How to Reclaim Financial Empowerment When Every Financial Decision Feels Risky with Shannon Ryan

Have you ever stopped to think about the relationship you have with money, not just your budget or bank balance, but the emotions that shape your financial choices?

Even though money looks logical on paper, the truth is most of our financial decisions come from our emotional state—shaped by the families we grew up in, what we witnessed, and what we learned about having “enough.”

In this powerful episode, I sit down with Shannon Ryan, Certified Financial Planner, TEDx speaker, and author of Your Money Has Feelings. With over 30 years of experience guiding people through financial change, Shannon brings warmth and compassion to a topic that often feels shame-filled or overwhelming. Her approach blends personal finance and emotional well-being in a way that might shift how you relate to money for good.

We explore:

• How early family patterns create emotional “scar tissue” around money—and how that shows up now
• Why women often carry unhealed money fears during midlife transitions
• How your nervous system responds to money stress—and what helps calm it
• Why financial security after divorce can feel like an emotional minefield
• The sneaky money beliefs that keep you stuck in scarcity
• What real financial empowerment looks like (hint: it’s not just numbers)

If you’re rebuilding after a breakup, reentering the workforce, or just trying to feel safer and more confident with money, this conversation will leave you feeling seen, grounded, and hopeful.

You’re not broken, you’re just taking the next right step.

Here’s to trusting yourself, and trusting the next right step.

Laurie

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DISCLAIMER: THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL, MEDICAL OR PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED THERAPIST IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SUICIDAL THOUGHTS. YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN LEGAL ADVICE. YOU SHOULD CONTACT A LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL WITH RESPECT TO ANY MEDICAL ISSUE OR PROBLEM.

Transcript

Laurie James: Hey there. It's Laurie. Before I get started on today's episode, I wanted to take a minute and thank you for being here. Your listenership means the world to me. And if you find my podcast helpful, please leave me a review. The instructions are in the show notes, and it only takes two minutes out of your day, and I would be forever grateful.

I also wanted to let you know I have a couple of openings for one-on-one somatic coaching. These go fast, and there's no better time than right now. So if you're ready to learn how to regulate your nervous system so you have more tools in your toolbox before the holidays arrive, consider this a sign that you have been waiting for. Click the link in the show notes to book your free inquiry call today so you will be ready for all the dysregulation and craziness that comes with the holiday seasons.

And if you have ever struggled with money and feel like it's controlling you instead of you controlling your money, my conversation with my guest today is for you, so enjoy. And if you find it helpful, please also consider sharing it with somebody who you think will benefit from it. And enjoy my conversation with Shannon Ryan.

Laurie James: Welcome to Confessions of a Free Bird podcast. I'm your host, Laurie James, a mother, divorcee, recovering caregiver, the author of Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, a therapy junkie, relationship coach, somatic healer, and now podcaster. I'm a free spirit and here to lift you up.

On this podcast, I'll share soulful confessions and empowering conversations with influential experts so you can learn to spread your wings and make the most of your second half. So pop in those earbuds, turn up the volume, and let's get inspired because my mission is to help you create your most joyful, purpose-driven life, one confession at a time.

Laurie James: Hello, Free Birds, welcome back. And today, I am super excited to be joined by my guest today, Shannon Ryan. She is not only a neighbor, that we just found out we were neighbors, she's a Certified Financial Planner with over 30 years of experience helping individuals and families navigate not just numbers, but the emotions tied to money.

Shannon believes money has feelings, and that the beliefs and wounds we carry often shape our financial choices more than we realize. She's the author of the upcoming book, Your Money Has Feelings, and you may have seen her on CNBC, Good Morning America. She did an incredible TED Talk here in Manhattan Beach that I actually had the pleasure of seeing in person. With her heart-centered approach, Shannon helps people move from money stress to empowerment. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you today. Thank you so much for being here with me. Hi.

Shannon Ryan: Laurie, thank you for having me. I love this. We're neighbors. I can't believe you saw my TED Talk. So we're going to have some fun.

Laurie James: Oh, definitely. So can you start out by sharing with me and our listeners today a little bit more about your story and your relationship with money, and how you transformed from being a traditional certified financial planner to someone who's now writing and speaking about the emotional side of money?

