The $80,000 car and the $6 mushrooms
Investing
5 min read
Questions?
If you’d like to discuss this topic, or anything else related to advice and investments, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
In the first article of a new series that we’ll be publishing throughout the year, we asked gender equity advocate and author Angela Meyer to share her insights on the emotions and relationships to be mindful of when it comes to money.
A woman I spoke to recently had just bought herself an $80,000 car. She’d built a successful business, made thoughtful choices with her money, and knew the purchase aligned with the life she wanted to live. It was simply something she wanted. She could afford it, she loved it, and she bought it.
A few days later she was having lunch when the waiter asked whether she’d like mushrooms on the side.
“Six dollars?” she replied. “No, that’s ridiculous.”
When she told me the story, she couldn’t stop laughing.
“I’ll spend eighty grand on a car,” she said, “but apparently six dollars for mushrooms is where I draw the line.”
I suspect most of us have our own version of the mushrooms. Hands up if you’ve refused to pay airport prices for a bottle of water before boarding a business-class flight, spent generously on your children while wearing a coat you’ve owned for fifteen years, or negotiated over a hundred-dollar invoice the same week you signed paperwork for a seven-figure investment.
A familiar tale
Money is funny like that. We can be completely comfortable making one financial decision while feeling unexpectedly uncomfortable making another.
Over the past decade I’ve had hundreds of conversations with women across many different financial backgrounds. Some were rebuilding after divorce, others starting businesses. A few had inherited significant wealth; more had built it themselves, from nothing. Some had more money than they’d ever imagined having; others were still working out how to make enough to simply survive.
What struck me wasn’t how different their financial circumstances were. It was how similar the money stories and beliefs were. Our conversations rarely started with share portfolios, property or tax structures.
More often, they started with a fragment of a money story, or a belief. One founder who’d just banked an eight-figure exit told me she still packs her own lunch every day, because a $14 salad “feels wrong.” Another woman, sitting on a family trust worth more than most people will earn in a lifetime, told me she’s never once asked her Financial Adviser a question she thought might make her “look silly” — despite chairing board meetings where she interrogates far more complex numbers without blinking.
Money carries contradictions, emotions, stories and beliefs that have very little to do with the number in the account. Research out of Cambridge University suggests most of our core money habits are largely locked in by around the age of seven [1] which means the instinct behind the mushrooms was very likely formed before we could read chapter books.
Long before any of us make our first investment decision, we’ve already absorbed hundreds of messages and beliefs about money. We watch how our parents talk about spending and saving, and notice how money is discussed.
Let’s talk about Mum
One of the interesting findings from Rich in Context [2] — research Cogo carried out for Hi Money, surveying 1,150 women and men across Australia and New Zealand — is this: if you want to know how someone will feel about money as an adult, no matter what the balance sheet says, ask about their mother. Respondents who grew up with mothers who talked about money positively reported higher financial confidence and wellbeing as adults. Those who were ‘financially well’ as adults, i.e. confident in their financial skills, rarely stressed about money to the point it affected their mental health, and/or frequently positive about their financial situation, were also the ones most likely to have had positive money conversations with their mothers.
53% of the ‘financially well’ cohort recalled their mothers doing this often or sometimes, compared to just 32% of the ‘financially unwell’ cohort. Fathers mattered too (47% vs 26%), but mothers had the stronger, more consistent effect. Both men and women in the sample reported talking to their mothers about money more than their fathers, which quietly debunks one of the oldest stereotypes going: the idea that women simply aren’t “good” with money.
What got passed down in those kitchen-table conversations wasn’t just money management. It was beliefs and stories. Money became something they could talk about, plan for, and get better at, rather than something to fear, hide, or leave to someone else. None of that hinged on how much was actually in the account. It’s correlated with whether anyone modelled having an open, easy relationship with it at all, which makes it a gift any woman, at any level of wealth, can now choose to give forward.
Early money beliefs and stories can be remarkably entrenched, but they can also be examined and rewritten, at any age, by anyone curious enough to ask where they came from and whether they’re really still true and useful today.
Almost every woman I’ve spoken with who grew up in a house where money wasn’t discussed found that exploring her own money psychology changed her relationship with money towards being more positive.
The car was never the hard part. The mushrooms were. $80,000 is a decision, and six dollars is a memory and a belief. The question isn’t so much how much you have, it’s often more about which of your old beliefs are still making the decisions.
Once you’ve built wealth, the conversation changes. It’s no longer just about growing the portfolio, it’s about deciding what kind of relationship you actually want with money, and understanding the stories that shaped you long before you had any to invest. Because those stories don’t only influence how you spend. They shape how you invest it, and how you eventually pass it on.
Questions?
Empowering female wealth holders is a subject close to our hearts at Helm Wealth.
Our Head of Advice, Brigette Arnold Manaia, will be exploring the theme in more detail throughout 2026, both at events and in articles similar to this bespoke series with Angela Meyer.
If you’d like to discuss your investments or financial planning needs with an expert, please feel free to email Brigette, using: Brigette.Manaia@helmwealth.co.nz
Alternatively, you can use the general office Contact Details shown on the left-hand side of this article.
Sources
[1] Source: Whitebread, David, and Sue Bingham. 2013: ”Habit Formation and Learning in Young Children”. London: Money Advice Service. maps.org.uk.
[2] Source: Hi Money, ‘Rich in Context’ developed in partnership with Cogo, 2024. himoney.co/rich-in-context
Photo credit: Melanie Kanzler for Unsplash