Ep 66 | Stop Spending Money (Like This)
In this episode, Priya Malani breaks down the single most underrated financial habit for high earners: the pause. Using a simple observation from how she orders food at restaurants, she makes the case that most overspending isn't reckless or irresponsible. It's just fast. Decisions made in motion, pre-approved by "I deserve this," and driven by a brain that reacts before it decides. She explains why autopilot spending is expensive not because of one big mistake but because of hundreds of small, unconsidered ones that quietly build a lifestyle you never actually chose.
Takeaways:
Autopilot spending isn't caused by one dramatic purchase. It's the accumulation of hundreds of small decisions that build a lifestyle you never sat down and chose.
When "I deserve this" pre-approves every purchase, it stops functioning as a decision and starts functioning as a justification.
High earners don't end up financially stuck from one catastrophic mistake. It's the slow accumulation of unconsidered choices that adds up to a lifestyle that costs more than it should and delivers less than it could.
The pause isn't about restriction. It's about making sure the decision was actually yours in the first place.
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The Stuff Our Lawyers Want Us to Say:
Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
Transcription
Hey guys, welcome to the F Word. Today I want to talk to you about an observation I had went out to dinner that it occurred to me is actually pretty applicable to our spending habits.
A while back I noticed something about how I order food at restaurants. If I sit down, scan the whole menu, and place my entire order at once, which sometimes they require, I almost always go too far. An appetizer. A main aside, sometimes I'm even ordering dessert before the first plate lands.
But somewhere along the way, I started doing something different. Now I almost exclusively just order one thing at a time, and usually the appetizer first, telling myself yeah, I can decide from there. What surprises me is how different my decisions are from what they would have been if I had just ordered everything all at once.
Sometimes I'm already full after the appetizer, sometimes the dish is richer than I expected and I just want to move to something lighter. And sometimes I realize I wasn't even that hungry, I was just caught up in the experience and the excitement of going out. Not to mention all the fancy ingredients that always gets me.
That tiny pause, that one that happens while I'm eating instead of placing the order all at once, completely changes my outcome. I know that sounds almost too simple to sound interesting, but stay with me, because the same thing happens with your money, and the stakes are obviously a lot higher than a restaurant bill.
Understanding Autopilot Spending and Your Brain's Decision-Making Process
So when it comes to spending, most of us aren't making bad decisions because we're reckless or irresponsible. It's that we're making decisions in the moment. Like while in motion, right? We're clicking buy now before we've even thought about whether we want the thing we're saying yes to upgrades at the checkout counter. We're just adding one more thing to our cart because it takes away free shipping. And now we've spent more than we would have prior.
And for a lot of high earners, people making 200, 300, $400,000 a year, the problem isn't that they can't afford it, right? It's just that the decisions happen so fast and the justifications come so easily, that spending becomes automatic. We're subject to the framework that's laid out before us. Free shipping, 2 for one. Whatever. Not considering whether it's designed to make us want more than we actually need.
And autopilot spending is expensive. Not usually because of one dramatic purchase. It's the accumulation of hundreds of small ones that quietly build a lifestyle that you never actually sat down and chose. So today I want to talk about the simplest thing you can do to interrupt that pattern. Not budgeting, not overhauling your finances, just learning to pause and understanding why that pause is more powerful than almost anything else.
So let's start with the moment before the decision.
Most spending decisions happen faster than we realize. You see something, you want it, you buy it, and sometimes that entire sequence plays out in under 30 seconds. The problem with that speed is that your brain doesn't actually have time to evaluate what's happening. It's reacting, not deciding.
Here's how I think about it. There are two ways our brain operates when we're making a decision. The first is fast and automatic. It's the part that sees the jacket and immediately feels a pull towards it, puts the entire outfit together in your head before you've swiped your credit card, and now it's already part of your wardrobe.
The second way our brain operates is slower and more deliberate. It's the part that asks whether you actually need it, what else you could do with that money, and whether you're going to feel the same way about that thing in a week. The fast brain is always going to fire first.
The question is whether the slower brain ever gets a chance to weigh in. That's what the pause does. It creates just enough space for both parts of your brain to be in the conversation.
So if you're out shopping — I know, who goes out shopping anymore — but let's say you're out shopping and you see something you love. Instead of buying it on the spot, here's what I want you to do. Walk into another store. Just distract yourself. Give yourself 5 minutes. Let your attention move to something else. What happens from there is genuinely useful information.
If you forget about the thing entirely, or see something else that you want even more, that tells you something. But if you're still thinking about it 10 minutes later, yeah, that tells you something too, but without the pause. You only ever experienced the initial pull, and that pull is almost always the strongest it's ever going to be right at the moment you first see something.
I want to be clear, the pause isn't about talking yourself out of things. We've already agreed and established you can afford it. Instead, it's about making sure the decision is actually yours.
