What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a question we’ve all been asked. Figuring out the answer is one of the most important things you’ll do. For some people, it comes easily. For others, the answer may change multiple times. It did for me. I changed majors three times during my freshman year of college, and I remember when and where I was when I decided to become a financial planner. It was my final decision, and one I’ve been fortunate to pursue my entire professional career.
Being a financial planner is one of the most humbling and rewarding experiences I could ever imagine. Every day, I am trusted with some of the most vulnerable, intimate, and important details of people’s lives. And I’m relied upon to use that information to guide, protect, and grow their savings.
I had an interest in personal finances for a long time — well before deciding to become a financial planner. I didn’t know exactly what a financial planner did. I just knew there was a lot of information that could help me maximize my own finances, and I wanted to do that the best I could.
As I started figuring some things out, I wanted to share this information with my close friends and family in case it could help them out, too. I didn’t herald myself as a financial expert. It was mostly things like opening a high-yield savings account, taking advantage of credit card rewards, and finding relatively easy ways to improve credit scores. But in conversations, I recognized that a lot of people didn’t know or think about these things.
I had seen people in my life make costly financial mistakes. It made it harder for them to “dig out” of debt, harder for them to save, and harder for them to achieve the goals they had for themselves. Without pinpointing it as a career, I knew that I wanted to help the people I cared about avoid making some of those mistakes.
The spring semester of my freshman year at the University of Georgia, I was sitting in a study room with some friends at the student center. We got on the subject of finances, and I started telling them about Roth IRAs. During that conversation, I realized two important things — both of which concerned me:
There was a lot of information I did not know about personal finance and the various nuances. At that moment, I was trying to give my friends solid advice and education, but I felt like I couldn’t be as effective as I wanted to be because my knowledge was still limited.
This conversation was around the same time that course registration opened for the next semester. I immediately started looking for courses on personal finance. As I was searching, I found that UGA offered a financial planning degree. I went to my academic advisor’s office and changed my major — for the third and final time.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t have some grand vision of making a lot of money or contributing to a large swath of society as a financial planner. I had a personal passion and interest in finances. That’s how it started. And as I learned more about financial planning, I was drawn to the idea of using my knowledge to help my family and friends with their financial decisions.
There’s the old cliché of choosing your career because you “want to help people.” Almost everyone can say that about their chosen profession in one way or another (which isn’t a bad thing). I wanted to help people, too. And as I thought about the different ways I could help the people I cared most about, I saw money as something that impacts almost every aspect of our lives.
After learning more about the different ways to think about and manage money, I found that there are so many strategies for doing things optimally and efficiently. The right way of doing those things was different based on a person’s specific situation, values, and goals. I started to see money as this often complicated but always important thing that involved a lot of different variables and decisions with big ripple effects. I was interested in personal finances. But I was also interested in analyzing situations and solving complex problems in the most efficient way possible.
That crossroads led me to financial planning. I saw this profession as a way to help people use money as the tool that it is to achieve their goals. Money is something everyone deals with and makes decisions about. Although my decision to pursue financial planning ultimately started because of my desire to help the people closest to me, it now extends beyond my family and friends and into the lives of my clients and the community I call home.
Once I changed my major to focus on financial planning, I dove in. UGA offers a degree program that allows students to pursue an undergraduate and master’s degree on an accelerated track — aptly named the Double Dawgs program. I enrolled in the program to pursue a bachelor’s degree in consumer economics and master’s degree in financial planning. I worked hard and was able to finish both degrees in three years.
I took my first financial planning course during the summer following my freshman year. That next semester, I went to my first financial planning conference — the National Association of Personal Financial Advisor’s (NAPFA) Fall Conference in Charlotte. At that point, I still knew little about financial planning as a profession. The NAPFA conference was an eye-opening and life changing experience that, in many ways, directed my path as a financial planner.
It was at the NAPFA conference that I learned about fee-only financial planning and how fee-only planners are different from other types of financial advisors. That experience really opened my eyes to what it meant to be a truly comprehensive financial planner. Being a part of that conference further solidified my decision to become a financial planner and, more specifically, cemented my passion for fee-only financial planning. I knew it was the best way, the right way, and — for me — the only way to provide financial planning advice.
When I got back from NAPFA, I started searching for fee-only financial planning internships. Soon after, I got my first internship at a local firm. It was a small firm, with less than a handful of full-time employees at the time. Being part of a small team allowed me to quickly gain exposure and hands-on experience. Even as an intern, I had a lot of important responsibilities and learned valuable skills.
As my internship went on and I became more involved with client relationships, I fell more in love with the financial planning profession. I ended up continuing my internship for multiple years and transitioned to a full-time position at the same firm immediately after graduating with my master’s degree in 2016. Over the next seven years, the firm grew exponentially, and I had the opportunity to lead a team of planners serving more than 200 client households.
What started as a desire to help people with their personal finances eventually deepened into helping shape the future of the financial planning profession.
Financial services gets a pretty bad wrap. And, for a lot of reasons, rightfully so. Many people’s experiences with a “financial advisor” don’t involve unbiased advice or holistic planning. It’s more like working with a salesperson who is pushing products to earn a commission check.
Those experiences have created a level of skepticism and mistrust. But, there still exists a real need for professional, fiduciary financial advice. This deepens an already very real problem: People need help navigating their financial well-being, but they don’t trust the professional “advisors” who, for far too long, have prioritized filling their own wallets instead of doing what’s best for their clients.
