How to master your money mindset with 'rules & richuals'

We need a name for the category of advice that people hear all the time and still ignore.

We've all heard it a million times - pay yourself first, save for a rainy day, don't keep up with the Joneses. But do we ever actually listen?

Personally, I think the reasons we ignore financial principles are similar to the reasons we tune out airline safety instructions: we give ourselves too much credit.

Deep down, we feel like it doesn't apply to us. While well-meaning advice tries to steer us right, our own sense convinces us we don't need the guidance.We’d prefer to believe bad things only happen to other people and that we’re uniquely positioned to skate past the curveballs, so we blow off warnings meant to protect us.

This sense of being "uniquely positioned" reveals a slippery truth about our relationship with money. At the end of the day, our financial well-being is?not solely defined by surface-level financial metrics like income, debt, and investments. It’s shaped by the internal gap between our intentions and actions, between what we know we should do and what we actually do. This gap is where good advice gets derailed and where the real work of personal finance takes place.

Now, it's easy to see the interplay between head and heart as a problem to fix because most advice frames it that way, but that misses the point entirely.

Because personal finance isn’t a problem that you can just solve with a bunch of rules and checklists - it’s something you manage forever, like breathing.

Imagine trying to ‘solve’ breathing by deciding to either inhale or exhale. Your lungs would be in for a rude awakening! ??

Breathing requires you to choose both. It works best when you can appreciate what each element?provides while also respecting its limits, and?a healthy relationship with money demands a similar commitment. It’s a constant give and take between principles and impulses, a flow of shifting emphasis from one to the other and back again. When you stubbornly ignore half the equation, your approach becomes unsustainable.?

I struggled with this for years.

I knew the importance of saving, paying down debt, and having an emergency fund. But in the moment, it was too easy to rationalize spending on things that provided an immediate emotional boost, even if they weren't aligned with my long-term goals.

I tried approaching my finances with a rigid, rule-based mentality alone. I thought if I just made my budget strict enough and followed checklists to a T, I could eliminate all the inconsistencies. My intentions were good, but it ended up backfiring. It led me into a cycle where I'd feel stressed about spending, spend anyway, then adopt a 'why bother' attitude that jeopardized any motivation to try again.

It wasn't until I really started reflecting on why I struggled so much that I realized my approach was all wrong.

There is a tension between what our minds know and what our hearts want. It’s a natural, inevitable part of personal finance that can't be wished or budgeted away. But if we always see it as a problem, it drastically undermines our ability to manage it.

That's what led me to develop our current philosophy centered around both ‘rules’ AND ‘richuals’.

The rules give me structure. They lay out the basic do’s and don’ts to keep me from going broke. Automated savings, spending limits, paying down debt - they’re the evergreen, firm, and universal principles that won’t change for the foreseeable future. They’re my way of putting my mask on first and ensuring I don’t give myself too much credit.

But rules alone leave no room for life's ebb and flow, so that’s where the richuals come in. They’re a play on the word ‘rituals’ and with your money, they introduce flexibility.

Richuals are meant to be tweaked, ignored, amplified, or customized. As we say in the book, they’re firm enough to offer some support but not enough to lay a foundation on.

They show up in the form of creating an 'approved?purchases' list during a shopping ban. They exist to remind me of my agency and highlight any places where I’m not giving myself enough credit. They allow me to go with the flow without abandoning my priorities or beating myself up unnecessarily. However, without an anchoring framework, they lack purpose and can justify mindless spending.

The point is neither works well on its own, so you have to embrace them equally. Rules give structure so you don't fly totally by the seat of your pants. Richuals add humanity so you don't treat personal finance like a soulless spreadsheet. Together, they introduce a dynamic of control and release that works with your life stages instead of against them.

This week on the podcast, we’re talking about one of my favorite rituals for self-reflection: the mid-year check-in. We’re discussing how to check in with yourself, reframe your progress, and find confidence in?the smaller wins along your journey. My formal reviews are one of my favorite places to let the rules & richuals play together on paper.

I can meet myself where I am without judgment because I don’t see them as opposing forces. I give myself the credit I deserve for making progress while also acknowledging where I still have room to grow. And I have faith that as long as I keep one foot in each - rules to ground me, richuals to soothe me - the gaps between my intentions and actions will continue narrowing over time.

It's a work in progress, as is any relationship worth having. But with patience and compassion for myself, my finances are no longer something to be solved and just a part of life to be experienced.

Listen to episode 167 now or watch it on YouTube below

And while you're there, check out the Season 3 Trailer for our series, Money on the Table. The first episode drops next Wednesday and we are so excited to share this work with you!