Ep 243 - Can I Save When It Doesn't Seem Like There's Enough?

I had to do the fifteen out size for my big sister because she drinks coffee Like nobody's business.

that I call financial holeness. It's like these ten key components that you need to achieve, almost like financial well, I call it financial holeness. Like so it's like it helps you to live your better life, achieve your biggest goals, and to really live a richer life. Because I feel

like financial freedom is is a big fat lie. And I never felt comfortable preaching financial freedom to my dream catchers because I knew damn well that most people were not going to attain financial freedom, which most people define as having enough money. Well, I don't have to work right now, you know, so they don't even I don't think people think of like retirement as financial freedom. They think on financial freedom as like a pile of money. I ain't got to work. I'm thirty, you know. And

that's cool for some people. But I felt like it felt exclusive and elusive, and so I came up with financial wholeness, which everyone can achieve, whether you're a mechanic, a doctor, a teacher, NBA player, That it's ten components that you just have to get under control and you can be okay financially. And so I wrote a book about it called Get Good with Money. I posted it on my socials. You're my ig. You should see it today. I mean it'll be up there, like you know, indefinitely.

I'm just really proud of it, Mandra and today it just oh so. What I'm really proud of too, is that I created a quiz because some people are like, well, how do I know what percentage of financial holeness? I am, so I created this quiz where you take it. It's two minutes, ten questions, and by the end you will know what percentage of financial hollness You've already accomplished. And I sent you like a little freebe a checklist to

see like what you have left to do? And then you know in March twenty twenty one when the book comes out, I can help you on that journey if you want to take that.

And all of the podcasts that I've listened to, news and politics podcasts that have had scientists, you know, or political or like scientific reporters talking about it have all been like blown away by that figure ninety percent. So I mean it sounds pretty good. But even if you want to be first, I don't think you will be unless you are like a first line you know, like a nurse or someone operating, you know, on the front lines,

as they say, of the pandemic. I mean I would like to get one, or at least I'm definitely open to it. Yeah, I believe in science, i'd be down. Plus by then we'll have a different president and I'll trust some stuff again.

It was like vetted by everyone on the team and taken again and again and again and again and again Andy, where did it? Just the level of work that we put in. And then today, you know, like when it's showtime Synergy the it's like everyone's doing even more work. So I and tapped out, but I got just random aside. Someone texts me and said, Tiffany, you know you I

had an awakening. I heard what you said about, you know, looking for your therapists using a therapist finder, and it just it hit me and I realized, like, you know, I've been avoiding finding a therapist, and I too don't experience super highs or super lows due to some trauma, and I want to boom beyond it. And I just thought like that's so beautiful and so and then the

therapist finder, Stephanie, reached out. She's like, oh my gosh, my friend told me that, you know, you talked about me on your podcast, and just like thank you so much. And it was just like such a lovey dovey day. And remember I talked about my friend Christina Aguilera and you were like, oh, her name right, But I don't know if the young woman that is a you know, the the paralegal that was mistreated where she was. Christina was like, girl, tell her to reach out to me.

So paralegal, who set your question? And we answered it. Christina is like, yo, let me help you. She is wide open to help. So isn't that awesome news?

like that in my area, let us know. And I'm glad that you know your friend reached out, Tiff, because we also got i think two or three two or three messages from other listeners offering to help Sandra, which is not her real name, I think we changed it

for the show. So if you're listening, Sandra, you know, you know what your real name is, and hit us up on Brown Ambitions, Instagram and the DMS, and I will try to connect everybody and shout out to our listeners for being so awesome and help y. Yeah, well that's beautiful. I do feel like they're thinking about spring, like thinking about March. I'm just like yes, because you know, it's getting dark at like four fifteen pm here now, and winter is coming and damn, what is going on

with this pandemic? Like I just it's it's pretty scary. I mean, and I feel like we have a bit of a responsibility. You know, the majority of our audience, I know are you know, our black women, and this this disease is truly coming for black and brown communities. So I just want to say, you know, when it comes to the holidays and you know, what's this time with family that I know, you know, this is the time we won't want to gather and be together. If

