Your Money, Your Rules | Money Mindset, Money Management, Abundance Mindset, Budgeting, Spirituality

133 | Redefining Retirement: Discovering the Freedom Mindset for Wealth and Work You Love

• Erin Gray | Spiritual Wealth Coach, Former Certified Financial Planner and CFO

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In this episode, I challenge the outdated narrative surrounding retirement and the concept of financial freedom.  Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “I’ll finally rest when I retire”?  I dive into how the traditional retirement model can feel restrictive, especially for women, and how it reinforces a scarcity mindset. 

Traditional retirement models are built around the assumption that work is something to endure, not something that can nourish your soul. But what if the goal isn’t to escape work, and instead, to reimagine it?

I'm sharing my own personal take on financial freedom, where wealth supports the life you actually want to live now, not decades from now. Especially for women and cyclical beings, this episode is an invitation to build wealth that honors your nervous system, your rhythms, and your soul’s seasons. 

In this episode, we'll explore:

  • Why the traditional retirement story feels restrictive for so many women
  • The burnout loop created by the “grind now, rest later” approach to work
  • How to define wealth beyond numbers—and into freedom of choice
  • What it means to create soul-led work that evolves with you
  • How to build a business that allows rest along the way, not just at the end
  • My thoughts on mini-retirements and sabbaticals

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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Erin Gray:

Welcome back to your Money, your Rules. I want to share an idea that I've been sitting with for a while and how it has us, I believe, on this hamster wheel, postponing our joy, our creativity, our creative endeavors for some future state. I don't really believe in retirement anymore, and I don't mean that in a hustle culture, grind forever kind of way. I mean that I no longer see retirement as the ultimate end goal. So if you've ever felt like the traditional financial planning doesn't quite fit your values or your visions, this episode is for you. Now, if you've been building a business or a financial plan that feels off in your body or it feels like that you're on a fast track to burnout, I invite you to pause and ask yourself what would life feel like if I didn't need to retire from it? What if the work that I'm actually doing right now could evolve with me, nourish me and allow me to rest and allow for rest along the way Inside my private one-on-one coaching container? You know we go beyond what I call the 3D the spreadsheets, the QuickBooks, the planning and we build wealth structures that feel nourishing and sustainable and aligned with who you are, based on what you want, what you feel in your body and based on your intuition, like I'm really helping you tap back into who you are, trusting yourself, trusting your intuition and guiding you know to be able to guide yourself along the way. I truly believe that we get to live well today and also long-term. If you are curious about working together, all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to see if we are a good fit for each other. So let's talk about I'm going to kind of put on my old CFP hat and I'm going to talk about what we were kind of taught about retirement, what society at least what I'm talking about in Western culture has taught us about retirement and then go from there.

Erin Gray:

So retirement is, or has been built right around this model that assumes work is something that we endure. It is a means to an end. It is something that you make money at so that then you can create a lump sum of money so that you can then actually retire, aka take time off, enjoy your life and actually live the life that you want. And you know there is this idea that we have a lot of us have bought into that there will come a time when you won't be able to work and that you'll need to have this lump sum of money. And it has us subscribing to the idea of you know, working for 30, 40 plus years, sacrificing your time and your energy and your family life for some future date, hoping, you know, questioning, not feeling secure or safe that you've saved enough money to finally rest when you're. What is it now? Social Security, retirement, age 67, I think for ages like us, you know, to actually do work that you love.

Erin Gray:

It looks like building wealth slowly, over time, and although that might be true on some fronts, it's not factual or it's not necessarily everyone's reality. You know, I've met many people that created in a couple of years what took me the last 20 to create. So we know that creating money isn't about time. It truly is about our wealth consciousness. And, you know, another thing that we might buy into is that our health. I mean, I can't tell you how many times that I hear people say well, you know, as I'm getting older or I have to prep because you know part of you know, retirement planning and getting all of your ducks in a row is like making sure you have long-term care insurance, and I think all of that has its place, but when we're coming from the energy that it is going to happen and we need to prepare for it, I think that's very different energy than if I need it, I have it but I'm not planning on it. And so how you think about your health? Do you believe that you're getting healthier and fitter and stronger as the more times you've gone around the sun, or are you believing that your health gets worse over time?

Erin Gray:

You know, for many of us I think, especially women, who are really remembering I should say really remembering who we are, you know, stepping back into our leadership, living an aligned life of how we actually want to, that idea of retirement feels very restrictive in our bodies. You know we don't. I'm one of them. I didn't want to work myself into the ground just to be able to buy back time later. You know there are things that I have. I would call it, like the previous, aaron and Aaron now that you know, after I decided I was going to stop working in my family's business, there are things that I've done that there's no amount of money that could ever buy that time back. Right, we've got to spend time with each other as a family and travel. That that you know my daughter will never be eight or 10 again, that that you know my daughter will never be eight or 10 again.

