Letters to L + C: Why Mom Quit Her Corporate Job
Welcome to the inaugural blog post for KKFP - I’m so glad you’re here! Throughout the life of this blog I plan to share helpful information on topics that professional women and those who love them would find value in reading.
Much of the content will land at the intersection of women and wealth, with categories on investing, financial planning, spending and saving, stock compensation, housing, family finances, employee benefits and 401(k), charitable giving, lifestyle topics and more.
My goal is to provide clear-cut education for high-earning professional women and their families that is framed with their values, perspectives, and life experiences in mind. It’s my hope this content helps you feel encouraged to take action and improve your financial health and wellbeing in even the smallest of ways.
But first, I’m introducing a blog series I’ll do from time to time called “Letters to L + C” which I’m dedicating to my young daughter and son (aka L + C). These posts will serve as reflections on life through the lens of ambitious women who are working to change the status quo. When my kids are old enough to read this series, I hope the stories inspire them to be brave and do hard things on their own path ahead.
DEAR L + C,
Twenty-two-year-old me, a fresh Finance grad from the University of Texas, would’ve laughed right out loud if you’d said that at age 33 I’d be starting my own business from scratch.
My threshold for taking risks went about as far as accepting a full-time job out of school with a company that most of my business school classmates had never heard of. The idea of being entrepreneurial was foreign and scary to me. I was perfectly happy sticking to the corporate track.
On a personal note, your dad, Matt, and I were figuring out life as a newly married couple around this same time. I had just started my corporate gig, and Matt was starting an internship with a print shop + graphic design studio.
We both knew that my work in finance vs. his work as a graphic designer meant I was probably always going to be the primary breadwinner in the family. Knowing this responsibility, the choice to work for a larger, established company was a strategic decision.
WHAT I REALLY WANT TO BE WHEN I GROW UP
Despite all of this, I actually loved the career path I was traveling. It helped that I worked for a company whose mission I truly believed in. Dimensional Fund Advisors, one of the top 10 largest asset managers in the world, is known for building investment strategies that are based on financial science rather than trying to outguess the markets.
Evidence shows it’s nearly impossible to pick the winning stocks before they make it big, or to time the markets with any real consistency - we’re better served by staying disciplined and investing across lots of global companies for longer periods of time.
In my role on the sales team, I got the chance to educate hundreds of independent financial advisors about how to invest their clients’ hard-earned savings using these principles.
Through this work, there’s something else I came to understand during my time at Dimensional - how important it is for individuals and families to partner with an independent, fee-only advisor in order to bring them better financial peace of mind through all of life’s experiences.
These financial planners didn’t just help invest their clients’ money - that was really just a means to an end - they helped families strategically use their financial resources to live their ideal lives, free of worry and stress.
I was intrigued by that work, so I ended up studying for and completing my CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification back in 2014 during my early years at Dimensional. The CFP® mark is table stakes if you want to be an effective financial planner due to the rigorous education and exam on the front end and ongoing hours of education required to maintain the designation each year.
Once I had my CFP® designation, I was convinced that “when I grew up” I wanted to be a financial planner too.
HARSH REALITIES FOR A WORKING MOM
In the meantime, I loved the fast-paced environment on a sales team as a young professional. True, I was usually one of very few women in a room (if not the only one) since I worked in a very male-dominated industry, but it didn’t bother me too much. Then as my career progressed and home life evolved, there were many times where I began to face unconscious biases or felt isolated.
This was especially true going through my first pregnancy with you L, and then attempting to figure out parenting in a dual career household where I was also the main breadwinner. There were no women with kids in sales leadership roles that I could look to for advice as I became a “working mom,” and it is still one of the toughest transitions I've ever made.
In fact, the majority of my clients and colleagues were men with a partner that stayed home. It seemed like they could easily compartmentalize everything going on in their personal lives in order to appear more focused and dedicated on the job. For me, everything bled together, and some things just didn’t get prioritized. I was seeing this happen to my successful female peers as well.
FINANCIAL GUIDANCE DESIGNED WITH WOMEN IN MIND
One area in particular that never gets the attention it deserves from successful professional women? Their personal finances.
What’s worse is the financial services industry tends to neglect this need because it wasn’t designed with women in mind. A big factor: most financial advisors are men. The CFP Board recently reported that only 23.4% of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professionals are women, a number that has hovered steadily around this point for over a decade.
In my own life I didn’t know if I was using my financial resources effectively to enjoy the journey ahead.
