A Message From Founder and CEO, Liz Davidson,
Long Beach, CA
9/13/09
Ten years ago, I started a company called Financial Finesse with a single mission: Provide people everywhere with the financial education and guidance they need to make informed financial decisions, so that they can become financially secure and independent. On Day 1, I decided that our company would only provide financial education; we would not sell any financial products or services or manage any money so that the information we provided would always be free of any conflict of interest. At the time, financial education was not an industy; it was not even a term that people recognized or related to. It was 1999, the dot com era was in full swing, and no one contemplated the importance of unbiased education and guidance because Wall Street seemed to have all the answers.
Over 10 years, times have changed a lot. Today, we are a leading provider of unbiased financial education programs for large organizations, who contract with us to offer our education as an employee benefit in this tough economy, so that employees have an unbiased resource they can turn to for critical financial decisions.
For the employees who have access to our services, we are able to make an enduring impact on their lives, fulfilling the mission we started with 10 years ago.
However, there are many more Americans who do not have access to our services or any other financial education because their employer does not offer financial education as a benefit, or maybe they don’t currently have an employer, making them even more vulnerable financially.
On top of that, there are over 50 million children in this country who are growing up without any sort of education or guidance around how to manage their money in a culture where we are each bombarded with a near constant slew of advertisements for products we don’t really need. Our children are the future of this country, and we are setting them up to fail unless we make swift and dramatic changes in the way we educate, guide and mentor them.
In my opinion, we haven’t done nearly enough as a company, and I haven’t done nearly enough as an individual, until we find a way to bring unbiased financial education and guidance to people who do not have access to it at work, at school, or through other sources or avenues. This site was built to do just that.
One of the people I admire most reminds me repeatedly how important it is to make the world a better place in the short time we have on this Earth. He is my husband and we are expecting our first child very soon, so we’ve been having a lot of these kinds of discussions lately. This site, which is “due” on the same day as our baby, is dedicated to my husband Joe for all his support and wisdom and to my son Jay who has already made an impact on my life even though his hasn’t started yet.
This site is also dedicated to all of you who never received financial education in school, never had it available as an employee benefit at work, and never found a mentor, teacher or financial planner you could trust to teach you what you needed to know to create the life you’ve always wanted for yourselves and your families.
I also hope it will inspire you, just as my husband has inspired me, to help others on their journey to become financially secure and to leave the world a better place than you found it.
Sincerely,
Liz DavidsonFounder and CEO, Financial Finesse
