How Can Women Achieve Financial Independence From A Place Of Abundance And Confidence? With Meghan Dwyer Of Money Isn't Scary

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors, and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge factor.

Hey, everyone.

Welcome to the Binge Factor.

I'm Tracy Hazzard and I have Megan Dwyer, Money Isn't Scary podcast host.

And I love that title.

I think it's really straightforward and wonderful. Megan has such a great perspective how.

She'S doing things and she's a certified.

Financial planner, which is problematic when you go to start a podcast.

There's regulations and other things.

So you really have to start a very different styled podcast. You have to do something that's much more personal, much more connective, definitely interview based. It's really difficult to do anything that surrounds financial advice, but having a conversation.

About money and scariness, like that's okay.

Thing, and she was able to make it work. Megan Dwyer is a certified financial planner and the host of Money Isn't Scary podcast. After spending 15 years watching women take a passive role in the management of their money, she's on a mission to help them stop playing small. By challenging the societal norms around women and money, Megan aims to empower women to make money decisions out of a sense of abundance and confidence rather than scarcity and fear. When Megan isn't working, she loves running, writing, and being mom to her two young boys, which are part of the.

Reason why she needed to start this podcast.

We're going to talk about that as well. So let's talk with Megan Dwyer about Money Isn't Scary.

Megan, so glad to have you here. Money Isn't Scary. I love that title. I think when you're straight out with what your topic is, it's always so much better. Is that the name you started with or did you agonize over it?

I did. Honestly, there was another name I wanted. I feel like it was never enough. That's what it was gonna be. And I remember chatting with somebody that I had worked with and telling him, and I didn't tell many people that I was gonna do this podcast, but I wanted it. The podcast is all about our relationship with money. So I am a financial planner and all day long I talk about numbers and I am doing all that, like black and white analysis. And the details. And I really wanted to talk more about the softer stuff and work with women in the same stage of life that I'm in and help them with their relationship with money and help them not be so overwhelmed and afraid of it. And the person I was talking to was like, I don't know, Megan. I feel like that's really vague. And what I meant by never enough was she just that we live in this kind of scarcity world, and so many of us come from that as a background. And I really felt like that resonated with me. But I'm glad that he pushed me to keep thinking about it. And then one day, all of a sudden, I was like, what about money isn't scary? Because it's not scary. It doesn't have to be scary. And so. And he's like, I like it. This guy was awesome. He worked with me, but he also had a very, like, entrepreneurial itch to him. So he did a lot of guiding and mentoring people along those lines. So he's. I'm like, okay, I got something good here.

I'm onto it.

Stuck with it. Yeah.

Wonderful. There are a lot of money podcasts out there. I think it's daunting, especially when you come out of the financial planning world, because there's a lot of regulations over there, so you have to really think about how you're going to manage that. Did that figure into your planning?

Yeah. I was at a different company when I started this podcast. I've had it out there for two and a half years now. It'll be three years in December. And I remember, I think there was some piece of kind of nervousness and maybe imposter syndrome that was going on when I was thinking about starting this podcast. But I also had to run it by, like, our compliance department at work. I had to let them know that what I'm doing wasn't a outside business activity and that I wasn't going to try to sell or do anything to impede the work that I was doing with the company or have any kind of bad energy around the company. Right. Or any energy one way or the other. I remember putting together a proposal for our compliance team, and I still to this day think they don't quite understand what I was doing. But I'm like, no, I want to talk about emotions around money and the softer stuff with money and not actual money. I'm not giving financial guidance. And they just couldn't wrap their heads around it. So after several versions and iterations of this proposal and Lots of back. And for us, finally they were like, okay, you do this, but this is completely separate from work. I'm like, yeah, it is, it's completely separate from work. But yeah, I think a lot of people that the unique aspect of the financial planning world is that the guidance is so customized and I don't really believe in kind of a one size fits all approach for financial advice and guidance. And there are certain rules of thumbs out there. Sure. But I still don't think that everything like a blanket kind of rule of thumb applies to everybody. So I really try to be very careful around what I'm saying in the guidance that I'm putting out there and really have it be more on again, turning internally, turning inside us and what's going on with us and our emotions versus you should have this amount saved for retirement by the time you're 40 years old. And I just feel like you can steer somebody so wrong in that way.

