Money stress is often framed as a budgeting or discipline problem, but that story misses what’s really going on. In this episode of Dr. Sev Talks Money, we explore why money stress isn’t a discipline problem and how emotions, experiences, and beliefs shape our financial decisions.
This conversation dives into the emotional side of money, financial wellness, and what it actually takes to move from financial stress to confidence. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, behind, or frustrated with money despite “doing the right things,” this episode offers insight, relief, and a more compassionate path forward
My guest is Jennifer Edwards, who helps people move from financial stress into confident action. Combining CFP®, Certified Financial Therapist™, Trauma of Money, and Psychology of Money credentials, she addresses what traditional financial advice misses: the psychology, relationships, and emotions driving every money decision. Jennifer has guided hundreds of individuals and couples through financial transformation. Her work across diverse economic and cultural backgrounds provides unique insight into real-world money challenges and the ability to connect authentically with any audience.
Contact Jennifer here:
breakthroughfinancialwellness.com
je**************@*****************ss.com
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The Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast’s mission is to empower women to approach money confidently, reframe their financial habits, and build a future where their money is a tool for opportunity and security. Through Dr. Sev Talks Money YouTube channel and Podcast, I provide actionable advice and inspiration to help you achieve financial freedom. Join me for one-on-one coaching, group sessions, workshops, or speaking engagements as we journey to financial empowerment together. It’s never too late to begin again—let’s make it happen!
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Transcript for Money Stress Isn’t a Discipline Problem
Hey, hey, hey, Savvy Squad. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money, YouTube and podcast, where we empower women to manage money confidently. Today we’re talking about why money stress isn’t a discipline problem, and why that realization can be so freeing. I’m joined by Jennifer Edwards, a Certified Financial Planner and financial wellness specialist.
Who helps people move from financial stress to lasting confidence. With training in financial therapy and trauma-informed money work she focuses on both the numbers and the emotions behind money decisions. Jennifer, welcome to the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast.
Thanks Dr. Sev. I’m so happy to be here.
Alright, let’s jump into it. I know this is going to be an exciting, discussion, because a lot of us are so emotionally tied to our money, and if we can learn to understand the relationship between our emotions and our money, I think that will be freeing for many of us. So I like to start off with a little icebreaker.
What’s the first big thing you remember buying with your own money? And do you still think it was worth it?
Yes. I have a very distinct memory about this because I learned very quickly that I have a tendency to be irresponsible. So I I was eight years old and my, maybe I was a little bit younger than that.
Because my parents instituted an, allowance system, and I’m the oldest in my family. And I saved up, I think it was like 50 cents a week, and I saved up and saved up and saved up to get my ears pierced. My parents said, yes, you may get your ears pierced, but you have to pay for it with your own money, and it must have cost, I don’t know, eight or $10.
This is back in the eighties. And then I went and got my ears pierced and it was at a beauty college, so that’s why it was less expensive. And they pierced my ears, looked all great, but you’re supposed to take care of that.
Like you’re supposed to use cotton and put alcohol behind them and you have to treat your ears after you get them pierced. And I got them pierced and then I didn’t do any of that.
Like, I didn’t follow the instructions and my ears ended up closing up. And so I had to save all over again to get my ears pierced a second time. So that’s my earliest money, memory of what I remember buying and saving up for .
Yeah, so like it was a wee bit of an expensive lesson, right?
Twice as much to get my ears pierced. Most people probably don’t even pay the initial fee. Their parents just do it for them. But I had to save up twice for that same experience.
So for someone who’s meeting you for the first time, tell us who you are and the work that you do.
Yeah, so I’m Jennifer Edwards. I’m a financial wellness specialist, a certified financial therapist and certified financial planner. And the work that I do is I work with individuals and families and couples to try to understand why they behave, think, and relate the way that they do around money, not just.
What you can do differently, but we get into the why behind it. So we work on the emotional the relational. So a lot of things have to do with how are couples communicating around money. How, what’s your dominant trauma response and how that shows up in your relationship with money. We talk about systemic influences that are making it difficult to succeed with money or reach your goals.
