CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - How to Talk to Your Parents About Money with Etinosa Agbonlahor

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Whitney speaks with Etinosa Agbonlahor about navigating difficult financial conversations with parents. They discuss strategies for approaching retirement planning, setting financial boundaries with financially irresponsible parents, and handling the emotional complexity of money conversations that often involve mortality and family dynamics. Have a question for Whitney? Call in and leave a voicemail for the show at 866-225-5466 Connect with Etinosa Book: "How to Talk to Your Parents About Money: A Short Practical Guide: Conversations That Build Peace, Confidence, and Financial Security” (available on Amazon) Website: https://etinosaa.com/ Podcast: Her First House Connect with Whitney Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club Follow Whitney on Instagram Follow Whitney on YouTube Order Whitney’s book, Toxic Positivity Learn more about ad choices. Visit podcast.choices.com/adchoices This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to the Calling Home podcast. Today we are talking about money. I know a lot of you have come to our groups lately at Calling Home talking about parents end-of-life care, inheritance, parents who ask you for money when you're not able to give it, parents who have stolen from you. There's so many of these stories in our groups. And so today I'm really excited to have Etiosa on the podcast. She is the author of the book, How to Talk to Your Parents About Money, A Short Practical Guide, Conversations that Build Peace, Confidence, and Financial Security. And we're going to be talking about two groups of people here. We're going to be talking about parents that you can no longer give money to or help because of addiction, mental

health issues, spending that you just can't keep up with, and also just people like you who are trying to have conversations with your parents about preparing for retirement and end-of-life care and things like that. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into that interview. So there's really like two groups I think that I want to speak to in this episode based on my audience. And so the first would be an adult who is trying to like help their parent prepare financially, take care of themselves. And then the other is I have a lot of people that listen to this show whose parents are, tell me a little bit about why you wanted to write your book about helping parents with money. I mean, this is a loaded topic. So I can tell you

the exact moment when I got the inspiration for it, but I can also tell you the impetus kind of behind it. So exact moment I got the flash of inspiration was in, I was in Boston in the winter last year. And so I'm in Boston Logan, the airport, and I'm going from, like, the gate to the plane. I'm on the jet bridge. And I just like, oh, my God, how to help people talk to their friends about money. And so I get to the plane. I'm, like, opening up my phone and checking, has anybody written about this? Is there, like, an actual actionable practical guide that, like, helps people just tell me what to do. And it didn't really exist. It wasn't there. And so I was like, I have to do this. But the impetus for that is that I had been having a lot of conversations,

both with financial advisors because I'm in that space and I have a lot of friends who are financial advisors and then with my friends who are not financial advisors about the kinds of getting that stage of life where they're having those conversations with their parents about budgeting, retirement, what does that kind of look like for you? What do you expect from me? How can I support you, right?

And they just didn't feel like it was awkward, it was tense, nobody really felt comfortable with that. And then on the financial advisor side, They're also seeing, like, my clients come in the room and they just, we should be talking. I want them to start talking about estate planning and they're just not there yet. They feel uncomfortable. They don't want to discuss this with their kids quite yet. All of this, while we have something called the Great Wealth Transfer happening, so about $73 trillion estimated will be transferred across generations in the next 20 years.

There's a lot of money going to be passed over. There's a lot of, like, lives and things are at stake and nobody's having effective conversations. about this. So it just kind of felt like this was sort of the nexus of everything coming together and people needing to have just those guidelines of this is how to talk through this and this is how you do that without breaking your relationship. That was kind of the impetus for the book. Yeah, I think it's such an important topic and I'm glad that you wrote it because it's definitely something that comes up. But I think that so many of the adults that I talk to find that talking about money with their parents is very triggering.

Like, there's a lot of landmines for both the parent and the adult child. And the parent almost feels kind of like the kid when you're talking to them about this stuff. I wonder, is that something that you run into? Absolutely. And the reason that it's triggering is because we see money as an extension of our identities. we see money as a way through which we can determine am I a good person or a bad person, my decision is good or bad. And I tell money or I tell people that money is just a tool.

