Nathan Astle – Financial Therapy, Money Conversations, and Grief

Nathan Astle

Nate Astle is the founder of Relational Money and a licensed marriage and family therapist.

He discusses what financial therapy is, how couples can have better conversations and relationships with money, what grief is like, how to think about your low points in life – whether they are your own or a tough conversation you had with someone before they died.

I appreciated Nate’s wisdom, experience, and ability to grapple with complex emotions in difficult situations.

Below are a few of favorite quotes from the discussion:

  • “A problem shared is a problem halved.” 
  • “It’s really unfair to not give ourselves the right to anger because you don’t want to be angry at someone’s funeral. There are a lot of social norms of what is appropriate and what’s not appropriate when it comes to grieving, but anger is part of it.” 
  • “I’ve had several people come to me because they lost a partner or parent and their last conversation wasn’t the best. Maybe they had a fight or something. But, your relationship with someone is not just that single point at the end. Your relationship is a thousand points all along. And maybe there were some high points, and there were probably some low points. And if something happened at the end of someone’s life, it doesn’t negate all of the other experiences that you’ve had with that person.” 
  • “Your low points that you have as an individual, whether they’re financial low points, whether they’re personal low points, they’re emotional low points, they don’t define the essence of who you are. You are of value simply because you are a human.”