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Is your relationship to money secure, avoidant or anxious? Financial therapist Amanda Clayman is back this season to break down our attachment styles to money and how they show up in our everyday lives. Plus, Amanda gets candid about her past struggles with debt and tells us how we can all make personal finance decisions from a calm AF headspace.

This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures, an early-stage global investment firm backing mission-driven entrepreneurs and industry influencers working toward a fair finance system for all. Learn more at flourishventures.com.

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You can find Amanda on Twitter @mandaclay, on Instagram @amandaclayman, and book a session with her on her website www.amandaclayman.com. Check out her show Emotional Investment on Audible.

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To follow along with a transcript, go to lemonadamedia.com/show/ shortly after the air date.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Amanda Klayman, Speaker 2, Speaker 3, X Mayo, Speaker 1

Speaker 1  00:12

So What’s your relationship with money?

 

Speaker 2  01:36

Um, it’s changing. I definitely used to spend above my means. Now I’m trying to, like, budget a little more wiser and not, you know, be so willy nilly with my money, so we have a little more of a contentious relationship now, but I think I’m still making it work.

 

Speaker 3  01:51

Money, and I mean, I like him, he likes me. We do a lot of things together. I could be so much better with him, but I feel as if he were great together. The only time I hate them is but I don’t have them.

 

X Mayo  02:06

Welcome back to The Dough. This is your host, X Mayo, and today we’re here to unpack your money. Feelings, y’all, we’ve tapped into some great financial advice this season and made some pretty decent jokes along the way, because I’m a comedian and I’m damn funny, but for real, talking about money and our money problems is an uncomfortable thing in real life. I just make it sound easy on this podcast, but baby, if y’all knew how much I spent on the daily y’all would call the police on behalf of my debit card. But no, really, I’m in a toxic relationship with Uber Eats. And there was that one time that I spent so damn much at home goods a bitch was sweating when the rent was due. Okay, but don’t judge me. We all be in that candle aisle, baby. It’s the it’s the mahogany, teakwood for me, right? And then the vanilla mutts. Oh, Jesus. And guess what, there’s a therapist for my money problems. Yeah, that’s right. You met her last season, the one, the only. Amanda Klayman, host of the pod Emotional Investment. Amanda is a financial therapist, because people got a roster of therapists these days for all kinds of things. You know, there’s a therapist for your sex life, your divorce, and even a therapist for podcast hosts. What you ain’t got one child, you need to get into it. Well, Amanda is the one we’re paying to quell all our money anxieties. We brought her back to talk about why we fall into patterns with our spending habits and how we can recognize our attachment styles and our ever evolving relationship to money. Hi, Amanda, welcome back to The Dough.

 

Amanda Klayman  03:42

Hi X, I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

 

X Mayo  03:45

Yes, so we start Amanda, as you know, every episode, asking guests a quick little icebreaker about where the hell their money went this week. And Amanda, it’s your turn. Where has your money gone this week? And do you regret it?

 

Amanda Klayman  03:59

Oh, Lord, well, my money this week went to camp, summer camp for one of my children. I don’t regret it, but I would not say that it is a conflict free choice, just because I was a kid who did not have the opportunity to go to summer camp. So on the one hand, I’m super grateful to be able to send my kids on the other hand, it always brings up a like, you know, not everybody needs to spend this money. Like, it’s possible to grow up without it.

 

X Mayo  04:34

Amanda, I have a cure for that. You should go, right, so that we can cure the inner child. You can have a good ass time, and you can tell your how many kids is it just one or two?

 

Amanda Klayman  04:44

I have two.

 

X Mayo  04:45

Two, you can look them and say, look me dead in the eye. I’m no longer Mommy. Mommy is gone. I am a kid, and I’m your fucking enemy. When we get in this pillow fight, your ass is grass, right?

 

Amanda Klayman  04:57

There is no mom in color wars.

 

X Mayo  04:59

That’s it, I think that that’s the solution. That’s so sweet. I think camp, there should be camp for adults. Absolutely, I feel, like a lot of I think wars would cease if people just had a jump a bouncy house, like people could just go somewhere and just jump.

 

Amanda Klayman  05:19

Yes, our nervous systems by playing, yes.

 

X Mayo  05:22

So we know your experience with money was a hard one. You, at one point, had 10s of 1000s of dollars in credit card debt, which I know is probably very common in America. So how did you work through your feelings around debt?

