When Your Wallet Says ‘It’s Fine’ (But It’s Not): A Lean Look at Money Habits
I don’t know about you, but I often find myself muttering “ah, it’s fine” when it comes to small money decisions. £3 here, £7 there, a subscription I forgot about - how bad can it really be? And yet, by the end of the month, the bank account feels like it’s been on a crash diet.
It’s the classic case of waste, the Lean kind. TIMPWOOD is alive and well in our wallets: transportation (delivery fees), inventory (food we don’t eat), motion (endless scrolling that leads to impulse buys), processing (overcomplicated banking apps), waiting (late fees), overproduction (five streaming services, three watched), overprocessing (paper statements), and defects (wrong orders we can’t be bothered to return).
But rather than wagging fingers, I thought, what if we used FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) on our personal finances? Not the scary corporate kind with clipboards, but a gentle, slightly cheeky version. Think of it as running risk analysis on your spending habits to design out the silly stuff before it snowballs.
Because, let’s face it: most of us don’t have an income problem so much as a “get more out of what we already have” problem.
How FMEA Fits Everyday Finances
Quick refresher: FMEA looks at three things:
Failure Modes: what can go wrong.
Effects: what happens when it does.
Controls: how we stop or soften the blow.
Normally this is for car engines or medical devices. But why not our bank accounts? Our habits are just another system, full of sneaky risks. And here’s where the 80/20 rule helps: around 20% of our financial habits cause 80% of our stress. Spot those few, fix them, and life suddenly feels lighter.
Let’s walk through some familiar money “failure modes” we laugh off with an “it’s fine”… until it isn’t.
Failure Mode 1: The Latte Levy (a.k.a. “It’s only £3”)
We all know this one. “It’s only a coffee (or any “vice”).” Until it’s every day, times twenty-two workdays, plus muffins when you’re stressed. Suddenly, your caffeine therapy has cost the same as a short holiday.
Effect: Money seeps away silently; you wonder why savings don’t grow.
Control: Do a mini 80/20: keep the one coffee a week that sparks joy, ditch the automatic daily run. Or set a “coffee jar” budget - when it’s empty, that’s it.
Lean Twist: See it as overproduction waste. You don’t need seven flat whites a week; one or two high-value ones will do the job better.
Failure Mode 2: Subscription Creep
A Gym you don’t go to. Apps you don’t use (Apple Pay auto-renewals 😣!). Four streaming platforms when you only watch one series on each. We tell ourselves “I’ll cancel next month.” Spoiler: we rarely do.
Effect: Cash leaks for zero value.
Control: Run a quarterly audit. Better yet, turn cancellations into a fun ritual - pour wine, log in, and gleefully click “cancel.”
Lean Twist: Think inventory waste. Subscriptions are like hoarded goods, you store them “just in case” but they expire unused.
Failure Mode 3: Minimum Payments, Maximum Stress
The seductive lie of “I’ll just pay the minimum this month” is familiar. It feels like relief, until the interest sneaks up like a ninja.
Effect: Debt hangs around for decades.
Control: Automate a little more than the minimum. Even £20 extra chips away faster than you think.
Funny Reframe: Imagine debt as a house guest who never leaves. Minimum payments are like offering them tea and biscuit, too polite to show them the door.
Failure Mode 4: Grocery Goblins
We pop in for bread, walk out with a trolley full of “bargains.” Or buy three-for-two veg, only for two to rot in the fridge. “It’s okay, it’s cheap!” Except it’s not when half goes in the bin.
Effect: Food waste = money waste.
Control: Use a simple 80/20: 20% of ingredients make 80% of your meals. Stock those; skip the extras.
Lean Angle: This is overproduction and defects rolled into one. Meal-plan light: decide two “anchor meals” per week and wing the rest.
Failure Mode 5: Retail Therapy (a.k.a. “I Deserve This”)
Bad day? Into the cart it goes. Good day? Reward yourself anyway. We trick ourselves with emotional justifications.
Effect: Short-term high, long-term clutter.
Control: Create a “pause list.” Write it down, wait 48 hours, see if you still want it. Often the craving passes.
Humorous Lean View: Treat it as motion waste, your thumbs scrolling endlessly to spend energy (and money) that doesn’t actually move life forward.
Failure Mode 6: Ignoring the Fine Print
Insurance renewals, card terms, hidden fees, our eyes glaze over, we click “agree,” and later find out it cost £200 more than expected.
Effect: Unnecessary expenses and stress.
Control: Put renewal dates in your calendar with an alert to shop around.
Lean Analogy: This is a defect caught late. By the time you notice, it’s costly. Early detection = leaner wallet.
Failure Mode 7: “Future Me Will Sort It”
Pensions, savings, rainy day funds, easy to postpone because “I’ll have more money later.” Future You becomes a mythical superhero who, sadly, never turns up.
Effect: Financial fragility.
Control: Automate small transfers the day after payday. Even £10 counts.
Cheeky Reframe: Future You is not Beyoncé. They won’t show up flawless. Give them a hand now.
Bringing 80/20 Into the Mix
Here’s the Lean gold: you don’t have to fix everything. Just find the few key failure modes that cause most of your stress. For me, it was grocery shopping for experimental cooking using 1/10th of everything I buy to try and online shopping “treats.” Once I nudged those, my account breathed easier - even if I still splurged occasionally on a fancy wine.
The 80/20 rule says: tackle the small set of behaviours with the biggest payoff. It’s less about guilt, more about leverage.
A Gentle FMEA Table for Everyday Finances
Final Reflection: Less Guilt, More Flow
The point of doing an FMEA on money isn’t to beat ourselves up. It’s to shine a light on the sneaky habits we excuse with “it’s fine” and see what they really cost us.
By using Lean’s playful but practical lens - waste, 80/20, and small nudge - we can stop the few high-impact failure modes from derailing us. It’s not about perfection; it’s about flow.
And flow with finances doesn’t mean being a monk. It means getting more out of what you already have, saving stress, and making space for the things that genuinely matter.
Future You will thank you. And yes, they’ll still let you have the occasional latte.
