She's On The Money - Is Math Anxiety Making You Bad At Money?

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Are you scared of math? Are numbers just not your thing? Well this does not mean you're automatically bad at money! If left unaddressed, math anxiety can end up shaping decisions you make further down the track and you might bury you head in the sand when it comes to your money. On today's episode we unpack math anxiety, how it plays out and what you can do about it. Acknowledgement of Country By Natarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements. The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's On The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.  Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN - 321649 27708,  AFSL - 451289.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, my name is Natasha Nabanunga-Bamblett. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta, Kernai, Wolperi and Awadjeri woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on Awadjeri country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through. As this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow. Let's get into it. She's on the money.

She's on the money. Hello and welcome to She's On The Money, the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. Now, Vi, I ask, have you ever found yourself saying something along the lines of, I'm not a maths person, I'm bad at money, I'm scared of maths even? Yeah, I think I've said all of those things. I think I'm going to diagnose you with maths anxiety. Oh my gosh, thank you for that diagnosis. I can now live my life free with a diagnosis that makes sense.

Perfect. It doesn't mean that you're bad at money necessarily, but today we're going to be looking at it. I've been diagnosed with ADHD legitimately and that does make me bad with money so well that's probably a whole episode in itself. It's a whole episode in itself and so the maths anxiety I'm sure isn't doing you any favours but here we go why are we talking about this today V? I think it is a very important topic to talk about yeah that's why no that makes sense but honestly talking about it I feel like this topic has come from the conversations I've been having in our DMs with our community recently because so many of you just feel so overwhelmed when you look at your budget or when you look at money or when

you're trying to work out your bank account and I feel like so many times the crux of it when we actually have the conversation isn't that you're worried about using software it's not about the budget it's just that you feel so overwhelmed with the numbers of it and the reality is finance and being good at money has nothing to do with numbers and everything to do with psychology because we all have a calculator on our phone, right? Like we all can use a calculator because they made us buy those expensive ones when we went to school and carry them around as though, oh, if you don't use this calculator, how are you going to live in your life? Not knowing that an iPhone would literally have way more power than literally anything that came out of the 90s. But I digress.

I think it's just so important to understand that so many of us have maths anxiety and number that anxiety and that can actually play into us assuming that we'll be terrible at money when in reality, it's got nothing to do with that. And just because you have decided not to, you know, study or work in something that is maths heavy doesn't mean that you don't know what you're talking about. Like at the end of the day, I think we can all wrap our heads around one plus one equals two and I, my friend, will teach you the rest. Like I've got the rest. I'll teach you about investing. I'll teach you it in a way that makes sense for you. But at the end of the day, most of us bury our head in the sand when it comes to money because honestly, it just

feels overwhelming and uninspiring. And so many of us will tell ourselves the narrative like, oh, I've never been good at numbers. Oh, I've never been good at money. I've never been good at all of these things. It's because it's about psychology. Think about your friends who are really good at saving back. Are they mathematicians? No, they probably just have their head screwed on and they know what their goals are. You think about the people who have, you know, really high incomes that aren't good at money. So we don't need cause and tan and sin. Oh, you remember all of those? You're so smart you did. Thank you. You don't actually need those because they have nothing to do with you creating financial security and getting your budget and

cash flow sorted and putting yourself in the best possible position. So I want to talk about it today because genuinely maths is not money and money is not maths. Money is psychology. All right. So I guess like on the back of that, what does math anxiety actually look like for people panic overwhelm that pit in your stomach or you know that lump in your throat anxiety in general it shows up when you're asked to solve a maths problem on the spot i get that anxiety when someone asks me what my times tables are because i was never good at rote learning so i just didn't learn them properly yolo sometimes i work in my best friend's coffee cart right yeah yeah in safety beach you guys might know or calculating the change i say you know this is five dollars seventy

someone gives me $10 and then another dollar and says, will that help? No, no. I don't know if that will help. I don't know if this helps. I don't know if you're trying to trick me. Well, technically that would help because I can see where they're going with that. I can see where they're going. Because it was $5.70 and they wanted a $5 note back. Totally. And then they wanted a few cents. Yeah. On the spot. No, it's not helpful. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming. You should just get a calculator that you put beside the register. I think I'll have to do that. That would really help. I think it's really important as well to just like talk about this as a normal thing, because how many of us experience this, but then feel like if we

talked about it, we'd come across as silly or dumb or like not an intelligent human being. Yeah. Why would you know how to do something if it's not part of your curriculum? Why would you know how to consistently be good at money and budgeting if we've never learned before? Bec, if I sent you into doctor surgery and said, you're the doctor today, how could you do that job? Well, I'd give it a go. You'd give it a go.

