More Money Podcast - 377 From Never Enough to MoneyZen - Manisha Thakor, CFA, CFP and Author of MoneyZen

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Have we lost sight of what's really important in life and are we too focused on hustling our way to riches? For many of us, the answer is yes, and thanks to Manisha Thakor and her new book , we can start learning how to get back to a place of zen. I'm so excited to have Manisha on the show because her book is honestly right up my alley (as you may have noticed with some of the themes of the podcast lately). In this episode, she helps break down some of the personal, cultural, and societal forces that exist that have led many of us to falsely believe we can never have or be enough, and what steps we can take to embrace pure joy and have a healthier relationship with money. Manisha has worked in the financial services industry for more than 30 years, with an emphasis on women's economic empowerment and financial well-being. In addition to MoneyZen, she has also co-authored two other personal finance books: and . Although she's a CFA, CFP and has her MBA from Harvard Business School, Manisha's work now focuses on helping people of all ages to balance their financial health with their emotional wealth. For full episode show notes visit: https://jessicamoorhouse.com/377 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. This is episode 377, and I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. And I have Manisha Thakur on the show, author of Money Zen, a book that when I discovered it, when it came into my, I mean, I get requests to be on the show. When it came into my inbox, I'm like, oh, this is exactly, it it's like, did the stars align? Like this is exactly the book for me, but also very in alignment with what I'm working on with my own book. So I'm thrilled to have Manisha on the show. She has worked in financial services for more than 30 years with an emphasis on women's economic empowerment and financial well-being. She's also a nationally recognized thought leader in this space and has been featured in a wide range of publications,

including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR, PBS, CNN, Real Simple, Women's Health, just to name a few. And prior to writing her book, Money Zen, she co-authored two personal finance books for women in their 20s and 30s. We'll link to those in the show notes also so you can check them out. And today her work really focuses on helping people of all ages to balance financial health and emotional wealth. And she's earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, her BA from Wellesley College, and is both a chartered financial analyst and a certified financial planner. I don't know, you know, I've talked about this a little bit on the show. I'm in the process of getting my CFP. It is a long journey, is a long journey. It is really hard to get your CFP and your CFA, especially the CFA. That's one

of the hardest designations in the financial field to get. So this is a big deal, big accomplishment. And she splits her time between Portland, Oregon and rural Maine, two places I would love to also split my time between. But she recently released her book, Money's End, Escape the Cult of Never Enough and Reclaim Your Life. And this is such an important thing to talk about the idea of enoughness, because everything externally is telling you, you do not have enough, get more. And as I've been, you know, learning through my own life experience and just doing research, that is no way to live. We cannot live in this place of more, more, more forever. It's going to make you unhappy. It's going to get you broke. It's not a good place to live. So we have a lot of really exciting,

interesting things to talk about in this episode. So I cannot wait. So let's get to that interview. But before I get to that interview, I want to share a little bit more information about my online course that you may not even know about, but it's been around for almost three years called Wealth Building Blueprint for Canadians. It's a course I built specifically with you Canadian listeners in mind who want to learn how to do passive investing like I've been talking about for years on the show. If you want to get rich slowly, invest for the long term, you don't want to day trade or dabble in something speculative like cryptocurrency or some hot stocks that you find online. You just want to make sure you can retire one day or save enough for buying a home. And this course can help

you. It is specifically about all the fundamentals you need to know about investing as a home. And this course can help you. It is specifically about all the fundamentals you need to know about investing as a Canadian. But then I also show you how to build a strategic investment plan and then how to invest in your own portfolio by way of either using a robo-advisor or doing it on your own from scratch. There's lots of worksheets and calculators and spreadsheets that you will not find anywhere else on the internet, hence why I had to build them myself, but also get lifetime access as well as access to the private Facebook group, my monthly Q&A sessions for students, a private email you can contact me with, and you also get a private one-on-one session with me when you finish the course as well. There are so many benefits to the course, so I highly recommend going to jessicamorehouse.com slash course to find more information and to apply. Again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash course to learn more and to apply. Welcome, Anisha, to the More Money Podcast. I'm excited to have you on the show. Jessica, it's such an honor to be here. Thank you.

