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Why Smart Women Pretend Their Money Doesn’t Exist (And How to Stop Being a Financial Ghost)

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I was making $180k a year when I checked my bank balance at 2 a.m. and had what I can only describe as a full-body panic attack.

Not metaphorical. I called my sister. She was asleep. I didn’t apologize.

Here’s the thing nobody says: I wasn’t bad with money. I was actively refusing to know about it. There’s a difference and it’s huge.

Like, I’d earn the deposit notification would ping my phone and I’d literally close the notification without reading the number. I’d swipe my credit card knowing it would post somewhere and I’d deal with it… never. Just never. I’d deal with it never.

My therapist, bless her, asked me when I last looked at my actual balance and I laughed so hard I snorted. That ugly laugh. The one that means you’ve been caught being insane.

“I don’t want to,” I said. Just like that. “I don’t want to know.”

And here’s what pisses me off: It’s not because I’m dumb. It’s not because I’m “not a numbers person” or whatever bullshit excuse we tell ourselves.

It’s because somewhere, someone taught me that money was dangerous. That wanting it made me greedy. That caring about it made me unfeminine or cold or… I don’t know. Wrong somehow.

So I made it someone else’s problem. My dad’s. My boyfriend’s. The universe’s. Anyone but me.

And then, because this is how anxiety works, I started avoiding it so hard that the avoidance became worse than the thing I was avoiding. My brain was literally working overtime to protect me from… a number. A number that was already true regardless of whether I looked at it or not.

I was just choosing to be powerless about it.

Okay so here’s what actually started to shift things:

I bought a regular notebook. Like a basic-ass spiral notebook from Amazon, the kind that’s $3 and comes in twelve colors. Mead composition notebook. Nothing fancy. Nothing that screamed “financial person.”

And I just… started writing money stuff in it like I was texting a friend.

Today I spent $140 on skincare and I’m pretending it doesn’t count because it’s “health.” It counts. It always counts.

Saw my credit card statement preview. Didn’t read it. Closed the app. Felt my stomach drop.

Why am I like this? Why is looking at my own money scarier than a dentist appointment?

No categories. No color coding. No bullet points about “financial goals.” Just me being absolutely honest on a page that cost three dollars.

And here’s the weird part, it worked. Not because I’m suddenly “responsible” but because I stopped treating my money like a monster under the bed. I treated it like a shitty friend I need to have a conversation with.

Then, and only because the notebook thing didn’t make me want to die, I got some basic tools. I’m talking sticky notes. Post-it tabs. A cheap pen that actually writes (Pilot G2, like $1.50 for a pack of 10 on Amazon). Nothing intimidating.

I literally just started sticking tabs on my bank statements. One color for “spent on stupid shit.” One for “necessary.” One for “unexpected.” That’s it. Not calculating. Not optimizing. Just seeing where the money actually went.

Because here’s what nobody tells you: you can’t change what you won’t look at. And I wasn’t looking.

So I forced myself to look. But I made it stupid-simple. Sticky note on the printed statement. Done.

And then something weird happened.

I stopped being terrified.

Not because the number got bigger or better or more impressive. But because it stopped being this abstract monster and became just… a thing. A real thing. A my thing.

I could see it. It was there. I’d spent money on my coffee habit (way more than I thought). I’d spent less on clothes than my anxiety suggested. I’d actually been saving something. Not much but something.

Suddenly my brain went from DON’T LOOK DON’T LOOK DON’T LOOK to oh. Okay. This is actually manageable.

Here’s what I want to say directly:

The women I know who actually built wealth or didn’t panic during a breakup or could negotiate their salary, they all did the exact same thing. They looked.

Not because they wanted to. Because they got tired of being passengers in their own financial life.

They bought a five-dollar notebook. Wrote some shameful stuff down. Realized nothing exploded. Looked at one bank statement. Then another.

They didn’t become “financial people.” They just became present for their own money.

Which honestly? Changed everything.

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