Ep83 | From Shwirl to Steady: My Money Story in Real Time

Meet me and a group of students behind the scenes to see how we go through Cosmic Currency by joining my email list at cosmic.link/current

What happens when you get brutally honest about your money story? When you stop hiding behind the pretty parts and share the messy, spiral-filled truth of how you've danced with dollars over the years?

Today's episode is different. No frameworks, no forecasting, no tips or tricks. Just the raw, unfiltered story of how money and I have waltzed through seasons of magical thinking, seasonal windfalls, avoidance patterns, and the humbling journey back to basics.

From inheriting two completely different money models from my parents to finding myself caught between worlds – helping others with their finances while completely avoiding my own.

In this episode...

👧🏻 How growing up with a CPA dad who spent freely and a methodical mom shaped my contradictory money patterns

🌊 The shwirl era – living van life, trimming weed, and trusting the universe while staying stuck in beautiful cycles

🌬️ Why seasonal windfalls from tax season became both a blessing and a trap that enabled years of avoidance

💸 The hidden costs of running a successful practice while still not tending your own money basics

🛠️ What it really looks like to rebuild from scratch when you choose soul alignment over financial security

🌉 How three income streams are supporting the transition while building something sustainable and aligned

Whether you're avoiding your money basics, stuck in feast-or-famine cycles, or rebuilding after a major life shift, this episode gives you permission to be exactly where you are. Because money stories are spirals, and every place on that spiral has its own wisdom and gifts.

Ready to see what's possible when you get honest about where you've been and intentional about where you're going?

🎙️ Brought to you by Lauren Poppins Raye

Find out your Cosmic Money Style: https://cosmicb.link/quiz
Align with your Cosmic Currency Codes: https://cosmicb.link/currency
Leave a Cosmic Coin Drop review: https://cosmicb.link/review

