AAR51 - The Money and Mental Health Connection

26 May 2026 · 1 h 3 min · 24 chapters

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In short

Money and mental health connection, focusing on how financial uncertainty, decision fatigue, stress, and comparison can create a feedback loop that worsens financial decisions and spills into other life areas. It also covers practical ways to break the spiral and reduce financial stress in relationships.

Guests

Evan Ray (host) and Andrew Sather (resident investing expert). No other guests are identified in the transcript.

Guest backgrounds

Andrew Sather describes graduating college, starting a job without budgeting/structure, later entrepreneurship with income fluctuations, and personal experiences with impulsive spending and financial stress. Evan Ray shares personal struggles with uncertainty/decision fatigue and relationship financial misalignment after moving post-college.

Key claims

“Get rich” thinking doesn’t address mental health; financial stress is a major driver of relationship conflict/divorce; stress leads to avoidance, impulsive decisions, and overreactions to markets; more money helps affordability but doesn’t automatically remove stress without structures.

Notable examples

buying a Switch/charger under uncertainty; “YOLO” into Rivian; moving for a job and realizing new apartment costs; partner disagreement about splitting rent; entrepreneurship income highs/lows and the need for reserves.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Understanding Decision Fatigue

0:45 to 1:42

Discussing the impacts of decision fatigue on financial choices and mental health.

“I just wish I had Shopify back then to ease my worries and handle the heavy lifting for me.”

Mental Health and Finances Discussion

3:33 to 7:20

Exploring the correlation between mental health issues and financial stress.

“So today, in recognition of May as Mental Health Awareness Month, we actually want to discuss some mental health.”

Feedback Loop of Stress and Decision Making

7:20 to 12:20

Examining how poor financial decisions can lead to stress and further bad choices.

“And the more things that we can do to try to improve in this area, I think the better off it can be.”

Personal Experiences with Financial Stress

12:20 to 14:00

Sharing personal stories of financial decision-making and its emotional impact.

“Again, it sounds small, but I know we all have those kinds of small actions.”

Navigating Financial Stress After College

14:00 to 18:00

Explore the challenges of managing finances after graduation and the impact of stress on decision-making.

The Cycle of Financial Decision-Making

18:00 to 22:30

Understand how stress can lead to avoidance and impulsive decisions in financial management.

“educate yourself on those financial decisions or even sometimes just put them off entirely.”

Personal Financial Decisions and Impulse Buying

24:34 to 28:00

Discuss personal experiences with impulsive financial decisions driven by stress.

“What's the best way to get started in the market?”

Understanding Financial Stress and Impulsivity

28:00 to 29:10

Explore how stress influences financial decisions and impulsive spending.

The Impact of Life Changes on Finances

29:10 to 30:40

Discuss how significant life changes can exacerbate financial decision-making challenges.

“It all spirals downward and leads to each other.”

The Illusion of Money Solving Problems

30:40 to 32:55

Learn why earning more money doesn't necessarily alleviate financial stress.

“And I can relate with that too, having my own episode after moving across the country.”
Show all 24 chapters

The Transition from Spending to Saving

32:55 to 34:50

Understand the shift from focusing on affordability to prioritizing savings.

“There's always another rung on the ladder above you.”

Income Fluctuations and Financial Planning

34:50 to 37:20

Examine how income fluctuations affect spending habits and financial stress.

“things that they need to afford currently.”

Building Accountability in Financial Decisions

37:20 to 39:40

Discover the importance of accountability in managing finances effectively.

“The entrepreneurial life can have huge income fluctuations.”

Seeking Support for Financial and Mental Health

39:40 to 42:00

Learn about the benefits of reaching out to trusted individuals for support.

“to you because it's easier you can convince yourself of anything basically and but it's a lot harder to convince somebody else of that same thought process.”

The Importance of Trust in Mental Health

42:00 to 43:50

Learn how reaching out to trusted individuals can support mental health.

“So anybody you can kind of speak these decisions to out loud, I think is very, very helpful.”

Financial Stress and Relationships

43:50 to 45:20

Understand how financial stress impacts relationships and the importance of alignment.

“What has been your experience with working through these kinds of stresses?”

Communication: Key to Financial Harmony

45:20 to 48:30

Discover why transparent communication about finances is essential in relationships.

“Even if it's not stressful for both of you, it'll be stressful for one of you to go through that.”

Fostering Open Financial Discussions

50:35 to 54:10

Gain insights into fostering open communication around finances in relationships.

“Banking services are provided by Lead Bank, member FDIC.”

Actionable Steps to Reduce Financial Stress

54:10 to 56:01

Learn effective strategies to manage and reduce financial stress.

“All right, so moving on to the last section here, which is the actionable step.”

The Importance of Emergency Funds

56:01 to 57:28

Learn why having an emergency fund is crucial for financial and emotional stability.

“But having visibility to that will allow you to potentially reduce it in the future or reduce other things to help aid in paying for that XYZ that you really need.”

Automation as a Financial Tool

57:29 to 59:38

Discover how automating savings and payments can alleviate financial stress.

“And we have a whole episode dedicated to emergency funds, the best actions, the best actions behind them and the best things to do with them and the best ways to manage them.”

Tracking Financial Progress and Mental Health

59:39 to 1:02:22

Explore the connection between financial tracking and mental well-being.

“but you're just not going to have to be stressed about all these decisions.”

The Value of Transparency in Mental Health

1:02:23 to 1:04:06

Understand the importance of being open about mental health challenges.

“And then I want to double click on what you said about sometimes a financial stress is not financial, but there's something deeper going on.”

Striving for Financial Freedom

1:04:07 to 1:04:54

Learn strategies for managing financial stress and achieving freedom.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00The first one that comes up to me is constant uncertainty and decision fatigue. Again, we'll talk about how to undo some of this stuff later as much as you can. But if you don't have a plan in place, if you don't know where you're at, where you're heading, where you want to go, blah, blah, blah. If you don't have a good roadmap and foundational understanding for all that sort of stuff, every single decision is exhausting. Deciding if you can afford to go buy a coffee is a thought process. Deciding if you can afford that new laptop is a thought process.

0:28Evan:I've been thinking about it recently and I can still remember the exact moment before I launched my very first business. I was sitting there staring at the screen and the self-doubt is hitting me like a ton of bricks. Is this really the right decision? What if I completely fail? What if no one buys anything? Making that leap was terrifying, but pushing through that uncertainty was one of the best decisions I ever made. I just wish I had Shopify back then to ease my worries and handle the heavy lifting for me. Shopify lets you tackle all those important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments to analytics, you name it, making your life easier.

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2:52Evan:That's 20 % off your first purchase with code investing at liquidiv.com.

