A Personal Story That Inspired a Mission to Help Women - Episode 110
In today's episode, I am talking with Ed Vargo, who helps women take charge of their money. Ed has a powerful story about growing up in a tough situation and watching his mom struggle because she didn’t have the right financial tools. Now, as a financial advisor, he teaches women how to make smart money decisions and avoid common mistakes. We chat about why women think differently about money, how to align spending with personal values, and why financial education is so important.
About our guest
Ed Vargo is the co-founder and President of Burning River Advisory Group and enlightenHer, a community devoted to money mentorship for women. With more than 24 years of experience in the financial services industry, Ed strives to help women develop a long-term financial plan for every stage of life including retirement planning, college planning, and transitioning successfully in cases of death and divorce.
Ed’s passion for helping women with their finances stems from his family life. His mother, an immigrant from South Korea, had four children with his father. After getting a divorce, she lost custody of her children due to inability to support her family financially. Her unfortunate lack of financial literacy fueled Ed’s passion to help women become empowered so that they can move through divorce confidently and without fear of losing their home or children.
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] What's up, my financially intentional people. I am honored to be joined by Ed Vargo, and he is going to talk about his mission to help women with their finances. And he has a very unique story that I am thrilled to have him share with you. And without further ado, Ed, Hey, welcome to the Financial Intentional Podcast.
Ed Vargo: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.
Naseema: Of course, let's just talk about your story, your background, and you have an interesting story of coming to the United States and being a child of immigrants and how that kind of shaped what you're doing now.
Ed Vargo: Yeah, I guess it really does start there. My mom and my father met. My father he was drafted during Vietnam, got stationed in South Korea, and that's where I met my mom. One of those, it starts out as a love story, right? They basically start out and meet each other and they were both young and fell in love and my older brother was born in South Korea.
[00:01:00] And then I was, and then they, my father got sent back to the United States and came here. I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then, they ended up moving back to Cleveland area, which is where my father's from, and that's where I grew up, in the Cleveland area. And yeah, my mom was moved overseas by herself, didn't really understand, couldn't really read the language, write the language.
That really has persisted till today, believe it or not.
Naseema: Wow.
Ed Vargo: It's never driven a car, she came over here and, started this American dream with, my father and end up having four kids, I have two brothers and a sister and the story takes a turn. Unfortunately, that relationship didn't last and they were divorced when I was pretty young and it was fairly contentious in that sense.
I guess like a lot of. Relationships that don't quite go right. But the uniqueness of that story was and it's not the greatest, really not the best part of the story is that my mother had to give up custody of her four Children during the divorce, and there's a multiple multitude of [00:02:00] reasons for that.
Part of it was a cultural barrier Not really being able to read the language, write the language, couldn't really get a job. So her ability to economically provide for us and do those types of things was beyond her, certainly at that time. And so there was a cultural side to that. There was also just a lack of knowledge and understanding of how the system worked.
Meaning if she had a Better understanding, perhaps she could have gotten child support. Maybe she could have had partial custody. Maybe she could have received some alimony, right? So there's other ways through the divorce, normal divorce channels, where she could have been able to be at least a partial, have partial custody of her kids versus feeling like she had no option.
In my mom's culture, it would be considered dishonorable to not be able to provide for your kids, so it would be better to give them up.
Naseema: Wow.
Ed Vargo: a case like this, yes, then for her to, not be able to care for them the way she thinks that they should and, and so it [00:03:00] wasn't that wasn't the best part of the story.
We had a lot of normal family trauma from that in the sense of growing up without a mom at home
Naseema: Yeah.
Ed Vargo: it took a lot of years to heal and forgive. Because as a young person, young boy, I didn't know how to think and understand what was happening. I just thought my mom abandoned us, that kind of thing.
Yeah. And not really realizing till many, many years later, just, how traumatic that must have been for her, so that was an eyeopening moment for me. And, when I came to that realization that, Hey, this is sure it was traumatic for me as a young kid, just thinking about yourself, but to be my mother and have to give up her four children, to during this divorce process and how, later in life, knowing it could have probably gone a different way if she had better guidance and understanding. It is a bit of a heartbreaking story to that end.
Naseema: I just wanna acknowledge the fact that. You as an adult have been able to see that side because there's a lot of adults that have gone through something similar and we're never able [00:04:00] to understand how a mom could give you up and. Also be able to deal with some of the trauma that it has happened to you because of it and acknowledge exactly like the trauma that happened to her.
So I wanna acknowledge that. 'cause I think that that's a very big thing. And you it's obvious that you've already done the work and maybe you haven't heard it in a long time, but that's a major. So yeah, I think that that's amazing that you're able to do that. Okay.
Ed Vargo: Thank you for that. Obviously, not an easy thing to do and having that self awareness isn't always so obvious, so I feel, somewhat blessed and the fact that I was able to come to those realizations fairly early and then, men fences and all of those things and it takes me to today's chapter in my life because that was the best of times, or excuse me, that was the worst of times, today's the best of times because, I'm the proud father of five daughters.
