Welcome to the Brown table. How's everybody? You look at you?
Hillarious?
My goodness, hold on, let me get the poll.
Oh oh my god.
No, you gotta do the white.
You gotta do the white. You did it, you did.
I couldn't mind the bicycle shirt. Hold on. You don't understand how hard it is to get Here's the truth.
Get rid of the eyebrow.
I'm like, I'm using the light of shade on my highlighter palette. I'm like, Okay, I thought I was winter pale, but you know what, I got a little melony. It's a little hard. You know what else, you guys, I have been sitting here for so long, dress like I really.
Wonder, like what was going on?
Yeah, yeah, I've been sitting here. No, it's so embarrassing. I have been sitting here for so long dressed like this because we are late. We're like forty We're almost an hour late for the show. And I did this beforehand because I was like, I need to test this makeup and see if I can get.
I get to look down.
Oh my god, but today I am on Niger Robinson. Welcome to Brand a Vision podcast from Brooklyn. From Brooklyn, I can't do the I thought it was the Bronx. I can't do any Bronx. Give me twenty thousand, one hundred. Give me Land. I need, I need Lims, I need.
Everybody keeps talking about I need the American woman. I'm like, she's not an American woman. She's from she's a new woman. Let's get it straight, particular speaking, let's get it right.
Oh my god, I don't know if she like set black American tourists like back or put us ahead.
So I'm just like, well, I didn't take that woman out already, like we know how it goes out.
There for a minute, Porkustan media and people were very kind to her. I've heard I have read.
She may wait to Dubai.
Dubai.
Yeah, there was clips of her in Dubai like she was back. I was like, wait a minute, Oh.
No, okay, I'm not caught up. Obviously I thought she was back. I thought she was still there.
So there's that.
No, no, no, I had read she got sent back to New York, but damn she went to Dubai. Well, she said that they were going to have their babies in Dubai.
Made her way because she was taking pictures with her fans, and she was like.
Oh my god, appear well shit, I mean, I'll start so, by the way, these are I don't have a black scarf, which is what, of course I do. It's somewhere in this house. This is a pair of pants, like.
You know.
And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna text my friends are gonna think this is so funny. No one is obsessed with her as I am. And I was like what. I was like, dang, this is a risk. What if they're not also obsessed with.
Oh I am definitely everybody out.
So funny. Well, thank you so much for laughing because that was a That was a huge dress for me. But that's my commitment to the brun Ambition audience. Well love Showema and Nelly Nasima. First time be a family, First time Brown Table. Annalyst is welome, Where are you from? Where are you calling in from?
You know, straight out of straight out of Uplea, California?
Really yeah? I think it was North Carolina this whole time.
I've never even stepped foot in North Carolina. Okay, I'm a straight Bay Area girl.
Don't mind me while I take this off of mine.
That eyebrow is real strong.
I probably shouldn't have tag us. I have like the really extra strength makeup remover, but this.
Is oh yeah, that's the good stuff. Take today. It's gonna take everything to commit.
Yeah, that's what I used. If we had been on time, it probably wouldn't be the cemented to my eyebrows. But y'all are gonna have to watch me take off this makeup while we talk in Da Fam. I'm gonna edit myself out of the YouTube video. I can't do it. I can't look at myself. It's hard to look that bad, you know. I mean not to brag.
She job, I mean she really is committed to that look because she does truly and just them eyebrows.
The third of her just before.
That's that takes a lot of commitment, right.
Because now I've studied it, you know, as a you know, it's hard for you to get that artist. It really and truly was, and for it to not just like as you can see, it absorbed into my own skin, you know, like the body.
Just scary, little natural scary exactly.
Oh my gosh. All right, Well for ba Fam, you're you're meeting Nasima. Probably not for the first time. I'd be surprised if y'all haven't watched any of her hilarious social media clips. I'm sure you do other impressive things, but I just enjoy your social media fam All about you, Nasima? What have we got to know?
Well, let me see, besides me being from Oakland, I am a labor and delivery nurse, mom of three very cute girls, and you know, I'm obsessed with just personal finance and black maternal mortality and morbidity prevention and all of those things, and advocacy, all of that stuff.
That's what I do.
In a nutshell, My platform is financially intentional. I have a financially intentional podcast all of those amazing things. And I'm just honored to be here because I've been asking to be on here for a long time.
Have you you have? I probably asked or something like that.
Oh girl, Well, this is the fun thing about this new format. As I'm realizing we have space for more panelists, it was hard to come between me and my girl, you know what I mean. So tell me about this labor and delivery nurse. So this is my question. Your full time? You're still at it?
I'm very much full time right now. Soon not to be.
Okay, it's a balance.
It's a balance. I'd love being a nurse.
I don't like necessarily all of the other stuff that comes with just healthcare and the changes and all those kind of things. I've been insulated from it for a while. It has now come into rear its head with budget issues and staffing issues and people being sick and our patient population being sicker. It's a whole bunch of things that are happening.
But like Mom's you know, moms com I.
Mean, I just had a baby f forty two, so you know, I was old as shit, and I'm very healthy, and I had a lot of issues. So I work in Silicon Valley where careers are prioritized heavily. So our patient population is keewing older, which means that we have a lot more issue. You mean their careers are prioritized over Yes, over all of our patients are older. Most of our patients are advanced maternal age. Most of our
patients have at least one comorbidity, so they're diabetic, they're hyperatensive. Yeah, I wasn't diabetic, but I was severely hypertensive and a whole bunch of other stuff. But yeah, so we deal with a lot with that. So that means are it's not just a straightforward just delivery, right, we are turning into more medsurge ICU, which you know, a lot of us, depending on what kind of areas you've been trained in, may not necessarily have that experience.
So it was a lot of that.
But then on the other side, you know, first hand witnessing some issues with just black women being treated I'm fairly in labor in my hometown and dealing with that and not just with providers that didn't look like us, providers that look like us, but when you're trained in under a certain system, you kind of tend to follow that system, right, So just like dealing with those things and using my platform that I have to bring up awareness to it is what I'm passionate about and just
being able to be unapologetically me just a girl from West Oakland. I'm still very hood, but I'm still very educated. I'm still very smart, and I'm still very experienced, and I talk my shit and being able to have a platform where I can do that it is very rewarding and it's open up a lot of opportunities for me. So you know, again just honor to be here, honored to be in front of people that may or may not know me but can see me in this life.
