257 | From Bankruptcy to Wealthy Woman Lawyer with Davina Frederick (Part 2)

Davina Frederick is a sought-after business coach for women law firm owners, who is very clear on how to use her money to create the life she wants.

Because of her personal experiences, she has a lot of financial wisdom.

In this episode, Davina talks about how she and her husband have thought through the financial impact of some of their life decisions, the importance of being clear about what you want in life, and the financial pitfalls she’s seen her clients and others encounter. This is part two of a two-part conversation.

• • Davina’s issue with women who are making a lot of money
  • planning for life events you don’t think will happen
  • taking responsibility for your finances
  • how Davina has used her money to create the life she wants
  • what Davina likes to spend money on
  • getting influenced on social media
  • the importance of making more money

Davina’s website

Davina’s Instagram

Davina’s LinkedIn

You’re listening to Personal Finance for Lawyers. I’m Rho Thomas, and as a busy wife, mom, and former Biglaw associate, I know all too well the tension between the culture of the legal profession and pretty much everything else you want to do in life. That’s why each week, I’m bringing you the information and tools you need to improve your money mindset and manage your money to create true wealth. Because ultimately, it’s not about the money. It’s about the freedom and flexibility the money affords.

Hey friend. Welcome back. This week, I’m bringing you part two of my conversation with Davina Frederick, lawyer turned business coach extraordinaire. If you missed part one, head back to last week’s episode. In that first part of the conversation, Davina talked a lot about her career, her journey into the legal profession, and her experiences with her own personal finances.

This week, we dive into Davina’s thoughts on lawyers making money, how we manage our money, the choices that we make, all of those kinds of things, and how we achieve the freedom that we want to have. So I can’t wait for you to listen to it. Please enjoy part two of my conversation with Davina Frederick.

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[Davina] Well, and it’s kind of one of my beefs, you know, is that when I talk with women who are making a lot of money, I will often hear, I will ask them, you know, private clients start working with me, I’ll start asking them, well, how much money do you have toured your retirement?

How much money do you have? You want to take all these trips around the world? How much money do you have to set aside for that?

You want to pay off your house, you want to pay for your kids this college or that or whatever. And I always bring them to the dollars because they have a fantasy about what, but let’s talk about how much that will cost you.

How much will that be?

And then that’s where they start to see, oh, whoa, the amount of income that I want doesn’t even begin to scrape the surface of all the things that I say I want to do.

And most of them, interestingly enough, 30s, 40s, 50s, even will say things like, I don’t have very much in my retirement. And they won’t, and they’ll say, well, my husband handles that. I get that.

And these are highly educated, highly intelligent women, and they may be making a lot of money, but they don’t, they’ll spend it. They’ll show me, they’ll tell me about their handbag collection, and I’m like, hey, you want to buy handbags? That’s great, but what if, what if something happens?

And, and I, I’m about to turn 60, and one of the things that happened when I turned 50 is I learned that a lot of women become widows when they’re in their 50s.

And I’m thinking about the future. And fortunately, my husband is really fit. I mean, he’s an athlete, right? So I’m hoping that he and I grow old together. But I also know as somebody who’s been married and divorced that divorce happens. I didn’t think I was gonna divorce when I married my first husband. And a lot of people and I’m talking to they don’t think allure get divorced. And yet we know statistically a lot of them will. And we know statistically that a lot of them will become widows.

And I see and talk to women who aren’t even thinking about what if that happens. And I have a lot of friends around the other side of that and I’ve seen the fallout. And so I’m kind of trying to serve as a little bit of a claxon or a warning for younger women who think this will never happen to me.

There were things I thought would never happen to me that happened in my life that, you know, I believe we create our own reality. I’m sure I caused a lot of these, you know, things because I was on a journey of some kind, right?

