When we are children, sometimes we face experiences that we are not yet mature enough to handle. We don't have the power, skills or resources to resolve the issue and we may not have the perspective to understand that it's not our responsibility. This can be frightening, confusing, upsetting and frustrating. As children, we cope however we can with the issue and the feelings that come with it.

For example, we might:

• distract ourselves and others with jokes and games 

• hide and wait for it to be over

• become aggressive and try to force others to do what we want

• be extra nice and accommodating, so authorities will approve of us and protect us

• or become fixated on trying to anticipate every possible problem and control what we can control perfectly, so there are no nasty surprises

These are all understandable strategies for a child to take when faced with an adult-sized problem.

Unfortunately, once we have learned a coping strategy, it can become our automatic response for similar situations, even in adulthood. In essence, when we are faced with an issue that reminds us of being young, overwhelmed and helpless, it's like we become that child again without even realising it! We respond like we did when we were little, before our adult minds ever get a chance to come up with a better solution.

Because these childlike responses rarely work out well for us as adults, we can end up feeling even more powerless and upset and even less capable of dealing with that aspect of life. The most challenging part is that it all happens so quickly, we don't even recognise that this is what's happening!

When the issue in question involves money, this can cause a lot of trouble. We need a calm, adult mindset when dealing with questions of money, not an overwhelmed childlike one.

Examples

If you heard your parents fighting because one of them went out with friends when the other one thought they couldn’t afford it, you might try not to spend anything on yourself at all, so no one can criticise you for it. You could end up thrifty, but joyless.

Or if your dad lost his savings to a scammer, you might just spend everything you get, because deep down you don’t trust that saving could pay off. Of course, this leaves you unprepared for emergencies and at risk of problem debt.

Or if your aunts and uncles were richer than your mum and rubbed her nose in it, you might become driven by money and the status it can buy. You could become wealthy but end up burned out and doing work you hate.

Thankfully there is a way forward. 

The solution

If you can imagine yourself as you were when you learned this lesson about money, you can connect to the childlike part of yourself that keeps rushing to the rescue with a strategy that no longer works. Once you can do that, you can gently persuade them to let your adult self take over and try another way.

This takes compassion and an understanding that your younger self isn’t trying to mess things up. Your younger self isn’t stupid or selfish or bad. They’re just doing what they can with the skills and understanding you had when you were that age. A good start is to let them know you are grateful to them for trying to help and you know the did their best. This should help you to feel more calm and able to think more clearly.

Then you can tell your child self that because you are now a grown up, you have different, grown up ways to solve the issue. The child part of you doesn’t have to be responsible for trying to fix a problem they’re too young to handle any more. You’ve got this!

I can help you to learn better, more grown up strategies for managing your money. To find out more, book a free, no-strings call and let’s discuss what financial coaching can do for you!

There are many reasons why unopened envelopes build up. Some people are in debt and are avoiding scary overdue payment letters. Some people are neurodivergent and letter-opening is a chore they tend to avoid. Some people are just busy and keep putting it off until they realise there are several week’s unopened mail and possible something important is lost inside that may need a response.

Now, I have to confess, I have many unhelpful financial habits, but I do generally stay on top of my post and my emails. That said, I’ve helped others with this and I’ve completed tasks I didn’t want to do enough times to have some useful tips.

If you want to tackle your envelope mountain, but the thought feels very overwhelming, here is my gentle guide to getting it done.

Paper can’t bite!

This sounds funny, but our bodies respond to anything we perceive as an emotional threat as if it were a physical threat. Adrenaline and cortisol flooding your system to help you fight or run away will not help you make wise, long term choices about your admin and organisation.

Remind yourself you are not about to fight a crocodile. You are simply dealing with some bits of paper.

What’s more, many people have a tendency to catastrophise about the unknown. There’s a reason that horror movies often don’t show us the monster. What we imagine is so often worse than reality. Once you know what is real, you can deal with it. Until you know, you can’t.

The mountain is actually a molehill.

90% of your post is unnecessary guff and when you open it you’ll find it can go straight in the recycling. It’s either advertising, or duplicates or it’s out of date. There is so much less here to deal with than you expect.

Get a buddy

Do you know anyone else who might have tedious life admin to do? Could you buddy up and do it at the same time? It doesn’t have to be in-person. As long as you’re working at the same time and checking in periodically via a video call or text messages, that will give you a boost. The key is to know that someone else is also tackling their crap at the same time you’re tackling yours. Misery love company and it can help you stay focused and push through when you know someone else is doing the same.

Regulate your nervous system and get in a positive frame of mind

Stretch your shoulders out, jump around a bit, walk around the block, take a few deep breaths and release them slowly. Make a hot drink. Put on some inspiring music. Speak kindly to yourself. You’re not a stupid, lazy, idiot who’s bad at being an adult and can’t even be trusted to open their post. You are an imperfect human like all the other imperfect humans. What’s past is past and what matters are the choices you make now. You are going to open this post because doing so will make your life better and you deserve a better life. It’s time to show yourself love and care by removing this source of stress from your home.

You can open mail and not read it.

Try that! Open your mail and sort it by sender without actually reading the contents.

Take breaks if you need to

Stand up and stretch at intervals. Get a breath of fresh air. It’s ok not to just blast through in a single sitting. (Of course, if you get into a flow or you’re neurodivergent and become hyperfocused, go with it!)

You may want to try the Pomodoro Technique of using a timer to measure out bursts of intense activity (typically 20-25min) with short breaks (3-5min) in between.

You can organise and still not read

Once your post is sorted by sender, sort each sender pile into date order. You still ddont’ have to read the contents.

Start an action list

As you sort the mail you’re going to come across items that need responses or other actions on your part, so it’s a good idea to be ready to make a list of actions as you sort. Grab your favourite notetaking tool whether that’s digital notes, voice notes or old fashioned pen and paper and be ready to capture whatever comes out when you actually begin to read what you’ve been sent.

Have your containers for sorted mail ready

Have a container for the mail you don’t need to keep ready to hand. You may have a shredder, in which case have that nearby and emptied ready to go. That said, it’s common to have too much to put through before a domestic shredder will become filled up and overheated. It’s wise to have a sack or two to contain the mail you intend to shred/recycle/throw out.

You should also have a couple of files for the mail you need to keep. One for mail you want to keep but may have no immediate actions like statements or updated legal terms, another for letters that require action. If you don’t have files, large envelopes will do. Even a couple of bulldog clips to keep like items together is better than just plopping them in a pile.

Begin where it’s easiest

Which letters do you feel most neutral about reading? If there are any letters that you think you will enjoy reading, try saving those for last, as a reward. However if there is a sender about which you feel entirely neutral, this are a good place to start.

As you read the most recent letter from this sender, ask yourself if you need to take any action. Do you have to keep the letter? Is it a statement of account, a legal notification or similar? Or is it just marketing or other useless information? If you don’t have to keep it, shred it and/or recycle it straight away. If there’s an action, add the action to the list and file the letter in the action file. If you just need to keep it, pop it in the “to keep” file, ready to be filed properly later.

