1443: My New Money Experiment That Might Change Everything You Buy

0:00Hey there, before we get into today's episode, this is Elizabeth, by the way, if you enjoy what we do here, if you find these episodes helpful, you've got to hang out with me on Substack. Listen, if you've never been on Substack, personal opinion, it feels so much better than social media. More ideas and inspiration, fewer ads, none of the algorithm and the drama and all of that stuff that can feel draining and distracting and like you get sucked into a rabbit hole on Facebook and Insta. So over there on Substack, I am sharing exclusive podcasts, deeper dives, daily notes, having conversations there that we aren't having here, you can find me at Elizabeth Benton Thompson on Substack. So head over to Substack.com, search for me at Elizabeth Benton Thompson, you can follow me totally for free or you can subscribe and get exclusive content for as low as $8 a month. Head over to Substack at Elizabeth Benton Thompson. I'll see you there. Let's get into the episode. If you want to be more consistent, you're in the right place.

1:03I'm Elizabeth Benton. Welcome to Consistent, a podcast by Primal Potential that is for all of you who feel frustrated by your lack of progress or overwhelmed by all the change that you want to make in your life. Here we stop frantically chasing new habits and start strategically building a structure of consistency. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome back to the Primal Potential podcast. I am Elizabeth Benton and I am kicking off a new experiment and I'm going to take you along for the ride. I'm going to tell you all about it today. This came from a tool that I use in my own life that I've told you about before and I'm just taking it to another level and kind of going public on what it looks like. So let me back up in case you haven't heard me talk about how I use this particular strategy to help me with money. Here's how it works. Tell me you wouldn't be genuinely excited about this imaginary offer.

2:06Imagine for a second that I walk into your house and you are standing in your closet and I walk in there and I'm like, okay, here's how this is going to work, my friend. I'm going to point to every single item in here, every piece of clothing, every shoe, every hanger, every mirror, every everything, every single item. I'm going to point to them one at a time and you get to decide either you can keep it or I will give you back every dollar you spent on it. Right now I'm sitting in my office as I'm doing this so I would be like, okay, the ring light you want to keep it or do you want the $78 back that you spent on it? To be honest, I'm going to take the $78. I don't care about the ring light that much, right? And everything I've got these grow lights for my plants, I've got a speaker, I've got dumbbells, I've got a computer monitor that I've never used before, all this stuff, one at a time. Do you want to keep it or do you want the money back that you spent on it?

3:08Now I've played this game in my own head enough to know that at least 80% of the time, if not 85, 90% of the time, I want to take the money and I would have a lot of money. I don't know about you, but I would have a lot of money. I probably have 300 books in my office and let's just say that on average they were $14. I know there are some books that were $30 or $40 and there were some books that were maybe eight or nine dollars, but let's just say that I have 300 books and we'll call it an average of $12. That's $3600 right there that I would rack up because I'd be like, honestly, the majority of them, I don't need to keep them. I would get rid of most stuff. Think about the kitchen cabinets you don't open. Think about items in your pantry, things under your bathroom sink and I would imagine that if you're really going through this mental exercise with me, you might be feeling a little bit annoyed because I certainly feel that way. Wouldn't it be nice? Wouldn't it be nice? Like, oh, I wish. And then it gets frustrating because in your head you can envision, I could have 20 grand

4:12in 20 minutes in my mind, right? It's not real, so it's a little frustrating, but there's a part of it that we can make real. I'm going to get there and that's what the experiment is all about. So hang with me. This all stems from the line that I use. This is part of my personal defense around finances and it looks like this. I tell myself, everything you see used to be money. Everything you see used to be money. The deodorant, the headband, the earrings, the groceries, every item of grocery, every piece of furniture, every shoe, every sock, every rug in your home, every appliance, every piece of clothing, every electronic, every charger for all of those electronics. Every single thing used to be money. Hey, think about it this way. Everything that you've thrown away ever in your life used to be money. Used to be money.

