[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Inside Social Work. I’m your host, Marie Vakakis, accredited mental health social worker, couple and family therapist. This podcast is about honest conversations, real life practice, big feelings tough topics. Lifelong learning and the moments that stay with us.

Whether you’re working in community schools, private practice, somewhere in between or none of those, this space is here to support you. We’ll talk about what it’s like to do this work, the grief, the growth, the messiness, the meaning, and all those human stuff that comes along with that. I hope you feel more connected, more grounded, and maybe a little inspired in your journey.

Thanks for listening, and let’s get into today’s episode. Today’s episode is a conversation I recorded with Dr. Bronwyn Milkins for her podcast Mental Works, and I wanted to bring it across to the Inside Social Work Podcast because it speaks about something that many of us experience, but we’ll rarely talk about in depth our beliefs about money and how they show up in our work.

And this is not just for people in private practice because we all have money beliefs, and I talk about [00:01:00] this a lot in my work with couples. I’ve had a couple of episodes on the Australian Finance Podcast of all things talking about money and money stories and how they show up for couples. So I’ll make a link to those in the show notes.

They were pretty fun and awkward conversations because, uh, I don’t really talk about finance and, um, investing and, and all that kind of stuff, but talk about relationships and when it comes to money, we don’t have, we don’t have very good conversations about it, so I’ll pop a link to those. You might wanna check ’em out.

But in this episode we’ll explore the mindset that many of us carry into particular, into private practice or sometimes salaried roles in mental health. We talk about where these beliefs come from, how they can help us or hold us back, and why financial wellbeing is not separate to the work that we do.

It is part of it. We talk about setting fees around things like guilt and shame, and the pressure to work for less because we care. We do good as we care. We should do it because we love it. We also speak about the judgment that can come from [00:02:00] others in our profession. When we start charging what our time and skills are actually worth, and this is.

A big thing for me. I think that we can undercut ourselves and our profession and others a lot, and so we need to get paid for our skills and for our worth. But you’ll hear me talk about that in the podcast. This is not a conversation filled with financial advice or numbers. It’s about the stories that we carry about money, the discomfort that many of us feel when we start thinking about ourselves as maybe as business owners.

Even if you’re a contractor, that’s a sole trader, you’re a business owner. Or when we realise our values around care and fairness can actually clash with the realities of running a practice or doing the work that we do, we talk openly about financial stability as a form of self-care and how taking care of your own needs supports your ability to care for others.

And we’ll also share some practical ways to start understanding your finances, your financial landscape, because. Money becomes something that you it, it’s, we need it. It makes the world [00:03:00] go round. We need it, and you need to be able to engage with it, not avoid it. So if you’ve ever felt awkward about raising your fees, struggled to explain your rates, or felt uncertain about your worth in the workplace, then this episode is for you.

Whether you’re in private practice or considering it or maybe working in another setting, these reflections are relevant to all of us. I hope you find something useful in this conversation, something that helps you feel a bit more confident, more grounded, and more connected to the work that you do and the life you want to build.

Here is my conversation or my interview with Bronwyn Milkins originally on the Mental Works podcast.

Bronwyn: I’m your host, Dr. Bronwyn Milkins, and today we are talking about money. We’re talking about money mindsets. It’s one of those topics that we rarely talk about, but we are interacting with money every day as mental health professionals, particularly as early career mental health professionals.

We can feel overwhelmed by the concept of interacting with money. Today we’re going to be talking about how do we manage money and what do we think [00:04:00] about money? Is it helping us or are our beliefs about money holding us back? We’re going to unpack maybe some the. Money mindset patterns, and some unhelpful money mindset patterns.

And hopefully you’ll walk away with some practical tips for managing your relationship with money so that you can stress less and focus on your work of being a mental health professional without those beliefs holding you back. Here to help us out is our guest today, Marie Vakakis. Hi Marie. Hello. Thanks for having me back.

It’s such a pleasure to have you back as always, and since you are a regular guest. I would love for you to tell listeners what’s something good that’s been happening for you lately? 

Marie Vakakis: Oh, um, I, I’m training, well actually by the time this episode airs, I’ll have done my first triathlon. Wow. And, um. That’s being very, um, positive, isn’t it?

I will have done it. That’ll be great. Maybe even done a couple. Um, but it was the first thing I sort of tried to do that was like, I’ve never done anything like that before. [00:05:00] And it might be really well linked to some of the things you’re talking about of when you get an idea in your head of what you are capable of or not, or a fixed belief of like.

I just can’t do that. And they come from really random places. It could have been like when you were little or in high school, or you might have sucked at gym class or something, and that sticks with you. And, um, so I just wanted to kind of push myself. I’ve heard stories of people overcoming like significant, uh, physical obstacles and starting from scratch again, thinking, oh.

This is learnable. Just like so much is teachable. This is learnable too. And fitness is, it can be built on and I don’t have to win it. I just wanna participate in it. And so, yeah, that’s, um, that’s something I’ve been chipping away at trying to get in a swim or run a walk, which has also been really good for self-care because now that the weather got a little bit better after winter, a bit of hibernation, I got to do a little bit more outdoor stuff.

So, um, yeah, I think that’s been a positive. 

Bronwyn: Oh, I’m really delighted for you. I think that’s gonna be [00:06:00] awesome. I jumped into triathlons a few years ago actually, and I don’t do many, but my funny thing with triathlons is that with a triathlon, you do a swim, bike or run, or some of them allow you to skip the swim or skip the run.

