Mindy: Welcome, everybody, to the BiggerPockets Money podcast, where we are talking with Shauna Game about trauma and money. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my strength in the face of adversity co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott: Great to be here, Mindy. uh as always with my always brings a powerful message co-host Mindy Jensen.
Mindy: Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting.
Scott: That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world or go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or deal with the conflict, trouble, or trauma that you’ve experienced with money in your past, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.
Mindy: Scott, it’s time for our money moment, the segment of the show where we share a money hack, tip, or trick to help you on your financial journey. Today’s money moment is, here’s one for the kitchen. Grow some herbs. Herbs cost three to four dollars a bundle at the grocery store, but you can have an herb garden in your window, which will cost about the same to start up and last for months or even longer. Do you have a money tip for us? Email moneymoment@biggerpockets.com.
Okay, Scott, I have to tell our listeners that today’s show gets a little bit heavy. It really affected me because I didn’t think I had money trauma until Shauna started talking about what money trauma actually is, and it turns out I do in fact have money trauma surrounding the whole idea of being able or not to spend money. And it turns out that money trauma kind of affects a whole host of people. It isn’t just people who grew up this way or people who experienced that. It actually has a a wide ranging, wide reaching effect on people. And I think this is a really powerful episode. I am so thankful that Shauna came to join us today to talk about this very important topic.
Scott: Absolutely. I I I had no idea that this was as widespread as it is. It makes perfect sense. We all have it. Um, and if you’re really search for it, if you’re really honest with your with yourself, as we did at the end of today’s episode, you’ll find that even if you don’t have it about maybe your personal finances, maybe you have it about things related to your work, um, or the business, um, if you’re if you’re a business owner, your real estate portfolio, if you’re a real estate investor. So, I think it’s really important to address it and then use the toolkit that she’s outlined here to work on it.
Mindy: Shauna Game is an award-winning money expert, certified financial planner, entrepreneur, certified trauma of money expert, author of The Money Mindset Journal, speaker, and host of Everyone’s Talking money. Shauna, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I’m so excited to talk to you today.
Guest: I’m so excited to be here. I’ve been a fan for a long time, so it’s fun to come on and have a conversation.
Mindy: Let’s talk money. Everybody’s talking money. Shauna, for those who haven’t heard your podcast, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Guest: Yeah, I started my podcast way back in 2015. It was sort of a dinosaur of the podcast world. And had no idea that people would actually like tuning in to hear me just babble on about money, but I originally called it millennial money. We ended up switching the name in 2021 because I wanted to create a more of a show, a dynamic, a name that really embodied uh, you know, behavioral finance, which is something I’m really passionate about, your relationship with money, and also a space where anyone of any age, any demographic could feel like they could come to a place to feel good about their money. Because I think we we all need that. So the show has just been roaring ever since. We just passed uh for us 25 million downloads, which was great for a small little show and a thousand episodes and so, you know, it’s just a collection, I think of of everything that I love to talk about money. I was a former certified financial planner, still certified financial planner but not practicing. And I would just notice that people would spend all this money on financial plans and then nothing would happen. There would be no change and I thought, well, this is really weird. Why is this happening? And it was across the board. It didn’t matter how much somebody made or how much wealth they had. It just they would not take any action. So I started to really dive into the relationship with money, the behavioral side, trauma, a lot of things we’re going to talk about today. And figured out that that was the piece where change actually happened, but most money experts don’t talk about that. So I wanted a place to talk about it.
Scott: Awesome. And so, so, um, what why I I would love to dive into that for one second before getting into our our main topic today. W w why do you think that is? And you know, in the last eight years of podcasting, have you kind of come up with an answer to that question about why people spend all this money on a financial plan and do all this, put all this time and money into it and don’t execute?
