When it comes to your finances, building healthy habits is crucial. Shannon McLay, CEO of The Financial Gym, joined TheStreet to discuss the most damaging money behaviors holding people back — and how to break free from them.
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Full Video Transcript Below:
CONWAY GITTENS: Tell me about some other what is your, like big or major habit that you would tell someone in terms of getting their financial well-being together?
SHANNON MCLAY: The number one thing is mindfulness and the mindset. It's all about a healthy money mindset. And most of us don't have a healthy money mindset. We think about money. It's not something that brings us joy again. It's bringing us fear and shame. I think it's, you know, there's varying figures about it, but certainly over 70% of people experience financial anxiety. And it doesn't matter if you're financially healthy or not. We see people who look to us very financially healthy and are feeling anxiety. And when we feel anxiety about an area, we avoid it. We don't want to dig into the thing that's creating anxiety. So Yeah.
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CONWAY GITTENS: So what are some of the most detrimental habits you see often in terms of people dealing with their finances?
SHANNON MCLAY: I think the number one thing is, is the mindfulness on where your money's going. I always say we work really hard for every dollar that we make, so we need to make it hard to spend those dollars because it's hard to get it in the bank. But it's so easy for us to spend money we spend on our phones. We spend it with credit cards on apps, and we don't realize where it's going. I think another big thing that we hear, a phrase we hear all the time at the gym is, I don't know where my money's going. I make it and then it's gone and I don't know where it is. And the funny thing is there's so many apps that will tell you where your money's going. But again, because we feel anxiety and we don't want to look, we're not going to look at it. And so that's one of the first steps we'll say is being mindful of where your money is going and whether it's tracking your expenses via an app or even just manually tracking it in the Notes app on your phone. That process of paying attention where your money is going is really a good first step.