Uh, so all of those things that are behind our financial behavior, and it’s just really helping us understand that true lasting financial change. It doesn’t happen just by understanding the numbers. Oh, I should be saving this to reach this goal. So we’re really trying to move people out of shame and out of confusion into that.
The light of clarity and confidence and just a healthier relationship with money altogether.
Yeah, I love that because money is so much bigger than the numbers, and the numbers are actually on the tail end of understanding our money. It’s really the emotions and the things that we attach to the decisions and the behaviors,
around money. I love the work that you are doing. So let me ask you this. Many people think money problems mean they’re bad with money or they lack discipline. I’ve heard that so many times.
I’m bad with money. But we know it’s bigger than that. So how can someone tell when their money struggles are deeper than just budgeting? Or a lack of financial knowledge,
Pretty much you can. Almost assume that they always are. Okay. So, it’s almost always deeper. So just sort of assume that and one way that you can tell if it’s more than just I need to understand more, like get more education, that can be part of it for sure.
Some people just don’t know maybe how credit scores are calculated and so they’ve got a not great credit score, but they didn’t know how. To change that or how that happened. And with budgeting, it can just be like learning how to establish a habit, but most of the time it comes below that. Is, especially if you look at what’s going on inside of your body and inside of your mind when you are trying to make a certain financial change.
So especially go to that neurological layer of your system and see if you feel any tension. Or if you feel kind of a, a shutdown down avoidance response when you think about doing a certain financial action, especially if it’s recurring. If it’s like every time I sit down to do my bills, or every time I sit down to, plan, make a spending and savings plan, or every time I think about talking with my boss about a raise or about my spouse, about, an expense that I would like for us to consider saving up for.
Because that’s a lot of times where the hangup lies is our body actually doesn’t feel safe doing that because we got a message in our childhood about money being.
Dangerous or something to be avoided. Scary, that kind of thing.
That resonates so much. And that leads me to my next question. Money doesn’t exist in a vacuum, so how do things like family expectations , culture or larger systems influence the way people think and feel about money? And I think you alluded to some of that in your last response.
Yeah, well, it has a lot to do with it. In fact, when I’m working with individuals, we talk about the family system that they are in because they’re not gonna be able to affect a change in their life without it affecting the system. So what’s going to happen in that system?
Let’s say you’ve got a first generation professional. Maybe a person of color or someone who comes from a marginalized community in the United States and they start to move up the economic ladder, there’s gonna be changes that’s really disruptive to the system that they come from. And so we talk about how are we going to deal with that?
Hopefully even before it happens, but usually they’re coming and going, my family’s asking me for all kinds of help with their finances and with their money, and I’m trying to get ahead and save for retirement and save for my house down payment, and yet I’ve got my own goals and my own family needs, and then.
My extended family is all coming to me. So there can be a lot of those factors and we’re always acknowledging that they’re there. That’s, one of the major layers is that relational layer inside of our families that affect our ability to be successful with money. Another part of this is that in the US there’s this emphasis on individualism and self-reliance and kind of this assumption that wherever you are financially, it’s up to you and it’s your responsibility alone.
And there’s a lot of cultures in the country. That value a different way of interacting with resources, more of a shared communal resource sharing, collective support type of a culture. So when those messages conflict. There’s a lot of emotions going on. People feeling like torn between two worlds.
They might feel like there’s this I don’t fit into either one space. And so, this dissonance that you’re feeling inside is reflective of what we’re experiencing on the outside.
I love how you connected those dots and that takeaway, because again we’re dealing with the internal things, emotions and the feelings and this on our money story and how we relate to money.
But there is a bigger system at play and so we have to be aware. Even as practitioners, how we can help our clients deal with not just the internal but the external. Which leads me to my next question. If you could change one thing about how financial professionals approach money and wellness , what would it be and what do you wish more professionals really understand as they relate to their clients?
It’s almost a, catch 22 because the financial, at least the financial planning industry, which is where I come from, not, banking and just investments, but really where you’re helping people create an entire financial plan, a holistic plan about, your short-term security, long-term security, legacy planning, all of that, that most of that.
Industry is sustained from people’s anxiety around money and their inability to make sound decisions because they’re often working from a place of emotion. You see this play out a lot of times. A lot of the profession is around trying to keep people calm. In when there’s market turmoil. It’s almost like that’s our big pitch.
