My Happy Money Journey: money for mid life women with Phoebe Blamey

Brilliant with everyone else’s money, and then yours comes along and you go all wobbly?

You can run the household budget, stretch the grocery money to the last cent, look after the kids, check in on your ageing parents and balance the books at work. Then a refund lands in your account and your first instinct is to hand some of it back.

Welcome to the money worthiness gap. It’s one of the most common money patterns, and it costs real dollars.

In this episode of My Happy Money Journey, Phoebe Blamey, bestselling author, former mortgage broker and business coach, unpacks why so many capable women struggle to feel worthy of their own money. And what to do about it this week.

Because worthiness grows when you take action. You do the worthy thing first, and the feeling catches up.

What you’ll hear

🔍 Money is information. Why your bank balance is a fuel light on the dashboard, and how reading it with curiosity changes your next money decision.

💪 You don’t have to bleed for it. Exhaustion is a terrible payment method. How to receive money as fair compensation for your work, and say a simple thank you when it arrives as a gift.

🧠 Your money story might belong to someone else. “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” “Don’t get too big for your boots.” Where your inherited money beliefs came from, and how to choose which ones to keep.

🧾 Keep the receipts. A simple evidence folder that reminds you how capable you are, especially at 2am when your brain starts telling stories.

✨ Act worthy first. Small, slightly scary actions that build financial confidence faster than any affirmation.

🌀 Tapping for scarcity. The emotional freedom technique (EFT) Phoebe has used for years when scarcity creeps in.

Your worthy thing for this week

Pick one:

Then finish this sentence: “The thing I learned about money growing up was...” Is it still true for you today?

Download the tapping guide

Ready to try tapping? Phoebe’s EFT tapping guide for money and scarcity is waiting for you inside the Happy Money Society, along with workbooks and resources to help you build a happier relationship with your money.

👉 Join the Happy Money Society and download the tapping guide: www.phoebeblamey.com.au

Coming soon

A special mini-series from the Million Dollar Conspiracy, Phoebe’s group program for experienced women business owners who’ve left corporate and are scaling up. Especially for you if you’re the one setting the price.

Follow My Happy Money Journey so every episode turns up in your feed. It helps the show reach more women who need it.

Tell Phoebe

Which one is yours? The report card balance, the exhaustion tax, the inherited money voice, the missing receipts, or never doing something just for you? Send Phoebe a message and tell her your worthy thing for the week. She reads every one.

Enjoy your journey. 💛

Becoming the Woman Who Owns Her Money

Divorce can leave you feeling like you're starting again financially.

But you're not starting from zero. You're starting with experience, knowledge and the opportunity to finally take control of your own money.

In the final episode of our divorce series, we move from protection to rebuilding — and talk about what actually helps women create financial independence after divorce.

We cover:

• Why your financial recovery isn't about finding someone else

The big message?

Recovery isn't rescue. Recovery is a skill.

You don't need to know everything about money. You just need to start asking better questions, making your own decisions and taking the next step.

You are not too old. You are not too far behind. And you are not starting from zero.

Your future belongs to you.

This episode completes our three-part series on money and divorce.

When the Numbers Don’t Add Up: Hidden Money & Divorce

What happens when the financial picture your ex is presenting just doesn’t make sense?

A bonus suddenly disappears. A successful business is suddenly worth almost nothing. There’s a mysterious loan to family. Or accounts and assets you never knew existed.

In this episode, we look at some of the common red flags around financial disclosure during divorce — and what you can do when the numbers don’t add up.

We cover:

• Delayed income and bonuses

You don’t need to become a forensic accountant. You need to know what questions to ask.

Because you cannot claim what you can’t see.

This is general financial information, not legal advice. Always speak with your family lawyer about your individual circumstances.

This is episode two of my three-part series on money and divorce. Next up: rebuilding your financial life and becoming the woman who owns her money on purpose.

Australian women come out of divorce around 30% worse off than they went in, and if you are over 50 that gap can stretch closer to 45%, often without ever fully recovering. In this first episode of a three-part series, Phoebe unpacks the decision that trips up more women than any other: what to do with the family home. She walks through why the house feels like safety, when keeping it is exactly the right call, when it quietly becomes the thing that sinks you, and the four back-of-an-envelope questions that turn the fog into a decision you can actually see.

Everything in this episode is general information. It does not take your personal circumstances into account and it is not personal financial advice. It is an ex-finance person sharing what she has watched happen to a lot of women, so you can ask the sharp questions and think through the big decisions with clear eyes.

If money in your relationship feels controlled, hidden, or used as a weapon, that is beyond a hard divorce. That is financial abuse, and it is the subject of the next episode. Support is available through 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Follow the show so the next two parts land in your feed, and subscribe to the newsletter to get the free Money Map. Coming up in Part 2: where the money hides in a divorce, the bonus that vanishes, the business income that suddenly drops, and how to catch it.

