Hey, hey, bea fam mandra here. I just first want to say thank you so much. We have been overwhelmed by so many beautiful messages of support and condolences for Tiffany and the entire Alice and Smith family. Just in case you haven't heard, it's really difficult to even share this. I think it's the first time that I've said it out loud to you guys versus just a social media post. But last month, very suddenly and unexpectedly, Tiffany lost her husband, Jerelle,
who you guys know better as Superman Jorelle. I can't even put into words how special a human this man was. If you've listened to our show for a while, it wouldn't take you long to realize just how special Tiffany and Jerell's relationship was. He will always be her Superman. He will always be an amazing father to his daughter, Supergirl aka Alissa. Thank y'all for your patience as we give Tiffany time to hear through this really difficult time,
especially around the holidays. If you would like to send your support to Tiffany and her family, the best way to do that is to keep Jarrell's memory alive. And you can do that by making a donation whatever you can to one of two charities that were going to link in our show notes. That is United Way of Greater Newark and the Apostles House of Newark. Thank you again for all of your support. If you're unable to
make a donation, that's totally fine. What we've asked everyone to do is just honestly check in on a neighbor, check in with your family, check in with a friend. Small acts of kindness were what Jarrell was all about. He was the kind of person who would call up friends and family in the morning every day to check in, drop in to fix someone's broken appliance just because he had a few extra minutes. He was a truly special, kind human being and he loved life, love loved his community.
So if you want to keep Jarell's memory alive again, any small act of kindness in your community or with your loved ones is a wonderful way to do that. I really hope that we will be back soon. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this throwback episode today's show, just to bring it back. Bring it back, Mandy, I'm shaking shrugging my shoulders back. Y'all, I'm really excited to share today's episode with you. This is one of our one of my favorite guests of twenty twenty one, the
one and only Berna A. Natt. She's a finfluencer, yes, that's the thing, and Berna has made a career out of making financial literacy fun, accessible and approachable for more young people. Everywhere, Berna breaks down everything from paying off debt to enjoying your income. She is the financial hype woman that we all need in our lives. And if you haven't checked out her new podcast, Money Please with Betches, you have got to check it out. Go to betches
dot com or download Money Please. Wherever you find podcasts like Brown Ambition. Without further ado, here is a throwback episode with our beloved co host Berna Annette.
Hey Hey, Hey, ba fam Please follow us on Apple Podcasts and keep our audience growing. If your iPhone recently updated to iOS fourteen point five, head to Apple Podcasts, search for Brown Ambition and click on the plus button in the upper right hand corner. Do that and you'll be following our show Loop Woop. You can also follow us on Spotify on Stitcher or on the Amazon Music app. You wouldn't have to do all that them, you know, if you had to Android, But you know Apple, that's fine.
It's fine. And now onto our show.
Heyba fam Mandy. Here we continue this week with our summer co host series. And I have to tell you, guys, I have had the biggest social media crush on this woman ever since I discovered her page and ig earlier this year. And they say, don't ever meet your sheroes because you may be disappointed. But this was such a
delightful conversation. You guys are going to laugh, you are going to be inspired, and you are going to go follow at hey Berna on all social media channels because you are going to love her, I hope as much as I do. So let me get to the point here and introduce today's guest co host. Her name is Berna Annette. Berna is an award winning financial hype woman.
Yes that is a title, let's manifest it, which is basically her made up way of saying that she creates financial education media that lives at at hey Berna all over the Internet. After Berna slaid her fifty thousand dollars of debt, she saved up to quit life and has been traveling the world trying to make money fun again ever since. Berna is actually joining us today despite the fact that she is in what she calls a book
writing cave. Yeah, she is working on her very first book, fourteens and young adults about slaying their own personal finance challenges. I am thrilled, So let me get out of the way of myself and get to this interview. Here is your co host for the week, Berna Annatt. Hey Berna, Hi, Mandy.
This is so wild, Like I feel the same. I mean, Brown Ambition was my first favorite financial podcast. It still is. It's still the one that I recommend to people, and people are like, what's your most You're fit. I'm like, everyone's just stopped talking. It's brand Ambision and that's the end of the sentence. And so it's so wild that like, eventually in a couple days, I'll be hearing my voice. You just said my voice. That's so wild. I'm so so honored to be here.
Well, hey Berna, so Berna, you describe yourself as a financial hype woman, which I'm so jealous of because that has got to be the best title in the history of personal influencers. What do you mean when you say you're a hype woman? What does that mean?
Oh my gosh, that's completely made up, first of all, and so that should be just inspiration to anyone of any age that you can totally make up your job and just kind of if you bring it and fake it till you make it eventually cool, people will ask you to be on their podcast and they'll they'll say the words even if you just made it up, and I'll I it's a career, and suddenly it's a career.
Very difficult to explain to my immigrant parents what that is, so they just think I work in money and communications. But financial hype woman is something I made up a few years ago because hype is one of the things I thought was missing from the financial world. So that's one reason I was like, I want more. I want there to be more joy, more hype, And by hype I mean energy, happiness, excitement, especially like there are no trumpets or foghorns that play when you do exciting financial things.
A lot of these things that we do in our financial lives typically happen in like a dark, sad corner of the Internet or like us hunched over our phones, and so I wanted to bring hype energy, excitement so you feel encouraged to do things. And if you think about a hype woman on stage, typically a hype person on stage, they are behind the main performer or rapper or singer, and they're just like they're the person that's just bringing the energy while the artistic person's doing the art.
And that's how I want people to envision me in their financial lives. Like you're the one in the front seat of your financial life. You're doing the earning and the paying and the bill paying and the goals. And I just want people to imagine me in the back like feel just like repeating things and dancing behind you in the back, like I'm keeping your energy yep. Like my purpose is to keep your energy up. And that's what I want to bring to the money world.
I don't know how you have the stamina to do what you do on Instagram. If you guys don't follow Berna, you have to go to at Hey Berna on IG. I mean your comedic, your physical comedy is something truly special and the time, cause I know it's not always easy to you can be funny, but you tell stories with your humor, and you have a whole there's like a beginning, middle, and end to your Instagram content. And I know how much time and energy and thought must go into it. It is quite effective.
Thank you, thank you so much. I found out that people really like it when I shake, I shake something for their financial wins. Do a little bit of chirking with what I got, which is not a ton, but I think people appreciate the effort. I know all of you and all of my other Internet creators out there understand that, like you have to sort of try out a bunch of different things and a bunch of different
approaches to find what hits with your audience. And people love it when I make up dance move to their financial wins. And so that's probably the most entertaining thing you'll see on their aside from other like storytelling and videos and things like that. I like to move. I like to bring the bodily energy into it.
I'm getting older now, I'm just wondering how you I ever like thrown it back out a back like you have more than one thrown anything out twisted something.
I'm approaching that for sure, I will especially on weeks where I'm like, I haven't worked out for a long time, which, mind you, is most weeks. I'll do like my Friday financial wins, and all week and long, I'm like, I am so sore my thighs, my legs, my knees, like I try to do the mega Stallion knee kind of tricks, and what you see on camera, I look like I know what I'm doing, but no that immediately after that fifteen seconds cuts out, I'm on the floor. It's all
for It's all for you. You know, it's all for the.
The audience, don't don't. I mean, leg Day is very important. Megan the Stallions an athlete. Don't tell me nothing any differently, Okay, athlete truly truly, And we have been obsessed with her latest song, what's it called thought Something? My son loves. Wow, my son goes to dance when that song came on YouTube. I mean, I don't know how appropriate it was for He wasn't paying attention to the pictures, but he and I got down. He loves to tour. He's such a cute little show off.
