Ep 60 | You’re Not Bad With Money. You’re Missing This Framework
We tend to think financial stress goes away once you make enough money, but for a lot of high earners, it just changes shape. In this episode, Priya unpacks why so many smart, successful people feel tense about money despite “doing everything right.” The real issue isn’t income, discipline, or effort — it’s decision-making without a framework. This conversation reframes how to think about saving, spending, and investing so money actually creates calm instead of the same anxiety, packaged differently.
Takeaways:
Financial stress is often a decision problem, not an income problem.
Accumulating money without a clear purpose creates anxiety, not security.
High earners don’t struggle with discipline — they struggle with permission.
Investing isn’t about winning or beating a benchmark; it’s about building options.
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Transcription
Why Smart People Feel Tense About Money Decisions
Restrictions are necessary when every dollar matters. Here's the problem. If you let it, that ceiling mentality follows you as your income grows and lifestyle inflation becomes a trap that goes on forever. You make more, you spend more, and somehow you still feel like you're barely getting ahead. Who the fuck am I to tell you what to do with your money? My name is Priya Malani. Currently managing millions of hard working dollars. Enough for a play. Let's talk.
Welcome to the F word. Smart money. No toll. Hey guys, welcome back to the F word. Picture this. It's Sunday afternoon. You're in Soho. You stroll into ASAP for hand soap, but within a few minutes you've got the face serum, a travel fragrance, and the geranium leaf body scrub on the counter. You're staring at a total of just under $300. You tap your card. Done. 0 hesitation. No shame, I do it all the time.
But a few weeks ago I was at a dinner party and this couple starts telling us about their Saturday at Costco. They spent two hours debating whether to buy patio furniture for the balcony. It was maybe 1200 dollars. They're telling us that they're running this whole mental calculation. They just got back from a wedding in Austin. They have another one coming up in Greece this fall. Should they really be spending money on outdoor furniture right now? Or what if they just got the two chairs and the table instead of the couch? So they leave empty handed.
And I'm sitting there thinking, this is such a perfect snapshot of how we spend money these days. We don't blink at $300 on soap, but suddenly $1200 on furniture warrants hesitation. Why are so many smart, successful people living this way? More often than not, I'm working with people with relatively similar incomes but wildly different decision making processes. And that's my jumping off point for what I want to talk about today. Because at a certain income level, the problem isn't how much you make, it's how you make decisions. And without a framework for those decisions, choices are going to start to feel loaded, even if they don't need to.
So today, I'm walking you through the three most important money mindset shifts you need to make in your 30s. They'll make you calmer, more confident, and way more intentional. And that means these shifts won't just improve your financial outcomes, but your quality of life. There's a side benefit too, I like to point out, and I strongly believe this. These shifts will help you identify the right partner because the clearer you are on your money, the clearer you are on your values. And when your values are clear, it's just easier to recognize them than somebody else. All right, let's get into it.
I can tell you this for a fact. When every financial decision turns into a question of whether you're being good or bad with money, you end up with this constant low grade anxiety that no amount of money will actually fix. Someone making great money doing all the right things financially can still feel completely paralyzed by spending decisions that should feel easy if they don't have the right framework in place. And the examples are endless. You have $85 of Thai food in your seamless cart. You see a $20 delivery fee and abandoned the cart. That meditation app that you haven't opened since February auto renews for $40. You let it go. You've been with your friend, $200 for concert tickets. Instantly. You spend 3 days Googling is a cordless Dyson vacuum worth it before baselessly opting against buying one at all. This isn't about being good or bad with money. This isn't about discipline.
Stop Budgeting, Start Setting Financial Floors
So here's shift one. Stop building ceilings and start setting floors. Here's what I mean. When you cross 6 figures, the 1st shift you need to make is this. Stop thinking in terms of ceilings and start thinking in terms of floors before you cross the six figure threshold you're very likely managing. Not enough. Like actually not enough. When money is tight, ceilings make sense. Don't spend more than 500 on groceries. Don't go over 400 on dining out. Restrictions are necessary when every dollar matters. Here's the problem. If you let it, that ceiling mentality follows you as your income grows and lifestyle inflation becomes a trap that goes on forever. You make more, you spend more, and somehow you still feel like you're barely getting ahead.