Connect with Lauren on Instagram: @laurenpoppinsraye

Transcript

0:58

I grew up in numbers, a CPA's kid. Learned money fluency before I knew what I did. Built my own practice, the paychecks were strong, but seasonal cycles kept stringing me along. Helping others with taxes while skipping my own, avoidance and windfalls became what I'd known. Dad spent with flair, Mom planned with care, I inherited both, a mix I now bear. I've let go of the office, I'm back at the start. Now building from soul with alignment and heart. Cosmic Currency center, the work feels divine, even if profits still further down the line. I'm frugal, more present, more clear than before. This new kind of tending holds room to restore. Three streams keep me steady, contracts, payouts, and play, but the vision I'm building is here to stay. Reliable flow, abundance that's true. That's the story I'm living, now let's dive into. Today I want to share something a little different. We're not going to be getting into any kind of frameworks or forecasting or tips or tricks. Today I want to share my own money story. So much of the way I support people and the work that I do is around helping you shift your money story. I think it's about time that I share, in more detail and honesty, about mine. My relationship with money has taken me all over the place from weed trimming van life to being a tax man, from avoiding the basics because I didn't need to, to recommitting to them with more alignment than ever. I want you to know that wherever you are right now with money, I think you'll hear pieces of yourself in the spiral of this story too. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about and share how my parents', very different money models shaped me and mine, what it felt like to be in the swirl, living off trim jobs, trusting in the universe, and calling and knowing that as abundance. The highs and hidden costs of running a successful tax practice and still avoiding my own money basics in the process. Why going back to basics is always powerful and how I'm recommitting to them right now. And the vision I'm building for reliable, aligned flow, the spending habits, seasonal traps and avoidance patterns I am letting go of to get there. Throughout it all, you'll hear me share candidly about exactly what's up with me right now with money. Something you don't hear a lot of people talk about in the candid, honest way that I'm about to. Money stories are all about cycles and wherever you are on your own personal spiral, I want you to know that it's totally okay and trust me, the story that I'm about to share is going to give you nothing but permission and affirmation and some kind of salve to accept exactly where you are too. First up, I want to share about the main influences, influencers in my life when it comes to my relationship with money, which is the case for most of us, my mom and my dad. This is always such a fascinating part for me of onboarding a new Cosmic Currency student because one of the first things you do is share a lot of things with me, so that I can get really clear and have an intimate understanding of your money story so that I can craft an experience completely tailored to you and what you need. It's always so interesting because the mom and dad influence usually is so different. That's usually the share and the story is like, well my mom was like this and my dad was like this. And it's just often so telling about then what becomes our relationship with money or our puzzle or struggle with money, you know, because we are the symbiosis of the synthesis of our two parents and what they gave us, what they passed through us. So my dad was a CPA, a tax man, I am sure you've heard of the expression, those that can't do teach and you know, there's really something there. We are motivated to explore through mastery and service something that we really need to learn for ourselves. My dad was a great example of this because he helped so many people with their money stuff, but he in a lot of ways was not very good with money. He spent whatever, whenever, and oftentimes being more of in like a, a relationship with money that made it a status symbol. For him it was much less about being responsible with it, it was more about just feeling free with it. Which is something that was absolutely passed down to me, but, and also because I ended up becoming a tax preparer, I understand why he was able to be that way, why it worked, because as I will share soon as part of my story, when you do taxes, it's a seasonal gig where you know that a couple times a year you're going to have this huge windfall of cash, and there's always another one right around the corner. So what that does is it enables you, or at least it did for my dad and I, my dad for his career, most of his life and me for the season of mine that I was a tax preparer. It enables you not to really have to be good with money because you do what you do and like you make it better, right around the corner. I'll tell more about how that happened for me, I didn't really know the intimate ins and outs of how my dad did it, but I saw the results, he just spent freely, sometimes in ways that seemed a little bit careless or unhinged, and it was always okay. He always make made it work. It was kind of a, a type of magical relationship with money that a lot of my clients can relate to, just trusting that it's always going to work out and not feeling or honoring the responsibility that it is for us to support the cause of it working out. That'll be a big part of my story coming of when I was a weed trimmer. So suffice it to say I definitely absorbed the money will come pattern and the just not being worried or bothered with it at all. On the other side, I like to think that I just got best of both worlds in terms of my magical relationship with money because there's that part of it, that