Episode 35: How to Navigate the Worlds of Law and Medicine

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Lynn S. Evans, and I am the host of Power of the Purse Podcast. There was a time in my life not too long ago, when I believed three things about money. First, women are not supposed to talk about or be included in any conversations about money. Number two, women don’t have the natural ability to understand anything about money, and three, men know best how to manage money. Those truths I made up about money guided me for years until I realized money was not a foreign language or some other obscure academic exercise. It was something I could not only understand, but teach to other women.

Too many times, I’ve heard stories from women who ought to know better but didn’t, until they were forced to because of divorce, widowhood, job loss, or the approach of retirement. This podcast will add another chapter to a rich history of successful women who when faced with some personal challenges, found the ability to step beyond them. We’ll examine some of the truths they made up about money from their life experiences and how that shaped the path they chose.

My mission is to help women have a healthy, positive relationship with money. With that in mind, my guest today is attorney Gina Campanella.

Gina is the founder and principal of the Campanella Law Office in New Jersey. A little bit about her background. She’s had over a decade of experience as a practicing attorney, during which time she has served as in-house counsel for a state licensed ambulatory surgical center, an ambulatory care facility, and participated in private practice with one of New Jersey’s premiere healthcare law firms after transitioning from litigation practice.

Her practice focuses on healthcare, regulatory, and transactional matters, and she also currently serves as Of Counsel to the Beinhaker Law Firm in Millburn, New Jersey. She was recognized by New Jersey Super Lawyers as a rising star in 2014, ’15, and ’17, and is recognized by Avvo as a Clients’ Choice Attorney in 2016 with an Avvo rating of 10 out of 10. Additionally, she earned her certification in HIPAA Administration in 2016.

She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Seton Hall University with a Master’s in Healthcare Administration in 2012, and earned her Juris Doctor from Seton Hall Law in 2005. From 2005 to ’06 she served as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Lois Lipton in the New Jersey Superior Court, Bergen County, Criminal Division. In 2002, she graduated with honors from Union College with a bachelor of arts in history.

She is a member of the Upsilon Phi Delta Honor Society for Healthcare Administration, and served as President of the Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society for History. She’s also a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives, the New Jersey Chapter, the New Jersey State Bar Association, the Health Law Section, and the Bergen County Bar Association, Women Lawyers in Bergen, and New York City Bar Association, and the New Jersey State Bar Foundation’s Vincent Apruzzese Mock Trial Competition Committee.

She also has been admitted to practice law in the State of New Jersey and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey since 2006, the District of Columbia since 2013, and the State of New York since 2013. Welcome, Gina.

Thank you very much, You make me sound incredibly busy.

Busy and very accomplished. Pretty awesome.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Pretty awesome. The 10 out of 10 is the one I really related to, that was pretty neat, I like that.

Yes, that’s thanks to some very wonderful clients who submitted some very nice and generous reviews of me on Avvo.com.

That’s wonderful.

Thank you.

I know that you are a really close associate with Nan Gallagher, who we’ve had as a guest on the podcast a couple months ago, and the two of you are like the dynamic duo when you go out and do all your presentations. Tell me…

We do try to be, yes.

How did you two meet?

We actually met when we were both working at the same healthcare law firm about five years ago. I started in August of 2013 and I believe Nan started in July of 2013. Nan’s focus is on litigation and board matters. Mine is on the other end. Mine is on contracts and the regulatory compliance. We found ourselves working together with a lot of common clients where I helped them at the beginning, informing their contracts or something of that nature, but then we would need Nan’s input because there was either a conflict over the contract or they were getting brought before a board for compliance issues or something of that nature. We really worked together a lot at that firm and built an enduring friendship and professional relationship that we’re very happy to be working together again, today.

That’s great. I just saw something, was it last night, that you’re doing another presentation? I saw something on Facebook that the two of you were going to do something, and it seems like every other week the two of you are speaking together at something in New Jersey or New York, which is pretty awesome. I mean I can’t believe the two of you, you must have this down to a science.

