A quick note before we begin
This episode was recorded when I was still positioned primarily as a money coach, and the original ending promoted Six Figure Safety and my former one-to-one coaching. Those offers no longer exist in the form described, so I’ve removed that promotion and linked the article to Momentum instead.
My work now starts more explicitly with revenue strategy, but the central observation still matters. How you see yourself with money affects the decisions you make inside the business, whether you look at the numbers, ask for support, hold onto revenue or keep pushing financial responsibility into a mysterious future month when you will apparently become a different woman.
Listen to the episode
In this episode
Say, “I’m terrible with money,” in a group of friends and somebody will laugh, nod and tell you what she bought on her credit card last week.
Say, “I’m really good with money,” and the atmosphere changes.
The first confession sounds relatable. The second can sound like showing off, even when both people are stating something they believe to be true.
That difference fascinated me enough to write a post about it, forget the post existed for several months because ADHD, then find it again and record this episode.
In this episode, we’re talking about:
- why being bad with money creates social connection;
- why financial competence can feel like status rather than relatability;
- how shame and social comparison affect financial behaviour;
- why “I’ll deal with it when I earn more” becomes a moving target;
- the difference between relatable messaging and an aspirational outcome;
- and how to act before the financially capable version of you feels completely familiar.
We bond over being bad with money
There are certain statements you can make about money that immediately bring people closer.
“I have no idea where it all went.”
“I’m avoiding checking my bank account.”
“Put it on the credit card and let next month’s version of me deal with it.”
They invite recognition. Nobody has to perform expertise, nobody risks making somebody else feel behind and the group gets a shared language for the discomfort.
But saying you are good with money does something different. It can sound like you are placing yourself above the group, even if you did not intend to. The listener does not only hear information about you. She may hear an implied comparison with herself.
That is why “good with money” functions more easily as an aspiration than a relatable identity. People want to become it. Very few people use it to say, I am one of you.
Financial competence carries status
We attach a strange hierarchy to money knowledge.
The person who understands pensions, mortgages, tax or investing can be treated as more responsible, more adult or more successful. The person who does not understand those things may feel she has failed a test everybody else secretly knew was happening.
You can see the consequence when somebody puts off speaking to an accountant, mortgage broker or financial professional because she believes she does not earn enough, know enough or have enough assets to deserve the conversation.
The professional has not necessarily said any of that. The hierarchy enters the room before they do.
And once competence becomes status, people are less likely to admit what they do not know. They ask their equally confused friends, laugh about the problem or leave it untouched. The people who understand money move forward, while the people who would benefit most from clear education remain surrounded by reassurance that nobody else knows either.
Relatability can reduce shame. It can also keep the answer out of the room.
I became aspirational before I felt qualified
In my mid-twenties, I started talking online about my debt and what I was learning about money. I was not presenting myself as somebody who had completed finance. I was documenting the process because I was figuring it out in public.
The account grew to around 25,000 followers. I worked with financial brands, appeared in press and was invited to events I would never have imagined attending when I began.
From the outside, the story changed. I was no longer only the woman saying, “I have debt and I do not fully understand this.” I had become the woman explaining how she changed it.
That gave me authority, but it also moved me into an aspirational position. The more evidence I had that I understood the subject, the less people related to me as a peer currently living through the same financial mess.
This is one of the oddest parts of becoming known for solving a problem. The result qualifies you to help, and the same result creates distance from the person who has not experienced it yet.
Being bad with money can become part of belonging
When I worked in theatre in my early twenties, money jokes were part of the social fabric.
We were not going somewhere expensive, we were going to Spoons. We could not afford it, so it was going on the credit card. We were all skint, all making questionable decisions and all laughing about it together.
Some people in the group were more financially stable than others, but joining the joke kept everybody on the same level. Nobody wanted to announce, “Actually, I have an emergency fund and a very sensible direct debit arrangement,” while the rest of us were deciding whether another drink counted as dinner.
The joke communicated more than the literal financial behaviour. It said, I am one of you. I am not judging you. I am not better than you.
That social function matters. Changing a money behaviour can risk changing how you belong, particularly when a friendship group has built part of its identity around the shared problem.
You may want the savings account and still feel uncomfortable being the person who says no to the spending. You may want to understand the business finances and still resist becoming the “responsible one” in a group that bonds through chaos.
The behaviour is personal. The pressure around it is social.
I still dislike the phrase “good with money”
Despite years of financial education, qualifications and working with clients on their finances, I have never felt entirely comfortable describing myself as good with money.
I know a lot about it. I have strong systems. I can make informed decisions. I also have a history with money and observable behaviours that still appear when other parts of my life change.
One of mine is overspending when my goals become unclear. When the money does not have an emotionally relevant job, short-term spending becomes more persuasive.
That is a useful example of why identity labels can be a bit shit.
“Good with money” suggests a completed type of person. You either are her or you are not. Behaviour is more specific. I can be excellent at cashflow forecasting and still avoid looking at a personal spending pattern. I can understand the maths and make a decision that does not support the goal.
