1882: Shame, Status and the Struggle for Financial Confidence

Summary

Podcast Summary: So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

Episode 1882: Shame, Status and the Struggle for Financial Confidence
Date: September 22, 2025
Guest: Holly Rubin (psychotherapist, specialist in transitions & women’s mental health)
Host: Farnoosh Torabi

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Overview

In this insightful episode, Farnoosh Torabi sits down with psychotherapist Holly Rubin to explore the complex intersections of shame, status, body image, and the pursuit of financial confidence—particularly among women, and especially those in midlife transitions. With a focus on mental health, cross-cultural perspectives (US and UK), and midlife challenges, they unpack the narratives and societal messages that entangle self-worth and net worth, and discuss practical ways to cultivate financial resilience and autonomy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Taboo of Money and the Role of Therapy

• Holly Rubin's Motivation: Holly describes how, living and practicing in London, she noticed how money was sparingly discussed—even in therapy. [05:35]
  • Money conversations are culturally taboo; not discussed openly, even in assessments.
  • The "unsaid" is as important as the "said" in therapy.
  • Money is viewed as a loaded topic, carrying layers of fear, guilt, shame, and aspiration.
• “Money is never just about money. Right? Money is always loaded. It always has so much more going on.” (Holly Rubin, [07:38])

Gender & Societal Narratives Around Money

• Gender Divide: A persistent divide, especially in traditional UK households; women measure their worth against earning power even when making essential non-monetized contributions (e.g., stay-at-home parenting). [09:24]
• Societal messages repeatedly devalue caregiving and domestic roles.
• Encouraging shifts: More fathers participate in caregiving, and conversations about value are slowly starting to change.
  • “That presence that mom was offering… that is priceless. So that I hope we get to.” (Holly Rubin, [13:17])

Unpacking Financial Confidence

• Roots of Financial Shame: Many lack financial confidence due to childhood scripts and early cultural messaging. [05:35], [07:09]
• Recognizing and naming feelings—fear, shame, guilt—is a necessary first step to reclaiming agency.
  • Therapy helps excavate hidden or taboo feelings about money and brings them to consciousness for change.

Women, Midlife, and Money

• Midlife as a Pressure Point: Period of major transitions—divorce, career changes, perimenopause/menopause, blending families—which often forces financial reckoning. [17:39],[18:19]
• Financial Literacy Gaps: Many women suddenly realize a lack of financial knowledge or involvement, leading to fear and overwhelm.
  • “It’s really terrifying… they realize they’ve let a lot of that go and now they’re at this point where they have to do something about it, and they haven’t.” (Holly Rubin, [18:19])

Taking Action: Steps Toward Financial Empowerment

• Meeting Clients Where They Are: Holly emphasizes accepting clients’ starting points; bypassing shame and focusing on practical resources—online tools, community groups, financial advisors, etc. [23:24]
• Value of Action: Awareness is only helpful if it leads to action; some clients may need hands-on support due to executive functioning challenges or other barriers. [31:15]

Linking Body Image, Identity, and Financial Confidence

• Status & Exterior Markers: Societal obsessions with appearance and wealth are intertwined—a desire to be seen as "skinny" or rich fuels both body image struggles and spending for external approval. [24:48],[29:08]
  • “If I can show off that I’m wearing Rolex and a this, then I’m approved of... But yet what is going on internally to get to that place?” (Holly Rubin, [29:23])
• Social Media’s Role: Amplifies status competition, drives comparisons, and heightens internalized pressure to keep up, often at the expense of true well-being.
  • “Sometimes just tuning that out can be a huge win.” (Farnoosh, [33:12])

Intergenerational Messages & Parenting Around Money

• Teaching Kids: Seizing teachable moments with children to unpack their perceptions (e.g., associating wealth with visible markers like big houses or fancy cars) and emphasizing that possessions don’t determine value or happiness.
  • “We try to live our lives with our money in a way that is aligned with what we care about.” (Farnoosh, [33:48])
• Open Conversation: Encouraging children’s questions, validating their concerns, and using them to foster security and understanding.

