Ep 72 | Solid Income and Still Stressed About Money?
In this episode, Priya names what she calls the "HENRY version of money silence" - the isolating experience of earning a high income and still feeling anxious, behind, or quietly out of control. Drawing from almost 12 years of client conversations, she breaks down the three specific ways silence shows up at high incomes. This episode is a permission slip to stop pretending - and a roadmap for what to do instead.
Takeaways:
There's an unspoken rule that at mid-six-figure incomes, you're not allowed to feel stressed about money.
40% of Americans in relationships can't accurately tell you their partner's income.
Clients earning $350-400K often have no clear picture of what their household spends each month - not because they're irresponsible, but because looking felt scarier than not looking.
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Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
Transcription
There's just sort of this unspoken rule that at certain income levels, somewhere in the mid six figure range, expectations start to shift. You're no longer allowed to feel stressed about money. You've crossed some invisible threshold where supposedly this stops being a source of anxiety. And if you're still stressed, that's a you problem.
Who the fuck am I to tell you what to do with your money? My name is Priya Malani, currently managing millions of hardworking dollars. Enough foreplay. Let's talk money. Welcome to the F Word. Smart Money. No.
Hey guys. Welcome to the F Word. A few months ago I was at dinner with a close friend and she confided in me that she had had a miscarriage. She knows I'm telling this story because the whole point of it was that for a long time she told no one. She was completely convinced that she was in some small group of people that this had happened to and that it was rare.
But then she told a friend, and crazy enough, her friend, unfortunately, also had had one. She mentioned it to a colleague while on a work trip, and she was shocked to learn that her colleague said that she had been through the same thing. One by one, something she'd been feeling completely alone on turned out to be something that several of the women around her had also experienced. She just hadn't known because we don't talk about it.
We were talking about how staying silent about things can actually hurt us more than it helps us. A while back, another one of my friends hesitantly mentioned that she had been in therapy for a couple years. When I told her I was too, we just kind of sat there and stared at each other like, why have we not talked about this?
Another friend of mine found that her love life specifically in the bedroom, had kind of stalled. She's not the shy type. So when she said she was gonna ask around, I was very curious what she would report back. Come to find out almost every single person she asked — relevant or not, all over 40 — echoed the same sentiment.
The pattern's undeniable. The things we feel most alone in are almost never the things we're actually alone in. We just don't talk about them. And so that got me thinking, what's the money version of this? And I knew it immediately. For those of us high earners, living a very full life in a very expensive city, sometimes opening our bank account just feels a little gross, and I wanna talk about that today.
Money is one of the last things people actually talk about. Honestly, I'm not talking about budgets or sharing investing tips. I mean, the real stuff. The stuff that like you're thinking about at 11:00 PM at night when you're trying to go to bed. I'll tell you this, the higher your income, the more isolated and alone you feel, and that's what I wanna talk about today. Let's get into it.
Whether we realize it or not, here's what we're all participating in. There's an economy built around the appearance of financial wellness. Social media didn't invent it, but it's made it inescapable. You scroll through Instagram and you see influencers selling every version of living your best life that you could possibly imagine. But then it becomes real. You see your college roommate posting pictures from Positano, your coworker — is that a two Michelin star restaurant? The boys trip to Portugal, the kitchen renovation, the weekend trip to the dealership where they drive out in a brand new X5.
None of these images come with a caption that says, funded by a 0% APR card I'm still trying to figure out how to pay off, or this was a gift, or yes, we can genuinely afford this and we also have an emergency fund sitting in a high yield savings account. So you don't know what reality actually looks like and you don't know what to assume. You just see the image and our brains fill in the rest. The story is almost always everybody else has their shit together, and I don't.
I can say that this is hard for everyone, but it's particularly brutal when your income feels like it's staring at you wondering, what is wrong with you and why are you behind? Because there's just sort of this unspoken rule that at certain income levels, somewhere in the mid six figure range, expectations start to shift. You're no longer allowed to feel stressed about money. You've crossed some invisible threshold where supposedly this stops being a source of anxiety. And if you're still stressed, that's a you problem.
So when the brunch bill comes and you split it and the $90 goes on your credit card, it's not really the $90. It's the $90 that follows the $120 dinner last Thursday that follows the $60 Uber back from the airport that follows the Barry's membership that follows the birthday dinner you just agreed to host in two weeks. It's the pile up. The math adds up to something that feels just slightly outta control. And you say nothing because what are you gonna say? You make good money. This is just how it is, or is it?
Let's talk about what I call the HENRY version of money silence. I've spent almost 12 years sitting across from high earners in conversations that don't typically happen anywhere else, and I can tell you that the silence shows up in very specific ways.
Let's start with the silence between partners. This one's striking. Studies show that nearly 40% of Americans in relationships can't accurately tell you their partner's income. That's two people building a life together who don't even know what they're working with. They assume, they infer, they look at the checking account and feel okay or don't. Either way, they say nothing.
And then there's the silence between friends. I see this a lot. When two high earners are close, they will often each privately assume that the other person is totally further ahead. Each one wondering why they don't feel as on top of it as their friend clearly seems to be, while their friend is sitting there thinking the exact same thing. Two people in parallel uncertainty, each convinced that the other person has cracked a code that they haven't.
