Season 4, Episode 6: Money and the Feelings Wheel (send help)
Or: Lazy dollars, power poses, and the myth of rational money
This week, Women on the Verge fan favorite Kacie Swartz returns, arms in the air, to hold forth on another man money myth. Money shouldn’t be emotional? What the eff are you talking about Uncle Warren?*
Kacie kicks off with the radical notion that your money decisions are supposed to be emotional - we’re humans, not spreadsheets. The actual purpose of financial planning is matching up what’s important to us as individuals, what we’re emotionally attached to, with how we spend and save our money.
She also tells us the name of her next hit single, following the record-topping success of her previous hit “Money is a River Not a Pond.”
Sara bravely breaks new ground in the emotional ecosystem by asking if “fine” is a feeling, and Caitlin makes a groundbreaking metaphor comparing retirement savings to a crock pot. It’s getting deep in here, people.
Together, the trio explore what it looks like to take your emotions seriously when it comes to financial planning, starting with how to figure out what they even are. If there’s a way to do this without a feelings wheel, could someone let Sara know?
You can find fan favorite podcast guest Kacie Swartz at Black Barn Financial.
*That is a reference to Warren Buffet who once said something that sort of sounded like the only rational way to make financial decisions is without emotions.
Ask us your dumb investing and finance questions, or just say hi! on our Ask Us page!
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This episode was edited by our co-producer Kelly West. Music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.
Transcripts for Season 4, Episode 6: Money and the Feelings Wheel (send help); Or, Lazy dollars, power poses and the myth of rational money
Caitlin [00:00:03] Welcome to Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough, where we're figuring out finance one dumb question at a time. I'm Caitlin Meredith, a mediator and coach based in the Bay Area.
Sara [00:00:18] I'm Sara Glakas, investor, advisor, and founder of BlackBarn Financial and the Austin Women's Investing Group, which you can find on Meetup.
Caitlin [00:00:28] OMG, we have over 46 episodes explaining everything from how to save for college to what the freak a Roth IRA is. Women on the verge dot com. Check it out.
Caitlin [00:00:40] Well today, on this episode of Women on the Verge of a Financial Breakthrough, we have fan favorite, back by popular demand, Kacie Swartz doing power poses. Wait! Arms are in the air. Dramatic poses being struck and she's just informed us Kacie is such a friend of the pod that she just gets to like book a time to record and then we'll be trailing after whatever her strong opinion is of the day which is of course the best kind of guest and I just heard that it's emotion and so Sara wilts and Kacie gets more powerful so this is very fun too to see the dynamic between these two Emotional money decisions, emotional what? Tell us, tell me more.
Kacie [00:01:40] So what I wanted to talk about today, and I want your perspective and your feedback as well, there is somewhat of a belief that money is logical and rational. And if you make choices with your money that are not the most mathematical, the most logical and rationale, that you're somehow doing it wrong. Yes. Okay? Yeah. And this might be something I've mentioned in the past, but the idea of doing it is a terrible angle to take at money because everybody's lives are very personal and their relationship with money needs to be just as personal and very tailored to their own situation. And there's no article on Forbes or Vanguard or whatever that's going to be you in particular. So for example, you are sitting at home and you have an investment portfolio and you're watching the headlines out there and the news of the day and it makes you nervous, then technically that's not very rational because you're invested for the long term. Even today. But on the other hand, we are humans and of course changes to our political situation or... Headline risk about trade partners. Those things are scary. Yeah. And that's just at the federal level, right? Like if you're talking about at your own house where you might make an emotional decision because your kids said that they hate their pants and they will only wear these other soft pants from Target and I just bought you pants. This is purely hypothetical, by the way. Purely hypothetical. I have to go back to Target and buy you more pants because you hated the first set of pants. When we have perfectly good pants at home. We have good pants home, exactly. But I will go because my emotion is I want my daughter to be happy. I don't want her screaming in my face every single morning. And if I have $17 to throw with this problem, I'm going to do it. Because that's not the most rational choice. If I was perfect, I would just like train my child to wear the pants we have at home, but that is not gonna happen. I think that.
Sara [00:04:18] Right I think another aspect of that that I hear quite a bit is this idea of making sure your money is working for you making sure every single dollar is working for and sometimes it just means I have some cash in an emergency fund I want to make sure I'm getting the highest interest rate but sometimes I think people kind of take it beyond that because they think it's what they're supposed to do to why should I keep a some amount of money in cash at all, right? Is it working to its absolute highest potential if I have it sitting in a high yield savings account or a money market account instead of, you know, invested for the long run. But whenever I now whenever I hear that phrase when someone says to me, you make sure every dollar is working or my money is working as hard as it can. I know now that I have to. Figure out what that person is talking about, like what, like what that means to them when they're making the decisions on where to put their money because a lot of it is based in emotion. That's like the Protestant work ethic.
