financial analysis

Entering My Opulent Era

This is slightly related to the subject of this blog so I figured I’d share.

Today is my birthday. I’m writing this ahead of time, since I’ll be overseas and practicing what I preach.

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve grown weary of the practical (boring) advice that is often offered by financial gurus. I am DONE with promoting austerity as the path to wealth, and I will no longer deny myself pleasure that adds depth and color to my existence. I believe it is possible to live luxuriously while also being wise with money. In fact, I’d argue that (for me) the only reason to be responsible with money is to enjoy the luxuries that money can buy. I may forgo ordering takeout to save up for a pair of Ralph and Russo shoes, or I may decide to stay home and read a book instead of blowing my quarterly massage budget on a night out with friends. Whatever the case is, I may opt for the responsible, “boring” choice, but only if it puts me in line for the luxury I really desire.

I have no interest in denying myself every pleasure, just so I can see a certain amount in my bank account. Yes, I believe in saving for rainy days and old age, but I also believe in leaving room for fun NOW! I don’t want a life where I’m not having fun: I want a life that is juicy, exquisite, and delightful from beginning to the very end. That is why I’m declaring this my Opulent Era. I require opulence in everything I do: my meals, my home, my hobbies, my travel, everything. If opulence means sacrificing the less interesting things, I’m happy to do it. I’m no longer interested in living a dull life JUST so I can have more money in an account. I want to LIVE (still responsibly, but not miserly!)

I’m committing to incorporating more opulence into my daily life. If that interests you, then stay tuned, because I’ll be sharing more of those opulent experiences here. I look forward to taking you all on this opulent adventure with me!

Posing at the Edinburgh Airport

Why Your Business is a Temple: The Sacred Systems that Scale Elegantly

The deeper truth of what you’re building

Most people think of their business as a machine: something to be optimized, automated, squeezed for efficiency and profit margins. They don’t think of their business as anything outside of a mechanism to accomplish a financial goal.

In the Sanctum, we see it differently.

Your business is a temple. It’s where your deepest gifts meet the world. It’s also where your ancestors’ sacrifices find new form. Their tears, their strides, their efforts – all of these energetic investments culminate into something new and powerful in your temple.

Your business is where your future lineage will one day trace their security and opportunity back to: all of the choices you’re making right now are part of your dazzling origin story.

This is why your systems — the structures that hold your offers, your money, your client relationships — must be more than transactional.

They must be sacred.

The Power of Spiritual & Strategic Infrastructure

True wealth isn’t just about how much money flows through your accounts. Money is just an indicator – a mirror – of previous decisions. However, true wealth is about how your business holds that money, circulates it, protects it, and grows it — without fracturing your nervous system in the process.

Here’s how we approach it in the Aureum Sanctum:

Systems that free time

Your time is your most precious non-renewable resource.

A sacred business honors it by building systems that operate gracefully even when you step away.

Seamless onboarding flows? These ensure that each new client feels cherished and initiated, without you scrambling behind the scenes. Automated payment structures? These trigger beautiful confirmations, not clunky invoices. Evergreen offers or passive products? These allow you to make money while you rest, travel, or simply luxuriate in your life.

Your business doesn’t require micromanagement. Trust the systems that you put in place.

Systems that regulate wealth

The goal is wealth without structure leaks.

Just like water that seeps through cracked jars, or the harvest that rots in the field, a business without proper storage in place will have spoilage and spillage.

Sacred financial systems are like consecrated vessels: Trusts that hold assets beyond your lifetime. Thoughtful tax architectures that transform liabilities into legacies. Elegant dashboards that show you your numbers at a glance, so you steward them with calm clarity.

When your money knows exactly where to go, it multiplies with grace — not chaos.

Systems that honor your nervous system

What good is scaling if your body is in a perpetual state of contraction?

Systems that support your calm can look like:

Calendars that include Sabbath days and silk afternoons — not just back-to-back calls. Automated reminders that replace mental clutter. Ritualized CEO days where you review metrics over tea and candles, so your wealth is tracked in a way that soothes your soul, not spikes your cortisol.

