Build Wealth & Your Relationship with Money
What is your relationship with money?
How do you discuss finances, saving and even investing with your partner? If those questions made you cringe, this episode is a must listen!
Dr. Anna Emily shares her story from living on her doctorate stipend to making 12x that amount in 18 months. Years later she realized she no longer loved her job and needed to break free of the rich illusion, which led her to save her first $100,000.
In this episode we dig into our personal stories and discuss everything from family members influencing our beliefs around money, the scarcity mindset, and the future of women's purchasing power.
You’ll hear Dr. Emily discuss:
The importance of being on the same page of your spending, saving and investment goals with a partner.
How core values impact your finances and how they are reflected in your goals in your relationship.
Money red flags to look out for when dating, in committed relationships and even conversations around money.
Connect with Dr. Anna Emily on Instagram @shes_somoney and listen to her podcast The She’s So Money Podcast. You can also get instant access to her free masterclass to learn how to save your first $100,000.
If you want to work with her to save your first $100,000 reach out to her on Instagram and ask about her Wealth by Design program. Let her know you found her from the Reinventing the Arena podcast!
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TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE
Molly Connolly (00:00.271)
I am absolutely thrilled to have you on my podcast, the Reinventing the Arena podcast. I cannot believe that I get to have you here and talk to my ladies about building wealth and relationships with money and anything that comes up for women with finances. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited.
Molly Connolly (00:00.302)
Personally, I wanted to tell you that when I looked at your content and how you have been positioning yourself as well as like what you've talked about on your podcast, it really hit me personally because of how money has hit me with relationships in the past. And it's paid a pretty big role in my life with relationships as well as growth as a human being. So I knew I had to have you on this podcast.
Can you first talk to me about how you got started in this career for yourself? Like how it evolved into becoming this expert voice and building wealth for women? Yeah, thank you. So the business that I have now and what I do now with She's Say Money is basically the result of my own personal experience with money. And
Basically, I started my first business in 2014 and it was the first business I'd ever had. I'd kind of done side hustle things and it did start as a side hustle. At the time I was studying full time for my PhD. So I was very busy, but I was broke and so I wanted more money. So I started this side hustle and long story short, it went very well, very quickly.
I went from earning less than a thousand dollars, like US dollars a month, because I was getting paid to study like, you know, living costs, they were covering my rent and things. And within about 18 months, I was earning like 12 to 15 K a month. So for someone that had never earned more than a thousand bucks a month, this was just, I mean, amazing, amazing, amazing. And I
spent it all basically because I didn't know what else to do. And I got very caught up in, you know, enjoying the money, which is fine. And I was the kind of person that used to take my calculator to the grocery store because I couldn't go over budget. And now all of a sudden I just, I didn't, I just always had enough money for what I needed. And it was such an amazing feeling. And that carried on for a couple of years. I was earning very well.
Molly Connolly (02:21.998)
And yeah, just spending on a holiday, buying designer items. I got an amazing car. I got an amazing apartment. And then around 2017, things started to go wrong. And what happened was in the kind of same timeframe, I fell out of love with what I was doing, which I never thought I would. I thought this is what I want to do forever. And also my income started to quite quickly drop.
And it was the first realisation I had that I'd really felt like I had not much to show for all my hard work except maybe these like few fancy things, right? I'd gone on some really nice holidays, which don't get me wrong, were amazing and I made amazing memories. But it started that spark, I guess, of I had always talked about financial freedom. You know, it's what I'd wanted is why I'd started a business like Laptop Lifestyle Financial Freedom.
And I'd always talked about it, talked to other women about it. And I slowly started to realize that I didn't actually know what that really meant. And I certainly didn't understand what it meant in terms of practically and tangibly using money to create it. In my head, it was just, I make loads of money, so I'm financially free because I felt rich. I felt like I had money, but of course I was, I call it the rich illusion, which is where
you know, and even if it can even happen to you if you just have like, you know, you're making good money and you're not really kind of worrying anymore, but you're still in that kind of month to month hamster wheel, you know, that cycle, because, you know, whether you're working or you have a business, you're still living month to month, you're spending what you make, spending what you make, what you make. And so you're going to run into problems when your income is affected because you've created all these commitments for yourself. And so,
So I started to really try and get control of my personal finances at that point. I ended up leaving that business and starting a second business and with my second business, I also went very well, very quickly. And this time I was like, I'm going to save my money. And so I saved a hundred thousand dollars. And when I got to that point, it was like, now what? And I had put
Molly Connolly (04:46.286)
I put some money away. So you can probably tell from my accent I'm English, but I live in Australia. The minute I'm traveling the world, but I'm normally home is Australia. So I actually put some money, some UK money in a UK, what we call like a bank bond, which is where they basically would take your money for one or two years. They lock it away and they give you a slightly better return than a normal savings account. So I put 10 ,000 pounds away for two years.
And when it came back, it was, I think it had given me a hundred pounds. And that was really like, okay, there's something I am missing here. Okay. Like I've, I'm getting better at managing my money and I've saved all this money, but this, this still feels like there's more to this wealth building financial freedom. And that's when I discovered investing and specifically the stock market, because I knew about property investing. I think most of us do.
But when I'd moved from the UK to Australia, I almost bought property in the UK, but I didn't because actually my dad talked me out of it, which I'm glad he did. But I was definitely stuck on that railroad of buy property. But, you know, like what you're taught to do, buy a property, get a mortgage, like, you know, where you're expected to spend your money. And retrospectively, I'm glad that I didn't do that. But when I discovered the stock market, it was like
I was like, this really suits me because I don't like, I can't buy property in Australia because I'm the temporary resident. So I'm legally not allowed. And I don't really want to buy property in the UK because I don't want to like have to fly back and manage, you know, things go wrong. And because my income has always been variable as well. And I actually shut down that second business and I spent a good amount of time, like trying to find myself. And I went through some personal stuff.