You're welcome. So you have a brand new book out called Money Zen Escape the Cult of Never Enough and Reclaim Your Life. This really intrigued me once it hit my inbox because that is something that I talk a lot about on the show. I talk to people about all the time is this scarcity mindset, this idea that most of us have likely due to a bunch of factors that we'll talk about that I know are in your book that we don't have enough or we didn't have enough or there isn't enough for all of us. And you know, if you have that mindset, it's obviously going to drive a lot of your financial decision making for the rest of time unless you are, you know, more aware of it and conscious of it. So I want to kind of start just first before we really,

really dive in because I'm so interested in this topic is, tell me a little bit about yourself. You have a ridiculous resume. You have several designations. You're a CFA. You're a CFP. You have an MBA. With all of that and all of your experience in the financial industry and as an educator and writer, why did you really want to focus on this aspect? Instead of doing, you know, there's a million prescriptive how-to finance books, why did you want to have the focus on this idea that we're all kind of in this cult of never enough? So I have worked in financial services for 30 years, and I've actually written two personal finance primers for young women in their 20s and 30s. And in doing that, I really, truly believed if I could just give the factual information to people that I would transform their financial lives. And what I came to learn, not only with the young women I

encountered with the financial literacy work that I do around that age group, but even in my professional life where I work with large institutions and corporations and so forth, and I'm meeting C-suite executives, what I'm realizing is you may know the solutions to your money problems, but if you have not addressed your underlying money worries, it almost doesn't matter. You will not get the full benefit of having that financial health. And that's what really got me intrigued, broadly speaking. And then when I had kind of a come to Jesus moment myself in realizing that I actually, despite all of that thinking, found myself in the same place, trapped in a never enough mindset. So I had to research it. And I was fascinated with what I found. And I thought,

I got to share this. Yeah, well, I'm curious to learn a little bit more about your your kind of experience and the moment that you discovered, oh, my, this is my issue too. What did you discover when you were doing some introspection about your own, I guess, relationship with money I was about 23, I've been fairly cognizant that my relationship with money and work is toxic. By that I mean, I was living my life to optimize the equation self worth equals net worth. A big part of that probably came because, you know, my early work was on Wall Street and kind of high finance type environments. But a lot of it was social. And I really believe that how much I had, how much I was earning was a measure of who I was as a person. And it really started to have negative effects across the totality of my life, whether it was getting divorced or losing friends or missing out on special events or waking up at age 50 and realized I was a human doing, not a human being. So I knew, but it wasn't until a very pivotal meeting that I had with a prospective client, where I just had tears streaming down my face. And we could talk about that a little more if

you'd like, where it just hit me that I have got to do something. I have got to understand how I landed in this place and how to get out. Okay, so you mentioned something right there, which is something I haven't heard of, but I actually think that's a great way to describe it. Human doing versus human being. And that really strikes me just because I feel like often we do value ourselves or value others based on their output, their productivity. What have you accomplished? Instead of who you actually are as a person, do you want to kind of share a little bit more about how you were able to kind of, you know, label those things when you were, you know, doing your research and interviewing experts for your book?

It was fascinating to me. And I think, you know, at the surface level, I think most of us are aware that, you know, if you meet someone new in the United States, at least, one of the first three questions will be, what do you do? And it's, you know, and we even ask young children this, what do you want to be when you grow up? And we don't mean be from a standpoint of your character or your values. We mean, what profession do you want to follow? And what I came to realize was that so indoctrinated into our culture is this belief that if we do certain things, we will then have certain things, and then we will be happy. And it's sort of this convoluted way of arriving at happiness, because you can, I mean, doing and having, that's endless. Where's

the end line on that? When do you get to the part where you get to be happy? And so that was one of the, well, there are a number of very striking things that came to hit me. But if I had to summarize one that I feel is fairly universal, it's that subtle, oftentimes not even conscious belief that so many of us have that that's the right formula to have life satisfaction to get happy. Yeah. I mean, when you honestly look at some of the kind of top performers, whether they are, you know, athletes or entrepreneurs or just like really wealthy people, it's interesting to really kind of take a look and do a deep dive on what is driving them. And ultimately, I think it is comes down to that that question of self-worth versus net worth. And the more I think it is comes down to that, that question of self worth versus

