A little heads up before you press play: this episode contains conversations about financial abuse and coercive control. It’s an incredibly important conversation, but please look after yourself while listening.

This week’s Money Diary is raw in a way I don’t think I was fully prepared for.

At 21, she fell in love with an older man and slowly built a life around him. Over time, she gave up uni, stopped working, helped raise his children, and handed over control of her finances without really realising how much of herself she was losing in the process.

What started as “he’s just better with money” slowly became something much darker.

By the end of the relationship, she was working unpaid for his business, questioning her own worth constantly, and living in a situation so controlling that she had her own fridge in the garage because she’d been made to feel like a burden.

And still… she didn’t call it financial abuse at the time.

After 14 years, one moment finally pushed her to leave. She packed up her dog, moved back in with her parents, got a new job, started learning about money for herself, and began rebuilding from scratch.

Now she has a growing investment portfolio, a $50k house deposit, and something even bigger than that: independence.

This conversation is heartbreaking, hopeful and honestly incredibly important. Because financial abuse rarely starts with one giant red flag. Most of the time, it happens slowly… until one day you realise you don’t recognise yourself anymore.

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Acknowledgement of Country By Nartarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements.

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