Shannon Ryan: Yes, thank you for asking. I've had this awareness of money and how it impacts people's feelings from a very young age. I talk about it in the beginning of the book, but I grew up in a family where my father was married and divorced three times. My mom has been married and divorced five times, forgive me, she's on her fifth husband. So I witnessed early in my life money through divorce being used as power.

My father was a surgeon. I loved my father dearly; he has since passed, but he wanted his wife to stay at home. He wanted dinner on the table. He was often doing surgeries, and yet he would control things. He wanted control in his life through money. So I witnessed this growing up, but on the other side, he was also very interested in emotional competence. So as his daughter, he started teaching me very early about people's emotional response to things. It’s ironic that I started seeing his emotional response to money, but it fascinated me from a very early age.

When I graduated from school and I went into financial services, I made a very specific choice to go into comprehensive financial planning, and this was the early 90s, so that was unheard of. In fact, my father said, "Why didn't you join Merrill Lynch? You should have joined..." And I'm not bagging on Merrill Lynch; it's a great firm, but why didn't you join Merrill Lynch versus, I joined American Express Financial Advisors? And I said, "Because American Express Financial Advisors is doing comprehensive planning. They want CFPs. Merrill Lynch is still a brokerage." And they said, "Well, the best brokerage on the street right now." And I said, "But they're not diving deep into what's important about people and their money."

So I started my career here, and I still believe, and I said to you before we started today, I think our industry still has it wrong. I think we look at ticker tapes, and we talk about investments, and we lose the human in the whole process. And so my career has really been based on this from a very young age.

Laurie James: Yeah, that's beautiful. And I love how you are being one of the voices around the fact that the industry does have it wrong, because we were talking again before we hit record. And I love my financial planner; he does a great job, but I do feel like it's very matter-of-fact, and he doesn't always look at me as a person that has feelings. And it's just like, "Well, this is in your best interest." It's like, okay, but there's also beliefs. There's also values. Different people value money differently. People want to see their money go to different things. They want to leave a legacy. There's lots of... I think there's so many things tied up in money.

Can you talk a little bit more about that, and how you kind of came to this revelation that, and we talked about money obviously doesn't have feelings; we have feelings around money. Can you talk a little bit more about that, and what you see in your clients that you've shared with in your book?

Shannon Ryan: Yeah, so let me start with just some basic definitions. Traditional finance says that you will always make logical decisions. You're going to pick the right stock, you're going to save the right amount of money for retirement, you're not going to have bumps in the road in your relationships or other things. You're not going to have to care-give for your parents, or you're not going through a divorce. Everything, traditionally, is going to stay logical, and then you'll be able to make a logical decision about it.

Behavioral science says we're messy. Our experiences, our wounds, our stories about things, our biases, biases that we acquire from just being in the world, has an impact on those traditional decisions. So the best decisions are made financially when we, yes, we understand, or we have a guide, like a great financial advisor, that guides us to strong traditional decisions. But if we forget the behavioral side, we may sabotage ourselves. We're just not going to make the best and the highest decision that is in alignment with our values and our long-term desires, and then we find people become dissatisfied.

I've worked with money for 30 years. How do I come into this? I don't just write about this; I don't just speak about this. I've spoke about this for years. I sit across, today, I sat across from two clients. I sit across from real people every day. And what I have learned is that money is emotional, and that sometimes you may not want the traditional things. You may not want the house and the two cars. You may want to rent and travel the world. And why can't we align our resources with our deepest desires to live the life that we really want? And to do that for many people, we have to learn to shift traditionally how we think about money, because there is so much judgment and guilt and shame around money that the "shoulds" start to interfere with our joy.

Laurie James: Yeah, definitely. And I think there's also something that I experienced in my marriage, is this feeling... You know, neither of us grew up with money, and when I met my ex-husband, he was working for Hughes and ended up then working for DirecTV, because DirecTV came out of Hughes. But because he didn't have money, and I didn't grow up with money, and I remember hearing my parents argue about money constantly, I picked somebody that I felt was going to be more secure.

But I also didn't ever think I was going to stay home to raise my kids either. And then you hold that first child in your hand, and you're like... everybody's different, but for me, it was like, "How do I let somebody else?" And so then my mindset started shifting. And going back to the money piece, I think as we started building our nest egg, I had the mindset of, "Okay, we have a little more flexibility. Let's do some different things. Let's take a big family vacation once a year. We're in a financial position to do that." We ended up, you know, buying a second home up in Mammoth that a lot of people in the South Bay do here, right?

