One of my first memories at 3 years old was waking up before the sun and crawling into Dad's lap as he read the paper in his big brown chair.
In later years he taught me to track stocks in the paper. I had to clumsily thumb through the business section and wade through the endless rows of tiny print until I found our stocks' previous day's close.
To this day I am still an early riser, waking at 4 a.m. to meditate and pray and then read the paper. And I deal with money.
But first, a little background. I attended Mount St. Mary Academy, where my mom was the Catholic campus minister, and where I was awash in the language of mercy and social justice -- a basic grounding in fairness.
At 18 I left to attend Salem College, the oldest women's college in the country, studying international business and music, but more importantly, finding a foothold in leadership, becoming president of my class and getting the chance to dream of something bigger.
At graduation I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, a Catholic volunteer service dedicated to social justice, and was placed in Phoenix, helping the homeless find jobs by finding employers willing to hire them.
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What was supposed to be one year turned into three, and I discovered that I had a knack for seeing the world through a public policy lens. That led me to getting an MPP [Master in Public Policy] at the Harvard Kennedy School.
But 10 years away from Arkansas was enough, and I was grateful to move back home and work in a career analyzing stocks. At that point I realized that even though I was starting a career in finance, I didn't know how to save money. Because at that point, despite working since I was 12 in my first babysitting job making $2 per hour, I had nothing to show for that work.
I did begin to save, and as money piled up in a savings account, the 2008/2009 economic crisis hit. Our country was caught flat-footed in all the schemes that seemed so normal, essentially using other people's money to finance houses, and investments, and our day-to-day lives.
At that point, my life which had always seemed so random, knitted together beautifully. The decision to save money aggressively not only insulated me, but it also gave me the power to dream. What if everyone made a similar choice as I had made to save? I realized how broken we were as a country with so many people not saving, living paycheck-to-paycheck, often on the brink of financial ruin, but with the train headed to an even worse outcome -- the inability to retire with dignity.
So in 2011 I left the comfort of the job I thought I would have the rest of my life and started a financial company. The idea was to move upstream and help people accumulate wealth -- to simply help them save for retirement.
The story of the creation of my company, Aptus (a name that means "appropriate"), is one of luck and of key people stepping in at important times. Against all odds, the company grew as the national appetite for talking about saving grew.
I have asked thousands of people to save enough for retirement (for young people, that is 10%) through Aptus retirement plans and speeches, through a movement I co-founded called Save10, asking women to help each other save through peer-to-peer relationships, and most recently through my book, But First, Save 10: The One Simple Money Move That Will Change Your Life. Here is what I know: If you ask people to save, they will typically do it. And with an ongoing conversation, they will keep doing it.
This column, Save Yourself, is the ask to save money and the ongoing conversation with me. But more importantly, I hope it is shareworthy with kids, grandkids, nieces, or nephews, maybe in those wee hours of the morning, snuggled up before the chaos of the day, as the sun rises.
Sarah Catherine Gutierrez is founder, partner and CEO of Aptus Financial in Little Rock. She is also author of the book "But First, Save 10: The One Simple Money Move That Will Change Your Life," published by Et Alia Press. Contact her at sc@aptusfinancial.com.