SPEAKER_00 0:00

We can point blame at the educational system around not providing financial literacy. We can point blame at, you know, whatever, right? But at the end of the day, a lot of these positions that we take or attitudes or beliefs that we take on money are things that we just kind of pick up, right? Like we didn't have to go through it. Somebody else did. And so we're like, oh well, I'm going to learn how to navigate this financial system in the best way that I know how. Very similar to the way that I just described my experience, right? I never had a job to know that I'm not going to be able to afford rent, but I saw my mom struggling. And so I just assumed that the struggle was a part of the process.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the show where financial planning meets human understanding. As an exceptional financial advisor, you know that financial planning is about more than just numbers. It's about giving clients the clarity they need to align their money with what matters most, which is why each episode is designed with that goal in mind. You'll learn how to uncover the psychology behind client decisions and gain insights and behavioral strategies needed to create deeper, more meaningful client relationships. You'll discover techniques for navigating emotional client situations drawn from conversations with leading industry experts in behavioral finance, psychology, communication, and more. Whether it's mastering discovery meetings, handling sensitive client conversations, or understanding what is truly keeping your client stuck, you'll walk away with not only strategies that you can use in your next client meeting, but also the confidence to do so. Oh yeah, hi. I should probably introduce myself. I'm your host, Ashley Kwame, a therapist who somehow wandered into the world of financial behavior and kind of decided to stay. My mission is to help you bridge the gap between financial planning and human understanding. Because remember, finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Let's dive in. Welcome to Planning and Beyond, where financial planning meets human understanding. I'm your host, Ashley Kwame. Today we're exploring the topic of financial trauma with Rakim Sabri, an accredited financial counselor and financial therapist. He's written extensively about the intersection of trauma and financial behavior. Probably one of my favorite blogs, Substacks. I don't know. What do you, I don't know exactly what you call it now. Column. I don't know. But his writing around financial trauma is incredible. And what I love so much about it is that he brings a really unique perspective on how financial trauma shapes client relationships with money. And today we're going to be exploring how advisors can create supportive environments for their clients who may have some financial trauma showing up or just in their past. Rakim, welcome to the show, my friend. I am so, so glad that you are here with me.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Yes, I'm glad to be here. I'm so, so excited. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Absolutely. Well, when it came to looking at the topic and area of financial trauma, you were the only one that came to mind. In my mind, it was if I'm gonna talk and go down this road of financial trauma, who am I gonna have that conversation with? And you were not only the first, but definitely the only person that I wanted to bring on and just learn from you. So so glad you're here. If we could start, though, maybe exploring a little bit of your journey, if you don't mind. Financial trauma is so specific. And we were talking just here a few moments ago before we hit record. Coming from the mental health space, I had never heard of financial trauma. And so I would imagine that maybe many listeners here, maybe they're not familiar with that term or expression. How did you get here? How did you get interested in financial trauma?

