This is an audio transcript of Money Clinic podcast episode: ‘Can financial therapy change our relationship with money?’
Claer Barrett
When you think about money, what emotions spring to mind? Pleasure, stress or maybe shame? Why do we overspend on some things like buying gifts for our friends, yet scrimp on others like contributing to our pensions? And where does our behaviour around money come from? If you think you’ve got some bad habits when it comes to managing your money, the good news is that my guest today says it’s possible to change them.
Vicky Reynal
We think about the symbolic meaning of our relationship with food or with sex or, you know, with other objects. Why are we not applying it to understanding our relationship with money?
Claer Barrett
Welcome to Money Clinic, the weekly podcast about personal finance and investing from the Financial Times. I’m Claer Barrett, the FT’s consumer editor.
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Vicky Reynal is a financial therapist whose new book, Money on Your Mind: The Psychology Behind Your Financial Habits, aims to help people untangle problematic aspects of their relationship with money. And for the next 25 minutes, she’s going to be sitting on the couch with us. Welcome, Vicky.
Vicky Reynal
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Claer Barrett
Well, it’s lovely to have you back on the show. But until now, many listeners might not have realised that financial therapy is a thing. Can you tell us, what does it involve?
Vicky Reynal
It’s very much a psychotherapy session, but in which we focus on your relationship with money. A lot of people come to me having tried going to maybe a financial adviser or having asked advice from friends and family and having tried different things to change their relationship with money or their money behaviours. But when that hasn’t worked, they end up coming to me because they want to get to the roots of why they behave a certain way with money, even though they know they should be doing it differently but haven’t managed to.
Claer Barrett
Hmmm. And certainly I’ve been looking forward to talking to you about all of the things that are in your book. But before we move on to that, how did you realise that there was a market for this particular form of therapy?
Vicky Reynal
Money comes into the consulting room anyway. You know, it’s part of living a life. And so people will bring it up occasionally. But I did have a few clients whose presenting problem was money-related, and I thought there could be a lot more who just haven’t been brave enough to approach a therapist to talk about it.
But it’s also come from a kind of a personal interest in it, you know, having both studied business and psychotherapy. In my psychology degree, money wasn’t talked about very much. And so you have all these incredible tools that psychotherapists have in their hands to be able to think about the symbolic meaning of our relationship with food or with sex or, you know, with other objects. Why are we not applying it to understanding our relationship with money? And so it was that interest that led me to read about it more and research it more. And slowly more and more people started reaching out to me for it.
Claer Barrett
What kinds of people seek help from you, and what kinds of money problems do they tend to present with?
Vicky Reynal
There’s no two clients I see that struggle with the same money difficulty. I see people who are too generous or too greedy, who overspend, or maybe gamble, who keep financial secrets. There’s all sorts of difficulties in business partnerships and families. You know, when you think about inheritance and what that brings up from people, both trying to decide how much you’re going to leave to whom, but also being the recipient of an inheritance and being baffled by maybe being more than you expected or less than you expected. And there’s all sorts of different issues that we can present with related to money.
Claer Barrett
Now, reading your book, Money on Your Mind, it quickly becomes apparent that our financial past has a really outsized influence on our financial future. Could you give us some examples of how that can work?
Vicky Reynal
Yeah, so definitely our financial past has an impact. So, for example, if your family has gone through a bankruptcy, that will shape your anxieties about your future finances or your ability to be better than your parents and not make the same mistakes. But I think what’s even more interesting are all the experiences that aren’t money-related that influence our future relationship with money. And that’s what my book mainly focuses on, which is experiences, for example, of an abandonment early in life, which could actually be behind why we overspend on luxury items, you know, things that we know will last for ever, and they will stay and they won’t leave us. Or experiences of being bullied in school, for example, that leave us with a longing to fit into groups. And so when we grow up, we overspend when we’re out with friends. We try to impress them. We try to feel like we belong . . .
Claer Barrett
He’s the person who pays first at the bar.
Vicky Reynal
Exactly. And get their approval. So there’s so many factors that shape what we do with money today.
Claer Barrett
So people could be presenting with what they think is a problem about money, but actually it’s about something much deeper.
Vicky Reynal
And that’s why I think it’s so valuable to explore your relationship with money, even if you don’t necessarily think you have a money problem, because pulling that thread can lead you deeper into yourself and understand aspects of yourself you hadn’t thought about before. Like, you know, your relationship with receiving, with giving, with sharing — all the values and skills that we use to express our relationship with money.
