134 | Why I Let Go of My CFP license: Trusting My Intuition Over Fear in Wealth Building

I'm peeling back the layers in this episode on why I let my CFP go and how I use financial planning with clients now.

This episode is for the woman who senses there's more to money than logic and spreadsheets. Who's done the planning, hit the milestones, and still feels disconnected. I invited you on my journey of choosing soul alignment over fear and how letting go of the traditional path allows me to serve clients at a more embodied, intuitive level.

In this episode, we'll explore:

• Why I walked away from the CFP designation
• How traditional financial planning often ignores intuition, emotion, and energy
• The moment I realized fear, not desire was keeping me tied to a system that no longer served me
• The difference between building wealth from scarcity vs. alignment
• What it means to embody prosperity consciousness
• Trusting your own financial wisdom before outsourcing to others
• Creating money structures rooted in self-trust, not formulas or fear
• The deeper emotional and energetic work behind money decisions

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From my soul to yours,

Erin

Chapters

• 0:00 Why I Let My CFP Go
• 1:58 Traditional Planning vs. Intuition
• 5:10 Disconnection from Traditional Money Systems
• 9:03 Moving Beyond Fear-Based Decisions
• 14:34 Teaching Financial Embodiment and Sovereignty
• 18:37 Invitation to Trust Your Intuition

Transcript

Erin Gray: 0:00

On the podcast today, I wanted to share why I let my CFP go, which is a certified financial planner, and how it has allowed me to serve at a deeper level.

Erin Gray: 0:09

Sometimes or I feel like a lot of times I'm talking to you, I'm teaching, I'm sharing, but I wanted to share a story about personally why I decided to let my CFP go and just give you some more clarity and explain how it has allowed me to serve clients at a much deeper, soulful level. I still believe in financial clarity and support and financial planning and I also feel like sometimes that traditional 3d model doesn't necessarily resonate. And when I mean by 3d, I mean the logic part, the very, I mean there is a place for planning and but there's also the place of intuition and spirit. And you know what, as you evolve and you grow and your consciousness changes, I think that that is important to include that in it and in the overall planning. That is important to include that in it and in the overall planning. So I found myself, you know, outgrowing that, that very logical 3d framework, and not just for my own life but also for the women that I mentor. And so this shift it wasn't just about me, it was about. What I had to really sit with is stepping into deeper leadership and helping clients access a higher, more soul aligned relationship with money. And I really had to, you know, start questioning was I keeping my CFP from a place of desire or was it coming from a place of fear? And when I asked myself that question it was because of fear. So I just wanted to dive into that today and share a little bit about that and my journey on this episode.

Erin Gray: 1:58

Welcome back to your Money, your Rules podcast with me, your host, erin Gray. So I want to share, first and foremost, why you know, the traditional CFP model didn't or I don't want to say didn't fit. Maybe I outgrew it. You know I love I will always talk so highly about all of our advisors. You know CFPs and CPAs and attorneys and all of our financial mentors that and mentors in general that guide us along the way.

Erin Gray: 2:25

But what the industry I felt was trying to do and if you currently work with one, depending on their consciousness, you may notice that they are more so in the 3D. You know, I had a client say to me the other day like she loves her CFP and her recommendations are great for her. She's like, but she doesn't talk to me about the emotional side, right, so it's very 3d, it's it's that long-term I call it like in your head logic, long-term projections. You know they they use the Monte Carlo simulation. That is something where they just basically runs through all different types of projections, all different types of scenarios, to get to see how long will your money last. Basically, you know retirement scenarios that they help you with planning. You know, based on, like I said, very logic-based, not intuition, and I don't want to say a play it safe, but definitely a covering all your bases, and I don't want to say planning for the worst, definitely a covering all your bases and I don't want to say planning for the worst. But oftentimes it is rooted in the energy that it is coming from, is coming from a place of maybe not fear. That feels like a very strong word, but very much so like what could go wrong or like if the shoe drops, kind of mentality versus what magic and what amazingness, and like all the possibilities that could actually happen. To me it felt like a model built around managing money and, although that is something that I help clients do, help them understand and how to manage their money better. It also doesn't encase how to relate to money.

Erin Gray: 4:11

What is your relationship with it? How do you feel it? Like I said, the emotional side of money, which I think impacts what we do with our money so much more than just doing with our money. You know like our emotions play such a huge role and once you are aware of your emotions, when you're aware of the energy that you're coming from before you make a decision, that is truly what impacts your decision-making and how the outcome is actually going to go, so much more than just the action of doing it. So at some point it started for me in my own journey with my own financial planner. It started to feel like the conversations were more about checking the boxes and less about honoring the energy of wealth and wealth consciousness. I began to feel very disconnected from him and with my money.