The right systems don’t just make you efficient: they make you feel profoundly safe.

Your temple deserves more than duct tape

Too many entrepreneurs slap together duct-tape solutions and wonder why their empire feels shaky. Temporary solutions rarely generate permanent positive results.

Your business deserves the same reverence you’d give to constructing a cathedral:

Solid foundations, intricate artistry, and space for spirit to move through.

So yes, let’s build the automations and hire the right team.

Let’s set up smart tax entities and invest in beauty-infused client portals.

Let’s do it not just for profit, but as an act of profound devotion to your future — and everyone who will walk these halls after you.

Create Your Business Temple

If you’re ready to treat your business as a temple that blesses you as much as it blesses the world — consider having a conversation with me. My door is open, and I’m excited to serve you as you create the business of your wildest dreams.

Scaling should feel sacred. Your business should feel like a beautiful sanctuary. Your nervous system deserves to thrive right alongside your bank accounts. Let’s build your beautiful vision – together.

Why I’m Diving Deeper into Tax Law Right Now

Sometimes legacy work calls you into new terrain.

Or, more accurately, into old terrain with fresh urgency.

I’ve described myself as a tax alchemist, someone who reads and interprets codes and designs wealth strategies that are sacred and sophisticated.

But in light of recent developments, I’ll be turning even more of my attention to the evolving world of tax law — and I want to bring you along for the journey.

The landscape is shifting

A newly passed comprehensive bill — the “One Big Beautiful Bill” — has introduced sweeping changes that will ripple through tax planning, compliance, and wealth structuring for years to come.

Simultaneously, a recent Supreme Court decision regarding the IRS, the tax court, and collections due process has redefined certain guardrails that taxpayers have long relied on.

Translation?

The frameworks that protect your wealth, your legacy plans, and even your day-to-day financial serenity are all being re-negotiated in real time.

What this means for you

Most people only discover these shifts when it’s too late — when they’re hit with unexpected liabilities, audits, or discover that their previously sound strategies no longer hold.

But in the Aureum Sanctum, we approach this differently.

We stay ahead by weaving regulatory changes into our rituals of wealth stewardship before they become crises.

This is why I’ll be dedicating more of my offline time to unpacking these new legal currents — what they mean, how they might impact your trusts or business entities, and how we can continue to shape them into elegant, protective structures for your family’s future. And, as I uncover crucial details, I’ll bring these insights back to the Sanctum.

The Aureum Sanctum approach: calm, clear, strategic

If the idea of diving into dense tax law makes you anxious, take a breath.

We approach this the same way we approach everything here: with calmness, clarity, discernment, foresight, and the steady reminder that wealth design is both art and architecture.

Together, we’ll navigate these changes without panic — only with precision and the quiet confidence of knowing your financial house rests on solid, beautifully crafted foundations.

What’s next

So expect to see more updates in the coming weeks and months:

  • Thoughtful explorations of the new bill’s most impactful provisions
  • Insights on the Supreme Court’s most recent collection due process decision and what it might mean for audits and collections
  • And practical, graceful guidance on how to pivot your tax and legacy planning strategies in light of it all.

Because at the end of the day, my mission remains unchanged:

To help you build wealth that is elegant, enduring, and exquisitely aligned with the life you’re here to live — no matter what the laws of the land decide to rearrange.

Harvesting Financial Wisdom: What Autumn Teaches Us

The autumn season is full of wonder and magic. Just think of how our senses are engaged during this time of year: the air gets cooler, the leaves change color, apples and pumpkins are at peak tastiness, and the environment is infused with the cozy energy that complements and prepares us for the chillier months to come.

