Even at the best of times, figuring out how to manage your money can feel like a mix of endless research, anxious guesswork, and plain old luck. The basic recipe of “save more than you spend” is often easier said than done—but if you live with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), this sort of financial advice can feel even more confusing and overwhelming, and may even trigger the OCD cycle.
For people with OCD, managing money can feel incredibly high-stakes. Spending, saving, or even just checking your account balance can all seem like actions that will trigger catastrophe, prove irresponsibility and immorality, or cause irreversible harm. Many people with OCD also experience the feeling of hyper-responsibility, and this belief that it’s entirely your responsibility to catch every possible misstep in order to prevent grievous harm can end up driving a lot of money-related obsessions and compulsions. But, ultimately, OCD is a bad financial advisor—its “advice” is nonsensical and stressful, and it never seems to want to plan to retire (no matter how much you wish it would).
Perfectionism and money management
Perfectionism or “just right” OCD creates the unbearable feeling that something is off, incomplete, or “not quite right.” When it comes to your finances, this can impact the way you go about budgeting and saving. The drive to make everything feel just right can lead you to beat yourself up every time you spend $10 more than you’d budgeted at the grocery store, or you have to stop for gas at the slightly more expensive station.
You might think that by diving into research about your financial options, you can make sure that you’re making perfect choices—but if the research is never-ending and never feels satisfying enough, you may, in fact, be experiencing the common OCD compulsion of excessive research. If you’re losing sleep staying up late to figure out which bank has the very best CD option, or constantly refreshing news about the performance of the stock market when you wish you were engaging in other areas of your life, OCD may be serving as your dysfunctional investment planner. Because no one can guarantee perfect choices or outcomes (especially when it comes to money), OCD’s demand for certainty can never be truly satisfied.
Magical thinking around specific numbers
People with OCD commonly struggle with Magical Thinking, a cognitive distortion characterized by worrying that specific thoughts, behaviors, or actions will directly influence the world when those thoughts, behaviors, and actions are not actually connected to the world in a realistic way.
This may manifest as frequent intrusive thoughts that suggest that you will be responsible for something terrible unless you perform specific actions. For example, “my plane will crash if I don’t say a prayer three times in a row before takeoff.”
When it comes to financial planning, this might look like worrying that you or your family will lose all of your money if you don’t carry out a compulsion. For many people, there is no clear link between the compulsion and the feared outcome you’re trying to avoid, but OCD insists it’s the only way to stave off disaster. OCD might also convince you that you must maintain or avoid a specific bank balance, or make a specific number of trades or investments, in order to avoid some other negative consequence befalling yourself or your loved ones.
How to tell the difference between OCD and good financial habits
Money is a source of anxiety for most people, with or without OCD, which can make it hard to tell when OCD is taking over. It can be difficult to distinguish compulsions from responsible fiscal behavior, especially when general financial advice, like checking your credit card balance regularly or making sure to thoroughly read financial agreements can feel like an invitation to engage in ritualistic behavior if you have OCD.
Some behaviors tied to managing money can look “responsible” on the outside—so it may not be obvious to others that these behaviors fuel obsessions—while feeling urgent, rigid, or frightening on the inside when you have OCD. Budgeting rules, tracking systems, and other recommended best practices can easily become compulsions.
Common money-related obsessions
It’s common to feel anxious when confronting your financial habits, but obsessional thoughts around managing money—like most OCD intrusive thoughts—are unwanted, repetitive, and distressing, rather than rational concerns. For example:
- “What if I make this purchase and it ruins my entire life?”
- “If the balance of my bank account doesn’t involve only even numbers, something bad will happen.”
- “What if I miss a charge by accident and am convicted of tax fraud?”
- “Will this spending make me irresponsible or careless?”
- “What if by not donating more money to charity—even if it’s money I don’t have—I’m immoral, or harming people irrevocably?”
- “If I don’t catch every possible financial risk, I’m failing my family and can’t be trusted.”
These aren’t just passing thoughts for people with OCD. They tend to be all-consuming and distressing, leading the person to perform excessive mental or compulsive rituals in response to the resulting anxiety, guilt, or shame often felt.
Common money-related compulsions
Compulsions are mental or physical rituals a person carries out in an attempt to alleviate distress, prevent some dreaded outcome from occurring, “solve” obsessions, or follow arbitrary rules OCD has created. They are time-consuming and excessive, and while they may bring down anxiety, that relief is often short-lived. Compulsions are never enough for OCD and actually reinforce obsessions. When it comes to managing your money, these behaviors might look like:
- Excessive checking and reassurance seeking, such as repeatedly reviewing balances, statements, or asking others to confirm spending decisions to try to avoid making a mistake or the “wrong” decision.
- Avoidance of spending due to fear of being wasteful, irresponsible, or causing harm.
- Keeping balances at specific numbers—for example, only even numbers.
- Compulsive donating due to fears that you’re a bad person if you aren’t giving enough for a certain cause, loved one, or community.
Managing your OCD and your finances
OCD’s impact on how you think about and manage money can go far beyond your finances. It can lead to guilt about your day-to-day choices that involve spending or saving, shame about whether the way you handle money is “adult” enough, and mental fatigue from constant monitoring and self-policing. And because most of us interact with money multiple times every day, OCD has plenty of chances to make you agonize over these actions.
While OCD therapy can be a financial investment (and OCD often excels at coming up with reasons for why you should not invest in yourself), untreated OCD—or OCD that is treated incorrectly—can be exponentially more expensive, and often has an immeasurable emotional cost. For example, contamination OCD might cause you to spend an exorbitant amount of money replacing clothes and bedding because they don’t feel “clean enough” or “safe”—no matter how many times they’ve been washed—health OCD might result in costly repetitive doctor’s visits, and driving-related obsessions might lead to expensive Uber trips in an effort to avoid being behind the wheel of a car. Regardless of what theme your OCD centers on, time-consuming compulsions can make it hard to maintain a steady job and income, relationships, or stay physically healthy.
Additionally, a lot has changed in the OCD care landscape in the past decade. Now, almost all Americans with commercial insurance (more than nine in 10) can use their benefits to access exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy—the most effective treatment for OCD—from a therapist with specialized training at NOCD.
Managing money without feeding obsessions and compulsions requires developing the same skill that defines much of OCD treatment: resolving obsessional doubt, tolerating uncertainty when required, and practicing response prevention. You can make responsible financial choices without being absolutely certain. Trying to attain certainty or relieve anxiety through compulsions like checking, hyper-control, or avoiding money decisions altogether will provide only temporary relief. Over time, this high-alert behavior teaches your brain that money is dangerous and must be tightly controlled, inflating your fear over time.
ERP with a specialized therapist can help you disrupt the OCD cycle by helping you focus on changing your relationship with doubt, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear rather than on achieving perfect finances. An ERP therapist can help you practice resisting compulsions around money, based on your specific anxieties. They can also help you internalize the fact that your ability to manage money does not determine your personal or moral value, while also understanding that it’s reasonable to feel anxious or intimidated by occasional big financial decisions. By learning to notice when OCD is influencing your financial planning, and gaining tools to interrupt the cycle of obsessions and compulsions, you can learn to manage your OCD and your finances.
