The Problem of Money Podcast

Most of us are waiting to know where the money is coming from before we begin.
Nims Purja remortgaged his house, went to climb the fourteen highest mountains on earth with no sponsors and no certainty, and the money only arrived once he had already started.
Shabbar brings the recent death of a man he never met but had come to love, and the conversation turns quickly from mountains to money. Tim points out that long before the risk of the climb, there was a financial risk most of us would never take.
From there they look at something harder: the judgments we make about people who follow their own path, and what those judgments protect us from seeing in ourselves. Along the way there is Jung on individuation, a mountaineer's words from 1924 about why we make money at all, and an honest look at courage, fear, and the comfort we mistake for a life.
Key themes:
Why not knowing where the money will come from stops almost all of us

How the word responsible can quietly stand in for afraid

What a child actually learns from a parent who never lives

Why the people who provoke us are showing us something we want

The difference between being sensible about money and hiding behind it

Enjoyed this episode? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or your own stories about money. Reach out and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Shabbar: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam
Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick
Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/
Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/

It's been fifteen years and Shabbar's mattress needs replacing. He's found one he likes. Three evenings later he still hasn't bought it, and he's calling that being careful with money.
It's reminiscent of the same tangle he got into over a hotel voucher last year. What looks like a small purchase opens onto something bigger: a budget he set himself and now can't break, a quiet feeling that sticking to it says something about the kind of person he is, and a pattern where chasing comfort produces the opposite.
Tim then walks him through it without letting him off the hook.
This is money psychology at the smallest possible scale, which turns out to be where the real patterns live.
 
In this conversation:
Why a budget you invented yourself becomes impossible to break

What it means when sticking to the number feels like part of who you are

How chasing comfort with money often delivers the opposite

Why saving thirty pounds is much more than just the thirty pounds

Coming back to the same money pattern a year later, and why that isn't failure

Enjoyed this episode? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or your own stories about money. Reach out and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Shabbar: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam
Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick
Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/
Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/

The numbers work. You could afford to do the thing. And you still don't.
Something keeps pulling you back to the safe version of your life, and it isn't the maths.
In Part Two of their conversation on power, Shabbar and Tim bring it home to personal money decisions. They look at the story we absorbed about retirement, the identity we build around being good with money, and the quiet self policing that makes any change feel dangerous.
Using Stephen Lukes' four forms of power, they work through real examples of people whose finances are fine but whose lives are on hold. It is a plain conversation about money psychology, financial anxiety, and what it actually costs to keep waiting.
Key themes:
Why having enough money does not switch off the fear of running out

What happens to your sense of self when the identity you built around earning stops fitting

The belief that living fully now is foolish, and where it came from

Why the people around you set the limits on what you think is possible

The discomfort of stepping out of line, and why it is not a sign you are doing it wrong

Enjoyed this episode? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or your own stories about money. Reach out and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Shabbar: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam
Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick
Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/
Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/

You have probably had the thought but never said it out loud.
Something about the way we all chase the number does not quite add up.
Then you decide you must be the one who is missing something. In this conversation Shabbar and Tim look at why it feels so risky to say what you actually think about money, growth and the economy. They use the story of the emperor's new clothes and a real letter written to the Queen after the 2008 crash to show how easily we hand our power to people who are good with numbers, and how quickly we decide our own lived experience does not count.
Tim then shares a four part framework on how power works, ending with the version most of us live inside, the one where nobody has to silence us because we do it to ourselves. This is a two part conversation about money psychology, shame and the slow work of getting your voice back.
Key themes:
Why questioning the growth story makes intelligent people feel stupid
What happens when economics becomes maths and forgets psychology, philosophy and history
Why we put people in suits on a pedestal but never the mechanic fixing our car
The difference between not rocking the boat and not believing there is a boat
How much energy goes into keeping yourself a compliant individual
Enjoyed this episode? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or your own stories about money. Reach out and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Shabbar: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam
Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick
Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/
Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/

Someone recently said to Shabbar: I'm good at growing businesses and making money. That's my gift. So why would I ever stop? He didn't have an answer.
This episode is the answer he wishes he'd given.
Shabbar and Tim take that real conversation and follow it somewhere bigger: the growth story we've all absorbed, where the salary, the pension and the business are always meant to get larger, and nobody ever asks when enough arrives.
Tim brings a test that separates people who love their work from people trapped chasing a number, and a blunt observation from nature: nothing alive grows forever, and when something does, we call it a tumour.
Along the way they cover Steven Bartlett, a client who left a corporate salary and finally felt rich, and why our money mindset quietly shapes everything from our pensions to the NHS. It ends with a simple exercise for spotting what you're really trying to maximise in your own life.
Key themes:
The question that stumps most successful people: why would I ever stop?

How to tell whether you love your work or you're just good at it

Why nothing in nature grows forever, and what that says about our money story

She quit the salary, kept the purpose, and finally felt rich

A 10% experiment: shifting attention from the numbers to the life

Enjoyed this episode? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or your own stories about money. Reach out and connect with us on LinkedIn:
Shabbar: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam
Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick
Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/
Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/