Money and financial coach Emily Gowen’s mission is a personal one. After overcoming significant student and credit card debt in her late 20s, she started looking for professional advice on optimizing her new savings, only to find that she didn’t yet have enough wealth to invest in a financial advisor.

While free services for the very low income and financial management for the already wealthy were easy to find, there were few options designed 

to help regular people earning regular salaries approach their finances with confidence and clarity. Having experienced how empowering it was to live within her means and save toward her future goals, she wanted to help others break their paycheck-to-paycheck cycles and believe a different future was possible.

It’s Not Just About the Number

Many of Emily’s clients arrive with stories of fear and shame around their own finances. “I have so many clients who are afraid of money to the point where they don’t look at their checking accounts,” says Emily. “And if it’s incredibly painful to just look at your checking account, which is just a number, there are other things going on.”

As a nation, we’re deeply undereducated about finance. Financial literacy is not taught in most schools, so most of us learn about money from our parents, friends, partners, and, increasingly, financial institutions like banks, lenders, and credit card companies. Add in a culture that celebrates spending over saving and emphasizes growth at all costs, and it’s a recipe for over-spending, under-saving, and magical thinking about money that costs us our peace of mind and robs us of personal power. For many women, that’s compounded by messages we receive from family and friends about who should manage money in a family, how much we should make, and what success really means. It can all add up to unnecessary shame about the choices we make.

“Throughout our lives, we create stories about money. For instance, I had a notion at a young age that if I ever made decent money, people wouldn’t like me or relate to me as much,” says Emily. “I had this number in my mind that was my glass ceiling forever. I had to do a lot of work to realize that people wouldn’t not like me if I made more money than that.”

While it can be challenging, Emily starts by asking her clients to do a complete financial inventory, filling out spreadsheets for their monthly bills, all their debts, and a current snapshot of their net worth. It’s a big step, especially for people who’ve avoided their finances for a significant amount of time, but there’s a lot to be gained by getting a clear picture.

“Once people have their numbers together, almost everybody says ‘Oh, it’s not as bad as I thought and I feel so much better now because I know. When I didn’t know, I thought it was so much worse,” says Emily. “And I have so much respect for the people I work with. It takes a lot of strength to let somebody else to look at your finances. It’s really hard to be that vulnerable.”

Get Clear on Your Priorities

Next, Emily asks her clients to consider what they value and whether they’re honoring those values with their spending. “I really want to work with people to shift their view of money from this terrible thing that holds you down, to a tool you can use to make awesome things happen in your life,” says Emily.

Once a client is clear on what matters, it’s time to develop a spending plan. “I think people hear the word ‘budget’ as bad, as limiting,” says Emily, “but I view it as the opposite. Not having a plan is still a plan, so if you have no plan, you might overspend. But if your plan is to save for and then spend money on the things that make you crazy excited, you might get there.” Eliminating consumer debt is a major priority for most of Emily’s clients, as is paying down student loans, building emergency funds, and budgeting for non-recurring expenses like back to school clothes, gifts, and car repairs, that don’t happen every month but still take a toll on household budgets.

But it’s not all drudgery. “One thing I work with people on a lot is deciding what ‘plenty’ means to them,” says Emily. “Sometimes people say they feel they will never have enough unless they make six figures. Then we itemize the things they think that money will allow them—fresh flowers every week, a yoga membership, a personal retreat each year—and it only works out to $5,000 a year more than they’re currently making. We often don’t  actually know how much it would take for us to add the things we really value to our life.”

As with most things having to do with money, the internal work is just as important. “During any process of getting better with money, gratitude is so important,” says Emily. “The more you’re grateful for having a house, a hot shower, nourishing food every day, the less likely you are to overspend and the more you’ll appreciate the money you do earn for your time.” Paying down debt, spending within your means, and planning for long term goals doesn’t always feel glamorous, but they’re key to reclaiming your sense of power over money and eliminating shame around spending, savings, and building the future you want.

Emily Gowen, AFC®, is a certified financial coach and owner of PDX Money Coaching.