Transcription
As a chartered accountant and a former banker, I've noticed that people who struggle with money the most tend to say the same things over and over again. And the problem is that the phrases they use are basically like hidden programming that quietly sets them up for financial failure. And so in this video, I wanted to share with you the five phrases that you should never say when it comes to money, why they are so dangerous, and what you should be saying to replace those phrases instead.
If you're new here, hi, I'm Nisha. I'm a charted accountant and a former investment banker. And on this channel, we talk about all things personal finance and self-development.
Starting with number one, and that is "someone else handles it for me." Whether it's a partner, an accountant, an adviser, the government, this phrase makes me nervous when I hear it. On the surface, it sounds sensible. You've got someone taking care of the financial side of things. Maybe it's smart delegation or you being able to feel confident enough with someone else to be able to handle it. But here's what I've learned after years in the industry. There is a massive difference between delegation and abdication. Too often what people think is smart outsourcing is actually them completely checking out of their own financial life. And when you hand over your responsibility for your money decisions, you assume that someone else will always make the right call for you, will always have your best interest at heart, and will somehow magically know exactly what you want without you being involved.
The problem is that even the person who has the best interest at you, even the best accountant, even the best financial adviser, they can't live your life for you. They don't know what you want as much as you do. They don't know about your deepest fears about money, your long-term dreams, the trade-offs you're willing to make. They can't read your mind about your financial security and what it actually means to you. When you disconnect from your finances, you lose both knowledge and confidence. You end up feeling like money is this mysterious thing happening to you, not really knowing whether it's in your control rather than being in the driver's seat. There is no one that should have more control over your financial life than you do. It's all well and good to delegate and to outsource some responsibilities, but you should always know what is happening when it's happening and what it means for you.
Number two, "money just doesn't matter to me." When someone tells me money just doesn't matter to them. It often sounds almost as if caring about money is somehow shallow or maybe beneath them. And I can tell you that this phrase, it usually hides avoidance. It's really just a way to say, "I don't want to deal with it, so I'll just pretend it doesn't matter." And that's quite a hard reality check. Money absolutely does matter. Not because it buys happiness directly, but because it buys the freedom. It buys choices. It buys security. And it is one of the most important things that defines how you live. It gives you options when life throws curve balls. It lets you help the people you care about. It removes obstacles that would otherwise limit what you can do with your life. When you dismiss money entirely, you're not being noble. you're actually just putting yourself at risk. You risk ending up in situations where you have fewer choices, you have higher stress, and you're less able to live the life you actually want. Money does not have to be your obsession. But it does deserve your attention because the better you manage it, the less you'll have to think about it. And the more therefore you can focus on the things that truly do matter to you. So next time you're saying, "Money just doesn't matter to me," reframe that and say, "Money is important to me. How can I make sure it helps me live the life that I want?"
Next is "I'm just bad at this." After working in finance for a decade, I can tell you that this phrase is one of the biggest barriers to financial success that I see people put up for themselves. When someone tells me, "I've just never been good at money" or "I'm just bad at it." What they're really doing is just giving themselves permission to stop trying. It's kind of like a get out of jail free card that protects them from the discomfort of learning something new, but it also locks them into staying exactly where they are. This is what psychologist Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset. This is the belief that your abilities are set in stone. And her research at Stanford shows that people with this mindset consistently underperform compared to those with a growth mindset, which is people who believe that they can improve with effort and with learning.
One thing that I know from the years of helping people with their finances is that money management isn't some mysterious talent that you're either born with or without. It's a very learnable skill just like driving, just like cooking. Nobody is born understanding compound interest or knowing what tax efficient savings work. The people who do succeed, however, financially, they're the ones who just decided to learn and keep going even when it felt uncomfortable. So, if you're in this cycle of constantly saying to yourself, "you're just bad with money." Every time you're about to say it, swap it to, "I'm learning about money. I'm just getting started." That little shift will just open up possibilities instead of shutting them down. Research consistently shows that people who believe they can improve at something are significantly more likely to actually improve at it. So stop telling yourself you're just bad at money because you're not bad at it, you just haven't learned it yet.
