Sacramento woman's business aims to teach underserved communities about financial trauma
SACRAMENTO — Sometimes, the path to financial success isn't paved with gold. It's filled with heartache and a lot of hard work.
For Robyn Gutierrez, having it all wasn't enough.
"I had gone to school, had worked in my career, worked my way up, but I was so misaligned and so unhappy and I was ready to walk away from that," she said.
So Gutierrez turned to an old friend and financial strategist Priya Kumar for help.
Kumar's journey to financial success took years. Her "ah-ha" moment came when she was a newly divorced mother with a six-month-old.
"I was grocery shopping, buying diapers and milk for my son, and my card kept declining," Kumar said. "It was so hard to hold back my tears. I promised my day, that day will never ever repeat in my life."
That's when she took her passion and aligned it with a purpose: teaching others about something called financial trauma.
"How different events and circumstances of our life are really what determines our relationship with money, [the] money mindset that we carry and we pass down to our kids," Kumar said.
For example, Kumar said she learned to work around the clock to achieve the American dream from her immigrant parents, and that money mindset was costing her psychologically.
"So re-evaluating your relationship, where it's really coming from, and understanding that mindset no longer serves you," she said. "They had limited opportunities. My opportunities are greater, so why am I almost operating from a lack of mentality?"
Kumar said she has developed a more abundant and loving approach to money and is teaching others like Gutierrez to do the same.
"I feel confident in the work that I'm doing because of the work we've done together, and I do feel more present and calm so I can be present for my son while I am also building this business," Kumar said.
Kumar is now doing workshops with underserved communities to help families and, specifically, single mothers get out of generational poverty and on the road to independence.