Financial Protection for Non-Earning Partners

• Farnoosh’s Advice: Encourages non-earning partners to establish individual accounts, practice financial autonomy, and, where available, leverage spousal retirement accounts (as in the US). [37:12]
• Holly’s UK Perspective: The UK lags regarding these structures; urges women to have proactive conversations to secure their financial future, even if systems are less developed. [39:16]

Systemic Challenges and Moving Forward

• Bringing Conversations to the Fore: Holly describes efforts to bring these topics beyond therapy and into workplace and community forums, partnering with wealth managers and lawyers. [40:29]
• Financial Therapy’s Rise: Both agree that growing openness about mental health enables the vital next step—addressing money narratives in tandem.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Money is never just about money. Right? Money is always loaded. It always has so much more going on.”
  — Holly Rubin [07:38]

• “The truth of the matter is that this is a societal message that has been played over and over again... I’m so proud to see when people can walk away... noticing that just because it doesn’t show up that way, I’m providing an opportunity and a secure attachment for my kids. And that is priceless.”
  — Holly Rubin [13:17]

• “We matter because of who we are. So that value is really often a goal that I have when I’m working with women, to acknowledge that even as you are now, you are enough.”
  — Holly Rubin [31:12]

• “Awareness is only good if you then put it into action... and if you’re not putting it into action, you’re just sitting in this space, which is not helpful either.”
  — Holly Rubin [31:15]

• On Body Image & Status:
  “We were body positive for a while... now we’re back in this place of Ozempic and Wegovy. It’s so tied into presenting a certain way and being skinny and skinny is better. And that goes with the financial piece as well.”
  — Holly Rubin [29:08]

• On Parenting & Money Conversations:
  “When a child asks you a confusing financial question... you don’t answer it, you ask them more questions... She needed to know that. Of course, you wouldn’t have known if you didn’t pursue the question.”
  — Farnoosh Torabi [36:34]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Cultural Taboos & Money in Therapy (London vs. NY): [05:35]–[07:09]
• What Money Really Reveals About Us: [07:09]–[09:05]
• Gender, Self-Worth, & Breadwinning: [09:24]–[12:47]
• Strategies for Building Financial Confidence: [13:17]–[15:58]
• Women in Midlife and Financial Transitions: [17:39]–[19:38]
• Overcoming Financial Shame & Taking Action: [23:24]–[24:22]
• Link Between Body Image & Financial Confidence: [24:48]–[31:12]
• Dangers of Social Media & Comparisons: [32:24]–[33:48]
• Parenting & Early Financial Lessons: [33:48]–[36:33]
• Practical Moves for Non-Earning Partners: [37:12]–[39:16]
• Financial Literacy and Building Wealth in the UK: [39:57]–[41:59]
• Rise of Financial Therapy & Future Improvements: [41:59]–[43:09]

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Tone & Style

The conversation is empathetic, reflective, and motivational, laced with personal anecdotes and actionable psychological insights. Farnoosh and Holly create an inviting space for listeners to reflect on their own money stories while offering hope and validation for anyone struggling with confidence, shame, or status anxiety around finances.

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Final Takeaway

This episode challenges listeners to go beyond numbers and budgets, to make space for uncomfortable but vital conversations about value, agency, childhood scripts, and shifting the lens from net worth to self-worth—both for themselves and for the next generation. As Holly says:

“Even as you are now, you are enough.” [31:12]

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Learn more about Holly Rubin’s practice: hollyrubin.com

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Transcript

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[Holly Rubin]

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[Farnoosh Torabi]

So money episode 1882 shame status and the struggle for financial confidence.

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You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh yourselves.

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[Holly Rubin]

We were body positive for a while. We had gotten out of that. We were acknowledging the fact that all bodies were good and now we're back in this place of Ozempic and WeGovy. Oh yeah, and it's so tied into presenting a certain way and being skinny and Skinny is better. And that goes with the financial piece as well. If I can show off that I'm wearing Rolex and a this, then, then I'm approved of, then I'm then again, I've made it. But yet what is going on internally to get to that place? What have you had to do and sacrifice in order to get there? For some, nothing necessarily. And for others, the designator piece is such a driver that that feels more important than actually what they had to go through to, to get there.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

