money

No More Direct File Through IRS

As of this tax season, Internal Revenue Service’s free filing option, Direct File, has officially been discontinued. This program was praised by a number of tax filers and even by the Government Accountability Office in one of its reports, but IRS decided that the program was too costly to continue. In November 2025, a Treasury Department report discussed how Direct File was no longer a priority, and resources should be redirected to expanding the Free File program, which outsources free tax filing options to partner programs.

This is unfortunate, as the platform was reportedly easy to use. It’s interesting that several of the larger tax preparation software companies were opposed to the IRS offering a free option, even though this option was initially only applicable to simple tax returns. It’s safe to say that the bigger tax preparation companies knew that the implementation of a simple and cost effective filing option would eventually mean the loss of many customers over time, specifically since the direct filing capabilities would eventually expand and become more sophisticated and comprehensive over time.

Though Direct File is no more, IRS continues with the Free File program, which is still beneficial for filers with an adjusted gross income of $89,000 or less. For taxpayers over the AGI ceiling, fillable forms are available for free through the IRS website.

While the discontinuance of Direct File is unfortunate, it’s good that there are still a number of affordable digital filing options for taxpayers that need it. You may view the free file partners and fillable forms by clicking on this link. Filing season will begin on January 26, so you have time to review the different platforms and see which one works best for you.

End Of The Year Financial Tips: How To “Winter” Your Finances

During this holiday season, it can be easy to forget that there are financial activities that we can do to set the groundwork for the year ahead. The life we want to live in 2026 is the life we prepare for now, in 2025. For this reason, I highly recommend doing a few winter activities to prepare your finances for the prosperous seasons ahead.

We have to remember that winter is the perfect season for strategizing and preparing. When many activities slow down or close due to the colder weather, we find ourselves indoors, with more time to work on activities we may have neglected when we were outside and living well. So during the winter, we can focus on our financial strategies, keeping in mind that we’re not focusing on speed. Rather, we’re building systems and protocols for financial strength, clarity, and structure.

To start, take a little (or maybe a lot of) time to audit without emotion. We need to take the time to look at our finances clearly, calmly and without shame. Remember, there is NO place for shame in our finances: we only need to focus on making great decisions moment by moment as we go forward. Auditing without emotion can help us identify money leaks, overspending patterns, weak systems and outdated obligations. Clarifying our money status is a beginning step for aligning with wealth.

Next, we need to fortify the essentials. This looks like laying the groundwork, and strengthening current frameworks, that support our financial ecosystem. This can include bolstering our emergency fund, reviewing and updating our insurances and other financial protection mechanisms, ensure that savings is automated, and clarify essential budget categories. Use this time to reinforce these financial containers before adding more money and more systems.

Then, we can turn our attention to reducing energetic drain. Remember that money follows energy. This is a good time to look back at the findings from the audit, and proceed to clean up whatever needs to be discarded. This is the time to cancel subscriptions, eliminate expenses that don’t serve us, cease engaging in any draining habits, and bring closure to any low quality commitments. The less noise we have, the more capacity we create. And capacity is needed before proceeding.

The next step is to clarify our priorities. I am a huge cheerleader for clarity: nothing fantastic can come from murky thoughts, so clarity is key when it comes to money. In the quiet of winter, we can hear our intuition clearly, and, using that intuition, we can align our actions and desires. At this phase, choose only 1 or 2 wealth priorities for the season. Too many priorities creates murkiness: 1 or 2 priorities is perfect for maintaining clarity. This also allows for precision that isn’t available when our energy and attention are split in too many directions.

Our next step is to prepare for spring expansion. While we enjoy and attune to winter’s energy, we also must keep in mind that these steps are our process to walk into spring confidently. Preparing for spring expansion includes steps like mapping out tax positioning in the upcoming year, pondering ideas regarding business structure or upgrades, pinpointing income goals, planning and structuring investment strategies, and identifying systems we will use for ease and expansion. A plain notebook for capturing all of these ideas and plans is all that’s needed to start.

The final step is probably my favorite, which is aligning the energy behind the numbers. This involves learning to regulate our nervous systems, honor our boundaries, and make decisions from clarity. Our mental state is where our financial reality begins, and we cannot create grounded wealth without grounded energy. Spend some time focusing on having the mental attitude of a financially successful person, and continue to align with this energy regularly.

Winter is a season of release and stillness, but it is not the death of our abundance. This season prepares us for sustainable prosperity. In this time, we can architect our next level with intention. We can build a life that our future selves can thrive inside, if we take the time to “winter” our finances.

If you need a quick reset for this winter season – something that will help you tap into the energy of the life you desire to lead – download the free booklet, the Sacred Winter Reset, and consider completing it before the end of the month. You’ll find some great tips in there, that will help tremendously with aligning with the energy of the season.

