You Don’t Need a Better Plan. You Need Permission To Trust the One You Have.

I live my life by spreadsheets and research. Spreadsheets help me organize my thoughts and plans and research helps me to feel in control.

I’ve spent years with my head down in the numbers trying to plan for the future. That’s right, friends. Years. Head down in the numbers, planning for the future, and missing what was right in front of me.

I haven’t been absent from my own life per se, but I definitely haven’t been “fully present”. Let’s be honest—most Type A, overachieving ladies aren’t. We want to be present. We beat ourselves up for failing. We promise ourselves we’ll do better. But when the thing happens—the date night, the solo retreat, the kid’s performance, the holiday experience—we’re showing up with smiles on our faces and to-do lists a mile long still running through our brains. The tabs do not close down on their own. And when you’re a woman who makes things run, who runs the things, there simply isn’t an off switch, try as we might.

We pull our phones out to record and capture moments that we can scroll back on later, but how often are we putting the phones down to simply observe and enjoy? I personally struggle with this. I tell myself to be in the moment and then the exact moment I feel the joy, I want to bottle it up and keep it (cue the urge to take out the phone to record and capture, thus losing the joy and now putting a screen between me and the actual moment). Even if I sit on my hands and avoid the impulse to record, my brain takes over with a fear that I’ll forget the moment. The narrative and “shoulds” start rolling in about how I need to journal about this moment later so that again, I can remember it. So again, I’m out of the present moment by trying to think of ways to capture the moment. I’m ruining it for myself and I. Just. Can’t. Stop.

I’ve been trying lately. To just be. To just experience. To accept that this brain (as much as it carries) cannot simply contain every moment of joy or sorrow and that some moments are meant to just be experienced. Not to be latched on to. But to be savored for a little while. Not to be deeply examined and have every excess drop of sweetness extracted from them.

I’ve been sitting, watching, laughing with my kids more. They are amazing humans. I grabbed my daughter’s hand the other day (she’s 10) and realized her hand is almost the same size as mine. Her little kid hands vanished in what felt like overnight. I blinked and she’s borrowing clothes from my wardrobe already.

As I reflect back on 2025, as many are doing this time of year—I realized this is the first year in many years that I lifted my head from the numbers. The first time I allowed myself a little space to breathe and the ability to savor.

The numbers, the planning, the research—it comes naturally to me. I love it. It’s why I’ve made a career out of it. The problem is that I’ve let it run me at times as well. I don’t know if I regret it, because that drive, that planning and that research have given our family a steady foundation to stand and build on into the future and I’m grateful for that. There was a lot of sacrifice made to get us here. Hours and days spent traveling, working, creating, putting myself out there again and again. I missed time with my kids and ultimately kicked my own ass through guilt and shame on a constant basis as I tried to be what society had me convinced I needed to be as a present parent and leader. Somehow I thought I had to do it all and it took a good decade for me to realize that storyline is a sham. The years I spent beating myself up are the biggest regret I have. Trying to conform to what others thought I should be, show up in spaces not as myself but as a package. It took me a long time to accept that I wear my insides on my outsides and the more I tried to shove the feelings, thoughts, passions back inside and into a box, the more I lost myself and those around me lost out. Frankly, I think the world misses out when we stuff ourselves into these packages.

I See This Pattern Everywhere

I see this same pattern playing out across the table from me. In my clients. In conversations with friends. In the women I admire most.

The client who keeps moving and selling homes, trying to optimize real estate and life, but can’t quite seem to settle. On paper, each move makes sense. Better school district. More space. Smarter investment. But underneath? She’s running. Searching for the perfect scenario that will finally make her feel secure enough to exhale.

The one who’s already hit her “enough number”—that magic figure we calculated together that would give her financial freedom—but she keeps stretching for more income. More clients. More hours. More revenue. When I ask her why, she says she wants to be more present at home. She wants to slow down. But she won’t give herself permission. The goalpost keeps moving because there’s always another “what if” lurking in her mind.

The couple looking for holes in the plan. We run the scenarios. We stress-test the portfolio. The numbers work. They work well. But instead of relief, there’s just another round of questions. What if healthcare costs explode? What if we live to 105? What if the market crashes the year we retire? They’re not asking because they need more information. They’re asking because they need permission to trust what they’ve built.

And then there’s the client sitting on a concentrated position—maybe stock from a company she helped build, maybe an inheritance, maybe real estate that’s appreciated beyond her wildest dreams. The rational move is to diversify. She knows this. I know this. We’ve run the analysis a dozen different ways. But she can’t pull the trigger because “what if.” What if she sells and then it doubles? What if this is the thing that was supposed to set her family up forever and she squanders it? What if her gut is telling her something the spreadsheet can’t see?

