Preparing for Parenthood Financially

was trying to figure this out. Have I been to Afrotech? Have I not been to afro Tech? If I have been to Protech. It has been many years, but I have known Morgan Devon, the founder of lavity, for over a decade or known of her. I actually interviewed her for a story when I was at Yahoo Finance a gajillion years ago. But anyway, it's a great little full circle moment. And if you can't tell by my Airbnb, I'm trying really hard to hide it, but I am. Actually you guys can see it on YouTube if I

pan the camera just the slightest amount. Wait for it, wait for it. Listen, listen, listen, listen, Linda. Some things you know, some air and some airbnb hosts just don't. They don't photograph the entire place. They they just photographed the three the three walls that or I guess, most appealing to the average viewer on the Internet. And sometimes you just got to kick a gamble on what that fourth wall is gonna hold. And I gambled, y'all, And some may say I won, and about what how much

did we lose? By? Forty six percent of us may say that I lost. It doesn't matter. I'm here, it's fine, I'm safe, and we're gonna do b AQA. So let's get into our first question. Oh wait, wait, wait, God, without Tiffany here, I like, I forget our disclaimer all the time. I'm gonna get my ass sued on myself, but at least I remember this time. Be a fan. Please don't sue me. Okay, please, No, this is b

a qa. We have I have God, this is so awkward when I say we instead of I. Man, this is b a QA, And I am not sure a financial planner. I'm not your career coach. I am not your investment advisor. I am just some lady on the internet that, for some reason is so blessed to have this platform. So take this for funzies, get your salt shakers out, shake them on up, and let's go. Our first question comes from a listener who wants to remain anonymous,

so I'm just going to call her Carrie. Carrie says, I am thirty eight and I recently found out I'm pregnant. I'm living in Washington, DC with my husband. We make about three hundred thousand dollars per year. We have six months of emergency savings and own a few rental properties. We don't actually use that income. Okay, Carrie, come through. However, I do not have any maternity leave at my job.

And there's the other. There's the foot dropping. My question is what is your advice on how I should prepare financially for baby? How much should I set aside for my three months maternity leave while I don't have any income? Is there anything else that we should consider financially? Thank you? Okay, Stacey. Wait, that's not the name I gave you, Carrie. Sorry, I

forgot my own fake names. Carrie, Carrie, Carrie. Okay, So, having just done this myself, I'm gonna take a guess here and say that you probably work for yourself because even you know, well, I'm just gonna say you work for yourself. If you do work for an employer, they are at least mandated to offer twelve weeks of leave, just not paid. So maybe you are getting that twelve weeks of leave, but you've got to pay your own way.

So regardless of the reason, that is tough. But I fully identify with it because I've of course had my son a little over a year ago, my second baby, and at the time I was an entrepreneur, so it was my first time bankrolling my own maternity leave, and ah man, it's way more stressful because you just don't have to calculate the finances as much into having a baby when you, of course are working for an employer and you're like, well, I'm just going to get my

same paycheck, you know, or close to it. So the first challenge is to understand what your monthly your monthly expenses are going to be and how much of that needs to be contributed from you. So it sounds like you and your husbands have a healthy savings account, you're going to need at least three months of that savings right to cover your essentials over the next few months. But I would also take a look at your insurance policy.

Make sure that you've got really good benefits, family benefits, especially for those post natal care visits that you're going to have baby well visits now because of Obamacare, Thank the Lord, protected at all costs. There are really generally

good benefits for baby and moms. Let's see. But the early expenses of having a baby is not the baby stuff like for at least in my experience, the early expenses is how much of the smart, fiscally responsible things that you would do when you're not going on zero hours of sleep, when your partner is not also going on zero hours of sleep. You guys have the benefit.

