Money Management: 30-Day Challenges for Financial Insight

Holly Trantham encourages embracing 30-day money challenges to reset habits and gain financial insights.

### Embracing Financial Growth: The Chill Guide to 30-Day Challenges
* 👋  Holly Trantham, the creative director of tfds, introduces season two of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life, focusing on **money and career decisions that enhance life without overwhelming it**.
* 🍂  As fall approaches, many look to reset their finances, emphasizing the **importance of starting investments early for long-term growth**, with Betterment simplifying the process through **automated investing and tax-smart tools**.
* 📊  Research indicates that forming a new habit can take anywhere from **18 to 254 days**, challenging the notion that it only takes **21 days**, suggesting that short-term challenges can provide **valuable insights into spending habits**.
* 💡  Trantham outlines three approaches for a 30-day money challenge, starting with a **spending category reset**, where individuals focus on **reducing spending in one area**, such as food, to **identify overspending and adjust habits**.
* 📝  The second approach is a month-long money audit, where participants **track spending, assess debt and savings, and calculate retirement trajectories** to gain a **comprehensive understanding of their financial picture**.
* 💼  Lastly, a short-term side hustle challenge encourages individuals to explore temporary income opportunities, like gig work, to **boost savings** and evaluate the potential for **long-term income streams**.
* 💪  While no challenge will lead to instant wealth, setting **clear intentions** can foster meaningful changes in mindset and financial habits, paving the way for a **more secure future**.

hello everyone. I'm Holly Trantham, tfds creative director, and this is season two of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life. For the past eight years, I've been working behind the scenes on all of the content you see here on YouTube and across all of tf's channels, and I also wrote our second book, Beyond Getting By. Throughout this series, I'll be talking about how to approach your money and career decisions from a chill place where they help you live the life you want without ever becoming your sole focus. So, now that fall is almost here, a lot of us are looking to hit the reset button when it comes to our finances, and one of the most important aspects of investing is getting started early so your money has time to grow. And with Betterment, investing does not have to be some scary, daunting task, no matter how much or little you know about the stock market. Betterment helps take care of the heavy lifting. Their automated investing tech and tax-smart tools are designed to help maximize your returns so your money

is put to work. Betterment can help someone ease their way into investing, as their financial experts are working behind the scenes to make your money hustle while you spend more energy on what actually brings you joy. Get started, be invested, click the link in our description, or head to betterment.com/tfd to sign up in minutes. In our productivity-obsessed world, which I've already spent some time talking about in this series, the idea of the 30-day challenge is inescapable. Whether you're interested in trying out Whole 30 or considering doing the annual 30-day challenge with Yoga with Adriene, for some reason, we love this idea that we can totally reset our lives or form a new healthy habit by sticking to it for just one month. That might be because, for a long time, we have accepted the idea that it takes 21 days to form a habit. However, research has shown us that that might not be as true as we think. A 2010 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology found the length of

time it takes for a new behavior to become automatic varies from 18 days to 254 days, according to the authors. Missing one day did not hinder progress; however, the more difficult behavior change was perceived, the longer it took for the habit to form. Now, I am someone who has always been interested in self-improvement and personal productivity. I literally wrote a book on how you can build a better relationship with money and not be so strict about it. But I personally still utilize a hyper-detailed budget spreadsheet, and I meticulously track my accounts because that makes me feel more on top of it. And I think the problems people run into with these short-term challenges can be the same ones we see with crash diets and cleanses. Beyond being potentially harmful to your health, they are just impossible to maintain in the long run. But that does not mean I think a 30-day challenge cannot be beneficial for kickstarting a new habit. And when it comes to money, I think short-term challenges can be really beneficial when

it comes to providing perspective. You won't necessarily be able to save thousands of dollars in a month, especially if you don't make that much to begin with, but you could gain some insights into your current spending habits and finances that can help you decide on longer-term habits to work on. Here are three ways I would personally approach a 30-day money challenge, starting with number one: a spending category reset. So, full no-buy challenges are really popular for a reason. They are tough to commit to, and they make for a great headline. We've interviewed plenty of people who have gone through them here on this channel, but they are definitely not possible for everyone, and they're also only really effective if you were buying too much of everything to begin with, which is a pretty privileged position to be in. So, rather than doing a full no-buy month, consider doing a reset in just one spending category, like your food spending. This is actually something Chelsea did back in February, which she tracked in our newsletter after not going out to eat.

