Kindness with Dennis Harhalakis

Money isn’t just about numbers – it’s about emotions, habits, and the way we treat ourselves and others. In this episode the guys welcome Dennis Harhalakis, an experienced money coach, to explore the connection between kindness and financial wellbeing. Of course we have another round of Tight Ass Tommo tips as ever. This episode is packed with wisdom, humour and practical takeaways to help you bring more kindness into your financial life. Hit play and let’s dive in!

Welcomes & Introductions

Want to know more about Chris Budd’s The Financial Wellbeing Pulse? Take a look here
Producer Tommo – Director and Chartered Financial Planner at the award winning, employee owned and B Corp certified Ovation Finance! Fancy a chat with Tom Morris and the team at Ovation? Contact details here

Chris Budd – founder of the Institute for Financial Wellbeing. Gearing up to play at the 2025 IFW conference.

What’s on Today’s Podcast?

A chat with Dennis Harhalakis, exploring money coaching and kindness in connection with our finances.

Tight Ass Tommo

Featuring some rather morally grey money saving tips around umbrellas and kids meals!

Interview on Kindness with Dennis Harhalakis

What is money coaching?

You can’t understand how to manage your money, until you understand your behaviour Dennis Harhalakis

Common things Dennis has seen when exploring finances with couples

Internal self worth is better for long-term wellbeing – so what bring internal self worth? Kindness!

• What is kindness?
• The importance of kindness to yourself
• How kindness is good for you
• Money and kindness

Why do those with more money often give less to charitable causes?

Compersion, the opposite of schadenfreude

Conclusions from the Guys

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Dennis Harhalakis has over 30 years experience in financial services. As a money coach he set up Cambridge Money Coaching – helping people understand and manage the money in their lives.

Want to know more – connect with Dennis on LinkedIn

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Transcript:

>> David Lloyd: Hello everybody and welcome to another one in our series of financial well being podcasts. My name is David Lloyd, I’m a broadcaster, writer, actor, bon vivant, man about town. Now increasingly a man of leisure about town as I move into my retirement but very happily, trying to juggle all of those not too demanding things in my life.

And one of the things that I enjoy doing very much is hosting this podcast, along with my two good friends, Chris Budd and Tom Morris. Tom, we let Chris go first last time and I know how hurt you are by this. So perhaps you’d like to tell us about yourself before Chris has his go.

>> Producer Tommo: I’m a director and charter financial planner Ovation Finance in Bristol. Do feel free to go on our website and check us out ovationfinance.co.uk Feel free to get in touch. And yeah we’ve been sponsoring and supporting this podcast now for said last week about nine, nine years. So yeah, still going strong.

>> David Lloyd: Please don’t be put off by the rather casual way in which Tom Morris just like he’s been doing it 114 times before.

>> Chris Budd: I was just gonna. So. So my name’s Chris Budd and I was the founder of said Ovation Finance and I thought it might be worth just telling people who may have not known or forgotten, that Ovation is an employee owned company owned, majority owned by an employee ownership Trust back in 2018 and it’s now become very popular. I advise companies on how to do it themselves, but I think it’s a pretty cool thing, don’t you Tomo?

>> Producer Tommo: I do. And you know what? I, I was too cool, David. You’re right. I was too shy about what we are. We’re an award winning financial plan.

>> David Lloyd: That’s more like it.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah. come on, come on.

> Producer Tommo: We are, we are employee owned and proud of it. So it means we got a whole team of everyone in the business is, is trying to push the success of the business on and we are B Corp certified, which is something we’re very proud of as well. So we got an awful lot going for us. We’re very proud of what we do at Ovation and, and the impact that we try and make on our clients, the people who are in their lives.

And also to the listeners, we’re really trying to get the message of financial planning, a financial well being out there to try and improve the nation’s relationship with money. And heck not just the nation, we got lots of listeners around the world. So there you Go.

>> Chris Budd: He’s going international.

>> David Lloyd: Well, I’d just like to add to that, obviously. Wow, we’re all bigging up. Ovation. I’ve been a client of Ovation now for, oh, a Good Long time, 15, 20 years maybe. When I started off with ovation, I had 50p in the bank and I’m now a multi billionaire.

>> Producer Tommo: We’re actually before 25th anniversary this year. Chris, you may, you may. Well, no. So there you go.

>> David Lloyd: Actually, those statements I made about the 50p and the multi billionaire may not be 100% true, but I have been a client of Ovation for a long time with both Chris and Tom and indeed various other people at various times looking after my financial affairs. And I have to say I’m an extremely satisfied customer. Clearly I would say that, wouldn’t I? But I’m going to say it anyway.

The Institute of Financial well being is holding a conference in May

Right, Chris, what’s happening in the world of, financial well being these days?

> Chris Budd: Well, we’ve got a couple of things. We’ve got the Institute of Financial well Being, which I. Anybody who’s a, financial advisor or planner listening to this should be joining, please and come along to the, conference which is happening in May when, I don’t know if I’m allowed to reveal this, but the night before, of course, any conference, the best bit is in the bar the night before. Right. And we will be having a bit of a party, but I think a band, including yours truly on guitar, will be providing the music, which will be, yeah, hugely exciting.

