Welcome to my final blog post, “Farewell Teen Financial Freedom”!
Before you become too alarmed at the name of this post, let me reassure you. No, Teen Financial Freedom is not ending, and no, I’m not leaving Teen Financial Freedom. Well…that’s not exactly true. Allow me to fill you in.
Background
Earlier this year I went to a Christian conference called Passion. It was an amazing experience, but one specific calling I had was to go on a mission trip to the Himalayas. I know I haven’t been super open about my faith before and this also isn’t a Christian blog, so I’ll spare you the details.
However, when the opportunity presented itself for me to get to go to the Himalayas, I jumped on it. Fast forward a few months and it was officially happening. I began preparing to go on a 6-month mission trip to the Himalayas.
As one could imagine, this is quite the undertaking to prepare for. Honestly, most people that I talk to still can’t wrap their heads around what exactly I need to prepare for. Let me put it this way, it’s a lot more than you would think.
To start, imagine needing to raise a significant amount of money to fund this trip, purchase thousands of dollars of equipment to be able to go on the trip, and work through all the other logistics of making it happen. It all gets way more complicated because I’m an entrepreneur with several businesses in the works. Not to mention, a college student in the middle of my 4 year education. Or, the fact that I deeply value family and friend relationships and want to get to spend time with them beforehand.
So yeah…maybe you can start to get a glimpse of what my life has looked like the last few months. But, what does that mean for Teen Financial Freedom going forward?
Future of Teen Financial Freedom
As I mentioned at the start of this post, no, Teen Financial Freedom is not ending. Hopefully you’re aware by now that TFF consists of a team of 6 people, not just me. Yes, I started the blog and have led the team ever since then. However, the team extends much beyond me.
The last few months we’ve been working hard to prepare for this so that it’s a seamless transition for everyone involved including me, the team, and the audience. We transitioned our leadership, set up new team systems, and figured out a good way to structure everything.
Terry, the second oldest of the group behind me, will be taking over Teen Financial Freedom for at least the next 6 months. He’s been my right-hand man ever since the beginning and he’s had a good amount of experience in all aspects of our platform (blog, podcast, newsletter).
I know the team is in great hands with him as the leader. It’s been amazing to watch him grow and develop over the last few years to be perfectly prepared to take on this kind of task.
When I decided to do this trip, our team at TFF decided that we didn’t want TFF to end. As a result, we needed to shift our vision a little bit to transcend any one leader.
My Future Role At TFF
You might be asking, what exactly does shifting our vision mean? Well…it means a lot more than I could describe in one blog post. However, I’ll do my best to give a brief summary.
For starters, we came up with a new vision statement, “Teen Financial Freedom is a community of youth looking to develop their financial literacy.” But beyond that, we really thought about what we wanted TFF to be going forward and how exactly we were going to achieve that.
We still aren’t certain of everything, but just know that we’re working on some big changes as far as how we’ll run things going forward. One of those big changes will be me stepping away from Teen Financial Freedom.
Obviously, I need to step away for the next 6 months which is the duration of this trip. However, myself or the team is uncertain of my role upon my return. As of now, I still see myself writing blog posts or recording podcasts now and then, but there’s also a remote possibility that this is my last blog post ever.
There’s part of me that still wants to go all-in on TFF, but there’s another part of me that just wants to sit back and take more of an advisory role and let the younger ones run things. So for now, the future is unclear for my future role at TFF.
The Takeaway
That’s it! There’s my farewell to all of you that are a part of the Teen Financial Freedom community. It has been an absolute pleasure building this community up and sharing my passion for finance with the younger generation. While I’m unsure of my own personal plans with the future of TFF, I’m confident that you all are in great hands with the rest of the team at Teen Financial Freedom! Best of luck to all of you in the future!