Navigating the Emotional Roots of Money Stress with Shang Saavedra

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with the help of AI and may contain minor errors or inconsistencies. Please refer to the audio for the most accurate representation of the conversation.

[00:00:00] Alyssa: You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today I get to hang out with Shang Saavedra and we got to chat about the emotional roots of money. Stress, let's get real Money comes with so much emotion and I love how she breaks down the root causes of money issues and how to navigate them and how. We all come to the table with different stories about money and what it looks like, not just to address finances, but to look at the emotional lens of finances in order to long-term address this and create a comprehensive plan for ourselves.

[00:00:43] It's so fascinating for me to have these conversations and think about my childhood and you know, I'm one of five kids and what each one of us has taken away and what our stories are about money given our childhood. I love getting to chat with Rach in the breakdown about this and what it looks like in our partnerships and our marriage and how we married humans who have different relationships with money than we had.

[00:01:07] What it looks like to navigate all that jazz and also what does this look like to teach our kids. I'm so stoked for you to get to dive into this episode and learn more about navigating the emotional roots of money, stress. Alright folks, let's dive in.

[00:01:28] Hey there. I'm Alyssa Blask Campbell. I'm a mom with a master's degree in early childhood education and co-creator of the Collaborative Emotion Processing Method. I'm here to walk alongside you through the messy, vulnerable parts of being humans, raising other humans with deep thoughts and actionable tips.

[00:01:45] Let's dive in together.

[00:01:50] Hi, how are you? 

[00:01:53] Shang: It's a good morning to be alive. 

[00:01:56] Alyssa: Yeah, good. That's a nice answer. So you are in Southern California, you've got two boys? Yes, I do. How old are your boys? 

[00:02:07] Shang: Five and two. 

[00:02:08] Alyssa: Okay. Salad. I have a 4-year-old little guy and a 16 month old little girl. So very similar ages there. 

[00:02:17] Shang: Yeah. And you're based, um, I know you're East Coast, but not entirely sure.

[00:02:20] That's right. 

[00:02:22] Alyssa: Yep. I'm in Burlington, Vermont. 

[00:02:24] Shang: Ah, okay. I used to be New England for quite some time. 

[00:02:28] Alyssa: Yeah, you were at Harvard? Yeah. 

[00:02:29] Shang: Yeah, and I grew up in the Boston area. 

[00:02:32] Alyssa: Okay, cool. Yeah, we lived down in Boston for five years. My husband did his master's down in Boston, and uh, so we were in New York City when we met and then moved over to Boston and then up to Vermont when we were ready to have kids.

[00:02:46] And he's from here, so we wanted to be near his family and all that jazz. 

[00:02:50] Shang: Makes sense. 

[00:02:51] Alyssa: Yeah. It's quite the biggest parenting hack really, is just living near my mother-in-law. Yeah. Is the most helpful. Um, well, I'm jazzed to get to chat with you about money. I think it's something that we often avoid. A lot of us grew up in cultures where we didn't learn how to talk about money or how to navigate it and, um.

[00:03:18] There's a lot of fear around it, and when y'all reached out to be on the podcast, I was like, Ooh, this is cool. We get to marry the like finances with the emotions work and dive into that. I'm curious, first of all, like what got you into this topic? 

[00:03:36] Shang: Yeah. I've always grown up with my parents talking about money and normalizing it.

[00:03:42] So it was a topic that growing up seemed normal to me to discuss. I didn't realize until I was an adult that that's actually pretty taboo. That's a gift. But I like money. I wanted to get rich. I wanted to, you know, make a lot of money. So it had, it had always been top of mind for me and through several very transformative experiences.

[00:04:07] In my twenties was where I was like, oh, money's actually super emotional. It's not just math, it's not just numbers. And that's how a lot of like the things that I teach today started developing about 10 years ago. 

[00:04:22] Alyssa: Yeah, so interesting. Okay, so can you break down for me when you're like, as a kid, you're like, I want to get rich, like I want that, what was that drive from, like from an emotional standpoint, what was your emotion that drove the like, I wanna get Rich?

[00:04:39] Was it from a place of security, safety, fun, where you're like, yes, sign me up. It would be exciting. Like what was your emotional drive for that? 

[00:04:48] Shang: As a child, I would say it was driven by being bullied. So, uh, growing up I was the nerd. I was tiny. And so in my head I had this revenge of the nerd story where I would be able to show that I'm quote unquote better than everybody else by being one of the wealthiest.

[00:05:07] Um, because I knew I couldn't fight back in the moment. It was way how power. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, it's so funny 'cause it seems so silly now so many years later because I was like, I don't even remember who my bullies are. Yeah. Like I couldn't get in touch with them if I even wanted to. But it started out as a revenge, the nerd story.

[00:05:30] Alyssa: That makes so much sense. Yeah. There's so much power. In having money, right? That, uh, I, we find this in the work that we do, that I did research in building emotional intelligence in kids. All of our work is based around supporting the adults, raising kids with these tools, and we have to constantly ask other folks for money so that we can provide these tools for the people who need them.

[00:05:53] And whether it's state governments or public private partnerships or philanthropic funding, we are in the position where we're constantly turning to people who have money to say, hi, this is a worthy cause. Will you support it? And it is. It's an interesting spot on my end. Sometimes I just get really frustrated in the idea that.

[00:06:16] I have to convince somebody that emotional intelligence in kids is something worth investing in. That seems nuts that I have to like put all my ducks in a row to make sure you know that this is a worthy cause. And the, I think, really root fear or feeling there. Is that this other person has power or control over us because they're the ones who, if they don't open their wallet, we don't get to do the work we do.

