09. Cash Confident Money Skills

Your bank balance isn’t just numbers... it’s stress, energy, and the stories you carry in your body. 

That’s why so much “budget advice” fails the moment real life hits.

In this episode, I sit down with Brie Sodano, nationally recognized personal finance expert, founder of Cash Confident, and author of “Cash Confident: Practical Money Management for the Modern Women.” Brie shares her path from young motherhood and nonprofit work to teaching herself stock options trading, then building a business that focuses on what actually changes outcomes: clear cash flow systems, emotional skill, and the capacity to hold more responsibility, visibility, and income. 

We also dig into her hot take on the financial advising industry and when paying for professional guidance can be worth it.

Then, we get practical. Brie explains why tracking your spending for a few months can change everything, how to spot “habit blindness,” and why time and energy are core personal finance resources. 

We also talk automation: automate savings habits, but stay present with spending and payments so subscriptions and price creep don’t silently drain you.

If money has ever made you feel stupid, this conversation offers a more motherly perspective and real tools to build financial freedom. 

You can learn more by visiting her website: https://www.cashconfident.com or email: brie@cashconfident.com

Join us for Rewiring Wealth coming up LIVE! Doors close July 26, 2026.

Connect with Sara on Instagram here.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited for today's guest. Bree Zedano is a national recognized personal finance expert, founder of Cash Confident, and author of Cash Confident Practical Money Management for the Modern Women. Brie teaches women how to build wealth and financial freedom. This inspires full life sovereignty and abundance. Her methods are holistic and fantastically effective because they address the root cause of common money problems. I'm so excited to talk to Brie today. This is an episode you're gonna want to listen to the whole thing through because there's gonna be so many practical nuggets for you to take away in your relationship with money and creating more abundance, choices, and sovereignty for you and your family. Brie, thank you for joining us today. I know

Motherhood And Early Money Reality

SPEAKER_00 0:55

we were just we were just saying your kids are older, they're teenagers. Can you tell us about your journey into motherhood to get us started?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Sure. Uh I got knocked up in college. That's I mean, that's how that's how we got started. Uh yeah. So Miranda was born, she's my she's my oldest. I was 21 when she was born. Um Mike and I then we then we got married, so we did it all out of order. So not that not that any of this matters. Um, but yeah, so we had her and then I finished up school, we got married, and then about five years later we had the second one. His name's Rocco, he's 15 now.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Oh my gosh, I love that. And when where were you in your career, right? You were in college, like what did your journey into entrepreneurship look like, especially starting out in motherhood fairly young?

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Uh so when I was in that first season of motherhood, I was working at the like the local boys and girls club. I was doing nonprofit work. I think I was probably writing grants about that time. Um and there were really only two points there that are were like worth mentioning. So at one point I was super happy doing my work and I was having a great time. And I taught myself how to trade stock options in order to supplement my nonprofit income. And this honestly helped me to float the boat because we got, I mean, we bought we bought a house, we got married. So as like a 21, 22-year-old, I had like a whole real life in terms of expenses, but I still had the earning capacity of a you know, a kid fresh out of college. Um and I might have even still been in college, right? I feel like when did I graduate? 2008. So Miranda was three. Yeah. So as I was, so I just taught myself how to trade stock options and I did that to supplement my income. And then at some point, I had done basically every job there. I was I started as a lifeguard, I was the aquatics director, I ran summer camp, I did the databases, uh, I wrote the grants, I was the interim executive director for a period of time, and then I was like, there's like I I was stuck. I was like, there's nowhere more for me to go here. And I was whining to my mom one day, and I was like, because also that job was super, that was like super stressful. Right. There was like a thousand kids, there was never enough money, like the whole thing, like it was a good time, but super stressful. And so, anyways, I was whining to my mother and I was like, mom, everything is awful, like I hate this place. And she was like, Well, you taught yourself how to trade stock options, so why don't you just like be a financial advisor? Like you could pass, like if you could successfully trade stock options, like you could pass the test. And so that's what I did. So I went and I got all my licenses to sell investments, and I was, you know, and so I got a job with a like a big national firm and I was selling stocks and bonds and mutual funds. And um I went, I I ended up switching to an independent firm, and that's where I really started to learn like the cash flow work. And about that same time I started to open up like my own mindset and I started to understand like how my thoughts drive behaviors, and I started applying this to clients. And so in 2017, I opened up this business because I was making so much more money doing cash flow work and planning work with people, and that shit lights me up. Like I love more than anything to like go into somebody's transactions, fix up the money problems, like get them out of, you know, give them a plan to get them out of credit cards, help like with the habits and all of that sort of stuff. And then all of a sudden, like they're on the vacation that they wanted to go on, or they have the kid that they thought they couldn't afford, or like what you know, like whatever anybody's personal goals are, but like, you know, Facebook makes it so I can keep track of these people. And I have the best time ever. And so uh 2017, I started this, and this is had uh when I first started this business, it was called Sheep to Sharks. And uh at some point I feel like I outgrew that branding. Um and so now the business is called Cash Confident, but it's I mean it's been the it's been the same thing the whole time. Uh yeah, so that's I mean that's the journey. That's what that's where we are.

