The Problem of Money, with Tim Malnick and Shabbar Kassam

The Meaningful Money Personal Finance Podcast

Host Pete sits down with financial planner Shabbar Kasslam and organizational psychologist Tim Malnick to discuss the psychological dimensio

Key takeaways

• Shabbar Kassam shares how losing his family home during his teens created long-term psychological imprints on his relationship with money.
• Tim Malnick explains the concept of 'projection,' where our intense reactions to money or others reflect unaddressed parts of ourselves.
• The distinction between 'money path moves' (acting for profit/security) and 'life path moves' (acting for personal fulfillment) is central to psychological growth.
• Financial planning should evolve beyond spreadsheets to include investments in health, relationships, and community connection.
• Unconscious financial narratives can lead to a 'split identity,' where individuals restrict their own opportunities to maintain a specific self-image like being 'the sensible one.'

Main topics

• Psychology of money
• Childhood financial trauma
• Money as a psychological mirror

Notable quotes

Money is not a problem. Money is just a thing.

Conclusion

The episode offers a profound shift in perspective, encouraging listen

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi folks, and welcome to the Meaningful Money podcast. This is session number 637, and no Rog today, just me, but me and two friends of mine, Shabak and Sam, who is a fellow financial planner and a longstanding friend of mine, and an organizational psychologist called Tim Malnick. And Shabak and Tim, they have a podcast called The Problem of Money, 60-odd episodes in now, and it's... They're doing great work really digging into psychology around money, and they're doing some fantastic work over there. So I wanted to bring them on. We ended up talking about, I want to say all sorts, but that's not strictly true, really focusing on why money brings certain things out of us, you know, how it... It brings positive and negative emotions, how it sort of seems to amplify lessons we learned early on in life. It's a great conversation. I sent the guys a list of questions in advance and we got to about three or four of them. No great surprise because we dig into the conversation. And obviously, you've got in Shabba and myself, very experienced longstanding financial planners. And in Tim, a deeply qualified and experienced psychologist who specializes in at least... you know, in the subject that we're talking about. So it's a great conversation. Tim brings a level of kind of vocabulary and understanding to the subject that I'm just deeply in awe of. So I'm definitely going to get him back. But for now, here's my conversation with Tim and Shabba on the problem of money. It's my pleasure to welcome Shabba Kassam and Tim Malnick to Meaningful Money. Gentlemen, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Speaker 3 (1:39) Very good. Hi. I'm good, Pete. Thank you. Speaker 1 (1:42) We're sending good vibes to my sound card, which just had a glitch. So we're just hoping that we can get through this. And if not, we'll rearrange. But Shabba, we've known each other for a bit. You're how many years into Lumos Financial now? Speaker 3 (1:53) So I started 2021. So, yeah, five and a bit years. It Speaker 1 (1:58) has. Speaker 3 (1:59) And I think we spoke quite early on in my journey, sort of moving to Lumos. Yeah, you came on Speaker 1 (2:06) to Mean for Money. We did an episode, didn't we? Yeah, Speaker 3 (2:09) Money and Religion, which was great. Quite a risky topic back then when we were discussing it and not one that's often talked about. Speaker 1 (2:18) And then you got in touch a couple of years now because you guys have, then it was very early days in your own podcast, Problem of Money, but now you're 60 episodes Speaker 2 (2:29) in, I think? Speaker 3 (2:30) 63 episodes Speaker 1 (2:32) in, yeah. So, Tim, do you want to just give us a little bit of your background, sort of who you are, what you do? Speaker 2 (2:39) Yes, professionally I'm an organisation psychologist, so training the psychology of people, work, organisations. I work as a coach one-to-one and a facilitator of groups and teams. And generally my work is about helping people go deep and often rethink business as usual. So I often work with people who are looking at the state of the world, thinking, oh, it's not going that well really, environmentally, socially, politically. and are trying through their work to do something about it. So I'm not a finance guy, but in the course of working with people trying to change things at a deep level, I came across some very interesting money work, and that's sort of, I think, what we'll discuss and how I've connected with Shabba. Speaker 1 (3:26) So 63 episodes in. Speaker 1 (3:29) going back to the start what kind of itch were you guys trying to scratch what was the trigger for starting this Speaker 2 (3:35) well I'll hand to Shabba because actually the podcast exists because he suggested it and he invited the conversations yeah Speaker 3 (3:44) thanks Tim okay well yeah I'll try and give the sort of the shortened version but basically basically I've shall I say been troubled by the topic of money and my own behaviors, interactions with money spanning decades. I think it goes back to sort of my mid-teens when I kind of saw my dad try and fail at an entrepreneurial venture, a lot of debt. We ended up losing our family home. And I spent a decade in this kind of, I would say, tense environment around money, had a massive impact on me going into my sort of 20s. I kind of just started shunning away from even talking about money, wanting to accumulate money. I would do just enough to sort of survive. And I just couldn't figure out what was going on. And then someone introduced me to Tim and said, I think it'd be really useful for you to go on one of his workshops. So I did that. And that suddenly opened up sort of Pandora's box for me, where I suddenly started to see. the sort of the unconscious behaviors and patterns that was that were prevalent in my life and all of the sort of unsaid things and I was like more and more I looked at it the more and more I realized that everyone's kind of got some sort of money dance or weird relationship with money and I just became fascinated at my inability to be able to shift but also quite sort of intrigued as to why this thing that we use every day has such a hold on us and so you know me and Tim kept in contact I was always a big fan of his work and then I think one day I just came to Tim and I said Tim I'd really love for us to sort of go on a journey together where I get to explore this in