Lauren: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Corporate Fuckery, the show that unpacks the cost of autopilot ambition and what it really takes to redefine success on your own terms. Today's guest, Heather Boneparth, is proof that partnership is the ultimate power move where you're brave enough to rewrite the rules together.
She's the Director of Business and Legal Affairs at Bonafide Wealth in New York City and co-author of Money Together, how to Find Fairness in Your Relationship and Become an. Stoppable financial team. Her work featured in outlets like CNBC. The Skim, HuffPost and Insider is redefining what equity looks like inside love, money, and modern partnership.
After leaving a high powered corporate law career to join her husband's. Firm. Heather started asking bigger questions about ambition, identity, and the invisible economics that shape our relationships. What she discovered is disarmingly simple. You can have everything you want. It [00:01:00] just might not look like what you expected.
Heather is the kind of powerhouse woman who knows her priorities and isn't afraid to us. Assert them not just at work, but at home, at the table, and at every decision that defines a life. She's helping couples turn financial tension into teamwork, ambition into alignment and marriage into something far more radical.
A fair one. Let's dive into what it really takes to build wealth without losing yourself. With the woman turning love and money into the most honest conversation of our time. Welcome Heather Boneparth
Heather: I don't think I'll ever receive an introduction as good as that ever again.
Thanks. Like I, I'm beside myself. I'm so happy to
Lauren: be here. I just told you, get ready to receive 'cause it's coming, girl. Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you, Lauren.
Heather: I am so happy to be here.
Lauren: I am like stoked I money and corporate fuckery go hand in my personal opinion for so many reasons. And it is [00:02:00] kismet that your book is coming out on October 28th, money Together.
We're gonna talk about that today, but I just feel like so compelled to talk about so many things in this book, and I know that my listeners are gonna just drool over everything that you have to say because. They know that a lot of their stories around money or they're going to, were birthed from a very young age and that they're still playing out in their everyday careers and relationships.
And once we get a handle on that in a way that feels like not war or conflict, that life can change and be different. That's right.
Heather: That is right. I think you, you hit the nail on the head. These are stories. The stories we tell ourselves about money matter and they begin long before you found your partner, and they're not gonna change just because you love someone.
Okay? These are stories that we learn from a young age. They are embedded in our identity sometime in our culture, in our lived [00:03:00] experiences, in our religion. These are things that we carry on with us into our adult life, into the workforce. They are how we form our workplace identities as well. It's really, really hard to marry all of those beliefs and those value systems with someone else.
It's not easy and it's how, you look at someone like me who was a corporate lawyer for more than a decade who married a financial expert, someone who's been in the wealth management space for more than 20 years. Even we were getting it wrong, and like we've known each other for a million years, my husband and I, and even we were getting it wrong, and that was, humbly speaking like the beginnings of what became money together.
Lauren: I'm glad you're able to write a book about it. I don't think my husband and I are quite to a point where that feels like a liberating experience, but tell us what the tipping point was like. Let's give the people a little bit around what was the impetus for why Money Together is such a powerful movement.
Heather: [00:04:00] Let's set the stage. If you wanna know the personal story behind this role, let's set the stage. I was about a decade into my corporate career, so I'm an elder millennial. I graduated law school at the height of the great recession. Yes. What I thought was going to be a very lucrative legal career that I had a grand direction for.
Was not gonna happen. Most of my class was unemployed at graduation. I was one of the lucky few that had a job with benefits that was full-time. It was grossly underpaid. It was not in the area that I thought I was going to practice. I ended up in commercial insurance, which shocker was not what I went to law school for.
And so, you know. What my husband, what my then boyfriend, eventual husband and I had figured out was that if I put my head down and work this corporate career, because I ended up, , you find a way, right? Yeah. You find a way. Yeah. I said this is fine. I'm, it's okay. That we are a team.
Everything we do is a team. And it's true, but I would hold down this corporate [00:05:00] job and this corporate career track and the stable benefits and be the breadwinner for our family for a period of time in our twenties. So my husband could take the risks and launch a firm, launch a career, try and build a platform online, because he's kind of this.
Online meme, Lord himself in the finance space. There's no other way to put it. I mean, he is just like, he's like a shit poster. Like he is great. But so we kind of, my, my stability gave him the opportunity to take the risks and to go and build and to kind of build his dreams. And we had, we've always shared that collective ambition.