Claer Barrett
Now, one of the absolute key messages in your book is that money is a symbol for other things. You say at one point, it oozes with meaning. Can you take us through some of the things that money might symbolise for people?
Vicky Reynal
All sorts. It can vary from power to love to masculinity to equality, fairness. It can represent value for people in terms of self-worth rather than external value. And all these different meanings, I think, is what makes it difficult to talk about money. Because if we all think of it differently, then we don’t know what is going on in the other person’s mind, not just about what it represents, but also the parameters they set around what’s frugal, what’s excessive, what’s risky, what isn’t. Then we’re left in the dark and that’s uncomfortable. Will they judge us? Will they be critical of our approach to money? And I think that’s one of the reasons why it gets tucked away and not talked about. It has many different meanings.
Claer Barrett
Well, I very much see money as security. That’s what it symbolises for me. You know, there wasn’t a lot of money around when I was growing up, and the fear of running out of money is something that stayed with me as an adult. And like many people, it does make me feel more uncomfortable about taking risk. It took me a long time before I felt comfortable investing money because I was worried it could just disappear in a puff of smoke if the markets changed. Also, it makes me work too much. You know, I want to earn more money. I find it really difficult to turn something down, even if I have enough. I mean, that’s just one example of how something symbolic can translate into something real and tangible.
Vicky Reynal
Absolutely. And I think a lot of people would identify with your view of it. And for many people like you, Claer, might become more aware about the importance of money and having to tackle it sensibly and accumulate enough to feel secure. And other people maybe go too far down that route and never feel secure, even if they’ve moved themselves way beyond the situation they were initially in. You know, they will never feel that sense of safety. And other people who do the opposite, and they just decide it’s too stressful, I’m just not going to think about money. And of course, it’s not a conscious decision, but that’s what how they defend against those feelings.
Claer Barrett
So when we understand that money is symbolic of something else, something deeper, how can that release us from a bad habit or negative behaviour?
Vicky Reynal
It can allow us to ask ourselves the right questions, you know, to catch ourselves in different moments in which we’re making financial decisions and stop and think, why am I doing this? So, you know, if you’ve just picked up the mail that’s fallen on your doormat and you’re about to put it in the drawer without opening it, and you know, you know, you’ve thought about this link that, you know, money’s anxiety-provoking and you avoid it, then you can, in that moment, maybe take a second and think, well, here I’m doing it as I’m putting it away, I’m avoiding it. Is that what I choose to do? Is that what’s the most sensible thing for me to do?
Claer Barrett
Well, fascinating stuff. And all of these aspects help us to understand our own relationship with money. But Vicky, I want to talk to you next about managing money with other people and in particular within romantic relationships, because this is an area that lots of people ask me for some help with.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. There’s a lot of conflict in couples about money, and the statistics show that it’s one of the areas that couples argue about the most in relationships.
Claer Barrett
It end relationships.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. And one of the reasons why there’s a lot of money conflict is that either this is a couple in which it’s difficult to find compromises in general and so their differences clash, and they can’t resolve them. They get stuck in who’s right and who’s wrong. Or it could be that they’re using money to express something deeper about their relationship that maybe they can’t quite put into words. And so, you know, I’ve heard people say, well, you know, he’s not giving me enough money, when actually what they really want to say is he’s not giving me enough attention.
Claer Barrett
Or time.
Vicky Reynal
Or time. He’s not, you know, investing in the relationship rather than, you know . . .
Claer Barrett
Buying me a gift but missing a date.
Vicky Reynal
Exactly right. So I think it would be so helpful for people to move to a place in which they say, right, we’re, you know, we’re looking at our approach to money in a very different way, but that doesn’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong. You know, each approach will have pros and cons. And so I think recognising the advantages of the other person’s approach to money can create a ground in which we can start and look for a compromise, you know, something that works and that is somewhere in the middle.
Claer Barrett
There was a great quote in your book about how we have two ears and one mouth, so we should spend more time listening. And I did think I need to check myself on this.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. Because we get worked up sometimes during conflict and it becomes all about how we are right and the other isn’t. So if you keep, for example, getting frustrated because your partner overspends, you know, think about how many times the conversation was about you overspent again, you know, stop wasting all of our money. We’re never going to get enough for the down payment. And that’s not really talking. That’s just venting frustration. But talking is about trying to help them understand, why are they doing it? How can you help them do it less? Do they want to stop, or do they think that that’s the right way to go forward? So I think it’s having a conversation with genuine curiosity and a desire to reconcile.
Claer Barrett
Well, as well as conflicts with our romantic partners over money, one thing that feels to me is becoming more and more common, especially in the cost of living crisis, is arguments with other family members, even with friends about money. What kind of advice would you offer to people who are living through that?