The math says one thing. The anxiety says another. And anxiety always speaks louder.

I recognize every single one of these patterns because I’ve lived them. Different specifics, same soundtrack. The relentless optimization. The moving goalposts. The inability to trust the plan we’ve worked so hard to create. The fear masquerading as prudence.

When Planning Becomes Hiding

There’s a difference between planning for security and hiding from life.

Planning for security looks like: knowing your numbers, understanding your options, building a foundation, stress-testing scenarios, making informed decisions, and then—this is the crucial part—trusting the work you’ve done.

Hiding from life looks like: constantly re-running the same calculations hoping for different emotional results, moving the target every time you get close, finding new variables to worry about, using “just being responsible” as permission to never feel satisfied, choosing analysis over action because uncertainty feels safer than commitment. The irony is devastating: we’re so busy building security that we’re not secure enough to actually live.

The Questions We Should Be Asking

So how do we know when we’ve crossed from responsible planning into avoidance? I’ve been asking myself these questions, and I ask them of my clients too:

• Am I running the numbers to inform a decision, or am I running them to avoid making one?

• Is this move I’m considering driven by opportunity, or am I just uncomfortable with stillness?

• Have I already done the work to know I’m okay, but I keep checking anyway because the anxiety feels more familiar than peace?

• What am I actually afraid of? And is more planning going to solve that fear, or is it just giving me somewhere to hide?

• If I had complete confidence in my plan, what would I do differently today?

That last question is the one that cuts through everything. Because usually, we already know the answer. We already have enough information. What we’re lacking isn’t data—it’s permission to trust ourselves.

Building a Foundation You Can Actually Stand On

The difference isn’t in how much you’ve saved or how sophisticated your plan is. It’s in whether you can actually use what you’ve built. I’ve seen clients with modest portfolios living fully and clients with millions still waiting for permission to exhale. The foundation matters, but so does what you do with it.

The goal of financial planning isn’t to create the perfect spreadsheet. It’s to build a foundation solid enough that you can actually live your life on top of it without constantly checking to make sure it’s still there.

Think about a house. You wouldn’t build a home on a foundation and then spend every day in the basement, tapping the concrete, looking for cracks, running new structural analyses. You’d build it, trust it, and then live in the rooms above it. You’d have periodic inspections, sure. You’d address issues if they arose. But you wouldn’t make checking the foundation your full-time job.

Yet that’s what so many of us do with our financial lives. We build the foundation—the emergency fund, the retirement accounts, the insurance, the estate plan—and then we can’t stop checking it. We can’t trust it enough to actually live.

My practice has evolved over the years to focus less on perfecting the plan and more on helping people trust the plan they have. We run the numbers, yes. We update as life changes. We course-correct when needed. But increasingly, my job is to give people permission to close the laptop. To stop optimizing. To trust that the work they’ve done is enough.

For my clients, I recommend a rhythm: review your full financial picture quarterly, not daily. Make major decisions with intention, not in reaction to every market fluctuation or new opportunity. Run your “what if” scenarios once, maybe twice, and then trust the answers you got. Give yourself boundaries around financial research—it should inform your life, not consume it.

And here’s the thing I tell every client who’s struggling with this: the money is supposed to buy you freedom. Not freedom someday. Not freedom when you hit some mythical number that will finally make you feel secure. Freedom now. To be present. To make choices. To occasionally make a decision that doesn’t optimize for maximum return but does optimize for maximum life.

Learning to Do Both

As I look back on 2025, I realize this was the year I started to learn that presence isn’t the opposite of planning. They’re not competing values. Done right, planning creates the container for presence. The foundation enables the freedom.

I still love my spreadsheets. I still find comfort in research and analysis. I still help my clients build comprehensive financial plans because that work matters. It creates security. It opens up possibilities. It turns “I don’t know if we can afford that” into “let’s look at what that would mean for our goals.”

But I’m also the woman who closes the laptop. Who grabs her daughter’s hand and realizes it’s almost as big as hers. Who doesn’t photograph every moment because some moments are meant to just be lived. Who trusts the foundation enough to actually stand on it.

I’m learning that the spreadsheet can tell you when you’ll have enough money to retire, but it can’t tell you that your daughter’s hand will only fit inside yours for so many more years. It can calculate compound interest with precision, but it can’t calculate the value of this Tuesday afternoon, this ordinary moment that somehow feels like everything.

The numbers still matter. The planning still matters. Know where you stand financially. Understand your options. Build that foundation. Run your scenarios. Do the work.

But then—trust it. Trust the work you’ve done. Close the laptop. Put down the phone. Give yourself permission to live on the foundation you’ve built instead of spending all your time in the basement checking for cracks.

Related: How To Talk About Money Without Shame, Judgment, or Empty Cheerleading