I think that applies to every coaching. Right. This is the thing that I think we so often come up with hard and fast rules. Like I'm in podcasting hard and fast rules. The advice I give to someone who's got over a hundred episodes to advice I give someone who's only got 10 is totally different. And we need to be careful about giving our blanket responses out in the Internet, out in podcasting somewhere that they're taking that wrong. The advice that they're taking are completely.

Wrong and isn't going to work for them.

Yeah, I think that's the lesson. Right. The lesson is, okay, there's a lot of guidance and advice out there, but what really matters to me, and I think that's so hard, cuz there's so many people, especially women that are part of my audience, that are so used to not trusting themselves. They're so used to myself included. Right. So used to trusting all these outside sources for what we should and shouldn't do. And that kind of gets us into some trouble.

It does.

So let's talk money podcasting, because this is a common thing. Did you go in with this idea that you were going to make money off your podcast or did you go in saying, no, that's not a part of my factoring for why I'm doing this?

No, not at all. I actually started the podcast, it was December of 2020. We were right in the middle of a pandemic and I was struggling. I was working full time from home, I had a three and a one year old and I found myself like nobody else was spending right you couldn't go anywhere. You couldn't do anything. But I was sure was spending. I was online shopping and I was like, people were prob. Like, what do you online shop for when you're in the middle of the pandemic and you can't go anywhere? You name it. I was buying shoes, I was buying bags. Because I realized in my mind that buying these things filled this, like, hole for me. It filled this void. And I didn't know what it was yet, but I knew there was something more than just the shoes. So I wanted to explore it and I wanted to dig in a little deeper. And so that's why I started the podcast, to share my journey. Because I know, again, if I was going through this, that other people out there must be too. With personal is universal. We just don't like to talk about it because money, especially is a super stigmatized topic. It's super taboo. Most people don't talk about it or raised in households where they don't talk about it. So I just wanted to talk about it. I wanted to help other women feel less alone because I wanted to feel less alone. So I didn't have any agenda other than that. I wasn't trying to even make it that big. I was just trying to almost use it as an outlet for myself, as a cathartic way to work through what I was going through during a difficult time.

That's amazing. I think that it's come a long way in your show. So when I listened to some of the early episodes, to listening to the more recent ones. I love that you're mixing up. You're doing interviews and solo shows. Your solo topics seem very personally chosen. Timing wise, they're chosen by something that you're doing. It seems that you're a little bit farther out because I could tell by the. When you recorded. Cause sometimes you mentioned them and anchor them in time.

Right.

Like we're recording this and March Madness is going on or something like that. So have a sense of that. So your interviews are way out, but you must be recording your solo shows.

A little closer to publication dates.

Oh, yeah. I do it the week of usually. You're absolutely right. It is what's going on in my world at that time. What am I going through? And again with this feeling that if I'm going through the season that I'm in, somebody else out there likely is too. Right? So why not share what I'm going through and how I'm processing it?

I think this is really why your show has such a Great binge factor. And I want to talk about that right now. It's a little earlier in the show than I normally identify it, but I want to talk about this right now because you set out at the beginning, and what you said to us earlier here was that you really wanted to talk to other women at a specific life stage. And you're specifically saying moms with young kids.

Right.

That's working moms.

Working moms with young kids. So you have this mindset about who your audience is, who needs to hear this. So you're being very curated about what you're choosing to present to them, what they will respond to, how emotionally triggered they probably are by some of those things, because you've been through it. And so it's always great to have someone who's a few steps ahead of you when you come into a show, rather than have someone who's, like, at the end of their stage, they're about to retire, they've got their nest egg, and then they're giving you money lectures about what it's like when you're struggling to figure out how to pay for gymnastics.

This week.

It's a different stage of life. And when you're talking to that and it's coming through in the content, in how close you are to the topic.

How emotionally invested in the topic you are as well, that's what makes your.

Show so bingeable that I have to go back to the beginning and listen to all of them, because I am.

At that same stage.

