SHE Asked Podcast
Welcome to The SHE Asked Podcast with Anna McBride—a space where the stories we tell ourselves are challenged, reimagined, and rewritten to unlock personal transformation.
Hosted by former therapist, storyteller, and lifelong seeker Anna McBride, this podcast dives deep into the power of narrative. Through personal stories and intimate conversations with guests, we explore how shifting our internal dialogue can change not just how we see our lives—but how we live them.
Each episode offers what Anna calls “practical hope”—real tools, lived experience, and emotional honesty for anyone feeling stuck, lost, or ready for change. Whether you’re navigating divorce, grief, reinvention, or simply trying to understand your past, The SHE Asked Podcast invites you to become the author of your own story—and the hero in it, too.
Follow along for weekly episodes filled with compassion, perspective, and the courage to ask yourself:
What story am I telling—and is it still serving me?
SHE Asked Podcast
You Can Heal Your Relationship With Money And Raise Your Self-Worth
In this first episode of She Asked’s end-of-year Completion Series, Anna McBride explores how our relationship with money mirrors our relationship with self-worth. Anna reflects on inherited money beliefs, financial avoidance, and the healing that comes from honesty, boundaries, and asking for help.
This episode invites listeners to complete outdated financial narratives from 2025 and step into 2026 with greater clarity, maturity, and self-respect
...because money isn’t just a resource, it’s a relationship.
✨ In this episode, Anna explores:
- How childhood money beliefs shape adult financial behavior
- The link between self-esteem, self-worth, and income
- Why financial avoidance is rooted in fear—not failure
- Letting go of shame around money and spending
- Creating healthier money boundaries for the new year
- Why 2026 represents a creative reset in your financial life
Anna also shares reflective journaling prompts to help you rewrite your money story and build a grounded, empowered relationship with finances moving forward.
If you’re ready to release old financial patterns, heal your relationship with worth, and enter the new year with more confidence and clarity, this episode is for you.
Welcome back to She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope. I'm your host, Anna McBride, and I am so excited that you're here. We've reached the end of the year, guys. Oh my gosh, 2025 is coming to a very fast end. And we wanted to wind up the year with a three-episode capulation of things that we are completing. Maybe there are concepts that are shifting. I know these are ones that I'll be covering, are how I'm shifting in them. And I'm offering them to you as a way for you to consider like where you are now and where you would want to be heading into 2026. The first one is going to be about money. Money. It's a topic that carries a lot of energy. One of the things that's important to consider about money is how it mirrors where we are in our self-worth. Yeah. This has been a part of my story, my healing story is how I have healed and worked on healing my self-concept around my worth. So I want to begin as we like to do in all of our episodes with a story. This one's about money, and it's my money story. I grew up not knowing much about money. I was in a large family with two parents that had two different relationships to money. My father came from the Depression, the era where everything was scarce. There was a lot of scarcity in his upbringing. And my mother came from a family that had a little bit more means and from another country. So there was a lot of layers around their relationship to money. In my case, being from a large family, you would think like we didn't have much, that we would be really struggling. Yet I have never worried about money. Interestingly enough, what I worried about was what I really felt was scarce, and that was love. And we'll get to that in another episode. In this episode, I want to share with you this story around how I began to relate to money. I again grew up in a large family, and my father worked really hard to be able to support all of us. He was working all the time, traveled in his field, and was gone quite a bit. And we were always told it was for his work and that it was because he was providing for us. Interestingly enough, I didn't know what he did for a living. We didn't talk about it. And we never talked about what or how what was his salary or what that looked like. Like we never talked about money. The only thing I knew about money was that my mother was always really anxious around there not being enough. And I can understand that. She had 11 children to take care of with my father traveling, so he was gone a lot. And as she would tell it, he would leave for the week for a couple of weeks and leave her some cash on the windowsill in the kitchen. Like, literally, like a$20 bill. Maybe two of them. If he was going to be gone for a couple of weeks. To feed 11 children. I know we're talking about decades ago. However, holy moly, I can't even imagine what that was like. My mother was a hustler. She had deals all over town with the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. Seriously. And with a neighbor who was a hunter. And