The Life Of Bryony - 47. Money & Mental Health: Shame, Spending, and Self-Worth with Clare Seal

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Money—it’s something we all have to deal with, yet so many of us feel ashamed, overwhelmed, or anxious about it. Whether it’s debt, emotional spending, or the way we tie our self-worth to financial success, these struggles can have a profound effect on our mental health. This week, I’m joined by Clare Seal, finance writer, speaker, and author, who became a leading voice in financial well-being after launching her Instagram account My Frugal Year, where she shared her journey out of £27,000 worth of personal debt. Together, we discuss: 💰 Why money remains one of our biggest taboos. 😨 How financial stress impacts mental health—and vice versa. 🛍️ Emotional spending, the ‘ADHD tax,’ and why many of us sabotage ourselves financially. 🔄 How to break out of shame cycles and build a healthier relationship with money. Whether you’ve ever felt out of control with money or just want confidence around finances, this episode is for you. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU 🗣 Got a question or a story to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB. 💬 Use the WhatsApp shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB. 📧 Prefer email? Drop us a line at [e-mail]. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need to hear it—it really helps! Bryony xx USEFUL LINKS If you’re struggling with debt or financial stress, these resources can help: 🔹 StepChange Debt Charity – Free, expert debt advice and solutions: 👉 https://www.stepchange.org 🔹 National Debtline – Free and independent debt advice: 👉 https://www.nationaldebtline.org CREDITS 🎙 Presenter: Bryony Gordon 🎙 Guest: Clare Seal 🎧 Content Producer: Jonathan O’Sullivan 🎥 Audio & Video Editor: Luke Shelley 📢 Executive Producer: Mike Wooller A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Life of Briny, how much is financial stress affecting your mental health? I'm joined by Claire Seale, finance writer and author, to talk about shame, emotional spending and why so many of us tie our self-worth to money. You're never, ever, ever going to run out of things to buy. You'll buy the thing, it'll be replaced by something else that you desperately want to buy. And you won't ever get to the point where you're like, oh, that's it. And I've got enough stuff now actually. I'm fine. I'm happy. You kind of have to decide that for yourself. Claire became a leading voice in financial wellbeing after starting My Frugal Year, an Instagram

account where she anonymously chaired her journey out of £27,000 worth of personal debt. My chat with Claire Seale coming up right after this. Producer Jonathan, how much money do you earn? Well, let's go straight in. Straight into the finances. I said to you just before we hit record here, why don't we do a fun thing that might go super viral on the internet where we swap phones and I'll show you mine if you show me yours. What, my bank balance? Yeah, I just think it'd be good for TikTok. That makes me feel unwell.

But like, I think that's what you get to in your conversation with Claire is the fact that we're all so super embarrassed about stuff like that. We would never do that. Yeah. Yeah. Would you prefer to show me your boobs to your bank account? My boobs.

Isn't that... look how fast you answered. Yeah, easily, easily. Like, much rather. I'd much rather talk about boobs and all sorts of things. I'd much rather talk about alcoholism. I'd much rather talk about boobs and all sorts of things. I'd much rather talk about alcoholism. I'd much rather talk about just all sorts of sexual shame

than money, my bank balance. And actually that comes from a sort of like, like as I say, and I've never spoken about this before actually out loud, talking to Claire is the first time I've kind of even mentioned it, was that I have these memories from my childhood of kind of financial chaos. And that sort of shame, that shame about money just gets passed down the generations. When I was in my 20s, quite often I would

get myself into financial situations where the bailiffs would be turning up in my adulthood as well. Really? Yeah. I've never really spoken about that. I mean, I think I have. I've written about it, certainly in my first book, Wrong Nickers. But yeah, it was like payday loans, all sorts of things that I, you know, now as a 44 year old woman, kind of shudder to think of, like living in that much financial chaos

is like absolutely horrifying to me, you know. But, you know, what we discuss in this episode is how, if you're not taught this stuff in childhood, it takes a long time to learn it. And often, like at most things, you have to learn through making lots of mistakes. Yeah. So you know that is not a situation I find myself in now today as a 44 year old. Yeah. You know yeah like talking frankly I felt a lot of shame about money but it's all felt so tied into my addiction and it's not necessarily that I haven't had it, it's that I've just handled

