Divas That Care Network

Options Are Power: Rewrite Your Money Story

• Divas That Care Network • Season 15 • Episode 60

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Come and listen to our Host, Candace Gish, as she chats with today's guest, Veronica Deraleau, for our “End of Year, Beginning of Me” Podcast Series.
A powerfully themed mini-series helping women close the year with clarity and step into the next one with grounded self-love and vision.

Veronica Deraleau is a financial coach, author, opera singer, financial technology manager, and U.S. Army Veteran.

During the COVID pandemic, when performing artists abruptly found their livelihoods on hold, Veronica felt called to share her personal finance knowledge. In ‘Making Money Is Simple,’ Veronica details the actions and mindset it took to pay off over $100,000 of debt in three years on a median salary. In her signature Money Simple coaching program, Veronica helps
professionals and creatives stop going paycheck to paycheck so they can provide an abundant life for their families and start living out their dreams.

A classically trained soprano, Veronica started her career serving as a musician in the US Army Reserve, where she performed across the country and abroad at cultural and political events for diverse audiences, including a President and Pope. She continues to sing today across a variety of classical genres, including opera, concert, choral, orchestral, recital, and film.

Upon graduating during the Great Recession, Veronica began working for a start-up and was hooked. Since then, she’s built her career in the commercial private markets, working for early-stage companies across various industries: alternative energy, real estate, private equity, and financial technology. One of her great joys has been supporting early talent in navigating and developing their careers.

Veronica lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Mike, and their dogs, Phil and Minka.

Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGGSMWRY
Visit the website: https://makingmoneyissimple.com/

Veronica’s singing website: https://www.veronicaderaleau.com/
Veronica’s LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-deraleau/

Connect with Veronica:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/makingmoneyissimple/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575215157056
LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/makingmoneyissimple/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/makingmoneyissimple/

We explore mindset, outcome-based budgeting, and practical steps to start fresh.

• origin story in music, Army Reserve, and economics
• startup lessons that shaped a creative approach to money
• adopting high-net-worth budgeting tactics for personal finance
• paying off six figures of debt on a starting salary
• launching webinars during COVID to help artists
• building a coaching practice and writing Making Money Is Simple
• ARIA framework explained: Awaken, Reframe, Intend, Act
• why financial literacy gives women options and freedom
• quiz invite to assess money mindset and get updates
• where to buy the book and connect online

For more Divas That Care Network Episodes visit www.divasthatcare.com

SPEAKER_01:

It's Divas That Care Radio. Stories, strategies, and ideas to inspire positive change. Welcome to Divas That Care, a network of women committed to making our world a better place for everyone. This is a global movement for women, by women engaged in a collaborative effort to create a better world for future generations. To find out more about the movement, visit divas that care.com after the show. Right now, though, stay tuned for another jolt of inspiration.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, hello everyone, and welcome back to the Divas That Care. My name is Candice Gish. If this is your very first time tuning in, a huge welcome to you. We are doing, we've actually been doing this now for 16 years. Oh my gosh. It's going to be on 16 years here. And it's just flying by so quickly. We've had so many amazing guests, hosts, just everybody, like all of our listeners on our program, listening to us. And it has been so much fun over these years. Lately, we've been um kind of changing things up here. We're actually been doing a podcast series now. This is our third one, our last one of the year, and it's called End of Year, Beginning of Me. And we're excited because it's gonna be a powerfully themed mini-series helping women close the year with clarity and step into the new one with grounded self-love and vision. So I am so excited because we're gonna be welcoming a diva to our family. Her name is Veronica Durolo, and I am very excited to get to know her. I have not had an opportunity to really chat with her, but I did look at her amazing website and I am blown away. Our listeners, you guys are gonna love her. So, Veronica, welcome to the Divas at Care.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much, Candace. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm excited that you're here, Veronica. Would you mind, you know, kind of introducing yourself to our listeners today?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. So I am a financial coach, author of the book Making Money is Simple. I'm also an opera singer and a senior program manager at a fintech company.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's wonderful. Can you, when I had an opportunity to look at your bio, you were talking about um singing in the U.S. Army Reserve. Can you share a little bit about that? I found that so fascinating.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So when I was in my 20s and in school, I had always wanted to be a musician. And um I went to school for both music. And then my mother told me, you know, hey, I think you should also take something else that's more on the business side. And I, so I did a dual major with economics as well. And after my first year of school, um, there was a recruiter on my campus who said, Hey, I see that you're um a music major and they have opportunities with the army, and you could be a reservist and go to school. And so you could sing, make money for school, and you can also continue studying and serve on the uh as a reservist in the army. So I did that uh from 2006 to 2014. I was in the army reserve and um served in New York and did all sorts of um singing for political events and um ambassadorial type of events. Um and then I went to school and and worked at the same time. So did all the things and um also met my my husband through the army. So it was it was very good to me.