Good. It's like she's legg Day inspo and she's a full body inso for anybody, But I think everyone is now paying so much more attention to what their knees and thighs can do and admiring their bodies for doing those things because of Megan thee Stallion, Like she just revolutionized the way I look at my knees for sure.
Yeah, I mean as someone who grew up. I mean, I'm biracial. My mom is white and I've told her this before. She knows and she might actually be listening to the podcast, So yay, mom, I'm talking about you again. But there were times when I was younger where she would say, like, do you really want to work out? Your thighs are already? You know you've got the thighs and you know you don't want them to get bigger.
Do you meet? But that's the beauty standard, right. I'm not trying to make this episode about body image, but shout out to shout out to anyone trying to break norms and make us thick. Girls, you know, just feel like we don't have to change a damn thing, you know what I mean?
Absolutely, not only do you not have to change it, but you can embrace it and shake it and show off what it is. Capable of and that's something that people can look at and be like, wait, mine can do that too, We can do that, we can go outside and do that. Absolutely, it just like turned it,
It turned it all on. I mean, what I love to see is like Meg thee Stallion and every other performer out there being like, look what my knees on my butt can do, and people just like bowing down to her in the comments of being like not only incredible lyricsist, rapper performer, but like she has to be putting extra work behind her thighs and her legs, and then we're so much more appreciative of the muscle of the curve of everything that's there because I'm like, if
I have more, I can shake more and mixes. It's a good thing.
So and it's the work behind it. And I think what attracts me to your work so much and what I try to what I try to think about in my own content or my own you know, just being myself on social media is I just love people who are not afraid to be silly, not afraid to put themselves out there, not afraid to not take themselves so seriously, but who still do the work and I do feel like, especially in the personal finance where all there in you know,
corporate America, when you talk about finance, it's often a you feel like you need to put on a different hat or use a different voice or like code switch to have those conversations. But I think what's so amazing about what you do is by being so approachable, by being so lovable and so freaking entertaining, You're immediately showing people this doesn't have to be all serious and doom
and gloom like it can be hilarious. We can laugh at it, we can say the things, we can talk about our debt, and then we can twork about it and we can do the work at the end of the day.
Yes, absolutely, for people like me who I'm by that, I mean people who are basically like fifteen to seventeen years old on the inside and always will be. It has to be hilarious, it has to be funny, or else it just it won't go down the same way.
You know, we know all the books and the podcasts and the blogs that spell it out and have all the information, but I found myself needing to translate those things for myself, Like when I was learning how to get out of debt, and reading the books and all the things, I found myself literally going, Okay, what they mean by that sentence is if you just like put your booty on the thing and your role around is like when you're on the dance floor, like translating it
into everyday stupid thing so that I could understand it. And then I realized I can't be the only one whose brain works like this. If I start sharing it, maybe people are into it. And I found that there's there's a space for that. There's a space for the serious stuff, but there's also a space for us in our children who like need to play with money in order to really connect with it.
Yeah, well, talk to me about your background financially. I mean, I know you had some credit card debt, some student loan debt, not unlike most millennials. I'm assuming you're a millennial. Maybe you're as allennial. I don't know.
I'm not thinking I'm like borderline millennial, as allennial. Someone called me jeriatric the other day. I was like, you know, whatever it is, I can still rock.
I think I'm actually a geriatric millennial, which, you know whatever, I'll take it, but talk to me about your journey. When did it start for you? You were at Instagram before. You've been producing and doing entertainment media for a while, right, So everyone's got that moment when they say, I want to make this my life's work to talk about money and educate people. What was that like for you?
Yes, Oh, my gosh. So I've been in kind of media my entire life. I grew up wanting to be a writer. I wanted to be the editor in chief of a magazine, and I like moved, you know, graduated from a journalism school, and I moved to New York and I internet a magazine. Hated it, hated it with a capital age. Still, though, you know, you find yourself postgraduation,
especially in journalism and media. You're young, you're doing internships, broke as heck, and I found myself a couple of years of being freelance after leaving magazines, twelve thousand dollars in credit card debt and thirty eight thousand dollars about forty thousand dollars in student loan debt. And I had sort of always written off the excuse that, like, you know, I'm freelance, I'm in journalism, I'm broke.
I'm young. I don't have to get my stuff together.
What was really behind that was like a lot of fear, a lot of shame, never wanting to admit how much debt I had, and never wanting to look my debt in the eye. And basically, you know, I did end up getting a job at Instagram, moving back to the Bay Area where I'm from, and that was maybe a half step where I was like, Okay, okay, I'm starting to get money every other Friday, which is like what I think, It's an adult thing to do. And now this feels like God being like you no longer have
no excuse to budget. I'm giving you money every other Friday. Do the thing I think. Hey, did I hit the Googles? Because you know, growing up again, first gen immigrant child of immigrants from the Philippines, they taught me very little about money. Taught me lots about like our culture and everything, but very little about money. And so everything I learned about money, I had to hit the Googles, just like millennials do when we don't know something, We hit the
Googles as hard as possible. And I was learning stuff through blogs and YouTube channels and books and I started to create this thing that I called Felicia's Wallet. Now, at the time, by Felicia was at its peak, peak fit cultural phenomenon. Everyone was like by Felicia, by Filicia. And someone said something about, like, I'd love to see Felicia's passport because she's always saying by, like we're always saying bye to her. She must be going all over the place. And I was like, I'd like to see
her wallet. How is she affording to say by all the time? So I started this like blank Google document where I put down everything I was learning about budgeting, everything I was learning about how to balance and figure out my paycheck, all of my financial moves every other Friday when I got my paycheck. I called that document
Felicia's Wallet. I didn't show it to anybody for a long time, and then eventually I was like, let's just if I just kind of talk about it on my social media, which had no kind of following for anything, Let's just see what happens. I posted about the document. I remember it's like a boomerang of me scrolling through it.
And the response to that was huge, and it wasn't just from my friends and family being like whoa budgeting money you're talking about out loud and like you haven't exploded, that's crazy, Like you broke the taboo, against the rules.
But it was also such a huge response from so many people that that I didn't know, and especially so many women of color up in my comments and like most notably whispering in my dms, like you're a stranger, but you're the first person I've ever seen who is a woman and a woman of color to talk about your personal money life, admit that you have dead out loud, say that you've been messing up for many months. But
here's that you're what you're learning. You're the first person in my life to actually talk about this, and it's it's changing my perspective. And that's when I was like, we got some something. There's something a little old me knowing nothing but no financial background yells from my corner of the internet, and the response was such an echo. That's when I was like, Okay, we got we gotta take this.
Somewhere, We gotta take it somewhere. How do you go from that to now you're writing a personal finance book? What happened in between? And also, congratulations, This is when I dropped that little nugget you you're going to be a published author.
Much so wild because this was the beginning, Like, this is what I wanted to be when I was super little, a writer, an author, and it's been a very long, windy road to get here. But basically, once I started sharing about Felicia's wallet, but I got the response from people, then I was like, Okay, all right, this is a thing.