And then the second thing is we’ve got our, I think it’s number 15th cohort of the Financial Wellbeing Certificate coming up February. So anybody, again, financial advisors and planners who want to get really much deeper into this subject of financial wellbeing and how to apply it to clients, come and have a look at the, Financial well being certificate. 18 hours worth of learning. Patricia, Tammy will put the link in the show notes. But yeah, please do sign up and come along and learn more.

>> David Lloyd: Brilliant. And that’s great.

Chris: We’re going to hear from Dennis Harhalakis about money coaching

Okay, so we’re, I think, pretty much up to speed. But now tell us, Chris, a little bit about what we’re going to be talking about in today’s podcast.

>> Chris Budd: We’re going to listen to a chat I had with Dennis Harhalakis. Now, Dennis is a money coach. Cambridge Money coaching is his, is his company. Anybody who is an IFW member will also know Dennis well because he always turns out to events. He’s always, inputting his words and they are always interesting words. That he puts into those meetings. He’s one of enthusiastic people about the concept of money coaching. So, yeah, we’re going to hear from Dennis about generally about money coaching, but also specifically on the subject of kindness.

>> David Lloyd: I’m looking forward to that interview very much indeed. But before we do that, we could not possibly proceed without paying a, visit to the monarch of meanness, as I call him, the Prince of parsimony, the meanest man in the world. Tight ass. Tommo, the man who has saved more money than anybody else who’s ever saved money ever. That’s not a very well thought through metaphor.

>> Chris Budd: I think we get the idea.

>> David Lloyd: Yeah.

Chris has a silly money saving tip for us today

But before we come on to his money saving tip for today, Chris, what have you got for us?

>> Chris Budd: So I’ve got a silly one. save money on umbrellas. If you want to get yourself a new umbrella, go to a department store or a big, place like Cribs Causeway. We have in Bristol, big shopping centre. Go to the information desk and tell them that you’ve lost a black umbrella. They must have loads of them in their lost property department. There’s no way of telling which one’s yours.

>> David Lloyd: Very good idea indeed. Slightly dishonest, but given that they probably aren’t going to get claimed anyway, go for it. It’s between you and your conscience. Great idea.

>> Chris Budd: I like that one a lot.

>> David Lloyd: So, master, what do you have?

>> Producer Tommo: Well, do you know what, now you’ve mentioned a bit of a conscience thing. I’m now thinking that mine might be a little bit actually as well. Crikey.

>> Chris Budd: Let us be the judge. We, we shall judge you, Thomas. David, get your arms, folded. Let us sit in judgement.

>> Producer Tommo: Mine is to try out when you, you know, do you enjoy your fish.

>> David Lloyd: And chips or only if they’re good fish and chips. I hate bad ones. Good ones. Food of the gods.

>> Producer Tommo: We enjoy. Right, Enjoy. Good fish and chips. I would. And it’s not cheap, is it?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Fish and chips.

>> Producer Tommo: Cod, you know, butter cod and a portion of chips.

>> Chris Budd: Get off with it. What is it?

>> Producer Tommo: Come on. try the kids meal. I genuinely. Me and, me and Lindsay, we sat down one night and we sort of ran out. I said, look, we need to grab something. Kids are in bed, we need to grab some. I said, I’ll tell you what, I’ll go around, I’ll go around the chippy. but we always notice when the kids have their little box, it’s loads in there. And I was like, do you know what? I reckon, I reckon we could get. Let’s try a kids Meal each and see how we get on. More than enough was like six quid a portion. I had some good COD bites, so a decent sized portion of chips. Lindsay had something similar. Job done. And we saved, I reckon we saved ourselves a good 40% of what we would usually spend. So the fruit shoot went in the bin because I’m not such a fan of those. But there you go. Try to get, genuinely try the kids meal, because the portions are worryingly big, actually.

> David Lloyd: Well, I don’t think that’s dishonest at all. I think it’s just. It’s just moderating your appetite to what, what you can eat and save your money in the process. It reminds me, we were in Norway last year on a family holiday and there was myself and my partner Gail and three of her children. There was eight, seven of us on a cycling trip. We went, we cycled out along this lake and we got to this little cafe and went in and we thought, what have we got to have some lunch? They didn’t have a huge choice. They had burgers, basically, or pizzas. And so we decided we’d all have a burger. So I kind of pointed to this thing on, there, and it was like burger and fries. I said, can we have like seven of those, please? And he kind of looked at me curiously and I said, yeah, that’s what you went. Oh, okay, okay.

So he cooked them up and served them up and we ate them and they were actually very nice burgers, I have to say. And then when we went to pay the bill, he said in very broken English, but certainly his English was better than my Norwegian, you know, he said, well, I think you misunderstood that, actually. The ones that you were pointing to were like, kids meals. but. But I’ve given you adult meals anyway. But I’ve just charged you for the kids meals.

>> Producer Tommo: Oh, wow.