 

Amanda Klayman  05:34

Well, it’s funny, my feelings around my debt were so powerful, in fact, that that was what, what sort of turned me off of my previous path when I was working in my previous career in in marketing and promotions, and really made me say, like, what is it about money that that really pushes our buttons? And in such a way like it was so big for me that it propelled me in a whole new career direction. But when I you know, one of the things that we know about money is that money can touch off a lot of feelings of shame, it kind of gets right to some of those core insecurities. And for me, my debt was like the biggest secret that I was keeping in my life, because everything else looked pretty good from the outside. And debt is something that that for a long time, we can keep that private. We can keep that hidden, you know, unless there’s something kind of dramatic that happens, like for me, I got to the end of all of my available credit, so I really had to change my ways, because I was kind of out of the money to keep doing what I’ve been doing.

 

X Mayo  06:40

Yeah, what was a moment for you where you realized that you had hit bottom?

 

Amanda Klayman  06:45

My mom had come to visit so, so my dad kind of started when I moved as a as a new college graduate, I moved to New York, and really just didn’t have, I wasn’t prepared financially to do that.

 

X Mayo  07:01

Amanda, I’d like to argue that no one is prepared financially for New York. Okay, I don’t care if you live on Columbus Circle, honey, you ain’t got it. Everybody you out here front and it is bad news bears. And I was there in 2013 it was far more livable, still very expensive. Now, redik, right? Redik, okay, so you were not financially prepared for New York, like the rest of the world.

 

Amanda Klayman  07:28

Right, so I did some some crazy workarounds, like my debt started because I needed to pay a broker’s fee. I needed to pay a security deposit, and then once, kind of the debt had a life of its own. It was also easy to be like, what’s another $50 here, what’s another $100 here, and and what? And that was kind of how it it accumulated over time. And it had big swings, and I would bring it down, and then it would go back up. And my mom came to visit, and I asked her, while she was visiting to cut my hair. So yes, we grow there was no summer camp in little Amanda’s past. There was also the era of mom haircuts in little Amanda’s past. So like having my mom cut my hair was not an unprecedented thing, but for like, a 25 year old living in New York City, like my tastes had changed, let’s just say so my mom gave me a really bad haircut, and I promptly just freaked out. And this was where sort of, my mom stepped in and was and tried to be very, like, reasonable, right, like, let’s call your hairstylist, tell her it’s an emergency. I’m sure she’ll see you. And that’s where I had to confess. Like, no, I bounced a check there, and I can yeah, like I had even exhausted my overdraft, like just Yes, the wheels were coming off the bus and the turning point for me was when I literally could not look in the mirror without The truth of my situation confronting me. I could not tell myself that I that tomorrow I was going to do better or do something different, and and that for me was when I just kind of throw my hands up in the air and and said, I need help. I do not have this together. And that I really had fought that moment for so long, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, I thought that my mother, who had grown up very poor, I thought that she would be so horrified that she would just disown me. So the fact that my mom was actually really helpful and gave me the key in that moment, which was that I needed to think of a spending plan, not as a form of just punishment, which was kind of how I was using it, but as a way to identify what my needs are, and to actually have to put money in place so that those needs would be met and have some boundaries around that. That was a really transformative lesson for me.

 

X Mayo  10:01

Yeah and it’s like, what you’re saying, I think is so important when you, like, had a visual representation of what was happening via your haircut, because Mom, we love you, you know. And moms, they’re very DIY, they’ll come together, and it’s just like, just shave it off. So no, I’ve been there, Amanda, I’m right with you. It’s, yes, it’s a journey, especially when you get to a place where it’s like, oh, I have overdrafted. I’ve, as we say, in the church, you rob Peter to pay Paul like you. It’s just so much happening to where you’re just kind of like, wow, I have to sit with this. So for the new people who missed our episode with you last season, which rude? Can you explain what a financial therapist is?

 

Amanda Klayman  10:45

Yes, a financial therapist is someone who will work with a client around the role of money on the in their lives to try to identify what are the the concrete financial issues that a person is working through. And then how are we treating that, that financial issue in the context of the whole person, so, meaning, like, when it comes to our emotions, our cognition, our relationships, etc, financial therapists are going to work in both the behavioral realm with money. Like, what is it that you’re trying to do? What behaviors are aligned with your goals, and a financial therapist is also going to really work with you on the the significance and meaning that these goals have in your life. Like, where do these goals even come from? Whose voice is it in your head that’s telling you that this is important? So we’re working with both the what of money and sort of, what is it that we’re trying to do, or what is the challenge we’re trying to mobilize around? And then what is the how of how we go about doing that?

