Culturally aware money coaching makes it possible for each of us to step into financial wholeness and empowerment. Without cultural awareness money coaching just falls on you like a brick of “shoulds”… See the real live comments I’ve heard below:
“It was surprising. Even though she was a woman of color, Latina like you, it’s as if she didn’t think about how what she was saying would land on the participants in the money workshop.”
“Do these people understand the amount of generational scarcity that I’m carrying?”
“I have all these questions! Is it okay to make more money? How do I set fees with clients? I’m a woman of color, and queer! Do I have a voice?”
This is such a JUICY topic that we first need to agree what we’re talking about:
- Culture – the mold that molded you and that we unconsciously think everyone else was also molded by
- Awareness – the sweet sense of gentle detachment from the mold
- Money Coaching – guidance in navigating money questions with body, mind and soul
- Financial Wholeness – bringing awareness and acceptance to the shadow sides of you and your mold
- Empowerment – owning your power and ability to make choices
Culture
According to an online search the Oxford dictionary defines culture as “the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society.” I also bring in Resmaa Menakem’s definition in his book My Grandmother’s Hands: Trauma, decontextualised over time in a family, can look like family traits. Trauma, decontextualised in a people, can look like culture.
You might think trauma is a strong word when it comes to something as mundane as money, but when you get to have money management conversations often enough, you realize there’s something deep going on. Money is linked to our ability to survive and our social standing – it’s big.
I start money workshops inviting people to stay in touch with their body because if they are in a state of disconnection they will not be able to learn, their cognitive capacity is impaired. If participants are feeling sleepy, angry, or want to run away by looking at their phone their body might be trying to protect them from uncomfortable feelings, memories, or thoughts.
All they have to do is note when they disconnected and come back to the conversation – no shame, no blame. As bodyworker Susan Raffo says, the first step to healing is to stop the violence. Rather than judge ourselves for getting set off by money anxiety, we get to hold ourselves with gentleness and curiosity and ask, “What happened? What do you need? What are you sharing with me?”
Understanding Our Wider Money Culture
It’s also important to know the wider culture of money in our society, from the racist history of money, consumerism, greed, gifting, debt, colonialism, etc. To dive into the racial wealth divide I highly recommend you listen to my conversation with Phuong Luong, Sonya Dreizler, and Emlen Miles-Mattingly: We Need to Talk About Wealth for All Families.
Awareness
As a society, and often as individuals, we need a new way of being with money. But before you start to rearrange the furniture, first turn on the lights. What space are you in? What do you want to keep? What needs to be discarded? What can be repaired?
Awareness is understanding that money is multi-layered for all of us. There is no way that any of us will know every culture so rather than shying away from the topic, it is more respectful and honest to lead with curiosity and humility and ask about someone’s experience.
As someone who is constantly integrating many identities at once (child of immigrants, expat from a first world country in a third world country, white skinned, Latina, woman, etc), I am aware of how much needs to be navigated, tasted, and discarded. My own journey understanding how decontextualized trauma lived in my family, my preferences, and my body prepared me to know that most of the time we have no idea what drives us.
Becoming aware is both understanding how you got to where you are while holding a stance of non-judgement. I advice financial planners, especially white ones, to come to client meetings with a sense of curiosity and humility. Our clients have some of the most intimate conversations of their lives with us! We best show respect by not assuming anything or dictating people’s decisions.
Money Coaching
Guiding clients to inquire into their money experiences with curiosity and gentleness is more effective than simply laying out the “right” money steps. Although I am an expert on money and have the certificates and experience to prove it, I’m not an expert on other’s life.
My place of genius is being able to tell when someone is lost in the conversation and gently bringing them back in. I love translating money concepts into metaphors that make sense to that person, and using props to make abstract concepts easier to understand. That is what I call money coaching, while teaching financial concepts is financial literacy.
An example of culturally aware money coaching
For example, take debt payoff strategies. Numbers wise the recommendation is to first pay off the debt with the highest interest rate while making minimum payments on other debts – this way you pay the least in interest fees. From there you go on to pay the next debt with the highest interest rate and so on.
However, you might be more motivated by paying off the debt with the lowest balance first so that you have one less debt you’re carrying. Or there might be a debt that’s linked to a bad memory, like a shopping spree after the end of a romantic relationship. Only you know what’s right for you.
While money looks like math, in practice it’s more similar to psychology.
Money is more than numbers, just like food is more than nutrition, and rest is more than non-action. Those are each key components, yet they do not show the fullness of the concept being defined and explored.
Financial literacy, like understanding your credit score and long term investing, it’s not sufficient to actually change behavior. I bet we’ve all experienced knowing what we should do, and not doing it…
When I teach and coach on the technical aspects of money I cover what I call the past, present, and future of money – see the image below for details.