for an entire month, she did end up saving a lot of money. But more importantly, she was able to identify where she was overspending before and adjust her habits moving forward. She also shared a breakdown of exactly how she did this in one of our members-only workshops and also included a guide for how to conduct your own categorical spending reset. And this is just a reminder that if you join the society at the $499 tier or higher, you get automatic access to all of our previous member event recordings. And if you want to do this and you're deciding which category to focus on, take a look at your current spending and see where you're constantly going over budget, or if you don't currently keep a budget, decide which non-essential spending category you are spending the most on. Number two, a month-long money audit. So before I finally internalized better everyday habits around my home life, I used to religiously do the apartment therapy January cure, which is a month-long challenge with daily tasks to help you get control over your home. One of the

tasks they always assign is to do a home projects to-do list, where you simply walk around your home with a notepad and take note of everything you want to do: a room you want to paint, a bookcase you need to clean out, or the scary under-sink area that you need to stop avoiding. And I always loved this assignment because it didn't come with any expectations. You end up picking just one manageable project to focus on during the month-long cure. But ultimately, this list-making exercise is meant to just give you a clear idea of what you would like to get done in your home, so you can start tackling those tasks on your own timeline. And I love the idea of applying this concept to a full money audit, where you don't actually set up to change any of your habits during your challenge, but you give yourself a look at your full financial picture before you decide what your next step should be. This could look something like this: week one, track your spending, go through several months of bank and credit card statements to see

where your money is actually going. Week two: assess your debt payoff and savings timeline. Look at your current debt and savings strategies and assess when you will be able to pay off debt or hit your emergency savings goal or other goals based on your current contributions. Week three: calculate your retirement trajectory. You can use an online calculator like this one to see if you are on track to retire when you want to. Week four: pick a goal to focus on. Based on all of the above, you will probably find that all of these areas are interconnected and you will need to adjust some to reach your goals in others. For instance, if you decide you are spending too much money on workout clothes, you could see that if you cut that back by x amount, you could reach your emergency fund goal in a matter of months. The point is not to walk away having saved more, but to actually just give yourself the information you need to start making incremental changes. And I think when it comes to money, especially this kind of slow intentional step back, can be really helpful for

people who tend to bite off more than they can chew. Lastly, number three: a short-term side hustle challenge. So, this is just a quick reminder that the best way to boost your savings and investments is to start earning more. But that's not necessarily something you can do in a 30-day challenge, especially when you consider that the average job search takes between 3 and 6 months. Focusing on just a 30-day side hustle challenge is meant to be temporary as a way to get a quick boost in savings and start building momentum or potentially find a new stream of income you could stick with in the long run to help you reach even more savings goals down the line. This could be an app-based side hustle like dog walking, grocery delivery, or other gig-based services. If you've worked in food service before, you could add a temporary side hustle by offering your services to pick up shifts at a restaurant where you have an existing connection, or you could also look for seasonal work such as gift wrapping or working on a customer service hotline.

During the holidays, and to make this effective, you have to determine what is an achievable goal on this timeline. For example, if you've already worked on a dog walking app before and already have solid reviews, it will likely be easier to just pick up where you left off and get some new clients. You could set a goal to walk a certain amount of dogs each week with the express purpose of putting everything you earn, minus taxes, into your emergency fund and just seeing how much that saves you by the end of 30 days. Or, if you want to dog walk as a side hustle but don't actually have experience on an app before, your goal could just be to find your first few clients by the end of the month, which you could aim to achieve by setting up a profile and procuring some testimonials from friends and neighbors. You could even do this by offering up your services in your neighborhood's Facebook group. At the end of the day, regardless of what 30-day savings challenges you see on social media, you're probably not going to magically save a bunch of money.

in a month again unless you already earn a fair amount and just cut out all of your spending for the month. But focusing on one specific side hustle can help you determine whether it is worth your energy to stick with it and give you a solid idea of what kind of extra income in the long run is possible. And while any 30-day challenge is not going to make you rich, I do think setting out with a very clear intention can be very helpful for making changes to your mindset and habits going forward. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you back here next week on the next episode of the totally chill guide to work and life.

Three 30-Day Challenges That Will Actually Change Your Finances

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The Financial Diet

The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life: Season Two

Holly Trantham, the creative director of TFDS, is launching season two of The Totally Chill Guide to Work and Life, focusing on money and career decisions.

She emphasizes the importance of starting to invest early and introduces Betterment as a helpful tool for automated investing and maximizing returns.

The series also discusses the popular idea of 30-day challenges for habit formation, questioning the common belief that it takes 21 days to form a habit.

The Timeframe for Habit Formation and Money Challenges

The time it takes for a new behavior to become automatic ranges from 18 to 254 days, with perceived difficulty affecting the duration.

Short-term challenges, like a 30-day money challenge, can provide valuable insights into spending habits and offer a fresh perspective.

Instead of a full no-buy month, resetting one spending category, such as food, can be a more manageable and effective approach.

One member successfully saved money for a month by identifying and adjusting her overspending habits.

She shared her process and offered a guide for others to conduct their own spending reset.

The article also suggests a month-long money audit, using a list-making exercise to gain a clear overview of financial goals and tasks.

Assessing Your Financial Goals and Boosting Savings

The plan involves a four-week assessment of your financial situation, starting with evaluating debt and savings strategies.

The second week focuses on calculating your retirement trajectory and adjusting goals based on interconnected financial areas.

The final part includes a short-term side hustle challenge to boost savings and potentially find a new income stream.

Achievable Goals for a Side Hustle During the Holidays

Setting achievable goals for a side hustle, like dog walking, can be effective during the holidays.

If you have prior experience, aim to gain new clients and save the earnings for your emergency fund.

For those without experience, focus on finding your first clients through networking and offering services in local groups.