Caitlin [00:05:30] A dollar.
Sara [00:05:31] Oh
Caitlin [00:05:31] It needs to be.
Sara [00:05:35] Lazy dollars.
Kacie [00:05:38] Caitlin, you're absolutely onto something because the greater conversation that I follow out there in the social media world is that exact same issue. Is this a symptom of hustle culture? Is this the symptom of the fact that we can't just be? Everything has to be Or else you're not doing it right. And I do have that conversation with folks a lot of times that one of the hardest things to do with your near-term funds and with your emergency funds is leave it the frick. Nothing. Yeah. Just let it sit. It's so hard. Honestly, that's true of the longer term money too. Once you put your money into an index fund, stop messing with it.
Caitlin [00:06:23] The reason we got a crock pot was so that things would cook themselves over tons of hours. Stop opening it and messing with things. Just set it and forget it.
Kacie [00:06:35] That's the whole point. Yeah, there's so much research out there supporting the fact that you're not gonna make it better. No one does. By just tinkering, you're gonna make better. And so just leave it alone. Get a discipline plan, do what you're supposed to do, and then set your calendar for however many months out and then leave it along.
Caitlin [00:07:01] Okay, so what this is bringing up for me is when we have anxiety, it feels like the best way to work with or manage that anxiety is through activities directed at the source of the anxiety. So, the money, so I'm gonna move it around. Like I have things to check off. There's a tangible thing that I can do. Much like nesting when you're about to have a baby and you're like, how will a human come out of my body? That can't be happening. I'm going to look at wallpaper. It's both a distraction and it's like an outlet for all of that anxiety about those things. So I totally get that piece of it that if you're not recognizing the emotion that is fueling all of tinkering and essentially like the biggest challenge for all us is to be at ease and discomfort, right? Except that she's sorry, we just episode is over. Keep going, Caitlin. But what is also making me realize when you talk about this, Kacie, is like the idea or the expectation that emotion would be separated from money. Believe it or not, as a mediator, many mediators would like a mediation to happen that is separated from people's emotions. So often they'll be like, I need to have one-on-one meetings with people before so they can vent everything out and then we can go and have a joint session where everything is like rationally discussed. I'm like, yeah, no, that's not the human beings like in our catalog of human experience that actually isn't like a setting where we can we are having a dispute with someone and I don't care what it's about. Emotion is right there. And if you're not bringing that into the session, you won't have a full voice in it. And especially if you pretend you don't have emotion. And that parallel seems um I didn't realize with money that that there's a similar thing like it shouldn't be part of it because we're going to be really reasonable and rational and you can't make good decisions when emotion is when did emotion get such a bad
Sara [00:09:13] I know, like as I was listening to Kacie at the beginning talking about, you know, being emotional or emotions, I think maybe this is just like the water that I'm swimming in these days, but I immediately got a little bit defensive about it being like, is it because I'm a woman? Yeah, it's a feminine trait, right? That you think of this as, right, it is a feminine traits to be emotional and is for irrational and hysterical and that I mean, I do think that there's always a balance when... Caitlin, whether it's a mediation and people are trying to come up with a resolution to a conflict or coaching someone through some sort of process, or like we do advising someone on a process or on their finances, that there is a balance. It is, I think, hard to make space for both of those things, right, that we are going to bring our emotions into this because this is our life, right? Like this is our life we're talking about. And we're trying to put together a framework so that emotions are driving every single decision that we're making at all points in time, because then we're just not really able to kind of stay on the path we probably think that we should be taking. Does this make sense at all?
Caitlin [00:10:38] Yeah, it makes sense to me.
Kacie [00:10:40] Here's the way that I, I help people through this, like as a financial planner, but also the reason that I wanted to bring it to like the greater audience today is, is because you're absolutely right, Sara, that there is a certain element of these traits are feminine and therefore negative, which sucks. It just sucks, because we have historically... Overvalued masculine traits or things that we find traditionally masculine. Once that research is turned on its ear, emotional intelligence is having a moment, right? Like everybody is acknowledging that being open to understanding the motivations of different choices is a good thing, surprise, surprise. And the way that I would advocate for people to kind of walk themselves through the process when it comes to an emotional money decision is acknowledging in the first place that emotions happen, right? Like it sounds so basic, but if you don't do it, then you're gonna be fighting against it without recognizing it's happening. And you can't get anywhere, right. Like you have to actually look at it and say, For example, I bought a half of a financial planning firm a couple years ago. And if that means that while the business is growing, I'm spending my IRA, I hate it. I hate making a withdrawal from my IRA. That money was supposed to be for the future. Okay, but when 22 year old Kacie put it in the, in the brokerage account, the future is now the future's happening. And so today, Kacie needs to use it. This is the time. It's not. A bad decision to spend some of that money because I am investing in a business, right? And same thing for other people who come to me as they're moving into retirement and it, and it's, they hate watching the number on their statement go down, even though they're now living on those dollars. And I'm like, what did you think the money was for while you were saving it? I mean, that's not very nice, but because I really do try and coach people through it. But the point is that the money is supposed to go down because now is the time that you were saving it for.
