EPISODE 2: FEELING SHAME AROUND YOUR FINANCES

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THE LOWDOWN

In today's episode, we delve into a powerful emotion that often lurks behind our financial decisions: shame. I believe that shame is the underpinning, the very core, of the emotions we associate with our money troubles, concerns, and anxieties. As Brené Brown aptly puts it, shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

At 35, having traversed different phases of my own money journey, I can assure you that even I grapple with shame. It emerges when I scrutinize my spending, ponder my financial future, or compare myself to others on divergent paths. That inner voice whispers, "You're falling short; you won't make it." But here's the truth: you're not doing anything wrong; your priorities simply differ.

In this episode we explore the origins of shame. Society often dictates what is deemed the "superior" way to handle money. Influencers like Dave Ramsey or the lifestyles of friends and family can become benchmarks, leading to shame if we fall short of these standards.

Consider this: shame creeps in when we attempt to fit ourselves into someone else's life framework. Trying to replicate their financial choices may not align with our true desires, causing dissatisfaction and shame. It's crucial to recognize that your path, unique to you, is not wrong; it's simply different.

I confess to feeling shame in my own financial journey. Initially fixated on societal expectations, I believed owning a house was the key to financial wisdom. However, my 2020 choice to move into an apartment sparked criticism from those advocating homeownership. Little did I know, the world would change in three months.

Had I succumbed to shame, I might have missed out on invaluable experiences. The pandemic allowed me to grow independently in my first solo living experience. Financially, I could afford an apartment in California. It granted me freedom during remote work, privacy in relationships, and ultimately led me to meet the love of my life in my apartment complex.

While some may view my years in the apartment as "throwing money away," the memories, personal growth, and relationships formed make it priceless. The key is acknowledging shame but not letting it dictate your worth or decisions. It's a tool teaching valuable lessons but should never make you feel unworthy or unlovable.

As we navigate our financial journeys, let's prioritize decisions aligned with our true selves. Pause, reflect, and ask: Does this decision feel right to me? Is it propelling me towards my desired future? If the answer is yes, let go of shame; thank it for its concern. If not, embrace the opportunity to reevaluate without succumbing to shame.

Remember, you are a beautiful soul, and your decisions impact the world uniquely. Put your money where it feels right, silencing the voice of shame.

MENTIONED IN SHOW:

Website: www.lovealwaysjess.com/getstarted

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/love.always.jess

SHOW NOTES:

Episode begins at [00:00:54]

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Hi, welcome to today's episode. Today's episode is going to [00:01:00] be talking about shame, which I feel is the root, the foundation, the centralized feeling emotion around all of our money, woes, worries, um, feelings, any emotions that come up when it comes to your finances. Renee Brown said it. Well, when she said, Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

I want you to sit and think for a moment. When, whether, currently, in the past, have you felt shame around your finances?

Shame around your finances could sound something like, I'm bad with money. I should have donated more money [00:02:00] to charity or tithed more at church. I'm such an idiot for buying coffee every day. I can't believe I didn't negotiate a raise. Or, I'm too dumb to understand credit scores. I'm too dumb to understand my retirement fund.

I'm too dumb to understand interest rates. Or maybe I never should have co signed on that loan.

All of these things, ideas, feelings that we have going on in our heads that make us feel shameful are natural. I don't think there's anybody in the world who hasn't felt shame or isn't feeling shame. 

Even me at 35 years old. Who has gone through many different iterations of my own personal money journey. Feels shame. , you know, I [00:03:00] question sometimes the stuff I spend my money on. Or what my future is going to look like from a financial perspective. I have dreams. I have goals. Am I gonna get there? Is it stupid to other people look at me and judge me for the choices that I've made, you know, I have conversations with coworkers or, you know, other friends and family members and the path that they have taken with their money is completely different than mine.

And sometimes that voice in the back of my head comes in and says, what are you doing? You're nowhere near where they are. You're a failure. You're never going to make it. Why are you even chasing after this financial goal? And that's shame speaking. It's telling you that you're doing something wrong when you're not [00:04:00] doing something wrong.

You're just, your priorities and your desires in life are completely different than the person next to you.

But let's pause for a moment.

Where does shame come from?

And I think a lot of the time

we don't stop to think, Why am I feeling this way?

What has society taught me about finances that I feel is the quote on quote superior way to handle my money? Or What has society told me that I need to be in order to be successful, in order to be considered

rich or financially stable? And that's going to depend upon which part of society you listen to. Um,

you know, you have, uh, the Dave Ramsey method, who [00:05:00] personally, I've never read the Dave Ramsey books, listened to him, anything, so I don't know. Everything that he talks about. But. 