The contradiction does not cancel the competence. It tells me where the next decision is.
That is also why I have never wanted clients to feel they need to arrive in front of me with beautifully behaved finances. I can recognise the behaviour without turning it into a character judgement.
Relatability tells us who is safe
We use relatability to assess social safety.
Shared experience tells us that somebody understands the rules of our group. They have lived through something similar, speak the same language and are less likely to judge us for it.
Money struggle is particularly good at creating that connection because money carries so much moral baggage. We do not talk about overspending as a neutral behaviour. We turn it into irresponsible, immature, greedy or careless.
So hearing another person say she has done the same thing can be deeply relieving. It removes the feeling that your behaviour reveals something uniquely terrible about you.
That relief is valuable. It is one reason relatable content travels so well.
But there is a difference between content that helps somebody feel safe enough to look at the problem, and content that makes staying inside the problem feel like the price of belonging.
Competence can trigger comparison
When somebody appears more financially capable, the interaction can move from peer-to-peer into comparison.
You are no longer thinking only, She has savings. You may also be thinking, She has savings and I do not. What has she done that I have not? What does that say about me?
That is an upward social comparison. It can be motivating when the gap feels possible and the route is visible. It can become threatening when the gap feels like evidence that you have failed.
This explains why aspirational content can create action for one person and avoidance for another.
One reader sees a business owner paying herself consistently and thinks, Fucking fabulous, show me how. Another sees the same result and decides the creator must have a completely different business, brain, partner, audience or life, so the example no longer applies.
The result has not changed. The meaning attached to the comparison has.
“I should be better with money” creates a problem
I fucking hate shoulds.
They usually bundle an observation, a judgement and somebody else’s standard into one irritating little word.
“I should be better with money” means you believe your current behaviour conflicts with the kind of person you are, or believe you ought to be. That conflict is uncomfortable, so something needs to change.
You could change the behaviour. You could question the standard. Or you could push the whole issue into the future.
The future option is extremely popular.
I’ll sort my finances when I earn more.
I’ll get help when the business is more stable.
I’ll make a proper plan when I have more time.
The capable identity stays intact because you have not rejected it, you have merely scheduled it for an unspecified later date. Lovely. No immediate discomfort required.
“When I earn more” is not a financial plan
There may be a genuine financial reason not to buy a service or make an investment now. Cashflow constraints are real, and I am not interested in treating every sensible no as resistance.
But “when I earn more” often has no number, date or mechanism attached to it.
How much more? For how many months? What needs to remain after tax and expenses? What will you do differently when that number arrives? Which current behaviour is preventing the extra income from becoming available?
If those questions have no answer, the condition is not helping you make a decision. It is helping you avoid one.
And the goalposts tend to move. You reach the revenue you thought would make the decision feel safe, then decide you need three months at that level. You hit three months, but an expense appears. You clear the expense, but now you are too busy.
The delay protects the current identity. It also preserves the current result.
Problems are louder than stability
A financial problem creates moments you can easily describe.
The card declines. The tax bill arrives. You move money between accounts at 11pm. You open the banking app, close it and decide tomorrow has a more suitable personality for this task.
Stability is quieter. The owner’s pay transfers on schedule. Tax is already allocated. The cashflow tracker shows what the next three months look like. Nothing dramatic happens.
That makes struggle easier to turn into a story, and therefore easier to make relatable content about.
It is similar with mental health and neurodivergence. At a particularly difficult point in my own life, the chaos was visible and easy to explain. Therapy and support did not remove every hard day, but the chaos became less loud.
The improved state was better to live in and less narratively exciting. This is, unfortunately, a recurring issue with healthy systems. They work, and then they stop providing daily plot.
We relate to the middle of the story
Stories hold attention while something is unresolved.
There is a problem, a series of decisions, setbacks, progress and a result we are waiting to see. Once the problem is resolved, the tension disappears.
That is why a person actively paying off debt may feel more relatable than somebody who paid it off five years ago. One is living through the decisions the reader recognises. The other represents the completed outcome.
The completed person can still teach, but her role changes. She becomes the guide, example or future possibility rather than the friend sitting beside you in exactly the same stage.
For a business, this distinction matters enormously. You do not need to pretend you are still trapped inside the problem you help solve. You need enough proximity to describe the current behaviour accurately, without making your unresolved struggle the only proof that you understand it.
Relatable does not mean identical.
Money shame creates a narrow acceptable middle
The easiest analogy for this is drinking culture.
In British social life, and particularly in the theatre world I worked in, drinking was built into belonging. There was often a pub attached to the theatre, or somewhere the cast went after the show. Staying for one was normal. Not drinking could make you the unusual person who needed to explain herself.
There was a strange hierarchy around it.
At one end, sobriety could be treated as impressive but faintly threatening. The sober person had made a decision that caused everybody else to notice their own drinking.
In the middle, social drinking was familiar and acceptable. Relatable.
