In this episode of Chicago Techies Podcast, I sat down with Christine Devane, Co-Founder and CEO of Club Money, to talk about how she’s rethinking financial advice for a new generation.

We got into Christine’s own path into fintech, she walked us through her non-traditional background and how eventually she became a tech founder, which is a great reminder that there’s no single background or blueprint for building in tech.

We discussed how traditional financial planning leaves so many people behind especially younger professionals and anyone who doesn’t fit the “high net worth” mold most advisors are built around. Christine shared how Club Money is combining AI with real human expertise to make personalized financial guidance more accessible, collaborative, and honestly a lot less intimidating.

This episode is really about access to financial literacy, to better tools, and to the kind of guidance that shouldn’t only be available to wealthy people. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed trying to figure out money, investing, or financial planning on your own, this conversation will definitely resonate.

Connect with Christine:

Christine’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinedevane/

Club Money website: https://www.joinclubmoney.com/

Club Money LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brightfin-io/

Club Money Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightfin.io

Connect with Chicago Techies Podcast:

Website: https://chicagotechiespodcast.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/chicago-techies-podcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chicagotechies

Connect with Ceci:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cbenitez87/

Hello.

Hello.

Welcome to season five of the Chicago Techies podcast.

The podcast that highlights the voices of Chicago techies and their experiences.

This season is all about Chicago talent, founders, operators, creatives, and tech professionals who are building, growing, and making things happen across the city.

I'm your host, Cecilia Benitez.

Thanks for joining us.

Christine.

Hello.

Welcome to the Chicago Techies Podcast.

Thank you for joining me this week.

Thank you.

So nice to be here.

I am excited.

I'm excited to dig in and learn about what you're building.

So why don't we start from the top?

Like, let's say your full name, your pronouns, where you're from, in your role.

Yes.

First of all, thank you for having me on.

I love talking all things Chicago tech.

I'm Christine Devan.

She her.

I'm from Wheaton, Illinois, and I am the CEO of Club Money.

That's right, Wheaton.

I think when we first met, I think we talked about that because I'm from West Chicago.

I'm like, literally one town over.

Right.

I totally forgot about that.

That's super cool.

Coast, 630 people.

Yeah.

What's up?

West Roosevelt Road.

I was just on it.

I was just on it.

Me too, actually.

I was just there yesterday.

You know, the locals love that stuff.

Driving 290 underneath the old post office, and now there's actually some companies in there.

And that's cool.

But people relate to that.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

Okay, so I am curious about what you're building.

Your role is founder and CEO of Club Money.

Let's start there.

Like, let's talk about Club Money.

What is it?

Yes.

Club Money is community finance.

So what does that mean?

It means we are making financial advice affordable for many more people for the first time.

And we're doing it by pairing AI created cohorts with human CFPs to get real, actual professional guidance on money from a real human person with other people who are just like you.

Whoa.

Okay, so then you're not trying to replace financial advisors?

No, we are trying to scale what financial advisors do to many, many more people.

And I've talked to a lot of financial advisors.

They know how big the need is, how big in terms of how many people, and also how important this is.

And I'm talking mostly about financial planning, not investment advice.

But financial advisors understand the personal finance problems that people face, and they see how big the need is.

However, they do not have a business model that can scale to many more people.

So CFPs are just one type of Financial advisor, financial professional.

When we talked to them, we learned that CFPs can serve about 100 clients themselves if they want to do this.

Well, about 100 people, give or take.

There may be some different experiences on that, but about 100 people.

So that means that you can't serve everybody, and you especially can't serve people who don't have a certain wealth threshold, usually about $250,000 in assets under management.

So even though they know that people who have, let's say, 30 grand in a 401k still have questions about money, they can't help them very much because they wouldn't make any money themselves if all of their clients were like that.

So you can go to a certified financial planner for like, 300 bucks an hour.

And for some people, that's great.

I mean, I've done it.

I learned some stuff.

It was helpful.

But a lot of young people in particular don't even know that certified financial planners exist, because CFPs are not chasing them, because they're not their core customer, because they can't be, because the business model is fundamentally unscalable.

So we are changing with club money, that business model, and also the product that is financial planning and approaching that differently so that it also can be scalable.

