alright guys welcome back another exciting episode we got breaking news for you guys ey o University is on fire and we want to make sure that everybody is included so we have a new promo that we are running 40% of our annual membership to ey o University which includes weekly webinars over 47 past webinar courses that are archived access to our private real estate Facebook group access to the book and movie club and much much more so if you're interested go to WWE yl university comm right now and enter code earners for annual membership 40% off the annual membership let's go [Applause] alright guys welcome back another exciting episode UIL the virtual edition virtual edition yeah so you better you know we get in better yeah sure this is our second virtual episode so you know we all worked out the kinks the first one yeah yeah so now find one yeah you know when there's a will there's a way we're gonna get it done so you know as I said we try to facilitate people and topics that we get requested for and you know this is definitely a topic that we have got requested like a lot of times you know cover like finance a lot of time we talk about like all kinds of high level stuff but it's important for everybody not just regular everyday people everybody is had the fundamentals I used to play sports and they my coaches noise to say like before you do trick shots and before you do you gotta learn the fundamentals yeah so our guest today is the fundamental champion crown the crown Symphony Alicia oh so she's better known as budgeting ista on Instagram and Facebook and all over the internet so a real a real force of nature she's been all over the place to real rather than more in America I believe for Black Enterprise she has something that she's no word on Oh his network no he just got finished talking about that Wall Street Journal New York Times yeah she's she's she's a published author she wrote several books today she has an own Academy she has extensive community or social media and she started in education preschool yeah so yeah so the budget needs to if you follow her Instagram you know she gives all kinds of tips from retirement planning to budgeting to paying off debt to just you know practical tips that financial tips understanding credit understanding credit all kinds of stuff so um yeah you know this is right up our alley is for Alicia so first and foremost thank you thank you for joining us thank you for having me this is dope I listen to y'all remember when Black Enterprise did that article on y'all I was a minute ago a lot that was crazy you know I put it all on my rotations I like listening to the podcast and then I saw you have my brother from another mother ash cast oh yeah yeah yeah that's all God sorry had more to party yeah yeah I want to podcast live podcast force in DC and then he did a regular so shout to Hashcash man he's a he's a good guy Ashoka the Ohio University yeah he's a regular he's our brother yeah he's palms own so Tiffany can we arm should I call you Tiffany or budget Easter which one do you prefer I mean you tell me whatever buy like you love these does you know that's the Brandon all right call you whatever just don't call you bro that's a fact so so alright you have a very interesting back story because I actually watched it on your website and a lot of people that we bring on the podcast from humble beginnings or the financial literacy was not taught to them you like first generation learning about financial literacy but you you was actually interesting for a few different reasons a you were a teacher like Troy you taught young kids preschool I believe but you said your father actually instilled financial literacy and you in early age he wasn't counted in the CEO and so can you talk about that year journey from you know growing up in a household of financial literacy to becoming an educator to now becoming an entrepreneur yeah so yeah you had a right my dad was a CFO and an accountant and he and my mom both immigrated from Nigeria shoutout beaucoup so my dad was like really like kind of like the academic when it came to financial education so like sit down Tiffany let me show you how to budget let me show you like how does he would like do a budget like in his ledger book you know let me show you how to use my calculator with the paper coming out the back and my mom was more like um real life application like oh we go on food shop and we do go see a five girls so you know we have five kids you think it's a way of life Extreme Couponing so I just like we didn't shy away from money talk in the house so it was odd to me when I got older and I was like yeah so it was odd to me when I got older how people were so fearful to talk about money because I didn't grow up with this knee-jerk reaction like don't we don't talk about money here or we don't share the ups and downs like I can't remember one Christmas my dad I think it was like November December here his his job was closing down he was like so for Christmas you know we won't we won't have Christmas in December instead we're gonna push it to the end of January right and I was like I so we put up the tree like January 25th and it was like presents about so there was he was really good and my parents are really good and talking about money in a way that was kid appropriate but not assigning negativity to it so it wasn't like ain't gonna be no Christmas we ain't got it it was like so daddy's job clothes because they had a strike so this is what's happening and then this is the immediate solution so I was kind of like yeah so that was a way of life and when it wasn't until really I got to college and my college roommate shoutout to her I won't say your name girl she was getting debt collectors calling the dorm room and we thought it was hilarious because I mean we kids dumb so they would call and we were like we would pretend different names and we would put on different voices and I thought it was hilarious and I went home telling my dad like yo Socky says has debt collectors calling the room and he was like yo my serious when you go back tell her to say this this this and this and I was like okay and so I did so it turned out that her mom who was a single mom and trying her best had opened up credit cards at her name and then even heard of that before and so it was kind of like the first time that I realized that not that I mean my parents we didn't have a lot of money you can't have a lot of money without kids for the most part so the thought that we had a lot of money but there was a lot of now and so was I didn't realize that that was truly the difference and not that like I said I didn't grow up having a lot but I grew up learning a lot and I took that with me and after college in college I didn't know what I wanted to do so I chose business randomly accept me again I guess I could get a job with that but I really fell in love with teaching on campus to make extra money I started working at the childcare center and I was like oh I like this this is fun I could be wild like to be my crazy self like if you know me I'm like a little on the wild side and I'm like all of my internships were so boring and I'm everything I'm gonna die here in corporate America they not gonna take my soul so I was like okay after graduation I it was like one year away when I realized I didn't want to work in corporate America and so I decided instead I'm gonna be a teacher so I went back and got my certification and in the meantime I said well back then you could do this I don't think you could do it now but you could teach preschool with a college degree you didn't have to be certified I believe now you have to have certification so I said okay it's nine months for certification I'll teach older grades after that but in the meantime I'll teach preschool but I ended up falling in love with that age and I stayed there for ten years and I loved it and I wasn't making much I remember my corporate internship job after graduating and offered me $50,000 a year and my the teaching job offered me 39,000 and that's when I realized the importance of financial education because I was like I could take the 50 and hate my life or I could take the 39 and love my life but not make as much so I took the 39 and I freaked it in a $40,000 I bought a condo I bought my car in cash I had like this little putt-putt 2019 Nissan Altima but it was paid off in cash so I had $40,000 say I bought a condo I had my Master's I was honestly I had money say that was maxing out my retirement account I was doing all the right things um so much so I decided okay it's time for me to start investing for wealth not just retirement so this is back in the day when I used to believe that if you look like you had money you have money so one of my friends I'll call him uh I call him Jacob the thief his name is not Jacob but he's in jail now so Oh J oh yeah laughs oh maybe had a penthouse in New York I mean dressed hailer down I was like yo Jacob you clearly have money teach me how to invest and he was like okay you look like a sucker I mean an investor so he was like you know the best way to invest is other people's money do you have credit cards I was like one but it only had much of a balance cuz my dad we're not the balance a limit my dad had already taught me that you pay off your credit cards every month in full so I had one and so he was like nah yo you got good credit opened up like three of them joy deserve okay opened them up and I had like high limits five thousand ten thousand he said take that money off we go invest with that money gave it to Jacob the damn thief and he was gold and here I was with $35,000 in credit card debt like overnight and I just remember being like wait what what is happening and then I remember I was like nah yo I'm gonna get the boys on Jacob like so I was searching for Jacob and and then the recession hit and all of a sudden in my school where I worked they were like year so new school year it's not happening so you know good luck to you I was like so wait now our old $35,000 and then I had just got my masters so now I also had a 50-plus thousand dollar like master's degree from Seton Hall University that had to pay off I have a mortgage credit card debt for the first time and no job all of a sudden it was like really bad and I went from all of a sudden being Tiffany who was so good with my money - Tiffany who's broke and it was hard to like dig my way out and it took me a while to kind of forgive myself for the mistakes except blamed like I mean it's one thing to take responsibility as another thing to blame yourself so I told myself you have to take responsibility but it's you have to you got to get tired of kicking yourself while you're down girl like okay we get it you ain't Kendall body you know you made a mistake you were in your early 20s these things happen so I leaned on what I knew I knew how to budget I knew what it save I knew how to like the fundamentals that I had learned at home I leaned on that and it was the recession the 2008-2009 recession I moved back home my parents I was 29 going on 30 sleeping in my medium middle school bed like oh this can't be life but it was and from there I started to just like build myself back up and people started asking me like yo cuz they already know me before I used to help my family and friends with their budgets and things like that and I used to volunteer doing so like I would help the parents of my preschoolers with their finances but just like something little like work but I realized that during the recession people needed that assistance and so I'm like friends with