I didn't want to commit to a mortgage where I knew every month I'd have to pay like a set amount. So the more that I learned about the stock market and how you can use that as a wealth building tool and the fact that it doesn't require any like, you know, set amount that you have to, that you're tied into contributing. It's never going to call you up and say the roof is leaking or, you know, there's no, like, it was just like, wow. And, and so my mind was just blown because I,
Molly Connolly (07:13.71)
All I knew about the stock market was negative things. I was one of these people that didn't even know that, you know, your pension, your 401k or whatever is, is in the stock market. So yeah, I just, I guess it was, wow, I can't believe that no one taught me this. I can't believe that no one said to me when I was making all that money, you know, wait, are you investing it? I can't believe we don't.
talk about it with my girlfriends and I never ever spoke about this. My parents never taught me this. School, university, and I just realized how much information is wrong and misleading and how it's just not talked about. And then we're staying broke, we're staying tied to our jobs, tied to our businesses. And I realized how many women were in my position that I was in where you're earning good money, like money's moving through your hands.
but you don't know what to do with it or you're ignoring it and you're not actually building the freedom and the wealth that you want. So that's the like shortened version of like, of why I then started teaching about it, learning about it. And then we are where we are now. So. That's fantastic. I really appreciate you like going through like the whole chronological part of your story, as well as like pointing out not only that women aren't taught, but like,
that were told what to invest in, that it's always going to be the house. I remember growing up and hearing the same thing, hurry up and buy a house, or it's like go to college so you have to spend money in student loans and then hurry up and get married and hurry up and buy a house and hurry up and have kids. But it was like, just save, build an emergency fund. and then you might want to put a savings account together just for shared expenses. But never was it discussed of like,
not only investing, but what you could do with investments in general. My father has tried dipping his toes in and helping me a little bit, but at the same time, there's just so much to learn about the stock market. Yeah. And I think because I had a conversation on another podcast recently about this, but the problem is there's just so much misinformation and
Molly Connolly (09:39.342)
What can happen is it just takes one person that you know to tell you a story and you're put off for life. Or unfortunately, and this is true of my own father, but growing up he was, and he still is to some degree, I mean, I'm a lot older now, but he was my hero. Everything he said was, he's a smartest man, he's a very, very intelligent man, smartest man I know.
Every time I had anything, any questions about money, I would go to him and anything he said was gospel to me. It was like, yeah, that's right. My dad says, da, da, da. And what's been really eye -opening is since I've taken, you know, my own initiative to learn about the stock market, for example, you know, financial freedom, he actually has a lot of, you know, misconceptions and a lot of what he actually says to me is wrong.
And I wouldn't know that unless I'd done my own research. And it's kind of scary because I think, you know, if you just believe, you know, especially men, they can be very confident in their wrong, their wrong ideas. They can be very confident in their misinformation. They'll say something like, this is the truth and it's very convincing. And so if you don't know much about it, you feel very intimidated by it, or you're just going to believe everything they say, then, you know, it's very easy to get
get put off yourself. So that's why educating yourself and making your own informed decisions is so, so important because, you know, his, his favorite thing is to send me news articles about the stock market is crashing and all the scary stuff. And I can actually dad like, so yeah, it's, it's unfortunately, you know, often what we do learn from our parents or, you know, people around us is negative, especially with the stock market.
because it is just so, it's kind of crazy how misunderstood it is. And it's, I always say that the stock market has the worst PR agent on the planet and property has the best spin doctor on the planet. So yeah. Well, it sounds like your dad and my dad would love to hang out because my dad is like, he's from Charles Schwab and be like, check out this and blah, blah, blah. And I'll be like, no, actually I like learning more about, I don't know if you've heard of Ellevest.
Molly Connolly (12:00.014)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I haven't I'm investing with them. My thing is, is that I didn't realize
Molly Connolly (00:00.59)
investment portfolios are really just for men in their age, but of course for women, we live longer. So like there's a whole different way that we need to learn to be investing just because of our own lifestyle and how, you know, we do live longer than men by, is it like maybe three to five years or something like that? So.
10 years, yeah. 10 years. So I really did like how you brought up kind of the mindset of how our parents really do influence us. What are some of the mindset blocks that you see with your clients or even what you had to work through other than the beliefs that were pushed onto you from your dad? Yeah. I mean, obviously with money in general, I see a ton. I do tend to work with clients more on
the holding, managing, growing money. So they've kind of got the making money part down, like they're comfortable with that. They're making the money and now it's like, okay, what are you going to do with it to actually grow wealth? So, I mean, mindset is everything even with managing money, investing money. I mean, with managing money, there's a lot of avoidance and that can come from believing that you have to be really good at maths or numbers to
to successfully manage your own money, which just isn't true. I've had a lot of clients that have had debt, either they still have debt or they've had debt from when they were younger, they mismanaged money when they were younger and they're carrying that guilt and that idea that, I'm just bad with money. And that's probably the biggest one, this idea, I'm bad with money. And the thing is that,
Obviously understanding that you've picked that up from somewhere at some point and it's become a self -fulfilling prophecy is really important. And the, I actually have a, an amazing client and she's got ADHD. And so we very much work closely together because the normal ways of managing money, like, you know, Dave Ramsey, all this kind of stuff, it just does not.