If there are duplicate letters for the same action, just keep the most recent and discard the rest.

Celebrate the small wins

Celebrate every time you finish a sender pile. Dab. Do a goofy dance. Strut around like Freddie Mercury singing “We will rock you”. Play air guitar. Give yourself a high five. Whatever will make this process feel just a little lighter and give you a moment to recognise all the work you’ve done, do it!

Go at your own pace

If you’d rather blast through everything in one sitting and be done with it all, go for it. If you’d rather break it into blocks and do some today and some another time, that’s good too. If you choose the latter, I’d suggest actually picking a time and putting it in your calendar as half-completed jobs have a tendency to linger if you don’t set a time for them.

Either way, remember to be kind to yourself as you go. You’re doing this because having a pile of unopened post is stressful and you deserve a life free of stress. You deserve to have the information you need to deal with any issues that arise and not be ambushed by them. That is what you are achieving by opening your post. Well done. I’m proud of you.

If you’d like me to help you get rid of your envelope mountain, pop a time into my calendar and we can work out a plan of action to get those papers sorted and gone.

Book a free 30min chat with Martha

I’ve put together this handy checklist to help you identify where you might be wasting money on recurring expenses. Of course, it’s prompted by the ongoing cost of living issue many of us are facing, but I hope it will remain useful into the future.

I have created a printable version that you can download and use to track your progress.

Check your spending on these categories of recurring payments. Are there ways that you can reduce your costs and/or increase the value for money you receive?

If you are in the UK, use the following resources to research your options and answer the questions below. (Unfortunately, I am unable to provide reliable international resources.)

Money Saving Expert

Money Helper

Which?

This checklist has been designed to be as broadly applicable and timeless as possible. If some item are not useful at present or to you personally, ignore them.

Utilities

Ask yourself:

• Have I signed a fixed term contract with penalties for ending it early, or could I switch without a cost?

• If I could switch without a cost, am I on the best available tariff? Could I find a new deal? If you take up a deal remember to put a reminder in your calendar shortly before it ends to prompt you to shop around again.

• If I am mid-contract, would the cost saving from switching be high enough to make it worth paying to end the contract early?

• If not, when does the contract end? Put a reminder in your calendar shortly before this date to be ready to find a new deal.

Expense

• Gas

• Electricity

• Other fuel

• Mobile (cell) phone

• Landline phone

• Broadband

Credit repayments

It is usually advisable to avoid borrowing money where possible except in certain cases such as mortgages. Even then, it is usually wise to borrow as little as possible, keep interest rates low and repay quickly. Minimising the interest you pay on credit can save thousands over time.

If you have both savings and debt, you will almost always be paying more interest for the debt than you are receiving for the savings. The exception is mortgage debt and most UK student loans. This means it’s often wise to use at least some of your savings to repay outstanding credit as long as there’s no early repayment charge.

Remember that if you are shopping around for credit, it pays to use an “eligibility calculator” that does a “soft search” on your credit reference file and does not affect your credit rating. Don’t make speculative applications to see what you will get, as these can negatively affect your credit score.

If you have a fixed rate or low cost variable rate mortgage deal that is going to end in the next six to 12 months, speak to an independent specialist mortgage adviser sooner rather than later to get advice on securing the best possible replacement deal.

Ask yourself:

• Is there a zero-interest deal available? Would there be a cost to transfer a balance to this?

• Will I have to pay an early repayment charge, or could I switch without a penalty?

• If not, am I on the best available deal? Could I find a new deal and what would be the costs to switch? If you take up a deal remember to put a reminder in your calendar before it ends to prompt you to shop around again.

• If an early repayment charge would apply, would the cost saving from switching now be high enough to make it worth paying?

• If not, when does the charge no longer apply? Put a reminder in your calendar before this date to be ready to find a new deal.

Type of credit

• Mortgage

• Credit cards 

• Secured loan(s)

• Unsecured personal loan(s)

• Car loans or hire purchase agreements

• Store cards

• Other kinds of in-store credit

• Overdraft (enter amount of interest paid monthly instead of repayment amount)

• Any other credit arrangements

A note about buy-now-pay-later schemes:

Although these are convenient and charge 0% interest as long as all payments are made on time, some mortgage lenders see them as a sign of poor budgeting. Leaving aside whether this is fair, if you are likely to be applying for a mortgage or re-mortgaging in the next six months, it is a good idea to avoid buy-now-pay-later.

General Insurance

Ask yourself:

• Do I have the right amount of cover? It’s important to avoid either under-insuring and leaving yourself at risk or over-insuring and spending money on cover that you will almost certainly never need.

• When does my insurance renew? Put a reminder in your calendar to shop around six weeks ahead of the renewal date.

• Could I save money by changing how I insure my goods, for example, by insuring gadgets through my home contents policy or adding a second named driver on a car insurance policy?

Type of insurance

• Home contents insurance

• Buildings insurance

• Vehicle insurance(s)

• Breakdown cover

• Travel insurance

• Pet insurance

• Mobile device insurance(s)

A note about appliance insurance/extended warranties:

Usually these are expensive and poor value for money. If a salesperson is being pushy about these, ask if they are saying that their products are poorly made, unreliable and likely to break down.

If you decide to replace a policy, never cancel the existing insurance until your new policy is live.

Life and health insurance

Making the right choices about protecting your income in case of serious illness or injury and protecting those you love in case you die is a topic that is too complex for this checklist. Please consider speaking to a specialist independent protection adviser about your needs.

If you review your protection insurance cover, or you are considering buying private medical insurance, check what your employer provides. Many employers provide at least some of these types of insurance, often at discounted group rates. However, be aware that if you have to leave your job, for example, because of long term illness or disability, your cover may end.

If you decide to replace any of your existing cover, check your new terms and conditions very carefully to make sure that your new cover is at least as good as your old. For example, if your health has changed, it may be that a new policy won’t pay out for a condition that was covered under your old policy. 

If you decide to replace a policy, never cancel the existing insurance until your new policy is live.

Subscriptions

Ask yourself:

• Am I using this product or service enough to justify this subscription?

• Do I need this tier subscription or would a lower priced tier meet my needs?

• Would a pay-as-you-go option be more flexible and affordable?

• Have I signed a fixed term contract with penalties for ending it early or changing pricing tiers? 

• If not, am I with the best value provider and on the most suitable pricing tier? Could I find a new deal? If you take up a special deal, remember to put a reminder in your calendar shortly before it ends to prompt you to shop around again.

• If I am mid-contract, would the cost saving from switching or ending the contract be high enough to make it worth paying to end the contract early?

• If not, when does the contract end? Put a reminder in your calendar shortly before this date to be ready to find a new deal.

