The avoidance spiral: why we stop opening money letters

Key points

• Unopened mail gets harder to face over time, partly because an amount you haven't looked at tends to take up more of your head than it deserves.
• The amounts don't change while the letters sit. What can change is your options, because late fees, formal notices and how much a provider can do to help all shift with time.
• A 10-minute sitting where you only open and record, and deliberately don't solve anything, turns a pile into a short list: who, how much, when, and whether it's urgent.
• Financial counsellors are free, independent and confidential. The National Debt Helpline is 1800 007 007 on weekdays.

There's an envelope on the kitchen bench with a provider's logo on it, and it's been there long enough that you've stopped noticing it. Maybe there are a few. In your inbox there's a subject line you've scrolled past a dozen times without opening it, because opening it would make it real, and today isn't the day. Our members have described the same thing to us, avoiding accounts and putting off thinking about money until something became urgent, and it comes up often.

What makes it hard usually isn't the money in the envelope – it's that you don't know what's in the envelope. While it stays shut it could be anything, and that's harder to carry around than a number you've actually seen. So here we go through why an unopened pile gets heavier rather than lighter, and a sequence for getting through it that takes about 10 minutes and doesn't ask you to fix anything while you're doing it.

Why it gets harder, not easier

An unopened letter isn't information yet. It might be an ordinary statement, or it might be a number you can't cover, and until you look it's both at once. Once you've seen the number you can plan around it, even when it's a bad one, and until then it tends to take up more of your head than the amount deserves.

Then there's what a letter feels like it's saying. Our members describe a lot of shame sitting alongside money problems, and a notice about an overdue account can come across as a judgement of you, when it's really a statement about an account. That's a big part of why the envelope stays shut.

The pile also keeps growing, because a month of ordinary post arrives regardless of whether you opened last month's. Each new item makes the job look bigger, so the time and the nerve it would take to get through it go up too, and putting it off another week keeps feeling like the reasonable option.

What is happening and how it feels can move at different speeds. The amounts don't change while the letters sit, however your options can: late fees may be added, an overdue account may progress to a formal notice, and hardship help is generally easier for a provider to arrange while an account is behind than after it has defaulted. None of that is a reason to feel worse about the pile. It's a reason to look sooner, while more of those options are still open.

The ten-minute version

A pile of unopened mail feels impossible because opening it and dealing with it feel like one job. Splitting them into two is what makes 10 minutes enough. Below is the sequence, and it works best in one sitting with everything in front of you.

• Gather everything unopened into one pile. The envelopes on the bench, in the drawer, in the car, plus the emails you've been scrolling past. Paper in a stack, emails into one folder or just a list of subject lines. Don't sort anything while you gather.
• Open all of them. One after another, without stopping to think about any of them.
• Write down 4 things per item. Who it's from, how much, the due date, and whether it says final notice, overdue or default. Nothing else, and a note on your phone works as well as paper.
• Sort into 3 piles. Urgent, scheduled and noise, using the table below. Physical piles on the table are easier than mental ones.

In this sitting you're only allowed to open and record. Solving anything is not part of it.

Deciding comes later, and it's a much easier job from a list than from a pile, because a list tells you how many things there actually are. It's often fewer than it felt like, and a fair share usually land in scheduled or noise.

What to do with the urgent pile first

Work through the urgent pile in the order that protects what you can't do without. Housing first, whether that's rent or a mortgage. Then the essential services: power, gas, water, and the phone or internet connection you need to sort out everything else. After those, anything carrying a legal deadline, like a court document or a formal notice with a date on it. The rest of the urgent pile can sit a few days behind them.

Then contact the providers, and do it earlier than feels comfortable. Energy, water and telco providers all have hardship teams, and so do credit providers. They can't promise you a particular arrangement, however asking is an ordinary request they handle constantly rather than a special favour, and what you're asking for is a payment arrangement you can actually meet. That's usually easier to set up while an account is behind than after it has defaulted, so the call you make this week may leave you with more room than the same call in two months.

If the total is beyond what a payment arrangement can reasonably fix, that's the point to talk to a financial counsellor. They're free, independent and confidential, they don't sell anything, and working out which debts to prioritise and how to negotiate with providers is exactly what they do. The National Debt Helpline is 1800 007 007 on weekdays, and there's a live chat on their site as well.

Once you can see it all

Once the list exists, you can see the size of the job. Seeing 11 items with 4 that need a call this week gives you a set of tasks you can work through a bit at a time, and it stops taking up so much of your attention on the days you're not doing anything about it.

Most of what's left once the urgent pile is handled is administration: knowing what comes out and when, keeping the due dates somewhere you'll actually see them, and not letting the next round of post turn into another pile. That's a much smaller job than the one you just did.

It's also fair to want fewer things to keep track of. If what's making the ongoing load heavy is the number of separate repayments and due dates rather than the amounts themselves, and those repayments are ones you can sustain, then whether reorganising them into a single arrangement would help is a separate question worth working through properly. It's an assessment rather than a next step, and it belongs after the urgent pile is sorted rather than instead of it.

Sources

• Moneysmart: Urgent help with money
• National Debt Helpline

This article provides general information only. It does not take your personal circumstances into account and is not financial, credit or legal advice. Consider your own situation and seek advice from a suitably qualified professional if you need it.