Childfree Life by Design

When you're Childfree, disability insurance is essential. Bri Conn, CFP® and Scott Barnes, CFP®, TPCP®, CLTC make the case that your paycheck is the engine behind the entire life you've designed, and protecting it isn't the same as guarding against some freak accident. More than one in four of today's 20-year-olds will become disabled before retirement, and about 90 percent of claims come from ordinary illnesses like cancer, heart conditions, and long COVID, not the dramatic scenarios people picture. The throughline is the one that runs through everything on this show: your income is your freedom, and protecting it on purpose is how you keep the life you built.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Why disability is far more common than people assume, with more than one in four of today's 20-year-olds becoming disabled before retirement and about 90 percent of claims coming from everyday illnesses rather than accidents
The real difference between short-term and long-term disability coverage, and why a solo earner with no partner to fall back on should treat long-term coverage as non-negotiable
How the definition of disability in your policy changes everything, from the restrictive "any occupation" standard to the "own occupation" coverage that keeps paying even if you build a new career
How occupational class, benefit caps, and riders like residual disability shape what you actually pay and what you actually collect, and why mental health claims are often limited to a set number of years
The tax rule that catches people off guard, why a benefit paid for by your employer is taxable while one you fund yourself arrives tax-free, and how that math should shape the coverage you choose
Episode Hosts:
Bri Conn, CFP® is a Childfree Wealth Specialist® at Childfree Wealth® and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®. She specializes in financial management, life design, and estate planning, with particular focus on LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, drawing on her own early financial challenges and recovery to fuel her work in personal finance education.
Scott Barnes, CFP®, TPCP®, CLTC is an Associate Advisor at Childfree Wealth® and the go-to expert for long-term care strategies and tax planning questions.
About Childfree Insights:
Childfree Insights is the trusted education hub for people who are Childfree or permanently Childless. It provides guidance on finances, estate planning, relationships, and life decisions for adults without children. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®, supporting long-term planning for people living without kids.
Connect with Us:
Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.
Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Building real community as an adult is quietly one of the hardest things about modern life, and it gets harder when you're Childfree. The friends you assumed would always be around get busy, have kids, or move away, and one day you look up and realize the built-in social life adulthood promised never actually arrived. Maddy Roche sits down with four people who got tired of waiting and built the communities they couldn't find. Kari Cardinale of the Modern Elder Academy, Florence Wlodarski of Parallel Social Club, and Charlie and Ali Higgins of DINK Social each started from the same quiet ache, wanting people whose weekends were free and whose lives looked like theirs, and turned it into something thousands have now joined. Underneath it all sits a striking finding: the single biggest predictor of a long life is not diet or exercise, but the quality of the friendships you build in midlife.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Why finding your people gets harder in your 40s and beyond, the specific friction points that make adult friendship so difficult, and how these community builders designed around every one of them
How three very different organizations approach the same need, from a midlife wisdom school to an in-person social club to an app built specifically for Childfree couples
Why the first hangout is only the entry point, and how structured, smaller gatherings create the deeper "third vault" conversations that actually bond people together
What it takes for an introvert to walk into a new community and get the most out of it, including why small, vetted, interest-based groups beat big networking-style events
The 80-year Harvard finding that the quality of your midlife friendships predicts a long life more than diet or exercise, and why that reframes community as a health priority
Episode Guests:
Kari Cardinale is a partner and Chief Content Officer at MEA (Modern Elder Academy), a midlife wisdom school with campuses in Baja, Mexico, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, plus a digital campus and an alumni community of 8,000 people across 60 countries, all built around navigating midlife and building new friendships.
MEA (Modern Elder Academy): meawisdom.com
Florence Wlodarski is the co-founder of Parallel Social Club, a social wellness community in Los Angeles built for DINKs, SINKs, Childfree, and childless adults. Parallel hosts around ten small, curated in-person events a month, designed to remove the friction from adult friendship and help busy professionals actually connect.
Parallel Social Club: parallelsocialclub.com 
Charlie and Ali Higgins are the co-founders of DINK Social, a social app built exclusively for Childfree couples to connect, discover events, and build real friendships. Launched in early 2026, the community-driven platform has already surpassed 2,500 couples.
DINK Social: dinksocial.com 
Episode Host:
Maddy Roche is the Chief Growth Officer at Childfree Trust®, where she leads all sales, marketing, and partnership initiatives and brings sharp insight to estate planning, LGBTQ+ legacy considerations, and Childfree financial decision making.
About Childfree Insights:
Childfree Insights delivers education for financial and estate planning without children. It supports people with no kids in making informed decisions about retirement, legacy planning, beneficiaries, and long-term care. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.
Connect with Us:
Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.
Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Loneliness carries the same health toll as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, and for Childfree adults there is no built-in carpool lane to friendship. You build your crew on purpose. In this episode, Melissa Holcombe, DSW, LCSW, Maddy Roche, Bri Conn, CFP®, and Alli Gage trade honest stories about the moments that forced them to rebuild their circles, from divorce and sobriety to cross-country moves, and the practical ways they found their people again. They get into why intergenerational friendships are a quiet superpower when your life is not organized around school pickups and playgroups, how to take the pressure off by letting not every friend be a best friend, and the small, repeatable habits, showing up a second time, raising your hand to volunteer, casting a wide net, that turn strangers into a community that fits the life you designed.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Why friendship is a health requirement rather than a nice-to-have, and what the research on loneliness, the friendship recession, and the emotional-support deficit reveals about how common it is to feel disconnected
How major life changes like divorce, sobriety, and moving can signal that your crew needs to change, and how to rebuild intentionally by getting clear on how you want to spend your time and who you want around you
Why intergenerational friendships are a particular advantage for Childfree adults, and how connecting across age groups brings perspective, mentorship, and a richer life
How to take the pressure off friendship by connecting over one shared thing, since not every friend has to be a best friend for the relationship to be deeply satisfying
The practical, repeatable moves for finding your people, from hobbies, classes, volunteering, and faith communities to apps like Bumble BFF and Meetup, plus why going back a second time changes everything
Episode Hosts:
Melissa Holcombe, DSW, LCSW is a Senior Advisor at Childfree Trust® with three decades in social services across child welfare, public schools, and guardianship and probate. She is also one of the nation's first Certified Veterinary Social Workers, with deep expertise in the legal and emotional terrain that vulnerable individuals navigate.
Maddy Roche is the Chief Growth Officer at Childfree Trust®, where she leads all sales, marketing, and partnership initiatives and brings sharp insight to estate planning, LGBTQ+ legacy considerations, and Childfree financial decision making.
Bri Conn, CFP® is a Childfree Wealth Specialist at Childfree Wealth® and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®. She specializes in financial management, life design, and estate planning, with particular focus on LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, drawing on her own early financial challenges and recovery to fuel her work in personal finance education.
Alli Gage is the Chief of Staff at Childfree Insights, the behind-the-scenes coordinator who keeps all the organizations running in an orderly fashion across the board.
About Childfree Insights:
Childfree Insights focuses on planning for solo aging and later life without children. It offers trusted education on financial planning, estate planning, and building support systems for people aging independently. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.
Connect with Us:
Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.
Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

