← HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney with Jean Chatzky
HerMoney Classic: The Surprising Link Between Alcohol and Financial Freedom
00:32:16
What does alcohol have to do with your money? Only everything.
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- [00:01]
Laura McCowan
You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
- [00:04]
Jean Chatzky
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- [00:36]
Laura McCowan
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- [00:58]
Jean Chatzky
Been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
- [01:00]
Laura McCowan
This to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
- [01:07]
Jean Chatzky
Hey everybody, I'm Jean Chatzky. Thanks so much for joining me today on HerMoney. So dry January for the second year in a row, I am practicing dry January, trying to make my way through dry January. Last year was pretty easy, actually. This year it's been a little bit tougher, which I think is just a sign that in light of or in the aftermath of my mom's death, I was definitely drinking a little too much. I was certainly drinking a little more. But the thing about dry January is it's not just a January thing anymore. It's become more than that. It's sort of a movement. Many people are practicing sober curiosity not just in January, not just in sober October, but throughout the year. And this dry January is especially relevant because it coincides with the ask from the Surgeon General for warning labels on bottles of alcohol. He is suggesting we should all think twice about our nightly glass of wine. The report that he issued highlights links between alcohol consumption and seven types of cancer, and suggests again that alcoholic drinks come with cancer warning labels. Despite these warnings, our alcohol consumption, specifically among women, has been increasing, not decreasing. Among younger people, yes, it's going down. But if you look at the numbers where women are concerned, they are trending upwards. And so maybe this is just a moment where we pause and we actually do give our relationship with alcohol a little more thought. And I think we can do it in a very measured way. For those of you like me, who really don't want to give up our nightly glass of wine. I want you to go and read the piece about our relationship with alcohol and the risks that Susan Dominus wrote for the New York Times in the middle of 2024. She really took a hard look at the numerical risks and the fact that, yes, while the risks have increased, the starting risk was very small. So it's an increase of a small number, which doesn't get you to a large number, which may make you decide that, yeah, you're gonna have that nightly glass of wine. Anyway. I think about, and this may not be a very good analogy, but I think about my sweet and low habit. I am still a pink packet woman. I have been. I like the pink stuff. I've been a fan of it since high school. I put it in my coffee like it's going out of style. Do I know it's bad for me? I absolutely know it's bad for me, but I like it better than Splenda. I like it better than Equal. I like it much better than Stevia. I don't necessarily like it better than sugar, but I'm not going full sugar. So I clearly made the decision that sweet'n Low is gonna be okay with me. And I think I may make the decision that one glass of wine a night is gonna be okay with me understanding the risks. But a lot of people are not. A lot of people are going in the other direction. Which is why I wanted to bring back this incredible episode with Laura McCowan, whose own struggles with alcohol led her to choose a different path that completely transformed her life. She's the author of the best selling memoir We Are the the Surprising Magic of a Sober Life and Push off from Nine Essential Truths to get you through sobriety and everything else. She is also the founder of of the Luckiest Club, a global sobriety support community. It was born during the pandemic. Today they have over 55 support meetings each week, monthly dance parties, game nights, and a running group that helps members forge sober community and connection. Laura, nice to have you here.
- [05:50]
Laura McCowan
Well, thank you so much. Thank you.
- [05:52]
Jean Chatzky
Tell me about you. Tell me about your journey. I understand that there is a drinking journal involved where you started keeping a record of when you drank and what you drank. And that totally jumped out at me because it's what I tell our listeners when they're trying to get a handle on where their money is going or they're debating a job offer. Get it on paper.