That's great.

I think I have a much better understanding of that now.

I'm curious about the journey that led you here.

Like, what kind of empowered you to build something around finance and the way that it has evolved along the way.

Like, what drove you there?

Yes.

So I do not come from the finance industry.

I was an English major.

I'm very much on the liberal arts side of the professional spectrum.

But everyone has to make and spend money.

Artists, everybody.

Everyone has to make and spend money.

So why can't we make it easier for everybody and have things that speak to a different type of brain?

Not everybody is a spreadsheet person.

I have tried to figure out how many.

What percentage of the population is truly quantitative by nature and therefore drawn to things like spreadsheets.

If somebody knows, I'd love to hear it.

I've never been able to find that in any research, but I'm convinced that it is a minority.

There are people, for sure, who geek out over spreadsheets, but the Venn diagram of people who geek out over spreadsheets and the people who have to make and spend money, that's a very small subset of.

Because everybody has to worry about money.

Not everybody wants to be an accountant, and I think that that's okay.

So that is Where I come from, just having more of a words and pictures kind of mindset to begin with.

Local people might be interested to know that the first business that I started was not in finance at all.

It was a pie business called Wedge Pies.

And we never had a storefront.

This was something I did nights and weekends while I had a day job.

We were in Logan Square Kitchen, which is now one location of the Chicago Diner over on Milwaukee in Logan Square.

So we were in the Logan Square Kitchen at the time, baking pies, delivering on the weekends.

And I realized from that that I wasn't too good at managing the money.

Even though I went to a lot of school and I was supposed to be one of the smart kids, I was not that great at the accounting and the finances for this business.

And I went into a teeny bit of credit card debt working on this business.

I paid it off because quickly I always had a full time job, like I said, the whole time that I was doing it.

But from that I kind of thought, okay, if I mess this up, how are other people doing with money and are they struggling with it?

And it turned out, yes, certainly they were.

And that's something I learned for sure when I was at Northwestern in grad school.

So I went to the MPD program at Northwestern.

MPD 2.

Master of Product Design and Development Management.

It's a little bit of a mouthful, but it is actually in the McCormick School of Engineering part time program.

Highly recommend.

It was great.

And we were talking about that as a problem to solve from a product management perspective and what could we do about it?

And as we were doing the research, we brought in some undergrads and we gave them free pizza and asked them questions about money.

And we wrote on the whiteboard, what is your biggest fear about money?

And these are Northwestern undergraduates.

So Northwestern is a pretty good school, right?

You expect that people there are getting their ticket punched to a successful adult life.

We asked, what's your biggest fear about money?

And two of those responses really stuck with me.

People said student loans and they worry about spending too much on takeout.

And we expected that.

But one person wrote being trapped in poverty and somebody else wrote, struggling my whole life, right at Northwestern.

So I took this mentality that, okay, I'm not good at this, are other people seeking help with this?

And that hit me in a big way that yes, absolutely they are.

And this problem is bigger and more important than I even thought.

And that's what motivated me to continue forward with it, take it out of that program and turn it into a real company.

That's awesome.

I mean, I think a lot of the most impactful ideas, especially in finance, come from those personal moments and frustrations and observations and gaps that people are facing firsthand.

So I appreciate that background story.

So when you're trying to.

Or at least when you're telling folks about your product, how do you explain it to them for the first time so they can kind of understand it?

Because you mentioned earlier cohorts.

Right.

Of people so that you can scale it?

So that's not necessarily something that I could just sign up myself and do it on my own.

It's like I actually will join a group of people.

How would you describe to someone hearing about it for the first time?

Yes.

And this is a work in progress.

Building it is a work in progress.

Describing it is a work in progress as well.

And that's why I kind of call it community finance.

And we're still defining what that means, but it's based on the observation that everyone worries about money, and everyone worries about it in a way that makes them feel kind of lonely.

The irony is everyone else is having the same questions and problems and concerns.

And people who are financial advisors see this over and over.

They answer the same questions all the time from everyone.

And that kind of is silly, right?

Like, why are we all individually approaching all the same stuff instead of doing it together?

So think about school.

We were in classes when we were kids, with 30 other kids.

