The topic of debt in personal finance is a little like the topic of migration. It is (made to be) controversial even though it is as old as humanity, and it has a different name and feeling for rich people vs poor people.

People without money who move countries are called “migrants” or worse, people with money who move countries are called “expats” and seen as adventurous and upper class.

Similarly, people without assets or on a low income have “debt” and are “bad” with money, while people with wealth are “leveraged” and financially savvy. Same concept, different perception. No wonder there is so much shame around it.

In the DearMoney groups, this is often the topic that causes the most stress and doubt. Especially for those who have a lot of messy, high interest debt like credit card or consumer debt, and they are just not sure about how to get on top of it. It is also stressful because of the stigma attached.

But it is also the area where people can save the most money the quickest. For example, one DearMoney participant this summer called her bank (something she would never have had the confidence to do before), worked with them to get her debt consolidated into one place and reduced the total interest rate. Over the course of the repayment period, this will result in a saving of between 9.000 and 13.000 euros depending on how quickly she pays it off. Not bad for one strategic and well-prepared phone call.

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So I wanted to write about debt, why it can be so heavy for some of us, different types of debt, what it actually costs and some of the strategies to get started and pay off the debt you need to get rid off. As always, I hope it helps take the sting out, make you feel more at ease, and if you need to, helps you get started.

Why debt is particularly shame-inducing

First, there is something worth adding to the expat and migrant comparison, because it is not only about perception. The words come with different prices attached.

Someone with assets and a stable salary can borrow at a lower interest rate, and higher amounts. Someone with neither borrows on an overdraft, which in Germany averaged 11.28 per cent in March 2026, or on a credit card, where rates run somewhere between 15 and 24 per cent depending on the card and the country. Both families need a new boiler when it breaks. One pays for a boiler. The other pays for it two or three times over via interest.

So the cheapest borrowing goes to the people who need it least. If you have ever felt ashamed of what you owe, just take that in for a moment.

Secondly, the other reason debt is heavy is that it is the only money problem that comes with enforcement... Nobody sends you letters about your under-funded pension or empty savings account. Debt agencies and credit card companies do, and in most countries it has a credit score sitting behind it that follows you into flat viewings and phone contracts. So when people tell me their fear about debt is irrational, I disagree. Some of the fear is incredibly real.

I was not able to open a bank account in Germany, not able to get a phone contract, not able to get a public transport card and the only reason we were able to get a flat is because we lived in that exact flat before. All because I had a bad, incorrect, debt entry on my Schufa (a German, particularly aggressive version of a credit agency). For anyone who has experienced debt enforcement themselves, or in their family when they were growing up, you know how scary and anxiety inducing all this is.

The other thing debt does is make people secretive. It is one of the most common things partners hide from each other, and from friends.

Different types of debt

As said, not all debt is created equal.

Some debt buys you something of real value. A mortgage buys a home (more on why buying a home is not always the financially smart option in a future letter!). A student loan, in a system where what you repay depends on what you earn, can be manageable and low interest. A business loan that lets you build something which then earns money is an investment into a future business.

In fact, I am working on a small investment and business loan for DearMoney at the moment to further develop the work and it can be a fantastic way to grow a small business.

But there are types of debt that are pricey and could harm your finances, so it is better to avoid them if you can and pay them off as soon as possible if you’ve had to use them before.

Three questions can help sort one kind from the other:

1. Will it still have value, or still produce income, after the loan is paid off?

2. Is the interest rate lower than what the asset earns or saves you?

3. Could you keep up with the payments if your income stopped for six months?

A mortgage can pass all three, for example. A high interest credit card balance usually does not. As a rough rule of thumb, we’d probably call any interest above 8-9% high interest. Most sit somewhere in between, and the point is to know which is which, and focus on what you know is harmful for your finances (and you).

Once you differentiate, focus on getting that high interest debt paid off in the best and most efficient way possible. For most of us, it’s overdraft and credit card balances that cause the most pain. What’s it for you?

What it actually costs you

We’ve talked a lot about the power of compound interest - for example here - but unfortunately that exponential growth goes for debt interest payments as well.

Say you have 3.000 euros on a credit card at 22 per cent, and you pay 60 euros a month, which is roughly what a minimum payment looks like.

Of that first 60 euros, 55 is interest. Five euros comes off what you actually owe.

Keep going at 60 a month and it takes about eleven and a half years to clear, and you will have paid around 8.200 euros for your original 3.000. Move it up to 100 euros a month and it is gone in under four years, at a total cost of about 4.400. That extra 40 euros a month saves you nearly 3.800 euros and almost eight years.

This is the real argument for dealing with expensive debt before almost anything else. Clearing a high interest credit card balance is one of the best guaranteed returns available to an ordinary person.

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Strategies to handle your debt

Do not throw everything you have at your debt until you have a small amount of money set aside first.

I know how that sounds when you are paying 22 per cent in interest, but I have watched this play out too often and it is quite simple, really. Someone creates a plan, puts every spare euro at the card for four months, and it starts to move. Then the washing machine breaks. Or they have to see the dentist. And because there is nothing set aside, it goes straight back on the card, four months of work disappears in an afternoon, and it is super demotivating.

So build that safe footing first. Our most popular article goes into how you do that, and why it is so important for your peace of mind and for your future finances:

The other way to avoid it, is of course to fully understand your expenses and income. This is one of the reasons we always start with an expense tracker - hopefully you only have to do this once or twice, but make sure you really are fully conscious of your spending patterns and habits. Only you can know how much you can dedicate to getting rid of your debt, but you have to stop the bleeding first. An honest look at what type of spending gets you there is key so you can give yourself the best chance of getting rid of that debt. We’ve developed a simple free beta tracker here to make that extra easy.

Another way to avoid further bleeding is to make sure you set your credit cards to full payment every month or even immediate. Sorry for the very obvious point, but some of us (ahem…me) forget sometimes and this small setting makes a huge difference.

To make things a little clearer and hopefully somewhat reduced, get the debt consolidated if possible, so all in one place. It is often surprising to people that you can actually negotiate these things, especially if you have struggled with payments before. Try and speak to someone at either your bank or whatever institution holds your largest debt. Before you ring, have your list in front of you, know what you can genuinely afford each month, and have your account numbers ready. Then ask, in this order: can you lower the rate on this account, can these balances be brought together into one loan at a lower rate, what would the monthly payment be, and what is the total I would repay over the whole term.

After you’ve tried that and you know what sits where at what interest rate exactly, pick a method to pay down your debt and stay with it. There are two I’d highlight, both work, it just depends what matters most to you:

• The avalanche means putting every spare euro at the highest interest rate first, then the next one down. This is financially the smartest way to deal with high interest debt. We love this simple explanation.

• The snowball means putting everything at the smallest balance first, whatever the rate. It costs more in interest but clearing one thing completely helps you stay motivated and make things simpler. A great explanation with examples here.

When you need more help

If the number is beyond what you can manage on your own, please know that this is a situation many people find themselves in, and there is a way out. In most countries there are people whose entire job is to walk you through it, and usually for free. I went looking for a single global directory to give you and there is none, which is a real issue. But here are some places I would start in the countries most of you write to me from.

United Kingdom. StepChange and National Debtline (0808 808 4000) are both charities, both free.

Australia. The National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007 is free, independent and staffed by financial counsellors.

Germany. meine-schulden.de has a search tool that finds your nearest free advice centre, and the online help is anonymous.

Netherlands. Call 0800-8115, it’s free. Behind it sit Geldfit and the Nederlandse Schuldhulproute, and your local council is legally obliged to offer help.

United States. The NFCC agency finder will point you to a non-profit counselling agency near you. The counselling session itself is free or low cost.

Like with every aspect of DearMoney: we shake off the shame and guilt first, and then get to work.

You’ve got this.

Warmest,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

Ps. Sign up is now open for our final cohort of the year: from September to November in small groups, transform your relationship with money and end the year with confidence, a financial plan and a fresh start: https://dear.money/group-course

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I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to write this piece. It’s one of the reasons I, as a human rights advocate, care about financial wellbeing. It is an issue that comes up regularly and is connected to my previous work on domestic violence. It is completely underestimated, and misunderstood:

It is not some cutesie hobby for people, and especially women, to get on top of their finances. Financial independence is an essential safety mechanism.

I know, it almost feels quaint to talk about domestic abuse these days. Aren’t we done with that, you may ask? No. Not even close. 1 in 4 women, 1 in 7 men and up to half of transgender and non-binary individuals will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime. It is WILD how common this still is. Why am I talking about it in a letter about money? An important indicator and even a potential predictor of a controlling, abusive relationship is financial control. So let’s get into it.

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Second, a warning: this is potentially triggering content, focused on negative control and abuse. If you know this is hard for you to read, read this instead for inspiration or learn the first steps to get started getting on top of your finances.

Of those who experience domestic violence, almost 99% experience financial abuse

Why is this such a structural part of domestic abuse? In domestic violence, we know that one of the most important elements is something called “coercive control”. And a very significant early indicator is financial control. So much so that there are barely cases of domestic violence where there is NOT some element of financial control.

You can imagine it, right? It is very difficult to control someone if they are financially independent. So it often starts with things like not letting someone work, or not letting someone have their own bank account, or taking someone’s money without their consent.

I have started seeing this come up in our DearMoney work, in small but significant ways, so I believe it is important to dedicate some space here to what financial control means, why it may be dangerous and how you can see it and prevent it.

What is it and why is it so powerful

When we talk about abuse, we tend to picture bruises. Or, as a Hungarian police officer once told me and my colleague: “unless blood flows, there is nothing we can do.” But there’s an element of abuse that starts usually before things escalate and is a tell-tale sign of worse to come.

The National Network to End Domestic Violence defines it as:

The people at Surviving Economic Abuse in the UK have actually sat down and measured the cost of this. Their research found survivors carry an average of £27,000 in debt built up through various forms of domestic abuse itself. And money is one of the main reasons people go back or do not leave in the first place.

When Surviving Economic Abuse gave evidence to Parliament, theylaid out how financial control sits right at the heart of coercive control, and how banks and employers and the benefits system all end up either being part of the trap or part of the way out.

How do you recognise financial control and abuse?

For years, we did not even really name domestic violence as coercive control, let alone defined the financial aspects of it. That shifted when Adrienne Adams and her colleagues built the first proper scale to measure it, sitting with survivors and mapping how the financial control actually works.

It shows up in many different ways:

• Taking control of your accounts or preventing you from accessing your account.

• Stopping you from having a job.

• Preventing you from buying essentials.

• Finding various ways to hold back money in forms of blackmail.

• Taking out credit cards or loans in your name without your consent.

• Making you constantly explain what you’ve spent your money on.

• Spending your money without telling you.

• Pressuring you to change your will, property ownership, or other assets.

Financial control almost never remains the only thing that happens, it usually escalates. That is why it is one of those key elements we were always on the lookout for in domestic violence work. Weirdly, this concept does not seem to have fully integrated into society.

We talk about being in charge of your own finances with either a “girl boss” faux independence language, or it’s dismissed as not important because of some weird morality or concept of marriage.

One of multiple reasons we do not agree with the popular financial “guru” Dave Ramsey on how when you’re married you should only having a joint account. It could ultimately lead to really significant consequences and we highly recommend making sure you at least have your own access to money.

This review gathers up decades of work on economic abuse inside violent relationships. And the financial aspects of the abuse are what stay the longest because this is basically the entire infrastructure of someone’s life. A 2024 study of women in New Zealand found economic abuse tied to worse mental health and a lower standing years down the line.

In short: not all financial control leads to domestic violence but almost all domestic abuse includes elements of financial control, and it is usually part of how it begins. It stays long after the relationship is over, and the consequences are often severe, structural, long-lasting and incredibly difficult to recover from.

It is the main reason survivors do not leave; they are simply not able to. Please remember this when you feel judgment come up about women who do not leave a relationship, even when it turns violent. There is an iceberg of unseen control that is incredibly hard to pull away from.

Knowing about money can protect you.

Learning the basics, making sure you understand your finances, and have full access to at least an emergency account is an incredibly powerful prevention. On top of that, if there is already a situation of control or even violence, the economic justice work done by the National Network to End Domestic Violence shows that teaching survivors the basics, budgeting, credit, how their own accounts work, is an essential part of being able to leave.

If I achieve to prevent or de-escalate even one case of financial control, DearMoney will have been a success, and I have a feeling it has already happened.

The reason I am writing this now is that I got several questions recently asking “why do I need my own bank account?” and “is all this really necessary or can I just let him figure this out?”. I hope you understand better now why the answers are a clear yes and yes.

Understanding your own money goes far, far beyond growing your wealth or earning a better income. Sometimes it's the difference between being safe or unsafe, between making choices and being stuck.

