You and Carol have been friends for thirty years. You’ve seen each other through weddings, funerals, two divorces and one very bad perm in 1986. So when you meet for coffee on Tuesday, the words just tumble out.
You tell her exactly how much your aunt left you in her will. You tell her you’re planning to retire next spring, even though you haven’t told your boss. And somewhere between the second cup and the blueberry muffin, you mention your sister’s news. Her husband lost his job, and she asked you to keep it quiet.
Driving home, you feel a small knot in your stomach. Carol would never hurt you. But she has a husband and a sister of her own, and you know how these things travel. Nobody passes on a story to be cruel. They pass it on because it’s interesting, or because they assume one more person can’t hurt, and before you know it your news has a life of its own.
Having people you trust is one of life’s real blessings. Still, some things are better kept close, even with them, and keeping them private says nothing bad about your friends. In this article we’ll look at six things worth guarding, what the research says about each one and when you should absolutely tell someone. So, let’s go through it.
Privacy Is Different From Bottling Things Up
Before we start, an important point. Keeping everything inside isn’t healthy, and nobody is suggesting you should. Michael Slepian is a Columbia Business School professor who studies secrets. He has found that 97% of people are keeping at least one secret at any given time.
His research shows that the harm usually comes from how often our minds drift back to a secret when we’re alone. Hiding it in conversation is usually the easier part. In one study he described to Big Think, people thought about their most pressing secret about 20 times a week. Confiding in someone helped, partly because the conversation brought support and advice, and people felt better able to cope afterward.
So this list isn’t about shutting people out. It’s about choosing carefully. That way the people you love don’t end up carrying things that could hurt you or someone else.
1. The Exact Details of Your Money
Telling a close friend that money is tight, or that you’re finally comfortable, is perfectly normal. Telling her the exact figure in your savings account, or how much cash you keep in the house, is a different matter.
This isn’t only about strangers. A 2023 AARP study reported by Wealth Management estimated that older Americans lose $28.3 billion a year to financial exploitation, and nearly three-quarters of those losses involve people the victim knows, like relatives or caregivers. When the person was someone they knew, the average loss was about $50,000, compared with $17,000 when it was a stranger. And most of those cases never get reported at all.
Even when nobody means any harm, money numbers change how people see you. A cousin who hears about your inheritance may suddenly need a loan. A grown child might start counting on help you never offered. And once a number is out, you can’t take it back, so even a friend you’d trust with your life might mention it to her husband over dinner, never imagining that he’ll repeat it to his brother, who has been looking for someone to invest in his new business.
If family tension over money sounds familiar, take a look at our article on the child who cared for their parents and the inheritance question. It shows how those conversations can go wrong. Do make sure one trusted person knows where your important papers are kept, though. That’s very different from announcing the totals at Sunday lunch.
What to say when someone asks: “Enough to fix the roof, thank goodness.” It’s friendly and true, and it closes the subject.
2. Your Passwords, PINs and Security Answers
Most of us would never hand out our bank password. But plenty of us happily share the answers to our security questions on Facebook without realizing it.
You’ve probably seen those fun posts on Facebook. They ask for the name of your first pet, the street you grew up on, your favorite teacher or your first car. According to AARP, the FTC warns that answers like these can match the security questions that protect your online accounts. A fraud expert quoted in the article called it “death by 1,000 little cuts.” Each answer looks harmless alone, but criminals can piece them together over time.
The FTC even suggests using false answers to security questions, as long as you’ll remember them. Your first pet can be “Purple Chandelier” if you like. Nobody will guess it. It feels a little silly at first, typing a made-up answer about a pet you never had, but it means that even someone who knows your whole life story, or who has read every Facebook post you’ve ever written, will hit a wall if they try to get into your account.
And with family, if someone may need to manage your accounts one day, set that up properly. Your bank or a lawyer can help with things like a power of attorney. Writing your PIN on a sticky note for your nephew “just in case” is how a lot of sad stories start.
What to say when someone asks: “I keep all of that in one safe place, and my lawyer knows where.” Nobody who truly cares about you will push back on that.
3. Plans You Haven’t Finished Yet
This one surprised me. In a 2009 study led by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer, people wrote down their plans for working toward an important personal goal over the next week. Half of them had their plans read and acknowledged by someone else. As Psychology Today explains, those people spent less time actually working on their goals during the following week.
The theory is that telling others gives you a little taste of the reward. Part of you feels the job is already done. Derek Sivers explains the idea in this short TED talk.
There’s an important twist, though. A 2019 study from Ohio State University found that sharing a goal did help in one situation. It worked when people told someone whose opinion they respected, like a mentor or a boss. Sharing it with someone whose opinion they didn’t care much about made no difference at all. “The important thing is that you need to care about the opinion of who you are telling,” lead researcher Howard Klein said.
So if you’re starting a new walking routine, you don’t need to announce it to the whole family group chat. Tell one person whose good opinion matters to you, and let the results speak for themselves. If walking is your goal, our guide on losing weight by walking might help you get started.
What to say when someone asks what you’ve been up to: “I’ve got a few ideas brewing. I’ll tell you all about it when they’re further along.” It sounds a bit mysterious, and people tend to enjoy that.
