Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
Know Your Money with Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch
124. Are Your Thoughts About Money Helping or Hurting You?
Your relationship with money might be more complex than you realize. Ever thought about what happens when you speak kindly to your finances instead of with fear or frustration? Bronwyn Waner and Craig Finch explore this fascinating concept through the lens of Dr. Emoto's famous water crystal experiment, where water exposed to positive words formed beautiful crystal patterns while negative energy created distorted images.
We often carry unconscious money scripts from childhood. Remember hearing "money doesn't grow on trees" or witnessing your parents' complicated financial behaviors? These experiences shape our emotional reactions to spending, saving, and investing well into adulthood. What's revolutionary about this conversation is the suggestion that we don't have just one relationship with money, but several distinct connections: with earning, receiving, giving, saving, and growing wealth. Each carries its own emotional patterns that might be helping or hindering your financial journey.
The podcast presents a powerful visualization exercise where you imagine having coffee with money as if it were a person. Would your money appear as an intimidating force or a supportive ally? This personification reveals deeper truths about your financial mindset. Whether you struggle with retirement planning, experience guilt around spending, or worry about having enough, transforming your internal money dialogue could be the missing piece in your financial wellness. By shifting from scarcity thinking to abundance consciousness, you might discover that money, like water, responds to the energy you direct toward it. Ready to speak more kindly to your finances and see what transforms?
Share your own money relationship insights with us and subscribe for more perspective-shifting conversations that help you develop financial clarity and confidence.
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Hello everybody, welcome to Know your Money. I'm Bronwyn Wehner.
Speaker 2:And I'm Craig Finch, and we are from Growth Financial Planning. We hope you enjoy our podcast. Welcome everybody, viewers. Bronwyn, you came bouncing in the studio with a new concept. It was exciting to have a chat over coffee and we'd love to share it with the viewers. So Dr Emoto did a very interesting experiment around water. Can you tell the viewers a bit more about it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So what he did was he put some water in a bottle for all of his students and he told the students to give that bottle of water negative energy. So they say things like I hate you. They even played really bad music to it. And what they then did is they took the water out of that bottle and they looked at it under a microscope and saw that there was all these distorted black sort of images into the water. He then the next day asked them to take another bottle of water and only say good things to that water. So things like I love you, you're kind. They then took that water and put it under a microscope and they saw the most beautiful crystals formed.
Speaker 1:We'll pop in a little clip now to show you what those crystals look like. So, as you can see from this, those crystals formed the most amazing pictures and we are made up of water. So how does this relate to money? And we are made up of water. So how does this relate to money? When I watched that video, I thought a lot about if money was a relationship. Or how are we actually talking to our money every day? What are we saying? What are the words that we're using. Is it hateful things or is it kind things, or fear.
Speaker 1:Or is it fear? So maybe, craig, if you can think, the last time you spent a little bit of money, can you think of an emotion that came up, like when you bought your cup of coffee, or you paid for a holiday or had to fix your car. Can you think of the words that may have been going on in your mind towards spending that?
Speaker 2:So I suppose the car, because it was quite expensive, went. Oh my word, that's a negative one. It's so expensive. Should I keep this car? But also but you bring up a good point when we grew up, I mean, a lot of the moms in the neighborhood used to say money doesn't grow on trees. And that's such a negative connotation because I think you thought money did grow on trees.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really did so there was a different way of looking at it. So I think the emotions around it maybe I've never thought of it before that maybe when I spend money you should think of it. You know, I'm buying this cappuccino and just say thanks to it that I have got the money to buy it and to enjoy the cappuccino, and just say thanks to it that I have got the money to buy it or and to enjoy the cappuccino. I think that would be an amazing.
Speaker 1:It's an amazing concept yeah, I think one of the biggest things for me is I always like doubt it in a way like, oh, I've got to spend this, but will I still have? Is there going to be more? So it's like, if you can just go back and listen, is there? What sort of mindset is around your money? What are you thinking? I did a course the other day on an app called Mindvalley. I can't remember the guy's name, but he asks you to sit and close your eyes and pretend that you are having coffee with money and he says picture what that person would look like in that chair. What would money look like to you?
Speaker 3:The monopoly man.
