The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Clare Seal on protecting your resources of money and time

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

In this guest episode of The Therapy Edit, Anna speaks to Clare Seal who is an author, Financial Coach and speaker at My Frugal Year.Clare's One Thing relates to expenditure (of both money and time) in the run up to the festive season and it's that it is never worth your wellbeing to live up to the expectations of others.You can follow Clare on Instagram at @myfrugalyear and find out about her services and background here https://www.clareseal.comYou can buy Clare's most recent book, 5 Steps to Financial Freedom here https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/147228920X/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1633600675&ref_=tmm_pap_swatch_0&sr=8-4

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist, mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hello everyone, welcome to a new guest episode of The Therapy Edit. And I'm really excited. I just got online with the lovely Claire and it felt like I'd already spoken to her. So I didn't even properly say hi because I've been following her for ages on social media. She's on there as my frugal year. Claire Seale is a financial coach. She's the

founder of the FW Forum. She's the author of three books and I'm pretty sure we bonded over the fact that one of ours came out on the same day. I think that was right. Her most recent book is called five steps to financial well-being, how changing your relationship with money can change your whole life. And on Amazon, I loved one of the bits of feedback that was that she is gentle, wise and compassionate in how she talks about our relationship with money. And that's everything that I get out of all the wisdom and the tools that she shares on social media. She's also got real-life money, an honest guide tackling control of your finances. That was her first book. And then to go alongside that, if you want, there is also the real life money

journal. So lots of tools to get you thinking about your relationship with money, which, if we're honest, is one of the most important relationships in our lives. Claire came to write her first book, Real Life Money after battling a difficult relationship with money for most of her adult life, finally realizing that there must be more to the equation than just numbers. Totally agree. So thank you, Claire, for everything. How are you just spoken at you? But how are you today? Yeah, I'm absolutely fine. I was just saying to you before,

I've just been catapulted back into the school frenzy after the holidays. So, yeah, just recalibrating to that and my four-year-old just started in September. So that's still requiring quite a lot of micromanaging, which is definitely making the switch between, like, parenting and work a bit more challenging as something that I struggle with anyway. But yeah, I'm really happy to be having this chat this morning. Oh, well, thank you. I think it sounded like we were the first thing that you were, that you did,

was logged on as soon as you came in from the whirlwind of the drop-off. And you're so right, I think I feel like no sooner do we get into a routine of school that then we get into a routine of half-term and then it's school again. and it just feels like you're constantly finding your feet and trying to anchor yourself in a different kind of routine or lack of. Definitely, yeah. So Claire, the question that we ask all the moms on this podcast, all the guests, is if you could share one thing,

what would that one thing be? So this is sort of specifically regarding the time of year and some of the kind of expectations that are coming up maybe with regard Christmas and spending, whether that is money or time, actually. And the one thing that I would say is that it's never worth it. It's never worth your well-being to meet someone else's expectations. because so often we find ourselves pushing ourselves beyond boundaries that we might have set or beyond our affordability, beyond what we can afford in terms of time

in order to try and meet different people's expectations. And this happens all the time, but it's never more acute than during like Christmas or major holidays, I don't think because quite often you're trying to like service the wishes of two sides of a family if you're married and have or have a partner or, you know, your co-parenting. You're also then trying to manage people's expectations with regards gifts, whether that's like your broader family or actually your children. But I would just say, you know, meeting those expectations is never. worth the impact that it has on your wellbeing, especially when sometimes that involves like borrowing over Christmas, which then that has like a massive hangover afterwards. So I would say it's really worth having some conversations to set expectations and manage expectations

ahead of time. And don't be afraid to put in some boundaries. Don't be afraid to make alternative suggestions, because it just, it's not a good trade-off, your peace of mind and your sense of well-being for hitting an arbitrary expectation that someone else might have of you. It's not a good enough trade. Oh, man, I mean, this taps into so much, doesn't it? It taps into kind of disappointment that you might feel coming from your choice. or other family members, it taps into confidence in having those conversations because that can feel like an incredibly scary, vulnerable thing to do. It taps into how we feel around asking others to accommodate for where the reality of where we're all at, whether that's

