224: Rethinking Wealth When Kids Aren’t in the Plan
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Welcome back to The Richer Geek Podcast! Today, we’re switching things up with a powerful conversation on redefining wealth and lifestyle. Our guest is Bri Conn, Chief Experience Officer at Childfree Wealth®, a life and financial planning firm dedicated to helping childfree and permanently childless people design a life they love. Bri shares her journey into this unique space, the principles behind their approach, and how the FILE (Financial Independence, Live Early) philosophy encourages living fully, now, not just in retirement. It’s time to rethink what financial freedom really means.
In this episode, we’re discussing…
Why Child-Free Financial Planning Is Different: Traditional money strategies often don’t reflect the goals of those without children, like the desire for experiences over inheritance.
Start With Life, Then Build the Finances Around It: Discover how leading with your ideal lifestyle can shape a more purpose-driven financial plan.
Understanding the FILE Philosophy: Financial Independence, Live Early promotes reducing work-related stress now to make room for joy and freedom long before retirement age.
You May Need Less Than You Think: Learn why many child-free individuals overestimate retirement needs based on outdated assumptions.
Early Planning = More Freedom: The earlier you start, the sooner you can travel, give, create, or pursue passion projects without financial stress.
Spending & Giving With Intention: Bri offers a practical strategy, matching your fun spending with charitable giving to overcome guilt and create impact.
Being a Supportive Ally: Understand how to support child-free individuals without making assumptions about their lives or finances.
Tools & Resources for Child-Free Living: From financial checkups to lifestyle design coaching, explore what’s available to help you build a life you love.
Resources from Bri
LinkedIn | Childfree Wealth® | The Childfree Guide to Life and Money by Dr. Jay Zigmont
Resources from Mike and Nichole
Gateway Private Equity Group | Nic's guide | Franchise With Bob
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler: Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today we have Bri Conn. We're going to change it up a little bit and she's going to talk about what maybe a lot of us are, and that's people without kids, I don't know, as you called that DINKs or, there's a couple of different things that you can call us, but Bri is the Chief Experience Officer at Childfree Wealth®.
It is a life and financial planning firm dedicated to helping child-free and permanently childless people. She's also a Childfree Wealth Specialist® and the co-host of the Childfree Wealth Podcast. How are you doing, Bri?
Bri Conn: I'm doing well. How about yourself?
Mike Stohler: Doing well. It's been a fun start of 2025 so far, can't complain.
So tell me a little bit about your background.
Mike Stohler: And what made you think about, getting involved in this type of a thing? I think it's important because a lot of people we don't even think about as my wife and I are child-free also. We just kind of go on through life and not even think about the things that might happen.
So give us a little bit about who Bri is.
Bri Conn: Yeah, so I started out my career in marketing and worked in that for a few years. Got to the point where I just did not enjoy it anymore. Really had an interest in personal finance and I was recommended this Facebook group, and it was for a child-free people, joined it, didn't really think much of it.
One night there were a couple posts and the first one said, "What do you do now?" And then the second one said, "What do you wanna do?" I commented on both of them. I said, "I'm in marketing. I work with social media management. And then I said, "I wanna be a CFP, a Certified Financial Planner."
Dr. Jay Zigmont, the founder of Childfree Wealth®, saw both those comments and said, "Hey, I'm A CFP. If you have questions, I'm happy to answer them for you. Otherwise, I would love to just send your information to some people that I know, who need help with social media marketing." Yeah. And it was like, "Okay, sure."
If somebody's here willing to have a conversation with me and I can learn more, I'm gonna do it. Did that, we talked for two hours, it was supposed to be 30 minutes and it was two hours. Did that a second time. And I said, "Can I have a job? Because I'm not really worried about asking. If I want something, I'm gonna ask for it."
So that's exactly what I did. And he said, "Let me think about that, because of course, this person, he's met twice now is asking him for a job." Called me back a couple days later and said, "I think we can make this work." And now I've been with Childfree Wealth® for just about two years.
I didn't think that this is where I was going to be in the finance industry. It was definitely an accident and wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for that suggested Facebook group and that post. But now I do it and I love it and I can't imagine doing anything else. So that's how I ended up here and that Childfree Wealth®.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. You know, it's amazing how, whether they call it destiny or just take the right turn or the left turn and it ends up on the path that you didn't know or expect, but it's the one that you're meant to be I think that's really cool. So, Childfree Wealth®, what is it?
What is its core purpose? Is it financial planning? Is it end-of-life planning? Is the everything. Is it CPA firm or financial advisory? Tell us about Childfree Wealth®.
Bri Conn: We do what we call life and financial planning, which means we really focus on making your finances simple so that your life can be amazing.
