For the first episode of Healthy Love and Money, host Ed Coambs introduces the show, which will explore financial intimacy through interviews with financial therapists, couples’ therapists, and financial planners. Today, he is joined by Lindsay Bryan-Podvin of Mind Money Balance. 

They begin with a discussion around Lindsay’s identity as a biracial woman, and how it has informed her perspective in her work, which is rooted in shame-free financial therapy. This opens a conversation around privilege, and the nuances around money, emphasizing the importance of therapist’s ability to be “comfortable sitting with the discomfort.”

Ed and Lindsay explore ways that they help couples get comfortable talking about money with one another. They then discuss divesting from personal finance experts to deepen money intimacy, which Lindsay explains is beneficial for over-consumers of information who develop anxiety as a result.

They investigate the things that are beneath financial anxiety, like the lack of certainty in the narrative that working hard directly correlates to increased earnings. This builds to a discussion of the value of work, beyond its monetary function. They talk about the necessity of systemic and structural changes to counter price sensitivity. In closing, they emphasize that everyone’s financial reality is different, and a lack of acknowledgement of that is shame inducing. 

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