net worth. And the more I have, or the the more accolades I have, the more credentials I have, etc. The more people, the more I will feel enough, the more you know, people will value me. And unfortunately, it's not kind of, you know, untrue, because we do kind of value people like that. So I'm curious when, even though this is, you know, we don't want to live in this society where, you know, you are more valuable, the more you have, or the more accomplishments you've made, we really should value people based on, are you a good person? You know, are you doing good in this world? How do we make a shift, not just mindset wise individually, but as kind of a greater society? I know that's

a big question, but have you kind of tried to kind of figure out what what is the answer to this? I think the answer to this is understanding that we arrived as a society and as individuals in this place, as a result of a variety of different factors. And I've clumped them into four, personal, cultural, societal, and evolutionary, biological. And I think the more each of us individually understand the series of circumstances that led us to fall into never a never enough mindset then in our personal interactions the way we think about ourselves the way we treat other people but also the way we we engage with businesses and products and the way in which businesses act

because businesses are composed of humans people and. And you mentioned something that I think is really powerful. When you talk to just mind-blowingly successful people, studies have shown, and I'm somewhat shocked, but then also not shocked because I think it's true in so many of our lives that many, many of these people are driven by what I'll call small T traumas. Things that happened in their formative years. I mean, our brains don't fully develop until we're 25.

Things that happen in their formative years that drive them into a scarcity mindset or I'm not good enough or I have to prove myself to others. And, you know, in my case, that was very true. And on the surface, what my small T trauma was will look ridiculously small. But I grew up in a small town in the state of Indiana, and I'm mixed race, and I was kind of chubby and had Coke bottle glasses and a skin condition called psoriasis, which left me with visible scaly patches on my skin. And I just didn't fit in. The cool kids made fun of me and called me things like thunder thighs and cow butt. And it hurt. Now, mind you, this is all going on between kind of fourth grade and sixth grade. Yet, honest to goodness, I think it drove me until probably age 45. I used to not even be able to talk about it in my 30s, 20s and 30s without tearing up. And so what happened to me, the link with money and success and work became,

I am going to, I am going to earn enough money so that I will never be trapped in a situation where people hurt me like that again. And that's an understandable thought, but it crawls deep into your psyche, into your body, and so many of us, that it can keep driving you from a somewhat healthy reaction into a very toxic relationship. And I think that's how we end up. So many of us, whether we, you know, end up being these super high flying one percenters or we're the rest of us who just become consumed and trapped in this 24-7 treadmill.

Small T traumas cannot be emphasized enough. And that probably was my biggest insight in the book about that driving factor. And often, often it's so subconscious. It's not something that we know and we're thinking about daily. I think so many people can relate to that. I mean, so many people have experienced something that you carry for the rest of your life, unless you are able to become aware of it. I think the complicated thing, and maybe this is something you recognize too, because you again, you have a great resume, you're very successful to then take a look at what has been the driving force for you to accomplish all of these things.

But then also, you know, at the end of the day, because of that kind of traumatic experience, you were able to accomplish a lot of good things. So it's kind of like, is this a bad thing? Is this a good thing? You know, it's hard to kind of let go of something that has been a driving force to a path that will look at you now. Is it have you ever kind of, like, that's kind of, I think that probably the conflict for a lot of people is like, well, this is, I mean, I don't mind having these bad things that happened to me, because look at where I am now. Yeah, just it's hard, right? Because on you know, if I look at my own circumstances, and I want to emphasize this was just one of the factors that drove me. But those painful recollections drove me to become on the outside what one would consider

successful. I rose very high in my career. I earned a really solid income. I was able to practice all the kind of financial advice that you share and give and, you know, find myself in a place at age 50 where I had the ability to retire if I wanted to, or take, you know, if I didn't want to retire, which I don't want to retire, I'm too young, to be able to do any work I want to simply because I want to, and I enjoy it, not because I need to earn a certain amount of money. So on one hand, you can look at that and be like, wow, Manisha, you nailed it.