Erin Gray: 5:12

And you know, depending on how you have set up, you know, a relationship with your planner, maybe it is very relational base and I think that if you are looking for one or you have one, that it needs to be that basis of that. It needs to be a very relational, a relationship, right Like they've got to get to know you. They have to understand what your wants and desires are, which I felt like my planner. We kind of got to that place where it was just semi-annual phone calls, you know, to check our accounts and allocate, reallocate our funds. It felt very masculine, you know, in that masculine energy and it didn't didn't feel like that there was a lot of room for that feminine, intuitive decision-making. And some of you might be listening and be like, okay, well then you just go get another CFP, go get another planner.

Erin Gray: 6:10

And while that is true and that is an option, what I needed to do first for me and with our money was to own it and to trust my decisions before I went off and I hired someone else. And I think so often, you know, when clients come to me, one of the things that we really work on is learning to help them trust themselves, helping them learn to honor their intuition, and I think we have outsourced our power to so many different people. And so, if this is you, I first want to say it's not a problem, it's not an issue. Just recognize it and remember, recognize where do you want to start taking back some of that power and owning your decision-making? And one of the things that, as I really expanded my consciousness and my wealth consciousness is no longer thinking in formulas like having faith over logic and really understanding If you've read any of Neville Goddard's work, which I highly recommend is really everything has already been created already, everything that we could ever want, ever have.

Erin Gray: 7:27

All of it has already been created. All we need to do is to manifest it, meaning bring it from that 5D reality into the 3D. So I don't make decisions anymore from my mind. I make them very intuitively. I'm not perfect at it and I'm a work in progress, like everyone else is, but I really try to live in that place of intuitive and following my sacral if you're familiar with human design like following what my body is telling me over what my mind is Also moving from. You know, the scarcity timelines or scarcity thinking. You know making decisions from an abundance mindset.

Erin Gray: 8:08

What would I love, trusting and having faith and like I talked about in the previous episode, is I don't believe that we should defer any of our joy or our living until we get to retirement, and I'm not saying that planners do that. I also think that a large majority of our collective consciousness does believe that we, you know, have to put money aside for retirement, because there will be a point in time when we will not work. And I really want to encourage you to start opening up your mind, to think or to ponder, like, what if that's not true? What if I can make money doing what I love right now and I can continue that even as I'm in my 50s, 60s, 70s? I mean, I think like we're just getting started. At the age that we are now, like I think there's so much value and impact that we have to give to the world, I can't imagine deciding to stop, you know, in 10 years, because that's what we've been taught.

Erin Gray: 9:12

And I just want to say that you know anything that I teach or that I coach on or I mentor on. It's something that I have embodied for myself, because that is a big value of mine. When I say being authentic, it is coming from that place of like I've done it and so I can walk you through it. My experience may be different than yours, but I am, you know, practicing, if you want to say practicing what I preach. So I think that me being able to really dive into the money systems and I'm talking specifically about the Western world and kind of how we have been taught to think about money and the financial industry and just really starting to pick apart what are the parts that I want to keep, what are the parts that I want to embrace and allow me to continue on my journey, and what are those parts that I'm willing to let go of.

Erin Gray: 10:13

So which leads me to, you know, letting go and doing things differently, which, you know, in the beginning felt a little scary because you know, the cfb, cfp board talks to you about like well, if you let go of your license, you're never going to be able to get it back. And, like I said, it's a lot of this fear-based thinking. So I kept my license or my designation for I don't know 10 I don't know how many years 10 plus years, probably, probably more than that because I had that fear of if I lose it, I'll never be able to get it back. But then I decided to let it go. I made that decision and come to find out they were calling me and sending me letters all the time, trying to get me back in to. You know, all I had to do was just pay the fee and I would be, you know, have my designation reinstated all that kind of stuff. And so you know it wasn't like I said. You know 10 years, 10 plus years, it wasn't an impulsive decision, it was very intentional and I had even talked to my own financial planner, which is a CFP as well, about letting it go and he had made that suggestion. Just to you know, keep it because of the time that was involved. You know studying for the test you have to take, so you have to like be in practice for so many years before you're actually able to sit for the test. You know just all of these things that you have to do in order to take it and then pass it.

Erin Gray: 11:38

But, like I said, what I realized is I was keeping my designation from a place of fear, not expansion, and I didn't want to make a decision from that place. I realized that in order to truly serve the women and men I do help, men that I work with high, achieving what I call soul-led leaders, I had to model a different way of doing money, which doesn't always necessarily I don't want to say agree, but may not be in alignment by, maybe, what we have been taught to do with our money. So I needed to be able to show you that we could build and we can build wealth from alignment, not from scarcity or stress, that we can create structures, you know, rooted in our nervous system, in our intuition, not from somebody else's Monte Carlo system or spreadsheet or software program. That that, moving beyond that binary thinking of saving and or versus spending to, or now versus later, to more flow and more freedom and living and true prosperity consciousness, you know the definition of prosperity is the feeling that you feel when the money is spent and also allowing for the influx and the outflux of money. And a lot of us have not trained our nervous systems to get to that place yet. We feel really safe when our bank accounts at a certain amount of money right, and everybody has a certain level and that's okay. And true prosperity is knowing that it will always come back. It always fills back up again.

