009. The Golden Handcuffs of Wealth & Envy

LifestyleMoney

Aug 29

Fans of RHOP are familiar with the green-eyed bandits, but are you familiar with the green-eyed monster?

If you've ever felt jealousy, envy or a touch of bitterness because you weren't born with a trust fund, this episode is for you.

In today's thought-provoking episode, we explore the complexities of being gifted wealth vs. earning it on your own, the allure of comparing ourselves to others, the ever-present feeling of envy, and why holding your own purse strings creates the most freedom in your life. Push play and let's explore strategies on how to manage envy and hold compassion for yourself when you feel it creeping up.

In today's episode, we cover the following:

Birdie and Bogey (1:42)

The dark side of old money: imposter syndrome, guilt and trauma (6:51)

Investing in experts garners more value than just money (12:05)

You can't compare people's journeys when they had different starting points (15:00)

The Golden Handcuffs: how people get trapped in wealth (18:34)

How to tamper your jealousy (22:04)

How envy can show up and how to acknowledge it (27:56)

Holding compassion for ourselves (31:50)

Hot Stock Tip: Slugging your face with snail mucin (35:51)

Transcript

Amber F. (00:05)
Welcome to Old Money, a show dedicated to helping you build the trust fund you wish you were born with. Ladies who lunch, listen up. Life is not about looking rich. I want you to build a life and a legacy that feels rich in every sense of the word. If you're ready to stack cash, talk shop, and trade insider secrets, you're in the right place.

Amber F. (00:25)
These are the new rules to old money. So let's get after it. Hello, rich girls. Welcome back to the Old Money podcast. I'm your host, Amber Frankies, and thank you for being here with me today.

Amber F. (00:37)
I am so excited about this episode because it wasn't a planned episode. It's just something that's been on my mind recently, which is dealing with these golden handcuffs of wealth and dealing with envy. Big surprise. I don't know if you know this, but I am not from generational wealth. I am observing it, right?

Amber F. (00:58)
Like, loving the conversations around it, loving that it's a trend right now, packaging this podcast in a really sexy way to attract people here so they think about, like I've said, dressing like Sophia Richie is going to bag you a millionaire. No, baby, that's not it at all. It's about living our wealthiest lives, building those wealthy lives, being super intentional about it. But today we're going to talk a little bit about what it feels like when you're seeing all these hotel du Cap weddings and these uber wealthy people on their yachts in San Tropez and dealing with the envy of it all and what that feels like and how to manage it. So that's where we're going today.

Amber F. (01:35)
But on the way, we're going to talk about a little bit of real housewives of New York, and we're going to talk about my birdie and bogey be. So. Just got back from a trip to Las Vegas, and if there's anything that's new money or chaotic money, it's Vegas for sure. My boyfriend loves Las Vegas. I used to really hate it, but I think that's because I had never done it right.

Amber F. (01:56)
I had stayed at, like, the New York New York hotel, which don't go there. It's not great, but Justin really does it right. This is his trip, his thing that he loves to do. And I love to tag along for the adventure and fun. We always stay at the same place, the encore hotel.

Amber F. (02:10)
And we have a little routine now, some traditions, and the traditions that I've implemented are getting caviar service and champagne at the petrosian bar in Bellagio, where there is just the best people watching ever going to shop and pick up a few things. We got the YSL card holder for our amazing giveaway winner from Instagram. Tracy. Congratulations. So the team at Usain Laurent sent that over to her.

Amber F. (02:37)
I got my own little card holder. And what else did? Bought. Oh, I bought a belt at Chloe. Justin got some sick glasses at Bottega, so we sprinkled around the stores.

Amber F. (02:46)
Had fun doing that. I also really appreciated that I was able to see some things in person that I was eyeing online. And it makes me realize that things look a lot better online than they do in person. I was looking at this one particular bag that had, like, a crocodile leather finish, and in person, it just looked super cheap. So I was happy to strike that off of my wish list.

Amber F. (03:07)
And I no longer covet it, which is mean. You know, the shopping is fun, the parties are fun. But for the most part, this trip is really about Justin and my's connection and taking a pause from the chaos and busyness of life and really taking a minute to reflect and talk about our relationship and each other. And we have such a strong connection, and it gets even stronger when we take time to do things like this. So I love doing little trips like this.

Amber F. (03:33)
But on the flip side of things, the bogey is that Vegas is like, let's not get it twisted. This is one of the worst places on earth. First of all, everything's fake, obviously, but also, people are just deranged. It is just the most depraved behavior I have ever seen. People are going to Vegas, and they've just decided I'm just going to be my worst self.

