How to Cope With Being Broke, Angry, and Ashamed

My Two Cents May 29, 2020  By Charlotte Cowles

Before Amanda Clayman became a therapist, she grappled with serious debt in her 20s. When she got her degree in social work in 2005, she decided to help people understand how money is tied to their emotional needs. “I wanted to say to as many people as possible, ‘Hey, it doesn’t have to be like this,’” she told me.

While the field of financial therapy is still relatively new, Clayman says a lot of therapists ask how they can address their clients’ financial anxieties. Her answer is simple: “’Talk more about money!’ I’m not offering financial advice.” Today, as the entire world grapples with the financial fallout of the pandemic — layered on top of the devastating toll of human loss — her work is more in demand than ever. In addition to treating patients, she recently partnered with the podcast Death, Sex & Money to launch a three-part series, Financial Therapy. We talked about how she overcame her own struggles with money and what she’s telling her clients who feel overwhelmed by financial stress and uncertainty.

How did you get into financial therapy in the first place?

I was raised by parents who were really anxious about money, but I didn’t know or notice. I thought they were just really careful with their finances. So, I inherited a good deal of that anxiety, and I wasn’t conscious of how that led to me to do certain things. As a young adult, I was really impulsive with spending, and I got into a lot of credit card debt. I was super ashamed of it; nobody knew.

What kind of debt are we talking?

At my rock bottom, I owed about $31,000 in today’s dollars. But I’d basically lost track because I would use a convenience check from one credit-card company to pay another one. My bills were just eating each other. This was also in the late ’90s, when it was possible to wrack up a huge amount of debt without really noticing because there were such low interest rates.

At the same time, my life was a fabulous mess. I moved to New York when I was 22, with no savings, and that was the beginning of my debt because I put my security deposit and broker’s fee on a credit card.

I worked in nightlife for the first decade of my career, in the promotions department, putting on parties to get people to come to clubs. And then for different lifestyle brands, like cars and alcohol and other companies, sponsoring events. I was an expert in motivating people to spend money on things. Of course, that marketing was also affecting me personally, which I totally didn’t see, until I finally did.

What kinds of things were you spending on?

I wasn’t living a lavish lifestyle. I was broke. I hung out at the club where I worked. I didn’t go out to expensive dinners. I was just a kid in New York paying a huge amount of rent and not making much money. I made $25,000 a year at my first job. But even after I got better jobs, I just didn’t have control over my money. I never had a budget. I never had an idea of how much I should be spending on anything.

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