Unpacking Financial Trauma with Rahkim

In this episode of The Money Script Podcast, Yohance sits down with Rahkim Sabree, author of Overcoming Financial Trauma, for a candid conversation about how money stress, fear, and past experiences shape financial behavior. Rahkim breaks down what financial trauma is, how it shows up through investing, scarcity, and identity, and why even high earners carry it. The episode also explores financial FOMO, nervous system responses, and Rahkim’s 3E framework for healing. If you’re interested in financial trauma, money mindset, behavioral finance, and healthier money habits, this episode offers a thoughtful, practical place to start.

Linkedin: Rahkim Sabree

Website: https://www.rahkimsabree.com/

Book: Overcoming Financial Trauma

Transcript

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Yohance: Rahkim, I appreciate you being here, man. I am so excited about this conversation we're gonna have, even though it's probably going to make me a little vulnerable myself, because you, sir, being the expert on financial trauma, I'm not going to sit there and act like I don't have any, because, whoo, I've had my share of trauma. But how did you get into this, this area of finance? I mean, it, I. I don't even think it's been around that long that people recognize that there's even a profession to help people with financial trauma. So how did you end up here?

Rahkim: Yeah, very much accidentally. I started in the coaching space, and I wanted to differentiate myself as a coach by focusing on mindset. So a lot of the early conversations that I had was around understanding, yes, there's the tactical aspects of money management, financial literacy, but what is the barrier that prevents people from doing things that they know that they should be doing? And so I come across some work on intergenerational transfer of trauma broadly, and thought, this is interesting. Could this be applied to money? And certainly it could be right. And so I started using the words financial trauma together, mistakenly thinking that I created or coined it, and then bumped up against the Financial Therapy Association. And so I'm like, well, financial therapy, I've never heard of that. My reaction probably much like many people who are hearing about the Financial Therapy association or the Financial therapy space for the first time, and I was encouraged to present at their conference, the annual conference, back in 2022. So I present on a topic of financial trauma, but through a lens of where is this disconnect between academics and practitioners? In hindsight, it's really interesting to kind of reflect, because financial trauma, although previously discussed, only existed within that realm of kind of academic circles. And so the everyday person is not hearing financial trauma. They're not able to identify or recognize their own financial trauma. And my argument at that time was that, you know, you have people who are out here doing the work in the field, and then you have people who are making judgments or creating policy or establishing, you know, these quote, unquote norms in their approach to navigating these topics. But the everyday person is like, I don't know what this is. And so what? Why is it? Why is that disconnect present? How do we get the practitioners on board with a lot of the research that's being surfaced? And at the time, I was. I won't call myself naive, but I was unaware because as somebody at the time who was a practitioner only I didn't realize that the research and the journals and, you know, all of these things existed to ultimately exist within the realm of practitioners. But if you don't know that it exists, you can't, you can't leverage it. So fast forward a little bit. I decided to take what I had already started building around using and socializing these, these terms, or this phrase, financial trauma, and line it up with what was already being done in terms of the space of research.

Yohance: So now. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Rahkim: No, you go ahead.

Yohance: Well, no, I, I, I wanted to back up because maybe I, I could be one of those individuals that's, you know, associating with the norms because I'm not a financial therapist. So let's, let's start with the basics. What is, what is financial trauma?

Rahkim: So financial trauma is any instance observed or experienced that has a negative impact on the way that someone views, views interact with or believes about money. So this is a definition that I've kind of created around financial trauma. There are other definitions in circulation that describe financial trauma as kind of this emotional response to flashpoint financial experience. Right. So that can be categorized as an eviction, job loss, repossession, homelessness.

Yohance: Yes, yes, yes, I've had all those. Okay, continue.

Rahkim: Where my perspective on financial trauma kind of expands this definition is that a lot of the focus in some of the conversations around financial trauma of the past speaks to the experiences that an individual has directly. My definition speaks to, observed or experienced. And so when I talk about financial trauma, I talk about it through six lenses, one of which includes vicarious financial trauma, which is what are the attitudes, the beliefs, the ideas that you have around money based off of what you observe or how you observe other people are treated based off of the money that they have or don't have. And so in particular, if we talk about a population of people who are navigating homelessness as an example, there are a lot of stigmas, of course, associated with individuals who, you know, maybe they're standing on the corner asking for change. And some of the first reflexed ideas that we might have around giving in that instance is, oh, this person is going to use this money for drugs, this person is going to use this money for alcohol. This person needs to go and get a job, this person needs to go and find a shelter. Right? And so we make these judgments almost in kind of like a reflex before even considering that their reality is not so far off from a reality that we could experience if we have a major medical issue or if we Lose our job or whatever the case may be. And so I speak to financial socialization, which occurs largely in our childhood, in developing this sort of disdain for individuals that don't have, or I refer to them, have nots. Right? And even though we may exist in the category of the have nots, it seems our goal based off of that financial socialization is to remove ourselves from that reality as quickly as we can, even if we can't necessarily remove ourselves from that reality. So when we talk about, and I'm sure this is something that you might see in your work, we talk about this idea of people keeping up with the Joneses, a lot of the overspending on things to keep up with trends or other people, you know, within our social circles may be rooted not in a desire to impress other people, but in the desire to establish safety from being considered to have not. I think when we take that lens and we kind of switch it from looking at the individual as lacking discipline or lacking self esteem and look at it through a lens of is this a response to a threat? It makes the behavior a little bit more, I don't want to say acceptable, but certainly understandable when we're viewing financial behavior through a lens of wanting to establish safety.

