FROM VULNERABLE TO VISIBLE…
Last year, I was tasked to come up with an idea around what we could post during Talk Money week, as financial wellbeing and helping people with their money is hugely important to us at like minds.
I was in debt at the time (to be honest, I still am - but much less!) and looking back I was fed up with feeling less than others because of the shame attached to my financial situation. It impacted pretty much every area of my life.
I’m a follower of Clare Seal, @myfrugalyear, on Instagram and I’d been following her (at the time, anonymised) story of how she’d got herself into a spiral of debt following specific events that had happened in her life. She was one of the first people I had come across who spoke about the stuff people wanted to hear – her actual real life money situation. People, including me, started to resonate with the things she was saying and I felt less alone.
I volunteered to tell my story for Talk Money Week last year and got others on board to tell theirs as part of our new #realmoneystories series.
As you can imagine, it wasn’t an easy task sharing my version of events and being vulnerable; but as Brené Brown so passionately talks about, I felt it was my ‘Call to Courage’. To lose control of my story and start a conversation.
The way I saw it was: we are asking other people to be vulnerable, to be brave, to put their whole selves out there and, to talk about money. But, were we? Was I? There is a big difference between discussing money as a topic and talking about it in way that has any kind of hope for real change in the way people think and feel about their money, and then in turn what they then do with it.
Pushing the ‘publish’ button…
My story didn’t change the world, and nor did I expect it to. But it did get people talking. And it got me thinking.
At first, after it was published, I didn’t want to attach my name to it. I wanted to run away and hide. I didn’t want to share it with my friends or my family. I was scared my clients and colleagues would read it and think less of me. I kept questioning myself ‘have I done the right thing?’
But then, the random messages came in. People thanked me for sharing it and sent me words of encouragement. Friends started talking to me about their own money situations, and some sent me books, articles, and podcasts on how to improve how I felt about myself, and how to make my money work better for me.
Okay, maybe this sharing thing is kind of cool... I thought.
Over time I started to feel more confident and empowered by it.
But as the weeks passed, like anything on social media, the story was forgotten.
The campaign was over.
And I would just absolutely cringe whenever I accidently came across my article, ignoring that it ever existed in the first place.
But at the end of 2020, I got an email from Nick asking if he could use it in a proposal! ‘
‘Um, yeh sure…’ I said ‘but only if you anonymise it’…
‘We can do, but if we do it anonymously, it would lose its power’.
I gulped…
… and, reluctantly agreed.
But at that moment, I took ownership of my story again.
A year on…
Over time, these interactions I’ve had have all felt siloed. But thinking back, each one of them accumulated to help me feel better about my experiences, more confident in myself and more able to build a better relationship with money.
My husband and I now talk about our financial situation as ‘life experiences’ – some of which have given us amazing memories, but others of which are more lessons learned. We are also fortunate enough to be able to manage it as ‘affordable debt’ like we do with our mortgage or car for example.
However, the biggest difference I’ve seen over the past year is I’ve started talking about money more, and other people are starting to talk about it more. I hope this ripple effect continues.
What I’ve learnt…
Without us launching this campaign last year, we wouldn’t have heard the powerful #RealMoneyStories from the team at like minds.
Stories like these bring home the fact that we never really know what’s going on in someone’s life, or the experiences and challenges that have brought them to the place they are today. It’s only by sharing these stories we can start to normalise the conversation around money and remove the shame and stigma that can be attached to it and help everyone create a relationship with money that works for them.