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“I don’t know what I’m doing when it comes to managing my money.”
“I don’t deserve to be earning/saving/spending as much as I am.”
“I just know I’m going to screw this all up eventually anyway.”
These are some of the thoughts that run through my head whenever I open my banking app or check my credit score — me, a personal-finance reporter at The Wall Street Journal. My confidence in my job and my confidence in my own finances are two different things. And I’m not alone in feeling insecure about managing my own money.
As we discuss career trajectories and feelings of social belonging, many in my millennial generation are familiar with “impostor syndrome,” the phenomenon of doubting your own hard-won success and feeling like a fraud in certain spaces. This kind of self-destructive thought pattern can also infiltrate our feelings about our finances — and all too often does for millennials.
An expanded version of this story appears on WSJ.com.
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