Just Like a Well-Written Poem, Your Financial Life Has Its Own Rhythm
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” You’ve heard this saying before, right?
I believe it applies to the conversation we started last week about the parallels between poetry and money. Because a poem I might love could be one that doesn’t have any resonance with you. And similarly, the rhythm that drives your financial life may not work for me.
But here’s what is universal: we all have a financial rhythm.
The question is whether it’s one you’ve chosen — or one you’ve simply fallen into.
A Question That Stopped Me Cold
You’ve likely heard me share this story before: In 2003, my CPA (at the time), Mr. Berthoud asked me a question I wasn’t expecting.
I had worked with him on my personal taxes for fifteen years, and my business taxes for eight. So by the time I sat at the side of his desk that tax season, I was proud of myself and my financial progress — and I thought he would be, too. And I was ready to be told so.
Instead, at the end of our meeting, he brought his glasses to the brim of his nose (and if you’re like me, you know that whenever an elder does that, what follows isn’t going to be what you want to hear). With his finger pointing at me, he asked: “When are you going to stop mortgaging your life?”
I left his office shocked, mad, and confused.
A few days later, I had a business bill to pay — but not enough in my business account to cover it. So I did what I always did when that happened: I went to my bank branch, pulled a withdrawal slip for my personal savings and a deposit slip for my business checking, and handed both to the teller.
And standing there at that window, something shifted.
I could see it — held in my own two hands. This was my pattern whenever my business needed money it didn't have. Dip into savings. Sell securities. Go further into personal and business debt. Repeat.
Turns out Mr. Berthoud was right. If I didn’t interrupt that rhythm, I would end up mortgaging my life. Not as a metaphor. As a reality.
(Btw: A question I once resented soon became one for which I am incredibly grateful. It’s why I share it every chance I get.)
Your Financial Life Has a Beat
Poetry uses meter, repetition, and rhythm to create meaning and momentum.
A villanelle circles back to the same refrain — and each time it returns, it lands a little differently, carrying the weight of everything that came before it.
Your financial life works the same way. The patterns you repeat — how you earn, how you save, how you invest, how you spend, what you do when things get tight — those aren’t random. They have a beat. And that beat has been building for years, accumulating weight with every repetition, whether you’ve been paying attention to it or not.
The trouble is, most of us don’t hear our own financial rhythm until someone — or something — makes it impossible to ignore. For me, it was two slips of paper at a bank teller’s window.
For you, it might be a number you keep seeing on your statement. A conversation you keep having. A feeling that arrives, reliably, at the end of every month.
Is It Time to Redesign Your Rhythm?
What’s the refrain your financial life keeps returning to?
Maybe it’s spending freely all month and then scrambling in the final weeks before bills are due.Maybe it’s saying, “I’ll start saving when I’ve paid off all my debt.”Maybe it’s earning more than you ever have, yet somehow still feeling like it’s not enough and you’re behind.Maybe it’s avoiding looking at your numbers altogether, because not really knowing feels safer than knowing.
On the off-chance you’re unfamiliar with my Financial Flywheel™ exercise, it’s designed to shift how you relate to your money. And it introduces you to a framework that helps you engage with your money by design — rather than by default, which is how so many of us have been conditioned to relate to money.
Not only does the Flywheel help you interrupt this pattern, it can also help you redesign your financial rhythm.
The components of the Financial Flywheel™ — Earn, Save, Invest, Spend — represent the four things you can do with your money, very broadly.
For each area, I ask a series of questions within each quadrant. Here’s a sampling:
Save — When you’re the age of the oldest person you know, what’s the amount of money that would make you incredibly proud to have once had in your savings account?
Invest — There are three ways to build financial wealth. How do you want to build yours; through investing in the stock market, investing in income-producing real estate, owning a business? Do you want to do all three or some combination? And at what number/valuation would you say, “Yes, I’m wealthy?”
Spend — If money were not an issue, what would you change about your lifestyle?
Earn — How much do you want to earn in five years? If you own a business, what's the amount you want your business to earn and, of that, what do you want to be able to pay yourself?
Can you see (or maybe even feel) how each area contributes to your financial rhythm?
This is why when one beat is off, you feel it everywhere.
And it’s just like a poem with a broken meter. It feels wrong even to a reader who can’t name why. The same is true when your financial life has a misaligned component — it creates a sense of unease that’s hard to diagnose.
I felt it. Mr. Berthoud saw it.The two slips of paper named it.
The good news is that a broken rhythm isn’t a permanent one. It’s just a pattern — and patterns, once named, can be redesigned.
If you read through those Flywheel questions and felt something stir — recognition, discomfort, curiosity, or all three — that’s worth paying attention to. That feeling is information.
And if you’d like to explore what it would look like to redesign your financial rhythm with intention, I’d love to have that conversation with you. A discovery call is a good place to start — it’s a chance for us to look at where you are, where you want to be, and whether working together makes sense.
You can book your discovery call here. [link]
Next week, we’ll close out this series with the most personal parallel of all: the way both poetry and money ask you to find the universal in the particular — and what your specific financial story might be telling you about what you truly believe you deserve.
About Jacquette
I love to ask questions and spark aha moments. I love to talk about why success with money is about more than just the numbers, and how the cultural impact on the intersection of money, business, and life matters–A LOT! And, I really hope I help people feel seen, heard, and not judged—especially since money is emotional and personal.
