Ep 56: How You've Been Trained to Be a CONSUMER

Ep 56: How You've Been Trained to Be a CONSUMER

You buy the car, the upgrade, the next thing, half hoping it will finally make you feel powerful or free or like you're doing well. Underneath, a part of you already knows it won't. In this part of their mini series, Shabbar and Tim step back from personal money stories to look at the bigger picture: the constant pull towards growth and more, and how it shapes the way we spend, save, and measure our lives. They trace how wanting more gets sold to us from the outside and fed by something unspoken inside. They also revisit our unconscious projections, the money work idea that the status, power, and freedom we chase through what we buy were always in us, never in the object. It is a conversation about money psychology, identity, and what we are really hoping the next purchase will give us. Key themes: * Why the next purchase never quite delivers the feeling you bought it for * How we slipped from being citizens into being consumers, and why it matters * Why the urge to grow and accumulate is so often driven by fear 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 [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam] Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick] Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/ [https://timothymalnick.com/] Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/ [https://lumosfinancial.com/]

Ep 55: The Good Life is NOT Found in GDP Growth

Most of us were never asked what we actually wanted from the economy. We were just handed a role: consume, earn more, and trust that growth will sort everything out. This episode is about what happens when you stop taking that on good faith. Shabbar and Tim continue their series on growth, asking what the economy is actually costing us, not just the planet but our sense of being alive. They look at why governments chase GDP the same way individuals chase a number, and what gets lost when growth becomes the only measure of success. Along the way, they surface an uncomfortable paradox: the savings meant to give us security are tied up in companies that need us to keep spending: * Why governments chase a number rather than asking what people actually want. * The pension paradox: how responsible saving quietly fuels the consumption machine. * What corporations gain from you never feeling like you have enough. * Why questioning economic growth can feel foolish, and why that feeling is worth examining. * What it would mean to think of yourself as a citizen rather than a consumer. 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 [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam] Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick] Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/ [https://timothymalnick.com/] Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/ [https://lumosfinancial.com/]

Ep 54: I've Spent My CAREER Believing a Money Story I Now DOUBT!

Most of us live inside a story about money and growth without ever questioning whether it is the RIGHT story. This episode is about what happens when someone who has spent their career inside that story starts to wonder if it is true. Shabbar shares what happened after reading two books, Mark Boyle's The Moneyless Man and Jason Hickel's Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, that sent him down a rabbit hole he is still in. This conversation is the first in a short series, and it is deliberately exploratory. Shabbar is processing in real time what it means to build a career helping people grow their wealth inside a system he is starting to question. Tim brings context from years of thinking about environmental change and the psychology of how collective stories get made and maintained. Between them they explore why the mainstream economic narrative feels so hard to challenge, who benefits from keeping it unchallenged, and what it means that so many people privately sense something is wrong but say nothing. The thread that runs through everything is the one this podcast always comes back to: the difference between what the numbers promise and what a life actually needs: * Why the story of endless growth feels unquestionable, even to people who can see it is not working. * The professional and social cost of saying out loud that the system might be the problem. * How our individual money fears and insecurities quietly shape the economic systems we all end up living inside. * What the degrowth movement actually argues, and why it tends to get laughed off rather than engaged with. * The question neither of them can fully answer yet: why haven't we arranged the way we live to work for everyone. 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 [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam] Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick] Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/ [https://timothymalnick.com/] Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/ [https://lumosfinancial.com/]

Ep 53: Why Artists Stay BROKE and Businessmen Stay BORED

There's a version of you that comes alive when you're being creative, playful, or fully yourself. And then there's the version that shows up to work. This episode is about the gap between them. Shabbar and Tim explore the artist and the businessman as two archetypes we all carry. Through personal stories and Jungian shadow work, they unpack what happens when we dismiss or avoid the side we don't identify with. Whether you're a creative who struggles with money or a commercial thinker who feels something's missing, this conversation holds something for you. The real question isn't which archetype is right. It's whether you're brave enough to take a step toward the one you've been avoiding. * Why what irritates you most about other people might say more about you than them * What the artist loses by treating money and commerce as corrupt * What the businessman misses by leaving creativity and play out of their work * Why the most alive version of you rarely makes it into your professional life * How growth often just means taking a 20% step toward the side you've been resisting 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 [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam] Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick] Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/ [https://timothymalnick.com] Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/ [https://lumosfinancial.com]

Ep 52: Your Pension Won't Save You From Getting OLD

Most of us carry a number in our heads. The number we need before we can stop. The age by which we need to hit it. Underneath all of that planning is a fear we don't talk about much: the fear of getting old in a society that doesn't know what to do with older people. In this episode, Shabbar and Tim pull apart the modern idea of retirement, where it came from and what it is actually promising. They explore how the fixation on a pension figure is itself a symptom of a culture that treats aging as decline, and how that fixation can quietly drain the vitality and curiosity we are trying to protect. The conversation moves toward something more useful: the things that actually keep people vital as they age, which include relationships, learning, and staying open to life, and those can be invested in at any age, with any amount of money. Key themes: * Why retirement is a modern industrial invention, and what we lose by treating it as a life goal. * How a society that fears old age drives our obsession with the pension number. * What actually keeps people curious and energetic as they age, and why it is not the size of their savings. * The comparison trap: measuring your number against where you think you should be at your age. * Why investing in your health, relationships, and emotional wellbeing matters as much as saving for the future. 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 [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/shabbarkassam] Tim: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick [https://uk.linkedin.com/in/timmalnick] Explore Tim's work and register for his upcoming workshop: https://timothymalnick.com/ [https://timothymalnick.com/] Find out more about Shabbar's financial planning services: https://lumosfinancial.com/ [https://lumosfinancial.com/]