Struggling to Save? Here’s Why Your Money Doesn’t Stay Put
You Aren’t Broken, You Just Don’t Have A System Yet
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If you’re ever paused when moving money to savings because you think, I’ll only have to take it back out soon, this episode is for you.
Today, I’m talking about why saving keeps fluctuating and why thinking it should never be touched may be keeping you stuck and discouraged.
By the end of this episode, you’ll understand what’s actually normal about savings fluctuating so you can stop feeling like you’re failing and start building confidence in your money system.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
The “yo-yo savings effect” and why money often moves in and out of savings instead of building consistently
Why saving money feels temporary—and how this leads to frustration, guilt, and self-blame
The biggest mindset myth about savings: that it should stay untouched to “count” as progress
Why most savings struggles come from a lack of purpose and structure, not lack of discipline or income
How treating savings as “future spending” changes the way you use and think about your money
The importance of labeling savings buckets for irregular expenses like annual bills, travel, and car repairs
Three powerful questions to help you identify what your savings actually needs to do and fix the cycle
If today’s episode helped you start thinking differently about why your savings don’t stay put, the next step is getting clarity on your own numbers.
That’s exactly what happens inside the 7-Day Savings Reset Challenge.
You’ll understand where your money is actually going, start building a simple savings system that works in real life, and walk away with a clear plan to stop the yo-yo savings cycle.
Unedited Transcription of Episode:
Welcome to today's episode. I'm so excited to talk about savings. Savings definitely is the trigger or the pivot point of creating what you need or solving the problems that you need. With your money. So I hope you will find today's episode helpful, and if you do come shoot me your thoughts over on Instagram, at, elevate Finances, or you can search dalene Higgins and let me know what you thought or let me know what questions you still have.
So let's dive into this. You have a little extra money right? You find you have a thousand dollars left over or spending didn't seem as great this month. And you're like, wow, perfect. I can put this into savings. And then as you go to do it, you think, ah, if I put that into savings, I know I'm just going to have to immediately yank it out.
'cause that is what always happens. Sure enough, you go through the motions, 'cause you know you're supposed to be saving. And within, two or three months, sure enough, you have to pull that money, yank that money right outta there, and so the money goes in and it comes right back out.
As you repeat this over and over, you begin to wonder why does saving money feel so temporary? I am sure there's other thoughts. We'll get into those later, but why does saving money feel so temporary? Why does it feel like this? Yo-yo effect. Okay. I loved the yo-Yo. I know it's from our generation. I watched somebody on TikTok doing Yoyo, and I thought, oh man, maybe I need to get me a yoyo.
I don't even know if they sell them a lot of fun. However, I have digressed. Let's come on back. So this money goes in, money comes out. I call it the yo-yo Effect of saving. So no matter how many times you try, your savings is never building, you might not deplete it completely, although sometimes you do.
But it's never building. It's never growing, and it's not giving you that. That feeling that you know you're supposed to have. You feel like you are trying, you're making every effort just like you're supposed to, but you're not getting ahead. You're not making that impact that you want. Then you start thinking, I am not good with money.
That's what it is. Or I don't make enough money. If I made more money, I could save. Or I know this as well, I spend too much. So I'm spending my savings. And so these thoughts, this yo-yo effect, it creates, he, you know, your hesitation whenever you think about saving again. So if this is happening to you, and I know probably most of you 'cause I hear it from.
My clients potential clients, people I'm chatting with, I want you to hear this. You are not bad at saving, you are not lacking discipline. We've talked about that on the podcast before, it doesn't mean that you need to be more restrictive, those are all places of scarcity, which creates its own problems, its own beast of an animal Later.
I just want you to know that this is a very common place to be and this help, gets you into where you're very frustrated. This is why people give up on budgeting, and all of these feelings are very normal. So why do you feel so stuck? Why do you feel so stuck? Why do you feel like you can't, you know, yes.
You had those ideas. Those are not true. And if you're, if you're not lacking the discipline and you don't need to be more restrictive, then why are you stuck? You're thinking, so what? So what? You know, what do I do now? Sometimes we move money into savings just because we think we should. And I'm sure that's true for you.
And as I kicked off this episode, I said, savings is going to be the pivot of everything, but are you moving it just into savings? And there's no real plan for what that money is for. I'm just gonna put the savings over here. It's gonna be here just in case. I'm just going to save it for a rainy day. Yes, we have rainy days, but that's not how I teach my clients to quote, save their money.
