Hey, guys, welcome back to Brown Ambition. It's Mandy.
Hey, Hey, hey, and you already know it's me Tiffany.
We've had a pretty exciting week. I feel like the last week has been pretty vic both of us. Tiffany's had a birthday. Happy birthday, Tiffany, wo.
Woop, thank you.
Happy twenty first birthday.
You know, when I was little, my mom she turned thirty nine and then literally for ten years straight she was thirty nine. It took me a while to catch on. I was like, wait, you're thirty nine again. That's okay. I want to stick with twenty nine and I'm never going to get older.
You know, like a day over twenty two. What did you do for your birthday?
I went to the Bahamas on a budget of course, because you know I'm the budgetista. Four hundred and twenty two dollars wooed for flight and hotel.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it was really beautiful. There's a beach in the Bahamas in Freeport, I guess that's the Grand Bahama Island where they taped Pirates of the Caribbean. And it was hands down the most beautiful beach I've seen ever. And it was empty because we went during off season, so it's like six miles of pristine, beautiful beach and it was just me and my travel friend Madeline.
Wasn't there just a hurricane there?
Yeah? I think, like, no, you know what there they I think some of the other islands, because the Bahamas is like a mix of like six different islands, and so some of the other islands kind of got the brunt of the hurricane, but where I was, they had not.
Okay, good, Yeah, that sounds amazing. I saw some of your pictures. They were so beautiful.
Yeah, it was just honestly, it's like literally just what I needed.
Well, I too went to an exotic destination.
You know.
My goal for twenty fifteen was to just like get the upper half of my body to be the same shade as the lower half of my body, because I feel like since I moved to New York from Georgia, I've never had an even I have not had an even tand like my legs have turned a shade of pale yellow that I feel like does not exist outside of the a cran box. We're like among muppets. And uh so, you know, naturally, I went to Wisconsin for one of the few days I take off a year.
This is actually, you know, for a really cool reason. My sister Mallory. I love her very much. She got married on Friday.
They were so beautiful. I was like, oh, look at you and your sister and the picture of her, like in the black and white standing in the room. It was like, so beautiful, I know, a fairytale bride.
It was really pretty. She had She had this whole like sixties like June Carter Cash hairstyle, and she got her makeup done. And I am like very much like I don't really cry and I don't really get emotional, so it was really fun to just like get to be in that girly environment. I've never been a bridesmaid before either really no. No, I have friends, but like.
Or don't. Like, Okay, you're gonna start a hashtag, y'all, so at FA Podcasts, that's our our Twitter handle, and I want you to hashtag Mandy. I'm your friend Mandy with the I Mandy.
Listen. I have friends, they just haven't gotten married yet. Nobody nobody from Georgia moves to New York to get married. That's why my friends haven't gotten married yet. I had a really good time and now I'm back and I we'll start with some We'll start with buzzworthy. Okay, I have to talk about this because before I left from my trip this past week, one of the last things I wrote was a response to this article, this essay
that Jennifer Lawrence wrote for Lenadham's new newsletter. You know, Lenny, I'm not really fan, but anyway, so Lena Dunham has a newsletter. She's giving me a bunch of celebrities. She's had like Hillary Clinton write stuff and being interviewed by her, and now she's got Jennifer Lawrence coming out for the first time ever and talking about what it was like
for her. I don't know if you remember, but so a few months back, like this summer Sony, then the huge production Studios was hacked and these emails came out revealing that Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams were paid like half as much wow as Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner were in the movie American Hustle, which came out last or last December or last Christmas. And Jennifer Lawrence never really talked about it until this letter, and she essentially writes,
you know, here's what it was like. It was shitty, like the guys with Dix got raises and it was great for them. And she what she says is basically like, I wasn't upset with Sony when I realized this, I was upset with myself. I blame myself for like leaving the negotiation table, and I should have stopped for myself. And she like kind of says, you know, it gives
the middle finger to gender bias. You know, she talks about how when she stands up for herself, people act as if, you know, she's insulted them or she's not being a team player. And she's like, fuck that, I'm going to say what I want to say when I want to say it. I'm done trying to find the adorable way to be assertive.
