Most financial advice focuses on tactics: budget better, invest earlier, negotiate harder. But for many people, the real barriers aren’t informational—they’re emotional. The habits and patterns that keep people earning the same amount year after year often have nothing to do with knowledge or opportunity and everything to do with deeply ingrained psychological patterns. Here’s what might actually be holding you back.
1. You Inherited Beliefs About Money That Aren’t Serving You
Research published in the Journal of Financial Therapy found that “money scripts”—unconscious beliefs about money formed in childhood—predict financial behaviors better than demographic factors, including income and education level. These scripts are passed down through generations, often without anyone realizing it. If you grew up hearing that money is the root of all evil, that rich people are greedy, or that your family just isn’t the type to have money, those messages didn’t disappear when you became an adult. They went underground.
The problem is that these beliefs feel like facts rather than opinions. They’re so deeply embedded that questioning them feels uncomfortable or even disloyal to your family. But until you identify the specific scripts running in your head and actively challenge them, you’ll keep making decisions that confirm beliefs you never consciously chose to adopt.
2. You Have A High Tolerance For Low Pay
Some people are chronically underearners—not because they lack skills or opportunities, but because they’ve normalized financial deprivation. They accept low-paying work, don’t push back on inadequate compensation, and rationalize their situation rather than change it. The discomfort of earning more—with all the identity shifts and new expectations that come with it—feels more threatening than the familiar discomfort of not having enough.
This high tolerance for low pay often manifests as staying in jobs longer than makes sense, not applying for positions you’re qualified for, and accepting the first offer without negotiating. Each individual choice seems small and reasonable, but the cumulative effect is years or decades of earning below your potential while telling yourself you’re doing fine.
3. You Sabotage Progress Right Before Breakthroughs
Financial therapists describe a pattern where chronic underearners unconsciously sabotage their own success to avoid the discomfort of change. Being successful can trigger imposter feelings—the sense that you’ll soon be discovered as not good enough. Rather than face that distress, people create problems that pull them back to familiar territory. They pick fights with bosses, miss important deadlines, or create family crises right when things are about to improve.
This self-sabotage can take subtle forms that are hard to recognize: procrastinating on a project that could lead to a promotion, not following up on promising leads, or taking on so much that you can’t do anything well. It’s like training for a marathon, leading the race, and then stopping to tie your shoe right before the finish line. You can always find a reasonable explanation for why the opportunity didn’t work out.
4. You Avoid Looking At Your Financial Reality
Money anxiety leads many people to avoid their finances entirely. They don’t check bank balances, don’t open statements, don’t calculate their net worth, and don’t make plans because engaging with the numbers feels too overwhelming or shameful. This avoidance behavior prevents the very actions that could improve the situation, creating a self-reinforcing cycle where ignorance enables continued poor decisions.
The irony is that avoidance usually makes anxiety worse, not better. The numbers you’re avoiding are still there, accumulating consequences while you look away. And without a clear picture of where you stand, you can’t make informed decisions about where to go.
5. You Equate Your Net Worth With Your Self-Worth
Research on money scripts identifies “money status” beliefs—the pattern of linking self-worth to net worth. People with these beliefs often grew up in lower-income households and internalized the idea that having more money would make them more valuable as people. This can drive overspending to appear successful, excessive risk-taking in pursuit of rapid wealth, and chronic dissatisfaction, regardless of how much they actually earn.
The trap is that if your self-worth depends on your financial status, you can never have enough. There’s always someone with more. And any financial setback becomes a devastating blow to your identity rather than just a practical problem to solve. This emotional volatility around money makes it harder to think clearly about financial decisions.
6. You Put Everyone Else’s Needs First
Codependency—being preoccupied with others’ lives at the expense of your own—is a form of financial self-sabotage. When you consistently prioritize everyone else’s needs, you don’t have time or energy left to pursue opportunities that could increase your income. You say yes to demands that derail your own projects. You give money you can’t afford to give. You stay in situations that aren’t working because leaving would disappoint someone.
This pattern often feels virtuous—you’re being selfless, generous, a good person. But the result is that everyone around you gets supported while your own financial life stagnates. Caring for others before yourself destroys careers as well as lives, and the people you’re trying to help often don’t benefit as much as you think they do.
7. You Don’t Believe You Deserve Success
Around 70 percent of adults experience imposter syndrome at least once in their lifetime, and for some people, it becomes a chronic condition that limits their earning potential. The psychological distress of feeling like a fraud prevents them from applying for higher-salaried jobs, asking for raises, or pursuing advanced degrees that could boost their careers. They delay or avoid actions that could increase their income because they don’t believe they’ve earned the right.
