Developed by Dr. Erika Rasure · Chief Financial Wellness Advisor, Beyond Finance
The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is a proprietary clinical model developed by Dr. Erika Rasure through her doctoral research, her clinical work as a Certified Financial Therapist, and the insights she gathered while leading sessions with Beyond Finance clients — making the path to lasting financial change accessible to everyone.
The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is the clinical model that makes saving, budgeting, and paying down debt actually stick.
The assessment is the natural starting point — it shows you exactly where to focus your energy across the five pillars.
What the Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is
The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is a proprietary five-pillar clinical model developed by Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™ — one of a small number of practitioners in the country to hold both a doctorate in Personal Financial Planning and the Certified Financial Therapist™ designation. The framework explains and reproduces the behavioral and identity-level work that supports lasting financial change.
The framework draws on peer-reviewed research in financial therapy, behavioral finance, and the psychology of financial decision-making — fields that consistently show that emotional and behavioral patterns, not financial knowledge alone, determine whether financial change is sustained over time.
Why this framework exists
Most financial education focuses on what to do. Budgets, debt payoff plans, savings strategies, and investment guidance are useful tools — but they require consistent behavioral follow-through to produce results. That follow-through is determined by factors most financial resources never address: the nervous system’s response to financial stress, inherited money beliefs, decision fatigue, financial self-trust, and financial identity.
Dr. Erika Rasure developed the proprietary Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework through her doctoral research, her clinical work as a Certified Financial Therapist, her ongoing review of peer-reviewed research in financial therapy and behavioral change, and the insights she gathered while leading weekly financial wellness sessions with Beyond Finance clients — where she identified the same transformative process unfolding inside the program. The framework gave that process structure, language, and a repeatable model, accessible to a wider audience.
The five pillars
Each pillar addresses one of the root conditions that determine whether financial change lasts.
Pillar 01
R
Recenter
Create the conditions for change
Recenter creates the internal calm that makes every other financial change possible. Chronic financial stress activates survival mode — shutting down the planning and decision-making parts of the brain. No budget, tool, or advice can produce lasting change in this state. Recenter teaches people to recognize survival mode and return to a state where intentional financial decisions become possible again.
Clinical basis
Research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that financial stress measurably impairs cognitive bandwidth — the planning and impulse control needed for financial strategies to work.
Pillar 02
E
Examine
Understand why you do what you do
Examine gives you a clear view of the patterns shaping your financial behavior — where they came from, what they’re trying to do, and which ones you want to keep. Most financial habits are emotional patterns inherited from family, culture, and society rather than rational choices. Examine is where people stop being run by their old money story and start writing a new one.
Clinical basis
Research in the Journal of Financial Therapy identifies inherited money scripts — developed as early as ages four to six — as primary determinants of adult financial behavior.
Pillar 03
S
Simplify
Make the right thing the easy thing
Simplify brings focus and structure to your financial life so the right decisions become the easy ones. Unnecessary complexity — too many accounts, competing priorities, daily decisions — generates decision fatigue that drives avoidance and abandoned intentions. Simplify removes complexity, automates recurring choices, and focuses energy on one financial priority at a time. It’s also where the concrete work begins: choosing a goal, resourcing it fully, and taking real steps toward it.
Clinical basis
Behavioral economics research on decision fatigue shows the number and complexity of financial decisions directly undermines decision quality over time.
Pillar 04
E
Empower
Build proof that you can trust yourself
Empower builds the one thing that actually changes financial behavior long-term: self-trust backed by real evidence. Most people who struggle financially don’t lack knowledge — they lack self-trust. Repeated attempts and setbacks have convinced them they’re simply bad with money. Motivation alone can’t fix this. Empower builds financial self-trust through accumulated evidence: small, repeated, captured financial actions that become too substantial for the “I’m bad with money” story to dismiss.
Clinical basis
Self-determination theory research identifies perceived competence as a primary driver of sustained behavioral change — more durable than motivation-based approaches.
