Let’s Talk About Money

It’s time to really start talking about money. We use money every single day, but we rarely talk about it besides “How much?”

Right?

Well, it’s time to change that. Talking about money will help you release the shame and guilt that you carry around money. It will help you build your relationship with your money. And it will set you free from the prison that you hold yourself in because of money. 

So are you ready to start talking about money?

Tune in to today’s episode and then leave your promise to start talking about money in the comments below!

Transcript for Episode 2 – Let’s Talk About Money:

This is episode 2 of the Prosper and Profit podcast. This is the Prosper and Profit podcast, where women talk about money and transformations, because being independent with money is sexy and profitable, and money transformations are how you prosper with your money daily, and now for your host, Clarissa Wilson.
Money is something that is rarely talked about because it’s considered a taboo topic. It has always been considered a taboo topic. We don’t talk about money. The most that we talk about is how much, but when we start to talk about money and really just get it out of our system, that money is okay to talk about, then we can start really building our relationship with our money and having that independence.
Clearly you notice that I love talking about money because not only do I have this podcast. I help other women on a regular basis develop their relationship with their money. I’m okay talking about money, and you don’t have to talk about how much money you have, how much money you make or how much money you owe. Just talking about the specific topic of money, how much certain things cost, how much you’re paying for certain things that you really think it might not even be fair to be paying that much, kind of stuff like that.
It doesn’t have to be specific topics of how much money you have, how much you make and how much you owe, but by being able to talk about money, we’re getting it out of our system. The emotions and the guilt and the shame that we just build up inside. We hold it inside and it’s kind of like how people explain bottling up emotion or if you watch a cartoon, one of the cartoons get really angry and they get really red and then their top just blows. That’s kind of what happens when you bottle all of this inside and you don’t talk about it.
When money was first brought about, it was used as a way to exchange goods and services for something else of value, because we only have the bartering system, so we would exchange goods and services for more goods and services, but it came to a point where you didn’t always need the goods and services of someone else but you wanted something that they were offering, so we came up with a money system so that we could buy something from someone else and give them money instead of receiving their goods and services in exchange, and at the time, only men had money. Only men made the money, they spent the money, they kept track of the money. Women had absolutely nothing to do with money and for the most part they weren’t even allowed to make money. If they did make money, it went directly into the purse or the wallet of the man of the family.
Then it came to the mid-1900’s when women started getting some rights to make money. They were able to start spending money and they were able to start becoming more independent with money by not having to rely on someone else. It actually came to a point where we started having divorces happen, so women had to have their own money, and there wasn’t a man there for them so they had to be able to make money. They had to be able to have their own bank accounts, because women couldn’t even have their own bank account before. A man had to have the bank account, and today 85 percent of the women spend the money that both men and women make. 85 percent of the women make the financial decisions of their family and sometimes without the input of the men.
The tables have been completely turned from when money was first brought into existence, and due to this, we need to talk about money more. With women having more rights around money, being able to have their own money, being able to have their own bank accounts, we need to be able to talk about money and we need to make it so that it’s not a taboo topic, because when we talk about money, we can eliminate the shame that we have around money. We can eliminate the shame and the guilt that we have around debt, or even not being able to have money, because it does come to a point where we don’t have enough money to buy what we want to buy, so we build up this shame and guilt inside because we can’t provide for something, but when we start to talk about money, we can figure out why we act certain ways with our money and we can make changes to our money situation.
By talking about money, it can actually set us free, because when you talk about something that you rarely talk about, you are able to start telling your brain and your heart that everything is going to be okay. You’re not letting your ego take over anymore by letting your brain and your heart realize that everything is okay and everything that I talk about on this podcast is something that I have experienced from my own experience. I don’t tell you to go out and do something because I haven’t done it. I have experienced that in the past where someone has told me to do something that they didn’t do and they didn’t know how it was going to end up, but everything that I tell you to do, I have done myself, and I won’t tell you to do something that I know doesn’t work.
