Breaking Money Silence: A Conversation with Kathleen Kingsbury

Kathleen Burns Kingsbury
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Purchase: Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly about Finances and Life a Richer Life 2nd Ed.

Kathleen Burns Kingsbury isn’t your average money mindset coach; she’s a pioneering force in the realm of women and money, setting her apart from conventional counterparts. With over 18 years of specialized experience, she’s dedicated herself to empowering women across finance, business, and entrepreneurship. As a mentor to female entrepreneurs, Kathleen offers invaluable guidance, drawing from her extensive background in wealth psychology and client communication. Her expertise extends to working with financial advisors, helping them navigate the complexities of wealth management while fostering stronger client relationships.

Her signature program, “Unleash Your True Value™: How to Shift Your Negotiation Mindset, Boost Your Confidence, and Close More Sales,” is the culmination of her expertise, honed through years of helping women executives, financial advisors, and entrepreneurs break free from money silence.

A graduate of Harvard Law School’s Program On Negotiation, Kathleen served as an adjunct faculty member at the McCallum Graduate School at Bentley University from 2009 to 2019, where she taught the Psychology of Financial Planning in the CFP® program. She currently teaches Strategic Negotiations in the Business and Management School at Champlain College. She is a certified Co-Active Coach with a master’s degree in Psychology and a bachelor’s degree in Finance.

Recognized by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and others, Kathleen is the author of Breaking Money Silence®: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly about Finances, and Live a Richer Life, her most recent of five books on wealth psychology and financial communication. And she’s not all business—when she’s not trailblazing the field of women and wealth, she’s conquering ski slopes and exploring the great outdoors in Vermont, living life to the fullest.

For more information, visit KBKWealthConnection.com.

 Kirby Rosplock

Welcome to the Tamarind Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock and today we are with a very special guest. We're with Kathleen Kingsbury, and she is an incredible money mindset coach. She's also an incredible consultant and has written several incredible books. So I've used incredible many times because she is all of that. She's written a book called Breaking Money Silence: How to Shatter Money Taboos, Talk More Openly About Finances, and Live a Richer Life. And she's just written her second edition of a book that I'm so excited to talk to you about today called Breaking Money Silence. And so, Kathleen, welcome. I am so thrilled to have you here today.

Kathleen Kingsbury

Thank you so much, Kirby. It's fun to break money silence with you.

Kirby Rosplock

Well, let's get into it because I'm not sure everybody on this call today might know what you mean by money silence. What does that mean? Why should we be talking about it and how does it really show up in our lives?

Kathleen Kingsbury

Sure. No, that's a very good question. Money silence is that money talk taboo that many of us grew up with, that is in our society, sometimes in our families. The way I describe it is it's that uncomfortable feeling that we get when we're engaged in certain financial conversations. Often, these conversations have an emotional component to them, and they are not the same conversations for everybody. For instance, it may be that in my family, it was taboo to talk about each other's salaries, whereas in another family, it might be taboo to talk about the fact that we are an affluent family and we're going to be inheriting wealth or that we all know we're going to have to sign prenups, that there can be some conversations about money and the technical sides of money. But often money silence is really just feeling angst or discomfort or anxiety to the point where you just avoid having that particular financial conversation. It can run the gamut, it can be small, or it can be every financial conversation is taboo. It affects all of us and it affects families. I think the big thing to keep in mind is that if we don't talk about money, it's hard to learn about money.

Kathleen Kingsbury

It's hard to pass down money. It's hard to raise financially fit next generation. It's hard to take care of our elderly parents. There's a lot of negatives to not engaging in conversations and falling into the trap of money silence.

Kirby Rosplock

Well, I can imagine money is at the core of every relationship, every union, every marriage. Even when you're dating, who pays the bill at the end of your first date? Or what happens when your child's trying to get into college? How are you going to fund that? When you get divorced and now you're co-parenting and you're trying to figure out child and custody and all those financial... There's always a financial component to relationships. And I can imagine money silence can create so much angst in all of those different kinds of relationships. And oftentimes money silence speaks sometimes a lot of them words, right?