The my win is your win. I'm gonna do this so that you can do that. That's all well and good. Okay. For a while, you know, until we had kids,
Lauren: I was gonna say, it's great when you're dinks, it sucks when you have responsibilities of paying. Whatever bill is related to rearing a child
Heather: un until you have kids, right?
Lauren: Yeah.
Heather: And that was right around the time that, I would say that [00:06:00] my career plateaued and I think a lot of women experienced that. There are ladders with broken rungs that just so coincidentally seem to coincide with the years that women are having children. And you don't have to make a stretch to understand why.
I felt. As I call it, the Bermuda Triangle of my career. I was lost in it for several years in my early thirties when my children were young, and it just so happened to be right around the same time that my husband all, all the sacrifices and all the risks we took, everything was paying off.
So suddenly I went from being the breadwinner in our household to an egalitarian household, to suddenly he's earning three times my salary.
Lauren: Sounds good. That feels good. Yeah. As a high achieving women woman uhhuh,
Heather: It feels good from a team standpoint of saying, Hey, things are going really well for us as a unit.
But.
How are things really going for me when I've given so much of my time to also help build his career, help him as his business advisor, like Moonlighting with my second job [00:07:00] as Doug's business consultant all these years. Content and business formation and all these things and marketing and it just so happened to be the same time that COVID hit and I had an 11 month old and a 4-year-old and a husband making three times my salary.
Suddenly what happens is I realized I was starting to tell myself stories about what I deserved and whose time was worth more. And those were not helpful stories that I was telling myself. I was undervaluing. Actually, one of the experts said in the book that I was complic complicit in my own oppression because ouch.
Because at that time, it was like everyone was home. We were both working from home. We had two small children in the high touch. Phase of life.
Lauren: Yes.
Heather: And, someone had to handle all of the burdens and responsibilities of the household. It was everything from the physical labor to the emotional labor to, as I like to say it, there was this extra layer of [00:08:00] invisible strain and emotional output around COVID and the decision fatigue that came with every little decision for having small children during that time.
Yes. Even when they went back to school, like nobody got it. I was like, every time they go to school, there's a chance they're gonna be quarantined for two weeks. It was insane when you look back at it. But anyway,
Lauren: it was, I still can't believe that we lived through that. Like personally, I might not ever believe that we lived through it.
Heather: I still have PTSD for sure, but right around this time, we, it went on for a while like that. And what was happening was I was losing myself in our arrangement. I was losing myself, not only in, in my role as a mother which is a, beautiful thing to find your identity as a mother.
But I didn't having normal opportunity to do that during COVID. And with that, I was also just losing myself behind my husband. Spend. And so much of that had to do with the stories that I was telling myself around time and money and value and power in our [00:09:00] relationship. And what was building was resentment for the thing I had helped my husband build.
Like we built it together and it's not like. He was ever the guy to take all the credit. Anyone knows, like there was a podcast he went on years ago and the woman said, I've never heard a a man talk so much about how his wife was re responsible for the reason that he's sitting here. He's a great guy, my husband, but still.
It's all lip service. At a certain point when I wasn't given the opportunity to pursue the things that I wanted to pursue, we reached a point where it felt like, what about me? And I was starting to grow incredibly resentful of his opportunities, of his platform, of his chances to take risks. And, I was taking it out on everyone that I love.
Not just him, my children, my family, my friends and we just felt like something had to give. And so this was about several years into COVID and I probably not in the most are, eloquent or polite or loving way, said something in this relationship, in this [00:10:00] family has to change. And I put my foot down.
One thing led to the next, and I was the Director of Business and Legal Affairs.
Lauren: All of
Heather: a
Lauren: sudden,
Heather: I'm writing a book about my messed up relationship with money to help other people through their messed up relationships with money and their family and their career, because it is all inextricably linked, especially for women.
Lauren: And why do you think that is? What's your opinion? I think that money
Heather: and care. Are inextricably linked. Mm-hmm. I think that we see women stepping away or downshifting from the workforce in a way where it feels sometimes like we don't know whether we made the decision or whether the decision was made for us.
So we find ourselves questioning what role we have both in society, in the workforce, and at home. And sometimes, we don't even know, like I said, who made these decisions? Yeah. And I think one of, one of the most damaging things that many of us believe, and I'm guilty of it too, was that [00:11:00] systemic institutional failures were failures of my own.
