About FJA
We are on a mission to help millions of Dream Makers to achieve Financial Joy in their lives.
Financial Joy Academy (FJA) is here to help you take action to achieve financial freedom, enriched with the small experiences that bring you joy.
Looking for support, accountability, inspiration, and motivation from a community of like-minded individuals?
We attract singles and couples in the pre-family and family stages of life from their 20s to their 50s.
We’ve got your back!
Overcoming Challenges Together
We know how challenging this goal can be, having achieved financial independence ourselves by age 34 with two children.
Some of those challenges you face today likely include 😅…
- Living paycheck to paycheck on a low or high income
- Doing the middle-class life and running the great rat race
- Being overburdened by mortgage and credit card debts
- Trying to raise children with ever-increasing cost of living
- Following the Joneses, because that’s what everybody else does
- Stressed, overworked, and tired all the time because the 9 to 5 pays the bills
- Fearful of losing your job with growing expenses, left right, and center
- Confused and lacking in knowledge, time, and ideas to make more money
- Lacking in motivation to start that business or chase your dreams
That list continues…
Our Formula for Success:
Courage, Growth, Community
Many people are in exactly this position, and most of them have no hope that the future could ever be better.
We were in this position too years ago until we started to make certain hard decisions in our lives that were counter-cultural. In addition, we focused relentlessly on Personal Development and experienced a radical change in our money mindsets over time.
That journey took us from making one income fearfully to becoming mortgage-free (in 7 years), achieving Financial Independence in 10 years whilst also making an income from multiple streams.
Making the right decisions over time, focusing on growth over money, and surrounding ourselves with like-minded individuals has given us a life that our parents never had. We have been able to achieve this even with Ken being a First-Generation immigrant and Mary being born into a low-income household in Hackney, London.
This has changed our lives and the fortunes of our young children, who already have more money at ages 10 and 12 than we did at 21!
It has created generational wealth for our family.
Today, we are passionate about serving our communities and helping others do what we have done. This is why we have spent years creating Free content on our blog, YouTube channel, and social media platforms and have now taken things to a whole new level with the FJA.
How We Help Transform Your Life 😀
We believe that you can apply what we have learned and achieve Financial Independence faster than the 10 years it took us.
Dream Makers at FJA have achieved results such as:
- Starting and growing money making online businesses or side hustles
- Buying their first and investment property
- Growing stock market investments by over 20% in a year
- Receiving 5-figure promotions at work
- Transitioning from Employee to Entrepreneur
- Becoming mortgage-free and 100% debt-free
- Doing property investment joint ventures with others
- Improved their mindset and relationship with money
- Formed new friendships and improved existing relationships, etc.
Here is what you will get as a Dream Maker:
- Step-by-step Success Paths. We created unique ‘Money Journey Success Paths‘ to help you progress on your money journey to financial freedom. Plus, ‘Income Success Paths’ to help you create multiple income streams.
- Fortnightly Live Group Coaching from Ken and Mary. These are ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions with detailed actionable answers.
- ALL Classes (present and future) by Experts. We have more than 70 at present. Subject areas include: Investing, Online Businesses (Blogging, YouTube, E-Commerce, Memberships, Amazon FBA, Digital Products, etc), Property Investing, Career Maximisation, Personal Branding, AI, etc.
- Get Access To The Lunch Time Club. Monday is Monday MBA, where we analyse a successful business and what we can all learn from it. Tuesday is Mindset and Wellbeing Tuesday. Wednesday is Wisdom Wednesday, where Dream Makers share what they’ve learned recently. Thursday is Book Club Thursday, where we read a business book together and discuss it. Friday is Accountability Friday, where Dream Makers share their progress and set goals to be kept accountable.
- Private Dream Maker Community of like-minded people from diverse backgrounds, who are all working together to achieve Financial Independence.
- Access our Masterminds. We currently have 3 of them on Property investing, Blogging and YouTube. Plus, an Advanced Mastermind for FJA VIP members.
- Networking and Events benefits through personal interactions online and offline with other community members. We meet in person at least twice a year.
- Practical Accountability three times a year through our Accountability Partnerships to inspire and motivate each other to achieve specific goals over a period of time.
