‘I'm not mad at the part of me that's driven and ambitious’
A Q&A with Hanna Horvath on deriving pleasure and identity from work and finding financial freedom by defining “enough”
Hanna Horvath’s Your Brain on Money is the kind of personal finance newsletter the world needs. She writes in a way that makes me rethink everything I believe about money, work and creativity.
The newsletter is about money psychology — why we do what we do with money, and the invisible forces that make it so hard to stop. But following Hanna also teaches me a lesson about how to work. She sets a high bar in this space with content that’s thoughtful, well-researched and thorough without feeling dense or intimidating. Hanna is a New York City based Certified Financial Planner and financial journalist who’s been writing about money for more than a decade, and her expertise shines through in her writing.
Hanna has her thumb on the pulse of our culture of money and offers insight into the latest trends and questions weighing on your mind — from the horrors of life admin to the depravity of gambling on war like it’s the Super Bowl.
I’m so excited to chat with Hanna about her own experiences with money and get to know the person behind the brilliant advice and analysis she shares every week.
I love the way you frame the three forces shaping your financial life: internal, social and structural. I’ll encourage folks to read your full article on the topic, but can you briefly explain these forces? How does traditional financial advice address them (or not)?
So the basic idea is that your financial behavior isn’t just about you. There are three main forces constantly shaping what you do with money:
Internal forces are the psychological stuff — unconscious beliefs you have about money, often formed and developed in childhood and absorbed through interactions with your family, peers and the world around you. These beliefs form “scripts” that run in the background of your thoughts and drive a lot of your financial behavior. Like, maybe you grew up watching your parents fight about money, and now you avoid looking at your bank account. That’s an internal force.
Social forces are everything coming from the people around you and the culture you live in — particularly what your reference group (your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers) considers to be “normal” financially. Social media has massively distorted this, expanding the pool of people we compare ourselves to.
Structural forces are the systems, products and policies that are literally designed to make it harder (or easier!) to make good financial decisions. Buy now, pay later embedded in every checkout screen. Subscription models that are easy to sign up for and impossible to cancel. The economy itself.
Most traditional financial advice basically only addresses the first one — and even then, just barely. They’ll offer up prescriptive advice like, just make a budget, cut out all “unnecessary” spending and be more disciplined. All of which puts all the responsibility on you. It completely ignores the fact that you’re making financial decisions inside a system that’s been engineered to exploit your psychology. I firmly believe that once you can see all three forces at work, you stop blaming yourself so much and start making decisions with a lot more clarity.
What’s the most joyful thing you’ve done with money in the past six(ish) months?
I booked a very last-minute trip to New Zealand to watch one of my closest friends perform — he’s a dancer. It was completely spur of the moment — he invited me two weeks before we were supposed to leave, and I booked my tickets the very next day.
At the time, I’d been feeling burned out and honestly kind of seasonally depressed with the New York winter, and something in me just said: Go.
It was not a “responsible” financial decision by any traditional metric. But I would argue that it restored me in a way that no amount of staying home and being sensible would have. I rented a car and drove around the North Island for a couple of days, soaking in the summer sun and taking in the most incredible views. Also, as an avid Lord of the Rings fan, the trip to Hobbiton was worth every penny.
I came back feeling like a person again.
That trip is a good example of what I actually believe about money, which is that its best use is buying you flexibility and autonomy (if that’s what you value, of course). Not stuff — the ability to say yes to the things that make your life feel like yours.
What messages did you get about money growing up? Which have you held onto and which have you let go?
I grew up in a very high-achieving, Type A family. My parents talked very directly and regularly about money, about what things cost, what they could and couldn’t afford, how they were thinking about big financial decisions. They were also really clear about boundaries. I knew early on that after college, I was financially on my own.
The main message I got from all of that was: Money is something you need to understand, and no one is going to handle it for you.