Please share this letter with anyone you think needs the very basics of financial literacy, and point them to this simple overview letter about where to start from last time:

And if you want to really help a friend, or relative or sponsor someone who needs it, you can gift a full programme slot, just say so in the comment box here and I will make sure it is accessible.

With care,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

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After our interview series, I wanted to go back to basics. A lot of new people have joined us in the meantime (hi and thank you!) and I wanted to create a place to start. With the basic support we have learned works well and a guide of sorts to what we have shared already.

This letter is my attempt at an honest answer to the following question, based on what has worked for our community (and for me):

Where on earth do I start?

If there is one DearMoney Letter to save, bookmark or send to a friend, it is probably this one.

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You do not have to do everything in this letter. Think of this more as a menu rather than a checklist. Even one element will move something forward and it will help shift that paralysis you may be feeling. Under each step I have added the letter to read alongside it, so this can also be your map back into everything we have shared so far.

A note before we start: if your money feels like a bit of a mess, you are not behind and you are not alone. According to the Financial Wellbeing Index, 94 percent of employees worry about money. That is nearly everyone you know, wrestling with this, and we barely talk about it. I wrote more about why that matters in Why feeling bad about money is the norm, not the exception. Struggling with this IS the norm.

So, let go of any shame you might feel about where you are now and let’s get started, together.

1. Learn something about yourself first.

How you handle money is part of a pattern you learned long ago, usually without noticing. Some of us control money tightly and still never really feel safe (The Protector). Some of us look away because it feels like too much (The Avoider). Some of us hold back or question the system because doing well financially feels complicated or even like a loss of integrity (The Skeptic).

When you can name your pattern, it can help you very practically because it helps you understand what helps you most. This is the best place to begin because it is the step that makes all the others easier, because you stop fighting your own wiring and start working with it.

Do this now: take the Money Archetype quiz. Fifteen questions, about 4-5 minutes, and it shows you which of three patterns has been driving how you generally are with money.

Find Your Money Archetype (5-Min Quiz)

Read alongside: Which of the three money archetypes are you? which explains the three types in depth, and Where your money beliefs come from traces where these patterns are learned in the first place.

2. Gather your Big Four.

You cannot calm what you cannot see. There are four sets of numbers that together give you the full picture: what you spend, where your money lives, what you owe, and what you have saved. The Big Four is just a way to gather it all in one place.

One previous DearMoney participant described where this kind of work of looking at it directly took him:

Here is a practical way to do it without dread. Set aside one quiet afternoon. Open a simple spreadsheet and give it four headings: what, where, owe, and savings. Work through them one at a time, logging into each account as you go, and resist the urge to fix anything while you gather.

Almost everyone who does this in our sessions tells me the same thing afterwards: the fear of not knowing was much worse than the reality. The Big Four walks you through exactly how to gather each number and why it is so important.

Whatever makes this easier or clearer for you, go for it. Many tools and AI out there to help, but remember this: you need to see it and have a handle on it, so really try to connect with these items yourself.

One of the next letters will be about AI and personal finance, and this question of how much AI to use for the work is a big one.

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3. Build a small buffer, your Love Fund.

Once you can see your financial picture, there is one money move that tends to matter most, especially in DearMoney where we focus on calming our nervous system first. When people ask me where to put their energy after the Big Four, my answer is always the same: a small buffer. A little money set aside for the unexpected. In our world we call it a Love Fund, a gift of safety and time to your future self.

It is the one non-negotiable in DearMoney, and the research is pretty striking. A 2025 Vanguard study of over 12,000 people found that just €2,000 in emergency savings did more for financial wellbeing than a higher income or more assets. People without a buffer spent nearly twice as long worrying about money every week.

You do not need six months of expenses for it to start working on you. Open a separate, accessible savings account, name it something that means safety to you, and set up a small automatic transfer on payday, even if it is ten or twenty euros. The point at the start is the habit and the account, not the amount. The emergency fund, your “love fund” shows you why it matters so much, how to begin, and how much is actually right for your situation.

Learn all about the emergency fund

4. Separate the feeling from the fact.

“I am bad with money” is a feeling. “I spend a little more than I earn most months” is a fact. While we first work with our feelings at DearMoney, knowing those facts is what builds the practical infrastructure that comes afterwards.

This is one of the most freeing shifts there is and is of course connected to the previous ones. When we are anxious, the brain treats money like a threat and stops learning. When we swap the story for the specific reality of what is happening in your finances, we move out of that survival state and back into a state where we can actually think.

Every time a heavy money thought arrives (“I am so bad with money” or “I will never get my sh*t together”), try writing the fact underneath it (“I forgot about this massive bill and now I am in the red” or “I don’t know what to do”). You will be surprised how often the fact is clearer, and far more solvable, than the feeling.

Read alongside and nerd out with me for a moment: From survival brain to learning brain explains what is happening underneath, and why this helps, small as it seems.

5. Build a money ritual for yourself (and your loved ones).

Avoidance gives quick relief but unfortunately it isn’t a very successful coping mechanism, as it actually makes the anxiety worse. Damn it. A small, regular ritual does the opposite: it teaches your nervous system that money is safe to look at. It is part of rewiring your brain.

Pick a fixed ten minutes each week, put it in your calendar so it is a real appointment, make yourself a proper cup of something, and simply look at your accounts. What is going on, any big spends or weird things happening? Any strange subscriptions you didn’t realize were still there? The point is to make money a thing you look at calmly, rather than a thing you avoid until it forces its way in.

Read alongside: 5 proven ways to reduce anxiety, and how that applies to your finances has the science behind why small and regular beats big and rare.

6. Talk to one person you trust about money.

Money is one of the loneliest subjects, because we tend to carry our stress about it in silence. And silence tends to create shame. That classic point, that shame disappears when it is spoken? It is a really important factor here. The relief of being witnessed and hearing how others share similar worries is bigger than people expect, and it is often the thing that makes all the other steps possible.

Read alongside: The loneliness was the part I didn’t expect is about this feeling in the context of being fired, but also about how much of our money struggle is really about how alone we feel.

And if you want to keep going after that, a few letters that pick up where these steps leave off:

• Setting a direction: How to set financial goals that work for you

• If your income is irregular: You’re not bad at money, you’re just a freelancer

• Thinking further ahead: The basics of investing and pensions

Until next time, be kind to yourself,

Gauri

Founder, Dear.Money

P.S. The autumn DearMoney group is opening soon, and it is the last individual cohort of the year. If you are interested, the waiting list is open where you can choose the time that works best and we will inform you when spaces open up. Add your name here.

For the final edition of The Money Sit-Down of this first series, I asked someone who has made money her professional life and her intellectual obsession, in the best possible way. Emilie Dayan Hill is a CFA, a Chartered Financial Analyst, who also writes about the psychology of money: why we are the way we are with it, and how our finances shape the life we live. You might expect someone with her credentials to have it all figured out. However, she is open about how she still grapples with it below.

In our next DearMoney Letter, by popular demand, we are taking it back to basics: “where on earth do I begin?!” We have many new subscribers and we will provide you with a step by step guide on ways to get started with getting on top of your finances.

But first: thank you Emilie, and enjoy everyone!

is a French-American investor, writer, and mother who works in finance in Atlanta, Georgia. She explores the psychology of money: why we are the way we are with it, and how clarity in our finances is the foundation of a well-lived life. She writes about this on her wonderful Substack “Finance That Feels” which I highly recommend.

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DearMoney: What’s the earliest money memory you have, and what did it teach you?

Emilie: I grew up in a French-American household in the southeastern United States as the first child to very young parents. They were frugal and worked hard to make ends meet. My dad was finishing his post-graduate education when I was a young child, and my mom was a teacher.

My first distinct money memory revolves around my French grandparents’ visits each year. I was probably three years old. I remember my grandfather taking me shopping: I could buy whatever I wanted. I remember ogling in the toy aisle at Walmart. I don’t remember what toy I chose, but I remember his wallet. He had so much money. When he counted out the dollars to pay, I had never seen so much. And I remember noticing that he treated money differently than my parents did: he was giving to me so generously and with such ease.

This contrasted sharply with the childhood feeling that my desires were a financial burden to my parents.

My first money memory taught me that money gets you what you want. As I grew older, it taught me that yes, money gets you what you want, but money can only go so far toward buying happiness.

Everyone is carrying their own money story, which shapes how they think, feel, and behave around money, regardless of how much they have. These stories get passed down.

DearMoney: What word would you use to describe your relationship with money right now?

Emilie: Co-dependent. Trust me: given the work I do, I feel embarrassed to admit this.

I am in a season of life with many financial responsibilities: our children, our mortgage, caring for our home, and completing my purchase of shares in my firm. I feel overly reliant on the money we earn and scrutinize every dollar and how it needs to be used. I live a wonderful and privileged life, but thinking about my finances does not bring me joy. It’s like a formal business arrangement, and both parties, me and my money, are keeping each other relentlessly accountable.

DearMoney: Tell me about a moment when money made you feel something you weren’t expecting.

Emilie: When I’ve been financially rewarded for good work, it surfaces imposter syndrome. I get a feeling like: “I need to work even harder now to show them this wasn’t a mistake.”

DearMoney: What’s one money belief you’ve inherited that you’re still working to unlearn?

Emilie: I am still unlearning the belief that my needs and desires are burdensome to others, financially and otherwise.

DearMoney: What does true “wealth” mean to you?

Emilie: True wealth is right here, right now. It is the moments we will never get back and our full presence in them.

This excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Ninth Duino Elegy captures it perfectly:

“...because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.... But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.”

DearMoney: What’s one thing - a shift, a habit, a realisation - that genuinely helped you?

Emilie: Years ago I developed my “Money Date” and it has helped me develop a healthier relationship with money. It is a twice-per-month, low-stress check-in across my accounts and financial to-dos. It has strengthened my confidence and resolve in believing that my money is in service of the life I want to live, not my life in service of money.

Because it’s on my calendar, I am able to set aside financial questions, concerns, and tasks, knowing I will address them during my Money Date. In that way, it provides a lot of relief.

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A note from me

What I keep coming back to is that Emilie is a CFA. She has spent her career thinking about money, advising on it, writing about it. But she, like so many of us, still wrestles with money. I find that really honest and reassuring. If someone with her expertise still feels this way, the rest of us are in good company!

And of course that true wealth, for Emilie, has nothing to do with the numbers.

The Money Date is worth trying, by the way. The idea that you can ring-fence your financial anxiety into two appointments a month, and actually put the rest down, is something we’ve been talking about in DearMoney programmes as well.

What came up for you? I’d love to hear. Reply here or leave a comment below.

As mentioned, in our next DearMoney Letter, by popular demand, we are taking it back to basics: where on earth do you begin?!

In the meantime, take care and have a lovely couple of weeks,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

Ps. we have opened up the waiting list for our final 2026 cohort of the DearMoney program in case you are interested and feel the time is right.

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For the second edition of The Money Sit-Down, I asked someone I admire greatly, who has dealt with money from every possible angle: in her family, as a founder, as a fundraiser for social causes, and as an investor and philanthropist. Where most people in her position talk about optimisation, growth, KPIs, Joana goes deeper, and inward.

Joana Breidenbach holds a PhD in cultural anthropology and is a social entrepreneur, author, investor, and advisory board member. She is co-founder of betterplace.org, Germany’s largest donation platform, and founder of the betterplace lab. Her current focus is the role of Inner Work in new forms of leadership and shaping the future, which she explores at innerwork.online. She also co-founded brafe.space, a network for entrepreneurs and investors, and supports organisations including ReDI School, DeepL, gut.org and Trivago.

More at: joanabreidenbach.de

DearMoney: What’s the earliest money memory you have?

Joana: I was five years old, with my parents on a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps. I remember going into a village shop all by myself. It was a very simple kind of drugstore, but I felt so empowered and grown up: to be able to go there alone, with my pocket money, and freely choose what I wanted. I have a vague memory of buying some hair pins, but the main feeling was one of autonomy and freedom.

DearMoney: What word would you use to describe your relationship with money right now?

Joana: Ambivalent. Parts of me are really relaxed and joyful about money, while others are tight and critical.

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DearMoney: Tell me about a moment when money made you feel something you weren’t expecting.

Joana: When I received quite a large sum from an investment I had made many years ago, my whole body calmed and relaxed. I hadn’t realized until then how much tension I had been holding: a largely unconscious fear of not having enough, and of needing to give up some of my freedom to earn more money.

DearMoney: What’s one money belief you’ve inherited that you’re still working to unlearn?

Joana: I grew up with parents who had very conflicting ideas about money. My mother, a housewife, would often say: “One does not speak about money. One has it.” It was more of a class attitude than a reflection of reality. My father, while earning well, was constantly worried about spending too much and could be quite stingy. To this day, he still knows the price of a streetcar ticket from his student days in Freiburg. That was 65 years ago.