4. Other People’s Secrets
When your sister tells you something in confidence, it’s hers. It isn’t yours to pass along, even to your husband or your best friend, and even if you add “but don’t tell anyone.”
Slepian’s lab has found that being trusted with a secret can bring two people closer, because we see it as an act of intimacy. But as the American Psychological Association describes his work, it’s also a double-edged sword. The more a confided secret preoccupies us, the heavier it becomes to carry.
Picture your sister hearing her own private news repeated back to her at Thanksgiving by a cousin who got it from your friend, who got it from you, and you can imagine how quickly thirty years of trust can crack. That’s a heavy price for one good story.
Women who become the family confidant often carry a lot of these secrets for everyone else. If that’s you, you might relate to our article on why the eldest daughter ends up managing the family.
There is one clear exception. If a secret means someone is in danger, such as a child being harmed or a person talking about ending their life, safety comes before loyalty.
What to say when someone asks you for the details: “That’s not my story to tell.” Said kindly, it actually makes people trust you more, because they know their own stories are safe with you too.
5. Every Complaint About Your Marriage
Every marriage has hard days, and having a friend to talk to can be a lifeline. But there’s a difference between asking for advice about a real problem and reporting every argument to your mother or your friends.
Picture how it usually goes. You fight with your husband on Friday and tell your sister all the worst details on Saturday. By Sunday, the two of you have made up, and you’ve forgiven him. Your sister hasn’t, and she may remember that story at every family dinner for the next ten years.
And venting may not even help you feel better. A 2024 review of 154 studies, led by Sophie Kjærvik and Ohio State’s Brad Bushman, found little evidence that venting reduces anger. According to ScienceAlert, what actually helped were calming activities like slow breathing, gentle yoga, mindfulness and simply taking a timeout.
If the distance in your marriage has become more than a bad week, our article on feeling like roommates in your marriage may help you think it through. A good counselor is also a much safer place for the details than the family grapevine.
What to say when your mother asks how things are at home: “We had a rough week, but we’re working on it.” That’s honest, and it leaves her with nothing to hold against him later.
This advice doesn’t apply to abuse. If your partner hurts you, threatens you or controls your money or your movements, please tell someone you trust. In the US, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233, or you can text START to 88788.
6. Your Good Deeds
You drove your neighbor to chemotherapy every week for three months. You quietly paid for a young mother’s groceries at the checkout. These are lovely things to do, and the urge to share them is completely human.
But researchers at Wharton and London Business School found that bragging about good deeds can backfire. In their experiments, described by Knowledge at Wharton, telling people about generous acts did show that someone was generous. But it also hinted at a selfish motive. Bragging only paid off when it revealed something people didn’t already know about the person.
Quiet kindness also has a way of feeling better from the inside. Many of us grew up with mothers and grandmothers who did enormous amounts of good without ever mentioning it, like the casseroles left on a doorstep after a funeral or the envelope slipped into a young couple’s hand at a wedding, and we only found out years later, which somehow made it mean even more. You did it because it was right, and nobody needs to applaud.
The researchers did note one exception. Telling friends about a cause you give to can inspire them to give too. So if you’re raising money for something you care about, go ahead and share. Just keep the focus on the cause rather than on yourself.
What to say when someone thanks you in public: “I was glad to help.” Then change the subject, which is somehow the hardest part.
What If Someone Feels Hurt You Didn’t Tell Them?
It happens. Your best friend finds out about your retirement plans from someone else, or your daughter learns that you had a health scare last spring, and she feels left out.
Be honest and gentle. You might say, “I wasn’t keeping it from you. I just needed to sort it out in my own head first.” Most people understand that, especially if you let them in now.
There’s a balance here, of course, and it’s worth checking yourself now and then. Privacy that protects your money and other people’s trust is healthy, but if you notice that you’re keeping almost everything from almost everyone, even when you’re struggling and could really use a kind ear, it may be worth asking whether you’re protecting yourself or simply cutting yourself off from the support you deserve.
And if someone close to you keeps using your private stories against you in arguments, pay attention to that. It’s a pattern we looked at in why narcissists provoke you.
When You Should Absolutely Tell Someone
Privacy has limits. Some things are too heavy to carry alone. Please talk to someone if you’re being hurt or threatened at home. The same goes if someone is pressuring you for money or if you’re struggling with your health or your mood.
Do you suspect someone is taking advantage of an older relative’s money? The Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116 can connect you with local help, including Adult Protective Services. And if you’ve had thoughts of harming yourself, you can call or text 988 in the US at any time.
Remember what Slepian’s research found. One honest conversation with the right person can make a secret far easier to live with.
Final Thoughts
Trusting people and keeping some things private can happen at the same time. Your closest friend can still be your closest friend. She just doesn’t need to know your PIN or what your sister told you last week.
The goal is to protect yourself and the people who confide in you. You can still let the right people in when you truly need them. A little privacy, chosen wisely, often makes those relationships stronger, because nobody has to wonder where their stories might end up.
Which of these six do you find hardest to keep to yourself? Let us know in the comment box below.