In any case. There’s always a transition between activities and for me with triathlons, the transition, I’m usually the slowest person because I really love to be comfortable while doing a triathlon. So I’ll put on my little bike gloves and I’ll make sure my socks are nice and I’ll make sure I completely dried and I don’t really mind because I’m just there to participate, like you said, and I’m having fun and I kind of laugh at myself that I’m always the princess last, and my partner’s like, come on, hurry the fuck up.

And I’m like, no way. I am gonna be comfortable. Yeah, that might be me.

And this year, because I did the triathlon a few weeks ago, I was like, I’m gonna be a big girl today and I’m not gonna wear my bike gloves. And I saved myself like 10 seconds, but I feel like I had regrets. Next year I’m gonna go back to bike gloves. I. [00:07:00] 

Marie Vakakis: Maybe we could, um, I can tell you about how it went after.

Bronwyn: I would love to hear how it went afterwards. And yes, I look forward to you doing it. I think it’s gonna be great. Okay, so you were mentioning before that maybe some of our beliefs may hold us back and they’ve come from early life and I think that’s why we wanted to talk about money today. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, I think, um, in, in so many of the different episodes we’ve talked about various bits of being in private practice and therapeutic, like your clinical skills is.

One very small component of that, which I think is really hard. I know, uh, I’m sure psychologists aren’t alone in this and, and accredited mental health social worker. You get to the point of either having your full registration or feeling like, okay, I kind of know what’s happening in the room with the person maybe.

So I’m still working on that. And then if you go into private practice. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that comes outta being a small business owner, and I think there are extra challenges and fears and worries that come up for folk who work in a healthcare setting [00:08:00] that’s for profit. And it can create a little bit of maybe moral injury or incongruence with values in one way.

And then also it might be something you’ve never really thought about before. So you don’t know how to navigate money, how to. Budget for it, how to manage, um, expenses that like, there’s a whole learning curve there. And the mindset bit I think is really interesting and probably a bit more related to the psychology of it.

Um, because I’m not a finance person, I’m not a financial advisor. So understanding the money mindset I thought was a really, um, big part of my learning and it’s constantly evolving. 

Bronwyn: Absolutely. I do feel like there’s a lot of shame around talking about money, and I’m curious about whether you feel the same in helping professions.

Marie Vakakis: I think there is, and I think our worst critics are other therapists actually, when some people will be like, oh, I can’t believe you charge that, or I think it’s wrong if someone doesn’t bulk bill, and like they people are very judgy and it’s like you have no [00:09:00] idea what someone else’s circumstances are and.

I, I really worry that we know in general that the largest growing population of homelessness is, uh, adult women. And a lot of women work in these professions as well. So there’s extra worry there of people taking time out. The workforce maybe for child rearing or care responsibilities have lower super.

And on top of that, if you’re not paying yourself well, you’re really not setting yourself up well to do good work. And I think if you are always stressed about money and you’re worried about money. Then you’re not gonna be doing good work because you’re gonna be scared. Every time there’s a cancellation, you’re going to be worried about paying the, the rent, the bills coming up.

You’re going to maybe avoid a particular supervision or training or on the other side. Just do too much of that and then end up with nothing in the end. So the money you make, revenue’s very different to profit. And people need to understand that as well. Like you might need to make $300,000 of revenue to take home a salary of a hundred thousand dollars when you factor in all these other expenses.

So there are a lot [00:10:00] more layers to that than people realise, and it’s really important to value that work and to charge adequately for it and balance that with other things that you wanna do for your community and health promotion and you know, general wellbeing. So I think it’s hard. 

Bronwyn: Yeah, so what you’re pointing out is that there’s consequences if we don’t take our money mindsets and how we approach money seriously.

Like we may not earn enough money to help us be sustainable financially, and that can cause us stress and that can impact our interactions with the people we serve. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, absolutely. And we are not here, we don’t do this work to take a valve poverty and we don’t Do, you know. I know for social it was a thousand hours of unpaid placement.

I’ve got a significant hex debt to earn less money than I would if I was working permanent part-time in retail and got the Sunday sort of shift and got those penalty hours. Like it’s really, it’s really shouldn’t. It shouldn’t be that if you care, you don’t get paid. 

Bronwyn: Absolutely. And so maybe this takes us to [00:11:00] why it is so taboo, because the biggest thing that I’m hearing is like.

When we sign up to these helping professions, maybe an underlying belief is that we’re supposed to help and be selfless. So if we’re thinking of money, maybe we are selfish. And if you go to a workplace and you are like, what’s my salary gonna be? They’ll be like, how are you even thinking of that?

Shouldn’t you be thinking of the population you wanna serve and how you can best help them? Yeah. I feel like that’s an underlying. Unhelpful belief. What do you think? 

Marie Vakakis: Well, what a way to trap workers. Yeah. I mean, I’ve always asked for a pay rise in every single job. Um, if there’s a range and it says above ward wage, I’m like, okay, well what, what’s the above ward?

Um, but what a way to really push female dominated industries expected over overtime for nursing expected overtime. Like teachers work their butts off and do all this marking and. Even when I was in paid employment, I was still doing probably case notes and PD and [00:12:00] supervision out of hours and at times some of that I wanted to do to not to grow or to get a new position or to kind of enhance my skills.

And sometimes it was just, it just could not keep up with the work. Like the system was broken and we copped a lot of that as well, and it’s, it’s so disheartening to think you can do all this work and maybe not afford. A comfortable lifestyle in a suburb that you grew up in and do things that you kind of thought you would do when you were studying?