there's any way you can scale back your holiday plans. Personally, I'm walking the I'm walking the walk. My my little brother who was so excited to come for Thanksgiving, which is also falling on Rio's first birthday. He's canceled his trip. My mom was supposed to come for two weeks. She tries to come here every few months to help. She's canceling her trip, and his first birthday is going to

be it's I'm still gonna make it fun. We're gonna get balloons and I'm gonna make a cake and we'll have just our you know, maybe four relatives, grandparents, and then his uncle and aunt here with us. They're living with us, they're quarantine with us anyway. But anyway, I just just if you're thinking about it, don't be just just cancel or down you know, downsize your your gathering, because this is really going to make her break. I think the next few months and you know, really lives

are at stake, and it's getting really scary. It is getting really scary, truly.

friend actually doesn't go anywhere. You know, she's been really careful at home, but her best friend came to visit her, and her best friend had been to a restaurant before, you know, before then she thinks that that's where she got it from. But she was really scared, and honestly, there were there were for for a good week and a half, two weeks. We couldn't even like I would call and she's like, I can't speak because that's how much she was coughing and had a hard time breathing.

You know, she's young, and so I'm not gonna lie. I was terrified, Like.

honestly because my dad is sex seventy seven. You know, my mom is in her late sixties, and she's just like, it's just not worth it.

let me know, because I'm trying to. I really want to make his first birthday because I know what means so much to my you know, he's the first grandchild for all of my all of our parents, and the first niece and nephew for my siblings and every niece and nephew. What first nephew for my siblings. So, if y'all have any tips on how to make a virtual you know, birthday celebration like fun and not weird, I was just going to put the laptop on the kitchen isle and just let them watch all day. Oh, just

like froll on Truman show. Let me know because we'll try and you know, make the most of it. But I hope you guys are staying safe.

you watching? She's like, you know what. I just think that that's so crazy that kids are. Like they're like, before we throw another toy out of the windows screen that we've ripped open, let's let's see.

I'm like, oh, this is what she means. You don't like anything good? Why are you throwing your favorite toys outside? And so now when I go over there, they're like yum yum and moo moo. I'm like, what's that. There are two stuffed animals they have the city dump and I'm like what. So apparently my sister says when they throw stuff out the window, She's like, I'm taking it

to the city dump. So the kids are delighting in the fact that both their favorite stuffed animals are apparently having a party at the city town.

big milestone. So I just want to make it special for him and everyone who survived it along with me. That's all I have to say about the holidays.

no one's name I always loved my English teachers. That was my best subject, but can't remember their names.

and she was a super young teacher. She was like twenty one or twenty two something like that, and she just graduated from Princeton, so you know, she was full of like all the like energy and you know, and Westfield where I grew up was like largely white and I was the only black person I believe in my in my AP English class, and she just took such a shine to me. I remember at first, I was like, oh, what does she want? But she cause I was pretty shy. I know you can't tell, but I was pretty shy

in high school. So I just used to be really really really quiet. But then I would, you know, turn in my work and stuff. And I remember we did like a poetry unit and I really shone through. And she's really like I used to write like so much poetry back in the day. My poet my poet name was poetic empress. Get into it spoken word, I make that up? I did.

she was like, you know, share some of yours. She's satifically, you should have a recording of some of your poems, and so, like, you know, during breaks or whatever, like we would go to the library and like record like me reading my poetry and then reading my angel and reading and I still had them on video, and she said you should keep it because you know, you it would just be something that you can look back on and whether or not this you know, you take this

into turns into something else, or whether you just have it as an amazing memory. And it just was so yeah, I just really loved that because it made me feel like someone saw me and saw something special to me when I didn't see that in myself because I'm one of five kids and I'm going to this big old high school and I don't look like anyone here really, And then it was like, here's a teacher that really saw me. And honestly, it gave me a lot of confidence that I did not have. I was super self

conscious like most high school girls. So yeah, Kate Strauss shout out to you. Actually googled her and I was like, oh, I think she's an administrator now for a college. But yeah, shout out to you, Kate Strauss. She made a huge difference in my life.

