I wasn’t raised to talk about money. I’m an elder millennial; our parents seemed to actively keep finances very hush-hush. In fact, discussing them at the dinner table (or anywhere else) was considered taboo. From what little I knew, though, one thing was certain: making a specific amount of money would mean I’d be comfortable for life and have the white-picket fence dream we were all sold. Which is why little me from back then would be shocked to learn I hit that number I had in my head a while ago… and yet I’m not exactly living the high life.
This topic comes up quite a bit in my friend group, comprised mostly of other millennials daring to do things differently from our parents by actually talking about money. What I’ve learned from these convos is that a lot of us are suspended in a state of “fine but not OK, per se” financially. Sure, it might all look nice enough on paper. The mortgage payment clears. The kids have shoes that fit. Modest vacations might make their way onto the calendar. But we also live with a constant low-level dread, a feeling in our bones, that a blown transmission or surprise ER bill could level it all.
It’s not that we’re drowning. Not yet, anyway. But we feel like we’re permanently treading water, and that doesn’t feel great either.
I reached out to experts, and they shared a few different terms to describe this. Stephanie Smith, a clinical social worker and founder of the support resource The Group Guide, calls it “living without a margin.” Edward Jones senior behavioral analyst Sarah Newcomb calls it “financial vulnerability.” And Morgan J. Brown, a certified financial coach and founder of Your Money Project, pegs it as “financially stable on paper but emotionally living paycheck to paycheck.”
I’m obviously far from the only one feeling this way, Smith says, as it’s “the most common money story I hear, far more common than active crisis.”
Yep, the number moved
Sigh. Remember back in the good old days when you were convinced making $100k a year would mean you’d made it? Yeah, Smith remembers that as well. “I’m a millennial,” she shares. “I believed that if I ever made $100,000, I would be rich and never worry about a thing.” Then she looked it up, only to discover that $100k in 1990 is roughly $256k today. So, as Smith puts it, “We hit the number. The number moved.”
Newcomb, a Gen Xer, says psychologists call this behavior anchoring. We lock in the money benchmarks we learned as kids and never update them. “The benchmark changed, but nobody told them,” she says.
And before there’s even a hint of the idea, let’s dispel it: It’s not the f*cking lattes or avocado toast to blame. Eric Croak, a certified financial planner and president of Croak Capital, points to the fixed costs that snuck in and piled up: $1,500+ a month for childcare, family deductibles that used to be dramatically smaller, extracurriculars that rival the mortgage. Smith adds that housing, childcare, and healthcare have outrun wages for decades. So, the fallout is really real. “When you finally reach that number and you’re not feeling secure, it can be worse than not reaching it at all,” Croak says.
Psychotherapist Silvia Dutchevici, founder of the Critical Therapy Institute, says we’re raised to believe money outcomes reflect personal merit. Meaning, when hard work doesn’t pay off, people don’t conclude the system is broken. “Instead,” she says, “they feel ‘I am broken.’”
A slow leak can be worse than a blowout
An actual money crisis sucks; there’s no way around that. However, it usually has parameters, edges, a space that you live between for a short period of time and then move out of. But being stuck in this state of financially OK-ish is “similar to a slow tire leak.” With emergencies, Croak points out, at least there’s something to do.
“A crisis has a shape,” Smith puts it. “There is a bill, a date, a decision, often a phone number to call. People rally around a crisis. Low-grade dread has no shape, so nobody rallies, including the person living it.”
Unfortunately, your body ends up footing the bill for all this worry.
“Financial stress is survival stress,” Newcomb says. And because the brain doesn’t always distinguish a physical threat from this prolonged sense of dread, your nervous system stays on high alert. When that happens, it tends to eat up the bandwidth you’d normally spend on things like creativity and fun.
Michael Schramm, a certified financial analyst and author of the forthcoming book Emotional Finance, says “tunneling” is what takes place when your mind locks onto short-term survival and burns a ton of energy doing it. One study published in Science showed that simply considering an unexpectedly high car repair bill lowered reasoning scores among lower-income participants.
Over time, that scarcity-stress pipeline becomes your new norm. “People stop recognizing stress at all,” Dutchevici says. “They think it’s just who they are: anxious, tense, a worrier.”