Like at some point there’s going to be a big market disruption. There’s gonna be a, a recession or something’s gonna happen to the market. It’s gonna go all over wonky, and you are going to want to react emotionally and that’s going to be a mistake because the plan will work. It’s got, safeguards.
Built into it. It’s got guardrails, it’s got stress tests. We know that the market the business cycle goes up and it goes down. We have expansionary periods. We have contractionary periods. We don’t know the top of the, the peak, and we don’t know the bottom of the trough, but we know that they’re going to happen.
And I will be there as your professional guide to help you through that so that we can stay the course and keep your plan on track. If we actually helped them heal those money wounds that are leading to that emotional decision making, usually that is based in fear. So fear of missing out on possible gains.
So that’s kind of a, like where we talk about greed, that is from Carl Richards work where, fear and greed repeat until broke. And then the fear that you’re gonna lose all of your money, right? That, I mean, this is the baseline fear of survival. Our survival instinct kicks in and goes, what if all of my money is gone?
And, then I’m not able to, even sustain a basic standard of living in retirement. This is where those base instincts kick in. So it would be, an interesting thing because if we actually healed those wounds. And they were actually able to make decisions from a place of confidence and clarity, and they were no longer like.
Oh yeah. I mean, the market’s gonna go up and down. I get this. I don’t even look at it like I didn’t even know that was happening. That’s what we really should be after. But if they really feel that way, if they’ve really got that down, they probably don’t need our guidance, at least to the level of the fees that most financial planners charge.
And so. I think that the new financial planning model ought to be more about this emotional and psychological support than really like, Hey, we’ve got this plan and then we’re gonna help facilitate conversations that are difficult. We’re gonna help you heal it, help heal money wounds. We’re gonna help you both understand each other’s money, beliefs, and money stories.
And then I will be here to, take over the busy work of managing. Your finances much more than like, whenever the market, has a downturn and then you know, everybody’s working overtime to keep people calm. Um, you’d really be measuring your success by, it doesn’t actually change what your clients are doing.
I couldn’t agree with you more and we’ll have some more conversation around that after this short break. Hey friends, quick pause. If you are enjoying today’s episode , the best way to support the show is to share it and leave us a rating. And don’t forget to subscribe. If you are watching us on YouTube, we’d love to have your support.
We’d love for you to follow us on all of our podcast platforms. So back to our conversation with Jennifer. Again, I love the way you stated that because as professionals we have to have that awareness, right? We have to have that awareness of our clients beyond the money beyond managing their plans,
Because the money doesn’t existin a vacuum for our clients. So going back to another question I wanted to ask you earlier, you’ve worked with. People from many different backgrounds. What money habits or emotional patterns do you see show up no matter how much someone earns, this is a repeatable money habit or pattern that you’ve seen.
So really just about every level of the economic ladder experiences some kind of financial stress. And the reason that poverty is so stressful is because it eliminates a basic human need of self-determination. So when you’re living in poverty, you feel like you have no choices. Your money’s spent before you even get it.
You owe it to somebody. You just hardly have any choices. You’re just, you’re putting out fires right and left. And that feeling of constantly being out of control and not being able to. To really have any say in the way that you’re in the direction of your life is why poverty is such a difficult place to live in terms of our psychology, right?
We’re, saying we, want to have some sort of say, we want to have some kind of choices in our lives and even mistakes. We want the right to. Make those mistakes. We wanna be able to feel like, oh yeah, I can learn from failure, I can learn from doing things wrong once or twice, and I can, make things better going forward.
What, happens then once we are out of poverty and we get into a state where we have some options or we have some choices, then we have the stress of making those choices because we don’t want to make catastrophic choices. We don’t even wanna make even little, mistakes. One of the things in our culture in the United States is that.
The system that we have really leads to a toxic perfectionism. Where it’s almost wrong. It’s like we can’t afford to make mistakes. We’re looked down upon when, oh yeah, I got into some credit card debt in my twenties, and that can follow you for, years. You’ve got this on your credit report for eight years,
It can really hamper a whole decade of your life and what’s possible for you. So this is one of the reasons why I do what I do, is to try to help people avoid those mistakes because we don’t want to make them. But then also we have to recognize that those choices, that comes with some stress as well.
