Money Mom Podcast
Welcome to The Money Mom Podcast—the ultimate guide for moms who want to take control of their finances, crush debt, and create a life of financial freedom and abundance. Hosted by Rachel Coons, a budgeting expert and mom of three, this podcast is your go-to resource for practical tips, mindset shifts, and empowering strategies to help you manage your money with confidence.
Whether you’re navigating grocery budgets, tackling debt, or dreaming of building wealth for your family, each episode offers bite-sized, actionable advice to make money management simple, stress-free, and even enjoyable. With relatable stories, expert insights, and a dose of mom-to-mom encouragement, you'll learn how to transform your finances—one small step at a time.
Tune in every week to discover how to save more, spend smarter, and feel empowered to create the financial life you deserve. Because when moms thrive financially, families flourish.
Money Mom Podcast
49: Your Money Thermostat: Why You Keep Sabotaging Your Financial Goals with Rebekah Kiger
Your nervous system might be secretly sabotaging your financial goals. Rebekah Liger, a trauma-informed master money and mindset coach, brings remarkable clarity to why so many of us hit the same money ceiling repeatedly despite our best efforts.
Growing up below the poverty line with a single mother and six siblings, Rebecca's early money story was defined by scarcity, fear, and government assistance. She shares how becoming a teen mom herself led to repeating these patterns until she discovered the link between her nervous system and her financial reality.
Ready to reset your financial thermostat and create a healthier relationship with money? This episode provides actionable insights to help you recognize and rewrite the unconscious patterns controlling your financial life.
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xoxo,
Rachel
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Hey there, welcome to another episode of the Money Mom podcast. I am so excited about today's guest that I brought on. I shared with you in a previous episode that in the Money Mom Club this month we are talking about money mindset and we're diving deep into our limiting beliefs with it and how we experience money and how we can really change the way we experience money will change everything in our world, and so I invited my friend, rebecca, to come on the podcast, because this is what she does, this is how she helps people, and so welcome to the show, rebecca. Can you just introduce yourself? Tell us who you help and what you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. By the way, rachel, I'm so excited to be here. So my name is Rebecca Geiger. I'm a trauma-informed master, money and mindset coach with over 18 years experience helping people reach their financial goals. So I help women's I mean mostly women, right, like I do have a couple of men here and there who come into my world, but I feel like powerful women like us, they attract powerful women, right? So I work mainly with women entrepreneurs and sales professionals who want to expand their nervous system's capacity to receive so that they can make more, save more and finally live more with actually true fulfillment in their life.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's powerful Okay so you talk about you're saying nervous system, somebody who's never been introduced to this work. I think you may need to dive into that a little bit more of what that looks like.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So. I know that it might sound like okay, so I'm here, I'm a money expert, all the things, but if I can back up really quickly, my journey didn't start here. I grew up below the poverty line and my mom was a single mom with seven kids, so there was a lot of scarcity around money, a lot of fear. We lived on government assistance and we were facing homelessness on a consistent basis, and so, because we tend to repeat the same patterns that we saw our parents, you know, do when we were kids, I actually became a teen mom myself, so I got pregnant at 17, had my daughter at 18. And I got on the same government assistance route as my mom, and so the journey really for me, I didn't start here right, and so that's I think the biggest thing that I really want to share is that when we grow up in an environment like that, where you know there's a lot of chaos and you didn't have to grow up below the poverty line like me, but say there was a lot of chaos or fights around money or job loss or divorce and it affected your family in a financial way, what will happen is our nervous system has a baseline of what it believes to be normal, and that baseline is typically created during what's called our programming years, from the age, like from when we're born to the age of about seven or so. And what happens here is when we move into adulthood we carry that program with us, unless we know how to rewrite it and rewire it right up.
Speaker 2:Happening is our nervous system has this baseline of what it believes is normal. What it believes is, you know, a comfortable setting, which for me, was chaos around money, was scarcity and fear around money. So anything that is unfamiliar to the nervous system is automatically going to be deemed as unsafe. This dates back to our survival times, like if you think about tribal times, when you know people were living in tribes and they walked out of their tent right. If there's a bear or someone who they don't recognize from another tribe, that's the body. You know the body's going to go into fight or flight. It's going to deem that as a threat and so we're going to want to run away from the threat or we're going to want to fight off the threat. And because the nervous system is tied to the oldest part of our brain, essentially that is wired for survival. It doesn't know the difference between a real or imagined threat.