But for him, I think he had this mindset of, "There's never... this could go away tomorrow," and this lack of mindset versus an abundance mindset. Do you see that with people? And can you talk about that from your point of view?

Shannon Ryan: You touched on a lot of things there. You know, the emotions around money are very complicated. I talk... I have several stories in the book around how to control sometimes when you don't grow up with a lot, or frankly, sometimes when you grow up very wealthy, you observe your role models controlling people in their lives through money. And so I see it on a very wealthy end as well.

I see people who have not grown up with a lot have scarcity. I'd actually call it fear, the fear of everything being gone tomorrow. I also see it with breadwinners. So if you were at home and your husband was the primary breadwinner, and you had four girls. So you have four girls, so that's a lot. You guys had your hands full. You needed probably a parent to be at home, for sure. But the person who's earning the money, if they've never had it, there's an enormous amount of pressure that "I better deliver. I've got these five women that are counting on me." And so it becomes difficult emotionally also on that primary breadwinner. And it's very easy to slip over into moving away from, "I'm a partner with my stay-at-home spouse," to "I am responsible. I'm taking care of all of this." And there's certain entitlements or scarcity sometimes that comes with that.

And of course, it depends on the person. And this is all very real because the person who is the partner at home is taking care of everything, enabling that person to actually be out there to earn a living. So in the end, it's truly a financial partnership. I would say that both people are earning that living, but it is not uncommon to see the person who is actually getting the paycheck feel that they have a certain level of power over a spouse and a family because they're the one getting the paycheck.

Laurie James: Yeah, I definitely agree with that.

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Laurie James: So in your TED Talk, you talk about financial scar tissue, and I think you mentioned that either before we hit record or shortly after. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I think that kind of ties into what we were just touching on, too. Like, how do you define financial scar tissue?

Shannon Ryan: You know, it's so funny. It's something that I... it's terminology that I came up with early in my career. And in the beginning, when you're a woman in finance, I started 30 years ago. Women in finance... there were no women. They were, they were the assistants, I'm sorry to say, and they were great assistants, but they weren't the financial advisors. And I felt like I needed to go in with my hair cut close. It was the 80s, you know, you had the pins and you're buttoned up and, and, and I... yeah, nylons. Oh my gosh, when those went away, thank gosh. But I was all numbers, I was all logic, I was all traditional. I felt like I had to be buttoned up, and I wasn't going to dive into this emotional side, because the client has just wanted about returns. And if I was a good advisor, I got great returns, and I was logical the whole time.

But what I started to see, intuitively, because I love the planning side, was that people were carrying what I call financial wounds, meaning they remember their parents arguing over money, or going through a divorce that had somebody use money as power, or going hungry, or not having the cool clothes or shoes to fit in. Something happened early in their career. They got fired out of the blue. So many things in our beautiful life journey in money happen that leave wounds, and long after those wounds are even forgotten, I started to see the scar tissue, the leftover wound that was being hit by an experience. Maybe for your ex-husband, it was the fear of being poor again, left him very scarce and scared, so he felt like he had to control everything.

But typically, people's reactions to money and their stories, the things they tell themselves over and over again, or their bias, typically has to do with this scar tissue. And again, sometimes they don't even remember. In fact, when I did the TED Talk, you have a coach when you're a TED Talk, and my coach was fabulous. And she said, "Shannon, when people leave this auditorium today, what do you want people to be talking about?" I said, "Well, luckily I'm right before lunch, and I want them to turn to whoever they're here with and say, 'Oh my gosh, I had totally forgotten. No wonder I can't buy something that I can completely afford, because my parents were so scarce and so worried about running out of money, they never spent money on anything. And so I've got this fear in my head that I'm going to end up being a bag lady if I even do basic needs.'" And that's where it came from. So for me, it's about heightening awareness. It's about saying, "We all carry this. What's yours?" And we're all different, and that's what's interesting. It's exciting for me, because I love this area, but I think it's also very intimidating to your financial advisors to bring this up, because money and emotions is messy, even to ourselves.