I started making videos, started making content, discovered something called Instagram, honestly discovered like Instagram boomerang, started shaking my butt for people, and we just started to build more and more of a community online of people who wanted to talk about money, wanted to talk about the absolute basics of money, but didn't want it to be what I like to say, Hella Mail, hell Apale, and Hella Stale. So much of what you see out there is Hella Mail, Hella Pale,
Hella Stale. And so I just sort of built this gathering on people who were sick of that. And the book came about last year when I partnered up with an agent. Her name is Tavia from Biota. She's incredible other women of color who champions all people of color, artists I wanted to. I brought her on to sort of level up and help me manage like brand partnerships and things like that. And she's the one that was like, hey, this publishing house wants to do a money book for
young people. You're basically a teenager walking around with paychecks. You do the thing, and that's that's where we are. And oh my god, Mandy, my first draft is due in like a month, almost a month exactly, so I'm losing my issue a little.
Been supposed to be here right now, right like, I'm not.
Even are you talking to me? I feel good you're Mandy? Are you kidding?
This is brown ambition. I was just telling you right before we started recording that I'm in. I put myself in this thing called book Leave quote unquotes. I've been this like book cave. I wanted to focus on writing my book and make my book writing process really fun, really enjoyable, like lean on my savings and actually give myself the time to make the process really fun. And I promised myself I would not come out of book
Leave unless it was like showstopper, incredible opportunity. And I remember you emailed me, I want to say, like a couple of months ago and I brought this. I have a business coach. I brought this to my business coach and I was like, sick, this is what I want to come out of bookly for. She's like, okay, I give my blessing.
Yeah wow where business coach approved. Well, I hope this is well. I'm sold to have you here. But I'm also so, you know, Tiffany just had a really successful book launch. And I told her. I was like, this is you know, obviously she was wildly successful, but I said, the reason why I feel so excited about Tiffany's success is that I know others will benefit from her success. You know, it'll make publishers look at women of color as really like money makers, you know, like a good
business decision. And ultimately that has been often the excuse in this, you know, in the business world, is like, oh, do women sell? Do women of color sell? Should we put you on the cover? Will people be turned off when they see it's by a woman? I mean, anyway, there's a whole history of like women changing their names, writing under pen names, so they'd be taken seriously. And I am so excited. I wish you nothing but the
most success. I want to know. So you said for young people, So what is the target audience for this book that you're writing, because I don't think we'd there hasn't really been a lot of books for like teens from someone who you know, I know, you're not technical. You know, you say you're fifty ten years on the inside, but you know we're we're a little mature now. But yeah, well yeah that's the target audience.
It's so funny because the target audience technically this is a HarperCollins young adult book, and the official on paper target audience is like sixteen to twenty five. Okay, but I know, like my content from the beginning had I
meant to always be talking to teens about money. The thing though about talking about money, especially when you talk in like a relatable voice, is you unlock the fact that most of us, especially in the US, especially if you're coming from an immigrant family, we are fifteen when it comes to our financial education, Like we are all children when it comes to our financial education, because most of us didn't receive any type of financial education, and
you know, we grow up into these like adult skin bags, but there is no financial education update download along the way, and so all my content was supposed to be for young people, but I got this huge millennial audience too and older because we've all been failed and so it's actually a tricky thing to be writing right now with the intention of focusing on sixteen to twenty five year olds.
But all the feedback I'm getting from my editor, from my editor's editor, from copy editors, from the publishers, They're like, so this is a book that I would buy for myself, this is something that I need, this is something that all my friends need. It's officially for sixteen to twenty five year olds, but I know that the lessons reverberate throughout all all that.
I mean, just throw a vampire or werewolf in there, and then there you go, right exactly.
I'm like, I got to sprinkle different pop cultural references throughout so nobody feels left out.
But our vampires, I think anymore, I don't know what would it be now.
That's more of a like that's like a definitely millennial, like when we felt the Twilight five do the whole.
Thing on TikTok, just like release chapters and sixty second incorments with the Busset song in the background.
That's what's interesting too, is knowing that we're like reaching out to a younger audience and it's not like we all like is not like a bunch of readers. No one's like pretending that gen Z is obsessed with the books. So I have to figure out a way to make it interesting enough for young audiences to pick up and actually be into it, and also for parents to go like, Okay, she's not going to teach my kids some like crazy shes and but still also something that I wanted to
read when I was young. I didn't want it to be all words. I don't want it to be all graphics. I want there to be silly stuff in it and fun stuff and challenges and things that get me out of the book.
So, well, you're gorgeous face to be on the cover, That's what I wouldn't know.
I don't know.
I don't know if I'm cool enough. I don't know if I'm cool enough like Tiffany to put my face on the cover, because in talking to other author friends, they're like, you basically have to be like Obama level to be able to be cool enough to put the book your face on the cover. Otherwise people are gonna look at me and be like, what, what's random? Ambiguously race brown girl, like what so we'll see.
I mean Tiffany talks about that, that moment when she was like not sure about putting herself on the cover. I feel like, I mean, it's the same thing as when you who wrote about Felicia's wallet, which I don't know how I didn't know that. I guess I haven't gone that back into the archives. It's into the vault
of Berna content. There's a lot out there. Yeah, and she eventually decided to go for it, And I feel like her gorgeous, brown, melanated self on that cover honestly probably sells books because the same thing that would have held a book back I think ten twenty years ago is now people are looking for it. Why people are looking for it, They want to like I'm saying, I mean, I'm not saying this is your target audience, but they want to put that on their shelf right in front.
So when their friends come over, they're like, yeah, I read Berna and Nat and she's great. Do you know about her? Oh you don't? Oh wow, it's crazy. You must not know any brown people like I do just my two cents.
No, I know exactly what you mean. I know that if I put my body on the cover like with Tiffany, like her persona, her brand is like preschool teacher, but make it finance and make it like and relatable, and so her on the cover with her like beautiful dress and like put together. It works. If I were to conceptualize myself on the cover of my own money book, I'm like immediately like, oh, there's probably going to be a body part. You have to sensor. My leg's going
to be up in the air. There's going to be Yeah, it's gonna.
Be wild flying out of you know, your orifices.
Just do something, all the orifices exactly. Actually, what I did last week is I bought a bunch. I just went on a rant and bought a bunch of books that I've been wanting to read that I knew were funny or interesting and taught something specific. And the book that I want right now is Ali Wong's Dear Girls. Have you heard of it?
I haven't heard of that book, but I know Ali Yeah, Oh my gosh.
Basically it's a book about is her letters to her two daughters, and it's so hilarious, super super funny. And the picture of her on the cover, it's her in this beautiful glittery dress, but she's asleep. She has like asleep with her mouth open. And I was like, see if we can hit a cover like that, that's like, yes, I'm Paul, but not really, Yes, that would be great to show it.
It's a different book. All right. Well I'm not obviously the air business coach, but got aside talk. We kind of skipped over that hefty debt amount that you mentioned earlier. You had nearly fifty thousand dollars in debt student loans. I get twelve thousand dollars a credit card debt. What were you buying, Berna, Oh my gosh, was it a lot avo toast.
It was a lot of bottomless brunch in the Lower East Side of New York City, is what it was. It was a lot of being twenty to twenty four years old in New York City with no financial skills, but lots of influence and kind of helium in the head about what you're supposed to be doing.
What years were you here, proud?
I was in New York City from two thousand and eleven to two thy fifteen.
God, we were so we could have been almost that was my era. Yes, of my wild Ponies, we were probably. I mean, if this were movie, you'd probably like go back and be like, Oh, that was you at that club or that was you at that lappy hour?
Yes?
Did you also wake up on each other? Did you also wake up on the side of the street on New Year's Eve robbed without a cell phone? Was that you or the other?
So?
