Many people tackle their money matters like a big spring clean: once a year, very reluctantly, for an entire Sunday. Afterwards everything is left lying again until the pile of letters and the uncertainty become too big once more. The result is a vague, nagging feeling that you don’t have things under control.
There is a calmer alternative: financial self-care as a routine. Just as you brush your teeth without thinking about it for long, you can also look after your money in short, fixed moments. In this article you will read why that works and how to build a routine that suits you.
Why routines bring calm
The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB, 2015) describes financial well-being as, among other things, the feeling of having control over your day-to-day finances and being able to absorb setbacks. That sense of control does not come from an occasional big effort, but from regularly knowing where you stand.
Routines help with this for two reasons. First, they reduce uncertainty. In Scarcity (2013), Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir describe how money worries take up mental space. What you look at regularly, your head no longer has to hold on to all the time. Second, routines make decisions unnecessary. You don’t have to choose each time whether to look at your money, only when, and that has already been decided.
How long does it take for something to become a habit?
You often hear that a habit takes 21 days. That figure has little scientific basis. Phillippa Lally and colleagues (University College London, 2009) followed 96 participants who wanted to adopt a new habit, such as a piece of fruit with lunch or a short walk. On average (the median), it took 66 days for the behaviour to become more or less automatic, with large differences between people: from 18 to 254 days. Simple habits became automatic faster than demanding ones.
Two lessons follow from this: give yourself time, and start with something small. Another interesting finding was that missing a single occasion hardly disrupted the process. So a missed day is no reason to give up.
For money matters, that means: don’t expect that after a week you will automatically check your balance every morning. The first weeks require conscious attention. Only after that does it become something you do without thinking, and that is exactly when the routine starts to give you calm instead of costing you energy.
Behavioural scientist BJ Fogg (Tiny Habits, 2019) recommends making a new habit so small that it can hardly fail, and linking it to something you already do every day. With money, that can be as simple as checking your balance once after your morning coffee.
A routine in three rhythms
A good financial self-care routine works on three levels. You don’t have to start them all at once. Choose one first.
Daily: two minutes of awareness.
- Check your balance at a fixed moment, for example after breakfast or on the tram.
- See whether anything unexpected has been debited.
- Ask yourself one question: is there anything today that I want or need to spend money on?
Weekly: fifteen minutes of overview.
- Open your post and emails, and pay or schedule the bills that have come in.
- Compare your spending for the week with what you had planned.
- Plan the larger expenses for the coming week, such as a birthday or school costs.
Monthly: half an hour of adjusting.
- Look back: what went well, what turned out differently? A monthly check-in gives you a fixed structure for this.
- Put an amount aside for your buffer or savings goal.
- Once a quarter, take a close look at your fixed costs. The subscription audit helps you find running subscriptions you no longer use.
Thomas’s story
Thomas (29) is a graphic designer and also works partly as a self-employed freelancer on the side. His paperwork always lived in a shoebox. “Every time I saw a letter from the tax office or another government agency, I got a knot in my stomach.” He decided to start small: every morning, while the coffee was brewing, he opened his banking app. Nothing more.
After a few weeks he added a fixed slot on Friday afternoon: fifteen minutes to send invoices and deal with the post. “The funny thing is that it takes less time than before. Back then I lost hours worrying and searching. Now I simply know what’s going on.” After three months he had a separate account for his taxes for the first time, and he was sleeping noticeably better.
Make it easy for yourself
- Link your routine to something you already do. After breakfast, after clearing the table on Friday, after the first working day of the month.
- Automate what you can. A standing order to your savings account on the day after payday, direct debits for fixed costs you know well.
- Keep it pleasant. A fixed spot, a cup of tea, some music. Financial self-care doesn’t have to feel like a punishment.
- Record your progress. A cross in your diary for every time you did your routine makes visible what you have already achieved.
- Be gentle with yourself when you miss a day. As Lally’s research shows, skipping once is not a disaster. Simply pick it up again the next day.
Small moments, great calm
Financial self-care is not a project with an end date. It is a way of taking good care of yourself, just like getting enough sleep or exercise. By taking a quick look every day, tidying up every week and adjusting every month, money matters become less threatening. You know where you stand, you see problems coming before they grow big, and you experience that you have something in your own hands. That is the basis of peace of mind.
Would you like to learn step by step how to build and keep up a routine like this? Then discover the course The road to financial well-being.