[00:06:45] And there's so much just power in having money that I. I am so glad you shared that with us, because I think it makes so much sense to be a kid who is being bullied and to see like, how can I fight back? Well, the way that I can fight back is to have enough money to have control. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:07:08] Yeah, that makes sense. Um, when you say you started realizing in your twenties that money was really emotional, how did you realize that what 

[00:07:18] Shang: happened? So. This was around the time that I got married to my husband, so my, you know, mid twenties. He actually raised the idea that you can buy a lot of freedom with money.

[00:07:30] And he's like, if we learn to be super, super frugal, then. Once we became parents of young children, the impact of the additional cost of raising children wouldn't create so much stress and anxiety. And he's like, that is actually very freeing because it means that you can take a longer maternity leave if you want to, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:07:51] And I was like, okay, sounds cool. Let's try it. Um, and in the beginning we created a budget where the spending was very. Minimal, especially on the nice to have size. We always covered our must haves, but basically my nice to have spending went down by 75%. 

[00:08:11] Wow. And the 

[00:08:11] Shang: first few months I could not meet this budget and I kept thinking there is something wrong with my math.

[00:08:18] Like I can't math this. I kept thinking it was like a math problem and eventually I realized it's not, because every time that. I was tempted to spend or wanted to spend on something that was nice to have. I realized there were a lot of emotions behind it. I was super stressed out at work, so that was a huge contributor.

[00:08:39] I was also really lonely because I had just moved to New York City and a lot of my friends were not in New York City at that time. 

[00:08:49] Mm-hmm. So 

[00:08:49] Shang: there's a constant crave for human connection. And I also went to therapy. Fantastic. And in therapy I realized that these struggles that I had with my budget were intricately connected with my psychological needs as well.

[00:09:06] Alyssa: This is so helpful as a frame. I think it's also helpful to hear like, okay, people who like can math the math and run the numbers and care a lot about this, it can still be really hard to put into action of the like. How do I shift from, I want to have this and I'm just gonna get it 'cause I wanna have it and I can afford it and we have the money to, I want to have this and I'm not gonna do that right now.

[00:09:32] I am gonna think of, I was just talking about this before we started, but I'm gonna think of future Alyssa here, right? Like I am going to in this moment say no. And I think this is something we struggle with as humans in general, that it's hard. It's so hard. Whether it comes down to like the food choice I'm gonna make or the movement of my body, or the taking of a shower today versus, I'm like, I'll take, I'll do it tomorrow.

[00:09:58] I'm too tired. I don't wanna go do it. And then I wake up and I'm like, gosh, my morning's so hectic. I wish I would've just showered before bed last night. Right? The, I'm so good at kicking this off to future Alyssa's problem instead of saying, yeah, I'm gonna make a harder choice for present Alyssa. That's actually gonna be a gift to future Alyssa.

[00:10:17] Shang: That is because it's using the part of our brain that needs to, uh, have executive function. As I'm sure you know, we weren't born as human emotional beings. If you look at a toddler, they're highly emotional because that part of the brain is rapidly firing during our developmental years and the part of our brain that can.

[00:10:37] Fully control our emotions. The prefrontal cortex doesn't actually fully develop until our mid twenties, which is fascinating. I'm like, oh my gosh, you're not even like fully brain formed until that time. And so right around the time my prefrontal cortex widely closed is also around the time where I'm like, oh, I'm dealing with all these emotions around money.

[00:10:56] And it is true that if your mental health isn't optimal, then your brain also isn't even given the full capacity. To allow you to be like, I'm going to think about future me instead of her, me. I'm going to, you know, control these emotions and not let them flood. All parts of my body. Um, and sometimes I, I actually tell people it's so hard because you might actually not even be in the optimal state where you can try to do the hardest thing.

[00:11:29] And I think that should feel really reassuring. 'cause it's, it's, uh, it's actually me saying it's not always you. Like there's other things at play that may be beyond your control. 

[00:11:40] Alyssa: A hundred percent yes. That the, when I have more capacity, when I'm well resourced, I can access my whole brain. I can think of future Alyssa more, right?

[00:11:50] I can say like, I wanna live in a strong body and when I know I'm gonna head into menopause in a few years, or pre menopause in a few years, perimenopause in a few years, and I'm gonna lose a bunch of muscle, right? And so right now Alyssa needs to be focused on lifting weights. And building my muscle so that when I enter into that space, my body is in as uh, a zone where it can hopefully maintain muscle and continue to build on it, and I can enter that head space.

[00:12:23] And be like, all right, great. I'm gonna work out and lift some weight and move my body so that future illicit can be set up for more success. When I'm well resourced. Yes. When I am not waking up throughout the night with a toddler when we don't have sick kids at home, right? When I have more brain capacity to be able.

[00:12:42] To make those choices. And then you enter in like, okay, yeah, no work got really busy and I'm traveling a lot and we've got a kid waking up and she's been sick or whatever. And now I'm like, what workout? What are you talking about workout? Are you kidding? I just wanna like lie down on the couch for 48 hours.

[00:13:01] You know like that is, yeah, I think so. Nice to hear that I. It makes sense for that to be the case that when you are less resourced, when you have less capacity, having access to your prefrontal cortex 

[00:13:16] Shang: is simply harder. Yep. And it then also shows up your money. Mm-hmm. Um, you spend more impulsively, bills, bills get ignored.

[00:13:26] True credit card bills, people ignore them, buried their head in the sand and you often feel like, I just can't seem to get ahead on these. Yeah. I'm just like, money cycles. Yeah. 

[00:13:37] Alyssa: Now I'm on Amazon and I need this thing. Yeah. Yeah. You just want something to feel better. You just wanna feel better, like gimme that dopamine.

