Speaker 1: Hey, hey, bea fam mandra here. I just first want
Speaker 1: to say thank you so much. We have been overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by so many beautiful messages of support and condolences for
Speaker 1: Tiffany and the entire Alice and Smith family. Just in
Speaker 1: case you haven't heard, it's really difficult to even share this.
Speaker 1: I think it's the first time that I've said it
Speaker 1: out loud to you guys versus just a social media post.
Speaker 1: But last month, very suddenly and unexpectedly, Tiffany lost her husband, Jerelle,
Speaker 1: who you guys know better as Superman Jorelle. I can't
Speaker 1: even put into words how special a human this man was.
Speaker 1: If you've listened to our show for a while, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't take you long to realize just how special Tiffany
Speaker 1: and Jerell's relationship was. He will always be her Superman.
Speaker 1: He will always be an amazing father to his daughter,
Speaker 1: Supergirl aka Alissa. Thank y'all for your patience as we
Speaker 1: give Tiffany time to hear through this really difficult time,
Speaker 1: especially around the holidays. If you would like to send
Speaker 1: your support to Tiffany and her family, the best way
Speaker 1: to do that is to keep Jarrell's memory alive. And
Speaker 1: you can do that by making a donation whatever you
Speaker 1: can to one of two charities that were going to
Speaker 1: link in our show notes. That is United Way of
Speaker 1: Greater Newark and the Apostles House of Newark. Thank you
Speaker 1: again for all of your support. If you're unable to
Speaker 1: make a donation, that's totally fine. What we've asked everyone
Speaker 1: to do is just honestly check in on a neighbor,
Speaker 1: check in with your family, check in with a friend.
Speaker 1: Small acts of kindness were what Jarrell was all about.
Speaker 1: He was the kind of person who would call up
Speaker 1: friends and family in the morning every day to check in,
Speaker 1: drop in to fix someone's broken appliance just because he
Speaker 1: had a few extra minutes. He was a truly special,
Speaker 1: kind human being and he loved life, love loved his community.
Speaker 1: So if you want to keep Jarell's memory alive again,
Speaker 1: any small act of kindness in your community or with
Speaker 1: your loved ones is a wonderful way to do that.
Speaker 1: I really hope that we will be back soon. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, I hope you enjoy this throwback episode today's show,
Speaker 1: just to bring it back. Bring it back, Mandy, I'm
Speaker 1: shaking shrugging my shoulders back. Y'all, I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: share today's episode with you. This is one of our
Speaker 1: one of my favorite guests of twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 1: one and only Berna A. Natt. She's a finfluencer, yes,
Speaker 1: that's the thing, and Berna has made a career out
Speaker 1: of making financial literacy fun, accessible and approachable for more
Speaker 1: young people. Everywhere, Berna breaks down everything from paying off
Speaker 1: debt to enjoying your income. She is the financial hype
Speaker 1: woman that we all need in our lives. And if
Speaker 1: you haven't checked out her new podcast, Money Please with Betches,
Speaker 1: you have got to check it out. Go to betches
Speaker 1: dot com or download Money Please. Wherever you find podcasts
Speaker 1: like Brown Ambition. Without further ado, here is a throwback
Speaker 1: episode with our beloved co host Berna Annette.
Speaker 2: Hey Hey, Hey, ba fam Please follow us on Apple
Speaker 2: Podcasts and keep our audience growing. If your iPhone recently
Speaker 2: updated to iOS fourteen point five, head to Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: search for Brown Ambition and click on the plus button
Speaker 2: in the upper right hand corner. Do that and you'll
Speaker 2: be following our show Loop Woop. You can also follow
Speaker 2: us on Spotify on Stitcher or on the Amazon Music app.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't have to do all that them, you know,
Speaker 2: if you had to Android, But you know Apple, that's fine.
Speaker 2: It's fine. And now onto our show.
Speaker 1: Heyba fam Mandy. Here we continue this week with our
Speaker 1: summer co host series. And I have to tell you, guys,
Speaker 1: I have had the biggest social media crush on this
Speaker 1: woman ever since I discovered her page and ig earlier
Speaker 1: this year. And they say, don't ever meet your sheroes
Speaker 1: because you may be disappointed. But this was such a
Speaker 1: delightful conversation. You guys are going to laugh, you are
Speaker 1: going to be inspired, and you are going to go
Speaker 1: follow at hey Berna on all social media channels because
Speaker 1: you are going to love her, I hope as much
Speaker 1: as I do. So let me get to the point
Speaker 1: here and introduce today's guest co host. Her name is
Speaker 1: Berna Annette. Berna is an award winning financial hype woman.
Speaker 1: Yes that is a title, let's manifest it, which is
Speaker 1: basically her made up way of saying that she creates
Speaker 1: financial education media that lives at at hey Berna all
Speaker 1: over the Internet. After Berna slaid her fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: of debt, she saved up to quit life and has
Speaker 1: been traveling the world trying to make money fun again
Speaker 1: ever since. Berna is actually joining us today despite the
Speaker 1: fact that she is in what she calls a book
Speaker 1: writing cave. Yeah, she is working on her very first book,
Speaker 1: fourteens and young adults about slaying their own personal finance challenges.
Speaker 1: I am thrilled, So let me get out of the
Speaker 1: way of myself and get to this interview. Here is
Speaker 1: your co host for the week, Berna Annatt. Hey Berna, Hi, Mandy.
Speaker 3: This is so wild, Like I feel the same. I mean,
Speaker 3: Brown Ambition was my first favorite financial podcast. It still is.
Speaker 3: It's still the one that I recommend to people, and
Speaker 3: people are like, what's your most You're fit. I'm like,
Speaker 3: everyone's just stopped talking. It's brand Ambision and that's the
Speaker 3: end of the sentence. And so it's so wild that like,
Speaker 3: eventually in a couple days, I'll be hearing my voice.
Speaker 3: You just said my voice. That's so wild. I'm so
Speaker 3: so honored to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, hey Berna, so Berna, you describe yourself as a
Speaker 1: financial hype woman, which I'm so jealous of because that
Speaker 1: has got to be the best title in the history
Speaker 1: of personal influencers. What do you mean when you say
Speaker 1: you're a hype woman? What does that mean?
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's completely made up, first of all,
Speaker 3: and so that should be just inspiration to anyone of
Speaker 3: any age that you can totally make up your job
Speaker 3: and just kind of if you bring it and fake
Speaker 3: it till you make it eventually cool, people will ask
Speaker 3: you to be on their podcast and they'll they'll say
Speaker 3: the words even if you just made it up, and
Speaker 3: I'll I it's a career, and suddenly it's a career.
Speaker 3: Very difficult to explain to my immigrant parents what that is,
Speaker 3: so they just think I work in money and communications.
Speaker 3: But financial hype woman is something I made up a
Speaker 3: few years ago because hype is one of the things
Speaker 3: I thought was missing from the financial world. So that's
Speaker 3: one reason I was like, I want more. I want
Speaker 3: there to be more joy, more hype, And by hype
Speaker 3: I mean energy, happiness, excitement, especially like there are no
Speaker 3: trumpets or foghorns that play when you do exciting financial things.
Speaker 3: A lot of these things that we do in our
Speaker 3: financial lives typically happen in like a dark, sad corner
Speaker 3: of the Internet or like us hunched over our phones,
Speaker 3: and so I wanted to bring hype energy, excitement so
Speaker 3: you feel encouraged to do things. And if you think
Speaker 3: about a hype woman on stage, typically a hype person
Speaker 3: on stage, they are behind the main performer or rapper
Speaker 3: or singer, and they're just like they're the person that's
Speaker 3: just bringing the energy while the artistic person's doing the art.
Speaker 3: And that's how I want people to envision me in
Speaker 3: their financial lives. Like you're the one in the front
Speaker 3: seat of your financial life. You're doing the earning and
Speaker 3: the paying and the bill paying and the goals. And
Speaker 3: I just want people to imagine me in the back
Speaker 3: like feel just like repeating things and dancing behind you
Speaker 3: in the back, like I'm keeping your energy yep. Like
Speaker 3: my purpose is to keep your energy up. And that's
Speaker 3: what I want to bring to the money world.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you have the stamina to do
Speaker 1: what you do on Instagram. If you guys don't follow Berna,
Speaker 1: you have to go to at Hey Berna on IG.
Speaker 1: I mean your comedic, your physical comedy is something truly
Speaker 1: special and the time, cause I know it's not always
Speaker 1: easy to you can be funny, but you tell stories
Speaker 1: with your humor, and you have a whole there's like
Speaker 1: a beginning, middle, and end to your Instagram content. And
Speaker 1: I know how much time and energy and thought must
Speaker 1: go into it. It is quite effective.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you so much. I found out that
Speaker 3: people really like it when I shake, I shake something
Speaker 3: for their financial wins. Do a little bit of chirking
Speaker 3: with what I got, which is not a ton, but
Speaker 3: I think people appreciate the effort. I know all of
Speaker 3: you and all of my other Internet creators out there
Speaker 3: understand that, like you have to sort of try out
Speaker 3: a bunch of different things and a bunch of different
Speaker 3: approaches to find what hits with your audience. And people
Speaker 3: love it when I make up dance move to their
Speaker 3: financial wins. And so that's probably the most entertaining thing
Speaker 3: you'll see on their aside from other like storytelling and
Speaker 3: videos and things like that. I like to move. I
Speaker 3: like to bring the bodily energy into it.
Speaker 1: I'm getting older now, I'm just wondering how you I
Speaker 1: ever like thrown it back out a back like you
Speaker 1: have more than one thrown anything out twisted something.
Speaker 3: I'm approaching that for sure, I will especially on weeks
Speaker 3: where I'm like, I haven't worked out for a long time, which,
Speaker 3: mind you, is most weeks. I'll do like my Friday
Speaker 3: financial wins, and all week and long, I'm like, I
Speaker 3: am so sore my thighs, my legs, my knees, like
Speaker 3: I try to do the mega Stallion knee kind of tricks,
Speaker 3: and what you see on camera, I look like I
Speaker 3: know what I'm doing, but no that immediately after that
Speaker 3: fifteen seconds cuts out, I'm on the floor. It's all
Speaker 3: for It's all for you. You know, it's all for the.
Speaker 1: The audience, don't don't. I mean, leg Day is very important.
Speaker 1: Megan the Stallions an athlete. Don't tell me nothing any differently, Okay,
Speaker 1: athlete truly truly, And we have been obsessed with her
Speaker 1: latest song, what's it called thought Something? My son loves. Wow,
Speaker 1: my son goes to dance when that song came on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how appropriate it was for
Speaker 1: He wasn't paying attention to the pictures, but he and
Speaker 1: I got down. He loves to tour. He's such a
Speaker 1: cute little show off.