Type of subscription

• Gym, fitness and wellbeing memberships

• Meal-kits, beverages, snacks, supplements etc

• Additional TV channels (cable/satellite/streaming)

• Music and audio streaming

• Household goods (paper products, cleaning items etc)

• Clubs, societies and leisure memberships

• Other physical products (e.g. contact lenses, razors, cosmetics, children’s items, pet items, flowers, clothing, hobby/craft supplies etc.)

• Magazines and newsletters

• Premium bank accounts

• Software, web-based services and in-app purchases on mobile devices (e.g. games, downloads, social media and communities, dating, educational, productivity, wellbeing apps etc)

• Any others?

Others

You may also choose to review how much you are giving to any charities or religious organisations, or to creators through services like Patreon.

So, I thought I’d see what I could work out about the difference a few key changes would make in just one year to a typical household in the UK. This was harder than I expected and I had to fudge a few bits here and there. However I think we can get some plausible indicators.

OK, so, an easy one to start off with: cancelling unwanted automated payments. This might be direct debits, standing orders or continuous payment authorities (commonly used for online subscriptions and recurring in-app mobile purchases).

According to NatWest research in 2020 the average wasted on these is £39 a month or £468 a year per household. Coincidentally that’s the same as the cost of signing up to My Year of Action, so if you sign up and we prompt you to take this action, that’s your money back. Everything else is a bonus. Of course, the NatWest number is from before prices started to rise, so it’s probably more now.

What about getting the best buy home insurance instead of just auto-renewing what we’ll assume is a poor deal? At the time of writing, GoCompare reckon they can save at least 51% of their customers £157 a year on a combined policy; Confused.com reckon they can do £163; and Compare the Market reckon they can do £159.

It seems like £160 is a decent ballpark then.

Looking at the same websites for car insurance, a £380 saving seems a realistic figure for this expense.

What about switching a typical balance to a 0% credit card from one charging interest? According to The Money Charity statistics, the average (mean) UK household credit card debt was £2,252 in October 2022. We’ll assume that this is the balance that’s typically carried over each month i.e. that the amount repaid and the additional spending each month are equal and cancel each other out. Apparently, Bank of England data for September 2022 put the average credit card interest rate at 22.2% APR. So shifting that £2,252 to a 0% balance transfer deal saves an estimated £495 if the balance is held at 0% for a whole year. If there’s a 2% fee for transferring, then the saving is £450, which is still nothing to complain about.

How about moving savings from low paying 0.01% AER accounts to a best buy instant access account. Here it gets tricky. I wasted a lot of time trying to get reliable savings figures. The truth is it’s a bit of a minefield because so many households don’t save anything at all that the figures often talk about savings amounts from amongst those who do save. That means the numbers inevitably skew high because savers are on average higher income than non-savers for obvious reasons. If you’re barely making ends meet, you can’t save, certainly not for longer than a few months.

If you look at financial wealth figures that include non-savers, those typically aren’t broken down by product type, so we don’t know how much is held in savings and how much is invested. For example, the median gross household savings in the UK is £12,500 but that includes money invested in shares and other financial assets, so it’s not useful for our purposes. Likewise I found a stat that gave a median amount of £180 per month “saved” per household, but didn’t distinguish between cash savings and investments, so this could be making wildly varying returns from person to person and household to household.

After much trawling around Office of National Statistics surveys, various savings providers and wherever else I could find, the best estimate I could get to was a typical figure of around £5,000 per household in cash savings. If that was being kept in an old instant access savings account of the type often opened automatically with a current account, it could be earnings as little as 0.1% AER or just £5 a year. In which case, moving it to one of the best buy easy access accounts would bring that interest rate up to 3% AER or £150 a year. So that’s a saving of £145 a year.

Shopping around for a better deal on mobile and broadband packages could easily result in savings of £30 a month total, especially if you’re out of contract. That would be £360 a year.

What have we got so far?

£468

£160

£380

£450

£145

£360

£1,963

Cancelling recurring payments

Switching home insurance

Switching car insurance

Transferring a credit card balance (with fee)

Moving savings

Getting deals on mobile and broadband

Grand total

Nearly £2,000 is pretty good going since none of these involves giving up on life’s pleasures. There’s no skipping lattes or declining invitations to brunch on this list. They’re all one and done actions that run in the background of your life just costing less or making you more than they used to do.

The trouble is making the time to actually get these things done.

This is why I created My Year of Action. So you could save your £1,963 and more with just a couple of actions each month that add up to big results. Check it out. I’d love to see you there.

In essence, even though each of us is only one person, we act as if there is an element of reciprocity in how we treat ourselves.

If we aren't loving and caring to ourselves we sulk and refuse ourselves future love and care. We act as if there is someone else in the equation who should do better, but it's just us!

Because we are angry and disgusted with ourselves for not looking after our wellbeing, we refuse to do the things that would improve our wellbeing as a kind of self-punishment.

The fix is to see the cycle for what it is and realise no one else can break it. we have to start showing ourselves the love and care we crave.

We have to treat ourselves as worthy of love and care in order to believe it, it doesn't work the other way around because the physical evidence is against us.

This is true both in the sensible ways (washing the dishes, getting fresh air, and going to bed instead of doomscrolling) and in the fun ways (taking a day trip, dancing like no one is watching, buying a small indulgence - like fresh flowers or fancy socks).

We have to make a commitment to ourselves. After all we're in this relationship for life. If we can't be happy in it, we can't be happy.

I have said before that we use money to treat ourselves the way we believe we deserve to be treated. 

That means that if we don't believe we deserve comfort and peace of mind, we will mis-manage our money so there's never enough and we are constantly stressed. 

The internal dialogue that says "If you can't be bothered, nor can I!" can get very strong around money, even for people who take excellent care of themselves in other ways.

That's why I'm inviting you to make 2023 the year you make a real commitment to yourself.

This is the year to show yourself some genuine consideration and prove to yourself that you are deserving of your own love.

The changes I've made since therapy weren't easy. I've had times of backsliding. The voice of self-resentment is loud at the beginning. One day of not wiping the cooker down properly or taking the lift instead of the stairs and it was easy to feel both that I had failed and that I was unworthy of a clean home and a healthy body. And if I wasn't worthy of it, why make the effort?

Because of this I know that structures and support to get started and stay motivated are vital, especially in the early stages. My therapist would ask about my self-care every week.

So, to help you not only get started but stay committed to yourself and to using money to treat yourself like you are worthy of love and care, I have developed a new programme that starts at the end of this month (January 2023). I'm very excited to share it with you.

My Year of Action is a small group coaching programme that I have been planning and testing for literally years. Now it's ready to launch starting this January 31st. I'm very excited!

(For those of you who have completed My Money Canvas, the programme maps onto the areas on the Canvas, so you can prioritise the areas you identified as needing the most attention. For those who haven’t sign up to my newsletter to get the free download, there’s a form on my home page.)

Because it's  the first time I'm running My Year of Action, I'm offering it at a heavily discounted rate, so it's works out at just £39 a month!

Given that one of my testers cut her costs by £600 a year in the first month, I reckon this is a great deal. You can show yourself a lot of love with £600.

