A Guide To Healing Your Relationship with Money
Thuy Lam [Thuy Lam]
Q: Could you please introduce yourself? What expertise do you have in financial literacy and consultation?
A: My name is Thuy Lam. I call myself a money mentor or coach; many people call me their financial mentor.
In terms of the expertise that I have, I come from a traditional financial planning background. I am a certified financial planner with about 20 years of financial industry experience, from managing multimillion-dollar corporate pension funds to transitioning to personal finances about 17 years ago.
I started my personal finance journey because that's where my passion has been ever since I was a kid.
I had a keen interest in all things money. I was filing taxes for my entire family and extended family by the time I was 16.
I attended investment seminars when I was in high school. I'd be surrounded by a roomful of grey-haired men in one of those investment seminars by these wealth management companies. I was me, Thuy, a visible minority female learning about investments and personal finances from a young age.
I've spent most of my career in personal finance. Through that journey, I've aligned the way I'm providing my services with my values.
At one point in my career, I had my insurance and mortgage licenses, and I offered my clients a full suite of financial planning products.
As I had mentioned, however, in alignment with my values, I wanted to be able to help individuals who didn't necessarily need an investment planner. Maybe it was someone struggling to just get ahead and be in the place where a traditional planner could help them. Not only that, I wanted to provide advice that was unbiased, objective, and independent of any financial products, which brings me to why I'm doing what I'm doing today.
As a financial mentor or coach, I'm only an advice fee planner. I still retain my certified financial planning background; however, my approach to finances is a little bit different.
Q: What are some of your favourite memories from your financial career?
A: My favourite memories are times in my career when clients have either been ecstatic because I went above and beyond or ended up in tears because of a breakthrough in their relationship.
Some healing, being on the same page as their spouse, the dissolution and overcoming of money barriers from scarcity to abundance, and attracting money into their lives.
The highlights of my career have been those memorable celebrated client moments where I'm jointly celebrating their success and being able to make a bigger difference in the lives of their families, the community, and the world in general.
Q: Why do you mainly focus on the financial lives of women and couples?
A: I had attracted, from a young age, starting out in financial planning, a lot of professionals and entrepreneurs, and they happened to be women. I became more focused on serving women only because, from a marketing perspective, that's where my network was.
I had supported a good number of entrepreneurial hubs that were directed and serviced women entrepreneurs. So that's what really landed me in terms of my focus on women and not just women alone; women come with their significant others, so it's women, couples and their families, but my services are not exclusive. I'm not biased; I have men who have been referred to my practice and am more than happy to service them as well.
My services are inclusive; however, I can say that as a woman myself, I'm very passionate about empowering other women with their finances so that they can thrive financially.
“I tend to find if you have money beliefs and potential money blocks that aren’t serving you, they’re creating obstacles and challenges for you to foster a healthy relationship with money and to be able to implement healthy money habits that support your financial well-being. ”
— Thuy Lam
Q: How do you approach money and financial wellness?
A: In terms of money and financial wellness, my perspective is that financial wellness encompasses being in tune with your numbers, being financially savvy, having financial literacy, and making money choices that support what we value and the goals we want in our lives.
There's another element: the key to all this is to recognise that money actually goes deeper than the numbers. It is important to understand that exploring our relationship with money and understanding our thoughts and feelings around money is key to many of the breakthroughs that can happen regarding our money success and overall financial wellness.
That's my belief in having a holistic approach to financial wellness, both the numbers and your money mindset.
Q: What is a heart-centered vision of life? How does the money flow when we align with a heart-centered vision?
A: When I'm sitting down with a client through the discovery process, to really get to know them, the most important part of that process is understanding that heart-centred vision of their life.
What I mean by this is: what brings them joy and happiness?
If you were to close your eyes and just imagine:
Where do you want to be spending your time?
What type of career do you want to be doing?
What brings you joy and happiness? What does that look like?
What do your days look like?
Who are you spending time with?
What kind of work are you doing?
Are you contributing to the community?
Are there causes that you care about?
It's a personalised vision, and it's not what society or family expects of you; it's what you want deep in the centre of your heart and what brings you joy and happiness. That's what I mean by a heart-centred vision of your life.
