The New Money Habits Podcast

Saving for the future, paying off debt, and preparing for something coming up can all feel important at the same time. We may want to make progress on every goal, yet find ourselves dividing our money and attention so many ways that it’s hard to feel much progress anywhere.

Nino and Catherine Van Der Laan continue their conversation about financial goals in this New Money Habits Classic. Beginning with holiday planning, they consider how a goal’s deadline relates to the money available to fund it. Catherine shares a renovation she and her husband were saving toward. December was the timing she wanted, but as they considered what they could realistically set aside, she began looking at February instead.

Nino also remembers finding a $20 bill in his backpack and mentally using it to cover several purchases made with his card. The cash was still in his wallet, and he kept thinking of it as available—even after the purchases had added up to more than $20.

From there, they explore how competing goals show up in a budget and in the decisions we make each day. Catherine distinguishes an established, ongoing habit from the next larger goal receiving focused attention. Nino reflects on the encouragement of finishing something and carrying that momentum into the next priority. They also consider why a plan that works mathematically can still feel exhausting to live with.

A clarification on the closing riddle: The $27 paid by the three travelers already includes the bellhop’s $2. The full accounting is $25 for the room + $2 kept by the bellhop + $3 returned = $30. Adding the $2 to $27 counts it twice.

If you’d like to see how your income, expenses, and priorities fit together, the free Payday Power Planner can help you put a plan around your pay periods.

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This episode features music by Summer School.

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A financial goal can sound like something we want until we start considering what making progress toward it will ask of us. Paying off debt or building savings may matter to us, but so might convenience, time with friends, and the things that make an ordinary week enjoyable.

Nino and Catherine Van Der Laan explore that tension in this New Money Habits Classic. Catherine recalls meeting with a prospective client who was struggling to save and felt stuck. As they talked through her spending and the life she hoped to build, Catherine began questioning whether the goals she had named were goals she actually wanted. Their conversation brings comfort and convenience into the discussion alongside financial progress.

They also work through what makes a goal specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Nino describes how putting actual numbers and a timeline around a debt can make it feel more within reach. Catherine shares clients’ excitement at seeing progress, including one who devoted an entire paycheck to debt and paid off her credit card in 90 days.

But that same client needed a break afterward. Nino and Catherine spend time considering the margin a plan needs for everyday life, unexpected invitations, and spending we can enjoy without feeling guilty about the goal waiting elsewhere. Coffee, dinner with friends, and Catherine’s enthusiasm for all things pumpkin find their way into a conversation about pursuing something important without exhausting ourselves along the way.

If you’d like to put your income, expenses, and goals into a practical plan, the free Payday Power Planner can help you plan around your pay periods.

The New Money Habits Community

Free tools and resources

This episode features music by Summer School.

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media.

New Money Habits Facebook Group

Questions or thoughts about the podcast? [email protected]

Sometimes we know our money situation needs attention, but asking someone for help feels harder than continuing to struggle with it. We tell ourselves we should be able to figure it out, worry about what someone will think of our spending, or decide things aren’t bad enough to bring anyone else into the conversation. Meanwhile, the same worries and patterns keep showing up.

Nino approaches that hesitation through his own experience receiving counseling for stress, anxiety, and anger. Working with Christian counselors helped him recognize things he hadn’t understood about his reactions and begin responding differently. He connects that help with his faith in Jesus and his belief that we are called to bear one another’s burdens. Having experienced the value of support himself, he questions why needing financial guidance should carry shame.

He also remembers a high school assignment that taught him to work out a car payment without connecting it to his income or the cost of insurance, maintenance, and fuel. It raises a fair question about the expectation that we should already know how to manage money: what were we actually taught, and what have we been left to figure out?

From recurring money arguments to feeling stuck, Nino considers how we can recognize the need for support and still talk ourselves out of seeking it. He also explains how he would challenge a spending choice that interferes with a client’s stated goal while leaving the decision with the client. Whether help comes from a financial coach or a thoughtfully chosen accountability partner, the conversation makes room to acknowledge what isn’t working and ask for support without treating that need as a personal failure.

If you’d like help thinking through your money situation, you can schedule a complimentary strategy session to talk about what’s happening and whether coaching would be useful.

The New Money Habits Community

Free tools and resources

This episode features music by Summer School.

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media.

New Money Habits Facebook Group

Questions or thoughts about the podcast? [email protected]

There is a difference between knowing what you're supposed to do with money and having a plan that actually works in your life.

We can learn how budgets work, understand the importance of saving, know that debt needs attention, and collect plenty of good financial information. But eventually all of that has to meet our actual income, actual expenses, actual priorities, and the decisions we're making every day.

Nino shares what that looks like through a client whose financial plan became much more useful once they were working with the whole picture. Money that had been sitting in one large savings balance could suddenly be connected to specific priorities. Goals that had felt impossible became clearer. The numbers hadn't magically changed. What changed was their ability to work honestly with what was really there.

