Like many Americans, Danna Perdue-Melton grew up in a household where financial literacy was not a common topic of conversation. When Danna finally did start learning about money and credit as she grew older, she learned all the wrong things. Despite a Master’s degree and a full-time job as a mental health counselor, Danna was unable to escape the financial decision-making skills she’d developed, and she found herself in a cycle of debt. Enter Operation HOPE. A friend introduced her to Financial Wellbeing Coach Penny Southward, and together they came up with a realistic plan to tackle Danna’s debt and put her on the path to achieving her goals of owning a home and starting a business.
“The first meeting was tough,” said Danna. “After sharing my complete financial history, I had to do something I’d tried to avoid my entire life—grapple with my spending patterns and the money decisions I’d made over the years.”
This is the first, and often the hardest step for Operation HOPE clients. “So often, clients simply do not know what they need to know to make good financial decisions. For example, most clients have never been shown how to create a budget that includes listing their rainy day and emergency fund contributions as recurring expenses. Once Danna understood that she had to budget savings as a recurring monthly expense, she was able to meet her down payment goal while putting away funds for unplanned expenses,” said Penny.
Once Danna had implemented a plan to reallocate more of her income toward repaying debt, she turned to Operation HOPE again for assistance on building assets that would help ensure her long-term financial security: starting a business and owning a home. Homeownership had always been a priority but the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to switch up her goals. In 2020, she founded her own private practice to help meet the increased need for mental health services for young people in her community. Operation HOPE hosted a number of entrepreneurship workshops that guided Danna—helping her figure out which business tasks she could handle and which ones were better left to an expert.
As home prices went through the roof in the aftermath of the pandemic, Danna could only watch as her dream of owning a home got farther out of her reach. With Penny’s guidance, Danna took that extra time to learn about home ownership, and Operation HOPE referred her to community resources like down payment assistance and mortgage companies so that, when the right place came along in 2022, she was prepared to make an offer. Danna was thrilled when the seller accepted the offer—making her a homeowner!
Three years since her first meeting with Penny, Danna reflects on how far she has come. It started with taking the brave step of confronting her financial history and making a plan to change. While her family didn’t talk about money, let alone entrepreneurship and building wealth, she carries their legacy in ways that are meaningful to her today. For example, her maiden name is featured prominently in her business LLC as a nod to her paternal grandfather. While he made it seem to Danna like he was “just going to a job,” she recently made the connection that he was a full-fledged entrepreneur as the founder and owner of a janitorial service.
Danna believes that without Penny’s help, she’d still be stuck in her old ways. Now she’s on a mission to destigmatize candid financial conversations, taking every opportunity to share the ups and downs of her journey with clients, as well as her own family, so they too can take control of their financial futures. Danna regularly refers them to Operation HOPE. In fact, her oldest daughter worked with Penny while in college and since graduation, she’s getting a head-start on building wealth and developing a plan to pay for medical school.
Things look bright for Danna—she has recently expanded her business and hopes to publish more books to add to the one she wrote during COVID. Danna is building a legacy her family can be proud of.
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