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What if your next chapter felt wider, calmer, and fully funded? Steph Wagner joins us to share how she rebuilt her life after a blindsiding divorce—transforming shame and avoidance into clarity, confidence, and a mission to help women own their financial future. As the National Director of Women and Wealth at Northern Trust and author of Fly: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom and Building a Life You Love, Steph blends disarming honesty with practical tools that make money feel learnable and liberating.

We start by unpacking the link between emotional health and financial autonomy—why abdication often begins with family money dynamics, and how identity loss creeps in long before a crisis. Steph walks through the first crucial step of exploring your money story and recognizing fluid money personalities like the giver, penny pincher, spender, and trailblazer. From there, we build a vision worth budgeting for, using simple prompts and accountability to turn hopes into plans without the pressure of a grand “purpose” mandate.

Then we get tactical. Steph shares the 45-20-35 model that replaces rigid budgets with a flexible framework: 45% to unavoidables, at least 20% to your future (emergency fund, debt payoff, retirement, investing, education that boosts earnings), and 35% to empowerment money for everything else. We dig into four core concepts—compounding, diversification, opportunity cost, and arbitrage—and outline Steph’s seven-step path from awareness to numbers, plan, daily habits, the right financial team, and healthier money conversations in relationships. Along the way, we talk longevity, the risk of outliving assets, and why confidence is the missing bridge between income and wealth for so many women.

If you’re starting over, scaling up, or mentoring the next generation, this conversation offers clear steps and a hopeful mindset to match. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a money reset, and leave a review to tell us the first change you’ll make this week.

Find STEP WAGNER Here:

Website: https://stephlwagner.com/

BOOK: FLY! A Woman's Guide to Financial Freedom and Building a Life You Love : https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fly!/Steph-Wagner/97

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