And while traditionally it’s all about love for others, what about self-love, and in particular, self love of the financial variety?

Because, let’s be honest, how often do we betray ourselves, treating ourselves worse than we would others? Demanding more of ourselves than is reasonable, or accepting things that we’d advise our besties not to?

Sometimes it shows up like this:

Saying yes to things we don’t want to do, using up time and subsequently money that we don’t have

Taking on unpaid or low paid work, because we don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings

Failing to speak up and ask for the pay rises, promotions and remuneration we know we’ve earned and deserve  

Ignoring, or deprioritising our financial planning because we’re ‘too busy’ and subsequently storing up problems for later life?

Not treating ‘no’ as a complete sentence.
 
In isolation, our struggle to prioritise financial self-love is bad enough. However when you consider recent news such as calls to extend the retirement age and potential changes to our basic working rights, along with ongoing gender pay, investment and pension gaps, we’re facing a perfect storm of factors that could cause lasting damage.
 
With the stakes so high, can we continue to fall short when it comes to our self-love?