It's All Relative with Dr Eliza Filby

Women are earning more than men in more relationships. So why does being the breadwinner still feel like a trap? Female breadwinners, women earning more than their husbands, the mental load, mankeeping, gender roles and the economics of marriage are changing relationships across Britain and beyond. Dual-income households have become the norm, fathers are doing more domestic work, and women have ac...

We’ve spent years talking about the motherhood penalty. It’s time we talked about the eldercare penalty. The number of childfree women and women without children is rising, raising some fascinating questions about money, pensions, eldercare, inheritance, retirement and the motherhood penalty. At first glance, women without children appear to have a significant financial advantage: no career break...

Have I saved enough for retirement? Perhaps we should also be asking: who do I want to spend retirement with? We talk endlessly about retirement planning, pensions, financial security, ageing and longevity. But there's another form of retirement planning we rarely discuss: friendship. As Millennials and Gen X think about later life, female friendship, co-housing, communal living and the loneli...

Women and men don't start the working day with the same relationship to time and we rarely talk about it. The pink tax, female time penalty, mental load, women at work, gender inequality, emotional labour, workplace productivity and AI are usually discussed as separate issues. I think they're connected. Women spend more time getting ready, more time organising family life and, often, more...

The housing ladder is broken. For Millennials and Gen Z, buying a home increasingly requires a leap. The UK housing crisis, first-time buyers, house prices, mortgages, renting, the Bank of Mum and Dad, and inheritance have fundamentally changed what home ownership means. For previous generations, the property ladder promised gradual progress: buy a flat, build equity, trade up to a family home. Fo...

Do you still lie to your parents about money? Even in your 40s? You are definitely not alone. The Bank of Mum and Dad, inheritance, generational wealth, financial independence, family money and the cost of living are changing the relationship between parents and their adult children. We talk a lot about the inequality created by parental wealth, but much less about what happens inside families whe...

Elon Musk thinks we will have AI Abundance in 10 years. Everyone is asking whether AI will replace jobs. The AI bubble is potentially on the horizon. Beyond the hype and the panic however, is the more interesting question: what is AI revealing about the way we work today? Over the past few weeks, I've become increasingly convinced that we're focusing on the wrong AI story. Yes, artificial...

I address the gender divide, the manosphere, the femosphere, dating, social media algorithms, birth rates, and loneliness in this episode. Are men and women still living in the same world, or are our phones creating entirely different realities? I didn't set out to make an episode about the gender divide. It emerged after two completely different conversations. One was with demographer Dr Paul...

Which profession earns the most? Corporate lawyers, doctors, teachers, Tech? In the context of the housing crisis, the Bank of Mum and Dad, social mobility, and the future of work. If the cost of everything has gone up, who can still afford life on a salary alone? That was the question that sparked this episode. A few months ago, my team and I analysed a simple idea: if house prices, childcare, ed...

Gen Z, AI, the future of work, hybrid working, graduate jobs and career advice. Why has an entire generation been labelled lazy when the real story is that work itself has fundamentally changed? Every time I speak to senior leaders, the same questions come up. Why won't Gen Z come into the office? Why don't they stay in jobs? Why are they so obsessed with work-life balance? The assumption...

The future of work is changing. Entrepreneurship, AI, portfolio careers, career advice, Gen Z, millennials, small business, financial resilience, purpose, and freedom are reshaping what a successful career looks like. In this episode, I reflect on my own journey from academia to building a business, and the career advice that completely changed my life. When I was in my thirties, someone gave me a...

The defining political emotion of the 21st century is powerlessness, says Grace Blakeley who I sat down with on this episode. Capitalism, inequality, stagnant wages, the housing crisis, Gen Z, millennials, entrepreneurship, AI, social mobility, and the future of work are all colliding in ways that are reshaping how we live, work, and think about our future. If capitalism won, why do so many people...

Birth rates are collapsing. Fertility rates are falling. Populations are ageing. And governments around the world are starting to panic. I sit down with world-leading demographer Dr Paul Morland, author of No One Left, to explore one of the most important and misunderstood issues shaping our future: demographic decline. Together we unpack what falling birth rates really mean for economies, welfare...