Caitlin [00:13:10] I want to stop even before we get there, and then I want to get there. But recognizing that emotion is present. I would go a step further, that it's not just be like, oh, I know there's emotions. But try your best to name them, too. And one of the tools that I give clients and work with is on the feelings wheel. You can just Google it. This rainbow wheel. Oh, Sara has a lot of feelings about it.
Caitlin [00:13:34] About the feelings we have.
Sara [00:13:35] Do this is you guys this is the hardest part of like any therapy that I've ever done is when the therapist gives me that goddamn feelings wheel and I don't fundamentally know how to name my feelings I'll like name one I'll pick one and they'll be like uh no I don't know if that's I don't know if that's what you mean.
Caitlin [00:13:59] Anyway, proceed with your feet. It's so hard. It's hard. And what you're pointing out is how it takes practice. Some people just have access to that, that it's been the native language to them. I'm feeling this, sad, mad, glad. I have that. And for some people, that's not part of their native language or the way that they think about something. So it does take practice. And I think I totally get what you were saying. You're guessing the right way.
Caitlin [00:14:25] Answer and trying to see in the therapist eyes. Did I get it right?
Sara [00:14:28] I'm looking to see, I'm like, is fine on there, fine is not on there.
Caitlin [00:14:35] Is annoyed a feeling or is that just because you're talking to me?
Kacie [00:14:40] And I just stay busy.
Caitlin [00:14:45] Because then it can give you clues like, for instance, angry. Angry comes up in mediation a lot and it might come up in your example too. I'm angry that I have to spend this money. I'm anger. Anger can come from so many different places. It can be the front for fear and it can be, I am so afraid of losing everything again like I did before or like my parents did when I was little. That can be story there. It can be. Fear because I'm in a new relationship and that vulnerability is making me feel like I'm afraid of everything. Like once you have something you can do a little investigating about the stories that are around it so then you can come to someone like Kacie and Sara and be like oh this is the situation I'm I want to avoid and I want to make good decisions around that and that could be completely different than it would be for any of the rest of us because that isn't the story we have in our head.
Kacie [00:15:39] I would love the idea that clients would come in primed to say, I am scared of money. Like if they just knew enough to say what the issue is and to be fair, a lot of my clients are scared of. Money, they don't want to look directly at it. They don't wanna think about it. They just have this fear that it's all going to disappear. I don't know if you would guys would recall the title of my first album, which was money is a river, not a pond.
Sara [00:16:15] We talk about it all the time. I sing it all of the time, that melody is in my head. Caitlin brings it up at least once an episode, I think.
Kacie [00:16:24] Exactly. Thank you, thank you. It isn't a rational fear that all of the money is just going to disappear, but we have to figure out what people are afraid of before we can go to the historical record and say, here is the last hundred years of market returns. At no point did everything go to zero and never recover. Or here is last hundred of political regimes. And this is how we have. Survived through all of them, you know, like whatever the things are, that are creating the fear, because if it's if they're anything like me, it's just like this back of your mind, unconscious fear spiral with no real definition. And then when I actually stop and look at it, I'm like, oh, you know what, it's really not that bad. It's really not that bad, I just didn't want to think about this.
Caitlin [00:17:18] And the story you're telling yourself is often so much worse than the reality. And so by not looking at it and being curious about it, you let that dark cloud, like take a disproportionate amount of your, I feel like it's like the pilot light that's always on then. You can never turn it off and it'll have like flares once in a while and until you really look at like, where is it? What's fueling that thing? It's hard to talk yourself out of it.
Kacie [00:17:46] Well, and this is one of the commercials for working with a trusted advisor of any stripe is that you have that accountability partner, especially if you are on a schedule of regular meetings with that person so that it never gets as dire because you have the session to like practice. The same way that if I go to the gym and I lift weights, like, what is it? Kind of stay ready so you don't have to get ready. It's like, I think it's like a Dwayne the Rock Johnson saying or something like that, like I stay ready so I don't have to
Caitlin [00:18:26] Get ready. More power poses, listeners, more power poses.
