Speaker 1: Hey, hey, ba fam, I am so excited to bring
Speaker 1: you another how to throwback. This was from last summer
Speaker 1: when we had this incredible series of guests with Chris
Speaker 1: Browning from Popcorn Finance. Oh, Chris, I miss you and
Speaker 1: you're so he has the most soothing voice you'll ever hear,
Speaker 1: and the fact that he talks about money. I'm just like, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a cozy, warm blanket of a man. That's what
Speaker 1: Chris Browning is. We also have my forever fave Berna
Speaker 1: and Nat from Hey Berna on the Show, and Jamila
Speaker 1: Soou Front Journey to Launch, and lastly Janie Torres from
Speaker 1: Yo Kioto Dineo. We are looking back today at some
Speaker 1: of the most memorable moments from that co host series,
Speaker 1: So check it out. Ooh, I'm gonna listen to this
Speaker 1: one because I mean, I like to listen to them all,
Speaker 1: but a little roundup of my favorite people talking on
Speaker 1: our show is just too good to miss. So I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoy this, and while you're listening, don't
Speaker 1: be shy leave us a review. We got some incredible
Speaker 1: reviews from a couple of listeners. We got one from
Speaker 1: Casey and from travel by Faith, who are so sweet
Speaker 1: and so generous and said the nicest thing about our
Speaker 1: show on Apple Podcasts. So please take the time to
Speaker 1: leave us a review. We will read them on the show.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we just love y'all so much. Okay, here
Speaker 1: is our how to episode for this week.
Speaker 2: Now, have the time of my life.
Speaker 3: Okay, just kidding.
Speaker 1: I've really miss Tiffany, but we made it, y'all, and
Speaker 1: I can't thank my guest co host enough for joining
Speaker 1: me and holding my hand through this period of separation
Speaker 1: while Tiffany has been on a much needed rest and
Speaker 1: recharge of AKA. I want to thank Chris Browning of
Speaker 1: Popcorn Finance Berna and Nat from Hey Berna, Jamila Soufran
Speaker 1: from Journey to Launch, and last but not least, Janie
Speaker 1: Torres Rodriguez from Yo Kioto Dineto Podcast for joining me
Speaker 1: this past month. Y'all.
Speaker 3: I can't believe we made it.
Speaker 1: I had such a good time getting to know these
Speaker 1: guys better, and I feel like I've got four new
Speaker 1: financial besties already. Now, this reference is strictly for the millennials,
Speaker 1: so boomers and gen zers, sorry, not sorry. So y'all,
Speaker 1: remember those old episodes of Saved by the bell where
Speaker 1: they meet up at the Max and they reminisce about
Speaker 1: the school year and they look longingly at nothing in
Speaker 1: particular in the distance, and then it happens. The screen
Speaker 1: goes all squiggly and you realize it's one of those episodes,
Speaker 1: a recap of some of the best moments from the
Speaker 1: season's past. Well, here we go, Bayside Tigers, I mean,
Speaker 1: ba fam, I am about to walk down memory Lane
Speaker 1: and replay some of the most memorable moments from our
Speaker 1: summer co host series. This is the greatest hits over
Speaker 1: the last month, and I hope you guys enjoy them
Speaker 1: as much as I did getting to relive some of
Speaker 1: these common when I'm in the co host chair. Honestly,
Speaker 1: sometimes I told Berna this when we had lunch last week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we like hang out now, I told her that. Honestly,
Speaker 1: sometimes I feel like I had these conversations and I
Speaker 1: semi blackout and I have a hard time remembering. So
Speaker 1: it was really fun to walk back down memory lane
Speaker 1: and pick out what I thought were some of the
Speaker 1: really poignant and powerful moments that I had recording with
Speaker 1: these amazing co hosts. So sit back and relax and
Speaker 1: enjoy this look back que the Squiggly Dreamy music Cali.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Our first trip down memory Lane starts with my conversation
Speaker 1: with the wonderful Chris Browning. He and I took a
Speaker 1: question from listener Laschen, who was asking about the difference
Speaker 1: between having a budgeting problem and an income problem. Lachine says,
Speaker 1: I just found your podcast after buying Tiffany's book, and
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed in her book, which is I will add
Speaker 1: here you guys called Get Good with Money, which you
Speaker 1: can get I Get Good with Money. It's an eight
Speaker 1: week National wait, eight week New York Times bestseller. At
Speaker 1: this point, it's insane anyway, So Laschen found us through
Speaker 1: her book. She says, in the book, Tiffany talked about
Speaker 1: determining if you have a budgeting problem or an income
Speaker 1: slash earning problem. And I think I have an earning problem.
Speaker 1: When I wanted to get y'all's opinion, I make fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. After taxes and insurance and my
Speaker 1: retirement retirement savings, I'm left with about twenty nine hundred
Speaker 1: dollars per month. I can comfortably pay my bills, save
Speaker 1: for travel, and add money to my IRA. But that's
Speaker 1: about it. I want to save more, but there's nowhere
Speaker 1: else in my budget. I feel like I can slice
Speaker 1: and dice. What do you guys think? So, what's your
Speaker 1: take on like a budget versus an income problem?
Speaker 4: Chris, This is a great question here, and I think
Speaker 4: sometimes we do get trapped in they Okay, let's let's budget,
Speaker 4: let's cut and let's save where we can, which is
Speaker 4: good to go through and evaluate your budget and see
Speaker 4: where you're maybe wasting money. But the only thing is
Speaker 4: you can only cut so much. If you've already you
Speaker 4: got your stuff under control, and you're really diligent with
Speaker 4: how you spend, you're going to get to a point
Speaker 4: where you just can't cut anything else. And if you
Speaker 4: want to increase your or increase the money available to
Speaker 4: invest and do other things with, yeah, you have to
Speaker 4: make more, which is it's much harder than cutting, but
Speaker 4: it's way more impactful in the long run.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, if you guys need to hear it
Speaker 1: here first. Although I'm pretty sure we've said it before,
Speaker 1: you cannot budget your way to wealth building.
Speaker 2: You can't do it.
Speaker 1: You cannot become rich by budgeting. You can get part
Speaker 1: of the way there. Certainly you can, and it's certainly
Speaker 1: a good starting point, and I think most levels you
Speaker 1: should have at least an idea of what's going in
Speaker 1: and what's going out and what's left over. Budgeting is amazing,
Speaker 1: but it ain't going to get you there, and I
Speaker 1: think I think it definitely sounds like if you're to
Speaker 1: the point where you want to put more money away
Speaker 1: and you just don't have it and you can't. Literally
Speaker 1: you've looked at the budget and you're like, what am
Speaker 1: I going to do? Like live in my car? You can't.