Yeah. And that's exactly it. I appreciate that. Thank you for saying that. Because I also wanted to make this very much a come with me journey versus me. Just saying, hey, I know more than you do. I've been there, done that. Not at all. I am still screwing up every single day. And I want all those other working moms out there that are trying to do the juggle to know that it's okay. It's okay. Somebody else out there is also in the same boat as you. And again, I said that I started this podcast during the pandemic when I was feeling very isolated and very alone. And one of the other reasons is because I wanted a friend. I wanted to be able to put out into the world what I needed, so what I needed at that time. And I think it's worked. I really do. I've had a lot of listeners, and as I started to grow and expand this and create a social media presence, and I've had listeners reach out to me and say, hey, I heard that episode that you did on Back to School shopping and. Oh, my God. I can totally relate that I know exactly what you're dealing with, and that feels really good. It's the whole community aspect of it all that just makes me really excited to be doing this.

I'm slightly ahead of you with kids ages because I have a fourth grader and a ninth grader, and they both.

Rode their bikes to school this year.

It's really scary independence. So wait till you get to that and you're like, I don't have to do anything but kick them out of the house on time.

That's it. Yeah. Make sure they're awake.

Kick them out of the house on time. Yeah. Wait till you get to the high schools. They do crazy things like fluctuating schedules. I cannot keep up with the time schedule.

Is high school starting to get later? Because I feel like when I started, it was like 7:05 is when the bell rang. You had to be in the door. And I was talking to a client this morning. It was like, no, high school starts at 8:30. What?

Yes, it's later. It's crazy. My younger one got earlier and my older one got later. I was like, when did this happen? I don't know what's going on. I know it's crazy. But these things are what we're going to go through. And then you just knowing that's coming for you makes different choices.

Right.

It makes different ways to look at things. Let's talk money isn't scary. I want to really talk about that. People get so hung up on the fact that their podcast probably will not make money because that's what they hear.

That they don't start one.

When you went into this and said.

That wasn't a consideration for you, what.

Was your metric for return on investment of your time?

Really? It was an outlet for me. It was another kind of coping strategy. So I didn't really have a metric for return on time, but as it grew and as I got through kind of different stages, I did not want to be. First of all, when I started, I did not want to be one of those pod fade people. I talked to so many people who said that. What is the stat? 90% of podcasts stop after episode eight. I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do that because I liked it. I enjoy doing it. But I also put a lot of pressure on myself at first because I think everybody, when they start, wants it to be perfect. Everybody wants it to be like, oh, My gosh, look what I created. I have this amazing award winning podcast with hundreds of reviews already and that was not me whatsoever. It still isn't. It's slow daily growth. It's a grind, right? But I also try to remind myself of why I started. I actually have a sticker right here on my laptop that says remember why you started. And I have it there because when I have those days where I start to get into that mindset of I need this, right, that kind of like neediness, that needy energy which I talk that I have a whole episode out on that, I realized that kind of puts me back in scarcity mode. And it's going to do what it's going to do if I just put the right energy into it. And I deeply believe that if I can continue to approach this from a perspective of my why, and again, my why is to not only help myself selfishly, but to help other people, then that takes the whole money aspect out of the picture. I have a full time job, right? That's what's paying the bills right now. So I know that's not the case for everybody. It helps me to take the pressure off of feeling like I have to do this. And if I don't get to an episode this week, I try to do one episode every week on Wednesdays to release it. If I don't get to it, okay, not a big deal. I really am trying to approach this from a this adds value to my life or this adds joy to my life versus adds anxiety to my life.

There's a lot of anxiety around money, definitely. So you don't need more. So let's talk a little bit about what happens. So I was listening to. Because she's a friend and someone I know well, Jessica Kuppferman. You did a recent interview with her.

She's awesome.

And she was so frank. And I really loved how frank she was about the anxiety about the money, about the events and things like that. And she was really straightforward.

And then the event got canceled.

It went virtual.

It went virtual. Yeah, it got. The live event got canceled. And so when something like that happens, what do you do because you're recording.

So far in advance, you no idea.

That was going to happen and then you end up publishing after the event. Did you think about pulling it? Did you think about what you might do about that?

