Don't Feel Ashamed About Money - You Owe It To Yourself

Are you worried about money? Anxious about debt? Nervous that I'm about to offer you
 a cast iron scheme guaranteed to help by consolidating all your losses into a single
 giant pot of liability? I'm here to tell you that if you do have money worries, you're
 not alone, even if you think you are. That's because no one ever likes to talk
 about being in debt, do they? There's so much guilt and shame attached to it, fear
 and anxiety. It may surprise you to know that while Shakespeare himself was
 absolutely raking it in, his dad was lucky not to have gone to prison for debt.
 I can't promise to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams, although maybe I can
 because I am after all hosting a podcast. But I do hope to be able to
 help you develop a healthier attitude to money. I'm Dave Cohen and this is
 The Shakespeare Mindset, the show that helps calm our anxieties with advice
 from the writer you hated at school.
 Welcome to The Shakespeare Mindset, the show that
 disentangles 21st century problems using 16th century solutions. By the
 end of today's show I absolutely guarantee you'll have a Porsche, a
 holiday home in the Algarve and a much healthier attitude towards
 and debt. Well, one out of three is not bad.
 The most famous Shakespeare quote on this subject is
 neither a borrower nor a lender be. Although there's also
 friends, Romans and countrymen lend me your ears and will give you
 generous interest rates of up to 20 percent terms and conditions apply.
 How many times when you were growing up were you warned of the
 dangers of borrowing or lending? If, like me, you're old enough to
 going to see your local bank manager for a loan, you may have heard it
 from them. It sounds so sensible I never stopped and thought about
 that phrase until I interviewed Emma Smith, professor of Shakespeare
 studies at Oxford University and therefore someone who I think it's
 fair to say knows what she is talking about. I discussed another
 phrase with her from the same character, to thine own self be
 She said these phrases are the kinds of things you might see on mugs or
 tea towels. Once you realise that the person saying to thine own
 self be true is polonius, a bloke whose sole purpose in the play
 Hamlet involves him being absolutely untrue to himself, you see
 what she means.
 What would the world be like if there were neither borrowers nor
 lenders? Humanity would stop, I think. If a homeless person came
 up to you asking for 10 pence for a cup of tea, how good would
 it make you feel to say, sorry, I can neither borrow nor lend?
 Although nowadays it's more likely to be, sorry, I don't carry
 cash. I'm waiting for the day, which I'm sure is not far
 away, when a homeless person will respond with, it's okay,
 I've got a payment terminal. Perhaps you could set up a direct
 debit? And anyway, everyone knows you're not lending the money
 to the homeless person. Excuse me, you young fellow, yes, you,
 I gave you 10 pence for a cup of tea last April. Can you let
 me know when you'll be able to pay it back? Bit short
 meself.
 We don't talk enough about borrowing, except in a
 negative way. We don't like to get into debt because we feel
 ashamed. It shows us up to be people who have failed, revealed
 a lack of self-restraint or discipline. And we apply this
 same principle to our national and international wellbeing.
 Governments seeking to invest modest sums of money into
 projects that will protect the long-term interests of their
 nations are given stern moral lectures about borrowing from
 business people who think nothing of lending billions and
 billions of dollars to half a dozen small companies that have
 promised to create machines that will make us all
 unemployed shortly before they turn on us like characters
 from a trashy science fiction novel and zap us to kingdom
 come with their human seeking laser missiles. Open AI has
 made $29 billion profits in the last two years. Oh, well
 done you. But it has also racked up $665 billion in
 not exactly debt, but money promised to them to pay their
 astronomical expenses required to kill off humanity, or at
 least give them a 10% chance of it.
