Your Magic Wand is Working

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in this country. My heart also goes out to everybody who everybody black, everybody black like you and I, who have to find a way to deal with that trauma, carry that pain with us through our days to our day to day and just say, like, for me, the key has been one hour at a time, like hour one hour at a time, because I'll have a good hour and then a bad hour. But some things that have been giving me life and enjoy lately has been I redid my zenden.

I put a yoga mat. I wanted to have a space, a door to close for the first time and nearly a year in the pandemic, just to become like myself again, you know, just to like. This is where I come down to invest in Mandy. You know what does Mama Mandy need. She needs time to work feel good about that. She needs to sweat on the peloton, she needs to stretch.

Whatever I need. So I realize I need a nap spot just to you know, in between meetings or whatever, just take a sweet little nap without having to go upstairs. Because when I go upstairs, the problem is that I can't avoid the baby. He's in the house, like he's everywhere, and he knows the sound of my footsteps on the basement staircase, so he comes running. This isn't a very big house and he's not at daycare yet, so yeah,

so I decided I'm gonna like put. I was like, maybe I should get a little shadse lounge or just honestly an air mattress or something. And then Stacy was like, have you seen this moon pod? And all I can say is it is a grown up bean bag chair and it is growing the best thing it is. So it's so nice. I'm gonna take a picture. It looks kind of ridiculous, but it's so comfy. I took a I took a delicious nap yesterday in my moon pod. I got a weighted blanket and I am investing in my nap time.

shared with me, it was like so good. I was like, okay, So for those of you who are like me and Mandy who team too much, you know, we'd be doing a lot, and sometimes we do so much that we're like, okay, Sis, it's okay to rest, she said to me, because I told her, I'm like, okay. The book you know, it made near time bestsellers second week in rub but theah blah was naming all these things like okay, okay, she said, okay, that we can agree your magic wand is working. Say

what noo? She said, your magic wand is working. You have manifested enough times to see that your magic wand is working. She just means that, like, and this is for you, who is listening, who does the most, who doesn't break, doesn't rest, I'm looking at the mayor, so I'm not judging you, but I'm talking to you. Sis, the one who's looking at the looking at like whatever contraption that you're listening to the podcast on, and you're looking like, oh, she trying to read me. I'm reading you.

Your magic wand is working. You don't have to go so hard, you don't have to go so long, you don't have to do as much as you've been doing. You can actually put your magic wand down and enjoy a little life a little bit more and guess what, it likely will recharge and work even better. And she was like, you have manifested this life that you're living. Now say it out loud with me. The seeds I plant grow, the seeds I plant grow. So you want to be even more mindful of the seeds that you're planting.

You want to garden intentionally. You know, you're not picking random fruit. You're picking the fruit from the seeds that you've planted. And so if you're wanting to pick different fruit, then you have to make space in your garden for something differently. And so I convince myself that, like more and more and more heart, you can do it. You can do. It's like nosis. You don't have to go so hard. You're planting the right seeds, you're picking that fruit.

But if you're wanting rest and relaxation and more harmony, then you have to plant those seeds as well. Your magic wand is working. And I just felt red for filth, so I figured, you know, i'd read you for filth as well. So there you go. I'm cury, doctor Green.

actually diminish future crops. So you have to tend to it. And then you you harvest what you can, use it the best that you can, and you try and store them away for winter. Okay, I'm doing.

all this to shine like you know. So it was just like, yeah, now when I say read for film, I didn't feel offended. It was perfect because to your point many I needed the permission to be like, it's okay to sit down. God, it's not gonna go away your trust, it's gonna be here. You put the work and it's gonna be here.

And she said that is enough. She said, that is enough. You were productive. That was the job that you had to do, and we need to like we need to celebrate the quiet work. This I don't know. I don't want to call it small, but you know what I mean, like the little tasks, the little jobs that we do, because some days, especially during the last week that we just had, some days it is all you can do to put one foot in front of another, sit in front of the desk, answer the day of emails, talk

to the boss, you know that kind of stuff. You know, do the work, or you know, just sit down and be there present for your children. It's that is enough. And certainly don't kill yourself trying to do what you think you should be doing on top of that, because some days you just need to be at peace with what you have done and tell yourself that you're enough. And if what was that mantra? Something about a seed.