So it's nice.
Oh my gosh, yeah, I mean being from the Bay Area, you're actually working with the population that like for me, it's like the black black mother mortality rates in this country. It's staggering, it's embarrassing, it's terrifying. And you've gone through it three times now. Now you're the age rangers of your kids. How white is the age range?
They're four years apart.
So I'm I have my first at thirty three, my second at thirty eight, and.
My last one I forty two.
However, for everyone, I was still high risk in some capacity and dealing with that. But yeah, to to experience it as a patient, to go through it firsthand, to be advocating for women and then not being heard from that position is another situation in itself too.
So it's very interesting. And just like during these.
Times, there's a lot of like when you put things out there and you share and you try to educate people, there's a lot of backlash from people who have now been emboldened to speak up about their prejudices. So like trying to fight from their job. No, I'm talking about just online. You know the holes all my DEI hires. This is what happens when you hire a Negro kind of come you know, first speaking up.
You know, you know how that goes.
He're not and is almost back yard.
I love.
But you know what I want to bring up. I just read this incredible book.
Anybody who is interested in diving deeper into what Anescenea was talking about in terms of her passion and her work, I just read this book called Legacy a Black.
Physician, Racism and Medicine.
Yes, I mean, you know she was going to be on the podcast last week, but I got, I know, I know, I got to have you you on the show with that.
Oh I would love. I would love to be on there with her.
The thing is like, I love that book, but it was almost too triggering from the read because I'm too close to it.
So I had to go, yeah, I would you got to put a warning on it because it's some in terms of like health care access for black folks in this country, and especially as it relates.
To black women with experience. There's so much with her mother, with her personal story, you know, giving birth and just her work.
Essentially, she's a doctor and has seen her like firsthand so much of what goes wrong in terms of trying to get black folks access to the things they need and heard.
And not like people just assuming oh you're lying.
Or you're or exaggerating or you know, don't you don't have the resources to be able to offer you what you need, So we're just gonna kind of let you wait around and not get the access to life changing care that you need.
So it's it's it's a lot. I really resonated because she's from Brooklyn. I'm from Brooklyn.
She talked a lot about coming out, Like I was just so touched, Like my hairs were standing on end at the end.
I was crying multiple times throughout the book. So I highly recommend it.
Yeah, gosh damn it. Yes, Well, ba fan, we're gonna have doctor Blackstock on the podcast. And I know I was so sad, but she's doing amazing. I mean, that book's like a New York Times bestseller. But I'm craving solutions. I'm craving real advice. I know we didn't plan this is not on my run of show, Nasima, but I don't care because obviously our audience is this is the population that you're trying to take care of. And like having I've had two, I've had two successful births so far.
I'm thinking about my third. I'm kind of watching you to see how you're surviving. And fortunately I have had very good experiences as far as I know. You know, But my older sister is in the hospital right now. Actually she's she's dealing with some complications from us. She's a living donor, she donated kidney, and she's dealing with some like complications. And I'll tell you the experience. And she's a white woman, you know, and my mom is a white woman, and they're in Wisconsin, so you know,
this is their people. And then and I'm just saying, like, even from her perspective, just being a woman in pain, because she's dealing with a lot of pain and postop that that they couldn't find a surgical reason for, and her having to like get them to understand how deeply her pain is and take it seriously. It's been so traumatic, I mean traumatic for her, dramatic for us in different ways.
But the nursing staff is so crucial. I mean, they're the people that you see so often when you're in you know, spaces like this, and I yeah, so I just I acknowledge the importance of you your role. I love our you know, our nurses, our healthcare workers and even y'all are dealing with so many outside pressures oh yea, and an employment situation like you know, the same corporate bs that like your accountant or you know, a project manager in tech is dealing with you. Guys are also
in this the ship with us. So you know, it's just difficult from patients, from the staff, you know, all the way around. Uh was there a question in there somewhere? Not I'm a soapbox. I'm just crossing back and have my eyebrows back it all right? Well, yeah, Nelly, you just came back. You're fresh from Switzerland. Dalan, how Isvos? How is DeVos?
It was in Davos.
So I did to Zurich, which is like the direct flight, and then take a train from Zurich to Dovos to go to the World Economic Forum, which I was invited to go speak on a panel about financial literacy education.
I'm surprised they care about us in Vos.
You know what it is it's like a global conference, right, so they're talking about what can we do better globally? And I do think that even though the US has fallen behind in education generally, we are kind of moving up to the top in terms of financial education ways, like not necessarily leaders in financial education results, but leaders in the wave to make it happen very.
Quickly, because like three years ago, there were only about.
Eight states that required financial literacy for high school graduation and now there's twenty six. So they went and did some research like, well, how did we go from eight to twenty six? We more than tripled access in the US? How did that happen? And they found out it's an organization that I work with called Mission twenty thirty five. The reality is the work that we do is nonprofit, so it's a charity. It's a found operating foundation.
So the money.
If there was not a very, very wealthy person who cared about this, like so deeply that they were willing to put tens of millions of dollars of their own personal well to make it happen, guess what, it just wouldn't be happening because there's nothing in the system creating change. There's someone with a lot of money who said, this is what I want to see happen. And so unfortunately that's the only.
Reason it's happening.
But the good thing is it has led to a lot of systemic change, and so that's kind of why I was saying, like, now we need to figure out how to make it happen, even if there isn't a person with a lot of money who wants to make it happen, but the fact that it should happen because it's the right thing to do, and.
Yeah, we got to bake it into the system exactly.
It should be baked in.
It shouldn't be left to philanthropy and to somebody coming you know. Like that was one of the things I was excited to go because I saw a viral clip from like last time the World Economic Form was going viral. There was a guy talking about taxes and he was on the stage.
I don't know if y'all seen this clip. It's like a middle age.
White man and he's on a panel talking about taxes and he was like, I am tired of coming here to Davos and hearing people talk about how important philanthropy is.
Stop it. Philanthropy is not the solution.
Taxing the wealthy is the taxing making sure wealthy people pay their fair share of taxes.
That's how we solve a lot of.
