In this video, I share 5 everyday phrases that quietly sabotage your finances - and what to say instead to build real financial confidence and control. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Intro 00:37 Someone else handles that for me 02:21 Money doesn't matter to me 03:40 I'm just bad at this 06:32 It's too late now 08:04 I can't afford it
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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 program link 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
If you're new here, hi, I'm Nisha. I'm a chartered 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 advisor, 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 interests 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 interests at you, even the best accountant, even the best financial advisor,
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 tradeoffs 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 curveballs, 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 Dirk 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
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 the 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 build 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, 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 holds 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. Don't forget to subscribe if
you haven't already and I'll see you in the next one.