But I wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. You'd just be making it up. I'd be a tiny baby in there. Exactly. If somebody sent me into their job as a potter, I'd like walk in and be like, I don't know how to make pots. I don't know how to do this.

I think it looks sexy. Like I've always wanted to do, you know, like that scene out of Ghost where you can like create a big vase and it's a sensual experience. I'd mess it up in 42 seconds, you know. I don't know how to do that because I've had no practice in it. But you know how you get good at that? You practice in it. If we haven't practiced money, how are you going to be good at it?

Exactly right. Before we go any further though, I do want to acknowledge that there is a genuine learning disability that makes it very difficult. It's like dyslexia, but it's called dyscalculia. And it's when you just really struggle to comprehend numbers. Today, we're not talking about that. We are talking about maths anxiety, which is more of a psychological hurdle than a neurological one. And I think if you're suffering from that, I can't help you in that aspect because I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or working in that space. But what I do talk about is money and maths anxiety as a generalized concept that we struggle with. So I don't want people to listen to this and be like, oh, V, did you know that's a real thing? Like I do,

but we're not talking about that. We're talking about people like you, Bec, who just get really overwhelmed with it. But I know you have the power to do it and I know you're smart enough and good enough and it's not hard. And if I give you the right push, like you will actually flourish, right? Like you'll be fine. But that's like everybody who's listening, right? Like I know you can do this because if I can do it, you can do it. And I know you think that I'm relatively intelligent. That's just good editing. That's just good editing, you know? It's true, says the person sitting with her 24-7. That's definitely true. But I feel like maths anxiety can convince you that you're bad at maths or you're bad at money and anything that involves numbers. And I just

think it's really important to know that there is legitimate research, Bec, that tells us that you being bad at numbers has literally nothing to do with your actual ability and everything to do with the fact that you haven't learned how to do it or you haven't been taught properly. That actually makes a lot of sense. Pretty sexy. So has there been any studies into the prevalence of maths anxiety and how it actually plays out for people? Obviously, yes. Like I'm not going to come not well connected. I'm going to come with a proof, baby. So the 2017 Westpac numeracy study found that maths anxiety affects as many as a third of adults and children in Australia. One very large study, which was

conducted in the UK in 2019, so a little bit more recent, found that 77% of children with high levels of maths anxiety achieved average to high grades in the subject. Oh. Isn't that good? Yeah. Like, you're doing really well, but you're anxious. Yeah, right. Maybe they're just like me and they're just anxious about everything. So in 2012, a USA study explored what was happening in the brain of children between the age of seven to nine while they solved a series of different maths problems. In kids with money anxiety, scans showed that the brain regions associated with processing negative emotions were hyperactive while those that play a role in mathematical reasoning and working memory

were completely unreactive. Oh, that's very interesting. So that means that there is literally a link between money anxiety and negative emotions. So no wonder we don't want to touch it. Yeah, that makes sense. No wonder you run away from it. Who wants to experience negative emotions? Yeah, that makes sense. The maths is mathing right now. The maths is actually mathing right now. The same study, Bec, also found that the effects were unique to the children with maths anxiety and had nothing to do with general anxiety, intelligence or reading ability. That's good to know. So it's just maths anxiety. So what I have determined from this, it's a real thing. It's a real thing. It's a real thing. We're talking a lot of numbers here. I say let's go

little quick break and see you guys on the other side. We are back in this episode, I feel like is a happy, snappy little episode that hopefully puts a pep in your step when it comes to maths anxiety and feeling overwhelmed by numbers. I feel like so many of us experience this and I just want to grab you and hug you and be like, it's not you, it's everyone. You're not alone. Like we all suck at maths. Like I fumble at the checkout sometimes when people are like, oh, it's 50 bucks. I go, oh my god have I even got that like I feel like we all go through this but what we should be doing is just normalizing these conversations because we can learn anything we put our minds to and I know this is like the worst quote ever dumber people have done better things like do you know

what I mean like you look at it like there are so many people in this world who have less intelligence but they just put themselves out there I see absolutely killing it at their game or their whatever like it's got nothing to do with intelligence yes in fact if you want like my favorite book recommendation of the moment. It's a book called Grit by Angela Duckworth. Is it about how ducks are worthy too? No, it's not about how ducks are worthy too. We are. You are killing me, ducks are worthy. We like Angela Duckworth. I mean,

