How to stop being weird about money (w/ Paco de Leon)
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Talking about money can feel confusing and awkward, but it doesn’t have to be. Paco de Leon is a financial planner and author of the book Finance for the People: Getting a Grip on Your Finances. Paco joins Chris to discuss ways everyone – but particularly freelancers and artists – can reframe their conversations and shift their mindset from “money corrupts” to “money gives you the power and freedom to create more art”. Whether it’s advising parents how to talk about money to their children or learning how to set a premium price for your skill, Paco shares tips to help you increase your profits – and transform your confidence around money.
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today on the show, |
| 0:06.6 | we're talking about money. And for me, one of the most surprising elements of doing comedy and writing |
| 0:12.1 | has been how much I've had to think about my finances. Money management is not my passion. |
| 0:17.9 | And yet, if I don't put in the time and effort to handle it correctly, I won't |
| 0:21.7 | get to do the things that I actually am passionate about. I would never have guessed that the |
| 0:26.5 | key to being able to tell jokes is that you also need to know how to categorize your expenses |
| 0:31.7 | and track your receipts. I could never have predicted that. At the same time, there's something |
| 0:36.5 | really interesting to me about the fact that there are |
| 0:38.8 | no universal answers about how you're supposed to approach money. |
| 0:42.2 | Everybody is just figuring this out on their own for themselves, whether they're a struggling |
| 0:46.2 | artist or whether they are a wildly successful entrepreneur, whether you're a person working |
| 0:51.7 | a stable corporate job or someone who cobbles together two or three |
| 0:54.9 | different sources of income to make ends meet. Today's guest, Paco de Leon, is a money expert, |
| 0:59.7 | but not just any money expert. Paco is a finance person who is also an artist. So this is someone |
| 1:05.9 | who not only sees the system from both sides, but also thinks deeply about our complicated, sometimes fraught |
| 1:12.1 | relationship with money. And whether you're an artist who dreams about quitting your day job or |
| 1:16.5 | you dream about getting a day job and just having a little bit of financial security, Paco has |
| 1:21.9 | incredibly practical advice for everybody listening. So here is a clip from Paco on the TED series The Way We Work. |
| 1:29.7 | This might sound strange coming from a former financial planner, but I'm not a fan of capitalism. |
| 1:34.9 | Almost everyone I work with and know and love is an artist, including me. So I know the way the |
| 1:41.4 | system is set up, freelancers and artists are too often way underpaid. |
| 1:46.4 | They often feel like focusing on money will corrupt their creativity, or they think they're just not that good at making money anyway. |
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