Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™, Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance, recently joined host Aneta Ardelian Kuzma on the Live the Width of Your Life podcast to explore a powerful idea: our biggest money challenges often have less to do with numbers than with the emotional stories we’ve carried for years.
In the episode, “Your Money Problems Aren’t About Math — They’re About This,” Dr. Rasure shared how financial therapy helps people uncover the beliefs, experiences, and emotional patterns that influence the way they earn, spend, save, and respond to financial stress. The conversation examined why shame, childhood experiences, generational money stories, and self-worth often have a greater impact on financial behavior than budgeting techniques or financial knowledge alone.
One of the central messages Dr. Rasure shared was that meaningful financial change begins with self-awareness, not self-criticism. “Our relationship with money is deeply psychological, deeply personal, and deeply healable,” she explained during the discussion. Rather than viewing financial setbacks as personal failures, Dr. Rasure encouraged listeners to approach their money habits with curiosity and compassion, recognizing that lasting financial wellness comes from changing both behaviors and the beliefs that drive them.
The episode also explored topics including financial intimacy in relationships, overcoming the shame associated with debt, building confidence in financial decision-making, and the connection between emotional regulation and financial wellness. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Rasure emphasized that healing one’s relationship with money creates more than financial stability — it creates greater freedom, confidence, and peace of mind.
The discussion reflects Beyond Finance’s commitment to addressing both the practical and emotional sides of financial wellness. By bringing the concepts within financial therapy to audiences seeking personal growth and purposeful living, Dr. Rasure continues to expand the conversation about what true financial wellness really means.
About Dr. Erika Rasure
Dr. Erika Rasure, PhD, CFT™ is an internationally recognized financial therapist, educator, and researcher with over two decades of experience helping people transform their relationship with money. She holds a doctorate in Personal Financial Planning from Kansas State University and is a Certified Financial Therapist™ — one of a small number of practitioners in the country to hold both credentials. As Chief Financial Wellness Advisor at Beyond Finance, she leads five weekly financial wellness sessions with clients navigating debt and is the creator of Beyond Finance’s Financial Wellness RESET™ Framework, Assessment, and Curriculum — a proprietary, clinically-informed model that addresses the behavioral and emotional reasons financial advice so often fails to stick, helping people change not just what they do with money, but how they relate to it. She serves on the Financial Review Boards of Investopedia, The Balance, VeryWell Family, and VeryWell Parents, chairs the Financial Therapy Clinical Institute Research Board, and her expertise has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, CNBC, CNN, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, the Associated Press, and USA Today.