Speaker 1:And for me it was this like huge, big, powerful, controlling thing and I thought, oh my gosh, is money controlling my thoughts, is it controlling my actions? And it was just such a beautiful exercise because it allows you to see how are you actually seeing money and how can you shift that and change it. So I mean you said the Monopoly man.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:If you picture this person that you're sitting across, what do you see and what are you saying to it?
Speaker 3:No, I said the the monopoly man is like a joke, because that's growing up. That was your, your uh. What was my understanding of of, uh, financial transactions was playing monopoly. Um, I used to think of money as like a burden, but now, more and more especially having watched a lot of wealthy people's interviews online, they all say the same thing that it's just the ability to get your time back. It's not a. They don't see money as the be all and end all. It's an instrument by which you can do what you want to do with yourself and with people you love. It's not a life source, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Also, I saw they interviewed Deepak Chopra a while back and he started a big charity, I think somewhere, and it was a big task and a lot of money was required to get the charity off the ground and to help a lot of people that needed help. And the interviewer said to Deepak well, where are you going to get the money? It's a lot of money to needed help. And the interviewer said to Deepak "'Well, where are you gonna get the money? "'it's a lot of money to get this off the ground'". He said "'I'll get it from where it is at the moment, "'it'll just come'". So the concept of abundance is it is there, it's there for everybody and it'll just come. And if we could change the mindset of all our poor people not to say and think negatively about money, it would make such a difference and we would have a far stronger society. We could change that mindset.
Speaker 3:What you said about abundance is that the mindset of money for, I'd say, most of the population in the world is scarcity.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 3:It's a hard thing to come by, but it really shouldn't be no, and the more you open yourself up to know your worth, the easier it is for that flow to come in.
Speaker 1:And also I think a lot of people talk about your relationship with money, but I don't know anyone else that talks about your relationship with money like we do, that there is more than one. There is the receiving money, there is the earning money, giving, saving, keeping. So what are your emotions around giving, like when that car guard is there? Is it like, oh, do I have to give this money? Or is it like I'm going to give this with love and kindness and that's going to feed their family?
Speaker 1:I'm going to give this with love and kindness and that's going to feed their family, because I feel that money is an energy and it's it's going to flow back to you. So what are you doing the most like when your debit orders go off? What are you thinking if you're keeping money or having to save it or put it towards your retirement and grow it? There's actually more than one emotion around each of those relationships, and just trying to get a little bit clearer on which one you struggle with the most can help bring in more energy.
Speaker 3:Okay question what's your feeling towards putting money away for retirement?
Speaker 1:So when I was doing this course it was one of the things that I realized is that I have a fear around saving money and growing money, and the thing that came up for me was a limiting belief, and it's that no one's good with money in my family. So by journaling, that sort of thought came up, because my mom was quite a bad gambler, so she'd make money and just sort of spend it all on that. And yeah, I mean, whenever my dad used to drop me off, he would give her money to, like last that week she didn't have her own money and then when I was there I was little and we'd just go spend all of that money, you know. And then when it comes to my dad, he is the most giving person you will ever meet. He'll just see someone and he'll just give them a hundred grand. Or we'll go to a restaurant and he'll give the hundred grand before the thing's even started. And it's a beautiful quality of his, because he sees that part of his relationship with money as if when I give, I get satisfied and I get it back, but then he doesn't really save as well as he should.
Speaker 1:So our way of looking at things helped me to see okay, what is my relationship with giving, what is it with that and saving? I don't have an experience from my parents of saving, so this is like a muscle I've got to try to build and a limiting belief that I'm working past. So, to answer your question, when I have to save and grow money, I think my mindset is changing, like I speak often about all those versions of you and I'm able to now see like there is this version of me that I want to retire happy. I don't want to worry about money, so it's a lot easier. The saving one. What are my goals? What am I working towards? What version do I want to focus on? And that's happening.
Speaker 2:The retirement one is a long way away. You're still young and you go. Hey man, this is a long time, 25, whatever years still to go.
Speaker 3:Okay, so to correct you a little bit, for me it's even longer, I'm not going to retire at 65. There's no way I'm going to do that. I'll probably have to work to 75 now.
Speaker 2:But when you so, there is a long-term goal where you say I can work for X amount of years and maybe I'm not healthy enough to work the balance of the years. So you think to yourself I don't know. I think a lot of people think this. I used to think this. That's a long way. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. So do I really? Is it going to make such a difference to put money away for my retirement now? But when you understand compound interest of course it is. And if we could all understand it from the beginning at school how compounding works, you'll be more comfortable with putting a portion of your money for the long term. So you can retire.