and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends and then finally my best friend was like you should you should start charging and I'm like can you do that and my baby sister gave me the name but janista cuz she was being Shady she's no you know the fashionista yeah she said that's not true you know I like it so but it was who's laughing now Lisa so yeah so I started the budget Nissa and it was started off as one-on-ones and then I started partnering with organizations like the United Way Boys and Girls Club and then I started working like you know speaking at colleges and then prudential before I knew it social media started to be less about what you ate for dinner and lunch and more and more people businesses started to come online and so I started to lean in to like using online to grow my business and the budget Easter was booming it actually does it really well I realized that this financial education space does really well during recessions and so yeah it was booming and it really I'm grateful for those hard times because it also humbled me and it taught me what people were really feeling when they were messing up financially because I didn't get that before glad been financially perfect up until like my my mid-20s and once I went through finding on financial hard times when someone tells me I lost my house to foreclosure I'm like I know what that feels like cuz I've been there or like you know I don't have enough money for groceries I'm like I know what that feels like and so I'm glad for those times because it allows me to truly be of service and from a place of empathy not just sympathy not a game first of all a happy teacher appreciation week once a teacher always a teacher I wanna go back to what you said about investing for wealth versus investing for retirement especially with my colleagues in the field of education all they think about is retirement they don't really think about lonesome well how'd you get people in and that mindset especially around you at that time to start well in during the massage everybody wide open everybody because it's like struggle time so everyone's like I need help i need help i need help and they realize that some of the everyone's not broke because of covet a lot of folks know that they struggling because of things for for covin that poverty was really like a magnifying glass on yeah you you know you was already here sis like you you know your bank account was already on low low and so it wasn't hard to get people in the mindset because people were really open like honestly it was just like hey you lose help budgeting I do because if you can't beat your kids you can't pay your bills you're ready to learn you know so that part was honestly easy it's hard it's hard doing great times to get people to get on board because before 2008 um financial crash nobody wanted to hear me talk about budgeting and living simply none of my friends cared but like you know when you lose your job and there's no money in the savings account in the checking account you know people were open so that's that's really what it was it was the times like it was it was like there was like a crack in the matrix and I slipped in hmm it was perfect timing for for what I was bringing to the table it was things I had already said already like even now like our business you know we had the best April ever it was the best month ever ever ever in ten years of business and it's because people are open right now because we're in what looks like to be the start of a recession so let me ask you this um he was making thirty nine thousand dollars a year mm-hm and in two years you said you saved forty thousand yeah and you maxed out your full your retirement plan mm-hmm how is that possible because I yeah how is that even possible well see one of the things I did was it's the before the before so what most people do they graduate college they're like you know I got to stop maybe you're poor and I was like I need a car too but what I'm not gonna do is get the $20,000 car with the car gnome instead I saved I stayed home my first year after graduating college because even though living with Nigerian parents are no joke cause it's still like why are you going is to midnight right so but I was like I'm willing to take the short-term L for the long term w tweeted at the budget II stuff so so that's what I did I stayed home for a year and I remember at the time I I didn't even I wasn't even making the thirty nine thousand I was making I think fourteen dollars an hour but I knew one thing I had pay rent and I didn't have a car at the time but I wanted to save up so I was making I want to say I probably was making like maybe like $2,000 a month or something like that or maybe not even maybe like fourteen or fifteen hundred dollars a month but I was saving about nine hundred dollars a month when I stayed home that first year out of college that's not my state I know everybody doesn't have this opportunity but I'm sharing cuz people would get mad like I can't do that sis you asked me my story I stayed home because I was able and my parents say you don't have to pay rent I used to ride my bike to go teach at the local daycare center it was in Plainfield New Jersey and I was making like I said 14 or $15 an hour making like I think $1,600 a month saved saved that $900 a month and at the end of the year I had like ten thousand eight hundred so with that ten thousand eight hundred I told my dad okay I want to get a car he was like well lesson adult lesson number one do not get a new car it's a waste of money they depreciate it's a losing investment it's not an investment it's a liability means liabilities well y'all know but money out so pocket take you to my guy everybody got a guy I'm take you to my guy he will take you to the auction and so he take me took me to his friend who's a dealer a car dealer and took me to the auction and I was like that one nine and I told you 299 Nissan Altima it was five thousand five hundred my dad said okay that's what you want so upon my 10,900 III I put down I bought it for five thousand five hundred so one now I have no Cardinal but I do have a car too my insurance was super low because when you own the car outright your insurance is new so I remember my insurance being like fifty two dollars a month so if you compare someone else's life they have a car they have insurance but that's costing them say three hundred dollars a month I have a car I have insurance but it's costing me fifty two bucks a month so I was like all right now we cooking with grease now it was like when I was able to get the job teaching right and making thirty nine thousand I still had that car and I was like okay now I'm ready to move out but one thing I knew was yes it's a dope to have my own fly apartment yes but you know what's even better paying low rent so I asked my sister I was 23 and she was 25 I say you ready to blow this joint she said sure mm so we got an apartment together it took me like I was in charge for looking into the apartment cuz she knew I was cheap so it took me like six months of looking everywhere we found this apartment it was actually next one day care center the woman who owned it she was like look y'all look like nice wholesome girls and it's next to my business this daycare center so I don't want no party and no this know that so as a result of that I'm gonna keep the rent low and reasonable it was $1,100 a month it included the utilities because the daycare center and the house that we were renting were connected so the daycare said I'd pay the utilities I was like but you ain't got to worry about us being crazy and so $1,100 a month divided by two is 550 so now my other friend has an apartment $1,200 a month in a car and insurance $300 a month her life is costing her 1,500 I have an apartment 550 a month and I have insurance five of them fifty bucks a month so my life is costing $600 to her 1,500 do you see so I learned that there think you can get the thing that you want is there way to get it at a discount so I was living the same life as the rest of my twenty-something your friends but I was patient waited for a discount like I didn't finance any of the furniture like I was sleeping on the air mattress until I had enough money to save and to get the the like bedroom set that I wanted and even then I knew you know you really can't negotiate at Macy's I was like you know Sylvia let's say my mom taught me when we were kids how to negotiate so I went to the mom and pop shop was like oh that Ashley Furniture real shoes still here you know new merchandise oh you move this on furniture oh my god after three weeks mr. Liu sold it to me for like you know like a 30% discount so I had my couch sad my bed set and I paid for a cash and so I was always really good at doing that saying I want the same things as my counterparts how do I get the same things as my counterparts but at a price that that makes sense so the reason why most people can't afford their life is that they finding us everything they finance their computer they have a blender bill our refrigerator bill and light but every little Gator they want even if you're like oh I don't have a blender bill did you use your credit card to buy that blender with an assist you had a lender bill and so I learned that if I wanted something to wait to save and to get it so I didn't add any additional monthly expenses that's how I was able to save so much because I was living off half my income because everything I had I had paid for in full so I wouldn't even have that many reoccurring on bills that's the key and to be able to save a significant amount of money is to not have reoccurring bills or not to have this many reoccurring bills well you know what I gotta be honest I was a little skeptical because I was thinking to myself like if you make 39,000 after taxes you make it like twenty five thousand but you broke it down and yeah I guess anything is possible there I was I was so waiting for you to tell us that you were on your noodle budget and I was like I hear cuz there's a doodle budget and now you got another way to get it done when I was you know unemployed and and after teaching and lost my job I did drop down and get my noodle on ask me like you know what's the noodle budget is really just what is your if you had to eat ramen noodles mean age you had to live your cheapest least expensive life no bells no whistles what is that budget so first you have to know what your regular budget is maybe it's $3,000 a month that's Fran that's the kids that's Carn or whatever right that's going out that's haircuts and then your noodle budget let's just say it's 2,500 bucks a month because you cut your own hair you don't go out and I don't suggest that people live at their noodle budget unnecessarily that's over sacrificed for what but you should know what it is because if you lose your job instantly you want to turn around and drop down and get your dude along like like why do you still have cable running and they threaten you a foreclosure like turn off the TV this is like most of my women up on me are my dream catchers are women right so it doesn't make sense we don't pay that fast enough you lost your job first people you should be calling are those extra you know those extra bills that you don't need to pay anymore it's not forever you will eventually watch TV again I promise you yeah you know but it's like we don't pivot fast enough I call it the lady in the fur coat so Bergen County I live in in Newark and during the last recession I was in Bergen County I was getting gas and this lady had like this fur coat on and like a Range Rover you could tell