3:07And welcome back to At Any Rate. My name is Evan Ray, and we are here to help you make sustainable financial changes without breaking a sweat. Today, please, everyone, give a big round of applause to our resident investing expert, Andrew Sather. Pause for applause. Oh, yeah, thank you. Nope. No, no, no. Thank you. It's a very exciting crowd today.

3:32All right. So today, in recognition of May as Mental Health Awareness Month, we actually want to discuss some mental health. We just want to discuss mental health around finances. I definitely, as I think mental health applies in pretty much every facet of our lives, it's not discussed as much as it should be. I think it's the effects of mental health are so, so far reaching that for the little bit that it's discussed, just touch on it. Like, oh, you know, be careful with this. doesn't really do it justice is the amount of effect it can have in people's lives. And it's also, when it comes to finances, it's a lot easier to just say, get rich.

4:09You know, your life will be easier and less stressful if you just get rich. So go make a bunch more money and you'll be okay is kind of the mindset. And I just don't think that works, to be honest. But also today, we don't want this to just be a therapy episode. Of course, we're not just trying to, you know, talk about, you know, sappy stuff and say that that's going to help people. we want to focus on financial effects and linkages between financial actions and mental health and vice versa and as always we want it to be as actual as possible we want it to be these are some things to watch out for and these are some things you can actually do to make it better on yourself make it easier on yourself or prevent things in the future not to mention that you know when we talk about how far-reaching mental health issues are it's one of the most common causes of stress arguably the most common cause of stress and is definitely the most common cause of divorce and other relational issues it just i mean we talk about all the time about about your why's and we'll touch on this later and everything but your your finances are so important to your your livelihood your your well-being your in this case your mental health your relationships your abilities to do things your opportunity there are so so many effects and to just treat it as if you can just go get rich and if you don't have all that other stuff lined up you're going to be okay is not realistic all that stuff needs to be lined up for you to have a good sustainable healthy life for yourself um but and you're going to ask kind of a personal question straight off the bat as i like to do um and you can go obviously as in depth as you do or don't want to do but when have you had some mental health related issues related to your finances in the past yeah uh the past being

5:48Evan:like what yesterday? It could be an hour ago or it could be a decade ago. I don't care. Yeah. I mean, it has been something very real in recent history. And I would just say like, you're not alone if you're dealing with this. And sometimes we don't realize how much money and the scorecard of money can affect the way you feel about yourself and the way you feel about life around you. And it's not a fun topic. And maybe you think, oh, well, that doesn't apply to me. I can compartmentalize money and my mental health. And I would challenge that, that maybe, hey, there's some benefit to thinking about mental health as it relates to your money.

6:38Evan:Because there are ways you can destroy your money or your mental health or both at the same time. I was just watching a YouTube video this morning and somebody was talking about an article that somebody wrote where he went as a degenerate gambler for a year. And that's probably not good for your mental health or bad mental health could lead to that. So hopefully through our experiences and us sharing about our mental health, it can encourage you that you're not alone. we go through a lot of things that you might go through and vice versa. And we're all just trying to figure this out together. And the more things that we can do to try to improve in this area, I think the better off it can be.

7:29And again,

7:30Evan:I hope we all feel like we're in this together and you don't have to walk this alone because you're not alone. Yeah. But I want to emphasize you talking about feeling alone because again, And that's another side effect of the fact that it is under discussed. It's not, I mean, this applies to a lot of the stuff we talk about, but it's not exactly fun to talk about. It's not easy to talk about. It's a difficult topic, but by other people avoiding it, not to just blame everybody else, but by the community as a whole avoiding these kinds of conversations, it makes people feel like I'm probably the only one, you know, going through this or, you know, I'm probably a pretty rare person to go through this, but in reality, you're a normal, very, very normal person for going through those kinds of struggles and realizing that other people that you know or look up to or whatever it is go through basically the same thought process as you is very validating.

8:25And learning how they deal with it or have dealt with it can be very, very helpful. But I know for myself, just to kind of be transparent on some stuff that I've struggled with personally, the first one that comes up to me is constant uncertainty and decision fatigue um again we'll talk about how to undo some of this stuff later as much as you can but if you don't have a plan in place if you don't know where you're at where you're heading where you want to go blah blah blah if you don't have a good roadmap and foundational understanding for all that sort of stuff every single decision is exhausting you deciding if you can afford to go buy a coffee is a thought process deciding if you can afford that new laptop is a thought process.

9:04Deciding if you can, I don't know, afford a new charger for your phone because you want another one in another room is exhausting. It all adds up, and those constant feelings of, I don't really know where I am, I don't know where I need to head, so I don't know if this decision that I'm looking to make is going to be okay is exhausting. All of that adds up, and it stacks up, and they may feel like small decisions in and of themselves, and they may be relatively small decisions, but when you have to make five of those financial related every single day that stacks up to man i always feel like i'm behind and i never feel like i know where i'm at not to mention that that definitely also applies to stuff like savings as well deciding how much do i need to save when do i need to save it where do i save it how much can i afford to save when you don't know any of this stuff then potentially leads you to not saving and feeling bad about that or you do save but you're like, I don't really know if I should have done that.

9:58I don't know if I'm going to be okay based on that. That uncertainty has really been difficult for me for sure in the past. And I've, I've, I think I've made it a lot better over time, but it's still something that I struggle with to this day of, um, of letting the exhaustion of those kinds of decisions build up. And the other thing I want to add that, that I resonate with something that you said is as a scorecard. I mean, we all struggle with, you know, envy, essentially some form of envy or measuring yourself against others, which is literally never worthwhile to do. And it's never going to lead to something fruitful, but it's very easy to be like, Oh, you know, I feel like I'm doing pretty good.

10:36And then you find out that, you know, somebody, you know, is making X amount more or gets, you know, X number of days more off or whatever it is, or has they been able to save X more or got something X years earlier than you that, that constant comparison or any level of comparison is also exhausting. That also is extremely stressful and makes it, it sort of reframes anything you've done in a negative light. You know, for example, say you feel good about the pay level you've gotten to congratulations. That's fricking awesome that I'm happy for you. And then you find out, well, my friend with similar experience is actually earning 20 % more.

11:10And now suddenly that whole thing that was a positive thing for you is instantly turned upside down and reframed as a negative. And that is a, that's jarring and that is difficult and that's stressful. Um, and I've struggled with that for sure. And I'm, I'm sure that that's another very common thing for people to struggle with. Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you feel like you're behind. Yeah. It all just adds up. Um, okay. So kind of diving into the first, first aspect of how mental health in general can affect your finances and vice versa is what I'm kind of terming the feedback loop in this case so poor decisions any poor decisions you make can make life stressful and a stressful life is going to lead you to making worse decisions and those worst decisions you're going to realize were bad decisions at the time or afterwards and that's going to make you more stressed which is going to make you make worse decisions it just keeps going back and forth and at some point you want to break that spiral and again we'll kind of discuss some some actions a little bit later but if you don't take some sort of meaningful action to break that cycle even if it's difficult even if it hurts in the moment if you don't take some kind of action to undo that then that feedback loop is just not going to stop ever essentially and for a lot of people sadly they will live their entire lives bouncing back and forth between bad decisions stressed about the bad decision so they make another bad decision it's sometimes it's easier to lean into the stress than to find ways to get out of it in the long term.