it really badly. Yeah to feed addictions Yeah, you know self-worth as well around money and having it that was touched on as well Yeah, I mean that's a really interesting thing that I think I You know like which people don't think about which I talked about was that whole thing of you know Not thinking you deserve money. Yeah, and then subconsciously actually blowing it as a self-sabotage. Yeah, getting rid of it. It's like it's come into my account, I need to get rid of it. You know, you hear about alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous and all those different ones, you know, cocaine anonymous and Al-Anon and all of that. But there are like 12-step fellowships for people who have problems with money. So there's one called debtors anonymous. Oh, that's great. Yeah, there's

like, they're so, you know, this is like a whole world. Yeah. Because as Claire says in the episode, we've all got to deal with money every day. All of us. Yeah. Like, life, that is life is centered around it. Yeah. But like, we all have to eat.

Yeah, 100 percent. There's no opting out of money. Is that what you're saying, Bernie Gordon? Bring back bartering. If I ran the world, everyone would just have all they needed. Is that communism? I have no solution, alternative solution to capitalism, but I wish I did, Jonathan. I wish I did.

Between us, by the end of this podcast series, we'll have a solution to capitalism. Listen, if anyone listening has the solution to late stage capitalism, please do drop us a line. Details are in the show notes. Details are in the show notes. We would love to share it with the rest of the world. For a price. If you're invested in what's been said so far, why not hit subscribe and spend your time wisely with me every week.

Claire, welcome to the podcast. Explain to the listener what it is that you do. They might know you better on Instagram as at myfrugalyear. Yeah, so that was my handle for years. My account was anonymous when I first started it and I basically started it because I was in like 27 grand's worth of credit card debt. I had no house, no assets, nothing. My salary was £27,500 at that time. So it was basically like a full year's pre-tax salary of credit card debt. And I started it anonymously, very arbitrary name. It was like a real spur of the moment thing. I was just like, well, this is how I'll get out of this situation. So a bit like some people will set up renovation accounts to show you the progress of their

home renovation. You basically had created a debt renovation account to show people the progress of you eroding your debt. Yeah, exactly. And it was really, really motivating. So I actually, I ditched that handle at a point last year and just, I'm just glassy all on there now. It felt like quite a good line in the sand to move on, but it was so helpful for a while. And I sort of expected that what would happen would be, I would set it up, I would post all these numbers, I'd get like told off, get some tough love, people would shout at me if I bought too many lattes and I would like hold myself accountable that way. I had so much shame, I was so angry

with myself. But what actually happened was that I got messages from loads of people who were either in the same position or had been there. I think the way that I was talking about it in terms of like the way that it was making me feel was sort of resonating with people quite a lot and you know these days there's so much financial content out there like good bad and everything in between but back then it was still I was one of the only people who was talking about it this was like back in 2019 yeah which doesn't sound like it was that long ago but it was pre-COVID and it is long ago. But yeah, so I sort of, it was cathartic for me and it was sort of, I treated it like a journal or like a blog, but over time it just, it like grew into something totally

above and beyond anything that I'd really imagined that it would be. And it became, you know, a new like career for me. So. What was your career when you were in 27,000 pounds worth of debt? Oh, I was the brand manager for Homeware's company. And that was like part of the problem was Instagram culture. And the fact that I was working for this interiors brand,

we were renting and I was like, oh, like maybe if I just buy another couple of scatter cushions, I'll feel like this is mine. I had never earned very much money. Neither me nor my husband had ever had a particularly good salary. I got pregnant at 25 when I was earning 16 grand a year, got married, had another baby, all of these really big life milestones. And I hadn't ever considered what the cost of them would be. Because I think that's like a really big chip that's missing from our education is like, how are you going to afford all of this stuff? And I just wasn't engaged with it at all.

