Got cash but scared to spend it? How to ditch financial guilt

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 worth: $1 million, $2 million, $5 million – the more, the better.

If you want to feel good about spending, you have to have positive beliefs about spending.

But what if the goal isn’t just to grow wealth, or have wealth? What if the goal is to enjoy a wealthy experience of life? Now, you’re playing a totally different game. Now, you’re not just thinking about how to accumulate wealth – you’re also thinking about how to use your wealth to meaningfully impact your quality and experience of life. Now, spending money is no longer contradictory to your end-goal – it’s integral to its accomplishment.

Change your beliefs about ‘spending’

Your beliefs about spending will determine how you feel about it. You can’t simultaneously believe spending is bad and then feel great about spending money. Even if you do manage to splurge, you won’t feel good about it – your negative beliefs about spending won’t let you.

So what are the beliefs you have about spending? Are they pretty negative? Maybe you think spending is wasteful, wrong, selfish, shallow, materialistic, irresponsible. Maybe you associate spending with loss – you’re more focused on what you’re losing (money) as opposed to what you’re gaining (the thing you’re buying).

Make a list of your beliefs and start to identify where you got these beliefs from. Maybe you borrowed some of these beliefs from your parents or learned them from social media. Start to question these beliefs – are they really yours? Do they serve you, and the life you want to live? Are they consistent with the experience you want, of spending money?

If you want to feel good about spending, you have to have positive beliefs about spending. You have to believe that this is a positive thing to engage in.

Change your identity

We don’t just have beliefs about spending; we also formulate beliefs about what our spending says about who we are. This starts to form part of our identity over time.

Maybe you think of yourself as very financially responsible, a mindful conscientious spender, a frugal person, someone who doesn’t spend mindlessly, someone who is careful and calculated about how they spend their money, someone who is low-maintenance or doesn’t enjoy spending, someone who doesn’t need much or is a minimalist, and so on.

Those aren’t bad things – they have their advantages, and they’ve probably served you well in your goal of wealth accumulation. However, they’re not congruent with your desire to start enjoying spending money. Now, if you suddenly start splurging, that’s going to go against who you believe you are as a person. That isn’t going to feel good.

If you want to become the kind of person who can spend with ease and enjoyment, you don’t just need to change your beliefs about spending money. You need to change your identity and what you think spending money says about who you are. Can you get to a place where spending money feels consistent with your identity – not a threat to it?

The common theme here is that the thing you’re wanting to do (spend money with more ease and enjoyment) is in some way inherently conflicting with your internal world-view. On some level, your financial goals, beliefs about spending, and even self-identity are not consistent with your desire to enjoy spending money. The key is to start to reduce that internal conflict, and as that gap closes, you’ll find yourself being able to spend money with less anxiety and stress.

Paridhi Jain is a money and mindset coach who combines practical strategies with mindset transformation to help clients create more freedom and fulfilment in wealth, work and life. Find Paridhi at: skilledsmart.com.au

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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