Why Your Money Disappears After 50 (It Has Nothing to Do with How Much You Earn)

Josefina Bonilla Velez: I got a bonus once. I wasn't sure how much, but I had an idea. And it was just good. Before it made it into my account, I had already spent it. Well, not actually, but I had things to do with all of it and then some. I needed to pay this. I to take care of that. I needed to handle this before something else came up. I want you to notice the word need. I needed. Need is a scarcity word. It starts from a deficit. It assumes something is already wrong that money has to fix. I wasn't spending, I was solving. And when you're always solving, money never gets to just stay. Six months later, nothing had changed. And I could not tell you where all that money went. Not exactly. I knew I had paid things. I knew I had handled some other things, but I could not account for all of the money. That is the part that should have scared me. It didn't. It just told, I just told myself it went somewhere necessary. ⁓ goes somewhere The thing is that What is running in the background was not something I was even aware of. It was programming and it had one job to keep me at zero. The same program was running when I made $35,000 a year or $300,000 a year, but it is not about how much money you make. This is about what happens the moment money arrives. Because if you've ever had more come in, and somehow ended up in the same place a few months later. That's a pattern running through you. You get paid on Friday and for a minute it feels good. It feels great. Then your brain starts moving. I need to take care of that. Let me move this money here. ⁓ I should handle that now before something comes up. By Sunday that was already in motion. gone, but not staying either. It's the same thing when you get something unexpected, a refund, a little extra, and the same thing happens. Relief, then movement. Money comes in and it doesn't stay long enough to become a long-term relationship. We're doers, and women over 50 learn early on that we do with the money what we think needs to be done. The cost of keeping the program running is lost opportunities and compounding that's lost. There's no real movement forward. And we tell ourselves, next time I will do better. Soon I will be able to. You fill in the blank, but that word soon can sit there for years. And now we're over 50, soon when? And this is not just your story. Jay Zagorsky a researcher at Boston University who has spent decades studying how people build and lose that who receive a large inheritance or financial gift lost half the money through spending or poor investments. Economists at Harvard tracked lottery winners 10 years after winning and found that they had saved Just 16 cents of every dollar won Our wealth container was not ready. The money found its way out. Abundance is not about more money. ⁓ Abundance when money shows up and don't rush to get rid of it. It's the ability to stay steady when money arrives. to not immediately solve, spend or avoid and to let it sit long enough to actually decide what to do with it. That steadiness becomes a practice. you build it on two tracks at the same time. The inner track is your beliefs, your nervous system and what your body does the moment money arrives. The outer track, the structure you build so that even the days that the inner work is wobbly when you're not feeling that great, the money still moves where you decided, both at the same time. Neither one alone is enough. are three things you're going to do first. The first one start tonight. Write your big vision, not a goal list. your identity, who you are when money stays. This is the piece most people skip. Writing the vision feels exposed. If you write it and it doesn't happen, There's evidence. A goal list is safer. It lives in the future and doesn't ask you to feel anything today. The vision asks you to sit inside a version of yourself. Your nervous system doesn't fully believe yet. That is exactly why it works. Tonight, paper, not phone. You write in as much detail as you can hold. what your life looks and feels like when you're fully in abundance. the way you feel that Sunday morning when money came in in the week and your first thought was not need. Your first thought was I have a place for this write that feeling is real enough feel it inside. Write it as though it is happening whatever rises when you try the doubt the voice that says you don't get to have this write that down too because that is exactly what the next practice addresses I Want to talk about something a little out there? tapping EFT emotional freedom technique I'm new to this so this is new for me. I was skeptical then I found the the research I Stopped dismissing it Dr. Peta Stapleton published a randomized controlled trial in 2020 in the Journal of Psychological Trauma. She measured cortisone, the body's primary stress hormone, before and after the tapping sessions. So the tapping group showed a 43 % drop in cortisone. The resting group showed a 2 % increase. % in one session. What that means for us, you cannot be in abundance and stress response at the same time. The body has to shift out of bracing before it can receive. Tapping is one of the fastest documented ways to make that shift. The affirmations you have already probably tried, the I am wealthy, money flows to me easily kind, work against you if your nervous system is still running the old beliefs underneath. A researcher at the University of Waterloo found that ⁓ can actually backfire when a person's deeper belief contradicts them. The statement lands on top of the wound without touching it. Your nervous system hears, am abundant, and immediately produces a list of evidence for why that is not true. I know this because I lived it. You write the statement, the statement bounces. This is why you clear first. You tap on what is actually running, not the positive version. Money doesn't stay with me. I handle money. I don't hold it. I don't know how to be someone who has. You say it, you tap through the points. You work the belief until something softens. Then the affirmation has somewhere to land. You are at the kitchen table. You read your vision. Something tightens. That tightening is the data, two fingers on the side of your hand, you say what is true and you tap. You keep going until the tightening eases. Then you read the vision again. That is the practice. Same belief every day, 30 days. tapping plus journaling, plus visualization, plus three other things. One practice, one belief, 30 days. I've watched women start five abundance practices in a month and finished none of them. Scattered practice, like scattered money, compounds nothing. The third is the structural container. I want to be clear about this. This is not separate from the inner world. It is the inner world made physical. When you open an account today and name it something that comes from your vision, you're making a declaration. Money is coming and I have a place for it. I expect it to stay. That expectation is a new belief in action. You open a second savings account at whatever bank you already use Then you set a transfer from to that account timed to the day your income lands, not to what it's left at the end of the month before life a vote. Then you check it. once a week you open it you see the number ⁓ you let the fact of money staying register in your body teaching your nervous system a new expectation ⁓ every week you open it the money's there expectation ⁓ deepens that urge to use it will come ⁓ it will have a very reasonable voice It will sound like need that moment is the whole practice your pause. do not touch it. Here's what you do today. Tonight you write the vision paper, 20 minutes, who you are when money stays. Then you open the account, name it from the vision, set this transfer to payday, close bank app. Tomorrow you start the tapping practice. Same time, same belief for 30 days. Not because you believe it yet, because you are building the belief by doing the thing before you believe it. You have a money doesn't stay problem and that doesn't change when your money comes in. It changes when your response to money coming in does. The program has been running a long time. It was built for a version of your life where money left fast and trusting it felt dangerous. You're not in that version anymore and you get to decide what runs now. The vision. the practice, container. That is how this changes. I'm Josefina Bonilla-Velez and this is Money and Motion. We can't go back, but we can move forward together.