Like we we’re actually, we’re, we’re part of an economy and it’s an exchange of energy and exchange of money, and our financial security is part of self-care. 

Bronwyn: Yeah, I hear that because I was thinking about this in preparation for our episode, but I was thinking like, wouldn’t it be lovely if the world was such that I could deliver my services to people who need them and perhaps can’t financially afford them, but I could also be financially comfortable and it would be lovely to live in such a, a world, right?

Um, [00:13:00] but unfortunately that is not the reality. And so we do need to manage our own. Financial sustainability with the services they provide, acknowledging that some people may not be able to benefit from them, and then that’s a painful feeling to be able to sit with. 

Marie Vakakis: It is, and it’s across so many industries, and I think it is hard when I do have the.

Believe and, and growing up in Australia that healthcare should be free and accessible and that’s no longer the case. Yeah. And it is conflicting to be in an industry that is very out of reach for people when I think it’s something that is so fundamental for wellbeing and so valuable, and sometimes the people that need it most can’t access it.

And you can spend your whole career turning yourself inside out and. Literally burning the candle at both ends and still not even feel like you make a dent in that. So I think it’s really, it’s really hard and I think money’s not inherently bad. And yeah, we deserve to get [00:14:00] paid. I. And both those things can be true.

Bronwyn: Yeah. I think, yeah, both of those things being true at once is the key here, because I think another way that we can get ourselves into knots like you were pointing to earlier, was if we take the social injustice of healthcare not being available freely to everybody, and try and solve that on our own by lowering our fees or having free fees, and we can try and take on that burden when.

If we have a look at the end, it’s like healthcare should be free, and that sucks, but, and I’m not responsible for solving that problem on my own. 

Marie Vakakis: No, and you can do things that feel more sustainable for long term. So I know for me, whenever I’ve increased my pay, and it hasn’t happened in a little while, I increased some of the regular donations I have, and I started that from way back when I, um, started learning about finances.

I did the good old Scott, got the Barefoot investor, and yeah. He has a big [00:15:00] thing there of giving back and setting a percentage of income for that. So whenever my income goes up, I donate more. Whenever I have, um, more opportunity to volunteer, I do volunteer more. Uh, I’ve just signed up with Parks Victoria to try and do some local volunteering on more of a.

I sort of literally hands on staff and I coordinate the local mental health professionals network and a, a local peer supervision group that are both free and I can disseminate that, that information. So I use my skills and expertise to do a one to many. And then throughout the years I’ve had different opportunities to have, so social work students on placement and, and mentor people.

And so I still give back. I can’t do that if I am completely cooked by my workload. So you still get to do good and you still get to donate your time or put, um, things in place. You might have a retainer, like a percentage of clients that you think, look, I can bulk Bill. Um, I do like, I don’t charge my NDIS clients my normal rate, and that’s a significant loss for me.[00:16:00] 

But I have a few things where I think if all these other things are working well, then I can afford to do these few things that give people an opportunity and. That means I probably can do it for longer than if I try to. I, I, I literally lose money on bulk fillings, so that’s just not an option. Yeah, and that would mean like, I would have to like have another source of income to pay me to bulk fill.

Like it’s just the maths doesn’t add up. 

Bronwyn: No, and what you’re describing sounds like quite a healthy mindset. It’s like you’re still living in lines with your values, so you are able to contribute to your community in some ways, but you’re also making sure that your value of caring for yourself, which includes financial sustainability is being lived out as well.

I’m wondering, how did you develop this healthy approach? Were you always. Like this? Or did it require some shifts for you? It’s, it’s tricky. I think I was a 

Marie Vakakis: little bit of [00:17:00] both. Like I grew up in a family that ran small businesses, so I was quite comfortable with the idea of entrepreneurship and, um, like sales and marketing and I, I had a really, like my mom was, I worked for my mom in a number of different organisation or companies at the time, and she used to give me this really beautiful example around sales being around value adding, and if you provide a really good quality.

Service or product, you’re helping someone and then they might also buy from you, but that wasn’t the bit you were trying to force. So we used the example of, um, going to Officeworks and you’re going to buy a printer and you, you buy the printer and you get home and you’re like, there’s no print, there’s no ink in the printer.

And there’s no paper and I don’t have the cord that I need to connect it to my, um, computer with the, to update the software. So not only has that salesperson missed an opportunity for the add-on, but they’ve also not helped you. And so I always [00:18:00] saw good customer service as a way to provide that good support.

So if you go to buy a print and the pen’s like, oh, don’t forget, it actually doesn’t come with paper. This is the one that works best with that, and it doesn’t have ink. So you might wanna get these cartridges and you might say, look, I’ve got the same printer at home. I’m just swapping it out. That’s fine, but you’ll appreciate that good quality service.

So I had an ability to understand like that, that good quality service, and providing that experience to someone. Can also increase your bottom dollar. But then I’ve also had a really big social justice kind of worldly idea. So I studied, um, psychology just to begin with, and I, I loved criminology and that was really systems based and looking at the world and how we interact.

And then I studied social work. So it, it is, it’s been hard. Like I’ve, I’ve wanted to always do something sort of activist based and also. Was quite comfortable wanting to earn a decent amount of money for my skills and expertise, and I found it appalling that I could have all these [00:19:00] qualifications and yet someone who’s got one degree who’s maybe worked their way up or maybe have no degree and just work, I dunno, maybe real estate earned significantly more than me.

