Many pressures impact how we manage our money, from friends pressuring you to spend money you don't have on a big trip to trends in the news swaying you into more risky investments. Even coworkers offer unfounded advice on your approach to wealth management. But have you ever considered the impact of toxic masculinity on your money?
On this episode of Living Not So Fabulously, hosts David & John Auten-Schneider are joined by journalist, writer, trans activist, and public speaker with a well-known TED talk, Tiq Milan. Milan explains what toxic masculinity is, why it affects everyone, and how it impacts our wallets. "People don't want to be vulnerable around their own struggles with money," he says. "But being able to be vulnerable around trusted people [is important] so that you can start to learn about how to use your money as a resource. You see people who have money, but you don't see the struggle behind it."
Milan goes on to clarify that toxic masculinity hinders one's ability to seek assistance with wealth-building because "toxic masculinity is all about competing with other folks instead of collaborating with community. It's not about love and empathy—like the morality around toxic masculinity isn't built around love or empathy. It's built around power and individualism."
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But no one is truly free from money struggles. Milan went on to discuss how the LGBTQ+ community also, in particular, needs to change their relationship and perspectives around wealth-building. "I think that it is a radical idea for us as queer people to gain wealth and also to understand the value of the money that we have as a community and as a powerful economic entity in this country. So I think there's a reframe that has to happen first to kind of radicalize our relationship to our personal finances."
For full episodes of Living Not So Fabulously, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website.
Yahoo Finance's Living Not So Fabulously is created and produced by Rachael Lewis-Krisky.