kind of financial resources, energy, emotional resources, physical space at home. It's it's huge and I think you're so you know you've hit the nail on the head it's not worth the trade off but I think sometimes we push through out of fear of what of what might happen have you have you you know what for you because you've been so you've been on such a journey with this and it's been so inspiring kind of seeing you grow in confidence and placing some of those boundaries and challenging them but what like how is how has that been for you and what have you come up against and how have you navigated some of those conversations? Yeah, so, I mean, it's often tricky, especially if it's sort of quite an intense, like,

one-to-one conversation or if you're in like a group or like a group WhatsApp where you feel like you're outnumbered by other opinions. And obviously everyone's like family and friendship dynamics are different. but for example like a couple of things for me is that a few years ago actually we decided I have a group a really close group of six of us friends a couple of us now have kids and if we'd carried on with the kind of always buying each other individual birthday presents and individual Christmas presents and then that spilled out into the families it could end up costing all of us a fortune. So a few years ago, we decided, okay, no, no Christmas presents. We're just going to go

for a group Christmas curry every year. And for birthdays, the other five of us put some money in and we give like a group gift. So we're able to give something really nice and it doesn't cost very much at all. And that kind of thing can definitely be replicated within families as well. This year, we've just moved it, like we've just bought and moved into new home. So we sort of quite early and quite gently said to both sides of our family, we actually, we always travel to them or, you know, sometimes I pay for an Airbnb for us all to have Christmas together and stuff. But we just said quite early on this year, we're, this is our first year in our new, like, family home. We're just going to have a quiet Christmas this year.

and actually everyone was okay with that. I think that the earlier you have those conversations and the more convinced you are as well. So we really had decided and I think that helped because we weren't then, we weren't leaving any room for negotiation or any leeway. And I think the people close to us can often spot really easily if there's like a chink in the armour where they could say oh yeah but could we just do this

and then you find your boundaries being chipped away and chipped away at until you end up doing the thing that they wanted you to do in the first place so I think there's that and then there's also the fact that and I find this really difficult because I'm a real people pleaser but I've been trying to really accept that like sometimes people will be disappointed with me And that's, as long as I've not done something deliberately to hurt them or been thoughtless or unkind, that isn't my problem. And actually, sometimes people disappoint me as well. And it doesn't mean that I love them any less and I get over it quite quickly.

So I think sometimes having a bit of acceptance of the fact that sometimes you will disappoint people and it will be fine and they will get over it. it is quite freeing. Oh, wow. This is so, this is so incredibly helpful. I have been feeling the disappointment of my kids because as they grow older, they start seeing how other people celebrate things and the effort perhaps that other people's parents put into things. And so when I say no, well, actually we're not doing that this year, you know, I feel their disappointment. And I think as parents, you know, many of us find it really hard to see our children's discomfort. So one of the temptations might be just to lean into doing all of the things and burning yourself out or really challenging your finances, depleting your finances in the process.

But actually, I feel like disappointment and healthy disappointment is a really, really healthy, brilliant thing for our children to learn to navigate. Because when I remember growing up, we had money was a real, real challenge for us, a real challenge. And I remember having friends that had stuff that we would never have. We wanted so much some of these things. And there were definitely certain friends we used to want to go and play at their house because they had really good toys. You know what I mean? And we had to navigate that, that disappointment. And I think it was a really important life lesson that growing more comfortable with the discomfort that other people will have what you don't,

other people will do things differently to you and yeah, it's a valuable, a valuable lesson to learn and teach our children. Definitely. And like in my coaching practice, I quite often speak to people whose parents did bend over backwards and maybe really overstretched themselves in order to, you know, in order to, you know, in order to not disappoint them and a lot of those people do find it really difficult as adults to deprive themselves of like anything that they want not we're not talking about needs here but like to sort of um yeah to and that can lead to real trouble with like you know living within your means and things like that and you know i i definitely identify with that as well you know looking back

my mum was a single parent for quite a long time and I never really went without anything and I could often persuade her like as a child to give in to what I wanted and then I don't think that served me particularly well as a young adult because I found it I think I had the mindset of I should always be able to get what I want like straight away

