Season 2, Chapter 11 · September 17, 2026 · 16:37 min

If you’ve been looking for how to free up money in your budget, the usual answer is a list of things to cut, and most of us have already cut the obvious stuff. What almost nobody tells you is that once your plan has been running for a couple of months, you often have the money right at your fingertips.

It’s in the phone plan you picked four years ago. It’s in the due date that always lands on your tighter paycheck. It’s in the insurance premium that crept up at renewal while you weren’t looking. Chapter 11 of SpendFirst is about going back through the plan you built and adjusting it to fit the life you want to live next. It’s also about what happens to your options when you do.

Key Takeaways

• Your list of bills reads as a snapshot of your life, which makes “would I sign up for this today?” a much easier question to answer than “what can I cut?”
• Adjustments that look small on paper (fifty dollars on SpendFreely or twenty-five on a SpendFuture category) are the ones that actually hold, and they compound.
• Spending more time managing your money than living your life is a signal that you’ve found a new place to be a perfectionist.

How to free up money in your budget when you have already cut the obvious things

There’s a version of refinement that’s really just restriction dressed up with better manners, and that isn’t what these adjustments are. The question underneath every one of them is whether the thing still fits. Imagine you had a blank slate and no commitments at all, and then ask yourself, would I sign up for this today? Most of the answers will be yes. The ones that aren’t are worth a second look.

Some of those adjustments free up real money, which means a bigger SpendFlex. Some of them just make the plan easier to live with, which matters more than it sounds like it does, because a plan you can live with is a plan you’ll still be running in a year.

Kelsa gets into values too, in a way that doesn’t require an exercise. A value isn’t the thing, it’s what the thing gives you. A runner might value health, or discipline, or solitude. For Kelsa, money gives her choice, and that’s what she and Michael were buying while they paid off debt. Once you can see which of your expenses support what you care about and which ones don’t, the ones that don’t stop feeling as tempting.

And there’s a real warning in here about perfectionism, delivered through Jamie, who has been doing this for years and still catches herself sorting transactions she promised herself she’d stop sorting.

Application

Go down your SpendFixed list one line at a time and ask, would I sign up for this today? Circle the ones where the answer is no or not sure. Don’t do anything with them yet, just notice which ones they are.

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