>> David Lloyd: Which was. Yeah, yeah, very sweet, actually. Yeah.

>> Producer Tommo: Anyway, so the money is. What is the tight to tip there is? Take advantage of a Norwegian’s generosity.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Yes.

>> David Lloyd: The innate generosity of the Scandinavians there to be taken advantage of at every possible opportunity. Right. Thanks for that.

Chris: Dennis Hahalakis is a certified money coach

Let us move on. So, Chris, remind us again who we’re about to hear from.

>> Chris Budd: So, Dennis Hahalakis is a certified money coach, and he trains money coaches. this interview is going to be one of those that you might want to listen to to two or three times because he’s so smart and knows so much about his subject, about our relationship with money, that, there’ll be lots that you’ll pick up. Second or third time that you will have missed first time. So don’t listen to me anymore. Let’s have a listen to my chat with, with the lovely Dennis. Dennis, good afternoon, how are you?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: I’m very well, thank you. Chris. Yourself.

>> Chris Budd: I’m all right, mate, I’m all right. Thank you for joining us. It’s been long overdue, and I’m really glad that you’re able to join us on the podcast.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: It’s a pleasure to be here, Chris. Thank you.

Dennis is a certified money coach who helps people understand their money behaviour

>> Chris Budd: So, we’re going to talk about the subject of kindness, but you have a vast knowledge on all things relating to the relationship between money and happiness. so just give our listeners a bit of a flavour of the sort of stuff that, that you like to talk about and you like to delve into before we get specific.

> Dennis Harhalakis: So I’m a certified money coach. and what that means is I help people understand their patterns, behaviours and emotions around money. And the reason I start in that space is because my experience and I firmly believe that you can’t understand and manage the money in your life until you understand and manage your behaviour around money. And since most of our behaviour around money is subconscious, it really is the place to start. It’s. You start with self awareness and then you can move towards, conscious engagement, conscious positive engagement with your finances. It’s hard to have conscious, positive engagement with your finances if you don’t know what you’re doing or if you feel trapped or if you feel ashamed or all the sorts of things that get in the way of us doing what we know we should do but somehow struggle to do so.

I think know yourself is actually one of your key pillars of well being. So know yourself is broad, but we can narrow it down to money if, if you like, know yourself around money. and so, you know, I have a, a process that I work through with clients, I have a process that I work through with couples. and I also help financial professionals, planners and advisors, our friends in the industry, to understand client money behaviour. Because if your job is to help people make financial decisions, then understanding how the person in front of you makes financial decisions would be really, really helpful. I think actually it’s a core part of supporting them. So that’s a little bit about me.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Ah.

>> Chris Budd: and, you know, we’ve known each other for a little while and you’ve always been one of the more, what are contributors to, to our IFW Institute financial well being events. And I mean that as a compliment. I know I sometimes rib you about it, Dennis. But whenever you open your mouth, you all listen, you know, because you’ve always got good stuff to say. so. But let’s just.

When couples are in couples therapy, are they aligned around money

So before we get into the kindness, then, one question that crops up from what you just said, couples, is a very interesting one. We don’t talk about advising couples very often. What are the common things that you see when you get couples come in to see you to talk about relationship to money? Are they. You find people often aligned, very often not aligned, or what are the common things that you tend to see?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Well, I guess the, the, the straight answer, straightforward answer to any question is when couples are in couples therapy, are they aligned? And of course the answer is no.

>> Chris Budd: They would be in therapy.

> Dennis Harhalakis: So, the issue with couples and money, is that we each have a subconscious relationship with money that we don’t understand. however, there is one thing we’re very clear on is I might not understand my relationship with money, and I certainly don’t understand yours. But one thing I know is that I’m right and you’re wrong. So we start from a position of, of ignorance and motivated reasoning around this space. And of course with confirmation bias, it’s very obvious to find plenty of reasons why I’m right and you’re wrong or the other person is wrong.

So there are actually three relationships with money in the room. I, have mine, my partner has theirs, and we have a joint one, the one that’s created by the interactions that we’ve had together around money. Now, we don’t understand our own, we don’t understand the other person’s. and the reason that we clash is that very often, well, in fact, almost always our stories about money are different. And the simplest way to think about it is this. Have you ever kind of come across a family, maybe in your own family, Chris, where you all grew up in roughly the same environment and you’re all slightly different around money, or even radically different around money. Does that ring any bells?

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely not in my own family. But I can think of clients that I’ve dealt with particularly. there’s one that springs immediately to mind. Well, one of them didn’t, feel they were inherited some family shares, and one of them didn’t want to accept the dividends that came from the family shares because he didn’t think he’d earned it. and the others were very happy to accept those family shares because they felt it was their dividend and family. Right. You know, so, neither. Neither right. Neither wrong. Not no judgement, but it’s very different.