Guest: I think money is this thing that we feel like we’ve got to go straight to the how-tos. You know, how do I buy a house? How do I pay off my debt? How do I save money? And so we spend time scrambling for those answers, but if we look at the science behind money, about 90% of money success is is mental. It’s what’s going on in your brain, your body, all of those uh, sort of triggers, things that have been carried through your childhood till your adulthood, But financial planning doesn’t address that. It doesn’t look at your relationship with money. It doesn’t look at, um, you know, even, even your impulse to take action. It doesn’t address any of that. It just gives you more of the how-to piece. And so I just found that you could give somebody literally the keys to the castle. And, you know, because money is such a, such a primal need and there there’s so much emotion bound up in money, people would just be fearful of making any change, even if it was positive change and so we just get to a place where, you know, in three months they be calling back and saying, I I need an update or I need something new. I’m like, no, you have the plan. It’s right there. We just need to, we just need to baby step it out, but um, it just, it just wouldn’t happen over and over and over again.
Mindy: I love that. Now, the math has long ago for many people, for most Americans, I think been solved. There are a number of, but there are a lot of right answers to how to build wealth and get ahead and it’s behavior that that is the challenge, I think. and that’s a wonderful diagnosis. Um your expertise is specifically in the world of trauma and that’s something we haven’t explored enough here on Bigger Pockets money. How big of a factor does trauma play in the behavioral component for why why many people are failing to get ahead?
Guest: Money trauma is one of the biggest trauma bonds that we all have. and it’s primarily because we, you know, the longest relationship most of us have is money. We grow up and we graduate school and we have to interact with money for the rest of our lives. And in that uh, that interaction, there are a lot of nuanced moments where trauma happens. And, you know, I think we’re used to talking about trauma in terms of, you know, maybe if um, there was abuse or or something like that that happened, something large. When we’re talking about money trauma, it can be very small moments that actually create a trauma reaction within you and I often say that money trauma isn’t just what happens to you, it’s what happens inside of you.
Scott: Can we can we define the term actually, just before we keep going getting on this thought? What what is what is it as you define it? Money trauma.
Guest: Money trauma is is any pattern or belief that creates a strong emotion within you. So fear, um, shame, judgment, um, you know, anxiety, uh for a lot of people it’s depression, um, and it also trauma is uh I believe a a pattern. So you could take out the word trauma and you could actually insert the word patterns. So what patterns keep recreating in your life that then make you feel X Y Z, anger, fear, shame, grief, doubt, whatever it might be.
Scott: Awesome. Thank you. and sorry, sorry to interrupt there. Please, please continue um, um, with the previous thought around, around, uh, uh, how these things, how it’s our longest relationship with money and and, uh, it impacts us the most in a way.
Guest: Yeah and I think it’s easy to think that trauma is something that happens to someone else. It’s not something that happens to us. But we all experience money trauma. We could look back to our childhood. Maybe there was a belief around money that existed in our childhood. For instance, I grew up in a very middle class, you know, I never had to worry about money type of a family, except that money had this hierarchical role in my family growing up. So, we would go on vacations and we would have a great time, but when we would get on the airplane to fly home, you know, my dad would bring out, those were the old days, so he bring out like the paperfolio of like all of the expenses from the hotel. and he would literally line item with my brother, my mom, and myself, you know, you spent $12 on, on tanning lotion and you know, the, you know, the in room dining bill was $40. Like what could you possibly have ordered for $40. And so, we would have this great high going on vacation and then we would come home and all we would hear about was how much money was spent on this and that that was a, a bad decision. and so as a kid, I knew that was uncomfortable, but I didn’t really understand the impact that that would make on me going forward. and so what it did for me is it was very hard for me to be able to enjoy spending money. And certainly to be able to enjoy spending money on things that you might consider luxury. you know, whether it’s a vacation or going out to eat, Uh, you know, another example is is going out to eat. I I have this pattern where we’ll go have a nice meal and, you know, my husband and I will get in the car to go home and immediately without even thinking, I’ll say something like, I can’t believe that cost fill in the blank. and he’ll just look at me and say, you’re doing it. And so these small little moments have a huge impact on your relationship with money and have a huge impact on your ability to go after the goals, to to take the action steps. And so I think for a lot of us, it could be these small, seemingly nuanced moments, whether it’s in our childhood or, you know, somewhere early adulthood that are just kind of laying dormant there, but they’re actually creating a trauma within us that is stopping us from being able to move forward and do the things that we want to do with our money. I mean, we could we could go down the laundry list of, of, um, you know, different occurrences that could happen that actually create trauma. But I think everybody can, can kind of look to a situation in their own life. You’re like, oh, yeah. I remember that and then I think this and then maybe that’s why I don’t do X, Y and Z.
