How Money Impacts Your Mental Health with Lindsay Bryan-Podvin

(soft music) 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. (air whooshes) (mouse clicks) (light music) Headspace Studios. Hi, my name is Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, and welcome to "Radio Headspace" and to Monday morning. I'm a financial therapist, author of "The Financial Anxiety Solution" and Founder of Mind Money Balance. My work focuses on the intersection of finances and mental health, and that's what we'll be discussing this week. Today I want to give a basic overview of how money affects our mental health, because it does, and by understanding that we can work toward a healthier relationship to our finances. When it comes to money and our mental health, so much of the messaging is around financial literacy and financial knowledge. And of course, literacy matters and knowledge matters, but money is really about how we feel. Research shows that between 80 and 90% of our financial decisions are based on how we feel. And my job as a financial therapist is to help people understand that the way we feel about money impacts the decisions we make or the decisions that we don't make. Money is stressful, and it's something that we interact with every single day. Whether we are paying bills, buying groceries, getting a payday, filing taxes, we're interacting with it all the time. And so this idea that somehow money is separate from the rest of our mind is really silly and really short-sighted. So often, the way we feel about money or the beliefs that we carry about money impact whether or not we do things like negotiate for a raise, or text our friend to remind them to pay us back after that meal that we picked up, right? So it's not just this household budget, it also impacts our careers, our friendships, and things outside of the four walls in which we live. So I'm a social worker by trade, and I went into the field of social work because I wanted to focus on people who had experienced depression and anxiety. So in my first job as a social worker, I was really excited to be helping people kind of boots on the ground with their wellbeing. And when I got my first paycheck, I was taking home less than I was as a waitress. And really quickly, I'm a type A type of person, I like to learn as much as possible really quickly, I did all the things I quote, unquote "should do." I went to...