 As always, it's difficult to use what little we know about
 Shakespeare's life to explain how he deals with particular
 subjects. But it turns out there's quite a lot of Jen
 around old par Shakespeare's finances. John was a glove
 maker. I make gloves. A local businessman, a bloke who had
 reasonably high status in the world of commerce around
 Stratford, until he ran into money problems. We know his
 business struggled during Will's teenage years when the
 gloves came off. Recently unearthed documents have shown
 that John pivoted. Man, I hate that word, but tell me a
 better way to describe this. And I promise I'll never say
 pivoted again unless I'm talking about a ballerina. He
 pivoted to crime. Selling illicit wool. Apparently in the
 1570s, on every street corner of Stratford, you could
 find a geezer with an enormous coat, which he'd open and
 say, What are you after? Merino? Rambouillet? Got a
 lovely Corridale here. Shut up, you. We know that the
 Shakespeare family's financial troubles continued, that
 Shakespeare himself had expected to go to university, but
 by the time he was the right age, the family lacked the
 means. He had a complicated relationship with money from
 a young age. I often try and jump in on coattails here
 by reminding people that two of my favourite writers,
 William Shakespeare and P.G. Woodhouse, came from
 families where the father's business went bust when they
 were teenagers, which also happened to me. There aren't
 many conversations in which you can say my name in the
 same breath as Shakespeare and Woodhouse, but this is
 one. I can vouch for the fact that going through
 your adolescence worrying where your next penny is
 coming from is character building. John was saved from
 financial ruin by his enormously successful son.
 Shakespeare didn't just make money from acting and
 playwriting, although he didn't do too badly at either
 those. He also ran his own company of performers and
 eventually his own theatre. Obviously, he never
 expected his dad to pay him back. Not only that, he
 helped him buy a coat of arms for the family. I
 guess today the equivalent would be to donate money
 to ensure the next children's ward at the local
 hospital is named after you personally. We know from
 our own lives that being helped out of debt by
 relatives might save us in the short term, but it
 often leaves a scar, a deep feeling of humiliation
 that is never any good for our mental wellbeing.
 Out there in the real world, we talk of central
 banks bailing out poor countries that have
 become economic basket cases. It's the language
 of humiliation and the solution, which usually
 involves them having to pay more money back at
 a higher rate of interest, only serves to
 exaggerate those feelings. Is it possible for an
 entire nation to feel humiliation? Yes, it is. Ask
 the Germans in 1923 when they were forced to pay
 back the reparations for World War One. Any
 leader who articulates these feelings can take
 his people down some strange and terrible
 paths. If I can extricate myself from the
 inevitable due money problems that tormented my
 childhood thanks to the merchant of Venice, I'm
 able to look at that play as a clever and
 This passionate examination of how the notion
 of lending and borrowing is not purely
 transactional, it's also deeply tied into our
 emotions. Be careful who you choose to borrow
 from and lend to, and be careful to ensure
 that you're able to negotiate finance without
 the distressing stigma that comes with
 financial difficulty. We may not like Shylock
 in The Merchant of Venice, by X some of you
 can't stand him, but it's Antonio who comes
 across to me as particularly unpleasant. This
 is a bloke who believes he has a sense of
 entitlement because he's had a bit of success
 as a merchant. He's confident. No, that's
 being generous. He's arrogant enough to think
 lending him money should be simple and
 straightforward. The play begins when Bassanio
 asks to borrow money from his good friend
 Antonio so he can travel across Italy to
 propose to Porsche who he loves. Antonio
 doesn't have the money on him, but he's
 pretty sure that Shylock will lend it as a
 bond. Shylock points out, not unfairly as
 it'll later prove, that all of Antonio's
 wealth is tied up in the promise of
 future money, a kind of 16th century
 walking AI data center on ventures he
 hath squandered abroad. Antonio is
 sneeringly dismissive of the money lender.
 Shylock asks, again not unreasonably,
 why he should lend money to a man who
 call me misbeliever, cutthroat, dog, and
 all for use of that which is mine own.
 Antonio says, and I'll call you all of
 this again. Just think of me as an
 enemy, he says. So if I don't pay you
 back, you horrible Jew, you can exact
 revenge. Believe me, I've met a fair
 number of Antonios in my lifetime.
 Okay, Shylock says, let's have a laugh.
 Pay me back on the day and I won't
 charge you a penny. Don't pay me back
 on time, all I expect in return is a
 pound of your flesh.
