Meghan Dwyer (00:00):

How we earn our money is emotional [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Oh yeah], how we spend our money is emotional, how and why we save our money is emotional, right. And oftentimes it goes way deeper than we even think it is on the surface, right because a lot of times those things come from generations, right. So, I heard this statistic recently takes six generations for trauma to leave the body.

[Music Playing]

Stephanie McCullough (00:33):

Hey, dear listeners, we need to let you know that Kevin and Stephanie offer investment advice through Private Advisor Group, which is a federally registered investment advisor. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations to any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you. Consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Now, let’s get on with the show.

Stephanie McCullough (01:07):

This is Take Back Retirement, the show that’s redefining retirement for women. Retirement is an old-fashioned cultural concept. We want to reclaim the word so you can make it your own. I’m Stephanie McCullough, financial planner and founder of Sofia Financial, where our mission is to reduce women’s money stress and empower them to make wise holistic decisions so they can get back to living their best lives.

Kevin Gaines is my longtime colleague with deep knowledge in the technical stuff: investments, taxes, retirement plan rules. He’s a little bit giggy and quantitative, I’m a little bit touchy-feely and qualitative. Together, through conversations and interviews, we aim to give you the information and motivation you need to move forward with confidence. We’re so glad you’re here.

Stephanie McCullough (01:56):

Coming to you semi live in the beautiful Westlakes office park in suburban Philadelphia, this is Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines of Sofia Financial, and American Financial Management Group. Say hello, Kevin.

Kevin Gaines (02:07):

Hello, Kevin.

Stephanie McCullough (02:09):

Today, we have an amazing guest, Meghan Dwyer. Meghan is a certified financial planner, but she also has her own podcast she started called Money Isn’t Scary, which has been going for four years now. After spending 15 years watching women take a passive role in the management of their money, she’s on a mission to help them stop playing small.

Stephanie McCullough (02:33):

By challenging the societal norms around women and money, Meghan aims to empower women to make money decisions out of a sense of abundance and confidence rather than scarcity and fear. So, of course, dear listeners, you know I love Meghan.

Stephanie McCullough (02:48):

When Meghan isn’t working, she loves running, writing, and being a mom to her two young boys. And we’re going to have a really interesting conversation with Meghan about all the things she finds in her financial coaching, practice and on her podcast. Let’s welcome Meghan.

Stephanie McCullough (03:08):

Meghan Dwyer, welcome to Take Back Retirement.

Meghan Dwyer (03:11):

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Stephanie McCullough (03:13):

Oh. I just think this is such a juicy conversation because it’s not often talked about and then people think, “Oh, my gosh, why do I have so much trouble?” So, tell us in your experience, in your view, what is it that stands in people’s way when it comes to money?

Meghan Dwyer (03:34):

Yeah! Well, I think there’s a few things, right, the first two things that kind of jump out at me are fear and shame. And I think the fear and the shame are also stem from culture and from the way we were brought up, right. So, I think if you grew up in a household like I did, where we didn’t talk about money except for that one day a month that dad did the bills, and it was always like stay away from dad that day, because he’s going to be stressed out and anxious, that was how we talked about money.

Meghan Dwyer (04:00):

I mean, literally there was no conversations around what it meant or values or anything. We just kind of like went through our days every day without kind of talking about that or having any intention around it. So, there’s that piece, but then there’s also the cultural piece too.

Meghan Dwyer (04:15):

And I think we live in a culture that bigger is better, more and more and more, right, and the keeping up with the Joneses and always kind of comparing ourselves to other people and focusing on what we don’t have rather than what we do have. I think you can’t help but sort of just naturally be indoctrinated into that, right. That’s just the world that we’re in [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah].

Meghan Dwyer (04:36):

And it takes a lot of actual effort to kind of go against the grain, if you will, and think differently around that, which is kind of the work that I’m now doing myself and I’m sure you guys are as well but, and what I’m trying to coach and help other women do as well but I just think that it takes a lot of effort in order to do that, right.

Meghan Dwyer (04:57):

So, where does this fear and shame come from? Well, the fear I think comes from the fact that we weren’t taught it in schools, right. So, we often come out of high school or college and we go out into the real world and we get a job and we’re like, “I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what, I don’t know—I get this paycheck, right but I don’t know what is being deducted from it. I don’t know what the taxes are. I don’t know what the 401(k) is. I don’t know how any of this works, right.”

Stephanie McCullough (05:21):

Yeah! And I don’t know what the implications are you know. I have $800, what can I do with that?

Meghan Dwyer (05:27):

What do I do with it, right? And there’s a big difference. I think I remember getting my first paycheck and I’m like, “Oh, well I make this amount hourly, so this salary or this pay rate times this number of hours, I should be getting this in my paycheck.” And then I saw that there’s all these taxes coming out and I’m like, “What is this? I have no idea what this is.”

Kevin Gaines (05:50):

Who’s this FICA person?

Meghan Dwyer (05:52):

Wait, who is FICA? Who is this state tax and federal tax? What is this? So, I think to have just basic knowledge and understanding of how that all works is really important, and I think we’re missing something, the fact that we’re not taught this in schools.

Meghan Dwyer (06:09):

I know that there’s some schools and there’s some states now that are trying to make this more of a mandate to have this in school and talk to kids, but it’s still not, and it certainly wasn’t in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up.

