Episode 1 - Redefining Wealth: A Tale of Family and Faith
Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Beyond Budgets® Podcast! In this episode, you’ll uncover the nitty-gritty details of host Deb Meyer’s personal financial journey, including:
Hearing “your papa too cheap, get a new papa” as a fourth grader shaped my financial decisions as an adult.
Why living in 5 states before 4th grade made me appreciate stability.
The importance of mentors on my career path from public accounting to investment advisory firm to entrepreneurship.
How my mom’s health crisis inspired our family to live in Spain for 3 months.
My biggest financial mistake.
Connect with Deb
Website: WorthyNest.com/podcast
Submit your family finance questions to podcast@worthynest.com
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Pick up a copy of my book, Redefining Family Wealth
Full transcript
Hello and welcome to episode one of the Beyond Budgets® podcast. I'm your host Deb Meyer, and today I'm going to share a little bit about my story. A little bit about my journey through childhood and my earliest money memory. And then if you listen to the end, you'll hear my biggest financial mistake. Even though I'm a certified financial planner, also a CPA and long-time financial advisor, I've actually made a few financial mistakes myself. So I'm here to be on the journey with you and tell you what I've learned from some of those mistakes so you can avoid those mistakes in the future for yourself. All right. I want to get started with the earliest money memory. What's your earliest money memory?
I don't know that this is my earliest, but it's definitely my most memorable. We took a trip when I was in the fourth grade from the Midwest. We were living in Wisconsin at the time (Milwaukee), and went to San Diego, California. Got to see the San Diego Zoo and the koala. It was really cool. I think that was one of my first times flying on a plane and just had a lot of fun memories from that.
But I'll never forget us crossing into Tijuana, Mexico. And first off, just being astonished by the extreme poverty in that area, it made me appreciate the blessings we often have in the US … access to clean water and healthcare. Crossing into Tijuana at that time, it just made me realize, wow, not everyone gets to live such a privileged life.
But the other memory I have is shortly as we were about to leave Tijuana, we had just taken a day trip down there and my older sister Julie, who's about two years older, wanted a poncho. So my dad, he had studied Spanish many years before when he was in high school and in his broken Spanish is trying to negotiate with the store owner for this poncho that my sister wants.
And they're going back and forth for probably 5 or 10 minutes, which, you know, it's pretty appalling or impressive given that he hadn't taken a Spanish class in like 30 years. But sure enough, my dad was trying to negotiate the best price. And then finally he leaves the store, doesn't really say anything to me. And then she comes out (the store owner or store clerk) and says in English, “your Papa too cheap, get a new Papa.”
No joke. That's what she told me. That was definitely my most memorable money moment as a child. And I share that story because I think for a lot of us, our upbringing has a profound influence on how we behave as adults when it comes to money or just any decision-making, right? And with a lot of intentionality about some of the lessons we learned from childhood that can be either beneficial or detrimental to how we function as adults when it comes to these harder financial decisions.
I do want to share a little bit about my upbringing, some of the values that my parents instilled in me from an early age, and hope it provides some context, especially when it comes to some of the education I'm providing on this podcast.
Starting off, I moved around a lot when I was young. I said in fourth grade, at the time we were living in Wisconsin, I actually moved many times in those early years. I was born in Illinois, moved to Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia, and then eventually Wisconsin in fourth grade.
And my parents weren't in the military. It was just that my dad was in manufacturing at the time. And he would often work his way up to plant manager, but unfortunately, plants would shut down and there were no other positions in that town. So we often had to up and move for him to find new employment. One of the key components of stability for us was actually my mom's job.
She was a CPA. She had worked at, I guess what was, Coopers and Lybrand at the time, right out of college, and then worked for some other smaller accounting practices after that. But no matter where we moved, mom always had a job, which was great. It was helpful, especially in those times of unemployment or times of transition for my dad and his position. And...
I just remember that stability. Even when we were in Wisconsin, I remember after a couple of years he lost his job and I was like, all right, where are we moving to next? And he said, no, we're staying put. At the time I think it was in seventh grade and it took him over, I think close to two years to find a new position. That's a very long time.