As a financial consultant and part-time herbalist, I am struck by how much nature reflects her wisdom to us at all times. As I always say, how you do anything is how you do everything, and nature is no exception to this. We are surrounded by clues and hints from the natural world at all times. And in this season, there are many lessons to be learned that can be applied to many areas of our life, including our finances. Some of the autumn-themed financial lessons I’ve observed are:

  • Balance is key to everything. The first day of fall is an equinox, meaning that there is the exactly same amount of daytime and nighttime. It’s this perfect balance between light and dark that I like to keep in mind when looking at financial strategies. Yes, make sure to save, but also make sure to spend. Invest in boring things that grow slowly and steadily (like bonds) but also invest in things that excite you (like plucky startups or fine art, if that’s your thing). Do work that you enjoy, but also remember to make time for restoration and rejuvenation. Duality in all things is required to create a satisfying, balanced lifestyle.
  • Use your energy wisely. There are some plants that thrive in the colder months, and that’s because they don’t waste their energy during unfavorable seasons: you won’t see those plants struggling to adapt and grow in the spring or summer. Likewise, we need to use our energy wisely. Instead of trying to bloom in every season, we should look for the time that is most favorable, and do our best work then. Consider what times of day, month, and year we are most energized (this is particularly relevant to women, who have to consider our monthly cycles and energy levels) and plan around that. When it comes to money, use your energy to develop income sources that won’t constantly deplete your energetic reserves: you want to focus on developing some sources that are passive, and will allow you to use less energy during the times when it’s required. Wisely using your energy is key to living comfortably throughout your years.
  • Slowing down doesn’t mean ceasing to exist. The plants that come back to life every spring appear to be dead during the winter. At first glance, these plants appear to be a hopeless case, going from lush green to dry, brown and brittle in the fall. But then, when the necessary amount of time has passed, you’ll see little green shoots and proof of life on these very plants that looked like they’d expired. Likewise, you may find that you’ve been going hard – too hard – to create the things that you dream of. This is easy to do, especially in your wealth-building stages: it can be exhausting to take in a lot of information, experiment with different strategies, go back to the drawing board to modify your approach, then start all over (psst – You don’t have to do this alone). . . After doing all of that, you may one day feel like you can’t take another step. Or, maybe you feel yourself declining, and, before you collapse from the stress, you realize you have to change the pace to preserve yourself. If you ever get to these points . . . Slow down. You can come back stronger and more resilient if you give yourself a chance to rest and regroup. Opportunities are infinite, and you’re better able to take advantage if you aren’t depleted and at your wits end. SLOW DOWN, and get back to your plan when you’re feeling better.
  • Embrace change. In autumn, the air goes from warm to cool, bringing in the crispness we’ve come to expect from the season. The leaves go from green to red, orange, yellow and finally brown, and the days have less and less sunshine. Nature shows us that the only constant is change, and embracing it is good for us. Instead of arguing against the cooler air, we wear clothing that makes us feel more comfortable. We enjoy the sunshine while we have it, and appreciate the variety of color the leaves offer us. If we’re wise, we embrace the change and adapt accordingly. When you see that your financial plan has gaps or doesn’t meet your needs, you may need to make some changes. There is wisdom in making adjustments with confidence and calm, instead of agonizing over the “could haves/should haves”. Making changes when appropriate and with an accepting spirit can mean the difference between the life of your dreams and lingering in “someday land”.
  • Release anything that isn’t serving you. Speaking of leaves . . . The gorgeous color changes we enjoy in the autumn reminds us that release can be beautiful. Letting go of leaves allows trees to conserve precious energy, with the promise that these leaves will return when the resources and energy are more plentiful. When we release the things that are draining us, or that aren’t serving us, we can use the energy we preserve on things that will support and nurture us. When it comes to money, I checked my investments regularly to make sure that the accounts are growing at a reasonable rate. Anything that is performing poorly over a period of time is released, and I’ll only reconsider when performance improves. Having a healthy level of detachment (which is different from denial or delusion) from our finances allows us to make rational decisions that serve us now and in the future.

Do you have any lessons that you’ve learned from the changing of the seasons? I’d love to hear more about it below!

5 Reasons Why We Don’t Earn Enough Money

Hi friends! I have a little bit of a surprise coming in a couple of days, but before I can unveil that, I have to cover a topic that I know has been on a lot of minds, and that seems to be discussed more and more in public forums as the economy goes through its ups and downs.