When we break that down to our money goals, it drives. It helps us to centre our money goals and how to direct our money to support that heart-centred vision of our life, which kind of just gives our money direction.
When we do have direction, we can easily align many of our actions with our money habits, such as spending, saving, investing, intentional income, and spending; it helps to align with that.
That approach to money that I call having an intentional income and spending, saving, and investing plan.
Q: What actions can be taken to increase financial equity between men and women?
A: In my point of view, the key to narrowing financial equity is:
1. Narrowing the income gap.
The pay gap for women who are born in Canada is 12 percent, and 30 percent pay gap for immigrant women, and that's specifically women of colour, women like me and you. So we have a huge gap to close, and let's be honest, the more you make, the more financial resources that you have to be able to not only fund your own heart-centred vision of your life but also more to give and more to make a difference with in terms of time, and also financial resources.
2. Women undervalue themselves.
The other piece for financial equity for women, especially with entrepreneurial women, and to some extent, I had to work through this block myself, but it's about getting paid worse as a woman.
What I tend to see with women is we undervalue ourselves, we think what we offer from a professional standpoint, and our services are worse.
So whether it's a salaried role or you're an entrepreneur, and you have charge of your own pricing, women are known to underprice and undervalue what they have to offer.
Not only that, but I know that as stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home women, we're offering a huge value to our families and our children. When you put dollars and cents into that, it's a lot of money.
Think of the cost of hiring a full-time nanny or childcare, a tutor, someone to discipline, clean the house, cook, and an Uber driver to drive the kids around their programmes; it all adds up. You add that all up, and it could be a six-figure income you're contributing. So yes, stay-at-home moms, you are of huge value to your family and don't ever discount that.
3. Take charge of your finances.
I think for financial equity for women is to take charge of their finances. Start being involved, increase your level of financial literacy, and be in the know; get in tune with what's happening with your money, start having open money conversations with your partner, and be involved with your financial advisor or advisory team.
Q: What is a healthy money mindset? How can we cultivate it?
A: Sitting down and exploring our own relationship with money.
Start a journal on a daily basis if you don't have time weekly and reflect on your thoughts, feelings, money, and money interactions.
For example, what thoughts come to your mind if you're about to make a purchase? You think to yourself, is this too expensive? Or do you think I'm not going to buy this because it's not on sale? Or do you think, oh, goodness, I don't know if I have the money to pay for this? Or oh, my goodness, my partner/spouse/husband's gonna freak out if I buy this, and if I buy it, I will have to hide it.
Whatever your thoughts and feelings are about money, start exploring your thoughts and feelings around money and journal about it.
As you start to see some trends, explore where to go back to your childhood and explore perhaps where those thoughts come from and identify if it's, in fact, causing that feeling, that money belief that you have, or is it just based on your personal and past experiences with money and it's not actually the reality.
I tend to find if you have money beliefs and potential money blocks that aren't serving you, they're creating obstacles and challenges for you to foster a healthy relationship with money and to be able to implement healthy money habits that support your financial well-being. In that case, I think the key is to get started, first on reflection, and then take it from there.
Q: How can women increase their financial literacy?
A: There are lots of tools that women don't know about.
There are books on finances, so, if you're a reader, pick up a book. There are podcasts, and you should pick one that resonates with you because there are so many personal finance podcasters. There are a lot of influencers who have turned to personal finance specialists, and you've just got to start somewhere.
Remember that it's a perspective and about understanding other's perspectives and finding out where you lie. It's about taking action regularly. It's about investing in your knowledge and setting aside time to learn numbers.
As I mentioned, start getting involved in your finances, stop putting your head in the sand and start understanding what's happening with your money. That alone will increase your financial literacy because you'll start to get serious, you'll start to Google certain topics, and you can start to ask and be empowered to ask questions with your financial advisory team.
“Remember that it’s a perspective and about understanding other’s perspectives and finding out where you lie. It’s about taking action regularly. It’s about investing in your knowledge and setting aside time to learn numbers. ”
— Thuy Lam
