What a Swedish Word Taught Me About Your Savings Account

I've had good news on the business front! My VAT people have put together a way that I can start offering actual paid services!

I am now working my way through all the bits that I need to do to make that a reality - setting up a payment service, how to get paid in British money and convert that to Swedish money, writing an actual sales page (which is like my worst nightmare to be honest!). All of this is stuff that I had researched and was fairly certain of six months ago, but the faffing about waiting for everything to happen has meant that I put it all to one side. The stuff that I had decided then might not apply now, understanding where I got to with each step is also a bit of a nightmare. Anyway. That is happening and I hope there will be good news on that front this week or next.

So make sure you're signed up to the mailing list to be the first people to find out.

Language Matters

In the meantime I want to talk about a particular Swedish word and how it's changed something in me which I think can also be applied to finance and money.

The word is 'förtjust' - which you pronounce something like fur-shoost.

It means delighted or charmed. There's also ‘förtjusande’ which means delightful, charming, lovely, enchanting, fascinating, ravishing and fetching. Also, apparently, ducky which I think is like 'duck' as in a term of endearment but I don't know how that fits in, I just thought it was kind of charming (you might say, förtjusande.)

It's not actually a word you hear that much, maybe förtjusande a little more. I asked some youngish, geeky Swedes about it at the weekend and they were a bit surprised that I'd even noticed it because people don't use it. I explained what I'm about to tell you, and then I added that I'd heard it a few times on 'Love is Blind, Sweden'. They both gave knowing 'ahhs' and suggested that they are the sorts of people that use the term. In all honesty, most young Swedish people look the same to me - fashion and makeup wise, it's very homogenous - so I've no idea what they were referring to when they said those sorts of people. Then the conversation moved on. Anyway, I digress.

It's not a word you hear much but I am watching most of my English-speaking TV with Swedish subtitles right now just so I can get a bit more practice in. It's very interesting to see the contrasts between the languages - because Swedish is sparse.

Jamie Oliver talking about a dessert will be like 'oh it's lavverly, right up ma street, get ya choppers 'round that, it's a party in ya mawffff, flavoursome, delicious, heavenly' and the Swedish subtitles will say 'mmm, hur gott'/'mmm, how tasty'.

But this förtjust/förtjusande word kept coming up in all sorts of situations - talking about food, relationships, travelling, clothes, experiences, it was in an Agatha Christie series and also How to Get to Heaven from Belfast. I've seen it in news shows, financial shows and shows about dogs! It's a joke in the household now, as Dr Chris doesn't read the subtitles so doesn't notice it, I am pointing it out at least a few times per programme.

Does Language Affect Behaviour?

I think it appears to much because it can mean so many different things according to the context. We in England have 20 words for something that they only have one for in Sweden. It really caught my attention. That's interesting, I think?

It made me wonder about whether such a concise, practical and understated language might be the perfect breeding ground for say, a global furniture brand based on simple product lines which stay relatively the same over time, and are built out of basically the same materials with the same tools which can be mass-produced and given away with each product. IKEA, in case I wasn't clear enough.

I am not a linguist, obvs, but I believe this is the idea of linguistic relativity. The language that you are brought up with and use in the every day, will shape or at least have an effect on the way that you see the world. You most often hear about this in reference to the Inuit who apparently have 20 different words for snow - I think has mostly been debunked anyway and the way it was studied was pretty problematic (of course). So I don't want to take the conclusions too far, but it's been sparking something in me.

I have two specifics links to money that I want to make here.

Economic and Financial Abuse

I was reading 'Hidden risks, fatal consequences: Economic abuse in Domestic Homicide Reviews: Surviving Economic Abuse', a report released in March 2026 by Dr Kathryn Royal for the charity Surviving Economic Abuse, about how economic abuse is often a part of domestic abuse and how we uncover that. I've included a link but it's really a difficult read so be careful.

The following few paragraphs also discuss abuse so pass over to the Emergency Fund section if you need to.

The report found that 'every 19 days a victim of economic abuse loses her life'. Over 50% of the domestic homicide reviews which were studied for the report featured evidence of economic abuse but this is likely an under-representation which they go on to explain.

A domestic homicide review is undertaken when a person over the age of 16 dies in the UK due to violence, abuse or neglect and this research analysed the 454 reviews carried out between 2019 and 2025. The researchers used both qualitative and quantitative methods and it’s a really difficult thing to read, but of huge importance.