And literally sometimes I’m genuinely saving people’s lives or their marriages or their relationships or doing something that is. Is so significant, and it’s like, why shouldn’t that get valued? And so I don’t know if I’ve reconciled it completely, but I keep having these discussions. I have them more and more openly on forums like this or with other peers, and I’ve given up this idea of having to have a solid answer.

I just, I kind of update the software, so I’ll have a conversation, something might resonate with me, my circumstances might change, and I’m being a bit more flexible with that. And just say, look, it can keep evolving and I don’t have to have it perfectly understood right now. 

Bronwyn: Yeah. And I really like how you emphasise that evolving way of looking at finances and your attitudes towards finances.

It’s like there isn’t [00:20:00] gonna be an end point where we have, I guess, perfect. Perfect in air quotes, views on finances. It’s always changing and shifting. And one thing I picked up in your description was that there seems to be some anger about the, uh, I mean justifiable anger about the injustice, say of the, the thing we were sold was that if we get these qualifications, we get these degrees, we’ll then have salaries that are commensurate with those degrees and we’ll be able to pay off our hex in a reasonable time.

And what we’re seeing now is that maybe that’s a lie. Um, and maybe that doesn’t match up and that produces some anger, which can, in my opinion, I think that helps us solidify what’s important to us. And I know that prompts me to think of, well, how can I approach this with a problem solving framework and make sure that I’m okay?

Marie Vakakis: How do you, 

Bronwyn: uh, that’s a good question. I think what I do is I make sure that it’s sustainable. So when I look at my private practice, when I look at other income. I do value money and like for example, I’m just being offered another contract for a [00:21:00] job and one of my first questions was like, is it gonna be the same pay that I’m on now?

Which I’m happy with. How can we make that possible? Um, because yeah, it’s important to me and that’s, that’s how I live and I make sure that I’m securing my future and my family’s future. Um, in terms of like other activism. If I need to meet with my local member for federal Parliament, I will do that.

I’ll go talk to people and make sure that, I guess, policy makers are knowing what’s happening with what we’re experiencing, and I closely follow what’s happening in that area. 

Marie Vakakis: It’s hard ’cause I think if you’ve got you, if money is not inherently good or bad, it’s what we do with that. And yeah, good people will do good things with more money and.

Maybe not so good. People will do not so good things, but lots of money. And so there’s that thing of if I am in a position where I can earn more and make more, I give back to the, I’ll do more of everything I do will just be on a larger scale, more money in my community, more [00:22:00] mentorship. I mean, even the podcast, that’s a labor of love that started, yeah, a hundred percent for my students.

And that was again, one of those examples of I was not getting paid to promote. The back, then it was the RMIT Student Fieldwork Education Program. Um. It cost me a fortune. Lots of time. Back then, I wasn’t even as proficient as I am now in recording episodes and editing them. So one episode, like my first one took like six hours to edit.

Like it was like grueling, painful, and the tech was all glitchy. And so, you know, that’s the, they’re the examples of, to try and increase the awareness of our field or to increase education for other social workers. I was putting in significant time outside of that, and that still hasn’t paid off. And that’s part of my.

One of my values is, um, is to educate and, and to learn. So I love learning. Um, and the, the three, um, values for the therapy hub is connect, grow, and discover. And that’s that growth bit and that discovery and elevating the voices of other people who [00:23:00] weren’t well known. Other programs, a lot of charities and organisers back in the day when I first started, um, that was all done at for free.

Um, and it still is. And so you, you can give back in whatever skillset that you’ve got, but I think people need to be very. Very careful that they have a, a secure base for themselves, that they’re not relying on a partner or some other source of income if they’re going to go out and do this on their own.

Because it is a business and it’s not a hobby and it’s not volunteer work. 

Bronwyn: So with our work not being a hobby, is this something that you’ve seen? So let’s have a chat about the views of money that you may have seen out there in the wilderness, in students, in what you’ve seen on the internet. What’s the ones that, uh, you are like, Hmm, that’s an unhealthy money mindset.

Marie Vakakis: I think the most simple is that I’m not good with money, and that is kind of like a head in the sand approach. And I don’t know if maybe I [00:24:00] have, oh, maybe I do have unrelenting standards or some sort of high expectations, but I would’ve thought for a group of professionals who spend most of their time helping other people sit in discomfort and move through that, we might be a little bit better at this.

And that’s not necessarily the case. You might not have been good at maths as a young person. You might have tried to do accounting at, you know, year 11 and 12 and not been great at it. To say, I am not good with money is just total bullshit. And that holds people back from sitting down looking at their finances, either printing out a bank statement, going through line by line, setting a budget, like just that belief that I can’t do this.

Can, can ruin someone’s business to not know your overheads, your expenses, your um, like things like work cover insurance. Like to not sit down and do that and just say, oh, I’m just no good with money is terrible. It can really make someone so [00:25:00] vulnerable to all sorts of things. So I guess that would be the, the biggest one to start with is.

You have to say, I dunno this yet, and just like you didn’t know how to be a therapist from day one and you that took, you know, a 6, 8, 10 year journey, this will be learn learnable as well. 

Bronwyn: I reckon 

Marie Vakakis: mental 

Bronwyn: health professionals are, you know, they’re smart folk. I don’t, I, I kind of don’t believe them that they would have a skill deficit or they wouldn’t be able to learn it.