That is simply not true. So that is how I think we find ourselves in this position where money, care, income as it relates to power and self-worth, result in women easily losing themselves in certain arrangements unless they make active efforts to assert their place and reclaim their time. It's just, it is such a slippery slope because
if it happened to me, this like incredibly conscious, ambitious, driven career woman, then I think it could happen to anyone.
Lauren: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more and you know, around the same time, 2019 is when I blew up my corporate career after a me too incident at work with our chief information and security officer at the time that retaliated, in my opinion, against me for the better part of a year.
And my brain had me convinced that I only had two options. I could stay and go find another job. 'cause my leader at the time had asked me to go [00:12:00] find another or part of the organization to work in, or I could blow everything up without a plan. And so I opted for door number two. And I had always felt like.
I was powerful in making, like I could go make money. If I could do anything, I could go figure out how to make money in the corporate space. I had a job change every 18 months. Early on in my career, I reinvented my career multiple times through multiple industries. My husband, when he found out I was going into technology as a technologist, he was like, honey, that's so cute, but like you're gonna get chewed up and spit out.
And here I was. 18 months later getting promoted and then promoted. And I mean, it was, it was wild. And so when I did that, I was like, oh shit. Like I just, shit the bed of life right here. Like I just, what did I do? 'cause I have no money. And we were spending like $1,500 more a month than he was bringing home.
And I didn't have un unemployment or anything like that to rely on. So I found myself [00:13:00] in like the perfect. Money storm, right? All of my money stories came up, all of my identity around the powerhouse part of what am I gonna do? How am I gonna figure this out? And truly I believe it's a lot of what.
Women who feel like their life is a house of cards really struggle with, right? They're like, I'm not giving up this lifestyle. Like you will have to rip it out of my cold dead hands to get me to walk away from this toxic situation that is keeping my lifestyle intact.
Heather: Completely agree. It is so easy to tether your self-worth to your income because that is the message in our society.
We are taught to optimize. We are taught for growth. Your growth. That, by the way, does not exist. No, it doesn't. If you ask me, even for the boomer generation, even that was a bit of a ruse as they all saw, after, 20, 30 years and expecting a retirement party and a watch.
And, or, at the end of it, it, that didn't [00:14:00] work out for many of them either, but I think even more so for the younger generations, aging into what, what's supposed to feel like the peak earning years of our careers. Like I think we're realizing that these narratives that , well if you just do this to that.
That's not really how you reach the pinnacle of your potential and your success. You've gotta rewrite those rules for yourself. You've gotta trust what's going on in here and not necessarily the lockstep version. I cannot tell you, Lauren, how many supervisors, managers, deputies I've ever worked under who like told me to be patient or that, and they have used the word ambitious.
Against me. Yes. Such with such vitriol, they didn't mean it in a nice way. They meant it in a way that I was allegedly subversive to them.
And I knew when I started to feel that, which, began in the years that I had grown out of that, you go from being like the baby, especially as like a woman.
I think you go [00:15:00] from being like the young lady. Yeah. Were that, or they treat you like that. I felt like that so many times in my career when no nobody had a problem with me then.
Lauren: You know what I mean? I was told like I just looked too young or, I didn't have enough refinement or I couldn't hang in this conversation, whatever it was.
And I was like, what do you. What do you mean? Right? What are you talking about? Or, my favorite also was that I was intimidating and that, there's I need to be aware that I can come off as kind of intimidating and I'm like, that actually has nothing to do with me. But most powerhouse women like take that in their, that means there's something wrong with me if I'm intimidating.
Like, what do you mean?
Heather: I remember how hard I tried. My first job that I ever worked was at a, was at like a mid-sized law firm. It was basically like all men. There were like four women at the whole firm. My whole team were these men and they were like the bros of bros. And like I, I was a paradox to them.
I [00:16:00] drank brown liquor and I watched college football. And I could have, and I was by the way, really good at my job. And that was, it was okay for a minute. It was okay until I started getting some of their work. Yeah. Until it wasn't, it was okay until it wasn't. I think so, and we start to try and say to ourselves, who do I have to shrink myself to, to be a version of me that will be tolerated?
Yeah,
Lauren: I don't even, I don't even think we think, how do I shrink myself? I just think we automatically try, and I used to call it Gumby when I was in corporate life, like I would contort myself into whatever Gumby version of myself I needed to be for the audience that I was with, so that I could be perceived as the successful powerhouse woman that could get whatever done needed to be done.
Heather: I think I would've really liked working with you.