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, this is a great question. And actually, I was thinking about this this morning because I was writing, and what I say in my writing is I met financial trauma at multiple points, right, in my journey. So it was directly based off of my experience in childhood, and I didn't have the vocabulary to describe what it was that I was experiencing. Then I met it kind of indirectly through observations working in financial services. So seeing how people manage their money differently and what they attributed their success or their failure to in managing their money differently. And then again, directly, kind of indirectly, I guess we could call it kind of like a hybrid through an academic lens. So I had started using the phrase financial trauma before I discovered the Financial Therapy Association or even financial therapy as a whole. And I truly I thought that I had created the phrasing because when I was writing my book Financially Irresponsible, I was reading a book that talked about generational trauma and then another book that talked about epigenetics and how not only do environmental factors influence the expression of genes, but how trauma really can travel through our DNA based off of not only our parents, but their parents and their parents. And so behavior starts to shift internally on a cellular level and also externally through associations, through culture, through uh family ideals across generations. And so I'm I'm like, wait a second, what does this mean for our money? When I started looking at it through that lens, I said, okay, I uh there's generational trauma, there's finance. How about financial trauma? And I thought it was like a really clever play on words. Fast forward a couple of years, I discover financial psychology, financial therapy, the financial therapy association, and I realized that financial trauma, the phrase, has been in circulation for a number of years now, and that there's research that points to it. And so my journey, if you will, or my charge at that particular point in time. So we're thinking this is 2023, I think. How do I close the gap between my understanding of financial trauma from an experiential kind of intuitive lens and financial trauma from an academic lens very quickly to establish not only credibility, but to be able to process and digest this information for people that exist outside of academia? So, you know, go back to my journey. I grew up in Mount Vernon, New York. My parents were extremely young. I tell the story all the time. My parents separated when I was probably in my mid to late teens. And because of that, I started to take more of an administrative role in the household to help my mom out. And so, of course, you get to see how the sausage is made, so to speak, you know, managing household finances, helping my mom take the bills over to, you know, whoever it was that needed to get paid, carrying the food stamps card, becoming aware of the fact that we had food stamps, becoming aware of the fact that we had Section 8. And because I'm acting as an administrative arm to the household finances, what I don't think my mom could have anticipated or even had the bandwidth to really entertain was happening on an internal level was I was making associations, right? The associations that I had begun to make were that I am savvy when it comes to household finances, right? That I am responsible when it comes to the household finances, that I am really kind of getting a crash course on what adulthood looked like from a financial lens in that these financial systems. And because of those associations, they also became my aspirations, right? So I'm thinking when I am an adult and I am able to manage my own independent financial situation, well, I'm gonna need the food stamps card because people can't afford, we can't afford groceries without food stamps, so groceries are unaffordable. I'm going to need to apply for section eight because we can't afford to pay the rent without section eight, so rent is unaffordable. And home ownership, you know, what's that, right? If, and I think this is a really important point to note, the possibility did not escape me, right? It was not like, oh, Rakim, you will never own a home. But it was, and if you were ever going to own a home, it's going to be way down the line, right? You're going to have to become a doctor, you're going to have to become a lawyer, you're going to have to become some kind of high-paying employment. And then you'll be able to afford the house. And so when I were writing this morning, what I said was it wasn't that it was an impossibility, but the likelihood seems so far off, almost like buying a lottery ticket.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Wow. Yeah. I think that one, it's an incredible story. And I've heard I've heard you share that story before. I've had the privilege of hearing you share that story before. And each time I feel like I leave with one, an appreciation for you, your mom, but also just new connections and insights into beliefs and how they get formed, and then how those beliefs that get formed, how we act upon them. And before we, because I'm gonna get super excited and want to go off into the weeds here, I think it might be important for you, if you don't mind, to maybe share a little bit about how do we define financial trauma? So through your work and writing, you've shared with us a few kind of nuggets here about maybe the development of it. But how have you come to define financial trauma if we can just put a definition there?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah, I love this question because I'm probably the only person that uses this definition. But the more that I explore financial trauma, the more that I realize, like the more this definition becomes reinforced for me, if that makes any sense. So I came up with this definition, like I said, before I discovered financial therapy, before I knew that there was a clinical lens on this. And the definition of financial trauma for me is any instance observed or experienced that has a negative impact on the way that you view, interact with, or believe about money. Since then, I have encountered definitions of financial trauma that make reference to a flashpoint experience like prolonged poverty or uh maybe a job loss that then causes you to have extended financial stress. And that's the manifestation of trauma, right? What is interesting, and I think this is kind of like my pushback to this clinical definition, is that it often only acknowledges experiences that you've had directly.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

When I talk about financial trauma and I say any instance observed or experienced, that points to uh vicarious trauma, right? So you're observing somebody else's, you know, either growing up, not necessarily poor, but growing up in a poor area can influence how you believe about money. Hearing other people's experiences when it comes to money can influence, you know, how you behave with money, right? So if somebody says credit cards are bad, or I invested my money in a stock market and I lost it all. Like I don't trust the stock market, or I don't trust buying life insurance, right? These are conversations that people are having that are then being passed down inadvertently or maybe intentionally to the next generation that then says, Well, my parents didn't do that, so I'm not gonna do that. And I think that those instances of trauma being passed between people are just as important to acknowledge because we can point blame at the educational system around not providing financial literacy. We can point blame at, you know, whatever, right? But at the end of the day, a lot of these positions that we take or attitudes or beliefs that we take on money are things that we just kind of pick up, right? Like we didn't have to go through it. Somebody else did. And so we're like, oh, well, I'm going to learn how to navigate this financial system in the best way that I know how. Very similarly to the way that I just described my experience, right? I never had a job to know that I'm not going to be able to afford rent, but I saw my mom struggling. And so I just assumed that the struggle was a part of the process.

