When someone sits down with me for the first time, they almost always start with a number. A debt figure. A savings target. A salary they think they should be earning by now.

And I get it. Money feels like a maths problem. If you could just earn more, save more, invest smarter, everything would fall into place. But after 25 years working in financial services and coaching women through their relationship with money, I can tell you this with absolute certainty: the money part is rarely the real issue.

The story underneath the spreadsheet

Money is one of the most emotionally loaded topics we navigate as adults. It is tangled up in our sense of safety, our identity, our worth, our childhood, our relationships, and the stories we have been telling ourselves for decades.

The woman who cannot bring herself to look at her bank account is not lazy or irresponsible. She is usually carrying a deep fear of what she will find there, and what that says about her.

The woman who earns well but still feels like she is one pay cycle away from disaster is not bad with money. She is operating from a nervous system that learned early on that security could be taken away at any moment.

The woman who spends impulsively and then punishes herself for it is not lacking discipline. She is often filling a gap that has nothing to do with the purchase.

These are not budgeting problems. They are human problems that show up in our finances.

Why the practical stuff alone does not stick

I spent years in corporate financial planning. I know how to build a budget, structure a portfolio, and map out a five-year plan. But I also watched smart, capable women sit across the desk from me, nod along to perfectly sound advice, and then do absolutely nothing with it.

Not because the advice was wrong. Because something deeper was in the way.

When you grow up hearing that money is hard to come by, you build a scarcity mindset that no savings account can fix. When your parents argued about money every Sunday night, you learn to associate financial conversations with conflict and shut down the moment things get real. When you have spent your adult life putting everyone else first, the idea of investing in yourself can feel genuinely uncomfortable.

Until you understand what is driving your behaviour, no amount of financial literacy will create lasting change. The spreadsheet is not the starting point. It is the second step.

What money work actually looks like

Real money work is not about becoming a finance expert. It is about building awareness of the patterns you have been running on autopilot and making conscious choices instead.

It looks like understanding why you avoid certain conversations. It looks like recognising the emotional triggers that lead to your least helpful financial decisions. It looks like getting honest about what you actually want your life to look like, not what you think it should look like based on someone else’s expectations.

And then, yes, it looks like practical steps. But those steps land differently when you have done the inner work first. They stick. They feel possible. They feel like yours.

This is not therapy. It is not financial advice. It is something in between.

What I do sits in a space that most traditional services do not cover. Financial planners give you the strategy. Psychologists help you process the emotions. But very few people help you connect the two.

That is where financial wellness coaching lives. It is the bridge between knowing what you should do and actually being able to do it. It is practical and personal. It is about your money and your life, not a textbook version of either.

Where to start

If this resonates, you do not need to overhaul everything tomorrow. Start by noticing. Next time you feel tension, avoidance, or guilt around money, pause and ask yourself: what is this actually about?

You might be surprised by the answer. And that curiosity is the beginning of real change.

If you want to explore this further, my 1:1 coaching and retreat experiences are designed to help women do exactly this kind of work, in a space that is warm, honest, and completely free of judgement.