I'm still not wanting to let go of entirely. It would never work for me to 100% live within my means and not to reach or stretch for, or embody the person that I want to be with money to continue to aim and grow in that direction. My dad gave me that and he showed me that it really does and can work. Sometimes it's not as sustainable as I've learned I would like it to be now, but I'm absolutely so grateful for his influence around that, that we get to have what we want and we do make it work as long as we're paying attention, which he paid attention enough. But again, it was this way of like not being proactive, but being reactive and making sure that it all worked out. My mom on the other side was and is, my mom is still alive, and an incredible example of what's possible when you are very intentional and responsible with your money in real time and how you anchor into your goals that you're working toward. I can remember a time when, and this is the other side of the magical relationship to money that I have around manifestation, but again, that more responsible one. Not like, well, I'm just going to swipe a card or get it now and figure it out. But the one where I'm like, hey, I really know that I want this thing. I remember from my childhood when my mom wanted to get this van, she wanted to upgrade her car to a van, and she put a picture of it in the bathroom so that we could see it every single day and we could envision it and she could work toward it, and she did. Eventually she bought the van. Kind of a different approach, but the like, Hey, I know that I can get there, I know that I can make this happen and I'm going to work toward that. She also did cool stuff like, when I was 16, she took savings bonds that my grandpa had been giving me for my birthday and Christmas. She cashed some of them out. She invested them in the stock market, doubled them real quick and then used them to buy me a car for my 16th birthday. She also had it wrapped in a bow in the neighbor's garage and gave me the gift of the garage door opener. That part's not related to this topic, but is a cool part of the story. Oh, and she put a picture of it on the cake, like an actual picture printed on edible paper. On my mom's side, she blessed me with the examples of being frugal, methodical, having clear, intentional goals combined with the absolute certainty and optimism that she would work her way toward them. So she would always say things like, money just always has a way of working itself out, but she didn't do the thing where she like first just went for it anyway, and then I'll figure it out. It was always like hey, if you want something, the money will come into play to support that. She would play a longer game with that. She's an example now of having amassed wealth because of the choices that she made and continues to make around that. I would say more grounded faith that things will always work out was something that I absorbed through her example of discipline and realism, that is a good kind of counter and contrast to my dad's much more free version of a similar trust that things will always work out. Either way, I for sure got that doubled down. I don't worry about money, and that's something that I attribute to both of their influences. In any case, I definitely inherited something from both of them. It's so obvious to me in what my money story has been, what my relationship to it is now, and I just love that I got the influences of both kind of the flare and the frugal. And also the trust that money doesn't have to be linear. I don't feel trapped in any kind of time for money type model with money. I can thank my dad for that for sure. And also the grounded, methodical planning. I feel grateful to have both and I'm very aware of how both play into what's possible for my relationship with money and how it's continued to evolve. Beginning first with working at a fast food restaurant and a grocery store and a mortgage company, a front desk. I also worked at this cool gig where it was a driving job and I got paid per job, like it wasn't per hour. So the faster I went, it was like a piece work situation. It was driving around, filling out little reports for mortgage companies on when somebody was either in foreclosure or bankruptcy or hadn't made a payment. Skipping through all those first jobs, there's two big seasons of earning that I want to share as part of the story, beginning with what I'm calling my swirl era, which was living in a van, going between a circuit of festivals, transformational music festivals and trimming weed and going to hot springs to recover. I would kind of do the circuit of those three things in a loop over and over, and we all called it in the swirl. A big part of that was I was a dancer at the time. A big part of that was just being in the energetic swirl of the dance floor. But it was also, it was more than that. It was like being in an in the flow, trusting in the universe kind of space with money in that it always came just in time and by design. I would have this cycle where I made the money, I did the other things till it ran out, then I found the next job to move toward to make the money again. I will say that at that time it felt like abundance and it felt like magic. It really did. It felt like synchronicity. And it was, and that was the swirl, right? That as soon as my money started to get low, I would get someone hit me up and want me to come work, and it really did work like that. Looking back, I can say that it was definitely a kind of magic, but that also was ultimately a trap. It kept me stuck where I was. I was never going to, you know, grow from there, I was never going to move toward wealth or being grounded. It was very much designed to keep me in the loop that supported it, if that makes sense. I would say it was definitely more of an expression of my dad's influence. Of