The Real Value Of Advisors

SPEAKER_00 5:15

I want to ask you, do you have a hot take on financial advising as an industry?

SPEAKER_02 5:24

I don't I brought I don't think so. I think it's uh honestly, a lot of the ways that we talk about financial advising, I think is super fucked up. And it's because they always compare the cost of the advisor to the compounded interest over 20 years of time. And it's just a silly way to do it. It's like your hairdresser provides a service, you pay them.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

If I was to be like, well, Sarah, if you net if you learned to cut your own hair and you invested every haircut you've ever had and you had it at a 7% compounding rate of interest, you could have $37,000 in shitty ass hair.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Like, you know, like it's such a weird, weird way that we talk about it. So uh I don't think everybody needs like a big professional advisor, but I think it's a service that's if you're not gonna get good at choosing your own stocks and bonds and mutual funds, or if you have a lot of money, you need more complex planning. I think it's it's a service that's probably well worth paying for. Um and maybe now there's some snazzy things you could do with with Chad GPT.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yes.

Cash Confident And Capacity Work

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Can you walk us through? I know you said the evolution, your business has been the same, right, since it what it started, the name just changed. What is cash confident today in 2026 as we're recording this?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Uh so really there's two main things that my business does. So when I'm working with clients, sometimes I'm working with clients to literally get the money stuff straight. I have a program that I call Cashflow Queen. And what we're doing there is we work, is it really about learning how to curate a life, right? It's time, money, energy, right? So so much of the common like financial wisdom only looks at money. It doesn't look at time resources, it doesn't look at energy resources, it doesn't look at our body's capacity for change or and so most of the money stuff doesn't actually work, like it doesn't literally work for the vast majority of people. And when women internalize that, and then they come see me and they're like, Brie, I'm so like, well, what's wrong with me? Like, why am I? And I'm like, listen, lady, you got a master's degree, you're running an entire town, like you're doing just fine. There's nothing wrong with you, you're just using a bad recipe. Um, so sometimes that's the bit that we that I work on with clients, and we work at like looking at where their money's going, re-getting control of that money, directing it toward where they want it to go. Most of the time, you know, clients have debt to pay off or they have savings goals that they want to achieve, and we do like the literal work to build out those systems and do like the money mindset to have a healthy relationship with money. And then other clients come see me, and they're usually doing pretty well in their business. They're making, you know, or sales, and they want to make way more money. And at that level, the net like money mindset can only take you so far. At a certain level, you have to actually work on your capacity to hold, to have to hold. And it's about money, but it's about way more than money. It's about like visibility and responsibility and leadership. Cause it's at that level, it's not, you know, it's just not just money, right? Like, if you want to, if you want a seven-figure business, chances are you're gonna have to hire some employees, you're gonna have to lead them, you're gonna have to show up in ways that are bigger and more badass than other places, you know, in other ways that you might have been in the past, right? And so all of that requires capacity. Um, and so there's like five different like areas of capacity that I work with clients on. It's like the the mindset, but it's more of like an advanced level mindset about training your mind on how to be your greatest tool instead of like a financial cock block, you know, like getting your mind to like um open up. And then there's like the emotional range of it. Most of us have feelings that we kind of are afraid of, right? Like fear of disappointment, fear of rejection. And when we have a lot of fear of sensation, really what ends up happening is we'll self-sabotage because I'm gonna be unwilling to take the action that could put that emotional state that I'm not willing to have on the table, right? So, like if I'm not willing to face rejection, chances are I'm gonna have weak sales, right? Like if I'm not willing to be criticized, I'm gonna have weak visibility. Um, so things like that. Then there's there's nervous system work. So money's highly sensational and it's really tied into our survival bits. And so we have to have ourselves, and it's not so much like regulated, like that people talk about that, but it's really about your ability to hold, like it's your ability to be okay and high sensation and then high risk and high stakes. And then I like a little bit of the woo stuff about understanding how the energy underneath um our actions help helps us to understand the results that we get. And then of course, there's like the the business model, like the clear, like the very practical, the very practical stuff of like, well, do you have a buy button? Cause that could, you know, like if you're not making money in your business and I like can't figure out what you do or you know, your pages aren't loaded, you know, like the very, very practical business stuff. So that's what I do. Either help people get their money stuff together or I help them make uh the big, big, big, big fat money tracks, one or the other.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

