It's time for the b a q a A that'd be a q a what you say that'd be a q ain't no man day to be a qa Just timpanay. The b a qa a man is not here. As you can see, I'm in the step buy my little son.
But I got y'all.
We're going to take some questions and I've got some answers. But as I always say, I'm not your mama.
No, I'm not.
Your cousin, well, your financial internet cousin. I'm not your financial advisor. I'm not your attorney. I'm not your doctor child, I'm not even your engineer. But what I am is a smart black girl who can answer some questions that you take with the smallest tiniest grain of salt aka sue somebody else you know, Take what I say with a grain of salt. Ask the people that you pay
like what you should do. Do. Let's get started, b a qa And if you ever want to ask a question, best thing to do is go head on over to brianambischon podcast on Instagram, send us a question.
There, and or go ahead on and.
To briannabishonpodcast dot com and click contact us.
Yeah, all right, let's get started.
Let me see, let me say, let me say, let me say, quick question from Patrice. But I think I'm gonna do three today. Patrice asks a question. She says, Hello, Tiffany, I love the podcast. And here you mentioned financial advisors a few times.
Do you have any.
Suggestions on how to find one I do or anyone that you could recommend. I'm single mom and want to meet some goals to prepare for her going to college. First of all, yes, single mama. Okay, now here's what you're gonna do.
Patrese. So I wrote this book called Geek. It was money.
I'm not gonna tell you that book, right, but what you are gonna do is get something far free. You're going to go to get Good with Money dot com. I'm literally going there now to make sure it's all good. And you're going to click at the top it says GGWM for gick Ors Money.
Book Club Kit. You find that, click on the kit sis right.
Then you're gonna download the kid and when you do, it's gonna open up one it'll it'll it'll send you a I guess a PDF or link, but you'll be able to open up right away and what's so great about the kit is if you scroll down zam zamz If you scroll down to chapter ten on the kit pick your money Team, there's gonna be these resources, right Like, there's gonna be these resources that you can use to find who you need. Like if I click, let me see, No,
where is it? Oh? Meanwhile, girl, I'm on the wrong thing. I was like, where is this. I'm looking at the book club kit. I mean, that's great. You could definitely go get your book club kit on two, but I want you to not get the book club get I want you to go there and get the toolkit because I was like, this doesn't look like what I said what you should have. You're going to get the toolkit
because that's really important. And I still want you to scroll down to chapter ten because in the toolkit you will find as soon as you put in your name in your email, it opens up right away to the website.
And if you go scroll, scrow, scrow, I want you to The reason.
Why I want you to go here is because it's more than just here's a list of financial advisors.
There are a bunch of things.
So there is this this template that I created called my sole called financial Life which is literally a template where it's like all of it is a sheet that you can fill out with all of your financial information. So when you interview financial planners ideally certified financial planners that you are, don't forget what to share with them, Like I like to actually share my my my sole called financial life template with them, like here's everything you
need to know about my finances. Let's talk, right, So that's one that's there. This is under chapter ten on the toolkit at get goodwith Money dot Com. Also there you're also going to find some sites that I recommend, like the na p F A fee only network, XY Planning. That's all gonna be there if you're looking even to find it, like an accountant, there's going to be information there. And so it's just like it's just there's just so many resources there that that are going to help you.
So I would go to get Go with Money dot Com. Click on the tool kit, scroll to chapter ten. Don't just get where you can find a financial planner. I also want you to get like what questions you should ask them and what and like like here's this temple that you can fill out with your finances so they know like whether or not you might be a fit for them.
So I hope that's helpful. Lansing.
Next on the docket, we have a question that we get a lot. I'm gonna give you a name. Let's call you Denise asks Hey, Tiffany and Mandra love you question. I never know whether or not to pay down debt or save what comes first, the chicken, nub the egg.
Well she didn't say the chicken or the egg. I had to that part.
So when you are paying down, when you have some extra money left over, if you know you're fortunate there you know there is that question. Do I prioritize paying down debt? Do I prioritize savings? And the answer is it depends what I say. Your name was fake name, Chanise. It depends Chenese. Because if you have debt that is expensive, which most debt is meaning over double digits like some people have debt it's fifteen percent, twenty percent double digit debt.