Amber F. (03:57)
And that was no more clear than at the pool parties that we went to on Saturday. We wanted to go to check out Tao beach because Justin had seen that Alesso was performing there. And by the way, this was during the weekend of Hurricane Hillary, which really didn't hit Vegas, and it was no big deal. But Alesso was canceled. We found that out when we were standing in line to get in, and the crowd at Tao beach was, like, aggressive and weird.

Amber F. (04:23)
And it was another dj. I at one point was like, I got to get out of here. And I literally booked it to the front door. And we went after that to encore beach club, which I've been to before with Justin. And that is an incredible, like, once in a lifetime pool party experience.

Amber F. (04:39)
No place does it better than encore beach club. Chain smokers were performing. We had seen them there before, and it was really fun for the first hour. Like, we showed up late to that pool party anyway. But people were just sending it in the most disgusting way.

Amber F. (04:53)
There was so many people. Like, two girls got wheel chaired out of the bathroom while I was waiting in line. There are people just being sick everywhere. I'm walking around with my sparkling water, looking around, being like, where am I? It was not great.

Amber F. (05:07)
So, again, it's all about what you make it, right? I think that, for one thing, access to different, elevated experiences really can change the experience you have at a specific place. Las Vegas is a great example of that, but it's also like, what vibe are you going to stay in? What are you going to allow to come into your energy field? And for me, those situations were not it.

Amber F. (05:30)
So we were out of there very quickly. So Vegas was fun for the shopping, for the connection, for the food. I'm not really much of a club girl. I'm not really much of a drinker. So we bailed on that pretty quickly.

Amber F. (05:42)
Anyway, my recommendations are absolutely Delilah's at the win. It's one of my favorite restaurants and experiences of all time. And my other recommendation is to stay away from the Texas hold'em tables. So, with that, let's move into what I've been thinking about recently and the way this episode kind of came to be. I've been really interested in this conversation about old money versus new money, and it came to light for me on the latest episode of Real Housewives of New York.

Amber F. (06:12)
No, this is not a pop culture podcast, and if you don't watch it, don't worry. I promise I'll bring it back. But there's been a couple of interesting episodes that have been really thought provoking for me. And the first one was on this recent episode. Brynn walks into a party, and somebody says, oh, you look so old money.

Amber F. (06:29)
And she's like, oh, thank you. It's like the best compliment you could ever give me. And this old money esthetic and style is something that's obviously coming up so much. But it's like, why is that such a great compliment? It's because we put so much value on being wealthy and what that means about ourselves, right?

Amber F. (06:47)
And in pop culture, old money is either idealized or demonized. And there is a really dark side of old money, right? Like, old money is defined as wealth that's passed down from generation to generation. Wealth that is not earned, but given. But when we look at not earning our own money and having it given to us, it comes with these purse strings, as we call them, or these golden handcuffs.

Amber F. (07:13)
And I'll talk more about that in a second. But what's really interesting about receiving money that's been earned from generation to generation? I mean, if you're talking about american old money, you're certainly talking about families who profited off of hundreds of years of free labor in order to build their wealth by the use of slavery. That's dirty money, and that comes with a lot of different responsibilities and guilts and trauma as well. And it's this rigged system.

Amber F. (07:42)
If you were of a certain class, color, et cetera, you had more advantages. That's still true today, but even more so hundreds of years ago. Right. But now also, when you, let's say, are living in 2023 and are handed millions of dollars without any proper financial guidance or personal development, is that really a great thing to aspire to? Because we know there's a lot of negative psychological effects for people who have received money after many generations.

Amber F. (08:10)
They're often reckless with that money because they haven't learned the value of earning it. I mean, think about Chuck Bass from Gossip girl, right? Just like this hedonistic, ruthless type of personality. Like anything in the world is mine. It's owed to me because this money's been owed to me, and I haven't really had to work to get it.

Amber F. (08:29)
I mean, the one thing about Chuck Bassett will give him credit for is he always had his hands in different honeypots as it related to businesses or getting involved in things. A lot of other people report the psychological effects of having no ambition and really having a lot of issues with self worth and impostor syndrome because they haven't done anything to earn this money. They've just been given it. Right? And Gossip girl, again, we see really destructive family systems and maybe parents that are not so involved in really guiding the children about what to do with that level of wealth.