> Dennis Harhalakis: Right. So in the same kind of crucible, if you can use that word around of childhood, people come out with very different messages about what they believe they can do, be or have with money. And that’s from the same family. So you can imagine that in different families it’s always going to be radically different. Particularly since we still kind of have this thing where in, in terms of relationships, we’re often attracted to people that can give us the things that we can’t give ourselves. We broadly term this opposite attract. Opposites attract. But you know, in some senses, so what that means is you’ve got two people that are different money, stories, different beliefs about what they can do, be or have with money in a relationship. neither of them understand their relationship with money. And it’s a difficult thing to talk about.

You don’t talk about it on your first date, you don’t talk about it on your second date. And then lo and behold, you’ve, you’ve moved far beyond that and you’re not going to bring it up because it makes you feel uncomfortable, it makes you feel angry. and it’s just not the sort of thing you want to put into your relationship. Now let’s go a little bit further down the line and we will have some unspoken, understandings or maybe agreements about who does what, for example. And then life changes. You have a child, one of you doesn’t go to work anymore. Now those unspoken arrangements have possibly changed. Oh, I thought you were going to go back. But you know, we need the money.

Well, actually, you know what? I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to do that anymore. And so even as we go through life, those life events that we have throw up other avenues where the unspoken agreements that we never discussed have actually changed. And we don’t know that they’ve changed because we never discussed them. But we, what we do know is that we’re not happy anymore with the way things currently are.

And so I hope that gives you kind of little insight into kind of why, how this, it, how it kind of evolves over, time. I mean, to give you an interesting example, I think, you know, if you’re a, if, if, if you’re, if you’re young and you’re looking for a partner and there’s this wonderful guy who was always first at the bar and he’s buying everybody drinks, everybody’s best mates and everybody loves him, you know, he’s like, great, you know, My, you know, now that’s fantastic behaviour. But what if you’re saving for a house or what if you’re saving for you know, a holiday? Whatever. That guy who’s still first at the bar is like now making you feel really unsafe potentially. I’m, you know, very generically sketching this out for you. So that behaviour which you were attracted to is actually now making you feel not so great about it. I’m like, why can’t you stop buying? You know, why do you have to be the first of the bar? Why do you have to do that? You know.

The first thing we talk about in money coaching is self compassion

So now we’re kind of really getting into the sort of into the money beliefs and the money stories about what people have. and bringing those out into awareness is, is hard because where do you go? Who do you want to be vulnerable in front of?

>> Chris Budd: Yeah. The phrase that you’ve used at the very beginning of all of this, which I think is going to become our theme for all of this is self awareness, isn’t it? Is if you know what the issues are, you could do something about them.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Well, you can’t if you don’t is probably the, yeah, the, the best way to look at it. and so in the money coaching space the first thing we talk about is self compassion and, and, and awareness. Actually after awareness comes self compassion. So I have a long list of reasons why managing finances are hard and I usually start any kind of presentation and well being presentation with that because I think it’s really important to anchor it as actually you know what if you can’t do this, that makes you perfectly normal. Most people can’t.

>> Chris Budd: M. Our brains are just not wired to make long term financial planning decisions or to handle the spending of money. That’s not how we, the DNA in our bodies has been built up over thousands of years, is it?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Well, delay gratification is not a long term survival strategy. Oh, you know what, I’ll leave that there for, for, for a while. You know, I’ll leave that apple, I’ll leave that half a pig or whatever it is, you know and you know, I’ll come back to it later. That didn’t work, right?

>> Chris Budd: No.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Grow up. When you evolve in an environment of energy scarcity and resource scarcity, you take what you can when you can. And if you look at hunter gatherer tribes, there’s this lovely expression which is I store my food in my brother’s belly. Okay, that one.

>> Chris Budd: I haven’t heard that one.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: So what it’s basically saying is you Know when I have plenty, I give.

>> Chris Budd: Okay.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: And then when I don’t have plenty, they give back to me. Which is why humans and most mammals evolve to live in social groups because it’s much safer and people look after each other. So if you look at lizards, that or most reptiles like they live on their own, they don’t worry, they don’t have any social niceties. We don’t as mammals. So evolve to living in groups is really important.

>> Chris Budd: So actually the the, the economic system that we live within, which is survival of the fittest, actually isn’t how we operate, is it? We operate collaboratively.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Yes.

>> Chris Budd: History.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Survival of the fittest only works in a kind of genetic code perspective. Survival of the most social is actually how we operate. And if you think about it from a species perspective, why are dogs, why do we have dogs? Because they’re social animals. They have learned how to live with us and they do it really, really well. They are just trying to be the best dog that they possibly can. Every single one of them.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah. So that, that segues nicely into, into what I wanted to talk to you about, which is which is kindness.

Internal self worth is better source of long term wellbeing than external self worth

So if I can just set this up for a second why we’re talking about, I mean one of the reasons why is because I asked you what you wanted to talk about. This is one of the things you said. But but I love it because one of the basics of well being in life is that internal self worth is a better source of long term wellbeing than external self worth. So if we’re getting our self worth on the approval of others, that’s kind of exhausting because we’re always chasing it. Our happiness lives on the other side of somebody else’s admirer admiring glance. But if we get our well being from internal sources, then that’s a much longer lasting and in our control. So then you come to the point, well, what brings internal self worth?