Molly Connolly (02:14.894)
work for her and her brain. And I said to her a few things that actually made her cry, I think, with relief really, because, you know, because she'd been carrying all this, you know, I'm really bad, I'm just bad at money. And there's a lot of guilt and shame and embarrassment that, you know, I know that women feel because I know my clients feel it. And I felt it too, like, I avoided my money for a really long time. When my income dropped considerably, I had a lot of mental health issues, because I'd
kind of, I put myself worth on how much I earned. So when that dropped, it was like, I'm less worthy. And I've spent money in ways that, yeah, I really wish I hadn't done that. You know, I've spent money on things that I think, you know, shit, I probably, you know, I shouldn't have done that. And I'm kind of still paying the consequences for it or whatever. So everyone's done it. And I think it's really important to know that.
At some point you will have picked up this idea, whether that is because someone specifically said that to you, like I do have clients where their parents or their families say to them, you are bad with money, which then, you know, they're gonna, cause that when what happens then is then you go out and you've got this like self identity, this, this money identity that I call it. And that's got like two parts. So one part is how you,
relate to money and how you think about yourself in relation to money. So that would be things like I'm really bad with money or I'm bad at managing my money. And the other part is how you view money works in the outside world. So this would be beliefs like all debt is bad, or investing's only for really rich people or things like that. So I kind of split it in those two parts. But whether you've had someone tell you you're bad with money, or which
more often than not happens, we need to understand that when we're growing up, normally nobody talks to us about this and we're either going to observe our parents and unfortunately I'm going to say that most people's parents are also not great at managing money or they think that they are when they're passing down misinformation. So if all you're doing is observing what your parents are doing and maybe they're in late to death and they just don't care or they're, you know,
Molly Connolly (04:38.766)
very like scarcity, mind, cell, maybe you did grow up with a lot of poverty, which can cause trauma around money, then you're going to live that out because that's all you've learned until you become more conscious and you're like, okay, I don't need to have this story anymore. But no one, everyone's a coin bad with money, but no one teaches us how to be good. And so, you know, if I said to you, you've got to go and perform brain surgery on this person, you know, and you drive
I know it's totally has to be brain surgery. I'm not going to say, you're just really bad at brain surgery. So to me, it's the same thing because we have this expectation, especially as women that well, then how do you expect yourself to be good? I mean, honestly, how do you expect yourself to be good? Because no one told you school doesn't teach you and because school and society especially impress upon us really negative ideas with money as women, you know, teaches us that way.
frivolous spenders. So we're fighting all these barriers from our parents, from society, and which is the most important thing I think to remember, that our generation as like millennials, I'm going to guess you're kind of maybe in the same age bracket as me, but we're the first generation of women to ever be able to do this. So our mothers and our grandmothers, they couldn't invest, they couldn't even own property, they couldn't have their bank account.
So maybe if our mothers were a little bit younger, they grew up where they could maybe own property and things are starting to change. But it's only in the last kind of 50 to 100 years. Women in Ireland couldn't own property up until like 1975. It was like, what, 50 years ago. So we are expected, but...
to know this stuff or expect ourselves to know this stuff, but we've inherited all this generational trauma of being told that we're not competent with money because we weren't allowed to have it. And we were the property, you know, we were born. So we've inherited that idea that we're as women, we're just not as good with money. And because we weren't, you know, we were told that we can't have your own bank account. You can't, you can't own property. So.
Molly Connolly (06:52.974)
You know, the stock market, especially, this is a very new thing that, you know, men have been able to invest in for like a lot, lot longer. So I think we really need to be a lot nicer to ourselves and understand that, you know, how are we expected to be good, you know? So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, yes, totally giving ourselves grace. And I even love the fact that you brought up, you know, it's so recent.
I did a podcast episode where I was talking about some historical, you know, things about feminism in the United States. And we couldn't even have, I think, a credit card until the 1970s. everything like a bank account had to be underneath our husbands or our father's name. as well as like when I was going to school, we were told girls are bad at math. And my dad was a math teacher.
And I was able to sit down and do math with him, but nowadays they're doing a whole different way of teaching math. And so parents to children can't even teach math.
Molly Connolly (00:00.59)
I'm also curious, you brought up the scarcity mindset and right away you hit me because that's what I grew up in. My parents were very proud of constantly penny pitching. In fact, my mom and my grandmother and I were in the newspaper for being coupon queens, but I was like just born. And so they were at a coupon queen party.
And my grandmother used to go into the grocery store and make money when that was still available because of how much she would do with, like canned good coupons. So I grew up around that. And then with my dad, he would always be like those little sayings like money doesn't grow on trees. you need to save for a rainy day. And nowadays like they're retired or they retired a little bit early. They travel, they enjoy things, but when, you know,
the pandemic hits, they're like, my God, we need to save as much money as possible. And so they get to that scarcity mindset all over again and being away from it. Now as an adult, I can really see where that comes from, but it's so difficult to dig down and release those mindset blocks or those beliefs that we've had as children because it's been ingrained in us for so long. And to rewire our brains with like, with neuroscience, like you said, like we have to do the work.
and actually find ways to show ourselves that we can do these things. Yeah, yeah. The scarcity mindset, honestly, we could do like a 10 part. I have a lot to say about that. So it scarcity mindset, I know, because it's something that's talked about a lot, especially with money mindset coaches and the mindset experts and
I'm not saying I'm a money mindset expert, but that isn't my main area of expertise. However, the scarcity mindset comes into a lot of what I do. And I think that it's very oversimplified when we talk about it. And there's lots of layers to it that need to be spoken about. For example, you can have a scarcity mindset because you've experienced trauma.