We do. We actually, again, that’s just, we know a lot of people at this point in our career. Thankfully, we both at least have been told that we’re both very engaging public speakers, so…

Yay

So when we do go out, we’re fortunate enough that we’re asked back. A lot of the physician groups that we work with have their annual conferences in the spring. This is really the time of year where the two of us, between societies and medical staff that Nan represents and societies that I represent, I serve as General Counsel to the New Jersey Association of the New Jersey chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. I’m also a member benefit organization of the New Jersey Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons. I go out to both of their conferences and spend the entire conference with them, put some presentations together.

In addition to that, we do go out to medical staff physician groups at particular hospitals, things like that. That’s actually one of my favorite parts of what I do now, is going out, meeting with the clients, and non-clients, as well. Just individuals that come to these speaking engagements and trying to just help them a little bit weave their way through the complexities of the law.

What you talk about and the review of contracts and the like, is just such a minefield for so many physicians who simply just don’t have the time or the understanding or the wherewithal to understand how to play the game of dealing with contracts, with new employers. Most of them, the older ones especially, the ones that are in my world, Baby Boomers, this is all new to them to be an employee. How do you help them navigate that kind of world?

I do, one of the main areas of my practice is assisting physicians, and particularly physicians that are close to retirement, and I’ve seen physicians close to retirement anywhere from their mid-50s to their late 70s, so there’s really not an age associated to that. It’s typically, it’s mostly men, and it is typically men who have been practicing as solo practitioners for their entire medical career.

The way we pay for medical care now in this country, no longer really supports the solo practitioner model, for many fields. There are several fields where a solo practitioner model is still very viable. A lot of my clients who are family practitioners, internal medicine physicians, things of that nature, they’re finding that if they’re close to retirement, it’s beneficial to them to sell their practice to a hospital or a large healthcare system, and then go in as an employee.

They definitely, a lot of the questions that they have for me, essentially start in one place. That place is, “Well, they told me it’s not negotiable.”

You say, “Everything is negotiable.”

Right, and I say to them, I say, “Now listen, this is where I know I don’t typically sound like a lawyer and that’s why you like me, but I’m going to sound like a lawyer now and tell you that everything’s negotiable.”

Yeah.

I think I’ve had one time in my entire career where a contract, where a hospital really did refuse to negotiate any element of a contract.

Wow.

Quite frankly, my client ended up not taking the job—

Good.

Because their feeling was if they’re not willing to meet me halfway or even talk to me now when they’re pursuing me and trying to woo me to become part of their practice, what are they going to do when I’m stuck, and I’m an employee?

Work with employers and people who are willing to meet you halfway. Click To Tweet

Yeah, yeah.

How are they going to treat me? I quite frankly agreed with that decision. I generally do not make a practice of telling my clients what to decide, ultimately. What I like to do is play devil’s advocate, give them the view from both ends, present them with possible scenarios or things that they might not have thought of, prepare them as best as possible when they’re negotiating a contract for the eventual demise of that contract. I don’t make a practice of telling them what choice to make once I’ve imparted them with that advice.

This was one scenario where after the client made the decision, I had to just say to them, “You know I agree with you 100%, I think you made the right choice.”

That’s good. You actually had a chance to say something, which is nice.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

That’s great. Let’s talk about how you got to there. You started out with a degree in history.

I did.

Then you went from there, did you go to get the master’s, and then, no you went to law school first.

Yeah, I went to law school first. I actually, my story, how I got to doing healthcare contracts is a bit interesting and unique, I think. I was very fortunate growing up. My parents placed a very heavy emphasis on education. My parents were both, they both grew up in Brooklyn, New York, both children of blue collar workers, first in their families to have the opportunity to go to college. My father, that’s where my parents met, when they were in college. My father was able to go to medical school.

