A Former Investment Banker Says Her Biggest Money Mistakes Happened While Working In Finance. ‘I Wasn’t Used To Earning That Much’
For years, personal finance YouTuber Nischa Shah worked in investment banking surrounded by people who earned high salaries and talked constantly about markets, investments and money.
But despite having a finance degree, an accounting qualification and nearly a decade in banking, Shah says some of her worst financial decisions happened during that exact period.
Confusing Income With Wealth
One of the biggest mistakes, Shah said in a recent YouTube video, was assuming that a high income automatically meant she was financially secure.
When her salary jumped after entering banking, everyday spending suddenly felt insignificant. Small purchases quickly became routine.
“I wasn’t used to earning that much,” she said. “Suddenly things that used to feel expensive didn’t anymore.”
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Daily coffee runs, lunches at cafes and social spending with friends became normal. Because the money was coming in consistently, she didn’t track the spending closely.
Looking back, Shah said she underestimated how dependent she had become on her salary.
It wasn’t until she started thinking about leaving banking and transitioning careers that the realization hit.
“I could have spent the last few years saving, investing, building proper cash buffers,” she said in the video.
Her advice now is simple: even when income rises, financial stability comes from assets and savings, not spending power. Building emergency savings and investing early gives people the flexibility to change careers, take breaks or deal with unexpected life events.
Another mistake Shah said many professionals overlook is the emotional side of money.
Working in finance teaches the math behind investing but rarely addresses how feelings influence decisions. She noticed that stress, uncertainty or even boredom sometimes affected her financial behavior.
“When I was stressed, I’d spend to feel better,” she said. “When things felt uncertain, I’d either freeze completely or overcorrect.”
Those reactions felt logical in the moment, but they were driven by emotion instead of long-term thinking.
Delayed Investing And Overconfidence
Despite working in finance, Shah said she delayed investing for several years because she felt she didn’t know enough.
“One year of not investing turned into two and then three,” she said in the video. “The painful truth was that waiting didn’t make me a better investor. It just meant I missed out on three years of compounding.”
When she finally started investing, she ran into the opposite problem: too much confidence.
Like many beginners, she started buying individual stocks and trying to pick companies she thought would do well. The experience taught her how easy it is to overestimate investing ability early on.
“Many of my early investment decisions were driven by excitement and fear of missing out,” she said. “I didn’t lose too much money on those investments, thankfully, but they did cost me peace of mind.”
She also found herself checking stock prices all the time, which added stress she didn’t need.
These days, she prefers a much simpler approach, like putting money into diversified index funds that track many companies at once.
Her conclusion is that money is useful for security and freedom, but it doesn’t function as a happiness switch. Instead, she now focuses on aligning financial decisions with the life she actually wants to live.
Looking back, Shah said her mistakes weren’t caused by a lack of knowledge.
“None of these mistakes are about being bad with money,” she said. “They’re about being human.”
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