It's time for the b a q a a b a q a with Tiffin. The b a q a no mandate, but the b a qa with Remat Sete. What I did there? I'm telling you when I get my record deal, y'all fen to be mad because I won't even be here like that. Okay. So anyway we have in the stew we have Ramat set Ti. I'm saying your name right right, Ramit say t I'm so sorry, Remed. You know as somebody who's name when I was born
was Adochi. You know they called me everything but that so Remeat safety and He is the host of Netflix's hit How to Get Rich. If you have not watched it, are you even a brann and bish and listener? Hellled we talked about it but also too. He is the author of New York Times best selling book I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He also has his own amazing podcast called I Will Teach You to Be Rich. For me is an og in the game, Honey. He has been here for a long time busting open a
door for us brownies and personal finance. So I asked for me if he could stay. If you have not listened to the interview before this that came out on Wednesday. Do it. It's an awesome interview. So I asked him if you could stay and answer some of your questions, and Ramat said yes, indeed. So question number one re meat, Hi, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna add that part. I love your podcast and have been listening for a while. You
both give such great advice on pretty much everything. I don't know about all that, girl, but okay, I'll take it. My question is should I take out a home equity loan to pay off my IRS taxes or pay them with an IRS installment plan. The IRS has interests and penalties that can occur daily, monthly, and quarterly. If I qualify for a home equity loan, I cannot only take out enough to pay the IRS. I could take out
enough to pay my doctor bills off. At that point, I would only be stuck with that loan payment, mortgage, one utility bill because my town has one bill for all utilities and student loans whenever they start back, which is going to be in August. My husband and I have vehicles that are paid off. The IRS total is sixteen thousand, and doctor bills are eight thousand. We have a mortgage and two kids. I am not willing to use my six month emergency fund to pay the debt off.
That's another question. Am I wrong for not using my emergency fund to pay off debt? That's funny. That's one to use the emergency fund for emergency Okay, that's not funny. I hope you can both help assist the out. So this is actually a really good question for me.
It is a good question. So first off, there is no right or wrong answer to this. I'm going to tell you how I would think about it. I find that when people have debt, they often will do everything except attack the debt. They'll write me about opening up a zero percent balance transfer. They'll write me about doing this convoluted tactic. And what I really want to hear from them is how much do you owe? How much can you aggressively pay every month? And when will it
be paid off? So? Could you do a home equity liign of credit? You could?
Would?
I know what I would do is I would call them up. I would say how much do I owe? With the medical bill? I would try to negotiate it with the IRS bill. I would try to get favorable terms, they'll actually work with you in many cases, not all, but many. And then I would set up an automatic payment plan. It might take you you said it's twenty four thousand, It might take you a year, two years, maybe three years, okay, factor in the interest depends on
what the interest is. Maybe they'll waive the interest depends. But that to me is focusing on actually behavioral change. We're going to cut off three hundred bucks a month from our spending and put it towards our debt. That's how I would approach it, because it solves the root problem. Simply shifting debt from one place to another may save you a little in interest, it may make you feel better, but it doesn't actually change the root problem. And so I want personally, if it were me, I would not
take a home equity line of credit. I don't want to take on more complexity. I want simplicity. I would make a debt payoff plan. I would try to negotiate and whether or not they allow me to. I would set up an automated payment plan and know exactly what month and year my debt will be paid off, So.
Question what about her six months? Which? First of all, congratulations we're gonna call you I forget, like we're gonna call you helpless sister out Hey, you help a sister out right? So what about her emergency funds? Like? Yeah, because I know people are very adverse to using emergency funds, which I can understand because you're afraid that something bigger might come along. What do you think about that?
Again, I don't think there's any right or wrong answer here. I do think it's amazing that she's saved up a six month emergency fund. To me, that shows a lot of discipline, a lot of foresight. It's rare and amazing. So I think she should give herself a pat on the back. There is something to be said once she
makes a debt pay off plan. Let's say that she's paying I don't know, five hundred bucks a month towards her debt, could be three hundred, could be eight hundred, whatever, and she's going to plug it into a debt payoff calculator and she's gonna say, Okay, it's gonna take me three point five years to pay it off. Then, now that she's got it all on paper, she can actually say, hey, wait a minute, I've got six months of my emergency fund.
What if I took one month and put it towards that debt, that might shave off four months of debt payoff. Who knows, But she can actually play with it and make a decision right now, she's kind of making a rule without really understanding the nuances, right and so sometimes rules are helpful because they're just black or white. This is what I'm gonna do, this is what I'm not
going to do. I don't mind it. I like rules, But with the debt amount of twenty four thousand, maybe one month might actually contribute meaningfully to paying off this debt.
