Our Most Uncomfortable Conversation Yet: Money

What does your relationship with money say about you? In this Beauty in the Break conversation, Foster and Cesar open up about ancestral scarcity, financial anxiety, overspending, and avoidance, revealing how their opposite money styles both clash and connect as they build a life together. We’re not giving our financial advice here, but instead having an honest exploration of healing your relationship with money and learning to see money as energy, emotion, and connection.

Together they explore money trauma, inherited beliefs, and the ways nervous-system triggers shape our money mindset. What happens when one partner hoards while the other avoids? Can we learn to feel safe with money and open to abundance at the same time? This episode invites awareness, compassion, and a gentler path toward money healing, trust, and emotional abundance.

In this episode they explore: 

• How attachment theory shows up in your relationship with money
• The truth behind “money can’t buy happiness”
• How ancestral stories and family history shape money beliefs
• Learning to trust your partner with money
• How to find flow between scarcity and abundance
• Real-life examples of moving from tension to tenderness with money

Also mentioned:

• Daniel Kahneman’s 2010 happiness and income study
• Matthew Killingsworth’s 2021 follow up study

If this episode spoke to you, you will love How to Spot A Gatekeeper where we explore reclaiming authentic power. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!

Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram. 

Cesar Cardona:

• Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
• Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
• Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter

Foster Wilson:

• Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
• Learn about her postpartum services
• Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

This episode is brought to you by Arlene Thornton & Associates

Transcript

But what is money?

All right, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. See, I already started deflecting.

My brain already started trying to get me out of answering the question.

There's the saying, money can't buy happiness, but I don't think that's true.

It's not true.

The truth is I'm a hoarder when it comes to money.

Do you feel like you can be trusted with money?

Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break.

I'm Foster.

And I'm Cesar.

This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open

and how we find beauty on the other side.

So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have to carry it alone.

We are here with you.

Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.

Welcome back, beloved, to another episode of Beauty in the Break.

Hello and wherever you are in your life, I'm glad you are here with us today.

I have to admit that I do not think we should do this episode this soon.

That we're about to do today.

Okay.

You didn't say any of this.

Please tell me why.

Well, so I feel like we are in the messy middle of figuring out money.

I don't just mean our finances, my finances, your finances as we start to blend our families

together.

But our own money trauma and my individual relationship with money and yours is something that is very

active in our relationship right now.

And I kind of was thinking like, oh, one day we should do an episode about money, but I

don't want to do it yet because I don't really have any answers yet.

Oh, okay.

And that was when I was like, we should probably do this episode.

Damn right.

Absolutely.

The moment you said that, I was like, well, we should be doing this episode.

Right.

We've done almost every episode we've done so far.

We have an understanding of it beyond the dip, the worst parts of it.

We're past it.

So we can look back, reflect on it, and then share it with somebody listening.

In this case, we're not there.

No.

And I don't know about you, I prefer the breaking side over the beauty when we do the show.

I like talking about the vulnerable stuff.

I like being a little embarrassed when I'm here with you.

Well, it's really interesting what we've been talking about lately.

And so I do want to clue everybody into the inside baseball of how two people with very

different relationships to money and very different viewpoints about money try to sort this through.

And that's part of what we're doing today.

I don't even have to give a disclaimer that this is not financial advice because I promise

there will be no financial advice given.

We really don't know.

Because to me, this actually is not about money at all.

I think for many people, their relationship with money is the most dysfunctional relationship

they have.

It really is a relationship that affects every single move you make in your whole day.

And we don't talk about it as a society.

Money is the other family member that everybody is aware of, but nobody wants to mention or talk

about.

How would you, in a nutshell, describe your relationship with money?

Well, the truth is I'm a hoarder really when it comes to money.

I don't feel safe spending money.

I kind of believe that when money comes to me, it's my job to lock it up and keep it safe and

not let it go out the door again.

And that's how I operate in the world.

Yeah.

I'm getting better.

Right?

Yep.

I'm getting better.

Oh, yes, you are.

I'm working on it.

Without question.

First off, saying I'm a hoarder of money is a humble brag.

Oh, well.