SPEAKER_02 12:02

I love that distinction around financial trauma being something that you, individual, may have direct experience with. And I also love that you are highlighting something that I would agree with as well, that it can also be vicarious. And we see this in the mental health field, vicarious trauma. You look at emergency responders, our military mental health professionals, things like that. So I love that you're making that distinction that financial trauma can be both a direct experience and an indirect experience as well. If we look at maybe from a behavioral standpoint, so you know, we have this, you know, conceptualization around, okay, what is it? Maybe even a little bit of where does it come from? If we start to kind of funnel down and look at maybe some of the key behavioral signs, what are some of those indicators that as advisors, as practitioners, that might indicate a client is dealing with financial trauma? I don't know if you have any examples that you've observed or written about, but what does it look like on the outside?

SPEAKER_00 13:15

Yeah, I think you know, this is gonna be a layered answer because depending on the audience, you may or you may not experience this, right? If you are an advisor and you're working with high income, high net worth client, for example, you're gonna encounter that individual rather when the myth or the metabolizing of their trauma, if you will, looks like material success, right? So if we can point to something like vigilance that says, hey, I grew up poor, I don't ever want to experience the trauma of what this poverty looks like. So I'm going to go and, you know, work 80 hour weeks and you know, whatever, so I can accumulate this money and invest it so that I can insulate myself financially. Capitalism, this idea of capitalism, right, rewards that behavior in the workforce. And so when you then, as this high income, high net worth client, go to an advisor, you're like, yeah, well, you you check off my boxes, right? Like, come on in. And so the advisor may not recognize that the journey from, you know, wherever they were to the wherever they are is like directly related to trauma that they may have experienced. And the individual, of course, subscribing to capitalism. And I'll talk about capitalism a lot in relation to financial trauma, but so in subscribing to this idea of capitalism says, well, my individual efforts have gotten me here, right? It's a personal success versus a personal failure, where you know, maybe they're not at that point. And so, advisors, I would caution to look out for this hypervigilance when it comes to money, where you know, they're constantly your client is constantly worried about what's happening. Your client client is constantly worried about well, how can I put more? What is enough? How do I define enough?

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:57

On the other side, though, from a practitioner's lens who's not dealing with high income, high net worth, um, I think like particularly for the people in the mental health groups, that they're going to see a combination of vigilance. They're gonna see some some scarcity in their right. In that scarcity, they're gonna, they're gonna maybe observe avoidant behaviors that say, Well, I don't want to deal with this, or I don't know how to deal with this. Or I keep trying to deal with this and something is wrong with me, right? And so I think like for the AFC population, financial counselors who are working with individuals who are not so high income, not so high net worth, you know, we're at the beginning of the year, and people are like, hey, my New Year's resolution is to have a budget, right? And it's such a simplistic concept, but why are people running into this wall with establishing a budget and sticking to this budget, right? It's not an issue of will at this point, it's an issue of skill, in that the skill is how do we navigate all of these variances that will distract me from being able to stick to this budget. And so the argument always, you know, surfaces in conversations and communities and personal finance space anyway, around financial literacy being the answer. And so, you know, like you said, from a behavioral perspective, we recognize it's not just the information, right? People are sitting on information and they're still not executing. It has to be a psychological route. Expanding that out a little bit more. What I've realized is that it's the interplay of so many lenses that keeps people immobilized in either not making a decision or making a decision to not make a decision, right? And I know that sounds, that may sound confusing to some people, but in plain terms, like there is a learned helplessness that occurs because every attempt to get out of where I am is met with failure, right? Now I'm dealing with shame. Now I'm dealing with guilt. Now I'm dealing with low self-esteem. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good with numbers. Like these are narratives that people are telling themselves. And in that, they're just like, you know, why try, right? Why try? And so what some of the work that I'm doing when I socialize this idea of financial trauma and providing people with vocabulary to describe what they're going through is also helping them realize that these quote unquote personal failures that you are adopting are not necessarily personal failures. It's you navigating a system and just kind of getting swallowed up. Then the question becomes is it okay to be swallowed up? Is it okay to be complacent? Is it okay to give up? Right. And so I want to be clear in while I'm extending so much grace to individuals who have experienced financial trauma or currently experiencing financial trauma, maybe will experience financial trauma in the future, it doesn't then become an excuse to just give up, right? Like it's unfortunate, it's, you know, it sucks that this is the reality that, you know, we live in and that we subscribe to. But I think that when people realize that they're in a battle, they're more prepared to battle versus people who are just kind of like, oh, I don't know that there's a battle going on. So I'm just relaxing. And in their relaxing, like they're just being funneled down this conveyor belt into whatever, right? Personal career. You know, if they define it that way.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

