Podcast Episode # 1: Our minds, our money and what matters the most

The WHY behind the Most Hated F-Word Podcast Hi. I’m Shaun – I am a certified financial planner, and I obsessed with relationships... financial ones, that is. I like finances, and I like talking. So, welcome to The Most-Hated F-Word podcast! Our mission is to focus on the intersection between our minds, our money, and what matters most. We will redefine the concept of retirement and find out what true financial independence really means. On today’s episode I discuss WHY I started a podcast and explore the intersection between our minds, our money and what matters the most. About: As a trained and practicing Certified Financial Planner, Shaun believes the last thing we want to hear is “save more, pay off your credit cards, invest your money.” Instead, Shaun deeply believes the key to living a financially-free life is rooted in our money psychology. And by identifying our money stories and money scripts that unconsciously impact how we think, act and feel towards money – we can start to gain control over our money relationships. When we understand our money relationships, and what’s important, our entire money framework changes in a healthy manner where we can experience financial independence. Shaun is on a mission to educate and empower people so they can live their happiest and most fulfilled lives. For Shaun, financial literacy is not about becoming rich, it’s about living our most enriched lives. Complete show transcript: Going to walk down to Zwick's pretzels with my little kid going to New Orleans to see Bruce Springsteen focusing on energy creating things taking the time to do a podcast like this for me. Those are the Beautiful Moments that I want to focus on along the way and that's why I trade my time for money. Welcome to the most Hated F-Word podcast where we focus on the intersection between our mind money and what matters most Just because maybe finances are not the sole purpose. Hi, I'm Shaun. I'm a certified financial planner and I'm obsessed with money. Yes. That's right. I'm obsessed with money. No, it's not money by itself. It's rather the convoluted money relationship that we all have that's what fascinates me so here it I like money. I like talking welcome to the most hated F-word podcast . my goal to focus on the intersection between our minds money and really what matters most in our lives because feel when we bring redefine the concept of money in our lives and examine our money relationships. We can take total control about how we feel towards money. On today's episode. We're going to talk about how this podcast will be structured what each episode will look like and what my intention is from the podcast. But first here's a little bit about myself as a trained in practicing certified financial planner. I believe that the last thing we all really want to hear is save more pay off your credit cards invest more money. These are very important things but we hear them all the time and we all often find ourselves not doing these things and becoming frustrated with ourselves. So I feel that the key to living this financially free life is actually deeply rooted in our money. G and our money relationships and I feel like if we first start by identifying what are our money stories and typically these stories are unconsciously impacting how we think act and feel towards money when we actually take the time to examine them we can start to gain control of our money relationship and find out why we're not making these seemingly simple decision to save more pay your credit card off in so forth. Earth And I really really do feel that when we understand our money relationships and then identify what's really important to us in our life our entire money framework can change in a healthy Manner and that's the intention of the most hated f word. Now I'm super excited to launch this podcast. It's something that I've wanted to do for a long time as I feel like it's a it's an outlet for me to really express my views on money relationship. And also it's an area for me and all the listeners to really grow and deepen our understanding of our money relationships. I'll be interviewing guests and for the most part will have consistent questions that really dig into their money relationships and how they feel think and act 2 It's money. I feel like by having real stories from real people. We all can relate in some capacity and maybe start to examine our own money relationships to make some tweaks by no means am I going to Proclaim that I'm an expert. I'm learning along the way with everybody else and I really feel by documenting these interviews. We can all learn together. I recently signed up for an incredible course out the u.s. Called. social ecology and behavior finance and the whole idea of the course is to look at how psychology and our money go hand-in-hand and why it's so incredibly important to examine our money psychology now before I get into a little bit more about the details of The podcast I thought it would take some time to just talk about why I came up with the most hated f word which we know is financed, but why I want to start this. And to do this, I need a little purse participation. Now if you're driving don't actually close your eyes because I'm going to have you close your eyes away. But if you're driving, please don't do that because I would be dangerous and I actually don't know what the liability is for me in that context. So please just Don't Close Your Eyes. Okay for everyone who's not driving? I want you to close your eyes. And think about the happiest moment in your life. think about where you were who you were with And think how you were feeling. Keep thinking. This is good. Okay. Now that we have this happy moment imprinted our minds we're going to switch gears and we're going to start talking about the most hated f word and as I've told you it's finances some people might think it's failure funeral often. Some people might even think it's farting but no as we know its finances for me what I think makes finances. The most hated F-word is the fact that we can't even talk about finances without clearing a room. As someone who makes it is a profession infinite arm. Sorry, let me restart as someone whose role is to talk about money all day long when I meet new people. I can't count how many times they're like, oh you're in finance. You don't want talk to you. We know it's a taboo subject and even according to a study that looked at the most avoided conversations Finance was the clear winner with 44 percent of the responses. Seriously 44 percent of the responses. Rate Finance is the top conversation people want to avoid it ranked higher than religion politics in death. I mean this means that we would rather talk about certain politicians most outrageous tweets than our own personal finances. But for the most part I can understand why. Based on our upbringings. Our dealings with money financed in and itself is a gross word when we hear it. We feel that it reeks of paperwork of debt. In fact a recent study in Canada showed that 42% a Canadians report finances the top stressor in their lives. That means that maybe even half the people listening to this now, which hopefully it's more than just to me on the first one which I'm sure it is. you would rank finances the biggest stressor in your lives and For me the part that I find disappointing are sad is that we tend to attach so much of our soaked Worth to her muddling money, and then we let those numbers to come to Define us. And as I started earning more money and getting a job, I started to realize that it seems like Society kind of has a script that goes like this we go to school then post-secondary. We graduate we get a job and even if it's a job that we hate then it's our job and duty to buy the biggest and best of everything and then at work with every promotion. We must Chase then we must upgrade our war. car housing everything inside of her house. So then we can do the best part which is posting Instagram worthy pictures so that everybody knows that we have made it. And sure I might be exaggerating but I feel like there's a lot of Truth to those statements there. But then if you look at what happens, we see 42 percent of Canadians are stressed. We're unhappy then we often tend to start living to work instead of working to live and why well, I think it's because we're hardwired were hardwired for the pursuit of money. And now on average Canadians are only spending a fraction of their disposable income. So disposable income is the money we have left over after all of our expenses. But we're only spending a fraction of that money on things that actually make us happy are that we find worthwhile. And I see this quite often as someone who has a profession in financial planning. I've learned that it doesn't really matter how much people make they have the same questions. More more so the same feelings. I feel like my money controls me and it stresses me out. There's a well there's several amazing studies that have shown that after a household meets a certain income. There's no correlation between how much money they earn after after this income level and happiness levels. So when this study was done in 2009 by Daniel coloman, it was $75,000 household income so you Inflate that out to whatever would be in 2020, but essentially at that time $75,000 of household income after $75,000. Every additional dollar earned had no correlation between happiness levels, but yet we find ourselves trying to get more money sacrificing our finite time so often but the question is is why are we doing it if the research is clear that it's not linked to happiness. Now that could be debated and there's several people who think differently and to some degree. I think that other studies and other research have shown that when we use money as a certain ingredien