Molly Connolly (02:16.91)
And so for me to just say to a client like, no, you know, think, you know, because often it's just like, think abundantly and like manifest money. If you've had, you know, I used to have a client who'd experienced homelessness when she was in Los Angeles on a trip. And, well, she was like trying to live there and she basically ended up like experiencing homelessness or homelessness. And if you've experienced that very real trauma of, you know, because there's people who, you know,
They're scarcely mindset and they have that, yeah, like you say, that pride in, you know, cutting corners and saving as much. But there's also people that will have developed it because, you know, they literally grew up in a household where it was we eat or we pay the bills. And, you know, you're going to go to bed hungry because I've got to pay the gas to get to work. That is so real and traumatic for people that it's very understandable that they would.
be like operating out of an extreme scarcity mindset. And because, you know, that fear of going back there is very, very real. And I'm very, very, very blessed and privileged. So I, you know, my dad, he was a barrister lawyer, sorry, gone barrister in the UK. He was a lawyer. So he earned very good money. He did actually come from what's interesting though. And he's a, he's quite a good case study, I guess, but he came from extreme poverty.
So his dad, my grandfather worked in the mines in the north of England and his mum died when he was very young. And they did grow up in extreme poverty. And my dad took himself from that to where he, you know, he put himself through law school. And it was really a series of very lucky events that people take. Like, you know, one of his friends' dad's paid for him to go to a good school. And like he was just...
naturally quite a smart kid, so he got scholarships. So he was able to completely kind of divert my like generational wealth, I guess, experience or whatever, like he completely changed that from his dad's generation to his generation to my generation, where he was able to, you know, provide for us as a family financially very well. But he is very rooted in scarcity.
Molly Connolly (04:40.91)
And it's very interesting to watch. Even though he is retired as well, he's 70. I know how much he has in retirement savings because he shares it with me because now that I do what I do, like we have these conversations and he's good. He is very good, but he is terrified of running out of money. But he'll also spend a ridiculous amount of money on something really
like you think you don't, you know, if you were that worried about money, you wouldn't be buying that kind of thing. So it's really interesting to observe. So I think that we need to understand that sometimes the scarcity mindset really comes from this real trauma. And so it's not going to be as easy as just snapping your fingers and saying, I'm abundant, I'm abundant. It's like, you have to deal with that trauma. And I think with our parents as well, something that's not talked about is the difference in the way that we live. So
Our grandparents, for example, might have lived through the war, or our parents might have lived through something where they, you know, like with the war, for example, that was like rationing and things like that, you know, so they can have experiences. People have parents that go bankrupt, and that causes them to be terrified of like investing, for example. So there's all these layers to it. On the flip side,
My most controversial opinion about it is that ultimately scarcity, especially with money and all resources really, is a man -made concept. And that's not to negate the very, very real experience that people have because they absolutely do. However, we live in a world where the top 1 % own more wealth than the other 99%.
And there's all sorts of reasons for that, but we are as the general public, taught save money, scrimp, like we're just taught that model of don't think about how you can make more money, think about how you can cut back, cut back, cut back. I mean, even, I don't know if you saw, but the Wall Street Journal got in a bit of trouble because a couple of weeks ago they had an article that said, you know, cause of course we have a
Molly Connolly (06:53.518)
cost of living crisis at the moment in mainland june especially the uk and they said if you're struggling with money try just not eating breakfast wow that's ridiculous wow and this is the but this is the narrative like you're poor like why don't you just try not eating you know it's like no we we need to you know it should be here's how you can upskill and here's how you can make more money so
Generally as a society, we have been brainwashed this way, right? Where in reality there is tons and tons of money out there to be made. And the fact that we don't have to struggle. Like people who can't eat this awful experience that people are having, this doesn't need to happen if there was a redistribution of financial resources. Which I know is very like, it's a big, big topic, but ultimately for me, I had a lot of guilt.
around wanting to be wealthy and wanting to have money and be rich. I felt, I call it like martyr syndrome because I just thought there's so many people struggling. Like, you know, I just felt so bad. And then the more that I thought about it, cause I, I have a PhD, right? So my brain is like on overdrive 24 seven, I'm a very deep thinker. And I thought I need to think my way out of this. And it was just thinking about it. Like, wait a minute. Why am I?
feeling guilt when I personally did not create this structure. And actually if I make you have more money, I can, you know, obviously not only look after myself and have a great life, but help to try and change the structure. Because, you know, we are, we are fascinated with how people spend their money, but personally, and I, you know, again, that's a whole other big topic, but I saw someone had spent, there was like,
Facebook post going around of some guy that had spent maybe like 200 grand on a meal, right? And the comments below were really fascinating because obviously some people are completely disgusted and some people were like, there's this idea, right, that if you judge someone very wealthy for how they spend their money, then you're rejecting money yourself, which I think is complete crap, to be honest. But for me personally, I would much rather spend that 200 ,000 on putting like five kids through college.
Molly Connolly (09:17.646)
That would give me so much joy. I personally don't resonate on any level spending that much money on a meal. But I don't believe for a second that's stopping my flow of abundance somehow. I think we need more people who, especially women, who are going to make and hold and create a lot of wealth and then redistribute it to some degree so that we can help this crazy structure we live in where people are struggling so much. And yes, people are flying there.
personal collection of supercars on a flight.