Speaker 1: You know, there's nothing else to slice and dice, like
Speaker 1: you say, so it is time to start looking at
Speaker 1: a couple different things. I am huge about the impact
Speaker 1: your career. I'm very passionate about the impact that your
Speaker 1: career choices can have in helping you accumulate wealth. And
Speaker 1: I'm also huge on looking for additional income streams on
Speaker 1: top of, you know, outside of your nine to five
Speaker 1: job or whatever work you happen to do, so that
Speaker 1: you diversify the income streams that you have. After a
Speaker 1: year like this, it certainly feels like a lot of
Speaker 1: people were turning to side hobbies or side hustles as
Speaker 1: they say, you're starting their own businesses to bring in
Speaker 1: extra money. Because it was a real kick in the ass,
Speaker 1: you know, to realize how vulnerable we all were, especially
Speaker 1: those of us who were tied to a nine to
Speaker 1: five job that either you had layoffs or cut back hours.
Speaker 1: I mean, it all felt very like scary and a
Speaker 1: good reminder about the importance of having those different income streams. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, Chris, both and I. You and I both
Speaker 1: have podcasts. You know, I don't think either of us
Speaker 1: is rolling in the dough from the podcast life, but
Speaker 1: especially not as you're getting all the upgraded equipment that
Speaker 1: it sounds like you're accumulating. But you know, talk about
Speaker 1: like the podcast and what other what do you what
Speaker 1: do you think about different income streams and how someone
Speaker 1: could you know, bring in extra wealth?
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, I mean obviously I'm I'm a fan of
Speaker 4: doing other things and building other streams of income and
Speaker 4: businesses and just things you own on your own. Because one,
Speaker 4: I just enjoy the process of making something and having
Speaker 4: it something that I've created is just it's just a
Speaker 4: cool experience and just I don't know, it makes you
Speaker 4: feel good, Like look I've made this thing. I've put
Speaker 4: my time and sweat into this and it's here. So
Speaker 4: I'm definitely for finding things that you're you're passionate about,
Speaker 4: that you enjoy doing, that you see an opportunity to
Speaker 4: have a viable business doing, and pursuing those because, like
Speaker 4: you said, you know, jobs are secure intil they're not
Speaker 4: until something happens where they need to move on from you.
Speaker 4: You know, things could change overnight. But but just like you,
Speaker 4: I'm a huge fan of growing within your career. That
Speaker 4: was one of the biggest things that helped us get
Speaker 4: out of debt when my wife and I kind of
Speaker 4: got serious about our finances. We had about twenty seven
Speaker 4: thousand dollars in credit card debt and we were taking
Speaker 4: home like forty five thousand dollars between the two of us,
Speaker 4: which was not enough money and not especially not in
Speaker 4: southern California. It is not much.
Speaker 3: Did you do that?
Speaker 4: Wow? It was rough. We were living in a tiny house,
Speaker 4: a very small studio for several years, and really we
Speaker 4: cut our budget down to like nothing, like we were
Speaker 4: not having any fun, Nothing was getting spent that didn't
Speaker 4: need to be spent, and it still was going so slow.
Speaker 4: It was. It was such a long journey, and so
Speaker 4: for me, that's what I went and I left at Okay,
Speaker 4: this is how much I'm making. I think at the time,
Speaker 4: I've got how much I was making by myself, but
Speaker 4: it wasn't I clearly wasn't a lot. What do I
Speaker 4: need to do? And so that's when I started saying,
Speaker 4: all right, what professional organizations can I join. I started
Speaker 4: joining these different groups for book keepers, and I would
Speaker 4: go to conferences and I would help organize as speakers,
Speaker 4: and then I would meet other people from other places
Speaker 4: and I would find out about new openings and build
Speaker 4: up my resumes. When I applied for the next job,
Speaker 4: it's like, whoh you did all of this, Like, oh yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, you can kind of pump yourself up, and
Speaker 4: so doing things like that it allowed me to increase
Speaker 4: my income so much faster than if I would have
Speaker 4: just stayed at my one job and hoped for a
Speaker 4: nice raise, which wasn't going to gum.
Speaker 1: What were you doing at the time. Your backgrounds in accounting.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, like accounting and bookkeeping work. So at the
Speaker 4: time I was a payroll supervisor. I was running a
Speaker 4: perill department at a school district actually, and.
Speaker 1: You're managing paychecks and trying to get a bigger one.
Speaker 4: Exactly. I would see everyone who was making more money
Speaker 4: than me and be like, all right, I need to
Speaker 4: do something about this.
Speaker 1: That's got to be really depressed.
Speaker 3: You know, when you.
Speaker 4: See some of those paychecks, you're like, I don't know
Speaker 4: what these people are doing right now, but I need
Speaker 4: to make some changes and get one of these because
Speaker 4: it's way more than I'm king.
Speaker 1: You know what's bad if you're like jealous of a
Speaker 1: Like I don't know what kind of school teachers these were,
Speaker 1: but I'm feeling like a middle school math teacher is
Speaker 1: making more. It's like, ooh, okay.
Speaker 3: It's time.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was like, because we all know teachers aren't
Speaker 4: paid that well, and I was getting paid a lot
Speaker 4: less than than the majority of teachers.
Speaker 1: That's a crime. Yeah, I've I love that, you know.
Speaker 1: I was recently celebrating with my husband because we've really
Speaker 1: been focused on increasing our net worth and we did
Speaker 1: the math with our planner and realized that we have
Speaker 1: increased our net worth by tenfold in the last five years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And I was I was sitting down and we're going
Speaker 1: to I'm gonna do a specific show about it. But
Speaker 1: as I was sitting through and working through, you know,
Speaker 1: how did we do this? I'll tell you one thing.
Speaker 1: It wasn't by budgeting the most significant, the biggest reasons.
Speaker 1: And I part of me almost feels a little, or
Speaker 1: used to feel a little not ashamed. But I think
Speaker 1: people want to hear that we just pulled ourselves up
Speaker 1: by our bootstraps, and you know, we coop on and
Speaker 1: we we were good people and we just worked real hard.
Speaker 1: They want to hear that kind of story. But the
Speaker 1: truth is was that I was super ruthless with pursuing
Speaker 1: new opportunities when two things were true, when I could
Speaker 1: earn significantly more, and when I could challenge myself professionally.
Speaker 1: So when I could when I was offered, when I
Speaker 1: was offered I was in other jobs, and when I
Speaker 1: was offered opportunities to move to a different company, as
Speaker 1: long as the opportunity was professionally rich, like I could
Speaker 1: I was learning a new skill, I was getting to
Speaker 1: try a new position or something like that, and it
Speaker 1: came with additional income. I was definitely willing to take it.
Speaker 1: And I was very risky with some of my career choices,
Speaker 1: and they could have gone the other way entirely, you know,
Speaker 1: without with risk comes rewards or you know, disaster. But
Speaker 1: it was because of those choices I was able to negotiate,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty percent percent raises equity in companies that
Speaker 1: I was joining, which opened me up to even additional
Speaker 1: opportunities to build wealth as long as that stock price
Speaker 1: in that company went up, which I was fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to have that happen sometimes. So like, those are the
Speaker 1: types of things that that I'm I'm ready to just
Speaker 1: be honest about it because there's no shame in it.