Yohance: Yeah, you, you, you hit a lot of things there that I know that I've not only experienced, like you said, even vicariously. I used to live in downtown Long beach and we had a high degree of homelessness when I was there. And it was some of the, the same individuals that would be at, in front of or nearby my home. And there were some of them that you knew that there was some mental illness and perhaps some alcohol or drug abuse. But there were also others that you would see that, you know, just kind of had a string of bad luck. I had a good friend that he's a comedian. And there was a period of time in his life in LA where anytime he would be encountered by a unhoused or homeless individual, he would ask them for their story. He said, I want to help you, but I need your story first. And so of course, I spent many late nights in the streets with him. So I got to be a witness to some of these conversations. And there was one I'll never forget where he asked this young man, we asked him how old he was. I want to say he was 27 or 28 years old, he's late 20s. And he said, what happened? And within a period of two months, he went from having a job to. And being married and with kids and having a Home to having none of those things. It started with him losing his job, which really had nothing to do with him. This is like 2009, so a lot of people are losing jobs in recession. So he lost his job. That caused some additional friction between him and his. His spouse. So the spouse packs up and leaves. He moves in with his parents. Both of his parents die in a car accident and the mobile home that they were living in burned down. And now he doesn't have home. And this was in a period of like a couple of months. It was like that. Talking about things escalating quickly in his, in. In the story he was telling us, like, hey, you know, I'd appreciate anything you can do just so I can get some food. He said, but what I really want is a job. Is there anything I can do? I'll. I'll clean your shed. You know, he's just, I'll wash your car anyways. You know, it's 11 o' clock at night. It's like, you know, I'm just gonna give you a little money today. But I remember starting to when once I had that story, I began to question sometimes even how I looked at those that were. That were living on the streets and that, you know, some of them maybe just got there yesterday versus are in a permanent state of homelessness. So I wanted to touch on the vicarious nature of this financial trauma, because being a financial advisor, a lot of the work that we do is directly tied to helping clients with their investment management. And for the last four. What year is this now? 2026. So since 2020, the market has continually gone up every year except one. I think it was 2022 and actually I think. I think it was still up. It just wasn't up much. It went down a lot right at the end of the year in 2020, we only experienced a very short downturn, which was that March, April time frame of COVID when they shut everything down. Prior to that, we hadn't experienced a serious downturn since 2008. 9. And the higher the markets go, the more, as it's been described of this irrational exuberance that starts to exist in the markets. And just as people can experience the financial trauma vicariously, they also experience the financial fomo.

Rahkim: Oh, yeah.

Yohance: For all the people that didn't buy Bitcoin in 2013, just over the last two weeks, we've had two very popular stocks that are like doubled or tripled in price in a matter of weeks. You know, as of this recording, it hasn't happened yet. But you have open AI and SpaceX and there's another big one that's all filing for IPO soon. And, and people, the, the fever of FOMO is at an all time high, people. I mean, I'm getting questions from clients that have no business buying stock asking should I, should I get some SpaceX? I'm like, you're 80 for what, what are you going to do with SpaceX? But, but they think that, that they're going to miss out on the next, next in as equally as painful as that can be of the missing out on what might go up when we experience the downturn, you'll then have this fear that spreads throughout the entire marketplace. And some people have no business being fearful. So we had a slight downturn in, I think it was in March of this year. And I had some clients reach out to me and said, should I be worried? I'm like, no, that's not how. You're not in debt. You're not in the, Your, your, your whole portfolio is not the s and P500. Your whole portfolio is not the Nasdaq, it's not the Dow. But they see people on the news freaking out. They see their neighbor, they or their neighbors got laid off and doesn't know what they're going to do next and then they start to internalize that fear themselves. So I'm curious, in your work, what are, what are some things that we can do to help detach ourselves from that, Similar to how you mentioned with the, with the, with the, the homelessness. How can we, what are some practices we can do to detach ourselves from that guilty by association thought process?