And I love this so much because, right, it touches on everyday life, money, and personal finances, and then business finances and the ability to serve your clients and both. And I'm curious, is there a recurring theme in your decade of experience that you see coming up with women again and again, maybe in a specific category or one of these buckets that you touched on?

Why Emotions Drive Spending

SPEAKER_02 11:18

I think the theme is really about emotions and our body, to be honest. Like so much of the way that we make the decisions in our personal money is highly sensational and it's highly emotional, and it's highly like there are certain states that are just expensive. Like if you're exhausted, like if you literally don't have the energy to cook dinner and your financial plan requires home cooking for it to work, that plan is doomed to fail, right? Like something's gotta give. Um, so I think looking at like our our actual time and energy resources there, and I think that a lot of that ends up being emotional. Like a lot of people are spending money in ways that are actually not aligned with the lives that they want, but it fulfills some emotional need um in that moment. And if you're not trying to get to the bottom of it and you're just trying to use like restriction and willpower, it doesn't really work, especially it doesn't really work in the long term. Um in those same, whereas in the business side, that same like emotional range, it's it's the same kind of things. It's like if I don't have the ability to hold myself in high sensation, it's really, really hard to take actions that are gonna move me into the discomfort of the unknown. So I think emotions uh in the body are two places that well, actually, now people are talking way more about the body. You know, if five years ago, I somebody said to me, like, my nervous system can't handle this. And I was like, literally, what are you talking about? What a weird sentence. But now I'm all like, well, have you been to a somatic class? You know, like have you done have you done any somatic work? Right? Like, that's a question that I'll ask people about. Um, as this stuff now is kind of coming more to the surface. But those are those are the things that I think the the theme really runs through. And it's with money, I I think the other theme is that in the practical thing, we get so fixated on the math, making the math work, right? And on the business side, we get so fixated with the strategy and having the best strategy. And it's like both of those things are critically important. And like, I'm like, if your math won't math on paper, zero percent chance that that's working in real life, right? Like, and if your business strategy won't work on paper, you know, so we need both of those things to be in place, but I think there's such an overfocus on like that masculine approach to things that it it can kind of be distracting from like the stuff that really moves the needles.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

I think this is this is so important. And I love somatics, I love body work. Um, and to your point, right, it is more common in conversations today.

Simple Tools To Expand Range

SPEAKER_00 14:04

And that leads me to the question of do you have tools around emotions, around right capacity, range of feeling that you work with on your clients? And if so, can you talk us through a little bit more about that? Or do you outsource for the emotional bits?

SPEAKER_02 14:22

It's really just techniques that I work with people on. Um, and so I there's a technique I learned from Michael Singer, and that's the guy that wrote The Untethered Soul. Um, so basically his approach is you just literally pay attention to the sensation in your body, and you will witness it kind of move or change, and then you may find that there's another sensation underneath it, and then you just be with that one. All right, it's pretty, it's like simple. I wouldn't say it's always the easiest thing, but it's it's simple to explain, and um that's helped a lot of people. The other place I will sometimes recommend is existential kink. You ever read uh existential kink, Dr. Carolyn Elliott? Uh, and finding like the pleasure in some of these unpleasurable or you know, don't like um situations. And I find my clients respond really well to both of those um methods on expanding emotional range. So just to be clear, expanding emotional range is really your ability to be in with yourself in high sensation. That's really what it is. And so if you can feel that rejection and stay present with yourself, feel it for the, you know, be with yourself for the 90 seconds, the two minutes that it takes to pass by, all of a sudden you're like, oh shit. Well, that wasn't all right, okay. I can do that again. Like it'll be fine. Um and in doing that, there's a lot of self-trust that comes, and I think the self-trust is a just more in like your your heart knowing that she's not gonna have to do it on her own. Like she'll have the presence of the mind to be with her when she's having you know those high sensation experiences. Um yeah, that's it. I think that's it.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

