Launch day is here! Welcome to episode one of Keep Finance Queerd. This week I am introducing you to my personal finance story, including the beginnings of my business, the “why” of starting this podcast, and what you can expect out of this series. I dive into my goals surrounding the podcast, get vulnerable about the creative process behind the scenes, and illustrate how coming out, receiving an ADHD diagnosis, and understanding who I am completely, has transformed my relationship with money. I can’t wait to share more of the conversations with you, and in the meantime, you can follow me wherever you listen to podcasts, and leave a review!
EXCITING NEWS: For every review the podcast receives in the first six months, I will be donating $1 to charities and organizations that have been selected by the featured guests.
Launch day is here! Welcome to episode one of Keep Finance Queerd. This week I am introducing you to my personal finance story, including the beginnings of my business, the “why” of starting this podcast, and what you can expect out of this series. I dive into my goals surrounding the podcast, get vulnerable about the creative process behind the scenes, and illustrate how coming out, receiving an ADHD diagnosis, and understanding who I am completely, has transformed my relationship with money. I can’t wait to share more of the conversations with you, and in the meantime, you can follow me wherever you listen to podcasts, and leave a review!
EXCITING NEWS: For every review the podcast receives in the first six months, I will be donating $1 to charities and organizations that have been selected by the featured guests.
Hi friends, launch day is finally here. Welcome to the Keep Finance Queerd Podcast where we will be putting the personal back in personal finance by exploring the complex, nuanced and deeply personal relationship between your identity and money so you can gain the tools, strategies and perspectives you need to make your money work for you. I'm your host, Ellyce Fulmore. I am a queer, neurodivergent millennial currently living in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with my girlfriend and about 200 plant babies. Don't worry, this podcast will be applicable to you no matter where you live in the world. I am the founder of Queerd Co, a financial literacy company with the mission of achieving financial equity. Ultimately, accessibility is one of the largest barriers to financial support. My goal is to create a safe and accessible space where people of all identities can visit, find resources, and know that their lived experiences are valued while advocating for holistic financial equity. Finding new and innovative ways to provide free and accessible financial education is key, and that's where this podcast comes in. This platform gives me the opportunity to elevate diverse voices and have indepth important conversations around identity and money. I am so incredibly excited to be sitting here and recording this episode for all of you, and I'll be honest, I'm also very nervous. Starting a podcast feels very vulnerable and it's a new type of project that I've never done before. The hardest part has been all of the decisions that I've had to make for this podcast. Like what is the podcast going to be about? What is the name going to be? What kind of cover art do I want? How do I want to record it? What software and equipment am I going to use? Who will come on as a guest? How will I structure the interviews? What do we want to talk about? What platforms do I listen to podcast on? What category is it in? The list goes on. My ADHD brain gets decision fatigue very quickly, and this hands down has been the most decision heavy project I've taken on. I feel exhausted at the end of each day because so many different people are asking me to make these decisions and I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just figuring it out as I go, but I am very happy to be here and I know that everything will fall into place. I hope that you can feel the passion and energy that I've put into this podcast and that it will deliver exactly what you're looking for. Before we start diving into the regular episodes and hear from some incredible guests, I thought we would start out with a little bit of my story. When I started my money journey, I was drowning in debt, had $60 to my name, and avoided my bank account as much as I could. When I got student loan emails, I deleted them unopened when I got paid, I spent that money immediately and found myself counting the days until next payday. I was $35,000 in debt and $15,000 of that was high interest debt. I had my financial breaking point one year when I was visiting my sister in Toronto. I had gotten strep throat while on the trip and gone to the doctor for antibiotics. The antibiotics were $80. I went to pay and my card got declined. I only had $60 in my bank account. This was the moment where I knew something had to change. I was making enough money that I shouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck and I was tired of always being stressed about money. Fast forward to January of 2020 pre world lockdown. I had just started my life coaching business and I had a couple of clients while also working a parttime job. I was finally feeling in control of my money and I had begun to make a lot of progress on my debt. Then in March of 2020, I was laid off for my parttime job because I didn't have much