Research Analysis: How Do You Check Your Bank Account After the Holidays Without Panicking?

Money Stress, Avoiding the Bank App, and Calming Practices: A Research Review

Prepared by: MyMoneyCoach Research Team Subject: What the research says about the ideas in "How Do You Check Your Bank Account After the Holidays Without Panicking?" Date: January 2025 (claims re-checked against primary sources in 2026)

The MyMoneyCoach Research Team wrote this plain-language review. It is not an independent validation or peer review. It is educational only and is not medical, psychological or financial advice. If money worry is affecting your health or daily life, talk with a qualified professional.

Take a short pause first, then look. A few slow breaths, naming the feeling and setting one small goal are reasonable, low-risk steps. Small studies show short-term benefits for related practices, but none tested checking a bank balance, so treat these steps as something to try, not a proven treatment.

Summary

The blog post suggests that putting off a look at your bank balance is a common human reaction, and that slowing down before you look can help. The published research supports parts of that picture and not others.

• Research on the "ostrich effect" shows that investors monitor their accounts less when markets are falling (Karlsson, Loewenstein & Seppi, 2009).
• Lab studies suggest money worries can use up mental bandwidth, though that research area has had mixed replication results (Mani et al., 2013; O'Donnell et al., 2021).
• A small randomized study found that two minutes of slow breathing before a business decision task was linked to lower stress and more correct answers (De Couck et al., 2019). That study did not involve personal finances.
• Stress is physical, and a major review describes two-way communication between the brain and the cardiovascular, immune and other systems, with wear on the body when stress is chronic (McEwen, 2007). That review is about stress in general, not money.
• Slow breathing raises heart rate variability across 223 studies (Laborde et al., 2022), and heart rate variability biofeedback was associated with lower self-reported stress and anxiety in a 24-study analysis (Goessl et al., 2017). No study tested this for checking a bank balance.
• A 20-minute goal-setting session reduced self-reported anxiety in a group of 50 clients, measured right after the session (Archuleta et al., 2020).

Earlier drafts of this paper made broader claims about brain circuits, hormones, gender differences and "proven" vagus nerve effects. Those claims could not be traced to a primary source and have been removed.

Part I: Money Loss, Stress and the Body

What the research does show

A meta-analysis of brain imaging studies reports that the anterior insula is active both when people experience monetary loss and when they experience pain, whether physical or social. The same analysis reports that the pattern for monetary loss looked more similar to social pain than to physical pain.¹ That is an overlap in brain activity in lab tasks. It does not show that a low bank balance is processed as a physical threat, and it does not tell us what happens when someone opens a banking app.

A longitudinal study of 500 rural Iowa families found that family financial stress in early midlife (average age under 42) was associated with a lower sense of control, which was in turn associated with more physical pain nearly three decades later. The association held after accounting for existing illnesses, income and age. The authors treat it as an association, the sample came from families affected by the 1980s farm crisis, and pain could also feed back into financial strain (Wickrama, Klopack & O'Neal, 2021).²

What stress does to the body in general

McEwen (2007), in a narrative review, describes stress as two-way communication between the brain and the cardiovascular, immune and other systems through neural and endocrine mechanisms. The hormones involved protect the body in the short run. Events in daily life that produce chronic stress can lead over time to wear and tear on the body, which McEwen calls allostatic load.³ That is the ordinary, well-supported sense in which stress is felt in the body. The review is by the originator of the concept and covers stress in general. It does not study financial stress or bank balances.

What this review removed

An earlier draft said financial stress keeps cortisol "chronically elevated," causes "burnout," and damages the hippocampus, and it included a table matching brain regions to financial stress. We could not trace any of those statements to a primary source about financial stress, so they are not included here. The general point about allostatic load is covered in the section above, with its limits.

Part II: Money Worries and Mental Bandwidth

Mani, Mullainathan, Shafir and Zhao (2013) reported that thinking about a costly financial problem lowered performance on unrelated reasoning tasks for lower-income participants but not for higher-income participants. They also found that sugarcane farmers in India scored lower on cognitive tests before harvest, when money was tight, than after harvest. Press coverage of the paper put the size of the effect at roughly 13 IQ points and compared it with losing a night of sleep.⁴ We confirmed the study and its design from the abstract and a university summary, but not the 13-point figure in the full paper.

The Mani finding needs some care. A 2021 audit that tried to replicate 20 studies on the psychological effects of scarcity reported "considerable variability," with some strong successes and some clear failures (O'Donnell et al., 2021).⁵ The idea that money stress can crowd out other thinking is plausible and has support. The exact size of the effect is less certain.