SPEAKER_00:

I find that absolutely fascinating. What a great thing to do is to go to school and then to be to do that also. It's something that I actually wanted my one daughter to do. She was a cadet uh here in Canada and she did so well with it. And I thought, what a great way to help pay for schooling too, because it does get quite expensive.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think that the army is one of those things, those sort of like hidden opportunities for social mobility, particularly when um you don't come from um uh, you know, family with resources. It's one of those ways that you can actually start to work and make money for school. And so I couldn't turn that opportunity down.

SPEAKER_00:

You know what? And I can't blame you. What a smart thing to do. Was it something that were you were really interested in when you went to college for it? Or was it just something that you wanted to fill in the time?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So I had taken this economics class in my senior year of high school, and that really turned me on to economics. And I was very interested in the social aspect of it. So I've always been interested in the psychology of that, um, how it works. And so I took economics. I mean, practically speaking, it was part of the same school. So I was able to do a dual major and have some overlapping credits, so there was some practicality to it. Um, but I did have an interest from that senior year of economics class. And so I went from there and followed my gut with that. And then I happened to graduate in 09, and it was the great financial, you know, recession uh in this, you know, across the globe. And um I was able to get a job out of college working for, you know, I was working in the army still, and I was able to get a job at a startup company because they were the jobs were limited, but uh I was able to get my feet wet working for a commercial startup in solar energy. And that was super interesting because I got to see uh everything from sales, marketing, operations, and I really fell in love with that uh creativity and uh being able to do a little bit of everything. And also that employer was very supportive of my singing career, and they I was actually working for them as a 1099 and had a little more flexibility there. Um, so put that all together, you know, as a musician, also you need to be a business, you're you are a business owner, and uh you it's it's very, you know, it's to your advantage to have some business skills. So that was very helpful. Um I was working with a lot of you know commercial billing building owners through that solar company because we would do like rooftop solar, and I kind of fell in love with real estate from that. So I went back to school, did my MBA with a focus in real estate. And when I first started working with my first commercial real estate company, I was able to witness how high net worth individuals did their budgeting for these multi-million dollar property budgets. And so it wasn't like just the schooling that got me, you know, the financial knowledge that I needed to turn my personal finances around when I graduated with, you know, six figures of debt from the school. Um being able to witness how they manage these multi-million dollar property budgets and how they would forecast these financial outcomes and then reverse engineer how to get there, that is really what turned it around for me. I was like, oh my gosh, I have been thinking that I've been doing budgeting. I'm using using an Excel sheet. I have my income and my expenses. But there was really no plan of how do I grow my money? How do I pay off this debt in on a fixed timeline? And so that was the aha moment that I had that allowed me to pay off six figures of debt in three years on my starting salary.