Thanks for reading and I’ll talk to you all soon!

The Shutdown Is Over. What Was The Result?

For those that are unaware, the longest shutdown in US history is officially over. To quickly bring you all up to speed, the US federal government must approve an operating budget annually (usually, it is confirmed before October 1st of every year). However, every once and a while, Congress – the people who vote on the budget – will disagree, and if the budget isn’t approved, then the government will shut down due to a lapse in funding. That’s what happened on October 1, 2025, and this shutdown lasted for 44 days (the previous record holder for longest shutdown was 35 days, back in 2018 – 2019).

Originally, this year’s budget disagreement centered on the expiration of Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits. These are set to expire on December 31, 2025, and these tax credits are what make it possible for health insurance through the ACA to be affordable. The expiration would mean that insurance costs would skyrocket for those that have insurance through the ACA. These credits are based on household income, and, considering the cost of living for most Americans, the credits are the only thing that have made healthcare insurance affordable and accessible. Many have remarked over how the insurance costs will double for most people that previously qualified for the credits. If the credits aren’t extended, insurance will likely be cost prohibitive for most of the families currently using insurance providers through the ACA Marketplace.

However, this temporary budget was passed without resolving the ACA expiration issue. As a result, the government reopened, and healthcare costs will increase drastically, starting on January 1, 2026. Elected officials who agreed to the temporary budget said that they did so because they were “promised” that the ACA issue will be revisited and resolved at a future date. It appears this whole shutdown was an exercise in futility: a complete disruption of government functions ended on a “promise” that is unlikely to materialize as expected. After getting this temporary solution, we may be facing furloughs again in January, when the current deal expires.

It’s a disappointing situation all the way around: so many people went without their salary, experienced disturbances in their government benefits, and were impacted by government closures, only for the proverbial can to be kicked further down the road. This was an expensive and careless exercise, it it doesn’t seem wise that these officials accepted a “promise” as a fair compromise for the precarious situation millions of Americans experienced this past 44 days. So, while I wish this was the end of the shutdown discussions, I anticipate I will be returning to this topic in a couple of months. Here’s hoping that the next few weeks will be a productive period for Congress, and that they will unite to ensure that Americans can continue to receive affordable healthcare rates.

Three Weeks of Government Shutdown 2025 – What’s Happening Now

Well, here we are 21 days into the shutdown, which ties this shutdown with the one that occurred in 1995-1996. Per the latest reports, there is no end in sight, which means that this is quickly becoming a possible contender for the longest shutdown in US history.

On my end, all has been well. I’m happy that my resources have sustained me thus far, and I”m just waiting patiently as things get sorted out with the federal government. Things may become direr for employees who weren’t able to prepare for the shutdown (thinking specifically of those newer employees, or those that have had recent or drastic changes in their financial circumstances). Please keep those folks uplifted in your thoughts: this may be an especially difficult time for them.

I’ve been employing a lot of selective information consumption at this time. However, some of my favorite sources for shutdown and general government information have been:

  • Federal News Network (enough general information on here to keep most people well informed)
  • NPR (great if I prefer to get my news via radio)
  • Heather Cox Richardson (government explained through a historian’s perspective: refreshing and informative)
  • LinkedIn News (though I often find myself conducting quite a bit of fact-checking to confirm the veracity of the statements I’m reading)

As soon as I have more details, I’ll be sure to share with you all. Until then, I’m standing by and waiting, just like the rest of the federal workforce.

In the meantime, I’ve been resting, traveling a little, and reading a lot. In previous furloughs, I learned that the most important thing I can do is occupy my time with things I enjoy and avoid obsessing about the things I cannot control. That has been instrumental in making sure that I don’t feel anxious or stressed, because worrying changes nothing. As a result, I always end up feeling pretty good about the uncertainty surrounding these closures. I use the time wisely and find ways to make the time off as fun as I can, too.

That’s it for this week in the Government Shutdown. Here’s hoping we’ll have some good news soon!

Shutdown Updates – What’s Happening With The IRS

Well, as this federal government shutdown toils on, many people may have questions regarding their tax obligations. After all, October 15th is the deadline for submitting tax returns after requesting an extension of time to file. What will happen to those returns that are submitted while nearly half of IRS’s employees are furloughed? And, what if you have some other tax questions that you need answered?

If you aren’t aware, IRS had a contingency plan that covered five shutdown days, but with the shutdown extended into its second week, nearly half of the workforce has been furloughed. You can expect that any IRS contact you need to make may be impacted by the reduced workforce. (You can read more about some of the general details here: IRS Shutters ‘Most Operations’, Furloughs Employees as Shutdown Continues). Fortunately, IRS published its contingency plan on its website, which spells out which functions will continue to operate, and which will cease. You can view the contingency plan here.