Speaker 2:So let's say, for instance, we'll bring this back to kind of today.
Speaker 2:Let's say, for instance, that every time you open your bank account, you get really anxious and you get really nervous and you feel your body starting to like maybe you're getting a lump in your throat or butterflies in your stomach, or you're feeling a lot of energy and anxiety, which we would a lot of times call anxiety.
Speaker 2:That is actually a signal that your nervous system is in a place of fight or flight or it's in an activated state and it doesn't actually feel safe handling or dealing with your finances or looking at your money or whatever it is. This happens sometimes when we receive bills in the mail or we're having sales conversations and we have to ask someone for money or receiving gifts. So there's a lot of ways that this will show up in our life, but essentially, bottom line is the nervous system doesn't feel safe with things that it's unfamiliar with. So if you want to get to the next level financially, you want to make more money and you want to double your income or you want to you know whatever it is that you want to create if that isn't something that you've normalized to the nervous system, or at least we're cognizant of. As you are raising your income levels and your wealth accumulation levels, the nervous system is going to deem that as unsafe and it will at all costs try to repel it because it sees it as a threat.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Can you talk like this, repelling and attracting? You talked about how we can raise our income, but is there other ways that you see this repelling and attracting? Because most let's just say this most of my listeners are not actually going out and making a bunch of money. That's not their goal in life. They're more stay-at-home moms. How do I control the finances? So can you speak to that a little bit, because I think there's a parallel here that we can talk about and I think you could probably say it better than I could.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. So this concept that we're talking about repelling and magnetizing money essentially is based on a concept called your financial thermostat, and we all have a financial thermostat setting. It's like the thermostat in your home, right, where right now mine is set to 68 degrees Fahrenheit. So if I were to open the door and, let you know the 30 degree weather, come into my house, my thermostat is going to kick into overdrive to get me back to that comfort zone of 68 degrees, right? So we all have this kind of ingrained in our nervous system, based on our programs, and we're all going to be different based on how we were raised, and also traumatic or kind of heavy financial experiences that you've had in the past can also play into this.
Speaker 2:But if you're someone who's not looking at going on making more money, this can also show up in how much you're comfortable saving and investing. So, for instance, let's say that your goal has been to save $25,000 in a savings account and you've had that goal for three years. But every single time you get there, you get to 25, you get to 25, five, and it's like a bill an unexpected bill comes up or something happens where now you've got to spend 10,000 of that and it's like, no matter what, you're making progress, but then every time you get over a certain number, it's like it's like freaking clockwork right that like something comes up or you feel the urge to spend it or you know you're you're creating these self-sabotaging tendencies where maybe again you're just finding ways to spend it or you're feeling really anxious around it. So these are kind of I don't know if that answers your question, but it can also come up when it as it relates to how much we're comfortable saving and holding onto as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this is something that we I dive deep into in our money mindset course is that this kind of goes down like we can talk about nervous system, but also like self-worth, and do you think you are worthy of having extra money in your bank account? Do you think you're worthy of not having credit card debt? And and and we can. That could be a root cause is that you just don't think you're worthy of it. You don't think you're worthy of not having credit card debt and we can. That could be a root cause is that you just don't think you're worthy of it. You don't think you're worthy of having excess money every month.
Speaker 1:And so when we can really kind of unpack some of these subconscious beliefs that have been dictating our financial success and we can bring them to light, what are the? There's a quote that, like the, bringing the subconscious to conscious is the only way to like rewrite the story right. So we have to bring these things that are happening, that we don't even know we're happening. If you have a thermostat that's been set at 58 and you want it set at 68, you have to realize it's set at 58 before you can reset it, right? So it's that same idea of like. What is the reasoning that you are self-salvage challenging? What's the reasoning you can't keep $25,000 in your bank account, and how do we fix it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. And actually I know the quote that you're talking about because I was just teaching on this earlier. It's by Carl Young who's the great?