Lauren: It was fun. I used to be a real fun coworker. My last job, maybe not so much I rec, I recognized I maybe wasn't given it a hundred [00:17:00] percent in the same way. Like I didn't have that same level of drive, so it wasn't quite as seductively fun.
Heather: And you know what, that's very interesting because my last corporate job. Was, it was a difficult time. Like I had ended up back this was my second stint at a corporate job in a GCs office that I had once worked for the company before and I had left and it was a whole thing that I can't talk about, but I came back and it was this soft landing because my former mentor had invited me back, and now I was on her team and I had not previously been on her team. And it created this interesting dynamic where I was really grateful, but I was like supposed to be really grateful and that where does the gratitude.
And the me just being here and still , Hey, I still have opinions and I still have drive and I, there's still things that I wanna do and there's still things I believe that I deserve. Yes, I'm grateful. And I, but I, I found myself during those years, during the COVID years where I was working at that job, working from [00:18:00] home it was a really, really tough time because I was really.
At a loss for where I belonged in this mental space of having gratitude to have a job after what had happened at my previous job and ending up back there, having a full-time job during COVID. Because a lot of people were losing their jobs and the fact that I was being told that I was like allowed to work from home and they knew that my children were around and whatever, and , yeah, they did.
They objectively treated me very well. And, but I say this and I look back and I think about this a lot like that. I think a lot of women mistake being tolerated for being supported. And there is a difference and, and no, this may not ever rise to the issue of saying , some of the stuff that we've talked about before, but it's still it changes the message that you tell yourself about where you belong, where your aspiration should be.
It really, it's it really can be damaging to your spirit, to your drive, to what you believe you deserve, and to think that what happens at work [00:19:00] doesn't impact what you tell yourself at home. They're one and the same. They're one and the same in the same way. Equity at equity in the world begins at home and vice versa.
So, yeah, that, that, that is just how it's all connected.
Lauren: I completely agree with you. That's why working in a culture that is so supportive of your As or people working with people, maybe not even a full culture. But having a manager that, or a leader that is supporting you, and I always say it that way because at Nordstrom we had the inverted pyramid, right?
So it's servant leadership all the way up. Like we supported from the bottom of the pyramid, the employees on the floor, how do we enable them to work better and all the way down? And I'm, I've always been into servant leadership. We don't stop long enough to think about even what some of those narratives are, similar to your money conversation around what we're walking into these corporate environments, thinking about [00:20:00] how they're impacting even how we're making our next move.
Like what is our next move? What do we decide to do? How much money do we think is possible for us? I'm sure you can relate of not getting the promotion, not being seen passed up, not getting the pay that matches, like all the things as powerhouse women and the winds listening right now, , oh yeah, I've totally done that.
And I still harbor resentment for Joe and accounting who couldn't be bothered to gimme 5% or whatever it is, four years ago.
Heather: I think. One of the best things that I ever started to do, and I know you did not just ask me for a tip, but no tip. Please tip. Yes, we're here.
I have always kept receipts. I don't just mean of, oh, I keep receipts of my wins, the little ones and the big ones. I would keep receipts of unique things that. Other people were not measuring because when you're in an in-house legal role, sometimes a win [00:21:00] doesn't look like you made the company money A win looks like.
You noticed a pattern in something that could present operational risk for the company and you flagged it and like I wrote every single one of those things down. So it was everything from a little thing. And then I would quantify those little things to those bigger umbrella things that really I wanted people to see.
This is something you unique to my brain. This wasn't just me picking things up and putting them down and optimizing and doing what I'm told. I discovered this thing and I own this thing, and this made the company better because I, Heather was here. Mm-hmm. And every year I kept that running list and I took it with me wherever I went.
It wasn't specific to one organization. I kept it because it helped me get that next job. I had specific instances to draw upon when I was applying to new jobs. And I could say, Hey I did X, Y, Z at this past job, and by the way, my salary, I expect more than that here because you're saying I'm gonna be doing this here.
I did at least this [00:22:00] here, this is the floor. Let's, we have to bring it up from here.
Lauren: A hundred percent. And I think what's wild about this day and age is, and it seems like we've had the same career season where, early on in the career we were being compensated at a certain level and you reach the pinnacle at some point where.
The delta doesn't change that much. That's right. And that's disappointing, first of all. Yeah. But second of all, that also feels like it is supposed to mean something about you. Right. So those 3%, 5%, and unless you're gonna make a career, a job change, like you're really not gonna make that much more.