Was I the one that was like chased down the robber for you and had no idea? Or was I the one who was like, girl, take this drink and I was like the last person to give you alcohol in the club. Could have been any one of them.
But that was a letter. Yes, that's so funny. Well then that's I mean, say no more because it is extremely easy to wrack up the kind of debt. But you said that you had a hard time facing it. When did you finally face the music? And then how did you how did you tackle it?
Oh?
Boy? Okay, So the build up to it was definitely being very influenced by New York City, like young person culture. You got to go out all the time, it's it's brunch in the club and brench in the club every weekend. And it's also this specific culture that my friends and I had of like almost bragging about how broke you
were or how much we were struggling. It was like it was like this very specific kind of humble brag of just like I'm broke, me too, I'm the brokes, like it made broke was kind of sexy to a weird and gross degree. And we would talk about struggling, but we no one ever actually talked about the numbers behind their debt, and no one talked about the actual abject, low boiled, constant fear we all felt about our debt.
And so that was terrible. It was like going to the bathroom and like opening my ba A app Bank of America app and like transferring so I can get the next round of Margaritos are on me. Terrible, terrible stuff. Oh, I think it was again. It wasn't until I got that full time job for the first time in a long time, with like the money drip every other Friday, that I was like, Okay, I think this is God telling me, like you may now enter the ancient Caucasian
art of budgeting. Let's see what's going on there. And then when I started to read blogs and things that were like, you got to attack your most expensive day, which is quite a card debt, and so I sort of followed that plan that most financial experts gave you of like attack their credit card debt.
First.
I had never seen all of my debt out on one piece of paper like that before, and that was like a step that I think a blog had told me to do. So I opened up Polusha's wallet, and I open up Bank of America and Chase and all the things, and putting all those numbers down on my Google doc for the first time and looking at them. It's the anticipation of doing that is horrifying, and then actually looking at it is like, there's horror to it, but it's a lot less scary than I thought it
was going to be. Like I was like, okay, I knew I had a lot, and when I saw the number twelve thousand, I was like, that's a butt ton. But then I started to sort of break down what would it look like to pay that off? How many months would it take? It got a little less scary
after that. I like to tell people that thinking about your debt before actually looking at it is kind of like when you wake up in the middle of the night and it's dark, but you can see your clothes chair, you know, the chair that you like throw clothes on, and talking about this is just a story someone told me. I don't know about a close share. But you like, look at your clothes chair in the night and it
looks like a serial killer. And the longer you stare it in the dark, the more you're like, that's definitely that's hysterically. It's getting closer, it's growing, it's getting taller. I'm gonna die. But then you turn the light out and you're like, oh, it's just a cloth stair. It's fine. That's what it felt like to look at my debt. Like before I was looking at it, I was like, it's gonna kill me.
I can't.
Then you actually look at the numbers and you're like, okay, it's a number. I might actually be able to plan around this.
I mean, at the same time, you're living in a really expensive I mean the Bay Area, even though you're working for a huge company like IG. It can't be cheap to it can't be cheap or even affordable to live there, and then you went, Now you're full time hey burn a full time Hella Helpful, which is your online community, right, Yes, we got it. We definitely gotta plug that and you guys can go to heyburna dot
com to get all the ways. Although you're probably a little dormant right now with your your book caving, but anyway, book market it for future use. But talk to me about Hella Helpful as a community and when did you launch that and how did you go from Okay, I've done the cute nine to five thing. I'm ready to go full on with my new venture. I'm selfishly asked, because that's what I'm doing right now a little bit too, so yes, yeah, I know.
I'm so excited to watch this happen with you. I have to say that major privileges helped to get me to from then to now, one being I increased my income a button when I went to go work for Instagram. There's nothing better for taking down your debt and saving money than earning more money. And that needs to be very transparent about that kind of thing. Amazing thing better crazy right.
People, don't what don't you call it a privilege? People? Don't like to admit it, but that is it's very simple. Like you didn't invent reinvent the wheel. I just just made more money and then I had more money, and then I used that money to pay off the debt.
That is the I mean, you have to be able to stay it out loud. The people who don't say that are probably trying to sell you an online course because it's I got to where I got, like, I got to taking down my debt in three years because I got a bigger paycheck. It's the number one thing. The tips and the tricks and the organization and the budgeting, those were all ways to organize the more money coming in. But it was the more money that made my debt
payoff journey so much faster than whatever. Really that what it could have been. And another privilege was when I came back to the Bay Area to work at my job at Instagram, I was still very like, I'm trying to be independent. I leave me alone. I want to get my apartment. And then my wonderful immigrant Asian parents were like, are you being an idiot? Your childhood bedroom is right there. I held out for a year. I was like, I want to live with my friend.
Lets get away from me.
And then I started to get really serious about my paying off my debt because I wanted to quit and travel for a year, and so did my partner. And that's when I was like, all right, I'm going to then lean into the privileges that I have been given given by the way I did not work. For the fact that I have an incredible family who were like, come, come stay in my house. That was a privilege. So I stayed with them for a year while I was
paying off my debt. I was still paying rent to them because I wanted to keep.
Some semblance of adulthood.
But yes, it was not San Francisco Marcert rent, but it was still rent and that was a major privilege too. So I have to be able to we don't acknowledge our privileges then that I'm trying to sell you online course, and that's what I'm trying to I'm not trying to do. No.
I mean, I think that that's amazing. And I certainly know whoever could flee to mommy and Daddy's house or family during the pandemic to save money. I mean, if you didn't use that as an opportunity to pay down some debt and stack your coins. I don't know what you were thinking. There's no shame in that. I've talked about how my husband and I moved in with his parents also, you know, his first generation Dominican, and his parents believe me, they would love if we were still
there in that three bedroom, tiny, tiny apartment. But that was I mean, it was the savvy, smart financial move, but it was hard. It was very hard. Respect and commend you for that.
Now there's an emotional tax that comes with it, for sure.
So you're living with your folks and your partner as well, or are you?
Guys, Yes, we both moved in to my families because we were both living in separate apartments on our own, and then we both committed to this debt payoffjourney together because we both wanted to pay off all of our debt and quit our jobs and travel the world for a year. And of course the entire time I were like, how do we save money, how do we save money? How do we make bigger payments on our debt? My parents are like idiots, idiots over here get it in
this house. And we're so grateful that that they were all would do that. So we did that, and please.
Tell me that a couple of years. Yeah, please tell me that your big travel year was not supposed to be twenty twenty. Did you get it in.
Before we finished it? It was all twenty eighteen January to December twenty eighteen, thank goodness. And then when I got back, I had to make a decision of like, Okay, well, am I going to go back to my cozy, comfy, well paid nine to five which is wonderful too, and there's no appol no shame in that. Or should I see where this crazy ass road is going to go? Like,
people respond a lot to these videos. They like it when I work for their financial wins, They like it when they teach something what if I just keep going? And that what if basically has lasted from the end of twenty eighteen to now.
Oh wow? So how much did you say for that epic trip? I like to get into numbers. Did you have a goal number in mind?
We did? I want to say it was like thirty six thousand that we saved for the trip between myself and Peter, because we know we wanted to travel for the entire year. Basically, what we did was once we stopped aggressively paying off our student loans. We put that exact same amount of money we were paying and just lobbed it into a savings every single month as if we were still paying off our student loans, and just lob lab lab all the bonuses, lob it everything, selling things,
lob it. We came out of that year. We had I think like four to six thousand dollars left at the end of twenty eighteen, and we used it to buy a used electric car. It is all very millennial. Yeah, he play millennial annoying for you.