And I think, yeah, you're right. I think learning to sort of deal with that disappointment or like even delayed gratification. So, you know, if your child, especially like slightly older children, if they do want something that's a bit more expensive. Like we've been really conscious with our seven-year-old having gone through a really difficult time financially to try and get him a bit more. engaged um and uh so we he really wants like a new games console for christmas and so we said we said at the start of this year if you have saved up enough if you saved up a hundred pounds from your pocket money and like chores and sort of like money that gets given to you by relatives etc by the end of the year then we'll put the rest to it and that will that will that

can be your Christmas present. So sort of instilling a bit of delayed gratification in your kids as well. And you can really help them to learn like the value of money and the value of saving. And it's not like the most romantic thing in the world, but he will still love that gift as much as it just appeared out of nowhere. If not even more so, because he's seen, you know, it's that you feel really good when you when you know that you've achieved something, that you've maybe gone without other things,

it does make it sweeter. And I think you're so right how we have to be more intentional about this in this world of kind of next day deliveries and Amazon boxes ending up on your doorstep. And, you know, I've got my card on my watch. And sometimes I think this is just terrible because my kids don't even see me handing over money, really. So there's, in our society, it feels like less.

of a tangible entity. So I think you're right, finding ways to make that a commodity that is more tangible for them through little savings charts and whatever that may be, giving them a little bit of pocket money every day and inviting them to choose one thing in the food shop and then paying for it themselves, whatever that may be. I think you're so right. And the other thing that's coming up in my mind as you're talking is, if I want to went out for a meal with a group of friends perhaps or if it came to Christmas and I knew and I was

to find out that a family member had bought us a gift or that a friend had gone you know quarters on the bill at the end of the meal and I and I discovered that they had then gone home and and just you know their heart had sunk as they looked at their bank account or that they'd been sitting there through the meal or through Christmas day thinking oh my gosh. this has pushed us beyond our limit or that you know I can't enjoy this or worrying about what other people are choosing off the menu you know I've been there and I've never spoken you know in those times there I've not I've not mentioned it to friends when I was a student perhaps and I just wish that people could feel like they could talk about those things because you want to

if you're if you're on friendship and your relationship or your family member you know ideally we want to support and make allowances for each other where we can rather than know that that cost more to them? Definitely. And I think that that is such a tricky thing to navigate because one of the things that I talk about when I talk about communicating about finances is it's really important not to make assumptions about what someone else's financial situation is. When I first started talking about like our debt and how difficult we were finding things actually within my friendship group a couple of other people then sort of like put their hands up and were like oh this has been happening like someone's partner had been you know making things really

difficult financially for them another person had like been really struggling since they'd been on maternity leave. And I just, I think sometimes if you can stick your head above the parapet and be honest about what's going on for you, everyone else breeds a massive sigh of relief. Oh my gosh, you're so right. And it can take a lot to be that person sitting there and thinking, actually, I need to say this. But yes, with the right people, what a relief that that can, you know, a sigh of relief around a table. And I remember when one family member said, you know, we can't actually afford to buy everyone Christmas presents this year. So can we do Secret Santa? So we do that. And I think it's, you know, in fact, it's really good to be doing things like that anyway because I just think