So even people with high net worth. It’s so interesting how, you’ve got people in this country who are worth more than the gross national product of some countries in this world they have more in the bank than a whole country could produce. And yet they don’t feel satisfied.
They don’t feel content, they don’t feel like they have enough. And so that level of anxiety of it’s always possible to imagine that we need more. Like, oh, well what if this happens, then I’m gonna need even more. Oh, what I remember that feeling of that climb when we were first starting out in our married life, and I thought if I had $5,000 in the bank, I would feel
so much relief. Whew. We’d be able to cover it. That at that time that was like gonna cover out-of-pocket max for our health insurance and, cover two, three months of expenses. And, then as soon as we got to the $5,000 level, I started imagining. Will I need 10,000? Because I was a stay at home mom who homeschooled our children.
So it’s like, what happens if, disability is actually worse off than death and we don’t have insurance that covers that doesn’t really replace your income. So it’s like, oh, I need more money. I need more money for this. Oh, what happens now? I’ve got adult children.
What happens if one of them gets divorced or one of them gets into a major accident and then, I have to sustain them again? You can always imagine the need for more. So we have this kind of constant anxiety around. Choices and then the high net worth people that they’re concerned about their money being misused after their death.
There’s almost always something that is, is worrisome to people.
That makes so much sense you made a statement about freedom to make mistakes. Society doesn’t give us that freedom. Well, let me not say, to give us, because it’s not for them to give, they pretty much punish us.
There’s a lot of meaning around it. Yeah. They, punish us or try to punish us for mistakes, what they deem as mistakes, because this is the way it’s supposed to go. This Is the path to wealth. This is the path. To education. This is the path to a career or whatever it is. And if you deviate from that path, they almost wanna punish you when you have all these people saying, well this is how I did it and if you do it another way.
It’s wrong, or something like that. So I love that you brought up that point because we. Because of society’s stipulations and rules and our conversations around freedom to make mistakes. A lot of people don’t make choices because they don’t want to make what they deem as mistake, so they freeze rather than make choices.
It reminds me of parable in the Bible where the man hid what was given to him rather. Rather than do anything,
it even says he was afraid of the displeasure of his Lord.
Yeah. So that tells us, you know, there was this motivation of fear that led to that freeze response that’s very much grounded in neurological research.
Yeah. And we see that today where there are people who are not making decisions because they’re like, what?
What if it’s the wrong one? So I want you to speak to that person right now. Who is listening? Who feels anxious or stuck about money? Um, what’s one small mindset shift or a simple behavior that they can try to do today to feel a little calmer, more confident and to tune out the voices that are so loud about, you can’t do this, or you shouldn’t do this, or This is the way you need to do it.
What is one thing that you can talk to that person and say one or more things?
Yeah, so this is why I developed my seven layer financial wellness framework was to answer this question so that people have something to say, oh, this is what’s going on with me, and this is the one action step I’m going to take.
So I’ll just review those really quickly. The seven layers of my financial wellness framework help us identify where the hangup really lies. So is it in the societal layer, which is this? Sys the systems that we were talking about earlier that helps us understand, oh wait, the system isn’t set up for me to succeed so I can again, diminish and decrease the amount of shame that I’m feeling.
I don’t need to feel shame around the fact that maybe I have debt, maybe I haven’t budgeted perfectly. Maybe I’m not where I want to be in my savings goals. So that societal layer that helps us, again, I identify, okay, there’s some forces external to me. My level of willpower and self-discipline that have affected where I am today.
And then that relational layer sits below that. Again, these are the family systems, the dynamics in our relationships with our family, our romantic partners, our coworkers and bosses. Anyone where we’re dealing with our money those relational forces are at work.
So that again, helps us understand. Wait a minute, my family maybe didn’t set me up and prepare me for the world that I was going to create as an adult. Or there are financial beliefs that I came into adulthood with that nobody ever helped me explore. Nobody ever helped me like say, will this serve me in my adult life?
’cause these are just beliefs that we came up with as children. With our immature brain trying to figure out. Makes sense of the world that we were experiencing. So it makes sense that a belief system that we came up when we were seven or eight isn’t gonna serve us when we’re, 27 or 28.