Like you wouldn't say I'm good with a hammer or I'm bad with a spanner. No, it's just a tool to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish. In the same way, money is just a tool to help you live the life that you want to live. So you can't be good with money or bad with money. But for better or for worse, we tend to just tie so much of our identities to money. that any kind of conversation about it almost becomes like, reveal to me, open up your diary and like, let me see if you're a good person or not, right?

And so that's like on the one hand, it's already a really tense conversation. On the other hand, children, adult children sometimes can feel like, because this is so tense, because this is such a big deal, I feel like I need to be like an expert. I feel like I need to look like I know what I'm doing before I approach my parents to discuss this. And parents feel like I've been doing

this for three decades, I don't need your help, right? So there's so much that we come to the table with. And in the book, I talk about all of the different ways kind of like mitigate those nuances, make sure you're not coming in a perspective of mandates or trying to control the conversation. How can you make sure that your parents sees you as somebody who's coming with care and with empathy and with respect? And then with curiosity, let's make sure you're in a good place, asking open-ended questions, lots of different tactics I provide in the book to make sure nobody feels affronted and nobody feels like you're questioning their entire lives and their judgment. Right, right. Like almost like if you bring it up, you're implying that they

haven't done anything about it. And sometimes they haven't. I mean, I've worked with a lot of adults, right, who they are their parents' retirement plan. You know, like, and I, I think there's something very cultural about that too. You know, like my mom's a first generation American and that is like set up in the family is like we've taken care of our grandparents and they live you know with family and not everybody is thinking about plans in the same way and I think sometimes that it can be so overwhelming for the parent to feel like oh you think I haven't thought of that or like even if they haven't they get very defensive and I'm wondering if you can give some tips on like how to work with that

defensiveness. I think that the first part of any kind of conversation like this is for assisting with yourself and just check your own, your own biases, your own money script. Everybody has this deep connection to money. So there's things you're going to come into the conversation with, a way of looking at money that are coming to the conversation that might accidentally slip out and start to look at your care attacking. And so you just want to be cognizant of that. You want to also come into the conversation preparing to actively listen, right? I always say this is a, But it's all based on curiosity and care and cooperating. So you want to come in, you're curious about where have you, what are you thinking about

with regards your money, how are you looking at for time, and how do you see all of these different things coming together? And then when you're actually within the conversation, so you've done your prep, you feel like you know what you want to get out of the conversation, you're aware of your biases, you know you're going to listen actively. Inside the actual conversation, start with vulnerability, use eye statements I've been curious about and I've been exploring debt. what do you think right you want to feel that I'm not attacking you I'm being vulnerable and that allows you to be vulnerable as well you also want to then avoid any kind of like yes or no questions that might feel like you're pinning them in a in a hole somewhat you know those open-ended questions and just watch for body language right if things are to get tense you don't have to solve everything in one conversation expect this to take a very long time over many iterations you should be having these conversations earlier in the process watch body language if people start to

fold arms. It's actually shrink into themselves. That's a cue. Okay. Well, in unfamiliar territory, let's step back. Let's move to, like, more comfortable places. Yeah, I think that those are all such great suggestions. And I'm thinking about, like, an adult who goes to their parents and their parents are like, well, I have no plan. I have no savings. You know, they've been living in survival mode for their whole life. And they're getting to this point where it's like they're going to need long-term care or they're not going to be able to work. How can an adult child navigate that with like their own fears about supporting themselves and maybe their children? I think the, first of all, that's very real, right? A lot of times because we're so scared of

these conversations, we don't start them early enough. And so by the time we start to talk about them, things have already, you know, they're at a point where there's not a ton of things that you can do to remedy the situation. But I think in every, occasion, it's important to where you want to get to is you have a plan together. You have a plan that your parent feels good about and that you feel good about. And so you might just start the conversation. And in the book, I talk about just getting the lay of the land, right? Like, where are you in terms of savings? What is your ideal? Let's start with what is your ideal? What is the life that you would ideally want to live? What is the lay of the land? Where are you in terms

