[00:00:06] Viktoriia Miracle: Hello. Hello and welcome back to happy time happy money podcasts with Viktoriia Miracle. And today we have Stephanie Georgakopoulos. She is

[00:00:18] hi, Stephanie.

[00:00:19] Is MBA wealth advisor, speaker and financial blogger. She is the founder of Financial EmpowHERed a community of busy and ambitious female business owners who come together to grow their businesses from lasting friendships, and most importantly, convert their business revenue into personal wealth.

[00:00:43] Hi and welcome Stephanie.

[00:00:45] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me here and I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:49] Viktoriia Miracle: We are excited to have you with us. Well, tell us more about yourself, about you, who you are, how did you start it and what inspired you to do what you do right now?

[00:01:02] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: Well it happened, I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but there were a lot of little things in my life that kind of led me to where I am today.

[00:01:13] Like you've mentioned, I'm a wealth advisor and I specialize in women and especially women that have their own businesses and it kind of started and propelled me forward with that. When I was in my mid twenties, I was running a successful moving and shipping company and I started to make a lot of money.

[00:01:33] So I took my husband at the time and we went to a local of, I was living in Florida, a local, Financial advisor's office and I want it to be responsible. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to start making my money make money. So we went into this, financial advisor's office. It was an older gentleman and he spoke to my husband the whole time.

[00:01:56] He ignored me and my questions. And just, if he did answer a question, he would look at my husband and answer and it was very frustrating. And then he got to this point where he started to describe a specific product. And I just didn't understand, I wasn't following him out. So I asked him, I was like, you know, can you explain that to me one more time please?

[00:02:15] And he looked at me and said, I remember it. Like it was yesterday, it makes me so infuriated. I know that finances and math are hard for women to understand, but there's really no way for me to make this simpler. If you don't get it, you don't get it. Viktoriia. I was livid. I could not believe it. I just grabbed my stuff and I'm like, there's no way that I'm gonna work with this person.

[00:02:38] That's so disrespectful to me. So I grabbed my stuff and I'm running out the door and my husband, you know, obviously comes to follow me and he looked at him and he's like, well, she's rude. He's like, no, she's not. You were very rude and demeaning. And not only that, she's the income earner, it's her money that you would have been investing.

[00:02:57] And, you know, you were very disrespectful to her and that's really kind of what propelled me into changing industries and going in to personal finance, because if it happened to me, it's happened to other women, right. And the crazy thing is I have a masters in finance. It's so ludicrous that you would have said that to me, it was just the way that he explained it about the way that I understood, or I just needed it repeated.

[00:03:22] I soon found out that there are so many instances where women want to get a little more information or they want to go and invest their money. And they're being mansplained and talked down to, and they end up not doing anything, which was kind of like what happened to me at that point? The day that I walked out, well, what happened was my righteous indignation.

[00:03:42] I was like, oh, it's fine. You know, I'll just move on. But my money stayed in the bank and it wasn't being invested. So I ended up hurting myself too and so I wanted to become, a proponent of that voice, helping women in a safe environment where they can ask all their questions, they can get all the information that they need to know and grow their money or their wealth.

[00:04:07] Viktoriia Miracle: Well, thank you so much for sharing. I'm curious. So you started to, then you decided just so you walked away, you didn't say you didn't invest your money and then you started to get it. You said you already had an education. So you just decided to what, what do you are, how are you helping right now a woman?

[00:04:25] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: So I left the transportation industry, like I said, I was running a moving and shipping company and I got into personal finance. and as I kind of grew in this position, I've been doing it since 2013. And you know, the more women I spoke to, the more experienced I got, I found out that one, I was absolutely not alone.

[00:04:46] And two were severely underrepresented right now in the industry there's only 24% of financial advisors are women, but women own. 48% of the welfare in the United States. And they're also going to inherit most of the $30 trillion that's coming in from baby boomers, right. But a horrible statistic for me that what I am trying to change is that 58% of the women don't feel competent enough to make their own financial decisions.