Kacie [00:18:32] Yeah, but if you're in a routine of looking at your money and understanding where it's coming from, where it is going, then hopefully it's not as surprising or scary when you see a volatility or when you something that's slightly atypical, you can look at the portfolio and you can say, ah, Jesus, how did I spend as much money? Oh yeah, it's property taxes. Every January I spend way too much money because it's property tax time.
Caitlin [00:19:06] So I was trying to Google and I think when you first suggested this topic, I found that Warren Buffett quote where he says like, take emotion out of money. This is awkward. Sara's a big Buffett enthusiast and Kacie just flipped.
Caitlin [00:19:20] The bird.
Sara [00:19:22] Let's take some of his quotes.
Kacie [00:19:24] I love his quotes. I think he's adorable too, but I think that that's a very privileged position to be in.
Sara [00:19:32] Well, and to be fair to Uncle Warren, I think he's also talking about his version of investing while he is often talking to us normal people in his letters to shareholders, when he's talking about investing, he's talking about deploying billions of dollars to buy a company and not making that personal, right, and not make that emotional. And so that's kind of where kind of I went with that quote is like taking the emotions out of it is OK. That totally makes sense. From his perspective. Where I wonder if he would say the same thing about like personal finance, right? Maybe he would.
Caitlin [00:20:11] And there's a difference between expecting yourself not to have any emotions and then like taking the time to process them so you can be responsive instead of reactive. So I think that's also like a nuance that you're pointing to, Sara, that like, and that you said, Kacie, like if you're making a different decision every single day based on your own emotional reaction to what a headline is or seeing your balance, that's react, that's just being reactionary. Whereas if you are able to say like, That makes me so scared. Okay, let me think this through. Obviously like I'm engaged right now. I'm activated some fear. Let me, what can I be curious about? Okay, lets look at market trends. Let's look at what my plan was before. So you're set up to ask yourself some questions or get reassurance from a financial advisor to be like, no, this is actually like what we were predicting. It's just hard to transition. I mean, I know that. When I was a hostess at restaurants, I would like your whole job is to like seat tables, but then they just get up and leave again and you're seating the same table. Like there was no level of satisfaction.
Caitlin [00:21:19] Everyone sit down, stay there for the rest of the night, or this puzzle is never gonna be solved.
Caitlin [00:21:25] And it feels sort of similar that you get, you lose track of what the actual goal is. You get in that saving mode and then it's really hard to like just toggle over to spending mode after you've adapted so much of your identity and thinking about the saving piece. I'll be that person.
Sara [00:21:43] I mean, I, Caitlin, I'm so curious, like when you are doing a mediation or when you're coaching, like what are some of the questions that you ask when something peaks your curiosity? Because this is just kind of your natural language, like something sparks curiosity, like that you should look at it a little bit closer. I'm not sure that's in everybody's wheelhouse to A, recognize that or B, figure out how to be curious about yourself and your emotions. Do you have go-to questions that you would either ask yourself or ask someone else during a mediation that triggers that introspection and gives someone the tools to start describing what they're feeling?
Caitlin [00:22:34] The place in my trainings that I do a starting is what's going on in your body, which doesn't always feel intuitive because it feels like, oh, this is all in my brain. But actually for most of us, it shows up somewhere like my stomach. Like I haven't taken a breath in two minutes or I'm breathing really quickly or I can hear my heart in my ear. Like there's some embodiment that shows. That you're having like a physiological response to what you're thinking about or being discussed. And so that's like an easier point to be like, stop notice right now, where is it showing up for you? And then start to get curious about like, what was it that kind of activated that response? I feel like that does come up with money where I'm like, in other areas, I know how to think through and ask questions, assemble all the information organizing. And if I can't do that with my accounts because there's too much fear there, that's telling me a long information that is valuable, which I think Kacie is right. So many, I'm just afraid of what the answer is gonna be and not having any ability to do anything about it if it's not the answer I think it should be. I'm wondering Kacie, if any of this is in the direction that you had had in your head about emotion and finance.