- [06:15]
Laura McCowan
Yeah. Things become different when we record them. What is unconscious, becomes suddenly conscious. And that can be a good or a bad thing or a good or a bad feeling. I think it's always a good thing. So about me, I had a long career in marketing actually and advertising for 15 years and I live just north of Boston, I'm from Colorado, I'm a mother and I surrounded myself with in this career. I don't think it's any accident that I chose advertising. It's a very booze filled culture and I surrounded myself, whether it's work, socially, my family, with people who drank like I did. And it wasn't, I didn't really stand out in that regard. I think as you noted in your intro, it's far more common to drink than not to drink. It's estimated that about 80% of Americans drink. And that was before even the mom wine culture started, before big alcohol started really targeting women as a market. I started drinking when I was 17, but in earnest, really dug in in college and through my early professional life. And although I did run into problems with drinking, it wasn't always problematic for me. I looked and performed well. I was what they would classically call a high functioning person who happened to also drink a lot. And I was really successful in my career. I, like I said, am a mom. I was married. I had lots of people that wanted me around, both my friends, family, my colleagues. So my problems with alcohol. Once in a while I would have a publicly difficult time or night. But mostly it was a private thing. I felt really scared about the way that I drank. I knew I needed it and liked it more than it seemed other people did. And once I started, I just didn't ever really want to stop drinking. But I managed it. And it really changed when I became a mother and really changed again when I got divorced from my husband in 2012. And at that point I was 35 years old. I was at a really high ranking position in the agency that I worked for and the wheels really came off at that point and I started to be really afraid. I knew I didn't have control anymore or I didn't know what was going to happen when I drank. And again, it was mostly private. Unless you got really close to me, you wouldn't have been able to tell. But to make the long story short, I reached a Point in 2013 where I had, and I write about this in my book, where I left my 4 year old daughter alone for an entire night in a hotel room at my brother's wedding because I was blacked out. And that was A horrific incident. It wasn't by any stretch the first horrific thing, but it was a public thing. My family was there for it. And so that started me on the trajectory of exploring sobriety. And I didn't want to get sober. I thought that was the worst thing that could ever happen. When you said you loved your wine. I loved my wine a lot and I needed it at that point. I was physically addicted. I tried at sobriety for a year and a half. I finally did get sober in 2014. Since then I have switched careers. I started writing about sobriety and podcasting about it. And really, it became something I was really interested in talking about. And I switched careers in 2016. Just do what I. What I do now. I'm an author. I teach several courses about personal development and sobriety. I run a company called the Luckiest Club. And it's a whole different life. I love talking about alcohol culture. Cause it's. To me, it was like I just didn't realize the water I was swimming in. I didn't and a lot of people don't. It's just something that. It's a foregone conclusion to a lot of people that alcohol's just there. It's very ubiquitous. It's socially totally acceptable to drink almost anywhere. And we. There's no other drug like that.
- [10:50]
Jean Chatzky
Your community is largely women.
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Laura McCowan
Yeah, it's largely women.
- [10:53]
Jean Chatzky
And do you think it's because women are more sober curious as you describe them, or sober concerned? Or do you think it's because. And I feel this way about her money? We want a place to just talk about something that people don't talk about.
- [11:10]
Laura McCowan
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I don't think it's that there's more women that are sober curious or sober concerned. As I emailed to you, I think it's. Women tend to talk about things more than men do. Women are drinking more than ever, ever before. And it's having a real impact in our lives. And women tend to just like more women read books, more women tend to be interested in. I hate calling it personal development, but for lack of a better word, they. We tend to be interested in it more and more open to it. For men, despite the fact that the prevailing recovery modality worldwide as. As Alcoholics Anonymous and that that was created by men. And it. I don't want to say it's for men, but it's masculine in its language and such anonymity is still very big for men. I think it's. It's Hard to talk about things that are deemed shameful. And this is one of those things that society still looks at as very. You either struggle with alcohol or you don't. And if you struggle, it's because you're an alcoholic. And that's a moral failure. It's a failure of will.
- [12:19]
Jean Chatzky
First of all, there's so many things that are just wrong with that statement. Right? I mean, I have people in my life who I have watched struggle. And I think, just like we have learned that depression is not an issue, it's a disease. We should not be pointing fingers at all. Why is it that women are struggling more than men, or not even struggling? Why is it that women are drinking more than we were drinking?