I'm joined by youth culture expert and researcher Konrad Collao to unpack one of the most analysed, stereotyped, and misunderstood generations on the planet: Gen Z.Everyone seems to have an opinion about Gen Z.They're either saving the world or destroying it. They're activists or apathetic. Entrepreneurs or work-shy. Progressive heroes or victims of the manosphere. But what if most of...

Multiple income streams, side hustles, moonlighting, portfolio careers, AI disruption, and remote work. Why are more professionals working two jobs, building side businesses and preparing for an increasingly uncertain economy? This week on It's All Relative, I explore the end of the one-salary life and the rise of the moonlighting middle-class professional. For years, we've associated mult...

This week on It’s All Relative, I sit down with Financial Times columnist Clare Barrett to unpack one of the defining generational questions of our time:What happens when an entire generation grows up expecting economic instability? Unlike millennials, who came of age during a consumer boom, Gen Z were shaped by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, stagnant wages, unaffordable housing, and...

This week on It’s All Relative, I explore one of the defining cultural questions of the 2020s: Who gets to be creative anymore? Because increasingly, traditional creative careers are becoming the preserve of the financially secure. The children of affluent families. The beneficiaries of the Bank of Mum and Dad. Those who can afford unpaid internships, unstable income and years of uncertainty. And...

This week on It’s All Relative, I unpack exclusive polling data from OnePoll, looking at how under-45s in Britain are really coping financially. And the findings are stark.38% of respondents said they felt worse off after receiving a pay rise. Not because pay rises don’t matter. But because rising wages are being immediately absorbed by housing costs, childcare, debt repayments, tax, and the gener...

This week on It’s All Relative, I unpack my recent conversation with Simon Sinek and explore why AI is transforming work and exposing everything that was already broken about it. The collapse of stable careers. The erosion of loyalty between employer and employee. The rise of individualism. The breakdown of the old life script. For decades, we sold people a very clear promise: Work hard. Get a deg...

Are you actually rich? Middle class wealth, income vs wealth, cost of living, generational wealth and inequality, why so many people feel poor in a rich country. If you earn £50k… you’re in the top 30% of earners in the UK.And yet most people on that salary would not describe themselves as rich. So what’s going on? In this episode of It’s All Relative, I unpack one of the biggest misconceptions sh...

Are women becoming more “materialistic”… or just more realistic? In this episode of It’s All Relative, I unpack one of the most controversial conversations happening right now around dating, relationships, and money. Because increasingly, we’re hearing that women are becoming more selective, more financially focused, even “gold diggers”.I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think we’re seeing t...

AI in universities, ChatGPT students, is a degree still worth it? Future of education, student debt, and assessment — is AI exposing a deeper problem with higher education? Are universities facing an AI crisis… or is AI simply revealing a crisis that was already there? In this episode of It’s All Relative, I explore how AI is transforming university education — and why the real issue may not be st...

Friendship and money, class differences, millennials, Gen Z, social mobility, and the Bank of Mum and Dad. How money is reshaping our friendships. We don’t like to talk about money when it comes to friendship. It feels uncomfortable. Slightly taboo. Almost… inappropriate. Friendship is supposed to be the one space where money doesn’t matter. And yet, increasingly, I think it does. In this episode...

Pensions, retirement planning, millennials, Gen X, and money. Why ignoring your pension could cost you hundreds of thousands. At 28, I made what I now think is one of the most expensive decisions of my life. I opted out of my pension. At the time, it didn’t feel reckless. It felt… rational. I needed cash. I was freelancing. I was living month to month. Retirement felt abstract, distant, irrelevant...

Gen Alpha charts, Gen Alpha data, Gen Alpha parents, Gen Alpha childhood trends – 8 charts every parent must see. This week on It’s All Relative, Dr Eliza Filby reveals Gen Alpha data on the rise of only children, gaming addiction, myopia crisis, Sephora tweens, shadow schooling, and why Gen Alpha calls parents "overwhelmed."Gen Alpha (born 2010–2025) is hitting teenage years amid the AI...