Live a Delicious Life

Oct 8

Episode 33 of Wellness Me Up — Wellness Me Up Diary Entry
with Values-Driven Financial Coach Corree Roofener
Written and hosted by Amanda Reece, founder of Wellness Me Up.

Corree Roofener is a values-driven financial coach who filed bankruptcy at 22 and built a multi-six-figure business anyway. She does not give a damn about your profit and loss report. She wants to know if your money is buying you a life that feels good in your body. Side note — we are both wearing red glasses and the energy is immaculate.

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Who Is Corree Roofener?

Corree Roofener is a values-driven entrepreneur, financial coach, nonprofit founder, author, retreat facilitator, and advocate helping entrepreneurs align money with purpose and courage. She is also a high school dropout who lived on her own since she was 15, filed medical bankruptcy at 22 when her husband fell off a roof, and has since built a debt-free, multi-six-figure business without a college degree.

She is also currently finishing a book — each chapter beginning with a letter to Coco, which is who she was as a little girl. More on that shortly.

She and I talked for twenty minutes before we even hit record. That should tell you everything about this conversation.

We Don't Talk About Money. And That's the Problem.

This was the first thing Corree said that made me smirk in agreement. Because yeah. We really don't. And we really should.

We have been handed beliefs about money that we never chose. Most of them arrived before we were old enough to understand what was happening. And because we never examined them — because our culture says you just don't talk about money — those beliefs have been quietly running our financial lives ever since.

Money is emotional. Not mathematical. Not logical. Emotional. And the emotions we have about it were handed to us by people who had their own complicated emotions about it, who got them from someone else, and so on and so on.

Which means the reason you feel shame around money, or scarcity, or like you can never get ahead, is probably not because of anything you did. It is because of what you absorbed before you even knew it was happening.

And you can choose differently. At any moment. But first you have to know what you are actually choosing.

Wealth Is Not a Number

This is the reframe that Corree comes back to over and over and I want it printed on something.

Our culture has defined wealth as a retirement account, a savings balance, a certain number of assets. And Corree says — bullshit. Wealth has nothing to do with a number. Wealth is who you are and what you believe life looks like.

Because if you are chasing someone else's definition of financial freedom you will always be chasing something you will never catch. You will hit the number and still feel empty. You will have the house and the car and the retirement account and wonder why nothing feels like enough.

Financial freedom does not mean you never have to work again. For Corree it means she gets to choose her clients, choose her hours, choose her life. A delicious life. Appetizing. Rewarding. Never once dreading who she has to talk to that day.

The moment a client gives her that feeling? That client has to go. That is her first sign.

I shared my own version of this. I remember making close to 100K and burning myself out completely. And then getting terminated. And the panic that followed — no partner, no backup, what am I going to do? And then deciding to go independent. Making a quarter of that income for a year. And then doubling it. And then doubling it again.

And still — even when the income has gone back down — the breathing room, the joy, the expansive energy of doing it on my own terms is worth more than double the income I was making before.

Wealth is not a number. I know that now in my bones.

Your Money Needs a Job

This is Corree's most practical teaching and it is beautifully simple.

Money that has a job has clarity. And at the end of the month when you are not asking where did all my money go but instead saying look at where my money went — that is power.

She also rehabilitates the word budget. Because most of us hear budget and immediately feel scarcity — like we are being told what we cannot have. And Corree flips it entirely. A budget is about your desires. Your values. What you actually want your life to look like.

If you want a $200 line item for Starbucks — put it in. She is not going to tell you what to put in your budget. But she is going to ask you — does this life, does this evidence, tell you that you are living in your values? Is this how you build your delicious life?

And when clients go through their bank statements and see they spent $650 eating out last month — most of them say hell no, this is not the life I want. But without clarity you cannot even see it. You are just out there in the Twilight Zone spending here and there with no information and no intention.

Information is not shame. Information is power. That is all it is.

Corree's reframe made a lot of CENTS to me — get it? 😄 — because I had already started doing this. I renamed things in my own banking accounts before this conversation even happened because I wanted to be more intentional with the words I used around my relationship with money. Instead of budget I started using the word allocation. And I called my debt my spiritual bank account. Because if the word is making me feel bad every time I look at it — change the word. Change how your brain relates to it. Do whatever it takes to start thinking about money differently.

Know Your Five Core Values. Then Build Everything Else Around Them.

This is where Corree's coaching gets really specific and really beautiful.

She works with five core values. For her they are family, health and wellness, courage and adventure, faith and spirituality, and purpose and freedom. And every single line item in her budget — her allocation — traces back to one of those five.