To find out more and book your place, just click the button.

I can't wait to see you there!

Many people are concerned about how much they will have to pay for their electricity and they want to know what to cut back. Knowing how much electrical appliances cost to run can help you make an informed decision about using them.

Martin Lewis from Money Saving Expert tweeted this helpful advice about calculating approximate energy costs for your appliances.

How to calculate energy cost of an appliance

1. Find its wattage
2. Know 1000W is a Kilowatt (kW)
3. You pay roughly 34p per kW per hour

So 100W (a tenth of a kW) appliance on for two hours is 3.4p an hour x 2 = 6.8p

— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) October 10, 2022

Tweet from Martin Lewis @MartinSLewis

This advice is great, but I know many people don’t want to do their own maths, so I’ve put together a quick spreadsheet to do it for you. You can download the sheet for free here with no sign up or other conditions. Just click the button and it’s yours.

I hope you find it useful. If so, I’d really appreciate it if you would share this post far and wide so others can benefit too.

The estimator only calculates a rough estimate of costs, so don’t rely on it to estimate your bills. Please read your meter regularly and contact your supplier to ensure your bills are correct.

If you believe there is an issue with your billing, please contact your supplier. If they cannot help or you aren’t happy with their response please contact the Citizens Advice Consumer Helpline on 0808 223 1133.

They also have online chat specifically for energy problems.

Ah yes, the something-always-comes-up effect, or as it’s otherwise known, the occasional spending issue.

If your spending plan only covers the day-to-day expenses that occur every month, then it will seem like “something always comes up” because many months have additional expenses that only occur once a year. If you don’t plan for these, they will always derail you.

So how can you get on top of your occasional spending? Well, occasional expenses can be categorised as fun vs boring types and predictable vs random types.

We’ll start with the predictable expenses because these are where the map of the year comes in. Get a calendar and write in each month any big expenses and also any times when your income changes. For example, if your employer pays a bonus (and you can be very confident you will be getting this bonus) when would that come? Is there seasonal variation in your hours, commission or profits? Mark that in.

This is your money map of the year. It could look something like this*:

Using the map will help you to see if there are particular crunch points in your year when several expenses come at once. You can then work out if any of these could be paid early or delayed to smooth out your costs. It can also help you to be clear during the “good” months how much you need to save for upcoming costs and how much is actually available for a bit of fun.

The random expenses are a bit trickier. You need to think about roughly what you expect them to cost and how often you expect them to happen e.g. if you’re in your mid-late twenties you can expect quite a few of your friends to be getting married and having babies, so it’s a good idea to put a small amount of money aside each month, so you can really enjoy these celebrations when they happen without worrying how much you’re spending.

If you’re a homeowner, you can probably expect one significant repair or replacement every year, so consider how much you’d expect to spend on a new appliance, item or furniture or repair call-out and divide by 12.

Mapping your money year and having a pot of savings (or two) for random costs, brings a strong sense of control and peace of mind. There’s nothing like knowing you’re not going to have to borrow for Christmas and you won’t be caught short by a blocked pipe or a bricked phone.

What is on your map? Can you take a photo and send it to me on Twitter @marthalawton?

*This is not my actual map of the year, it’s loosely based on UK averages.

We could have stayed living in the house as it was when we moved in. We could be living with ugly, textured 1980s wallpaper and a drab, grey fitted carpet throughout. We could have decided that we didn’t want to know if there were issues with the plaster or woodworm in the floorboards. We could have made do with the old radiators, even if they were full of gunk and didn’t get hot all the way down. We could have decided that whatever the strange plasterboard alcove was hiding could stay there.

We didn’t.

We sucked it up, called in the professionals, and pulled away the superficial to find what was really underneath.

What was really underneath?

Well, there was lots of gunk in the central heating system but new radiators and a flush through sorted that out. There was a really weird paint job that we suspect might date back to the 1930s when the house was built. There was some places where the plaster is pulling off the walls and will need to be cut away and replaced completely. There was a set of electrics so dodgy we are now re-wiring altogether. There were floorboards in surprisingly good condition (hooray!) just waiting for sanding and polishing. There was an interesting arch that’s part of the chimney system.

If you go through struggles that you are powerless to prevent, (difficulties in childhood, natural disasters, serious illness, adult trauma and abuse etc) you will develop the mental equivalent of ugly wallpaper, cheap carpet and strange pointless alcoves as a way to feel or appear normal until you feel safe enough to repair the effects of your struggles.

The trouble is, your brain puts up the wallpaper without asking you first. It carpets the floor before you have a chance to object to the colour. It sticks an alcove over things you actually quite like, so you forget they were ever there. In fact, you’re so busy surviving, you don’t even notice that your mental home has changed. By the time you are in a position to do anything about it all, ugly wallpaper, drab carpet and strange alcove seem normal. This is just how you are.

Many of the struggles I wrote about above often involve a financial element. That can lead to the sense of powerlessness and pain connected to the event transferring to your feelings about money. There are also times when money is right at the heart of a painful experience, like losing your job or finding your partner has secret debts.

If you have stopped looking at your finances or told yourself you’re “bad with money” or “not a money person” that’s ugly wallpaper.

Here’s the thing. Until you look underneath, you won’t know where the plaster is pulling away from the wall, so you won’t know what needs repair. You’ll be living in the cold needlessly because you would rather avoid dealing with it than get warm.

More than that, you also won’t know about that arch that could become a cool feature if you let it out. You won’t be able to polish up and enjoy your good solid floorboards.

Personal finance experts often tell you to face facts so you can fix where you’re failing. I’m telling you to face facts so you can discover and celebrate where you’re already better than you knew.

Yes, and fix the bits that need fixing, because you deserve better than cracking plaster and cold radiators.

Are you ready to lift the grey carpet over your money mind?

Try My Money Canvas. It’s a quick, free, simple tool to help you uncover your financial strengths and weaknesses with no maths and no paperwork required.

It’s ok.

I’ve got you.

Imagine a life in which the end of the month doesn’t feel too different from the beginning. Imagine planning to treat someone you love and being able to go to town without going into debt. Imagine knowing if one of life’s crises crops up, you have the money to cope. Imagine musing on the future you want once your ready to stop working, confident that you’ll be in a position to enjoy it.

What if you could be ok with money? What if you could be fine with money? What if you could be good enough with money?

The good with money/bad with money false binary that I’ve ranted against leaves no room for a more casually comfortable relationship with money. In reality, this is what a lot of people would prefer. Many people would like to be confident they’re doing alright with their finances, but aren’t primarily driven by money.

Does the idea of being good enough with money sounds great, but also a long way from your current situation? That’s ok. You can get there. The key is to start really, really small.