more detail with you alongside and we can just dive into to stuff that happens every day in my professional and personal life and the things that I see around me and would you be up for it and uh yeah Tim said yeah that sounds great but I think the reason why he agreed to it is probably at the crux of the work that we do and I'll let Tim sort of explain why I Speaker 2 (6:09) was going to say exactly the same thing so I hope it's all right to share this about your previous podcast Shabba can I share what you said to me Speaker 3 (6:17) Yes. Speaker 2 (6:18) So Shabba had come on one of my workshops where we go deep into the unconscious stuff around money. And then we'd have some follow up sessions. And you're also part of a community I have as well for people who want to continue this work. And then he came up with this. Yeah, I want to do a podcast on this. And he said two things that made me say yes. Speaker 2 (6:39) The first thing you said is I used to have a podcast, but I realised I wasn't that excited about what we were talking about. I was doing it as a business thing. I was doing it as a marketing thing. And in our work, we kind of call that a money path move. You know, we do all of this stuff in our lives, not because it's our passion, not because it brings us alive, not because it's some kind of real creative thing, but because we think we should or it's sensible, we get the money. But he said, but actually, I really want to talk about this stuff with you. And in my work, I'm often listening out for what I call that life path impulse. And I don't really care what it is. And I don't really care to start with whether it's going to make anyone any money. I'm interested what I listen out for is, does it bring this person alive? Do their eyes light up? And if any move, whether it's a new business or a change in life or change in career, or in this case, let's do a podcast. If I feel like it's supporting a life path move, if I possibly can, I will say yes. So it's been a pure life path move and we're still enjoying it. And we hope other people do too, really. Well, Speaker 1 (7:48) 63 episodes in, it's Speaker 2 (7:50) a Speaker 1 (7:50) good job, man. I don't think you'd have carried on this long if you weren't enjoying it. So the problem of money is the title. of the podcast so let's kind of spin that around and ask why why is money so problematic shall we your sort of personal experience obviously speaks to this but generally speaking why is it such an issue well Speaker 2 (8:07) maybe i can start and you can build from your experience um so the phrase the problem of money comes from a book money and the meaning of life by a american philosopher called jacob needleman who i know you know And one of the things we say, and we mentioned this earlier in the podcast, is it's very important. There is no problem with money. Speaker 1 (8:29) Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:29) Money is not a problem. There's no problem with money, whether I've got it or haven't got it or money is just a thing. If you like, it's a neutral technology that we made up, humans made up. But somehow most of us feel there is a problem. Right. And all our problems can be different, but kind of similar. And by the way, and you'll know this, Pete, and you'll know this, Shabba, as financial advisors. And I know this as a coach. People can have big problems with money, whether they've got loads of it, average or not very much. So it's not even just if I don't have money, it's a problem. I've worked with many people with lots of money for whom it's a tremendous problem in relationships, emotions, freedom. So what's going on? It seems in the terminology of what we explore, money does something to our psychology and money gets wrapped up with some of our least conscious and most least developed parts. And therefore, in simple terms, when we've got a problem, when we have a problem with money, it's not money's problem. It's reflecting back. some part of us that maybe we need to be more in touch with or more conscious of. And that's what we're really exploring. Shabba, do you want to build from your experience or your client's experience? Speaker 3 (9:53) Yeah, I mean, you've sort of summarized it, you know, better than I could. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I find on the podcast. I've just been sort of going on this journey to explore this stuff. And I have a lot of thoughts, feelings, emotions around money. And Tim gets to like package them up within sometimes a framework or just give some terminology and insight into what's going on and helps raise my consciousness. And I think through doing that, the people that listen get to benefit from someone like myself who's on a journey alongside Tim who's... a bit more experienced. And I think Tim will still allude to the fact that he's, you know, like everyone still has his own money stuff that he has to battle with. But it's just a great dynamic that allows this stuff to become conscious, because I think it's one of the great taboos in society that we, we can talk about money, you know, we can talk about numbers, investments, you know, ISAs and pensions, but we very rarely talk about my money. Like what's going on with me and my money that becomes deeply personal and very uncomfortable. And I think that what I've managed to get comfortable with is talking about my money. And that allows the conversation to really flourish. And I think the people that have reached out to us, you know, really enjoy that. I kind of say the unsaid. Yeah. Speaker 2 (11:30) There's something quite humble and honest. And I just want to build a couple of things there. We do do some episodes where we dive in to Shabba's questions and stories. Often we don't even know we're going to. He just comes up with something and we go deeper. And he's actually very brave because he says it is a taboo and it always feels vulnerable to actually get below the surface with what's really going on here with money. Because if it's true that money and our money problems kind of reflect deeper stuff enough, we'll always feel a bit vulnerable. So Shabba does actually a very courageous job. But we don't just do that. So we'll also do episodes based on things we read in the news. We did an episode on the difference between American and English golfers. You know, the American golfers wanted to be paid lots of money and the English guys did it for free. We'll look at current affairs, things in the news, budgets, tariffs, questions people write in. And also things, you know, obviously anonymously, but things from clients of both of ours. But one of the keys is always it can be quite a small, apparently small thing. A