And one of the answers is kindness. Being kind to other people, helping others, sending the lift back down, whatever we might call it. So that’s why when you put this on your list of things that you’d like, like to talk about, I jumped at it because we haven’t talked about it.

It’s important to understand what financial well being means

So let’s start with a bit of a daft question. What actually is kindness?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Well it’s not a daft question at all. I think it’s really important in the same way that it’s also important to understand what financial well being means. And I’m not going to jump into that because that’s your space or what’s my relationship with money mean? And I think the more interesting part of kindness is about being kind to yourself. And that’s really, really important. Being kind to other people will just park that to, to one side.

>> Chris Budd: We’ll take a little detail. That’s good. Yeah.

> Dennis Harhalakis: Helping old ladies across the road, stuff like that. And we know what, what it is in many senses and where people don’t generally know is about being kind to yourself. Now without going into the many, many reasons why managing money is hard, not just from the we’re not wired for it perspective. We don’t talk about it, we don’t have a, a blank slate. We’ve already talked about coming out of childhood with a subconscious inheritance patterns, behaviours around money we don’t understand. we have this other side, the kind of thin lit side that says that, you know, because money has numbers, we can turn money discussions into numeric discussions. Financial education can be typically an austerity gospel. You just separate wants and needs. It’s all about maths. Right.

When it isn’t, it’s all about emotions. and also there’s this, I think there’s a tendency to reinforce a kind of libertarian view of financial wellness based on, well, you know, it’s your own fault, you’re in charge of it. and this kind of really ignores the fact that nearly everything stems from where you started in life. so there’s lots of things around money to make it make where it’s challenging to understand it. And that’s why kindness is really important because we have this thing that’s central to our lives that no one, most people have never been shown how to manage. We misunderstand it but we don’t talk about it because we have this kind of taboo around it.

>> Chris Budd: Embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to admit that you’re not very good with money.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Oh totally, absolutely. I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Sterling Moss once said. Famously there’s two things a man will never admit he can’t do and one of them is drive and the other one is make love and I would say also manage his finances. The third one. So for those of us that remember Sterling Moss, I was going to say.

>> Chris Budd: With some of our younger listeners might have, well he used to drive.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: That was even before James Hunt. So you know we have this thing that’s wired to our emotions and self worth. We end up clashing with our partners, we make mistakes we end up with anxiety, guilt, shame, regret and you know, the stats around money and, and, and financial well being and all of this blocks us, it blocks us from engaging with our finances and it blocks us from getting help. So I want to say at the outset to everybody that’s listening to this, if you, if not, not managing your finances well is totally understandable. If you have debt or if you have no savings or if you can’t spend any money, it’s normal, it’s totally understandable.

>> Chris Budd: I, I almost go as far as to say, Dennis, I. Is it even possible to manage money well? You know, I think of it depends what your objective is and your outcome, isn’t it? I mean I can think of a number of extremely wealthy people who don’t manage their money well, you know, because it doesn’t make them happy or because they’re still trying to get more of the money that they don’t need. doing things that they don’t enjoy in order to get more wealth or whatever it might be. there’s, I can think of a hundred examples of people with or without money that aren’t very good at managing money. It’s just not something we do, is it?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Well, wealth creation is a completely different process from wealth preservation, wealth management. so you know that and in fact in many of the things that allow people to create wealth make it uniquely impossible for them to hold on to it. and I’m thinking of like very concentrated bets on small things and I’m not talking about financial wages, I’m talking about setting up companies, setting up businesses. You know, it’s a very concentrated way of building wealth and that teaches you nothing about how you manage it and hold on to it and diversify risk and generate and model good behaviours to your children so they don’t end up with the same issues that you have or possibly the opposite issues.

Being compassionate to yourself around money is important, says Dennis Strange

So all this leads me to, to the, to why being kind to yourself. And I want to extend that to being compassionate to yourself around money. Because we don’t choose our money behaviours, we don’t choose most of our behaviours. We don’t choose to be anxious or ashamed or guilty or jealous. You don’t and it’s not your fault. Now it is your responsibility going forward, once you have a level of self awareness around this to take ownership of it. But up until now, absolutely not. no one chooses to be bankrupt. No one chooses. They end up in those spaces for various reasons. But it’s not a conscious choice.

So be compassionate with yourself. Self compassion, self acceptance and self forgiveness. Because otherwise you can’t change. So if I’m looking to change an aspect of my life, we’ll talk about money. But it could be my relationship with food or my relationship with exercise. And I believe there’s something fundamentally wrong with me. And let’s remember where we get that from. We get that from childhood. Because when people say to you, why did you do that? What’s wrong with you? Why did you hit your sister? What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you sit still? What’s wrong with you? I’m doing something, I don’t know what it is. It’s not going wrong. It must be me.