And somewhere along the way, the conversation becomes more personal for Nino too. Building a real plan isn't only about getting the math right. Sometimes it requires being honest about where we are, what we're doing, and whether the way we're living actually reflects what we say matters.

Join our free community and connect with others building healthier money habits.

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Become a member starting at $7/month and start your 7-day free trial today.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Watch on YouTube
Watch the full video version of this episode.

Helpful Tools (FREE)
Explore the Payday Power Planner, Food Number Calculator, and other practical tools to help you build healthier money habits.

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/helpful-tools

Schedule a Free Call with Coach Nino

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/contact

Join Our Free Facebook Group

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Submit Your Questions

[email protected]

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media for more insights, tools, and updates.

This episode features music by Summer School.

Getting out of debt, changing a spending pattern, or building a healthier relationship with money can take a lot of work. So when an old habit returns, it can be tempting to look at that moment and decide the progress didn't stick. 

But what if the relapse itself has something to teach us?

Nino and Maria continue their conversation about the stages of change by looking more closely at what happens when we return to an old financial behavior. They explore why the relapse probably began long before the balance became obvious, how thoughts such as “I can never get ahead” or “I can out-earn this later” can quietly influence the choices that follow, and why understanding what happened underneath the behavior may be more useful than simply creating another rule.

Changing a habit doesn't always happen in a straight line. Sometimes going backward gives us information we didn't have the first time through—and that information can help us build a stronger way forward.

Join our free community and connect with others building healthier money habits.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Become a member starting at $7/month and start your 7-day free trial today.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Watch on YouTube
Watch the full video version of this episode.

Helpful Tools (FREE)
Explore the Payday Power Planner, Food Number Calculator, and other practical tools to help you build healthier money habits.

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/helpful-tools

Schedule a Free Call with Coach Nino

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/contact

Join Our Free Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/newmoneyhabits

Submit Your Questions

[email protected]

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media for more insights, tools, and updates.

This episode features music by Summer School.

Sometimes we look at the way we're spending money and realize it doesn't quite match the things we say matter most to us. 

It's tempting to treat that as a budgeting problem. Spend less here. Save more there. Make a better plan.

But what if the behavior is telling us something?

In this revisited conversation, Nino Villa and Maria Casillas explore the relationship between money and our values—not simply the values we say we have, but the ones that begin to emerge through the choices we make with our money and our time. Maria shares questions she uses to help people get beneath the easy answers and think more honestly about what actually matters to them.

That becomes more complicated when we recognize that we don't make those choices in isolation. Families can value different things. Advertising and the people around us can influence what we want. Sometimes spending that looks unnecessary from the outside may actually be meeting a very real emotional or relational need.

And that's where the conversation begins to shift.

Before we change a behavior, it may help to understand what that behavior has been doing for us.

Join our free community and connect with others building healthier money habits.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Become a member starting at $7/month and start your 7-day free trial today.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Watch on YouTube
Watch the full video version of this episode.

Helpful Tools (FREE)
Explore the Payday Power Planner, Food Number Calculator, and other practical tools to help you build healthier money habits.

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/helpful-tools

Schedule a Free Call with Coach Nino

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/contact

Join Our Free Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/newmoneyhabits

Submit Your Questions

[email protected]

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media for more insights, tools, and updates.

This episode features music by Summer School.

Planning for your child's future can feel like trying to make financial decisions about a life that hasn't happened yet. 

Will they go to college? Choose a trade? Stay close to home? Go out of state? What will it cost? How much should you pay? And how do you save for their future while still paying down debt, preparing for retirement, and taking care of everything your family needs today?

Those unanswered questions can make it tempting to wait until you have a clearer plan.

Mary Ann and Bereket Kelile explore a different approach: start with what you value, think about the future you're trying to support, and then let the numbers help you determine what's actually possible. That may mean funding part of an education rather than all of it, balancing college savings with retirement, considering different educational paths, or creating enough flexibility that the money can still serve your child when their plans inevitably change.

They also discuss 529 plans, brokerage accounts, scholarships, Roth IRAs, planning for multiple children, and why parents don't have to carry 100% of the cost themselves. But underneath all of those choices is a much simpler principle: you don't need every answer before you begin.

A small amount saved consistently today gives you something that waiting for the perfect plan never will—time.

Join the New Money Habits Community

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Bereket Kelile

[Insert Bereket's required professional disclosure/disclaimer prior to publication.]

Music Credits

This episode features music by Summer School.

Back-to-school season has a way of reminding us that the cost of school doesn't end with notebooks, backpacks, and a first-day outfit. 

Activities start. Registration fees appear. Lunch routines change. Transportation costs shift. There may be childcare, sports, homecoming, dance lessons, or eventually a car, college, and student loans. None of those expenses look exactly the same from one family or one season of life to another, but many of them have something in common: we usually have more opportunity to plan for them than we realize.  