[00:13:44] Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. I actually have found my, like one of my favorite ways to access dopamine is to go on Facebook marketplace and just say like, is it still available? But then I don't even need the thing. But when I just feel, is it still available? I get a dopamine hit and I'm like, okay, that feels good.

[00:14:01] And then I fully forget and I end up with like a bunch of messages from people that are like, hello, do you want this thing? No, I do not. 

[00:14:09] Shang: That is so funny. 

[00:14:12] Alyssa: Oh, that's real. Uh, in your book you mentioned your money problems are a symptom and there's a deeper root issue. Can you dive into that a bit more? I.

[00:14:23] Shang: Yeah, I would love for us to understand that retail therapy is real. Like, you know, you and I are just talking about how we often go online and browse and shop and stuff to feel better in the moment. It's entertaining, it's fun. And also it's great to have a package show up on the door, and I found throughout.

[00:14:43] Time, and I coach people 1 0 1 with personal finance that the people who had a lot of cyclical spending, credit card debt, impulsive spending, when they came to me, it was oftentimes also they were under depression, anxiety symptoms. Something's not going well in their personal life. Breakup, separation. Um, and this, this was a pattern that repeated over and over.

[00:15:12] And I was like, okay, they're actually not bad at money. Like many of these people are incredibly intelligent, make a lot of money, well over a hundred thousand dollars. So it's not an issue of intelligence. There's something deeper. And that's when I started developing the language and the body of research that I call today, the three root causes of.

[00:15:36] Bad money, behavior, so to speak. 

[00:15:38] Alyssa: Yeah. And bad in quotation marks for folks. Yeah. Folks tuning in. All right. Let's dive into those three root causes. What are those three root causes? 

[00:15:47] Shang: Yeah, so they are feast and famine adverse events. Scarce immigrant for feast and famine. You likely grew up in a household that lived paycheck to paycheck, and it doesn't even have to be low paycheck, paycheck.

[00:16:02] I've seen this in high income households as well. Your parents also did not have the emotional capacity, the brain power to plan ahead. And so money gets spent when there is some and when there's no money, they go into debt. Very commonly. Children from this root cause also end up being very impulsive spenders as an adult because they never saw any behaviors modeled otherwise.

[00:16:28] Sure. 

[00:16:29] Alyssa: Is it possible to swing that pendulum and like if you grew up in a feast, in feast or famine? Yeah. To be like on the other side of that, then like. Uh, super saver where you, where it'll never feel like you have enough money. Even if you are a multimillionaire and you live well below your budget, and by all accounts and purposes you're doing pretty well, is that possible that there's like that pendulum swing of what I experienced in childhood was such a.

[00:17:03] Uh, like a boomerang from like, yeah, okay. We don't have, we do have, we, we're going out to dinner. We're not going out to dinner. Right. Like that is what I'm imagining there. Is it possible to have that pendulum swing? 

[00:17:14] Shang: It is possible to feel a lot of guilt over spending as well, especially if like. Basically, or fear A, this adult.

[00:17:21] This adult who does end up saving probably has made it like halfway through healing from that root cause. Like, okay, you're actually better at budgeting, but you haven't made it full way because emotionally speaking, you haven't like given yourself a lot of grace to feel. Stable. And I think that actually ties into some of the other root causes as well.

[00:17:41] Um, in adverse events, for example, you grew up with money or resources being used as a means to control you. So as an example, it might be that a parent might withhold a nice birthday gift or a reward until they say, you gotta look a certain way, you gotta be of a certain weight, or you have to get really good grades.

[00:18:02] And basically it's like. Making love conditional. And that's really dangerous because then the children are taught that they cannot possibly be loved unless they met some external standard. And then as an adult, you continue to define yourself by these external standards. And in your money behavior, it's very common here where people do what I call identity seeking, spending behavior.

[00:18:26] So you put your money and your time into areas where you feel like you can be told that you're a good person. So for some people it's actually putting a lot of time into the careers. Um, I fall under some of that. Yeah. For some people it might be aesthetics, looks, et cetera. For others, it might actually be something as egregious as substance abuse because they're looking for meaning somewhere.

[00:18:49] Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. This one's pretty hard 'cause this one needs a lot of digging deep to heal from. Yeah. 

[00:18:55] Alyssa: That's so deeply emotional because it's about your worth and value as a human. 

[00:19:00] Shang: Exactly. Exactly. And you kind of have to reverse it by understanding that you have inherent worth no matter what you do.

[00:19:08] Yeah. Well that's 

[00:19:09] Alyssa: one of our like five pillars of emotional intelligence is motivation. Looking at intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. And these humans would fall under predominantly extrinsic motivation. Yes. Right. Like forever looking outside of themselves saying, are you proud of me? Versus the ability to say.

[00:19:27] I'm proud of me. Yeah. And, and be able to look internally. That makes a lot of sense to me. And then our, our last one. 

[00:19:34] Shang: Scarce immigrant. Um, yeah. I wrote this particularly well because there are a lot of immigrants in this country, and I am one myself and many people who are part of immigrant families. It's because they immigrated for economic opportunity.

[00:19:48] Sure. And usually they're coming from poorer country. So these immigrant parents left everything they knew behind and have to live very frugally. Just to make it work with their children. And then what they're gonna tell their children is, Hey, mom and dad took all the risk. We left everything we knew to make life better for you, so you shouldn't have to do the same.

[00:20:07] And so they often pressure the children to go for safe, quote unquote safe careers. They often pressure their children to consider real estate ownership. Um, having gold jewelry because to them that feels like safer than you know, where they came from. These children grow up and actually find that many of these children end up doing well career-wise 'cause they were told to pursue a high paying job, but they are absolutely scared of risk taking.

