From the Green Velvet Couch |A Conversation with Teresa Bailey
What if the reason you keep putting off your financial planning has nothing to do with math? What if the real block is something much deeper, rooted in shame, history, and a nervous system that goes quiet every time the topic of money comes up? There is an actual connection between emotional and financial health.
On her podcast, From the Green Velvet Couch, Shelly sat down with Teresa Bailey, President of Waddell and Associates in Nashville and a passionate advocate for women entering the financial planning field. With more than 17 years in wealth management, features on CNBC and NBC, and a deep interest in the evolution of financial services for women, entrepreneurs, and creatives, Teresa brings something rare to the conversation. She sees money as a human story, not just a balance sheet.
Here are the moments worth holding onto.
The Moment Psychology and Wealth Management Collided
When Shelly asked Teresa when she first connected psychology to wealth management, the answer was almost funny. Around day three of her career. Teresa noticed that clients would receive very sound advice and then simply not act on it. That gap between insight and action fascinated her, and it has shaped her work ever since.
Running simulations and building plans, she explained, is a surprisingly small part of what financial advising actually requires. The larger part is understanding why people do what they do with money, and why the smartest plans in the world sometimes sit untouched on a desk for years. Teresa’s curiosity about that gap is what makes her different from the average advisor.
The Four Pillars Show Up Again
Shelly has talked about four pillars of wellness throughout the podcast, which is her shorthand for the idea that true health requires emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial wellbeing. Teresa’s perspective fits perfectly inside that framework. She has watched clients make better financial decisions as their sleep improves, their nutrition stabilizes, or their emotional support systems strengthen. She has also watched the opposite, clients who unravel financially during divorces, grief, or caregiving crises, not because they became less intelligent, but because they could not access their own clarity while in survival mode.
Those transitional moments in life are almost impossible to navigate well without a strong emotional foundation or a trusted guide. Teresa pointed out that her industry offers very little psychology training, even though so much of wealth management involves walking people through the hardest moments of their lives. This is exactly why Shelly built her wellness specialist practice around the full spectrum of a client’s life, including the emotional, physical, financial, and spiritual pieces that rarely get addressed together.
Why We Freeze When the Topic Is Money
Teresa shared an observation that stopped Shelly in her tracks. She has watched countless female entrepreneurs speak with total confidence about their business finances, then visibly shift into a trauma response the moment the conversation turns to personal investing, estate planning, or the stock market. Shoulders tighten. Faces go blank. The same woman who runs a multimillion dollar company suddenly says, “Oh, I don’t know anything about money.”
How can that possibly be true? It cannot be, and yet it is. Teresa believes the answer lies in history, not capability.
Fifty Years of Full Financial Rights
One of the most eye-opening parts of the conversation was Teresa’s walk through the history of women and money in the United States. She is currently deep in research on this topic, and what she has uncovered is rarely discussed in school or in casual conversation.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Fair Credit Act, which gave women the full legal right to hold a credit card in their own name. Fifty years. Before that, women’s access to credit and assets depended on male family members. Even further back, under something called coverture law, a woman became part of her husband’s legal entity upon marriage, meaning she could not directly own property or make independent financial decisions.
The rules varied by region. In parts of the North, a widow could be left with nothing because assets passed directly to male children under the assumption that those sons would take care of their mothers. In parts of the South, women were sometimes allowed to keep assets in trust, though a husband still signed the legal documents. None of it was foolproof, and almost all of it is missing from the way we tell the story of American financial history.
Teresa’s point is not to dwell in the past. It is to help women understand why financial confidence does not come naturally. We are only a few generations into having the right to build it at all. The shame so many women carry around money is not a personal failing. It is inherited, and it can be released.
The Weight of Shame and the Power of Starting Over
Shelly shared her own experience of being a single mother for twelve years before her current marriage. She described the intense emotions that came with navigating finances during that season, and the shame and embarrassment that sometimes pushed her to disengage rather than seek help. She also named a common misconception. Many women believe you have to already have money to get help with money, which is not true at all.
Teresa agreed. The shame many women carry is a deep well, and it can keep them from the very resources that would change their lives. Her solution is both simple and radical. She is starting small pocket events where women can talk about money the same way they talk about recipes, parenting, and what they saw on TikTok. Women are natural strategic thinkers, and when they bring that strategic lens to their finances the way they bring it to organizing a closet or running a business, the results are extraordinary.
This kind of confidence building, across every area of a woman’s life, is exactly what Shelly helps her clients develop through her performance mentoring work with women leaders and entrepreneurs.
A Story About the Hair Salon and the Golf Course
One of the most memorable moments in the episode came when Teresa shared a story about tax deductions. She noticed that many of her CPA colleagues treat golf course outings as legitimate business networking, which they are. She then began asking why her own networking environment, her favorite hair salon, was not treated the same way.
The salon is full of women business owners and executives talking shop, building relationships, and doing the same kind of trust-building work that happens at any golf club. Yet when Teresa raised the question with her CPA friends, they looked at her like she was speaking a different language. She had to slow walk them through it, comparing the activities point by point, until they finally said, “Okay, I had not thought about it that way.”
That story captures something important. Women are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the same recognition that male-dominated spaces have enjoyed for generations. Sometimes it takes a patient, well-informed guide to help others see what has been invisible to them.
Money Is a Health Practice
Toward the end of the episode, Shelly asked Teresa for her top recommendations on how to build financial and emotional health together. Teresa’s first piece of advice was to treat money the same way you treat your physical health. Schedule a recurring time to sit with it. Teresa works on her finances every other Sunday. She checks her transactions, reviews her spending, and keeps a clear picture of where her money is going each month.
Her second recommendation was a mindset shift. Rather than dreading the word “retirement,” she asks herself what she wants her future life to look like and then works backward from there. Saving becomes an act of hope rather than a chore. Finally, she urged listeners to make sure their financial plan includes a category for emotional wellness, both now and in the future. She also swapped out the word “budget” for “spending plan,” which Shelly immediately loved. Who would not want a plan to spend their money?
The bigger principle beneath all of this is the same one Shelly returns to again and again. Healthy people are not healthy by accident. They are built through small, intentional practices that stack up across every area of life. This whole-person approach is at the heart of Shelly’s wellness consulting work with organizations and leadership teams, where money conversations belong right next to mental health conversations.
🎧 Join the Conversation
If this post sparked something in you, the full episode is waiting with even more warmth and thoughtful insight.
✨ Listen to the full conversation on the From the Green Velvet Couch podcast. Visit the Podcast page to discover more episodes focused on resilience, leadership wellbeing, and holistic wellness.
Let this be your invitation to slow down, breathe deeply, and step into a well-grounded life full of growth and intention.