Kacie [00:23:49] It absolutely is. And the reason that it's appropriate is because I didn't know what you guys were going to say, but I was pretty confident that everybody has a story about how emotion and money work together. Our colleague here at the firm, Amy Kalistri, said the best thing a few months back that is my new second album going to be called Buying investments takes research, and selling investments is emotional. Everybody does a ton of research when you're buying something, but they don't do that when it's time to sell, right? They sell because of a knee-jerk reaction, or they sell because they need the cash. And so I love the idea of coming to the sale decision with the same. Objective outlook as you come to the purchase. Again, because I'm a financial planner and I care more about like what you're gonna do with the money than watching it pile up. Like what is the money for? It's very easy, especially when we are accumulating to just look at that balance, that net worth number and just want it to go up. I just wanna see it go up, up, up because it feels like it's gamified. Like we wanna win. Want to see a million dollars, we want to see three million dollars. We want to see the round numbers, they really appeal to everybody, right? But why? What is the point of this money? If the money is supposed to support me so that I have an FU fund, remember that this is the FUZK fund. And it's supposed to make it so that you are never tied to a geography, a job or a loved one. So if you need to leave any of those things, you have the finances set aside, right? So if I have my FU money and I have my travel money and my bills are paid, then like why am I accumulating a giant Scrooge McDuck pile of money for no good reason? What's it for?
Caitlin [00:26:04] Can I know this person? Coming at you from a different perspective. I get that. And one of the questions I would ask and that does this gets back to Sara, your question of how you get curious, something I ask people all the time is how will your life look different in five years, if what you want has happened? So in the version of this person who really has all of the financial stability that objectively, like anybody would want and still they're having a feeling of scarcity and FOMO perhaps and like an ambition that doesn't match like what we would think of as a Asking Them to imagine themselves in five years. Like let's say you've gotten that what is different about your life then And maybe like reverse engineering from there. Are they really imagining like I thought in five Years xyz would happen and then it's an opportunity for you to be like, yeah good news Like that is exactly what's going to happen or, oh, you've then changed the goalpost, let's just name that, and let's investigate why that is, and if that is compatible with actually the quality of life that you would like. Like, does working an extra five years fit in to how you want it to be, or do you kind of want them both? I wanna be a million, you know, a 10 millionaire, but I wanna stop working now. So can you figure that out, Kacie? Is that the disconnect that you're trying to put together, Kacie? It's that.
Kacie [00:27:38] And then there's also like this deeper personal self-discovery journey that you can easily delay, especially when I'm working with folks who are close to retirement years or close to having the savings that they want to have. But by which I mean, you and I are sitting here, it's 2025 and we're like, okay, in 2030, you're going to quit working. You've been accumulating, you're doing everything right. 2030, you're done. We write it in your notes. We make a big red mark on the calendar. Five years goes by, we're getting close. You don't want to do it. You want to keep working. I need more money. Like the number always goes up. This happens all the time when I'm working with folks who are close to retirement. And part of it is the scare, like being scared. But part of is also because if I don't, actually think about what I want my life to be like. It's, you know what I mean? Like it's very easy to just not have to think about it. I go to work because I've always gone to work. I've been working since I was 16 or I don't wanna have to decide what I do with my life if work is optional. You can like delay it if you say, well, it's important that I just keep accumulating.
Caitlin [00:29:01] For me, that also points to how hard it is to have identity shift. If you're a breadwinner, what does that even look like for your status? It can be something as simple as retired people, like I won't have a business card anymore. Like, what is that like to not be protected with some of these like markings of status? And those can be internal, like I'm the breadwinners, I'm really proud of the salary that I finally managed to have like. Why would I then stop that? That's what I've been working towards my whole professional life. And I think also what you're pointing to is like, we don't have a lot of support to imagine our life post-retirement and the status that might come. It's like a loss of all the things. Your life can look like it's going into a void. It's not like you're, you know.
Kacie [00:29:54] I'm not going to be alone with my thoughts, especially when I'm here in US culture that highly values productivity, and you are choosing to step out of that. People say that they don't want to have to work or they'll be like, oh, must be nice. But really, on a day-to-day basis, it's difficult to go against the grain.
Caitlin [00:30:21] I totally got that. And I can't imagine not ever working, but not because of the money. But like I'm lucky to do something I'm really interested in doing and it's like a way of meeting people, you know, all of those things. I'd like to have work right and have to work. Like that seems amazing. And I think people with corporate careers, like it must feel unimaginable. Like how will you organize a Tuesday if you don't have that structure imposed on you?
Kacie [00:30:51] I think it's one of those reasons that you see so many people making giant career changes in their forties, because this is where you get to that point of the corporate ladder where you're like, I'm either going to be committed to corporate world or I'm going to make a change.
Caitlin [00:31:06] And it has to happen now. Sara, what are you thinking around this idea of not catching up with the financial reality for emotional reasons, emotional reasons? Wait, sorry, say that again, not catching up with reality. Well, my summary of what Kacie's hypothetical client is is someone who hasn't caught up with the financial realities or thought that the goal was financial, but it actually is an identity piece that needs to be worked on.
Kacie [00:31:41] Thank you. That's what I meant.