[00:20:36] Because you're being told safe, safe, safe, safe. Growing up, and this actually probably goes to the person who's, you know, afraid to spend, you might be afraid to invest in yourself when it comes to growing your business or career. You might be afraid of entrepreneurship because your parents don't want you to be a business owner.

[00:20:51] Totally. And you may even be afraid of, um, investing your wealth into things like the stock market 'cause it feels super scary and super risky. I've often seen immigrant, uh, adults sitting on very large savings accounts 'cause they're like, I don't want to put this to, to any risk. Wow. 

[00:21:13] Alyssa: Okay. Yeah. And. I'd imagine they would have a hard time investing in themselves in things like they could absolutely afford it, but would not have a monthly, like house cleaner.

[00:21:26] And instead we'll put their time into that space rather than their money. Things like that. 

[00:21:32] Shang: Yep. Or um, yeah, let's say there's a business circle or a business coach that you could be hiring, but they won't. 'cause they're like, oh, that's a lot of money and I don't know whether it's gonna. You know, make me any money going forward.

[00:21:43] Yeah, 

[00:21:44] Alyssa: yeah. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Which group do you see most 

[00:21:49] Shang: often, or is it spread? I think it's spread, and I also sometimes say you could see yourself in one, two, or all three of these. They're not mutually exclusive. 

[00:22:00] Alyssa: Sure. Sure. And when it comes to like doing the work to navigate the emotional journey around money, what have you found to be most beneficial in helping people kind of start to regulate their emotions?

[00:22:16] And what we talk a lot about here is that we often want. We want self-control, right? We want access to our prefrontal cortex. We wanna be able to make rational decisions and navigate problem solving, conflict resolution, all that. But you need to be in a regulated state to access that. So we can't be dysregulated and reactive.

[00:22:34] Yeah. And you can't regulate what you're not aware of. And then that's what we find so much from people is they're, they're like, okay, yeah, I'm trying to do the regulation part, but they don't know what it looks like for themselves. When they're in a dysregulated state, they can't notice kind of those signs and symptoms.

[00:22:52] So I'm wondering what do you, what have you found most beneficial for folks in doing this work with them to help them start to be able to access that self-control piece around their emotions when it comes to money? Yeah. 

[00:23:05] Shang: It will be a little bit different by root cause. And obviously if you have, you know, multiple root causes, then we do multiple actions for those coming from feast and famine where it's about, uh, learning to control your impulse.

[00:23:17] One of the first things that I actually tell people to do is to remove the trigger, um, the temptation for the impulse in the first place. And, uh, for someone who is very addicted to Amazon, I'm like, I'm gonna assign you one Amazon day a week, and you're gonna go on Amazon. And you're gonna browse and you know, you can put everything you like into the cart and then you're gonna come back a week later and then decide if you wanna buy it.

[00:23:40] And that, you know, seven day pause is, is enough to have their impulse of parts of the brain cool down and have people select what they like to do, and then in conjunction for somebody with impulse um, issues. If I helped them save up a solid emergency fund, um, and even a starter emergency fund, which is one month of like bare bones expenses, it actually breaks the paycheck to paycheck cycle.

[00:24:06] 'cause now you have savings. And I think even achieving that is so worthwhile because it, it gives people the motivation to keep going and be like, wow, I can do this and I can be different than my parents. 

[00:24:19] Alyssa: Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. And then they get to reap the nervous system rewards of that because the dopamine that you get from the feast part is one thing, but the cortisol or adrenaline you're gonna experience from the famine side of it is really challenging to navigate.

[00:24:41] Yeah. And so I'm sure when they have. Successfully, like created that one month savings or whatever kind of those steps are, I'm sure that there's, um, uh, that they're gonna experience dopamine from that of like, Ooh, look how comforting and rad it feels to feel safe to know that there won't be a famine next month.

[00:25:08] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And then you can kind of start to rewire the brain a bit of like, yeah. Yeah. And then you start to rewire the brain where the brain knows like, oh, we can have that feel good feeling, not just from checking out on Amazon, but also from saving in a way that makes me feel safe.

[00:25:26] Exactly. Very cool. Very, very cool. Oh man, I am like, I need this. I wanna talk more about this. I love this. So I, I grew up in a low income community. Um, one of five kids, and both my parents, my parents got pregnant when they were in college. They were 19 and dropped outta college to raise us and, and continue to have more kids and all that jazz and.

[00:25:49] They both went back to school and ended up getting degrees and working in education and, uh, it's been really interesting to watch all five of us as siblings and what our responses have been to our childhood. Yeah. And as you were describing the three buckets, I was like, Ooh, where do each of us kind of fall in these?

[00:26:12] Right? Like, what does that look like? Uh, I did a lot of therapy and work around my relationship to money in my twenties, and uh, it used to be something that really scared me, that I would've fallen kind of more into that immigrant side of like, I need to work hard and save, save, save, save, save, and be so frugal.

[00:26:31] And definitely don't take a risk, never spend money on myself. And because I did, we didn't have money, you know, and like I had, that was my perspective, was. That almost like it'll never be enough money to take a risk. Mm. 'cause you never know what's gonna happen. Exactly. Was where I started and yeah. It's been interesting as you were just like kind of laying this out to think about like, where do I fall in this now and what is my relationship to money now and, and the reality that for us in the US where our basic needs are not covered by our government, money is safety.

[00:27:11] Mm-hmm. It means a roof over your head and food to eat and healthcare and clean water to drink, right? Like money can provide those parts of our nervous system that need to just know that we're gonna be safe. That it isn't necessarily like, and I need to have a yacht, but that we live in a country where those needs are not guaranteed to be provided for.

