In this episode, bestselling author and certified trauma of money coach Keris Fox she shares how to transform your relationship with money by rewriting your money story. She explains why so many women believe they're "bad with money" and offers practical steps to befriend your finances.
In this conversation, you'll learn:
• Why knowing your exact financial position reduces anxiety
• Simple daily self-care practices that help money management feel better
• How to recognise and soothe your nervous system around money triggers
• The importance of checking in with your body before making financial decisions
Whether you struggle with money trauma, avoid checking your bank account or want to move from scarcity to abundance, this episode offers gentle, trauma-informed and VAST/ADHD-friendly approaches to building a healthier relationship with money.
Feel Better Every Day! Learn from the self and Self* care practices the professionals depend on.
With a mixture of solo and interview episodes, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham (author of 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing) shares trauma-informed and VAST / ADHD-friendly self and Self* care ideas to help you:
• Feel Better (regulate your nervous system and do the things that help you create a life you don’t need to retreat from)
• Be Better (accept yourself completely with love, compassion and kindness – you don’t need to do a thing) and
• Do Better (turn what hurts your heart into action to support your family, organisations, communities and the world at large)
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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hi, I'm Eve Menezes Cunningham and you're listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. Every Tuesday I share trauma-informed and ADHD/VAST-friendly self-care ideas to help you take better care of yourself (and your Self with that uppercase S for that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant, miraculous part of yourself).
I do this to help you create a life you don't need to retreat from, and you can find out more at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com. Today's episode, I'm delighted to welcome my friend Keris Fox.
She used to be Keris Stainton and she's a best-selling author and she has been running the Ladybird Purse over on Substack for years now, helping women at midlife, myself included, to transform our relationship with money. She is now a certified trauma of money coach and I cannot wait to share our episode.
Welcome Keris Fox, formerly Stainton. Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
Ah, it's such a pleasure. It's so funny because we've only started, like it's in the last few years, we've become, I was going to say real life friends, but we've still never actually met in person. We regularly connect online, but I've known you coming up, what, 15 years online, at more of a distance? Possibly even more than that, I think, yeah.
Well, when did you write, I remember you writing your first book. I remember you getting-
That's 15 years ago this year. Yeah.
But I was on like Journobiz before the book came out, so probably even before that, yeah.
Yeah. And now I'm delighted to have you on the Feel Better Every Day Podcast, talking about the trauma of money. Would you like to say a little bit about what you're working on and how people can find you?
Yeah, the trauma of money. Talking about the trauma of money. I want to talk about the joy of money as well.
I love trauma work because it's all about recovery and it's about the joy, the growth. Yeah, through the trauma to get to the joy.
Exactly that, yeah. Well, I'm actually working on, I did Trauma of Money coach training earlier this year, so I am trauma of money certified. Yeah. I'm putting together various programs to do with that, which what I wanted to do when I started trying to put something together, I realised that a lot of the trauma of money stuff is kind of fits in with narrative, with storytelling.
Because I'm a novelist as well, I thought the two of them go together quite well. I've been combining the rewriting your money story and your next chapter. I'm putting all of that together and it feels like I've got all of this information now and I'm kind of whittling it down.
In the meantime, before I've actually got that put together, I've got my Ladybird Purse money Substack that I've been writing for three and a half years. So every Monday there's an interview with a woman about money and also my own kind of money misadventures. I've started calling it, although I'm not sure that's strictly true anymore.
And yeah, I have another Substack, which is my author Substack, which is called Happy Endings. And yes, I have two books out at the minute, one nonfiction, which is the Harry Styles Effect.
Yeah, I'm holding up the Harry Styles Effect for people who are listening rather than watching with joy, because this is the book Keris was born to write, basically, and it's just delightful.
That's so nice of you. It's like a fandom memoir. So it's not just about Harry Styles, it's about me and fandom and music. And it's also like a celebration of Harry Styles.
And then I've just had a novel came out last week, which is under pseudonym, Olivia Harvey. And that's like a new adult sort of sexy rom-com inspired by Below Deck. Stealth, what did somebody call it? Stealth, stealth, stealth sauciness, I think the review said, or stealthily saucy, something like that.
Well, congratulations.
Thank you.
Did I say that's called Rock the Boat, that one? Sorry.
No, you didn't. Thank you.
People can find out about your books at kerisfox.com. Many, many, many books. So for today's episode, we're talking about how to get through the trauma of money to the joy of money.
And I know for me, since I started reading Keris's Ladybird Purse, and I've been interviewed a couple times for it, and it's really made me reassess my own trauma around money.
And with my recent ADHD diagnosis, the dyscalculia, and like, it's like I do regular money dates and all. But I often feel like crying, just sorting out bank statements, I've got my UK bank statements, I've got my Irish ones, I've got the business, I've got the personal, it's all, and it's just putting them in date order makes me want to cry. And, and recognising, okay, my brain really does not thrive with numbers.
