Michael used to sleep with his phone under his pillow—not because he was waiting for an important call, but because the vibration from his banking app alerts would jolt him awake. Another overdraft. Another minimum payment. Another “you’re out of money” moment that felt like failure.

By day, he was a charismatic twenty-nine‑year-old marketing manager with a magnetic LinkedIn profile and a talent for storytelling. By night, he was dodging collection calls, ghosting his student loan portal, and panic-refreshing his credit card balance before trying to buy groceries. He didn’t always live like this; it happened slowly. First came the student loans—he told himself everyone had them. Then the credit cards—just for textbooks, at first. Then Uber Eats, because he was too tired to cook after ten‑hour workdays. The car lease “to look professional.” The drinks to network. The vacations to “reward himself” for surviving burnout. The shame crept in quietly, disguised as lifestyle. As performance. As “normal.” But here’s the thing about shame: it loves secrecy. And the more Michael tried to fix it alone, the worse it got.

Research from the American Psychological Association shows that financial stress is one of the top contributors to anxiety and depression, especially among millennials and Gen Z. And when stress becomes chronic, it hijacks the brain’s executive functioning, which makes it harder to plan, act, or solve problems. In other words: stress about money exacerbates financial problems. And avoiding dealing with debt doesn’t mean you’re lazy—it means your nervous system is overwhelmed.

Michael kept telling himself, “I’ll open the bills tomorrow.” “I’ll fix this when I get a raise.” “Once I pay off one card, the rest will be easy.” But avoidance breeds more avoidance. And eventually, even opening his mailbox felt like a threat.

It wasn’t until he missed his sister’s birthday dinner—too embarrassed to say he couldn’t afford the meal—that the dam broke. He collapsed. Told a friend everything. And something surprising happened: instead of judgment, he got a story. The friend had been there too—once sobbing on the bathroom floor over an $18 overdraft fee. The pain Michael felt wasn’t his alone. Countless others had lived it; he just hadn’t known where to find help.

According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, seven in ten Americans say they’ve struggled with debt at some point—and a third say it negatively affects their relationships, health, and work. What’s rarely talked about, however, is how debt messes with identity. Michael didn’t just owe money. He felt like he was the debt. “I earn more than I ever thought I would—and I still feel like I’m drowning,” he said.

But debt isn’t a moral failure. It’s a complex mix of systemic pressures, emotional habits, and psychological conditioning. Michael learned that the first step wasn’t budgeting—it was compassion. He started small. He downloaded a debt-tracker app, but didn’t open it for three days. Just having it on his phone felt like progress. Naming the problem out loud took even longer. But eventually, Michael booked a session with a financial coach. He expected to be shamed. Instead, he was seen.

“I feel broken,” he admitted through tears.

The coach didn’t flinch. “Broken people don’t show up to sessions,” she said. “Brave ones do.”

Debt has a way of isolating people. It makes you feel like you’re the only one who’s screwed up. Like you should’ve known better. Like you don’t deserve help until you’ve “fixed it.” And among younger generations, the shame can be even more acute: a 2022 NerdWallet study found that 70 percent of millennials and Gen Z respondents said they feel embarrassed about their debt. Many avoid asking for help because they think they should already know what to do.

Michael didn’t need more willpower. He needed relief. And relief came when he stopped hiding—and reached out. His financial coach didn’t just give him a plan—she gave him a place to be honest without judgment. She helped him create systems; but more importantly, she gave him back his sense of agency.

Let’s be honest: most of us were never really taught how to manage money in a way that felt good. If you’re like me, you may have grown up hearing conflicting messages: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” “Work hard and save.” “Buy a home and you’ll be set.” And maybe, just maybe, “Make sure you marry rich.” That last one? It was something my mom actually said to me—often. She meant well. She was scared. And like so many women of her generation, she believed financial safety came from someone else.

I didn’t marry rich. I became the breadwinner. I became the one protecting what mattered. And over the years—through working in the financial industry, writing books, interviewing thousands of people, and standing on stages speaking to North Americans from every walk of life—I came to understand something vital: money isn’t just about math. It’s about emotions. It’s about stories. It’s about who we believe we are—and what we believe we deserve.

Millennials are the first generation expected to be worse off financially than their parents.

We are living in a time of seismic economic shifts. Housing prices are making homeownership out of reach. Jobs don’t come with pensions. Layoffs and side hustles are the new normal. And yet, most financial advice still clings to outdated rules made for a world that no longer exists. For many of us, the old formulas no longer add up. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Pew Research, millennials are the first generation expected to be worse off financially than their parents.

For women especially, there’s another silent challenge: confidence. Despite having equal—or in some cases, higher—financial competence, fewer than half of women globally say they feel confident making financial decisions. This confidence gap isn’t just frustrating—it’s costly. When we hesitate to take control, we risk missing opportunities, delaying important conversations or avoiding decisions altogether.

