Never Too Old to Get Rich

CHAPTER 2Money Maven

Lazetta Rainey Braxton, Financial Fountains

“A dollar within our household always had a purpose that was already marked,” says Lazetta Rainey Braxton, 45, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), founder of Financial Fountains (financialfountains.com), a fee-only financial planning and registered investment advisory firm based in Baltimore, Maryland, chair of the Association of African American Financial Advisors (AAAA), and president of the AAAA Foundation.

“I received my first paycheck when I was 16 from the Golden Corral restaurant, where I worked as a hostess,” Braxton says. “For the first time, the money was all mine, and I felt a weight of what to do with it. What did I want to earmark it for?”

Braxton grew up in the small rural town of South Hill, Virginia, and money was stretched in her family. Her mother and father both worked full time – a factory worker and construction worker, respectively – but they often had to go into debt to make ends meet. “My parents didn’t go to college,” she says. “Their jobs didn’t earn a lot of money, but in many ways, they struggled with money because of lack of access to basic personal financial concepts.”

Her passion for learning about finance and helping people, particularly African American families like her own, with financial planning was driven by watching her parents grapple with money. “At the time, I didn’t ...