How Did I Get Here? Getting To Know Samantha McKee.

I started as a Finance major in the Fox School of Business at Temple University in the Fall of 2017. In high school, I had taken a few business classes and found myself drawn to understanding personal finance and wanting to help people, without any desire of being an accountant. Coming into Fox was more nerve-wracking than I had imagined, but the people were also very nice and open. I remember feeling under-dressed in my sweatpants after seeing a few of my classmates in their business professional clothes. Suits, jackets, ties, knee-length skirts. It was intimidating and made me wonder if I would be wearing a suit to classes. 

In my first semester at Temple, I was still getting used to campus and spent a lot of time with my roommates and boyfriend. We had great times at the Student Carnival and had a few really great movie nights. In the first few weeks at Fox, I attended a few meetings for the Fox Accounting Association, a student professional organization that is focused on accounting and that does a lot for the community of North Philadelphia.

Eventually, I started looking into other Student Professional Organizations through Fox’s website and learned about the different finance-focused majors that were offered at Fox. There were three options. Corporate Finance, Real Estate, and Financial Planning. After reading about each program, and knowing I am not a person destined for Real Estate or the colder Corporate Finance world, I decided to attend a meeting for the Financial Planning Association (FPA) at Temple. They also offered free pizza which was more than enticing as a college student with very limited funds.

So, I attended my first meeting on a Friday, and I remember the speaker was using a lot of acronyms that I had never heard of before, and I vigorously wrote them down in my notebook so I could look them up afterwards. RIA, fiduciary, CFP… There were quite a few.

While the acronyms and new terms were confusing, the bulk of his presentation was focused on the need for Financial Planners. People who wanted to help others to plan their futures in safe and effective ways. He talked a lot about always acting in the best interest of your client’s and being available to help them when they needed support the most.

He talked about strong women, losing their husbands, after 50 years of marriage, who had no idea the state of their finances, because it was not in their wheelhouse at the time. Financial planners helped those women and their families to get through their most vulnerable moments—and that was extremely touching and invaluable to me. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to help those women who were struggling, I want to help parents send their children to college without worry of losing their home or retirement fund. After my first meeting with FPA, I knew that I wanted to learn more, and I made an appointment with an undergraduate advisor for the next week. We sat down, talked about how I was enjoying Temple, and I told him about my plans to switch my major and to declare a minor in Organizational Leadership.

Financial Planning was a fairly new program at Fox when I made the switch, but the program has taught me the very fundamentals of being a financial planner and has put me in contact with so many advisors who really care about their clients and their futures. Now, as I enter my Senior Year at Fox, I feel nothing but excitement for the future.

This Summer I am looking forward to learning everything that I can about the profession from the wonderful women at CURO Wealth Management! Having the opportunity to apply the lessons that I have learned through the Financial Planning program at Fox to real clients will be invaluable to my career and in furthering my education.