Father's Day Is Over. The Weight Isn't.
Men, money, mental health, and the silence that’s quietly wrecking fathers. A conversation with financial therapist Ashley Quamme.
Byline: By Stoy Hall, CFP® | Founder, Black Mammoth | Host, NoBS Wealth®
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YouTubeThe cards are back in the drawer. The grill is cold. The “Best Dad” mug is back on the shelf next to the other ones, the ones the kids made in preschool that he won’t throw away no matter how chipped they get. Father’s Day weekend looked like every other Father’s Day weekend. Family. Food. A few photos. A nice card. A quiet drive home.
And the loop in his head never paused. Am I providing enough? Is the business going to make it through the summer? Is this kid going to grow up and resent me? Did I just spend money I shouldn’t have? Why does the market look like that? Why do I feel like I’m one bad month from everything falling apart? That static does not turn off because someone handed him a tie and called it a holiday. It just gets louder in a quieter room.
This week on the NoBS Wealth® podcast I sat down with financial therapist Ashley Quamme to talk about the conversation our industry has spent decades avoiding. Masculinity, money, and mental health are not three separate problems. They are one. And the cost of pretending otherwise is showing up in every advisor’s office, every marriage, and every household where a father is carrying something he refuses to put down.
It Has Never Been A Harder Time To Be A Father
Ashley said it in the first ten minutes of the episode and I want to repeat it here because it’s true.
It has never been a harder time to be a good father.
Men today are being asked to swing on a pendulum that did not exist for their dads or their grandfathers. Be the leader. Be the provider. Be strong. Be the rock. But also be soft. Be emotionally available. Be nurturing. Kiss the boo boos. Talk about feelings at the dinner table. Cry at the recital. Then go close the deal, pay the bill, fix the deck, and figure out what the hell is happening with healthcare costs next year.
That’s the assignment. And most fathers are doing it with zero blueprint and zero one to talk to about it.
I feel this personally. I played college football. I have a high standard for my boys. I’m at every practice. Every game. Every camping trip. I am there. And I still sit awake some nights asking if I’m doing this right. Last summer my oldest was hitting a mental wall in his training, and I made a call my wife couldn’t make. I took the boys to the field. We ran sprints and stairs until they cried. I broke them down on purpose because I knew that was the only way they would learn they could get back up. A week later they asked when we were doing it again.
That was the right call for that moment. It might not be the right call for every moment. And the truth is, I am making it up as I go, the same way every father reading this is making it up as they go.
Pull quote: “Men experiencing economic insecurity are 16.3 times more likely to report suicidal ideation than women. That is not biology. That is shame.”
Men Don’t Have A Feelings Problem. They Have A Permission Problem.
One of the most damaging lies the world still sells is that men are wired to not feel.
Ashley shut that down inside the first segment. Men are absolutely wired to feel. The biology is there. What’s happened is centuries of cultural and evolutionary conditioning that trained men to swallow it, hide it, redirect it, or work it out of their system through productivity, aggression, or silence. None of those are feelings strategies. Those are coping mechanisms.
And the cost of those coping mechanisms is starting to show up in numbers we can no longer ignore.
Research from Equimundo found that men experiencing economic insecurity are 16.3 times more likely to report suicidal ideation than women. Read that twice. That is not a biology problem. That is a permission problem. Men have not been given permission to admit that the money stress is breaking them, so it breaks them in private. And by the time it surfaces it’s a crisis instead of a conversation.
This is the part of the financial industry that almost nobody is willing to touch. Because it doesn’t fit on a pie chart.
Why Men Won’t Ask For Help With Money
There is a stereotype that men don’t ask for directions. It’s a joke. It’s also true. And in the financial world it costs people millions over a lifetime.
Ashley pointed out that in most heterosexual couples, men carry more of the long term big picture money knowledge and women carry more of the day to day operational money knowledge. That’s not a value judgment. It’s just the pattern she sees. But here’s the wrinkle. There is a group of men who feel the expectation to know the long term stuff and don’t actually know it. And instead of saying “I don’t know,” they pretend.
That pretending is where the shame lives. That pretending is where the bad decisions get made. That pretending is why the good old boys network of financial services has stayed alive for as long as it has, because men would rather nod along with a buddy of a buddy than admit out loud that they don’t understand what’s in their portfolio.
And here is who gets hurt the most by that dynamic. Anyone who is not already inside that good old boys network. First generation wealth builders. People of color. Women-led households. LGBTQ+ business owners. Anyone whose financial education didn’t get handed down at the country club. They feel the same pressure to know, the same shame around not knowing, and they have even fewer trusted places to ask the question.
