Until very recently, aside from a small emergency fund, I’d never saved any cash. Instead, I carved out a certain portion of my income to put toward my long-term investments, made sure I paid off my student loan every month and spent the rest as I saw fit.
But a couple of months ago, my boyfriend and I got engaged. So we’ve begun setting aside money each month to put toward what promises to be a very well attended and very pricey wedding.
I’ll be honest — I’ve been feeling pretty crappy about it. Not the wedding — I couldn’t be more delighted to marry this man. Rather, I’ve had a lot of guilt and anxiety over how I made room in my budget for the wedding fund.
Up to now, I was contributing 18% of my salary, plus a 6% company match, directly into retirement and investment accounts. After talking with an advisor at my company’s benefits manager, I decided to reduce my contributions to 9%, with the 9 percentage point difference going toward the wedding.
So what’s the problem? For one thing, I’ve written enough stories about compounding interest to know that every dollar I put into my investments now is worth much, much more down the line. I feel like I’m stealing from my future self to pay for a DJ and flowers and crab cake sliders.
I know that given how much I’ve saved, I’m actually ahead of schedule retirement-wise. So why am I feeling anxious? To find out, I scheduled a call with Jasmine Ramirez, a financial therapist and founder of Honest Hour Therapy.
And as it turns out, feeling shame over competing money priorities is “quite common,” she says.
“One of the things to consider is there are different seasons for different things that you have going on in life,” she says. “That’s not to say that contributing for your future plans isn’t a priority. But there are other priorities that are happening right now.”
Advice from a financial therapist
What I learned is, in short, a wedding is a big deal. It’s something that’s important to myself, my fiancé and our families. Just because I happen to be in a “season” of my life when this is a financial priority doesn’t mean I should feel guilty for putting other goals on the back burner.
That guilt “usually comes from thinking there is something else we should be doing,” Ramirez says. “And wherever those messages are coming from may be worth a deeper dive.”
For me, it’s not hard to pinpoint. I make my living dispensing financial advice. Surely, I keep telling myself, I should be good enough with a budget to carve out room for one goal without decreasing my contributions to another.
But here’s the thing: I’m bad at it! My fiancé and I tried to sit down and create a zero-based budget a few months back and failed spectacularly. The reason I’ve always practiced so-called reverse budgeting — essentially, setting aside a certain amount for financial goals and spending the rest — is that trying to figure out my expenses makes me miserable.
But it’s OK if you realize a certain style of budgeting isn’t for you, Ramirez says — as long as you’re making some sort of plan.
“If reverse budgeting is the way to go, reverse budgeting is the way to go,” she says. “It’s really not about discipline. It’s really about finding a system that works for you long-term.”
Within my current system, however, I’d likely feel less anxiety were I more intentional about where my money goes, Ramirez says. To that end, she recommended I choose a few core values around which to base my spending.
I still have to sit down with my fiancé and figure out exactly what those are. But the point is, once I define my priorities, I can feel less guilty about spending in those categories. If connection with our friends is key, for instance, I don’t have to feel bad about a night out to dinner that got a little expensive.
What’s more, knowing where we want our money to go can give us a roadmap for cutting out expenses that are truly extraneous.
“A task that I like to encourage my clients to do is print out one month [of expenses] and go through it. Pick out your three values, go through your spending, and all of the ones that are within your values, circle them,” Ramirez says. “The ones that are left over, you can re-evaluate.”
I told her I would. And in the meantime, she told me, I should stop beating myself up about the way I’m working toward my goals.
“There’s a voice that’s telling you that you should be doing something else, and that’s often where we feel like it misaligns,” she says. “That’s where anxiety comes from. Too many competing priorities. You have to give yourself grace and do what works for you.”
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