It sounds like you this is your first baby, so you don't also have another little one to chase around, which can elevate the exhaustion and stress to a higher degree. But still you're not going to be your best version of yourself. I mean, you're going to be this brand new, incredible mother, which is of course an amazing version of yourself. But in terms of like the same choices that you would have made pre baby. You'll find out on your own,

but they tend to change. We all think we know everything and then you have a baby and it's like, you know what I really would like to order? I don't know, Taco Bell at ten thirty in the evening, even though it's like thirty dollars with fees going to be to Tacos, Like, we just make these choices, right, So I would leave whatever room and the budget you have right now for like groceries, you know, the kind of like even the types of groceries that you're buying,

just factor in more delivery. You can also go ahead and ask friends and family instead of baby gifts, you know, give you gift cards to Uber Eats or door Dash or any of those services. Another thing to consider, not even like, especially if you're an entrepreneur, is that three months is not enough for like a proper give. It's not just about bonding with the baby. Three months is just simply not enough for us as women to get

back to our base level. It's hard to under it's hard to understate the massive amounts of changes your body is going through to create this human life, and then when that human life leaves your body and goes out into the world, your body has to recover. It is a trauma, Okay, it is a beautiful trauma, and we love it, right, we love it. However, you are going

to need lots of time to recrup rate. And I just don't I don't just mean physically, although that is true if it's your first baby, you're still relatively young, like you might bounce back quote unquote faster, but the mental toll, the psychological toll, trying to juggle, even if you don't run your own business, but just trying to juggle a nine to five with motherhood. Childcare expenses are wild. You live in Washington, d C. So I know that. You know that, So I hope you have a childcare plan.

So I would say, whatever you think you need for three months of income, I would just do fifty percent more. So if that is fifteen thousand dollars, then make it twenty two five hundred. And that for me, is just giving you extra wiggle room for the what if. It's also giving you some wiggle room for what if you don't want to get back at it after just three months? What if you want more flexibility. What if you decide you're not ready to send the kid to daycare or

whatever childcare you have planned. I mean to be honest, in an ideal world, as a new mom, I would this may sound insane, but have a year's worth of income banked. It's completely unrealistic for so many parents out there. I get it. But in an ideal world, and you are a woman of means, I see what you're doing. You have this great income, you guys are saving, You've got your rental property income that you haven't been touching.

If at least you know you've got it there, you have some security and safety when it comes to making the best choices for you where you're at psychologically, and then also for your baby and spending time with them. And you know myself, I think I've talked about it on the show. How I prepared financially for my three months of leave. I set aside three months three and

a half months basically of income. However, it wasn't even the baby that caused some issues, but I had a lot of health crises in my family and was doing a lot more traveling, and also underestimated the mental toll of that postpartum period, combined with having another child to look after who I of course, you know, love deeply combined with try and write a book, combined with trying to run a business, combined with family drama. And I just wasn't able to produce at the level that I

had anticipated. So I say all that to say, more is more, Okay, So if you have more, I would be setting aside at least enough to cover you while you're gone. Oh and this is the other thing I forgot to say, but if you're someone who's running your own business, I would double I know that again it sounds a little aggressive, but getting back to work after three months off for an entrepreneur some depending on what

your business is like. It's not just like turning on a switch and all of a sudden money may start coming back in. You may need to get back out there, start warming up clients and running sales funnels or whatever it is that you're selling, and you know, getting back out there to get to where and you may not be working full time, So be real with yourself in terms of how long it will take you to ramp back up to earning what you need minimum to support

your lifestyle. And then you may decide, Okay, I want to have a little bit more set aside. Okay, all right, I think that's all I got, Carrie. I wish you so much luck and enjoy, enjoy and enjoy. There's nothing like there's nothing like there's first few months as a mama, and it just it gets different. I mean, I will say it gets better in a lot of ways. Less challenge.

