Is Financial Anxiety Hurting Your Relationship?
Financial Anxiety is defined as a pervasive, always present sense of worry about all or most financially related decisions in your life. Every person experiences financial stress in their lives (e.g. an unexpected expense, a job loss, or a pay cut). However, people who have Financial Anxiety are those who continue to experience worry even after the financial stressor has been removed or ameliorated. For example, a financial stressor of a job loss would certainly cause worry in most people, which would then dissipate after a person is able to secure another job. However, for people who have Financial Anxiety, they continue to experience the same — or even worse — feelings of worry related to finances, even after obtaining employment again.
So how can you tell if you have Financial Anxiety or if you are simply experiencing financial stressors?
The Financial Anxiety Scale (Shapiro and Burchell 2012) is a wonderful tool that can help us answer precisely this question. This 10-item questionnaire is used in research to help identify the level of Financial Anxiety someone is experiencing.
For each item, assign a number of your experinece: 1 = Never; 2 = Rarely; 3 = Sometimes; 4 = Often; 5 = Always
I feel anxious when I think about my financial situation.
I have difficulty sleeping because of my financial worries.
Thinking about money makes me feel stressed or overwhelmed.
I avoid checking my bank account balance due to fear of what I might find.
I worry that I won't be able to meet my financial obligations.
My financial situation negatively impacts my daily life and well-being.
I feel physical symptoms (e.g., headaches, stomach issues) due to financial stress.
I struggle to concentrate on work or daily tasks because of financial worries.
I feel embarrassed or ashamed about my financial situation.
I avoid talking about money because it makes me uncomfortable or anxious.
While there is no clinical cutoff for the Financial Anxiety Scale, this tool can be really helpful as a guide for assessing if you, or your spouse or partner, is having difficulty with Financial Anxiety.
The impact of Financial Anxiety on your relationship can be significant (a 2025 study cited that it was listed as the primary reason for 41% of Gen X divorces). The sooner you identify Financial Anxiety in either you, or your partner, the better chance you will have of being able to change the way you both feel and communicate about finances.
If you — or someone you know — needs help having these conversations, reach out! Financial Couples Therapy helps improve your communication around finances and can help directly mitigate the negative impact of Financial Anxiety through pragmatic tools and working through the emotions of financial conversations.