Welcome to Don't Retire Graduate, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with a purpose and a passion. I'm your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman, and this is the sixth season of our show. Every other Thursday, we'll be bringing you interviews with amazing guests. And on alternating weeks, we're hosting our Diary of a Financial Advisor segment where we interview financial advisors about their professional journeys and and their passion for helping others succeed. Please take a moment to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Today I'm pleased to be joined by Chelsea Williams. Chelsea is known as the Money Whisperer and she's the host of the Always and Never about the Money podcast. I love that.
Eric Brotman [:With over a decade of working with entrepreneurs and their money, Chelsea's come to understand it's always and never about the money. So she's on a mission to splash some color around this very black and white topic. School never taught us about money, yet we use it every day. Financial clarity can be the thing that shatters glass ceilings. Chelsea. Welcome to Don't Retire Graduate. Hey. Hey.
Chelsea Williams [:Happy to be here.
Eric Brotman [:This is going to be fun because first of all, the name of your podcast has me wanting to like, subscribe immediately and check out every episode. So you already have that. Tell us a little bit about yourself first and how you got into being the Money Whisperer, which I also love. And then we'll go from there and talk a little bit about the show and some of the work you're doing.
Chelsea Williams [:You know, I love this story. I am where I am by complete accident is how it started. It was necessity in my life when I was 20 years old, newly pregnant, single mother, to do something with myself. And so I found myself in college for healthcare administration. Saw this accounting class come up and I loved it. My brain clicked with it. So I ran with it and it was really a journey of trust. After that, I landed a good in house job, found the opportunity to take over their books, and that led to working in a tax and accounting firm and starting my own business.
Eric Brotman [:Okay, and how, how long ago did you start your. Your own practice, your own business?
Chelsea Williams [:Eight years. Yep. We're coming up on nine.
Eric Brotman [:Okay. Well, you know, they, they say the first. The first 30 are the toughest. So you're almost there. I'm only kidding. Actually, for our industry, it's generally five years to know if you're going to survive or not. So congratulations on reaching almost 10 years. Tell us a little bit about your business.
Eric Brotman [:And what you do every day to help empower folks, and I know you particularly help empower women with financial literacy and awareness. So let's talk about some of the work you're doing.
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah. So when I was VP at the tax and accounting firm, before I started my own company, my first company, I realized one thing that really created, like you like to say, passion and having a mission. And that was that the work we were doing for business owners, handing them these financial reports kind of ended at just giving them the financial reports. They had no idea how to use them, what they are saying, because, you know, your money tells a story. And so, as a side passion of mine, I love, like all of the neurosciences, quantum physics, I'm just fascinated by human nature and understanding it from a biological and scientific level. So at some point, that understanding, with my understanding of all the nerdy number stuff, started to merge, and I started to realize, you know, we're not teaching these people about money, but how they manage their business money is how they manage their personal money. And so that's what led me to create my sister company, Money Mastery, where I work with business owners and individuals around their money, because money is a mirror. And like my podcast says, it's always and never about the money.
Chelsea Williams [:And what we're doing in our finance is very much a reflection around what we're doing in the rest of our life. And I love working with women in particular, because we are brand new to the financial algorithm, as I call it, meaning the whole timeline of financial institutions being in existence. Women have had the ability to create financial independence for 1% of its lifetime. 1%. We are only dipping our toes into this algorithm. And so I love helping women because behind the money is psychology. And women have a lot of generations working against their psychology that are also working against their money.
Eric Brotman [:All right, that's so much to unpack. I'm going to do my best because I love that, first of all, I am the father of a daughter, a high school daughter, who, you know, fortunately, because of her parents and because of the school she goes to, was never told when she was young that she wasn't going to be good at math, which I know a lot of girls are still told, which is preposterous and absurd, but that still happens in the United States in various places. And when it comes to money, what's interesting is that the household wealth in this country is something like 75% controlled by women, whether it's single or widowed or women or divorced women, or whether it's just the women controlling in a traditional marriage or other marriage, controlling the wealth, and that number is increasing, not decreasing. The future of money is female entirely. Women outlive men and the future of money is female. It's one of the reasons why, you know, we spend so much energy and identifying amazing humans for our organization. And we're very heavily female dominated in terms of not only advisors but, but specifically the C suite. And it's because that's, that's where the puck is going, in my opinion.
