Here’s a question that stopped Margaret cold during one of our What’s Next Circle sessions: What are you saving it for?

She’d been describing her hesitation about a personal growth program — thoughtful hesitation, the kind that sounds entirely reasonable on the surface. She had savings and was comfortable. But there was always something that made it feel like the wrong time to spend on herself. Better to be careful. Better to hold on.

So I asked her to name it. The emergency she was protecting against. The specific scenario that all that careful holding was guarding her from.

She sat with it for a long moment. Then: “I actually don’t know.”

Fifteen years of financial stability. Not one defined emergency. Just the posture of scarcity, so practiced and familiar it had become indistinguishable from wisdom.

That’s what this post is about.

Scarcity Is a Sophisticated Impostor

Genuine financial prudence is real and valuable. It’s the reason many women in this life stage have the security they do. It kept the lights on during lean years, guided smart decisions, and built real cushions against actual risks. Prudence deserves respect.

But scarcity thinking is something different, and it is extraordinarily good at wearing prudence’s clothing.

Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, spent decades working with people across the full economic spectrum, from families in extreme poverty to some of the wealthiest individuals in the world, and found that scarcity thinking operated independently of actual financial circumstances. It wasn’t about what people had. It was a posture, a lens, a default orientation toward not-enough that persisted regardless of what the bank account said. “Scarcity,” Twist writes, “is a lie we tell ourselves before we’ve examined the evidence.”

For women in this life stage, that lie has a particular shape. It doesn’t announce itself as fear. It arrives dressed as responsibility, as practicality, as love for the grandchildren, as good Midwestern sense. “Scarcity” says what if something goes wrong and I should save this for later and that’s a lot to spend on something like this. And because those phrases have served you well at other points in your life, they feel trustworthy. They feel like you.

The question worth sitting with is: are they actually you? Or are they a habit so old it’s become part of your wallpaper?

The Someday Trap

The most insidious version of scarcity thinking for women in this life stage is the someday orientation. I’ll invest in myself someday, or I’ll take that trip someday, or I’ll sign up for that program when things settle down.

The trap isn’t the delay. The trap is that someday has no address. You can’t arrive there because it keeps moving.

Patricia, whom you met in last week’s post as the woman who was still clocking in without getting paid, had a variation of this. She was saving energy, not money. Keeping herself in careful reserve for a future version of her life that was going to be more certain, more settled, more clearly the right time. When I asked her what that future looked like, she described something almost identical to her present. The only meaningful difference was that future Patricia had finally given herself permission.

You can see the loop. You’re waiting for conditions that will feel right enough to give yourself permission. But the conditions are waiting for you to give yourself permission first.

Brené Brown’s research on scarcity, which she traces through her work in Daring Greatly, points to a culture organized around “never enough”: never enough time, money, certainty, or evidence that it’s the right moment. Brown’s finding is that the antidote to scarcity isn’t abundance in the sense of more. It’s what she calls sufficiency — the recognition that you already have what you need to make a good decision, right now, with what’s in front of you.

Someday is where you send decisions you’re afraid to make today.

What Genuine Prudence Actually Looks Like

Here’s the important distinction, because this post isn’t an invitation to abandon your financial judgment. Real prudence exists, and it matters.

Genuine financial prudence is specific. It has a number, a scenario, and a name. Financial prudence says: I’m keeping this reserve because my roof is aging and I’ll need it in the next two years. It says: My income is variable this quarter, and I want a clear cushion before I commit to anything new. It’s grounded in real, current, nameable circumstances.

Scarcity thinking is general. It’s atmospheric. It’s a persistent low-grade reluctance with no specific address, a vague unease that something might go wrong without being able to say what that something is. Scarcity resists specificity because specificity would reveal that the threat isn’t as real as it feels.

Here’s a simple self-inquiry to help you tell the difference:

Name it. What specific situation are you protecting against by not investing in yourself right now? Can you describe it in concrete terms?

Date it. Is this risk current and real, or theoretical and distant? Is it something that might happen, or something that is actually on the horizon?

Match it. Does the size of your caution match the size of the actual risk? Are you protecting against an actual threat, or treating all spending on yourself as though it carries equal danger?

If you can answer those three questions with specificity, you’re working with genuine prudence. If the answers stay vague — if the threat keeps shape-shifting when you try to name it — you’re likely working with scarcity in a reasonable disguise.

Abundance Isn’t a Price Tag

One more thing worth naming, because this post doesn’t exist to make you feel reckless or irresponsible for being careful.

Abundance thinking isn’t about spending freely or dismissing legitimate financial considerations. It’s a posture, the same word Lynne Twist uses for scarcity. Abundance means approaching decisions about self-investment from a foundation of sufficiency rather than fear. It means asking does this align with my values and my vision for this chapter? Instead of what if I regret this?

You can be a woman who is thoughtful with money AND a woman who invests in her own growth without running a guilt audit first. You can appreciate the caution that established your security, but understand that this same caution, when applied to yourself without end, is not protecting you; it is preventing you from living the life you desired.

The prudent thing, at this stage, might actually be to invest. Invest in clarity. In the community. In the version of yourself who shows up for the next thirty years with intention rather than inertia.

This Week

Try the three-question self-inquiry on something you’ve been hesitating about. Name it. Date it. Match it. See whether what you find is genuine prudence or a story that’s been borrowing prudence’s vocabulary.

If you find yourself sitting with more questions than answers, that’s exactly the right place to be. The questions themselves do something. Letting them sit with you this week is not nothing.