2039: How to Create Sticky Financial Habits

Farnoosh Torabi (0:00)

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SPEAKER_2 (0:37)

You're listening to So Money with award-winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day, get a 30-minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers, and from Farnoosh yourself.

Monica Packer (1:03)

With habits, we're playing a longer game than people often think of. Often we think of that 21, 28, 30-day cycle to get a habit and then we just imagine it to be the same habit. Now, from then on, for all eternity, the same habit at the same time of day and in the same way, day after day, the rest of our lives. Well, if we're going to look at habits that way, then that means I'm stuck exercising the way I am now at 40, at 80, and that's not going to be realistic, you know? It's the same thing with other habits of connection, of rest, of money management, of home management.

Farnoosh Torabi (1:37)

Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh and my guest today is someone that I've been really excited to talk to for a while. She's been on the show in the past and she's back again with a new book. And the reason she's here today is because, listen, there's one area of my life that's a constant work in progress. It's habits. I've tried the color-coded habit trackers. I've gotten the label makers, the 5 a.m. wake up challenges. I did that like twice in a row and I thought it had stuck. It hadn't.

Then, of course, all these apps had guilt trip me with the streaks. And most of them fall apart by week two.

Usually right around the time life gets busy and I decide, you know what, I'm not actually a routine person. So when I found out my next guest wrote an entire book, arguing that the problem isn't us, it's the way we've been taught to build habits, I had to have her on.

Monica Packer is the founder of About Progress. She's the author of Sticky Habits, A Woman's Guide to Reclaim Happiness, Ditch Perfectionism and Create Habits That Last. She also has a top rated podcast with millions of downloads where she helps women build sustainable growth by choosing progress over perfection. She's a Certified Habits and Identity Coach who's guided thousands of women. She's also a former middle school teacher, God bless her. A mom of five, oh my God, the list, a sourdough obsessive and a newly minted gardener. Her book, again, Sticky Habits comes out this fall and it completely reframes what a habit is even for. Monica, welcome to So Money.

Monica Packer (3:14)

Well, I probably shouldn't have been having my reactions so audible, but thank you, that was such a kind introduction and so relatable. Like how many of us have failed a habit challenge or 20?

Farnoosh Torabi (3:27)

My husband jokes because I woke up one morning at 5 a.m., I set my alarm, I was like, I'm going to do this. I read like a Business Insider article about how it completely changed a woman's life. I think I did it for a couple of days and then I thought, that's it. I'm a morning person. I wrote a whole email to my list about it. I was like, guys, let me tell you a little something. From this side of the 5 a.m. morning wake up and then I never did it again.

You conned your audience into thinking that you're a morning person. I'm not. I never was, I never will be and that's okay.

Monica Packer (4:01)

Well, gosh, you're talking to me after a year and a half of me having to wake up at 5 a.m. to write this book.

And I'm telling you, it made me angrier, it made me sadder. It made me feel less like myself. And I'm not going to be part of the 5 a.m. club anymore. And that's what I hope we can present to people today is its habits aren't about fulfilling prescriptions. They're not about doing what the bro self-help tells you, you need to be doing. It's about helping you feel like yourself. And that framing, all of us are habit people. We don't have to meet the stereotype because I don't, I don't.