Sara [00:31:44] I mean, certainly, like I think from like an advisor perspective, it's those are some of the hardest situations to work on for for me. Sometimes with people that I've worked with, it comes across as catastrophizing the future. Like wanting to run every single worst-case scenario and then assuming they all happen at the same time and at a magnitude we never even imagined, right? So because I think it feels very satisfying, I think, for the client and for the advisor to be working towards that date on the calendar that Kacie talked about, right, like, hey, 2030. We're coming up on it. So exciting. And then it's like, well, but what if all of these? Really bad things happen, are we actually ready? And even if you can say, yes, there's something. Sometimes a client will bow up against like not possibly believing that that could be accurate and so it does kind of come back to like okay like as an advisor like i have. Like a blind spot or a hole in my training to be able to understand. What that person is trying to tell me like why the numbers aren't enough in that case right like we have all of the fancy software and we run all the scenarios and it's still. It's still not enough. That there's I mean a fear of uncertainty which you know like most people have and it feels very dissatisfying I think to be like oh we can't like I only rely on on the numbers I'm showing you the numbers but I'm not like savvy enough about telling the story or like making the emotional connection to you're really going to be okay right you really What?
Caitlin [00:33:39] Should. What happens when this is what I do and in my world it's called looping the dynamic. What happens? When you name that you say, huh, I want to check in with you about something. Feel it, you know, from my vantage point, you've done all the things you should have, you've saved all the money, it's invested in the places I've been advising you, I feel like we've had this good collaboration to work towards your goals and I'm feeling pretty good that we're like, maybe not 100% there, but 95%. This is kind of in my world, like the dream scenario. But what I'm getting from you is a different feeling. And I wanna check in with you to feel like where that mismatch might be coming from. Do you notice that? Like, it seems like there's some heat here and I'm not exactly sure Like, how I can best support you with that. That's where I would be curious but I'd have to name it first and say like what my perspective is and I think for you this and but will you help me connect those dots so I can
Sara [00:34:48] mean going back to my inability to to use the feelings wheel have I ever said this in a meeting no but now that you are describing it it's it's what I wish that I could say in a meaning in order to discover what the client is thinking I mean and as you were you're saying that I'm like oh my gosh like I should write this down and then I realized we were recording it and I could probably just go back and listen to it and learn how to do it
Caitlin [00:35:15] Oh, Sara, we're making a podcast. We didn't tell you, but it's actually a podcast
Sara [00:35:21] then I was thinking like Kacie and I should get a feelings wheel in our office to feel all of these things I mean because it does loop back to what Kacie brought up at the very beginning which you know and that we've talked about on other episodes about it being behavior and emotion and certainly like not in my wheelhouse and I think not in many people's wheelhouse to name the emotion but it still is very important right especially like you said if we're you're at this point where you're like. I feel like I'm not helping. I'm trying so hard to help and we're just not there, right?
Caitlin [00:35:59] What I think of it, if naming an emotion is too fraught, let's stay away from that, but being able to call out a mismatch and recruit the other person to help you connect some dots. So it's more, and I think you are good at this, is figuring out like, oh, I'm at the limit of where I feel helpful and I'm noticing that. And then recruiting the other person, like naming that. I'm feeling like there's a mismatch here and that I'm not getting something about what you're actually asking me. So it's more admitting you don't know what's going on than being able to diagnose very specifically, see what I'm experiencing is this and what I think you. Just being able be like, I feel like something's going here and I'm reading you, like this is landing on you in a different way than it's landing on me. What do you think about that?
Caitlin [00:37:06] I was just paraphrasing a question you could ask a client, but you passed straight A.
Sara [00:37:12] I thought you were asking me what I felt. I feel like pretty fine about it. I thought that you were just answering with your classic feelings, we'll answer. I was, I was. But also, Caitlin, the other facet of what you're describing is making me think about a lot of the women that come to our office and they have been burned at other advisors because the advisors don't have that. Connection to their own feelings, or those advisors have made people feel shame because they have feelings about money, or the advisors make people feel like there is a certain way to do things, or The clients are the ones that have to like drag the conversation back to their own feelings and trying to understand it. And I think that if you're working with somebody. That's supposed to be the professional, then the responsibility is on that person to understand that this is a very common issue for a lot of people, and it's not the responsibility of the I'm scared about money. Advisors should start with the assumption that everybody's freaking scared about money. It comes up 98% of the time, like everybody. So I don't want people to feel bad about being scared about the money, and I don't want them to feel like, oh, the advisor's the expert and they know everything and they're just this all-knowing, all-seeing paragon of money investing. And so the advisor would never be scared and I can't tell the advisor I'm scared.
Sara [00:39:01] Like, all.
