2024: Meet the Woman Who Invented Financial Wellness

**Farnoosh Torabi** (0:00)
Hey friends, if you've been sitting on a book idea and wondering could this actually become something, this is your moment. Join me in New York City on October 9th for Book to Brand. This is my intimate full day immersive designed to help you turn your idea into a clear, compelling, pitch-ready book concept. You will meet the insiders, agents, publishers and recent authors who can help bring your book to life. Spots are limited and early bird tickets are on sale now. Head to booktobrand.co to reserve your spot. So Money, Episode 2024 Meet the woman who invented financial wellness.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:56)
Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life?

**Liz Davidson** (1:04)
Financial trauma and financial wellness, just because you are doing well in terms of your income or even your assets. Obviously, assets are more important in the picture, but a lottery winner or professional athlete, we do a lot of work with the different professional sports organizations, and we can have sudden wealth or someone that's a CEO and they IPO and they suddenly become wealthy, but not have the knowledge, habits and behaviors to sustain wealth, right?

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:39)
Yeah.

**Liz Davidson** (1:39)
And that is absolutely critical. So we say financial wellness is the way to obtain a sustainable financial security.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (1:49)
Welcome to So Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Torabi. Almost 30 years ago, before financial wellness was a line item in anyone's benefits package, before it was a buzzword that we all throw around in this space, my guest today was watching something unfold that most people missed entirely. She was raising money for a hedge fund during the.com boom, sitting across from entrepreneurs and high net worth investors, watching them take wild risks with money they'd worked incredibly hard to build. And she had this realization, if these wealthy, sophisticated people were this exposed, what about everyone else? What about the assistant down the hall with paper equity and no safety net? Nobody was in their corner, so she built the thing that didn't exist. That's Liz Davidson, founder and CEO of Financial Finesse, the company that's widely credited with inventing the workplace financial wellness industry as we know it. She's the author of Money Strong and What Your Financial Advisor Isn't Telling You, Today, we're getting into what her company's brand new 2026 research reveals about who's actually stressed about money right now, and it might surprise you. We're talking AI's growing and complicated role in how people learn about their finances, the quiet epidemic of high earners living paycheck to paycheck, and benefits maxing, which might be the most underused free money sitting in your employee portal right now.
Here's Liz Davidson.
Liz Davidson, welcome to So Money.

**Liz Davidson** (3:23)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (3:25)
I'm excited. I'm so thrilled to be with the founder of Financial Wellness as we know it. We throw around this term constantly in personal finance, and you had the vision decades ago to build really like a mission around this, targeting employers, what I think is so brilliant, to bring this literacy to their employees.
I want to learn all about that. But first, take us back to, I guess now what 20 years ago, before financial wellness and workplace financial wellness was an expression we use or a whole category. What did you see in the marketplace that made you certain that companies needed this and that their employees needed this? Was it hard convincing folks back then to implement this?

**Liz Davidson** (4:16)
Yeah. So two things, it's I'm really dating myself here. It's 27 years now.
It's crazy.

**Farnoosh Torabi** (4:23)
Closer to 30, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

**Liz Davidson** (4:26)
It's insane. 1999
You said something interesting, what made me certain. I think when you start a business, there really is no certainty. So I had been, I had started, previously started a hedge fund, a very boring hedge fund. It was value-based, buy and hold, but a hedge fund in that it was available only to accredited investors, high net worth people. And in that process, at a gentleman that was our portfolio manager and I was getting investment capital into the fund talking to these investors, this was the.com era and I was watching them, because I would broaden the conversation beyond our fund and I was discovering they were taking all sorts of risks on individual stocks that could go to zero. And I'm thinking you work so hard to build this wealth. These were entrepreneurs mostly, but also just people that, high-powered attorneys and people that had really amassed a lot of money but didn't come from money. This was like a lot of blood, sweat, tears. And they were putting themselves at risk. But then I thought about it and I was like, well, they have multiple homes. They could sell, they could downsize and be okay if and when the crash happens. What about everyone else? What about the people? We were in San Francisco at the time. What about the administrative assistant that has equity on paper and is spending as if this is worth $2 million and that was going on? And it's like, who is there for these people that isn't trying to sell them? And at that point, it was nobody. And then the financial media at that point was heavily on the market, right? It wasn't as much on personal finance. It was much more money's top five mutual funds based on like last year's return. I mean, it was just all very hyped. And I'm going, there is no one out there that has people's back that is really looking at their situation from a completely unbiased perspective. And I feel this is so important. We started out doing workshops for women, which was actually a very unsuccessful business.