Hi! Have you ever found a new way to budget and felt certain this was going to be your ticket out of debt and into more savings, only to find the same old you waiting at the end of all your planning? Maybe you have felt the frustration and shame over not being able to save any money? Or maybe, you keep spending money when you know you need it for something else like your bills? Maybe you can pay your bills and save, but you struggle to purchase the things you need even when funds are set aside for them?

Here's why... Your view on money is not being addressed. If you keep viewing money the same way you always have, it does not matter how great the new tool or budgeting idea may be. This mind set drives the way you view yourself with money. BUT you can uncover your scarcity money mindset and begin to experience freedom with your money. Once you uncover your money mindset you will no longer view you and money the same way.

This is not a get rich quick scheme or a new way to budget. This simple exercise can change the way you are with money for good. You can answer a series of questions that can lead you to the root of your issues with money. Once you uncover your scarcity money mindset you can break free of old money habits that are keeping you broke and stuck!

Here is how the exercise works:

1. Do a spending analysis

This sounds more complicated than it is. To do a spending analysis you just go through the last 3 months of your spending. You will want to do this with each of your accounts. So you will need the last three months of transactions for any checking or credit cards you have.

Next, you will need crayons or highlighters. You will use these to color code your transactions. You will want to assign a color to each category you spend your money on. For example, food might be blue, gas could be yellow, eating out could be red. After you assign each of the different categories a color, you will go through your statements and highlight the transactions with the corresponding color coded category. You would go through your statement and highlight all the transactions for food in blue, all the gas transactions for gas in yellow and so on. You will want to do this for every single transaction for all of your accounts.

Finally, add it all up. You will take all the blues (food) and add them all together and find the total amount you are spending each month on food. You will do this for each of your categories. Once you have the sum total for all of your categories you will see where all of your money is going. I will warn you, most people are shocked and feel sick when they see where they are truly spending their money. We think we know where our money is going, but until we sit down and go through our accounts row by row, we really don't know where our money is going.

You can watch this video for more information on how to do a spending analysis

The spending analysis is key to the process. If you skip this step you will not have the same outcome of those who follow through.

Once you have gone through your spending analysis, the prompts from the worksheet will help you to uncover your scarcity money mindset. You will use the results from your spending analysis to look at your thoughts and emotions and discover what has been driving the way you have been with money.

To continue with this process of uncovering your scarcity money mindset use the prompts found in this worksheet to finally get to the root of your scarcity money mindset.

We hope you found this helpful and trust that you will be able to get to the root of the issue with your money, and the next time you sit down to do a budget you will be able to stick to it!

Take good care and all the best to you with your money!