 Bassanio is horrified, but Antonio is
 complacent. Of course I'll have the
 money, all my business deals will work
 out, don't worry about it. Here we
 can see the complications of lending
 and borrowing among friends and
 enemies. As a friend, Bassanio feels
 a terrible burden of responsibility. As
 an enemy, Antonio is effectively
 daring Shylock to do him serious
 damage. Antonio's relationship with
 Bassanio is now complicated by
 finance. And no, I'm not going to
 mention the words repressed
 homosexuality, gah, too late. Of
 course, you're welcome to that
 modern interpretation and many
 productions play on that. But to me,
 not an expert, just a fanboy, it
 comes across more that Antonio
 lacks his own feelings of self worth
 by trying to win the friendship of
 others by being incredibly generous
 with his money. Over generous,
 actually, not least because he hates
 Shylock and resents the fact that
 Shylock is a better businessman than
 him. Shylock dislikes him, he says,
 because he's a Christian. But more
 important, he gives away money so
 freely, it brings the price of
 lending down. Again, dare I say,
 not unreasonably. Shylock is
 asked, what would you ask for in
 return for a man who sees you as
 his sworn enemy? A pound of flesh,
 please. It's a very eloquent way
 of saying your life and actually
 is no less than Antonio should
 expect. Luckily, Bassanio's true
 love, Portia, successfully
 persuades the court to drop the
 case since there's no mention of
 blood. And if blood was spilled,
 that will be murder, wouldn't it?
 Not only that, but Antonio gets
 his own metaphorical pound of
 flesh by forcing Shylock to
 convert to Christianity.
 Ha ha, no wonder Shakespeare
 called The Merchant of Venice a
 comedy. God bless him.
 Antonio is a prototype of a
 character who appears in a
 much later play, Tymon of
 Athens. This is much less
 complex than The Merchant of
 Venice, but at its heart is a
 ruler, Tymon, who is so
 uncertain about his own
 self-worth that in order to
 win friendships, he gives his
 moneys away by the chariot load.
 This is going to go wrong
 very quickly.
 In Act One, scene one, we
 see him giving his money away
 with abandon. By the end of
 Act One, scene two, he's
 being warned to be more
 careful. Oh, that men's
 ears should be to counsel
 death, but not to flattery.
 He's warned by Appomatus.
 And by the next scene, he's
 starting to get into serious
 debt. Soon he's broke, bitter
 and angry. He thought he
 had purchased friendships for
 life with his money, but
 all he'd gained was
 flatterers. As soon as they
 saw which way the wind was
 blowing, they dropped him
 like a lead weight, one
 that was also stinking of
 dog mess. So far, we've
 talked about lending and
 borrowing entirely in terms
 of straightforward finance.
 You borrow, you lend. It's
 a purely financial
 transaction. Even then,
 personal relationships can
 get in the way and cause
 problems. What happens
 when we're not talking
 about finance, but other
 areas where there's a
 balance sheet at work? What
 of love, power, and
 ultimately life and death.
 Nobody wants something for
 nothing. Tymon is literally
 giving all his money away.
 But he's still expecting
 something in return. What?
 Love, I guess. It's that
 emotional attachment to
 finance again. Why does he
 think he'll get it? What
 would you do if the king
 impulsively gave you a
 hundred grand? My guess is
 that you'd spend it as
 fast as possible before he
 changed his mind and asked
 for it back, which is
 pretty much what happens
 in that play. You idiot,
 which is effectively what
 Appomatus says to him. On
 two occasions, first when
 he has tons of money and
 second when he hasn't.
 Tymon and Appomatus trade
 childish insults like two
 jobbing comedians on a
 channel four roasting
 programme, only with
 much better written
 lines. But you get the
 sense that Appomatus
 genuinely wants to help
 Tymon. The opening scene
 of King Lear is on the
 surface about financial
 transaction. Lear is
 about to retire and divide
 up the kingdom. Initially
 we're told he was going
 to favour handing most of
 it to the Duke of Albany,
 husband of his oldest
 daughter, Gonoril, who
 really is as unpleasant
 as the disease she
 appears to be named
 after. But no, we're
 told again, Lear is
 going to be scrupulously
 fair and divide it 50
 50 between Albany and
 Cornwall, husband of his
 second daughter, Regan. At
 which point Lear himself
 enters and the rules are
 changed yet again. Here's
 how I'm going to carve up
 the kingdom, he says. It's
 going to be three ways
 now. I've got three
 daughters, see, and this
 will be done by the
 far more scrupulously
 fair method of asking
 them how much they love
 me. The daughter who
 loves me the most gets
 the biggest share. Seems
 fair to me. By now,
 the only certainty is
 that we don't have a
 ruler so much as a TV
 quiz show host. Gonoril
 believes that there are
 no words to describe how
 much she loves him.
