Learning to trust yourself with money again 🧭

Welcome to Inner Equity - my weekly newsletter about building financial confidence on the path to the life you want 🏡

Each week, we break down one meaningful money concept and leave you with an exercise that you can use to put it into practice.

This week, we’re looking at how to rebuild trust in your judgment after a financial mistake 👇️

A money mistake can keep shaping your decisions long after you’ve dealt with the bill. You remember what happened, and start treating it as evidence that you can’t trust yourself with money.

That’s a difficult belief to carry into every decision that comes next.

Say you put some money into a friend’s business a few years ago. You liked the idea, trusted the friend, and agreed before you understood how the business would make money or what could go wrong.

The business failed, and you lost the investment. 

Since then, you’ve described yourself as “someone who makes bad money decisions.” When your partner brings up your finances, you tell them they should handle it because they’re better at this stuff.

You still earn, save, and pay bills. But you’ve stopped participating in decisions you could learn to make, because participating means you might get something wrong again.

Now, the mistake does deserve an honest look. You committed money without understanding the arrangement, and trusted a relationship to answer questions you hadn’t asked.

But those are specific things you can change. “I’m bad with money” gives you very little to work with.

We sometimes hold on to that judgment because it feels responsible. 

But what did the reminder teach you this week? Did it help you ask a better question, or did it keep you from decisive action?

To help remedy this unhelpful pattern, choose something small enough to examine without pressure. 

Sit down with the household budget, ask about an account you’ve stopped looking at, or work through a decision with your partner instead of leaving the room.

You may still feel uncomfortable afterward. 

Let yourself notice that you followed through anyway, without demanding that one good afternoon erase a few years of doubt.

Set aside 20 minutes with a notebook and one financial decision you still hold against yourself.

1. Write down what happened: the decision, the amount involved, and the result. Describe it without using a label like “stupid,” “reckless,” or “bad with money.”

2. Separate what you knew then from what you learned later. Identify what was within your control, including any question you chose not to ask.

3. Write one rule you can use next time. Make it specific enough to follow, such as taking a day to review an offer privately before responding.

4. Choose one manageable action for this week that uses what you learned. If someone else was affected, include a conversation about what still needs to be repaired or followed through on.

Keep the review somewhere you can return to. When the old judgment comes up, you’ll have a more accurate account of what happened and a specific commitment to check against.