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HAVE THAT SOMEONE YOU CAN ASK ALL YOUR MONEY QUESTIONS,
NO MATTER HOW WEIRD.

Your life is complicated. career, money, relationships, self care, community. You no longer want to handle it all alone.

Working with a financial planner is an investment in you: your financial strength, your future, your happiness.

We walk with you as you navigate decisions, from small to Very Big.
We work with you to unearth and clarify what you want in life.
We help you use the financial and career opportunities in the tech industry.

WE KNOW...

The tech industry offers tremendous financial opportunities, especially at private companies, where there’s the promise of big money down the road, but…wow, that’s complicated. 

We all want to know what will happen in the future. With our company stock price. With our lives. With our career. With the housing or stock market. Alas, we simply can’t. How do we do financial planning, then, without that certainty? We manage risks and plan for opportunities. We help you create a resilient financial life that allows you to more confidently navigate through whatever ends up happening in your future.

Are you single, 25 years old, making way more money than you ever expected to, and have no one you feel you can talk to about your money?

Do you work at a pre-IPO company and have lots of stock options…which are just sitting there because you don’t know how to even think about them?

Maybe you’re 40 and so. over. this tech industry thing. Does the idea of doing other work feel foreign, unattainable, but oh so tempting?

Or are you about to come into a lot of money via an IPO and you really don’t want to screw this up?

Beyond the Numbers, What Will You Get?

Clarity
The internet can give you information. Too much, in fact. This relationship can help you uncover what’s important and what you need to do.
Prioritization.
When you need more life insurance, to roll over some 401(k)s, to invest some extra cash, and to manage the risk of company stock, we help you identify which to do first.
Alignment with your values and intentions.
If you tell us you want to buy a home but you spend most of your money on travel, we’re here to (respectfully) point that out.
Accountability.
Behavioral change is hard, be it your diet, exercise, finances, or relationship. Sometimes meeting for 10 minutes to click a button on a website is just what you need.
A safe place to ask...anything.
“This might be a stupid question, but…” Yep, we get this a lot. While we wish you wouldn’t call your question stupid, we’re very happy to answer it.
Access to other professionals.
You’ll probably need a CPA, insurance broker, attorney, and career coach at some point. We can hook you up. We also connect clients with one another because they can often help each other out.
Connection with your partner.
Each of you have equal value in this work, regardless of your financial knowledge. We believe that a fulfilling partnership requires each partner to be fulfilled.

Who We Are

MEG

(she/her/hers)

Founder and Lead Planner.

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JANICE

Client Services Associate.

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Yerim

Associate Planner.
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Get clear on what you want in life. The financial decisions will follow.

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I want financial clarity

Meg Bartelt, CFP®

I worked in the tech industry straight out of college. Through the first Dot Com Boom. Aaaaand through the crash. When I got laid off. Fun times.

In my 30s, I got bored with my work in tech, and I changed careers into financial planning. I also got married, had two babies, moved cross-country twice, went back to school for a graduate degree, bought my first home, decided (I mean, not unilaterally) to have my husband retire from tech and become a stay-at-home dad, and started a business (this one!).

I don’t know if I’d have had the guts to do all of that without the money and flexibility my husband and I both got from the tech industry. Which is why I love working with women in their early to mid career in the tech industry.

It’s such an exciting time of life. And the opportunities are almost boundless. But it’s so stressful. And oh my goodness, what do you mean “estimated taxes”?!

I’ve learned that if we are intentional and if we do the work, our opportunities in the tech industry can help us build that fulfilling life we all crave.

What else about me?

Wellllll, I grew up in Newport News, Virginia. I went to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where I majored in Economics, gained 10 pounds (unlimited Fruit Loops? whut?!), and learned to banish writer’s block. I moved to the Bay Area in 1998 and worked as a technical writer for 10 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, mostly in the software-security sector. ‘Tis also, it should be noted, where I met my husband. We both worked on the Engineering team at a small startup.

After I changed careers, I got my Master’s of Science in Financial Planning from Golden Gate University. I then worked for fee-only Registered Investment Advisors, back in Tidewater Virginia.

In search of a home better suited to us, my husband, my two daughters, and I moved to Bellingham, WA. Julia the Dog—a sweet girl, if not technically a good girl—joined us a couple years later.

So much of what makes me happy—hiking, biking, cooking, yoga, kale, and ancient minivans missing hubcaps—are part of the fabric of life here. For those rare times when I have a stretch of silence and time, I love reading books about European royal history, sci-fi/fantasy, and Anything Russia.