Meghan Dwyer (06:23):

So, I think, I immediately felt this kind of shame and fear around it because I didn’t know what this was and I guess I felt like I was supposed to know what this was by this stage of my life. But again, I was– we weren’t talking about it in at home, we weren’t talking about it at school so how was I supposed to know this?

Stephanie McCullough (06:39):

Exactly.

Meghan Dwyer (06:40):

And then I think there’s the shame that compounds, right when we don’t know and I can speak for myself and probably on behalf of women, maybe more so than men, but I think that when we don’t know something, there’s this kind of underlying angst that we have that we don’t know it and we feel badly.

Meghan Dwyer (07:01):

And so, with that, it kind of compounds and we end up kind of shoving it all down and maybe then not asking the great questions or asking the questions that maybe we should know or maybe that we really secretly want to know but we don’t want to admit that we don’t know, or we don’t want to admit that, you know there’s this like fear of feeling stupid or looking stupid, or fear of other people thinking of us a certain way.

Stephanie McCullough (07:25):

Totally. I remember I had this one friend, she’ll ask anybody anything, and I always thought, “Oh, my gosh, she’s so brave.” Whereas I’m like, “Ooh, if I ask that question, then that person will know that I don’t know the answer and I’m supposed to know the answer.” That’s what women tell me all the time. “I Know I should know this stuff.” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, really?”

Meghan Dwyer (07:43):

How should you, you weren’t taught this, right. It’s like in school where you’re like — I remember like you’d be in a classroom and they’d ask a question, I would always have this fear of raising my hand because I might be wrong, right.

Meghan Dwyer (07:55):

Or this fear of even I might have a question to ask the teacher, but I won’t ask it in front of everybody else. So, I’ll go up quietly after class and ask that question because right. I don’t want other people to know or to think a certain way or perceive me a certain way if I don’t know that [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah].

Kevin Gaines (08:12):

Yeah. That’s the beauty of email is that you can turn around and email whoever you were just talking with and say, “Hey, by the way, I forgot to ask you,” and you always couch it as, “Oh, I forgot to ask this.”

Meghan Dwyer (08:21):

Yeah. Exactly.

Kevin Gaines (08:23):

Or I was thinking more so even then, you don’t even have to admit, “Oh, I was too shy or too intimidated or too worried about how I’m being perceived.” I do that all the time, all the time.

Meghan Dwyer (08:35):

You can totally couch it, which is fine and at the same time, I think it’s really important to kind of lean into that discomfort right of why am I kind of couching this or making up this excuse or saying it this way because– and it’s not necessarily that you need to admit it, but I think just admit it to somebody else, but acknowledge to yourself like, “Ooh, this doesn’t feel right,” But what is it that makes me so uncomfortable about speaking up and feeling like I feeling this discomfort about potentially being wrong or this discomfort about potentially not knowing the answer to something. Like what is that? And where does that come from? I think that’s really important to kind of explore too.

Stephanie McCullough (09:15):

Starting to notice those patterns and the feelings when they come up and yeah, it’s hard to do because you’re stepping out of yourself almost and like you know hovering above and like, “Ooh, I’m seeing that pattern again.” You know..The money stuff comes up and then I start to get tense and or whatever it might be. But the helpful first step is becoming aware of what’s going on in your head, in your gut.

Meghan Dwyer (09:38):

Absolutely. That’s what I say all the time. The first step any kind– on this journey to any kind of progress or making any change is the self-awareness. We have to know what … and I always say lean into the triggers, right. Lean into the things that make you feel icky right and we all have them, we all have those things, right, so what are they?

Meghan Dwyer (09:59):

And that means, Stephanie, like you said, kind of stepping out of yourself and almost being that like non-judgmental observer and saying, “What are those things that are making me feel this ickiness inside?” And just observe you know, not say, “Oh, I need to fix that.” Which is something that I always do.

Meghan Dwyer (10:17):

I always want to change it or fix it or I’m an action person. So, I’m just like, “Okay, what are the 17 steps that I need to do to make me not feel this anymore, right?” [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah] It’s almost like, “Did you guys see Inside Out 2?”

Stephanie McCullough (10:30):

No, not yet. I heard great things.

Meghan Dwyer (10:32):

Oh! You have to. It’s like that’s the anxiety. So, anxiety is this character that comes in and she’s trying to avoid all the discomfort or all those awkward feelings or — just like in the movie, she’s a teenager. So, it becomes more kind of like awkward and uncomfortable, but you’re going to have those feelings in whatever situation for the rest of your life, right.

Meghan Dwyer (10:51):

So, it’s this idea of being aware that these things, these feelings are there without trying to immediately step in and fix them. So, that’s the non-judgmental awareness and that’s the first step in all of this in any kind of change because you have to.

Meghan Dwyer (11:12):

I truly believe emotions are a superpower and when you feel that ickiness and when you start to maybe get like angry inside or even if you feel sadness or whatever it is, identifying what those feelings are and where they’re stemming from is really important because those emotions are teaching us something.

Meghan Dwyer (11:30):

They’re always telling us the direction that we need to go. Our job is to just learn how to identify them, validate them, right because so many of us say, “I shouldn’t feel that way. Don’t be mad.” I think as women too, we’ve been taught for so many times like, “Oh no, don’t have those feelings, just put a smile on, right. Be happy all the time because that pleases everybody else.”