else to do. At that point, I decided to jump in and give my business my all. I started talking a lot more about career and money because I felt that that was what most people needed at that time and I think if we take a look at my Tik Tok today, it's pretty clear that we all definitely did need that and my financial literacy business was born. My business started out as a typical financial literacy business. I was sharing tips on how to save more money, pay off debt, and boost your credit score. But as I started to work more intimately with clients, I realized the root of their financial problems was more than a lack of financial literacy and poor decisions. See, at this point I have received over 700 applications to work with me and I've heard over 700 stories of people's struggles and it's become very clear to me that if being good with money was as simple as making a budget, that we'd all be good with money. Now, during the beginning of my business, which was also the beginning of the pandemic, I was also going through a period of immense personal change. I ended my relationship at the time, came out publicly as queer, and started dating women for the first time. A couple of months later, I legally changed my first name to my middle name, which I always felt suited me better. These changes pushed me to explore other aspects of myself and six months later I was diagnosed with ADHD. As I was going through these changes, I did a lot of reflection on how they affected my finances, specifically getting diagnosed with ADHD and starting to learn more about it. I realized how much of my financial habits and struggles stemmed from my ADHD. I have always struggled to follow traditional budgets because to me they are boring and overwhelming. I would often forget about my bills, forget to cancel subscriptions, forget to return items. I struggle a lot with time management, which would result in me paying a lot for takeout or food on the go because I was always running late and I'm still always running late and these are just the tip of the iceberg. But don't worry, there's going to be a lot more on how I manage my money with ADHD. Later on in the podcast, I began to think, what if our struggles with money wasn't because we were bad with money and actually stemmed from things like our parents financial mindset and practices, our own lived experience, the systems working against us, and the aspects of our identity that made us not fit into the typical patriarchal system. Personal finance is not just about managing your money better, creating the perfect budget, working harder, or making more money is so tightly tied to the entire human experience and understanding that is the key to making your finances work for you. Your financial situation is directly affected by your access to safe spaces, your gender identity, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, trauma, mental health, disability, body size, etc. Etc. Which is exactly what we are going to talk about on this podcast. Keep Finance Queered will be alternating between solo episodes and guest interviews, with new episodes dropping every Thursday. I know many of you are probably looking for tangible money tips like how to pay off your debt quicker, save more money, build up your credit score, things like that. And don't you worry, my solo episodes will include a lot of these topics, but we are going to be covering a lot more than just tangible financial advice. I encourage you to listen with an open mind because although you may think that the tangible advice is what you need, I promise you that the guest episodes will give you so much more remember what I said about money being tightly tied to the human experience? That is the key to understanding how to make your money work for you and your lifestyle, and that is what the guest episodes will deliver. The conversations with my guests will be more nuanced and complex, but they will begin to uncover all the aspects of identity that impact your money. I want to take a moment before we close this first episode out to acknowledge my own societal privilege when it comes to money and the role it plays in me being able to even have the platform I do today. It's important that while we acknowledge the barriers that work against us, that we also identify the barriers that don't even exist for us, that may exist for others. Coming from a small town in rural Alberta, I've done a lot of learning and unlearning and will continue to put in the work to better support and uplift marginalized communities. I am actively investing in BIPOC queer and women run businesses and I am committed to a lifelong journey of self education on systems of oppression and my role in actively dismantling them. With that said, I am so, so excited that you are here and listening to this podcast and I can't wait for you to hear some of the incredible interviews that we've done already. You can show your support for the podcast by rating and reviewing it, subscribing to the show and sharing on social media. All of the support that we've gotten so far has been amazing and I appreciate you all so much. Thank you for listening and remember to Keep Finance Queerd Keep Finance Queerd is produced and hosted by Me Ellyce Fulmore. Podcast Trailer intro and outro by Serena Deschner Audio editing by Lizzie Rajchel. Messaging and marketing by Kelly Schmidt and Michelle Jalali. Graphics by Kaitlin Brown from Designs By KB.