And the point was we all learned together.

We all needed to learn the same kind of material, and we all learned it together.

So why can't we do something similar with money?

When it comes to how this actually plays out, again, that's kind of a work in progress.

So there is one question that comes up pretty frequently, which is, do you know or see the other people in your group?

Because when people talk about finances, a lot of it is stuff that people don't want to share.

Some people do want to share it.

I think that's an increasing trend, especially with young people.

And I think it's good to talk about it no matter what, to talk about this more.

But some people don't want to share that.

And some people, on the other hand, really do.

Some people are posting their net worth in regular sequence on TikTok.

So some people want to talk about this more and some people don't.

So when we talk about creating these groups of people, the purpose of that is to scale the business model so that more people will be able to afford it.

We call it kind of like mass transit for the financial journey.

Instead of taking a limousine, everyone taking a limousine from point A to point B, we're talking about something that's more like the cta and you're there with a bunch of other people.

Everybody's paying a little bit and getting a lot further together in terms of features and all of that stuff.

We have a huge roadmap.

We love talking about all of that and we will get there.

Where we're starting in the very first place is something called Balance My Goals.

So this is something that you can individually sign up for on the Club Money website right now.

This is in development so you can get on the waitlist, but it's called Balance My Goals.

And the purpose of it is to help you figure out, first of all, how much money you're saving every month.

Hopefully it's some.

If it's none, that's okay too.

We'll figure it out together.

But help you figure out how much money you're saving every month and then what you should do with that money.

So let's say you can save $500 a month.

Awesome.

You've done the hard part.

You've made the money and you've managed to cover your expenses and hopefully go out and enjoy some restaurants and concerts and whatever, a little bit as well and still save that amount of money.

Terrific.

Then what do you do with it?

You might have student loans to pay for.

You might have credit card debt to pay off.

You might have a savings account that you want to put more money into.

You want might want to beef up your emergency fund.

How much money should be in there in the first place?

This is something that a professional can help you answer as well as investing.

Everybody wants to invest more than they are today, probably.

What is the right balance for you of that $500 a month?

This is a game that's, you know, finance is a game that's won day by day, month by month, over a period of many, many years.

This is not just.

Everybody kind of likes the idea of a get rich quick thing, but the word that's usually after that is get rich quick scheme.

And those are not typically very good.

So this is a day by day, bit by bit kind of task.

So if you think about it month to month, and you think about achieving those goals, debt payoff, saving cash, and investing those three goals on a monthly basis, how should you bring the resources and the money that you can save every single month to those goals.

What's the right breakdown for you?

We couldn't find anywhere that you could get an answer to that question.

And so that's going to be the first part of our group finance that we launch officially.

I like the concept.

I probably would need something like that in my future because I was planning when I had my kids, obviously I ended up seeking a financial advis, but that was in my mid-30s.

Right.

Like I hadn't really thought about it before.

Like I had just a savings account.

I didn't really know about high yield savings.

I didn't really know about investing as much either in the first, like my, in my 20s.

So I think this is a really cool opportunity for like all sorts of young people that are just getting out of college, transitioning their first job.

Like they should get this type of information so they can be aware of the options they have.

Exactly.

I think that's something that's missing for sure.

Yes, thank you.

Leading straight into my point.

That is something that's missing.

This is a huge gap, especially with people who are in their 20s and early 30s.

Because financial advisors have that business model where they need to focus on higher net worth clients.

They can't serve the young people.

The young people are getting missed.

Even the people who grew up in Wheaton, which is a very nice suburb.

Even people from Wheaton are having questions when they're in their 20s and 30s.

And I should know.

And this is something that we've observed and are definitely trying to fill that need and bring a different product and a different price point to those folks.

Because when you graduate from college, what happens is you kind of stumble around on your own and try to figure it out for 15, 20 years.

Right.

Until you become old enough to magically have a financial advisor or need one.

Why are we letting people just stumble around alone for that amount of time?

And I think it's just because nobody's invented the right thing to serve them and speak to them.

And that is absolutely what we're trying to do.

What has been more challenging than you expected about building and finance in this space?

Good question.

I think something that's been more challenging is something that has been challenging is the fatigue with products like ours, with messages about personal finance in general.