Kathleen Kingsbury

Yes, I actually agree that. It negatively impacts relationships. I think the upside is when you're able to bust through and learn how to talk more openly and honestly about money. What ends up happening, which people People think, Oh, this is going to create a big rift. Often, if you're able to do this and build up that muscle over time, it increases intimacy in relationships. So you actually feel closer, you learn more about each other. And so what we're avoiding fighting because we fear it's going to upset somebody or there's going to cause conflict, ultimately, if we lean in and we learn how to do these conversations around money and have these conversations around money, you feel closer to your partner, closer to your kids. You understand what your aging parents went through in order to give you what they gave you. So there's a real upside in breaking through it, but it can be very loud in families and in relationships, but it doesn't have to be.

Kirby Rosplock

Well, tell us more about this new book, because I love that you've written it and that you're bringing it to us all, and it shares some great new insights. You've published your first book in 2017. What prompted you to write this updated version?

Kathleen Kingsbury

So, Kirby, I was so curious as to what has happened around money silence since I originally published the book. I was also really excited to look at how the pandemic has impacted how we think, feel, and talk about money. Going through a global pandemic, it's hard to say that it hasn't affected every area of our life. So I was really interested in looking at that. And I guess the last thing is that I have taken the money silence message, which started off as being individuals, couples, and families, and the advisors that serve them. And I have broadened it out to also include breaking money silence at work, specifically around women and women negotiating, voicing their value and being able to fight against gender wage inequality. There were a lot of different reasons that I delved back in, and it certainly has been eye-opening, and it certainly has been fun to update the original book.

Kirby Rosplock

Wow. So that last piece caught my curiosity. I mean, that's a big, juicy topic there. I'm just curious how that must add a whole new dimension to money silence because the gender gap in terms of the glass ceiling and oftentimes compensation, how did you squeeze that into this book? That feels like a whole other book. Are you telling me you added more to this book or is this a new book in itself?

Kathleen Kingsbury

Yes, that's funny because when I was writing the bonus chapter, it's called Unleash Your True Value, I was writing it and I thought, Oh, wait a second. I think this is another book. So, stay tuned. There might be more coming. But in this chapter, really, what I start to explore and what I start to explain is some of the work that I've been doing in the past couple of years around empowering women to break money silence, certainly at home, but also around funding, around their salary, if they're entrepreneurs, around asking for their fee. And it's been really satisfying work. And when we think about money. Often it's a symbol of something. And so there's something very empowering when a woman in particular, although it can apply to men as well, is able to say, Hey, I'm valuable, and I'm going to set certain financial boundaries. I'm going to take care of myself, not only financially, but personally. And I'm going to say, No, I'm worth it. And so doing that work, coaching women around this, training people around this topic, It has been really inspiring. And to be honest with you, I had no idea that this is where the Breaking Money Silence work would go when I originally published the book.

Kathleen Kingsbury

But I'm so happy I ended here because part of it is I have struggled. I started my business about 20 years ago. And as an entrepreneur, it was really hard to set your fee, to ask for your fee, to communicate it, especially in a predominantly male industry, so I just wanted to save people the time and energy and give them a roadmap for how to go about doing this so they didn't have to get so many bruises or get so bumped and beaten up, get so beat up in the process. So, yeah, it's probably the part I'm most excited about is this new work.

Kirby Rosplock

Yeah. And I loved in that chapter, which you let me get a sneak peek to read about imposter syndrome, which I know I suffer from. And I think many women who are type A and high achievers feel like the more they know and the further they achieve, the more they feel like they suffer from imposter syndrome, which is, I'll raise my hand. And I loved your discussion on chronic under-earning. I think that is brilliant. And I love that you have that under earning quiz. So, boy, buy this book just to get to the end, because I think that is a brilliant tool that you have. And I love the way this chapter progresses to give you some real action items and some great tools to really identify your value and to understand how you work through the process. Because I think for a lot of folks, they get stuck, right? Not knowing how to compare, especially if you develop a set of skills that are niche and aren't comparable. It's really difficult to value yourself. And back to this theme of breaking the silence, I think it's really hard to talk to people about what's your value?

Kirby Rosplock

How do you value yourself if there's no conversation with others or comparables, right?

Kathleen Kingsbury

That and also, if you've been socialized, to be humble, to put relationships first, to make sure you don't brag. It's a complicated thing from a psychological standpoint. I mean, I certainly fit high achieving Type A person, and certainly have in the past struggled with imposter syndrome. I think what is most important for people to remember is that there is this psychological component to breaking money silence, whether it's at home or whether it's at work. What I think sets the book apart is that it isn't that I just talk about that. It's also, Okay, what do you do about it? What I have noticed in the second edition is that in our society, we are talking about money more than we did in the past, so that's good. We're breaking money silence more often, but we still are really struggling on the how to do to do this, whether you're a financial advisor, coaching or guiding clients to do this, whether you're an individual trying to figure this out, or whether you're a woman trying to negotiate your salary. So what I think is really important is, in addition to understanding your psyche is what action steps can you take?

Kathleen Kingsbury

And so I've always been somebody who likes to understand why something happens, but then I don't sit around and ponder the why for very long. I'm like, Okay, so now I know why that happens. What do we do about it? So this book provides that roadmap for what to do about it.

Kirby Rosplock

Let's switch gears for a minute and talk a little bit about breaking the money silence and what you see with the different demographics. We've talked a lot about women. Did you start to uncover any differences between, say, the rising or the younger generations, Gen Alpha, Gen Millenials, Gen Z, or the older generations, the silent generation, the boomer generation? What are we seeing in terms of trends? Is there anything different in the data proofing out?

Kathleen Kingsbury

Yeah, that's a great question. What I noticed is that, and not surprising, but the next generation is doing a better job about talking about money. I think the big shift that I see is, in millennials going forward, right? That 71% of millennials think our society would be healthier if we talk more openly and honestly about money. So that's a mindset shift. And that translates also into millennials, Gen Zs, and those afterwards feeling as if you need to talk about money in a relationship once it gets serious. Whereas when you look at the boomers or even, I'm a very old Gen Xers, the Gen Xers, we often, our regret was, Oh, we didn't talk about money in our relationship soon enough. And now we know we should have, whether that's you've gotten divorced or you had to work through something in your marriage to stay married around money. I see that as a real positive. There's this belief that, Yeah, we need to be talking more openly and honestly about money. There's still the question of, How do we go about doing that? I think that's where the book and advisors like you really provide value.

Kathleen Kingsbury

I think the second piece is the younger generations are saying, We want to do this differently, and we're committed to doing it differently, but we need help. It's not like they were necessarily raised in a family that taught them to do this. So the way I view it, Kirby, is we are breaking the cycle, like you break the cycle of addiction. We're breaking the cycle of money silence. And hopefully, by the generation after this, there'll be no need for me to write another book or an updated book. I'll just be sitting on a beach and enjoying myself, knowing that more people are talking openly and honestly about money.

Kirby Rosplock

That's great. What do you think then the rising generation or these millennials and Gen alphas, what lessons might they be able to provide or teach their elder generation? If they're more capable of talking more openly? What you think they might be able to pass on, pass forward to their parents or grandparents that maybe their grandparents and parents, it wasn't kosher, it wasn't okay, right?

