Financial Readiness Workshop

October 15, 2019

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In the transition to adulthood, it can be very confusing and intimidating to navigate finances and saving for the future. After all, we’re too young to be thinking about retirement. As young people, we are often perplexed by budgeting our money or the importance of a 401k plan. However, on October 3rd, the Concert Careers Pathway Program hosted Laurie Nardone, the Managing Principal at Shira Ridge Wealth Management, to offer guidance in personal financial management. This was the first personal finance workshop offered at The UC Theatre, with the hope of helping our staff and CCP participants excel in all areas of their life!

We checked in with a few of our Concert Career Pathways participants to see what they took from the workshop and how they will address their finances moving forward!

“I have good habits, but where I do struggle is in my budgeting. I don’t necessarily track where I spend all my money, I just don’t spend more than I have. She gave good questions to ask myself before making a purchase. Some of them included, “How much will I spend in a transaction today?” or “If I want it now, will I want it if I wait a day?”  I will use these questions before making purchases. The money you spend today is money that you won’t be able to spend later on.” 
-Ivan Cardenas

“I’m especially taking away from her savings habit plan since that isn’t something I was practicing all that well in the first place. It’s just like she said, progress over perfection. It’s hard to focus on the baby steps sometimes, especially when it comes to finances, but it’s important to realize that just starting is a big step in itself. Talking with Laurie during the break really reassured me in setting my priorities and making plans.” 
-Marissa Gutierrez

“I appreciated the lesson that lower-risk passive trading actually offered similar benefits to high-risk active trading without the volatility and potential of severe loss of money. I think that most people have a vision of the stock market and trading as a high-intensity rollercoaster, so it was refreshing to hear an expert advocate for low-and-slow growth of wealth. I also appreciated the strategies proposed to cut back on credit card debt, particularly the move to rank cards by interest rate rather than balance and cut out the worst rates first.” 
-David Murphy

“Something that stuck out to me was the focus on personal goal-setting to create the future that I want for myself, and the questions to ask myself before buying something. Before the workshop, I hadn’t given any real thought to what I want my future to look like financially, but now I foresee achievable goals to work toward.”
-Wanny Mei