we're canceling JK Rattling's, but that is okay. But essentially she wrote this book and it's about grit. And it is this really cool book about how grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals. And one way I guess to think about grit is it's not talent. It's not intelligence. It's actually about how the most successful people in this world aren't the smartest and maybe they aren't the most talented, but they're the ones that get up and try again. And that's like that grit. I think it was 2013, she did a TED talk and that TED talk is amazing. If you don't want to read the book, just look up grit, the power of passion and perseverance. And that TED talk is amazing. It like makes you feel so empowered, I suppose, because it's really about this power

that you have of perseverance and actually standing up and just going, you know what, I'm just going to try again, because that's what creates the most successful people in the entire world. Nothing to do with intelligence. So if you're telling yourself this narrative of I'm not smart enough or I'm not good enough, it actually has nothing to do with that. So when I say, dumber people have done better things, that's what I mean, because they've probably got that grit. And I feel like if anyone was to compliment me, I would love it if people said, she's real gritty. You seem like you've read that book. When you were explaining that book to me,

I was like, yeah, you've read it and it shows, babe. It's honestly a really good book about, I guess, just the power of perseverance because, you know, I'm not silly. I am relatively intelligent. Let's be honest. I'm a bloody nerd, but like, I'm not the most intelligent person in the entire world. I'm not the smartest. I'm not the funniest. I'm not the anything. I'm not even the best at finance. I'm not the best podcaster. I'm not anything. Debatable. Well, I know, but I'm genuinely not. And I'm okay with that because that means there's heaps of people I can learn from, but also being gritty means I will continue to make content. I will continue to do this stuff. And like, you can do

that too. And I just don't want people to feel less than because they aren't, you know, they're feeling, oh, I wasn't that smart at school. We all have narratives of teachers telling us that we're not good enough or that we aren't going to add up to anything or that, you know, that's the wrong career choice. But like, it doesn't matter what your capability is or what your intelligence is or even what talent you have. You could be the best singer in the entire world, but you don't have the confidence. So nobody ever finds that out. Right. Right. Like you could be the most intelligent person in the entire world, but you're, you know, so hard on yourself that you never get to capitalize on the fact that you're the most intelligent person in the entire world.

yeah yeah I totally agree with that so I just think it's so smart and so I guess you know we can go back into the questions that you've got for me but I'm just so passionate about this topic because I don't want you to be stressed I want you to be empowered I want to have the best days ever and I know that you can do it because I can do it Beck can do it like you just need the education yep yep I agree with that so I guess like prevention is the best cure I want to know how does it all develop so we can kind of like nip it in the bud and see the signs early It's obviously super common for maths anxiety to start when you're in primary school, because that's when you start learning about maths. With some studies finding that it can

actually start in kids as young as six years old. They're just bambinis still. Tiny babies. You're like grade one-er. You shouldn't feel like a baby. Five or six. Oh my gosh, no. I feel like so many of us, as I said before, have had bad teachers or, you know, unsupportive environments, but all of that can be changed. Like, I'm so passionate about this and we really should do another episode on money stories. so if you go all the way back to season one episode one that was my first podcast it was

called money stories and the reason it was my first podcast is because that's what I'm most passionate about like we can't change the past we can't change the environments we had the people that supported us we can't change you know the education we were given the privilege that we had but what we can do is change the future like you have no control over what's happened to you and that's why we shouldn't crucify ourselves based on our past mistakes or based on what we did or didn't have access to. But there are so many amazing people in our community who have proved to us that you can just change your money story by choice. I'm not saying it's easy, but you can change your money story by choice. And that is such a beautiful thing. And I just think

that if you did have somebody who wasn't the most supportive or the best environment, like you can become good at something if you choose to be good at it. It's epic. Maybe you inherited a whole heap of baggage from your parents. We obviously have a money Diaries episode where I always ask, can you tell us a little bit more about your money story? One, because it's my favorite question, but two, it's so pervy and it's so beautiful that we've got this community that want to share with us. But we talk to people about the baggage they inherit from their parents or their circumstances or traumatic events they've been through. Or we even talk to people about their privilege. Like we have talked to people who have been given it

on a silver platter, done nothing with it. Like it's wild what your money story is made up of. I'm obsessed with it. Other things, Bec, like gender stereotypes are also really major sources of negative beliefs about money and maths, especially in girls and women who tend to experience maths anxiety way more than boys do, even though they perform just as well in the subject. Like girls aren't inherently worse at maths. No. But it's not a girly topic. I'm not a finance bro. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad that we're veering away from that narrative. And hopefully that will not be a common stat in the future. I agree.

