With momentum building in my business Life You Choose I have recently been asked “What was the inspiration for Life You Choose?” Mentoring and coaching individuals and teams to achieve amazing personal, career and business goals, was a major part of my corporate career that I loved. Especially helping others to achieve more than they thought was ever possible.
I have found that mostly this was about confidence and belief in themselves, combined with opportunity to learn and demonstrate what they could do. Their success was my success and watching others go on to achieve amazing things, felt even better than doing it for myself.
The desire to help others achieve their own personal and professional success has now led me to start Life You Choose. Life You Choose provides coaching programs to empower women in their lives and to achieve financial independence. Outside of my corporate career I have also built personal wealth through property investment and have always encouraged family and friends to build their own wealth, either through property or other investments.
I have spent the last year researching, developing content and continuing my own learning through building a tribe of professionals, to provide additional expertise. I have tested and retested the content and ran a number of workshops for women, where the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
When I first decided to develop coaching programs to empower women to achieve financial independence, I knew there was a need. I did not realise, just how desperately these programs were needed. I have watched friends and family hold themselves back, often through a lack of confidence or through fear. I am now seeing the impact that these choices are having on them today and will have on them in their future. My goal is to reach as many women as I can and inspire them to be empowered in their life and to really believe that they can build their own financial independence and personal wealth. My premise is, if I can do it, starting from a position of no financial backing or financial education, others can too, you just need to change your mindset
What I have found surprising is that there are a range of little known financial facts about women in Australia. While I present this information at my workshops, it seems we just don’t talk about the financial realities of life.
In one of the women’s groups I was mentoring, one of the participants raised her concern about her financial future, it was causing her to lose sleep. When asked what was she doing about it, the answer was nothing (apart from worrying).
A quick check in with the other women in the group revealed that 100% of them were also doing nothing about their financial health, even though they all had as a minimum a niggling concern.
What I didn’t realise at the time was that these women were also much better off financially than most women in Australia. They were all working full-time (2 out of 5 women, work part-time, 3 out of 5 if you have children under 5) and were all earning close to the average weekly wage, which is not the case for the majority of women.
We should all know our financial facts and we all need a plan, which includes our ongoing financial education.
We have only one life and we should all live a life we love, and this costs money, so let’s not pretend that it doesn’t.
We need to understand the importance of income, the relationship to superannuation and our ability to access debt. We also can’t rely on our employee super contributions alone, to provide for our retirement, the median for super for women at 55-64 years is just $80,000. Very few of us will earn enough income, that enables our employee contributions to provide for a comfortable retirement (when did you last check yours?). If you are a business owner, it is likely that you are in an even worse financial situation regarding paying your own superannuation. Add into the equation the possibility of relationship breakdowns and career breaks and we have a recipe for financial disaster.
The earlier we start our financial education, we will learn that there are less dramatic changes needed to positively influence our financial future. Most of the changes needed will be to our mindset, as this is often what is holding us back. Why was I able to purchase property as a single woman on less income than others and continue to build my portfolio over time?
With a number of speaking engagements coming up and more workshops scheduled, I am pleased that we are starting to talk more about this critical topic. It is a great time, to develop your own life and money plan. Check out the latest events Life You Choose Events
I look forward to continuing the conversations on living an empowered life with financial independence.
Kerry Ashbrook is the founder of Life You Choose, which is a business focusing on ‘Empowering Women to achieve Financial Independence’. Life You Choose provides a range of coaching programs and workshops, to give women the confidence to create a step by step plan for Life & Money.
Kerry Ashbrook is an entrepreneur, business women, inspirational speaker, author, coach, corporate executive and investor. Kerry offers a range of coaching programs for women and men, focusing on life, career and business. You can email Kerry.Ashbrook@Lifeyouchoose.com.au or complete your contact details below: