Welcome to our first Client Seat episode, because even coaches need coaches.

Mary Ann Stenquist teaches people how to break the shop-regret-shame cycle. 

She's a spending coach who helps ambitious women align their spending with their values instead of their impulses.

She knows money. She teaches it. She coaches on it.

And she's stuck.

For four years, Mary Ann has been caught in a cycle: fund the emergency savings, drain it when something happens, rebuild it, drain it again. The AC breaks. Then the furnace. Health expenses pile up. Then the car.

The answer isn't more discipline or a bigger paycheck. It's a better system that accounts for life's inevitable "Whammies."

Each time she taps into that fund, guilt follows. The balance drops, and with it, her sense of security.

Mary Ann says it clearly: she wants an emergency fund for her emergency fund. She knows she needs one. She's built one multiple times. She just can't keep it intact long enough to feel the peace it's supposed to provide.

What makes this exhausting isn't the expenses themselves. It's the way her emergency fund has become a scorecard for whether she's doing money right. When the balance is high, she feels secure. When it dips, she questions everything.

In this first episode of The Client Seat, you'll hear what real financial coaching sounds like. Not a workshop. Not theory. A real session with a real coach working through a real challenge.

We talk about the difference between true emergencies and what I call Whammies: expenses that aren't unpredictable, just irregular. We walk through how to stop using one savings account for everything and start building a system where money has a clear purpose before you ever need to spend it. And we work through what it means to "be good with money" when life keeps throwing curveballs.

If you've ever had a client whose savings account feels more like a stress trigger than a safety net, this conversation will show you what might be missing.

Links & Resources:

• Ultimate Growth Guide
• Join the Facebook group
• Ally Bank
• Visit Mary Ann’s Website

Key Takeaways:

• Pulse fatigue is when your client's sense of security is tied to a number in their savings account. When the balance goes up, they feel relieved. When it drops, panic sets in. That's not peace of mind; that's exhausting.
• Emergencies and Whammies are different things. True emergencies are unpredictable. Whammies are irregular expenses your clients know will happen: home repairs, health costs, car maintenance. They shouldn't be funded the same way.
• SpendFuture™ accounts are savings meant to be spent. These aren't funds to protect. They're funds to prepare so that when life happens, your client is ready without guilt or scrambling.
• The words matter. "My Health" or "My Home" feels different than "Emergency Fund #3." The language your clients use shapes how they feel when they use the money.
• Progress over perfection matters here. If your client pulls from a SpendFuture™ account before it's fully funded, help them see they didn't drain their emergency fund. They were more prepared than they would have been without the system.
• Keep the rhythm going. After tapping into savings, clients want to stop everything and rebuild their emergency fund. That's what creates the cycle. Keep funding the SpendFuture™ accounts or they'll end up back where they started.
• Emergency funds need clear rules, not vague intentions. Your clients should sit down and define exactly what qualifies