I want to go back to this client that you're talking about from an example standpoint, because I can just imagine. So sometimes I try to put myself in Clayton's position, right? Like as an advisor, if he were hearing you talk like right now, what would be going on through a set? And that's a really scary thing for me to do. I recognize that. But I could, I could imagine he or others going back to what you said about this client who is very vigilant that comes in and is like, hey, advisor, here's this portfolio. I've got a net worth, you know, let's just say it's you know 2.5 million and high income. And on paper, everything looks great. Right. But there, as you said, I think where sometimes trauma gets missed. Please, please tell me your thoughts on this, is we see that representation from a numbers standpoint. And you mentioned about the capitalist society, it's rewarding, right? And from a mindset place, we're like, okay, they're fine. They're quote unquote, right? They are fine because look at on paper how successful they are. And as an advisor, being curious a little bit more about pulling back those layers to say, how did you get here? What is that interplay that you talked about that's contributed to getting here? My question, I guess, kind of for you, is those clients who are really vigilant and outwardly successful from a numbers standpoint? You know, you mentioned kind of where that vigilance may come from. I see it also in a place of maybe what we would call workaholism, working ourselves to death. What are maybe just if some additional, if we were to kind of personify this client as kind of like an avatar, what else might they be going through? Or what else might be contributing to this uh really successful, like on numbers place, but maybe internal vigilance or belief system that they may be coming into the advisor's office with?

SPEAKER_00 20:19

Yeah, I think I think culture plays a huge role in this, right? And when we hear culture, a lot of times we think about race, religion, language, region, but we don't think about work, like workplace culture. We don't think about familial culture, we don't think about religious culture if an individual is religious. And so with the intersection of so many different lenses around what makes us us, I think that when you're talking about characteristics of this individual, we have to look at, or I'm not gonna tell people what they should do.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

It's okay if you do.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

I would encourage people to look at the other areas of this individual's life that then either uh flourish or suffer as a result of this vigilance, right? So somebody who is a workaholic often doesn't have the bandwidth or time to pursue hobbies that are not tied to their work, may try to drown the feelings of fatigue or overwhelm with other substances. Maybe that's caffeine, maybe that's drugs, maybe that's alcohol. They will maybe look for ways to like get that excitement, the feeling of excitement, right? The dopamine chase through gambling, through, you know, under the guise of networking, but like these big parties, like partying, by showcasing what they have to other people. And then, you know, we start looking at the relationship between vigilance and perception of power, or a vigilance and a perception of security, or vigilance and a perception of where I exist in relation to the next person. And so maybe respect comes in there. We start assigning the character traits that should be ours to the money that we have. As a result of the value of how we're perceived in public to the money that we have, right? And so I am powerful because I have money. I am respected because I have money. I am loved because I have money. And so then the focus stays on how do I get more money, right? How do I keep feeding this? And again, like you said, on paper, it looks great. But how much of that do you get to enjoy? Right. I think when we're talking about money traditionally, anyway, and still persistent to this day, there is it's so siloed. It's not holistic. And so if we can open up the conversation to a more holistic lens, and it's not to say that every individual that has achieved wealth is, you know, running away from their trauma and you know dumping into this vigilance. But it is to say that if you experience a hard enough like upbringing, so to speak, you may say, hey, that that pain was a pain that I don't want to experience. And so any other pain will be okay. Right. If I have money and I'm in pain, well, at least I still have money. But if I'm poor and I'm in pain, well, I'm poor, I'm poor and I'm in pain, right? So I have conversations with individuals who are high income, high net worth often, and just kind of figuring out like how do you view the world, right? What I have a mentor specifically, and I'm like, how do you view capitalism? Like you do recognize that capitalism is like an exploitative system, right? So how do you have this conversation with somebody who feels like they're drowning? And he goes, Well, to and I'm gonna butcher how he said it, but he's like, to go to somebody who's drowning and tell them that you know they need to swim is hard, but what's the alternative?