Speaker 1:yes, shadow work.
Speaker 2:And he says until we bring the unconscious to the conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate, meaning you will sit there and Chills, no right, same chills. It's like this is the kind of thing that will come up for you when you experience what Carl Young is talking about. It's like I'm just not that kind of person, or this just doesn't like I someone like me wouldn't ever have this kind of success or I'm just bad with money that's what he's talking about which is just call it fate. We're like this is the way it was supposed to be. This is how I was raised and I promise you guys, like I held on onto that for so long.
Speaker 2:I loved being a victim to my circumstances. I loved it because it was very comfortable. I didn't have to face any of my shadows, I didn't have to look in the mirror and look at my shit, and so I stayed stuck for far longer than I would have wanted to. But the point is that I'm, you know, past most of that now and I'm on the other side, and you know I did have to let go of those beliefs, those systems, those ways of being.
Speaker 2:But first you're right we have to shine a light on them to be able to even cultivate awareness to the fact that they exist, because we're not taught this stuff in school, so we're not. There's nothing wrong with you if you haven't heard of any of these things before or you don't know what's going on or what kind of blind spots that you might have. The subconscious mind and the nervous system they're working in tandem here. So you're right, it's all money, mindset, nervous system work and it's about uncovering what are these beliefs, what are these stories, these money stories that we have, what are these blocks that are going on on the subconscious level, so that we can actually release them and let them go?
Speaker 1:And how do you bring the subconscious to conscious? What are some of the ways that you can take someone through? If there are blocks that they have, how do you tap into that subconscious? Because it can be really hard. You're like, yeah, I have a subconscious mind, but I don't know what's going on in there. So what are some of the things you can do?
Speaker 2:I love this question and it kind of leads into so. I have a method that I use with my clients, and pillar number one is to cultivate what I call an awareness lens. This is really where you become the gentle observer in your own life. This is looking around at the patterns, at the way that you speak about yourself, the way that you speak about your capabilities, the way that you speak about money, the thoughts that you think. Right, if I were to say to you I'm just going to give you this $100,000 right now, I'm going to give it to you and you can put it in your bank account and just let it sit there, that's for you for a rainy day, what are some of the things that immediately start to come up? It's like well, why would you do that? I don't think I'm like I don't know if I'm, why would I? I'm not worthy of that. Why would you give me that? Or whatever is happening in your own mind, right, and there's all kinds of examples that we can use to cultivate and to kind of prompt those things. But really one of the simplest ways to start to become aware and develop this awareness lens is just to start listening to yourself, start observing the way that you talk and observing how you show up around money. I think that personifying money has been a game changer for me, meaning that I do believe that everything is energy. I believe that on a quantum level, I believe that on a literal level, and I do believe that everything is energy. So if money were another relationship in your life would like, what would money say about being in a relationship with you? Ooh, that's powerful, right.
Speaker 2:And it's like if my husband walked in the door and I was anxious every time he walked in, cause I didn't want him to leave. And I was grabbing onto him and I'm like, where are you going? Don't leave. When are you coming back? How long are you going to be gone? Right? And I'm like, please don't leave. Why are you leaving? Don't leave. Don't leave. And I don't feel safe. If he leaves, then how great of a relationship is that going to be?
Speaker 2:But we show up that way around money. It's like I can't spend it. I have to hold on to it, I've got to grasp onto it, I can't let it go. I'm going to. You know when's it going to spend it? If I know I'm going to make money back, right? Or if this is an investment where I'm going to make money.
Speaker 2:Or the opposite side of that coin would be if my husband walked in the door and I'm avoiding him and I'm like I can't even look at you because I'm so stressed out. Every time you're around I don't want to look in your direction, you stress me out. Could you go away? What kind of relationship would that be? And yet we show up that way around money. We avoid looking at our bank account, we avoid paying bills. We avoid looking at the bills when they come in. We let them pile up our taxes. You know like all of those kinds of things are indicative of how you actually feel about money. And so again, looking at it through the lens of if money were an actual person, what would money say about being in a relationship with you can really help you see what your blind spots are, or at least some of them.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's amazing. And this all goes back to just getting curious, right we talked about this when I was a guest on your podcast that money is so emotional, right, we hold so many emotions towards money. And if we can take out some of the emotion and we can look at this of, like, what am I saying to myself about money? How am I showing up to money and get unconditional love? Curious, right? No judgment, no shame. The only thing you're doing is positive work. This is fixing, this is not making it worse.