And it's yeah, we seek status. We want the status. Welcome back to so Money everyone. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. Today we're talking about how money is never just about money. It's identity, it's history, it's how we even see ourselves in the mirror. And so today we're joined by psychotherapist Holly Rubin, who specializes in transitions and women's mental health. Supporting individuals, couples, families through the ages and stages of life. She focuses on areas including perimenopause, menopause, body image, identity, cross cultural living and financial well being. She's advised organizations from Deloitte to wealth management firms, all on this psychology of money and confidence. Today we unpack why so many women carry shame and doubt around money. How early messages about worth, caregiving and who earns shapes our financial confidence and why self worth gets tangled up with net worth. We also explore her nuanced link between body image and money, the ways that our appearance and status can sometimes mask or magnify our inner stories about value, security and belonging. Here's Holly Rubin. Holly Rubin, welcome to Sew Money.

[Holly Rubin]

Thank you so much for having me, Farnoosh.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

I knew the minute I met you that I wanted to continue talking with you in front of an audience on so money. You and I share a deep sympathy and concern and excitement for women and their financial independence. And your background is really unique and comes to this money stuff from these really important backgrounds and perspectives. You sit at the intersection of money and mental health. And I know a lot of your work recently has been focusing on women in midlife. So we want to, we. I have a lot of and I know my audience is right there with me. But first, Holly, what drew you to explore this blend of money and mental health in your psychotherapy practice?

[Holly Rubin]

Yeah, it's a really good question. I found that finances in general and money in general, where I'm living, which is in London in the UK and I've been here for 24 years, so I've gotten used to the language and what things are said and what aren't, what isn't said as well. But what was coming up in my clinical space was a difficulty with talking about money and talking about finances. And when I dug a little bit more and I conversed with colleagues, I really realized that I was the only person who was bringing this up in assessments that people really didn't talk about this. And there are lots of reasons why people don't talk about it. They don't talk about it culturally. It's just not something that people are conditioned to talk about. In fact, we tend not to. So as a therapist and behind closed doors, what we don't talk about is equally as important, if not more important, than what we do. That led me to say, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna push the finance piece here. I'm gon talk about how people bring themselves to their relationship with money. Talk about early experiences, money mindsets and money scripts and all these ideas of who and how we think about money, because it really does form such a huge part of who we are.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, that's my follow up, which is what does it reveal? You were curious to poke. And so there was obviously a reason for that. You were seeing some substantive reactions, Revelations. Right. Maybe they were. Your clients were hesitant to go there with you in the beginning, but you had a sense that there was a lot to learn about the person from their relationship with money. Why. Why is that such a great place to start to learn about someone?

[Holly Rubin]

I think it's. It's revelatory, really, because what people are feeling. Let's just say this. Money is never about money. Right? Money is always loaded. It always has so much more going on. So when people are not talking about it, there's usually discomfort, and there's usually a whole lot of other emotions that lie there. So there's fear, there's. There's greed, there's jealousy. There's all feelings that are not necessarily ones that we're proud to have. And as a consequence of that, we tend to shy away from it. So I know you talk, which I think is amazing. You talk about fear being almost that permission slip, that idea to say, go and do something with this. And I. I love that. And I couldn't agree more. And yet what I saw is that people weren't able to go there, that they couldn't jump on the fear yet because they didn't necessarily know what they were fearful about. They knew there was discomfort, but until we talked about it, until we unpacked it a little bit, There was no real sense of what it was that was lying in an unconscious space, which is what, you know, what our job as therapists sort of is to excavate a little bit and to figure out, move around and figure out what's going on unconsciously so we can bring it to the surface, make it conscious, and then we can do something with it in terms of behavioral change.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

And so what are the themes that you have discovered? What has risen to the surface? What has become the conscious in your practice? The struggles, the narratives, not healthy, unhealthy narratives that we may have with about money, our relationship with money, what is, what has become apparent?