I can detect traces of my mother’s attitude in me: a reluctance to take money really seriously, to give it value, while at the same time taking for granted that money will be there. Somewhere, somehow.

DearMoney: In one sentence, what does true “wealth” mean to you?

Joana: True wealth is relaxing into my own being, feeling safe inside myself. It also means being in authentic relationships with my husband, children and friends. Feeling them and being felt by them. Knowing that they are well, or have adequate resources, emotional as well as material, to look after themselves. And being able to express my values in real life, by creating and supporting initiatives I want to see in the world.

DearMoney: What’s one thing - a shift, a habit, a realisation - that genuinely helped you?

Joana: Listening to more marginalised friends talk about their material circumstances and fears made me realize, really on the level of the nervous system, what monetary scarcity does to a person. How much constant worry about money can fragment and shatter our sense of self.

I also found it striking to see how people’s actual wealth often has no relationship to their feeling of psychological safety. That you can be very wealthy and still feel that you don’t have enough. That it can all vanish tomorrow.

I have much more empathy now for “stingy” wealthy people, knowing how caught up they can be in their own psychodynamics. And yet: wealth comes with the responsibility to work on your shadows.

A note from me

That earlier line from Joana’s mother is interesting, right? “One does not speak about money. One has it.” It’s quite cutting, and extremely revealing.

What I find remarkable about Joana is that she’s done the work to actually trace where her own relationship with money comes from. The mother’s attitude, the father’s anxiety, and the ways both show up in her still.

Her definition of wealth is also a reflection of her deep work and awareness of her own experiences. Feeling safe inside yourself, and knowing the people you love have what they need. Quite a different starting point from the louder messages we get bombarded with about money. No hustle culture for the sake of it here.

What came up for you? I’d love to hear. Reply here or leave a comment below.

Next, I wanted to reach out to someone in the US who is an expert in wealth management: , who is a French-American based in Atlanta, Georgia, and also an extremely thoughtful writer about money. Can’t wait for you to read her nuggets of (beautifully put) wisdom.

After that, as requested, we’re sharing our top tried and tested practical tips to get started and build your finances with examples from our DearMoney program participants.

With care,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

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I’ve been so excited to share this new series of letters with you.

(If you enjoy this work, please give it a ❤️ down below. That goes a long way in helping find new audiences, thank you so much)

There is no shortage of financial advice. There is, however, a real shortage of honest conversation about money. One reason I started writing this Substack was to show that it is ok to talk about money. To share what so many of us wrestle with. And to show what actually works for people.

The next editions of the are focused on individuals we can all learn from, people we might recognise something of ourselves in.

The Money Sit-Down is a series of short conversations with people from very different backgrounds and sectors. We asked them all the same six questions: about their earliest memory of money, the word they’d use to describe their relationship with it now, what true wealth actually means to them, and something that has genuinely helped them.

For the first edition, I asked the brilliant .

Yuki Kho lives in The Netherlands and is editor-in-chief of cultural programs at VPRO, one of the country’s most respected public broadcasters, known for its independent, cultural programming. She is also co-founder of audio company Eeechooo and works as a moderator for cultural institutions.

Her mission: to make and keep art and culture accessible to everyone, without compromising on content.

Yuki also co-created Podcast over Poen with Shula Tas. That’s Dutch for “Podcast about Money” and it does exactly what it sounds like: demystifying money for people who weren’t taught to talk about it.

She also writes a popular Dutch Substack on culture and art.

Instagram.com/yukikho | Podcast over Poen on Spotify

In short: a perfect fit.

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DearMoney: What’s the earliest money memory you have, and what did it teach you?

Yuki: Going to the butcher to pick up groceries for my parents, I remember asking my mom before leaving if she was absolutely sure I had enough money to buy everything she needed.

I was so afraid of the humiliation of not having enough.

It taught me to always have enough savings or cash on hand, and that I want to feel in control of my money.

DearMoney: What word would you use to describe your relationship with money right now?

Yuki: The word I would use is “control.” I am constantly trying to feel in control of my finances, by budgeting in Excel, tracking everything in YNAB (You Need A Budget, an app to help people budget), setting up periodic transfers, and working toward targets.

At the end of each month, I do a money review where I go over all my expenses and write a short summary. So overall, I think my relationship with money can be best described as “in control”.

DearMoney: Tell me about a moment when money made you feel something you weren’t expecting.

Yuki: The first time I made a (small) profit from trading stocks, I felt smart. I understood why I had bought that stock and why it was increasing in value.

It turned out they weren’t.

Being in control of my money and understanding the systems behind it still makes me feel incredibly proud and capable.

DearMoney: What’s one money belief you’ve inherited that you’re still working to unlearn?

Yuki: That you shouldn’t talk about money. That it’s “tacky”.

I still believe you don’t need to discuss it with everyone, but I do think it’s important to normalise conversations about money among friends.

It helps you feel supported and also gives you a better sense of what is actually “normal” and what isn’t.

DearMoney: In one sentence, what does true “wealth” mean to you?

Yuki: Being healthy and being able to afford good, organic food for myself and my family.

DearMoney: What’s one thing - a shift, a habit, a tool - that really helped you?

Yuki: That building a good money system takes time. And that maintaining it is like personal hygiene, such as showering or cutting your toenails.

It requires ongoing care, attention, and consistency.

So don’t create a system and then ignore it. Build one, and make sure to review and reflect on it regularly.

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Thank you so much, Yuki.

Next time, we have the brilliant author, social entrepreneur, speaker, serial founder, investor and all-round inspiration from Germany, Joana Breidenbach.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, questions or requests for what we should cover, just respond here or comment.

With love,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

After the first letter about our lay-off research, a lot of you wrote back.

Some of you were in the middle of a layoff right now. Some were helping a friend through one. Some of you are leaders who had managed redundancies and were figuring out what works best.

I feel that, because I have been on both sides. Nobody will ever be grateful for losing their job, and that is right. But what became clear from this research is that it is absolutely possible to offer much better support to get people back on their feet faster. I have learned a lot from it already, and I hope it helps you too, wherever you are sitting.

Almost everyone asked the same thing: what do I actually do?

This letter is an attempt at the answer. So whether you’re grappling with this hard reality right now, whether you know it’s coming and want to prepare, or whether you are figuring out how to manage it from the other side, I hope this letter provides some support.

It has three parts. The first is practical: what the research told us about the first days, and what first steps to take. The second is about the job search and reinvention of a career. The third is about what remains missing and what we are building at DearMoney to address it.

All info and context about the research and your incredible feedback is in the first letter, so if you haven’t yet, please do go back and read to understand the full depth of the lay-off experience people shared with us.

And if you need more, are curious about our new work on this and how to get more support, just write us at talk@dear.money.

Part 1: The First Days

The first days after a layoff are not the time to figure out your whole life. They are the time to steady yourself and protect your options. Here is what the research told us matters most in that window.

Do not sign anything while you are in shock

One of the people I spoke with had spent twenty years in human resources. She had designed redundancy processes. She had written the scripts managers use to tell people their positions are being eliminated. She knew, professionally and theoretically, exactly what a layoff does to a person.

And then it happened to her.

All the professional knowledge did not protect her. The feelings arrived anyway. The shock. The disorientation. The inability to think quite straight.

If someone with twenty years of HR experience designing these processes still needed time before she could think clearly, then everyone does.

This is the most urgent practical finding from the research: do not sign anything in that state. You are allowed to ask for a little time. In many countries, you have a legal right to a reflection period before signing. The moment before you sign is also often a moment of negotiation, and it is usually the only one you will have.

More than one person in the research signed quickly, moved on, and later wished they had not. More than one person who pushed back received significantly more. Get the agreement reviewed. Check what is negotiable. Give yourself at least a day before you put anything in writing.

Know your real runway

The financial anxiety often arrived, the research shows, quickly and as a big unwieldy fog. People knew things were serious. They just did not know how serious, and the not-knowing was a problem and anxiety-producing in and of itself.

You have to know your financials, and you have to understand how long you have before you’re in trouble.

This is where the existing resources of DearMoney can help immediately.

First, figure out your “Big Four” - here’s how:

Write down what is coming in. Write down what must go out. Separate the fixed from the flexible. Identify what can pause. Then give yourself the actual number in months - how long can you give yourself to figure out new forms of income.

That period is almost always longer than the fear suggests. But even if not, a number you can work with is categorically different from a hunch you cannot. Especially if you are an avoider - see more on the psychology behind this here:

The people who fared better did not strip their lives down to bare survival in the first weeks. They kept things they knew they needed to feel ok.

Knowing your essentials matters particularly for freelancers and contractors, who discovered that every standard support structure assumes a formal employment relationship. No severance. No unemployment benefit. No access to retraining or coaching support.

How to build that infrastructure for yourself as a freelancer? Start here:

The financial anxiety without the formal scaffolding is its own specific experience, and it deserves its own specific plan.

Tell three people.

There is an instinct, after a layoff, to go completely quiet. To avoid situations where questions might come up. One person described visiting her family abroad shortly after losing her role. Normal questions about work and career created what she called a kind of vertigo.

The response to that discomfort is usually to withdraw. This is the thing that makes the following months much harder.

Immediately afterwards is the wrong moment to blast out your news online and to anyone in your broader circles. It is, however, the right moment to tell three people you trust. Three people who know you, who will not immediately try to fix you, who can hold what you are carrying.

The research showed clearly that the people who fared best were not the ones with the widest networks necessarily, or the ones who just knuckled down without telling anyone. The people who seemed to handle it best were the ones with a few people close enough to tell the truth to and to get some unconditional support.

With the great added benefit that this is one of those moments in life you figure out who matters most to you. Nothing wrong with that clarity!

Build rhythm before strategy

The people who tried to construct a perfect career strategy in week one often found themselves spinning. The people who built a simple weekly structure first found the thinking easier once they had it.

In my work with leaders I like to describe this as letting the snow globe settle. When that snow is still all up around you, wild and crazy? Not the moment for long term planning. When it is settled, and you figure out your rhythm, you know what brings you steady energy and support? That’s when you can start setting out longer-term plans.

This usually translates into, as one person described it, “a first-aid kit for your nervous system”: something physical, something in nature and something cognitive. Another person described that the only thing that worked those first days was to figure out a rhythm to the day, because losing the rhythm of work is a really significant issue for most.

The strategy will come. The rhythm makes it possible to think clearly enough to build one.

Part 2: What actually worked in finding what’s next

Most people navigating a layoff are given some version of the same advice: update your LinkedIn, fix your CV, network, stay positive. None of this is wrong. But the research showed, repeatedly, that it is missing the most important part, and that the gap between the advice and the actual experience of searching is where people get into the most difficulty.

Here is what people told us actually helped:

Clarity before applications

One of the most consistent patterns among people who found their footing more quickly was that they had done one specific thing first: they had got clear on what they were actually looking for, before they started applying.

Not “any job that pays well” and not “my last job at a different organisation.” Something much more specific than that: What kind of work do you believe in? What kind of organisation works well for you. What kind of role. What conditions do you need to bring your best. What do you truly bring? And… what do you actually want next?

Several people described writing a one-pager: a short document for themselves, not for employers, about what they wanted next and why. The people who did this described making better decisions about where to apply, and feeling less like they were just firing arrows into the dark.

This comes back in my work with people who transition roles or who are building portfolio careers: clarity about yourself, what you bring and what you need and want are essential.

Most people said spending some money, or part of provided learning budget, on a coach for this helped them a lot. But others found their way through this alone, it just took them longer.

A different way to network

Almost everyone knew, rationally, that most opportunities come through existing connections rather than cold applications. Almost everyone found networking impossibly hard in the weeks after a layoff.

Many interviewees described the shame and the sense that reaching out confirmed something about a diminished status somehow. The imagining of what former colleagues were thinking. One person described being convinced for weeks that the entire professional world had noticed his situation and was silently drawing conclusions. What helps? Structured conversations with people who knew him well, one to one, asking them to describe what they valued in his work.

One person said “The world is not watching as closely as you think. People do not notice or care as much as you fear. But you need someone to help you remember that.”

If you are in a job search and networking feels impossible, start here. Ask two or three people who know your work to tell you what they see in it.

Then make a list of five people you know whose work you admire, who you believe have interesting and current views of the space you want to work in, and ask them for a conversation. In that conversation, simply ask things like “what is happening in your space you’re excited about” and “what organisations are really exciting to you”. It is a chance to learn and signal your new availability.

Key is: you show that you are approaching this change with care and curiosity.

Peer community

The thing that finally broke through the isolation, in case after case, was some form of peer community. Other people in a genuinely similar situation, meeting with some regularity, without hierarchy or the power dynamics that make reaching out feel transactional.