But I think what's strange is like, I mean, I agree that you definitely want to take and as a woman, you know, we don't negotiate nearly as much, but don't act as if if you had negotiated, you still probably would have not gotten what what the guy's got, you know what I mean.
Well, that's the thing people ask me, like, doesn't she have an agent doing this for her. Yeah, And I'm like, probably, but I guess maybe it was a situation where the agent was like, oh, she's a woman, this is what she's worth, you know. And I'm like, in that case, I hope she fired him exactly.
I mean, that's just crazy. Let me tell you. So, I'm I'm on this tour, this Know Your Value Tour by MSNBC, and I don't know if you know Mika Brazinski. So she has this show on WSNBC called what is a show called Oh Morning Joe. So she's got this co host Joe, and she started this tour because of this reason right here. So she has this co host, cohort cohort co host Joe, and she and he are really equally important on this show. And she found out she just casually, I don't know how it came out.
She found out after negotiating and their show was like number one, it's doing so great. She found out that he was making get ready for this not one times more, not two, not five, but fourteen one, four times more than her. Fourteen times more. How is that even possible? She was like, wait what? So she started this whole Know Your Value to he to really teach women kind of like how not to be First she wrote the book, yes, and yeah the book. Yes, the book came out first,
but it just was really shocking. Here's this woman, she's beautiful, she's smart, she's got this great show, and you're thinking, like she's on top of the world fourteen times more her co host was making and so don't tell me that's just the lack of like, oh, I didn't just negotiate. That's just crazy, you know, right?
And I think what she You know, I interviewed Mika for Yahoo when her book came out, Know Your Value, and I like what she had to say. And I feel like I've heard this again and again and I've even experienced this in my career. Is the importance of having a male mentor or not just you know, the
word mentor is so like loaded. I'm not talking about someone who's like your Yoda and takes you aside and like shows you the meaning of life and is there for you every day, but just someone who you can go to and say, hey, so you know, what's like Joe or Mike, Like, how much did you make when you were starting out? What you know, what did you make when you were on my level, what are you making now? And like, that's the bar that you want to rise to, because sadly enough, oftentimes men make so
much more. That's who you should be, you know, that's the bar you should try and try and strive for. And when Mika found that out, she makes a big deal about talking about in the book she went to oh and asked him for negotiating strategies I In Jennifer Lawrence's letters, she writes basically like, you know, screw you,
gender bias. I'm gonna say whatever I want. And Mika too is like, well, Joe's like screw you to everybody and like cursing at them, doesn't care, doesn't give a you know, a crap how people view him, which is all great, And I want to be like girl power middle finger gender bias, like get what you want, go in there and ask for what you deserve. But unfortunately, and this is where I feel like Jennifer Lawrence missed
the mark in her letter. This is what I write about in my story for Yahoo, which is that studies show there are real social and professional consequences for women when they speak up for themselves in a work. Yes, people are more, people are less likely. Studies have shown to want to work with a woman who speaks up for herself, especially when it comes to her salary, and to work under a woman who speaks up for themselves. And I find that really disheartening. And I think, but
I think that's reality. You know, you have to recognize that you can't just take the advice or just like you know, just like any man. Oh my god, so many men responded to this, like I have over one hundred comments on Facebook for this article and so many like guys, You're like, why should we feel sorry for women? Just don't know how to negotiate, just like, speak up for yourself, just like ask for it.
It's not that easy.
It's not like if I ask for if I go in a room and say, hey, I deserve half a million dollars, you know, and I want, like I don't know the stock options, put me on a board, like give me my own office. As a woman, people are gonna think, wow, she's kind of greedy, she's kind of full of herself. As a man, you're like, oh, well, maybe you know he deserves it.