And for people listening, trying to decide about. What is best for them based on the advice that you just gave, what would you recommend about how people reconcile, their value against what they bring to the table?
Heather: I think there is a point, and this is not like salary negotiations [00:23:00] aside, like I, 'cause I want you to go get that bread, I want you to, I want you to fight for as much as you can. I want it to be fair. I want you to be paid, according to what you should be, not just what your gender is being paid.
Lauren: We could have a whole episode on just gender payment. But I think it's really,
Heather: I
Lauren: wanna
Heather: bring up this other point, if you don't mind.
Yeah, go for it. I think that. One of the most damaging thoughts for me was that first of all, my husband is an entrepreneur. There is no ceiling Yes. On how much he can earn. We just can earn. I mean, granted there's no floor either. Yeah. And that's what makes it so volatile. Right. And that's what, that's where the risk comes in when we talk about things like capacity for risk and appetite for risk.
It was important to make to bring it back to couples and families, is that you striving for what's going to be the best for your family may not necessarily only mean that you need to keep earning more and more and more up.
Because there's a moment where my salary, the way that I provided for our family, and [00:24:00] I talk about this in the book a lot, about how caregiving is providing too. And how providing and the value that you provide is not limited to the dollar amount on your paycheck. Because what I provided for my family, even though I was reaching a career plateau from a salary band standpoint, within the structure of like the corporation I was in what I was providing was the hedge.
Against the risks that he was taking. Yes. And I was providing the stability for my family and the corporate benefits. But I think that's the point, right? This, when we look at our ambition and we look at what is enough for us I strongly encourage you. Even though we, even two things can be true.
We're saying these things, they can coexist at once. We should strive for every dollar that we deserve, but we should detach our self-worth from whatever that number is because the value that you provide to your family and contribute to your community and the people that you love is not affixed to that self.
Lauren: Amen. I'm gonna just let [00:25:00] people let that sink for a second, because that is it. It's like sermon, truly because. So many people are like, I have to keep going. And yet if we bring this all the way back to the mother, money together and fairness and what you can have everything you want in life. But you're gonna have to spend a hot second figuring out what that is and trust that it's not gonna look like what you think it looks like.
We have people addicted, and I was one of those addicted to a lifestyle, addicted to a sense of dollars in my bank account, addicted to vacations and houses and cars and jewelry, whatever it is. And they're not actually willing to look at what the information is, the data. And so how do you bring them? As my money expert here today, tell my powerhouse woman who I literally had a multiple six figure exec that I helped clear out some.
Pressure in her body with some of my [00:26:00] subconscious reprogramming this week. She's like, Lauren, I can't even look at my finances. I can't even do it. I've been told over and over that I need to find where my money is so that I can make an exit plan for my corporate job and go all in my business, which just earned its first six figures and she's , I cannot get myself to do it.
It feels like nothing but stress and pressure.
Heather: That's a really, it's really hard to reprogram yourself, but you gotta start from the ground up first. You need to know where everything is. You do and you need to have access. Access, especially in a relationship that's like a big thing, access which means you know, all the passwords, you have, all the apps on your phone make it easy.
It's easier than ever to gain access because we all have everything on our phones. It's not like you need to go find the checkbook at the bottom of your sock drawer anymore. You can make it all.
Lauren: I wrote a check for the first time in five years the other day. Damn. This is odd.
Heather: No, but no, but so true.
And there's better banking apps than ever that and budgeting apps that make your life incredibly easy. But when it comes to what you said [00:27:00] about lifestyle I think you have to ask yourself this question too. What is it that you are gaining out of the lifestyle? What does that represent to you, and why does it represent that to you?
So we wrote a chapter about never enough. The concept of never having enough. There's , there was an amazing book called Money Zen by Manisha ur that was all about the cult of never enough feeling like not just your things, your material things, your vacation, your homes, , are never enough, but your accolades at work.
Getting that pat on the head, feeling like the constant striving is never enough. It's not a sustainable way to live. Because it comes with a lot of really bad feelings, like envy, jealousy shame is a big one. When one of the,, financial therapists that I interviewed for this book said the word shame to me for the first time, and that I, he basically, accused me of carrying shame with regard to not only my student loan debt from law school, but [00:28:00] just the way that my career had gone.
When I tell you that I felt the words in my entire body, like it went down my spine when he said you are ashamed of the way that your life turned out when it comes to your career. And I felt it, but then I would use like, to me, like I, yeah, like I always wanted to carry that nice handbag because it felt like a statement of my success.
