About

About the Founder

My name is Wendy Holmes, and Contingent Money is my attempt to address a very common problem I see my colleagues facing every day. Here is the long version story of how the idea for Contingent Money came into being.

I have been teaching as an adjunct instructor in the California community college system since 2014. Coming into the job basically financially illiterate, I struggled for years to navigate the financial ups and downs of adjunct teaching. After almost a decade of the stress and anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck in a job I knew I could lose in an instant, I suddenly got hit with a massive tax bill and realized I had managed to bring in six figures the prior year. Growing up in a poor household, a six-figure income had always meant you had made it, that you didn't need to worry about your finances anymore. Yet, here I was, making six figures without realizing it and still living paycheck to paycheck.

That was my "aha" moment. That is when I started getting serious about solving the problem of living on an incredibly variable and often totally unpredictable income. I figured out a system on my own, reading countless articles, watching endless YouTube videos, and trying every recommended strategy and new budgeting app I could find. It took years of frustration, wasted money, and much too much precious time. I have found that our circumstances are so unique, our income is so variable, and our contracts are so complex, that contingent faculty really need more support to piece together a stable income and maximize their benefits to find a decent sense of financial stability in the job they love. That is what Contingent Money aims to do.

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