I didn’t used to like talking about money. I like to be able to hide everything under the rug, just push it away, not deal with it, and that’s how a lot of us are, but when we start talking about money, there’s no need to push it under the rug anymore. We can just be more free, because I know that when I started talking about my money and I started opening up about how much student loan debt I have or even how much money I made, it’s like I felt this entire relief just come through me, because it was okay. Everything was going to be okay, and by talking about it, I was able to start making changes and seeing the automatic actions that I actually make.
I’m not saying that by not talking about money you have to share how much money you make, how much money you owe or how much money you even have in the bank account, but you can talk about other things that have to do with money, how much things cost, something that you want, the way that you act around money. You can start talking about those things, and get to a point where it’s okay to talk about everything with money, and it’ll start making the process around money much easier. You’ll learn it’s okay to have money. It’s okay to spend money, and the more that we talk about it, the more that we build a relationship with our money, the easier it all gets.
I mention that I have student loans. I actually have 95,000 dollars in student loans. Am I proud of that? No, not really, but I’m not afraid to share that number. I know that by me sharing that number, it puts other people at ease knowing that they might not have as much as I do, or they do have as much as I do, so they can relate to my situation, or someone else might have more but it still puts them at ease because they know that it’s okay, because student loan debt is something that is growing in our world.
Most of us that go to college, we end up graduating with student loan debt and it’s not something that we can really get away with anymore by not having student loans, especially when you want to go to college for higher education for something like being a lawyer, being an accountant, that’s what I am. I’m an accountant, or even being a teacher. We need more education so that we can help other people with what we know, and I may have 95,000 dollars in student loans, but I’m working to pay it off one day at a time, and that’s all we can do, is we can only do one day at a time.
Did I have to get 3 college degrees to get to where I am today? Probably not, but I can tell you that I wouldn’t have the same knowledge that I have today if I didn’t get those 3 college degrees, and could I have gotten the same knowledge for a lot less money? Probably, but I can also tell you that I probably wouldn’t have been as disciplined to learn all of the information that I have learned on my own like I did when I was in the classroom, and when it comes to money, most of us carry a form of shame or guilt with the way that we have dealt with our money before. The shame or guilt is what keeps us stuck. It keeps us from moving forward and making changes in our lives.
When you start to talk about your money and the shame and the guilt that you carry, you can begin to make changes, and by making these changes, you begin to find that you have more money. You can start making more money. You can start saving more money, and most likely you can start spending less money, because it takes just knowing what’s there and what’s not there and how you act, to be able to make these changes. When we talk about this with someone else, that’s when we realize stuff that we do, because a lot of our automatic actions are not something that we notice until someone else points it out, because I’ve noticed some of the stuff that I do just by interviewing some of the ladies that are showing up on this podcast, and you’ll probably notice the same thing by listening to these interviews. You’ll notice stuff that you do, and it’s not a conscious action. That’s why I call them automatic actions, because it’s not conscious. It’s just something that you do automatically because it’s something that you learned.
You realize that you do this, and you’ll be able to start making those changes, but if you really are not okay with talking about money with someone else, then go out and get yourself a journal that you use to specifically talk to yourself about money, and then every night before you go to bed, sit down and write in this journal all the stuff about money that has happened that day that you need to get out of your head. Just by doing this exercise, writing down the stuff that you need to get out of your head about money, will help you release some of that shame and guilt that you carry around money. Journaling is something that helps us talk indirectly about what we need to talk about, because when you start to write this stuff down on a piece of paper, you’re still getting it out of your head. You’re not keeping it bottled up inside, and that’s why this exercise is so powerful.
My challenge for you today is to find one person, or a money journal, that you can talk to on a regular basis about your money, and then I want you to come back to the show notes page and leave a comment that you found your buddy, and I want you to make sure that you subscribe to this podcast so that you can learn more about money on a regular basis. The show notes for this episode and all other episodes can be found on prosperprofitpodcast.com. I hope you would leave a comment on the show notes page for this episode and let us know what your biggest takeaway was for today, and be sure to subscribe to this podcast so that you never miss an episode.