If you're the person who listens to Dave Ramsey and finds what he says to be your foundation, to be what you want for your financial goals, you're going to feel shame when you're not meeting those goals.

Another example is. If there's an influencer or a family friend who their life, the way you envision your future life to be, is exactly theirs and you want to model it after them, you're going to sit here and you are going to try to emulate them, you're going to try to replicate what they do, but when it doesn't work You're going to feel shame because you're trying to fit yourself in to the framework or the box [00:06:00] of what somebody else's life looks like.

And is that possible? Absolutely, 100 percent if you want to be exactly like them. And you want to do everything that they do down to the penny. Could you make it work? Sure. But at the end of the day, does making that work feel fulfilling to you? Is it everything you wanted it to be? And I'm almost guaranteed that if you're feeling an ounce of shame because you're not meeting those expectations, or the expectations That you thought would make you happy aren't making you happy.

It's because it's not what's right for you in your soul,

in your mind, in your heart. And I feel like those are the moments that shame creeps in telling you, you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong. This isn't right. [00:07:00] You're unworthy because you're unable to do this. When at the end of the day, it's not what you're meant to do. You're meant to do it differently.

I mentioned that I, myself, feel shame around things today. Um, I felt shame for years since I started working. Um, was I putting my money towards the right things? Was I doing

what felt

like what society says that your role with money is? , for years, I had this idea in my head that

you need to buy a house in order to be smart with your money, invest in real estate. And honestly, that's my goal for 2024. is to save up money to buy a house for real estate or to live in. Um, [00:08:00] but for the longest time, my goal was to use my money to travel. And January of 2020, I knew it was time to move out of my parents house, but I wasn't ready to move into a home because

I didn't want to have the,

I don't want to say burden, um, responsibility. I didn't want to have the responsibility of maintaining a home, collecting mail, making sure that the house was secured while I was away. If I were to travel, in 2019, I had traveled to six different places and 2020, I was like, I'm going to do even more. I'm excited.

I'm moving into an apartment. I'm moving into an apartment because if anything happens, the landlord is responsible for it. It's a small enough place that [00:09:00] I won't have an overabundance of things. There's security, the property is maintained, I don't have to do anything other than exist in this apartment.

And then when I choose to go and travel, I go away, and I come back, and everything is well.

That was the choice that I decided to make. I felt shame from older generations or people who purchase houses because they were like, you're throwing your money away. You're putting your money towards rent instead of into a mortgage where it's going to, build you equity. And then you have an asset instead of a liability.

At the time that I got this apartment, I had no idea that three months later, the world would shut down.

My dreams have changed.

If I would have sat And listen to the shame when I got this apartment,

I might not[00:10:00] have traveled,

I might have put all of my money into purchasing a house and then focus on remodeling

and focus on maintaining the home,

but my heart would have been sad.

My soul,

my soul that had this desire to travel wouldn't have felt right.

It would have felt sad that I wasn't seeing bits and pieces of the world that I had wanted to go and explore. Like I had mentioned in 2019, I had gone to six different areas.

One of those areas was India, which is paid for by work. And when work pays for your flight, it's nice to do a layover in a different country. 2019, I did my layover in Dubai, and I had so many dreams and aspirations. To possibly explore [00:11:00] Singapore or head over to Spain.

I knew that I wanted to go back to India to see my friends in India,

but I also knew that I wanted to take that time being on the other side of the world to explore other parts of the world. I knew that I wanted to go back to Costa Rica and I still want to do all of this. If I would have listened to the voice in the back of my head that made me feel shameful, that told me that I was doing it wrong, that told me

you're wasting your money, you could do better than this.

You could build a brighter future if you just did X, Y, and Z.

Then I wouldn't have opened the possibility for me to do what my true heart's desire was.

Obviously, as I said earlier, fast forward three months, the pandemic happened, the world shut down.

I didn't end up traveling,

but I didn't also feel [00:12:00] shame

because here's, here's the good things that came out of the pandemic, out of being in this apartment. During the pandemic, I had the opportunity

to grow independently. It was my first time living alone.

College, I had roommates, and then I moved back in with my family. And I always told myself, the next time I move out of my parents house, It would be on my own or with the person I'm going to marry.

It meant that my financial journey up until that point, January of 2020, had led me to being able to afford an apartment in California on my own.

It gave me the opportunity to make this place my own decoration wise, energy wise.

It allowed me the freedom and the space when the pandemic happened to work from home[00:13:00] and not have to compete with my family working from home.

It meant that if I needed space, I could have my space.

And when I got sick, I didn't have to worry about getting my mom or my grandma sick who were immunocompromised.

It also meant that I could build healthy relationships with partners. Because I didn't have anybody else here, so we had our privacy, we had our space.

