Guilt is Expensive
Not feeling enough will cost you everything.
A friend called me, breathless with excitement.
She wanted to treat her partner, her rock and constant through some of the hardest years of her life. She said, "He deserves something beautiful. Something big."
She had picked out a necklace. It was $7,000. She didn't have the money. She was thinking of opening a credit card.
Here's what I've learned working with clients on time and money: both reveal our deepest stories about worth. And those stories often drive us toward choices that feel urgent but take us further from what we actually want.
I paused. She kept talking about how much he had done, how she just wanted to show him he mattered.
And then it happened. That tiny, almost invisible shift.
Her voice got quiet.
"I just feel like I haven't done enough... for a long time."
There it was. The truth.
The kind that gut punches the air out of your lungs when you finally say it out loud.
This necklace wasn't just for him. It was a peace offering to herself. A way to soothe the shame of not being able to contribute for a while. She wasn't just buying a gift. She was trying to buy her way out of guilt.
And that moment cracked something open in both of us.
Because don't we all do that sometimes? We spend money (and time) as a way of proving something.
That we're enough. That we're not behind. That we're still lovable. That we matter.
We call it love. We call it generosity. We call it "treating" someone.
But sometimes it's actually a distraction from the hurt underneath.
As we talked more, I asked her gently what she really wanted. Without skipping a beat, she said: "A home. I just want a place where we can finally breathe."
That necklace? It would have taken her further from the one thing she craved most. Just like when we say yes to commitments we don't have time for because we're afraid of disappointing people, we end up disappointing ourselves.
Morgan Housel writes in The Psychology of Money:
"Financial success is not about knowledge. It's about behavior."
The same is true for time. You don't need another productivity app or budgeting spreadsheet. You need to understand the emotions driving your choices. The stories you're telling yourself when you swipe that card or say yes to one more thing.
Because when you're clear on your why, when you know what you're really building toward, you stop chasing things that don't fit the life you're trying to create.
And that clarity? That's where real wealth lies.
This week, take 10 minutes and journal on:
What am I calling a gift that might actually be guilt?
What emotion was underneath the last big purchase I made?
What do I really want and are my daily choices moving me closer or further from it?
Let your answers surprise you. Let them soften you. Let them guide you back to what matters.
Some of you reading this know you're ready to dig deeper. You're tired of the patterns that keep you stuck, spending money you don't have and time you can't spare on things that don't align with who you're becoming.
If you want support making the real, hard changes, (the kind that shift how you move through your days and dollars) I'm here. I'm taking on a few one-on-one coaching clients who are ready to do this work.
Comment below and let me know what's one pattern with time or money that you're ready to change?
Melissa K Lowe