This story is part of our December 2024 issue. To subscribe, click here.

It’s Monday morning, and I’m heading to a credit union I have not visited in over five years to make a withdrawal. An unfortunate plumbing incident burbled up at my condo over the weekend, and now that it’s fixed, my plumber needs to get paid. Sadly, the bill exceeds the contents of my small but mighty primary checking account, so it’s time to access my emergency fund. Why am I banking like it’s 1979?

Reader, I am a person with an avoidant attachment style — to money.  

What is a financial avoidant, and did I just make up that term? 

It’s me, and yes, I did. When I see a bill arrive in the mail, my stomach churns. When I see an envelope arrive bearing a bank logo, I fling it directly into the shredder. I hate money, which is inconvenient since it’s a basic fact of life.  

The financial avoidant life chose me. It certainly wasn’t nurtured — my parents were both responsible savers, willing openers of bank mail and prompt monthly credit card payers who never messed up their taxes or ducked a call from a collections agency. My relationship to finances is like many people are with visiting the dentist: I turn into a ball of stress and dread that is, at minimum, embarrassing, and can actually be self-sabotaging. 

Recently though, I decided to cut out the negative self-talk and instead accept myself as I am. Over time, I’ve developed strategies to work around my limitations, and you can use these methods to reframe your own relationship with money in the new year. 

Hide money from yourself   

If you’re not tightly tracking your accounts, you can’t know when you’ve reached your own spending limit, so I put backup plans in place for myself.

It’s why I drove to a credit union after the Great Plumbing Mishap: I have several accounts for which I have no paperwork, no associated debit or credit cards, and no paper statements to haunt my mailbox. To access your accounts, all any bank needs from you is a state-issued ID. 

So get out there and find yourself an interest-bearing savings account. When you open it, take care to avoid any regular online or paper trail. Then, when the plumbing hits the fan, you aren’t left standing in financial hot water with no emergency fund to dip into.  

A reminder, though, unless your money is in a federally insured financial institution, it’s not truly safe. And don’t keep cash in your house! Mattress money isn’t earning anything.

Lastly, should you emerge from a coma with amnesia or, sadly, you die, no one will be able to figure out your labyrinth of finances. Consider writing it all down and putting it into a safe deposit box. If the only evidence of your finances exists in your own brain, you’re not going to have any way to pay the hospital bill when (or if?) you get out of that coma. 

Automate everything, and set reminders when you can’t

My 401(k) contributions sneak out of my paycheck before I ever see them, tax-free. I don’t miss the money and plan to thank myself in my later years. I chose a Roth IRA because taxes are taken out now, so I won’t have to pay out later when I will still be the same person: mad at taxes, but with grayer hair. As for investments, I never look at account statements, which is how I sleep soundly even when the stock market takes a dive.  

For bills, I choose autopay whenever I can so I never have to risk an accidentally missed payment because I didn’t open the mail. If I can’t autopay it, I pay any remaining bills out of only one bank account because there is absolutely zero chance I will log onto multiple websites every month. 

And I set lots of reminders. Knowing I’ll never visit my online bank accounts for funsies, I electronically remind myself to make payments or stop subscriptions — basically anything that’s not automated.

Use Venmo (or another peer-to-peer payment method) as sock money
When someone pays me back for something, I leave it there, and that becomes my hidden money for salon visits or other small luxuries. Note: Actual financial experts will tell you not to keep money here, so cash out anything above the amount you plan to spend in the near future.  

Hire a tax professional!

Taxes are again upon us — ugh. I happily pay a pro to do my taxes each year — they save me more than their fee costs. No more tax-time stress spirals for me. Or you, in 2025.

My fellow financial avoidants, in your financial life as with all of life, embrace the ways in which you are different and strategize for the type of person you really are. Now look at you! You’re a perfectly competent person with secret money. 

Susan Burns works in the communications department at SAFE Credit Union in Sacramento, where she regularly writes about personal finance. This is the first time she has written about her own, highly flawed, relationship to money.  

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