Vicky Reynal
One of the things that I’ve observed in friendship groups is that money rarely gets discussed ‘cause we’re kind of afraid of other people’s judgment. You know, it is a time in which for many people, there are real money concerns. They have to make real sacrifices. A lot of times people will tell me, I don’t know how to tell my friends that, you know, I can’t afford the hen do, or I can’t afford to pay so much for the gift collection they’re planning. And actually being the first one that says that, rather than being met with judgment or criticism, is usually met with somebody else saying, I’m so glad you said that, because I can’t afford it either. And so in creating a space in which that can be talked about and in which we can normalise expressing our situation to others is massively important.
Claer Barrett
You know, your mentioning of hen dos calls to mind the episode of Money Clinic we did about a year ago on how to tell a friend that you can’t afford to go to their wedding. We have one really heartbreaking example on that show of somebody who just ghosted her best friend. She’s cut off all contact with her because she was so ashamed that she couldn’t afford to fly overseas and attend her wedding and take a big part in the ceremony. And that reminds me of one of the opening statements of your book, which is that money isn’t what makes us happy. Friendships and close relationships with people, in your view, are the biggest contributor to happiness.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. And you know, in some ways, the conclusion of the book is that money doesn’t matter, but we make it stand for things that matter. And so when we’re using it to buy love, when we’re using it to buy a sense of self-esteem and self-worth, then, we’re giving money too much importance. You know what? Ultimately, what will make us happy are relationships. I think one of the things that people don’t realise, going back to that example you just gave, is that sometimes not talking about it leaves things open to people’s fantasies. And so, you know, that friend would have completely understood, I imagine, that, you know, you can’t afford to fly to the wedding. But ghosting them will have left them thinking all sorts of much worse things about, you know, she doesn’t care about me as a friend or whatever else. And so I think there’s little to lose when it comes to talking about money.
Claer Barrett
Well, lots of listeners come to this podcast because they want to find out more information to arm themselves and to get started in investing, to finally overcome the fear and anxiety of looking at their pension record. All of these things. One of your tips in your book was to create a list of the things that you want to learn about money.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. You know, about a half of adults in Britain and abroad actually are anxious about money. And what I find is that a lot of times, the anxiety is kind of a vague feeling that leads people to push the topic away. But actually, when you start understanding what’s behind it, it’s often a lack of knowledge. You know, I’m anxious because I know I should be doing more about my money management, but I don’t. Why don’t you? Because I don’t understand. Well, what don’t you understand? And once we start spelling it out, well, it’s actually pensions, but, you know, I’m supposed to be a proper adult and understand how pensions work, but I don’t. There’s so much shame about asking and spelling things out. And so it’s so helpful when people can articulate what it is that they don’t understand, because it gives them, first of all, an obvious next step, which is to find out. And that immediately alleviates the anxiety. So the more we know about money, and research has shown this, the less anxious we are about it and the better choices we make. So making explicit what the anxiety is about is always helpful because the solution could be within reach.
Claer Barrett
Vicky, I want to touch on another behaviour in your book, which is self-sabotage. Now, why can we be our own worst enemies when it comes to money?
Vicky Reynal
There are a number of emotional reasons why that could be the case. I’ve seen people fall short of success because they were actually afraid of success and what that could bring with it. So, a fear of people’s envy, a fear of doing better than their parents. But I’ve also seen people who don’t feel, you know, deep inside themselves, kind of deserving of good things, because maybe they grew up in an environment in which they weren’t giving enough kind of positive reinforcement. They didn’t have parents that were necessarily present, telling them how well they were doing and allowing them to feel loveable. And so they grow up feeling undeserving. And that gets acted out through bad investments and bad financial choices that always keep them stuck in a place in which they don’t have enough.
Claer Barrett
Give us an example from your consulting room.
Vicky Reynal
I’ve seen one person that was coming to me with what seemingly was an overspending issue. And actually, when we started looking into, you know, where was all this money going? Why were they getting in their own way? It was actually a fear of separation, a fear of leaving their family home. And, you know, they were in their 20s, still living at home. And it was a fear of kind of becoming an independent adult and potentially losing the attachment with the parents that was getting in the way.
Claer Barrett
And that was causing them to self-sabotage by spending all their money rather than saving up for a deposit on a flat.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. Yes.
Claer Barrett
Another topic that you explore in the book are the money secrets that we keep. What would you say are the most common ones and why do we hide our financial behaviour?