How to manage finances. Yeah. This is the fascinating thing because, as I said, it's the thing we are told growing up, we mustn't talk about money, you know, and it's seen as we were talking, you know, I was to producer Jonathan earlier, I was about to tell him what my wage was and I thought I can't do that. That's outrageous. You can't talk about this stuff. And when people do talk about earning money, or they talk about being successful, or making money, people are like, oh, that's a bit much. But then the flip side is when we don't have money, and we know actively in debt to people the shame around that. It's really interesting because also the correlation between money and mental health is huge. Be it that if

you suffer from a mental illness you are more likely to have problems with money and if you have no money if you are in poverty you are more likely to suffer problems with money and if you have no money, if you are in poverty, you are more likely to suffer from mental illness. But also it is so often financial mismanagement is a symptom of being in a mental illness and I know that for me a lot of my 20s and 30s were a really quick learning process in how little I knew about money, about the value not just of myself, but also of just things and the way I lived our life. It was all such a reflection of it.

My first memory as a child was hiding behind the sofa with my mum because someone was banging on the door and I thought it was like a monster come to murder us but I realise now it was a bailiff. Yeah. Right. And I just that sort of slight financial chaos which I think is now when I speak about it to people and you know when I talk about it to my mom and she feels all this shame about it. But I was like, but it happens to people and we need to talk about it. I'm 44, Claire, you know, that I am able to live my life kind of debt free, whatever you might call that, because I have a mortgage that is visible from space. Yeah. So I'm not debt free.

You know what I mean? But like, yeah, it's taken me this long to get to a stage where I'm able to kind of even just do like an in and out. What are my outgoings? What am I, you know, and I find that fascinating. And I'm sort of admitting that here, not to kind of look like I'm some sort of, you know, I'm probably open myself up to sort of privilege or whatever. But it's, it's, it's just, there is none of that, you know, academic in our, there is none of that in our academic, in our curriculum and it becomes a huge source of shame for people. Yeah and I think, you know, you're talking about your experience from childhood, lots

of people like the stats that say that most of us have our like ideas and attitudes towards money pretty well shaped by the time that we're seven. And then every experience that you have while you're growing up, if you look back and then compare it to like your own journey with money as an adult, normally it just makes so much sense. We've all got like our own sort of map of the world when it comes to money. You either like taught about it or you weren't. If your parents didn't really know about it then how could they teach you about it? So quite often this thing like compounds throughout generations as well.

But you were saying about like the difference of links between mental health and money management and it is just a cycle and it can turn into a bit of a spiral of just like you feel rubbish, so you avoid your finances, you spend more, and then that gives you a bit of a lift for a moment, but then you have to face the consequences, so that all comes crashing down, then you feel worse, whether that's like more anxious or more depressed, and then you're looking for a lift again. So it can really, really spiral.

This is so interesting. There are so many layers to this conversation about the sort of living in a society that constantly wants us to consume. So if you go on social media, it's very difficult to have a sort of an interaction on social media where you're just scrolling, where you aren't bombarded by ads for things.

Impossible. Buy this, get that, do, and then you can literally press a button and then if you can't afford to pay for it now, you can always buy now, pay later, partner, all of that kind of stuff, which was not an option when I was a kid. The thing about buying our pay later is that you can make the decision to take out credit to essentially take on debt just in that moment, whereas you might not be like, oh, I really like that dress. I'll just go and apply for a credit card so that I can buy it. But you can apply and get credit in the moment. So again, it's another bit

of friction that's taken out of the process, which is really convenient, but I think sometimes it's just made way too easy for us. But then what's so interesting though is what you're getting at, Claire, is that it's made really easy for us. Because when you talk about when you when you talk about having a an annual wage of £27,000, and then manage you to get into £27,000 of credit card debt, the natural thing is like, how are we allowed to do that? Yeah, you know, like there should be a system whereby banks are going, No, no, that doesn't feel tenable to me. But actually, we live in a society that makes it really, really easy to get into debt, right? That wants us to get into debt.

Yeah, it's probably enough for our economy. And that then wants us to blame ourselves when it happens. Exactly. And that's what I'm interested in getting into here. And that's what you're so good at sort of nailing. I actually would love to go through those three sort of sections of society which I'm sure most of our listeners will fall into one of them. Yeah. So the first one is people who get in touch with you, their wages are not keeping up with the cost of living crisis on and they simply cannot afford, you cannot budget your way out of a low weight.