Erin Gray: 13:26

So, by releasing that relationship that I had with my own planner and also from having that designation, you know, behind my name and abiding by their rules and regulations, you know I ultimately it felt like a freeing right, a freeing of myself from the need to fit into a box or specific desires into somebody else's. You know formula and what I really think that I did was is really gave myself the permission to guide others in building wealth on their terms that makes them feel alive. That does incorporate the spiritual and the 5D of money along with the 3D right. So I do with clients. We do still talk about that 3D part of money because we do live on the material plane, but it's not the only thing that we talk about right. Like I said, the energy that you move from when you take action is what determines the outcome. And so teaching clients about how your energy moves, what you are thinking and believing, you know, are you in a poverty conscious or a wealth conscious mentality, or some may call it scarcity mindset or abundance mindset Like what are your core beliefs when it comes to money, and also about who you are money and also about who you are. So you know, fast forward to today, to you know who I am now and how I support clients.

Erin Gray: 15:09

I don't teach financial planning in the traditional sense anymore. I think what I do is I teach true financial embodiment, like how to feel safe with your money, how to feel safe first and foremost within yourself, right, and then, because you feel safe and secure, then that just how it shows up in your money or how it shows up in your relationships or in your business, like that's a byproduct, right, but who you are as a person. That is what I'm teaching you know, teaching you how to make intuitive decisions and living from your deepest values now. Now also recognizing that who you are today is going to be different than who you are in six months, a year, five years, 10 years from now. So, allowing those values to change, allowing who you are as a person to change, allowing that fluidity and also knowing that that's okay and making decisions from that place. Also knowing that that's okay and making decisions from that place.

Erin Gray: 16:10

I also teach what I call sovereignty. You know not giving your authority away to any external expert. I think that they have their place. They are our advisors and they are our guides, but you are ultimately the one that makes the decision. You know learning to partner with them and with money, from that deep sense of self-trust that you have your back, even though it may not look like what you know, the decision that you are making. That might not be the one that they would make or that they would advise you on, but you feel solid in your decision and I see now, I mean I'm always, sometimes I do consider myself a trailblazer, because I do think sometimes I I don't want to say sometimes a lot of times you know how I live my life, how I make decisions, how I I'm a big believer in you know like I have to practice what I preach.

Erin Gray: 16:58

I have to have gone first before I teach it to you. What I preach, I have to have gone first before I teach it to you. And so I see how I had to have that experience with my own planner and how I had to come from the 3D world myself, right, how I had to move from that place of logic and analytical and you know, show me the numbers and everything had to make sense in my mind to be moved to more so in the 5D, in the spiritual world, and then taking action from that place. I had to do that first for myself in order to be able to teach it to you. And I also had to have the contrast right To see that there was a different way. Like, if we don't have that contrast, if we don't have something that is different, then we don't know. Like, how do we know what joy feels like if we don't feel sadness? How do we know what abundance feels like unless we've felt or know what scarcity is right? Like we have to have contrast in order to see what is on the other side, and I think that that is important, at least for me, that I had to experience to see. Okay, that is one way to do it and there is no right or wrong way. But for me and my body and how I want to serve and impact and change the world, it is from that spiritual perspective first and then through the 3D.

Erin Gray: 18:19

So if you have ever felt like traditional financial advice doesn't really fully speak to your heart or your intuition or maybe a deeper vision that you have for yourself in your life, I want you to know that you are not the only one. My clients and myself, you know we experience things and feel differently, and I think that you are not. I mean, nobody's ever wrong. Right? You're not wrong for craving a more soulful approach to wealth. You are not wrong for wanting to have the emotional part as well as the money management part together as the money management part together. You don't have to follow a model that you know everyone else has subscribed to Like you get to enjoy your life now and build and continue to build wealth now and in the future.

Erin Gray: 19:16

You get to have a business that you love now and that supports you now as well as in the future, like we don't have to delay our joy or outsource our wisdom.

Erin Gray: 19:28

And if this is something that is speaking to your heart, I want to encourage you to reach out to have a conversation with me, see if we are a good fit for each other.

Erin Gray: 19:37

And you know, I want to encourage each of you, like the reason why I named my podcast, your Money, your Rules is to encourage each of you to let go of these rigid rules that we have been conditioned to live in and to believe that is true, and to build a financial life that feels so deeply aligned to who you are and your vision, and for you to feel alive and to wake up energized every single morning and to feel abundant. If that is something that speaks to you and you want to see about working together, you can just click on the link in the show notes and schedule the time to have a conversation. Okay, until next time. I want to encourage you to trust yourself, to trust your knowing and your intuition, and if you're like Erin, I don't even know how to begin. Just get quiet with yourself, start to tune in to what your body is feeling and honor that. And just start small and own your sovereignty, your decision making, what you want in your life, what you know that you are capable of having, and until next time.