That's my take. Like that, I like if so, remember we I'm glad that we said that's what he would do, because what do we always tell y'all that we are not your financial advisor, we're not your doctor, we're not your lowie, we're not your mom, we're not your dad. Go see Grandy, don't sue us. This is just take it with a grain of salt, the smallest grain that you can find. And this is certainly just some Hey,
this is what I potentially would do. And essentially, you have to decide what you're going to do for yourself help. Us to stay out, but no, I like that. I think that that was the one thing I was going to say to add to it is I was going to say, look to see like not necessarily using all your emergency funds, but potentially using some of them to help expedite the process, because sometimes we forget that emergency funds are for emergencies. I remember a friend of mine
calling me one day. She was crying and her car broke down or something like that, and I was like, well, what's wrong. She was like, oh, my car broke down. I don't know what I'm going to do. I have to get to work. And I said, well, you know, because I've been working with her, I'm like, well, you have emergency funds. She's like, yeah, but that's for emergencies.
Like, oh my god, the same thing. The same thing happened during COVID. So during COVID, I had so many people and they're like, my wife like still has to go to work. I'm so worried. You know, we have this illness in our family, and but I don't know what else to do. I'm like, this is literally a worldwide emergency. This is what an emergency fund is for. So I mean that was like potentially life or death. I think that this is a little murkier, you know, debt.
You can make the argument maybe it is, maybe it's not. I don't personally think it's something that I would tap my entire emergency fund for. But if you've done a great job of building up six months, you may want to consider whether dropping that down to five months, you know, what does that do for you?
Yeah? Also too, if you're able to meet the point, I'm assuming that we're taking the leap that you got there by putting aside a certain amount of money every month, you know, or if you paid period or every like, Well, now that money can be available to put toward your irs dead instead.
Yeah, totally, you know.
So you know. So, Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, come back and answer another question. So if you are a listener before we take a break and you want your questions to be answered, we can. You can go to Brownivision podcast dot com click contact us. You can go to Brand and Vision Podcasts on IG and sliding the dms. Okay, you could also tweet us at the BA podcast or Brownivision Podcasts at gmail dot com. Ask your questions about business, about career, about personal finance, about money.
We are here to answer your questions as much as possible. Okay, and we're back. And I decided to switch gears cause I could do that, you know, for me's been in the game longer than I have. And I teach you guys all the time that if you are looking for mentorship, like to look for people who have done the things you're wanting to do, especially if they have time put in. Because I'm not impressed. Like you know, someone is one
year in business and they've made for million dollars. Cute, I'll see you in ten years, you know, because anyone, as the kids can say, as the kids say, can hit a lick. I can see my bonus starter right now. Like no, she didn't, I said it hit a lick. I'm cool anyway, So anyone can hit a lick. But it takes it really takes like knowledge, it takes fortitude, It takes consistency to be in business year after year
after year after year. And so I'm going to lean into the wisdom of remeat and not necessarily ask a financial question, but a business question. So I am in a real like no, no, no, I'm like in this weird place where I don't want to do as much work as I used to do, and I'm not doing as much work as I used to do remat just because I'm just like I'm over it. I used to work all the time. I have a number of companies, one of them Brian Ambition with Mandy, which we have fun
our podcast and I love it. I want to keep it. I have an online school, the Literature Academy. It does well, and I have I hired a CEO, thank god, so I don't have to do the day to day running. And then i have my personality brand, the Budgetista, which is the business of Tiffany, and I'm trying to figure out, like I don't know. It's not so much for the Academy because I feel like it's taken care of, not for Bound Ambition because I feel like it's taken care of.
But I'm in this weird space with the Budgetista where I'm like what you know, Like what am I? I don't really know what to do because I love doing I love teaching financial education, but I'm in this weird space where I feel like I'm supposed to be pivoting towards something and like, have you been in a space where like because I feel like I will teach you to be rich. It's like equal parts this external business, but I still associated with you kind of like as
this personality brand. Like, what's been some of the pivots that you've made that have allowed you to have more space and freedom and time while still your business still being successful.
A lot of pivots. What a great question. Gosh, this is this is fantastic. So my business been around about twenty years and it's kind of fascinating from a bird's eye view to see many other players in personal finance and other industries. And I guess I have a model of three different types of businesses that I've seen. One is ones that grow really fast. They typically take venture capital and that's what they want to do. That's the game they're playing. Another one is one that goes really deep.
I have a friend Patrick Mackenzie, who writes a newsletter on basically really detailed banking. He's super deep. If you want to know about banking transactions, He's the guy in the world. And then another model is longevity. They stay around and I love that.