But on the other hand, when I kind of woke up to this realization that I had hit this point of financial health, I'll call it, I realized I had zero emotional wealth. I had no, I mean, I was a shell of a person. I had no hobbies, no real close friends. I'd missed family events that in retrospect, I look back and think, what kind of human being misses things like my grandmother's funeral? You know, things that I thought were not important enough, or that I felt I was too busy to go do because I was chasing after these things that I thought were going to make me safe. And so it's a double edged sword. And so I'm certainly not telling people not to try and succeed, but rather to broaden your definition of what it means to

have a rich life. And the definition I like to use is it's the combination of financial health and emotional wealth. And you have to build both. And together, they turbocharge your life satisfaction. But one in the absence of the other, I mean, you can have the most amazingly emotionally wealthy life. But if you have no money, now, that's a deep source of stress and problems. And you're not going to have money then either. So what you're kind of saying, and this makes a lot of sense, because I think a lot of people who experience something traumatic or, you know, some difficulties, especially growing up, they have this idea that, OK, fine, in adulthood, then I'm going to be successful. I'm going to accumulate a lot of money. I'm going to get rich. That is going to counteract all of the kind of trauma and difficulties that I experienced.

It is going to be the solution to the problem and make everything OK. And I think a lot of people still have this idea that money is the solution to all of life's problems. It can solve a lot of problems, just not all of them. And what you're saying is you can reach that level of success that you've been working your whole life towards, you reach that kind of peak, and then be at the top of the mountain and look down. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm here alone. I'm unhappy. My demons are still here. It didn't solve everything. And I thought it would. And I don't know, it's like, I there's this, you know, kind of concept of like, wouldn't you rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy? It's like, I'd rather not be unhappy. So I guess that's just like, you know, just a reminder. It's not just about having the money there. It's deeper than that. It's so much deeper. And the whole

reason I wrote Money Zen is I wanted to give people a blueprint to do exactly what you just said, be happy. And what I found is certainly small T traumas can can affect you. But then there are other circumstances that even if you didn't have small T traumas can can affect you. But then there are other circumstances that even if you didn't have small t traumas can put your head in the same vice. For example, when I think about societal influences, I call it counterfeit financial culture, where we're exposed to images and people around us living lives that they can't technically afford because they are doing it on debt. Or it's, you know, on TV, this is one of the most glaring examples where I'm watching a police or a medical or legal drama. And, you know, there might be a paralegal on a legal drama. And she's

got the most amazingly, you know, I'm going to pick on suits, Donna, who's one of my favorite characters on suits. And she's got she's beautifully coiffed. Her hair is never frizzy, even though theoretically, the show is taking place in a humid city. Her clothes are exquisite. And it's not just the styling. I mean, it's the fabric. You can see it's been custom tailored and her shoes. And she's going out for expensive drinks after work. And I actually, one of the things I did in the book was I added up what it would cost to live and groom at that level and then compared it to the average income of a paralegal. And you literally would have to earn 30 to 50% more

to live that way. So the media is showing us constantly these lifestyles that don't match the incomes that the people living those lifestyles would be earning in the jobs that they're purportedly doing. And then you layer on to that, the fact that with easy access to debt, you know, it used to be when, you know, you lived in a certain neighborhood, because it wasn't super easy to get a mortgage, you had to put, you know, 20% or more down. And so you and your neighbors lived a fairly similar life. But now we can live well beyond our means with credit cards. And it's so easy to look at our neighbors and say, well, if they can do that, why can't I do that? And then social media tops

it all off, right? Because when you see the family photo from vacation, everybody's like kumbaya on the beach, and there are no photos of the kids having the food fight or mom and dad giving each other the silent treatment. So, you know, societally, we have this pressure that encourages us if that happens to be a wound to keep valuing money, success, status. But even if we don't have wounds, that alone can create a toxic, painful mindset. Yeah, I mean, I guess the idea and really going back to what we're discussing at the beginning of this interview was the idea of there's never enough. If you are stuck in the cycle of believing, you know, really wrapped into like Instagram and social media and just the expectations of the neighbors, they've got this

beautiful house and I mean, just on my street alone, it seems like everyone is always doing renovations. I'm like, how do they afford like this is an expensive time with high interest rates? How are you affording renovations when your mortgage is up? It's it's you can probably feel like no matter how much you earn, how much you save, there's literally never enough because there's always some new product. There's always, oh, you know, you did a renovation five years ago. It's outdated. Now you got to do it again. It's this constant, you know, kind of like you said, hamster wheel. You can never get off and you can never stop earning money or you can never have enough money because there's always something to spend money on in order to then kind of feel validated and valued and feeling like you are enough, right? Precisely. And the thing, renovations is a classic example,