Speaker 1: In fact, I had to do it. I'm a black
Speaker 1: woman in America, yo, Like, we don't make that much money.
Speaker 1: We make sixty percent of what a white man earns.
Speaker 1: So for me, I just always thought about when I
Speaker 1: went into like a salary negotiation or when I was
Speaker 1: approached by a competitor or a different company to come
Speaker 1: work for them, I really looked at that as an opportunity.
Speaker 1: It's often the best opportunity you can get to negotiate
Speaker 1: a higher salary and staying at the same place for
Speaker 1: a long time. It ain't it, y'all. It is not
Speaker 1: it in terms of in terms of salary growth, especially
Speaker 1: if you came in entry level. That is not the
Speaker 1: way to increase your income unless. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: stay there if you love your job, but then you
Speaker 1: got to start side hustling on, you know, get a
Speaker 1: side business or take a hobby and start bringing in cash,
Speaker 1: you know, on top of your earnings. But loyalty does
Speaker 1: not pay in corporate America. It doesn't. I am proof
Speaker 1: of that. I really had to make those big, scary
Speaker 1: leaps to get to where I am today, to get
Speaker 1: those bigger paydays.
Speaker 4: No, I mean, I love that so much because I've
Speaker 4: seen it where in a situation no one. I won't
Speaker 4: name a place so no one can figure out what
Speaker 4: I'm talking about. But that was a place.
Speaker 1: Well, leave Chris alone, don't get in, don't get them
Speaker 1: in trouble.
Speaker 4: Don't get me in trouble. Please don't go research this place.
Speaker 4: But I was working at this place. There's a woman there.
Speaker 4: She was amazing at her job, she was amazing, and
Speaker 4: she just wanted She didn't didn't think she was asking
Speaker 4: for a raise. She just wanted a better title than
Speaker 4: what she had. And they're like, no, we can't do
Speaker 4: that I'm sorry, it's something so easy. They were like, no,
Speaker 4: we can't do that, but what you're great? So she's like,
Speaker 4: you know what, all right, I'm out of here. So
Speaker 4: she left, got a at her job, got the title
Speaker 4: she wanted, and got to pay raise the person they
Speaker 4: brought in to replace her. They gave the title that
Speaker 4: she wanted and more money, and it was like they
Speaker 4: could have done it all along, but it was just like, well,
Speaker 4: they think we have you here, you're not going to leave,
Speaker 4: so we're not going to do anything. And that's where
Speaker 4: you like, I mean, I agree with you one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: That's that's the only way you're going to make these
Speaker 4: significant leaps sometimes is to define better opportunities outside of
Speaker 4: where you are. Because they have no incentive to make
Speaker 4: your pay jump significantly.
Speaker 1: And you may think that they're the nicest people. You know,
Speaker 1: they've come to your housewarming parties, they gave you a
Speaker 1: nice little gift when you had a baby or you
Speaker 1: got married. It does like they're not going It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of effort. I was that manager who really
Speaker 1: fought for raises and promotions for my people when I
Speaker 1: didn't have to, because I wanted to retain them.
Speaker 5: I and there were.
Speaker 1: Plenty of people who just don't do that because it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of time, it takes effort. You got
Speaker 1: to like do your research. You got a bat for people.
Speaker 1: It's just not in a lot of people's best interests
Speaker 1: to go to bat for folks. That's work. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that example. I mean, I hate it, but
Speaker 1: it's a really good example of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: Loyalty does not pay, y'all. But I want to talk
Speaker 1: a bit about before we get to the next question
Speaker 1: about starting a new business. Like I literally I'm at
Speaker 1: a point where I just started a new business.
Speaker 3: Hell guys, I'm I'm the.
Speaker 1: CEO and founder of Mandy Money Media, which is a
Speaker 1: independent content consulting firm and editing and writing business. Yay,
Speaker 1: do I get the kind of thanks? You know, do
Speaker 1: my own thing. After a long well like a decade
Speaker 1: of experience, I'm striking out on my own. And what's
Speaker 1: so fun for me has been doing these things Like
Speaker 1: I filed for an LLC. It's shockingly easy to do this, y'all.
Speaker 1: You just need a little bit of money and like Google,
Speaker 1: like you just had a Google. If you go to
Speaker 1: your state's Department of Labor website or just google your
Speaker 1: state LLC. It'll have a very easy to fill out form,
Speaker 1: pick your name, give them your little coins. I had
Speaker 1: it with the minutes. I got approved and got my
Speaker 1: my LLC established, and then it's what the I R
Speaker 1: S do you? Did you do this yet? We get
Speaker 1: a tax payer or an employee ID number through.
Speaker 4: The i RS dot gov and that's such an easy process.
Speaker 4: And then you don't have to give people your Social
Speaker 4: Security number either.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think I might have to like
Speaker 1: get it, but yeah, it took. I was I was shocked.
Speaker 1: It was instantly, Oh, here's your e I N. Here
Speaker 1: you go. And once I had that e I N,
Speaker 1: what did I do? I went and got a business
Speaker 1: bank account, just did some googles to find the best one.
Speaker 1: Although I will say, I don't know if you have
Speaker 1: a business bank account or credit card yet, do you?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do have the credit card. I've not gone
Speaker 4: the banking route. I'm still I mean, I probably shouldn't
Speaker 4: be saying this out loud, but yeah, maybe you lessnings
Speaker 4: and personal accounts as business accounts right now.
Speaker 1: You know that's cool. It depends on how you. I
Speaker 1: did learn that, you know, when I was trying to
Speaker 1: decide whether to do an LLC or work as a
Speaker 1: sole proprietor. It's very different, like in terms of how
Speaker 1: how you can commingle your personal versus professional expenses and
Speaker 1: things like that. But definite I got the one with
Speaker 1: my CPA and he was like, LLC is the way
Speaker 1: to go. So that's what I did. And yeah, but
Speaker 1: the E I n it took seconds and the oh,
Speaker 1: the business bank account. What I was going to say,
Speaker 1: is I because that's I wanted. I'm gonna get paid soon, hopefully,
Speaker 1: hopefully soon from clients. You know, I'm manifesting it, like
Speaker 1: my husband installing his Tesla charger five months before he
Speaker 1: actually had a Tesla. I'm going to get this. I
Speaker 1: got a bank account through a online bank, and it
Speaker 1: was kind of hard to find a fee free business
Speaker 1: bank account. It seems like a lot of them charge
Speaker 1: They either have a minimum required balance, which I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'm gonna make I'm gonna make money, but
Speaker 1: like I can't, I can't commit right now that I'm
Speaker 1: going to be making a certain amount. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: took a lot of comparing and contrasting. But I definitely
Speaker 1: I was able to get one, and you have to
Speaker 1: have your E I N in order to get one
Speaker 1: set up. And then I got approved for a personal sorry,
Speaker 1: a business credit card, which was a So it's it,
Speaker 1: you can do it. And look, I'm a business who.