Family vacation? Line item. Teaching her kids who they are through extracurricular activities they love? Line item. Supplements and protein powder because she is over 50 and that is what her body needs? Line item. Numerology and astrology deep dives because that is where her faith and spirituality is going this year? Line item — and she said she is genuinely excited to hand that money over because she is so aligned with what she is getting back.

When you earn money and put it towards things that make you feel alive — everything makes sense. Even the things we hate paying for. She said she does not mind paying insurance because it means she gets to get in her car and take a 10,000 mile road trip. She does not dread groceries because she gets to buy food that fills her family with energy and health.

That reframe. That shift from I have to pay this to I get to pay this. That is the whole thing.

I shared my own version of Amanda math — how I repurpose money now in my digital nomad life. Buying storage drawers for a friend's house instead of spending $150 on a hotel night. Renting a place at Blue Mountain and bringing all my friends for a weekend away instead of spending that same money on rent. The money is the same. The life it buys is completely different.

Does this match my values? Does this fuel my delicious life? Check, check. Yes.

A Behavior Comes From a Belief

This is the line I keep coming back to most from this conversation.

Everything you do with money — every spending habit, every saving pattern, every way you earn and every way you avoid — is a behavior. And every behavior comes from a belief. Full stop.

So if you want to change what you do with money, you have to go find the belief underneath it. And those beliefs are almost always personal. A client who never spent anything because their parents lived through the Depression. A couple with completely different money stories creating completely different money behaviors and wondering why nothing aligns.

She shared a couple she works with. One of his values is five-star restaurants — Midas level, full experience, every time. It is in his blood. His wife's value is travel and he is more indifferent about that. And instead of fighting about it — which is what money disagreements in relationships almost always become — they each got to define their own values and create their own clarity within the marriage.

And when you meet each other in your own desires — when you actually see each other for what fills them up — something opens. Compassion. Understanding.

Corree believes the number one reason couples divorce is money. And having worked in the conflict, separation, and divorce field for over 20 years I would say there are many layers to that — but I absolutely understand what she means. Unexamined money beliefs crashing into each other every day is a real thing.

The WTF Wheel Question: What Would Your Past Self Be Shocked You Now Believe In?

This one went somewhere immediately honest for both of us.

Corree said grip. She used to believe that controlling everything was safety. That if she gripped hard enough she would be accepted, loved, safe. And now she holds nothing. She tells the universe she does not know what is happening today and asks what she should do. Complete opposite. The people who knew her in her twenties and thirties see her now and she cannot imagine what goes through their heads.

I jumped in with the same. I am a recovering people pleaser. A recovering fixer. A recovering controller. I grew up believing I needed to put everyone else's needs ahead of mine and fix everything around me. And it warped big time.

And even with this podcast — the biggest thing standing in the way of expansion was me. Trying to control it. Trying to manage every piece of it. And as soon as I stopped — things flowed. Things happened. Problems I thought existed stopped being problems.

Still learning. Still catching myself. But so different from where I was.

Letters to Coco

I want to make sure this does not get lost in the middle of a Cidabit diary blog post because it is one of the most moving things shared on this podcast.

Corree just handed her book to her publisher. Each chapter begins with a letter to Coco — who she was as a little girl. And writing those letters was some of the hardest work she has ever done. Because she had to sit with the fact that she never saw her. She was always looking for everyone else to see her. But she never turned that gaze inward. Never said — you are worthy. You are important. Everything that you are is exactly as it should be.

She said some mornings she would come out of writing sessions sobbing. Her husband asking what was wrong. And it was just the grief of finally holding that little girl. In compassion. In a way nobody ever held her.

I was hugging myself listening to this. Right there on camera. Just hugging myself.

What Wellness Me Up Means to Corree

When we actually begin to ask ourselves the questions we ask everyone else. When we actually begin to give ourselves the care, the healing, the time that we give everyone else.

She said she believes we are all born on purpose for a purpose. But it takes a lot of hurt and a lot of hard to go back and remember who that person was. And when you begin to remember — when you give that human a hug and get genuinely excited to reintroduce yourself to them — everything can change.

If you can live a life full out of your heart and not your mind she thinks we could live in a whole different world.

I think she is right.

Want to work with Corree?
Corree Roofener is a values-driven financial coach, nonprofit founder, retreat facilitator, and author helping entrepreneurs align their money with their purpose, their values, and their most delicious life. One-on-one coaching, retreats, and more available.

👉 correeroofener.com
📱 Find her on socials — search Corree Roofener

If this one made you want to live a more delicious life... you already know what to do. And subscribe to Wellness Me Up wherever you listen.