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Matt Paradise on Whole-Health Wealth & Lasting Recovery
Manage episode 507235024 series 2968201
Rich sits down with award-winning author and nationally recognized financial educator Matt Paradise to explore “whole-health wealth”—the blend of practical money skills, mindset, and healing. Matt shares his path from homelessness and addiction to 20 years in nonprofit credit counseling, his battle with cholangiocarcinoma, and the tools anyone can use to lower anxiety, get out of debt, and build a purposeful life. Listeners walk away with real-world frameworks for budgeting, credit repair, and changing the money stories that keep them stuck.
Sponsored by Elite Power Washing
Guest Bio:
Matt Paradise is the award-winning author of Financially Capable and a nationally recognized financial educator and keynote speaker. After overcoming addiction and years of instability, he spent two decades with American Consumer Credit Counseling creating education programs from prisons and shelters to corporations and later founded his own speaking and consulting practice. A survivor of cholangiocarcinoma and a liver transplant, Matt champions a “whole-health wealth” approach that marries money management with mental and emotional wellbeing.
Main Topics:
· Money as a mental-health conversation, not just math
· Early life, addiction, homelessness, and the turning point to sobriety (July 1999)
· Nonprofit credit counseling: budgeting, debt management, and credit reports/security clearances
· “Process addictions” (spending, gambling, digital) and financial psychology
· Building education outreach across prisons, shelters, and companies
· Cancer diagnosis (cholangiocarcinoma), treatment path, and transplant; choosing hope
· Writing Financially Capable: the “dirty B-word” (budget), practical tools, and mindset
· Nonprofits as businesses: sustainability, staffing, and fundraising realities
· Gratitude, community, and purpose as engi
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Chapters
1. 10 Years of CWRB (00:00:00)
2. “Money isn’t just math—it’s mental health”: Meet Matt Paradise (00:02:10)
3. Connecticut roots, ironworker dad, teenage angst, and drugs (00:03:50)
4. Open-minded to everything: daily use, school clashes (00:07:12)
5. [Ad] PodMatch (00:14:30)
6. (Cont.) Open-minded to everything: daily use, school clashes (00:15:08)
7. Overdose in high school and the missing ingredient: hope (00:16:46)
8. Sobriety date: July 1999; process addictions explained (00:19:08)
9. Odd jobs → retail → Bombay Co. → invitation to recovery community (00:21:28)
10. Breakthrough: ACCC hire (Oct 1999), GED, certifications (00:28:29)
11. What credit counselors see: debt, medical bills, and marriages in crisis (00:34:12)
12. Sponsor: Elite Power Washing (00:38:01)
13. Building education outreach: prisons, shelters, EAPs, identity theft fixes (00:38:37)
14. Cancer curveball: diagnosing cholangiocarcinoma (00:40:53)
15. The night everything changed: hemorrhage, ICU, survival by grace (00:45:11)
16. Chemo → radiation → transplant pathway; why awareness matters (00:47:09)
17. Pandemic pivots: writing Financially Capable (00:48:57)
18. Book release (2023), seven awards; the “dirty B-word” (budget) (00:51:28)
19. Three-part framework: world, psychology, and practical tactics (00:54:23)
20. First money memories and how they shape adult choices (00:55:07)
21. Nonprofits must run like businesses; staffing vs volunteers (01:00:02)
22. Professional-quality self-publishing and mission over ego (01:01:48)
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