Confessions of an Oversaver
Financial paranoia seems like a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem
Financial paranoia seems like a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem
Content warning: Very brief mention of disordered eating and sexual and domestic violence.
In about a month and a half, my partner and I are moving to a new apartment. The new apartment meets all my requirements: rent is less than 33 percent of my monthly income, it’s in the right location, it has the amenities we need, it looks nice. For the neighborhood, it’s a better-than-average deal.
But it’s $300 more per month than our current rent. And I’m panicking.
I know I can make it work. I know how much money I squirrel away each month. I know that in addition to my full-time job, I supplement my income with consulting and Medium revenue, I know that I’ve told my partner he needs to contribute to household finances far more significantly than he has in the past. But I’m panicking.
I know we need to move out of the tiny disintegrating apartment we’ve been living in for two years. I can admit at this point that we never should have moved there in the first place; it was always too crumbling, too small. I know a new apartment will give me the space to work from home in peace and allow us to actually have guests over for dinner. But I’m panicking.
Every time I spend money, even on essential things, I’m nearly waylaid by a swirling twister of guilt, dread, and self-doubt, and my mind projects me into a dystopian future where all my possessions have burned to the ground, I’m long-unemployed and sick, and every financial reserve I’ve carefully built has been depleted. Whenever I part with a cent, I have to work to overcome these fears, and then find myself overcorrecting by cutting necessary spending on something else. My hang-ups about money are debilitating at times and cause me internal and interpersonal strife, as well as lost social and professional opportunities.
I’m an oversaver. While it might sound like a humblebrag of a problem, it really is a problem. And it has cost me more than you might think.
Psychological research has documented it over and over again: most people (in the U.S. and Western Europe, at least) fall prey to optimism bias. They think a task will take less time than it actually will. They assume positive events (such as winning the lottery) are more likely than they actually are, and they underestimate the risk of negative ones. They anticipate that their future selves will somehow be more productive, happier, more responsible, and more consistent than their present-day selves.
I’ve felt so boxed in by my own absurd, financially withholding rules that it has seemed like a functional life would be nearly impossible.
I am one of the few people I know who suffers all-encompassingly from pessimism bias. I think tasks will take three times longer than they actually do. I assume life is only going to get worse. I see my future self as less capable, and more doomed than I’ve ever actually been. To me, and to a lot of people with anxiety, the future is forever a force of loss and threat.
And so I save. I plan for contingencies. And it makes it incredibly difficult to live in the present.
Oversaving is a problem you might never have heard of. In our world, where wages have stagnated and costs have risen, it’s rare to find someone whose problem is having too much money. Of course, having too much money is not my actual problem. The problem is that I have a distorted relationship with money and spending—one that costs me a whole heck of a lot in the long run.
It costs a lot of money to be poor. Poor people are forever having to buy needed items, like groceries and household supplies, in small amounts, and thus can never reap the financial benefits of buying in bulk. Poor people may have to forgo doctor’s appointments, therapy, fitness classes, professional development opportunities, networking events, travel, and any other number of expenses, all of which can lead to an improved quality of life. Poor people have lower life expectancies, worse mental health, and are socially isolated and more vulnerable to crime and abuse because they lack the mobility, preventive measures, and social goods that wealthy and middle-class people enjoy.
I’m not poor. I’m obscenely fortunate. I got a Ph.D. in a field that can actually earn me money; graduate school allowed me to sit out the entire Great Recession. I began working at age 13, and I have never been unemployed. Nearly every single month of my working life, I have accrued a net savings. That savings has grown to a sizable nest egg that I could use as a large down payment on a house. If I had the actual courage to spend any of it.
The path to accruing that savings, however, has not been sunny or psychologically healthy. I have always worked multiple jobs, even when I’ve had full-time employment. I have avoided therapy, doctor’s appointments, annual flu vaccinations, travel, academic conferences, mundane social outings, fresh produce, and even exercise because my financially paranoid, pessimistically biased mind deemed it too costly. I’ve worn holes into my shoes, cut my own hair, taken trips on buses that make me physically ill, lived in an apartment with a shower that bubbled up with sewage, and languished with an untreated heart murmur and recurring fever for months, all because I couldn’t bring myself to cough up money I had.
I’ve saved a ton, in the short-term at least, by denying myself these things. But it has made my life smaller, sicker, sadder. It’s cost me a lot of chances at professional growth, social connection, and joy. At times, I’ve felt so boxed in by my own absurd, financially withholding rules that it has seemed like a functional life would be nearly impossible.
And while it may sound like an absurdly privileged problem to have, oversaving is not something unique to anxious university professors with cushy lives, like me. Some of society’s most marginalized workers oversave too.
Oversaving is an understudied phenomenon, but it appears to be most common among those who are financially vulnerable and who deal with a great deal of unpredictability in their income. Sex workers are often oversavers, for example, and so are service industry workers who rely on tips. Freelancers sometimes oversave for similar reasons. If you never know what the next month’s income will be, you may choose to live as if good times can never be counted on. And you wouldn’t be irrational for doing that.