Between the ages of 19 and 25. Yes. So it's a little busy in the Vargo household. Yep. Yep. I [00:05:00] think about, what my mom went through. Part of what drives me in our advocacy in the businesses that we run, particularly women's advocacy stems from that. It's look, I looked, I had a case, a situation in my own life where my mother had to make a bunch of compromising decisions that she felt she couldn't move past or didn't have an understanding of how to move past.
And then I have my daughters who we can create a different story. And so I never want them to feel like they're not able to move forward due to things they want to do in their lives because of some of the challenges my mother faced, whether it's economics or understanding, or just not having the knowledge and the confidence to move forward.
I'm trying to build some different tools, for my girls and support them in any way we can. And that spilled over into the work that we do with our clients, both. For burning river advisory group in our broader company enlighten her.
Naseema: Yeah, I think that's our small 5 daughters between 25 and 19. You must have had your kids are really [00:06:00] young because you look really younger. But that is wow,
Ed Vargo: Yeah, it was a lot You know when they were all born between the ages of six and a half years apart So from baby to the oldest six and a half years apart and we'd have them out You know out and about walking and just out in public and people would just look at you, you know We'd get all these eyes
Naseema: 2.
Ed Vargo: of bemusement on people's faces.
It's just Oh my God, those poor folks with all those girls. But I love those days. It was crazy, chaotic and a lot of that work felt more on my wife than myself. She really raised them during the youngest ages. But yeah, like controlled chaos, herding cats, all those cliches apply.
And then now, they're at the stage where they're all in college or into their post grad studies and getting out in the world. And yeah, it's been quite the journey. It's gone very fast and I'm trying to hold onto as much of those days as I can.
Naseema: I love it. I have three girls, so I'm halfway there.
Ed Vargo: You don't need to have five to know that, that [00:07:00] there's a lot of chaos that goes with it.
Naseema: Yeah. But what happened? Okay. So you went from this gap from being given up for your mom. Who did you stay with? And, how did you embark on this path of being in the finance space?
Ed Vargo: Like I said, my father had custody of us kids, and so that was a challenge. I think being a single parent as a father, very unusual back in those days. He was, inner city, we grew up poor, steel worker. My dad worked hard, always worked hard, but he was never good with money. He had his own demons, he fought alcoholism battles his whole life and always provided though.
That was, I'll give him credit for that always provided was just bad with money. It's just one of those guys who just didn't have money and had a negative relationship, a poor relationship with money. And so when I grew up, I never really thought I'd ever have money. I never had much of an opinion around money per se.
You so my dad grew up with this idea that money was bad and people who had money were. in turn bad. And I think that was just his way of coping with his lack of [00:08:00] Having money, it's his defense mechanism. I didn't grow up with any real mindset around money, almost indifferent. And even when I got into this business, it was almost just, I just went to work.
It's a means to an end, and I don't know. I don't know if that was necessarily a good thing or a bad thing per se, but that's just kind of how it, how it came about. And like today, though, of course, my view around money is very different. I think money is just it's a tool, right?
It's whatever you make of it. And I do believe in the mindset that money can help you become more of who you already are. It can corrupt. Of course, it can lead to bad things, but it can also lead to really wonderful things in the right hands. Be very generous. The most generous people tend to have the most money because they can do the most, the most good because they have more dollars to spread around.
Of course, the converse is true too. You can do a lot of bad things with money,
Naseema: yes.
Ed Vargo: but yeah, and I'm in this space today, where Just I don't exactly know how I fell into this career. It was at the heart of the sort of [00:09:00] early 2000, 1999 going into 2000 when markets were melting up.
So to speak. I got into the industry. It was. Follow me from afar after trying, I was in banking. I actually did a little stint as a, an assistant golf pro working at a country club. Yeah, completely different. And then I got into personal finance and it's been nothing but green pasture from there.
I really fell in love with it back when I was 28 and I'm 52 now. And I've got a lot more years ahead of me to do this. So I feel very fortunate to have found this space when I did.
Naseema: Yeah you've been in it for a long time. So I know that you've seen how it has changed. And the reason why I have my little foot in this personal finance space is because the lack of representation and a lot of the gatekeeping that I saw that was going on in the community and the lack of very diverse voices in this space, my friend Berna likes to say, Finance has got a male pale and stale.
So it's hard to, [00:10:00] find voices that represent something else. And I just love what you've built with enlighten her. So share like what you do and how you support women.
Ed Vargo: Sure. I'd be happy to. there's 2 companies, there's burning river advisory group, which is our wealth management company. It's where I started and it's our primary business today. It allows me to start a company like enlighten her and then put some energy and effort behind it. Burning river is a traditional wealth management business, comprehensive financial planning really engage 1 on 1 going in deep.
Small number of clients, really high level in depth, get to know the person, get to know what's driving them in their life type of planning. And what's unique about that business is that for the most part, we work predominantly with women. And so if you go to our website and you were to look at. At who we serve, it'll be very obvious within about three seconds that [00:11:00] this business focuses on working with women.
And I think women do have a unique way of looking at money and quite frankly, to your point earlier about the financial services industry. It is very male dominated. And I think there are a lot of reasons for that. Some good, some bad, some just neutral. The reality is, it's a very heavily male dominated industry and again, it doesn't make it bad.
It's just that's the reality behind it. And obviously I'm a guy, but we tend to work with, we're predominantly work with women and we've built a whole platform and a practice that supports women and meets women where they are. So it's not taking sort of a male centric point of view and then.