Some people found this through structured programmes. Never Search Alone, for example, runs peer-based job search groups designed specifically for this transition. JobBuddies, in Denmark, connects people navigating career change.

Others built their own version informally, with two or three people in the same situation agreeing to meet every week.

The format matters less than two things: regularity, and the absence of anyone who needs things explained to them. Being with people who already understand removes the exhausting work of context-setting. It also confirms that what you are going through is not personal failure. It is a shared experience, and other people are navigating it and finding their way through.

One person described the peer group she eventually found as the thing that “kept her in rhythm” through months of uncertainty.

Services people used

• Reverse recruitment agency - One person used this instead of traditional outplacement, on advice from an HR contact. It is pricey - he paid 4,500 euro for six months of work, with a guarantee of half the fee returned if they did not find a role at the target salary. The agency managed their entire application process through a Monday.com system, handled CV and motivation letter revision, and took the rejection out of his hands.

• Resumé writing service - another person described the resume service her company provided as the most practically helpful thing she received. Her specific framing: there is something “confrontational” about updating your resume after a layoff, when self-doubt is highest. Having someone else do it removed that barrier. She called it a significant “mental lift.”

• Trusted coaching - many people described coaching as highly valuable, especially when focused on the deeper work of identity, next stages of career and transition work.

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Part 3: What we are building

This research has shaped a new strand of DearMoney’s work.

What most interviewees who received some support from their organisations shared was that outplacement services were terrible. Extremely expensive for the organisation, very impersonal and generic, and ultimately not much more than a set of online videos.

Since this is so different from what we learned in our research, we are building Steady Ground: a program for people navigating layoffs, redundancy and work transition. It is designed for people in purpose-driven sectors, though not exclusively.

Steady Ground covers the financial clarity that is needed, the values-based and practical guidance that most people never receive, the peer community that the research showed is the single most consistently helpful element, and the identity work that has to happen alongside the practical work.

It is structured, human, practical support for the whole experience, delivered by people who understand what it means to have work that matters to you, and to lose it.

We are in the process of building the first program for organisations now. If you want to know more, if you are going through this yourself, or if you are a leader in an organisation who wants to offer something genuinely better to people you are letting go, we would love to hear from you.

• Currently navigating a layoff? Simple form here to get notified when the program is open to individuals

• Leading a team through redundancy? Write to talk@dear.money to receive more on how DearMoney can help

A final thought

The number 1 action you can take to prepare for an impending lay-off, or really any career transition, chosen or otherwise, is to build an emergency fund (or “love fund” as we like to call it).

Nothing, and I mean nothing, has as high an impact on your feeling of financial stability as having a buffer for these life events.

Read what to aim for and how to build it in our most popular Substack post so far:

Any questions or thoughts are always welcome, and I am again deeply grateful to all the participants, all of you, who contributed this wisdom so others can benefit from it.

With care,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

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It started with a simple request on LinkedIn: would anyone be open to share their experiences around being let go of their job? And you really, really were.

People, over 50 of you, spoke about severance, savings, benefits and job searches. But very quickly, almost every conversation moved somewhere a lot deeper.

You spoke about shame. About loss of dignity. We heard your stories about losing your rhythm, community, losing your confidence, and sense of being useful.

You spoke about trying to work out whether to cut every little expense or keep the small things that made you and your kids feel human. About health insurance, childcare, visas, legal rights and LinkedIn spirals.

About the strange loneliness of being suddenly outside the world of work.

At DearMoney, we often say that money is rarely only about money. It carries safety, shame, family history, status, belonging and imagined futures. A layoff brings all of that to the surface at once.

We set out to learn more about how people are impacted by layoffs because there is hardly a more fragile, more visceral moment that tests us financially and psychologically than losing our job. And it’s all around us, right? From aid cuts to corporate layoffs, from AI taking over certain roles to geopolitical uncertainties: it’s clear that only change itself is certain, and that we will have to find much better ways to cope with this rollercoaster.

The image that kept coming to mind was Turner’s storm: not a clean crisis, but a weather system. Money, identity, fear, pride, law, family, status and survival all moving at once.

This letter is the first in a short series where we will share your stories, the patterns we learned, what people told us actually helped, and what they wished had existed in the first days and months after losing work.

To start with…

This isn’t a simple story of good vs bad.

I have been on both sides of this equation and have made plenty of mistakes, including in most of the painful categories below. There is no easy way through a layoff, on either end. Nobody is entitled to a job for life, and organisations changing course is a regular part of working life. This research is also in service of leaders having to manage layoffs, to help find the most effective and caring ways to support people through it.

Because what we found were profound stories of loss, uncertainty, and fear, and through them, a clear picture of how much better we could be doing at supporting people through it.

To give you a sense of the diversity of people we connected with: We spoke with and collected detailed qualitative answers from over 50 people in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Denmark, India and Argentina. People from human rights organisations, climate coalitions, philanthropy, academia, startups, and large corporate teams. People who received generous severance and people who received nothing. People who had found their footing again and people still searching.

Here is what you shared with us:

The TL;DR

People were trying to understand why they felt ashamed or hopeless. They were trying not to spiral after another rejection. They were trying to work out whether to cut every expense or allow themselves small things that kept them human. They were trying to remember that their skills still existed, even when nobody seemed to be hiring. They had to figure out government help if there was any, and how to keep health insurance, a roof over their head, immigration status. And they had to handle all of that while feeling very alone.

It is undoubtedly a lot to carry.

Inequality shows up here too, of course. For one person, it may mean a difficult few months and a bruised ego. For another, it may mean losing a visa, losing healthcare, or even being forced back into a country where they are not safe, left without any help. For another, it may mean being pregnant, unemployed and trying to navigate a benefits system that sends the wrong letter one week before the due date. For yet someone else, there is simply no support whatsoever and they take over a year to find their feet.

This is why the usual advice can feel so thin. Update your LinkedIn. Fix your CV. Network. Stay positive. None of this is wrong, but it is not enough, and not tailored to the actual deeper experience people go through.

People told us they need sharp tailored support in the first couple of days and through the next months, they deeply need community and they need guidance on how to build back up, both professionally and personally.

Four themes came through clearly:

Dignity.
Identity.
Loneliness.
Money confusion and anxiety.

1. It’s not (just) the money - the role of dignity and agency

I was expecting the financial anxiety to come first: what do I do with my severance, how long will my savings last, when will I be okay again. Instead, within the first few minutes of almost every conversation, in the interviews and in the survey responses, people went somewhere else entirely.

One person, laid off from a major international philanthropy after years of work, said: “I would rather have less money and more dignity in this process. Nobody asked me anything. I felt powerless and disrespected.”

A senior professional in her fifties, deeply experienced in her field, described her termination and kept returning to the same sentence in different forms. She felt they hadn’t seen what she had contributed. She used the word “unseen.”

Someone else described being called into a meeting that had been scheduled under a false subject line, finding three people waiting for him in the room. He used the word “brutal.”

One woman was two weeks postpartum when her employer began the process of laying her off. She was still recovering from a very difficult birth. She described telling her partner: “Right, I need to put my big girl pants on.” She craved strategic, sharp, fast advice, and a sense of agency in the process.

This is the first finding, and I think the most important one: HOW you are being laid off leaves some wounds even with the toughest people I know, and money cannot heal that alone.

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2. Identity

The second thing that came up, regardless of financial situation and regardless of country, was identity. How it is connected to what role people had, and to how this change impacts their financial situation.

A woman who had spent her career in human rights asked: “Who am I outside this work?” That felt very familiar, honestly, it is clear that a sense of loss of identity is a very important part of what happens after someone loses a job.

Someone in Germany described the weeks after his layoff in three phases: Phase one: profound self-doubt, trying to rationalise what had happened. Phase two: a creative burst, making plans for research, a nonprofit, a book, everything at once. Phase three: anxiety and panic, as applications went unanswered and savings started shrinking. He also described the particular shame of trying to explain all of this to his elderly grandfather, who had held three jobs in his entire life and did not understand why someone would not simply find another one immediately.

He shared: “No one on Instagram tells you how to explain to your 80-year-old grandpa, who doesn’t understand why you are not immediately looking for a new job, because mental health is not a concept he actually understands.”

One survey respondent described watching her credit card balance rise over nine months before she found a new role. She is a caregiver for two children with disabilities and an adult disabled sibling, and her partner was on short-term disability leave for much of that time.

Another survey respondent, an experienced professional in her mid-forties, applied to 90 jobs over the course of her unemployment. She was a final candidate for three. She wrote about the fear not just of running out of money, but of losing her health insurance in the United States while caring for two children with disabilities. She also wrote about age: whether employers would see her as too old for the kind of work she had been doing.

The financial anxiety, the loss of identity and the fear of being passed over are deeply intertwined. Especially when it is taking a long time to figure out what’s next.

3. Losing a job can be profoundly lonely

There was almost always a brief period of solidarity right after a layoff, particularly when several people were let go at the same time. Messages of support. Group chats. Shared outrage. And then, gradually, people scattered. Understandably, everyone focused on their own situation. The solidarity dissolved.

And then came the isolation.

Networks became awkward to reach. Reaching out felt uncomfortable, as though it confirmed something about a new and diminished status. One person told me it felt like begging. Another described being convinced the whole world was watching and judging, that everyone had noticed and was silently drawing conclusions. Several people described stepping away from LinkedIn, where other people’s announcements of new roles arrived as small repeated injuries. One survey respondent wrote that she had stopped using it altogether: “LinkedIn presents unrealistic portrayals of others’ success.” She had found it was making everything harder, not easier.

One person built her own community from scratch because nothing like it existed where she was. Another described a peer network as the thing that kept her in rhythm through months of uncertainty. The survey respondent who had spent nine months watching her credit card balance rise wrote that the thing that finally helped was finding others who were caregivers navigating layoff while responsible for disabled family members. “It was especially helpful to connect with others who were caregivers,” she wrote. “The sense of failure in the face of responsibility is very overwhelming.” Being with people who shared it made it, somehow, more doable.

4. And of course, the money..

Almost nobody said they simply had too little, though money was getting very tight for many. What they said was that they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and nobody had told them.

One person in the US discovered almost by accident that severance packages are negotiable. She pushed back against an initial offer and received significantly more. “Younger me would not have even thought that was an option,” she told me. “Younger people heard the message: you should be grateful for what you got.”

Someone else said that the first thing she had wished for, immediately after being let go, was clear guidance about her legal rights before signing anything. Nobody had told her that the moment before she signed was also a moment of potential negotiation. She signed quickly and moved on. Looking back, she was not sure she should have.

Freelancers, contractors, and people whose work ended gradually rather than through a formal notice do not fit the standard support frameworks. They fall through every gap. And they are, the research suggests, experiencing the same identity crisis and the same financial confusion as everyone else, while receiving none of the formal protections. Read more about how you can set yourself up in the best way as a freelancer in this Letter.

Others described not knowing what benefits they were entitled to, or how long their savings would realistically last, or how to construct a budget for a period of uncertainty that might stretch to a year or more. Nobody told them to do this in week one. Nobody helped them figure it out.

They were navigating in the dark at the exact moment when their cognitive bandwidth was already consumed by shock and grief.

This research is now shaping a new strand of DearMoney’s work: support for people and organisations navigating redundancy, career disruption and financial uncertainty. The need is very clear: People do not need another generic outplacement portal. They need steadiness, clarity, community and a way to remember their own value.

In the next letter, I’ll share what people said they needed in the first days and months after losing work: the practical things, the emotional things, and the kinds of support that actually helped them.

If you would like to share your experiences, you still can here, I cannot tell you how grateful we are for everyone’s care and openness in sharing what is often a really painful experience. Thank you!

With care,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

She is in her 30s now. A PhD student. The director of a global organisation working on sexual and reproductive health and rights. And, in her own words, “the first generation in my family to navigate financial systems independently.”

She was the winner of the Bloom Financial Wellness Scholarship, and one of 114 people who applied for our April cohort, from 56 cities in 31 countries across five continents (!). I read every single one, from Karachi, Kampala, Cincinnati, Bhutan, Bogotá, Berlin, Beirut, Bulawayo. In fact, the applications were so incredible, we decided to run the scholarship one more time for our June cohort, applications open until 15 May here.

We proudly serve all people who need support in transforming their relationship with money. But this scholarship is specifically for those in social change work and who need the help the most.

I wanted to share some of their stories here, so we normalize talking about money and how it affects us in much bigger ways than we think. I think we can all see ourselves in some ways in these examples.

One clear thread that came up again and again:

Being the first.

Many people who applied were first in family to go to university. First-generation immigrant. First in family to finish secondary school. First woman in family to hold finances independently. First to break a cycle of violence. First in family to migrate.

