It's time for the b a q a A to b a q A what you say the b a q A man day, the b a q A with Tiffan Ay, the b a q A brought a bit of your question and answer. Yes, we are Tiffany and Mandy, and although we're not your therapist, you're your personal financial advisor, your accountants, your attorney.
We are two.
Smart brown girls who know a thing about money, personal finances, career and business.
And so you know we're in studio just to answer your questions.
Yeah, and today we got a real talk Tina with a current hot seat. I had to read your whole name because that's amazing. Thanks so much for joining BA. So wait, you already know each other.
Well, we had tape before, you know, Mandy when you use out with the with the coude. But I guess there was some technical difficulty and so we got real talk to you to back in the studio.
Thank you for having me. You're also my mentor because i'm your mentee. Yes, it's been so helpful to me. You just dropped so much great information to improve my life as an entrepreneur and I just love it.
Thank you.
Because Randy was out, and so we were like, we had to get some guests. And so I was like, you know what, while man is out, let me get some business guests. So so I dropped in the mentee chat and said, hey, if any mentees want to come on, so ask them their ask some business questions or even personal finance questions come on through.
So so, yeah, that's what's going on here.
All right, Well, it'll be my first time hearing your question. That's your question.
Well, I think last time I asked it was definitely about finances. I am an entrepreneur. I'm a realtor. I talk about just real estate. I do real estate here in Atlanta, Georgia, but I also do you know, I have a blog. I write about relationships and travel. So the market has slowed a bit. It's a great market, but it's definitely was a transition for me. And my finances were not good to start with. After the pandemic. I had some health issues. I had surgery and I
was just getting back from that. And then now my income as an entrepreneur real estate agent has stopped completely. So it's not just like I had debt before. Now I have I'm laid on my rent and they don't have a ban where if you're laid on your rent you don't get evicted. They start that process right away. So I'm just wondering what to do. I'm trying to, you know, try to get clients and trying to do all these marketing and meanwhile I'm dealing with where do I live, how do I pay off my debt, how
do I keep my car? And my family is getting tired of me. So it's stressful.
First, I want to say, honestly, Tina, it's so crazy that you said this, because I just saw an article today literally, like I think it was Yahoo Finance, and it was like it was I forget what percentage of realtors are later on their rent, like were lading on the rent November that like that that's a number that they're watching. A number of realtors are later in their rent.
It's a number that they're watching, like as an indicator to what's happening in the housing market, because less homes are being sold, homes are being sold for you know, home prices are going down, not rapidly so, but they're going down, and less people are listing because you know, they said, you know, the listing numbers are are down to like twenty twenty levels. So what you're feeling is not a tinage made a mistake thing.
It's a this is what's happening.
So I just want you to acknowledge because sometimes we have to acknowledge that, like you know, certainly you know it's good to take responsibility for like where we are, which is important, but it's also important to acknowledge that there are outside circumstances that are aiding or creating the environment. So the environment that you're in is not one that you created, you know, as far as like these outside circumstances, and.
That's good to knowny times, I think I'm the only one, like you know, no one else is right laid on their rent. Like I'm in my forties, I'm not twenty anymore.
It's just me.
So that's that's comforting to know, but it's disappointing as well.
Yeah, how long have you been in the real estate business.
I've actually been a realtor for six years.
Six years? Okay, I do this is your first kind of experience with a real difficult sort of housing economy, right.
No, I mean I did have I do want to just say to everyone check your adrenals. I had a lot of adrenal issues, so I had to get my adrenal removed. So I wasn't able to work a lot of those years where I was sick. So I have had just a lot of stops and goes. It's not just this time. It's just that I was actually getting on my feet and doing quite well, closing every single month. You know, I felt healthy, and I was like paying off my debt. You know, I was just so proud
to pay off my debt. During the pandemic, I did not have a car. I actually did have a chance to travel, but only on a like a bootstring budget, a very low budget. And then I came back and I tried to build myself up again and I didn't have a car, and I was finally able to buy a car this year, pay it every month, automatically, pay my rent automatically. I was doing great. So I'm forty two and I just feel like during college was probably the last time I had a roommate and it was
just so problematic. Maybe I was younger than I just feel like me as a very sensitive person, I like space to myself. I just feel like it would be a worse problem. But maybe I need to come down and really look at the situation and say I can't have what I want. I need to do what I need to do. Now, what do you think?
I think you got to throw out that version of yourself that you're comparing yourself to, like where you think you ought to be right now at your age, which you're still young.
Okay, girl forty three, look at a horn. You're doing what only baby on here.
If any wedden always doing well?
No, girl, I am both out of rock bottoms.
Yeah, but you really I think it's like we think we're comparing ourselves to like Instagram models, but I think so often it's like that version of ourselves that we think we ought to be at wherever we are in our lives because that person, like comparing yourself to her and where you think you are, like, that's holding you back from saving yourself and from you know, taking the steps. It's only temporary, like you're gonna get back on your feet,
the housing work. It will bounce back. It does, But for now, I I think it's about what are the resources you can lean on for help because you need help. Roommain is one option. Do you have family you could stay with in the meantime.
I think me and my family both know that they'd rather give me money for hold on before we move in back together. My family is in Michigan. I just don't feel like it's a good market for me to prosper in and environment. But I do appreciate my family for all they've done.
So I just say, like, during times like this, it's like, you do what you have to do until you do what you can do what you want to do. So you do what you have to do until you do what you want to do. And so ideally the solution would be to do whatever I want and then it works out. But you know, there are moments we all know in life that that's just not how that goes.
Sometimes it's like, okay, So, like when i'd lost my job when I was a teacher and I was I remember I was thirty, I ended moving back home with my parents. It was not ideal because they're Nigerian and the curfew was still midnight.
They don't give a damn how old you are. I was literally like.
Thirty my dad's and if you came back long minute after midnight, this door would be locked.
You will sleep wherever you were, wherever you were. I was like, what kind of life is this?
It was a life of a thirty ye row who didn't have the mortgage money for her place. And if I was going to live with my parents, this is what the rule was. Then I moved in with my sister for like a year, you know, I told her three months she was like girl. After like a year, she was sick of my stuff. It was like, get out. And then I moved in with like a friend of mine who was renting a room in a home, and so it was like four or five of us each renting a room. I did that honestly until thirty four.
So from like twenty nine to thirty four, you know, I was like bopping around and bouncing trying to figure it out, and so is it something that I'm wanting to do, Like, oh my gosh, you know, this is so great renting a room, like I just came home from jail now, But it's what I had to do in that moment to create a financial foundation for myself, you know. Same, I had like this old Ragley car
that I could I didn't really drive. I either walked everywhere I took public transportation and so it wasn't easy. But I also reminded myself this is temporary, you know, because I am actively working on a stronger financial foundation. I had all this debt that had to get rid of the house, you know, they had lost to foreclosure. But I started to build my business from a place of underspending finally, you know, and then I got.
On my feet.
And so I just say all that to say that, like, you know, I mean, whether you're forty two fifty two, I mean, I get it, because it feels like I'm supposed to be grown, and I thought I thirty, I was supposed to be grown. I shouldn't be going through this, you know. But the truth is, okay, understood, Tiffany.
But we're here. So what you're gonna do?
Because the thing is is that if you avoid making the choices, life gonna make the choice for you.
Yeah. I did actually talk to a lawyer, and he did say that my of my options were to file Chapter seven and that way it can start all over. I know when people when I say, oh I moved to France, are like, oh gosh, this girl is not trying to save But when I lived in France. I lived in a studio by myself with my dog. It costs four hundred and eighty five year old a month, and I didn't have a car, took the bus, I walked everywhere. I was living the life on a real
small budget. So I'm really thinking about file filing Chapter seven, going overseas and just building my life there if I can.