Laurie James: Well, you said it very beautifully at the beginning. You know, the numbers, the financial, is very black and white, but the behavioral side is very messy because of our history. And I think that that is really important, because a lot of people don't always make that connection between, "Why am I spending too much?" or "Why do I have all this money and I'm not spending it?" depending on what their financial situation is, and what is the relationship and the connection to my past behaviors, past... you know, the scar tissue that's still there. So can we heal that scar tissue?

Shannon Ryan: I think, like any other wound, Laurie, that you get, and if scar tissue or a scar is left, you're probably not going to fix the scar. It's going to remain. But I would submit that you can heal how you interact with that scar by understanding it. It's not a fast journey. I think many people want things answered really quickly. They want, "Okay, I want this solved right away, and now that I know it, I'll never do it again."

But most of us have years of repeating thoughts, where we ruminate. We stay up late worrying about money, or we're making a decision that we can't... "I can't take a trip every year, although I want to. In fact, that's one thing I really want to do, but I just can't," although I may have the money to do it, but we won't allow ourselves. So this is not a one-and-done. This is a recognition of it, and once you see it, very rarely... you can't.

Laurie James: Yeah, yep, definitely. But that's true with any, whether it's, you know, an emotional wound, you know, from a divorce or a loss, or...

Shannon Ryan: Anything, anything. But then it's... I tell a story of a woman in my book, that is... she used... she, when she first started coming to my office, she came in and she would carry this purse. It was a Louis Vuitton purse. It had been well-worn, and she loved it. She'd bring it in. And every time I was with her, I, you know, I noticed she had the purse. So finally, one day, I said, "Mary, will you tell me about your purse?" And she said, "My husband bought this purse for me when we couldn't afford it, but all I needed was a Louis Vuitton purse. I needed something beautiful to pick up and carry each day because I was working so hard, so it was one of the greatest gifts of my life. And I know that it's worn and tattered now, but since he's gone, I want to buy myself another one, but I can't afford to do it," which wasn't actually the truth.

And I reminded her and showed her the numbers that she could if she wanted to buy herself a new purse. I offered to go with her, and she just couldn't get past the fact that she did. She was scared to spend the money on the purse, although she had more than... she could have bought ten purses. So it was hard, and so finally, I offered to go with her. She said, "No, I'm going to do it, Shannon. I'm going to go." And we never had a meeting after that, because she passed. And her daughter called me, and she was in the house to tell me that she had passed peacefully. And I said, "Rose, will you do me a favor? Will you go and look for your mom's Louis Vuitton purse? And do you know the story of that and your dad?" And she didn't know the story, so I told her the story about her dad and the Louis Vuitton purse, and then she was on the phone, and she said, "Shannon, there's a second purse. It looks like mom just bought a new one." And I cried. I cried that she was finally able to allow herself that little luxury. And I know that it's a silly story, because it's about a purse, but it's so much more than the purse.

Laurie James: It is so much more than the purse. There's so much more, so many layers, and who knows what else there was from your client's past, and the way she grew up, and the relationship that her parents had with money, or that she had to have money until she got married. And I'm guessing, if she's passed, she probably lived through the Depression.

Shannon Ryan: Well, she was an immigrant into this country, and she came into the country, and they owned bike shops, and they were very, very successful, but she and her husband worked incredibly hard and never forgot their immigrant roots, and they raised their family here, sent the girls to college here, but yet they remember being poor and hungry.

Laurie James: So a lot of the women and some men who listen to my podcast, they're navigating big transitions: divorce, "emptiness," paying for college, starting over, maybe even some people needing to go back to work in midlife because of their financial situation. And as we've talked about before, money obviously feels very, very scary. What are some common beliefs that you see that we tell ourselves about money that actually might be holding us back?

Shannon Ryan: I have the privilege of working with a lot of women, maybe because I am a woman financial advisor, there hasn't been a lot of us, but I've worked with a lot of women through divorce, and I can tell you exactly candidly what I'm told in my office. The first thing is that when you are in crisis, it's already painful enough, so many people will avoid looking at money, and what I hear is, "I'm not good at it."

"I really don't understand math. My husband did this. I thought he was going to take care of me. My father did it." They've abdicated it to someone else. Or they have a deep-seated belief that they're not good at it, and a terrible fear that there's not going to be enough, that if I look at it, that I'm really going to know that I am going to starve, and I am going to be that bag lady, and my kids are going to starve. And what have I done? Why didn't I talk to my husband about this sooner? Why didn't I put things in place sooner? So the shame spiral is tough, especially during some of these transitions.

