Feeling more tense now we are on top of our finances!

[boomsonicca]

Weird feeling and not sure why I’m not just feeling a sense of relief!

After a long time of not having these things and after some a good look at our budget and seeing exactly where money was going, we now finally have an emergency fund saved up, and each month we are now overpaying our mortgage and have a standing order in place to continue topping up savings.

I feel in such a privileged position now, but at the same time scared to go back to how we were before! I feel like I’m becoming obsessed with the budget planner and ensuring the savings are going up!

I think I just really value the sense of security and understand how quickly things can change for people and that scares me slightly.
anyone else feeling similar?

I can relate OP. I went from being basically broke, a couple of years ago, in a bit of debt, to maxxing out ISAs and soon to be mortgage free in my 30s.

I think partly the feelings you mention comes from disbelief. I didn't expect to be here and I worry that I will wake up and it was all a dream hah!

But I'm terrified of losing that sense of security. As a result I'm more cautious now with my spending by far, than I ever was going from month to month.

I think the more money you have, the less it is about affording things and more about a sense of freedom. And I want to keep that sense of freedom waaaay more than I want to buy "things", if you see what I mean.

I do sometimes feel more skint now I have no debt and am making headway into saving six months' expenses.

I think it's because I have better understanding of how precarious my finances were before, and how easily I could be there again.

Absolutely agree! The sense of freedom is really important and having that bit of breathing room if needed.

I also keep really funny sense of not having much money to “spend” at the end of the month, because money is going directly to savings and overpayments. And then reminding myself that’s the point, I don’t need to be spending it on nonsense.
Out of sight out of mind in my savings account !

I actually think this is really common for people who lived with debt/poor finances and then managed to turn it around. I have a friend who spent the best part of 3 years in the minus, credit cards, loans, lived in her overdraft and yet openly says she was never particularly worried about money. She has now managed to claw her way out of that completely, no debt, savings, emergency fund, and always says she worries more about money now that she actually HAS money than she ever did when she genuinely had none- or less than none!

Yes, my parents had very little so I'm aware of how much freedom I get with having more. But I'm always aware it could change quickly, particularly as a single parent. I've tended to keep living off the salary I had when I divorced and put any pay rises into savings/mortgage so I also sort of feel like I don't really see the benefit of improving my career. I've had to force myself to have some treats but I definitely have that anxiety that it could change so easily.

Yep. We’ve recently become mortgage and debt free. We’ve worked hard for years to end up in this position and done it entirely by ourselves. I feel proud but also worried that we could end up struggling again in the future. We follow the Dave Ramsey method. People have rang into his podcast with these feelings and he’s reassuring that it’s normal.

OP, I totally get what you're feeling because I've experienced it too, along with my DH, our families, and friends who have similar worries. We're in a good place financially and pretty stable—it's such a relief to have the resources for anything we need, and we're very careful and thoughtful with our financial decisions—but I can't shake the fear of falling back into financial hardship. It always feels like we're just one step away from making a big mistake and losing it all. I don't think this constant feeling of unease will ever completely go away.

I can relate. Lowish earner here, no other income coming in, but I'm in the best financial shape I've ever been in having finally learned to live within my means. I do occasionally feel anxious about potentially waking up in the middle of the night wondering how I'm going to pay my bills, as I did many times in my 20s and 30s. I look at my budgeting spreadsheet at least once a day.

It's comforting to a degree knowing I have a large buffer, but sometimes I wonder if I save a little too much and not doing enough fun stuff which results in grumpiness and low mood. After decades of renting, I'm taking on a smallish mortgage next year, which will deplete almost all of my savings and the thought of that feels terrifying...I honestly think I'm probably going to have some therapy before and after the mortgage goes through!

Sense of relief will come, might take a few months, but when you see your savings increase, you can congratulate yourself for achieving it. Whilst it’s really hard having no money with all the worries, I do think once you do start to improve finances, you do handle money more carefully going forward. After paying off our mortgage, everyone said you must feel great, but it didn’t sink in for a while. Well done OP for doing what you are doing, and hopefully carry on doing, look forward, not backwards.

We have been very similar.
We’ve always worked for ourselves and by late 40s realised time was running out for paying off our Interest only mortgage and starting a pension. So we’ve had a 10 year slog of heads down, working long hours to clear mortgage and paying very spare penny into pensions which will give us a good lifestyle in retirement.
We got there last year at age 59 but to be honest we are still in “panic mode”. We saw our financial advisor last month and she says this is very common and can take a while to get rid of that feeling of not being able to spend.
She also said you don’t have to feel like you should be jumping up and down popping champagne corks, you can enjoy feeling content with your life rather than that horrible feeling of not having enough money. Good advice I think.

This is totally a thing. On the "you need a budget" Reddit people talk about being YNAB broke. This is where you actually have money but it's all precisely allocated so you don't have anything to actually spend. I'm the same. I always feel like i can't afford a holiday when I absolutely can but I've arbitrarily allocated all my money to long term savings.

There are regular threads on here where someone says they've inherited £20k (or whatever) and what should they spend it on. The answers are always like "oh 10k on a lovely holiday and 5k on a piece of jewellery and then save the rest". It makes me anxious just thinking about it - I'd be putting the whole lot into pension.

I know I'm the one with the problem by the way!

I feel the exact same when I see those threads. I kind of wince to be honest. I know that sounds terrible, but I just couldn’t justify blowing a whole lot of money on things like that unless I had saved specifically for it. I have just received 60k and besides taking my mum away for a night to a spa hotel it will be going into savings until I decide how best to use it and by that I mean either pension, mortgage overpayment etc.
i have sinking funds for everything else. So car stuff, holidays, emergency funds are all taken care of. Yet I still check my balance daily and try to leave more to save even after I have put money into savings at the start of the month.