Author: Stephanie Fairyington / Source: Big Think
I check my finances, including my 401K, every single day. Every. Single. Day. My financial fixation stems from my mother’s obsessive preoccupation with prioritizing saving over spending. She had several economic edicts on repeat throughout my childhood: Earn a dollar. Spend 50 cents. Save 50 cents; It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.
Unlike many Americans, my older brother and I were taught — forced — to resist our consumerist urges.
I constantly witnessed my mom wringing her hands when any life event interfered with her ability to preserve as much cash as possible — braces, back-to-school shopping, holidays, and birthdays. Consequently, I’m perpetually in knots about money and erroneously believe that my hyper vigilance will somehow protect me from financial ruin.So when those down-pointing red arrows on the Dow Jones Industrial Average show up regularly, as they have been for the last week, and my retirement accounts start shrinking, I stare at my online statements with misty eyes and panic. In other words, I do exactly what one should not do. To help you — and me! — reduce anxiety amid so much market volatility, I checked in with two financial experts, Erin Lowery, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together, and Grant Sabatier, the creator of Millennial Money and the author of the forthcoming Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need, to bring you the equanimity and rationality you need to relax.
Don’t look!
Lowry says to stop looking at…
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