 

X Mayo  11:48

Yes, no, money is emotional.

 

Amanda Klayman  11:50

Yes, is emotional.

 

X Mayo  11:53

Hey, listeners, we’re gonna take a beat, but be sure to come back ready to unpack your money baggage, because after this break, Amanda is talking money attachment styles, and I’m getting therapized.

 

X Mayo  15:04

So I want to switch gears a bit and get into an interesting connection you’ve made between our attachment styles and how we see money. Can you talk more about that?

 

Amanda Klayman  15:12

Yeah, so attachment style is is kind of a code for how we connect with the world around us, and attachment style starts really early, even before we are verbal, and that’s because as tiny babies, we are 100% dependent on our caregivers, right? So the first sort of understanding that we have of the world and our place in it is based on how our caregivers respond to the needs that we have as babies and when caregivers are available, when they are attentive, when they are able to perceive our our needs clearly, and it feels like that that connection is alive and open and thriving, then we develop what’s called a secure attachment style, which means that we really we can trust we can can believe that even if something goes wrong for us, that there are people who love us, our identity is secure. We can go out there for help, etc. And you can imagine what kind of behavior with money would come from this attachment style, right? So this is probably a person who is able to to spend money without being overly worried that that money will not be replenished. This is a person who is able to relate to their needs and say it’s okay for me to use money to take care of my needs, because my needs are valid and they’re valuable, and I’m a valuable person, and I deserve Oh, and by the way, in secure attachment style, I do want to say that that means that the parent is getting it right about 30% of the time, like none of us is a baby mind reader correct. We’re guessing, so I don’t want to put it out there like we have to 100% of the time understand what our babies need and and be able to deliver that 30% of the time is the benchmark for us getting to that secure attachment style. But you know, a lot of us grow up in situations where things are more chaotic, where caregiving is not as reliable, where caregivers are distracted or stressed about their own lives. They may be reacting to patterns in their own childhood, like earlier in the episode where I talked about all the feelings that just come up when I need to pay my child’s camp fees, right? Because I didn’t have camp. So depending on sort of how, how much a person has worked through their own unconscious associations with some of this stuff, like, what if I was kind of like, my child is saying, I want to go to camp. My friends are going to camp, and I’m like, you don’t deserve some version of you don’t deserve to go to camp. Camp is bad. Camp is a waste because I’m haven’t worked through my own feelings about.

 

X Mayo  17:50

Right, and now you’re projecting on little Abigail, it’s not fair.

 

Amanda Klayman  17:54

Exactly, and so when children, for example, do not have that reliable caregiver, they can sometimes get into an avoidant attachment style, where they feel like they have to take care. They don’t learn to trust anybody. And when they get dysregulated, because money is very dysregulating, which is our clinical term for like, it’s it upsets us. We’re distressed. It feels feels bad, feels painful. We feel upset, we get dysregulated. A person with an anxious and avoidant attachment style is going to have a much harder time being able to relate to their needs and trust in kind of a available world of resources where they’re going to be able to to identify their own needs and say it’s okay for me to safely meet this need or to ask for help or support from another person. And sometimes we have also a disorganized attachment style where we feel really, like, strongly pulled towards something, and we’re pulled towards something that’s unsafe, so we’re super ambivalent about it. We go back and forth, and that’s where we get a lot of, like, really kind of more chaotic. I would say that in some ways, my my behavior with money, when I was really in that phase of my life, struggling with debt, that was a very disorganized kind of orientation to money. I wanted it, I craved it. I also feared it, and that chaos was absolutely reflected in how I manage my behavior with money.

 

X Mayo  19:25

I would love for us to play a little game where we figure out my attachment style to money. Are you down for that Amanda?

 

Amanda Klayman  19:34

Okay, let’s do it.

 

X Mayo  19:35

I already know it’s insane. Is I have an insane attachment. So what do you need to know to figure out what type of attachment style that I have?

 

Amanda Klayman  19:45

I want to know X like, how was money treated in your family when you were growing up?