The fix isn’t more financial content. The fix is permission to ask the question without losing your dignity in the process.
Tired Of Carrying The Money Stress Alone?
If anything in this conversation is hitting close, this is the part where you stop reading and do something about it. A Power Hour is exactly what it sounds like. One hour. One conversation. We sit down, look at what’s actually going on in your financial life, and you walk away with a clear plan and zero pressure to work with me beyond that.
No pitch. No products. No bullshit. Just a real conversation about your money with someone who isn’t going to judge you for not having it figured out.
Financial Therapy Is Not What You Think It Is
The biggest misconception about financial therapy is that you have to be in crisis to need it.
You don’t.
Ashley made the case clearly. Financial therapy is not laying on a couch crying about your mother. It’s not about healing some deep trauma before you’re allowed to manage money. It’s the simple recognition that every financial decision you make is part numbers and part emotion. The late Daniel Kahneman put a number on it. Eighty percent of every financial decision is emotional or psychological. Twenty percent is math.
So if you have ever made a financial decision in your life, you have made an emotional one. The only question is whether you’re aware of the emotion driving it.
That’s what financial therapy does. It pulls the emotional driver into the light so you can see it. Once you can see it, your decisions get sharper. Your conflicts with your spouse get smaller. Your relationship with money gets clearer. And the shame loop starts to lose its grip.
This is not therapy for the broken. This is maintenance for the human.
First Gen Wealth Builders Have Their Own Quiet Crisis
One of the things Ashley named in this episode hit me square in the chest.
When you are the first person in your family to actually build wealth, nobody warned you about the weird part.
The weird part is showing up to the family reunion in a nicer car than anyone else and feeling guilty about it. The weird part is having friends who don’t get why you can’t just spend money the way you used to. The weird part is your parents not understanding what you do for a living. The weird part is realizing that the people who raised you cannot give you advice about the financial life you’re now living, because they never lived it themselves.
That isn’t a crisis. It is a stress. A real one. And it deserves to be talked about by someone who understands it.
This is the audience NoBS Wealth® exists for. First generation wealth builders. Minority and LGBTQ+ business owners. Everyday Americans building wealth without a blueprint. If that’s you, you are not alone in feeling weird about your own success. You’re just in a quiet club that nobody warned you about.
How To Actually Open The Conversation
Ashley laid out a framework in the episode that I want to repeat here for two audiences.
If you are a father reading this and any of it is landing, here is the move.
- Awareness. Come off autopilot. Just notice. Maybe you have some thoughts and feelings about money, masculinity, and provision that aren’t serving you. You don’t have to fix them yet. You just have to see them.
- Honesty. Is the way you’re thinking, feeling, and doing money actually helping you? Or is it hurting you? You probably already know the answer.
- Action. If it’s hurting you, what’s the next step? Talk to a friend. Talk to your spouse. Talk to a financial planner. Talk to a financial therapist. Talk to me. The next step isn’t a flowchart. It’s a phone call.
If you are the partner, friend, family member, or advisor of a man who’s clearly carrying something, do not approach him with a clipboard and a plan. That conversation will go nowhere.
Come at him with curiosity. Ask if any of his friends ever talk about feeling pressure to provide. Let him talk about other people first. Most men will start to drop their guard once they realize you’re not there to fix them. You’re there to listen. The door opens slowly. Walk through it slowly.
For the advisors reading this, same playbook. Use story. Talk about other clients (without breaking confidentiality) who feel the weight your current client is carrying. People recognize themselves in stories before they recognize themselves in questions. Use the story as the bridge.
Conclusion
Here is the central truth of this entire episode, and I’m going to say it the way I said it on the show.
The most dangerous financial decisions in your life are not because you are stupid. They are because you are too proud to ask.
That pride costs marriages. It costs businesses. It costs net worth. And in the worst cases, it costs lives. Sixteen point three times more likely to report suicidal ideation is not a statistic you get to scroll past because it feels heavy. That stat is somebody’s brother. Somebody’s father. Somebody’s husband. Somebody’s friend.
So here is the ask. If you are a father, find one person you can be honest with about your money stress this week. Just one. Not your full life story. Not a confession. Just one honest sentence to one human who isn’t going to fix you. That’s the starting line.
If you love a father, ask him a question and then shut up and listen. Don’t fix. Don’t problem solve. Don’t suggest a budgeting app. Just listen.
That is how the silence breaks.
Comment Question: Dads, who is the one person in your life you actually let see your money stress? And if there isn’t one, what’s stopping you from finding them?