Amber F. (09:04)
I mean, Chuck, Blair, Serena, all these people, Nate, they all had all of these different family systems that were incredibly dysfunctional. And I know that this is a fictional show, right. But it's indicative of what really happens in these circles. I mean, not only do you have these destructive family systems, but you also have exposure at a very young age to a lot of adult things like parties, drugs, alcohol. And it's reported, and, I mean, this is true for many famous old money families, including the Vanderbilts, that drug use and abuse and alcohol abuse has led to the downfall of many old money families.

Amber F. (09:41)
There's this proverb that's something like wealth never makes it past three generations because the first generation will build the wealth. The second generation is inspired to preserve it by witnessing their parents hard work. And then the third generation, never having witnessed the work that went into the creation of this wealth, will squander it. So it's a really interesting dynamic when we start to talk about the darker side of what it means to be given this wealth. But something that really came up for me was this idea that if the money is given to me, is it really even my own to decide what to do with it?

Amber F. (10:16)
And this is where we get into the purse strings conversation. And you know that proverb, it's whoever holds the purse strings holds the control. And if you've ever been married before, planning a wedding, and you have parents that want to be contributing to that wedding, that wedding becomes your parents wedding. Right now, they're inviting their friends and their contacts to celebrate you. But if they're paying for it, they have a say in what happens at that wedding, who's invited, what the tone is, what the choices are.

Amber F. (10:46)
Because when the money is not your own, it is not yours to make decisions with. And I'll be really honest, this has just occurred to me, and again, I've been, listen, really honest, envious of people that have been given so much wealth. But at the same time, were they really given the freedom that I have had to make my own decisions, to study the things that they want to in college, to pursue careers that they are inspired by, without somebody saying, we've been three generations of bankers. You must go into finance. I think that there's a lot of freedom that we overlook when we don't inherit wealth, when we do make our own way and create our own future, we get to be the ones that decide what we do with our money and our time and our efforts.

Amber F. (11:31)
And I don't know about you, but I certainly know that if I were given money from people in my life, they would want to say in what I do with it. And that's not something that I'm interested in navigating. And so while it would be nice to have been handed millions and millions of dollars, that's not my reality, and I'm not sad about it anymore. And this was really made apparent to me also in going back to real housewives of New York, Uba made a really interesting comment. And by the way, Uba is such a queen.

Amber F. (12:03)
And her hot sauce line, Ubah hot. So interesting because she's talking about bringing on investors so that she can grow. Because if you're going to do a product based business, it can be very expensive to hold inventory, do packaging, and production at scale so that you can spend less per unit and then charge the same amount, you have better margins, etc. And it's often a great business decision to bring on investors. But Ubah makes a comment that she doesn't want to bring on investors because she doesn't want to be told what to do.

Amber F. (12:34)
And on one side, my initial response to that was like, girl, yeah, you do want to be told what to do. You don't have any experience in consumer packaged goods. You don't have any experience in doing this. But if you took what's called greener money or money from investors who have experience, connections, good resources, and advice to give you, that could be a really great investment for you. Because we have this tendency to think that we know how to do it all.

Amber F. (13:00)
But there are people that are out there that have made so much money in doing the things that we want to do, and so taking an investment from them can actually garner more value than just the money. Right. We now have better connections, better resources, etc. So I was like, girl, if I was giving her money, I would want to tell you what to do. Let's say if I've made a bunch of hot sauces before, you would want to listen to me if I was your investor, because I would help you.

Amber F. (13:25)
That is part of taking on investment. So having this, like, I don't want people to tell me what to do mentality was a little off putting to me. But on the other side, I totally get it. Because if you are just taking on money and not advice, not greener money, then, yeah, now you have a boss. Like, you started your own company, you started your own product, and all of a sudden you're taking on not just a boss, but maybe a board, maybe you have ten new bosses who are going to tell you what to do and how to brand and what needs to happen.

Amber F. (13:54)
And you do lose control of a lot of the elements. But if you're investing with the right people, that doesn't have to be a negative thing. So I thought that was such an interesting reflection on what that means to take on money from people. And then even further than that. This conversation I saw on Reddit was so eye opening to me.

Amber F. (14:15)
And the headline on this Reddit article was, it's crazy, the difference between where Aaron is at life at 36 and where Brynn is at life in 36. And I had, first of all, no idea that both of these women were 36. But also, I am 36, and I feel like they're both so grown up and so much more mature, older, I don't know. And Erin, she's got two kids. She's already been married for ten years.