My parent’s education was the key to prosperity and self-sufficiency and being able to… It was just being able to provide for yourself. I have two older sisters and when all three of us were growing up, the emphasis was on education. My parents, coming from families where they both had to work from age 14, while they were going to school, while they were doing everything they were doing, the saying in my house was always, “Being a student is your job.”

I was very lucky that I was really able to focus on school. I was encouraged from a very early age to consider things like graduate school and professional school. I knew when I went into college, that I wanted to go to graduate school after college, and I had a fairly good idea that law school was the direction I would be going in. For me it was, well do I want law, do I want business.

At the time, in 1998, 1999, the prevailing feeling was law is a profession you don’t have to rely on someone else to be employed the way you might with a business degree, and you can, it kind of went with the theme of my family. Get an education that’ll allow you to be self sufficient and make a living as an adult.

When I went into college, it’s again, it was 1998, it was a much better job market when I started than it was when I finished. The prevailing thought was, well you’re going to law school, just major in something you enjoy. There are no prerequisites for law school. You can essentially major in anything, and I loved history and I loved American history, so that’s why I chose the major I did in college, and then knew that I would be taking the LSAT and immediately applying to law school and going to law school after college.

Then I applied to the three law schools in New Jersey, because I knew I wanted to practice in New Jersey. Again, the prevailing idea was go to law school where you want to practice, unless you’re going to Harvard, and I was not going to Harvard. I chose Seton Hall. Came home, went to Seton Hall.

The interesting thing about law school, in retrospect, was I did not have anyone in my family that went before me that went to law school, except for my older sister. She was only three years ahead of me. She wasn’t experienced enough to know the things that one would know 10 years out, 20 years out.

Something that I tell people who are contemplating going to law school now all the time, is do not let them make you think that you have to be a litigator to be a successful attorney. My career began in litigation. It actually began in family law litigation. My clerkship was in Criminal Division, and I actually wanted to go into the prosecutor’s office but there was a hiring freeze the year that I was applying. The county where I was in didn’t have any openings, and typically they would hire from law clerks in the county.

There were really no positions, so I ended up going into private practice, ended up in family law, which quite frankly was the last field I ever wanted to practice in. Again, I had no one, I had no one advising me and I didn’t realize once you were in a field, you kind of got stuck there.

I practiced in family law for several years, and then finally realized that this is not what I went to law school for. I wasn’t being fulfilled with my profession, and that’s actually when I decided to go back for the master’s in healthcare administration. As I said, my father was a physician, so like I have the medical background and I have the healthcare business background, and I thought, you know what? I can use that knowledge and use my legal knowledge and make it into something.

At that point, I was thinking, you know, maybe I made a bad choice with law school. Maybe I should have gone to business school. I thought that the Master’s in Healthcare Administration was maybe a second bite at the apple, to go into a business profession.

I was doing that Master’s program. I left my litigation job at the family law firm, the last family law firm I worked at, that was when I took the in-house position at the surgical center, and while I was in that in-house position, I was getting my master’s, with the thought that after I got this master’s, I was going to get a nice business job in a hospital, and I would not be practicing law anymore. Yes, that was—

Okay

Yeah

I was just going to ask you that, because generally, if you’ve already got the law degree and then you go back into something which is pretty prescribed, and I don’t mean that, you know, tongue-in-cheek…

Right

Healthcare administration

Yes

Generally, it’s a choice that you know you’re going to be an internal person, and you’re not really going to be practicing law as we think of it in a courtroom. Why did you make that decision to go that route, rather than where you had been, which was with the general public in working outside of a private company?

I, at the time, I thought that I would be happier at an in-house position. After several years of working in family law, which is a very emotional field of law, as I’m sure you can imagine, and it’s a very aggressive field of law, quite frequently referred to as the hand-to-hand combat of litigation.

Oh, I never heard that one before, that’s good, I get it.

After four years of that, I think I just had burnout, and I was not sure if it was working with the public or the field I was in, or the litigation. I wasn’t sure where the burnout was coming from. I just knew I needed a change. Business already interested me, and I already had background in medical and healthcare business.