The systemic issues, instead of pretending that the philanthropy is how we solve these problems and just depending on people with a lot of money to feel good in their heart of hearts and give the money and get a tax break from it.
Like, no, we just need to actually tax the people.
That need to be taxed at the levels of needy taxet to be able to sustain the country.
And this also applies globally.
Has anyone checked interpol is that man? Is he okay? Have they kidnapped him as he disappeared? Because I don't know that kind of philosophy has a place in today's situation. Ship right, so that we're in with our current leader. My god, it's true.
And that was a couple of years ago.
And the truth is he's gone on social media and said that they've never invited him back ever since he went on that rant, never invited him that. Well, when you go in and tell the truth, now, oh no, you're going too far.
We don't want to hear it.
We don't want to hear about ourselves. We want to believe that these checks. That's such a great point. You want to believe that these checks are like that's all we gotta do is write a check and then be done with it.
But it was so elitiates. I'm gonna tell you, like when you go. The only reason I got access to a lot of the events were because I knew someone who invited me to go speak on the panel.
And every single time.
I clicked the link and registered, they would email me back and say, your submission has been received. We will consider whether we're going to let you into this event or not. So they tell you register here, But what you're doing is actually just letting them know that you want to go, and they'll see if you're cool enough.
Oh you're so funny. All right, Well, did y'all watch the Super Bowl? You're all into that? You meant?
I watched the Catcher concert, and I've heard they were playing football during the concert.
I don't know.
Yeah, it was like in the background, you know, it was at a stadium. It was interesting. It's part of the message. Yeah, but damn, I'm still I'm still unpacking that performance. What was y'all's what was y'all's take.
You know, First of all, I just have to acknowledge that Oakland was heavily in the building.
Okay.
Bay Area culture is super influential in hip hop world, and I just want people to put it, you know, give us our flowers. Second of all, the messaging, like Kendrick Lamar is very intentional about everything that he does, and so I think it's gonna take a little while to unpack all the subliminals. But I love the Uncle Sam that I was so confused.
I did. I mean, I was I was like, what am I looking at? And plus I got my kids running around, I'm trying to focus, and I'm just like, isn't this the Kendric performance. I had just ran from the kitchen like probably, you know, chopping up someone's pizza into bite sized slices. But and I was like, what is that? And I was like, wait, Sam uncle said, and then just you could not reach me for the next thirteen minutes and thirty eight seconds. Yeah, hilarious.
I love the black men that formed the American flag and then Kendrick in the middle on it just looked like a struggle. I was like, oh, that imagery was like that's it, and like how it was very like protective. It was like very like battlestands, Like you know, I.
Didn't see this in that moment.
If you look at the part where they all lean over, it's they're they're hovering over, like leaning onto each other's backs. And the visual represents the fact that America was built on black folks backs.
Name like that is powerful.
And so there's people who are trying to trash the performance and saying, oh, it wasn't all this all that, and I'm like, wait, that's.
Not who It wasn't for them.
Don't go on Twitter or whatever it's called X or whatever.
But they say, and Beyonce didn't deserve Album of the Year.
Those are the same people, That's right.
But the sad thing is it's like if you didn't get it, it's because it wasn't It wasn't for you.
Actually was not for I have been so inspired by art in a way that I mean I have throughout my life, but this past year especially and just like the art that is being made and I know, yes, like not like Us was the song of the year and it came out of a rap battle and you can sort of, and I've seen people try to diminish it to that, like, oh, it's just a beef, you know, between two rappers, and now it's like why did it deserve? But Kendrick's intent and he never gives interviews, but I
need j'all. If you haven't listened to his interview with Apple Music that he did a couple of days ago. I listened to it this morning. And the way that he approaches his art and he literally he said, one of my most favorite things I've ever heard talk about chills. The way that he approaches art and his his you know, I call him a poet, but the way that he uses his his words, his lyricism, his expression, his talent.
He said, he knows so many men in his life who are so filled with rage and they have no they don't have the tools that he does to get the rage out of their body, to put voice to like do something with it, you know, make an impact, get everyone to understand. And that he feels I'm getting chills just talking about it, and he said, you know me, I'm using my expression, my power of expression to give
a voice for them. The way that he approaches his art is just so inspiring, and it also it makes me want to double triple, quadruple down on things such as Brown Ambition podcast being for us, such as my book that's going to be published in twenty twenty six being called Brown Ambition, and having the focus be for us, even at a time where it feels like there's that pressure like they want like maybe we should go back to the way it was before, you.
Know, gown down on this for us stuff.
Yes, brown it down.
But I'm like, look at how Kendrick and how much success he has and he's never lost he's never lost his compass, Like his focus has been his people. It's been And I won't even say us because I don't feel like I'm his people because I'm just a Georgia girl, biracial. I'm talking about Nazima, I'm talking about the West Coast, like people who came Who's Who's like generations before Kan left the South moved to California and brought that culture with them. And it's just inspiring, truth really is.
I Mean, he's the man we all know that, Like he got a Pulitzer Prize.
He's the only musician.
To get it outside of like classical musicians and jazz artists like he's he's truly like that type of person who has committed to achieving in writing masterful lyricism, and like you can't deny that. I feel like people just missed, like it went right over their heads that they were publishing on. Well, how wasn't this big commercial appeal he
doesn't have, Like he didn't have all the hits. It's like you missed the artistic statement, the social commentary, the representation, the storytelling, the cultural significance of the moment of the everything on the stage. It was a visual spectacle.
Granted it wasn't.
Like the back to back to back chart topping hits that like Rihanna's performance was, but that's this is not us trying to it's not care right, And I just feel like people miss that. Anybody talking, I was just like so over it because you didn't get it, Like you really just didn't get it.
It's just like we have to we have to be overly qualified for and I'm tired of it.
But I'm sick of it, honey.
I have always been in the top, been in the top one percent of everything that I've done. I've always been the only one in the room. I've always been represented and I do not need to prove myself to you. Okay, you better google's He.
Literally is on the largest stage in the globe and people expect him to prove his worth. He's worthy. I'm like Siri, play man in the garden. Yeah, you know what I mean. He deserves it all. He actually deserves it all just because he's there, just because of his like track record, his career. And if you're not, you need to go to the library and look up on
a you know, an unauthorized biography of Kendrick Lamarin. That's fine, or use your chat GPT or whatever little you know tool you do to avoid books now and then maybe you can learn something. But to be out your like speaking out the side of your neck about how this man does not deserve or like he's not worthy.
