The Money Story You Inherited That's Keeping You Broke with Kate Morrison | E26

Sherry Brooks

Kate — okay. I need to start with a confession. I have made really good money. For years now. And there have still been mornings where I woke up convinced it was about to disappear. Like this specific, almost physical dread. And I didn't understand it because nothing in my bank account justified it. So — what is that?

Kate Morrison

That is the most common thing I hear from high-earning women, and it has a name — I call it the scarcity echo. It's not a response to what's actually in your account. It's a response to what was in the account when you were eight years old. Or what you heard your parents whisper about at the kitchen table after they thought you'd gone to sleep. Your nervous system learned that money was unsafe, unpredictable, something that could vanish — and it never got the update that things changed. The body doesn't know you grew up.

Sherry Brooks

The body doesn't know you grew up. That just — okay that landed. So what you're saying is that even when our external reality changes completely, we're still responding from an old internal reality?

Kate Morrison

Exactly. And this is why traditional financial advice misses so many people. You cannot spreadsheet your way out of a nervous system response. I spent ten years as a financial planner giving people perfectly logical advice. And they'd nod, they'd say it made sense, and then they'd go home and do the opposite. Not because they were irresponsible — because their emotional relationship with money was completely driving the bus, and logic was just a passenger. The moment I understood that, I went back to school and retrained as a therapist. Because that's where the real work lives.

Sherry Brooks

Okay so walk me through what you mean by a money story. Because I use the phrase "limiting belief" a lot in my work, and I want to make sure we're being specific here — are they the same thing?

Kate Morrison

Similar but different. A limiting belief is usually something you can articulate — "I don't think I deserve success" or "I'm not good with money." A money story goes deeper. It's the whole narrative. It has characters. It has a plot. It has a moral at the end. Like — maybe the story is: "In our family, wanting more than you have is selfish." Or: "People who have a lot of money did something wrong to get it." Or: "Money always comes with strings attached." Those aren't beliefs you chose. They're conclusions you drew as a child from the evidence around you. And they are incredibly durable because they feel like facts, not opinions.

Sherry Brooks

They feel like facts. That's so good. Because you don't question facts. You just live inside them. Okay — so how does someone find their money story? Like if someone's in their car right now thinking "I think I have one of these" — where do they start?

Kate Morrison

I use something I call the Origin Audit. Four questions — and you can do this with a piece of paper right now. Question one: growing up, what was the main emotion in your home when money was discussed? Not the words — the feeling in the room. Tension? Shame? Fear? Relief? That feeling became your baseline association with money. Question two: what did the adults around you say about people who had more money than your family? This tells you what story you absorbed about wealth itself. Question three: what was the very first time you remember money causing pain — for you or for someone you loved? That's often the origin event. And question four — this one surprises people — what do you never, ever want to become financially? Because the thing you're running from is usually shaping your decisions just as much as the thing you're running toward.