 Whatever the value of
 this land, which I may or
 may not decide to grab
 from you, what's far
 more important is my
 love for you. Regan
 goes more transactional.
 Her older sister names
 the same deeds of love,
 but still comes short of
 the love I have. It's
 left to Cordelia to
 lay bare the
 differences between Lear's
 contractual definition of
 love and what she
 genuinely feels towards
 her father. I love your
 majesty according to my
 bond. No more, nor less.
 I think she would have
 got on well with
 Shylock. Lear cannot
 comprehend being loved in
 a way that's nothing to
 do with his wealth. His
 viewpoint is supported
 by the Duke of Burgundy,
 who was all set to
 battle with the King of
 France for the hand of
 Cordelia. Sorry love,
 he says, although in
 slightly more
 Shakespearean
 language, as the pound
 signs fall out of his
 eyes, you have so lost
 your father that you
 must lose a husband.
 And all the
 Burgundy Chardonnay
 you could have quaffed.
 What about the King of
 France?
 Ma chérie amour.
 Fairest Cordelia,
 thou art most rich,
 being poor.
 Burgundy loves you
 for your money, I love
 you for your soul.
 That kind of thing
 always sounds better in
 a French accent,
 doesn't it?
 People often say
 Shakespeare, the
 sonnet writer, is the
 closest we get to
 understanding
 Shakespeare, the person.
 Not that I agree with
 that, just because most
 of them are written in
 the first person and
 they're about love.
 It doesn't necessarily
 follow that they're
 about what Shakespeare
 feels about love.
 Let's just say for the
 character of the poet
 in the sonnets,
 love is often defined
 in terms of a
 financial exchange.
 The very first sonnet
 is a kind of backhanded
 compliment to the
 beauty of the young man.
 Life is short
 and your beauty will
 fade, so stop being
 so bloody selfish.
 Have a kid so we
 can enjoy the beauty
 of your offspring
 when you're gone.
 A lot of the
 language here, though,
 is less flowers,
 trees, more financial times.
 Your beauty is
 contracted to you.
 Not having a kid
 means famine,
 where there should
 be abundance.
 The language gets
 more explicit as we
 continue through
 these early poems.
 And by the time we get
 to number four,
 it's all about the money,
 money, money.
 The opening lines.
 Unthrifty loveliness.
 Why dost thou spend
 upon thyself thy
 beauty's legacy?
 Set the tone.
 By not having a kid,
 it's like you're
 spending inherited
 wealth on yourself
 rather than investing
 or sharing it.
 When you die,
 what acceptable audit
 canst thou leave?
 Thy unused beauty
 must be tombed with thee.
 Which usered lives
 the executor to be.
 Time and again,
 the sonnets return to
 love and its end,
 described as a business deal.
 Sonnet 87 begins,
 Farewell,
 thou art too dear
 for my possessing,
 and like enough
 thou know'st thy estimate.
 The charter of thy worth
 gives thee releasing.
 My bonds in thee
 are all determinant.
 In Sonnet 142,
 he talks of the
 infidelity of himself
 and his loved one of
 robbing other beds'
 revenues of their rents.
 And I'm sure if Excel
 had been around at the time,
 he would have written
 something lusty about
 spreadsheets.
 Sonnet 134 is perhaps
 the bitterest exploration
 of a love triangle
 as a transaction
 that has gone horribly wrong.
 The woman he loves
 has fallen for the boy
 he also loves.
 He's lost them both.
 He talks of himself as
 mortgaged to her love,
 but it's his own fault
 because he sent the boy
 to woo her for him
 in the first place.
 Him have I lost,
 thou hast both him and me.
 He pays the whole,
 and yet am I not free.
 It doesn't matter to me
 whether this is
 Shakespeare himself
 or Shakespeare writing
 as a spurned lover.
 It's an exploration of love
 at its most cynical,
 as nothing more than
 a balance sheet.
 How being in love with someone
 is like being in their debt.