The next layer is educational. So it’s definitely in there. Sometimes we just need education and we need to get in there and learn something new some new way. Oh, this is the process of going, from a place of insecurity to a place of security. And then the behavioral layer.
You know, we have to definitely institute new habits and patterns, so that could be where your hangup lies. But then there’s, below that is the physiological layer, what’s going on with us in our body? So the example I usually give is don’t go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. Look at are you hungry, lonely, tired?
Are you bored? Or you’re anxious? Are you angry? That’s not a good time to be trying to make important financial decisions. Then our psychological layer, which is the layer that I deal with a lot with my clients, is exploring those beliefs, talking about those many histories, saying, okay, what? What really do you want?
What your values are that you really want to. Interact with money going forward, and then the neurological layer, which is really where the trauma lies, where the past is the present, where we might, let’s just say we were, we as a child, we saw our parents or a single caregiver.
Hovering over their table with like a bunch of bills and, spreadsheets and their computer and papers and you knew that it had something to do with money as a child and you saw them, in this state of, total anxiousness. And you might even have seen that they were crying over.
These papers that were on the table that you were like, oh, this is a dangerous topic. This is an area that I want to avoid. So if we have a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response to money, then we deal with it on that trauma layer. So what I like to have people do is think about your hangup.
Think about what it is you’re trying to do, right? I’m trying to get outta debt and I just seem to constantly like yo-yo about it. I’ll pay off some of my credit card debt and then I’ll build that back up again. That’s one that I see a lot. Or I just consistently don’t go after promotions and so I’m under earning.
That could be one that we see a lot. Or it could just be that you you want to have greater control over your spending and your savings. But you’re just not able to sit down and institute a budgeting habit. So we identify where, what layers are involved in your hangup, and then I really encourage people to try to be intuition led on this to look at the seven layers and almost run through each of them in their minds one at a time, really slowly again, trying to be in what we might call self energy or guided by your higher self or the Holy Spirit.
Spirit or God leading you, whatever that force is that’s beyond you, that you’re bigger and a bigger part of that, that will usually guide you to which layer to focus on first. And for most people it’s the bottom most layer. Whatever one is the most buts. Sometimes it’s relational, sometimes it’s, we’re like, ah, I’ve got a partner who’s not really supporting me in helping me reach these goals.
We wanna make sure that we’ve healed any traumas before we try to. Not heal them entirely, but at least identified them so that we can go to our partner and say, Hey, I get that you have your money story and I have my money story, and neither one of us is trying to hurt each other, but this is really affecting our ability to be financially successful.
So I’d like for us to start addressing it, and that’s when I would say, yeah, let’s start working as a team around this. Yeah, so I can really just identify where is that and then work, because if you’re going at the wrong problem, let’s say you’re just thinking that it’s behavioral, but it really is neurological, then you’re gonna, you’re not applying the right solution.
It’s like trying to open up a ketchup bottle with a sledgehammer. It just would cause more of a mess, right? Because again, it would make you increase those feelings of shame and reinforce the idea that, oh, I guess I can’t be successful with money.
Those seven layers that you mentioned sound like something that someone would benefit from your program if they were to become a part of it, because they’ll be able to explore all of those layers and understand which one is maybe the most triggering, and then work on all of them, because we all need to work on all of those layers at some point, but understanding which one is the most triggering and which one do I need to.
Start with sounds like, something that someone could benefit from. So with that, what programs do you have going on that, that we can support or someone listening to can sign up for, where these things that you discuss can be beneficial to them?
So currently we are enrolling young couples in our connected and confident financial empowerment for young couples program, and that is really for couples in their twenties and thirties.
And we’re trying to, we’re really marketing it as a gift like. Make a great wedding present or an engagement present for the young couple in your life. That’s just starting out, but also it works really well for those in their twenties and thirties. The things that we’re gonna teach, the financial basics, all the technical financial basics about.
Budgeting and investing and consumerism and debt and insurance and taxes. And then on top of that, we’re gonna explore that whole belief system. Conflict resolution techniques, the seven layers, and where your hangup actually lies, what your dominant trauma response and how it shows up in your. Money and your relationship with money.
