Most Money Problems…Aren’t About Money

The glorious TikTok algorithm served me a video the other day. It was from a sex therapist who opened with, “Most couples who come to me say, ‘Our marriage is perfect, except for our sex life!,’ and it’s almost never true.” 

She goes on to explain how—much of the time—when a couple believes they’re no longer sexually compatible, it’s usually the physical manifestation of something else. An uneven power dynamic, a lack of emotional intimacy, a trust issue…the list goes on.

While I don’t know *checks notes* anything about sexual compatibility or marriage (outside of what I’ve learned in the last 18 months; shout-out to Sir Husband Thomas), the video stuck with me: Money is the same way. 

To a hammer, pretty much everything looks like a nail. To a personal finance writer, cash seems to be the cause of (or solution for) pretty much every problem.

Of course, for people who are living at or below the poverty line (or really, anywhere within walking distance), it actually might be about money—but money has a way of masking and distorting problems that have almost nothing to do with the number in your checking account.

“Just one more year”

In the FI/RE community (and in retirement planning more broadly), there’s a phenomenon known as “one more year” syndrome. “One more year” syndrome is what happens when you finally cross the glorious finish line of your illustrious financial independence number (i.e., the amount you need to retire), then promptly twiddle your thumbs on the other side of said finish line and ask, “But are we sure it’s time to quit? What if I just gave it another year or two?” 

The reasons vary and sound reasonable enough: Leaving the workforce during what are likely your highest-earning years. An unpredictable future of expenses that are hard to estimate (like healthcare or housing while in a tenuous market). The belief that just giving it “one more year” will make you feel more secure.

“One more year” syndrome is not about money. It’s about a sense of security. 

And when you’re turning to your brokerage account and asking it to provide you not only with all the things it can buy but also with an indelible sense of safety, you’ve officially crossed into dicey territory. 

It’s all relative

As wise finance avenger Ramit Sethi once tweeted, ”Your feelings about money are highly uncorrelated to how much you have in the bank.”

Years ago, at age 22, I was blissfully unaware of just how close to the edge I was living. My net worth was no more than several thousand dollars, I was making below-average income, and I was trying to keep up with the Kardashians. 

I never thought about money (until my financial awakening, when my precariousness was laid bare before me, of course). I wasn’t stressed about it. I didn’t feel insecure or risky. If anything, I felt like I had it made, baby! I had a steady biweekly paycheck with my name on it for the first time in my life, and relative to my former, college self, I was rich. 

But this phenomenon helps explain why now—at 27—I think about money constantly, despite having far more of it than I did five years ago. If you were to take an Anatomy Park-style cruise through my prefrontal cortex at just about any time of day, you’d probably find some remnant of a minutes-old thought that sounds something like, “Well, once I have $2.5 million, all this stress will go away,” or, “Well, once we’re financially independent, I don’t think I’ll have this anxiety about employment anymore.”  

It’s incredibly easy to lose perspective. “Your feelings about money are highly uncorrelated to how much you have in the bank.” It’s no surprise, then, that throwing more money at your feelings about money usually does little to fix them.

So what’s the takeaway here? 

I’ve had to start instituting the phrase, “What’s this really about?” when I catch myself getting worked up about money. I even nicknamed the part of my personality that has a tendency to get a little too Scrooge McDuck-y sometimes ”The Treasurer.”

The Treasurer is the part of me that stomps around my amygdala wearing a bright green plastic poker visor carrying a grinning piggy bank, frantically pointing at it, reminding me that if we can just get this hunk of smiling metal a little fuller, everything will improve.

The Treasurer wants to hoard. She wants to prepare. Ultimately, she wants to feel secure and safe and cared for. 

Crucially, I think of this part of me as separate from the real me—a little trick I learned from something called “Internal Family Systems,” a method of therapy and philosophy about humans that basically says we have little “families” of people—parts of us—that wrestle for control of our core self to keep us safe. 

(I sometimes also jokingly refer to The Clipboard Self, the part of me that frantically needs to check shit off the to-do list and manage the calendar or else she implodes, and The Beauty Queen, who’s a vestige of my Alabama days who makes me feel like if I’m not perfectly “made up” 24/7, I’m failing at being a woman.)

The Treasurer, though, is a little monster that gets fed new material constantly by way of my profession—and when I feel her start to emerge, I picture that visor-donning version of me and ask her: “What’s really the issue here? What are you actually scared of?”

Usually, The Treasurer answers something like, “I’m afraid we’re not going to have enough,” or, “I’m afraid our lives are going to get worse if we don’t get more,” and somewhere in the course of the “conversation,” I’m able to unearth what’s actually driving the erroneous need for speed more money: A sense of security, stability, and safety. 

“No, Treasurer, we already checked our net worth this week. We don’t need to check it again. Why do you feel like you need to check it right now? What feeling are you trying to get?”

Am I suggesting you have an out-loud conversation with another part of yourself while on the subway? No, probably not. But when you find yourself alone with some quiet time, it’s nice to engage the part of you that’s worried about money gently and earnestly. I like to visualize a caricatured version of myself for this, but I don’t think that’s necessary—it’s just nice to give the little voice in your head a judgment-free outlet to express what’s up. 

If you share finances with another person, inviting them to express their inner, seemingly irrational concerns openly and honestly can be helpful, too—as can letting them know what’s coming up for you when you find your own Treasurer getting antsy. 

Maybe you’ll find your inner Treasurer is actually just a very young version of you—after all, many of our financial neuroses are inherited (and not the fun kind that comes with a $12.92 million tax exemption). 

You may find it represents the thing your parents used to control you, so now you want nothing to do with it. 

You may find that money represents “just another adult thing” that you feel like you’re not very good at, and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy you use to beat yourself up. 

You may find you’re ready to retire on paper, but you’re really just not sure who you are without work, and shoveling more money onto the pile for “one more year” feels like a more worthy use of your time. 

That last one hits people particularly hard, because it’s so existential: What is my life for if not to create shareholder value?! (I kid…sort of.)

Yes, for some of us, sometimes a cigar really is a cigar—if we’re living really close to the edge, our financial fears probably are actually about money. 

But for some of us, it’s worth exploring three important questions:

• What if everything…went right? Envision the “you” that has the type of abundance and security you want. What will you do with it? Are you taking your friends and family on amazing adventures? Are you the world’s best gift-giver? Are you the largest donor to your local animal shelter? Do you support local businesses? Rather than focusing on the worst case scenarios of what could happen if things go wrong, spend time visualizing what things will be like when they go right. 

• Do you enjoy your work? We put a lot of emphasis on preparing for retirement in the personal finance world, mostly because many of us are underprepared—but in the process, sometimes we unfairly demonize work. Are you enjoying how you spend your time working? If the answer is yes (or even just “usually” yes), you may need to give yourself permission to enjoy it—maybe an early retirement isn’t actually what you’re interested in after all, and that can be a freeing realization that takes some of the pressure off.

• If you had $10 million in your bank account tomorrow, how would you spend your day? Imagine for a moment what total financial freedom would feel like—when you log into your Chase checking account and basically see the “infinity” symbol, what would you change about your life, if anything? How would you spend your day? This can help put us in a frame of mind that addresses the heart of what we actually want money for. If money isn’t a “thing,” then what?

What you probably won’t find? That many of your concerns about money are actually about money at all.