It felt like. Screw you. Screw you. Despite the odds, I objectively have these things that make me appear to other people, that I've got my shit together. Yeah. And that and there's a lot of that. And it really was for some, I think a lot of it was for other people. Yeah. Look, I still like nice things.
Look, don't get me wrong. I love nice things. I love to shop whatever, and I like to go on vacation. Fine. But who I was doing it for. Is really the question. And what we do and the work that Douglas does with the clients of the firm too, and what we saw with so many couples, I mean, oh my god.
[00:29:00] We spent, I spent more than a year interviewing dozens and dozens of couples, like at length, like several hours each. Wow. Talking to them about all sorts of issues with their money and their stories of growing up and what their pain points are today. And we ask every single couple whether they had enough.
And the answers were incredibly profound and eye-opening, and they gave me a lot of perspective, and I think that perspective is something that a lot of us lack today, and it's not our fault. It's the fact that we live in a global village because we carry it in our hand every day. We have opportunities for comparison, and not just that, but we have algorithms that they don't just provide us with access to different lifestyles and ambitions.
And these growth hack people and all these success stories, but they almost normalize them to the point where you begin to feel like you not only deserve them, but if you don't have them, that you are doing something wrong. For not [00:30:00] having them. And it's insidious. It is not just what we experience IRL with the people around us.
It is truly what we are consuming in our diet of media and content every single day. That tells us. That we need all of these things in order to prove that we've made some objective level of success. But the problem is that it really, like when you're defining your life by those things, it may never feel like enough.
And unfortunately as we show in the book, and as we've seen and as I've learned, that those things may feel really important in the moment, but something could change in your life in an instant. And you can realize that none of it really mattered at all. That's really powerful stuff.
Lauren: Yes.
And let's just be real, a little realer for a second. You ain't taking it with you and you ain't taking that persona of carrying the handbag with you. So you are not, this conversation is, chef's kiss good. It's so needed because I would have never [00:31:00] guessed, even in my own right, if we were sitting here 10 years ago and I was,
little miss have my shit together on the outside, buying the nice handbags, having, 30 pairs of designer shoes because I worked in luxury retail and that's what we did. I would not have admitted to you that I had credit card debt. I would not have admitted to you that savings was hard.
I would not have admitted to you that I hadn't had a conversation about 401k or you know, that. I had no idea what a good financial plan was for me or my family going forward. And I know there are women listening and probably men too, that are like, I am scared shitless to have this conversation to open the door on what it looks like to be.
Financially, I'm just gonna say free, because that really is what I believe. Money together is intended to give , you the gift of is like just having a different relationship that sets all of those stories free so that you can [00:32:00] actually have a conversation. That makes sense. And so how would you tell them to get started?
Heather: With our book money Together? No. No, but I'm no, I'm not, I am not even kidding. I think , no, but that's, but there's a reason that we wrote this book because Doug has been a financial advisor, my co-author and my husband has been a financial advisor for 20 years. He sits across the table from couples all the time that see a version of life that they wanna see, not the reality of the financial situation in front of them.
And, I think that a lot of people find themselves having the wrong conversations around money and the right conversations around money begin with empathy. They begin with curiosity. They remove judgment and they begin with your past. That's why we begin the book with talking about your past, because I think we have to get to the root of some of these money scripts, these beliefs that we've embedded in so deep into our identity that they're coming out in the actions and the [00:33:00] financial decisions we're making now as adults, right?
You want to be, you don't need to begin with a spreadsheet. I think that's like my big point, especially for women, right? Who are repulsed at the point of digging into this because they say, I don't wanna even know, I don't wanna know, I don't wanna know what I've done.
You, you are not the first, there are so many women who feel this way that would not admit similar to what you've said. Yeah. I carry a rotating rotating. Yeah, rounds of consumer debt over the years when I've gotten myself in a hole for things that I've wanted. And they feel a lot of shame around that.
And I would say the way to break these patterns is to break it down from the very start and to start. And especially if you are in a committed relationship, when you have that support from your partner, that lack of judgment, when you really start to understand what's going on under the hood. Then the two of you can start to see how each other operate better, and you could start to catch each other before you fall back into old patterns.
And when we talk about moving forward, because that's [00:34:00] ultimately where we end where we end this book and we look forward and we say Hey. None of us really know what's gonna happen tomorrow, but we should plan for a future that we're excited for. Yeah. That we have things that we look forward to.
