Getting Financially Naked with Liana
Getting Financially Naked with Liana
At the Financial Gym, we call the first meeting you have with a trainer, the “financially naked session”. In this meeting, you share everything about yourself financially so the trainer knows where you’re starting so that he or she can make the plan for how you can get where you want to go. Above all other meetings, this one scares clients the most because they are afraid or ashamed of their financial situation. A year ago on this podcast, I shared my financially naked session and it led to a request for more. Now this is a regular series on this podcast.
Getting in the hotseat today is long-time podcast listener, who is actually NOT a financial gym client, Liana. She joins me today to share her unique career journey and of course all of her financial details.
What Are We Drinking?
Liana — Hot toddy - Lemon zinger tea, honey, and a splash of bourbon
Shannon — Bota Box Nighthawk
Podcast Notes
Liana found this podcast through Frugalwoods.com. Liz featured Shannon on one of her blog posts and Liana has been following ever since.
She has been listening to this podcast for at least a few years now. Liana likes to listen while she takes walks. This podcast was the inspiration for starting a podcast at her work.
Liana lives in Vermont, but not on a homestead.
Liana is an editor, but her training is in neuroscience. She has her PhD in neuroscience, because originally she wanted to teach at a small liberal arts school.
She went to college at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. Liana taught for a while at the University of Vermont. She thought it was going to be her dream job and realized very quickly that it wasn’t.
Her financial situation allowed her to freelance. In addition to teaching, she always wanted to write and edit. Eventually, one of her clients hired her on full time.
Liana works for a company called Research Square out of North Carolina. There is a small office there, and some people work on site, but for the most part, employees work remotely. It has been great for her work/life balance and she has never been happier.
Her clients are non-native, English speaking scientists that are trying to get published in English language journals. A lot of the top journals in science are in English.
There is a huge barrier, because many of the research scientists throughout the world do not speak English as their first language, and they have a hard time portraying their science.
Her company has very strict rules about content — they don’t touch any of the content. It is strictly language editing. They leave comments if they think they may be changing the meaning.
Their company is now taking on a new product in-house where scientists ask them for help with their ideas. Liana is getting trained on that now.
When Liana first realized she wanted to leave academia, she started looking for jobs and side hustles with editing and writing. She quickly realized she was very qualified to do the scientific editing, but there was a whole field called medical writing.
She was applying for jobs in medical writing, but she didn’t get them. Liana did a lot of research on it and she decided to take a course from a woman named Emma Nichols, who is a medical writer with 20 years of experience. She created a course for people who wanted to train for medical writing.
It was expensive, but one of the perks of the course is if you do well, you will become one of Emma’s freelance writers. Liana completed the course, worked for Emma, and earned back the cost of the course in about a month.
Emma had a Listserv and she would post medical writing jobs on there. Liana’s current employer was listed there.
Liana is from New Hampshire originally, and she came to Vermont for grad school. She went to Emery in Atlanta to do her post doc and it was a total culture shock. It gave her the peace of mind that she really does want to live in New England forever.
She took the first job she could to come back and ended up working as an assistant professor in the same department she got her degree in. She met her now fiancé there and there is no way she wants to leave Vermont.
Liana saw Frugalwoods on Facebook, and when she started reading the blog, she was hooked. She felt so alone her whole life, because she was good at saving and didn’t like to spend on things like her friends. She felt a lot of shame around that, because nobody really understood.
Reading that blog was the first time she realized she wasn’t alone.
There are bloggers out there now that have really brought frugality to the forefront and made it more acceptable, especially with the FIRE movement.
Questions from the financially naked discovery questionnaire:
Birthday: May 21, 1987
Job: Research Square
Pay: $52,500 (switching from semi-monthly to bi-weekly)
USAA Checking: $8,000
USAA Savings: $1,300
American Express Emergency Fund: $13,700
USAA Roth IRA: $5,500
Voya 401(k): $19,650
Fidelity Rollover IRA: $47,300
Fidelity Brokerage Account: $38,000
Student Loan Debt: Paid off in 2018; had $25,000
Credit Card: Paid off monthly
Car: $7,000 ($294/month, 2.75% interest)
Credit Score: 800
Mortgage: $400/month
Health Insurance: Yes, with employer
Life Insurance: Group life, short term disability, and long term disability through employer
Average Monthly Expenses: $1,400
Will: No
Children: None
Goals 1-3 years: Wedding (9/19/20) and decide on honeymoon
Goals long term: Financial independence
What’s important to you (sacred cows): Gym membership and charitable giving
TAKEAWAY: My biggest takeaway is to be open with the journey your career may take. I graduated 20 years ago with a degree in finance hoping to have a career in investment banking. That’s obviously not where my career went, but everything I learned along the way led me exactly to where I’m supposed to be now.
Random Three Questions
What is a show you like to binge watch?
What is a food you hated as a child and do you hate it now?
If you won a million dollars, what would you do with it?
If you’d like to get financially naked with my team, and drop any fear or shame you have around money, I hope you’ll reach out to us at The Financial Gym. My trainers have literally seen it all so nothing will surprise us. We don’t care how you got here, we just care about getting you where you want to go.
The great news is that Martinis and Your Money listeners get 15% off Financial Gym services. If you’re ready to manifest your dreams, like Liana, in 2020, head over to, or send friends to, financialgym.com to get set up today.