If I am afraid, I am afraid.
Don’t tell me my fear is unfounded, improbable, imaginary. That’s a losing proposition and it’s not going to help me. I’m afraid and now you’re telling me I’m stupid? Fuck you.
No. The way to deal with fear is with bravery. Even the tiniest act of bravery is enough.
The fear of financial insecurity is damn near universal. The amount of money someone actually has will not assuage the fear of possible future lack. I have seen it with people who couldn’t possibly spend all their money during their lifetime, even if you handed them gasoline and a match to help burn money.
Here is the tiny act of bravery I used, again and again and again. It banished the fear and got me started to having a decent emergency cash reserve.
Here is how I did it: every time I was afraid that I would experience financial catastrophe, I would open the bank app on my phone and move $5 from my checking account to my savings account. I would immediately feel better.
Why? I’m guessing that this was a visible signal to my brain that—contrary to my imagination and all the possible calamities that might befall me—I was in fact so financially strong that I could take money out of the day-to-day bank account and put it into permanent savings. My brain ignored the amount and focused on the action.
Incidentally, the savings account balance at which my fear dissipated was embarrassingly small: $1,000. It just goes to show that the fear was unreal, imagined. But you couldn’t have told me that while I was in the middle of the fear.
But if you had told me about the tiny act of bravery ($5 to a savings account in a completely different bank, hard to access), I would have listened.
I don’t know where the idea came from. As near as I can tell, I just spontaneously started doing it.
Today, I did a transfer to savings, just like the old days. A bravery transfer. More money this time (a lot more), same principle. I am brave.