The BA Q&A: My Husband Keeps Blowing Money!

may or may not have been using credit cards to invest. Oof. This one's painful. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to respond to it. But listen, this is some really juicy tea, some hot pipe pipe and hot tea for your Friday. So let's get it going, all right. Question number one that I teased This comes from listener Robin, who sent us an e mail saying Oof okay. Robin says, my husband does not believe in savings accounts and often blows through money. I just found out that he made

an over fifty thousand dollars investment without consulting me. He often does this, and he lost it all this was all done with credit cards. What or where should I start to secure my financial future? Robin, every sentence it got worse. Like, first of all, doesn't believe in savings accounts. I didn't think that was a thing that we know.

I thought we could at least all agree that's one of those things like in today's world, can't we at least agree that saving is important, like we can we can fight about politics and vaccinations and that, but came. I thought we could at least agree that having more money set aside is better than not having money set aside. But Okay, your husband's a unique individual. So first of all, doesn't believe in savings accounts. Strike one often blows through money.

Strike two lies to you, because I think not telling you is also a lie. Lies to you when he spent fifty thousand dollars on credit cards to invest like what, I don't even so I'm going to make an assumption here that either he did cash advances on multiple credit cards to get that amount of money, or potentially he invested in an individual's business by paying with a credit card. I have no idea. I can't even begin to fathom your question, though, is where do I even start to

secure my financial future? Robin, Listen, I am in obviously. I've been married for several years now, I've been with my partner for a decade, and it's not easy. It's definitely not easy to align yourselves financially with an entire with a different individual. You've got to diferent goals, different styles, different values potentially. But this is like beyond, This is beyond the normal kind of situation that partners face when it comes to trying to work out their finances as

a team. This is next level. I mean, this is like fraud. It's fraud on you. I'm concerned for you, genuinely, genuinely concerned that your finances are in deep, deep jeopardy. The longer this continues to go on. At this point, given the level of financial infidelity happening, the level of I'm gonna guess manipulation control, I don't know what's exactly going on here, but it's so bad that I don't even know if there's a way to necessarily rectify it.

As far as your personal financial future, I would make sure that none of that debt is in your name, like those credit cards. I'm hoping that they were just in your husband's name and not your own, and start keeping really tight control and protecting your finance. It's protecting your bank accounts. I would start squirreling away money in your own savings account that he does not have any

access to. Girl, get that password, get second factor authentication, you know, get the FBI on it, lock it down, because I don't think you want your husband anywhere near your money, because he's proven to be really careless. Yeah, this is shocking to me. So I would start on your own. Like, let's even forget about the relationship factor. Like you're you're an independent woman. You can decide whether or not this is the kind of relationship you want

to continue having. But let's say you decide to stay with this person. I think it's all about you creating a huge like grand canyon, sides divide, and on one end of that grand canyon is him, and on the other end of it is you and your money. So keep it safe, keep your own savings accounts, keep you your own credit cards, make sure that they are hidden that he can't take them. And then as far as your assets and the debts that he's been taking out, start to figure out, you know, what your if your

name is on any of those accounts. You may even want to speak with a family law attorney to because in your state, like there's sometimes not sometimes often in different states they treat they treat spousal debt in different ways.

And I'm not sure where you're from, so I can't really speak to the laws in your state, but reaching out for informational conversation or consultation with a family law attorney may help you figure out in your particular state, what can be done to protect your assets from any bad acts on his part, because that's that's the best thing you can do. You don't mention children, so maybe you know in this case things are a bit simpler. It's just you. So I'm trying to think of other

ways you could potentially I mean, this guy unhinged. He literally sounds unhinged. So I hope that you are. You can reach out to someone who can give you some legal advice about how to protect yourself in your state. But this does not sound like a healthy relationship. It sounds really freaking scary. I hope that you're taking care of yourself and taking some steps toward protecting yourself and

don't necessarily blame yourself. I mean, listen, when people are when people are this hell bent on taking risks with money, I mean, there's something else going on there. It has nothing to do with you, and it's not about how you could have prevented it. Like if they're really determined, bound and determined to make these kinds of careless mistakes when it comes to their finances, there's probably nothing you

could have done. This is just about putting your own oxygen mask on first and getting if you're not going to get out of the relationship, at least protect yourself financially so that you know you've got that safety and security and you can take care of yourself at the end of the day. I am wishing you really well. Thank you so much for opening up and sharing your story, and I hope you hear this and I hope that you're doing well. Okay, all right, WHOA, that was a lot.

