How I Went From Money Moron to Personal Finance Entrepreneur

Hey there! I'm Lise, the driving force behind Soltera Money. I am following my passion for personal finance and building a business that empowers women with their money in meaningful and impactful ways.

I know many women like me in their late 30s, 40s, and even 50s who are looking for inspiration to make changes in their lives to get ahead financially, find meaningful and fulfilling ways to earn an income and achieve the necessary financial security and independence to live rich lives.

Many of you are stuck with your money because:

• You never learned how to build a solid financial foundation.

• You got caught up in the consumerism hamster wheel.

• You never took a moment to understand the underlying factors that affect how you engage with your finances.

• You never connected with money in a way that gave it a purpose nor put it to work towards what matters most in your life.

  
  

There was a time when that was exactly me!

My story isn’t an enticing rags-to-riches tale of how I paid my way out of $50,000 worth of debt and built a seven-figure net worth in five years. I genuinely admire those folks who achieved that! My story is really nothing more than that of an everyday woman who had to figure out money on her own.

From Interior Design to Personal Finance

I'll start by sharing that I didn’t start my career in finance. I studied interior design at university and worked on commercial interior projects for the first decade of my professional life. I shifted into corporate real estate management for several years afterward. The corporate gig was great for my finances, but maintaining an edge in a high-performing culture eventually led to burnout. When I turned 40, I took a career break to find a new path (what I call my mid-life sparkle!).

I have always been motivated to be of creative service to the world. I love to share my ideas, knowledge and experiences with others in ways that uplift them and leave them changed. So, when I found myself looking for my next career season, I wanted to get on a new path that would pique my curiosity, fulfill my thirst for learning and immerse me in solving big problems. I geek out on any task that involves strategizing, planning and crunching numbers. If it requires a spreadsheet, I’m on it! I’ve developed a knack for seeing things through my client’s eyes. As a result, I’ve always felt at home as a leader, a dot connector, and a storyteller in my work.

I’ve intentionally chosen to pursue professional experiences on these themes, and it felt only natural that I would gravitate towards another path that would ignite me and allow me to bring valuable ideas and solutions to others. So I chose entrepreneurship.

I had many viable business ideas that I could pursue, but I wanted to choose the one that really got me excited about helping people. And I felt that personal finance was one of those areas where people still needed help. Having a solid financial foundation brings security, choices and ease in life.

Personal finance has been a passion of mine for the past 16 years. But, I didn’t always have money figured out, and my financial journey wasn’t easy. I made many money mistakes and learned valuable lessons about engaging with my finances in ways that aligned with what I wanted most in life. Once I started to connect with my money meaningfully, everything changed for the better. This is why I'm leaning into my financial journey as a launch pad to help others.

My Financial Past

I had many advantages in my early life. I grew up in a middle-class family that worked hard and didn’t struggle financially. My parents managed their money well, gave me a good life, and helped me get a higher education. Opportunities were within reach during my childhood, and money worries didn’t exist. To me, this is the dream of a middle-class Canadian family. I know how lucky I am to have been born into these circumstances.

As a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s, I never learned how to engage with money. I wasn’t interested in money because I was more preoccupied with Barbies and building forts in the woods as a make-believe pioneer girl. In those days, financial literacy was not in any classroom curriculum at my schools. My parents never really taught me the fundamentals of money, and of course, I never asked. Because I didn’t care much about money, it wasn’t an incentive for me to do chores, so I never had an allowance. I never had a say in any financial decisions, not even those concerning me. In hindsight, my parents did their best; it was the only way they knew how. And in those days, I guess they just assumed I would be smart enough to naturally figure out this money thing when I was older.

Except I didn’t. Well, not at first, anyway.

Failure to Launch

You can’t learn how to be good with money if you never take the opportunity to engage with it. So, in my late teens and early adulthood, when I started to make a bit of money at summer jobs and part-time gigs, I was utterly unprepared to manage it well or be financially independent. I made many money mistakes, which usually involved spending beyond my means.

My sidekick in the money mishaps was the first credit card I signed up for on my university campus during orientation day. I was told that this was a great time to start building credit (which was true!) But, I knew nothing about how credit worked. I knew I had a spending card with an amount to buy things I wanted and a sense of freedom with absolutely no concept of responsibility. They gained my full permission to twist my naïve student rubber arm!

Money Moron

In those days, like many young women, my guilty pleasures were always clothes, shoes and accessories, and my closet was busting at the seams (such a cliché). More often than not, I carried a balance on my credit card every month, and I never saved up for anything ahead of time. I would buy something when I wanted and pay it back later, but not in full. Eventually, with every branded shopping bag I brought home, I started to take on a not-so-fashionable brand of my own. I was seen as “bad with money,” or “can’t be trusted with money,” or, in the words of infamous Canadian financial expert Gail Vaz-Oxlade, a "money moron." These were the terms my parents always brought up to remind me of their disappointment in my choices.

The Bank of Mom and Dad to The Rescue

Not that I need to blame my parents for everything that is wrong with me. They are phenomenal people, and I am so grateful for them. But, I think it's important to acknowledge that many factors, including our upbringing around money matters, influence our relationship with money. So, I have to give some credit where credit is due (sorry, Mom and Dad!). Despite all my parents’ concerns and comments about my bad spending habits, they also enabled them by allowing me to live at home rent-free and bailing me out of money troubles more than once. Again, my parents did their best for me in the ways they knew how. They wanted to protect and help me. The upside of that privilege is that you never have to learn the hard way. The downside is there’s always a lingering question of whether you will EVER learn. Frankly, it was embarrassing to be irresponsible and continue to allow my parents to rescue me.