However, people who work in these industries tend to rely on their health and mental well-being to be able to successfully continue in their jobs. Sex work can be socially, emotionally, and physically taxing, and it’s hard to do many types of sex work if you have a visible illness that’s not being treated. Similarly, service industry workers have to be warm and upbeat if they want to pull in good tips. Freelancers need to remain high-energy and persistent if they want to keep jobs coming in at a reasonable clip.
When taken to its extreme, oversaving can kill you.
All these lines of work become even more difficult if you are depressed, anxious, in pain, or nursing a cold that won’t go away. Oversaving can put someone at an increased risk of burnout or leave them too ill to work with the public. When taken to its extreme, oversaving can kill you, by keeping you from seeking medical care when telltale symptoms of a more serious condition first arise.
This phenomenon is serious. Even if some of its victims, like me, are far more insulated from the consequences than others.
Where did I develop my compulsion toward oversaving? One factor that seems salient is a vivid memory I have of being screamed at by my dad.
We’d just gone miniature golfing together, and he suggested afterward that we get ice cream at the Dairy Queen. He must have said, specifically, that we’d get an ice cream cone. Meaning he expected to pay about $1, maybe less in 1990 money. But I didn’t catch that detail. I just thought he was buying me an ice cream of some kind. So I ordered some silly, fruity, colorful drink, one that probably cost more like $4.
And he screamed at me. And ranted. And railed about it the entire drive home. And in the tidy little narrative crafted by my imperfect memory, that is the day when I started looking at the prices of things, the day when I started refusing myself things I wanted.
My dad was a verbally abusive, emotionally explosive person. He was also a child of poverty who grew up with very little money. He was cheap, but also financially irresponsible. He’d spend weeks trawling garage sales for a tool he needed, but he’d also impulsively throw cash at a truck or a gambling trip. He complained constantly about money, but also didn’t discuss the specifics of our family’s financial situation.
By the time I was a teenager, I’d internalized the idea that money was a confusing, terrifying thing, that it needed to be hoarded without end and never considered intelligently. I took up a part-time job as soon as I could, mowing lawns with my dad. I was about 13, and mowing lawns was also his side hustle, a thing he did for spare cash during the day after working the third shift in a warehouse. The money was decent, it was paid under the table, and it was illegal for me to be handling all that industrial landscaping equipment. When I was 16, I got a job in retail. I toiled and I saved and I saved. I skipped hangouts with friends. Once, I even shoplifted a blazer to wear for debate team matches because I thought it was more sensible to do that than pay for it.
Somehow, from all of that, I had $7,000 in savings by the time I left for college. I was proud of what I’d accomplished, I guess, but I already felt it would never be enough.
The rest of my life, up to this point, has been guided by a similarly vague impulse to gather as much money as possible and save it in an unfocused, uneducated way. I’ve always been on the lookout for side hustles, always supplemented my income with part-time work, and scrimped and scammed my way along.
In some ways, this compulsion has served me really well. I’ve always been able to make rent. I paid my student loans off a few years ago. If one of the horrible events I worry about actually happened, I’d have the liquid assets to deal with it.
It turns out that sometimes you do have to part with money in order to live. I’m starting to get the hang of it.
But also. I spent nine months in 2014 refusing to go to the doctor, even though I was getting debilitating chills and a 103-degree fever every night. I avoided getting an IUD for years, even though I knew my birth control was making me depressed. I coped with hopelessness and the aftermath of sexual trauma and domestic violence for years without the aid of a therapist. I didn’t donate to as many causes as I could have. I didn’t buy loved ones enough gifts or rounds at the bar. I missed a lot of invitations to shows and parties unnecessarily. I ate food that was undernourishing because it was cheap. I gave myself anemia.
Did I mention I’ve suffered from disordered eating? Yeah. My bent toward self-denial took me there too.
How does someone overcome compulsive oversaving? In my case, finally starting therapy was incredibly helpful. Every week, I have to talk to someone about my anxieties and then fork over my debit card to pay for the support. And my life has gotten a lot better since I started going. I’m better able to draw boundaries now. I can identify and communicate my feelings. I have fewer late-night crying jags. It turns out that sometimes you do have to part with money in order to live. I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Oversavers have to find a way to be more optimistic and trusting, despite all the internal (and systemic) pressure to the contrary. We have to risk some spare change on things that will make our bodies and minds feel good. At first, every “unnecessary” expense causes pain and terror, whether it’s a flu shot or a new pair of shoes. But every time we tolerate the pain, endure the expense, and find that the world hasn’t ended, we get a little bit better at treating ourselves. And eventually, with some practice and work, we can come to believe that we are worthy of eating healthy food, going to the doctor, and going out to dinner with friends once in a while.
And so I’m renting that bigger, pricier apartment. My partner and I will finally have enough closets for all our stuff. We’ll have space for our pet chinchilla to frolic and play. And I’ll be able to open my home to people I care about, to fill my life with company, food, entertainment, joy.
Well, if I can bring myself buy a new kitchen table to gather around, that is.