I may say so myself.

You know, I knew this woman, she's a hoarder, and her house was stacked to the ceiling with

stuff so that I imagined you and your house with a full house of money stacked to the top

of the ceiling.

That's what I heard.

That being said, I am on the other side of it.

How much does this cost?

Okay, cool.

Great.

Spend it.

Whatever.

I have been for most of my life that proverbial person who won't look at their bank account and just keep spending.

I'm not that person anymore because you've been helping me be more conscious and aware of it.

But for me, money was a means to some sort of external joy.

Yeah.

You spend it as soon as you got it.

Keep the back door and the front door open as the breeze of cash goes through the house.

Right.

And I mean, you and I couldn't be more opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to this.

And we are working on walking each other towards the middle, towards a more healthy relationship.

I love that so many times we've had conversations where I can see you being tight in your body

about money.

And I'm walking over like, hey, it's all good.

It's all good.

And then there's a voice in my head that's like, who are you telling it's all good?

What are you talking about?

You've just made money and spent it all the time.

You're not the person to consider the source, bro.

You know, like that's how it feels.

But there's some validity still in what I'm saying, but it's to get you to a middle spot,

which is what you're doing for me as well.

And I will say it's hard to trust you in the saying, it's all going to be all right, knowing

I know exactly your type.

Yeah.

Right?

Exactly.

Like I don't want to be that either.

I don't want to walk all the way over to the other side of the spectrum.

I just want to come to the middle.

Yeah.

So if we kind of start with the question of what do you think money is?

How would you answer that?

For me, money was don't think about it, but make a lot of it and spend it.

Again, like a breeze going through the back door and the front door, the breeze of money

is just flowing through and I watch it go by because I want it to, I want the money to

come in and I want it to go back out and I don't want to have to think about it because

it's so dynamically specific with so many levels of discipline that I apparently didn't want

to deal with.

But what is money?

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

See, I already started deflecting.

I already started deflecting just then.

My brain already started trying to get me out of answering the question.

What is money?

Money is the vehicle.

Money is the vehicle of things needed or things wanted.

Full stop.

It's an energy.

Yes.

But I'm trying to be as practical as possible by way of being metaphorical.

It is a vehicle.

It is the thing that can get you from A to B.

It's not something to hold on to and keep.

I've never seen a hearse with a U-Haul behind it.

And at the same time, you can live a life completely stressed, miserable because you have none either.

Well, there's the saying, money can't buy happiness, but I don't think that's true.

It's not true.

It's not true.

The phrase money can't buy happiness was quoted by somebody who either had money their

entire life and wanted to keep other people poor or they were just lying.

It's not true.

I spent a lot of time in my life being miserable because I didn't have money or I was hungry or I was stressed or depressed about it.

Now that I have money in my life, it's fantastic.

Yeah.

There's a base level where a top level of happiness is equated with a good deal of money.

I don't know what the number is, but...

Daniel Kahneman is the one that first did this study.

And he had to study and it said that once you hit that number, you kind of plateau.

And then another student, like 20, 30 years later, came and found the potholes in some of the study he was doing and said, that's actually incorrect.

And Daniel Kahneman says, let's work together and find out the right answer.

Wow.

And they found that it increases together.

The scaling does separate a little bit, but there's minimal plateau.

Yeah.

I would bring the question back to you.

What is money to you?

Well, I do believe in my heart.

My healed version of myself believes that money is energy and that it's an exchange.

My trauma doesn't believe that.

My trauma believes that money is something to be kept safe, something to hang on too tightly with a white knuckle and to grip it and to not let it slip away.

Is the trauma a feeling or is it a thought?

It's of my body.

Okay.

I believe it's ancestral.

Okay.

I believe it's my entire family felt this way.

Do you think thoughts of particular of this is wrong?

I shouldn't do this.

I should be spending on this.

Well, so what I've uncovered lately is that due to some triggers I've had about money is that I believe that if I spend money in a frivolous way, which could be on entertainment or on dinner out with my family,

but that is determined to be frivolous because we actually could eat at home and cook at home, that I will be a fool, that I'm foolish for spending money.