Changing it on the edges and then repackaging it for women. It's a complete teardown build up from the ground in terms of how women think about money, how women engage with money. But again, to this lens, it's a very small group that we work with
and you intentionally, say, I wanna work primarily with women, or is that just the clients that came to you?
it's a bit of an evolution. So I didn't [00:12:00] start there and so we, I started presenting in a certain way though. So I asked the question we were naturally drawing way more women than men. Like three to one, four to one and not on purpose. And so I started to step back and we were making some changes in, in terms of how we run our business.
And I just wanted to reverse engineer and get a little bit deeper into the heart of the matter. Like, why is that? And what I came up with when I discovered was just the way we engage with money and how we think about money in general. In very simple terms, when women engage with money, they tend to think about big picture, like what can this money do for me?
Can I take care of my kids? Will it allow me to have some work life balance? Will I not have to work forever? Can I be generous with my dollars, etc.? It's very much, what will this money do for me? And then men tend to engage with money a little bit differently. It's more about, am I getting the highest rate of return on my investment?
How am I doing against my peer group? Will this give me status?
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Ed Vargo: [00:13:00] negative, not, but just different, right? So men engage with money differently and the way we were talking about money, I in particular taught what was talking about money and presenting, how I can work with them. It was all about what can money do for you?
How can money be a positive influence in your life? How can it support you? So money, the attaining of money was to support these larger life goals versus for a lot of men. It's like the attaining of money to have a lot of money.
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Ed Vargo: And again, I'm painting with broad strokes here, right? But that's, I think that's the heart of why we started to work with a lot more women were gravitating toward us.
And then once I figured that out, I just said, you know what, I'm gonna. I think I'm just going to go all in on this. I'm just, I know, and it was a big decision to make, right? Cause this is a male dominated business and most clients are men. And so the decision was like, we're basically going to say, to half the population and the population that has more of the [00:14:00] money, we don't want to work with you. And that was a really big decision. It's not to say we don't want to work with them, but. No, by deference. We were saying we want to work with this group. And then so naturally a lot of guys were like, oh, they work with women. They don't want to work with me. So not a small decision to make.
But I'm happy. We made it. We're a unique voice out there. Most advisors don't do this. In fact, I was at this executive coaching conference and I pitched this idea. I went up in front of the entire group. This is before I had officially decided to do this. I was testing the waters and I said, to give it like a little spiel about who you work with.
And I said we work predominantly with women. Our focus on working with women only, I think is how I worded it. And I literally had a dozen people, this is not a joke exaggeration, I had a dozen people come up to me afterward, all men. And they were like, the series of questions went like this, are you really going to do that? Really? You're like, he's I could never do that. I think it's a great idea. It was, yeah, they came up and I took me back at first. They were like, are you really [00:15:00] going to do that? I was like,
Naseema: Why not
Ed Vargo: that's a pretty direct question.
Naseema: Yeah.
Ed Vargo: And they, they follow. It was like, are you really going to do that?
I could never do that. I think it's a great idea. And I was sold there because all of these, these were very high producers. They were all saying, Yeah.
Naseema: hmm.
Ed Vargo: never do that. And that, led to me. That's all I needed to hear. And that's why, again, there's the industry does is the way it is very male dominated working with other men because they're successful doing it that
Naseema: Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm
Ed Vargo: but there is another way to do it.
And that led to enlighten her, which is. If Burning River is really small, one on one, maybe a couple hundred clients we could work with, EnlightenHER is a big tent. We want to take all the knowledge that we have, and we've, garnered an extensive level of knowledge working deep in finance. We want to push it out to the masses, low price point, a lot of it free, more coaching than in depth one on one, and then really help.
Women on a broad scale, learn these skills. They're all [00:16:00] learnable skills, right? Women can learn these skills just as well as men. They need a different sort of voice, a different lens, but that's the point of EnlightenHER is to get the word out and help women become empowered through money. It's not a negative thing if you use it in the right way. we're just getting started. It's been a slow go to get off the ground, but we appreciate, the voice you're lending us here to get the word out because I really, I look at my girls as being that generation that can kickstart this in a big, big way.
Naseema: hmm. So is the reason why, you started enlighten her to expand access to financial services? Because I'm assuming burning rivers might have some minimum account requirements that a lot of people don't necessarily have. Is that true?
Ed Vargo: I think of them as they're separate,
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: and I don't think of EnlightenHer as I'll back up a step. To your point, the reality is that, yes, Burning River can only work with so many people, and there are higher minimum [00:17:00] requirements in order to work with us for it to be cost effective to work with
Naseema: Yes, huh.
Ed Vargo: know, so if you're someone who's just starting out or starting over chances are you don't have the resources where it makes sense to work with a company like ours. It would just be cost prohibitive, but you still need help, right? You still need guidance and support. And I really just felt like it's, we have all this knowledge and information that we've gained over the years.
It would be, it's a waste if all we can share with is maybe a couple hundred households. I felt
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: could do more, we could have a larger impact.
On the world at large. And that's where enlighten her comes from. And it really isn't a business at this point. That's about generating revenue
and becoming a side hustle.
It really is a passion project that I believe in.
