Some people struggle with a compulsive need to save money. Even when their income is more than adequate, they feel as if any expense on present desires would be reckless. They see their peers fail to save for the future, and it redoubles their resolve. Some of them aspire to an early retirement, socking away their earnings in pursuit of a specific number that means “safety,” or “success,” or “freedom”—forgetting that retirement (especially an early one) tends to cause a crisis of meaning, when the intrinsic rewards of working are suddenly subtracted from life.

Of course, there’s much to be said for financial prudence, but what I’m talking about is the extreme version, where the saver begins to suffer from money anxiety, far beyond what the real circumstances impose. This can take the form of missing out on too many things, but it can also involve a partner’s distress—not just because the person won’t buy gifts or take vacations, but because they inflict too much criticism about the other person’s spending habits. In a relationship, constant penny-pinching can build resentment. And if one partner always takes the role of money saver, the other will have a hard time avoiding being cast in the role of money spender. When the saver talks as if spending and wasting were the same thing, the spender will be at risk for shame and guilt. Those are bad for the relationship.

The proverbial phrase “penny-wise and pound-foolish” is useful here (a Britishism, where a pound is worth a hundred pennies). But suppose the miser is prudent on both levels, saving money in matters both large and small. There is still a sense in which the phrase applies, because most expenses are less important than the emotional well-being of yourself and those closest to you—especially if you have a partner, and even more so if you have children. If you’re managing money well enough that your income covers your expenses and permits you to save or invest some of each paycheck, it might be penny-wise, but pound-foolish, to refuse to take your partner out on a date. That’s because the relationship is worth pounds, not mere pennies, and paying for shared pleasant experiences in the present is a form of investment in the relationship’s future.

Not only that, but the present is, strictly speaking, all we have. Aside from the fact that we might somehow die tomorrow, the present is the living flame of experience, where we are, and its claim on our resources inheres in the truism that this, too—not just the future we’re so worried about—is life itself.

Suppose you are struggling with excessive frugality, to the point where your partner feels nagged and demeaned by your bids for total financial control. You find yourself commenting on their every purchase, even though you realize the pain and anger this tends to cause. How can you stop yourself from saying this kind of stuff?

Well, here’s an exercise that may help. Imagine yourself one year in the future. You’ve now made about a hundred more remarks concerning your partner’s spending habits, their specific purchases, and their ideas about money, remarks that sprang from your anxiety and impulsivity. You rationalized your behavior by focusing exclusively on the fact that the money you were trying to save is, ultimately, for the both of you (for your family, whether it’s just the couple, or more). But now, one year on, you can plainly see how much accumulated suffering this has caused, how much distance it has put between you and the other(s) whom you love. You wish you had a time machine—you see where I’m going with this—to undo the piteous waste of closeness and harmony that you squandered in all that worrying. Well, here you are, back in the present, with those twelve months still stretching out ahead, unspoiled by any thoughtless utterance or grim withholding. How will you use this second chance?

Of course major purchases and big-ticket decisions will still require some discussion, some ambivalence, and some math. But in the small matters that crop up so frequently—stuff that costs less than 1 or 2 percent of a paycheck—you have a richesse of opportunities to let go, stay quiet, and smile on the process. For example, suppose your partner has just a brief moment free (between work and school, or childcare and eldercare, or housework and rehearsal, etc.) to grab a few necessities, and buys them at a big box store, instead of the 99 cent shop you’re sure is much cheaper. They could have spent $7 less and gotten the same stuff. Well, that $7 is not going “out the window.” It’s being invested in the relationship. You make the investment by giving up this one little nugget of control, and prizing the other person’s effort over your own vision of perfect prudence. As you watch yourself respond (rather than react), choose gratitude for the labor they did running errands, not anxiety about the price tag. Getting the job done should count for more than doing it perfectly.

When was the last time you took your beloved out to dinner? Can you afford to? If so, remember that this moment, too, is life. The present counts at least as much as the future will. And though you must save some for tomorrow, you should also spend some for today, lest it be remembered as a time of anxious austerity that could have been better, but wasn’t. Live your life, not your fears.

If this post resonates with you, consider booking an appointment with me at 917-873-0292, or email Jamey@drjameyhecht.com. Sessions are available in-office in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and remotely in NY, NJ, TX, and CA.

We think of motivation as something driven by discipline. Often it is just that, a pressurized pushing and shoving from behind, away from the possible bad consequences of our inaction. As someone like Jordan Peterson is happy to remind us, discipline guards against the perils of what some people call laziness. But discipline is not the only form of motivation.

Rather than being pushed from behind, away from the failure we dread, we can be drawn forward from in front, led onward by curiosity, fascination, and a desire to explore the world. I do not believe in laziness. I think what we call laziness is actually internal conflict, a pattern in someone’s functioning, not a trait of his or her nature. If together we can bring the conflict into focus, you can position yourself to make more free, informed choices about what it is you actually want to do with your opportunities. “All you have to do,” as Gandalf said to Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, “is decide what to do with the time that is given to you.”

I had a teacher years ago—a brilliant, soulful teacher of Ancient Greek, the late Jack Collins—whose maxim was “To row is human; to sail, divine.” Of course it was a play on the old proverb “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” What he meant was that there’s a place for discipline, and it’s often necessary, especially near the beginning of a project. But after discipline has done its work, after it’s gotten us launched, rowing our boat away from land, pushing on the oars, there comes a time when discipline is no longer needed, and the serious joy of the work takes its place. When you row a boat, there’s a 1:1 correspondence between the effort you invest, and the result you get. Shove on the oars this much, and the boat lurches forward so much as a result. But when we sail, we hoist the canvass, and thereafter the job is just to maintain the right relationship to the wind—a mighty force, for whose creative power we are not responsible. The wind is a free-flowing, abundant aspect of the environment, and the sailor(s) work is to keep the sail so oriented that the ship can move in the desired direction under the wind’s wild, natural power. Rowing is no longer necessary. One unit of effort can now yield much more than one unit of progress.

Reading books, or writing them, works the same way. At first, you’re counting how many pages you’ve read since you sat down; how many minutes you’ve been reading; what chapter you’re up to; and so on. But then you get successfully caught by the unfolding story, and you forget about all that counting and measuring. You read on because you want to know what happens next; because you care about the main character; because the story is carrying you along. Of course it isn’t only our intellectual tasks that work this way. So do a great many more of our human endeavors…

Therapy is sometimes a form of rowing out, away from the familiar shores of our trouble, and toward the open world, where there are currents and breezes that we can harness for our purposes if we can find the right balance of humility, self-knowledge, and ambition. To row is human; to sail, divine.

If this post resonates with you, consider booking an appointment with me at 917-873-0292, or email Jamey@drjameyhecht.com. Sessions are available in-office in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and remotely in NY, NJ, TX, and CA.