Money is never just about money. It’s identity, history, and how we see ourselves in the mirror. Today, we’re joined by psychotherapist Holli Rubin, whose work sits at the intersection of mental health, body image, and financial wellbeing. She specializes in life transitions and women’s mental health, and she’s advised organizations from Deloitte to wealth management firms on the psychology of money and confidence.

In our conversation, Holli unpacks why so many women carry shame and doubt around money, how early messages about worth, care work, and “who earns” shape our financial confidence and why self-worth gets tangled up with net worth. We also explore her nuanced link between body image and money: the ways appearance and status cues can mask (or magnify) our inner stories about value, security, and belonging. And crucially, she offers practical ways to move from awareness to action, especially in midlife when careers, relationships, and health are all in flux.

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In this week’s Ask Farnoosh, Farnoosh opens with a personal story about a $5,000 fraud attempt on her business checking account—and what she learned about staying vigilant. She then breaks down today’s biggest money headlines: the Fed’s recent interest rate cut, why U.S. credit scores just saw their sharpest drop since 2008, shifts in the housing market, and why groceries and rent are still stubbornly high despite easing inflation elsewhere. Farnoosh also answers a wide range of listener questions from investing to estate planning.

Register for Farnoosh's investing workshop on Sept 30th.

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What happens when ambition—the very quality that’s supposed to fuel our success—ends up making us sick?

My guest today, Amina AlTai, knows this firsthand. On a sweltering July morning in New York City, she got a call from her doctor that changed everything: if she didn’t head to the hospital immediately, she was just days away from multiple organ failure. The cause? Years of overwork and overstriving, rooted in her experience as the child of immigrants, navigating a post-9/11 workplace with an Arab name, and feeling she had to be the hardest working person in the room to matter.

That wake-up call set Amina on a journey of healing and reinvention, eventually becoming an executive coach to senior leaders and women around the world. From her work and her own life, she’s come to see that ambition isn’t the enemy—but the way we relate to it can be. In her new book The Ambition Trap: How to Stop Chasing and Start Living, she introduces us to two kinds of ambition: the painful kind, driven by wounds like rejection or injustice, and the purposeful kind, rooted in truth and wholeness.

We’ll talk about how to spot the difference, how to break free from the “painful ambition” that leaves us exhausted and disconnected, and what it looks like to redirect that drive in ways that nourish us, support our communities, and bring lasting fulfillment.

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