Financial Self-Care for Gen Z & Millennials: 12 Ways to Get Started
I am beyond thrilled (and a little fangirling) about a guest blogger, Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, from Mind Money Balance. Lindsay is a LMSW from Michigan who is well-respected in the financial therapy community. Her wisdom has graced the pages of NPR, The New York Times, Huffington Post, and beyond. She is passionate about helping people change their relationship with money (and leave their guilt behind). She has brought some super helpful tips to you all about financial self-care. How Self-Care Affects Mental Health
Self-care has been a buzzy term for the last decade or so, and while it’s been reduced to bath bombs and “hot girl walks,” self-care has actually been proven to help lower your stress levels, decrease the risk of illness and restore your energy reserves. According to SAMHSA, there are eight dimensions of wellness: emotional, spiritual, intellectual, physical, environmental, occupational, social, and financial.
The great thing about these eight dimensions of wellness is that they intersect with one another. In other words? If you focus on improving your social self-care, for example, carving out intentional time to hang out with friends to practice tai chi, there is a good chance you’ll experience benefits in other areas of your life, such as emotional, physical, and spiritual.
Financial self-care is the unique action steps or tasks that help you understand what’s happening in your financial life and make sure that the habits you have are moving you toward achieving your unique financial goals. When we practice financial self-care, there’s a good chance that it will positively impact your mental health. As a financial therapist, I’m passionate about helping people at the intersection of money and mental health.
Why Can’t Millennials or Gen Z Save Money?
No, Gen Z isn’t self-obsessed, and no, Millennials can’t save money for many reasons that have nothing to do with their willpower. In fact, according to a May 2023 Experien survey, Millennials and Gen Z want to save money, understand their credit, and have an active interest in improving their financial wellness. They also want to buy homes, but the increasing cost of homeownership, coupled with low inventory, makes buying a house out of reach. The old personal finance trope that tells young folks to stop shopping and eating out isn’t going to cut it: even if someone stopped buying that twice-weekly $6 latte, at the end of the year, they’d only have $624 saved, not anywhere close to having a downpayment for a house. It’s no wonder that Gen Z and Millennials are stressed!
Financial Self-Care Practices
Financial self-care allows you to take care of yourself in the dimension of “finances,” but it ripples out easily into other areas of wellness, such as emotional, intellectual, environmental, and social. Acts of financial self-care are individual tasks that can help you have a healthy relationship with your money. The great thing about financial self-care is that no one act is too small. I’ve curated a great list for anyone, but especially helpful for Millennials and Gen Z folks.
Take Yourself on a Money Date
A money date is a time you dedicate to specifically review what is happening in your financial life. Items you might want to review include your monthly income and expenses (to make sure there are no hidden subscriptions or duplicative fees you are paying), checking your credit score (more to come on financial self-care item number seven), looking at how much you have set aside for retirement, and how much debt you have. There are a few things to keep in mind with a money date: keep it short but keep it regular. “Regular” can be different for everyone. For some people, they like to look at their money daily. For others, they like to look weekly or monthly, but just having that consistent cadence of checking in can help you feel less overwhelmed by your finances and trust that you’ll check in with your finances in the figure, too.
Use Automation
One of the best ways to work toward financial goals is to automate as much of your financial life as possible. Put your bills on autopay, set up automatic transfers from your checking to your vacation savings (Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, anyone?), and signing up to have your retirement contributions increase annually. Carve out a little bit of time to get automation set up, and put an entire segment of your financial life on autopilot.
Talk About Money
Connect with your family, friends, or folks on the internet about money. Money shame, the internal feeling that you are bad with money, dominates the personal finance space when it comes to women and money and can make it hard to engage with personal finances. Choose a topic, such as negotiation in the workplace or being a first-time home buyer, and start chatting!
Host a Swap Party
Coordinate your friends or neighbors around and host a swap party! A swap party is when you gather folks together and ask everyone to bring items that they aren’t using or loving anymore. The caveat is that they must be items in good enough condition to be comfortable to swap with someone else. To make it the most impactful, have a theme. For example: professional clothing, home goods, or baby items.