Molly Connolly (00:00.462)
the gap is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but it doesn't need to be like that. And I, I realized that I didn't want to carry this guilt because it wasn't serving anyone. So yeah, so I went on a tangent there, but it's a big topic. I loved it. You brought it up. Like what I really like, how you, the fact that you are a deep thinker, like I was going to say something and I just paused before and I noticed, you know, how you're talking about your dad and like the money, mine's have a scarcity. And with my parents,
I noticed that as I've withdrawn a little bit from the money conversation with my dad, it's showing that that society belief is that they have worked so hard to get where they're at, that for our generation, it's more like a guilt that we're not having to work hard to get what we want. And so it's like the two generations are semi fighting about if you don't work, can't work hard, play hard. So that's another thing that I had to understand that you don't have to work
yourself to death, to make a living. At one point I was working two jobs, a full -time job and then waiting tables at night. And I eventually had an ulcer and was losing a lot of weight, getting really sick, having a lot of stress. And my doctor forced me to quit my job and find something new within three months. And when I did that,
when I found my new job, they didn't really want me working, like leaving work early to go wait at tables. And so I had to quit getting cash on hand and said, I had to learn how to get money every two weeks. Like those, even those little changes in someone having a job that's like a corporate or, even either freelance entrepreneurship or even waiting tables, just even how that money comes in and out. And then our generational push or
you know, the judgment from our parents tops onto that is just insane to go through. So I really appreciate you bringing all this up. Yeah. And I mean, that's another thing that, you know, we, for us now, like the world has changed so much since our parents and even things like social security or like state pensions in the UK, you know, the UK have already made
Molly Connolly (02:21.326)
they've made changes to the state pension. So you know, have to be even older to get it. And of course, a lot of people unfortunately will be reliant on that as their main source of income once they stop working. And really, I believe that probably by the time that I'm at that age, it possibly won't even exist anymore. And so the whole structure that our parents did grow up in, and they, yeah, it's different. And now, like you say, there's kids on the internet making
like becoming multimillionaires with cryptocurrency when they're like 17. There's a whole world out there of opportunity that where we can especially leverage our time and we're not exchanging time for money, which is really the only model. So the internet has also changed everything. And so again, yeah, our parents, when they're looking at us and they're freaking out because we're doing all this crazy stuff. I mean, my parents have been
You know, my mum is very, very supportive and my dad is, but he definitely is like, he just has given up trying to understand like, I'm traveling. I've got like, I'm not married. I've got no kids. I don't own property and I'm like traveling the world and I'm nearly 36. So I'm definitely going against everything that their generation would have done. But yeah, I think that's, that's another really important point to make, 100%.
So yeah, I'm not traveling the world like you are, which would be fabulous. I'm also a person where it's like work so hard that I can't even take trips. My husband kind of gets on me on that. But yeah, like we're married, but we don't have kids. We're not planning on having kids, but we both got married to each other later. So it's just like that whole gap of what society has told you that you have to do. It brings up like a few of these things. I know,
Molly Connolly (00:00.206)
you said that you did yourself taught where do you think women really need to begin in order to, you know, make the money, make that wealth, build it as well as distribute it, which honestly, I do understand and believe your concept because I really feel that women, we're obviously taught to serve. And so in a bigger way, I could see just us doing things in a bit of a distribution in a way that's going to better the world.
like you said, than just spending frivolously on a coach bag or whatever that we don't necessarily have to have. Yeah. I think, again, it's probably my ridiculous brain that I've thought so deeply into this, but there's so much behind that. And, you know, in, is my kind of personal opinion that with
with money and obviously most of the world's richest and wealthiest people are men. And there was some research done that where they interviewed billionaires and one of if not the biggest driving force behind these billionaires wealth was basically proving to their own fathers that they weren't a failure. So this kind of backs up my belief that for the most part
these men in power and with a lot of wealth are basically driven by unhealthy ego. And that is something where although, you know, women and men are one, we're brought up to have very different relationships with money. Like you said, women are taught that they're bad at math, for example, which we're not, we're just as good, but there's all sorts going on at the school level that teaches us that we're not. But I do believe that
for women, we do tend to naturally be more nurturing and that is reflected in how we spend our money. So women with wealth do actually give a lot more back to their communities than men. And so all the kind of research shows that women having more money and having wealth is only going to be a good thing for the planet and for the world. So there's that.
Molly Connolly (02:19.182)
I do also think that, you know, we can have that and we can have the coach bag, you know, like you, you get to have both and it's not, you know, this is something I'm very hot on when I work with my clients is I don't want people to feel like they have to like sacrifice their life now, or they have to give up the things that they love. It's not about that. It's there's things that need to change for sure, but
actually that's another narrative that we've been taught of like, you know, don't have your takeout coffee because you'll never be rich. It's like, you can have your daily like flat. These are that kind of, it's like micro thinking that women at all, like, you know, save money. Don't buy that designer handbag. It's frivolous. Like, you know, save your money as opposed to those are kind of $10 decisions that are never going to make you very wealthy.
but we're not teaching women how to invest in the stock market. We're not teaching women about risk tolerance. We're not teaching women how to grow and sell businesses. So even now, only about 1%, I think, of venture capital goes to female startups, right? And things like that, like we're still so far behind and there's a huge wealth gap. It's about, I wanna say it's maybe,
I'm not sure the latest thing's in, it's going to be about 20 cents to the man's dollar. And like for women of colour, it's even worse. It's like one cent to a white man's dollar. So that's pretty, yeah, it is ridiculous. And also, you know, we have the pay gap, you know, so for women who are in corporate, which is why I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship, because it, on some level, you think like it's going to level the playing field. Although, like I said, most venture capital is still being put into.
male -run companies because men think other men are more reliable even though the Fortune 500, the companies that have women in the C -suite are more profitable. So all of the actual research and evidence shows that when women are equally involved in a company, for example, the company is more profitable. When women have wealth, the planet and the world will be a better place. Yeah.