Speaker 3: Good. It's like she's legg Day inspo and she's a
Speaker 3: full body inso for anybody, But I think everyone is
Speaker 3: now paying so much more attention to what their knees
Speaker 3: and thighs can do and admiring their bodies for doing
Speaker 3: those things because of Megan thee Stallion, Like she just
Speaker 3: revolutionized the way I look at my knees for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean as someone who grew up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm biracial. My mom is white and I've told her
Speaker 1: this before. She knows and she might actually be listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast, So yay, mom, I'm talking about you again.
Speaker 1: But there were times when I was younger where she
Speaker 1: would say, like, do you really want to work out?
Speaker 1: Your thighs are already? You know you've got the thighs
Speaker 1: and you know you don't want them to get bigger.
Speaker 1: Do you meet? But that's the beauty standard, right. I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to make this episode about body image, but
Speaker 1: shout out to shout out to anyone trying to break
Speaker 1: norms and make us thick. Girls, you know, just feel
Speaker 1: like we don't have to change a damn thing, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, not only do you not have to change it,
Speaker 3: but you can embrace it and shake it and show
Speaker 3: off what it is. Capable of and that's something that
Speaker 3: people can look at and be like, wait, mine can
Speaker 3: do that too, We can do that, we can go
Speaker 3: outside and do that. Absolutely, it just like turned it,
Speaker 3: It turned it all on. I mean, what I love
Speaker 3: to see is like Meg thee Stallion and every other
Speaker 3: performer out there being like, look what my knees on
Speaker 3: my butt can do, and people just like bowing down
Speaker 3: to her in the comments of being like not only
Speaker 3: incredible lyricsist, rapper performer, but like she has to be
Speaker 3: putting extra work behind her thighs and her legs, and
Speaker 3: then we're so much more appreciative of the muscle of
Speaker 3: the curve of everything that's there because I'm like, if
Speaker 3: I have more, I can shake more and mixes. It's
Speaker 3: a good thing.
Speaker 1: So and it's the work behind it. And I think
Speaker 1: what attracts me to your work so much and what
Speaker 1: I try to what I try to think about in
Speaker 1: my own content or my own you know, just being
Speaker 1: myself on social media is I just love people who
Speaker 1: are not afraid to be silly, not afraid to put
Speaker 1: themselves out there, not afraid to not take themselves so seriously,
Speaker 1: but who still do the work and I do feel like,
Speaker 1: especially in the personal finance where all there in you know,
Speaker 1: corporate America, when you talk about finance, it's often a
Speaker 1: you feel like you need to put on a different
Speaker 1: hat or use a different voice or like code switch
Speaker 1: to have those conversations. But I think what's so amazing
Speaker 1: about what you do is by being so approachable, by
Speaker 1: being so lovable and so freaking entertaining, You're immediately showing
Speaker 1: people this doesn't have to be all serious and doom
Speaker 1: and gloom like it can be hilarious. We can laugh
Speaker 1: at it, we can say the things, we can talk
Speaker 1: about our debt, and then we can twork about it
Speaker 1: and we can do the work at the end of
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, for people like me who I'm by that,
Speaker 3: I mean people who are basically like fifteen to seventeen
Speaker 3: years old on the inside and always will be. It
Speaker 3: has to be hilarious, it has to be funny, or
Speaker 3: else it just it won't go down the same way.
Speaker 3: You know, we know all the books and the podcasts
Speaker 3: and the blogs that spell it out and have all
Speaker 3: the information, but I found myself needing to translate those
Speaker 3: things for myself, Like when I was learning how to
Speaker 3: get out of debt, and reading the books and all
Speaker 3: the things, I found myself literally going, Okay, what they
Speaker 3: mean by that sentence is if you just like put
Speaker 3: your booty on the thing and your role around is
Speaker 3: like when you're on the dance floor, like translating it
Speaker 3: into everyday stupid thing so that I could understand it.
Speaker 3: And then I realized I can't be the only one
Speaker 3: whose brain works like this. If I start sharing it,
Speaker 3: maybe people are into it. And I found that there's
Speaker 3: there's a space for that. There's a space for the
Speaker 3: serious stuff, but there's also a space for us in
Speaker 3: our children who like need to play with money in
Speaker 3: order to really connect with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, talk to me about your background financially. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you had some credit card debt, some student
Speaker 1: loan debt, not unlike most millennials. I'm assuming you're a millennial.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're as allennial. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm not thinking I'm like borderline millennial, as allennial. Someone
Speaker 3: called me jeriatric the other day. I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, I can still rock.
Speaker 1: I think I'm actually a geriatric millennial, which, you know whatever,
Speaker 1: I'll take it, but talk to me about your journey.
Speaker 1: When did it start for you? You were at Instagram before.
Speaker 1: You've been producing and doing entertainment media for a while, right,
Speaker 1: So everyone's got that moment when they say, I want
Speaker 1: to make this my life's work to talk about money
Speaker 1: and educate people. What was that like for you?
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh, my gosh. So I've been in kind of
Speaker 3: media my entire life. I grew up wanting to be
Speaker 3: a writer. I wanted to be the editor in chief
Speaker 3: of a magazine, and I like moved, you know, graduated
Speaker 3: from a journalism school, and I moved to New York
Speaker 3: and I internet a magazine. Hated it, hated it with
Speaker 3: a capital age. Still, though, you know, you find yourself postgraduation,
Speaker 3: especially in journalism and media. You're young, you're doing internships,
Speaker 3: broke as heck, and I found myself a couple of
Speaker 3: years of being freelance after leaving magazines, twelve thousand dollars
Speaker 3: in credit card debt and thirty eight thousand dollars about
Speaker 3: forty thousand dollars in student loan debt. And I had
Speaker 3: sort of always written off the excuse that, like, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm freelance, I'm in journalism, I'm broke.
Speaker 4: I'm young. I don't have to get my stuff together.
Speaker 3: What was really behind that was like a lot of fear,
Speaker 3: a lot of shame, never wanting to admit how much
Speaker 3: debt I had, and never wanting to look my debt
Speaker 3: in the eye. And basically, you know, I did end
Speaker 3: up getting a job at Instagram, moving back to the
Speaker 3: Bay Area where I'm from, and that was maybe a
Speaker 3: half step where I was like, Okay, okay, I'm starting
Speaker 3: to get money every other Friday, which is like what
Speaker 3: I think, It's an adult thing to do. And now
Speaker 3: this feels like God being like you no longer have
Speaker 3: no excuse to budget. I'm giving you money every other Friday.
Speaker 3: Do the thing I think. Hey, did I hit the Googles?
Speaker 3: Because you know, growing up again, first gen immigrant child
Speaker 3: of immigrants from the Philippines, they taught me very little
Speaker 3: about money. Taught me lots about like our culture and everything,
Speaker 3: but very little about money. And so everything I learned
Speaker 3: about money, I had to hit the Googles, just like
Speaker 3: millennials do when we don't know something, We hit the
Speaker 3: Googles as hard as possible. And I was learning stuff
Speaker 3: through blogs and YouTube channels and books and I started
Speaker 3: to create this thing that I called Felicia's Wallet. Now,
Speaker 3: at the time, by Felicia was at its peak, peak
Speaker 3: fit cultural phenomenon. Everyone was like by Felicia, by Filicia.
Speaker 3: And someone said something about, like, I'd love to see
Speaker 3: Felicia's passport because she's always saying by, like we're always
Speaker 3: saying bye to her. She must be going all over
Speaker 3: the place. And I was like, I'd like to see
Speaker 3: her wallet. How is she affording to say by all
Speaker 3: the time? So I started this like blank Google document
Speaker 3: where I put down everything I was learning about budgeting,
Speaker 3: everything I was learning about how to balance and figure
Speaker 3: out my paycheck, all of my financial moves every other
Speaker 3: Friday when I got my paycheck. I called that document
Speaker 3: Felicia's Wallet. I didn't show it to anybody for a
Speaker 3: long time, and then eventually I was like, let's just
Speaker 3: if I just kind of talk about it on my
Speaker 3: social media, which had no kind of following for anything,
Speaker 3: Let's just see what happens. I posted about the document.
Speaker 3: I remember it's like a boomerang of me scrolling through it.
Speaker 3: And the response to that was huge, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: just from my friends and family being like whoa budgeting
Speaker 3: money you're talking about out loud and like you haven't exploded,
Speaker 3: that's crazy, Like you broke the taboo, against the rules.
Speaker 3: But it was also such a huge response from so
Speaker 3: many people that that I didn't know, and especially so
Speaker 3: many women of color up in my comments and like
Speaker 3: most notably whispering in my dms, like you're a stranger,
Speaker 3: but you're the first person I've ever seen who is
Speaker 3: a woman and a woman of color to talk about
Speaker 3: your personal money life, admit that you have dead out loud,
Speaker 3: say that you've been messing up for many months. But
Speaker 3: here's that you're what you're learning. You're the first person
Speaker 3: in my life to actually talk about this, and it's
Speaker 3: it's changing my perspective. And that's when I was like,
Speaker 3: we got some something. There's something a little old me
Speaker 3: knowing nothing but no financial background yells from my corner
Speaker 3: of the internet, and the response was such an echo.
Speaker 3: That's when I was like, Okay, we got we gotta
Speaker 3: take this.
Speaker 1: Somewhere, We gotta take it somewhere. How do you go
Speaker 1: from that to now you're writing a personal finance book?
Speaker 1: What happened in between? And also, congratulations, This is when
Speaker 1: I dropped that little nugget you you're going to be
Speaker 1: a published author.
Speaker 3: Much so wild because this was the beginning, Like, this
Speaker 3: is what I wanted to be when I was super little,
Speaker 3: a writer, an author, and it's been a very long,
Speaker 3: windy road to get here. But basically, once I started
Speaker 3: sharing about Felicia's wallet, but I got the response from people,
Speaker 3: then I was like, Okay, all right, this is a thing.
Speaker 3: I started making videos, started making content, discovered something called Instagram,
Speaker 3: honestly discovered like Instagram boomerang, started shaking my butt for people,
Speaker 3: and we just started to build more and more of
Speaker 3: a community online of people who wanted to talk about money,
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about the absolute basics of money, but
Speaker 3: didn't want it to be what I like to say,
Speaker 3: Hella Mail, hell Apale, and Hella Stale. So much of
Speaker 3: what you see out there is Hella Mail, Hella Pale,
Speaker 3: Hella Stale. And so I just sort of built this
Speaker 3: gathering on people who were sick of that. And the
Speaker 3: book came about last year when I partnered up with
Speaker 3: an agent. Her name is Tavia from Biota. She's incredible
Speaker 3: other women of color who champions all people of color,
Speaker 3: artists I wanted to. I brought her on to sort
Speaker 3: of level up and help me manage like brand partnerships
Speaker 3: and things like that. And she's the one that was like, hey,
Speaker 3: this publishing house wants to do a money book for
Speaker 3: young people. You're basically a teenager walking around with paychecks.
