'Tis the Season: How to Set Financial Boundaries You'll Actually Stick to This Holiday

What comes to mind when you think of the word “boundaries”? I know what comes up for me: saying a lot of “NO”. Let’s open this up a little bit: What are we doing when we say “no”? We're actually limiting something—we’re setting limits.

In all areas of our lives, we need limits. We can't let people drain our time, our energy, and our money, because that will get us into a place where we're feeling anxious and overwhelmed and a lack of ease.

What we're hoping to do when we set these limits around our time, our energy, our money: we're hoping to protect something vital for ourselves.

That's what boundaries really are. They're these limits, these guardrails, these ending points where we say, ah, no, no more. I'm not going past this level because I know if I go past this marker here, I'm going to be drained. I'm going to be overwhelmed. It's going to be something that's not be beneficial for me.

And, in the spirit of Financial Autonomy for Women--which is all about choice--we get to choose where those guardrails are actually set. We get to choose the ending points, the limits that are going to protect our time, our energy, our money.

With the holiday season here, as we all know, we tend to spend more this time of year, no matter what type of holiday that you celebrate. You don't even have to celebrate a holiday to spend money around this time of year.

As consumers, going to be bombarded with sales with offers with deals with specials that we might grab in the moment because we're experiencing FOMO. We're worried that we're going to miss out on a deal at a reduced price.

In setting Financial Boundaries during the holidays, I am not going to tell you not to capitalize on those deals. That's not what we're going to do here.

What we're going to do is we're going to get clear on how many deals we're actually going to go for. We don't have to go for all the deals. If we go for all the deals, we don't have those healthy limits and guardrails around our money. And that would be draining for us. That might create a January 2024 where we're really feeling the pain.

How to Boundaries in a Way that You’ll Actually Stick to Them

How can you set boundaries in a way that you'll actually stick to them? This is a powerful question.

Here’s the secret…Are you ready?

Get in touch with your “WHY.”

If you want to actually stick to your boundaries, get in touch with your why. Why are you setting this boundary anyway? Why do you not want to go overboard?--with spending, with draining your time, your energy, your money this holiday season?

When we get in touch with our why, what we're really doing is we're getting in touch with our true selves. So, if my why is... "I don't want to run up my credit card bills again this year"--what that tells me as a financial coach: this person is not up for carrying debt anymore. This person feels burdened by their debts. This person wants lightness and freedom and comfort.

That's their "why."

Here’s the great news: You can get in touch with your "why" right now. Take this moment right now and reflect on your “why.”?

You can journal it if you want. You can talk about it with a friend if you want. I'm not really concerned about how you get in touch with your why, but that you just get in touch with it.

And it's going to take probing beneath the surface level answer. It's going to take reflection. It's going to take some depth.

All you have to do is ask yourself: “why?” again and again and again, and you're going to get to the heart of your answer, to the heart of what really motivates you.

You’ll know your why when you feel it, when in a spiritual sense, in a psychological sense, in an intuitive sense, you can feel it in your body. When you tap into the why that's driving you towards change, when it hits that mark inside you. That's it. You will know your why, and that's going to help you actually stick to the boundaries.

Getting Clear on the Boundaries We Want to Set

After you get to your “why,” you’ve got to get clear on the boundary that you want to set.

And, getting clear with money can mean picking dollar amount limits for yourself across your holiday celebrations, gift giving for others, and spending on yourself.

Pick a dollar amount for the Christmas dinner or the Kwanzaa dinner or the Hanukkah meals that you're going to have with your friends and family. Pick a dollar amount for that expense, the food and the beverages and all the goodies that you're going to buy for those and stick to that.

That's a way to create a ceiling, a threshold. And because you're already tapped into our "why," you're going to have better chances of sticking to it.

We must be interested building success for ourselves. And that demands that we sit and we reflect about what are these dollar value limits for my holiday celebrations, for any type of gift giving that I'm doing, and for any type of spending I'm doing on myself.

Now that you’ve got your dollar value limit, you're going to need to track your progress in staying under that limit, staying within those guardrails, so this means you do need to track your spending.

This is the gift that keeps on giving. If you track your holiday spending, you are going to start developing a habit whereby in 2024 and beyond, you can set boundaries, track your spending, and then you can reorganize your finances and put your money to work in ways that support your "why's" like never before.

One of the main keys to successful money management is knowing where the money is going.

This is exactly why I developed a mini course, where you can get right to that clarity of knowing where the money is going by tracking your expenses.

When we track the money, we inevitably gain insights about our behaviors about our true wants, our true needs about our "why" that feel intentional, that feel grounded so that rather than feeling like the money is controlling you, you are in control of the money.