[Holly Rubin]

I think one thing that I've noticed time and time again is a gender divide in terms of what comes up for people around money. And again, being conscious of a little bit more of a traditional upbringing perhaps, or being in the uk having traditional values, or being in a heteronormative couple, what that's. And having the male figure be the breadwinner and mom, perhaps at home, that sort of more traditional family system. What that was bringing up time and time again was this idea that if mom was choosing to stay home, if the woman was choosing to stay home or needed to stay home, based on what finances made sense for the couple, that the, the self worth and the value of what they were bringing to the family, to the table, was not celebrated quite as much as perhaps the, the man who was bringing home the bacon type idea. And that was coming up time and time again. And it's, it was so upsetting and it is going to. Continues to be so upsetting because the truth of the matter is that this is a societal message that has been played over and over again and repl. And I'm proud to say that generationally, I'm, I'm in my 50s, so I know that I'm talking to a generation that's a little bit older. But I also appreciate that we are starting to see change there. And yet clients that are more midlife are still struggling with this idea of what is my worth if I am not in the workforce and I am.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Not bringing home a big substantial paycheck. There are so many parallels. Although your work is focused in the uk, I'm hearing echoes of it here in the States. I will say though, interestingly, when I was writing my last book, or my second to last book, when she makes more, when I was researching it and trying to find comparative books, comparative titles, I found one that was called, I don't know, the Female breadwinner. Or something. And it was a UK author. And so I assumed, I jumped to the conclusion that the Brits are more advanced or are having more sophisticated conversations around money, at least with women and money compared to Americans. But. So I'm a little surprised, but also not surprised because we also know culturally in the UK it is very tight lipped. We say, or you say, I don't know. I don't. You know it better than I. Yeah.

[Holly Rubin]

It'S a, it is more my work, the work that I do, the job that I do, addressing feelings, talking about feelings, that in itself is taboo. Right. So I'm working with a lot of taboos behind closed doors in terms of therapy in general has only really become much more accepted in terms of mental health over the last 10 years. Whereas back in New York, where I moved from, everybody had a therapist. It was much more normalized. Those differences are definitely apparent. But the idea of what we're allowed to say, how do we say it, what, you know, the signifier of what money is, what it means, if we have it, if we don't have it, and all of the, all of the nuance that comes up around that is really interesting to explore.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

So now we have the context, we have the background on how we've arrived at this place of having this unhealthy relationship between our self worth and net worth. What have you seen work for your clients when they're trying to unwind from these, from these mindsets, from this lack of confidence? How have you seen them successfully become more confident around money?

[Holly Rubin]

Yeah, it's a great question. Again, it starts with them, and it starts with them understanding the reason why they feel the way they do. And that goes back to cultural messaging and societal messaging so that they can begin to release some of what they might feel bad about, that they might feel blame, they might feel ashamed of being in that position. So once that is out on the table, we can talk about that a little bit more. And then those conversations go home and they can be had in a more comfortable way whereby they can talk about these things with their spouses and say, you know what, this, it's really difficult when, when you come home and you ask me how the day was and if I have, if I'm a mom of young children, let's say so not quite that midlife place, but. And you ask me what I've done and I'm sitting and I have a pile of laundry and a sink full of dishes and I know I've been busy all day long and yet I'M not necessarily able to show what I've done. So it doesn't come up on the balance sheet, for example. And yet we know as therapists that presence that mom was offering and that time that mother was picking up and making snacks and making lunch for the next day and picking up from play dates and balancing all of those balls in the air that, that women and mothers do, to actually feel at the end of the day that I didn't necessarily do anything worthwhile is, Is so false. And that's the narrative and that's the mind shift that I really, I'm so proud to see when people can walk away with that, noticing that just because it doesn't show up that way, I'm providing an opportunity and a secure attachment for my kids. And that is priceless. So that I hope we get to. When I work with people, do the men get it? Do the men get it? They have begun to. Absolutely, they have begun to. Because in all fairness, things are achieving a little bit more of a balance where dads are picking up at school and dads are home potentially a little bit earlier for, for bats on all of those things and corporates are helping with all of that. Right. There's two week paternity pay in this country and dads are beginning to take it. Whereas 10, 15 years ago, dads wouldn't necessarily dare take it and be out of the office. Now they're going and they want to be a part of that. And so they're seeing what goes into a day in the life of.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

You have a very. I've known you for not a long time, but I'm going to venture to guess that you grew up with a relatively healthy mindset around earning and financial independence. You run your own business. You're obviously in a position to help other women with their money. What do you think it was about your upbringing? Since we're talking about how so much of this is rooted in our childhoods and our early life experiences, what do you think it was about your upbringing that was. Was a positive influence? Where for others it may have been the opposite and they grew up to have bad feelings when it comes to money?