In this episode of The New Money Habits Podcast, Mary Ann, a spending behavior coach, and Renée, The Student Loan Coach, explore how families can use back-to-school season as a financial reset. Mary Ann approaches money by starting with priorities and asking whether our spending reflects what we actually value, while Renée is more comfortable letting the numbers help guide the decision. Their different approaches reveal an important truth: there isn't one perfect way to manage money. The goal is to find a process that helps you make intentional decisions before the expense makes the decision for you.   

They also talk about the difficulty parents can have saying no, why saying no to one thing may actually allow us to say yes to something that matters more, and the value of proving a need before immediately buying the solution.  

Later, the conversation moves into college and student loans, including the importance of looking beyond the dream school to the life and budget that may follow graduation. Rather than allowing college to simply “happen,” Mary Ann and Renée encourage families and students to consider likely income, future living expenses, potential student loan payments, and the many different paths that can lead toward a meaningful career.  

Because planning isn't about getting every number exactly right.

It's about having enough clarity to adjust when real life doesn't go exactly according to plan. 

Join our free community and connect with others building healthier money habits.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Become a member starting at $7/month and start your 7-day free trial today.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Watch on YouTube
Watch the full video version of this episode.

Helpful Tools (FREE)
Explore the Payday Power Planner, Food Number Calculator, and other practical tools to help you build healthier money habits.

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/helpful-tools

Schedule a Free Call with Coach Nino

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/contact

Join Our Free Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/newmoneyhabits

Submit Your Questions

[email protected]

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media for more insights, tools, and updates.

This episode features music by Summer School.

Most of us have had the experience of looking at our spending and deciding, I need to stop doing that. 

Maybe it leads to a no-spend challenge, cutting out a particular category, or setting a new rule for ourselves. Sometimes that works for a while. But if we never understand what was behind the spending in the first place, it can be difficult to make the change last.

In this episode of The New Money Habits Podcast, Nino Villa and Maria Casillas explore a different approach: mindful spending. Rather than beginning with rigid rules about what you should or shouldn’t buy, they look at the beliefs, emotions, and purpose underneath the way we spend.  

Sometimes the spending we feel guilty about isn’t actually the problem. We may simply be carrying an old belief about how much we should spend without considering our family, priorities, or circumstances. Other times, the same purchase can serve very different purposes. A meal out might be an unplanned convenience one day and an intentional opportunity for connection another. Looking only at the number misses part of the story.   

As the conversation unfolds, Nino and Maria explore how to recognize the stories we tell ourselves about money, identify the areas where we actually want our habits to change, and understand why we spend the way we do. Because lasting change usually requires more than changing a behavior for a few weeks. It requires understanding what’s driving that behavior in the first place.  

The goal isn’t necessarily to spend less.

It’s to become more intentional about when, where, and why you choose to spend.

Join our free community and connect with others building healthier money habits.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Become a member starting at $7/month and start your 7-day free trial today.

https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Watch on YouTube
Watch the full video version of this episode.

Helpful Tools (FREE)
Explore the Payday Power Planner, Food Number Calculator, and other practical tools to help you build healthier money habits.

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/helpful-tools

Schedule a Free Call with Coach Nino

https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/contact

Join Our Free Facebook Group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/newmoneyhabits

Submit Your Questions

[email protected]

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media for more insights, tools, and updates.

This episode features music by Summer School.

A monthly budget can tell you how much money is coming in and how much is going out. But sometimes that still isn’t enough. 

The missing piece may be timing.

When does your income actually arrive? Which expenses need to be paid before the next paycheck? Is the money you need available when the bill is due, or are you constantly looking backward and realizing something should have been paid days ago?

In this episode of The New Money Habits Podcast, Coach Nino Villa explores what he calls cash flow clarity—understanding not only what you earn and spend, but when those dollars actually move through your life. He also looks beneath the numbers at the beliefs and emotions that influence whether we plan ahead, react at the last minute, rely on credit, or manage what we have with greater intention.  

The goal isn’t simply to pay bills on time. It’s to create enough clarity to reduce stress, make informed decisions, and use money as the tool it was meant to be rather than feeling controlled by it.  

Sometimes peace doesn’t begin when more money arrives. Sometimes it begins when you can finally see clearly what the money you already have needs to do next.

Connect with others who are building healthier money habits in the New Money Habits Community.

Join our free community:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Become a member starting at just $7/month and start your 7-day free trial today:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/NewMoneyHabits

Watch on YouTube
Watch the full video version of this episode.

Helpful Tools (FREE)
Explore our collection of practical financial tools, including the Payday Power Planner, Food Number Calculator, and more.
https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/helpful-tools

Schedule a Free Call with Coach Nino
https://www.newmoneyhabits.com/budgeteers/contact

Join Our Free Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/newmoneyhabits

Submit Your Questions
[email protected]

Follow @newmoneyhabits on social media for practical financial guidance, tools, and encouragement to help you build healthier money habits.

This episode features music by Summer School.