Lesson 25 - Spending in Sobriety

I’m here to tell you that it’s important to spend money in sobriety. 

Yes, you heard that right!

People often think that as a Financial Sobriety expert I will tell people to never spend money. 

When I am out with people there is always the joke “don’t tell Linda what I’m buying”. Even during gatherings I am part of with She Recovers it’s an ongoing joke that peeps have to hide their spending habits from me. 

It’s actually important in Financial Sobriety to spend some of your money on things that make you happy. 

If my message was to convince you to never spend money you will end up going on a shopping spree.

It’s equal to if you were told to go on a “diet” (heck to the no by the way as I am very anti diet culture) and when you restrict your “bad” food you end up eating the “bad” food in the end anyways, and usually in larger amounts because of the restriction. If I tell you you can’t spend money you will end up buying even more. 

Food and Money have a lot of parallels. 

I was lucky to have Bronwen Thorbun, disordered eating coach and fellow She Recovers coach join me for a podcast, you can find that here: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/your-money-your-recovery/id1493570547?i=1000580004760. It was such a fun conversation! 

My thoughts are that if you are making the choice to be sober (or if you haven’t gotten there yet or on another recovery journey) then having some freedom on your spending is really important. 

When I first started my financial sobriety and even when I overall started my sobriety from alcohol I still bought myself things I wanted, it just didn’t look like spa vacations, expensive dresses with matching shoes etc. It started to look like buying a really beautiful bubble bath ( I love a good bubble bath!) or enjoying time out with a friend for a meal or coffee. 

It is really important to put this into your spending plan. You get to choose to still spend some money on yourself, this is part of achieving Financial Sobriety. 

Recently my husband and I went on a trip to Costa Rica. We hadn’t been away together on a overseas vacation since I had gotten sober, almost 10 years! We used to travel internationally every year. Right before I got sober we went on two in one year. Our credit cards got a really really good workout. Ugh. That feels really icky when I think about it. 

Working our Financial Sobriety we knew it was important to get our spending under control and paying off our debt before we even thought about going on a trip. We would go on occasional weekends away a few times a year because it was important to us to get away for quality time but it looked ALOT different than what it did before I started my Financial Sobriety, and I’m really proud of us for that. We didn’t need the 5 star hotels anymore, we just wanted to spend time together in a simple air bnb. 

It took awhile to plan an international trip and even months leading up to it we felt hesitant but are we ever glad we did it! 

It solidified my thoughts of how important it is to enjoy our money in sobriety. 

I don’t even remember how many times I cried on the trip with incredible gratitude for all the work we had done in our FInancial Sobriety. 

We are planning to go again in 3 years. The saving has already started! 

Buy the coffee’s, buy the shirt you see and fell in love with (just not one in each colour), buy the dinner out with friends, go get the pedicure. JUST PLAN IT! 

Planning our spending is one of the main foundations in Financial Sobriety with Sober Spending. Check out the blog post for this here: https://www.lindaparmar.com/blog/lesson3

You are worthy of this experience too. You are worth enjoying your money and healing your relationship with it. You are not alone. 

Welcome to Financial Sobriety ❤️