So that's the first group, right? So we're gonna go through all these bits. The second group are, and I suspect there's quite a lot of, which is people who are stuck in the sort of cycle of shopping addiction, right? And the shame of that. And then the third group is the people who are suffering from what you call the ADHD tax.

But it also is that sort of financial mismanagement because of mental health. Yeah. I'm sure actually the second and third group are sort of... There's lots of crossover. But there also might be people that fit into all three groups at the same time. Definitely. So let's go through each group. That first group, the people who are, who can't, you can't budget your way out of the

cost of living crisis. What is your advice to them though? Because you are, what would you say to anyone who is like, the numbers just don't add up for me. Obviously it's really important to meet that with a lot of empathy and just like really reiterate to people that there are sort of two places that something can exist, right, within your control and outside of your control. And if what you're describing is stuff that's not within your control, then how could it be your fault?

Because I think people still feel a lot of shame around that. They think, oh, I should have had a higher paid job or, you know, quite often what people do is they'll look back through all of the mistakes that had made before, any money that they'd let go through their hands or whatever, and they really dig into that. If I hadn't done that two years ago then I might have more now. Exactly, exactly. And you know, my first kind of thing is to just try and make sure that people know that it's not their fault, you know, these things that have happened have happened without outside

of their control. But then also just making sure that people really know and are aware of their rights and what they're entitled to, giving people maybe the confidence if they're working in the private sector, to ask for a salary review or ideas for any kind of side hustles. I'm always really cautious of that though, because I hustle culture and like working every hour that God sends is such a problem at the moment of doing your like nine to five and then your five to nine or your five to nine and then your nine to five. And then also there's organizations like Turn to Us who have grants for people who were

enduring like financial hardship. And then there's a brilliant organization called Income Max, which helps people to claim everything that they're entitled to. Lots and lots of people, I think because of this like drag that has happened on people's finances, lots of people don't think that they would be entitled to anything, but they actually may be. And that's definitely even more so with things like if people have got children help towards childcare. It's amazing how underclaimed all of that stuff is. So if there's anything practical that I can do to help any direction that I can point them in. I'll always do that. But those are always the hardest messages to receive because I wish I could fix this for you, and it's not

your fault, but it's just really, really shit and really difficult. I'm so sorry. It's really hard when we live in hustle culture know, there is a sort of go on social media and it can be like, you know, there's a lot of talk of manifesting and mindset and that's just really annoying if you have a job that's just really low paid. If you're a nurse, you're, you know, if this stuff is just not keeping up with inflation, it's really annoying to be told by some businessman who's, you know, who lives in Dubai or something that the problem is a money mindset, right? And I think it's really important to be able to cut through that shit.

My suspicion is that most of the people who are out there telling you like, oh, you can manifest all this money, look at, you know, quite often they'll like post a dubious screenshot of their bank account, like, look how much I manifested. And I suspect that those people are getting that money, not from manifesting, but from like selling people courses about how to manifest money. So, you know, I think that in some ways mindset's important if you're keeping yourself small because you don't think that you deserve money and this is in my coaching this is what I work with quite a lot of people who've maybe grown up without money or they've got like really low self-esteem or whatever. Sometimes if you can address that you can actually then have the confidence to ask for the pay rise or to put your ratesesteem or whatever. Sometimes if you can address that, you can actually then have

the confidence to ask for the pay rise or to put your rates up or whatever. So there's some grain of truth in it, but as with loads of things like this, it gets to a level where it can become exploitative and pretend. But yeah, those limiting beliefs that people have, they are quite interested. And I'm always a bit cautious of saying the whole thing's rubbish. I think there are kernels, but I also think it is. Let's go into the limiting beliefs, because I'm really fascinated in self-worth and how And how is that reflected in literal material things? And like I often, as soon as money gets into my hands, I think I don't deserve this.