I'm going to be made fun of.

I'm going to be taken as the butt of the joke.

I can't believe you would spend your money that way.

It's a voice in my head, but it certainly comes from my family upbringing.

If that voice is coming from family ancestral trauma, do you feel comfortable telling me whose voice that is?

All the unpacking that I've done, I think that it kind of stems from my grandparents who grew up in the Great Depression, who were born in the Great Depression.

They were also poor, and so there was actual scarcity.

There was actual lack of how are we going to eat dinner, and that kind of bled through my whole family to a place where no matter what amount of money anyone has,

the idea is don't be a fool and spend money that you don't have.

Be responsible with money.

I was good at that.

I could save.

From a young age, I could save money, and that was praised and rewarded, and I was told that was a good thing,

and it's reinforced by society that it's a good thing.

But I still don't believe that it's safe to spend.

I only believe it's safe to save.

Okay.

Tell me why you don't think it's a good thing to have this mentality right now.

I think there's a lot of benefits to it, of course.

I think it means that I'm quite responsible, and I'm never going to not pay my bills and things like that.

But it affects a lot of things.

It affected my marriage, for sure.

I stress and hold tightly to things, and I don't allow a lot of fun to happen.

And now that my kids are old enough that they kind of have more desires to go to the mall or go out to dinner,

let's go to this event or whatever, I can feel the tight side of me about money is affecting everyone else's joy and happiness

because I become the queen of no.

That's what you want to avoid.

Yeah.

Was this your signal that this might be problematic, or did you know that before?

I think it's been recently that I've realized how problematic it is.

Well, I mean, you've seen it.

I have seen it.

Yeah, I've seen it.

I can see it in your body language.

Everything changes about you when that stuff goes.

Your eyes change.

Your jaw clenches a bit.

There's just so much change in you.

It's the only time I see that side, by the way, which is a compliment to you

because whatever work you've had to do before, you've done a good amount of work,

and this might be one of the few last big things for yourself from your past.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I come from the exact other side.

I come from, what's the line in The Aviator?

He says, I've lost a lot of money.

I'll make a lot of money.

And I was a kid when I saw that movie.

And I go, yeah, agree to that.

Totally agree to that.

I come as this very lackadaisical, always made money.

I've always known how to make money.

I've always learned how to make money.

Now I'm at a point now where I'm like, I want to learn how to keep this money instead of being the exact opposite of rigid.

Where does that come from?

I don't know.

Neither of my parents told me much about money, budgeting, saving.

My mother's really good at making a great amount of money.

She's from the streets.

She learned the street mindset and the money mindset.

She got it in a natural sense.

My father did it by just working a job constantly, showing up for the job over and over again.

It's the same job he's worked at before I was born.

He's still there now.

And I grew up watching both of them go through ebbs and flows of money.

But seldom, I should say, did they ever tell me how to do budget.

Since no one ever brought it up to me, I haven't had the desire to want to learn it.

Do you feel like you can be trusted with money?

That's a really loaded question.

You mean like if someone gave me cash and said, go buy these things?

I mean, if you came into a half a million dollars, do you think you could be trusted to do good with that money for yourself?

Yes.

Do you think it would disappear?

Today, who I am today?

Yes, absolutely.

A hundred percent.

Who I was before?

No.

It would have gotten drunken and snorted away in no time.

Like no time, by the way.

When I sold my house, I was still trying to figure out money.

I spent way more than I wanted to.

I was really upset about that, actually.

And I was like, I spent way too much from this profit of this house.

I spent like three months giving myself the hardest, firmest no about everything.

If it's not food, healthy food, then you're not buying it.

And I kind of learned a little bit to discipline myself.

But then, of course, once I got that, life started happening.

There's external stuff.

I don't have a problem now with spending stuff on it just because I want it.

I'm like, oh, wait, now I need this.

Now I got to pay this person.

Now I got to do this thing.

That's where the budgeting stuff comes in.

That's where you've been really helpful about me trying to learn my relationship with that.

It's a very tough relationship.

It's tricky because if you're not looking at your money, you're not looking where your bills are being paid, what's going out the door, how much you bring in versus how much goes out.