It's fine and embrace it. So you buy your wonderful you bout your electric vehicle, and then you decided to lean into hay burner. So does your partner Is he a partner business as well? Does he help with the hay burner?
He does. He helps in that he keeps us grocery fed and that my dog likes him the best, So he helps with the dog the most, for sure. But he's doing his own thing. He works at the YMC in San Francisco, and he's ours. He's the emotional balance. When I'm in the corner of our apartment screaming and yelling and dancing and you know, tworking for your financial wins. He's the balance.
Oh wow, I feel like we have so so much in common that that's exactly the dynamic with my husband, although he's not he's more of like an eye roll and I'm not doing that for you. You can do whatever you want to do and the Zenden I will have no part in it. Oh gosh, there's Zenden too.
I love your Zenden. I mean, you built a space for you to do your knew freelance whatever thing.
Yeah. I it took me almost a year to take the space for myself, and I don't know why it took so long, but it is. It is my sanctuary. It's kind of moldy and it smells sometimes when it rains, but it's mine, but it's yours. She's cute. She cute, very cute.
This is where it's all going to start. It started in a basically like corner chair for me, and that's where it's. At Least you have a den, at least.
You have a space.
I have something. Well, I'm loving having you on as co hosts. Why don't we take a quick break. We're gonna take some questions from our fabulous listeners with Berna and stick around, guys, we'll be right back. All right, we are back to take y'all's questions again. I am joined by the illustrious, the amazing financial hype woman, everybody's financial hype woman.
Hey Berna, Hey, oh my gosh, I've been dreaming about doing that. Hey hey, hey, like I feel a little just doing it.
Dang, we should have done it in the beginning.
Did you commit?
You're good at it? You're good at it. I mean, I'm not trying to listen. She has gone, but not forgotten. She'll be back. I'm not trying to like, I'm not trying to, like, you know, start infiltrating her her trademarks while she's gone.
No way.
I chiled her for the vibrato. I was like, give me Tiffany for this.
We're back. Let's just do it then, Okay, let's do it. Okay, go from the hey hey hey, heyah, you do the hey hey, and I'll pretend like you're Tiffany and I'll just I'll do my thing.
Okay, beautiful ready and five six seven eight, Hey, hey, hey.
We're free, We're black, We're black. We're never on the same key. We're never in any kind of harmony. It's just beautiful.
It's almos, it's different channels. We come towards each other like a river.
Boom.
Well, we are in the purple. We're both bring a little purple today we have the same wavelength channeling just like it's just meant to be. All right, but seriously, all we are here to answer your questions. As a reminder, my friend Berna and I we are your financial girlfriends today. We are not your financial experts, your financial advisors. Always consult you know, all your biggest money questions with a
professional if you want real, personalized, tailored advice. What we're suggesting to you our opinions based on our own experiences, YadA, yadayatda. Please don't sue us, don't forget you. Guys can send us your questions at Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com, or you can head us up on ig at Brown Ambition Podcast. All right, let's get into your questions. We've got two amazing ones. The first one comes from listener named Shanika. Shanika says, hey, y'all, hope this message Rea reaches you.
Well.
I recently obtained my master's in social work becoming knowledgeable about financial wholeness with the assistants of Brown Ambition. I paid for my graduate degree out of pocket a snap. However, I am fifty thousand dollars in debt from my two undergraduate degrees. My annual income is fifty thousand dollars, and as a single woman with no children, I have a pretty good amount of disposable income. What do you feel is the best approach in terms of decreasing my undergrad
debt to aid my financial wellness. I'd like to be debt free, but I'd also like to enjoy some of my earnings. Thank you in advance, and please tell Tiffany Hello, Hello Tiffany. She hey listen and she's on vacation. But anyway, all right, Shenika, Well, congrats on going getting a whole graduate degree without debt. That's even more impressive.
And two undergraduate degrees is what it was.
So she paid for her grad degree masters out of pocket, but she still has fifty k a worth of debt from two undergraduate degrees, so she real real educated espe she's trying to tell I was.
Going to say, like, let me just have my financial hypoman moment and be like, you paid for a graduate degree out of pocket. That is a beautiful and wonderful thing. Many many graduates out there are like, huh, feeling a lot of inspo. So please give yourself three to five business days of credit for that first before you jump into the debt payoff journey. But yeah, many first dates.
I also want to know how she did that, but that's you know, neither here nor there. Yes, so having an income of fifty k with fifty k worth of debt. This is always a trick with student loan questions is people don't always say whether it's federal or private. But we have to remind you all that until the end of September, you don't need to make payments on your student loans. So that's a huge opportunity. It doesn't make a lot of sense one they you just don't have to.
There's there's a moratorium on student federal student loan payments because of the pandemic or the end of September. But on top of that, you could stand to gain a lot more by you know, putting your money even in a high yield savings account. I mean, they're not giving
much return these days, but it's better than nothing. Or you could be funneling more cash into your emergency fund or of course investing, you know, contributing to a four to one k if you have one or an I array as far as like the disposable income part and feeling like, you know, I'm single, I have no kids, I've got fifty K. Now I want to be enjoying it.
That is constantly like the tug, you know. On the one hand, it's like if you're going to be making good money but you can't enjoy it, then like what's the point. But at the same time, that fifty k debt isn't going anywhere, So like what do you say to that BURNA, I.
Think you hit the number one thing is we're in a very weird bubble of time right now where federal student loan kind of don't matter until the end of September. I don't remember. Now Mandy, you can tell me whether interest is accruing or not, because I'm like, are we in a golden enough time? Right so that could be this could be a golden time for you either to like Mandy said, put that money into something that's going
to grow faster. Than your interest rate on student loans, or if you want to be eager beaver about it, which I typically am with my finances. We're also in this golden period where interest is not accruing, so the payments that you make towards these student loans are interest free, so you get to like at that principle from now until September. That's pretty cool. If that excites you, then
go for it. But I'm also really glad that we're talking about, Like, Okay, becoming debt free as soon as possible sounds sexy and cool, but it does not have to be the path that you want to pursue, especially if it sounds like this person wants to lean into having no kids, being done with their degrees and enjoying their life. I know lots of people. Actually, my wonderful business coach Kristen, she is one of the most. She
has an incredible net worth, she started many businesses. She's so inspiring to me, and she's like, I have a bunch of student loans that I haven't paid off because to me, I wanted to me it was more worth it to invest in these businesses and go on vacation and treat my parents. I just wanted to do that more than pay off my student loans. And that doesn't bother me. I'm not shaming myself for it. Mathematically it
works out for me. And so there are many roads to consider here, and especially because you don't have any dependents, you can consider the like I don't have to be dead free right now kind of.
Road and rub it in all of our parents, all of the parents out there Rebden are bases. But you can just do whatever you want, whenever you want. I just took we took the baby to Atlanta this weekend. It was a two day trip. I don't even know how I have the brain cells to rub together to even talk to you today, but I was like, I will not miss Berna. It was so exhausting the days of I remember loving Atlanta Hartsfield. Now I'm like, why
don't the elevators work? And I mean, at the end of it, I felt like I had run a damn marathon with that baby and the stroller and the stuff. Oh my god, comes girl, travel till you carry on and pack light exactly.
I have so much reverence for all my friends who are parents because going, especially traveling basically leaving the house with a young child is preparing for a marathon. The travel itself is a marathon, and you again need to give yourself three to five business days to recover from that. Because I'm so glad that you're here and to be
like honored this time. But I'm like, exactly if for the person who asks this question, you can afford to indulge in like vacations or do things that take up your energy without having to think about somebody else's energy, Like you can do things with their money that makes you feel free and you don't have to be debt free to do it. So there's there's lots of options here.