Naseema: huh.
Ed Vargo: We want to get the word out. We wanted to take my daughters as an example and say, because one of the things, I've learned. And notice is like how my girls engage with money is very different than their peer group.
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: Now, that's probably not a [00:18:00] surprise given that they grew up in a financial advising
Naseema: Mm
Ed Vargo: but maybe for different reasons, because it's not like I put them in a room and we had weekly lectures about how money works.
We never did any of that stuff, but they think about money differently because we as parents modeled money differently. How we engage with money looks different. Even though the formal learning wasn't necessarily a part of the curriculum, we modeled money differently. We spoke about money differently.
We engage with it in our relationship with money is very different than say, maybe their peer group.
Naseema: hmm.
Ed Vargo: And, but it's just about education really at the end of the day. It's just about educating those young folks or really anyone for that matter about, the mechanics of money and how it works, but there's values that are tied to it.
So when you can get to somebody younger as they're developing those values, it's a little bit easier to create new habits Mm hmm. fix bad habits. And that's why our focus tends to be a little bit skews a little younger. And of course, I'm there because my girls are younger. I think the opportunity is [00:19:00] really massive for those who don't have to change bad habits, but create new ones.
Naseema: love that. I love that. And I just, I'm always of the train of thought that more is caught than taught. And it's not like you had to just be like, this is how we're going to do things. Yeah, your kids see you move in a certain way around money. And of course they're going to emulate that. And they're at the stage where it's just now you're seeing it come into their day to day actions.
And I think that's incredible. I aspire to do that for my girls, so thank you
Ed Vargo: Yeah.
Naseema: for being an example of that.
Ed Vargo: Oh thank you for that. I love that more is caught than taught because that is a big part of our parenting style was to, lectures don't really work. You can do that when you're when the kids are really young and you have that power over them. You can lord over them a bit, but as they start to become their own people, you have to provide influence.
So it goes from power to influence and then you just hope to be able to maintain that influence for as long as you [00:20:00] can. So they let you in and, lectures. Heavy handed kind of stuff that doesn't work and it doesn't last, especially as the older they get. So this idea of more is caught than taught.
I think it makes a great deal of sense. And I've never really heard it termed that way. So thank you for that. But it is we would talk about concepts that they would. They probably wouldn't listen to us if we were talking to them directly, like one on one. But if they could be an earshot and feel like they were listening in on the conversation, we would turn those moments into teachable moments, even though they didn't realize what was happening.
Naseema: Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's great. But what are some ways that you've seen those conversations manifest into what they do like daily with money or how they handle money?
Ed Vargo: I'll give you an example. They love to go thrifting.
Naseema: That's so They love to go thrifting, right? My second oldest daughter, Mia one day I overheard her talking to somebody, one of her sisters. If a shirt costs more than 7, I'm not buying it. That's what's too expensive. [00:21:00] 7, right? 7. And I just laughed out loud because we're not a what I would call a frugal household, right?
Ed Vargo: We do a lot, but we spend money on Doing things,
Naseema: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ed Vargo: we don't tend to spend a lot of buying clothes and things of that nature. My wife, I'll give her a lot of credit for instilling that habit, the thrifting habit and trying to be creative when you're going out and doing these things.
And so they're more conscious about where their money goes.
And it's not like they have a ton more money or they have more money than their peer group. They're all poor. They're poor because they're in college or just, getting out of college. And so everybody's at the same level in terms of dollars and cents, but how they engage with money, it is very different.
They spend money on food. They love their food, but they don't buy a bunch of clothing, they're not wearing a bunch of bling, things of that nature. So that's one key thing is they've, they're not runaway consumers. And there's so much of that, that derails people, they spend money.
They don't [00:22:00] have when they get money, they spend all of it versus learning some savings habits. So I would start with, and then tying your values to it. What do you really value? Do you value, a Gucci brand name or that kind of thing? When you, it's bad enough when you have money. But when you don't have money, it's devastating
Naseema: definitely. And like, how did you fund their college?
Ed Vargo: a combination of things, so growing up even when I was in this business, it's a grind, building a business,
five young kids. So we live small, we lived in a small house, shared bedrooms and, getting making ends meet was just how we did it at the start. So we weren't able to start saving for college.
As early as you might think from a financial advisor, but we're like, a lot of people, we're living life and trying to figure this thing out. And then over time, you start putting some money away toward college and whether it's 529 plans, et cetera. And there's a lot of different ways to save and invest for college.
And then, what happens with most people's lives there. There's a [00:23:00] trajectory, right? You start making lower dollars, you do better, you make more, you make a bit more and hopefully your trajectory is increasing along the way. And that was true for me in running my business. And I was able to do more.
I had more money later when my kids were in school than at the start. And so I may have taken down loans at the start of their college. And there's, I think there's going to be like 13 straight years when one of the kids are in college. Think about that.
Naseema: That is, wow, that's what I'm like saying, like five girls in college ain't no joke.
Ed Vargo: No, it's like for 13 straight years, at least one was in college,
and there was many years when there's three of them in college.
So yeah, I couldn't cash flow the whole thing the entire time, and as I got later in life and further along, I was able to do more out of cash flow.