Molly Connolly (04:41.166)
that that's still not happening. So yeah, I think you can have both. And in terms of starting, you know, it's really just believing, I think that, or allowing yourself to believe that you are capable of managing and growing your own wealth and managing your own money. And up until really you maybe have a million or multi -millions to invest, you can do all of that yourself. You don't even need a financial advisor.
unless you really want one. So I think it's just starting with that belief and being aware of any beliefs you have that are stopping you from managing. If you're avoiding your money, for example, you never look at it, you're scared to look at your bank account. That's another big thing. Even for women that have, I have six figure earners, seven figure earners that I've worked with where they're like, I'm like, I said, have you done?
XYZ and they're like, no, I don't want to look, right? So there's this idea of like, and you know, my sister, she's my biggest case study because she, I mean, she will literally cry. She get her whole nervous system. You know, if you feel it in your nervous system, then it's understanding where is that coming from? What's causing your nervous system is going to fight or flight when it comes to your money.
And understanding where that resistance is coming from is really important because you have to be able to manage your money and you have to save, you have to be good at saving. You can't build wealth. So you can build wealth without a big income, but you can't build it without being able to save your money. So saving as a skill is really important. So really the starting point is
why have I resisted this for so long and getting to the bottom of that? Beginning to manage your money, beginning to save regularly. And then it would be moving on to understanding investing and how you actually take those savings and then leverage them into wealth. That's fantastic. I totally agree. A lot of people do not address that part of the beliefs and getting to why are you feeling the way? Now that I think about it,
Molly Connolly (07:02.03)
How do you, like, let's say a client of yours comes and she has a partner or she's married. How do you handle finances with your client where maybe her partner's not on the same page or you know what I mean? Like maybe they have disagreements about how they handle money. Yeah. Do you know what? It's interesting actually, because I would say that whether most of my clients are very
willful women, but it's actually not been much of an issue. Yeah. But I do know that it is an issue. It's actually one of the biggest reasons my past relationship ended. I think that money is up there with like infidelity as like the number one or two reasons why relationships will end. I think that when you begin this journey, you obviously do want your partner on board.
I'm a big believer in that. I know that some couples, even married couples, keep their money completely separate. If that works for you, great. But in my experience, when that's happening, it's on some level, it can be like almost financial abuse because it's normally the man makes all the money and he's like, this is my money. And the woman, maybe she gets like an allowance from him or she's working like a part -time job because she's raising kids.
And so she's got next to nothing. I mean, I actually had a conversation with a woman over Instagram where this was happening. To me that, you know, that's a whole other story where you need to seriously question the relationship that you're in. I do believe that as a partnership, you know, especially if you're married, then it should be a partnership and you should be agreeing on how, you know, you are sharing financial resources and things. I also believe that you should have your own money still as well.
But I think you need to have talks around really important things. So I remember going in to see my fiance at the time. And I said to him, because I'd started to learn about this fire movement, which is financial independence, retire early. And I was like, this is what I want. Like, I want to retire early. I want to get to a point where all my investments and my passive income cover my expenses. And I just, I'm going to go and
Molly Connolly (09:24.878)
feed dogs in Africa or I just want to give back to the world and like travel and just like live. And he was on such a different page. We weren't even on the same book. Like he just, he zero interest in this. So this is all that was always going to be an issue. So I think thinking about things like, okay, you know, what do we want to achieve with our money? Like what are we saving towards?
And do we agree on saving? Because a lot of the time, you know, you might have one partner that saves very well. And this is, again, the issue that we had was I was a very good saver at that point. And I was like, I want to go on holiday. And he was broke, basically. And he didn't save his money. He was like, I want to spend the money that I'm making, like life's too short for saving, like that kind of mentality. So I think it's really clear on these things of
about saving, what are you saving toward? Are you saving toward like a house you wanna buy together, for example? Talking about your retirement, like when do we wanna retire? Like what does that look like? And I think it's definitely a red flag if they're not gonna engage with you in these conversations, because that's obviously they're carrying their own resistance around money. And obviously having a joint account and deciding
you know, the rent and the bills or whatever are going to come out of this and then we're going to have our own spending money. So I think it's really important to have those conversations around those core things. You know, are they wanting to build wealth? Are they even motivated by money? You know, what does that look like for them? And to have that just open communication, really. And then, you know, hopefully they'll either be on the same page or
you know, maybe they've never really thought about it and now you're taking that kind of lead to start thinking about it and you're going to say, okay, well, I want to think about it and like, I want to talk about that. And then I always teach my clients to have money dates every month as a minimum. So including them in that as well and just kind of going from there. But I really think that money
Molly Connolly (11:37.678)
Money reflects our values, basically. And if you don't have shared values, then you're going to hold a relationship together. So for me, my number one value is freedom. And, you know, my second value is like growth and personal development. And also I'm a Taurus. So I am very driven by stability. So financial security to me is extremely important. And with my ex partner,
He didn't care about freedom. He didn't really value it. He was happy in a nine to five. He wasn't bothered about security. Like he literally lived by the seat of his pants. Like he had no savings. And it's a bit different when you're self -employed. It's even more important, I think, to have like reserves and savings. But when he was talking about us having children, my whole nervous system just freaked out because there's no way I'm having kids without us having reserves, without us having like some kind of level of stability.