Eric Brotman [:So it's interesting you said it's only 1% because you guys, you guys, I'm referring to women as you guys, you all have begun essentially taking over the money game in only 1% of the time. That's impressive.
Chelsea Williams [:It is. And that's one of the things I like to talk about too, because women feel not only disempowered because it's not only they're being told, you're not going to be good at math. Which by the way, for anything number wise, you need the math of a fourth grader. It's not that complicated. I think we psych ourselves out of that. But it's not only math. I have a lot of clients who were raised with family members telling them, you don't need to be part of the money conversation. You don't need to understand this stuff.
Chelsea Williams [:This is not something you should be involved in. And so it is incredibly profound to me that in only this 1% span, if you back out enough, in my opinion, we've leveled the playing field. Like there are still wage gaps and things, but if we zoom all the way out and look at the big picture, it's only a matter of time.
Eric Brotman [:Yeah, I do think the playing field is mostly level. I think women are able to, they can vote with their wallets if they choose. They can choose professional advisors with their wallet and with their spending power and with their acumen if they choose. And you know, so often we hear these stories and I've seen, I've been at this 32 years. I've seen those situations where a husband and wife traditional, looks like something out of all in the family, but they come in and the husband literally won't even let his wife speak in the meeting. Like I've seen that in my career. I don't tolerate it, but I've seen it and it's real and it's peculiar to me. Now there's also lots of situations where one of the two partners or spouses tends to take the lead role in the financial impact in the House.
Eric Brotman [:Whether it's the bill paying or whether it's some of the decision making, it doesn't mean there isn't conversation. It means that one party or the other says, all right, this is. This is one of the lanes I'll play in, and I'll take this one and you take that one, and we'll sort of divide and conquer a little bit. And I'm seeing that pendulum swing to be much more 50. 50 than what I'm sure was 95. 5 for a long time.
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah. Are you saying that rightfully so? I have, yeah. And especially with financial advisors, not only are you guys seeing, you know, the wife not being an active participant in the conversation, but a lot of financial advisors are doing it to the clients. Right. Speaking to the husband, working with the husband, not engaging with the wife or inviting them in. And so, yeah, it. It is certainly a thing.
Eric Brotman [:I. I love that advisors do that, by the way, because it means that they don't keep those clients. And we do. And I say. I say that to be funny. You were like, oh, God, what's he gonna say? Now, I say that very respectfully because that's just not the way we do business. But we do see that now, the. The industry, I believe, is still something like 88% male.
Eric Brotman [:So when we go to. We go to conferences and we have, you know, our. Our incoming CEO and our CIO in this firm are both incredible women. And when they go to these financial advisory conferences, people still approach them like they're someone's spouse, like, oh, who are you here with today? 2025. That's ridiculous. And, you know, on the one hand, they're irritated by it and frustrated by it. And on the other hand, I guess you try to reframe it a little bit and say, you know what, they're underestimating, you just go crush them. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know what to say.
Eric Brotman [:The fact that that continues and it's never happened to me, and it happens to lots of other types of folks. I mean, you know, you look at the space, the industry, something like 97% Caucasian, too. So you can look at. In very similar ways in. In, you know, racial terms, age terms, gender terms. I mean, there's so much. This industry is old and white and male. Now, I am not beating on those people because I think I might qualify at least two of the three and maybe all three soon.
Eric Brotman [:But. But being able to identify that that is A, not okay in the long run, and B, not productive and not helpful. Has been a competitive advantage. So if there are any other financial advisors who are watching this and you're still talking only to the husband and not to the wife, please keep doing that because it will make you irrelevant very, very quickly, and we appreciate it. So, sorry, Chelsea. I just had to. I had to throw a zinger out there because this is still happening. You're right.
Eric Brotman [:You're seeing it.
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah. And for those listening and they feel that go reach out to you, you know? Right. I think that's one of the things that women. We have to do in this crucial period is really own our understanding. So if you haven't been part of that conversation, start inserting yourself and being part of that conversation. And even. Even in a healthy relationship, we want to split the responsibilities. Right.