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: That's what I ended up doing. So it's been, it was a combination of things over time to get to where we are now. And the kids had to participate, right?
So I never told them that, look, I'm gonna pay for your entire college.
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: I said they were gonna have to take out loans, have to be Cognizant that college costs money, the school that you choose [00:24:00] matters, right? So often, I think there's a lack of understanding between, because we can get loans for this or the parents will step in or
Naseema: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: understand that if you come out with a 40, 000 debt, that's a lot to pay back, but they have no context of how to understand 40, 000 of debt.
Naseema: hmm. Yep.
Ed Vargo: more than that. So we were able to be obviously smart, probably a little smarter than the average bear about choosing the schools that matter, not going after the name, the big name on the door or going to school for the wrong reasons because we want to party and have fun.
And those are great. But those are byproducts, so yeah, it's a combination of things over time to get there.
Naseema: Yeah, I can't imagine oh my God, five girls putting them through college. That is
amazing.
Ed Vargo: to come, right?
Naseema: Yeah, that's even
Ed Vargo: ending. It doesn't end, right? I'm convinced that on some level for the rest of my life, no matter how long I live, I'm going to be paying for something for those girls. I just gave up. I'm [00:25:00] like, all right, whatever. And if I'm in a position to do it, I'm happy to do it as long as, they take care of their own dad and mom down the road.
That's fine.
Naseema: I was just imagining, like, all the hair and nails and all that stuff that you have had to pay for their whole life.
Ed Vargo: Yeah, you get a whole different perspective. I, I get a different perspective for two reasons. One
obviously these are women, right? Obviously, I'm not a woman. So big difference in terms of how I naturally see the world and how they see the world. And I've got to come their way because they just outnumber me.
So that there's that. But there is a difference between having five kids and two in terms of just large families. And there, there's just a difference if you have a larger family and whatever you define, three and up a larger family, the inflation on kids, the more kids you have changes a lot of how you engage with the world, especially monetarily, right?
So if I do a family vacation, that's say we want to fly anywhere and [00:26:00] it's 300 per flight, which is really cheap. That's seven, that's 2, 100 and I haven't even started. I probably need two hotel rooms. Okay, and if you're eating most of your meals out, unless you're getting an Airbnb kind of thing, you just think about that inflation and how it compounds.
Oh, then I can't just get a regular size car. I need a car big enough for 7 people and 7 people's luggage. And so it's, and that's been another learning for me along the way, just being able to put my shoes in this and put myself in the shoes of others with larger families. But from a larger context, it just gives me greater empathy because I realize that, just because I'm looking at it from this lens, and this is my experience that could be very different.
The same. Circumstances could be interpreted very different by somebody else who has a different life experience or a different circumstance at home. So that's been very powerful because I work with the public and we're trying to, help those folks make some very important values based discussions around money.[00:27:00]
Naseema: I know that that's positively beneficial to what you do, especially because your business is women focus and I can only imagine that the way that you envision and light in her is something, a tool that can be accessible to your daughters and used by your daughters.
How do you foresee like a platform? Enlighten her, be able to empower people like your daughters.
Ed Vargo: I think there's a number of ways to reach that audience. One is we have to. Find out what their needs are. I think we have a good understanding of what their needs are, because, my girls are in that group, right? That
Naseema: yeah. Mm-hmm . Yeah.
Ed Vargo: and it's, I want to back up a step and lighten her really isn't just about young women.
It is about the entire, the whole, the full spectrum. But that's where my mind goes. But the reality is it's really just about, and this is a little cliche about educating women about money and how to think about [00:28:00] money, but it's not from the traditional lens. And I, because look, I can talk about budgets all day long.
Okay. I can give you, there's a thousand free budgets that all work on some level on paper online. You don't need me for that. The problem with the budget is they don't work. And they don't work because people, first of all, you don't like to do budgeting and then the mechanics of it are impossible to cover every expense that you have. But there's no internal buy in. There's values tied to spending and budgets don't tie values to your spending. So , this is beyond the scope of today's conversation, but I think if. If we can get people to think differently about money and tie their values to the way they spend and use money, that's going to carry the lion's share of the conversation.
If you knew that, look, you have a finite supply of money, which we all do, and the less money you have, the more particular you need to be about how you spend those dollars. But if you knew that Your kids were the [00:29:00] most important things to you, and not just that, but their education would be the most important things to you, then your first dollars get spent there. Whatever that means for you, it could be private school, it could be tutors, it could just be buying books, getting them, curiosity stream online, whatever the case may be, you put your dollars there first. And then if you have money left over, you're like where am I next? Most important values, creating experiences that we can grow from.
Some of those don't cost any money at all. It doesn't cost any money to go take a hike, to hike out in nature and get out in the woods, those kinds of things, but the point is if you understand your value hierarchy and you can work down that hierarchy, that's where your spending should go.
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Ed Vargo: if we think about it, and this is how I think about it. If you show me your calendar and your checkbook. I can tell you what's important to you,
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Ed Vargo: where you spend your time and where you spend your money tells me all I need to know. Now, you might say I really value my kids education, but if you're putting no time and no [00:30:00] money towards your kids education, it sounds like you might be fooling yourself or
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Ed Vargo: want that to be most important to you, but you're choosing other things.
