In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Joi Jackson-Morgan. When Joi was eleven years old, she earned her first paycheck as a newspaper delivery person. She distinctly remembers it was for $40.72. Joi wanted to use the money to buy a new pair of shoes. Her mom had different plans. Joi’s mother took her to the local bank and helped Joi open an account and use the money to buy a savings bond. By her mom’s math that bond would be worth double by the time Joi was 18. She was right. That money e...
Oct 12, 2023•32 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Leslie Feinzaig. Leslie grew up in Costa Rica. She describes her family as immigrants to that country who endured hard lives. She came to the US as a Visa-dependent business school student and soon realized that staying here for her career while still tethered to a Visa required her to take jobs with large companies who could sponsor her. This meant continually working for her resume. But Leslie is an entrepreneur at heart, and this was frustrating. U...
Oct 05, 2023•35 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is AdaPia d’Errico. All long-term investors lose money at some point, usually due to market fluctuations. Many years ago, AdaPia, who worked in finance, lost her entire life savings when she was defrauded by a private placement she invested in. As she tells us, even though she was the victim, she positioned herself as the perpetrator in her mind at the time. AdaPia blamed herself because, with her background, she thought she should have known better. The...
Sep 28, 2023•38 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Christina Bui. As Christina tells us, losing everything was good for her. The fall of Saigon happened in 1975. Leaving everything they had behind, Christina’s mom paid a stranger with gold to get a flight out of Vietnam. The plane took off on what happened to be the day before the Saigon airport was bombed. This harrowing escape was a pivotal moment that created more opportunities for Christina and her mother than they ever would have imagined. This i...
Sep 21, 2023•30 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Ken Pecus. Ken is one of those resilient people who hit financial bottom and catapulted back up again. Long story short, he got caught up in legal battle over a franchise agreement. He knew he was in the right and kept the fight going for four long years. In the end, he lost half the lawsuit, and faced financial tragedy when the judge awarded the other side attorney fees just as Ken’s own business was being hurt by the Financial Crisis. This meant Ken...
Sep 14, 2023•36 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Fran Maier. From her first start-up, Match.com, to her latest and fifth start-up, BabyQuip, Fran is a passionate entrepreneur whose mantra is, “It’ll all work out”. Fran’s motto was put to the test during the pandemic. On March 6, 2020 she presented BabyQuip, a baby gear rental business dependent on people’s travel, to the sharks on Shark Tank. Days later, the pandemic became a reality and the economy closed. Don’t worry. It all works out. Being a sav...
Sep 07, 2023•33 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Hilary Blair. Hilary helps businesspeople get comfortable in the uncomfortable. She believes our society has shut down a lot of sharing within conversations and, as a result, we miss out on leadership opportunities by confusing confidence and comfort. Hilary observes that you can be confident if you accept the discomfort that might be involved. Tell your story, share your vulnerability and where you’ve made mistakes. This transparency, especially in m...
Aug 31, 2023•30 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Lauren Keen Aumond. Lauren landed a finance job with a small company when she graduated college. A year into the role, she decided she wanted to learn more and earn more. Lauren thought she had to leave the company to do so, but instead an internal opportunity opened up for a sales position. Sure enough, she applied. When the head of the company learned this news, he said with surprise, “Spreadsheet Lauren is going to do sales?” Yes, she did. Lauren b...
Aug 24, 2023•33 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Diania Merriam. In her 20s, Diania felt like she was wasting her privilege. She was an educated white woman in a first world country with a good job, yet Diania was living paycheck to paycheck and running up a mound of debt. She decided something had to change. Diania made a mindset shift and became a supersaver. She got creative and resourceful about meeting her needs and developed a brand-new relationship with money. Diania Merriam is the founder of...
Aug 17, 2023•31 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Lisa Gautier. Lisa cares deeply about the hair on your head. That might sound weird but let me tell you why. 25 years ago, she and her husband started an environmental public charity called Matter of Trust. Matter of Trust is famous for running a program where they collect hair clippings from thousands of salons. They then form the hair clippings into mats that soak up oil spills because, as you’ve likely experienced, hair is excellent at collecting o...