Chelsea Williams [:We want to delegate and be a partnership, but still understand what the other side of that looks like. And yes, we are still paving paths, but the momentum we have is really exciting.
Eric Brotman [:So tell me why it's always and never about the money First, I love the title. I love the idea, you know, you've left out certain things, like sometimes about the money, or occasionally or rarely or seldom. So why always and never? What's the genesis of that?
Chelsea Williams [:What I try to help people understand and have a perspective, shift around is the fact that money is a tool. It's an inanimate object. It does not care what you feel, think, see as right, wrong, indifferent. It operates according to how you direct it. And so when you take this idea that everybody has the same exact tool and we're all living in the same exact equation, which is money we make minus money we spend equals money we keep to save and invest. You start to understand that money moves with your energy. So, and I like to say there are. There's no such thing as money problems, only problems showing up in your money.
Chelsea Williams [:And to use an example, that a lot of people can probably relate to something as simple as lending money to a friend or a family member, a lot of times that can result in conflict, especially if somebody doesn't pay them back or it puts you in a cash situation where you're now struggling. To me, what I see in those situations is a lack of communication and a lack of boundaries. So it's not really about the money. It's about. And these are things that you can probably trace in this relationship further back was the upfront communication, the being clear, the setting, the expectation, your boundary to say, no, I can't lend this to you, and risk not getting it back because it'll put me into a. Into a financial situation. So I love helping people see money as a mirror and really drill down to what's behind this frustration, what's behind the thing that I'm calling a money problem, but it's actually a problem showing up in my money.
Eric Brotman [:So I know you work with business owners and executives, but also individuals and households. You talk about the simple equation, and it is just arithmetic. What comes in minus what you spend equals what you consume, save. We've been trying to teach people to pay themselves first and to. To carve out that 10 or 15 or 20% or whatever makes sense for that household saver. Invest that first or use that for long term. And then how you spend the other 80% is up to you. Do anything you want with it.
Eric Brotman [:Do you concur with that? Does that. Does. Is that disharmonious with. With some of the things that you teach, or does that make sense to you?
Chelsea Williams [:I believe in the same exact thing. There's a book called Profit first by Mike Michalowicz, and it's called Profit First. And so we use a framework very similar to what he outlines in the book, not only for our business clients, but for our individual clients as well. And the main premise of the book is pay yourself first, just like you said, and prioritizing profit instead of it becoming an afterthought. And, you know, that's one of the biggest issues that I see is we have a net zero equation. A lot of us, a lot of business owners, a lot of individuals are spending everything they make. In fact, some of us are spending it before we even get it. I mean, we all know the story of yourself or someone that got a raise, and the raise kicks in next month.
Chelsea Williams [:So today they go and look for a new car, and that money's gone before they ever even start to get it right. And so by prioritizing paying yourself first or profit first, you are showing yourself that you can control your equation and put that stuff aside. And the biggest kickback I get, because for individuals, this means a savings account, right? Put money aside to save. And the biggest kickback I hear, I'm sure you hear it too, is I don't make enough to save or I don't have enough to save. And saving is not necessarily about the amount more. So it is about getting into the habit of every time you receive money, please, putting a specific amount of it aside and not even considering it. And I say, I don't care if it's 50 cents, it's 50 cents saved, no matter who you are or where you're at, financially speaking, you can install the habit into your life. That way, when you do find something in life that grants you the opportunity of more money, you're not tempted to just stay in the habit of not setting it aside.
Eric Brotman [:So you mentioned a little earlier during our conversation that the way business finances are handled and the way household finances are handled are similar, if not the same. And so I'm curious because for our business clients and for people who are business owners, and even in our company, we do create an annual budget. We do monitor that, we do spend time on that. However, people who've been listening to this show for six years know that I call that the B word when it comes to households. And we don't ever try and do that to ourselves. We don't use the B word partly because I think households are, I think are unable to stick to or even unhealthy to try and stick to a hard budget. You know, to me, if you make X dollars and you put 20 cents away and you spend the 80, how you spend it, I truly don't care whether it means you you're going to a nice steakhouse once every three months or you're going to a run of the mill spot every Friday. I don't care how you spend it.