Whenever we meet with our clients, one of our first questions is, do you care about how much money you pass on when you die? Many of them say, "No." Okay. If you're not caring about how much money you pass on when you die, then you have the ability to make a lot of different choices throughout your life. So oftentimes, people will come to us and want all the financial advice and what do I need to invest in?
Should I do this or that? And I'm like, "Whoa. That's great, but what do you want out of your life first?" What do you want it to look like? What are the things you like to do all the time? And what do you wanna do more of? How can we make your life more amazing? And we really have a lot of conversations about that and what that looks like for people.
And then from there we figure out what numbers are attached to that. What do you need to shoot for and earn or invest so we can get there. But that life part is such a big piece for us of, let's not just focus on numbers. I have conversations with people who are so checklist and number-driven.
I don't know, you can go through your entire life. And I've had this before, I've had people getting close to retirement age, or at retirement age. And I've asked them, " What do you want to do with your life?" And they don't have an answer. They don't know. And I remember it so clearly one time, this has been one of the first calls I ever did, and I still remember it and the person's face. And I asked, I said, "Has anybody ever asked you that before? What you wanna do with your life?" And they said, "No.". And it was so amazing, but also kind of sad.
To know that this person had gone through so much of their life and they had just been following all these boxes the entire time, and it wasn't reflective of them.
Mike Stohler: You get caught up in the nine to five and putting in your tenure. I think especially the child-free, you maybe expand on this. Let's say, you have spouses, they're working, all of a sudden they're retirement and now they're like.
" Now what? You know, sit in the lazy boy, watch tv. , Do I now take up golf? What do I do with my life? And how important is that? Not only to help others, we're child-free and now it's like going, "Well, I could give a lot of money to nieces and nephews." That's probably what they would want.
Bri Conn: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: Or we could look at charities, foundations, and different things like that. How important is it to start that process early so that at least you have some type of goals? Because we're meant to have goals, right? And say, "You know what? I want to be able to do this." I know I'm never gonna have kids, but I want to be able to give $500,000 or a million dollars to this charity, and now that is now my purpose to be able to do that when I pass.
Bri Conn: Yeah, I think starting it early is so incredibly important. I had a conversation with some younger people recently and I was like, "I'm so glad that you've come to me now." Because many times I don't see people for another decade or two. Maybe they missed a lot of the things that they wanna do, but the earlier you come and the earlier we get started on a plan, we can figure out maybe you don't have to work as much as you feel like you need to work right now, or you can cut back sooner.
You can go do the things you enjoy. Whether it's giving money or whether it's giving your time and energy, or just spending that time and energy with. Other people in your life that are important to you. Those options can be available to you if you think about it and plan far enough ahead. But if you're not thinking about it, all of a sudden you end up with a big pile of money and you don't know what to do with it.
Because I have that where I have people who I will put on goals to spend a certain amount of money on themselves every month, and maybe they spend half of it.
But they're not getting anywhere near there. Oftentimes, you mentioned charity. The one way that we can really get people to spend money who have a accumulated bunch of it is to match whatever they spend on fun every year on giving.
And so let's say they're giving $50,000 or they're spending $50,000 a year on fun. Alright, let's also give $50,000 a year.
That's one way that we see they're not really experiencing guilt of spending money on themselves because it's okay to spend more on yourself if you...
Mike Stohler: I had never feel guilty of spending money. No.
Bri Conn: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: I made the mistake this week at Barrett-Jackson and which is a car auction and ended up a couple bourbons later and came home with a car.
Bri Conn: That happens.
Mike Stohler: " Hey honey, I had some fun this week. Guess what's in the garage?"
All that aside, so you hit on something's kind of important and , I've talked to some people about this. Talked about it, is you always think you need more than you really do. Can you expand on that a little bit? It's like maybe you only have one car, you don't have the commute, you don't have all a lot of the expenses.
So what does that mindset is? "You know what? I need $5 million in order to retire."
Bri Conn: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: But you maybe need half that or portion of that. So what does that mindset and why do you think you actually need less than what you think about that you need?
Bri Conn: I think many times people come up with magic number based off of things that they've seen.
So many of the numbers out there, and those benchmarks are designed around people who have kids and have the goal of passing money on the next generation. There hasn't been a lot done on what if that's not your goal? And so people are aiming for these benchmarks, not realizing that, okay, that's not matching the idea of spending down their assets over time.
And I'll often ask people, " Okay, what's your magic number?" And they'll come up with a number and I'll say, "How did you get there?" They're like, "I found a calculator online." Great. That calculator is not necessarily matching you though, and we often talk about that 25 X annual expenses, and now I know some people are going like, it's 20X.