Why don't we take a quick breaking break and I will be right back with more of your ba q and as all right, ba fam, we are back. I am well, I say we. I'm so used to being a wee Tiffany. I miss you. I am back. It's Mandy with more of your ba Q and a's y'all. If you want to shoot us a question, you know you can do that on IG Hit me up at Mandy Money on IG, or you can hit our podcast page up at Brand Ambition Podcast and it's a DM

also on email Branambition Podcast at gmail dot com. We love to get y'all's questions, everything from career to financial to relationship advice. We're here for y'all. Send them on in. All right, We've got a couple of juicy career questions now, so let me move on over to IG. Actually, I've got a question from Kelly. Kelly says Mandy. I listened to your webinar last week. There was a question about staying at a job for flexibility but the pay is not good. What do you think about that? All right,

So I hosted a webinar last week. It's called seventy K to seven hundred K How I quit my way rich and built wealth through my nine to five. And

this is a webinar I've done only two times. And the reason I started doing this was because I wanted to open up and share sort of my story on literally how I quit and how quitting jobs played such a fundamental role in helping me build wealth over the course of my career, especially in the last five years, which is when I was able to make that jump from seventy K net worth to seven hundred K net worth based on some strategic career moves that I made.

And what I love about this webinar is people like it's I keep it. I keep it one hundred percent in these webinars, and the questions are so good and I didn't get to all of them during this past webinar, So I love that Kelly wrote in to ask this question. So she's saying, stay at a job because it's flexible, but the pay isn't too good. I get it, y'all,

especially when you're a working parent. Sometimes knowing that, okay, when I need to stay home for example, like if the kid is sick, or you know, if you're sick and you just want to have the flexibility of staying home, or you want to take a mental health day or things like that, Knowing that you've got a team and a boss there who just trust you to get your job done and isn't going to necessarily make you feel bad for taking that time off, and especially now, like

if they also give you the ability to work remotely on top of working in the office, that's a huge benefit. That's like a It's a kind of job benefit or job perk that you can't necessarily put a price tag on the same way you can like base salary or signing bonus or equity. But it's definitely one of the more attractive benefits that jobs have today to offer, and it's what people want. We desperately are wanting more of

this flexibility, So I can understand why. Like, for example, if you've got job A and they're offering you seventy five flexible schedule, you can make your own schedule, you can work from home when you want to remote work

when you want to, et cetera. And you're choosing between that job versus Job B, which is maybe ninety five K, but they want your butt in the seat at eight am, and they want you to track your lunch breaks and they dock your pay if you're gonna be late or things like that like that to me, is maybe not worth at extra twenty K, And it's really a personal choice at the end of the day. It's a personal choice.

If the job, if the job that you have now is giving you flexibility, that makes you, It makes you happy, It makes your day easier, it helps you do what you can for yourself, for your family and have a living wage and be able to pay your bills on time. Like that is the dream, right However, I would never want anyone to necessarily stay in a job just because they're flexible, the same way I wouldn't want someone to

stay in a job because the pay is decent. You never know what else is out there, and that the reality is that a lot of like there's more than one employer that is willing to be flexible today, especially in today's job market, more and more employers are getting it. They are actually getting it. They are increasing the number of paid time off days, sick days, you know, being

more flexible when it comes to remote work. So the odds are even greater of finding another employer that will be equally as flexible, but then also may pay you more. So what I'm not a fan of is ever just staying. Like my least favorite word I think I mentioned it before is stable. Just because something is stable and it's a known entity doesn't necessarily mean it's the best place

for you in your career. So that's why I'm always encouraging people to keep one eye open, stay open to opportunities, stay you know, with one eye on LinkedIn or job boards to see what's coming through. Keep an eye out for employers that you hear have a great reputation for their benefits, Employers that you hear friends talking about, or that have been have won awards for the way they've treated employees, or have been written in like publications like

fast Company or Insider or even Bloomberg. Sometimes they'll do lists of the best companies to work for or spotlight companies that have these amazing benefits. So keep an eye on that, because just because of place like there's more than one, there's more than one option out there. So that's what I will say. Great, I understand why you'd stay someplace, and even if you know it's paying a little bit less than what you can get somewhere else.

But the huge benefit is that they're flexible. I understand that one hundred percent. But I don't want people to limit themselves or think that there's not other opportunities that could do both. It is possible to have flexibility and get good pay. You just have to be willing to wait and look for those opportunities as they come by. All right, thank you Keley. Let's move on to another question.