But they were dead set on staying in one place and letting my sister and I finish high school. And ironically, I was like least excited to be in Wisconsin because I hate cold weather. And I begged them, okay, please, let's move to another warmer place to make this our long-term home. But my dad's parents were up there in Wisconsin and he had a brother up there as well. And a sister. So it just...
made sense to stay close to some of the family, but yeah, there was a lot of instability in my early years in terms of location, where we lived, and my dad's jobs. But with mom, I always felt this sense of stability, and that's what ultimately led to my interest in math, accounting, and personal finance. I even started reading Money Magazine for fun as a middle schooler. I know it's nerdy, but it's true. It kind of forged my future in terms of wanting to learn more about money and saving, even just with that sense of frugality that my dad had with the example in Tijuana, Mexico.
Deb Meyer (07:12.402)
I remember him oftentimes telling my sister and I, you gotta turn off the lights in every room before we leave the house. And just being very conscious of costs all the time. Part of that upbringing though, was also a scarcity mindset. It was very pessimistic. If he lost his job, it could be a long time before he found another. And...
A lot of the decisions I think my parents made were based more on fear than on the opportunity or potential that they saw. So while I commend all of the savings and frugality that they fostered in me, I also wish there would have been a little bit more of excitement around the possibilities of what could be, right?
And I have this older sister, she's two years older by age, but in school, she was three years ahead because of birth dates and some other stuff. It's funny because I would always see what she was doing with my parents and she was always pushing the status quo … always trying to go past the line that they were setting as a parental boundary. And when it came to money, she would spend a lot, she never really wanted to save.
So I became the polar opposite of Julie. Like I was always trying to do whatever I could to get in my parents' good graces. If that meant Julie was having arguments because she was spending too much, I was not going to have arguments. I was just going to save. And that's kind of how my childhood played out. I started saving when I was 13. I had my first job at age 13, a real job with a paycheck, working in a senior citizen facility.
I was a server in not a nursing home but more of an assisted living apartment complex. And then went on to do some hostess jobs at restaurants and office jobs, things like that. So I had accumulated a decent amount of savings and then when I went off to college, was trying to figure out what major to pursue.
Deb Meyer (09:28.494)
And at the time I was really interested in international business. So I had studied abroad for a couple of weeks and done an exchange program in high school in Spain. And then when it came time to go to college, I went to Saint Louis University, which in addition to having the US campus, also has a campus in Madrid, Spain. And the cool part about that is the scholarship I had transferred over.
Because it was called St. Louis University, I could still have my scholarship and study abroad over in Spain for as long as I could get the classes I needed. My sophomore year, I studied abroad in Madrid and then really tried to hone in on getting an international business degree because I wanted to work abroad.
And I remember talking to a guidance person at the home campus in the US. And she said, you know, it's great to want to do some international stuff, but it's really hard to get a job as an international business major. I highly encourage you to get some other degree, even if it's getting a dual major, but just to have something that you can make your entry into the business world and then eventually transfer to an international location once you earn your stripes.
So I took her advice to heart. Debbie Barbeau is her name and she's an excellent person. Anyway, I decided on accounting. I followed in my mom's footsteps. And once I graduated college, went on to work at Deloitte Tax for about two and a half years. And really loved it for the first couple of years. I think for me just being surrounded by really smart people who kind of took me under their wing, helped teach me a lot of things. It was immeasurable.
Jason Rule is one of those guys, and he and I are still in touch today. He was the manager at the time I was a staff member. And Don Poling was one of the partners. And I just think back over some of these great mentors I've had in my career and how much it has been wonderful to learn from them, but also see where their careers have gone.
Anyway, at Deloitte Tax, I realized I didn't love doing just historical tax prep and compliance. So I wanted to do more forward-thinking things and help impact people on a more personal level, guide the decisions that they were making now that would have a future impact.
I went and looked for another position in 2009. Oh, no, I'm sorry, in 2006. I don't know why I said 2009. And ended up at a firm called Financial Management Partners. At the time I joined that firm, there were about, I think I was employee 11 or 10. And we were an investment management firm that had a good but small amount of clients, and our founder had big growth aspirations. So when I joined them in late 2006, it was right before we started having some of the financial crisis of ‘08. I got a few years in there of seeing
investments actually go up in value. But then I was in for a big awakening when everything started crashing in late 2007 and early 2008. And during that time had a lot of personal milestones. I got married to my husband Bryan in 2007. And then we had our first son in 2009, who's now 14.
We also had a second son in January of 2013. And by the time he was born, I was trying to decide whether to stay or go if I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, now that we had two kids, or if I wanted to continue working there. And my husband, Bryan, was not only working full-time, but he was also doing an evening MBA program at Washington University in St. Louis.
Deb Meyer (14:13.406)
So a super demanding schedule for him. And here I am with a toddler and a newborn. And I was like, I can't juggle all these things. The other piece for me at the time I decided to leave the firm in late 2013 was just around the types of clients we were serving and whether it was making that much of an impact.
When I started at the firm, it was a pretty small firm, with a relatively small level of assets under management. And by the time I left, we had, I think it was 25 employees, and we were managing billions of dollars. And it didn't feel like I was making much of an impact anymore, to be honest. I was working with a lot of multimillionaires and I just didn't know if...
The advice I was giving was actually moving the needle for them. I ended up leaving Halloween of 2013, just about 10 years ago. And I tried to be a stay-at-home mom for about four months. I wouldn't say failed miserably, just didn't enjoy being home with the kids all the time.
So I took this kind of entrepreneurial path, had an opportunity with one of my clients from the multi-family office to help do some accounting work, and go back to my roots in accounting. At that point, I launched an accounting practice called SV CPA Services. So that was in 2014 … really just trying to help this former client with some pretty complex accounting as an outsourced chief financial officer. And then started bringing in other clients, other small business owners, doing accounting work for them, helping with some of the tax compliance over time. And then in 2016, my husband Bryan actually lost his job. He had finished his MBA program and...
Deb Meyer (16:29.634)
things I thought were looking rosy, but they weren't as rosy as it was on the surface. At the time, the business was just more of a part-time business for me because I was still home with young kids. And by that time, we had our third son in 2015. So this reality hit me that, gosh, I might need to be more of a stable financial person for our family if Bryan's unemployment lasts a while.
And I just kept thinking back to that scarcity mindset of when I was a young girl and my dad would lose the job and my mom's income was our only income. So for me, it was about creating more financial security for the family. But also I really missed the time I had been at the investment advisory firm and now family office.
And I wanted to get back into that. So I launched WorthyNest®, which is a registered investment advisory firm. Launched that in late 2016 and had zero clients. Knew I needed to create some kind of awareness, but I'm not the type of person that loves to go to in-person networking and schmooze and that kind of thing, so I figured, okay, what could I do online to attract people to WorthyNest®?
I started contributing to articles and then started a blog, and luckily it found some success. I got into writing, and was able to get a spot on the Kiplinger Building Wealth channel online. Made several contributions to them, got quoted in some national media on other platforms and just fell in love with writing. Obviously, still loving the financial planning aspect, but...
This was definitely my way of helping relate to people because I know money can be a topic that's not always comfortable to discuss for a lot of people. So anyway, after the blogging, then in 2017 my mom started having some pretty severe health issues. And she suffered from a condition called atrial fibrillation which in and of itself isn't necessarily...
Deb Meyer (18:53.502)
life-threatening, but it can cause other life-threatening things like stroke or cardiac arrest, things like that. So when she got sick, I at the time had just started Worthy Nest, I was gaining a lot of traction with new clients. And I needed to have a focus on what type of clients I wanted to be serving going forward…
but I hadn't really defined what that niche looked like. I knew families broadly, but I didn't know what type of families in particular. I'm Christian, but more specifically, I'm Catholic. And for me, I had to rely so much on my faith when my mom was sick, severely sick. I had to openly share that with some of my clients, and many of the clients were ultra-supportive, praying for her.
It was a defining moment, not only in my personal life, but my professional life trying to figure out who I really wanted to be serving going forward and define the niche of Christian or Catholic families at that point. It's interesting when thinking about
Deb Meyer (20:18.742)
financial decisions. You know, a lot of us think of the quote, “you can't serve both God and mammon.” And it's really hard to place God first in your life if you're letting money be an idol. That's kind of been one of the guideposts for WorthyNest and now any kind of content creation, including this podcast.