This is where floors come in. Instead of putting ceilings on your spending, you start putting floors on your priorities. And then I need to put away at least 15% to retirement. I need to invest at least $1200 a month. I need to save at least $800 towards my sabbatical fund. The floor becomes your non negotiable. It happens first, and this isn't a question of whether you can afford it. For every person I've worked with who's crossed 6 figures, their income is already far beyond what it used to be. But without laying floors in place first, you'll never escape the paycheck to paycheck cycle.
You probably tried budgeting at some point, probably more than once. You download an app, you track your spending, you categorize everything. Maybe it helped for a minute, but eventually one of two things happened. You stopped using it because it was tedious and annoying, or you kept using it but it didn't actually make you feel any better. Here's why. Budgeting asks where did my money go? But what you actually want to know is, what am I allowed to spend? High earners, ambitious 6 figure earners don't struggle with discipline. They struggle with permission.
Without permission, every spending decision feels like a character test. Can I afford to meet up for dinner? Should I really book the nicer flight? Am I being irresponsible when every decision feels like a test? You either overspend out of exhaustion or underspend out of fear. Neither one's good, but with your floors in place, whatever's left is your guilt free spending money for the month. It's forward-looking. It's intentional and it removes the guilt. You can stop asking, can I afford this? Because you already decided that couple at Costco, they're stuck in ceiling mode. Every purchase feels like it's taking away from something else. But when you operate from floors, it's not a moral dilemma anymore. It's just a choice because you know if you have the money.
So you're not reacting to your money anymore, you're directing it. So that's the first shift. Stop thinking in ceilings. Start building floors.
Give Your Money a Purpose, Not Just a Pile
Shift number two, stop accumulating. Start aiming. All right, let's talk about the second shift. Once you've built your floors, once you know the minimums that are happening automatically in the background, the next shift is stop accumulating money just to feel safe. Start aiming it at something specific. This is where a lot of high earners get stuck on the surface. They're doing all the right things. They're saving, they're investing and contributing to their four O 1K. They're being responsible, but when you ask them why they're doing those things, what the money is actually for, the answers usually vague.
Retirement security, just in case. I don't know, I just know that I should. Or my favorite, building wealth. That's a never ending game. Accumulating wealth without aiming it just creates the same anxiety packaged differently. You'll end up wondering how much is enough, when do I get to enjoy it and why am I compromising for it today? Here's what I mean by aiming. A client I was working with had about $180,000 sitting in a savings account. She was really proud of it, like proud as she should be. She built that over several years and it made her feel secure. But when I asked her what the money was for, she shrugged and said just in case something happens.
Fair enough, that's always the reason we begin to save. But I pushed a little more. Have you ever had an emergency that required $180,000 to handle? No. Would you know if you needed to access this tomorrow? Probably not. Do you think you might want to actually use any of this for something you've been dreaming about? Yeah, actually. So we broke that number down. She wanted to take a six month sabbatical, which would roughly cost 45,000. She wanted to change industries at some point, which might mean taking a lower paying role for a year or two. So we set aside 90,000 for that income bridge to transition. And the rest, we relabeled as her actual emergency fund, which was far more than she'd statistically ever need.
Now the 180,000 has a job, some of it is sabbatical money, some of it is transition money, some of it stays as true emergency funds. And suddenly she didn't feel guilty spending money on her kitchen because she knew exactly what the rest of her money was doing. Saving with intention feels way different than saving out of fear. 1 creates momentum, the other paralyzes. Saving should be a tool, not a personality trait. So here's the second shift again, stop accumulating money just to feel safe. Start aiming it at the life you actually want to live.
Invest for Options, Not Just Market Returns
All right, shift to #3 stop chasing returns. Start building options. Let's talk about investing because this is where a lot of high earners get stressed. Most of us were taught that the goal of investing is to maximize returns. Beat the market. And because of that, I see a lot of high earners accidentally using gambling language. When they talk about investing, they'll say things like I'm betting on tech. I got in early on that one. I'm trying to time this right, and I get it. That's how we've been taught to talk about the market. But here's the problem. That's gambling vocabulary, betting, winning, timing, playing a game. Those words describe a game where the goal is to outsmart other players, where someone wins and someone loses.
And if that's the framework you're using, investing, we'll always feel stressful because in a game you can lose. But that's not how actual investing is supposed to work. I'll give you an example. I had a client who was completely fixated on the S&P 500. Every time we talked, same question. How did I do compared to the S&P 500? If the S&P was up 20% and his portfolio was up 14, he felt like he failed, like we were doing something wrong. Never mind that his portfolio was diversified or that it had bonds, that he had cash set aside for a hometown payment in two years, that he had international exposure.