At the other end, visible dependency was treated as sad, irresponsible or shameful. People in the middle could distance themselves from it, while also feeling uncomfortable about how close some of their own behaviour might be.
Both extremes disturbed the middle. One suggested we should be doing better. The other showed where the behaviour could lead.
Money can work the same way. Extreme wealth is aspirational, sometimes suspicious. Severe financial distress is judged. The socially comfortable middle is being a little bit bad with money, making jokes about it and never looking too closely.
The middle feels normal. Normal and useful are not synonyms.
Relatable content regulates, aspirational content mobilises
Relatable content says, You are safe here. I understand why you do this. You are not the only one.
Aspirational content says, There is another possible result, and here is a route towards it.
A business selling change needs both.
If all your content is aspirational, the audience may admire the result while deciding you could never understand their current reality. If all your content is relatable, they may feel seen without seeing a reason to move.
This is the messaging lesson inside the money conversation. The person selling the transformation needs to be relatable in approach and aspirational in outcome.
You can say, “Of course you panic-sell when the bank balance is low, because without a revenue forecast the urgency arrives before the plan does.” That recognises the behaviour without endorsing it.
Then you show the different result, predictable sales, reliable owner’s pay and decisions made from evidence before the crisis point.
The empathy opens the conversation. The mechanism makes change believable.
This affects how people buy support
Asking for help can threaten the identity you have been protecting.
You may rationally want to become the person who understands her numbers, sells consistently and pays herself properly. But hiring support requires admitting that the current approach has not produced that yet.
So the brain offers safer conditions:
- when the business earns more;
- when the launch is over;
- when there is more time;
- when things feel less messy;
- when you are finally ready.
There is often no obvious arrival point for ready. Readiness becomes the emotional state you expect the solution to create, while also making it a prerequisite for accessing the solution.
Bit of a design flaw.
You do not need to buy every service that makes you uncomfortable. Discomfort does not prove something is right for you. But when the same reason delays the same decision repeatedly, it is worth examining whether the condition is real or whether it keeps you inside the identity you already know.
You cannot make the future identity fully relatable first
The version of you with a stable salary, a clear sales plan and six months of revenue visibility may not feel normal while you are living month to month.
You have limited evidence of being her. That is precisely why the identity remains aspirational.
Some people use visualisation, affirmations or vision boards to make an unfamiliar outcome more cognitively available. I would be careful about dressing that up as a guaranteed neurological trick, but the practical mechanism makes sense: what you repeatedly notice and rehearse becomes easier to imagine, and easier to connect to a decision.
The vision still needs behaviour underneath it.
If you want a £3,000 monthly salary, what revenue and profit support it? Which offer creates that revenue within your capacity? How many sales does it require? What happens to the money after it arrives?
The aspiration becomes useful when it produces a specific commercial choice.
Act before it feels completely comfortable
There was no perfect moment to leave employment and become self-employed. At some point, the unfamiliar choice had to be made, then repeated until it became the new familiar.
Money behaviour works in a similar way.
You look at the number before you feel like a numbers person. You set the salary before consistent pay feels normal. You follow up with the lead before confident selling feels like part of your identity. You keep overflow in the business before holding money feels comfortable.
Not because you should. Not because financial competence makes you morally better. Because those behaviours support the life and business you have decided you want.
The goal is not to become a flawless person who is officially Good With Money™.
It is to make useful financial behaviour familiar enough that it no longer requires a personality transplant every month.
Bring the identity down to observable behaviour
If “being good with money” feels distant, stop trying to adopt the whole identity at once.
Ask what she does:
- She checks the cashflow before committing to an expense.
- She pays herself an agreed amount on an agreed date.
- She knows when current payment plans end.
- She follows up instead of assuming silence means no.
- She gives incoming revenue jobs before spending it.
- She notices overspending without turning it into a moral crisis.
- She asks for qualified help before the problem becomes urgent.
These are behaviours. Behaviours can be practised, measured and adjusted.
Episode 14 explains how to forecast your business revenue, which is one practical way to replace “I should understand my money” with a system that shows what is actually happening. Episode 8 explores why holding money can feel unsafe, and Episode 7 looks at the relationship between money mindset and money management.
Being good with money may never become relatable
I do not think we are about to start bonding at dinner parties over how beautifully we allocated our tax money.
Being a bit bad with money will probably remain easier to joke about. It reduces comparison, protects belonging and allows everyone to remain comfortably in progress.
But you do not need the identity to become socially relatable before you are allowed to move towards it.
You need an outcome you genuinely want, a mechanism that can create it and enough evidence to take the next decision without requiring the whole future to feel safe first.
The aspiration gives you a direction. The behaviour changes the result.
Continue listening
Want the capable version of you to become the current one?
You do not need more evidence that inconsistent revenue feels stressful. You need a business structure that changes what happens next, a revenue target tied to your life, an offer that can produce it, a sales system you can repeat and cashflow that turns the revenue into reliable pay.
That is what we build inside Momentum.
Apply for Momentum, and we’ll turn the aspirational result into observable business decisions.