It's so funny because it's so simple, right? Those are such simple techniques, such good books. I will also link those at the very bottom of the show notes if anyone wants to check them out. Um, but like Bree said, right? It's very simple to explain, it's simple to follow. It's a little bit harder to actually sit down and do because right, you're saying high sensation, I say discomfort. You just have to get used to sitting with whatever is coming up in your body and those feelings to your point to be like, okay, that wasn't so bad. I can move through it, I can be with it.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Yeah. Yeah, those are some real big money skills.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

Well, they're in business.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yes, yes. And

Start With Tracking And Patterns

SPEAKER_00 16:52

for the moms that maybe are in business, right? They are in the trenches of motherhood. They want to work on their relationship with money. They're hearing us talking about sensations and emotions. Can you give us some practical tips on where they can start if right they avoid their money altogether and don't even want to open their bank account?

SPEAKER_02 17:52

Yeah. All right. So if you're in a whole avoidance season, then that's something that you'd have you you might have to start with the avoidance. You might have to learn to s to just kind of be with that. Once you're able to move through that part, where I generally would suggest is starting to look at tracking, like tracking your money. I like Monarch, but there's a thousand different money trackers. Um so the sorry, I got distracted. Everybody walked by. Um, all right. So you want to track your money. So the first couple like three months of tracking your money will change your life. And the reason that I say that is because you can start to see then like patterns and trends. So when you're looking at them your money, the things that you really want to be looking at are time, money, and energy. And so where most people like make a mistake is they cut the things that seem like frivolous or the things that they uh enjoy. And because that's the stuff that they can remember spending, right? But we have have there's like habit blindness, and there's what you know, there's usually some level of waste in people's transactions. We want to think about like the efficiency and how we do like our household procurement because it's not just time. A lot of times I see when people are trying to save money, they decrease the efficiency of how they buy their house, like all their household goods. They're doing a ton of shopping. And I'm like, the more you shop generally, the more you're gonna spend. So we want to start to pull some of that back because then we get the time, money, and energy back, right? And then we can do other things with that, be present with our kids, start businesses, uh, I don't care, take a nap, have a sandwich, fornicate, whatever does it for you. You know what I mean? So we want to start to get that that sort of stuff back. And then I like in my book, I have like I I go through all of it step by step there. But I I built this thing called the invisible system to stop leading money and start stacking cash. And really, it's just like a five

The Five Account Invisible System

SPEAKER_02 19:54

account system where we separate out our bills um from working capital, and working capital is like all of the stuff that you see coming, but it's not your regular bills, right? It's like the maintenance on your car, vet bills, deductibles, back to school shopping, holiday gifts, um, you know, your irregular self-care. Like, I don't know, I used to be blonde. It used to take me, you know, $300 every, you know, every so often, right? I I stopped being blind because ain't nobody got time for that. Um, you know, so you we start to set that money aside. That's really the money that keeps us out of credit card debt. Then you set the money aside for your vacations, your home upgrades, your important things. And then your pocket money. And so that's like your gasoline, your groceries, your like adult autonomous spending money. The reason that I have clients separate the money out in such ways is because the money gets allocated and then it's there by purpose rather than by line item. And so mentally it reduces the mental load. So that way, basically, the only money that you have to really look at on a real regular basis to make a day-to-day decision is the pocket money. And that money's relatively a small amount of money in comparison to the big amount of money. So there's just less mental noise about did the check clear, do I have to do this? Do I, you know, like what do I need something going forward? Because all of that mental load is already like done on paper and systemized. Um also, we want to systemize our good habits. So we want to systemize those savings habits and automate them. And then we want our spending habits to be done manually so that way you can pay attention to it. Right. And so sometimes people are like, but I love the automatic bill pay. And I'm like, well, listen, it's your money. We get to do it however you want, but being present when the money goes out is a really important to being able to like pay attention to it and keep track of it. And so when you you get so like the first step is to like look at where your money's going and then start to redirect anything that's going to places that you don't value, right? So that's like step one, and then you systemize, you know, you map it all out and you systemize it. Those are some of the practical things that you can do, you know, to make a system that that lasts, that works.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

