Adriana Gallegos keeps a team of people organized at her job as an associate director of administrative operations. But in 2024, as Ms. Gallegos, 46, was headed into a divorce while working full time and caring for three children, she found herself procrastinating on her personal finances.
“I was going through a really overwhelming time, because getting ready to go through a divorce, it’s like a full-time job,” she said. “It’s not only the mental toll and emotional toll, but also there’s so much paperwork that you have to prepare.”
After a few stressful months, Ms. Gallegos decided to seek help.
She posted in a Facebook group for working moms in Watertown, Mass., and met Tulsi Vadodaria, 45, founder of Life Admin Navigator. Ms. Vadodaria offered a financial organizational service called daily money management.
These professionals may have backgrounds as certified public accountants, financial planners or bookkeepers. Daily money managers most commonly help two groups: seniors, especially those with cognitive impairment or a recently deceased spouse, and wealthy individuals. The service varies depending on client needs, the same way a housekeeper might walk the dog in one home or vacuum cereal from under a high chair in another.
Most commonly, customers receive help to stay on top of bills, prevent theft and scams, and ensure they’re spending at a sustainable level. Increasingly, people who are just too busy, overwhelmed or struggling are also seeking these services.
Ms. Gallegos had her first meeting with Ms. Vadodaria in a coffee shop, huddled over her laptop so Ms. Vadodaria could gain an understanding of her income and expenses.
Ms. Vadodaria took the reins of her bills and her home budget, fitting in the new expense of legal fees. She went over the open-enrollment brochures from Ms. Gallegos’s employer and explained the changes she would go through as she transitioned from married to single. Overall, Ms. Gallegos said, the effect was like having a “fairy godmother” show up at a crucial moment.
“She didn’t quite give me the shiny pink dress,” she said, “but she got me through a difficult situation where I was able to focus on my family and get through.”
Ms. Vadodaria charges $60 to $90 per hour, depending on the complexity of the case. Clients may pay as little as a few hundred dollars a month if they’re already fairly organized. If she has to excavate them from an avalanche of overdue bills, her fee may reach a few thousand dollars.
Like a professional organizer facing a packed closet, Ms. Vadodaria will sit with her clients facing a mail stack and help them go through it, creating piles for items to file, shred or take action on. Within the pile that needs action, she’ll help clients decide what to work on first — perhaps bills that are accruing the most interest. She commonly finds checks that have expired and need to be reissued.
“They’ll hire me for six hours to go through their mail,” Ms. Vadodaria said. “Once they have a few sessions, we’re no longer putting out fires.”
Ms. Vadodaria said people with anxiety or depression often benefited from the service but might struggle with getting help financially. She tells them: “You have other things you do very well that I know I can’t do, 100 percent. So don’t feel shame. No stigma.”
Ms. Gallegos used Ms. Vadodaria’s services for two years before she found herself better able to handle her own financial life.
“I still call her here and there when I’m stuck with something, but now I feel much more balanced, and I have my spreadsheet that she created for me,” she said.
Sharon Zissman, 64, president of the American Association of Daily Money Managers, first heard about the profession when she was hired by Everyday Money Management, where she’s currently the director of business development and client relations.
The company charges $160 an hour and has about 300 clients — 80 percent of them seniors who need help with expense tracking, budgeting, mail management, filing systems and more. Once, someone became a client after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He had been taking care of all of the finances for his family, and “he said, ‘I need you to be me when I can no longer do this,’” Ms. Zissman explained.
After he passed away, Ms. Zissman spent seven years helping his wife with the financial tasks he had taken care of.
In other families, she said, complicated relationships or dynamics made worse by financial pressures may make it more advisable for a professional to step in.
“That’s also very rewarding for us,” she said, “to go in and be able to say to the adult child: ‘Just enjoy your parents’ company. You don’t have to get into it with them on the finances, because we’re taking care of it.’”
Other clients, of all ages, need help figuring out how to stop spending so much. Ms. Zissman said she might set up a bank account for just their bills and another account for discretionary spending.
However, her company doesn’t take on cases where severe addiction to shopping or spending may be at play.
“If they truly have some issues where they need some professional mental health, then we suggest they get that,” Ms. Zissman said.
Donna Olah-Reiken, chief executive of Preferred Small Business Solutions, was already managing financials for her mother and other clients when she read the term “daily money manager” on a certified public accountant’s bio.
“I’m like, ‘OK, this is what I’m doing,’” Ms. Olah-Reiken, 60, said.
She started the service for a client who asked her to manage his mother’s money because she had cognitive issues. Ms. Olah-Reiken paid the woman’s bills, protected her from theft and monitored her spending.
Referrals play a strong role in connecting money managers to clients. They often come from financial advisers, estate lawyers or care managers. The American Association of Daily Money Managers requires its roughly 700 members to have background checks and agree to standards of practice that bar them from disclosing any confidential or sensitive client information without consent. Providers often have professional liability and general liability insurance. Often, clients don’t give over passwords. They may give the money manager read-only access to an account or opt to call financial institutions together.
Ms. Olah-Reiken wishes clients signed up proactively with the service, but usually it’s a reaction to theft, a divorce or just feeling fed up.
That was the case for Tom Beaujour, an author and owner of a recording studio.
“I just messed up a couple of times,” said Mr. Beaujour, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “The water got shut off just because I hadn’t paid the water bill.” Insurance policies lapsed; he didn’t pay his taxes correctly. “Just dumb stuff where I was not keeping up with it,” he said.
Ms. Olah-Reiken’s company helps him with his personal and business finances, and he said he was writing off about $10,000 that he wouldn’t have been organized enough to figure out otherwise.
“They know how to very calmly remind you to do stuff,” Mr. Beaujour said. “You need to be yelled at, but you don’t want to feel like you’re being yelled at.”
As a musician, Mr. Beaujour describes himself as having “a guitar problem.” Knowing that each purchase will have eyes on it has made him more aware of his spending.
“You have to just get used to the fact that somebody can see your PayPal and your Amex, and assume that they’re not laughing in their office, like: ‘Oh, my god. What has he done now?’” he said, referring to his American Express credit card.
Ms. Olah-Reiken said that, even for clients who asked for help with budgeting, daily money managers were more like a coach or mechanic than a babysitter. She spends the first conversation with clients focusing on goals and essentially asking how much tough love they want.
Mr. Beaujour has now been working with Ms. Olah-Reiken for about nine years.
“I’m 54 years old,” he said. “I’m not going to suddenly turn a corner where I’m going to be on top of this stuff.”
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