If you're not looking at it, then you don't have to acknowledge that there's a problem.

And everybody in society wants to say, you know, wants to avoid the topic of money, especially one-on-one.

It's gauche to talk about money.

It's inappropriate to tell people how much you make and that kind of stuff.

But yet we're confronted with it every single day.

Constantly.

What kind of capitalistic mendacity do we live in right now?

What sort of trickery has been told to us that we shouldn't be talking about money?

What employer didn't want two employees to not talk about it so one could find out how slighted they were?

Yeah.

Right?

And then two, I feel like we designate our actual worth with money.

Yeah.

If someone doesn't make money, then they're not making great – they're not a good person.

They're not smart.

They're not equipped.

If they make too much money, they're also horrible, by the way.

Right.

But like, what is this worth?

Like, what's the worth of this thing I'm buying?

It feels like they're asking themselves, what am I worth of this?

I feel like we designate ourselves with how much money we should or shouldn't have, and people get embarrassed by that stuff, and they don't want to talk about it.

Yeah.

I think we should be talking about it.

I think that's why we have this episode.

It literally causes so much stress in people's lives.

And look, we're both self-employed.

And at some point this summer, you went down with COVID for a week, and at some point, I went down with COVID for a week.

We were out money of our clients for an entire week of work because we're self-employed, and we don't get sick pay.

And it's a real thing.

No, I shouldn't be getting paid by my clients for not showing up to my work.

But still, I had to eat that.

I have to figure that out for myself and readjust everything because it was unexpected.

And the unexpected cost for me is something that is a huge trigger for me, like getting hit with a bill that I didn't expect.

Even if I can pay it, the unexpected nature of it is something that just gets me really flooded and anxious.

What happens to you physically?

I feel like the rug is being pulled out from under me, that I'm not safe.

I don't know why I have so much trauma about it because the Great Depression didn't happen to me.

But I really do believe it worked its way into my entire family system.

I have panic about this money being suddenly gone for nothing, right?

Say it's like parking ticket or insurance premiums went up or something.

It feels wasteful to me because it's like, oh, I'm getting the same exact premium.

There's no difference from last month, right?

And now I'm just spending more.

And it feels like I've flushed money down the drain.

I see.

Two things.

One, there's now studies that show that stress and trauma itself can pass down through DNA.

There have been studies for it already and multiple generations, by the way.

Two, there's still validity in what you're saying.

Like this price goes up on this thing.

Have they done something better since then?

If they haven't, why is the rate going up?

So it sounds like you will latch on to the logical good point to prove your emotional trauma.

Yeah.

Right.

That's what it sounds like.

It's valid.

It's valid.

Mm-hmm.

But it doesn't make me feel good.

It's not incorrect.

But it is incomplete.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

That makes so much sense.

So here is what my theory about having experienced my side of money and then been witness to sort of your mindset about money.

And I talk to people about this in my life.

Like what is your experience?

What is your experience?

I feel like there's maybe three types of people in this world.

Those who are like me, which I'm going to call anxiously attached to money.

There's never enough.

When money comes in the door, I have to save it.

I have to keep it safe.

I can't spend it.

It could disappear at any moment.

I will never have enough.

It's lack mentality.

It's scarcity.

It's an anxious attachment.

We're going with attachment theory here.

We're applying it to money.

Your version would be called avoidant attachment.

I'm not really going to think about money.

I don't care how much that costs.

I'm not going to look at my bills.

Look away.

No budget whatsoever.

Just like not think about it.

I know people who will pay other people to handle their money for them so they don't have to look at it.

Yeah, yeah.

You're looking at somebody who would do that without question.

Why am I going to give myself all that stress?

You asked me one time when I was trying to teach you budgeting.

You were like, can I just pay someone to do this for me?

And I said, well, that would defeat the purpose of having the awareness around your own money stuff.

As you talk right now, I'm feeling like embarrassed.

I feel ashamed.

I feel dumb.

I feel really lost listening to that.

And through all of that, while you're saying that to me, I'm still trying to argue paying someone else to do the thing at the same exact time.