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yeah. Oh okay. Oh, yeah. So okay, getting into conversationally, uh how advisors can ask questions to start to peel back some of those right layers. Like you just said something that I hear so often. Like advisors, I'm thinking in particular context of spending. So there is quote unquote enough there financially, and whether it's retirees or you know, just clients who are not retired, the spending part, not being able to spend it in a way that provides enjoyment, right? Could be some indicators, but let's just say this advisor is like, oh man, okay, all of this is sinking in and it's setting in. And I think that client John and Mary, I think John may have some financial trauma indicators here. How can an advisor who's, you know, not an AFC, not a therapist, but how can an advisor maybe start to ask questions to dig a little bit deeper? What advice, what approach would you suggest to them if there's a hunch or a curiosity there?

SPEAKER_00 25:04

Yeah, I think advisors are uniquely positioned, you know, when it comes to talking about money because money is such a taboo topic. So if, you know, they're working with a client who um, you know, obviously they're managing their money, or at least they're managing expectations and decisions around money, they have an end that many people don't. I think that, you know, financial therapy is becoming popular. And so when people hear financial therapy, they're like, oh, that's interesting, but there's still like the stigma tied into the therapy word where people's like, I don't like that's I imagine that some people, I'm thinking of avatars here, would feel like therapy of any sort is like soft, right? I'm not that person. I don't need that. Again, going back to this idea of the advisors like uniquely positioned to provide education around the fact that financial therapy exists, if there's a hunch that, you know, they there's a need there, right? But also they can ask questions that maybe other people can't ask, right? So, like one of my favorite questions to ask people when I sit with them is what does money represent to you? And people always like, they don't know how to answer that. They're like, oh, you know, it's some people will say like what they think that I want to hear, oh, money's a tool, or you know, money's a resource, or you know, whatever. And then I'll dig a little deeper. And it always comes down to like these same like common responses. Money represents security. Money represents freedom, money represents power, right? Those are like my top three. And I'm like, okay, freedom to do what? Security against what? Power to do what, right? And I think that when it comes to both advisors and financial therapists, or you know, any of these helping professions, you know, our mission is not necessarily to solve the problem for the client, right? The mission is to help the client like come to this realization that they can solve their own problems. For advisors specifically, that might be challenging because, or I'll finish my thought. It might be challenging because it is, I'm gonna use the term like facetiously, above their pay grade, right? And not from the lens of you're not qualified or you're not entitled to helping your client in this way. It is the exchange of your time and value for what it is that you're making. Is it worth it to you to go deeper? Right? Are you getting paid enough for this, right? So you might an advisor might feel like they are um like this, I don't have time for this, right? And so I think advisors may need to recognize some of the tells around financial trauma in themselves before they can begin or in tandem with their experiences around having these conversations with their clients. Because if the advisor doesn't feel like it's important, they're not gonna see it. And I've run into advisors who are just kind of like, yeah, you're talking a lot of like woo-woo, like social justice stuff, right? And um because I think so much of the industry's culture is this very sanitized, non-holistic, siloed one plus one equals two approach. And as we start to see the shift become more normalized around like adding the behavioral components to understanding financial behavior, and we can see that everybody involved benefits, the advisors, the clients, and you know, on down, I still recognize that there's like a there's you know, people who are in their way, right? Like they're just kind of like, nah, like I've been doing this for however long I've been doing this, and this is what has worked for me, and these are the clients that I see, and my clients are happy with this, and so you know, this is not necessary. And you know, that's unfortunate, but I think like what you're doing is helpful to help kind of influence the direction of what the industry looks like and what the industry accepts and maybe encourage advisors to then, you know, go get an AFC or at least get the education around how to have these conversations or how to recognize these tells around um client behavior so that they're better equipped to have these conversations and recognize when it's necessary to transition the conversation to a professional who specializes in that space.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Yeah, I like to tell advisors and really anyone, even my supervisees on the mental health side, is the expectation is not that you are everything and everyone for your client. That is not the expectation here. And when we're talking working with a client who may have financial trauma either in their past or andor it may be actively showing up in the planning process, you know, the expectation is not that you are the healer, but to be aware enough to know. And I love that question you know that you posed of, you know, what does money represent to you? Yeah, that values-based type of question. And, you know, in my kind of practitioner brain, you know, I was thinking, how would I deliver that? And I would follow that up with, and where does that come from? Trying to kind of suss some of that out, right? And maybe it is then, oh, well, my parents divorced when I was 10, and I had to be the quote unquote man of the house. And so I had to get a paper out and then start, you know, financially contributing to the household. I know that's not your story, but these are stories that I have heard from other clients, right? And in that way, an advisor, you know, as you were saying, like being able to at least just notice that and connect then to AFCs or financial therapists, certainly, that are in the community. I don't want to say that's it because that minimizes it, but it's like, you know, that's it. Like that's all you have to do. Not really. I'm joking. There's a little bit more to it than that. But from an expectation standpoint, you know, that is that's a tremendous amount of support in your work on the kind of AFC financial therapy side, you know, you're working in the trenches, I say with with clients. Like you we're in the trenches, you know, with with clients. What are, you know, maybe some other low-hanging fruit ways that on the financial advisory side, advisors can offer maybe trauma support for their clients? Is that through maybe some languaging, communication styles? You know, I know we've talked about kind of the referral process, like referring out, but what are maybe some additional ways that advisors can support clients who may have some financial trauma, some financial trauma?

