Many years ago, while navigating a deeply traumatic life event, I had the good fortune of working under a sympathetic boss who offered me some truly sage advice.

He shared that his Sunday School class had been studying the well-known “Five Stages of Grief.” He walked me through each stage and then explained what I have come to believe is the most important part: simply knowing the stages is not what matters. The key is having the willingness to work through the first four stages so you can eventually reach the final one: acceptance. Only then, he told me, can you begin to move forward.

For those who may not be familiar with this framework, here is a brief history.

In 1969, Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross changed the landscape of palliative care and psychological counseling with her groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying. The book introduced what became known as the Five Stages of Grief—a profoundly moving framework designed to help patients, families, doctors, nurses, and clergy better understand the emotional reality of terminal illness and bereavement.

It is a model born out of deep human suffering. And while it is important to respect the solemn weight of the Kübler-Ross model when confronting true tragedy, human nature has a way of revealing similar emotional patterns in far less tragic circumstances. We grieve not only death and devastating loss, but also the loss of our plans, our expectations, our conveniences, and our fragile illusions of certainty. That includes financial reality.

A Note on Using This Framework

Before going further, it is important to be clear: we are not psychologists or psychiatrists, and this article is not intended to treat grief, trauma, or clinical depression. Those are serious matters that deserve appropriate professional care. But in financial planning, we often see people wrestle with a different kind of loss: the loss of an expectation, a timeline, a lifestyle, or a plan that no longer works.

That emotional process matters. I have learned that no matter how sound a financial recommendation may be on paper, real change usually cannot happen until a person has emotionally worked through the situation and arrived at some level of acceptance. Only then can a plan be fully embraced and implemented.

Here is what that journey can look like when your financial life is involved.

Stage 1: Denial

Denial is not necessarily irrational. It is often the brain’s first line of defense against an unpleasant reality. In the financial world, denial may look like refusing to log into your online banking portal, leaving credit card statements unopened on the counter, or insisting that a temporary career setback is “just a glitch” that will fix itself next month.

Denial gives us a little emotional breathing room. The problem is that it can also keep us from seeing the facts clearly enough to respond.

Stage 2: Anger

Once denial begins to crack, anger often steps in. Anger can feel more powerful than disappointment, fear, or embarrassment. It tricks us into feeling a sense of control, even when we have very little.

We rage against corporate layoffs. We blame the Federal Reserve for interest rates. We curse the local real estate market. We may even become angry at the person who gently points out what the math is already saying.

The challenge is that anger rarely changes the bank balance. It simply delays our ability to deal with it.

Stage 3: Bargaining

Bargaining is our attempt to rewrite reality into a version we prefer. When facing difficult choices such as changing jobs, downsizing a home, reducing spending, or delaying retirement, bargaining is where people often get stuck. We promise ourselves that if we can just keep the oversized house, we will radically cut back on groceries, skip every vacation for the next decade, and miraculously start budgeting down to the penny.

Bargaining feels productive because we are technically “thinking about solutions.” But sometimes what we are really doing is negotiating with reality rather than responding to it.

Stage 4: Depression

In this context, we are not talking about clinical depression. We are talking about the acute disappointment that comes when we finally acknowledge that we may not get the outcome we wanted. Needing to sell a beloved home, leave a familiar career path, delay a dream, or scale back a lifestyle can be genuinely painful. There is often grief in admitting that something we hoped would work simply is not sustainable.

Ironically, though, this discomfort is often where real progress begins. Once we stop aggressively fighting reality, we can finally begin adapting to it.

Stage 5: Acceptance

Acceptance does not mean liking the situation. It does not mean pretending it is easy. It simply means acknowledging reality clearly enough that you can begin to move forward.

For some people, acceptance may sound like: “This house is always going to create financial stress, and it is time to let it go.”
For others, it may be: “I cannot retire as early as I hoped.”
Or: “We need to change our spending.”
Or: “This business, job, investment, or lifestyle is no longer working the way I wanted it to.”

Acceptance is not defeat. In financial planning, acceptance is often the beginning of strength.

Moving Your Life Forward

Acceptance is the threshold where actual progress happens. It is the moment the needle starts to move: the unnecessary impulse spending stops, the resumes are updated and sent out, the “For Sale” sign goes up in the yard, and sustainable boundaries are drawn. It is the moment you accept that the financial path you were traveling is no longer sustainable—and you decide to build a better one.

The Five Stages of Grief were never intended to trivialize true loss. Major life events—serious illness, the death of a loved one, divorce, or disability—deserve the utmost respect, time, and compassion. Yet this timeless framework can also shed light on our everyday frustrations and financial stalemates.

The next time you find yourself arguing with an airline representative, mourning a piece of real estate that was never truly in the budget, or explaining to a sullen teenager why a luxury BMW is not appearing in the driveway for their sixteenth birthday, take a breath and ask yourself “What stage am I in right now?” The answer will not instantly change your bank account or solve the problem. But it may help you reach acceptance a little faster. And acceptance is where good financial decisions begin. The sooner we move toward acceptance, the sooner we can focus on the only question that truly matters: What do we do next?

Kristina Bolhouse, CPA/PFS, CFP®

President

© 2026 Kristina Bolhouse and The Arkansas Financial Group, Inc., All rights reserved.

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