Hey va, fam, it's Mandy Money here. Now. I believe that we all have a unique superpower in life, me personally. I was lucky enough to discover mine about ten years ago. I was just a few years into my career as a financial journalist. I had spent weeks I was interviewing at this huge media company which you guys may or may not have heard of, called Yahoo, and they wanted to poach me. I suspected that I was underpaid at the time, and I was ready to finally tip the
scales back in my favor. I plucked up every kernel of courage I had and I negotiated the hell out of that offer. In the end, I walked away super victorious with a twenty eight thousand dollars salary bump and a forty five thousand dollars batch of equity, and from that point on I never looked back. That was the day that I learned my superpower was being able to fight through my fear and my doubts, leverage my skills
as a storyteller and business reporter, negotiate like a bad ass. Now, those negotiation skills propelled me to a multiple six figure salary before the age of thirty. But that would not be that exciting if I couldn't help y'all as well. So that's why for the past year and a half, I have coached hundreds of women from across the US and beyond in their job searches and their salary negotiations.
And the wins that I have seen y'all secure incredible, like an attorney who I helped get a ten thousand dollars salary bump and a fifteen thousand dollars signing bonus just this past March. And another woman named Rose who used my negotiation scripts to score three thousand dollars more from a recent job offer. Y'all, these wins have showed me that I am meant to do this work, and I am so excited that I am going to be
relaunching my sold out masterclass called Nail Your Negotiation. The Masterclass five steps to negotiate like a bad ass and never leave money on the table again. I'm going to be coming to you live with this masterclass on Tuesday, November eighth at eight pm Eastern Standard time. Check the show notes for a link to register. Y'all. My first masterclass last month completely sold out. We were turning away people at the virtual door. You do not want to
miss out on this, so definitely register. Go to Nail your Negotiation dot Com to grab your seats. I hope to see y'all there. Here's what I'm going to be covering in this masterclass. You're going to learn how to finally get over your fear of negotiating, how to brand yourself so you can attract the juiciest job offers, how to figure out what to ask for before you negotiate, how to nail that interview so they practically throw money at you, And last but not least, how to rock
that counteroffer and you leave no crumbs behind. Plus, live attendees are going to get a free bonus negotiating cheat sheet that's going to make it super easy to calculate your target salary, so you go into a negotiation strong knowing your value. Let's do this, y'all. Join me November eighth at eight pm for the Nail your Negotiation Masterclass again. Grab your seat. They are limited. Only five hundred seats
are open. Go to Nail Yournegotiation dot Com to grab your seat and I will see y'all their moneymakers.
Dinna Duna duh.
It's the bag A C A, y'all. I can't believe I just did that. Tiffany, please come back. Y'all know I'm not good at singing the intros to the show, but that was my staff. Y'all. It is B A Q and A Friday, and I'm so excited to be sharing a very special edition of our brand Ambission Q
and A with y'all this week. These questions were answered during our live Halloween special where we were joined by the incredible Delianbarrows from Delianne Money Coach and Mark Russell, my baby brother from another mother, Mark Russell from Betterwallet join us live in the Brand and Mission Studio on YouTube. We were able to take some questions from the crowd live on air and we have got those Q and A for y'all today. But don't forget. You can send me your question and you can be a part of
the Brown Ambition Show. We'd love to have you. Why don't you go to IG right now, give us a follow, slide into our DMS and submit any questions you have on finances, career, business, whatever it may be. We are your financial besties. We can't wait to hear from y'all and without further ado, let's get on into this spooky b A Q and A and I promise I'll stop singing now. Okay, Christina has a question in the chat. Let's see what is ooh good one. I don't even
know the answer to this one. What's really going on with the student loan forgiveness? This is Biden's do loan forgiveness plan. There's so much being said, but nothing is really clear. It is giving very much like Public Service loan forgiveness, which was so like it was released and then it was super confusing when people actually, you know, took their tenures and they could apply for it. It was all very like opaque. But like, let's let's set
the context. So Biden announced this a month ago. Now was it in September? August?
Are we talking because two different things? Are we talking about the PSL up forgiveness? I start we talking about the ten to twenty thousand dollars long.
One talking about the ten to twenty k Yeah, I was just like comparing it to just how confusing that whole forgiveness process was. Yeah, but they announced it in August and now there's a lawsuit, right like they're being fought in court as we know, what do you guys know about the latest with the potential for this you know, incredible program which everyone was so excited about the ultimate fate of it.
Well I'm hearing that like they're still very optimistic about it and that they're going to start issuing payments soon hopefully. But it's stuck right now at the Eighth Circuit. Right, So the district court is like, there's levels to lawsuits. So they came in at the district court level. That judge was like, we're throwing this out. You guys have no standing, which means like you're not being injured by this, So if you can't prove injury, we're going to throw
this out. And so they did. But then they appealed it to the Eighth Circuit. And this was intentional by the Republic who file this lawsuit. They specifically filed it in the Eighth Circuit, which is a very conservative circuit because they thought that the judges would be more open to their arguments. And so now it's stuck at the
Eighth Circuit. They're reading the briefs, they're hearing arguments, and they're going to make a decision of whether or not they're going to pause the program permanently or they're going to let it continue. So the good news is that even the Supreme Court has already preemptively rejected any challenge to it. So now you've got the Supreme Court rejecting it, the District Court rejecting it, and now it's just the
Eighth Circuit Court in the middle. But from everything that I'm reading from the Biden administration, they're still very optimistic this is going to go forward. So until we know otherwise, I would try to like not panic this. Again, it's one of those things that it's out of our control. It's out of our hands, So there's no point in
panicking about it. As soon as there's something new that's going to be posted about it, I guarantee you you will care about it because every social media platform is talking about it. We are all on top of it. If you follow any of us.
Follow these two especially, could.
You talk amongst each other just trying to figure out like are we on the same page? Like okay, like what are you talking about?
What're you talking about?
But yeah, I mean, like the lawsuits coming through and just going through the different I didn't even know all that dealy answer. Thank you for providing some context. But yeah, I mean I think it just comes down to just politics, which unfortunately they have to go through before there was any relief.
I always say money's political, and this is a perfect example, right, Like this is literally we're right before the midterms. Both sides are being you know, catered to in their way, so top of politicians do politicians are going to a politician, you know, like you can't like you can't blame them for doing exactly that's what.
We want, right, I'm like, we voted for you do some stuff like when we get a little dance, you promised us you had some moves, mister Joe, and he's finally doing it, and everyone's like, yeah, he's just doing it because it's midterms. I'm like, yeah, that's the whole thing. That means that he's afraid of our power as voters and he needs to.
But it's also what he campaigned on and what he promised, so he's trying to deliver on that promise. Otherwise, like what was the point of us, you know, like taking.
Your word for that exactly. I think the big CTA or call the action is like, make sure you're applying. I think there are so many people out there that are not applying, and the time is now, the applete from the last time I checked, the applications are still open. You can go and apply for student loan debt forgiveness.
And again to Delian's point, like control what you can and you know, hopefully if everything pushes through, then you end up gaining that you know, ten I guess ten to twenty thousand dollars with debt relieved, which can help out a significant amount of Americans.
Yeah. Yeah, my sister is so excited. I think she's getting like eighteen thousand between her and her husband, eighteen thousand forgiven. And I mean that's a game changer for them because she works in healthcare and they don't pay them nearly enough, nearly enough. Should we take one more question? Let's see John has a question the chat. With the holidays coming up and having a big family, what's the best way to budget for buying gifts while still having
enough to take care of bills. I would consider like going after Halloween and starting your shopping. You little late John, you got to get in there early.
Budget.
I'm feeling like shopping in July, like this will be good for so and so, and start like that's my my strategy is like by throughout the year and then try not to forget where you put the stuff. That's my strategy. What do y'all say?
I would say, I no longer buy toys for my friend's kids. Sorry, thank you enough. I contribute to their five twenty nines. I'm like, you're set up a five twenty nine. If so, I will happily contribute to it. And you know that's my vibe now, and I I think that that is it's been. The parents are very grateful for it. It's not awkward at all. You get to also educate your friends on it if they don't know what a five twenty nine is. And that's been my strategy for a couple of years now.