Eric Brotman [:Whether it's dining or housing or education or entertainment or it makes no difference if you've saved that amount. I think it's really hard to stay on a budget in a household because life happens and in business, life is a little more predictable. Am I barking up the right tree or am I just missing the memo? It's okay if you think I'm missing the memo. You tell me because you promised you were coming in hot. So it's all right.
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah, yeah. No, here's something that we all need to think about too. I love how you call it the B word because that is people's response to that word. That's like, ew, gross. I don't want to manage a budget. I don't want to feel restricted and not be able to spend wherever I want to. But here's how we need to approach the B word. What a budget does for you is it protects your future self.
Chelsea Williams [:What, what it does for you is gives you boundaries to spend within and freedom around those financial boundaries. And the profit first system outlined in Mike's book. When I first read that book, my jaw kept dropping because by the time I read it, I was actually already using a multi bank account system for my personal financ and so look, yes, things come up, and they do come up in business as well. It's kind of like the same unpredictability to a certain degree. The only thing you can do, and most of them are predictable even on a personal level. You have a dog, you probably are going to get a vet bill. But the only thing you can do in those situations is prepare for those things if it's something that can happen. And what does that mean? That means having a cushion.
Chelsea Williams [:That means having an emergency fund. All of these things are, are things that can be prepared for. And it's all about positioning yourself to not have to, you know, go take out a personal loan for the vet bill or the roof. If you live in a house, you know the roof is going to be replaced. It's fairly easy to predict when that's going to happen. So all of these things can be managed to some degree.
Eric Brotman [:I, I'm going to agree with you only because I think it's in my best interest, because I think you could probably talk circles around me when it comes to the B word. I do think there's a tendency because the emergency fund is perfect. The emergency fund makes a lot of sense and people will always ask the same question, which is, well, how much is enough and how much? And of course that depends entirely on households and budget and is it one income house or two income house? Is it, you know, is your lifestyle pushing it to the, pushing the envelope or do you have a meaningful cushion? I mean, there's so many variables and I generally don't love rules of thumb. I consider a rule of thumb to be like a one size fits all garment. And the only one of those I can think of is a hospital gown. And they're not flattering on any of us for so many reasons. So do you use a rule of thumb for emergency funds or how do you, how do you suggest people calculate what is, when is too much, when is it too much, where you should probably be deploying that for a better return and when is it not enough where you're too close to the vest. How do you, how do you manage that for folks?
Chelsea Williams [:I am just like you. I cannot stand cookie cutter solutions for such a diverse set of circumstances. And I think a lot of it has to do with the person, you know, what makes you feel safe. I have some people who are like, yeah, two months, two months of padding for all of my bills is all. I. Cause I know I can figure something out in two months. I have other people that want to go six Months because they have, you know, less of a risk tolerance. And so knowing what two months looks like for you, six months looks like for you, knowing what the potentials are.
Chelsea Williams [:Like I said, if you own a house, there are phantom costs to owning a house and you probably know what those are. Take a few minutes, write them down, do some fourth grade math, but figure out what you're really comfortable with.
Eric Brotman [:You know, I don't know where you went to school, but there's some fourth graders who probably can't do that. I mean I, I, I know you were in the advanced, you were like AP whatever and you did all the, you talked about neuroscience and quantum physics and you lost me at just past hello. I was gone in that conversation. But in terms of the, in terms of the math itself, yes, you can build a sinking fun a condo communities, have replacement reserves and do studies on when you're going to need roofing or pavement or the pool fixed or whatever it is. Households maybe aren't quite that sophisticated in doing that. I know you can probably pay a company to do that. I'm not sure anyone should. You mentioned the two months and the six months.