Stephanie McCullough (11:51):

Just shove it down.

Meghan Dwyer (11:52):

Shove it down. So, we need to validate those feelings and we need to learn how to manage them in healthy ways and manage them also by tuning into what they’re trying to tell us, right. So a kind of, it’s an art, it’s not a science. And this is something again that I think is so difficult because we not only were we not taught anything about money, but we weren’t taught anything about emotions growing up either. I certainly wasn’t.

Stephanie McCullough (12:15):

Exactly. And so, we’re trying to normalize the fact that like none of us learned the money stuff. But also, let’s talk about the fact that money is emotional. That’s a big thing that is not talked about, I mean, how could it not be emotional?

Stephanie McCullough (12:30):

And yet, yes, it’s complicated. We live in this complicated financial system with all these rules and vehicles and all that stuff, that’s one thing. And there’s going to be emotions around it and you shouldn’t berate yourself for having emotions about money.

Meghan Dwyer (12:44):

Oh, my gosh, yeah, you’re so spot on. I just did a presentation last week for a women’s conference and I talked about this exact same thing, money is emotional. I was like, “Let’s face it, okay, we can’t keep expecting it not to be.” [Stephanie McCullough overcross: right] Our job though is to understand what those emotions mean.

Meghan Dwyer (13:05):

Because think about it, right, how we earn our money is emotional [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Oh Yeah], how we spend our money is emotional, how and why we save our money is emotional, right. And oftentimes it’s so much more– it goes way deeper than we even think it is on the surface right because a lot of times those things come from generations, right.

Meghan Dwyer (13:27):

So, I heard this statistic recently, it’s six generations for trauma to leave the body. So, if your great-great-great grandmother has experienced something and it wasn’t fully healed, that gets passed down and you actually like it’s in your body, it’s in your genes, it just physically is. So, unless that wasn’t fully healed and processed, like your chances are you’re experiencing some of that, right.

Meghan Dwyer (13:55):

So, some of the things that were — what I’m getting at here is the family piece, right. Something that was important to your great-great-great grandmother or grandfather, very well could somehow be, you might not know it on the surface, but it could be somewhere in your subconscious underneath it all and that might be what is driving some of these emotions and thought patterns and beliefs that you have when it comes to money.

Stephanie McCullough (14:19):

It’s so wild.

Meghan Dwyer (14:21):

It is.

Kevin Gaines (14:22):

So, when you’re learning or when you’re starting to become aware of the emotion with money, how do you see it? Just how do you see it?

Meghan Dwyer (14:31):

It’s not easy, right because especially the way I kind of describe it is, we are on this treadmill all day, every day. My audience is women and moms in particular and so you know, I’ve got two young kids, a full-time job, managing all the family, all this stuff, right, there’s just a lot of responsibilities and sometimes you wake up in the morning and it’s like everything just coming at you, right.

Meghan Dwyer (14:52):

You immediately have texts and emails and all this stuff that you just have to respond to and you also have to get kids at the door and you’ve got all this, get yourself ready and everything. So, you’re just on this constant treadmill, right. The way I see it is you’ve got to give yourself the gift of jumping off that treadmill and slowing down.

Meghan Dwyer (15:11):

Easier said than done, I fully understand that. But until you find you are able to give yourself a little bit, just a little bit of quiet time, you’re never going to be able to see that have that self-awareness and see how this, how the things that are happening in your day-to-day life is impacting those thoughts, beliefs, and those patterns that you have, right.

Stephanie McCullough (15:34):

So, you’re just going, going, going.

Meghan Dwyer (15:36):

Going. And your brain is spinning all the time too. So, I think about it, like I was just describing the character anxiety from Inside Out 2, it’s almost like you don’t even know what’s happening until you stop and you give yourself.

Meghan Dwyer (15:49):

Like at the end of the movie, it’s like they have her sitting in a nice relaxing chair with her tea and the idea is you need to give yourself a second, like , slow down and start to actually like be aware like, “Okay, I like to write it down, right,” because nobody’s going to tell this to you anyway.

Meghan Dwyer (16:09):

Tell this to you, you have to kind of figure it out for yourself. You have to just give yourself a second and even just write down like, “What is making me uncomfortable right now? What is this?” And then go deeper and keep going, peel layers because it’s oftentimes not what is actually on the surface [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah], right?

Meghan Dwyer (16:27):

So, if you are having like a frustrating day at work right and this is some of the things that I’ve kind of learned about myself. You think on the surface that it is actually about work right because something happened, or you’re frustrated with this client or this coworker or whatever it is. You think that that’s what it is but it might not actually be that.

Meghan Dwyer (16:48):

Like. If you keep kind of thinking like, “Okay, well what else is going on? What else could this, what else is kind of going on here?” Well, maybe actually the reason why I’m so irritated today, and this is bothering me so much, is because my family’s driving me crazy.

Meghan Dwyer (17:1013):

And why is my family driving me crazy? Because I haven’t taken a second for myself in the last like two weeks and I haven’t done yoga, I haven’t been doing like … whatever the things are that make you feel whole.

