I'm Shaun Melby. I write about money for the generation that was never taught any of this.
I'm a fee-only CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional based in Nashville, Tennessee. I've spent the last 15+ years in the financial industry, including nearly a decade managing money for country music artists. I started Melby Money to fix what I think is the biggest problem in personal finance: most of the people who need a financial education the most have never had access to one that actually speaks their language.
If you've ever read a finance article that left you feeling more confused than when you started, or sat through advice that assumed you already understood half the terms, that's the gap I'm trying to close.
Subscribe to the Newsletter
What Melby Money Is
Melby Money is a personal finance education brand for Millennials and young professionals who are actively building wealth.
It exists because most financial content falls into one of two camps. The first camp talks down to you, treating financial literacy like a private club you should have figured out by now. The second camp performs sophistication, using jargon as a substitute for substance. Neither one helps you make a better decision on Monday morning.
What I write here is the financial playbook nobody handed you. Real math. Real opinions. Real numbers. No hype, no guarantees, no hidden agendas. The goal is for you to walk away from every post, episode, and email with one thing you can actually do.
Melby Money is not financial advice. It's financial education, the kind I wish every Millennial had access to in their twenties.
How I Got Here
I went to Belmont University and graduated in 2005 with a BBA in Finance and Music Business. The dual major was deliberate. I wanted to be the guy who handled entertainers’ money.
After college, I spent close to a decade as a business manager for country music artists. That meant I handled the complete financial picture for some of the biggest names in the industry: accounting, taxes, personal finances, payroll, every dollar earned and every dollar spent. Water bills to farmland purchases. I was good at the accounting and tax work, but there's a reason I was a finance major and not an accounting major. The job gave me a front-row seat to how money and human behavior collide at extremes. People are making life-changing money overnight. Spending patterns most advisors never see. The real consequences of not having a plan when the cash starts flowing.
That experience is what made me interested in behavioral finance. The technical side of money is solvable. The behavioral side is what actually determines whether someone builds wealth or doesn't.
In my early thirties, I made a deliberate move into wealth management. I wanted to help people build wealth, not just track what they already had. While in business management, I became one of the youngest CFP® professionals in the country at the time of my certification, and I founded Melby Wealth Management as a fee-only, fiduciary advisory practice a few years later. I work with clients across the country who are in the active wealth-building stage of their lives.
Melby Money came later. Most of the people I sit down with for a first meeting at Melby Wealth have never worked with a financial advisor before. Roughly 7 out of 10, based on my own intake data over the last several years. They're smart, accomplished, hardworking people who simply never had anyone teach them the fundamentals. That number was the spark for this brand. If that many of my own clients are coming in cold, the gap is enormous, and the demand for clear, honest, no-BS financial education is enormous with it.
So I built a place to do that work in public.
What You’ll Find Here
I publish in a few places, and each one serves a different purpose.
The blog is the workhorse. Long-form essays on investing, budgeting, retirement, debt, money mindset, and the life decisions that put real pressure on your finances. The structure is hub-and-spoke: deep guides on the big topics, with focused posts that go a level deeper into specific questions. New posts every week.
The Melby Money Show podcast runs about 15 to 20 minutes per episode, twice a month. It's the same voice as the blog, just spoken instead of written. I cover one topic per episode and try to actually be useful in the time you give me. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
The newsletter is where the best of it lands in your inbox once a week. If you only follow one thing here, follow this. Email is the only way I can talk directly to you without an algorithm in the way.
If you want a place to start, the investing and budgeting hubs are where most people begin. From there, the topics branch out depending on where you are in life.
If you want the short-form version of what I write about, I post daily-ish across a few platforms. Pick the one that fits your scroll.
Where I’ve Been Featured
My work and commentary have appeared in CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune, CNN Business, The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Money, Financial Planning, InvestmentNews, ThinkAdvisor, CityWire, MusicRow, GoBankingRates, InsuranceNewsNet, and others. You can see the full list of media coverage here (opens in a new window).
A Few Personal Things
I live in Nashville with my wife and our two young kids. I'm a Green Bay Packers fan, and I have season tickets to Nashville SC and follow the Nashville Predators. The local restaurant scene is one of the reasons I'll never leave this city.
The values I try to bring to this work are the ones my dad instilled in me growing up. He ran a beer wholesale business and worked harder than anyone I've known. The three rules he repeated until they stuck: Always be kind. Do the right thing. Work hard and good things will come. Those rules cover most of what I'd otherwise need to put on a values page.
Want to Work With Me Directly?
Melby Money is the education brand. If you're looking for personalized financial planning, that's what I do at Melby Wealth Management, my fee-only fiduciary advisory practice based in Nashville. We work with clients nationwide.
If you want to keep things at the educational level, join the newsletter and listen to the podcast. Both are free. Always will be.
Get the Newsletter
Full Disclosure: Nothing on this website should ever be considered to be advice, research, or an invitation to buy or sell any securities. Please see the Disclaimer page for a full disclaimer. Shaun Melby, CFP® provides fee-only financial planning and investment management services in Nashville, TN through his company Melby Wealth Management.