Yeah. Absolutely, And I think Tiffany and I have gotten more comfortable talking about what you mentioned investing in yourself, you know, doing things that that maybe don't have immediate returns now, but you know that will make you a better a better person for your work as a social worker. I mean, that's a field where you're going to be pouring so much time and energy into other people. So if you don't pour into yourself, you know, what are you going to give them? And I want that for you.
I want you to be I have that work life balance you know, or whatever your version of that is. And as long as you're spending money for experiences or things that you value, like f what anyone else cares about if you want to spend all your money on I don't know, Star Wars memorabilia or going and hiking the PCT trail like Cheryl what's her face from that book with the boots. I don't remember what it's called. Now, Yeah, mild there you go, thank you, there you go. See
look at us, look at us. Just that that was the layup. Thank you. Yeah. Just as long as you're focusing on your values and spending your money on what's important to you, I think that's the that's the north star that a lot of people forget about, and that's what gets them down the road of you know, know, not to not to pick on burn up, but the bottomless brunches or things that maybe seem okay in the moment but don't really seed you, you know, long term.
Yes, absolutely, And I also really want to like, as annoyingly people say in the Bay Area, double double click on what you said, Mandy of we're talking to I know.
I need to showers probably.
The I literally have an iPhone note somewhere for my Instagram days. Of all the annoying Silicon Valley ship people said all the time, one of them was like, I want to double click on what you just said. And that's one of those. So if forever in.
A comedy so quick say oh, highlight.
It's like a highlight. It's like, let me just double let me Oh my god, I almost use that one with another double down double click, like I want to zoom in when you just fum. Yeah, if you're ever in a comedy situation and want to make fun of people from the Bay Area Silicon Valley butt faces from the Bay Area, you can say double click, so on a zug click on what you said, Mandy, which is
we're talking to a social worker. This is a person who, like shout out to all social work folks, you pour yourself into your job in such a different way than other people. Self care and like decadence and luxury, whatever that means to you is so important and not just like one big splurgy thing a year, but like consistent monthly, like always meeting yourself there self care because from what I understand from social work, I used to work at the YNCA for about four years and worked with social
workers very closely. Y'all deserve so much and not self care with like capital S, capital C, face masks and whatever, but like, I want you to almost have like a self care budget for yourself because social work is pouring out and if your money is not going to be used towards things that fill your cup and as a social worker, your cup gets emptied a lot more, I think than many other folks. And like, what's the money for so? And I hope you lean into that as soon as possible.
I love that. I hope that was helpful, Shanika, and thank you again for your lovely question and all the love. Wish you the best. All right, let's take one mo question from our audience. If I can find the dang tab. All right, here's a cool question, interesting question, not maybe the sexiest on its face, but I do feel like we constantly This is the question that it probably took me a good five years into my career before I had I could finally stop having to google it to
remember what the damn difference was. Those question is from someone who liked to remain anonymous. They work at a university that we won't name out of interest of keeping her, you know, anonymous, but she asks, I was recently hired at a university, and I'm trying to determine if it's better for my future self to have money taken out of my paycheck and put into my four oh one K pre tax or after tax. Wouldn't I have a
tax advantage if it's taken from my paycheck after tax. Listen, there's not really a wrong answer here, and I do so, and I and I this is a specific question that I definitely think you know it's worth talking to a the only financial planner about because it's never just about your four to one K or in your case, you probably have an educator account which is like a four or three B but still similar, so you probably wantn't
get more personalized advice than this. But just to break it down, you know, when you contribute to a traditional four to one K or traditional IRA or sorry, a four to one K, you're putting dollars in pre tax, which means you put the money in and you don't get tax until you take it out when you're old and gray or hopefully not so old and gray in retirement. And the benefit there is that your money grows tax free. It's it's wonderful. It's an incentive to get people to
put money away for retirement. The WROTH four one K is different in the sense that you pay taxes upfront, and typically what some financial advisors will say is this is also a tax benefit. It's just a little bit more indirect because you're paying taxes now. Let's say you're earning a lower income today than you plan to be earning later when you get to retirement age. You could be saving money by paying your lower tax rate now than when you start withdrawing from your funds later. Benefit
that I think is overlooked. What the ROTH is that you can actually withdraw your contributions, so it's not actually as tied up as a traditional retirement account. Where Like if you take an early withdrawal and it's just to you know, pay for something or to pay off some debt, it can be tax penalties that you have to pay and then income tax on top of that on what
you withdraw with a ROTH. Like let's say you put in five thousand dollars over a couple of years you want to and you've gained you know, two thousand dollars on that five K. So you've got seven k in there right now, you could arguably go in there and withdraw some of that principal amount, that five thousand that you put in and pocket that without the penalties of a traditional four to one k. But now that we got all that like jargonique goodness, mum out of the way,
burna talk to me about I mean, this is like a common This is like a common you know, one of the first adulting type decisions that happen when you get a new job. For me, I was so like ignorant about all this mess. I had a four oh one K match at my first job. I was there for fifteen months, never opened, never put a dime in it, left all the money on the table. It'd be fair.
I had no dimes to put in there. But sure, what was what was it like for you when you started to you know, you went from freelancing to like, oh benefits like a four toh one k. What was that like for you and how did you decide?
Yes, actually trying to figure out what in the gd hell as a four oh one K was one of my first financial kind of Google entries. Ever, when I you know, like you said, we go through HR and the orientation, they're like, here's your four oh one K before you could even ask, like why is it even named before oh one? And they're like, come onto the next and then they're like, we can't give you advice or HR. We're not a financial so you get very
little answers in the first place. It was amazing to find out through Googles, not the HR representatives, which typically they should be more helpful, but a lot of the times they are not. It was amazing to find out that for a lot of young people, especially in your very first jobs, your four oh one K is like the first time you're actually your money is getting invested,
often invested for you, and you have no idea. Like it was many months into my job, like you said, Mandy, when I realized that money was being taken out for my four oh one K for my paychecks and things were happening to it. I guess I had like blacked out and signed papers when I enduring orientation, agreeing to something and I didn't understand it until many months afterwards,
and like couldn't actually change things. So it was amazing to find out that first of all, money won, money was already being taken out of my paycheck, what without my maybe like kind of unconsensually, without my understanding of how it happened. Two, I learned about what you just said, four oh one K matching. My company was a company
that does that. They did four oh one K matching, which meant when I put certain amount of money into my four oh one K, my company was like, cool, me too, Simon says, I'm going to do the same thing. Up to a certain degree. We love to say as financial you know, mouth holes, that's free money. That's money on the table, right, I give money, and you're I move. You move like Ludacris, I move the money. And then the company says me too, I'm move the money. So
that was amazing to find out. And then you get into the Okay, so what's the difference between a four and when K and ira you learn about all the things that man you just said about, like the tax differences. That's around when even if, like if you had held on to this point of like trying to learn, that's around when people's brains.
Start to tune out and it starts to.
The butterfly out the window, gonna go get lunch, but they are really important differences when you're kind of looking at things. But I think the most important thing is whichever path you choose. Sit yourself or an HR representative or if financial advisor down until you and like ask all the questions until you fully understand the differences between the two. Don't go blindly into it like me and be like, it looks like the.
Guy to my left, just check the box and and so it makes it that like I literally left money on the table for the first year, I left free money out of my own damn retirement account for the first year because I was just blindly following.