[Holly Rubin]

I think again, in a similar way we talked about it. Money wasn't necessarily taboo in our family. There was conversation, there was a lot of. Again, Montreal, where we grew up, it was a very business oriented city. So there's a lot of entrepreneurialism and creativity involved in that. So that was conversation and that was fun. And I also grew up with a mother who worked so which again, was not necessarily commonplace at that time. And all early memories for me were about going with her on a Friday to the bank teller with her little envelope of her checks. And she would sign her checks and stamp them, give them to the teller, and the teller would give them back in cash. And that was so powerful for me to see that. Literally the currency of what that meant to have a working mom. That was important and it was. I admired that and that was definitely something I wanted to do as well.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Now, so much of your work focuses too on women in midlife. As we were talking before we were recording, midlife is not just the onset of perimenopause and menopause, which brings on neuro and physical changes in your body, but it's also midlife is when there's just a lot of shifting, whether it's divorce, blending families, starting a new business, changing careers. It can be an exciting time. It can also be a very financially complex time. What do you find are the themes, the financial themes that are coming up in your conversations with clients at this age, at this stage in their lives?

[Holly Rubin]

Yes, it is such a good way of describing this time. It is a real. There are just so many things all happening simultaneously and it's a very full on experience, money wise. Again, at this midlife, we're seeing marriages breaking down, we're seeing new couples getting together, blending families, a need to actually assess finances in a way that perhaps wasn't done earlier on. And that has really brought the conversation to the fore, if you will. So what are we doing? How are we doing this? If I'm, if I haven't been involved before, I need to be involved now. I want to know what's going on or I need to know what's going on because I'm taking the decision to potentially leave the marriage. So there's an awareness, there's a psychoeducation that needs to go on around financial stability and what that means for, for the couple moving forward, for the woman moving forward. It's really terrifying. I think many of my clients feel really terrified at this stage because they realize that they've let a lot of that go and now they're at this point where they have to do something about it and they haven't. The financial literacy and the eq, if you will, are just, they're just not there.

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[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, I often hear, I feel like I'm starting over or just starting for the first time my financial life. If it was. If this is for the women who often are separating or leaving their spouses and maybe didn't have an income during the marriage or weren't involved in the finances. And what is your advice? How do we meet this fear with solutions?

[Holly Rubin]

Yeah, again, I think we really have to meet people where they're at, which is something that I say all the time that we need to be where they are. And if they don't have the education, how do we help them get that ABCs and one, two, threes and it doesn't matter regardless of where they are. Again, the shame piece. Hopefully we can bypass that. We can again put it on the table that this is just. If you haven't learned these things up until now, that's okay. If you haven't had the help before or you're coming to this not having that same information, how do we get you the help? Because it's out there and it's out there in so many different ways. There's online help, there's community help, there's financial, all kinds of financial therapists. Now there are financial advisors, there's books, there's podcasts. There's a whole lot of resources that they can lean into to help educate themselves.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

I was reading your bio and reviewing some of the work you've done in this space and I wanted to talk to you about this linkage between body image, identity and financial confidence. This is not something I've ever really explored or heard someone link this idea of your body image and your financial confidence. Can you tell me a little bit about what's going on here?

[Holly Rubin]