that you know this woman had Bank at one point so I'm looking cuz I'm nosey I'm looking at her the amount of money on her gas um like whatever like on the gas tank where it says like how much she owes it was like $25 right and so in Jersey we don't pump our own gas so she gave the do her car he swipes it it's like nah it gives it back to her you know and she gives him another one another one and but it was a height of the recession probably 2009 and what it was crit like clear to me was then this is someone who had money but maybe she had it all wrapped up in investments and that had dropped she had not pivoted she was still living at that Oh like you see how I gave her a whole like back story I don't know a business I told myself I was like oh she clearly had money but she don't had no money no more she's still just stunnin her Range Rover right but everyone does that everyone we do that we all do that like if you're cable still on and you can't afford your rent if you're still buying clothes and you're late on your credit card bill you see like we all are the lady with the fur coat on it's just at the different levels so just key to life were key to a strong financial life it's just living below your means I mean I nobody know nobody wants to do that my dad would say you have to cut your coat according to your size right everybody was squeezed into a small now you no you are media home like like it's not living less of a life it's living within the life that your money provides for you there's nothing wrong with that you can't grow wealth living an outsize life its levels its levels and you got to understand what level yo humbling experience sometimes but it is what it is dream catchers not dream chasers a boy that's a fact theory would say words mean things yeah I just actually wage act accordingly Wow so in the next on the next segment we got we don't go into the meat and potatoes of all of the financial tips that everybody always tools in our in Elysian fall and give us some pregame so in this segment your thought up where we left off for budgeting and budgeting I think it's budgeting is extremely underrated when it comes to financial planning for individuals I always say like if you look at the corporation budgeting is I'm a major thing that they do I can I mean like Apple knows every dollar that comes in and comes out like they pay accountants millions of dollars they have a whole team of accounting to keep track of books and budgeting is like that's everything budgeting is everything but it's like most entrepreneurs and most regular people that just have jobs have no idea of the budget like they don't have any idea of how much money comes in they have no idea of how much money goes out they're just winging it and just you know spending money whenever you know they need to and the money comes in and it just goes to the bank and that's kind of like how most people run not only their business but their life so budgeting budgeting 101 right for somebody that has never budgeted before but the first and foremost why why is budgeting essential and then we're going to like some different hacks that can help people to get better with budget so budgeting is essential because it is a physical picture of what your money is doing right so if you have kids and you're in the other room and your two-year-old is quiet you're like wait what the hell are they break-in because you don't even you're cutting up putting a you know putting the knife enough in the socket whatever you know and so uh it's the same thing with your money like you you have to be on top of your money I would say like your money is like a bad two-year-old like if you leave it to its own devices it's gonna be breaking shade that backing cars right so you want to be on it when it comes to your money and and be present you you are the adult you decide what your money does and so that's what a budget allows you to do and allows you to be the adults of your of your life and so it's it's important you know I don't care how much money you make you can outspend like great wealth there are people who have been millionaires and even billionaires and have been left penniless so I think sometimes people think like well if I had ten million dollars what MC Hammer Toni Braxton right Allen Iverson so many people have outspent their wealth it is more than possible so what kind of all right so what are the different strategies for budgeting right like it's someone okay yeah I realize the budgeting is important I want to do it so how do I go about it is it spreadsheet software like is there formulas that you should use because some people say like the housing should only be like twenty or thirty percent of your total budget so yeah which it what's your philosophy as far as like the 101 the person realized they need to budget now they actually want to start a budget so let's just start super super easy because I mean yes I use this crazy all that stuff but most people are not gonna do that to start it's the difference between I want to lose some weight and so tomorrow you're gonna run you know ten miles you're not gonna rent a mouse you might the first day in a second that you're gonna go back to the couch so I want you to start off walking so for someone who's like I don't budget I never stood to a budget first things first is start with having separate bank accounts right I believe in having a bills account to pay your bills and having a spend account to spend from your bills accounts should not have a debit card attached to it you that's a debit card is a choice I don't think people realize that the bank issues you a debit card but you could be like nah I'm good so my bills account does not have a debit card in my spend account that's both is their checking account at the same Bank has a debit card and then you want at least one savings account not at that Bank so you want at least one sakers account at an online-only bank and so what it looks like is that your money comes in some of it goes into your your your I like to call it my deposit account / you're spending council that's for your money lands some of it goes into your bills account to pay bills and you know how much to go into your bills account by what bills are due and then some of it goes into your savings so in the beginning you're not gonna have the math perfect you might just be like I don't care what 10 dollars goes into your savings when I was at my broker's I was literally transferring two dollars you know just to continue habit of savings you never you never want to get out of the habit of putting something away in your savings account that's important so what I did for my husband for example he's not gonna sit down at spreadsheet that's just not happening he's like what breaks it you know so we do it said now is we budget for him anyway because I like the spreadsheet we budget before his money even gets there I said babe go to HR choose what you gonna tell them hey before you give me my money and some of it goes into his retirement account check some of it goes into his it says his spend account that deposit account where things are deposit is right check like his direct deposit account right some of it goes into our joint Bill's account check some goes into his personal savings check and some goes through our joint savings so he basically his budget is done automatically through HR so it lands and all he has to think about is when it comes to his personal savings whatever you want to do with that natural business as tabatha was saying the vegan vegan chef everybody loves right now - your business right and um they all see all he has to worry about too is his basically his allowance in his deposit account in his spending account so whatever is in his spending account if I see my husband with some new Jay's on back in the day I used to be like oh that's what we doing you want on jor-el's with the bread money right because I know one thing he didn't take it from the bills account he didn't take it from our joint savings so he took it from his personal savings or his spending account that's fine and so like if you don't know how to do anything else if you just have at least those three accounts and have your money automatically split from really four because you want to have a retirement account and have your money split from work then you will be ahead of the game and so for people who want to go a little bit deeper for me you know like I like I said I'd like to have spreadsheet I'd like to know how much we're spending on on groceries how much spending on gas so I keep track of that I just the tool I like to use best is just Excel so I like to keep track of that there but you don't necessarily have to you set aside a you know an allowance for yourself you know typically things are led by Bill so if ideally you want to be setting aside 12 to 15% for your retirement and you probably are saying like I can't afford to lose 12 to 15% of my pay or than 31% and every six months he boosted up start with a half a percent and every six months you boost it up start with something toward retirement and then your bills I like to do bills every two weeks so the money I have transferred to the bills account you ask yourself okay how much are my bills from the 1st to the 15th and how much are my bills from the 15th to the 30th and that's how you know how much to be going into the bills account you know so it might be or you might just have a select number you might say well my bills are around $3,000 a month so every paycheck or every pay period my bi-weekly um or my monthly pay period $1,500 is gonna go into my bills account and having your bills account paid bills automatically for you it's really gonna be like clutch like I I don't pay bills bills paid themselves so it lands on my bills account ended are my bills already no pay my um pay the electric bill pay the water bill pay these bills me automatically and like I said what's left in my spend account is attached to my debit card and I can spend and when that money is done so a mine what's really important to about a budget is is the the savings account I don't want you to save at your regular bank because it makes it easy to transfer we've all been there target right and then like oh man like I really want whatever this thing is this blender this dress's shirt and you look at check-in you know damn well you ain't got no money a check-in but you know who got money down savings even though you're like that was you like passed away you sure can't make that transfer and you're like dang later you're like that's why I'll never go nowhere so I'm always that target to buy toilet tissue and then I leave but $300 worth of stuff if you put your savings in an online-only savings account them then you're gonna have to wait at least 24 to 72 hours for your savings at your online only saving account to transfer back to your checking to your to your spend account and so what that means is it makes your money inconvenient and inconvenient money gets saved so I like this website called magnify money.com to look for an online-only savings account because they grade it so savings accounts from A to F so you're gonna look for an account that's one two you're gonna look for an account that's FDIC in short that's two three you're going to look for an account that's gonna give the highest interest rate cuz your your big bank is not gonna give you much of an interest rate so online only savings accounts don't have this much overhead so they pass that on to you and you earn a higher interest and then form and you're going to look for a bank that has low deposit