12:45For me, kind of similarly to what I talked about with sort of what I talked about earlier with making decisions based on uncertainty and having decision fatigue and everything, my loop was bad, uneducated decisions leading to more stress. Again, it sounds small, but I know we all have those kinds of small actions. If I wanted a new phone charger and I bought a new phone charger, but I wasn't sure if I could or not. Now I'm going to feel stressed about that decision. And that stress is just going to make me think, okay, I don't really know what I'm doing anyways. Let me just go get something else or make the next decision without putting the effort in to fix it because I'm too scared that if I look into how to fix it or where I'm at, that I shouldn't have bought that phone charger.

13:24You don't want to look back and realize you made a bad decision. So you'd rather just ignore it and make another bad one going forwards. So I've been caught in that loop myself. Andrew, would you say you've been caught in that kind of a feedback loop before.

13:38Evan:Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like your decisions get worse or the amount of time you take or I guess the rationality behind this decision gets worse and worse the further down this spiral you go? Did that kind of be something that you dealt with? Yeah. for me it was definitely soon after I graduated college I've talked about it before but when I graduated college and got a solid job with decent pay I didn't know what the heck I was doing I didn't I didn't have a budget I didn't have any structure I didn't know where I was where I wanted to go I didn't know what was normal what wasn't normal what was expected I didn't know any of that and so it was very easy to again feel very stressed about not knowing what decision to make but when I make a decision that would make me more stressed and would just lead to me making making worse decisions um I can't remember any specific purchases off the top of my head but I know it was very easy to just pile on stuff like like for me as as kind of as a nerd tech stuff is something that that I'm interested in and enjoy but when you don't know if like for example I know I bought a switch at that point um if you don't know if you can afford a switch or should have bought that or if that was you know okay for you to buy or whatever then you're just going to feel stressed about it and not even enjoy the thing you bought nearly as much and it's not going to help it it's not going to if if making a decision is stressful it also makes it stressful to figure out what the decision should be next time and so if i already feel that stress about buying the switch the next time i look to get you know an accessory for it or maybe you know a new computer monitor or something like that i'm i've already been sort of reinforced that these decisions are going to be stressful and i'd rather just push through it and be like i'm just going to go buy it because i because i kind of think i can or whatever then put in the effort to to sit down and figure out what's going to be okay with me um in my finances and what's not so i kind of spiraled down a bunch of those sorts of purchases just because it was easier to spiral down that way than sit down and figure everything out.

15:53Evan:I'm imagining that, like you mentioned, buying the Switch, and maybe that was a stressful thing because you didn't know if you had the money to do or not. It's one of those songs that plays in the background of your life without you realizing it, right? It's something that, in hindsight, I guess you could look back and be like, oh, that was kind of a dumb decision that made me kind of feel more stressed out. and just kind of be a part of you for a while. Maybe that's some of this negative effect around spiraling is it can play in the background of your life and affect you in other ways that you're not even realizing at the time.

16:37Yeah, feeling stressed about a ton of financial decisions like that, it's not going to help any other aspect of your life. that's going to make it harder to even make other decisions like exercising or eating the right stuff or whatever, just from feeling stressed. Even if they seem completely unrelated when we're speaking about it right now, I guarantee that any stress you feel about getting to work late or something like that, completely unrelated, can affect your decision-making for anything else in your life, for a decision that you made for what to have for breakfast, or the first thing to do when you got into work, or what was the best first thing to do or how you communicated to your coworkers when you got into work.

17:18There's so many of these far-reaching effects that can affect other parts of your life just because one seemingly unrelated part gave you stress. And again, what we want to help do in this episode is undo a lot of that.

17:31Evan:Yeah, so what are some examples of how financial stress can affect decisions? Some ways that can affect it. First off, we touched on a lot here. is avoidance for sure. I think that the second that it's stressful for you to make decisions, the easiest thing to do is to avoid making decisions or avoid making educated decisions and just keep flying by the seat of your pants. That can be one of the easiest things to do. So it's difficult to look into what options you have for making financial decisions and not educate yourself on those financial decisions or even sometimes just put them off entirely.

18:10it might seem like a good thing you know when we're talking about go back to the switch and the computer monitor or something it might be good you might think it would be good to say well you bought a switch and it stressed you out so you shouldn't buy a computer monitor but guess what then all i'm going to be thinking about is wishing i had that computer monitor that because i don't know if i could have afforded or not if i looked into it and said nope i can't then at least that's something solid in my mind i can save towards it know when i can buy it and boom. And that is, that's a, that's a very structured few steps to get to something that you want versus, uh, essentially like an indefinite walk towards, I don't know if I can afford that.

18:46I don't know if I can afford that. I don't know if I can afford that. And it just never ends. Um, and, and for me, for sure. And I think for a lot of people out there, it's a lot easier to, to avoid stress. That's kind of a first knee jerk reaction is if something feels stressful, just back out of it just back away from it um and that's definitely not not a healthy way to go about it also something that has definitely applied to being um i was going to say in the past but that's a freaking lie has applied to me is is impulsive therapy so it's at least from the way that that i view it for myself um if if a decision feels stressful and you're looking towards making future decisions it's very easy to feel like okay if i just go make impulsive decisions and at least I'm in control of it.

19:29At least I'm not, I feel like I'm not letting the stress control it. I'm not letting anybody else control it or have input or anything. I'm just taking control of the situation and saying, I'm going to go buy that computer monitor. I don't care about my level of stress. I don't care what I, what I feel about it. I feel like it'll make me feel better to go take control of it by just making a decision and making them quick and impulsively. Um, and, and this absolutely affects me now at this point, especially with, with something like the house. Um, even though we do do a ton of work to budget and know where we are and know what we can and can't afford, especially when it comes to the house, when things suddenly become thousands just to do anything, you know what I mean?

20:07Like anything house related is at least a grand. That's just kind of how it goes sort of. Um, and when things cost that much, they definitely become more difficult to budget for and more difficult to feel certain that you can afford. Even if the numbers all work out, it's sort of difficult to convince yourself. Yes, I guarantee I'm okay to do this. Let's go. It's difficult to get to that point. And so one of my, another one of my knee jerk reactions is, okay, I feel, you know, 80, 85 % confident. I'm struggling to get to the last 15%. And instead of sort of looking inward and figuring out what I can do to reach that last 15%, it's easier for me to say, screw it.