of savings, investments, etc. And if that's not a lot, let's talk through what our options are. it might be we need to go find a financial professional and get actual help here and have somebody point to us, we can do this, this and that. Maybe Medicaid becomes something that we need to talk about right now, et cetera. But your goal in that situation is let's just understand where things are and then let's start to work towards a plan together. I love that. So first, just figuring out, like, what's the picture here? What are we even working with? And I love the idea of bringing in a third party, like whether that's a financial advisor or, I don't, a therapist, a mediator of some kind, somebody that can help, like, be the middleman so that it doesn't get

into this whole like power dynamic between the parent and child, which I think is really what makes these conversations so tricky. And that is why the, starting with the I statement is actually pretty powerful because what you're doing is you're allowing a see-saw of who's giving advice, right? I've been thinking about how to manage debt with the kids going into college now. What did you guys do when we were young? Now they get to give you advice. And now you can ask, okay, and so what are you thinking about now as you're thinking towards retirement? So there's a see-so of who's giving advice and nobody feels like they're the student in the conversation. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. That's so true. And so even just

starting the conversation it's a good way to get some data too if you bring things up and they're like oh i haven't been doing that or i never thought about that he's like okay we're really starting from cross zero here yeah i love that suggestion and that's helpful is i know you talked about like some body language signs but are there any other signs that someone might notice in their parent that like, okay, I need to back off and try to do this later. Shutting down the conversation verbally, right? Or brushing it off. And depending on what culture you're from, that's going to look very different. Right. Like, I come from a Nigerian background. And so when somebody doesn't want to go deep into a conversation, they might not

say that. They might just laugh it off. Right. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's funny. Right. They might tell a joke, instead of going deeper. And that is a sign that they don't want to go forward. It's very polite. Everyone is happy. Everyone is laughing. But they're telling you, like, stop, right? And so it depends on your cultural context and nuances.

It will help you understand. If they're not talking about the thing you want them to talk about, if the conversation is not progressing, they don't want to talk about it. Maybe it's time to switch. And then sometimes it might just come out in a lot of defensive language, right? Like, I was doing the best I could. I don't know the stuff. Nobody taught me.

Like, if the defensive language comes out, that's another sign that they feel like you are attacking them. And so it is time for you to go, I'm just really curious, really want to be as supportive as I can, what would make you feel comfortable, right? Like, let's move, let's either you turn the taxes to let's talk about your garden or let's talk about, either you change the conversation. Because, again, you don't need to solve everything right that minute, or you get their help. it feels like things that gets intense, how do you want this to progress, you know?

Yeah. No, that's that's very helpful. And I think knowing like the unique signs that the person, I mean, everybody knows the people and their family, the ways that they deflect and kind of move out of topics that you know not to, we continue to push it sometimes from a place of our own anxiety to want to get the conversation to be solved and over, right? And that doesn't work. It's so important to, and I try and say this a lot of times in the book, this is hard. Expects it to take a long time. You don't have to solve everything in the first conversation. If you're not making progress, it's fine. Stack. Go do something else. Bring it back up in a couple of weeks.

That's okay, too. You know, this is not a tick-the-box exercise. Right. But I think that's why your advice about starting this early is so important because I find in my work that most people are not having these conversations until someone is very sick. they're at the end of their life or they're about to like lose their house. You know, like a lot of these conversations are happening when the child is like, I have to step in and take over because my parent isn't able to handle this anymore. And when you do that in a panic, it's very difficult.