I am a Certified Financial Planner™ professional, a Registered Life Planner™ and a member of the XY Planning Network and the Financial Planning Association.

CFP
RLP
XYP
FPA

Janice BAKKE, FPQP®

On the leading edge of the Gen X cohort (that is, somewhat beyond “early to mid career”), I remember receiving my first work email address and being shown a web browser by a student worker at the university in Seattle, where I was a transcript evaluator in the early 1990s.

Later, influenced in part by the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) classic, Your Money or Your Life, I lived on the cheap in Southern California while working as an admin in the mortgage industry through Y2K (a Very Big Deal in our IBM AS/400 shop) and saving as much money as I could. After cashing out my employee stock options shortly before the housing crash of 2008, I took an open-ended sabbatical and volunteered for an urban farm outreach program.

Looking back, I see how I could have benefited from having a more structured, long-term financial plan. It is gratifying to see some of our clients come to a time in their lives where they can step away from the paid workforce—if they wish—before the traditional retirement age, either temporarily or ongoing.

I might also have benefited from an objective, supportive adviser who might have encouraged me to buy that starter home in Pasadena when I didn’t know if I could or should.

Setting aside any coulda shoulda wouldas, my life now is in the beautiful Pacific Northwest on my family’s small farm with its legacy red barn, a couple cows and their calves, and a flock of chickens. I appreciate the convenience of my virtual administrative and logistical position at Flow. Being able to check on the calves and chickens between filling out forms is a valued perk!

I am a Financial Paraplanner Qualified Professional™ (FPQP®).

FPQP

Maddie Burton, CFP®

I’m a born-and-raised Chicagoan who’s also lived in Washington, D.C., where I graduated from Georgetown University in 2009. I’ve since put down roots in Tacoma, Washington, after discovering that I feel most at home when exploring the Pacific Northwest’s hiking trails, being rained on, and wearing flannel—preferably all at the same time.

From a young age, I was aware that feeling in control of your money was key to security and peace of mind. My parents split up when I was ten, and I watched my mom work tirelessly to reestablish her career after spending a decade as a stay-at-home parent. By the time I graduated into the Great Recession, with my first payment to Sallie Mae looming, I realized that making a financial plan for myself would need to be my first official act of adulthood.

After a few years, it became clear that making financial plans for others was my professional calling, too. So I started taking night classes and spending my weekends studying for exams as I worked to become a Certified Financial Planner™ professional.  I’ve been a financial planner since 2017, and was lucky enough to join the amazing Flow team in 2019.

I’m so grateful that I get to spend each workday helping people use money as a tool to turn their wishes into reality—and to make the complexities of their financial lives feel, well, a lot less complex. (I believe that each time someone translates needlessly complicated financial jargon into plain English, a unicorn gets its wings.)

Before discovering my calling as a financial planner, I worked in the broader financial services industry—at an investment management firm, as well as a boutique investment consultancy—and in higher education at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. In addition to being a Certified Financial Planner™ professional, I’m a member of the XY Planning Network and the Financial Planning Association.

In my free time, you can find me spending time with my one-eyed rescue cat, Cammy, or pursuing one of my hobbies: running, film photography, and mastering the perfect pie crust (the secret? Half butter, half leaf lard—don’t @ me).

CFP
XYP
FPA

Yerim Hahm

In August 2021, I quit my job in healthcare services in Ohio, signed a lease in Washington, and began an amazing yet terrifying 2500-mile road trip with my Border Collie, Mika.

I didn’t know it at the time, but within a month of moving, I made the (relatively easy) decision to call Seattle my forever home. I took these drastic life changes with excitement about taking my first steps towards a career in financial planning!

In my family, the discussion of financial literacy took as much space as forks did at our Korean dinner table. Had my parents known about the financial tools available to them or had someone guided them, they could have spent more time celebrating life rather than worrying about it.

I wish I could have shared with my parents what I know now, but as Soren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

So here I am for the new graduates who are navigating their first and largest positive cash flow, the brilliant women who are their hometown’s success story yet still feel inadequate in their finances, and those who simply want to learn more.

I joined the Flow team because Flow seemed like my kind of girl and, frankly, a lot like me. She’s capable, witty, down to earth and smart with her finances. She loves anything you can call a pet and starts her mornings with today’s Wordle.

I am currently enrolled in Boston University’s Financial Planning Certificate Program and on the Apprenticeship pathway to become a CFP® professional.

Hiking with Mika is my favorite thing to do, aside from turning my TV into a karaoke machine. In an effort to stay active during the drizzly winters, I recently took up bowling, climbing and snowboarding.