Dr. Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas, joins Broadcast Retirement Network to reveal the hidden toll of financial anxiety. Transcript: Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Joining me now is Dr. Stephanie Zepeda. Dr. Stephanie, I should say, it’s good to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning. Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas I’m so happy to be here, Jeff. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network I’ll tell you what, I’m very happy to have you. Thanks so much for making time because I know you know this and this is why I reached out to you or we reached out to you. It’s very difficult. Affordability is a big challenge. Many people are having a difficult time making ends meet but it’s creating a very, very, very stressful situation that’s affecting people’s mental health. So I wanted to get your reaction to that and tell us what you’re seeing with your own practice of financial therapy, Texas. Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas Right, it’s something where, I wanna make a clarification between there’s financial stress and financial anxiety. Financial stress, everyone has financial stress. The water heater breaks, a car repair has to happen, you need a dental work that you didn’t have as a budget line item. So financial stressor being experienced, you’re gonna get a little bit of energy around that and you’re going to be feeling a little concerned about it but then after the stressor is over, after you figure out how to pay for the repair and what’s gonna happen, the energy tends to go away. You return to baseline. Clarifying that with financial anxiety is you are anxious even when a stressor is not there, right? And that’s someone who’s just maybe hypervigilant about money and really scared outside of the presence of a financial stressor, an immediate financial stressor. What we’re seeing now is that maybe someone was financially anxious before all of this economic disruption but now we’re seeing financial stressors being really omnipresent, just all the time being there between gas prices impacting absolutely everything from the food we eat to the way that we commute, prices of everything increasing. We’re seeing that and it’s in our daily life so the stressors are up. So even the cohort of people who weren’t financially anxious are experiencing financial anxiety all the time because of how present financial stressors are. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network So as a follow-up to that and thank you for that clarification, how does it manifest itself? I mean, we’re all humans, we’re all individuals, we all handle the response to stress and anxiety differently but how are you seeing it manifest itself maybe among the patients that you see every day? Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas It can actually vary quite a bit. Some folks like to dive in and they say, okay, I’m feeling this financial stress. I’m going to know every single expense, I’m going to budget every single line item and I wanna have my vigilance, I’m gonna be really vigilant. Other people tend to do financial avoidance. I don’t wanna look at my credit card bill, I don’t wanna look at anything and in fact, one form of financial avoidance can actually be to spend more money. There’s this really interesting paradox happening where everyone’s feeling the squeeze but we are spending more, we are spending more going out to eat, we are spending more on travel and I think that that’s more this financial avoidant behavior of, oh yeah, everything’s on fire right now but I’m not going to look at it. And so what’s really interesting, so at Financial Therapy Texas, the majority of folks that I help are couples and it tends to be the people who are financially vigilant and their response to financial anxiety is to really zoom in, tend to be married to the people who are financially avoidant. And so that’s not only causing mental health struggles but it’s also causing relational conflict. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, well, I guess they say opposites attract. Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas We sure do, yeah. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network So, and let’s talk about that for a second because look, the last thing we want is for couples to break up and money can be a source of major, oftentimes, at least from what I read, is that when couples are struggling, it can just tear the fabric of a marriage or a relationship apart. How do you help people put that aside because that is so detrimental to people personally but also they have children, that’s not a good thing either. Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas Right, 100% and that’s actually part of why I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist and I just kept seeing it with my couples this presence of money as a conversation they’re not really having. And in the first seven years of, when they look at divorce statistics, the most commonly cited reason for divorce is financial in the first seven years, after seven years, it’s other things, but it’s very pervasive. And so one of the things that I love doing with my couples, you have the person who’s more zoomed in and financially focused and then the other person who’s maybe a little bit more avoidant. I like them to look at what’s the strengths in both of y’all’s perspectives. The person who’s a little bit more frugal and focused on being hypervigilant, well, they’re gonna keep things safe. They’re gonna make sure that you don’t overspend unintentionally. They’re gonna make sure that, hey, if we have to go into debt for something, what’s our debt payment plan? How are we gonna adjust our spending accordingly? They’re gonna keep things safe. The more carpe diem YOLO person, they’re gonna keep things fun. They’re gonna make sure that you don’t live life in a restricted sense, right? Now, each side, although they both have their good qualities, also have some things that they need to be looking for. So for the person who’s really frugal and really focused on things, are you sure that you are including the partner in the conversations? Are you sure that you are letting them understand your concerns and your worries? Or are you just taking things out on them? Because sometimes it can come across as very judgy. For the person who’s more carpe diem and YOLO, are you making sure to also communicate to your partner? Hey, I really would love to do these things. I know we can’t do all of them. Which ones do we really want to do? And so that kind of looking together at, hey, what’s the strength of both of our perspectives can lead you away from criticizing each other and towards understanding each other. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network When you look at your clients and maybe in your community, are there certain demographics that maybe fall into this category of being very, have a lot of anxiety and stress? Like what I’m trying to get at is if someone’s maybe skewing a little bit more mature, they have a little bit more experience. I mean, ups and downs are part of life. And the longer you live, the more ups… Look, I’m in my middle age. I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs. I’ve seen a lot of market swoons. I’ve seen challenges kind of what we’re seeing today. So in your experience, are you seeing different generations handle things a little bit differently? Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas That’s a great question. Because as I was reflecting on it, gosh, I see folks that, some of my Boomer generation folks and Gen X, they are having really similar anxieties as my millennial and Gen Z folks, where they want to do the right thing. Especially my hypervigilant, more frugal folks, they wanna do the right thing. And what’s causing anxiety across generations is the right thing to do isn’t always clear. From your industry, you know what to do and you give the advice, but at every single disclaimer with any retirement decision, with any investment decision, they always say, we can’t predict this. This is our best bet, but we can’t predict this. Simultaneously, you have many unprofessional voices in the ears and in the hearts of people today with… And I love social media. I don’t wanna poo-poo it, but there’s some real dangerous stuff being shared online, very dangerous advice being given online about where to save, where to invest. And it’s given by people who have no professional training, don’t know what they’re doing. And frankly, they don’t have any consequences for their bad advice. Whereas someone who is a fiduciary, someone who is trained in retirement, they have consequences for their bad advice. And so, I think that’s another thing influencing the hypervigilant, more frugal folks, but then also influencing the financially avoidant folks. And so, I think that’s something really new that we haven’t had across human history. We’ve had financial stressors. We haven’t had a person in our face 24 seven giving us really bad advice ever in human history before. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, and it’s really hard to your point. It’s really hard to tell what people’s motivations are from doing, putting something online, right? They could be being paid there. And hopefully that’s something that you bring it up and it just kind of cued and maybe the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates advisors or FINRA or someone can take a look at because you’re right. People should pay a price legally if they’re giving out erroneous advice. You know, I kind of, to me, it’s almost like those carny barkers. I was having a conversation with my wife. You know, the carny barkers that would go across the Midwest and you have carnivals and say all sorts of things to get people, sell snake oil and things like that. So, I think it’s something that certainly needs to be reined in. Let me ask you in the remaining time that we have, how do you de-stress? I mean, what can you do? Is it getting an app, like the Calm app or one of those types of things to help you kind of clear your head and clear your mind? Because you can’t make the best decision unless you’ve got a clear mind. So, what’s the best way to do that? Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas What I like doing is, again, similar to what I said of having my clients look at their individual strengths with, you know, the frugal mentality, the hypervigilance, and then also the carpe diem mentality, is I like blending both of those, saying, okay, we cannot calm down. We cannot de-stress if we don’t have an accurate picture of where we are financially. So, I do a hybrid approach. I say, hey, let’s get the actual data and let’s see what our burn rate is. And let’s get some specifics. You may be feeling the pinch, but how much? Are you in the red $1,000 a month? Or are you in the red $200 a month? Or are you in the red $5,000 a month? We don’t know until we know. So, looking at the data, getting, and if they’re in a relationship, getting the person who’s more financially avoided to also look at the data so that they can have their eyes open and see, oh, wow, we’re overspending $2,000 a month. I didn’t realize that. It didn’t feel like that big of a number to me. So, getting the facts, getting a lay of the land, and seeing, okay, where are we? Income versus expenses, cashflow. So, doing, I think the apps are great at tracking. They’re okay at tracking. I think they’re really horrible for setting up a budget. Even the best ones are just clumsy. Kicking it old school, Excel spreadsheet, annual January to December, income, expenses, line item, everything. It’s boring, but it’s effective. And it really helps you to go through and look at your bills and say, hey, why are we paying for three net subscriptions? I didn’t realize we were doing that. So, doing that exercise, getting a lay of the land, then making decisions together. A lot of times, what we just said, it’s hard to know if we’re doing the right thing, and especially for people who are in long-term relationships together, maybe they have children, making the decisions with your partner rather than separate. So, if you’ll make the wrong decision, okay, fine. You both take responsibility for it and you move ahead together. Whereas if you’ve made the decision by yourself to make a big purchase or to make a big investment and things go wrong, that’s a heavy burden to carry by yourself. Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network Yeah, well, I certainly agree. And this is the value of that third party, the role that you’ve fulfilled. You’re kind of like a sounding board. You actually can listen to all sides and help kind of like a guide, if you will. Stephanie, we’re gonna have to leave it there. It was a great conversation. Look, I hope people can take something from this, plug it back into their lives. Life goes on, but these are tough times for many of us and creates a lot of anxiety. Great to see you. Thanks for joining us. And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. Stephanie Zepeda, PhD, LMFT, founder of Financial Therapy Texas My pleasure. Thank you so much, Jeff.
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