Montana Funk (00:13):
This is Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the ABA Young Lawyers Division and produced by Moraine Media. Welcome back listeners. This is your host, Montana Funk. Today I'm joined by Melissa Cecchine. Melissa is a seasoned financial expert with a passion for guiding individuals towards conscious financial management and smart wealth building strategies that bring lasting peace of mind, financial stability, and freedom. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you enjoy this really important episode. Good afternoon, Melissa. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? I am good, thank you. I am really excited for this episode because I think finances in general for everyone, whether or not you're a young lawyer or literally anyone, I think can be a very daunting topic. And obviously having someone who's an expert in that area to help ease the listeners to how they can balance that kind of stuff is something that I personally need help with. So it's really important and I appreciate that you're jumping on to talk about that today.
Melissa Cecchine (01:15):
Absolutely.
Montana Funk (01:17):
I want you to kind of give the listeners just a quick background on what started your passion for finances, how you kind of gone on this journey of becoming an expert.
Melissa Cecchine (01:26):
Sure. So I am probably one of the few people that I know in my age group that's actually utilizing their degree in some sort of way. So I actually went to Penn State. I started out in finance and international business, and the year before I was supposed to graduate, decided to change over to accounting. So I have been in the industry for over 30 years, have my CPA, worked for a public accounting firm for five years and really disliked that. So I ended up moving on to be a controller at an organization and it's where I got my nicknames. So my last name is Cecchine, which is Italian, and when you look at it, it's not obvious how to pronounce it. My boss there, he kept messing up the pronunciation of my name and he was like, do you mind if I just call you Cha-Ching since you're the money person?
(02:28):
It sounds so much like Cecchine, but I can remember it. So for my business, I actually go by the name Melissa Cha-Ching, and I've been a director of finance. I have been a CFO at organizations in the DC metropolitan area. And then about 10 years ago I decided to start my own business. I had been doing a lot of personal development work, which included coaching, coaching, life coaching, and I really wanted to try to start to incorporate that into the work that I did. I was actually really trying to get out of doing any kind of financial type of coaching, but what I noticed is every time that I happened to be working with clients on their, I was doing business coaching, it would always kind of end up SP lancing and leading towards finance and money. And along the way, unfortunately in 2017, my mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
(03:36):
This was really before I got into the personal financial coaching, and I am an early child, but my mom comes from a family of 13 kids. But it was just really up to my dad and I to try to handle out the financial portion of what we had to deal with with my mom's Alzheimer's. Fortunately, we had family to help with her care, but as she started to get worse, we were like, oh my gosh, what do we do if we have to put her into a nursing home? How much does it cost? We got sticker shocks. Some of the places were like $14,000 a month, and my parents had not planned financially for that. Around the same time when the pandemic broke out, I was introduced to a woman's empowerment coach who also was doing financial services. And as I got deeper into that, what I really found is that my greatest passion and joy is to meld all of my skills and talents and work with individuals and small business owners on their personal finance and their business finance. And that ended up creating a program called the Miracle Money Makeover, where really, whether it's for your business or your personal finance, it's really the same structure and things that you need to look at to understand money and finances.
Montana Funk (05:04):
It sounds like you have quite a robust past that led you to your journey towards here and obviously going through something so daunting and emotional with your mother, right? I'm sure it's just overwhelming and shocking and having to then adapt from, okay, here's a life I was living. Now I actually need to kind of take a different step. I'm sure was intense for you, so sore that you had to go through that. And obviously one of the things that I started off this episode with was how much finances take up every part of everyone's lives, and it can be such a scary topic and such a hard topic. And I'm wondering you having firsthand experience of something that was emotional, how do you encourage people to say, okay, this is a scary topic. This is hard to discuss, but move past this emotion and take the emotion out of it and focus on what's at the forefront. So do you have any advice to how to actually remove that emotional aspect and move past that fear to start having these conversations?
Melissa Cecchine (06:05):
Yes, I have some suggestions and it's one of the things that I really focus on in the work that I do with my clients. It's not just the, I always say money is math and science, but what's incorporated into that, which can really mess you up or be triggering is the emotional aspect of it. And that's where a lot of people end up really getting stopped. So I have a money personality quiz and the different categories, usually you're either a saver, a spender, a debtor, a wealth explorer, or a money avoider. Some people are just avoiding the money because they just don't want to deal with usually the emotional aspect of that. So one of the things I like to take a look at is first of all, what is your money mindset around this and your money story? So your money story is these inherited conversations that created how you view money.