Like you say, if like they can learn how to do their profession, they can certainly learn how to look at some numbers. Bearing in mind that some people might have difficulties with numbers, but I’m wondering if there’s beliefs that might be behind the, I can’t deal with money. What do you think they could be?

Marie Vakakis: It could be individual, um, kind of childhood beliefs, early experiences. Sometimes they’re subconscious. Uh, they’re usually subconscious. Uh, it could be seeing a parent maybe spend too much money, and so you just don’t understand what that’s like. So again, we [00:26:00] can overcompensate for a behavior. We can kind of repeat the same thing.

Or maybe having someone who was, uh, growing up in a family that was very frugal. And so you might also then be very frugal. Or you might splurge ’cause you felt so restricted when you were young, so you might have these extremes. It could be a comment someone said when you were younger about maths that you struggled with.

There’s a range of different things, but it’s not, it’s not good enough to not know. And I. Even if you’re not in private practice, you should still have some basic financial literacy so you can save for the future and then the present that you want. Whether that’s just managing your budget, whether that’s saving for something, if that’s, you know, a holiday, a trip investment, your, your, you know, retirement, like they’re important things to have.

Sort it out. And as a tertiary educated professional, there is no reason that this should be hard for you or I, impossible. Totally awkward, uncomfortable, [00:27:00] difficult overwhelm. Yes, yes. But there’s no reason that with the basic numeracy and literacy that you’ve had to get through to pass statistics, like seriously, that’s complicated shit.

Bronwyn: Yeah. 

Marie Vakakis: You should be able to do this with a bit of help, some resources, maybe some cries. That’s okay. There’s no reason that you couldn’t do it. 

Bronwyn: Definitely. I wanna talk about two money mindsets with you that I think might be relevant to early career listeners. And one of them I think is relevant to them, but also to me.

And so this is a bit of me sorting out stuff. The first one that’s uh, I think I’ve gotten past but I think is relevant to early career listeners is this, which is, I don’t deserve to earn more until I’m more experienced. What do you think? 

Marie Vakakis: Look again, that’s, that’s okay, but you still need to have a bit of a formula in mind of what does it cost you to turn on the lights?

So you might not open up a restaurant like, [00:28:00] I don’t know, for those in Melbourne, like Avi or Mond or like you not, you might not be like, oh, I’m an apprentice chef and I’m gonna try and open a chef’s hat restaurant. You might start with something simpler and smaller and you still need to have an idea of.

If I don’t feel comfortable charging that, that’s okay, but how do I make this work? How many um sessions do I need a day? How many sessions do I need a week? What are my overheads? So make that decision based on facts and figures. 

Bronwyn: Yeah. What about people who are not setting their own fees, but are being told what their fee is, or just earning a salary?

What about that belief? I don’t deserve to earn. More until I’m more experienced. I don’t know. Could that be holding us back or is that a realistic belief? Like, you know, uh, you know, a first year person probably isn’t gonna be earning the same amount as a 10 year person. 

Marie Vakakis: I think it really depends on what you have to offer.

And I struggle with this because sometimes I do think experience does [00:29:00] matter and yet we don’t wanna say that there’s no value in that. So you might need to figure out again, what’s your. What’s the change you’re creating for that person? What’s the impact you’re having on that person’s life? So, you know, you might think of a service that we might pay for, like, do you want, um.

I know what’s a one that comes up a lot around, let’s say, working with, um, virtual admin. So Vir VAs, it’s like, do you want the 30 hours of the VA that charges $10 an hour, or would you rather 10 hours with the VA that charges $30 an hour? And sometimes we think, well that person, if they’re charging $30 an hour, they’re probably gonna get a lot done of a higher quality, of a higher level, and maybe they’re actually really good at it.

So you get to kind of weigh that up. You might’ve come across from another industry. And it might take you a bit of time to establish those skills, but it’s also what the market is asking. Is your niche needed? Is it in demand? And your [00:30:00] marketing, your branding, is there scarcity in that town? Like there’s actually a lot of competing factors and you have to really understand that because you are a business, if you’re in private practice, even if you’re a contractor.

That’s a business to business arrangement. So you are a business and it’s on you to work out can you afford this? If you think about the rate you are taking, and it, it’s not that lucrative being a, a group private practice owner, because when, yeah, you’ve got so many overheads, but when you’re thinking like a client’s paying a certain amount of money, let’s say $200 for a round number, you don’t make $200 an hour from that.

You’ve got to cover so many expenses. That’s across any industry. Like we might think, oh, I’ve gone out for brunch. It’s like, well, it’s just a piece of toast and an egg. It’s like, well, it’s the rent, the shop fit out, the insurance, the, I dunno, electricals the gas water heating. Um, the, the chef, the staff, the bookkeeper, their, their, um, they might have an accountant, they might have [00:31:00] a dishwasher, like an actual person there, or do like, you know, they’ve gotta buy cups and plates and cut cutlery.

Like there’s all these things. So it’s not just. I could have gone and made a piece of toast. 

Bronwyn: Yes, there’s a lot that goes into what we charge people and a lot of value they get out of it. So when we’re thinking about that belief, I don’t deserve to earn more until I’m more experienced. It’s not the simplistic is what I’m hearing from you, because there may be other dimensions that you may be able to offer value on.

For example, let’s say you specialise in, uh, sex therapy for older couples. Pretty niche area. Um, might be a lot of value in that for some people. And even though you may have been in it for one year, you may be able to value add more than somebody else who has been it for 10, but not have that specialisation.