The functions that will continue during the furlough are:

  • Criminal Investigations (CI) (law enforcement operations, ongoing investigations, and protection of officials)
  • Data and property protection (computer systems management and taxpayer remittances)
  • Limited taxpayer services (disaster relief or safety focused only)
  • Filing season preparation (forms design, IT testing and modernization)
  • Contract oversight (for contacts necessary for life/property safety or exemption functions)

The functions that will cease during the furlough are:

  • Routine taxpayer services (call centers, walk-ins)
  • Non-disaster transcript processing
  • Non-automated collections and legal counsel for non-exempt matters
  • Research, planning and training not related to exempt activities
  • Most administrative and HQ functions not tied to safety or property protection

For those that have tax concerns, you may be wondering what should you do while you wait for IRS to go back to fully operational status. I tried the 1-800 number for IRS earlier today and found that indeed they are receiving calls, but you won’t be able to connect to a live person unless its related to disaster relief or some major safety concern. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the October 15th extension deadline is looming, and this furlough is unlikely to be a valid reason for not submitting your tax returns. So you will want to remit your returns anyway, since the data and property protection teams are still operating during this time (they will receive the documents, but processing wont’ resume until the furlough ends). Unfortunately, if you need a transcript and you’re not living in a disaster area, your request will not be processed during this time (keep this in mind if you were completing a process that requires income verification, like asset purchases).

Please know that in cases of shutdown, there are usually no pauses in automated collection actions: the time frames and system-generated documents generally continue as normal. So if you are currently under a payment plan, the shutdown will not stop or prevent you from having to pay on your balance owed. Also, if you were anticipating a refund, there is a good chance that that too will be automatically (systemically) issued if you were anticipating a direct deposit. I am unsure how this will impact paper checks. Additionally, if you are under criminal investigation (hopefully not!) and were hoping that the furlough meant you’d get a break, I hate to be the one to tell it to you, but the CI team is still hard at work and investigations will continue.

These reduced services can be a bit frustrating, but the shutdown is temporary and will be resolved at some point. Right now is a great time to sort through your documents in anticipation of your next year filing, or you can review some of the changes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (if you want me to share my notes in a future post, let me know!) Previously, we heard talks of tax collections being reduced or the IRS being eliminated. But with an estimated 80% or so of government funding coming from the IRS, the chances of a completely dissolved Internal Revenue Service are slim. So if you’re hoping that the temporary government shutdown will lead into a permanent shutdown of Internal Revenue Service, I wouldn’t bet on it. But who knows? Anything is possible.

Do you have any tax questions or are you still wondering what’s next for the federal government? Leave your questions below, and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Stay Safe: The Story of a Scam, Part 2

In my last blog post, I shared some of what I’d learned about Lightning Shared Scooter Company (LSSC), a pyramid scheme that stole millions of dollars from investors under the guise of a scooter installation and leasing company. After scrutiny from the FBI and customer complaints in more than 20 US states, LSSC shuttered its doors and vanished into thin air. When the company disappeared, so did many investors’ hard earned money.

In hindsight, I’m sure many of the participants in the scheme can identify multiple red flags that were always present. However, when in the throes of the excitement of generating income quickly, some of the usual caution is often disregarded. Some people who had been part of the company for a few years were earning the equivalent of an average US salary in less than two months’ time, and as a result, they probably didn’t ever stop to ask themselves, “Does any of this make sense?”

I want to be VERY clear: a pyramid scheme can only be effective if it causes participants to doubt their instincts. Even savvy investors can be scammed, as history has proven – time and time again – over the last 50 years. Nothing that I’m sharing should be interpreted as victim blaming, because the key to an effective scheme is sophisticated deceptive practices. NO fraudulent scheme can be effective if it’s obviously scammy, so naturally, victims may not identify the scam immediately. While I suspected the business was a scam as soon as I heard it, it was difficult to identify it as such when there are multiple people earning consistent profits from it over several years.

With that being said, here’s a list of some of the red flags, as well as ways to identify scams and schemes as they are presented to you.