Eric Brotman [:Some of the variables that we've at least identified and how long that should be is how predictable is your income? You know, for people who are a straight salary, it's different than for people who live on commissions or tips or where you don't know exactly what's coming in. If you have a dual income household, unless you both work for the same company, the odds of two unemployment simultaneously aren't as high. I mean if you work for the same company, I guess that's still possible. How old are you? And it's not just age. I'm not talking, I shouldn't use age as the, as the level, but how close to financial independence are you or to maybe ending your employment where maybe not only is your risk tolerance quite as high, but where you have dueling factors where your ability to earn is in fact waning at a given point. There's a bell curve. You know, our highest earning years tend to be between 45 and 60 or so. And you know, it creeps up along the way and, and then sometimes it starts to drop off for various reasons.
Eric Brotman [:And I'm not alleging ageism so much as just looking at statistics. What other variables? What are some of the other things that it might impact that. Did I miss a few?
Chelsea Williams [:I think those are really good and all things to take into consideration. And at the end of the day, if you are able to stack up Enough to cover what you think might be worst case scenario, like furnace goes out or something like that. As long as it doesn't eat it all up. The idea is to replenish it back. And so part of managing your money is getting in tune with your money because money is energy, but it has very distinct patterns. And you know, even when I'm working with my business clients, I make it really easy for them. When we're doing a three year forecast, I'm like, look, what we're doing right now is giving it our best guess. And that may sound weird coming from a professional, but when I first start working with somebody, I don't know their patterns, I don't know their tendencies.
Chelsea Williams [:All I have is historical financial information to work off of, plus the conversation I have with them about what their plans are for the coming three years. It is a constant dialing in process and it's not overwhelming. If you touch point with your budget once a quarter, you're doing better than most people. So you know, you really got to get to know your numbers over time.
Eric Brotman [:There's a lot there. And you did use the B word again, but it was in a business context. So I'm giving you a pass. There's a, there's a process of doing pro formas or forecasts, whether it's professional or personal. But there's also just, let's face it, financial plans, even a perfect financial plan, if there is such a thing as the ideal financial plan, which I would define as a plan that works no matter what, and that's incredibly difficult. But let's say that that is done. Any projections done into the future are absolutely wrong. The math might be right, but the reality can't be because things aren't linear.
Eric Brotman [:If you're looking at an average annual return, it doesn't matter what you plug in unless it's going to be exactly that every single year, it won't be linear, it's going to jump around a little bit. And the volatility matters, the sequence and series of returns matters, inflation matters. Your health matters, matters. So many variables. A financial plan is by its very definition a projection, but it's, it's not correct. And it shouldn't be treated as gospel. Put in a drawer and said, 10 years from now this is where I'm going to be. Because it's not, it's a reasonable representation for what could come and it has to be adjusted.
Eric Brotman [:You mentioned quarterly. I think personal financial plans, at least annually, should be, should be looked at and ultimately what you're doing here. This is not like charting a path along the highway system. You know, if you use Google Maps and you find, here's the highway system and you decide, I don't care about traffic. I'm just following this map, that's the path you're going to travel. But if you're on a boat, if you're on the sea, which is far more what. What money's like, it's much more liquid than it is solid. Right.
Eric Brotman [:If you're trying to get from A to B, the way the tides move, the way the weather moves, the way the boat behaves, the way the sails behave, whatever it is you're going to always have to look at. Are you off course? How do you adjust that course? So do you. Do you think there's a. Do you think there's a. Right, you mentioned quarterly for business. If that's the cadence, Is it really about just getting something on paper, monitoring it? It's not a set it and forget it and just adjust that course as variables change.
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah, yeah. You know, there was a study, I want to say Harvard, where the graduating class, they had, they did a survey, and those who wrote down their goals were 80% more successful when they checked in with them some years later. What we're doing is we are calling our shot. That's what I call it. Call your shot. You have to have something measurable, something clear that you can aim for. Now, it's also important to understand you have no idea what the journey likes. And your shot may change.
Chelsea Williams [:It probably will, in fact, change. But what we're doing by checkpointing and even, like the people I work with, I tell them to check in with you, people that they work with that do what you do twice a year, get the updates, adjust your shot. Right. But I think the art is in mastering the pivot, because things will change always. And if you know how to navigate that change and how to adjust your shot for that change in the numbers, that's what we're trying to achieve here.
