It all started when I was chatting to my friend about my plan to ombré my eyebrows, because as much as I loved my precisely my brow pencil, I was fed up with the daily ordeal of having to fill in my sparse brows, made worse by a gangster style scar through one of them after stitches a few years ago. So I knew what I was going to do, did my research and booked my appointment. 

But when my friend asked me the cost and balked at it when I told her, it occurred to me that whether it’s our eyebrows or something else, lots of us (women especially) have a real mental block about spending not just our money but even our time on ourselves. Not least when it comes to thinking about our finances in a more strategic sense than how much a beauty treatment costs.

Yet how many of us are the go-to people for sorting out all of the family admin, arranging all the get togethers, coordinating the doctor’s appointments for elderly relatives, and just generally showing up with our whole selves for other people all of the time, with often no more than just a cursory glance in the direction of our financial planning.  

We are carers, mothers, and all around one woman villages for so many others. Roles that often bring us such fulfilment that it’s easy to overlook that we’re no longer main characters in our own lives. At least not where our financial futures are concerned.

We know we need to do something. But the enormity of the challenge seems too great to even contemplate. So we park it. Until there’s a day of reckoning when we realise quite how low down our own priority lists we truly are.

The Rainmakers will know that our relationship with money underpins virtually everything we cover in the Rainmakers Academy, which is why it’s one of the first modules we tackle.

Not just because our financial behaviour is so deeply rooted in our psychological make up, which in turn is informed (at least in part) by things that may have happened in our childhood.

But also because, as women, lots of us are at war with ourselves daily, over our money management. 

We castigate ourselves for our perceived failings.

Speak harshly to ourselves for the most minor of monetary mishaps.

Are guilt-ridden over our ‘emotional or impulse spending’ barely pausing to contemplate what might be some of the triggers of said emotions or impulses.

Or we block our own blessings by failing to take action. We neither fight nor take flight. Instead, when it comes to our money, we just freeze. With potentially devastating long term consequences. How many of us even know whether we’re saving enough into our pensions for example.

And if this seems too lofty a goal to even contemplate, let’s look at something a little more attainable.

Making space in your budget for self care. Not something we do as a one off for a birthday or anniversary. But something we do habitually, that we regularly allocate time and resources to.

If you already do this, then that’s great.

But from my unscientific poll of Rainmakers, even when we do, it’s something lots of us still struggle with.

So my challenge to you this week is to make space in your budget for you.  Starting by taking a look at your numbers in the first place and getting familiar with your cashflow so you know where you might boldly insert yourself (not just mousily squeezing yourself in with zero fanfare). Where you need to be saying ‘no’ more often in your budget so you can say ‘yes’ more often to yourself. 

Maybe it’s ombre brows. Maybe it’s something else.

But don’t allow your mind to make you think you are undeserving.

Don’t allow hyper-vigilance when it comes to your money to preclude you from enjoying the fruits of your labour.

You are worthy.

You are deserving.

Rework your numbers and free up some cash for a regular date with yourself that you can stick to. It doesn’t have to be big but it does have to be sustainable. Practice doing it without guilt and give yourself a break.

I’ll give you the rest of the playbook in the Academy 😉

Doors open in a few weeks. Join the waitlist for up to 30% off the regular price.

See you there!

P.S  – this ombre brow process is not for the weak. I hadn’t banked on looking like cruella de vil for the first week and having to go into hiding, hard to do on a small island where everyone knows everyone else! Let’s just say I’m not above paying the price for beauty! Have you done it? Email me and let me know!