  • Recent launch and request for individual investors instead of using institutional funds. Companies at the size and scale that LSSC claimed it was DO NOT seek random individuals to fund it. Companies that plan to expand and to set up an effective presence in a new country or market will use the banking structures of that country. And yes, crowd sourcing is an option for smaller companies, but even that is generally conducted on a third-party platform that offers some neutrality and security to investors.
  • Promise of a quick return of investment. The old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true . . . ” comes to mind.
  • Usage of a profit model that doesn’t look like any others that you’ve seen or experienced. Most compensation structures have already been created and tested: truly innovative models are as rare as hen’s teeth. If the profit model is new, then you should probably wait a while to see how it works, and if it’s sustainable over the long term. If some of the participants had just waited for a few months or a year, they would have seen that the company’s profit model was fraudulent and could have avoided being fleeced.
  • Complicated pay structures and mechanisms.If you don’t completely understand how and why you’re getting paid, then that could be a reason to pause and do some additional research. You should be clear on how the money gets to you and why you’re getting it.
  • Multiple concurrent activities that are not connected to the company’s mission. These are also known as “distractions”. Hosting dinners, raffling items, logging into a chatroom that requires constant involvement throughout the day, required training hours that don’t actually teach you anything related to the business, multiple unrelated “meetings” per week: all of these things add up to a company that wants you so distracted that you won’t notice that they’re failing to pay you on time . . . again.
  • Conflicting messages regarding pay, participation, etc.,. Once a company flip flops a number of times, you can bet that they’re simply readjusting as they realize that the time for the scam is running out.
  • Insistence upon involvement in activities that have nothing to do with the company’s mission and profit generation. If they want you, as an investor, to do anything other than put in money and read quarterly earning statements, then they are likely trying to distract you. If the company wants you participating in contests for no clear reason other than “community building” AND if the activities being promoted have nothing to do with the income generation of the company, you can better believe that this is part of the deception that makes investors more comfortable with sinking in additional funds.
  • Unclear connection between company activities and company mission and profit generation. Why would a company raffle off house plants, air fryers, and televisions daily, especially if the company doesn’t specialize in selling house plants, air fryers or televisions? Again, another distraction.
  • Structures that claim to be inspired by existing models but have very little actual connection. This is a common tactic that causes the investor to “fill in the blanks” when they should be more skeptical. LSSC claimed to be similar to companies like ride-sharing platforms (think Uber and Lyft), but the scooter operations were more akin to rental car agreements. The company also claimed to be focused on the “sharing economy”, but nothing in the scooter business requires that. This was part of getting the investors to associate the company with trusted models that had proven themselves, even though the company had not actually employed the model that they claimed was their “inspiration”.
  • Cryptocurrency as the sole means of conducting business. Please know that I’m not anti-crypto: I believe any platform or method of acknowledging currency is “valid”, so long as all participants are knowledgeable and agree to use the platform/method as intended. But the focus on recruiting individuals that are unfamiliar with crypto, then insisting that the individuals only operate within cryptocurrency platforms, is a red flag to me. It should be noted that the appeal of cryptocurrency lies in the fact that it exists outside of government regulations. So prosecuting people who have committed criminal acts on crypto platforms is challenging, and oftentimes impossible. Also, the relative anonymity that can be accomplished by using crypto platforms means that identifying culprits is almost always impossible.
  • Poorly constructed training sessions, and training that reads more like indoctrination than specialized education. When a business is newly formed, you can expect that some of the training and other information sessions may be a little disorganized, and trainers may not be able to answer every question that comes from the audience. However, after several years in business, there should be a streamlined, organized and fairly seamless training program in place, with trainers that are well-versed and poised. Also, your spidey senses should go off when training sessions focus heavily on indoctrinating participants as opposed to educating them. What’s the line between indoctrination and education? Even experts debate this, but generally speaking, any statements that push people towards ideologies without critical analysis would fall under the indoctrination umbrella. If you find yourself in a space that presents opinions as “logic”, uses an assortment of formal and informal fallacies to make arguments and utilize shaming and embarrassment tactics to encourage certain behavior, it’s likely that indoctrination – not education – is the goal. When you see poorly constructed training paired with indoctrination, what you’re likely experiencing is a scam.
  • Fanaticism is the main attraction, not the product or service. Going back to the point about indoctrination, one of the outcomes of being brought into a business that operates like a cult is that participants go from interested supporters to fanatics, allowing the business to take over their lives. One of the most peculiar things about the LSSC scam was how much time the business demanded of investors while still calling itself a source for “passive” income. There was nothing passive about the number of discussions, training and meetings that investors were required to attend each week. There was also nothing passive about the activities required by participants to maintain the payment levels that they achieved when they first invested. As a slight aside, it’s worth noting that requiring fanaticism from participants is one of the hallmarks of cults, and, in my opinion, so many things about the LSSC scam read as cult behavior.

Those are the main red flags I identified in the LSSC scam, but I can comfortably state that most scams use a number of the tactics that I mention. I hope that everyone involved with the LSSC scam is made whole, and I hope that anyone that’s questioning an investment opportunity does their research and makes sure that the opportunity is a legitimate one.

That’s all for today. I’ll talk to you all soon!

Stay Safe: The Story of a Scam, Part 1

In the financial world, the only guarantee that exists is that there is always a scam or scheme on the horizon, ready to take advantage of the ambitious but ill-informed masses. Recently, a large group of global investors and entrepreneurs fell victim to a scooter scam to the tune of millions of dollars.

