About Stepwise

I was only 8 years old when my dad passed away.

From that day forward, it was just my mom and me.

We weren’t rich. We weren’t poor. 

But with just one salary instead of two, I started learning about personal finance at a young age.

If I wanted a new toy, I had to work for it. If I wanted a car, you guessed it…I had to work for it.

At that age, it was annoying. Now, I am grateful for it. 

College Years: Trying to Keep Up

When I started to look at colleges, my ever-practical mom sat me down and told me that she was not going to be able to cover the cost of college. 

I got accepted into a great college with partial financial aid, and had some help from my mom and family friends but I still had to take out student loans. I had to work during the school year and every summer. 

Even then, trying to keep up with my classmates’ spending habits was a challenge.

I couldn’t travel like they did. I couldn’t eat out like they did.

This lit a spark inside of me. I never wanted to feel that way again.

Post College: Financial Wake Up Call

After a rough job search, I was lucky enough to land a job at a consulting firm. 

I arrived in an empty Washington D.C. apartment with $30k in student debt.

That same day, I found an offer for a 0% interest credit card.

I thought I had hacked life.

I put everything on it. Rent. Snacks. Furniture. 

Spoiler alert: this was a BAD idea. 

Then I got my first student loan bill in the mail. 

With my credit card & student loan bills, I didn’t have enough money in my account at the end of the month. I knew I had to make some pretty drastic changes fast. VERY FAST.

Down the Personal Finance Rabbit Hole

My reality forced me to start building good habits or face the consequences. 

I dedicated myself to becoming an expert in personal finance over the last decade.   

Instead of looking the other way, I started tracking everything. 

1. I made a very basic budget on a piece of paper with income, bills, and debt payments
2. I ate a lot of Mac N Cheese and biked everywhere to save money
3. I only shopped or ate at places I could truly afford 

I read everything on investing, saving, and personal finance I could get my hands on. 

The lessons I learned freed up so much mental space. I no longer felt behind, guilty, or irresponsible. 

I had a plan to live the life I had always dreamed of.

Helping Others

Rather quickly, my friends and family members started coming to me for my advice on financial strategies. 

I talked about it so much that my friends said “you should write all this stuff down and share with others”. 

It took a few years for it to actually click.

Stepwise is Born

That’s until I met Jeremy, who is the co-founder of Stepwise.  

We first connected through Mylance, a platform for professionals launching their freelancing businesses. 

We quickly hit it off with a shared excitement for personal finance education.

We agreed that there’s a lot of good personal finance content out there, but it lacks a clear structure, process, and actionable steps. 

Between Jeremy’s SEO expertise and my personal finance tools, Stepwise was born.

Why We Created Stepwise

At Stepwise, we believe that:

• Actionable step-by-step advice should be accessible to everyone
• Learning personal finance shouldn’t be anxiety-inducing or mysterious
• Everyone deserves to feel confident about their financial future

We hope that these resources:

1. Save you a lot of time, so you can go do fun stuff and spend time with your friends
2. Give you confidence that you are making the right choices
3. Leave you with actionable knowledge to create a financial future you are excited about

If you’ve made it this far, we sincerely appreciate you reading this. We deeply value your input and look forward to connecting with you in your financial journey.  

Cheers,

Seavron & Jeremy