I assume that me wanting to stand up for that point of wanting to pay somebody to handle my finances is probably the justification to protect the embarrassment, the ashamed, the fear, the feeling like I'm stupid, and so on and so on.

No.

You're doing great.

Thanks.

And also, I feel the same way.

It's uncomfortable to talk about all of this.

And I also sit in a place of the anxiously attached, the savers, the hoarders in the world that are more like me are accepted by society.

Right?

Oh, well, you're good.

You're a saver.

You're doing well.

And maybe that feels good to them and maybe it doesn't.

But society looks more favorably upon people who are savers rather than people who are spenders, let's say.

It's an unfair dynamic.

You're saying that essentially both should be looked at and examined.

Yeah.

In order to find that balance again.

I think that I'm triggered about money just as often as you are, perhaps, in a different way.

Maybe we handle it in a different way.

Yeah, we handle it in a different way.

Same trigger, different handle.

Uh-huh.

That sounds about right.

Uh-huh.

I could totally see that.

You and I kind of describe it the same.

I said vehicle.

You said energy.

Uh-huh.

Right?

And those are things to which two conductors communicate.

Uh-huh.

Right?

Vehicle takes you from A to B. Energy itself takes radio frequency from A to B as well.

Yeah.

What we're doing with it is different, though.

Yeah.

You're choosing to say, like, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't get rid of any of this.

And I'm like, come on.

We're the strippers.

Yeah.

Okay.

So if I'm the anxiously attached type and you're the avoidant attached type, there is also the

opportunity for a secure attached type.

So not everybody in this world has a dysfunctional relationship with money, but many people do.

There are securely attached people as well.

Those types of people feel that money comes and goes and it flows, flows in and out, and

I'm safe to save and I'm safe to spend.

And I do things I want to do and I save for the future and they have like a nice balance.

I believe that you and I both would like to be there.

Yeah.

I do think that you and I are both securely attached in relationship.

Mm-hmm.

And here we need to be securely attached within the relationship of our money.

Yeah.

Well said.

That was a really great way of saying it.

In the act of you trying to walk yourself from your respective side to the middle, from

the anxious attachment to secure attachment, what is one thing you want to try to give up

to walk yourself to the middle?

And what's one thing you want to take with you when you walk yourself to the middle?

Brr.

That is not an answer, unfortunately.

No.

I want to give up the white knuckling for the sake of flow.

And I'll tell you an example.

You know this very well, but a couple of weekends ago, the kids were here.

The kids always want to eat out and I always want to cook at home because it's cheaper.

I came to the middle on that somewhere where I said, Friday nights when you're with us,

which is every other weekend, we'll get takeout.

And that worked out really well for a while.

I could plan for it.

I could know it was coming.

I could get ahead of it.

I know that it's not every night, but it is going to be these every other Friday nights.

And that felt really good to me.

And that was growth for me.

And then this particular night, we had a friend over.

So it was extra mouths to feed.

I had planned to order pizza for everybody.

It all kind of fell apart before me because kids were asking for sushi and they wanted to

go to a restaurant.

And it was way more, it ballooned into way more than I expected it to be.

And I got very tense and extremely triggered.

I mean, I fully shut down.

You were trying to help me get into a place of like, it's okay, let's do this thing.

They want to do it.

It's fun.

But my nervous system was so dysregulated because I had planned for one thing.

And we're now talking about something that costs two or three times as much.

It felt really scary in the moment.

And what I would like to answer your question, what I would like to take with me towards the

middle is the ability to let go of things that are unplanned and embrace some of the spontaneity

of life.

The releasing of control.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

From that weekend, what I gathered was you wanted to keep the control, but you just moved

where you were controlling it.

Yes.

A little bit.

That's true.

Yeah.

And then I would take with me the understanding that I have about budgeting and saving and

spending.

With a little more flux and flow to life, I do understand how to invest my money and how

to put my money to work for me.

That part now actually feels fun.

When I get into a place where I'm able to actually put a little money away into investments,

I get to play with money and I get to let it sit there and I get to let it turn over.

And that is something that I want to give props where it's due.