Part III: Avoiding Financial Information

The "ostrich effect" is the tendency to avoid information that might be unwelcome. Karlsson, Loewenstein and Seppi (2009) studied the account monitoring of Scandinavian and American investors in two datasets. They found that investors monitor their portfolios more often in rising markets than when markets are flat or falling.⁶ Their explanation is that people avoid information when they expect bad news, because attending to it makes its emotional impact stronger. This is a model with supporting data from investors. It does not show that every person who delays checking a bank account is doing the same thing.

Shapiro and Burchell (2012) found that financial anxiety is distinct from depression and general anxiety, and that people who feel it tend to avoid financial information.⁷

We could not verify the claims in earlier drafts that avoidance reliably produces late fees and interest charges, or that avoidance is linked to the sunk cost fallacy. They have been removed.

Part IV: Calming Practices Before You Look

Does slow breathing help before you look?

De Couck and colleagues (2019) ran two studies.⁸ In Study 1, 30 healthy adults did a symmetric breathing pattern, a pattern with a longer exhale than inhale, or watched a neutral film. Both breathing patterns raised heart rate variability measures, and the film did not. In Study 2, 56 students were randomly assigned to two minutes of longer-exhale breathing or to two minutes of waiting, then did a 30-minute business decision task. The control group reported higher stress during the task, the breathing group did not, and the breathing group gave a higher percentage of correct answers.

The De Couck studies were small and used students and a business task. They did not involve personal finances or bank balances. They support the modest idea that a short period of slow breathing may help some people feel steadier before a demanding task. They do not show that breathing "restores prefrontal function" or "lowers cortisol," and we found no source for those claims.

Research on slow breathing beyond De Couck and colleagues is larger. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 223 studies found increases in vagally mediated heart rate variability during and after voluntary slow breathing, and the authors suggest it could be advised as a low-tech, low-cost technique with few adverse effects expected.⁹ Heart rate variability is a heart signal, not a direct measure of felt stress. For stress itself, a meta-analysis of 24 studies (484 participants) found that heart rate variability biofeedback training was associated with a large reduction in self-reported stress and anxiety (Hedges' g = 0.83 against a control condition), and the authors called for more well-controlled studies.¹⁰ Critics point out that the trials were small and relied on self-report. A later review of 58 randomized trials reported a more conservative small-to-moderate effect that did not differ from other effective treatments.¹¹ None of this work tested breathing before checking a bank balance. We say that many people find a slow breath a useful pause, and nothing stronger.

Brief mindfulness and sunk costs

Hafenbrack, Kinias and Barsade (2014) ran a series of experiments in which a short focused-breathing meditation made people less likely to let past costs drive a current decision (the sunk-cost bias). The authors report that the effect ran through less focus on the past and future and less negative emotion.¹² This is lab research on hypothetical choices, and we did not check the full text.

Does naming the feeling help?

In a brain imaging study of people viewing emotional pictures, putting feelings into words ("affect labeling") was linked to lower amygdala activity and higher activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (Lieberman et al., 2007).¹³ This supports the idea behind the blog's "name what you feel" step in a lab setting. It was not a study of money or bank accounts.

Financial therapy

Archuleta and colleagues (2020) used a 20-minute Solution-Focused Financial Therapy goal-setting session with 50 clients. Self-reported anxiety was 16% lower right after the session, with drops in anxiousness (22%), irritability (15%) and muscle tenseness (21%). Worry (9%) and fatigue (7%) fell, but those changes were not statistically significant. Only short-term effects were measured.¹⁴

No source supported the earlier claim that specific financial therapy tools work better than financial education for lasting behavior change, so it has been removed.

Part V: Gender and Money Stress

Earlier drafts listed percentages for women and men on financial anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, checking bank accounts and debt stress. None could be traced to a primary survey, so the numbers and the table have been removed. We also removed an unsourced statement about oxytocin. This review makes no claim about differences between women and men.

Part VI: Holiday Spending Context

LendingTree's holiday debt survey reported that 36% of Americans took on holiday debt in the 2024 season, with an average balance of $1,181. That was up from $1,028 in 2023 and below $1,549 in 2022.¹⁵ This is a single online survey from one company, not a census.

We removed earlier figures about the share of people stressed about holiday debt and about buy-now-pay-later balances. We could not trace them to a source for that year.

Does the brain "learn to fear money"?

