Cognitive Bandwidth & Stress · 90 secs
Financial Anxiety Test: Free Scarcity Mindset & Money Trauma Screener
Panic when checking your bank account, terrified of destitution despite savings, or drowning in guilt over basic purchases? Free 12-item clinical screener based on Mullainathan & Shafir's Scarcity Bandwidth Tax and Brad Klontz's Money Scripts.
Scientific Overview
Financial anxiety and scarcity mindset tax cognitive bandwidth, creating tunneling where the brain obsesses over imagined financial ruin regardless of objective wealth. It leads to compulsive hoarding, spending guilt, and compensatory binging.
What This Assessment Evaluates
- Measures cognitive bandwidth tax, money rumination, and decision fatigue around pricing
- Assesses catastrophic destitution phobia, phantom poverty dread, and fear of homelessness
- Evaluates deprivation guilt, hoarding broken items, and impulsive revenge-spending cycles
- Provides somatic grounding anchors, dedicated weekly financial windows, and abundance protocols
How to Take This Test
- Answer honestly based on your experience over the past 7 days.
- There are no right or wrong answers; trust your initial emotional reaction.
- Receive your personalized score breakdown, mascot insight, and custom journaling prompts immediately.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the cognitive bandwidth tax of scarcity?
Harvard and Princeton research demonstrates that worrying about financial scarcity consumes working memory and executive control, lowering effective fluid intelligence by up to 13 IQ points during financial triggers.
Why do I feel poor even when I have savings?
Childhood experiences of financial precarity or parental arguments condition the nervous system to treat spending as a threat to physical survival, leaving deep 'phantom poverty' somatic memories.
Medical Disclaimer
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Takes just a minute. Free, anonymous, and no account required to see your initial results.
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