He's like even now, like you know, as an entrepreneur, setting my prices. Sometimes it's a bit like scary, because you know, it's almost like, you know, because I do a lot of community work, so people tend to feel like, oh, okay, it should be free, right, Tiffany's free, even though I see her flying all over the place and teaching and
speaking and blah blah blah. And then you know, somebody will hit me up and they're like, oh, so that's your price, or I'll get like behind the scenes or this is what I get a lot, which is so strange. People who'll have just met me at an event, we'll just say, hey, girl, you can give me a call real quick, and I'm like, who is this And they're just asking me to call them for like financial advice, like but I don't know them. And I just think myself, O, man,
if I was a guy, would that be? Would you? And I don't think people are doing it to be purposefully disrespectful of my time and like, this is the business that I'm in. But I feel like as a woman sometimes it's like why you charge? Oh so I just can't talk to you on the phone. I'm like, I'm running a business, right, you know, And so and then I feel bad. Sometimes I'm like, well should I? I mean, even now I take way more calls than I should. I know that because I feel bad saying no,
I feel greedy, like, well, tifny help them. And even though I have built so many different avenues for people to get help for free, I still find myself giving away even more of myself for free. So it's difficult whether you have regular nine to five or whether or not you're an entrepreneur.
I mean, when did you get to the point where you felt like you were asking for what you deserve in terms of like the feaz you're charging about a month ago, and you've been doing this for a long time.
I know, I've been in business for five years. And it wasn't even me. This is what happened. So this huge organization, this national organization, was like, hey, Tiffany, we want you to speak at five different locations with us. Send me how much it would cost per location. So meanwhile, I mean bear in mind that this has been a banner year for me. So like last year, my highest rate was like fifteen hundred, and I thought that was
big money. So I thought to myself, I was asking everybody that I knew that had no real experience, What do you think I should charge? In my heart, I wanted to ask for five thousand dollars per per talk, so five times five twenty five thousand. But I was like, there's no way they're going to give me that. That's
way too much money, Tiffany. But I was like, I really wanted to ask for that, and so I kind of like asked around and decided to play it safe and asked for thirty five hundred dollars per talk, which was still huge because my talk is like forty five minutes, and I thought, well, still big money, Tiffany, right man, And I submitted my thirty five hundred dollars for talk.
They said yes. And then I met the woman who kind of like is like the she's a global what was her position, like global something, communications director or whatever, and she pulled me aside. She's a woman of color, pulled me aside and said, oh, Tiffany, I wish you would have asked me about the rates first, because they told me to tell them how much. She said, before you sent out that email, because I had to send it out to a number of people and everyone saw it.
She said, honestly, for what you are providing for us. We paid between ten to fifteen thousand dollars. I talked, so I could have gotten paid minimum. Wasn't it too late to go back? No, it was I could pay fifty thousand dollars and instead I'm getting fourteen thousand from fifty thousand minimum.
Do you feel like you just weren't asking the right people in terms of what your rates should have been.
Oh yeah, of course, because I didn't know who to a Honestly, I'm in I feel like I'm in this new waiting pool where most of my friends had regular ninety fives or they're like beginning entrepreneurs and my business is not going to say their business is not growing, but they're not in the same business as I am.
Like one of my best friends, she's a really successful publicist, but she's not a speaker, so she's like, I don't know, you know, if I was doing publicity work, she'd know and so and even when the woman this is how crazy. Even when the woman told me, Tiffany, you should have asked between ten and fifteen thousand, I actually told her no. I said, oh no, no, no me, Tiffany, There's no way you guys are not paying that. She said, Tiffany, I'm the one who okays the budget. How are you
going to tell me no? Can you imagine? It took me like twenty four hours to digest, Like, yes, Tiffany, they would have paid you that, because I kept thinking, they're not gonna pay me that, and she's like, yes, this is what we pay.
At the point when you have to talk to someone who's like you may not know personally mm hmm, but you know who is at a higher level than you.