Speaker 1:There's again, for everything that you are experiencing with money, there are hundreds of thousands of other people out there experiencing the same thing you are. You're not on this journey alone. You're not doing it alone, and I mean that's why I think we are so strongly called to this work is because we see the benefit and we see what can happen when you really unpack some of these negative emotions that we feel around money. Can you speak to? I mean, you came from rags to riches, right, like really we could talk about that. But you also I don't know if you mentioned it, but you also were a financial advisor for a lot of years and have since kind of stepped away at more. You can explain it better, but expect away from that role and really gotten into this feminine energy, the energetics of money. Can you tell, take us through that process and tell us what prompted that and why you landed where you landed?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely so. As I mentioned, you know, I had a kid at 18 years old, my beautiful daughter. She just turned 19. She's my best friend in the world, which is like my biggest accomplishment, right? But when she was a baby, I knew that college was just not an option for me. I had to get to work right away. Nobody was going to provide for her if I didn't. So I started working in at the bank, not like just literally going to work at the bank. My mom worked at the bank at the time and I knew.
Speaker 2:The only thing I did learn about money as a child was that if you worked hard, you could make more of it. Like that was it. So I'm like, okay, cool, I, I will do anything to provide for my child. So I'm like I'll get to work, and I did. I worked really hard and the first few years it was working right, like I got on the corporate hamster wheel, if you will. I was making more and more money each year and I was observing and learning everything that I possibly could. But it started to get to a place where I was working 60 hours a week in some weeks and missing a lot of time with my daughter, missing events, missing things that you really shouldn't be missing with your child, right? But I was a single mom. I didn't have a choice. So about five years into this or so, I was probably making about $50,000 or $60,000 a year at the time and I was completely burned out. I thought that I had made it. I'm like this is a shit ton of money compared to where I grew up. I'm like I made it, I did the thing, but I'm completely burned out, exhausted, and I don't think I can do this anymore.
Speaker 2:So, as fate would have it, my it's about the time when my mentor came into my life and he saw more in me than I saw in myself, and he was a financial advisor who was making multiple six figures, working, you know, more than like no more than 20 hours a week. And this is the same person who said to me. He sat me down and he asked me the question of if you could make any amount of money in the world, what would it be? And I really just was so flabbergasted by the question I low-balled him a little bit and then we settled on $100,000. And I'm like sure, I'll make $100,000. I don't have a college degree, whatever. I'll make a hundred grand, sure. And I'm like sure I'll make a hundred thousand dollars, like I don't have a college degree, like whatever. Like I'll make a hundred grand, sure. And he was like, okay, let's get to work.
Speaker 2:So nine months later I had hit my first six figure year and that's what really allowed for me to see, like holy crap, like this works, like there's something to this. And that was my very first experience of setting SMART goals and manifesting and all of that right and stepping into that. So I continued on my journey. I was a top performing financial advisor at every single firm that I was at. I won all kinds of awards, I was making a ton of money and it was about 10 years, a decade or so into my career, where I had just hit the biggest month of my life. I had made the bank millions of dollars the prior year and I hit an almost six figure bonus in one month and I was so proud of myself. I was so proud and I was sitting doing a performance review with my boss at the time and he goes.
Speaker 2:I was expecting him, because all I wanted, rachel, all I wanted was somebody to tell me that I did a good job and that all of the sacrifice and the grinding and the hustling and the trading, the time for money, was worth it. Like just somebody telling me I'd done a good job and he goes. Well, you had a great year. But you know they, whoever they is right the powers to be, he goes. Rebecca, they don't care what you did yesterday, they don't care what you did last week, last month, and they definitely don't care about what you did last year. The only thing that matters is what you're doing, moving forward, so what's in your pipeline.