And so there's a misalignment. There's this cognitive dissonance between what you say is important to you but to what you're actually doing. And I think that's really important because that conversation's not had enough.
Naseema: Yeah.
Ed Vargo: We need to really think about what's most important to me, where are my values, and if we can have those types of conversations earlier in life during their lifetime, then they'll probably make better decisions.
Naseema: And I like that because a lot of people who are seeking financial advice or think that they need to get better with money, miss that part. They think it's I'm not good at budgeting. I'm not good at investing, but it's really about, again, aligning your values with how you spend. And I love how you said that.
And, but people can't really conceptualize that because, it's not the norm. So yeah. [00:31:00] Shifting people to think like that, I think is really impactful.
Ed Vargo: Yeah, that's the heart of the matter at the end of the day. You can they didn't studies and studies after study. They'll say something like are you on track? Do you feel you're on track for retirement? And they're like, no, I'm not on track for retirement. They're like, okay. What are you going to do about it?
Nothing, probably nothing and laugh about it and go on with their day,
Naseema: Yeah.
Ed Vargo: That's. That's the major disconnect. So they recognize there's an issue, but there's something preventing them holding them back from actually taking the action that's required to change their behavior. And so we got to go deeper.
It's not about math. It's not about numbers on the page. It's deeper than that. And it doesn't have to be metaphysical, right? It doesn't have to be this big kind of voodoo thing. You don't have to meditate over it per se, but you do have to get in touch with What really is important to you and are you willing to do what it takes make the sacrifices to align your spending or the way you engage with money with those values and you're better off just acknowledging no, I'm not okay with that.
I'm [00:32:00] not willing to do the hard work on this. It's too hard. And then at least you're not fooling yourself. And then you can maybe find a different way around it. Maybe you can make adjustments in other areas of your life to accommodate the reality of your situation.
Naseema: Mm-hmm
Ed Vargo: And a crude way of thinking about it is if you were, let's say, an alcoholic and you said there's, I just can't go into a bar.
I'm never going to not be an alcoholic. Okay. This is a terrible analogy, but bear with me I, but I'm not going to stop drinking. But if you understand that I talk about this, because it's touched my life in ways. A part of the backstory, we talked about earlier. But if you acknowledge that and you say, okay, this is never going to be the way I would ideally be.
I would rather be clean and sober. Never drink. However that's really, I'm honest with myself. That's not going to happen. However, I'm going to put some rules and engage with. This disease in a different way. And so that might mean I never drink alone or I never go to a bar or et cetera. So you start to make [00:33:00] different choices that acknowledge the reality of the situation.
It's not perfect, but it's real. And it's enough to move things in a different direction and keep going forward versus telling you this idealized notion or this idealized story of what you wish it would be, but that holds you back even further because you can never come to grips with the reality of your situation.
And money is very much like that. People tell them this little story about because they think that's what it should be. But it's, it doesn't mesh with their reality and how they're, what it takes to engage with money in that way. I hope that makes sense.
Naseema: it makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense and it makes a lot of sense to the fact that why people will just not do anything or, put it off until it's almost too late. So yes, that was a great analogy. But I want you to share like how enlightened her works with people to overcome those things and, empowers women.
Ed Vargo: We're just getting off the ground. [00:34:00] So, the vision is still being developed. But the reality is, I think is bringing awareness is the big part, we if you go to inlinehere. com, I think there's some really good blogs that talk about these subjects in this way.
, it's not your typical.
Yeah. In fact, 1 of my keystone blogs on the site was, budgets are bullshit. It's a 2 parter because I do believe that budgets don't work. And I can explain why I believe that to be the case. And there's not a lot of traditional, nuts and bolts do X, Y and Z. But it's more about the mindset around money and so getting, being, becoming aware of the connection between how you think about money and how you engage with money, how you fundamentally, again, engage with money is really, really important, getting the mindset right.
And once you do that, then we can certainly layer on all of the brass tacks because it's a lot easier to go to a person and say, okay here's how we can do, a spending plan or here's you want to keep track of where your money goes, but that's different than a budget. So here's how we keep track of where our money goes.
Now, [00:35:00] here's a methodology for making sure this is always top of mind, et cetera, et cetera. So we start with building these building blocks and as you build your knowledge base. you can go deeper into these subject matters, or if you're like, you're the type of person who's I really don't like this stuff.
I want to know enough. So I'm smart and I can find the right people to work with, but I really don't want to do it. And lighten her is designed to do some financial coaching as well. So that's a little different than burning river, which is we do it for you and we're in it. Build this 20, 30 year relationship.
Coaching tends to be a little bit more transitory. So we come in, provide some knowledge, some direct feedback, coach you up, and then let you go. You can do it on your own. And if you want to come back and get a little check in, stuff like that, you can do that. And if you graduate, so to speak, and you want to work.
Excuse me, and you want to work in the burning river and you're ready for something like that. So it's about progressing you through it. My hope is, and I'm not sure if we can deliver on this promise. I guess it's not a promise. I'd love to do [00:36:00] a digital course for people who are just starting out trying to figure it out.
I think there's a tremendous need for it. It would be priced at a reasonable place. So people can step into it and get that knowledge. We've done this on the divorce side. We've built a divorce course for someone who's either. Okay. On the front end of considering divorce, someone who's actively knowing that they want to do this.