Speaker 3: You do the thing, and that's that's where we are.
Speaker 3: And oh my god, Mandy, my first draft is due
Speaker 3: in like a month, almost a month exactly, so I'm
Speaker 3: losing my issue a little.
Speaker 1: Been supposed to be here right now, right like, I'm not.
Speaker 4: Even are you talking to me? I feel good you're Mandy?
Speaker 4: Are you kidding?
Speaker 3: This is brown ambition. I was just telling you right
Speaker 3: before we started recording that I'm in. I put myself
Speaker 3: in this thing called book Leave quote unquotes. I've been
Speaker 3: this like book cave. I wanted to focus on writing
Speaker 3: my book and make my book writing process really fun,
Speaker 3: really enjoyable, like lean on my savings and actually give
Speaker 3: myself the time to make the process really fun. And
Speaker 3: I promised myself I would not come out of book
Speaker 3: Leave unless it was like showstopper, incredible opportunity. And I
Speaker 3: remember you emailed me, I want to say, like a
Speaker 3: couple of months ago and I brought this. I have
Speaker 3: a business coach. I brought this to my business coach
Speaker 3: and I was like, sick, this is what I want
Speaker 3: to come out of bookly for. She's like, okay, I
Speaker 3: give my blessing.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow where business coach approved. Well, I hope this
Speaker 1: is well. I'm sold to have you here. But I'm
Speaker 1: also so, you know, Tiffany just had a really successful
Speaker 1: book launch. And I told her. I was like, this
Speaker 1: is you know, obviously she was wildly successful, but I said,
Speaker 1: the reason why I feel so excited about Tiffany's success
Speaker 1: is that I know others will benefit from her success.
Speaker 1: You know, it'll make publishers look at women of color
Speaker 1: as really like money makers, you know, like a good
Speaker 1: business decision. And ultimately that has been often the excuse
Speaker 1: in this, you know, in the business world, is like, oh,
Speaker 1: do women sell? Do women of color sell? Should we
Speaker 1: put you on the cover? Will people be turned off
Speaker 1: when they see it's by a woman? I mean, anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a whole history of like women changing their names,
Speaker 1: writing under pen names, so they'd be taken seriously. And
Speaker 1: I am so excited. I wish you nothing but the
Speaker 1: most success. I want to know. So you said for
Speaker 1: young people, So what is the target audience for this
Speaker 1: book that you're writing, because I don't think we'd there
Speaker 1: hasn't really been a lot of books for like teens
Speaker 1: from someone who you know, I know, you're not technical.
Speaker 1: You know, you say you're fifty ten years on the inside,
Speaker 1: but you know we're we're a little mature now. But yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah that's the target audience.
Speaker 3: It's so funny because the target audience technically this is
Speaker 3: a HarperCollins young adult book, and the official on paper
Speaker 3: target audience is like sixteen to twenty five. Okay, but
Speaker 3: I know, like my content from the beginning had I
Speaker 3: meant to always be talking to teens about money. The
Speaker 3: thing though about talking about money, especially when you talk
Speaker 3: in like a relatable voice, is you unlock the fact
Speaker 3: that most of us, especially in the US, especially if
Speaker 3: you're coming from an immigrant family, we are fifteen when
Speaker 3: it comes to our financial education, Like we are all
Speaker 3: children when it comes to our financial education, because most
Speaker 3: of us didn't receive any type of financial education, and
Speaker 3: you know, we grow up into these like adult skin bags,
Speaker 3: but there is no financial education update download along the way,
Speaker 3: and so all my content was supposed to be for
Speaker 3: young people, but I got this huge millennial audience too
Speaker 3: and older because we've all been failed and so it's
Speaker 3: actually a tricky thing to be writing right now with
Speaker 3: the intention of focusing on sixteen to twenty five year olds.
Speaker 3: But all the feedback I'm getting from my editor, from
Speaker 3: my editor's editor, from copy editors, from the publishers, They're like,
Speaker 3: so this is a book that I would buy for myself,
Speaker 3: this is something that I need, this is something that
Speaker 3: all my friends need. It's officially for sixteen to twenty
Speaker 3: five year olds, but I know that the lessons reverberate
Speaker 3: throughout all all that.
Speaker 1: I mean, just throw a vampire or werewolf in there,
Speaker 1: and then there you go, right exactly.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I got to sprinkle different pop cultural references
Speaker 3: throughout so nobody feels left out.
Speaker 1: But our vampires, I think anymore, I don't know what
Speaker 1: would it be now.
Speaker 3: That's more of a like that's like a definitely millennial,
Speaker 3: like when we felt the Twilight five do the whole.
Speaker 1: Thing on TikTok, just like release chapters and sixty second
Speaker 1: incorments with the Busset song in the background.
Speaker 3: That's what's interesting too, is knowing that we're like reaching
Speaker 3: out to a younger audience and it's not like we
Speaker 3: all like is not like a bunch of readers. No
Speaker 3: one's like pretending that gen Z is obsessed with the books.
Speaker 3: So I have to figure out a way to make
Speaker 3: it interesting enough for young audiences to pick up and
Speaker 3: actually be into it, and also for parents to go like, Okay,
Speaker 3: she's not going to teach my kids some like crazy
Speaker 3: shes and but still also something that I wanted to
Speaker 3: read when I was young. I didn't want it to
Speaker 3: be all words. I don't want it to be all graphics.
Speaker 3: I want there to be silly stuff in it and
Speaker 3: fun stuff and challenges and things that get me out
Speaker 3: of the book.
Speaker 1: So, well, you're gorgeous face to be on the cover,
Speaker 1: That's what I wouldn't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm cool enough. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I'm cool enough like Tiffany to put my face
Speaker 3: on the cover, because in talking to other author friends,
Speaker 3: they're like, you basically have to be like Obama level
Speaker 3: to be able to be cool enough to put the
Speaker 3: book your face on the cover. Otherwise people are gonna
Speaker 3: look at me and be like, what, what's random? Ambiguously
Speaker 3: race brown girl, like what so we'll see.
Speaker 1: I mean Tiffany talks about that, that moment when she
Speaker 1: was like not sure about putting herself on the cover.
Speaker 1: I feel like, I mean, it's the same thing as
Speaker 1: when you who wrote about Felicia's wallet, which I don't
Speaker 1: know how I didn't know that. I guess I haven't
Speaker 1: gone that back into the archives. It's into the vault
Speaker 1: of Berna content. There's a lot out there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: she eventually decided to go for it, And I feel
Speaker 1: like her gorgeous, brown, melanated self on that cover honestly
Speaker 1: probably sells books because the same thing that would have
Speaker 1: held a book back I think ten twenty years ago
Speaker 1: is now people are looking for it. Why people are
Speaker 1: looking for it, They want to like I'm saying, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is your target audience, but they
Speaker 1: want to put that on their shelf right in front.
Speaker 1: So when their friends come over, they're like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: read Berna and Nat and she's great. Do you know
Speaker 1: about her? Oh you don't? Oh wow, it's crazy. You
Speaker 1: must not know any brown people like I do just
Speaker 1: my two cents.
Speaker 3: No, I know exactly what you mean. I know that
Speaker 3: if I put my body on the cover like with Tiffany,
Speaker 3: like her persona, her brand is like preschool teacher, but
Speaker 3: make it finance and make it like and relatable, and
Speaker 3: so her on the cover with her like beautiful dress
Speaker 3: and like put together. It works. If I were to
Speaker 3: conceptualize myself on the cover of my own money book,
Speaker 3: I'm like immediately like, oh, there's probably going to be
Speaker 3: a body part. You have to sensor. My leg's going
Speaker 3: to be up in the air. There's going to be Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's gonna.
Speaker 1: Be wild flying out of you know, your orifices.
Speaker 3: Just do something, all the orifices exactly. Actually, what I
Speaker 3: did last week is I bought a bunch. I just
Speaker 3: went on a rant and bought a bunch of books
Speaker 3: that I've been wanting to read that I knew were
Speaker 3: funny or interesting and taught something specific. And the book
Speaker 3: that I want right now is Ali Wong's Dear Girls.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of it?
Speaker 1: I haven't heard of that book, but I know Ali Yeah,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: Basically it's a book about is her letters to her
Speaker 3: two daughters, and it's so hilarious, super super funny. And
Speaker 3: the picture of her on the cover, it's her in
Speaker 3: this beautiful glittery dress, but she's asleep. She has like
Speaker 3: asleep with her mouth open. And I was like, see
Speaker 3: if we can hit a cover like that, that's like, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm Paul, but not really, Yes, that would be great
Speaker 3: to show it.
Speaker 1: It's a different book. All right. Well I'm not obviously
Speaker 1: the air business coach, but got aside talk. We kind
Speaker 1: of skipped over that hefty debt amount that you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: You had nearly fifty thousand dollars in debt student loans.
Speaker 1: I get twelve thousand dollars a credit card debt. What
Speaker 1: were you buying, Berna, Oh my gosh, was it a
Speaker 1: lot avo toast.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of bottomless brunch in the Lower
Speaker 3: East Side of New York City, is what it was.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of being twenty to twenty four
Speaker 3: years old in New York City with no financial skills,
Speaker 3: but lots of influence and kind of helium in the
Speaker 3: head about what you're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: What years were you here, proud?
Speaker 3: I was in New York City from two thousand and
Speaker 3: eleven to two thy fifteen.
Speaker 1: God, we were so we could have been almost that
Speaker 1: was my era. Yes, of my wild Ponies, we were probably.
Speaker 1: I mean, if this were movie, you'd probably like go
Speaker 1: back and be like, Oh, that was you at that
Speaker 1: club or that was you at that lappy hour?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Did you also wake up on each other? Did you
Speaker 1: also wake up on the side of the street on
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve robbed without a cell phone? Was that
Speaker 1: you or the other?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 3: Was I the one that was like chased down the
Speaker 3: robber for you and had no idea? Or was I
Speaker 3: the one who was like, girl, take this drink and
Speaker 3: I was like the last person to give you alcohol
Speaker 3: in the club. Could have been any one of them.
Speaker 1: But that was a letter. Yes, that's so funny. Well
Speaker 1: then that's I mean, say no more because it is
Speaker 1: extremely easy to wrack up the kind of debt. But
Speaker 1: you said that you had a hard time facing it.
Speaker 1: When did you finally face the music? And then how
Speaker 1: did you how did you tackle it?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Boy? Okay, So the build up to it was definitely
Speaker 3: being very influenced by New York City, like young person culture.
Speaker 3: You got to go out all the time, it's it's
Speaker 3: brunch in the club and brench in the club every weekend.
Speaker 3: And it's also this specific culture that my friends and
Speaker 3: I had of like almost bragging about how broke you
Speaker 3: were or how much we were struggling. It was like
Speaker 3: it was like this very specific kind of humble brag
Speaker 3: of just like I'm broke, me too, I'm the brokes,
Speaker 3: like it made broke was kind of sexy to a
Speaker 3: weird and gross degree. And we would talk about struggling,
Speaker 3: but we no one ever actually talked about the numbers
Speaker 3: behind their debt, and no one talked about the actual abject,
Speaker 3: low boiled, constant fear we all felt about our debt.
Speaker 3: And so that was terrible. It was like going to
Speaker 3: the bathroom and like opening my ba A app Bank
Speaker 3: of America app and like transferring so I can get
Speaker 3: the next round of Margaritos are on me. Terrible, terrible stuff. Oh,
Speaker 3: I think it was again. It wasn't until I got
Speaker 3: that full time job for the first time in a
Speaker 3: long time, with like the money drip every other Friday,
Speaker 3: that I was like, Okay, I think this is God
Speaker 3: telling me, like you may now enter the ancient Caucasian
Speaker 3: art of budgeting. Let's see what's going on there. And
Speaker 3: then when I started to read blogs and things that
Speaker 3: were like, you got to attack your most expensive day,
Speaker 3: which is quite a card debt, and so I sort
Speaker 3: of followed that plan that most financial experts gave you
Speaker 3: of like attack their credit card debt.
Speaker 4: First.
Speaker 3: I had never seen all of my debt out on
Speaker 3: one piece of paper like that before, and that was
Speaker 3: like a step that I think a blog had told
Speaker 3: me to do. So I opened up Polusha's wallet, and
Speaker 3: I open up Bank of America and Chase and all
Speaker 3: the things, and putting all those numbers down on my
Speaker 3: Google doc for the first time and looking at them.
Speaker 3: It's the anticipation of doing that is horrifying, and then
Speaker 3: actually looking at it is like, there's horror to it,
Speaker 3: but it's a lot less scary than I thought it
Speaker 3: was going to be. Like I was like, okay, I
Speaker 3: knew I had a lot, and when I saw the
Speaker 3: number twelve thousand, I was like, that's a butt ton.
Speaker 3: But then I started to sort of break down what
Speaker 3: would it look like to pay that off? How many
Speaker 3: months would it take? It got a little less scary
Speaker 3: after that. I like to tell people that thinking about
Speaker 3: your debt before actually looking at it is kind of
Speaker 3: like when you wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 3: night and it's dark, but you can see your clothes chair,
Speaker 3: you know, the chair that you like throw clothes on,
Speaker 3: and talking about this is just a story someone told me.
Speaker 3: I don't know about a close share. But you like,
Speaker 3: look at your clothes chair in the night and it
Speaker 3: looks like a serial killer. And the longer you stare
Speaker 3: it in the dark, the more you're like, that's definitely
Speaker 3: that's hysterically. It's getting closer, it's growing, it's getting taller.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna die. But then you turn the light out
Speaker 3: and you're like, oh, it's just a cloth stair. It's fine.
Speaker 3: That's what it felt like to look at my debt.
Speaker 3: Like before I was looking at it, I was like,
Speaker 3: it's gonna kill me.
Speaker 4: I can't.
Speaker 3: Then you actually look at the numbers and you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: it's a number. I might actually be able to plan
Speaker 3: around this.
Speaker 1: I mean, at the same time, you're living in a
Speaker 1: really expensive I mean the Bay Area, even though you're
Speaker 1: working for a huge company like IG. It can't be
Speaker 1: cheap to it can't be cheap or even affordable to
Speaker 1: live there, and then you went, Now you're full time
Speaker 1: hey burn a full time Hella Helpful, which is your
Speaker 1: online community, right, Yes, we got it. We definitely gotta
Speaker 1: plug that and you guys can go to heyburna dot
Speaker 1: com to get all the ways. Although you're probably a
Speaker 1: little dormant right now with your your book caving, but anyway,
Speaker 1: book market it for future use. But talk to me
Speaker 1: about Hella Helpful as a community and when did you
Speaker 1: launch that and how did you go from Okay, I've
Speaker 1: done the cute nine to five thing. I'm ready to
Speaker 1: go full on with my new venture. I'm selfishly asked,
Speaker 1: because that's what I'm doing right now a little bit too,
Speaker 1: so yes, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to watch this happen with you. I
Speaker 3: have to say that major privileges helped to get me
Speaker 3: to from then to now, one being I increased my
Speaker 3: income a button when I went to go work for Instagram.
Speaker 3: There's nothing better for taking down your debt and saving
Speaker 3: money than earning more money. And that needs to be
Speaker 3: very transparent about that kind of thing. Amazing thing better
Speaker 3: crazy right.
Speaker 1: People, don't what don't you call it a privilege? People?
Speaker 1: Don't like to admit it, but that is it's very simple.
Speaker 1: Like you didn't invent reinvent the wheel. I just just
Speaker 1: made more money and then I had more money, and
Speaker 1: then I used that money to pay off the debt.
Speaker 3: That is the I mean, you have to be able
Speaker 3: to stay it out loud. The people who don't say
Speaker 3: that are probably trying to sell you an online course
Speaker 3: because it's I got to where I got, like, I
Speaker 3: got to taking down my debt in three years because
Speaker 3: I got a bigger paycheck. It's the number one thing.
Speaker 3: The tips and the tricks and the organization and the budgeting,
Speaker 3: those were all ways to organize the more money coming in.
Speaker 3: But it was the more money that made my debt
Speaker 3: payoff journey so much faster than whatever. Really that what
Speaker 3: it could have been. And another privilege was when I
Speaker 3: came back to the Bay Area to work at my
Speaker 3: job at Instagram, I was still very like, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to be independent. I leave me alone. I want to
Speaker 3: get my apartment. And then my wonderful immigrant Asian parents
Speaker 3: were like, are you being an idiot? Your childhood bedroom
Speaker 3: is right there. I held out for a year. I
Speaker 3: was like, I want to live with my friend.
Speaker 4: Lets get away from me.
Speaker 3: And then I started to get really serious about my
Speaker 3: paying off my debt because I wanted to quit and
Speaker 3: travel for a year, and so did my partner. And
Speaker 3: that's when I was like, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 3: then lean into the privileges that I have been given
Speaker 3: given by the way I did not work. For the
Speaker 3: fact that I have an incredible family who were like, come,
Speaker 3: come stay in my house. That was a privilege. So
Speaker 3: I stayed with them for a year while I was
Speaker 3: paying off my debt. I was still paying rent to
Speaker 3: them because I wanted to keep.
Speaker 4: Some semblance of adulthood.
Speaker 3: But yes, it was not San Francisco Marcert rent, but
Speaker 3: it was still rent and that was a major privilege too.
Speaker 3: So I have to be able to we don't acknowledge
Speaker 3: our privileges then that I'm trying to sell you online course,
Speaker 3: and that's what I'm trying to I'm not trying to do. No.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that that's amazing. And I certainly
Speaker 1: know whoever could flee to mommy and Daddy's house or
Speaker 1: family during the pandemic to save money. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you didn't use that as an opportunity to pay down
Speaker 1: some debt and stack your coins. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you were thinking. There's no shame in that. I've talked
Speaker 1: about how my husband and I moved in with his
Speaker 1: parents also, you know, his first generation Dominican, and his
Speaker 1: parents believe me, they would love if we were still
Speaker 1: there in that three bedroom, tiny, tiny apartment. But that
Speaker 1: was I mean, it was the savvy, smart financial move,
Speaker 1: but it was hard. It was very hard. Respect and
Speaker 1: commend you for that.
Speaker 3: Now there's an emotional tax that comes with it, for sure.
Speaker 1: So you're living with your folks and your partner as well,
Speaker 1: or are you?
Speaker 3: Guys, Yes, we both moved in to my families because
Speaker 3: we were both living in separate apartments on our own,
Speaker 3: and then we both committed to this debt payoffjourney together
Speaker 3: because we both wanted to pay off all of our
Speaker 3: debt and quit our jobs and travel the world for
Speaker 3: a year. And of course the entire time I were like,
Speaker 3: how do we save money, how do we save money?
Speaker 3: How do we make bigger payments on our debt? My
Speaker 3: parents are like idiots, idiots over here get it in
Speaker 3: this house. And we're so grateful that that they were
Speaker 3: all would do that. So we did that, and please.
Speaker 1: Tell me that a couple of years. Yeah, please tell
Speaker 1: me that your big travel year was not supposed to
Speaker 1: be twenty twenty. Did you get it in.
Speaker 3: Before we finished it? It was all twenty eighteen January
Speaker 3: to December twenty eighteen, thank goodness. And then when I
Speaker 3: got back, I had to make a decision of like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: am I going to go back to my cozy, comfy,
Speaker 3: well paid nine to five which is wonderful too, and
Speaker 3: there's no appol no shame in that. Or should I
Speaker 3: see where this crazy ass road is going to go? Like,
Speaker 3: people respond a lot to these videos. They like it
Speaker 3: when I work for their financial wins, They like it
Speaker 3: when they teach something what if I just keep going?
Speaker 3: And that what if basically has lasted from the end
Speaker 3: of twenty eighteen to now.
Speaker 1: Oh wow? So how much did you say for that
Speaker 1: epic trip? I like to get into numbers. Did you
Speaker 1: have a goal number in mind?
Speaker 3: We did? I want to say it was like thirty
Speaker 3: six thousand that we saved for the trip between myself
Speaker 3: and Peter, because we know we wanted to travel for
Speaker 3: the entire year. Basically, what we did was once we
Speaker 3: stopped aggressively paying off our student loans. We put that
Speaker 3: exact same amount of money we were paying and just
Speaker 3: lobbed it into a savings every single month as if
Speaker 3: we were still paying off our student loans, and just
Speaker 3: lob lab lab all the bonuses, lob it everything, selling things,
Speaker 3: lob it. We came out of that year. We had
Speaker 3: I think like four to six thousand dollars left at
Speaker 3: the end of twenty eighteen, and we used it to
Speaker 3: buy a used electric car. It is all very millennial. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he play millennial annoying for you.
Speaker 1: It's fine and embrace it. So you buy your wonderful
Speaker 1: you bout your electric vehicle, and then you decided to
Speaker 1: lean into hay burner. So does your partner Is he
Speaker 1: a partner business as well? Does he help with the
Speaker 1: hay burner?
Speaker 3: He does. He helps in that he keeps us grocery fed
Speaker 3: and that my dog likes him the best, So he
Speaker 3: helps with the dog the most, for sure. But he's
Speaker 3: doing his own thing. He works at the YMC in
Speaker 3: San Francisco, and he's ours. He's the emotional balance. When
Speaker 3: I'm in the corner of our apartment screaming and yelling
Speaker 3: and dancing and you know, tworking for your financial wins.
Speaker 3: He's the balance.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I feel like we have so so much
Speaker 1: in common that that's exactly the dynamic with my husband,
Speaker 1: although he's not he's more of like an eye roll
Speaker 1: and I'm not doing that for you. You can do whatever
Speaker 1: you want to do and the Zenden I will have
Speaker 1: no part in it. Oh gosh, there's Zenden too.
Speaker 3: I love your Zenden. I mean, you built a space
Speaker 3: for you to do your knew freelance whatever thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I it took me almost a year to take
Speaker 1: the space for myself, and I don't know why it
Speaker 1: took so long, but it is. It is my sanctuary.
Speaker 1: It's kind of moldy and it smells sometimes when it rains,
Speaker 1: but it's mine, but it's yours. She's cute. She cute,
Speaker 1: very cute.
Speaker 3: This is where it's all going to start. It started
Speaker 3: in a basically like corner chair for me, and that's
Speaker 3: where it's. At Least you have a den, at least.
Speaker 4: You have a space.
Speaker 1: I have something. Well, I'm loving having you on as
Speaker 1: co hosts. Why don't we take a quick break. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take some questions from our fabulous listeners with Berna
Speaker 1: and stick around, guys, we'll be right back. All right,
Speaker 1: we are back to take y'all's questions again. I am
Speaker 1: joined by the illustrious, the amazing financial hype woman, everybody's
Speaker 1: financial hype woman.
Speaker 5: Hey Berna, Hey, oh my gosh, I've been dreaming about
Speaker 5: doing that. Hey hey, hey, like I feel a little
Speaker 5: just doing it.
Speaker 1: Dang, we should have done it in the beginning.
Speaker 3: Did you commit?
Speaker 1: You're good at it? You're good at it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to listen. She has gone, but not forgotten.
Speaker 1: She'll be back. I'm not trying to like, I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to, like, you know, start infiltrating her her trademarks
Speaker 1: while she's gone.
Speaker 5: No way.
Speaker 3: I chiled her for the vibrato. I was like, give
Speaker 3: me Tiffany for this.
Speaker 1: We're back. Let's just do it then, Okay, let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: go from the hey hey hey, heyah, you do the
Speaker 1: hey hey, and I'll pretend like you're Tiffany and I'll
Speaker 1: just I'll do my thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, beautiful ready and five six seven eight, Hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 1: We're free, We're black, We're black. We're never on the
Speaker 1: same key. We're never in any kind of harmony. It's
Speaker 1: just beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's almos, it's different channels. We come towards each other
Speaker 3: like a river.
Speaker 4: Boom.
Speaker 1: Well, we are in the purple. We're both bring a
Speaker 1: little purple today we have the same wavelength channeling just
Speaker 1: like it's just meant to be. All right, but seriously,
Speaker 1: all we are here to answer your questions. As a reminder,
Speaker 1: my friend Berna and I we are your financial girlfriends today.
Speaker 1: We are not your financial experts, your financial advisors. Always
Speaker 1: consult you know, all your biggest money questions with a
Speaker 1: professional if you want real, personalized, tailored advice. What we're
Speaker 1: suggesting to you our opinions based on our own experiences, YadA, yadayatda.
Speaker 1: Please don't sue us, don't forget you. Guys can send
Speaker 1: us your questions at Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can head us up on ig at Brown
Speaker 1: Ambition Podcast. All right, let's get into your questions. We've
Speaker 1: got two amazing ones. The first one comes from listener
Speaker 1: named Shanika. Shanika says, hey, y'all, hope this message Rea
Speaker 1: reaches you.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 1: I recently obtained my master's in social work becoming knowledgeable
Speaker 1: about financial wholeness with the assistants of Brown Ambition. I
Speaker 1: paid for my graduate degree out of pocket a snap. However,
Speaker 1: I am fifty thousand dollars in debt from my two
Speaker 1: undergraduate degrees. My annual income is fifty thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: as a single woman with no children, I have a
Speaker 1: pretty good amount of disposable income. What do you feel
Speaker 1: is the best approach in terms of decreasing my undergrad
Speaker 1: debt to aid my financial wellness. I'd like to be
Speaker 1: debt free, but I'd also like to enjoy some of
Speaker 1: my earnings. Thank you in advance, and please tell Tiffany Hello,
Speaker 1: Hello Tiffany. She hey listen and she's on vacation. But anyway,
Speaker 1: all right, Shenika, Well, congrats on going getting a whole
Speaker 1: graduate degree without debt. That's even more impressive.
Speaker 3: And two undergraduate degrees is what it was.
Speaker 1: So she paid for her grad degree masters out of pocket,
Speaker 1: but she still has fifty k a worth of debt
Speaker 1: from two undergraduate degrees, so she real real educated espe
Speaker 1: she's trying to tell I was.
Speaker 3: Going to say, like, let me just have my financial
Speaker 3: hypoman moment and be like, you paid for a graduate
Speaker 3: degree out of pocket. That is a beautiful and wonderful thing.
Speaker 3: Many many graduates out there are like, huh, feeling a
Speaker 3: lot of inspo. So please give yourself three to five
Speaker 3: business days of credit for that first before you jump
Speaker 3: into the debt payoff journey. But yeah, many first dates.
Speaker 1: I also want to know how she did that, but
Speaker 1: that's you know, neither here nor there. Yes, so having
Speaker 1: an income of fifty k with fifty k worth of debt.
Speaker 1: This is always a trick with student loan questions is
Speaker 1: people don't always say whether it's federal or private. But
Speaker 1: we have to remind you all that until the end
Speaker 1: of September, you don't need to make payments on your
Speaker 1: student loans. So that's a huge opportunity. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense one they you just don't have to.
Speaker 1: There's there's a moratorium on student federal student loan payments
Speaker 1: because of the pandemic or the end of September. But
Speaker 1: on top of that, you could stand to gain a
Speaker 1: lot more by you know, putting your money even in
Speaker 1: a high yield savings account. I mean, they're not giving
Speaker 1: much return these days, but it's better than nothing. Or
Speaker 1: you could be funneling more cash into your emergency fund
Speaker 1: or of course investing, you know, contributing to a four
Speaker 1: to one k if you have one or an I
Speaker 1: array as far as like the disposable income part and
Speaker 1: feeling like, you know, I'm single, I have no kids,
Speaker 1: I've got fifty K. Now I want to be enjoying it.
Speaker 1: That is constantly like the tug, you know. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, it's like if you're going to be making
Speaker 1: good money but you can't enjoy it, then like what's
Speaker 1: the point. But at the same time, that fifty k
Speaker 1: debt isn't going anywhere, So like what do you say
Speaker 1: to that BURNA, I.
Speaker 3: Think you hit the number one thing is we're in
Speaker 3: a very weird bubble of time right now where federal
Speaker 3: student loan kind of don't matter until the end of September.
Speaker 3: I don't remember. Now Mandy, you can tell me whether
Speaker 3: interest is accruing or not, because I'm like, are we
Speaker 3: in a golden enough time? Right so that could be
Speaker 3: this could be a golden time for you either to
Speaker 3: like Mandy said, put that money into something that's going
Speaker 3: to grow faster. Than your interest rate on student loans,
Speaker 3: or if you want to be eager beaver about it,
Speaker 3: which I typically am with my finances. We're also in
Speaker 3: this golden period where interest is not accruing, so the
Speaker 3: payments that you make towards these student loans are interest free,
Speaker 3: so you get to like at that principle from now
Speaker 3: until September. That's pretty cool. If that excites you, then
Speaker 3: go for it. But I'm also really glad that we're
Speaker 3: talking about, Like, Okay, becoming debt free as soon as
Speaker 3: possible sounds sexy and cool, but it does not have
Speaker 3: to be the path that you want to pursue, especially
Speaker 3: if it sounds like this person wants to lean into
Speaker 3: having no kids, being done with their degrees and enjoying
Speaker 3: their life. I know lots of people. Actually, my wonderful
Speaker 3: business coach Kristen, she is one of the most. She
Speaker 3: has an incredible net worth, she started many businesses. She's
Speaker 3: so inspiring to me, and she's like, I have a
Speaker 3: bunch of student loans that I haven't paid off because
Speaker 3: to me, I wanted to me it was more worth
Speaker 3: it to invest in these businesses and go on vacation
Speaker 3: and treat my parents. I just wanted to do that
Speaker 3: more than pay off my student loans. And that doesn't
Speaker 3: bother me. I'm not shaming myself for it. Mathematically it
Speaker 3: works out for me. And so there are many roads
Speaker 3: to consider here, and especially because you don't have any dependents,
Speaker 3: you can consider the like I don't have to be
Speaker 3: dead free right now kind of.
Speaker 1: Road and rub it in all of our parents, all
Speaker 1: of the parents out there Rebden are bases. But you
Speaker 1: can just do whatever you want, whenever you want. I
Speaker 1: just took we took the baby to Atlanta this weekend.
Speaker 1: It was a two day trip. I don't even know
Speaker 1: how I have the brain cells to rub together to
Speaker 1: even talk to you today, but I was like, I
Speaker 1: will not miss Berna. It was so exhausting the days
Speaker 1: of I remember loving Atlanta Hartsfield. Now I'm like, why
Speaker 1: don't the elevators work? And I mean, at the end
Speaker 1: of it, I felt like I had run a damn
Speaker 1: marathon with that baby and the stroller and the stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, comes girl, travel till you carry on
Speaker 1: and pack light exactly.
Speaker 3: I have so much reverence for all my friends who
Speaker 3: are parents because going, especially traveling basically leaving the house
Speaker 3: with a young child is preparing for a marathon. The
Speaker 3: travel itself is a marathon, and you again need to
Speaker 3: give yourself three to five business days to recover from that.
