My Financial Mindset is on a Seven-Year Lag

I’ve written at length (both last week and at the end of 2022) about the realizations that helped me become financially savvy. But I’ve never shared the experience that occurred before those initial W-2 paychecks started coming. 

I faced a post-grad experience that will be familiar to most young people: Securing an internship after graduation—rather than a full-time job—pressed “start” on a punishing, ticking clock. I was officially on my own, which meant paying my own bills. But on $12/hour, that necessarily meant finding a generous, empty-nesting family friend who would let me crash until I could afford rent. 

I was fortunate not to sweat the crushing pressure of student loan payments that many in my generation do, but I still felt that giant internship timer ticking down in my chest with each passing pay period. 

While I knew I had the safety net of parents who would allow me to move home and charge cheap rent if I couldn’t find a full-time job, the thought of working hard to graduate with a 4.0 and still returning to my hometown with my wilted grad cap tassel tucked between my legs was unbearable. I applied feverishly for full-time roles all summer, rarely received calls back, and politicked within an inch of my life, politely circling back and barking following up the tree of any person who would take the meeting. If August rolled around without an offer, I’d be officially unemployed—a fate that, at the time, seemed worse than just about everything but death. 

I desperately wanted to get hired full-time at the company where I had worked for two summers already, but their program was notorious for hiring very few interns. We were told our fate was decided as much by headcount availability as by our performance, and the entire ordeal felt precarious and mostly out of my control. 

Miraculously, by the grace of the corporate gods, a huge game of organizational musical chairs in the marketing department was announced in the last weeks of August, and it shook loose a few open seats at the bottom of the food chain. One week before the internship ended, I got my job offer, meaning I’d only need to go a couple of weeks without income. 

But the stress and desperation of that summer did a number on my psyche. 

It was the first time in my privileged life that I had experienced the taut, perilous risk of being without income or meaningful savings indefinitely. I perceived my struggling as a failure to achieve the most basic precondition of adulthood. (As I’ve previously shared, my parents were ultra-frugal savers employed for the entirety of my adolescence.) 

The initial relief of having a W-2 paycheck quickly subsided to make way for the realization that the rest of my life was going to feel like a muted version of that summer if I kept spending every cent: suspended over the edge, with my weight supported by the rope of corporate beneficence. It deeply affected my subconscious relationship with money, work, and security. 

In hindsight, I know it wasn’t actually that serious. But it doesn’t matter if 2024 Katie is aware that 2017 Katie was panicking over a very common, lowish-stakes experience. 2017 Katie’s psyche spent four months in earnest, professional fight-or-flight. It doesn’t matter whether she was actually being chased by the metaphoric lion or not; her careerist nervous system experienced life as though she were. 

The other day, I was meeting with my coach, Elizabeth. I had been droning on about some financial fantasy I had for “when money was no object,” and she stopped me: “Can I pause and ask a question here?” she interjected, probably interrupting a sentence about safe withdrawal rates. 

“Sure, please,” I begged. (Even I get tired of my droning about sequence of returns risk.)

“Why is money such a motivator? It seems like money is a huge driver here. Where’s that coming from?”

*slowly reaches for the remote to dim the “Money with Katie” neon sign on the wall behind me*

I looked at my lap as she correctly identified that I mostly made decisions by scanning a choice’s potential (or lack thereof) to move me closer to this post-economic state.

My current identity as the person who’s motivated by the “number going up” as a benchmark against which to gauge safety and security, I realized, had been manufactured intentionally after that summer by choice. I had not always been this person. I had chosen to become this person, a process I wrote about in last week’s piece.

It’s hard to admit—and harder to accept—that my obsession with financial independence was a fear response to a job hunt I took far too seriously at 22. For nearly seven years, that fear response has served me well. In fact, there are some parts I’d still like to keep around!

But there are other parts—the parts that were expecting too much from money, asking it to provide meaning, a sense of safety, and feelings of security—that I’m beginning to see are like trying to explain niche memes to your grandma who’s never wasted an afternoon on TikTok. We’re simply speaking two different languages. 

When the “number going up” no longer signifies a meaningful, incremental boost in security (or success, or comfort) the way it once did, it’s no longer the most helpful criterion by which to judge your decisions.

What’s an approach to money look like for a woman with a steady income and healthy savings? Or, perhaps in light of last week’s piece: What’s that identity look like? 

Ignoring it entirely feels like an overcorrection on par with sneaking Q-tips out of SoulCycle bathrooms to save money, but maybe you’ve earned the ability to weigh it as the second- or third-most impactful factor in decision-making, instead of the first. 

It’d be a layup to summon examples about simple spending choices here, but the clearance section is not where life paths fork. Basing your next career move primarily on satisfaction and mental health—as opposed to dollar signs—is a more instructive example for where you may actually need to lighten the weight you’re granting the number on the job offer, not double down. 

More money will not meaningfully increase my feelings of safety and security anymore, because my needs are met and I have a healthy emergency fund. It was probably never going to provide my life with meaning, but the confidence-building process of mastering it did for a short time. 

The good news—as we’ve learned—is that identity can be changed. The evolution continues!