Because that's too broad. It's too, it's not descriptive, it's not supportive. When something comes up and you've set money aside like this, yeah, it feels very available. So you reach right in, take it to solve whatever problem you have. Another reason you feel stuck is because life happens,
life is a rollercoaster. It happens in many different ways, and honestly, it doesn't happen the same every 30 or 31 days. So when we are told to budget for the month or save for the month there's a little bit of a struggle with that because life doesn't happen in those windows. So when an expense shows up.
That doesn't fall within the 30 days. That didn't happen last month or the month before, such as your annual bills, your car repairs, or oh heck, spring break, we've just had that when those things have not been planned for. This money that you stuck aside for the rainy day becomes your fallback, so it's unplanned in your mind.
You didn't set it aside for those things and so you feel unsuccessful, maybe you did set it aside for that, but you don't like using it for that. That's a different animal and a different beast. The other thought you may have is that savings is not to be touched, in you, you're like, okay, if I'm doing things right, my savings will just sit there and grow.
Okay, there's a bucket that's going to do that. But in reality, some of your savings is meant to be used. If you've heard me say it before. Savings is just future spending. And putting a tag on that is crucial. Is crucial, that's where we get this unclearness. Get rid of that unclearness in our mind.
So I think a lot of the challenges of where you're stuck is that there's really common advice and I think at some point the personal finance world was trying to make savings simple, so I gotta commend them for that. But the advice to just pay yourself first can be a problematic gesture. Now, if it works for you, great because you've got other things going for you.
It's not just because of this. And if you're like, well, yeah, I've tried to do that and it's not working for me, that piece of advice is incomplete, just pay yourself first, just set it aside, and then spend the rest of your money that is lacking in full complexity of what that's supposed to do. And like I said, if it's working for you, it's because you've got something else going on.
It's incomplete because if you don't know what that money is for or when you all need it or when you can use it and how it fits your life, it's not gonna stay saved. It's not gonna stay saved. I don't know how many times I tell my daughter, she's like, well, I just have this savings over here, and I'm like.
You have to put a label on it. What is the label? And so then she tells me, and I'm like, okay, we have to label these. So as we've talked about, savings, the struggle, the yo-yo effect, I'm sure you have tried to solve this problem by thinking, why can't I save money? You that isn't a question of blame onto you, and that right there is not gonna be solved.
It's not you. We've already talked about that. It's not because you're bad with money. It's not because you don't make enough, eh, maybe 5% of you, so I have three questions that I want you to start asking yourself about savings to help you get away from the why can't I? The first one is, what do I want my savings to do for me right now?
Why are you saving? What do you want it to do for you? What is it? What purpose is it going to serve? And I know that's a very broad, but we've gotta start there. What do I want my savings to do for me right now? And you might quickly say, well, I want financial security, or I want retirement. Great.
That's a perfect idea to start thinking about savings. The second question then, what keeps happening that has you pulling your money back out? So at the point that you're like, oh, I gotta go get that money. I want you to back up one or two steps. What happened? What showed up? What you know, problem there, not because you can't save.
What's this thing back here? And as you think about that, it's gonna probably lead you to the third question, which is what IST being planned for? Remember that month to month, which is hard, I get that because our money comes. Weekly, every other week or once a month, but we've gotta go beyond that.
And that's the difficulty, but start thinking about what isn't being planned for. Think through that. Because once you start to see that pattern, once you start understanding like where the actual challenge is arising. You will realize this isn't about being more disciplined, making more money, or that you need to try harder,
and if you can take those two steps back, you're not gonna want to just throw your hands up in the air and think that it's never going to work. It's really dialing into what is that challenge? What is that problem at that step, and how can I now start taking action differently? So if you're looking for support and making savings more simple and easy and personalized.
Because that is key, there's a reason it's called Personal finance. I created something to help you get started. It's a seven day email savings challenge, and it's designed to help you build a system over the seven days without the yo-yo effect. This is the exact system I use in my coaching program that I use to help clients save up to 11 K and 90 days.
So if you're tired of guessing and you're done guessing, I want you to head over to Elevate Finances us slash savings, and sign up for that challenge today. It is not overwhelming. It is a little task that you do for seven days to build a saving system. Complete from how much do I have to, where does it need to go, and all of the steps in between.
Because saving money isn't supposed to feel like a constant reset. And if it does, it's not because you're failing. It's a sign that something in your system needs attention. That's why I talk about money systems and there's several pieces that come together to build a complete system to help your.
Retirement happen to help your purchasing that house happen, whatever it is, ? Whatever that goal is, these systems have to be designed for you. So I hope you'll go grab that. Um, seven day email challenge. Seven small steps. You can take action one in literally 10 minutes every day if that, and by the end of the week, you'll have a complete system hoping to get you building and growing and creating that wealth that you need and moving towards the retirement that you want.
Thank you for listening, and I hope you'll join me next week.
