Why Your Relationship with Money is More Complicated Than You Think (And How to Fix It)

By Molly Benjamin, Founder of Ladies Finance Club

Listen to the full podcast here.

If you have ever opened a budgeting app, lasted about three days, then quietly deleted it and never spoke of it again, this episode is for you. In one of our most candid conversations yet, we sat down with Angela and Rachel, two New Zealand-based women who have spent a decade working at the intersection of money psychology and gender equity. They are the founders of High Money, a therapist-designed online course, and the authors of the newly released number one bestseller Money, Money, Money: How to Reset Your Money Mindset and Find Financial Freedom. And honestly, the conversation was one of those ones you want to forward to your entire group chat.

What struck me most is where their book begins: not with a spreadsheet, not with an investment strategy, but with the question nobody else seems to be asking. How do you actually feel about money? It sounds simple, but for so many women, that question opens up something huge.

It is Not Just You. The System Was Never Designed For Us.

One of the most powerful things Angela and Rachel do in their work is give women permission to stop blaming themselves. Working as a gender equity specialist, Angela brings what she describes as a systemic lens to financial wellbeing. She talks about the gender pay gap, the gender retirement gap, the pink tax, and all the other structural forces quietly diverting money away from women's pockets every single day.

"We heard a lot of women say, I am just really bad with money," she shared. "And we would say, are you? Or are there so many things diverting money away from you that maybe it is not you at all?"

That reframe alone can shift something. Because the truth is, the finance system was built without women in mind. That is not a feeling. That is a fact. And once you understand the systemic issues at play, your complicated feelings about money start to make a lot more sense.

The pink tax is a good example of this in action. You know, the one where women's razors cost more than men's, where menstrual products add up year after year. Rachel shared research showing it amounts to somewhere between $200,000 and $250,000 over a lifetime. A quarter of a million dollars. And knowing that did not make her feel defeated. It made her furious in the most galvanising, I-am-going-to-get-my-financial-life-sorted kind of way.

The Money Psychology Piece Nobody Talks About

Rachel is a therapist as well as a co-founder, and she brings that lens beautifully to the money mindset conversation. She described her own early relationship with money as treating it in a way she would never treat a person, bingeing on purchases and then refusing to look at her bank account for two weeks out of pure shame. Sound familiar to anyone?

What shifted things for her was not finding the perfect budget template. It was doing the inner work, exploring her money psychology, and getting clear on the stories she had been telling herself. Once she did that, she described it as a floodgate opening. Suddenly the investing podcasts were interesting. Suddenly the apps made sense.

This is exactly what I see time and again with Ladies Finance Club members. We can teach you how to invest. We can teach you how to get out of debt. But until the mindset work happens, the practical stuff rarely sticks.

High Net Worth Women Struggle Too

A common assumption is that complicated feelings about money only affect women who do not have enough of it. Angela and Rachel would gently push back on that. Their work with high net worth women reveals a completely different but equally real set of challenges around financial wellbeing.

Rachel shared a story from her time working in California, where she met a woman chopping onions in a kitchen and chatting about how hard it was to pay rent. She later found out this woman was from British royalty. She was hiding out, pretending to be broke, because having money felt like a barrier to real connection.

Closer to home, Angela described a woman who had inherited half a million dollars but was spending only $20 a week on herself. She could not bring herself to touch the money. It had come from a loss, and spending it felt wrong, like it was not truly hers. These are the kinds of deeply layered beliefs and emotions that financial education alone simply cannot reach.

There is also the quiet financial invisibility that can happen within relationships. Angela noted how common it is for women, even in high-earning households, to be kept out of the bigger financial decisions. Managing the household budget, yes. Understanding where the investments are going, knowing the full picture of the family's wealth? Often not. And if that relationship ends, the consequences for women can be severe.

Trauma, Money, and the Snowball Effect

One of the most moving parts of this conversation was when Rachel walked through the way early trauma can shape a woman's entire financial trajectory. Not in an abstract way but in a real, step-by-step illustration of how difficult beginnings can compound into a lifetime of financial disadvantage through no fault of her own.

What Angela added to this was something behavioural economists call tunnelling: when you are in survival mode, your capacity to make good long-term decisions is genuinely impaired. It is not laziness or irresponsibility. It is what trauma does to the nervous system. Understanding that, really understanding it, is part of what makes their approach to financial education so different.

The Moment That Changes Everything (The Exercise to Try This Week)

In the High Money course, there is an exercise where participants quite literally talk to money. You grab an object or you ask a friend to play the role of money, and you have a direct conversation with it. As strange as that might sound, Rachel described women having life-changing realisations in the space of just a few minutes.

One story that really stayed with me: a 53-year-old woman doing the exercise, who suddenly realised she had been waiting her whole life for someone to come and save her financially. And in that moment she thought, no one is coming. I have been telling myself this story for decades. So I am going to save myself. The next session, she turned up with her laptop open, live-tracking her bank feed into a budgeting app. Completely transformed.

I have heard almost identical stories at our Ladies Finance Club events. The prince is not coming. And that realisation, as confronting as it can feel, is often the most liberating thing a woman can hear.

What the Research Actually Found

Angela and Rachel commissioned a research study called Rich in Context, spanning both Australia and New Zealand, looking at the sociocultural factors that shape women's financial wellbeing. A few of the findings were surprising, and one in particular stopped me.

Across all genders, people felt more comfortable talking to their mothers about money than their fathers. Not necessarily because mums were giving investing advice, but because they were the ones holding the emotional space for those conversations. Angela was excited by this. What would financial education and financial services look like if they were designed with that kind of relationship at the centre?

The research also confirmed that 30 per cent of people have no financial plan at all. Not a rough sketch. Nothing. Just a vague hope that things will somehow work out, or that the big break will come. Rachel admitted she was once firmly in that camp, banking on the success of an as-yet-unmade film to sort out her finances. The wealth transfer data coming down the line makes all of this even more urgent: women are about to inherit significant wealth, and how prepared we are to receive and steward that matters enormously.

What Would They Say to the Financial Services Boardroom?

We asked both Angela and Rachel what they would say if they had five minutes in front of a financial services boardroom, given how often the industry tries to target women with pink branding and soft language.

Angela's message was direct. Women are about to inherit enormous amounts of wealth through the coming wealth transfer, and truly understanding us is going to define which businesses thrive. Neglect us at your peril.

Rachel was equally clear. Women are immune to pink flowers. We have grown up in the Princess Industrial Complex. We see straight through it. The businesses that will win are the ones willing to genuinely seek to understand what women actually face, not what they imagine we face.

One Money Move You Can Make This Week

If you take nothing else from this episode, take this. Talk to your friends about money. Not just the practical stuff, though absolutely do that too, but the feelings. The embarrassing stories. The fears. The weird beliefs you have been carrying around since childhood. Tell someone your money story.

Rachel's suggestion for this week is to find a friend and try the money conversation exercise. Give money a voice. Ask it what it thinks of you. Listen to what comes up. It sounds a little unusual, but the stories coming out of the High Money community suggest it is one of the most powerful things you can do for your relationship with money and with yourself.

Where to Find the Book

Money, Money, Money by Angela and Rachel is available now in all good bookstores and as an ebook. If you are in Melbourne, they are hosting a launch event at Readings bookstore in Carlton on the 7th of May and would love to see you there.

Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, and if you’re looking for a trusted financial adviser or mortgage broker to help put any of this into action, check out the new Ladies Finance Club Directory.