 In this world,
 there can never be
 a love of equals
 and love is like money.
 If someone expresses
 their love for you
 and you accept it,
 that's like them
 asking to borrow you
 and you loaning yourself to them.
 And that can never
 successfully be resolved.
 Which is a pretty grim
 and dark way of looking at love.
 Then again,
 maybe this is me
 looking at the late 1500s
 through my 21st century lens
 and in my Ted Baker shirt.
 In Elizabethan times,
 life was imagined
 as a debt owed to God or nature.
 Let's face it,
 if you weren't fighting in a war
 or freezing to death
 in the countryside,
 you were hanging out
 in the cities
 where the plague turned up
 every few years or so
 to remind you that life was short.
 Assuming you were lucky enough
 to have survived
 the infant mortality rate
 that killed around
 one in six of newborns.
 To me, that feels like
 a perfectly sensible way
 of looking at the world.
 You and I
 and every one of us
 alive today will have long been gone
 and outlived by inordinate
 amounts of nature,
 we hope, for centuries to come.
 And actually,
 I think it's quite healthy
 to apply that kind of perspective
 to our own lives
 when we're trying
 to survive financially.
 I'd say keep our heads above water,
 although given what's about
 to be predicted
 to happen weather wise,
 that might turn out
 to not be a metaphor about money.
 If we look at ourselves
 as the collateral
 that's been loaned to the world
 to do as we see fit,
 and we in the West
 have spent the last century or so
 acting like a drug fueled teenager
 binging on everything
 the world has to offer
 because in a few seconds time,
 relative to the lifetime
 of the planet,
 we'll be gone.
 Then maybe perhaps
 we can start to treat the world
 with a bit more deference
 and respect.
 And it's possible to look at the way
 we deal with our finances
 and think of ourselves
 as trustees of them
 in the way that the world
 is a trustee of us
 with the little patch of planets
 we each inhabit.
 At this point,
 I could probably do well to parrot
 the kind of self-help advice
 you're going to get
 from any other podcast
 that has the words money
 and mindset in the title.
 I'm going to suggest
 you look at the venture capital
 that is driving the American economy
 as an example.
 Watch closely what they're doing
 and you do the exact opposite.
 Number one,
 pay off your debts.
 At least I agree
 with that first bit.
 Don't be a borrower.
 Apart from anything else,
 as Shakespeare kept proving,
 it makes you feel bad,
 ashamed,
 humiliated,
 guilty.
 Number two,
 put money away.
 Yeah, why not?
 According to the impending
 weather reports,
 there are a lot of rainy days ahead,
 so it would be wise
 to save for them.
 Number three,
 invest your income.
 OK, so maybe you're being
 a little bit tech bro
 when you do this,
 but unlike the US,
 don't invest with money
 that isn't yours to spare.
 Number four,
 talk to partners.
 I think this is the biggest deal
 when it comes to money
 and the reason it makes us
 all so miserable.
 Precisely because our feelings
 about money are tied up
 with guilt, shame,
 self-esteem and humiliation.
 We don't like to talk about it.
 So come on,
 let's have a chat.
 As Bob Dylan said,
 or rather sang,
 when you got nothing,
 you got nothing to lose.
 Actually, that was more like speaking.
 And I want to finish
 with a quote about
 our tricky relationship with money,
 the best one I've ever read
 about coming to terms
 with not having it.
 And it's from,
 what do you know,
 William Shakespeare.
 The line is in Othello.
 Desdemona's father is angry
 that he has stolen her.
 Here we go again.
 Love as a transaction.
 The Duke of Venice
 reassures him the robbed
 that smiles steals
 something from the thief.
 He robs himself
 that spends a bootless grief.
 If you spend your time in grief
 over something that you've lost,
 you're robbing yourself
 of your own well-being.
 If you can smile about this loss,
 you deny the thief
 the satisfaction of your misery.
 In other words,
 acceptance and a positive attitude
 rob your opponent
 of their power
 to destroy your peace.
 That's it for now.
 If you enjoyed this,
 please can I steal
 a few seconds of your time
 to leave a nice review
 wherever you've listened.
 It will validate my net worth
 as a human.
 Take me out of the red
 and put me in the pink.
 See you next week.