Financial Planning for Big Life Changes

kids go nuts. I'm making spikes for the grown up so like who cares? Just don't look away from the piles of laundry, look away from the closet doors that are going to be shut on so much crap that is spilling out of them. Lets let's focus on the kids having fun. Y'all all right, thank y'all for the overwhelming yeah support for the show in the past couple

of weeks. Not only did y'all fill out the b A listener survey and so thoughtfully gave y'all's feedback for what you want to see next for brad Ambition and twenty twenty five. Like I just, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much, BAFAM. I just y'all are the freaking best. I don't know, I mean, I do know. I was gonna say, I don't know how we got how we got so so lucky with the BA fam and the BA listenership, but I know wise

because y'all have been rocking with us for years. I know some of y'all have maybe just discovered the show, but we have been around for almost a decade and we have never lost sight of y'all and why we are doing this show. And I think that feeling y'all can feel that love that we have for you BA Fam, you know we're doing this for you, and that y'all send that love back to me is just incredible. So

thank you so much. Now we're heading into a Thanksgiving week and I know you're going to be inundated with promos for Cyber Monday and Black Friday and holiday sales and all of that. But before you get that big pile of marketing emails, I want to offer a really cool opportunity to you. I've never done this before. I'm a little nervous about it. I haven't even told my business coach because she might be like, Mandy, what you doing? Why are you making it so? Why are you doing that?

Why are you doing that? I'm doing it because I want to. I'm doing it because I listen to y'all and I see even from the survey, from y'all's comments to the questions we get in our DMS, I see that this has been a tough year, whether it's financially

or career wise. You may be feeling like your dollars are not being stretched or not stretching as far as they used to, That you're not getting the big raises and promotions like we were seeing in twenty twenty one twenty twenty two, that you're not feeling as confident getting yourself out there in the job market, or even if you are in the job market, that recruiters are ghosting you, that you're doing a lot of interviewing but you're not

getting any job offers. It's a tough season out there, right, So I'm actually offering a flash sale, a one day only twenty four hour sale on the Mandy money Maker's Course and Academy. So this is my I wasn't gonna say, magnus opus. It is my baby. It is the course that I created and have been adding to and improving and iterating on for three years now. It is the most comprehensive career strategy offering for women of color that

I have seen. I created the solution that is going to help you feel more confident about your career goals. That is going to give you the winning strategies that I myself used to tenx my income from thirty thousand to over three hundred thousand dollars a year across a decade of my own career. It is going to make you feel less alone if you are someone who's wanting to pivot but still feeling stuck. It is going to give you strategies to negotiate to bounce back from challenging

times like the ones that we're in right now. When it comes to your career. It's going to make it give you the confidence so that you can actually, I don't know, post on LinkedIn get seen and noticed by not just recruiters, but the right recruiters, the ones who really have job opportunities and are looking for someone special who's going to separate themselves from the pack. I will teach you. I've got templates for LinkedIn, I've got interview tips.

I have got not just that, but I've got a holistic approach to solving some of the biggest challenges in your career. What do I do if I feel stuck? How do I actually get recruiters to respond to my emails? How do I get noticed by recruiters? How do I be seen? How am I going to be seen as a thought leader in my space? How do I send emails dms to people that I'm interested in can with without giving them the ick and without feeling super desperate

on my part? How do I build confidence as a negotiator? And when I actually earn more money, because that's what I'm here to help you do, how do I invest that money and use that money to grow my wealth? Right? How do I turn my career into a wealth building engine? That is what the Mandy money Makers is all about. And for the first time only, like I said, I am offering the full course to you for fifty five zero. I really hope my business coach is not listening, just

don't listen. Fifty percent off fifty percent off, Okay, and today is the day, so at the at midnight tonight, this deal will expire. But I want to give you guys a chance to take a bet on yourself, to invest in yourself. Now, this course is probably what a dozen or more hours of content. I've got five thousand dollars worth of bonuses, and I keep just adding to

the bonuses because why the hell not. I look at the Mandy money Maker's Course as a It's the kind of investment that is going to appreciate in value over time. There are modules, there are bonuses that I add as I learn, as I gain insights from the community, I'm constantly making it better. So I've added a bonus on how to start your own consulting business. I've added a bonus on how to start your own podcast, because why

not it's an additional income stream potentially, right. I've added a module on how to get quoted in media if you're someone who doesn't want to just be a thought leader but actually get you know, put in media mentions and things like that. I have added a module, an additional module on career pivoting so how to do an actual hard pivot in your career. And I go through four or five different styles of pivoting that you can do, and I will continue adding on. So fifty percent off

the entire course in academy is now available. Go to Mandy money dot com slash academy to get this limited time deal. It is ending at midnight. Your turn is turning into a pumpkin at midnight tonight, So please don't walk, run, oh and shoot. I just forgot one additional thing. I really hope my business coach is not listening to this. But another first for me is I am introducing a

referral if you and a referral bonus. If you and a friend both enroll the Mandy money Makers and you tell me who you are, you're each going to qualify for a one hour free coaching session with me. A one hour free coaching session with me. Okay, And if there's one thing that we talk about on Brown Ambition, it is the value of time. I typically charge upwards of three hundred and fifty dollars per hour for a one on one session with me. I'm giving you each

one for free. So you're going to get fifty percent off the course, which you have access to for a lifetime, and in your back pocket. You're going to have a one on one session with me, your favorite career coach and Brown Ambition podcast hosts, Mandy Wood of Santo's at your beck and Call. Okay, so please enroll. Go to Mandy money dot com slash Academy twenty four hours only. Good luck. I hope you take advantage of this. It

ain't gonna happen again. Wait till my business coach comes and grabs me up and tells me Mandy, But I don't care. I don't care. I'm doing it for y'all. Okay. At the end of the day, sometimes you make decisions that are that are just best for your community. And that's what I want to do. Okay, That's why I'm my own boss. I can't wait to see y'all in the academy. Okab a fam Now, just as a reminder, I am not your financial advisor. I am not your

personal investment advisor. I am not your lawyer, or your doctor, or your obgyn or your landscaper. I'm nothing. Okay. I'm a lady on the internet who has got some insights and some ideas, and I'm here to let y'all in on how I think about problems and some solutions I may have. But please, Dear Lord, do not sue me, and we all jump on into your question now. While I'm looking up these questions, I do want to note that Spotify, y'all have been leaving comments on Spotify. Why

don't no one tell me this? It's incredible? So you know how we've been reading reviews from listeners on the air. I'm going to start going into Spotify and reading our comments because y'all have been so generous with your feedback and I just appreciate it, and I want y'all to know that we see them, we read them, I love them. I will respond when I see them. Yes, it's really me responding. I try to sign the I try to sign my replies Mandy so that you know it's me.

But honestly, it's probably me. It's probably me who's responding. So let me jump into Spotify comments right now and see who we can give a shout out to, because y'all are just amazing. Where do you know that on tokay two listeners to the Matthew Knowles interview that just aired this week. Okay, this is a long number. This commenter says, wait the Matthew Knowles. Okay, Mandy, we see you. Y'all know this means we're only six degrees of separation

from Queen Bee. Go Mandy, thank you. And then listener Diana says, what, okay, Mandy flex on flex on us. Then this is your world. We're just living in it. Oh, y'all are so funny. Did y'all like the Matthew Knowles interview? That was so fun and shout out to Yeah, shout out to his team for letting him come on the show. And he was just so sweet to talk to you.

I kind of felt like I was talking to my dad, you know, just also knowing that he's like a gajillionaire who co wrote some of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands of all time. No, no big deal, all right. Listener Gift Yeah twenty four. Oh okay, this is on the episode earning four hundred thousand dollars and still drowning in debt. This is the baqa from I

think two fridays ago. Gift Yeah twenty four says, I love the vulnerabil and authenticity that Mandy shared in this episode, thank you y'all have to go back and listen to that episode because I did. I told a tail. I told a tale about my target addiction. Go back and listen. This is listener two one seven, says Mandy. This. This is what the ba fan has always loved about you and Tiffany, the authenticity that y'all bring. You weren't only talking to missus X, you were talking with all of us.

I've been overspending also, and I don't make anywhere anywhere near what you you or missus X make, but I felt seen and there was zero judgment. Thank you. That is uh, that is so kind. Thank y'all so much. Okay, I'm gonna read one more and then we'll get into questions. This is from listener Taylor. Taylor responded to the episode the Smartest Ways to invest in Your Future. She said, I love the BAQA. I've been listening for the last

half of the year and learning a lot. I changed jobs two years ago and I totally forgot about my four one K. My current job does profit sharing. I need to look into where that money went. Forever learning from these amazing ladies. I love that. Taylor Honestly, some of us we just need a reminder. You know, there's so much going on throughout the day, so many other important tasks you gotta do that sometimes that old dusty retirement account or investment account or whatever, you just kind

of forget about it. So I'm so glad that this show has been helping y'all. Spotify comments it's a thing. And what I love about Spotify comments is that I can actually see which episode you are responding to, whereas on iTunes we can see the comments, but unless you tell me which show it was, I don't exactly know always which episode really resonated with y'all. So shout out to Spotify. All right, now, let's get into this week's question.