middle of the school year. Miss Parks was like, no, no, no, I'm going to commute all the way to pick you up from your uncle's house and take you to school and back home every day. So she took my little brother and I to and from school for like the last couple of months of the year, which was just so far and beyond. And she used to get me McDonald's French fries. I'll then I forget that, and.

question from a listener. We'll call her. Danielle. Daniell says, Hey, ladies,

So I'm having trouble saving. This has been for a few years now. I'm originally from New Jersey and I relocated to Savannah about five years ago. Between my significant other and I we make about sixty five thousand dollars a year. But still I'm having trouble saving. Right now, we're paying six hundred dollars for the mortgage, Utilities are about three point fifty, and we have a car note which is about four seventy five. Thanks to coronavirus, are

one hundred dollars a week. Daycare bill we're no longer paying, but groceries have gone up about three hundred dollars a month because we're home all day. I see people giving their tips on how to save, but these people are making way more and never have kids. Is it possible for me to save? Or should I be realistic and realize saving is just not possible at this time, thank

you for your help. Essentially, really having trouble saving doesn't understand, you know, where she's supposed to get the money to save when there's just not enough.

it's shelter, and I'm even late on that. So one of the things I did when I was like at my Brokes broke Is Brokes, when I honestly didn't even have money for regular bills, is that I would, you know, like if I had like fifty cents, if I had, I would put it in a you know, in a in a jar and say like, okay, every month, I'm gonna save at least something. And I would put it like in a but it was more I mean, I would take it out later, but it was more ceremonial.

So I reminded I didn't get out of the habit of setting aside something. But there are moments in life when you just don't have it and and it's not because you're being frivolous. It's because things are hard, and that's okay. I don't savings is ideal, but it's not always realistic in whatever situation you find yourself in. And I would say, if there's not enough money, you have one of one or two issues. Usually it's like it's a don't make enough issue or spend too much issue.

Everyone's issue. Who's not saving is to spend too much issue. Most people, that's the default. I don't have enough money, you spent too much. Not always, sometimes I'm not making enough. And so that's what I would really focus on. Instead of stressing yourself out and making yourself feel bad that maybe you're not able to save, it's asking yourself, are there ways to make additional income so I have a little bit more room? Can I ask for a raise or promotion? Is there something I can do on the

side to bring some more income into the household. So, but also you know, being easy on yourself. Not being able to save is not a condemnation of your character. It's just a it's just your current situation. But it won't always be.

it's really easy, especially when you have kids. I also feel like I see what you're saying when it's about you, when you talk about you know, looking and listening to other people who give advice and like they don't have children, there is some good helpful advice out there, you know, from people for example, Christina and Aman from Our Rich Journey. You know, they have two tween age girls and they

talk a lot about the ways that they've saved. So if you haven't checked out their YouTube channel, we've had them on the show before. I think it was episode I mean two thirty and one to thirty one, I think a few couple of months ago. You can go

back and listen to that. They have a really great YouTube channel, great advice on finding side hustles, especially which was one way that they brought an extra income when they were saving for early retirement, and they really got the kids involved too, and their little girls have this channel called our which what is it called.

a family. But I agree with tiffany times are really tough right now, and a lot of people aren't saving what they think they should or that what they want to be saving. And there's so many goals that have been set aside because of what's going on right now, you know, in our economy and with our healthcare crisis, and I think we've all just got to like lower the bar a little bit for ourselves and take it easy. You know, it sounds like you're making making ends meet,

which is right now. You know, all you really need to do. I do wish that there was some form of you know, help, you know, another stimulus or whatnot. But unfortunately, for the time being, we are all our heroes, you know, asking for help, looking for resources in your area. That's really all that you can do right now. But best of luck to you and to your family and y'all if you have any you know, I think a

lot of our listeners have kids. If there's anything y'all are doing, you know these days, to you know, bring an extra income or you know, adjust your goals and expectations because of what's going on, you know, feel free to share.

lean into those services if you need them. I've certainly been in that position before as well. Sorry to cut you off, Mandy, I just want to put that out that I was just thinking of that.