I want you to over index and pay more towards paying down debt because right now, let me see what banks are giving as far as interest. Right we're about to look it up about to see like what banks are doing as far as interest rates, let's slay like I'm trying to think, like what a high yield savings accounts is giving right now? High yield savings accounts, Okay, okay, right now the highest I'm saying is about four point five percent. Okay, well I actually that's old, so that's weird.
Why is it not showing anyway? But right now, yeah, about four point five percent? Right, So, if your debt is costing you ten percent, and high yield meaning like the highest you're getting right out here in the streets is four and a half percent, ten percent is bringing you down.
Four percent is halfway bringing you back up.
So do you see why it's important to pay off the thing that's actually costing you the most amount of money because you cannot save what the debt is costing you.
So what I would say.
Is is I want you to focus on getting rid of expensive debt now. I don't want you to not save. So let's just say I had one hundred dollars, I might say to myself, I'm gonna put twenty five dollars into savings because savings is like a seat belt.
You know, you're gonna have to lean into that safety of it.
All that's just how it goes, you know, Like, so you should have something going towards savings and then maybe I put seventy five dollars toward paying down that debt because the debt is costing me way too much money. But let's just say I had like some student loan debt and the interest rate was like three percent or something like that. Then I would over in debts on the savings because the savings is just making me more
than the student loan is costing me. So I would say maybe like seventy five into savings twenty five to pay you know, the student loan debt off.
I hope that makes sense.
That, like, if you're paying off debt versus savings, look to see are you gonna make more in savings or you're gonna spend more on debt. In prioritize which one the interest rate is higher. You know, you should still try your best to do both, but prioritize the one with the interest rate that's high, because that's where you're gonna see the biggest return, or at least the biggest cut down. I think it was, Oh, who's that richest man in the world when he's the richest warm Buffett.
He said, the best raise you can give yourself is to get rid of high interest rate debt because that interest rate, that fifteen twenty percent is coursing you, siss. So if you can get rid of that debt, you are going to be able to have more money a month.
That's like an internal raise.
So before we answer another question or two, we don't see, we're gonna throw the break, pay some bills, and we're gonna be back and black and brown and miss see you in a minute. We're back in black. Can I just get into the fact that, like, because I mean, if you don't pick yourself up, who's gonna big yourself up? Your girl skin has been glowing. And when I tell you I don't have like I have. We don't have on on. I have like this thing from Bobby Brown called something a bomb girl.
I'm the worst.
But anyway, so it gives you a little bit of a glow. But I don't have foundation on. Look at my skin. You know what I've been doing instead? I have been taking So I asked my doctor it was okay to take. They said, yes, I have been taking collagen and it's like one of the best ways to get collagen, which I don't do this because I don't eat meat. Is bone broth, you boil bones and like, cause there's like collagen in the bones, and collagen is
what helps your skin rejuvenate. Collagen is like helps with joints and stuff like that. And so I've been seeing the girls talk about collagen and but I said, before I put them things in my body, child, let me ask my duelter. And they were like, you know, that's fine that you can take collagen, and that's great. So I ordered this like collagen called like Spoiled Child. I'm sure you to all the this is not sponsor. I ordered this collagen called Spoiled Child, and I was like, okay,
the taste is not bad. I take like two tablestoons every morning. It's a little sweet, so I'm sure the sugar is like if you diabetic, you might want to say, but anyway, so you know the girly seed that you know, it's about two months before you really see.
Like a different you know.
So I was like, okay, So I'm on the end of my second bottle, which actually let me make myself a no because your girl need to order another bottle.
So the girl.
He said, you know, after two months, I'm gonna say I'm just literally making myself no order or order college.
College.
Yeah. And so the other day, like I was getting like my makeup retech. I was like speaking at someplace big time. The other day, I was like, you know, like getting my makeup done, like to speak on the stage. And the lady was like, you have such great skin. I mean, people tell me I have decent skin all
the time. But I was like, hey, yeah, yeah, But then I really looked because when I came back from Egypt, like last month, like Egypt burnt your sister's sister to a crisp okay, I was, and I wore sunscreen even though I'm chocolate. I wore sunscreen because chocolate do melt. And but it's just like my skin was so dry after and it just was not looking its best and I was breaking out like crazy, and I don't break out.