Speaker 1: You can't tell me nothing. I'm a business owner, right,
Speaker 1: I don't need a storefront. I'm doing it.
Speaker 4: It's so different than what people thought of, like what
Speaker 4: people I think. We have a much different image in
Speaker 4: our head of what it takes to be a business owner.
Speaker 4: It's it's so it's such an easy process these.
Speaker 1: Days, it really is. So I hope that that motivates
Speaker 1: y'all and inspires you to to look at you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you're like me and you've been doing
Speaker 1: something for a long time, you know, and you realize
Speaker 1: you've got a certain set of skills that companies would
Speaker 1: pay to take advantage of or leverage. You know. That's
Speaker 1: a way of like, let's say I was still doing
Speaker 1: my you know, had a nine to five job, I
Speaker 1: could I could feasibly do this on the side and
Speaker 1: just bring in some extra income. And that's the beginning
Speaker 1: again to true wealth building. So I love that Tiffany
Speaker 1: covered that in her book, Get It with Lenny dot Com.
Speaker 1: Y'all she got the book. I love that she covered
Speaker 1: that in the book because it really is like it's
Speaker 1: the next level from just basic budgeting really focusing on
Speaker 1: your income.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it really is such a great idea. And you know,
Speaker 4: what I've started to discover too, is that the bar
Speaker 4: is actually very low for a lot of what people
Speaker 4: consider good work. I'm very shocked for whatever it's right
Speaker 4: in my mind, it's like people are like, if you're
Speaker 4: going to do something for a company, it's like it
Speaker 4: has to be the best thing that's ever been made.
Speaker 4: But I've I've I'm not gonna again, I'm not going
Speaker 4: to name any companies, but I've I've witnessed some some
Speaker 4: businesses doing work that I'm like, that's all it took
Speaker 4: for you to get paid, And well, I guess I
Speaker 4: need to step it up and do some other things.
Speaker 1: I know well in my career, I've employed people like myself,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, i know exactly how much mediocrity there
Speaker 1: is out there. I'm going to go out there and
Speaker 1: be the best, and it's not going to be that
Speaker 1: hard because it's a lot of mediocreup. Okay, not to
Speaker 1: shade anybody, but it's a really good point. It truly is,
Speaker 1: and I yeah, I'm excited about this new journey. And
Speaker 1: thank you Lachine for your question and for checking out
Speaker 1: our I love that.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Next up, we have a snippet. It was really hard
Speaker 1: to pick a favorite nugget from my conversation with Berna A. Natt,
Speaker 1: but I did think that this particular part of the conversation,
Speaker 1: when we were taking a question from a listener wanting
Speaker 1: to know whether or not they should go for a
Speaker 1: traditional or a wroth for a one k, it really
Speaker 1: unlocked and interesting point that Berna made about this key
Speaker 1: part in our young adulting lives. So let's check in
Speaker 1: and see how Berna tackled this topic. I was recently
Speaker 1: hired at a university, and I'm trying to determine if
Speaker 1: it's better for my future self to have money taken
Speaker 1: out of my paycheck and put into my four to
Speaker 1: one k pre tax or after tax. Wouldn't I have
Speaker 1: a 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
Speaker 1: so and I this is a specific question that I
Speaker 1: definitely think you know it's worth talking to a fee
Speaker 1: only financial planner about because it's never just about your
Speaker 1: your four to one K or in your case, you
Speaker 1: probably have an an educator account which is like a
Speaker 1: four or three B but still similar, so you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't get more personalized advice than this. But just to
Speaker 1: break it down, you know, when you contribute to a
Speaker 1: traditional four 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.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're earning a lower income today than you
Speaker 1: plan to be earning later when you get to retirement age.
Speaker 1: You could be saving money by paying your lower tax
Speaker 1: rate now than when you you know, start withdrawing from
Speaker 1: your funds later. Another benefit that I think is overlooked
Speaker 1: what the ROTH is that you can actually withdraw your
Speaker 1: contributions so it's not actually as tied up as a
Speaker 1: traditional retirement account, where like if you take an early
Speaker 1: withdrawal and it's just to you know, pay for something
Speaker 1: or to pay off some debt, it can be tax
Speaker 1: penalties that you have to pay and then income tax
Speaker 1: on top of that on what you withdraw with a ROTH.
Speaker 1: Like let's say you put in five thousand dollars over
Speaker 1: a couple of years you want to and you've gained
Speaker 1: you know, two thousand dollars on that five case, you've
Speaker 1: got seven k in there right now. You could arguably
Speaker 1: go in there and withdraw some of that principal amount,
Speaker 1: that five thousand that you put in and pocket that
Speaker 1: without the penalties of a tradition four oh one k.
Speaker 1: But now that we got all that like jargonique goodness, mum,
Speaker 1: list out of the way, Burna talk to me about.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like a common This is like
Speaker 1: a common you know, one of the first adulting type
Speaker 1: decisions that happened when you get a new job. For me,
Speaker 1: I was so like ignorant about all this mess. I
Speaker 1: had a four oh one K match at my first job.
Speaker 1: I was there for fifteen months, never opened, never put
Speaker 1: a dime in it, left all the money on the table.
Speaker 1: To be fair, I had no dimes to put in there.
Speaker 1: But sure, what was what was it like for you
Speaker 1: when you started to you know, you went from freelancing
Speaker 1: to like, oh benefits, like a four toh one K.
Speaker 1: What was that like for you? And how did you decide?
Speaker 6: Yes, actually trying to figure out what in the GD
Speaker 6: hell as a four oh one K was one of
Speaker 6: my first financial kind of Google entries.
Speaker 2: Ever, when I, you know, like you said, we go.
Speaker 6: Through HR and orientation, they're like, here's your four oh
Speaker 6: one K before you could even ask, like why is
Speaker 6: it even named?
Speaker 2: Before one?
Speaker 6: And they're like, come onto the next and the they're like,
Speaker 6: we can't give you advice or HR or not a
Speaker 6: financial so you get very little answers in the first place.
Speaker 2: It was amazing to find.
Speaker 6: Out through Googles, not the HR representatives, which typically they
Speaker 6: should be.
Speaker 2: More helpful, but a lot of the times they are not.
Speaker 6: It was amazing to find out that for a lot
Speaker 6: of young people, especially in your very first jobs, your
Speaker 6: four oh one K is like the first time you're
Speaker 6: actually your money is getting invested, often invested for you,
Speaker 6: and you have no idea. Like it was many months
Speaker 6: into my job, like you said, Mandy, when I realized
Speaker 6: that money was being taken out for my four oh
Speaker 6: one K for my paychecks and things were happening to it.
Speaker 6: I guess I had like blacked out and signed papers
Speaker 6: when I enduring orientation, agreeing to something, and I didn't
Speaker 6: understand it until many months afterwards, and like couldn't actually
Speaker 6: change things. So it was amazing to find out that
Speaker 6: first of all, money won money was already being taken
Speaker 6: out of my paycheck, what without my maybe like kind
Speaker 6: of unconsensually, without my understanding of how it happened. Two,
Speaker 6: I learned about what you just said for one K matching.
