The C.A.N. Foundation was founded by Cynthia Daly in September 2018 to provide free financial literacy classes to educate and empower individuals and families to understand the basics about money management and making smart money moves. Its initials stand for three generations of women while simultaneously sending the message that: I CAN, You CAN, We CAN, They CAN, She CAN, He CAN, and Everybody CAN!
“C” is for Cynthia Fields Daly, CPA, MBA (Finance) and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. Cynthia is the granddaughter who was taught by the Family Matriarch Nancy Johnson Fields at the age of 10 years old that “if you do not know how to manage money, it would not matter how much money you make because it will never be enough.” These teachings took place around the kitchen table every day and she applied those lessons through trial and error for the past 35 years. As a result of budgeting, saving, and investing, Cynthia became an Investor and Homeowner at age 24, an Entrepreneur at age 28 with a sixfigure portfolio at age 29, and a Philanthropist at age 48. Cynthia has taught financial education classes since 2008 starting with the University of Virginia Cooperative Extension Program and has continued teaching through organizations, workshops, retreats, and classrooms. She conducts retirement and financial reality fairs. Her motto is to not leave any family behind.
“A” is for Anna Fields White, Cynthia’s mother and the daughter of Nancy. Anna grew up working on the family’s farm and in the family’s businesses under the tutelage of her mother. She saw first hand what “a penny saved is a penny earned” could do. Anna is the oldest of six children of Nancy Fields and became the “Matriarch” of the family upon Nancy’s passing in 1984. She demonstrated for her daughter, Cynthia, what is like to be selfless and to ‘give’ back to her community without asking for anything in return. Her motto is “do your best and God will take care of the rest.”
“N” is for the “Lady” herself, Matriarch Nancy Johnson Fields. The irony is that I grew up calling my grandmother “Lady”, not “grandmother” or “grandma”. Nancy had a very limited formal education, but she was a woman with incredible wisdom. She taught all her children the importance of money and how to make their money work for them. She demonstrated this principle by having $5000 in cash saved in the 1960s, equivalent to $42,000 in today’s dollars, as a down payment to purchase acres of prime waterfront property when the opportunity presented itself. This same property remains in the family and it is worth millions of dollars today. Also, Nancy was a serial entrepreneur who once owned a convenience store with gas stations, laundromat, and liquor store in the 1960s – 1980s. She also assisted her children financially in their business ventures of farming, dry cleaners, fast food, and real estate. When she died in 1983 at the age of 72, all her children were Entrepreneurs, and they remain as such today. Her motto was “if you do not know how to manage money, it would not matter how much money you make because it will never be enough.”