like, oh of course there's always more money available, I just need to go make it, and then I'll spend it however I feel like, and then when it's gone, I'll just go make more. There was no planning. There was no intentionality. There was no forethought. It was just completely in the moment all the time from one moment to the next. That was all it was ever going to be. That wasn't going to create the space for me to ground or root deeper, to build toward a future that could support me. So eventually something needed to shift and it was right about the time of my Saturn return that just was not going to satisfy the part of me that was really craving to be more responsible, that's a story for another time. It was a straight up transmission and invitation of like, look, if we show you what's really possible, if we show you the magic within yourself that you've been seeking, will you then put this quest away and ground yourself, get a home, start your tax practice so that you can actually be an anchor for and a rooted place that the magic can ground into. Ultimately that is what I did, that is what happened. I said yes. I went on the two week ride of a lifetime to be shown some really amazing things that have since become the background hum of what animates all of this for me. In any case, I did let go of my van. I got a home. I started a tax practice, which just felt so obvious at the time because I was such a natural bridge of the worlds of tax life, from my dad. I had worked in his CPA office my whole life. First filing and then doing some of his client's books, and then eventually actually helping him file tax returns as a seasonal job. Then the world I had just come from with all of these alternative, incredibly creative people that really struggled with the money side of things. Artists that weren't making enough people charging by donation, people not paying their taxes and avoiding the system because they didn't believe in or understand how to plug into it. Were kept smaller than they should be and like I like to say, crouched under a concrete ceiling, that was never going to let them grow beyond where they were, which I understood so well because I was living that life myself before making this transition. So I followed in my dad's footsteps. I built my own practice. He was my mentor. It made for an incredible relationship for us that was not possible otherwise. Also a story for another time, but it was just such a beautiful space for us to get to work together. For him to get to teach me and train me through the mastery that he had stepped into over the decades that he had done that work for people. Honestly, it was perfect for the time that it was. It was a way for me to make really good money. To help people that really needed my support in a way that I could so easily and naturally support them. It was a way to really develop respect and reputation in my community and just serve in a way that was so fulfilling. When it came to the money side of it, as I've already alluded to a little bit in the beginning of this episode, I got into what ultimately became another kind of trap. So my version of it is that I would just use credit cards and I would spend freely however, I felt like. I knew that right around the corner, I would just be able to bring them back to zero and start all over again. I was always behind and it was fine. Honestly, at the time I didn't even care. I just liked knowing I could spend whatever I wanted when I wanted, and knowing that I was always going to be able to recoup and reverse it a couple times a year. I got really comfortable in that cycle, but I wasn't planning ahead still, it was still just like another trap and another cycle where I was not being intentional in what I was creating with my money. Except investing in some cryptocurrency, which ended up being really helpful later in the story, when I needed what that had grown into. That said, for the most part, I was stuck in that cycle. The other thing I mentioned, in my rap at the beginning, it's not that I didn't file taxes because I did. I didn't set anything aside for taxes, which is such a big part of what I teach. It's one of the things that's so important, because I would see this so much with my clients, is like, when you don't do that, then you get stuck with this bill. You can't afford it. Then you're paying backwards plus interest, plus penalties. It's a bad game. However, it's not one that I had to worry about because I made all my money when taxes were due. Just another enabler where I didn't have to set money aside for my taxes because I knew I would make most of my money right before the tax deadline and be able to easily pay it. Between the credit cards and not setting aside for taxes, I was experiencing success. Mostly outwardly, I would say, because there was still inner avoidance. I was not tending my money the way that I taught there was a dissonance, an incongruence there. I was not being with money the way that I was teaching my clients to, I was saying, do as I say, not as I do. I was really just stuck on a Groundhog Day, hamster wheel kind of repetitive cycle, that even though it was a step up from being a weed trimmer, I was making way more money, but I didn't have much more to show for it. By the way, if this real talk, admission and share of what my money story has been is interesting to you, I want to invite you to go on a ride with me that is starting soon, this coming Friday, it's going to be a 10 week email journey. You'll get one email a week where I'm going to be sharing behind the scenes of what it's like to go on the Cosmic Currency journey and have that experience, the Hero's Journey transformation. I have decided as part of this first run of the new version of the program, that includes the Cosmic Currency astrology codes as part of how to align yourself with each aspect of what