About Me
Hi, my name is Jessica! After 15 years of working in the investment and corporate finance world, I’m fulfilling my passion to teach families how to build confidence and clarity around their money to help them live their dream life.
Money impacts all of our lives, and I first observed this impact in middle school. My mother was sitting at the dining room table with a pile of papers and looking stressed. I learned it was tax season and she didn’t have the money to pay what we owed, and we had racked up significant credit card debt. My parents had advanced degrees, their own successful business, and yet were still struggling with money.
As a result, for me as an adult money was a source of stress and I thought the best thing I can do for myself is to make good money. More money = security. I sought out a career in financial services, first working on the investment research side of things and eventually transitioning into the world of private equity. At first things were going well, I was able to avoid high interest consumer debt and even make a plan to pay off student loans, but things changed when I got married and started a family.
Suddenly, our financial picture was a lot more messy. There were so many additional expenses coming in to manage with kids and a mortgage- and it felt like a constant roller coaster where one month we’d be fine and the next our water heater broke or the car needed repairs so we’d have to drain our savings or put it on a credit card to get by. I felt like such a failure because this is exactly where I did not want to be in life- stressed out where my money was controlling me instead of the other way around. I was also traveling all the time and my husband was in a high stress work environment, and it was taking a toll on our relationship and ability to be present with our kids.
That’s when we started to get really intentional with a vision of our dream life. Ultimately we wanted flexibility to spend more time together and with our two boys creating memories and being present for each other. To get there, we knew getting our money in order was going to be a big part of reaching those goals. Through education, trial and error we were able to come up with a budgeting method that worked for us and still allowed us to enjoy life, while saving and investing toward our financial goals.
After years of “working the plan,” today we have a solid emergency fund, enough passive income to cover most of our basic living expenses and the freedom to take lower stress jobs that are meaningful to us.
The biggest benefit is the peace that we feel not having money as a stressor in our lives, and I want everyone to have that feeling! My goal as a financial coach is to help you discover your reason for getting your financial house in order, how to align your daily decisions to reflect that, and coming up with an action plan to help you reach those goals while still enjoying life in the present.