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