I did. I really did. I actually sent her an email. I think she took the summer off so she didn't get back to me. But I also realized the vulnerability that she had in that episode was incredible and so authentic, and I just felt it was so worth sharing with everybody because everybody's going through something like that. Maybe not on the scale of planning this big event, right? Like live event, but everybody's going through something like that. And I just thought it was important for people to know that even these people who seem like they have the glamorous job or the heads of this, that they are going through the same thing you do. They have the same insecurities, they have the same fears, and that's okay. And I think at the end of the day, she's a very smart person, and I'm sure she found ways to recoup whatever money she could into a good perspective about how next year is going to be. But I also loved her just genuineness and realness, straightforward and realness. And those are the kind of guests that I love talking to. Those are the people that, to me, add the most value, because the people who are gonna not share are like, what's the point?

Why have them on? Yeah, right.

What's the point? There's so little connection, I feel like, in the world these days, right? Just in our culture, and this is my little part of the world, where I want to create more of that connection and help people who are maybe out there feeling really alone or feeling really frustrated or upset with themselves or whatever it is, to maybe get a little bit of perspective and maybe feel a little bit better about themselves again. That's what I said. That's why I started it, because that's what I wanted. That's what I needed at the stage of life that I'm in at the time I started it. And now it's shifted, right? The things that I worry about now have shifted, but there's always going to be those worries.

What things did you find so surprisingly wonderful about podcasting that you hadn't imagined before?

Honestly, I think it is the outlet. It's. I didn't realize how much of a mental health cathartic tool it is for me. I don't necessarily script or anything like that, but I usually do an outline in kind of in my head, and then I just map it out on paper around the topic that I want to talk about and how do I want to approach this. And then I use that outline, and that's what I speak to when I record the episodes. But even doing that outline is just such a helpful way for me to get it all out. It's like journaling in a way. It's the combination of kind of Written verbal journaling.

I love that.

Verbal journaling, exactly. No, it is. It's like there's so much stuff to work through, and it just gives me that space to do that. Allowing myself too, to have that special time. Like I just didn't to myself. That's alone time. Yes. I know in many of my episodes, you probably hear the dog barking in the background or the kids screaming downstairs, but I'm just like, nope, mom needs a minute. Mom needs a couple minutes. And when I allow myself to have that time, and I've been allowing myself to have that time on a consistent basis weekly. Right. It just, it makes me a different person. It brings me more joy, honestly. It's my way of connecting to myself. And the other thing I was going to say that surprised me about podcasting is again, the connection piece. And it's not even the way that you probably think of. I know there's. I said I wanted to connect with the listeners. I wanted the listeners to be able to connect with somebody that. That they can relate to. But it's also. I was saying to you before that at first I had to reach out. I used podcast guesting platform in order to find guests. But then after a while, the more people I met, it was like, oh, you should meet this person. You should meet that person. And then the introductions and I think the kindness of people willing and women willing to help each other and be supportive of each other just blew my mind. And I just realized that there's a world out there of people who want to help each other, and that's really awesome. And just the more people you meet, I love that I'm totally an extrovert. So I love connecting with people. That's how I get my energy. And you just never know. I love the intros, the meet and greets, and I also love having a conversation with somebody that I don't really know that well. And you just never know where it's going to go. Typically, when I prepare for interviews, I have kind of bullet points. Right. I have maybe some questions and things that I know I want to specifically talk about, but I also like to just let it be and see where the conversation goes. And you never know. You get so many cool nuggets out of those kind of conversations.

Let's talk about what's scary about podcasting. Podcasting isn't scary. Would be my show's name if I thought of yours.

There was probably some scary things.