This week's money question comes from igh listener Ta Coola. Tacola says, Hello, ladies, I need some help getting started with trading. I listened to your podcast regularly, especially when you feature guests who trade in stocks. I guess I'm a little hesitant and unsure of my and I would love some of your personal advice on where to begin. Okay, to Cola, you know, we got a really great response because we did a replay a Haloback episode of an interview that we did with Terry Egioma of Trade to

Travel or Trade and Travel. Terry is incredible. Go back and find that episode. I think it was a Holiback episode a few weeks ago, but you can find her everywhere. Terry A. Geoma is an educator and she teaches. She probably teaches tens of thousands of people how to trade all the time. But the one thing that I thought of when you asked about help getting started trading is don't trade with real money in the beginning. So what

it's called is paper trading. And I have a paper trading account through my trial Schwab investment account, and there are other paper trading So the reason they call it paper trading is because it's not real money. It's literally like a playground for you to you can actively trade and you feel like you're trading, and you get you get used to the terminology. You can make mistakes without actually risking real money. And I would say do that for as long as it takes for you to feel comfortable.

I've actually been trying to do that for the past year, and I kind of had these like spurts where I'm doing it and not doing it, and I don't quite feel ready to, you know, get to that tarry level of investing, but why not try and while you're building up your confidence, like use these tools as a way to do it. So there are other paper trading platforms on brokerages like wee Bowl that's we b u LLL their Schwab, like I mentioned, Schwab actually acquired the Thinker

Swim platforms. So they acquired TDM ror Trade which founded the Thinker Swim platform, which is like the OG of paper trading. So if you're on Charles Schwab, that's the Thinker Swim platform. Interactive Brokers has a paper trading offering. E Trade of course has paper trading and this is a new one that I haven't heard of or personally you trade station new to me, maybe not new to y'all. But those are five options if you want to get into paper trading, and I think it's such a great opportunity.

Even if everything looks like Greek to you, I mean, why do we hate on the Greeks whatever? Greek is a beautiful language. Okay, if everything seems hard to understand or it's a lot of jargon, at least you can give yourself time. You can take your time, you can google stuff, you can look up explainers and hey, like ask me questions along the way. Maybe we can have Terry come back on the show. But I love this because it is a I mean, it's not even I

wouldn't even say low stakes. It's a zero stakes way to start training yourself and how to trade and how to make money literally appear from nowhere. It's magical. But yeah, I am not again your investment advisor, and you got

to do what's best for you. But paper trading, I mean, it's kind of a no brainer, right if it comes to increasing your knowledge, getting yourself to practice, and getting over that hump of like making it a little less scary, just like actually getting in there and seeing how it all works. Okay, Tacola, thank you for your question. I'm going to be right back with question number two. Ba Faan stay tuned, all right, ba fam, I am back with a question from our email inbox Broad Ambition podcast

at gmail dot com. If y'all want to submit a question to the show. By the way, when you submit a question, make sure you put BAQA in the subject line because the mailbox is full and I need help parsing through finding y'all's questions. Okay, this question comes from listener Jenny Love that name all right. Genny says, I found you both in March twenty twenty three and Binge

listen to your episode from the start. That's amazing. I feel like I know you both so well and thank you for all the work you both do to empower women. I'm in my mid forties. I'm married and I have a four year old. I live in New York City, Husban and I have a yours, mine and hours financial setup. I recently came into some money which falls into the mine category. It's around one hundred k. For now, I have it parked in a CD till I decide what

to do with it. I have the following retirement accounts. I have an IRA and I've maxed out my twenty twenty four contribution. I have a work pension and a four to seven B plan which I contribute towards. I also have a high yield savings accounts with six months worth of expenses. I have revolving credit card debt which I pay off each month. Also, I have a mortgage.

I take care of my disabled father, so I'm wondering if I should keep this extra hundred k in a savings account for when he passes or as his health deteriorates. I took a step down when I had my son and I wasn't earning as much for a few years. During that time, I didn't contribute to retirement. So should I invest the money into a brokerage account? If so, how much we have a five to nine plan set up for our son. Should I put some in there?

I have analysis paralysis right now, trying to decide what to do. Please advice, I thank you and advance. Ginny, Okay, Ginny. I love rich people problems. I love I got money problems. This is a good problem to have, okay. And honestly, parking it in a CD until you decide what to do with it is so damn smart. And the reason is that with the certificate a deposit account or a CD account, which if you guys don't know what that is,

there you go. CDs tend to have much higher interest rates than your typical high yield savings account even and if you get a high interest rate on a CD, that can be a great way to grow your funds. But you have the protection of FDIC insurance, which means that your money is ain't going nowhere. Okay. Also with the CD, the only caveat, well there's a couple, but the biggest caveat is that you have to leave it there. So leave it there for up to for the best rates.

