£10 or £1 Million: Why Your Reaction Says Very Little About the Number

Before you read any further, let’s try something

Imagine someone hands you £10, right now with no strings attached. Actually pause and notice what happens. Is it relief? Indifference? A flicker of ‘is that it?’

What Catherine Morgan Taught a Room Full of Finance Professionals

Now imagine someone hands you £1 million instead. Same deal, no strings. What happens this time? Excitement, probably, maybe - but sit a second longer. Is there also a flutter of panic? Guilt? A voice asking what you'd have to become to deserve it, or what people would think, whether you'd know what to do with it? Are there really no strings attached? 

Catherine Morgan, who developed the Money Clearing Method I use with clients, ran exactly this exercise on a room full of people once - split them in two, gave one half the £10 scenario and the other half the £1 million one, then asked everyone how they felt. The answers had almost nothing to do with the size of the number. Some people given £10 felt completely content. Some people given £1 million felt nothing but stress. There was jealousy, relief, confusion, distrust, happiness. 

The Money Isn't the Thing

The point of the experiment is to understand that money is more emotion than it is anything else! The audience she was talking to were finance professionals and she was trying to show that how humans are with money is not necessarily logical. A big sum of money - a lottery win, an inheritance, finding out what a friend earns - is not just a big sum of money but an event which will be experienced alongside a whole heap of emotions. In the same way that a stock market downturn, a credit increase or a new job offer might. The money isn’t the thing, how we feel about it is and this is primarily what determines how people deal with it. 

That's not a small distinction. It's the whole reason a spreadsheet, on its own, will never fix someone's relationship with money. You can hand a person a perfectly balanced budget and they will still feel like a fraud, or still feel panicked every time a bill lands, or still spend the windfall the second it arrives - not because the maths is wrong, but because the maths was never the thing that needed fixing.

Why My Hotel Job Pays Less and Feels Like More

I’ve been thinking about this a lot in relation to my little housekeeping job which I talked about in the newsletter. It pays very little and it’s hard work. I didn’t take it for the money but because I wanted to create a sense of stability and belonging - which it has. What I hadn’t quite realised was the satisfaction I get from being paid for manual labour - it creates a genuine sense of self-worth for me that I’m not sure could be created otherwise. 

On paper it doesn’t make financial sense to take time away from the business I’ve been building that is really starting to build momentum (thank goodness!!!) and pays way more of course, but this is actually the steadiest I’ve felt in months and it’s given me a refreshed feeling for what I’m doing here too. 

If the amount of money predicted the feeling, that wouldn't make sense. But it's not supposed to make sense, because the feeling was never really about the amount.

The Question Underneath the Number

So, here’s what I’m offering you - think of a feeling you have experienced around money - fear, shame, smugness, relief, anything - that you’ve assumed is caused by how much (or how little) you have. Is there a chance that the feeling was already there, long before the number showed up, just waiting for you to come across something to confirm it?

That question is most of what financial coaching actually is. Not ‘let's build you a better spreadsheet’ (although that might come into it…) but more like: let's find out what your nervous system already believes about money, so the next number that lands - whatever it is - doesn't have to drag the same old feeling in with it.

Maybe this week you just notice it. Next time a number makes you flinch or grin, pause and ask what you're actually feeling  and whether it’s actually about the number at all. 

Don’t worry - the housekeeping job is just a few hours in the mornings, so the financial coaching keeps going with aplomb and I would love to dig into this with some of you!

Book here. 

Love Eleanor. xxx