their deal was that if he hunted and she cleaned them, they would split them. And so there were many mornings when I would wake up and there would be carcasses of deer and geese and lots of other fowl and that he had hunted that she was going to clean. I thought it was like a war zone. It really was something. However, looking back as a mother, that must have been so stressful for her to have to make up for what was the deficit between the cash that my father left for her and the amount of mouths she had to feed. And make sure that you can take care of yourself. Now I'm one of seven girls and I have four brothers, yet she kept drilling that message to us, the girls in the family. Like we had to have a career, we had to have our own ability to provide for ourselves. What was interesting was I paid more attention to what my mother did, not what she said. And I also noticed that what my mother did was she always deferred to my father when it came to money. He was in charge of making it, he was in charge of how it was spent, he was in charge of everything related to their money. His name was on the bank account. She couldn't even access their money. She couldn't get credit cards in her name. I know that was more about the times that we were in, however, it was very traditional, very restricted in her access to money. So I grew up in that environment and then got married and recreated that same story. When I got married, I didn't have a career. And within 10 years of our marriage, I was a mother of three children. Still no career. At that time, I was pursuing the idea of becoming an athlete, a professional athlete, albeit although it wasn't the way my life turned out. Yet I didn't have the means to make my own money, and my husband was in charge of all of our financial decisions. He was the major breadwinner, and so he decided how our money was invested, how we were going to spend it. We had a budget, and if I was going to spend anything over a certain amount, we had to talk about it. He was very controlling. I just saw it as something familiar because this is what I grew up with. Although I knew what he did for a career, I didn't necessarily understand or appreciate how much he made. I just was always told it was more than me. So my relationship to money has been very much like my childhood. So therefore, I didn't own my relationship to money until I had to. And my marriage lasted for three and a half decades. So for three and a half decades, I continued that storyline. And I am here to tell you that what I learned from all that is I was contributing towards how disempowered I was around money. And it was very much tied to what I thought my worth was. I would only progress or allow myself to progress in the area of income to a certain point. I had negotiated with my husband about moving my business to our property, and he thought that was a good idea because of the tax write-off. So he encouraged me to become our tax write-off, which meant that I could only make so much money because we had to have enough losses to write off. So I was participating in the process that kept me from being fully self-supporting. It was only upon the end of my marriage that I really had to start taking responsibility for financial decisions. I still needed more time to mature there because I didn't understand and appreciate the healing I had to do around my self-worth in order to be able to make better decisions where money is concerned. I am happy to say that I have shifted so much in this year around the relationship of money that I feel like my worth internally has risen so high and it reflects externally in my life. And we will get to how that's possible today. So what I want you to take away from the story is that our family of upbringing pretty much helps define what our relationship to money is. What we saw growing up, how people related to money, we inherit those stories. There are very few of us that actually create a healthy relationship to money without having to go through an unhealthy relationship to money. So let's begin there, right? If you are one of those people like I was that really struggled to have any relationship to money or a healthy one, you're not alone. Statistically speaking, money is one of the number one reasons why people are anxious. 65% of our population cites money as the number one stressor in their life, according to the American Psychiatric Association, a poll they did back in 2003. Yeah, it makes people feel anxious because they don't know how to relate to it. They don't know what to do with it or they think that they're doing it wrong. I know I did. I don't know about you. So when I stopped hoping that money was going to figure itself out on its own, that's when my relationship to it changed. I've talked about this before, but back in February of this year, I began the process of attempting to buy a condo here in New York City. It had a big down payment that I had to make, but I wasn't quite in a position that I am now in terms of my clarity around my relationship to money. This was a tough lesson for me because I not only lost the condo, I lost my deposit. It's a lot of money. It's very embarrassing for one, and two, it was very stressful because I said to myself, I can't keep going through this. I have to really look at the way I relate to