Understand why you do what you do with money
In thirty days you will know where your money story came from, and you will have a plan for your money that you wrote yourself.
You have probably done some version of this work before, and you may already own the books. Then a real money moment arrives, and you quote a number lower than the one you had written down, or you leave the invoice in your drafts for three days. That does not mean you are bad with money, because almost nobody was taught how to untangle the feelings from the numbers.
What is actually in the way
Most of us learned about money by watching rather than by being taught, so we picked up the feelings along with the habits. That is why the gap you notice is not between what you know and what is true, because it sits between what you know and what you actually do when money is on the table.
You know what your rate should be. You know what you meant to put aside each month. You know the conversation about your numbers that you have been putting off since spring. The knowing has never been the problem here, because knowing is not what answers in the moment.
Think about the thermostat in a house. You can open every window on a cold morning and the rooms will warm up for a while, and then the thermostat quietly pulls the temperature back to the setting it was given years ago. Money works much the same way, because a new plan warms the room and the old setting keeps pulling you back to what feels normal.
There is a whole day in this workbook on that setting, which I call your income thermostat, and on how to move it.
Capable women should not have to carry money shame quietly, and that is why this starts with your story instead of a spreadsheet.
Who wrote it
I grew up without much money, and that is a large part of why I became an accountant. For twenty years I have worked on the money side of business, first at PwC, 21st Century Fox and Capgemini, and then on my own with startups, small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Most of the owners who called me were earning well and still running out of cash, or their books were a mess, or they were getting ready to raise money. What they wanted was not a lecture about budgeting, because they wanted peace, more profit and a lot less chaos.
And nearly every time, before we could get anywhere with the numbers, we had to talk about what money meant to her, because those beliefs had been setting her prices and her limits long before any math did. So I built the workbook to do both halves, in the order that actually holds.
One focused theme a day, with a short read, two or three prompts and room to write.
The order matters, because you cannot rewrite a story you have not found yet, and a budget built on the old story will not survive the month.
Part one · Foundation and vision
You define wealth across five areas, which are your wallet, your experiences, your attitude, the people who bring you love and your health, then rate where you honestly sit in each one.
You finish withYour own definition of wealth, and an honest score for each part of your life
You write your financial legacy and take your why down three levels, because the first answer is almost always the surface one and the third is the one that carries you through a hard month.
You finish withA financial why strong enough to hold on the difficult days
Part two · Your money story
You go back to your earliest money memories and the household you grew up in, and write down the beliefs you inherited. Seeing where a belief came from is what turns it back into a belief, because until then it has been running as though it were a fact.
You finish withYour money blueprint, written out where you can see it
There is a day on money shame written directly to women, because shame is expensive and it uses up the energy you need for the next decision. Then you get practical ways to settle yourself before a money conversation.
You finish withYour fears named, and tools to steady yourself before you need them
You take your belief through Byron Katie's four questions, which ask whether it is true, whether you can absolutely know it is true, what it costs you to believe it, and who you would be without it.
You finish withThe belief taken apart at the root, and your wealth declaration
Part three · Higher self and money in action
You build out the version of yourself who has already done it, down to her values, her habits and her boundaries, and you name her. It works because a decision is much easier to make when you can ask what she would do.
You finish withYour higher self, described clearly enough to borrow from
Then come the days on self love, boundaries, gratitude and forgiveness, because wealth built on self-punishment turns into burnout. From there you look at your own income ceiling.
You finish withYour income ceiling named, and the beliefs holding it there
You build your holistic budget on the fifty, thirty and twenty split, work out your monthly cash flow, calculate your net worth, put your debts in the order that costs you least, and look long term with the CIGAR frame.
You finish withA holistic budget, your net worth baseline, and a wealth plan
Say you run a small design studio.
You have three clients you like and a rate that has not moved in two years. Last month you sent a proposal with a lower number than the one you had written down beforehand, and you are still a little annoyed with yourself about it. In the first week you write what wealth would actually mean for you, and it turns out to be time rather than a bigger number. In week two you trace your discomfort about charging back to the way money was talked about at your kitchen table growing up, and you take that belief through the four questions until it stops sounding like a fact. In week three you name the pattern plainly, which is that you drop your price the moment someone goes quiet, and you learn what to do with your body in the ten seconds before you answer. In week four you build the budget, run your net worth for the first time, and see that your necessary expenses are eating the share meant for building wealth. By day thirty you have the next seven days written down, and the first item is the rate conversation you have been avoiding since spring.
The bill rarely arrives all at once, which is exactly why this is easy to put off. It shows up as the rate you did not raise, repeating on every invoice for the rest of the year. As the savings you meant to start in January. As interest on a debt you could have put in a better order months ago.
Forty-seven dollars is a small thing to test all of that against.
Get the workbook →Start tonight
$47
That is roughly one dinner out, for thirty days of work and a set of frameworks you will still be using years from now. The PDF arrives by email as soon as you pay.
Get the workbook → The file stays yours, so you can print it and write in it by hand.Go through the thirty days and write in it properly. If you finish and it genuinely did not shift anything in how you see and handle money, email me at simone@simonecr.com within thirty days of buying and I will refund every cent. I will also ask you what did not land, because I would like to know.
Fifteen to twenty minutes is enough for most days. Some will keep you there longer, and that is usually a sign you have found something worth sitting with.
No, and the workbook is yours to keep, so you can go at whatever pace fits your life. A steady rhythm does help, because the prompts are sequenced and each one builds on what came before. The budget on day twenty-seven lands differently once you have done the first three weeks.
Both, in that order. The first two parts are your money story, and the third part moves into your budget, your cash flow, your net worth, your debt and your long-term wealth plan. I built it this way because a budget laid on top of an unexamined money story tends not to survive the month.
No. The arithmetic in it is addition and subtraction, and every framework is explained in plain language before you are asked to use it.
Yes. It arrives as a PDF, so you can print the whole thing and write in it by hand, or type into it on your computer if you prefer. Writing by hand helps, because it gets past the editor in your head.
Then the workbook is a good place to start and not the place to finish. In it you fill in the frameworks yourself. The Empowered Money Method is ninety days where I read your real numbers with you, which is the part no workbook can do.
When you want more than a workbook
In the workbook you do the whole thing yourself, with my frameworks to follow. The Empowered Money Method is ninety days working with me privately, where I read your actual numbers with you. We talk first and decide together.