Speaker 1:I also think this retirement thing is a new concept. It hasn't been around for a very long time and for me, I don't want you to think about retiring, rather think about that financial independence. So don't you want to wake up at 55 and go if I don't want to work tomorrow?
Speaker 3:I don't have to. That's exactly what my plan is.
Speaker 1:Because I have that money aside, Whereas if you say I'm going to retire at 75, you're pushing that goal out because you're trying to get there.
Speaker 3:So the problem, I think, is well, let's look at a timeline of your life, right? So you finished school, you finished university. Some people have already accrued debt by the end of university, so they're starting on a negative timeline. They start to save, hoping for that compound train to take them through, and they're going well. And then they get married and have a couple of kids and they want to send the kids to private school. So that slows the growth or slows the ability to save as much as you think you'd need or you'd like to, or whatever. It just does Things happen in life.
Speaker 1:But again, I think it comes back to that point of the water thing that we're trying to say.
Speaker 3:No, no, I agree with you, but I'm saying I think there's this idea that you start saving at 21 and go to the moon, and I don't think it happens, because I don't know anyone who is in their 85s or their 80s or whatever, who went to the moon. They're barely surviving.
Speaker 1:But I think that's a lot to do with your financial planner and talking about these sort of things, because that person that finished finished university and they've now got this massive debt. Every single time they earn that paycheck, they're going oh I hate, I hate that I owe debt. I hate this money, I have to pay this because I owe that debt. So they are talking to their money in that way.
Speaker 3:That's what you're saying.
Speaker 1:And how is that going to create? It's like, think about it if you're in a relationship with a person. A prime example is a husband gives his money to his wife and she just goes and blows it. We never do that. And that husband, husband says all you do is spend the money, can't you save it? There's no food in the house. That is how is that marriage gonna go?
Speaker 1:how is that marriage gonna go? How's that wife gonna feel treated? And that's exactly what we're doing with our money, with all of those things. Kids do come along. School does school fees do come along?
Speaker 2:yeah, but we've got to think no, you have different seasons through your life and that will happen. You're going to have an expensive season where you just bought a house, your kids are just starting school, and then it eases up at varsity and your mortgage is paid and it eases up at another part of your life. You've got more money to invest. So, yeah, there are seasons, but I think the important thing is that, for another great concept is to think more positively about even your debit orders and how they go through. That's a really good one.
Speaker 1:But I think, if you think about it like a farm Okay, let's say that there's a farmer and he's now starting his farm the first thing that he needs to buy is the land right. So that, for example, is getting your education. You're going to go and get your education. You're going to pay for that. There's going to be debt on that. The next thing is he starts his family, so that's planting the seeds. So now he's going to go plant all of those seeds.
Speaker 1:If he keeps buying more seeds because he's making his family bigger and better and he's not thinking about the water or the plows that's needed to get the stuff out, or the tractor, he's never, ever going to be able to get the tractor. So he's going to have planted all of these seeds and they're going to die because he doesn't have the next part of the process in running the farm. He doesn't have the employees, he doesn't have the tractor. So I think what we're trying to say is don't not plant the seeds, definitely do that, but then maybe don't go plant a million seeds and have no tractor and no people, rather than plant half of that.
Speaker 1:And I hear what you're saying, that realistically it doesn't work like that because your wages. But what I'm trying to say back is, if you have a better way of talking to money, I truly believe that you will have more, that it will become easier because you're seeing the bigger picture. So every time, just in our conversations that we're having with you, I want you to go back and sit and think about if you were contributing to a retirement annuity, or every contribution you do make to a retirement annuity are your thoughts? Because you're seeing the seeds, you're seeing the family, you're not seeing the tractor. And how can you change that wording to yourself? Because the more positive you can be about okay, I'm putting two thousand rand towards retirement, that's so beautiful, I'm so grateful instead of oh, I could be using this there. It will change the dynamics and you'll be able to put more there.
Speaker 3:I agree with the way you talk about it. I agree with having the positive attitude to money. I do agree with that.
Speaker 2:And that's a good place to start. Thank you everybody. Thank you for listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast and would like to subscribe, please visit our our website, wwwgrowthfpcoza. The information we have provided in this podcast is our personal opinion. For more detailed information, please discuss your financial situation with a financial planner.