money, the way I relate to it's my relationship to it, so that I can make better investments, I can hold myself accountable, and also really look at the way I think I'm supposed to be handling it. As a result of that experience, I really started leaning into and looking at all the ways in which I had been relating to money and how I wanted to shift on that. One of the things that kept coming up was that my concept, my self-concept around my worth, was very limited, very immature, and very built upon my old story in my marriage and even the one my parents had. I had been carrying a story with me that pretty much said I wasn't worth much. I wasn't worth taking the time to get to know what I want money to do in my life, how I want to invest it, or how I see myself making it. I don't profess to pretend that I know what I'm doing with money, yet I can tell you now I have help. Now I'm completely honest about what I know and what I don't know. Back in February, I pretended I knew what I was doing when it came to buying that condo. Yes, in New York City we have attorneys, we have realtors, financiers that will help you put all that together. But did I ask them for help? No. Because I didn't want to admit what I didn't know. Now, because of that humbling experience, I am more open about that. I am now sitting in a home that I have purchased six or seven months after that experience, yet in that time I really had doubled down on my healing process relative to money. I remember going into the purchasing of this condo, and I had a conversation straight up with the attorney, the realtor, and the financer. And I said to all three of them, I don't know what I'm doing. And I need you to help me see everything clearly so that I don't repeat what I did back in February. And they were all in to help me. Interesting, what happens when you ask for help, and they were also wanting me to be successful in the purchase of this condo. And so here I am, able to tell you that when you can be that honest, that clear, and that healed, things work out better. So that lesson brought forward a few things that I want to just emphasize with you, and that is about certain habits we have around money. My habit up until the point of when I went through that process had been not to be completely forthcoming about my limitations. I had a habit of just moving so quickly through a process, and that had to do with other challenges that I have, but I was so quick to rush, I didn't want to miss out. And so I convinced myself that if I didn't move quickly, then I was going to lose that condo. I ended up losing it anyway, and I'm convinced that it was partly because I wouldn't slow down, I wouldn't ask enough questions, I wouldn't admit that I didn't know what I didn't know. And now because I saw that more clearly, I attended to those parts of me that were not quite healed around that. And those are holdovers from my childhood. And where back then I thought that if I admitted what I didn't know, it wasn't safe. Back then, people knew that I didn't know what I was doing with money, I was laughed at. That happened again in my marriage. My husband thought it was very not okay that I didn't know how to invest money, handle money, or even argue with him around money. I always deferred to him because I literally felt very childlike around money. I'm not like that anymore. I take it all very seriously and to the point where I can handle it so much better. So habits around money are something to look at. The other thing is around fear. I had a lot of fear around money that I needed to look at it. It's not like I felt like I wouldn't have enough money. It was more like I had made money connected to love. And so my real fear around not having enough love in my life was very confused and somewhat wrapped up in my relationship to money. It was blocking me. So it's like I had to face the fear around love in order to really have a different relationship with money. I had a fear around not knowing what I was doing with money. And that was true. I didn't know what I was doing. I think the real fear was people knowing that I didn't know what I was doing. Because how would that look like? What would people think about me? That was the real fear. And I want to tell you that I'm not alone in not knowing what I'm doing. I really do think that most people don't. Yet I will be the first one to tell you that I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't care if people know that. Obviously, I'm talking about it now. I wasn't talking about it then. Another fear was to have people know that I had such a restricted idea around my worth. I come across as being very confident, and I am. However, it's been confusing on how confidence didn't really translate into worth. They are really two different things. My self-worth, which is really tied up in my self-esteem, was far much lower. And it was perpetuated through my marriage because of the dynamic there. So when it came to money, I was very low in my relationship to worth. I thought that I had to perform at a very high level to be worth anything. And so I'll give you an example. I worked for the better part of two decades as a therapist. And for more than half of that time, I never raised my rate, which was way too low to begin with. And I really wanted people to feel