Realistic Money Goals for 2026: Ditch the Shame Spiral and Set Intentions That Stick

Brown Ambition

iHeartPodcasts

Business, Self-improvement, Education

4.9 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's January and the pressure is on to go harder, save more, invest more, and transform your entire life by next year. But piling on intense goals doesn’t always lead to motivation — often it leads straight to anxiety, comparison, and money shame when life inevitably throws a curveball.

In this episode, Mandi welcomes back listener‑favorite board‑certified therapist, speaker, writer, and financial therapist Aja Evans, author of Feel Good Finance. Aja helps us rethink how we set money and career goals so they actually fit our real lives — kids, cold weather, surprise plumbing bills and all — instead of sending us into a shame spiral when we “fall off.”

You’ll hear Mandi and Aja talk about:

• Why January might not be the best time for your most ambitious goals, especially if you’re in hibernation mode and running on low energy.

• How to get brutally honest about your time, energy, and responsibilities so your goals reflect the life you actually have, not the one Instagram says you should have.

• The mindset shift from “I’m starting back at zero” to “I handled that emergency and I’m still on my path,” even when a surprise $1,000 home repair blows up your plans.

• How “under‑promise and over‑deliver” with your money goals can quiet that inner “shitty committee” and help you feel proud of your progress instead of chronically behind.

• Simple reminders from Aja — “be realistic and be nice” — and why it really isn’t that serious if your timeline moves from March to July. If you’ve ever looked at your accounts and thought, “I should be further along by now,” or felt like one unexpected bill erased all your progress, this conversation will help you reset your goals with more compassion, more honesty, and way less shame.

Stay tuned at the end of the episode for Mandi’s note about how to send in your juiciest money and career questions for upcoming BA Q&A Fridays in 2026.

Get listener perks and bonus content on our Patreon! Join the BA Fam here: https://www.patreon.com/c/brownambition/

Follow Aja on IG @ajaetherapy

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, hey, BA fan. Welcome back to Brown Ambition. It's your host, Mandy Money. I'm here to help y'all talk about
0:06.1	money, career, building a life you actually want to live, not just one that looks good on paper. So it's January. I ain't got to tell you all that. You know what time it is. You know it is cold. It is frigid and it's the time of year when we are looking back at the year before and getting ready
0:21.2	to set some big goals.
0:22.3	We want to make more money.
0:23.4	We want to save more, invest more.
0:25.5	You're listening to Brown Ambition, baby.
0:27.0	You're in the right place.
0:28.1	However, I've been doing this long enough to also know that sometimes putting that much pressure on ourselves doesn't necessarily lead to motivation.
0:35.6	Or if it does lead to motivation, maybe we're motivated for a couple of
0:39.2	weeks, a couple of months, and then quickly our goals can lead to a path that ends with anxiety,
0:45.3	comparing ourselves to other, and just straight up, shame. Shame we feel about falling off track.
0:51.3	Shame, we feel about having surprises of that send us off track. Shit happens.
0:57.2	So instead of doing an episode where I'm going to help you set brand new goals for the year and it's all
1:02.2	about new year, new you, I wanted to revisit a conversation I had with board certified therapist,
1:08.9	speaker and writer Asia Evans. She's the author of
1:12.1	Feel Good Finance and a financial therapist herself. So I had Asia join me for a quick
1:17.6	convo about how we can go into this new year, setting financial career, any types of goals that we
1:24.0	have in a way that's not going to lead us down this dark path where we end up
1:29.5	having regrets and basically feeling terrible. If you're someone who's ever looked at your bank
1:34.7	account and thought, I should really be further along by now or why do I keep messing this up?
1:39.6	This episode is for you. I promise you by the time you finish with this conversation, one, you're
1:44.4	going to learn how to be much kinder to yourself. And two, you're going to fall in love with my pal,
	...

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