Better money decisions begin when we slow down enough to understand ourselves.

 

On this episode of Get Ready Before Life Happens, Tony sits down with DonJay Rice to explore how curiosity, reflection, and emotional awareness can help rewire the way we think about money.

 

From scarcity mindset and workaholism to gratitude and values alignment, this conversation highlights how financial healing begins with asking better questions and taking one small step at a time.

 

Key Takeaways

🔹 Take time to recognize and celebrate our wins 

🔹 Our money behaviors are often rooted in childhood experiences

🔹 High achievement can sometimes mask fear and scarcity

🔹 Curiosity is a powerful tool for uncovering what is really driving behavior.

🔹 Silence creates space for truth in conversations.

🔹 Financial change happens through small, consistent improvements.

🔹 Understanding what is true today helps loosen the grip of old beliefs.

🔹 Aligning money decisions with values leads to greater life satisfaction.

 

Tony’s Take: Money and emotions are deeply connected. When we slow down, get curious, and stop judging ourselves, we begin to shift from reacting out of fear to making decisions that reflect our values and goals.

 

 🎥 Watch this episode below: 

 

🎧 Listen to the podcast below or on your favorite podcast app. 

 

Connect with DonJay Rice, FBS: 

 

• Drumbeat Of Wealth Website: https://www.drumbeatofwealth.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donjay-rice-fbs®-36950a297/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551358480000
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drumbeatofwealth/?hl=en

 

Resources mentioned: 

 

• The Enneagram Institute: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com

 

Bio: 

 

DonJay Rice is a Certified Financial Behavior Specialist. With that title he works with clients, couples and families to heal and create a path forward when their relationship with money becomes unhealthy. He is also a public speaker who leads audiences to discover how money behaviors impact relationships with others as well as the relationship they have with themselves.

 

DonJay is a Certified Christian Life Coach through the American Association of Christian Counselors. A certified Enneagram Coach and a Certified Trauma Coach. He has been a guest on several international podcasts and has written articles for the Journal of Financial Planning. He holds a Masters Cert in Financial Psychology and Behavioral Finance from Creighton University.

Prior to being a Financial Behavior Specialist/Coach, DonJay was a financial advisor for 28 years, developing a special niche in working with clients where money behaviors were entangled with past or present, grief and trauma.

Working for a brokerage firm with over 19,000 advisors. DonJay grew his practice from zero clients, zero assets and zero leads to be in the top 2% of the firm in terms of annual gross production. DonJay also consistently scored in the top 10% of the firm in terms of client satisfaction surveys while performing several volunteer leadership roles within the organization.

That is what he DOES, or has done, but it doesn’t describe who DonJay IS? So, who is DonJay Rice? His family and close friends describe him as: Kind, Optimistic, Creative, Generous, Vulnerable, and a heart filled with Empathy.

 

👉 Start Your Financial Readiness Plan: A free, practical plan that helps you create your in-case-of-emergency Financial First Aid Kit, organize what matters, and prepare before life happens. Start Your Free Financial Readiness Plan  https://www.tonysteuer.com

 

👉 Support Get Ready. Become a Get Ready Insider and help keep the Financial Readiness Plan free, support the podcast, trusted resources, and consumer-first financial education. You’ll receive access to the Get Ready Library. Support Get Ready here. www.tonysteuer.com/support

 

Transcript 

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Tony: When we understand how emotions and experiences shape our money decisions, empowerment follows.

Welcome to Get Ready: Before Life Happens. I’m your host, Tony Steuer.

Today, I’m joined by Donjay Rice.

Donjay, welcome to the podcast.

Donjay: Hey, Tony. Thanks for having me.

Tony: I’m excited.

This conversation has been a long time coming. I’ve wanted to have you on the show for quite a while and just hadn’t made it happen.

I’m glad you’re here today and excited to share your story.

Tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story?

Donjay: My origin story involved a lot of grief and childhood trauma.

The money message that came out of that was:

“If I just succeed enough, if I just achieve enough, if I just set goals and knock them down, I can block all of that grief and trauma from my brain because I won’t have time for it.”

And I was praised for it.

It helped me get out of poverty.

It did all these great things.

So it must be a good thing, right?

It worked until it didn’t.

Eventually, I realized I still had a scarcity mindset.

I was knocking down goals out of fear.

From the outside, it looked great.

Here’s a guy who’s crushing the world.

But little did people know that my money beliefs, fear, and everything underneath them were crushing me on the inside.

Tony: That’s interesting.

I think that can be common among high achievers.