Speaker 6: My company was a company that does that. They did
Speaker 6: four o one K matching, which meant when I put
Speaker 6: certain amount of money into my four oh one K,
Speaker 6: my company was like, cool, me too, Simon says, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna do the same thing up into a certain degree.
Speaker 6: We love to say as financial you know, mouth holes,
Speaker 6: that's free money. That's money on the table, right, I
Speaker 6: give money, and you're I move, you move like Ludacris.
Speaker 6: I move the money. And then the company says me too,
Speaker 6: unmoved the money. So that was amazing to find out.
Speaker 6: And then you get into the okay, so what's the
Speaker 6: difference between a four O one K and ira? You
Speaker 6: learn about all the things that men you just said about,
Speaker 6: like the tax differences. That's around when even if, like
Speaker 6: if you had held on to this point of like
Speaker 6: trying to learn, that's around when people's brains.
Speaker 2: Start to tune out and it starts to the.
Speaker 6: Butterfly out the window, gonna go get lunch. But they
Speaker 6: are really important differences when you're kind of looking at things.
Speaker 6: But I think the most important thing is whichever path
Speaker 6: you choose. Sit yourself or an HR representative or if
Speaker 6: an Encial advisor down until you and like ask all
Speaker 6: the questions until you fully understand.
Speaker 2: The differences between the two. Don't go blindly into it
Speaker 2: like me and be like it looks like the guy
Speaker 2: to my left, just check the box.
Speaker 6: And and so it makes it that like I literally
Speaker 6: left money on the table for the first year. I
Speaker 6: left free money out of my own damn retirement account
Speaker 6: for the first year because I was just blindly following.
Speaker 6: There's so much pressure in the process. Don't be afraid
Speaker 6: to sit down and like, ask all the damn questions,
Speaker 6: google all every single phrase, every single thing that you
Speaker 6: can so that you understand both ways. And like Mandy
Speaker 6: was saying, it's not like there's a major, giant, like
Speaker 6: big mistake difference between the two. Honestly, I don't think
Speaker 6: there really is. It's especially when it's a first sort
Speaker 6: of investing foray, but understand the crap out of it.
Speaker 6: You really you deserve to understand the crap out of
Speaker 6: everything happening to every dollar.
Speaker 2: And it's tiring.
Speaker 6: But until a retirement expert comes in and starts doing
Speaker 6: a dance.
Speaker 2: At every like orientation, this is how we got to
Speaker 2: do it, it'll be me it.
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 like the incentives that keep them there.
Speaker 3: I don't know why companies.
Speaker 1: I mean literally, at previous job, when one of the
Speaker 1: benefits was RSUs restricted stock units literally stock in the company.
Speaker 1: And I had a staff of young people who had
Speaker 1: never so much as heard of an RSU before, and
Speaker 1: I'd have to do their performance reviews and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get you know, five thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of RSUs and they would have these blank stares and
Speaker 1: finally I was like, do you know what this is?
Speaker 3: No, or they would say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh it's like the thing, you know, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: here's what it is, and then their eyes would get why.
Speaker 3: They're like, whoa, this is.
Speaker 1: Great, this is great, but you don't 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 I was.
Speaker 6: Going to say, they're lucky to have an employer that's like,
Speaker 6: let me tell you exactly what it is, because I
Speaker 6: remember learning about RSUs in my former job too and
Speaker 6: being like, this is a huge tech company with so
Speaker 6: many resources. I can't believe I have to google this
Speaker 6: shes on my own to find out that I'm.
Speaker 2: Being given equity in the company. But the equity works
Speaker 2: like this it's got all these rules.
Speaker 6: It's like, bless you and every other employer that actually
Speaker 6: looks out for the young people like that.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful.
Speaker 1: That's where you're saying, you know, how, what is it?
Speaker 3: What is Hella?
Speaker 1: The personal finance world is Hella mal hellapale, Hella stale
Speaker 1: hell Stale.
Speaker 2: Yes, love it.
Speaker 3: That is true of businesses too.
Speaker 1: It's really the structure is built for I think people
Speaker 1: who don't need to have a sit down and talk
Speaker 1: about RSUs because their uncle or their father or their mother,
Speaker 1: you know, their mentor tells them those types of things.
Speaker 1: But a lot of folks, especially brown and black black
Speaker 1: people women, you know, we don't go into the corporate
Speaker 1: world with those extra benefits and those you know, advisors
Speaker 1: and little evil parrots on our shoulders to tell us
Speaker 1: these types of things that we have to seek it
Speaker 1: out for ourselves, and companies need to do the extra
Speaker 1: work to do all that. But now I'm on my
Speaker 1: soapbox now about one of my favorite subjects, which is
Speaker 1: how businesses fail their employees.
Speaker 2: I love it, but subscribe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I.
Speaker 1: Do want to say thank you to this question and
Speaker 1: just to take it home. The only bad decision here
Speaker 1: is to not invest, to not save for retirement. That's
Speaker 1: the only bad decision you can make. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: to your point burnet about getting knowledge for me, the
Speaker 1: best thing I did at twenty four was just start
Speaker 1: saving before I even knew everything I thought I needed
Speaker 1: to know. I just did the easiest option, you know,
Speaker 1: check the box for automatic withdrawals into a target date fund.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, cool, you're cute. I'll come
Speaker 1: back to you when I'm ready to dive in more
Speaker 1: and do more things. And that was the smartest decision
Speaker 1: I ever made, putting me on my path to a
Speaker 1: tenfold increase in my net worth over the past you know, decades.
Speaker 1: And I yeah, And I just don't want people to
Speaker 1: hold themselves back because they don't think that they know enough.
Speaker 1: There are some small steps you can take today that
Speaker 1: will put you on the right path, and you'll, you know,
Speaker 1: you'll accrue that knowledge over time. Just don't wait until
Speaker 1: you're you know you can recite, and don't wait until
Speaker 1: you have to stop googling the different terms.
Speaker 3: I still google sometimes.
Speaker 2: Me too, all the time. It's fine.
Speaker 6: I mean, we aren't like raised with these pockets of
Speaker 6: knowledge in our heads, and so we have to keep relearning,
Speaker 6: we have to keep shoving them mentor heads, because it
Speaker 6: doesn't come naturally to so many of us. And I
Speaker 6: love to also tell young folks like you have something
Speaker 6: that every older Hella male Pialstale investor wishes they had,
Speaker 6: and that's time. It's time you have that frickin in
Speaker 6: bags all all around you. And that's the most important
Speaker 6: thing for retirement investing specifically.
Speaker 2: So just get her done.