That can be a good starting point, but that's not a starting point because in that you're missing the cost of long-term care, which can be quite substantial. Right now in 2025, it's about $115,000 a year is the average and it goes up by 5% a year. So we're not necessarily counting those things in there.
And I think people forget that. They also forget that retirement, when you do retire, it's usually a retirement smile spending. People spend a lot right away in retirement and they don't spend as much at the end that long
Mike Stohler: term.
Trave the world, go see things that they couldn't do. Right?
Bri Conn: Yeah, exactly. Then it goes up at the end because of the long-term care costs and we're so often forgetting that, but with our clients, they're like, "I don't wanna wait until I'm retired. I don't know that I even wanna retire at all." They wanna keep working and doing something and so you can be aiming for a number, but if you're gonna keep working and doing something, that number's not gonna be helpful because you're just continuing to make money to.
To give away at the end, which is not really a priority for you.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. I want to die with zero in the bank. You know?
Bri Conn: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: Why not? It's very interesting because my wife and I talked about, it's like, "How much money do we need? Do we want to do things?" And then we see some people that saved it all, didn't spend, like now while they're working, they end up getting sick and then it's like, "Oh, aren't you glad you have multimillions of dollars?" And because now you broke your hip and you can't do anything. So what is that balance of some people are like, "I don't wanna spend now, I don't wanna spend, now I need to save for retirement."
Is there a thing? It's like going, "Hey, it's okay to have fun now while you're working."
Because it's also stress relief while you're working 9 to 5 for someone else. And you can't just sit there and just pound it and hope that you're healthy when you retire.
What do you tell some people about that balance of work life? Now compared to like you know when you retire?
Bri Conn: Yeah. I can think of multiple people that I know personally who have worked so darn hard. They've put themselves into health complications, whether that be heart attacks or strokes, because they've been so focused on working and they haven't taken that break and I've even had health scares before too. I don't know how to necessarily translate that to people other than say, "Hey, you've got all this, but there's gonna be a day that you don't, and you never know when that is."
I think the more that people see that around them, which is unfortunate because it sucks to have that stuff going on, but when people see those health scares in others, then they go, "Oh, I need to do something now. I can't just keep doing this forever."
I've seen people who, they're like, "I have to take a two week vacation every six months." And like, why do you have to take a six months or two week vacation every six months? "Because my job is so stressful." Okay, can we cut back on work? Can we change jobs?
Sometimes we're gonna figure out like, let's not just treat, I don't wanna give you a diagnosis of like, work is really hard and so we're gonna just put you on a medication of travel. No.
Let's figure out what the issue is and if that's your job is really stressful, are there ways we can change that and adjust so that you're not having those big issues happen all the time, and sometimes it's sitting down and they take a sabbatical for a period of time and they find a new career.
But those things can, let's treat what's actually going on. Let's not just add band-aids.
Mike Stohler: I see in the bio says, it's very interesting. The concept of FILE.
Mike Stohler: (Financial Independence, Live Early). Expand on that, if you would.
Bri Conn: Yeah. Financial Independence, Live Early is really, we hear about fire all the time.
Yep. Financial independents, retire early, and so the idea of that most people is they're grinding super hard to go ahead and retire and duck out. FILE is, do we need to grind really hard or can we aim for financial independence, we're still going for that.
Can we cut back on work? Can we get to a point where, "Hey, you're still working and now you're just covering expenses quite similar to Coast High and you're not putting money away."
What you make, you just spend it and then your investments are growing. You're good. I've done that with people and it's been great. Are there ways that we can adjust similar, what I was talking about with work? Versus like needing to stay in that job and continue to take these vacations to stress relieve yourself. Like no, it's that live early is changing those jobs and finding jobs that aren't so stressful and you can really enjoy. Or maybe that's just cutting back to part-time or three quarters time, anything like that as well. So it's doing more of those experiences now.
Think about travel. How many things do people wanna do? I know years ago I was told by somebody that I shouldn't be traveling so much because I should do that when I'm in retirement. And that's great, but I'm a very active person. The things I wanna do require me to be very active, and if I wait a few decades to do that, who knows if I can even do it anymore.
Mike Stohler: You can't climb those stairs when you're in there. When you're older or different things. I'm not that old and I'm like going, "Yeah, you know, I can't, it's too active." I'm not gonna jump on that board and wakeboard and do all these different things. It's like, "Nope." You start to slow down and you should take advantage.
I always tell people. Especially the younger people, if you're listening to this that are choosing to be child-free, you do have to live your life because believe me, once you hit 50 things change, you creek and groan and do all these types of things.
That's crazy.
If someone says, " You should wait until retirement, enjoy life."
Mike Stohler: Something's interesting is how people with children can be supportive to people who are also child-free by choice. My wife and I, child-free by choice. Mm-hmm.