Exactly how I was like, fight to my website that night and I increased my rates to so like my top rate now is one thousand dollars and it goes down from there. I increase my rates right away. So I told myself, this is it, because if they're telling me this, this is what my worth is, how am I, you know, pushing against it saying no, I'm worth one third of that? Not even you know, right.
I recently had a conversation with someone like, you know, someone who's in the same field as I am. I was asking her because she just got a great promotion. She had a very glossy new title, and I was like, man, she must be making a lot more, and I wanted to figure out how she had done it. I just I just asked a lot of awkward questions. I'm known for, like asking people, how much do you make? How is
that negotiation? Whatever? I just ask weird questions. And I asked her straight up, you know you got this great promotion? First of all, how'd you do it? Well? She had a competing offer from another another company, which is great leverage. And then I said, okay, great, how much do you make now? And she and I are pretty close in our you know, in our levels. We work in different fields, but close in our responsibilities, in our duties. And she
earns less than I do. Now what fit having this promotion? And I was like, what's happening? At first, I was like, okay, good because I was almost you know, I negotiated the hell out of, you know, the last couple of job
offers I've had. And I always tell women that, and I've learned this from my own experience, is that if you're negotiating a job offer and you are sweating bullets and you're about to shit your pants, and you feel like like your heart is punching you in the throat, then you should add ten percent, because I feel like as women, we as women, we tend to pull back when we should be pushing forward. And it's very uncomfortable. And I can't like count on two hands how many
women I've told how uncomfortable negotiating can be. And it's never going to be comfortable, like probably never until you I don't even know when, but like it's always going to feel against every base instinct as a woman to ask for more. And I'm like, you have to embrace that, like discomfort, and you have to push through it and
ask for more. And that was a good example of you know, in this, in this the case of my colleague in this woman in their company, she had it negotiated early, and she was basically negotiating from a lower base than what I was negotiating from. And that also just goes back to like you need to start early and negotiate hard, because like once you get that first offer, that's what every raise is going to be based off of.
You know, I'm so oh speaking of so over it.
I think it's time for brown break, ground break. What's going to do? What's you gonna do when me come for you? Oh?
Yeah, that too?
So who needs to have several seats this week.
Several seats how many women are on the View, because that's who needs to have I think four, four or five seats. We need a stadium of seats for every woman on the View. All eight of those X chromosomes need to be sat down and silenced. I mostly have a problem, you know, the View. I don't know why they don't cancel this show. It's crazy it's even still on. I'm not gonna lie like I have a job. I don't watch The View. I haven't sat down and watched
a full hour of this show probably ever in my life. However, I'm the consumer of the Internet, and so all the clips and stuff I see, and recently the two I guess the main person on the show right now who's
just like saying the dumbest shit is Raven Simone. So recently on the show she was talking about I guess it's this whole segment started by you know, making fun of like YouTube stars, like internet stars, weird names, and Raven comes out and just like, you know me, be real, I would not hire someone with the ghetto name, says.
Raven Simone, random on the wrong letters A.
Raven Simone and I think, I think you're the one who who first shared this on Facebook and I saw it, and I'm just like.
What is happening?
Why is doing exactly what they want her to do in terms of like just riling up people.
But like she's so meanwhile, I mean, and I'm not one to throw around the word ghetto blah blah blah, but when Raven she looks she has pink hair, yes, and like red hair and like fake fox locks, and just she is serving water Maandrella Lisha whatever the fake name that she created with like Raven Simone, honestly, just don't even have several seats. Just get your coat. This is a get your coat moment. Leave the building. Whoever you brought, whoever came with you, or who brought you here,
they're no longer allowed at the party. She's just, like you said, she's just saying stuff just to be ignorant. I heard that. Even her own father was like, I tried.
Write really funny she wrote like a dad post on Facebook. He's like, she said some stupid shit, but I still love her.
Yeah, that is a very dead that is.
That's honestly all I want to say about that. Like I just think Raven needs to get.