There may be a lot happening in the background, and achievement becomes a way of masking it.

For somebody listening who immediately recognizes themselves in what you’re saying, what was the moment when you realized:

“Wait, this is what’s happening to me”?

Donjay: For me, the wake-up call happened in stages.

The first stage was on Father’s Day.

My two daughters had something really special planned for me at home after church.

We came home, had dinner, and they were doing what kids do.

They were goofing around, laughing, and joking.

I remember getting activated and saying:

“Come on, guys. We’ve got to hurry up and get this over with because Dad needs to go to work.”

So they did.

And I went to work.

I was a financial advisor at the time.

I was sitting at my desk doing all the work that had piled up.

It was nice and quiet.

And sometimes that’s when our wake-up calls happen, in the stillness and quiet.

I thought:

“What have I done?”

“What am I doing?”

That was the first real wake-up call that there was something more going on than simply setting goals, knocking them down, and being successful.

Something else was driving it.

Tony: It sounds like the stillness itself became a signal.

If you’re piling on so many things that there’s never any quiet, sometimes we can mistake activity for inner peace.

There are a lot of forces pushing us to stay busy.

Our society and culture often tell us that we should always be doing more.

But we’re all running faster, and it doesn’t necessarily seem like we’re getting anywhere.

Donjay: A little louder for the people in the back.

That’s exactly right.

As a society, we’ve gotten incredibly busy, and we praise it.

If I call and say:

“Hey, Tony, what’s happening?”

The first thing you might say is:

“I’m really busy.”

And we say that almost like it’s something to brag about.

It’s become a badge of honor.

We’ve gotten so busy that we don’t even think about our own thoughts.

We don’t stop and ask:

“Why did I think that?”

“Where did that come from?”

We’re reacting all day long.

We need to get better at creating space.

Even if it’s just five minutes of solitude.

Become more aware of:

What am I doing?

What am I thinking?

What am I feeling?

That’s how we really start to grow, whether it’s with money, relationships, or life.

Tony: It’s taking time to reflect.

And for a lot of us, taking that time can actually feel scary.

Donjay: I saw that in my own story too.

I was going through therapy for achievement and workaholism, which can show up as a money disorder.

One Friday, my therapist asked:

“How many things are on your to-do list for tomorrow?”

I pulled up my phone because I always kept my list there.

There were probably at least 20 things for a Saturday.

She said:

“What if, just for this Saturday, you didn’t do any of them?”

“All of those things can wait.”

“What if you went fishing or sat by the fire pit and just sat there?”

Tony, I immediately started crying.

She asked:

“What do those tears represent?”

I said:

“They represent that I’m scared of what I’ll think about.”

I think a lot of people have been told to push, strive, and put their emotions aside.

Don’t think about why you’re doing this.

Don’t think about that old wound.

And part of the reason is that it’s scary to go there.

But we need to realize those thoughts won’t crush us.

They won’t cripple us.

We need to move through that fear and see what might be on the other side.

Tony: I think that’s so important.

But moving through the fear can still feel overwhelming.

When somebody recognizes:

“Okay, this fear is here.”

What advice do you give them for beginning to move through it?

Donjay: I have an exercise where we work with 15 soothing statements.

Clients read through them and find maybe three or four that really connect with who they are.

I also work with the Enneagram, so a lot of those statements connect with different Enneagram styles.

Someone may read one and think:

“That doesn’t resonate with me at all.”

Then they get to another and think:

“That one really hits.”

Part of the reason may be that it connects with their Enneagram style.

Soothing statements can help.

And then it’s about leaning in.

We don’t have to jump into the deep end of the pool.

What would five minutes look like?

Surely five minutes of stillness isn’t going to do the damage you’re afraid it will do.

Then afterward you might say:

“Wow. That wasn’t so bad.”

“Maybe I had a difficult thought, but here I am.”

It’s about creating space.

Creating curiosity.

And working against shame.

A lot of what keeps us captive is shame.

Take the Father’s Day story I just told you.

For the longest time, I didn’t tell anybody.

What father does that?

But sharing it dissolves the shame.

The more I share it, including sharing it publicly now, the less power it has.

It’s out there.

And then people respond:

“I can understand how that happened.”

“I’ve done something similar.”

One of the first things I ask clients is:

“Who are two or three people in your life who are your crew?”

The people you could tell something difficult to and they wouldn’t gasp.

They wouldn’t judge you.

They wouldn’t immediately try to fix it.

They wouldn’t dismiss it.

Then we test the waters.

Share one little thing.

How did that go?