Round Up!
Similar to tip number 2, enrolling in apps automatically round up your purchases and can help you save. Apps like these (Acorns is the OG in the “Round Up” arena, but there’s also Chime’s “Save When I Spend” feature and the “Round Up” feature by Quapital) allow you to tell your bank to round up your purchases to the nearest dollar, putting those extra coins into a dedicated savings account.
Practice Community Care via Swaps
Community care means practicing intentional mutual support with others. Rather than hiring a dog walker off an app or outsourcing grocery shopping, think about swapping petsitting services, babysitting, meal prep, and other acts of mutual aid. This not only helps you practice financial self-care by saving money, but you can deepen the connection to others in your area.
Understand Your Credit
Credit scores seem convoluted and confusing, but increasing your 3-digit credit score can help you access lower interest rates on loans, secure better housing, and more. Sign up for a free service like Credit Karma or Credit Sesame to learn what your current credit score is, and follow along with those services as they provide tips to help you increase your score, too.
Journal to Practice Financial Gratitude
Pause to acknowledge how far you’ve come financially, what your money affords you, and the little wins you’ve won. If you aren’t a journaler, then simply stating in your head the financial things you are grateful for counts. For example, “I’m grateful I have money to buy my dog her special food every month,” or “I have gratitude for my friends who will go on walks with me instead of only meeting up at happy hour.”
Find Supportive Money Books and Podcasts
Thankfully, there are so many amazing books and podcasts specifically tailored to meet the unique needs of Gen Z and Millennials. Some of my favorite books are Finance for the People, Money Out Loud, and I Will Teach You To Be Rich. For podcasts, I love How to Money, So Money, and Popcorn Finance. BONUS! Corral some of your besties and create a money book club: choose a money book that you can check out from the library and chat with your friends about what you learned!
Get Creative With Your Savings Accounts
Instead of “Savings Account -3673,” or whatever generic name your bank defaults your account to, rename it according to what that savings account is for. If it’s an emergency fund, rename it a “Safety Net” fund. A savings account for a rescue kitty becomes the “Humane Society Account.” When we get specific about financial goals, we are more likely to stick with the habits we need to achieve those money goals.
Celebrate Your Milestones
While practicing financial gratitude is a great way to practice financial self-care, go on and brag a little! Get out the champagne flutes and top them with Topochio to toast with friends when you’ve landed a new job, break out the good chocolate when you update your resume or take a celebratory drive with a friend when you’ve paid off your car!
Get A Good Therapist
Therapy for Millennials and Gen Z folks can be short-term to work through a particular problem or life stressor, or it can be longer to have someone available as you navigate life. When you start practicing financial self-care, it’s not uncommon for other areas of your life to need additional support, too. Finding a therapist as a Gen Z or Millennial can feel overwhelming, but search for therapists who have shared values. For example, there are therapists who specialize in working with resilient Millennial women or therapists who help out Gen Z folks who’ve experienced trauma.
Get Started with Self-Care Practices
This list of twelve ways to help you practice financial self-care is just the tip of the iceberg. The purpose of sharing this list is to help you understand various financial self-care practices to help you get your mind and money in balance. You don’t have to meticulously track each penny that comes in and out of your Venmo account, but you can start taking ownership of your relationship with money by getting intentional about your financial goals and habits.
More About Lindsay Bryan-Podvin
Lindsay (she/her) is a financial therapist, a woman of color, an author, and the founder of the financial wellness company Mind Money Balance. A practicing LMSW since 2012, she uses a shame-free approach to help people get their minds and money in balance by focusing on the intersection of money and mental health. While financial literacy is important, she champions the belief that money is rooted in emotions and impacted by the systems around us. When she’s not nerding out on the emotional and psychological side of money, you can usually find her walking her dog and listening to an astrology podcast or curled up with a big bowl of popcorn watching Bravo TV.
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