Amber F. (14:38)
She has this thriving business. She's already sold all this real estate. And then Brynn kind of feels like she's more still finding herself not sure if she wants to settle down, although she talks a lot about wanting to, having children, et cetera. They're just at very different places in life. And it's so interesting that the standard cultural protocol is to say that Erin feels, quote unquote, farther along because she's already been married and had the children.

Amber F. (15:04)
But it's so irresponsible to compare somebody like Erin to somebody like Brynn and to even insinuate that Bryn isn't as far along as Erin. It's like, far along. On what track? What's the goalpost? Where is she trying to get to?

Amber F. (15:18)
And what's the. You know, we've learned from the show that Brynn has had some significant family trauma in her life, which if you're in Erin's shoes and you're raised from a very wealthy family and you have all of the connections in the world. Her mom was already in real estate before she got in, so she had a lot of exposure and experience to bank on to get started early. Yeah, you're going to have less trauma to work through, like, more help to get to where you want to go. Meanwhile, Brynn has to have gone through a lot of therapy and growing and healing and just kind of taking care of herself before she's able to really fully express herself as an adult in the world.

Amber F. (15:57)
And I think about myself with this a lot as well. Not to say that I've experienced any level of trauma to what Brynn has shared, but just kind of healing through and figuring myself out. I'm also 36, and I'm not married, and I don't have children, but I certainly don't feel behind. And I don't think that Brynn does, either. I think that she's been on her own path, and the paths look very different depending on where your starting point is.

Amber F. (16:22)
Right. It's like they say someone like Erin started on third base, and that's very easy to get home and make a run. Right. And so with Brynn, it's really interesting that people are comparing them, pitting them against each other almost, and saying, brynn is so much farther behind. When I couldn't think that would be farther from the truth.

Amber F. (16:41)
I think Brynn would tell you that she's pretty satisfied with her life. She's living her fullest expression of herself, whether you like her or not on the show. I think they're both very interesting characters, and they really do show two unique perspectives of what it means to be an adult in this world, with or without children. I also think this whole, like, oh, Bryn is living her Carrie Bradshaw. She's sex in the know.

Amber F. (17:03)
These archetypes, these tropes, I'm really done with it. Honestly. I just gave a talk this morning, actually, to Real Page. I mentioned this in my last podcast, and something that I brought up is these shows, these archetypes that we've seen for so long. Like, there's always four women on the show.

Amber F. (17:18)
There's always the word girl or sex in the title, right? We've got sex in the city. We've got girls. We've got sex lives of college girls. We've got golden girls.

Amber F. (17:27)
All of these four different extremes, right? You've got a Samantha Jones. You've got a Carrie Bradshaw. You've got a miranda. You've got a charlote.

Amber F. (17:34)
And they're not to say that there's four different ways to be. I really think that these four archetypes represent four different. Are very complex personalities. So these assignments of trying to put people in a box or make sense of what they do by comparing them. Know, I just did this with Chuck Bass for it's how we make sense of things is that we have points of comparison.

Amber F. (17:56)
And it's unfortunate that it really degrades or devalues the experience that Brynn has had and all the things that she's overcome. But speaking of comparisons and kind of figuring out where we're at based on where we are relative to others, whether they are fictional characters or other people that we know, we will come back to this as it relates to finding our place and our identity in relation to those we admire and dealing with that envy. But there's one other thing I wanted to touch on with this conversation around envy and looking at other people with wealth, something that I think gets overlooked a lot is this conversation about golden handcuffs. And this was a term I first heard at my last job. And essentially, it was established to mean different things that companies would do to entice their employees to stay with that one company for longer as opposed to switching jobs.

Amber F. (18:49)
So it's those carrots, right? How are they carroting you to stay at a job? And we know that some of the techniques used are investing 401 ks after you're there for a certain amount of time, or vesting into employee stock purchase programs, or maybe being offered a sabbatical after so much time, or being offered the opportunity to work in a different location or travel, all of these things that encourage you to stay with the company. But what's happened recently is that we've put ourselves in our own golden handcuffs through our lifestyle inflation. And what that means is that as we continue to grow in our careers, we might make choices to reflect our success at work, with our commitments at home, such as buying a new car when we get that promotion, or upgrading our house when we get a new job.