What scared you the most about it? What were you most afraid of when you first started and maybe there's still a little bit of insecurity lingering around, too.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's putting myself out there and not being perfect, I think. And that is something that I worked through a lot feeling like. I remember at the beginning of my podcasting journey, I did. I wrote out. I like, scripted every little word, right? Because I was like, what if I say this wrong? What if somebody doesn't believe me? What if I don't come off as somebody who people see as intelligent? Right? And a lot of that. And I've done. I've explored a lot of this through some of the episodes. A lot of that goes back to some. The underlying beliefs that I have, right? That I'm not smart or that I'm not good enough or there's a lot of worthiness. All of these beliefs are wrapped up in money, but they're all wrapped up in accomplishment and achievement as well. So I think that was the biggest thing for me, is putting myself out there, and it just feels so vulnerable. And what if people don't like me? Oh, my gosh, what if people don't like me? That took me a long time to work through, and I'm still not quite great at it yet. It's funny. So my husband tells me all the time, there's so many moms in your kind of in town. And I have a circle of parents from both the second grader and the kindergartners. And he's, you should just promote it. Just put it out there. Tell everybody to listen to it and go put it on. Our town has a local website with. For businesses. And he's just put it out there. I'm like, no, I can't do that. I can't do that. And I just realized that there's so many of that vulnerability that's still. I'm not great at. Right. That aspect of kind of fear and that, oh, my gosh, what if somebody sees this and then they just judge me? So it's still there. I'm still working through it. And I feel like a lot of us are. It is scary to put yourself out there. People are looking at you and you're in this kind of public forum. But at the same time, I would. Would never take it back. I would never go back and not have made the choice to do this, because the platform that I have created, again, has done so much for me personally, and it's made me grow so much as a parent, as a person, and professionally, too. It just makes me so much less Nervous about meetings and having conversations around things that I may not be a hundred percent an expert at.

And I think you're probably really identifying really quickly, oh, this is a pattern of language I've heard here before. This is that fear creeping up. Let me talk to that. When you have client in front of you or things like that. So it is probably. It's giving you a broader view of.

Your industry and all the people that.

You might be touching in the future. I love that's what your takeaway is because it's so great that you're still working through those things. Because I just gave a. We do a. And for all our staff, our USA staff, we have international staff as well, but our USA staff, we do a.

Monthly mentorship call and they asked for a mentorship on confidence.

It was such a great topic. And I said, here's the thing, I don't really want to completely talk about confidence because confidence has a whole bunch of things underneath it, like fear of judgment.

Oh my gosh, it's so layered.

It's so layered, right? It's so nuanced. But I said, here's what I do know about confidence and here's what we'll work on.

Confidence is a practice and that's it.

Being good at money is a practice. All of these things are a practice, right? Podcasting is a practice.

And it's our belief system that holds us back, right? It's our mindset, it's the things that we tell ourselves when nobody's watching that is what holds us back. It doesn't have to be that way. And I want to help women and I want to encourage to know, first of all, you're not alone, right? We're all going through these things. We're all nervous about one thing or another and none of us has to be perfect. And that's where I think I differ so much from all that financial guidance and that's out there, especially that kind of male dominated financial guidance. It's you do this or you do that, you do this, you don't do that, and then you're rich and that's no, women don't work that way. We are so much more feelers and we're more intuitive and we connect better. And I just really feel like there's a different approach, there's a softer approach to this whole process. Right? And again, you just said money isn't scary, podcasting isn't scary. The things that I talk about, I always say, I look at this, all these things from the angle of Money. But these are all concepts that apply to every aspect of our lives. It applies to parenting and. Right. One of the biggest things I talk about on my show when I actually had an amazing guest, Dr. Kristin Duff, she's the pioneer in self compassion research. I talk about self compassion on every single episode, basically because we need it. The hardest people. For me, I'm the hardest person on myself ever.

That's exactly what comes across and that's what we discussed in our confidence and mentorship. Exactly the same thing. Would you say that to someone you mentor?

Why?

Do you say it to yourself?

No, absolutely not. Would you say it to your child? I think about that all the time too. The way that I think about I talk to myself, even if it's just in my head. We got to watch that because it's damaging and it's just putting us down this like rabbit hole of not being able to help ourselves and it keeps us stuck. And again, that's my whole purpose is trying to help women thrive and trying to help women stop playing small. And there's just so many aspects to that beyond just the numbers.

Well, you are not playing small. I'm very impressed with all of that and I'm so glad that you have put out. Money isn't scary. You just put out your new website. You've got a new website all up and running.

So tell me what's in your future?

