Your Grandmother's Money Story Is Still Controlling Your Finances

By Molly Benjamin, Founder of Ladies Finance Club

Listen to the full podcast here.

The Money Story You Never Knew You Had

Here's a question worth sitting with: when did you first decide that money was complicated, scary, or simply not for you? Chances are, the answer reaches further back than your first pay cheque or even your first piggy bank.

In this episode, we dig deep into the generational roots of our money mindset, exploring how the beliefs, fears, and habits passed down through the women in our families are quietly running the show. And once you understand this, so much starts to make sense.

Jess's new book, Get Growing, opens with a chapter called "Dirt" because before anything can grow, you have to understand the ground you're standing in. That ground, she argues, has been shaped by decades of laws, social norms, and lived experiences that locked women out of financial independence entirely.

When the System Was Built Against Us

As Jess researched her book, she found herself increasingly confronted by just how deliberately and systematically women were excluded from wealth. Her own grandmother, a multilingual manager of a Japanese engineering company, by any measure a remarkable woman, couldn't open a bank account without a male signature. Couldn't access a mortgage in her own name. Despite her intelligence and capability, she was legally shut out of financial autonomy.

These weren't just policies from another era. They were the backdrop against which an entire generation of women formed their understanding of money and then passed it on to their daughters. Research suggests our money mindset is largely formed by the age of seven. Think about that. By the time we're learning to read properly, our core beliefs about savings, debt, abundance, and scarcity are already taking shape.

So if your mother learned about money in a household shaped by constraint, fear, or exclusion and her mother before her navigated a world that didn't legally allow women financial freedom, it's not hard to trace the line to the anxiety you might feel looking at your bank balance today. This is generational inheritance at work, and most of us don't even know it's happening.

The Beliefs We Carry Without Realising

Two of the most common inherited money beliefs Jess sees in her clients are "money isn't for me" and "I'll start when I feel ready." They might sound different, but they lead to the same place: inaction. And inaction, when it comes to investing, saving, and building wealth, is its own kind of financial decision, just one made by default rather than by choice.

The scarcity mindset runs deep too. Many women grew up witnessing money as a source of conflict;  hushed arguments at the kitchen table, the stress of bills, the fear that there was never quite enough. Our clever brains, built for survival, filed all of that away as danger. No wonder so many of us feel a spike of dread when we open our banking app. Our nervous system genuinely believes it's protecting us.

Jess is also refreshingly frank about the cultural overlay. TV shows, advertising, tabloid culture;  they've all worked overtime to portray women as impulsive spenders who can't be trusted with their own finances. It's not subtle, and it's not accidental. When the people with the most wealth also control the media narrative, the message that "this isn't your domain" gets amplified in ways most of us absorb without question.

Finding Your Hot Iron Moment

One of the most powerful exercises from Jess's book is what she calls the "hot iron moment." When she was a child, her mother warned her not to touch the iron. She touched it anyway. She hasn't been near one since.

We all have a financial version of this; that early, visceral memory that told our subconscious what money means and what it costs us. It might be the moment you heard your parents fighting about debt. The birthday when you were told you couldn't have what you wanted. The shame of a declined card. These memories don't just fade; they become the lens through which we make every financial decision, often for years.

Identifying yours is the first step. Jess encourages you to go back, sit with it, and ask: what did I decide about money in that moment? What did I decide about myself? From there, rather than judging yourself for those beliefs, you can thank your brain for doing its job and then gently let it know you're ready to take the wheel.

Meet Your Money Monster

Once you've found your hot iron moment, Jess introduces one of the most fun and genuinely useful tools in her toolkit: the money monster. The idea is to give your unhelpful financial patterns a name and a personality, creating some separation between who you are and how you sometimes behave with money.

Jess's own is called Stacey the Staller, a master of procrastination who shows up whenever a big financial decision looms and suddenly everything else seems more urgent. For some women it's Bougie Barbara, who genuinely believes she deserves that business class upgrade (and she might, but does she deserve freedom and options more?). For others it's Anxious Annie, who gets so paralysed by the fear of making the wrong investing choice that she makes no choice at all, and then feels the guilt of that for months.

Naming these patterns doesn't mean excusing them. It means understanding when they show up, what triggers them, and how to redirect before they take over. Because here's the truth: you can know all the right habits around budgeting, savings, and investing, but if your money monster is making the decisions, the knowledge doesn't matter.

Building a New Identity with Money

Jess's final piece of advice is one that resonates long after the conversation ends: create an alter ego. Not a fantasy version of yourself with no debt and a passive income portfolio, but a version of you living your exact life right now; same job, same commitments, same tired Tuesday evenings, who simply makes different choices.

This is rooted in James Clear's identity-based approach to habits. Real, lasting change doesn't start with outcomes ("I want to save $20,000"). It starts with identity ("I'm someone who takes care of her financial future"). Give your alter ego a name, a vibe, even a pair of metaphorical glasses. Ask yourself: what would she do with this extra $50? Would she check her super? Would she spend 20 minutes on her budget this Sunday? Confidence with money is built one small, identity-consistent action at a time.

And when it all feels heavy, because sometimes it genuinely does, Jess's reminder is a warm one: celebrate every single win. Not with a splurge, but with a moment of real acknowledgment. Paid off your credit card? That matters. Hit your first savings milestone? That's not nothing. The path to financial empowerment is long and it winds. Treating yourself like your own best friend along the way isn't indulgence, it's what makes the whole thing sustainable.

This Is Where Change Actually Starts

None of this is about blame. Not of your mother, your grandmother, or yourself. It's about context. When you understand the system you grew up inside, when you can see how the feminist fight for financial equality is still, right now, playing out in your own relationship with money, something shifts. The shame loosens. The patterns start to look less like personal failings and more like inherited ones, which means they can be unlearned.

You are in a relationship with money for the rest of your life. It will influence your choices, your freedom, your options, and your legacy. The question isn't whether that relationship exists, it's whether you're going to be the one running it.

Jess's book Get Growing is available now on Booktopia, Amazon, and at all good bookstores. And if you're ready to take the next step with your own finances, visit the Ladies Finance Club directory to find trusted financial advisors, mortgage brokers, and more.

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