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. And I think some people aren’t gonna like these, but some of us, some, I’m like, say like, I don’t know if I’m one of the, some people are better at their job than others. Yep. Some people are better at building rapport. Some people get better outcomes. Uh, some [00:32:00] people are more likable or connect better with clients, and they’ll probably be in a position where they can charge more.

Bronwyn: Yeah, true, true up. Okay. Here’s the other belief I wanted to talk about, and it’s one that is my current limiting belief, and I wanna guide you along it by explaining it in this way. So bear with me for a sec. Because I was thinking of a metaphor, and then I opened the fridge for lunch and I saw butter.

And so I’m gonna explain it using butter, which is how much would you pay for an excellent butter? Like what’s the top limit you would pay? And it’s a luxurious butter. It’s really nice. Butter. I’m assuming you’re not vegan, but I don’t know, um, how much would you pay for it? 

Marie Vakakis: I reckon I’ve paid 10 to $12 for a like cultured butter.

But they come in like, it comes in like a ball, like a salted ball. Oh, really? Yummy. Looks like a bar of soap. Yeah, it’s great. 

Bronwyn: Yeah. But like butter has an upper limit, so you wouldn’t be paying like [00:33:00] $75 a butter. Right. 

Marie Vakakis: Suppose not. 

Bronwyn: Okay, so here’s where I’m struggling, which is that if I think of that in terms of therapy, I’m like, there has to be an upper limit where like I can charge for therapy and I’m having a, a, a struggle because I’m like, how much is therapy worth?

And then I’ve gone into knots about this and I’m like, what is the upper limit? Not what I can charge, but well, how much do I think like butter? How much is therapy worth? And so I’m struggling to charge more. ’cause I’m like, I don’t actually think therapy is worth more than this. And I don’t know whether I’m undervaluing therapy or undervaluing myself anyway, I just wanna hear your perspective.

Marie Vakakis: But that might be something to, like, if the cost of, um, milk went up and the cost of electricity went up and churning, the butter went up, people would have to make a decision. Either I pay what it cost for butter, because that’s, that’s the reality, or I switch to a different spread. You might think, [00:34:00] well, yes, $10 might be the upper limit for butter.

But if you go to a restaurant and there is a beautiful warm piece of sourdough bread and a little bit of butter that’s smeared on it, suddenly that’s 20 bucks. So is there value add? It’s really tricky because. That’s some of the reality of economics. 

Bronwyn: It is, yeah. And I, something else is like tied into that.

It’s like, well, if you don’t give yourself a pay rise with inflation, you’re actually taking a pay cut. And so I’m like, yeah, then it, then it needs to go up. 

Marie Vakakis: But I think about what I would pay, um, uh, for those who we’ve probably talked about, like I, I love Esther Perel. Yeah. I reckon I would pay, I reckon I’d pay grand for an hour in a room with her.

Bronwyn: I would too. And I don’t even like follow her that deeply. 

Marie Vakakis: You know, that’s like spending 50 bucks on butter. Like, you know, you might have a T-shirt that’s signed by a band and you think [00:35:00] on earth, would someone wanna pay that much money for that t-shirt? It’s what you, what worth you put in it. Right. And then how famous that band gets.

Bronwyn: Yeah. So I guess what you’re saying is that maybe there’s no absolute value of therapy, rather it’s how valuable it is to the person receiving it. And that might be worth 50 bucks, or it might be worth 2000 bucks. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. And that’s not to say that there are some people out there who value it, who desire it and still can’t afford it.

Mm-hmm. And that’s, that’s the dilemma. Okay. And that’s the, the difficulty that we sit in with this is. It’s not saying that some people don’t value it, some really, really do and some will prioritise rent and then therapy and they, they value it so much and see how life changing and other people, that’s the first expense to go and some people need it so much and there’s nothing left in their budget.

And the ironies, I’ve been at [00:36:00] that point as well. I’ve had moments where. Business wasn’t going well. Cost of living was crazy and I didn’t have enough money at the end of the week to pay for a therapist who charged not even close to what I charge there. There literally was nothing else. I’m like, if I was really, really unwell, yes, I probably would get a loan, put it on credit, maybe ask someone for money.

I’d refinance something, but it wasn’t at that point yet. But it’s, it’s hard. It’s like, it’s not that I don’t value it, but I had to make a choice of what’s more important right now. And so it is sometimes in the, the eyes of the beholder and then there are some realities. Like someone would be like, yeah, I’d love to get that t-shirt signed by Taylor Swift.

And I’d love her and I think she’s amazing. Or I’d love to get the VIP ticket for a concert and I still don’t have that kind of money. 

Bronwyn: Yeah, it, it really is a big dilemma and even just having this very brief conversation, it really just highlights to me how many facets of money, beliefs there are.

There’s the stuff that you’ve [00:37:00] grown up with, the stuff that you’ve been taught and the stuff you’ve been socialised with that all coalesce into something. Quite, um, can, it can be quite difficult. So I guess the question is, are there any practical strategies that we can say to listeners who have a lot of anxiety or overwhelm about finances?

What can they do? 

Marie Vakakis: Educate yourself like you would with so many other areas. Start to digest some content in bite-sized pieces. So some podcasts might be a good start for you. Um, I like the Barefoot Investor book that was good for personal finances. The, um, she’s on the money, um, love, she’s on the money.

Yeah. Really great. And then there’s the podcast, there’s the, she’s on the Money Invest, there’s the business Bible. So there’s a few really digestible stuff, um, there for. Millennials, so the language is a little bit user friendly. Um, that was been really good. There’s the Australian Finance Podcast, which I’ve been a guest on a few times, talking about how we talk about money.

Um, you know, there’s, there’s lots. So [00:38:00] find a few things and find someone who explains it in a language that makes sense for you and, and start to do that. So, digest some of that content. That will give you some ideas around how to then start thinking about that. And so many business coaches, almost anybody that works in this space, will have had, they’ll have something on their content in their socials, on a blog post, on a podcast episode where they talk about money mindset.

So, you know, you can use, um, Spotify or the Apple Podcast app as a bit of a search engine and typing money, mindset psychologist or money mindset, social workers or private practice, money mind, something like that. And you’ll get, you’ll get some stuff started and. I think if you’re partner, they’re really good conversations to have is to like, think about what does money mean?

How do we talk about finances? I know we’ve referenced the eight dates book. Yeah. Um, but that’s got a whole chapter on money. So even understanding your story about money, where those myths came from. Like I think of, um, you know, if you were. Little and you had, [00:39:00] um, you know, you saw a, I don’t know, I don’t even know a fancy, an Audi, a Mercedes drive past and your parents or someone made the comment being like, oh, what’s that person overcompensating for?

Or, you know, something like that. You might start to make the association or having nice things must mean you are a douche bag or a wanker. 

Bronwyn: Yeah. 

Marie Vakakis: And you, we don’t even realise the power of those things. So you might actually sabotage making money because you’ve subconsciously associated that. With being a bad person.

Bronwyn: Mm. Yeah. That ties in so much to this belief. Like, if I charge too much, people will think I’m greedy. Um, if I charge too much to the clinician, other clinicians will think, what am I overcompensating for? Um, who do I think I am charging this much? Yeah. I think people do hold themselves back from earning their financial potential because of the fear of judgment and criticism from other people.

Um, so there’s a lot of practical strategies we can do, and I think there’s a lot of internal work that we could also [00:40:00] do as well. 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah, I’ve done a few different, um, courses and I’ve done one through, I’ve got, had a really great business coach called, um, Fiona Johnson, and she’s got a, um, get financially fit course.

So that was really, really great. And then I did one through Tess Crawley, the CEO mindset. And between the two of them, there’s a few, you know, sort of consistent themes that come out, but. We can fall into a number of different categories when we talk about money mindset, and one is like, it’s kind of being like the martyr.

Like avoid investing in tools and resources and, and you’ll see it, you’ll see it in Facebook groups. People are like, oh, it’s coming up to my, you know, registration renewal. And, you know, it’s been hard as a business owner, so I’d appreciate if anyone’s got some free training that I can do to get my CPD hours.

And they almost do it as like a. Poor me. I’ve suffered what’s available and I’m all for being frugal and I’m all for being, um, creative. Is that where, where you’re spending your money, but there’s a tone that makes it [00:41:00] different? Mm. You know, and then there’s people who undercharge and I think that’s often as a fear of rejection.

Mm. So if you are really undercharging, you might wanna explore that too. What is the fear? Then there’s some people who hoard cash and who save money and they don’t pay themselves, and they’re scared of it running out. And so it’s just really helpful to just start to explore those things, explore those beliefs, and just get to understand yourself better and do the hard things that you tell your clients to do.

If you’re struggling with this, go have a few sessions with a therapist or talk with your supervisor about one part of it and talk to your therapist or someone in in a peer supervision group. Talk about this a little bit and start to unpack what it’s like for you. You know, you can use some examples.

You don’t have to talk, tell clients. You know, I talk about money mindset, but you can say, I’ve been in that position of having to learn something new at my age, and it’s really scary. Yeah, and that might be the truth. You might’ve had to learn to, you know, some basic accounting and basic [00:42:00] bookkeeping and it was overwhelming.

And being okay to sit in that discomfort, to hold that lightly, to explore those feelings that’s living and breathing the work that you are challenging people for. 

Bronwyn: Yeah, as you were talking, I was thinking like, you know how there are some things that we learned through experience and we’re like, oh, you know, in the end I’m glad I went through that because I could learn that I think with money, like I wish that I didn’t have to go through it to have learned it.

I wish we had had these conversations earlier and I wish I had had them at the start and done the work rather than gone through it. Like the consequences for me were not too severe, but just as an example, I undercharged way too much when I first. Started out and then it made increases much harder and I had to do multiple because I was undercharging so much.

And then there were a few other examples. Again, relatively minor consequences, but I wish I didn’t have to go through it to learn it. Um, so yeah, I would really encourage people to get on the front foot with [00:43:00] this and have a look at their money approaches. 

Marie Vakakis: But that’s the sort of stuff, and we talked about it.

Uh, we’ve talked about it briefly in other episodes and little snippets, but. You, if you started as a bit of a side hustle, you have to make those mistakes. Yeah. If you, you’re gonna, you’re gonna lose, you know, talked about you’re gonna lose something. Time, money. Was it quality? Yeah. If you went all in and you thought, just like you were, if you were to get some venture capitalist funding or apply for a loan at the bank and you had a full business plan and you were gonna open up a restaurant or, you know, sell centered candles or.

But a company, um, you might have a business coach, a mentor, a business plan written up. You might have that stuff structured so that you don’t make those mistakes starting off. And so that’s part of the limitations. You wanted to do it cheaply and you wanted to do it slowly. Yeah. And it costs you something and that’s, that’s okay.

