Laura Rotter goes solo in this episode to introduce something new she's weaving into upcoming conversations: astrology — and she wants to explain why before you react. As a CFP, CFA, and MBA from NYU Stern with years in institutional investing, Laura knows what eyebrows this raises. But in her work with women around money, she's noticed something the spreadsheets can't explain: two women with nearly identical finances can have completely different relationships with money. The difference, she says, is in the person.

In this episode, Laura introduces the concept of archetypal systems — frameworks developed over centuries to understand the patterns that shape us — and explains how astrology, at its most thoughtful, functions as a mirror for self-knowledge, not a prediction tool. She connects this to the "money scripts" psychologists describe and explores how understanding your relationship with planets like Saturn and Venus can illuminate why you relate to money the way you do.

This is a preview of what's coming: conversations with women navigating life transitions, viewed through both a financial and archetypal lens. The Chiron return at 50. The second Saturn return in your late 50s. The Pluto transit that asks where you've given your power away. Laura isn't asking you to believe — she's asking you to stay curious.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The difference in how two women with identical finances relate to money isn't in the numbers — it's in the person
• Archetypal systems (like astrology and Jungian frameworks) are tools for self-knowledge, not personality tests
• Astrology as Laura uses it is a mirror, not a prediction tool — she's skeptical of predictive astrology too
• Every financial decision is filtered through a lens of meaning shaped by family, culture, and early experiences
• "Money scripts" — unconscious money beliefs — can be explored through archetypal frameworks
• Saturn in your chart reveals how you relate to structure and long-term planning; Venus reveals what you truly value
• Upcoming episodes will explore life transitions (career change, divorce, retirement) through both financial and archetypal lenses
• Major astrological cycles to watch: Chiron return (~age 50), second Saturn return (late 50s), Pluto transit

CONNECT WITH LAURA

Website: trueabundanceadvisors.com

Email: laura@trueabundanceadvisors.com

Interested in a Money & Stars Profile? Email Laura for a 60-minute session combining your birth chart and financial picture.

Christine Mathieu grew up with champagne taste on a beer budget — her mother's words, repeated so often they became a wound. From a gifted dancer whose knee injury ended her performing arts career, to a financial advisor who quietly filed for bankruptcy while serving clients, Christine has lived through upheaval that would break most people. In this conversation, she shares how divorce, financial collapse, and a life rebuilt through Buddhism, metaphysics, and money coaching taught her that real wealth begins with your inner world — and that the question she lives by, "Says who?", is the most liberating thing anyone can ask themselves.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL DISCOVER

• Why hearing "you have champagne taste on a beer budget" as a little girl shaped Christine's financial struggles for decades
• How a knee injury at 19 derailed a dance career — and led her to art history, writing, and eventually wealth coaching
• What Christine noticed during the 2008 recession that made her realize financial advice alone was never enough
• The hidden financial abuse inside one of her marriages — and how she used money strategically to protect her children
• Why she became a Metaphysical Minister, a practicing Buddhist, and a certified money coach — and how they all connect
• The difference between "follow the push" and "follow the pull" — and why Christine now lives entirely by the latter
• How she helps clients facing retirement or divorce reconnect to their values, identity, and core desired feelings

ABOUT CHRISTINE MATHIEU

Christine Mathieu is Western New York's only Certified Money Coach (CMC)® and a Wealth Coach at Note Advisors. A former financial advisor and current Metaphysical Minister, she blends spiritual insight with grounded financial wisdom to support women navigating midlife transitions. Having personally experienced divorce, bankruptcy, cancer, and reinvention, Christine understands that true change begins within. Through compassionate inquiry and her signature question, "Says who?", she helps women release fear-based beliefs, reclaim self-trust, and redefine wealth as a state of peace, purpose, and possibility — creating meaningful change from the inside out.

CONNECT WITH CHRISTINE

🌐 Website: www.noteadvisor.com/wealth-coaching/

💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christineamathieu

📸 Instagram: @christine.mathieu | @sayswho.whatfor

🎯 Take the Money Types Quiz: www.noteadvisor.com/the-money-types-quiz/

📅 Book a Money Confidence & Clarity Audit: calendly.com/christine-wealthcoach/finding-peace-clarity-after-divorce

Imagine lying in bed, laptop open, typing an apology to a client because your body has completely given out — a full allergic reaction on top of a car accident on top of a shoulder that can't lift above your head. You're 48. A UC Berkeley researcher. A mother. And for the first time in your life, you're turning down work.

