Let’s Talk About Money

Several years ago I hosted a radio show called Let’s Talk About Money. I chose this show’s title because the bottom line is we don’t talk about money. We’ll talk about everything else—we’ll talk about our husbands, partners, children, parents, boss, co-workers, sex, relationships, weight and so on. We’ll talk about EVERYTHING but money! Actually do talk about money—at least in our heads. You know, that negative little voice that nags and berates you. I call my voice Chatty Cathy and it’s taken a lot of years to quiet my voice when it gives me negative messages. I say, “Thank you very much for sharing, goodbye.” But, how many of you would go to a party, introduce yourself and tell the person you’re deep in debt? No way! And, you probably wouldn’t tell them you’ve never invested in an IRA or mutual funds because you don’t understand them.

Don’t think you’re alone, because you’re not! In our society we’ve been taught not to talk about money. One example, it’s not polite to ask someone how much they make. So, instead of talking about money we make assumptions. We assume because someone lives in a nice house, drives nice cars, wears nice clothes, sends their kids to private schools and goes on nice vacations that they’ve got it made financially. The bottom line they could be what I call a Financial Fraud. They could be living from paycheck to paycheck and have a mountain of debt. But, they look really good on the outside.

My husband and I were financial frauds for many, many years. We spent lots of money that we didn’t have and often used credit cards and equity in our house to finance our purchases. About eleven years ago we finally started working on getting our financial act together. We began by talking about our finances and making a list of action steps. First on the list was paying off our $10,000 in credit card debt followed by getting a will; establishing and funding an emergency account; opening an IRA and so on. The good news is that we had always fully funded our 401K. However, we didn’t understand the different investment options, which cost us a lot of money. It took us several years to get our finances in shape, but we did it.