I want to double down on the intentionality because as everybody knows, like the artists pay for the Super Bowl performances, whatever they bring their their the all the stufffects the people, the staging, the lighting, the dancers, everything that is there is coming out of their pockets, and so that.
Is in their vision, right yea, his own production. He just he left his label and started his own production company. Was it pg lang And he was talking about how they like the team at the table, the thought that went into every single iota of that. I mean that performance for me, I've been unpacking Beyonce Bowl ever since. I'm still watching that almost every other day at least.
And Dochi's performance from the Grammys. Oh, I won't the expression the fashion, you know, I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me exactly what the bell bottoms like had to do with like the movement, Like I want to be on board. Let me know if I need to run out and get me.
Well, just play it out. But the thing is that comes up, but I'm not listen my baby. That's her theme song.
Okay, she like a minor like what.
You were talking about, Mandy, about the artistic expression, Like this is what we need to hold us together during these times where we're so inundated with all this negativity and it's coming from all the different places, right, but these are our little acts of rebellion and I'm here for it.
Every time, Nasima, every time you post about how your your kids have like six figure investment funds, that is resistance that's right, baby, you know what I mean? That is it. And every time you get online and you share your experience, and every time you show up to work in spite of all the challenges, and Yanelly, you too show up to you know, the work that you're doing and go out your way to show up in
a room full of people. And Davos who probably to be Frank didn't love that you were there, probably thought you were a diversity panelist, you know, trying to fill a quota, but still like we're showing up and that you know, one of my Mandy money makers, she actually said something that blew my mind last week. And since the election, I've been drawn to like the poetry of Langston Hughes especially, and like the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and Charmaine. One of my makers was like, well,
the Harlem Renaissance was about one hundred years ago. It was, And I was like wait, and I got chills. I'm like, you're right, it was. History is rhyming. And I'm like the way that Langston, the way that Zora and Neil Hurston like those voices, the art that was made during that period. I'm like, oh, maybe we're in this this other you know, heartless New Harlem renaissance. But I don't know what to call it yet. We'll just go with
like Brown and Vision renaissance. That's right. In twenty twenty five, it really hit, truly it did.
The moment of Serena on that screen. Yeah, I just hurt everyone's scream.
She didn't get enough airtime, really and truly she did not those.
Five seconds enough.
I don't even know if there was five. It was not enough. She looks so damn good.
That was epic.
That was Sissa kill it.
I love that was the part that was part of my favorite part.
Oh my god, Oh my god. When they when they did what is it? All the lights?
All right? Well, I'm trying to think what else from the Super Bowl Jalen hurts. People are obsessed with him and his beautiful black wife.
This is what y'all wanted by team management.
That wowr leadership team.
They're all women. Love it. I love that. Well, now I get the hype. I really like you. Between him and Aaron the guy from the Lion King movie, the New One, I just saw a beautiful man. I didn't look into the body of work, but now I get it. Because damn I did actually watch the football, and it was I don't think anyone else thought it was a good game necessary unless you were from Philly, because like
you know, it was pretty like obvious. It was insane they dominated to see him dominate in that way and and and make his city so proud. It's just I always get a little emotional, and I kept thinking like, Oh, those are just someone's babies out there in a sema. That's just someone's mama, Like we just create these humans and you don't even know like where they're gonna go. Also, all the wide receivers on the Chiefs who kept dropping passes and like letting their quarterback get sacked.
I was like, that's just someone's baby.
Wow, Like I didn't realize that they have two of the largest linemen in NFL history plays.
I know. Yeah, So it was the rock game with you know, with size does matter after all. Just putting that out there, all right, Well, between that and the stress that I'm under right now because the Beyonce Cowboy Carter Tour tickets go on sale tomorrow, y'all in the Bee Hive were going, y'all not going nothing. Tell me you didn't like it.
I didn't go to the last one because I just was like, oh, I don't know about all this hype.
And then by the time I wanted to go, it was too late to prad.
But I wouldn't go. I wouldn't go. I see, I knew it. I could tell by the way you've inhaled. I was like, oh, I would go.
Okay, so this is this is my thing.
I would go.
I can fully.
Afford to go.
My thing is I want people.
To prioritize their I I rais before Beyonce.
Oh gotcha? Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Well then I usually in general don't pay for concert tickets, and so I'm always like romans, I'm.
Like, ah, can I get it for free? Is there a way I can finangle it? Is somebody I know that works in.
The production Like so that's all my only thing about Yeah, I have my uncle is a producer. My uncle is the one to put together Tony Tony Tony and Bogue, all those old school people.
So I've been in the music industry with my whole life.
I think that's my favorite. You're like, you have to value some things. You can't value everything. So it's not every concert I have this. Beyonce's Renaissance tour was the last show I went to, you know, and I haven't bought tickets for that since. But that one was crazy. I did drop like a washer dryer, A good one, and the experience. I still smile like that, you know what I mean. And so for Cowboy Carter. But this time, my friend, she's too bougie for me, but she got me.
We're gonna go. We're gonna try to get tickets for London, and by try, I mean we already booked our flights in our hotel.
If you're gonna spend all these thousands of dollars, it may as well be an experience that's more than two hours.
You know.
I would definitely invest in her concert, especially because my Robbry is fully funded.
That's right, mine is not. But anyway, that's all the time we have.
Let me bring in.
There, let me take a little break, and we're gonna come right back. We have a very special guest to join us in the Brown Ambitions studio. His name is Aaron Thomas, the founder of prenups dot com aka one of the greatest divorce attorneys in America. We're gonna be talking about relationships and money and how we can protect the bag while we secure the bag. Ladies. Okay, so I mean not to pick a side, but we're picking a side. Come on, it's a look at the paneless,
all right, ba fam, Welcome to the Brown Table. Mister Aaron Thomas. I read this. You are the three time winner of Atlanta's Best Divorce Attorney, I mean best in the business, do you know what I mean? Also the founder of prenups dot com and a Harvard Law graduate, and Aaron I just feel like your everyone's friend. Any financial educator that I've talked to has been like, have you had Aaron on? Have you had Aaron on? Have you had Aaron on? But I'm really happy to have
you join us on Brown Ambition. Finally, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I am honored and excited to be here.