like they got a good deal. Like I was the bargain therapist when really I was negotiating against myself because I didn't believe I was worth what other people were charging for the same service, even though I was so good at what I was doing. So this idea around self-esteem, self-worth, and money is something to think about if you are struggling with the same thing. And yet it's very understandable because one relates to the other. Self-esteem, self-worth, and money are in a triad with each other. And how we relate to ourselves and our worth is a direct consequence of what our income would look like. So if you were like me and you struggled to see that you were more deserving of better income, if you'd never even thought about that or haven't fought for yourself to keep raising your worth, then it might be something to think about. That was a fear of mine not being worthy. I am so grateful to be able to sit here and tell you that I have really leaned into that. That I don't struggle with that the way I did. I'm able to change my mind, and so are you. It's not something to give yourself permission for, although, if you need one, write that slip right now. Because you deserve to open up your mind and allow money to be coming to you at a higher level because you are shifting your relationship to yourself, your worth, and to money, which includes habits, which includes just what you think you are worth. So in a torance, credible. So now let's get to the real crux of this conversation. And that is what we are going to leave behind in this year in regards to money. And to me, this is really about a boundary, right? Boundaries are sacred. Boundaries are what we will no longer participate in. What we're no longer going to do. And so when it comes to money, it's important to consider about boundaries. I know that for myself, what I am leaving behind, what I will no longer do, is to think that money isn't something that I ought not to consider. It's not going to be an afterthought, like how I look at numbers relative to income, and how I look at bank accounts, how I look at all my investments. This is something that I used to avoid. I am leaving behind avoidant behavior when it comes to money. I want to leave behind all avoidant behavior, but particularly when it comes to money. So I don't want to avoid looking at my bank account because if I'm avoiding it, it's because I'm fearing something. And so now I look at, I want to face my fear and do it anyway. And so therefore the avoidance just becomes less of an issue. I am looking at my bank accounts regularly, I'm looking at my investments regularly, and I'm looking at the way I'm spending my money. I'm no longer avoiding that. In this day and age, it's too easy to spend money. Your cards are on your phone, you just have to tap and you spend, right? Or you just scroll online and you hit buy, buy, buy. I know I've done it. Now I'm practicing the pause before I spend. If it's important today, it'll be important tomorrow. And if it goes beyond a certain level of spending, I want to consider it before I spend it. I used to look at scrolling as something to do with my spare time. When I realized and slowed down and realized that I was using it to alleviate certain anxiety, I got curious about that and I asked myself, what am I anxious about? If I'm not worried about money, what am I really worried about? And what I came to find out was that when I wasn't attending to myself, when I was looking outside of myself for attention, and I wasn't getting it, that made me anxious. And so I would definitely feel the time scrolling and spending instead of really feeling the feeling. Yeah, I no longer am going to avoid having conversations around money when it comes to people that I care about. I'm a very generous person by nature, and I am okay with that. Yet I think that when it comes to how I invest or who I invest in, I want to make sure that it is something that works for me. So I'm no longer going to people please when it comes to money. These are conscious choices that I'm making that have more to do than just money, yet they really spill over into my relationship with money because how I relate to myself, to my feelings, to my loved ones, people I care about, is how I relate to money. It's just another relationship that I have. And if I want it to be one with integrity, one in alignment with who I am now versus who I was in my marriage, who I was as a child, I have to be willing to have a boundary about how I want that relationship to be. I want it to be of quality. I want it to be of integrity. I want it to be of no fear. Because even though I said that I wasn't worried about money, my childhood was filled with so many other things that I was anxious around, other fears that I had. I didn't understand nor did I appreciate how lacking I was in other needs that I had. And I couldn't articulate that. It just wasn't, there wasn't any space for that. So as an adult, I never matured in being able to speak up for what I needed. And so that really spilled over to the way I related to money. I was very childlike with money, and that's only until recently. And so I'm no longer going to participate like that because I'm a grown-up and I want to have a mature relationship with money. I don't want it to dictate my life. I just want it