And that is on the part of both our potential customers and investors as well.

Personal finance is a known problem.

It's a big problem.

It's been talked about ad nauseam many ways by many different people.

And so investors are kind of like, yeah, well Everything's pretty much out there.

I would argue that it's not.

And I would argue that because the problem is still so big and if anything, getting bigger, there's room for multiple solutions, certainly, and definitely room for one that fits the gap that we're talking about on behalf of our customers.

A lot of people talk about financial literacy.

That is certainly a need.

However, there are not very many people who don't know that you're supposed to save money.

Everybody knows that you are supposed to save money.

How do you do it?

When do you do it?

Where do you do it?

How do you focus on it?

How do you keep yourself going with it?

What is the point of doing it?

That is all.

Those are all more detailed questions that are more complicated.

When people talk about financial literacy, I think they think, well, everybody that's not me is just foolish.

And that's certainly not true.

And I think something we need to be a little more aware of and generous in our thoughts with other people, particularly younger people.

I'm going to say this out loud, and it's something that frustrates me.

Everybody who has gray hair hears about my product and tells me about how much young people spend on coffee.

You guys got to get a new line, okay?

It's become a joke.

It's become a meme.

It's out there for a reason.

And I don't lead with that, but I go to events and people bring this to me every time they're throwing this on the doorstep.

Young people in their coffee spending.

And.

It's really unfair to criticize young people for not being able to afford the life that older people had, because things have most definitely changed.

Prices of housing have changed.

Childcare, as we talked about.

I mean, these are huge shifts, and the amount of money is staggering.

And if you are not aware of those, then you really haven't read enough of the news.

And I don't know how you've missed it if you can still be talking about people's coffee spending.

People buy coffee because they can't afford houses.

Get with the program.

First of all, we need to get those people to 1 million cups Chicago, because that's where you could get free coffee and get smarter.

Exactly.

That's true.

There is one place where there's free coffee and it's Fun.

Every Wednesday, 9am Technique.

Yes.

See you there.

Seriously, that was like.

I incorporated an ad right there.

Yeah, very good.

Before I follow up on the investor challenges that you kind of alluded to, you also alluded to this, you know, this idea of waiting for kind of your customer to be on that readiness mentality.

So I. I'm curious about that, because club money seems to focus not just on the finances, but also on that mindset and the behavior.

So how do you think about that balance when you're building this product?

Yes.

So what we have on the App Store right now is something that is foundational to the community finance idea, and it's fundamentally simpler.

What is on the App Store right now under the name Club money is expense tracking, and it's like Tinder for money.

It's very simple.

There's only four spend, splurge, save, and share.

And you just swipe to categorize.

So you connect your accounts.

We're using Plaid, which is the industry leader.

It's all secure.

And you swipe your transactions to the corners of the screen on your phone, and that is all you have to do.

You can literally do this on the bus.

I have.

So it is about mindset.

I think some of the mindset that we need to change, though, is not necessarily that all spending is bad, because that's the kind of message that you intuit from hearing a lot of other personal finance content and listening to a lot of other stuff.

The mindset that we want to create is that this doesn't have to be that hard.

Like I said, you can do it on the bus.

It doesn't have to be that hard.

It doesn't have to be that restrictive, but you do have to pay attention to it.

This is something that from the beginning we are doing that's very different from our competitors, which is you do have to interact with your expenses.

You do have to go in and look at them and you have to swipe them.

You have to make a choice about where they go.

People often ask, well, can't you auto categorize that?

Technically, yes.

But just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

Because one of the big problems that we're addressing is the avoidance of the topic in general.

So if a product can auto categorize for you, if there's a finance tool that can do this for you, what that does is it says, I give you permission to ignore it forever so you never have to open it because it's all out of categorized, then what is that going to do for you?

It's not going to help you realize anything about your expenses.

It's not going to help you pay attention to them on a more frequent basis, which is what most people really need to do, is just make sure they're looking at this stuff once a month.

So that is a behavior that we want to change is the avoidance, not necessarily the spending.

People who have a spending problem know they have a spending problem.