SPEAKER_00 31:45

I like this question because I make reference to a framework that I've created called the three E's, right? And so the the three E's are exposure, education, execution. And so the advisor can be a part of any or all of those E's, right? The exposure piece and saying, hey, have you ever heard of financial trauma? Right? If they have an understanding of what financial trauma is, well, now they're bringing the awareness to the individual through exposure, right? If the advisor feels so inclined to get educated on what does this look like? How do I recognize this in my clients? Who do I put them in front of? They can be a part of the education phase or they can hand off the education phase to someone like, hey, I have a partner who's better qualified to talk about this. Let me loop you in with an AFC or let me loop you in with a financial therapist, right? Or maybe a traditional therapist. Um, and then lastly, the execution phase. And I think this is probably going to be the area where most advisors are going to be able to shine the most. And the execution phase, that is really all on the client. They can have all this information, they can have all of these resources, but ultimately they have to be the one to make the decision. Well, part of helping to drive the execution from a helping professional's perspective, whether that be a financial therapist, AFC, advisor, et cetera, is being part of that individual's community, right? I think community is one of the solutions to helping somebody move from a place of maybe learned helplessness to um taking the steps necessary to create, you know, whatever the outcome that they want to have. And so being a part of that person's community can just look like, hey, I'm here for you, right? Or it can look like these are the steps that I recommend you take around, you know, getting to this accomplishment. Let's have check-ins. Or this is something that I've done, or you have enough, right? I did a presentation like a week ago or so, and there was a lady in my audience who is she's retired a psychotherapist, and she indicated that she's pretty well off. She came up to me at the end of the session and she was like, This is phenomenal. My presentation was on money scripts. She's like, This is phenomenal. I never like made these connections before. And she was like, I could see myself, like, I am very vigilant. She had made associations between money vigilance and her behavior. She's like, when I go and I talk to my advisor, right? It's a real life conversation. She was like, he's constantly telling me that I have more than enough. Like, I am not going to be able to spend all of my money because when my husband got sick, I started saving for the both of us. And now he's not here anymore. So I save for two people and I have all this money. And she's like, but I'm still so worried every time I go in. And she shares with me that as she's become aware of this behavior and as her advisors become aware of this behavior, they've even developed little jokes where after every meeting, she'll take the free pen. And so she says the advisor said to her after the last meeting that they had, it's okay, you can have the pen. And she was like, Um, I left it. She's like, I'm learning to leave it just because it's free doesn't mean that I need to take it from me, right? And so this was a very quick story that she shared with me. But when she talks about this vigilance, you know, again, going to what advisors might see in their own client base, that vigilance may be a place of even though on paper I have enough, inside I don't feel like I have enough. I still need to argue about the dollars and cents of what a roll of toilet paper costs. I still need to take the free pen. And not that people shouldn't advocate for themselves and negotiating fees, but like when individuals are positioned, and you know, we're about to get deep really fast, positioned from a systemic perspective to be advantaged financially. And I'm gonna give an example over individuals who are positioned from a systemic perspective in a in a kind of negative sense, then I think it also kind of exacerbates that trauma. So the solid example I'll give is I used to work in banking and specifically for Bank of America. And Bank of America at the time prioritized the relationship that they had with the high income, high net worth clients. Of course, made sense. That's who had the biggest deposit balances. And what I noticed specifically too with regards to fees is that the individuals who had money with the bank or these relationships more frequently than not got their overdraft or other fees refunded. Whereas individuals who didn't have a less relationship with the bank, meaning they didn't have any money, were often more frequently than not denied for these overdraft fees. And the bank justified this to the employees as being based on, because there was an algorithm that made the decision, and it was based off a variety of factors that included your relationship, whether or not you had direct deposit, whether or not you had um large balances, how many overdrafts you had in the past, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so we would be able to recite this back to the clients. But systemically, the individuals that don't have any money are not positioned in a way that they are going to be able to take advantage of the benefits of refunding these overdraft fees and therefore get penalized for being poor, right? If your account was negative for longer than five business days, you would get hit with another extended overdraft fee. So now, beyond being $35, let's say in the negative, you're $70 in the negative. And so any money that comes into that account then gets eaten up first to accumulate for the negative balance before you actually get access to your money. And we're all like taught to be okay with this, right? And so when I when I talk about the exacerbation of trauma on both ends, right, the individual who has the money and who's navigating this vigilance and maybe a little bit of scarcely scarcity through their vigilance says, I need to make sure that every penny matters and that I'm getting every penny back. The individual who can't, who is actually experiencing scarcity, who doesn't have money, who can't, you know, make those decisions, are now put in a position where they have to basically beg, right? I don't have the money. Can you please refund me this? Or I'm just gonna let the account close. And now there's a check systems report that says my account closed with a negative balance. I can't go and open up a bank somewhere else. And so we have these conversations and financial circles around what does it look like for unbanked and underbanked communities, right? Why individuals are not participating in banking systems, we need to give them more financial literacy. It's not a financial literacy issue, it's an issue of I didn't have enough money to stay with your bank. And now because I didn't have enough money and I was penalized, I can't bank with you or anybody else in the area. Of course I have to go to check caching. Of course I have to, you know, do all of these predatory practices. And so, like I said, we went deep really fast, but but reeling it back in, it's not just knowledge, psychological barrier. We overcome those two things and we have financial success. It's knowledge, psychological barrier, conditions due to the systems that we navigate and whether or not we feel equipped or empowered or encouraged to fight against these systems in order to get to a place where we feel like we are a financial success.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