- [12:51]
Laura McCowan
Well, I want to address the part that you talked about. Cause I think it's really important for people listening because everyone. I don't know what the statistics are exactly, but chances are everyone you meet is touched by someone who struggles with alcohol or drugs. Right? And we'll just keep it to alcohol. I mean, it's, it's. There's 15 million people struggle with alcohol use disorder in America. That's, it's not a small number of people. And it's not a binary thing either. It's not. Either you, you have the, the gene or the disease. The disease model is definitely debated, but it's not that you either have it or you don't. It's a huge spectrum. It's a, it's an addictive substance, period. And so of course, people get addicted. And it's. We're, we're marketed to. I mean, you talk about money and business, and it is a billion dollar industry. It's working on us because that's what happens. You know, we don't see it. So I just want to address that. It's not a binary thing. Most of the women that I talked to didn't have a problem for a long time. And oftentimes what happens is they became mothers, they have careers, and they were trying to do it all. And something had to hold that up in the back end. And alcohol is just there. It's marketed to us, it's put in beautiful packages. It's all day. Our friends do it. Some of my biggest drinking times were when I was a young mother, when I had a young child, because it's hard.
- [14:22]
Jean Chatzky
It is hard. I mean, I remember those. There were times in my life where I really didn't reach for a glass of wine every night. And then I became a mom. And I remember with my friend Diane, who Lives across the street. Mondays, Mondays, we would feed the kids together. We would throw them in the bathtub together. I Pictures from those times. But there was always wine involved.
- [14:49]
Laura McCowan
Yeah. And that's super common. It's totally socially acceptable now. It's not that women didn't do this before, but in my mom's age, they sat around and smoked cigarettes together and drinkier and drank, but it's. But the cigarettes and they all. There was also pills. When my grandma, who just, you know, passed away a few years ago, she was 95. And I joke, but it's not really. She was a certified sort of drug addict. Do you know, she had been taking Valium for years because that's how, you know, it was. It was called literally, mom's little helper. So women have been encouraged, either privately or now publicly, to self medicate and that you deserve it. You deserve it. This is hard. And you'll get people, countless women, mothers, publicly. Kelly Clarkson's a great example. Because I remember hearing her say this and my jaw just dropped, is like, how do you survive having four kids? And she said, wine.
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Jean Chatzky
Yeah.
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Laura McCowan
And. And it's like, it's a joke, but it's not a joke. That's not uncommon. People weren't aghast at her saying that was like, yes, me too. So why we're drinking more, why women are drinking more is. It's a layered topic. But I think a lot of it has to do with the social acceptance of using a drug that does work. You described it. It does take the edge off. It is socially social lubricant. It feels good for a while, but there's also a big mythology around it because the reality is you get. You feel better for about 30 minutes and then all kinds of things crash and it messes up your sleep. And so the answer to wine is usually more wine the next day or whatever. So people fall in, unwittingly fall into a habit. And I think that has a lot to do with it. I think, you know, it's a flip side of feminism. You know, we wanted to be able to do all the things and. Or maybe a dark side of feminism. We wanted to be able to do all the things, and we wanted to have all the things that men had. And part of that was being able to drink openly, publicly, with abandon. And there's that. Those are the two big things. And then you can't deny the ubiquity of it. In our culture, it's just marketed to the tune of multiple billions of dollars every year to Women.
- [17:08]
Jean Chatzky
So let's talk about the dollars, because this is a personal finance podcast and you wrote extensively in your memoir about how your financial situation changed as your relationship to alcohol evolved. Can you talk about that?
- [17:22]
Laura McCowan
Yeah. And this is something I don't get to talk about much, so I'm. I love talking about it. I was a financial mess. By that I mean six figure debt, living paycheck to paycheck, no matter how much I made. Having a huge scarcity mindset about money, always, I was very afraid of it. I couldn't even talk about it. It was almost more shameful than my drinking in a way. I just felt like it was a lost cause, like I'd probably always lived that way and I just ignored it. I didn't know how to look at it. And some of that is a product of the cycle of drinking and the chaos that it creates in your life. Just from a practical standpoint, I wouldn't pay bills. I didn't have my head wrapped around it. We talked about writing things down. It was a big, big day. When I think it took me two years into sobriety to write down how much debt I actually had, I couldn't even write it down. I didn't know the number. I just knew it was big. Right. So I got sober in 2014 and started to slowly piece together the practical things. I would pay my bills on time. I knew I wasn't spending money in alcohol, and I would spend hundreds of dollars on alcohol, both going out to restaurants and, and buying it myself. And then there was a big a mindset shift that has happened over the course of many years. Just to not be afraid of things that I'm afraid of and to know that really the only way to resolve something is to look at it.