But that to me, when I’m sitting talking, it’s shocking how many women lawyers who will say my husband has retirement, well, how much does he have? I don’t know. Is your name on it? Oh, I don’t know. I guess I probably should get my name on it

I should be like a, you’re like, I mean, these are real conversations. And so I’m here going, hey, wake up, you’re making all this money and what are you doing with it?

And there’s a lot of its international travel and all that, which is great, which is fine. I’m all about enjoying your money, right?

But I also think that there’s got to be a balance of, yeah, but what if you really live to be 90?

[Rho] I 100% agree. Yeah, I love that you’re bringing them back to the numbers. Like you mentioned that they’ve got dreams, they’ve got these aspirations, but they’ve never looked at how much does that cost? What do these numbers look like?

So bringing them back to that, but then also bringing them back to the possibility of something happening, right?

Of course, we don’t want someone to get divorced or to be widowed, but it could happen, and so we can prepare for that, prepare for the worst, even if it never happens. I would rather have the plans in place, have the money and not need it, than for the situation to happen, and not be prepared.

[Davina] Well, and the other thing is I married a millionaire, and I never thought that he would lose his business. He never thought he would lose his business. And there were just a lot of things that sort of lying up at the same time that caused that to happen. And, and, you know, he was really unhappy in the business too. So I’m sure that there’s an energetic thing that was going on.

But, you know, so you think to yourself, you know, well, things will always stay the same. And we know who’ve lived through financial crises and things happening that things don’t always stay the same.

And so what are you doing personally? And, and it’s really easy to look at a spouse and go, why didn’t you? Why didn’t you do this? Why didn’t you do that?

But, you know, I see a lot of spouses that are on it there. We’re in it for the ride, man, we’re going, you know, hey, what’s cool, whatever, you know, and we’re not thinking that this will all go wrong.

So I can’t look at my husband and go, you screwed up because I was right there with him, man. We were spending, we were having a good time, life was good. And then, you know, things changed and we really neither of us were educated financially.

We had, we both grow up in families with people who didn’t understand financial education and investing or any of that. And so, you know, we grew up in working class families, and his father was a lawyer but not a great businessman.

I mean, he’d get paid in chicken sometimes, you know, like that kind of lawyer. So, yeah, so I think, you know, it was a wake up call for us to look at our lives and go, well, wait a minute, what is it? Do we really want? What’s really important?

And this is something you’ve talked about with your spouse, like having that moment ago, what is it that we really want for our lives? What does that look like? And can we start allocating money in that way toward that?

[Rho] You are absolutely right. Like when we started our whole money journey, a big part of that was us talking about, what is it that we want our lives to look like?

Because when we came out of school, we just fell right into the typical way of doing things, right? That kind of automatic. You go to work, you come home, you do this, you go back, you know. And we didn’t think about that broader vision for our lives and how work fit into our lives versus, you know, trying to fit our lives around the work.

Work was very much the priority, and we didn’t realize it until we had our son. We’re looking at can I go reduced hours? Can I be able to spend a little bit more time with him? Looking at the finances when we realized that we couldn’t do that. That’s what really shook us, you know, if you will, that made us think about that how do we want our lives to look and how does work fit into that versus work being the priority? So I love that you said that.

[Davina] Right? It’s huge. It’s huge, you know, cause you and I are friends and have talked about this, but I was born and raised in Florida. I lived there for my whole life and my husband did too.

We so two natives found each other and we just started talking about what would it be like to move someplace else where we’d like to move. And we negotiated discussing, this went on for years.

And then finally we decided last year to 2023 to move to Colorado.

We had traveled to Colorado several times to kind of get an idea of where we wanted to move because we wanted to have more access to terrain and the higher altitude and cold weather sports and more outdoor activities and that kind of thing that we enjoy.

So we moved to Colorado and that was a big financial investment. We paid a lot of money to move. The cost moving would shock you, to hire movers. It was absolutely shocking. And we also brought my mother in law with us because she’s widowed, and we brought her along and our little English bulldog.

So we drove for three days to get here and we moved. And then I was just telling you, we just bought a house in December of 2024 here in Colorado because we love it so much where we live we’re kind of North Colorado. And that decision was a financial investment to make that. Also, I’d left my parents who were in their 80s. They’re in their mid 80s in Florida with my sister. So my whole family is there and I made the decision to leave.

So there was a lot involved in that.

But that’s something looking at your life and going, you know, life is not getting any longer. We want to change things and try things and do things. But that was a choice. And so we had to. We chose to not spend our money in other ways to be able to do what we did with our move. And it was quite a financial investment, right?

And I think there’s a lot of people don’t think of that as a financial investment, right? They don’t think. But when you look at the cost of moving, we had to sell our house, we had to rent a house here. The rent’s more expensive here in Colorado than it is in Florida.

And we brought my mother in law, we had to find accommodations for her and she lived with us for a year. So all of those were financial choices that we made for the purpose of creating more of a lifestyle that we wanted.

And so as a consequence of that, you know, we haven’t taken as many international vacations as other people I know have. We’re looking at a vacation for anniversary, and we’re going to go someplace a few hours from here and have a vacation, place I’ve never been to before and have a vacation, but it’s not going to be to Europe this year, you know?

So I think there’s some things about looking at what you want. I, personally, I mentioned handbags. I don’t buy designer handbags. Could I buy designer handbags? I absolutely can afford to buy a designer handbag, but I would cry if I spent that money, much money on a handbag because I would be like, really? Because in Loveland, Colorado where I live, most people are walking around in like yoga pants and fleece jackets. We’re spending money on like ski tickets. You know?

Nobody would even know that what I was carrying was a designer handbag, right? There’s nothing wrong if people want to collect designer handbags and have designer handbags, but it’s a choice that I make. I say I’d much rather go hiking, right? And I’d rather buy some expensive hiking boots so my feet won’t hurt, right?

[Rho] Because you’re very clear on what’s important to you.

[Davina] Exactly. My health. And so I spend, we have a gym membership. We go to the gym four days a week. You know, it’s a it’s a, it’s a looking at what we want and spending money on it.

We also don’t have kids, which was a huge decision that we made. Would we regret that? What would that be like? But for us, we were just, it was a financial decision that we both we made and said, you know, we just don’t think that this is what we want for our lives. And there’s a financial component to it as well as in our decision making process as well as other factors that came into play.

[Rho] I think that’s the case with most decisions that we make in life, but we don’t think about it in that way. We don’t think about the financial impact, even as you’re talking about moving from Florida to Colorado and that it was a financial investment and all of the money that went into making that decision, but you are using your money to create the lives that you want, which I’m all for.

[Davina] Right. Right. And I think that’s, and there are sacrifices in that or what may appear to be sacrifices to other people, but if it, if it’s not that big of a deal to you, is it really a sacrifice? Right? But other people might look at it.

I was thinking about, I’m gonna do this little uninfluencing video for my Instagram. I haven’t done it yet, but you can’t see right now, but the people are following me, they’ve seen in my videos our house that we bought. I really love it. It’s a really good size for us. It’s, you know, meets a lot of our needs.

But when we moved in, these walls were like peachy pink color. And I mean they did the color drenching, so it was every light switch, every, every baseboard, every door, everything was this color throughout the whole place. So we had it painted.

And upstairs and there was also matching carpet throughout it, throughout it. We replace the carpet, carpet. And I’ll show it to you. It’s really pretty but we made. We replace the floors upstairs with wood floors but we kept the carpet downstairs.

So in my uninfluencing life, I have this sort of terracotta colored carpet. And the reason we like it is because sound. It absorbs sound. We both have our offices down here.

We have a dog that slips and slides on floors and so this is great. We can play with her in the family room with our carpet. She can come up and down the stairs. The last house we lived in at wood stairs, she couldn’t go up and down the stairs because they’re too slippery. She almost got hurt. So here she can go down the stairs.

