Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm your host for this week, Jen Liu, and I'm the Assistant

Controller at the Moth. I'm recording this episode during tax season in the U.S., which

can be a time of confusion and anxiety for millions of Americans. Part of my job as an accountant

at the Moth is to help my team feel more comfortable with money. Want to know how many

tickets we sold at a story slam? I have a report for that. Want a donation count from

the annual Moth Ball? I have a report for that. Having a report for that makes the whole

thing sound easy. But translating millions of tiny details into one digestible story

is a lot harder than it looks. On the podcast today, we have two stories about everyday people

struggling to make sense of the impact that money has on their relationships and their

inner growth. First up, Sarah Rosa S. B. Jacobson. Sarah told this story at a Sydney story slam

where the theme of the night was, you guessed it, money. Here's Sarah, live at the Moth.

So when people used to tell me that cultural or language differences can put strain on

a new relationship, I thought it was ridiculous. I just fall in in love with a Dutch girl

and I thought, you say, art apple, I say potato, who cares? And then one day, quite soon

in the relationship, we're in that state of finding out everything about each other. We were

sitting on a bench covered in pigeon poo looking at some traffic. And she said to me, could

you please give me that 10 euros for the concert ticket I bought for you? Now that concert

was a concert she had invited me to. A concert that she was playing the harp at, actually.

And a concert I would never otherwise chosen to see. And I said, excuse me. And I suddenly

thought, this isn't going to work. This is really not going to work. The language thing

is okay. But the fact is we don't speak the same money language. And then we tell you

a bit about my money language coming from a large South African Jewish family. In my family,

...