Usually they say:

“They responded exactly how I thought they would.”

“They didn’t judge me.”

“They didn’t dismiss it.”

“They didn’t try to fix me.”

“Someone even said, ‘Me too.’”

So it’s about creating space, leaning in, being curious, becoming a nonjudgmental detective of yourself, and working against shame.

Tony: I love that:

Be a nonjudgmental detective of yourself.

That’s a really useful way to put it.

Examining yourself can be scary because you may have to confront something real.

But as you said, talking about it also takes away some of its power.

When you’re carrying shame privately, it can become very powerful.

That doesn’t mean everybody has to talk about it publicly on a podcast.

Start with therapy.

Start with somebody in your trusted circle.

Take the smaller step.

You can’t do this all at once.

Donjay: No.

You have to work through it in layers.

Lean in rather than jumping into the deep end all at once.

Tony: I want to go back to something.

Can you explain what the Enneagram is and how you use it?

Donjay: Sure.

Think of the Enneagram somewhat like a personality assessment, but it goes deeper than that.

There are nine basic styles.

There are variations around those styles, including what are called wings.

But what the Enneagram does differently is that it doesn’t just say:

“You’re an extrovert.”

You might hear that and think:

“No surprise there. Thanks.”

The deeper question is:

Why are you an extrovert?

How might that quality become a superpower?

How might it become a liability?

The Enneagram looks not only at your basic makeup, but at questions like:

How do you act when you’re in alignment?

How do you behave when you’re out of alignment?

What happens when you’re stressed?

What do you tend to move toward when your normal approach isn’t working?

Something else that’s interesting is that people can be mistyped.

Sometimes that happens because we spend so much time performing particular roles.

Maybe you’re expected at work to be the person who always grabs the ball, runs with it, and takes charge.

You may answer assessment questions according to the way you’re expected to perform rather than what your natural tendency actually is.

So someone might initially appear to be one Enneagram style when something else actually fits them better.

I have clients take the assessment.

Then I take them through what I call mistyping questions.

Once we have a better understanding of their style, we look at the Enneagram with money.

How do you behave around money when you’re in balance?

How do you behave when you’re out of balance?

What do you do with money when you don’t feel loved?

What do you do with money when you don’t feel heard?

For many clients, it’s the first time they’ve ever thought about those questions.

I’ve had people say:

“How are you inside my head right now?”

And I say:

“It’s the Enneagram.”

From there we look at their money story.

How has that style interacted with things that happened in their past?

Then we use exercises designed to help bring them into better balance with money.

That’s how I incorporate it into my coaching.

Tony: That’s really interesting.

For everybody watching and listening, I’ll include information in the show notes so people can learn more about the Enneagram and your work.

Something you said really stands out.

If you take an assessment based on the expectations other people have of you, or the expectations you think they have of you, it can throw things off.

That gets into authenticity.

You’re the only person who can be yourself, and you’re going to be better at being yourself than anybody else.

It’s fascinating how that authentic self can differ from the role you think you’re supposed to play.

Women, for example, may carry many different expectations around being mothers, employees, caregivers, and other roles.

There can be a lot of expectations layered on top of who someone actually is.

Once people begin discovering that, how do they deal with the fear that may come with changing?

Donjay: A big part is recognizing and celebrating wins.

We’re terrible at that.

If you say:

“I sat in silence for five minutes, and it didn’t crush me.”

That’s a win.

Celebrate it.

Our negativity bias keeps us focused on what’s wrong.

We don’t give enough space to what’s going right.

I once had a business coach tell me:

Celebrate any and all improvement.

Maybe yesterday you didn’t understand something about yourself.

Today you do.

You don’t even know what you’re going to do with that information yet.

That’s still a win.

When I was a financial advisor, I did a lot of role-playing with new advisors.

After each role-play, I told them:

“Name three things you did right and one thing you want to work on.”

I told them the rule before we started.

Then after the role-play I’d say:

“Okay, evaluate yourself.”

And they would immediately jump to everything they did wrong.

The one thing they wanted to work on became five things.

So I had to keep redirecting them:

“First, tell me three things you did well.”

Then:

“What is one thing you can work on starting today?”

Not 20.

Because if we create a list of 20 failures, we aren’t going to improve.

We’re just going to beat ourselves up.

Tony: I like that:

What’s one thing you can work on starting today?

It reminds me of sports.

People can put enormous weight on the last shot of a game.

A player misses one shot and takes all the blame.

But there were missed passes, missed layups, defensive plays, and dozens of other moments during the game.