I mean, it's always challenging, but I mean it's never going to be the way it is when they're just a little bean and you can just they just lay in your chest like a little loaf of warm bread and it's just like the best feeling. And I hope that you have a healthy delivery. I hope that you are well cared for, be you know, get that husband advocating for you, and make sure that the doctors are

listening to you and paying attention. Unfortunately, in this country, being a black woman in labor is a risk factor, and I just wish, I wish the most for you and that little baby and your growing family. And thank you so much for sending in a question. All Right, I will be right back with one more question. Stay tuned, ba fam. All Right, VAFAM. I am back and I've got a question from email brand a Vision podcast at gmail if you want to get your answer your questions answered.

This question came from Crystal, who says, Mandy, thank you for the episode Not America. To me. It helped me with my ongoing anxiety since November fifth. You're welcome, Crystal helped me with my anxiety to being able to come here and just pour out my heart to y'all and let you know what I was feeling in the moment. Crystal says, sometimes I feel like so many of us have our heads in the sand about what's to come. It will not be like twenty sixteen. It will be

so much worse. For the sake of my and my family's sanity, I really want to leave this country. You're not alone, Crystal, so many people have been feeling the same. Can you guys do an episode explaining what could happen with our money and investments. I remember what my great grandmother said about life during the depression. It wasn't a depression for black folks. She said, we were used to

not having anything. Part of that not having was also not having money in banks and stocks because we weren't allowed to during that time. However we do now. Many of us have our lives tied up in iras, mutual funds, banks, and stocks. If those things were to crash or something similar, how do we ever recover in a system that is against us? What do we do? Also? I can't help but think about the Handmaid's Tale and how women weren't able to access their money in banks. Can you guys

help with any guidance? Thanks for all you do, Okay, Crystal Baby? What I love about this email is that our email inbox. You know what I'm going to give you, guys, free rein because sometimes we need a place to deposit all of our worst fears when our partners are sick of hearing this doom scroll and dooms you know, ID eight And that's really what anxiety is about. It's about anticipating an outcome that we can't really predict and often can't control. But I think it's useful sometimes to just

purge all of the what ifs. Okay, But then I need you to just leave them over there because it's not going to serve you, Crystal. And like I know, so many of us are feeling the same thing. And when you wrote this email that was only a couple of days from when I'm recording my answer. And I can feel the ache, I can feel the desperation, I can feel the fear really behind what you're talking about here, the handsmade tale Handmaid's Tale reference, like those memes are

going crazy. They have been ever since, you know, twenty sixteen, maybe even before. I can also feel like you're focusing or trying to focus on something that you actually can control, which is your finances to a certain extent, right And I think the best thing I can offer you right now is a reminder of the safety the one am I looking for the guardrails that are in place so that your investments and your savings and your earnings arecatively safe,

you know, depending on what happens in the economy. So let me just start with the banks. So I can't imagine any of you guys are saving your money anywhere besides an FDIC insured bank account. If you are saving your money anywhere except for if FDIC insured bank account, listen up right now. With FDIC insurance, your money is federally protected up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars

per individual per account. Okay, So let's say you and your partner have you each have a separate bank account you're at, you know, at a institution like you both get that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of coverage. I'm going to post a link just to remind y'all of FDIC insurance how it works, how to make sure your bank is FDIC insured. But that should give some peace of mind now it is federally insured and at a time when crystal for sure you ain't trust in

this government. I will note that the cap on that federal deposit insurance that ount has risen under democratically elected or democrat. They've all been democratic. What am I trying to say? Democratic presidents of Democrats. I think it was Obama who pushed it to two hundred and fifty max. And that's where it's been. So is there a chance that the Department of Treasury under a Trump reign may

lower that? I would say so, I don't. I would hope not, because all those Litley economy voters who voted for him, they did it for the economy right. And FDIC insurance was specifically introduced to prevent another bank crisis, and it absolutely came in handy during the two thousand and eight crisis. I think it was at that time that the insurance level was raised under Obama to the

two fifty, so you have that. So your investment should be covered or likely are covered under Security Investment Protection cover, which is going to protect any funds that are held within a brokerage that suddenly fails. And what I want to distinguish here is that no investing always comes with risk. And the reason they say that is because even SIPC coverage does not protect you from losses that you might incur from swings in the market or downturns in the market.