For example, I often explain debt management strategies using different shaped fruits or whatever objects I have at hand. The cantelope can either be the debt with the highest interest, or the one you are most excited to get rid of. This helps the person see they have a say on what strategy is right for them.
When people decide which of the growth inducing (and potentially uncomfortable) routes they want to take, they are more likely to fully commit and enjoy the journey, rather than when they are told which one is “right” by the numbers.
Financially Whole
Becoming aware of what drives us and the parts that we’ve rejected or hid from is becoming whole. It’s the reward for going through the pain of facing money trauma in our lives. Wholeness allows us to respond from the NOW rather than whatever thing we are trying to protect ourselves from.
One of my favorite stories of wholeness and money transformation is from a past participant of Bosque Money who is an entrepreneur. Unconsciously she thought creating money systems, like automating cash flow and creating forced savings for her retirement plan, would make her less creative. Through our community conversations she realized that having money systems would make her MORE creative by reducing money stress!
As she took ownership of her money decisions things began to shift and she began to see new solutions or simply step out of problems she was creating herself. She recognized and owned the power she had to create a satisfying money life. She can now make decisions based on her current money reality rather than trying to avoid a “boring, stable, creativity killing” money system.
Empowerment
Money can mean power, although even all the money in the world can’t protect you from bigotry. For some of us having power can mean becoming a target when it upsets the status quo, be it in our families, workplaces, or in greater society. So be gentle when you sense a desire to keep yourself safe and small – it’s a very normal response!
In Uncolonized Latinas, Valeria Aloe talks about how as women we need to “redirect [our] attention to what [we] can deliver” instead of our perceived shortcomings. Those shortcomings are so internalized that we can’t push them out – in fact, anything you push on responds with equal force.
Instead redirect the attention to channel the power you already have to take action, navigate the world around you, taste it, and discard what does not serve you.
The Truth is Continuously Revealing
An awesome part of helping people come into their wholeness (i.e. heal) is that the one facilitating (in this case moi) needs to embrace their own wholeness. Below is a glimpse into my own continuously unfolding journey with money.
As the first in my family to be born in the US to a wealth of opportunities, for a long time I’ve walked around with guilt because of the randomness of my birth. Seeing children my age experience hunger while waiting at the border to cross into the US marked me, especially because my dad would threaten my brother and I to go beg with the other children if we were misbehaving in the car. Now I know he didn’t mean it, but back then it terrified me. And it confused me.
Why was I sitting in the car with my parents while these children were in the street selling candy or offering to clean windshields? This question fuels my desire to see a more just world, but it also made me feel like I already had so much that I couldn’t ask for more.
I unconsciously felt that by having even more I might loose my connection to my loved ones and my roots.
I unconsciously organized my money life around being resourceful and making do with whatever I had.
I unconsciously put limits on my aspirations.
As an entrepreneur I have unconsciously sabotaged plans to make consistent invitations to my business because:
- Outreaching to strangers is uncomfortable – how do I explain relational magic in bite sized elevator pitches?
- What if I made a sale?? What if I had more money coming in? Who would want my money? Would I feel even more disconnected from my cousins in the old country? Would I feel even more guilt?
It’s funny to see how my dad is actually a wonderful example of seeing the randomness of birth and telling it to f*** off. While my father is not wealthy compared to my average investment management clients at Strategy Squad, he is incredibly wealthy compared to where he was as a child.
- Point one: none of his six children ever went to bed hungry like he did.
- Point two: he earned enough post-graduate degrees to overcome imposter syndrome and questions about his accent in any room.
When my dad was a cab driver in his late 20s in Los Angeles, California, one of his passengers told him he was young enough to do anything he wanted, and at that point my dad wanted to be a pilot. While his English was not very fluent, even so he enrolled in a pilot course. Because he was worried about his English he memorized the book and ended up with the highest test results in the course!!
Can I love my ambition, a gift both my parents gave me, along with the good luck of being born in the US?
Becoming financially whole is integrating those parts of us we’ve rejected, which in my case is ambition. In the spirit of transparency, while I live comfortably, give ongoing charitable donations, and even send money to my grandmother monthly, I can only afford my values driven lifestyle while living in third world countries.
How can I call myself a global citizen when I’m only able to be a digital nomad in the Global South? Becoming financially whole means I am READY to invite people into my business along with a trip to Ireland.
The Gifts of Culturally Aware Money Coaching
All the Colors, and specifically Bosque Money community coaching, are transformative experiences that bring wholeness. The feedback I hear from clients and participants tell me that this work is not just for my well-being, but for all of us. Because when you have stable and supportive money systems you are free to go focus on living your best life, for yourself, your loved ones, and your community.
People come to money coaching because they are in enough pain to change their ways, they want to uplevel their money skills to flourish at a new stage, and most commonly both. Whoever you decide to work with, make sure that cultural awareness, humility, and gentleness are interwoven through the whole process.
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