First-Generation Money

When I was looking for financial advice and guidance years ago, I hit a wall. It felt to me like most content out there was aimed at people who have a basic history with money already. Whose financial life is a series of small refinements on a route somebody else already walked in their family.

Many of you are not that, and this letter is for you. You are people figuring it out yourself. What is incredibly hard about carving a path is that you cannot see it in front of you. You don’t know what it looks or feels like. All you know is that you are moving away from something hard and towards something hopefully better. It takes profound courage to be first.

“I am the first one through this door”

Let me show you a little of what I mean. The stories below are real. While names are removed for privacy; locations are accurate and quotes are their own words:

A university graduate in Amsterdam writes, “as the first person in my family to go to university, I have had little access to financial knowledge or guidance.” She grew up watching her mother remain in a violent relationship because she did not have her own money. She is now the one breaking that pattern.

A first-generation American in Washington D.C. writes, “I grew up in a first-generation, low-income, working-class immigrant family, where I assumed we were ‘rich’ or ‘well off’ because my parents bought us everything we wanted.” She now covers their living expenses.

Someone who lives between the UK and Madrid writes, “I am a first generation university graduate. I come from a low-income background where money was always a stress. My dad claimed bankruptcy when I was a teenager and our family home was repossessed.”

A young woman in Costa Rica writes, “I am the first one to finish secondary school and university, the lack of generational wealth and its impact is quite clear.”

Migration as the ultimate “first”

Migration came up again and again. The truest trailblazers, in many ways, are the ones who left.

A two-time immigrant in Atlanta, Eritrean, who lived half her life in Saudi Arabia, writes, “I have no idea how to approach money. Am I supposed to strive to just survive? Am I supposed to take the big risks for big rewards? Do I even belong in spaces of financial stability?”

A female immigrant in Berlin, writes about a single-income household where her mother held the finances “unheard of in a patriarchal society,” and how she now struggles to keep her own progressive values intact while letting herself spend with joy.

And finally, a profound example from Houston:

This part: I know how to manage being poor. That is the wall. Managing scarcity is a skill you've already mastered. Building something from it is a different muscle. That is what we built DearMoney for.

What being “first” actually costs you

Last month I wrote about the friendship account and the long, ancient lineage of women pooling resources in chamas, seettu, sou-sou, esusu, and tandas. That letter was about what is possible when we organise our financial lives in community.

This one is about the cost of doing the opposite. Of having to do it alone. Besides having to financially start from behind, there are other costs that people pay for being first in their community or family:

It costs in legitimacy. The sense that you are allowed to think about money, ask questions out loud, sit at the table in a financial advisor’s office, fill out a form that asks about pensions without freezing. Almost every first-generation applicant I read described a flicker of “this is not for me” the first time they looked at finances.

It costs in permission. To want financial security without feeling like you are betraying the people who did not have it. Many applicants describe a complicated guilt about earning more than their mother ever did, or about spending on themselves while family back home is stretched thin.

And it costs you a peer. The one thing almost every person who inherited a map has, and most first-generation people do not: someone who knows what it feels like to do this from scratch, in a body that holds an inherited story about what money is and is not for. We all need someone to do hard things with, and shame disappears when you share it.

Literacy can be googled. Legitimacy, permission, and a peer cannot. They have to be built, with other people who get it without you having to explain.

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Why I am writing this today.

We partnered with The Bloom on a scholarship to make sure our DearMoney program reaches the people who would otherwise not be able to join. The June 2026 cohort applications close on 15 May. So don’t hesitate: if you have read this far and at any point thought that’s me, apply for the chance to receive a fully funded place in the DearMoney program.

You do not need a polished story to apply. The applications I cannot stop thinking about are the honest and raw ones. The Karachi-based applicant who opened with “felt like ranting today.” (SAME). The applicant in Berlin who simply wrote, “I have no income right now.”

It is a simple process that should not take too much of your time, and if nothing else, if you do not join the program, you will still contribute to the overall purpose of our work together. To make others feel like they are not alone.

Apply by 15 May

The other way - join and support

Some of you reading this may not recognize yourself in these stories. That does not mean you don’t need support. Maybe you grew up with parents who explained a mortgage, or a country whose currency stayed put, or a family where money was something you learned about. But your relationship with money may still need a lot work, because you hold deep anxiety and fear around money, and DearMoney is built for you too.

If that’s you, here is something I want to be open about: the only reason the scholarships exist is because other people pay to join the programs. There is no foundation behind this work, no grant. Every scholarship seat is funded by the people who join directly or sponsor a spot for someone who needs it.

It is the same logic I wrote about last month. The chama, the friendship account, the seettu. You put in what you have so the next person can pull out what they need.

So if you read this letter and are interested in doing the work, you are deeply welcome:

Join the June 2026 cohort

Warmest,

Gauri
Founder and ED, DearMoney

P.S. If your friend, sister, cousin, or colleague is the first something in their family to navigate this work, please forward this letter to them.

You know your numbers. You have the spreadsheet, the savings, the plan. And you still wake up sometimes at 4am wondering if it is really enough.

Or…

You haven’t opened that envelope. You avoid looking at your bank account or dealing with any finances at all costs. In the meantime, you are terrified of what you might find.

Or…

You have read every critique of capitalism worth reading. You can name the mechanisms. You have also not asked for a raise in three years, and when a friend mentioned their salary last month something inside you flinched.

These three experiences are very distinct, but they get treated as if they were the same problem. That is a big clue as to why so far it may have been difficult to find relevant support for you.

The core idea of this letter

Various studies have shown that the vast majority of us, somewhere between 80 and 94%, carry some form of anxiety around money, with more than a third experiencing moderate to severe financial anxiety. An overwhelming majority of us is, at the very least, uncomfortable with money. And yet most of us carry it alone, convinced the shape of our particular struggle is unique, or shameful, or a sign that we are just “bad” at this.

You are not. You have been handed a problem in a shape that was never yours, and told to solve it with tools that were built for someone else.

What I want to offer you today is something a little different: a way of understanding which money pattern and archetype might fit you, so that the work you do from here can meet you where you are rather than where a generic money guru assumes you should be.

We dug deep to find patterns and ways to categorise the different relationships with money we have come across so far, all in service of helping us find the best starting point. Here’s what we found:

The three archetypes, in brief

The Protector

You navigate the world with a high degree of responsibility, and it comes at a cost to your nervous system. You might have the spreadsheets. You might have the savings. You also have a constant sense that if you look away for a moment, it will all come undone. For you, money is a tool for managing an unpredictable world. The catch is that safety keeps moving. There is no number that makes the monitoring stop. Your work is to start with the understanding of what “enough” or “safe” really means to you.

The Avoider

Money lives on the periphery of your life as something slightly ghostly. You are likely mission-driven, creative, deeply principled. You prefer the world of ideas and impact to the world of invoices, and there is a locked room in your financial life that you have not quite been able to bring yourself to open. It is certainly not laziness or “I’m just chaotic”, labels you may have been given before. It is a form of self-protection, and it is costing you. Your work is to start looking, with guidance and structure.

The Skeptic

You see the system clearly. You understand the structural unfairness, the history, the extraction. Because you see the game so clearly, any move toward your own financial flourishing can almost feel like a betrayal. You may have stayed in precarity as a (perhaps subconscious) way of keeping your integrity intact. Your analysis is not wrong. Your conclusion, that your own scarcity helps anyone, is worth questioning. Your work is to get familiar with your own version of “wealth” and learn about ways to take care of yourself and loved ones without compromising your values.

Most people read those three and land somewhere between “that is definitely me” and “I think I am a mix of two of them.” The quiz is built to tell you which is carrying the most weight right now, which helps to get started in the right place.

Take the Money Archetypes quiz

Where this comes from

Over the last year we have had many in-depth conversations with people who do serious work in the world: activists, founders, investors, organisers, creatives, people running mission-led businesses on tight margins, people leading teams through difficult things.

These three shapes kept appearing. This honestly surprised me, because I had expected something a lot messier, but the patterns were pretty stubborn. I can share with some confidence that the three archetypes we have developed do capture a significant number of us and how we connect with money.

We wanted to build an instrument that could name them without flattening anyone into a caricature. Working with our own findings as well as from the field of financial therapy (the work of Brad Klontz on money scripts is foundational here for example) and behavioural economics, we created a 15-question questionnaire.

Each archetype is scored from five diagnostic questions. The instrument has been tested against a working sample of people inside our community, and the patterns have been consistent so far.

Of course, nobody can be fully captured by this kind of differentiation. It is simply a starting point, a way of naming the loudest voice right now so you can begin to work with it. Most of us carry traces of all three.

The invitation

The quiz takes about four to five minutes. Fifteen questions, no right or wrong answers. At the end you get your archetype: what it is, why it makes sense given the world you grew up in, and where the actual work lies.

Discover your archetype

What is waiting on the other side

If, after you read your archetype, something in you wants a place to begin, there is a 7-day audio companion called “The 7-Day Money Shift” waiting for you on the results page.

It is a short, private audio journey made specifically for your archetype. Between 12 and 20 minutes a day for seven days. Starting with something that is probably true for you, a reframe that has helped other people with your particular money story, and a set of small, doable moves to help you get on top of your finances. The goal is not to overhaul your finances in a week of course, but to help you get confident and closer to financial clarity, in a way that fits how you actually feel about money right now.

We developed this as a way in for those of us who feel quite lost and simply need somewhere to begin. Just a calm voice you can listen to on a walk and clear guidance.

More on that once you know which one you are.

For now, the work is only this: to get a better understanding of what you need. And I would love to hear how you find the quiz and whether you relate at all to the outcome.

Warmest,
Gauri

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This one is for my freelancers out there, making it work as creatives, writers, consultants, or anyone with an income that fluctuates and leaves you feeling even more worried about money than usual.

I want to make sure that besides inspiring stories from all over the world about money to make you feel less alone, you also get some extremely practical support here. And this is a practical question we get all the time: how can I create calm in my finances when I am a freelancer and I have no idea what comes in every month?

Let’s get to it!

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There was a period in my life where my income made very little sense. Ok, honestly, that period is right now...

Some months, large amounts come in. Other months, very little. Building a new social business is messy, chaotic, unpredictable. To be sure, because I have been at this for a long time, I have other sources of income and I have injected a lot of calm into my finances. But I also needed to self-create some additional structure in my financial setup to make it work.

The Freelancer Money Flow

Five elements you need to make this work:

1. Build a two-month buffer

Before anything else, if you can, work toward holding two months of your baseline expenses somewhere that is not your everyday account. This is your foundation. Two months in your “source” pot (you’ll see what this means a little lower down) so that you always have enough to pay your own salary. It means that a slow month is just a slow month, no big deal. You do not have to build this overnight of course, but the buffer is what lets the rest of the system breathe. We talked about the importance of a buffer (and building a “love fund”) here as well.

2. When money comes in, hold a percentage for taxes first, move the rest

This is non-negotiable and I say it with love. When an invoice pays out, a portion of that money is not yours to spend. It belongs to your future self at tax time. I hold 50% because I am based in Germany and my contributions are high. I also leave room for pension payments from that amount. In most places, 35 to 40% will cover you well. This is the money that stays in your account where invoices come in, perhaps a business account or just a separate regular one.

3. Move the rest to a source pot, your salary flows from there

This is the heart of the whole thing. The remaining money, after the tax hold, goes into what I call a source pot. Every time an invoice is paid, you move the remaining percentage after your tax withhold to the “source”. My source pot is a little savings pot inside my regular checking account, most online banks have this. Think of it as a reservoir. Money flows in whenever invoices pay, at different and varying amounts. What flows out is something you control completely and is going to be the same every month.

4. Pay yourself a predictable, realistic salary from the “source”

Every month, on the same date, you move a fixed amount from your source pot into your main account. Your salary. You decide what that number is, based on your actual expenses, your baseline needs, what feels livable and please make sure this is a realistic number grounded in what you actually need and use. And then every month, that amount arrives. Like clockwork. Regardless of what came in from clients that month.

Boom, you have transformed your chaotic unpredictable income into a lovely, feasible, realistic and predictable salary.

Some months you are adding generously to the source pot. Some months you are drawing it down. Both are fine. That is what it is there for. What stays consistent is the salary, and that consistency is what your nervous system craves.

5. Give every part of your salary a job.

Once your monthly “salary” lands, divide it between:

• Your everyday expenses account (rent, food, subscriptions, the basics)

• Savings with a purpose. A trip. A piece of equipment. A future creative project. A home.

• A joy pot: small, intentional, guilt-free. Read more about why this is so crucial to have here.

• An unexpected expenses fund, because something always comes up, and it is better to have a name for it before it arrives.

You can make this as simple or as intricate as your brain wants. Some people have two accounts. Some have five. The structure is yours to shape.

What matters the most is the principle underneath: Irregular income in, but steady flow out.

