9: From Hating Math to Budget Nerd
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Money Clarity Podcast. Today I'm doing something a little different and I'm gonna share with you basically my origin story, if you will, or how I went from hating math in middle school to. Being the budget nerd that I am today.
Like I mentioned in the intro, I hated math in school. I remember crying over math in middle school because I just didn't understand it; it didn't make any sense to me. So, when I went to college, I was actually a graphic design major. I have a degree in graphic design, and I took one math class my first semester of freshman year and said, "I am never touching math again."
So, how did I go from that to being a budget nerd? Let me take you through a little story. I graduated with my degree in graphic design in 2008. If anybody remembers what was happening in 2008, it was not exactly a great time to be entering the job market. Plus, I graduated and realized, "Yeah, I don’t know that I really want to be a graphic designer," but I didn’t have any idea what else I wanted to do. Honestly, I spent six or eight years working a lot of odd jobs. I traveled for two years—I was out of the country for almost exactly two years, mostly through Australia and New Zealand—which I’m happy to talk about anytime, but that could be a whole other podcast.
In 2015, I was working for a real estate photography company and a friend asked me to help her with her budget. To this day, I still don’t know why she asked me, but she did. So, we sat down on a Friday night and looked at her finances. We looked at her bank account and her transactions, going over things line by line. I showed her a couple of things, like, "Hey, if you take this extra money that you’re making from your second job and put it toward your car loan, you could have that paid off before you go to grad school in a year." That just blew her mind. She made a comment toward the end of the night and said, "I am so sorry for making you work on a Friday night," to which my immediate response was, "Are you kidding? I love this stuff!"
That was my lightbulb moment. Like I said, I had been working a bunch of odd jobs for eight years and didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but I had always heard the phrase, "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life." I realized I needed to investigate this. I started connecting with financial advisors on LinkedIn. This was 2015, and even then, the idea of a "money coach" wasn't familiar to most people. When you thought about finances, you thought about financial advisors.
I reached out to one advisor I had met briefly before and asked, "Can we meet for coffee? I want to ask you about this industry." I sent cold messages to several others too. I met with that first advisor and everything he said made me think, "Yes! Okay, tell me more. This sounds great." Long story short, from the time I met with my friend in early November 2015 to the time I signed on to start studying for my licenses with my first firm was less than two months. Everything just clicked. By Christmas of that year, I was studying. It took about six months to get licensed, and on July 5, 2016, I officially started at my first firm as a licensed financial advisor.
I was doing investment planning and retirement planning, but I kept coming back to the budgeting piece. People kept coming to me for help because they knew I enjoyed it. Around this time in early 2017, I met my now-husband. He was also a financial planner at a different firm. We met at a local young professionals networking group and totally hit it off. We met on a Wednesday morning, were having coffee by Thursday, and went on our first date on Saturday. We have basically been together ever since. Our friends used to joke that we were perfect for each other because we would "nerd out" over spreadsheets.
Eventually, I moved over to the firm he was at in August 2017. A couple of months later, we realized we were working toward separate goals and decided to completely merge our businesses. That was the beginning of 2018. We still have that business together—Providers and Families Wealth Management. However, I still wanted to do more with budgeting. I wanted to do coaching on an emotional level that our firm’s compliance rules didn’t really allow for. So, I started a separate business in 2020. I became a Certified Money Coach, which taught me how to look at the relationship with money—how your upbringing and beliefs affect your habits today.
While the coaching addressed the "why," it didn't touch on the practical "how." I had been introduced to YNAB (You Need A Budget) in 2017. I’ll admit, it was hard at first! There was a learning curve, but I watched all the videos and took the classes. It was a total game-changer. I eventually became a YNAB certified coach. I decided to take the best of both worlds: the emotional pieces of money coaching combined with the practical application of YNAB. That is what really made the difference for my clients.
I never thought I would be in financial services, much less loving it. But once I started, I knew this was what I’d be doing until I retire. It is incredibly powerful to help people take control of their money. I hope it inspires you. You don’t have to be great with numbers to take control of your finances. Math is different than money. I still don't want to solve equations for x, y, and z; I have zero interest in that. But taking your income, comparing it to your expenses, and seeing how you can impact your life and the world? That’s what lights me up.
If you'd like a little bit more support, I would love to have you inside of my new membership, the Empowered Money Circle. This is a supportive space to heal your relationship with money, get practical help using YNAB, and finally feel confident managing your finances. You can learn more at theexuberantelephant.com/membership, and that link will also be in the description below.
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