Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Planning, Budgeting, Scarcity Mindset, Financial Freedom, Online Business

84 | 5 Powerful Ways to Turn Your Money Fears into Financial Confidence

• Erin Gray | Financial Mentor, Former Certified Financial Planner and CFO

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Does the fear of losing money hold you back from making bold moves in your business? In this episode, I am unpacking why money fears are so common and I'll share the 5 ways I transformed my own relationship with money and now help my clients move from financial fear to empowered decision-making.

Learn how past experiences shape your money decisions, why tracking your finances is crucial for clarity, and how to reframe "money mistakes" into valuable lessons.  I dive into why having a safety net matters, and explain why small, consistent actions trump dramatic changes when building lasting financial confidence. 

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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

Does the fear of losing money hold you back from making bold and decisive moves in your business? Maybe you're like me, where you have made some investments in yourself and they haven't necessarily turned out the way that you expected them to. Today, we're unpacking what that fear really is, why it's so common and how you can start really shifting into financial confidence, and by the end of this episode, you'll have practical tools to let go of some of that financial anxiety that you might be feeling and really start making empowered financial decisions. Do you want to create a system to stop avoiding your money? Maybe you're feeling guilt and shame when it comes to finances. Welcome to your Money, your Rules. I'm Erin, a former certified financial planner and CFO, and yet I used to avoid my money and had fear, no matter how much we had. I can't wait to teach you how I overcame my money avoidance and started consistently managing my finances in a really simple way. It's time to get comfortable with money. If you're ready to stop letting fear control your financial decisions, I would love to support money. If you're ready to stop letting fear control your financial decisions, I would love to support you. You can head over to my website at generatealifewelllivedcom. Click on the tab work with me and then support and mentoring, and you can schedule a call In a short hour. We can work through some of your money mindset and you can gain such clarity and confidence to move forward in an empowered way.

Erin Gray:

Okay, so let's dive into really breaking down the fear of losing money. I'm going to give you certain or specific examples that have happened for myself what I see in clients and also just in general women that I talk to, and why it happens, and then what you can do to start changing it. So, first and foremost, I think the fear of losing money comes from some type of past experience. So maybe, like I've said in the beginning, maybe you have invested in yourself and in your business and maybe it didn't turn out the way that you expected it to, and so you might be a little gun shy to invest again, because you did take that leap of faith, you did invest in yourself and you didn't get the result that you were expecting. I always encourage clients when this happens, because this has happened with me multiple times over. There is learning in that experience I always take.

Erin Gray:

What did I learn from it? You know I've invested with some people that didn't necessarily it aligned at the time, but in the beginning they seemed fine, but as I got into their program, as they grew, it felt like a mismatch and I always look at it as a way of okay, how does that contrast actually help me? So maybe you know you have invested in yourself, or even you know childhood beliefs. You know, think about growing up. What was the belief system? How did your parents or your caretakers talk to you about investing money? What happened?

Erin Gray:

You know one of the things that for me it was like mistakes cost you money and that was a belief that I really had to work through versus. You know, I learned from every decision that I've made and these experiences they create subconscious money blocks that influence how we invest our money, how we save it or I like to use the word have now how we have our money and what kind of risks and investments we're willing to take. So with anything, it's starting with awareness, where you don't have to, you know, go all the way back to. You know I was five years old, but just get curious as to where did this fear start? Did it start with maybe some stories around with your family? Did you actually make an investment and you got reprimanded. Or maybe maybe you know, even when you were younger, you it doesn't necessarily have to be, um, a money investment that you made, right. It could be something as simple as you wanted to try to do soccer, and then you ended up not liking it and your parents were like, well, you have to stay with it. So it was almost this you're going to pay for your mistakes mentality, and that's not necessarily what our parents are trying to teach us, but that, that belief of, oh, if I make an investment, if I take a risk, that that I have to live with this decision, and then just start noticing, as you make different money decisions, are they based on facts and data or are they driving you from an emotional place? Are you investing from fear, or are you investing from expansion and growth and abundance, or is it based more so in scarcity or fear, more so in scarcity or fear?