Vicky Reynal
Money secrets are actually more common than one would think. So in some surveys, they found that two out of five people have kept some kind of financial secret from their partner. And the common ones, I would say, are around spending, so hidden credit card debt or, you know, hiding purchases, cutting off the tax as you walk in the house, things like that.
Claer Barrett
The only things delivered to the Financial Times office.
Vicky Reynal
(Laughter) For example. And usually there is, of course, the fear of judgment. So, you know, if we’ve already had arguments with our partner about our overspending and, you know, we can see why we’re hiding it. But sometimes there’s other reasons. You know, we could be holding on to a secret as a passive-aggressive act. You know, our partner, you know, has annoyed us somehow, maybe they’ve been unavailable emotionally or they’ve done something we didn’t like. And so we, unconsciously retaliate by holding on to a secret.
For other people who maybe are, you know, maybe fall in the category of, what is called avoidant attachment, they’re afraid of relationships, they prefer to keep others at arm’s length because they feel a bit insecure in them. They might use secrets kind of as a barrier, kind of a boundary between them and the other person. It makes them feel safe because it creates a distance with the other person that allows them to feel comfortable enough in a relationship. So that could be kind of a deeper emotional reason why we might hold things to ourselves, in our relationship.
Claer Barrett
Finally, Vicky, I wondered if you could give us some tips for dealing with financial anxiety. Lots of people suffer from this anyway, but even more so at a time when our finances are under pressure from the cost of living crisis. Do you have any tips for listeners into how they can ease this pressure?
Vicky Reynal
So sometimes breaking down that anxiety into, well, what is it? You know, is it that you feel you should be managing your money better and you’re not doing that? You kind of know that there’s small rejigs you could do to save yourself some money. For example, renegotiate your mortgage.
Claer Barrett
Yeah, that’s something that lots of people have got to face up to this year.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. And so there’s different routes you can take to do that. Do you understand what you need to do? So is, you know, step one doing some research on it, talking to people about what are they doing about it. You know, reading a book like your book Claer, that helps you understand a little bit more.
Claer Barrett
Well, asking friends to recommend a good mortgage broker.
Vicky Reynal
That’s right. All of these things, I think, help alleviate anxiety because, first of all, they give us some control in a situation in which a lot feels out of our control and a lot of the anxiety is about that. You know, what will happen to my finances, to the economy, how will that impact me? But there’s many things that are within the realm of our control, and that we can be helped doing, either through apps or through conversations or through financial experts.
Claer Barrett
I mean, I have to say, as somebody who really suffered from financial anxiety as a young person looking for my first job, one of the things that really helped me was holding on to the feeling, the good feeling that I felt when I had engaged with the problem. And I’d looked at something and I’d headed it off. Whether that was paying the bill before fine came in or whether it was, as you say, doing some research about something and making an active decision before one was foisted upon me. And I kind of shut my folder of all of my financial paperwork and kind of breathe out and feel this feeling of calm. And holding on to that feeling was what made me get better and better at managing my money.
Vicky Reynal
And I think what that does is, I think you’re describing a sense of empowerment and of agency, which is, you know, the opposite of what we feel when we’re in an anxious state in which, you know, things can happen to us, you know, that can be done to us. But if we tried to take a little bit more control of the situation and focus on what we can do to improve our financial situation, then that has a positive impact on the anxiety. It really lifts and we feel more energised, more empowered by it.
Claer Barrett
Well, a positive note on which to end our conversation on the Money Clinic couch today. Vicky Reynal, thank you so much for coming in and sharing your calm words of wisdom and insights with our listeners.
Vicky Reynal
Thank you Claer.
Claer Barrett
And of course, if you want to read more from Vicky, her book Money on Your Mind is out now, and there’s a link in today’s show notes.
That’s it for Money Clinic with me, Claer Barrett, this week and we hope you like what you’ve heard. If you did, spread the word and leave us a review. We’re always looking to chat with people about their money issues for the show. So if you’re interested in being part of a future episode, then email us. Our address is money@ft.com. You could also take a peek at our website ft.com/money. Grab a copy of the FT Weekend newspaper or follow me on Instagram and TikTok. I’m @ClaerB.
Money Clinic was produced in London by Tamara Kormornick. The sound design is by Breen Turner and our editor is Manuela Saragosa. You heard original tunes this week by Metaphor Music. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. And finally, our usual disclaimer. The Money Clinic podcast is a general discussion around financial topics and does not constitute an investment recommendation or individual financial advice. For that, you’ll need to find an independent financial adviser. That’s all the small print for now. See you back here next week. Goodbye.