the finish line never ends. The very common example is like you start renovating either the kitchen or the bathroom. And the next thing you know, you're like adding on a sunroom, and then you're adding on a home gym, and then you're adding on a home theater. And you know, where is the finish line when you are in an environment of seeing media images, seeing your neighbors do things? And then that brings me to the third factor that can drive this never enough mindset, which is this pervasive cultural idealization in a way of what's come to be known as hustle culture. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, it's not just in the US. I mean, this happens in a wide variety of countries overseas as well, where we are literally taught that our careers are our callings, and they are careers are who we are, not going back to the beginning of our conversation, our character. You know, it's not that you are a kind person who loves your family, enjoys knitting, makes great brownies and volunteers. That's not your worth. Your worth is the, you know, the title on your business card. And somehow, there's a writer for The Atlantic, Derek Thompson, and he calls it, I think he's the first person to

coin this term, workism, that we're all, we're worshiping at the altar of workism. So if you feel this way, my point with this third factor is, yeah, you're being pushed, you're being, you're being pushed into You're being pushed into this to do it. You're rewarded for this kind of behavior. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because it's definitely I feel like the hustle culture has evolved, still exists, but it's very different. Like in my 20s, it really was like work long hours, get up before. I mean, there still is a lot of that crap, get up before am if you're not getting up at 4am and going to the gym, then putting in your 12 hours

and hustling, then who are you? Who are you? There's another thing that I've been seeing just constantly on my social media, this idea of working really hard. So then you can set up a lifestyle where you can only you only have to work kind of like the four hour work week, you only have to work, you know, four hours a week. And then you can just enjoy your life in I don't know, like Costa Rica or something like that. They never tell you how to do any of that. But it's also this idea that, oh, you're working a nine to five, you're an idiot, you're doing something wrong, you should be like me living in Costa Rica, you know, and just spending my day surfing with no context of how that actually works. And so you kind of feel like you're between the either you have to work all the time, or you're working, you know, the average amount, you're a chump, you should be working

two hours a week, you're you're not doing it right. And you're like, Okay, I literally don't know which to pick. And you and again, going back to the feeling of not feeling worthy, or you're just doing it wrong, or, you know, you're gonna just be caught into a weird cycle that you don't know how to get out of. Well, and the irony is, you know, as you so rightly pointed out that these images, we don't get the details behind how they were done. So, you know, maybe somebody is in Costa Rica working four hours a week or four hours a day because they are living in the most sparse conditions and they've really pared down. They've made a very conscious choice to trade things for this experience. That would be healthy. One way to do it. But often what

happens is people are doing this by incurring debt. And so that lifestyle that we're seeing, it's going to catch up down the road when you have to pay that off. Now, on the flip side, there's a movement, FIRE, Financial Independence Retire Early, where people who espouse to this philosophy save an awful lot early on so that they are able to do this. It's a conscious decision. It's a lifestyle decision. And generally speaking, the process of doing that high level of savings is bringing joy. And so there's joy in the process of reaching this able to live the life I want to live. But when we just see it in the absence of context, we don't know which one of those routes someone has taken. And it can make us feel really bad

about ourselves. There's one kind of thing when looking at some notes about things to discuss, the idea, and I haven't heard this before, but I love it, the idea of achieving less as the real path to lasting success. We always hear more, more, more, do more, be more, buy more, achieve more, earn more, et cetera, et cetera. Why? And usually when we think about less, it's always in a negative context, like you have less, you are less, you know, it's never with a good, healthy lens. So what is this idea of achieving less? Because I like it, I've scaled back a lot in terms of some of my goals, or, you know, expectations I put on myself,

and I'm significantly happier, because I realized I you know, expectations I put on myself. And I'm significantly happier because I realized I was putting way too much pressure on myself and was kind of losing track on why do I, where do these expectations come from? And when I scaled back and was kind of doing a little bit less and kind of just letting myself relax and enjoy the moment, I was happier. And it also kind of, in some areas of my life, opened up doors to new opportunities. And, you know, kind of, honestly, not that I really believe in manifestation, but it definitely allowed for a different perspective. And, you know, I wasn't necessarily like a failure for choosing a different path. Do you want to kind of speak to what achieving less