I was getting cystic acne like I was in high school.
But I started taking this collagen and I bought all this stuff that I was gonna use to kind of rejuvenate my skin, and I just got lazy. I bought one hundred dollars worth of stuff and I just never got to it. So I'm using my normal skin carero tuons that I've been using for the last three years, which is because my skin gets really dry birds bees, I use an oil cleanser. Then I use like this serum from this black owned brand that I love called
butter Bar. They have this melanin serum that I've always been using for the last two years. And they have an under eye roller things that I always been using. And then because I can get like little ezema patches I was using, I used this like this like Ezama lotion, but I use it on my face too, but the same. Like, I didn't do anything different. But when I was saying my skin it is the most supple. I ain't never
seen my skin like this. And I was like, in literally I was putting lotion on my skin yesterday, and I was like, why did my skin feel so soft.
Like sore like a baby's booty.
I know, I'm going off on a tangent because I'm like whatever, girl Mandy in here, I could do what I won't, I could do what I won't, So anyway, and I was like, I'm not doing anything different. I have not used any of those products that I bought to like rejuvenate my skin post Egypt, because I've just been lazy about it. I'm using the same routine I always as I always and yeah, and I realized the only thing new is this dag on collagen. And I'm not here to say you need to use collegen, but
I'm just saying your good sis. I mean, my skin is given twenty five, but my knees is given forty three. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I would just love to know. Has anybody try collagen?
You know?
My sister says she was gonna try it so we fit the sea, But I don't know. I don't know if that's why my skin looks like this. All I'm saying is I didn't. I'm not using anything new on my face, you know. The only thing different is I'm taking collagen. So, like I'm not a medical doctor, so I'm not saying that's what you need to do. But like I said, I spoke to my doctor, the one who I pay, so that's what you ought to do.
But and just ask about you know, like I don't know, cause I just, you know, I want to be youthful because my mom, don't have no wrinkles, and I said, child dry skin leads to wrinkles. We don't want that, so our forty three year old skin is holding it tight. Okay, anyway, shout out to collegen. Anyway, let's see question from Shirlean. Charlene says, Hi, ladies, I have a dilemma and I hope you can help with it. I have a personal loan of five fifteen thousand, five hundred and with a
whopping fifteen point twenty four percent interest rate. She said, I know you don't have to tell me, sad face, I get it. That's a lot running the numbers. I don't have the capacity to pay more than the minimum payment, which is three hundred and eighty thousand a month on the loan, and I am a new single mom working part time. However, I do put aside four hundred dollars a month into my son's saves account, and that currently
has a balance of fifteen thousand dollars earning approximately four percent. Oh, we just answered the question like this. I have recently decided that I want to put at least ten thousand of the savings into an investment bond for my son and continue to fund it each month, as I have been doing. But part of me thinks I should take fifteen thousand to pay the loan that rebuild my son's savings by paying eight hundred dollars a month into it.
What say you?
I hate the idea of taking my child's money, but I also hate the debt that won't move. For context, I have two thousand in emergency funds and hope to buy a home in the next year or two. Thanks so much, Shirlene, Hirlene, Chirlene, Shirley, Shirley, Shirley, I beg you please, you don't something take my man. That's Dolly Parton and then it was like remade by Malea Cyrus. Okay, Shirlen, this is hard, right because you're like, I want to set aside money for the baby, which congratulatess mama.
I love that. But you have this debt, which you're absolutely right.
If you pay the minimum on this fifteen thousand dollars debt, you will be paying that debt.
It's go get a like a.
If I had the time, I would like plug into a calculate you're gonna pay not be paying that debt for a long time.
And you're likely paid like double what you actually own.
