage people to set goals for longer periods of time… quarterly, yearly, 3-5 years, or even longer, and to focus on the measurement of outcomes.
And the truth is, with the way outcomes ebb and flow, it makes sense to measure outcomes less often. Anyone who has ever tried to hit a sales/revenue goal or weight loss goal knows it doesn’t always come in equal sized weekly chunks.
But we also know, goal accomplishment isn’t really about outcomes, it’s about behavioral changes. If you change the habit, the outcome will follow.
And when it comes to changing habits or incorporating new ones, weeks often provide an exceptional unit of measurement for many reasons:
Weekly planning – We tend to plan our lives around what lies in the week ahead, so there’s a natural way to incorporate planning and monitoring behavioral change on this schedule.
Easier to envision – Our “one week from now”-self is a relatively easy future-self to envision. Think about it this way… when folks ask, “where do you see yourself _____________ from now” the longer that time period, the harder it is to “see” ourselves. But if someone asked us, where do you see yourself one week from now, most of us have no problem at all seeing that future version of ourselves. In fact, we could probably even tell you where we plan to be and what we plan to be doing.
Less failure – Tracking a daily habit “daily” can, for some folks, lead to a sense of failure and defeat if they miss a day. Even daily habits are best thought of as “almost daily” to avoid the sensation of falling off the wagon when you inevitably miss a day.
Faster course correction – Shorter tracking periods allow for smaller, and more manageable course corrections.
More success – Shorter tracking periods allow you to recognize success more often, retraining your brain to believe you will be successful at this endeavor.
What weekly measurements look like in practice:
For example, if my new year’s resolution is to take a 30 minute walk each day and to start intermittent fasting, the outcome I might be looking to achieve might be weight loss, or possibly just better overall digestive health, physical health and/or mental health. The outcome isn’t really that important, this is the action plan for behavior change I’ve created to achieve it. Using the numbered points above:
Weekly planning – I can look at my calendar and see where my days will have room for my daily walk. If my initial plan was to walk during my lunch hour, but I realize I have lunch meetings on Monday and Thursday, then I will need to plan for another time of day. My weekly calendar is accessible for me to plan around, beyond a week, it can be hard to predict what life brings.
Easier to envision – I’m not doing this for some hypothetical version of me that I can’t envision. I have a perception of where I’ll probably be one week from now, and I can envision that future version of myself feeling good about accomplishing this small set of steps.
Less failure – That being said, I also understand life is challenging and throws unexpected things my way. Rather than feeling mad at myself if I don’t accomplish this goal every day, if I can look back each week and realize that I’ve done it 5 days out of 7, I’ll be able to consider that ‘meeting expectations’ (bonus if I get all 7). In fact, if I realize I have a late dinner and drinks scheduled with friends on Friday night, I’m not even going to worry about that for fasting, I’ll just plan to take that day off.
Faster course correction – At the end of the week, if I’ve only actually gone for 4 daily walks, I’ll be able to remember fairly clearly what got in my way of walking on the days I didn’t do it and make a plan for how to tackle those obstacles next week.
More success – Finally, if I did get my 5 walks (or more) in, I’ll be able to recognize that as a success, and start to reframe my brain into thinking that I am the type of person who sees things through, rather than abandoning them a month into the year. Each chance I have to give my brain evidence of this is building the neuronal pathways that lead me to believe I will be able to take new habits on and stick with them. (If you have been providing your brain a lifetime’s worth of evidence to the contrary, it’s extremely important to start stacking up these pieces of evidence, so the more often you check in, the more of them you can build.)
What goals are best left checked on longer time periods
I don’t think it’s really a matter of goals, so much as outcomes vs. behavioral change. I think weekly is a great way to monitor habit change and implementation. Whether it’s spending, saving, eating, exercising, or screen time, these types of small behavioral changes benefit from a dedicated time, about once a week to reflect, plan, adjust, and recommit.
Outcomes, on the other hand, deserve different timelines, somewhat dependent on how long they will take to achieve. But be careful about checking outcomes too often, before you’ve let the processes do their work. I find that the obsessive checking of outcomes is often a bigger discouragement than encouragement, as we tend to let them dictate how we feel about our success when they are not, always, entirely in our control. In reality, the consistent application of improved daily habits will eventually lead to improved outcomes given enough time.
For example, if I:
That’s not a failure. I still did my part, and, given enough time, those spending/saving habits that I’ve created will get me to my $10,000 balance and beyond. The important thing is to keep my focus on the amount I’m spending each week, so that I can keep up the habit I’ve built of adding to my savings.
You Don’t Really Want Goals/Outcomes…You Want Feelings:
I also think an interesting thing to notice is how unimportant certain outcomes become if we have changed behaviors in ways that improve our mental health and relationship to money, food, work, or smart phones. Many times, I have started a behavior change with an outcome in mind, successfully changed the behavior, and forgot to ever check on the outcome. Years later I will find some sort of note I jotted down about a savings goal or a physical health goal, that at some point I surpassed (maybe on schedule, maybe not), but the reality is, the behavioral change was rewarding enough that I just kind of forgot about the outcome. Because at the end of the day, it was probably never about having $10,000 in savings, but rather, it was about feeling confident and comfortable living within my means and knowing I had enough for a rainy day. It wasn’t about the number on the scale – it was about feeling healthy and strong in my own body. And those feelings are built on habits, not outcomes.
Photo acknowledgement: Photo by Jazmin Quaynor on Unsplash, Photo by Paico Oficial on Unsplash, Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash, Image by Leo from Pixabay