My mom did an amazing job at teaching me from a very young age what to do with money that I

had saved and where to put it and how to invest it.

And two, actually think about an IRA when you are 18 years old, which not many people do.

And she encouraged me because I had always worked.

I had always provided for myself.

I was good at putting it away.

And so she helped me to open an IRA and think about the future, which at 18 when you're going,

I don't care what happens when I'm 65.

I cannot even fathom that.

But she was so right about it.

And starting early with a little bit of money is far greater than starting late with a lot

of money, actually.

So I take that with me and I'll teach my kids that too, because that was so valuable.

She gave me so much.

That's pretty cool.

What about you?

For me, walking from avoidant attachment with money to secure attachment with money, the thing

I would take with me is the realization of life can be fun.

You can enjoy these things because we made it all up.

Let's not forget we made all of this stuff up.

It's working temporarily in this capitalistic society.

We made it up, however, nonetheless.

So keep that sense of joy there.

The thing that I would leave behind is my desire to want to constantly ignore the voice in my head

that's saying, how much do you have to spend on this?

And me ignoring that voice is what I want to leave behind.

Because it shows up in my thoughts.

I'm just like, eh, I'll deal with you later.

It's been 36 years later.

And I'm trying to, I'm still ignoring it, you know?

And I lucked out to be able to make enough money in my life that some people who think this

way, they end up with no money.

And then they're done.

You're in a hole.

And once you're in that hole, you're stuck.

I'm fortunate enough that that didn't happen to me.

I want to leave behind the ignoring of the voice that's trying to be mindful about what

I have, who I am, what I can do with what I have, and take some accountability and responsibility

for myself in that way.

Mm-hmm.

Do you remember the time we were in Cost Plus World Market?

And we looked at a towel, I think it was.

And we looked at the price.

Oh.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

It was a towel, I believe.

I, I, okay.

I'll believe you.

Yes, please.

Would you like to recreate this moment?

We were at Cost Plus World Market.

I don't think we had been shopping together all that long in our relationship.

So I hadn't uncovered our money stuff yet.

And we picked up this towel and it was pretty, but you know, a very, it was a nice towel.

And the price tag turned over and it was $40.

And I looked at it.

Yeah.

It was great.

It's a perfect metaphor because I was like, oh, cool.

I like this towel.

Check this out.

Great.

How much is it?

Oh, okay.

And then you went, $40.

And anybody, if you're listening, you've been to World Market, it's quiet in there.

Yeah.

So in the middle of some silence and like some like nice jazzy being playing, you just hear

$40.

Anytime the number 40 shows up in anything we do, we're like, 40 minutes.

It was a prime example of you being like, yeah, well, if I like the towel, I like the towel,

I'm going to buy it.

And I was like, never in my life could I spend $40 on a towel.

It would be a pox on my whole family.

World Market is the best.

I would never say a thing wrong about them.

As a matter of fact, I would take 15 to 30 seconds out of this show to talk about how much I enjoy

World Market.

For the right price.

For the right price.

I'm your agent.

For the right price.

Way more than $40.

Okay.

So we're walking ourselves towards secure.

I kind of explained what I've been doing about it, which is to really look at my triggers and to talk about it openly with people and say, I felt really embarrassed about this.

I felt really stressed about this and it doesn't have to be that way.

I'll tell you this story.

One time I was meditating and I was dealing with the money stuff at this point in my life as well and unpacking it.

And I got this visualization that money was just this circle of energy and it was a rainbow and it was so beautiful.

And when you really think about it, money is going around and around and around.

It's just changing hands.

It's not going anywhere.

Because my viewpoint was always like, if it's out the bank account, I flushed it down the drain.

When I was sick with COVID, I had to have two different people back me up as other doulas.

And I had to pay for them.

Out of my money.

But this means that my money is circulating to other doulas that I care about in my community.

What is wrong with that?

That's beautiful.

That's a beautiful realization.

It was a reframe.

And the voice is really strong saying, I can't believe you're out all this money for an entire week of work.

But actually, I was circulating it.

So that's something that I'm hanging on to and thinking about.