If I do get it, I need to get rid of this. I need to just like, there's literally that thing of that limiting belief of I do not deserve these monies. And I had to catch myself sometimes when I sort of go, oh, little old me, you know, I don't deserve this job, or I don't deserve this, I don't know, praise or whatever. I go, no, actually, do you know what, it is okay. And I do think in Britain, we do have, again, it goes back to that mindset, mustn't talk about money. And then when people do talk about money, and, it goes back to that mindset, mustn't talk about money. And then when people do talk about money and they go, I've been successful and I've done

well, we go, oh, that's not good. But actually, I'd rather the good people had the money. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, I have these limiting beliefs that only bad people have lots of money. And I think it's like easy to see, especially if we're like thinking that we might be descending into like an age of techno feudalism where just all the big tech lords are all billionaires and the rest of us are. I mean, if you looked at the papers, you're like, that is true, Briny, only bad people

have lots of money. Yeah, no, but I do totally get that. And the thing about not deserving it, and so as soon as it comes into your bank account, you kind of have to get rid of it as quickly as possible, is such a big thing. And I think I'm constantly making these discoveries about myself as well. So even like recently, I was like, oh, I think that I've never felt safe in my entire life, like safe and secure. And so I think, and sometimes I can see that you've got Owen O'Kane's book, Addicted to Anxiety, behind you.

And I'm really fascinated by this, of like, sometimes I think your comfort zone actually might be feeling unsafe and insecure. And so, you know, because it's what you're used to. And I was like, oh, I think I've always, like, really pushed myself financially. Because, you know, we paid off all our debt, but then we didn't have a house, so we pushed ourselves to buy a house. So there was always something, next thing that we were, like, really striving for and never quite feeling, like feeling safe or secure.

And I was like, oh, I think I'm doing that because I don't know what it is like to feel properly safe and secure. I think I always have to feel anxious about something. And keeping yourself on edge financially is a really, really good way to recreate that lack of safety that you might have felt throughout your life. It was a really big epiphany for me and I was like, right, now that I know that that's what I'm doing, I actually can probably stop doing that now. But I think, yeah, the impulse to get rid of things that you don't think that you deserve. You can

see it across lots of different things. Lots of people sabotage their relationship if they don't think that they deserve it, or they, you know, even sadder, like, ruin their relationship with their children because they don't feel like they deserve it. I think we do it with loads of things. It feels counterintuitive,

because you think, well, why would you do that? But it is something, it's a very sort of intrinsic part of human nature and we don't talk about it enough. And I think it's really brilliant that we're talking about it now, Claire, because what it gets to is the heart of the kind of psychology of how, yeah, it is a lot of us don't feel worthy of money. And so and so this actually takes us on to the second group of people.

Yeah. Right. The people that compulsively spend and who it's been made a lot easier to do that because of, you know, Apple Pay and and planner. I sometimes feel like am I just a sort of magpie? If we were to get my bank balance, my bank statements up, I actually don't really... Jonathan, the producer, is looking at me as if to say, let's do that. No, let's not. But I mostly spend my money on coffee. But what a lot of money I can spend on coffee. Coffee's very effing expensive.

So for me, like my spending issues aren't really on like things that are for me. Like I don't buy lots of clothes or anything like that. And I was like, oh, like, look, I'm doing so well. I'm not like spending on myself. No, look at it and I've just like sort of like transferred it from there to like, oh the kids need X, Y, Z and there's always, you know, in family life there's always something that needs to be bought but I think quite a lot of women particularly and mums also particularly aren't, they don't think that they're compulsive shoppers or overspending

because they're like spending to try and solve problems rather than like... This is the thing. It's all coming from a place of trying to boost, trying to validate and trying to make life better. Exactly. And we can get stuck on. So I think one of the principal problems here is that social media is a thing, it's never going away, but where our parents' generation maybe used to compare themselves to their friends and neighbours and that very keeping up with the Joneses type thing. But now we've got so many Joneses to keep up with and it's not just like you're then looking at like they're having their house renovated or look at their kitchen island and it's you know we're just being fed so much more information it gets really overwhelming

but there's a concept called hedonic adaption and they also call it the hedonic treadmill but it's basically this idea that we all have this baseline level of happiness and one of the key talents of human resilience, because we are really resilient, is that any move away from this baseline level of happiness is temporary. And so it's a great thing because it means that you can endure quite a lot of trauma and still return to the same baseline level of happiness. Something bad happens, usually we bounce back, unless it's something really, really life-changing. But in a similar way, any positive move away from that is gonna be temporary.

