We are a modern family from San Francisco. Jenni is a financial advisor with Sincerus Advisory, a fee-only comprehensive financial planning firm. Previously, she worked in tech where she was named “Hero of the 500s” by Fortune Magazine for her corporate and community contributions. Lisa is a money coach, using her skills as a behavioral therapist and social worker to help people develop spending habits that they can feel good about.
After experiencing how financial planning afforded us the freedom to make a leap from salaried security, take our family around the world, and pursue dream ventures from filmmaking to bicycle rides – it’s now our mission to help others make their greatest dreams a financial reality.
But before we say more about us, let’s talk about you. We’re guessing we have a lot in common.
You wish you could afford more time to enjoy and be present to the people you love most.
You want the freedom to choose your work based on purpose over paycheck.
You have some big dreams, and you’re ready to take command of building your ideal life.
But maybe…
Let’s go deep for a minute. Here’s what we believe about money:
Instead of letting money determine our value, we have the opportunity to use money to express our values and enable a fulfilling and awesome life.
If we’re honest, more money is nice.
But what’s even nicer is knowing in your soul that you have enough, do enough, and are enough.
As a business director in a Fortune 500 tech company, there was a lot that Jenni valued about her work. She had autonomy. She was good at what she did. Most importantly, she had colleagues that were smart, thoughtful, and collaborative.
However, the work came at a cost. Jenni lost 2-3 hours every day commuting. She traveled nights away regularly. She spent the day rushing from one meeting to the next, often barely managing to find time to use the bathroom. Jenni would come home each night exhausted, only to have to log back into work after putting the kids to bed.
Meanwhile, Lisa had chosen a career as a psychotherapist at San Francisco’s most prestigious hospital. But with student debt and an undervalued profession, she felt priced out of the city with limited career mobility. She came home with little emotional reserve to care for herself or her family.
We blamed ourselves, thinking we must just be doing a poor job of managing life. But then we came across an NYT article titled Stressed, Rushed, and Tired: Portrait of the Modern Family. That’s when we realized that our experience was the norm.
We needed to find another way. We began imagining a life where…
That was when Jenni discovered the power of financial planning. Not just a few tips and tricks thrown together after reading a money magazine. But a comprehensive financial plan and investment management approach that aligns your money with your deepest values and biggest goals.
We sat down and articulated what we wanted most for our family. We wrote it all down in a “Family Freedom Manifesto,” and we began developing a long-term financial plan to support our vision of an ideal life:
We looked at how we spent our money and cut out what wasn’t meeting a need or bringing us joy.
We put an end to our flip-flopping investment approach and established a cost-efficient investment plan that would maximize the chances we could achieve our goals. We chose investments that expressed our values, and we felt good about putting our money in causes that mattered to us.
We started to think out-of-the-box about what was possible as a wage-earning employee, taking a sabbatical to pursue a once-in-a-lifetime trip around the world, then another and another to enjoy time with our children.
We moved to Europe for a new job, in part for the adventure and in part for a cost of living adjustment that would boost earnings. We moved again, this time to Asia, taking advantage of our location independence to make the best of a challenging period.
We found easy ways to earn a little side money here and there, which when added up, could afford a few pretty spectacular vacations a year.
It’s allowed us to leave the security of a salaried job to create a purpose-driven business that we find meaningful and enjoyable.
It’s enabled Lisa to stay at home as a full-time parent while our kids were still young.
It’s offering us the space to pursue passion projects like producing a film documentary that lead to this TED talk and launching the Asia Rainbow charity bike ride.
It’s freeing us to become location independent and go on family adventures around the world (though home will always be San Francisco).
It’s letting us afford the big things we want to provide for our family as well as the regular luxuries that bring us consistent happiness.
It’s enabling us to eventually go home and raise our family in the city that we love, despite how darn expensive that city happens to be.
It’s giving us the time and space to actually enjoy what we already have in our lives instead of needing to pursue more.
In an age where the most educated and privileged Americans are working more hours than ever and financial security feels perilous even for high-earners, so many of us feel constrained by the need to “make a living.”
But what if it doesn’t need to be this way?
What if this financial fear is just a reaction out of a misguided survival instinct that is leading us to trade in our capacity to express our best gifts for the sake of safety, status and consumption?
What if there was a way to provide for our families and live in wealth while still having the freedom to choose how we work and spend our time?
The answer lies in getting extremely intentional with your money. For us, this was the key to developing the emotional and financial confidence to pursue a life that we want to live.
Now, we support others to do the same. Learn more about working with us here:
