Four Sentences That Completely Turned My Finances Around

These are the sentences that saved my financial life. Literally.

Okay lovely, let me be real with you for a second. If you’ve ever stared at your bank account and felt that gut punch, that sinking “how did I get here” feeling, I want you to know something: you are not broken, you are not bad with money, and you are absolutely not alone in this.

We all walk these wildly different financial paths. Some of us grew up watching our parents budget every cent while others never had a single conversation about money at the dinner table. What works for one woman’s wallet might not work for yours, and that’s okay. Try not to measure your financial journey against someone else’s highlight reel of luxury vacations and investment portfolios. Where you are right now is exactly where you are, and that makes it a valid starting point.

As I continue to fall more in love with building my business and creating real financial freedom, I know that for me, words have been everything. Specific sentences, all said at different times, by different people, that cracked something open in how I thought about money, success, and what I was actually worth. They stuck with me and they changed the entire trajectory of my financial life.

I was once a fresh graduate, summa cum laude, driven, ready to take on the world. Two years later? I was drowning in debt, had zero savings, a business idea that had completely flopped, and was so financially stressed that I couldn’t sleep at night. The anxiety was all-consuming. I’m talking panic attacks over opening the mail. It took me three solid years of hard, uncomfortable, humbling work to rebuild. And now? I run a business I love, my debt is handled, and I actually have a savings account that makes me smile.

Life takes your finances places, inwardly and outwardly, that you never expect.

1. “Never say never.”

So the first phrase I want to share with you, lovely, is one that most people roll their eyes at. It sounds like something your nan stitched on a pillow. But in the context of money and business? It was a complete game changer for me.

When my first business tanked, I met a woman named Claudia at a networking event I almost didn’t go to. She was this incredibly sharp, seasoned entrepreneur in her fifties who had built and lost and rebuilt businesses more times than she could count. She sat across from me at a table of women who all seemed to have it figured out, and she could see I was barely holding it together.

I told her I was done. I said I would never start another business. I would never put myself in that kind of financial risk again. I was going to get a “safe” job and just survive.

She looked at me, sipped her coffee, and said, “Never say never, babe. The woman you’ll be in two years won’t recognise the one sitting here right now.”

At first, I brushed it off. But here’s what that sentence actually did for me financially: it made me stop slamming doors shut on possibilities. When we say “I will never invest” or “I could never run a business” or “I’ll never be good with money,” we’re literally closing off entire avenues of wealth and growth. According to research from the American Psychological Association, financial stress significantly impacts our ability to make sound decisions, and that fixed, fearful thinking keeps us stuck in survival mode instead of growth mode.

Once I dropped the “nevers” around money, I started seeing opportunities I had been blind to. I was able to look at my failed business not as proof that I was incapable, but as expensive, invaluable education. I stopped holding myself to impossible standards of perfection (“a real entrepreneur would have made that work on the first try”) and started giving myself permission to be a messy, learning, evolving business owner.

Sometimes your financial life is unpredictable, and therefore, so is your path to wealth. I still catch myself saying, “I would never spend money on that,” and then I laugh because I literally cannot predict what future me will need or want.

It made me so much more comfortable with financial uncertainty. And here’s the thing: although there is a lot of pain in losing money and watching a business fail, there is also so much beauty in what you learn about yourself in the process. This is why I now pledge to invest in myself no matter what, because I am always discovering new things about what I’m capable of building. Never say never, because keeping those doors open is how you stumble into the opportunities that change everything.

2. “Going broke is part of the process.”

The next sentence I share with you gently, because I know this one hits different. Three years ago, I was in such a bad financial place that I genuinely didn’t know if I would ever recover. I had maxed out credit cards, a failed business behind me, and I was robbing Peter to pay Paul every single month. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t even talk to my closest friends about it. For a while, the only thing keeping me from completely giving up on my financial goals was the fear of things getting even worse.

Finally, I called a mentor from college who had been through her own financial rock bottom and could actually relate. I will never forget sitting on my kitchen floor surrounded by bills when she said the words that shifted everything. She said, “Quinn, going broke is part of the process.”

I’d maybe heard something like it before, but she said it as someone who had been buried in debt herself, rebuilt, and come out the other side thriving. Then she said something that you can only truly say when you’ve lived it: “Why don’t you commit to twelve solid months of financial recovery, actually follow a plan, and then reassess? Because quitting on yourself is always an option, but what if you just haven’t given the comeback enough time yet?”

