EP57- Female Financial Independence Series: Financial control is not just for stay at home mums

With me today is Sandra Ten Hoope is a successful corporate lawyer and toxic relationship awareness advocate and author. She is using her experience of surviving not one, but three abusive relationships, to help other professional women change their life. We talked about her story and she shared some things that you could be looking out to get out of the abusive relationship as early as you can.

People have this idea that abuse only happens in a certain area, like certain neighborhoods, to women who are not working or those who work on low paid jobs. No matter what you’re culturally from, it doesn’t matter financially, what your financial standing is or what your career CV looks like, abuse happens.This happens to women from all backgrounds, doing all kinds of things and in all kinds of ways. 

Another false idea is that abuse is just being hit in the face or other parts of your body. abuse is way more than being physically hit. Emotional abuse, its financial abuse is sexual abuse, its physical abuse. But any element that makes you feel not worthy or not seen or not heard, that makes you wonder that makes you feel guilty that makes you feel ashamed. All of those, take those signs seriously.

The truth is, the outside world will never know if abuse is already happening in a relationship. Abusers know create that image of good, amazing, wonderful person while the abused tend to not let the world know what’s going on because of fear or most of the time, shame. 

This is why, Women Aid, plays a very important role in changing the lives of these abuse women. Women wouldn’t be able to get out of the abusive relationship confidently. Women’s aid could give guidance on a lot of legal financial issues, but also provide sort of hands on care, be it in a safe house or other kinds of support groups that help them to get balanced again.

At the end of the day, there are still things we can do to protect ourselves from being in a very vulnerable position financially.   

1. Don’t let just one person handle all finances in the relationship. Make sure you don’t let a single person in the relationship take all the responsibility of the family’s finances because when all else fails and the relationship comes to worst, the other person will be left with nothing. At all.
2. If you choose to have a joint account, make sure that you have insight of what’s going on with the money on a regular basis so you can immediately react when you see any irregularities. And if so there are ways to seek help in creating a step plan, if you decide that it’s so off balance.

Financial independence doesn’t mean you got a million pounds in the bank, it just means if you needed to pay for a service or product, for your wants or needs, you won’t need to ask for money from anyone because you can provide it for yourself. Always aim for financial freedom because only then that you will be left with options when things go off balance. You have the option to leave if necessary and build a future for yourself on your own terms.

Grab the book called Do Not Try HIM At Home. And it covers feeling relationships, one with a womanizer, one with what I refer to as the abuser, because there was physical abuse in that relationship, and one with an addict. You can also visit her website to know more about her and her advocacy. Sandra’s main aim is to raise awareness that there are various types of abuse and it can happen to anybody. And she believes that if there is awareness then others might wake up earlier that she did. And stay connected with her on Facebook

Listen to the full podcast here.