She Makes Six Figures But Can’t Make It Through the Week
A woman making over six figures sat across from me and said something I hear multiple times a week.
She didn’t have enough money to cover all of the bills due by the end of the week.
She has a great income, and on the outside, it looks like she has it all together.
I hold no judgment. I’ve been there!
This is the specific kind of confusion that happens when your income and your reality don’t seem to match.
You know you make good money. You know the money came in. Yet you’re looking at the checking account wondering how you’re going to cover everything before the next paycheck.
The women I work with say some version of the same thing:
“I make good money. I don’t understand why this keeps happening.”
I’ve heard that sentence, or one very close to it, more times than I can count.
Women with steady paychecks, women with income that comes in irregular bursts, and women making more today than they ever have before.
The number changes. The feeling doesn’t.
It Rarely Starts With Reckless Spending
I don’t commonly find a woman recklessly blowing through her money.
Often, she’s excellent at her job, disciplined in most areas of her life, and the person everyone else calls when something needs to be handled. Yet she’s carrying nearly every financial decision in her head.
She’s reacting to whichever bill or request comes first, doing quiet mental math in the grocery store line and checking her account before saying yes to dinner, a school expense, something for the house, or something she wants for herself. She makes a hundred small financial decisions throughout the week without ever sitting down and deciding, in advance, what her money needs to do. She keeps telling herself she’ll get to it “when she has time.”
Most months, she figures it out. She moves money around, delays something, uses the card or tells herself she’ll straighten it out with the next check.
Then something bigger happens and she’s back in the account asking herself, How am I going to fix this one?
She’s gotten very good at making everything work, and after a while, reacting starts to feel a lot like managing.
But she knows it takes more mental space than she’s willing to admit.
You’ve Already Proven You Can Pay Off Debt
I’ve talked with countless women who have paid off debt more than once, only to find themselves using the credit card again.
You may be one of them.
Over the years, you may have paid more in loan payments than the entire amount of consumer debt you’re carrying right now.
But looking at the numbers, it feels like a mountain and you’re tired of climbing.
Stop telling yourself you’ll never get out of debt.
You’ve already proved you can commit to a payment month after month and see it through.
Where I see women get caught is after the debt is paid. A $500 car payment ends. A $300 credit card payment ends. A loan you’ve been paying for years is finally gone. That money is yours again. But if you haven’t decided what you’re going to do with it, life has a funny way of deciding for you. A little more at the grocery store. something the kids need, the house project you’ve been putting off, a weekend away and the painful one – the expense you weren’t expecting.
Before you know what happened, the breathing room you worked so hard to create is gone, and when something bigger comes along, the credit card gets used again. You already know how to pay off debt.
What has to change is what you do with the money after the debt is gone.
Guessing Can Go On for Years
I’ve sat in a consultation with a woman who couldn’t tell me if one paycheck covered her rent. She had never actually put her income and expenses in front of her at the same time. She was guessing, and she had been guessing for years. After a while, that became so normal that she stopped questioning it, even while the balances on her credit cards kept getting higher. She couldn’t see the rent bucket had a hole.
I don’t commonly see one giant purchase that wrecks someone’s entire financial picture – though there was once a $1600 car payment…
Most often, I see years of making one decision at a time without ever looking at what all of those decisions add up to.
Put Your Own Mask on First
These days I find myself saying, “Put your own mask on first.”
I’ve had more than one client who, without realizing it, was giving her adult kids more money than they could afford and continued to struggle building their own Emergency Fund.
I’m a mom. If one of my kids genuinely needs me, I’m going to do everything I can. But I also think we have to be willing to ask ourselves some hard questions.
If I’m continually using the money that could protect my own household to rescue everyone else, what happens when I have the emergency? What am I teaching my kids about managing money if I continually put my own financial stability behind theirs?
There are times our kids truly need us.
There are also times when helping them means letting them figure something out while we take responsibility for what needs to happen in our own financial life.
“If I Just Made More Money…”
A common thread in my first conversation with a woman is that she believes:
“If I just made more money, I don’t think I’d feel this way.”
I understand why. More money really does solve some problems, I often say “money touches almost every decision we make.”
But I’ve watched women get bonuses, promotions and income increases, then look up a few months later and wonder where the extra money went. Maybe you’ve done it too. You finally got the raise you had been waiting for and thought, Now we’ll have some breathing room. Then a few bills increased. Spending loosened a little. Another subscription was added to the growing list. The kids needed something. You finally replaced something you’d been putting off. None of those decisions are unreasonable until…
A few months later, you’re making more money and still checking the account before payday.
That’s why I don’t believe more income, by itself, fixes this.