Speaker 6: Just get her done in any which way, and confuse
Speaker 6: yourself with the terms once there's already money in the pot.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: Okay, for those of y'all who've been following Brown Ambition
Speaker 1: even from the beginning, but even if you tuned in
Speaker 1: last week for the first time, I guarantee you at
Speaker 1: some point we mentioned either husby my husband Enrique or
Speaker 1: Superman Tiffany's husband Durell. Now, when we first started the show,
Speaker 1: neither one of us was actually married yet, and these
Speaker 1: guys have been through it all right. We love to
Speaker 1: talk about how Superman constantly opens the door when Tiffany's recording,
Speaker 1: or how my husband decided it would be really neat
Speaker 1: to spend one thousand dollars to get in line for
Speaker 1: a tesla when he and I just started dating and
Speaker 1: saving for our wedding. We give these guys a lot
Speaker 1: of grief. But during my conversation with Jamila Suffront from
Speaker 1: Journey to Launch, she and I had a really wonderful
Speaker 1: sort of reflection on the importance that the partner that
Speaker 1: you choose in life can have when it comes to
Speaker 1: your own wealth building and your own career journey. So
Speaker 1: I want to take a moment to replay this segment
Speaker 1: from my conversation with Jamila from Journey to Launch.
Speaker 5: This is so important because he was He looked at
Speaker 5: me like I was crazy, because he is a very
Speaker 5: simple man and he's very easy going. Right So, and
Speaker 5: you know again, when I came to him a few
Speaker 5: years ago and I'm telling him about all these stories
Speaker 5: on podcasts I'm hearing people retiring and quitting their jobs,
Speaker 5: He's just like, really, because I don't want what are
Speaker 5: we going to do?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: What are you talking about? And it really took some
Speaker 5: conversations to get him to kind of see. And one
Speaker 5: of the things I always say with couples is like,
Speaker 5: don't like I had to show him one the numbers,
Speaker 5: the numbers for him, even for me, like I had
Speaker 5: to believe the numbers, meaning I had to map out,
Speaker 5: really is this possible? Will I be able to one
Speaker 5: day quit my job early? How much money can we
Speaker 5: save and invest if we aggressively do this, if we
Speaker 5: cut back, if we become more optimized in our finances,
Speaker 5: how much money can we have? So I literally when
Speaker 5: I came home and told him the first time, he
Speaker 5: looked at me like, what are you talking about? And
Speaker 5: then over time what I did was I didn't push
Speaker 5: him to this is really important. Just because you come
Speaker 5: up with the realization or have an epiphany doesn't mean
Speaker 5: like your partner will they have they have They're on
Speaker 5: a whole another timeline. So I respected that, but also
Speaker 5: started to show him like the numbers, like I created
Speaker 5: this spreadsheet, and it showed like if we do this,
Speaker 5: like first of all, step back from the spreadsheet, what
Speaker 5: does a life look like now that we enjoy and
Speaker 5: what does the life look like now in like twenty years,
Speaker 5: right when the kids are this age and like at
Speaker 5: the house and we can travel, and how can we
Speaker 5: balance that now? So we started with the dream of
Speaker 5: our lives, what they are now and what we want
Speaker 5: them to be. And then we like did numbers around it,
Speaker 5: and I showed him, well, if we do this, make
Speaker 5: these changes in our finances, save and invest this much
Speaker 5: over time, we can have you know, over a million
Speaker 5: dollars in twenty years, and we can do all these things.
Speaker 5: And that started to get him excited because instead of
Speaker 5: me just saying it and talking, he saw the numbers.
Speaker 5: And then the other thing I really was important to
Speaker 5: say was yeah, I want to do this, so I
Speaker 5: quit my job. But also, like you know, I'm the mom.
Speaker 5: I'm I'm the one giving birth and having three kids.
Speaker 5: I also have the crazy commute. See my husband his
Speaker 5: job is maybe like ten minutes away from our house.
Speaker 5: So he also knew the pressure of just like my life,
Speaker 5: and he wanted me to be happy. And so I
Speaker 5: made sure that like, oh, not only like we were
Speaker 5: going to pursue what I wanted, like in terms of
Speaker 5: our career or quitting my job, but what is it
Speaker 5: that you want? So I definitely we made sure that
Speaker 5: include his wants and hopes like into what we were doing.
Speaker 5: You know, I don't really care about having a nice car.
Speaker 5: We used to have nice cars. Quote unquote back in
Speaker 5: the day before kids and getting a little bit more
Speaker 5: optimized with our finances. But I say, look, if I can,
Speaker 5: I want to buy you a car, you know, Like
Speaker 5: it was things like that that got him excited. So
Speaker 5: that way we both were.
Speaker 3: That was my way into baby.
Speaker 1: I said, save for a Tesla, let's plus for a tesla. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's investing for a Tesla.
Speaker 5: It's so important because he is a little bit more
Speaker 5: like fancier I would say, than me, right, like I'm
Speaker 5: good with kind of just like bare minimum, but sometimes fancy.
Speaker 5: He's like, if I could do it fancy all the time,
Speaker 5: I would, So talking about it in that term really
Speaker 5: helped to let him know that this is a team effort.
Speaker 5: It's not just about what Jamila wants. And also like,
Speaker 5: if I'm miserable because I'm working and driving all this time,
Speaker 5: like those whole family is not going to be like happy,
Speaker 5: So let's work to a place that we can get to.
Speaker 5: And so he eventually got on board with that. But
Speaker 5: he's very easy going and laid back. Thank God for
Speaker 5: that in terms of he pretty much trust me. We
Speaker 5: have the open conversations about it, and even when it
Speaker 5: came to quitting my job because that was huge, Like
Speaker 5: my income was more than half of the family's combined income,
Speaker 5: and so if like it would almost be better if
Speaker 5: I was a teacher and then he had his career,
Speaker 5: because then like you know, he can kind of stay
Speaker 5: on his trajectory. But for me to walk away was
Speaker 5: like a big step because what does that look like
Speaker 5: as a family. We have three kids, We have a mortgage, Like,
Speaker 5: so we literally had to save up enough money to
Speaker 5: cover our expenses while journey to launch like started to
Speaker 5: you know, become more stable, and that was scary, but
Speaker 5: we did it together. We had the conversations and it's
Speaker 5: it's working out so far.
Speaker 3: So that's no, that's wonderful.
Speaker 1: I also have always been it's so funny how the
Speaker 1: you know, in no shade to your husband. I always
Speaker 1: talked to my husband. I'm like, dude, you work for
Speaker 1: the government and you have the boogiest taste of like
Speaker 1: where do you come off with this? Like what it's like,
Speaker 1: I must he has like this very specific T shirt brand.
Speaker 1: He gets custom shirts. I'm like, I'm the one shopping
Speaker 1: in the clearance track at H and M.
Speaker 3: But the same as you.
Speaker 1: I I was I was earning probably like two three
Speaker 1: x what he was earning at the at my peak
Speaker 1: earning career in you know, corporate America, so to speak.