Rahkim: Yeah, great question. I think first and foremost you hit on a lot. But people are socialized to attach their value as a human being to what is in their bank account or how much money they're bringing into their bank accounts. Right. And so when you experience what you described, right, people are either aggressively looking to accumulate or worried about losing all that they have. Many times it's due to, again, the desire to establish safety or maintain that safety. So they're fearful of losing that safety through the loss of the value of their assets. Or in the other end, if you're trying to accumulate, you're wanting to establish more safety. And so there's kind of like this hyper vigilance that exists and, and like, okay, this is an opportunity for me to not even necessarily get out of the situation that I'm in, although that's certainly the case for some people. But put more distance between the Reality of me struggling and however it is that I define that than currently exists. And so when I work with people, I try to help them understand because it's not, it's not for me to do. Right. For them to do that. Their value as a human being is just that they're valuable whether they have the money or they don't have the money. Unfortunately, a lot of the messaging that we see through financial socialization, through the media, through a lot of the conversations that are being had on and off social media about what is responsible or financially literate involves them dumping their money into the market. And so they, they make these associations or, or no.

Yohance: Or real estate, small business or.

Rahkim: Yeah, yes, yes. And so they make their. They make these associations not just in terms of their value as a human being, but around their intelligence, around their financial literacy, around, you know, the things that they quote, unquote, should be doing. And I think from a certain perspective that works great for financial service providers who are. They're. They're giving, they're giving their expertise. Right. So, okay, hey, like you're looking for, right, you're looking for this advice. Let me give it to you. And, but I think that when we look beyond the numbers and we look at what is the driver of this behavior and how do we address the drivers of this behavior, that really just comes down to this desire to feel safe. I attended a creator conference at the New York Stock Exchange a couple weeks ago and they shared.

Yohance: Was Bilal still there?

Rahkim: Yes, he was. Who invited me shout out to.

Yohance: Oh, he invited you. Okay. Is that how we know each other? Maybe that's our common thread. I said, is that how we know each other? Is he our common thread?

Rahkim: I don't think so, but possibly.

Yohance: Okay, but Blau and I have been friends for close to two decades. It's been. Been a.

Rahkim: Okay.

Yohance: I was with him in his days of being a wholesaler in Los Angeles.

Rahkim: Nice.

Yohance: When he, when he, he was still learning the difference between a mutual fund and etf. Yeah. Now he's the ETF king, but, you know. Yeah, that's right.

Rahkim: But, but as I was in the audience and I was listening to the presentation, particularly as it relates to the particular focus on AI crypto and allow the rallying behind the. The companies that create the chips, like Nvidia, one of the analysts said something really interesting. He said retail investor behavior is changing where first off, retail investors make up 20 of the market and that they've been beaten over the head with this idea of buying the dip so much that even when we're seeing the pullbacks, they're doubling down on the investments. Now, of course, this may not be a universal truth, right. There may be individuals within pockets that say, hey, like, I see, I'm panicking, I see there's the pullback happening. But this was stated to this audience of us by the analysts. And so I wrote an article for Forbes where I kind of not challenged this, but it piqued my interest in that is the change in behavior due to the fact that it feels more safe to double down on the investments than it does not to. Because of what the guy said, right?

Yohance: Oh yeah, no, I, I'll tell you, yes, that's in my own experience. Yeah, it feels safer to double down because again, because of the, the FOMO aspect. Like. Okay, because if I look at my experience, and that's what I was kind of laying the groundwork there of, of what we've actually experienced in the last 15, 16 years. What year is this? 2026. No, I'm sorry, 17. 18 years. It's been 18 years since 09.

Rahkim: It's crazy.

Yohance: And what have we. But what have we experienced since then? Just new high after new high after new high after new high. Nothing breaks this market, so to speak, other than covet. But even when covet broke it for a short period of time, money was pumped back into the economy and the buying began again. And so the little dips that we've had, and when we look back on those, if you bought during those dips, you've been handsomely rewarded. I mean, I'm Pavlov's mouse at this point. Like, yep, hit the button, you know, so. And now there are parts of my life and part of my clients lives as well where we're just, we're not doing anything crazy, we're just buying. We're doing the dollar cost averaging. So we're buying the same amount of shares every month, whether up or down. So that does create a little bit of doubling down, but on a more systematized basis. But there are some places even in my own financial life where I'm like, oh, the market sound, I did it in March, market was down. I was like, let me find some money from somewhere. What? Oh, I bought Nike when it was 70. I'm making these numbers up, so don't go out and math. Check me on this. But I bought it at 70 and now it's 40. I mean, Nikes are still on my feet. Why not double down? And why not do it now I have the money I have the opportunity. And, well, Nike's probably not a good example because it kept going down. But in most cases, we've continued to be rewarded for that behavior. So I'm curious, where did you, where did that article take you as far as, you know, what, what you saw as far as our emotional stance in making those decisions?

Rahkim: Well, I think, you know, in, in response to your question on paper, the behavior would be encouraged, right?

Yohance: Absolutely.

Rahkim: You mentioned that this is something that you do, right?

Yohance: I can back, I back test the hell out of that, and it's going to give me the same answer for the last 18 years. So at that point, you're like, oh, this must be a fact. It has to be true now, right? Until it's not.