If you have been keeping up with the world of frauds, scams and schemes, you may have heard of the Lightning Shared Scooter Company (L.S.S.C.) The Hong-Kong based company purported to set up scooters in densely populated cities, and investors could pay a flat fee to lease a set of scooters for 3 years. These leases were supposed to fund the initial scooter purchase and subsequent mechanical maintenance. Larger investments created the opportunity for more scooter leases, and more leases meant more money could be made by the investor. The company would maintain the scooters, and the investors made money by “turning on” the scooters every day of the work week (Monday through Friday). The claim was that investors would recover the initial investment within 30 working days (about 6 weeks). After that 6 week period, all subsequent income generated was profit.

This sounds simple enough, but the story quickly fell apart as the company revealed more about what they expected from investors. First of all, the company was compensating investors for “turning on” the scooters, but it didn’t seem logical that, in this age of automation, these devices would need to be manually powered on. The company alternated between claiming that investors didn’t need to bring in additional participants and claiming that the only way to make money was to add new “team” members as quickly as possible. Additionally, the training and investor meetings were extremely disorganized and repeated the same canned, surface-level information in slightly different ways. Investors were expected to attend YouTube “training” sessions that weren’t substantive, but simply a way to continue to spin the illogical compensation structure of the company and leverage the excitement of new investors that were ready to make “easy” money. These “trainings” offered fluffy, poorly constructed arguments in favor of the company, and were little more than a way for the YouTube trainers to quickly become part of the YT Partner program, offering a way to make money beyond LSSC’s scooter scheme.

Another peculiar point about the scam was the method for compensation. The company only paid through cryptocurrency on Coinbase, and they required a complex process for remitting investment funds to start. The company would have different short term investment opportunities for participants, where investors would remit $10,000 or more and, within 2 or 3 days, they could receive from 10% to 25% over their initial investment. LSSC went a step further, and also started making claims that the money received from the company was nontaxable due to the fact that the company was Hong-Kong based, offering awful and oversimplified tax guidance to excited but uneducated investors (at the point where I heard this, I KNEW, for sure, this was a scam and would cause financial ruin for the participants if it continued).

Further, the company’s rapid expansion was supposed to be part of a strategic plan to corner the North American market by “proving” public interest in scooter usage (all while scooters devices have been in use for many years here in the US). Relying on investors’ ignorance of how foreign companies enter new markets, the “logic” presented argued that the fact that investors’ participation would make a stronger claim for LSSC as it navigated the process of setting up US presence. The company attempted to bolster its appearance of legitimacy by offering business registration information and documents on live videos, telling investors (and I paraphrase here, but not much), “If we were crooks, would we register with regulatory agencies?” Personally, the registration documents provided by the company were among some of the flimsiest I’ve ever seen, and didn’t actually confirm the legitimacy of the company, but that should be no surprise, given the way things turned out.

In the end, the company came toppling down in late July 2025. In the weeks leading up to the collapse, the company amped up activity, promising to gift Teslas to some of the lucky investors, planning multiple grand openings of scooter stores in the US, and giving away the equivalents of thousands of dollars in household items to investors each day. After failing to pay investors timely, AND after failing to disperse rewards promised through games and competitions on the company’s BonChat platform (their exclusive communication channel structured similarly to WhatsApp), it became clear that LSSC was what it claimed to be. On the heels of FBI scrutiny, the company closed down and left many people with lightened wallets and shamed faces.

Further, some of the more public members of the organization – who were also investors who lost significant money – have become victims of harassment, despite the fact that they were not the masterminds behind the scheme. Several individuals have been forced to keep a low profile in light of the scandal. It has been rumored that the different higher level individuals that interacted with investors were actually AI generated entities, making it nearly impossible to pinpoint the actual parties responsible for the scam.

In any case, I have a lot of sympathy for the victims, and there were plenty of them: the entry point for investors was fairly low (less that $1000 USD when the company shuttered its doors), making it accessible. And, because the company initially kept its promises to investors, the early investors (some of whom came into the structure when the fees were less than $500 USD) were encouraged and inspired to bring in as many family members and friends as they could. I have several family members who fell victim to the scheme, however, they personally incurred the loss for the individuals that they brought into the company (they made the investment on behalf of the people they brought in, only to be repaid when the participants were beyond the 30 day investment recoup period).

There were many red flags with the scheme, and I will explore ALL of them in my next post. So stay tuned for Part 2 of The Story of a Scam. I’ll talk to you all soon!

