How can I stop thinking – and worrying – about money?

2 hours ago 2

Opinion

September 23, 2025 — 2.13pm

I have a lot of anxiety about financial security. I have a stable job and I save well, I’ve learned how to invest. I thought I’d feel secure by now, but I don’t. Furthermore, I still struggle to spend without guilt, worry about worst-case scenarios and keep hoping I’ll start feeling more secure at the next financial milestone – maybe when I buy a home, but then I’ll have a mortgage; or perhaps when I have a certain amount in investments, but then I know watching the portfolio drop during market downturns will cause me anxiety too. How do I stop feeling so financially anxious?

Financial security is a funny thing. In the finance world, we’re told it’s a number – it’s something you can see in your bank account or balance sheet. So, you work hard to hit that number.

If you feel like the wolf is always at your door, it might be time to try and re-frame your thinking.

You change your spending habits, learn to be frugal and restructure your cashflow to create a savings system. You breathe a sigh of relief as the bills get easier to pay, and you stop worrying about running out of money before your next pay cheque. For a while, that feels good.

But then you hear about investing. Suddenly, your savings don’t look so secure any more. Turns out, your savings are being eaten up by inflation. So, you start a new journey – learning to invest. You read the books, listen to the podcasts, open the account and start putting money in.

Now, you have a whole new level of financial anxiety to worry about. Are you investing in the right thing? What if there’s a market crash? What if you ‘lose’ all your money overnight?

It never seems to end. You hit one goal – only to realise there’s a new level of financial security you could be aspiring for. A fully paid off mortgage, a bigger portfolio of investments, and so on.

It’s totally possible to have millions of dollars in assets, and still worry about worst case scenarios that could leave you penniless.

At this rate, you could spend your whole life chasing financial security, and never get there.

The truth is financial security is not just a number. It’s also a feeling. It’s not just an external circumstance, it’s also an internal state of mind and being. The first takes financial skill – the second takes emotional skill. You can have one without the other, but really, you want both.

In your case, it sounds like you’ve been working on the first – and now it’s time to start working on the second. How? Start by noticing and feeling the security you already have.

You know the problem with deferring the feeling of security to a specific milestone or point in the future? By the time you get there – by the time that ‘future’ becomes the ‘present’ – you will have spent years practising feeling insecure, and deferring security to a future milestone.

You’ll have mental and emotional habits of insecurity. You’ll have practised thought patterns and emotional responses of insecurity. You will be masterful at finding reasons to feel insecure. That doesn’t turn off automatically, the minute your bank balance ticks over to a specific number.

This is why it’s totally possible – and a reality for some – to have millions of dollars in assets, and still worry about worst-case scenarios that could leave you penniless.

You start to unravel this by appreciating, noticing, and giving yourself permission to enjoy whatever level of security you have available to you – right now. Not when you arrive at some specific milestone in the future, but right here, right now, on the journey to your future goals.

So, what security do you have available to you now? You have security in the way of a stable job, savings and investments. Sounds like you can afford to pay the bills quite comfortably. Maybe you have a solid education in a secure industry.

You can even go beyond financial – maybe you live in a secure neighbourhood, or have secure friendships, or you live in a state or country that offers protections that other locations don’t. What I’m showing you is there are many ways in which you can start to tap into and experience the feeling of security in your present day life, right now.

At first, you might have a hard time even identifying things to feel secure about, let alone letting yourself actually feel secure about them.

In fact, your knee-jerk reaction might be to dismiss all of that. “That doesn’t count.” “Yeah, but…” – because that’s part of the habit: to dismiss, devalue and defer feeling secure now. Feeling secure isn’t a familiar feeling to you.

This is the hard part. If you want to feel financially secure – at some point, you need to choose to change your mental and emotional habits, and start noticing and feeling the security you have right now. Otherwise, it’ll always be something you defer to a ‘future’ that never arrives.

Paridhi Jain is founder of SkilledSmart, which helps adults learn to manage, save and invest money through financial education courses and classes.

Advice given in this article is general in nature and 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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