So when it comes to money, we go, well, I’m an adult. It’s a number, it’s numbers. It’s not working. Must be my fault, must be something wrong with me. And our friend Martha has this lovely expression about, I think, a client said to us, like, why am I an adult in every area of my life, but when it comes to money, I feel like a child. So if you listen to this and this is resonating with you, be kind, have some self compassion. Because if you believe there’s something fundamentally wrong with you, which there isn’t, but you want to change, you’re going to hit a roadblock, you’re going to hit a speed bump. Strange is never a straightforward process.

And if you believe there’s something wrong with you, the first time it goes wrong or not as well as you want it to, you’re going to blame yourself and you’re going to go, I knew I could do this. I knew I could never do this. I would never, never been any good with money. M. Managing money is difficult and it’s not going to be a straight line and get some help, get some support. But fundamentally, be kind to yourself.

>> Chris Budd: Okay, Dennis, Love that. Thank you. That’s a lovely message.

One of the phrases about kindness is that it’s a selfish act

let’s come back out of that detour now and let’s go back to kindness, being kind to other people. one of the phrases I, like, I heard once is about kindness is a selfish act. I think it was from the Book of Joy, which is, for those listeners, I mean we talk about it all the time, but those who haven’t heard it but the Dalai Lama and Art, Desmond Tutu having a conversation over a week about the sources of joy. And one of the comments, I think it came from Desmond, Tutu was about how kindness is actually selfish because it’s good for you. And I thought that was a lovely, lovely framing. So how is kindness good for us?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Yeah. well, the first thing I want to say is that, looking after yourself and being kind to yourself is not selfish in the way that we understand it. Self care is not selfish. Selfish is when you orientate everything around your life to suit you. And, and I don’t think that kindness is a selfish act. What I think they’re trying to highlight is that this, it has benefits to both parties.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, yeah.

> Dennis Harhalakis: in the same way that forgiveness is primarily a gift to yourself, forgiving other people is a gift to yourself, not to them, it’s to you. The reason for that will go to a Buddhist, expression, which is anger is like carrying around a hot coal and looking for someone to throw it at. What are you doing? You just burn yourself in, in, in, in that process. So forgiveness doesn’t make what people did to you any harms. Right. Or acceptable or anything. It’s not saying that’s fine. It’s saying I don’t wish to drag that part of my life from the past into the present and carry it around with me anymore. So in the sense that forgiveness is primarily a gift yourself, I think you can say that kindness is also possibly a gift. Kindness to other people is potentially a gift to yourself. And I think from the neuroscience perspective, you know why that, you know why that is. and so what do you mean by that, Dennis?

What I mean is that I think from the research perspective, the people that, that have, the research shows that kind of acts of kindness, strangers or random acts of, of kindness to strangers does, actually, so the research I think was, what the one I remember is, I think they gave a whole bunch of people $10 to, to do what they wanted with. Half of them were told to spend it on themselves and half of them were told to give it to somebody else, a random stranger. And, and the results came in and the people that had given it to a random stranger, as opposed to spent it on themselves by whatever measure they measured it, got more well being for it.

Chris Budd: The other bit of research I like on that, I’d forgotten that one actually. That’s a great, great example. The other one I like is the blood donors, study which I think was Elizabeth Dunn in Canada. I’m not 100 sure, but they they put an advert who would like to come and give blood and a whole bunch of people responded and they emailed them back, said great, see you on Wednesday at 10:00 by the way. And then the first group they said if you turn up, if we see you, we’ll give you $50. The second group they said if you turn up, we’ll give $50 to charity. And the third group, they said if you turn up, there’s no money in it, but we’d love to see you. And the highest turnout on the day came from the people they offered no money to.

Lowest turnout on the day was those they offered $50 to. With the middle one being the charity. And the reason being that giving blood isn’t something you do for money, it’s something you do for purpose and joy and meaning. And so actually putting money into the equation sullied it somewhat. So does that tell us something about how money and kindness might be connected and actually not always helping each other?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: I think there’s a broader point around bringing money into a lot of things is that it doesn’t, it’s really, it’s ended up as a proxy for so many aspects of our lives when in fact it really should just be a medium of exchange. And so it, because it brings in the stories that we have around money as soon as I bring in money into it. And your point is, is very valid, as in if I ask a friend to, to do me a favour, he doesn’t, they don’t expect to be paid for it. And once you, once you bring money into it, you’re like, well actually you know what, my hourly rate is this. And yeah, so you know, I’ll do it for you because I want to, not because you’re going to offer me some, you know, what kind of an amount of money is actually going to, to be part of that.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah. I remember hearing a stand up comedian talking about a friend said, listen, I don’t believe you’ve got any time this weekend. You can just help me decorate my front hall. I’ll, buy you a pint. And so I went round and I decorated front all good to six hours on the Saturday, six hours on the Sunday. What did I get for it? 3 pound 50 for a pint. That was my hourly rate or my rate for the whole weekend. And at the end of that I bought him one back. So my turn. I know, and I bought in my round. So yes, absolutely.

How we treat others changes how they become in our presence

>> Dennis Harhalakis: so I think there’s one more thing I’d like to tease out with you around being kind to other people.

>> Chris Budd: Okay.