It wasn’t until I had a degree, a new career, an apartment, and financial bills and responsibilities that counted that I finally woke up. I was now a grown-ass woman who should be able to do responsible things independently. As I desperately wanted to be taken seriously and wear that image like a badge of honour, I committed to myself and my family that I could be good with money.

Learning the Ropes

To meet my ‘good with money’ goal, I read everything I could about personal finance and learned how to manage my money better. Back then, library books, blogs, and odd newspaper articles were my gurus. Once I got the lay of the land and found ideas that appealed to me, I started experimenting with different money practices to see what worked.

Financially on Trend (Before It Was a Trend)

I was a ‘loud budgeter’ before it was a trend. I would do no-spend challenges to free up cash for some months. I made a spending plan. I learned how to live with less. I adopted systems to make money tasks easier. I froze my credit card in the freezer so I wouldn’t use it. I implemented a pay-yourself-first mindset like the Wealthy Barber told me to. I automated many financial tasks. I threw all my extra cash at my debt, which helped pay it off quickly. I told my friends what I was learning, and they asked me questions. I became a go-to source of knowledge about money within my social circles. I got better at this money thing day by day.

But…

Money Issues Generally Run Deeper

Admittedly, my challenges with overspending didn’t magically go away. Financial literacy and money systems alone were not fixing my bad spending behaviours. The more I restricted myself to improve my financial situation, the stronger the urge to spend the money burning a hole in my pocket. The more I overspent, the worse I felt about myself. The worse I felt about myself, the more I soothed my feelings with shopping. Shopping for clothes, shoes, and accessories was always my quick dopamine fix. If I didn’t feel good, I could try to look good. Then, I’d go right back to restricting myself. This was an unhelpful cycle and an unhealthy relationship with money.

I had been in my career for a few short years, and although I worked hard, I definitely wasn't rolling in dough. There was enormous pressure to prove I could “launch” into adulting successfully. Eventually, I started to feel ashamed of how I was wasting my hard-earned money on things that weren’t that important. I felt embarrassed that I would flippantly use money to soothe an emotional need. As I learned more about opportunity cost, the burden of such unhelpful decisions on my long-term financial well-being was more than I could bear. There were always trade-offs with any money decision I made, and mine were rarely positive.

The Disadvantages of Singlehood

Being single can have advantages and disadvantages when it comes to money. The biggest disadvantage is that you have to manage all your financial responsibilities independently. Accomplishing many common financial goals can be hard and sometimes impossible on a single income, especially if you aren't a high earner. We live in a society that values relationships, family structures and dual-income households. There are pressures to conform and keep up with peers. I always enjoyed being single and saw no need to couple up, even if it could help with the bills. But all my close friends were pairing up, buying homes and sharing living costs with their partners, and they were achieving their aspirations. I remember wondering how I would ever own a house on my own or afford the life I wanted on a single income. And, if I wasn't going to pursue the marriage with two kids, a dog and a house kind of life, what kind of life did I want to have?

Focusing on What Mattered

I started focusing on figuring out what mattered to me. I did this by doing what I know best: walking down to my local library and firing up the computer to source any book or blog discussing mindfulness, goal setting, desires, and finding meaning in life. Connecting these things to money didn’t happen seamlessly. It took quite some time and a bit of trial and error to eventually get the hang of setting meaningful financial goals.

I examined what I valued and determined how I wanted to use my money to live out those values. I learned how to set smart goals for my career and my life. I made strategic career moves in line with my professional aspirations and to improve my earnings. I prioritized my desired life experiences like travel, which incentivized me to save. I was keen to build my wealth and made consistent, automatic investment contributions over time. I created a ritual out of reviewing my finances. I always knew how much money was coming in and where it needed to go every month. I found great motivation in tracking my net wealth. And, because my goals were meaningful, I was inspired to put every financial windfall or gift towards them. I also gave myself the grace to enjoy life and set aside money in a fun fund that I could spend guilt-free.

Connecting my financial actions to my vision gave me focus and set me up to achieve many aspirations. In recent years this has included purchasing my first home, funding annual vacations, paying for a graduate degree, funding my career break, starting a business and more.

Giving My Money a Purpose

Taking an interest in financial literacy, setting a vision for my life, and finding a purpose for my money finally helped me be more intentional with my finances. Once I viewed money as a tool to achieve my life vision and put it to work for me positively, money started to flow much more easily and I no longer let it go to waste.

Still a Journey

Today, I can truthfully say that I am finally in my ‘good with money’ era. But like any relationship, my relationship with money needs to be nurtured. I still go through emotional spending phases, but they are few and far between, and I am conscious of keeping it within my means. I have more healing to do around my money trauma, which I discovered while becoming a certified practitioner in the Trauma of Money Method™. I am constantly learning new things about myself and the myriad of factors influencing how I engage with my finances. While I have built expertise and know-how about financial topics, I am also a work in progress, continuously improving my financial well-being alongside my clients.

You Too Deserve a Better Relationship with Money

From experience, I know what it’s like to think you are bad at money, feel stuck, and wonder whether you’ll ever get ahead. You don't need to be shoulder-deep in debt to benefit from help (although if you are, definitely call me!). Maybe, you want to adopt a better mindset around money or build better financial habits that get you to your goals faster. Perhaps you need to figure out how to land on both feet after a separation. Or you hate your job and want to feel financially secure enough to take a break, make your next move or start a business. No matter what stage of life you are in or your specific money situation, reaching your goals and achieving financial well-being is possible. 

I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to take the guesswork out of doing money things well and to help as many women as possible transform their relationship with money. If you are reading this thinking I can help you, book a Soltera Assessment call today. Together, we'll start making this your Good with Money Era!