And we kept this carpet, and this carpet is very expensive, luxurious carpet. The people who picked it out, they love this carpet and it’s really a very great carpet for walking. But do I like wall to wall carpet? Would I pick out wall to wall carpet? Probably not. But again, it’s one of those things where I look at it and I go, but it meets a lot of our needs. We’re not hosting the Queen here at our house. We don’t have a lot of, we don’t do a lot of entertaining. Like all the people on HGTV seem to. This is perfect, but it’s a choice, right, about what you want and what you don’t want. And I think a lot of us don’t look at our money in those terms and say, is this really what I want or am I trying to impress other people?

I mean, I drive a Lexus that I bought. It was already pre loved when I bought it three years. It’s now 10 years old. It’s been paid off. Not the best car for Colorado, but we have a Subaru. So we need to, we ride in my husband’s Subaru, but I’m not getting rid of that car. I love that car, right? I’m gonna drive it till the wheels fall off. Because to me, I don’t care if other people look at my car and go, oh, you’re not, you obviously don’t have any money because you’re not driving the latest and greatest car, right?

I’m like, whatever, you know like I barely I drive. I work from home, I drive to the gym and back, I drive to the grocery story and back. Like it’s such a, I love it. I call it my pimp car because it’s so smooth and comfortable. It’s the most smooth car I’ve ever like I want to lay back and, you know, ride in it. It’s so smooth. But it’s 10 years old and other people may look at that and just go, and I bought it used because I’ve refused to buy a new car because they depreciate the minute you drive it off the lot.

[Rho] But that goes back to you being very clear on what’s important to you. Because you said earlier like, I don’t care about fancy handbags. I don’t care about, you know, this carpet versus that other type of flooring or whatever, right? You love this car, you’re gonna keep this car, you don’t care about getting the next car.

And I have told my clients, I just told them recently that when you are thinking about the goals that you have, especially like for a lot of my clients, and I don’t know if this is the case with yours, a lot of my clients’ ultimate goal is something around freedom. Having the freedom to do what they want, when they want, not having to be in the specific job that they’re in or in a specific situation.

And I told them, like, if we are thinking of this ultimate goal of freedom, and you want to start using your money in a way that gets you to that freedom, you have to not worry about what other people think about that because trying to keep up with what this person’s doing, that person got this kind of car, well they took this kind of trip, maybe I should take that kind of trip too. And I should buy these clothes, and I should get this house and all of that kind of stuff that we do, trying to keep up with other people or impress other people keeps us from our ultimate goals.

And so I tell them like, don’t worry about what other people are doing. You have to not care about other people’s opinions of you because you are focused on your goal and what you want.

[Davina] Well, you know, the funny thing about that is that most people are not thinking about you, right? They’re not thinking, you know, I’m not going Rho got a new car. I, you know like I’m not thinking of that. I’m thinking about, oh, I got so many calls I have to do today. I got clients. Oh, I need to email this person. I mean, I’m not even thinking about you and I love you, right?

So, I’m not… And I think that’s where we get caught up and I think social media is a big driver of that. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t grow up with social media. Well, we didn’t even have the internet, right? So then we got the internet and that changed business, and that was cool.

And I used to love AOL instant messaging and dial up, it was fabulous, right? And now we have social media, and I’m 59 years old. I have a tremendous amount of tools in my toolbox, my emotional toolbox, and I still get influenced by social media.

I’m scrolling, scrolling Instagram, going, oh, look at this, they will the beautifully produced photos of some gorgeous place in the world, and I go, I have to go there, I want to go there, right? How come I’m not going there? I’m not living my life right if I don’t get to go there, right?

And, and I think to all the people who’ve grown up with it, how impactful that is on their life choices. And Gen Z, I recently read an article that Gen Z has the largest amount of debt of all the generations, because a lot of them are seeing this and they’re going my peers are doing all this.

Well, I need to do this, too. I’m gonna go put it on credit cards and I’m gonna go do it and then the money will come and I will pay it back.