Kacie [00:39:01] All of this shame based nonsense goes back to why I think this is an important topic in the first place because we are all humans and every decision we make is fueled in some way by a feeling. We've probably said the word feelings during this like 45 minutes more than most advisors have in their whole career.
Caitlin [00:39:20] More than Sara will in the next month of her life.
Sara [00:39:23] That's right. I'm just getting it all out in 145 minute podcast never talking about feeling. Yeah
Caitlin [00:39:29] Yeah, she's closing up for 2025. OK, but what you're talking to me, Kacie, about is client's fear. And what I'm also hearing is advisors fear. And I think I know you would also want to talk about the advisors. But for me, I know this as a mediator or a conflict coach. When someone is representing to me a need they have and I get worried, I will not be able to meet their need. I feel overwhelmed, insecure. And that can come out as bullying. I wanna steamroll them, like just do it my way. I wanna impose structure in the situation so that like I can feel at peace again because it is, I am feeling unrest about not being able to meet someone's need. My self-esteem is gonna plummet because I'm like, shit, what if I can't help them? So I can either ignore the feelings layer, I can try to steamroll them and just be very aggressive into like getting them to get with the program and like forget all that. There's a lot of emotional, emotion meets emotion. You might not think it does, but of course it does. You're gonna activate something on the other side when you express an emotion. And so that's where I think it's useful for advisors, some of them if they're interested, to also be able to have their little feelings wheel. So they can figure out for themselves, because that's stressful to feel like someone has all these needs and you can't meet them and that's your job and I feel like a fraud, like, why am I even in this job? So to be able to kind of like accept that too. In my world, in the kind of mediation I did, it's funny that we're talking about mediation so much, but I use something called the understanding-based model and one of this, there's six tenants and one them is let the parties own the conflict. And that's a reminder and a compass that we hold, that you're helping people with their own conflicts, but it's not your own. And the second you try to take it on as your own, you insert yourselves in ways that are maybe not helpful, pretty patronizing, assumes that the other person can't make the best decisions for themselves. They need you swooping in. And then you have this undue burden. And then you might feel like, shit, if I can't meet that need, then you're mad at them. Yeah, like resentful. Yes, yes, like it can set you up for this cycle. So it's a mantra that I have to repeat to myself, let the parties own the conflict and be very clear at the boundary between what's their problem to solve and how I can show up and support them and think through things and see these are the questions we can ask and the information. And there's another that allows me to have a buffer that's like, yeah, this is really hard and I can see this is a really hard for you. And if there's a way I can be supportive, let me know. But that's different than me absorbing it as my own thing which I will then process spit out as like anger, aggression, some other way. That's my experience with feeling at the receiving end of someone's needs that feel overwhelming to me.
Kacie [00:42:40] And I would assume that that might really resonate with the listeners of a financial advice podcast, that they are the types of people that also are doers and activators and all of the other words about that kind of stuff. When their own friends come to them, it's very easy to say, just do it my way. Just download YNAB, do what I do. Yada, yada yada and everything will be fine and I don't wanna hear your thoughts and complaints. Like I can understand that too. And so if you can, as the friend of somebody else who might be scared about money, redirect them in ways that is more useful or at least just listen. I mean, of course they might be that friend that just will never stop talking about it. But most of the time, it's not that. It's more just, there's a certain life event that's going on and people are scared and they don't necessarily want to hear how to fix it. They just want you to listen.
Caitlin [00:43:47] I'm wondering if you both have a different experience post COVID, because I think once so many unimaginable things did happen, like the world is going to shut down. Are you kidding me? We won't be leaving our houses for a year. Like, come on. Like such extreme things happen during that time that we could not have imagined in 2019 or January 2020, for instance. I'm wondering if that like it actually this was long before that or so for people that are still feeling like I need to produce I need to produce if any of it you think is an echo of like look what happened like the unimaginable happened so how can you be here and tell me no everything's gonna be Look at my chart
Kacie [00:44:40] at the charts. That's really interesting. What do you think, Kase? I say no, because the unimaginable happened. It was god-awful. I seriously have PTSD from spending a year in my home with a newborn. But honestly, we did come out of it. So it's almost the opposite. I point to COVID and say, look at this absolute shit show that we all survived. We're not nearly as like fit or outgoing as we may have been four years ago, but we survived if we're still here. A lot of people didn't and I don't want to minimize the losses, but the stock market certainly survived beautifully. And, you know, Western capitalism didn't fail. And all of these different like catastrophes, like Sara was mentioning, there's ways that culture and society work through them. And so I think it would be a little egotistical to think that we can think of something that society and culture won't work through.
Caitlin [00:45:46] Yeah.