Positive financial goals that are so good and so aligned with our values that they are worth us changing our behavior today for. Not just getting caught in this cycle of like self-soothing spending. And other things that we've done before because we're so aligned.
I'll give you a great example from our own life. We were going to move, this is our starter home. Starter home. It's funny, like millennials and their starter homes , that become their forever home because of the housing market. And, but whatever. We moved into this house pre COVID 2016.
It was never meant to be the house that we stayed in forever. There's a lot wrong with it. Then during COVID, everything happened in our relationship. The money and finances and family and everything like that, and the housing market, all this stuff. And we had a decision to make If I had left corporate law and not got [00:35:00] to find some other job in corporate law, stable W2, salary, six figures, the whole deal. We would no longer get to move right now. And we were starting to look at homes. We had a realtor, the whole deal. But if I joined the firm. I could live out this dream of mine. I've always been a writer and it's always been my dream to get back to writing and journalism and write a book that could really help people.
Lauren: You are a fabulous writer, by the way, like truly. I've probably read half the book and the way that you write is so real. Thank you. Sidebar. But truly the style is phenomenal.
Heather: I really appreciate that because I don't feel like writing is something that I choose to do. It's something I like, have to do.
Okay. That's like how I feel about it. But, it's innate. It's in my, it's in my bones. But, but we had a choice and that choice meant though that we couldn't move into the house. And we told the realtor, we're not looking at homes anymore. And yeah, there's always times we're, and we're still in that house today, and there's times where I'm like, man.
Kitchen's freaking annoying. I wanna host a holiday dinner. I wanna, but it really, like [00:36:00] there are such shallow passing thoughts that just move in one ear and out the other because we are so aligned, I get to do this. We made a conscious choice to reprioritize. Our goals and allow me to shoot for the fences with this dream that I've always had to build my own career.
Write this book, start, helping women and helping couples reach greater equity in their life and their relationships. 'cause it's gonna help women out in the world. This was my dream and it was worth not moving into a bigger house right now. Of course, it was worth it, right? And so eventually
you start to believe it, right? And so when we talk about how we move out of old patterns, I think aligning on your goals and your priorities is that's how you do it.
Lauren: That's how you do
Heather: it.
Lauren: This last January because we had finally about a year ago, started having. Money, conversations, and it wasn't even like safe.
[00:37:00] So I come from a lot of financial insecurity. My father who recently passed away and is part of the impetus of this podcast, if you listen to episode one of season one he was horrible with money. We ended up owing the IRS half million dollars. We, he, I'm not even gonna claim that he owed the IRSA half million dollars in like 1992, which.
In today's terms would be a lot more than that. And I mean just, the scarcity mindset and we can't talk about this and this is dirty. We had liens on our house. Our house went to auction. So many things, Heather, we could be here all day. I could tell you so many things. We could
Heather: do this all day.
Oh my goodness. But I can't even imagine for you as a child probably feeling some sense of. Responsibility as a child just because we wanna make things right when we see and feel chaos around us. And that I experienced some, I was parentified as a child. Yeah. Oh,
Lauren: oldest. Oldest daughter. Are you also Oh I'm an
Heather: only child.
Lauren: [00:38:00] Yes. I remember that book. Yes. I actually, I have an only child and I can see, 'cause my husband is also the oldest, like it has got to be the pits to be the only child from two oldest children. But it's funny, I feel compelled to share like even what I had to heal, as you said that just last week I was doing some practice work with the subconscious reprogramming change work that I do, which helps you rewrite literally in real time using conversation techniques like we have here and your subconscious mind to let go of some of these.
And I have this memory where I'm sitting in my mom's 1988 Minivan Chrysler minivan with red with wood panels. Oh yeah. And I am watching one of my parents withdraw my, at that time, life savings, which was probably about $1,200. That I'm just confused as all fuck. I'm , what's going, , what do you say as an 11-year-old in that situation, you say [00:39:00] Nothing, John Snow, because you don't know what to do.
You don't know what's going on. And, yeah, of course I wanted to make it better.
Heather: And how powerful that to this day, you remember that story?
Lauren: Oh, I can see it. And because there is so much trauma in my past, like there's a lot of shit I can't see, but what I was able to see in the work that I do, and someone gave me the gift of helping me move through, and that's the work I, that's why I do the work that I do, is that I was holding on a responsibility.