Yeah, so what I'm working through on the website is I really want to start to do virtual online workshops and I want to teach these concepts to women. And beyond just the podcast. Right. I want to be able to do it whether it's one on one or kind of group format. And that's what I'm working through now. But I really want to be able to spread the message to more women that again, this isn't scary, we can do this together. And it's again, money is such a nerve wracking, emotional topic. But if we're all in this together and you know that you're not alone, then that's where I think we can all thrive. So, yeah, I want to do more. I want to start to do more workshops and again, I'm going to keep doing the podcast and my goal is to get some really amazing guests on the show over the next couple of months. So stay tuned for that. But yeah, I'm excited just to see where it goes. It's been an awesome year. I've had a lot of growth personally and everything that I've been doing with the podcast and Putting myself out there. And I'm just excited. The next feature, the next step.

I'm excited for you, Megan. Money isn't scary. Megan Dwyer, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, thank you for having me. This has been great.

There's a lot of money podcasts out there and they all have very different focuses. But there is a fundamental difference in Megan's show with addressing this model of a life stage, which I think is so critically important for financial advice anyway, by really addressing that, by setting the tone of when these fears start cropping up, right, they start cropping up in the early part of your life, they.

Start cropping up again later in life.

As well, or when a life stage adjusts. Really addressing that and putting that as a core focus of how she developed her show, I think was a really smart choice for her. It was a smart choice for audience attraction. And it's showing in her numbers. She's got a great podcast. She shared her numbers with me. She's really doing very well with this show because it's so focused and because she's so service minded in how she's doing the show in general. I think that when you're dealing with insecurities and fears or hopes and aspirations, you can either be in one place or the other. But I think when you've got something that has a lot of stigma to it, which money does, dialing into those insecurities and fears and putting it right out there in the title of the show was a really smart choice. And that's really where she's excelling and why her show is attracting the audience that it is. Plus, she's got a great show. She's just doing some really smart things. She's discovered this idea of doing solo shows and interview shows and having a good balance of those. She discovered that really early on in her show and in the path of it. And so now 140something episodes in, it's really hit its stride and really doing what it needs to do to keep that audience engaged, to keep that audience activated and keep them listening to the next episode and the next episode. She's built her binge ability into it. There's always growth in a show and I'm really glad to see that she's moving into a new website, that she's taking the power of her show back, moving it so that it has its core is headed back to her. Because she's not only the host of the show, just like many of you are the host of your show, but you're not Just this passive. I'm going to say passive host, right? You're an active host and that's what you're looking for. You're looking to guide them, you're looking to provide resources to them, you're looking to provide more. And if they can't get from your show onto your website, onto a path to workshops and other things that Megan wants to provide, then it's not gonna work. So you can connect up with Megan Dwyer. Money isn't Scary. You can go to her new website, check out the workshops that she's planning to run, check out how she presents her podcast and what she does over there by going to the blog post for this episode@the Bingefactor.com that way you're always sure to get to the most current place and current way to find Megan Dwyer. You're also going to want to listen.

And check out our show because I.

Guarantee you some scary things are coming up for you surrounding money and podcasting. It's a pretty common thing that I see and hear again and again.

So take some advice from someone who.

Is an expert in it. Go check out Money Isn't Scary, subscribe to the show, take a listen to many of our episodes, and I bet you're going to find some things that are helping you support not just confidence with money, but confidence in your podcasting.

Because podcasting isn't scary, as Megan and I pointed out, might have some scary.

Aspects to it, but you can certainly push through that, especially with some confidence building in both actually doing, actually growing and actually building a show that is surrounding the topic and the area you feel most confident in, which is exactly. Or maybe like Megan, it's in the place where you wanted to build the most confidence in, so you built it into a practice for yourself. So I hope that you enjoyed this.

Episode with Megan Dwyer.

I certainly did. And I hope that you'll join me next time for another interesting podcast or who's got a journey that might be very similar to the one you'd either like to follow or one you are already following and you can learn some great success tips from them as. So join me here next time on the Binge Factor.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd brand if you'd like to be interviewed on this show as well as featured in Tracy's column. Please go to thebingefactor.com guest and apply.