requirement so that means in order to open up the bank account maybe you have to have to put in $1.00 and also to in order to maintain and get that interest you don't want them to say you have to have ten thousand dollars in the bank account in order for you to earn the interest that they advertise so those are the four components are going to look for in your online safe account so I hate to say like Oh 20 percent here 30 percent there unless you have an irregular income you don't have to live by percentages you you live by amounts so $100 here $300 there $400 here that's what your that's the split that you should be doing regularly every month if your money it fluctuates because you have an irregular income then you would might say you know 40% goes into my bills you know 5% goes into spending but you have to work backwards like how much are your bills unless you started from scratching you're 21 you're just moving out then you can force your bills to fit within that percentage but it's easy people to say oh 17 34 yeah but like so what are your bills actually though your bills might be 70% of your income right now you know so that's so you have to pay your bills and your I'm not worried about the percentage just now like how much do you actually need to pay bills put that in the bills account okay how much ideally do you want to save once those bills are paid I want to save $100 a month we'll make that a bill now that hundred dollars a month is automatically put into that savings account directly from your job and then what's left over like I said it's you're spending money you know you might tell you so I'm gonna give myself $50 every two weeks for spending okay great for whatever reason if there's not enough money then you take care of bills you say I guess I can't save this month and I guess I can't um I don't have spending spending money this month for like you know spending money for things that are like you know like hair nails grooming this and that you know so sometimes you don't have it and that's okay so there are times when I didn't have it but I had to pay bills and even sometimes I didn't have enough for bills and I have to say well I have to pay my noodle budget bills my essential bills Verizon can wait Rison it's not going to shoot you if you don't pay yes will affect your credit score but credit scores are things that you can you can you can increase later I much rather you take care of things that I can make you happy I mean healthy and safe oh I was just thinking about that because one of the things the powerful things you talk about is identifying ifs like we can have anything we want if we just identify ifs in control them so that we can budget right like so if I want to say $400 maybe I don't go to the barber shop twice a week right so he talked about the importance of identifying the ifs and how they can translate to having more money in your budget absolutely therefore questions you should ask yourself before you spend any money do I need it do I love it do I like it do I want it need it love it like it want it need it so your needs come first that's food shelter clothing water the absolute necessities you must have to stay healthy and safe you pay for those first most of us are here to that that's why you're alive then your loves are those things that enhance your life what are things five 10 years from now that still add value even though that thing might not be there all right so if you had Oprah's bank account I always tell people what would you do or do more of so a lot of people say travel maybe they start a business maybe they go back to school maybe philanthropy whatever that is so those are your loves those are things that give you a long-term joy even when that thing is not physically there right and then your likes are short-term joy so you know that's your that's your target run that's your that's that dress that you're like oh this is super cute you know that might be I don't know eating out with friends or eating out on the French might be a love because you might be like you know I'm such a foodie five years remembering that restaurant so there's no judgment you get to decide but likes our short-term joy and wants are just things to get I really try to stay away from just frivolous spending which is what wants are it doesn't mean I never do it but it doesn't make sense to trick up your money and wants when you can have more things from loves and and and your needs and so what I try to do is I try to live in the second half the first half of life my needs and my loves cuz that's an enriched fulfilled life so I'm not really a foodie although my belly would suggest booty but I used to go eat brunch every weekend with my friends and then one day I was like what am I gonna brunch I have not been on vacation in like two years so I stopped going there like it was heavy you so cheap right and I'm like I'm not cheap it's just that like I don't want to spend my money on brunch anymore I don't spend thirty dollars a week in brunch and so I started saving my brunch money that I made it a game every time they asked me to go to brunch I would put I would transfer thirty dollars in my savings account and then within a few months I had enough money I went from my first solo travel trip I went to Albuquerque New Mexico because I had on my bucket list I wanted to ride in a hot-air balloon in Albuquerque New Mexico so hot air balloon capital of the world who knew now you do right it's almost like okay so I'm at my friend called me Tawana she was like hey girl we're gonna have brunch tomorrow but I know you and your cheap behind you ain't going I was like cuz I was like slight flex so I actually made your flex I was like ooh girl I got to get in a hot air balloon the captain said I got my phone New Mexico watch money might drop so now I don't I stopped telling my friends I don't say I don't say no to brunch I'll tell them like I know girl I can't go right now because I'm saying yes to Paris I'm saying yes the Istanbul I'm saying yes to Santorini these are places I've been I'm saying yes to Morocco and so I started to decide for myself what my needs and my loves were so I'm not against spending money I'm against mending money on things that don't matter to you prioritize what your more is like some of us are spending our whole life spending money on someone else's idea of more Tawana is a foodie not me that's her more that's less for me you know let her eat out with another foodie she can come to my house and chill out for free and so that's really how you start to prioritize this to ask yourself look what does more of a life truly mean you know for me I don't want any you know your spending should be reflective of your values and how you want your life to go so you said it all hunting with the online savings that was a good point I tell people all the time like you gotta treat your savings like a bill like how you have your bill your car bill like you can't afford to not pay your car bill you can't afford to not pay your cell phone bill so savings like you said no matter how much it is it should be a line item in a bill I think but I wanted to touch I had a few questions so first when you have mentioned with your husband with HR so I didn't even know that was possible so somebody's paycheck can be split into different bank accounts direct deposit typically up to four so most midsize so like even my company I don't have some huge company but we're able to do that so typically up to four splits and so if you're if you're a single ready to mingle I would say your bills account um a like and and your savings account and your spending account so I would do the three right so but if you are in a relationship where you're like sharing expenses then I would have four I believe that you should have some autonomy over your finances as well as responsibility because you're with someone so that would be a personal savings each person a joint savings a joint bills and and and and then your own spending account so two checking to savings so one of the checking one of the savings is yours and the other checking the other savings is someone else's and well belongs to collectively to the whole all you have to do is just go to HR and it's like a form like the regular Direct Deposit form that you fill out but it's just like you can just add different bank accounts to it yes and tell them this is the amount like what like you know my check is $5,000 you know let's just say a pay period a thousand goes here it goes here it goes here and so now like the other day because my cuz because it's online only savings we don't look at all the time my husband is like yo pay got mad money in my savings I'm like okay you're welcome I never had this much save because he doesn't think about it it's been like the last two or three years that money will just land so my husband at the time maybe this is all man with your boy so you know your boys be like yo yo you can let me hold $30 you let me hell you know maybe such as such as you know such a struggle coming and I'd be like oh tone I leave a like tone right below you know so now this old we would have to be talking back and forth to take money out of our joint pot so now there's none of that cuz one you have your own allowance money you have your own savings you want to give told all your favors how you want to live your life go ahead you know don't touch this joint account long I'll see no tone bill and that so it allows you you know so everyone to feel like you're part of this community where you're all contributing but it allows you to have autonomy like he can do whatever he wants with well not whatever he wants but you know Nemean like with his money he can decide and so I think that works best for um if you're in a significant ship with someone and another thing the last question so Doyle on savings like I said I believe the same thing you said as far as it's good to have it not with the bank like I change I have chase for my business in my personal bank account but I have Capital One my online savings and you know the reason is that it's nice the whole high school to get the money you gotta wait like three days so psychologically it's like out of sight out of mind when you when I log on they chase that I don't see it I don't forget about I was just thinking about just nothing I forgot about I forgot about I don't really even you know I'm saying so what what do you have any top thanks that you're recommending like or like interest rates that we should be taught that I think I think it what my interest rate is I know it's slightly high like you said because online banks don't have the same brick and water expenses as regular traditional banks do so just always good to have online bank for the higher interest rate but are there any ones that in particular right now that's paying higher interest rates than others there was so his being like one of my DS [ __ ] don't pay my bills right no but honestly so the reason why I tell people like I'm currently with Ally Bank al ly right but here's the thing allied bank back in the day they had the best they had the best interest rate they don't anymore they're integrators okay I think that's my check it was like 1.5 percent but there are banks out there there was a credit union when I looked at magnifying money the other day that was given two percent so I definitely say go for the bank that's giving the highest interest rate there's also goldman sachs has a has a bank account called like marcus my goldman sachs you know that's another one so you know i say that there isn't a best bank if the bank is FDIC in short and they're