Downturns in the market, however, come with the territory of investing, and that's why having an investing strategy is so so important and it's why here at Brand Ambition, we are big on y'all finding a financial advisor who can at least even if it's a one time sit down, based on your time horizon, based on your tolerance for risk, based on any goals that you have, short, medium, long term goals. They will help you develop an investing strategy where you're going to make sure that you're not over

leveraging yourself. You're not getting in a situation where market's downturned and all of a sudden your shirtless and have nowhere to live now. I highly if you're someone who has an IRA for a one k, you know you're just investing, maybe in a wroth on the side or whatever. It's very unlikely that even with a market downturn, you would have all your money tied up in that account.

But a financial advisor can make sure. It can make sure again put in place some guardrails that you can control that will at least give you peace of mind that Okay, let's say you're really worried about the stock market, so you want to You're really not tolerant of any losses. They will keep you up at night. You will go into an anxiety spiral. You can't cope, so you want

to have more of your money in cash. This is also a strategy that the older you get, the more the more it makes sense to have less money tied up in the market and more money in cash reserves. CDs like those types of deposit accounts that have that fall under that FDIC insurance guideline and are going to be solid. So anyhow, the point is you'll develop a strategy that is in line with your risk tolerance and

how much time you want to be investing for. But let's if you're doing it on your own, then I would double check your investments and just make sure that you're not too over indexed in stocks. The goal rule of thumb is to take the number one hundred and subtract your age from it, and that will give you your stock to bonds ratio. So I'm thirty seven, so ostensibly that means I should have sixty three percent of my portfolio in stocks and thirty seven percent in bonds.

And I personally am invested in some growth funds, like some passive passive investment funds that are automatically shifting my investments over time. And then I do have some accounts that are just held in a Vanguard brokerage account. And I'm not gonna lie. I have a pretty high tolerance for risk, especially because I'm on the I'm younger, I have what thirty something years of investing before traditional retirement age, and so I am completely invested in stock index funds ETFs.

Things like that. About the market in general, no matter what president has been in power. The research is clear, the data is clear that the stock market tends to bounce back and on the whole even with different even with wars and different presidents at different presidencies and you know, all kinds of natural disasters and all of that. The market does have these times when it goes down, but it tends to go back up, down and up, down

and up, down and up. And it's really hard unless it's like, if you're looking at the stock for X, for example, I'm sure that has gone up and down since Elon Musk has infiltrated the Republican Party and the White House. Now you'll also see, you know, the stock

market I think surged after Trump came into office. And like it's no question that Wall Street businesses, business owners, big billionaires, big money, they wanted Trump to win because what they're doing is they anticipate he's going to make taxes lower for them, that he's going to make it easier for them to remove regulations and barriers that stop them from doing the business things that they want to do, like Elon Musk building his rockets in random desert land

and national wildlife reserves in Texas and not wanting to have to deal with regulations that say you can't knock down that poor bird nest and other you know, So a base of Jeff Bezos, for example, like this is just an example. He may say, like, oh, under Biden's Biden's administration, we paid this crazy tax on cardboard because of how much card were we put into the world. So under Trump, maybe like Trump will reduce that cardboard tax.

That's not a real example, it's completely made up. And so maybe the Amazon stock will surge because they anticipate that Trump is going to make things juicier, make the profits for Amazon higher, and so they're reacting to that. Markets are very emotionally reactive because they are not just driven by robots. They're driven by human beings and our behavior, and that can go up and down and swing and swing.