Mindy: The amount of I feel seen right now as I’m listening to you say these things and I’m, I’m thinking to myself, you know, yep, yep. I hear that. I do that. I do that. Like, when someone compliments you, and I think this is more women than men, but when someone compliments you, Shauna, what a lovely dress. Oh, thanks. It was on sale. It’s always on sale because you never pay full price. And because when you were younger, you didn’t pay full price. I just, I feel really, really seen, but I don’t feel like I am a victim of money trauma. And yet I have traumatic money experiences as, you know, anybody who listened to that episode that came out a few weeks ago, a few months ago now, I is I’m sure screaming at the the radio, yes, you are. Yes, you are. I don’t spend money. I have a hard time releasing it from my grasp and it is very, very difficult. And I’ve, you know, I really do think it’s back to that time that I was at that garage sale and I was going to buy that giant pencil and the guy gave it to me for free and my dad said, you know, if you would have had to spend that quarter, then you couldn’t have bought this thing for your mom because that’s all the money you had and now it’s like, oh, I shouldn’t spend any money on myself ever because then I can’t do something for somebody else. And that’s, yeah. Wow, thanks. Therapy with you know, talking about, yeah, I always say I’m, I’m personal finance meets money therapy in a in a nice little package.
Guest: Um, you know, you’re talking about, about women in money and I think that’s, that’s more like we have to put an exclamation point on that. I mean, how many, how many female listeners right now could relate to this? You, you go shopping with your mom as a kid and you come home and and your mom says, hide that or we’ll take that out of the car when, you know, once your, your dad’s in the house or take that immediately up to the room and don’t, don’t say anything. I mean, I I grew up with so many different instances about that. And so, you know, even as, as an adult when my husband will say something like, is that new? Oh, no. This isn’t new. I’ve had this forever. I didn’t buy this. This just magically showed up in my, in my closet. I’m thinking, why do I do this? Why does it matter? I could actually afford to buy the piece of clothing. I don’t have to make up a story about it, but it’s so ingrained from childhood that it’s just, it’s second nature.
Mindy: Yeah and he might be saying, is that new because he then wants to say it looks nice instead of just is that new? Did you spend money? I think a big challenge in this world of money trauma is identifying it and labeling it as such, right? Money trauma. How did you, Shauna, first first discover and then identify that this was, these were traumatic moments and how did that fuel your, how did you then become interested and an expert and certified in this, in this area?