Amber F. (19:36)
And what happens is that as you increase your payments that are due out to everybody else and you inflate your lifestyle, you then give yourself golden handcuffs to have to stay in that job, even if it turns out to not be the right job for you. You have to stay because you have to make those payments. And so all of a sudden, you've tied yourself to this commitment, whether you intended to stay there or not. And I had a boss many years ago, and I'm not saying this is ethical or appropriate. I'm just saying it happens.

Amber F. (20:05)
And you should know about it, because I learned about it as well. I had a boss who, when we would interview new candidates, he would ask our front desk manager to do a little bit more recon on the candidates as he was interviewing them. So, first of all, he would always check in with the receptionist and ask if that person was kind to them when they checked in. I think that's pretty good practice. But he would also send out this office manager to go look in their car, and he would say, was the car messy?

Amber F. (20:29)
Was it dirty? We had a small parking lot, so it'd be very easy to tell which car was not one of the core teams. Was the car messy? Was it dirty on the outside? Did it have a car seat in the back?

Amber F. (20:38)
That is 100% illegal, by the way, to make hiring decisions based on familial status. But it happens, guys. And then the other thing this boss would say would be, what kind of car do they drive now? And he would take note of it, and he would also take note of when his employees bought a new home or moved or when they upgraded their car. And I heard him say on many different occasions, oh, just bought a new car.

Amber F. (21:01)
He's going to need to make that car payment. So we've got him for a while. And that's the truth. You guys, there are some managers out there that will look at your golden handcuffs as your security with them to stay at that job.

Amber F. (21:17)
Today's episode is sponsored by trust and will. Yes, we talk a lot about making money on this podcast, but I'm also interested in keeping it. And that's what trust and will is here to help us do. You might be thinking, I'm young. Do I even need a trust or a will?

Amber F. (21:31)
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Amber F. (21:58)
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Amber F. (22:29)
These are the new rules to old money, baby and trust and will is here to help.

Amber F. (22:35)
You can get trapped in wealth. We've talked about this in a couple of different frameworks. You could have the family pressure of having to do what your family wants because they hold the purse strings. You have investment pressure from investors who might invest in your business, who might make decisions for you that you may or may not agree with. You have kind of the reverse handcuffs of coming not from money and then having to start farther behind than people that did.

Amber F. (22:59)
But then we have the golden handcuffs that are either put on by your company or you might put on your golden handcuffs on your own. So I encourage you to this is such trite advice, but make sure you're not spending beyond your means. And if you are upgrading your lifestyle, can you really afford it? And we can talk more about that in another episode of what's affordable for you based on what you take home. But this leads me to the topic of envy and feeling jealous of others.

Amber F. (23:27)
Because I'm going to tell you, these conversations, these things that I've been talking about recently, specifically for me, the purse strings conversation has really tempered my jealousy around other people having been given mass amounts of wealth and coming from families that might dictate what their options are, whether it's, like I said, what career they do, who they marry, the types of things they can have, what their expectations are. I'm so grateful that I don't have those expectations put on me from my parents. So that has really, really helped me in tempering my envy. But there's a couple of other things that have helped me as well. And one of the things that I've been looking at recently is the number that I actually need to earn and save for me to have a beautiful, expansive, wealthy life.

Amber F. (24:16)
And that number actually might be smaller than you think it is, because when we don't define what the number is that we're trying to hit, it feels like this big, ambiguous, unattainable goal that, what are we ever going to make that much money? How are we going to have as much money as Jeff Bezos? Well, you likely won't, sis. I'm not trying to make as much money as Jeff Bezos. I don't really know if I want a half a billion dollar yacht.

Amber F. (24:41)
I'd like to charter one, but I don't know if I actually want one. Maybe I want to try on a different yacht every time I travel. Who really knows? My point is this. When you start looking at the numbers that you actually need to make to live a life of your dream, I'm going to just super simplified.

Amber F. (24:57)
This is not like tax implications, Social Security, et cetera. But if you had $5 million, what would that mean for you? If you had $5 million in an investment account, would that be enough? I mean, some people say probably not. But the reality is, if you had $5 million in interest earning investment account on a monthly basis, your pretax interest income would be $22,916 or weekly.

Amber F. (25:25)
That means you would get $5,288 or daily. You would get $753 a day on interest for your money sitting and working for you. And those are based on really conservative but average returns. And that's if you had $5 million invested in a specific balance of different assets, et cetera. This is not investment advice.

Amber F. (25:45)
This is just giving you a picture. It's painting you a picture. My question for you is, did you know that? Did you know that's how much money $5 million could make for you. So I ask you, could you survive on $22,000 a month?