Speaker 3: Because I'm so glad that you're here and to be
Speaker 3: like honored this time. But I'm like, exactly if for
Speaker 3: the person who asks this question, you can afford to
Speaker 3: indulge in like vacations or do things that take up
Speaker 3: your energy without having to think about somebody else's energy,
Speaker 3: Like you can do things with their money that makes
Speaker 3: you feel free and you don't have to be debt
Speaker 3: free to do it. So there's there's lots of options here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And I think Tiffany and I have gotten
Speaker 1: more comfortable talking about what you mentioned investing in yourself,
Speaker 1: you know, doing things that that maybe don't have immediate
Speaker 1: returns now, but you know that will make you a
Speaker 1: better a better person for your work as a social worker.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a field where you're going to be
Speaker 1: pouring so much time and energy into other people. So
Speaker 1: if you don't pour into yourself, you know, what are
Speaker 1: you going to give them? And I want that for you.
Speaker 1: I want you to be I have that work life
Speaker 1: balance you know, or whatever your version of that is.
Speaker 1: And as long as you're spending money for experiences or
Speaker 1: things that you value, like f what anyone else cares
Speaker 1: about if you want to spend all your money on
Speaker 1: I don't know, Star Wars memorabilia or going and hiking
Speaker 1: the PCT trail like Cheryl what's her face from that
Speaker 1: book with the boots. I don't remember what it's called. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: mild there you go, thank you, there you go. See
Speaker 1: look at us, look at us. Just that that was
Speaker 1: the layup. Thank you. Yeah. Just as long as you're
Speaker 1: focusing on your values and spending your money on what's
Speaker 1: important to you, I think that's the that's the north
Speaker 1: star that a lot of people forget about, and that's
Speaker 1: what gets them down the road of you know, know,
Speaker 1: not to not to pick on burn up, but the
Speaker 1: bottomless brunches or things that maybe seem okay in the
Speaker 1: moment but don't really seed you, you know, long term.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, And I also really want to like, as
Speaker 3: annoyingly people say in the Bay Area, double double click
Speaker 3: on what you said, Mandy of we're talking to I know.
Speaker 1: I need to showers probably.
Speaker 3: The I literally have an iPhone note somewhere for my
Speaker 3: Instagram days. Of all the annoying Silicon Valley ship people
Speaker 3: said all the time, one of them was like, I
Speaker 3: want to double click on what you just said. And
Speaker 3: that's one of those. So if forever in.
Speaker 1: A comedy so quick say oh, highlight.
Speaker 3: It's like a highlight. It's like, let me just double
Speaker 3: let me Oh my god, I almost use that one
Speaker 3: with another double down double click, like I want to
Speaker 3: zoom in when you just fum. Yeah, if you're ever
Speaker 3: in a comedy situation and want to make fun of
Speaker 3: people from the Bay Area Silicon Valley butt faces from
Speaker 3: the Bay Area, you can say double click, so on
Speaker 3: a zug click on what you said, Mandy, which is
Speaker 3: we're talking to a social worker. This is a person who,
Speaker 3: like shout out to all social work folks, you pour
Speaker 3: yourself into your job in such a different way than
Speaker 3: other people. Self care and like decadence and luxury, whatever
Speaker 3: that means to you is so important and not just
Speaker 3: like one big splurgy thing a year, but like consistent monthly,
Speaker 3: like always meeting yourself there self care because from what
Speaker 3: I understand from social work, I used to work at
Speaker 3: the YNCA for about four years and worked with social
Speaker 3: workers very closely. Y'all deserve so much and not self
Speaker 3: care with like capital S, capital C, face masks and whatever,
Speaker 3: but like, I want you to almost have like a
Speaker 3: self care budget for yourself because social work is pouring
Speaker 3: out and if your money is not going to be
Speaker 3: used towards things that fill your cup and as a
Speaker 3: social worker, your cup gets emptied a lot more, I
Speaker 3: think than many other folks. And like, what's the money
Speaker 3: for so? And I hope you lean into that as
Speaker 3: soon as possible.
Speaker 1: I love that. I hope that was helpful, Shanika, and
Speaker 1: thank you again for your lovely question and all the love.
Speaker 1: Wish you the best. All right, let's take one mo
Speaker 1: question from our audience. If I can find the dang tab.
Speaker 1: All right, here's a cool question, interesting question, not maybe
Speaker 1: the sexiest on its face, but I do feel like
Speaker 1: we constantly This is the question that it probably took
Speaker 1: me a good five years into my career before I
Speaker 1: had I could finally stop having to google it to
Speaker 1: remember what the damn difference was. Those question is from
Speaker 1: someone who liked to remain anonymous. They work at a
Speaker 1: university that we won't name out of interest of keeping her,
Speaker 1: you know, anonymous, but she asks, I was recently hired
Speaker 1: at a university, and I'm trying to determine if it's
Speaker 1: better for my future self to have money taken out
Speaker 1: of my paycheck and put into my four oh one
Speaker 1: K pre tax or after tax. Wouldn't I have a
Speaker 1: tax advantage if it's taken from my paycheck after tax. Listen,
Speaker 1: there's not really a wrong answer here, and I do so,
Speaker 1: and I and I this is a specific question that
Speaker 1: I definitely think you know it's worth talking to a
Speaker 1: the only financial planner about because it's never just about
Speaker 1: your four to one K or in your case, you
Speaker 1: probably have an educator account which is like a four
Speaker 1: or three B but still similar, so you probably wantn't
Speaker 1: get more personalized advice than this. But just to break
Speaker 1: it down, you know, when you contribute to a traditional
Speaker 1: four to one K or traditional IRA or sorry, a
Speaker 1: four to one K, you're putting dollars in pre tax,
Speaker 1: which means you put the money in and you don't
Speaker 1: get tax until you take it out when you're old
Speaker 1: and gray or hopefully not so old and gray in retirement.
Speaker 1: And the benefit there is that your money grows tax free.
Speaker 1: It's it's wonderful. It's an incentive to get people to
Speaker 1: put money away for retirement. The WROTH four one K
Speaker 1: is different in the sense that you pay taxes upfront,
Speaker 1: and typically what some financial advisors will say is this
Speaker 1: is also a tax benefit. It's just a little bit
Speaker 1: more indirect because you're paying taxes now. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: earning a lower income today than you plan to be
Speaker 1: earning later when you get to retirement age. You could
Speaker 1: be saving money by paying your lower tax rate now
Speaker 1: than when you start withdrawing from your funds later. Benefit
Speaker 1: that I think is overlooked. What the ROTH is that
Speaker 1: you can actually withdraw your contributions, so it's not actually
Speaker 1: as tied up as a traditional retirement account. Where Like
Speaker 1: if you take an early withdrawal and it's just to
Speaker 1: you know, pay for something or to pay off some debt,
Speaker 1: it can be tax penalties that you have to pay
Speaker 1: and then income tax on top of that on what
Speaker 1: you withdraw with a ROTH. Like let's say you put
Speaker 1: in five thousand dollars over a couple of years you
Speaker 1: want to and you've gained you know, two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on that five K. So you've got seven k in
Speaker 1: there right now, you could arguably go in there and
Speaker 1: withdraw some of that principal amount, that five thousand that
Speaker 1: you put in and pocket that without the penalties of
Speaker 1: a traditional four to one k. But now that we
Speaker 1: got all that like jargonique goodness, mum out of the way,
Speaker 1: burna talk to me about I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: a common This is like a common you know, one
Speaker 1: of the first adulting type decisions that happen when you
Speaker 1: get a new job. For me, I was so like
Speaker 1: ignorant about all this mess. I had a four oh
Speaker 1: one K match at my first job. I was there
Speaker 1: for fifteen months, never opened, never put a dime in it,
Speaker 1: left all the money on the table. It'd be fair.
Speaker 1: I had no dimes to put in there. But sure,
Speaker 1: what was what was it like for you when you
Speaker 1: started to you know, you went from freelancing to like,
Speaker 1: oh benefits like a four toh one k. What was
Speaker 1: that like for you and how did you decide?
Speaker 3: Yes, actually trying to figure out what in the gd
Speaker 3: hell as a four oh one K was one of
Speaker 3: my first financial kind of Google entries. Ever, when I
Speaker 3: you know, like you said, we go through HR and
Speaker 3: the orientation, they're like, here's your four oh one K
Speaker 3: before you could even ask, like why is it even
Speaker 3: named before oh one? And they're like, come onto the
Speaker 3: next and then they're like, we can't give you advice
Speaker 3: or HR. We're not a financial so you get very
Speaker 3: little answers in the first place. It was amazing to
Speaker 3: find out through Googles, not the HR representatives, which typically
Speaker 3: they should be more helpful, but a lot of the
Speaker 3: times they are not. It was amazing to find out
Speaker 3: that for a lot of young people, especially in your
Speaker 3: very first jobs, your four oh one K is like
Speaker 3: the first time you're actually your money is getting invested,
Speaker 3: often invested for you, and you have no idea. Like
Speaker 3: it was many months into my job, like you said, Mandy,
Speaker 3: when I realized that money was being taken out for
Speaker 3: my four oh one K for my paychecks and things
Speaker 3: were happening to it. I guess I had like blacked
Speaker 3: out and signed papers when I enduring orientation, agreeing to
Speaker 3: something and I didn't understand it until many months afterwards,
Speaker 3: and like couldn't actually change things. So it was amazing
Speaker 3: to find out that first of all, money won, money
Speaker 3: was already being taken out of my paycheck, what without
Speaker 3: my maybe like kind of unconsensually, without my understanding of
Speaker 3: how it happened. Two, I learned about what you just said,
Speaker 3: four oh one K matching. My company was a company
Speaker 3: that does that. They did four oh one K matching,
Speaker 3: which meant when I put certain amount of money into
Speaker 3: my four oh one K, my company was like, cool,
Speaker 3: me too, Simon says, I'm going to do the same thing.
Speaker 3: Up to a certain degree. We love to say as
Speaker 3: financial you know, mouth holes, that's free money. That's money
Speaker 3: on the table, right, I give money, and you're I move.
Speaker 3: You move like Ludacris, I move the money. And then
Speaker 3: the company says me too, I'm move the money. So
Speaker 3: that was amazing to find out. And then you get
Speaker 3: into the Okay, so what's the difference between a four
Speaker 3: and when K and ira you learn about all the
Speaker 3: things that man you just said about, like the tax differences.
Speaker 3: That's around when even if, like if you had held
Speaker 3: on to this point of like trying to learn, that's
Speaker 3: around when people's brains.
Speaker 4: Start to tune out and it starts to.
Speaker 3: The butterfly out the window, gonna go get lunch, but
Speaker 3: they are really important differences when you're kind of looking
Speaker 3: at things. But I think the most important thing is
Speaker 3: whichever path you choose. Sit yourself or an HR representative
Speaker 3: or if financial advisor down until you and like ask
Speaker 3: all the questions until you fully understand the differences between
Speaker 3: the two. Don't go blindly into it like me and
Speaker 3: be like, it looks like the.