There's so much pressure in the process. Don't be afraid to sit down and like, ask all the damn questions, google all every single phrase, every single thing that you can so that you understand both ways. And like Mandy was saying, it's not like there's a major, giant, like big mistake difference between the two. Honestly, I don't think there really is. It's especially when it say first sort of investing foray, but understand the crap out of it.
You really you deserve to understand the crap out of everything happening to every dollar and it's tiring. But until a retirement expert comes in and starts doing a dance at every like orientation, this is how we got to do it, it'll be me.
I mean, I think they paid big, big dollars for you to come tell their employees about their benefits, which is one of the incentives to keep them there. I
don't know why companies. I mean literally at previous job when one of the benefits was rsu's restricted stock units literally stock in the company, and I had a staff of young people who had never so much as heard of an RSU before, and I'd have to do their performance reviews and be like, oh, and you're gonna get, you know, five thousand dollars worth of RSUs and they would have these blank stares, and finally I was like,
do you know what this is? No, or they would say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh it's like the thing, you know, and I'm like, no, here's what it is, and then their eyes would get why. They're like, whoa, this is great, this is great, but you don't know until you ask those questions. So, and a lot of people aren't like me. They don't have time, you know, they don't take the time, so definitely has.
I was going to say, they're lucky to have an employer that's like, let me tell you exactly what it is, because I remember learning about RSUs in my former job too and being like, this is a huge tech company with so many resources. I can't believe I have to google this shiz on my own to find out that I'm being given equity in the company. But the equity works like this, It's got all these rules. It's like, bless you and every other employer that actually looks out
for the young people like that. That's beautiful.
That's where you're saying, you know how, what is it? What is Hella? The personal finance world is Hella mail Hellapale, Hella Stale, he Staleyah love it. That is true of businesses too. It's really the structure is built for I think people who don't need to have us sit down and talk about RSUs because their uncle or their father or their mother, you know, their mentor tells them those
types of things. But a lot of folks, especially brown and black black people, women, you know, we don't go into the corporate world with those extra benefits and those you know, advisors and little evil parrots on our shoulders to tell us these types of things that we have to seek it out for ourselves, and companies need to do the extra work to do all that. But now I'm on my soapbox now about one of my favorite subjects, which is how businesses fail their employees.
I love that subscribe.
Yeah, but I do want to say thank you to this question and just to take it home. The only bad decision here is to not invest, to not say for retirement. That's the only bad decision you can make. And also, you know, to your point burnet about getting knowledge. For me, the best thing I did at twenty four was just start saving before I even knew everything I thought I needed to know. I just did the easiest option, you know, check the box for automatic withdrawals into a
target date fund. And then I was like, cool, you're cute. I'll come back to you when I'm ready to dive in more and do more things. And that was the smartest decision I ever made, putting me on my path to a tenfold increase in my net worth over the past you know decades, and I huge. Yeah, And I just don't want people to hold themselves back because they
don't think that they know enough. There are some small steps you can take today that will put you on the right path, and you'll, you know, you'll accrue that knowledge over time. Just don't wait until you're you know, you can recite, and don't wait until you have to stop googling the different terms. I still google sometimes me too, all the time.
It's fine.
I mean, we aren't like raised with these pockets of knowledge in our heads, and so we have to keep relearning. We have to keep shoving them intoor heads because it doesn't come naturally to so many of us. And I love to also tell young folks like you have something that every older hella male pailstale investor wishes they had, and that's time. It's time you have that freakin' in bags all all around you. And that's the most important
thing for retirement investing specifically. So just get her done, Just get her done in any which way, and confuse yourself with the terms once there's already money in the pot.
I love that. All right, Well, thank you all so much for your questions. Thank you Bernard for being my my copilot on the question segment. All right, well, let's get into this is a big moment for Berna. How does Tidy do this?
Now?
I'm forgetting Brown Boost Brown Break Brown, But no, that's not it.
Are you going to have like a like a Mickey Mouse Club? Oh yeah, Ti remember that?
And it always ends up. It's kind of like Eenie Meani Mi Nemo. Her Brown Break intros always end up making nego first, no matter what it is. The last says no, it's fine. I'm just like the stat the cars are stacked against me. I'm not always prepared. But what would you like to do? Are you gonna boost or are you going to break? My friend?
Oh boy, let's see. Am I going to boost? Am I going to break? I think I'm going to boost?
Okay, keep it body to boost.
I'm gonna keep it a pozzy because I'm in my book cave, and like we were talking about before we started recording, being in a book cave means I'm extremely selective about the things that come into my eyeballs and and scroll past my screen, and so I'm trying to keep it pousey for the book. You know, give give the book pozzy vibes. I think I want to give a boost to the idea of community so this is cheesy. We talked about like my heal, healthful community and all
that stuff. What I'm talking about is, today I'm thinking about the fact that creating this book requires a community. It'll probably be just my name on the cover, but I'm thinking about, like I said, my business coach who's a woman of color that supports me every single day. My agent, who's a woman of color supports me every single day. I have a small group of like mastermind other financial creators who I like bounce questions off of. I'm asking my audience all the time of like opinions
and things. I'm constantly texting my three teenage nieces. Is this stupid? Is this lame? If I had to compare stocks to like an anime character, which one would it be. I'm just thinking about the fact that nothing good happens as like in a silo in a cylinder by yourself.
In my life, all the most wonderful things have happened because other specifically black and brown women have reached down up across to me, pulled me up a ladder, pulled me into their arms, pulled me into their mastermind, lued me into an email, including you, Mandy pulled me into this and made me feel like community is a thing
that makes all these things worth it. And so I just want to I want to boost to everybody who's reached out to a fellow black end or brown person, especially a woman, and said, let me bring you into this mix because your name deserves to be on this table, or let me make sure that you know I add your handle to this list of creators that needs to be considered for this thing. That's just what I'm thinking
about today. So I'm grateful for all the people that know how to reach out and around and bring people in.
I love that that's everything that Brown ambition stands for, right. I mean, that's the reason we started this podcast. It's probably the reason you started. Hey, Berna and Hella helpful and thank you too, because it takes a village, and we all have our little villages and it doesn't serve anybody to think that you can do it alone. That just leads to agony and pain and stress and anxiety. You need to like share the burden.
Yes, one hundred percent. I'm always trying to think of the fact that you know, my own ancestors, again being Filipino, they did so many more things in community than as an individual, and I'm trying to keep that while I'm creating these things that feel very individual a book, you know, other projects and stuff like that. And like my ancestors raw shit out in community, and I think they had it, they had it right as opposed to this American individualistic colonizer bs bust out, bust out.
I love that. Well, thank you. I'm so glad to be I consider myself I've pushed as much as you think I pulled you in. I'm just put I'm just inserting myself into your orbit because I need more of this. This is what I've been missing. It's just conversations with other creators, other people passionate about the same thing I am,
and other people with unique voices. And this isn't technically my boost, but I do want to boost a very moving message that you posted an IG I think a few months ago, and it was maybe the peak of violence against Asian American and Pacific Islander AAPI communities in this country, and your message was so powerful to me, and I think this year was it was it was really easy to just you know, keep your eye, keep your eye on your lane, you know, last summer was
so hard. The whole the whole fucking year was just a crapshoot. But that was a real lesson for me to also look outside of my own identity and look at how the world is impacting other you know, marginalized people, and reach out to friends of mine who might be impacted and try to do it in a mindful way. And and I just so I thank you for that, for taking that time to go off script and to
share what was on your heart. And I hope that you continue to be just as authentic and amazing as you are and really sit with the knowledge that just because it's not you're not for everyone, and maybe appealing to everyone that is not what we're doing this for. It's really about unapologetically talking to people who look like us and saying, if you know, f the norm and you're wonderful.