How about for you?

And how has it been when I've been working on budget stuff with you?

First thing first, it's challenging.

It's tough.

You are gentle and kind constantly.

And my brain is always waiting for you to berate me or be sarcastic or be passive aggressive to me because I spent money on something.

I'm always waiting for you.

I'm always waiting for it.

Always.

Every time you ask me a first question, I already feel like it's a trap.

Immediately.

And so I don't know if you've noticed this or not.

And I'm just noticing it now verbally, consciously while we're having this conversation.

Typically, I give you minimal answer.

So there's no room for you to try to trap me.

I just noticed that I do that now.

I've always done it.

But I just noticed it in this moment.

That's how it feels.

And then as of recently, when you've shown me things, how to budget stuff, there's an app for it you can use.

There's whatever.

Telling me, like, this is how you're going to put your money in this business account.

Transfer it to this personal account.

All of those things and sitting down with me and talking it through with me.

I remind myself this is a version of self-love.

I remind myself every time this is a version of self-love.

It's helped more than anything else.

It has been really hard still, nonetheless.

There's a deep part of me that just doesn't want to do it.

This is a hang-up I'm having still to this day.

I have gotten lazy still knowing that you're going to text me.

You can transfer this money to your personal account.

And then I have clients, male clients, who are like, no, my wife handles all the financial stuff.

Multiple.

So then I get a template of like, oh, this is an option.

This is an option.

And it's a very easy option.

And I'm the kind of person who's like, how efficient can I be?

How minimal can I move and get the most out of it?

You're saying to just outsource it to me.

Correct.

And you're apparently not paying you this time.

It's very embarrassing for me to say all this stuff, actually.

I'm pretty chill for most of these stuff.

But just while talking to you, the hand that's not waving around was kind of squeezing my leg a little bit.

I didn't notice it until I let go, actually.

It's embarrassing.

And again, I'm a little ashamed.

Well, and I think helping you through that, because budgeting is like, I literally could just bounce in here and talk about budgeting, how exciting it is all day.

Beauty and the budget.

I do love it.

And I love teaching people that.

But what's been really interesting is that it then triggers stuff that comes up for me.

To watch mine.

To watch you.

Yes, absolutely.

Because there will be things that you spend money on that you've been amazing at going, oh, yeah, you're right.

We don't need that.

I can just cancel that subscription.

I can cancel that subscription.

Which I expected a lot more pushback on a lot of things.

And we went around and around about one of your TV subscriptions about, well, all you really do is watch baseball.

Is there another thing that you could do that's just baseball that doesn't cost this much?

And we figured that out.

And you've been so flexible in saying, okay, yeah, we don't need that.

Okay, yeah.

And it's for you doing it.

You're not doing it for me, which is good.

And then still I found myself knowing too much about your financial situation that then I started to take on your financial stuff.

Emotionally.

Emotionally, yeah.

So instead of just thinking about my own income, because we do not share expenses in any kind and we don't live together.

So I just have to worry about what comes in the door and what goes out the door for me.

But then I started taking on in my head, you know, is he spending on this?

Is he spending on that?

And that was a place I did not want to go.

Because that's not healthy for our relationship.

Yeah, agreed.

Agreed.

It's tricky when you do have, it's trickier when you are married to someone and you share expenses and you live together.

And a lot of that stuff, if we live together, how you spend your money does affect me.

Absolutely, Doc.

I'm sure it would.

So we're a little bit sitting in a place of privilege where we can keep everything really separate.

100%.

If that were ever to change, I think this is why we're doing this work.

Because if we were to ever merge our finances for any reason, I don't know that I ever...

That would be so much richer.

Well, I don't know that I'd ever feel comfortable doing that.

But we need to do this work first.

Yeah, yeah.

So what's coming up for me now is just to say that if you're in a position with your partner, that you will be merging finances at some point.

Either because you're living together.

And even if you don't have the same bank account, you're sharing expenses, living expenses.

Or you're getting married, which you really will be sharing your money.

To understand whether you're somebody who's anxiously attached, or you're somebody who's avoidant attached, or you're both secure, or one of you's secure and the other's not.