paying you the highest interest rate that's the best Bank like I said I like a lie but I'm only there now because I signed up with them originally but let's believe though with the coins are you don't have to be loyal to your own banking now loyal to you ya know go with whoever you give you them coins you know one of the things you said about having a joint account you know I can attest to I think it's a great idea especially for married couples I heard you preach about preparing to invest right so if you have that joint account what is something that couples could think about investing so this is great so people ask me like here's the steps to prepare attempt that so you don't have to wait to invest for retirement so to be clear when I say retirement is an investment the purpose of retirement is not so you go you're not gonna live on no private island in retirement unless you're living on a private island now retirement so you can maintain your current lifestyle if you set aside twelve to fifteen percent of your income now if your gross income now and that's all you ever do what that will and the ability to do is maintain your current lifestyle so if you don't see palm trees next to you now you Rinku see palm trees when you eighty right so then so if you do that first and foremost because you must set aside for your future self and as your younger self job to look after your future self so that comes first then after you're doing that then you have to have a budget right you have to have some sort of physical plan of what your money is doing this much is going to build this much is going to spending something so that's step two do you have a budget check before people say oh I wanna invest I'm like slow down slow down son you killing them so so that's two do you have a budget great now step number three right do you have savings right so are do you have emergency savings at minimum minimum and during the recession I say to six months during a non recession I say at least three months three months of your noodle budget meaning do you have three months of your essential bill saved because we already talked about if you were to lose your job you're gonna drop down and get your noodle on you're not gonna be living at the same you're not gonna be living at your $3,000 bus you're gonna be living at your $2,500 budget so do you have at least three months of your noodle budget saved that's important because that is going to help you if times get rough and tough you have that great then number four do you have high interest debt meaning how you going to invest when you old visa at eighteen nineteen twenty five thirty percent do you think you're gonna get a return of fifteen thirteen you know a thirty percent no on average the market yields about seven to eight percent a year so what that means is you put your money in the market on average you're going to get back eight cents let's just say but because you have credit card debt you're losing eighteen cents a month a year so you make it eight cents and lose it eighteen cents the best thing you can do is pay off the credit card debt the high interest credit card debt because you're losing more than you're likely to gain in the market so before you start investing you and your boo like get rid of that high interest credit card debt first and foremost so that's four so now you've done all those four things you feeling cute okay you feelin spicy now we can leap into investing for wealth so investing for wealth if you are a couple if you don't know how to do nothing else like you know so most people are like they're not really willing to do like everybody wants to like trade options they don't know that is they wanted to you know they everyone's a buy stock then you brought Delta how's that working out for you right now how's anybody it's doing terrible I can tell you because I had Delta so most people want to do that but truth is most people are not willing to do the work for investing that's okay so this is what I tell people instead you can invest in a mutual fund I prefer target-date funds because it's like super super I'm hand-holding a target made fun is a mutual fund that you pick the target date the date you want to pull out that money so typically most target date funds are the date that you want to pull out that money typically is the date that you want to retire so lose might say 20 50 20 45 20 35 they're usually five years apart so you're gonna pick a mutual fund that's a target date fund right a mutual fund just so you know for those listen I'm sure you know but you never know it's a collection of investments I like mutual funds that tend to be index fund so they follow a particular index like the S&P 500 which is basically like the market so that means you're invested in a mutual fund that's an index fund and it follows the market and your money the reason why I like target date funds is that it rebalances like a true investor knows that they have to shift based upon how life like where they are in life most people don't do that so a target date fund does it for your target date fund says you pick the target date of 2050 it is now 2020 we had 30 years we got time so we the target date fund is gonna be invested more aggressively because you have 30 years the closer you get to 2050 the more conservative automatically your investment is going to be invested because the target date fund is aware up 2050 is coming up so the closer we get if it's 20 49 then you're super you might be invested in in all cash accounts in in bonds super super conservative investments right so you don't do anything else you go might be so fun that that's that that follows an index fund like I said the S&P 500 typically you can you can follow you look for a mutual fund that's that's called a total market fund meaning that your fund mimics a particular market like I said the S&P 500 hundred so when the when the market goes up your money goes up when the market goes down your money goes down but we like we like I mentioned before on average the market yields about 7 to 8% a year so you will you will over the over the next 30 years you're gonna see about 78% game which is great you know even like that's for people who are like I don't want to nothing else like and so when you're looking for a on a target date fund or a mutual fund you're looking for something called the expense ratio and that is the fee that that fund is charging you the percentage of the money that you have invested with that fund and so right now like a vanguard they have one of the lowest expense ratio so the brokerage accounts that have mutual funds and a target date funds and these total market funds are like Vanguard vitality Charles Schwab so you got a Google expense ratio first fidelity expense ratio for Charles Schwab I think like right now it's like the target for a fund for a total market target date fund for Vanguard right now is like point zero six percent which is great right not even point zero zero six percent which is like something ridiculous like a piece of a piece of a piece of piece of a penny so that's great because the average financial advisor is going to charge you one percent of the assets of your of your money that they've invested so the financial advisor is going to charge you 1% Vanguard's going to charge you a piece of a piece of a piece of 1% so you get to keep more of your money these are the biggest hindrance to earning money you know I'm not anti financial advisor but you're spending a lot of money sometimes for them to do automatically what some of these automatic funds can do unless you have other things you financial vices doing for you and there's just investing your money bra sis just put it in a in a target date fund and let the fun automatically balance for you and you can keep most of your money so if you're investing with your significant other what I love is that you can loose like hey Vanguard we want to open up a mutual fund would prefer a target date fund that's invested in the index so you have like I know Vanguard literally has one called your total market follow you have a total market fund okay open it up we're gonna be putting two hundred dollars a month just you can have that transferred automatically from your savings account you can treat your two hundred bucks a month because you already have your three months of savings Treach for your three hundred bucks a month or two hundred bucks a month into that account and let it grow you kind of set in semi forgetting so that's like the easiest possible way to start investing if you do that you will be better off then ninety nine for nine point most people and just keep it really simple I think investing should be really simple and like you really are interested in learning how to buy individual stocks but you have to when it comes to investing like in the traditional sense and like the market keep it simple and then you can also invest by starting a business you can invest by writing a book there's other ways to invest you can invest buy real estate like I do all those things I i have residual investments where i have books that pay me a few thousand dollars a month from books I've written years ago I have a business that you know that's an investment as well I put money into that business and it yields money back I also have real estate you know even in your primary your primary residence you have to think about that as an investment and you have to understand that the key with investing is you should make money on the by not necessarily the sell so meaning this is then if you always make sure you make money on the buy you never lose but it's time to sell so bought this house I'm living in now cash slight flex but it was a foreclosure so it was worth at the time maybe 320 because it was kind of like a little bit beat up and we bought it for 180 so we made money on a bot even if nothing else we didn't fix it up we like you know we time ran out of money to fix it up we bought it for 180 a house that's worth 320 so we made money on the buy no matter what so even now they're talking about the market is gonna drop about it it would have to drop a whole hell of a lot for a house worth 320 to drop down to 180 you know got out of the one built in exactly so we should then we then we renovated the place so now I just got the house appraised we've renovated it the house is now worth um 390 so it's like even if we never renovated who's gonna win so same thing with socks you know that like you you make money on the by you know not necessarily like you don't want to have to wait for the sell but and I'm not people do that they want to jump into the market right now because you know you're your neighbor it's like oh I bought um oh you're not even big on me oh you don't know what they're talking about don't jump in and lose your money like if you're not going to do the research you're gonna be broke get you an index fund you know invest in things that you're willing to do the research on or invest and semi-automated super simple investments and you'll be fine you don't have to have the your investments that honestly largely be boring you don't have to happen stocke so all right so the last segment we're gonna bring it home with a few more tips on personal finance all right so okay so two questions that I had that's related to personal finance not speak once the first one is credit cards right so a lot of people struggling with credit card debt and I've heard different strategies on how to pay your credit card yeah I think one strategies like the avalanche strategy like so we have one strategy you pay off the smaller amount