I'm overwhelmed, I'm not working. It's not good because I don't want to pretend like everything is okay, because I think that's not just detrimental to y'all who are listening, but detrimental to me and to Mandy if you don't show up fully and truly, because I want to see, Like I don't care how great it looks from the outside. Sometimes it's a hot mess, and people struggle no matter

what stage or what phase they're on life. And sometimes you're actually your most calm and zen when you are your least outwardly successful, you know, and so all of that you get to see, like what it all looks like, like the truth of all that it looks like with where we are and not just you get to see like our growth. I feel like, I'm sure if you were to listen to me from like a year ago, I sound way more stressed or way less connected. But

I'm feeling so much better. And even though like the launch took a lot out of me, Like I'm reassessing, like you know what next steps look like, and I feel more in control that I don't have to do all the things, And like I'm actually seeing things differently, like, oh, I can do those five projects without doing those five projects. Let me call Taylor, let me call this person, let me call that pert. They can do those projects for me under the Budgetista. So I'm even learning how to

navigate differently. I used to think, Mandy that whatever I had new projects, I used to be like, oh gosh, because in my mind I was thinking about all the work I had to do, and It's like why why can't Like Taylor writes great courses, Like I want to do a course for get Good with Money, And I'm like, why do I have to write that course? The book is written. You did that? Give Taylor the book and say make a course based upon this. Taylor is one

of my course writers. And I was just like, oh, yeah, duh, you know, like every relegate, yes, And so I just feel like, hopefully that you get to hear it's the ups and downs, the side to side and see that growth is a journey that you never never finished with. And yeah, and that to give yourself the space and the grace.

was to recalibrate. So once you celebrate your winds, recalibrate And by that I meant, you know, not treating whatever it is your budget or your financial plan as one and done like a rigid set of guidelines that you're just going to beat yourself up against forever. Because as we've learned the past year, like income can change, you know,

your health can change. Your circumstances where you live can change so quickly, and I think that people should give themselves grace when it comes to their financial plan as well, and to bake that into your process. And it was something that as I was writing it for that talk, I realized I had not done that, Like I had

not looked at so my income. My income did increase significantly this past year just because of some career choices I made, and I hadn't really reassessed how I was saving and spending, and I started to get really stressed out about it like there was a Friday not long ago where I was like, wait a second, where is where's it all going? You know, are we what are we doing with it? Are we investing? Like where's it?

And I had just lost track. I had. I finally sat down, you know, after I wrote that line in my presentation, because I didn't want to be a hypocrite, and I was like, Okay, I'm going to recalibrate, like what is happening? You know, our income has increased, so what are we doing? And for me, it was it was sitting down and just methodically going through the different accounts and seeing like what is going out, what is

coming in? And it was so it was so for me, it almost like gave myself permission to acknowledge that I had kind of lost track of my financial I don't know what you want to call it, like framework or plan and just to kind of get a gut check like where am I at? And it turned out I had all these automatic transfers, I was contributing twice to this brokerage account, and I had, you know, doubled up on some kind of contribution to a savings fund for

my son. And it was good, but it was also kind of sloppy and messy, and so I got everything cleaned up. I made new more ambitious goals as far as saving and investing. And I just wanted to say that because even myself, you know, having done this for so long, even I sometimes forget to recalibrate and look at how my situation has changed and sit down and just go back to that. That'll be word the budget. And I just wanted to remind y'all it's been a really hell of it's been a hell of a year.

And if you guys need that, like, sit down, look at how the financials are doing, and see if your goals that you made, you know when you started your budget still align with where you are today, and if not, then just just change them. Like you can change them. You're the boss. You can change them. And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, that was really inspiring, Tiffany.

If you have the ability, please ask for help.

try and keep it brief. If you feel a little wordy, you might still want to reach out to us via email, or you can always DM us at Brand Ambition Podcast on Insta or at or sorry. Our email is Brand Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. If you're feeling a little wordy, but we'd love to hear from you, It's nice to hear y'all's voices eight four four eight five eight eight zero eight zero. All right, let's dig in. Let's dig into that voicemail Sarah, what do we have?

you know, So it can be a good benefit. Now, the pros and cons of holding on to it or selling it, right away. I'm not surprised that you found conflicting information. I wouldn't call it conflicting. I would just say it's one of those questions where it's like there is no exact right or wrong answer. And to remind you guys, like, I'm not an investment expert, I'm not your financial planner. I'm just Tiffany and I are just your financial girlfriends, just here telling you what's worked for us.

