By Rebecca Jackson
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August 13, 2025
The holidays are rapidly approaching and I'm sure, like me, you are keenly aware of this fact. If you are anything like me, your empty wallet is already whispering to you about its worry. Back-to-School did a number of my wallet, and it is already starting to fear the swiping that will take place from Halloween prep clear thru to 2026. This felt like the right time to drop this blog that I started drafting years ago, in April of 2021, but I never quite made it back to it long enough to finish it... until my own financial life was in complete chaos once again after my husband suffered his spine injury back in April 2025, nearly exactly 4 years later. Then, I touched back into this blog over the summer, for my own benefit, and I've been polishing it here and there, working on completing it since. I'm finally ready to share it with you! Enjoy! In order to keep from having messy money habits you can improve these practices in your life, leading you closer to financial freedom with magical money habits instead. Let me break it down for you a little more. M ake changes E liminate waste S top excess spending S ave where you can Y ou are worthy M anage investments O nly spend for need N ever sacrifice quality for price E levate your money IQ Y our Legacy is shaping We could all make some changes to our financial outlook. To make changes you have to first be brutally honest with yourself about your current financial outlook. Money is half mindset and half managing it. If you ignore bad money habits or bad money beliefs, they will run your life from behind the scenes. If you spend on wasteful things, you're bound to feel regretful as well, Make these necessary changes to become the manager of your money instead of the spender. This is the natural next step. You should eliminate waste , in your spending, but also in your life. Where are you wasting tangible things in your life that is causing hidden wasteful spending? Are there places you can cutback in your consumption to eliminate excess spending? Ask yourself the hard questions to help you eliminate the waste and create abundance to benefit your family, your home, your dreams and your goals, all of which are ultimately to the benefit of your legacy. To say it another way, stop excess spending anywhere you can. Do you spend a ton of money on clothing. Maybe it's craft supplies that rarely get used, or home organization stuff that you keep planning on implementing soon. Whatever things in your life that you are spending excessive amounts on, no matter how well intended, identify them and then minimize the expense they create in your budget When it comes to buying the necessary consumables like food, toiletries, and paper products, it's best to save where you can . I'm not saying cheap toilet paper if you're used to a certain ply, but I am saying to coupon, or shop sale whenever and wherever you can to prevent excessive spending on the things you have to buy. There's no need to pay full price for the things we always know we need and use frequently, just plan ahead, shop the sales, and be prepared instead of spending unnecessarily. The most important part of implementing these things is to acknowledge that you are worthy of having money come freely and easily into your life. You are worthy of spending, saving, or investing your money when it does come. You are worthy of financial wealth and abundance, but it will not just come to you, it needs to be nurtured and managed intentionally. Moving past cleaning up your money habits and into how to make your money work for you, you should first make investments . Whether they be traditional investments in stocks and bonds on Wallstreet, or real estate investments, or small business investments, the way you personally decide to invest is entirely up to you, but it's a beneficial first step to making your money multiply and work for you. Simply spending gets you nowhere except needing to collect more dollars to spend. Invest, don't spend. When looking for other ways to multiply your money you must continue the themes above by following one simple spending rule: only spend for need . You can justify the need however you choose, but need should fuel your spending. Not jealousy or envy, not insecurity or doubt, only need. Those other ways of fueling your spending are all going to create unhealthy spending habits. You worked so hard to eliminate messy spending habits, it would be a shame to slip back into old ways. Looking for ways to multiply may seem like looking for the least expensive option is best, except this is flawed thinking because the lower the price, typically lower the quality. Lower quality means frequent need for repair or replacement. When it comes to making purchases, I encourage that you never sacrifice quality for price . Spend where you need to spend to increase quality and minimize additional future expense. When you buy cheap you pay for it, multiple times, and in multiple ways. Multiply your money by minimizing the number of times you have to spend it, accomplished best when you purchase better quality products. Another way to multiply your money is to constantly be intentional to elevate your money IQ . It's not enough to make money and then to invest the money. If you don't elevate your financial IQ you will still lose your money, making bad investments, bad quality purchases, inconvenient expense timing, etc. Elevating your financial IQ should be a lifelong journey, where you continually grow your money mindset, financial comprehension, and also seek new ways to ensure money retention. With all of this, as you begin implementing remember