You can be excellent at making money for a business and still feel strangely uncomfortable managing your own.
You can build the product, negotiate the contract, deliver the work and keep everything and everyone else moving. Then an accountant asks about your pension, your cash reserves or what you actually need to live on, and suddenly you would rather hide and re-organise your website again.
There is a particular vulnerability in being a capable adult who feels undereducated about money, especially when people look to you for leadership.
Unfortunately, most schools in the Western world don’t teach financial literacy.
I recently finished listening to the audiobook Becoming a Millionaire God’s Way by Dr. C. Thomas Anderson. What resonated with me the most was the invitation to look at the type of home you grew up in and how that has impacted your thinking. What did you learn about money growing up? What did you come to believe about yourself? And how much of that are you still acting out?
We inherit mindset and explanations long before we learn how to examine them.
Money causes arguments that usually run along the lines of things like “wealthy people are selfish.”, “security can disappear overnight”, “asking for more is ungrateful”, or “work harder and you’ll be fine”.
Some families teach careful stewardship; others teach silence or fear-based scarcity; it can be a mix of different messages, and those lessons can follow us into the businesses we build. Our foundational financial education often underpins the fee we apologise for, the invoice we avoid chasing, the purchase we make because we want to feel successful for an afternoon.
Another successful month does not automatically change any of it.
Being taught to buy
We live in a consumerist culture that makes spending remarkably easy. There is a payment plan for the phone, an upgrade for the software and a reason to believe the next purchase will move our life forward.
Learning how ownership works requires a more deliberate effort.
I keep coming back to Apple. What if we learned to set money aside for ownership with the same regularity that we consider upgrading the phone? We are thoroughly familiar with being the consumer. How familiar are we with being an investor?
Apple is purely an illustration here, not a share recommendation. Buying one company’s shares concentrates risk. A phone can also be a perfectly useful business tool. The question is whether our financial habits make room for assets that could support our future, alongside the things we use today.
The education gap is measurable. In the OECD’s 2023 survey across 39 participating countries and economies, an average of only 34% of adults reached its minimum financial literacy score. Only 42% answered the compound-interest question correctly. [2]
We cannot assume that earning an income teaches us how to manage one.
I believe every business should be linked to an overarching cause.
I love my work, and the cause behind it is clear: to build legacy wealth within my family and equip the next generation with the financial literacy to build, manage and protect their own.
That purpose guides how I earn, what I invest in and what I teach. Financial independence gives me greater choice over my time and resources. I want my children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews to have that same freedom.
Financial Literacy is a MIND Discipline
Financial literacy has a central place in the MIND pillar of my platform. It requires us to examine inherited beliefs, understand the numbers and develop the judgement to make sound decisions.
We need to teach young people how ownership, accounting and investment work before borrowing and spending become their default financial education. That means giving them practical opportunities to manage money, evaluate risk and plan beyond their next purchase.
The legacy I am building includes both wealth and the knowledge to steward it. Financial education is part of the cause behind my business and a responsibility I intend to carry forward.
There is also a physical cost to financial pressure. It follows us out of the office.
A 2024 study reported by UCL linked financial strain with a greater likelihood of a high-risk biological profile four years later, using markers related to immune and hormonal function. It was research involving adults aged 50 and over, and an association rather than proof of cause. [3]
This research does not establish that poor financial literacy shortens your life, or that a budget reverses illness. However, for me, the practical implication is enough. Reducing avoidable financial uncertainty deserves a place alongside the other ways in which we care for ourselves.
“A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children"
~ Proverbs 13:22
That asks us to think beyond the next purchase and the next invoice. What resources are we preparing? What understanding are we passing on? What is our legacy? What will the people who follow us have learned from watching how we handle money?
A bank balance is no measure of someone’s goodness. Illness, low pay, caring responsibilities and injustice are real. Financial education cannot remove every constraint. However, it can help us to make better decisions within the circumstances we have, and recognise where we need support. It also affords us to see from a perspective we may never have considered to become aware of the opportunities all around us that we could not previously see.
Put a Foundation Beneath the Ambition
Understanding why we think the way we do gives us a place to begin. The next step is to turn that understanding into decisions we can repeat.
For paid subscribers, I have created the Feral Founder Financial Foundations Toolkit: six editable Google Docs and a Google Sheets workbook, built around the seven steps below.
The pack takes you from the beliefs you inherited to an accurate view of your money, written investment rules and a practical 90-day plan. The worksheets contain the prompts, examples and space to do the work. The spreadsheet handles the calculations. You keep your own copies and return to them as your circumstances change.
Your next financial plan should begin with the evidence about your life and your numbers. That is what this toolkit is designed to help you build.
