#69: Abby Davisson on what the Data Says about Money and Love

In this week’s all-new episode, podcast host and entrepreneur, Melissa Kiguwa speaks with social innovation leader and co-author of the book Money and Love Abby Davisson. Most recently, Abby spent nine years as president of the Gap Foundation and co-founded the organization’s employee resource group for working parents, which has been featured as a best practice for how employers can support dual-career couples. In her book, Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions, co-authored with labor economist Dr. Myra Strober, the two offer a cutting-edge guide for navigating life’s most consequential and daunting decisions using research-based insights road-tested in a popular Stanford University course. 

Highlights:

– Abby leads off the conversation with how decisions about money and love are inextricably bound and that when we compartmentalize the two, we miss out on a critical opportunity to leverage the entirety of the information, along with our own  response to it, to make more meaningful, holistic life decisions.

– Next, she outlines a flexible, but sturdy, framework when grappling with some of life’s bigger decisions.

– Next, Abby relates how being married can feel like being the CEO of a very unglamorous non-profit especially when the function of caregiving is so undervalued by our society. Having love and money conversations are uncomfortable. No one is eager to talk with their new romantic partner about their massive student loan debt. It’s completely easy to put off these conversations, so she offers a helpful hack for how to get out of the day-to-day routine and make time to have meaningful engagement around the topics. 

– Lastly, Abby shares her (and her co-author’s) audacious vision for the world… for people to finally realize that money and love are profoundly intertwined, but that it's not enough to solve these issues on an individual level, and that for society to really change, we need to address them on a communal and cultural level so that in the future we all have fewer negative trade-offs that ultimately hinder our lifelong happiness.

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