By Wendy Wright, LMFT | Financial Therapist & Founder of the Wendy Wright Financial Therapy Approach™
Have you ever promised yourself that this time you were going to do it perfectly?
You were going to stick to the budget. Stop spending unnecessarily. Save exactly what you planned. Follow every rule.
And then life happened.
You spent more than you intended. You abandoned the plan. And suddenly, one decision seemed to mean you had failed at the whole thing.
If this sounds familiar, you may recognize the same pattern in the way our culture often talks about food.
Be good. Follow the rules. Don’t overdo it. Have more discipline.
Money and food may seem like entirely different subjects, but after years of working in both eating disorder treatment and financial therapy, I’ve seen how often the emotional patterns surrounding them overlap.
And one of the biggest overlaps is our tendency to use control, restriction, and perfectionism in an attempt to feel safe.
The problem is that the tighter we grip, the harder sustainable change can become.
Why Money and Food Can Feel So Similar
Before I focused primarily on financial therapy, I worked extensively with people navigating eating disorders and their relationships with food.
Over time, I began noticing something fascinating.
People often used remarkably similar language when talking about food and money:
“I feel out of control.”
“I know better. Why do I keep doing this?”
“I don’t trust myself.”
“I’m ashamed that I let this happen again.”
Eventually, this observation became part of what I call The Intersection of Money and Milkshakes™: the idea that our emotional relationships with food and money can draw from many of the same underlying stories.
Both can become connected to safety, worthiness, enoughness, and control. And both can become places where we try to manage uncomfortable feelings by creating increasingly rigid rules.
When Control Feels Like the Solution
When something feels uncertain, creating rules can provide relief.
A detailed budget may make you feel like everything is finally under control.
A strict spending plan may quiet the anxiety temporarily.
A promise that you will never use the credit card again may create a sense of certainty.
Rules themselves aren’t inherently harmful. Financial structure can be incredibly useful.
The question is: What happens when you can’t follow the rule perfectly?
If one unplanned purchase immediately becomes evidence that you’re “bad with money,” the issue may no longer be the purchase.
Perfectionism has entered the conversation.
Instead of the financial plan being a tool that supports you, following the plan perfectly can begin to feel like proof that you’re doing money “right.”
And that is a very difficult standard to sustain.
Restriction Can Create Its Own Cycle
This is one of the clearest parallels I see between money and food.
With food, someone may move between strict dieting and periods of overeating.
Money can have its own version of this restrict-and-binge cycle.
You decide you’re spending too much, so you respond by tightening everything.
No eating out.
No unnecessary purchases.
No treats.
Track every dollar.
Then something happens.
Maybe you’re exhausted. Maybe you’ve had a difficult week. Maybe you simply want something you didn’t account for.
You spend.
And instead of seeing that purchase as one decision, perfectionism tells you the entire plan has been ruined.
So you spend a little more.
Then comes the shame.
Then comes another promise to “get serious.”
And the restriction begins again.
The problem isn’t necessarily that you need a stricter budget.
The restriction itself may be helping to keep the cycle alive.
“Budget Is to Money What Diet Is to Food”
One of my 10 Principles of Financial Therapy© is:
Budget is to money what diet is to food.
That doesn’t mean budgets are inherently bad.
It means we need to pay attention to what happens when we treat a budget as a rigid set of rules that determines whether we’ve succeeded or failed.
A budget can easily become another magical promise:
If I can just follow this perfectly, I’ll finally feel okay.
But sustainable financial change usually isn’t created by finding the perfect set of rules.
It comes from developing a relationship with money that has room for real life.
Plans change.
Expenses happen.
Priorities shift.
Sometimes you make a financial decision you wouldn’t make again.
A healthy financial plan needs enough flexibility to survive all of those things.
Perfectionism Makes Every Decision Feel Bigger
Financial perfectionism can make ordinary money decisions feel enormous.
There has to be a right amount to save.
A right amount to spend.
A right investment decision.
A right way to budget.
And if you’re terrified of choosing incorrectly, you may find yourself doing nothing at all.
This is another pattern I’ve seen in both money and food. When every choice feels loaded with the possibility of failure, making any choice can become exhausting.
You might avoid opening your banking app.
Put off making a decision.
Research endlessly.
Ask several people what they would do.
Or create another set of rules hoping that this time you’ll finally get it right.
What looks like a lack of discipline from the outside may actually be an enormous amount of pressure on the inside.
What If the Goal Isn’t Perfect Control?
This is where financial therapy offers a different starting point.
Instead of immediately asking:
“How do I make myself stop doing this?”
Try asking:
“What is this pattern trying to do for me?”
Maybe restriction creates a temporary feeling of safety.
Maybe tracking every dollar makes uncertainty feel more manageable.
Maybe avoiding your accounts protects you from the fear that you’ll discover you’ve done something “wrong.”
Understanding the purpose of a behavior doesn’t mean you have to continue it.
It gives you more information about what actually needs your attention.
This is what I mean by Abundant Compassionate Curiosity and Zero Judgment, Principle #1 of my 10 Principles of Financial Therapy©.
When judgment quiets down, curiosity has room to ask better questions.
Sustainable Change Needs Room for Imperfection
A sustainable relationship with money isn’t one where you never make another decision you regret.
It’s one where a single decision doesn’t become a verdict about who you are.
You can spend more than you planned and adjust.
You can change your savings goal when life changes.
You can notice an old pattern without immediately punishing yourself for falling into it.
You can make a plan without demanding perfection from yourself in return.
The goal isn’t to stop caring about your finances.
It’s to build enough flexibility into your relationship with money that one imperfect moment doesn’t send the whole thing crashing down.
Because sustainable change isn’t about controlling yourself perfectly. It’s about learning how to respond when things aren’t perfect.
Frequently Asked Questions
Money and food can carry similar emotional patterns around control, shame, scarcity, safety, and enoughness. In my work, I’ve found that people sometimes even use the same language to describe their struggles with each. Looking at those similarities can help uncover the emotional story underneath a financial behavior.
Financial perfectionism is the pressure to make the “right” money decision every time. It can show up as rigid budgeting, fear of spending, excessive research, avoidance, or shame when you don’t follow a financial plan exactly.
For some people, very rigid financial restriction can contribute to a cycle of restriction, spending, shame, and renewed restriction. Rather than automatically making the rules stricter, it can be useful to understand what is driving the cycle.
No. Financial structure can be helpful. The difference is whether your budget functions as a flexible tool or a rigid measure of whether you’re succeeding or failing with money.
Begin by noticing the judgment attached to your financial decisions. Instead of immediately creating another rule, approach the pattern with compassionate curiosity. Ask what the behavior is trying to accomplish for you and what kind of support might create more sustainable change.
Explore Your Own Money and Food Patterns
If you’ve started noticing some of these parallels in your own life, I created The Intersection of Money and Milkshakes™ to help you explore them more deeply.
The $10 video + workbook bundle includes a 21-minute lesson and Financial Therapy Journal workbook designed to help you examine your own money and food patterns through compassionate curiosity rather than judgment.
And if you’d rather explore your relationship with money with individual support, you can also book a free discovery call to learn more about working together.
Your response to money has a story.
Understanding that story can be a much more sustainable place to begin than trying to control your way into getting everything “right.”