(07:13):
Probably didn't even know that it was happening, but the story is created out of what are the conversations your family are having about money, the people around you, even at your cultural conversations. I was just talking to someone yesterday who was Indian and they had, she felt badly even talking about money in her culture. You're not supposed to really bring up the topic of money and talk about it a lot here. It's like you're not supposed to talk about your salary. It's not appropriate to do that, but it's really first taking a look at, I always think it's good to look at, is this really your conversation or a conversation that was created from somewhere else where my parents would always say, you got to work hard for your money. It could never be easy to make money. You got to work really hard. So I think it's helpful to start to look at those conversations that you may be saying that you just inherited and start to dismantle that a little bit. And then the other thing is, I think do a lot of work around what are the emotions and how do those feel? Where do they show up in your body?
(08:35):
There could be a lot of guilt and shame around money and just being present to where does that arise? A lot of times for myself, it'll kind of be in my heart center. So what you can start to see is sometimes you'll start to notice the feeling in your body first, and then it's like, oh, I can feel this heaviness in my heart to realize, oh, I'm being triggered by that emotion. And it's, it's literally automatic, but awareness is really the first step. So it's really being more aware of those emotions that are coming up. And then oftentimes we automatically just respond to them and we may want to avoid, but if we're aware like, oh, this is coming up, but I actually have a choice. So the name of my business is a Conscious CFO, and my goal is really to have people be more conscious about their money.
(09:36):
When I say I'm a money strategist and a money coach, people are like, oh, I got to cut my expenses. I got to create a budget. I can't have a latte anymore. And I'm like, I'm not that kind of coach. It's like I'm really having you be more conscious of what you're doing so that you're actually making conscious choices. A lot of people just are in the habit of spending, or they have retail therapy, they want to feel better about it, and it's like noticing, do I really need that? Or is this just literally an automatic response and I need to feel better in the moment, keep buying this stuff and keep increasing your credit card debt. It's like, do you want to choose to be on debt or do you want to consciously choose like, oh, this is just an automatic response of something that I do. So I think being more aware is the first step.
Montana Funk (10:29):
That's actually a very unique take that I haven't heard before because like you said, when you hear finance, people are like, we'll, create a budget. You need to go through everything you do and then tell yourself, okay, you only have this much money on going out to eat. But in the long term, sometimes that's not realistic. Sometimes something comes up and you can't stick with your budget. So the mindset of the consciousness, I want to really elaborate on that, think that that's so unique and important in a different way. That kind of helps, I think prevent some of those people who are listening who say, well, what happens if I have an emergency? Or what happens if my friends getting married and this month is more, how do I'd have to say no to everything? Do I have to not go to the parties? So I really like that and I want to take a quick break, but when we get back, I kind of want you to elaborate a little bit more on how you kind of meld that approach.
(11:21):
So something I think that is also important to kind of lead into this I think kind plays into it as well, is stereotypes that we have around you. Were talking about before the break, how you manage your money and how do you do it, cut out the lattes, what's important and your approach being okay, actually think about it. Think about what steps you want to do. Do you want to do this? So are there any stereotypes that you think are common or that you hear that you're like, okay, no, this is not the way that we need to actually focus on this, move past that, let's switch this mindset?
Melissa Cecchine (11:56):
Yes. So there's some financial mentors that are out there. I don't know that I want to name names. One of them is very popular, but it's all about never go out to eat, never. You don't want to have a new car, pay your house off in full. You don't want to have any debt whatsoever. And that is one way to look at it. And people who are in a lot of debt, that actually may be very helpful for them. And that's one of the reasons that I like to see what people's money personality is. So when I start to work with a client, I have them do the money quiz because I may coach someone differently who is a saver. And I think with each personality there can be really amazing aspects to that one. And there also can be some challenges. So even with someone who is a saver, it's like, great, you're saving money.
(12:51):
That's a good habit to have. But on the other side, sometimes it's like these people can't have fun because they're like, I can't save, can't. One of my friends, it's like, well, I can't go out to dinner. I don't have enough money. I need to save more money. And I know it must be frustrating for her as her friend. It's frustrating for me sometimes as well. So I really like to take the approach of, like I said, it's really being more conscious and making conscious choices as opposed to this identity that was created that you probably weren't even aware of.
Montana Funk (13:30):
Is there an alternative that you think or that you use to the budgeting that we are all told is the key to saving, right? Is there any tool that you say, Hey, look, this actually also could help and you don't have to sit down and create this strict budget where you can't have any leeway.