And I think one of the biggest travesties is, I remember going to college and the credit card companies were all over campus getting you signed up for your first credit card so you could build credit.

Well, that’s just the thing you want to do is give 18, 20 year olds, you know, credit, right? And it was such a, it’s such a scam, you know, and taking advantage of people.

And so I think that’s a lot of what’s happening is you build your credit, get your credit. And so the big thing right now is travel. We think everybody is traveling the world, but us.

I don’t want to wait until I’m 60 to travel because my dad died when he was 60 and he never got to travel. So I’m not gonna wait, right? We hear that a lot and that’s sad and true and it does happen some, but also a lot of people now are living longer than ever, right?

And you have a long, hopefully you’ll be one of those people with a long life with a lot of opportunities to do things.

Should, am I saying you shouldn’t travel now, but should you get 20 credit cards to play the points game? But you’re having, you’re running these cards up and playing the points game, and before you know it, you’re in a position that you never thought you would be in.

[Rho] Oh, 100% yes. And I’ve talked with a lot of my clients about travel, and it’s exactly like you said, where you’re seeing your friends’ pictures on Instagram or wherever talking about their trips and these amazing things that they’re doing. And like you, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with traveling.

I like to travel as well, but I don’t think that traveling at the expense of your financial security is the wisest thing to do. There is a way to balance it where you can still be making progress on your goals.

You can make sure that you’ve got that safety net, you can be investing like all of that kind of stuff and travel. Maybe you’re just not traveling as often as you see some of your peers doing. And like I said, we don’t know how they’re doing that.

[Davina] Exactly. And some of them, you know, I’ve got some friends who, they’re taking their kids, they’re financially able to take their adult children with them, and they’re paying for things.

And if you’re looking at, at that and going, how come I can’t go travel like my friend who’s my age, well his parents may be paying for that, right?

Or there maybe people who run up an enormous amount of debt to pay for that because they want the photos of it to say that I did this thing.

And I’m, you know, I love travel too. I enjoy, I enjoy seeing new places. I hate the actual traveling part, but I love seeing new places, and there are things I want to see in this world before I die and all of those things. And maybe I’ll see some of those things, maybe some things I won’t.

But also you know, I know of someone who has lived her whole life financially dependent on others, not really learning anything about finances and money. And now she’s here in her 80s trying to get a job and she’s got no work experience, and she’s trying to get a job because her Social Security is not covering it and she’s out of savings.

And that’s a very scary thing and a very sad story. When you see that and you think, that will never be me, but you could be wrong because you don’t know what health crises life might throw at you. You don’t know what might happen, you know, to leave you in that circumstance

And so me, I’m just looking at it and saying, well, maybe there’s a balance here. Maybe there’s a balance and we just don’t, you know, spend it all. Like maybe there’s a balance and what we can do and the, and the regret I have is that I didn’t, you know, I didn’t learn that when I was younger because now a lot of the financial advice books that you read are always about targeted at people who are 20s and 30s.

If you save $100 a month, you’ll be a millionaire by the time you’re 40.

Well, what the hell does that help people who are already in their 40s and 50s and 60s who haven’t been investing and saving, and don’t have those years of compound interest. And there are a lot of us out there. Okay. There are a lot of people in their 40s, 50s and 60s.

And I remember, and part of my sort of being on a soapbox about making more money. If you are a highly educated, highly intelligent person, you’re wasting your potential if you’re not turning that into cash, if you’re not doing something to give your family more options, give them more resources. Because when I was young, I worked jobs making 20, 30 thousand dollars a year.

And I’m sorry, Dave Ramsey, but you cannot save your way to wealth when you’re only making 20, 30 thousand dollars a year. You are having to pay rent, you’re having to pay, you know, insurance, you’re having to pay all the things. Are there people out there who do it? Yes, but they’re living very austere lifestyles. And that is the same.

