The number you can't say out loud
What forty years of saving never taught you how to do
You know the number.
It’s the dollar amount that would feel like too much to spend on yourself this year.
The trip.
The renovation.
The gift to your daughter that’s bigger than your husband would approve of, if you still had to ask.
You know exactly what it is.
And you’ve never said it out loud.
I’ve sat across from women with $4 million, $6 million, $10 million, and more in savings and investments who can tell me their grocery budget down to the dollar but can’t bring themselves to say what they’d actually love to spend on what they actually want.
Oh, they know.
The problem is that saying it makes it real, and real feels reckless.
Here’s what most advisors will tell you: the math works.
You can afford it. Your plan supports it.
They’re not wrong.
They’re also not helping.
The math has never been the problem.
The problem is that nobody ever taught you how to spend money you’ve learned to accumulate and protect over the last 40+ years.
You were rewarded for saving and praised for not being the kind of woman who is irresponsible when it comes to money.
Now you’re sixty-seven, sitting on a portfolio that does its job whether you watch it or not, and the muscle you spent a lifetime building, the one that says not yet, not now, is the same muscle keeping you from the life your money was always for.
This pattern is what’s reckless.
Living small to protect money you’ll never spend is a slow surrender of the years that were supposed to be the whole point.
So here’s the assignment, and I mean it:
Pick the thing.
Say the number out loud.
To yourself, to your partner, to me if you want.
The trip, the gift, the renovation, the 2nd home — whatever’s been sitting in the corner of your mind for two (or twenty) years.
Saying it doesn’t commit you to anything.
Just say it.
The spell breaks on its own.
— Russ
P.S. Hit reply and tell me your number. I read every message. No advice back unless you ask — sometimes you just need to put it somewhere that isn’t your own head.