The Current - Controlling your money, so your money doesn’t control you

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Jessica Moorhouse says the way you manage — or mismanage — your money could have roots in your childhood, and it’s not just about willpower or responsible choices. The financial educator explores how to break those cycles in her book Everything But Money: The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom. 

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Budgeto's. It's much less expensive than the leading clown-based cereal. You just have to assemble it yourself. We save 50 cents on that purchase. So embarrassing. Mom is making us wear clothes from Goodwill. Bart, your penny pinching rampage has gone too far. Don't you think you've had enough fun? Last year, you spent $5,000 on donuts. I earned that money.

Just like for the Simpsons, money is a source of stress for many of us, and scrimping and saving isn't easy. Often, our spending habits and attitudes towards money stem back to our childhoods or even our ancestors. That's what Jessica Morehouse looks at in her new book. It's titled Everything But Money, The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom. Jessica Morehouse is a financial educator and the host of the More Money podcast. She's in Toronto. Good morning. Congratulations and a happy new year. Good morning and happy new year. Jessica, how relatable do you think that scene from The Simpsons is? Oh, it sounds like my childhood. There's definitely points in my

childhood where we had to shift grocery stores. I mean, I lived in hand-me-downs. Yeah, it's very relatable. Yeah. And why is it important to take stock of what you felt about money and what you learned about money as a kid? Yeah. So what I predominantly do is teach adults about money management and how to improve their financial lives. And I've been doing this for over a decade. And what I discovered, especially once I became a financial counselor and was working with people one on one was that we often think that our issues with money

are about money or our choices, and we should just be making better choices. Why do we keep on making mistakes? Well, the truth is, it's not because of necessarily a lack of finance. That could be one of your issues. But a lot of the people I deal with, that's not the problem. They have a decent income or they have an income. Or they think that they don't have willpower or there's a lack of financial literacy and usually those aren't the issues as well there's something deeper going on and so that's what I really want to investigate in my book everything but money was why are people in the stuck in these cycles when they've read all these personal finance books they listen to my podcast they're

doing the work to educate themselves so they can improve their financial lives, but they still don't know why they're overspending, or they're, you know, getting into more debt, or they're terrified to invest. Why is that? And so in order to get those answers, and then find solutions, you do have to kind of figure out what is your origin story? Where did these things all start? And they all start in childhood. Yeah. So we'll break down what you learn a little bit more. But I know you ask readers to sort of consider what their first memory about money is.

So what is yours? Yeah, I share this in the book. And it's funny, when I was writing that chapter, I actually really didn't know. So I kind of had to do the exercise myself. And pretty quickly, I got the memory of, oh, when I was four years old, I went to the grocery store with my mom, as I always did. And I loved doing that. I loved walking in the bulk food aisle and looking at all the candy. And I decided to steal a gumball because I didn't think it was that bad. I see adults popping a sample here and there into their mouths. What's the big deal? And so I did that. And then my mom eventually caught me and, you know, reprimanded me and said, you can't do that. That's stealing. That's wrong.

But the other kind of component that really stuck with me, it wasn't that just that stealing is wrong. And I have not stolen anything ever since I've been very, you been very afraid to do that ever since. It was the fact that she also kind of made me feel that we can't look like we don't have money in front of our peers, our community. That's shameful because we don't want to look poor. There's something kind of negative associated with that. And I've carried that since now. So really, ultimately, my first money memory was money equals shame or something shameful. And I've carried that for a long time. And that's predominantly the biggest emotion or biggest feeling that people that I talk to have is money and shame. And when I had a lot of interviews with people and even people in my

family and friends, they always had some sort of childhood memory that was connected to something like a shame or guilt or something kind of negative. And if that is the case, if that's something you're bringing to your adulthood, how does that inform how you perceive money? I mean, it really does impact it. For me, I just, I think, made money have more control over me instead of the reverse. We should be viewing money as a tool that's not good or bad. It's really what we do with it. But I think most of us come from a place where we think money is in control. It's dictating our decisions, our behaviors, our feelings in general. And so for me, carrying this shame from childhood, I was very careful with my money, which overall is a good thing. But also it prevented me from sometimes taking risks or