So you get the new job and you're thrilled because you've got a 10 grand pay rise. Very quickly that becomes normal. That's your new normal. We were obsessed with the idea of buying a house. And when we bought our house, I felt so lucky. Like I was just so happy and delighted. Within six months, I was looking at four bedroom houses on Rightmove and this is just what happens to us is our new normals are always changing. If we don't try to and you know unfortunately the way to counter it is all of the stuff that we've been told it's the like gratitude is trying to be in the moment like trying to have like flow experiences where we're just thinking about now and not

thinking about the next thing and the next thing. But if we don't do all of those things to try and like ground ourselves, it's so easy to just be on this treadmill of like, this isn't enough. Oh, now I've got that, but that's not enough. And I think that that is what happens when we get stuck in that cycle of buying more and more and better and better things. Now I need this. Yeah. And quite often overspending isn't necessarily about buying material things, either it's about upgrading your lifestyle. And some of that lifestyle creep I don't think is really lifestyle creep. I think that being able to afford to go to therapy a couple of times

a month is just a decent standard of living and an investment. But in pursuit of having everything perfect and aesthetic, which is like a whole other thing of like, you know, on Instagram, even when you do the laundry, it has to be fucking aesthetic. Um, is, you know, the pursuit of that perfection is so expensive and you will never get there. This is what I've had, it's like been my best performing piece of content, whatever that means. And it's literally just a reel where I'm like doing a voiceover that says, like, I'll tell you this thing, you're not going to like it, but you're never,

ever, ever going to run out of things to buy. You know, you'll buy the thing, it'll be replaced by something else that you desperately want to buy. Like, they're going to carry on making more and more stuff, and you won't ever get to the point where you're like, oh, that's it, and I've got enough stuff now, actually. I'm fine, I'm happy. You kind of have to decide that for yourself. And so I think that's what's happening to people. I think that they're trying to like constantly level up or not even that, but just like constantly trying to feel complete or, you know, but the scroll is never ending and never run out of things to buy. If we try and derive our happiness from outside things we get in real trouble.

Yeah so much. It's also like shopping is quite cheap dopamine as well like in the same way that scrolling is cheap dopamine and then you just get, kind of just get used to it. You know, I think Moe Goudert's talked about it as well of like, you know, money can definitely make you happier up to the point where you've got enough to live a good life and you've got the things that you need and you've got like security and safety. Yes, like money definitely can make you happier up to that point. But after that point, all I think what he says

is all it's gonna buy you is toys and you'll get bored of them really quickly. If someone is listening and they feel trapped in a cycle of overspending, what are the practical things that you can do to kind of try and, because I love practical advice when I get stuck in something. So what are the practical things you can do with your social media to do with your life

to just make life a little bit easier for you? Yeah, so I think it's a good idea to set aside some time to like properly tackle it. So the first thing that I would do is go through and unsubscribe to all of your marketing emails because they're coming to find you. Like you might be, you know, none of us can ignore our phone if it lights up, if we're trying desperately to read a book or, you know, watch a TV show without double screening. You can't ignore it. So that's coming in and it's intruding in your life. Get rid of all of those. This is kind of like a bit of a detox plan almost.

Unfollow anyone that makes you feel like shit or makes you feel jealous or envious on social media, obviously. Also, just spending less time on there anyway is better for you. But I understand that's almost impossible. I'm not going to be a hypocrite here and say it's easy. I'm on my phone all the time. Sometimes no-spend challenges can be helpful.

I don't find them that helpful because I think they can become a bit sort of crash-diety. I think the parallels between money, having issues with money and having issues with food, which I also have always had, are very, very strong. They're mirrors of each other. Let's talk about that because actually you make the point that just as a diet it's not going to work if you do it for two weeks and then go. And obviously on this podcast we are, you know, diet culture is like a big no-no.

Yeah. But, you know, but just as, you know, that crash diet won't work because then you then return back to normal habits or whatever and it keeps you swinging between extremes of binging and purging and restricting and all of that. Yeah, whatever you might be using as a crutch for your emotions or whatever's going on in your head, right? So there are lots of things that you can be sort of addicted to or rely on and some of those things like drugs or alcohol are very, very, very difficult to give up, but you can stop using them.