So you can also help identify each other’s trauma responses and be that healing force in each other’s lives as you’re trying to heal those old wounds. We talk about neurobiology and the dopamine cycle. We’re launching this pilot right now. I’m trying to get at least 10 couples in it to get started.
So, if you’re interested and if you’re, a parent or a grandparent or a loved one of a young couple, just. Email me at in**@*****************ss.com. So bt like breakthrough and we’ll talk about how we can get your child on board. I have found that this is not very hard.
Usually we talk to the parents and grandparents and they say we will fund it, we will pay for the program. For the young couple, and then we go to the young couple and the parent doesn’t even have to be involved in that conversation. They not even sending the message like, I think you’re really bad with money and so you need this.
That’s not usually what they feel. They usually feel very grateful and supported that somebody would think. Hey you didn’t have this when you were starting off as a young married couple, and you knew that you needed, like if, when I look back at what my husband and I have experienced and how this would’ve changed our financial trajectory and all the unnecessary relationship turmoil that we could have avoided, most of us feel like.
We know young couples need a lot of support. You’ve got two different cultures that are merging. Even if they both come from Western European cultures, you’re still got the family cultures. And then a lot of times I’m working with couples where you’ve got somebody from a different cultural background and then the dominant economic culture and they’re trying to merge.
Financial systems, and that can be really stressful and difficult. It’s hard not to superimpose that your differences are actually like character flaws. ’cause they’re not character flaws. They’re these, subconscious belief systems that are guiding your financial lives that you really didn’t choose.
So that, that program is our pilot program. Anybody who wants to address any of these things, just reach out to us. Go to my website, Breakthrough Financial Wellness, and Schedule a call. Just email me at in**@*****************ss.com, B as in boy, T as in tom financial wellness.com, and we’ll talk about how to structure a program for you in your circumstance that’s gonna help address the exact problem that you are facing.
So with that, before we wrap up, what encouragement would you like to leave with listeners who may feel behind, ashamed or overwhelmed, ? I’m gonna be sharing, Jennifer’s website. Shortly and all of her contact information will be in the show notes also.
But I would love for you to speak to someone who’s listening right now who may be feeling behind, ashamed or overwhelmed, maybe one of those persons we talked about before who is stuck on making a decision because they don’t want to make a quote unquote mistake. What can you say to that person right now?
I like the phrase, it’s not your fault, but now that you have some awareness. Around what has impacted your ability to be successful with money in the past, it’s now your responsibility to take care of your future self. I only want people to be successful with money because they’re taking care of themself out of a place of self-love.
Not out of what society expects from you, not out of what your family thinks is right, but from a place of self-love especially because in our culture. We’re kind of responsible for taking care of ourselves when we’re old and if we don’t have something in place, at least a small amount of savings.
The options for our future self are pretty limited. But if you are at that stage where you’re in your sixties or seventies and you really haven’t saved very much, you’re probably feeling a lot of anxiety, which is gonna lead to poor decision making and probably degenerate relationships. And your relationships are your strongest resource.
They’re even stronger than your money. If you have a ton of money and you don’t have a strong community and good, relationships, it won’t matter how much wealth you have, so we need to nurture those relationships. We need to diminish the shame so that we can make sure that those relationships are strong.
Because that will be the resources that you rely on in your older age. They’ll have a lot to do with it. So there’s just so much to, to talk about. If you can only do one thing, then just go to my website and schedule a call. If you’re just like, I don’t know what it is, it’s a free consultation we’ll just talk about, okay, what are your options?
And we’ll try to come up with at least one thing you can use right away. And then we’ll work from there.
Okay, and Jennifer’s website is breakthrough financial wellness.com. It’s up on the screen for those of you who are are watching. And it will also be in the show notes. Jennifer, thank you so much for sharing with us today.
And for listeners, if you take nothing else from today, let it be this. Money, stress doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means there’s something worth understanding. And as we’ve discussed here today, sometimes it may be the psychological, maybe it’s the emotional. Whatever it is, is something that you may need to understand.
And when you understand it, then real change becomes possible. So until next time, take care of yourself and your money. This is Dr. Sev signing off.
