Drew Feutz, CFP®

I came into financial planning in a roundabout way. I was raised in a middle-class family in a farming community in rural Indiana. I was fortunate enough to have the values of hard work and discipline instilled in me at a young age by my parents and grandparents, which is really the basis of where I am today. I’ve never been the smartest or the most athletic, but I’ve always tried to be the hardest worker in the room.

In high school, I realized that my parents weren’t going to be able to afford to send me to college and that it was going to be up to me to figure it out. I spent hours upon hours filling out scholarship applications, writing essays, and editing those essays with suggestions from my mom (I’m lucky that she’s a teacher and is good at English). One day, I received a scholarship application packet in the mail for the Networks Scholarship at Indiana State University which requires that recipients are business majors.

The scholarship provides full in-state tuition, a $3,000 professional development account, professional development seminars most Thursdays for four years of college, experiential learning, creating and developing professional relationships, and personalized coaching. My mom encouraged me to apply for the scholarship although I felt that I had no chance at being selected for it.

Somehow, I convinced them to pay for my college education. I could not be more grateful for this!

Like many college students, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do entering college, but I thought that I wanted to do something in business. As I made my way through my freshman and sophomore years, I narrowed down my career interests to operations and supply chain management and finance. I was fortunate to have an internship at a logistics firm in Dublin, Ireland the summer after my sophomore year of college. Living in Dublin for 3 months was a fantastic experience and it helped me to realize that this was not the path that I wanted my career to head.

At the beginning of my junior year of college I learned about a new Financial Planning major at ISU which piqued my interest. I began taking classes for the major and quickly found that this is where my passion lies. Not only does financial planning allow me to help others, but it’s something that I can use to make my own life better as well.