Chapter 1: The Emotions of Money
I Couldn’t Get Her to Just Quit Her Fucking Job.
Kristine is my best friend and my absolute favorite person in the entire
world. We’ve traveled to a half dozen countries together, we’ve been in a
car with each other for at least five hundred hours (we once tried to
calculate it), and we feel each other’s wins and losses like they’re our own.
We met at my first job out of school—a job that I fled after a year and a half
because of its insane toxicity and hellish culture.
This particular evening, she was calling to complain about yet another
horror story, because while I had gotten out, she hadn’t. After seven years at
the same company, she was still dealing with the same bullshit.
While I tried to stay present and listen, one thought kept going through
my mind: “I just need to convince her to leave. That will make her so much
happier.”
You probably know this scenario well. A friend calls, complaining about
a problem, and you know that you could fix it. You could give them a
detailed, step-by-step PowerPoint of what they should do now, because you
want them to be okay and to feel less pain. But guess what? That’s not what
your friend is coming to you for—at least not yet. They’re not coming for
an action plan. They just need someone to rant to, someone who will listen,
someone who can empathize and tell them, “Man, that sucks, I’m sorry.
Let’s work through it.”
Right now Kristine is not calling me for a solution; she’s calling to
emotionally process her shitty situation at work, because that’s the first,
most necessary step.
The same thing happened when I started coaching women about money.
When I first began my work as a money educator, I immediately dove
into my favorite thing: actionable advice. With good intentions, I thought
that offering guidance around goal setting, budgeting, and investment
strategies would be enough for success—and we’ll get to all those things
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