Rahkim: I think when we. So your question was around advisors and what can advisors do? I think we can look at the behavior through the lens of the numbers on the page or the numbers on the screen, right? And say, okay, yes, this is, this is a good behavior. You know, you're doing the right thing. But pulling some of the layers back, particularly as it relates to the clients that you serve. I think what would be responsible, what would be encouraged through my lens, do with this, what you want is understanding what is driving that behavior? Is fear driving the behavior, or is it coming from a place of being informed? And so when we look at this lens of, excuse me, viewing financial behavior as an attempt to establish safety, then the conversation that I would encourage any financial professional to have with their client is, what's driving this? What is the why behind this? Specifically in the realm of financial trauma? And I'm pulling back a little bit, but specifically in the realm of financial trauma, one of the biggest misconceptions that I see is that people associate this phrase with individuals who are experiencing financial hardship, whether that be because they're underemployed, because they're unemployed, or this is what their life has looked like for a long period of time. For some reason, financial trauma is not associated with individuals who have high income, who have high net worth, and who have had to do what they have had to do to get to that point.

Yohance: High net worth, high incomes. You get the trauma of a letter from the irs. That can be some.

Rahkim: Absolutely.

Yohance: Or you get, or you get into the, the, the, the disagreement with a spouse or another loved one as to how much you are, are not doing for them, or you have grown kids that have expectations from you. And, and then, you know, I exercise some. No. And all of a sudden I become an evil person because I'M just not keeping my checkbook open all the time. And yeah, that creates financial trauma for me as well. And I, I mean, I have a relatively good income. I'm not going to say I'm rich or anything, at least not in this podcast. But I'm doing okay. But that is a financial trauma for

Rahkim: me and for a lot of people.

Yohance: Yeah. And, and I am, I'm not a have not, if you will. I have roof over my head, there's two cars in the driveway, and all the bills are paid. So. But, but that is, and that I, I mean, for me, that trauma, it feels like being broke. I mean, it's the same that the, the feeling that I, that I received when my son and I were having our indifferences around money. The pain felt the same as when I went downstairs that one day from work and the car had been repossessed. When I came home one day from work and the eviction letter was on the door, it feels the same. And part of that, I understand that as a financial advisor, behavioral financial advisor, I understand that the chemical responses that are happening in my brain, in my glands, amygdala and things of that nature, I can't repeat them all right now. But the response I'm having, that flight fight freeze response is the same for all of those instances. And my brain doesn't really know the difference in that emotional pain. 100 because what is it? It's fear. Oh, no, I'm never going to talk to my son again. Is that true? No. But in the moment, that's how it feels, right? Oh, I'm never going to get another apartment now that I've been evicted. Was it true? No. But in the moment, it's definitely how it felt. And then getting back to the market conversation, oh, no, I'll never make this money up that I lost in this month.

Rahkim: Yep,

Yohance: also not true. But in the moment, it's exactly how it feels. So I believe you're right. I think it is. It does. A lot of it is centered in, in fear. But what about the other side of that coin? What about greed? Do you think that has a similar impact on the, the trauma?

Rahkim: This is an interesting question because yes is my default answer. Like when you started asking the question, like everything in me screamed, yes, but I think that. So you talk about fear, you talk about greed. I think that these are further along in the response. And I love that you talked about the somatic response to trauma because, like, that is a game changer, right? When we talk about the nervous system and the nervous system responses. That's not like a nice to have part of the conversation. That is the conversation. And, and the examples that you gave were, you know, so spot on, phenomenal. Right. Regardless of income assets, what have you, your brain body connection does not recognize that in that moment it is safe or maybe it's not safe. Right. And so it's giving you as it's alarming to you saying hey, there's a problem, there's a problem and interpret that however we interpret that. So I think that the step beyond the chemical response as you described it is then that fear or is then that that greed or is then that hyper vigilance that can be misinterpreted as greed. Right. So when I talk a lot of times when I'm having these conversations, I like to pick on Elon Musk. For some reason I think he's easy to pick on partially because he is one of the richest men in the world. Right. And we see, I think right now

Yohance: he has the title. I think it's, I know it will be probably next week with, after this SpaceX thing is just going to get astronomically more stupid, for lack of a better term to describe it.

Rahkim: And I followed him in his career for a while and just a lot of the lore around him and his work and his work ethic and how he's lost sleep or, or you know, his involvement with his family, just different aspects of.

Yohance: Let's throw the ketamine in there. Let's throw that. Yeah, his, his, his involvement with his siblings and his what his, what they have to say about him, what his children have to say, what the President has to say.