I also grew up in a really high-performing, academic environment, where success was tangibly measured through grades, schools, job titles, salaries, etc. I internalized this idea that your worth is what you can measure. And for a long time, money became one of the primary ways I kept score with myself, through my income or my net worth.
That led to a lot of anxiety. Because when your sense of security is tied to a number, no number is ever enough. I kept thinking I’d feel settled at the next milestone, whatever that was, and then I’d get there and the goalpost would move.
What I’ve definitely held onto from this is the work ethic. I’m not mad at the part of me that’s driven and ambitious — that energy built my career and my newsletter and everything I care about professionally.
What I’ve let go of (or I’m trying to let go of) is the idea that my income or net worth is a reflection of how successful I am. Money is a tool. That’s a deceptively simple thing to say and a much harder thing to believe. I’m still working on it.
How do various facets of your identity impact your work and finances?
I’m an anxious person. I’m very self-critical. I carry a lot of self-doubt, even when the evidence doesn’t support it. And all of that shows up in my financial life.
For example, take my scarcity mindset. When it comes to work, I’m terrible at saying no. I want to be the person who can do it all, which really means I want to be the person who never has to turn down money. That’s a form of ambition, I suppose, but it’s ultimately not beneficial.
Being the person I am and also living in an environment like New York City can give you this “hustler” like mentality, the belief that you just have to keep striving and making more money. Which sounds empowering, and sometimes it is. But it also means I don’t always stop to ask whether I should do something. I’ve hit money milestones I thought would make me feel secure, and the feeling never came. One realization I’ve come to in my money relationship journey is that financial security isn’t a set number. It’s really your relationship with “enough”.
My definition of “enough” is ever changing, but right now it’s the ability to give myself options, especially with just how much uncertainty it feels like there is out in the world. But I’m also working to accept that I’m someone who gets a lot of pleasure and identity from work, and that’s OK, too.
What’s one financial decision that frequently causes you stress? How do you work through it?
Being a freelancer in New York City. That’s the decision, really — because it’s a decision, every single day. I am choosing to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world without a steady paycheck, and that math doesn’t always math.
There’s a running calculation I can never fully turn off: Is this sustainable? Can I afford to turn down that project to protect my time for my own work? I left a more stable path to build something more self-directed, and I believe in it. But bills inherently will pop up, and I’ll get anxious again.
The way I’ve worked through it — and “worked through” is generous, it’s more like “am actively working through” — is by getting clear on why I made this decision. I stay in New York because of the people. My community is here. The creative energy, the friendships, the collisions with interesting humans that make my work better — that’s all here. And I’ve decided that’s worth more to me than the stability I’d get by moving somewhere cheaper or taking a salaried job I don’t love.
Essentially, I’m choosing community and autonomy over predictability. Some months that feels like freedom. Other months it feels like a very expensive gamble. But I think that’s what it actually looks like to align your money with your values — it’s just yours.
Besides yours, what personal finance newsletter(s) do you most recommend and why? Who is it best for?
Money with Katie (Katie Gatti Tassin) — Sharp, funny, and very structurally aware. Katie’s great at taking a cultural moment and showing you the economic forces underneath it.
kyla scanlon — She makes macroeconomics feel human, which is genuinely hard to do. If you want to understand what’s happening in the economy without your eyes glazing over, Kyla’s your person.
Anne Helen Petersen (Culture Study) — Not technically a money newsletter, but she writes about work, class and American life in a way that’s deeply connected to everything I think about.
Instead of talking about the weather, what do you wish strangers would ask you about when you meet on the street?
I wish people would ask me what I’m reading — I go through about 70 books a year and I always have a recommendation loaded. Either that, or I wish someone would let me talk to them about urbanism and why American cities are designed for cars instead of people. I’m a big The War on Cars fan, which is maybe a niche thing to bring up on the street, but honestly I think the way a city is built tells you everything about what a society actually values. And that connects to my money work more than you’d think.
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