Yep. Mistakes get made. Feelings get hurt. You know, that's when people really feel like you're taking over control. And it's hard to have a curiosity and a care. and an empathetic, you know, conversation, when you're panicking about we need to solve this thing right away, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And both of you are anxious because of the thing happening. Mm-hmm. I noticed, too, and I don't know if this is something that's come up for you, that conversations about money also become conversations about, like, mortality and about death. And so when we're talking to our parents about that, it's forcing them to think about their age and their health. And I feel like that really complicates things too. It absolutely does. And that is part of why I chunked the book into the chapters that I did because I wanted people to think about it as we're just going to have a savings conversation.

We're just going to have a conversation about their investments. We're just going to like thematic and not like we're going to do the whole big thing at once. Because even with my parents, among one of them is just absolutely not ready to like I think like in Nigeria culture we talk about people who like just come back over and over and over again and one of my parents is definitely like that day just absolutely don't want to hear it like they're probably going to live to 150 if they could you know and so in our conversations whenever we start to get to that place of like hey I stayed planning wheels you're like not ready yet okay do you know how old you are, but okay, that's, you know, I'm comfortable with what you're doing and I'm

comfortable with everything else that you're doing from a financial perspective. So that doesn't worry me. We're all competent children. Everyone can step up and help. Everybody's going to be okay. But I know, like, that is a trigger for them. They're just not ready to have that conversation. But one day, there will be, which is why we started talking about this five years ago, because in the next five or ten years, when they're ready, we would have built enough trust, would have built enough knowledge of each other, but they will know whatever, we're talking about whatever I'm suggesting, it's going to come from a place if I care about you

and I want you to have the best possible and support you in that way. Exactly. Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth there that I think you're so right that it has to be articulated in that way of like, I'm not doing this to control you or because you don't know what you're doing,

but because I care about you and I also know that at some point you might need my help because, you know, you're going to be older and I'm going to be younger, that's just unfortunately, like, the facts. Yep. And we might have to work through it. But I notice even with myself, like, I have children and when my husband and I were talking about, like, doing a will of, like, who would our children live in if we passed away?

Like, it is really hard to think about that stuff. And then to go and put it in writing, like, I have an aversion to that. And so I understand that feeling for sure. It's a difficult thought process. It is. It really is. And it's not a one and done, right? And this is why the state planning process is so big and complicated and why they have actual, you know, lawyers and financial professionals who can deal with that is that there's a massive psychological element to it. Nobody wants to come to terms with their mortality. So, no one is ready for that conversation yet, right? So in the book, we really talk about just starting softly, like Lisa's that you can use, like, to, how do you feel about this? What are some fun memories you have? What are things that you love that you think about? Oh, I definitely want, you know, to keep this in the family, et cetera.

And it's just like, like conversations to start with. We're not even putting anything down on paper yet. We're just discussing the joy and reminiscing about the life that, like, you have lived and what you want to do kind of moving forward. Also, with that, I have a friend who's a lawyer, and she always says that if you don't write things down, If you don't create a plan, the government will create one for you. So don't think you can avoid any of this by just not doing it.

It will go into probate. It will be whatever the government decides is what's going to happen to your property that you've worked out for your entire life. So if you care about your loved ones, if you care about or if you just care about having a deal with what happens with your stuff that you've worked for your whole life, you really should be stepping up and creating some of these documents and facing some of these harder kind of conversations with yourself. Yeah, it's so true that like that avoidance eventually you have to pay for it, right, or the people that love you and care about you. And I think even framing it, you know, in the sense of like legacy. And I love how you talked about like positive things that that can give you a lot of information on what your loved one wants. And you can even use that to like strategically tailor conversations to help them maintain those things or pass them down to future.

generations. Absolutely. Yeah. So the other one I want like population I wanted to talk about that I mentioned to at the beginning is like parents who are very irresponsible with money and are maybe even relying on you as like their bank. Yes. So this is about financial boundaries. And I was talking to somebody about this yesterday and I told them the story of a friend who lives in a different country, her mom was financially dependent to her to the point where it was egregious, like, it was just getting out of hand. And because she was reluctant to address her, mom lived in a different country, she lives in a different country, because it was getting out of hand.