And then the worst one. There's the silence that lives inside. You know that you should probably look at some of your numbers, get a handle on what's coming in and what's going out, but the conversation just keeps getting pushed and you just don't. Partly because opening that door feels like it might confirm something you're not ready to know, or you're worried you won't know where to start or what anything means.
I've had clients earning $350,000, $400,000 a year who had no clear picture of what their household was spending each month. Mostly just because looking felt scarier than not looking. They'd convinced themselves that if they looked it would be bad, and then they'd have to deal with whatever they found. That's money silence. And it lives in the same income bracket as the Hamptons weekend and the fancy wine and the business class upgrades. It does not care what you make.
So what do you actually give up when you stay silent? When you don't talk or think about money, it's fair to say that every financial decision you're making happens in a vacuum. You have no sense of whether your savings rate is strong or weak relative to where it should be. You don't even know if the stress you feel is an actual problem or a feeling driven by a money mindset that's no longer accurate or serving you.
Even worse, when you avoid talking about it, you have no access to what the people in your life may or may not have figured out. Their frameworks, their decisions, the things they do differently, their learnings. I guarantee there are people in your income bracket who do feel genuinely confident about their money, who've built real savings, who sleep well at night. Most of them didn't get there alone. They talked to somebody, they asked an embarrassing question, they found out their situation was way more fixable than they actually thought, or maybe even better than they thought.
Think about my friend. The moment she started talking, she got community. She stopped sitting with something really heavy in total isolation. That's available to you. Just gotta decide when you wanna access it.
Now, I'm not asking you to announce your salary at dinner. Here's where I want you to start — with yourself. Get honest about what you feel when you think about your money situation. Is it avoidance? A nagging sense of being behind without knowing behind what? You gotta figure out what that is because you cannot address what you haven't acknowledged.
Then if you have a partner, have the goals conversation. A real one. I have tons of episodes to help you get the conversation started, but you need to ask, where are we going? What does our life look like in 10 years and are the choices that we're making right now pointing us in that direction? That's honestly a conversation most high-earning couples have never had, but it changes everything when you finally do.
A couple weeks ago, I gave a rowboat analogy. Are you and your partner in two separate rowboats and therefore putting in extra effort than would be required if you just jumped in the same boat and started rowing together? And maybe you do wanna find a professional to help — to find out if what you're carrying is as heavy as it feels, or lighter, or just different from what you've been imagining. Are you truly behind or not? That way you can stop operating on a story you made up in your head.
Most of the clients I work with come in expecting bad news and leave with relief because they finally know what they're dealing with. And once you know, like really know, you can stop feeling bad about something that might not be as bad as what you've been dreading.
Okay, before I let you go, I always end the show with a segment called Best Bite. I'm a big foodie and I love to give a recommendation of someplace you can go, something you can try, something that I've eaten recently that blew my mind. This one's not so recent. I'm actually giving you guys one of my OG places. I can't take credit for this one. My parents actually have been going there since the seventies. It's called Mamoun's Falafel on MacDougal and West Third in Greenwich Village.
I grew up going there and until just recently, it was cash only. The way I like it. I still refuse to use a credit card just because it's a cash only kind of place. Late night spot for NYU students. I don't actually know their hours, but it feels like anytime I go there they're open. So if you happen to find yourself in Greenwich Village, get the falafel. I like to add hummus at Mamoun's Falafel, and the hot sauce is the real deal, so go easy. I bring friends here. I bring outta towners here. It's not fancy — in fact, it's a shack. There's no place to sit, but it is without a doubt one of my best bites. This would probably be on my top 10 list of all time best bites. And they have so much more than falafel. They have shawarma, they have a lentil soup, they have dolmas — uh, the grape leaves with rice — so good, baba ganoush, everything's awesome. But start with their classic falafel pita.
Before I let you go, just another nudge to find your way out of the money silence that most of us live in. It is not serving you. Also, you're almost certainly not as behind as you feel. The anxiety you're carrying is probably not as unique to you as you think. A friend across the table from you, the one you're pretty sure has more figured out — there's a real chance they're living in the exact same silence. The difference is one conversation. Start with yourself, then maybe your partner, then someone who can weigh in and really show you the full picture.
If you think of someone who might need to hear this message, I really hope you'll share this episode with them. And as always, if you have a second to leave us a review, that's the best way to help other people find the show. Please remember to like, follow, subscribe wherever you're listening to keep money at the forefront. You're a HENRY, and that means high potential for building wealth and securing the financial freedom you're after. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
Thanks for listening to the F Word with Priya Malani. If you like what you heard, hit subscribe wherever you're listening and leave us a review while you're at it. Approval junkies, don't forget you can find a ton of great resources, content, courses, and other freebies at stashwealth.com. Now for the capital F stuff, our lawyers want us to say: Stash Wealth is a registered investment advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only, and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific security, product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment advisor — that's us — before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There, we said it.
THE STUFF OUR LAWYERS WANT US TO SAY: Stash Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor. Content presented is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to make an offer or solicitation for any specific securities product, service, or strategy. Consult with a qualified investment adviser (that's us) before implementing any strategy. Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. There…we said it.