Imagine the types of actions you would take as a person who is good enough with money. Some suggestions:

• shop around for deals and cancel unwanted subscriptions, so you don’t waste money on shopping;

• learn the meaning of financial jargon and basic economics, so you feel confident in your choices;

• save and invest automatically on pay day, so you don’t rely on willpower to make good intentions happen;

• pay off borrowed money as soon as possible without incurring extra charges, so you pay as little interest as possible;

• negotiate for more pay and lower costs, so you get a great deal;

• keep financial paperwork orderly, so you can get your hands on the information you need when you need it;

• learn what different financial professionals do and how to choose the right one for your needs, so you can tap into the expertise we all need from time to time.

Choose one of these groups of actions. Now choose a single, small, simple action that fits within this group.

Smaller than that. Nope. Still too big. Think smaller. Think tiny.

Some suggestions for tiny actions:

• Search for reviews for one product you are considering buying and bookmark the review to read later, if you can’t read it now;

• Find out where you can see the list of subscriptions in your Apple, Google or other mobile payments account;

• Learn the meaning of one piece of financial jargon - this is a good list - start with words you’ve seen before;

• Find out how to set up a regular automated payment into savings;

• Find out if you can overpay any money you’ve borrowed without being charged extra;

• Make a list of your achievements at work;

• Open one envelope - you don’t have to read what’s inside.

We become confident, not because we’re confident people or by telling ourselves to “be confident”, but by doing what we want to become confident we can do.

There is no such thing as being “bad with money”, but if there were, and if you were, the “cure” would be these tiny actions, one after another, day by day, gradually adding up to better more money in the bank. Do a few tiny actions every week and you’ll be well on your way to being good enough with money.

P.S.

I used to be a financial adviser. It was my job to have a deep understanding of financial products currently on the market and how these could meet people’s needs. I would listen to people’s individual stories and ask questions about those needs, then recommend the products I thought would suit them the best.

As a money coach, I help people understand and improve their psychological relationship with money, so they can be happier that their financial choices are supporting them to build the life they want. There! You’ve completed an action from the last group already! In fact you’ve done it twice. Well done. Go have a cuppa and listen to a song you like.

Do another tiny action tomorrow.

You’ve got this.

I think this may be one reason why so many people don’t save enough for retirement*. They simply can’t picture themselves without their work. That’s not to say people don’t want to stop working. If you ask people what they’d do if they won the lottery jackpot “quit my job” or “never work again” come high up the list, but that’s usually about getting away from stress and frustration, not moving towards a more desirable life.

To put it another way, many people can imagine vividly what it would feel like to tell Cherie that she can staple her own damn expense reports, Derek that his reheated mackerel is a form of air pollution, and their line manager to get ****ed because they are outta here, suckers!

But what happens next is a mystery.

Financial independence doesn’t require a lottery win. Regular, diversified, tax efficient investments plus time will get you there. Even if you don’t make plans to fund your life once once your stop working, at some point you probably will. It’s worth taking the time to understand what you want your life beyond work to be like.

Once you’ve successfully built wealth throughout your working life, how will you spend it?

The interesting thing is that many people can name the things they will do in the first few weeks of freedom, because that’s really just like planning an extended holiday. The bigger question is how will you spend your day-to-day? What happens next? And what about after that?

This is a deeply personal question. Everyone has a different answers. Some may want to take frequent holidays. Some will spend time learning, volunteering, pursuing hobbies or creative projects. Some want to spend more time with family. Some want to focus on their wellbeing and staying active.

Most of us only have quite vague answers to this question and that’s an issue on two fronts.

Firstly, because vague goals are not motivating. Why would you save and invest for a life that doesn’t exist? Having a clear vision of your life beyond work helps you understand how much money it will take your to get there. It also makes that goal more desirable. Once I can really imagine my future, every pound I put into investments is no longer “for my pension”, it’s for my “learning historically accurate calligraphy and bookbinding” fund. Or my “weekly one-to-one yoga class, sauna and mani-pedi” fund. Or my “hiking the world, from the South Downs to the Appalachians” fund. Or whatever floats your boat. (A catamaran fund?)

It’s more obviously worth being frugal now in order to invest towards these dreams than the generic investment goal “for retirement”.

Secondly, you may be able to put plenty aside for your life beyond work, but if you don’t know what that looks like, you could get there and find you’re feeling kind of flat and nonplussed. It’s common to struggle with the transition out of work, and the change in identity that comes with it. Thinking about what you want your life to be like can make that transition smoother. It’s psychologically easier to let go of a past identity if you have a future to reach towards.

For me, I’d like to have a studio space and make all sorts of art without caring if it’s any good, at least three holidays every year, and the option to pay for massage and physiotherapy immediately if any part of me starts feeling creaky.

What would your ideal life beyond work look like?

You can learn more about financial independence and investing to make work optional on my podcast, Squanderlust.

*Or protect against serious illness and injury for that matter, but that’s a whole other topic.

1. Pick your time, do it when you're both feeling fresh and relaxed, not last thing at night or when you're just home from work.

2. Schedule in advance, so can both prepare for the conversation and neither of you is caught on the hop, which can feel like being ambushed and make people defensive.

3. Know your numbers. Vagueness is worrying and causes misunderstandings, be as precise as you can.

4. Listen before responding.

5. Check you've understood anything that could be taken more than one way.

6. Confirm decisions and actions together.

7. Approach the conversation from a place of curiosity and kindness, we all have our money baggage, when yours and theirs don't match up it can be hard on you both.

8. Try to see any disagreements as a problem you're working together to solve, not a fight you need to win.

The desire to “make it work” because we’ve already put in so much has us wasting our time energy and goodwill on people, jobs and other organisations that do not deserve it and throwing good money after bad.

Ever read a story about a six-month-marriage where one partner only went ahead because the big expensive wedding was all arranged? Cringe! Yet it happens. Why? Because “We’ve come so far we can’t back out now.”

Yes, yes you can!

This phenomenon is the sunk cost fallacy. A cost you can never get back is a sunk cost (all time wasted is a sunk cost). The sunk cost fallacy is when we make the sunk costs a factor in our future decisions, instead of purely looking at the future costs and benefits. The sunk cost is irrelevant, what’s gone is gone.

Some reasons why we end up falling for the sunk cost fallacy:

• Pride - we try to style it out - “No, I love my (expensive but impractical) marble kitchen work surface! Sorry, please don’t put the turmeric down there… or there…”;

• A sense of responsibility - “Others have put their trust in me, they will feel bad if we don’t finish what we started”;

• We look at what we’re getting compared to what we paid, when we should just ask “what is this worth to me now?” This happens a lot in investing, people resist selling underperforming shares because they don’t like having made a lost compared to the purchase price.

• Over-optimism bias - “We can make this work!”

• Hatred of waste - to cut our losses is to admit we have made a wasteful decision.

If you’re a frugal type, that last one is the killer. It’s easy to keep doing something inconvenient, boring, tiresome etc because you don’t want to have wasted your money and efforts so far. Realising that you’re better off admitting to the waste and finding ways to avoid it in future is a huge relief but it can be an emotional struggle to get there.

