Austin offers free financial freedom book to seniors in Wooster and surrounding areas

If you take a quick tour around the internet these days, you’re more than likely to find plenty of people offering advice, but it always comes with a sticker price.

Cody Austin has plenty of advice to offer about gaining financial freedom, but he’s giving it away for free to area students.

Austin, a financial adviser and founder of Austin Wealth Solutions in Shreve, wrote the book “Your Financial Freedom: Find Freedom and Thrive” and provided it for free to all senior students attending Wooster, West Holmes, Hiland and Waynedale high schools.

“The hope is that by giving students the book, we can help them avoid some of the turmoil we see so many people in,” Austin said. “We would rather see young people gain understanding and learn how to deal with finances before becoming adults rather than trying to help them work through tough situations after they’ve experienced financial struggles. We want to motivate kids to make sound decisions.”

As a financial adviser, Austin found he connected the most with those struggling financially because his heart was with them in their plight. Thus he became a personal financial coach, something he said took him several years to fine tune.

“As you can imagine, when people are struggling with their personal finances, it’s difficult to pay someone to help you through it,” Austin said. “And that encompasses a lot of people.”

Instead of connecting with people one-on-one, he began reaching out through area businesses and corporations to sell his services as a company benefit where the employer pays for the costs and provides it as an employee benefit.

Some impressive companies have signed on, and the program has paid dividends, but Austin didn’t want to stop there.

Instead, he wrote his book and had a desire to offer it to high school students for free so they could gain insight on becoming financially stable and learn how to thrive prior to hitting the adult world.

“It took me five years to write the book and get it published because life tends to get in the way,” Austin said. “I finally realized I had to get it done because there is important information in there that young people need to learn and institute in their lives.”

Budgeting, insurance, differentiating between good and bad debt, money management, and saving and investing are some of the topics discussed in the book, and Austin said the hope is students will read through it, take what they can to heart and begin to employ some of the strategies before hitting the adult work world.

Austin said he was doing some financial classes with area students at Wooster High School prior to publishing the book and realized there were many unknowns for young people when it came to the financial world and preparing for life.

“So many young people are utterly unprepared for life and the decisions that they’ll need to make,” Austin said. “There is so little taught about what they will be facing, and students going to college are signing up for a quarter-million of debt, and they have no idea what’s coming.”

He said recognizing the great need and lack of understanding teens have when it comes to finances, he wanted to coach kids and give them a resource they could turn to any time.

“Your Financial Freedom” was the result.

He said the book is written in a one-on-one perspective, is personalized and takes steps toward building a plan.

He said every student can take a different message and grow in different areas, depending on their situation and needs.

“It’s not a free pass,” Austin said. “Kids still must be willing to put in the work and put the knowledge they learn into practice, but it can be a great starting point for them. It’s all about what financial freedom looks like to them.”

Austin said he has received great feedback from the participating schools.

“The hope is that we can get the book into their hands and have them realize that they can get ahead of debt and gain some financial stability and freedom,” said Felicia Hay, marketing director and coach at Austin Wealth Solutions. “Our goal is to have them get ahead of needing to face the tough financial difficulties.”

Austin said they are blessed to be able to provide the books to seniors for free, and he said ideally, he won’t ever see these students coming in for financial advice as adults.

In addition, he said it can even lead these seniors toward creating dialogue about finances at home with their parents.

“The book can be eye-opening for these kids,” Hay said. “It’s about self-reflection on creating good behaviors and habits.”

Financial struggles are difficult and lead to numerous struggles in life. Learning how to avoid living paycheck to paycheck provides a freedom that has lasting positive effects.

Austin said they will continue to offer books to seniors annually and hope to branch out to other schools.

To connect with Austin Wealth Solutions, visit www.austinwealthsolutions.com.