Aug 10, 2023•31 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dr. Jordan Grumet. Jordan’s father was a doctor who sadly collapsed and died of a brain aneurysm while working at the hospital. Jordan was young at the time, and he was determined to grow up be just like his dad. Jordan figured that if he became a doctor he could step into his dad’s shoes and do the things that his dad never got the chance to do. So, Jordan became a doctor and, after years of burnout, realized that the thing he thought was his main pu...
Aug 03, 2023•33 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Bree Schumacher. Bree is a lifelong entrepreneur who took a $500 loan and turned it into a seven-figure business with over 100 employees, which she ran for 19 years. Bree sold the business in 2020. While she could easily have sold it to a competitor and immediately walked away, Bree went with her heart. She knew selling the precious business to one of her longstanding employees was the right move for the business and to secure her legacy. Bree creativ...
Jul 27, 2023•36 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dr. Deborah Ekstrom. Early on her career, Deborah didn't have a lot of extra time. There were tremendous demands on her for the things she needed to learn for medicine. She tells us that like most professional women, when she got married, she supported her spouse through his journey and had children who required her attention and nurturing. It was challenging, and learning about money wasn’t a priority until it became one. At that time, Deborah found ...
Jul 20, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Tracy Coenen. When Tracy went to college she decided to major in criminology and law studies, because she wanted to become a prison warden. However, sophomore year she took an elective called Financial Crime Investigations and she loved it. The course changed the trajectory of Tracy’s focus and she’s now a forensic accountant. In that role, her goal is to help a thousand women a year have better financial outcomes from their divorces. Today, Tracy run...
Jul 13, 2023•31 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Jeanette Bronée. In her twenties, Jeanette was a successful executive in the fashion industry in Denmark with fifty people reporting up to her. She felt like she could do it all. Then, at the age of twenty-six, Jeanette’s ambition caused her to leave all of that and move to New York. She had a rude awakening. Jeanette’s first job in the U.S. was as an assistant and it paid almost nothing. She felt like she was falling apart and had to start over. This...
Jul 06, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Robert Marks. Robert always wanted to build his own house. He even remembers being in middle school and doodling houses while his teachers droned on and on. About ten years ago, Robert and his wife found a beautiful piece of land that would be perfect for their dream home. They spent two years planning the construction, working closely with an architect, and then another couple of years building it. When the house was finished, it was incredible. Ever...
Jun 29, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Meridith Grundei. Meridith knew from a young age that she was born to be a performer, and that meant hearing constant reminders about how she’d starve as an adult. A less resilient person might have been deterred by these warnings, but not Meridith. She’s a self-identified rebel and she was determined to prove that she can make it. This wasn’t easy. She was working in an industry where peers would often work for free to get credits. Free wasn’t part o...
Jun 22, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales our guest is Rachel Donnelly. When she was a young adult, Rachel’s mom was diagnosed with cancer and passed away a couple of weeks later. Rachel’s dad had previously died, so along with dealing with the shock and emotions, Rachel was probating her mom's estate. She was also stepping into her mother’s shoes by taking care of her uncle, who was in the later stages of Parkinson's disease. This meant even more logistics of getting the power of attorney, healthcare prox...
Jun 15, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Sparky Abraham. Sparky Abraham has been helping people with debt problems for nearly a decade. This means he has frequent money conversations, sometimes in unconventional situations. For example, Sparky helps host debtors’ assemblies, where strangers come together in relatively small groups because they have something in common that they usually haven’t talked about with anyone else - being in debt. He believes the debtor assembly structure allows the...
Jun 08, 2023•32 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Kadar Lewis, EdD. Kadar tells us he was a low-income student of color who was, fortunately, given scholarships to attend private schools when he was growing up. Often, he was the only black kid in his classes. This meant he was the low-income kid surrounded by money. It was everywhere, yet his family didn’t have much. Kadar considers that dissonance as the beginning of the money trauma he experienced throughout his life. One component of that trauma w...