So for me, like, and also our values were completely different and they're going to be reflected in how we spend and use our money. And so it was, you know, we were always going to run into issues. So I think getting really clear on those values and how they're reflected and how you spend money as a partnership is just a super important conversation to have. Yeah, I completely agree.
I don't think I told you this. I was previously married. I got married in 2008, right before the recession hit. My ex -husband, he looked like he was really good with money. We would go out on wonderful dates. And if there was something that we ever needed, we would get it. We bought a house right before the crash and...
What ended up happening was that I found out that he was going out and getting a credit card, maxing it out, getting another one and maxing it out. And it wasn't until, we both got back from our, when we got back from our honeymoon, I got laid off. And then two or three months later, he wasn't passing his boards to be a nurse. And we had our house go into foreclosure. And it was one of those moments where it was like, Holy shit.
Molly Connolly (13:55.214)
What are we doing here? This isn't even our first year of marriage. Yes, the recession hit, but we were not prepared. Like I was 26 and he was honestly 23 and we both never had these conversations about saving. But we were told, you guys should go ahead and buy a house. This is the best time to buy. And it was the worst idea for either of us. But you know,
It really, yes, money and other things caused us to have a very difficult relationship and going from, you know, not having any, and then having to live paycheck to paycheck once you could find a job at that time and never being able to save. So I personally feel like there's a lot of women out there that this is the last conversation that they want to have as they start a relationship.
or they get fully into the relationship. My current husband and I, ironically, I moved in, I had only known him for like three months. And I moved in the day the pandemic shut down in the United States. And then, you know, everything was obviously for us works really well. But like, we ended up later on having a conversation about finances. And I am the person that's like, save, save, save, but it's coming from my old, you know, my mindset from my parents. And he's more,
Not a lot, but at the same time, he's like, we need to go and live now. Like, his parents, his dad's health is not the greatest. So he sees it in the future of like, if we don't go do these things now, we can't do them in the future. So we're weighing them back and forth and being able to do both. So now that we've had these conversations, it's fantastic to be able to like, okay, can we go do this or can we do that? yes, we can. Or no, let's save for this instead. So,
I just think that most women just put that off and I really appreciate you going into like your own personal story about that. And even talking about the red flags because I was going to ask that later. Yeah, it is difficult. Don't get me wrong. It's an awkward conversation to have. And I'm not, I'm certainly not saying because I'm, I'm obviously single now and dating. So don't get me wrong. I'm not out there on the first date being like, I want to see your friends. Yeah, exactly. Like how much debt do you have?
Molly Connolly (16:17.518)
But you know, it's actually, God, I could just talk to you for hours about this, but it's a very important conversation to have. And I think you can learn a lot about someone from those first few dates anyway. So if you're dating, for example, and it's something you want to be aware of, if you're in a relationship now and you haven't had the conversation, have the conversation because I have way too many clients.
that are in really bad financial positions because of a ex either putting things in their name or you're gonna, you know, if you're gonna marry someone, like I only found out that my ex fiance had nearly six figures of debt by accident. And then it was like, you know, if I'd married him, obviously depending where you get married, then you take that on. And I think women don't realize when they get married, especially in the UK, for example, I recently learned that
this idea of a prenup, which I know is kind of popular in America, it doesn't stand up in court in the UK. So you can write something where you're like, you know, so as, and I was the breadwinner and I had the majority of the savings and investments and things. So, you know, you've got to, you've got to talk about this. My sister, she bought a house with her ex -husband, luckily, you know, it pays to have a dad who's a lawyer because he wrote all this stuff, but
And, you know, that then turned into a very, very nasty divorce and she was only protected because, well, because my dad helped a lot and that was like, you know, we were very lucky with that. But, you know, for someone who didn't know, they probably would have lost half of this house to an ex -husband where my sister paid all the deposit and she paid pretty much all the mortgage. So you've got to have, yeah, it's awkward. Yeah, maybe it's like, and it's not that you think this person is going to
purposely screw you over. It's just having that openness so that you understand what their relationship is like with money. Cause it's not just you've got to be on the same page with the values. It's understanding that mentality around money and whether that's going to be supportive to you or not. And if they're out there like shoving everything on credit cards and getting into tons of debt, you know, guess what? If you get married, it's your debt too, basically. And so,
Molly Connolly (18:38.478)
you know, we need to have these conversations. And actually, I was talking to a friend here in Vietnam yesterday about splitting 50 -50 on dates. Yeah. And when I first told her my opinion on it, she was like, yeah, but I'm not sure, like, it doesn't feel fair. And I said for me, because she'd gone on this date, right, where this guy, I think, I think they just bought drinks and some very cheap food. It's Vietnam, right?
So put this in the context of Vietnam where you can get a meal for two people with like a starter, a main and a drink for probably like $12. Okay. It's cheap here. So we're not even talking that he took her out in London or New York. This is Vietnam. And they came over and they were like, how do you want to pay? And he's straight away, he's like separately. And
she was like, I didn't like it. I was like, yeah, because for me, that shows his relationship to money, and he is tight around money. And he is like, in scarcity around money, like, he can't even shout you a drink and a meal in Vietnam. That to me, shows a lot about that man's relationship to money. And for me, I'm not looking for that. I'm not looking for someone who's rooted in scarcity. I'm not looking for someone who, like,
I don't want to be in a relationship where it's like, we went out for dinner, we've got to split it 50 -50. That's not what I want. I'll get this and then I'll get this. That way, that dynamic. So to me, that's the kind of thing that I'm looking for on first, second, third dates is you can learn a lot about how someone relates to money and their money mindset just by observing how they carry themselves when it comes to things like the bill coming over or when you
talking about money. So yeah, so you don't need to be out there on the first day asking all those personal things, but as you're getting more serious, it's definitely a, it's like the kids conversation, right? You don't want to get really serious with someone and then be like, well, do you want kids? No, I don't. I really want kids. So there's a part in that relationship and like, say if you're married or you're in a serious relationship, then definitely you want to be having that conversation. So funny enough, my husband and I did.