Again, just like people know they need to save money, people who spend too much money know that what they need is not a whole guilt trip about that, but a way that they can keep track easier, simpler, and in a way that feels more positive so that they can think about what changes they do want to make, if any.

We're basically just making the tool simpler so that people can come to their own decisions about their mindset and behavior.

Yeah, no, I like that.

It sounds like you kind of gamified it a bit, right?

Like with people being able to swipe left or right for whatever option.

I think that's fun in itself.

And then have you found any key learnings based on conversations, like early conversations with your users and your community?

Quite a few.

And it's hard to even know where to start.

One thing that I have learned in particular about personal finance is that people who have ADHD really struggle with personal finance.

And I think the way that we're trying to make that easier for them, and thus everybody, is by making something visual, by making something that is a little bit more fun, and by focusing on once a month that this is something that you can and should look at once a month, and you can complete that task and move on.

And so when we factor in the gamified kind of rewards systems in the app, this isn't quite there yet.

But when we think about that part, we want just the simple act of going in and looking at your expenses to be something that we celebrate and reward, that you get the confetti.

Right now, there is one celebratory experience in the app that we call the super pig, and that is when you hit your savings target for the month.

And it's all based on simple percentages.

It's like the 50, 30, 20 rule on steroids.

That's been a common rule of thumb in personal finance for 20 years.

50% Of your income should go to needs, 30% to wants, and 20% to savings.

We have that breakdown in the app.

If you don't like that or it doesn't work for you, we have a simple menu of some others, like the debt crusher, the yolo, there's the fire.

We even added in this economy, which has a 60% spend on needs, because, let's be real, that's necessary.

All of them have at least a 10% savings target.

So when you hit your savings target for the month, whatever that savings target is, you get this Woo.

Fun confetti experience that we call the super pig that we'd like to have, I don't know, have the super pig, have little piglet children that are different celebratory experiences on a smaller way in the app.

Before we move on to my fun questions about funding, how you're building this right, I want to give you the chance to share in your own opinion or your own words how or what makes club money different from traditional finance tools or other apps out there.

Mm.

We've talked about a couple of these already, and one is making it fun.

Making this something where the experience of looking at it is better and different and simpler.

You know, let's be real.

Spend, splurge, save, share.

You only need four words.

So making it more fun, making it simpler.

That's the experience that we have today that is differentiated from other budget apps where we connect the dots to our bigger vision for community finance is that you track those expenses.

And then with that data, that's how we can sort of put you in a group or a cohort with people like you who have maybe the same amount of income and expenses or have the same spending on certain things or live in similar areas with similar cost of living, et cetera.

But there's probably somebody in Connecticut and probably somebody in Arizona that have very similar finances that could benefit from the exact same advice.

And they don't know each other, and they don't know them.

So where we connect the dots between those two experiences is using that data to put you into that cohort.

And that's how we will deliver the advice.

So on the one hand, the product we have today, more fun, more simple, and the product that we have or that we will have in the future and we're building now with balance, my goals is that it will be truly a community where you can know, at least with however much data you feel like sharing a lot or none or whatever, but know that you are not alone.

We always talk about personal finance as personal finance.

Maybe the problem with it this whole time has not been the finance part, but the personal part.

Maybe if we make this into something that we do together and can get excited about together, maybe that will be easy for everyone.

Why do people join group workout classes?

It's because having other people around pushes them harder.

And it's because there's accountability.

You know, I go every Wednesday.

I know so and so is going to be there.

So I'm going to go we know all this from behavioral psychology and we're not really bringing that into finance and I think that's a huge missed opportunity.

Yeah, no, that's a great point.

All right, so transitioning off to the funding of this and how you're growing.

So how have you been funding it?

Club money so far?

Because you're still pretty early stage.

We are.

I mean, I've been working on it for a while.

I've been full time for two years before that, you know, when I was talking about Northwestern, I still had other full time jobs while that was happening.

So I've been full time for two years.

We have funded it through a combination of bootstrapping and founders cash, as well as investment from friends and family and local angel investors.

So we've done that so far via SafeNotes and we're continuing that now, but also talking to some of the very early VCs to get us into that institutional capital phase.

I was going to say in this economy, 100%.

So you are thinking about that, raising capital and focusing more on building and refining this concept as you go?