Kathleen Kingsbury

I love that question because there is a chapter in the book called Raising Financially Fit Parents. And so I do believe that we can role model that it's okay to be transparent around these conversations. A lot of taboo topics like sex, politics, religion, all of those topics are now discussed much more openly than they used to be. I do see the younger generation really leading the charge in that. There's a way in which if you're sitting in a room and you have all the generations there, there is a way in which the younger generations are just like, Of course we talk about that. It's not even a thought. It's almost weird to them we're not engaging in these conversations. And so that is what I think the message can be, that it's okay if you are a boomer or if you're a traditionalist, if your grandkids or great grandkids want to talk about money, want to talk about something that you thought was taboo, follow their lead because it makes us a healthier, happier society. It brings you closer together, and we get this mutual understanding. Now, I don't want to paint a rosy picture that it's always wonderful.

Kathleen Kingsbury

Sometimes we have to work through different views. But in general, it really is something that as a parent or grandparent, you can give the gift of talking about money to the next generation because they're open. In fact, one of the things that came up in the research is that even though some people might be reluctant to talk about money, that a large percentage, it was like half of all, and then it broke it down by generation, but half of the people were willing to have the conversation if someone else initiated it. So no, you could give the gift of initiating that conversation.

Kirby Rosplock

And give me an example. I mean, what might that look like? What could you start that might be safe, but also might be a little bit provocative or evocative, might get people starting to feel like, oh, we can go here. We can start to actually open up and talk about this and normalize it and not make it taboo. Because for so many families, because no one actually has the courage to put their neck out there because they know they might be the one crucified, if they bring it up, it never gets talked about. And so another holiday goes by, another year goes by, and people are still waiting on the sidelines wondering, will we ever really bring this topic up? Because I don't want to be the one who's looked at as either being entitled because I'm asking for more knowledge or the one who's like, why doesn't she know or he know and looks not intelligent for asking?

Kathleen Kingsbury

I think one of the most interesting and easiest ways of talking about it isn't to go to the numbers, isn't to go to something conflictual. It's taking the text of asking somebody else a curious question. So it could be, Hey, Grandma, what did you learn about money growing up? What did your parents teach you? I know it's different, or you could even blame this podcast. I recently listened to this podcast, and I learned about this thing called money silence. What was that like for you growing up? I find that with couples, instead of talking about something that's really conflictual, instead turning to your partner and saying, Hey, what are you most proud of? When it comes to the way you make or manage money? And focus on successes and make the conversation short. That's the other thing. It is better to have a 5 to 10 minute conversation about money that breaks the silence that you both walk away feeling like, Okay, we made some progress, then to have some three hour session where you just equate like, Talking about money is hard and exhausting. I want people to have these small successes. So start with something positive.

Kathleen Kingsbury

Start with something that's about somebody's money story or money history, and be curious. Also be okay if they don't want to go there. You can invite them, but it may be that you've been thinking about it for six months. I really want to have this conversation. And then you invite them and they're like, Whoa, didn't know we were going to talk about it. So if you get that reaction, I think it's really important to just say, Just know. I would love to know that information. Let me know a good time, like when you're ready to share it. So you give the other person some control and when they're breaking money silence, it isn't always up to your timeline.

Kirby Rosplock

Now I'm going to ask a tough one for you, Kathleen. What happens or what have you seen when families put up the wall and they say, Oh, yeah, we don't go there. We're not ready for that. Or like, Yeah, that's a great question, but yeah, that's We're not ready to have that conversation. And then you want to ask, but when? Or what is the circumstance? But you know that might be too much. What have you seen work well or what have advisors, what have you given tips to advisors to how they can support those families who have huge guards?

Kathleen Kingsbury

Let me start by just sharing a very quick personal story. So, between writing the original Breaking Money Silence and the second edition, our family went through some difficult times around aging, selling a second home. In that process, what I realized in a new way, very different than I realized, I don't think I had realized this with the first book, was that you can invite people to engage in conversations about money. In our family, it was about how are we going to sell this family home? Are we going to sell this family home? And having a conversation about what that meant. That you can invite them in, but if they don't want to have it, there's no way you can force someone to have it. So I want to level set in saying that it's okay if there are families that have money silence, that I really encourage people to focus in on the relationships where you can make a difference. And having experienced that myself, you can write a book, you can educate people nationally and internationally, but sometimes you can't make a dent with your own family. So just know that. Now, I'm not saying to give up.

Kathleen Kingsbury

What I'm saying is, let's level set and not be Pollyanne-ic about it. The other thing I would say, especially to advisors or to, and I did this before I decided this wasn't going to go anywhere, is chipping away at it. The strategy of just looking for opportunities to just say, Hey, this might be an instance, if you're an advisor, this might be an instance where it might make sense to have a conversation with your children about this. Not saying we have to do it now, but if they were in the room, what might you say to them? Or if it's in your personal life, you invite someone in, they put it off, maybe even they say, We're not going to talk about it. And maybe you go back, not at a family event, not at a holiday, not at charged a time and just say, It would be really helpful to me if we eventually had that conversation, and here are the reasons. I respect that you may not want to, but I just want you to know where I'm coming from. And so you chip away at it. I think chipping away at it is the way to go and to focus in on the places in your family life and in your friend's circle and in your work circle where people can engage in those conversations.

Kathleen Kingsbury

Because what you'll find is you can build that muscle up and sometimes things shift in families. So I haven't permanently given up on my family, but I'm saying right now we're not having those conversations.

Kirby Rosplock

Yeah. Well, and I love that you're realistic. I think for some families, many families are pretty closed, and that's a condition that's been inherited, too, right? So oftentimes, sometimes that taboo has been something that's been passed on for a long, long time, and it's hard sometimes to break that silence. And so it takes orientation around family members starting to find their own ways of communicating. And it oftentimes starts with how they start to figure out how to communicate with their spouses. And then the choices that they make about how they decide to start communicating with their children. So, how they start-

Kathleen Kingsbury

Well, and I've coached people on this. And what I do find is that whatever system you're in, it really starts with you figuring out your relationship with money, how you want to communicate, getting better at it. Like you said, it may be with a partner, it may be with a friend, and then building up the strength to then be able to, in a very adult way, communicate what you would like to do. Whereas often And I certainly have been a victim of this as well, with families, it can get emotional. So then you can communicate in all the wrong ways and you're like, Okay, so I tried to do something good, but that didn't really work. Let me go back to the drawing board. And so, Kirby, I think that's where advisors users or working with a money mindset coach or a therapist, somebody that can help you work through your piece of it can be really helpful and then eventually shifting the system.

Kirby Rosplock

Absolutely. Well, Kathleen, this is just so powerful. This work is so fascinating to me. Your book is such an amazing companion for those who want to dig deeper, know more about the research, and just understand the trends. I think it's such a great action item that gives you a call to action if you want to jump in and start doing this in your own personal work with your family. So thank you for taking this to the next level, giving us this second book for us to dig into. It's really exciting, and I love having you as our guest today. Is there any final thoughts or ideas that you want to leave us with before we wrap it up today?

Kathleen Kingsbury

Well, first of all, I've always respected your work, so that means a lot that you are excited about the book, so thank you. I think the message I'd like to leave for anybody listening in is that in the next week or so, just dare to break money silence. Just a small conversation. Don't pick the most risky conversation. Just dare to have a conversation you wouldn't have had around money with someone in your life and see what it's like. And I feel like if each and every one of us can do that, there's going to be a cycle, and eventually, we will end money silence for good. So it's a big ask, but just a little conversation, and let me know how it goes.

Kirby Rosplock

That's such a great idea. It's a great first step to take. And I know you're going to give us some great links to more resources. So thank you for all your generosity with your time, your treasure, sharing your insight and wisdom, and certainly with all the excitement with your new book. So thanks again, Kathleen. Wonderful to have you today on the Tamarind Learning Podcast.

Kathleen Kingsbury

Thank you.