Yeap, totally agree. Either a five twenty nine or I just give people money, like my sisters know every single year I have five older sisters. I'm like, you guys are getting money because I don't know. First of all, I don't know what the hell you want. Second of all, like I much rather just give you cash, because I'm sure you much rather have fifty dollars than me pay one hundred dollars.
For a product that you don't want.
So that allowed me to decrease how much I spend during the holiday season. But when you think, when you think about twenty twenty three, I talk all the time on the platform, you know, make sure you're setting up a sinking funder, a Christmas fund. I mean, twenty dollars
a week for fifty two weeks. It's more than one thousand dollars that you could have for your kids or for family that you can either give out or you can buy toys, whatever it is, while not having to think about, Okay, well how am I going to find the money that I need in order to pay for not only gifts but also the life expenses that I have.
So planning for Christmas starts on December, or Christmas of next year starts December twenty sixth, right, So like, just keep that in mind as you're planning out, you know, Christmas gifts and everything. I think that was the only money tip my mom has ever taught me, is like to build a sinking fund, their Christmas fund.
You call the thinking fund.
Sinking Yeah, yeah.
Interesting, the sinking fund, all right, I feel like for big families, if you have young kids, it's so hard though, because I see the ads now coming up on YouTube. I had to invest in the ad for YouTube kids for Rio because my son, because I was like, he's going to be inductrinated to want these toys. So the ads come up and then their minds change all the time. So I really can empathize with parents who are like, wait,
you said you were into Paw Patrol and July. Well now it's December and it's all about I don't know, like my Little Pony or whatever the kids are watching these days, Blippy or these random Russian children who open up toys and are bajillionaires on YouTube. But for me, experience as rule. So I think having conversations when the kids are old enough about what do you value? Do you want If you want a toy, Okay, here's our budget.
We're gonna you can have toys and things. But what if we put the same money we would put into gifts into a family experience and maybe it's going on a cruise or you know, going on a road trip or a vacation or something. I hope that I can create the kind of we were so gift obsessed as kids in my household like and I, And it makes
me so sad because my parents, especially my mom. I was raised by a single mom and she had four kids, and I'm just like my heart breaks for her having these greedy ass little kids landing toys, and I'm just like want to go back and just squeeze my little self like stam it, but I want to create, like I don't know, to household where it's about those experiences,
and we recognize that it's a trade off. You know, things you can't take with you, but these experiences as a family, you know, we won't get back.
I recently tweeted something where I said, you know, I grew up poor and my parents did the best that they could. But at the end of the day, I don't think about like the gifts or the things that I didn't get. I think about all of the time that I wanted with them but didn't have because my parents were working all the time, and when they were home, they were always tired. Like my parents were always exhausted.
My mom couldn't even sit for a movie with us, like she would immediately fall asleep, you know, So I would rather they work less and spend more quality time with us and not buy you know, gifts or so many gifts. I feel the pressure to like keep up because at the end of the day, like, that's what I remember is just how exhausted they were all the time. So I think at the end of the day, and that's what most kids want, they just want quality time.
They want your attention more than you know. When they're opening the gift, they're like, are you looking at me opening the gift? Want your attention, you know, So give them your undivided attention. That is the best gift you can give them.
Or if your mark, just throw money at them. So let's a little brother move right there. If it's not cash, it's like, here's a bath and body, You're welcome.
I have no clue, absolutely no clue we want.
And no time to figure it out, I guess anyway. Oh, this has been so fun. Okay, let's take a quick breaking break and we'll be right back with more of our special Halloween Treat edition of the ba Q and a let's pivot because I have a fun little segment. We're gonna call this brand ambition trick oh treat. So I'm going to ask you, guys. I'm going to run through like a little list of financial things, concept headlines, and y'all have to answer trick or treat. It should
be pretty self explanatory. Treat is good and trick is bad. So I'm going to kick things off and we can hopefully go a little bit speedy on this one. But we're gonna start with cryptocurrency.
Trick or treat.
Trick shock, I'm amazed, trick you've thought about that for a minute.
Well, I don't think I have enough time to explain, but I would say trick.
Well, okay, explain for like ten seconds. All right.
Cool.
