I’m in my late 30s, and my finances are a mess. Why can’t I fix it?

I’m a high-income earner in my late 30s. I have a good career, I’m well-educated, but I’m ashamed that I don’t have my financial life together and keep avoiding it. I’m able to get by because of my high income and generally reasonable spending, meaning I’m not in debt, and I save well. But my financial life is a mess: bills getting paid late, taxes piling up, no idea what’s happening with my super, and savings I know should be invested, but I can’t bring myself to look at. I didn’t grow up in financial struggle, or have any financial traumas I can think of. How do I get past this avoidance of my finances?

There are a few different things that could be going on. Let’s break down what might be some of the most likely culprits.

Going back to basics as an adult can make you feel silly, but it’s an important step in the process.Credit: Simon Letch

You’re not avoiding your finances. You’re avoiding being a beginner

You’ve put the hard work into becoming capable, confident, successful and respected in your career. Now, venturing into an area of your life where you feel all the pains of being a beginner again feels uncomfortable.

Let’s be honest – being a beginner sucks. It’s awkward, clumsy, you make silly mistakes, and you feel insecure about your progress compared to everyone else.

This can be confronting, especially if you haven’t felt those beginner pains in a while. It can feel like a threat to your identity as someone who is intelligent, competent, good at what they do – because this is an area of your life that feels like evidence to the contrary. It’s easier to avoid than deal with the cognitive dissonance that comes with facing it.

There’s a good chance you have expectations of yourself that exceed your current level of skill and ability.

When we talk about expanding your comfort zone, this is the actual discomfort we’re referring to. People think the discomfort is in the learning of new skills, but that bit isn’t nearly as uncomfortable as the hit to our self-identity.

We think we’re smart, capable, intelligent – until we try something totally new, and feel the utter awkwardness of being a beginner all over again.

The way past this is to accept your status as a beginner. This may feel confronting, but will free you up to enjoy being a beginner again. You’ll have more reasonable expectations of yourself. You’ll make progress the way a beginner does – slowly, clumsily, but surely, inevitably.

You’re seeing it as a task that needs to get done, not a skill to be practised

Your finances are more than just something to be ticked off your to-do list. From the outside, that’s what it might look like – a series of tasks that need to get done.

In reality, anything can be boiled down to a simple list of tasks, from brushing your teeth, to going to the gym, to studying for an exam, to cooking a meal. But if you think about what it takes to successfully execute those tasks – it’s more than just doing the task itself.

There are also a number of incidental habits and skills required. For example, with your finances, there are practical skills you’ll need to learn (like how to streamline your savings, how to invest, how taxes and super work).

But you might also need to start building other skills and habits – maybe creating a regular schedule around your money management, creating a system to organise your accounts and paperwork, feeling comfortable looking at your accounts, building the confidence to talk to professionals and so on.

In other words, there are lots of micro-skills and habits that go into being able to successfully manage your finances on an ongoing basis. This isn’t meant to be daunting – it’s meant to give you some relief.

I’m saying it’s unfair to expect yourself to just be able to “sit down and get it done”. It’s probably more accurate to think: “I haven’t yet built the various skills and mental/emotional muscles required to feel confident in executing this task consistently.”

The good news is skills can be learned, and mental/emotional muscles can be built – it just takes some time, repetition and practice. But isn’t that a far better way to think about it, than feeling this perpetually nagging sense that you somehow have to figure out how to eat an enormous, ever-growing whale in one sitting?

In short, there’s a good chance you have expectations of yourself that exceed your current level of skill and ability to work through this area of your life with confidence. It’s this gap that causes a lot of emotional resistance to facing your finances because it’s a recipe for feelings of disappointment, shame and failure.

The key is to accept where you are with compassion and kindness, instead of judgment and expectation. This will give you the emotional freedom to approach the task without the weight of emotional baggage that’s currently keeping you stuck.

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

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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