Jun 01, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales our guest is Dr. Akhtar Badshah. Born, raised, and educated in India, Akhtar was accepted to MIT for graduate school. As he explains, that was the easy part. To attend school in the U.S. he also had to win the visa lottery and receive a scholarship to make his dream come true. Fortunately, the stars aligned for Akhtar. From then on, his life was shaped by people asking him to do something different from what he had been doing all along the way. As a curious and min...
May 25, 2023•30 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Julie Castro Abrams. Julie is a hard charging activist who very early on knew what she did not want to be– and that was a trophy wife. This is because when she was young, Julie saw her mother’s friends navigating divorces and ending up destitute as a result. Julie wanted to have a family and a career, and she also wanted to protect herself from the financial risk that her mom’s friends experienced. Julie successfully crafted the life she wanted, inclu...
May 18, 2023•35 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Bobbi Rebell, CFP®. Bobbi is a former business news anchor and globally syndicated personal finance columnist. Bobbi is also an author and her most recent book is titled, Launching Financial Grownups. Live Your Richest Life by Helping Your (Almost) Adults Become Everyday Money Smart. This topic is very dear to her heart because Bobbi has two twenty-something children and struggled with getting them started on their financial grownup journey. For her, ...
May 11, 2023•33 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Tom Brickman. Tom’s forty and he hit F.I.R.E within the past year, meaning he’s achieved financial independence and can retire early. This was not by accident. Tom was a hustler from the very beginning, helping neighbors with garage sales, taking out trash, mowing lawns, doing whatever he could do to earn a buck. He ultimately put his attention toward real estate, scooping up homes that no one else wanted and turning them into desirable rental propert...
May 04, 2023•34 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Kristin Keffeler. Kristin’s family’s money story launched when she was in her twenties. Her parents and oldest brother started a company, grew it, took it public and sold it, all within five years. In other words, during the period between starting and graduating from college, her family experienced a series of significant wealth events. As a result, Kristin’s money narrative got more complex. She was trying to sort out many things like how did she wa...
Apr 27, 2023•35 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Izzy Gesell. Izzy is a former special education teacher, restaurant owner and stand-up comedian. He knows some great money jokes. Here are a few he shared with us: Why did the robber take a bath before he stole from the bank? He wanted to make a clean getaway. Why can’t you borrow money from a leprechaun? Because they’re always a little short. Why is money called dough? Because we all knead it. Years ago, someone Izzy knew approached him about buying ...
Apr 20, 2023•30 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Heather Rader. Heather almost fell out of her chair one night when she was out with a friend and she found out what he was making. The friend, who was also a coworker on their sales team, was telling Heather about how he and his wife were about to buy a new house. This caused Heather to ask her colleague about his compensation. She learned he was earning almost double of what she was. This was a big shock because Heather was consistently the top sales...
Apr 13, 2023•29 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Taylor Adams. Taylor is a 5th generation member of an entrepreneurial, enterprising family. The first chapter of his life was about reconciling his own personal ambition within the context of business and his family. Taylor talks to us about the professional anxiety that he felt at that time. He thought to be loved and respected, he had to be as successful, or more successful, than his father even though that mandate was never communicated to him. Thi...
Apr 06, 2023•30 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Dr. Michele Mikeska Jaffe. Michele comes from a family of hard workers. Hard work was a sacrifice that you did for others, money was the fruit of that work and displaying wealth was taboo. These messages stuck with Michele through her early adulthood. When she was in her late twenties Michele discovered that she could actually enjoy the money she was making. This ah-hah resulted from her love of travel. She realized at that time that her income afford...
Mar 30, 2023•35 min
In this episode of Money Tales, our guest is Cindy Arledge. When Cindy’s parents died, they left behind a complicated estate. Cindy says there was 17 trusts that co-owned four pieces of commercial real estate and the beneficiaries spanned multiple family members. Cindy was determined to realize her parents’ legacy and see her daughters receive the property that her parents wanted them to have. Other family members felt differently, so Cindy ended up buying out all of her nieces and nephews to se...
Mar 23, 2023•33 min
