Testimonial - Cross Shield Financial - S. E.

Speaker: S. E., Cross Shield Client

S. E.: Hi. So my question about the biggest successes that we've had since working with Cross Shield, you know, we have this very tangible success of paying off over $25,000 worth of debt in a little over a year, which is a huge win for us, but it's almost a bigger deal in my family. How much less anxiety there is around budgeting and being on the same page with my husband about where we're allocating our funds and what we're spending on and the establishment of these funds that help us and, you know, on a month to month basis of. Ok, so we've got two birthdays for the kids coming up or we've got Christmas or this trip we wanna take or whatever it may be. We have all these things in place now where we don't worry, December coming around doesn't mean that we're struggling because, you know, we've got all this stuff to pay for, for cousins and aunts and whomever we have everything is set aside and set up so that we're funding these buckets every month and we're not stressing during the times of the year when we should be having fun Um, so that's been a huge thing for us. You know, we've, like I said, we've paid down quite a bit of debt, which feels great and it hasn't felt like we've had to alter how we live our lives. You know, we maybe make sacrifices every now and then, but we still do the things that we wanna do. We still have fun. Our kids don't know what the difference to be completely honest. but, you know, getting that money off the balance sheet is great but not having to worry about. It constantly has been a much bigger win for me personally.

S. E.: So I would say we have changed the most by now, we are operating from an offensive position with our budgeting instead of a defensive position. So we have plans in place for what we want for ourselves, what we want for our kids, what we want for our marriage, how we want, you know, retirement to look. And we're having those conversations now instead of 1520 years down the line when we don't have other options. And you know, I would say that before we started working with Cross Shield, I was influenced more by what people around us were doing what they had or an Instagram video where someone was saying here's what you should be doing with your money right now. And if you're not doing that, you're not gonna be able to afford retirement. You know, it kind of when you work with Cross Shield, it kind of cancels out all of that noise, all of those things affecting the way that you're making decisions and planning and it reduces the worry that you have about. Ok. Am I making the right decisions? You know, I got my tax refund. What should I do with this chunk of money, you have somebody there helping you and guiding you and telling you that everything is gonna work out and here's how we're gonna make it work out. And I thought prior to working with cross shield that I was great with money. I mean, we were a budget household and we knew where when it was coming in and when it was going out, but there has been a very big shift in what that actually means and how much more a specific budget and plan can benefit your family that you don't even realize.

S. E.: The number of ways that cross shield is different from other companies and organizations. Uh I cannot even begin to list um our first meeting that we came into, I had all of our account balances laid out. I thought I was gonna be, it was gonna be a monetary discussion, you know, tell me where you are on this, how much is left on this loan, you know, all of that sort of stuff. And the first question that I was asked was tell me about your parents' relationship with money. And then that same question was asked of my husband, you know, two minutes later and then it was, what are your goals for yourself? What are your goals for your family? What do you want to have? What are important things to you? It wasn't about, you know, how much can we invest here? How much can we pay off in this amount of time or, you know, oh, you have this, this much extra money. You should put all of it towards debt. It wasn't anything like I thought it was gonna be and it has completely changed my outlook on money and how to operate with my husband and what to, you know, provide for my kids. And I get just, it is true coaching. It is not checking boxes or transactional in any way. It's just, and someone really trying to get to know you and understand your goals and help you to get there. It's not their goals, it's your goals and you know what we want might be different from the next couple that they're working with or the next business owner or whomever and they can adjust and pivot to match your needs and your wishes. It seems effortless. I'm sure that there's a lot going on on the back end, but the way that they work with us was just not what I was expecting. And I, we've been so grateful to have someone in our lives that we can turn to and say, here's what's going on. We don't know what to do about it. We came into this situation thinking we knew what we were doing and we knew what we wanted and that we were doing pretty well. And it's not that we weren't, it's just that we did not realize how much room there was to grow and how much space we had to do everything better and cross shields really just provided that for us.