How to Make 2026 the Best Year of Your Life (Financially)
Oct 9, 2026 · 24 min · 23 segments
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- Speakers
- DamienHost
- Show signals
- SuitabilitySafeAudience≈30k followers
Oct 9, 2026 · 24 min · 23 segments
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
So I've got 12 months of mine right here, and if you asked me to tell you who I am, I would probably say something like I'm disciplined with fitness, that I eat well, and that I spend most of my money doing things with my son.
But my bank statements, they tell a pretty different story.
Right here on Valentine's Day I went twice.
I've got a missus.
Where's your man at, Jess? Turns out he's out at some random petrol station engaging in a sordid love affair with his perverse passion for puff pastry.
Your bank statements are where the perception you hold of yourself meets the cold, hard reality of the truth.
Mine is in the shape of a lukewarm sausage roll.
I think everyone should do this exercise, going through 12 months' worth of bank statements each year, not to see how much money you spent really.
It's a bit deeper than that.
It's to see who you really are and then ask yourself, "Am I actually okay with that?" I'm not telling you to cut things.
What I really care about is intentional spending, so deciding who you want to be, what you want to learn, where you want to go in life, and then aggressively spending in service of those goals while saying no to everything else.
Every pound I spent in a Greggs is a pound I didn't spend supporting the person that I think I am.
In fact, it actively works against my fitness goals, and over time the gap between who I thought I would be and what my behavior creates builds this dissatisfaction and disappointment in my own view of myself.
There's this idea called mimetic theory.
It basically says that most of what we want isn't chosen consciously.
It's not innate.
We copy it from people around us.
I guess that's why fashion trends come in and out, and I think it's also why a lot of the spending that we engage in leaves us feeling dissatisfied because we never stop to think, "Is this actually what I want or is this what society's telling me that I want?" I now wanna move to a different discussion around spending in a section that we will call raising your floor and not your ceiling.
I was talking to T this year, my mate and the co-host of my podcast, and he was asking what I think he should spend a pay rise on.
He was looking at cars.
I said, "Don't buy a car.
Buy a robot vacuum cleaner." The average person spends around 30 minutes a week vacuuming.
Over a lifetime, that really adds up.
So I've got 12 months of mine right here, and if you asked me to tell you who I am, I would probably say something like I'm disciplined with fitness, that I eat well, and that I spend most of my money doing things with my son.
But my bank statements, they tell a pretty different story.
Right here on Valentine's Day I went twice.
I've got a missus.
Where's your man at, Jess? Turns out he's out at some random petrol station engaging in a sordid love affair with his perverse passion for puff pastry.
Your bank statements are where the perception you hold of yourself meets the cold, hard reality of the truth.
Mine is in the shape of a lukewarm sausage roll.
I think everyone should do this exercise, going through 12 months' worth of bank statements each year, not to see how much money you spent really.
It's a bit deeper than that.
It's to see who you really are and then ask yourself, "Am I actually okay with that?" I'm not telling you to cut things.
What I really care about is intentional spending, so deciding who you want to be, what you want to learn, where you want to go in life, and then aggressively spending in service of those goals while saying no to everything else.
Every pound I spent in a Greggs is a pound I didn't spend supporting the person that I think I am.
In fact, it actively works against my fitness goals, and over time the gap between who I thought I would be and what my behavior creates builds this dissatisfaction and disappointment in my own view of myself.
There's this idea called mimetic theory.
It basically says that most of what we want isn't chosen consciously.
It's not innate.
We copy it from people around us.
I guess that's why fashion trends come in and out, and I think it's also why a lot of the spending that we engage in leaves us feeling dissatisfied because we never stop to think, "Is this actually what I want or is this what society's telling me that I want?" I now wanna move to a different discussion around spending in a section that we will call raising your floor and not your ceiling.
I was talking to T this year, my mate and the co-host of my podcast, and he was asking what I think he should spend a pay rise on.
He was looking at cars.
I said, "Don't buy a car.
Buy a robot vacuum cleaner." The average person spends around 30 minutes a week vacuuming.
Over a lifetime, that really adds up.
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