Why High-Earning Women Still Feel Broke (and What to Do About It)

There's a version of success that looks like you have it all figured out — the business is growing, the income is there, the calendar is full — and yet you're looking at your bank account wondering where all of it went.

I've been there. And it took working with Germaine Foley to understand why.

Germaine is a certified life and money coach who helps high-earning women build wealth without giving up the lifestyle they love. She paid off over $200,000 in personal debt — while still living her life — and then designed a financial framework she calls the Do Both Method. It's built on one core belief: you don't have to choose between building wealth and enjoying the life you've worked so hard to create.

I had the pleasure of working with Germaine personally, and I'll tell you directly: she is one of the best coaches I've ever had. Not because she taught me a new spreadsheet system. Because she helped me understand the story I was telling myself about money — and why that story was costing me more than I realized. 

She came on The Systems-Driven CEO this week, and I'm still thinking about the conversation. 

The Moment the Juggling Stopped Working

Germaine and her husband were making multiple six figures. They also had overdrafts, 401(k) loans, 0% interest card transfers, and over $200,000 in combined debt. From the outside, everything looked fine. On the inside, she describes it as a hot mess. 

"We were doing all the things you do to make it work," she told me. "Rob Paul to pay Peter. Move this debt over here. But we were barely making it work."

The turning point came when their second son started daycare and the bill arrived. Their daycare payment was exactly the same as their mortgage. The juggling that had been holding everything together started to come apart, and Germaine knew something had to change.

Her why wasn't abstract. She thought about the $100,000 in student loan debt she and her husband were carrying. She thought: what would our lives have looked like if someone had just paid for our education? What if we could give our kids that instead?

That was enough. That was the anchor.

‍

Why Traditional Personal Finance Advice Keeps Failing Women

Before Germaine found her path out, she did what most people do: she read the books. And they all said the same thing. Restrict. Deprive. Cut the lattes. Pull your kids from their activities. Live like no one else so you can retire like no one else.

She brought this to her husband. He looked at her like she was a stranger.

"He said, 'Jermaine, yes, we have to change — but we can't do it like that.'" And that conversation became the seed of everything she teaches today. 

The problem with restriction-based personal finance isn't just that it's unpleasant. It's that it doesn't work — because your brain won't let it. 

"If your brain thinks wealth building means pain and deprivation, it pushes it to the back burner. And the whole time, you're missing out on all the wealth you could have been building through compounding interest. You just keep telling yourself you have time." 

The Do Both Method exists because the alternative — do one or the other, suffer now or struggle later — was never actually an option. It was just a story.

‍

The Skill Nobody Teaches You After You Get Out of Debt

Here's the part of Germaine's story that hit me hardest, because I've experienced a version of it myself. 

When she finally paid off the last of that $200,000, she expected to feel like she was floating. She expected celebration. Instead, she felt almost nothing. Because she'd spent years in a cycle of money in, money out. Every surplus had been thrown at the debt. It was the right thing to do — but it had trained her psychology around one pattern: spend everything you have on something. 

When the debt was gone, the pattern didn't disappear with it. It just looked for somewhere else to go.

"I had to get comfortable with actually having money in my account and letting it accumulate. I had to wake up to the trance I was in."

She started carrying $1,000 in cash — ten $100 bills — in her purse for a month. Not to spend it. Just to practice being with it. To prove to herself she could have it and choose not to spend it. 

It sounds simple. It's not. Making money and keeping money are two entirely different skill sets. High earners are almost universally trained in the first one. Almost nobody teaches them the second. 

‍

Spend on What You Actually Value (Most People Aren't)

One of the exercises Germaine does with new clients is deceptively simple. First, she has them name their values. What actually matters to them in life? What do they love? What do they want their life to look like? 

Then she pulls up their bank account. 

"I didn't know she was going to do that," I admitted on the podcast. "She did the values first and then pulled out the bank account, and it was just shocking to see what I'd written down versus where my money was actually going." 

My number one value is travel. I want to see every ocean. I want photos I'll remember forever. Not one dollar of my spending at the time had anything to do with that. It was all going to bills, to the business, to things I couldn't even name. 

Germaine sees this constantly with business owners especially. The trap isn't personal spending — it's business spending. Investing in programs, tools, and education at a pace that outstrips the ability to actually implement what you're buying. 

I knew she was talking about me. I still carry that lesson. 

‍

Psychology Is the Strategy

Germaine is a certified life coach in addition to a money strategist, and that combination is the whole point. Strategy without the psychological piece doesn't stick. She learned this before her business, when she'd try to help people with money tactics and watch them revert within weeks. 

"Once I brought in the life coaching tools and the psychological pieces, that's when people started making permanent change. Because we could finally get to the root causes." 

Money shame is real. It's quiet. It lives inside the things we grew up hearing — "money is the root of all evil," "money doesn't grow on trees" — and inside the movies and shows and cartoons we absorbed before we were old enough to question them. Cruella de Vil was rich and evil. Cinderella was good and poor. Scrooge had everything and was miserable. Robin Hood was the hero precisely because he took from the wealthy.

We didn't choose those stories. But they're in there, shaping the way we earn and spend and avoid, often without our conscious awareness. 

Her suggestion for anyone who suspects their money beliefs are running their behavior: get them on paper. Write them down one by one. Then ask yourself — is this actually true? Does it have to be true? What else could be true? 

"Sometimes you work on one belief and everything else just goes away," she said. "If your core belief is 'money is the root of all evil,' releasing that one thing might be the unlock for everything else." 

‍

Net Worth vs. Self-Worth

This is the part of the conversation I keep coming back to. 

"Your self-worth is 100% intact," Germaine said. "You didn't create yourself. Something created you, and that creator made you worthy. Full stop. That part is not up to you." 

Your net worth, on the other hand, is entirely yours to shape. Those are not the same thing. Treating them as if they are — letting what's in your account tell you something about who you are — is one of the most common and most expensive mistakes she sees high-earning women make. 

She also described your earning potential using an image that stuck with me: everyone has their own pie. There is no single pie that you're competing with someone else to slice. Your pie is yours. You decide how big it gets. And no one else can take it. 

‍

The Books Worth Reading

Germaine's reading list leans away from traditional personal finance and toward the energetics of money:

•      Money and the Law of Attraction by Esther Hicks — on the energetics and attraction principles behind wealth

•      The Abundance Code by Julie Ann Cairns — on money mindset and thinking around financial possibility

•      I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi — the more practical, step-by-step option

•      Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron Gikandi — on wealth consciousness and money as a tool within a larger universe of abundance

‍

Germaine Foley's work matters because it starts where most money advice refuses to go: the story underneath the numbers. It's not enough to hand someone a system. The system only works when the beliefs driving your relationship with money have actually shifted.

If you're a high-earning woman who's wondering why you can make the money but can't seem to keep it, you're not broken, and you're not alone. You were just never taught that skill. And it turns out, it's learnable.

Start with Germaine's free private podcast series at germainefoley.com/wealthclass — five episodes, designed to immerse you in the Do Both Method, hear from her clients, and help you decide if private coaching is your next step. If you want to book a consultation, she'll build you a three-part plan right there on the call. No pressure.

And if you're ready to build the business side of your life to match the financial vision you're working toward, let's talk. Book a strategy call with Lynea here.

‍