Jill Sirianni
Appearances
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
This is Jill. I think that really our finances are so much more nuanced than what traditional personal finance advice is going to let on. We so often wanna approach it with a math first approach approach. When in reality, our financial decisions, the way that we spend our ideas about money are so intertwined with who we are as a person, our experiences growing up, our current context and kind of
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
How all of these things end up informing the ways that we understand money, approach it, steward it as a resource along with all of our other resources. There's this gap in really combining those two things. We often kind of treat money as if it's this separate entity where we just have to understand spreadsheets to be good at it. In reality, we realize, no, I've got a spreadsheet over here.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
And yet, I'm still not quite making the decisions that I want to be making. I still am impulse spending. Or maybe I'm spending money in areas that I don't feel ashamed about, but society or other people are telling me I should. that there are things I should and shouldn't be spending money on.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
And I think we really wanted to approach this in a manner of recognizing those nuances, our humanity, how dynamic we are, and creating some more freedom and flexibility in the way that we understand and approach money that is far less shameful, because it's not about shoulds and shouldn'ts, right and wrong, and these binaries that we've been sold, but the fluidity of it and the spectrum of
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
What can be a really wise, sound decision for one person might not be for another because of the context or season of life that they're in. And so this is kind of meeting that reality of saying you are a whole person and your money decisions fit within that context. And how can we help you develop spending as a skill?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
This is a big question and it is essentially what our entire book is about and how values-based spending can really be the key to feeling really confident about the decisions that we make. And how we came to this is really through Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
If you're familiar with that, it's a triangle and you've got your basic needs at the bottom as far as your physiological needs and safety needs. In the middle, you have your self-esteem and belonging needs. And at the tippy top, we've got self-actualization needs.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
This is finding purpose, engaging in creativity, recognizing that our needs are not just physical, which I think is where most traditional personal finance advice stops. It's food. Shelter, clothing, done. How do we do that and say no to the rest? And we're really recognizing there is more beyond that. We want to achieve an experience in our lives like having friendship and family.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
This led us to what we call the four Fs, faith, family, friends, and fulfilling work. They meet those higher level needs on that hierarchy of needs. Now, the four Fs shouldn't cost us money, but we do need money in order to pursue these higher needs.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
And so values-based spending is recognizing these core values inside of ourselves and then being able to start identifying, okay, if this is the case, how can I align my spending more with these areas?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
I think a lot of regrets are tied to the decisions that we've made, usually decisions that maybe we didn't have all the information that we needed, or we were kind of influenced to choose something that was not in our best interest. And so I think where these things combine, of course, it's going to impact our finances. What comes to mind for me most often here is impulse spending.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
We hear from a lot of people that this is a big area of contention when it I think the key with that then becomes let's identify what kind of impulse spenders we are. When is it that I am impulse spending? Is it out of habit? Is it that I'm shopping as an activity? So I'm of course just finding myself with things in my cart.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
Does it usually happen when I'm stressed or overwhelmed or feeling super anxious? Or maybe if I'm feeling happy and celebratory, I just need a little treat all the time. Is it that I love to hunt for things and I love deals and I constantly am drawn to the red sticker?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Why Traditional Budgeting Fails and What’s Missing from Your Money Plan
or maybe the social influence of being on Instagram or around others in our community who have certain things that feel like, yeah, they're going to solve our problems. If we can start to identify which one of these impulse spending areas are we kind of falling into, it can help to then inform the next steps. How might I then shift some of the behaviors around those spending decisions?