Oh, I mean that's like again, this is why I was like, it's time, Like I'm of all the things I could be doing outside of book leave, I'm like, I can't let this go by. This is the platform that understands that, the community that gets it. So thank you.
Let me be your hype woman for just then, ye Okay, I can't do it, but I mean I can to work, but I'm going to say I'm not going to do that right now. I want to do a quick break because I can't let this be. I can't let this go. And I'm hoping that I know you said that you're in a book, cave. I don't know if you've been on the socials lately, but Chrissy Teagan was canceled. Have you heard of this recently?
I'm like, again, she was no, So.
She's been canceled kind of for I like telling a poor woman to like go kill herself and all these things on social media. She came out with this long as apology note on IG today. I'm sure you haven't had a chance to read it, but I wanted to take a break for well one, cyberbullying in general, and I think as two women who live on the internets and especially social media, when you're trying to enter a space that traditionally has not been for you, the trolls
are alive and well. And I've had my first taste of this really on TikTok and to have me, Chrissy, They're so mean, they really are, and to other women especially it's especially women talking about finance and the patriarchy and all these things. But yeah, I just wanted to talk about that because, I mean, Christy is someone who it just shows that trying to be the first to be witty and funny on social media, it's almost like using that power to drag people down, to especially other women.
It really. I know that she's apologized now, but I just wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the impact, like the real feelings that are out there on the Internet, and the fact that we're all out there creating content, but we have feelings too, And I hate for someone who has an image of being so you know, so welcoming and so funny and charismatic and amaze and the beautiful children and superstar husband and all that kind of stuff.
Why does she need to take someone down if someone like that feels small enough on the inside to tell others. And in her message, she admits that there's not just this one instance that was recently made public. There's more people like victims of her own cyber bullying. We just have we have to hold people accountable for it. I don't want to wish anyone ill, but I'm genuinely like, I'm raising a child who eventually will be who knows what the internet will be when he's old enough to
use devices. But I just I don't know what to do about, like the cyber bullying, but it is so and especially if you're reaching young people like you say that you are with your book. I mean, this is a real it's a real danger, and it's a real, I don't know, its own little epidemic or pandemic, whatever the right phrase is. But how has that impacted you? Do you have a do you have trolls or do you just kind of have a way of filtering that out?
Oh? Absolutely, we have troubles. Oh my gosh, definitely have trolls, basically from the day that I started talking about my money life, which I'm sure you've experienced and especially I'm sure you're experiencing on TikTok is when a woman or person of color or a woman of color opens their mouth about a hella male, hell of pale, hell of stale formally thing the hella mail pale stales, and those who represent or want to protect their interests come out.
They just come out with fists because how dare you try to give advice to other people who look and sound like you. That doesn't cater and center the white man, which is what most finance advice does. When we center ourselves in this work, people get really get their feelings hurt. And so I've definitely gotten trolls of people who are saying like I don't know what I'm talking about, or I made stupid financial decisions. Even if both those things were true, doesn't mean I have to shut up when I,
like you said, spoke out. If I ever speak out and kind of step outside of my quote unquote lane of finance, and I talk about race, I talk about my experiences, I talk about the liberation of black people. I talk about stop harassing Asian people. The trolls really come out. And what I've found to be true when you're an Internet creator and is clearly true even when
you're someone as big as Chrissy Teagan. No one has given us any classes and how to act on the Internet, and there are a lot of people out there just like throwing their unhealed trauma at each other. People think that we can say things and do things to each other either on Twitter or in the DMS that you
would never actually do to human face to face. And so I've learned a lot from especially many of my activist friends on IG how to draw your boundaries with people on the internet who don't know who you are, how to say, hey, I have created a list of boundaries, and if you're a new person and if you want to interact with me, you have to see this list of boundaries I've created. One of them is you can't DM me if I don't know you. If I'm not in relationship with you, and you're about to DM me
with your opinion, stop, I don't want it. You don't know how to act with me, and so it's not going to be dialogue. Two. I do dialogues. I don't do Suddenly I'm your garbage can for everything you think about Asian people or everything you think about brown people, I don't do. While this message should have really gone to your therapist, I do dialogues. That's an exchange of information.
If you don't know what that is, I will not respond to your DM Three it's like, you know, these are the way Like if I'm sharing my personal experience and I did not ask for your opinion, don't give it to me. These things feel very normal if I were to see, like have coffee with you, Mandy, like in real life. But we lose our brains when it
comes to the Internet. And it goes to show also that you can be the most famous, the most beautiful, the most visible, and you still don't know how to draw boundaries with yourself, and you still don't know how to like, remember there's a human on the other side of the thing. So that's the number one thing. It's if people lose their humanity so easily, And it's important, tiring, but important to let people know where your boundaries are on the Internet because clearly some people don't.
Know how to act.
One thing that you said that struck me that I hope people take away from it is recognizing that it's not about you, it is someone else throwing I think you said they're unhealed trauma at you. Hurt people, hurt people. It's as simple as that. And I don't want to as more of us, women of color, even you know, men of color too, are out there sharing our povs, sharing our voices. And believe me, corporate America wants us.
They say they want us right, but ain't there are not always ready for us, and we have to really take care of ourselves because wherever you go, the trolls will be there, and you need to sort of have your you know, have your mental health process and check whatever that is for you. Everyone's got their own way, but just getting to a good place where you really know yourself and you're comfortable with yourself. Like it sounds like Berna, obviously you really are and that's not always
easy for some people. But that is the biggest thing. It is not it's not your stuff. You keep doing what you're doing. Like trolls be damned, they're going to be there, but it's not about you. It's about them, and just try not to engage with them and keep create, creating and thriving because that's what we're both here to do. Yep, absolutely, I forgot we're talking to it's just you and me in.
This world is me and you in your in your zenden. But I totally clost on in all of that. It's and it's funny because the more you are genuine and true to your own message, I think the more trolls can sort of sense that. I feel like I've gotten more trolls, the more genuine you are with your voice, and so it's like the further you get out there, the more you have to be clear about your boundaries and and let folks know where they can't step. But doesn't doesn't mean you stop creating.
When it comes to you burn out, there is no boundary. I like, as far as like you know, we were to live, we tight Now it's all love. Thank you so much for co hosting with me.
Thank you, thank you for making this dream come true.
I really just like I don't believe you no for.
Real, for real, Like if you ask my Spotify, Unleashed, UnrealEd, whatever the heck. At the end of every year, probably for the fast three past three, three years, past four years, top podcast has been Brown Ambition. So this is my freaking dream. Thank you so much, Maim so much.
Well, thank you for being so supportive and for doing what you do again. You're at Heyburna dot com. Anywhere else people can well, they can't find you anywhere now. This is like an exclusive interview on her book Leave. This is the only place you can find Berna right now. But when are you out of your book Leave Cave? And then where can folks find you?
I am out of my book leave cave in August, so I give my first draft in the middle of July, and then I basically blackout for two weeks. Who knows where I'm going to be. I'm just going to be face down in my dog, I think, for two weeks, and then in August I'm back out with some cool projects coming. But follow it all on Hey Berna on Instagram.
All right, I love it all right, Berna. Think you, thank you, thank you, thank you.