That’s why I decided, I said, “You know what, I’m going to take a leap, let me take a leap into something I already have a background in, to begin with.” At the time, I thought that I would be happier doing that. Then when I finished my master’s and the time came to start applying for these hospital positions, I would get the same answer. I would have people calling me up saying, “You look like a great candidate, but you’re a lawyer. Why are you applying for this job?”

That was a bad thing?

Apparently, it was.

Okay.

I think the prevailing belief was that I was overqualified and they couldn’t understand why I was making the change I was making. At that point, I sought the advice of one of my professors from my master’s program who was also an attorney, and his advice to me was, “You’re not going to like this, but you have to go back into a firm, even for a little while. That’s the only way you’re going to get hospitals to take a look at you for an in-house position, or any kind of legal regulatory position in a hospital. You have to get the law firm experience doing this kind of work, first.”

Then that’s when I applied to the firm where I met Nan. I ended up applying for that position. I accepted that position because I was very impressed with what I saw when I went on the interview. It ended up being one of the best experiences I had as an associate, and a young developing attorney, I’ll say, short of having my own practice.

It was one of the best experiences I had, and I learned there was this whole other area of law where I did not have to set foot in a courtroom. I did not have to have clients screaming at me 24 hours a day, I could work in a lovely, professional environment with other professionals and help them get to the creative solution to their problem. That’s when I really fell in love with working with the public and working with my clients.

Then you said, one of the things you’re most proud of is that you started your own successful, keyword, “successful…”

Yeah.

Law practice. If you loved what you were doing as an associate, why did you jump ship and say, “I’m doing my own thing?”

Unfortunately, the firm that Nan and I were with, we had a key partner pass away.

Oh, okay.

Then there were rumors, discussions that the firm was going to be sold. The culture changed a little bit, the environment changed a little bit. Quite frankly, I think perfectly appropriate for your audience, as a young female associate, I was noticing more and more frequently that there were fewer opportunities available to me than there were to the young male associates that had less experience.

Yes, funny how that works.

Yeah. I had been asking for over a year to be sent out on public speaking engagements. As I told you, it’s one of, something that I get invited back repeatedly, it’s one of my favorite parts of my job, and I had asked repeatedly, “Can I please go, can I please go?” A young male associate who had been working for the firm for a week started getting sent out on speaking engagements.

Nice, nice.

Things of that nature.

Wow, okay.

Seeing men who had less experience than Nan, get promoted above her. Things of that nature. It’s still, even though it was a wonderful environment, I kind of had to sit back and think okay, it’s a wonderful environment, but it’s a wonderful environment among really bad environments.

Which is pretty good, though, if you’re a guy, right?

Yeah, I mean great if I were a man, but as a woman, it’s still a little rough out there.

Yeah, it sure is.

Yeah, and I think that that was one of the things that quite frankly, Nan and I grew very close over, is that we both really enjoyed helping our clients, but we just kept kind of hitting our heads on the ceiling when we tried to present new, innovative ways to try to help our clients.

Would that be the glass ceiling?

It might have been, yes. Yes, it might’ve been the glass ceiling.

Oh, I think so. Right. Let me switch to surround now, because I’d like to get a little idea of how Gina Campanella became Gina Campanella relative to your perceptions of money. As you said, your parents, it was very, very important, your job was to be a student. Now that’s a very significant financial perspective on things because you know that if you screwed that part up, things were not going to be too pretty at home.

Yes.

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about that. I think there’s a huge impact on your life with that kind of a expectation at a very early age. Tell me what your family was like when you were growing up. You said you’re the youngest of three?

Mm-hmm, I’m the youngest of three girls. I have one sister who’s three years older than me, another who’s six years older than me. We’re all three years apart. My oldest sister is actually also a physician like my father, and then my middle sister is an attorney as well. You can see there that the emphasis was definitely on education.

The professions.

