Breaking Free from Financial Shame — with Lindsay Bryan-Podvin
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This week of financial wellness content is brought to you by Wealthfront. Savings should feel like progress, not pressure. And with the Wealthfront cash account, it can. You earn a 4% annual percentage yield on uninvested cash from program banks with no account fees or minimums, and you get instant fee free withdrawals to eligible accounts. No stress, no guesswork. Right now, get a $50 bonus when you deposit $500 into your first cash account at wealthfront.com/headspace. Wealthfront is not a bank. Rate is subject to change. For more information, see the episode description. (gentle music) Headspace Studios. (gentle music continues) Hi, my name is Lindsay, and welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Tuesday morning. So I don't know about you, but I've definitely had moments of financial shame. Whether it was overspending on a night out or feeling like I didn't make enough, these things really had an effect on how I felt about myself, but this is totally normal and there are things that we can do to help mitigate these feelings. So today, we'll explore financial shame, what it is, how it affects our decisions, and why acknowledging and addressing it can help us build healthier financial habits. Let's dive in. I think we have to start by acknowledging that guilt in shame are different, but we tend to use those words interchangeably. So guilt is external while shame is internal. So, for example, guilt is, "I made a mistake," shame is, "I am a mistake." So when it comes to financial shame, this sounds like, "I'm bad with money. I don't get money. Money isn't for people like me." And when we start to understand that, it helps us to see how this financial shame can manifest and also impact what we do or don't do when it comes to our money. I have absolutely experienced financial shame, and it runs the gamut from overspending on a night out to feeling like I was too dumb to understand something like how to file taxes. Right now, I am in partnership with the University of Michigan. We've run financial empowerment workshops for over 450 participants. And something that has been screaming out, both anecdotally and in the survey data, is that people are saying that it was so powerful to not be alone when it comes to money because secrecy, silence, and judgment impacts shame and tends to make shame worse. The way that these workshops worked is that there would be a little bit of information taught, an example given, and the bulk of the time was having people who were literal strangers at the same table have conversations with one another about things like what their money story was, or about money mistakes they'd made, or about financial goals that they wanted to achieve. I have an anonymous quote from a participant who said, quote, "Going to the workshop and sitting with my emotions while everyone else was talking made me realize this isn't just...
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