Hey Reader ♥,

I came across something this week that's been sitting with me, and I wanted to share it with you.

My friend Nechelle over at Her Future Wealth wrote a reflection on a YouTube video that stopped her in her tracks. It's called "55 and Broke: The Conversation Nobody Wants To Have" by Sheila Hammond.

Sheila's story is raw and real: laid off in her mid-50s, nearly two years without work, trying to rebuild from a place that doesn't fit the neat financial scripts we've all been taught to follow.

What Hit Me About This Story

Here's what Nechelle captured so well in her piece: Sheila did everything we're told to create financial security.

She stayed committed to her career for decades. She showed up and overdelivered. She saved for retirement. She was "responsible."

And yet at 55, she found herself with the ground pulled out from under her and no easy way back in.

This isn't a story about someone bad with money. This is a story about what happens when you build your entire life around a system that quietly changed the rules while you were busy holding up your end of the deal.

The System Nobody Talks About

When Nechelle says "system" here, she's not talking about some abstract conspiracy. She's talking about things like:

• Companies deciding you're "too expensive" in your 50s, regardless of your performance.
• Severance and unemployment designed to cover short gaps, not 18-24 month disruptions.
• Cost of living outpacing wages for decades.
• Retirement advice that assumes a smooth path to 65—when that's not how most people's careers actually unfold anymore.

That's the reality many of us are navigating, whether we're 28, 38, 48, or 58.

Why This Matters for All of Us

The easy response to Sheila's story is to turn it into a budgeting lecture: "Save more. Plan better. Cut spending."

But that misses the point entirely.

As Nechelle writes, this isn't about someone who refused to plan. This is about someone who organized her whole life around rules that were supposed to create safety—and then discovered those rules didn't hold when the ground moved.

If we don't talk about that context, we keep telling people to "fix their budget" when the deeper issue is that the systems they were taught to trust aren't as reliable as they believed.

The Question Worth Asking

Whether you're building a business, working in corporate, or somewhere in between, here's what I want you to sit with:

• Where did you learn what "being responsible with money" looks like?
• Are you building your life around the version of safety you were sold, or around the full version of wealth you actually want?
• Where are you trusting systems to stand in the gaps when you can see they most likely won't?

And the flip side:

• What does wealth look like if it includes your health, relationships, time, peace, and ability to rest—not just your retirement balance?
• What needs to shift now so you're not forced into a crisis later with no say in the timing?

Why Nechelle's Piece Matters

What I appreciate most about Nechelle's reflection is that she's not packaging this as a "here's how to fix it in 90 days" story.

She's telling the truth about being in the middle of rebuilding—not from a glossy "bounce back" narrative, but from the messy reality of it.

She's also connecting it to something I talk about constantly with first-generation professionals: wealth isn't just financial.

When you only optimize for the money part—the savings, the retirement accounts, the income—you risk exhausting yourself chasing a version of security that was never as solid as you were told.

Money is one lens of wealth, not the whole picture. When you start including health, relationships, time, capacity, and peace in your definition of wealth, it gets harder to ignore the tradeoffs you're being asked to make in the name of being "responsible."

What This Means for You

I'm sharing this because this conversation isn't just for people in their 50s.

If we all ask these questions earlier—about what we're building, what systems we're trusting, what version of wealth we're actually pursuing—a lot of us would:

• Advocate for ourselves differently at work
• Structure our businesses differently from the start
• Make different financial decisions long before being forced into a disruption with no runway

That's the work. Not only fixing budgets or optimizing portfolios, but examining the systems we're building our lives inside of.

You can read Nechelle's full piece on her Substack here. It includes a link to watch Sheila's YouTube video "55 and Broke: The Conversation Nobody Wants To Have".

Here's to building wealth that includes all of us,

P.S. If you're realizing that traditional financial advice doesn't fit your multi-generational reality, that's exactly why I created the Bridge System™. It's designed for complex lives, not theoretical ones. Get the Bridge Spending Plan

What Caught My Attention This Week