Yes, absolutely. I think at a young age, we had a very traditional family in that my father left the house every day to work, worked very hard when we were younger. I remember a time when I was younger where I would have to go to bed before my father came home from work at night, and when I got up in the morning, he’d be gone already, but when he was home, he was home, and 100% of the attention was on us.

Sunday was typical Italian-American family. Sunday was family day. We all spent the day together, we’d do things, we’d have a nice meal. Then my mother took care of everything at home. I think, I don’t think I even appreciated how much my mother took care of until I was much older and I was doing these divorce cases, like you said at the top of the podcast, there are many women who don’t realize that they have to learn about finance until they’re going through a divorce. Their spouses always handled all the finances.

Until I started doing that work, I didn’t realize that my family was different. All the household finances were handled by my mother. My father went out, he handled his business finances, he made the money, he gave the money to my mother, and whatever needed to be spent to provide for us, my mother budgeted, my mother did all the banking, my mother took care of the mortgage, everything. I think I didn’t realize how unique that was until I started practicing divorce law and saw the dynamics of other families. I think that was a big part of what really got me where I am today.

In what way?

In the way that I really got to see both sides of it. I got to see the importance of the business planning, and I got to learn that piece from my father. My mother, who was with us every day, really taught us a lot of the lessons when we were younger that I didn’t even realize were lessons at the time, about budgeting and spending your money wisely.

One of the things I still tease my mother about today, because we live in the same town now. I moved back to the town I grew up in because I loved growing up here so much, and my parents still live here. My mother and I will still go to the supermarket together and things. One of the things I still tease her about is she used to, when we were younger and we were learning how to do math, one of the ways she would practice our math with us is she would have us compare the value of brand name items in the supermarket versus the supermarket brand. We would figure that okay, you’re getting five ounces of the brand name for five dollars, and you’re getting six ounces of the supermarket brand for four dollars. Which is the better value, and things of that nature. I still do that today.

That’s amazing, I love it.

I still do that today. It’s one of those habits that’s really stuck with me. Now that I speak with a lot of other women my age, it’s interesting to me how much I learned about budgeting and managing money from my mother, that a lot of my friends my age did not learn from their mothers.

Very common.

Absolutely, and I think it’s incredibly valuable.

Can you remember the first time you had any sense about money? What it was, what it meant?

When I started middle school, that’s when we got to the point where my older sisters had friends that had part-time jobs, and had spending money, and things like that. That’s when I kind of remember the conversations with my parents like, “Well why can’t I get a part-time job so I can have some spending money of my own that I don’t have to account for?”

That’s when my parents said, “Okay, well you know what? You know how we feel, school is your job. We don’t want you working at a supermarket or working at a convenience store or something like that and taking time away from your studies.” At that point, that’s when we started, my parents would start instituting allowances with us. A big part of that was even in that, there was always a lesson in everything with my parents. Even in that, it was a lesson in budgeting.

“Here’s your allowance, you can use it however you like, but these are the things that you’re going to be responsible to do with it.” For example, “If you want to go to the movies with your friends, that’s now an allowance expense. If you want to go to the mall shopping with your friends and you want to buy something that’s not clothing or shoes or something you need, that’s now an allowance expense.” That’s when I really started having to budget the frivolous things that I wanted to spend that money on.

My parents were never the type of people that had I run out of that money and I wanted to go to the movies, they would have said, “Oh well, you can’t go, you ran out of your money,” but I don’t recall ever having a time where I ran out of my money.

Smart, very good.

They really instilled the importance of budgeting in all of us. That’s really when I think, the first time I really remember, realizing wow, the money is gone already? Kind of like the reaction I had when I opened my first paycheck when I had my first paid internship in law school. I was like, “Wow, where did it all go?”