The outcome is the culmination of all of those things, not one moment.

Donjay: Exactly.

We do the same thing in life.

We look back and say:

“If this one thing hadn’t happened, everything would be different.”

Really?

Is life that simple?

Life is incredibly interconnected and complex.

There are many things that bring us to particular moments.

We need to stop beating ourselves up.

I work with parents who financially enable adult children.

Often they identify one incident and say:

“This is when everything happened.”

Usually it’s the latest incident.

But there were other things along the way.

There are so many influences affecting us.

As a friend of mine once said:

If you think the answer to a complex problem is simple, you don’t understand the question.

Tony: I love that.

A lot of these things don’t have simple solutions.

And that gets back to money stories.

Something else I noticed is that when you described your process, you didn’t really get to money until later.

Money is often the result of all these other things happening in our lives.

It simply shows up through our financial behavior.

Let me flip that around.

Suppose a client comes to a financial advisor and just wants to talk about numbers.

How does the advisor begin a conversation about emotions without making it feel forced?

Donjay: That’s a great question.

Financial advisors ask me that a lot:

“This all sounds good, but how do I actually do it?”

It starts with the advisor eating their own cooking.

Have they sat with their own emotions around money?

You really can’t walk with somebody else unless you’ve done some walking yourself.

An advisor can ask:

“What are my emotions around money?”

“Where did they come from?”

“When do they become unhealthy?”

Understand your own stuff.

Then one practical thing advisors can do is have a feelings wheel available.

Maybe it’s on the conference table.

If you do Zoom meetings, you could say:

“I have something called a feelings wheel. We might refer to it during our conversation. If you ever want me to pull it up, just say the word.”

Don’t make it a big dramatic thing.

Then the advisor can model using it too.

Maybe you describe your own emotion in a situation.

Again, don’t make it forced or salesy.

You can also use language with the client like:

“You seem a little nervous.”

Notice I use the word seem.

Words like “seem” and “feel” can help keep you from judging someone.

I’m not saying:

“You are nervous.”

And I usually underplay the emotion.

I’m not going to say:

“Tony, you’re frantic right now.”

That’s basically like telling someone to calm down.

That never works.

Instead:

“You seem a little nervous.”

Put it in the form of a question.

And it’s okay if you guess wrong.

People naturally want to correct you.

Maybe they say:

“No, it isn’t nervous. It’s more like uncertainty.”

Great.

Then:

“Tell me more about uncertainty.”

“Are there any other words that describe how you’re feeling?”

That’s when you can hand them the feelings wheel or put it on the screen.

Then stay silent.

You can use this even when things are going well.

“You seem confident.”

“You seem decisive.”

“Anything else on this list that describes how you’re feeling?”

And advisors can demonstrate appropriate vulnerability themselves.

We don’t need what I call vulnerability vomit.

But if a client asks:

“How was your weekend?”

You might say:

“My daughter went off to college. I’m incredibly proud of her, and I was also a little sad.”

Now the client sees that you aren’t putting on this perfect emotional armor.

So my advice is:

Eat your own cooking.

Be appropriately open about your own emotions.

And use something like a feelings wheel to introduce emotional language naturally.

Tony: I want to go back to something you said:

Stay silent.

Silence is a superpower.

Listening is too.

That’s something I’ve learned as a podcast host.

I try to wait a couple of beats after a guest finishes because so often they’re about to say something else.

If I jump in immediately, I can cut off the most interesting part.

The same thing applies in any conversation.

Sometimes people are still processing what they want to say.

When an advisor stays silent, that may be when they really learn something.

Donjay: Absolutely.

And if silence feels uncomfortable, tell the client up front.

You can say:

“One thing I try to do in meetings is leave some silence in the room.”

“That isn’t meant to make you uncomfortable.”

“I think giving clients time to think, process, and respond is important.”

“Would you agree?”

They’ll probably say yes.

Now you’ve committed yourself to doing it.

Tony: We’re practicing silence right now.

One last topic before we start wrapping up is scarcity.

You mentioned that at the beginning.

Scarcity is a place a lot of us come from, and it can create issues both in our lives and with money.

We hear people talk all the time about moving from scarcity to abundance.

But what does that actually mean?

How do people begin making that shift?

Donjay: With my clients, the first step is recognizing where scarcity came from.

I believe that if we want to rewire or reprogram behavior, we need to understand the root.

Was the scarcity mindset connected to a past event that your mind is still reacting to?

Maybe your family was homeless.

Now any time there’s a fear of not having enough, your mind says:

“You aren’t safe.”