Melissa Cecchine (13:48):
So what I have people create is what I call a conscious spending plan. It's kind of like a budget, but I call it a plan because it's what you plan to do and you really use it as a guidepost. When I'm working with clients, I say, you can either do it good, better or best. I'm not going to lie. The best way is probably to go into all of your expenses, have a line, I don't budget for what you're doing, but some people just are never going to do that. So if you can lease, what would be really great is to first of all know how much are you really spending each month in total, what your total expenses are? That would be really good. And then it's like you can go to the next step better. It's like, okay, let me create a conscious spending plan.
(14:40):
Maybe you see it's like probably I'm spending more than I should each month based upon the money that I have coming in, and that's not what I'm committed to, so I'm going to come up with a conscious spending plan. I think the most important part is sticking to, if you say, I want my expenses to be $5,000 for the month based upon the income that I have coming in, it's like I'm more interested in that bottom line number and maybe you can finagle the things that are in between and we know life happens. There's going to be things that come up. Like you said, I have a friend that's getting married. First of all, I think the biggest crisis is we are not provided with proper financial education in school. By the time that you are 18 to 22, you really should know some of the foundation and fundamental pieces.
(15:37):
And a lot of people are never taught that. They're requiring it more in schools, but I have a degree in finance and accounting, they never teach you the personal part of it. I can tell you about running a business, but your personal finances, you're taking a different view of it, you're looking at it differently. And those are the things that we often don't learn. And that's the thing that I'm passionate about. A big component of the work that I do is just providing education. I provide a lot of free education so that people can understand the basics, and then if they want to deep dive and go further, it's like that's when they can work one-on-one with me or within the programs that I have. But like I said, it's just getting a little bit more information, diving in a little bit more deeply so that you can actually fulfill on the things that you want to fulfill on. And a lot of those things obviously come back to
Montana Funk (16:37):
Money. Unfortunately. I like that approach too because I think going back to the emotion part of it, to say to people maybe the idea of looking through your bank statements from the last six months and organizing everything is really scary and daunting and you don't want to do it. So maybe let's just take a little step, let's like you said, the good, let's just see what you can even learn. Maybe you can learn something more and that's better than nothing. And I think that that's really important because I'm sure there's people listening who are like, I'm not going to open my credit card statement. Ignorance is bliss. I am just going to keep spending, right? They're like, I don't need to see that. It's going to be too embarrassing. It's fine. So people who are like that on that end, who are avoiding it, who are avoidant, what is one little step that they can take to get to that good where it's like, okay, at least now you have maybe something that's not as daunting as doing a whole spreadsheet and looking at your statements from forever, but can still help them take a little step that's less anxiety provoking.
Melissa Cecchine (17:37):
First of all, being willing to take a look. Another thing is, I had a conversation recently with someone with there being a lot of shame and guilt around it. I think the first step is starting with forgiveness. I think it's really important to be able to start with forgiving yourself for what you may have done in the past and taking on being more courageous to take a step in the right direction. It's just being willing to take one step at a time and one step for you may be different than one step for somebody else. So what I really encourage people to do is what's one step that you could take in the right direction that would actually feel good for you and for you, maybe it would be like, okay, I'm going to be courageous enough just to look at my bank statements or just to download my credit card and take a look at that.
(18:38):
An app that I absolutely love is called Monarch Money. Maybe it's purchasing that app and you can tie the app to your bank accounts and your credit cards and it will start to upload all of that data for you. And it's a great way as you're spending money, you can start to categorize it and then the first time you go through it, you can start to auto categorize. So then in future months, if you are going to this same coffee shop or restaurant, it will automatically categorize it for you. And then you can start to see and get an idea of, okay, what are my monthly expenses? And I don't necessarily have to go in and get the data and sort it myself. It'll start sorting it for you so that you can get a better idea of where your money's going.
Montana Funk (19:32):
I like that. I'm going to have to download that. I think that is the issue or the daunting part of people who are listening, feeling like they're stuck is, okay, where do I even begin? And obviously, granted, you would hope that everybody who's listening who has credit cards is checking their statements so that they can make sure they're paying them off and whatnot. But it is to some people depending on their life history, maybe like you had talked about their background. For some people that may be even too much. So I like the idea of tools that our listeners can say, okay, let's just take a breath. Let's take one step. If it's overwhelming, I'll deal with that later, but let's just see what I can get to. So I want to take another break, but when we come back, I do kind of want to talk about remedies that can happen when someone has found themselves in a situation with finances that they are too far in or don't know how to come out of.