Maria used to walk around with her bank balance lingering like a low-grade fever in the back of her mind. Not because she didn’t earn enough—she did. She had a good job in health care, a modest condo she bought herself, and no debt outside of her mortgage. But every time she spent money—on a coffee, on shoes, even on birthday gifts—she felt a pang of guilt, like she was doing something wrong. It didn’t make sense. She was careful, organized, even frugal. But no matter what her spreadsheet said, Maria couldn’t shake the feeling that the financial floor might collapse at any moment.

At thirty-eight, Maria was a senior project manager at a multinational health care company, the first in her Filipino family to finish university, the go-to person for everyone in her life. She had the job. The title. A place of her own. A solid income. The meticulous spreadsheets. And the stress. There was the pride and panic she felt in equal measure every month when she transferred a few hundred dollars to her parents—not because they asked, but because it felt like a given. They had done so much for her, and now that she was “the successful one,” she felt responsible for helping, even if no one said it out loud.

There was the pang of shame when she’d pass a Zara on her lunch break and impulsively buy another blazer she didn’t need but could definitely justify. Or the way her stomach tightened when her friends talked about investing, because she had a savings account but didn’t really know what was in it. Maria wasn’t irresponsible. She was exhausted. And she couldn’t understand why someone so competent felt so anxious every time she logged into her online banking. It wasn’t until she started unpacking her money story that she began to understand: this wasn’t just about numbers. It was about history. Her history.

It happened one ordinary Saturday morning. Maria was helping her mom clean out an old filing cabinet stuffed with immigration documents, yellowed report cards, bank receipts, and a brown envelope labelled: “Western Union. 1992–2006.” Inside were dozens of money transfer slips—faded, thin, curling at the edges from time. “That’s how I sent money back to the Philippines,” her mom explained, sorting papers like it was nothing. “Every month, even when I was just cleaning offices.”

Maria held the stack in her hands, feeling its quiet weight. Paper memories of sacrifices no one had ever spoken about. Every month. Even when her mom was barely scraping by. Even when she was raising two kids alone. Even when she could barely speak English, working night shifts, cleaning buildings where no one ever learned her name. The math didn’t make sense. The love did.

Later that afternoon, Maria sat alone in her condo, staring at nothing. A thousand spreadsheets couldn’t have taught her what that envelope did. Her family hadn’t just passed down frugality; they had passed down something heavier: Fear. Duty. Survival. Money, in her household, had been both sacred and stressful. An invisible inheritance—etched into the silence, into the sacrifices never spoken aloud.

It wasn’t that Maria didn’t know how to budget. It was that her nervous system had been wired, quietly and lovingly, for sacrifice. No wonder she couldn’t hold on to money. No wonder security always felt temporary, conditional, borrowed. There was nothing wrong with Maria. She was carrying history in her bones.

This is the unspoken part of financial literacy—the part you don’t learn from your bank’s budget calculator or an investing seminar. The money stories we grow up with and silently internalize. These unconscious beliefs are known as money scripts, a term coined by financial psychologist Brad Klontz. Some examples include: “We can’t afford that.” “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” “People like us don’t do things like that.” These aren’t just throwaway lines. They’re programming. If we don’t challenge them, they become our reality. They seep into our bodies, our nervous systems, our instincts—long before we ever open a bank account or file a tax return. And without realizing it, we can spend decades following financial blueprints we didn’t even know we inherited.

Research from the University of Cambridge suggests that money habits are already set by age seven.

For many first- and second-generation immigrants, financial stories are also cultural stories. There’s pride in sacrifice, and a sense of duty to give back. And sometimes, there’s deep guilt about having “more” than your parents ever did. The stories we inherit about money are often invisible, but they run deep. They’re passed down through generations, absorbed in childhood, and reinforced by the world around us. And unless we consciously rewrite them, they become our financial DNA.

Neuroscience and behavioural economics tell us that early experiences with money shape our beliefs long before we’re conscious of them. Research from the University of Cambridge suggests that money habits are already set by age seven. These beliefs are encoded through repetition and emotion—two of the most powerful learning tools the brain has. We also know that financial behaviour is deeply emotional. According to a 2021 study from the Financial Health Network, financial stress is the number one source of anxiety for Americans—and that data holds similar patterns across the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. And yet, most people don’t trace those emotions back to origin stories. They just feel the tension.

This is why simply giving people more information rarely works on its own. You can know what you “should” do with money and still not do it. Because your emotional brain—the limbic system—is wired to prioritize safety, familiarity, and belonging over logic. That’s how a money story passed down in love can turn into a limitation passed down in silence.

It took time for Maria to find her footing. At first, she swung in the opposite direction. She froze all her giving and became rigid with her spending. She downloaded five budgeting apps. She took three online investing courses. She scheduled meetings with a financial advisor, a therapist, and a career coach—all in the same week. Classic overcorrection. But she quickly realized that being “good with money” wasn’t about controlling every dollar—it was about understanding the why behind her choices. She eventually began investing with more confidence, no longer waiting for some imaginary moment when she’d be “ready.”