Meghan Dwyer (17:14):

Oftentimes we just go through these patterns where we are so busy that we forget to take care of ourselves and so I think what’s really happening, it’s like, “No, maybe I don’t need to quit my job, maybe I don’t need that, maybe I actually just need to take care of myself right now or maybe I need to ask for help or get a babysitter or so I can go to that yoga class or whatever it is.”

Meghan Dwyer (17:33):

So, slowing down I think is huge. Easier said than done and this is kind of my journey that I talk about a lot on the podcast. It’s like sometimes I say these things and because I feel them truly and then life gets in the way, and I have to call myself out. I have to literally say like, “Yeah, I haven’t been doing that lately, my bad,” but just so you guys know, I’m human and this is all part of this process.

Stephanie McCullough (18:00):

Oh yeah. So, then when women get to kind of the phase of life where … I’m working with them, which is kind of, midlife and better, so maybe they’re empty, nesting if they’ve had kids, or then the shame has just compounded because years and years have gone by and they haven’t really tackled the money stuff, they haven’t figured it out yet, they haven’t learned it, they haven’t taken the time to kind of identify their emotional patterns around it and then that could show up in numerous ways.

Stephanie McCullough (18:24):

Maybe there’s some debt going on, or maybe they haven’t saved as much as they thought for retirement or even just, I don’t even know where it all is. Like I don’t know where the money goes, I don’t know where the money is, and I don’t know what it means for my future.

Meghan Dwyer (18:36):

The avoidance. Yeah. [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah]

Kevin Gaines (18:39):

Because I think that sounds like one of the biggest issues that Stephanie and I see is people just not to your last thing you said, Stephanie, which is people just don’t know where it is, which I’m guessing feeds the anxiety and the uncertainty because everything just seems so discombobulated and just trying to find a way to get your head wrapped around that.

Meghan Dwyer (19:04):

Yeah, it’s overwhelming.

Kevin Gaines (19:05):

It’s like step one, and it’s a really hard step. So, how do you embrace becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable, I guess?

Meghan Dwyer (19:16):

Yeah! So, you are right. I think it becomes overwhelming, especially if it’s again, it kind of compounds, right. The reason why there’s something there, there’s something that keeps you stuck and that’s what keeps you from doing it in the first place, from looking at your finances, from like even having the awareness of what you have and how it all works right. [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah] which in my mind is super empowering. Super empowering to have, but you may not even be ready to get there right now, right. So, you’ve got to kind of start from the beginning.

Meghan Dwyer (19:44):

And the first couple things that come to my mind are first of all, women need to know that they women or men, or whomever it is, need to know that they’re not alone right and actually, we’re all set up this way. These feelings that we’re having are universal. I just was again, in this conference I was doing last week, I was saying women weren’t allowed to have credit cards in their own name until 1974.

Stephanie McCullough (20:07):

Right. I was seven-years-old that year. That’s not that long ago.

Meghan Dwyer (20:11):

Yeah. I mean, the way I say it is, my mom was 20, she was a full-fledged adult and this idea of having autonomy when it came to her money was radical, right. She watched her mom and her mom’s mom and all these other women before her have a man play a role in their money, in their personal, their money decisions.

Meghan Dwyer (20:28):

And as a result, when you always have somebody that is helping you or making sure your decisions are sound, it takes away a lot of self-trust, right. So, I think women just first need to understand that this is the world we were born into, right, so if you think you’re bad at money or you avoid money or whatever it is, know that you’re not alone, right.

Meghan Dwyer (20:50):

And the other huge piece to this that I talk about all the time, and I did because I love it and I need it myself, is this self-compassion. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Dr. Kristin Neff, but she–I’ve talked with her on my podcast before. She’s incredible and she talks about the three main components of self-compassion are mindfulness.

Meghan Dwyer (21:11):

So, mindfulness is kind of what we’ve just been talking about, this self-awareness piece like, stepping out of the anxiety and the stress of the right now, just stepping outside of that and watching it as that non-judgmental observer, right. So, knowing, being aware of our thoughts knowing how that is impacting us, so mindfulness.

Meghan Dwyer (21:33):

Kindness, kindness is simply the golden rule. Treat others the way you would want to be treated and that means yourself as well. So, like, you need to treat yourself with this kindness the way that we would treat our child or somebody else who we love, right. I think for women in particular, forget that step a lot[Stephanie McCullough overcross: Totally].

Meghan Dwyer (21:52 ):

And then the last piece is common humanity which is just knowing that, “Hey, we’re in this together.” Everybody, everybody makes mistakes with their money. Everybody screws up, everybody yells at their kids, everybody has bad days, right, all of that.

Meghan Dwyer (22:05):

So, I think having that knowledge and understanding again, that I’m not alone, that helps to reduce some of that shame. When we can start to reduce that shame, that’s when we’re going to start to feel a little bit more empowered, right. Like—

Meghan Dwyer (22:18):

I don’t think we can without doing some of this internal healing work. You can truly be at a place where if you’ve never looked at your finances before, where you can feel ready to look at your finances, I think it all starts from within and you’ve got to kind of, we always say like it all starts at home but I think that means it all starts within us.

Meghan Dwyer (22:36):

We have to be empowered enough, and I think we also need to understand, as I started off talking about the culture and the world that we’re in. We live in a consumer culture, we live in a capitalistic culture and companies, even I talk about Target all the time in this like love-hate relationship I have with Target.