Don’t Do It Alone: The Power of Sacred Support

The myth of the “self-made” success story might be the most damaging narrative in modern business culture. It suggests that true achievement comes from solitary effort, that asking for help signals weakness, and that independence equals strength. Trying to duplicate a “solo” success story is a recipe for burnout and frustration. You don’t *have” to build your success alone for it to be valid and rewarding.

This myth is particularly harmful for women navigating significant challenges, creating impossible standards that guarantee burnout. Doing it alone is killing us, slowly AND quickly.

The truth? No meaningful success happens in isolation. Every thriving entrepreneur has robust systems of support—whether visible or behind the scenes. The difference in a sustainable approach is making these support systems intentional, aligned, and yes, sacred.

What Is Sacred Support?

Sacred Support = Intentional Support

This includes people, tools, rituals, and practices that uphold your well-being while you build wealth. Sacred support honors your values, your capacity, and your nervous system.

The term “sacred” isn’t necessarily religious or spiritual (though it can be if that resonates with you). Rather, it signifies that your support systems deserve reverence, intentionality, and protection. Sacred support isn’t an afterthought or a luxury—it’s the essential foundation that makes sustainable success possible.

Why “Sacred” Matters

Traditional business advice often treats support systems as purely practical resources—tools to maximize productivity or extensions of your working capacity. This transactional approach misses the deeper significance of truly aligned support.

Sacred support differs in several key ways:

Alignment with Values: Sacred support systems reflect and reinforce your core values rather than undermining them. They help you create success on your own terms rather than pushing you toward conventional models that don’t serve you.

Honoring of Capacity: Sacred support acknowledges and works with your actual energy patterns rather than trying to override them. It creates space for your humanity rather than treating you as a production machine.

Nervous System Attunement: Sacred support is designed with awareness of what helps your nervous system feel safe and regulated. It reduces activation rather than adding to your stress load.

Reciprocal Nourishment: Sacred support creates mutually beneficial relationships rather than one-sided extraction. It values fair exchange and sustainability for all involved.

By treating your support systems with reverence, you create an energetic exchange that is balanced, restorative, and sustainable.

Types of Sacred Support

A comprehensive support ecosystem includes four essential types of support:

Emotional Support: Therapists, mentors, trusted friends

  • Professional support for processing feelings, challenges, and growth
  • Mentorship that provides perspective and wisdom from those further along the path
  • Friendships that offer understanding, encouragement, and witnessed experience
  • Support groups specific to your circumstances or challenges
  • Coaching relationships focused on your emotional wellbeing alongside goals

Practical Support: VAs, schedulers, automation tools

  • Administrative assistance that handles routine or depleting tasks
  • Technology that simplifies complex processes or eliminates unnecessary steps
  • Service providers who manage specialized aspects of your business
  • Systems that capture and organize information without mental strain
  • Household support that reduces the domestic load alongside business demands

Energetic Support: Bodyworkers, spiritual practices, environments that soothe

  • Physical therapies that address embodied stress or tension
  • Practices that connect you to larger meaning or purpose
  • Spaces designed to support regulation and restoration
  • Nature connection that provides perspective and renewal
  • Creative outlets that allow processing and expression outside of work

Financial Support: Payment plans, income smoothing, wise investments

  • Cash flow strategies that create stability during capacity fluctuations
  • Investment approaches that generate passive support for your goals
  • Financial professionals who provide expertise and perspective
  • Proper compensation structures that honor your true value
  • Emergency funds and safety nets that reduce scarcity stress

Mapping Your Sacred Support Stack

To create a comprehensive support system, it helps to assess what’s missing and what’s strong across three dimensions:

1. Internal Support Systems These are the practices, mindsets, and resources that you cultivate within yourself to create a foundation of self-support.

2. Interpersonal Support Systems These involve the relationships, connections, and human resources that provide different types of support through direct interaction.

3. Infrastructural Support Systems These include the technological, environmental, and operational structures that create efficiency, consistency, and ease.

When these three dimensions are combined with the four types of support, you create a comprehensive “Sacred Stack” support map that illuminates both your strengths and gaps:

By rating your current support in each cell from 0-5, you can identify critical gaps, emerging strengths, and high-impact areas for improvement.

Energetic Boundaries + Business

Many people with challenging circumstances struggle to set boundaries—especially in business. This difficulty often stems from complex factors:

People-Pleasing Patterns: Fear that boundaries will result in rejection or abandonment

Trauma Responses: Hypervigilance that creates excessive responsibility for others’ experiences

Worthiness Wounds: Belief that your value depends on availability or usefulness to others

Income Insecurity: Fear that saying no will result in financial instability

The Aureum Sanctum approach reframes boundaries not as rigid walls or restrictions, but as energetic containers that protect your capacity and clarify expectations. These containers create clarity, predictability, and sustainability—ultimately benefiting both you and those you serve.