Speaker 1: But that's so that's so funny, and it's also you know,
Speaker 1: shouts out to shout out to partners. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't put genders on it, but partners who are willing
Speaker 1: to maybe maybe they have their doubts, but they just
Speaker 1: you know, have those in the shower alone. They they
Speaker 1: support and they you know, have faith in their partners
Speaker 1: to to really bet on themselves and to take their
Speaker 1: career to a different place. That's really wonderful that he's
Speaker 1: been supportive to you, and I I appreciate you talking
Speaker 1: about the whole the values you know, and how you
Speaker 1: as a partner. I've struggled with this too, probably a
Speaker 1: little bit more than it sounds like you did. But
Speaker 1: I was like, it was very hard for me to
Speaker 1: start to share in the values based investing. Like so
Speaker 1: for example, you know, I had no problem spending money
Speaker 1: on values or experiences that I particularly wanted to have,
Speaker 1: but when it came to a you know, if it
Speaker 1: was a car or you know, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: concert or something that you know Enrique really wanted it
Speaker 1: was it was like, hmmm, it's not really worth it,
Speaker 1: and I had to had to learn to share in
Speaker 1: that it was. That was probably my one of the
Speaker 1: more difficult challenges for me financially and like mentally as
Speaker 1: a spouse was bringing them in and being open to
Speaker 1: you know, they're what they value and not not discounting
Speaker 1: it and making that a part of the overall plan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, it's important, just like and
Speaker 5: for me, I think as growing up without really you know,
Speaker 5: I didn't have a father in my life, or I
Speaker 5: had father figures, I didn't really have a close relationship
Speaker 5: with them, and so I was like for me, the
Speaker 5: value based things like the simple even though I say
Speaker 5: he's fancy, like the other things that he's about, which
Speaker 5: is like family, and he's very grounded and supportive. Like
Speaker 5: it's like one of the first signs like I saw
Speaker 5: in him, like when we first started dating years ago,
Speaker 5: that I said, like, out of all the things I
Speaker 5: want in someone, it would be the opposite of what
Speaker 5: I knew my dad to be. And so I think,
Speaker 5: whatever that is. I know some people meet people like
Speaker 5: that and they are not They don't turn out to
Speaker 5: be this way eventually, but that's what he is and
Speaker 5: who he is. And so even as an entrepreneur and now,
Speaker 5: like I know, like having three kids, like he is
Speaker 5: an equal partner in the house and in parenting. I
Speaker 5: still feel like I do a little bit more, but
Speaker 5: I feel like he is as much equal as outside
Speaker 5: of my controlling self he can be in terms of
Speaker 5: how I like things done. And it's been when people say,
Speaker 5: how do you do this? Like how did you manage
Speaker 5: all that stuff when you were working and commuting and
Speaker 5: the kids, and how do you even do it now
Speaker 5: as like a business owner with the kids, It's like, well,
Speaker 5: because I he's an equal partner in this, and that
Speaker 5: has a lot to do with I think how it
Speaker 5: allows me to make money and be happy, and how
Speaker 5: our household lives and how we choose to spend money.
Speaker 5: So I'm proud of the fact that I chose I
Speaker 5: chose him as my husband.
Speaker 1: Isn't Jamila the best? And shout out to her husband
Speaker 1: Woody as well? To close out this walk down memory Lane,
Speaker 1: I chose a very special part of the conversation that
Speaker 1: I have with Janice Torres Rodriguez from the Jochio Dinero podcast.
Speaker 1: Janie is a bad ass, y'all. First of all, I
Speaker 1: love the way that she talks about how she built
Speaker 1: her confidence in a very male dominated world in her
Speaker 1: fields of engineering, and how she flipped all the stereotypes
Speaker 1: on their head, becoming very used to being one of
Speaker 1: the only, if not the only, female in a room.
Speaker 1: And she even talks about how she actually got used
Speaker 1: to being man's plain to the point where it became
Speaker 1: an asset to her that she could actually stomach it.
Speaker 1: So let's round out our walk down memory lane with
Speaker 1: a look back at my conversation with Janie. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: as an engineer and a Latina like, I think that
Speaker 1: the career experience has definitely served me well in the
Speaker 1: sense that I'm so used to being mansplained that now
Speaker 1: when it happens in like the personal finance sphere, which yes,
Speaker 1: it absolutely does.
Speaker 3: It kind of doesn't bother me.
Speaker 7: I'm just like, bitch, like what, like we are the same,
Speaker 7: so I'm not even here to like I don't need
Speaker 7: your explanations, sir, thank you. And because that came so
Speaker 7: much from like my corporate experience, I was usually the
Speaker 7: youngest woman in the room, I was usually the only
Speaker 7: woman of color, and there was a lot of like that,
Speaker 7: just you know that girl, that girl gets like the
Speaker 7: project that nobody else wants to work on and just
Speaker 7: gets talked down to, gets told that I'm aggressive when
Speaker 7: you know the men are quote unquote being assertive blah
Speaker 7: blah blah. So I think from that perspective, like, I'm
Speaker 7: grateful for the fact that it gave me a thick skin,
Speaker 7: because right, I don't take any shit from anybody at
Speaker 7: this point, and I think my career has a lot
Speaker 7: to do with that. But I think I followed my
Speaker 7: father's footsteps when it comes to an engineering background, because
Speaker 7: he is an engineer as well. He works on like
Speaker 7: automating production line for manufacturing companies, and so I always
Speaker 7: like was surrounded by technology and curiosity in science, Like
Speaker 7: that was always the vibe that was in my house.
Speaker 7: I was always wanting to find out what my dad
Speaker 7: was working on. So I think, you know, I saw
Speaker 7: him being financially successful and I wanted to mimic that.
Speaker 7: But then I also realized, like, after a while, I
Speaker 7: just don't care about this. This is not what lights
Speaker 7: me up. Yes, I was making great money, like I
Speaker 7: was twenty five years old, making like seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 7: I started making six figures before I turned thirty. And
Speaker 7: you know, the monetary aspect of it is what kept
Speaker 7: me in the field for so long, because I had
Speaker 7: all these thoughts about, like, well, what the hell else
Speaker 7: am I going to do? It's actually gonna be able
Speaker 7: to pay me this type of money. But at some
Speaker 7: point I just realized, like, I can't go through life
Speaker 7: just living with the excitement of a paycheck because it's
Speaker 7: not it's not worth it to me. I can't wake
Speaker 7: up every day with anxiety about going to work and
Speaker 7: doing something that literally just like drains me. And then
Speaker 7: I don't care about.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting with that for a moment because I want people.
Speaker 1: You don't You guys don't have to do it. There's
Speaker 1: another way. Here's another way. You mentioned therapy earlier. Now,
Speaker 1: I talked to my husband about therapy because I've been
Speaker 1: in therapy ever since I got pregnant a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. I just knew it's well, first of all,
Speaker 1: I know it's really hard to find a therapist that
Speaker 1: you jive with, and I I was looking for therapists
Speaker 1: before you know, better help and talk space and all
Speaker 1: these new apps and stuff. But I whenever I kind
Speaker 1: of bring it up, I can feel the air in
Speaker 1: the room change around. My husband and his family. They're
Speaker 1: Dominican American and you know, first generation in this country,
Speaker 1: and there's just there's a bit of a stigma about it.
