The Perfectionist's Guide to Getting Good With Money

Part 1: Stuck in the muddle with you

For a long time, I thought getting good with money meant becoming a different version of myself; someone more disciplined and minimalist, someone who doesn’t impulse-buy a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich because I was too tired to make breakfast.

Many people struggle with money for the same reason: they think being good with money is a club reserved for perfect people.

Maybe you can relate: you make a budget, try a no-spend challenge, or finally face your fears and start learning about investing. And when one of those efforts falls by the wayside, it’s easy to conclude that there must be something about you that’s incompatible with being good with money.

Welcome to the perfectionist’s guide to getting good with money.

For the next few weeks, we’re going to examine how perfectionism sneaks into your relationship with money, keeps you stuck, and convinces you that progress is impossible.

If you’ve ever felt this way, remember that money is not (and never was!) a test of your character.

Money is for funding the kind of life that sits right with you. It’s also for getting your bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches when you’re too tired to make breakfast!

But if you’re a perfectionist, you’re likely having a tough time enjoying (let alone feeling content with) your financial situation.

Psychologist Dr. Samuel Mikhail, who co-wrote a book on perfectionism, described how perfectionists can take a difficult situation and make it impossible.

When discussing a patient experiencing debilitating chronic pain, Mikhail said, “Another patient who could no longer play on the floor [with his children] might focus on other ways of connecting with his kids, such as reading in bed or sharing an ice-cream sundae. But perfectionists live in an all-or-nothing world: because something has been lost, everything has been lost.”

“That attitude is likely to carry over into recovery, with the perfectionist thinking, I need to be just as I was before, rather than appreciating partial progress.”

Credit: The New Yorker

Yet, as I’ve written recently, we live in a treacherous personal-finance landscape.

Teenagers are offered hundreds of thousands of dollars of confusing student loans, Klarna and Afterpay are dangled on every checkout page, and we often struggle to have honest conversations about money—even with loved ones.

So many of us have financially stumbled at some point, and then we drag this all-or-nothing thinking into our financial situations. “Something” may be lost when we take on hefty student debt, tank our credit scores with unsatisfying purchases, or find ourselves fighting about money with our partners more often than we’d like. Sure, something may be lost, but not everything.

I once heard the writer Joyce Carol Oates say, “Every story has a beginning, a muddle, and an end.” If you’re feeling stuck around your money, maybe you’re just in the muddle.

Like the father learning to be a good parent in spite of his chronic pain, we have to resist perfectionism’s conclusion that difficulties and setbacks mean we’re hopeless and all is lost.

We all have unique situations where incremental progress is not only possible but incredibly important for how we see ourselves. I can only get good with my money, not someone else’s more ideal-seeming financial situation.

Research on perfectionism shows that process goals are far more effective than outcome goals.

For example, instead of saying, “I’m going to get my credit score to 800,” a more supportive goal might be: “Every Sunday, I’ll review my spending, look at the week ahead, and make sure I have enough for groceries, gas, and rent.”

For perfectionists, big, one-time goals (like saving $10,000 by December) can subtly set us up to feel like we’re failing. Here’s why:

• There are too many factors outside your control: market swings, car repairs, health issues, etc.

• “Success” only arrives at the very end, which means months go by without any sense of progress.

• Perfectionists, especially, need frequent feelings of competence to stay motivated.

Feeling like you’re getting somewhere with your financial goals isn’t always about having more discipline or willpower. Sometimes it’s about choosing more appropriate goals that let you see your progress along the way, which is exactly what we’ll be digging into next week.

Until then, I’d love to hear from you:

Where do you notice perfectionism in your relationship with money—and how does it affect the way you set (or avoid) financial goals?

Thanks for reading.

– Dan