And on that note, I wanted to introduce today's sponsor, which is Claude from Anthropic, which has honestly been a game changer for me. Here's the thing. We live in a world now where saying "I'm bad at this" is really just an excuse. There are AI tools that can teach you anything, help you understand complex concepts, or walk you through the skills you think you don't have. And one of my favorite ones for doing that that I use every single day now is Claude. Most recently, I needed to create an interactive financial calculator for a free live workshop that I was hosting. Old me would have said, "I'm terrible at coding. I'm just bad at it." And given up. Instead, I spent one evening working with Claude to build exactly what I needed from scratch. It understood what I was trying to create, what I was looking for, and helped me bring my idea to life. It got what I meant, not just what I was trying to say. And the point is, there is no excuse anymore to say, "I'm just bad at this." Whether it's understanding your finances, learning a new skill, extensive research on a topic, or even just a second brain to help you make a big life decision, tools like Claude can help you bridge that gap. You just have to be willing to try. If you want to check out Claude, you can try it for free using the link in my description. Thank you so much, Claude, for sponsoring today's video.
The next phrase is, "It's too late now." When someone says, "It's too late now," what they're really saying is, "I wish I started earlier, and since I didn't, I'm giving myself permission to give up." It's regret disguised as something that's final and set in stone. They look at all the years that have passed, imagine what could have been if they started investing in their 20s, and decide that there's no point in starting now. But this mindset is incredibly, incredibly dangerous because it just freezes you in place. Instead of doing something useful with the time that you have left, you just do nothing at all. And that's the hardest bit. That's the real tragedy. And something that you need to understand is that time is only one ingredient in building wealth. The other two ingredients are how much you contribute and how consistently you do it. They are still completely within your control. No matter what age you are. I've worked with plenty of people who started in the 30s, 40s, 50s, even 60s and still built solid financial freedom. They succeeded not because they had decades ahead of them, but because they made steady, intentional moves once they finally began. The biggest mistake isn't starting late, it's not starting at all. Instead of thinking it's too late, think about what can you do with the years that you have left. There are still so many ways to manage your money strategically so you can catch up. If you're completely new to this field, you're overwhelmed, and you just want a step-by-step structure that can get you on the path to creating financial freedom, I'm also hosting a six-week boot camp starting very soon. You can find out more details in the link in the description.
And moving on to phrase number five, "I can't afford it." This is probably the phrase I hear most often for things that are most often not true. When people say, "I can't afford it," it sounds like it's just an objective fact. As if money or the lack of money is completely in control of their decisions. But after looking through people's finances, helping them with their own finances, I can tell you that what they usually mean is, "This isn't where I want my money to go right now." The problem is saying, "I can't afford it." It puts you in victim mode. You're blaming an external circumstance for your choices. But swapping that phrase to "it's just not a priority for me." That changes everything because suddenly you are back in control and you're forced to take responsibility for your decisions. And it feels quite uncomfortable when you say this because it makes you confront whether your spending actually lines up with what you say you value. If you're saying, "I can't afford it. I can't afford to invest," for instance, but in the same month you've just bought a new iPhone because you felt like the latest one. It's not that you can't afford it. It's just that investing isn't a priority for you right now. And when you say it like that, it might actually hold more weight onto what you're doing because saying it out loud actually just exposes the truth. It's not that you can't afford it, you're just choosing other things over it. And when you know consciously the decisions you're making, and when you say it in that way where it's "this is not a priority for me right now," you really can take a step back and decide, is this something I want to continue doing? Is it worth it? or do I actually want to change my decisions to align my money with what I actually or the direction that I actually want my life to go in?
That is it. Those are five of the most common phrases that I hear people say that really hold them back with money. If you found yourself saying one of these phrases in the last 24 hours, let me know what it was that you said and how you plan to change it going forward. The language you speak or the things that you say to yourself make more of a difference than you possibly realize. It is a starting point for changing the actions that you take. Thanks so much for watching.