20:46Let's just go do it. Boom. Now I've taken control of it. I've gotten the stress out of the situation. Now I'm good. But guess what? Now I'm stressed after the fact about whether I should have done that and whether I could actually afford it because I never fixed that last 15%. I just made a decision and that just doesn't fix anything. And then now, you know, you make two or three of those decisions down the road and now you have two or three of those 15 % pieces of stress that are adding up and it just gets more and more stressful over time instead of completely understanding everything. Then the last thing I'll say that thankfully doesn't apply quite as much to me, but I know it affects a lot of other people's decision making is, is overreaction to financial moves, especially external financial moves.

21:28So if we talk about stuff like the market dropping or interest rates shifting or other political related issues, it makes you want to instantly either jump on an opportunity or jump the heck off of something like a falling knife or jump off of something that you know is falling, like a stinking ship or whatever. It's easy to see something heading in a good or bad direction and feel like you instantly need to be on that or else you've missed something or you've screwed up or made a bad decision. When the better thing to do would be, would have a good grasp of everything. And if you feel like you don't have a good grasp of everything, then it is completely okay to not instantly react and not feel like you need to instantly make a decision because there are essentially infinite opportunities and infinite bad situations to jump off of that will happen in your lifetime.

22:17And if this one or this two or whatever it is, is something that you couldn't reach a confident decision on in time to get onto it, that is okay. Just learn from it and be more ready for the next one. At least that's how I view it, and that's what's kind of helped me avoid overreacting to that kind of stuff. But what with this kind of resonates with you, Andrew, or any others that you think of?

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24:24Evan:Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com slash beginners for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash beginners. What's the best way to get started in the market? Download my ebook for free at stockmarketpdf.com. that last one if you talked about impulse as a therapy I think the stock market as a therapy for me I've always looked at value spotlight it's like this is other people's money so I'm going to take it very seriously and separate the emotions from that but my own personal finances I'm much more willing to yellow and it's funny that we're doing this episode now because me and Steven were just talking about it very recently in the episode we did, how I YOLO'd into Rivian.

25:17Evan:And that was one of my overreactions of feeling like I was losing control of my finances, feeling like I had to make a big move because my finances had fallen behind or taken a turn. It's not always up and to the right. and so I think that oh, YOLOing into Rivian or YOLOing into a crypto will carry me out of this situation and they haven't and so when those didn't work out, it just makes me spiral and it makes everything worse so I can definitely relate with financial stress and just kind of looking at what you were sharing it's like you're almost like impulsively solving for the emotion in that moment but not addressing what gave you that emotion in the first place.

26:16Evan:Or maybe you are addressing it and just not finding success in addressing it or something. I don't know. No, I think that's absolutely accurate. It's a lot harder in the moment, like if we kind of use that Rivian situation as an example it's it's a lot harder to convince yourself that not jumping on something like rivian at that moment is going to be okay because you feel like if you don't make an action this very moment then then you're going to continue falling behind um when in reality that making no decision would be okay and absolutely be better than making um making a knee-jerk decision that isn't based on as much as it normally would be you know what i mean um like for me i'd love i love love love it's kind of a personality trait of mine probably too much to do a ton of research into buying things but stress makes me want to skip all that you know if i don't feel like i can afford the thing i'm looking into or or trying to understand the best options for what options i have and everything if that's stressful for me because i don't even know what i can afford or if I'll be able to afford it, then it's a lot easier to skip all that research because it's just going to keep reminding me of that stress level.

27:29It's a lot easier to skip that research and just go make a decision. And then now not only am I stressed about having, whether I could have afforded it or not, but I'm also stressed because I don't know whether I made the right decision or not. Cause I didn't go kind of through the process that I normally go through. We kind of just, we don't become ourselves when we let stress control our decisions. whereas if I again figured out what that 15 % was, why it was stressing me out so much and resolved it as much as possible then I could take a week, do a ton of research into stuff and it would be enjoyable because I would know I can afford this, I'll be okay, let's figure out what the best thing is to do, bang I buy it, now there's no stress about the purchase and there's no stress about which purchase I made it's just a much better place to end up but it's a lot harder in the moment

28:20Evan:do you remember and maybe you don't and that's okay but in a decision that you made where you were just too stressed out that you just made it impulsively do you remember what event kind of led you kind of led up to that because like what was what was an event that was higher in the spiral that might have given more stress that contributed to not doing your normal process that is that's a very good question um i would say that that there's a there's a couple things number one is if we kind of go back to like i was talking about with uh recently after i graduated so i don't really know where i'm at whatsoever it was it was even higher up in the spiral was definitely even the decisions of like in this case i moved to take this job and it was even up in the decisions of okay well i moved you know i uprooted a bunch of stuff i don't know where the heck i am um and and now i'm you know paying for my own apartment that's that's a nice apartment and we're in a completely different area and we're having to you know pay for things that i never thought of paying for which i know sounds stupid and silly but it's just you don't really think through everything um and so even just the stress of okay we moved oh we're in this new apartment and this is what it costs and x x other decisions, even those can make it more stressful just to decide, okay, can I buy a switch?

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29:47It all spirals downward and leads to each other. Not to mention that there's also non-financial stresses that can make making a financial decision stressful as well. So for example, starting a new job, again, being in a new area, working with new people, working in an industry that I've only ever read textbooks about at that point, all of that is a ton of ton of uncertainty and stress that doesn't make it fun to sit down and you know budget out a switch purchase or something it it just doesn't make that a fun process instead all i feel all day quote unquote is a ton of stress around everything in my life at that point i'd rather just take control of the switch decision go and go buy one without thinking about it um so i think that's also a good example of how how any stress in your life financial or not can can significantly affect your financial decisions as well.

30:41It's a lot of change.

30:43Evan:Yeah. There's a lot of change all at once. Mm-hmm. And I can relate with that too, having my own episode after moving across the country. It's... Mm-hmm. These kinds of things can affect you more than you think, especially if it's a lot all at once. Yeah. Yeah, and I know I'm kind of using like the switch and computer monitor as sort of... ineffectual examples. I don't even know if I use that word right in that case, but decisions that don't have that far reaching of effects. But back then it was also stuff like not wanting to budget, not wanting to save, not wanting to invest anything. Because again, I'm going through so much stress with other stuff.