Is this like your time of years? Is your time to shine? It's Valentine's relationships. It's also like peak divorce season apparently.
Is it?
It is?
It is divorce season and it is engagement slash prenup season. It is both of those right now.
Ollow, It's the duality you know you're seeing some couples begin their journey together and helping others consciously uncouple or whatever it is that you call it today consciously pop. Yeah. Yeah, Well I'm an old married lady. I've been married for eight it'll be eight years in April. We don't have a prenup and I also, I know, right, sorry, yeah, and I kind of regret it because I think we might need a post up. But see ya, Nelly, do y'all have prenup? Well, I don't know if yo, Nelly,
you're not married. I know that situation. But y'all share what's what's going on over there? What's your thoughts?
Girl?
We've been okay? So my partner and I love this man to death and back.
He and I have been together for twelve years going on thirteen this year, and we are just you know, we have never been the most traditional people were just long term partners and who aren't necessarily going.
To pursue that route.
But for the first time in my relationship with him, I thought maybe we could get married. In the moment I thought that was when I watched Aaron Thomas speak on stage at Economy about maybe not brushing off marriage as a concept, but considering marriage with the prenup as a way to make sure that you're comfortable with marriage. And I was like, dang, like that really blew my mind.
Yeah, And my situation is I'm a two time to force a what the first time very intentionally. The second time, I didn't know I needed a divorce because it was a domestic partnership and when you have a domestic partnership with kids and uh property involved in the state of California, you do have to have a door. So I have two divorce decrees.
Wow.
And so with the help of Aaron, I know that my next serious relationship, and it took me a long time to even consider marriage again. I'm definitely gonna have a prenup that worked through that.
So okay, so you didn't have before. Now, okay, do you think do you wish you had? Like were there issues?
Oh my god?
I answer yes for sure, because everybody in love is always talking about I would never do that to you. It would never come down to that. And the thing is the divorce process is can or can be I'm not going to generalize, can be really really contentious if
you allow it to be. Especially for me, I've always been the bread winner, and it always though, it'd always be like, well, what can I get out of this situation, when from the beginning I was just like, hey, this is not you know this, George, this is mine, this is ours, whatever, whatever, and yes we're on the same pace.
This is what happens.
It always comes up during that dissolution process that oh, well I didn't really agree to that.
I kind of want this.
Okay, Aaron, I want to hear what is it that you said to y'a elly to make her want to get married to this gorgeous man.
Don't be telling that the people. Why did that?
I want to get back, I said, I consider that maybe it would work.
Well, I know, but I love your I love your perspective you have on prenups, Aeron, Yeah.
Yeah, great, great place to start. I mean, what what is a prenup? We could even go further and say what is marriage? But well let's let's let's let's assume some prime here. You know, and if you if you say, what is a prenup? A prenup is an agreement. It's a contract. It is it's a set of rules that defines your financial relationship with your spouse, both during marriage and in the event of divorce, and my point of view on it is you've already got one. If you
are married, you have a prenup. You have either chosen the default prenup meaning the laws of the state where you happen to live as your prenup, which no one's read, or you are writing your own prenup, you are writing your customized rules for your financial relationship. And the further that you know society has progressed since the eighteen hundreds when all of these laws were written, the less likely that the default plan is going to work for your marriage.
And in fact, if it were like a literal document, like I'm calling you the default prenup, it's really just
the state laws right where you live. But if were a literal document and you had to choose to sign, either you know, the default prenup, or you could sign like customized prenup rules that you and your spouse chose, literally no one, not a single person, would choose to sign the default prenup because it means you're giving the ultimate power over the distribution of every penny you've ever earned in your entire life to a complete stranger who's
going to hear you and your spouse complain about each other for a few hours tops and split up everything you've worked for for your entire existence, and nobody actually wants that.
I mean, I do scroll really fast through those like terms of agreement, you know, like when yeah, so, like I'm not saying I wouldn't sign. I'd probably be like, I just want to get to the honeymoon. Check check this box, give me that, give me the standard. Okay, Okay, well, I guess like for me, I'm just wondering, like as someone who obviously I got married eight years ago, I had brownish at the time. Now I'm just I'm a whole different person and my career is so different now
it's I'm full time entrepreneur and breadwinner. I don't know, to be honest, because it's being an entrepreneur. It depends on the month some you know, we don't keep score for someone like me. How do you even go about getting a post up? Is it the same process? Is it too late for us?
It's not too late. It's not too late, and it's a very similar process. I mean, I think that you know, at its bare minimum, and there's a lot of things that you can do with the prenup that you could go into, but a lot of it is about establishing what's mine, what's yours, what's ours right. And the laws were written for a time in place when it was assumed that number one, there was one breadwinner, it was the man, and there was a homemaker, and it was
the woman. And the couple was getting married at adage twenty one, when they were coming into their marriage with no assets, no bank accounts, maybe one car, no no business, no home, no four to one k's hadn't been invented, student loans were the hundreds of thousands. Credit cards didn't exist. You didn't have any of those things. And so it was written for a time and for couples where they were starting their financial lives from complete scratch, an absolute
financial blank slate. And the average couple getting married today is more likely to be about thirty thirty five, sometimes forty, and those couples are coming in with four or five bank accounts, three or four credit cards, student loans, businesses,
a condo, all of these different types of assets. Maybe some kids, some kids, all these different types of assets, and and like a decade or more of their own financial habits, which can be tougher to blend together than just the money in the bank accounts, right, and it is so complex and the idea that we're just going to smash all those things together, you know, imagine merging your business with another person's business on just like you know, a pinky swear and just saying like, let's hope that
everything works out, without like demanding to say, what are the financials, what are the economics like? But for some reason, the knowledge that we have about what would happen in the business partnership, you add romance into the equation, and all of a sudden, it's off the table. You can't talk about finances, despite the fact that this is the most consequential financial contract you'll ever into it into your life.
