As someone who has written about personal finance for over 15 years, I can think of a whole array of budgeting and spending advice. I’ve covered various rules and ratios, eye-opening questions, and deep-seated money philosophies.
Many of these tips and tricks are useful. Vanishingly few of them are fun.
While most of us recognize that we need to get our finances in order if we want to have a shot at our dreams, almost none of us relish the task. Tracking your spending, cutting your expenses, and maxing out your retirement account might be worthy activities, but they aren’t generally joyful ones.
Perhaps that’s where many of us go wrong.
According to Manisha Thakor, a certified financial planner and author of Money Zen: The Secret to Finding Your Enough, we can often get closer to our financial goals by chasing joy than by relying on willpower. That’s why she recommends something called a joy audit.
The joyful approach to fixing your finances
I first stumbled across Thakor in a personal finance column on The Cut. Written by Charlotte Cowles, the article is a response to a young woman who writes in worried about “lifestyle creep.” A nurse with a healthy salary, the letter-writer has noticed that, as fast as her income grows, so too do her expenses.
“When I go through my credit card bill, it’s a million $40 or $150 paper cuts that I barely even remember,” she reports. “I wish I didn’t feel so strapped and high-maintenance. I’ve tried to stick to a budget before, but I never seem to manage it.”
In response to this highly relatable letter, Cowles phones up a host of personal finance gurus, many of whom offer the usual worthy tips about setting goals and reviewing your spending. Thakor’s advice stood out.
She too recommends going through your bills line by line (sorry, folks, it looks like this is unavoidable), but she offered a new and cheery approach to what can be a dreary job. Channeling celebrity organizer Marie Kondo, she suggests that rather than focus on what painful cuts you can stomach, you look for which purchases actually bring you joy.
“The objective isn’t to deny yourself. It’s to be more aware of what actually makes you content and what doesn’t,” she tells Cowles.
You can even make the experience something of a treat for yourself. “Designate a special time for it, light a candle, get a snack, pour yourself a beverage, and make it nice,” Cowles writes, summing up Thakor’s advice.
How to conduct a joy audit
I was intrigued. In all my years writing about personal finance, I’d never come across an expert who attempted to make budgeting actively enjoyable. Not only did her approach sound pleasant, it also sounded more effective. It does not take a PhD in psychology to guess people are more likely to stick with things they find joyful rather than dreary.
So how do you actually conduct a joy audit? You can read her book for the full answer, of course, but Thakor spelled out the basic steps for CNBC. Set yourself up in that comfy chair with a nice glass of wine or mug of tea and then go through your bills, highlighting everything you spent money on that did not bring you joy.
Some of those expenses you will not be able to cut. The electricity bill is not fun, but it must be paid. But you are likely to come across many optional expenses that did not yield much happiness.
“It might be going out to an expensive lunch with colleagues where you gulped down everything so fast, you didn’t even enjoy it,” Thakor suggests. “Or, you feel as a parent you need to take your kids soccer lessons and they hate the soccer coach and you hate driving them there.”
“Cut those expenses and allocate toward things that bring you joy,” she instructs.
Start with joy
Will this simple but pleasant exercise eliminate all your money problems? Probably not. Those struggling to meet basic needs are sadly not a chill evening and a highlighter away from ending their money stress.
But for those who are lucky enough to have the fundamentals covered, sorting through your finances is largely about understanding and owning your priorities. You’re much more likely to define yours sensibly if you approach the problem as an opportunity to maximize joy rather than parcel out pain.
