What’s actually holding you back from sorting out your money

I’ve been doing a fair bit of speaking lately. Four events in the last week, and there's something I've noticed. Across all of these rooms, full of smart, capable, high-functioning women, the same handful of stories keep coming up about why they haven’t sorted their money yet.

There are five common issues that I'm seeing, so I wanted to talk to these, break them down and show you how to reframe them.  This is work I've done with many clients, and it's fundamental to moving forward and making money less heavy and complex.

1. “I don’t have time”

This is the one I hear the most. Usually followed by, “I’d love to, but...”

Here’s what I notice, though. You block out time to exercise. You block out time for clients. You block out time for school pickups and Zooms and back-to-back everything. So the time isn’t really missing. What’s missing is the decision to spend a small bit of it on sorting out your finances.

And the time it actually takes? Way less than you think.

My quarterly money review used to take me about an hour. Now it takes me about 20 minutes. Not because I’ve become faster at the process, but because I built Prosperess so I’m not entering data anymore. The bank info is already there. I just update a couple of numbers in my Net Worth and track my progress.

My weekly check-in is five minutes on my phone, sitting on the couch, updating some categories in my transaction list.

So when someone tells me they don’t have time, what I’m usually hearing is that they don’t know where to start, so they don’t start at all. Which is a completely different problem, and a fixable one.

2. “I don’t have enough knowledge”

If you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet you’re a smart woman. You’ve figured out harder things than this. You’ve built a business, run a household, learnt your craft. You’ve absorbed enormous amounts of information in your life.

So let’s be honest. You probably already have enough knowledge to take the next step. What you haven't done is given yourself permission to act on what you already know.

This morning at an event, I spoke to a woman who had opened a share trading platform, deposited her money, and then just stopped. She sat there with the screen open going, “I don’t know what to do next.” She had enough knowledge to get to the platform. The thing that stopped her wasn’t knowledge. It was the next bit.

If you genuinely do need more knowledge, get it from somewhere targeted. A mentor, a consultant, a coach. Someone who can shortcut the bit you’re actually stuck on. Don’t try to read every book first. That’s not learning. That’s avoiding.

3. “I’m not confident, what if I get it wrong?”

Confidence isn’t something you read your way into. It’s something you build by doing one small thing, seeing what happens, and adjusting (if necessary).

When I first set up an automatic investment, I was nervous. What if I needed that money? What if the market crashed? I had every objection lined up. And then I did it anyway, with a smaller amount than I invest now. I watched what happened for a few months. Adjusted.

Now, when the deduction comes out a day later than usual, I notice and eagerly wait for it to be deducted so I can see what cash I have to actually work with. That shift didn’t come from reading more books about investing. It came from doing the thing awkwardly to begin with, then repeating it enough times until it became routine.

Quick reframe while we’re here. Share trading and share investing are different things, and the language matters. Trading is buying and selling on a regular basis to try and time the market. Investing is buying and holding. Just buy and hold. If the word “trading” makes you nervous, you probably don’t want to trade. You might just want to invest. Different game, different rules, different stress level.

4. “I’ve got this story about money”

We all have them. Usually inherited from whoever raised us.

Mine was about property and debt. I watched my dad lose money on real estate, struggle with repayments, sell properties for less than he bought them for. He lived through 18% interest rates (which we’re currently nowhere near, by the way). So, for years and years I didn’t want to buy a house. I told myself it was about flexibility, and not wanting to get into debt. It was really about not wanting to live through what I’d watched as a kid.

I learned that debt can be good, when used in the right way and with strategy and purpose behind it.

My husband and I only ended up buying our home after we got kicked out of a rental, which I’d lived in for nearly eight years. The owners decided to sell, and the new owners wanted to move in. And something in me went, nope - I want my daughter to have a home that can't be taken away.

In hindsight, I should have bought sooner. The story I was running was older than my actual financial life. Once I saw what was driving it, the story lost its power.

What stories are running yours? “I’m useless at managing money.” “I can’t seem to keep money.” “I’m not good with numbers.” These aren’t truths. They’re scripts. Worth investigating before you let them keep making decisions for you.

5. “I don’t have enough to start with”

This one’s interesting because sometimes it’s literally true. If you’re saving for a house deposit and the number isn’t there yet, the number isn’t there yet. Fair.

But more often, “not enough” is a feeling, not a fact.

A woman at an event told me she’d signed up for a round-up micro-investing app six months ago, connected her bank accounts, and hadn’t looked at it since. She opened it that morning and had $1,200 sitting in there. Twelve hundred dollars that build over time, without her even noticing it. Built entirely out of spare change and compounding.

That’s the part most people underestimate. Wealth isn’t built by having large amounts of money to invest. It’s built by having small amounts of money invested consistently over a long time.

If you’re feeling the squeeze right now, with groceries and fuel and everything else getting more expensive, that’s real. The answer isn’t to feel hopeless about it. The answer is to start with what’s actually in front of you. Have a look at where the spending’s going. See if there’s an income lever you can pull. Drop a few dollars into a micro-investing app and let it compound.

The thread connecting all five

Do you notice anything about these? Each one sounds like a logical reason. Each one is actually a story we’ve inherited or built to keep ourselves safe.

The thing that breaks them isn’t more information. It’s doing one small thing, seeing it work, and letting the result update the story.

You don’t have to fix it all at once. You don’t need a whole plan. You just need to take one small step past the story you’ve been carrying, and let the next step show up.

If you want to talk it through with someone, I do free clarity chats. Sometimes saying the thing out loud to another person is enough to hear how thin the story actually is.