Wealth in the Country: Financial Sovereignty for Women

By Holly Hayes | SheIsMe Wealth Co-Founder 

As featured in SheIsMe Magazine, Issue 3, December 2025.

Published in my column for SheIsMe Wealth, “Wealth in the Country.”

I never expected wealth to look like this.

If you’d asked me in my twenties what a “wealthy life” was supposed to be, I would’ve painted a picture straight out of early 2000s TV: a New York apartment, high heels, taxis that never arrived on time, and the belief that success only counted if it lived in a concrete jungle. 

Yep, I have always desired to be a big city girl. 

And yet here I am, writing this column from regional Victoria, Australia, looking out the window of my home on wheels (yep, my trailer) and not a skyscraper in sight.

It’s funny how life circles back. When I said yes to writing this twice-monthly wealth column for SheIsMe Global. I laughed. “Is this my Carrie Bradshaw moment?”

Except it’s not Sex and the City, there is definitely no sex (solo mum to 19-month-old), and there is definitely no City. It’s Wealth in The Country. 

Because… I’ve always wanted to write. I guess since I was in high school, and I was told in not so many words, I wasn’t good at English. I was never really that good at anything in school. 

I never pursued writing because my self-doubt got in the way of my up there in the clouds dream. 

Hilarious, because in 2024, I released my first book, “Looking Forward, Looking Back,” and to my surprise, hundreds of people resonated with my story.

Not just friends and family, but literal strangers who purchased my book and felt so compelled to tell me how deeply it resonated with them…

But yet, I still don’t consider myself a writer. Until now, when I got asked so effortlessly to write this column twice a month! 

I am pinching myself as I write this. Dreams do really come true, ladies! 

So, I digress….back to my trailer window… and staring at the rolling hills and the trees, and listening to the birds chirp. 

The version of “wealth” I wanted back then? Concrete Jungles and endless sirens at all hours of the night. I don’t want it anymore.

The world has shapeshifted, and so have we.

What used to ‘seem’ glamorous, the grind, the deadlines, the constant pressure to perform, now feels more like confinement dressed up as aspiration.

Today, wealth is no longer about the city you live in, the title on your email signature, or the number of steps it takes to climb to your apartment.

Wealth in 2025 and beyond is sovereignty.

It’s choosing your hours, prioritizing your peace, self-custody over your money, and unsubscribing from the system that was never designed with women in mind.

→Some people are pulling their kids from traditional schools.

→Some are pulling their money from traditional banks.

→Some are pulling their energy away from micro-managing bosses, deadlines, and the idea that a good life must be earned through exhaustion.

And that’s what I’m here to write about, not from a pedestal, not from the mountaintop, but from the messy yet exciting middle. 

Because I’m living this shift in real time, just like you.

2020 was my reset year. Like many of you, I resigned from the old version of success and went looking for fulfillment and actual abundance. 

I realized the old model of wealth didn’t work for me anymore. It wasn’t spacious. It wasn’t nourishing. It definitely wasn’t mine.

I wanted to travel. I wanted to rest. I wanted to work when I felt like it. 

And honestly, I have never felt wealthier than I do right now. 

I don’t hate Mondays anymore. Now I take my son swimming and to the park every Monday morning. After that, if I feel like it, I might check my passive income or follow up on a lead or two.

Time. That is the thing that feels ridiculously wealthy to me now. No rushing. No commute. No pretending to be someone I’m not just to fit into a system that never fit me.

So welcome to this space. This column. This quiet rebellion.

A place where we’re going to explore the new landscape of wealth together:

• Sovereignty

• Decentralization

• Crypto (without the jargon)

• Nervous system wealth

• Generational money patterns

• Living outside the system

• Designing a life that you love 

Through the lived experiences of women, rewriting the script as they go.

Including me.

So pour yourself a wine and let’s celebrate the soft life. Twice a month, we are going to walk through this evolution together, one insight, one story, one sovereign step at a time.

Here’s to sovereign women rewriting wealth their way. 

The future is exciting.

Holly xo