[00:27:37] Yeah. 

[00:27:38] Shang: Um, I often say money is like a knife. If you use it well, it feeds you. If you use it poorly, it may actually kill you. Um, and it really talks about how we can start by calling it a neutral item, but then the way we approach it and behave around it then leads to certain outcomes either way. And when we think about the adverse events, uh, root cause, that one I think is.

[00:28:01] Probably in terms of, um, healing time-wise, probably the one that takes the longest because we are literally talking about something as deep as once. Sense of self. Yeah. And for that one, I push all my clients who I identify as having some presence of adverse event. I'm like, we gotta get therapy. Like you do need to have mental health treatment.

[00:28:20] Yeah. Be it therapy, medicine, whatever, to regulate your brain with a, the help of a professional. And then, um, from that I actually really encourage people to, uh, bring a lot of love into their lives by themselves. So I'm like. If you're suffering from a breakup right now, um, every day you're going to dress well and tell yourself, I am amazing.

[00:28:46] I'm beautiful, I'm deserving of love. Um, for somebody who is, um, acting out of. Fe uh, like feeling like they lack a lot of stuff because, you know, they may not be making a lot of money. I'm like, we're gonna use a gratitude journal. And every day you're gonna write down like three things that you're grateful for.

[00:29:04] 'cause we have to build up almost a body of affirmations to overcome years and years of negativity that you've been feeding your head. Um, and from that, that usually is a start where after a couple months we'll see people start to say like, Hey. I do have the power to love myself. And when they re recognize that power, then they're willing to say, what does loving myself mean in terms of money?

[00:29:32] And then that's when we can do a lot of the more, um, mechanical changes, like, oh, having a budget and planning for the future, and things like that. 

[00:29:39] Alyssa: Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I, I love that you bring mental health supports into it, recognizing that. Without that as a part of 

[00:29:50] Shang: this, everything would be a short term fix.

[00:29:53] Exactly. 'cause you might just end up going back to Amazon and buying things to feel better. Hundred 

[00:29:57] percent. 

[00:29:58] Alyssa: Yeah. 

[00:29:58] Bring your sister brown there. Yeah. 

[00:30:01] Alyssa: Uh, this is so rad. I, I'm so grateful that you are out there doing this work and write in the book. And so what does it look like for folks who are interested in kind of connecting with you, learning more about your work, all that jazz?

[00:30:15] What are the, what does that look like? 

[00:30:17] Shang: Yeah, I am primarily on Instagram under the username, save my cents as in cents in dollars, all one word. And you can also reach me on my website, save my sense.com. I love answering questions and helping people feel better about themselves. So let me be positive ray of sunshine when it comes to money in your life.

[00:30:39] I love it. 

[00:30:39] I love it. 

[00:30:40] Shang: What my, 

[00:30:41] Alyssa: my last question, what does this look like with your boys? Like what? It, uh, how do you talk about money in your household with them? What does that kind of look like? What are they exposed to? 

[00:30:50] Shang: I think it's important to keep it age appropriate. 'cause right now my boys are five and two, so it's gonna be very basic.

[00:30:57] But my five-year-old does have a weekly allowance. He understands that if there are things he wants, we do have to, you know, physically hand over money. Uh, to, to buy it. And then over time, as they learn more math, then I might make the concepts more complex. I imagine that once they learn the power of exponent, we can introduce both the concept of debt as well as the concept of investing.

[00:31:23] And then ideally, by the time they graduate into adulthood, I'll have taught them by that point how to keep a budget, how to read. A paycheck and how to start saving for the future. Yeah. I 

[00:31:40] Alyssa: love 

[00:31:40] Shang: this. 

[00:31:40] Alyssa: Oh, I love it. I love it. Thanks for offering this foundation and this groundwork for those of us who didn't grow up in these households.

[00:31:48] Absolutely. Stay tuned after this note from our sponsors. Rach and I will be right back with the breakdown.

[00:31:59] Rachel: I think I need a summer haircut. 

[00:32:02] Alyssa: Okay, fun. Although I lo I love your hair long right now. 

[00:32:05] Rachel: I'm not gonna cut a lot. 

[00:32:08] Alyssa: Maybe like I'm growing mine out. You are? Oh yeah. It's so long. Yeah, 

[00:32:12] Rachel: it's super long. I just, I need like a trim and 

[00:32:15] Alyssa: cute. 

[00:32:17] Rachel: Yeah. How long are you, what's your goal? 

[00:32:20] Alyssa: You usually keep your hair pretty short.

[00:32:23] I know, I know. I don't have a goal right now. I am just like, I kind of wanna have long hair again, which I haven't had in a while. Uh, it's right now probably about my shoulders ish, maybe a little longer. And I don't think since kids, 'cause I had a pixie. Before kids. Mm-hmm. And I feel like I haven't gone like long, long.

[00:32:48] You haven't, since I had a pixie, I, when I met you, I had long hair. 

[00:32:51] Rachel: Yeah. 

[00:32:53] Alyssa: And then once I went to the pixie, I've gone like longer where I've like grown it out to like my shoulders and then I've always gone back to, this is the longest 

[00:33:02] Rachel: I've seen it on you in quite some time. Yeah. 

[00:33:05] Alyssa: Yeah. I'm just letting it ride.

[00:33:07] I don't know what I'm gonna do yet, but I'm just gonna let it ride. Just living young, wild, and free. That's right. That's right. I think part of it is like, I know I'm done having babies and entering into a space where I just do my hair a little more, even if it's just like blow drying it. Mm-hmm. And when I had babies, I never was going to do that.

