The Financial Gym is shaking up the industry by taking a page from the fitness world. Instead of complex spreadsheets, the company offers personalized financial coaching, helping you get into your best financial shape. Shannon McLay, CEO, Financial Gym, joined TheStreet to discuss this unique approach.
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Full Video Transcript Below:
CONWAY GITTENS: So the financial gym is taking a gym model and bringing it over to the world of personal finance. So how does that work and what are the benefits?
SHANNON MCLAY: Yes, so years ago when I was working as a Merrill Lynch financial adviser, I saw so many people who didn’t have $250,000 of investable assets, which is what you needed to work with me at Merrill Lynch. I saw so many people who didn’t have that but wanted financial guidance and wanted to get it from a human being. And and, you know, even till this day, it’s been 11 years now., but even now it’s like most companies will say, use an app or, you know, use a bot or AI, some AI financial planner.
But money is very personal. And I think most people don’t understand money and personal finance. And I wanted to figure out a way to deliver it to the masses. And I thought there’s so many places we could go to get physically healthy if we wanted to, but if we wanted to get financially healthy, where would we go. And I thought we would go to a financial gym and similar to a regular gym, people could pay a monthly fee and get the workout they needed. So, you know, somebody might be working on their debt, somebody might be working on budgeting, somebody might, might be working on investing and leveling up their game. But there’s a workout for everybody.
GITTENS: How does the financial gym help a person deal cope with financial shame?
MCLAY: Yes, that’s actually the first step that we take with working with clients. We call the first session. You have with us with your trainer. We call it the financially naked session. And it’s tongue in cheek and what we say. But what we’re doing is we’re acknowledging the shame right away. We realize if you’re going to tell us how much credit card debt you have, what your income is, how much is in your bank account, we realize those are all highly charged, how people feel like highly charged and emotional subject areas. And so we realize that they feel like they’re stripping naked in front of us. They’re stripping financially naked. And, you know, they feel embarrassed.
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MCLAY: And our first day, our first session is to understand and tell them that we understand, that we don’t care what you look like financially. We don’t care what your balance sheet looks like, we don’t care. We just care about where you want to go. And we can’t take back how you got here, but we can change where you go from there. And a lot of that initial work is accepting, giving people grace on the financial decisions they’ve made and realizing that the big thing we say at the gym all the time is anything you do financially is fixable. Anything, whether it’s bankruptcy, too much credit card debt, not enough saved, not prepared for retirement. Everything you do financially is fixable. So understand that no matter what you did to get here, no big deal. It’s just how much fixing do we have to do to get you where you want to go.
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