I feel like the filing bankruptcy. I mean, that option is there for a reason. There's no shame in taking that option. Very scary because most of your debt you said it's medical and also like consumer debt, like credit cards.
I actually didn't do that smart thing. I tried to pay all my medical bills and I put all my monthly expenses on my credit card. I had eight hundred credit at the time. I had eight hundred credit all my adult life, and then when I just couldn't keep up, I put everything on the credit card that was not medical. So I have ten thousand hours worth of debt.
Well, yeah, with medical debt. I mean, Tiff, what kind of advice do you give when it comes to like which one? I know we can't turn at the clock, but when it comes to deciding do I pay on this medical debt versus you know, putting my life on credit? What do you think about that, Tiff. I know that there's like income or sorry, low income assistance like for medical bills and things.
Like that at hospitals and too, they have a law in place where like the way medical debt hits your credit is not as detrimental as it wants used to be because they acknowledge it's not you being financially quote
unquote irresponsible. So just in general, like if anyone's listening and they're like they're having to choose between medical debt and their bills, you know, with the money that you actually have that coming in medical debt, there's more leeway with how to navigate from creditors, from the credit bureaus.
And so if you have if you.
Could only choose one and less, not paying the medical debt will mean that you can't have access to whatever the medicine is.
That's different obviously, you know.
But yeah, then paying like your your personal bills and then working it out with medical debt, because there are some it might be a lot of paperwork, but there are some things in place, like one like I call myself one time, like dyeing like my hair, because my friend Joy used to always like when I got because I used to get I used to get gray, like I've been getting grade since I was like twenty six, So I like, I started with like one gray eyelash
and now like all my lashes are great, but you know, mascaro, you can't see it.
But I still have little grades which they will stay.
Because my friend Joy used to what I thought was dye my hair every like I don't know a few months or so, but she was using a rinse.
I didn't know that.
And then one day it was like, oh, my do myself, George is this is one of my many roommates when I was living in the house, like we all just came home from jail.
So Joy was like she always dyed her hair and whatever. I was like, ooh can you.
I'm like, I have like one of two grades, and she was like, oh, you know, I thought it was like I said, I thought it was a die. So then I decided I was going to do it myself because she had done it a couple I'm like, I can do it. And she wasn't living in the house anymore. And the next morning I was like oof, like I had this like bubble under my skin that grew. I don't know if anybody remembers a movie mask.
From Share though.
Literally though my whole face was like it was like liquid under my face. It exploded and I was so scared. But I had no money, so I was like, maybe it'll go away. So I called my mother and it was like my mother's a nurse. I sent her a picture. She was like, are you are you kidding me, Tiffany. You need to go to a mergency room right away. You're having an extreme allergic reaction. And I googled it that some people are allergic to black hair dye. You're
supposed to do a test. I did not know, you know, because I assumed I had been getting it done. But it was a rent, which is not the same. There's something a black hair dye that some people have a severe allergic reaction to, and ding ding ding. I was one of them people. But I waited out for like two days until it got worse and worse. I was like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. And literally there's a hospital like not even a half a block up the street. Actually the hospital where I was
born Saint Michael's in Newark. I lived on the same street. I said, I'm about to live here.
Done, I was born here. So I went to Saint Michael's play they gave me the equivalent of like liquid bena drill. I was like, wait, I didn't even think of take beta drill.
So I gave the equivalent of liquid beded drill and a prescription for more benadryl, and then you know, it went down. I got an eight hundred dollars bill, which is that's why I was afraid of and I was like, for liquid beta drill.
I can't afford it. So I waited.
You know, they sent me the first letter, the second, then the letter became pink, and then the letter was read, which is like pay now or else. And so at the time, so I remember my sister that time was dating her now husband who's in medical school. He was like, no, call them because you might be able to negotiate, and so I was like really, and he said yes because he was like interning at a hospital. And so I called the hospital and was like, you know, I really
don't have it. You know, basically, I'm broke. What can I do? And They're like, well, what can you afford? I was like four hundred dollars and they said okay. I was like, wait, two hundred dollars. They're like, no, girl, for you just.