[00:33:31] So yeah. I'm like, I feel like I can enter back into a space where I maybe can take care of long hair again. 

[00:33:37] Rachel: Yeah. We'll see. I'm sure it'll go back to short 

[00:33:40] Alyssa: at some point. 

[00:33:41] Rachel: Well, I have never historically styled my hair. I mean, I straightened it in high school, but then like I kind of quit doing that and I.

[00:33:50] I've always just kind of like let it air dry and whatever. Um, but I have been curling my hair sometimes. Um, yeah. It's cute. Yeah, I like it. I mean, I can't use a regular curling iron because I don't have those skills, but I bought Nora that like automated curling thing. 

[00:34:07] Alyssa: Yeah. Smart. Um, 

[00:34:08] Rachel: it's kind of a game changer, honestly.

[00:34:11] Um. Okay, but classic. My, she's getting older, so like she's starting to wanna like wear my clothes and stuff, which is bonkers. Um, we're nowhere near the same size, but it's giving oversized t-shirt and, um, totally. But, so when I had that wedding that I was singing in, I was getting ready for that wedding and she had taken the curling iron to my sister's house with her.

[00:34:38] So that's just like a taste I think, of what's to come. Yeah, a 

[00:34:42] Alyssa: hundred percent. 

[00:34:43] Rachel: Yeah. So I, Cody had like taken to drop the kids off to my sister so that we could go to the wedding and I had stayed home to get ready. I had to be there earlier. So I call him and I'm like, can you ask Nora where the curling iron is?

[00:34:56] And he's like, oh, she has it. I'm like, what kidding me right now. So anyway, I drove to my sister's house and did my hair. Um. But yeah, we're in, I'm mentoring a new phase of girl mom. Yeah. Um, where she's has me do her hair every morning before school. Like she's such a tomboy for so long. Yeah. Is tomboy even the correct term anymore?

[00:35:21] I don't know, but um, yeah. I don't 

[00:35:22] Alyssa: know what we're supposed to say now. We're don't, I don't either. I can't keep up with, I feel like an 85-year-old woman, but I'm like, I can't keep up with the terms these days. So me, please 

[00:35:32] Rachel: tell me if tomboy is no longer okay. 

[00:35:34] Alyssa: And then what are we supposed to say? I don't know.

[00:35:37] She wasn't very, don't just tell me what I'm not supposed to do. Tell me what I also can, do 

[00:35:41] Rachel: I right. Find the, yes. She wasn't girly. I'll just go. I'll just say that. Yeah. She was 

[00:35:45] Alyssa: not feminine at all. Although she did love pink for a while. 

[00:35:51] Rachel: Yeah. But even still, it was like she was just like a wild child and now she like totally.

[00:35:56] Has like a style that she is wanting Sure. And like has preferences and has me, is having me do her hair before school every day. And um, so yeah, I just feel like I'm in a whole new chapter of Yeah. Parenthood That's so wild 

[00:36:11] Alyssa: to think about. Like, I, you know, I have four brothers and. I did not grow up in a feminine household whatsoever.

[00:36:20] Like when people are like, oh yeah, I played with my Barbies. I'm like, what? Barbies? Like I just did. It was so not, the culture of our household was really sports focused. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I played a lot of, like Mario Kart in James Bonna, N 64. Same oh 

[00:36:37] Rachel: oh seven baby. That's right. 

[00:36:39] Alyssa: Had like masking tape on our living room floor that was always either a basketball game or a soccer court or whatever, like just, that was my childhood.

[00:36:47] And there was the only person I really remember like doing my hair was my sister-in-law. I. Because she and my brother are high school sweethearts. She's been in my life since I was like eight, and she would like braid my hair and stuff like that. And other than that, like I didn't have that experience.

[00:37:08] And now as an adult, when I'm like going to my parents' house, I will only pack a few things. 'cause most of the things my mom, I can like wear her clothes. Yeah. Even if our sizing isn't like perfect, I can Yeah. Give oversized seizure vibes or whatever. Mm-hmm. And. I love that for me. Yeah. And for her, I think she loves that experience of like me coming into her space and like even snagging a pair of earrings or whatever for thing.

[00:37:38] Yeah. In a way that we really didn't have when I was growing up, and I don't know why. 

[00:37:46] Rachel: Yeah, I feel like Nora for a long time was closer to Cody in many ways. 'cause they have like similar sensory systems. I always wanna be like on the go and he's playful and she's a very playful human and so it's kind of nice.

[00:38:01] With her, like now wanting my input on like hairstyles and like, she'll be like, mom. Yeah. You have a shared experience. Totally. And so I feel like we have this like, easy way to connect. Um, she still is obviously very close with Cody, but I feel like our relationship is, has this like, new face to it, which is really fun.

[00:38:21] Yeah, 

[00:38:22] Alyssa: that's fun. Uh, who are we chatting about today? 

[00:38:24] Rachel: Today we are chatting about Shang. 

[00:38:28] Alyssa: Oh yes. The money one. Oh yes. Oh, I love this one. It's so interesting 'cause I think of like, you know, and I talk about this in the episode, but that I've got four siblings and we were all, except for the youngest, the rest of us were raised in relatively similar financial scenario.

[00:38:51] With the three oldest, it was the hardest 'cause my mom was. 19 when she had my oldest brother and they just had no money. She dropped outta college and had him. And, uh, but also I didn't experience like all of a sudden we were flush with cash, like still had no money. Sure. Maybe a little bit more established for my dad in some capacity in a, in a job or whatever.

[00:39:20] But, uh. It's what's interesting is that we all came away from it a little differently. I did a lot of therapy in my early twenties around my relationship to money. 