So I think when you think about any type of if you bucket crypto underneath alternative asset classes, I think there's a place in your portfolio for it, but it should not be the entire portfolio. Right like when people are going they're putting ninety percent of their money into crypto, like their entire portfolio into crypto, I think then it
becomes a trick. But if you find a way to use it strategically and let it be five, you know, less than five percent of your portfolio, I think there's there's an opportunity there We'll see how it pans out into the future when we have more data on cryptocurrency, but as of right now, it's it's a trick, and I think people are falling for it.
Okay, no, especially black and brown people to a crazy extent. Like if y'all, if you don't know what these words mean, Vanguard, etf indext fun, don't be investing in crypto before you understand these other terms. Okay, all right? What about buying a house in today's housing market? Trick or treat?
Oh? That's always that is a trick, question, is what it is. I think it's hard. It can always be a trick if you don't run your numbers and you don't actually know what you're getting into, right, If you're just doing it because you've been told that that's like what you're supposed to do as an adult, that you're supposed to buy a house, that this is how you build wealth. If all of your expectations are off, it's
a huge trick. If you're buying a home because you absolutely want one, you know it's going to be a big expense, but you want one. You want a backyard for your family, you want more space, you want more privacy. But you're not counting on this being like your retire plan, right, You're not counting on this, you know, being like putting all your eggs in this one house and that this is going to be guaranteed, you know, generational wealth for my family. I think then that it can be a tree.
So you have to It's all about like your perspective when you buy the house, and also like are you buying too much house? Are you overbidding? Are you you know, giving into pressure. Just because you get approved for you know, a million dollar mortgage doesn't mean that you go and buy a million dollar house. So I think if whether it's a trick or treat is like depends.
On you, right, yeah, yeah.
When Dellian mentioned in the beginning, I mean it's really a numbers game because you're either going to get you know, right now, prices are lower, but rates are high. You know, a year ago the other way around, you know, housing prices were higher and rates are low. So it's truly a numbers game, and I think it does to Delian's point, it comes down to what you want in your life, Like where are you at in your stage of your
life because everyone's situation is different. I'm looking at the Atlanta market now and I think there's a ton of opportunities. Though rates are high, but you can always refinance after a certain period of time. So if you need to jump in, you know, do whatever you need to do. Put yourself in a position to jump into the market.
But don't feel pressured from other people telling you to do certain things, because, like investing, you know your time to jump into the housing market or into the investing market, whatever it might be, isn't going to be the same as someone down the street or your best friend or whoever else. It will always be different on your situation.
And you ain't co signing this mortgage, then you can take your advice and take it to the internet streets and leave me alone, all right? What about Elon musk owns Twitter now trick or treat.
Or that is a big ass trick?
I agree?
Yeah?
What about the think? I mean, he brought a freaking sink?
What was that all about?
I don't even let it sink in. I'm the owner of that now. Yeah, yeah, dad joke, Oh my god, Well he got a lot of babies, Nick Cannon check.
Anybody can make a dad job.
Quirky guy. I think it's more of like the I feel like the impact to social media world is what I worry more about, because he's going to make some pretty big moves with Twitter, I'm sure. I mean, he's probably already made a bunch of moves over the last forty eight hours. And I think he's going to influence what Mark Zuckerberg does with meta and like, you know, what other people do with their social media platforms, which may not be extremely positive for the overall experience.
That's my biggest and the fact that he's like, you know, he's taking a private which means less oversight. He's doing that intentionally so that he can do whatever he wants without having an answer to anyone, having to answer to shareholders. And I will say the most disturbing thing that I've seen is how, you know, the use of the N word has shot up like forty five and since he's taken over, so people are like, finally we can say
what we want, And yeah, that was terrifying. That was really really scary.
So yeahant you know be fact checken, stay fact chicken. All right, let's get it going. I gotta get more and more and more Okay, what about this after pay slash Clarina slash affirm.
Oh for creat big ass trick trick tricks.
Okay, I'm not gonna lie I used. I think I used one of them to pay for my peloton. I finally paid that thing off.
You're smart with money, right, like you're smart with money, like you've you can you can kind of navigate that. But I think it's the new credit card right without the negative connotation that comes along with you.
It's just too good to be true. Well, I'm going to have to pay that Sephora purchase. Come on now.