 

X Mayo  19:51

It was treated as a necessary resource for us to have what. We need, and it was also growing up, it kind of felt like a thing that I knew would be available if I asked my mom for it, like if , she just made shit happen I don’t know how to put it into words so I knew that. I didn’t know that we didn’t have a lot of money. I never went hungry. I always had a place to stay, and I lived with people that were in my same tax bracket, you know. So it wasn’t until I got bused and started going to this YMCA that was in a more affluent area that I started feeling the difference, and they were all like white kids and so but I knew that, like when it was time for my cheerleading outfit, I knew I needed $600 even though that was a lot of money, I knew if I told my mom, she would figure out how to go get it, like there’s extra work she would do. My mom’s a hustler. She would slang enchilada plates, she would make Christmas wreaths, she’s made Easter baskets. She would do whatever. And we have, I have nine aunts and uncles in such a big, large family and a big extended family, so it was always a way to go get it. But it wasn’t like we had an unlimited amount of it. I knew that, okay, I need to tell my mom I need something. If it’s $100 or more, she needs to be prepared for that, because she has bills to pay, and what we make is enough for what we need.

 

Amanda Klayman  21:31

Yes, so the good news is that sounds very secure to me, and I’ll tell you what the points are that I’m noticing. Number one is this sense of trust and connection with your mother that you were able to share. Here’s a situation where I don’t have the capacity to to satisfy this need myself, and that need is about like this activity, but it’s also about the development of your social activity or social identity. I mean, in that age, like I for a tween or a teenager, like the most important thing is that they belong, that they find their place in their their social group. So for you to come to your mom with a really important developmental need, that you’re experiencing it there, and for her to validate that, for her to mobilize in her efforts, in terms of, like, let me be on your team to help you get what you need. And, oh, by the way, if I can’t do it, here is another supportive layer of aunties and uncles who are also available to show you love and support and and all of that is a very secure feeling for a child, because what it says is, I don’t have to take care of this all myself. I don’t have to worry like because, let’s contrast that if, if your mother was overwhelmed, like chronically overwhelmed, if she was absent, distracted, if, if she was feeling so kind of on edge herself, that for you to say, mom, I need a cheerleading uniform triggers her defensive kind of patterns where she can’t even hold the feelings of how bad it feels to not be able to help her child. Like, because this is like, where our unconscious gets super tricky. Like, there is a a very common parental response, defensive response that would would shame the child and say, like, how can you bring that to me? Like, how can you be so selfish to ask me for $600 don’t you know that it’s a struggle just to pay rent and put food on the table so, so the need itself and the request would be the thing that becomes kind of the the target, if you wow that parents, parents reaction. So I’m so glad to hear that that was not the response that you got. And that is probably one of the things that, like it changes us in our orientation, from either like, like, the world is hard, but you know what? I’m tough. I’m capable. I can go out there. I can ask people for help if I need it, versus, the world is tough. Why even try? This is, I’m never going to get ahead. It’s a waste of time. Nobody’s going to help me, etc. Like those are two paths that can emerge from, from just the different ways that that interaction goes and the patterns of those interactions in our younger years.

 

X Mayo  24:30

Yeah, no, I am my mother’s child, so I, you know, my name is $80 in suitcase on Instagram, because that’s all I had when I decided to move to New York. And obviously I know that, you know, I didn’t have kids, there’s other, you know, factors that have allowed me to live this way. So I don’t want to act like anyone can just, you know, go and do it. I know I come from a very specific, privileged background and that I had, you know, a very supportive mother and family, but I do think that my attachment style to money for for me, sometimes, as I’m thinking about it now, I feel like it is a way for me to kind of like heal my inner child, like all the other additional things that I wanted that didn’t have anything to do with like a scholastic endeavor, a extracurricular activity, or something like cheerleading. That was something I was involved with in school. But like, I wanted these shoes. I wanted to go to this concert. Like I begged and begged and dreamed to go to the Spice Girls concert. Like there’s so many things. So now I go to every concert I saw Beyonce, three times, Amanda, so I went to Renaissance last year. We were on strike. Beyonce went on tour. I went on tour. Okay, so three times. So I will say, Amanda, I do think that I can get a little I love me. I think I can get a little reckless with my love for me. I be like, Girl, whatever you want go and get yes, yep, it’s justifiable. So I don’t know what that’s called. I don’t know. Do you know what that’s called? Amanda? Like, sometimes I can rock the boat when it comes to a want versus a need, and then, like, my little inner child is just like, yes, you deserve that matcha with the lavender cold foam versus making it at home like you like all the things I didn’t want as a kid. Sometimes I’m just like, I want that, I deserve that, you know.