Designing Your Sacred Systems

Supportive systems should reduce decision fatigue and increase your sense of spaciousness. Effective systems create reliable processes that continue functioning even during capacity fluctuations, freeing your energy for high-value contributions only you can make.

The difference between standard systems and sacred systems is significant:

Standard Systems focus primarily on efficiency, productivity, and standardization. While potentially useful, they often prioritize output over wellbeing and conformity over individuality.

Sacred Systems honor your unique patterns, protect your energy, and create genuine ease. They’re designed with awareness of your specific needs rather than generic best practices.

If you need support in creating your sacred systems, please reach out to me so we can determine if we should work together.

Your Sacred Circle

Creating (or curating) a sacred circle of collaborators, co-regulators, and community is essential for sustainable success. While systems and tools provide important support, human connection offers unique benefits that cannot be replicated through technology or solo practices.

Your sacred circle provides essential functions that systems alone cannot. I will flesh out this concept further in a future post, but in the meantime, assess your current circle and determine which individuals currently surround you and how these people show up in your life. Ask yourself questions to determine their role in your life. Who energizes you after a conversation? Who do you feel safe asking for help from? Who have you been giving to without replenishment? Where can you seek community or mentorship that aligns with your energy level and vision?

Integrate for Success

Shifting from understanding to embodiment requires gentle but consistent practice. Here are some different practices to begin integrating sacred support into your daily experience:

1. Clear a Drain: Identify and eliminate one person, habit, or task that depletes you

2. Support Swap: Trade support with a friend—30 minutes for each other

3. Sacred Stack Audit: Complete your support map honestly

4. Tech for Support: Automate one thing you’re doing manually

5. Ask for Help: Reach out to a coach, mentor, or trusted peer

6. Boundary Builder: Establish one clear business boundary

The Impact of Sacred Support

When fully implemented, the systems of sacred support you’ve developed will transform your experience of business creation in profound ways:

Energy Amplification: With appropriate support, your available energy is focused on your zone of genius rather than scattered across depleting tasks.

Creative Expansion: Freed from constant logistical demands, your creative capacity naturally expands into new possibilities.

Sustainable Scaling: Your business can grow without proportionally increasing your personal energy expenditure.

Increased Resilience: Multiple support points create stability during inevitable challenges or energy fluctuations.

Deepened Impact: Your unique gifts can reach more people when you’re not handling every aspect of your business alone.

This approach might seem radical in a culture that glorifies self-sufficiency and individual achievement. But what could be more practical than designing support systems that honor both your vision and your humanity?

The path to sustainable success isn’t about doing more alone—it’s about creating the sacred support that allows your gifts to flow without depletion. By embracing the power of intentional, aligned support, you’re not just building a business—you’re creating a revolutionary model of wealth creation that honors the full humanity of entrepreneurs.

What would become possible in your business if you were truly, comprehensively supported? I’d love to hear your thoughts below!

Why The Previous IRS Commissioner Was Perfect For The Job

Upon hearing that IRS recognizes that they need more staff but doesn’t seem to be clear how to best accomplish this, I decided to research the current leadership, to see if the organization had the right people to realize their goals. The things I learned about Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long initially made me raise a brow, but since I believe in nuanced interpretations, I carefully considered what I learned about him and comfortably concluded that he is actually a very good fit for this role. Unfortunately, as I was completing my analysis, Long was removed from the position of Commissioner! That being said, a little background on Long is still worth considering, even if it’s just for the purpose of comparing the qualifications of future appointees.

Commissioner Long is a former congressman from Missouri, and he previously supported initiatives to abolish IRS. Additionally, there have been questions about Long’s ethical background, as he was once employed by a firm that obtained fraudulent Employee Retention Credits (ERC) on behalf of their clients. Long has stated that he did not partake in any wrongdoing, and Senate agreed with him, confirming him as commissioner in June 2025. Long was removed from his role as Commissioner in August 2025, less than 60 days after he started.

Here is why I think Commissioner Long was perfect for the role:

  • He has very little actual experience working in tax administration. This may be unusual for IRS commissioners but not for other public roles: there are a number of elected officials that have ZERO experience that qualifies them to participate in the committees in which they serve. The lack of relevant experience isn’t the disadvantage you would expect: it often serves as a prompt to dive deeper and really do the work of understanding how things work from the inside out. Long was in a perfect position to see IRS through fresh eyes.
  • In this role, he could have reconfigured the IRS in a way that best supported his vision for a fair, efficient revenue generator for the US. As a critic of the current IRS setup, he has a much deeper understanding of the flaws that can be fixed within the system. By focusing on fixing those issues, he could have set in motion the kind of changes that would actually make IRS a much better vehicle for financially supporting its goals and objectives.
  • I believe in the Emperor Sung effect when it comes to putting critics in positions that were initially opposed to (see The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene, Law 2, “Observance of the Law” for more context). There’s something transformative that happens when critics inhabit the roles they initially opposed. This gives them the opportunity to see firsthand where processes break down and how they can actually fix the problem. It’s very rare that someone gets into these positions and doesn’t have a shift in their perspective and interpretations. I believe that Commissioner Long was far more invested in cementing his legacy as a brilliant leader that transformed the behemoth that is IRS, than to be the one that dismantled the agency because of previously held viewpoints.