The best rates on a CD are gonna often come along with the longest the longest periods of time with which you need to keep the money in that account. So one year, two, three, four, five year CD, they're going to increase in rate. But the caveat is that you will have to pay penalties if you try to withdraw it early. So I'm hoping that you have it parked in like a I don't know, six month or a one year CD, but sounds like a good plan

while you figure stuff out for sure. Okay, So I'm in the put a chunk of that away category away for now. You have your six months of expenses for your family, but while you're taking care of your father, I honestly think double that because the expense of taking care of being a caregiver, which means I mean you have two people to take care of a four year old and you're ailing father and that is just a

lot of pressure. You may need to take time away from work so that you don't end up getting super burnt out and overwhelmed. You may want to use some of that money to hire a home health aid or just to help cover your expenses so that you can take a step back if you want to really take on a lot of the bulk of the caregiving duties

and responsibilities. So I could definitely see a world in which you just take a part of that and budgeted out for how many months of additional support you can hire to help with your father or even childcare, you know which I want to or maybe both. Even so you're revolving credit card debt, you say you pay it off each month, so I'm assuming that means you pay

off in full each month. So it sounds like you don't have like any high consumer debt that's gonna immediately require like a big chunk of that one hundred k. You have a mortgage, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess that it's at a relatively low interest rate, so we don't wanna. I wouldn't recommend, And again I'm not your financial advisor or your attorney or anything. Like that. But I typically wouldn't recommend like putting that toward your mortgage, because there's other,

you know, better places that you can be putting that cash. Sometimes. Let me see as far as your like brokerage account. Absolutely I would take a chunk of it and you can you can break it up, you know. I would prioritize it by what is the highest risk category for your finance needs. It could be that your dad's going to need around the clock care. It could be that you're going to be taking a year off because you

need more time to do all this caregiving. It could be that, you know, I know, you say that you're married. I hope you're happily married, but it could be that you anticipate having a separation and so you'll need to have extra income to you know, last you through that time.

I'm not trying to be a Debbie down er. I'm just being realistic as some like different scenarios of what would come down the pike to make you want to hold on to more cash now because you were not able to contribute to your retirement fund for those three years, catching up by parking like actually depositing a chunk of that Hunter K, and to your you say that you've maxed out your IRA, well, then open up a traditional

brokerage account. It can be a ROTH, but open up a traditional like brokerage account and you could put half of that hundred k. You can put the fifty k into that. A good I OWE. A good strategy to think about too, is like, as far as taxes are concerned, where can you put that one hundred k that will minimize your tax liability? So if you have an accountant, Jinny, I would definitely say ask your accountant. This is I'm

answering your question. At the end of November, you still got time, right this episode's coming out tomorrow, you still have time to make some smart decisions about where to put that money so that you don't end up having

as much tax liability. So that could be maxing out your four one K, or you save a four to seven what is it four or five seven B a program that you have, so maxing that out, maxing out your WROTH, I RAY, and then whatever else you have you can max out if you have a HSA account, if you have goodness, What are some other tax advantages tax advantage accounts that I can think of right now.

Those are the big ones. Yeah, oh you're obviously you mentioned your five two nine set up for your son, So also making that contribution before the end of the year, it could potentially reduce your income, your tax income for the year. So I think it's a good opportunity for you to talk one on one with your accountant or an accountant, because sometimes I know that you've got these varying priorities and all these different big important things that

you could be setting aside money for. But the beauty of an accountant is that they can help you put that money away so that you maximize the amount of money that you end up with and minimize the amount of money that Uncle Sam takes because he will be coming to get his share. That is the one thing that he will always be want to do. Okay, So

that's really my advice. That's some ideas that I have, But I think ultimately sitting down with the CPA who can make the help you make the best choices to limit your taxes is a really smart way to take this. And I'll be surprised if you don't already have a CPA, because I have never. I mean, I just love messages like this especially when you listen to our show, because it just shows how incredible our audience is and how

y'all really listen and take note. And I'm just really proud of you for even being in this situation right now. And I think if you can maximize your tech strategies here, you'll be in amazing shape. Okay, thank you so much, Jinny for your question. BA Fan hit us up. We are brown at Brand Ambition Podcast on IG. If you want to hit us up on IG, you can email us Brand Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. Don't forget to leave a rating or review, leave us a comment.

To those who are tuning in on YouTube, Hello, Hello, seeing me live and color our YouTube audience, y'all are just incredible. I love I'm always in the comments. There's an incredible discourse on YouTube and I'm loving growing our community there. So if you're listening right now on Apple or Spotify or another audio platform, hop on over to YouTube. Make sure you're subscribing to Brand Ambition Podcast. I post

special clips of the shows. When we do live events, they're going to be on YouTube being streamed, So make sure that you are subscribed. You can get notified and stay in tune with our content there. If you just want to see what's the state of Mandy's crazy playroom office and when is she going to get a grown up office again? Join us over on YouTube all right, PAFAM until Monday, Happy weekend. I can't wait to see y'all inside the Academy. Bye.