just feeling good about spending money. I still have issues when I'm like, I want to spend some money and buy myself something. And always in the back of my head, I have this person talk to me saying, but do you need it? Can you afford it? Is this really something that you should be doing? connect our feelings with money and start at that, you know, origin point, we can then start making connections on how do we feel about money today? And how are those feelings dictating our decisions? And you, you know, I just got a DM this morning from someone who started reading my book and said this was the first time that they made that connection for themselves and got like that

light bulb moment because often the personal finance advice you see out there is we'll just stop spending money that you you know don't have or just stop doing this just it's not that simple we have these emotions these really big feelings and a bunch of other stuff internally that are make making us act in a way that sometimes is not to our benefit but actually to our detriment. But some of what you said, to me, it assumes that, you know, if you're going to feel good about spending money and not ashamed that you've spent too much, but some of that assumes that you have some money to start with, right? Absolutely. And that's the book really is focused on when it's not a financial issue, when, you know, we have the, you know, the income, the means, and it's really just, but we keep on overspending or we keep on not putting anything into savings, and you can't figure out, why do I keep doing

that? This is the book that's going to address that. But when you're dealing with a, I don't have enough income, or my expenses are exceeding my income, or there's just lack of money, that's a whole different other issue. I do address that a little bit in the book when we specifically talk about uh when you do want to find some professional help you know with a therapist or even with you know financial professional how do we find that money in our budget because these things aren't cheap so i do have some um solutions for that but yeah they're two very different uh issues okay so what do you find

for for those people who have some money and they're wondering how to stop overspending? What is the sort of most common misconception or false belief people have about the money they do have? Yeah, so one thing that I came across is often, again, the advice out there is that you're doing something wrong. Something's wrong with you. And I feel like we actually should be asking ourselves a different question to find out what is really going on so I can change my behaviors and actions moving forward, which is, well, instead of, you know, what are you not doing? It's what happened to you?

What happened for you to, you know, have this kind of blueprint that isn't serving you, but it's the only guide you've been using up until that point? We need to figure out what that blueprint is. And those things that kind of inform our blueprint are, how were we raised? How was money spoken about in our household? What were some of the things that we adopted from our parents, whether that was directly or indirectly? And then there's also some kind of bigger things, some deeper, more uncomfortable things for people to really address, which is, do you have some trauma, some childhood trauma, even trauma in your adulthood, things that have affected you that you, you know, if you have

trauma, and it's hasn't been healed, hasn't been dealt with, you carry that with you in your body, in your mind forever until you really deal with it. And so that can inform how you spend money. If something happens, you're out and about, you get triggered, sometimes you'll use money as a method to self-soothe yourself so you can get back into a place of connection and calmness and peace. And I see that with a lot of people when they get riled up, when they get really emotional, they use money as that mechanism to kind of get back to a place that they feel comfortable in. you know, goals about anything, but really money can sometimes be where you peg your hopes and dreams. So at the start of the year, what would you suggest? How do people go into this year if they're trying to meet some new financial goal? I would say instead of going into this year and once again saying, I want to earn this amount of money or save this amount of money or have this

net worth by the end of the year, which again are fine goals. If you have never been able to successfully reach any of your past financial goals, and you're just repeating the cycle, maybe it's about having a different goal, which is I want to have a better relationship with money. And I want to do the work this year on on, you know, healing the things that need to be healed, and deconstructing my current money story and rewriting a new one. And so that's what my book ultimately helps you do is let's do that inner work so we then can do that outer work. And just lastly, before we go, parents are like, oh dear, now I've got to worry about I'm giving the wrong message to my kids. One tip for how you can make sure your kids don't walk away

with a money problem in their minds? You know what? Hey, parents, I know it's the hardest job in the world, so give yourself a break, parents, I know it's the hardest job in the world. So, you know, give yourself a break, but just be careful how you discuss money. Remember, kids are sponges. They know everything that you say, even if you don't know that they're in the room. So try to speak about money in a way

that's free of shame and judgment and show them that, no, it can be a positive thing, but ultimately it's, you have to make, you know, kind of the right decisions and make sure that, you, it can be a positive thing, but ultimately you have to make kind of the right decisions and make sure that you know you're in control of money. Money is not in control of you. Okay. Jessica Morehouse, thank you so much for this. Thanks so much. Jessica Morehouse is the author of the new book,

Everything But Money, The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.