Kara Sammet grew up with one foot in two very different worlds. Her mother — a single mom on public assistance — stretched every dollar, chose between bus fare and macaroni and cheese, and built herself into a CPA with a 4.0 the same year Kara graduated middle school. Her father's family, meanwhile, skied in Aspen. The message Kara absorbed was sharp and clear: your safety depends on your ability to earn. Work hard, save everything, never go into debt. And never make too much money — because people with money think they're better than you.

She carried that drive all the way to a PhD in educational statistics, a research post at UC Berkeley, and a seat at the table with tenured faculty from Harvard. She was doing important work — helping tech companies like Google, Snap, and Cisco bring more women into leadership. But it was soft-money contract work. And she was running herself into the ground.

At 48, her body staged a revolt. Shoulder injury. Constant illness. Nearly 50 extra pounds. A doctor who shrugged and said: "You're almost 50. That's just what happens." A yoga teacher who said: that's not true — go find a physical therapist. So Kara did. She paid that yoga teacher to walk a mile with her while she rehabbed her shoulder. She set a goal: run three miles around the lake by her 50th birthday. She did it. Then kept going — to triathlons, to 100-mile bike rides, to half Ironmans.

When the pandemic hit and her academic contracts dried up, she made the pivot. The colleagues asking "how are you doing what you're doing?" became her first clients. The behavior-change research she'd spent a career studying became the method. And Healthspan Habits was born — coaching high-achieving adults, especially women, from couch to consistency using neuroscience, community, and compassion.

Her definition of success hasn't changed at its core: do work that matters, and trust that financial stability follows. What has shifted is where she believes safety comes from. Not from external circumstances. From within.

Guest

Kara Sammet is the founder of Healthspan Habits and a behavior-change coach helping high-achieving adults build sustainable, active lifestyles for long-term health and longevity. A former global tech consultant (Google, Snap, UN Women) with a PhD from UC Berkeley, Kara blends neuroscience, identity-based habit design, and community to move people from knowing what to do to actually doing it.

Connect with Kara

• Website: https://www.karasammet.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kara.sammet
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karasammet/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karasammet

Resources

• Healthspan Habits — coaching programs and resources: https://www.karasammet.com

Imagine being a teenager holding your very first paycheck, trying to make sense of the words gross and net — and asking your dad whether you should tithe on the big number or the small one. And your dad grins and says: well, do you want God to bless your gross or your net?

At some point you've probably asked: What does it mean to have enough — and to actually feel it? And what happens to the business, the mission, the identity you've spent two decades building when the season changes and the kids leave and the path opens up again?

Sinikka Waugh grew up in a household where money wasn't discussed in polite company — but the lessons were everywhere. Her mother managed the family finances while her father was on military deployment. Tithing was non-negotiable. And in elementary school, her mother — a teacher — ran an experiment that Sinikka had completely forgotten until this conversation: if Mom packed your lunch, you paid less from your allowance. If you bought school lunch, you paid more. The kids had a say in how family resources were allocated. Without ever calling it a financial lesson, it was one of the best she ever received.

She went to college intending to be a literature professor, discovered she was a project manager at heart, and launched Your Clear Next Step — a training and coaching company — as a woman entering a male-dominated field with no business background and a very big vision. For 18 years she ran the company, became the primary breadwinner for her family, put two daughters through college debt-free, and impacted nearly 60,000 people's workdays. Then 2024 arrived: an election year that froze discretionary spending, her mother's passing that pulled her away from the business for eight months, and a client who chose not to honor their contract. Any one of those would have been hard. All three at once nearly broke the company.

Guest

Sinikka Waugh, PMP, is President and CEO of Your Clear Next Step, a training and coaching company that has helped nearly 60,000 people have better workdays since 2008. With a background in languages, literature, and project management, Sinikka trains and coaches in three disciplines: returning business value, authentic human connection, and navigating change. She is also the host of the Even Better Podcast.

Connect with Sinikka

• Website: https://www.yourclearnextstep.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sinikkawaugh/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yourclearnextstep/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourClearNextStep/

Resources

• Even Better Podcast with Sinikka Waugh: https://evenbetterpodcast.libsyn.com/ (also on Apple and Spotify)
• Your Clear Next Step — training and coaching programs: https://www.yourclearnextstep.com
• Free resources from Sinikka: https://www.yourclearnextstep.com

Imagine sitting across from a business school professor, ashamed. Three jobs in three years. A venture you're not sure will work. And you're terrified that if it doesn't, the resume just gets messier. Then he says something that stops you cold: maybe you're asking the wrong question.