To that memory that I had done something, or I had contributed in a way that had caused that financial scarcity or that financial issue. It had nothing to do with me. In fact, it had nothing to do with my own mother. My mom had no idea. I. That this was, my dad had all of this debt. Could you imagine coming home?
And Douglas being like, so let's sit down and talk about this. I like, as a wife, I would be like, what the, what? Excuse me, know what? We're getting [00:40:00] divorced right now. You know what? It happens. Yeah.
Heather: And I've spoken to couples in the book where it still happens today. It's and it's, and the reason people stay for all sorts of reasons.
And it's and this is no judgment on any particular situation, but I think it's just so complex. But the point being, these things that happen are so powerful that you held on to feelings from that and you infuse those feelings in your adult relationship with money. And I. I air myself out first in the book.
You will get my full life story. Yeah, I got
Lauren: some of it, but I just, maybe my
Heather: full life story, they were, my editors were like, this is not a memoir, Heather. Like we're cutting.
Lauren: It's just really interesting that has been part so much of my own healing journey, right? Like you talk about it as going back and looking at the stories and understand, and for me it's like the parts that got ingrained, and it's why, again, I use [00:41:00] the tool set that I do, is because you never know what is actually in your way.
And that's where the subconscious change work comes in . I had no idea that for whatever reason last week was the week that I needed to be told that it was okay to move past that and that it wasn't my fault. Now, I could have consciously told myself that for probably the last 30 years and it would've done nothing.
Heather: Isn't it so strange how things connect and it could be in a very like, unassuming moment. Yeah. , This book did that for me. Yeah. I, there was a point in the middle of this, probably closer to when I was around 70 or 80% done with a draft, and I said, I just made sense of my entire life.
I know. And I just made sense of my entire relationship with money. Yeah. And, um, it's incredibly freeing.
Lauren: It is the ultimate liberation. I would agree with you and I have had the gift of having that as well, and I know that [00:42:00] some of our powerhouse women that are listening and leading and supporting teams and running families and how homes and all of that, they're like, what's the point of all this?
And I think that both of us in our own way are an example that when you get curious and make choices that allow you to be open to that shift. That the possibility of that knowing actually starts coming to fruition.
Heather: I agree.
Lauren: All right. Last question 'cause we're officially out of time, but we'll have you back because I actually, Heather, I actually wanna do a whole season on money.
I actually wanna do a season on money education, money management. I wanna have experts from all over the world. I wanna talk about how. You're gonna be episode one, baby, because Okay. I told I've got people for you, I've got introductions. To me I would love that because I believe at the end of the day, a [00:43:00] lot of us went and signed up for a corporate career and we're out there proving ourselves in these generations because we're like, we can fucking do it.
We can do it, and we're gonna show you we can do it, and we're gonna let it cost whatever it needs. To cost on our mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, or energetic selves. But we're gonna show you that we can do it. And I am on this earth, I believe, to help women rewrite that so that they can find their own semblance of freedom.
But my question for you is, what do you want all powerhouse women to know out there about money together?
Heather: I want them to know that time is the greatest currency we have and that you can apply that concept. In every area of your life, you can apply it at work to protect your time and assert your worth.
You can apply it at home to assert your needs and you can apply it to the people that you love, to be sure that you're keeping in perspective what matters most to you.
Lauren: Amen. My whole body's lit up by that. So ultimate [00:44:00] truth bomb right there at the end. Heather. I adore you. I just met you 57 minutes ago, but I adore you.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for the gift of your time today, and I look forward to having you back on the show.
Heather: I had such a lovely time. This was such a wonderful conversation. I'm so happy to have joined you. Thank you.
What I love most about this conversation is how Heather reframes wealth, not as a number, but as a mirror for where we place our time, energy, and worth. Her And Doug's story is a reminder that money isn't just math, it's meaning. It's the story of who we think we have to be and what we're afraid to lose, and who we get to become when we start rewriting our money rules.
Because partnership, whether in business love, or with yourself. Isn't about keeping score, it's about staying aligned to what truly matters. So as you go back to your day, ask yourself, where am I still trading time for approval instead of peace? What story about money or success [00:45:00] am I finally ready to retire?
If this episode sparks something in you, share it with another powerhouse woman who's ready to build wealth without losing herself? And don't forget to check out Heather and Doug's new book, money Together Out Now.
Until next time, stay curious, stay powerful, and keep rewriting the rules of what success looks like for you. I'm Lauren DeGolia, your Chief Expansion Officer, and this is Corporate Fuckery.