31:23Why the heck would I be able to pile on more stress with one of those decisions that, you know, at the time to me just feels like gambling and throwing money away or whatever, or betting on stuff. Why would I want to take on any more stress with that when or doing something like a budget which i know is going to be stressful because it's always stressful to start a budget from scratch um why would i want to go through that kind of stuff if i'm already feeling stress everywhere else in my life so so i would also kind of i would add to that that uh that if you're struggling with financial related stress i guarantee you there are other stressors in your life as well non-financial related that it would help a ton to resolve and obviously i'm just going to say resolve because i don't you know everybody's personal stresses are very very different and and widely varying and i don't know what you're going through specifically but uh but i would say it's important to resolve that before you're going to be able to fully resolve your financial stresses i think that's very well said yeah yeah um so to kind of move on from that also uh but it also relates to when i graduated college and I, you know, earned a good paying job and everything like that is that more money helps, but it does not fix financial stress either.

32:40Um, I also want to be very clear that it is definitely easier to get by with more money than less. I'm not going to sit here and say, if you double your income, your life is going to be worse. I mean, it might be for unrelated reasons, but I'm very confident that a lot of things would be easier for you, but it's definitely not going to get rid of your financial stress. Like it's easy to assume. We always, the grass is always greener. There's always another rung on the ladder above you. It's easy to say, if I just earned 10 grand more, suddenly I could afford everything and boom, life would be peaches and roses.

33:07But it's not that easy and that's not how it works. Not to mention that definitely some personality traits or bad habits or things that you struggle with, such as impulsive spending or lifestyle inflation, those just pile up the more money that you make. Those don't get any better. those don't get any easier you just rack up the numbers that you make the same number of decisions and the same kind of decisions but the dollar value of those decisions don't change unless you have stuff structures in place to understand where you're at where you should be at where you want to be at and you're working towards that if you're not then you're just going to be you know 10 % of your paycheck goes to x every month now that 10 % is the higher dollar value and that's all that changed.

33:53Also for me, again, going back to me, um, earning more money after graduation since then with good habits, more money definitely makes things much, much more affordable. Again, going back to percentages, if you're spending 10 % of your paycheck on something and you double your pay, just making up something, if you double your pay, then maybe that same thing can be 5 % of your paycheck. And now life is much more affordable and much easier that part of your life at least. but if you don't realize that and you don't stop yourself from having lifestyle inflation then and you let that creep back up to 10 percent then now you're kind of back where you started and that's a very frustrating place to be um but for me with with good structures kind of a way to phrase is for me it turned things from how much do i it turned from how can i afford to buy this to how much can i save and that was definitely a powerful transition for me and i know that would be a very powerful transition for a lot of people out there that currently struggle to afford the things that they need to afford currently.

34:54In an ideal world, you earn some more money to the point that you can afford the things you need to afford. You don't change the things that you need to afford in the first place. And now you can start to work through the process of how much to save. And again, that deciding how much to save has its own stressors. But I would say straight up that those stresses are likely to be at least lower than the stresses of how to afford stuff. So you're always going to have some kind of stressors there, but it can make their severity a lot, a lot, a lot lower. And this is also another reason that I don't agree with the concept of, I understand where they're coming from, but I don't agree with it's easier to earn 10 grand more than to save 10 grand more.

35:35While that is definitely true and I get where they're coming from, I think that it implies that if you go earn 10 grand more, that that's going to fix a bunch of stuff inherently. But I think that it's really what you do with that 10 grand that matters. If that 10 grand just turns into savings and turns into making your life easier and making your future life easier, then I completely agree with it. But if that 10 grand turns into, now I have a free 10 grand, I can spend however the heck I want because I managed to earn 10 grand more, then that is just going to keep digging the same hole that you're already digging.

36:08Not to mention also in episode 47, we covered it a lot more as well, but more money can come with other downsides, other stressors in your life that again, will affect your financial decisions. I guarantee you and affect your financial stress. I guarantee you. So just a straight equation of earning more money makes life easier is not true. And sometimes it can be, depending on the opportunity, earning a little bit more money is actually going to make life harder or more stressful for you. and cause you to make worse financial decisions. So you have to look at that more money very holistically.

36:48You have to look at the other life-related stresses that might come with it, and you have to look at what you're going to do with that money and know what you're going to do with that money before it's really going to be able to lower stress levels for you. But Andrew, what has been your experience with income fluctuations, earning more, earning less? What has its effect been on your stress levels?

37:11Evan:The entrepreneurial life, and this sounds so obvious to say out loud, but until you live it, sometimes you don't really understand just how true it is. The entrepreneurial life can have huge income fluctuations. And when the income is really high, it's very easy to make those expenses go higher. and even if you feel like, like for me, I never feel like I'm a materialistic person. So I find something that can be, look altruistic or something or look more honorable of a spend, if that even makes sense. You know, like a really nice wedding for my wife, right? Like these kinds of things still make me think I'm being a responsible person.

37:59Evan:But when you have those fluctuations as an entrepreneur, I wonder now with hindsight if I could have done better financial planning and built up some reserves because the fact of the matter is entrepreneurship is fluctuating. And so if you can build up reserves when income's higher, you might have an easier time when income dips. So that's just been kind of my experience around this. I guess it's so easy to trick myself into thinking yeah, if my income goes higher I'm a pretty conservative person I won't increase my expenses but I guess I'm not as good as I thought so if you struggle with that, it's okay I think it's part of our that's just what we do, right?

38:49Evan:You get more income and you figure out ways to spend it and like you said, it's not as easy as it sounds to just say, you know, I'm going to make this much more and I'm going to save this much more. It is not that easy. Yeah. I think there, there has to be structures that you put in place outside of yourself, whether that's, you know, built into something like a brokerage account or a savings account. You know, we'll talk about automation and how that can, that can alleviate a lot of this. Um, or if you have some kind of accountability with someone else, I'm not saying to give your savings account, you know, routing number to somebody else, but I'm saying, you know if you have some accountability that you have to discuss this kind of stuff with somebody else then they from a third person perspective it can be a lot easier for them to be like hold on is this you know just just previously you told me this and now you're telling me this and there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance here and it can be a lot easier to a third party than it is to you because it's easier you can convince yourself of anything basically and but it's a lot harder to convince somebody else of that same thought process.

39:53So that's definitely something that's been helpful for me is having other people be a part of that.

40:00Evan:So for somebody who's maybe single or something and would not involve a partner, do you think that's where a financial advisor could be a bigger value add? Yeah, I think a financial, I think there's definitely, there's a couple routes you could go with this. The first option is definitely a financial advisor can be a fantastic, fantastic option, especially if you know you've struggled with financial stress in the past or are currently struggling with it or making educated financial decisions. Just having a financial advisor, they don't have to manage your investments or make investment decisions for you or manage your savings.

40:34They don't have to manage anything for you necessarily, but just having somebody that you filter these kinds of decisions through, you present your thought process or you present what you're struggling with, they can be extremely helpful with that. Another avenue for that that comes to mind is even just therapy in general. Again, emotional stress, life-related stress has a massive effect on your financial decisions. And if you're struggling with one, you're likely struggling with the other. So it's completely okay and a fantastic idea to work with the therapist or work with a mental health professional to help solidify other aspects of your life.