o the larger amount first I think now other strategies you pay off the highest interest know first so like if you have five cards and one is twenty percent one is fifteen you pay up to twenty percent first where the other one is that you have five cards and whatever the highest amount is you focus the majority of your resources to that knock that out the way anything so do you have a set strategy for people that you personally recommend or like what's the best way that somebody can can go about paying off credit card debt so you know the both really good way so I personally like the the snowball method first first and foremost oh I like a mix of snowball slash avalanche so the Avalanche method is the method where you pay off the more expensive debt first and that is the debt that has the highest interest rate so that's the fee that they're charging you for the money that you owe them right so the reason why you pay that off first is because logically if I can give it at that that first that that is costing me the most amount of money I'm paying 20 percent 20 cents on every dollar for that day but the problem is is that what if that debt that you're owing is thirty thousand dollars and you make thirty thousand dollars a year you'll be paying that forever so it doesn't really feel good it's like the equivalent of saying you're gonna benchpress a hundred pounds tomorrow you're just starting out so I like to start off with this snowball method which is that you pay the debt with the lowest balance first right and so you start off so you can have early success and so let's just say you know you have a credit card that where the balance is a hundred dollars you pay off that hundred dollars woohoo now you take that whole payment I used to pay to that debt and you roll it over to the next lowest debt on your list so as you start to do that then once you started get a little momentum then you can start looking at okay now which debts are really now you can start to mix in avalanche so which debts are actually costing me the most amount of money now that I've freed up cash by paying off these lower debts and so I like a mix of the two of avalanche and snowball method but I say start off with snowball and then you can start to infuse avalanche so basically start off paying off the debt with a with the lowest balances first and then once you have excess money because you don't have those those smaller balances you don't have those credit cards to throw money at then you can start using this excess money to pay off debts with the highest interest rate you said in times right now like a lot of people on financial hardships I've heard you say that one of the things you could do is reduce your payments to debt so if you were paying $200 a month to your best buy card and the minimum payment was $50 maybe not paying 70 is a key you want to talk about that a little bit if you don't have at least three months of your noodle budget saved so three months of essential essential expenses saved I mean I would even pay $70 so my best bobby-pin that's why the 50 because during recessionary times the time zone of recession cash is queen right because if you were to lose your job if you were to get sick if your job would have closed down what you gonna do you're going to be cast debt-free and no savings equals dead because so many people are still so proud Alti I paid off my credit card debt how much savings you got nothing well then you got a girl no I'm desperate no you're not let your car break down what you gonna do sis you want to look at your savings account which is empty and you're gonna look back at that credit card and swipe that card and that credit card is now going to charge you a fee for using that card for an emergency when you could have used money for free and from your savings account so I like debt free does Iko well I mean especially the black community potential does this did this study called like the black American experience or something like that about money and they found that they interviewed like a few thousand black folks and asked like what's your number one goal and our goal as a community is to get debt-free and the larger population their goal is to grow wealth because somehow along the way we have confused debt freedom with wealth it's not same you know who else is that free I've got a four-year-old nephew Roman Roman don't have no debt Roman is broke right won't we got no money so debt free is not the same thing as wealth and we put so much energy into get in debt free that doesn't mean anything right I rather you focus like you know make debt something that's like this behind-the-scenes gold deck freedom and you know you pay it like you're supposed to but really focus your energy on growing wealth now give me an example so I had told you had that that stood alone seeing her on University fifty thousand dollars plus right or like fifty two thousand something like that I was the forbearance Queen I was like not this year no no deferment nope right so I did that for years and then maybe like three or four years maybe four years into the budget needs to I could afford to make a payment on the day and I started to and then I realized that maybe I was paying like I don't know a few hundred bucks a month and I was like huh I canna correctly I had aggressively paid off that thirty five thousand dollar credit card debt scam and I said I can continue to aggressively pay off the student loan debt but I noticed that the budget Easter is needing money for growth I need to hire a designer I need to hire a what so I could take this extra money and put it toward the business instead so I told like my student loan you want back on forbearance and deferment I'm gonna have to see you later sis and I put the money toward my business instead and in two years I was able to write a full check of fifty two thousand dollars to my credit card my to my student loan debt because I had grown my businesses to seven figures so if I had to use that money to pay off the student loan debt then then I would have been student loan debt free and maybe a business that was making some you know low to mid six figures which is cool but now in doing that not only did I have enough money to pay off my student loan debt I didn't focus on that I finally got to it but but I focused on well I was able to buy this house for one hundred eighty thousand dollars cash I was able to renovate this house another six figure of renovation I was able to pay off my parents house $120,000 you said I mean so focusing on wealth allowed me to have all the things including debt freedom focusing on just getting that free just gets you that moment four years old with no debt but no money nice is true what you said and a lot of talking especially in our community we equate yet it's only like that that we think about so like cars or credit cards and stuff like that so that's why such a push and Dennis like you know all kinds of people that preach you know that free community and all that stuff so it's like most people have any slide of all kinds of religious nothing against the religious community but you know it's all kinds of religious quotes that people throw in it and it's kind of like half truths because this good debt in it's bad day and if you're not fully educated you you think that all that is bad where I mean I've told the story several times couple different on the podcast with I've done several different times without taking money from my credit card interest-free for like twelve eighteen months and I invested it and it's like I if you give me twenty thousand dollars free for 18 months via balance transfer but people don't even know you can put the balance transfer into your actual bank account I give me twenty thousand I'll give it back to you eighteen months let me flip this by the time I flip it doubled it and I just got to pay you back the twenty thousand nine I borrow so I just use that as an example that there's this there's good debt and it's bad debt and especially when you're in business I mean it's kind of really almost impossible to run a business without any debt at some point if you plan on really scaling like even major corporations they have debt for the most part like very few companies have no debt at all you have been responsible and managed to debt properly but it's a leverage so leverage tool so like we're unfortunate in that we cuz wasn't nobody linen lending my black behind money right right we're just not happening and Wells Fargo was like girl get out so I had to build a bunch of kneestr from the ground up you know with like so we had to dimension Easton became the bank so as the budget he started to do well then it was enabled me to branch out to my other companies and the budget needs to became the bank lending to those other companies other companies may money pay the budget needs to back and now one of my companies is um we had a first second figure month right and so and then we have reoccurring of just under seven figure so by next month will be an eight-figure your company with no debt so do we use credit cards to pay for things like marketing but we pay them off in full every month we have our AMEX card that we use largely so here we are 8 figure your company and and no no long-term debt you know so it's I just say all that that like it's possible to do the things that you want I mean and still I live fairly simply like if you see me out here in these streets you would never know right because I you know because it was like do I elevate my lifestyle right now the do are pour back into my business so I had already told my financial planner I believe that you know I have a financial planner because I was at a certain point where I knew I know how to make money and how to save money I know what a budget money but I really wanted to learn how to grow my money to the next level so I hired a financial planner for myself and my husband and and so I forgot the damn point of my story I think one of the beautiful things about you and ourselves is like 2010 we would just like I was fresh out of college teaching and one of the things I saw in education is that financial literacy wasn't being taught in school and so I reached for my best friend I'm like yo you know you you're doing finance why don't we try to teach finance to kids and it seems like around the same time you're doing this a similar thing well you want to talk about the the law eight one four four or as we know it as the world should know what the budget needs to look yes I don't friend Fame you know you have to just understand that your deposits you what you deposit has seeds you get to reap later right you could reap that harvest so I was teaching financial education at the United Way it was a young woman there and it was Angela V McKnight at the time she was working for like IBM or something but she did so much for her community in Jersey City some was like yo you should be an assembly woman because you do so much you have this nonprofit your dope so she ran is she won so she hit me up and was like hey Tiffany you know I took your class at the United Way it was a six-week course I want to do something for education for the City of Norfolk not just the city but for the state of New Jersey and I told her well Jersey is ahead of the curve and that we had already had a law in place for high school right and but I told her I believe because I said teach preschool that kids as low as three and four to be getting financial education age-appropriate financial education hmm so she and I met up at the at the Starbucks downtown Newark and we started to write write the