Off the air.
Get her off the air. Yeah, she doesn't make good since Cheetah Girls, and I love Cheetah Girls.
All right, sold, she was such a cute odes.
That was her last successful TV show, and that's where it should have ended.
How I'm trying to remember. I forgot, Like my memory is like though, I'm like, what was my blown break?
Your brown break was going to be discount airlines?
Yeah? No, but I had a better one. Oh I remember? Oh so oh my brown break this week is kind of like, I guess piggybacking on Christy Tigue and I'm congratulations to her and John Legend and if they're progant preggers. So mine is linked to the fact that I just turned thirty six. Yes, get in twenty two. Honestly, I'm not even a shame of my age. People are always like,
what you told someone. I'm like, yeah, I'm thirty six, so what So I don't have any kids, although me and the BF Superman I are definitely talking about it and about working on it far as getting married and having children's. But I mean, I get that question, what are you gonna have kids? Tiffany're getting a little old. When are you gonna have kids? I'm like, uh, i'd your business. I'm just wanting to take a brown break from the whole when are you gonna have kids? Question?
It's just, yeah, it's just intrusive. And you don't know what if I was trying and I wasn't able. You know, a friend of mine just had a super preemi. He has been trying. He and his wife have been trying for years. Their first set of twins that when she was first pregnant, she lost them, and then they lost another baby, and she just went into really early labor and her their son is only twenty three weeks and he was only twenty three weeks inside her and he came out one pound seven ounces.
Wasn't that what Chrissy Tiagan was saying. So she has this new show with like I don't know, Tyler Banks and Josie.
From Yahoo Hey.
Called The fab Life. And on the show, she was talking about how people keep asking her because she's been married for I guests a couple of years and people have been asking her like winning and I have a kid, and I guess say I'm having some fertility issues. She said, you know you don't know our problems, and it's rude that you're asking.
Yeah, because you know, I mean, I'm not having for I mean I don't know. I mean I haven't tried, but I mean not did I know? But what if I was and you're asking and asking? Yeah? So just rob break just mind.
Of business, mine business. I feel like this should be dedicated to mother's auntie business.
Remember just where did that come from?
Just mine? Mine?
Was? That? Was that Wilsmith trying to teach Asley Banks how to how to fight?
Oh man, maybe.
It's my business.
I had that awkward karaoke moment where you're like, I'm gonna do the Fresh Prince song and then you realize there's a whole other verse that you.
Never show the show.
Just side note on that one. I went to a conference. I didn't talk about this a couple like I guess. A week or two ago. I was in Montana, another beautiful place in the middle of nowhere, and it was it was a conference full of women and we at one point we were talking about there was a speaker who was talking about how she revolutionized for you know,
foreign correspondence for women journalists. And she spent like a long time talking about her career, and I was like, hey, you know, I really would like to know what did you sacrifice? Do you have a family, how did you you know? Do you have a marriage? Like what are
your what's your personal life like? Because she only focused on the professional and someone at my table was like, you know, we never ask a man that, And I'm like, valid, however, a man does not have a uterus and a man does not have this ticking timeline of their biology, and like I'm all for being feminist and like not asking sexist questions, I know, but I feel like there is a point where, like women to women, I don't see what the problem is in me asking you a legitimate
question about like how you balanced family and work?
You know what I mean?
Because that's like I feel like that's what men want, That's what women want to know. Can we have a baby and be you know, a CEO or like I don't know, like foreign correspondent or whatever, Like what are the real what's what's the reality here?
Yeah, I sacrifice is telling you. Like today, like we taped a little bit later than usual because I had to make dinner because Superman was like, so you haven't made dinner in a while, and most people would be like, well, so what he can make his own dinner. Honestly, he always makes dinner, he said. Luckily he doesn't listen to the podcast, so I can go in. He always makes dinner. He always has a laundry, he always has a dishes, he always has a cleaning up. He always makes the bed.