Speaker 6: Guy to my left, just check the box and and
Speaker 6: so it makes it that like I literally left money
Speaker 6: on the table for the first year, I left free
Speaker 6: money out of my own damn retirement account for the
Speaker 6: first year because I was just blindly following.
Speaker 3: There's so much pressure in the process. Don't be afraid
Speaker 3: to sit down and like, ask all the damn questions,
Speaker 3: google all every single phrase, every single thing that you
Speaker 3: can so that you understand both ways. And like Mandy
Speaker 3: was saying, it's not like there's a major, giant, like
Speaker 3: big mistake difference between the two. Honestly, I don't think
Speaker 3: there really is. It's especially when it say first sort
Speaker 3: of investing foray, but understand the crap out of it.
Speaker 3: You really you deserve to understand the crap out of
Speaker 3: everything happening to every dollar and it's tiring. But until
Speaker 3: a retirement expert comes in and starts doing a dance
Speaker 3: at every like orientation, this is how we got to
Speaker 3: do it, it'll be me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they paid big, big dollars for
Speaker 1: you to come tell their employees about their benefits, which
Speaker 1: is one of the incentives to keep them there. I
Speaker 1: don't know why companies. I mean literally at previous job
Speaker 1: when one of the benefits was rsu's restricted stock units
Speaker 1: literally stock in the company, and I had a staff
Speaker 1: of young people who had never so much as heard
Speaker 1: of an RSU before, and I'd have to do their
Speaker 1: performance reviews and be like, oh, and you're gonna get,
Speaker 1: you know, five thousand dollars worth of RSUs and they
Speaker 1: would have these blank stares, and finally I was like,
Speaker 1: do you know what this is? No, or they would
Speaker 1: say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh it's like the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm like, no, here's what it is,
Speaker 1: and then their eyes would get why. They're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: this is great, this is great, but you don't know
Speaker 1: until you ask those questions. So, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people aren't like me. They don't have time, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't take the time, so definitely has.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, they're lucky to have an
Speaker 3: employer that's like, let me tell you exactly what it is,
Speaker 3: because I remember learning about RSUs in my former job
Speaker 3: too and being like, this is a huge tech company
Speaker 3: with so many resources. I can't believe I have to
Speaker 3: google this shiz on my own to find out that
Speaker 3: I'm being given equity in the company. But the equity
Speaker 3: works like this, It's got all these rules. It's like,
Speaker 3: bless you and every other employer that actually looks out
Speaker 3: for the young people like that. That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: That's where you're saying, you know how, what is it?
Speaker 1: What is Hella? The personal finance world is Hella mail Hellapale,
Speaker 1: Hella Stale, he Staleyah love it. That is true of
Speaker 1: businesses too. It's really the structure is built for I
Speaker 1: think people who don't need to have us sit down
Speaker 1: and talk about RSUs because their uncle or their father
Speaker 1: or their mother, you know, their mentor tells them those
Speaker 1: types of things. But a lot of folks, especially brown
Speaker 1: and black black people, women, you know, we don't go
Speaker 1: into the corporate world with those extra benefits and those
Speaker 1: you know, advisors and little evil parrots on our shoulders
Speaker 1: to tell us these types of things that we have
Speaker 1: to seek it out for ourselves, and companies need to
Speaker 1: do the extra work to do all that. But now
Speaker 1: I'm on my soapbox now about one of my favorite subjects,
Speaker 1: which is how businesses fail their employees.
Speaker 3: I love that subscribe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I do want to say thank you to
Speaker 1: this question and just to take it home. The only
Speaker 1: bad decision here is to not invest, to not say
Speaker 1: for retirement. That's the only bad decision you can make.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, to your point burnet about getting knowledge.
Speaker 1: For me, the best thing I did at twenty four
Speaker 1: was just start saving before I even knew everything I
Speaker 1: thought I needed to know. I just did the easiest option,
Speaker 1: you know, check the box for automatic withdrawals into a
Speaker 1: target date fund. And then I was like, cool, you're cute.
Speaker 1: I'll come back to you when I'm ready to dive
Speaker 1: in more and do more things. And that was the
Speaker 1: smartest decision I ever made, putting me on my path
Speaker 1: to a tenfold increase in my net worth over the
Speaker 1: past you know decades, and I huge. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just don't want people to hold themselves back because they
Speaker 1: don't think that they know enough. There are some small
Speaker 1: steps you can take today that will put you on
Speaker 1: the right path, and you'll, you know, you'll accrue that
Speaker 1: knowledge over time. Just don't wait until you're you know,
Speaker 1: you can recite, and don't wait until you have to
Speaker 1: stop googling the different terms. I still google sometimes me too,
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 2: It's fine.
Speaker 3: I mean, we aren't like raised with these pockets of
Speaker 3: knowledge in our heads, and so we have to keep relearning.
Speaker 3: We have to keep shoving them intoor heads because it
Speaker 3: doesn't come naturally to so many of us. And I
Speaker 3: love to also tell young folks like you have something
Speaker 3: that every older hella male pailstale investor wishes they had,
Speaker 3: and that's time. It's time you have that freakin' in
Speaker 3: bags all all around you. And that's the most important
Speaker 3: thing for retirement investing specifically. So just get her done,
Speaker 3: Just get her done in any which way, and confuse
Speaker 3: yourself with the terms once there's already money in the pot.
Speaker 1: I love that. All right, Well, thank you all so
Speaker 1: much for your questions. Thank you Bernard for being my
Speaker 1: my copilot on the question segment. All right, well, let's
Speaker 1: get into this is a big moment for Berna. How
Speaker 1: does Tidy do this?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting Brown Boost Brown Break Brown, But no, that's
Speaker 1: not it.
Speaker 3: Are you going to have like a like a Mickey
Speaker 3: Mouse Club? Oh yeah, Ti remember that?
Speaker 1: And it always ends up. It's kind of like Eenie
Speaker 1: Meani Mi Nemo. Her Brown Break intros always end up
Speaker 1: making nego first, no matter what it is. The last
Speaker 1: says no, it's fine. I'm just like the stat the
Speaker 1: cars are stacked against me. I'm not always prepared. But
Speaker 1: what would you like to do? Are you gonna boost
Speaker 1: or are you going to break? My friend?
Speaker 3: Oh boy, let's see. Am I going to boost? Am
Speaker 3: I going to break? I think I'm going to boost?
Speaker 1: Okay, keep it body to boost.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna keep it a pozzy because I'm in my
Speaker 3: book cave, and like we were talking about before we
Speaker 3: started recording, being in a book cave means I'm extremely
Speaker 3: selective about the things that come into my eyeballs and
Speaker 3: and scroll past my screen, and so I'm trying to
Speaker 3: keep it pousey for the book. You know, give give
Speaker 3: the book pozzy vibes. I think I want to give
Speaker 3: a boost to the idea of community so this is cheesy.
Speaker 3: We talked about like my heal, healthful community and all
Speaker 3: that stuff. What I'm talking about is, today I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about the fact that creating this book requires a community.
Speaker 3: It'll probably be just my name on the cover, but
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about, like I said, my business coach who's
Speaker 3: a woman of color that supports me every single day.
Speaker 3: My agent, who's a woman of color supports me every
Speaker 3: single day. I have a small group of like mastermind
Speaker 3: other financial creators who I like bounce questions off of.
Speaker 3: I'm asking my audience all the time of like opinions
Speaker 3: and things. I'm constantly texting my three teenage nieces. Is
Speaker 3: this stupid? Is this lame? If I had to compare
Speaker 3: stocks to like an anime character, which one would it be.
Speaker 3: I'm just thinking about the fact that nothing good happens
Speaker 3: as like in a silo in a cylinder by yourself.
Speaker 3: In my life, all the most wonderful things have happened
Speaker 3: because other specifically black and brown women have reached down
Speaker 3: up across to me, pulled me up a ladder, pulled
Speaker 3: me into their arms, pulled me into their mastermind, lued
Speaker 3: me into an email, including you, Mandy pulled me into
Speaker 3: this and made me feel like community is a thing
Speaker 3: that makes all these things worth it. And so I
Speaker 3: just want to I want to boost to everybody who's
Speaker 3: reached out to a fellow black end or brown person,
Speaker 3: especially a woman, and said, let me bring you into
Speaker 3: this mix because your name deserves to be on this table,
Speaker 3: or let me make sure that you know I add
Speaker 3: your handle to this list of creators that needs to
Speaker 3: be considered for this thing. That's just what I'm thinking
Speaker 3: about today. So I'm grateful for all the people that
Speaker 3: know how to reach out and around and bring people in.
Speaker 1: I love that that's everything that Brown ambition stands for, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the reason we started this podcast. It's
Speaker 1: probably the reason you started. Hey, Berna and Hella helpful
Speaker 1: and thank you too, because it takes a village, and
Speaker 1: we all have our little villages and it doesn't serve
Speaker 1: anybody to think that you can do it alone. That
Speaker 1: just leads to agony and pain and stress and anxiety.
Speaker 1: You need to like share the burden.
Speaker 3: Yes, one hundred percent. I'm always trying to think of
Speaker 3: the fact that you know, my own ancestors, again being Filipino,
Speaker 3: they did so many more things in community than as
Speaker 3: an individual, and I'm trying to keep that while I'm
Speaker 3: creating these things that feel very individual a book, you know,
Speaker 3: other projects and stuff like that. And like my ancestors
Speaker 3: raw shit out in community, and I think they had it,
Speaker 3: they had it right as opposed to this American individualistic
Speaker 3: colonizer bs bust out, bust out.
Speaker 1: I love that. Well, thank you. I'm so glad to
Speaker 1: be I consider myself I've pushed as much as you
Speaker 1: think I pulled you in. I'm just put I'm just
Speaker 1: inserting myself into your orbit because I need more of this.
Speaker 1: This is what I've been missing. It's just conversations with
Speaker 1: other creators, other people passionate about the same thing I am,
Speaker 1: and other people with unique voices. And this isn't technically
Speaker 1: my boost, but I do want to boost a very
Speaker 1: moving message that you posted an IG I think a
Speaker 1: few months ago, and it was maybe the peak of
Speaker 1: violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander AAPI communities in
Speaker 1: this country, and your message was so powerful to me,
Speaker 1: and I think this year was it was it was
Speaker 1: really easy to just you know, keep your eye, keep
Speaker 1: your eye on your lane, you know, last summer was
Speaker 1: so hard. The whole the whole fucking year was just
Speaker 1: a crapshoot. But that was a real lesson for me
Speaker 1: to also look outside of my own identity and look
Speaker 1: at how the world is impacting other you know, marginalized people,
Speaker 1: and reach out to friends of mine who might be
Speaker 1: impacted and try to do it in a mindful way.
