I feel guilty about my spending, so I went to see a money therapist

‘Have you ever shoplifted?” a financial psychotherapist is asking me at 9am on a Wednesday morning. We are delving into my childhood and my relationship with money, which, I am about to learn, are intrinsically linked.
I like to think I have a decent relationship with money. Saving into a pension each month, religiously paying off my credit card but never skimping a round at the pub — no red flags here. In an ideal world my coffee expenditure would be lower, but what millennial working in London isn’t propped up by their addiction to Gail’s bakery?
But scratch beneath the surface and some cracks emerge. Like the wave of guilt and anxiety when I check my credit card bill, regardless of the balance and even on a good month of saving. Or why, as a chronic people-pleaser (so I’ve been told) who feels extremely uncomfortable when others are disappointed, this goes into overdrive when poor value for money is involved.
If my husband is served a disappointing meal in a restaurant, I petition that he swap plates and enjoy mine instead. It comes across as quite deranged. He invariably declines, and it kills me. It’s not a fear of him going hungry, but the horror of someone paying for something that wasn’t what they wanted or expected.
I am not alone in feeling a mixture of stress and guilt when it comes to money. A survey of more than 3,000 therapists by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) last year found that 46 per cent had seen an increase in financial anxiety.
Much of this will be linked to debt or spiralling bills — few have emerged unscathed from one of the worst cost of living crises in memory. But worrying about money is not exclusively for those who don’t have much of it.
Those who have suffered financial stress early in life might feel guilty about spending, or anxious that their fortunes will change, even if they live comfortably. Others may find that arguments with loved ones always lead back to money, or struggle to talk about inheritance because of strained family dynamics.
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This is where financial psychotherapy comes in. I am a recent therapy convert and so didn’t take much persuading to book in a session with Vicky Reynal, a financial psychotherapist and author of Money on Your Mind: the Psychology behind your Financial Habits. I am in good hands — Reynal has an MBA from London Business School and a postgraduate diploma in psychodynamic psychotherapy. She has lived and worked in nine countries but settled in London 17 years ago and says the growing trend for financial therapy is not necessarily linked to an increase in money problems.
“People know they can seek help and talk about anxieties or concerns about money now, support that previously wouldn’t have been there,” she said.
I am about to buy my first home with my husband (some would argue that this is a bigger commitment than marriage) so the opportunity to better understand my attitude to money was well timed.
Reynal and I meet over Zoom for a 50-minute session. She asks if there are money issues I’d like to begin with and I pick the house purchase and the nagging feeling of guilt I have that I could do more to save or manage my money better. Guilt crops up a lot in our session, along with a fear of losing control.
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“I think there is something here about putting your needs first,” Reynal says. “When we spend, we are often getting things for ourselves and the question is, is that OK? Can you feel deserving of good things? Can you feel that it’s appropriate for you to allow yourself to have whatever it is that you bought that month?”
It’s impossible to sit in a therapist’s chair and not bring up an absent parent, so we talk about the sudden death of my father when I was 19. How it led to a fear of the unexpected and anxiety that things are about to change for the worse.
“It is not uncommon for people who experience a sudden loss, maybe a bereavement or a separation in the family, to buy expensive luxury items. They are buying things that will stay and not abandon them. And this can drive overspending in some cases,” Reynal says.
I certainly tried to make myself feel better with fast fashion in the years after my dad died, spending money in Topshop so often that I almost kept the company afloat single-handedly.
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Reynal asks if I have ever had any issues with shoplifting, to which I am grateful to answer no. “It is common for people with experience of sudden loss to feel deprived and you spend your life trying to claim back that thing that was lost,” she says. “Stealing is one way of feeling like you are claiming something back.
“But we all cope with things differently. Children who are quite young when parents get divorced can experience that as an abandonment. An illness that makes the parent emotionally unavailable [can do the same]. All these deep-rooted experiences can shape how we handle money later in life.”
As for my deep sense of dread when someone gets a poor meal in a restaurant, we work it back to wanting good value. Having parents who worked hard to build a business, the idea of not getting good value for money is jarring. It’s OK to spend it and enjoy it, but when the latter doesn’t happen it grates.
Dedicated financial psychotherapists are much more common in the US, where it is more normal to talk about money, Reynal says. But if left unresolved, difficulties with how we spend, save or earn money can wreck relationships with friends, families and partners.
In 2023 the BACP said that 55 per cent of its therapists who worked with couples had reported an increase in clients with money issues.
Ylva Baeckström, a psychotherapist and lecturer at King’s Business School, says: “Everyone worries about money in one way or another, whether you are wealthy or not. You might worry about having enough for retirement, or there might have been a bankruptcy in the family and you struggle to spend money. Or it can go the other way and you overspend because you think there is no point in saving because it will be lost anyway.
“Generally we still don’t talk about money enough. It can mean that people tend to feel quite isolated when it comes to financial concerns.”
One session with Reynal was only enough to scratch the surface — clients usually work with her intensively over a period of months, if not years. She only works with individuals, not couples, and clients range from the ultra high net worth to those on a low income, to whom she offers concession rates.
But even over our short session, a couple of lightbulb moments have certainly given me a better understanding of what makes me tick. Hopefully this will stand me in good stead before I make the biggest purchase of my life.