Money Stories Bonus: The Personal Side of Money Management
Apr 08, 2024
Shelby Nicholl
As we gathered around the microphone, Stephanie McCarthy, and I, Shelby Nicholl, couldn't help but reminisce about the piggy banks and lawn-mowing gigs of our past. Our bonus episode of Kick it Open turns into an intimate affair, as we exchange tales of our financial roots, revealing the impact of our early money memories on the fiscal philosophies we uphold today. We laugh, we reflect, and we even admit to the odd discomfort we've felt discussing our own finances, despite spending our careers in wealth management. It's a paradox we're ready to unpack, and we invite you to listen in on this rare glimpse into the (our) personal side of money management.
Recorded and produced by Muriel Network. Graphic Design by John Gallagher. Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/ra/let-good-times-roll License code: EV5ON7Y3CSESDSEU
As we gathered around the microphone, Stephanie McCarthy, and I, Shelby Nicholl, couldn't help but reminisce about the piggy banks and lawn-mowing gigs of our past. Our bonus episode of Kick it Open turns into an intimate affair, as we exchange tales of our financial roots, revealing the impact of our early money memories on the fiscal philosophies we uphold today. We laugh, we reflect, and we even admit to the odd discomfort we've felt discussing our own finances, despite spending our careers in wealth management. It's a paradox we're ready to unpack, and we invite you to listen in on this rare glimpse into the (our) personal side of money management.
Recorded and produced by Muriel Network. Graphic Design by John Gallagher. Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/ra/let-good-times-roll License code: EV5ON7Y3CSESDSEU
Hi, I'm Shelby Nickel. I'm a 25-year corporate veteran and I spent most of my career inside of the wealth management industry. After climbing the ladder to reach top levels at two broker dealers, I often found myself as the only woman in the room. I felt and saw many corporate leaders and women advisors feeling left out, burned out and ready to have more impact. If you're a woman in wealth management, this podcast is for you. In this podcast, I'll tell the stories of women who are slaying it, doing things differently and bringing new energy to their work. This podcast is named in honor of a Muriel Siebert quote. Muriel Siebert was the first woman member of the New York Stock Exchange and she said when a door is hard to open and nothing else works, sometimes you just have to rear back and kick it open. After decades of sluggish progress, it's time for us to kick the door open on women's success. Hey, everyone Shelby here. So this episode of the Kick it Open podcast is a bonus episode.
Speaker 1:
When Stephanie McCarthy and I were recording our money story episode with Melissa Reichenwald, we had a whole discussion about our personal money stories and, rather than having those in the main episode, I pulled that content out and here is a bonus. We recognize that for many, you may not want to listen to this, but if you know us and you love us, you'll probably think this episode is fun. So anyway, here you go, Enjoy. In the wealth management industry, you know we spend our whole day talking about money. It's obviously like what so much of us do, and many people who are attracted to the industry are really probably uncommonly good with money. They're very secure about money, maybe even have positive money memories, etc. But we know that there is this wealth gap also specifically for women, and certainly racial elements to it as well, and so we know that not everyone has the same stories about money too, and so I'm excited for us to have this conversation today where we can kind of get underneath a little bit of the money stories and money memories.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm excited too. I think that, just like as coworkers, you know, I worked with people for 10 years and we talked about money every day and I don't know that we ever talked about our personal behaviors and attitudes towards money.
Speaker 1:
Isn't that super interesting? And especially in the space that you were in, because you and I were for a long time, market researchers and we were talking to investors and advisors about money and their attitudes on things all the time. And yet, even behind the glass, the glass of the focus group facility we might not have been sharing our own money story.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so true, we're like asking our clients and the investors we're researching to tell us their money stories and not sharing too much behind the screen. Or if we did, it would be like a joke, you know, like someone would say something and we'd be like, yeah, I feel that way too. Ha ha, you know.
