It’s a bit unusual for me to do two blogs quite so close together, however I’m making the exception because money is such a hot topic at the moment and has been for a while now, and I wanted to let you know about a new initiative my wife, Kim, and I are running called ‘Money Chats’.
“Alone, we can do so little; together we can do so much.”
Helen Keller
As I mentioned in my last blog Money and Mental Health – Introducing Make Peace With Money, money is a source of a lot of worry and stress; everyone deals with this in their own way, however the most common response is to bury your head in the sand and hope the worries go away. Another way of coping is to keep quiet and pretend that everything is fine; money worries can make you feel as if you are failing and therefore you could be too embarrassed or ashamed to ask for help.
Kim and I felt like this before we walked into our local branch of Barclays to have a meeting with the bank manager after my breakdown. We knew the manager, a lovely lady called Dacsha, but we were scared what she would say or how she would react to us opening up about our struggles. One thing that Dacsha said to us that still stays with us, is that there were a lot of people who were in a worse financial position than we were. Now, this isn’t a good thing, but it did help to make us think that we weren’t alone in our struggles.
Kim has also had conversations with accountants and financial advisors who say they are almost acting as unofficial counsellors for some of their clients.
This level of struggle can’t be ignored.
Feeling you are alone is one of the worst places to be, and that’s why Kim and I decided to start Money Chats.
Money Chats are held online and open to anyone; the aim is to create a proactive, collaborative, non-judgemental space where people can talk openly about money, share their lived experience in a constructive way, and support each other. It’s not about opening you bank accounts to everyone; it’s about sharing as much as you want, about anything in particular that you are struggling with that is related to money. You don’t even have to say anything, you can just turn up and listen if you want.
Another reason we started the Money Chats is because money is a taboo subject, a bit like mental health, we are taught not to talk about money openly. Like so many things in life, we often wear a mask to cover what is really going on. We don’t even teach our children about it in school, instead we rely on parents to pass on their knowledge, but this can be tainted by their own past experiences or limiting money beliefs. We want to help people feel more confident talking honestly about money, and feeling comfortable asking for help if they need it.
Changing the conversation around money will benefit yourself, your family, your friends, your colleagues, and may even help with levelling out some of the inequalities where money is concerned.
Kim is an advisor with Enterprise Nation and we launched the Money Chats last year by running a live panel event, which included the founder of Enterprise Nation, Emma Jones; we recorded the event (video below) and while it is more related to business owners some really important topics were raised which will be of interest to everyone, some of which we are planning to explore further.
We hosted our first Money Chat in December 2023, and the next one is on Thursday 14th March 2024, from 10am to 11am UK time, it’s live over Zoom and all are welcome. We are then planning to run them on a monthly basis. Click on the link below to book your place.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And Breathe...... 