My name is Veronica (aka Vee) and I’m just a girl that is fascinated by money and what people do with it. Sounds kind of boring, right? A little bit, but I can’t help it! It’s what I’ve been passionate about for all of my adult life.

I joined the Financial Services Industry when I was just 18 years old and never looked back. I initially started in banking and worked as a bank teller for 5 years all through college. When I was in my junior year of college, my Intro to Corporate Finance professor asked me if I had ever considered a career in investments.

I had not at that point, but she thought I’d be a good fit for a program she was the director of where basically a team of students managed an endowment fund for the university for a year. That’s right, college kids managing real money.

It was a life changing experience for me. It was then that I knew that I wanted to work somewhere in the investment management world. I learned a lot that year, but one of the things that I caught onto early on was the male to female ratio. When I showed up for my first boot camp that summer I found a classroom full of guys.

The program was made up of about 21 students broken up into 3 teams. In the entire program, there were 4 females and 17 males. My team of 7 students was comprised of 6 guys and me. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against men, but I was surprised to see how big the difference was. I wondered, is this normal?

I graduated and went on to work at a Wealth Management Firm (my current gig — which I absolutely love, btw!) and quickly found out that yes, it was and isnormal. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women represent only about 30percent of U.S. financial advisors. That number shrinks even more in other parts of the industry. For example, less than 10% of U.S. portfolio managers are women.

Okay, so what’s the big deal? Why am I telling you all this? Why am I here? Well, I’m glad you asked! Like I said before, nothing against men here, but my time in this industry and my experience of being surrounded by all these men have inspired me to do something. No, I’m not telling you all to become financial advisors or portfolio managers (although I’m not opposed to that at all!), but I want more women, especially young women to know more about money.

I want us girls to be interested in learning about saving, investing, debt management, how to buy a house, credit scores, etc., just as much as we are interested in learning about doing our makeup, trying new recipes, or finding the perfect workout. I say us and we because I’m right there with you. I love finding makeup tutorials because I know nothing about how to contour my face, and I love finding good recipes because I don’t know how to cook many things yet!

Being able to hop on the web and find a video showing me how to contour my face or finding a great blog full of delicious recipes is an incredible resource. I hope to be a small resource to all of you and create a place where you can come on and learn more about your money.

So, I hope you will join me on my new journey as a blogger. I will be writing about all things personal finance and do my best to make cents of all this money stuff (punny, I know) I’ll try to keep it as interesting as possible and not bore you too much with all the finance jargon!

XO,

Vee