This one comes from Golda. I know Golda gold That's one of my career coaching clients, so I love this question. Golda says, Hey, Nandy, if I leave a job after three months, what are the pros and cons of leaving it on my resume? Ooh, this is a good one, Golda. I'm not gonna even lie. I can think of two jobs, at least I'm trying to remember now, two jobs that I have full time. These are like full time professional roles.

Not when I'm talking about jobs, I'm not really talking about like the part time work you did in college or in between, or bartending or whatever, nannying. If you do like those side jobs more like full time roles that you would put on a resume or LinkedIn. I can think of two jobs that I don't have on my resume because they were just short. They were such short stints. The reason is because collectively, like my resume right now as it stands, is really strong with what

I have on there. The pros and cons of whether or not to have that in your resume. So let's work through them. Pros of including a job that's on your resume when you've only been there for three months. Pro is it explains a career gap. So this is becoming less problematic or less frowned upon by recruiters and hiring managers these days, to have like a gap on

your resume. They're not as they're not as much like looking at that and questioning and being suspicious and actually LinkedIn just released a new feature that lets you add a career pause to your resume on LinkedIn or to your list of employment on LinkedIn, a career pause, which then you can explain if it was for caregiving or whatever reason, which is like destigmatizing that whole thing in this case though, So the pro there is that you

can explain rather than have a gap there. You could have an explanation like, Okay, I was here for a short stint. Now I would expect in an interview them to ask you, okay, so you know, I see you only spend three months at this job. You know, can you tell me why? As long as you've got a strong story and you have a reason behind why you left, and it wasn't like, oh, I just like I just

didn't like it. You know, hours were crappy, so I just left, Like you have to have a strong reason, and it can be you know, I was hired to do X y Z the company was acquired and everything changed. Or I was hired thinking that I'd be working on this team but things changed. You know. That's so often the reason why we leave jobs after such such short stints is because something was It was like a bait

and switch, like and this happens. I think a lot when people are getting a job and you think it's something and you get in and you're like, oh crap, this is not it. And in that case, I think it's to be respected that that you're able to recognize this is not a good fit. I'm no longer the

right person, so let me move on. So a pro is that you're able to explain that in an interview if given the opportunity, and you can, if you tell a reasonable story and tell it in the right way, then I think the hiring maid or the recruiter will

understand and it won't necessarily be a mark against you. Now, some cons if I can play devil's advocate here, so obviously having so if you're looking at if you've got a long resume and you know you've worked two years and three years and four years, and then there's like a three month stint somewhere at the bottom, like the sorry.

If it wasn't like a recent job and it's earlier in your career, I would I would lean toward that being more of a con It's just going to distract them from all the great work that you've done more recently, and it's going to like give them a reason to

ask it. Like I would remove it honestly if it was let's say three years or more in the past and you've had at least one or two solid jobs since then, because like I said, it could just create like an opportunity for some doubt to creep in, and like I said, like you've got substantial career experience since then, so kind of like why take that little bit of risk.

So I can go either way. If it's something if it's like your most recent job and you're leaving after three months, I would I would probably add it if the story that you have you think will resonate with recruiters.

If not, then I would say you could use the new career pause or career break feature on LinkedIn just to characterize that as a career break, and you can also use the same language you know on your resume if you wanted to say career break, and then you can kind of explain I was trying out different things and ultimately decided that this is a path I want to take, and this is why I want to work for your company. So much of interviewing and explaining our

career history is about storytelling. And I talk about storytelling all the time. I mean, it's how I make my living telling stories as a has been as a writer and a journalist. But it's so crucial, and that's what I feel like. I spend a ton of time working with my career coaching clients on is okay, so these

things happened. If we tell the story in an accurate but strategic way, we can frame it in the best possible light so that the people on the other end understand where you're coming from, and they're understanding your thought process and the considerations that you took before making these decisions. So that's why I actually don't think that short stints at jobs necessarily are what could hinder your potential of

getting your next great opportunity. I think it has a lot more to do with how you characterize those short stints and what you say to the recruiter or hiring manager about that time. If you've got a good, practiced, well framed story prepared for that, and you anticipate it'll

come off positively, then I would say leave it. If your story is not there, or it was a really terrible experience and the story does not paint you in the best light, then I would say probably just leave it off the resume and explain it as a career pause of some kind. All right, I hope that is helpful. Thank you so much for your question, Golda. Thank you all so much for your questions. Again. Hit me up. I'm at Mandy Buddy on Instagram. Brand Ambission Podcast on Instagram.

You can also go to our website brandimission podcast dot com to leave us your questions there, or shoot us an email at Brandambission Podcast at gmail dot com. See y'all next week.