Why it’s so lonely
The thing is, you mostly look fine. And even if you weren’t, most of us assume everyone around us is doing better thanks to the illusion of social media. Nobody thinks to reach out or check in.
Plus, while it seems like we talk about it more, money is still semi-taboo. “We’ll talk about sex or our mental health before we’ll say what we earn and why it isn’t enough,” says Dutchevici. And she’s not wrong — in a recent National Debt Relief and Wakefield Research survey, 60% of millennials said they’d rather publicly display their weight than their total debt.
Then there’s the difference between how we live now and how previous generations did, and many of those ways don’t show up on a bank statement.
Recounts Smith: “a grandmother 10 minutes away, a neighbor who took the kids on Tuesdays, a church that noticed when you stopped coming, a casserole when things went wrong.” Today, many families live far from relatives (or are somewhat estranged), both parents work their asses off, and a lot of people aren’t familiar enough with their neighbors to expect them to pop over with a casserole. We very much feel that we don’t have the same kind of built-in support systems our parents and grandparents did.
On top of all this, many of us don’t want to say anything because “other people have it worse.” And it’s true! Still, every expert we talked to said that doesn’t cancel out your stress. “There is no dollar amount where you’re not allowed to be stressed about money,” Croak says. Smith frequently hears “I know people have it worse,” usually as an apology. The hitch, she says, is “That has never once made a nervous system stand down. Comparison is not relief.”
Erica Sandber, consumer finance expert at BadCredit.org, keeps it short and simple: “Pain is pain.”
How to calm your nervous system
Frustratingly, we can’t count on the economy to get fixed this year. Or probably next year, either. Maybe ever. But we can make living in it feel a little less like a permanent five-alarm fire, say the experts. Their advice:
Call it out. Dutchevi suggests swapping “I’m bad with money and it makes me anxious” for “I live in an economy that makes security hard to reach, and my body is responding to that. Putting the problem where it actually belongs can bring some relief.
Plan out that worst-case scenario, all the way through. Your brain spins through about 1,000 vague what-ifs every day, so Newcomb recommends picking your biggest fear (say, a job loss) and running through it. Unemployment benefits, what you’d cut, who you’d call… whatever you might need to deal with if push came to shove. “Financial anxiety thrives on uncertainty,” she says.
Consider the two-account trick. Brown’s favorite fix for decision fatigue (aka “If I buy this, will I be able to pay that?”) is keeping bill money in one checking account and moving your designated spending money into a separate one. That way you always know what you have to spend, and you know spending it won’t compromise your bills getting paid.
Build whatever mini cushion you can, whenever you can. Literally just thinking about the go-to financial advice that you should have six months’ worth of expenses saved up makes me feel like panicking. Brown encourages thinking smaller for now, pointing out that even the first $500 to $1,000 can keep a surprise from becoming a crisis.
Say it out loud to somebody in the same boat. Smith says this is the one people all too often skip (ahem, we know our parents and grandparents did!) and also the one that arguably matters most, emphasizing, “Regulation is social.” Sandberg agrees, suggesting you tell a trusted friend when you’re skipping a group dinner because you’re broke. Odds are, it’ll free them up to admit they’re stressed about money, too.
Where to get help
Pretty much across the board, the experts we spoke to recommended a combo of help: someone for the money, someone for the feelings.
- Nonprofit credit counseling. It’s free. Agencies like those in the Financial Counseling Association of America can review your budget and may work with creditors to lower interest rates and waive fees, says FCAA President Martin Lynch.
- A certified financial planner, analyst, or coach. You want someone reputable and trusted who can give you real (and realistic) numbers based on your current financial situation.
- A therapist who can help if stress is affecting your sleep, mood, or relationships. Schramm points to cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and Croak notes there is such a thing as certified financial therapists, too.
- Your people. Smith says what many of us are missing is a village: “You can not prescribe one, but you can rebuild a piece of it on purpose.” Her free directory, The Group Guide, lists peer support groups by topic and state.
And remember, you don’t have to wait until things fall apart. “No one has to be in crisis to reach out,” says Croak.