Meghan Dwyer (22:56):

Target, I mean, it preys on us, like. I mean, women are taught that we’re not good enough and if we just have this pair of shoes, this eye cream, this new outfit or this whatever, then we’ll feel better about ourselves.

Meghan Dwyer (23:13):

And I think when we kind of see, and there’s nothing wrong with having those things at all, but I think we also need to look at it from the lens of they’re just trying to make money off of us too. They’re trying to make us like these advertisements and this kind of goes back to consumer behavior 101, right.

Meghan Dwyer (23:28):

I was a marketing major in college that you feel these emotions, good, bad, indifferent, after you see these advertisements, which now are constantly in our faces in so many different mediums and forms, but you feel a certain way and it makes you therefore act and spend your dollars, right. But I think we need to understand when and how we’re spending our dollars and if those are just continuing to reiterate these feelings of maybe negative self-worth.

Stephanie McCullough (23:55):

Oh, my gosh, it’s so complicated,right. The marketers, they know this psychology stuff, so we need to arm ourselves and be aware of the thoughts and the feelings that they’re trying to elicit in us when we see the ads or experience, you know, walk through the store or whatever it is.

Stephanie McCullough (24:14):

Like everything is planned very deliberately to try to part us from our dollars and it is hard to be more intentional and check in with yourself and be like, “Is this really in line with what I want to be doing and who I want to show up as and my values?” That takes time, right. I mean, it takes at least a break into being surrounded by the messaging.

Meghan Dwyer (24:39):

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I will add to that, that you just mentioned is it is so important to know what those values are and intention is huge here. So, again, so many people don’t just, we’re on this treadmill and we’re just going through life every day but we don’t pause to stop and think like, “What is important to me?”

Meghan Dwyer (24:57):

And I do this, I have people do this values exercise, I don’t know if you’ve seen it before, I actually have one right here. It’s literally just a list of personal values. There’s like I don’t know, 60 or 70 of them. And you just start by going through and circling what … circle your top ones or circle — I don’t know, it doesn’t matter, but circle the ones that resonate with you that feel right.

Meghan Dwyer (25:20):

And then kind of narrow it down from there and until you eventually get to maybe your top three to five or three to six or something. I think so many people don’t do these because we forget, but we also maybe think that we know what they are but if you go through this exercise, you might be surprised [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah].

Meghan Dwyer (25:37):

And those top three to five values, those are kind of your guiding light or they should be, and oftentimes values, they certainly can shift but for the most part they stay steady, right. If family is a value of yours, now chances are in 10 years, it’s not going to be, right.

Meghan Dwyer (25:56):

So, I think it’s important for people to kind of go through these types of exercises and just say, and honestly like have it in the back of your mind every day. Or as you go out into the world, we’re headed into the holidays now and the holiday shopping season and all that, “What really matters to me? Is it, who knows? Is it family or is it adventure or travel or whatever?”

Meghan Dwyer (26:18):

And try to align how you use your dollars with those purposes. And again, like I said, too maybe not on the earn side so much but maybe the spending and the saving for those particular reasons. I think that is like a huge step I think in helping people again, to create that self-awareness.

Kevin Gaines (26:37):

So, when you’re talking about values, you’re talking about values in this value inventory, if you will, you’re talking about conceptually what’s important to you not necessarily how do you view it? Because it could be that you know family in your 20s means one thing, family in your 60s or 70s could look different, but that value is still there, is that what you’re saying?

Meghan Dwyer (27:03):

Yeah yeah. Exactly. It is, and I think these are kind of general concepts, and like I said, they certainly could change but I think you’re right, I think how you view it. Like when you’re in your 20s and you know maybe you don’t have a family of your own yet, that’ll look different than it will if you are in your 30s or 40s and you do have young kids of your own versus what that would look like when you’re in your 60s or 70s and maybe the kids are grown up and out of the house.

Meghan Dwyer (27:31):

But I think for the most part, if that is what is important to you, there’s a common thread throughout your whole life. That’s why it’s good to kind of look at these every so often and just see if the way … you’re spot on, the way I look at values is what is important to me right now? What matters? What’s driving the bus here?

Stephanie McCullough (27:50):

It can be difficult too, right because if all your neighbors on the street have fancy cars and you’re driving an old beater that’s 15-years-old and you know barely making it because you want to spend more on travel or your value is truly I don’t know, sending your kid to music camp, whatever it might be.

Stephanie McCullough (28:08):

But it can be hard to kind of — it feels like going against the grain or swimming a stream or whatever your metaphor is for consciously saying, like  “No, I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to fall into the pattern I see all around me with my dollars because I need to preserve them for this other thing that is really important.”

Meghan Dwyer (28:28):

Yeah. It’s a journey. I mean, this isn’t like, this isn’t something that is easy right, this is something that takes practice so it’s a process. And again, I think that the self-compassion piece of this is really important because I mean, there are going to be times where you’re not able to fully act in alignment with those values.

Meghan Dwyer (28:48):

Of course, there are because you’re also trying to balance, especially if you have a family, you’re trying to balance other people’s needs as well, right, so. And there’s going to be times where, yeah, maybe you do get sucked in.

