Does financial stress make it harder to think clearly?

Rabbi Landau teaches that it does. People joke that the minute someone gets rich, everyone thinks he is smart, but the joke hides a truth: being broke can lower your IQ, “not because you’re less intelligent, because your brain is spending its limited bandwidth on survival.”

“When you’re worried about paying rent, you don’t lose intelligence, but you lose access to it.” That is why, he says, the fear of poverty can make you poorer than poverty itself, and why your biggest financial problem is not your bank account but what your bank account is doing to your brain. “So the first investment is not in the stock market, it’s buying back your own brain.”

“Worry feels like thinking,” he warns. “It’s the opposite of thinking.” King Solomon, the wisest man, told us not to lean on our own wisdom: “Betach el Hashem bechol libecha, v’el binascha al tisha’en,” trust in Hashem with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.

His conclusion: “Don’t use your mind to replace trust. Use trust in Hashem to free your mind.” Bitachon is not the opposite of intelligence; “it’s allowing intelligence to work at its best.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Financial stress does not make a person less intelligent, but it takes away his access to his intelligence.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

The fear of poverty uses up the mind’s limited bandwidth on survival. Worry feels like thinking, but it is the opposite.

Underlying need or longing

The first thing a struggling person needs is to “buy back” his own mind.

Deepest human truth

Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of men, said not to lean on your own understanding but to trust in Hashem with all your heart. Trust does not replace thinking; it frees it.

More questions from this teaching

• What does it mean to trust in Hashem and not rely on your own understanding?