I did the same thing you do with Mandy with my time too, And the way I did it was it was set up as autopay, so I don't I've never missed the payment. It was auto pay, and I'm like, oh, zero percent auto pay cool. I think the problem is that people don't do the autopay option right. And that's how these companies make millions and billions of dollars is on the late fees. Because I'm like, how is this business model working? I don't understand they're charging zero percent?
How are they making money? It's on the late fees, so that's how they get you. So, if you are going to use one of these, just set it to auto pay, cool, no problem. But if you're not going to use the autopay option, I would stay away from it.
Yeah, I call them a treat. But with all those all those quid pro quoe quotes like read the fine print and I like to I could have paid for it in cash, but I'm like, why tie up my money with this bike if I can just zero percent finance it and then keep my money in my savings account where even I'm earning you know, maybe one percent or two percent now anyway.
But Yeah, Similarly, like any other debt you take on, you want to make sure you have a plan in order to pay off. I think the challenge is a lot of people around December they go and they buy these gifts because they don't have the money and they don't have the they don't have a plan to pay it off, and they get into all this debt and then they find yourselves getting in like January February worlds around.
They're like, okay, well I'm still making payments on this thing that I bought in December and November, and I don't have enough money to pay for it, right, So you want to make sure you have that plan before you get into really any debt, which it seems like both you guys have I love.
That picture you just painted of that experience. I think that's such a visceral feeling of you have that moment of joy when they open up the gift and it's so exciting, and then you're left with the bills a couple of months down, and you're the pit in your stomach. You know, there's like in your stomach and you feel sick because they've already forgotten about that thing you bought
and you're still dealing with the debt. Okay, speaking of which trick or treat Black Friday sales, Mark, You're a dude. I know you were in those best Buy Black Friday ads.
I love best Buy.
I why do I know you so well? And I don't even know you that well.
That's like my second home.
Anytime that I just have extra time, I'm in best Buy, I would say again in long same vain, you want to be strategic about what you buy. Like for example, I needed a toothbrush and I went and I bought it now, but I really thought about Hey, like I could have bought this during Black Friday and it could have been half off, right. I also, when I moved down to Atlanta, I need a TV. If it fell like, if I moved down here in November, I probably would wait until Black Friday in order to buy because I
needed a TV. But I think sometimes people go and they buy things that they don't need, and then months down the road they're like, why did I buy that? Right? The joy goes away? You know that that feeling is very fleeting after some time. So I would say it's a it's a treat. You know, have some fun, right, Like we're like, how did how Delian start off? Like, you know, you make the money, Like, go off and live your best life, but make sure you have a
plan as going about doing it. So I'd say, take advantage of it, have your fun, but again, still have a plan and think about do I really need this or do I want it?
Yeah. I think everybody likes the idea of getting a deal and so, oh I got a deal on this, but they don't realize that a lot of these stores will actually increase their prices before Black Friday sale and then say it's forty percent off when they've already built in a huge markup. So there is a lot of marketing gimmicks going on that you guys don't may not even realize is happening behind the scenes. Understand, at the end of the day, these stores will always come out ahead.
They will always come out ahead. And if they get you to buy something that you were never planning to buy in the first place, they win and you lose.
Yeah, I'm down for we need a new TV right now too, and we're going to wait and see what the sales are like. Even if we don't find something good like, we'll get one. But it's like something that you actually need that you're planning to buy to score a good deal. When I'm day gal, I like shopping online. I'm not going to nobody's store. I'm not waiting at all.
I live across from a mall and I never.
Go in there.
Ever.
It's a quick pro tip. If there's something that you think that you want right now, let it be a TV or a sound system, whatever it is, go to Best Buy now, take pictures, figure out what the cost is right now. That way, when November comes up, whenever Black Friday is, you can go and check those prices to see if it's actually fifty percent off or whatever it is, and you will see what Delian's talking about because I've seen and implemented the same strategies before when I work in retail.
So yeah, there's also a Chrome extension I think it's called price Checker that you can add to your Google Chrome and you can just click it and it'll find the same product you're looking at. So if you're looking on Target or best Buy and it will show you like four or five competitors and what they're So it makes it really quick to makes it really easy to quickly comparison shop. I think it's called price Checker. I'll figure it out and put it in the show notes.