bill it was like if you ever like you know Schoolhouse Rock I'm just a bill it was like like a civics class of like all the steps that had to go to they become a law first you sit it down you kind of write out what you're thinking then her team has to do research to see what's already out there maybe there's outstanding bills there wasn't I told her that it should be elementary and middle school so he wrote up a bill we met with these different committees because you have to have people on board and so we met up with competitive education committee they said we loved it and she was like I need you to come because the teachers are kind of pushing back good you know as a teacher there's always some new initiative you're like what now yeah we already have Matt time Engle something like what now you know they don't like change they don't like anything added to their schedules yes and so I say I agree you're right because a teacher I was like you know what you like Susan I'm not doing it and so what I did was I went back and we edited the bill to say that it wouldn't you it was mandatory to have financial education integrated into the school day so meaning you could be teaching science and talking about money so like how much would it cost to clean up the park you could be teaching colors and or you could be teaching like art and maybe you're making a savings box so integration versus like stop it's money time so the teachers like I like that you know talk about with the committee then it has to go to like the Senate then it has to go to or has go to the House and the Senate and they voted on it it went all the way up to governor Christie's desk and it was a year that he was like on his way out and he promised he was gonna sign it and he didn't and in the state of New Jersey if a governor doesn't sign a law it's vetoed by just not signing there's certain states where if a governor doesn't sign a law on the way out it's automatically integrated in but not in New Jersey so he worked for two years for it to get to his desk only for him after signing I was like what so but it was it was fine because then we have to go back to the beginning meaning like we had to rewrite the bill and now all of a sudden they want to drop off the elementary school part who like fine we're not fighting we'll just have middle school so we went through the same committee House Senate got the governor mercy Murphy says and this is why you know the right thing that happens at the right time because if we would have had it signed under what's-his-face you know Christie it wouldn't we wouldn't have had all the fanfare governor Murphy was like not only do I love it I super love it so in the state of New Jersey we have our very first black lieutenant governor which is basically governor second in command and he was like I'm not gonna be there but I would love for this to have a signing day not every log is a signing day so not only do we have a signing day with our black lieutenant governor you know she was a lieutenant Oliver signing we got to choose the school and Angela chose the Barack Obama school because you know we keep it all the way black here it is lieutenant governor black woman Angela assembly woman who made this law happen a black woman bündchen east up on stage black woman it was such in a black black black affair and all the kids in the audience my mama came honestly was doping to see her sign and she was like this bill is now a law it was like amazing yeah it wasn't it too you know at the time some things don't soak in and you're like okay that's good go about your business but one of my best friends was around the corner and she'd has daughter Olivia who is eight and so they come over all the time and then Olivia was like auntie Tiffany can you help me my homework I said sure so I'm looking at this homework it's like about money and I'm like you know about money in school she said yeah we started learning about money in school and it was like oh snap there goes exactly it hit me like Olivia's learning about money because something that her aunt Tiffany did so that was when it was like a full circle moment so yeah and that's gonna live off for generations like that impact that you just did and it's true like it could be it doesn't have to just be in mathematics like there's there is finance and everything it could be in the literature in here they could be in social studies it can be in science like you said like a lot of we could talk about going out of space how much Rock is and how much Tesla puts into SpaceX puts in to displace exploration it's all around us so I'm happy that you did that and I guess there's two guys we might have to work on something new your elementary school because honestly I want that when you step foot in public school in New Jersey from the very beginning kindergarten all the way up to your senior in high school you're getting financial education it's just gonna set you apart for when you when you you know go off into adulthood like if you had 12 years of financial education you're not the same kid as a kid that did absolutely survive so speaking on education you have you have your own educational platform can you talk about that yeah so I have an online school called the live richer Academy it's dope I created I wanted to create a safe space for women so the budget Easton is is it just what they we have a handful of guys in there I just don't know act up what you know my sausage my community so Prudential has a study like that same black and money study where they found that women just in general I'd only think it was like a black study but they found that women in general make up two-seven-zero 70% of the financial choices in the household so even if she's a stay-at-home mom who's buying the groceries who buying the kids the kids food like you know if you you're married right so you you hate a car and like I say it's a family car you you love the car she hate the car yeah I get in that car now she let a car and y'all get in that car right and so because women have a lot of influence on how even if they're not making the money on how money is spent right so I realized that if I wanted help my community the best way to do is to women and I am a woman so it's easier for women to listen and to flock to me so I started and I started the budget east of ten years ago I started kind of like our crew like I always say like we're the bee hive of personal finance and we call ourselves dream catchers because words mean things and we're like over nine hundred women women deep in over 100 different countries like we are in formation and so I have Facebook group it's like five hundred thousand women and they're 24 hours a day 80% of the group is engaged that we just had each other like well did anybody know how to do a budget does anybody know anything about credit how much sister the baby shoots cost you could ask anything in that group it's a safe space and so I was teaching the basics and then as I was growing so I'm a baby millionaire you know no fun would be like yo I still be out here in these streets not like the streets my friend like no we stay you know target close so what you could get done with the Academy what I realized is that it you cannot budget your way to wealth right so you can budget you could say that's great but at some point you have to elevate to the next level and I realized that I had got to this level because of my especially my dad and I realized that I need instruction I need mentorship I need experts and so I started myself pulling people from the financial community to teach me how to do certain things you know like how do you invest in real estate how do you invest like what's the best retirement got like all these things that I didn't know ten years ago I was pulling them in and I started to raise my own net worth from negative three hundred thousand when I lost the house and I had the credit card debt and the student loans to now like just over a million dollars so you know like 1.1 1.2 right my net worth and so and I'm completely debt free like I don't owe nothing on this house and I we own two houses to cars we don't know we don't have any credit card debt we're for real debt-free you know and so I thought to myself as I was growing and I'm teaching the women the basics you know a lot of the women were outgrowing the basics so the basics I give away for free so like the Facebook group dreamcatchers lives richer with the budget and he's step 3 all of my challenge is free you know most of the information free but I thought to myself as I'm elevating and growing I want to bring along my girls and so and they were asking me for more but I'm like well that's not really my expertise so I started to reach out to the people that helped me to elevate and said can you teach a class and I started to put these classes together and I created the limit richer academy where it's like 50 or 60 different experts ash cash our boy teaches so every talks are the best of the best of the best and we have classes and it's awesome and we have 31,000 students inside the literature Academy maybe getting their life buying houses real estate starting businesses getting press placing a kid it's like it's amazing every day in our we have a private forum where people post their wins like some of the wins are like tremendous credit scores raising and so we have these experts come in and teach and the Academy is just like a warm embrace and it's really there to help you elevate beyond the fundamentals to like truly start to grow wealth for yourself that's what I want for us and I'm proud of the literature Academy it's it's four years old it's just how we just had our first second of your month um and so so seven figures in a month it's like I'll ask you you know but how much did you spend to get seven figures a month so what I really proud of is like not the end of this month but we're on track by the end of next month to have seven figures reoccurring meaning with no market spend with no output except for salary and like bills and our salary and bills and things are I think like some she told me my um my CFO where it's under ten percent so under ten percent of our total income goes to keeping this academy running without without the market spend and will be reoccurring income will be seven figures by the end ex-smokers read about eight hundred thousand dollars a month reoccurring so that's like tremendous with no day and so it's just proud of the Academy you know like I was like what we've been able to do and how many people have been able to help I mean we've helped our audience save well over 200 million dollars pay off 150 million dollars worth of debt we transform lives like you I can't go anywhere without some sister hemming me up and give me a hug and crying I think so much you know even when I walk these streets like people are like Hong Kong but he says that you I'm like it is gone you do give me six feet that you could do good work that you can help good people and that you could make good money that those things are not conflicting values you know like you don't have to have a business that takes advantage of people you could have a business that's Transpac that truly is of service that transforms live that you know that leans into the community that you want to speak to we don't take advantage I don't like every day a credit card company leans into me and says like oh you know we'll give you 300,000 if you sign them up and I'm like yo kick rocks I know I can make be making so much more money for all the people that come to me and asked me to like sell out my community I'm like no yo I