How To Manifest Money When You’re Struggling — A Real South African Mom’s Story
How I Started Manifesting Money Before I Even Had Any
Okay so listen.
I’m letting you in on something I don’t talk about everywhere. Something that feels personal and a little vulnerable and also something I genuinely believe is changing my life.
Brew that 5 Roses tea. Add the hot milk. Pull up a chair.
We’re going to spend some time together.
The Moment I Knew Something Had To Change
I’m not going to dress this up.
The bills piled on. My account started to see no money. And I sat with that feeling — that tight, anxious, suffocating feeling of looking at your finances and thinking how am I going to manage this week? — and I made a decision.
Not a dramatic decision. Not an overnight transformation. Just a quiet, firm, non-negotiable decision.
This has to change.
I think a lot of us know that moment. When the stress is no longer background noise — it’s the main event. When you’re in a store mentally calculating whether you can afford everything in your trolley. When you smile at your kids and inside you’re doing maths.
That was me. And I refused to stay there.
What Financial Freedom Actually Looks Like To Me
Before I could start calling money in, I had to get specific about what I actually wanted. Not the vague “I want to be rich” version. The real, specific, deeply personal version that makes your chest feel tight when you say it out loud because you want it so badly.
So let me tell you what financial freedom looks like to me. Not to a financial advisor. Not to a YouTube guru. To me.
It looks like always having money in my account. Not just enough — actual money. A buffer. A breath.
It looks like savings. A number that grows every single month. A foundation being built brick by brick.
It looks like being debt free. Waking up without that low hum of what I owe and to whom constantly running underneath everything.
It looks like walking into a store and buying what I want without the mental calculator running in the background. Just picking it up and putting it in the trolley. Because I can.
It looks like surprising my kids. Just because. Not for a birthday. Not for a special occasion. Just because I can and because the look on their faces when something beautiful arrives unexpectedly — that is everything to me.
It looks like taking care of the people around me. My family. My loved ones. And one day, consistently, charity. Because I believe that a woman who has been through tight seasons and comes out the other side has a responsibility to reach back and pull someone else through.
That is my vision of financial freedom. It is specific. It is mine. And I speak it out loud because I believe that what you can see clearly, you can build intentionally.
Take a sip of that tea and ask yourself — what does YOUR version look like?
So What Is Manifestation — Really?
Let me be clear about something before we go any further.
Manifestation is not magic. It is not a vision board you make on a Sunday afternoon and then sit and wait for the universe to deliver your dream life to your front door.
Manifestation — the way I understand it and the way I practice it — is the combination of mindset and action. It is deciding what you want with absolute clarity. It is speaking it like it is already on its way. And then it is getting up, every single day, and doing the work.
The doing the work part is non-negotiable. I need you to hear that.
But what the mindset work does — and I have felt this shift in my own life — is remove the energetic block. That quiet voice inside that says I don’t deserve this. This isn’t for people like me. Money is hard and life is hard and that’s just how it is.
That block is the real problem. And manifestation — done with honesty and intention — starts to dismantle it piece by piece.
What I Actually Do — My Real Practice
I want to share exactly what I do because manifestation content can feel very out of reach sometimes. Very polished. Very “I wake up at 5am and journal for an hour in my perfectly lit studio” — and that is simply not my life.
I have three very interesting children and a whole lot of life happening at any given moment. So what I’m about to share is real, imperfect and completely doable.
The Mind Power Course by Robin Banks
This is where it started for me. Robin Banks is a South African mind coach and his Mind Power course genuinely shifted something fundamental in how I think about my own potential and my relationship with money.
If you are in South Africa and you have not come across his work — please look him up. This is not a sponsored mention. This is me telling you about something that genuinely helped me because that is what we do here. We share what works.
The course introduced me to the idea that your mind is either working for you or actively working against you. And for a long time, mine was working against me in the area of money — without me even realising it was happening.
Visualisation
Every day I take time to see my life as I want it to be. Not in a desperate, please universe let this happen way. In a calm, settled, this is already mine and I am walking towards it way.