5:14If I went back and I applied that mindset starting when I was 20 years old, I probably have millions that I don't have right now. And it's disappointing, because like I said, as far as I know, nobody's coming to my house offering free refunds. I can't go backwards and turn all my stuff into cash. Even though I'm telling you, I would, I'd all of a sudden be much more of a minimalist. And though I can't go backwards and turn all this stuff into cash, I can apply that exact same principle to everything I consider buying from here on out. As much as I wish that I could go back to when I was 20 and start thinking and choosing and deciding and making purchases that way, I can't. But I can do it moving forward. I called out my defense clients the other night. I said to them, can you think of something where you have the opinion, if only I knew that 20 years ago, like if only I knew that 20 years ago, things would be so much different.

6:17And then I said, but that thing, if only, are you living that way now? For example, I talked to a lot of people who are like, oh, only I knew when I was 20, how important muscle mass is. Okay, well, yeah, we could agree. It would be nice to know that when you're 20, but now that you know that in your 40s and your 50s and your 60s, are you living the way you wish you had lived when you were 20, are you doing those things or is this just sort of an imaginary thing because we can't apply it to things behind us, but we can apply it to every single thing moving forward, right? So I told my clients they were asking me to give an example of the way I use defensive protocols in my own life. And I was explaining to them that when I want to buy something, I go through this, this idea that, let's say most recently, it was a jacket that I saw on an Instagram, this influencer was doing a try on from a store that was having a sale. You've probably seen these posts before. And there was this one jacket and it was super cute. It was absolutely my color, very trendy, normally like $79 on sale for 40 and what my brain

7:22naturally starts doing is going, it's only $40. That's a pretty good deal. And I could actually use it for this thing. I have a thing in mind for this jacket. I could wear it to this event that I have coming up and also $40 doesn't feel like a big deal. Like $40 isn't going to be the reason that I have financial stress or the reason that I don't. And what I call this is permission logic. Permission logic is the completely reasonable sounding case we make for moving the target, lowering the bar, making an exception. And it feels extra compelling because it's usually true. If not wholly true, at least partially true. It's true that it is only $40 and it's true that I can afford it. And it's true that a $40 jacket is not going to destroy my financial goals or make a meaningful difference in my monthly budget. And so with that in mind, my defense can't be to try to convince myself that buying the jacket is a big problem.

8:24So I have to approach it differently. Normally I would ask myself something like, do I want this jacket enough to spend $40 and that question's pretty easy to get a yes from. Like it's cute. It's on sale. It's a good deal. And I'll wear it. And I can afford it. But the question changes. The answer changes. When I ask the question, would I rather have this jacket or $40? Would I rather have the jacket or would I rather have $40? Even if right now I want the jacket, I'll sort of fast forward, okay, let's say six months from now. This imaginary figure comes into my closet and says, item by item, would you rather have this or would you rather have the money? How would the jacket fare in that moment? Six months from now, am I going to be like, no, no, no, no, I really want the jacket, I want to keep the $40. Most of the time, I know I'd rather have the money.

9:25I also know that I'm going to have thoughts that make buying the thing seem very reasonable. So instead of hoping that I'm just disciplined enough in those moments to ignore those compelling thoughts of like, buy it, it's cute, it's on sale, you can wear it to this event. I approach them differently and strategically, okay, is this going to be another one of those things that I wish I had the opportunity for somebody to just give me the money back. So as I've used this more and more and shared this with more and more of my clients, I started to wonder what would happen if I took this idea, this principle and I made the result more visible, which leads me to the experiment that I've started and I'm going to be sharing with you guys. For the next year, every time I'm genuinely considering a discretionary purchase and decide that I would rather have the money than the thing, I am going to transfer half of the money of the thing into a separate savings account. Now, you could argue it should be 100% all of it.