That's the essence of Financial Autonomy--the choice, the agency, the control. We get to say:

"I'm in control of the money."

Here’s another cool thing about tracking: When you nail it, when you stay within those guardrails and you set yourself up for ease and comfort and peace of mind, you get to celebrate that.

That's an empowerment piece that is also the gift that keeps on giving. The empowerment that you feel when you consciously tap into your why, that is something you get to claim all for yourself. You're going to feel like a total boss when you do that all the way till the end of December.

How to Communicate Your Boundaries Clearly, Even when It’s Uncomfortable

I know that anytime I need to communicate a boundary with somebody else, it's a source of anxiety for me. I don't like having awkward conversations. I don't like confrontation.

And what I've learned over time is when I do the exploring of the "why" and really tap into why this is so important to me, it doesn't matter how awkward that conversation is anymore because I'm so firmly grounded in what I need to say.

It’s much easier to communicate clearly what I can and cannot do because I've tapped into my why the benefits that I'm seeking long term that this can offer me.

So let's talk about clearly communicating with the other people in our lives. It’s always a good thing to start with “I” statements.

So this might sound something like:

“I really need to Give gifts in a way this year that help set me up for success in 2024 in January. And I've thought a lot about that. And this is how I need to approach gift giving this year.”

That's how you might want to start a conversation with friends or family about traditions around gift giving that you've had in the past.

“I really need to feel good about gift giving this year. And in previous years, I've noticed I haven't felt so good, especially when January comes around and I really want to change that. So, how can we work together to figure out a way to keep our gift giving going in a way that feels good for both of us?”

So, we start with "I" statements when we're communicating our boundaries clearly. And because we've done the work of tapping into our “why” and getting grounded in our “why” we stand to have less anxiety and that overwhelming awkwardness that comes with having challenging conversations, because we know it's something that really matters.

Here's another example:?“I'm working on ways to create a lot more comfort and peace of mind for myself in the next year. I've got goals that I want to work on, and I really want to set myself up for starting on a strong footing come January. So, sticking to my holiday budget is really important for me this year”

To be clear, we don't always have to explain ourselves when we communicate our boundaries.

But, when we share why we're doing a certain thing, why we’ve chosen a boundary, it might help create an impact for a person on the other end—the other person might say: “Oh yeah, I totally get it.”

(Honestly, I think we’d all be surprised at how many people in our lives are ready to hear that and ready to say, “Oh, yeah, I get it. Way to go.”)

Setting Financial Boundaries with Children at the Holidays

Setting financial boundaries with children at the holidays is going to depend on a lot of things: how old your kids are, how much they already know about financial management, maybe the type of expectations that they have around this time of year, what their friends are getting on the holidays and what's going on in school, etc.

You might want to use this holiday season as an opportunity to connect with the child(ren) in your household in a way that enlists them in managing money around this time of year.

Children love being helpers.

So if there is a way to enlist your kids as helpers, in the financial decision making—maybe for the gift giving for Uncle Rob—"Hey, would you be my helper? I've got to figure out which gifts to buy for Uncle Rob and I have $50 to spend. What do you think that uncle Rob might like?”

Doing this doesn't mean the kids carry the burden of bills. We’re inviting them to practice decision making with responsibility and accountability.

Children love to step up and to help when we ask them to be there.

Remember, we can make this fun. We can make it a game. We can Encourage them and celebrate them helping us. And, perhaps most important: we can thank them for being good helpers.

When we explore with our kids, they are much more engaged and they experience an empowerment as well.

Of course, we have to ask: What about those gifts that are always the hot holiday item each year?--those Tickle Me Elmo's and the gaming systems? What do we do when children are hyper-focused on these gifts??

We can remember that boundaries are about healthy limits that protect time, energy and money.

We might need to support kids in protecting their time and energy with all the focus on those go-to gifts, the frenzy that they can get sucked into.

And, we can keep in mind that it's okay to allow the kids to be excited about gifts and it's okay to let kids be disappointed when they don't get it.

Children are resilient, and they can recover from disappointment.

We can have conversations with them and engage them in a way that takes the focus off gifts, the importance of gifts, and the importance of getting stuff so that Christmas is a richer experience, other than just getting stuff.

Celebrate the Holidays in a Way that Protects Your Time, Energy and Money

You've got some great tools you can use here this season.

Maybe the most important step you can take--even before you consider implementing any of the above--is giving yourself the permission you need to protect your time, energy and money.

A lot of the time, giving yourself permission to protect yourself is the key that's missing.

So, this year, give yourself permission. And then give yourself permission again.

And, as always with finances, be kind to yourself, seek support when you need it, and let me know how it goes.?