And having the confidence at nearly 50 to say to someone at the bank, or say to someone around, like, I'm really not great with numbers that I got a new accountant who it feels much better with. I've gone on to Xero, but your, your misadventures, as you call them, and your interviews, it's really helped me confront some of my… I'd done money mindset work before I'd done like, kind of my money story, and like, my earliest memory being burgled when we lived in Tottenham, like all of that.
But there's something so lovely reading people who love money, and reading people who still struggle with money, but also, I think, with women at midlife. What would you say the biggest problem people have around money?
Oh, wow. Well, I think with women, it is thinking that, that we're bad with money. I think that's like, it seems to be the first thing that often when I approach women to interview, the first thing they say is, “Oh, no, I'm terrible at money, or I'm rubbish with money, or I don't have any, I wouldn't have anything to say.” And I always think on the one hand, I can't imagine a man ever saying I don't have anything to say on any subject. But also, I think it's that women, you know, I mean, I don't even really know, at this point, what bad with money means. I think it's not, you know, for years, I thought I was bad with money. And it was that I didn't have enough money a lot of the time.
Or I was in a relationship where, you know, we had our money pooled, and that caused its own issues. And, and I think I interviewed Glynis McNicol, I think, what day is it today? Tuesday, Tuesday, yesterday, an interview went up with Glynis McNicol. And she said, she's an amazing writer. And she pointed out, you know, it's only relatively recently, it's only within our, my lifetime, certainly, that women have really had access to our own money. So it's not surprising that, you know, we're still learning, there's still this element of scarcity, because, you know, until women couldn't have credit cards in their name until I think 1974. I'm not sure if that's only in America. And also, you know, the bank accounts and had to give up the job when they got married, couldn't get a mortgage alone. You know, there was still until fairly recently, and it might still happen. I don't know, because I got divorced.
But, you know, I can remember booking a holiday, and I did all of the booking, I paid for it with, you know, a card in my own name, I put myself down first in all of the booking. And when the paperwork came out, lead passenger was my husband. So, you know, this kind of society, and structural issues that are still massively impacting more than I think we realise.
So I think it's not that we are bad with money. I think it's that, you know, we're finding our feet with it. Yeah, exactly.
Finding our feet is a good way to put it. So how like in terms of feeling better around money, the things we can do the regulatory stuff, what would be your top tip or tips?
Well, my first thing is always to know exactly what your position is. I always feel better if I know exactly how much money I've got.
And I know what's coming in and what's going out. So I did, you know, like a lot of people, you know, would not open bills, not check my bank account, just not think about it and hope for the best kind of thing. Whereas now I'm kind of upset. I love checking my bank account every morning. I quite often like this morning, I woke up at three, the cat came and jumped on my headboard and woke me up at three. So I went to the loo, of course. And when I came back, I did like all my kind of morning checks. And I always check my bank account to make sure there's no surprises, because that used to be a thing that would so often be the case that there would be surprise money would come out and then I'd be in trouble. So now I always know. And I have, you know, I know. I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure about how banks are. My bank's amazing for being able to put money in pots and for instant payments, cut shelf instantly. I'm not sure if all banks do that now. My old bank definitely didn't used to. Yeah. But I'd recommend a bank where payments, payments show up instantly. So you're not waiting three days and then you get a surprise, which is tricky.
Definitely, as painful as it can be to see what you don't have sometimes, how much debt you've got, how much you're earning, even to look at your earnings and find out that your earnings don't cover your outgoings. Yeah, it's painful and it's difficult, but it's just so much better to know. I think it's so much better to know.
And like you said, Eve, when you said, you know, even look, even putting the bank statements in order is difficult. Obviously, I understand for everybody, it's not going to be that easy, but you can get somebody to help you. You're not necessarily an accountant.
You can find a friend if you know somebody that you don't mind knowing your financial business. I spoke to a friend once who literally I said to her, I'd love to interview you for the newsletter. And she literally was like, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. Completely freaked out. Yeah. I know some people can't deal with it and don't want to deal with it. Yeah. So find somebody who can help you because it's just it's just takes so much of the stress away if you do know what your position is. Yeah, that's brilliant.
And I know I've gone on to Xero in the past year. So my UK business account and my Irish business account, I can reconcile it all as we go. And it's just so much easier than everything stacking up and me having to do. I still use the spreadsheet. I love spreadsheets for other things. There's something about the numbers and the way they scramble a bit, but it had never occurred to me. So I could even ask a friend to come over and just do something else in the room like that kind of body doubling idea.
Yeah, I'm going to start doing that on Zoom through Substack actually, just to kind of go through, you know, money admin, because I love the idea. I love the concept of money dates.
I love sitting down and going through it all. And, you know, to make it nice to put music on and to have. Soothing your nervous system and making sure. So that moves us into the be better portion, where it's basically you're absolutely fine. You don't have to change a thing. It's all good.