In his mind, the S&P was a scoreboard, and anything below that meant he was losing the game. So I asked him, what do you think your portfolio's job actually is? Because here's the thing. The S&P 500 is 100% U.S. stocks. It's designed for maximum growth and maximum volatility. It doesn't care if you need the money next year. It doesn't care if you're trying to buy a home. It doesn't care if you can't afford to sell in a downturn. It doesn't care how stressful the ride is. It has one job grow over decades, no matter how bumpy the path.
But his portfolio had other near term purposes. It had multiple jobs. Some of that money needed to be stable in the short term. Some of it needed to be accessible without selling at the wrong time. Some of it needed to behave differently so he wasn't fully exposed if one area of the market tanked. So when his portfolio didn't match the S&P 500 in a given year that wasn't under performance, that was the portfolio doing exactly what it was designed to do. Gambling asks, did I win? Investing asks, is this doing what I need it to do?
When you use gambling language, success is always going to be comparative. Did I beat the market? Did I time it right? Am I ahead or behind? When you shift to investing language, the questions actually change. Does this give me the options I want? Can I access the money when I need it without selling at a loss? Am I protected if one part of the market crashes? Can I weather a bad year without panic? Those aren't performance questions, but they are the questions a smart investor asks.
Once you've worked on mindset shift #2 and you're aiming for real outcomes, The S&P 500 is very unlikely going to be the appropriate benchmark of success. Also, though, investing will stop feeling like a never ending race with winners and losers. That's a good thing. It's going to start feeling like a more deliberate way to support the lifestyle you're building overtime, not overnight. That's why things like tax diversification, account structure, and asset allocation matter so much for higher earners. Not because they're fancy strategies, but because strategy beats prediction beats gambling.
So that third shift again, stop using the language of gambling to talk about investing. Real investing isn't about guessing the right stock or beating a benchmark. It's about making sure your money does what you need it to do consistently and without requiring your constant attention.
Mastering Your Money: Recap, Best Bite, and Final Advice
So there you have it, the three most important mindset shifts to make around your money in your 30s, especially when you're earning 6 figures. Again, here they are. Number one, stop thinking in terms of ceilings. Start setting floors. Number two, stop accumulating wealth for the sake of it. Start aiming for clear priorities and #3 stop using gambling vocabulary. Start focusing on investing.
Your income is a tool and a six figure salary. That's a powerful tool. Once you understand it better, you'll be able to use it better and that'll unlock all kinds of opportunities. OK, before I let you go, I always end the show with my segment called Best Bite. Love to share something I've eaten recently that blew my mind, and this one's actually a very, very simple one. This restaurant actually came up a couple weeks ago when I was chatting with my friend Pia. We were talking about the ethics of building wealth, and she brought up as her best bite, the restaurant Tonchen.
My best bite this week comes from that restaurant, and it's a ramen place. The ramen is out of this world. It's it's really phenomenal. Highly recommend. But my best bite is they have this set of three, it's an appetizer and you get kimchi marinated mushrooms, some sort of edamame, and I like a ginger soaked cucumber and Oh my God, I guess I'm cheating a little bit because my best bite is actually this little appetizer tray that you get with these three phenomenal bites.
So I'm picking the set of three from Tom Chin. So, so good. If I had to pick one on that tray, I might actually go for the edamame. I, I can't explain the flavor. It's salty and savory and umami and all the things it's, it's addicting. It's so, so, so, so good. So if you get a chance, try the set of three at Tonchin.
Finally, I just want to say, if you're in your 30s and you're earning good money, this is a true inflection point. You can keep doing what you're doing, earning more, saving more, hoping it eventually feels different. Or you can make these shifts now and change how money feels for the rest of your life. You don't need more income, although it'll come. You need clearer decisions, intentional outcomes, and systems that support the life you want. Because financial freedom isn't about having unlimited money. It's about knowing confidently that your money is doing exactly what you need it to do, what you want it to do.
And as always, please like, subscribe and follow us to be in the loop on future money topics. I'm Priya Malani, financial advisor for 30 somethings. All right, that's it for today. Thanks for listening.
Thanks for listening to the F word with Priya Milani. If you like what you heard, hit subscribe wherever you're listening and leave us a review while you're at it. Or approval junkies. Don't forget you can find a ton of great resources, content, courses, and other freebies at stashwealth.com. Now for the capital F stuff our lawyers want us to say
THE STUFF OUR LAWYERS WANT US TO SAY: Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