Speaker 1: And and I just so I thank you for that,
Speaker 1: for taking that time to go off script and to
Speaker 1: share what was on your heart. And I hope that
Speaker 1: you continue to be just as authentic and amazing as
Speaker 1: you are and really sit with the knowledge that just
Speaker 1: because it's not you're not for everyone, and maybe appealing
Speaker 1: to everyone that is not what we're doing this for.
Speaker 1: It's really about unapologetically talking to people who look like
Speaker 1: us and saying, if you know, f the norm and
Speaker 1: you're wonderful.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean that's like again, this is why I
Speaker 3: was like, it's time, Like I'm of all the things
Speaker 3: I could be doing outside of book leave, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I can't let this go by. This is the platform
Speaker 3: that understands that, the community that gets it. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Let me be your hype woman for just then, ye Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't do it, but I mean I can to work,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to say I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: that right now. I want to do a quick break
Speaker 1: because I can't let this be. I can't let this go.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping that I know you said that you're
Speaker 1: in a book, cave. I don't know if you've been
Speaker 1: on the socials lately, but Chrissy Teagan was canceled. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of this recently?
Speaker 3: I'm like, again, she was no, So.
Speaker 1: She's been canceled kind of for I like telling a
Speaker 1: poor woman to like go kill herself and all these
Speaker 1: things on social media. She came out with this long
Speaker 1: as apology note on IG today. I'm sure you haven't
Speaker 1: had a chance to read it, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: take a break for well one, cyberbullying in general, and
Speaker 1: I think as two women who live on the internets
Speaker 1: and especially social media, when you're trying to enter a
Speaker 1: space that traditionally has not been for you, the trolls
Speaker 1: are alive and well. And I've had my first taste
Speaker 1: of this really on TikTok and to have me, Chrissy,
Speaker 1: They're so mean, they really are, and to other women
Speaker 1: especially it's especially women talking about finance and the patriarchy
Speaker 1: and all these things. But yeah, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about that because, I mean, Christy is someone who
Speaker 1: it just shows that trying to be the first to
Speaker 1: be witty and funny on social media, it's almost like
Speaker 1: using that power to drag people down, to especially other women.
Speaker 1: It really. I know that she's apologized now, but I
Speaker 1: just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the impact,
Speaker 1: like the real feelings that are out there on the Internet,
Speaker 1: and the fact that we're all out there creating content,
Speaker 1: but we have feelings too, And I hate for someone
Speaker 1: who has an image of being so you know, so
Speaker 1: welcoming and so funny and charismatic and amaze and the
Speaker 1: beautiful children and superstar husband and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Why does she need to take someone down if someone
Speaker 1: like that feels small enough on the inside to tell others.
Speaker 1: And in her message, she admits that there's not just
Speaker 1: this one instance that was recently made public. There's more
Speaker 1: people like victims of her own cyber bullying. We just
Speaker 1: have we have to hold people accountable for it. I
Speaker 1: don't want to wish anyone ill, but I'm genuinely like,
Speaker 1: I'm raising a child who eventually will be who knows
Speaker 1: what the internet will be when he's old enough to
Speaker 1: use devices. But I just I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do about, like the cyber bullying, but it is so
Speaker 1: and especially if you're reaching young people like you say
Speaker 1: that you are with your book. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a real it's a real danger, and it's a real,
Speaker 1: I don't know, its own little epidemic or pandemic, whatever
Speaker 1: the right phrase is. But how has that impacted you?
Speaker 1: Do you have a do you have trolls or do
Speaker 1: you just kind of have a way of filtering that out?
Speaker 3: Oh? Absolutely, we have troubles. Oh my gosh, definitely have trolls,
Speaker 3: basically from the day that I started talking about my
Speaker 3: money life, which I'm sure you've experienced and especially I'm
Speaker 3: sure you're experiencing on TikTok is when a woman or
Speaker 3: person of color or a woman of color opens their
Speaker 3: mouth about a hella male, hell of pale, hell of
Speaker 3: stale formally thing the hella mail pale stales, and those
Speaker 3: who represent or want to protect their interests come out.
Speaker 3: They just come out with fists because how dare you
Speaker 3: try to give advice to other people who look and
Speaker 3: sound like you. That doesn't cater and center the white man,
Speaker 3: which is what most finance advice does. When we center
Speaker 3: ourselves in this work, people get really get their feelings hurt.
Speaker 3: And so I've definitely gotten trolls of people who are
Speaker 3: saying like I don't know what I'm talking about, or
Speaker 3: I made stupid financial decisions. Even if both those things
Speaker 3: were true, doesn't mean I have to shut up when I,
Speaker 3: like you said, spoke out. If I ever speak out
Speaker 3: and kind of step outside of my quote unquote lane
Speaker 3: of finance, and I talk about race, I talk about
Speaker 3: my experiences, I talk about the liberation of black people.
Speaker 3: I talk about stop harassing Asian people. The trolls really
Speaker 3: come out. And what I've found to be true when
Speaker 3: you're an Internet creator and is clearly true even when
Speaker 3: you're someone as big as Chrissy Teagan. No one has
Speaker 3: given us any classes and how to act on the Internet,
Speaker 3: and there are a lot of people out there just
Speaker 3: like throwing their unhealed trauma at each other. People think
Speaker 3: that we can say things and do things to each
Speaker 3: other either on Twitter or in the DMS that you
Speaker 3: would never actually do to human face to face. And
Speaker 3: so I've learned a lot from especially many of my
Speaker 3: activist friends on IG how to draw your boundaries with
Speaker 3: people on the internet who don't know who you are,
Speaker 3: how to say, hey, I have created a list of boundaries,
Speaker 3: and if you're a new person and if you want
Speaker 3: to interact with me, you have to see this list
Speaker 3: of boundaries I've created. One of them is you can't
Speaker 3: DM me if I don't know you. If I'm not
Speaker 3: in relationship with you, and you're about to DM me
Speaker 3: with your opinion, stop, I don't want it. You don't
Speaker 3: know how to act with me, and so it's not
Speaker 3: going to be dialogue. Two. I do dialogues. I don't
Speaker 3: do Suddenly I'm your garbage can for everything you think
Speaker 3: about Asian people or everything you think about brown people,
Speaker 3: I don't do. While this message should have really gone
Speaker 3: to your therapist, I do dialogues. That's an exchange of information.
Speaker 3: If you don't know what that is, I will not
Speaker 3: respond to your DM Three it's like, you know, these
Speaker 3: are the way Like if I'm sharing my personal experience
Speaker 3: and I did not ask for your opinion, don't give
Speaker 3: it to me. These things feel very normal if I
Speaker 3: were to see, like have coffee with you, Mandy, like
Speaker 3: in real life. But we lose our brains when it
Speaker 3: comes to the Internet. And it goes to show also
Speaker 3: that you can be the most famous, the most beautiful,
Speaker 3: the most visible, and you still don't know how to
Speaker 3: draw boundaries with yourself, and you still don't know how
Speaker 3: to like, remember there's a human on the other side
Speaker 3: of the thing. So that's the number one thing. It's
Speaker 3: if people lose their humanity so easily, And it's important, tiring,
Speaker 3: but important to let people know where your boundaries are
Speaker 3: on the Internet because clearly some people don't.
Speaker 4: Know how to act.
Speaker 1: One thing that you said that struck me that I
Speaker 1: hope people take away from it is recognizing that it's
Speaker 1: not about you, it is someone else throwing I think
Speaker 1: you said they're unhealed trauma at you. Hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that. And I don't want to
Speaker 1: as more of us, women of color, even you know,
Speaker 1: men of color too, are out there sharing our povs,
Speaker 1: sharing our voices. And believe me, corporate America wants us.
Speaker 1: They say they want us right, but ain't there are
Speaker 1: not always ready for us, and we have to really
Speaker 1: take care of ourselves because wherever you go, the trolls
Speaker 1: will be there, and you need to sort of have
Speaker 1: your you know, have your mental health process and check
Speaker 1: whatever that is for you. Everyone's got their own way,
Speaker 1: but just getting to a good place where you really
Speaker 1: know yourself and you're comfortable with yourself. Like it sounds
Speaker 1: like Berna, obviously you really are and that's not always
Speaker 1: easy for some people. But that is the biggest thing.
Speaker 1: It is not it's not your stuff. You keep doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Like trolls be damned, they're going to
Speaker 1: be there, but it's not about you. It's about them,
Speaker 1: and just try not to engage with them and keep create,
Speaker 1: creating and thriving because that's what we're both here to do. Yep, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I forgot we're talking to it's just you and me in.
Speaker 3: This world is me and you in your in your zenden.
Speaker 3: But I totally clost on in all of that. It's
Speaker 3: and it's funny because the more you are genuine and
Speaker 3: true to your own message, I think the more trolls
Speaker 3: can sort of sense that. I feel like I've gotten
Speaker 3: more trolls, the more genuine you are with your voice,
Speaker 3: and so it's like the further you get out there,
Speaker 3: the more you have to be clear about your boundaries
Speaker 3: and and let folks know where they can't step. But
Speaker 3: doesn't doesn't mean you stop creating.
Speaker 1: When it comes to you burn out, there is no boundary.
Speaker 1: I like, as far as like you know, we were
Speaker 1: to live, we tight Now it's all love. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for co hosting with me.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for making this dream come true.
Speaker 1: I really just like I don't believe you no for.
Speaker 3: Real, for real, Like if you ask my Spotify, Unleashed, UnrealEd,
Speaker 3: whatever the heck. At the end of every year, probably
Speaker 3: for the fast three past three, three years, past four years,
Speaker 3: top podcast has been Brown Ambition. So this is my
Speaker 3: freaking dream. Thank you so much, Maim so much.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for being so supportive and for doing
Speaker 1: what you do again. You're at Heyburna dot com. Anywhere
Speaker 1: else people can well, they can't find you anywhere now.
Speaker 1: This is like an exclusive interview on her book Leave.
Speaker 1: This is the only place you can find Berna right now.
Speaker 1: But when are you out of your book Leave Cave?
Speaker 1: And then where can folks find you?
Speaker 3: I am out of my book leave cave in August,
Speaker 3: so I give my first draft in the middle of July,
Speaker 3: and then I basically blackout for two weeks. Who knows
Speaker 3: where I'm going to be. I'm just going to be
Speaker 3: face down in my dog, I think, for two weeks,
Speaker 3: and then in August I'm back out with some cool
Speaker 3: projects coming. But follow it all on Hey Berna on Instagram.
Speaker 1: All right, I love it all right, Berna. Think you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you.