Rahkim: Yep. And so, you know, on the one hand I think there are people who glorify where he's arrived to financially, what it is that he's been able to accomplish. But we strip away all of what has been sacrifice done. However we want to categorize the, the other 80% of what has, what has gotten him to this place and this fixation on success in how he may define it and how it may be defined in popular culture tied into that dollar amount. Do I think that he is operating from a place of greed necessarily? I don't think that's for me to, to determine. But if you're asking me my, my personal opinion, probably not. I think that he is, I'll use the word obsessive about what he views as success right through his lens and that the money has been a byproduct of that. I don't think the Money is driving that. But I do think that once you arrive to a certain place financially, that you want to maintain that status. And so where you talked about fear, he may be like, okay, I have this, like, I don't want to go back to zero or I don't want to go back, not even zero. I don't want to go back to PayPal. Right. Because there's different, there's different levels stripping those categories in those words. And you know, maybe just the idea of judgment associated with where he's arrived to what he's done to get to that point, et cetera, et cetera. I do think that his behavior, and just using him as an example, but this can be applied to anybody. That his behavior is a behavior that in his mind, in his reality, is in alignment with the way that our brains work, which is seeking safety. So how do you seek safety as a trillionaire? Right. What does that look like? Well, how do you seek safety?

Yohance: It looks like maintaining your trillionaire status because it's one of those things where it's, it's, you feel that if it begins to unravel, it just won't stop. And so you have to continually just, I mean, if we're going to call it a yarn ball, you have to continually make sure it is wrapped tight and secured because if you drop it, it's going to roll down the hill and you won't be able to catch it. And I think society has proven that to us. If you look at all of the ultra wealthy people who've lost all of their wealth, because from the outside looking in, it does look like it happens almost overnight. And a lot of times we're able to, again, outside looking in, tie back to one thing. Once that one thing happened, it was all downhill from there. And, and, and actually we don't have to go to the ultra wealthy. We can look at this in people that win the lottery, athletes, other folks that get inheritance and things of that nature that start operating out of a sense of fear. And then they make that one mistake and then you look up again and they're broke. And, and I, I think to, to Elon's credit, I mean, I'm, he's not my favorite person on the planet right now. I'm not one of those people that's going to say those dumb memes that say if Elon Musk gave every person a million dollars and you know, there'd be no poverty because I know the truth, he doesn't really have a trillion dollars.

Rahkim: Right.

Yohance: We have just said A society that the things he has are worth this much, and he does have, I think it's safe to say, unlimited borrowing power. Okay. And when you have unlimited borrowing power, it doesn't matter how much money you have, because you can borrow as much as you want. And the banks believe that they're going to get their money back eventually from those assets that are going to be worth something at some point in the future. But I, I believe that. I, I agree with you. I believe that, that if you and I started to think about. Because I've read Elon's the, the first biography on him. Read it twice, actually. I was an early investor in Tesla. I have clients that work at SpaceX. So I, I tend to kind of keep up what's going on with Elon and had clients at Twitter or whatever they call themselves now. And I believe you're right. I, I think he perfectly embodies the, the correct biological responses that someone like him would have. Because I think you could even scale Elon down to someone that has half as much money as him or even 10 of that. And you'd probably see that some of the same behavior. Actually, I know people with, yeah, like, wait a minute, not gonna call them out on this podcast. I was like, wait, yeah, I can't wait to call him out later. I'm telling him, I'm like, bro, you're just like Elon. And he's gonna hate when I say that. And then we're gonna. I'm gonna, like, listen to this podcast and be like, bro, you might be right. Like, I know I am just now go get unlimited borrowing powers and make it worth it. So, but no, I, I appreciate that, that, that insight on, on Elon and, and I want to, I want to segue just a bit because I know you recently published a book. I want to make sure we spend some time on that. Overcoming Financial Trauma, you said it was published just here recently, in the last six months or so.

Rahkim: November. November 2025.

Yohance: Now, of course, we'll put a link to the show notes on. To where we can find the book. I'm assuming we can find on Amazon and all the other fun places where books are found. But in that book, you talked about the 3E's framework, and I was wondering, just as a little commercial for our listeners, can you walk through the three E's and how that fits into this strategy of overcoming financial trauma?

Rahkim: Absolutely. I appreciate you asking. So the book is divided into three parts that follow the 3E framework. The 3E stand for exposure Education and execution. And so walking through the framework, the exposure part of that framework is largely what we're doing here. Right?

Yohance: Where's what I thought? I was like, hey, we're doing that. I was thinking, I was like, wait a minute. In my head, I was like, check.

