The Problem of Money Podcast

You set a budget to feel organised and in control, but it restricts you from doing the things that could really benefit your life.
 The money is sitting there, but something stops you from using it.
Shabbar and Tim continue their conversation on budgeting and money mindset, this time turning to the HOW. Starting with a mattress that cost more than the pot allowed, and a city council that couldn't fund prevention because its budget system wouldn't allow it.
They look at what tidy categories hide: the cost of staying where you are, and the benefits you can't put a number on. Then the conversation widens beyond money to your time, your attention and the people you love.
Key themes:
Why the money is there but we still won't move it
The cost of staying in work you don't love, and why we never count it
How a made-up budget number starts to feel set in stone
What changes when you budget your time and attention, not just your money
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/

Following our deep dive into the courage of living a true life path—inspired by the legacy of climbers like Nims Purja who risk everything to do what makes them feel alive—we turn our focus inward to a tool that often feels like the exact opposite of freedom: the budget.
For most people, budgeting carries a heavy, restrictive reputation. It sounds like a chore designed to kill joy, limit spontaneity, and force us into spreadsheet-driven austerity.
But what if your budget wasn't meant to sort out your numbers, but to serve your life? 
In this first episode of a 3-part series on budgeting, Shabbar and Tim break down the psychological spectrum of spending. Using Shabbar's recent fixation on buying a new mattress—and the anxiety of exceeding an arbitrary "budget anchor"—they explore how our unconscious habits with money reveal how we relate to control, freedom, and intimacy.
The conversation opens out into what life centred budgeting actually means, and why it has more to do with openness, communication and what you want your life to look like than with spreadsheets.
They look at both ends of it: the person who tracks every pound and feels quietly ashamed when they overspend, and the person who spends freely and genuinely doesn't know where the money went.
Key themes:
Why coming in under budget can feel like a moral win
What "I don't know where the money goes" is really telling you
Why spending freely isn't the same thing as being free
How family rules about being sensible end up writing your budget
What changes when a couple decides together what their money is for
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/

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/