Sean Pyles

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And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.

I had a week recently where I accidentally bought three pairs of running shoes.

What?

Three?

I don't know if I told you I'm going to be running around Mount Hood over the summer.

And so I'm training and I need a few different pairs of shoes to prepare for that.

Today, we'll be chatting about treating yourself and how to balance it with savings goals, which I am doing, by the way.

Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds.

I'm Sean Piles.

To help us answer Michael's question on this episode of Smart Money, we're joined by personal finance writer Kim Palmer.

Hey, welcome back to Smart Money, Kim.

I read this great book a few years back called So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and it was about kind of the rise of online Internet shaming.

And the book describes shame as this feeling that you have because of how your actions are not in line with what people expect you to be doing.

So in this case, shame can derive from maybe not having enough savings for retirement or not spending your money on the right things that other people are putting upon you.

So you're internalizing these external expectations and not living up to that.

And that breeds shame, which can be really destructive.

So Kim, what are some ways that you can address shame when it comes up around your spending?

A lot of times we don't even realize we have these money stories.

Was there a moment, Elizabeth, where you suddenly saw, oh, wow, I've been telling myself that I don't deserve money and that's kind of messed up?