In Stylist’s new digital series In the Red, we investigate how debt is really impacting young women in 2022 – from our relationship with credit cards and shopping to examining how debt informs our relationships, our beauty regimes and the way we operate in the world. 

Creating money rituals is not really as fluffy as it sounds; there are absolutely no crystals involved, for starters. I won’t mention the universe once, I promise. It’s about building a connection between you and your money that fosters and encourages positive habits.

Creating routines, rituals and habits around your practice with money will support your journey towards a healthier money mindset and give you a framework for managing your money so that you don’t have to think about it all the time.  

A lot of the language that we use around money and budgeting is similar to how we talk about food and dieting, with discipline held in the highest regard and any deviation from ‘ideal’ treated as gamechanging or deal-breaking. Serial budgeters tend to apply the same all-or-nothing application to finances as yo-yo dieters do to food and exercise. Once you’re in that mindset of perfection or bust, it can be really difficult to actually be fair and reasonable in your expectations of yourself.  

It’s broadly acknowledged that it is what we repeatedly do that builds our world and our experience of life, rather than single events, and this relentless nature of the life admin and self-care tasks that we have to complete is what can lead us to feel burned out and despondent, which can, in turn, lead to the ‘fuck it’ mentality that precedes giving up.

This is especially true of money management, so we have to find ways and strategies for making those repeated actions easier and incorporating them into our lives in a way that doesn’t drain us.

Personally speaking, there are a few habits and rituals that I’ve found to be key to building a lasting sense of financial wellbeing, and they are:

• Living with a budget
• Checking your bank balance regularly
• Consistently saving something
• Staying on top of debt
• Practising gratitude

  This isn’t a prescription, but a good baseline framework for a healthy relationship with money. If you can develop habits and rituals around these five areas, I promise that you’ll see an improvement in your financial well-being.  

For me, creating a budget that actually worked with my own lifestyle and goals was transformative, but it didn’t happen right away.

The issue was that my budgeting technique was, essentially, coming from a place of self-loathing. I hadn’t made peace with my mistakes, and every ounce of my self-worth was tied to the £27,000-ish of personal debt that I’d accrued.

The role of your budget in your wider financial wellbeing practice is, quite simply, to present you with the information that you need to set your priorities and make informed choices. For most of us, it’s not possible to have it all, all at once, so we need to learn to make smart choices according to what we want and need, and what we can afford – and this is what your budget will tell you.  

Your budget is the red thread running through all of your finances; the sourcebook for all of your decision-making when it comes to money. Sympathetically created and properly maintained, it can be your best friend, rather than an arduous chore or a stick to beat yourself with.

A successful budget is:

• Easy to follow (don’t give columns weird labels)
• At least a little flexible (if the Eiffel Tower didn’t bend a little in the wind, it would break)
• Comprehensive (don’t leave any payments or accounts out)
• Accurate (don’t guess or round amounts down) 

One of the challenges to financial wellbeing that arises again and again is the tendency to bury our heads in the sand when it comes to money. I did this for years, and while the immediate threat of what was going on with my finances was mostly neutralized, the anxiety continued to bubble away under the surface as the actual material problems grew in the dark.

Once you have your budget, which is, in a lot of ways, the keystone for your financial habits, it’s important that you check in with it, and also with the bank account or accounts that it relates to at regular intervals. This could be daily, weekly or monthly, according to what suits you, but if you’re used to avoidance tactics when it comes to money, something more regular will help you to get used to feeling connected and engaged with your finances in a healthy way. This is where exposure therapy tactics can be really useful.  

Formally, exposure therapy is a form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that’s usually used for treating phobias, obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety, and it’s carried out by a psychotherapist or specialized practitioner. What we are talking about here, though, is using some of the techniques and principles to make facing your finances easier if you experience high levels of anxiety around money – so that the inclination to bury your head in the sand becomes weaker, and you can engage with your finances in a more relaxed and controlled way.