Your Paycheck Is Still 100%
No matter what your paycheck is, the money you receive represents 100% of the income you have available for that period of time.
It doesn’t matter if you’re paid weekly, every two weeks, twice a month, monthly, or your income changes from month to month.
Maybe your 100% is $2,000. Maybe it’s $5,000. Maybe it’s $15,000. It’s still 100%.
Your housing, food, utilities, insurance, kids, debt payments, savings, giving, travel, subscriptions and everyday spending have to fit inside the money coming in.
If all of those things together require more than 100%, there is a deficit. You have to make up the difference somewhere.
You may overdraft the checking account. You may pull from savings. You may use the credit card and tell yourself you’ll catch it up with the next paycheck.
Then the next paycheck comes, and it already has a job. Now you’re trying to cover this month’s expenses while paying for part of last month too.
Do that month after month and the credit card can quietly become part of how you make it from one paycheck to the next. That’s when it becomes so difficult to get rid of.
You’re trying to pay the balance down while still needing the card to fill the gap.
A larger income gives you a larger 100%. It still doesn’t give you more than 100% to spend.
I believe it is important for women to know both numbers: What is actually coming in, and what are you asking that income to cover?
Money Without a Plan Costs More Than Money
The cost isn’t only the interest on the credit card or the overdraft fee. It’s the breathing room that never seems to grow.
You pay something off and think you’ll finally have margin. You get a raise and think you’ll finally get ahead. Then a few months pass and the extra money has been absorbed somewhere.
There’s also the mental cost. You lie in bed wondering if you forgot something, you check what’s coming out tomorrow, or you think about whether you can spend $100 without creating a problem somewhere else.
Money conversations with your spouse can become tense too. You may both be trying to make good decisions, but when neither of you really knows the full picture, a conversation about dinner out, something for the house or helping one of the kids can turn into an argument very quickly.
The silent expense doesn’t show up on a statement. It shows up when life gives you a choice and your finances make the decision before you get to.
I know a woman who recently had a close family member pass away. She didn’t have enough to cover her expenses while she took the time she needed to grieve. She went to work.
Money without a plan can cost more than we can truly calculate.
Maybe it’s a trip you’ve dreamed about taking and the opportunity finally comes. Maybe there’s something you’ve wanted to do for years, but you’re not financially prepared when the door opens.
Maybe someone you love needs you and you want the freedom to show up. Or maybe you’re sitting in the dentist chair and you’re told you need several thousand dollars of dental work.
You’re still sitting there listening to what needs to be done, but part of your brain has already gone straight to the bank account.
How am I going to pay for this?
Those are the moments when having your money in order means far more than knowing a number.
It gives you choices.
Life Usually Doesn’t Give Us Much Notice
It’s easy to put “figure out the money” on the list for later. When work settles down, when the kids aren’t so busy, or after the holidays.
When you finally get a weekend when there isn’t something else that needs your attention.
But the transmission doesn’t wait for your slow month. The dentist doesn’t know you’re trying to catch up from vacation.
A family emergency doesn’t check your bank balance before it happens. Opportunities don’t always give you six months to get ready.
By the time some of these decisions show up, you can’t go backward and create the margin you wish you had.
That’s why the work we do before we need the money matters more than we realize in the moment.
What Financial Leadership Looks Like in Real Life
A Financial Leader knows what’s coming in and what has already been committed.
She knows what she’s setting aside, what is going toward debt and what she can spend and enjoy.
She doesn’t need forty spreadsheet categories or a financial system that takes hours every week to maintain. It’s much more practical than that.
It’s checking your bank account and already having a pretty good idea of what you’re going to see.
It’s knowing Christmas is coming before December and putting money aside for it. It’s remembering the car insurance bill before it’s delivered in your mailbox.
It’s your child asking for something and being able to answer without immediately checking the bank account.
It’s buying something you genuinely want and enjoying it because you already knew the money was available.
And sometimes it’s having an unexpected expense show up and realizing, I can handle this.
I wasn’t born knowing how to do all of this. These are habits I had to learn too, and they’re the habits I now teach women.
For me, that’s it’s difference between carrying money around in your head and actually leading it.
If Your Income Went Up but Your Peace Didn’t
If you’re earning more than you used to and still wondering where it all goes, I don’t think you need someone telling you to try harder. You probably already work very hard.
But I do want you to be willing to look at what is happening with the money after you earn it.
If your income has increased but you still feel the same pressure at the end of the week, making more money hasn’t solved what you thought it would.
You don’t need another year of earning good money and wondering why it still feels so tight. You need to know what your money is being asked to do and decide what matters before every request, bill and expense starts deciding for you.
Book a 1:1 Q&A call and let’s look at what’s actually happening with your money.