Was I spending/saving/investing in a way that allowed me to live my most fulfilled life?
And what about my family? My young kids, and a husband who works full-time too: I felt like I was neglecting to protect what we were building and didn’t know my financial blind spots.
All of this uncertainty, and I was a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional - trained to help other people answer these questions. It just goes to show how tough it is to make objective decisions about your own money.
One thing was clear: my peers in the corporate world - other professional women - deserved financial guidance from someone that understood what a day in their life felt like. They deserved the option to partner with someone who could save them time, boost their financial confidence and help them proactively grow their wealth.
I contemplated this huge gap in financial services long enough to start imagining how I might build a business to help solve the problem. For professional women in particular, I understood the weight they carried, and I wanted to offer them relief, namely the organization and process around managing their financial life.
If there were more financial planners that catered specifically to successful women in their early to mid-career, they’d have a better chance of optimizing their high-income years in order to build long-term, sustainable wealth. More importantly, these women would be free to focus more on themselves - their career path, their marriage, their kids, their friendships, or whatever it is they valued most.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
I continued to get more involved in the financial planning community and discovered an entire movement of financial planners closer to my age who were starting their own businesses to serve their ideal clients, especially individuals and families who were still in their wealth-building years.
I was drawn in - could I do that too? Is this how I could become a financial planner? For the first time in my life, I considered what it might look like to take a huge, calculated risk, forgo the security of my predictable salary, and pursue what I was truly most passionate about.
The most refreshing part about considering a huge change like this was that I didn’t have to do it alone - so many financial planners who had taken the plunge to start their own businesses before me offered advice and encouragement to help me decide which path to take forward.
Many of those planners were women, some with small kids just like me, and they’ve remained my close friends and mentors over the years. To them it wasn’t a question of “if” I should start my own financial planning business, but “when?”
Your dad also gave me his full support in chasing this dream. I’m sure he secretly thought I was nuts for wanting to give up my career as a sales professional, but deep down he knew that my heart and my passion were already invested in the idea of launching an independent business to serve families just like ours.
WHAT IS RIGHT VS. WHAT IS EASY
In the five years that followed, Matt and I set aside a good amount of our take-home pay into a savings account that I lovingly titled “The Dream.” The plan was for me to launch my own financial planning firm once we had enough of a cushion to account for my lost salary while I worked to bring on clients and build from scratch.
In the same time frame, we had our second baby (my sweet boy, C!), and shifted routines as we transitioned to being a dual career household that was now a family of four.
I think the ultimate strain on my plan to leave my stable job came when the global pandemic hit about a year after C was born. The highs and lows of pandemic parenting, homeschooling, and virtual school, coupled with the uncertainty of everything going on in the world was enough to scare me out of launching a business entirely.
There were plenty of practical reasons to play it safe and stick to the corporate track too. At Dimensional, I had been made a Vice President and was running business development for my team which I really enjoyed. I even had the opportunity to serve as the Lead Chair of the newly-formed Women’s Inclusion Network for employees, which felt like really important work that we were all doing as part of broader diversity and inclusion efforts at the firm.
It would be easy to stay where I was, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone who decides that’s what’s best for them and their family. I ultimately figured out that the right thing for me, and the example I knew I wanted to set for you kiddos, was to get uncomfortable and try something different with my life moving forward.
WORDS OF AFFIRMATION
As your mom, I’m always trying to encourage you both to be brave, creative, and curious, and this next phase of my professional life is me trying to embody those values as well. In January 2022, I found the courage to hand in my resignation after nearly 12 years at the same company.
And now just a few months later, I’ve launched a business to help professional women and their families make the most out of their wealth-building years. I think I’m working more hours than I ever have before, sometimes long into the night after y’all have gone to sleep, but this work gives me so much joy and energy. And I can’t complain about the freedom I now have to design my schedule so that work fits neatly into our family’s life.
L + C, thank you for teaching me to be brave and to do hard things, especially when there’s the opportunity to make a difference, even a small one, out in the world. I’m terrified and excited for what’s to come, and I know you’ll be rooting for me, just the way I root for you every day as your biggest fan.
With love,
Kelly aka Mom
If you’d like customized help using your financial resources effectively in order to make the most out of your wealth-building years, please schedule a free consultation here or email me with questions kelly@kkfp.co
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Disclaimer: This blog post is not intended to be a substitute for specific financial, tax or legal advice. The article is for general informational purposes only. Reproduction of this material is not permitted without written permission.