Because it's exactly what you said earlier, you know, I raised you, I took care of you, you're this big successful person. Now, are you not going to take care of me, you know? Because she was so reluctant to have that conversation and set this boundary. suggest they know how to. A lot of people have relationships with their parents where they've never been able to quite set those boundaries adequately. Things escalated to the point where the relationship completely damaged.

Everything is like in this area, and they had to both fly into London from their respective cities to have an uncle mediate and help them fix things. And I said, you don't want to wait until you have to take international trips to sort this out. Financial boundaries are really important. And here's the deal. At some point, you're an adult enough to sit down and say, I'm an adult, right?

And so we need to get clearer about, let me be vulnerable and let me be honest with you. This is roughly what I make. You don't have to show exact numbers, but this is roughly what I make. I'm trying to buy a house in two years. The children I have to go to privacy because I live in a state where public school is not really an option for us. Or whatever is going on in your life, right? This is where we are. At the end of the day, this is how much I have for you.

this is how much I'm going to have for you moving forward until something in my financial situation changes. Now, let's discuss what that looks like for you. Do you want me to send it to you monthly or do you want to send it to you once a quarter? You can give people options within a set boundary. And so sometimes you have to have conversations that it's a bit more. This conversation is going to be awkward. So it's going to be hard, but it's going to save me from five years of terrible, awful feelings and then having to like, you know, escalate things to like degrees nobody really wants yeah totally i i love what you said because the boundary is so clear and you're offering options and saying like this is what i can do and i think

again like we talked about like the culture and the expectations are so loaded in a lot of this stuff and parents um who are maybe not very emotionally mature or who are a little manipulative can definitely weaponize those things right if you love me you would do this. I just need 20 more dollars. I just need this. And you start to get wrapped up into this, like, this is what it means to be a good son or daughter or family member. And I've also seen that dead spill into other aspects of that person's life and that person relationship. Right now, you know, the husband can't show up fully for his wife and for his children because he's dealing with and under this emotional burden of like my dad wants money all the time. And how do I have

that conversation and I'm so upset and I can't believe it and like he's just so upset about that it starts to spill into everything else and so it matters that you set as financial boundaries both for your sanity but for the health of other relationships outside of a relationship with your parent yep it's so true it ripples into every other area of life and ultimately like when you're saying yes to that you're having to say no to something else yeah totally and and I think any parent who like cuts their child off because they won't give them unlimited money. You know, that relationship was probably a little bit fractured already.

And I hope, you know, people listening to this that have been in that situation, like, you can't blame yourself for that being kind of the demise of the relationship. It's really hard. You can't out give. You can't over give. You can't give everything that you have to somebody who's not necessarily being reasonable, right? There's just no, there's, you can't, you can't sacrifice yourself entirely and expect that people who haven't appreciated and seen that sacrifice will understand that, right? Yeah.

So. Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to ask you about is like siblings. If you have multiple siblings that are all trying to give financial advice, how can someone navigate that when the advice is conflicting or different? I think it should be coordinating with your siblings where possible. It also depends on where you are in the hierarchy, right? Like, I'm the eldest, so I just naturally expect that everybody's going to fall in line. And they don't always do that, and I'm very shocked.

Like, what's going on there? But I think that, so in the book I gave this example of the siblings who wanted to talk to their parents about where they were in terms of retirement planning. And both had very different perspectives. the daughter just was curious, you know, where I want to make sure you're okay, how can I best support you? the son was like, I have a family. I want to make sure you're not going to need me. And so the conversations do I have in a little bit different, and that frustration started to like play out in the actual conversation.

So I think if you have siblings, it's good to align with them. And everyone get on the same page in terms of this is just what we're curious about. We just want to make sure that they're okay. Whatever your goals are together, just kind of align with that and then come as a united front to the parentage or have a designated speaker. or you don't want different conflicts and bits of advice. Yeah, that makes sense. And maybe even like it sounds like you're saying the siblings should get on the same page first.