Sara [00:45:48] And I think that people don't give themselves enough credit to, like one of the things I, in trying to help people kind of work through the catastrophizing is like looking at people's track records, right? Like what has happened in the past that would give you an indication that you don't have the tools and resources to deal with whatever's going to happen in the future, right. You have this track record. That's why we're sitting here. And that's why, you know, you have this nest egg, you've been doing this planning. And end. Doing all of these very right things and not perfectly, but you've done enough things the right way to be here like what makes you think that that trend is going to change in some way that you're going to become a totally different person and it's going to go off the rails in a way that you won't be able to pull all of your resources to bear to deal with whatever crisis pops up and that does usually I think make people think like oh yeah like. I generally make pretty good decisions. I've made mistakes, but they're kind of in the past and we're here where we are, and so hopefully I'll be able to do that in the future.
Caitlin [00:47:01] You have given me that talk before, and it was during the pandemic, and I was getting the PPP loan, and I worried I was gonna spend it all on fancy pillows.
Caitlin [00:47:11] Allowed myself to like the budget for outdoor fancy villas. And I was like, I don't think I can be trusted right now. Like, what if I blow it all?
Caitlin [00:47:20] On Fancy Pillows and you're like, you're allowed to buy a couple pillows. But it was also the idea that I'd be getting this like windfall and like going from this time of like scarcity to like that, I can't be trusted. It's like when the dog food thing, like bag.
Caitlin [00:47:38] Bursts and the dog goes hog while in the kitchen. Imagine myself being on all fours and just like licking up all the money.
Sara [00:47:49] Crushed to death under all of the pillows that you buy.
Caitlin [00:47:53] I'm afraid of being too successful, Sara, because I cannot be tight." And you're like, well, then...
Caitlin [00:47:58] Let's think through your decisions up to this point. I think you can be trusted.
Caitlin [00:48:03] And so I think that's a very effective thing. And this all links back to the psychology. And I know that thinking fast and slow, condom and behavioral money and psychology is the negativity bias. That the negative things that have happened in the past are much stickier than the positive. And so what I remember is being in Target, getting text messages, and losing $15,000 in Airbnb bookings. Like that is for me. The marker of the pandemic. It's not the day I got the PPP loan and bought two new fancy outer. From world market. It's the feeling of the ground coming out beneath me. Those are the things that stick in my head, not even the big things or the gradual improvement that brought me to stability again. And so that's also what we're all working against in our own brains. And you guys are just more practiced at seeing it again and again. No, here are the trends. You've been in this work for a long time. You've seen all the goddamn charts. And those of us that aren't being exposed to that every day, it still feels like the ground could come out beneath us at any time.
Kacie [00:49:19] Which is another commercial for setting some sort of review period every six months, every three months, every year, whatever it might be, so that people have that kind of unnatural but very necessary review period to look back at what they've accomplished. Because what you said about how you don't notice gradual changes is so true. And so if you are doing the right things and it's gradually accumulating, you're not gonna notice until it's been accumulating for quite a while.
Caitlin [00:50:00] I feel like that's something we can all practice, like those milestones, not just in money, but everything, like the difference between like nothing happening and amazing success. There's a lot of milestones that happen along that way. And I know in my own professional life and others, it's hard for me to intentionally like articulate those so that when I achieve them, I have a sense of achievement instead of like, I'm still not there, I'm not there. We now have to wrap up. Thank you so much for bringing this here. We need all the tools to think about us and money all the time.
Kacie [00:50:38] That's right.
Caitlin [00:50:39] And now I know what to get Sara for her birthday feelings wheel.
Caitlin [00:50:51] Do you have a question about finance or investing? Send it to us in an email or voice memo to our website, womenontheverge.com. Don't worry, Sara will answer it, I won't.
Sara [00:51:02] Hey, Women on the Verge, we want you to know that economic abuse isn't always obvious, but it's a powerful form of control. Maybe a partner limits your access to money, sabotages your work, or racks up debt in your name. If any of this feels familiar, please know you're not alone and support is out there. Learn more at thehotline.org or call 800-799.
Caitlin [00:51:27] Our podcast is edited by our co-producer, Kelly West, with music by Bad Bad Hats and Devmo.
Caitlin [00:51:33] I know the first thing you notice is that I'm covered in
Sara [00:51:46] This podcast contains general information that is not suitable for everyone. The information contained herein should not be construed as personalized investment advice. PASS performance is no guarantee of future results. There is no guaranteed that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast will come to PASS. Investing in the stock market involves gains and losses and may not be suitable for all investors. Information presented herein is subject to change without notice and should not considered as a solicitation to buy or sell any security.