I see the account balance. I see the savings growing month by month. I see myself walking into Woolworths and filling that trolley without flinching at the total.
I see my kids’ faces when I surprise them with something they weren’t expecting.
I hold that image until it feels real. Until my body actually relaxes into it. Because your nervous system cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is vividly imagined. And I want my nervous system practising abundance — not rehearsing scarcity.
Affirmations
I speak them out loud. Not in a whisper. Out loud, with conviction.
Money flows to me easily and consistently.
I am building a life of financial freedom.
I am worthy of abundance.
My income is growing and my debt is shrinking.
I provide for my family with ease and with joy.
Did I feel a little silly in the beginning? If I’m being honest — yes. But I kept going. Because staying silent and staying stuck felt so much worse than feeling a little silly talking to myself in the mirror.
Journaling
I write. Not every single day — and I will always be honest with you about that because this blog will never perform a version of my life that isn’t real. But when I do sit down with my journal, I write as though the financial freedom I want is already here. I write in gratitude for it. I describe it. I let myself feel it on the page.
There is something about writing it down that makes it more real than simply thinking it. Like you are signing a contract with yourself. A commitment. A declaration.
Speaking To My Water
Okay. Stay with me here.
I am not going to pretend I have been doing this for years. I literally just learned about this and I am still very much in the curious, wide-eyed, is this actually real? phase of exploring it. But when I first heard about it, something in me stopped completely.
Water holds energy. It responds to intention. And so before I drink — I hold my glass, I set my intention, and I speak to it. I tell it what I am calling into my life. I ask it to carry that energy into my body and into my day.
Am I a scientist? Absolutely not. Can I hand you a peer-reviewed study right now? No. But I can tell you that the act of pausing before I drink — of being intentional about even that one small quiet moment — has made me more conscious. More present. More deliberate.
And deliberate is exactly how I want to move through this season of building.
What Has Actually Changed
I want to be transparent with you here because I think the kind of manifestation content that shows you the results without showing you the reality does more harm than good.
I am not debt free yet. My account is not where I want it to be yet. I am in the middle of this journey — very much in the middle — and not standing at the end of it looking back.
But here is what has genuinely changed.
My relationship with money has changed. I no longer avoid looking at my account because I am afraid of what I will see. I look. I face it. I make decisions from a place of intention rather than from a place of panic.
My belief has changed. I genuinely believe — in a way I simply did not before — that financial freedom is not something that happens to other people. It is something I am actively building. Right now. With every decision, every post, every intentional morning.
And this blog is part of that. Every post I write, every woman who finds this space, every brand that chooses to work with That Sassy Mom — that is manifestation meeting action in real time.
We are not where we want to be yet. But we are taking action every single day. And we are not ashamed of that — not even slightly.
How You Can Start — Right Now, Today
You do not need a perfect plan. You do not need to have everything figured out before you begin. You just need to decide that where you are right now is not where you are staying.
Here is what I would tell you to do today:
Get specific about what financial freedom looks like to YOU. Not the version from someone else’s vision board — your version. Write it down in enough detail that it makes you emotional when you read it back. That emotional response is important. That is your body recognising something true.
Speak it out loud every morning. Before the kids wake up. In the shower. In your car. Say it like it is already on its way to you — because it is.
Look up Robin Banks and the Mind Power course if you are in South Africa and you are ready to do the deeper work. It is worth it.
Journal your abundant future in the present tense. Date the entry. Come back to it in six months.
And if you want to speak to your water — pour yourself a glass right now. I will be right here doing it too. 😄
One Last Thing Before You Go
I had to share this with you today because I needed you to know that you are not alone in the tight seasons.
The woman writing this blog has sat in that place. Has looked at her account and felt that specific kind of fear. Has wondered quietly how she was going to manage.
And she decided — quietly, firmly, without apology — that it was time to change the story.
So did you. The moment you clicked on this post, something in you was already ready.
We are in this together. 🧡
Now finish that 5 Roses. And go speak something good over your day.
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