What makes imposter syndrome particularly insidious is that it often affects high achievers the most. The more you accomplish, the more you feel like you’re fooling people. Research has found that nearly a quarter of people earning over approximately $100K admit they feel like financial frauds, showing that higher income doesn’t necessarily cure the underlying belief that you don’t deserve what you have.
8. You Operate From Scarcity, Not Possibility
A scarcity mindset—the persistent belief that there’s never enough to go around—breeds fear and anxiety that influence every financial decision. People operating from scarcity hoard money without ever feeling secure, avoid opportunities because they might lose what little they have, and make choices based on fear rather than potential. The focus is always on what could go wrong rather than what could go right.
This mindset often develops in response to real experiences of deprivation, but it outlives its usefulness. Even when circumstances improve, the scarcity lens remains. It leads to overly conservative financial behaviors that prevent wealth growth—because zero risk also means zero growth. Staying safe feels responsible, but it’s actually a guaranteed way to stay stuck.
9. You Can’t Receive Compliments, Help, or Money
Some people have no problem working hard and creating value, but struggle enormously with actually receiving compensation for it. They deflect compliments, refuse help even when they need it, and feel uncomfortable when money comes their way. The underlying belief is often that they don’t deserve good things or that accepting help makes them weak or indebted.
This receiving problem shows up in practical ways: not raising prices for services even when demand exceeds supply, not sending invoices promptly, not following up on payments owed, and accepting less than market rate because asking for more feels greedy. The ability to give without the ability to receive isn’t generosity—it’s a dysfunction that keeps money flowing away from you.
10. You Chase External Markers
When people don’t know what success actually means to them, they default to chasing markers that don’t bring satisfaction: the job title that looks impressive, the salary that sounds good to others, the lifestyle that photographs well. They achieve these things and feel empty, then assume they need more of the same. The real problem is that they’ve never defined what they actually want.
Without internal clarity about your values and goals, you can’t make strategic decisions about money. Every option looks equally good or equally bad. You end up scattered—pursuing multiple directions halfheartedly rather than committing fully to one path. This diffusion of energy guarantees that you’ll never build the momentum needed to break through to a higher income level.
11. You Think In Fixed Amounts Rather Than Growth
Some people approach money with what psychologist Carol Dweck would call a fixed mindset—the belief that financial ability is static and can’t be improved through effort. They think they’re “just not good with money” or that their earning potential is predetermined by factors beyond their control. This belief becomes self-fulfilling because it removes any motivation to learn or try new approaches.
A growth mindset about finances would recognize that money skills can be developed, that income can increase with strategic effort, and that past patterns don’t dictate future results. But making this shift requires letting go of the identity of being someone who struggles with money—an identity that, however painful, may feel safer than the uncertainty of change.
12. You Use Money To Regulate Emotions
Emotional spending—using purchases to feel better—is well documented, but the pattern goes beyond retail therapy. Some people use financial decisions of all kinds to manage their emotional states: impulsive investments when they feel powerless, excessive risk-taking when they’re bored, or hoarding when they’re anxious. Money becomes a tool for emotional regulation rather than a practical resource to be managed strategically.
The problem is that money is terrible at solving emotional problems. The relief from emotional spending is temporary, followed by guilt that makes the underlying feelings worse. And when financial decisions are driven by emotional states rather than rational assessment, they tend to be poorly timed and poorly conceived.
13. You Mistake Busyness For Progress
Some people work constantly but never get ahead financially because their activity isn’t strategically directed toward income growth. They stay busy with tasks that feel productive but don’t actually move the needle: perfecting things that are already good enough, helping with other people’s priorities, or doing work that should be delegated or eliminated. The busyness itself provides the illusion of progress.
Real income growth usually requires focused effort on specific high-impact activities, which means saying no to many things that feel urgent or important. But if staying busy serves the psychological function of avoiding the anxiety of strategic thinking—or the fear of committing to one path—you’ll keep spinning your wheels year after year.
14. You’re Waiting For Permission That Will Never Come
Many people stay stuck because they’re waiting—for someone to tell them they’re ready, for conditions to be perfect, for external validation that it’s time to make a move. They don’t apply for the job because they don’t meet every qualification. They don’t start the business because they haven’t figured out every detail. They don’t ask for the raise because no one has suggested they should.
The permission you’re waiting for doesn’t exist. The people who advance financially are often no more ready or qualified than you—they just didn’t wait to be told it was okay. At some point, you have to decide that your own judgment is sufficient authority to pursue what you want. No one is coming to tap you on the shoulder and say it’s your turn.
This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial advice. Consult a financial professional before making investment or other financial decisions. The author and publisher make no warranties of any kind.