Yeah, absolutely. Involving the parents in that. Absolutely. Yes. Because then you're a united front and it's one voice of this children talking to the parents. Right. Exactly. All right.

So let's end with like a little just recap process for everyone. let's say you just listen to this episode and you're feeling inspired to talk to your parents about money, walk me through, like, the steps that you think someone should follow. First of all is preparing yourself. So understand and there's money scripts, there's biases. I talk about some of that in the book, but just prepare yourself. That's the first thing. Understand what you want to get out of the conversation. Very important. And then once you know, kind of you've set the, that level playing field, prepare to actively listen. I give the analogy of it's sort of like

you and your parent are working on a painting, right? And they're standing out describing what they see and your job is kind of like take that down. And so you're asking questions. You're talking about like, is the sky deep blue, is it orange? Like tell me more about what you're envision and tell me more about where you are. So start by that prep, prepare to be active to actively listening. When you're actually in the conversation, give yourself grace. It's supposed to be hard. It will be difficult. So it's not you're not failing if it's difficult or hard or tension in the actual conversation if it's the very first time you guys are approaching this it might be a very general overview of like how do you think about money how are you thinking about um things moving forward i did things

that you're planning on doing just kind of like a broad sense of what their plans are and then in future conversations you might then start to unpeel the layers let's get deeper let's get deeper and then you'll get to a place where you've built enough trust and vulnerability with each other where you can then get the lay of the land where are things right now, right? So notice I'm not asking about bank accounts in the first conversation. You start with where you're trying to get to paint that picture. At some point among those conversations, you will be at a place where they will feel comfortable saying this is kind of where we are debt-wise, this is kind of where we are bank account-wise.

And then from there, you can start a solution together and create a plan together. And even within that plan, you also want to have that perspective of empathy and care and caution, right? So it's, oh, I think we could talk to a financial professional about this. Oh, I think that there's some great budgets and apps out there. Why don't I look through a couple of them and I'll give you some recommendations. Try it. If you don't like them, I can find other ones for you. Low pressure, but you're still positioning yourself as somebody who can help with the solution in there.

And then try and set up some sort of frequency of every now and then we'll come back and have conversations like this. You want to have those regular check-ins and that cadence so that you never feel under the pressure or you never feel surprised by, oh, they're going to lose the house or something like, you know, you want to set up that regular cadence. So that's kind of the overall flow. Prepare yourself, start softly, have those conversations, give yourself grace, and then set up regular check-ins. I love that. That's great. And is there an age that you think that people should start having this conversation at? I think that you should start young. There is no official age in my mind. You should be talking to your parents about their money when you're 20 and you're

trying to figure out your money. You should be talking to them about when you're 30 and you're freaking accelerating in the career space when you have children. As your life changes, your parents most likely have gone through the same stages of life that you had, it's a great opportunity every time something new happens in your life to open up these conversations. The earlier you start the more productive and the more prepared you're going to be down the line. Yeah, very true. I think there's going to be some people listening to this, like, oh my gosh, I'm so scared to start asking. These conversations are like my parents would be like, I'm not going to tell you about my money. You know, why are you asking about that? But maybe by them modeling, you know, them speaking about what they're doing, like you said, it will really open up the door for that conversation. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much. So I'd love if you could tell everyone where they can find your book, more of your work, et cetera.

Absolutely. So you can find the book. It's called How to Talk to Your Parents About Money on Amazon in the print and in the digital versions. You can find me on my website, Etiosa A.com. So that's E-T-I-N-O-S-A-A-D-com. And I'm also on Instagram, real estate with Eti. Yeah, those are the places where you can find me.

And I'm always up for a conversation about personal finances, the money side of things. So absolutely feel free to reach out. out. Well, thank you so much, Etios. I appreciate you coming on. The Calling Home podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified health care provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment relationship between you and Collin-Colm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on please see calling home's terms of service linked in the show notes below.