And so what I will share with you is, after decades of working with real people and helping them through these transitions, the first thing is, you will get through it, even though you feel like you won't. No, you're going to die, you're going to suffocate, and maybe some days you want to just, you know, you will get through it financially. It may be messy, meaning you may have to make some decisions you don't want to make, meaning you're used to a certain lifestyle, or you have to go back to work after agreeing that you are going to take care of kids, and you gave up your career, and you're behind in your career because you just gave up 15 years. I get it. It's scary.

So taking an inventory and understanding where you're at, but more importantly, understanding now that you're through the transition, who you want to be as you get through it. And once you're in it, you can't get out of it. You've got to move through it. I guess you can stay stuck in it, and that's a choice that you can make. It's a choice that I hope that somebody in transition doesn't make. You just got to get up, take the next step.

But I believe that the women and the men, I've seen a lot of stay-at-home men now these days, where they go through transitions that are very similar, that as long as they keep making the next decision, as scary as it is... and I've had men and women sitting in my office just in tears, and "I'm scared, and this is not going to work out." And then we just take a look at everything. "All right, let's take a look at all your resources. What do you need to do?" And we've made decisions to sell homes. We've made a decision to change out cars. We've made a decision to get a second job, maybe a third, until we get debt that we were, you know, we were left with from a bad divorce. So there's so many different situations. I also work with people that all of a sudden have gone through divorce and have more than enough money, but they're terrified to even interact with it.

So it's on both sides, and the stories and the things that we tell ourselves are typically not positive. Whatever you're telling yourself, we have enough to work, in my opinion, to align it with what's important. So when I'm working with somebody, it's like, "Laurie, tell me what's most important at the end of this. Who are you? Who do you want to be?" And the first thing it's said is, "Well, that won't happen, Shannon. I don't have enough," or "I just can't swing it." Don't weigh on whether it's possible or not. Tell me where you're going, and then we figure out how to get there. And so it's the most effective way to move through something. And I'm not saying it's not painful. It is.

Laurie James: And when you have... there's so much uncertainty when you're going through a transition, whether it's a career change or a divorce, male or female, because you're splitting up your money, and typically, the majority of women don't fare as well as men do through divorce. I mean, the statistics show that, unfortunately, and so that, I think, then becomes harder on women, because even though there's more men that are staying home, more women end up staying home than men. And our legal system doesn't always look at that, in my opinion, fairly.

And I know that there's, you know, on the men's side, it's really hard, too, because, you know, writing that check every month for 10 years, 20 years, a lifetime, or whatever, that feels really hard for them, too. But yeah, and I think it's also scary, because, like you were talking about before we hit record, it's primal.

Shannon Ryan: It's primal. It's how we clothe ourselves and feed ourselves, but it's more than that. It's how we judge ourselves and others. When you say somebody is successful, what do you think? They've got money. We don't... We rarely examine the quality of somebody's life. When I say, "Hey, Laurie, I ran into our friend, and oh my gosh, she is so successful now," are you thinking, "Oh, she's successful in her marriage? She successfully raised her children, she's working out and doing Pilates"? You think she's made money, and that is our society. And I don't fight the way that we think this has been for generations, how we viewed success.

However, when you view that on a society level, to be accepted, to be considered successful, now that's tied to money. Oh my goodness, the emotions behind all of that run so deep. And back to the divorce, because I know you've got people going through transitions, one of the other pieces, and the reason why divorce isn't equitable typically for the person who made the decision and the sacrifice to step away from a career, is our society is moving so quickly that unless you keep your digital skills and your professional skills up to date, and you're out of the workplace two years, five years, 10 years, you are grossly behind, and you will not command the salary. So the person who stayed in the workplace has continued to grow with their ability to earn an income as well.

And I'm not criticizing people who choose to stay home. I'm actually saying I love that choice. I think in every family, you have to make a personal choice, but if you or your spouse decide to stay home during those years, one of the things that I talk to my clients about is, first of all, protecting yourself financially: prenups and post-nup agreements, protecting your education, meaning if you're not working in your profession and keeping up to date on your skills. And it sounds really cold, because we go into it and we're like, "But I'm in love, and he's going to take care of me." And it's... you know, Taylor Swift got engaged today. We're... oh, did she? I didn't hear the news they got engaged. So I don't know if it's today, but she... so they're recording on the day that she and Travis Kelce announced her engagement. And it's a love story, right? So everybody wants the love story and to be swept off the feet and taken care of, I think she's worth more than he is. But what I'm saying is is that we want to relax into something or someone and just feel financially safe.

