Dear Friend,
Some of you have been curious about the financial side of my sabbatical.
Did I carefully tuck money away for years and map everything out perfectly?
Did I simply declare a sabbatical and hope things would somehow work out?
Did my husband and I need to have difficult money conversations to make this possible?
The answer is: yes… and no.
While I have been saving money throughout most of my years running my business, the truth is that this sabbatical was not perfectly planned. Much of what I had saved was mentally bookmarked for the future rather than for current cash flow.
So my husband and I had to sit down and have many real conversations about money, work, timing, family, and what this next chapter would ask of us.
We already had years of training and lived experience with my four-stage money conversation model.
In this framework, I invite clients to approach “money dates” differently—instead of fighting or spiraling, to create a new kind of container where they can truly listen to each other so compassion, understanding, and love can seep in.
So don’t start with numbers and spreadsheets—they rarely work so well at the beginning.
Start with storytime: your family money beliefs, your parents’ money styles, and how you’re similar or different.
Next, explore your values and how they show up in spending, saving, giving—and where you differ.
Then move into: Who’s doing what? Who’s handling the bookkeeping, the cash flow, the accounts?
And finally, the fourth stage: coming back to the same team—or realizing you’ve been on the same team all along.
What season of life are we in?
What transitions are happening?
Who needs space to grow, rest, grieve, or reinvent themselves?
Who is carrying what right now?
Big life transitions always affect the ecosystem of a household.
Sometimes one person wants to leave corporate life and start their own business. Sometimes someone wants to stay home with a new baby. Sometimes there’s illness, loss, burnout, caregiving, reinvention, or a deep need for rest.
Money conversations are rarely just about money.
Over our 25 years together, my husband and I have often talked about wanting things to feel “50/50” in our relationship. But that has never meant a literal 50/50 split at all times.
There were years when we contributed equally financially. Other years it was 60/40. And there was one period when my Art of Money business brought in 75% of our household income.
But finances are never the whole story.
During those years when my side was bringing in more income, my husband was supporting my business in countless behind-the-scenes ways—helping with my website, tech platform, creative strategy ideas, marketing, and launching the Art of Money each year. He was also carrying a significant share of household responsibilities.
And there were other seasons when he needed time and space to explore the next iteration of his own work in the world.
We’ve both taken turns growing, stretching, supporting, risking, pausing, and carrying more.
Then one spring day in 2025, while walking in the high mountains, it became crystal clear to both of us: it was time for me to take this year-long sabbatical, even though everything wasn’t fully figured out yet.
Truthfully, I had been dropping little seeds about this sabbatical for at least a year beforehand.
I tend to do that.
I slowly share clues with my husband while I’m still listening inwardly myself, waiting to see if something is truly calling me.
I’ve noticed I’ve done this before during other major life transitions.
When I was 38, after years of being completely certain I did not want children, something shifted almost overnight. One morning I woke up with a deep knowing: I wanted to have a child. I even knew his name would be Noah.
It surprised me too.
So I started dropping little seeds with my husband. Eventually, I asked him to come to therapy with me. I sat quietly while he explored his own feelings and reflections around becoming a parent.
I can be intense when I want something. But this felt different. It felt like a deep knowing.
And this sabbatical has felt very similar.
I’ve shared that during this sabbatical I’ve been reading more, cooking more, doing barre, and resting more.
All of that is true.
But recently I said to my husband, “You know I’m also spending a lot of my days thinking.”
Thinking about life. Death. The state of the world. What matters most to me now: our son graduating from high school, his upcoming travels to Japan, the reality of him slowly preparing to leave home, and of course what’s next for me and my work.
This kind of spaciousness feels incredibly luxurious—and also deeply essential.
In one of my previous newsletters, I mentioned the book and card deck Fair Play, which helps couples and families revisit the invisible labor of life and household responsibilities and find ways to redistribute things in a way that feels supportive and sustainable.
During this sabbatical, our deck has definitely been reshuffled again.
I’m doing much more of the cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, bookkeeping, and tax organization. I’m still very much the CFO of our family—the one with the clearest view of our cash flow and finances.
Honestly, I sometimes joke that I’ve become a bit of a “trad wife” these days—entirely by choice—which is definitely a first in our 25-year relationship.
Meanwhile, my husband has stepped more fully into growing his consulting business in a new way. One of our earliest conversations about the sabbatical was whether he truly felt ready for that expansion.
That piece mattered.
And he was ready.
His business has grown tremendously this year, and for the first time in our relationship he is bringing in about 95% of our household income.
Part of my role as CFO is cheering him on and supporting him in moving through his own money ceilings. And when he gets tripped up, I’m here to support and steady things.
After many years as a teenager and young woman declaring I would always make my own money and never rely on a man, this is brand new territory for me—and yet it feels deeply right given our 25-year history and the sense that we are truly on the same team.
This, too, is just another season, and will shift again when I step back into parts of my business—and into new creative projects like my Financial Therapy Press, which I’ll be sharing more about this fall.
But for now, this is the shape our lives have taken.
And the key to making it all work has been ongoing, honest money conversations.
Conversations filled with story, values, fears, hopes, logistics, numbers, dreams, and reality.
This is the work I’ve spent decades teaching.
And now, once again, I’m living it myself.
So this is a little story about how we got on the same team in a new way.
This sabbatical needed to honor my deep need for quiet reflection, healing, and rest.
It also needed to support my husband in growing his business and stepping into a new financial season.
And it needed to support our family as we moved through this tender threshold with our son—senior year, graduation, travel, and the beginning of his next adventures.
This is a window into how this sabbatical has been unfolding behind the scenes.
Not perfectly. Not with every detail figured out in advance. But with many honest conversations, lots of revisiting, reshuffling, listening, number crunching, dreaming, and reimagining together.
I think this is what partnership often looks like over the long haul.
The equations keep changing.
Who carries what keeps changing.
What is needed keeps changing.
And underneath all of it is the ongoing practice of returning to each other again and again to ask:
What season are we in now?
What matters most right now?
And how do we support each other through this next chapter of becoming?
For now, this is our season.
And strangely enough, even though I’m technically on sabbatical, I’m still very much the CFO of our family.
With my dearest wishes,
P.S. While I am on sabbatical, I still have a few offerings from free to low-price points. You can see my Offerings page here.