One way to get around the sunk cost fallacy is to imagine someone else had paid the cost. We can ask ourselves, “What would I say to a friend who was in this position?” (Honestly, this is in the top three clarifying questions of all time.)

I’m deeply grateful to my late great aunt Sonia (great as in “fantastic” as well as in “my mother’s aunt”). When my sister and I were in our early teens she took us out to a West End play. We stood up at the interval and she turned to us. “Well, that was boring,” she said, “Let’s go for dinner.”

So we did.

We didn’t stay because “otherwise we’d waste the cost of the tickets” that money was already wasted. We left because staying would also waste the rest of the evening.

Now I always walk out of boring entertainments, and I always raise a mental glass to Auntie Sonia as I do. I encourage you to do the same.

We also did an episode of Squanderlust on the sunk cost fallacy.

So, regret aversion, as this phenomenon is called, has a bad name in the personal finance community. We’re encouraged to step away from the sale goods and give ourselves 24 hours to reconsider whether there’ll really never be another reasonably priced plain white t-shirt or if we’d actually find life meaningless without an avocado slicer like the one that influencer uses. (What even happened to avocados? Are they still a thing? I’m too old to know.)

I think, however, there are ways to make regret aversion work for you. Don’t get me wrong, it’s possible to make many silly choices from trying to avoid the possibility of regret. It’s a major cause of procrastination as we try to reconcile mutually exclusive options. Done right though, regret aversion can be harnessed to help us get motivated in the face of fear, self-doubt, boredom, frustration and plain old slog.

I have an image on the desktop of my computer that says “Turn ‘I could have’ into ‘I did’”. It’s there to remind me that I don’t want to look back on my life with regret. I don’t want to say “I had these gifts and opportunities and I didn’t use them”.

You can use this method for all sorts of goals including financial ones. Tell yourself “It might suck giving up my time to budget and meal plan, but if I can’t afford to spoil my partner on our anniversary, that’s going to suck even more”. Or perhaps, “I might feel uncomfortable negotiating my salary, but I’ll regret feeling I could have earned enough to save a deposit for my own home”. Or even, “It may feel awkward to ask the adviser to explain my pension to me yet again, but I don’t want to get to retirement and find I’ll be living on beans on toast instead of ”.

This is why it’s important to be really clear about your goals. The more you can visualise what you’re working towards, the more you can use the potential regret of not getting it to motivate you.

Exercise:

Imagine one of your personal goals very clearly, something you think you could do, with a bit of effort. Go on. I’ll wait.

Now picture the regret you would feel if you didn’t do everything you could to achieve it.

It feels horrible right? So, what can you do to make sure you never feel that way? What steps can you take towards that goal?

Comment below, what do you not want to regret?

As you may know, my husband and I moved house just over a month ago. It was a horrible, stressful process but we’re very happy in our new home. One side-effect of the move is that we no longer live opposite our local corner shop. This is the corner shop where I get my chocolate. Sorry, this was where I used to get my chocolate. The nearest corner shops are now at least five minutes walk away. Now I think twice before going to buy chocolate. The extra few minutes walk means I have to want the chocolate more before I‘ll be bothered to go and get it. This is what is known in behavioural science as friction. In this case, this friction is going to be good for my blood sugar and also my wallet, because I have expensive taste in chocolate. It doesn’t have to stop me altogether, even a 50% drop in trips to the shop will make a difference given time.

Friction can work for you or against you. We’ve also moved further away from the gym and I can’t see myself restarting my membership because I know the extra distance means I’m much less likely to go. Since I’m getting a surprising amount of physical activity sorting out our new garden, I’m not so worried about that. (Also yay! More money saving!)

These are changes that happened naturally as part of the move, but this change is also a chance to reassess our day-to-day lives and find opportunities for intentional improvements. For example, we’ve reconsidered which bank account we use to pay our bills. We’ve set up joint savings for the work we’ll need to do on the house. We’re planning our finances more as a household than as two individuals who happen to be married and live together.

It’s no surprise that all the research says that big life events are the time when people often seek financial advice or coaching for the first time. Getting married; buying a home; giving birth or adopting; and approaching retirement are all big changes with obvious financial implications. As are the less happy life events, such as divorce, bereavement and sickness. Yet many people would be better prepared for these big events, both happy and sad, if they’d got advice or coaching some years before.

Similarly, waiting for a big event before you evaluate your habits is a mug’s game. You’re really just procrastinating. Instead, set a date with yourself to go through your finances regularly and while you’re at it consider your daily life and see if you can find a way to tweak a routine or habit for the better.

Would you save money if you:

• Walked a different route and avoided a tempting shop;

• Tried a different supermarket or avoided a certain aisle during your usual shop;

• Unsubscribed from a mailing list (or twenty);

• Changed your evening routine, so you’re not browsing while you’re tired and your defences are down;

• Unfollowed certain social accounts;

• Made more proactive choices about how you spend your free time, so you feel more fulfilled and connected, and are less prone to emotional spending;

• Found a way to reduce friction for your good habits, like automating payments to savings and investments on the day you get paid or using an app with a round-up function;

• Considered the big events that could be coming in your life and started working out what you’d need to make sure your finances were in the best shape possible if/when they happen.

I have another blog post about why it’s important to use friction to help you do the right thing and also a podcast episode with the science behind why we shouldn’t rely on willpower, so it’s better to design your life to avoid temptation.

What have you done to help you reinforce good habits and avoid troublesome ones?

(I’m going to go through why I think this for the benefit of readers who suspect therapy could help them and have enough money if they prioritised differently, but are choosing not to start therapy “because it’s expensive”. If you are on a low income or your other essential costs eat up so much of your budget that you genuinely can’t make space for therapy, and you know you need it, please scroll to the bottom of the post where I’ve put links to some low cost and free resources.)

When I first worked out what I’d spent on therapy, some years after I’d stopped seeing my therapist, I was a little shocked. I’d been on a pretty good salary while I was in therapy, so it hadn’t been too much of a stretch to cover the cost, but I hadn’t saved much outside of my workplace pension. I wondered if part of the reason was that I had put so much money into my mental health.

I messaged my sister and said “I don’t regret it, but wow, look at what therapy cost me!”

She replied with typical little sister directness “If you hadn’t had the therapy you would have spent it all on booze. (shrug emoji)”

And you know what, she’s right. Because before therapy I was in a pretty bad place and my spending reflected that. I was struggling with a whole bunch of difficult feelings and unprocessed mental STUFF (from early childhood losses through being assaulted in my twenties to a deeply toxic relationship and messy break-up) and I didn’t know how to respond to all those thoughts and feelings in healthy ways.

So what was I doing?

• Drinking too much. Not whisky-on-the-cornflakes drinking too much, just more and more often than was wise.

• Eating too much. Not exactly binges, but not exactly not binges either. I’d have a tub of Häagen-Dazs on the sofa once a week. Or a big bag of Kettle Chips with my bottle of wine. By myself. In my flat. On a Thursday.

• Shopping too much. Not to the point of getting into debt, but too much for saving and building a solid financial future.

