What My Therapist Would Want Me to Do With The Money I’m No Longer Spending On Her

by Rachel Goldfarb

Last month, my therapist and I had the breakup conversation.

I call it that, but it was more reasonable than any breakup conversation that I’ve ever had. She told me that I had much improved on the work anxiety that initially brought me to her. I thanked her for giving me the tools to take healthy breaks from my job and to recognize what parts of me still existed outside of my employment. And we agreed that this particular Sunday evening would be our last appointment. I could always email her if I need to — and maybe I will someday — but for now? We’re done.

While I’m not having too much difficulty adjusting to no longer having a Sunday evening appointment every other week, the biggest joy of being done with therapy is what it’s done for my budget.

You see, I’ve been paying out of pocket for most of the time I was seeing Michelle. She gave me a nice discount, since I didn’t have any insurance coverage for our sessions, but $75 every two weeks is a decent chunk of money–especially since I spent five months of our time together unemployed!

That makes November the month for reworking my budget, because there’s no longer a $150 budget line in Mint for “therapy.” I spent a lot of time considering my options:

• I could put all of that money into savings, perhaps splitting it between my 403(b) and my savings account. That might tackle some of my latent anxiety about retirement, but it wouldn’t exactly make me a happier person. I don’t think Michelle would go for this one, because my anxiety is definitely a more immediate thing.
• I could increase my charitable giving. But I’ve already done that once since starting my new job; my new budget allows me to give much more beyond my monthly donations to my synagogue and my local abortion access fund. Michelle would agree that I donate to important causes, but she might ask how my giving impacts my anxiety. Answer: not much at all.
• I could increase my grocery budget. I love to cook, and it’s a form of relaxation for me. I’ve wanted to start buying meat from the fancy ethically raised kosher meat company for a while. Putting more money towards groceries would make that an easy change, and Michelle always encouraged me to use cooking as both a form of relaxation and a way to make my workweek less stressful. She’d be really proud of the quantity of leftovers-for-lunch in my fridge right now.
• I could throw it all at the fun stuff. More books, more theater tickets, more restaurants. It’s true that those are the things that I wasn’t doing well at prioritizing when I started seeing Michelle, but I would feel pretty irresponsible if I spent all the money seeing Hamilton again and again.
• I could save for travel, which does make me happy–and thanks to Michelle, I’m much better at fully ignoring my job while I’m on vacation, a skill that I basically just utterly lacked before seeing her.

In the end, I’ve decided to go with a split. I’ve opened a new savings account that’s just for travel, and I’ve set up an automatic transfer for $75 every month. It’s not a ton of money, but it’s more than I was previously saving for travel. Here’s hoping for cheap plane tickets somewhere fun in late 2016!

The other $75 will go towards whatever I want to spend it on in a given month. Maybe some months I’ll use it for incredibly expensive pasture-raised kosher ground beef, or to buy all the bestsellers with long library waiting lists. Maybe I’ll buy myself overpriced-but-adorable dresses at Anthropologie. This month, I’ll use it at the hair salon to refresh the streaks that my roommate calls “grownup purple hair.” It makes me happy, and that’s all Michelle would really want for me in the end.

Rachel Goldfarb is a writer, editor, social media strategist, and activist in New York City. Follow her on Twitter @RachelG8489.

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