41:11And they'll probably even help you solidify some of the financial related stress. And that's all gonna, you're gonna be able to use the same kind of tools that you help yourself in the rest of your life. And you're gonna be able to use those same tools related to your finances. And it's just gonna kind of help everything as a whole. And then the last idea here, which is probably the least structured of the three, but also just being transparent with somebody you know. It could be a family member. It could be a friend. And it definitely needs to be somebody that you trust and isn't going to judge you for struggles that you're going through.

41:42They just need to be there to just straight up support you with no questions outside of that. But if you have somebody like that in your life, then just being transparent about stuff can be very helpful. Again, just saying stuff out loud, saying thought process out loud, potential decisions you're looking at making out loud can make potential potholes in that decision-making process a lot more obvious than if you were to just pave over them in your mind and ignore it. So anybody you can kind of speak these decisions to out loud, I think is very, very helpful.

42:16Evan:yeah and I've heard mental health professionals say that one of the best things you can do for your mental health especially if you're struggling is to reach out and lean on those people who you trust and because people won't always know if you're going through something so you kind of have to take that initiative and that can be one of the best ways to to help pull yourself and just make efforts to, to help your, whatever state you're in. But that is one thing that you can do as a, as a strategy to, to try to help with the stress, help with whatever you're going through is, is to reach out to people you trust.

43:00Yeah. And I can, I can say for 100 % certainty for myself that I'm extremely, extremely, extremely thankful to have such an amazing wife. And I have, you know, worked with innumerable or worked through innumerable things with her. And I would not be in the same situation or making the same kinds of moves or decisions or progress or any of that without her and without her help and guidance the whole way. Having somebody that you trust, again, whether, whether they can help you make the right decision or whether they can literally just be somebody that you're telling your potential decision to. Sometimes you say it to them and you're like, I don't even need you to respond.

43:35I can hear myself. Nevermind. Just being transparent about stuff is a massive help. But this is also a point that I think could be very interesting and helpful to hear from you, the listener. Feel free to comment below or email us. What has been your experience with working through these kinds of stresses? And specifically, how have you helped those kinds of stresses? Who have you worked with that's helped you? Or also, what has been your experience because you know we all tend to in general especially or especially if you're not an entrepreneur tend to kind of trend upwards in terms of income has life gotten easier for you over time as you've earned more income or has stuff just become more complicated or have the same struggles just stuck around the whole time but we're kind of touching on relationships there we also want to touch on financial stress in relationships again we mentioned it before and I think a lot of people know it, but it is the number one reason for relationship conflict in general, breaking up, divorces, whatever you want to call it, relational issues in general.

44:38Financial stress is the highest cause of all that. The first place that I think that it causes issues is just financial misalignment. Goals, the means to reach those goals, your financial whys, we talk about a lot, why do you want to earn more money, why do you want to have more money, blah, blah, blah, and willing sacrifices to achieve those goals. If you're not aligned, you don't have to be perfectly 100 % aligned, but if you're not aligned in general with your partner on all of those aspects of your financial life, then every single financial related decision is going to be a struggle. It's going to be a fight.

45:16It's going to be an argument. It's going to be stressful for at least one of you. Even if it's not stressful for both of you, it'll be stressful for one of you to go through that. And it's very important to be aligned as much as you can financially ahead of time. before you go make decisions, before you make huge financial moves together, it's very, very important to be very open and honest about where you want to head and try to be as aligned as possible. Again, you'll never be a hundred percent. One person is always going to have to sacrifice a little bit here and there for, you know, the betterment of the relationship as a whole.

45:51But if you don't take time to align ahead of time, then you're just going to have more issues down the road. And then that feeds into the other point related to financial stress, which is just lack of communication. A lot of times, you know, going through financial struggles as a couple is okay, but going through one person going through financial struggles when the other person thinks everything is okay is never going to turn out all right. The person who thinks everything is okay is not going to understand why everything isn't okay for the couple as a whole. And the person who knows everything isn't okay or knows that they're not okay is going to want more support from the other person.

46:28But if nobody communicates back and forth where you're at, then nobody's going to get what they need from the situation. And for me, a personal situation for me was, and I've mentioned it in the past, I think a couple of times, but it was a situation again, as always, a lot of financial turmoil soon after graduating college. But it was related to moving away for this job after college. And we were discussing the apartment that we were going to move into. And I just had the initial blanket assumption of, of course, we're going to split rent. There's going to be two of us living there. Boom, we're going to split rent.

47:00Easy peasy. That's just a default for me. No questions asked, never even a thought whatsoever. And there was a point where we discussed it a couple of times or just, I'd mentioned it a couple of times where Jen got up the nerve to say, Hey, I don't think that we should split the rent. I don't think I can split the rent i'd like to discuss this going forwards and basically the second she brought it up it was it was it was a mental shift for me of realizing that just because splitting the rent was a default for me doesn't mean that that was feasible to her or fair to her or okay to her in general and if she hadn't communicated that then again we would have been living in this apartment i would have been happy with it and able to afford it and she would have been struggling more and saying and then wishing that she communicated that and that would absolutely lead to have led to conflicts and issues in our relationship and it all goes back to because i didn't communicate that decision and think through it i just took it as a default or it would have been partially because she hadn't brought it up and communicated her the stresses it was giving her up front but the fact that she did communicate that and bring it up and the fact that i was open to understanding what she was saying and shifting my mindset led to just turning it into a much more a much more feasible situation for us that didn't cause us any financial stress going forwards i've been paying a lot more attention how my body actually performs and recovers lately especially since i've been having a huge focus on building muscles in the gym not just for the aesthetics of it but for the long-term mobility benefits of it what surprised me is how much of what you feel during training actually starts in your blood.

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49:37Evan:As business owners, I think we all understand that we're spending too much time managing the small stuff with our business's finances because there's multiple bank accounts, multiple apps, a place to do your bookkeeping, a place to do invoices, transfers to keep track of debt payments. It goes on and on and on. But imagine you could have all of your biggest hassles with accounting and finances in one place. And that's what Found offers. It's a business checking account with built-in bookkeeping and tax software designed for small business owners like you and I. Found empowers us to keep things organized and unlock time to strengthen our company's competitive advantages, which as we all know on this show is the best way to build a thriving business.

50:14Evan:One of the things that is really critical in this day and age with the power of the internet to work with so many different types of people in so many different places is the ability to make contractor payments easy and trackable without all the ridiculous fees. Found has that too. Take back control of your business today. Open a Found account for free at found.com. That's F-O-U-N-D dot com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Lead Bank, member FDIC. Join the hundreds of thousands who've already streamlined their finances with Found. It's cool that she had the courage to bring that up because that's not an easy conversation, I'm sure.