And I get that with my whole heart, but I also know the reality of what happens on the backside of a lot of marriages. And I also know that even if your marriage or your partnership is everything you want it to be, there's nothing guaranteed. Whatever, you could lose your job, you could be sued and lose all of your assets. There's so many things, so keeping skills and keeping yourself up to date is really important.

Laurie James: Yeah, and you know, I got married in the early 90s, and I was of that mindset, because my mom always worked; she was a teacher, and I was like, "I'm not going to rely on somebody else." And I did, you know, I worked up until we decided to have a third. And who knew I was going to have a third and a fourth, because I had identical twins. You know, and there's so much about that I would not change for the world. But I have to say, you know, I have reinvented myself. I, you know, but it was fucking scary, and it was hard, and it's still ongoing, because I don't do things traditionally. I mean, I could have gotten a job, you know, at a Pottery Barn or William Sonoma or done something, but that's just not who I am. I, I need, you know, more meaning in my life. I need more value, more meaning for me, personally, and helping others has always been something that's been important to me, and it's one of my core values.

It is really scary and it is really hard, but if you just take small steps every week, every day, then those small steps add up to an entire staircase, and you will get back. The other thing I wanted to say is, you know, my kids witnessed me staying home, and my oldest daughter is engaged, and she's getting married next summer, and at one point she was, which I'm super excited about, and I love her fiancé, but one of the things she talked about, which is on this point, is that she thinks she wants to stay home with the kids, or, you know, when she starts having kids. And I said to her, because of, based off of my experience, I'm like, "I suggest you keep doing something, even if it's part-time, right? Even if it's one to two days a week." I think that's important to your point about keeping your skills up. But it's not just about the skills. It also has to do with our self-worth.

Because if you're in a marriage that somebody is controlling with money, that's picking away at your self-worth, because they're saying, "I don't trust you with this money." So if they're saying that about the money, what else are they saying that in manipulative ways, which is something that I experienced in my marriage. And I think that I wouldn't have felt... because I definitely struggled with self-worth and self-confidence. I mean, I think the most thing I ever did before I wrote my book was like, write an email, a PTA email about how I'm going to share carpool for a week, or, I mean, you know, or a PTA email of like, you know, how we're going to raise funds for the PTA, or whatever it was. So I think that's a really, really important piece, and even if somebody is just starting to get back into the workforce because they know they need to, any listeners, just do it slowly. You don't need to figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life or the rest of the time that you have to work if you do have to work today. Yeah.

Shannon Ryan: And those transitions can come on quickly. I grew up in a household where my father was a surgeon, and he liked his wives not to work, and with the multiple marriages, I witnessed so much of that as a child that I talk about in my book, that I even shared with my husband when we were dating, that I will always work, I will always maintain my career, maintain my licensing, and basically because I don't ever want to lose the control of being able to provide for myself and my children. And if he wasn't comfortable with me doing that, I wasn't the right person. And I will tell you that that is a disorder. That's a money disorder out of my own scar tissue, out of my own brokenness.

I've been married to my husband for 35 years. He's incredibly dependable. I can lean on him without losing his respect, which I thought, given what I was demonstrated growing up, was if I was a stay-at-home mom and I wasn't earning a paycheck, which I believe stay-at-home moms earn their paycheck with their working spouse, but if I did that, then I would lose the respect, because I wasn't providing additional value. So all the things you were feeling was what I was so terrified about that I wouldn't stop working, and that's not good either, Laurie. Like, there needs to be a balance here. So it's very important that we understand our story, and not to say that my story of staying engaged and working was the right way to do it, or your story was being at home was, but what I'm saying is is we all have a story and decisions that we made, and from those decisions, we need to continue to align with what's most important to us.

I had a client whose husband just died at 47, and they weren't expecting that, and he was wonderful, and she was stay-at-home, and he was providing and not making her feel bad about... I mean, perfect situation. He didn't have enough life insurance. He didn't have enough life... He had enough for them to get by, but not for a lifetime of him being gone.