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Jean Chatzky
Yeah, I think that's so true of money. And it, it's at the heart of what we do in our coaching program, in our finance fix program, we make you look at your data. You may not want to look at your data, but until you look at your numbers, until you get in there with your numbers, you can't fix it because you don't know what it is.
- [19:18]
Laura McCowan
That's right. It's basic awareness. It's like step one and it's terrifying. And then almost immediately there's relief when we do it. You mentioned me writing down how much I drank. I just didn't have a real concept of how much I actually drank. I thought it was a few glasses of wine a night or something like that. And it was over the course of A week. A lot, lot, lot more. Because my glasses were three glasses, you know. And so it's just. I didn't do that to shame myself. It was just like, what is really going on here? It was just like, with money. It took me two years of sobriety to be desperate enough to want to change it. I just didn't want to live like that anymore. And I didn't think it was possible for me fear money and have shame around it. And I don't today. I really don't. I invested in coaching. A lot of it is just practical building blocks, but I. I look at my money every day. I know what comes in. I know what comes out. And that's a miracle to me, but.
- [20:20]
Jean Chatzky
That'S what it takes. I mean, I look at my money every day, too. Coming out of my divorce really got a stronger handle on it. And I had had a handle on it before, but I knew at that point of transition in my life, I needed to be more aware. And I like looking every day. Looking every day makes me feel comforted and in control.
- [20:41]
Laura McCowan
Yeah, I feel empowered about money. And I never thought I would say that. Never.
- [20:48]
Jean Chatzky
I'm wondering if the other women who are members of the Luckiest Club have experienced a similar financial metamorphosis. Years and years ago, I did a program called the Debt diet with Oprah. And we found, interestingly, that people who went on the Debt diet, and there were so many, actually lost weight because once they got control in one area of their life, it was a lot easier to get control in another. And I'm wondering if. If this is similar.
- [21:23]
Laura McCowan
Oh, it's all connected. I don't see it as very different. A lot of the work that I have done to be. A lot of people think they have money problems, but they don't. They have worthiness problems. They have mindset problems. They have scarcity problems. They have trauma that they haven't processed. They need to go to therapy and learn some emotional sobriety. And when those things happen, suddenly a lot of external circumstances improve because it all comes from the same place. I think there is merit to working on your money skills and your know how and you're learning the tactics of how money works and looking at it every day and things like that. So much of it is emotional. And when we're operating in a state of fear, what we know from evolutionary psychology and other things is when we're operating from a state of fear, we can't thrive. We're just trying to survive all the time. There are many reasons People get in debt, but a lot of it is just being in survival mode for way too long. Right. And I don't mean to minimize the very real reasons why people have financial problems. A lot of times there's extraordinary circumstances and there's a lot we can do at the individual level. You asked about, do other people go through similar metamorphosis? I mean, money is one, I would say of the top three things that people struggle with when they get sober, it's their relationships, money. And I don't even know what the third would be. How you'd classify as sort of emotional sobriety.
- [23:00]
Jean Chatzky
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- [24:42]
Laura McCowan
There are a few reasons. One is people with addiction problems tend to by the like 97% of them have experienced trauma. And what that often does is it sort of they operate in scarcity mindset. They operate in a survival mode a lot of the time and that extends through so many areas of their life, one of them being money. So this isn't true for everybody, but it's true a lot of the time, especially for women. They've given up their power. And sometimes that power means financial power and financial autonomy, where they have outsourced that to other people in their lives, whether it's a partner or they've just given up and thought, I can't do anything about my money situation. There's also poor boundaries. People who struggle with addiction struggle with boundaries. We don't have a strong sense of ourselves and where I begin and you end. And so what that means is there's a lot of giving away, giving away our power, giving away. Yes, our money, giving away the ways that we can live our lives with a lot of sovereignty. And that's what I see a lot of times as the money issue, is this lack of sovereignty or autonomy. Like, I don't believe I can be good at this, so I'm just not gonna try. I have a lot of shame around how I spend. And it's very secret. And that's the thing that we see with people who struggle with alcohol. Lots and lots of secrets, lots and lots of behaviors they don't talk about. And that's always about shame. And until we talk about it, it stays shameful. It increases the shame. Secrecy increases it. So I'm sure you have a lot more insight as to why money is a secretive, shameful thing in society, especially for women. But that's just what I see. And then there's the fact that if you have a substance abuse problem or even if you drink a little more than you want to, you're unconscious more. You're making unconscious decisions. There's a lot of links to purchasing things when you're not quite with it, signing up for things when you're not quite with it. Just not being able to stay on top of your finances because you're not there. You're not able to have the presence of mind to do that.