Javier had always been the responsible one. The first in his family to graduate from university. The one who helped his parents translate their tax slips and navigate their retirement savings. The one who explained compound interest to his roommate and made laminated budget sheets for friends. He was the person others turned to for financial advice.

But when it came to investing? Javier stalled. “I feel like I should know this,” he admitted quietly to a colleague one day. “But I’ve never bought a single stock.” He didn’t even know the basics.

It wasn’t because he didn’t care. It was because he cared so much that it felt paralyzing. One wrong move, he feared, and he’d undo not just his own hard work but everything his parents had sacrificed for him. Everything they’d given up to offer him a shot at stability. He wasn’t just investing for himself. He was investing for a legacy. And that kind of pressure? It was heavy.

According to a 2023 Gallup poll, only 61 percent of Americans and 33 percent of Canadians own any stocks at all—directly or through mutual funds or exchange traded funds. And for younger adults or first-generation investors? The rates are even lower.

One major reason: fear of doing it wrong. Behavioural economists call this decision paralysis—when too many options, conflicting advice, or high perceived stakes make us freeze instead of act. Add in loss aversion (we feel the pain of loss more intensely than the pleasure of gain) and first-generation guilt, and it’s no wonder Javier felt stuck. Every scroll made it worse. TikTok screamed: meme stocks, options trading, crypto flips, infinite banking, real estate hacks, passive index funds, time the market, don’t time the market, buy the dip, be the dip?!

It was overwhelming. Even on Reddit’s r/personalfinance or r/stocks, the advice varied wildly depending on who you asked—or what their financial privilege had masked. Javier didn’t just feel uninformed. He felt underprepared.

Javier’s experience wasn’t unique. According to a 2023 Pew Research survey, nearly 40 percent of Gen Z investors say they’ve made financial decisions based on TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit—before speaking to a financial professional. A 2022 Ontario Securities Commission report found that, while digital platforms have increased access to financial content, they’ve also amplified misinformation, especially around speculative assets, like meme stocks and crypto. FOMO is a real behavioural trigger—and social media supercharges it. “When it feels like everyone else is getting rich overnight, your brain goes into survival mode,” says Klontz. “It’s less about greed and more about fear—fear of being left behind.”

Like many people who are afraid to get it wrong, Javier did what seemed safest. He waited. He told himself he’d invest “next year.” After he finished that course. After the market stabilized. After he felt more confident. Javier knew the facts. He’d read the stats. He knew that long-term investing—especially when done early and consistently—was one of the most powerful tools for wealth-building. So why wasn’t he doing it? Because investing isn’t just logical—it’s deeply emotional.

Behavioural economists, like Meir Statman, have shown that investing is never just a numbers game—it’s a mind game. Emotions, cognitive distortions, and subconscious scripts shape every decision we make. Javier wasn’t irresponsible. He was human. And the antidote was strategy.

Nearly 40 percent of Gen Z investors say they’ve made financial decisions based on TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit.

Javier wasn’t the only one feeling this way—and the data proves it. A 2022 Fidelity study found that 70 percent of young investors say they feel overwhelmed by investing jargon, and more than half avoid it entirely because they “don’t want to feel stupid.” The 2022 UBS “Own Your Worth” report found that even high-earning individuals—especially women—often delay investing due to lack of confidence, not lack of capability. And in Canada, an Investor Office report from the Ontario Securities Commission revealed that 43 percent of millennials say they don’t feel confident making investment decisions, even though most have access to the tools to start.

Javier decided to invest in himself first. He downloaded beginner-friendly investing books; The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel became a favourite. He signed up for newsletters like Canadian Couch Potato and The Motley Fool, opting for slow, steady voices over hype. And he met with a financial advisor. Not to hand over control, but to learn. To ask questions without shame. To build a strategy rooted in alignment, not adrenalin. “I didn’t want the next big thing,” Javier explained. “I wanted a plan that made sense for me.”

Javier finally understood that the secret wasn’t some magic stock tip. It was discipline. Consistency. Peace of mind. “Every time I invest,” Javier said, “I’m not just building wealth. I’m proving to myself that I’m capable. That I’m thinking long term. That I deserve peace.” This wasn’t just about money anymore. It was about identity. About seeing himself as someone who could grow, prepare, and protect—without needing to chase.

A year later, Javier’s portfolio wasn’t flashy—but it was growing. So were his confidence and his clarity. He still checked his accounts weekly, but not obsessively. He did quarterly reviews with his advisor, who had become more coach than calculator. More than anything, Javier had stopped looking for a miracle. He’d built something better: a mindset that could hold both fear and action.

Adapted and excerpted, with permission, from Save Yourself: A New Approach to Thinking about Money and Taking Control of Your Financial Future by Kelley Keehn, published by Douglas & McIntyre, 2025.

Kelley Keehn is an expert in the world of personal finance, a media personality, sought-after speaker, and popular author with a passion for helping readers transform their relationships with money. She lives in Toronto.