I love.
Buying a car and keeping it for fifteen years. I love my investments for fifty years. That's just how I'm wired. And so in order to do that, in order to have a long business, I realized a few things. Number One, I got to have a way that makes profit. Okay, that's really important. If you don't have profit, then you're you got a hobby. So having a really strong baseline of something that makes money, and preferably a lot of
it at high margin, that's awesome. The next thing, the next pivotal moment for me was I think really realizing that now that I have that, I want to have fun. If I'm not having fun, my team's not having fun. If my team's not having fun, our readers and followers and fans are not having fun. And that's the end of the ball game. So what does that mean for me? It suddenly started to take on a different meeting. It means that my wife and I travel for a couple
months a year. We love traveling, it's important to us. And while I'm traveling, I'm not working. I might log in for one hour a week check some high impact messages that got to me from my assistant, and that's it. But I'm work is an important, but it's one part of my life. And if you kind of like expand that out, you realize it means you have to have an amazing team. You have to scope down what you're doing.
You may not be able to do everything, but you do a few things and do it really well, and you have to resist the rest of the world telling you you should be doing.
X, Y and Z.
You know, they told me I should have a podcast for eight years, and I heard them, but I just was like, I don't have the right idea. I'm gonna wait until I do. They told me that I have to change the name of my business because it's too focused on me. But I like me and I'm good with it. So you know, I think you have to have a really clear idea of who you are and who you're not and then have fun. That's what I would say.
Okay, yeah, it's because I'm saying I now, I travel a lot. I take about three months off a year, and to your point, I actually don't work, which I love. I'm like, I tell the team, you know, if there's a fire call, a firefighter, like, don't you know unless someone on the team is actually hurt, you know, then of course I care about that, you know, like something's happened to someone on the team, because I care about my team. But other than that, I'm like, figure it out,
figured out, let me alone. And so I've just been like, you know, because that was one of the bigger things I said, like I want to focus more on how do you actually want to live, Tiffany. And then because for the longest time, it was like what is the budget, eeath the need and then I will fit Tiffany around what that business needs, you know, And now it's really like,
really Tiffany focused. I used to take my laptop with me, like to the grocery store, like I had a mar because I'm like, you never know when an important emails got and sometimes my phone is not enough. And now I'm like, I can't remember the last time, like I mean, my laptop. I don't even bring up with me when I travel because I'm just like, why unless I want to watch a movie? Yeah, you know.
So I love that It's really about, you know, is what is my rich life? And in your case, I can see it's it's travel, it's exploration, it's other things. And you can still do that and have a really successful business, especially at your level because you've been doing it, you have the team. But I think spending time on really painting that picture of your rich life for today, which can change tomorrow. I think that's the process I use routinely.
Is there like a tool or anything that you use. I remember a tool that helped me when I first started was Tim Ferriss and the book you know for our work week. He was like, figure out. I can't remember the words that he used, dreamline yes, yes, and so it was like, and then how much is that gonna cost you? And that helped tremendously when I was teaching preschool trying to figure out, like what was I
going to what was I going to do next? Is that still a tool that you use or you have something else?
I have my own tools, So I have several. I'll share a couple of them here. One of them is a ten year bucket list. And you can do this solo, you can do with a partner. My wife and I did it together and it was really fun because what do I mean by a ten year bucket list? What I mean is what do I or we want to do in the next ten years where if we accomplish these things, it will mean we have lived a rich and meaningful life. Okay. And the answers are so interesting.
So we had we both wrote them down separate piece of paper, then we compared them. We went back and forth. He could do this with a friend, with a partner, solo, and it was like one person, I want to learn Spanish and the other person goes, wow, oh wow, that's amazing. So do you want to do that with a teacher? Do you want to do it in Mexico City? What does it look like? Kind of saying yes? And another person, I want to do skydiving. Oh, that's gonna have to
be on your own. I'll meet you at the bottom with a bottle of champagne. And what we found was we found a couple that were really meaningful for both of us. So for us, it was to have a tenure wedding anniversary in a very special place that we know with all of our friends and family. So we honed it on that and we said, all right, let's actually make this happen. How much what's the date? We knew the exact date. How much is it going to cost?
And so what we did was we went back to our piece of paper, we wrote down a number and we just ballparked it. People get hung up on precision. Sometimes you don't need precision, you need a big, bad, round number. So we both came back, we compared numbers. Mine was a lot bigger because you know, I like nice hotels and whatever, and so in this case, if you have two different numbers, you just go with the
bigger one, okay. And we took that number, and we started saving money every single month because we knew the exact date that we needed it. So every month and we talk about money. It's like a video game. We're getting a little bit closer to that thing. I think for a lot of people, that's first tools tenure bucket list. The second one is going through my money dial exercise, and you can find this. I gave a talk at Google. You can find it in my money coaching program. Essentially,
what do you love to spend money on? For most people, the number one answer is food. It's like eating out. The next answer is travel, The third is health and wellness, fourth is mind convenience, And there's a variety of other money dells. The second question is what if you turn that dial up and you quadrupled your spend what would it look like and feel like? And this is where it gets quite surprising. Most people are very linear in
their answer. They go, oh, I'd have to watch my weight because I'd eat out four times a week hahaha. And I go, wait a minute, where would you eat out? Who would you bring with you? There's so many different ways beyond mere quantity, and you can really create some special things if you spend more, if you spend extravagantly on the things you love, as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't.
I love that. This is great. See y'all find I was gonna have for me? Asked me questions? Girl? No, no, for real? This is like really helpful because what you're essentially saying is that it's really not The question is not what do I do in business? It's like, what do you do as Tiffany? And match the business?
Yes, what is my rich life Tiffany? And then once I have that vivid, specific, huge vision, we're not shrinking our vision, we're maximizing it. Then where does the business fit in? And by the way, for your listeners, I bet this is common. So when I ask people what is your rich life. I often get this really funny response to the first one is I want to do what I want when I want. I go, God, not this answer again. I go, well, that's so interesting. I never heard that. So what do you want? And then
they just stare at me blankly. They never thought about it. Think about we go to work, we answer ten million emails, we save our money, we listen to this podcast, and then what's it all for? We never even thought about it? What a waste. So that's the first one. The second one is sometimes they'll tell me something like I really want to have, like a beach house. I go, wow, that's really cool. Tell me more about that, and then they do this. They go, well, it doesn't have to
be a big beach house. I mean, it doesn't even have to be that nice. I mean it doesn't even have to have a roof. I mean even three walls is fine.
It's fine.
I don't even it's just a little one. I go, why are we minimizing our dreams? This is your rich life, not your worst life. You're telling me you need a three walled beach house with no roof. That's your rich life. And really what it is is we minimize ourselves. We are taught that it's not okay a dream big, that we have to shrink ourselves because society won't allow us to dream big. I don't want that shit. I want to hear your big, bountiful dream. Now, maybe you want
a huge beach house in Malibu. All right, that's gonna cost twenty million bucks, probably unrealistic for the vast majority of people. Fine, but how about renting it for four days? How about that at least you can taste it and see. Or maybe it doesn't have to be a twenty million dollar house. Maybe it can be more modest. But let's at least start big and then we can figure out the numbers from there.
No. I love that because because you're right, so many of us. How can you accomplish a thing? But even in your own dreams, your curtail yourself, you know, which is crazy. Oh, can you tell us a little bit more before before we kick you off? And I'm just joking. Tell us more about Netflix, like where can people well, obviously on Netflix, but tell us more about your show, what they can expect and where they can like connect with you further.
So the magic part of the show, how to Get Rich on Netflix is that I didn't know anything about the guests that I worked with before I met them. The only thing I knew was their name, and I had all of their financial documents. So you follow me as I'm looking at their documents and I'm trying to guess who are these people, what's going on, what might be the problem. So I can see, for example, someone who had a lot of debit card transactions at one oh five in the morning, I go, oh, this is
probably a young guy who likes to go out. I recognize that type of spending. I know that from my twenties. And you know, I see somebody else who has a bank account at a private wealth management bank. I go, Okay, this person's wealthy. Maybe they have an inheritance, maybe high income, et cetera. And then we try to figure it out together. So that is the show How to Get Rich on Netflix and my podcast where I talked to couples about money called I Will Teach You to Be.
Rich and you're New York Times bestseller.
I Will Teach You to Be Rich Rich, Yeah exactly.
Now, it was so awesome to have you on. If you miss the Wednesday show, over me go listen to it. That's your homework. Like I said before, if you have questions that you want to ask myself and Mandy when she's back from Maternityly, the baby's so cute. If you're not following her Mandy Money on social media, you're missing
out on all the cuteness. But if you've got questions, you can ask them at brindibisionpodcast dot com, Briannibision Podcast at gmail dot com, briand and Vision podcast on Instagram, slide into the DMS or the BA podcast on Twitter. We answer your questions every week. Thank you until next week, bye, and thank you again so much for me. We really loved you here.
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The Briannambision podcast is produced by Imani Crosby and Dennis and Plinsky is our in house tech guru. I am your co host, man Woodrif Santos, and we will see y'all next week. Ba Fama