 

Amanda Klayman  26:23

Yes, and then we we I mean, some ways I would just say that that’s like, a that we’re permissive with ourselves, that we have a hard time. There could be some impulse stuff that’s going on, but, I mean, like, the thing that’s kind of crazy though, about about impulse is, like, that’s an emotion, right? That’s an emotion that wants a direction that says, I’m gonna feel better if I have this thing.

 

X Mayo  26:51

Yes, of course, Amanda.

 

Amanda Klayman  26:54

Yes.

 

X Mayo  26:55

It’s a high. It’s like a drug.

 

Amanda Klayman  26:56

And but in the moment,  it works until we kind of run into where it doesn’t. So like, like, in the moment, it’s so good one Beyonce, you know what? I’ll even give you the three Beyonce concerts.

 

X Mayo  27:15

Yes, and just so you know, I called my business manager. I said, Hey, can I do this? I just want you know what I’m about to do. She said, I’ve been getting calls all day. This is when the tickets drop. Our clients be calling all day. I say, you know, I want to see her in a specific way. I need to feel her sweat, okay?

 

Amanda Klayman  27:33

But look what you did, so yes, the impulse, all human beings are going to be impulsive, right? Like our emotions just want to find a direction. And so when we’re when we’re feeling that that desire, that want, that acquisitiveness, the way that we relate to that like is sometimes we just say yes, and we have a runaway yes with ourselves. Sometimes we start to associate some pain and stress with that. So like, like for me, for example, with my debt. Like watching my debt creep up, that balance creep up above, sort of created this emotional counterbalance to that impulse. So when I was like, all of the sudden, spending itself starts to feel more stressful because you don’t know if that spending is safe. You don’t know if you are safe to yourself when you are being really impulsive with money without, like, a full context of, kind of like, where, how your money is coming in, and where it it needs to go. And so that starts to that stress starts to inhibit that impulse. It starts to kind of get in the way sometimes with that impulse, so so we might start to sort of tighten up or change our behavior or what I love that you’ve done is that you have built a structure, an environment, for yourself where, if you can’t provide that boundary for yourself or or you don’t want to be in charge, like you want to be the yes person for yourself, but you need a no function, in your system. And so you bring in this business manager to be the no function, or the feedback function that’s going to go X, this is okay. You don’t need to worry about it or, let me, you know, let’s pump the brakes and you know you would get that advice from this person that you have put in the role of providing that that structure.

 

X Mayo  29:25

Yes, or she’ll email me and she’ll say, What the fuck are you doing? Like she recently did. She said, what? Excuse me, what are you doing? She’ll send me an email, though. She’ll send me a text, and I’ll be like, because it was Mother’s Day. She said, well, how many mothers do you have? I was like, my girl needed things. I needed to get it okay. And then, you know, when we went into Sephora, she wanted a perfume. And I was okay, give me a perfume too. All right, y’all, it’s time for another break, but when we come back, we’re getting advice from Amanda debt on how to stay emotionally regulated during tough money decisions.

 

X Mayo  32:41

How do we know when we’re making decisions, money, decisions from a regulated and secure headspace?

 

Amanda Klayman  32:47

So this is the message that I really want to bring to the world, because not everybody can afford financial therapy in a fee for service model, but I feel like financial health is incumbent upon me and the people in this field to really be out front as cultural leaders and teachers, talking about this and bringing the message of how we can best do money. So doing money in a in an emotionally regulated, healthy kind of way, means that we are really paying attention to money and and dealing with money in its context. And what I mean by that is that the question is not like, thumbs up or thumbs down. Do I want to see Beyonce, or do I not want to see Beyonce? Because most of the time, the answer to that is going to be thumbs up. I want to see Beyonce.

 

X Mayo  33:37

I mean it, let’s be clear. It’s Beyonce who like an.

 

Amanda Klayman  33:41

Unlimited, infinite amount of time, but the yes potential for that is is super big, but we know that there’s a real world boundary, right? We can’t see Beyonce an infinite number of times, so we need context for that decision. When is it okay to see Beyonce, and when is it when is it not consistent with all the other sort of factors in my life. For me to do it, that’s the context of the decision how much money do I have to set my budget is not always the easiest thing for folks and and so it it is hard for us unless we say like this needs to be a practice for me to look at my money regularly, to sit down in a place where, where it’s acceptable, and I’ve kind of baked it into the plan of how I do money, to have an emotional reaction that’s present with that. Because I think a lot of us, we we might have something like in our financial lives that needs attention, but it’s like I can’t do that because I am so stressed out, I am so anxious, I can’t even put my butt in the chair.

 

X Mayo  34:43

To even look at the numbers.

 

Amanda Klayman  34:45

Yes, so we do what I call, like drive by money, which is, like, there’s a thing that needs my attention, I’m gonna just kind of go in there and as quickly as I can, I’m gonna neutralize it and get back out. Like, we don’t want to be thinking about money.

 

X Mayo  34:58

[…] Drive bys all the time, Amanda.

 

Amanda Klayman  35:00

Yes.

 

X Mayo  35:01

Wow, drag me. Oh, my God now I have a term. This is why we need to come see you, Amanda, because having language is so liberating, like having verbiage to know, like there’s a reason. Let’s get into it. This is context.

 

Amanda Klayman  35:18

Yes, it’s dysregulating, but we need to expect to be dysregulated. That’s the thing, is like.

 

X Mayo  35:24

And that’s normal.

 

Amanda Klayman  35:24

Not it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Like, we have these feelings about money because emotions are so important to guide us in our decision making, like, like without emotions, we don’t know what’s valuable to ourselves, but it does take emotional work to to figure out how things are valuable relative to each other. So again, it’s not thumbs up or thumbs down on Beyonce. It’s like, how much do I love Beyonce relative to this other financial goal or constraint that I have in my life?

 

X Mayo  35:58

So what’s a question that we can ask ourselves to know like because I know I want to make sure to give our listeners tools to make sure that we’re coming from a regulated and secure headspace. So let’s just say, you know, there is let’s just say, well for me, let’s use me as an example. I want to reupholster my couch.

 

Amanda Klayman  36:18

Yes.

 

X Mayo  36:19

For what I want it. I want it to be orange. It is a terrible, dull gray color, but is the most comfortable couch in the world. And I want it to be orange. And I want it to be orange Sherpa that is going to cost around with the materials and labor like $4,500 so what question do I need to ask myself, Amanda, to make sure that I’m making a money decision for this couch from a regulated and secure headspace.

 

Amanda Klayman  36:54

So the question would be, what else is on my list of things that I could also use that $4,500 for, like it. It’s not about the couch itself. I mean, because you’ve already said this couch is important to me. I love it, so we don’t have to, like, dig any deeper. But the tool thing is, like, where else could that $4,500 go?

 

X Mayo  37:19

Okay.

 

Amanda Klayman  37:19

Where is it needed? Where else might I want it and that. And then we sort of like, then we feel our feelings around that.

 

X Mayo  37:29

And you know what I do? This may help our listeners, and this might be toxic. And you could tell me, Amanda, but what I do, what’s been helping me to slow down on purchases and not buy things, especially because I have expensive taste and I am truly the things that I want. It could be just the smallest thing and I want it for the table. For my coffee table is $7,000 it’s insane, so what I do, Amanda and to our listeners, I will put things in my cart like, like a drug addict. I will just put every fucking thing I want on that site in there, and then I’ll click Checkout, and then I’ll get out of the tab. I’ll close it all up. It’s like a drug, because for me, I still feel like I want to be able to click on it, I want to look at it. I want to see how much it is. And I also have multiple docs in my Instagram that I allow myself a treat, like every time I book a thing and I will I have a three docs of what’s technically in my notes app, so three different notes that are full of home decor that I just keep collecting every time I see an ad, I do click on it, and then I put it in there, because I gotta click on it. I want to see what it is, but that’s how I’m able to kind of get that hit of serotonin, feel like I’m still able to kind of like search window shop, but actually pull the trigger on the per on the purchase when I have more money.