Erin Gray:

And I think for us it's really important for us to to really get clear. And I think, when we are really clear, a lot of us want to live well now and also in the future. We don't want to continue to delay our joy and our freedom and our time with our spouses and our children to some point later down the road. And for me, and I think for a lot of the people that I talked to, you know, retirement had for me become this dangling carrot, often used as a delay button of joy, of rest, of creativity, of lifestyle freedom. You know I've had people tell me that they are staying where they are for retirement because of the health insurance benefits or, depending where they are, you know, pension or their 401k or something like that. You know, when, depending on your consciousness that you could go out and create a company to match your retirement income in several years and think about the remaining time that you would have to continue to grow that company.

Erin Gray:

So the way that I have shifted, or I think about retirement now what I actually believe instead of that, normal work 40 years and then you get to enjoy your life is doing work that you love and getting paid extremely well for it. I believe in soul-led work that nourishes you across your life, not that burns you out until you're allowed you know and I'm air quoting until you're allowed to stop. I believe in building wealth that creates freedom of choice, not an escape route, and I definitely don't subscribe to the BS of our income is going to be less in retirement and we're going to be in a lower tax bracket, which is why we need to save in qualified retirement accounts right now. Like how often I hear people say that or some planners say that and I don't know if that has come from what they've actually seen, or and or what we have been taught. But I don't want to be in a lower tax bracket when I retire. I want to continue to make more money as I age. When I retire, I want to continue to make more money as I age.

Erin Gray:

I truly believe that designing a life and a business that you don't need to retire from because they are in alignment with who you are, it's not a separation, it's your business is coming through you and whoever you believe in God, spirit source whatever, that is some higher power, that that is an act of moving within you and you are the channel and the vessel versus separating and when I say separating work from your personal life, I just mean like who you are as a person, like you are the same person in your business as in your personal life, because it is coming from within. So for me and the women that I support, the real desire isn't really retirement or some end goal. It's having time, sovereignty, right, having freedom over and choosing how do you want to spend your time. Nervous, safe income, meaning how are you generating your income and are you doing it from a place of love and joy? And when I say safety, what I mean is that you truly understand that you are the one that creates. Yes, money comes from source, from God, but you are the one that is creating it. It's not something that happens outside of you, allowing yourself to have creative freedom and spaciousness and time and meaning and impact. And I believe you don't have to wait until 65 or 67. You know like, if you're paying attention to what social security says, you can structure your life, your business and your money now to honor those values and I believe that the work for us is to become the person that believes that this is true in her body and creates that now. So I truly believe you know the more that I have thought about this.

Erin Gray:

I was messaging a friend the other day and we were talking about our cycles and I believe that definitely. I mean, we're all creatures, all of us live in different cycles, but the atmosphere that many of us women have grown up in has been very masculine energy, at least a lot of my clients and friends of mine. Right, I mean the financial planning world and the construction world is very masculine maybe not so much now, but definitely when I was in it it's very masculine, it was masculine energy. And as women, you know we are cyclical beings. Think about our cycle and you know I've been paying attention to my energy levels and how it changes, based on when I'm menstruating or when I'm ovulating, and I'm thinking about how I have operated in such a masculine world and how we have probably been taught and thought that we didn't have a choice but to run a business or, you know, lead like men do, and I don't think that biologically, that's actually how we're wired to do it and actually what we want to do.

Erin Gray:

We're not meant to live in on these linear timelines where we go, go, go, grind for decades and then we suddenly get to stop and rest. So think about, instead of like retirement as an end goal or a place where you're getting to, what if you gave yourself and I've talked about this on previous podcasts of like mini retirements or creative seasons or spacious off time in your business, shifting maybe how you receive money, like relying on, yes, your business, but like creating multiple streams of income so that when you want to take time off, you can allow other sources of income to support you. And I think that that is, you know, how I've really started to. You know, I always thought wealth meant money, but that is how I have learned to view wealth now as the ability to pivot, to rest, to choose differently when your soul is calling for the next iteration of yourself, the next chapter. And we're not meant to live our fullest lives after we're done working. You know we're meant to do work as an extension of who we are.

Erin Gray:

So this week I would encourage you to ponder If you love your business, you love your life.

Erin Gray:

I'm so excited for you and so proud of you and like yes, yes to you, celebrate you.

Erin Gray:

If you don't love your business or you're not necessarily loving parts of your work, what I would have you ponder for this week is if you are someone who is in your business or doing your work just so you can get to a point where you can finally relax and have fun and enjoy yourself.

Erin Gray:

I want you to ponder what would it look like for me to love the life that I have right now. What would it look like to enjoy the work that I do and be able to take time off or travel or whatever it is that lights your soul on fire along with your business? It's like it's not something that you have to work towards to get to a certain amount to then be able to enjoy your life Like. What would it look like to enjoy my life right now and write that down? And what that might look like might be different for you than someone else, and that is perfectly okay. Thank you for being here and for letting this conversation expand your mind and your consciousness. Until next time, may your work nourish you, may your wealth support you and may your life feel like something that you never want to retire from.