50:50Evan:And then you were also actually listening to what she was saying and not just shutting it down right away. and obviously that doing those hard things at the beginning made things easier at the end yeah yeah it pretty much all these kinds of decisions are difficult in the moment but so much easier down the road it just makes the rest of your life or the rest of living with that decision so much easier even if that up front moment is is a lot more difficult do you guys have anything in any tactics that you do to help that communication happen? Do you do anything intentionally to foster that kind of communication?

51:34Evan:Or do you guys just kind of really are pretty good at bringing stuff up when you need to? I would honestly say that as with a lot of this other stuff, it stems from how you handle the rest of your life. So when it comes to your personal financial stress, it stems a lot from how you handle stress in the rest of your life or decisions in the rest of your life, not finance related. And for us in our relationship, I don't think we've taken any specific steps to be open to discussing finances. We take specific steps like discussing a budget or where we're at financially and stuff. but how we got to the point of being open to discuss that kind of stuff i think just comes from work that we've put in in the rest of our relationship to be to be willing to be emotionally vulnerable to each other and not judgmental to each other and take a moment to like like i mentioned before take a moment to listen to what the other person is saying and what they need instead of letting and this is definitely something that i've struggled with myself not letting myself given to the immediate initial reaction again as always a knee-jerk reaction to hold on but it's two of us that's not fair screw you boom moving on now now i've kind of set that that that wall up and now it's not going to get fixed if you just take a second to try to reframe it from their point of view like most of the time the another person especially in a relationship isn't trying to be hurtful they're not they don't have malice they're not trying to hurt you they are seeing things from their point of view and and maybe there's something that they're missing in their point of view but maybe there's something you're missing in your point of view that's causing you guys to see each other as combative and see each other as hurting each other when in reality there's just one or two things that aren't being communicated or aren't clear or you're not aware of that or you're not thinking of that that are causing you to see this situation as a problem instead of, oh, I'm realizing something that I didn't realize before.

53:38And going through that work with the rest of our relationship has definitely allowed finances to be just another aspect of we can communicate it and be open and honest. And if the other person says something that I initially disagree with, just taking a moment to look at it from their point of view helps you understand that they're just trying to communicate something and be clear about something they're going through or don't want to go through as opposed to they're trying to change things for me or affect me when that's just not the case. No, that's awesome. Yeah. That's a really good way to do it.

54:10Yeah, I appreciate that. All right, so moving on to the last section here, which is the actionable step. So we want to discuss some ways that we have reduced financial stress and some ways that we think can help you out there as well. First off for me is, and it's probably the hardest of them, is just understanding your financial situation. understanding your financial situation is it's always going to be painful it's always going to be difficult um not because it takes a ton of time or a ton of work to get done necessarily um depending on your on your financial situation your personal financial situation but because it's just never fun to look under the hood and see what exactly is actually going on so it's it's definitely going to be like ripping a band-aid off at first it's going to hurt but in the future it's going to help a ton, a ton, a ton going forwards.

55:03Um, so stuff like a budget, that's always the first, first, best, most powerful, most highly leveraged step that you can take is just setting up a budget. As we mentioned before, we have a free, easy to use a budgeting spreadsheet available online at einvestingforbeginners.com slash budget. And that's the exact same spreadsheet that I use all the time, um, to track my wants, needs, and savings. And that can help kind of break things down for you. And I would say sitting down with that spreadsheet or a pen and paper or an abacus, I don't care what the heck you want to use, sit down with something that's going to help you work through your finances and being honest with yourself about where money is going will be very helpful.

55:44You don't need to worry yet about where you want it to go. I think that simply having visibility to where your current financial situation is at is going to make a lot of things very obvious for you. And again, it might make things a little bit more stressful up front because you might think, oh crap, I didn't realize that much of my income was going towards X. But having visibility to that will allow you to potentially reduce it in the future or reduce other things to help aid in paying for that XYZ that you really need. You can help scale down some of your wants to afford some of your needs and it won't be fun.

56:18It won't be easy. But again, a year from now, you're going to be okay financially with much less financial stress instead of a year from now thinking, oh, I can just keep going and spending on X and piling up credit card debt or struggling with things and realizing or struggling with things. Another step, a very, very powerful step as always is an emergency fund. I would say that it's as much an emotional tool as it is a financial one. An emergency fund is just some money that you have set away that is only intended to be spent in emergencies. What this allows you to do is be a lot less stressed about financial decisions about financial moves it could even be a physical move or something like that or or a job layoff or a job shift or taking a pay cut or some any any leap that you take in your life whether on purpose or not on purpose is going to be made a lot easier emotionally and financially but especially emotionally if you know that you have some kind of net to fall back on that means that no matter how bad things go for you you will always have a net to sustain you for a while instead of taking a leap and knowing there's no net below you.

57:23If you screw this up, then you're going to be in a world of hurt. An emergency fund is a padding that can change that a ton. And we have a whole episode dedicated to emergency funds, the best actions, the best actions behind them and the best things to do with them and the best ways to manage them. That's episode six. So you can just look up AAR06 on your podcast platform and you'll be able to find that and dive in. And then the last thing that I want to mention here has been probably the single biggest shift for me personally, which has been automation. And I know I love using the word automation because I think it's applicable, but I know it makes it sound a lot more difficult than what I'm talking about.

57:57All I mean by automation is things like auto bill pay, things like going into your brokerage and setting up automatic investments on a regular basis, or setting up your paycheck to set a certain amount of your paycheck to go into a high-eld savings account. Those kinds of automations are massive, massive actions. bills you're not going to have to remember to take action on money gets moved where it needs to be and where you want it to be with again zero willpower and zero actions taken ongoing you're just relying on your upfront decisions and the best thing about that is that everything can be based on a budget you can sit down when you know potentially you're you're in a less stressed state at that moment and you can make good educated decisions on your finances and as long as you have the upfront decision to say, you know what, I can afford and I want to save 300 bucks a month.

58:49And you set up that automation. Now it's going to be really annoying for you after the fact to go change that or go reduce that. And so more than likely you're going to save 300 bucks a month going forwards indefinitely. And that is the kind of situation you want to be in. I would say that that is infinitely more likely to happen than if you said, I can afford to save 300 bucks a month. Every single month on the first of the month, I'm going to go into my high yield savings account and I'm going to transfer over 300 bucks. That might happen three months out of the year or something like that, maybe.

59:17That is just not sustainable. But if you literally took one minute more, a minute and a half more to just go into that high old savings account and say, hey, every month on the first, transfer over 300 bucks. That will continually happen unless you go in and edit it. And that's a fantastic financial tool to not only build long-term wealth and help yourself financially in the long term, but you're just not going to have to be stressed about all these decisions. For me, decision fatigue at this point mostly comes from purchasing decisions that can't be automated, you know, unless I want to buy a new switch every single month, these kinds of financial decisions that I just can't automate.