 

Amanda Klayman  38:57

Yes, so there are several things actually that I absolutely love about that. Number one is that you are able to meet the impulse but, but kind of pull yourself out of the trajectory of an impulse buy before the moment of purchase. And in a sense, like you said, I’m able to get in there. I get the serotonin hit because I’m doing the shopping. And it’s funny, because shopping is something that can feel productive to us, like it feels like we’re accomplishing a task. So if we’re avoiding another task, one of the reasons that shopping is so attractive as a distraction is because it does make us feel like we’re accomplishing something, even if it’s not the thing accomplishing, the thing that we, you know, shouldn’t be avoiding, but so you’re you’re putting yourself kind of in the arena. You’re able to safely extricate yourself there. You are creating a template for when and how you are going to buy things. So there is a sense of comparison. That it’s not just about the impulse of that moment. It’s really about like, what’s my overall, more long term vision, which is so good for our our sense of security, sense of like, orderliness, of I can make my life the way that I want it, and you’re also creating rules for when you do gratify those those wants. So it’s like, when I book something, I go to my list, yeah, and I select something off of the list.

 

X Mayo  40:25

I do, I feel like, so like, I’m treating myself. I feel like, you go, girl, I love it.

 

Amanda Klayman  40:31

That’s an incredible, emotionally healthy financial strategy.

 

X Mayo  40:37

Okay, good. I thought I was a nut.

 

Amanda Klayman  40:39

No, this is, this is absolutely something that I would teach and I would support for people.

 

X Mayo  40:45

Okay, great, wow. I’m a financial therapist. Look at that. Let me add that to my bio.

 

Amanda Klayman  40:50

Because the most important thing that you’re doing is is you are bringing yourself out of just the the impulse of the moment, where all we’re doing is thinking about how to get this thing that I want, or how to avoid this feeling that I don’t want. It’s sometimes the subtext and you are are able to think more and behave more strategically.

 

X Mayo  41:12

So finally, where can we find you? Because you know I know someone, wink, wink, a friend of a friend whose name rhymes with Sex Pio, who might want to come book a section.

 

Amanda Klayman  41:27

I’m very easy to find. So you can find all of my stuff @amandaclayman.com. On Instagram, I’m also Amanda Clayman, and I feel like every other social media has a slightly different handle, so I’ll just say the Instagram one.

 

X Mayo  41:40

Okay, yes. And we could also potentially find you at a camp near you.

 

Amanda Klayman  41:47

Yes, I will be the one s’mores every night.

 

X Mayo  41:51

Yeah, she might be there picking up her kids. She might be there, you know, just in a potato sack, just going to town, absolutely. Oh, my God, Amanda, you truly are the bee’s knees.

 

Amanda Klayman  42:02

I always enjoy our conversations, and I just am such a fan of the show, and I will come back literally every time. thank

 

X Mayo  42:10

Okay,  you so much for joining us. Amanda, have a good day.

 

Amanda Klayman  42:12

Thanks, X.

 

X Mayo  42:13

Bye, all right, y’all it turns out I’m not that bad at the money thing, which is a relief. Did you hear that Belva okay, as we learned from Amanda, our relationship to money starts young. It can take a lifetime to unlearn bad habits. I’m still figuring this shit out myself, but I’m happy to hear from Amanda that I am not a threat to my next paycheck, and that I have set up some pretty good boundaries, and y’all can too. So I wanted to leave y’all with a couple resources that Amanda shared with me. If you’re struggling with your debt and any shame around it, please check out debtors anonymous and under earners anonymous. These are two safe spaces, both online and in person, for you to talk your shit out and get the help you need, trust me, you will need community and support while you change your financial behaviors, because, as we’ve heard, money is emotional. And on that note, let me go see what I could treat myself to today, because apparently I’ve been pretty damn good.

 

CREDITS  43:13

There’s more of The Dough with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like blooper reels from our recording sessions. Subscribe now and Apple podcasts. The Dough is a Lemonada original. I’m your host X Mayo. This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures. This series is presented by the Margaret Casey Foundation. Our producers are Claire Jones, Rachel Pilgrim and Tony Williams. Kristen Lepore is our senior producer. Mix and Sound Design by Bobby Woody. Original Music by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Jackie Danziger is our Vice President of narrative content. Executive Producers include me X Mayo, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. You can follow me on IG  @80dollarsandasuitcase and Lemonada @lemonadamedia across all social platforms, follow The Dough wherever you get your podcast or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.