6 money habits that could be a sign of emotional problems

How do you feel when the time comes to split the bill in a restaurant? Are you happy to let your partner see receipts for what you’ve bought after a shopping spree? How comfortable are you asking for a pay-rise at work?

Your answers to these questions might be able to tell you something significant about your psychology. They could even reveal something that is making you unhappy.

Just as in other areas of our lives - like our personal relationships or our eating habits - the way we behave with our money can be a reflection of our emotions, often driven by childhood experience.

Vicky Reynal has seen this up close in her work as a psychotherapist who has made issues involving money her specialty.

“The people that come to see me come with a presenting problem related to money,” Vicky told me in a recent interview for the Personal Investor podcast. “They might come because they find they consistently self-sabotage financially, or they are too greedy, or they can’t enjoy their money without feeling guilty. There might be money secrets or conflict in families and couples over money.”

As well as working as a psychotherapist in a private practice and the NHS, Vicky is a regular contributor in the national press, This is Money and ITV for example, and has written a book - Money on Your Mind - about the psychology behind our financial habits. You can watch our conversation in full where we gather some of the most revealing insights from our interview, including the money habits and behaviours that could suggest deeper emotional problems.

• Watch: What your money habits say about your psychology

Check the links underneath the video to subscribe for free and get the podcast downloaded direct to your device each week.

‘Can you bail me out – again?’

As Vicky explained in our interview, our money habits can be influenced by infant experiences. Inconsistent parenting as an infant can leave us with ‘anxious’ or avoidant’ attachment styles in adulthood that can govern how we behave in relationships.

We can unconsciously use money as a tool to control the world around us – to keep people far away or bring them closer.

“For example, you might see couples in which one person continues to self-sabotage financially”, she told me. “And when you start digging into what's going on, it's actually because they gain great relief when the other partner comes in and rescues them. It reassures that anxious part of them in relationships that always fears being abandoned or rejected.

“They want to know there's somebody there caring for them, looking after them, and that's why they're self-sabotaging.”

“I think we should keep our finances separate”

Unlike people who are anxiously attached, those with “avoidant attachment” may prefer to keep their distance from people and get uncomfortable when a relationship becomes emotionally intimate. This can arise if they have been denied sensitive responses to distress in infancy.

“If you take the avoidant attachment style, somebody will want to build a distance between themselves and the other because they feel like that's as close as they can get and still feel safe“, Vicky said.

“Sometimes they use money secrets. They have a secret account somewhere, or they simply insist on separate accounts because combining finances is yet another way in which they feel too much is getting merged. They don't feel safe in that dynamic.”

“I’m not a big spender – but I can’t help myself when it comes to those kids”

Vicky explained that inconsistencies in how we behave with money around different people can often be an indicator of emotionally driven behaviour.

“So if you say, for example, ‘I'm generally quite measured in my generosity, but when it comes to my grandchildren, I just can't hold back. I buy them everything’. That invites the question of what's going on there?

“What is it about the relationship with the grandchildren or even their own children? Are they compensating for something in their relationship with them? Or are they trying to remedy something from their past experience? Maybe your grandparents never bought them a gift and they want their grandchildren to have a different experience.”

Vicky explained that we might spend more money around certain friends, but not others.

“It has to do with how we imagine other people will respond to us. If we fear this particular person might exclude us. If we have a desire to please them. This might lie behind this overspending.”

“You can’t beat a bit of retail therapy!”

Extravagant spending on new things is a problem if it leads to debt. But even if you have the money to spend, habitual spending on certain items can indicate deeper unhappiness.

Vicky explained: “A lot of overspending can be about a desired magical transformation of the self. If we feel unlikable and unlovable, we might spend on items or surgeries or clothes that we imagine will make us feel more desirable. We hope that we'll come out of the changing room having truly changed the way others perceive us, or in the way in which we feel about ourselves.

Vicky gave the example of a client who couldn’t stop herself buying new handbags.

“One woman that I write about had a history of abandonments in her past. The thing that she was regularly spending on were luxury bags that she could barely afford. We started exploring - what is it? What is it about these items? And she said to me, ‘well, the bags stay. They don't leave you.’

“So what she was getting was this sense of being able to hold on to something, something of value that is mine. And that was somehow addressing that wound that she had of repeated disappointment.”

In other examples, overspending can result from growing up with parents who never managed their emotions adequately.

“We learn that instead of sitting with feelings and managing them, we need to take action. We become impulsive. We act and we spend.”

“There’s nothing wrong with counting the pennies!”

It can be good to be frugal with your money - but excessive underspending can have a very negative impact on our happiness. And there can be different explanations for it.

Vicky said: “One very striking example that I always use is of a client who was very wealthy. He made large sums of money, but he couldn't bring himself even to buy himself a coat. He was so miserly in his spending. And when we started digging into the history, there were a lot of factors that explained this difficulty in allowing himself to have good things.

“It can just be an aspect of self-denial. I use the term ‘financial anorexia’ - denying ourselves the good things that money can buy because there's something about that that feels satisfying - triumphing over our needs. Maybe in the past, we were told we were too needy or maybe we feel an internal need because emotionally we weren't fulfilled, and instead of feeling that we deny it and we triumph over it.”

For other people, being tight-fisted is caused by an emotional wound around fairness and sharing.

“Sometimes it comes from sibling dynamics”, Vicky said. “That's where we often learn what it means to share and how things can or cannot be fair. If that's not addressed or repaired it might manifest in our adult relationships and we can end up feeling, exploited in some way if we feel we have given money away.”

“Greed is good!”

The aggressive accumulation of wealth can be a sign of an unmet emotional need. Vicky described the compulsion in some people to always have more money as similar to the compulsion in others to comfort eat.

“If we use the food analogy, I've called the under-spender the financial anorexic. Greed is more like overeating. It's the person that just can't be filled. There's an inner void usually linked to an emotional deprivation in childhood that leaves them longing for more. That can be expressed through different symbols - for some people it's food, for other people, it's money. This can also see them stuck in cycles of overwork.”

“Sometimes I ask clients who never seem to have enough - ‘enough for what’? That question opens things up. Sometimes the response you get is – ‘enough to be taken seriously’. Self-worth and financial worth are linked in our minds.”

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Important information - investors should note that the views expressed may no longer be current and may have already been acted upon. This information is not a personal recommendation for any particular investment. If you are unsure about the suitability of an investment you should speak to one of Fidelity’s advisers or an authorised financial adviser of your choice.