I wasn’t taking good care of myself in other ways too. My home was frequently messy to the point where I was embarrassed to have visitors, I wasn’t exercising much, my sleep patterns were off, I’d get hooked on Skinner box-type casual video games and play them for hours. My inner critic had free rein to berate me as and when they felt like it. I was bad at making time for friends and lonely by myself.

When you look at this list of unwholesome behaviours, they fall broadly into two types. I was either neglecting myself (not exercising, not sleeping well, not keeping my home nice) or I was trying to numb difficult feelings with pleasures and taking it to excess (food, drink, games and shopping).

Since this is a money blog, let’s talk about the role shopping specifically played in this. How does shopping help numb difficult feelings?

If you’re feeling out of control, shopping gives a sense of control. When the world seems unpredictable and dangerous and your mind is a whirlwind of negativity, shopping feels like a simple, consistent ritual to hold onto. I choose what I want and, if I can pay for it, I am given it. Done.

If you lack self-respect, shopping is a way to buy respectful treatment under the convention that the customer is always right. I understand this is more complicated for LGBTQ+ people, disabled people and people of colour, especially those with darker skin, but in general, the principles of good customer service mean that sales assistants should be friendly and considerate of your needs. And you might not be getting that from anyone else, including yourself.

If you feel you there’s something wrong with you, shops offer infinite possible solutions. Maybe this personal organiser will make me feel like a real professional. Maybe this sketch book will rekindle my childhood love of drawing. Maybe this underwear will make me feel cute enough to want to go meet someone new. Of course, if the feeling comes from a lingering belief that your narcissistic parent/childhood bullies/abusive ex were right, no amount of fancy pants will fix it.

Our hunter-gatherer brains start releasing dopamine when we start shopping. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes the search for pleasure enjoyable. It makes the actual process of seeking out a purchase feel at least as good as getting your hands on your new item. If you’re feeling miserable and unmotivated, this feeling might be quite rare in your life. Another reason why shopping can temporarily pull you out of that low place and seem so compelling.

Ultimately though, shopping is not a solution to your problems. The underlying pain and mental mess is still there and then there’s the shame of having overspent, when you know you should be able to save.

You can numb your feelings all you like, but you carry your mental baggage until you unpack it. I may have spent £9,700 on therapy, but I’d spent far more on treat foods, booze and unnecessary purchases. If I consider the opportunity cost of not having saved or invested the money I overspent, I’m looking at an extra £140,000 into my retirement fund, minimum. Ouch!

I don’t blame my younger self. I was overwhelmed and didn’t have better ways to cope. I was doing the best I could, but the best I could do was still making things worse until I spoke to a therapist and started working on the root causes of the issues.

What’s more, the calculation above is just based on the few year in the run up to deciding I needed to get help and finally deal with my issues properly. If I hadn’t had therapy and had just kept spending as I was, that potential investment figure would have been closer to half a million! What’s more, my mental health didn’t do my career any good either, so there would have been losses there too. £9,700 is nothing on that.

Therapy worked for me. I feel better about myself. I’m clearer-headed and make better choices. I live a very wholesome life. I exercise, I meditate, I enjoy my Häagen-Dazs, wine and Kettle Chips in moderation. My house is reasonably clean and tidy. I get to bed at a decent hour and mostly sleep well. I only shop when I have a clear idea what I need.

What I’m trying to say is, if cost is what’s putting you off getting help, but you have money for treats, shopping and socialising, then I’m taking this excuse away from you. The financial benefits of getting your mental health in better shape are clear cut, I’m afraid.

I’m lucky that I could afford to pay for private treatment. I’m well aware of that and, believe me, I’m grateful for it.

If cost really is an issue because of your life circumstances, there are some ways to get support at low or no cost. I don’t know about options outside the UK, but I will do my best with those available here.

Therapy can be available for free through the NHS, but getting access to it is a notoriously slow process. You’ll need to speak to your GP first of all. There’s more about this route on the NHS website.

You may be able to get help through a mental health charity. The best way to find out about those is through Hub of Hope, which is a national directory of all types of mental health services. They also have details of support lines you can call in case you need someone to talk to right now.

Many private therapists do offer a reduced rate if their full price is unaffordable, so if you can afford something each week, you can ask whether that might be an option. Mind has more information about finding and choosing a private therapist. It’s a good idea to know what you’re looking for and what questions to ask. On Counselling Directory, you can search for practitioners who offer concessions for people in certain circumstances including students, low income and unemployed people. Listings on the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy also include whether the practitioner offers concessionary rates, although you can’t include that in your search criteria.

Alternatively, there are online tools available. While these are not the personalised in-depth support a therapist can give, they can be very helpful for keeping your head above water and as an alternative to the kind of numbing actions that can damage your health, relationships and finances.

There’s Living Life to the Full, which offers free Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) based courses to help you understand why you feel the way you do and how to move into a more confident and resilient way of thinking, so you can feel better.

There’s also Moodgym, which is similar (and available globally) and charges £25.20 (inc VAT) for 12 months of access.

Finally there are lots of apps recommended by the NHS to help with different aspects of your mental wellbeing. Many of these are free to use, although they may have in-app purchases, and you can find them here.

Money and mental health is a tricky topic. I’ve only talked about my experiences and I was lucky in that my issues were relatively treatable. For more on how money and mental health interact you can listen to this episode of my podcast, Squanderlust, with Emily Reynolds.

I didn’t want to have to explain my whole blog post on social media, so I thought I’d just do a quick LinkedIn poll and see what came back.

In my previous post I talked about how saying someone is “bad with money” or “good with money” is simplistic and disguises all the many different skills needed to manage money well.

This poll highlights another damaging part of the “bad with money” label. As with almost all labels, it promotes a fixed mindset. For those of you who aren’t familiar with fixed/growth mindsets, I’ll give a quick explanation.

A person with a fixed mindset believes that our skills and abilities have inherent limits beyond which no amount of practice, study and effort can take us. A person with a growth mindset believes we have infinite capacity to develop our skills and abilities as long as we practice, study and work.

A fixed mindset says that talent is everything, you’ve either got it or you haven’t. A growth mindset says that we all start from different places, but where we end up is a combination of our own efforts and the resources available to support us.

It’s worth noting that a growth mindset doesn’t say anything about the rate of progress, only that progress is always possible. Slow improvement still counts. It also makes it very clear that resourcing is important, this isn’t a viewpoint that says the world is a pure meritocracy and there are no structural advantages or disadvantages.

If you say that some people are just “good with money” and others are just “bad with money” and that’s all there is to it, you’re expressing a fixed mindset position about money. The trouble is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. If someone is just “bad with money” why should they try to manage it? They are doomed to failure and might as well give up. Similarly there’s no point is trying to teach or coach anyone to get better with money if it’s just in their nature to be “bad with money”.

One of the people who commented on my post said something similar.

