Emotional Money Choices

My wife and I are savers, and I like to think we make mostly rational financial choices. But there are a few less than rational things we do with money that make us happier. I’m not saying it’s irrational to seek happiness, but the reasons for these choices are definitely on the emotional side.

Over-saving for retirement

We saved quite a bit more than we needed to retire to the life we want. We could have quit our jobs earlier, but nagging doubts about whether we had enough drove us to work longer. It’s quite reasonable to save some extra as a buffer, particularly if you have a high-paying job and you’d make much less trying to re-enter the workforce years later. However, we went well beyond a reasonable safety buffer.

But if we hadn’t over-saved, we would have felt uncomfortable, and we likely would have reduced spending on pleasures like travel. So, given our conservative financial natures, I think we made the right choice, even if it is somewhat emotional.

Large savings account

In an attempt to balance our individual net worths, we’ve saved my wife’s income and spent from mine. A side effect of this choice is that money needs to flow from accounts I control to accounts my wife controls. When she has to ask me for money, it makes her feel a little like she’s begging and has to justify her spending.

As far as we’re both concerned, all the money we have belongs to both of us, but this feeling of being less like an adult remains if she has to ask me for money. So, we opened an EQ savings account that pays good interest and filled it with enough cash that she won’t have to ask for money for more than a year. We consider this cash to be part of the fixed-income part of our portfolio.

We’d probably make a little more interest if we moved some of this cash to GICs, but the trade-off is worth it to us.

Real-time safe spending level

I created a spreadsheet that calculates our safe monthly spending level using near real-time market data. It’s good to know how much you can safely spend from your portfolio, but seeing the amount change in near real-time is clearly overkill.

However, when markets start dropping enough that it becomes a subject of conversation with friends and on social media, we tend to start having those nagging doubts about whether we’re spending too much. Being able to look at the spreadsheet and see a monthly spending figure that’s still clearly above what we spend gives us peace of mind. I think we’d likely curtail spending if we didn’t have the spreadsheet.


Whether we call these choices emotional or irrational, we’ve found they make our lives better. To those with different money personalities, these choices might seem strange, but I suspect we all make some financial choices to compensate for our emotional sides.