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A word about getting started

If you are reading this and you do not have a two-month buffer yet, that is okay. Start with the salary concept anyway. Even a buffer of a few weeks gives you a frame to work within. The goal is to stop making financial decisions in a state of reaction, and start making them from a position of calm.

You are not bad at money. You are living in a system that was designed for people with predictable paychecks, and you are not one of those people. It just means you need to build your own rhythm instead.

I would love to know what you come up with! I am rooting for you, good luck and have fun with it.

Next time: what people actually need when they lose their job. The result of a 4 month research project where we spoke with dozens of people in-depth about how they experienced being lai off and what they needed the most during that time. It was incredible how deep many of you were willing to go and I look forward to sharing more about that work.

With love,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

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She has a joint bank account with four of her friends. They each put a little money in every month. They use it for flowers. For help when someone needs it. For weekends away. For joy, for security, for whatever they need or want, no questions asked.

A structural support system based on trust and love.

I know it sounds extremely simple, but I find this genuinely radical. And the more I shared it, the more I learned: women have always known this and this happens truly everywhere.

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This is ancient, and it is everywhere

When I shared this story, the responses came flooding in. And so many people recognised it in their country, in their community, in their friendship groups and how far back and how wide across the world this instinct goes to build something different for ourselves.

In related ways, big and small: in Kenya, people have long organised themselves into chamas, savings and investment groups that pool funds for financial security in community. In Sri Lanka, it’s called seettu. One friend told me her mother, a bank clerk, contributed monthly to a small group fund like that so that when her turn came to receive the collected pot, she could buy books for her children. Those books, she said, gave her a lifelong love of reading.

In South Asia more broadly, chit funds operate on a similar principle. In the Caribbean and among African diaspora communities, you find sou-sou and partner hand. In West Africa, esusu. Across Latin America, tandas.

There is a really interesting book about this - The Banker Ladies - documenting the women who built these informal financial systems from the ground up, often outside the formal banking sector entirely, often because the formal banking sector was never built with them in mind.

And then there’s a wonderful former colleague of mine in the UK who has done this since primary school. She and her closest friends, now scattered across the UK, each pay in monthly. They use the fund for weekends away to reconnect. “When we go,” she said, “it feels like a luxurious all-expenses-paid trip where we get to treat ourselves and each other.” The money is almost beside the point. The point is that they built a structure around something they valued, and now it happens, reliably, every year, regardless of who is flush and who is stretched.

We’ve been taught that money is private

The dominant story about money is that it’s personal. Yours alone. Something to protect, manage, be ashamed about, and never, ever discuss with friends. We’re trained to see financial struggle as a private failing and financial success as a private achievement. Either way: yours to carry alone.

This story has a purpose, of course. It keeps us isolated and compliant. It stops us from noticing patterns. It makes systemic problems look like individual ones.

But here’s the thing nobody tells you: as an adult, you can just... decide to do it differently.

You can open a bank account with your friends. You can pool resources. You can build a little infrastructure of care between the people you trust most. There is no rule against this. There is no form to fill in. You just have to imagine it first.

The imagination gap

This is actually the hardest part. Not the logistics, not the money, not even the conversation about money. The hardest part is believing you’re allowed and able to organise your financial life around joy and connection, not just survival and obligation.

In DearMoney, we talk a lot about what we call “learned limitation” - the way many of us, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, immigrant families, or who’ve experienced financial instability, become brilliant at scarcity and terrible at dreaming. We can stretch 100 euros across a week and build 15 spreadsheets to show you how. But ask us to imagine a life built around what we actually want? Nothing.

A joint friendship account isn’t a complex financial instrument. But it i’s an act of imagination. Someone had to think: what if money could look like this? What if we used it to make each other’s lives a little more beautiful, possible, safe?

The Banker Ladies knew this. They didn’t wait for a financial system that worked for them because it did not exist. Instead, they built one.

Power over, power with

We’re living through a lot of “power over” right now. Wealth deployed as weapon, as shield, as leverage. The Epstein news cycle. Wars. The constant evidence that money, concentrated in the hands of people with very few scruples, does very ugly things to the world.

But I don’t believe it only has to be this way, and this is exactly why.

A joint account between five friends who buy each other flowers and cover each other when things get hard - that is also “personal finance”. A group of women in Nairobi building financial security together. A mother in Colombo receiving the monthly collection and spending it on books for her children. A group of friends scattered across the UK treating themselves to a weekend away, every year, without the stress of who can afford it. These are also examples of what financial resources can do. It’s just that this version never makes the news.

A question to take with you

Who are your people? And what would it look like to build a small financial infrastructure around your care for each other?

It doesn’t have to be a joint account. It could be a dinner fund, a “someone needs help this month” understanding, a shared commitment to splitting the cost of something that makes all of your lives better.

Money can be a force for good. Not in a grand, save-the-world sense - though I will keep working on that too - but in the sense of: “we take care of each other here”.

That’s the stuff that keeps me going and I hope you can draw some inspiration from this too in these dark times.

Warmly,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

P.S. — If you do something like this with your friends or in your community, I would genuinely love to hear about it. Just reply and tell me.

For those working at the forefront of social change, financial health is a radical act of self-care and community preservation.

When we are financially “stuck” or overwhelmed, our capacity to lead, create, and sustain our mission is diminished. We believe that to change the world, you first need to feel secure in your own world.

That’s why I am thrilled to announce that DearMoney has officially partnered with The Bloom to launch our first Financial Wellness Scholarship.

The Opportunity

We are granting one full scholarship for a changemaker to join our live, 6-week Financial Wellness program starting this April, and one for our June cohort.

Our missions are deeply aligned: The Bloom works to ensure that growth in social impact is no longer a “network privilege,” but a reality for everyone. Together, we are adding financial wellness to that toolkit of resources.

The Details

• The Program: The full, live, guided DearMoney journey to rewrite your relationship with money. From money anxiety to money ease.

• The Timing: This round of applications is for our April cohort, running from April until mid-June.

• Deadline: Applications close Wednesday, 25 March (in one week!).

Apply for the Scholarship Here

Help us spread the word

We want this scholarship to reach the people who need it most: the ones who are so busy caring for their communities that they’ve put their own financial well-being on the back burner.

If you know a changemaker, a founder, or a social impact professional who is feeling “stuck” with their money, please share this post with them.

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With gratitude,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

For more on why personal financial wellness is a key part of social change work, read our piece:

“Why Personal Financial Health is a Social Change Strategy”.

Something interesting keeps coming up in DearMoney. People who are thoughtful about almost everything else in their lives go strangely quiet when pensions and investing come up. This one is for you.

Most people understand, in principle, that thinking about and planning for the future matters. That relying solely on a state pension or continued good health carries way too much risk. And yet, when they try to get started, something in them hesitates. I completely understand, I have really wrestled with this too. Here are a few things that have come up:

• How do you plan for a future in systems that feel extractive and unfair?

• How do you invest without feeling complicit in an economy you would fundamentally redesign if you could?

• How do you motivate yourself to think long-term when the present feels uncertain or heavy?

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Those tensions, besides not knowing where to start, are often the biggest barriers for people grappling with their finances.

This is why we work so hard at DearMoney to find the right balance, to give you the tools to design your long term plan yourself and make smart, informed choices in line with your values.

It is important to know this: you are participating in the current financial system whether you choose to reap the benefits or not.

Your bank invests your money at will. Your savings squirreled away in a savings account with 2% interest? What do you think your bank does with that money? So we have no choice but to find our way through. To get financially sound and stable, and to build ourselves a future. Take control of where your money goes and how it grows.

Here are just a few principles that might help.

Remember, we are not financial advisors and will never tell you to choose specific plans or stocks or anything else. We help you find your own way and make informed choices. This support is for those who have not fully started or don’t know where to begin.

What we mean by costing the future

At DearMoney, we talk about investing as ‘costing the future’, an act of care across time. It is about how the person you are today can support the person you will be later, without requiring them to work forever or live with constant financial anxiety.

As one DearMoney participant in London put it:

“I thought investing was for people who were already rich. Now I see it as a way of making sure I am not forced to keep working forever and I have choices if I need to change my life.”

We move the emphasis from 'performance' to 'stewardship.' In a very practical sense, this isn't about trying to get rich quick, it’s about the responsibility we have to ensure our future selves aren't left vulnerable.

Why time matters more than brilliance

One of the least intuitive aspects of building wealth is that it is not primarily determined by how much you earn. It is shaped by how early and how consistently your money is given the chance to grow.

To make this tangible, imagine two people investing €300 a month (assuming a standard 7% average yearly return):

• Person A (The Early Starter): Invests from age 30 to 40, then stops completely. They never add another cent for the next 25 years.

• Person B (The Late Starter): Waits until age 40, then invests every single month until they are 65.

At retirement, the results are startling:

• Person A ends up with roughly €335,000.

• Person B ends up with around €258,000.

Even though Person B invested for 15 years longer and put in significantly more of their own cash, they couldn’t catch up to the ten-year head start Person A gave their money.

Of course, these numbers aren’t a guarantee: the market fluctuates and goes through cycles. But history shows that over decades, a broad market average of 5–8% per year is a likely outcome. The difference here isn’t discipline or intelligence; it’s simply the math of time.

As so often in life, time, is the ultimate scarce resource.

This is why waiting until you feel ready often turns out to be costly. It is never too late, but you do need to get started. I have only recently started (and I am 42), but I am very happy I did.

A certain approach to investing

At this point, people often say they already know this, but still feel stuck. That is usually where investing culture becomes the problem.

Most mainstream advice is loud, competitive, and obsessed with outperformance. Pick the right stocks. Time the market. Buy crypto. Beat everyone else.

For many people, this framing is alienating, it definitely was for me.

Building long-term security tends to rely on a simpler set of principles. None of these are gospel, but they are some examples of the grounding principles we use in our community:

1. Don’t invest what you know you need in the next 5 years: Remember that we build foundations together, DearMoney is not for advanced investors. We build stability, safety, calm. That means we first build our emergency fund (“love fund”), are clear about our short to mid-term plans and we know exactly what we can invest to hold long, long, long term.

2. Take the “Free” Money: If your employer matches pension contributions, take every cent. It is a 100% immediate return. Nothing beats that.

3. Tax Relief is Your Friend: Use the structures designed to help (like 401ks, ISAs, or Rürup plans). Depending where you live, certain types of pension plans will offer either a tax benefit at the contribution or at the payout stage.

4. Radical Simplicity: Keep things simple and low-cost. For example, you can invest in low-cost index funds (ETFs) that track the whole market. You own a tiny slice of everything rather than betting on one “winner.”

5. Consistency over Intensity: Invest regularly and evenly every month.

6. Doing Less is Doing More: The best investors are often the least active. They set it up, ignore the headlines, and let time do the heavy lifting.

What about ethical investing?

Just keep in mind: you are currently funding all the companies in the world by keeping money in a regular bank account. Unless your accounts are in very specific ethical banks, your bank will not set any limits on how or in what they invest YOUR money.

So be aware that not investing does not mean you are not participating. You are just not getting the benefits of it.

For those carrying discomfort about where their money goes, it is worth knowing that there are now broad index funds that exclude fossil fuels, weapons manufacturers, tobacco companies, or other sectors you may object to. On top of that you can actively invest in sectors like renewable energy to make sure your money goes to a more ethical set of companies. There is no perfect portfolio, but you do have choices and you owe it to yourself to learn about them.

It is possible to build future security without funding what you oppose.

An invitation to get curious

Rather than asking you to commit to a plan, I want to invite you to explore this for yourself.

If you have a moment this week, open a compound interest calculator and play with the numbers. Learn what it means to invest and keep it invested for decades. Here’s an example of a calculator we’ve have used a lot, but there are many. Notice what comes up.

For some people, the numbers bring relief. For others, they bring discomfort or a sharper awareness of how unequal starting points can be. All of this is worth noticing.

We will return to this in more detail in April, when I will hold a free webinar where we walk through some of the practical mechanics of actually getting started, all questions welcome.

For now, I hope this offers some perspective.

If you have built some stability, some buffer, some understanding of your finances, dealt with some high interest debt, it may be time to start supporting your future life and dreams with this long-term work.

With care,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

Ps. DearMoney is built on some really great resources out there that break this down clearly and beautifully. I mentioned before how much I love Ramit Sethi’s work on the very basics of getting started and the principles of long term investing, as well as Andrea Longton’s work and her book The Social Justice Investor.

What nobody could see was that I was personally terrified about money. Just persistently anxious and unclear about my own finances. Lost. And ashamed, though I wouldn’t have used that word then.

And I could see something else from that seat: how much people’s past with money shaped whether they received funding. There are many notable exceptions, but very often, the founders and leaders who’d grown up very securely asked differently, pitched differently, followed up differently.