means and how it could be maybe a healthy thing to integrate into your lifestyle? Oh, absolutely. This is sort of the culmination of, you know, it's one of the last topics I talk about in the book. And what I love about it is it's a tool to enable you to find your enough. Because when you're constantly doing and adding more and more and more obligations, commitments, stuff, goals to your life, you can't find your enough. It's so crowded in your head and physically and logistically, perhaps in your life. And one thing that I noticed when I was working on early drafts of the book and running it by various colleagues and friends was of all the concepts I talk about in the book, achieve less was the one that got the strongest reactions. And I don't mean in a positive way. People were really like, I don't want to achieve that. I don't want to, you know, and that doesn't appeal to me. And it really was a lightning rod concept. And yet, what you described, you know, this,

you know, I'm with you, I'm the term manifestation, I'm always a little worried about using it. But really, what is happening is that you now have more space. So you are identifying the activities that make you happier and saying no to the activities that don't, whether those are work and paid activities or outside personal pursuits. And so you are making better decisions with your limited resource of time. And that's how you end up having what feels like these serendipitous opportunities pop up. Well, they couldn't pop up before because you either didn't have time to notice they were there or you didn't have time to hone the skills that would be needed for those opportunities to pop up because you were trying to develop skills in too many areas, or you didn't have time to take advantage of something

that came out of the blue, like a friend saying, you know, hey, I was going to go on this trip with my boyfriend, and now he has some other commitment. Do you want to come with me? So that's what I think about achieving less, but it's a very scary concept unless you've gone through these other steps of understanding what's driving you to this place. And, you know, maybe one last concept we could talk about would be the fourth factor, which is the evolutionary biological factors, because I think those play into why the words achieve less are such a lightning rod. I mean, I can totally understand where people would hear the word less or achieving less and feel, you know, a certain reaction because that is counterintuitive to everything that we've learned. So when you say kind of, you know, some of these kind of human, you know, behaviors,

what do you mean? What are some of these things that we should be aware of? One of the very fascinating things as I was researching was that the path led me to talk to evolutionary biologists who focus on why humans do what they do from a biological standpoint. And so one of the examples that I talk about in the book is how modern life as we know it today is, you know, pick your number, 300, 400 years old. For the vast majority of humans' life on this planet, we lived very close to the land. And we lived with the seasons. And there were seasons of plenty, and there were seasons of scarcity. And so our brain was hardwired during seasons of plenty to gather as much as we could to make it through the periods of scarcity. And our brains have not evolved in that very core area to fully process a world in which

we have nonstop in developed countries, plenty on steroids. And so, you know, physically, we're hardwired, grab more, grab more. And so achieving less, trying to attract less, trying to bring in less, that just from a completely subconscious amygdala standpoint can be terrifying. Another one is that we, you know, when we lived on the land, we could meet in Maslow's hierarchy of the needs, our very core needs, food, shelter, you know, our transportation was walking or a horse. And nowadays, you know, somebody threw you and I into the woods. I bet you anything we'd have a pretty hard time finding ourselves food and shelter for a prolonged period of time. And that's because what we use in modern society to meet those basic needs is money. Money is how we buy food,

shelter, transportation. And so, you know, from a survivalist standpoint, we're hardwired to want to meet those basic needs and money is one of the tools. There are other tools, but money is one of them. And so when you say achieve less, not only are you speaking to the ego, to societal issues, to cultural issues, to personal small t trauma drivers, but you're also speaking to, you know, the core of your fight or flight center of your brain. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people don't realize how much these things that are there deep inside us from, you know, 1000s and and thousands of years are just based off of feeling are we, you know, we need to survive and do we feel threatened, even in like a modern day context, you know, some of the threats don't make any sense. Of course, there's going to be enough, there is a lot of data to show that there is enough resources on this planet to sustain everyone. And yet we are, for whatever reason, I'd say,

especially in Canada and America with our kind of capitalist society built how it is, it's everyone for themselves. And everyone is just like survival mode, get out of my way, I need to make sure that I get my cut because we've kind of moved away from more ancient civilizations of community and helping each other. And it's hard. I mean, that's a big shift. I don't know how we're gonna ever get back to that, which I'm like, I kind of wish we were more community based and taking care of each other. You know, you always hear that saying, oh, it takes a village to raise a child. I'm like, who is this village? Like, there's no villages anymore. No one is like you are hiring, you know, people or you

