If you’ve landed here, chances are money feels like a constant source of stress. Your paycheck disappears into crushing debt, and the idea of planning for the future feels impossible. That uneasy feeling in your stomach? I know it well—because I’ve been there too.

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Enter tying the knot and making the decision to start a family and be there for my family. A couple of years later my husband relocated to another country and things got tough because there was a change of government, and he found himself unemployed. Our son was 4 months old at the time and I was a stay-at-home Mom. I was shocked when I realized that though I had a roof over my head, I couldn’t keep food on the table and keep the lights on. I needed to get a job – FAST!  Reason: I WAS BROKE!

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Flashback to my 20s and early 30s: single, climbing the corporate ladder, and making “six-figures” as they say. My career was soaring, but my finances, that was a different story. I thought that I was living the dream until I woke up - FAST. That was the day that I decided that I would take full responsibility for my financial future, and I never looked back.  

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It took ten long months before I landed a temporary job for four months. The longest 10 months of my life. I still remember my first day at that job. I was so grateful that I could finally earn some money to provide for myself and my son. No more. Expensive purses, designer suits and shoes of every color. Vacations. It is not about how much you earn, it’s how much you keep that matters.  With a career that meant frequent international travel, fine dining and duty-free shopping never became a way of life. I took lessons from Scrooge McDuck, until I created an emergency fund and vowed never to be in that uncertain financial space ever again. It was tough, but I did it and you can too!

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Everything I knew about managing money could be summed up in one simple phrase – savings account, checking account, compound interest and whole life insurance. I understood compound interest because my parents had taken a mortgage to build our home and throughout my high school and college years, I would ask myself when we would ever finish paying for the house as every month my mom gave me money to take to the mortgage company. 

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What I later realized was that we were paying compound interest. Secret# 1: We should earn compound interest. From these early experiences, I learned to never have a mortgage for 30 years and I was determined to increase my knowledge about earning and investing money. I simply continued my journey towards financial independence.

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Fast forward to December 2008 and coming to live in the United States. Very soon I realized that living like Scrooge was not sustainable and decided to focus on the outcomes that were most important to my family. I learned to prioritize. Even embarking on a second career in my 40s in another country was as easy as 1-2-3 because of my Emergency Fund. It is possible to leverage your current income by changing your relationship with money to achieve your desired outcomes. It is possible to achieve financial independence. Setting priorities and paying yourself first are indispensable elements in achieving your goals. 

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Whatever goal you set for yourself is possible and as a licensed financial educator, I am here to help you make that happen.