Interview with Steph Wagner: A Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom
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What personal experiences led Steph Wagner to write her book on financial freedom?
If you're sitting here right now, wherever you are with your relationship with money, do you like to get in the game or are you more comfortable to sit on the sideline and watch other people? Well, that's the difference between abundance and scarcity, right? But how do you go and unleash your power if it's trapped inside of you in fear?
That was Steph Wagner, author of Fly, A Woman's Guide to Financial Freedom and Building a Life You Love. I'm Motley Fool producer Matt Greer. Now, Motley Fool contributor Rachel Warren recently talked with Wagner about financial empowerment, retirement, and yes, building a life you love.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Motley Fool Conversations. I'm Motley Fool contributing stock analyst Rachel Warren, and I'm delighted to be joined on the show today by Steph Wagner, a nationally recognized authority on women's economic security and National Director of Women and Wealth at Northern Trust. Steph leads the firm's advisory practice for women and its Elevating Women platform. It's a national program focused on building financial literacy and helping women use their wealth to create meaningful impact in their families, businesses, and communities. Before joining Northern Trust, Steph spent years advising high-net-worth women navigating major life transitions. She also built a national consulting practice for wealth management firms seeking to better serve female clients and founded Women Wealthy Wise, a platform dedicated to advancing financial literacy and empowerment for women.
In her new book, Fly, A Woman's Guide to Financial Freedom and Building a Life You Love, Steph gives women an empowering tools-based approach to help achieve financial freedom and thrive for years to come. Steph, I'm really excited to talk with you today and discuss your book. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
How can women unleash their financial power?
I want to really set the table here for our conversation today. Your book starts with your own deeply personal story, a really pivotal series of moments in your life that led you to take control of your finances and create your own plan for success and subsequently discover a real passion for educating and empowering women to take charge of their money. Maybe just start today, you know, share with our audience your background, your story and the journey that began, I think, as you put it in your book, your wake up call to financial independence.
Yeah, thank you. I actually always loved finance. I loved math. I kind of went to college knowing I wanted to do this. You know, I wanted to get in the world of finance, particularly corporate finance. And I started my career in investment banking and was really fortunate to get in this crazy world of private equity very young. Pretty naive about it. Way back then, it was in its infancy. Certainly no women, I think. in the field, so consequently I had no mentors, which became really important as I was navigating my career, my life, I got married, I started having children, and this was really the beginning of what eventually became my wake-up call, which was, you know, the pressures that I think so many women feel as their careers are evolving and then as your family life is tugging at you, especially in the world of finance,
I actually had this moment where I was asked to get on a plane to Cessna no less, to go and look at a deal in a very rural town of Alabama. I was six months pregnant. I had a two-year-old at home and my husband at the time traveled over 150 nights a year. And I just sat there and said, this isn't sustainable. Like something has to give. And as I shared, I had no one to talk to. And I really saw it very black and white. I quit literally like the next day. And that wasn't really... where I lost my financial independence. Yes, I lost my earning power in that moment, but I always thought I could get that back really quickly. I think what happened to me, which happens to so many people, is as couples, we're dividing and concreting, you know, as we're navigating all the busyness.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What personal experiences led Steph Wagner to write her book on financial freedom?
0:05–1:53
2
How can women unleash their financial power?
1:53–6:33
3
What is the importance of financial literacy for women?
6:33–9:29
4
How do past financial influences shape our current relationship with money?
9:29–22:29