The 'I Deserve This' Reflex and Understanding Financial Trade-offs
The next thing I want to talk about is something I see with high earners because I think it's one of the most underrated financial habits and it's almost never talked about. It's what I'll call the I deserve this reflex. And I want to be clear, it makes complete sense.
You've built a career, you work really hard, you're under a lot of pressure, you carry a lot of responsibility. And enjoying your money isn't just OK, it's the whole point of earning it. So when something nice comes across your radar — a trip upgrade, a better apt, a car that's just a little bit nicer than the one you already have — the internal response is often immediately I've earned this. And you have.
The problem isn't that that statement is wrong. The problem is that when every purchase gets pre-approved by the I deserve it phrase, it just stops functioning as a decision and it starts functioning as a pass for whatever you want in that moment. It's always available, which means it's a lot less meaningful or useful. It's diluted. It never actually slows you down to consider your priorities or even more importantly, the trade-offs.
What the pause forces you to do, even briefly, is replace that reflex with a more important question.
What am I trading for this?
Because for every dollar you spend today, it's a dollar you can't use for something else. And at the income levels I'm talking about, the potential of that money is significant. It can build investments, create flexibility, buy you time later, give you options that you don't have right now. That's not a reason to never spend it, it's just a reason to spend it deliberately.
Again, the question isn't whether or not you can afford the thing. You probably can. The more interesting question is what are you actually choosing when you say yes, and what, perhaps unknowingly, are you saying no to on the other end of that decision?
Because when you understand the trade-offs, you might still buy the jacket, but now you're making an active choice rather than just gradually accumulating a life you never quite decided on.
Discovering Your Spending Patterns and Making Truly Deliberate Choices
So what changes when you start pausing? The thing I find most interesting about this habit is just how much information it reveals and surfaces over time. Once you start building in even small pauses before spending decisions, you start noticing patterns that you just couldn't see before.
You'll notice the purchases that happened when you're tired or bored or stressed, the ones that are like about something else entirely. You'll notice when you're spending to keep up with what people around you seem to be doing. You notice the slow creep of lifestyle inflation, the steady ratcheting up of what feels normal without any single moment where you consciously agreed to it.
And once you can see those patterns, you can actually decide which ones you want to keep. That's a very different experience than looking at your bank statement at the end of the month and wondering where it all went. And this is what I mean when I say the pause isn't really about restriction, because restriction implies you wanted something and said no.
The pause is different. It's about making sure you actually wanted the thing in the first place, and that the wanting wasn't just a result of momentum. A pretty floor display, 24-hour sale, 2 for one free shipping, whatever.
Because high earners rarely end up financially stuck because of one catastrophic mistake. It happens through thousands of small decisions up levels that get made without much thought, each one totally reasonable on its own, but adding up to a lifestyle that costs way more than it should and delivers way less than it could.
The pause interrupts that pattern at the source.
Priya's Best Bite: A Memorable Cocktail from Louisville
Before I let you go, I always end the show with a segment that I call Best Bite. I'm a big foodie and I love to tell you about something that blew my mind recently that I had. So this one's a cocktail, which I haven't done in a while. I was in Louisville, KY a few weeks ago and I went to a Speakeasy in downtown called Trial and Error.
I'll be honest, my hopes weren't the highest and I'm a little bit over espresso martinis at the moment, but this one looked interesting. It was called the We're About to Be Up All Night, so if that tells you anything, and other than the fact that I can tell you it had orange bitters in it, I don't really know what they did. But it was so much better than any espresso martini I'd had in the longest time. It was also incredibly strong. My sister said that if she was going to drink it on her own, she'd need to start at 9:00 AM. So lots caffeine, lots of liquor. I didn't see any problems.
So if you're in Louisville — or as the man who was booking my flight called it, Louisville, KY — check out that We're About to Be Up All Night at Trial and Error.
Last Thoughts on Pausing for Wealth and Episode Conclusion
OK, before I let you go, I want to leave you with an idea. The next time you're about to buy something online in a store, doesn't matter, just pause. Walk away for 5 minutes, open a different tab, just let your brain think about something else for a moment, then check back in with yourself and see how you feel.
Sometimes you'll want it just as much, sometimes you'll have completely forgotten what it was. Both of those outcomes are useful information. What you're really doing is just running a little experiment on yourself, figuring out how much of your spending is something you're choosing versus something that's happening to you.
And once you start seeing that clearly, it gets a lot easier to make the kinds of financial decisions that actually reflect what you want your life to look like. Because building wealth at your income level isn't about saying no to more things. It's about making sure that the things you're saying yes to are the ones that actually matter to you, not the ones that were just available when you weren't really paying attention.
If this episode got you thinking differently about how you spend your money, I would love for you to share it with someone who might need the same mindset shift. And if you're not already following, please take a sec to like, follow, subscribe wherever you're watching. All right, that's it for today. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.
THE STUFF OUR LAWYERS WANT US TO SAY: Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