Amber F. (25:57)
Is that enough for you if you have that with your spouse? I think that that's a really interesting concept to consider. And then you say, well, gosh, a million dollars is a lot of money. And you're right, it is if you are just waiting for somebody to hand it to you or you're trying to earn it by getting a 2% inflation raise every single year. And that's why we're going to talk so much about building value outside of earning your paycheck at work.

Amber F. (26:20)
And oh my God, I feel like I have like 1000 different episodes. Like I need to get out so quickly because there's so much to discuss. But I really believe that adding value to this world and this marketplace with your talents and tapping into that, you can make a lot of money very easily. And just to give you some context, I have this little piece of paper and it's printed out. It lives on my desk and it says how to make a million dollars.

Amber F. (26:45)
And it's not an instruction manual but it's a guidepost for what it would look like to earn a million dollars. To earn a million dollars you need 5000 people to buy a product for $200 from you. How many products have you randomly purchased on Instagram Marketplace or TikTok shop or whatever it might be that cost $200? You need 10,000 people to buy a $100 product from you. It's very easy to get 10,000 views on a TikTok video this day and age.

Amber F. (27:14)
You also need maybe just 2000 people to buy a $500 product from you. Maybe that's a service. Maybe that's consulting. You need 1000 people to buy $1,000 product from you to make a million dollars or you need 500 people to buy a $2,000 service product from you to make a million dollars. Now, obviously with the product there's going to be costs associated with creating that product, selling it, et cetera.

Amber F. (27:35)
Same thing with the service. But there are ways out there when you structure yourself to make money in a way that has your end goal in mind. Well, if I only need to sell 500 people something for $2,000, I could do that. You could do that. That's a million dollars right there.

Amber F. (27:54)
And then do it five times and you have $5 million in an investment account and you're now earning $22,000 a month on interest and you're spending all day at Pilates. I mean, the mindset shifts in the math around this make these things feel so much more achievable to me. And it really tempers my envy because when it doesn't feel so far away, when it's not this idea of an old money kid, I don't need to be Blair Waldorf. I don't need to be Kit Keenan, who, by the way, if you don't know, she is the real life Blair Waldorf. Her mom is Cynthia Rowley.

Amber F. (28:25)
She is an Instagram TikTok influencer running around New York City doing everything fabulous. She is literally Blair Waldorf. You could still have a great life and not be Kit Keenan or Blair Waldorf. That opportunity is there for you. You just have to make sure that you're striving towards the right goals and prioritizing the right things so that you can have the very wealthy life that you love.

Amber F. (28:48)
So for me, I'm a logic person, right? I've been talking to you about these ideas, these things, these constructs around how much money I need or why maybe having money given to me wouldn't have been the best thing for my life. All of these ways I could get trapped in wealth, all these different ideas, these are all logic based. But the reality is that envy is not a logic based emotion. Envy comes up for me a lot.

Amber F. (29:10)
I do feel envious still. And it's something that is hidden under that anger iceberg that I've talked about before. So envy can present as aggression, frustration, hate. For me, it shows up like heat in my body. It's like a flare up, like I'm having a reaction.

Amber F. (29:25)
I get hot. It can show up like an increased heart rate. And for me, the number one thing is acknowledging when it's coming up. Why is this flaring? What's the allergen that's making me feel so freaking hot right now?

Amber F. (29:38)
I'm really working on acknowledging the thing that's making me feel envious. And a lot of the time, it's not as simple as just saying, oh, I want her life. It's what is it? What story am I making up about this life? And what story am I making up about myself that I don't have the things that she has?

Amber F. (29:56)
We assign a lot of meaning and emotion to things like money and status and success. And when we see it in others as humans, like I was talking about, we're looking at ourselves relative to others. So we're using these other points of comparison to figure out where we fit in the hierarchy. And this is something that's evolutionary. This is something we've always done right as human beings, as neanderthals, whatever.

Amber F. (30:19)
But it often makes us feel like, in comparison, we're worth less than these other people because they might have more money than us, or they might have a private jet and we don't. Or they might be looking fabulous on that yacht in wherever they are in Sardinia right now. So one of the things I've been working on is neutralizing these observations and letting them be true without letting them mean anything about me. It is true that there are people that I follow on Instagram right now, Lauren Bostig, Morgan Stewart. Right.