Whatever it is, all right, A couple more, a couple more shrink flation trick or treat.
Oh that's a big ass trick.
Yes, we can't do this year. The bags are shrinking, but the price everything.
My potato chips, I'm like, were my potato chips? They are gone? I'm like, what's going on? Like it's either more air or less chips. I'm like, something's happening here. I could feel like because like I used to say, I would go to Trader Joe's. I spend like about one hundred and fifty dollars every ten days, and I would be able to fill up like four shopping bags and now I spend one fifty and I can only
fill up three bags. So definitely seeing shrinkflation happening, and that one's there's really not much you can do about it, right, You just kind of have to. If you do see some products like really skyrocketing, you may want to consider just like not buying that for the foreseeable future. But some things you just need and it's like I can't avoid this.
Yeah, it's about that price per ounce for me, or price per unit. I'm always looking for that on the barcode or with the little price on at the grocery store, because if you buy the list of the bigger package, usually you're paying less. But then it's also like I don't want to waste anything. This is why I'm most people who goes to the aisle at the grocery store, and it takes me forever because I'm just reading everything and doing mental calculation. Mark, is there anything I don't know?
Has Berry's boot Camp? Have they shrunk your classes and it's still charge the same. I have no relation, hit you.
I was just trying to think through that, and there hasn't been many ways. The only thing I can think of is like the price of like meats, Like I have a pretty protein heavy diet. When you go and you buy meat from you have a Publix down the street and the trailer Joe's and Whole Foods. Now, it's definitely more expensive in order to buy like a pound of meat. But otherwise I haven't paid as much attention as I probably should.
Check your ptter and see if they were putting less than that can.
Yeah, I need to check the clementines I just bought to see if I'm getting less probably matter more.
Yeah, all right, let's make this the last one. TikTok algorithm trick or treat mmm, trick, thank you. I think it's because even when.
You do hate a viral, it's not the people you want, so it doesn't even help you. Like I've had several videos go super viral, like a million views, and they feed it to like a bunch of teenagers, and I'm like, these are not my people. These are not my people. So it can be it can be frustrating on that platform for sure. But you know, twenty twenty twenty one, TikTok was glory days. I my business was booming. I was getting a lot of business off of TikTok. Then much less now now it's Instagram.
Yeah, I guess it depends on what viewpoint, right, So if you're coming in as like the consumer in a way, like you may be getting what you're looking for. Like my TikTok is not booming in any form of fashion. I never had, it never has and I don't know
if they ever will, but we'll see. But what I'm looking at TikTok right now, I'm looking at like different places that I want to travel, Like I'm playing a trip to two Turks and my TikTok feed is like all these different vacation places that like I really want to go, so I'm saving them, I'm taking down notes, I'm putting in the trip of vasor. So the algorithm has been good to me from a consumer standpoint.
A consumer, I agree, fantastic.
But in terms of like business, and you know, I feel like I put out prequality information and it's not taking off as I would want it to. I think they have some work to do on the algorithm.
Still, I will say like they're saying that TikTok is going to be like the new Google, and it's true. I do find myself. I use it only for the search bar in TikTok and Google and like using it as a Google feature and it's fantastic.
Especially for cooking. Yeah, I'm a huge TikTok's kind of where I go to take a brain vacation. So I don't follow a lot of personal finance or money stuff on TikTok. I just like to go enjoy my fun, love island bloopers, and it knows me too well, it shows me too well. Oh well, this has been so fun. Thank you Deli, thanks for saying yes to me. I feel so privileged and I hope it was a good use of your time. It was such a joy having you here and Mark the little brother, who I just adore.
Even though you're not actually blood, you feel like blood. Thank you so much for spending a little spooktacular Halloween episode with me, and to the BA fan for tuning in live on YouTube. Y'all are amazing. Thank you so much for your continued support, and we will see y'all next week. For our regular BA episode, Hey Ba fam. We could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown
Emission Podcast is produced by Cumulus Podcast Network. It's edited by the wonderful Emani Crosby and produced by Tanya Bustos. Stimplinsky is our in house tech crew, and I am Bandy Witchard Santos your co host, and I will see y'all next week.