> Dennis Harhalakis: So how we treat others changes how they become in our presence. So if you’re cynical, you know, you are more likely to micromanage or spy or whatever it is on other people, to try and protect yourself from what you imagine is a selfish person on the other side of that interaction. And so what happens if you treat people with aggressive, respectful and selfish displays of behaviour? they don’t like it. And then you can go, oh, I knew they were selfish, aggressive or disrespectful. So when we are kind to people, not just necessarily random strangers, but if we, if we assume the best, take leaps of faith, trust people, that is likely to bring out the best in that other person.

So this, I think is a really powerful concept. Economists call it earned trust. and it’s, you can say, well, it’s treating people like you want to be treated or treating people like they want to be treated, you know, but fundamentally what we’re talking about is that if we advance kindness, trust and, to other people, they generally respond. And that, and kindness is, is, is makes the world a better place in, in that sense. So have you heard of the, the polyvagal theory or the vagus nerve?

>> Chris Budd: Tell me all about it.

> Dennis Harhalakis: So the guy who discovered this is a guy called Stephen Porges. And he has this thing that he says is basically, if you want to make the world a better place, start by making it, making people feel safer. So radiate kindness, radiate positivity, because your system is exquisitely attuned to detect danger in other people’s faces. So when you smile and when you put, safety into the world for other people, you make them feel better and you make them feel safe at a physiological level.

And kindness, I think it’s just part of that, it’s just a way of kind of like demonstrating in a, in a, in a, in a broader sense, but actually the core of it, what sits underneath it. Because, feeling is safe is not a nice to have. It’s a biological necessity. If we don’t feel safe, then a lot of things don’t work very well, including the prefrontal cortex and in a kind of rational thought. So being kind is part of making the world a safer and a better place.

>> Chris Budd: Love it.

The figures for how much people give to charity each year are breathtakingly low

So, one last place I want to go with this then is. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna just bring us back to money. Not that we’ve gone too far away from it, but it’s not, it’s. It’s inextricably linked with all that you’re talking about, isn’t it? But actually using your money to give it away, to act to whether it’s philanthropy, whether it’s gifts to family. I was talking to somebody, a young chap that I, I know very well, he would say he doesn’t give presents to people. It’s not what he does, it’s not who he is. And I said, I think you’re missing a really big opportunity to feel happy in life actually, because giving presents is a lovely thing to do. So, you’re kind of, a lot of what you’ve been talking about is kind of demonstrating that kindness is a good thing. And if you’ve got money, you could actually give money to somebody else and feel good for it.

But people don’t tend to do that. the figures for how much people give to charity each year are breathtakingly low, especially the more money you get. Why is that happening? Why is it that people who have 10 million, I mean, the actual figure was something like people with 10 million in assets only give something like £2,000 a year to charity. it’s a, it’s extraordinarily low. And that’s an average. So people, some people give tens of millions. That’s the average. Many people who we would consider very, very wealthy give nothing to charity. That seems to me they’re missing a huge opportunity. I don’t understand why.

> Dennis Harhalakis: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s an interesting question. I’m trying to recall the research on this. But fundamentally, people attach a lot of self worth to the number in their bank account, their nets at their self worth. and it’s not immediately clear that giving it away is of any benefit to them. In fact, we are surrounded by a, marketing and social media system that encourages us to spend money on ourselves and says that if you buy this or drive this or wear this, you’ll be happy or rich or successful or more happy or more rich or more successful. And kind of all of that taps into our deepest fears, which is of not being good enough.

Because in reality, the message that you need to buy this or drive this aware this is because you’re not good enough. So we go back to, you know, why did you do this? What’s wrong with you? So what you’re saying here is that actually instead of spending money on yourself, giving it away to others or spending it on others is a much better way to feel better about yourself than buying stuff you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people who don’t care about you. But it’s totally counterintuitive. It’s Counterintuitive anyway, at a kind of core, survival message, or basis. But it’s also, I think, the, the messaging that we get around us.

Schadenfreude is the enjoyment of others’ displeasure or pain

So I, I’ll ask you this. Do you know what Charden Freuder is?

>> Chris Budd: Yeah.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Okay. For the benefit of our listeners, would you like to explain what schadenfreude is?

>> Chris Budd: That this is enjoyment of somebody else’s displeasure or pain or laughing at somebody else hitting their head on a ladder or whatever. Great.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Yeah. Taking pleasure in other people’s pain. Do you know what the opposite word for Sharden?

>> Chris Budd: No, I do, Dennis.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Okay, so the opposite word, there are two words. One is Freud. Freuder, which is the German word, or the other word is compersion. Now, if we think that taking pleasure in other people’s success is a good thing, how come no one knows the word for it? And if no one knows the word for it, how likely do you think people are able to incorporate it into their lives?

>> Chris Budd: I remember the England cricket team. That’s a segue for you.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Have you gone to get that one from Chris from the archive?

>> Chris Budd: The England cricket team of the 80s and 90s was a very selfish place. So biographies have told me. you read of people who would go into the dressing room and nobody even spoken to them on their debut. Nobody even spoken to them by the time they walked out. And I think it was Duncan Fletcher that brought in the, the principal that if one of your teammates scores 100, you come out on the balcony and you be happy for their success.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Nice.