And so it was four hundred but I paid it slowly.
But it was kind of like the first time that I realized, wait, what medical debt.
There's a lot more.
Leeway, you know, and so like just I mean, of course you didn't know that then, but you know, now hold that thought before we continue. Let's go to break because you know, we got more to talk about.
And here's the thing.
I know, fifty thousand sounds like a lot of money, but at one point I was three hundred thousand in debt and now I'm completely debt free, you know. Three hundred I mean, so, of course a lot of it was mortgage, but thirty five thousand was credit card debt, fifty thousand was a student loan debt, and then I had my mortgage, you know, to my home. But I'm just saying all that to say that you know that, yes, it can seem very daunting and overwhelming, but there is
a way out. But it typically starts with taking stock of where you are now. And getting yourself to a place where you're living under your means so you can start putting a plan in place. So if that means moving to France and finding like an expensive studio and starting your business with like you know, with like with your overhead really low so you can pay your bills and work on your debt at the same time, and fileing bankruptcy. If that's what it looks like, then that's
what it looks like. If it looks like getting you know, so a roommate to come live with you for like six months to a year, you know, if that's what that looks like, you know, there's no there's no one way, but there has to be something that you're doing. Like standing still is not the answer.
We know that I do and I do get frozen. You know. This weekend I put my car out on Toro, so I made just under two hundred bucks for the weekend. It's not great, but it's something I started looking for, like other real estate related jobs, temps jobs that I
can do. And then when I did have money, I was negotiating with each credit card, so I was able to negotiate about fifty to eighty percent off my bill so I had that payment plan in play, and then I finally called and said, I can't pay this anymore. So they delayed the payment and then they put it in smaller payments for the same overall amount, since I had already paid half of the bill. And then I put my pride down and said, I actually need food
stamps and I need to apply. So I just got that in place and I'm waiting for that to come through. You know, I'm going to these real estate Christmas parties trying to look fabulous. And then I got my little food stamps card in my wallet, so that's.
A good Please.
I'm glad you mentioned food stamp because I was gonna ask about food banks or any other even rental assistance programs. I know that the moratorium on evictions because of the pandemic, there were like nationwide and statewide moratoriums they wouldn't evict people. Those are now expired. But for the most part, put in Georgia and in Atlanta, what sort of rental assistant programs might there be that you could apply for?
I be looked into that.
That is an excellent question. I did apply to rental assistance. However, they are so behind they cut off the date for the last application just like a month or two or ago, and I just got my application in right before the deadline. But because they're so backed up, they haven't sent got a message. I haven't been assigned a processor. So I'm just waiting and my rent is late late, late, and they don't understand that I have to wait and they
have to wait. It doesn't make sense. So I have my court date of when I will go get the eviction and hopefully that the rental assistance comes before the court date.
Is there a way you could update the rental assystems people on my court date's coming up? This is happening, it's real enough to be.
Yes, there's like a third party. They can't see your application and you can't talk to the processors there, but you can say this application needs to be expedited because she has a court date coming up.
You want to be a squeaky wheel. I feel like with this situation, I get it, though. It's like emotionally exhausting and you have to be on top of everything yourself. It's like whack a mole, financial whacka mole. There's an episode of the podcast I Don't Know if you listen to it, and I should have googled the name.
There's an episode of.
Brown Ambition where I had a realist, a realtor who has a show on AHGTV, gah what's her name? It
was incredible. I don't know if you heard that episode, but she was a realtor during the Great Recession, during the housing crisis of two thousand and six through eight, and her saving, her savior, she said, was she got they have these like little known jobs within the US Housing Department through HUD and other like federal agencies where they're looking for people to like sell foreclosures and like do this sort of like government contract work that's not
like the sexy realtor jobs. But she was like, this is how I paid my bi during this time when when no one was selling and you know, my listings went down. So that may be an idea. I'm going to find that episode for you. So I'm just sitting You're like, what was her name?