What was the alternative? You would’ve had to maybe take a loan or use some of your savings to sit down with [00:44:00] a business coach or a financial advisor and say, this is my idea. What do I do? And they might have helped you set it up, and that could have cost you a few thousand dollars to then not undercharge.

Bronwyn: Yeah. 

Marie Vakakis: And so it just came from some, you lose, you can’t have it all at once. 

Bronwyn: No, it’s so true. And I guess that comes back to we try and make the best decisions we can at the time. Um, with money though, there can be more serious consequences. Like you said at the very start, it’s like. Older women are the fastest rising group of homeless people in Australia.

So it’s like we need to be sure that we are earning super, um, that we are earning adequately to help us along in life and, and not just us, but our loved ones as well. So, Marie, what do you hope listeners will take away from our conversation today? I guess if you could leave them with one or two things, what is it that would be the top most things.

Marie Vakakis: Start somewhere. Start with understanding this, and if you’re listening and you’re not in private practice, there’s still a lot of value in [00:45:00] understanding your finances. Um, understanding how to save money, how to maybe invest money, how to set up for super, like making extra contributions, understanding your tax.

There is, we underestimate how much we can do in 10 years and sometimes we overestimate what we can do in a year. So small, consistent steps, setting up those good systems. S being, you know, starting to educate yourself is great. Open up the, you know, get a library card. Libraries still exists and they have online books that you can book.

Borrow as eBooks. You can read them on your phone or your iPad and audiobooks. She’s on the money’s in the library so you can get it for free. Start somewhere, you know, check out a few podcast episodes with someone that’s helpful. Um, but it, it’s okay not to know. And it’s, it’s, now that you’ve heard this, it’s not an excuse.

Okay? You’ve gotta start somewhere and make those small [00:46:00] changes. And it can be confronting, it can be overwhelming. You’re not alone. A lot of people have been there. But you’re gonna set yourself up for so much more success and longevity, not just in the field, but for life. You know, you wanna work out the kind of lifestyle you want to live, and this will help you with that.

Bronwyn: Hundred percent. I do think the biggest benefits so far that I’ve seen of just becoming a little bit financially more literate for me and addressing my beliefs first, is that I’m more resilient to when I see judgment online. So like if I see, oh, you’re so greedy, or kind of implying that, or people like, oh, you should be a martyr.

Um, I’m more resilient to that. I’m able to connect to my own values and then. The other benefit is that I’m more financially secure. Of course. Yeah. Um, but I’m curious, have you seen benefits from increasing your knowledge? 

Marie Vakakis: It’s reduced the, the anxiety day to day. So once I started learning [00:47:00] that barefoot model of, of in putting money in different accounts, it meant that it kept me accountable to my spending.

It kept me not freaking out whenever there was a big bill because that was sort of buffered. And I did a, a simpler version of that even when I was younger and renting, I literally had paper envelopes and I was putting money in those. And that gives you a sense of control. And knowing your ins and outs and being informed gives you so much more control.

So then you can set boundaries around where you go for dinner or what you spend money on for Christmas, or what holiday you can afford. Like if you’re informed, you’re not gonna have those as many of those unexpected surprises. And it does help, like having a bit of money saved meant I was able to pay for a surgery that I needed privately.

Instead of waiting another, you know, 12, 18 months in pain, that maybe would’ve cost me more because of the amount of time that I would have to take off from work. So there are some [00:48:00] benefits to having that buffer there. And the more, you know, the more informed you are, you can make more educated choices.

It’s, it’s not, it’s not enough to just say, oh, I dunno anything about finances, even if your partner’s really good at it. Still understand the basics, know where it’s going, get an understanding of the overall picture, and start to have that, those conversations so you know, you know, you know what’s happening with your hard earned cash.

Like you, you are busting your butts at uni in on placement at work to spend the best hours of your day, the best years of your life to earn this. Digital currency now. ’cause it’s not paper. Yeah. And you wanna know where it’s going. You want every single dollar to have a goal. To have a job. Every dollar should have a job.

You know, if you’ve gone somewhere and you’ve had a shitty dinner and you’ve spent $50, I want you to think I worked for over an hour for that. Was that worth it? I give every dollar a job. 

Bronwyn: Oh, that’s so [00:49:00] true. Well, thank you so much, Marie. And. I believe, have you got a course coming up on this? 

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. So just after our conversation, I thought it’d be really good.

So I’ve got a webinar coming up, um, building Healthy Money Mindset, um, and that’ll be on my website so people can check that out live. And if you’ve missed it live, um, it’ll be on demand when that’s done. 

Bronwyn: And what’s your website? 

Marie Vakakis: Mariva kakis.com au. 

Bronwyn: Excellent. I’ll make sure I put that in the show notes. I think it’d be really valuable to get on board with it for the reasons we discussed, but I just don’t think it’s unique.

I reckon every one of us, because they’ve all grown up. With money and in relationship with money, either not having enough, having lots or, you know, different types of relationships. Like, yeah, we all need to, we all need to think about it. Like we’ve got beliefs about it. So I might be limiting. Some might be healthy, some might be unhealthy.

Anyway, sounds like a great course. Well done. 

Marie Vakakis: Thanks. 

Bronwyn: Yeah, and thanks so much for coming on the podcast again, Marie. It’s such a [00:50:00] pleasure to have you and your insights, and I feel like you’re a good balance for me because I’m like, I.

Marie Vakakis: Yeah. But then you come back with, oh yeah, I know that too.