Your closet is missing that coat you never bought.
Absent from your calendar is the full-day spa visit you keep putting off.
Not because you couldn’t afford either one.
Because some part of you isn’t sure you’re allowed.
You can afford the cabin with the balcony. You book the one without a view.
You can afford to fly first class. You buy the coach ticket and tell yourself it’s practical.
At dinner, you skip the appetizer that has your mouth watering.
You order the second-cheapest glass of wine. You can afford the good one, but it feels like breaking an unwritten rule to choose it.
I see this same pattern show up again and again: in married couples, in widows, in women dealing with divorce.
People who could comfortably spend 25%, 50%, sometimes 100% more than they currently do.
Two numbers, one retirement paycheck
Many financial plans I build with clients have two spending numbers.
The first is the number you’ve become comfortable spending. The number you’ve settled into, sometimes without thinking.
The second is the amount you can comfortably spend each month. This depends on your income, savings, and lifestyle.
I call this your retirement paycheck.
For many of the people I work with, these two numbers aren’t close, and inertia is almost always the reason why.
A confession
I’ll admit something here: I’m fairly frugal myself.
I’ve built my career helping people enjoy their money. But I often struggle to follow my own advice when it comes to spending.
Writing this week’s essay, I had to ask myself the same questions I’m about to ask you.
The habit that built the wealth
For most of your working life, saving was the focus.
Save more. Spend less.
Watch your money pile up.
You kept saving, year after year, and you got good at it.
Retirement changes the rules.
The primary goal isn’t to keep growing your money.
It’s to use it.
And the discipline that made you a great saver doesn’t automatically know how to become a good spender.
You never trained that muscle.
Why would you have?
I touched on this once before, in passing, in a piece called Living Rich vs Dying Rich.
Many people reach retirement and find it hard to switch from saving to spending. This change can make some savers more frugal and worried when their paycheck stops.
The deferred life plan
Ask most people why they haven’t loosened up their spending, and you’ll hear some version of:
I’ll feel more comfortable spending next year.
Once things settle down.
Once I know for sure I won’t need it.
It’s like saying you’ll start living once you retire.
But now you’re retired, and your goalpost has moved again.
Lawrence Yeo describes this trap as the Nothingness of Money.
It’s making sacrifices for a future that always seems out of reach. Eventually, the sacrifices become the main focus, and the future never arrives.
This is almost always fear, masquerading as prudence.
What if I run out?
What if I’m not going to be okay?
What if I make the wrong decision at the wrong time?
All fair questions.
But if your plan already addresses them, and for many of the people I work with, it does, you’re probably spending in fear.
Test it, don’t flip a switch
I’m not suggesting anyone go from careful to reckless overnight.
Nobody rewires forty years of habit in a weekend.
Try something smaller.
In a previous article, I discussed money dials.
Pick one.
Turn it up by 50 to 100 percent for a month.
Try spending $80 or $100 on a birthday gift for your grandchild instead of the usual $40.
See how it makes you feel.
If you usually book the interior cabin, book the one with the balcony next time.
Keep it small. This is a test, not a lifestyle overhaul.
Then pay close attention.
Not whether you enjoyed it, but what came up while you decided.
If it felt easy and natural, that’s useful information.
If it made you anxious or fearful, that’s useful information too.
Get curious about where the anxiety comes from.
Sometimes, it connects to a lesson about money you learned as a kid but never thought to question.
And if you do run a test, keep it a test.
One nicer dinner or one travel upgrade is data. Feedback.
A spending spree is different. The goal is to learn about yourself, not to compensate for past frugality in one weekend.
Retiring the muscle that got you here
The saving muscle isn’t the villain in this story.
It’s the reason you have a spending choice to make at all.
Forty years of using it built the wealth that makes this whole conversation possible.
But a muscle built for one job doesn’t automatically know how to do a different one.
You’re allowed to be proud of the discipline and still decide it’s done its job.
It’s time to let it rest, at least a little, now that you’re retired.
Ask yourself this
What are you waiting for? What’s the future trigger or event that will allow you to begin spending more comfortably?
What fear lies beneath your spending decisions? Not the story you tell yourself or how you rationalize it in your head, but the real thing that scares you?
Do you spend based on lessons you learned about money long ago from parents and grandparents?
If your portfolio balance doubled tomorrow, would you actually spend (and live) differently?
Bottom line
You spent decades saving and building wealth.
Paying down debt.
Living well within your means.
What you do with it now is a different skill, and it’s a skill worth practicing on purpose, starting today.
If you want to discuss your retirement paycheck, hit reply or reach out anytime.
And if someone in your life could use this same nudge, feel free to pass it along.
Until next Wednesday,
Russ
P.S. — If you try your own money dial test this month, I’d genuinely love to hear how it went. Hit reply and share your story.