I keep myself busy, and that keeps me from really feeling what isn’t working in my life. And that can allow me to plow ahead and not listen to voice that says, ‘Ahhhh… this is not working. This isn’t working.’ I’m like ‘Shhhhhhh! I’m working! I’m not gonna listen to you now!’ Because it can be scary, to look at what’s not going on.
Kicking people when they’re down is an ugly look and for those personal finance influencers who choose to continue to do that-you need to check your hearts. How is this helpful?
Because like I said, adulting is hard and expensive enough in and of itself. So it’s only right to find some ways to treat yourself without emptying your wallet.
Taking action will make you feel like you have at least a little control, which is a great remedy for anxiety.
When we really got serious was when we had our first child, and we didn’t have enough money to fix our car that had broke down on the side of the road. And we had a thousand dollars worth of repairs, which—in the grand scheme of life—is not earth-shattering, but because we did not have it and we had an infant to cart around, we were really concerned. And so what does a person do when they can’t fix their car but they need a vehicle to get to work?
I don’t know why or how you got into your current financial situation, but it sucks. It sucks that some people assume you can just fix it by getting a better paying job. As if you wouldn’t already have that if it was an option. As if you haven’t already tried.
Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize last year for showing that not only do humans make financial mistakes, they make predictable mistakes. He joked about calling his research ‘Dumb Stuff People Do.’ But today, it’s called ‘Behavior Economics,’ and it has changed public policy across the world.
They’re kind of like an actor’s script in a movie. We just continue to read the lines in our heads or out loud to our family and friends, and believe that they’re true! When in fact, they are often quite distorted, and can limit our success or even hurt us. For most of us, our money scripts are unconscious, but they drive all of our financial behaviors.
We chat about her history with mental illness, how that’s impacted her financial life, what sparked her desire to help those feeling suicidal over their debt, and how money can be the most important (and useless) thing in the world.
When people discuss debt, it’s usually referenced as some sort of personal failing. Like, why can’t you pay off your debt? It’s easy. Make money, pay off your debt. Duh.
Feeling shame can affect the way we live our lives, and especially how we spend our money.