Money, Grief & Healing: A Former Advisor’s New Mission

In this episode, our guest DonJay Rice and I take a deep dive into the complex relationship between money, grief, and healing. Early in DonJay’s career as a wealth manager a series of personal and professional turning points led him to add behavioral coaching skills to his work, way before it was a common practice for wealth managers. In our conversation, he opens up about how an experience with three widowed clients changed everything he thought he knew about money and human connection.

We explore how personal history shapes our financial behaviors, the ongoing impact of childhood experiences, and what it takes to truly feel emotionally safe with money. DonJay shares insights about his own upbringing in poverty, becoming the legal guardian of his special needs brothers, and how discovering his "transferable skills" outside of traditional finance became a catalyst for work filled with purpose and meaning. We also reflect on the journey from emotional numbness to the subtle joy of appreciating nature and why helping others reclaim their voice is part of his life’s work.

Get to Know DonJay Rice

DonJay Rice is a Financial Coach and the founder of Drumbeat of Wealth, where he specializes in guiding clients through the tangled intersections of money, grief, and trauma. With over 25 years of experience in financial services, including 28 years as a wealth manager, DonJay brings a unique blend of financial expertise and deep emotional insight to his coaching practice. His work is grounded in behavioral finance and shaped by his own journey through personal loss, hardship, and healing.

Having grown up in poverty and navigated complex family responsibilities from a young age—including becoming guardian to his special needs brothers—DonJay developed an acute sensitivity to how unresolved grief can shape our financial lives. Today, he draws on that lived experience, as well as formal training in financial psychology, to help others find clarity, purpose, and a renewed relationship with money. Whether it's unspoken money anxieties or long-standing emotional patterns, DonJay helps clients find their rhythm again—one beat at a time.

Episode Highlights

[00:01:50] Meeting DonJay Rice
[00:04:48] The moment three widows changed his career
[00:08:29] Leaving financial advising without a plan
[00:12:10] Realizing he had transferable skills
[00:16:22] Childhood financial enmeshment and trauma
[00:21:22] Why people box up pain and how we eventually unpack it
[00:26:02] The value of sensitivity and unstructured time
[00:32:22] Bringing social justice into financial coaching
[00:38:20] How DonJay works with clients post-therapy
[00:41:53] Exploring “half-truths” and inherited money beliefs
[00:47:50] The role of a coach: not an expert, but a mirror

Keywords

#moneyandtrauma #griefsupport #financialcoaching #healingjourney #financialbehavior #socialjusticework #donjayrice #traumainformed #moneyhealing #coachingwithpurpose #drumbbeatofwealth

Resources

Drumbeat of Wealth
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Nobody Nowhere: The Remarkable Autobiography of an Autistic Girl by Donna Williams

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Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.