This week's question: If you have been through it, did keeping the family home turn out to be the right call, or the thing that quietly sank you? Tell me in the comments, or DM me if it is too raw to post. Your answer might be the thing that saves the next woman.

Listen: The Happy Money Journey, wherever you get your podcasts. 

Until next week, enjoy your journey.

These four pieces of real advice printed for women who out-earn their husbands, including leaving the house without your wallet so he gets a turn at being the provider, blew my mind. Then I had a conversation with Prue who got up super early to walk the dogs and unstack the dishwasher, while Mr Prue slept soundly. This week, why capable women keep themselves small, what it is costing, and the question underneath all of it....

This is how it started...

A research team went through ninety four newspaper and magazine articles written about women who earn more than their husbands, and pulled out what those articles told the women to do. Let him pay the bill at the restaurant. Leave the house without your wallet or your keys so he gets the opportunity to be the provider. Let him cover one particular family expense so there is a sense of purpose attached to his money. Play down your income and your success.

Somebody was paid to write that. An editor decided it was reasonable. Some of it was published recently.

Look at those four instructions together and they are all the same instruction. Make yourself smaller so you can stay where you are.

That is what this episode is about. Not whether you can earn more than your partner, because clearly you can. What it costs you to be seen doing it, and the groups you are trying not to fall out of while you do.

We talk about the marriage, the family you came from, the friends you have had for twenty five years, and the biggest group of all, which is the terms and conditions of being a woman with money in this country.

There is a section for those of you who now earn more than your father ever did, because nobody tells you that this contains a loss as well as an achievement.

Then there is Prue, who is made up like a mosaic of my favorite women in this situation. She runs a four million dollar cleaning business while unstacking the dishwasher at seven in the morning. She turned down two million dollars of work she was perfectly capable of doing. .

I will be upfront that I do not have this fully solved. I have got a long way into it and I have got one thing I want you to do about it this week.

What I want you to take away: protection is not a number. It never was. It is somebody's capacity to hold you, and that has nothing to do with what they earn.

We talk about the property boom all the time. We almost never stop to explain what it actually means for you.

Go back to the 1960s. Your parents buy an ordinary house in an ordinary inner suburb of Melbourne or Sydney. They live in it their whole lives, never thinking of it as anything more than the family home. Then one day that house is worth two million dollars, and it lands on your kitchen table as an inheritance.

So we get into the real research on what happens to a capable woman when serious money arrives, why our bodies read a windfall as a threat rather than a reward, and the five things you can do this week to become the woman who can actually hold it. This one goes deep, and it is coming for a lot of you sooner than you think.

Where the wealth actually came from. The property boom explained properly, with the real numbers, and what it means that a whole generation got wealthy through their houses without ever learning a thing about managing wealth.

Sudden wealth syndrome. The psychologists who named the cluster of guilt, anxiety and paralysis that shows up when money arrives fast, and why feeling it does not make you broken.

The lottery study nobody talks about. What thousands of winners taught us about why a windfall postpones trouble instead of fixing it, and why the money was never the thing that needed fixing.

Your money scripts. The beliefs you formed about money in childhood, before you were old enough to question them, and how one of them quietly runs the show the moment real money lands.

What happens in your body. Why financial change fires the same alarm system as physical danger, floods you with cortisol, and dims the exact part of your brain you need to make a good decision.

The five things to do this week to get ready before the money arrives.

Sit down with a cup of tea and finish this sentence honestly: "In my family, money was..."

Write down whatever comes up. Scarce and frightening? Never discussed? Something you were made to feel greedy for wanting? Then ask yourself gently, is that still true for me now?

That is the whole task. It is private, it takes ten minutes, and it changes everything downstream.

If you want to get your own financial world in order so you are ready to hold what is coming, come and join us inside the Happy Money Society. It is where this work happens together, without the guilt and without the jargon.

Everything is over at phoebeblamey.com.au, and the link is right here in the show notes.

Everything shared in this episode is general information only. It is not personal financial advice. Please take your own situation to a professional who can see your full picture.

Until next week, whatever you're doing, wherever you're doing it, and whoever you're doing it with, enjoy your journey.

You signed off a six-figure budget at work this week. You have not opened your own super statement this year. If the money conversations at the barbecue make you nod along while a small voice says you should know more, this episode is for you. Phoebe walks through the five money questions every woman in her 50s needs to be able to answer, with the real Australian numbers behind each one, and why this decade is the one where you close the gap between being capable and being prepared to hold money.

Somewhere between $3.5 and $5 trillion is moving from the baby boomer generation to the next one, the largest transfer of wealth in Australian history, and up to 65 percent of it is expected to end up in the hands of women. Many of the women receiving it are educated, experienced and successful, yet they have never been the decision maker on the big money. Someone else did the investing, met with the planner, knew where the paperwork was.

Phoebe shares the story of Annette (a composite, so don't go looking for her), a 56-year-old senior consultant who felt like the work experience kid in her own life the day an inheritance landed, then works through the five questions that turned that around.