Maybe an important person in your life repeatedly told you:

“You have to work hard because somebody will always pull the rug out from underneath you.”

Where did the message come from?

Then start questioning it.

Maybe it was true once.

“Yes, my family was homeless.”

That was real.

But:

“I’m not homeless today.”

So what is true today?

That’s where we start.

Discover the root.

Then begin rewiring the response because our minds and bodies can continue reacting subconsciously to something that happened a long time ago.

Tony: Then what does an abundance mindset mean to you?

Donjay: My company is called Drumbeat of Wealth.

There’s a quote I love:

Wealth is a state of mind.

That’s part of why I chose the name.

It isn’t simply:

“I want all my clients to become wealthy in dollars.”

I want them to experience wealth as a state of mind.

For me, abundance includes:

Do I have gratitude?

Am I recognizing the good things happening in my life?

Am I thankful for them?

As human beings, we’re wired for connection.

We’re wired for compassion.

We’re wired for love.

So where is gratitude in my life?

Where is generosity?

Where is connection?

Those things feed relationships.

For me, an abundance mindset is centered around those ideas.

Tony: I love that.

And it goes back to one of the first things we talked about:

What is actually important to you?

Not what you think is supposed to be important.

Once you understand that, you may realize you don’t need as much money, recognition, or status as somebody else.

You can make choices that fit who you are.

I started out selling life insurance decades ago.

I eventually moved away from sales because I enjoyed consulting on insurance much more.

I could probably have been more financially successful if I had stayed in sales.

But I didn’t like being a salesperson.

I made a choice.

There were financial trade-offs, but it was a better fit for me.

For all of us, there’s a question:

“Is this who I want to be?”

“Is this how I want to show up?”

Donjay: I agree.

I do a values exercise with clients.

We slow down and ask:

“What are my values?”

Clients work through a list of about 125 values and eventually narrow them to five.

Then we ask:

“Why this value?”

“What is the story behind it?”

“When you think about this being one of your five core values, what happened in your life that made this matter so much?”

Then comes the next question:

Am I actually living in alignment with my values?

Because I can be succeeding, striving, and pushing, but if the life I’m building isn’t aligned with my values, I’m probably not going to be very happy.

Tony: I love that.

Aligning your life with your values creates a very different kind of success.

Donjay, to wrap up, I have what’s called the Get Ready Hot Take Trio.

These are three quick questions I ask all my guests.

First:

What’s one money myth or belief you’re trying to break?

Donjay: For me personally, I’m always pushing against the idea that I need to overachieve or continually succeed.

Those patterns that are rooted in our past may never completely disappear.

For me, that tendency can slide into workaholism.

So I have a daily ritual.

When it’s time to stop working, I close my laptop and say:

“Donjay, you have done enough for today.”

I take a moment and think about the things I accomplished that day.

Then I shut the laptop.

I close my office door.

My wife and I have a time where we talk about our day.

We talk about what we appreciate about each other.

We talk about the emotions of the day.

And I put my phone in another room.

Because I know myself.

If she pauses, my instinct can be:

“Oh, there’s a moment of silence. I can answer one more email.”

So this is something I’ll probably always need to be aware of.

But I have a system and a plan for it.

Tony: I think that’s important.

These things from our past may not simply disappear.

We can recognize them.

We can work with them.

But they’re still part of our story.

Let’s get out the time machine.

If you could go back knowing what you know now about money, what advice would you give your younger self?

Donjay: Money and my emotions are tied to everything I do.

And if I don’t become the master of them, they become the master of me.

Tony: I love that.

Final question:

What’s your number one tip to change the way we think about money?

Donjay: Slow down our lives and get curious.

Tony: I love that.

Curiosity is something I talk about a lot.

Being curious and asking better questions can help us become more financially informed and make better decisions.

It’s how we learn.

Donjay: One hundred percent.

Tony: Donjay, where can people learn more about you and your work?

Donjay: I’m active on LinkedIn under my name, Donjay Rice.

My website is DrumbeatOfWealth.com.

I’m also on Instagram and Facebook under Drumbeat of Wealth.

Tony: Awesome.

For everybody watching and listening, if you have access to the show notes, there will be links to Donjay’s website and social profiles.

Donjay, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Donjay: Thanks, Tony. It was a blast. I had a great time.

Tony: And thank you, everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

If you learned something today that changed the way you think about money, please subscribe and share this episode with a friend.

You can also go to TonySteuer.com to join the Get Ready Movement and access my newsletter and free resources.

Because when life happens, the way you think about money matters.