Episode Details

What if your relationship with money is really a relationship with life?

In this episode of Thought Atlas, I sit down with Morgana Rae, an author and wealth coach who has spent more than three decades exploring the psychology of money, abundance, and personal transformation.

Morgana’s journey into money coaching wasn’t intentional. She says it began with her own financial struggle. Despite having coaching skills, clients, public recognition, and what seemed like all the ingredients for a successful business, she found herself struggling to make even $100 a month in Los Angeles in 2003. She was paying her expenses with credit cards, borrowing from family, and carrying enormous shame about the contradiction between helping others with their lives while feeling financially stuck herself.

After trying marketing courses, sales training, coaching techniques, and various spiritual approaches, Morgana reached a breaking point. Seven prospective clients had agreed to work with her, yet none showed up or paid her. She describes retreating to her bedroom, crying, raging, feeling hopeless, and questioning why her life wasn’t working.

That moment led to a different question: What was happening inside her relationship with money?

Morgana explains how this question became the foundation of her work. She argues that money can represent much more than money itself—it can become connected to love, worth, safety, identity, and our deeper relationship with life.

We explore the difference between doing everything you’re “supposed” to do and actually understanding the internal patterns that may influence how you respond to opportunities.

Morgana then walks us through her six-step process, Financial Alchemy, which she developed from her own experience and later incorporated into her coaching and book of the same name.

The process begins by uncovering what she calls the Money Monster: giving form to the fears, experiences, and beliefs associated with money. From there, she describes confronting and destroying the monster before creating a new relationship with money that she calls the Money Honey.

This imaginative relationship becomes a way for her clients to explore what they need to feel safe, loved, valued, and supported—and then translate those insights into concrete action.

We discuss why Morgana believes the process isn’t ultimately about money. She sees it as a way of changing our relationship with life and with our own sense of self-worth.

She also shares stories from clients who, according to Morgana, experienced dramatic financial changes after applying her approach—including one client who received an unexpected $10,000 after following an instruction from her imagined Money Honey to go skating with her son.

We talk about scarcity, fear, practical financial problems, and the way heightened emotion can affect our ability to see possibilities clearly. Morgana explains why she encourages people to use fear as an opportunity to examine what lies underneath it rather than simply trying to suppress it.

Near the end, we explore how challenges can sometimes reveal possibilities that weren’t visible before and why Morgana believes the most important transformation is not simply making more money, but changing how we relate to ourselves, life, and possibility.

Listeners who want to explore Morgana’s work, take her Money Love Quiz, access her free four-part video series, learn about her coaching, or find her book can connect with her directly through Morgana Rae’s official website. (morganarae.com)

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Food for thought: “Change happens at the speed of safety.”