We have to really consider stewardship in the equation. And if that resonates with you, great. If it doesn't, I don't know. I share a lot about my values as it relates to Christianity. So hopefully you would still get great info on the personal finance side. But if you are Christian or Catholic, I think you'll find even more value from this podcast.
All right, so 2017, luckily my mom was able to get some really important medical procedures, get on some medications that would at least prolong her life. We didn't know for sure how long that life was going to be, but there were some steps taken by her doctors and thankfully she pulled through.
But it gave me a new perspective on things. And I said, you know what, life is short. I miss Spain, let's take an adventure as a family. And my husband at the time was in a new role but he didn't love it. He was just kind of plugging along in it for the money or the financial stability for our family. And we started planning this trip, this three-month-long trip to Spain.
We ended up leaving in January of 2018 and were there through Easter and got to go around to the four major cities in Spain. Flew into Barcelona, got to see Valencia, Madrid, and Seville or Sevilla. And I will tell you that was one of the best experiences for our family. Our kids were pretty young at the time.
Deb Meyer (22:33.754)
But it was definitely an important place to have family togetherness and set a goal and work towards it. So we saved up for quite a bit. We were just relying on my income while we were over there. And I will do a whole other podcast episode, I'm sure, on the Spain trip itself.
But I would just encourage you, if your family has some long-held dream and you're too afraid to work towards it. Just know that life is short and people you love can get sick on a moment's notice and sometimes they pass away. Anyway, once we returned from Spain, then God put it on my heart to write a book. I had been doing all this writing prior to that and really loved it. So I...
I was able to launch Redefining Family Wealth in 2019. Then shortly after the publishing, we decided to make another big change, and we moved to Florida to be with my parents. My parents were in Missouri with us for a while, but then they made Florida their permanent residence, I think back in 2016, right before my mom's health issues started. And we knew that if we wanted to spend time with them, we needed to be the ones to make the move.
So thankfully my husband Bryan, who was born and raised in the suburbs of St. Louis, was willing to go on this adventure. And we uprooted our family, moved cross country and went to Florida, Southwest Florida, just outside Fort Myers. In every one of these decisions or big changes, we keep coming back to
Deb Meyer (24:31.826)
what are our values, what's important to us. And for me, it's really about family. My mom unfortunately passed away two days after Christmas in 2022. But honestly, I won't ever regret moving here and being close to her. I know it was a huge transition for all of us, but I'm just so thankful we did it.
And that's part of why I encourage you whenever you're thinking about some big life-changing decision that looks big and scary to you or what you're afraid other people might think. It's okay to just go for it sometimes. And yes, hopefully, you have some financial plan in place to help make that happen. But that's really where I'm here to be a resource and help educate if you do have some of those goals or dreams that you're really trying to move forward with.
Okay, I'm going to get over the emotion. So let's talk about my biggest financial mistake. I made a few here and there. One of my smaller ones was actually in high school. We were in an economics class. I think it was my junior year of high school. And this was right before the tech bubble burst. I remember vividly in the class, they said, okay, we're gonna do a...
fake portfolio of five stocks, individual stocks, you get to pick them and then track them over time. And then we're just gonna see who ends up with the most money at the end of the semester. Well, I thought it was really cool that we were doing this exercise. Like I said, I was already a money nerd. I had been reading Money Magazine for a while. And I had taken $2,000 of my earnings from summer jobs and stuff. And...
Deb Meyer (26:34.454)
put that into the real stock market. I modeled my portfolio that I had in class and invested in those real stocks. And I remember putting, I guess it was 400 bucks per position in five positions. By the end of the year, I think I was down to like a thousand.
And it felt so bad that I sold. I just sold. I couldn't take it anymore. I was looking at those numbers and thinking, oh gosh, how could this happen? But ever since then, I know you don't sell low. You don't sell low. And you definitely don't get into something that's a craze.
I've had many clients since then say, oh, looks like this is a hot thing. Maybe I should get into that. And I say, no, if it's hot now, no. Do not trust the heat. Anyways, that was one of my smaller financial mistakes, and it's helped me become a better advisor because I'm much more cautious about the trendy stuff and get a little bit more excited when its just long-term investing, knowing that, okay, we have a plan in place. We're going to monitor it over time, but not make any drastic changes just based on where the market happens to be at a given time period.