Yes, yes, we are raising capital right now, in fact.

So we are raising a 300k round at the moment, likely still with those safe notes.

But we do have some very helpful local investors already and they're on our advisory board and are also people who I can call for advice when needed.

And so we lean on them.

They've been very terrific.

That's great.

What does growth look like for you right now though?

Are you more focusing on the fundraising side or the building community or the product itself?

Expanding reach?

Where are you hoping to grow?

This is probably not an answer that anyone would advise, but we are doing a little bit of all of those things at the same time.

And the reality is you kind of have to.

You kind of have to.

So right now we are focused on building and building the product and the wait list for this feature balance my goals.

So that is really going to be the first part of the advice aspect of our product that we launch out there.

And I think it is differentiated.

This is the first feature we have shown our beta test group that has received a 100% thumbs up rating.

They all said they would use this or would like it in some capacity.

It is the first time that that has happened.

So we're excited about building this.

We are building that now.

We are talking about in social media, getting the word out there and really trying to drive people to sign up for that wait list for this particular feature.

And that is in the first iteration going to be more of an individual experience.

But from that we can build into more of this group sort of concept and at the same time we're pursuing our 300k race.

Got it.

How big is your team?

I have a co founder who's getting real good at cloud code.

I have worked in software and product management before, but I don't code.

I can't write code.

He's really taking that and running with it and it's incredible what that can do these days.

Yeah, seriously.

So it's just the two of you right now?

So it's the two of us.

We also have a certified financial planner who is with us.

She's out in Boston.

Her name is Misty lynch if you want to look her up.

But she's terrific.

And I think I'm overusing the word terrific today.

She's great.

She's amazing.

So that's our team and we've worked with some other folks in design and development and everything, so definitely had a lot of help pulling this together.

But that's the core.

Yeah, no, don't worry.

I like to overuse the word that's awesome because I always feel like it is awesome.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But let's talk about a little bit about Chicago and like building here in this community and the support that you're getting.

So we were just talking about how much I love Chicago, how much we both, you know, we can be more Chicago.

So I'm curious about how this ecosystem and this, this community has influenced your journey as a founder, you know, so far.

Yes.

First of all, for a product like ours, I think it makes sense that it comes from the Midwest.

This is a very practical solution to a long standing problem.

And it's not something that we're trying to go out there and disrupt everything and make a big splash about.

We just want to do something that isn't being done that can help a lot more people.

So I think it's fundamentally very practical in that way.

And who better to do this than people from the Midwest?

That's what I think.

Yeah.

Are there any specific groups or spaces or communities that you have felt this support from here in Chicago?

Like are you in any co working spaces, any incubators, anything that has really helped you kind of propel yourself more?

Yeah, we're not in any co working spaces that costs money.

We have been very, very lean, so not opposed to that.

But we haven't joined any so far.

1871 Has a lot of terrific events.

One Million Cups we already talked about.

But that is a terrific group.

Terrific.

Again, love it.

One Million Cups is fantastic.

One Million Cups is fantastic.

Every Wednesday morning with the free coffee.

And so that is a group that I genuinely like.

I mean we've hung out there but I enjoy seeing everybody there.

And because it's founder friendly I think you get a different perspective on things and a more honest take from the people presenting and also the people in the audience providing feedback.

There are a lot of different casual events focused on women founders.

All the shout out to the women founders in Chicago.

You guys are amazing.

I love meeting you at all these different events.

And so that's always, that's always good too.

Did you.

Did you ever participated on that?

Like women tech founders, the financial one with, with bmo.

You know what I'm talking about?

No, I do know what you're talking about.

In fact we applied and I don't know what is happening with it.

I'm not certain that we didn't make the cut but since I haven't heard from them I'm kind of guessing we.

Didn't send you the best vibes because I really love that, that opportunity that they have.

They give you like one on one guidance with experts from BMO and they offer like tailored support I guess around sales cycles and vendor management and all this stuff.

So that should be really exciting.

So good luck if you get selected.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks.

They get to do a lot of cool stuff.

I was jealous when I was working there and the program manager that was leading it got to go to New York and they got to go to San Francisco and a bunch of other places and I'm like, I want to be on that group.