Meghan Dwyer (28:57):

I think it’s into the culture and you see, “Oh, this person has this fancy car, maybe I want this fancy car too.” But I think that in those times, that’s when you need to be kinder to yourself. You need to say, “Hey, you know what? Oops, I did that.” And you’ll know, that’s the thing I always say too. When you spend your money on something that isn’t in alignment, you’ll know.

Stephanie McCullough (29:18):

And back to the self-compassion, right, it’s not another reason to start beating yourself up about it. Like, “Oh, my gosh, I did it again. I can’t believe it. I’m the worst human ever like.” No, no, no, no, no, it’s more information, right, if you’re in your non-judgmental observer, your scientist mode like, “Oh, okay, I’m gathering more data, I did that thing that’s not exactly in alignment.” Maybe what led me to do that, I was feeling super stressed and at the end of my rope and like, “Oh, maybe that’s a pattern, right.”

Meghan Dwyer (19:43):

This is the peeling back the onion, right. Because you’re right, there are so many layers to all of this and it becomes more and more complex, right. So, I think it’s all part of this knowing yourself, knowing– and that is the biggest journey, whether it’s with your money or it’s with any other aspect of your life, which I truly believe that your relationship with money is parallel to your relationship with yourself.

Meghan Dwyer (30:06):

And these are all kind of more universal concepts that you can apply to other areas of your life. I just kind of look at it from the angle of money. But yeah, I mean it’s complex and we are human. We are not robots and we have to continue to remind ourself that.

Meghan Dwyer (30:21):

And yeah, I always say this, I learned to ski when I was 25-years-old. So, I was clearly at that stage, like, I wasn’t a 3-year-old. I was very afraid of falling. And I remember I had this ski instructor who told me, in the very first thing he told me was, “You’re going to fall. So, the first thing I’m going to teach you is to learn how to get up when you fall.”

Meghan Dwyer (30:41):

And that was sort of a completely backwards way of looking at it [Stephanie McCullough overcross: right]. But I use this analogy all the time because I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that we can’t expect ourselves to not know how to … when I didn’t know how to ski at all to go out there and be this expert skier, right.

Meghan Dwyer (31:01):

Even if I was an expert skier and I had been skiing for years, I’m human, I might trip over stick or a pile of snow or something like that right and you will fall. So, the trick is not being afraid of it [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yeah] and getting comfortable with falling and getting back up.

Stephanie McCullough (31:22):

I like that analogy. So, one of the things Meghan, that you work on is talking about money stories, money beliefs. Can you talk a little bit about the role that those play in how we deal with our money?

Meghan Dwyer (31:35):

Oh, yeah. I mean, just here’s an example, right. One of the beliefs that a lot of people have, we always hear this like, “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” right, which is clearly rooted in scarcity, right. So, I think what’s really important is to understand what those beliefs are.

Meghan Dwyer (31:52):

And again, we can’t do that without creating some space and giving yourself a space to have that self-awareness, right, to be able to see what’s being triggered here right and the emotions will tell you, lean into those emotions.

Meghan Dwyer (32:06):

Like if your husband decides he wants to spend God knows what on something for Christmas and put it on your credit card and you get this angst because you’re like, “Oh no, I can’t spend that, I can’t spend that.” What does it feel like? What does that feel like in your body and where is that coming from?

Meghan Dwyer (32:21):

Scarcity is a big one for a lot of people. So, I think those beliefs are really what is driving the behaviors for so much of us. It’s like that kind of cognitive behavioral triangle, right. So, the beliefs are going to be what needs to be explored, I think.

Meghan Dwyer (32:37):

And once we can sort of identify, and this is what I do in the one-on-one coaching work I do with people is we start to identify where these beliefs come from, right because oftentimes these beliefs aren’t necessarily ours.

Meghan Dwyer (32:48):

Sometimes they are, sometimes we’ve formed them through our own life experiences, but a lot of times they are just inherited from how we grew up. So, they either came from mom or dad or maybe a grandparent or somebody who might’ve been close to you growing up as a child.

Meghan Dwyer (33:03):

Understanding where those beliefs come from is really important and then understanding how those beliefs have been playing a role in your life, for us, I guess we go through kind of like a bio and a history and understand what are some of those patterns, identifying what those beliefs are, then knowing where they came from, and then understanding how those beliefs have played a role in your life up until now, until the present moment.

Meghan Dwyer (33:27):

And from there then we can kind of take the step to heal that and to change that a little bit. Like what is the replacement belief that I want to have instead? And then sort of back into it from there, what are those kind of small but significant steps that we need to take to get to where we want to be rather than where we are right now.

Stephanie McCullough (33:46):

Because it’s like a little subconscious voice that’s just playing on repeat right and you’re not even aware that that’s what’s going on under all the layers of.

Meghan Dwyer (33:55):

Until you take the time to do this work, right. So, that’s why doing a money bio and a money history is so important because you may feel like there’s something off or you just feel stuck or you feel uncomfortable around money, there’s something there, but you don’t really know what it is yet.

Meghan Dwyer (34:14):

So, until you kind of take some time to go back, I think it might be, and you don’t have to do this super in depth, but I think once you start to like formulate what are some of those memories and experiences that I’ve had around money, you may start to see patterns pretty quickly.