10:25I'm only doing 50%, I'm meeting myself at my willingness, but the thing that I'm exploring in this is what happens if I start treating every discretionary purchase as a choice between the thing and the money. The day that I started this, I mentally committed that, all right, I'm going to do this and if I end up not purchasing the thing because I decide I would want the money more, then I'm going to make it tangible if I was willing to spend 40 bucks on a jacket, but I'm not going to spend it, then I should be willing to spend 20 bucks and put it into the savings account, right? So the day I decided I was going to do this, I was driving home for my hair appointment and my hair appointment was midday, so I hadn't eaten anything, I was getting kind of hungry, but acquaintance owns a nutrition store near my hairdresser's place. So I was like, I'm just going to stop in there. I'm going to buy a box of protein bars, it's more economical to buy a box than to buy one, you know, you probably spend two or three times as much if you just buy one, so I'm going to buy, I'm going to buy 12 of them, it's cheaper that way, and then I asked myself, okay,

11:26this box of protein bars is 32 bucks, 3199. Would I rather have 12 protein bars or would I rather have 32 dollars? And in that moment, I'd rather have 32 dollars than eat 32 dollars. So I went home and I moved 16 bucks into the brand new savings account that I opened just for this experiment. And then the same thing for the $40 jacket, cute color of the season, color I look great in, didn't buy it, so I moved $20 over to the new account. And I think this is where the experiment is going to get interesting, because a couple of things are going to happen. Number one, as I see the balance start to grow, I think I'm going to be incentivized to say more and more, no, so that I can see the number continue to grow, so that I can see the effect of it. I mean, who doesn't like to see a growing bank account balance, right? So I think that that's going to come into play. The fact that it's visible is going to add an element that I didn't have before where it has like this cumulative effect, whereas when I was doing it before, there was no sense

12:26of an accumulation of deferred expenses or money saved from not buying something. And so I'm adding that element in and I think it's going to be fun, but also all of a sudden that the decisions that seem like on their own, they don't matter. Like $32 in protein bars, like whatever, the jacket, it's $40. They feel kind of too small to really make a difference, but when you can visibly see the cumulative consequence to thousands of decisions that feel too small to matter, think about this way. Think about all the money you've wasted between age 20 and 40. Now if you're 50 or 60 or 70 years old, think about all the money that looking back wasn't worth it or was wasted or you wish, like if only I had all of that money instead of the fast food here instead of buying cheap clothes that I don't wear instead of the

13:26knick-knacks around the house that just collect dust and I ended up donating. If only that money was in an account, right? In and of themselves, those decisions feel too small to matter and yeah, we can sort of theorize about the total, but now I'm going to be able to see it, right? Now here's the deal, the money has to actually move. Otherwise this becomes fake savings math really, really quickly. Like I thought about buying an 80,000 car, but I didn't, so I saved 80,000 dollars today. No. However, if you were genuinely going to buy the car and you decided against it and you transferred 40,000 dollars into your savings, like, hey, that counts. The goal here is not to create an imaginary total based on everything I managed not to buy. The point is to redirect some of the money that I would have spent and just watch what happens, right? The $2 decisions, the $200 decisions. It's going to help me also notice when I choose the thing. For example, yesterday my kids were swimming in the pool and I was sitting out there and my son, Roman, loves for me to read to him.

14:30We went through, I think, something like 45 of the box cart children books, all that we could find. We went to thrift shops and used bookstores and we asked people to be on the lookout for them and we managed to scrounge up about 40 of the books and we read them all. I was like, maybe I'm just going to buy a set of the Hardy Boys books and read them to him. I did because the other thing about this experiment is that the goal is not to spend the money, or the goal is not to stop spending money, right? I'm not trying to eliminate spending. I'm not doing a no spend September or a no spend fall or anything like that. What I did notice is that it slowed me down to think about it. Would I rather have these books or would I rather have, I think, maybe the set that I bought was like, I don't know, called $50 or something? Yeah, I'd love to have $50, but I also think that having this time of reading allowed to my kids is a thousand percent worth of $50. I bought the books and similarly the other day it took my kids to a juice place and got