>> Chris Budd: And it completely change, turned around a disastrous. A team that had been losing for a decade, you know, completely turn them around. Just that. Well, obviously wouldn’t be just that, but that was one of the main things they did and it’s really noticeable now. You see, because I love my cricket, that whenever somebody does well, everybody’s genuinely pleased for them, even though it could mean they’re taking your place for the next, next game. You know, so, the fact that it’s, I mean, it was a great point that we don’t know the word for it. That’s why we’re doing this podcast, Dennis. That’s why we’re having you here to, to educate us so that we can make these changes.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Right, Absolutely. And, you can’t change what you’re not aware of.

>> Chris Budd: No.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: So if you’re not aware that, of, of taking the joy in others and what the words for, it can’t be part of your life. Right.

Chris: Dennis is a big contributor to the Institute for Financial well Being

>> Chris Budd: So this, we’ve now got the title for our, podcast, Compersion. What on earth is that?

>> Dennis Harhalakis: Yeah, I’ve got comparsion socks. No, no, that’s something else. To stop my dvt not conversion.

>> David Lloyd: Brilliant.

>> Chris Budd: Dennis, this is absolutely fantastic. I know that we can talk for absolutely hours about this stuff and we barely scratch the surface, but, that’s been a really, really interesting chat and I come away having learned something new as well. So thank you so much for joining us.

>> Dennis Harhalakis: My pleasure, Chris. Thanks for inviting me.

>> David Lloyd: Well, Chris, you said before that interview that we might want to listen to that, you know, two or three times. I could not agree more. Absolutely fascinating interview. And, and, and you know, I always like to pick you up when I think you’ve done a good job. I don’t do it all the time, but on this occasion I thought, you know, you, you did a really good interview. But what an interesting man.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah, and a lovely guy as well. Lovely guy. He, he’s a big contributor to the Institute for Financial well Being. and he’s one of those people that, that will, will contribute often, but when he talks, everybody listens, you know.

>> David Lloyd: Yeah, yeah, I can believe that. And, and I’m a huge fan of his central message really, which is, which. About being kind, being kind to other people. in the last podcast we did, I was asked what one way in which I’d changed over the last 10 years. And I think I said I’d become a much more patient person. And I think on reflection and having listening to Dennis talk, I think I’ve also become a kinder person as well. And I think when you’ve got a bit more space in your life and when a lot of the stress of, in my case, work and having a, you know, ten, years or more ago, a very ill wife as well cause huge amounts of stress. And I didn’t necessarily always have room for kindness in my life and I think I’ve introduced a lot of kindness into my life now and I, it makes me feel much happier as a person in that I can now spend a little bit more time thinking about other people and a bit less time thinking about myself. And I thought he put that across in a, really, really clear way. And I love the way in which he then went on to connect it to how you can relate that to your financial well being.

>> Chris Budd: Yeah. One aspect of kindness that he particularly, wanted to stress was self kindness and the fact that it’s important to understand that it’s normal to be rubbish with money because it’s not an easy thing to be good at, money, and so just go easy on ourselves and be kind to ourselves and then you find that you’re more kind to other people and it’s a lovely virtuous circle.

Chris and Dennis discuss the meaning of schadenfreude in today’s podcast

>> Producer Tommo: I, I’m really excited to go tell Lindsay about a new word compersion. Yes, I thought it was absolutely brilliant and it’s amazing when you, when you do that. You can live vicariously through people’s success. It’s really quite a lot of fun. Yeah, it is a lot of fun when you see when a friend shares that they’ve got something good going on in their life and you know, you. Although it’s that bit about, you know, extrinsic worth versus intrinsic worth that you mentioned, Chris, but you know what, when, when somebody be feeling joy for that person, is a lovely thing. It really can lift your mood. But to my friends the schadenfreude will still exist in the sporting context. So to my, to my bath following friends. I’m gonna chuckle when you lose, which isn’t a lot these days and I’m expecting you to chuckle at me when Gloucester lose. So it’s okay.

>> David Lloyd: But it’s interesting, isn’t it that yeah, a lot of us do know the meaning of the word schadenfreude, but I, I’d never was not aware that there was an opposite word to that. And it’s not something that we think about. And for me that was a very simple but fundamental learning thing that I that I took away from that interview. It was really, really fascinating. So if you think that you’ve got more to be got out of that, by all means go back and listen to it again. But yeah, thanks very much Chris and Dennis for an absolutely fascinating chat. So that’s all we have got time for you today. I hope once again that you’ve enjoyed spending a bit of time in our company listening to the fascinating. Dennis, if you’re watching us on YouTube, please do subscribe all the messages from the future that we talked about, yes, that was in the last podcast. We asked you to send 30 second message from yourselves in 10 years time about a decision that you might have taken and how it worked out for you. So we’d love to hear more of those. But in the meantime that’s a lot for us for today, but do join us the next time for another one in our series of financial well being podcasts

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