Guest: For me, I had this moment when I was uh a certified financial planner working with other people, but I would go to the ATM to deposit a check or to get cash out and I would not look at my ATM receipt. I would fold it up into some sort of like origami shape and shove it into my wallet and I would never look at it. And I just had this moment one day when I thought, oh, wow. Like I’m trying to help other people figure their money out and yet, look at what I’m doing. And it was a real kind of awakening moment for me where I thought, okay, I have to, I have to figure out what is going on. Like what is creating this behavior in me. And it, it, it was a real, felt very real fear for me. I I knew there was enough money in my bank account. That wasn’t the issue, but there was something about seeing the numbers that just, you know, gave me like cold sweats. And I started to think, okay, what is it? Is it, is it just my thinking around money? And then I thought I walked that out for a little while and I’m like, no, it’s just got to be more to it. And so I started to really look at the impact that your childhood has. There’s even studies that talk about generational trauma patterns. So you could actually be living out money trauma that was experienced by an ancestor way back. uh, you know, when I think about um, I had a grandma on my dad’s side and she was one of the first female, you know, entrepreneurs in the family in um, you know, the 1930s and 40s. She ran a beauty salon out of her house, which just was unheard of at that time for women. And um, she was a workaholic. So she worked all the time and primarily because she lived through the great depression and she never wanted to run out of money. So she had this fear and so she would literally work 18 hours a day just to make sure there was always enough money. And so I can see that pattern replicated in the way my dad talks about money and the way he line items after we go on a vacation all the way down to me not wanting to look at my ATM receipt and being terrorized by the numbers even though logically it doesn’t make sense to me. So I really started to think about if we look at trauma in terms of patterns to diagnose. So what are the patterns around money that I have? What are the things that I just absolutely won’t do around money because there is a fear. And then how can I look at what those patterns are doing with my ability to move, you know, towards the life I want to live with my money? Where is it stopping me? And so I became really interested in trauma and looking at, okay, you know, when we talk about trauma, it also creates these reactions in our bodies. So for me, I would get, you know, my heart would race, I get kind of sweaty, my palms would sweat, different things like that. That’s a trauma response. And so, you know, we can’t just look at trauma in terms of um, the event or what has happened. We also have to look at what is it doing inside of our bodies? You know, when we start to notice these feelings in our bodies, we can get to an understanding of, okay, I’m in a traumatic moment about money. How do I kind of unravel this? And so I, you know, was looking around for how do I learn more about this? How do I get more educated about this? And um, there’s an organization called the Institute on Holistic Wealth and they offer a certified of certified trauma of money expert designation. And so I went through that and really paired that with, you know, not only my own experience, but other experiences that I had working 10 plus years with clients, you know, how can we use this information to help people diagnose their own traumas and then be able to figure out how to like calm their body and their mind long enough so that they could create a different response out of that trauma.
Scott: Let’s let’s dive into that word diagnose. So it is um is this diagnosable or is it generally overlooked in in a medical setting?
Guest: Oh, it’s generally overlooked. I mean, you know, I think most people understand the magnitude of of money and the emotions around money, therapists, obviously, long have been talking about, you know, the the two hot topics, sex and money. And so, I think there’s a, um, general understanding that that something really powerful is happening around money and it’s, it’s causing these real feelings with people and they’re just not sure what to do with them. But it it isn’t yet at the place, I believe, where you could go somewhere and get this diagnosis of of, you know, being in money trauma or having traumatic money events happen to you. So, um, you know, what I like to do is just talk about experiences I’ve had in my life, experiences that I’ve seen other people have around money that have created uh a trauma response. And hopefully, somebody listening could maybe use that a little bit as a mirror to their own experience and to their own life and to, and say, okay, let me think about what has, what has happened in my own existence up until, you know, whatever age I am. And how do I pull apart some of those things that really do cause the very strong emotions around money for me.
Mindy: Wow. So I before I started, you know, preparing for this show, I realized that there was money trauma and did not at all realize that I had money trauma. How can I and, you know, our listeners start looking for these responses? I mean, it’s so easy to just ignore stuff and I have ignored stuff for years. I don’t spend money because I’m frugal and that’s a good thing. So it’s not that I have money trauma around spending money, it’s that I’m frugal. So, you know, you turn it into something else. Um, how can somebody who might be deluding themselves or maybe not even deluding themselves, just completely not even thinking that they have money trauma. What are what are some things they can look for within to start recognizing, yeah, this is a thing that they need to address.