Yeap, love that point about how much has changed, because that is so true. I see that generally generationally within my own family. Now, I don't need a man, but I have a man because I want a man, not because I rely on that man to provide for me. But the reality is my mother did need a man because she relied on the man to provide for her, and he did control a lot of the financial things. And I saw that in a very negative way in my home and vow like never to let that be
me type of thing. So I'm very committed to, like my finance is being really clean and organized and being on top of maxing out my retirement account, both my four one K and my roth theray, doing everything I can to generate extra income YouTube, social media, speaking, publishing a book like I'm that girl right My four one K that I have been maxing out every year, doing my best to like hit that and like find other ways to make it work can be taken from me
in a divorce, even though it's my account with my name on it, and even though us my spouse wouldn't maybe never even put a penny on it, has no rightful claim to it in terms of their names not on it or anything, but could still take the some or all of that money.
In a divorce.
But marriage creates a connection that most people don't.
Realize wasn't there.
So that was the piece that was eye opening for me in terms of, oh, I need to protect myself be really smart.
And the other thing I learned from Aaron is that your businesses aren't protected by outside of a prenow.
So if you have a business like it's.
Basically up to like with the state of what they're they're gonna do. Like the only way you can form protection from your business is through an arrangement like this.
Probably the biggest surprise for most people, and honestly, fifty percent of my job as a divorce attorney is having this one conversation. It's once you get married, your paycheck is no longer just yours. Your paycheck is y'alls. It belongs to both of you.
And schiles of value set up y'r accounts and so.
But people are living a lie, they're living a legal fiction in their relationships because they go through them thinking what most people that would you know, it was just talking about it's intuitive. If the account isn't my name, it belongs to me. If the count's in your name, it belongs to you, and if it's in both names, it belongs to both of us. That rule that applies for ownership in literally every other aspect of our lives
is out the window when you get married. And so the people spend twenty twenty five thirty years under this assumption that the retirement account belongs to them or the rental property where they've been paying the mortgage on just belongs to them. And they sit in my office and they say, what do you mean she wants half of my retirement account that I've been contributing to since before
we even met. What do you mean he wants half of the property, half of the equity in the house where I I've been the only one paying the mortgage for the past fifteen years, and now he wants to come in and take half of that. And I have to say yes, because you were paying it with the money you earned during the marriage, which, under the law, unless you ever prenup or post them, this as otherwise
is joint money. And so people have made their entire life decisions, career decisions, write business decisions based on this thing that is false, right, And so there's this disconnect whenever you hear somebody say like, oh, I went through a divorce and I got absolutely screwed by the court, what actually happened is the core perception of what your marriage meant ran up against the legal reality.
Right.
It's me.
I'm people, I'm squirming inside of my But what about love? Don't you see my shirt?
Ear?
You know you missed it, But I was I was the most optimistic pop culture icon. Ever the American woman in Pakistan earlier, and she, you know, sure she used a filter to shield her identity and present herself as a blonde woman to a nineteen year old in Pakistan who she like entrapped in a marriage that wasn't like legit and all of that. But she really just like put her heart on the line, you know what I mean.
And I think she's also an example of like maybe she should have had a prenap, do you know what I mean, Like she wouldn't have had to be like Pakistani government give me twenty thousand a week. So I guess like I'm just holding space for the people because I am the people I am, And I just feel like you're yelling at me and I don't like it, but I appreciate it. Ah.
We all started as this. I graduated from law school not knowing this. It wasn't until I got into family law that I realized, because it is it's hard.
Not to say I graduated from Harvard Law. When you graduated from Harvard is it? Just tell me because I don't know how that feels, is it.
I usually wait about fifteen minutes before I try to shoehorne it in the conversation, but yeah, you know, I.
Graduated from a law school, like in my yeah you said I went to school, you know, you know, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
You know, couples today, for the most part, are not combining everything into one bank account when they get married, right, They're living with separate bank accountsl So really, what we're talking about when we're saying, like, get a prenup is make your legal reality match the way that you're already living. We're not talking about going out and doing something crazy.
You know, like gone are the days where there is only one you know, earner for the entire household, and so necessarily every check that the earner works has to support the entire household. People live in worlds where like this is mine, this is yours, and this is ours. And if you want those divisions that you set up yourself to be honored in whatever comes later, then you have to put it in your own agreement. And the default prenup, the default your state laws are not equipped
for today's marriages. They're not built for to income house. They're not built for people who get married in their thirties. They're not built honestly for women that have any kind of autonomy over their finances, their their life, their body. I mean, you got to think, for your, marriage has been around since like twenty four hundred BC, and for ninety nine percent of that time since then, marriage has been a property contract, not a joining of two people.
People like to talk about this like two people become one, Like it's just like the romantic ideal. You know what the laws used to say in the United Slates, the woman ceases to exist as a legal entity, and she is properly incorporated into that of the man. Have you ever heard like somebody say, you know who gives this bride away at a wedding? It seem a little weird that the ride is something to give away. You ever heard like I now present to you, mister and missus
John Smith. Why did her name disappear?
Disappear? I think I'm realizing is that I thought, because I'm so independent and knowledge and because I have my own money, that a prenup was like less necessary for me. That in retrospect sounds absolutely idiotic. I recognize that. However, I think that's a mindset I had, was like I'll be fine because like I got my own and I
know what to do. And if it comes down to that, like, I'm gonna hire a bang and ass attorney and we'll be will be, we'll be we'll be good, right, Yeah, yeah that I'm ready.
No, No, I think I I'm I'm right there with you. I mean, the stigma is so strong, you know. Literally, until I was in Finland, I thought the exact same thing that everybody thinks, which is like prenups are for super rich people or like Hollywood couples who change their spouses like they do their pajamas, right, and and I never got that it is like you were literally just customizing the contract that you're signing up for, or.