That’s pretty funny. It’s also interesting what you just said, though. I don’t know that people actually make a conscious decision about that, that you were able to distinguish between wants and needs. That’s a big issue for so many women. They think that it’s all mushed together in one big pot. The idea of budgeting is irrelevant because it doesn’t make any difference. I see something I want, I buy it. There’s no distinction between needs and wants, so that’s really a fabulous lesson that your parents taught you without you realizing it was a lesson, like you said before.

Distinguishing between wants and needs should be a conscious process. Click To Tweet

Absolutely. Yeah.

What do you think has been the most threatening to your financial security?

Probably one of the things that I often look at the older generation, the Baby Boomer generation and I’m quite envious of, is in the Baby Boomer generation you graduated from trade school, you graduated from college, you graduated from professional school, you got a job, and that was your job for the next 30 years of your life until you retired.

I say I’m envious of that because for my generation, and I think particularly when I graduated law school in 2005 and finished my clerkship in 2006, the economy was flooded with attorneys at that point. My graduating class was actually the first graduating class of attorneys after September 11th in New York City where a lot of people that were displaced from their jobs in the business sector decided to go to law school.

We had a massive over-enrollment in my law school my first year. I have to say, probably at least one-fifth of my graduating class were individuals who were displaced from their jobs due to September 11th on Wall Street.

Wow.

There was a flooding in the market and it was not uncommon to switch jobs every two years because you have the Baby Boomer generation that can’t retire when they were “supposed to” and make room for others to advance. You also have the gender dynamic in the professions, which, and I’m not saying it exists everywhere. I’ve also had many male mentors who have looked beyond gender and have actually taken affirmative actions to try to help me overcome that. I’m not saying it exists everywhere, but it definitely still exists and it’s definitely still a consideration.

A lot of times, more so for women than men but for everybody really, the only way to advance is make a move. Get someone to hire you laterally in a higher position or at a higher pay grade or something of that nature. I think that it’s just this idea that you have to move to advance, and I didn’t like the idea that any day I could walk into my job and there was just no idea of security.

To make big career moves: Get someone to hire you laterally in a higher position or at a higher pay… Click To Tweet

Unless you started your own firm.

Exactly.

Yeah, exactly, that’s the way to do it.

Exactly. That’s ultimately, and like I said, my father had his own medical practice his entire career, so I’m very fortunate to have a very good business mentor in my father. I approached him with the idea. I said, “Look, I would like to open my own practice, I’d like to have a little more control over my life, and quite frankly, I’d like to have a little more control over how I’m able to treat my clients.”

I like to be very straightforward with my clients. I don’t like having a managing partner that’s only looking at dollar signs on a page, tell me what I need to charge. I’d rather charge less and help a client than stick to a strict set of rules about what I should be collecting on certain matters. To me, it was about professional freedom and also professional security.

Let me ask you a followup to that question. What would you say are some of the best and worst financial decisions you’ve ever made?

Oh, that’s easy. They both have to do with real estate.

Okay.

The worst financial decision I ever made was buying a condo right before the real estate market plummeted in 2008. That resulted in a couple years’ stop over, staying back with my parents after I was able to sell that, thankfully. The best financial decision I ever made was buying my house in the town where I live now.

Very good. That’s good. That’s a nice, happy ending on that, I like that one.

Absolutely.

Where do you want to be financially five years from now?

You know, that was one of the questions you gave me a heads up might come up in our discussion, and I’ve been thinking about it. Quite frankly, if I’m in the same place I am now, I’d be very happy.

Good. That’s great.

I’m very comfortable. I can provide for all my needs, so, and I can provide for all my needs without stress or worry. I think I’d have to say just on theme of our discussion, I’d want a little more for the wants.

Okay, yeah, that’s good, because you could probably handle that right now.

Absolutely.

Comfortable.

Exactly.

I’m thinking about one of the questions I asked you prior to this conversation was what do you for fun. I have to ask this one because I just love it. In the summer months, you said you enjoy riding your Harley-Davidson Sportster Trike.

Yes.

Where do you do that? I love it.

In New Jersey. I actually, my father has always been in motorcycles his entire life.

