Shannah Game
I help people stop lying about money. About what it cost. About what it means. About who they had to become to keep up with it.
See Shannah in action.
Two minutes inside the conversation — the warmth, the wit, the room she creates wherever she speaks.
"I'm a financial expert who discovered the real problem isn't financial literacy — it's the stories we inherit about who we are and what we're worth."
Shannah Game is a Certified Financial Planner™, Certified Trauma of Money Specialist, and author of Unraveling Your Relationship with Money (Wiley, 2025). After 20 years inside the world of personal finance — and 10 years hosting a top-rated money podcast — she discovered something the industry doesn't want to say out loud: information isn't what changes people. Identity is.
Today she's one of the only financial experts formally trained in trauma-informed money work — and the only one bringing this conversation to the stage as part keynote, part one-woman performance. She speaks with warmth, wit, and radical honesty about the stories we inherit, the receipts we hide, and what it costs to keep pretending. Audiences leave feeling seen, steadier, and finally able to tell the truth about money.
She started a podcast in 2015 with a $10 microphone. Ten years and 28 million downloads later, she sold Everyone's Talkin' Money — one of the New York Times' Top 4 money podcasts — and turned her full attention to the conversation almost no one is having: the inherited stories about money, identity, and worth that are running our lives.
Four conversations
audiences don't forget.
Part keynote, part one-woman performance. Shannah tells the true story of inheriting her father's hunger for "more" and her mother's shame around wanting any of it — and how she spent two decades folding receipts into origami so no one would see what she was spending to feel like a person. Unraveling is about the stories about money, worth, and identity we receive before we're old enough to refuse them — and what it takes to finally put them down. Audiences leave undone, in the best way: clearer about who they are, what they've been performing, and what they actually want.
What the audience gets
- A new lens on the stories they've been carrying since childhood
- Permission to stop performing financial success
- The difference between a story you inherited and a story you chose
- An experience they'll still be talking about weeks later
What the organization gets
- A truly distinctive keynote experience — not another panel
- Builds psychological safety across the room within minutes
- Works for mixed-gender, women's, and leadership audiences
- The signature talk people remember the conference by
Every receipt tells a story. The Lululemon leggings weren't about the leggings. The DoorDash wasn't about dinner. The "I'll just put it on the card" wasn't about the card. Shannah unpacks what we're actually buying when we spend — belonging, safety, relief, an identity we're trying to hold onto — and why the budget will never fix it. This talk gives audiences a new way to look at their own spending without shame, and a language for the part of money no spreadsheet can touch. The session that makes the financial wellness benefits you already offer actually get used.
What the audience gets
- Why "track your spending" never works long-term
- The emotional contract underneath every purchase
- A way to look at receipts without judgment
- Tools that work because they're rooted in self-honesty, not discipline
What the organization gets
- Higher engagement with existing financial wellness benefits
- Addresses financial stress — a top driver of lost productivity
- A session employees actually attend, share, and reference later
- Gets to the emotional root, not just the mechanics
You hit the number. You closed the deal. You got the title. And nothing changed. Shannah talks about the moment in a parking lot when she finally hit her made-up "enough" number — $30,000 a month — and felt absolutely nothing. Enough is about the arrival fallacy that's quietly running high performers into the ground: the belief that the next milestone will be the one that finally feels like rest. This talk gives audiences permission to stop running long enough to ask what they're actually running toward — and the language to define "enough" on their own terms instead of inheriting someone else's.
What the audience gets
- Why achievement never silences the "not yet" feeling
- The cost of high-functioning and quietly exhausted
- How to separate inherited "enough" from chosen "enough"
- A way to stop running without feeling like they failed
What the organization gets
- Addresses burnout in top performers — the people you can't afford to lose
- A vulnerable, relatable session that creates connection across levels
- Tools people apply to work, money, and life immediately
- Works powerfully for leadership and women's audiences
Nobody warns women that perimenopause doesn't just change the body — it changes the relationship with money. The 3 a.m. money spirals. The decision fatigue. The brain fog hitting right in peak earning years. As a CFP who didn't see it coming herself, Shannah names the connection no one in personal finance is talking about — and gives women language, validation, and tools for the most under-discussed financial transition of their lives.
What the audience gets
- Why money suddenly feels harder in midlife — even when the numbers haven't changed
- How hormonal shifts affect risk, spending, and decision-making
- Permission to stop blaming themselves
- Practical scaffolding for big financial decisions during transition
What the organization gets
- Support for retaining experienced women (40–55) — the fastest-leaving demographic
- A genuinely novel session with high attendance and word-of-mouth
- Leadership positioning on women's midlife wellbeing
- A topic employees are desperate for and rarely offered
This is what it looks like.
The conversation people
are still having weeks later.
Attendees don't just remember Shannah's talks — they describe being changed by them. Here's what they say in their own words.
Unraveling Your Relationship with Money
Discover & Ditch Your Money Trauma So You Can Live an Abundant Life
Published by Wiley · 2025The book takes audiences deeper into the work Shannah brings on stage — the emotional patterns underneath spending, saving, shame, and avoidance, and how to finally rewrite them. A powerful pairing for book club selections, audience giveaways, and follow-up workshops.
I don't think anyone has had more public conversations helping people untangle their money stories than Shannah Game — and now she's packaged her wisdom into this generous, transformative guide for us all.
Bake It Out.
Shannah's new YouTube show and Substack series, Bake It Out, brings audiences into her kitchen for the conversation women aren't having about money, midlife, and identity — one bake at a time.
The show extends Shannah's keynote work into long-form, intimate, and shareable storytelling — and gives event organizers an active, growing audience touchpoint to reference, promote alongside, and cross-pollinate with their own programming.
Bake It Out
The kitchen-table conversation about money, midlife, and what we're really hungry for.
Watch on YouTube →Built to fit your event.
Keynote
45–60 minutes. The signature experience — part keynote, part kitchen-table conversation. Warm, funny, and quietly transformative.
Workshop
60–90 minutes with a guided workbook. Interactive, reflective, and built for groups that want to go deeper than a talk.
Virtual & Fireside
Remote keynotes, moderated Q&A, fireside chats, and panels. Flexible for hybrid teams and virtual events.
You're not bad with money. You've been performing a story you didn't write.
Answers to the questions
most organizers ask.
Everything you need to know about working with Shannah, before you even pick up the phone.
Booking Shannah.
At a glance
Who she speaks to
- Corporate culture & leadership conferences
- Financial wellness & HR programming
- Women's ERGs & internal women's initiatives
- Leadership summits & professional associations
- TED-style stages & lecture series
- Women's health, menopause & midlife events
- Theaters, festivals & performance venues
- Alumni associations & conferences
Let's give your audience
a conversation they can't unhear.
The kind that doesn't end when the lights come up — the kind people are still talking about weeks later.
Book Shannah to Speak