Understanding this and start trying to walk each other to the middle so that you can get to a place where those things hopefully don't become triggers in your relationship.

It's really hard.

Yeah.

I want to implement the extra request here, the order of doing it kindly to each other as well.

Yeah.

I've seen...

Full stop.

I don't got to say any more of that because the disagreements I've seen people have is just crazy.

Yeah.

Do it kindly.

Yeah.

My gosh.

And I needed to notice, because I said to you, I need to notice when I'm getting triggered about helping you with this and showing you the other side, right?

I'm going to show you the anxious side, and then you're going to come closer to secure.

But when I started getting triggered by that, I said, I'm going to back off from teaching you this for a bit.

It was adorable, too, because you said it right when you laid down before you went to sleep.

Do you remember?

No.

You don't remember that?

Uh-uh.

We laid down in bed.

You faceplant into the bed, because I think it was a long day of other stuff.

Uh-huh.

And you were laying there, and your face was kind of like this, and the pillow.

You know, baby.

That was a guess, because I was still wide awake.

Uh-huh.

You're like, I can't do your money.

I can't do your money stuff for you like this.

I was like, all right, you got it.

I'll figure this thing out.

And I mulled for like a day or so, and then I came back to you with some questions.

And I was like, okay, let me start going through these steps for my own self, which kind of fits me in a lot of ways as well.

I'm pretty good at giving me the fundamentals, and I'll turn that thing into something new, completely new for me that works in my way.

I've already pulled back on spending.

I always remind myself when I'm by myself what would Foster say to me in this situation.

I hear your voice in there, and that keeps me on a better track.

And then some of the steps that I've taken now is remembering that I should fall in love with the practice of something rather than the result of something.

Now there's a discipline side to me that I'm like, this is fantastic.

Falling in love with the practice of it will consistently yield more and more results.

It will yield your ROI.

It will compound in whatever it is, in fitness and in meditation and podcasts and whatever you're doing, and in this case money.

My way to walk to it little by little has been getting into a place of discipline, recognizing the discipline, validating that, and therefore I'm falling in love with that.

It's like how you feel better when you eat better, even though you still want the fast food.

It's like your body feels good when you're eating cleaner.

Correct.

And that's the reward rather than like, I did the thing.

Sort of.

Well, sort of.

For me, it's different.

I heard this study once that they were talking about how people will, instead of, again, falling in love with the results, say they're doing a workout.

Like, I'm going to look great.

I'm going to whatever.

When they're feeling their worst in the workout, they'll say to themselves, this is a beautiful thing I'm giving myself right now.

And then they start falling in love with the first step.

Instead of steps one through nine, sucking, and then ten is just glorious.

So I started, I tapped into that and hacked that for my own thought process.

So it's not even eating this food is going to make me feel healthy.

It's I'm being, this is great that I'm being this way to myself.

Right here, right now.

And how beautiful is that?

Yeah.

I love that.

Because how beautiful is that?

Because also now as your partner, I trust you.

That you're going to take it as far.

I got you as far as I could go with teaching you stuff.

And maybe I can teach you more down the road when my nervous system calms down a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But now you're going to take it and run with it and do something different because you're doing it for you.

You're not doing it for me.

Correct.

Overall, it helps us, both of us, but you're doing it for you.

And that kind of translates to a lot of things in this world.

Yes, and a lot of things in this relationship that I love a whole lot.

One of my favorite things is that you and I will have completely separate circles.

And you're focusing on evolving you completely.

I'm focusing on me evolving me completely.

And then when we come together, we just share what we learned.

We don't force what we learned onto each other, which I think has just been a complete benefit.

Just phenomenal in that way.

Well, our beloved listener, I want you to ask yourself today, are you team anxious attached?

Are you team avoidant attached?

Or are you one of those very few people who are incredibly secure with money in this relationship?

Who are you?

Team foster, team Cesar?

Yeah, and just look at it.

The awareness is the biggest part.

Yeah.

The absolute awareness is the biggest part because so much of us don't know what we don't know.

I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.

And as always, please be kind to yourself.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar & the Clew.