So for me, I sometimes get a little I'm more on a weary of holding a lot of stock in a company that already pays my bills. I would much rather invest outside of my company stock. For example, at anytime, I was granted stock through restricted stock units in the past, So this is a little bit of a different way that companies can give you stock. So restricted stock units is just we're gonna give you stock in the company, you know, but we're not gonna give it to you

right away. You gotta work here for a year, and you gotta work here for another year to get the you know, the next batch, and then year after that to get the next batch. So it's like an incentive to stick around. I always sold those things lickety split. Immediately, no matter what the stock had done. I treated it

like a free cash bonus and I sold it. That worked for me because I personally didn't want to have a lot of money tied up in one single stock, let alone a stock that like they already have my paycheck and my income, like if they crash, I could lose what my stock value and my job Like that for me was too much to risk. So that's why I sold it immediately. Now where you're talking about tax implications is if you sell it and then you pocket the you pocket your proceeds. So that is where you

need to think about the tax implication. If you decide to sell it. You know that could end up working in your in your favor if you, you know, make a certain amount of money on it. But you have to also weigh the cost of short term in a short term tax on on that sell out selling that stock. So I would say talk it through with whether it's an accountant or your financial planner, and just see if

it's worth the amount that you're paying in taxes. For a lot of people, Like for example, back in January TIF when everyone was buying not everyone, but a lot of people were game stop and what was it like AMC there were you know, I think I even had tweeted, you know, be careful because if you purchase game Stop, you know, in December and then the stock I don't even know how much like quadruple or tenext a couple of months later, and you sold to profit off of that,

you also had a tax had a tax hit because you get taxed more when you hold the investment for a shorter period of time. And a lot of people on Twitter were like, yeah, we know, like don't you shouldn't discourage people from investing just because of the tax implication, Like you can still make a lot more money even

after paying taxes. And that's true. That's why I'm saying, like, if you want to sell to get that benefit because you bought the stock at a discount, cool, But then also ask your financial planner or CPA or whoever you know, what would my tax implication be and would it be worth it? Nothing is stopping you from selling that stock like I did and then using it. I didn't sell

it to cash the profit. I went turned around and bought index funds or ETFs with it, so I instantly diversified what would have been all the money tied up in one stock by investing in an index fund or ETF, which is how you can, you know, be exposed to multiple stocks, not just one. So that's personally what I did. And again I'm sure it was like a bunch of conflicting information on that one answer, but yeah, there's really

there's really no one right answer. It's like a combination of what makes sense financially and then what helps you. What's the kind of decision that you can sleep with that night, and that's something you have to come to on your own.

you I don't know, what they're called. But they'll give you stock without calling it stock. It's like a certain class of shares because they haven't gone public yet or no one, you know what I mean. And then you kind of can see at least then you have some ownership, like if they were to sell, you have something. So that's kind of an exciting that's kind of an exciting step for a budgetese to if you do ease it tease, but first, like vision insurance, that's great. People need to

get their glasses and stuff. That's exciting though. All right, and for our final question, this one comes from the GRAM. All right, this says, hi, ladies, I'd like to buy a home in twenty twenty five or twenty twenty six. Is it smart to place home savings in an investment account starting now or a high interest savings account? I have my six month emergency fund saved and I'm currently paying down some consumer debt. Good question.

I probably would do like some sort of half and half, because five years is just about the cusp of what you're looking for when when you're thinking about investing, Because what I don't want you to do is not to have the money readily available. But then I don't want you to miss out and potentially earning more than you with a savings account.

a short term or a long term investment? And then what I would say is Investing in the market can mean a bunch of different things. So if you're looking to invest in something that could potentially give you a you know, a good return on investment, but not make you overexposed to any one single stock, I would say, you know, choose ETFs or even opening up a brokerage account that has Like, for example, I opened up a brokerage account recently, and there was a certain fund you know,

based on time horizon and based on risk tolerance. Those are just fancy words for how much time do you have to invest for and then how stressed out are you going to be if the market goes down and goes up. So based on those answers, I was directed to a specific kind of fund and it instantly diversifies, you know, put money in and it spreads it across several ETFs and that you know worked for what I wanted.

So you could look at options like that to help you, you know, make sure that you're investing, you know, putting your money for your home down payment somewhere that you're broadly diversified over the next four years, so four or five years, so when company goes down, it doesn't like take your whole down payment with it, so j I

would just say acknowledge the risks of that. You know, the biggest difference between a savings account at an FDIC insured bank and an investment account is that it's FDIC insurance.

It's a beautiful thing, baby, it's a beautiful thing. It means if the banks collapse, then the federal government ensures the money in your account up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I think, And you don't have that when you're investing, so you have to sort of assume the risk of what happens when you invest in one hundred percent. You know, consult a professional if you'd like to, and do your own due diligence because you really have

to make the best choice for yourself. Isn't it crazy?

I have eighty thousand dollars cash for a down payment. Great, But then there's a bidding war and all of a sudden, the house is six hundred thousand and you don't have one hundred and twenty thousand, you know, and it's it's just way out of your price range so fast. So I just feel like.

The house that I bought when I was twenty five has never reached back up to the two twenty that I bought it for. It's been almost it's been over twenty years. No, it's been over fifteen years if.

sell the house for. So sometimes the blessing is that you didn't get it, you know, like, I'm not purchasing. I had set aside a bunch of money to buy some homes, but I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing it. I'm not going to. I have much rather put my investment towards something where there's going to be a yield. Where Why would I buy an inflated house for five years from now for it to go back to the value where it's supposed to be and I've lost some money.