We built out a very reasonably priced course is going to, I think we'll save people a ton of money in the whole process, but it really is about getting the knowledge and the mindset, right? And having a place that you can come to and engage with in the way that makes you feel comfortable. Because money can be very intimidating and it can be used as a weapon against you people in financial in the financial services industry.
Kind of they have a tendency to to talk over people's heads or it's
Naseema: especially women.
Ed Vargo: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a power play. And there's still today, some of that old school mentality around this, I just, I can't, I can't understand it. I don't even think it's good [00:37:00] business, much less poor manners to do it that way.
But
Naseema: I mean, it's still a lot of that. I'm a nurse and so it's female dominated and it's not like a few days that goes by where, like somebody comes to me and talks to me about their finances and I'm just like, why haven't you talked to Craig who runs our, our thing for our job or retirement fund for our job.
And I'm like, talk to Greg. He's like a great resource. And they're like, no, Greg scares me. And I'm just like, Greg is a great person, but he does have a boisterous kind of, he can be intimidating to some people, but I just, yeah, it's real.
It's real. Women feel it a lot and it does truly get in the way of them building wealth. And to have an alternative place to go is super important, even though I think that they should talk to Craig.
Ed Vargo: that point, if they're not talking to Craig, maybe Craig is not their cup of tea, but there are others out there.
No. And but it is hard. I won't say it's the thing that people really are eager to [00:38:00] go do. How excited are you? Is anyone to go out and interview financial advisors, right?
Because one, you're making yourself vulnerable because you don't, you don't know that much. You don't want to be taken advantage of. You don't want to be talked down to. you don't want all those things that could happen. And it's just easier to continue doing what you're doing.
The path of least resistance. I can understand it because it isn't easy to engage. Most of the people that we work with, we're not marketing on the internet, right? We're not doing social media and doing these things. Most of the people we work with at Burning River are coming through us through word of mouth referrals.
They have somebody they've spoken to, like you're trying to You know, talk about Craig to make that pathway a little bit easier. But imagine if you didn't have that in your life and you're thinking about finding someone.
Yeah, it's hard, and again if you're a woman, I think it's a bit harder because There are fewer financial advisors that cater to women and that understand how women think about money and have built their businesses accordingly So the pool of potential advisors is a lot smaller to [00:39:00] choose from Which makes it even harder to go out and take that risk And so I I feel you know, I don't think there's an easy answer to that I mean it does involve putting yourself out there taking some risk getting more knowledgeable and all of those things are are barriers It's still worth it.
It's important to do it. But yeah, I won't say it's easy.
Naseema: Yeah, definitely not easy. Definitely not easy, but I feel like every day there's more solutions for people and ways to kind of like, we threw a lot of the snake oil salesman out there because there's a lot of that in the personal finance space. And I think especially predatory towards women and people of color the people selling insurance as investment products is really one of those kind of things that has really played. I know my profession as a nurse there'll be people in the break room that are doing it and it's disheartening. And those are the people that are often accessible as financial [00:40:00] advisors and I should actually do financial advisors in the quotes, but yeah, I.
I feel honored to be able to share resources like this, that people can access that are actually really solid, good tools to help people get on that path of really empowering and improving their finances. And just share with us how we can access enlighten her and what you hope. It'll do for people like the women in my audience, because 90 percent women here.
Ed Vargo: If you just go to enlighten her. com and on the homepage, there's a couple of ebooks that you can download for free. There's one called nine money myths. I would start there. If you're just. Want to learn more about personal finance. It's nine money myths for women that you can read through. I think it's a good piece and get you started again written for women and for the women point of view, a woman's point of view, and I would engage with the blogs, take a look at what's there, find [00:41:00] something that matters to you and go deep on one subject.
I think the value conversation money and values seems to resonate overwhelmingly with women and I just love that concept. It solves so many problems, if you can align your spending in your relationship with money with your values and then rank order them because you can't have 30 different values that are all the same level, and I'm sure most people don't, but you have a few that matter most.
Thanks. You can align your use of money and quite frankly, your time to those values. That's probably half the battle right there. But I think there's a great website where we're continuing to build things out. We're going to the more support we can get, the more eyeballs we can get, the more we can do in the space.
And 1 of the things I will say. That makes us unique is that most financial coaching companies, most of the stuff on Instagram and, on social media tends to come from someone who has experience in a [00:42:00] space. They may have gotten into debt, got themselves out of debt, and then they document that they put it on Instagram.
They're charismatic. They get it out there, but their background in finance is very limited. On the other hand, we're quite different. I've been in personal finance for 24 years. I have all the requisite credentials that you would want to have a lot of experience hands on working in the field. I'm not a great marketer.
I'm not on Instagram, right? I'm not charismatic in that way. We have so much knowledge behind us, right? We have so much, data and real world people and experience that we can go back to. And we're building it out. So I can tell you for sure that if you come to our site and if you engage with us, you're going to get the right information as much as I can say that you're going to get it from the right lens for the right reason.
Enlighten her isn't about making a bunch of money. It really isn't. It's about engaging with the world in a different way. And getting the word out and trying to help women take control [00:43:00] and do it differently because I don't think the traditional financial advisor space or financial services arena is moving fast enough.