SPEAKER_00:

That's insane. That is absolutely insane. And that's why we're gonna be really diving into this because how many people come out of school with debt? How many people accumulate even more debt over the years and they feel like they're lost?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Yeah, it's it's a common, common story. And um I don't think I would have been able to put it together had I not seen it in real life, but just having that mindset of like, oh my gosh, this is a whole new paradigm of thinking, and maybe it's possible for me, and just leaving that possibility open and being open to whatever it took. Because as a singer, they say that uh, you know, debt is the abattoir of dreams. And so it's a dream killer to have debt. You know, you can't be creative and maintain low expenses and take, you know, risks in life if you're carrying this debt around. And so I was extremely motivated to pay it off as soon as I could, just so it wasn't hanging over my head and limiting my dreams.

SPEAKER_00:

You know what? I love how you just said that, and it's beautiful. Uh did you start sharing this knowledge through uh workshops or did you want to write the book right away? How did that all come about?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, absolutely. So in 2017, that's when I started, I I graduated with my MBA, my student loans came due, and I started uh doing that, you know, motion where I was start, I was like, okay, I'm gonna pay this off, I'm gonna pay this off. Come 2020, that was the year I paid off my loans. Of course, we all know COVID hit in 2020, and many of my artist friends, all of my artist friends lost their contracts overnight. So I had just done this incredible thing. I was like, I feel like I have a superpower. And I figured out something that I don't think a lot of people figure out, and then all of my artist friends lost their contracts and were, you know, a lot of them unemployed overnight. So I felt very compelled to share the financial knowledge that I had gained. And I started just with musicians, just doing webinars for musicians at first. So that was in 2020. Um, I'm currently married to my my husband Mike. He's he's active duty military. And so there was a little bit of uh transition in there. We moved in 2022 to a new location um from Texas to the Pacific Northwest. And so I kind of put that dream down for a little bit, um, where I was like, okay, I feel motivated to share this information. I was thinking about the coaching, kind of put it down while I was transitioning, um, you know, where I was living. Then in 2023, we settled here and I picked that dream back up and I started researching, like, okay, what is a financial coach coaching business look like? And I did a lot of research and I thought about, you know, how am I going to differentiate myself? Um, there's a lot of noise in social media, but I think I feel like I have a story to share, and I feel like I have the power to help people. So that was what motivated me. And I that was when I thought of writing the book so that people could get to know me as a person. And if we if they resonate with my story and feel like um I can help them, then maybe they can find me through the book.

SPEAKER_00:

Right now, during our this season for us, you know, we're talking about, as I mentioned, the end of the year, beginning of me. Why is it important for women out there to be financially secure and have that knowledge?

SPEAKER_02:

It just gives them options, you know. Um if whatever dreams you want to pursue, they're going to be easier if you don't have the financial stresses of the day-to-day and you're able to um go from that survival mode to the thriving mode. It it just takes with the weight off and it allows you to be more creative and free. So absolutely, I think all women should be empowered with financial literacy. And if, you know, we we didn't all come from families that had that knowledge to share, but it's it behooves us to go and get that knowledge.

SPEAKER_00:

I love it. Would you mind, Veronica, you know, kind of sharing a little bit of a preview, something that our listeners would um take away when they read your book?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so my book um uh is a very sweet to me because it combines both the business side uh and also my singing. So I have my what's called my ARIA money model. Aria is an operatic song and aria is an acronym in the book. And it's my four-step process for going from stuck to free with money. And it's all about first changing your mindset when it comes to money so that you're not holding on to limiting beliefs and you believe one, that it is possible to turn it around for your money. So the first step is A, which is awaken. That is when you um have that uh come to Jesus moment and you sit down with yourself and you say something, something's gotta give, something's um gotta change because I'm working too damn hard to not be getting anywhere. So that's the first step is awakening. Then R is for reframing, so reconsidering everything, um, reconsidering your default operating assumptions in life and um starting to be open to different ways of thinking. Then I is for setting intentions. So after you've reconsidered your default operating assumptions, uh, what is that intention that you're gonna set? Like, why are you doing this? What is gonna be the why that's gonna keep you motivated? Um, so sort of setting that vision, setting that intention. And then finally, A, the last A is for taking action. So I find that a lot of people are unsuccessful with hanging on to these behaviors that can be constructive for their money because they don't have a clear enough vision. It was because I had music and because I was like, I want to be an artist and I don't want to be held down by this debt that kept me so motivated. And also, I um when I graduated, my husband and I wanted to start our life together and I I didn't want to be the one that held us back. So having that clear vision and then going through that four-step framework is what they'll find in the book.