Rahkim: Okay, providing language, shared language for how we define financial trauma. Right? So you asked the question, what is financial drama? Gave you guys a definition. What are the sources of financial trauma? So we talked about vicarious financial trauma as one of six sources. And so people are now, you know, being introduced to the language. They're like, okay, you know, I have that, or I may have had that, or I know somebody who has that. And I think that when that aha moment goes off, then it, like, opens up the mind for what else is to follow. We can't address an issue that we can't identify. And so going back to your point about the. The body, the body's response to the nervous system, I often open up with, you know, we're not socialized to view money as threatening. And so when we can then frame money or our associations with money as being threatened and our responses to that threat through a lens of our behavior, it's like, oh, wait, yeah, I'm doing that thing. Because whatever the case, and when I work with people one on one, or even when I open up with talks, I ask the question, what does money represent to you? And a lot of times people answer in the same way, right? One of one of these three categories. Money represents power. Money represents safety, Money represents freedom. And so any variation of response that I get usually falls into one of those three categories. Categories. If the individual doesn't specifically state one of those three phrases based off of how they respond to me, I then respond to them. Now, knowing how they're moving or behaving with money because of how, how it manifests as or what it represents to them in their lives. So the exposure piece gives language for that. The education piece dives into that nervous system response as well as where and when financial literacy is necessary and introduces financial counseling and financial therapy. Right? So we're talking about the triune brain. So as you mentioned, fight, flight, freeze, fun. How does that show up in our money behaviors? Am I not opening mail? Am I not checking my bank account balances? Am I. Am I not budgeting if I'm not doing these things, even though I'm saying that I want to do these things? What is causing the conflict there? And how can we have a body awareness when we approach doing these things? As you mentioned, the conflict with your son and the experience of the car being repossessed cause the same response in your body. Right. Well, we have to understand, well, what is that response and why is it happening? And then the execution phase is actually doing the work I would argue is probably the hardest phase. Right. Because we can sit and we can learn and consume all of this information all day, but ultimately we have to take action. And sometimes taking that action doesn't feel safe. And so our bodies are going to rebel. During the execution phase is where I encourage people to build community. And that community can be people that you share the last name or share the same household or share the same geographic area, but it also can and should include the financial professionals like you and I. So, you know, maybe I'm working with financial therapists, maybe I'm working with a financial counselor, maybe I'm working with a financial advisor, a financial planner, so that I can not necessarily have the accountability, but so that I can feel a little bit more safer and holding my hand with that person to walk through the areas where I'm just not going to do it by myself. In that section, I also talk about rewriting the money narratives that we carry.

Yohance: So money scripts are all about.

Rahkim: Yep, there you go. So you may say, hey, I am bad with money because XYZ happened. And I think that a lot of times people view their relationship with money in hindsight through the lens of things that they have experienced.

Yohance: Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. See, now you dropping knowledge like Rakim. Okay, hold on, hold on. I gotta breathe through that one for a second. Say that one more time.

Rahkim: A lot of times people, people view their relationship with money in hindsight, so they will look at what traumas they experienced in childhood or what they observed from their parents or during their beginning income earning years and who they had to become to overcome those things. But they maintain that throughout the rest of their life as if it's a static reality, right? Like I cannot change this about.

Yohance: But it, that is my reality. That's what made me who I am. I, I have this success because of the repossessions and the evictions and my parents trauma with money and being a black man in a white man's world for all intents and purposes in finance and dropping out of college and I'm dumping on you right now. But. And that's because you struck a nerve. I was like, how else am I supposed to do it? It made me, it's. I, I look at it as, as building bricks Or LEGO bricks. Like, I had to build this foundation first. And now, yes, I have a nice house sitting on it now, but that foundation is the same.

Rahkim: Yeah, I forget the exact phrasing of. Of the quote, but something to the effect of what it took to get you there is no, it got me

Yohance: here, won't get me there. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, so I actually need to just build a new foundation or.

Rahkim: Or give yourself permission to grow. Right. Everything that. Everything that served you up until the point of who you are should be acknowledged, should be celebrated. But where you want to go tomorrow may not require those same things of you. And because we have created our identity around what it is that we experienced in the past, we may not allow ourselves to let it go and give ourselves the permission to move forward. And so, perfect. Here's a good example. Right. You talk about the things that you experience and the things that you have had to overcome, and you brush past them very quickly. But all very heavy things. Some of them will continue to persist for as long as you're alive. Right. You will always be a black man in America.

Yohance: Yes. And the all is for America, not for being black. It was just for the America.

Rahkim: Yeah.

Yohance: Anyway.

Rahkim: But the. The effort that you may have had to put into arriving to where you are now may not be the same kind of effort that you have to put in to get to the next place. Right. You may not have to. I'm just using random. Random numbers and random anecdote work the 60 hours a week to get to.

Yohance: I'm not going to.

Rahkim: Right.

Yohance: So.

Rahkim: But, yeah, but some people carry that same vision.