At some point you've probably asked: What does it mean when the path doesn't look the way I planned? And what do you do when the things your family is quietly struggling with — addiction, mental health, infertility — don't have a clean answer, and the people you turn to for help don't either?

Arden O'Connor grew up in a blessed household — two parents from opposite financial backgrounds, a father in real estate who modeled entrepreneurship, and a childhood where every opportunity was funded. Harvard Business School followed. But the transition into the working world was humbling: three jobs in three years, an expensive lifestyle she hadn't earned yet, and a deep discomfort with money she'd never had to think about before. It took her well into her 30s to understand what things cost.

What broke her open wasn't career failure — it was her brother. Watching her family pour resources into addiction treatment with no roadmap, no coordinator, no one asking the right questions, she kept thinking: there has to be a better way. So she built it. Intent Clinical launched to serve families navigating addiction. It now serves families across 40 states dealing with addiction, mental health, dementia, eating disorders, autism, and infertility — the things nobody talks about at a cocktail party but desperately needs help with.

Her own road to motherhood became another chapter of that same mission. After cancer in her 20s left her unable to carry children, she navigated egg donors, sperm donors, and surrogates alone — overwhelmed by the complexity, the cost, and the emotional weight of depending on others for the most precious thing she'd ever know. Now her firm helps others do the same, with a timeline, a cost estimate, and emotional support alongside the clinical navigation.

Arden O'Connor is the founder of Intent Clinical and a nationally recognized speaker on the intersection of behavioral health and wealth management. She advises private wealth advisors, law firms, and family offices on best practices for addressing mental health, addiction, aging care, infertility, and family dynamics within affluent families. Intent Clinical operates across 40 states with a team of 40 full-time and 400 part-time staff.

• Website: https://www.intentclinical.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arden-o-connor-87715b

• Intent Clinical — services for families navigating addiction, mental health, dementia, infertility, eating disorders, and autism: https://www.intentclinical.com
• Addiction and Affluence — the O'Connor family documentary film (30 minutes, featuring psychiatrists and family stories): contact Arden via intentclinical.com
• Corporate behavioral health programs — employee wellness, embedded psychologists, crisis response: https://www.intentclinical.com

Imagine sitting on the couch after the second failed fertility treatment, not knowing what's next — and your husband looks at you and says: "Let's just go to Paris for three months." And you go.

At some point you've probably asked: What would it take to actually walk away from something that's destroying me? And what happens to the life I imagined when the plan stops working — career, family, all of it?

Julia Shteynberg grew up in an immigrant household where money was talked about openly, practically, and without drama. Her parents encouraged saving, explained trade-offs, and gave her an early foundation most people never get. She absorbed it all — and built it into a career in corporate finance, climbing to director of FP&A at a startup, manifesting the executive life she'd imagined in college.

Then the blood, sweat, and tears of it caught up with her. The pressure, the hours, the startup chaos — she hit a wall so hard she couldn't even look at other finance jobs. So in late 2021, she did the thing responsible immigrant Julia had never done: she quit without another job lined up.

They had been living on one salary and saving the other, so the 40% income cut didn't faze the household finances. But it freed her up for what came next.

After the fertility treatments didn't work, Paris happened. Three months. Unexpected. And in a Parisian café, a connection her husband made led to a job offer in Europe. In early 2023, they moved to Madrid. Julia had already started her money coaching business. Now she was running it from Spain.

Her coaching style is built on the same values she grew up with: intention over impulse, trade-offs made consciously, systems that fit your real life. She works with high-earning women — entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers, CPAs — who have piles of money but no plan for it. She helps them build one. And her closing message is simple: you can make more money. You can never get time back. Build a life worth protecting first.

Julia Shteynberg is a money coach and former corporate finance executive who helps high-earning women design a custom money system aligned with their values and built for wealth growth. Through her Money Makeover program, she empowers women to manage their finances with confidence and ease. Based in Madrid, she works with clients across the US via Zoom.

• Website: https://www.moneycoachjulia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliashteynberg/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliashteynberg/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julia.shteynberg

• Free resources + email list: https://www.moneycoachjulia.com/email
• Money Makeover coaching program (6 months to 1 year, flat fee) — book a consult at https://www.moneycoachjulia.com

Imagine driving past a beautiful house and the words just come out of your mouth: "I bet he's a crook." You don't even know where it came from. You clap your hand over your mouth. And in that moment, you realize a five-year-old's belief has been quietly running your life — and your business — for decades.