As I became more aware of these issues, I knew that I would always choose to work as a fee-only financial planner and do my best to advance the fee-only financial planning profession. I mentioned earlier that my first financial planning conference was at NAPFA’s fall conference in 2014. Once I started my career as a full-time financial planner, I continued to become more involved with NAPFA, drawn to their steadfast advocacy for fee-only financial planning.
I joined a NAPFA committee in 2016, essentially right after I graduated college and started working as a full-time planner. That committee was focused on building a community of young, fee-only financial planners and helping them navigate the first several years of their careers. I was part of that committee for five years, and I met a lot of incredible people. I went on to serve NAPFA in other ways, including their conference committees (full circle!), and in 2022, I was elected to serve on NAPFA’s national board of directors.
NAPFA and other organizations have allowed me to meet so many amazing financial planners. These experiences and relationships have deepened my passion for fee-only financial planning and helped me grow both as a planner and as a person.
In May 2023, I co-founded my own financial planning firm, Fully Financial. Opening my own fee-only financial planning firm was a dream I’d had for a long time, even when I was in college. I wasn’t always sure that it was a dream I was going to pursue, and the exact vision of that dream has taken many different forms throughout my career.
I remember during my first NAPFA Conference in 2016, I met Alan Moore (co-founder of XYPN and fellow UGA alum). I was so inspired and impressed by what he was doing at XYPN, which was helping people launch their own fee-only financial planning firms. Around that same time, I found an article on Kitces.com by Sophia Bera detailing how she set up her own financial planning firm for less than $10,000. While I certainly wasn’t ready to start my own firm then, these people and resources showed me that it was attainable.
When I finally decided to open my firm in 2023, it just felt like the right time. I didn’t want to have the regret of wondering “what if.” So, I took the leap.
I co-founded Fully Financial with my husband, Cody. We had both moved to Athens, Georgia, to go to UGA and decided we never wanted to leave. This was our home for the long haul. I believe that the relationship between any professional advisor and their community is a crucial one. As Cody and I looked around our community in Athens and within our own relationships, we recognized there was a real lack of options and access to fiduciary fee-only planning. Our previous firm had a high asset minimum requirement, which had continued to increase exponentially as their business scaled and expanded beyond Athens.
It was really important to me to remove some of the traditional barriers to entry, like high minimum requirements. I wanted to be able to help people in my community regardless of their portfolio size, because I knew many of them could benefit from fee-only planning but just didn’t have access to it.
Creating Fully Financial with no asset or income requirements was so exciting, because it provided a way for me to offer fee-only planning and continue to build my career while also providing greater accessibility to fiduciary advice, improving financial literacy and prosperity in my community, and helping more of the people I know and care about secure their financial future.
Almost all of the business advice for new financial planning firm owners is to choose a niche. I’ve lost count of how many times Cody and I heard “the riches are in the niches,” or some other variation. But we were very intentional and decisive when launching Fully Financial – we would not have a niche. I mean, one of the main reasons we were starting our own firm in the first place was so we could help more people, not less.
We knew that a niche might help us focus narrowly on our messaging and on our marketing. But it was also going to narrow our vision.
I want to be able to help more people in my community. That includes both my geographic neighbors in Athens and other communities I’m a part of, like the LGBTQ+ and Jewish communities. For me, it didn’t feel right to try and segment our firm in a way that would pigeonhole us into turning away a large number of people who I wanted to work with.
Building Fully Financial in the way that we have allows us to serve more people from all walks of life with their own unique issues, values, and goals.
Working as a financial planner and now owning my own financial planning firm has been everything I dreamed of — and more.
When I decided to become a financial planner, I knew that I wanted to help people maximize their financial well-being and outcomes. I understood and appreciated the fact that that would involve helping people make real life decisions — both big and small. But something I did not initially expect was the emotional and relational component that comes with being a financial planner. I’m not sure anything in an academic setting could have adequately prepared me for the deep relationships and bonds I would build with my clients.
A lot of people think of finances as strictly math, with numbers on a page and formulas on a screen. And, sure, that’s certainly part of my job. But it’s also real people, all with their own real challenges, real aspirations, and real dreams. I was 19 when I started pursuing a career as a financial planner. 19-year-old me didn’t realize how much it would mean to me, personally, to help people — especially people I had never met before — manage their life’s savings.
As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve become more aware of and grateful for the weight of the responsibility that comes with that. Because I’ve also come to realize how my clients see me — how they trust me, how they believe in me, how they rely on me, and how they care about me. It’s difficult to put into words how invested I’ve become in my clients as people, and how — although not something I anticipated when I decided this is what I wanted to be when I grew up — building relationships with them is one of the things I love most about my job.
I want to see them succeed. I want to see them fulfilled. I want to see them accomplish their goals. I want to see them happy.
I get the honor of sitting with people when they realize — some for the very first time — that retirement is attainable; that they can start a family of their own; that they can afford to leave a job that stresses them out; that they can purchase their first home.
Yes, I get to help figure out efficient and optimal solutions to oftentimes complex money decisions. But I also get to build lasting relationships with people who I care deeply about, and along the way, I get to make a difference in their lives, provide them with some level of peace of mind, and support them through all of life’s transitions as they meet milestones, reach goals, and set new ones.
I hope my clients always know as I help them pursue their dreams, they’re inviting and allowing me to pursue mine.
Fully Financial is a registered investment advisor offering advisory services in the State of Georgia and in other jurisdictions where exempt. This article is provided for educational, general information, and illustration purposes only and does not constitute specific investment advice. Registration with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission or any state securities authority does not imply a certain level of skill or training. We encourage you to consult a professional financial planner, accountant, and/or legal counsel for advice specific to your situation.
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