Financial LIteracy & Education

Purposeful Finance is a California Public Benefit corporation dedicated to improving financial literacy and providing money education. We are currently applying for 501(c)3 status with the IRS

Once Upon a Time:

A Professor Wanted to Continue Helping His Students

Purposeful Finance was started as a way for a professor to continue helping his students after completing his Personal Finance course. 

Joshua Escalante Troesh is a college professor in Los Angeles, instructing courses on Personal Finance, Business, and Entrepreneurship. Students in his Personal Finance course would (and continue to) visit him in his office hours after they graduated to ask questions about their personal finances and the new struggles and goals they were facing. 

Purposeful Finance started as a Facebook group for the sole purpose of providing students an opportunity to continue getting assistance and guidance on their personal finances. Former students could ask questions in the Facebook group and get answers and discussion about how best to manage their financial challenges. The Facebook group then grew into the website you see today.

Joshua Escalante Troesh 

Joshua has been an adjunct faculty at colleges and universities since 2000 and is now a tenured professor at El Camino College. During his career he has been intimately involved in many of the major financial events that have shaped the 21st Century. Leading up to the mortgage crisis of 2008, he was an executive at a financial institution in Riverside, CA. Leading up to the dot-com crash of 2000, he was the Director of Marketing for a dot-com startup which provided independent financial research on technology and internet stocks.

This career gives him a unique insider's perspective on the major events which have defined the modern investing and financial era. 

Education

Joshua holds an MBA and a bachelors in marketing from Azusa Pacific University. His education and career in marketing offers him an insider's perspective on how companies use pricing, packaging, advertising, and other tactics to shape consumer behavior and purchasing decisions.  Additionally, he is currently taking courses at UCLA working toward being able to sit for the certification exam as a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).

The Banking Industry

As the former Vice President of Marketing & Business Development for Service Plus Credit Union, Joshua has an inside perspective on how financial institutions work. He was involved in multiple industry working groups and forums leading up to and during the mortgage crisis of 2008.

While at the credit union, he developed marketing campaigns that brought the credit union to one of the top 50 fastest growing institutions for membership and loans out of over 8,000 credit unions nationwide. In 2008, he shifted the focus of marketing toward people struggling to pay their bills; using outreach and programs designed to help people who had lost their jobs be able to come through the crisis with their home, car, and credit intact.

Although Service Plus never offered the exotic loan programs that caused the crisis, Joshua knew many of the institutions and executives that were struggling due to the use of non-standard home loans.

The dot-com era

Joshua was also deeply involved in the dot-com boom of the late nineties and the bust that came as the millennium turned. Working as the Director of Marketing for InvestorIQ.com, he saw from the inside the progression of the dot-com investing era. InvestorIQ.com provided independent research on technology and internet stocks to investors, institutions, and academia. In addition to seeing the progression of his company, Joshua watched the financial progression of an entire sector of the economy through the eyes of the analysts and their reports.

Academia

Now, Joshua is a college professor and uses the insights and knowledge from his career to help students better understand their finances, entrepreneurship, and business. His courses attract a wide range of students including traditional college students, attorneys and business owners, parents wanting to better provide for their families, and retirees looking to better understand their options.

Life & Wife

Joshua is married to an amazing woman and, together, they have dealt with many of the same issues he writes about. They each came into the marriage as two independent and professional people, and have experienced the transition from individual financial management to managing money as a couple. They have dealt with combining their finances, purchasing assets together, and developing their financial plan as a team. With a young son, they are also investing for his future including planning to pay the dreaded university bills.

Contact

Joshua can be reached at info@purposefulfinance.org.