And the cherry on top has been that by being here, in this apartment complex, I have met the love of my life.

He lives in the same complex, we met in the hot tub one night, and that changed my life. So sometimes, when we're feeling shame around something, in the moment, we don't see the bigger picture. We don't see. What's going to come.[00:14:00] 

We're focused on the finite, the in the moment, the oh no, I screwed up. What are people gonna think of me?

This makes me unworthy. This makes me unlovable. This makes me

This makes me a bad person because I chose this. Instead of that, but what we're forgetting is that that decision that you made,

it affects the trajectory of your life, not anybody else's

that leads to some of the greatest outcomes,

because sometimes that decision is a lesson to be learned, but sometimes that decision also means that your future. Opening the door to a brighter and better future that is more aligned with you.

I said a little bit ago in the [00:15:00] podcast

that my goal for 2024 is to save up enough financially to get a house.

My dream of traveling the world hasn't gone away. But it looks different now than it did four years ago. Life has happened.

Life has happened and I am outgrowing this apartment.

My financial decisions to be here at this apartment to some people might look like I threw my money away.

You spent four years paying thousands of dollars a month on a one bedroom apartment when that same money could have been put towards a mortgage

and you didn't get to travel. What a waste.

But like I said, so many other things have happened in the past four years that have made my decision of being in this apartment complex. worth it. [00:16:00] Every penny, every memory,

everything I have done in the past four years has been because I let that voice in the back of my head that was feeling shame go and told myself, you're in the right spot. Sure, you didn't get to travel as much as you wanted to. You didn't get to return to India. You didn't get to go and explore Singapore or Spain or wherever, but that's okay to do it again.

It just means it's going to look different.

It means that you're going to be in a house with the love of your life, creating a space that is both of yours.

And then you're going to get to go and travel the world with your partner.

Money can be stressful.

And when we let the voices, or the choices, or the ideas, or the visions of other [00:17:00] people trickle into our head,

It creates the voice that tells you you're doing it wrong. It brings up the feeling of shame

and that feeling, will never go away

because there's always going to be something new. That you choose to do,

but the beauty of recognizing that feeling, of recognizing the voice telling you that you should feel horrible and that you should go run and hide for making that decision, recognizing that allows you to take your power back and allows you

to say, Hey, I understand that you're feeling unworthy, that you're feeling,

That you're feeling like we did something wrong,

and the best thing to do in those moments

is to give [00:18:00] yourself compassion.

Ask yourself,

ask yourself, is the decision I am making,

sorry, rephrase that, does the decision I am making feel good to me? Is it holding me accountable for the outcomes I want?

I chose to get an apartment because I wanted a space that had minimal

upkeep slash responsibility

that I could leave and come back to and if something were to go wrong while I was gone somebody else would take care of it. I didn't have to worry so that the outcome that I desired Was the freedom to go and travel?

Does the decision you make hold you accountable for the outcome that you want? If it does,[00:19:00] Great. Let the shame go. Say thank you for your worry. I hear you. I feel you. But I've got you. I've got you. I will take care of you.

And say thank you. And let it go.

If

the decision you made doesn't sit right with your soul and doesn't keep you accountable for where you want to be financially, if the decision you made doesn't feel right in your soul and doesn't hold you accountable for the decisions, sorry, for the outcomes that you want. That is when it's time to re evaluate what you are doing.

That is when it's time, still not to feel shameful, but that is when it's time to say to yourself, this isn't working, I want to fix this.

Shame [00:20:00] is a tool that can be helpful.

It keeps us on the right path. It teaches us valuable lessons.

But never let shame make you feel. Like you are in the wrong,

like you are unworthy or you are unlovable because you are so worthy and you are so lovable. Everything you do in life

is leading you to the next greatest chapter, the lows and the highs.

And the people around you will have their opinions and will want what's best for you from their worldview perspective.

But what they think is best for you isn't what is always best for you. So know that despite the opposition you get from the decisions that you make, you are [00:21:00] still lovable. You are still worthy.

So try to find a way to reframe that feeling of shame

and break it down into, is a decision I made

one that feels right to me.

And if it feels right to me, is it something that is moving me forward towards the future that I desire?

Depending upon your answer. We'll depend upon your next steps.

You are a beautiful and bright human on this earth, and we need you

because the decisions you make impact the world financially, spiritually,

physically.

So when it comes to your money,

put your money where it feels right to you

and silence the voice of shame. I hope that [00:22:00] helped you today.

And I hope that as you head into this week, if shame creeps into your head in any way, that you pause and you ask yourself those two things

and go from there. Have a beautiful, beautiful week ahead. You are

loved and you are worthy. Talk to you next week. Bye.

​ [00:23:00]