Yohance: Yeah, you're right. Because there was a time. Yeah, there was. And you know, it's funny you mentioned that I arrived there very recently when I started having a conversation with myself about the definition of enough. Because there was a time where if you'd asked me a decade ago, or not even decade. Let's go back even further. Go back two decades when I really. When I made my first hundred thousand and saw a quarter million, was around the corner and saw, okay, wait, if I keep going at this progression, I can get to a point where I'm making over a million dollars a year. And I lived with that for a long time of thinking that I needed to be making a million dollars a year. And then I realized I was like, wait, I don't really need a million. I mean, it sounds good. It's cool. I kind of don't want those tax issues. Not saying that I'm gonna turn down a million a year. But, but what I realized is that I wasn't willing to give that much of my time, give that much of time away from family. I also wasn't willing to face that much objection and rejection. I mean, we deal with that being. Doesn't mean financial services is a sales role. I was like, I, I don't need all that. I, I, you know, if I can, if my household can get X, the bills are paid, we can take a vacation or two. I can save my daughter's college. I can save my own retirement or financial independence. I don't need to make a million. Now, if I become a New York Times bestseller and it comes with a check for a million dollars, I'm cashing that check. But I'm not going to spend the sleepless weeks and nights. I'm not going to Elon musk my way there because I just don't, I don't. This, that doesn't, it doesn't drive me the way it used to.

Rahkim: Yeah.

Yohance: So I, I can see, I appreciate that. And I'm, I'm sure you're going to be sending me a bill after this since I just had a therapy session. But, but I can see where, to your point, that even in my own foundation and for those of you that were the flies on the wall for this conversation, I'm going to tell you, like listeners, I love you guys and gals. I forgot you were there. I was just here at Rakim having a conversation. I forgot we were doing a podcast. So hopefully this has been. I don't even say hopefully. I don't have to say that if you were listening. I know this has been as impactful for you as it has for me, because I'm thinking about that analogy I gave of Legos, which I enjoy Legos, but I have this foundation that's been built on all this financial trauma. And I think I've been, I've been in a space where there's certain pieces. I've allowed myself to say, no, we're going to tear down that garage and we're going to build a new one. But there's other areas where I just kind of painted over what was already there when I probably should have stripped that paint off and that wallpaper off and gone down to the, what's it called? The board that's not painted. You know what I'm talking about? Sheetrock. Going down to the Sheetrock and saying, let's start again. I don't need to continue to mask over some of those things and think that they have to be a part of my hindsight identity when it comes to money. Oh, this was heavy. I'm gonna need to take a walk.

Rahkim: I'll just add to that. You can move to a new area and build, tear down.

Yohance: I'm just. I'm just gonna walk out of frame right now. I just feel like

Rahkim: I'll give. I'll give the example I gave in the book. And. And it's funny because as I was writing the book, it was very much a healing experience for me. Right. I'm processing my own stuff as I'm writing it. But the example I gave was because I grew up. Well, I shouldn't say because I could grow up. There was a time period in my life where I was helping my mom manage the household finances. And in helping her manage the household finances, although it was a moment in time, I built an identity around I am a good manager of money. And being a good manager of money serves you well when you are receiving money. Right. As an employee. I just celebrated five years of full time entrepreneurship last week.

Yohance: Congratulations.

Rahkim: Thank you. And the first two of those. I'm sorry, the first three of those five years, I had no idea what I was doing. And I. And I just didn't realize. Right. I'm burning.

Yohance: That means you were doing. That means you were doing it right, though. That's good. You're doing it right.

Rahkim: As I'm writing the book, I work with a friend of mine who is also a financial therapist. And. And we have a session and I'm like, I want to experience the financial therapy as the. As the customer. Right. If I'm going to talk about it, like I need to be about it, I want to have this experience so that I can report back. And I don't really expect much if I'm going to be honest in going into the session, because I'm like, all right, well, you know, we're going to do all the things that I know that I do for other people. The breakthrough moment for me was in this specific thing coming up. And I'm saying, I am a good manager of money, but I'm having a disconnect in my business. I'm not making money, or at least I'm not making money in the way that I want to be making the money. And what we landed on was that because I had told myself that I was a good manager of money and that this was the thing, I did not allow myself to believe or accept that I was good. I was a good generator of money. Yeah.

Yohance: Those different things Right.

Rahkim: And so as an employee, I can manage money because I receive a check every other week. As an entrepreneur, if I'm not getting the money, then I can't manage what I'm not getting. And it's creating frustration within me because I'm like, I'm not able to do the thing that I've told myself that I'm so good at in moving to another place and building. I don't have to knock down the building of me being a good manager of money. I just need to build a new

Yohance: building that says, okay, okay, okay, you got me. You got me. All right, so, yeah, you, I'll email you the address where you can send the bill. I, I appreciate this session. No, no, Rakim, this has been amazing, man. I, I, again, I don't know how we found each other. I'm glad we did. I know we have some folks in common, probably a bunch. It's probably LinkedIn somewhere that I don't know, but I'm glad that we had this connection. For people that want to find you, how do they find you?

Rahkim: Brockham Sabri. Everywhere, right? My name. So I use my name and all my social handles. Instagram is probably my biggest platform. LinkedIn close second. I have a substack, rakimsubri.substack.com I write articles for Forbes. So if you go to Forbes.com and type in Rakim Sabri, you'll see some, some commentary there. And then anywhere books are sold, Overcoming Financial Trauma is available. Definitely check it out. I talk about everything that we've talked about and more. Again, that's Overcoming Financial Trauma.

