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Yes, I deal with intrusive thoughts over my finances too, just in a slightly different way. I just moved into my apartment, and I’m now budgeting more. When I was living at home for free, I had much more disposable income, and could put a lot into my savings but still spend a lot. Now that I have a stricter budget, I’m saving less, and I feel out of control. I worry I’ll go broke or lose everything I’ve saved. I want to go on vacations but I’m scared to use my savings. With OCD, there’s a balance of worrying over realistic things, vs not realistic. And I think it gets murkier when it feels like your worries are super valid. Because of course, no one wants to go broke or have a financial downfall. I think having a reasonable safety net of savings for cases of emergency can happen, and you can still purchase things or go on vacation. You can try asking yourself what the purpose of not buying something, or not going on vacation, would be. Do you have an actual expense coming up you need to save money for (bills, anything costly like car maintenance etc), or do you feel like you’re giving in to avoidance? Trying to understand the purpose of doing or not doing something can help you see if it’s more OCD related, or more needs based.

I know when I’ve been in the mode of not having a budget and just buying things as cheap as I possibly can always makes me feel guilty. I feel so much better now that I have set aside like “$30 a month for fun” and then use for a movie ticket or museum ticket or something. It doesn’t have to be absolutely strict. If I go to $32 one month, I don’t freak out, but having a general allowance for things can lower the guilt because you know “I can spend this money on a museum ticket and know I still have enough for groceries”

Yes yes yes…this is me. I have so much anxiety when I’m having to spend money. It’s horrible. I’ve never been good at managing money anyway and I put off paying for stuff and worry about it for so long but I eventually end up paying in the last moment because I have too and then I think why didn’t I just do that in the first place. I struggle to spend any money on myself at all. I constantly ruminate that I’m not going to have enough money when I’m elderly and I’ll be living in one room with no heating and I won’t be able to afford to eat and so on and so on and so on predicting my future. I hadn’t really thought of this as part of my OCD but now I realise it is. I’m constantly ruminating about what my future holds and finances is no exception. I’m going to work on this with my Therapist now.

I have always lived less than paycheck to paycheck. I have always kept a VERY tight budget, worked 2 jobs, and focused on paying bills over buying food so no one would know I was broke. I read every article about saving money, or cutting things out of my budget, but they never help because I've never afforded the things they suggest cutting out. Currently spiraling about money. I look at every bill I have multiple times a day, worried I didn't pay something, or that I can't pay something. I've never made a late payment, but I always feel like I'm drowning even when I'm not. If I have any money left over from a paycheck, I panic that I didn't pay something. It's exhausting!

this is literally me! I recently have to take out a HELOC to replace some things in my home that I've let go of for quite some time ever since then now I'm worrying about oh my God two years down the road if my 10-year-old car dies how the heck am I gonna afford that because I have this HELOC we have two old cars what's gonna happen? And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Before all this happened, I was purposely looking for things that were broken in my home and researching them to see the cost of them and if they're worth being fixed and what the life expectancy of each thing is for instance, a roof. Then I look for the reassurance from other people about this and here I am.