I'm Nick, the guy in the photo, with my amazing and slightly crazy family. I'll spare you the details, but if you were looking at my resume, you might assume I had a solid grasp on personal finance. That assumption would be a mistake.

 

Despite having an MBA in international finance and 20 years in various finance roles, the truth is that my education and career have done little for my understanding of personal finance.

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For most of us, the journey towards financial freedom is separate from our education and our careers.​ 

 

For us, you could say the journey started about 15 years ago when my wife and I were early in our careers.  Our financial picture was much different back then. We had very little in savings ... actually, $0 in savings. We both had student debt from undergrad and were about to incur considerably more debt since most of our income was about to disappear; we were both going back to being full-time students.

 

I decided to speak with a financial advisor to get us on a solid path. I wanted to know what things we should be doing now to set ourselves up for success in the future. So I made some phone calls and set up six appointments with six different financial advisors over two days.

 

After the two days of meetings, I came away disheartened and disappointed. The majority of the advisors I met with were not interested in helping unless I had at least a few hundred thousand dollars that they could manage. A couple of the advisors cut the meeting short after I had told them we had about $300 in our checking account. Two of the six advisors were kind enough not to be visibly disappointed when they found out we were not wealthy. Unfortunately, the services of those two advisors were unaffordable. They offered initial assessments of around $1000 with follow-ups at an hourly rate of $200 to $300 an hour. All of them ended the conversation by telling me to come back in a few years and they would be in a better position to help. 
 

Those conversations along with an absence of formal education on the subject, sparked a passion to create a community to help fill in the gaps. That's why we created Money Over Milkshakes LLC. We wanted to create a casual and comfortable space to discuss all things finance. A space not influenced by sponsors in the finance industry. Just good honest advice in a community of family and friends.