I'm so glad that you mentioned just those three because I think that that's a really I mean, I just think that that's an important piece of awareness to realize, right? Because I think as practitioners, sometimes we focus right on those first two, and sometimes not having the maybe overt awareness around there is a larger, you know, system here at play that influences how our ability to be able to, you know, financially move through systems, success. How does that contribute to the psychological factors on top of the education as well? So, as a fellow pin thief, I really empathize with this retired psychotherapist here. And I am not interested in changing that behavior on my end. I am not interested in not being a pen thief, so please be aware of that. I take pins all the framework.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

It's a nice pen, I'm saying it too.

SPEAKER_02 39:38

I'm not interested in changing, I'm not interested in changing that. And I'm just throwing it out there that I will steal your pin. And but I'll tell you, and I'll at least I'm honest and enough in saying I'm stealing your pen. I'm taking this with me. If advisors are wanting to learn more about financial trauma, if the wisdom that you have shared here today, the depth of it, right, has sparked just any curiosity. Where can financial advisors go to learn more about financial trauma?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Yeah, I'm gonna give a uh a list, right? Um, I want to point to the Financial Therapy Association because it for me is very much a professional home. I do believe that there are resources related to financial trauma available, usually geared towards practitioners, but I think the education is important for everybody. In terms of depth of information, I know there are other people who are talking about financial trauma. Top of my mind, I think about Chantel Chapman and the Trauma of Money program that moves through somatics, systems, education, et cetera. And then, you know, lastly, I would point to me and the resources that I have in circulation, right? So you mentioned my uh newsletter on Substack. I write pretty regularly for Forbes. And a lot of my ponderings on financial trauma are ponderings that connect experiences that I've had, the observation of other people's experiences, systems, culture, um, beliefs, the academia, understanding trauma and the way that trauma is evolving, and then it continues to evolve in the mental health space. Right now, the understanding of trauma continues to evolve rather. So you get in real time the connections that I'm making through the articles and blog posts that I share. And lastly, I'm working on a book, right? And the book is really going to be kind of like the culmination of all of that. It is what has my experiences been? What is my observation of those experiences being removed from those experiences, right? So if I can look at what happened in the past, what I'm going through now, right? Because I think there's like this idea that, and I think this comes from the American healthcare system, if we take this pill, like all of our problems will be solved. And that's not how trauma healing works, right? It's not just if I take this pill, if I do this action. It is intentional and consistent maintenance to fight against the trauma that is constantly being inflicted on us every single day. And shame on me for mentioning this this late in the in this conversation. But I think so much of the conversation around financial trauma is centering individuals who are currently experiencing not necessarily poverty, but financial struggle due to a lack of income or resources that individuals who have income and resources feel like they're immune to it. Individuals who have income and resources are just as capable of experiencing the financial trauma, if not more so. Because think about how you associate value to your material possessions, to the money that you have, and what it would look like if those things were ripped away from you. Because it's possible those things can be ripped away from you. And so when we develop these roots of perceived security through the lens of the money that we make or the assets that we have, and those assets are taken away from us, then who am I outside of the money? I think that's the question that advisors should ask of themselves, that advisors should ask of the people that they work with. Who are you outside of the money? Right. And then how does that inform your behavior with the money as a result? I've observed that individuals will wear their money as like the suit of armor or this cape that says, well, if stuff hits the wall, I got me, right? There's this prioritization of individualism in, you know, American capitalism. We're not poo-pooing anybody's individual efforts to build wealth for themselves or by extension for their families. But I think about how internally