So just be mindful about getting a house just to get a house, just to get a house.

to the housing market as well. It may take a year or two because a housing market moves very slowly sometimes, but hopefully we'll come back to a realm of normalcy in the next couple of years in the housing market. But definitely don't just buy to buy. That's yeah, yes, I mean it's you know, it's fine, but it's it's not necessarily the best way to.

But Dana decided last year that she was actually going to put a number on the cost of systemic racism to a society, to America, Like how much has the economy missed out on? Because if you're black and brown in this country, you're how your home is worthless because you earn less over time because you don't get you know, a certain salary. All those all those different factors, and the number that I don't know if this is a

boost or break. I think it's a boost for Dana because she took her own experiences this article Bloomberg will put a link to on the show. Note she took her own experience encountering racism as she worked up you know, worked her way through financial services, and decided to actually quantify it. And the number that she came up with is kind of insane. But racism has cost America sixteen

trillion dollars. Sixteen trillion with a T dollars okay, that could have paid for sixteen stimulus plans, right like economic relief packages. So I just wanted to highlight that and

say thanks to Dana. In this article, she also just shares like a bunch of anecdotes about how she had encountered bias herself and how she decided to tackle this question and use her skills as an economist and researcher, and bless her for that, to use those skills to actually give people, to help people see that when we talk about wealth building for black and brown people, it's not just costing us, you know, it's not just costing

our children wealth. It's also costing the country wealth. Because when you don't. When everyone is not succeeding and everyone's not successful and thriving financially, it actually hurts the economy. You know, they have more people who are unable to spend, which drives business. Right, So if we really want to to improve the economy, we should all treat financial equity as a real urgent need and an urgent call to action. And so I love this this little piece of research.

So shout out to Dana and uh yeah, we'll post a link to that in the show notes.

So everybody's favorite financial fairy godmother, Lynette so Forms Women to reached out to me, I don't know, some months ago and asked me it was this a thing that I did called the One, And it was supposed to be about who was like the one person in your professional life that like made all the difference, you know, And of course I was like, that's easy, Lynette, And so I talked about how as a result of like meeting Lynette so many years ago, I don't even know,

it was probably like about ten years ago. You can go on if you go down Forbes. It's just it's called how the budget needs to save people millions with help from an unexpected mentor. And it's just really nice. It's just this six minute video that came to my house.

They recorded me kind of just talking about how when I first met Lynette, how I made a mistake and how I treated her nothing disrespectful, but like it was embarrassing now that I look back on it, not for Lynette but for me, and how she poured so much into me in that first car ride and how to this day it really helped to catapult me to where I am now and all the things that she used to share and tell me are where I am now.

And the thing about Lynette kwed Fondi Cox, if you're not familiar, she's one of the first black financial educators women to be seen publicly. I mean Good Morning America today,

so all the shows, Lynette did it before everybody. And not only just that, she's just like the kindest, like honestly, I you know, I told my story and I posted it in our in our Black money group, Mandy, and like the comments were just feels like about Lynette stories and one time she helped me and one time she did this, and and that's what I aspired to be

I aspired to be a Lynette. I told the story on social media the other day about how one of my other mentors shared how she had made a mistake when she had a mentor because she thought she and the mentor were neck and neck at one point because they had been on the same stages, but not understanding that you could be on the same stage in different levels.

And how she learned very quickly that although she was a light pole and it seemed taller than her mentor, but her mentor was a tree and had deep roots. And when her foundation was shaken, her light pole fell and the mentor's tree remained, and it quickly humbled her to realize that nasis don't compare here, your instant flash with someone's years and years and years of work. And I could never hold a candle to Lynnette like what she's able to do, how she's been able to help folks.

I mean, Lynette is to me the ultimate goals. How she shows up as a wife, as a mother, as a friend, as a mentor, as a financial educator. Lynette been a New York Times bestseller and just the humblest and kindest and just I just wanted to say all that I know she's herd earl. I love her. She's just she's goals and when I look at Lynnette, that's what I hope to grow too. So yeah, that was

just it. I just wanted to share that. Just shout out to Forbes and especially Forbes Women for giving me the opportunity to brag on my mentor and to I didn't even say share her with the world because'slready been shared many, many times, but to share at least my personal story with her with the world.

it out and post that in the show notes. If you want to go back and get your fix of Lynette the Money Coach, ask the Money coach. That's her website. I think yes, she's awesome. All right, well that is the show. Can't wait to see y'all next week. Get some rest, go plan some seeds or something.