The Whole-Family Budget: A Money Plan Every Household Can Live With

Sonja Franklin is a financial educator, speaker, and the creator of the Whole-Family Budget method. With over fifteen years of experience working with families across the income spectrum, she has developed a practical, relationship-centered approach to household finance that prioritizes collaboration over control.

Franklin's career began in nonprofit financial counseling, where she worked with families navigating foreclosure, bankruptcy, and medical debt. It was there that she first observed a pattern that traditional financial advice consistently overlooked: the most successful families were not the ones with the most rigorous spreadsheets but the ones who had learned to make financial decisions together, with honesty and mutual respect. This observation became the foundation of her methodology.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Family and Consumer Sciences from the University of Georgia and is a certified financial counselor through the Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education. She has written for *Kiplinger's Personal Finance*, *Real Simple*, and *The Penny Hoarder*, and her work has been featured on NPR's *Life Kit* and in *The Wall Street Journal*.

Sonja Franklin lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two children, who have served as both her greatest teachers and her most honest financial accountability partners. She speaks regularly at financial literacy conferences, school parent nights, and community organizations, and she continues to work one-on-one with families through her online coaching practice. When she is not thinking about family budgets, she is likely hiking in the Columbia River Gorge or attempting to bake sourdough bread with inconsistent results.