Personal Finance Coach: Justin Enany
Personal Finance Coach features stories, insights, and tips from TrustPlus to help workers, businesses, and organizations thrive.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in a rural, somewhat isolated area where you don’t necessarily have [access to a lot of resources], it was a very poor area. I grew up in Appalachia.
There were a lot of people on public benefits who had access to things like that. But we did not have a lot of access to resources from nonprofits who are trying to help people navigate complex systems, which research shows is so important.
When I came to New York, I saw people who had similar financial health to many of the people who I grew up around but who had a lot more resources available to them, legal non-profits, places like us [TrustPlus] that a city provides where they can get help, where they can get information and guidance. That is not present in a lot of places in America.
So I think one nice thing about TrustPlus is that it expands that type of service that you do find in cities to these parts of the country where otherwise people wouldn’t have access to them.
What is a personal finance coach to you?
I try to help people have a more positive relationship with their money. I think that’s my main goal in my work. We feel a lot of guilt and a lot of shame around our money. And my work is like a guilt free or a shame free space. I tell my clients, I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to deal with numbers and offer a comfortable space to share and understand those numbers.
I view my role as someone that the client can bounce ideas off of, and someone that can help the client understand things that are within my area of expertise, that they don’t have a clear understanding of. I help guide them to understand the decisions that they’re going to make. I don’t make the decisions for them. And, I state that explicitly. My job is to help them make informed decisions based on their preferences.
I’ll point out to clients through budgeting or through a discussion of their goals, if you are to do this, this is what happens, which is the desired outcome for you, and then help them make the decision that way. But I’ll have clients who oftentimes will choose something that is less than optimal from a pure financial stance, but it aligns more with their values or what they’re comfortable with at the time. And I view those as a success too.
What’s a session like?
It depends on the person, a lot of it is exploring what the client wants to do, what their goals are, if they have any pressing issues, what they’re trying to achieve, why, why they’re having the session in the first place, why they feel it would be a good idea for them to have financial coaching. Then that helps us lay the path forward for what we’ll do together in future sessions.
Do you have an area of expertise or a favorite topic you cover with clients?
I tend to have more experience with investing, retirement accounts, the theory behind investing, assessment of risk both from my educational background and my personal background, so that’s something that I often discuss with clients, to the extent that it’s relevant to the session. I don’t give investment advice because I’m not qualified as a certified financial planner, but I do explain how different investments work.
I spend a lot of time talking with clients who ask questions about investing, it comes up fairly often: what is a stock, what is a dividend, how do stocks work, what’s a mutual fund, what’s an index fund, what are bonds, and just helping people to understand that aspect of the financial system.
Any favorite success stories?
I had a client who was a freelancer who had no savings and she’s paid off all of her current credit card debt. She has $10,000 or $12,000, she said last time I spoke to her, and she said she’s never felt this confident about finances before. She found the work really empowering.