59:56But what I have done with automation is taken away all the stress for all the other decisions that the mortgage gets paid on a regular basis. The, you know, homeowner association gets paid on a regular basis, uh, utilities, stuff like, um, Where I'm saving my Roth IRA deposits, 401k, all of that stuff is all done in the background without me taking any ongoing action. And that means that I don't feel stressed about any of those decisions because I just don't think about them a ton because they were all already set up based on my budget and I know I can afford it. And boom, no questions asked. That has been a massive, massive shift for me.

1:00:30But what kind of actions have you taken to reduce your financial stress, Andrew?

1:00:35Evan:All of those. I think all of those help. The budgeting thing, I just wanted to say, I noticed when things feel most uncertain is when I'm doing the budget less. And when things are rocking and rolling, that's when I'm doing the budget more. And that's okay. As long as you're kind of coming back to the budget, right? As long as, even if things slip, you come back to the budget, you re-steer things. And that definitely helps way more than never budgeting. Yeah, for me, it's not the same tool, of course. but for me, I like to track my net worth over time just to track progress, kind of see where I'm at, whatever.

1:01:12Overall, it can be motivating. When we bought the house, and of course, a ton of costs were sunk into closing costs and blah, blah, blah. So there was no way that I was going to come out even from that or whatever. I didn't log it for like four or five months after we bought the house just because the stress of like, I don't want to see that number go downwards, maybe not do it. But now after the fact, I'm like, I really wish I'd freaking done it because at At least, you know, looking back on it in five years, I would have seen that, seen what kind of an effect it had on me and been motivated by the progress even since then.

1:01:42But instead, I just let the short-term stress cause me to not do anything about it. And then now I regret it after the fact.

1:01:50Evan:Yeah, I mean, that's just part of the game. So if you're like guilting yourself for not doing that, it's okay. You can get back to it. And that's the most important thing. putting away for retirement or emergency fund when you have the excess money and automation too. Super huge. I always say if I did one thing right, to quote Cain Brown with my finances, it's automating$150 a month, regardless of where the income's super high or super low, just as a baseline, that has been a great game changer. And then I want to double click on what you said about sometimes a financial stress is not financial, but there's something deeper going on.

1:02:36Evan:I would just highly recommend trying to work on your mental health and just to kind of wrap it all up, work on your mental health. I've had my struggles. I shared them on my buddy Chris Granger's podcast as a born-again Christian and how I've tried to deal with my things. And we all have personal struggles and things where I don't think making investments in mental health will ever be a bad investment. I think doing what you can, connecting with people around you, not fighting alone, those are all things that will be value additive to your life. And so I personally recommend trying to go after those things.

1:03:21Heck yeah, 100%. Any community you have around you, whatever community that you have access to or you are a part of or you trust the most, reach out to them. I guarantee you that people will surprise you a lot when you're totally transparent with them. I mean, if you walk up to them and you're like, dude, I'm really freaking sad right now. I do not feel good for XYZ. I guarantee you they're not going to laugh at you. They're not going to judge you. They're just going to be like, why, what's going on? Let's talk about it. That's a very powerful shift to just be transparent with people. And it's not easy.

1:03:52No, no. It's very, very difficult. Again, ripping the bandaid off as always. but but it's always always worthwhile

1:04:01Evan:would is that like kind of the theme for this episode is like rip the band-aid off just left and right ripping band-aids off i don't care if it's a hairy leg and it's gonna hurt like sin just rip the band-aid off yeah i agree beautiful all right well i really hope that this uh helps some people out there um again this is this is one of the most difficult things to struggle with and realistically it's going to be never-ending struggle to some degree but the whole goal here is to just reduce it as much as possible or where you can so that it's a lot easier to manage you know what might potentially be left at the end of it but as i said before we'd be extremely interested and honored to hear from from what you may have gone through what may have helped you and again feel free to comment below or email at evan at einvestingforbeginners.com and let us know what you've gone through and what's helped you but as always remember financial Freedom is built one smart move at a time.

1:04:55Keep it simple, keep it steady. And at any rate, I'll see you next time. Peace. The information contained is for general information and educational purposes only. It is not intended for a substitute for legal, commercial, and or financial advice from a licensed professional. Review our full disclaimer at einvestingforbeginners.com.

1:05:25Evan:Morning Brew's daily newsletter breaks down the biggest news in business for millions of people every day. And now we're moving from your inbox to your headphones. Each day we'll cover everything from the latest Apple event to why nobody can afford a house right now. And some people are saying it's the best part of their morning. Because we know something you don't. Business news doesn't have to be boring. So check out Morning Brew Daily wherever you get your podcasts. And on YouTube.

From the publisher

Money stress isn’t just about dollars—it’s about what money does to your brain. In this episode, Evan and Andrew dig into the real link between mental health and finances: decision fatigue, avoidance, impulsive “therapy spending,” and the spiral where stress creates bad decisions… which creates more stress.

Then we get practical. If you’re stuck in that loop, the goal isn’t perfection—it’s reducing the pressure so you can make clear decisions again. We walk through the “rip the band-aid off” steps that actually help: getting visibility with a budget, building an emergency fund as an emotional safety net, and using automation to remove willpower from the equation.

What You Will Learn

Why financial stress becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop

How uncertainty + decision fatigue makes even small purchases exhausting

The 3 common stress responses: avoidance, impulsive spending, overreaction

Why more income helps but doesn’t automatically fix money anxiety

The practical “band-aid rip” plan: budget, emergency fund, automation

Timestamps

00:00 – Why this isn’t a “therapy episode,” it’s actionable

06:00 – Decision fatigue: when every purchase becomes stressful

09:00 – The feedback loop: stress → worse decisions → more stress

15:00 – Avoidance vs impulsive “therapy spending” vs overreacting

28:00 – More money helps… but doesn’t fix the root problem

35:00 – Accountability: advisor, therapy, or a trusted person

40:00 – Relationships: misalignment & lack of communication

47:30 – Action steps: budget visibility, emergency fund, automation

Resources Mentioned

The Value Spotlight Newsletter: https://einvestingforbeginners.com/value-spotlight-newsletter/

Free monthly budgeting spreadsheet: https://einvestingforbeginners.com/budget/

Email Evan: evan@einvestingforbeginners.com

Have questions or want your story featured? Email the show at newsletter@einvestingforbeginners.com or comment below. Your feedback shapes the podcast!

Remember, financial freedom is built one smart move at a time. Keep it simple, keep it steady, and at any rate, we’ll see you next time.

Timestamps are generated by artificial intelligence, and are not 100% accurate depending on the platform used for listening.

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