I'm a homeowner of eight years and the main level of my house desperately needs repairs. I'm talking floor cracking, paint peeling, desperate. It's a long backstory, but basically, the person I purchased a home from was kind of shady and didn't do work properly. Now there's a lot that will have to be done in order to do the job right. My plan is to sell the house within the next year or so. I know that in order

to do that, I need to make the repairs. But to be honest, even if I don't sell right away, I'm just tired of the way the house looks. It's seriously depressing. I've gotten estimates ranging from ten thousand to eighteen thousand dollars for the work, and I took out a twelve thousand dollars home equity loan for the repairs right before the RONA shut everything down and holding on to the money in my savings because we're in the middle of a pandemic and recession, so I wanted to

have a cushion. I highly doubt I'll be out of work anytime soon, but of course you never know. So what should I do. Should I go ahead and get the repairs done now, or should I continue to wait it out. I'm so torn about this, and I just need another opinion or two, because I am all cabs stressed. Okay, So twelve K in the bank. It's a home equity loan, which is for those who want to back up real quick. A home equity loan is when you tap into the equity of your home and the bank gives you a

loan based on that equity and you owe. Let's say, well, there's a home equity loan, there's a home equity line of credit. Home equity loans a lump sum. So it's like a personal loan, you know, the same way that a personal loan works. You just get the lump sum and you're in your bank account and you can use

it for whatever you want to use it for. And then a line of credit is when you it's basically like, you know, same amount of money, but instead of getting in a one line some you can use that line of credit as you need it. You don't have to use the whole thing if you don't want to, kind of like a credit card. But anything you do use, you'll you'll eventually end up owing it back. All right, Well, thank you for indulging me. In my definition, that's.

Although you didn't say what she didn't say what she did for a living, But she seems pretty confident she's not going to lose her job. I don't know what work needs to be done in the house, but you know, like around here where I live, I certainly see that people are actually working because you know, you want to maintain and be safe. But you know there are farms and things that are still you know, they're using safety

precautions and are working on people's homes. And that's honestly, you might be able to get work a little bit cheaper because you know there are people who are not wanting to, you know, renovate right now because of all that's going on. So you might find people who I wanted to give you a better deal because they need to work. So keep that in mind too. I just think taking money out of a property that's meant to be used to like enhance the property, you just don't.

I just don't want you to not to use it to enhance the property. And now you've pulled money out, you own more, but the property is not worth more.

the bare necessities, especially with like winter coming up. I mean, I think, you know, it's not a bad time to do a project like this, Like Tiffany said, people are probably looking for work, and if it's interior work, that's a bit more appealing the twelve thousand dollars that you've got sitting in your bank account. You know, not I can't think of any necessarily downsides to not using it.

But if it's I mean, if you've got stable income, you don't mention if you've already got you know, a little bit of savings set aside, or a lot of bit of savings hopefully you know, if you were to lose your job, then you know, I don't see any harm in it. But like I'm like making a mental pros and cons list. If you want to sell the house and you know you need to do the repairs, then I would say, Okay, that's that's a reasonable use of funds that you've taken out against the equity in

your home. That makes a lot of sense. A lot of people, like I feel like that's the most popular reason for taking out a home equity loan. And if you feel, you know, relatively stable in your job. And yeah, I don't see a huge problem with that personally from

my experience doing home improvement projects. It's that it doesn't all happen at once, and you may be able to you know, spread the workout over several months so you don't have to fork over the entire twelve thousand dollars right away, and that may help, you know, hedge against

some of the risk. So if you don't have to spend it all, you know, you can be saving on the back end, you know, trying to replenish your savings as you you know, use those funds to fund your project and then feel a little bit more you know, confident moving forward. And then worse comes to worse if something bad happens, you know, you lose your job or a source of income or whatnot, then you may not have used all of the funds and just a portion

of it. So if you're going to be working with a certain company or contractor, you know, ask how they would like to be paid and how many installments and over what period of time, and that can give you a better sense of you know, how far you can spread the payments out. Whoof I really dug deep for that. So I hope that was helpful. And again Tiff and I are you know, they adjust our ideas. Ultimately, you got to do what works you know best for you.

