The Woman Behind the Guidance
My name is Amanda, and I’m a married mom of two, and I genuinely love our life and our little family! It’s not always easy, and it’s definitely not always pretty or Instagram-ready, but it’s ours, and we love it! A few years ago, though, things were not okay. We were struggling financially, and it was spilling into everything else. We were arguing more, constantly frustrated, and just…tired. Not the kind of tired that comes with having young kids. A heavier kind. From the outside, we looked fine, but on the inside, things were starting to fall apart.
The first time I really sat down and looked at our finances, I was honestly shocked. We weren’t reckless, after all! We weren’t making big, flashy purchases. We were just doing life. Paying bills, going out occasionally, trying to keep up. But when I actually added everything up, we were over $186,000 in debt, not including our house. I have a Master’s in Finance, and I still didn’t see it coming. That was the moment everything shifted for me, and I realized this wasn’t about math. It wasn’t about knowing what to do.
Personal finance is completely different from corporate finance, in that you can understand numbers and still feel completely out of control with your own money. Because this is about behavior. It’s about habits, patterns, and the way you think about money every single day. And if you’ve ever told yourself you’re not good with money or that you’re just not a numbers person, that’s not actually the problem. I used to think the same thing, and it kept me stuck longer than I want to admit!
When I look back now, I realize that we weren’t making one huge mistake; it was the smaller things. Habits that didn’t seem like a big deal in the moment. Decisions that felt perfectly normal, in fact! But they added up quickly, and before we knew it, we were in a situation that felt overwhelming and honestly pretty embarrassing. We also live in a world where borrowing money is completely normal. Credit cards, car loans, student loans, you name it! It’s all been positioned as just part of life. But no one really teaches you how to manage it in a way that actually works for your life. So people try budgets, spreadsheets (no, you don't need another spreadsheet), and systems, and when those don’t stick, they assume they’re the problem...but they’re not.
Now, I help women understand what’s actually going on with their money by helping them see their patterns, change their habits, and build something that actually fits how they live. Because once you understand why things are happening, everything starts to feel a lot less overwhelming and a lot more doable!
