Why Checking Your Bank Balance Every Day Isn't Working

The difference between doing more and doing what actually works

(This post is adapted from one originally published on May 23, 2019)

You've been tracking your spending for months. You check your bank balance religiously. You've read the books, listened to the podcasts, maybe even tried multiple budgeting apps. You're doing all the things you're supposed to do.

So why aren't you getting anywhere?

Here's what I learned from an unexpected source—my physical therapist—that completely changed how I think about money management. And it might explain why you're working so hard with your finances but not seeing the results you want.

When Hard Work Doesn't Equal Progress

Years ago, during the Great Recession when my husband was reduced to a four-day work week and I was home with a toddler and a newborn, I found myself in physical therapy for chronic back pain. After a lifetime of competitive sports, my body had stopped cooperating, and I needed help getting back to living the active life that I wanted to live.

I attended a PT practice that catered to serious athletes, which made me feel like part of the team rather than just another patient whose body had failed them. I loved watching other patients push themselves in the exercise room—it gave me hope that my “new mom” body could feel athletic again.

Before attending PT I had self-diagnosed myself on the internet (sound familiar?). I learned about exercises to build up a particular muscle. Day after day, week after week, I did my reps faithfully. But I never got stronger.

When I mentioned this in my first appointment with the PT, her response shocked me: "Stop doing those exercises. They're not doing you any good."

Wait, what?

"Sometimes repetitive exercise makes no difference whatsoever toward making you stronger," she explained. "Instead, what you need to do is activate the muscle."

The Problem: Your Money Muscle is Asleep

As she explained it, when a muscle has been damaged or underused, it can become dormant. The muscles around it step in to compensate—doing their neighbor's job, but not particularly well. No matter how many reps you do, those substitute muscles keep working while the one you actually need stays dormant.

The solution isn't more repetitions. It's waking up the right muscle so it can do its job properly.

I couldn't stop thinking about this concept. And eventually, I realized: this is exactly what happens with money management.

People often come to me doing all the "right" things repetitively—checking accounts daily, reviewing transactions, moving money around—but they're not activating the deeper systems that actually create change. They're working hard, but they're working the wrong muscles.

Repetitive Exercise: What You're Already Doing

Think about the financial actions you take over and over:

• Paying monthly bills

• Transferring money to savings

• Making regular purchases for your household

• Checking your bank balance (maybe multiple times a day)

• Reviewing transactions in your budgeting app

• Moving money between accounts

These actions feel productive. They feel like you're "on top of your finances." And some of them are genuinely necessary.

But then there are the repetitive patterns that work against you:

• "Retail therapy" after difficult days

• Impulse purchases triggered by social media

• "Treating yourself" so frequently it's become a daily habit rather than an occasional reward

• Paying the minimum on debt month after month without a payoff strategy

In my work I sometimes meet people who monitor their money obsessively—checking apps, reviewing spreadsheets, tracking every dollar—but still can't reach their financial goals. They're exhausted from all the effort, but they're not making meaningful progress.

This is the financial equivalent of my useless muscle exercises. It feels like you're doing something constructive, but you're not actually getting stronger.

Muscle Activation: Waking Up What Actually Works

So how do you "activate" your money management muscles?

The answer isn't doing more of what you're already doing. It's about engaging the deeper systems that drive your financial behavior—the ones that have been dormant or that you didn't even know existed.

Here are three ways to activate your money muscles:

1. Identify Your Core Money Values

Most people make spending decisions based on what feels normal, what their friends are doing, or what seems like they "should" want. But when your spending doesn't align with your actual values, it's like those compensating muscles doing the wrong job—lots of effort, limited satisfying results.

Understanding what you genuinely value allows your daily money decisions to work in service of your goals rather than against them. This isn't about willpower or discipline. It's about waking up the alignment between what matters to you and where your money goes.

2. Understand Your Money Personality

We all have dominant patterns in how we interact with money. Some people are natural savers who struggle to spend even when it makes sense. Others are spenders who find saving nearly impossible. Some avoid money decisions entirely, while others obsess over every detail.

None of these patterns are good or bad, they're just your default operating system. But if you're trying to manage money in a way that conflicts with your natural tendencies, you'll exhaust yourself fighting against your wiring.

When you understand your money personality, you can design systems that work with your nature rather than against it. That's activation, not repetition.

3. Recognize How You're Actually Motivated

Are you motivated by external accountability (deadlines, other people's expectations)? Internal standards (your own goals and commitments)? Both? Neither?

This fundamentally shapes what money management systems will work for you. Someone who needs external accountability won't succeed with a system that relies purely on self-discipline. Someone who resists external pressure won't thrive in an accountability group.

Most people try to force themselves into systems designed for a different motivational style. Then they blame themselves when it doesn't work. But the system was the problem, not you.

What Financial Coaching Actually Does

This is what makes financial coaching different from financial advice or education.

Financial advice tells you what to do: save more, spend less, invest wisely.

Financial education teaches you how things work: compound interest, tax brackets, investment vehicles.

Financial coaching helps you activate the muscles that make it possible for you to actually do what you already know you should do.

In coaching, we:

Identify which "muscles" are dormant—the values, motivations, or patterns you haven't been using or didn't know were there.

Design systems that fit your actual wiring—not generic advice, but strategies built for how you specifically operate.

Create the conditions for sustainable change—not through willpower or discipline, but by engaging the deeper drivers that make different choices feel natural.

Provide the perspective you can't get alone—like my physical therapist who could see what I couldn't: that my hard work was directed at the wrong muscle.

The Path Forward

If you're exhausted from checking your accounts every day, reviewing your budget religiously, and still not getting where you want to go, the problem isn't that you need to work harder. It's that you need to activate different systems.

The repetitive actions have their place. But without activation, they're just motion without progress.

Whether you join a group coaching program where you can explore these concepts alongside others on similar journeys, or work one-on-one for deeply personalized attention, coaching provides something you can't access alone: the ability to see which muscles need activating and the guidance to wake them up.

You don't need more discipline. You don't need to try harder at what's already not working.

You need to activate the money management muscles that have been dormant—and finally start seeing the progress you've been working toward all along.

Ready to stop doing repetitive exercises that aren't making you stronger? Schedule a free consultation to explore whether group or one-on-one financial coaching is right for you. Let's figure out which muscles need activating and build a system that actually works for how you're wired.

Does this resonate with your experience? Have you been working hard with your money without seeing the progress you expected? I'd love to hear what you're dealing with in the Comments section.