Walt Williams
I was born in Charleston, SC, and moved to Tennessee as an infant where I was raised. I graduated from Cleveland High School (TN) and attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. My upbringing came with its fair share of challenges as I was raised by a single mother struggling financially to raise three children.
One of the toughest challenges was constantly being the family on the move. To put this in perspective, my elementary school was K-8, but by the time I completed the 8th grade, I had attended 7 different schools, lived in 7 different cities, and in 5 different states.
The craziest part? I still attended this same elementary school in every single grade from K-8. By the time I graduated high school, I had lived in 21 different places.
Now at 43 years old, the home that my wife and I currently own is the longest place I’ve ever lived in one spot in my entire life—just over 6 1/2 years.
While my childhood came with its fair share of instability and financial challenges, I wouldn’t change any of it for the world—it allows me to truly understand, connect, and motivate consumers that challenges in life aren’t a sentence to their future.
My 20s were spent ruining my credit due to poor decisions and lack of understanding. My early 30s were spent paying the price and cleaning up the mess. It’s frustrating to look back and see how unequipped we were as high school graduates entering adulthood.
Credit education wasn’t taught in traditional schools, and my mother, like many parents, couldn’t teach me what she didn’t understand. Like most others, I was sent out onto the field to play a game without ever being taught the rules.
In 2018, my wife Jen and I founded our financial literacy company, Approved Credit Coach. Since then, our team has educated and assisted thousands of consumers across the country in their journey to better credit—helping them reach homeownership, better interest rates, business funding, and more.
We know that this economy is not friendly to a poor credit score. Most people aren’t sitting on a pile of cash to fund their financial goals—so we lean on our credit scores to open doors for us. But your credit score is simply an assessment of your ability to play FICO’s game—and this game is easily winnable when you understand the rules.
We teach the rules while equipping you with the tools to repair, maximize, and protect your credit—so no matter the financial storms you’ve faced, you can move forward with confidence.
Jen Williams
Born and raised in Northern KY, I received my bachelor’s degree from NKU and worked in healthcare IT for the first 20 years of my career.
At 20 years old, I married my high school sweetheart, and things went south fast. By the time I was 21, I had lost my house to foreclosure, my car had been repossessed, and I had filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy—only to convert it to Chapter 7 a few months later because we couldn’t afford the payments.
During that time, I was also scammed out of $2,000 by a company claiming to help me avoid bankruptcy. Soon after, I got divorced and eventually **financially recovered**, but I had no idea that I had options.
Instead, I lived with horrible credit for the next 10 years and was at the mercy of a bad credit score until my early 30s.
In 2018, I realized there was a great need in our community for credit education after being asked to help someone with their credit. That’s when I became the co-founder of **Approved Credit Coach**.
Our company focuses on helping consumers and businesses improve their credit to **reach their goals**. We focus on **education**, as we all know that **real-life financial literacy isn’t widely taught**.
I also became a **Certified Financial Education Instructor℠** so that I could continue to provide **ongoing financial education** to our clients and those in our community.
Our company also works with **refugees** in our local community to help provide **basic financial education & resources** to become homeowners.
**My passion is truly helping others and making a difference! ❤️**