is needed from you to confidently and in compliance tend your money. I'm going for the ride too, I'm going to do it too. I'm going to get back to basics and I am going to go through the program alongside a handful of students that are also going through this first run. Together we are going to share with you what our experience is. I'm going to be taking you behind the scenes, pulling back the curtain, sharing with you my experience and feedback from my students. If you have curiosity about what it actually looks like to do the money stuff you've been avoiding and what it takes to get to the other side, make sure that you're on my email list. You can subscribe at cosmicb.link/current, like C-U-R-R-E-N-T current. You'll subscribe to my newsletter, the Cosmic Current. You'll get that on Wednesdays, which is also jam packed with all kinds of good stuff, getting you acquainted with the cosmic weather each week as an online business owner. I have my weekly Zodiac Unhinged series, which is shared to give you a little giggle, and other great resources in there. But you will also get this new Friday email for the 10 week series and be able to peek behind the curtain of what it's like to go on this journey. Join me and this group of other students to see how we go through this process and practice step by step, and watch me recommit to my own money tending, get back to the basics. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it cosmicb.link/current. Now this brings us to the part of the story where I let go of my tax practice. Even though I was making great money, I got to a point after my dad had passed a couple years before. Honestly, my heart was not in it the same way that it was when he was my mentor in my corner. But also the bigger catalyst was that I became a mama and I had my last tax season during the first season of my son's life, postpartum, and oh my goodness, it was a lot like, and it was doable, I had the support that I needed, but honestly it was completely unsustainable. I realized that for me, it no longer made sense to do the seasonal hustle. I was really wanting something that felt more sustainable. There's really no better word for it. I didn't want those tax seasons sprints anymore. But not only that, I really felt ready and something about I think, not wanting to do anything that wasn't as desirable to me as hanging out with this new human, with my son. Doing taxes no longer made the cut. It made sense for as long as it did, but it wasn't really my true passion or gifts that I wanted to be supporting people with. Hence, the pivot that you now find me on the other side of with this work. I let it go and I started building from the ground up, which there was definitely a humbling transition there as part of that. A part of me, a delulu part of me, thought that it would just be a super smooth transition. All of my clients would come with me into this new work and it wouldn't actually feel like starting over. However, it absolutely did, and I'm still making my way back up, though, I have to say, and this really is so telling about what really matters and what wealth and success really are. I am making so much less money in this season and stage of rebuilding my business than I was then, but I am so much more fulfilled with the work I'm doing. It felt like such a scary thing to make that decision at the time. As soon as I said it out loud, it was like the universe rearranged everything to make it happen easily for me. It became so seamless, I connected with the perfect people to take over my practice and continue supporting my clients and ended up being a very win-win for us as well, because they have been giving me payments to buy me out ever since. That ended up being the cushion and the transition that I needed to be able to rebuild my business and not have to worry about money. Long story short of that transition, I needed to bring astrology into the mix. That has always been me, and even though I would talk about it with my clients, it was not central enough. I needed something that made more sense for my nervous system and as a mama, and I was really craving to have a more aligned relationship and strategy with money that supported the new version of myself I was stepping into as mother, as wife, as part of a family, not just myself that I needed to support. Fast forward to where I'm at now. I actually have three streams of income. This is something that I think not enough people talk about. You don't go from having an idea to have a business, to it's supporting you full time. A coach that I'm working with uses the analogy of the main course and the dessert. At the beginning, the business that you're building needs to be the dessert and you need to have something else that's the main course. And I had this intuition from the beginning. You can't put pressure on your business, especially a passion business. You need to have something else, a side gig, some kind of bridge job, something that makes enough while you build your business. For me, that looks like a three parter now, I do have income from my business. It's not yet enough to support me full time. Even though I work on it most of the time, I guess what I mean to say is it's not enough to cover all of my financial responsibilities yet. I also have the money coming in from selling my tax practice, so that is a second income stream. The third, and this is a little bit of a spilling of the tea, I haven't actually shared this explicitly and I do want to share more about it in the future, but I am the lead prompt engineer for a company called True Self. It is an app startup at the intersection of AI and all of the systems like astrology and human design and enneagram and gene keys, and numerology and so many systems combined into one profile known as your soul print. Anyway, I get to work with the coolest people. I geek out on