The self-soothing. What kind of things would you recommend people do to relax around money and to accept their whole selves around it?
Well, a big thing for me for ages was, I think, because I always felt like I didn't have enough money and I would get to a point where I'd kind of think, “Oh, you know, well, I've got debts and I haven't got enough. So, you know, screw it. I'm just going to buy whatever.” And then. Obviously, that would make it worse.
It made me maybe feel better in that instant, dopamine, but that didn't help anything. And I'm really just kind of taking the time to check in with myself physically to feel, you know, if it wouldn't even be necessarily stress about something, I wouldn't feel stressed. I'd feel excited sometimes.
But any sort of heightened emotion was like, don't buy it when you're feeling like that. Breathe or just to check in with myself and think, how am I feeling before I kind of click that buy button? And it doesn't always work now sometimes, especially books. I'll just be like, I'm allowed to buy books.
I'm an author. To just to kind of have that physical check in and get used to how it feels in your body. I've only really recently, and you know so much more about this than I do about I'm like regulation and vulnerability.
I did a I did a podcast, I think, a while ago with Claire Venus, who also is on Substack. And after we talked for like an hour and afterwards, I felt kind of all, you know, and I was perfectly, you know, I didn't feel upset or stressed or anything. I just felt kind of hyper. And I was like, you know, on my phone, scrolling, whatever, doing, you know, probably went and got a coffee and a bunch of biscuits or something. And then saw Claire on Substack and put on Substack notes, “Did a Zoom this morning. I've got a vulnerability hangover. So I've taken myself off to the beach to just sit and look out at the waves.” And I was like, “Oh, that's a much better way of dealing with it than shoving chocolate digestives into my mouth. I might try that!”
And now I've become, I went to a party last week in London. And the next day, it's just I just felt weird. It's the nervous system. It's that sympathetic activation and the allowing it to settle, to come back. And that's the thing, in the past, I never would have realised. In the past, after the party, I would have thought, “Why did I have that third glass of wine? Why did I say this? Who was I saying that to? What was I, why was I even talking about this?” And instead of beating myself up all day, I just thought, “Oh, it's the vulnerability hangover.”
I can just relax. So I think with money, that's the same, you know, it's the same thing. You check, you feel that heightened emotion with just opening, you can open in your banking app. And one thing actually I used to do years ago, and I don't need to do it now, because like I said, I really love opening the app in the morning, was I would kind of try to get myself, you know, like hype myself up before even opening the app. There used to be a thing years ago where you could write a cheque for yourself.
Yeah.
And you could like write a cheque for, you know, a million dollars or whatever. Law of Attraction. And so I would go and, yeah, I would go and look at that cheque and feel the excitement and then open my banking app with the sense of excitement instead of the sense of dread.
But now I have that sense of excitement, even though, you know, I'm very, very far away from a million dollars.
But it's befriending your bank account. It's befriending your bank account.
Exactly. Yeah. I love it.
In terms of the do better element and how us moving through the trauma of money to the joy of money and how that can help us turn what hurts our heart into action and like help make our world and the world a better place. No pressure.
No. And now as well.
Oh, my God. I know.
But now more than ever, we need to turn all that despair into action and hope. And what would you say around that?
I mean, I've been trying to donate more to like community funds and mutual aid rather than charities. And I really just I don't have like a set. I mean, I have a couple of charities that I donate to. One is the Loveland Foundation, which is for black women and girls. I can't remember the woman's name, Rachel, somebody. Yeah, I can't remember. And really, it's just when things pop up online now, you know, lots of people have started sharing like mutual aid funds on Instagram and on BlueSky. It's just really rather than donating to these huge charities with their massive overheads. I think community is that is now and is going to be the most important thing. Yeah. And so that's where I'm kind of putting my focus.
Well, thank you so, so much. Joy always to talk to you. And you're going to stay with me for the Sole to Soul Circle.
And we're going to be talking about your ideal and actual self-care around money. But do you want to say again where people can find you online? Where's the best place?
Just kerisfox.com. Everything is linked from there. I'm trying to go back to, you know, the old website days instead of constantly moving around the internet and everything keeps closing.
Yeah. So I'm trying to make it, trying to make that like a central hub where everything, everything, you can find everything there. Wonderful.
Thanks again.
Thank you for listening to the Feel Better Every Day Podcast. If you’d like more, you can join the Sole to Soul Circle in order to access a rich archive of exclusive content including deeper dives into every episode and the whole Love Your WHOLE Self chakra journey. And you might also enjoy the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing. You can get more information and access many many libraries and much more at selfcarecoaching.net and you can also connect with me and let me know how you’re getting on. Have a gorgeous week and I look forward to sharing more soon.
And this episode was produced by me, your host, Eve Menezes Cunningham.
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