That fifteen is gonna cost you, Like, you know, that's the problem with like when you pay the minimum on debt, it's that like so much of that money goes to fees, which is really disheartening. You know. So I can understand you didn't say how old your son was, but you said I'm a new single mom. So I don't know if you're newly single or newly a mom. But the
thing is, if mama ain't good, nobody good. And so I know you're like, oh, I hate taking away from my son, but you know it's really taking away from your son, this fifteen thousand dollars money you owe at fifteen percent. If it was me, I honestly, especially if my son was a baby, like it'd be one thing. If you said my son graduates high school next year, then I might be like, ah, you need that money
for college right away. But if your son is really young, you know, if he was super young, you know, like I said, you're a new mom, you know your son is like two three. I would take that full amount and pay off that debt and say we're not going back into we're not going back into debt.
No more.
Now you don't You didn't tell me your other debt. Do you have other credit card debt and things like that. I don't know that here, because then I might reconsider. But I'm just going to pretend like this is the only debt that you owe besides like maybe your car note or something like that. But this is the most expensive debt in the you don't have any credit card debt.
I'm just going to pretend I probably would put all, if not most, to pay off this debt because at that fifteen percent, it's going to take a long time to pay that off. And if your son is only earning four percent, and let's just say you put your money, his money into a bond, right, you put it into investment,
you put into the market. The market is still on average going to yield about ten percent a year, So ten percent is still less than fifteen that you know, fifteen in the quarter that the debt is costing you.
Does that make sense?
So even if you were to get a great return in the market at ten percent, you know, you're still it's still not going to be what the debt is costing you. So I probably would all things considered used to pay down that debt and stay out of debt, you know, as much as possible, because what you don't want to do is you don't want to make it a habit of like saving and then taking, saving and taking.
So then what I would do moving forward is I would be putting my son's money into a vehicle that I cannot easily touch, to your point, like setting and putting up you know, investing it so it's not easily accessible to you. That's probably all I do. I would be, like I might. I'm not saying this is what you
should do. If I would do, I'd probably bite the bullet, pay off this debt, commit to not getting back into debt like that, or if I do, you know, borrow money or whatever, you know, navigating for the best interest
possible so it's not costing me so much. And then any new money that I'm going to be doubling down my child, I'm going to put it into an account that I don't have as much free access to because we don't want to make a habit into taking from the son's account, from your son's account, and also too, instead of doubling up to rebuild my son's savings into
eight hundred buck dollars a month. I would put four hundred dollars to my son and four hundred dollars into my emergency fund, because your emergency fund is not enough, you know, like you want ideally they have three months worth of expenses in the emergency fund, you know, because here's the reason why if something happens, what would you and your son do? You know, like I would make that My priority is to bulk up that emergency fund.
So again, I would probably pay off all of, not most of that fifteen thousand dollars because it's too expensive. I would continue to fund my son's account with the four hundred and now put the other four hundred into my emergency fund, if not even more into the emergency fund, like two hundred to my son for you know, six hundred to the emergency fund only because if emergency hits, who won't look after you and a baby that money?
And so that's more important right now.
And then you know, like try your best to keep out of debt and continue to earn and look for ways to earn additional income.
I hope that's helpful, Shirlene.
Yeah, sometimes you have to make those choices that are not the funnest or the cutest, but the choice that we have to make. I have certainly been in that place, so certainly, no, no, no shame. You do the best you can with what you have until you can do better, Then you do better.
So I hope that was helpful. Bea fan. If you have.
Questions that you want to answered about business, about career, about money, about entrepreneurship, you know, you just want to share whatever you can, hit us up. We are the BA Podcast on Twitter, Brian Ambition Podcast on Instagram, Brianambition Podcasts dot com. You can click contact us and ask questions there. There's a contact contact me button there until next week. Holy, By next week, we all are the auntie of a brand new BA baby. We already have Rio,
that's Mandy's son, Rio. We already have Rio, So we're about to have a new BA baby. So we all be on baby watch to see when that baby's coming. Because Mandy literally do like today any day now, so you'll be stuck with me.
But that's okay.
We're gonna have some guests in the stew I's just here by myself today because Mandy had to do some baby things last minute. All right, y'all see you next week.
Bye, Hey, ba Fam. We could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown Ambition Podcast is produced by Imani Crosby and Dennis Stanplinsky is our in house tech guru. I am your co host Mandy Woodrif Santos, and we will see y'all next week, ba Fam.