Yohance: Indeed. Indeed. Well, look, I, I am very grateful for you because I feel that today I've had a bit of a breakthrough in overcoming some of my own financial trauma. And it goes back to it. I'll say that there wasn't a lot of skills that you presented that were revolutionary or new. It was the application of those skills that were just different and allowed me to look at things through a bit of a different lens. So I, I appreciate you pouring into to me. Like I said, I forgot we were having a podcast. We was, I was my therapies. I was on the couch for a minute there and I, I want to say just to everyone listening or for those of us watching on YouTube, of course, do the whole like and subscribe thing. But that's, that's something, we do that for shows that we like so like and subscribe so that you know when the new shows are coming out, but also because it helps Other people learn about the show. That's how the algorithms work these days. If you're interacting with it, more people are going to see it. Also, do a friend a favor if something that we said today resonated with you and you think would be helpful for someone, as Rakim says, shares the same last name as you or same address as you, or it's within your neighborhood or your ecosphere, send a link of this episode to them and. And then follow up for a conversation and have that conversation with them, because maybe they can be a part of your community as you start to overcome some of your financial trauma, or you can be a part of theirs. So we appreciate you spending some time with us on the Money Script podcast. We will be back probably next week. I guess right now, I just got to be honest with everyone. There are so many episodes in the can right now. That's a old film term. Back in the day, I used to be a. I used to work in movie theater, and our films would come in a little cans, you know, the reels of film. So in the can means it's ready to be shown to the world. We have a lot of episodes in the can right now because I opened up my calendar once I was done with the CFP studies, and I said, I'll put podcasts in there. Why not? And it's. It's filling up. So Mondays and Fridays, I'm recording. So there's going to be a lot more episodes to come, interviewing a lot more interesting people, and they're going to all just help us improve our financial literacy, because that's what the Money Script podcast is here for. So we appreciate you spending some time with us, and we will see you next time. All right, sir, thank you. So what happens next is this will get edited. Edited. And then you'll hear back from Jessica. She'll let you know what the launch date is. When she launches, she's going to put on YouTube. She can put on all the podcast stations. Of course, we'll send you links to everything. We'll also tag you in anything that we post. And the only thing I asked you to do is just engage a little bit, because, like I said, that helps build the algorithm and hopefully help you sell some more books. If you have any discount codes or anything like that you want to give, Jessica will be in touch with you. You can give that to her. If you have anything like that or anything that you want us to promote in the. The.

Rahkim: The.

Yohance: The show notes. And yeah, I appreciate you. This was great, man. And I will. I'll get a copy of the book as well, because now, now I'll send

Rahkim: you a copy, so.

Yohance: All right, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I have just.

Rahkim: You.

Yohance: All right. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, hey, brother, I appreciate you and yeah, be in touch soon.

Rahkim: Yes, sir.

Yohance: Welcome to the Money Strip podcast. It's your host, Johan Saracen. So happy to be with each and every one of you today. Hope you're enjoying your summer. If you are listening to this in chronological order, it is now summer. It's officially here. And it's June. It's my birthday month. Happy birthday. And happy birthday to Alicia, too. It's also her birthday month. Yes. Our birthdays are in the same month and they're two days apart. Now you know something about me. So today I have a author by the name of Rahkim Sabri, and he is the author of a book called Overcoming Financial Trauma. And I'm just going to tell you guys up front, I got lost for a minute. I, I was so deep in the conversation with them, and I, I turned into my own therapy session. I really did. And, but it was good. Like, I had a few breakthroughs in there that I'm really excited to, to go a little bit deeper on. And, you know, I may need to have some conversations with a financial therapist myself. I, I notice in this conversation that there's a lot of things that I carry, and I, I think I treat them as if I've already overcome when I'm still kind of carrying it, still in that bag, you know, as you. It's the hunchback thing. I still got it back there on my back, even though I've, I, from the outside looking in. I have the success. I have the notoriety and all of the things. And the financial literacy. Oh, I must have plenty of that. I'm a financial advisor for 25 years. I must be really financially literate. And to a, you know, to a point, I am. But I still got this hunch on my back, and Rahkim really helped me think through some of those things. So I'm confident that he's going to be able to do the same for you. This is one I'm going to warn you. You're going to want to give this a couple of listens because I'm excited to go back and listen to it, because there were things that he was saying that. Because in the moment I'm in the podcast and I'm trying to get through my interview that I, I probably need to spend some more time on and just really dissecting to understand what he said. And, and by the way, he his book, Overcoming Financial Trauma, I I have not read it yet, but my copy is on the way. I'm excited to read it, but I've seen a couple of clips on YouTube and things of that nature where he's speaking to it. And that's why I wanted to share it with all of you. So let's get to Rahkim. And no, it's not, not the rapper Rahkim. It's, he spells a little different, but Rahkim, he's gonna drop some knowledge, too. Let's.