Absolutely. The intersection of these areas all have something in common and that is how we are putting together our the external parts and the internal parts. So for example, how our appearance, if you will, what our appearance in terms of the body image piece, what our appearance reveals about who we are inside. Okay. How our self esteem and our interim internal and our external worlds, how they come together. Okay. So there's a bit of a confluence that happens also with the financial piece because being a taboo topic, feelings being a taboo topic, we're not necessarily talking about those so easily. So the nuance comes with, I don't know, let's say you have someone shows up at, I don't know, a pickup in a flashy car and you have your 7 year old potentially in the backseat saying, wow, Johnny's family's just picked him up in such a fancy car. They must be such a rich family. And, and through a child's eyes. Right. That perception wouldn't be wrong because there's this shiny new thing and that's going to be a designator and indicator of wealth. But we know very well that's not necessarily an indicator of wealth, but that's something that is a first impression. It's something that we're going to judge this new situation on, but it doesn't necessarily reveal the what's in the bank account, if you will. And so this confusion around how we put ourselves out there, what we are putting, what we're showing isn't necessarily reflective of what's going on internally. And that's where they all meet. I hope that makes sense.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, they say rich shouts and wealth whispers or rich yells and wealth whispers. Yeah, we say things in America, maybe also in the uk, skinny and rich kind of go together hand in hand. This idea that your appearance, people work very hard to have this appearance, physical appearance and that comes from their physical body, but also what they're wearing and what they're driving and all the things that they are so desperate to portray a certain financial image at the expense of their health 100 and their bank accounts. You know, we don't know what's going on and how they're actually affording things.

[Holly Rubin]

And my father used to say, have you seen their bank account statements? That's what he used to say. If somebody said oh, so and just bought a whatever or did this or. We don't know, we never know. I think again that that fascination for me, I was a big piece of this came also from the fact that I was in, I was in fashion before going into going into. I did my psychology and then I did my fashion degree and I was always fascinated and then left Fashion because the industry was just so challenging. And I said, I'm going back to do my master's. And I needed to tie up these areas. This appearance piece and how we put ourselves together and what that says about who we genuinely are internally. And for me, it was about fun and creativity and it wasn't about being dressed head to toe in Prada. It was about how we take that bit and we curate and we create who we are and what that says about us. But it doesn't always. That's not the rule for everyone. Right. It doesn't always indicate a healthy. A healthy human and all that. Just because we're putting ourselves out there and we know first impressions, we know the ideas around first impressions and what they say. But there's so much more to. To a person than who you meet in the first three seconds.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, It's. I want to be perceived as rich because I have internalized that. That means I'm. Maybe if people think I'm rich, then they also might think I'm also smart, successful.

[Holly Rubin]

Right. Successful.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Right. Or I'm just in this special club. Right. I'm vip.

[Holly Rubin]

Exactly.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

And with that comes. I don't know. It's fascinating. It's. I feel like now we're going back to high school and like for sure.

[Holly Rubin]

And then trying to fit in and all the. Definitely. And all the worry around back to. We were body positive for a while. We had gotten out of that. We were acknowledging the fact that all bodies were good. And now we're back in this place of Ozempic and wegovy.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Oh, yeah.

[Holly Rubin]

And it's so tied into presenting a certain way and being skinny and skinny is better. And that goes with the financial piece as well. If I can show off that I'm wearing Rolex and a this, then. Then I'm approved of, then I'm. Then again, I've made it. But yet what is going on internally to get to that place? What have you had to do and sacrifice in order to get there? For some, nothing necessarily. And for others, the designator piece is such a driver that. That feels more important than actually what they had to go through to. To get there. And it's.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, we seek status. We want the status. Yeah.

[Holly Rubin]

And again, it's different here. Right. That status is a little bit different here in that the. You're taught again, the taboo around money. If you're very wealthy, you don't talk about being very wealthy. So it's converging and it's a little. It's more confusing. Now I think I like to unpack it. It' fascinating. Wow. I really want that message that women. I want to counteract that societal message of not being enough. We are enough. And it's not about what we have that makes us enough. We are enough just based on who we are, because we matter. And we don't matter because we have or we do or we own. We matter because of who we are. So that value is really often a goal that I have when I'm working with women, to acknowledge that even as you are now, you are enough. And it is something that we hear more comfortably now. But to really reflect on that and to really believe it, to know it and believe it are two. Two different things. So I think that's a message that.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

I really want and to act on it is like the next piece.