Many of us work hard, do a good job, and yet we still don’t seem to earn enough money. This is a problem that I had personally for years, until I made some crucial changes that helped me to turn this around (more about those changes in a minute). There are at least five common reasons why we don’t earn enough money, and I’d like to discuss these with you, as well as point you in the direction of some support for turning these reasons around.

  1. We didn’t do skill audits when needed. A skill audit is a deep dive into our knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs, for those that are familiar with federal job terminology). Listing our skills then having a deep appreciation for what we’ve mastered is critical to understanding our worth in tangible measurements. Without this knowing, it’s nearly impossible to be adequately compensated for our work. After all, if we aren’t clear about our value, how can we appropriately price our labor when interacting with clients and employers?
  2. We undervalued our skills. Even when we’re crystal clear about what’s in our skill set, we can still under-price ourselves. Many of us believe that timidity, and being the “lowest bidder”, will ensure that we get the clients or the jobs that we want. And it’s true that doing this may get us jobs and clients, however . . . We often find that undervaluing our labor means that we work harder, get burned out faster, and earn less over time. Please don’t let the current conversations about the desperation in the job market discourage you: there are enough positions available at every income level to satisfy your earning desires, and you don’t have to undervalue yourself just to secure employment.
  3. We have outdated money beliefs. Once upon a time, we believed that telecommuting and virtual work environments were only available to the few lucky people that happened to stumble upon progressive employers. Then 2020 happened, and we found out that a lot of employers that previously found telework to be “infeasible” and “unsustainable” could now operate with 100% virtual teams. I mention this example to illustrate that our money beliefs should be constantly shifting because our realities are always transforming. For that reason, we have to ask ourselves honestly whether we believe that we can actually earn more, that employers and clients are willing to pay what we ask, and that there are environments that will support the kind of work we wish to do. Only after considering these things can we remove this block in our earning potential.
  4. We accepted principle over profit. This is probably the only reason that may remain even after going through the other points. Sometimes, we choose work that is underpaid but rewarding (education and farming are two fields that come to mind immediately) because we’ve decided that the emotional rewards outweigh the financial gain. It is possible to have abundant income and deeply purposeful work all wrapped in one, but if our main motivation is principle, we may not seek out more lucrative opportunities. The goal should always be adequate or abundant income, coming from meaningful work. We should never have to choose between the two and, if our financial gain means that we have to compromise our values, then the opportunity isn’t worth it.
  5. We’re paralyzed by fear. This is probably the biggest one, because it’s the only thing that requires constant monitoring and addressing issues as they arise. It’s also the only point that can’t be easily corrected by introducing objective information. Our fears can convince us of monsters in teh shadows and can keep us from taking leaps of faith. However, it’s key to note that we are always larger than our fears, and we can always choose to be brave. Our future selves require us to be courageous and take one step forward, then another, even when we don’t know exactly where it will lead us.

I’ve personally gone through each of these reasons for underearning. I didn’t understand the breadth of my skillset, I did work where I was grossly underpaid, I believed that my dream salary wasn’t possible due to XYZ (insert lots of detrimental thinking here), I engaged in meaningful work that didn’t pay much, and I’ve been so scared that I wouldn’t even apply to certain jobs. I’ve tackled each of them one by one, in order to dismantle my money blocks and earn more money than ever. Now my work is simultaneously interesting, full of purpose, and well paid. I also got to tap into one of my core values – flexibility – since I now have a position where I can choose my work schedule based on my needs.

I’m here for you all if you need help with reason #1 – identifying your current skill set. I am currently offering a skills audit package on my Services page, so you can see my approach to quantifying your KSAs. It includes a telephone/zoom conversation with me, as well as a beautifully formatted document that you can use when seeking new earning opportunities, and you can customize it as you add new skills to your toolkit. It’s perfect for helping you get clear on your depth of expertise and how to position yourself to earn what you want and deserve. The skills audit will also help you overcome any of the five reasons that may be blocking you from earning more money, as well as any skills gaps, and recommend how to address these gaps in the most affordable and efficient way.

Those are my top five reasons why we may not be earning enough money. Look out for more insights in upcoming posts! Take care.