Deb Meyer (28:04.21)
Now for the bigger financial mistake. And I thought I was being really smart at the time. I graduated college, like I said, I had been a big saver my whole life. So I was fortunate to pay offa couple thousand dollars in student loans. Most of college was paid for through scholarships and some support from my parents. And I was in a position where I had saved about 10% for a house down payment on a starter home.
Keep in mind, this was St. Louis, this was not California where starter homes cost a million dollars. This was $150,000 that I bought the house for in 2005. And I was really smart about it. At the time, I was single and had two roommates renting out the other rooms because it was a three-bedroom house.
Then when my husband, Bryan, and I got married, we decided obviously we're not going to live with the roommates anymore. So they left, Bryan moved in. And once we had our first son, we decided in 2009 to move into a little bit larger home in a different suburb.
When we put the house on the market, I thought, okay, I had put like $20,000 into it for repairs and things like that over the years. I think I got a new roof at one point or new heating system. I don't remember the specifics. I just know I put at least $20,000 into this house. And when it came time to sell, realized, oh crud, it's not selling for anything close to the 170 that I've already put into it.
So it ended up selling for right at the 150,000 mark, even though that's what I had paid for it in 2005. We had also gone through that whole housing bubble thing. And then of course when you factor in real estate commissions, things like that, it was just a big financial loser. So here are the lessons I learned from that. Number one, I had only saved 10% for the down payment.
Deb Meyer (30:13.246)
I highly recommend if you're buying a home, especially if you're a first-time home buyer, try to get at least 20%, especially in today's mortgage interest rate environment. If you don't have the full 20%, unless you qualify for a VA loan or some other specialty loan, you'll have to pay PMI, which is called private mortgage insurance, or take out a secondary loan to bridge the gap. Let's say you only have 5% saved for a down payment.
You would potentially have to take out a secondary loan to cover that 15% gap. And it's usually a much higher interest rate, like a home equity line of credit would be. Although mortgage rates for traditional fixed mortgages are very expensive right now in the historical context. All of that to say..
Even financial professionals like myself can sometimes make financial mistakes and it's okay because we learn from them. I want you to understand no matter what mistakes you've made in the past, it's okay to forge a new path. Especially when it comes to family finance, making good decisions as parents, I know you care immensely about your kids and want only the best for them. And I'm here to help equip you on that journey of smart financial decision-making, thinking through the consequences before you actually take the action.
I do want to share in closing this four-piece pattern I see to successful financial decisions. One is having the proper mindset, understanding there's an abundance to things, that there's opportunity on the horizon, and hope for a brighter future.
Whatever mistakes have been made in the past don't have to define you going forward. The other piece is values and I'm going to be going into lots of detail on episode two about values, how those play into financial decisions. Discipline is a third aspect … that's really taking the prudent path, being able to check in regularly on where you're at and where you want to be and kind of following that middle of the road, not being on either extreme.
When you think about people who often get into lots of debt, they're on the extreme of, hey, I want it, and I don't necessarily have the funds to pay for it. Then you have the other extreme of people who are ultra savers and never spend any of money.
Really the great path forward is when you can find a happy balance between the two, when you save a good amount, but you're also willing to spend on the things that are meaningful to your family. And then finally monitoring, just being aware of what's going on. If you set a financial goal, see how you're doing in comparison to that goal when it comes to investing … not just putting it in an account and never checking the balance, but seeing over time how the balance grows or declines.
And understanding that markets are going to shape that, right? The last two years have been pretty volatile markets. 2022 was rough for everything. It wasn't just equities. It was rough for fixed income as well, which is typically considered a safe investment. Even this calendar year in 2023, we had a pretty good rise in equities, but then a lot of that has already been taken back.
So potentially bonds might offer a little bit more hope in the short term for the future. There are a lot of things to consider as you're monitoring it, but even when you're just thinking about basic budgeting, knowing where your actual spending is at relative to the budget, that's another aspect of monitoring, too. All right, well I hope this was helpful for you.
Like I said, I wanted to be vulnerable, share a few of nitty-gritty details of my financial life in the hope that it inspires you to make great changes in yours and transform your relationship with money as a parent.