I used to be really good at not knowing things.
Not because I was unintelligent. I knew how to research, how to ask questions, how to learn. I just had a very careful, very deliberate blind spot around money. I didn't want to know what the numbers said because I already had a feeling, and the feeling was not good.
For a long time, I told myself this was a class thing. That I grew up in a household where money wasn't discussed in detail, where you paid what you could and didn't ask about the rest. And that's true. But at 42, I've learned to distinguish between an explanation and an excuse. That was an explanation. The avoidance was mine.
Here's the thing about financial avoidance that no one really says out loud. It's not laziness. It's actually a very active thing. It takes effort to not open the statements. To know your card is in the red without knowing by how much. To have a general sense that things are fine without ever actually checking. That kind of not-knowing is a full-time job. And I was very dedicated.
The shift didn't happen because I got a windfall or hit some milestone. It happened because of a concert ticket.
I wanted to see Jay-Z. And I couldn't just buy the ticket. I had to save for it intentionally, track the money, make sure it was there when I needed it. And something about that small, specific act of financial intentionality broke something open. I did a thing I wanted to do, with money I'd planned for, and it felt different than every other time I'd spent money. It felt like a decision. Not a reaction.
That was the beginning of me actually caring about my finances instead of just worrying about them.
There's a difference. Worrying is passive. It's the anxiety without the action. Caring requires you to know things. To look at the numbers. To make a plan and then, novel concept, follow it.
I started with the basics because the basics are where most of us actually are, regardless of income. Fifty-thirty-twenty. Needs, wants, savings. I know that framework isn't new. But knowing about something and actually applying it to your real numbers, in your real life, with your real spending habits exposed on a spreadsheet, is a completely different experience.
What I found was not as bad as I feared. And also more honest than I was comfortable with.
The "needs" category was mostly fine. The "wants" category told a story I wasn't proud of. Not because I was spending on things I didn't care about, but because I was spending on things I'd forgotten I even had. Subscriptions. Services. Things I'd started and never stopped. That's not even pleasure spending. That's just money going somewhere with no intention attached to it.
I canceled eight things that month.
I also started actually reading. Not financial self-help, which has a tendency to be condescending about your relationship to money while selling you a book for twenty-five dollars. I mean actual educational resources. Khan Academy for the fundamentals I never had. The CFPB for understanding what my rights are. NerdWallet for frameworks that don't require me to have a degree to apply.
The goal was literacy, not perfection. I didn't need to become a financial expert. I needed to become someone who could sit with her own numbers without looking away.
I'm still in that process. The Audacity Project's first phase is partly about this. Living from my future self's perspective means making financial decisions that the woman I'm becoming would recognize. Not just the woman I've been.
What I know now is that the avoidance wasn't protecting me. It was just making the same problems more expensive. Financially and emotionally.
I'm not going to tell you to open your statements tonight if you've been avoiding them. I understand that impulse too well. But I'll say this. The knowing is almost always better than the not-knowing. Even when the numbers aren't good. Because when you know, you have options. When you're avoiding, you just have dread.
And dread, as I've learned, is a full-time job I can no longer afford.
More on this. The financial chapter of The Audacity Project is ongoing, and I'll be documenting it here.