‘I worry I’ve over-spent’: Here’s how to spend and not feel guilty

September 22, 2026 — 3:00pm

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I have money but I struggle to spend it. There are times I do spend quite liberally; if I’m on a holiday, I might splurge because I do enjoy the feeling of freedom and abundance. But then I feel a lot of guilt and anxiety. I feel bad for wasting it. I question whether I really needed it. I worry I’ve over-spent – even though I know I have enough, there’s always this feeling of like “well, you never know what could happen in the future – it’s always better to have more”. How do I get over this?

This requires changing your psychological and emotional relationship with spending. Here are a few strategies I use to help clients create this shift.

Change your north star

If your goal is to keep growing your wealth, every time you spend money, it might feel like you’re going against that goal. This creates an internal contradiction: if the goal is always “more wealth”, then any amount of spending feels wrong. It makes sense to minimise all expenditure.

Maybe this is what you’ve been taught it takes to build wealth: you have to put every spare dollar to work – never spend it. Spending is something to minimise and even eliminate – never to increase. And there’s something inherently impressive in having a big net........

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