In any case, we won’t get to see Long usher in changes to the IRS. He has been appointed as Ambassador to Iceland (I can’t say whether that’s a promotion or not: I’ll let you be the judge of that) so we’ll just have to keep an eye out for the next commissioner and wait to see what changes will come. Long seems excited about his new role and I’m sure he’ll share many updates as he settles into his ambassadorship.

I’m interested in who will be appointed next. In the meantime, I’ll watch for updates on IRS’s hiring initiatives and implementation of the OBBBA in the weeks and months to come.

Winning the IRS Employment Game: A Strategic Guide

I recently shared a post regarding the Internal Revenue Service’s “hiring” push that is unlikely to result in any material impact on agency goals and objectives. However, at the end of the post, I mentioned how there would be some terminated or laid-off IRS employees that may be considering returning to the Service for the upcoming filing season, and how these employees could maximize the opportunity regardless of how indeterminate their employment time may be. Here are my recommendations for getting maximum benefit as a re-hired IRS employee:

  • Prior to returning to the office, schedule any doctor and specialist appointments so that your reinstated federal health insurance can cover those visits. For instance, if I was a former IRS employee that intends to be rehired before the filing season begins, I’d start scheduling doctor appointments for February and March 2026. I’d be sure to focus on those specialists that have a 6-9 months wait list, as well as any doctors that I have been unable to visit while I’ve been unemployed. I’d put those appointments on President’s Day if possible (this is a federal holiday that is open for many businesses, including a good number of medical offices). If, for some reason, I am not hired or my insurance is not reinstated within a few days of the appointment, I’d call and reschedule. I’ve lost nothing, and the medical office still has time to offer that space to another patient.
  • Leverage your lunch time and after work hours to complete free Skillsoft training to qualify you for a different job. Since it’s been more than a decade since I worked for IRS, I’m unsure how much access employees have within Skillsoft. However, if you are a rehired employee, confirm the Skillsoft access information in your employee handbook or through intranet pages. See if there is an option to download the Skillsoft app to your personal device, where you can use your agency log-in information to complete training when you’re off the clock. If so, explore the training paths that are most beneficial to your goals and use this re-employment period to complete the training. As you complete courses, make sure you retain copies of your completion records, lest they become unavailable to you in the future. Some programs I’d recommend are the project management and business analysis tracks (successfully completing Skillsoft training in either area is accepted by the Project Management Institute and the International Institute of Business Analysis). However, if you’d like to know of additional Skillsoft training that I recommend, let me know, and I’ll do another post.
  • Research the tuition reimbursement and student loan repayment options available to you. It’s uncertain whether these programs are going to be available when rehired employees return, but if I came back to the agency, this would be one of the first things I’d confirm. Generally, you must have at least one year of employment to qualify, but you’ll have to confirm whether there are additional criteria, such as whether the year of employment must be 12 consecutive months, if you must be a permanent employment (as opposed to seasonal) to qualify, if the benefits are available only to certain job series (positions), etc.,.
  • This is a perfect opportunity to utilize Employee Assistance Program (EAP) resources. Whatever you need that is available through EAP, go ahead and use it. I cannot remember the full extent of the resources available through IRS’s EAP, but these programs usually offer counseling and therapy services, financial and legal advice for personal purposes, and expedited referrals to various specialists. It’s a complimentary service so get as much as you can while you’re there.
  • Prioritize completing internal required and supplemental training and save documentation of it. Outside of Skillsoft, IRS used to maintain its own training materials. I advise you to take advantage of these training programs if still available and, should you find yourself laid off again, you’ll be able to prove that you’ve completed tax-relevant and other specialized training programs. These can be great if you enjoy working in finance or tax, and want to distinguish yourself from other applicants for other positions.
  • If at all possible, invest heavily in your Thrift Savings Program account. Socking away some retirement funds is always a good idea, and the effect of compound interest can work to your advantage. The sooner you put funds in, the longer you can benefit from the time advantage. So if you can put in a little (or a lot!), do it. Your future financial security will thank you for whatever you do now.

If you can think of additional strategies for rehired IRS employees, please leave those suggestions in the comments, so that others can benefit. Also, if there are any points that need correction, please let me know and I’ll be sure to update. Let’s help each other to make the best of this situation!