The Quiet Cost of Avoiding Your Finances

Why financial wellness might be the missing piece in how ambitious women think about health, stability, and self-worth

Why Financial Wellness Belongs in the Conversation About Health

Money, money, money… money.

Let’s just go ahead and talk about the thing that you would never think matters when it comes to your health, but somehow affects literally everything.

It affects your energy.
Your stress levels.
Your ability to make decisions without spiraling.
That low-grade “am I okay?” feeling that shows up at the most random times.

Money touches all of it.

And yet, we’ve somehow decided it belongs in a completely separate category from health, as if your nervous system isn’t paying attention to what’s happening in your bank account.

As if your body can’t tell the difference between “I feel supported” and “I’m kind of winging it financially and hoping for the best.”

For a lot of women, money sits in the background like a browser tab you keep open but don’t click on.

You know it’s there.
You’ll get to it eventually.
Just… not today.

The Version of Me Who Avoided Money Completely

For a long time, I would have told you I was “fine” with money.

Which, in hindsight, is exactly what someone says when they are absolutely not fine with money.

From the outside, everything worked. I had a job, I paid my bills, I showed up, I functioned.

Underneath that, there was zero structure.

No system. No awareness. No real understanding of what was happening.

I was in my early 20s, fresh out of college, making $33K a year, living on my own for the first time, feeling very adult about the whole thing.

And my financial strategy, if we’re being honest, was this:

If the money is in my account, it’s available.

Clean. Simple. Slightly chaotic.

And then, of course, reality stepped in.

I remember doing a full grocery run, feeling very responsible, very “look at me taking care of myself,” getting to the register…

Declined.

And if you’ve ever had your card decline in public, you already know the energy.

The heat. The panic. The immediate desire to leave your body and start over somewhere else.

I practically ran out of the store.

And here’s what’s actually wild.

That moment didn’t fix anything.

I didn’t suddenly become financially responsible overnight.

It still took me years, almost a decade, to actually understand how money works in a way that felt steady.

Which, honestly, says more about what we aren’t taught than anything else.

Why So Many Women Feel Behind with Money

Let’s be honest.

Most of us were never actually taught how to manage money.

We were taught how to get a job.
How to work hard.
How to be responsible.

But managing money in a way that feels clear, strategic, and calm? That part was… implied.

Or left to Google. Or trial and error. Or vibes.

And when you zoom out, it starts to make a lot more sense.

Women couldn’t open a bank account without a male co-signer until the late 1960s, with some banks continuing that into the early 1970s.

So your mom or your grandmother may have literally needed permission to access money.

Which is… a lot, when you actually sit with it.

And then there’s this.

Women couldn’t easily get business loans until the 1980s.

The 1980s.

Meaning there was a time, not that long ago, where a woman building a business like this would have been significantly harder without a man attached to it.

So when you feel like you “should” have this all figured out…

Zoom out.

We are the first generation of women navigating full financial autonomy at scale.

And no one handed us a clear, practical playbook.

Where You Actually Start (And Why It’s Simpler Than You Think)

Most people don’t start with a budget.

They start with avoidance.

Or that vague, slightly annoying feeling of “I should probably get my finances together at some point” that lives in the back of your mind for… longer than you’d like to admit.

The shift starts with something much less dramatic.

You just look.

What is your income?
What do you have saved?
What do you have invested?
Where is your money actually going?

And yes, those questions can feel a little aggressive at first.

They used to stress me out too.

But they’re not there to judge you. They’re there to orient you.

Because once you can actually see what’s happening, you stop making decisions in reaction mode.

You start making them on purpose.

And that’s really all budgeting is.

Awareness.

Which sounds boring until you realize how many people are operating without it.

A Simple Way to Understand Where Your Money Is Going

There are a million ways to manage money.

Some of them are complicated enough to make you feel like you need a finance degree just to get started.

This is not that.

The 50/30/20 method is simple, which is exactly why it works.

Fifty percent of your take-home income goes to needs. The non-negotiables. Housing, transportation, food, insurance, childcare, minimum debt payments.

Thirty percent goes to wants. The things that make your life feel like your life. Dinner out. Travel. The random online purchase you absolutely did not need but now feel emotionally attached to.

And twenty percent goes to savings. Future you. Stability. Options. The version of your life that feels a little more supported.

Why Most People Don’t Overspend Where They Think They Do

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Most people assume the problem is the “wants.”

It’s the dinners. The shopping. The little things.

Sometimes it is, but it’s usually not.

The real pressure tends to build in the “needs.”

Housing that’s just slightly too expensive.
A car that felt like the “right” next step.
Expenses that individually make sense, but collectively start to feel… tight.

And because these are “responsible” expenses, they rarely get questioned.

Which is how people end up feeling financially stretched while technically doing everything “right.”

The Big Financial Decisions That Quietly Shape Your Life

This is where awareness really starts to matter.

Because these decisions don’t just impact your bank account, they shape your day-to-day experience of your life.

Housing is usually the biggest one.

A general guideline is that your home should be about three times your household income, and household income is your total gross income before taxes, not what hits your bank account.

When everything is factored in, your housing costs should land somewhere around thirty percent of your take-home pay.

Cars are another easy place to stretch.

They carry identity. Success. A sense of where you are in life.

A helpful guideline is keeping your car around one-third of your annual income, even though that number can feel a little humbling depending on what you’ve been eyeing.

Then there are kids.

Which… are wildly expensive.

On average, it costs around $180,000 to raise a child through age eighteen, and that doesn’t include education. Add in school, activities, and everything else that tends to come with it, and this becomes a significant part of your financial picture.

Education itself also plays a major role.

A simple way to think about it is keeping student loan debt aligned with what you reasonably expect to earn annually within your first decade after graduating, because these decisions tend to follow you for a while.

Financial Stability Is More Than Just Numbers

You can know exactly what to do with money. And still feel weird about it.

You can be earning well. And still feel a little on edge.

You can be completely “fine” on paper. And still avoid logging into your bank account just a little longer than necessary.

Because managing money and feeling safe with money are two completely different experiences.

One is strategy. The other is internal.

And when those two are out of sync, it shows up everywhere.

Learning to Feel Safe With Money, Not Just Manage It

Everything started to shift for me when I stopped treating money like this thing I didn’t want to deal with… and started treating it like something I could actually understand.

That’s when curiosity replaced avoidance.

And once that happened, everything got easier.

More clear. More grounded. Less charged.

Not perfect. Just… better.

And that’s really what financial wellness is.

It’s not just numbers.

It’s the feeling that your life is supported.

It’s the ability to look at your finances without that subtle tension in your body.

It’s knowing that the life you’re building is actually backed by something stable.

Because when your finances feel clear and steady, your body feels it.

You think more clearly.
You make better decisions.
You move differently.

There’s less background noise. Less second-guessing. Less of that subtle pressure you’ve learned to carry.

And for ambitious women, that matters more than we often realize.

Because you can’t build a life that feels expansive on top of something that feels unstable.

Financial wellness becomes the missing piece. And not because money is everything, but because it creates the foundation that everything else rests on.

Your health.
Your capacity.
Your sense of self.