Meghan Dwyer (34:30):

And some of those patterns, risking scarcity is one of them but I think also this kind of feeling maybe less than or not enough like those are some of those beliefs as well. And who knows, like I know in my personal experience, that wasn’t something that I learned from outside of me, I learned that from my–how I was raised and there was so much of that stuff that came from my mom.

Meghan Dwyer (34:53):

So, being intentional about — for me, this whole journey started when I had kids because I didn’t want to pass on some of those beliefs that were, I don’t want to say negatively impacting me, but weren’t helping me, they weren’t really like doing anything, they were just kind of making me feel uncomfortable.

Stephanie McCullough (35:14):

Living rent-free in your head.

Meghan Dwyer (35:16):

Totally. Yeah, and just feeling blah, right. And I just knew I didn’t want to pass that on to them and have them feel that blahness, right, so that’s where the work came in and that’s when I was like, “Oh, let me start to think a little bit more about where this came from.” And first of all, what is it, identifying it, where did it come from and then where do I want to be instead right and that’s the intentionality piece of it.

Kevin Gaines (35:41):

Meghan, in your work with your clients, how often is this self-discovery resulting in “fixing the problem quote-unquote” versus learning how to almost adjust your expectations knowing you have these particular views or learned behaviors?

Meghan Dwyer (36:05):

I think it’s a little bit of both to be honest. I mean I think you can– as humans, there’s this neuroplasticity, right, we can unlearn things, but I think that it’s a journey right, there’s no fixing per set. There’s like a, “I’m going to try to do it differently. I’m going to look at it differently today.”

Meghan Dwyer (36:26):

So, the work is in those, as I was saying, those kind of small but significant steps and some of those are kind of active things that we can do like, that are empowering things, whatever it is, putting together a budget or making that phone call or doing the action steps.

Meghan Dwyer (36:40):

But a lot of it comes in the behavioral, which is the emotional and the behavioral, or even like the spiritual piece of it, right. So, the saying, the mantras and having this like understanding that there’s kind of more out there besides … it’s not always in my control.

Meghan Dwyer (37:01):

So, if I can try to have that belief that I am okay and I am good enough and I’m doing the right things to kind of create this, whatever it is, I just used the example of scarcity to create this abundance in the world around me. It’s a mindset shift.

Meghan Dwyer (37:17):

So, you’re right Kevin, I think that some of it is, there’s things that we can do to fix per se and I don’t know if they’re necessarily, you will ever be fixed, but there’s steps you can take to kind of move towards that but there’s also an adjustment of expectations.

Meghan Dwyer (37:33):

I mean, the chances of you going from, if you really … like if the numbers say that you have a low income to go from making $50,000 to making $500,000, like that’s not going to happen overnight right and that may not happen at all. So, it’s more adjusting that mindset and that perspective that, “Hey, do I have everything that I need within the confines of my life right now?”

Meghan Dwyer (38:01):

And I think it is a little bit of adjusting and probably a lot bit of adjusting those expectations to be like, “What do I actually need? What is important to me?” And that kind of comes into play there. Like, Do I need to have this big life that somebody else that makes $500,000 a year has right, so it’s an art, it’s not a science.

Kevin Gaines (38:20):

And this is actually the third or fourth time we’ve touched on this issue and I’m not quite sure how we could explore it more, but I’d really like to, the whole idea of the relative versus the absolute. I’m having a good year, but my next-door neighbor just got a new car, put a pull in and everything, he must be having a better year. A year ago, I didn’t have a good year. How do we fix that? You know.. I don’t even know how to ask the question even.

Meghan Dwyer (38:48):

We see that all the time and I think my response to that and I have to coach myself on this every single day. Coach my husband, coach my kids on this, we don’t know what’s actually going on in somebody else’s life, right.

Meghan Dwyer (39:00):

So, that person, I was just thinking about this example the other day. We had basketball last Saturday, and we had another dad brought his son over who’s on my son’s team for pizza afterwards.

Meghan Dwyer (39:14):

And they were talking about a neighbor of theirs and the dad drives a Land Rover, the mom drives a BMW and I just said something like, “Oh, well, I assume I just have some like— oh well I assume they must make a lot of money,” and he’s like, “I don’t know about that.”

Meghan Dwyer (39:27):

And I just started thinking, and that was sort of it in the conversation, but I just started thinking a little bit more that, I mean, you can finance things up the wazoo. I mean, you just don’t know, I have no idea what those people — what their financial situation is like.

Meghan Dwyer (39:40):

And I probably will never know and I don’t really care that much, but it just goes to show that some people are going to live a certain life because there’s certain things that matter to them, right. So, it doesn’t matter necessarily if there is debt or if there is other ways of financing or getting these things, I think we just don’t know what other people have or why they have them.

Meghan Dwyer (40:03):

They could have gotten a gift, maybe somebody, one of the grandparents gave them some money or maybe they gave into an inheritance, we just don’t know or maybe there’s a trust or something like that. We just don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, so I think the way I have to always remind myself of it is focus on yourself.

Meghan Dwyer (40:20):

Focus on what matters. And it’s so hard to not compare all the time, I know it is. But just constantly going back to, you know what, stay in my lane and as long as I can focus on and I can sort of control how I feel about myself relative to money, then that’s what matters, right.