Like it is a possibility that you could stop using them. But with money and food, you have to keep using, you have to learn and manage them well to keep yourself healthy, whether that's financially healthy or whether that's just about having been obliterated as a teenager and a young person by noughties diet culture and then having to try and relearn what's normal to eat in order to nourish your body. It's the same a bit with money, is if you've always had this terrible relationship with it, wouldn't it be so much easier to be like, well, that's it, I'm not doing money anymore for the rest of my life. But you can't. But it's just with these things, you have

to keep them in your life. They have to play a role in your life. So it's about learning how to do it well. And so many times people just find themselves bouncing between one extreme and another, like you've said. And I definitely similarly would go through those kind of like binge, purge, restrict cycles with food. And I have done similar with money throughout my past as well. And so I think it is about really like radical self-empathy and I think that's the only way out of both of those things is just going into it, know that you're

gonna fuck up, you are like you will and you have to be okay with that idea of like, that you might go back and, you know, do a behavior that you haven't been proud of in the past. You might have a splurge or you might have a couple of weeks of burying your head in the sand. If you don't acknowledge that it's possible to come back from that and that it's okay and that you're not a dreadful person, if you do that, then it's much easier to pull yourself, it's much more difficult to pull yourself back in. So I think you have to be really empathetic. You have to build some flex into, you know, because shit happens and you might have to pay out extra for something one month or whatever.

The heating set the point of my break. When we were a couple of months into this debt journey that I was documenting on Instagram, we needed three new tires and I was like, well, it's just going to set us back. And we had to be all right with that. And I think also if you can just get a couple of fuck ups over and done with early on, actually really strengthens your resolve. Even just, again, acknowledging that that relationship exists and using that as a bit of a framework to not overly restrict yourself.

Especially again, because there is a bit of a side of social media that's like obsessed with uber-frugality that I also don't think is like particularly healthy of trying like trying to deprive yourself of as much as possible. I fully get how difficult it is because I live in the extremes I really do and like you know that is a neurodivergent thing but it's very much either like things are great or they're terrible. I have to try and like drag myself kicking and screaming into the middle sometimes. But yeah, and it is difficult. Okay. Well, let's talk about this. This again takes us on to the third group of people, which are neurodivergent people who might be experiencing the ADHD tax.

Yeah. Talk me through that. So the ADHD tax was sort of coined as a term for, you know, like the parking tickets, the late fees, all of the like sort of annoying but also kind of like treated as semi-humorous. My mother doesn't have a diagnosis of ADHD and I shouldn't probably diagnose her live on this podcast but the bail lifts would turn up because of parking tickets and an inability to, and it was like, oh, financial mismanagement because of neurodiversity. So there's that, there's kind of like the visible part of the iceberg, which is all

of that stuff that you can see kind of like, you know, the the cost of being disorganized or the cost of poor executive function. Sometimes it's like the cost of being unemployed or underemployed if people are really struggling with because obviously, you know mental health issues are more quite often comorbid with ADHD or autism. But then there is like the below the surface part of the iceberg which is so much of the stuff that we've already talked about which is when you're neurodivergent you're so much more likely to have low self-esteem because you've always been told that your way of doing things or your way of thinking is wrong. So because you've always been told that your way of doing things or your way of thinking is wrong. So there's all of that stuff. Like I have spent so much money throughout my life

to try and like fix myself or to appear normal outwardly, you know, or to sort of to make other people like me or to make up for the fact that maybe I might have let someone down because I forgot about something. So I think, you know, there's all of the stuff that we can see on the surface, but then there's all of that other stuff that's baked in. Addictive behaviors are so much more common if you've got ADHD and I think shopping addiction is a really like unrecognised part of that. And I think also, don't you think it's still seen as quite lighthearted? We very much think that... Like sharing clueless. Yeah, and like the Becky Bloomwood type thing of it's all quite frivolous, but it can really

destroy your life. Really, really, if you get into extreme financial difficulty and debt, it can be life ruining and it takes over every second that you're awake and it's like the last thing you think about before you fall asleep, the first thing you think about in the morning. But it robs you of your sense of security. 100% and it's just, you know, you have those baseline thoughts that go through your head and quite often they are just replaced by like, oh my god, this is, how am I ever going to get out of this? This is so dreadful. What have I done? Like all of that stuff. And if that's the

like metronome that's ticking around in your head, that's so bad for you. Was that the metronome ticking around in your head? It was like the thrum in the background of every conversation. And it's so distracting as well. I've got young children and my middle child, my youngest son, was a baby at the time. And I just remember being like, I'm not paying attention. I'm not soaking in any of this. I feel like I should be absorbing his babyhood. He's amazing.