Speaker 1:
Yes, yes, well, it seems like. So there's money stories and money memories, and as I was prepping for this podcast, I was really kind of confusing the two, so let's bring a little clarity to them. I guess just a little bit. So we have bring a little clarity to them. I guess just a little bit. So we have the same terminology. Money memory I'm thinking about the first things I remember about money. These are like the stories from childhood and they're the memories. And then money story might be a one-liner that I sort of have in my head about my general attitudes about money. Is that how you think about it too?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that's how I think about it. I mean, the more I thought about money stories, the more that it just seems so much like therapy, right? So it's like your money memories are like the forming experiences you had growing up that now shape how you approach your money story today and how what your behaviors are towards money and and all of that. So it's often a good place to start talking about your money memories, but you also have to think through like, okay, what does that mean for me today? Why do I you know now do these things with money? So do you want to start? You want to share some of your early money memories?
Speaker 1:
Sure, when I think about my money, memories, I think about three kind of events is what I see in my head. And so the first one is I was really lucky to have a great grandmother and I can remember mowing the grass at her house, and what was funny about this is I would get paid $5 for mowing her lawn with the push mower. I was probably 10, I think, when I got to start doing this and I say got to start, because then it was like my money, and so my grandpa would hand me the $5 bill. My great grandmother's son would hand me the $5 bill for finishing the yard. Their son would hand me the $5 bill for finishing the yard. But what was funny is that all the adults were literally circled around me as I was mowing this yard, but they were all there to support me, to make sure nothing went wrong, to make sure I didn't hurt myself. But then at the end of the day I got to take home the $5.
Speaker 1:
And so it was probably one of those early memories of do something, get paid Right, and my parents really drilled that mantra into me do something, get paid. I was paid for getting good grades. I got a job as soon as I could. I babysat for the entire summer when I was 12. I worked part-time jobs the moment I turned 16. And so do things, get paid. Spend the money how you want. That was the big lesson there.
Speaker 2:
So that's number one.
Speaker 1:
Number two and I'll make these a little shorter is in the second one. My second memory is going shopping with my mom and my cousin for clothes for vacation. So I was a single child until I was 10. And so my parents would take my cousin with us on vacation so that I would have a playmate, and before the vacation we would go clothes shopping to get clothes for the trip, partially because my mom wanted us to coordinate, but I also think it was partially to help out my cousin's family, who didn't have the same level of money security that we did, and so it gave me a bit of a privileged viewpoint, because we had enough to help others and we had enough to buy clothes specifically for vacations. So my lesson there was that we had enough.
Speaker 1:
And then the last memory I have is coming home from school I was probably 11 or 12 and I walk in and my mom is completely sobbing. She was at the kitchen table and just crying. She'd made a mistake on a tax filing and as a result we owed this significant amount of money. I don't even know how much it was, but it was significant enough that she's at the table sobbing and part of her grief was that she'd made a mistake, which that lesson really stuck with me too.
Speaker 1:
But also we were, at that point, a total perfection. You think I have it bad, but also at that point we were a single earner family. My mom had quit work to stay home with my sisters, who are 10 years younger than me, and so now we had the stress of a really large unexpected bill, and so this one taught me some resiliency, but also that money is like not to be trifled with, and you need to be able to do the math really correctly and accurately, and if you do that you'll probably be fine, but if you make a mistake it might be devastating. So those are my three money memories that I come back to.
Speaker 2:
Interesting.
Speaker 1:
What about you?
