Today we’d like to introduce you to Bunchie Mulbah.
Hi Bunchie, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
My story reminds me of one of my favorite flowers, the lotus. They don’t grow in beautiful environments, but they’re so beautiful, same as my story. I was born in Monrovia, Liberia (small country in West Africa) but unfortunately during that time, there was a brutal civil war going in my country that required some of my family and I to move to nearby countries. I left my mother in Liberia at age 4 and moved with my aunt, and we fled to Ghana. I stayed in Ghana until I got the opportunity to come to the US at age 7 on refugee status.
I grew up in Philadelphia, PA, and went to college at University of Pennsylvania where I got my bachelor’s degree in finance and minored Accounting. In 2016, I moved to Houston, and it has became ‘home’ since then. I got my MBA with a Finance concentration from the UHD in 2020.
With my finance background, I have worked in accounting/finance for the past 7 years in varies of industries including; banking, retail, wealth management, oil & gas, and chemical. I currently work in credit with one of the top leading chemical companies. I’m also the Founder of Focused Finance, a personal finance education service to my lifestyle/money blog Faith Family Finance.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No journey is smooth, but when God is in it, you don’t need to jump when you approach a speed bump. During my sophomore as an undergraduate in 2013, I got pregnant; you can only imagine the struggle that already comes with being a broke college student, and here comes another mouth to add to the picture. It was challenging but my greatest accomplishment. Throughout the struggle, I took him back to campus at 6 months, and I completed my bachelor in the 4 years with Cum Laude.
Just when I thought the struggle would slow down, I guess not. After graduation in 2016, I got this idea to move to Houston, TX 2 weeks after with the 22 months toddler. I had no plan or idea what I was doing, but I pray and followed God’s path. It was difficult in a new state as a fresh undergraduate without my network, family, or friends.
I used my time to create new network, new community, and new people to call friends and family. I volunteer at organizations and get involved in the Houston community. I started mentoring for Big Brother, Big Sister to pour back into another young girl live.
In 2020, I started my blog, Faith Family Finance, to write and share life and money topics. It was the top thing that mattered to me the most in the exact order, and I knew I wanted to inspire other people. What started with talking about just me took a different turn in 2021 when I created my newsletter, Focused Finance, to focus more on financial news that were going on and how it affected consumers’ household by providing finance education on budgeting, saving, & investing. I knew it had to be more than just writing about my journey. Money is part of living, and it can break you if you don’t understand it. Financial Literary was lacking in my community, and I needed to be the voice to push and promote it, so I launched my personal finance online business, Focused Finance.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
Faith Family Finance was founded during the pandemic in 2020 when I did a self-reflection on my birthday on all the life experiences I was going through (wedding, graduate school, purchasing a home, & job loss), and finances was a part of each category. After sharing my experience for the whole year and attended my first finance conference for creators, I knew I had to serve my community beyond just my experiences. I needed to educate in a form of content creation. Finance being a taboo topic in my community was just enough reason I showed up faithfully providing financial information from budgeting sharing money, saving money, spending money, and of course, investing money.
In 2021, I started the newsletter for the blog called Focused Financed to help millennials navigate and understand their finances to achieve their goals. I share my real finance numbers and the progress when teaching my audience.
I have a free community of focused friends that virtually meets up occasionally once a month to have open money conversations. This helps all of us understand our relationship with money and how it drives our financial decisions and eventually shapes our financial circumstances.
Anyone is free to join the community by subscribing to the newsletter to get an email or follow the page via Facebook or Instagram. I offer free a One Year Focus Spending Plan (budget) that’s simple and straightforward to help you manage your money and tell it where to go. If that’s not enough, I created the Financial Focus Dashboard which is a spreadsheet of your overall financial picture from budget, spending rate, cash flow, and network. You can purchase on my website and wouldn’t regret tracking your incomes, expenses, savings, and debts easily all in one place.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Three qualities that have shaped my character have been faith, ambition, and authenticity. It continues to play the role in my journey.
Pricing:
- 25
Contact Info:
- Website: www.faithfamily-finance.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bunchie.mulbah/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/focusingfinance/
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/bunchiemulbah
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/bunchville
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoxwtNrcrlC1Lg38CavkM1g
- Other: https://focusedfinance.gumroad.com/l/focus
