What If Your Money Anxiety Isn't Actually About Money? |
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Our earliest money memories shape lifelong beliefs about safety, scarcity, and enoughness.
Chasing the “right number” rarely resolves money anxiety, even for high earners.
Healing our relationship with money means understanding the emotions beneath the numbers.
Earlier memories of money matter
I grew up in the Rust Belt during a period when the economic ground beneath many families was quietly shifting. My father went through long stretches of unemployment, and even when work returned, the uncertainty never fully left the house.
Long before I studied economics or worked on Wall Street, money had already entered my nervous system as a question: Do we have enough? Children don’t understand macroeconomics, but they notice atmosphere, the spoken and unspoken cues around money, the tension when bills arrive, and the pauses when adults talk about work.
I also grew up watching the TV show The Price Is Right. The premise of the show is simple: If you can guess the price of things correctly, you win. Contestants stand in front of washing machines, cars, and vacation packages, trying to land on the right number.
As a kid, I absorbed something from that without realizing it. I internalized the idea that if you could just understand the price of things and guess the right number, then things could work out. Somewhere in my mind, I began to believe there must be a correct number for life as well, whether it be salaries, investment accounts, or net worth.
The Weight that Money Can Carry
Money was also part of the story of my parents’ divorce. Financial strain places enormous pressure on relationships, and research consistently shows that money is one of the most common sources of conflict between couples. Financial problems are cited as a major factor in roughly a third of divorces (Dew, Britt, and Huston, 2012).
Watching that unfold left an imprint on me. Over time, money came to hold questions much larger than income or investments. Beneath the practical concerns about paying bills were more personal questions that took years for me to recognize. Was I enough? Could I someday support a family? Could I build a stable life? When money carries questions like these, it begins to take on psychological weight far beyond the numbers themselves.
Chasing the Right Number
Like many people who grow up around economic uncertainty, I gravitated toward trying to understand money. I studied economics and eventually worked close enough to financial markets that the numbers were no longer abstract.
Competence with money matters and financial stability can calm the nervous system in real ways. But something else slowly became clear: understanding money did not automatically quiet my relationship with it. Working in finance, I found myself surrounded by people who had achieved the financial milestones many of us imagine will resolve money anxiety. They had successful careers, high incomes, and large portfolios.
From the outside, their lives looked secure, yet the emotional relationship with money often looked surprisingly familiar. The numbers were larger, but the underlying questions had not disappeared. Some people spoke openly about feeling trapped in what are sometimes called golden handcuffs—careers that paid well but felt difficult to leave. From the outside, it looked like success, but from the inside, the same questions lingered: Do I have enough? Am I safe? Am I enough?
Over time, I began to notice a pattern I now think of as financial bypassing. This can be thought of as using a financial strategy or constant monitoring of money to avoid deeper emotional questions. It shows up in subtle ways, like refreshing investment dashboards throughout the day or believing the next financial milestone will finally bring peace. Those who spend all day doing it will tell you that watching a portfolio rise and fall rarely resolves the underlying unease and more likely boosts underlying anxiety. Often, what we are asking money to answer isn’t actually a financial question, but a psychological one.
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Money in the Nervous System
Researchers studying financial behavior have found that early experiences with money shape lifelong beliefs, so-called money scripts, that influence how people earn, spend, and save (Klontz and colleagues, 2015). Financial therapist Bari Tessler has similarly emphasized that healthy money work must address both the practical and emotional dimensions of money.
Financial anxiety also remains widespread, with surveys consistently showing money among the most significant sources of stress in American life. That anxiety has taken on new forms as well, as many workers now worry about technological change and whether artificial intelligence could reshape the future of their work. When people are unsure whether their skills will remain valuable, the old question resurfaces. Do we have enough?
A Different Kind of Money Work
None of this means money doesn’t matter. Financial sufficiency matters deeply, and when basic needs aren’t met, anxiety about money is entirely rational. Beyond that threshold, something interesting often happens. More money doesn’t resolve the deeper questions we attached to it in the first place.
The work then becomes less about chasing the right number and more about understanding the relationship itself. For instance, where do our money stories come from? How does our sense of safety and worth become tangled up with numbers?
When we begin to see that emotional layer clearly, money can slowly return to its proper role as a tool that supports the life we’re trying to build. The hope then is that the nervous system can finally stop trying to guess the right number and feel at peace.
American Psychological Association. (2023). Stress in America™ Survey. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress
Dew, J., Britt, S., & Huston, S. (2012). Examining the relationship between financial issues and divorce. Family Relations, 61(4), 615–628. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x
Klontz, B., Britt, S., Archuleta, K., & Klontz, T. (2015). Financial Therapy: Theory, Research, and Practice. Springer.
Tessler, B. (2016). The Art of Money: A Life-Changing Guide to Financial Happiness. Parallax Press.