Not only that, but even people whose fixed mindset puts them in the “good with money” category, can end up very anxious about their money skills. This is because if your ability with money is fixed and you make a mistake or have a financial setback then a fixed mindset says that’s because you’ve reached the limits of your money ability. There’s no way to correct for the mistake in future. A fixed mindset may even tell you that you’re not as ”good with money” as you thought, perhaps even “bad with money” after all.

Worse yet, because in a fixed mindset every skill or behaviour is a fundamental unchanging characteristic of who you are, any time things go wrong that’s a sign you’re a lesser person than you thought. This means that a person with a fixed mindset who gets into debt will either see themselves as a helpless victim and expect someone else to fix the problem for them, or will be too ashamed to ask for help because it feels like exposing their fatal flaw.

It’s an insecure position to be in.

On the other hand, a person with a growth mindset around their financial skills will be actively seeking to improve and will perceive a setback or loss as a chance to learn. They can think clearly about whether they made a mistake or whether they just had bad luck. Neither answer is a threat to their sense of their own value as a person. If something goes wrong with their finances, even a serious debt issue, they will be ok asking for help and will hope that their adviser can help them understand how to fix things now and avoid similar problems in the future. People with a growth mindset tend to be open about their shortcomings because they see themselves as a perpetual work in progress. Today’s failing is tomorrow’s strength.

As you might guess from all of this, people who have a growth mindset about an activity, whether it’s money management, acrobatics or playing the bassoon, tend to achieve more in the long run, because they will usually be more persistent and creative in their approach to developing their skills.

The good news is a fixed mindset can grow into a growth mindset, it’s just a matter of talking about yourself and others slightly differently. Instead of saying “I’m bad with money” or “I’m good with money” (fixed permanent personal traits) you can say “I’m making a habit of tracking my spending, but I don’t do it every day yet” or “I’ve made a plan for my financial future and I’m happy with how well I’m sticking to the plan” (actions and outcomes).

You’ll find you feel more in control with a growth mindset and it will help you to a more secure financial and emotional future.

You can learn more about fixed and growth mindsets and Dr Carol Dweck who did the research around them in this episode of my podcast, Squanderlust.

The idea that you can be “bad with money” or “good with money” comes from a simple assumption: that managing money is a single skill and you are either good at it or bad at it.

All-or-nothing.

Binary.

Simple.

Nonsense.

Financial success involves using a wide range of skills together, along with a measure of luck. If you tell yourself there is just one money skill and you don’t have it, you deny yourself the credit for all your existing strengths. This attitude will prevent you from realising what’s really going wrong in your money management and how to fix it. The vague undefined nature of being “bad with money” causes a sense of general helplessness that will always undermine your efforts to improve.

OK, so, what are some money skills?

• Self-knowledge - so you understand what you really want, what you really don’t want and what you are and are not prepared to do to get to your goals.

• Realistic goal setting - so you know where you want to go and whether that’s possible.

• Collecting and analysing data - e.g. what do my bank statements say about my current spending patterns? Where might those have come from?

• Planning - what, specifically, do you have to do to achieve your goals?

• Research and selecting reliable sources of information.

• Prioritising - making effective comparisons.

• Negotiating - whether that’s a raise at work, settling a complaint or a getting a better tariff for your bills.

• Assessing risk and being comfortable with uncertainty.

• Monitoring progress and adapting plans to changing circumstances.

• Reading comprehension, ability to identify key information in a lengthy document.

• Numeracy skills e.g. to compare value for money from different deals.

• Assertiveness - willingness to ask professionals awkward questions; willingness to say “no” to friends or family members when their plans don’t work with yours.

• Proactive problem-solving - spotting issues and resolving them quickly.

• Organisation to keep on top of your paperwork and avoid missing deadlines.

• Communication skills and empathy to navigate conflict around money with people close to you.

• Tenacity - for when things are unpleasant or challenging.

• Moderation and self-care - so you neither overspend your way into debt nor burn out trying to be over-frugal or hustling too hard.

This is not at all a comprehensive list, but hopefully it gives you a hint of the ways that managing money involves a range of skills in balance with each other and how you will use different skills at different times.

Once you see managing money this way, the idea of being '“bad with money” makes no sense at all. You might be missing some key skills, or not applying them to your finances, because you didn’t realise how they applied. I’m sure you have at least some of them though and once you start thinking of money management as the combination of the right skills at the right time, you can work out how you need to improve.

It all just becomes much more manageable. You can do this. One step and one skill at a time.

For more on all-or-nothing thinking and how it can mess with your finances check out this episode of my podcast Squanderlust.

You see people tend to mentally blend together weddings, marital relationships and the formal legal side of marriages. The truth is these are different and separate things and any given couple can have one, two or three of them in any combination.

I’m leaving out the religious aspect of weddings/marriages/relationships on purpose here. As a non-believer I am not qualified to discuss it and I don’t want to cause offence by misrepresenting people’s beliefs.

OK, that said, let’s talk about the three elements.

Weddings

A wedding is a ceremony and usually a party. It usually includes the necessary paperwork and promises to create a legally binding marriage as well, but it doesn’t have to do so. A wedding is usually a joyous celebration of love, with family and friends and, ideally, music, embarrassing speeches and far too much food.

Relationships

A relationship is about how two people get along. This includes many formal and informal ways in which you might make financial decisions together, but it isn’t fundamentally about money and property, it’s about how you are together. How do you communicate? How do you feel about each other? What do you do for each other? What part do you play in each others’ lives?

Marriages

Then there’s the legal marriage, the most neglected part of the equation. This is the part people often only start paying attention to if things go wrong and they start talking about divorce. I would strongly advise learning about this before you get married instead.

There’s a lot of dismissive talk about marriage being “just a piece of paper”. The deeds to a house are just a piece of paper too. So is an employment contract. So for that matter is a peace treaty or the constitution of a country. N.B. Common Law Marriage is not a real thing in the UK. It doesn’t matter how long you live with your partner, you aren’t married unless there’s a marriage certificate. Don’t be fooled.

Marriage has important but often hidden implications for your finances. I’m going to talk about just three examples from the UK (there are many). The effects are at least as profound elsewhere.

The Marriage Allowance

The Marriage Allowance means a non-working (or low income) spouse can transfer a proportion of their tax allowance to their higher income husband/wife.

Inheritance Tax

If you own substantial assets you want to leave to your partner, getting married protects them from potentially having to pay Inheritance Tax on those assets. Home owners take note.

Wills

Getting married instantly invalidates any will either of you had before you were married and if you don’t make a new one, the rules of intestacy apply and your spouse automatically gets the lions share (potentially everything) that you leave behind.

How unromantic!

I understand that some people will think this is a cold and impersonal take on marriage. It can be uncomfortable to take a peek beyond the white lace and petals into the cost-benefit calculations underneath. I am certainly not advocating taking a mercenary approach to intimate partnerships. (My own wedding was a joyous day and I am extremely smug and soppy about my wonderful husband.) I do however, advocate understanding what you’re getting into when you sign the register and say “I do.” We did, and you should too.