Personal Finance 101: It's OK to Cry

I’m sure everyone has received bad financial news: your stock plummeted; a forgotten bill resurfaced months or years later; or you lost twenty dollars while trolling around town. Whatever the case, money troubles can send you reeling..and feeling like you want to curl into a ball and cry your eyes out.

If you think crying is not an adult response to money woes, I think you’re missing out on some excellent, therapeutic tears. The kind that, once they are out, make you feel ten thousand times better. Allowing yourself to let go, to scream or cry at the unfairness, can actually be a good thing. Let me explain through my most recent tear-fest.

The Situation

When we moved into our house, we had a pretty substantial amount of electrical work completed. An electrician buddy of my husband’s replaced our breaker box. The repairs were much-needed and much appreciated.

Our problem came with the bill. We knew a ballpark figure of how much we would be billed, but the electrician needed to sit down and complete the paperwork. He told us he’d send a bill as soon as possible.

Well that “asap” turned into weeks. Then months. Then a year. The whole time, my husband would drop hints and the electrician would say he was working on it.

After a year, I kind of forgot about it. Well, not really forgot, but stopped expecting it. We bought furniture, drapes, updated our bathroom, you name it. Every expensive remodel was no longer put on the back burner for this ghost of a bill.

The “Electrical Shock”

Wouldn’t you know: once we stopped expecting the bill, the electrician decided it was finally time to send us an invoice…for $500 more than we were expecting! To say the least, we were a little shocked. My hubby called his buddy about the discrepancy, and his bill was legit. Just unexpected.

Once resigned to our fate, I lied on the bed and cried. And cried. And cried. How could we afford such a large bill after we spent so much remodeling? I thought about it and cried some more. My husband, evermore optimistic, rubbed my back and told me it was OK. But I just kept crying it all out.

The Rainbow

Finally, after I had thoroughly soaked the comforter, I felt amazing. I realized then that I wasn’t crying about the bill. I was getting out some other frustrations and sadness, but that bill really put me over the edge to endless tears.

Once I was in a little more sane state of mind, I knew that we could tackle this setback. We cut back our budget for a few months and were able to replace the money we stole from savings (to pay the bill) before we knew it.

As a bonus for my many tears, though, I felt more optimistic about the work problems that contributed to my waterfall, and I worked those out at the same time. Oh, another bonus: I learned that I should never stop expecting an outstanding bill.

The point here is that tears can help you let go of frustrations. Crying over money problems may actually bring you closer to a solution. Or at least closer to the acceptance necessary to pick up and move on. So let it out: you could feel like a million bucks (even if you don’t have a million smackers).

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