Yes.

Cool.

Cool.

One thing that I think is challenging for us in Chicago is that we are a consumer company and we're not cpg.

So we're consumer tech and there's a lot of great B2B companies and a lot of support there.

And I'm not saying that we don't have the same but I don't see the community for consumer tech being as big proportional to the other ones.

So that's something that we're thinking through too.

I mean in terms of applying to accelerators and stuff like that, not everyone is a great fit for what we are doing.

So we've tried to be specific about.

We want to grow as a consumer company.

Not that we aren't open to B2B plays necessarily, but I think fundamentally what we are solving is a consumer problem and it needs a consumer solution.

Yeah, that's fair.

Well, on that note, when you think about the long term vision for club money, what kind of impact do you hope that you will have on people's lives?

Yes, I hope that we can make those years between those years after college easier for people.

And you know, not everybody goes to college either.

We could make those first years of a working life easier for people to start figuring this out with help from not only professionals, but also people that are like you.

Because all of this stuff is out there, the knowledge is out there and the support is out there and the shared experience is out there.

And if we can bring that together within our company to help people get through those years a little bit better and get them started faster on their financial journey, then I would be delighted at that outcome.

Yeah, no, I love that.

And then quickly, before closing out, I'm curious about the lens of a founder that you have now.

So what advice would you give someone who wants to build something, maybe in the financial space too, but doesn't really come from that fintech background either?

That's a good question.

I just did a post on LinkedIn that was things I've learned in two years as a founder.

The one thing I think I would say is know why you are doing it.

And if the answer is to make a lot of money, you will not continue doing it because that alone is not motivating enough.

It is too hard.

And there are a lot of ways to make money, a lot of them.

And there are a lot of different ways to do hard work.

This has to be whatever this is for you, whatever the concept is, that has to be the kind of hard work that you want to do.

And if it isn't, then you're not going to keep up with it.

And maybe that's okay.

It's okay to pivot and say, I'd rather do something else.

But before you start something like this, I would say appreciate why you personally want to spend your time doing this.

And if you've got a very compelling reason for yourself, you'll be a lot more motivated to continue when the going gets tough.

Yeah, great advice.

And a bonus question.

We're at a pivotal moment in time where a lot of us are having a lot of different types of information.

We're gathering a lot of information.

More people are asking Claude or ChatGPT of the things to help them with their financial future.

So I'm curious if there's anything exciting there that you hope that will bring some more financial wellness for everybody in the world.

Yes.

First, I think that fundamentally our business model rests on being able to accomplish these groupings with AI.

Our thesis is to let humans and computers do what they are each good at.

And computers are good at pattern matching, and humans are good at being human and talking to other humans.

So if we put the best of these together, I'm optimistic that we can create a very different community finance experience that would not have been possible in the years before AI and computers existed.

I think that is an enabler to us being able to make this differentiated product that will help millions more people than can afford financial advice today.

That's great answer.

Appreciate that.

Humans go.

Humans go.

Humans go.

Humans go.

White Sox.

Oh, there I did again.

I like that you're a White Sox fan.

You hardly ever see that anymore.

I know, and that's why I have to bring it out there.

Because you know what?

It's.

It's unique.

How's the season going so far?

It just started, right?

It just started.

We're doing okay.

Nothing, nothing.

Nothing's been decided yet.

I don't know what you mean.

I like that.

I like that.

You know, hey, only up from there, right?

Only up from there.

All right.

Well, I appreciate you being here.

For anyone that is listening that might want to follow up on your journey or just get involved with Club Money, how can they find you?

You can find me on social media.

I will say what I say at the end of every one of my videos.

I'm Christine from Club Money.

Follow me.

Let's figure it out.

I like the voice too.

You definitely have a personality voice.

I don't have that.

I feel like I just have like the same old me boring voice.

If you if go make 6 or 700 Tik Tok videos like I have and you will develop it over time.

It's not really.

That's true.

I guess I don't just practice enough.

Yeah, I'm sure that would.

That would help.

Well, Christine, thank you so much, so much.

I hope to see you soon at the next 1 MC.

But I appreciate your time and thank you so much for joining us.

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you.

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