(20:25):
So I think a lot of the times, and granted I'm not the financial experts, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but it does seem like a lot of the time for people who are in that avoid an area, it's not too late maybe, but they don't realize how deep they are in or how much they need to actually take it serious until they're realizing, oh man, I have a lot of expenses I can't pay off or interest on my credit card is through the roof. I can't make those minimum payments. So what would you say, what advice do you have to people who maybe have said, okay, I'm actually in a situation where I personally feel like this is a financial crisis for me? Obviously understanding that everyone's different, but for anybody who thinks for themselves personally, they're in this area where they're not comfortable and they want to get out, what's a piece of advice to give them to say, okay, here's the steps you can take to actually start coming back from that?
Melissa Cecchine (21:17):
I think the first thing is, I had mentioned a lot of this is the mindset part. To get over the emotional apart, especially if you are a money avoider, I think number one is to forgive yourself and give yourself a break. Unfortunately, we're not taught this. It is one thing if you're taught and then you're not doing it, but most people are not taught what they are supposed to do, how they're supposed to handle money. We're not taught at school. Oftentimes our parents are teaching us. They may not even have good tools, they never learn. So give yourself a little break, start with that. Forgive yourself for what you did in the past and be committed to start to take some steps forward. I think the thing that's really important is unfortunately, you really need to know where you are to be able to know where you want to go.
(22:22):
So if you know that you maybe have a lot of credit card debt and you want to get out of debt, I think unfortunately the first step is knowing where you are and how much that may be. When I take people through the Miracle Money Makeover process, the first part is really the money clarity process. Understanding how much money do you actually have going out each month? How much money do you actually have coming in? But knowledge is power. Knowledge is really power. So a lot of times I think people don't understand, okay, well, I have rent food, I'm buying stuff. A lot of people don't realize that maybe they have $6,000 going out a month, but they don't understand. They only have 5,000 coming in. So it's like, oh, there's a thousand dollars gap there. But that's power, that's knowledge. It's like now you actually have an opportunity to do something and consciously choose, but at that point, you're consciously choosing to be in debt.
(23:29):
But there could be steps that you could start taking. There's so many different free resources and books out there. One of the companies that I partner with monthly, we have a course called Money 1 0 1 where we teach you some of the finances and it's free. So I just like to be able to provide that type of information to people because that's a great first step. It's like just looking for different resources or this podcast, there's podcasts on money. Just really starting to get into those conversations and listening to those types of things. I just really try to help people to start to take those first steps to start to understand what their money situation is so that they actually have the opportunity to shift that and make it look to let them know you're not stuck here, and you can start taking steps in a different direction and maybe with the good, better, best today. Let's just start with good. Let's just start with one aspect of our money on finances that's going to have us take one step, even if it's one baby step in the right
Montana Funk (24:45):
Direction. And I guess I should ask you, maybe this is a hard question, but is there one common mistake that stands out to you that people make the most when it comes to saving and managing their money? I think a lot
Melissa Cecchine (24:59):
Of it is that they actually don't know where the money's going or how much they're spending each month compared to how much they have coming in. I think that's literally number one. The other one is because of that, people don't have an emergency savings account. I think that's one of the most important things. In an ideal world, I think you should have three to six months of whatever your monthly expenses are in an emergency fund. But if you don't even know what you're spending each month, it's kind of hard to even do that. But at least having a thousand dollars set aside in case something does come up, something happens to your car, or you have a friend that's getting married that you can actually tap into and utilize cash on hand, and I might even, I think this is actually the one that's the biggest thing.
(25:55):
People not understanding credit cards. That's probably actually the top of the list of where things go astray because people put things on credit. I happened to be very lucky. This is where I never realized until I was in my thirties how important this conversation was that my parents had that I just listened to. They didn't have it with me, but they always would say, we can't put that on credit card. We can't pay it off at the end of the month. So they would only put things on credit card that they knew that they could pay later. So they really used it as a tool for a time gap to, okay, I can get it today. I'll pay it off in a month when it's due. But they would never carry a balance. And I had friends who in college got credit cards, ran up wild amounts of debt, and because of compounding interest, it took them years and years and years to pay off.
