Sowing the Seeds of Financial Freedom
Nurturing a Healthy Relationship with Money | Guest article by PontificaMuse
April is National Financial Literacy Awareness Month
There are seasons in life when financial advice feels more like noise than nourishment, and managing our money feels more like fighting a tangle of twisted vines in our mental backyard.
What if we approached our relationship with money not as an endless battle but as something to be tended like a garden? With patience, attention, and reverence, what might it become?
This is an invitation to grow something enduring, a financial life of enough. One seed, one choice, one quiet act at a time.
Step 1: Find the Light
Just as flowers need proper light exposure to thrive, your financial situation requires the light of truth to reach its full potential.
Spend 30 minutes creating a simple “money snapshot.” This isn’t a budget. It’s the sunlight on your current terrain, without any shame, guilt, or self-sabotage.
List all income sources.
List all recurring expenses, including savings and investments.
Don’t forget those pesky irregular expenses, like quarterly/annual payments or seasonal sports fees for the kids.
List all debts of any kind, with current balances.
Pause and breathe! The light shines on these thorny weeds, so we can see how to defeat them and make room for new life in our financial garden.
List all savings, investments, and retirement accounts, with current balances.
Step 2: Assess the Soil
Healthy soil is dynamic and alive. So is our relationship with money. Before planting anything new, we must assess the mental soil that fuels our financial growth. What’s the current condition of yours?
Begin by choosing one emotional purchase from the last 30 days, and write down what you felt when you bought it, what you hoped it would change, and whether you would do it again.
Repeat for a recent impulse purchase, a nagging recurring payment, and for a transfer (or lack thereof) to a savings or investment account.
These need not all be negative transactions! This is the practice of tilling the soil, of turning insight into nourishment to create more positive interactions with your money.
Step 3. Eradicate the Weeds
A garden thrives on thoughtful choices regarding what must be removed, what is allowed to remain, and what will be added. The wild morning glory is vibrant and alluring on the surface, but it earns its other name, the bindweed, by strangling other plants if not quickly eradicated.
Likewise, our finances must be culled of the alluring but unnecessary or harmful things that drain resources from what truly matters in our lives and from our hopes for the future. What are the weeds in your financial garden?
Identify one expense that no longer aligns with your values, and eliminate it this week. Cancel a subscription, skip an impulse buy, or say no to an obligatory outing.
Removing the excess does not shrink your life. Rather, it makes room for the important things to blossom and expand.
Step 4: Plant with Intentionality
Scattered seeds won't flourish consistently. Good gardens - and good finances - require careful planning and a steady rhythm of attention and maintenance.
These needs are met through well-established systems of budgeting and automation. Having solid systems in place makes it easier to stick to our plans, and it makes adjustments for unexpected life events much easier to manage.
Create (or update) your budget to reflect all the income and expenditures you captured in Step 1. Then, automate one aspect of your finances today: a weekly $5 savings transfer, a recurring bill payment, or a monthly retirement contribution through your employer.
Establishing these systems isn’t restriction. It’s the arbor in which your financial future will thrive.
Step 5: Water, Weed, and Watch
Water is the income that meets our financial needs. Shortfalls cause drought, reversing our progress. Weeds are the excess expenditures when we still have bills to pay. Left unchecked, they can destroy the entire garden. Watching is regularly reviewing/updating our budget and automations, just as we regularly check our gardens for pests and anything that might be amiss.
Neglect is the quiet undoing of both gardens and goals. But perfection isn't required – only consistent attention.
Create a 30-minute weekly “money ritual.”
End the week with a favorite beverage, light a candle, and review your budget and accounts, and note anything that need to be addressed the following week (e.g. unexpected credit card charges, incorrect bank fees, etc.).
Finally, breathe, and celebrate your progress. You’ve taken control of your money and planted the seeds of your financial freedom.
What you tend to will thrive!
The steps above are a simple approach to start taking control of your financial life. But what comes next?
Your garden of financial freedom will not blossom overnight. It takes a determined mindset, lots of patience, and strategies that evolve with you and your money over time.
Below are three books I personally used to help pay off $70,000 in under three years and finally begin saving and investing. (None of these are sponsored.) Through this process, I gained control over and confidence in my financial future.
You can, too!
1. Destroy debt: “The Total Money Makeover” (2024 Edition) by Dave Ramsey
Free resources are available on his website.
2. Automate your financial system: “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” (2nd edition) by Ramit Sethi
Free resources are available on his website (works best in Chrome).
3. Enjoy the results: “Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money & Your Life” by Bill Perkins