Timestamps for this episode:

Linzy Bonham 00:00
The people who are your people start to change when you change your focus and your way of thinking and ask for more from life and ask for more from the people around you.

Linzy Bonham 00:09
There’s a lot to grieve here, and this can be a really hard part of changing your relationship with money, taking yourself more seriously is, you know, for every door that opens, there’s other doors that close.

Linzy Bonham 00:21
There’s loss here, and I want to acknowledge that because it’s difficult, and it’s not fun.

Linzy Bonham 00:33
Welcome to Money Skills for Therapists, the podcast that helps therapists and health practitioners in private practice go from money confusion and shame to calm, clarity and confidence with their finances.

Linzy Bonham 00:43
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by numbers or avoided looking at your business money, you’re in the right place. I’m Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach and creator of Money Skills for Therapists.

Linzy Bonham 00:52
Before we jump in, I want to remind you of something really important. Most of us highly skilled and competent therapists and health practitioners were never taught about money.

Linzy Bonham 01:00
Not in grad school, not in supervision, not anywhere. And yet, here we are, running businesses that need to take care of us while we’re busy taking care of others.

Linzy Bonham 01:09
It is a lot of pressure. So if part of you feels anxious about money, avoidant, or like a bit of a hot mess financially, I want you to know that you are not alone.

Linzy Bonham 01:17
And I am here to help. Through my live workshops each month, I teach practical financial skills to help you feel more grounded, calm, and confident with your private practice money.

Linzy Bonham 01:25
You can see what’s coming up and save your spot to join live or register for the replay at moneyskillsfortherapists.com/workshops. Let’s get started.

Linzy Bonham 01:34
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. We’re technically in the middle of a five-week break between seasons 16 and 17 of the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, but it isn’t actually a break because we’re still releasing episodes.

Linzy Bonham 01:46
Last week, we shared a compilation episode about debt. Next week, we have an exciting podcast takeover coming your way from one of my biz besties.

Linzy Bonham 01:53
And throughout the rest of this, quote unquote, “break,” we are also re-sharing a few of our top episodes from the past year.

Linzy Bonham 02:00
Today’s best-of episode was our most downloaded solo episode of 2026, where I dive into what happens to friendships and relationships when you decide to stop sacrificing yourself and finally take your financial needs seriously.

Linzy Bonham 02:13
As helpers and healers, stepping into our worth and recognizing that our needs actually matter can really shift our dynamics with colleagues, with former classmates, with close friends, sometimes in really surprising or challenging ways.

Linzy Bonham 02:25
In this solo episode, I share my own experiences with this, along with what I’ve seen working with hundreds of therapists over the years,

Linzy Bonham 02:31
breaking down four different facets of money and friendship, and exploring how they show up in our life as our relationship with money evolves. Enjoy!

Linzy Bonham 02:44
So first, let’s talk about valuing your gifts and your time and how that can impact your friendships.

Linzy Bonham 02:51
When you start to really look at your financial needs… You are gonna have to start to acknowledge that what you do professionally has value, right? This thing that we do, the healing work that we do, whether that’s mental health therapy,

Linzy Bonham 03:04
whether that is m… manual practice that you have, the helping and healing that we do has value, right? And the more that we get in touch with that, the more that we realize that this thing that I do, I deserve to be well compensated for it.

Linzy Bonham 03:17
I should not be struggling and suffering while I’m also bringing immense value into other people’s lives, means that you have to start really valuing your gifts and your time, right?

Linzy Bonham 03:27
There’s a shift that starts to happen there where you realize, “Yeah, this thing that I do is actually valuable. Just because it’s come naturally to me or just because I am good at it doesn’t mean it’s not valuable,” right?

Linzy Bonham 03:38
“I’m actually changing people’s lives with this gift.” And when you start to value your gifts and your time, you’re gonna start to value them in your personal life too, not just in your professional life.

Linzy Bonham 03:49
Most therapists and caretakers I find are prone to self-sacrifice, right? So we tend to have often built relationships in our personal lives, we’ve built friendships where we are not necessarily valuing our gifts and our time, right?

Linzy Bonham 04:03
Where we have been over-giving, where we’ve been overly accommodating and people-pleasing, right? All, all of these lovely things that come along with having a helping, healing kind of personality.

Linzy Bonham 04:13
And when we start to value our gifts and our time, that is gonna disrupt that dynamic in friendships that have been based on you giving a lot, over-giving, sacrificing yourself. Being like, “Oh,

Linzy Bonham 04:26
it’s the end of a busy day and I’m exhausted, but I will go and have coffee with this friend who is not gonna ask me anything about myself, but I know they’re going through a hard time, so I’m gonna go sacrifice myself despite being exhausted.”

Linzy Bonham 04:39
When you’ve started to value your gifts and your time, you’re gonna find you’re less able to do that, right? That starts to be really inauthentic to do that.

