Farnoosh Torabi
speaker
72 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Farnoosh Torabi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It gives us confidence sometimes to believe we can do something and arrive on the other side safe. And as women in this world, I know this personally. I've seen it. I've witnessed it. I've experienced it. Money helps. Having your own money. Someone else's money is not your money. Your parents' money is not your money. Your partner's money, to an extent, you share in that.
But do you have your own bank account? Do you have your own credit card? Do you have your own source of income, potentially? I think that if you are willing to prioritize your financial well-being and say that not only do I need this, but I deserve this, it is my birthright, your world opens up.
Just five. So I would say that the biggest fear is the fear of not having enough, which has real... There's a realness to that. I mean, you look outside, things are expensive. And so there could be a real actual legitimate reason for that fear. Then there's the fear of even if you have enough, losing it all, right? You're just one job loss away from losing your house.
You're one bad investment away from not being able to retire. There is a fear of wanting too much. And this affects a lot of women. The... Admitting of, I want to be rich, I want to be financially successful, that's a scary thing to come to terms with out loud in front of others because you're worried about what that might say about you and your priorities.
The expectation is not that you're gonna be that woman, right? The expectation is maybe that you're gonna prioritize caregiving, you're gonna prioritize your family, you're gonna prioritize other things, not money. So we fear that.
We fear as parents sometimes and caregivers, raising our kids in such a way where the cycles get repeated, where maybe we grew up with a fear of scarcity and now we're bestowing that on our children or on the other end, giving them too much and then they don't appreciate it. Again, it's sort of what we all have, which is that lack of financial literacy.
I think it's like 60% of Americans didn't speak a word of money growing up. And as adults, that becomes a fear of its own that not only you're not going to have the sort of fluency and confidence around money, but that your kids who are watching you are also not going to be able to be strong in that department.
And then I think for those who are perhaps the boomers, my parents, this fear of dying without a real financial legacy, that's important culturally to Americans is to be able to die with a will to pass on some assets to the next generation. And again, I think part of it is like this fear of thinking about death and not doing the proper estate planning, exacerbates that.
So those are the five things. And I tried to pick the ones that kind of go through the generations. There was a recent study that actually found that millennials, Gen Y, they're the ones who are most afraid of running out of money.
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's why I often say before you get into the nitty gritty of your finances, you have to talk about how you grew up with money. It's so foundational to really understanding your partner.
And so when you see them, when you witness them being tight with money or overspending or not wanting to talk about money and not wanting to have that confrontation, you don't go, what's wrong with you? You go, oh my God, I understand where this is coming from. So let's unpack that.
Sometimes the exercise I often say is when you're experiencing a financial fear of any sort is to trace it to its root. Where did this fear come from? Is it even my fear? It may just be my parents' fear from the 1960s, from the 1970s latched onto me. Because yeah, growing up, there was scarcity and that was a scary time.
But that was also a time when I was nine and I didn't have agency and I didn't have control over what was happening with the money. And so my parents' fears became my fears. I inherited that and I never let go of it. And maybe even just maybe that helped me for a while as I got older, having that fear of losing money made me a super saver.
But now I still have this anxiety that I'm gonna lose it all, but I have savings, I have a job. And yet, so this is when the fear is no longer serving you and you need to kind of go down memory lane, find its source and make the adult decision that, this ends here. This ends with me right now. Um, and I'm going to rest this fear.
I'm going to thank it maybe for how far it's taken me, but now it's not serving me. Looking at the facts of your life that you do have. I mean, I remember this woman, uh, this woman wrote to me. She said, Farnoosh, I'm in my fifties. I'm a single mom. I've helped my boys get through college. I grew up in scarcity and poverty and, uh,
it actually, that fear led me to be very financially in charge of my life. I started a business. I bought my house. I single-handedly raised my boys. And I just fear like I'm going to lose it. I'm going to lose. I'm one bad decision away. I don't trust that this is going to endure. And so what I said to her was, first, let's trace this. Everything I just told you, this is your mother's fear.
This isn't you. And this is real. I mean, not to say that this is a fabrication. It happened. You were once this young girl experiencing lack. Now, is that true? Look at everything that you have. Take inventory of your life. You have done amazing things with your money. You have not exhibited a pattern of making bad decisions with your money. And so sometimes you need that wake-up call.
You need someone else to tell you, here are all the things that you've done, or you need to take a really honest look at all of your accomplishments. I say... is taking inventory of all of your accomplishments and all of your assets that no one can take away from you. Like, yeah, maybe the market will tumble and you have no control over that and your investments do dip.
And that may mean that you don't be able to retire at 65 as you were planning. But does that mean you've lost it all and you'll never regain it? Because you are who you are at the end of the day. You've gotten to where you are for a reason. And that is not something that can be taken away from you. When people get laid off and they're afraid of never getting a job again, I say, okay, that's scary.
You don't have a title. You don't have an income. You source a lot of your sense of self-worth and identity from that job. It's gone now. You're worried about uncertainty. But here's the thing. When you fear financial uncertainty, which is what that is, what does your body want? You know, it wants certainty. Ice cream. It wants ice cream, yes.
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