Amber F. (30:50)
Flailing around on the mediterranean sea with their kids, having the time of their lives. And that can be true without that making it mean anything about me. Just because they're having a great time, it doesn't reflect anything about me or my worth or my opportunities. It means literally nothing into comparison about who I am. It doesn't have anything to do with me.

Amber F. (31:09)
And I can be happy for them without attaching it to myself or my own identity. And the other thing that's really come up for me as well is that I might not know the whole story. Like, how often have you gone on vacation and you haven't pooped in three days? You're bloated. You feel like absolute hot garbage.

Amber F. (31:25)
You drank too much the first night, you're still hungover. And then you go and smile for a picture on Instagram, and everybody's like, slay queen. You're crushing, and you're literally dying on the inside. Now, I'm not hoping that's happening to Lauren Bostick or Morgan Stewart. I'm just saying we don't know the whole story.

Amber F. (31:40)
And so that's why I say the cure to envy is curiosity, not only for what's going on within ourselves, but what's going on for them. And the thing that really changed this for me is actually having a conversation with somebody about this. I have this woman in my life I admire so much, and she is literally traveling the world nonstop. I have no idea how she has the energy for it. And I was like, God, you're killing it.

Amber F. (32:01)
I'm loving to see your travels. I'm living vicariously through you. I'm so obsessed with watching your story unfold. And her response was along the lines of, yeah, after my divorce and not being able to have children, it's been the next step in my life. Oh.

Amber F. (32:14)
Whoa. That shook me to my core, because you would never know that this person was dealing with something that wasn't just fabulosity. All the time. And it doesn't mean that she's not happy and doing this in spite of it. It's like she has her own things going on as well.

Amber F. (32:29)
And so it made me think, like, what am I seeing that I'm just assuming is true? Am I just assuming that this woman who's traveling the world is fully fulfilled and happy? Or does she want for more, the same way that I do? Or this woman who I see running this crazy, successful, incredible business? Maybe her stress level is eight times what mine is, and I can barely deal with my own.

Amber F. (32:50)
Do I want to take that on? I'm not saying that we should think the worst of people. I'm just asking us, asking myself, reminding us that we don't know the whole story. So we need to hold compassion for others instead of judgment, but we also need to hold compassion for ourselves and not hold judgment. I mean, when you felt envious last time, did you hold compassion for yourself, or did you judge yourself?

Amber F. (33:14)
And did you feel like you didn't have enough? You're not doing enough. You just aren't enough. Because that's my typical go to, and that's what I'm really practicing getting out of. So just to recap quickly, we are leaning into the power of neutrality.

Amber F. (33:27)
We are not allowing what's happening for other people. Reflect onto us. It doesn't have anything to do with us. We are also neutralizing those thoughts and those envies and jealousies by using our logical brain and our math brain and also remembering some things that may come with the strings that come with that great wealth. The other thing is that we are responsible for what we expose ourselves to.

Amber F. (33:50)
So the way that I expressed, when I feel envy, I feel hot, like, in my chest. It's like an allergen for me. And it's my responsibility to manage what I expose myself to. So if something is making me flare up, I need to clean it up, right? I need to get it out of my environment.

Amber F. (34:05)
So that might mean unfollowing some people on your TikTok or your instagram page. It might mean muting them if it brings something up in you so that you can focus on working on yourself first instead of always being exposed to that stimulant. So that's something that I've done recently as well, of really cleaning up what environments I'm in and around and making sure that if I'm in an environment that makes me feel jealousy, I'm transmuting that to inspiration. And, oh, wow, that was possible for her that can be possible for me as well. It's important to remember that not a single person on this earth has the exact same makeup as you, experience as you, life history as you.

Amber F. (34:43)
So it's hard to find people that she did it, and we had the same conditions, so I can do it, too. You're going to find a huge span of different types of people that have the things that you think you want, whether it's the money, the bag, the relationship, the stability, the home. And what you need to do is look for these people as expanders. So I'm really big about finding people and calling them out in my life and saying, I love what you're doing. You are an expander for me, meaning that you've expanded my possibility of what's available to me and really sharing that with them.

Amber F. (35:15)
And every time I've opened up a conversation about that, that's when that curiosity has come in, and that's when we've been able to have some real conversations about. Not everything is as it seem. It's not as easy as it seems. So again, leaning into that curiosity, huge. And as we lean into the curiosity with ourselves, again, I really encourage you to hold yourself with some compassion without judgment.

Amber F. (35:38)
And if it comes up in you, it's okay. It's your thing to journal on. It's your thing to explore deeper and think about what's available for you, why you think it's not available for you. Maybe journaling on it. Working on a gratitude list.