Linzy Bonham 04:46
There’s gonna be parts of you that are like, “No. What I do is valuable, and I’m no longer gonna be in this dynamic.”

Linzy Bonham 04:53
And that is gonna be a disruption to friendships that you’ve built that are based on you sacrificing yourself, right? Friendships that are not reciprocal or friendships where you’re giving beyond your boundaries, right?

Linzy Bonham 05:03
Your friendships, if they have been built on you caretaking and overgiving, as you start to value your gifts and your time, they’re not gonna work the same anymore, right?

Linzy Bonham 05:14
Like, you are changing. You are changing, and the dynamic in your friendships, if it has been built on you overgiving and you’re no longer doing that, you’re changing the rules.

Linzy Bonham 05:25
You’re changing your boundaries, and that is going to impact your friendships. The next piece that goes along, of course, with valuing your gifts and your time is being more in touch with your own needs.

Linzy Bonham 05:35
When we start to be more honest about our financial needs, and that might be realizing that you can’t actually get by on $45,000 a year. You need to be making $70,000 a year to get by in the city that you live in, right?

Linzy Bonham 05:48
Or that might be acknowledging that you also need to retire, you know? There… there’s not gonna be some magical fairy that sweeps in at the end and takes care of you.

Linzy Bonham 05:56
You are the one who has to save your retirement. When you start to really acknowledge your own needs and you’re in touch with your own needs, that’s also gonna impact your friendships.

Linzy Bonham 06:05
There’s gonna be friends who are on a similar path to you of starting to take their needs more seriously, or maybe they’ve always been in that place, who are gonna be able to support you, and you’re gonna be able to cheer each other on and,

Linzy Bonham 06:16
you know, help each other stay connected with your goals and what matters to you. But there’s gonna be other friends who were invested, not consciously… unconsciously invested in you not being in touch with your own needs, right?

Linzy Bonham 06:28
And in being self-sacrificing. And when those friendships were built with that dynamic in it, you’re gonna be changing that relationship, right?

Linzy Bonham 06:37
Not everybody is gonna want you to change. There’s gonna be dynamics and friendships that you’ve built that are really based on you not being in touch with your needs, right?

Linzy Bonham 06:47
And, and overriding your own needs and being like, “This is fine. This is okay,” when it’s not fine and it’s not okay. And the more that you are in touch with your financial needs and take those seriously,

Linzy Bonham 06:57
the more that is also gonna be showing up in your friendships, and things that might used to be okay in a friendship for you are not okay, right? The friendship might not work as well anymore because you are changing.

Linzy Bonham 07:10
Along with valuing your time and energy and being more in touch with your own needs… when we start to change our relationship with money, it also changes the focus of our time and energy.

Linzy Bonham 07:22
We might be reading different books, listening to different podcasts, you know, consuming different things than we used to. There’s also gonna be a change in mindset and outlooks. Often, we have made friendships based on,

Linzy Bonham 07:35
like, similar political views, similar philosophies of life, right? Like, we, we end up in, in step with people at times in our life because we, you know, think the same, we talk the same, we’ve come from similar experiences.

Linzy Bonham 07:49
But as we change our relationship with money, and maybe you start to think more about financial strategy, right? You wanna put your energy towards that, to thinking about, “How do I get the most out of my retirement planning?”

Linzy Bonham 08:01
Your friend who has not done this work is probably not gonna be able to chat with you about that. They’re not gonna be interested in that, right?

Linzy Bonham 08:08
You’re gonna start to maybe be interested and talking about different things, or you might start to talk about something that is very interesting to you and realize, “Oh, this, this friend is, like, not there. They are not in this place,” you know?

Linzy Bonham 08:19
And so we do put ourselves kind of out of step with our friendships in terms of where our focus is, what we’re thinking about, but also how we’re thinking about the world, how we understand how the world works, right?

Linzy Bonham 08:31
I have found for myself, as I have changed my relationship with money over time, as I’ve taken myself more seriously, as I’ve earned more money than I ever thought I would be able to earn,

Linzy Bonham 08:43
and earn more money individually, but also just generated more money from folks wanting to get my support and the support of my team with their money, that has changed how I think about the world, for better or for worse, right?

Linzy Bonham 08:59
We end up with different philosophical outlooks, right? Different ideas of, like, what is possible when you’ve experienced something that’s possible, and your analyses might start to change, right?

Linzy Bonham 09:10
Especially if you have come from a narrative of very strongly systems-oriented narrative where, like, everything is systems, everything happens kind of to us, more of, um, that kind of, like, strong, strong systemic analysis.

Linzy Bonham 09:25
When you start to make choices that have impact and you start to take things more seriously in a way that has direct impact, that’s gonna change that philosophy, right?

Linzy Bonham 09:35
Your philosophy is gonna shift. And if you have a friendship that started with a, a similar worldview, your worldview might start to change, right?

