Episode 56: Money on Your Mind: Boost Your Financial Confidence – Melissa Leong

When was the last time you talked in depth about your money? Research shows talking about finances can build financial confidence, and lead to better financial outcomes. But you need to know where to start.

On this episode of the REAL TIME podcast we’re joined by Melissa Leong, best-selling author and resident money expert on the daytime talk show, The Social, to dive deeper into the connection between money and happiness, how we use emotion over logic when it comes to financial decision making, some of the most common mistakes made by self-employed individuals, and how being more financially aware can help REALTORS® in their businesses.

Transcript

Erin Davis: What if I told you money can buy happiness, but maybe not in the way you expect? Hi, I'm Erin Davis, and welcome to REAL TIME, the podcast for REALTORS® brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association.

Erin: Today we're joined by Melissa Leong, bestselling author and resident money expert on the daytime talk show, The Social, to talk about how financial awareness can be the key to a happy life. Melissa, welcome. It's so good to have you here today. Thank you for joining us.

Melissa Leong: Thank you so much for having me.

Erin: I think it's probably safe to say that money is a taboo topic to a lot of people, and we don't talk about it enough. There is a financial awareness that seems somehow to be missing. Can you walk us through financial awareness and how that relates to financial literacy?

Melissa: Most people focus on financial literacy as this, "Oh, we need to have our children learn more about it in school, and we need to make sure that more people are empowered with the knowledge of how to manage their money and make better decisions because they'll have the facts." I think that's important. I am a financial literacy champion, so absolutely I think that's important. I love that you talked about financial awareness because just because you know something, it doesn't mean you always do what you know.

Why I love to also talk about financial awareness as a sister to financial literacy is yes, we can know everything there is to know about personal finance. That doesn't mean we're going to always make the right decisions when it comes to, financial empowerment and structuring our money in a way that best gives us the opportunities and the life that we want to live. It's two things to keep in your back pocket.

Erin: Okay, so let's dig into that a little bit. Why don't we do things like save, for example, even when we know that it's right? We have so much cognitive dissonance in our lives and so many other places that could be 17 podcasts. Let's talk about this in this episode and why don't we do what's right, like save?

Melissa: This topic could fill volumes. There are many incredible, incredibly smart individuals who are devoting their lives to neuroeconomics or behavioral economics, which is just the study of why we do what we do when it comes to money. I would love just to highlight maybe quickly three of them. One of the three things, some things that what causes us to behave strangely when it comes to money because we're not always rational. We're human beings and there are wonderful quirks to us.

One of the things is that we do not operate well under stress. There's a part of our brain that regulates the long-term repercussions of our actions, which you need when figuring out money decisions. That goes offline when you are stressed, which is fascinating because as you know, money is a stressful topic for many, many people. It's the top thing that we stress about. It's what causes people to lose sleep at night, according to many surveys year after year. It's the top predictor of strife and conflict and separation in relationships.