Erin Gray:

The thing with fear, though, is it does keep us stuck and it limits our growth. So when we are either avoiding financial decisions maybe we're playing small in our business we know that there's an investment that we need to make or want to make to help us grow, but we're not making that decision, then we are continuing to play small in our business and it can also show up, like it has for me, of hoarding money right, holding onto money too tightly, because you have that fear of look at how it's turned out before. It's almost like you have this evidence that has been built up of like look at how it hasn't worked out for me versus look at all of the things that have. And when we continue to make decisions from a fear-based place, they stop us from investing in ourselves and investing in opportunities that could grow your business, could grow your wealth, and start looking at it as the decision of shifting from that scarcity mindset to more of one of sufficiency. I know that the self-development and the money world talks about. You know scarcity to abundance, but I really like to go from scarcity to sufficiency and trusting that you always have had money, it always has shown up when it needs to and really start taking steps and taking those leaps of faith from that place of trust, of growth, of sufficiency.

Erin Gray:

Also, tracking your finances is going to start really helping you gain more clarity. I know that in a couple episodes back I think it was maybe 81 or 82, I talked about avoiding your money. And it's kind of like you know when you were a kid and the big scary monster that we thought was either underneath our bed or under or in our closet, and we just wouldn't look at it. And then that idea just became bigger and bigger and bigger. Versus having the courage to look underneath your bed or look in your closet, aka look at your numbers, look at where you are. Even if you don't necessarily like where you are, you do gain clarity and I think that the fear gets exacerbated because we stay in the unknown and then that just creates more fear and then we stay in the unknown more right? So start tracking your finances whether it be with an Excel spreadsheet in your business or using QuickBooks or some budget software that you like to use for your personal life but start tracking it and start taking time to sit down and look at where is your money going, where is it coming from. Sit down and look at where is your money going, where is it coming from.

Erin Gray:

The third point is, like I already mentioned, is reframing. If you have made any type of investment, reframing that investment instead of it's a loss or a mistake. A lot of times people will say I've made these mistakes I just was having this conversation with our daughter last night is that I don't want her to look at decisions that she's made as a mistake I just was having this conversation with our daughter last night is that I don't want her to look at decisions that she's made as a mistake. I want her to look at it as lessons learned, and that is the reframe that I've had to look at decisions that I made. Maybe they haven't been. I haven't gotten the result that I thought I was going to get with an investment, but I have gained. What did I get out of it? What did I learn from that? Because, number one, then you're able to not repeat that cycle again and you're also able to get more clear when you do and when you are ready to make another investment in yourself, what you are looking for and what you are not looking for.

Erin Gray:

You know, every entrepreneur and investor has experienced financial setbacks, like I don't know anybody who has ever been in business, who hasn't, who. They would say that they haven't necessarily. You know, in air quotes, made a bad investment. Right, but it's what we do with that decision, it's what we think about. That is what actually decides where our ship is going to go right. We can either beat ourselves up over it we can feel a lot of regret and shame or we can look at it from a place of what did we learn and what are we going to do differently next time?

Erin Gray:

I also want to say you know that I think we need to slow down the buying process. I think investing in ourselves is absolutely part of being an entrepreneur and evolving and growing. We do need help as we grow our business right, and who better to learn from than people that have already done it? It speeds up time and saves money. And also, I think sometimes we are purchasing things that maybe we're investing in ourselves in ways that you know.

Erin Gray:

When you, when you slow down the buying process and you ask yourself why are you doing this, you really get to find clarity as to why are you trying to solve a problem and is that problem you're trying to solve? Is this actually the answer? Or are you trying to solve a different problem and you're just trying to throw spaghetti at the wall? And the only way that we know which answer that is is if we actually slow down and in you know today's business world of like flash sales and you know percentages off and hurry up and buy now and countdown timers and you know black Friday sales. We can sometimes get caught up in that arena and one of the things that I've really had to do is slow down and really trust and ride my wave and recognizing that for me, depending on the amount of money, the decision, sometimes it is actually longer than what I expect it to be. If the decision is $5,000, it might take me several weeks and that's okay. And I think that when you actually do, when you start to slow down, when you actually get and gain more clarity as to why you're investing in something and are you really committed, that's the other thing. Are you committed to finishing it and seeing it through, or is this just another shiny object that we're doing? When you start asking yourself those questions, when you start slowing down, you really get to gain a lot of clarity and see what are you willing to do and also, is that investment the best investment for you at this time?