[00:39:33] I had a 

[00:39:34] Alyssa: lot of like scarcity, fear would never spend, I. Because I never had a cushion, right? Like there wasn't a like, oh, if you can't make rent, we'll float that for you.

[00:39:47] Or, my college wasn't paid for. My car, my clothes, my food, my, nothing was ever paid for. I had my first job when I was 12 and I got, I remember standing in the office when I was 14 'cause I could get my working papers, like my 14th birthday. I was so excited 'cause I could finally work at the restaurant now and make a little more money in addition to babysitting and.

[00:40:12] So all that to say, like for me, I then did a lot of therapy around it and now have a different relationship with money than my brothers who everyone in their own space has just a different relationship with money. And it's so interesting to see like being raised in a very similar household, how it can manifest differently.

[00:40:35] Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. We have had, so. Cody and I were so young when we got married, um, that like neither of us had really like, fully established our, like, ideas about finances or money. Um, and we grew up really differently as far as like money is concerned. So there were like many years of our marriage where we were like trying to find common ground and having disagreements about like what spending should look like.

[00:41:08] Um, and it actually was like a source of quite a lot of disagreements for the first several years of our marriage. Um, and I think, and, and you talk about this in this episode, money is so emotional. Um, and it's, there were so many like emotional triggers that would come up for me from like family of origin stuff when we were making financial decisions and for him too.

[00:41:37] Um, he grew up with initially a lot more wealth than I grew up with. But then his parents had this kind of like financial disaster when he was in high school, and so he actually came into our marriage with a lot of fear around spending. 

[00:41:52] Alyssa: Mm-hmm. 

[00:41:54] Rachel: Um, and I am not a frivolous spender by any means. I actually like, really like to save my money, but we would have disagreements about like just budgeting items, like how much money should go to this and how much money should go to that.

[00:42:09] Um, and so we had to work on like, even just our communication about it. 'cause we were actually in agreement about a lot of stuff, but we were communicating in such a. Triggered and like revved up way. Yeah. It's so emotional. So emotional. And I would get really defensive and be like, are you trying to say that I'm a frivolous spender?

[00:42:26] Because I think that we should buy like honey crisp apples instead of what, you know, whatever. Totally. And we would just like get into it and I would be like, okay, well is our kid having like nourishing food a priority for you? And then he would be like, of course it is. But like, we need to think about.

[00:42:45] The other expenses that we have. Right. And so it just become also, we were just so young, we weren't being totally emotionally mature while we were talking about it. We 

[00:42:53] Alyssa: didn't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex to even navigate the conversations. 

[00:42:57] Rachel: It was, yeah. Now it's like laughable to think about.

[00:43:00] Alyssa: Um, 

[00:43:02] Rachel: but yeah, those just like highly emotional and it becomes, it almost feels like how you approach money is like part of your identity or like, says something about your character. Right. 

[00:43:15] Alyssa: Totally. Yeah. It can just get Well, even the idea that like if you're responsible with money, you'll be fine in this world is such a myth and capitalistic idea.

[00:43:29] And I mean rooted also in so much racism. 

[00:43:33] Rachel: I, yeah, I was just gonna say, it's like it's so much white supremacy in that thought process, correct? 

[00:43:38] Alyssa: Mm-hmm. And it is. It, it's interesting, even thinking, like, thinking back to when Zach and I started dating, Zach grew up comfortable, fine, and he, they didn't have a bunch of money, but they also, he was never worried about money and he is an only child.

[00:44:03] I'm one of five and, uh, it, when we started dating. I controlled all the like finances within our household, like the, even dealing with like rent or utilities or groceries or anything like that. And I have this distinct memory of he was making almost no money and we were living in Boston and he was doing his master's and I was doing my master's at the same time and was teaching full-time and consulting on the side and babysitting on the side and.

[00:44:41] I remember this like three pack of white J Crew T-shirts arriving in the mail and J. Crew Correct. White T-shirts for white T-shirts. Correct. And I was like, okay. It was like the tip of the iceberg.

[00:45:05] I was just like, okay. So we sat down and I pulled open, like our budget. Mm-hmm. And I was like, I'm just, I'm so confused. Is there like a pocket of money? I don't. Know about, or a source of income I'm not aware of. And he was like, no, I just, I needed new like white T-shirts, whatever, and I've just always gotten these.

[00:45:29] And I was like, totally. And if your parents wanna continue to fund that, that's so awesome. And like, great. Maybe that's what I was missing. And if they're not gonna continue to fund your white t-shirts, then at this point off of the amount of money you make, let's just look at where our money's. Going, have you ever heard of 

[00:45:51] Rachel: or Fruit of the Loom for white T-shirts?

[00:45:54] Alyssa: He'd never, ever made a budget before. Oh 

[00:45:57] Rachel: yeah. 

[00:45:58] Alyssa: Just they paid his rent. Totally. And he had just, he lived a more financially privileged lifestyle of like mm-hmm. His rent and all that had been covered by his parents through college. Mm-hmm. And I met him as he was graduating college. And entering into life where that wasn't gonna happen anymore.

[00:46:15] And he'd never made a budget before. He'd never had to. And there was another point in our marriage where he was like, yeah, I think we should X, Y, and Z. And I was like, oh, it's really hard for me to make that decision without looking at our budget. And he was like, oh, I think we could swing it, whatever.

[00:46:33] And I was like. Oh, it's not a, like, I think I just need to see the numbers. Mm-hmm. And he's heard that from me enough times now, that if he's presenting an idea of something he wants to do, we wanna go on this trip, or he wants to, whatever it, he will now present a budget and be like, here's where we have, here's where it's coming from.

