Find financial freedom with Stella Gold ✨
What if you let hedonism lead the way?
✨ A golden new episode is out now! ✨
What if you approached money from a place of abundance, rather than restriction? Stella Gold will show you the way.
Stella (they/them) is a “wealth activist” and a certified, trauma-informed financial wellness educator. Their business, My Gold Standard, helps people understand the emotions, experiences, and desires behind how they spend money, and build wealth along the way. Stella’s entire life changed when their father died suddenly, leaving Stella and their mother to sort through the impenetrable financial processes of the government. In this episode, Stella talks about their own financial education and wealth journey; how grief shaped their future; and what it was like to fully step into their nonbinary identity.
Stella Gold changed my life. I met them in my late 20s when they became my financial advisor through a finance startup in New York City. They helped me define my financial goals, get a grip on things like taxes and 401ks, and — most importantly — learn how to save. And they did all of this without ever making me feel small or guilty about how I spent my money. I can honestly credit them for setting me up for a much brighter financial future: their guidance made it possible for me to eventually travel, lick my wounds, and decide to move to Austin after I was laid off in March 2020, without going into debt.
In the years since I was Stella’s client, I’ve been in awe of what they have achieved. They started their own business, My Gold Standard, where they work with clients to help them dig into their limiting belief systems around money, then work to heal old wounds around finances and embrace their own power to build wealth. (Yes, our early experiences and relationships shape our behaviors around money, just like every other aspect of life.)
In America, most of us are unfortunately never taught the vital basics of financial literacy, and Stella actively works to change that, especially within the QTBIPOC community. But Stella is also a self-described hedonist. They let lust, desire, and abundance lead their financial decisions, rather than restriction and scarcity. Their Instagram stories constantly remind me to live in the now, and embrace my joy. It’s an intoxicating way to look at money, and life.
Another quality I so highly admire about Stella is how they truly honor themselves. Stella came out as nonbinary last year, and it’s been a pleasure to see them embrace themselves more fully, and share that with the world.
A small but important part of this episode is a moment when I accidentally misgender Stella, then immediately correct myself. I left this in the episode and bring it up now because I think many people may be afraid of making mistakes when it comes to someone’s pronouns, or correctly using sensitive language around a topic they may not be well-versed in. But, as Stella notes, pronoun mistakes don’t have to be a huge deal; what really matters is that you give a damn about the identities and visibility of the people in your life, and you make the effort to show up for them in the way they need you to — and that includes integrating their preferred pronouns into how you speak and think about them. As Stella says: “Can you just correct yourself? And let’s move on.”
I invite you to spend an hour inside Stella’s expansive world:
Some other interesting topics we touch on in this episode:
Stella’s obsession with eels (5:54)
The impact the sudden death of Stella’s father had on their life and financial future (15:02)
What it’s like to work with Stella (37:18)
Stella’s financial book recommendations (50:08)
Discovering nonbinary people in Stella’s Filipino ancestry (47:04)
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Extra special thanks to:
My podcast editor, Chelsea Eichholz (Twitter), co-host of the Untitled Cinema Gals podcast
Logo artist Jaymie de los Reyes
You are not alone!