- [27:13]
Jean Chatzky
Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely true. And we've talked about that, that if you're gonna have a glass of wine, then your defenses are down and you should just stay away from. From the computer. You should stay away from Instagram. You shouldn't be anywhere where you are going to make purchases, because believe me, most of them are going back. Let's wrap this with two pieces of tactical information I'd love to get your thoughts on. If you are a woman who drinks and you think you should be drinking less, maybe you are so sober, curious, what do you do? What are the steps? And by the same token, if you are a woman who drinks and it occupies a nice place in your life at this point, how do you keep it in that lane?
- [28:03]
Laura McCowan
Great question. I laugh because the second answer to the second question, I'll go first. That's the big myth is that we have, quote, unquote, control, or it's totally a choice. Because whenever you dance with an addictive substance, there is a chance that you will become addicted to it. That's what addictive substances do. So whether it's a psychological addiction where you just. You really look forward, you don't feel quite right if you don't have that at the end of the day, or it's a physical addiction, the hope that it won't manifest into something worse is a hope. So I just want to say that it's not that some people are immune and some aren't. That said, I know so many people who have a perfectly fine relationship with alcohol. I don't know that it does anyone favors, but I don't think it's necessarily bad for everyone. Right. The key is to have some consciousness around it. That's the answer is, say, why am I drinking? Like, the moment before you drink, ask yourself, what's going on? Why am I doing this? And if the answer is, I just really enjoy it, great, you ask yourself the question. But if there's a part of you that's going, I hate the way I feel right now. I don't know that I can tolerate the next hour or two hours without a glass of wine. That's something to explore. And it's just no judgment, Curiosity. Right? Okay, so there's that. And then the first question about if you suspect that alcohol plays a bigger role in your life than you want it to, there's often a nagging voice that we have that says, this isn't serving me curiosity again. There are luckily now, so many resources and so many places to go to look at that question without judgment and without saying, I gotta label myself if I'm gonna do this. You don't. I don't call myself an alcoholic. It's not a black or white binary thing. It's perfectly acceptable to say, I don't know if this works for me, and I'm gonna explore it. So one book I would check out is my dear friend Annie Grace wrote a book called this Naked Mind. And it really looks at the mindset around alcohol and sort of explores the myths that we have around what alcohol does for us. That it's a relaxant, that we have more fun, all those things, that it facilitates connection. And it's very much written for a sober, curious type of person. That's a great place to start. I would explore that. And then people have different relationships with social media. But one of the thing great things that's happened in the past five years is there's a lot of sober curious. If you just search that hashtag say on Instagram, you're gonna find a lot. Just listen. There's podcasts, tons of them. Check em out, see if any of what people are saying resonates with you and then follow the next breadcrumb if it does.
- [31:02]
Jean Chatzky
Laura McCown, thank you so much for a really terrific conversation. If we want to find more about you about the Luckiest Club where do we go?
- [31:12]
Laura McCowan
Just go to my website. Everything is there. It's my name. Lauramccowen.com and the luckiest club has its own website too, theluckiestclub.com but it's all linked for my site. That's the best place to go.
- [31:26]
Jean Chatzky
Thank you so much.
- [31:28]
Laura McCowan
You're welcome. Thank you for having me.
- [31:30]
Jean Chatzky
Of course. Thanks so much for joining me today on Hermoney. If you love this episode, please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. We always value your feedback and if you want to keep the financial conversations going, join me for a deeper dive. HerMoney has two incredible programs. Finance Fix, which is an eight week program designed to give you the ultimate money makeover, and Investing Fix, which is our investing club for women that meets bi weekly on Zoom. With both programs we are leveling the playing fields for women's financial confidence and power. I would love to see you there. We'd like to thank our sponsor, Edelman Financial Engines. Her money is produced by Haley Pascalides. Our our music is provided by Video Helper and our show comes to you through Megaphone. Thanks for joining us and we'll talk soon.