[00:05:19] So what they do is they leave it to, whether it's their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their uncles, but a male that they, you know, To make those financial decisions for, for them. And this is even women with their own businesses, you know, they're running very successful businesses, but they still don't feel that competence, because they don't feel like when they do reach out that they're respected and they don't feel that when they do reach out, they're given specialized unique advice for that and so that's what I do is I help with.

[00:05:52] Viktoriia Miracle: So why woman, you would say specialized advice?

[00:05:55] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: Great question. So women are unique, obviously. We're amazing but when we're looking at our finances, we have different things that are going on for us. Like one, we're paid left, so when you hear those cookie cutter advice, that 10% or 15% of your income away, they're thinking about how much a man makes and the trajectory of what he's going to make over his lifetime, how much it increases.

[00:06:18] Right. Well, for women we're paid less so we're going to take, like, even if we put 10, 15% away, we're putting away less. Right. But we live longer. So our money has to last longer, our retirement years are longer. What happened right now, or what is happening right now is that we're living five to seven years longer and we're running out of money.

[00:06:43] So if we're taking those generic advice or the advice given to our male counterparts, we're going to end up running out of money. 17%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot of women in retirement right now are living under the poverty level.

[00:07:00] Viktoriia Miracle: That is a lot. it's not a lot, but it is. It is a lot.

[00:07:04] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: It is a lot. When you think about how like the baby boomer generation, how many people that really is, and as their spouses pass away, it's going to get worse. And we have higher costs in retirement as women. We have more health expenses, right. So not only are we living longer, we have more expensive, so we really need to be saving a lot more.

[00:07:28] Right. And it also doesn't take into consideration like if you listened to the cookie cutter advice where you are somebody that's 22 years old, just out of college, starting their first job, they're putting away 10, 15, 18%, right. That's a lot of years to put money away and he can manage a compound interest.

[00:07:51] Right. But let's say you're 45 years old out of a divorce and you're just starting fresh now, again, from nothing. That's not going to help you hit your goal and what are you investing in? Right. What is your investment getting? so these are the reasons why it's so imperative to get that specialized advice, make sure that it's tailored to you.

[00:08:14] Make sure that it looking at what's your goal is not just, oh, we'll put 10% away, but oh, this is how much money you're going to need in retirement to live comfortably. Let's work backwards from that. What do we need to do today to get to that amount versus just theoretical? Oh, put 10% away because that will really help you avoid poverty in retirement.

[00:08:36] Viktoriia Miracle: So thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. And I, I wanted to ask you a question that, you know, I mean, it's so important and I know you share way more and I know you have an amazing gifted, you will also speak about money, blogs and how to actually, you know, decide and start investing without scarcity or thinking that we're not good enough to invest, but we're running out of time.

[00:09:03] Last question that I have for everybody on this podcast is I want you to fill in the sentence, the blank in a sentence for me. If you really knew me, you will know that I am blank.

[00:09:18] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: Oh, if you really knew me, you would know that I am an introvert who pushes through my own blocks in order to fight for you, to make sure that you get everything that you need so that you can live your most empowered life, anything in my power for you.

[00:09:38] Viktoriia Miracle: Thank you. And share with the artist. What do you have for us today? I know you have some gifts?

[00:09:45] Stephanie Georgakopoulos: I can do so every month I host a breakthrough, your money blocks to release your inner bad-ass masterclass to help women who are trying to start, learning about investing, trying to start getting that courage to go out and get the information that they need and the support that they need.

[00:10:06] Generally it is at, at cost, but if you connect with me on Facebook at Financially EmpowHERed, and let me know that you came in through Viktoriia and through this happy time, happy money podcast and I will offer that to you for free and help you get, making your next level of income, the next level of money.

[00:10:29] Viktoriia Miracle: So good, thank you so much and if you're watching or listening this, just scroll down, you will find the episode link page, where it click in there.

[00:10:37] You will find all the links that we mentioned in this episode and all the contact information as well. Thank you so much for watching and listening, and don't forget to leave review and a rating. If you like that and share with your friends. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie, for coming over. Bye.