In this episode, Bri Conn CFP® sits down with Hillary, a client who is Childfree not by choice, for a real-life Childfree Wealth® checkup. Hillary has already done much of the emotional heavy lifting, moving through grief, redefining what her future looks like, and arriving at a place of clarity and intention. Now she is ready to match that clarity with a financial plan that actually fits her life.

What unfolds is an honest, grounded conversation about inherited accounts, trust income, estate planning gaps, career sustainability, and what it really means to plan for a future you once imagined differently.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why a Childfree Wealth® checkup is a discovery session first, and how the process of gathering your financial information can bring surprising clarity before the first meeting even begins
• How the emotional journey from childless not by choice to Childfree by intention shapes the way you save, plan, and envision your future
• Why inherited IRAs come with time-sensitive distribution rules that depend on the original account owner's date of death, and what that means for long-term planning
• How to tell the difference between an HSA and an FSA, why it matters more than most people realize, and the triple tax advantage you may already have access to
• Why six months of liquid savings carries even more weight when you are single, and how an accessible emergency fund protects you when disability coverage, job changes, or healthcare costs create unexpected gaps

The episode mentioned in this conversation can be found here:

https://childfreeinsights.com/resources/podcast/episode-168/

Episode Host:

Bri Conn, CFP® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, Childfree Wealth Specialist® at Childfree Wealth®, and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®.

About Childfree Insights:

Childfree Insights is a trusted resource for life planning without children. It explores financial planning, estate planning, relationships, and long-term decisions for adults building a future without kids. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.

Connect with Us:

Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.

Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Sister Monica Clare knew from a young age that marriage and children were not her calling. She just spent decades being told otherwise. By the time she made it to the Groundlings in LA, she had checked every box society handed her: the career, the marriage, the full script, and none of it fit. What came next was a $150,000 debt payoff, a cross-country search for a convent that actually aligned with her values, and a vow of poverty that she says left her feeling more taken care of than ever before.

In this episode, Bri Conn CFP® sits down with Sister Monica Clare, Episcopal nun and author of A Change of Habit, for a conversation about what it actually takes to stop living for other people's expectations and start designing a life around who you actually are.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why the pressure to marry and have children has always been more economic than emotional.
• How the Episcopal Church differs from Roman Catholicism and other denominations, and why its LGBTQ-affirming, progressive theology surprised even Bri
• What it costs to become a nun, financially and otherwise, and how Sister Monica Clare paid off $150,000 in debt before she could answer her calling.
• How communal living under a vow of poverty actually works, what $50 a month in allowance looks like in practice.
• Why the doors that close are just as important as the doors that open, and how Sister Monica Clare learned to read the difference between a path that is hard and one that is wrong

Episode Host:

Bri Conn, CFP® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®, Childfree Wealth Specialist® at Childfree Wealth®, and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®.

Episode Guest:

Sister Monica Clare is a nun at the Community of St. John Baptist, an Episcopal religious order based in Mendham, New Jersey. She is the Superior of the convent and will soon be an ordained priest. She is a trained spiritual counselor specializing in religious trauma, mental illness, and addiction.

Her forthcoming memoir, A Change of Habit, was released on April 29, 2025 by Crown and Sugar23 Books at Penguin Random House.

Before becoming a nun in 2012, she worked as a photo editor in Los Angeles and was a member of the Groundlings Sunday Company. She started her TikTok account, @nunsenseforthepeople, in June 2021, to make people laugh and to demystify life as an Episcopal nun. To her great surprise, the popularity of her TikTok channel has continued to grow and she now has over 227K followers and 2.9M likes.

Follow her on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nunsenseforthepeople

About Childfree Insights

Childfree Insights focuses on planning for solo aging and later life without children. It offers trusted education on financial planning, estate planning, and building support systems for people aging independently. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.

Connect with Us:

Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.

Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Women could not open their own bank accounts without a man's signature until 1974. That is not ancient history. The people who lived through it are still alive. And the financial world Childfree women are navigating today was built in that shadow.

In this episode, Bri Conn, CFP® sits down with Grace L. Williams, financial journalist and author of Give Her Credit, to trace the women's banking movement from a living room in Denver to the laws that changed everything. Grace spent nearly a decade researching the founders of Women's Bank, the legislation that finally gave women access to credit, and the remarkable, often overlooked stories of the women who made it happen.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• Why women's access to credit is recent history that still shapes how Childfree women plan today.
• How the founders of Women's Bank in Denver built something extraordinary within the constraints of their time, and what their stories reveal about financial autonomy, resilience, and the power of collective action.
• Why lenders once required women to disclose their reproductive plans before applying for a loan.
• How access to credit changed the calculus of marriage, independence, and life design for women, and what it means to build a financial life grounded in choice rather than circumstance.
• Why financial rights remain fragile and worth protecting, and what the arc of the women's banking movement can teach us about where we are now and what we stand to lose.

Episode Host:

Bri Conn, CFP® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®, Childfree Wealth Specialist® at Childfree Wealth®, and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®.

Episode Guest:

Grace L. Williams is a financial journalist, content strategist, and author with over 20 years of experience translating complex financial and cultural topics into accessible, engaging narratives. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and Yahoo Finance. She is the author of “Give Her Credit” (Little A, 2025), which chronicles the women's banking movement and the rise of female financial empowerment. Grace is an alumna of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and has spent her career following the money to understand what people buy, why they buy it, and what it reveals about culture and power.

Find Grace on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grace-l-williams-547a054/

Give Her Credit is available at independent bookstores, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Target.

About Childfree Insights

Childfree Insights delivers education for financial and estate planning without children. It supports people with no kids in making informed decisions about retirement, legacy planning, beneficiaries, and long-term care. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.

Connect with Us:

Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.

Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.