Meghan Dwyer (40:38):

And of course, don’t pretend that you’re not going to like one day — compare yourself to the neighbor next door or the family basketball or at school or whatever it is, of course, you’re going to, but it’s just this kind of constant reminder of like coming back home.

Meghan Dwyer (40:55):

And again, too, we weren’t taught this in school, so people are going to do all kinds of things with their money because they want to and because we never really learned how to properly do this. I also think that the way the system is kind of set up, financial planning and guidance and having access to resources, it’s a little bit better now with things like robo-advisors, but historically it’s always been available to the people with the higher net worth [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Oh yeah].

Meghan Dwyer (41:23):

So, to be able to make these decisions, I think important decisions when people are younger and don’t have as much money, that’s really important, right. So, if you didn’t have that help or that guidance, how would you know, right?

Stephanie McCullough (41:38):

Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

Meghan Dwyer (41:40):

Self-compassion. Give yourself some compassion regardless of where you’re at and whatever stage you’re at with this.

Stephanie McCullough (41:46):

Exactly. And what you’re feeling in the moment. And if you do find yourself judging or comparing right back to the self-compassion, I think that’s a good thing. So, Meghan, how can people find you, follow your podcast, follow what you’re doing, all the good work that you’re doing in the world?

Meghan Dwyer (42:03):

Yeah! So, the podcast is called Money Isn’t Scary because it’s not or it doesn’t have to be and you can find that anywhere you get your podcast. And you can also check out my website, which is moneyisn’tscary.com and that’s where you can find more information on working with me, if you wanted to do one-on-one coaching, which is one of my favorite things.

Meghan Dwyer (42:24):

I think it’s a four or five session kind of immersive experience and we really get to go one-on-one, learning about your history and understanding those patterns, those behaviors, those challenging aspects, where they’ve come from, how they’re impacting your life right now, and how we can start to shift those to patterns and behaviors that are more aligned with where you want to be. So, it’s awesome work and go check out the website if you’re interested.

Stephanie McCullough (42:50):

That’s fabulous. We will definitely link that in the show notes. Thanks for being with us.

Meghan Dwyer (42:54):

Yeah, thank you for having me. This was great.

Stephanie McCullough (43:00):

Well, Kevin, you know I enjoyed that conversation because this– the mind stuff, the emotional stuff, the psychology stuff, I just find so fascinating. Partly because as Meghan was saying like, we don’t learn about money, but we also don’t learn about that side of it and that that’s even a part of money and financial planning.

Kevin Gaines (43:22):

I always find these conversations completely fascinating. It’s not an area that I spend a whole lot of time focusing on so when we start having these guests on, or even the subject when it’s just you and I talking and we’re getting this, I just get caught up in, “Oh my gosh, That’s I haven’t quite thought of that before. Oh, well that would explain a lot,” and you get these moments of clarity and I always find these episodes, the ones that I learned the most from.

Stephanie McCullough (43:55):

Yeah, yeah. No, her idea of leaning into the discomfort, leaning into the triggers, that was like, “Oh wait, no, I don’t want to do that. Why would I want to lean into discomfort?” But that’s where the information is.

Stephanie McCullough (44:09):

That’s where if you are able to be compassionate with yourself and try to step into that neutral observer position like, “Oh, I’m feeling super uncomfortable about this. What’s going on? What are my thoughts? What are my feelings that are happening?” That’s the treasure trove, I think of self-knowledge that’s going to set us up to being able to be more intentional and in alignment with our values in the future.

Kevin Gaines (44:35):

I mean, to use the cliche experience is the best teacher. Now somebody else’s experience is the cheaper teacher, which hopefully we’re able to present on some of these interviews. But yeah, I mean, I think back to a different genre that I listened to, but the guy on the one broadcast is always saying, “Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.” And that was a lot of the stuff Meghan was saying was, “This exists, that’s not going to change [Stephanie McCullough overcross: right], what are you going to do with it?”

Stephanie McCullough (45:09):

Yeah, yeah. Acknowledging instead of being surprised every time like, “Oh, I’m feeling anxious about this or I’m feeling panicky,” expecting it to your point of changing your expectations, but then trying to use it as fuel, as fodder as whatever the right word is for your own journey.

Stephanie McCullough (45:31):

Because we’re all on a journey to get better with this stuff. It’s not easy because it’s complicated and because we have all these thoughts and feelings about it.

Kevin Gaines (45:39):

I mean, that’s why earlier on you talking about identifying your values and to your point Stephanie of that, we’re always saying it’s not about the money itself, it’s about what you do with the money. Again, this is where those values come into play [Stephanie McCullough overcross: Yup].

Stephanie McCullough (45:52):

Listeners, we hope you enjoyed this conversation with Meghan Dwyer, go check out her podcast and her website, we’ll talk to you next time. It’s goodbye from me.

[Music Playing]

Kevin Gaines (46:01):

And it’s goodbye from her.

Stephanie McCullough (46:05):

Be sure to subscribe to the show and please share it with your friends. Show notes and more information available at takebackretirement.com. Huge thanks for the original music by the one and only Raymond Loewy through New Math in New York. See you next time.

Voiceover (46:20):

Investment advice offered through Private Advisor Group, LLC, a registered Investment Advisor. Private Advisor Group, American Financial Management Group, and Sofia Financial are separate entities. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual security. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. This information is not intended to be substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.