Tracking Expenses: Why Awareness Beats Control.
We tend to jump straight to fixing things.
Tighten the budget. Cut the extras. Save more.
But what if the problem isn’t your spending — it’s your unconscious spending?
The autopilot.
The habits you didn’t choose, but inherited or absorbed.
The small decisions that don’t even register anymore.
Before you can change anything with money, you have to do what Maria Nemeth calls the first step in any transformation:
Look. See. Tell the truth.
As she says, “Whatever you look, see, and tell the truth about begins to lose its emotional charge.”
— Maria Nemeth, The Energy of Money
That’s what tracking your expenses is really about — not control, not guilt — but awareness.
WHEN IT HIT ME
Early in our marriage, I thought I was doing everything right.
I used Mint, a “real” budgeting app, with categories and limits set.
But every month, I blew through them.
I’d spend in unplanned categories, get hit by oil changes or birthday gifts, and wonder why it never balanced.
I was budgeting — but I wasn’t seeing.
There was no awareness of whether my spending matched what I valued.
When I switched to YNAB, I finally started tracking with intention.
I set up sinking funds for non-monthly expenses and created a “projects” list for the bigger things I wanted to plan for.
The shift wasn’t in the app — it was in the seeing.
Once I could tell the truth about what was actually happening, I could take aligned action.
A SIMPLE SHIFT
If you’ve ever said:
• “I make good money, but I don’t know where it all goes.”
• “I’m doing everything right, but money still feels stressful.”
• “It just disappears.”
Start here: Track, don’t fix.
Use an app if you can — automation helps.
At the end of each month, pause and look.
Where did your money really go?
Did your choices match your values, or your habits?
Are those habits ones you chose — or ones you inherited?
Keep watching.
Awareness compounds faster than any investment.
Because Financial Independence doesn’t start with cutting back —
it starts with seeing clearly where your energy and money already go.
✭ FI LAB CHALLENGE ✭
This week, try a 30-day awareness audit.
Don’t change anything yet. Just track.
Then ask yourself: “What’s true about how I spend — and is that what I want to keep choosing?”
That’s where alignment begins.
Jessica Yancey is a coach, consultant, and FI mentor who helps high-achieving professionals build clarity, choice, and freedom with their money and careers. After two decades in corporate leadership, she built her own F-You Fund and now teaches others how to create options—without extreme frugality or quitting overnight. She blends simple money math with energy and mindset work to help people design a life that actually fits.
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