Speaker 1: It's very much like not from him, but like from
Speaker 1: some of his extended family. You know, why won't you
Speaker 1: just talk to God about that? And by the way,
Speaker 1: I come from a very uh southern black family in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and it's the same damn thing. It's like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we talked to Jesus when we have problems, we know what.
Speaker 1: So what was that like for you? Was it easy
Speaker 1: for you to turn to therapy in your journey or
Speaker 1: did you have did you have any like internalized stigmas
Speaker 1: against it as well?
Speaker 7: I definitely had internalized stigmas. My husband went to therapy
Speaker 7: before I did, and so I actually followed his example
Speaker 7: because mental health was something that was very common in
Speaker 7: his family like to talk about, and I was the
Speaker 7: complete opposite. So he actually gave me like the courage
Speaker 7: to even pursue this. And you know, at some point
Speaker 7: I wanted to talk about it to my family too,
Speaker 7: And when I first told them, of course, they're just like, girl, like,
Speaker 7: what do you have to complain about, Like you have
Speaker 7: a perfect life, get over it, your anxieties made up,
Speaker 7: blah blah blah. But at some point, you know, you
Speaker 7: kind of have to just brush that stuff aside and realize, like,
Speaker 7: your feelings are your feelings. You don't need somebody else
Speaker 7: to validate them, and if you need help, like, that's
Speaker 7: what it's there for. So whoever approves or doesn't, they
Speaker 7: got to get over that shit because it has nothing
Speaker 7: to do with you.
Speaker 3: I love that your husband.
Speaker 1: I've never heard an anecdote from someone saying my male partner,
Speaker 1: my husband encouraged me to get into therapy. I want
Speaker 1: to hear more stories like that. I think that's amazing. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well we don't have that much time, but I want to.
Speaker 1: So we haven't even gotten to Jokida d Naro. But
Speaker 1: before her, you've lived like twelve lives in the past decade,
Speaker 1: it feels like, but you didn't start with Yokito.
Speaker 3: D Nato while you were working.
Speaker 1: You've launched your food blog right, Delish Delights, which is
Speaker 1: to this day, one of your ten income sources, which
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to Genie about how she has
Speaker 1: ten streams of income, which is like major goals. But
Speaker 1: talk to me about Delish Delights how it is making
Speaker 1: money for you today. And then when did you pivot
Speaker 1: from food blogging to money blogging and money advice?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so the food blog is definitely like a creative
Speaker 7: outlet that I started because of this frustration that I
Speaker 7: had around my career. I had a typical quarter life
Speaker 7: crisis where I'm like, I wake up, my I'm like
Speaker 7: twenty seven years old, What the hell is my life?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 7: Why is this the thing that we all have to do?
Speaker 7: Like why do we just have to go to work
Speaker 7: every day and work till we're sixty five and then
Speaker 7: like go and enjoy life. So I was convinced that
Speaker 7: like maybe I should just quit my job and go
Speaker 7: to culinary school and I'm going to be like, you know,
Speaker 7: Gordon Ramsey or something. But then I realized, okay, wait,
Speaker 7: so I'm gonna take like a massive pay cup because
Speaker 7: we all know the restaurant industry doesn't pay. I'm going
Speaker 7: to get into more student loans debt when I'm still
Speaker 7: paying off like my master's degree. Hold on, maybe this
Speaker 7: is not the route to go. So then I discovered
Speaker 7: the world of online blogging. So I started finding websites
Speaker 7: like skinny Taste dot com and The Pioneer Woman, and
Speaker 7: I realized, oh, this love of cooking that I have
Speaker 7: can actually be something that I can do from home
Speaker 7: and I can create like this website, and maybe I
Speaker 7: can actually monetize this, and so I dove in like
Speaker 7: head first. I created my blok. I started sharing recipes.
Speaker 3: Every day.
Speaker 7: I was like, you know, my husband would come home,
Speaker 7: I'd be like on top of the kitchen table, like
Speaker 7: taking pictures every dish in the you know, kitchen sink,
Speaker 7: all the pots would be used. And then I got
Speaker 7: laid off like six months after I started the blog
Speaker 7: and have this free time to myself to really just pretend,
Speaker 7: like what would it be like if I was a
Speaker 7: self employed person making a living off of a food blog.
Speaker 7: So I took the opportunity to take some courses in
Speaker 7: food blogging, which was just becoming like a thing that
Speaker 7: people were actually teaching you how to do that you
Speaker 7: could actually make money on. And I started implementing what
Speaker 7: I was learning into my journey as a blogger, and
Speaker 7: so here we are, like eight years later. You know,
Speaker 7: I started monetizing the blog maybe two years after I
Speaker 7: started it, because those two years were basically a huge
Speaker 7: learning curve where I was starting to understand, like how
Speaker 7: you actually monetize a brand that you create online. And
Speaker 7: eight years later, the blog is earning anywhere from ten
Speaker 7: to fifteen thousan dollars a month in passive income from
Speaker 7: ads from traffic that is coming to my website. I
Speaker 7: reach about four million visitors a year now with my website.
Speaker 7: Thank y'all so much for rocking with me this past
Speaker 7: month during our summer co host series. I miss Tiffany.
Speaker 1: She will be back next week, so check out our
Speaker 1: episode coming up next week on July. Let me look
Speaker 1: at my calendar, because y'all know, mom brain is a
Speaker 1: real affliction. July fourteenth, we are back with a fresh
Speaker 1: episode with Tiffany. She is going to be back in
Speaker 1: the co host chair. I cannot wait. But again, thank
Speaker 1: you so much to our listeners for rocking with me
Speaker 1: this past month and to our co host Chris Berna,
Speaker 1: Janice Jamila. Thank y'all so so much. From the bottom
Speaker 1: of my heart. For joining me and opening up about
Speaker 1: your financial journeys. They have been inspiring, hilarious, thought provoking.
Speaker 1: I can't wait. Can't wait for you guys to catch
Speaker 1: up and listen to all of them. Check out our
Speaker 1: podcast wherever you get them Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Amazon Podcasts,
Speaker 1: a Lord, Stitcher, tune in wherever you want to get them.
Speaker 1: Check out these episodes, and don't forget to hit us
Speaker 1: up on Instagram. Let us know what you liked about
Speaker 1: an episode. Send us your questions, y'all know we love
Speaker 1: to answer them. We are at Brown Ambition Podcast on Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at the BA podcast or
Speaker 1: send us an email where Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 3: Ah, that was the best I knew I was going
Speaker 3: to love that.
Speaker 1: Hope you guys enjoyed that throwback where we got to
Speaker 1: listen to some of our favorite friends of the show
Speaker 1: from the past summer. It was a really fun trip
Speaker 1: down memory lane. And make sure y'all keep coming back
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday three times a week for
Speaker 1: more Brown Ambition. See y'all next time.
Speaker 3: Bye,