- Ongoing Motivation and Inspiration from a truly unique and talented community of people with the right heart to help you succeed.
Please read our FAQs before joining FJA.
Our work has been featured on:
Our Stories: Ken & Mary's Journey to Financial Independence
Ken's Story
I emigrated to the UK from Lagos in 1998 as a 14 year old with my parents and siblings.
We lived in one single room in North London and life seemed pretty impossible. Money was non-existent and we also did not have the “papers” to do normal jobs.
Years of living under the radar and beneath the poorest of UK society was soul destroying. As ti..
I emigrated to the UK from Lagos in 1998 as a 14 year old with my parents and siblings.
We lived in one single room in North London and life seemed pretty impossible. Money was non-existent and we also did not have the “papers” to do normal jobs.
Years of living under the radar and beneath the poorest of UK society was soul destroying. As time passed, we started to take risks as a family.
When you have no options but to create an opportunity to survive, you’d do anything to make a living. We started creating small businesses as a way to make some money. Everything from a cleaning company to a niche recruitment business. As we made some money, we started to reinvest that money into other assets or businesses.
Over time, we had salons, nail bars, nurseries and even a magazine publishing business. Parallel to all this, I focused relentlessly on my education.
I scraped through my GCSEs as a new immigrant and worked hard to make decent A-Levels (A, B and C in Maths, Chemistry and Biology).
This led me down the path of a degree in Economics and Accountancy at City, University of London. 3 years of hard work and I got a top First Class Degree with Honours.
That result led me to begin training as a Chartered Accountant with a top 10 UK firm. Continued learning led me up the ranks from a junior accountant to a Chief Financial Officer in Financial Services.
Along the way, I also picked up an MBA from the University of Cambridge.
Whilst doing all this, I continue to apply my learning to my personal life and after I met Mary in 2009, we set off on our journey together to Financial Independence.
It has been a rollercoaster ride of career development, business startups, income growth and asset acquisition.
Thinking back to 20 years ago when I started from nowhere, I could never have predicted the life I have today.
In April 2020, I quit my 6-figure corporate job and started living the live we’ve always dreamt about.
I’m in complete control of my time and income and enjoy spending time with our children, building our marriage, travelling and running our lifestyle business .
This is the lifestyle I’m now helping other choose and design their lives to achieve.
Mary's Story
I am one of four children, the last-born child and the only girl in the family.
I was born into a tough neighbourhood in Hackney, London, and lived there for 27 years of my life until I met Ken, and we got married. I attended Brunel University, where I earned a degree in Multimedia Design and Technology.
During my placement year, I got a taste for bu..
I am one of four children, the last born child and only girl in the family.
I was born into a tough neighbourhood in Hackney, London and lived there for 27 years of her life until I met Ken and we got married.
I attended Brunel University, where I did a degree in Multimedia Design and Technology.
During my placement year, I got a taste for business and designed websites and created brand elements for clients.
I went on to work in media within production creating multimedia resources for the education sector.
After a couple of years, I moved on to work in a large corporate for a Top 5 accountancy firm as an E-Business Analyst.
All these experiences have kept me fascinated by tech. I am a creative at heart and skilled at all things digital.
I took the big leap when I got pregnant with our first son to retrain and manage one of our family nurseries.
I got thrown into the deep end and for 5 years learnt everything there is to know about how to run a nursery business.
Those business skills coupled with my digital skills have given me a solid skill set now working from home in charge of all creative work for The Humble Penny and Financial Joy Academy.
Life today looks very different to my childhood having been born not too long after my parents emigrated to the UK.
I was born into a hardworking immigrant home and have always had to fight for my place.
I grew up a dreamer and always wanted a totally different life to the one that I grew up with.
Today, I am living a version of that life that I always wanted and part of my goal is for this to be an inspiration to our children.
One of the best things about being Financially Independent is having the location independence to live life the way we want.
We work 20 – 30 hours per week from anywhere in the world as a result of creating multiple income streams over time that support us from various investments.
The fact that I’m here today is proof that it is possible with planning and working smart, and I hope this becomes an inspiration to others to create the lives that they want.