But all I can think about is this. Also is that there's that kind of added shame, isn't there in parenting of like, when you have children, you think, God, I really should have this shit sorted out by now. And when you're like, but I don't, yeah, you know, that sort of complete horror, but it's so, again, it's so important.

We talk about this because this is the kind of the great taboo that I'm sure lots of people tuning in will be like, yeah, that's and you know, and also people's experiences of money are so personal, I guess to their childhoods as well in many ways, you know, and how it is also psychological. So Claire, this podcast, I hope that everyone who listens to The Life of Briony will feel a little bit better at the end of listening to an episode than they did at the beginning. And I feel I'm

really glad that you've come on and been so open and chatted to me about money and financial mismanagement and shame and all of those things because I feel like it's been such a sort of big background part of my own mental health that I've never really kind of spoken about before. But also, what I love is practical advice, and you're so brilliant at giving practical advice. So I wondered if there is someone tuning in today who feels they're in insurmountable debt, yeah, and they will be feeling terror because that is a, it's a horrible place to be. And my heart goes out to them. What would you say to them? What are the first steps to getting to climbing up and getting out of debt? I think the first step has to be to arm yourself with all of the information. The chances are

if it feels insurmountable and outside of your control, probably you've done at least a little bit of burying your heads in the sand. Maybe you don't know exact amounts of balances. You might not know how much interest you're paying on things. Do a bit of a fact-finding mission on that and get it all down on paper or in a spreadsheet or whatever. What do you owe? What do you owe and where is it and what?

I had like six or seven credit cards at one point and that can feel overwhelming. The number of accounts, the different logins, all of that stuff. Where is it and what, you know, I had like six or seven credit cards at one point and that can feel overwhelming. The number of accounts, the different logins, all of that stuff. Get yourself like a file of all of that information so you don't have to sort of anxiously look for it every time you're trying to address it. But then I would always say give step change or national debt line a call. Definitely do not engage with those people on TikTok

who come up and are like, we can write off all of your debts. They are bad actors. They're bad news. If something feels too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. Absolutely. And you know, quite often, if you've Googled anything to do with debt, that's when those things are going to start coming up in your algorithm. So do ignore them. There are debt management plans and things that can help and that can reduce the amount that you owe, but you always want to go through official channels. And if you go through a debt charity, specifically like StepChain, you won't ever be charged for that. These other places, they'll often charge you a fee. And so there are official

arrangements that can be made if you've got to that point and you can't make your minimum repayments and the debt is completely out of control. There are some consequences and some trade-offs to all of the different options, but sometimes it's the best thing to do. That isn't what we did, we just caught it in time to make it doable to do ourselves. But the next thing is you need to sort your budget out and work out what do you need to live. Definitely ring fence a couple of things that you enjoy in there, but try to make cuts where you can and come up with how much money you've got each month to pay off your debt. And then you, I mean, the most efficient way to do it is like you pay off your highest

interest debt first. So arrange everything in order of interest, minimum repayments on everything, throw everything else that you've got at the debt with the highest interest. Once it's paid off, you then take that amount and add it to your minimum payment for the next one, so you're paying more off the next one, and then so on and so forth. It's called the avalanche method. It might take a while. It took us two years. It could have taken a lot longer than that, but the time is going to pass anyway, and you could either be in the same situation or worse, or you could find yourself in a much better situation. Don't ever be put off by how long it's going to take.

Because it took you a while to get into it, probably. It's going to take a while to get out of it. A huge thank you to Claire for going there and sharing her wisdom about money. If this episode has made you rethink your relationship with finances, please send it to a friend. And of course, don't forget to hit follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode. Take care, be kind to yourself, and I'll see you next time.