Speaker 2:And I don't know if you guys have ever experienced a moment where you literally like detached, like I was completely dissociated, I literally like left my body because I'm like you have no idea how much I sacrificed to get here and how much I've given to this company, in this organization, and I just made you guys so much freaking money and this is this is what I get. So at that moment in my head I was like I'm done, I'm, I'm not doing this anymore. I started saving, putting all my money aside, and I was like I'm quitting this job. And so I did. A few months later, I walked into that same boss's office, handed in my resignation letter.
Speaker 2:It was like the best moment of my life, but when I quit my job, no one told me that I was going to bring all of that hustle, grind, scarcity with me into my business, and that's exactly what I did. So I brought all of that. I was like, literally working at 10 o'clock at night. I had my laptop in bed with me. I was working nonstop. It didn't have to be. I didn't have to be. I had done all the things that society said was going to make me happy and it didn't. And so that really brought me to the place of.
Speaker 2:I remember seeing like a post on the internet or something that was like does your nervous system feel safe with abundance and rest, or something, and I was like holy crap. I went down all the rabbit holes and realized that I started using all of these practices that I was learning. I started to regulate myself, I started to work on my money mindset, I started doing all of those things, and that's when everything changed and I started making more money while doing less than ever before, and I finally was able to experience the life and travel and do the things that I wanted to do. And so now I'm in a place where, you know, I make a six figure semi-passive income stream that supports my financial coaching business and it's all done through again.
Speaker 2:Just being in that alignment, I knew that this was where I was supposed to be. I knew this was what I was supposed to be helping people with and I had created the success, but I felt very lonely. I got to a place where it was like I have all the money, I have all the things, but what that's it like? I've got to tell other people about this. Other people need to know that this is available, and so that's why I started the financial coaching business.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is so cool. I love that story Super powerful story and that's freaking messed up. I'm glad you got out of that. I don't appreciate you, okay. So if, if my listeners want to dive into your world and learn more about this and really figure out you know the nervous system and how it may be affecting their money experience, where can they find?
Speaker 2:you? Yeah, absolutely so. I'm on all the socials as rise with Rebecca, so my name spelled a little differently. I'm sure you have it in the show notes, but you can definitely check out. Check me out on Instagram, so I hang out the most. I also have a podcast Rachel was just on it. It's called the soul powered podcast and I definitely have, you know, freebies and free trainings that you can dive into. If you want to learn a little bit more about this, why this work is so important and how it might be showing up in your life, you can definitely check those out on my Instagram as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So anything that you can think of before we sign off, that you would like to speak on, that you think my listeners would appreciate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. The message that I want to say is just trust yourself. Like the reality is that where you are right now is indicative of the decisions that you've made in the past. But if you're being called to move in a different direction and you wanna work on your finances, you wanna put yourself in a place where you could cultivate that financial freedom, just know that that desire is on your heart for a reason, and where it is that you're going in the future is not indicative of where it is that you were in the past. It's indicative of the decisions that you make right now. Right now, the things that you do today are going to be the things that determine where you are three to five to 10 years from now. So trust yourself.
Speaker 2:If you're being called to dive deeper into this work, if you're being called to learn from someone like Rachel, get into the community, do the things, because your higher self, that future version of you, is going to thank you for doing it. So trust that. It's okay to trust that and to follow mentors, because you can see that mentors you know are really, I think, cheat codes in this world. I love having mentors in my life. I was given the power of a mentor a long time ago, and that's why I do this work now. So find yourself a good mentor, find yourself someone who has a process and a system, and lock arms with them and go and create your financial freedom.
Speaker 1:That is so beautiful and I just will say a big fat amen. Rebecca and I know each other because we are in the same entrepreneur container and that's changed my life right in my business and my experience, so I can't hit on that enough that we aren't meant to go through this life alone. We're not meant to struggle alone. We are meant to be together and there is power in community and in asking for help and and investing in yourself and in your future, and there's nothing better than you. There's no better money spent than in investing in yourself um, any type of investment. So love that. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for coming on the show today and go check her out, go follow her Instagram. Thank you so much, Rebecca, for coming on the show today and go check her out. Go follow her Instagram, Check out her podcast. She has so much beautiful knowledge and energy and I just love everything that you speak on, Rebecca. So thank you. Thank you, Rachel, Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:We'll see you guys next week.
