Hidden Gems: Meet Madison Lee of moneyplanus

Today we’d like to introduce you to Madison Lee.

Hi Madison, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve changed direction more than once in my life, and every time it was for the same reason: I kept meeting people I couldn’t help from where I was standing.

I came to the United States from Korea. I’d been working in marketing, and I gave that up to study acupuncture. People asked why I would walk away from something I’d already built. I didn’t have a tidy answer then either. I just knew I wanted work where I sat close to people.

For years, that’s exactly what I had. I read bodies for a living — where someone held tension, where the pain was actually coming from, which is rarely where they pointed. I was good at it and I loved it.

Then a patient started crying on my treatment table.

She was going through chemotherapy. She wasn’t crying about the pain, and she wasn’t afraid of dying. What she said was that she couldn’t bear to become a burden to her children.

I had been hearing versions of that for years without really hearing it. Women would come in for a shoulder or a headache, and somewhere in the hour it would turn into money. Tuition. A husband’s business slowing down. What happens to the family if I can’t work. I could treat the shoulder. I couldn’t touch any of the rest of it.

That day I understood I’d been treating the wrong thing.

I’m a mother too, so the question came back around to me: if I keep living exactly as I am, why would my own future look any different? I didn’t have an answer, so I left.

I started over with no clients, no referrals, and no reputation in this field — just conversations, one family at a time. That was several years ago. Today moneyplanus is a full practice serving Korean-American families planning across two countries, and most of my new clients come from families I’ve already worked with.

What surprised me is how little the work actually changed. As an acupuncturist, I looked for the thing that hadn’t become serious yet. I do the same thing now. Different room, same job.

The difference is what I can do at the end of the hour. When a mother sits across from me and says she’s afraid of becoming a burden to her kids, I don’t just listen anymore. I can hand her a plan.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No. And the hardest parts weren’t the ones I expected.

I expected the money to be hard, and it was. In my old practice, people booked appointments and walked through the door. In this work, nobody is waiting for you. I started with no clients and no reputation in the field.

What I didn’t expect was the word itself. In our community, “insurance” carries a history — people have been sold things they didn’t understand by someone who disappeared afterward. So I’d sit down with a family and watch them brace before I’d said anything. I wasn’t starting from zero. I was starting from below it.

I also came in as an acupuncturist, not from a bank or a big firm, and for a while I treated that as something to cover up. I walked into meetings armed with numbers and comparisons because I thought that’s what credibility looked like. That was the mistake. More information doesn’t help a frightened person. A mother would nod politely and never call again — she hadn’t come to me with a math problem. So I went back to what I already knew how to do: listen first, find where it actually hurts, then talk about a plan. The background I’d been apologizing for turned out to be the most useful thing I brought with me.

The struggle I still carry is timing. Some families call after the diagnosis, after the business closed, and by then there’s very little I can do. That one doesn’t get easier. It’s why I teach publicly now instead of waiting for referrals.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about moneyplanus?
I’m a licensed life insurance agent. moneyplanus is a financial planning practice for Korean-American families, and I work in Korean and English across sixteen states.

A lot of my clients are living in two countries at once. Parents in Korea, kids here. A place back home, a mortgage in California. Money going one way, taxes owed the other. They’re rarely confused for lack of information — most of them have read too much of it. What they don’t have is a plan built around their own life.

My rule is protect first, then build. Protection should arrive while you’re still alive to feel it.

I think about it as three seasons. A protected foundation for a child. Income guarded during the working years, when everyone depends on you. And in retirement, turning what you saved into something you can actually live on.

What sets me apart isn’t a product — it’s that I came from medicine. Years as an acupuncturist taught me to find where the pain is really coming from, not where the patient points. I run a consultation the same way. Listen first. Nobody needs a chart handed to them when what they need is to be heard.

Brand-wise, I’m proudest of the teaching. I put out free education in Korean every week, and I’ll sit down with a family whether or not it ever turns into business. The people most likely to go unprotected are the ones who assume this isn’t for them.

But the real proud moment is quieter. Somewhere in a meeting a client goes still and says, my family will be okay, no matter what happens to me. That’s the job. The rest is paperwork.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
My clients, first. The early ones took a chance on someone who had just left another profession entirely. They had no reason to trust me except that I sat down and listened, and they sent me their sisters and their neighbors anyway. Almost everything I have was built on that.

The patient who cried on my treatment table deserves credit too, though she’ll never know it. She’s the reason this practice exists.

Professionally, I lean on people whose expertise sits next to mine — an estate planning attorney and a real estate agent I trust completely. Families don’t experience their lives in separate categories. The house, the will, and the insurance are one conversation to them, so being able to bring in the right person makes the advice honest instead of partial.

Then there’s my family. My children are the reason I understand the fear I hear from every mother who sits across from me. I’m not planning for other people’s families from the outside. I’m in the same seat.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://moneyplanus.com/en/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moneyplanus/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/moneyplanus
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moneyplanus/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@moneyplanus