BIO: Manisha Thakor has worked in financial services for over 30 years, focusing on women’s economic empowerment.
STORY: From a very young age, Manisha equated her self-worth to her achievements. This led her to overwork herself almost to death—twice.
LEARNING: Don’t underestimate the incredible power of the net present value of your future earnings. Invest concurrently in your financial health and your emotional wealth.
“Investing concurrently in your financial health and your emotional wealth is the secret formula to maximizing the NPV of your potential future earning stream.”
Manisha Thakor
Guest profile
Manisha Thakor has worked in financial services for over 30 years with a focus on women’s economic empowerment. A nationally recognized thought leader around the issues of financial literacy and education, Manisha has been featured in national media such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, CNN, and CNBC. She has written two personal finance books for women in their 20s and 30s. Her latest book MoneyZen: The Secret to Finding Your “Enough,” comes out on August 8th, 2023. Manisha earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA from Wellesley College. She also holds the CFA and CFP designations.
Worst investment ever
Growing up, Manisha lived in a small town in Indiana. Being mixed race, she got picked on a lot, particularly in grades four, five, and six. Those formative years put her on the search for a sense of belonging. The cheerleaders and football players didn’t like Manisha, but the teachers did because she worked hard and got good grades. So Manisha started getting endorphin high from teachers’ approvals and getting good grades. She kept studying and going after those grades because they made her feel whole and worth something in a way that she didn’t feel socially.
When Manisha entered finance, she realized there were no teachers or grades, just bosses and money. And so, she developed a profoundly toxic relationship with work, money, success, and accomplishments. Manisha had come to identify her self-worth in her school years with grades. In her professional years, Manisha placed her self-worth in her net worth. Because Manisha was so locked into her identity and sense of self-worth as her achievements at work, she didn’t have friends or hobbies. She worked seven days a week and traveled 40 weeks a year for a decade.
One day she was sitting on a plane and had tears streaming down her face. She had piles of paperwork on her small tray that she was trying to work on. All Manisha could think of was that she had no idea how she would make it through the next 48 hours of meetings because she had no energy left.
A lady sitting across from Manisha came and gave her this look like she knew what she was going through. The lady opened this expensive-looking silver pill case and pulled out three yellow pills. She handed them to Manisha and told her to take just half a pill. Manisha grabbed the pills like candy. She didn’t even ask what she was putting in her mouth. Turns out it was Valium, and it helped. Manisha was able to calm down. She took another pill the following day and made it through her meetings.
Manisha kept this life going until she had two near-death experiences. Both times Manisha wished she’d spent more time with family, that she’d not missed her grandmother’s funeral or the many weddings because she had meetings that were so important.
The second near-death experience was her big wake-up call. Manisha had reached this point where she could only stay awake for about five to six hours daily. She found out her body was attacking itself. It took Manisha nine months to get her energy back. During this period, she realized that she had spent the entirety of her adult life on this 24/7 hamster wheel of hustle culture. Manisha was so driven by this mental model of self-worth equals net worth that she didn’t understand the power of the net present value of her future earnings.
Lessons learned
- What we have that’s entirely our own, and we have enormous control over, is our brain and how we use it to generate our future income.
- Don’t underestimate the incredible power of the net present value of your future earnings. Always protect it.
- Investing concurrently in your financial health and emotional wealth is the secret formula to maximizing the NPV of your potential future earning stream.
Andrew’s takeaways
- Don’t be internally driven to work seven days a week. Get away from that.
- When pressure is on, step back and take time.
No.1 goal for the next 12 months
Manisha’s number one goal for the next 12 months is to achieve less.
Parting words
“If people think that this may be a problem for them, but they’re not quite sure, I put together a really fun quiz at MoneyZen.com. Check it out and see if you’ve gone down the rabbit hole. I want to help pull you out.”
Manisha Thakor
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