Linzy Bonham 09:42
And that is gonna put you out of step sometimes philosophically and politically and just in terms of what’s interesting from the people that you built friendships with before you started doing this work.

Linzy Bonham 09:53
So sometimes you just wanna talk about different stuff. Or you start to talk about something that’s really interesting to you and realize, “Oh, this person’s, like, not at all interested in talking about investments or how to, like, batch time.”

Linzy Bonham 10:04
They’ve got other focuses. And so this is also something that can happen in terms of friendship as we change our relationship with money, as we start to take ourselves more seriously.

Linzy Bonham 10:14
Again, not everybody’s gonna go with you, right? We’re all on different paths. Now, something that I haven’t mentioned yet but that is, I think, really relevant to all of this is that it sucks.

Linzy Bonham 10:26
This is the part of growing and changing that also involves a lot of grief. And I know that a couple years ago on the podcast and just, like, in my, my communities, I talked about this more ’cause it was very active

Linzy Bonham 10:39
and present in my life at that time of having to make space or let go of relationships that used to be really important but did have these dynamics baked into them or that we just didn’t have that much in common anymore.

Linzy Bonham 10:53
And those might still be friendships that I maintain in a casual way, but the people who are your people start to change when you change your focus and your way of thinking and ask for more from life and ask for more from the people around you.

Linzy Bonham 11:06
There’s a lot to grieve here, and this can be a really hard part of changing your relationship with money, taking yourself more seriously is, you know, for every door that opens, there’s other doors that close.

Linzy Bonham 11:18
There’s loss here, and I want to acknowledge that because it’s difficult, and it’s not fun.

Linzy Bonham 11:25
And I think that friendship is an area generally in society that we don’t talk about enough, you know, of, of how it feels when you have somebody that you’ve loved deeply and been in touch with and been in step with for a long time,

Linzy Bonham 11:37
what that’s like when you start to fall out of step or things that you used to be okay with or that you at least expressed to that person you’re okay with, you’re no longer able to tolerate.

Linzy Bonham 11:45
There’s a lot of loss there, and there can be conflict and tension and hurt. There is a lot that sucks about friendships no longer working, and I want to name that because this,

Linzy Bonham 11:57
in some ways, is some of the least fun part of changing, of growing, is the things that we used to really value, the people that we used to really value who we no longer are in step with. So I will say with growth always comes grief.

Linzy Bonham 12:15
They go hand in hand. This is one of the areas where I’ve certainly felt the most grief in my own growth. But it’s also one of the areas, friendship is one of the areas that’s been the richest for me too,

Linzy Bonham 12:27
in terms of growth. The folks that I’ve ended up in step with and the ways that they see me and show up for me and challenge me are a type of friendship that I could not have had before I did this work. So there’s,

Linzy Bonham 12:43
you know, also all of the great relationships that you build on the other side as you value yourself, take yourself more seriously, ask for more from life and, and maybe ask for more from the people around you if you haven’t been doing so.

Linzy Bonham 12:55
There’s beautiful new relationships or changed relationships on the other side, but it certainly can be a painful process to go through. So money and friendship, to sum it up. You know, as we change our relationship with money,

Linzy Bonham 13:09
our relationships change because, you know, we value our gifts and our time more, we’re more in touch with our own needs, and we often change the focus of our time and energy, and we change our mindset and our outlooks, right?

Linzy Bonham 13:20
Our, our philosophies change. Maybe our politics change and shift.

Linzy Bonham 13:25
This all has an impact on friendships. So just noticing that, noticing for yourself, are these things showing up in your own life in some way?

Linzy Bonham 13:33
Where are the areas where maybe your growth is starting to create some tension or conflict where relationships that used to fit are not fitting so much anymore? And naming that and thinking about how you want to address that.

Linzy Bonham 13:47
Are these things that you can talk about with this person? You know, is there enough love and openness and trust in this relationship that you can start to, to name where there’s discord?

Linzy Bonham 13:58
Or are these areas where this is life showing us that seasons change, and this is a natural change that’s gonna be coming as you continue to take better and better care of yourself financially and emotionally?

Linzy Bonham 14:14
As I mentioned in this episode, our relationships change as we change our relationship with money. While you might lose some friendships through your growth, there are also new positive relationships that are gonna be built in the process.

Linzy Bonham 14:27
If you are looking to find your people and be part of a community of lovely, like-minded people who are also helpers and healers,

Linzy Bonham 14:33
and who are also working to transform their relationships with money and build businesses that support not only the folks they serve, but also them, then I invite you to join our private WhatsApp community.

Linzy Bonham 14:43
You can click on the link in the show notes to submit your request to join, or reach out to our team at hello@moneynutsandbolts.com to get connected.

Linzy Bonham 14:50
And if you’re enjoying the podcast, it is always helpful to me if you leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify to help other therapists and health practitioners find us and join these conversations. Thanks so much for listening.