You’ve done everything right. The income is diversified, the systems are in place, the tracker gets updated weekly. By any reasonable measure, you’re ahead. So why, when you open the app, is there no satisfaction? Just a quick scan, a mental adjustment, and the familiar sense that you should probably be further along by now.
The optimisation trap
If you’re the Builder, you’re good at money. Very good, actually. The systems are running, the numbers are tracked, the goals are set and usually met. And still, you can’t stop tweaking. There’s always another savings target, another income stream to explore, another strategy to implement. The feed delivers a constant stream of women doing it faster, better, younger, and even though you know comparison is meaningless, the knowing doesn’t seem to help.
You don’t rest because rest feels like falling behind. And falling behind feels dangerous, even when “behind” is a completely invented position measured against strangers on the internet.
The quiet Financial FOMO
Maybe you’ve had this moment. You’re in bed, scrolling, and you see yet another “I hit £500k by 32” video. You close the app and, without thinking, open your banking app just to check. Nothing has changed in five minutes, but your heart rate has.
That’s Financial FOMO in miniature. The feed sets the bar, your nervous system panics, the optimiser jumps in to calm it down. It feels productive. It feels responsible. But it’s actually just anxiety looking for somewhere to land.
The success-anxiety loop
One psychologist describes a pattern he sees in high earners: you seek validation through achievement, the achievement gives brief relief, then anxiety about maintaining it kicks in and the whole cycle starts again. The higher you climb, the higher the bar moves. Success doesn’t resolve the anxiety. It deepens dependence on the next success.
This is why hitting the goal never feels like arriving. Because arriving was never really the point. The point, underneath, was managing a feeling. And feelings don’t respond to spreadsheets.
✦ Mini check-in: Are you the Builder?
☐ Rest feels like something you need to earn, and the earning is never quite enough
☐ There’s a number that would finally feel like “made it,” but it keeps moving
☐ You feel uncomfortable when you’re not actively working on your finances
☐ Your financial planning never gets to feel finished
☐ You compare your progress to people online, even though you know it’s not helpful
If you recognise yourself here, you’re not greedy or obsessive. You’re usually driven by something closer to fear: that the security you’ve built could disappear, that you’re not as far along as you should be, that there’s some version of “enough” you haven’t reached yet.
What the optimising protects you from
There’s something underneath the productivity, if you’re willing to look. Usually it’s a version of: if I stop, I’ll fall behind. If I fall behind, I’ll lose what I’ve built. If I lose what I’ve built, I won’t know who I am.
The money becomes tied to identity in a way that makes rest feel genuinely threatening. Doing nothing with a free afternoon feels irresponsible. Taking a holiday without checking the portfolio feels reckless. You’ve built a life where your worth is measured in forward motion, and now you can’t find the off switch.
✦ Make the offline day a ritual, not a test
Once a month, don’t check the numbers. No apps, no trackers, no portfolio updates. But give the day some shape so it doesn’t just feel like white-knuckling:
- Choose the day in advance and tell yourself: today, my money is allowed to exist without me
- Create a small anchor for the day: a walk, a book, a long bath, analogue planning
- When the urge to check hits, just note it: there’s the alarm again. Then return to what you’re doing
- Afterwards, jot down what came up: boredom, panic, unexpected relief
That’s the material you actually need to work with.
✦ Your own definition of enough
Write down what you actually want your money to do for you. Not what the feed says you should want. Not the early-retirement fantasy unless that’s genuinely yours.
Ask yourself:
- What would feel like enough, specifically, for my life?
- What would make the work feel worth it?
- What am I actually trying to buy with all this optimising?
The goal isn’t to lower your ambitions. It’s to make sure they belong to you and not to an algorithm.
Where this can go
If you’re the Builder, you’ve spent a long time learning how to accumulate. The next edge might be learning how to stop. And if this pattern feels entrenched, it’s worth exploring with someone who gets it. Money as a mirror, not a maths problem.
This is one of three patterns we see when financial anxiety dresses up as ambition. The others are the Careful One, who saves to feel safe, and the Curator, who shops to regulate. You might recognise yourself in more than one.