Pillar 05
T
Transform
Grow into your financial self
Transform consolidates the work of all four preceding pillars into something lasting: a conscious, articulated financial identity that you can name, live from, and build on. It’s the stage that allows the person you’ve been becoming on your journey to show — and can deliberately adapt into through the years ahead. Behavior change without identity change is fragile, and Transform is where that fragility becomes strength.
Clinical basis
Identity-based behavior change research in the Journal of Financial Therapy consistently shows that sustainable financial change requires an identity shift — from doing differently to being differently.
About the framework developer
Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™
Chief Financial Wellness Advisor, Beyond Finance · Creator of the Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework
Dr. Rasure is one of a small number of practitioners in the country to hold both a doctorate in Personal Financial Planning and the Certified Financial Therapist™ designation. She developed the proprietary Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework through her doctoral research, her clinical work as a Certified Financial Therapist, her ongoing review of peer-reviewed research in financial therapy and behavioral change, and the insights she gathered while leading weekly financial wellness sessions with Beyond Finance clients. The framework gave that process structure, language, and a repeatable model, accessible to a wider audience.
At Beyond Finance, she leads five weekly live group financial wellness sessions with enrolled clients.
PhD, Personal Financial Planning — Kansas State University
Certified Financial Therapist™ (CFT™)
Member, Forbes Finance Council
Financial Review Board Member — Investopedia, The Balance, VeryWell Family, VeryWell Parents
Chair, Financial Therapy Clinical Institute Research Board
Featured inForbes · CNBC · CNN · NBC’s Today Show · Associated Press · Barron’s · Fortune · USA Today
The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is a proprietary five-pillar clinical model developed by Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™ — Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance — that addresses the emotional, behavioral, and nervous-system dimensions of financial wellness. The five pillars are Recenter, Examine, Simplify, Empower, and Transform. It is the clinical foundation of Beyond Finance’s financial wellness programming and the basis for the Financial Wellness RESET™ Assessment and Financial Wellness RESET™ Curriculum.
RESET stands for Recenter, Examine, Simplify, Empower, and Transform — five clinically grounded dimensions of financial wellness that address the root conditions determining whether financial strategies produce lasting behavioral change.
The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework was developed by Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™, Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance. Dr. Rasure holds a doctorate in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University and the Certified Financial Therapist™ (CFT™) designation — one of a small number of practitioners in the country to hold both credentials. She developed the framework through her doctoral research, her clinical work as a Certified Financial Therapist, peer-reviewed research in financial therapy and behavioral change, and the insights she gathered while leading weekly financial wellness sessions with Beyond Finance clients.
Most financial wellness approaches focus on what to do — budgets, savings plans, debt payoff strategies. The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework specifically addresses the behavioral, emotional, and nervous-system conditions that determine whether those tools produce consistent results. The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is the only financial wellness framework developed by a practitioner holding both a doctorate in Personal Financial Planning and the Certified Financial Therapist™ designation. It is grounded in clinical programming with documented behavioral outcomes — including a 42% improvement in self-reported financial habits across more than 10,000 graduate survey responses.
Yes. The framework draws on peer-reviewed research in financial therapy, behavioral finance, and the psychology of behavioral change — including research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Financial Therapy, and the behavioral economics literature on decision fatigue and self-determination theory. The graduate outcome data — a 42% improvement in self-reported financial habits across 10,000+ Beyond Finance program graduates — documents the measurable outcomes of the clinical approach the framework is built on.
The Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework is the clinical model — the explanation of what determines whether financial change lasts. The Financial Wellness RESET™ Assessment is a 20-question tool developed by Dr. Rasure that measures where an individual stands across the framework’s five dimensions. The Financial Wellness RESET™ Curriculum is a five-module self-paced educational program that guides learners through the work of each pillar. The framework is the foundation; the assessment and curriculum are the tools built on it.
Continue with the Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework