Award-winning financial journalist Stacey Tisdale says that we are conditioned with “childhood scripts” that formulate our identities and behaviors about money. Just like actors on a stage, we follow those scripts into adulthood unless we accept responsibility to change them. Stacey says, “Our financial choices have got nothing to do with numbers.” While we are learning what’s right and wrong, Stacey says we’re also being conditioned–women as nurturers and men as providers. That also affects our attitudes about who handles the money and what roles we play. There are also scripts that create a bias about race and money. Blacks are perceived as being financially illiterate and other races are perceived as being good with money. Stacey says it’s important that you know and own your biases and manage them for your own benefit. She says, for example, that she personally doesn’t value money, so she knows to research average pay for a job before going into wage negotiations. This is important because research shows that only 7% of women negotiate their first job, verses 52% of men, and not negotiating your first salary costs you $500,000 by the time you’re 60 years old.
As CEO of Mind Money Media, Inc., Stacey uses her journalistic background to create programs and content to bridge our deepest truths, share information that limits mind-made beliefs and foster our understanding of each other to build empathy and create partnerships. Her most recent partnership targets the Black community and is called “Team Wealth Wednesdays,” co-hosted with Angela Yee, the co-host of iHeartMedia’s “The Breakfast Club.” Stacey urges people to take the pledge to take control of your finances and receive free information and resources weekly to help you with your careers or entrepreneurial pursuits.
Women Control the Wealth of the World
Stacey says that women are going to gain control of more wealth because we’re living longer than men, so we’ll inherit more also. However, Stacey says, “Only 7% of women feel capable of making strong financial decisions. So, it’s really a confidence gap. Nothing can make you forget who you are quicker than money.” Her career as a financial journalist revealed some core truths: first that few things work as simply as money. “Don’t spend more than you have; don’t borrow more than you can afford to pay back and don’t invest more than you can afford to lose.” But, Stacy says, “Money is the leading cause of substance abuse, the leading cause of suicide, the leading cause of depression.” So, she concluded that there was a lot more to this than dollars and cents. She embarked on a six-year research project, which became the book, The True Cost of Happiness: The Real Story behind Managing Your Money, to find out what drives financial behavior. One of these keys is that men and women value money differently, which is one factor behind the pay gap. But women are goal-oriented about investing, rather than return-oriented and we are conditioned to caring for the community. With the added wealth in women’s control, we are accumulating power to make real change.
The recent surge in Game Stop investing taught us a lesson about what happens when people come together collectively and organize their financial power. Stacey says, “It’s not that we need the world to change; we are the change. We have the power within us. Owning it–owning the power that we have. My favorite money mantra is ‘You’re already perfect. If you don’t believe that it’s due to a poverty of your understanding. Get rid of that understanding and you will become rich.’ We have the power. If we only invested in companies that were respectful of us and only invested in companies that had inclusive corporate cultures, we could change that tomorrow. People listen when there’s a financial organizational structure behind it.”
LEARN TO ENGAGE YOUR SUPERPOWER
Listen to this conversation for more wisdom about how to overcome mind-made biases on every level. Stacey believes that we’re all perfect in the beginning, with all the creativity and problem-solving skills we need. Then we are conditioned to behave in certain ways. Stacey’s goal is to teach people to navigate their own conditioning, because she says, being biased is natural. We just have to manage that part of ourselves.
Check out her website, MindMoneyMedia.com for information about her other programs, her book The True Cost of Happiness, and her newest event series, Team Wealth Wednesdays. Stacey says that we are far more than what we are conditioned to believe, and we need to accept responsibility to reach beyond it and empower ourselves.