there can be so much overwhelmed with the amount of stuff, you know, as well. And what are we teaching our children when they just, you know, they're just being bombarded with things. It becomes an activity opening presents in itself. Little gets played with. So just being creative in, in some of the things that you're thinking of doing that will benefit others. And yes, starting those conversations, you might do it with hands trembling and a lump in your throat, but actually you're giving your friends an opportunity to see you in more of an authentic way. And if anything, what that should be doing is deepening those relationships. Yeah, for sure. And I can't, I can't think of a time when like a friend or family member has ever been like,

vulnerable with me in that sort of way where it has ever made me think less of them or you know or made me care less it's always it's always like acted in the opposite way it's always had the opposite effect yeah absolutely well thank you so much for encouraging us to as we move towards this festive season just thinking what what works for us what might need to change because I think sometimes we don't even realize that it could be another way. And perhaps there will be conversations that need to be had decisions that need to be made. But if anything, hopefully these will find you in a more authentic and freeing relationship with the people that are most important in your lives.

So thank you and thank you for everything that you do and the resources that you bring us in navigating this. So Claire, to finish off, I have some quickfire questions for you. Okay. What is a motherhood high? for you um oh definitely seeing my children uh handing out sweets to trick or treaters yesterday they were so so like happy they were dressed up they were like enjoying being generous and it was just lovely oh i love that and it's just that reminder isn't it that we have so many other ways in which

we can give it doesn't have to be kind of financial it can be you know that we give our time we give we give our support we have lots so how lovely that they just enjoyed handing over those sweets and what's a motherhood low for you i think when my second son was born and this it's a lot to do with kind of you know my relationship with money around that time as well but feeling i i realized now that i was so lonely i didn't have the nc t support or like group of friends i had with my first son and I've found myself really wanting to be part of something and belong to something. And it was really at the time when there were lots of clubs and clicks on social media of kind of like all Insta-famous mums and they were all like carrying the same changing bags

and wearing the same slogan jumpers. And I just would like buy things to try and feel like part of something. something and obviously it didn't make me feel any less lonely i was just sort of you know spending beyond my means in order to try and feel like i was part of something and it if i if anything i think it made me feel like more lonely and i think that's that's a real low for me yeah it's so important for humus isn't it to feel seen and to feel heard and validated and i think you know we're taught, especially on social media, that these things will have you feeling heard and validated, whereas what you're talking to us about is that it's actually about that authenticity.

It's about pushing through those barriers of those different difficult conversations with people in your life. And that is how you find that connection, isn't it? We all crave so much. So what's one thing that makes you feel good, completely non-memorated if you want it to be anything? What makes you feel good, Claire? Oh, it's 100% having a fresh manicure. And I know that it shouldn't be something so superficial.

But I just, I look at my hands so often when I'm like working and doing things. And genuinely when they're freshly done, it gives me like a little buzz every time I look down or every time I like reach out to get something. So that's like the best money that I spend every month is that's my one thing. I love that. I love that. And a bit like that game console with your son, you know, I bet you have to, yeah, that's a conscious thing that you work towards, isn't it? Because I've seen you talk about that before. And finally, how do you describe motherhood in three words? Oh, difficult, joyful, life changing. Difficult, joyful, life changing. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time's day. And thank you, Claire, for being that person that sticks your head above the parapet and starts these conversations so that other people can breathe that sigh of relief

and have those important conversations too. Thank you for your tips today and your honesty. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you, Claire. Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Therapy Edit. If you enjoyed it, please do share, subscribe or review because it makes a massive difference to how many people it can reach. You can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha.

You might like to check out my three books, Mind Oath and Mother, Know Your Worth, and my new book, The Little Book of Calm for New Mums, grounding words for the highs, the lows, and the moments in between. It's a little book you don't need to read it from front to back. You just pick whatever emotion resonates to find a mantra, a tip and some supportive words to bring comfort and clarity. You can also find all my resources, guides and videos

all with the sole focus of supporting your emotional and mental well-being as a month. They are all 12 pounds and you can find them on anamatha.com. I look forward to speaking with you soon.