[Holly Rubin]

Exactly. Well, you're so good at that piece. As more of where I sit is like, I'm digging and I'm trying to figure out, and then what are the next steps? What do you do now? You know this. What do you do with it? And I think sometimes we get really stuck at that place. And talk therapy can. We can be really bad at that because we can unearth it. But if you've unearthed it and you've become aware of it, awareness is only good if you then put it into action. And if you're not putting it into action, you're just. Just sitting in this space, which is not helpful either. That's often why people need that next phase of, how do I get that help? How does somebody help me? And some people can't. There. There really are barriers to what make putting into action difficult. And some of that is as simple as someone with challenges in ADHD and executive function and not being able to have the planning skills or not being able to work through some of the things that need to happen in order to ensure that you're living financially safely, if you will. So that's something that I come across too.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

I don't think social media helps either. I wonder what these conversations would have been like with your clients 25 years ago. On the one hand, maybe we weren't enlightened enough back then to go, you know what? I need to be having these conversations.

[Holly Rubin]

Yeah.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

So I appreciate that we've come so far in that regard that we're actually having these conversations, but we're also living in a world and in a time when there's so much pressure and so much sort of visibility. But I'll also call it false visibility into how Other people are living and measuring ourselves against others has been, it's. I don't know, we're not. We haven't peaked because just, it's just every day there's just more and more ways. There are more and more ways to measure yourself against others. But sometimes just tuning that out can be a huge win.

[Holly Rubin]

Yeah, definitely. And even I have two, two in the US currently at university. And even that it's so different. Even university and conversations around money and costs around money, it's different than how it is here. It costs so much to go to the grocery store to pick up milk or yogurt. Like that's what we want for our young adolescents and our adults. We want them to begin to see these things. But the awareness of that is really important to, to, to start to have.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

We have conversations about money at home. Not so forcefully or intentionally necessarily, but it comes up and I think that you want to seize the moment when for example, my son will say, wow, they must be so rich because they have this big house and this pool. And then they internalize that. Does that make us less than or why don't we have a pool? And it's an opportunity. I tell parents, like, I think that can be scary to address and because maybe you haven't done the work to really understand that even though you don't have the same things as other people, it's not, it doesn't mean that you're not as smart or accomplished or interesting, but. But it starts at childhood. And this is the time to tell the children to share in those lessons that they're making choices. I don't know how much money this family has, but this is having these things that this is what they've chosen. And we try to live our lives with our money in a way that is aligned with what we care about. If we really decided as a family that a pool would be important, that would mean having to move. Do we want to do that? That comes with trade offs, so. And it might be not going to summer camp because the money has to come from somewhere. And so this is how we try to talk about it. And in a way that doesn't scare them. I find that kids often just want to know, are we okay? They're not trying to learn how to one up the neighbor. They just want to make sure that we're okay. That my daughter asked me the other day, mom, do you have $2,000 in your bank account? She's 8. And it was a very specific question. I said, so I've learned from other experts that when a child asks you a confusing financial question or a question you don't have an answer to right away, or you don't want to answer it right away, for whatever reason, you don't answer it, you ask them more questions. And so I said, huh, that's a very specific amount of money. Is there a reason you're asking me about $2,000? And she said on this episode of. Of whatever she was watching, they. The mother was unable to pay her rent for the month, and it was $2,000. And the whole episode was about potentially losing their home over this $2,000 cost. And okay, now I get it, right? She's asking me this question because it's not about 2,000 or $3,004. It's just about, are we gonna be able to pay our mortgage or our housing costs? And so we. So I reassured her, I said yes. And I was glad that she came to me about it, that she thought it's okay to ask this question.

[Holly Rubin]

Absolutely.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

I was terrified to ask my parents, did we have any money? And then I just tried to read between the lines.

[Holly Rubin]

Absolutely. And I think to your point that you asked her more questions, you learned more about it, which is precisely what allowed for the conversation to continue. I think if we are, as parents too afraid to take that information on or get defensive as a result of it, then the conversation stops and she doesn't get her answer and she doesn't feel secure in whatever it is. She needed to know that. Of course, you wouldn't have known if you didn't pursue the question. So it's so interesting. It's so interesting.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah. Going back to what you were saying about women who aren't earning a paycheck but are caregivers and home providers and all of these important jobs that we don't associate an economic value to, but a thousand percent provide economic value to households. Have you gone so far as to suggest to these women, hey, maybe you should talk to your partner about securing your finances in some way? Maybe it's creating your own savings account. Do you have your own credit card? In America, we have what's called a spousal individual retirement account. It's designed for the partner who isn't working with a. Earning a paycheck. The. The spouse, the other spouse can open it for their partner, who's the caregiver in their name and contribute to it for them. And it's a retirement account. Essentially, if you're not working in corporate, you're not earning potentially a 401k as it is here or retirement account, traditional retirement account. So this is an alternative. And I think this is even more difficult for people to get to that point. It's okay, maybe I can like get my head around the fact that I have economic value, but then to say, hey, let's actually do something about this so that I am protected.

