The Intersection of Money and Milkshakes
by Wendy Wright, LMFT, Financial Therapist, Money Coach, Money Story Specialist™
The money and food connection is more powerful than most people realize.
When we begin to explore how we relate to food and how we relate to money, we often uncover the same emotional patterns — around control, scarcity, shame, and enoughness.
What Do Money and Milkshakes Have in Common?
You may be wondering what money and milkshakes have in common. To start, they can both give you a brain freeze (ha!). But beyond that, they can both cause real discomfort when they feel out of control — and the patterns we build around both are rarely just about the food or the finances themselves.
I’ve spent over a decade as one of the first therapists in the nation to practice financial therapy as my primary focus, and one of the most surprising and consistent things I’ve witnessed is this: the way people talk about their relationship with money can often be identical to the way they talk about their relationship with food.
This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a clue.
The Discovery That Changed My Practice
When I was working primarily with individuals navigating eating disorders, I started noticing something that stopped me in my tracks. My clients would use the same sentences to describe their experience with money as they used for food, body image, and exercise.
“I never have enough.” “I always go too far.” “I promise myself I’ll do better, and then I fall apart again.”
At first, I thought it was a quirk. Then it became a pattern. And then it became the foundation of what I now call The Intersection of Money and Milkshakes — the idea that our emotional relationship with money and our emotional relationship with food are often drawing from the exact same well.
Both are wrapped up in questions of safety, control, belonging, and worthiness. Both carry stories we learned long before we were old enough to question them. And both tend to respond — not to rules and willpower — but to compassion, curiosity, and healing at the root level.
Do You Recognize Yourself in Any of These Patterns?
Before I explain the connection more, I want to offer something that might bring you some relief. Take a look at these common patterns and notice how many feel familiar — in either area of your life:
The Restrict-and-Binge Cycle
With food, this looks like strict dieting followed by episodes of overeating. With money, it can look like periods of rigid budgeting — tracking every penny, denying yourself everything — followed by a spending spiral that leaves you feeling ashamed. The cycle is the same. The currency just changes. If this cycle feels painfully familiar, here’s why it keeps happening — and how to stop it.
“I Never Do It Right”
Some people feel like they can never find the right food to eat. Every choice feels loaded, fraught with potential failure. These same clients often feel paralyzed about spending or saving — because whatever they choose feels wrong, and the fear of making a mistake keeps them stuck.
Shopping as a Coping Mechanism
For some people who are working to change their relationship with food, shopping steps in to fill the same emotional need. It offers a temporary sense of comfort, control, or belonging — the same feelings that food once provided. It’s not weakness. It’s a nervous system looking for relief.
“I’ll Never Have Enough”
A deep fear of scarcity shows up in both food and money. You might hoard food — keeping a stuffed pantry just in case. You might also hoard money in ways that don’t serve you, or conversely, spend it down quickly because unconsciously, it never feels safe to have it.
If you found yourself nodding at any of these, I want you to hear this clearly: this is not evidence that something is broken inside of you. These are patterns — and patterns have origins. They can be understood. They can shift.
Why the Money and Food Connection Is Real
Money is emotional before it is logical.
That’s one of the foundational beliefs of my work, and it’s exactly why behavior change around money is so hard when we approach it with spreadsheets alone. The same is true for food. Meal plans, macros, and calorie counts rarely heal the relationship — because the relationship is what needs attention, not just the behavior.
When we look at both money and food through the lens of emotional healing rather than compliance and control, something opens up. We stop asking “why can’t I just do the right thing?” and start asking a much more compassionate, much more useful question: What is this behavior trying to do for me?
That question — what I call approaching your patterns with Abundant Compassionate Curiosity and Zero Judgment (Principle #1 of my 10 Principles of Financial Therapy©) — is where real change begins.
Another tool I use in my practice is what I call ‘Take the Money Word Out of the Sentence”. If you find yourself saying “I never have enough money” — remove the word money. What’s left? “I never have enough.” That’s a story. Often one that was handed to you long before your first paycheck. And it shows up everywhere: in your wallet, on your plate, in your relationships.
The Emotional Language of Money and Food
Here’s something powerful to sit with. The emotional vocabulary people use around food and money tends to be nearly identical:
- “I feel out of control.”
- “I’m so ashamed of myself.”
- “I know better, so why do I keep doing this?”
- “I’m afraid of what will happen if I let myself have it.”
- “I don’t trust myself.”
These statements aren’t about food or money. They’re about a nervous system that learned early on that safety, enough-ness, and worthiness were not guaranteed. Financial therapy — especially when it’s rooted in the same relational and trauma-informed approaches we bring to eating disorder work — helps people heal the story underneath the behavior.
You can’t shame yourself into financial peace. And you can’t restrict your way into a healthy relationship with food. Both require something softer and far more powerful: understanding. And you can’t budget your way out of a panic response either — the nervous system has to come first.
I Explored This on the Taking Up Space Podcast
I had the pleasure of diving into this exact conversation on the podcast Taking Up Space with Cassie Krajewski, where we talked about the complex and often overlooked intersection of money, food, and mental wellness. We explored how financial therapy invites curiosity and compassion into the picture — allowing people to move away from rigid, shame-based approaches to both food and finances, toward flexibility and self-acceptance. Listen to the episode here.
And if you haven’t caught my conversation on the Stacking Benjamins Show with host Joe Saul-Sehy, Paula Pant of Afford Anything, and Larry Sprung of Mitlin Money Mindset — don’t miss it. We talked about how financial trauma shows up in everyday money behaviors and why the financial therapy approach creates a different kind of result.
Ready to Explore Your Own Intersection?
If this is resonating with you — if you’re starting to see how your money patterns and your food patterns might be telling the same story — I created something specifically for this moment.
The Intersection of Money and Milkshakes is a $28 video + workbook bundle designed to guide you through your own patterns with compassionate curiosity. It includes:
- A 21-minute video lesson — watch first, so you arrive at the workbook with the right framework
- A beautifully designed Financial Therapy Journal workbook with prompts that help you explore the intersection of money and food in your own life
- A gentle, non-shaming approach rooted in my decade-plus of financial therapy practice
This isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about understanding yourself — and finding that the patterns you’ve judged most harshly are actually trying to protect you.
One More Thing — You Don’t Have to Do This Alone
One of the most powerful things I’ve witnessed — and experienced personally — is that healing accelerates when we stop carrying our money stories in silence. When someone finally says, “I’ve never said this out loud before” — and they say it to someone who won’t judge them for it — something releases. That moment of connecting the dots — between your story, your patterns, and your money — is where the real shift begins.
If you’re ready to go deeper, I’d love to be that person for you. Book a free discovery call and let’s explore what’s possible when we bring compassion to the stories that have been running the show.
Your money story doesn’t define you. Let’s rewrite it together.
As a reminder, these resources are not therapy or a replacement for therapy. They are meant to be educational and work beautifully in combination with therapy.