Eric Brotman [:I love that you used art instead of science, because math might be science, but this is not scientific. You know, this is an art. And I say the same thing about accounting. And accountants might say, oh, my gosh, no, we're scientific, it's exact and it's to the penny. But the fact is, if I were to take my tax documents for a year and give them to 10 CPAs, I would get 10 different tax returns. That's absurdity. But it's true. It's art.
Eric Brotman [:If I were to Take my family's situation financially and go to 10 different financial advisors. I would get 10 different sets of recommendations. That's really overwhelming. Now, there might be a lot of overlap. There might be some things that are sort of low hanging fruit and obvious, but there might also be some things that are, that are more unique to a specific firm or a strategy or a belief or a psychology. So if you're a consumer and let's say, let's say you're working with some folks and you want them to see a financial advisor and get some guidance on this, how do you help them pick a firm or an individual or a team that they can feel comfortable in the recommendations where they don't have to go to 10 firms, get 10 plans and then do some amalgamation?
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah. So first of all, I encourage everybody. This is why we own our understanding. Right. And we talked about it earlier with women, but it's really everybody because one of the things that we do as people with our finances is we abdicate instead of delegate. And I see this a lot in the business world. They're abdicating their position and leaning on their bookkeeper for CFO advisory, but they don't know the difference. And so when it comes to the long term planning, first of all, I believe in the rule of three.
Chelsea Williams [:And we even tell our prospects this. We send them a guide on how to find a good bookkeeper and say use the rule of three because good fit matters. And I think what's important is that you feel comfortable with that person. They're answering your questions. They're even telling you what questions to ask they are asking you about because again, you want it to be your vision based off of your understanding. So they're asking you the right questions about what it is that you want to get when you graduate into retirement, which I love that phrase, by the way, and then giving you options, you know, educating you and, and being honest with you.
Eric Brotman [:Chelsea, we are dangerously close to the end of this episode and I know nobody wants to hear that because we could listen to you all day long. I have to ask you before we do anything else, what you want to be when you grow up.
Chelsea Williams [:I want to be like my Grandma Johnson. Shout out to Grandma Johnson. And the reason for that is she is 86 years old and running around doing her garden, mowing the lawn. She is moving. I think she can outdo me any day of the week. So that is what I want to be when I grow up.
Eric Brotman [:That's awesome because that, that speaks to the difference between lifespan and health span. And it's a big deal. I mean, people, you say, how long do you want to live? And you know, I think a lot of us would say, I want to live to be a hundred, but not if I'm sitting in a chair for 10 years. You know what I mean? So it's a quality of life issue. That's awesome. And I hope your grandma hears this episode and I hope she's appreciative of the shout out. I've never actually in six years had someone shout out to their grandma. That's really good.
Chelsea Williams [:This is the first. I'm going to have to help her on her phone on how to listen to it because she won't know. But I'll definitely send it to her.
Eric Brotman [:Well, you can send her the phone or you can get her onto the YouTube. She can watch you too, if she wants. Obviously. How can folks who want more with the money whisperer or who want to check out your show or your company or just to talk shop with you, talk about the B word. How can folks get in touch with you?
Chelsea Williams [:Yeah. Head on over to moneymastery Work. We have all of the many socials that we are on, including our podcast, and we also have a form on the podcast page for you to submit your questions. I love answering real world questions on our podcast.
Eric Brotman [:Fantastic. This has been great. Thank you for being here. I know we're going to stay in touch. I know we're going to collaborate. There's no doubt in my mind. And I can't thank you enough for being on the show. You were a great guest and I know folks are going to enjoy this episode.
Eric Brotman [:Thank you so much.
Chelsea Williams [:It was fun. Thank you.
Eric Brotman [:I'd like to thank all of you for listening and watching today. If you enjoy our show, please be sure to share it with friends and family so they can join you on your journey to financial freedom. And please take a moment to review or leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform. Those are priceless to us. We'll be back next week with another entry in our diary of a financial advisor and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you don't retire. Graduate securities offered through Kestra Investment Services llc. Kestra is member finra, SIPC Investment advisory services offered through Kestra Advisory Services llc.
Eric Brotman [:Kestra as an affiliate of Kestra is. Kestra is or Kestra as are not affiliated with Brotman Financial or any other entity discussed.