Speaker 2:
Oh gosh for me. You know it's so funny because we recently went to a networking event together and there was a. You know we separated into tables and they had several opening questions right, get to know you questions and one of them was what's your first money memory? And a couple of people at my table answered it and they answered it. But like I think there were three of them that answered it and I was surprised and I shouldn't have been, but I guess it's from so many years of researching investors and not really researching women that work in wealth management. Their answers seem to answer the question like how did you learn to become good with money, right? So a little bit like your first story, you know, like absolutely you know it was at that time I got a lemonade stand and I got my own money and then my mom told me to put, you know, $2 in the or you know a third of it in the bank and then I could spend a third of it and like that was what they were telling their story and I was kind of like going back to my childhood and thinking like I, that was not, I don't have a money memory like that. You know, like I don't have a like when did you learn to get good with money? And I think it's so telling about the industry like that. I mean you said that you know at the beginning is like you know the people that are drawn into this industry and that work in it for a long time that's the group of people that were at this event are probably good with money and do feel confident and have those kind of memories. And the memories that I have weren't really like that. We weren't the kind of money that like imparted financial wisdom.
Speaker 2:
I think my mom had a lot of anxiety about money. We weren't in poverty by any means. She was a single mom until I was like seven or eight and then, you know, she got married and so, like that helped improve our circumstances. But you know there was anxiety but she largely kept it from me, right, it was like I never really felt like, you know, significantly poorer than my friends or that I wasn't being able to do anything, you know.
Speaker 2:
So I was always kind of like a question mark, like we just kind of didn't talk about it, and she was always doing things for extra money. As an example, she would buy candy and sell it to her friends at work, like it would sit on her desk and like people would give a dollar, you know, and I don't know how much could she possibly make with that right, like I don't know, 20, 30, $40. And she loved doing it right, it wasn't like she thought it was so fun and she was always talking about it and you know it was just like this. So the I don't know what my money memories, we'll figure out a way to make whatever we need happen. You know, like that summer camp that I, you know, I wanted, really wanted to go to. We would figure out a way at the last minute. You know, whatever the deadline was, we'd figure it out and I'd get in and get to go. And that's just kind of how I grew up.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that scrappiness is something that many of us can relate to too, right Like, I can remember my grandmother telling stories about how she would sell pickles in my little rural town to raise money to buy the kids clothes for school for my dad's generation. So I think there's something about that, just in like the American story in general, right it is this like we're going to find a way, we're going to raise the money somehow, some way.
Speaker 2:
Okay, shelby, this wasn't planned. But something that I was thinking so much about when we were again preparing for this podcast was and I think I told you this already I recently reread the book. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, yes, okay. So this is, you know, a classic American novel, right? And as I reread it, there were so many ahas I had rereading it the second time, and the biggest one was a whole character was missing from my memory, a main character of the mother of that book. So I don't know if you've read it or if, for people that haven't read it, there it's a family. They are a Irish immigrant family in Brooklyn in the 1910s and they're super, super poor.
Speaker 2:
And it opens on this scene where the main character, who's like eight years old, is like selling trash for pennies and then taking it and buying candy pennies and then taking it and buying candy, and it just continues. It's a very like visceral scene, it's like a very memorable part of the book and the whole book is like that, though, right, it is, it's this, it's the quintessential, pull you up from your bootstraps, like cultural narrative. And it's like the money story, it's like the meta money story that, like Americans, are given as, like you start with nothing but you can become something, and I think that's really important because, yes, it's our individual experiences that shape our money stories and it's the cultural narratives that we're fed that really come together to form our money story. And then one more thing to add about this book that was really interesting is, as the book goes on, the dad was really bad with money. He eventually dies Not a spoiler, very popular book and the mom remarries a guy who has money.
Speaker 2:
And I think that's a really important thing to say because, for women in particular, that's a story that's told to us as that, like there's there's the pull you up from your bootstraps and, and you know, go to school and put your nose to the grindstone. And then there's the get married and, like, those are the two ways to financial freedom for women, right, and I don't think people talk about that, that much.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that's a really important point and I don't think people talk about that that much. Yeah, I think that's a really important point and especially because historically that's been the primary, if you look at history, that's been the primary way that women's money stories were shaped. It was based on who you married.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely. It was everything, that was the whole thing, and that's like the primary lesson of this book, which I just was just blown away by. You know, that's not what I got out of it when I read it when I was 20.
