Who Am I?

Hello there, I am Kristen.

Born in Blackpool, a child of the early ’70s, I now live in lovely St Annes just a few minutes walk from the beach which for me is a joy. I get a fantastic sense of freedom being by the sea.

I am wife to Nick, Mum to Izzy, and Human to Bodge The Dog.

For the last 24 years, I have made my career in financial services by developing a multi-award winning financial planning company, Red Star Wealth, and with Nick, a financial education provider Red Star Education

I am, you might say, somewhat of a financial geek.

But it wasn’t always that way. As one of 3 children to a single mum, the only concept of money I understood growing up was there wasn’t any. What we did have seemed hard to come by, and things did not improve with age. Our family definitely did not understand personal finance. At 16 I was living on my own in a rented one-room place and found myself with a choice of keeping a roof over my head and food in my stomach or staying on with my education. Education lost. For a time. In fact, living in a space somewhere between homelessness and having just about enough was a regular occurrence for me, frightening high levels of debt and a feeling of no way out was the entirety of my life until 1998.

That is when financial services saved me. Literally.

One in a long line of temporary jobs took me into the offices of a financial advice firm – I immediately felt right at home and soaked up knowledge and qualifications like a sponge. Over the years I dedicated as much time and energy as I could to become a financial planner and educator. It is now, all these years later, I can look back and know how much your life can change when you understand personal finance and the relationship you have with it. I have embodied living that change, my daughter had and continues to have so many more opportunities than she would ever have had before because of that change, and it is that change I have a passion to help others achieve. Please look around the site and see how working with me might just change your life too.