So I want you to worry a little bit less about how the market's reacting in these small windows of time, these pockets of time where a big event has happened, like an election, like I said, a natural disaster, any kind of like regulatory changes that may happen at the federal level that can impact businesses or impact goods and things like that, Like I want that to sway your investing strategy less because you have to assume shit's always going to be hit in the fan at some point

in America, right like, it's just how the world works. Shit gon't hit the fan, and that will impact markets in a negative way. However, you also have to think about the other reality, which is that the data. This is not just me making it up. The data shows the stock market bounces back. When we are investing, we are making a bet and we are taking the risk that on the long term we're going to come out ahead. Okay, I can't sit here and guarantee that you're going to

come out ahead. I at this point in time, have chosen to stick with the data shows, and the data has shown that long term investors win. That when you put your money in the market and you just park it and you let it rock for a few decades, you will tend to come out on top. And that is what we need right now. Inflation, even though it's down, is still higher than it has been. We have to

hedge against the rising cost of goods. We have to hedge against how expensive life is going to be thirty to forty years from now, when we're retiring, because that's when we're going to be taking We're going to be taking withdrawals from our investment account and our money needs to stretch. Okay, especially for women longer, because we're amazing, right and we have longer to support ourselves on those

investment incomes, So longevity and stretching those dollars. That's why people are obsessed with, you know, hedging against inflation, because at least if I'm going to guarantee that my money is going to grow at a faster rate than the

cost of everything grows, then there's a good idea. There's a good chance that I will have enough to sustain my lifestyle in retirement and I won't have to go and cut back and you know, end up relying solely on like Social Security checks, which are usually super small and underwhelming. Okay, Crystal, I first of all, thank you for being so candid, and thank you for your really kind words about last week's episode in the wake of

the election. Thank you for putting words to I think a lot of the fears, and I think your email is not the only one that I got with a similar type of question, But yeah, it really encapsulates like our fear, and I just want to remind y'all that

the fundamentals of stock market investing have not changed. We have done multiple episodes about strategies around like being an everyday investor in investing for retirement, so hopefully you can check them with those out, I'll probably do some future episodes just about the market post twenty twenty five, because of course we're heading into a new year and I'm heading into a new season of my life. Like even here sitting talking about my investments, I'm like, well, shit,

I made these choices when I was twenty four. This is over a decade later. Maybe I should be making some changes. So these are really good questions to have, Crystal, thank you for sending them to me. And if you guys want your questions answered on the podcast, feel free to hit me up Brand Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com or you can email, or you can DM me at Brand Ambition Podcast on ig All. Right, BA fan, I'm going to read a review. This comes from listener

Maria three Borha, Mandy and Tiffany I App. We love y'all. I've been listening to BA for about two years and I love all the education, laughs, community encouragement and love that you ladies bring to the table. I just finished listening to Mandy's latest episode, and I want to say that you, my dear, have put in Oh. I haven't read this yet. Oh. I just want to say that, you, my dear, have put into words all of my feelings.

I am grateful that this is a safe space not only for you, but for all of us, and that you are able to articulate our sentiments. Thank you, ladies for the work you both do. But more than anything, thank you for just being there on my happy days, but more importantly on my emotional days. God, thank you, Maria. I don't know what to say. I don't know what

to say. I got a couple more I'll read just people who've responded to last week's episode, because I just I want to say thank you because I'm literally I'm doing the show for y'all, so to hear that it matters is just keeps me going. Thank you you. C KH says, thank you so much for your encouragement. Today's podcast was much needed. You ladies always show up for us. Aliyah Medici says, you're the best. Mandy, thank you for your latest episode and for your bravery and dedication and grit.

Love you love you all to b A Fam. All right, we'll see you next week. Coming to you three times. We have a juicy interview with Can I say yet? Who Are? I'll give you a hint now, if I sing a song, you're gonna think it's one of the girls. It's not one of the artists, okay, but it's someone related to them. I'm a survive I ain't gonna live up, I ain't gonna stop. I'm all survive it. Yeah, yeah, bye, b A Fam.