I, I think people ought to learn to be smart with their money, but there’s a reality if you’re only making so much money, if there’s an opportunity for you to make more money and do it in a way that you enjoy, that serves you right?

So I’m not saying you should go be working in the salt mines if that’s not, you know, how you want to live your life, but there are a lot of people out there have to work in salt mines, right?

So I think if you are a highly educated, if you’re a lawyer, you’re highly educated and you’re privileged to some degree because of your education, you have an opportunity to do more with what you have. And when you do more with what you have, then you are providing more options for yourself and your family to live the kind of life that you want, to reach that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, that self actualization, which is what we all strive for.

But if you keep lingering down here and saying, I’m satisfied with this, I’m satisfied with this, without asking the question of, but really what else? How else could I go? Could I go beyond survival to thrival? You know to self actualization. Am I hanging out in, I’m making enough?

Well, yeah. But are you making enough if things go wrong and suddenly you can’t work anymore?

[Rho] Yes. Oh, I love all of that.

[Davina] I’m sure people are listening to this going, oh my God, I don’t want to listen to her anymore.

[Rho] No. Well, I thought this has been wonderful. I love your views on money. One of the reasons why I wanted to invite you on the podcast, and we did not even talk about actually starting your own firm or things like that. Which obviously means that you got to come back and we will talk about those things.

[Davina] I would love it. I would love it. I definitely would. I know your audience is made up largely of lawyers and there’s probably a lot of them out there with an urge to just… it’s like people who want to write a book, you know, a lot of us have this sort of dream. And then what, what’s the difference between the ones who write the book and the ones who don’t write the book?

What’s the difference between the ones who start their own firm and the ones who don’t?

And a lot of people don’t want to. That’s fine too, you know, you can, you can still have a career in another law firm and be very successful. And I’m not against that. For me, it just wasn’t what I wanted, you know, goes back to that. What do I want? Choice. What do I want?

[Rho] Exactly, exactly. But I know you’ve got lots of thoughts on starting your own firm, but then also just your thoughts on making more like the things that you were just talking about because I think you’re right that we can…so yes, we can cut expenses, especially people who are in the legal profession in large firms, mid size firms, even boutique firms, right?

A lot of us are making really good money even as employees. But could we be doing something else on the side? Can we be doing something that allows us to bring in additional income so we’re not only dependent on this one income source, right?

And then can we be moving some of that money toward investments and things like that that can be making money for us? All of that kind of stuff, I think helps us to achieve the freedom that so many of us are looking for.

But we will absolutely get to that conversation in another time, but thank you so much, Davina, for being here.

Please take a second and tell everyone where they can connect with you, where they can learn more about the work you do.

[Davina] Great. The best thing to do is go to wealthywomanlawyer.com. I have a lot of resources on there. The link to my Wealthy Woman Lawyer podcast is on there. My two books are there and I’m going to be putting up a new training soon on there.

So that’s really the best place. You can also follow me on Instagram or my Facebook page. My Instagram is where I’m most active and where I enjoy, and I am on LinkedIn, but I tend not to be on there as much.

[Rho] Love it. Well, thank you again for being here. It has been such a pleasure as always.

[Davina] Thank you Rho. I’ve enjoyed it.

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All right. I hope you enjoyed the rest of my conversation with Davina. I just love the way that she thinks about money. I think she has so much wisdom to share. And listen, if you are interested in starting your own firm and making money on the side, be sure to check out her podcast, Wealthy Woman Lawyer. She has such great insights and brings in interesting guests, so I think if you enjoyed this conversation, you will really enjoy that podcast.

Please also take a second to share this episode with a friend or two who you think could use this information. Sharing is how we get this podcast in the hands of more lawyers so that they can get the information they need to manage their money better. As always, I appreciate your support.

As we close out, friend, I pray that you take the information you learn here, apply it in your life and open up to the realization that wealth is available to you. As you do that consistently, week after week, you’ll continue to take steps to take back control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve. Talk to you later.