Ramit Sethi, the author of one of my best personal finance books I Will Teach You To Be Rich shared an interesting money spending story on Twitter the other day. He’s been talking to people who are almost retiring and people aged 65+ who are retired.
He’s been asking them what they plan to do with all the money they have saved for retirement. A majority of them say “I’ll save more.” They don’t know how they will spend money they’ve stacked for years, money they’ve earned through blood, sweat and tears.
Ramit also has a fantasy. Something that is never taught by personal finance gurus and I’m yet to read a book that addresses it: to teach people how to spend money. Say what???
He tweeted that he’s looking for rich people (at this point, he lost me) to take around New York for 2 days to teach them stuff such as ‘where to get the perfect suit and why people eat at certain restaurants.’
Guess how many people responded? Keep in mind that he has almost 200K followers on Twitter. Only one person responded. When Ramit reached out, the guy backed off!
Ramit says these people just like a lot of us, have learned three financial skills:
- How to save money.
- How to worry about money.
- Creating financial anxiety within ourselves.
Raise your hand if you felt attacked. I felt like he pointed out these three things to spite me.
Fear of spending money
Since I already wrote an awesome piece addressing negative money emotions and how to get over them, I was aware that fear of money is a common money script that messes up a lot of people’s lives. What I didn’t know was that it affects so many people, even the ultra-wealthy and retirees. So I went digging…
The fear of spending money or the fear of money, in general, has a name! Chrometophobia.
People who have this money phobia exhibit symptoms such as:
- Hesitance to spend money even on basic needs
- Avoiding activities that bring joy such as visiting family and friends
- Counting their money or checking their bank account balance every day
- Depressive thoughts.
Some people get physically ill due to worrying about money. You need the help of a mental health professional if you have such symptoms.
For those who don’t possess such symptoms but still constantly worry about money and have financial anxiety like myself, spending money is often accompanied by feelings of guilt. This is referred to as buyer’s remorse. It’s that feeling of regret you experience after making a purchase.
As Ramit teaches ‘spending money is a skill’ that we need to learn. One of the ways that I’m teaching myself how to not feel guilty about spending money is celebrating when I accomplish a goal however small. I also have a ‘fun’ monthly budget.