Who is Elizabeth Starr Harden: personal money coach
Greetings. Please allow me introduce myself.
My name, if you have not yet guessed it, is Elizabeth Starr Harden.
I am a 50-something happily-married, empty-nested mother of two. I reside in the Denver metro area in colorful Colorado. And I am a personal money coach.
A geek at heart, I’m fascinated by all things tech. I love spreadsheets, puzzles, reading, and working hard and getting dirty. I love my children above all else.
My personal history with money goes something like this:
I was born to relatively wealthy parents both of whom had successful, self-made fathers. The wealth never made it to my generation for various reasons. This first stage of my life was a financial roller coaster of comfort to complete insecurity and periods of poverty back to relative comfort then to complete financial chaos.
I set out on my own right after high school, made many money mistakes, made a few good money decisions, completed trade school, took some college classes, had good jobs but not a career, and finally gave up the glamorous life of clerical work to be a full-time mom. This middle stage of my life consisted of a stable and gradually increasing income but very unhealthy familial relationships that left me drained — financially and emotionally.
Next came the years of marital, mothering bliss — homeschooling, raising a twice-gifted child, traveling, investing every resource into my children. Our financial situation during this stage of life resembled a gradually building crescendo — we started out poor as church mice improving our situation slowly but steadily eventually reaching the current point in our lives that many would call “financial independence.”
In 2016, after a 30-year hiatus, I headed back to college. When it’s all said and done — sometime in 2018, if all goes well — I’ll complete my degree and have a few more skills in my coaching tool belt. Or maybe I’ll just stay in school for another decade — why wasn’t school this fun when I was younger?
