Financial anxiety
Persistent worry, dread or tension about money, often with an urge to avoid thinking about it. It can be present when finances are poor and also when they are sound, which is what separates it from financial strain.
What drives it
Avoidance brings short relief from dread, and checking brings short relief from uncertainty, so both habits are kept. Useful for identification because the feeling often does not match the bank balance, and the mismatch tells you where to look.
How it shows
Work
Putting off the expense report, the pension form, the salary conversation. Freezing when asked for a budget figure, or rechecking the payroll date several times in one week.
Relationships
Leaving all money tasks to the partner, then feeling shut out. Tension whenever a holiday or a gift is mentioned, even when it is affordable. Repeated ‘are we okay?’ questions that the figures don’t settle.
Self
Notice whether opening the banking app brings a jolt before you see the number, whether good news about money gives relief that lasts minutes, and whether you tend to avoid or to overcheck.
What tells it apart
Financial strain: Strain follows a real shortfall. Anxiety may be present with savings in the bank, and the check is whether better numbers calm it.
Money vigilance: Money vigilance (Klontz) is a belief set: be careful, save, keep it private. Anxiety is the felt dread, and a vigilant person can be calm about money while an anxious one cannot.
Generalised anxiety: Generalised anxiety ranges over health, work, family and money in turn. Financial anxiety stays on money, and Shapiro and Burchell found it measurable apart from general anxiety.
A test
Ask how the person felt the last time their finances improved. If the worry returned within days with no new bad news, anxiety is more likely than strain.
Questions to carry
- Before they looked at the balance, what did the person expect to see, and how close was it?
- When my money is fine, what do I find to worry about instead?
How strong the research is
moderate. Shapiro and Burchell (2012) found that self-reported financial anxiety went with slower and more avoidant responses to money words on implicit tasks, and that it was separable from depression and general anxiety. Archuleta, Dale and Spann (2013) built a Financial Anxiety Scale with 180 students at a peer financial counselling centre, and the field is still young, with small samples and few studies outside students.
Where it comes from
Gilla Shapiro and Brendan Burchell, 2012 (Measuring financial anxiety). Archuleta, Dale and Spann, 2013 (Financial Anxiety Scale)