focused individuals are when it comes to amassing wealth. We look at some of the wealthiest people on the planet, right? Or the wealthiest people in the country, and how there is still a focus on amassing wealth or maximizing their price. Profit potential on a day-to-day basis, despite being in a position where they could never spend all the money that they have, and how that focus is not placed on, or even more explicitly, how the idea of fair distribution of wealth is demonized with terms like Marxist or socialist, right? And so how do we get to a place where the values that we have around money can be extended to around us, right? Does money represent security for you? Cool. How do you create security for other people? Does money represent power for you? Cool. How do you give other people power? Does money represent safety for you? Cool. How do you create safety for other people? And I don't think that that part of the equation is often even approached, right? Or discussed in these conversations because it's all about me, me, me, me, me. And I'm a firm believer and you need to put on your oxygen mask before you go and try to help somebody else. But at what point do you feel secure in your oxygen mask that you can then go out and help somebody else? And that doesn't look like philanthropy for the purposes of a tax write-off. That looks like being very intentional about how you allocate your resources to help somebody else. You know, I talk about all these things and more on, you know, the various channels that I write for, that I speak for, and certainly going to be getting into the weeds in this book that's due for release in November.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

Yeah, yeah, you definitely do. And it's some good writing. It sparks some really interesting thoughts, conversations, and from an advisor standpoint, even your positioning, thinking about, you know, how can I help? What is my role in helping clients here? So as we're wrapping up here, Rakeem, I know that you are all over the place. Can you share with us? We'll make sure that we have some links. Where are you, my friend? Where can people find you? Where can they reach out and connect with you?

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Yeah, I'm everywhere. But um, I've been really consolidating my focuses a little bit. So um, I'm the most active on LinkedIn. And I think, you know, for advisors and advisor population, that is the most appropriate channel to connect with me on. And I'll probably connect it to somebody that you know, right? Um, you know, I have a great network of advisors and other helping professionals. Outside of that, I'm pretty active on Instagram. That's more lifestyle stuff, though. So, you know, if you're interested in my life and processes behind the scenes, maybe some educational content or ponderings in video short form video, Instagram definitely at Rockim Sabris. But, you know, with all of the commotion around TikTok recently, I think that now it's more important than ever for um creators to kind of like own their space. And so 100% I would push people in the direction of Substack. I have a redirect that's really easy for people to remember. So it could be either rockimsabri.substack.com or if you have a hard time spelling my name or whatever, you could go to overcoming financial trauma.com and it will still direct you to the substack.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Awesome. We'll make sure that we link that there in the show notes. Thank you all so much for tuning in and allowing Rockim and I into your ears and into your mind today. If you found value in today's episode, I'd love to stay connected with you. You can follow me as well as Rockim on LinkedIn, where not only does he share insights, uh, but uh, you know, sometimes I share a few insights uh as well uh there too. And make sure that you go on and subscribe to our monthly newsletter at planningandbeyond.com where we share exclusive resources and strategies that you can use in your practice. Don't forget to follow the show wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode like this. And remember, my friends, finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Planning and Beyond. I hope you found today's insights valuable and inspiring for both your practice and your personal growth. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more advisors like you who are dedicated to making a difference. For more resources, tips, and to continue the conversation, visit our website at beyondthefp.com. You'll find articles, tools, and information about upcoming episodes designed to support your journey and practice. Stay connected with us on social media and never miss an update. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. And remember, the best way to grow is to keep learning and sharing. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond.