How Kelly is navigating 3 big financial decisions

A return to renting, passive income & nervous system burnout

Hi friends —

All the planets have stationed direct, spring is spring-ing and boy can we feel the momentum! It feels like everything is happening all at once, and our nervous systems are having to really step up to the plate to manage it all.

For Kelly, this has manifested in the form of making a plethora of large financial decisions at the same time. Funnily enough, she wasn’t aware of the exact reason for her exhaustion until she used her Energy Audit to identify this undercurrent — and now she wants to share the learnings with you.

This newsletter is for those of you who find yourself struggling with going against what feels “normal” or “privileged”. It’s for those of you who want to choose what’s best for current you — in honor of being more present in life — and consistently struggle to do that.

Read on, because by learning how Kelly identified her path forward with 3 big financial moves… you might have the courage to better own your unique path, too.

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PS Kelly has just soft-released her first novel (ok, a 56 page short story!) called Her Serendipitous Way ✍🏽

It’s a parable about Natalia — a seemingly successful woman in her sixties — who embarks on a journey of self-discovery. While trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to Jude and suffocated by societal expectations, Natalia’s solo trip to Rome and London becomes the catalyst for reclaiming her sense of self. Along the way, she encounters a variety of people that inspire her to reclaim her own unique path.

Kelly would love your support by reading & reviewing the book, available on most storefronts now (Amazon US, Amazon UK for easy reference!).

Doing the most… & relaxing the least

Most of April I was teetering on the edge of nervous system burnout.

I’ve managed to achieve this state by doing a few things:

1. Taking on a lot of projects that are high cognitive load compared to their relatively small time commitments (i.e. applying for British citizenship, selling our house)

2. Pursuing a variety of career oriented projects and opportunities that are all aligned to my north star, yet require very different skill sets and therefore high context switching (i.e. writing, coaching, consulting, community building)

3. Putting myself in a situation where I’m making a lot of big financial decisions seemingly all at once (I’ll get into this more deeply in a second).

4. Feeling my month to month income is tied to my value in society (spoiler alert: this is the punchline).

First things first… you might wonder, how do I even know this?

I re-did my Energy Audit last week. For those who are new here, it’s a process where I look back at the last 4-6 weeks, and rank all of my day to day activities in terms of time take and energy/aliveness given (and then look for trends).

Because sharing is caring, this was my list of activities:

And my trends / observations were as follows (no judgement, please!):

What jumped out immediately was #1 and 2 in my list of why I am in nervous system burnout… but it took me a minute to realize that nestled within and across all of these things was item #3.

And that this was the real key.

What do I *really* want

It was the key, because the reason I’m making all these big money moves is to more deeply accept myself via adjusting my life fairly heavily (yet again, lol).

Like, 5 years ago I quit full time employment and became a coach & consultant. That was a great first step towards my most resonant life.

Then, 2 years ago I started investing intentionally & learning more about how to maximize my resources. That was another great step towards my most resonant life.

Then, in the last 6-12 months I began partnering with like-minded innovators in a deep (and scary!) way to be able to own more of my multi-dimensional interests professionally. That was an even greater step towards my most resonant life.

Now, I never did any of this intentionally. It just sort of… happened. Like, I knew it was right — but I didn’t know exactly why I was doing it.

And yet with the hindsight and retrospect that comes with committing to writing a consistent newsletter (you should try it!)… the penny dropped.

What I really want, is to be able to say F*CK IT. To go big or go home — in life and in work. To have no plans except living life in technicolor.

And the thing I have been putting off for years (that I knew was mis-aligned literally just weeks after I made the purchase) was selling my home.

Putting my big girl pants on

I can still remember the moment from November 2020 so clearly. I had just purchased my home (2 months before) and a brilliant fellow coach in training asked me about my value of freedom, and where I wasn’t honoring it.

Immediately I knew that owning this beautiful flat I had just bought was actually making me feel trapped. Objectively, I committed to owning it for 5 years for it to make financial sense (and avoid paying big penalties as per my mortgage terms).

So for the last 5 years, I have struggled with this decision of being a homeowner in London.

In many ways, I am grateful — it was instrumental in creating the environment that allowed for me to bring together my partner, dog & growing family.

And yet, it’s not who I am (in fact, if I’m being really honest with myself I don’t think I should own a home ever again).

Because not only does it make me feel trapped environmentally… it’s stagnating me financially.

So here we are… selling.

With no plan other than to travel for a while once baby #2 is ~4 months old, and decide from there where in the world we will rent next (literally, your guess is as good as mine!).

I can never just let it be easy 😛

This is hard because it goes against the grain of what is “normal” yet again (my fav thing to do, lol).

And it requires a more intentional financial strategy to support it… as the systems surrounding those who are grounded in 1 place (i.e. even something as simple as 401k’s / pensions) support you organically.

So… what big financial transactions are happening in Kelly’s life?

1. Simplifying (and further diversifying) my stock portfolio. Again for those who have been following along, I purchased a lot of individual stocks last year. I had some big winners (LRN up over 100% in 9 months!) and some big losers (EDU down over 40% in 9 months). I recently finished re-balancing my account — a particularly harrowing experience during a tumultuous tariff-insanity-fueled moment.

2. Selling my property in London, where I’ll pay myself some “income” off the profit … and then invest 80% of the cash back into the market and keep 20% liquid in cash or cash equivalent assets. Again, frightening as this means I’m really backing myself into a corner to not buy a home again in the immediate term (as once you put money into the market it needs to really be sitting there for 5-10 years for those “guaranteed” returns we hear about).

3. Buying my parents’ house off of them (they recently bought a new house to retire in Florida, so are needing to get rid of the Chicago one) as an investment property. I’ll be renting it to them for the foreseeable to cover costs, as they want to come back to Chicago in the summers. We aren’t planning to live there, but will enjoy staying there when we come back to visit family. This adds another layer of stress as I’ve never managed home ownership remotely, plus requiring me to learn the rules and laws around home ownership in America as someone living abroad.

Alongside this chaos… I have been feeling this low level stress around figuring out how to earn a stable(ish) income while nomad-ing with 2 young children… all while knowing that my success recipe in life is to lead with blind optimism, never being able to see more than a step (max two) ahead. If I am following the breadcrumbs (strategy be gone!) I am truly doing it right (for me).

This takes me to takeaway #4 from my Energy Audit — a silly society norm that I cannot seem to overcome for the life of me.

Pressure be gone!

As again I love transparency, I’ll give you some numbers on my home:

1. I put £150k into the house as a deposit 5 years ago

2. We’ve paid off £60k of the mortgage

3. The home has appreciated in £80-90k in value

4. We’ve invested ~£10k in renovations over the years

5. I’ll have paid ~£20k in fees across purchase and sale

This means (if you do the math) I will walk away with £270k cash post-sale. Not insignificant!

And yet the saver in me says… I must put all of that back into the bank / investment accounts and not touch a single dime until I retire 🤣

Why oh why do you do this to yourself Kelly? When in fact, you’re about to have a baby and taking some of this “passive” income to fund a financially low pressure maternity leave?!

So, I’m (working on) giving myself permission to take £50k of the profit and put it towards my 2025 income. If I do this, that means I’ll have hit my income target for the year… and I can pursue the plethora of beautiful projects and explorations I have been working on.

Because ultimately, this is what’s frying my nervous system. A sense of entitlement reserved for the wealthy. The toxic side of privilege.

In doing a meditation recently where I explore the idea of “losing it all” — my reputation, my projects, my flat, my career, my finances — instead of feeling resistance… I felt free.

Relief, even.

Because what I want more than anything is to simply be *present*.

Once you have all of these (amazing?) things in life (aka a large bank balance)… you have to be constantly working to maintain them. Ok let’s be real… grow them.

Rather than choosing what is best for the current version of you.

I have been gifted this opportunity to choose what’s best for me & my family.

And by the grace of whatever higher power is out there… this is my public commitment to really, truly choose it 🧚🏼‍♂️