So funny. I'm like, you read my mind because I was gonna ask your opinion on automatic payments because they

Automation Pros Cons And Subscriptions

SPEAKER_00 22:21

are my favorite, because I find it's easy, I don't forget, but to your point, then you're not present with when something is being paid, exactly how much it is. So I love that tidbit.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yeah, I usually I will also have clients set up a whole Like inside their own bank account, their online bill bill pay system where we set them up as vendors where you can pay them. And so there's you know, so it's like paycheck one, I pay the mortgage and the insurance. Paycheck two, I pay all my little stuff, you know, and you obviously have to build that out based on your payments and when they're due. Um, but it still keeps that mental load down so that way you're not like you would you could really pay your bills, like set all the amounts, you know, in like 10 minutes a month. Uh once like, but your system, the system would have to be built by then. Again, listen, I've had many clients successful on the automatic payments, but I've also seen some real horror stories with automatic payments, enough so that I'm like, I don't know, man, I don't trust it.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And also, right, the point to like what subscriptions are out there that are on automatic payments that you signed up for six years ago and now you've completely forgot about. And to your point, the importance importance of tracking the money and just seeing where it's going and what's not aligned anymore. Yeah. Do you have any words of wisdom, anything we haven't touched on that you think is important for women to know when

It Is Not Intelligence

SPEAKER_00 23:46

it comes to their relationship with money?

SPEAKER_02 23:52

I think one of the things that I'd want to say is it's not about intelligence. And I say this because so many people come see me and they're like, three, like, I have a degree, I'm so smart, like, why can't I figure this out? And I just want to say it's really not an issue of intelligence. Like, I've worked with plenty of people that are super duper smart and have a lot of trouble with money. And I think when we think about it that way, it the the whole thought process itself actually kind of exacerbates the problem of like internalizing, like, well, what's wrong with me? Why am I bad at this? When a lot of really what goes into well-managed money is really about the curation of desire, uh, the decision about what to like what to say yes to, what to say no to, which I don't really think is like a logical like intelligence. You know, I don't think I don't think they're the same thing. Um, I think understanding what feelings are driving our buying impulses and our buying decisions is probably worth more than you know, uh like being better at spreadsheets. Uh and I think also like learning to be with yourself in those moments of discomfort, like you know, being able to work with yourself through an avoidance or through I don't know, like mom guilt is super expensive. Like, there's a lot of emotions that are highly expensive. And I think that level of stuff is is like nobody's really talking about that. They're looking at the math and just being like, well, you can spend this much money on this, and I'm gonna stop buying lattes and don't get your nails done. And a lot of the advice is wildly incomplete, and it leaves people thinking that they're stupid, and that's really you know, or like they're lacking some flavor of intelligence, and I find no evidence of that being true. So I think that would be the wisdom to share because I think that's also a really painful sticking point for people, and I just want you to know like it's not you, there's nothing wrong with you.

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. If you need to rewind and go listen to that again because yeah, so potent. Thank you, Brie. Where can everybody find your book? And where is the best place for them to stay connected with you?

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Ah, so anybody can find my book

Book YouTube And Cashflow Queen

SPEAKER_02 26:22

where books are sold. Uh Amazon Birds of Noble Target, where really literally where where books are sold, um, you can get the book. And probably the best place to really like get my juiciest stuff is on YouTube. Um, that's where my podcast is, which uh is in the podcast places too, but then there's other little nuggets, and I'm just launching a whole new podcast strategy. Um, and so there'll be more and more coming out. But there's like 300 videos there, maybe. So there's plenty to get started with.

SPEAKER_00 26:55

Thank you. And do you have any ongoing or upcoming offers that you want to share with our listeners?

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Well, the next round of cash flow queen, and that's the Get Your Money Stuff Together program, that will launch uh September. So I'm not sure when this will go out, but um so for September, that's the next uh big thing that I've got. But if you go, if you like find me, there's always a place to join my email list and then who because who knows what I'm gonna do. I'm always I've always got something. Sometimes it's a class, sometimes I sell these little mini courses, sometimes I just show up for office hours for like who knows? I'm a fickle fickle thing. So uh, but for sure I'll do a launch of Cashflow Queen in September.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm so excited we got the chance to talk. Oh, you're well, thank you for having me. It was my pleasure to be here.