Hi - Cole here! I’m a Special Education Elementary School Teacher turned Financial Paraplanner Qualified Professional (FPQP™) who’s passionate about making sure women don’t get left behind when it comes to understanding their money.

I provide financial planning + support to (mostly) millennial women who are smart and doing amazing things in the world but need some gentle guidance around money.

Wall Street and the finance world is often called a “Boy’s Club”. Women only hold 9% of positions in venture capital, 6% of positions in private equity, 3% in hedge funds. Eighty-six percent of investment advisors are men! Our society often teaches women to just stay out of it — we shouldn’t take finance jobs and we shouldn’t understand our shared financial lives with our partners or even our own as individuals.

In so many ways, patriarchy teaches women that money is not for us to understand.

But here’s what I've learned over the past two years of working with women 1:1 and in small groups: personal finance has basically nothing to do with our ability to understand math or complicated equations or numbers. It takes learning and practicing some good habits and knowing how to navigate an excel spreadsheet, but we are more than capable of understanding all of this.

I feel so excited about being part of women's journeys towards their own financial literacy and liberation -- I love helping them feel empowered to look at, understand, and make thoughtful decisions about their money.

I am so lucky to have some amazing financial professionals in my family (see photo -- thanks Suri, Bernie, Harry, & Lori!!). Following in their footsteps, last year for my birthday, I did a fundraiser to become certified as a Financial Paraplanner Qualified Professional. This year, I'd really like to take my expertise to the next level to be able to even better support the women I work with and become a full Certified Financial Planner (basically, hoping to drop the "para" from my title!).

While I continue to be "in training," I'm actively getting paid to do this work with women - specifically, helping them staredown their spending (if you're new to this, you can read about it on my blog !), understand how and where their cash flows, and put gentle financial plans + goals in place from there.

I'm raising $7,200 to cover the cost of taking the full online certification course to become a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) through the College for Financial Planning .

✨If you give $75 or more to my campaign, you'll be entitled to a free spending staredown and I'll reach out to you to see if you'd like to set one up

✨If you give $150 or more to my campaign, same as above plus I'll offer a staredown to someone who can't afford one

Sending love + lots of gratitude for taking the time to read!