were just struggling to make it on your own. There's no village to help you anymore. You are bringing up such an important point because there are big structural issues behind this. In a lot of capitalist societies, not all, but in a lot, there just are not social safety nets. And so, of course, in the absence of knowing that you are going to have access to health care, access to education, access to funding and retirement, where a very small portion of people control a very large portion of the wealth. And if that can be redistributed in various different ways, if our cultural priorities shift, I think there are a couple of examples, the Scandinavian countries in particular, where if you look at the bell curve of earnings, it's so much tighter than what we see here. There is a very strong emphasis on the community versus the I, and there are robust social safety nets. And, you know, as a result, you see more of an emphasis on building up the emotional wealth component of your life in a lot of the

Scandinavian countries, because your financial health is not under constant threat. And financial wealth, like really trying to maximize it is, you know, for what? Because, you know, it's more clear when you're able to not come out of the gate worrying about massive student loan debt and credit cards that you've run up and jobs that you may get laid off from, you know, these days via email sometimes even, you know, there's like no sense, there's no sense of safety. And we don't have community in the same way. I'm, you know, there's like no sense, there's no sense of safety. And we don't have community in the same way. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm half Indian. And, you know, one of the things my I have several cousins, but my uncle, one of my uncles has three kids in particular. And, you know, between them, they've had medical degrees and PhDs and amazing jobs at tech companies, but they all have children. And so at various points in their careers, they and their spouses have literally moved in with

my aunt and uncle. And that's how they've had child care. They've literally had multi generational community. And then the Indian community, because they've cultivated it, it's not like all Indians everywhere have this, I certainly don't. But they've cultivated a really tight community of friends. And so when somebody falls on a difficult time, there are people there to step in and help. And broadly speaking, we're not encouraged to cultivate because it's what you said. It's, you know, everyone out for themselves, rugged individualism. If you need help from other people, that makes you weak. Yes. When you're like, man, I love the idea of having, you know, if I wanted to have a family to get that kind of support that you really don't see in a lot of families in North America when there's so many benefits, not just financially, but like you've talked

about emotionally and, you know, just for even like the kids to be able to have that really close relationship with their grandparents or their aunts and uncles and family. I think it's a beautiful thing. But in our capitalist society, you know, if someone has to move back home, we're like, oh, what happened? As if it's a beautiful thing. But in our capitalist society, you know, if someone has to move back home, we're like, oh, what happened as if it's a bad thing, when really, we should just be thinking about things differently. But it's hard to get away from, I guess, you know, our worries about how people perceive us or how society perceives us, which is obviously what your book is trying to dismantle so we can think differently,

shift our life and who cares what other people think? Because you may realize everyone's just doing the same thing. They could probably also get a lot out of your book, too. I think, you know, my toxic paradigm was believing that my self-worth was my net worth that came from a variety of different factors. Everybody's, you know, if a person is not experiencing money's end, which I would define as calm confidence and clarity about both the specific tactical role that money plays in your life and what you need to do to manage that, but also your relationship to money and having a

positive relationship. I feel like many, many, many of us have an algorithm or an equation in our head that is not a healthy one. And if we can flip that switch, and it's different for each of us, if we can flip that and say, you know what? I want to live my life to optimize the equation financial health plus emotional wealth equals money zen, where my goal is to be financially healthy. Because as we said earlier, having no money is a huge problem. But the goal is not to have, you know, as much money as you possibly can make at the expense of everything else, where you are putting your time and resources and your enjoyment in both of those buckets, health, financial health, and emotional wealth. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's the magic recipe. And people can learn more by grabbing a copy of your book Money Zen before I let you go, Manisha. Where can people, you know, if they want to kind of learn more about you,s there. And you can find links to preorder the book. And it's available in all the places, bookstores. You typically buy books. But I want to also mention that sort of a fun, slightly lighthearted, but also slightly serious way to assess where you

are on that spectrum of financial health to emotional wealth and what steps might help you shift towards where you want to be. So for fun, MoneyZenQuiz.com. And for more info on the book, moneyzen.com. Amazing. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about some of my favorite topics when it comes about money, which is really the underbelly of money. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much. And that was episode 377 with Manisha Thakur. Make sure to check her out and her book at moneyzen.com. You can also find her on Instagram at Manisha Thakur and on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it, and Facebook and LinkedIn. I'm going to link to everything so you can easily find her in the show notes for this episode. JessicaMorehouse.com slash 377 is where you can find