SPEAKER_00:

It is such a hard thing, as you were mentioning before, going through COVID and going through all these different things. A lot of people really got stuck in this cycle, and they felt like they couldn't, you know, get out of this financial debt. Getting that mind frame and saying that I want to get out of this, this the stuckness of it and so that I can live my dreams is so empowering. And I I think it's really our listeners need to hear right now is that empowerment and that inspiration that you know what I can get out of it and just listening to your story, I think it's gonna really inspire them. I want to ask you about like on your website, you have a a quiz there. Tell me a little bit about the quiz and why our listeners should go and do that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, uh, so I would love if they would take my quiz. First, it'll give you an assessment of where your mindset is at, and maybe uh if you are if you have some of the um symptoms of being money stuck, so they can take that quiz, and then um that will also how add them to my mailing list so I can then stay in touch with them. So I would love to for if they would take my quiz.

SPEAKER_00:

Perfect. So tell me, Veronica, where can people go and purchase your book?

SPEAKER_02:

It is available on Amazon and and it's available in both Kindle and print.

SPEAKER_00:

Excellent. A lot of people are doing Kindle these days. I've always been a very big, you know, I love touching books, but over the years and through through COVID, I actually started using a Kindle a lot more, but I still love the variety of having uh the actual book in front of me. So this is I do too.

SPEAKER_02:

I have collected too many books. So I think I need to do a little bit of donation.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. My husband actually just built me a library in my house because I have so many books. So I I completely understand. Um Veronica, would you mind, you know, maybe um, you know, sharing some last minute tips to our listeners today, something that they can take home with them to inspire them on their journeys.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so I had this um very it I would I would ask them to think about times in their life where they've had paradigm shifts. So one of the stories that I share in my book is when I was 13 years old, um, I had only known how I lived, you know, my and my mother is uh an immigrant from the Philippines. So uh I didn't realize that she had retained some of her behaviors from living in a third world country. And then it was only when I went to my very first sleepover that I realized that people used the shower heads in showers. And that's when I was like, oh my gosh, people live totally different lives than I do. And I so there have been times throughout my life like that where I've just been like, oh my gosh, I'm do, you know, it opened my eyes to new possibilities that I were like outside the bounds of my existence of what I believed existed. So I would just encourage them to be open and um be open to the possibilities of there's there's a different way of doing things.

SPEAKER_00:

Perfect. I love that story. Thank you so much for sharing it. Veronica, would you mind sharing all your social media with our listeners today so that they can go and connect with you?

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. So um I uh have Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. You can find me at making money is simple, my website, making money is simple.com. And uh so yeah, all at making money is simple.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much, Veronica. I've had such a great time. Was there anything else you'd love to share with our listeners today?

SPEAKER_02:

Um, I would love if you'd pick up a copy of Making Money Is Simple, stop going from paycheck to paycheck and start living your dreams.

SPEAKER_00:

Wonderful. Veronica, thank you so much for being a part of the end of year, beginning of me podcast series. I think that this is a great for people to get for Christmas time because in the new year that everybody's always got these resolutions. So, all of our listeners, this is the perfect time to get this book. It'll help you start the new year off right. So, Veronica, thank you again. And thank you to all of our listeners for checking out this series and make sure that you check out all of our other shows. There's gonna be a lot of them launched in the next couple of weeks, and we want you to check them out and be inspired to help you through 2026. Wishing all of you a fantastic day, and remember to do something kind. Until next time, everyone.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for listening. This show was brought to you by Divas That Care. Connect with us on Facebook, on Instagram, and of course on divas that care.com, where you can subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss a thing.