For a long time, Re­nee Pop­plewell has been very good with mon­ey.

This did not make her im­mune from the fi­nan­cial land­mines many en­counter and hav­ing been vic­tim to such, she is hop­ing to help oth­ers avoid such mis­takes as the Founder and CEO of The Ac­count­abil­i­ty Play­book, a fi­nan­cial coach­ing and ed­u­ca­tion com­pa­ny.

The pro­gramme is com­mit­ted to help­ing peo­ple take con­trol of their fi­nances, feel con­fi­dent with mon­ey, and build se­cure, sus­tain­able fu­tures.

Pop­plewell has per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence to draw up­on for her clients, as she was blind­sided by fi­nan­cial con­cepts she had not been ed­u­cat­ed on and quick­ly found her­self deeply in debt.

“I mi­grat­ed to the UK in 2005 and al­though I knew at 15 years old, I was a great bud­geter. I mean, I was dis­ci­plined. I used to save, re­al­ly good mon­ey habits,” she told the Busi­ness Guardian.

She ex­plained how­ev­er, she had trou­ble man­ag­ing cred­it card debt and need­ed to start over.

“I moved back to Trinidad af­ter five years be­ing in the UK. I had all this debt still car­ry­ing. So I came back to Trinidad and To­ba­go with about six cred­it cards maxed out. Of course, they need their mon­ey, so I’m come back in my moth­er’s house. No job. All this debt and try­ing to make up mon­ey where can to send back to the UK to pay this mon­ey back,” she shared.

Pop­plewell ini­tial­ly tried to play up a fa­cade, but it was on­ly af­ter sim­pli­fy­ing her life and recog­nis­ing her ac­tu­al needs and goals did she char­ter the way to­wards re­cov­ery.

“You couldn’t tell I was broke. I was floss­ing. I will go out there in all the good clothes,” said Pop­plewell adding, “I think when the emo­tions got to be too much for me. I was like this can­not be how I en­ter my 30s. So I went back to POA (prin­ci­pals of ac­count­ing), re­al fun­da­men­tals. The re­al ba­sics. It was re­al­ly back to ba­sics. Tak­ing up a note­book, writ­ing what I was do­ing, and what I was spend­ing. A lit­tle tu­tor­ing here, and a lit­tle thing here I got a job even­tu­al­ly, and go­ing back to ba­sics and putting my head down and think, okay, Ren, in­come, ex­pen­di­ture, what do you need? What do you want? And re­al­ly go­ing back to those fun­da­men­tals to build my way out,” she stat­ed.

From there she was able to move out of the red slow­ly un­til af­ter a cou­ple of years she was able to buy a new home and move back to the UK.

As she saw the fruits of her re­cov­ery, the seeds for her ca­reer be­gan to be plant­ed as she grad­u­al­ly be­gan to be­come an ad­vo­cate for fi­nan­cial man­age­ment among her friends.

“They would tend to come to me, and just re­al­ly in­for­mal­ly, have con­ver­sa­tions. I’ll look at the num­bers. I knew peo­ple’s salaries, my close friend’s salaries. I helped them out. I’ll have them save mon­ey. And that was how I was go­ing about. It wasn’t meant to be a busi­ness. It wasn’t meant to be any­thing for­mal,” she said.

How­ev­er, the piv­ot came af­ter an­oth­er set­back, the col­lapse of her mar­riage and the sub­se­quent hir­ing of a coach to help through an­oth­er dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

“Through that mar­riage break­down, I found a coach. I had a coach to help me nav­i­gate that dif­fi­cult time, not so much fi­nan­cial­ly, but just emo­tion­al­ly. And when I saw the pow­er of what coach­ing did for me in that space I want­ed, I thought, what was the area of my ge­nius?

“I want­ed to be that per­son for peo­ple who felt hope­less. So I trained to be a coach in about my third year of hav­ing a coach and I start­ed my busi­ness in 2021 and I work with one client. It wasn’t re­al­ly about fi­nances on­ly, but that came up quite a bit, and I moved from hav­ing one client in the first year to hav­ing served over 100 women in their fi­nances in the past three years,” Pop­plewell said.

She ex­plained that fi­nan­cial man­age­ment was es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant now giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate and the im­mense men­tal strain fi­nan­cial in­se­cu­ri­ty can place on in­di­vid­u­als.

“Fi­nan­cial stress was of­fi­cial­ly, and is of­fi­cial­ly my worst sort of men­tal strain dur­ing a sit­u­a­tion or dur­ing a life-chang­ing event. A lot of times we at­tach our self-worth to our bank bal­ance, as to our­selves, first, to what we ac­quire and when we where we are in abun­dance with those things, our voice is through the roof,” she said.

Pop­plewell fur­ther not­ed, “When we lack in those ar­eas, you find at that self-worth, it starts to chip away. You feel a lit­tle bit less of a val­ued mem­ber of so­ci­ety. You feel like all the ef­forts that brought you to this point are null and void, and that is al­ways like an open­ing for all ad­verse or all neg­a­tive thoughts about who you are in this so­ci­ety.

“It’s a quote that is well known. Mon­ey is a ter­ri­ble mas­ter, but an ex­cel­lent ser­vant and goes af­ter that self-worth when we make mon­ey, the thing when we make mon­ey, the mea­sure of suc­cess when we make mon­ey, thing we’re chas­ing. When it’s not work­ing ac­cord­ing to plan, it ex­pos­es every­thing and opens up the door for all neg­a­tive re­ac­tions to it.”

She not­ed that this gen­er­a­tion al­so feels this pres­sure com­pared to pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions, but her ses­sions are geared to­wards teach­ing her clients that those goals aren’t that far out of reach.

“When we look at our par­ents and what they would be able to ac­quire home own­er­ship, you know, a steady job that had a good pen­sion, for ex­am­ple, when we look at what we are faced with now, we see home own­er­ship, for ex­am­ple, as an al­most im­pos­si­ble feat. We al­most doomed to rent when you look at the house prices, we think these things are now out of our reach,” she said, “What I want to say is that we spend the mon­ey that we spend on the things day to day. We usu­al­ly spend them be­cause we think we can’t af­ford the things we ac­tu­al­ly want to ac­com­plish.”

Pop­plewell has start­ed tak­ing up the course full-time af­ter be­ing made re­dun­dant at her job in the UK but said that set­back has al­lowed her to fo­cus on more clients in T&T.

She not­ed that cul­ture and time zones aside, the mes­sag­ing re­mained large­ly the same as the fi­nan­cial pres­sures and chal­lenges were sim­i­lar.