So I veered hard off my expected career path to try and help fix an issue nobody was talking about but everyone I know was feeling deeply: our relationship with money. First for ourselves, with friends and colleagues, and now with many others and organisations through DearMoney.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far about money and social change:

1. Economic background shapes how you move through this work, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone

There’s a particular kind of confidence I kept noticing in funding spaces. A groundedness that said: if this fails, I’ll be fine. The people who had it took bigger creative risks, asked for more, pivoted more easily. The difference wasn’t only talent or commitment or even the quality of their ideas. It was also whether they had a safety net so they can try and fail.

This isn’t comfortable to say out loud. But it is worth fighting to shift it. Not by pretending class doesn’t exist, but by consciously building our own sense of groundedness if it isn’t just handed to you. One that doesn’t depend on inheritance or background.

DearMoney exists, in part, because I have learned that this kind of solid confidence and financial safety can be built, with care and in community.

2. Your money beliefs are old programming, not permanent facts

“I’m bad with money.” “Caring about earnings makes you less committed.” “Building wealth is for other kinds of people.”

I held versions of all of these. They felt like self-knowledge. They weren’t. They were patterns formed watching family or people in school, they were thoughts absorbed from the culture of the sector, calcified into identity over time.

Our brains are genuinely mutable - it is a real wonder of life. The relationship you have with money right now isn’t who you are. It’s the best strategy you developed with the information you had, probably when you were quite young. Neuroscience (and experience) shows us that change is available to you.

3. Financial anxiety doesn’t make you more committed. It just makes you more stuck.

What I’ve seen, in my own life and working with others at many levels of social change work, is that financial flexibility creates options. And options create power. The ability to leave the toxic situation. To say no to the misaligned client. To take the strategic risk that feels right rather than the safe one that pays the bills. To build something new that does not exist in the world yet and may even feel impossible to most.

I certainly stayed in situations I should have left sooner. We don’t talk about this enough: resourcing yourself is part of the work, not a distraction from it.

4. Stability takes time and isn’t linear.

The shift from fear to stability and imagination doesn’t happen all at once. It happens through understanding where the anxiety actually came from, building some solid structures and slowly learning to trust our own capacity to navigate money.

To be clear, amounts matter, of course, but it is not enough because it is no indicator of financial health when someone who earns a lot is riddled in credit card debt, anxiety, fear and has not built their financial future.

Understanding our own situation clearly enough to make real decisions, not reactive ones. That kind of agency turns out to be essential when you’re trying to change things in the world.

5. This isn’t only a “low income” problem, and understanding that dissolves a lot of shame

I built DearMoney initially for people who don’t come from wealth. But what I discovered quickly is that shame and anxiety around money are remarkably universal. Some of my most difficult periods actually came when I was earning more than I had before or after.

People create financial chaos at every income level, for all kinds of reasons. Most of them emotional. Most of them rooted in something old.

And when we bring people together across very different financial situations, they almost always want the same things: flexibility, safety, meaningful work, time to breathe, connection. Rarely money for its own sake. Lives that feel genuinely “wealthy” to them, whatever shape that takes for them. That turns out to be achievable at many different income levels.

What this work looks like

The DearMoney work we do with individuals and organisations holds both dimensions at once:

1. The emotional archaeology: understanding what money meant in your life, your family, where shame comes from, what you’ve never let yourself imagine.

2. The practical scaffolding: understanding your actual situation, building systems that fit your real life rather than someone else’s template, creating a personal way forward.

Both are necessary. Neither works without the other.

This places people on a stronger footing so they can shift from anxiety to agency and work on changing the world with confidence instead of fear. And again, resourcing yourself is part of the work, not a distraction from it.

Warmest,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

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Last time, we defined and got started on our Love Fund. Today, we’re moving into the engine room.

We often think managing money requires constant willpower, but the secret of the “Big 2026 Reset” is actually infrastructure combined with the deep work of understanding our own patterns. It’s about creating a system where your money knows where to go so you don’t have to decide every single day to be “good.”

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I realized I was exhausted from making decisions. Once I automated my savings, I stopped feeling like I was in a constant battle with my own bank account. – DearMoney Participant in the US

Think of your financial infrastructure like the plumbing in your house. You don’t want to carry buckets of water from the well every day; you want to turn on the tap and have it flow.

Here are some of the basic elements there is good consensus on, and of course, we dive much deeper into these in our DearMoney programs

1. Pay Yourself First

The biggest mistake we make is saving ‘what’s left over’ at the end of the month. Usually, nothing is left. Infrastructure means your ‘Love Fund’ or ‘Future Self’ payment happens the moment you get paid. Automate those payments and make sure they are taken care of before anything else.

2. Separate to Protect

If your savings stay in your basic expense or checking account, they will get spent. You need different “pots.” At a minimum, you need:

The Hub: Your main checking account for bills and daily life.

The Vault: A high-yield savings account (or for those of us in Europe, a savings account that is not the absolute bottom in terms of interest…) for your Love Fund, ideally at a different bank so it’s out of sight.

The Joy Pot: A space in your bank account for what gives you pleasure. The things that bring you deep happiness. This can be where you put a little money aside for delicious brunches with friends or a planned holiday. The point is, you need one area in your financial infrastructure that is for pure pleasure.

And for all you freelancers out there: you need a “source” pot, which is what you will pay yourself a “salary” from every month. We’ll dedicate a special DearMoney Letter to freelancers in March.

If that seems like a lot, most online banks now allow “spaces” within a bank account, so really the only absolute must-haves in separate accounts are your Hub and your Vault. You can get as simple or as complicated with this as you would like, these are just the very basics.

3. Follow Your Money Exercise - the flow of your money

Please indulge me and actually draw something with me: take a piece of paper and draw a map.

First, draw a circle for “Income.” Draw arrows to where that money needs to go (Rent, Love Fund, Groceries, etc.). Where does it come in and where does it all go?

Now, ask yourself: How much of this can I automate? Most banks allow you to set up recurring transfers.

Reflection

Which part of your ‘money plumbing’ is currently leaking? Is it a lack of automation, or are all your funds mixed in one confusing pot? Commit to moving one automated transfer this week, and get very clear on what accounts you need to make this work for you.

It may not be the most romantic part of DearMoney, but my goodness does it settle the nervous system once done.

Btw, we have looked at the patterns we found in this work and developed three “archetypes” of people and their relationship with money. It helps inform where you might need to focus and what your superpower is. If you are curious about which Money Archetype you are, you can take a 3-minute, 15-question assessment here - and no, you absolutely do not need to leave your email to get the results. We hope it is a helpful part of you getting on top of your finances.

Warmly,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

Last month, we spent time imagining our 2026 and setting the goals that make our hearts beat a little faster. But as we move from vision to reality, we have to talk about the foundation. After years of research discovering many versions of financial advice out there as we created DearMoney, there truly is nothing else the world of personal finance agrees on as much as this, whether they’re finance bros or the more thoughtful, psychology-based experts. No matter what path you choose, no matter your goals, the first action to take once you know your finances and truly the only “non-negotiable” in DearMoney is to create a buffer, or, an emergency fund if you don’t have one yet.

This is the single most impactful move you can make for your future (and current) self. It is the circuit breaker that takes the panic out of your finances.

In our DearMoney world, we like calling it a Love Fund, after one of our participants named it that. It is a gift of safety and time that you give to your future self. Here’s all you need to know to get started. It will take time - it honestly took me about a year to get to a good place, but please don’t let that discourage you. Read on to get started. And if you have one already, maybe it is time to check whether it is the right amount for you.

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“Having that money tucked away changed how I breathed. I stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.” – DearMoney Participant in Germany

Why does the Love Fund matter so much?

In my personal experience, building this fund for myself provided the single biggest shift in my sense of control over money, and it allowed me to take decisions in my life I otherwise would not have taken, like leaving a well-paid job to build other initiatives.

The research backs this up: A 2025 Vanguard study of over 12,400 people found that having at least €2,000 in emergency savings resulted in a 21% increase in financial wellbeing. That was a bigger impact than having higher income or substantially more assets. People without emergency savings spent nearly twice as much time each week (7.3 hours versus 3.7 hours) worrying about their finances. They also reported much higher stress: 51% experienced increased financial stress year-over-year, compared to just 15% of those with at least €2,000 saved.

What actually is an emergency or love fund?

A Love Fund is money set aside specifically for unexpected life events that are fairly substantial: your boiler breaks, you lose your job, your car dies, a family member needs help. It sits in a separate but accessible savings account that you don’t touch unless there’s a genuine emergency. You do not invest it.

It’s not for holidays. Not for a new coat. Those things are important, and you should save for them too, but separately. The emergency fund is your safety net. It’s what allows you to sleep at night.

How much do you actually need?

The standard advice is 3 to 6 months of living expenses. But here’s what matters: it really depends on your situation, and what would make you feel secure:

• If you’re a single-income household with kids, aim a bit higher, between 6-9 months.

• If your job is secure and you have family who could help in a crisis, 3 months is probably about right for you.

• If you’re self-employed or work in an unstable industry, perhaps push toward 6 months.

Start by calculating your actual monthly expenses from your Big Four work.

But here’s the key: when you’re calculating what you’d need in an emergency, you can strip out the nice-to-haves. Focus on rent, utilities, food, transport, minimum debt payments, and a small buffer. There is a super helpful simple calculator here to use to see how much you’d need roughly: https://www.nerdwallet.com/banking/learn/emergency-fund-calculator

One participant told us: “I realised my emergency number was €1,200 per month, not the €2,500 I normally spend. That made the goal feel possible instead of impossible.”

Write down your number and what that translates into as your love fund goal.

How to actually build it

1. Start small and start now. Start with saving until you reach €1,000 or one month of your expenses. That is already an incredible buffer for most of us. It is also the first step before paying off debt (see next section). If you do not have any buffer in place, this first month will be your first and only savings priority, above investing, dept payments and pension.

2. Automate it. Set up an automatic transfer on the day you get paid. Even if it’s €50 or €100 a month. Research on financial behaviour shows that automation removes the need for willpower, so it is key to remove any decisions you can.

3. Keep it separate. As said, put your Love Fund in a different bank account, ideally one that takes a day or two to access. Close enough to reach in a real emergency, far enough that you won’t dip into it for a Friday night out. So if you are someone who already has this money sitting somewhere in your bank account, move the amount to a separate account.

Important: The simultaneous debt question

People often ask: should I build an emergency fund or pay off debt first? The answer: both, but strategically. If you have high-interest debt, building a massive Love Fund while paying 19% interest can feel like running in sand.

In our experience it helps to build a small starter buffer first of one month of bare essential expenses. Doing it this way prevents you from going deeper into debt when something happens. Then, focus heavily on paying down your high-interest debt (anything over 8%), before returning to finish building your full 3-6-month Love Fund.

Next steps

So in very short, here’s how you start:

1. Add up your essential monthly expenses (rent, utilities, food, transport, minimum debt payments, small buffer)

2. Multiply by your target months (3, 6, or 9 depending on your situation)

3. Write it down: “My emergency fund goal is [amount]”

4. Decide on your first automatic monthly transfer amount, and calculate how long it will take you.

5. Set it up this week

At DearMoney we never talk in these directive terms, because all situations are different, we are not individual financial advisors, and we believe there are many ways to get on top of finances. The Love Fund is the exception. We all need that buffer.

How would it feel to wake up tomorrow knowing that even if your income stopped, you’d be okay for six months? Sit with that feeling of calm and get started.

In our next letter in our big 2026 reset series, we’ll talk about how to build your infrastructure of money to make everything as easy and clear as possible.

Warmly,

Gauri
Founder, DearMoney

Thank you for being with us! I am so grateful for every single one of you, and your reactions have been wonderful and heartwarming. This newsletter is part of our ‘big 2026 money reset’ series, giving you practical support as you redesign your finances this year, the DearMoney way. Would you help us by sharing this with one person who might need some support in this department, or on your socials?

I hope 2026 brings you joy, peace, and enough space to breathe.

I’ve been thinking about how we set goals at the start of a year. How easily we fall into targets that sound respectable rather than meaningful. And how soon we fall into the trap of pushing something too hard that is not quite right for us. So, I wanted to share a reminder about how we approach this in DearMoney and why your goals are allowed to be unmistakably yours.

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As you have all you need from the last letter to grapple with your current financials, and you have done some dreaming about what wealth means to you, this is about translating all that into goals that feel like yours.

The goal-setting trap

A participant in our workshop asked me a few weeks ago: ‘Is it okay if my financial goal isn’t about a number? I want to create a community space where people can make art together.’

A thousand times, yes.

Most financial goal-setting fails. Not because we lack discipline, but because the goals aren’t ours. We’ve been taught to want things that sound responsible: ‘Save 20% of income’, ‘Retire by 65’, “Build a six-figure portfolio.”