But isn't it wild? It's also kind of like, I guess this is another left field part of the conversation. Just even the way that, you know, here at She's On The Money, we create content is illustrated in the media. Like anytime anything happens, it's like Victoria Devine and it's always fluffy and it's always like her and her community of girls. But like if somebody who is male did the same stuff that we did, it would be looked at very, very differently somehow because I am a female who cares about her nails and her hair and wants to

have you know rainbow technicolor nails and I want to get my eyelash extensions and I really enjoy those things that means that I'm probably not as good at money or finance as you are right like there's just this inherent underlying idea that I am not going to be as good at that and it's wild when I meet people in the wild it's wild when I meet people and they're like oh what do you do they go I've got a podcast and they go cute what's your real job I go okay cool like I also own a mortgage broking company they're like oh really do you just work from home like it's always undermined it's always underplayed because there's this stereotype that I don't fit of somebody who might own a successful finance company yeah that is a real shame you know what I don't even care

like I could not care less it's actually comical like oh no sometimes I work from home but my team And they work from an office. Yeah. And they kind of like bat their eyes and they're like, what, a team? It doesn't compute. What? What? It just, it's my favorite thing in the entire world.

But I just think that gender stereotypes are obviously this massive source of anxiety and they shouldn't be because we're not less than. Yeah. We've just been fed this patriarchal idea that women shouldn't be good at things. When in reality, we know that women are better investors than men. There is so much research out there to say that if we just divide the genders and look at who's a better investor, women are. Because we take more time, more energy to understand the circumstances. We are less likely to be responsive. We're more likely to think about

the circumstances. It makes us better at investing. I like that. That's a strong statement. And I'm going to agree with having absolutely no knowledge on that. But women are more likely to tell themselves that they're not good at it because they don't know anything about it. They're not smart enough that is a real shame and it's fake fake news fake news everyone we're cancelling it because you're a really smart girl and i believe in you yeah but essentially all of these things that we're talking about today are linked to your story and are linked to the narrative that you tell yourself as an adult and they actually don't reflect your ability at all yeah you could actually be amazing at maths and you're thinking about this going oh wow that's another part of my

life like i'm not so good at comprehension or i'm not good at you know making friends or i'm not good at whatever it is. Like you can be if you want to be. I love that. You can be if you want to be. How do we address it? It's not a life sentence. Like you aren't stuck with mass anxiety forever. To be honest, I really think it's about education because most of the time we feel anxious about something or we're scared about something or we don't want to engage in something or we're just a little bit apprehensive because we don't know enough about the circumstance, right? Like I get social anxiety and a lot of the time the thing that alleviates that social anxiety is if I get told who's going to be there where it is I'm far less anxious if I'm going somewhere I've

already been because you already know the circumstances and basically that's education right so like education makes me feel more comfortable same with maths you usually are going to feel overwhelmed or like anxious about something if you don't have enough information about that but if I sat you down and gave you all the information that you needed I'm not saying amounts of anxiety is going anywhere, but I promise it will be much less because you feel a bit more empowered in that circumstance. So I guess the first step is to challenge your personal beliefs about yourself and your abilities and maybe ask yourself, what are you good at? And I promise there are going to be things like there's so much to this

where I know that if you are anxious or you don't have enough confidence, you just go, oh, I don't want to have too many tickets on myself. Well, that's really lame. But honestly, having a low opinion of yourself, it's not modest. It's not sexy. It's actually self-destruction. And I think so many times we try to be modest and go, oh, like, I don't want to, you know, look like I'm pumping up my own tires. Why? It's destructive to pretend you're not as good at things as you are. I mean, there's obviously the flip side of that where you have a God complex and you think you're amazing at absolutely everything. And like watching those train wrecks of the auditions on Australian Idol, which are one of my favourite things in the entire

world, right? I do love those. Where you're just like, that's a lot. Thank God for God complex sometimes. Yeah, thank God because it provides me with a lot of entertainment. But at the end of the day, you saying what you're good at is actually just really constructive and really helpful and helps you leverage into other parts of your life. You might be really good at conversations. You might be really good at one or another thing. And like, that's not a bad thing to say, oh, I'm not good at that. Or I am good at that. It's actually a really good thing to just be real with yourself because we can't learn and grow if we don't know where we're learning and growing from. So take, for example, like sport or writing. How do you react when you make a mistake doing

something that you're really confident with? Do you go, oh my God, whatever. That doesn't make sense. If you're really good at sport, Bec, and you like, you know, we're playing tennis and you're really, really good at tennis and you miss a swing, you're probably just going to shrug it off and try again, right? Because you're actually really good at that thing. But if you were just learning tennis for the very first time and you miss a swing, you'd be like, I can't do this. I suck. This isn't good. Like I'm the worst at this. I'm no good. You haven't had enough practice. I'm like, that's basically it. But when you make a mistake with maths, maybe you really punish yourself with negative affirmations or panic, right? Of course I got it wrong. I'm so bad at

