Friday I was getting a haircut, and discussion of my career of being an Economics Educator developed into a conversation about preparing for the future financially. I am currently teaching a unit about investing and preparing for retirement, especially suggesting to students that they should take full advantage of matching 401k funds and possibly supplement with a Roth IRA. The person cutting my hair asked for my thoughts on Roth IRA vs. 401k or SEP plans and I was able to quickly expand on some of the benefits and drawbacks of each and describe to her how each can benefit her or her business. She promptly asked me if I ever had any thoughts of becoming a financial advisor. I told her that I was not sure that I wanted to take on the role of advisor, and still I am not sure how that would fit into my role in education, but I have researched the possibilities of becoming a financial coach. I can see my role as an educator laying the foundation necessary for me to take some steps in the direction of reaching out to an audience and being able to share an objective eye and provide accountability to people’s personal finances. This is something that I wasn’t taught in school, I didn’t learn it at home and through my experiences with co-workers that discuss their finances with me and students who are not learning good financial habits at home, I see there is a need for financial coaching.
Again, just talking with a co-worker on the way out of work, a conversation struck up about investing, I am not even really sure how the topic came about. We were just chatting about the PSAT test we are administering tomorrow, maybe how many years we have left before retirement, I am not sure, but my wife pointed out how this is a common theme in my life that I regularly end up talking about personal finance education, because I am passionate about it. She just really bluntly put it that I tend to find and steer many conversations to topics that I am passionate about. Well, there is another reason that I may need to tap into this entrepreneurial spirit and look at developing a financial coaching or financial education business. I have passion, there is a need. I have made less productive financial decisions in my past and am now learning from it, it took me until I was in my late 30’s but luckily my wife and I did (I also married a wise partner as well). Nonetheless, I think my passion stems from the fact that I didn’t have the best role model, teacher or coach that taught me good financial practices when I was younger and my hope is that I can do that for some. My friend Harry was super excited to talk to me, and is looking forward to our next conversation about investing, but his best compliment was that he learned something in our 5 minute conversation. Not only did I get to share a good chat, but I was able to teach co-worker about the low cost of investing with index funds and ETF’s.