How is it that we can support other people other than, be able to travel and not get babysitters? Which is the nice part.
Bri Conn: Yeah. I think not having to find a babysitter, amen to that because that I feel like is always a big struggle for people. But it's just really being a kind human, not going in with preconceived notions and being judgemental, you know? There's many times in which people like to make comments and saying, "You should do this, or you should do that, or you should be able to fund this because you must have." I feel like the one we see all the time is our child-free. People will assume that they have a bunch of extra time and money to go and do for other people.
That's not necessarily true.
Mike Stohler: I get that a lot. You're right. It's like going, " We spend $100,000 a year on all of our kids. You must have all this money."
Bri Conn: Yeah. Yeah. Like when we're working with some of our younger clients, and people will say that to them, it's like they have no idea what the financial situation is for them.
And the clients are doing well and they can do the things they wanna do, but that doesn't mean that there's extra money, just they're swimming in that they can go and pay a bunch for other things like. Recognizing that life choices are different and that is okay. And not being rude about it or saying, " You should do this, or you should." That one of the shoulds of life that everybody likes to put on one another.
Let's not do that.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. Exactly. And ladies and gentlemen, again, it's Bri Conn, childfreewealth.com is the website. What happens? People are like going, " I never even thought about."
Because a lot of us don't. We have our IRAs, we have our 401(k)s we have our whatever.
I go on childfreewealth.com. What is there, what type of services, resources, what can we find?
Bri Conn: Yeah, we have a bunch of blogs up on our website. We also have a podcast, Childfree Wealth, if you're just checking us out to start, and you can find us on social media.
Everything is Childfree Wealth®. We make it super easy for people. Just type in Childfree Wealth® and you will find us. But the number one step in order to meet us and start off is a checkup. It's a paid meeting in which we send you a form and then access to our financial planning software. We have you connect accounts, upload a bunch of information, and then we go through and we basically give you like a diagnostic report.
You know when you take your car in for service and they mark things red, yellow, green, we do the same thing. And so we go through and kind of give you a high level overview. And then we have a one-on-one meeting we talk to you, go through, talk through some of the things and learn more. After that plan and that diagnostic report can be used.
We have different paths after that, whether that be DIY, you're in the academy and you're just kind of starting out. Usually just focusing on your fundamentals. Not a whole lot going on. If you need hourly advice, you can get hourly advice. You buy an extra hour within the academy from us and get that as needed After you've done the checkup report.
Or if you need more one-on-one service in that annual planning, or you're looking for investment management, we do flat fee and it's an annual plan. You can jump in. Usually in the first year we meet with people just about every month. because there's a lot of different things that we're going through and we don't wanna overwhelm you.
We wanna work on one or two things a month, so it's not too much at one time. Otherwise I can get really exhausting and. Yeah. If we throw a bunch of stuff at you at one time, that can be a lot. So we're just really focusing on changing a little bit at a time. So it's a different level of service based off of what you need and how much kind of time and attention, or just complexity too, the more stuff you have, the more complex things can get.
And that's when we really do that one-on-one planning. You meet with us, you talk with us, and we work through things. We also do more like preventative things in the background of we can check on something or, "Hey, we noticed this." Just keep an eye out for you.
Mike Stohler: You know, Bri, it's been a pleasure 'cause it kind of eye-opening for all of us, that we kind have to think about this stuff and, one of the big things that we talked about off the air was, and also, what do we do when we need help, at home.
I think I have to have some type of a money to maybe hire people to come over and do wellness checks. And because we don't have children that can bring us food, or take care of us. So we have to hire all that stuff out. So I think it's very important.
Is there anything. That I might not have discussed or asked you that you'd love to inform our listeners?
Bri Conn: Dr. Jay just had a book come out and it's called The Childfree Guide to Life and Money that came out at the beginning of this year slash end of 2024. Like right at the turn of the new year and.
That book kind of goes through our philosophy and the things we cover. We really, we just wanna have you enjoy your life. And so however we can make your finances simple so you can live an amazing child free life, that's what we do.
Mike Stohler: There you go. And I like that. Everybody is Bri Conn with childfreewealth.com.
Thank you so much for coming on The Richer Geek. I hope you have a blessed day.
Bri Conn: Thank you.
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ABOUT BRI CONN
Bri is the Chief Experience Officer of Childfree Wealth, a life and financial planning firm dedicated to helping Childfree and Permanently Childless people. She is also a Childfree Wealth Specialist® and the co-host of the Childfree Wealth podcast.
Childfree Wealth has been featured on Fortune, Forbes, MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Insider, CNBC, and many other publications.
In her free time, Bri loves hiking, running, and generally anything that involves being outside. Her core values are community, education, social participation, & sustainability.