(26:54):
Where I didn't have that from that one conversation that I happened to be lucky enough to overhear. But a lot of people may have parents who are constantly putting things on credit card and they don't talk about it, just, I need this, so I'm going to put it on credit card. So I think if someone is dealing with credit card debt, it's like the game you could play is not put anything else on credit card and be trying to manage your money from whatever you have in your bank account each month. And when it's done, it's done. And then you really get to see, you are only spending as much as what you're bringing in and trying to eliminate using credit cards as much as possible if you have a lot of debt on them. And I think people just live above their means because they don't really know in the first place when someone comes and gets their first job, it's like, how do you know how much you should be spending on your housing and your food and how much it's really going to cost for you? And if you were in college and not making any money, and then you go to making a good salary, but if you're living in an expensive place like dc, the cost of living there is very high, but all your money could be going out just to pay for your basic expenses. So people live above their means for what they're making.
Montana Funk (28:19):
And I mean, obviously the cost of living nowadays is we're seeing it skyrocket, right? I mean, just everything is super expensive. And I'm very lucky that my dad is very good with finances, so he had that conversation with me. If you're going to get a credit card, read the fine print because there's going to be interest on it. Things I didn't know, like you said, we don't learn that. We don't learn that, oh, there's only a, well, there's a $40 minimum payment, I'll just pay that. No, no, because if you have thousands after that, you're getting interest on that, right? And so like you said, it's the lack of education is kind of sad because there's so many people out there that you just hear, oh, obviously I put on my credit card tap. I mean, even in movies, right? Everyone's like, just charge it to my credit card.
(28:59):
You just put it on that and it just disappears, right? And they're like, oh, and it's fine. Oh, you don't have to pay it. Yeah, right. Oh, what do you mean you're going to charge me more money if I don't pay off that? Right. It's the sad reality. I think that you're right that we don't know that, or at least when I was in university, we didn't have those classes. We weren't forced to take a financial education. So I know you mentioned a couple, but are there any other resources that you could point our listeners to help them get started, get educated, give them even like you had said, some of the basics to just allow them to have some sort of help if they don't have those conversations?
Melissa Cecchine (29:36):
Yeah. Obviously you can follow me on Instagram at Melissa. I always posting about stuff on there. There are a couple of people that I really, I think one of the things is to, there's a lot of different people and resources out there, but really finding someone that aligns with your values. So Dave Ramsey is someone who is very well known, but he tends to be on the stricter side, but it could give you some basics for information. Another one that a lot of younger women follow I like to follow as well, is Tory Dunlap. And there's free resources. Like I said, we have the Money 1 0 1 class and I post stuff on Instagram and Facebook. That is a lot of just financial education or did you know, and I'll get replies. I had no idea. I didn't know that. So you can Google it, you'll probably find lots of different free resources out there. I think it's really just listening to podcasts is also a great way to really start to look at it and have those conversations.
Montana Funk (30:58):
Yeah, I think those are all helpful. I know you said the money 1 0 1, I'm definitely going to look into that. I think that that's important. I always also want to just be more up to speed on things because also I feel like in the financial world, things are changing constantly. So that's simply something I'm going to check out. And we'll put all your socials also in the bio for this episode. So listeners, if they want to go on your Facebook, like you had said, Instagram, they can do that. And I think that that's important. Like you said, just taking that initial step. Let's get to the good, see who's then wanting to go to the great and the best. Just take those steps and thank you so much for providing those resources for us. And thank you so much for also joining me today to have this conversation because it is important. It's a topic that's really hard to sometimes address because it is a hard topic, but without addressing it and taking those steps, it can become a pretty scary situation for a lot of people. So I appreciate you joining me today to discuss it.
Melissa Cecchine (31:50):
Yeah, thank you so much for your time. And I'm very passionate about educating people, especially younger people who really have an amazing opportunity to shift their financial future. Sometimes I meet people in their fifties and they're just really starting to look at and critique this, and they don't have the time horizon to save for retirement. They would like to, but if you're in your twenties and thirties, you have a longer time to be able to, I say retire when you desire.
Montana Funk (32:25):
I appreciate it because I am in that kind of same boat where I am younger and it is so helpful for me, and I'm sure all the listeners are also as grateful as I am. Just to have this kind of information and even listening to this episode is a step towards having more resources and like you said, to step towards even the good, just listening to know a couple of things out there that they can do and getting more information than they didn't have before. Well, listeners, that is our show. Thank you as always for tuning in. And if you like what you heard today, you could recommend us to a friend. We can be found anywhere that you listen to podcasts. Until next time, this is your host Montana Funk, and you've been listening to Young Lawyer Rising, brought to you by the ABA Young Lawyers Division and produced by Moraine Media.