training AI, LLM models to be able to synthesize all of this information about you into the most epic reports that are unlike any report or reading you have ever gotten. Side note and not meant to be the CTA or plug of this episode, but I will leave the link, if you want to go and get your soul print, in the show notes, you can go check that out. Honestly, landing this gig was such a dream come true. I would do this work for free if I could swing that. Sometimes it feels too good to be true to have the things I obsess about most astrology and AI combined into this position that is just super flexible and is the most exciting use case that I know of for where AI is taking us. As you know, I also have reports that I create through using the tool of AI to synthesize so many personal things about you, to make things customized specifically for you, so that you can get the most out of them. Okay, that was a little bit of a tangent, bringing it back in. I'm at the point now where I am more intentional and conscious about my spending. I wouldn't quite use the word frugal, because I'm aware of where that line is, I wouldn't say that I completely stay inside of it. I do push the edges of what's possible and what I can afford, so that I have space to grow into what's possible and what's coming in, and I find that works really well for me. As a kind of middle ground, perfect sweet spot of those two influences that make up my money model. But I pay off my credit cards every month now. I still use them and I use them even smarter now to get cash back and travel miles and all kinds of cool stuff. So I would never take that out of the mix, but I pay them off every month and I'm constantly tuning into, this is something we look at in Cosmic Currency as well, what my recurring expenses are so that I can turn those dials and cut back on some as needed. I have a solid record keeping practice. I actually put money aside for taxes now as it comes in, which means, by the way, as a self-employed person, you often end up getting a refund because I put a percentage of everything I make into a fund, when it comes time to pay taxes I get back whatever is extra in that account, and there is always extra, by design. So, as you can probably imagine, compared to my previous two seasons and stories that I told of being a weed trimmer and then a tax preparer, I am now starting fresh and building from the ground up in a way that truly feels aligned with what I know is important and what sets the stage for real wealth and success. Not just outwardly or by show, but inwardly and in a way that aligns with my values and is going to get me to be able to fulfill the goals that I have. Which is aiming toward having a reliable flow through my business that covers my ad spend and beyond and embodying both of my parents' influences both the freedom to splurge and push the bounds or the edges of what I can currently afford, as well as the responsible foundation to know that I'm growing toward being able to fund more and grow bigger. And working toward being able to buy a home in a new state that we are aiming to move to in the near future. A big one for me too, is being able to liberate my husband. I don't mean hire him into my company or make it so he doesn't have to work.'Cause I know that he always will and will want to, but make it so that he feels just as free as I do, because that's how I live my life when it comes to money, and I want him to feel the same freedom of being able to do whatever he wants and not have to worry that he has to make a certain bottom line because I'm not to that point yet. I want to be able to make all of the money that we need so that he has more freedom of choice. Because right now he is working a 40 hour a week job and I know that he wants to spend more time with our son and I want that for him too. So big dreams, big goals, but absolutely in reach. I am moving toward being able to sustain my family and scale my soul led, purpose-driven work to be able to do just that. So that's where I'm at right now. Excuse me, while I go, tend to a little bit of a vulnerability hangover. Kidding, not kidding, but it felt really important to share this with you because this is how I start my relationship with every new Cosmic Currency student, is they share the RealReal of their money story with me because it's through getting honest with and sharing what your money story is, that you're able to own the past that got you here, own where you are right now, and own where you're aiming toward. Own the intention that is driving you to grow forward. And that's me here in this new budding chapter of my own money relationship. Aligning with the kind of service and support around helping you with your money that feels so much more aligned than just enabling avoidance. By waving a magic wand during tax season and making the neglect go away. I'm actually supporting soul led business owners to have the kind of relationship with money that they're proud of, that they feel confident with and that they know is taking them to where they actually want to be with money. Honestly, it feels really good to be back at the basics and tending the simple things. Starting over to align with the things that I teach and preach, and building a foundation again, that feels so much more solid than anything before it. Money is not something you fix once. It's a practice, it's a commitment that you come back to again and again, which is what I'm doing now to go back on this Cosmic Currency journey for myself, along with my clients and for you to be able to see what's possible and go on this ride with me. So again, if you are not on my email list, you are definitely going to want to be before this first email drops Friday. The link is in the show notes or go to cosmicb.link/current to subscribe to the Cosmic Current and join us on this ride that begins Friday.