A Clo Bare Money Coach student success story
Editor’s note: This interview was recorded in 2023, when Cassie had grown her net worth by $140,000 since taking the course. We’ve since followed up with Cassie — by May 2025, her investments had grown from $360,000 to $700,000. We’ve updated the post to reflect her full journey.
If you’ve been researching Clo Bare Money Coach and wondering whether the Lazy Investor’s Course or Wealth Freedom Accelerator is worth it, Cassie’s story might be the most compelling answer I have.
Not because the numbers are dramatic — though they are. But because Cassie came to me already doing pretty well. She wasn’t starting from zero, drowning in debt, or financially lost. She was a disciplined saver with a long-standing financial advisor relationship and money already in the market.
She just had no idea what she actually owned, what she was paying, or whether any of it was working for her.
That’s a different kind of stuck. And it’s more common than most people think.
Who Cassie Is
Cassie is a born-and-raised Boise, Idaho local — self-described “grumpy local” in a city that’s been discovered by everyone else. She works as an executive recruiter for a healthcare management consultancy, loves the outdoors, and is aggressively working toward semi-retirement by 45. She has about four and a half years to get there.
She’s also one of the most clear-eyed people I’ve ever talked to about money. She doesn’t have a budget. She has a system. And that distinction matters — we’ll get to it.
Where Cassie Started
Cassie grew up solidly middle class in Idaho. Her dad was a high school teacher who painted houses in the summer to make ends meet — and she spent one summer on his crew in 100-degree heat, watching him work, having what she describes as a “holy shit moment” about how hard her father had worked for their family.
That moment shaped everything. She knew from a young age that she wanted financial independence. She wanted to be the one who controlled her own money, not dependent on anyone else to do it for her.
So in her mid-20s, she did what she thought you were supposed to do: she hired a financial advisor.
She had no idea what she was investing in. She was “sometimes sending money to this investor guy” without a system or strategy. But she was in the market, getting the employer match on her 401k, and moving in the right general direction. That was more than most people.
The problem was what she didn’t know — which turned out to be a lot.
The Financial Advisor Breakup
After taking the Lazy Investor’s Course in early 2022, Cassie started asking questions she’d never thought to ask before. What was she actually invested in? What were her fees? What accounts did she have and what were they doing?
What she found wasn’t great.
Her financial advisor — someone she’d been with for 12 to 13 years — had $22,000 sitting in cash. Uninvested. Just sitting there. He had forgotten to reinvest her dividends.
When Cassie reached out to ask about rolling some accounts into a Roth IRA to simplify her portfolio, he pushed back hard. When she pressed further and started asking real questions about her investments and fees, he got defensive. Then heated. Then he threatened to just close her accounts.
Cassie’s response: fine. Do it.
She spent a couple of hours on the phone with Fidelity, transferred everything herself, and never looked back.
She had been paying roughly 2% in fees to a non-CFP who had forgotten to invest $22,000 of her money. The course had taught her what to look for — and once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it.
What Changed After She Took Control
Here’s what happened after Cassie fired her financial advisor in August 2022, starting from approximately $360,000 invested:
| Date | Amount Invested | Change |
|---|---|---|
| August 2022 | ~$360,000 | Starting point (fires advisor) |
| January 2023 | ~$400,000 | +$40,000 in 4 months |
| June 2023 | ~$460,000 | +$100,000 in 10 months |
| July 2024 | ~$600,000 | +$240,000 in under 2 years |
| May 2025 | ~$700,000 | +$340,000 total in under 3 years |
She is now maxing out her 401k every year, maxing her HSA, doing a backdoor Roth IRA, and investing additional money into a brokerage account through Fidelity — all automated, all running without her having to think about it day to day.
She checks her accounts regularly — not to tinker, but because watching the progress keeps her motivated. “It’s like efficacy,” she told me. “I keep going because I can see it working.”
The System That Makes It Work
One of my favorite parts of Cassie’s story is her money system — because it proves you don’t need a traditional budget to build serious wealth.
Cassie and her partner keep their finances separate, contributing a percentage of their income into a shared account for joint expenses. For her personal money, the system works like this:
- She has $10,000 in a high-yield checking account at a local credit union at all times — this is her “I could quit my job tomorrow” fund
- Her paycheck comes in, and automated investments go out first (pay yourself first)
- Everything above $11,000 gets invested
- She lives between $10,000 and $11,000 — anything over that gets swept into investments
That’s it. No tracking every coffee. No spreadsheet with categories. Just guardrails that ensure she’s always investing aggressively, and the rest is hers to live her life with.
She tried the detailed budget approach. It wasn’t for her. The anti-budget system is.
The Part That Goes Beyond Money
Cassie took the course during one of the hardest periods of her life. Her partner had been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer in 2021, which meant traveling to other states for treatment, navigating an overwhelming medical system, and confronting the reality that she needed to be prepared to handle everything on her own.
That experience catalyzed something in her. She’d always wanted to be financially independent — she’d watched women in her life get stuck because they’d depended on a partner for financial security, and she’d promised herself that would never be her. But the cancer diagnosis made it urgent in a way it hadn’t been before.
What she didn’t expect was what happened on the other side.
In her words: “The amount of confidence that this has built for me personally — the amount of ‘no, fuck you, I can totally do this’ — is so much more than I ever thought. I never thought it was humanly possible. And I see it in every area of my life now. In my professional work, in my personal life — anything I’m facing, I’m like, well, if I can manage my own finances, I can probably manage this.”
That’s the thing I try to explain to people before they take the course, and almost nobody fully believes me until they experience it themselves: this isn’t just about the money. Getting your financial house in order is one of the deepest acts of self-care there is. It changes how you move through the world.
Is Clo Bare Money Coach Worth It? Cassie’s Answer.
I asked Cassie what she’d say to someone who was where she was a few years ago.
“Just do it and do it now. Because if I knew what I know now at 39, at 29, I wouldn’t be working. Every little bit counts. If I have $17 extra a month, I still invest it. You can see the difference it makes even in a short amount of time.”
She also said something that genuinely moved me: “There’s nothing you could ask me to do in support of your business that I would say no to. It’s not just about the $140,000 net worth increase. It was the self-confidence, the strategic and critical thinking about money, the education — and supporting a woman-owned business that is lifting up other women.”
Cassie is now on track to reach semi-retirement by 45. She’s gone from paying a non-CFP advisor 2% in fees on money he’d forgotten to invest, to managing her own portfolio, maxing every tax-advantaged account available to her, and watching her investments compound toward $700,000 and beyond.
She started the course with $360,000 already invested. She’s added $340,000 in under three years — by finally knowing what she was doing with money she’d been earning all along.
Watch Cassie’s Full Story
Hear Cassie tell it in her own words — including the full story of the financial advisor blowup, her anti-budget system, and what $700k in investments feels like when you built it yourself.
Ready to Start Your Own Story?
The same free investing class Cassie attended is happening now.
Clo Bare Money Coach is a personal finance education brand founded by Chloé Daniels, named Bankrate’s Best Overall Personal Finance Influencer for 2025. The Lazy Investor’s Course has helped thousands of women build wealth, pay off debt, and take control of their financial futures.