that and more information about her. And I will be sharing more information on how you can enter to win a copy of her book, but also copies of other books that have been featured on the podcast in just a moment. Do you want to figure out where your money is going? Do you want to organize your finances once and for all? Do you want to feel less anxious about your money? Well, I have a great tool for you, my collection of budget spreadsheets, which you can find at jessicamorehouse.com slash shop. These new and improved budget spreadsheets have helped thousands of people over the years. And these are honestly the budget spreadsheets that me and my husband still use today. They come in Google Sheets and Excel. They also come with a comprehensive video tutorial to

show you exactly how it works. And they're very easy to use. Not only that, I've got versions for pretty much any scenario. So if you're an employee, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you are self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. If you're in a couple and one of you is an employee and one of you is self-employed, I've got a budget spreadsheet for that. I've got seven different budget spreadsheets for any kind of situation. So no matter what's going on in your life and your income, I've got a budget spreadsheet for you. So if you want to take action and see some progress with your finances, this is one really easy step that you can take right after listening to this episode. Just go to jessicamoorehouse.com

slash shop, find the right budget spreadsheet for you, and then start making some moves that future you will be really, really thankful for. All right, so if you want to win a copy of her book, Money Zen, but also enter to win a copy of one of the books that has been featured on the show so far, we've got Peter Atwater's The Confidence Map, Eleanor Tucker's Thanks for Sharing, and Gabe Dunn's Bad with Money. Just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest. They are all featured on there and I will be adding more books. We've got, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six more books, at least. And I still have, I haven't booked all my guests at this moment as I'm recording this,

but I only have three more that I need to book, which is very exciting. And yeah, there's lots of books that will be available up for grabs. So go to jessicamorehouse.com slash contest to find out all the books I'm giving away so far and to win and check back weekly for what new book is up for grabs. And then what I do is I then draw the winners at the end of the season. And so that'll be probably likely in January that I will be giving those books away. But then that'll be a nice, you know, new year, new you kind of thing, which is exactly why we were putting my book out in January 2025. So we can kind of, you know, be part of that wave of new year, new you. Here's my book about trauma and, you know, behavior and all these things about money.

Yeah, book's going. It's going. It's going. Thank you so much for asking. It is going. And I can't wait for this month to end. Because once it's over, that means I will only have two chapters left. And those two chapters, in my mind, like one of them, super easy. The other one, it's gonna be just enjoyable. It's gonna be really enjoyable to write. So yeah, it's coming along. It's coming along. But you know, besides book writing, which is always happening, I also have been very active on Instagram and YouTube. So make sure to check those out. You can find me on Instagram at Jessica I Morehouse. And also the podcast has a Instagram account at

More Money Podcast. YouTube is just under my name, Jessica Morehouse. So that's where you can find me there. And that's pretty much what I've been doing. I mean, I've been doing some other things, but nothing really exciting to share. Nothing that you would care about. So I'm not really gonna, you know, bother you with it, really. Yeah, so I guess that is it for me. Thank you so much for listening. A big shout out to my podcast editor, Matt Rideout, as always. And let's give you a little idea of who is going to be on the show next week. I've got Ayo Oodani, who is not only the author of the new book, The Immigrant View, and co-hosts a podcast of the exact same name, but he is also a city councillor for Kitchener Ward 5. If you live in Ontario or Kitchener, you may already know him. You may already recognize

his name. And we have a really great conversation about how, as an immigrant himself, how to navigate immigrating to Canada specifically and how to navigate the workplace when you come from a very different place. He immigrated to Kitchener in 2016 from Nigeria. And it was, you know, he learned a lot. And he wants to make sure that others who are immigrating, but also companies who are, you know, welcoming immigrants into their workforce, you know, we're working together to make, you know, really welcoming, safe spaces for everybody. And so it's a really great conversation that we're going to have next week. So that is it for me. Thanks so much for listening, and I will see you back here with a fresh new episode next Wednesday. this podcast is distributed by the women in media podcast network

find out more at women in media.network