There's a lot of lip service paid to it, but there's so much inertia, going the opposite direction that I haven't seen that. And I've been doing this for 24 years. I've been hearing about this massive change of why women are so important to financial services for the last 15 years I don't I haven't seen the dial move much at all. So I wouldn't wait. Yeah, don't wait find your own people Yeah, engage with those people ask questions You know if someone comes to our we're we we would Love for people to ask us questions come to the site drop questions engage with us you're going to get You know a ton of our time because we're eager to help and support and we can do it now because we're just getting off the ground so
Naseema: Yes, I love it. I love it. And then can you I was going to say I am that person that that person on social media that has paid off a million [00:44:00] dollars in debt and has my story, but I will be the 1st person to tell you. I'm not a financial advisor. I can't help you do it. But to have a resource to be like, but go talk to it, go over to enlighten her.
com is where it's at. Because again there just needs to be more resources like this and so I love being able to do that to be the conduit of knowledge to just be like, this is what I've been through. It's possible. And if you need help, this is direction you could go in.
Ed Vargo: right? We all, we all have our areas of expertise, right? You have this great story, this amazing story of resiliency and resolve.
And now you want to share the benefits of that with others, right? So you're giving of your time, you're taking your experience
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: these real human moments. And you're throwing it out there for the world because people latch on to those human stories, right?
So that's
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: comes
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: It's not from numbers on a page, and then if they're ready to take that next step and need to go deeper, you're putting them in contact with those who are subject [00:45:00] matter experts in those areas and, helping them in a different way. Again, I appreciate you having me on today.
I've
Naseema: Of course. Of course,
Ed Vargo: the work that you do.
Naseema: but before we go, can you share who makes up enlighten her? I know it's just not you you have some other experts that you work with.
Ed Vargo: We do. Formerly there's myself and my business partner, Melina Carberry. And it's not just a one man show. There's effectively one man and the rest are women. So there's Melina Carberry
Naseema: It sounds like that's the theme of your life. Can I just highlight that? Like you're constantly surrounded by women. I hope you have a good core male group because you are, you got your wife, your kids, and then at work.
Ed Vargo: you go down the line, there are very few men, that I'm engaging with in terms of even professionally. I'm all right, though.
Naseema: You love it there. I don't see, I don't see you having an issue
Ed Vargo: I don't have. Yeah, I don't have a problem with that at [00:46:00] all. Melinda Carberry, she's a financial advisor. Been with me. We've been working in this practice for a long time together.
And then Heather Hatchler, she's a life coach and she has her own other outside platform. She works a lot in the. Blended family space, and there's a personal life coach, and she's 1 of the financial coaches here. She has great life experience. Great. In terms of, experience in a different way, connecting with women and
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: them from that perspective, and we've trained her up on the financial side, which, quite frankly, is a little bit easier to do because it's concrete.
Naseema: Mm hmm.
Ed Vargo: And then my daughter, Hallie is working with us
Naseema: Oh, that's so cool.
Ed Vargo: in charge of client communications and marketing. Yeah, so she just recently graduated from college from BW here in Cleveland and with an art degree and art psychology degree, something like that. I forget. It changed. late. There's a lot of kid
Naseema: There's a lot of kids to keep up with. Yeah, get
it.
Ed Vargo: in charge of that.
So she's doing some social media on the enlighten her side. So we don't do [00:47:00] anything on burning river, but we're doing this for enlighten her. And then we have great partnerships in the community from a professional standpoint. So whether it's therapists or it's the attorneys, divorce attorneys, bankers, whether a realtor, like as an example, if you're going through divorce, finding a house can be tricky.
Because the economics of that all change, so having somebody who really understands that and understands the lending behind it So we've built a really strong community Group that almost all women by the way But to connect others with so it's us right now with the four of us in Enlightened her and we'll see what that takes us
Naseema: I love it. I love it. And so again, if anybody wants to work with you, find out about enlighten her, where they go, where they learn more about it is enlighten her. com. And then you guys, you have, yeah, you guys have social media.
Ed Vargo: Yes. We're on predominantly Instagram right now, and I think our Facebook page is just [00:48:00] getting up and running You know, I'll have to put you in contact with Hallie about that. She's, I told you I'm not good at this marketing stuff, right?
Naseema: Hallie to hit me up.
Ed Vargo: I'll put you in contact with Hallie. You guys can work all that out.
Let the experts handle that. But I know she's building out our presence on EnlightenHer. And again, we're starting up, we're starting out, we, there's a lot of passion, a lot of focus, and there's a lot of, quite frankly positive energy and everyone I've spoken to about, what we're doing with EnlightenHer.
I've received nothing but positive feedback on it. And so we're excited about to see where this takes us. And we're just appreciative again of you sharing, your audience with us and allowing us to speak a little bit about the work that we're doing. We think it's important work and it's not going away.
Hopefully we're at the forefront of something big.
Naseema: I think you are Ed, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to my audience. I know that they can benefit from the work that you're doing, so I am very happy to share.
Ed Vargo: Thank you again. I appreciate your time.
Naseema: Of course, .
Hey there I’m Naseema
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