15:34them in a sia bowl to share before we went to the playground. That's fine. I'm not trying to get a better picture and your goal can be different, but mine is not to not spend money. But I am noticing that I'm being much more intentional because I realize, all right, I can spend $12 on an sia bowl for my kids, but I'd rather have that or the $12, what I'd rather have that or transfer six into savings. And there's going to be times when spending the money is the decision that I make, that's not failure because the goal isn't to stop spending. The goal is to slow down and really evaluate it as a choice between the thing and the money and then to make it visible and tangible by moving half of it. And I want to know how often I choose to buy it and what I feel is worth it. And I think that six months from now I'll be able to look back and be like, you know what? I've learned that these things were very much worth it and these things in hindsight I'm feeling like they aren't. And that will be an easier lesson to grasp because of this physical component that I've added of transferring the money.

16:35What I'm trying to do is make the trade off more explicit. And I'm going to share this as I go. Tiny decisions, the big ones, even if it means being judged for the things I buy or the things I don't buy or how much they cost, that's fine. Judge away. I understand that that's going to be part of the nature of this experiment. I want to just see where this goes. And you know what? If you want to do it with me, I think that would be fun. I find whether it's a step challenge or a spending challenge or a protein challenge, it's always more fun when you do it with other people. And your rules might be different. Maybe you transfer 10% of the money. Maybe you transfer 100% of the money. I'm still in my head about if 100% would be better and I reserve the right to change the rules. It might be that a few months in, I'm like, you know what? I think this would have more of an impact if I transferred 100% of the money or 75% of the money. But where I'm at right now is 50% and that reflects me meeting myself at my willingness, wanting to do something different and not saying, well, because I'm not willing to do it this way, I'm not going to do it at all. Nope, there's something I am willing to do.

17:36This is it and I'm excited about it. I'm not asking myself, can I afford this? I'm asking, would I really rather have the thing or would I rather have the money and not just in the moment, but how do I think I would feel about this in six months or six years, would I rather have the thing or would I rather have the money? Like on the Hardy Boys books, I want to keep them so that Roman can have them when he's older. He can read them on his own when he's older so that he can read them with his kids in, you know, 30 years or whatever it is. I'm going to be sharing these updates on social, but I'm going to be writing about them in a lot more detail on sub-stack. So if you are not following me on sub-stack, I want you to know you can follow me there for free. There's a lot of stuff that I do over there on sub-stack that is totally free. There is stuff that I do over there that's paid and the paid stuff like the exclusive podcast and the deeper dive conversations. You can follow those for as low as $8 a month. So find me over on sub-stack at Elizabeth Benton Thompson. If you've got questions about this experiment, let me know.

18:39I'm pumped about it. I've already started transferring the money. The balance is still pretty low, but I'm going to be giving, I don't know, maybe monthly updates or something. And most of those will be over on sub-stack as I reflect on what I'm noticing, how it feels. And if you're going to do it with me, please tell me. I've got a post about this going up on sub-stack. So let me know if you've read it, let me know what you think, let me know if you're going to join me, if your version is going to be different or you're going to do it in a similar way. I'm excited. Can't wait to see you over on sub-stack. Find me there at Elizabeth Benton Thompson. No, at Elizabeth Benton Thompson. Yeah. That's where you can find me on sub-stack. I'll see you there. Have a great day. Before you go, head over to sub-stack. Find me there. And you're really going to love it. There are exclusive podcasts, daily notes, deeper dives, some really great conversations that we just aren't going to have here on this public format of the podcast. You can follow me on sub-stack totally free or you can follow for as low as $8 a month

19:42to get exclusive member-only content. At Elizabeth Benton Thompson over on sub-stack, you'll have to tell me what you think. But everybody I talk to says that sub-stack feels so much better than the social media that you're used to. So head over to substack.com. Look for me at Elizabeth Benton Thompson. Follow, subscribe. I'll see you over there.