this. Is that helpful for anybody involved? Yeah. You kind of think like, I mustn't have the brain for this, but I'm sure you do. Exactly. And there's this psychological concept called reframing. And I learned a lot about it when I was studying, but you can Google it reframing and like lots of examples about reframing to help you. But essentially, instead of saying something like, oh, I'm not a maths person, or I'm just really bad with money. You could say, oh, I'm just experiencing some maths anxieties, It's just making me feel a little bit overwhelmed. Like that's a much better situation to be in.

Maybe practicing some math skills in a fun, I don't know if it can be fun. It's fun for me. But maybe just like no stress environment is probably better. Like have you done Sudoku or Noodle? I do like those. That could be really fun to get you back into numbers and then slowly start to do things. I think that there's this misconception that you need to dive right in and take every single step. if budgeting or looking at your money situation is a bit overwhelming, Bec?

Do you know what my advice is? Don't do it. Don't do it. How about we just put that to the side? How about we start with just looking at your payslip? How much money comes into your bank account each week? Did you know that? Do you want me to tell you?

No, I don't want you to tell me. But if you know that number, you're in a better position than you were yesterday when you didn't know the exact amount. And maybe that's all we do today. That's fine. Maybe tomorrow we can talk about how much you're spending on your groceries. Do you know? Maybe you don't.

Maybe we can work that out. Maybe we can have a look at what your groceries look like each and every single week. And you go, oh, jeez, I didn't even know it was that much. Oh, Bec, is there anything you want to change in that? Oh, yeah, I just need to maybe cut back on how many cheesecakes I'm buying or something. I do buy a lot of cheesecakes. You do. But it's one of those things that I think you don't need to go boots and all into this.

just take it slowly because the slower you take it, the more it's actually going to absorb. It's why we don't do anything in intensives. At uni, I got offered to do intensive subjects. Like, you know where they like take an entire semester, like 12 weeks of content and they like pump it into you in four days. So I did that to get rid of like two subjects that I really wanted to get rid of. And I was like, sweet, I'll just do this over the Christmas break. I'll sign up for two intensives. Could not tell you what I learned. Couldn't because you know what? I crammed all that information so I could do the test at the end of the day, tick it off, go home, have probably three glasses of wine, go back the next day, do the same thing. All right. You know, do my

little group project that we did over four days. Submit that. Breathe a sigh of relief. Wait for my result and go far out. Glad that's over. Yeah. What did I learn? Literally nothing because I didn't absorb anything, which is why we need to do it in small chunks over a long period of time with things that matter to you, not with things that don't matter to you. If you're just starting your budgeting journey or just starting your money journey, why are we talking about compound interest? Victoria does think it's real sexy. But is that the best place to start? Right. How about we just start with the small things? Because the small things are the foundation of financial literacy. And if we can create a really solid foundation, if you like, you know, wiggle at

the top or you're swaying and you're not sure, you're not going to fall very far because the foundations are really solid. So I think that we just need to take small steps and little steps and make sure that the system works for you. So automatic payments might work for you. For other people, they might not work. For some people, having a really good budget spreadsheet like the one in our Budget and Cashflow Masterclass that I do makes a lot of sense. For other people, they're like, I don't want that. I just want an app that does everything for me. Educate yourself, listen to She's On The Money, go into our Facebook. It's the most supportive place in the entire world. It makes my heart sing every single day. Ask questions and normalize this

discussion because to me, it is so important to be having money conversations because when I talk about money, it puts you and my friends in a better position. And then when you talk about money, it kind of spreads. Yeah. It's like, do you remember like the phone trees when you were younger? Phone trees. Yeah. They like had it on Legally Blonde where like I call three people and then those three people portray people. Like, that's what we're going to do with financial literacy. We're going to do a Legally Blonde Flown Tree. Let's try it.

Let's challenge ourselves. I think we're done. I think that's a really good place to leave it. I think so too. Legally Blonde's a very good movie. Go and listen to it. Go and listen to it. Go and watch it.

Go and watch it. I'm such a podcaster. And you can listen to it if you want to. No, just go watch it. I'm sure there's an audio version. All right, have a good day. Love you. Have fun, guys.

We'll see you on Friday. Bye. Bye. the advice shared on she's on the money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances she's on the money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision if you do choose to buy a financial product read the pds tmd and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs. Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money

Sherpa PTY LTD ABN 321 649 27708 AFSL 451 289.