to be an asset. And the way I know to make it an asset is to be able to have no fear in the way I'm relating to it or handling it. And yeah, that's something I'm keeping in mind as I wrap up this year and want to participate at a higher level to money. And I want to change the story of how I describe my relationship to money. I'm not going to say phrases like, I am bad with money. I'm not going to say things like, I don't have to work for money, or that I am here just to do service. Yes, I want to be of service, and I needed income. So I'm being real about my worth and about my relationship to money. And these are things that we can all do together. We can change the way we have a relationship to money by changing the story we tell ourselves about it and what we say about it to other people. Because what we think and what we say becomes a reality. It becomes the belief system that participates in the way we relate to what we are doing. As we approach 2026, I want us all to experience the abundance that's right around the corner. The year 2026 adds up to the number one. And numerologically speaking, that means creative beginning. So we're going to begin again in creating our relationship to money. So how do you want it to look like? I can tell you that I want it to be abundant, I want it to be low fear, I want it to be realistic, not a fantasy. I want it to be real and yet I want it to be an asset in my life. So that looks like having a plan, a simple one, not complicated, having one that's realistic, that I can live by and participate in, and be willing to shift. Because as my life changes, so should every relationship in my life. They should grow, it should expand, it shouldn't stay the same. Because rigidity is like fear. And I don't want to be rigid. I want to be flexible, I want to be expansive, and I want my relationship with money to reflect that. I want to remove shame from my game, and that includes my relationship to money. So what that would look like is that I want to save without shame, I want to spend without guilt, and I want to be clear about what I'm choosing to spend my money on. Not people pleased to do it, not be doing it out of fear and restriction, yet I want to be conscious about it. And I really want to see that the way I approach my relationship to money to be an extension of my ever-growing self-respect, self-worth, and self-esteem. And as I continue to heal and grow in those areas, my relationship to money will just keep getting better and better, and so will yours. So one of the last thoughts as we wind up here that I want to leave you with is this idea of enoughness. One of the biggest fears that I had was that I wasn't enough, that I had to perform at a higher level to be worth anything. Worth being loved, worth an income, and worth being somebody that could be of service to people in this world. And I'm here to tell you that I have learned the biggest lesson around being enough. I am enough, I have enough, and I do enough because I'm here. My connection to all of you is because I realized that I have a story, one which people can learn from, one which I have grown through, and that is enough. I don't have to embellish it, I don't have to make stuff up, I just need to be me. That's a value, and that's a lesson. So if you're struggling with enoughness or not feeling like you're enough or have enough or do enough, learn from my story because you are, you have, and you do enough just by being here. I want to offer you a few journaling questions in case you want to go deeper. Because remember, people who shift in their relationship to money actually report to be happier. And I'm all about expanding happiness, as is our podcast. We want you to heal and grow and expand. That's what the She Asked is all about. So why not shift and grow when it comes to money? So you too can have a happier existence and relationship to it. So here are some journaling questions to consider. What is the earliest belief that you can remember having about money? And who gave it to you? You inherited it. So where did you inherit it from? And where in your life do you avoid financial responsibility? And what is the emotion or feeling behind it that's contributing towards that behavior? If your financial life were to feel more grounded, more empowered and more abundant in 2026, what would your life look like on a day-to-day basis? Because if you can see it, you can be it. So imagine what would your life be like if you were more grounded in your relationship to money and you lived with the belief that it was abundantly available to you. I'm not talking about magical thinking. I'm talking about expanding your relationship in just what your belief system is around money. It matters. If this episode resonated with you, please sign up for our newsletter where we share many tips related to this type of topic as well as information about our upcoming workshops and our retreats in 2026. And also share this with someone who you know that might be struggling with their relationship to money. It's something we all can improve on. We want to enter into the new year with less fear, more agency, and more sovereignty when it comes to money. So let's do this together. This has been She As. I'm so glad you tuned in where healing meets practical hope. And until soon, be well.