Just women who like are in a marriage. I think about Charlotte and Sex and the City, who was like gonna be a homemaker and left her job at the gallery to marry what's his phase with the rectile dysfunction and like, and she was fighting over I deserve more than you know whatever, I deserve a million dollars and if we get divorced, and like, for I was thinking it was more for women who weren't coming into the marriage with something so that they'd be protective if it
didn't work out and you wouldn't be like out on your ass. Yeah, and so I think I just which maybe is a little bit valid, But I didn't know the rest of that. I didn't absorb it, but now I do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it is, you know, it is really about getting clarity about where you stand, you know, and if you are married to the type of person who say you are that person, that is your career is going to take a back seat to your spouse's career because you were going to be more of the homemaker, you were going to raise the kids. You are counting on this idea that your spouse's earnings are going to be there to support you, that your spouse's retirement is
going to be your retirement. And wouldn't it be good to know before you quit your job and leave the workforce for ten years whether or not you're married to somebody who thinks this is my retirement and if you leave me, you're out on your own. I mean, isn't that something to like? Wouldn't that be something nice to lock in because otherwise you're living in this, you know, in this in between world where you know you don't
have explicitly defined expectations. You have your idea, they have their idea, and whether or not these ideas of what your financial arrangements are ever voiced, it is going to cause friction along the way. Forty percent of married American couples don't know how much their spouse makes don't know their spouse's income. That is like the most basic, like if you're just the person doing the taxes in your household,
would you would have that information. But the fact that almost half of American households are living in these situations where one doesn't even know the other one's income. They certainly don't know how much they have in retirement, they certainly don't know their you know their total asset, or how much they have in credit card debt. And so you basically in a financial situation where your spouse is hiding your own money from you. Legally, they are hiding
your own money from you. Or if you're the person where you have all the accounts and everything is in your name and they don't have the logins, they don't have access, you're hiding legally their money from them. And some people will be cool to say, Hey, I got my retirement, you got your business. I got my car, you got your car. I got my play money account, you got your play mone account. We've got a onejoint account that's our fifty to fifty that's our ours, and
our MARYL home that's ours and everything else. But if you're that person and that's your agreement, you got to lock it in because, as everyone who's gone through a divorce says, like those agreements of like, that's yours, I don't want any of your ex you don't want any of my wy That goes out the window when the divorce papers.
Are I think sometimes you're thinking about negotiating with the other person who is like a sweet person and blah blah blah, wouldn't hurt a fly. But once they get it, they lawyer up right, it's the Aaron Thomas of it all. Who's going to be like, oh, I represent the wife or the husband or whoever, and like I'm gonna isn't that kind of the I mean, am I wrong there? That's the attorney's job, right, is to negotiate the best
terms for their client. And if you have separate representation, maybe your husband doesn't know all he could be asking for, but the attorney hope you know the one that he hired.
Will will highlight that, Yes, it's the attorneys, but it's also the entire legal system. It is not set up to ease the path for amicable divorces and these like cooperative settlements. No, the system is set up to incentivize I mean, first of all, trials litigation are wars of information, and I win my cases by having as much information about the cow case and having the other side know
as little as humanly possible about my case. So as soon as you hire up the lawyer is going to tell you in your own interests, don't tell them anything, stop talking to them, don't listen, don't negotiate without me, don't hand over a single statement unless I tell you that you're supposed to do that. And then the other
side is going to do the same. And because divorce litigation is this weird world where all of the things that would be totally like irrelevant, like you're not even allowed to bring them up in court, like your sex life and what kind of parents you are in the home, and like all of those kinds of details are exactly what is relevant in the middle of a divorce case.
And so why are you nodding. I mean, does that happen? Does that happen? Do you know?
If you want to give personal.
My divorce was a little different in that he went to jail for abuse, and he was in jail when I filed for divorce. But still he could have took my house, He could have took everything I had, even though he was in jail for abuse.
Here's the thing. They don't think they're taking advantage. It's like you saw sixth sense, Like they don't know they're dead,
like the people who are going through litigation. So in forty one out of the fifty states, they don't have to split your assets fifty fifth, which can still have some unfair, you know, outcomes depending on what your situation was, Which means that the court can split a fifty to fifty, but they can also do sixty forty or seventy thirty or eighty twenty based on the judge's subjective belief about each spouse's contributions to the marriage, contributions both financial contributions
and non financial contributions. And here's the thing is people who are in like true fifty to fifty relationships, even those people still each spouse feels like they're given sixty five percent. They feel like they're doing the majority of the work. Everybody in a relationship feels like they've been doing the majority of the stuff. So they don't think they're taking advantage. They think, you know, like if you earn the money, you think like, I earn the money.
I'm the one that went out there and busted my butt and put the dollars in the bank account. And the other person is thinking, yeah, while you were out there doing that, I was holding downs on the home front and getting the kids to soccer and cleaning up the house and you know, managing you know, the folks coming in the lawn folks, and I was paying the babysitters, and I was doing all of this. You couldn't have built any of that without me, and I put my
career on hold for that. So at least you walk away with a job. And so each person has like the moral high ground in their own mind as to why they're going after the money. And that's why divorce is not set up for, you know, for easy settlements. Everybody's got a point, everyone's got a reason, a valid reason in their mind why they deserve the majority of
the money. And so the only way to do it is to decide who owns what when you love each other, rather than leaving that decision to be made when you hate each other.
Yeah, but Aaron, I also like your approach to pronounce when you're saying it's not just about what happens in the in the case that you separate. It also provides a roadmap of how you're going to handle your finances through your marriage, and something that you can reference and come back to that.
Is that is you know, once I realize that, you know, I was going to have a prenup. So I got married nine years ago in April, and once I realized that I was going to have a prenup in my marriage, I started thinking, how could I take this further? Like, how could I make this into a prenup that not only yes, obviously I want to avoid a messy divorce
case that should not be super controversial. But what other things can I do if I'm going to go down this path, If I truly believe that discussing finances on the front end and getting on the same page of these types of things is going to be beneficial to my marriage, what would the perfect marriage look like what could we do, and so me and my wife said down. It came up with like a list of rules, and so one of them is we have it in our pre nup that either one of us can request up
to three counseling sessions per year. And there's no questions asked, there's no you know, what usually happens is somebody suggest counseling, but it's on the tail end of an argument, so it comes off like it's an accusation, like something's wrong with you counseling, you go to counseling. I don't need counseling, you know, like something that you need rather than something that you do as like maintenance, your annual physical for your relationship. And so we put that in our agreement.
We have it in our prenup that neither one of us can spend over five hundred dollars from any joint account unless it's approved by both of us ahead of time. And that heads off of the past like all of these you know, you spend what wait a minute, you spend you spend all the money from the joint bank account.