Chapter guide

Pick one of the five questions, just one, and write your current answer in a single paragraph. If your honest answer is "I don't know", write that down too. "I don't know" written on a page is the beginning of a plan. "I don't know" floating around at 2am is just fear.

If you want company while you do this work, come and join the Happy Money Society. There is a free tier and a paid tier, full of women asking these exact questions out loud instead of alone. Head to phoebeblamey.com.au or use the link below.

This episode contains general information only. It is not personal financial advice and does not take your individual circumstances into account. Please speak with a licensed financial adviser before making financial decisions.

ou have a bit of money to work with, and you have realised you are the one deciding what happens to it now. That is a real shift, and it comes with a question almost every woman asks me like a confession: how do I know what to do, and how do I know I am not about to get ripped off?

This episode is the answer. Over the next couple of decades an enormous amount of wealth is going to land in the hands of women, through inheritance, through longer lives, through our own earning. We are going to be the ones holding it. This one is about learning to hold it like you own it, not nervously, not so cautiously it never moves for you, but with the confidence of someone who knows how to check.

Not one of those questions needs you to be a financial expert. They need you to be the one holding the wheel, willing to ask out loud.

Every situation is different, and the rules change. Confirm current figures with the ATO and MoneySmart, and get advice for your own circumstances before acting.

Log into your super. Look at the balance, look at what is going in, and see whether you have any carry-forward room. If you do, get on the phone to your fund, because your fund has advisers you can talk to. If you have a self-managed fund or serious wealth, speak with your financial adviser.

If you want to keep building this kind of confidence with women doing the same work, come and join us in the Happy Money Society. It is where a single episode turns into a habit. Find it at phoebeblamey.com.au.

This is general information and education only. It is not personal financial advice. Rules change, and every one of us has a completely different situation, so check the current rules with MoneySmart and the ATO, and speak with a licensed financial adviser and your accountant about your own circumstances.

It is the end of financial year, and if this week has been all receipts, logbooks and bookkeeper calls, you have had plenty of money conversations already. Every one of them was with someone else. The tax office. Your accountant. A portal at ten at night. This episode is about the one conversation you have not had yet, the one with yourself, and why the first of July is the cleanest fresh start you will get all year. Grab a pen, put the kettle on, and let's have it.

The four conversations to have with yourself before the new financial year gets going:

The number worth knowing: the ASFA benchmark for a comfortable retirement for a single homeowner now sits around $630,000 in super (ASFA Retirement Standard, updated February 2026). Knowing you are behind is not the bad news. Not knowing is.

On the downsizer super strategy mentioned in the episode: if you are 55 or older and sell a home you have owned for 10 years or more, you may be able to contribute up to $300,000 per person ($600,000 for a couple) from the sale proceeds into super as a downsizer contribution, within 90 days of settlement. It sits outside the usual concessional and non-concessional contribution caps, which is what makes it powerful for topping up super later in life. It does count toward your total super balance and can affect Age Pension entitlements, so it is worth getting advice on the timing. Full rules and the form are on the ATO page linked below.

Pick one of the four conversations. Not all of them. One. Have the honest one and find your super balance, or have the out-loud one and text one person the words "I'm finally getting on top of my money." One conversation this week changes which version of you walks into the new financial year.

Everything in this episode is general information to get you thinking. It is not personal financial advice and it does not take your own circumstances into account. Please get advice tailored to you before making any big financial moves.

Until next week, whatever you're doing, wherever you're doing it, and whoever you're doing it with, enjoy your journey.

Remember Cristina Yang turning to Meredith, right as she was leaving the show for good, telling her not to let what someone else wants eclipse what she needs. He's very dreamy, but he's not the sun. You are.

We forget that. There is even a term for it: role engulfment. We get so caught up in the doing for everyone else that our own self, and our own financial life, fades into the background, and it costs us. One day you are comforting a friend who has just been through a brutal divorce, the lights go on, and you think, this could be me.

This episode is about taking the wheel. If you have been carrying the worry without ever holding the wheel, this one is for you. Phoebe walks through why so many capable, high-earning women end up financially invisible in their own lives, why that gap is exactly where women get hurt, and the five things you can do this week, on one page, at your kitchen table, to put yourself back in the centre of your own financial universe. You are not the moon orbiting everyone else's money. You are the sun.

Australia is moving through its largest ever transfer of wealth between generations, estimated at around $3.5 trillion (some research puts it closer to $5 trillion), with roughly 65% of it expected to land with women. Family money tends to flow to the eldest daughter. It can arrive through divorce. It can arrive through the death of a partner. The women who get hurt are not the careless ones. They are the ones who never knew where the money was. This episode gets you ready to hold it.

Plus: who belongs in your financial universe, how to choose advisers you trust instead of inheriting ones you do not, and why talking to your friends about money is one of the most powerful financial moves you can make.