The Anxiety You’re Not Telling Your Advisor About

Here’s a number that stopped me cold: 71%.

That’s the percentage of financial planning clients who report experiencing financial anxiety, according to research by Dr. Megan McCoy at Kansas State University.

Not 71% of the general population. 71% of people who already have an advisor.

And here’s what makes it worse: when the advisors themselves were asked what percentage of their clients are anxious, most guessed 35 to 40 percent.

They’re missing half of you.

Why Financial Anxiety Persists Even When You Have a Plan

You’d think hiring a financial advisor would settle things.

You have someone managing the money. You have a plan.

The American Psychological Association reports that 72% of Americans experience financial anxiety, so having professional help should move you into the calm minority.

It doesn’t.

McCoy’s research found that working with an advisor doesn’t automatically reduce financial anxiety. And the people carrying it aren’t always the ones you’d expect.

It’s not just the client calling after every market dip.

Sometimes it’s the person who cancels the annual review.

Sometimes it’s the one who seems perfectly calm but never follows through on the plan.

Sometimes it’s the one who snaps at the office staff for no apparent reason.

If you’ve ever left an advisor meeting thinking I should feel better about this than I do, you’re not alone. And you’re probably not saying it out loud.

What’s Actually Happening Beneath the Surface

The book Facilitating Financial Health makes a claim that seems absurd on its face: there’s no such thing as a resistant client.

If you’ve ever agreed to a financial plan and then done nothing about it for six months, you might disagree. But the argument isn’t that resistance doesn’t exist.

It’s that resistance is always a symptom of something deeper.

Maybe you’re being asked to move faster than feels safe.

Maybe the plan makes sense on paper but doesn’t match how you actually think about your money.

Maybe there’s an emotional block nobody has bothered to ask about.

When you avoid the estate planning conversation, it’s rarely because you don’t understand the tax implications. It’s usually because thinking about death is uncomfortable.

When you keep “forgetting” to consolidate accounts, there might be an attachment to the old advisor, or fear of making a wrong move, or simply feeling overwhelmed by paperwork you don’t fully understand.

The resistance is the signal. A good advisor treats it like a clue, not a character flaw.

What Actually Builds Trust

Here’s where McCoy’s research surprised me most.

She studied what leads clients to genuinely trust their advisor. Technical competence mattered. Reliability mattered. Communication skills mattered. But the factor that mattered most was shared values.

Clients who felt their advisor had the same philosophy about financial well-being reported significantly higher trust and commitment. Not similar backgrounds. Not similar wealth levels.

Similar values about what money is for and how to think about it.

This has real implications for how you choose an advisor, or evaluate the one you have. Finding the right fit isn’t primarily about credentials or fee structures. Those matter.

But the deeper question is: does this person see money the way I do? Do they understand what I’m trying to build, or are they going to put me in a model portfolio and send quarterly statements?

McCoy pointed out something uncomfortable: many advisors haven’t done the work to understand their own money story, their own values around wealth.

If shared values drive trust, and your advisor hasn’t clarified their own values, the relationship is built on unstable ground.

Not All Anxiety Is the Enemy

Here’s a finding I didn’t expect. McCoy referenced research by John Grable showing that financial anxiety works like a bell curve.

Too high, and you can’t process what your advisor is telling you. You leave the meeting and remember nothing. But too low, and you lack the motivation to act. You don’t feel enough urgency to follow through.

Researchers call this productive middle ground “eustress.” It’s the tension that gets you out of bed, that makes you care enough to do the work. The goal isn’t to eliminate all financial anxiety. It’s to calibrate it: reduce the kind that paralyzes, preserve the kind that motivates.

McCoy’s research also shows that couples who work with a financial planner may experience improved relationship satisfaction over time. Not just better financial outcomes.

Better marriages. Probably because the advisor provides a safe space to navigate financial conflict that might otherwise spiral. When a couple sits down and realizes they don’t just want to go to Europe someday but want to go together, something shifts.

This reframe changed how I think about the advisory relationship. A good advisor isn’t trying to make you feel nothing about your money.

They’re building a structure that channels your natural concern into productive action rather than reactive panic. And the medium matters. A phone call during a volatile week says something different than a mass email. A handwritten birthday card says something different than an automated message.

The intentional decisions about how you communicate, not just what you communicate, are part of what builds that trust.

What You Can Do About It

The client experience has shifted in the last decade.

Advisors used to rate their own communication skills lower than clients did. They knew they needed help with the relational side.

Today, those results have flipped. Advisors rate their communication and psychology skills highly, but clients have become more discerning.

The reason is straightforward: you know you can get basic portfolio management from an app. You know you can look up information faster than your advisor can.

The technical side of advice is increasingly commoditized. What remains different is the relationship itself, the ability to understand what’s happening beneath the surface.

So here’s what this research suggests you can do.

1. Name the anxiety.

   If you’re carrying financial stress your advisor doesn’t know about, that’s information they need. Not because you owe them a therapy session, but because the anxiety is shaping your financial behavior whether you acknowledge it or not. The advisor who understands what you’re actually feeling can build a structure that addresses it. The one who doesn’t is building for a version of you that doesn’t exist.

2. Evaluate values alignment.

   Does your advisor articulate a clear philosophy about money and financial well-being? Do you know what they believe, not just what they sell? If the answer is no, that’s worth a conversation. McCoy’s research suggests it may be the single most important factor in whether you’ll trust the plan enough to follow it.

3. Pay attention to how they respond when you resist.

   When you delay, push back, or go quiet, does your advisor get curious or get frustrated? Do they ask what’s going on, or do they push harder? The advisor who treats your resistance as a signal is the one who can help you build something that lasts.

71% of advisory clients carry anxiety their advisor may not see. If you’re one of them, you’re not failing at being a client. You’re having a human experience that deserves a human response.

The advisors worth working with understand this. And they build their entire practice around it.

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Dr. Megan McCoy is a professor of personal financial planning at Kansas State University and a leading researcher in financial therapy. Her work on the intersection of emotional and financial well-being has shaped how the profession thinks about client relationships.

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If this resonated, I write about the relationship between behavior and wealth every week in Everything Compounds

You can subscribe on our website, or reach out if you’d like to talk about what a more structured approach to your financial life might look like. 

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