Most people are shocked that those are the words that saved my financial life, but being reminded that I didn’t have to fix everything right this second was the biggest relief I’d ever felt.

It also meant I could stop treating my debt and my financial mistakes as moral failures. According to a study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, financial shame is one of the biggest barriers to people actually taking action on their debt. We feel so terrible about the mess that we freeze instead of cleaning it up. My horrible, ugly financial situation was suddenly no longer proof that I was irresponsible or stupid. It was a normalized part of a process most people are too ashamed to talk about.

I started reading books about financial recovery and talking about money openly with everyone. And you know what? Almost every woman I spoke to had her own money horror story. The reason some of us slip through the cracks financially is because the shame is so immense that we don’t ask for help. Those platitudes about how “money doesn’t buy happiness” or “just stop buying lattes” are literally keeping women broke and silent.

We endure financial stress we really don’t have to because we forget we have options. I don’t know how to change the entire financial system, lovely, but I do know how to talk about money now. I talk about it with honesty, more casually, not to downplay how serious debt is, but to take all of the taboo shame away from the conversation.

Because my mentor was brave and honest with me, I was able to get brave too. It has been three years, I am financially healthy and building wealth. That phone call gave me permission to feel all the ugly, scary financial feelings and still keep going.

3. “I am still financially capable, even when my bank account says otherwise.”

In my early twenties, a financial advisor I couldn’t really afford at the time told me, “It’s okay to not have it all figured out financially.” That cracked something open in me and gave me permission to be imperfect with money. But years later, through building and rebuilding, I’ve been able to transform that into something even more powerful: “I am still financially capable, even when my bank account says otherwise.”

Your finances will spiral out of control more than you’d like them to. That’s just reality, gorgeous. I have gotten to know a lot about how fragile and resilient our relationship with money really is over the years. I know that I am the one who shows up for my finances 24/7. I am the one who has to make the hard calls, have the awkward conversations, and sit with the discomfort of a tight month.

Even during my worst financial seasons, I found ways to be resourceful, creative, and scrappy. I side hustled, I negotiated bills, I found free resources to educate myself. We can forget our bright spots when the debt feels heavy. So if everything is stripped away and I’m sitting with nothing but my skills, my brain, and my willingness to work, I still know I am financially capable. I am here, and I can rebuild.

As Harvard Business Review has noted, women consistently demonstrate exceptional leadership and problem-solving skills, often outscoring men in key competencies. Your capability is not defined by your current bank balance, lovely. It never was.

4. “I can experience the same depths of financial abundance as the financial pain I’ve felt, sometimes more.”

I have been saying this for a while now, and I mean it with my whole chest. I have known deep financial pain. Pain I never expected to feel. The kind where you’re calculating whether you can afford groceries and petrol in the same week. The kind where you avoid phone calls because you know it’s a creditor.

But along the way, I have also known financial joy. For every time I sat on the floor crying over a bill I couldn’t pay, I have also experienced the absolute thrill of landing a client I dreamed about, of taking care of my wellbeing without checking my account first, of watching my savings account grow past a number I once thought was impossible for someone like me.

I have felt the despair of a business that failed and I have felt the electric, full-body excitement of a business that took off. I have truly felt what it’s like to go from surviving to thriving, and it isn’t just sentences that saved my financial life. It was also me. My grit. My refusal to let my worst financial chapter be my last one.

The depth of financial struggle you’ve experienced? That is the exact same depth of abundance that is available to you. You’ve already proven you can feel that intensely. Now imagine channeling all of that intensity toward building something beautiful.

Above all and no matter what, return to yourself over, and over, again. Back yourself financially through every season. Be real, radical, and relentless with your money.

These four sentences rewired how I think about money, business, failure, and what I’m worth. And honestly, they’re not complicated. They didn’t come from fancy financial textbooks or expensive masterminds. They came from real people, in real moments, who told me the truth when I needed it most.

So if you’re sitting there right now feeling like your finances are a mess, like you’ll never figure this out, like everyone else has it together except you, let me be that voice for you today: never say never. Going broke is part of the process. You are still capable, even when your bank account says otherwise. And the abundance you’re dreaming of? It can run just as deep as the struggle you’ve survived.

You’ve got this, lovely.