Speaker 1:
But that you reread this book that you had read originally in your 20s and now you got something completely different out of it. It's so interesting how the perspective will change in those years. It makes me think too, about how, about probably my money stories or my money memories have changed over time also, but I still keep coming back stuff to this place of, like the money, like what is the one liner for me? What do you think your one liner?
Speaker 2:
is is, I think my one-liner is we'll always figure out a way to make things work. Yeah, yeah, scrappy, and it means that I still kind of keep it in the back of my mind, I don't bring it to the forefront. I'm like, no matter what's going on, we'll find a way to make it work.
Speaker 1:
I think my underlying money story, the one liner for me is I am a hard worker, so I'll always have enough money.
Speaker 1:
Now my version of enough is probably different than your version and I will say I like to spend money, so my version of enough is kind of a lot, but I know I'm a hard worker at the same time and I invest in my career so that I can always make more. So that's, I think, my underlying money story and it definitely pulls through to my work ethic and it pulls through to my personal life. I really prioritize career and have prioritized career in order to have enough money for the family.
Speaker 2:
Yeah Well, it's so interesting to talk about this because, I mean, we've been friends for you know a while and I don't know. I mean, I don't think any. I don't think what you shared today is a surprise to me, right? It's not like I'm shocked, but these are just conversations. You just don't have enough, and I'm glad we did.
Speaker 1:
I'm glad we did too. It made me realize like I haven't had the money memory conversation with my own spouse.
Speaker 2:
I know, I don't think I have either. I need to do that. I mean, this is really important. Like I said, it's like therapy and I think we you know we're managing our household and our money together, so we should definitely know each other's money story.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you should know each other's money story and those money memories. And then I think the other thing we should be thinking about is how do we turn this into a conversation with our kids?
Speaker 2:
right.
Speaker 1:
What are what's going to be their money story and their money memories?
Speaker 2:
Yes, that is so, that is. That's something that's on my mind. So much because I think about how to make it different than what it was for me growing up.
Speaker 1:
What are we going to go do based on what we've heard today?
Speaker 2:
I think what we need to do is go talk to someone about our money story.
Speaker 1:
I love that.
Speaker 2:
More than one someone.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I definitely need to have this conversation with my own spouse.
Speaker 2:
Yes, yes, and friends and my financial advisor, and everyone.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, that's too much. Everyone is too much, but many people because we just need to bring down those barriers. It was interesting in the community because we just need to bring down those barriers. It was interesting in the community. We had a question this past week around money stories that people have and which ones they thought should go away, and about 40% of the respondents said that the story that needs to go away is the story of it's impolite to talk about money.
Speaker 2:
How do you get comfortable with bringing it up? What do you say with your friend at your next coffee?
Speaker 1:
I feel like it's your first money memory yeah, maybe, why not? Yeah why not talk about a deeper conversation that you'll get into?
Speaker 2:
that's true. That's true, yeah, and it's. It goes back to our networking podcast. The more you do it, then you'll have the muscle memory and it won't feel so weird the next time. That's so true.
Speaker 1:
That's so true. And then it makes me also think about the other types of conversations we could be having with our friends, Like money is one element right, but it could also just be like what's your first memory? Wouldn't that be interesting to know from friends that you maybe made in adulthood that you weren't there in those early years.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah, oh, that's so good.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, how can we take our conversations to a new and deeper level? In general, Money being one part of that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, oh, I love that. Okay. Well, that will be our homework this week.
Speaker 1:
Yes, we're going to go have some conversations about money stories.
Speaker 2:
All right. Well, I love talking with you today, shelby, have a wonderful afternoon, and I can't wait till we talk again.
Speaker 1:
Can't wait. Talk to you soon. Bye, hey friends, if you'd like this podcast, we have three quick things you can do to support us. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Share this podcast with your contacts and go over to Muriel Network, m-u-r-i-e-l Networkcom and sign up for our free newsletter. Thanks,