Molly Connolly (20:58.03)
on our first day talk about both of those. And you can also do that if it's if it's if it feels like a little bit, do it. Yeah. So 100 percent. Before we go, I know that some of the ladies had some great questions and two of them are quite long. But I was curious if we could get those answered before we end up today, because this was fantastic. One of them was what's the best way to get rid of credit card debt with high interest?
Should you take out money if you have a 401k to pay it off a personal loan with a lower rate or a credit card with 0 % interest on balance transfers? Yeah. So I can actually, yeah, as quickly now, and then I can always go on my Instagram and do something more in depth. Okay. That sounds good. YouTube. That's quite an easy one. So if you've got high interest credit card debt, there's a few things you can do, but one of them should definitely not be.
taking out of your 401k. Not only will you get a massive penalty, but your 401k is invested in the stock market. Most of it will be, there'll be some in bonds and things like this. Golden rule of stock market investing is do not pull your money out. So don't do that one. So you could either look for a personal loan or
Obviously a balance transfer, an opposite balance transfer and interest credit card is great. I, you know, if you're wanting to build your credit rating or use credit cards, then they're obviously amazing. They're something that I use because you're not paying any interest. My golden rule though, really is you shouldn't be using them unless you've got the money and savings. So with money, there's always the trade off, right? So let's say I had five grand in savings.
and I wanted to buy a new computer that was five grand, I might consider putting the computer actually on a 0 % credit card and taking that 5k and investing it because it's out there then making money and I've managed to buy the computer but I'm not paying any interest. So that's something to think about is like you're always trading off with your money, like is it out there working for you or is it not out there working for you basically?
Molly Connolly (23:19.662)
So that is definitely an option. Also with credit cards, loans, anything like this, always, always, always call them up and ask for a lower rate. Because almost 100 % of the time they will do that. The amount of times that when I have had credit cards in the past or I've struggled to like meet my minimum payment in the past or whatever, I've called up and I said, hey, you know, usually I pay on time. I've had this credit card for many years.
can you basically not charge me interest? And they say, yeah. Or you can call up and say, you know, I'm paying 20 % and I found another credit card that's 15%. I'm gonna move to this other company. Credit card companies want your money. That is literally how they operate. So, you know, use and abuse that and call them. But if you can get a 0 % credit card, then obviously that's always the best option. That's fantastic. I love how you just dropped that.
Good part of there. And another question some lady had was, in your opinion, how much of your life do you need to sacrifice in the now to get the life you want in the future? Do you save and put off trips so you can travel the world later as you want? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think probably I do need to hop on Instagram stories and then you can just direct people that. But because it is a big one.
But in a nutshell, it really depends on your personal circumstances and your priorities. So, you know, I'm not, I don't teach this idea of sacrifice. I think it's important to reframe it as priorities. And obviously, if I have a woman I'm working with and she's making a hundred grand a year, she's not going to have to prioritize in the same way as a woman who's making 50 grand a year.
you know, if it really, if you're in a position where it really is, I either save or invest, then you just need to decide what's most important to you right now. And I think reframe it so you don't feel like you're denying yourself. See it as a choice. Like if, for example, you are wanting to invest so that you can, you know, live a great life in the future, then think about, okay, I'm
Molly Connolly (25:39.246)
let's say you have an extra like $500 left over for the month, you think, well, I could go on holiday now, or I could invest it for my future self. And you know what, I'm going to choose to invest it for my future self, knowing that I will be able to go on holiday soon. Just right now, I'm going to choose to put it into my future self. And also, obviously, I always encourage every woman to focus on how they can increase their income so they don't have to.
make so many of these choices, but rather than seeing it as like, I want to go on a holiday or I can't today, just think about it as you're making an empowered choice. I don't believe that you do have to sacrifice. I mean, in all honesty, when you do like an audit of your spending and you start spending in a value aligned way, in a mindful way, you'll probably free up a lot of money that you then can put toward a trip. So yeah.
You might need to tweak a few things and yeah, you might need to go through some phases where you're having to prioritize one thing over the other. but ultimately it's just a case of, of asking yourself, which, which do I choose to be most important right now in this moment? And then that is where you would direct your money. Yeah, I love that. But empowering our future self is something that even I can hear it in your voice, like personal development side of you, like how that really gives tenfold to women.
when they have the chance to do that. I absolutely loved having this conversation with you. And I feel like my ladies that listen to the podcast are really going to enjoy it as well. I 100 % appreciate your time and your expertise. Can you tell the ladies, first of all, like where can they find you? What do you have going on if they want to get, you know, in your world? Yep. So the best place to find me is Instagram. So it's actually is underscore sorry money, but I'm sure you'll
Just link in the show notes. And then I have a podcast as well called She's Sowing Money. And yeah, Instagram is the best place to come. And I have a free masterclass that you can get started with. And my, the main way to work with me is through my Wealth By Design program, where I help women save their first 100K and learn all about personal finances, managing money, investing money and all the things. So yeah, just come over on Instagram and.
Molly Connolly (28:01.998)
Follow me and say hi and let me know you found me on this podcast. that's fantastic. Once again, thank you so much, Anna. I really appreciate you joining me. You're welcome. Thank you for having me.