You Might Also Like: The Personal Finance Podcast

**Andrew** (0:00)
A lot of people go out there and they chase money, thinking it is gonna fix everything else. When does that backfire?

**Rebecca Whitman** (0:05)
We can look to the example of celebrities who have money, power, and fame, yet so many of them are ODing and dying, or suicidal, or having really dysfunctional relationships. We think our society tells us that money, power, and fame are the three things to constantly be striving for, and that they're gonna fix us. We're looking for outside validation to fill a god-sized hole in our heart, and it starts from within.
Happiness is a decision, not an acquisition. It was 2016, it was the hardest year of my life, because as my marriage was slowly and painfully unraveling, my dad was slowly and painfully dying. And I never knew when the divorce would end, or when my dad would die, and it just so happened, they culminated in the same week. My dad was buried on a Wednesday, and my divorce was finalized on a Friday. A few months later, I was sitting across the desk from my financial planner, and he said, Rebecca, you lost your dad, you lost your marriage, but you're having your best fiscal year ever. You've actually become a self-made millionaire. I'll get happy when I get over there. But guess what? Over there never comes.

**Andrew** (1:16)
She lost her father and her marriage in the same week. And most people would have fallen apart. Most people would have let everything burn, including their finances. Rebecca Whitman didn't.
And when I sat down with her, I wanted to know why. Because what she figured out is it isn't about money. It's about why the people who grind the hardest are often the ones building the least. Why high achievers who look successfully outside are secretly burned out and broke in ways that don't show up on Paymer. And a lot of them are chasing a version of freedom that they'll never actually reach. Rebecca has worked with thousands of people who by every external measure have made it. They have a good income, they have a busy calendar, and they look successful. But she keeps seeing the same blind spot. And over and over again, it is quietly destroying their wealth. Now she built a framework around the pillars of abundance. Not because it sounds good, but because she learned the hard way that when one collapses, they are all going to collapse, including your money. So in this episode, we get behind the real psychology of lifestyle inflation, why most side hustles fail before they even get started, and what it actually takes to build a six-figure income from scratch. The one thing that the personal finance world doesn't talk enough about and is not honest enough about. This episode is going to shift the way you think about money entirely. So without further ado, let's welcome Rebecca to The Personal Finance Podcast.
So Rebecca, welcome to The Personal Finance Podcast.

**Rebecca Whitman** (2:40)
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here, Andrew.

**Andrew** (2:42)
So you've built this really cool framework around abundance. I want to talk about financial abundance a lot because the psychology behind money is one of the things that we love to talk about, and I say this all the time, 90% of money is your psychology, and only 10% is kind of your know-how, and I love kind of how you think about this and how you think through abundance overall. So you've talked about financial abundance and how it can't exist in isolation, and you talk through these six different pillars. So I want you to kind of introduce those six pillars to our audience and then we can kind of dive into this.

**Rebecca Whitman** (3:13)
Well, thank you so much. It's actually seven pillars, so your audience gets a bonus pillar that you know about. So the first pillar is spirituality, and they are in order of importance according to my experience. So having a relationship with a power greater than yourself. I choose to call that power God. You can choose to call it whatever you want.
The second pillar is fitness, body before business. And if you're strong and healthy, then you can go out and build a great business. If you're sick and have to stay in bed, then you can't do anything. So health is wealth. The third pillar is emotions. I believe all emotions come from scarcity or abundance. You're in a conversation of not enough time, not enough energy, not enough money, or more than enough time, more than enough energy, more than enough money. I mean, you, for example, have all these different businesses as I do. And a lot of people like, I'm overwhelmed with just one. Well, it's just a mindset that we have enough time and we have enough energy to do all these different businesses. And it's a lot of fun. We can get into that.