[Holly Rubin]

Absolutely.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Have you had those conversations and how do those conversations go?

[Holly Rubin]

Oh, wow. I think we're. I'm so many steps behind that conversation. It's fant. How brilliant to be able to have that. I don't. We must have. I don't even know. But you're gonna.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Even if it's just her own bank account, it's just, it's not so much for, you know, people say, oh, that sounds so transactional. But it's really to honor their contributions and to allow both partners to have financial autonomy to a degree. Right. Just because you're not earning a paycheck, why not be able to practice financial autonomy? Especially if you're providing such value to your household.

[Holly Rubin]

100% to be able to. If that could happen, then you're really counteracting the societal messaging which says that staying at home or choosing to stay at home doesn't have value, doesn't have worth. You're absolutely offering a solution whereby if you can have that, women are going to feel that they're contributing both in a way that is valuable at home and also that society recognizes. We might not have caught up there yet. I'm going to find out here what that would be or what that would be called, but I don't think that, that we have gotten to that place yet. And it's a very important place to get to.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

How do people in the UK typically build wealth in America? It's through real estate investing. And I don't mean like overnight wealth. Right. I'm talking like, excuse me, and not overnight wealth, but long term consistent wealth building. Just curious, this isn't maybe a question you were expecting, but since we were on the topic of comparing retirement accounts and savings accounts, I'm just curious, what is the typical pathway to quote unquote, retiring comfortably in the uk?

[Holly Rubin]

There's all kinds of ways of contributing. So also you can contribute with ISAs and you can do that, but you need often to be working in order to. And if you're not. I created this panel where it was a so myself Maseco, which is a private, private wealth management company and a lawyer as well. And we all again collaborated and came to have the conversation around, around wealth from these different angles. And so many people walked away from this. They found it very useful. But most of them were women actually. They walked away and they was like, oh my God, I haven't done this, I haven't done that, I haven't contributed to this. I gotta get on that. I have to have these conversations. I have to bring them home and have them. So they hadn't necessarily done anything, but at least what it propelled was for the conversation to be brought up with their partner so that they can do something and be proactive around it. So I think again, we have to be having these conversations. I need to take from behind the consulting room the conversations that come up. My hope is to be able to bring them again to more corporate situations, to helping advisors around understanding the psychological impact of it, but also understanding the need for equality and the need for coming together, both partners and, and figuring it out together.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, it's also a growing need here in the States. There's a burgeoning profession in financial therapy and which I it says essentially is what you're doing. And I think more and more like we know that we can just put our money in an account and the technology will invest it for us. And the numbers part to the, to some, to a large extent you can automate the compounding and all that. But it's this narrative stuff, it's this money and feelings stuff that. And I think it can only happen now because we've come around to this notion that therapy is, is good and therapy is not taboo. And now we can layer onto that the financial feelings that we have not uncovered.

[Holly Rubin]

Absolutely. It's such an important thing to be able to do and to release oneself from all of the negativity or all of the shame potentially that's attached and be able to speak much more frankly. I think you, I think people in the US are a lot more comfortable doing that than we are here. Wow.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

We're good at, we're good at something maybe relatively speaking, when it comes to money. Holly Rubin, thank you so much. This has been a really insightful conversation. I know that many listening have felt, seen and hopefully also helped and I know helped. So thank you very much.

[Holly Rubin]

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure parnish.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Thanks so much to Holly Rubin for joining us. To learn more about her practice and to get in touch with Holly, you can visit hollyrubin.com H O L L I R U B I N thanks for tuning in and I hope your day is so so money.

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