Amber F. (35:50)
I know that sounds so corny, but writing down a gratitude list. By the way, this is such overgiven advice. But just writing it down does nothing for me at all. So I can't write down a list of 20 things I'm grateful for, but what I do is I think of two or three things that I'm really grateful for, and I get into the moment of feeling the gratitude for it. And I'm talking about closing my eyes when I'm in bed and really picturing myself, imagining myself watching myself on a movie in my brain, of hugging my dog for the very first time.

Amber F. (36:20)
Oh, it makes me choke up just thinking about it right now. It's really getting into the feeling of the gratitude. Not just writing it on another list, like getting into the feeling of it. That is a huge energy changer. And with that, I just want to remind you that envy is a very normal, very common kind of feeling that comes up for us, especially as we're all striving and we all come up against these rocks or blocks in our lives and we look to others and say it's easier for them.

Amber F. (36:48)
And I mean, with that, I hope that me being transparent about what I've struggled with, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I'm an open book. So send your questions in oldmoneypodcast@gmail.com. Talk more about that. And just exposing more of these honest conversations can really help neutralize and temper that feeling.

Amber F. (37:06)
And we can get a little bit more comfortable with it than we are right now. So with that, I'm going to leave you with one hot stock tip of the day. The thing to invest in what you should be putting your money into. And this is something that I resisted for a very long time. But I am here to be the 800th person to tell you that the hype is very, very real.

Amber F. (37:23)
You guys, my skin is glowing, and it's because of the snail mucin. I am obsessed. It's this coarse rx, I think is how you say it is the brand snail mucin hydrating gel cream situation. And yeah, it does come from snails. I tried to look into how they get the mucin from the snails.

Amber F. (37:44)
It's kind of disgusting, but I think they put them in, like, a centrifuge and they spin the snails around so they get really dizzy and they suck all of the snail juice off of them and don't think about it too much. It's so gross. It's so, like, sticky and stringy. But it honestly has been such a game changer for my skin. I run dry, and what I've been doing is I've been putting on after I wash my face, putting on my actives, then I've been waiting for that to dry.

Amber F. (38:09)
Then I spray my face with a mist. I'm using the La Roche-Posay mist water. You can use evion or whatever else, because it does need water to activate. And then putting a couple of pumps of this on my skin, letting that dry and then locking it in with my moisturizer before I go to bed. And the glow is real.

Amber F. (38:27)
I'm not kidding. It's not just glow. It's just kind of like the overall health, I think. I've been doing this mini slugging procedure every couple of nights. And so if you're grossed out by the snail mucin, I'm looking at you, Emily Austin.

Amber F. (38:40)
I know it's disgusting. I would give it a shot because it really has done a lot to change my skin. I got mine on Amazon. I typically don't buy skincare on Amazon because there are so many fakes out there. But this one was verified.

Amber F. (38:52)
And also if you go on Costco, you can get it for, I think you can get three for basically the price of what you're paying for one at Costco. I'm sorry, on Amazon or Ulta or whatever, but snail mucin? Let me know how it goes. I'd love to see your glowing selfies. Tag me in them.

Amber F. (39:06)
I hope you guys are doing well. Thank you again for spending time with me on the Old Money podcast. My name is Amber. I am here at your service, so let me know what you want to talk about, what you want to hear next, and we'll make that episode happen for you. Talk to you soon.

Amber F. (39:18)
Bye bye.

Amber F. (39:21)
Feeling rich? I hope so. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Old Money. If you have questions you want answered, email me at oldmoneypodcast@gmail.com, or hit us up on social. We are at Oldmoneypodcast and I am at your service.

Amber F. (39:36)
If this episode spoke to you, inspired you, helped you, if you took a single note, it would mean the world to me. If you could please just take a minute to rate and review the podcast. And if you're not doing so already, subscribe. And if you have friends who like getting rich, please share this episode with them, even if it's just on your Instagram story. And I'd love you more than Jeff Bezos loved Amazon prime.

Amber F. (39:58)
Thank you so much and I will talk to you on the next episode. Remember, I'm not your lawyer, I'm not your tax professional, and I'm not your financial advisor. The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire, and support listeners in their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. In addition to that, this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Bye.

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The content presented in this podcast is intended to entertain, educate, inspire and support listeners in their personal and professional development and does not constitute business, financial, or legal advice. Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services for which individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services related to the episode.

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