Gorin and colleagues (2020) had 29 healthy adults do a task in which sounds signaled possible monetary losses. After two sessions, an EEG measure of the auditory cortex's response to those sounds (mismatch negativity, used as an index of cortical plasticity) was larger for sounds that signaled large losses, in the condition where telling the sounds apart helped participants limit their losses.¹⁶ This is a small lab study of how the brain processes sound cues. It does not show that people learn to fear money, or that grounding techniques rewire fear responses, and earlier statements to that effect have been removed.

Conclusion

The research supports a few modest points. People tend to look at accounts less when the news is likely to be bad. Money worries can crowd out other thinking, though the size of that effect is debated. Stress involves the body in well-documented ways, though the research is about stress in general and not about bank balances. Slow breathing reliably raises heart rate variability, and heart rate variability biofeedback has been linked to lower self-reported stress, with effect sizes ranging from large to small-to-moderate depending on the review. Short breathing and goal-setting practices have shown small, short-term benefits in small studies. No study tested the specific five-step routine in the blog post, and none shows that the routine will work for any one person. Treat the blog's steps as a reasonable, low-risk practice to try, not as a proven treatment.

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References

Footnotes

1. Meta-analysis of fMRI studies, "Does Losing Money Really Hurt? Shared Neural Circuits Between Monetary Loss and Pain" (data collection on NeuroVault: https://neurovault.org/collections/11982/). Author and journal details not verified. ↩

2. Wickrama, K. A. S., Klopack, E. T., & O'Neal, C. W. (2021). Midlife family financial strain, sense of control and pain in later years: An investigation of rural husbands and wives. Stress and Health, 37(4), 790-800. Summary: https://news.uga.edu/financial-stress-lead-to-physical-pain-later/ doi:10.1002/smi.3038 ↩

3. McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873-904. PMID 17615391. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17615391/ ↩

4. Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013). Poverty impedes cognitive function. Science, 341(6149), 976-980. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1238041 ↩

5. O'Donnell, M., et al. (2021). Empirical audit and review and an assessment of evidentiary value in research on the psychological consequences of scarcity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(44). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2103313118 ↩

6. Karlsson, N., Loewenstein, G., & Seppi, D. (2009). The ostrich effect: Selective attention to information. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 38, 95-115. doi:10.1007/s11166-009-9060-6 ↩

7. Shapiro, G. K., & Burchell, B. J. (2012). Measuring financial anxiety. Journal of Financial Therapy, 3(2). doi:10.1037/a0027647 ↩

8. De Couck, M., Caers, R., Musch, L., Fliegauf, J., Giangreco, A., & Gidron, Y. (2019). How breathing can help you make better decisions: Two studies on the effects of breathing patterns on heart rate variability and decision-making in business cases. International Journal of Psychophysiology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30826382/ ↩

9. Laborde, S., Allen, M. S., Borges, U., et al. (2022). Effects of voluntary slow breathing on heart rate and heart rate variability: a systematic review and a meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 138, 104711. PMID 35623448. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35623448/ ↩

10. Goessl, V. C., Curtiss, J. E., & Hofmann, S. G. (2017). The effect of heart rate variability biofeedback training on stress and anxiety: a meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine, 47(15), 2578-2586. PMID 28478782. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28478782/ ↩

11. Lehrer, P., Kaur, K., Sharma, A., et al. (2020). Heart rate variability biofeedback improves emotional and physical health and performance: a systematic review and meta analysis. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 45(3), 109-129. PMID 32385728. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32385728/ ↩

12. Hafenbrack, A. C., Kinias, Z., & Barsade, S. G. (2014). Debiasing the mind through meditation: Mindfulness and the sunk-cost bias. Psychological Science, 25(2), 369-376. doi:10.1177/0956797613503853 ↩

13. Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421-428. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17576282/ ↩

14. Archuleta, K., et al. (2020). Solution-Focused Financial Therapy goal-setting session and financial anxiety. Contemporary Family Therapy. Summary: https://news.uga.edu/archuleta-financial-therapy-research/ doi:10.1007/s10591-019-09501-0 ↩

15. LendingTree. (2024). Holiday debt survey. Reported by NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/personal-finance/36-americans-took-holiday-debt-year-averaging-1181-survey-finds-tips-c-rcna185492 ↩

16. Gorin, A., Krugliakova, E., Nikulin, V., Kuznetsova, A., Moiseeva, V., Klucharev, V., & Shestakova, A. (2020). Cortical plasticity elicited by acoustically cued monetary losses: an ERP study. Scientific Reports, 10, 21161. doi:10.1038/s41598-020-78211-7. Summary (Neuroscience News, "Losing Money Causes Plastic Changes in the Brain"): https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroplasticity-finacial-loss-17440losing-money-causes-plastic-changes-in-the-brain/ PubMed 33273646 ↩