[00:46:50] Here's where the money's gonna come from, here's how it's working. And I'm like, great. Cool. It takes the emotion out of it. Mm-hmm. When I can look at a spreadsheet, you know, and say like, okay, we have. We have the money there and if there was a crisis, that's my like, emotional piece is that I need to have crisis fund because I never had a fallback.

[00:47:15] I always, in my whole life had to have my own crisis fund. Yeah, 

[00:47:21] Rachel: that's actually something that I feel strongly about too is like having a, a little nest for emergencies. 

[00:47:29] Mm-hmm. 

[00:47:30] Rachel: Um, I mean obviously there's some. Rational value to that. But also there is for me, like some fear-based totally thinking about that and like, well, what will we do if X, Y, or Z happens?

[00:47:41] And so finding that balance between like being, being financially responsible and not being reckless, but also not making decisions from like a crisis point of view, 

[00:47:53] Alyssa: you know? Totally. And for me, when I have that emergency fund there, I. Can take a lot of the emotion away from the rest of our decisions.

[00:48:05] Like, okay, then I can look at just numbers easier. Uh, I don't fall into a like scarcity mindset of like. More and more and more. There will never be enough. And, and I used to, that's where a lot of my therapy came in. Like I used to never spend anything. Mm-hmm. Because I grew up in a household where there wasn't enough.

[00:48:25] I was just saying to someone on our team the other day, like the idea I, I remember going in high school to like put gas in the car. And I didn't have my own car and would use my parents' car and would go to put gas in and my dad would be like, here's like $12 or whatever, and like put $12 in. I never remember filling up the car.

[00:48:48] And of course we were gonna need the gas at some point. I lived in a rural western New York. It's not like we had public transportation. But we lived so tight that there, you couldn't just fill up the car. Mm-hmm. It was, here's whatever's left over for gas. Yeah. And that's what I grew up in, you know? And so I remember when I started to get to the point where I would routinely fill up the car when we needed gas and being like, whoa, I've made it.

[00:49:19] Yeah. Right. Like I can just fill up the car. 

[00:49:23] Mm-hmm. 

[00:49:25] Alyssa: Yeah. And I don't have to think about it. 

[00:49:28] Rachel: Yeah, I remember. So I would use like my summer job, money would be like my gas money for that school year. And I could drive myself to school and it would always be like I would put like five or 10 bucks in and that was totally just like, 

[00:49:42] Alyssa: you know, but I think it really shifted my idea of like, what is enough?

[00:49:46] Mm-hmm. You know, what is enough money and. Being like, yeah, I made it is I put gas in my car fully. Like right now, the current way that we live, I'm like, I have enough. Mm-hmm. And I have siblings who have more money than we do, and it doesn't feel like enough for them. And I'm like, that makes sense to me, given how we were raised, that there's a fear of what, it'll never be enough.

[00:50:17] You know, because you. You don't see how much you have today. You're then just forever that tiny human who didn't have enough. 

[00:50:29] Rachel: Yeah. 

[00:50:32] Alyssa: Yeah. And that's why I like within her work, like obviously her work is so focused on finances, but she talks about how you can't separate the emotions from the finances that you have to dive in.

[00:50:45] And how therapy and like recommending therapy in conjunction with her consulting is something that's so important to her because it, those tiny human parts live within us when it comes to money. 

[00:50:57] Rachel: Yeah. 

[00:50:59] Alyssa: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and I, I see how people can enter into the space with judgment of others. 

[00:51:10] Rachel: Oh, for sure.

[00:51:11] I mean, they're 

[00:51:11] Alyssa: spending money on this and they don't have, they can't afford X, Y, and Z and they're doing this, or why aren't they, why would they get that job? They can't afford to work in social work or whatever like they need to, and. It's all the, just like unhealed parts of us, right? Like the key to all of it isn't changing the system necessarily so that no one works in social work because you don't get paid enough.

[00:51:35] Sure. We should pay social workers more. And also I think if we did the work to heal those parts of us, there would be more people fighting for like, oh yeah, no teachers, social workers, essential care providers should be paid. In spades. Yeah. But it would require humans to do a lot of work internally to get to that point.

[00:52:01] Rachel: Yeah. There's so much there. 

[00:52:05] Alyssa: So much there. 

[00:52:08] Rachel: Ooh, 

[00:52:09] Alyssa: yeah. Um, absolutely. It was unpaid, I mean, originally enslaved and then unpaid labor for so long. Correct. 

[00:52:20] Rachel: And it's just that fallacy that like. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps. 

[00:52:24] Alyssa: Oh, it's so ridiculous. 

[00:52:27] Rachel: It, it's just not reality. Um, correct. Yeah. There that could be its own series.

[00:52:36] Alyssa: Well, it's interesting to think about, you know, we had Dr. Marielle Bouquets episode rebrand last week about the healing of the cycles and breaking those cycles from our childhood and how that falls into this episode two. 

[00:52:52] Rachel: Oh, 

[00:52:52] Alyssa: 100%. Yeah. Fascinating. I think that this is something I, I wish we had more conversations about money and about the emotions tied to money so that we could move forward.

[00:53:04] So I hope everyone snags, uh, her book and checks her out because I. These are things that a lot of us grew up not knowing how to talk about, uh, and it just perpetuates cycles rather than breaking them. Thanks for tuning in to Voices of Your Village. Check out the transcript at voices of your village.com.

[00:53:25] Did you know that we have a special community over on Instagram hanging out every day with more free content? Come join us at seed dot, and so SEW take a screenshot of you tuning in, share it on the gram and tag seed dot, and do so to let me know your key takeaway. If you're digging this podcast, make sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

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