🕯️When the World Feels Unsafe, Money Stops Being Logical
I want to talk about something that’s been weighing on me and I know I’m not alone in this.
We are watching some deeply unsettling things happen right now with ICE and immigration enforcement. Regardless of where you fall politically, there’s a shared undercurrent I keep hearing from clients, family, and honestly from my own body: a loss of safety and predictability.
And when safety feels threatened, money changes.
Not in a spreadsheet way in a nervous-system way.
When your body doesn’t feel safe, your brain shifts into protection mode. Planning feels harder. Long-term thinking feels distant. You might notice yourself spending more on comfort, or freezing altogether. You might avoid looking at your accounts. You might feel guilt for not being “on top of it” the way you normally are.
I want to be really clear about something:
That response makes sense.
Money decisions don’t happen in a vacuum. They happen inside real bodies, in real contexts, during real moments of uncertainty. And right now, for a lot of people especially immigrants, children of immigrants, and anyone who has ever had to question their belonging this moment is activating something much deeper than “current events.”
It’s cumulative.
It’s old fear meeting new headlines.
It’s past instability being stirred up again.
It’s your body remembering what it once had to survive.
If you’re noticing changes in how you’re relating to money right now, I don’t want your first instinct to be correction. I want it to be curiosity.
Ask yourself:
What am I actually responding to?
What feels threatened right now?
What would help me feel a little safer in this moment?
Sometimes the answer isn’t “do more.”
Sometimes it’s:
– tighten boundaries with the news
– limit conversations that leave you dysregulated
– pause big decisions until your body settles
– revisit the systems you’ve already built to remind yourself: I do have options
This is one of those moments where the phrase “money gives you options” becomes very real. Not in an aspirational way but in a grounding way. Emergency funds, flexibility, savings, and even simply knowing where your money is can be deeply regulating when the world feels chaotic.
If you’re finding it hard to engage with your finances right now, please hear this: You are not failing. You are responding to a world that feels unstable.
Your next money date doesn’t need to be about optimizing or fixing.
It can simply be about checking in. Naming what’s coming up.
And reminding yourself what support you already have.
If this moment is bringing up fear, anger, grief, or exhaustion that matters.
And it belongs in the money conversation.
I’m holding space for you.
And I’m walking through this alongside you, not ahead of you.