If your anxiety around money is causing you to avoid observing or making decisions about your finances, then the first step is to put regular checking into place. I would suggest that checking your balances and budget once per day is sufficient to get the benefits of exposure without accidentally introducing a new compulsion to check your bank account every five minutes ‘just in case’, because that’s not good for your financial wellbeing either. 

You should find that, after a few days, the little jolt of anxiety that you feel as you open your banking app starts to grow quieter and maybe even subsides, while you’ll also start to feel more confident and relaxed when tapping your debit card at the checkout or even talking about money with friends. Exposing yourself to your financial situation repeatedly will help you to take ownership of it and, eventually, make you feel more empowered to change it if and when you want or need to.  

Rituals and habits are king when it comes to most things around money, because it’s the small actions that you take every day that add up to your bigger picture, but they are particularly critical with saving. Saving money can feel like the most positive, nourishing habit if you’re doing it well – but it can also feel like an insurmountable mountain to climb if you’re not used to it, or a huge amount of pressure if you get a little bit obsessed with stashing as much cash as possible.

Despite the fact that many of us think that we can’t afford to save, and so we put it off for a future time when we might be earning more or forking out less for things like childcare, for those earning a living wage, there is usually something that can be put aside, even if it’s just a small amount. If you can create a saving habit for a small, affordable amount each week or month – even if it’s £10, to start with – you are telling yourself that saving is a priority for you, and you’ll be more likely to consider stashing any spare cash in the future, rather than spending it right away. Seeing that pot of money grow, even if it’s very slowly at first, is motivating, and it pushes you to take further positive actions with your money.  

Keeping debt under control, like most things, is much easier when you make a habit of it. Even for people who consider themselves ‘good with money’, it’s very easy to overspend on a credit card, because it’s one step removed from your everyday finances. There’s often a delay in the payment being visible on your account, it won’t immediately affect your current account budget and you get to experience the pleasure of buying something without also experiencing the pain of paying for it right away. There’s a disconnect between our spending behaviour and the financial consequences, which can really distort our ideas about what we can afford to spend, and leave us spiralling into financial difficulty if we’re not careful.

The more we can remove emotions from decisions about credit and debt, the easier it is for us to manage them in a healthy way, because we’re not bouncing from one knee-jerk reaction to another like a pinball. I know first-hand the effect that having debt can have on your mindset, and it’s easy to slip into a cycle of panicking and frantically paying off as much as you can, then falling short in your monthly budget and having to borrow again.  

If you use your credit card for small purchases throughout the month, which are affordable, it’s a great idea to set up a direct debit to collect the full amount when you get paid – like with saving, the sooner this amount leaves your account, the more accurately you can plan your monthly finances.

If you’re using your credit card to spread the cost of a bigger payment, divide the amount that you owe by the number of months that you want to pay it off in, and make sure that you have a direct debit set up for that amount, also on the first of each month, or whenever you get paid. 

Gratitude is a habit that will likely enhance not only your relationship with money but also trickle into other areas of your life. It’s easy to be sceptical about gratitude practice, especially if a difficult relationship with money and consumerism has coloured the way that you view things. For a period of my life, I found it very difficult to feel grateful for anything I had, because I was constantly looking at what everybody else had, and feeling as if I wasn’t measuring up.

I discovered the power of gratitude while I was in the thick of repaying my debt, and trying to find a way to make peace with money as I was learning to understand and control it. With most of our income going on bills and debt repayments, there was a lot of lifestyle adjusting to be done, and it was sometimes difficult not to feel resentful of the things that I felt I was missing out on. I needed to find a way to reframe the experience I was having, and gratitude gave me the ability to do that. 

Speak to a Financial Conduct Authority registered financial adviser before taking financial advice, and think carefully before making any decision.

Five Steps To Financial Wellbeing: How Changing Your Relationship With Money Can Change Your Whole Life by Clare Seal (£14.99, Headline Home) is out now. 

Images: Molly Saunders, Getty, Headline Home