what it's all for. you are not just trying to grow dollars in your bank account, you are trying to be the one who defines you, it's all a part of your legacy shaping into what you want you will give future generations. Financial changes will affect future generations far more than they will benefit you. Growing wealth isn't about you now, it's about ensuring financial stability for your grandchildren and their grandchildren, the best ways you can. Cleaning up the mess can lead you to true financial F lexible fun R ich culture E ducation E ntrepreneur potential D estination travel O pportunities M oney in the bank and your pocket When your money habits are clean and you have extra cash flow as a result you can partake in more flexible fun . Often times last minute opportunities or higher ticket purchases are impossible for a person with messy money habits. Being intentional to practice cleaner methods when it comes to managing your money truly opens up freedom to have significantly more flexibility when deciding how you have fun and where you can choose to do so. Lavish vacations, adventurous outings, and unique products and experiences all typically cost more and are rarely presented with extensive time to prepare. Without flexibility in your spending capacity, these things will be harder to achieve. Being fortunate enough to be born into a wealthy family that affords rich culture in your life is not commonplace. This is why in a Monarchy there are the Royals & the Commoners, requiring significantly more commoners to make a kingdom run successfully. If you aren't one of the lucky ones born into wealth it doesn't mean you can't have a rich culture fulfilling your experience here on earth. It just means you have to be intentional in your choices, and practice clean money habits. Doing so will afford you the freedom to experience many opportunities to ensure a rich culture even though you don't have a royal title. Sadly, in the world we live in, a good education can sometimes be hard to obtain. This is just another example of how clean money habits can make the difference. This disappointing truth about our schooling institutions may be too challenging for our society to fix, but we have power as adults. University prices are higher than they've ever been, and for many families, it's too steep a cost for them to manage, a frustrating truth for many. If this was your family as you approached adulthood, you can change the story. You can break the chain. Keeping clean money habits as an adult can afford you the ability to obtain opportunities to further your education with more ease Every store, every restaurant, every product started with a person who saw entrepreneur potential in a vision they had and then decided to take a leap of faith. With clean money habits, your leap can feel much smaller than if you are chasing this dream with no padding in your bank account. It costs money to make money, and this is the reason more people aren't building their own companies. I can promise you I'd be further along in my own entrepreneurial vision if my money habits were cleaner at the start. I knew nothing of true destination travel . I understood travel but not really travel based on the destination of your choosing. Honestly, I only understood travel based on your bank account. Until I was in the double-digits as a kid I believed that vacations were always camping. We never took big vacations, or really anything more than a camping weekend, until I was a teenager. As I grew up and had kids, I began to understand their reasoning. Kids are expensive, and so are vacations. Spending on luxurious vacations, or the freedom to just visit somewhere that you're interested in, is one of those unique benefits enjoyed by people with money to spare. Clean money habits help you accrue money to spare. One of the best perks to having clean money habits that allow you to be financially comfortable is simply opportunities , plainly stated. When a musician you love it doing a show a few hours away, but you can't afford a reliable vehicle, it doesn't even matter if you can squirrel away the ticket money, you still can't get there. Lost opportunity. When your bestie is getting married in another state, cross country, if you can't afford to take days off of work to attend her wedding weekend or even to buy the plane ticket you both lose. Missed memories. Lost opportunity. When your kid gets the chance to participate in a school production, but the program fee and uniform expense is more than you can swing, you're disappointing your child. Another lost opportunity. Clean money habits, that help you accumulate extra money in the bank just growing, allows you to get to the concert, enjoy your friend's wedding for a whole week, AND also enjoy as many showings as you want of your kid's play, photographing every second. The absolute best part of practicing clean money habits is having money in the bank and your pocket; there's no easier way to put it. Having clean money habits allows you to do all of the things (flexible fun, rich culture, education, entrepreneurial potential, destination travel, and opportunities) while still having money in the bank and also in your pocket. There is no better feeling, than to know you have extra money, just in case. With all of this in mind, how will you begin cleaning up your money practices and minimize the wasteful spending? I consider wasteful spending to be anything that: 1) Does not meet one of your core needs 2) Improve you as a human while still aligning with your values or 3) Spark joy inside of you in a healthy and productive way. Set some money goals... practical and out of this world BIG ones! Live Dazzling! ~ Rebecca