Thank you, Mandy. I would love to do that. I also, do you know referral so if anyone in another state needs a realtor, I have. I have a team of realtors that I can just connect them with and that would be something I could do in France and why I'm building up my business.
So or if I.
Yeah and just name page page, turnock up that episode, that is something I would love to do here in the United States as well.
And just think about it this way, that there are moments when you can put a band aid on something, and there are moments when the decision has to be bigger, like it's an amputee, you know what I mean, feels like and so know when you have to jump the jump over where it's like I've done enough bandages and it's just not enough that I have to do something drastic, you know, and so we're afraid to do that. And I get that, you know, and it's okay to start
with bandages. But if you feel like, you know what, which it sounds like, you know, you're not just sitting on your hands. You've done a lot of work already. So what it just means is to the indicator that it might require a big overture. You know, it might require like moving or bankruptcy, you know.
File for BA. You know, it might require that. That's what it sounds like you're.
Getting to and what's on the other side of that, at least as you can start to work towards freedom. It seems so big and so bad, and I look back at it now, I mean, I tried everything not to lose my house, and then I did, and I was like, oh, Okay, it wasn't so bad, you know what I mean, Like because here I'm now I'm in the house now, you know what I mean. And it was like, knowing what I know, now, I'm not gonna lie.
I wish I would have let it go sooner, because I threw tens of thousands of dollars at a house that I was no longer going to keep, like at least thirty thousand, because I took all the money out of my retirement account put it toward the house to save it.
Only to lose it.
And I was like, oh man, I could have lost it the year prior or whatever. It kept my thirty thousand dollars, you know. And so sometimes the bandages do more harm than good. So just consider that, like, you know what, it might be time to take this big leap, because these bandages might actually just be elongating, you know, and making the situation worse.
Well, this is confirmation I really appreciate that everything you guys have said, I'm going to apply and get moving glad literally.
Tina, you have everything you need to bounce back. Thank you for being so candid and for sharing so openly too, because I know that you're not alone, and there's so many people out there silently going through what you're going through and they're ashamed of it. And I feel like owning your story and this is just the beginning, and you're going to have a fabulous comeback story, like you know, like Tiff, like everyone else in their lives, like You're going to be great.
Thank you living up to my name real talk Tina, trying to be as authentic as possible and real. So here is the.
Only way you get real advice. You have real guidance. So thank you for that.
Thank you, je me.
This is going to help so many people because a lot of people don't want to say the struggle they're going through, and so you coming on and sharing it is really going to free someone else to say me too.
And this was really helpful. So thank you. Tella.
If you are looking to sell a home in Atlanta, where can they find you, Tina? In case we got some listeners Oh.
Yes, I'm in Atlanta. You can find me. I live in Midtown right now. Yeah, but you can find me. I'm real Talk Tina on any social media platform YouTube, ig, TikTok.
Okay, okay, awesome, all right, fabulous. If y'all got real estate needs, talk to Tino.
Okay, all right, y'all.
If you want to be in the hot seat over here at b a q A, you can Maybe you have to be like Tina and send us either an email to brannanbischon podcast dot com. There is a ask us anything or or contact us and so you can send a note there. We can read your stuff aloud or and you can hit us up on Instagram Bound of Pision podcast and if you send us a voice and note, our producer Imani will take a listen and she thinks you're fit. She'll invite you into studio. You
guys can chat with us. So hopefully you enjoyed.
Thanks Tina to meet you, Hey ba fan, We could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown and Mission podcast is produced by Cumulus Podcast Network. It's edited by the wonderful Emani Crosby and produced by Tanya Bustos.
Dennistimplinsky is our
In house tech curu, and I am Bandy Woodrid Santos your co host, and I will see y'all next week