and when it does

What I love and what I don’t love about money mindset

Sure, you didn’t ask for my opinion, but here it is anyway!

I’ve never liked the abundance vs. scarcity part of money mindset – binary thinking is extremely not my jam. Also, I’m rooted in numbers and facts. 

That said, at the core of that abundance vs scarcity binary was a valuable lesson for me and I took away from this the idea that you can reframe your thinking about money* by shifting your language and making it a touch more positive.

When shifting your money mindset is helpful and useful

The big change for me was rephrasing “I can’t afford it” and turning it into “that’s outside of my budget”. This did so much for me. 

First of all, it gave me empathy for my potential clients.

Because sometimes you’ll have a person, a potential customer, standing right in front of you, telling you that your work is “too expensive”. 

You know that the jewelry that you make isn’t actually too expensive. You know what work you put into it, you know the cost of the materials, and the value of your labor. This customer though might really be saying that your jewelry is “outside of their budget” or that they don’t value it enough to pay for it. And that’s OK. This reframe helped me not only feel empathy for my potential customers, but also helped me not hear their comments as criticism.

How can reframing your attitudes towards money help your customers and clients

Next, this simple reframe of my own language opened up and sparked creative ideas about what I could do for my customers. Could I offer payment plans? Should they be on my email list for sample sale discounts? Would it be more meaningful to them if they took a class in how to make jewelry?

But the biggest benefit of this mental and mindset shift was that it helped me plan – plan for abundance, and to think ahead to a time when I COULD include it** in my budget, or to set aside the money to make it happen. It wasn’t a “no, you can’t have that” mentality. It was a “not now, but you can save up for it” mentality. And that kind of planning helped me shift my own money mindset.

How can changing your money mindset help you plan in a weird year for the metals market?

And after this year, a year that left almost every designer I know feeling behind on pricing (especially when ordering materials) or keeping themselves on a tighter budget because my god would you look at those gold (and silver!) prices, it just feels dishonest to talk in terms of abundance vs scarcity when the choices that everyone has had to make this year were extra hard.

The binary thinking can also feel dishonest if you haven’t taken the time to do a radical examination of your numbers. 

Because the state of being scarce or abundant can have some real numbers behind the feelings, and it is worth knowing what your numbers are really telling you.

Be realistic in your money mindset

Because the abundance vs scarcity mindset can’t be affirmed, undone or rectified unless you have a realistic picture of your finances as they are – the good, the bad, the meh. 

Maybe you have more opportunities than you know, or maybe you do need a ruthless review of your expenses. It’s like a Schrodinger’s cat of a problem – until you look inside of your numbers, you do not know what you need – if the business is thriving or treading.

So let 2026 be a year to add a little abundance in, by starting with a fresh perspective of the state of your money right now.

*This podcast episode has a lot of good discussions about this idea

**”It” could be a house, some equipment, an employee, those boots on Poshmark, or a new bra.

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