Guest: Well, what you’re talking about is a great example of starting to notice money trauma. So, you know, what you’re talking about not spending money. It obviously has a pro to it and then it has maybe a con side to it. And so, it’s starting to list out some of those things that that feel, um, very much a part of your money existence. So, one of the exercises I tell people to do is to take take out, whether it’s their notes app or if you like to keep a little journal with you during the day, and write down every time you have a thought about money and put a plus next to it if it’s a positive thought and a negative next to it if it’s a negative thought around money. And you would be surprised, I would say the majority of us across the board are going to have far more negative thoughts around money than we’re going to have positive thoughts around money. And that part of that is just we live in a very scarcity kind of driven society around money, the messages we hear all day long are you don’t have enough, there isn’t enough, you’re not going to be able to do X, Y and Z and so that’s just sort of kind of automatic uh with us. So one of the exercises is is doing that and when you come across a negative thought around money, write down what it is. and what you’re going to start seeing are patterns in how you interact with money. So, not spending money is certainly one of the uh, biggest money trauma patterns that we see. The other flip side of that is spending too much money. So maybe you just, you have these moments where you feel out of control or you feel stressed in your life and so your instant response is to go out and spend money. and obviously that gets in the way of you being able to achieve your money goals. So that is something to look at. What are these triggers that are getting in the way and causing me to go out and just kind of recklessly spend money. You could also have money trauma that that existed from, maybe you got laid off. you know, pandemic a lot of people got laid off or had to kind of shift their work environment. That could create a trauma bond within you because maybe there just wasn’t enough money. Maybe you had to really kind of struggle to figure out how you were going to pay for everything. Um, and so, gosh, we could go, I mean, we could go all down the list if you really want to. Those are kind of the three common ones that I find. Uh, another one is if you’ve had an instance of financial abuse. So maybe you were in a partnership, um, and there was some level of financial abuse. Maybe the other partner either took out some credit cards or some accounts in your name that you didn’t know about or maybe they were overspending and there just wasn’t enough money available. Uh, so financial abuse happens a lot of time. It doesn’t have to be just a female issue. Uh, it can happen to the male listeners as well. And, um, so I think that the first step in recognizing trauma is doing a, a deep dive and asking yourself how do I feel about money? Most of us are going to have some sort of negative reaction to money, following that question up with why? Why do I feel a certain way about money? So if my answer is I’m always stressed about money. Why is that? What are the events that are occurring in my everyday life that are causing that to happen? And and digging down and digging down until we get to a layer where we can really see, oh, this happened to me. That happened to me. This is a belief I’m carrying forward from my childhood or this is what I’ve seen uh and I’m mimicking the experience around money. So when we can get to kind of a foundational level, that’s when really we can start to recognize where does the trauma actually exist, what are the patterns around that trauma, and then what can we do about it?
Mindy: Back to your comment about the journal, what is frugality? Is it a positive or is it a negative? I mean, it’s great to be frugal. You’re saving money, you’re not being wasteful. Um, but you know, there was a recent New York Times article about uh, financial trauma, and the guy uh, that was featured in the beginning of it was like, I never want to spend money because I grew up poor and I just attributed this to frugality. And at some point, being frugal is a good thing and then at some point being frugal isn’t such a good thing anymore. So when, how do you make the distinction if the thought is a positive or a negative when it comes to something like that?
Guest: It’s really tricky. You know, what you’re talking about is really tricky and I think it’s something that so many of us can relate to. And I I believe I read that article as well. There was another one I was thinking about, um, I forget the the person that they were talking about, but he saved some like massive amount of money and was just this huge saver and realized later in life that it was actually a disservice to him because he never actually experienced life. He was just so focused on saving money. And, you know, when I worked with couples, a lot of times there would be somebody who was super frugal, that was just all about saving. and then the other person on the other hand would want to spend money, would want to go out and kind of live life. And so, you know, it was really about finding that balance point. So I think bringing that same logic into your individual experience is where can I find a little bit of balance where I allow myself to spend money on things that line up with my values, things that feel good to me? Maybe you’re somebody who, um, you know, you you want to go out to dinner, but when you go out to dinner, you you want it to be just a really, you want it to be a really good place. You want to have a really good meal and that’s your your one thing you’re going to spend money on every month, right? So allow yourself permission to spend money in that way because that supports you, that’s going to give you life, that’s going to give you a positive feeling and a positive emotion around money. and the rest of the month you can be frugal, you can you can do all the things that you want to do. So I think it’s, it’s, it’s about balance and it’s about figuring out what your money values are and where you actually really do want to spend money and the places where you’re allowing yourself to just go ahead and be frugal.