I guess, I guess I'm not getting anything. You know, I guess I'm meeting McDonald's this month, those types of arguments about like the individual expenses over the course of the relationship, and then deciding how our money was going
to flow through our bank accounts. So we each have our own discretionary money that gets taken out of our joint pot every month, so that I can maintain some autonomy over my spending like I had the first thirty five years of my life before we got together, and she can do the same where she can spend her money without us having to argue about every little thing because we have some of our own money, We've got our joint money, and we've built in annual meetings into
our relationship where we sit down and talk about the finances, like taking a lot of the guesswork about what makes for a healthy relationship by systematizing it and putting it in writing on the front end of your relationship. So, yes, we have a roadmap that makes it more likely that will actually stay together. We wrote a prenup that makes it more likely that we won't have.
To use it.
You know, there's two ways. There's two ways to avoid a messy divorce. Right one to stay together that works fIF percent of the time. And the other is to get a prenup or a post nup, And if you work on both of those together, you're really getting the best of both worlds and setting yourself up to where you're protecting no matter what happens.
It's also like, through the course of going through a prenup, having to ask questions and if you're having arguments over these questions or the other person is like, well, I don't want to tell you all that, Like you're finding things out about a relationship, and I think that almost becomes sort of like a filter or like a pre screen for your partner, Like, can we get through this prenup process without wanting to kill each other? If not, then maybe you're not ready, Aaron, I want we only
have a couple of minutes left. I wanted to ask about Janelly's situation. So you are partnered but not married, so for and I think a lot more women are doing that and couples in general. So how can you protect yourself if you're not in a formal or illegal marriage.
Well, if you're not, if you're not married, that old intuitive rule applies. What's in your name belongs to you. Your debts that are in your name belong to you, Your assets that are in your name belong to you. Uh, and you don't need to go any further until you
start doing any kind of like joint investing. Probably the most common thing that unmarried couples will do is if they are buying a piece of property together, or if they're living and they're on a lease together, that they'll sign some kind of cohabitation agreement that says, Okay, if we break up, how do we how do we handle anything that is in joint names, whether that's an asset or a debt, And that just you know, removes some
of the messiness around. Say you bought a house together and you can't take it anymore, you move out, you want to get your equity out of that house. You know how difficult that's going to be. Sometimes it's more expensive than a divorce case. That's how complex those types of things are, because what are you gonna do, you know, force a sale, are you going to force a refinance? Particularly when you you got it on a three percent interest right now and now there's seven you know, you're
you're in for a fight. So that is definitely, you know, and that's that is a growing area of of of the law as well as cohabitation agreements and people who have chosen to say, Okay, maybe I don't actually want to go down this marriage road with all of these other complications and things that I that I didn't ask for.
But if we do buy a house together, if we do some kind of like investment together, even if we're just living together on the long term lease and we're both buying things, they're coming into the same house, maybe we want to just get something on paper to make sure, like, Okay, if things go left, you know, which, how are we going to get out of this without both of us having a lawyer up and spend tens of thousands of dollars that we don't have.
Yeah, and ya, Nellie, why was it that Aaron? Like why what what did he say that had you thinking like, Okay, maybe I could see myself getting married.
I mean, for me, it has always been a thing of like my family defines marriage as like a religious ceremony, and my boyfriend and I we both have we grew up very like strict Catholic Dominican American households, where you know that's your values are the church, right, But once we both went off to college and like, you know, my mom would say, we we became secular.
We start sitting right, we're now living the sending lives.
But we just we kind of educated elite, right.
We went from you know, the Catholic church to well, my mom would say a lot of things, but anyway, the point is we kind of both disconnected a lot from like the our upbringings and the religious part of our life being the core value that drives everything else to now having very different core values and but still aligning in a lot of ways in terms of like, oh, we understand that our parents are desperate to see us get married, but we both understood that in their eyes,
marriage is this love thing that happens in the church, and in our eyes we both on should know it is a legal contract.
It's a piece of paper. Actually is what marriage is. This is why you have to sign that marriage license at the church.
Okay, So like in our minds we just view we had different definitions of marriage from our families and my entire our entire relationship, we have both been completely okay with being the weirdos, the not normal ones in the family who don't do things the way that my you know, buy the books the way my parents and his parents have wanted us to. But we also feel really badly about that because we want to make our parents happy
and proud of us. Like we you know, we both just feel really bad every time they see us for the holidays. They're like, stand, like, why are.
You torturing us?
We just want grandbabies, and we just want you to get married so you can go to heaven.
We don't want you living in sin.
Yeah, And I'm just like, you know, I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to cause them pain if they're on their deathbeds. Like and they said the one last and wish they had was for us to get married, Like, oh, I would brant and get married because I just feel so bad for my parents, right.
But I never found it something that aligned with the way that I view my world, like my worldview as a woman who has worked really hard to not become this like submissive housewive woman who's who's dependent upon you.
Know, her her spouse.
And so that was the first time I had the understanding that you could structure a marriage in a way that was fair to both parties and not aligned with like the conventional approach to marriage, which is very much you know, the male dominates in a heteronormative relationship, that the male kind of dominates, takes control, that you take his last name and you become his property, that you know, you do what he says, and he kind of manages the finances, you merge everything.
And I was like, absolutely not.
I work too damn hard to you know, grow my investments and to learn all this stuff to like default to just letting someone else like have control over it. But Aaron kind of opened my eyes to the fact that that's not how every marriage has to be. And if you write a prenuptial agreement that you both feels fair and that you both agree on and then enter the marriage, you're so much more likely to have a healthy marriage and also healthy couple of finances.
That's a word I feel like I needed to. I mean, it's nice to meet you now, Erin, but I kind of wish, like eight and a half years ago or so, where were you. It's not too late. Well, I want to thank our guest Aaron Thomas for coming on the show.
Erin.
I know your book is right behind you, but you want to hold it up. Tell ba Fam where they can get that book.
Of yours Prescription Meet the pre Marital Contract designed to save your marriage. It is on Amazon and everywhere else where you can give books.
That is a beautiful cover. I love it absolutely. Congratulations three times Atlanta's best divorce attorney doing big things in my home state, my hometown to yan Ellie Nasima, thank you so much for joining me at the Brown Table and BA Fam. We will see y'all Friday for the ba Qa