Ah okay, that’s where it came from.

Now he actually, he has arthritis, he’s suffering from arthritis, he had two knee replacements. When he got to the point where he couldn’t hold up the bikes on two wheels anymore, he had all of his motorcycles converted to three wheels, two in the back, one in the front.

That’s great. I love that.

At that point I said, “Okay, now I want to learn how to drive it.”

That’s good.

It’s a really fun hobby that I really enjoy. You get up, you’re not allowed to, you can’t answer the phone, you can’t talk to anybody. It’s solitude, it’s fresh air, and I feel like it’s a little bit safer because it’s three wheels, not two.

Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.

Absolutely.

That’s kind of like, what do they say, cushioning your bets, or something like that.

Exactly.

Get three wheels…

Exactly.

You’re okay. You go with a group? Are you part of a group of people that travel together like that?

No, no, it’s just—

It’s just you?

Yeah, just me, and then sometimes—

Your dog?

No, the dog, he will not ever forgive me if I put him on the motorcycle.

I want to see that, though. I want to see that with the dog that has the goggles on, sitting on the sidebar or something. That would be way too funny, but I love it. That’s good.

The other thing you said is you’d never pass up an opportunity to spend a day at the beach. What’s your favorite beach?

I have two, actually. I love the Gulf Coast in Florida. I feel like that’s, to me that’s just as good as the Caribbean, it’s beautiful, and then of course, the Jersey Shore.

Of course.

I’m a born and raised Jersey girl.

Okay, but what one, which beach?

Sea Girt, my family has a home in Sea Girt, which is right between Point Pleasant and Belmar for people who are a little more familiar with the more notorious hot spots. That’s really, it’s northern Jersey Shore in New Jersey, and I love it.

Okay, I love that, that’s great. You like the Gulf Coast of Florida. I always thought that was so rocky, I never really appreciated it, but…

Oh no, it’s gorgeous.

That’s me. One other quick question I want to ask before we tie this up. Do you ever see yourself being retired?

That’s a really good question. I don’t know. I think at this point, you know I’m single, I don’t have any children, so I think at this point it’s very difficult for me to conceptualize not having my career in my life. I think that if and when those things change, and yeah, I can definitely see myself retired, traveling. One of my favorite things to do, I will go see anywhere new once.

Oh, okay.

Traveling the world, seeing new places, seeing new things, that would be my ideal for retirement.

All right, so what place is on your bucket list?

Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I would love to go to China.

Oh really?

Yes, China and Russia are on my bucket list. I think that’s the history nerd in me.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Yeah, there are so many historical places, I did a concentration in East Asian history when I went to college.

All right, well now we understand. Now we understand. That makes a whole lot of sense to me.

Absolutely.

Okay. Maybe you can get to do that, I hope you do.

I hope so.

That would be wonderful. I guess at this point I would just say that I want to thank you very much for being a part of this today.

Thank you very much for having me.

I’m glad we were able to put this together, because there were some, a few little mix ups on my part, and I apologize again for that, but who cares. We did it.

We’re here now.

I want to say my thanks to you, my guest, attorney Gina Campanella, and to all of you in my Power of the Purse community. I hope today’s podcast was helpful in enriching your understanding of money, and how it can help you achieve your life goals. If you’d like to spend 15 minutes on a call with me and ask me questions about your personal finances, please go to my website, powerofthepursepodcast.com, select the contact tab, and find a time that works for you.

Thanks again, attorney Gina Campanella for sharing your time and your knowledge, and let us out there, all the people listening, know how can they reach you.

Absolutely. My law office is Campanella Law Office in Wyckoff, New Jersey, so you can just Google me. My telephone number is 201-891-3726, and all of my contact information is on my website, which is www.campanellalawnj, as in New Jersey, dot com.

Beautiful. Until the next time, thanks for listening and remember, money is not the enemy. Your ignorance of it is. Goodbye until next time.

How to contact Gina:

• Email: glc@campanellalawnj.com

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