Scott: When I when I think about the word trauma and I think about recovery from trauma or or addressing trauma. I think of a process and not so much of an event. Is that your experience in in this first, first question?
Guest: Yeah, absolutely. It is, it is a process. It’s a journey, just like your your your money is a journey. I look at it very much there isn’t a destination that you arrive to. There isn’t a day for most of us, I will say, where you get to you’re like, wow, I mean, I just have the most amazing relationship with money. There is nothing that’s going to knock me off course. For most of us, it’s just this act of of living a human experience where we’re going to get triggered by things, uh, you know, along the way, we’re going to have these strong emotions around money. And so I look at it very much as a process and really understanding how you interact with money, how you want to interact with money, because those two things are very different for most of us. And what are some things that you can do every day, for some of us, it’s it’s every minute where you can calm your body and you can calm your mind when you’re having one of those trauma response or you’ve you’ve basically uncovered a a trauma pattern that might exist there. And so I really think it’s about creating, um, it’s creating space, I think between the trauma and and you and that is a process. I, you know, very much comes back to mindfulness techniques and, um, being aware of what’s going on in your mind and body and then having some tools in the toolkit to calm yourself enough that you can move through the process, forward the process. And I believe every time you are in a a trauma moment around money, just the more you understand, the more information that you have about what’s happening, the better you can kind of move along the process. But I don’t think you ever get to a point where it’s like, well, I’m trauma free and everything, everything’s perfect.
Mindy: I have hopes for that. Me too. It would be so much easier.
So, what can trigger someone to experience symptoms of emotional trauma and money trauma? And what are some tools that you can use to help cope with these triggers?
Guest: A lot of times it’s people or places that trigger the money trauma. So it might be somebody that you have in your circle, even somebody you might have in your family that when you’re around them, you feel certain emotions around money. I will tell you, I absolutely love my dad to death, but when I’m around him and he’s asking me anything about my career or money, I instantly feel like a five-year-old little child trying to prove to my dad that I’m doing well. And so I start having physical feelings. I start getting the heart racing, my voice gets very high, um, and I I start to feel like I’m pushing my way through a conversation. And so, you know, it took me a long time to realize, oh my gosh, that’s what’s happening every single time my dad’s asking me anything closely related to money. And so I would say, you know, start by looking at those instances where you feel some sort of physical response to a money conversation, to a question being asked to you or a behavior. you know, we talked about like going up and hiding the the you know, the shopping, whatever we bought shopping, um and that we do it with maybe our partners today. you know, when you catch yourself in that moment, start thinking about is it is it the person that is causing this to happen? Is it something back further than that that actually doesn’t have anything to do with this person? Like what is it in this moment that is causing me to have this physical reaction or this thought pattern around money. And so, you know, I think when we talk about any thing around money, certainly about trauma is we’ve created this this loop of thinking in our head where we just automatically go through this. Our brain is lazy, our brain loves patterns, it loves to just repeat patterns over and over again. It’s very comfy place for us. And our brain also likes to tell us, you know, it’s okay, it’s okay to freak out about money. like that’s normal. Everybody does this, it’s not a big deal. But uh, you know, there are ways again to just tell our brain, no, we actually don’t want to freak out about money. No, we actually don’t want to have a trauma response. Um, so there are a lot of tools. You know, we can, we can look to uh mindfulness. that’s certainly one of the biggest tools in the toolkit that they teach in in this designation that I went through, and that could be very simple things. It could be recognizing what’s happening and changing the conversation if you’re talking to somebody and they’re the person that is making you feel a certain way about money. Um, I use a technique because my brain can start spiraling around money. When that happens, I use a technique called noticing. And so what I do is, I look immediately to the surroundings that I’m in and I start naming off things that I see. You know, right now, I see trees and I see green, and there’s a yellow lamp next to me. I’ve got a computer screen that is pink. You know, I just start naming things that are around me. And what that does is tell my brain, it’s okay, you can relax, you’re not in a traumatic moment right now. You’re just having a thought pattern that is tapping into a trauma event or trauma response that happened to you. So I do a lot of things like that. They’re a great breathing technique. There’s a technique called boxed breathing. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this one, but it’s a great breathing technique that slows down your nervous system so that your body can come to a place hopefully of peace and it’s it works like this. You breathe in for four seconds. You hold your breath for four seconds. You breathe out for four seconds. And you hold for four seconds. So you literally create a box with your breath. And I tell people to try that sequence maybe four or five times and just notice how it changes your body chemistry and how it also changes your brain chemistry. It’s okay to feel a certain way about money. you know, when we talked about like going up and hiding the the you know, the shopping, whatever we bought shopping, um and that we do it with maybe our partners today. You know, when you catch yourself in that moment, start thinking about is it, is it the person that is causing this to happen? Is it something back further than that that actually doesn’t have anything to do with this person? Like what is it in this moment that is causing me to have this physical reaction or this thought pattern around money? And so, you know, you can check out my podcast Everyone’s Talking money. It is available on absolutely any podcast player. We do a deep dive into all things personal finance and money therapy. So you will find lots of different topics around this. and you can head to my website. everyone’s talkin, T A L K I N money.com where you can find a whole lot of extra resources around money.
Mindy: Thank you, Shauna, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Scott: I think that is a powerful moment.
Okay, Scott, uh maybe one of these days I’ll be able to make it through an episode without crying. Um, that was a really powerful episode. I am so thankful to Shauna to coming on and sharing with us what money trauma is, how to recognize it, how to start to deal with it and, you know, remove it from your life, how to recognize it, I think is the first step. And I, like I said before, I didn’t think I had money trauma and whoo, this episode changed my mind. Woohoo. What did you think of the show, Scott?
Scott: I I thought it was a real eye opener and really thought provoking there. You know, I I’ll just leave some questions dangling for folks to think about. You know, I loved what she said about how money is the first relationship that most of us have. um, uh uh uh or or an early relationship that most of us have. Um, I think it’s a way to potentially rephrase that. and I wonder if most of us are all of us are experiencing the first, the first experiences of money are, are from a position of dependence, um, in some way. And and is there a way to to noodle on that question and think through how, how our, how, what are ways that we can, you know, try to negate this problem to some degree in the next generation.
Mindy: I think that’s really, really, that last point is so powerful because your money trauma may not even be your own. Like Shauna said in the show, you could be living somebody else’s money trauma, some ancestor’s money trauma. I’m so thankful that she came on the show today. I would love to start a discussion in the Facebook group, which is facebook.com/groups/bpmoney, talking about money trauma. What did you think of this episode? Uh, do you have any additional tips, maybe that you have gotten in dealing with your own money trauma or things that have helped you cope with uh triggers, things like that? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode and this topic. Um, so again, biggerpockets.com, I’m sorry, that’s facebook.com/groups/bpmoney. Um, so, thank you for listening to this episode. I know that it got uh a little thick sometimes, but I think it’s a really important topic and I’m so glad that we were able to talk with Shauna about it. So, uh Scott, I think it’s time to get out of here.
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, way to deliver, little lizard.
Scott: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Calen Bennett, edited by Exodus Media, Copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.