Erin Gray:

The fourth tip that I have is, you know, building up a safety net to reduce some of that fear I have noticed with women and I think that this is probably true for humanity. But it seems when I talk to women, the language that we use is sometimes a little different than what men use. We do use words like safety and security and I know men use those words too but there is this underlying thread that if we have some extra cash, that we feel a little bit more secure and I'm not going to go into in this episode about you know, like keeping gobs of cash in the bank, because the bank just turns around and uses your money. But I do think for every person you have to see and ask yourself what is, what is your number for you that feels good. When we don't have you know, people will call it an emergency account, which I don't agree with that language, because when we have emergency accounts, we're literally telling ourselves and the universe that, like there's an emergency, that's going to happen.

Erin Gray:

I think that having you know, having a having account, is what I call it right, or another colleague of mine calls it you know, a rainy day fund. So whatever you want to call it, but think about when you're, when you're calling it that and when you are embodying having that money. Are you having it because you are scared or are you having it because a woman who takes care of her money is prepared right. That's a very different energy than I have to have this money because I feel so much fear versus I have this money because I may want to make an investment at some point or I may want to be able to use this if X, y, z, and. And just really getting clear on the energy of having that money and when you have a plan in place, when you have some funds in the bank right, your nervous system, your brain is able to feel safer and I think you're able to think more clearly, make different decisions and more confident money decisions, because that survival need isn't so pressing. So having that account where you both in your personal and in your business, so that you have that buffer and I think the number is going to be different for everyone but just really getting clear on how many months of expenses feels good for you and really asking yourself you know, whatever that number is, is that because it's coming from fear or is that become? That's coming from this feels good to have this amount of money and it feels expansive.

Erin Gray:

And then the last tip that I would say, which I always talk about, is taking small, consistent actions. So, so, overcoming your money fear isn't about making huge leaps, and I think that the personal development world loves to talk about quantum leaping and huge overnight success, but what I have found for myself to be true and for clients is to be simple, to be consistent, because you are becoming the person that takes care of her money. You are becoming the person that is confident with her decisions, and that doesn't happen when you do it sometimes and when you don't do it other times. I would much rather you improve at 1% versus making these huge jumps and then going back down and then going back up. So, really, what are the consistent steps that you can do and you can take every single day, every single week, because those add up to the months, to the years?

Erin Gray:

So, what is one financial decision today that you can take without overthinking, whether that be looking at your books on a daily basis or looking at your bank account, or sitting down and actually calculating what are my monthly expenses in my personal life and do that I have that amount of money in an account so that I can be prepared if I want to invest and just to have that money. And if you make up the number, you know you. You get to the number and you're like the brain, you know, wants to start to tell you like how is that ever going to happen? Or whatever. Just start small, start automatically. You know drafting what you can into an account and start that consistent, because I think we are like little kids, we do need that pat on the back. And when you see that money go into that account every single week and you start to see it build up, you start building confidence in yourself.

Erin Gray:

Okay, so to recap, fear of losing money might come from past experiences, whether that be you've invested in yourself and it didn't go the way you wanted it to, or your childhood experiences. Fear keeps you stuck in that scarcity mode. So shifting to sufficiency really starts to get your mind and your body opening up to different opportunities. You know reframing any type of investments that you made, not as a loss, but what did you learn from it? What did you gain? How has that helped you become the business woman that you are now Building up?

Erin Gray:

Financial security helps reduce anxiety. So how much do you want to keep in your having account? What amount does that equal in your monthly expenses, whether it be personal and or business and then taking small, consistent steps daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Right, we don't become that person overnight. It happens one small step at a time, one day at a time. That I really believe is the key to long-term financial confidence.

Erin Gray:

So I want to leave you with you know, where is fear holding you back from making empowered financial decisions? And what's one small step that you can do today to challenge that fear that you have around money? And if you're ready to break free from the fears around money that you've been having and you want to feel financially confident, you can head over to my website at generatealifewelllivedcom. As always, thank you for listening, for tuning in and for sharing your time with me Until next time. Did you learn something today? Do you know another female entrepreneur who might be avoiding her money? Will you send this episode over to her for me, and, if you have it in you, please leave me a review for this podcast. It helps the show grow and I love hearing from you. See you next week.