"Sometimes instead of choosing one or the other we should just give ourselves BOTH."
+ what do you do with loose change?
Hi and welcome to The Ladybird Purse, my weekly newsletter about women and money. I’m not a financial advisor and am in no way qualified to give financial advice. I’m just a girl who this morning spent twenty quid in a coffee shop to Get Work Done and did not get any work done. Sigh.
I don’t think I have anything to say about money this week. This could be because it’s all going fine. Not amazingly, I haven’t had a windfall or anything, just… fine. I’m plodding along.
There’s something I would really love to do but it’s expensive and I don’t know if I can justify it and I keep looking at the tickets and thinking hmm and not buying them and I suspect soon I’ll look and it will inevitably be sold out and I'll be relieved.
Also my novel is due in one week and so much of my brainspace is taken up by all the work while crying.
Oh there is one thing. Remember my teen’s floor change? A couple of days ago, he handed me some loose change and said “Can you make that digital?” I transferred 43p to his account and now I have yet more coppers I don’t know what to do with.
It reminded me once again of something author Lisa Jewell said when I interviewed her:
I think our generation does tend to remember money as coins when we were little. The smell and feel of it, the sound if it, a fifty-pee piece sellotaped to the inside of a birthday card, handing over fiddly pennies and half pennies for sweets at the corner shop. Our children won't have those memories, isn't that weird?
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An interview with… Satya Robyn
Satya Robyn helps folk to be kinder to themselves at Going Gently, as well as being an Internal Family Systems psychotherapist and running a Buddhist temple. She also loves money.
What is your relationship with money currently?
At the age of forty nine I think I am finally learning to value myself properly, and to find a way of translating that into money. I have just put my psychotherapy prices up a lot, and I am beginning to earn proper money from my writing through my Going Gently Substack. I have a new 'system' in my bank where I put my money into different pots, which means that I feel better about spending money on myself, and that I'm even beginning to accumulate some... progress!
My relationship also remains complicated, as I think most people's relationship with money is. I still have deep-seated beliefs about the 'wrongness' of luxury, the moral superiority of ascetism, and guilt around not spending all my spare money on planting trees or meeting desperate human need.
In Internal Family Systems we speak about having different parts, and I definitely have some parts with pretty bizarre, strong views about money! I continue to see my strong feelings about money as being 'trailheads', which will lead me to the places inside me where healing is needed. I don't see that this work will ever be finished, but I do experience a lot more ease around money than I used to, and I'm also getting better at enjoying it!
What’s your earliest money memory?
My memory is terrible, but I think I can remember slotting coins into a piggy bank, with the knowledge that the only way to get them out again would be to smash the pig. What drama!!
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
I don't think my younger self would listen to anything I had to say. Unfortunately I think she needed to learn things the hard way, over time, mistake by mistake. I would give her a hug, though, and say that she was doing great and that she had a lovely life in store.
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
It was a long time ago now but I should never have taken a student loan out and then frittered it away on CDs and clothes. It wasn't necessary and it took SO LONG to pay off.
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
I made three wishes last year and one of them was that I would come to own a very expensive Amitabha Buddha, made by hand in Nepal and shipped over the seas. I saved up and I bought it (see photo below). It now sits on my office shrine and it is beautiful - I appreciate it every single day.
Am I allowed two best things? I was out with a friend one day and we found a shop with domed glass paperweights with sparkly jellyfish inside them. I could NOT decide between the big and the medium one, and in a fit of extravagance I bought them both. It turns out that they hold the light and glow in the dark for hours and hours. I have never seen them anywhere again, I love both of them with all my heart, and sometimes instead of choosing one or the other we should just give ourselves BOTH.
Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan?
Argh. Don't ask me that. I have a small pension from a few years of working for a big corporation as a trainer, but I didn't start anything else until very recently and I only put a little bit away every month. I try and reassure myself by imagining myself at 83, still loving my work as a therapist, and only very occasionally nodding off.
What would you do with £10,000?
Boring but most of it would go straight into the remaining mortgage on our little rented-out house - it's a year away from being paid off. Then I will immediately start saving so that when we move out of the temple we can move in a little house with a little bit of green all around it - this is my dream. I'd put enough aside for a slap-up meal at the BEST vegan restaurant in our local town - with extra take-away pudding.
What little luxury could you get with a tenner?
If you gave me a tenner I'd get excited about buying a couple of glossy magazines, would go and read the covers of lots of magazines, would remember with some disappointment that I don't enjoy reading them any more, and then I'd spend it (of course) on a small box of expensive caramel chocolates. I might even give you one.
If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?
How can women move towards valuing themselves as much as men do?
Love that last question/note. Reminds me of advice I heard back in college when I was studying engineering - men apply to more jobs they're unqualified for than women. Studies have shown that men are more likely to apply for jobs if they have just a couple of the bullet requirements, but women often feel the need to fulfill all the requirements before applying. Just one way women can start valuing themselves more!
I remember tipping the piggy bank upside down trying to jimmy the coins back out the slot 😆