Laurie James: Right. And at 47 you don't have your nest egg built up enough to retire, you know, unless you're in the tech world or, you know, you helped with a startup, but the average person isn't in a financial position to not to stop working or to provide enough for their wife and how many of her children that they have for the rest of their lives at that age.

Shannon Ryan: And I wish I had been involved. I've evolved since he's passed. I wasn't involved before he passed, because there's ways of protecting ourselves, getting enough insurance on the person who's working. I mean, there's a lot of things to do to protect. My husband is getting ready to retire here in the next two years, and I'm increasing my life insurance because as a primary breadwinner, I'm going to stay in the workforce for 10 years after he is done working, and if I die prematurely or something happens to me, I want to make sure that he has the resources he needs, and that's really important.

So there's ways of creating a desired outcome and planning for it, but we have to understand our own fears. As I said, I told my husband early on what my fear was, and I've learned I can definitely trust and fall back on him, and he doesn't lose respect for me. And, you know, so but I had all of these basic, I call money disorders and feelings and scar tissue, from what I witnessed as a child and from what I've learned, I'm not alone. There's a lot of us that have carry this stuff, and we either face it and build the financial life that we love, or we... I've people go to the grave with piles of money they were never able to enjoy because they just couldn't learn to enjoy it.

Laurie James: And why earn all that money if you're not going to enjoy it and you're just going to let your scar tissue control your life? I mean, yeah.

Shannon Ryan: And what happens, I think, is, once you do have some wealth, and what I mean by wealth is you have choices. And there's so many people in the world, Laurie, and I understand this, that don't have choices around their money. They live in such poverty that they don't have choices. I recognize that, but the rest of us do, and those choices that we are making around our money has an outcome that either aligns and makes us happy or doesn't align. I've seen a lot of people go to their death with a lot of money, and they could have lived exactly how they wanted to live. They could have given it away and gotten so much more joy out of the giving, but they were so terrified and had so much scar tissue, they hung on to this paper like it was going to save their life, or they felt their only value to their family was the money, so they used it as power. So the dynamics... and so clearly I find this very interesting, and I get to live this with everybody in their lives, every day, and it's fascinating. We're all so different. I think that's what makes it such rewarding work.

Laurie James: Yeah, so finding what you value in life and what's important to the listener, and then using the money that you do have to then create that life, I think is really important, whether you're going through a transition, whether you're not going through a transition, whether your spouse is getting to retire soon, all of those things. So thank you so much. As we come to a close, what's one confession that you'd like to share with our listeners that maybe we haven't touched on yet?

Shannon Ryan: I was so nervous after watching my father so controlling over money that I made a decision not to have children, and I was so terrified in the financial world that if I had children, I would have to give up my career and my power to control my own financial destiny. And I'm really grateful to my husband, and I'm really grateful, I'm a person of faith, that I really had this deep feeling that I was supposed to have children, because I had my first child at 37 and my second at 40, and it's been the greatest journey, but I didn't want children because of my money hang-ups. Wow.

Laurie James: And you were able to overcome your fear and have two incredibly beautiful children. Yeah.

Shannon Ryan: Two girls. And it's been... I've done some great things in my life, but there's been nothing for me greater than being Lauren and Taylor's mom.

Laurie James: Oh, I love that. Thank you for saving that to the end. That's so beautiful. And thank you so much for being here. How can people find your book? And how can people find you if something resonated that you said and they want to get in touch with you?

Shannon Ryan: I have everything on my website. It's https://shannon-ryan.com/ , and the book's on there. It'll be out in the next couple of weeks. Thank you so much, Laurie.

Laurie James: Yeah, thank you. I'll have that information in the show notes. It'll be easy for people to click through. Thank you so much, Shannon. Thank you, Laurie. Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Free Bird. I'm grateful to be in your ears and hearts. If you're interested in becoming a Free Bird, I'd love to support you. Please check out my website at https://www.laurieejames.com/ to learn how we can work together, or to sign up for my newsletter so you can receive tips on how to date and relationship differently and ultimately find more freedom and joy in your life. If you found this podcast helpful, please follow or subscribe, rate and review, and share it with friends so they can find more freedom in their second or third act. Also, until next time.