Being Childfree changes how you build a business, from the money you can pour back in, to the hours you keep to the question of who it's all for. Jena Gribble of Blush Cactus and Huzefa Kapadia of Scalar Learning join Bri Conn, CFP® to talk about what that has actually looked like for them, the runway that lets them weather a slow season, the boundaries they set by choice, and how they think about a business's future when handing it down was never part of the plan. They get into the real trade-offs and the freedom underneath them, including why success on your own terms beats scaling for the sake of scaling every time.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
How being Childfree can create real financial flexibility for a business owner, from reinvesting profits to building the runway that carries you through slower seasons.
Why flexibility and availability are not the same as having unlimited time, and how both founders set boundaries around work that they chose rather than work that was imposed on them.
How to think about the future of a business when passing it to children isn’t the goal.
Why defining what success actually looks like matters so much for Childfree founders, and how to avoid the trap of scaling for the sake of scaling.
What experienced founders wish more people understood before starting out.
Episode Guests:
Jena Gribble is the founder and brand strategist at Blush Cactus, a branding and marketing agency in Gilbert, Arizona, that helps businesses clarify who they are, communicate their value, and build brands people trust. What began as a freelance graphic design business grew into a full agency with a team, with strategy at the heart of everything they do.
Connect with Jena: blushcactus.com
Huzefa Kapadia is the founder of Scalar Learning, a Los Angeles based education company focused on math education. A former software engineer and patent attorney, he launched Scalar Learning solo in 2013 and grew it through word of mouth and a successful YouTube channel into a team of tutors, while still tutoring more than anyone on his team.
Connect with Huzefa: scalarlearning.com 
Episode Host:
Bri Conn, CFP® is a Childfree Wealth Specialist at Childfree Wealth® and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®. She specializes in financial management, life design, and estate planning, with particular focus on LGBTQ+ individuals and couples, drawing on her own early financial challenges and recovery to fuel her work in personal finance education.
About Childfree Insights:
Childfree Insights is a trusted resource for life planning without children. It explores financial planning, estate planning, relationships, and long-term decisions for adults building a future without kids. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.
Connect with Us:
Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.
Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.

In this episode, Bri Conn, CFP® sits down with Ilaria Rawlins, CEO of Fortuna Bank, to talk about why female entrepreneurs are denied business loans three times more often than their male counterparts, what it actually took to build one of only 15 women-owned banks in the country, and what every woman building a business needs to know about finding a banking partner who is genuinely in their corner. Fortuna Bank is only the second bank in U.S. history ever intentionally created to be women-owned, and Ilaria spent 30 years in banking before making it happen.
In This Episode, You'll Learn:
Why female entrepreneurs are denied commercial loans three times more often than men and what the network gap between male and female business owners actually looks like in practice
What questions to ask when interviewing a banker, why community banks are often a better fit for startups than large national banks, and how to find a lender who will look at your business holistically rather than running your application through an AI underwriting system
What it actually takes to start a bank from scratch, including raising $20 million in capital, navigating a 500-page regulatory application, and launching in the same month that SVB and First Republic failed
Why Fortuna dropped its minimum shareholder investment from $50,000 to $10,000 and how 350 shareholders -- 75% of them women -- came together to build something that had almost no precedent in the industry
Out of 4,300 banks in the United States, only 15 are women-owned -- and why that number tells you everything you need to know about where the gaps in capital access actually live
Resources Mentioned:
Building Your Bench with Maddy Roche and Bri Conn, CFP®
https://childfreeinsights.com/resources/podcast/episode-175/ 

Episode Guest:
Ilaria Rawlins is the CEO of Fortuna Bank, a newly launched women-owned de novo bank dedicated to expanding access to capital, fostering community impact, and supporting entrepreneurs who have historically faced capital barriers. With over 30 years of banking experience and recognition as 2025 CEO of the Year by Columbus CEO magazine, she is a leading advocate for women in business and financial empowerment.
Connect with Ilaria on her website: fortunabank.com
Episode Host:
Bri Conn, CFP® is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, Childfree Wealth Specialist® at Childfree Wealth®, and Customer Experience Manager at Childfree Trust®.

About Childfree Insights:
Childfree Insights is a trusted resource for life planning without children. It explores financial planning, estate planning, relationships, and long-term decisions for adults building a future without kids. Home of Childfree Wealth® and Childfree Trust®.
Connect with Us:
Ready to work on building better financial habits? Connect with our financial planning team at childfreewealth.com or learn more about estate planning at childfreetrust.com.
Follow Childfree Life by Design on your favorite podcast platform and join the conversation on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/childfreeinsights
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChildfreeInsights/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/childfreeinsights
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ChildfreeInsights

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational & entertainment purposes. Please consult your advisor before implementing any ideas heard on this podcast.