These aren’t bad goals. They’re just not your goals. They’re templates.

The Journal of Consumer Psychology found that abstract goals (‘save more money’) are far less motivating than specific, personal ones (‘save for a class in Japan’). Your brain processes them differently. One is a number. The other is a life you can imagine, feel. We work a lot with imagining what feeling runs through your body when you have achieved your goals. The beauty is that your body does not know the difference between you imagining it and it actually happening, and it allows you to vividly connect to what you set out to do.

The CFPB in the US found that financial wellbeing comes down to four elements:

1. Feeling in control day-to-day;

2. Being able to absorb a shock;

3. The financial freedom to make choices; and

4. Being on track to meet future financial goals.

We work through all four at DearMoney.

Short-term: Building trust with yourself (6-12 months)

Your short-term goals are about trust and stability. Almost every person who wrote ‘emergency fund’ as their short-term goal was thinking about flexibility or peace of mind, about answering the phone or opening mail without dread. More about that crucial emergency fund (or “love fund” as someone called it) in our next Substack.

This short-term goal setting connects to the first steps you need to take to feel safe and grounded, translated into specific numbers.

One participant put it perfectly: ‘Not feel guilt when spending and have a sense of financial freedom.’ And when prompted to make this specific and concrete, as short-term goals should be, he made it, ‘To not feel guilty when I spend because every month I contribute to a small emergency pot and in 6 months this will cover three months of salary.’

Medium-term: The courage goals (2-5 years)

This is where people admit what they really want.

‘Work in a field I love’, ‘Live between two countries’, ‘No longer financially dependent on family.’

These are independence declarations. Having enough stability to take risks. Enough security to make choices that seem impractical but are the juiciest.

Psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky found that the happiest people aren’t those who achieve all their goals, but those whose goals come from within, not from what they think they should want. They should be genuinely based on our needs and desires. We help you figure this out in our work together.

Long-term: The life you’re building (5+ years)

Here’s what struck me about our participants’ long-term visions: almost none were about being rich for the sake of it. They were about being free, safe, at peace. Some real-life examples:

‘Live in a beautiful place, near people I love, with the option to spend money on organic food and meals out without anxiety.’

‘Create a community space, have freedom to experiment and travel.’

‘To be rooted and to be free. Live somewhere beautiful with people I love nearby. To begin to see the fruits of my labour.’

See the pattern? Connection. Beauty. Generosity. Creative freedom. Time. It’s almost as if none of this is really about money. ;)

Permission slip

Your financial goals don’t have to look like anyone else’s.

It is wonderful to want to retire in Portugal. You absolutely are allowed to want to renovate your mom’s house in Sweden. You can prioritise travel over investments. You can want to spend money on organic food and beautiful things.

The only requirement: they’re yours. They make you feel more alive.

We work on building the safe foundations for you to be able to dream outrageously on top of those. We know how hard it is to even imagine, and we know it feels very far away.

A gentle next step (if you want company)

If you’d like to explore this work with a bit more structure and company, we’re hosting two free one-hour DearMoney webinars in February. They’re reflective and practical, and you’re welcome to join quietly or actively, camera on or off.

1. Getting on top of your finances without losing yourself: Friday, 13 February at 5 PM CET / 4 PM UK / 11 AM New York

A practical conversation about creating calm and clarity with money, without hustle culture or becoming someone you don’t recognise.

Register here

2. Why money makes us anxious even when we are “doing fine”: Friday, 27 February at 5 PM CET / 4 PM UK / 11 AM New York

A shame-free exploration of why money anxiety persists, and what actually helps it soften over time.

Register here

Your practice

Write one goal for each timeframe. Make it concrete, and a little outrageous. Then ask: If I achieved all three, what would a random Tuesday morning feel like? Who would I call to celebrate?

Warmly,

Gauri
Founder, DearMoney

P.S. We’ll continue our series on the Big 2026 Money Reset with a detailed blueprint for an emergency fund in our next letter.

Resources:

• Book: “The Soul of Money” by Lynne Twist

• Article: “The Power of Small Wins” - Harvard Business Review https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-power-of-small-wins

Happy 2026! We share this practical letter for everyone who wants to kick off the new year preparing the ground for a fresh financial start. Make sure you pair it with a comfy blanket and hot chocolate.

There’s a moment that happens for almost everyone in our Dear Money sessions when someone finally looks at their complete financial picture for the first time. That moment, a first understanding of what is actually happening, that first “taming of the monster” as someone put it, is what this letter is about: the very best way to start if you want to bring peace into your finances and shift your relationship with money.

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The avoidance trap

Financial anxiety creates a tricky cycle. When we feel overwhelmed by money, our instinct is to look away. We delay payments. We avoid checking balances. We let bills pile up unopened.

It makes sense: avoidance provides immediate relief. But here’s what a study in Frontiers in Psychology found: avoidance doesn’t just fail to solve the problem, it actually makes anxiety worse over time. It prevents the learning and understanding that could genuinely help.

One participant shared: “I didn’t answer the phone and I wouldn’t open the mail, and debt after debt stacked up. Finally facing it was terrifying, but the relief was pretty immediate.”

The Big Four

So what does ‘looking directly’ at your finances actually mean?

At DearMoney, we’ve found that there are four essential pieces of information that, together, create a complete picture of your financial life. We call them “The Big Four”:

1. What you spend: your monthly and annual expenses. Tracking your expenses for one month is part of the work and incredibly powerful for not only understanding your patterns but for other calculations later.

2. Where it lives: all your accounts, including current, savings, credit cards, and pensions.

3. What you owe: any debt, from credit cards to student loans to mortgages, and at what interest rates.

4. What you have saved: your savings, investments, and retirement funds, including any pension pots you might have via past employers.

These four categories aren’t complicated, but gathering them can feel daunting if you’ve been avoiding them. And that’s okay. This isn’t about judgment. It’s about clarity.

Why this matters

Understanding these four things does something powerful: it transforms vague anxiety into specific information.

Instead of “I’m bad with money,” you can say “I spend €300 more than I make each month”. Instead of “I’m drowning in debt,” you can say “I owe €5,000 at 18% interest, which means €75 in interest charges monthly.”

Specific problems have specific solutions. Vague dread just sits in your stomach.

Research consistently shows that people who track their finances experience less financial stress – not because their situations magically improve, but because they’re no longer operating in the dark.

Getting started

If you’re ready to gather your Big Four, here’s how to approach it gently:

Start with what you spend. Track everything for a month, everything, including the coffee and the streaming subscriptions. Use whatever method works for you: a notebook, a spreadsheet, an app. The tool doesn’t matter, consistency does. Just one month.

Don’t forget irregular expenses. That annual insurance payment, birthday gifts, holiday spending: break them down into monthly amounts so you see the true picture.

Then map where your money lives. List every account: your current account, savings accounts, credit cards, pension pots, investment accounts. Write down the balances.

Next, face what you owe. List any debt with the total amount and the interest rate. This step can feel heavy, but remember: debt is just information. It’s not a moral failing, you just need this information to take the right steps forward.

Finally, acknowledge what you’ve saved. This includes obvious things like savings accounts, but also pensions, investments, even that cash you’ve set aside for a specific goal. Give yourself credit for what you’ve already built and learn what exactly has already built up.

‘Less scary’

Here’s what we’ve seen happen when people complete their Big Four: the anxiety doesn’t disappear entirely, of course, but it changes. It becomes workable.

This is what we mean by ‘you cannot calm what you cannot see’. Once you can see your financial reality clearly – without the distortion of avoidance or shame – you can begin to work with it.

And that’s not just philosophy. Research on anxiety interventions shows that exposure combined with information is one of the most effective ways to reduce anxiety. Not avoiding the scary thing, but looking at it clearly, understanding it, and realising it’s manageable.

Moving forward

In our next letter, we’ll talk about something essential and very appropriate for the new year: how to translate your imagined, beautiful life into effective goals.

But for now, if you’re ready, gather your Big Four. Take your time. Be kind to yourself. And remember: knowledge is power.

Warmly,
Gauri
Founder, DearMoney

Resources that we find helpful:

• Audio: Farnoosh Torabi on “How to Feel In Control Of Your Money” - Perfect for addressing the anxiety and avoidance themes in the letter

• Book: “Women with Money: The Judgement-Free Guide to Creating the Joyful, Less Stressed, Purposeful Life You Want with the Money You Have” by Jean Chatzky

• DearMoney expense tracker

In our last letter, we explored the power of imagining a different future and how simply naming what you want can set the stage for a real shift. If you missed it, you can read it here:

Happy holidays for those of you who celebrate this time of year! We asked people who went through the DearMoney program what they felt was the biggest gift of the work, and this letter to you is based on their answers. May it be a gift to you as well this season.

Their number one answer was: the possibility of imagining a different future.

We do everything backwards with money.

We start with what we can’t afford. What we need to cut. What we’re doing wrong. We build our entire financial life around restriction before we’ve even asked ourselves what we want to expand toward.

What if we flipped it?

What do you want money for in the first place?

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The imagination problem

Just last week, a wonderful friend who is from an immigrant family in Australia said: “I cannot for the life of me imagine what I desire or want, but ask me how to figure out how to stretch 100 dollars and I can give you 15 excel sheets.”

It’s not that we don’t have dreams, it’s that we’ve been trained out of them. ‘Be realistic’ becomes ‘Don’t want too much.’ ‘Be grateful’ becomes ‘Don’t ask for more.’

Research bears this out, too. Studies have found that people experiencing economic scarcity perceive the future as more distant – it literally feels farther away when you’re worried about this month’s rent. Australian researchers found that financially disadvantaged students consistently report lower educational aspirations than their peers, not because they’re less capable, but because they can’t picture themselves in certain futures.

This isn’t a personal failing; at DearMoney we call it “learned limitation”.

The imagination exercise

Before we talk about budgets or savings rates or debt payoff (we’ll get there!), I want you to do something that might feel uncomfortable: dream big.

Set aside an hour. Write about your life 10 years from now. The life you really, deeply want and desire. Let your mind roll through these categories and see what comes up:

Work: What does Monday morning feel like? Are you excited? Calm? Do you work from home, an office, a studio, a garden? What problems do you solve? Who do you work with? What kind of impact do you make?

Health: How does your body feel when you wake up? What movement brings you joy? How do you nourish yourself? What does rest look like?

Relationships: Who’s at your dinner table? Who do you call when something wonderful happens? How often do you see the people you love? What rituals do you share?

Home: What do you see when you look out your window? What does your space feel like – cozy, spacious, minimal, abundant? Where do you feel most yourself?

Time: What does a perfect ordinary Tuesday look like? What about a perfect weekend? What do you do when no one’s watching and nothing’s required?

And anything else you can imagine!

Don’t edit. Don’t think about how. And whatever you do, DON’T be reasonable.

What people actually write

The best part is hearing the many examples that come from others, it is deeply fun and inspiring. Here are some real examples:

“I wake up without an alarm. I make coffee slowly. I have time to read before starting work.”

“My parents visit without financial stress. I can pay for their dinner without checking my bank balance.”

“I work four days a week on projects that matter. I spend Fridays in my garden.”

“I live near water. I can walk to get good bread. My friends drop by without planning.”

Notice what’s missing? How do these feel to you? The dreams are smaller and bigger than you’d think at the same time. A really clear pattern emerges: Time. Space. Choice. Freedom. Connection.

The permission structure

A participant once told me: “I realised I was saving for a retirement I couldn’t even imagine while denying myself the books that make me feel happy today.”

This isn’t about YOLO spending or ignoring your future. It’s about knowing what you’re building toward. When you can see the life you want, the daily choices become clearer. The guilt drops away when spending aligns with the vision. We then translate this into practical work (see our next Letters!).

Why this matters

We start with dreams because restriction without direction is just deprivation.

If you don’t know you want to live by water, you’ll never make the choices that get you there. If you don’t admit you value convenience over luxury, you’ll feel guilty about every grocery delivery while wondering why you never feel satisfied.

Your numbers should serve your life. Not the other way around.

Next steps

Next week, we’ll talk about the Big Four – the complete picture of your financial reality. Because once you know where you’re going, you need to know where you’re starting from.

But first: imagine! It’s much more powerful than you think.

You’re allowed to want a different life. You’re allowed to imagine it in vivid, delicious detail.

Warmly,

Gauri

Founder, DearMoney

P.S. – One participant wrote that their dream was to “own enough books that I need a library ladder.” Another wanted to “have fresh flowers every week without thinking about it.” This is definitely one of mine. What’s yours?

In our previous DearMoney Letter, From Survival Brain to Learning Brain, we explored why so many of us feel anxious or shut down around money, and how shifting into a calmer, learning state makes change possible. If that sounds helpful to you, find it below.

A transformative read