They found that the language used in the reviews is not standard: some named the economic abuse, some named the features of it but didn't go as far as to call it abuse. There were examples of mortgage companies noting abusive behaviours but not naming it, therefore not providing support or alerting appropriate authorities, also courts and other agencies behaving similarly. The language in the homicide reviews isn't even standard regarding sex, gender, ethnicity or country of origin so then it's difficult to rely on these factors when assessing impact.

The first thing that really struck me about effect of language was from the forward given by Frank Mullane, CEO of Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse where he points specifically to the importance of the language used in the report:

"I applaud the use of the expressive words “restriction, exploitation and sabotage” to describe economic abuse as they bring an appropriate status to its huge and ruinous effects."

I'm not saying that we should catastrophise everything, but in the interests of being 'calm' and 'rational' I think we lose something of the gravitas of some situations. I see it in the way people discuss war and genocide so nonchalantly, as if it's just some sort of game with tactics, but also in the opposite way when language is used to make things seem more confusing than they are - often within economics and politics.

To come back to the report, each time they highlight a particular victim's story, they start with a quote from a loved one about how that person lived their lives - it's incredibly moving and it serves to contrast the real human lives behind the picking apart of what went wrong for them. Language really sets the tone and highlights what's important.

I wrote a newsletter about economic abuse with links to sources of help and support if you are currently affected or if you would simply like to know more.

Emergency Funds

A lighter note, hopefully, but also a part of your economic resilience and ability to be part of a potential support network, is your easy access to money if you need it.

I talk about emergency funds in this blog post here, and then the following blog post about your own 'broke amount' which is really just another way to term it. So if you need a freshen up on what these are go for it, and then come back.

I mention at the end of the emergency fund post that some people don't like calling them that - they prefer something like 'fuck off fund' or 'cash buffer' - without the actual word 'emergency' in it so that it's not making you think of emergencies and stressing you out each time.

And I get that, really I do. I am quite big on woowoo, vibes, manifestation stuff really and I think the way that you speak about things matters. I do also think that we can get carried away with stuff like that, especially when we have a tendency towards overthinking and anxiety, what a way to delay actually saving for an emergency if you can't think of the perfect name.

However, I have read two books recently which I think work together here, the first being Profit First (a reread actually) and the second being Banking On It by Anne Boden about how she set up Starling Bank (both of those are affiliate links).

In Profit First he has you setting up a series of bank accounts and allocating money to each according to a predetermined percentage - profit, owners pay, taxes and operating expenses. He is pretty adamant that you use his names for each account which I am agnostic about, apart from the name he suggests for the taxes account which I love - it's something like 'This Is The Tax Man's Money, Not Yours, Don't Touch It'.

Such a great illustration of how he understands the entrepreneur's mind - we all know we should be saving for taxes, but when the money is in our account, it's still our money in our minds, we spend it and then struggle when we should be paying our taxes. The idea that, with language, you demarcate that particular money as not yours is a massive step for an entrepreneur and I am telling you from personal experience - it works! And not just in business.

The reason that Anne Boden's book links here is that it was Starling which really came up with the idea of pots or spaces as a service that a bank could offer. If you're not familiar with Starling (or Monzo who… 'borrowed' the idea… read the book for more details), when you have an account with them you have your main current account and then you have the option to allocate money into separate pots which you can name and add a photo to. They're not different bank accounts, so when you get the statement the money is all together, but it lets you separate it out for yourself, like the envelope method.

I set up a charity/giving pot in my Starling account to which I added this picture of Celine Dion:

Doesn't she look generous!? It made me smile every time I looked at it.

Now that Starling don't pay interest on their current accounts, I think the pots are slightly less attractive, but they can be used to do exactly what Mr. Profit First would like you to do. Which is separate your money out so you're looking at small portions of it for specific purposes rather than a whole lot of your money in one go.

He's from the USA, so of course his book is American based, and he talks through how to persuade your bank to give you extra accounts without charging for it - the same situation applies here in Sweden, annoyingly - but over in the UK you have the ability to do this for free!

More than that, you have the opportunity to use language (and pictures) to encourage yourself to do or not do something. That's my fave kind of financial step forward because you set it up when you're feeling motivated and then it's simply in place when you lose that oomph.

We don't have accounts like that in Sweden, and you pay for your current account to top it off, so I'm going to have to do my own persuading when it comes to actually making money if I want to follow Profit First (which I do).

Just one of the many things I have to do which is making me feel both incredibly excited but also overwhelmed and butterfly-stomach-y (I was about to say anxious then, and it might well be, but this is better than a feeling of dread anxiety so I'm using my language to shape that).

Anyway, once again, sign up to the newsletter here as I hopefully will have wonderful news soon!

Love Eleanor. xxx