At some point you've probably asked: What beliefs am I carrying that I didn't even choose? And how much is an old story — one you absorbed before you had the words to question it — quietly setting the ceiling on what you allow yourself to achieve?

Connie Whitman grew up in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of a Depression-era mother and an Italian immigrant father who worked construction, went to school at night to learn English, and jockeyed cars on weekends. The messages were layered in early: money doesn't grow on trees, hard work is the only way, and — from one unforgettable detour through a wealthy neighborhood during the riots — big houses belong to crooks. Her parents meant the mob. Five-year-old Connie heard: success is dangerous.

That belief stayed buried for decades. Then one afternoon, driving past a 10,000-square-foot home under construction, she heard it come out of her own mouth. She was in her late forties. She'd been running a successful sales training business. And an energy healer had just told her she was afraid of success. Now she understood why — she unconsciously believed that if people perceived her as successful, they'd think she was a crook.

Working through that belief took over a decade. But it was the foundation for everything that followed — including surviving the hardest financial season of her life. When COVID hit, every client paused. Her husband's company closed simultaneously. Two kids in college. Zero income. She burned through savings, spent tens of thousands on three coaches, and spent seven days a week for months rebuilding her entire business from live to digital — at 59 years old.

Connie Whitman is the CEO of Changing the Sales Game, a four-time #1 International Best-Selling author, speaker, and podcast host with over 25 years of experience helping business owners, leaders, and sales teams build powerful organizations. Her signature ESP (Easy Sales Process) framework teaches heart-centered selling through improved communication skills. She hosts the podcasts Changing the Sales Game and Enlightenment of Change.

• Website: https://changingthesalesgame.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conniewhitman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conwhitman/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhitmanAndAssociates
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Connie_Whitman

• Free Communication Style Assessment (gift for listeners):

  https://changingthesalesgame.mykajabi.com/communication-style-assessment

• ESP (Easy Sales Process): 7 Steps to Sales Success by Connie Whitman
• Podcast: Changing the Sales Game — search on your favorite platform
• Podcast: Enlightenment of Change — search on your favorite platform

Imagine waking up one morning barely able to move — shivering, sweating, unable to swallow — and realizing the first thing you're calculating isn't how to get better. It's how much money you're going to lose by not showing up to work.

At some point you've probably asked: What's the point of making money if my body is falling apart to make it? And when did the hustle stop feeling like freedom and start feeling like a trap I can't get out of?

Dominique Jeffries grew up in Louisville, Kentucky as the baby of the family — but you wouldn't know it from how she acted. At ten years old, she was secretly saving her lunch money and slipping it back into her mother's wallet, convinced the family didn't have enough. Her mother reassured her they were fine. But the belief had already taken root: there's not enough, so sacrifice.

She moved to Miami to model. When the income wasn't consistent enough, she picked up restaurant work — and then couldn't stop. Double shifts, ballet flats, red lipstick, racing from 10 AM to 11 PM. Saving every dollar. Never slowing down. Until one night after a double shift, a scratch in her throat became a severe UTI that nearly spread to her kidneys. She was barely able to text her sister for help. And lying in bed, too sick to move, her first thought was: how do I make up the money I'm going to miss?

That was her turning point. She said a prayer: she wanted work with no ceiling, no clock-in, no physical toll. She set a deadline — by March, she'd be done with the restaurant. She didn't know how. Then the pandemic hit, and the restaurant closed. The very thing she feared became the opening she needed.

During lockdown, her sister introduced her to Purium — an organic superfood company with a network marketing model. Dominique jumped in with no experience and no hesitation. The nutrition changed her body. The business changed her finances. And for the first time in years, she says, she could dream again. Mental clarity returned. Her intuition came back online. She started sharing it with her parents in Kentucky, her friends, strangers — and watching their lives shift too.

Dominique Jeffries is a mentor and entrepreneur passionate about helping women reclaim their health, wealth, and purpose through holistic nourishment and community. After years of overworking in pursuit of financial security, a health wake-up call led her to align her work with wellness and fulfillment. Through her business in organic nutrition with Purium and her mentorship work, she guides women in creating residual income rooted in balance, purpose, and impact.

• Website: https://niquejeffries.my.canva.site/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/niquejeffries
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dominique.jeffries.9
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominique-jeffries-42425a84/

• Shop Purium superfoods + connect with Dominique (includes $50 gift card off your first order): https://ishoppurium.com/getnews?giftcard=nique
• DM Dominique on Instagram to connect, share your story, or learn more about the business