vaccine not your vaccine, whoa no, not a vaccine. You can order your test kit for COVID online. They mail it to you overnight. You do a little nasal swab, put it back in the little tube and you ship it off to them again overnight and I got my results back and maybe three business days from after I mailed it, so it's pretty fast and you didn't have

to leave the house. It's really safe. So I'm going to drop a link to Pixel lab Core in the show notes because I have found friends and family don't want to get tested because it's a hassle and with Pixel, I just and maybe there's other companies besides Pixel, but this is the place that my family has used a few times now, and you can order kit. I've ordered two kits and although it says it's one hundred and nineteen dollars at checkout, if you put your insurance information in.

You know, thanks to the one piece of legislation that was passed this year, it made COVID testing free, so you should be able to get a free COVID test through Pixel. So that's my boost for that, and I promise a double boost. The other side of my boost is have you had Tiffany? You're so busy, but I wanted to shout out. I know you probably haven't watched it yet, but there is a black Andy black, black black Netflix movie Christmas movie called Jingle Jangle. I can't wait.

It looks so good. I'm saving it for this weekend because I want to, like, or whenever we get our Christmas tree, I want to like watch Jingle Jangle? Who is it? Having? It has? What's the guy from the Last King of Scotland forest would occur? I believe Keegan Michael. Wait what's that? I always get them confused, Keegan Michael, Peel or no Key and Peel, the tall one, the non horror movie one. He's isn't it? And I feel

like it's a musical or something. I don't know. It looks amazing and I can't wait.

cases in front of RBG. Wow, So anyway Neil's officiale okay. So Neil has been doing something called court Side with Neil, a discussion of the post election litigation attempting to reverse the election results. And when I tell you, Mandy, life, because you have this man who is one, he's like really like, you know, down to earth. I don't know how he manages to explain law in a way that

like anyone can understand. But any anxiety that you might have felt post elections saying well, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna feel good until you know president electorsworna and girl, I don't feel no anxiety because Neil has broken down all the tea with the light. So he is like. What I love about Neil's that clearly he's like genius, super smart, you know, super accomplished. But he's also slightly shady, so he adds all that together, which is the.

So if you're feeling any anxiety about post election, even though you're like, I'm pretty sure we're good, go head on to Neil katal n e A l KA t y A L and watch some of his court side Like IG shows there like three or four minutes long. It's just, like I said, super smart, a little bit of shady, but very entertaining.

I don't know how this all happens. And I feel exactly like you were saying, Tiff, like I want to be excited, but like court stuff, I don't know how this works, litigation. What love it? So his name is Neil, we'll link it in the in the show notes. That's that's dope. I can't wait.

It's just really honestly, what I like about it too, is that it's it's very like, it's not just entertaining, it's very informational from like and you know, just someone who has not just studied law, but you know, practice laws for a long time. And then you're like, oh and then when then when you watch I'm not gonna lie. When you watch like Fox and the News, you're like, this is really bad they are. They are reporting in such an egregious way that you're like wow, because none

of what they're saying is actually happening. They're like straight lying, and you kind of know that, but to hear from a legal perspective, you're like, this is really really bad.

I feel fortunate. I feel a little guilty because I know a lot of people are struggling, and I feel very fortunate. It's like the survivor's guilt that I have the opportunity to take paid time off. I got to figure out some way to get back, but I'm going to try try to at least with some of it and take a load off because it has been a year, yes,

and several years in one, like you said. And if you haven't, even though holidays are kind of lowercase ce canceled this year, still take your time off, even if it's just to sit around and watch Jingle Jangle on repeat on Netflix a million times. I think if you have the opportunity and the blessing to have some time off, take it, enjoy it in whatever way you can. Let's make the most of this. Yes, I agree, I agree.