don't want to make money in that way I want to be an example that you can show up like you know you can show up be kind keep your community first and still make Bank like you think I'm not gonna be like yo we're on our way like our goal is nine figures you think we're not gonna make a hell here we gonna make it and still be good to our community and pour back in because I set aside 10% and pour right back into the community that we serve so it's just a pleasure so yeah the literature Academy is my jam yeah we have something for your for your listeners who or wanted to be part of the literature Academy like I said we have some men in there I'm sure they've been dragged by their girlfriends in there and they're like so anybody could join like em I mean like I say this a lot but if you don't mind that it's the same the same information for men and women it's just that I would say 96% of our audience are women come on Jemaine actually gave y'all a um like if you were to go to literature Academy calm you'll see the full price but for your audience I gave you guys a a 40% off discount link for you could either pay monthly or you could pay get two months free if you paid annually and you just pay the one lump sum so it's like a gym membership where like if you pay monthly it comes out every month I mean you can cancel anytime obviously but I don't like people to get that high a member and get and get um get one month free but it's 40% off so I don't know if I say it's to say priceless who knows what people gonna listen to I mean I don't plan on raising the price anytime soon so I'll say for now so right now it's it's 50 bucks a month if you were to go to Liberatore academy.com but if you use the link for argue loser yeah yeah it's $29.99 a month so 40% off that's dope $29.99 a month four four four now normally would have been I think like $500 or $600 for the year but for in your leisure it's a $299 so 300 bucks for the whole year because you get two months free and so yeah I mean all that value I'll say this I always tell people like $29.99 a month right for the 40% off that's a dollar a day you know so many people like my attorney is in there like you can even like speak his name for a dollar you know like if he does a contract for me I gotta be like dang re word like the the homie hookup for it for a he did a contract me was was three thousand dollars of the homie hookup and he's in there teaching you know my my CFO Santa she is the dopest she just did a whole class about how to set up your business so you want to hire Santa you know I pay stock to six figures you been had you know you're getting Shanta you're getting the TV you're getting ash cash you're getting all these amazing people my girl sandy who teaches you had a side hustle and make money on the side my girl Tila who teaches you like you do want to invest in in stocks individual stocks and learn how to trade options she teaches that like you know you want to work at ela it's $1500 I believe she might actually charge two thousand for her course but what makes the Academy special is that everyone in my community knows how much I want to pour into the community so they donate their time to us like that's because there's no way I could make the Academy 30 bucks a month in a way because they're like if I had to pay each of those folks for what their what they're worth but they want to pour back into a community that they know might not otherwise be able to afford their level of expertise and so they're like Tiffany I got you you know I'm gonna come I'm gonna teach my class and I'm gonna make sure that folks get it and so on yeah it's just a blessing like it's and when you get that level of commitment when you get that intention poured into you like the sky is the limit like I said we have thirty one thousand members right now about three hundred two hundred three people three hundred people new join a day and it's like a look that's in there so yeah get to get so forty percent off use they're linked when I'll see you in the academies no I appreciate it I appreciate you doing that and yeah it's always a blessing to just to meet people and like I said I checked it out I actually checked it out and it's super efficient so if anybody's interested like like Tiffany said you know she was kind enough to give us a special discount for UIL so we put in the link in the bio about the description if you're listening on Apple or Spotify if you're watching on YouTube the description and also be on our website on our UIL alumni tab so you can go to our alumni tab on ey oh are you Lisa calm and we'll have the links everywhere so once again thank you for that I appreciate it please thank your honors take advantage of how can people contact you on social media any new initiatives that you want to make the people aware oh so yeah I am the budget mister everywhere the budget needs on Instagram on Facebook on Twitter or even on tape talking but I'm not talking don't rush to don't rush challenge right so Twitter everywhere I'm the budget East um my favorite part and probably right now is like Instagram but like you know I you can follow me there but congrats on 300,000 so yeah so I'm also this is the budget Easter calm so if you're looking for resources and so I have a ton of resources one of my things is that my biggest thing is you don't have to spend money with me to get help Mike when you're a teacher you want teacher for real for real you know you're like I can't help but teach like you catch me at the whole foods boozy teachers truly a calling so I always say like cuz I know now everybody I mean for some people thirty dollars a month is too much you know so we have a ton of free resources to help you get in stay on financial track so I believe of service first so yeah the budget needs to everywhere but like probably my most exciting new project I have a ton of hooks but you can type in budget least on Amazon and find them but this is my baby I thought they could see my baby so there he goes her name is Molly Moore and okay I'm gonna go back to my preschool teacher roots and come for the babies and start teaching pre financial education in a way that's age-appropriate so for the last like forever years I've been working on this book and this character so it's gonna be the first of many of her series and it's called happy birthday Molly Moore and this book in particular teaches kids the difference between more and like what truly does more mean more presents more stuff for my family more friends so at the end because you know the teacher meeting like I can't just like have a book and it's like a cute book at the back of the book actually have like a section where it's like extend the lesson questions and extend the lesson activities so you as a parent can read the book and be like okay how do I make sure they think my kid gets the the lesson about what this book is supposed to teach so if all of your teacher an educator you're like oh I don't feel like making a whole lesson plan you're in God's to girl I did it or you do the assessment and I aligned it with like you know state and federal standards on purpose so that way makes it easy for you and so I'm just so proud of it because it just is like me going back to my roots and um yeah Somali more it's available at Molly more calm mal I mo re so I figured Molly you know you think like Oh Molly no Molly like the African country and al I that's the first African I thought about this is a key what I thought and I did on purpose cuz I was like Dora is just Spanish enough black baby and so yeah and a li mo re but I'm just really proud of her because it's just it's been literally like over ten years in the making this book has been in my head and to have it physically in front of me we did a Kickstarter and we raised like $75,000 I couldn't believe in my damn self almost double what we were asking for when I tell you already major networks have reached I found turning her into a show well yeah it's crazy you know when you really step in like if I could leave anybody with anything is that like yo there's nothing special about me except for my relentless pursuit for excellence I'm like yo wake up always be better everyone on my team is a freaking beast so much so I called in unicorns shout out to the unicorn squad because they make magic happen every day so like I tell me I think I'm smart enough I think everything in me is like enough like I'm smart enough like b-plus smart be smart you know I'm chill chill enough you know I'm cute huh you know but like what makes me sets me apart it's like y'all can't stop won't stop relentless pursuit of excellence though this book is ten years in the making who works in something for ten years I do because it was gonna be right and as soon as I open the floodgates if I tell you some of your faves have reached out look I got a production company I would love for Molly more you know when I just posted the screenshot book wasn't even print again I already have like three deals on the table my word so I if I could leave you with anything is that like you're the relentless pursuit of excellence and it's not about killing yourself it's about daily deposits what is it that you want out of life right that mess down and deposit into your dream Bank daily like oh you know I want I want a business okay did you do Google search today did you read did you listen to earn your leisure today did you read a book you know every day depositing something into your goals and dreams and in the sky's the freaking limit like you know some of the things I've been able to accomplish yo I just be a preschool teacher ten years ago are wiping butts during this time right and now you know I could pay somebody wipe my butt if I wanted to do everything's on the table Ted DiBiase said that everybody's got price time I got a virgin [Laughter] Troy housekeeping item shout to everybody on patreon.com big shout out to our newest member Anthony he said this is Troy can you do me a favor let the world know that I came to patreon because of Janet who was part of Ernie ELISA University she's an outstanding contributor to ilu so shout out to Janet for recommending Anthony and welcome to the family Anthony that's not proud to pay program we have a bunch of tiers that you can join up and some of those tiers lead you to ey Lu and they also lead you to our private real estate real estate Facebook group who was hit which is headed by our brother mg the mortgage Josh they're not to bet yeah that group is I mean I can't we shot with the numbers we should do some kind of collapse yeah ngati wai o university and a private real estate group on facebook I know you got obviously you know the whole movement yeah what's up that would be that would be crazy yeah the community is growing at a bass very fast race and shout everybody is purchasing the merch like the merch is flying like out the stores right now so everybody that's been supporting that we appreciate it we got our market Monday's coming out the shirts and we got our earnest shirts coming out shout to outgrew Marley market Monday's the hottest Stock Show on the world in the in the community you know in the world you know what you're right I apologize we take it but yet every Monday 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time exclusively on our YouTube channel shout out to me and Dunlap master investor that's all that's speaking up so much team it's crazy you know every week we set a new record of attendance oh sure so once again guys thank you for rockin with us we appreciate it see you next week peace peace [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you