I'm like, the worst. The only thing I do consistently is my business, the Budgetisa, And sometimes I like look up after twelve hours of like working on the computer or tending to my business, and I'm like, what have you done to add to the household? Nothing? And he's always so good and kind about it. But then every once in a while he's like, babe, I wish you'd make dinner. So I was like, you know what, I'm not gonna say, I've got work to do, because I always have work to do, you know, And so I
don't want to lose. This is such a great relationship because everyone else I've been with has been like, you know, like, ugh, Tiffany, you and this budget, theese, the business. But he's really supportive, so I really try to listen. When he's like okay, enough already, like just put like, even after you get off the podcast today, I'm gonna close the computer for
once in my life. I'm gonna go downstairs and watch whatever show he's watching and just hang out and like help him full close because he's doing laundry right now. Because you know, I just I don't want to sacrifice everything. Like I see Oprah and I think to myself, Wow, you know Oprah didn't have kids, and she made a conscious decision not to have children because she said she knew she couldn't do both be Oprah and be a
good mother. She had to decide. And I don't want Oprah's status if it comes with me having to decide not to have a family.
Alrighty, and let's move on along to tips.
Tips tips, tips, tips Man.
Tips Man. Well, this week, Tiffany wrote a really fun and I think insightful. I'm all about being real. I'm all when people ask me, like how much do you make? How do you afford living in New York? I always tell the truth. And I like that you put out there on Facebook like you're entil You just like threw out your budget like I need the budget, Neista, Here's
how my life works. So I wanted to talk to you, like and both of us actually just like sharing tips on how to maintain a good lifestyle while still you know, being within our prospective budgets.
Yeah, that I mean honestly to me, it starts with number one live simply like I don't live in fancy life. I think. I think. I wrote on Facebook that, like, I still drive my ninety nine toy to Camra, which I got like eight years ago, so it's not like I got it new, but I paid for in full. It was four thousand dollars I remember, and it still runs great. Honestly. Cameras are a really great cars sidebar and Tiffany.
What if I don't want to drive an old car and I want to go on trips and travel.
Well, I say this that you can't have everything at the same time necessarily, like not even necessarily, It's just not possible. You can't have all things at the same time. You have to ask yourself, well, what do I want now, and then what do I want later? Like Oprah's like
I can't have baby and do Oprah? Okay, if Oprah can't do boths, come on now you have to decide, like if you're paying a three four hundred dollars car payment, and then another two three hundred in insurance, and then you're only making not only but you're making twenty five hundred dollars a month. So you just can't have all things. You have to make a choice. So living simply is one of the ways that I'm able to travel the world because I have put travel over me having like
a super fancy car. That's number one. Living simply.
Yeah, Like I liked I live. Even though I earn like three times as much as I earned when I first moved to New York, I still live basically the same.
Exactly.
I've improved some things, like a nice bed for quality of life, like I buy more than one pair of shoes a year. I bought some snow boots that are waterproof. But yeah, I really try and keep my like you try and avoid lifestyle inflation.
Exactly.
I've seen so many friends when they get and they get a new raise, or they get like a little bump at work or a bonus, and.
They're like, oh man, I'm rolling in dough.
I'm gonna like, I'm gonna start ordering seamless every night. I'm going on this vacation I'm gonna take my friends out to the bar, and that money is gone, and then your expenses are higher and you're like, where did that raise go? And then that's when you start the hamster wheel. You got to keep earning more and earning more, exactly. I gotta get the fancy car, I gotta get the better house, got get the bigger iPhone. You have to stop, like just freeze when you get a raise.
Freeze exactly. And that's what leads us to NIME. But number two for me, which is really just look for the discounts. I remember I was talking to these college kids and I was telling them. I was bragging about some trip I'd been on. I was like, oh, and I only pay you know, flight, hotel, all inclusive, like seven days whatever it was. I think it was like Jamaica. I paid six hundred dollars. And they are like, what, but you said you make good money. I'm like I do.
They're like, well, what does it matter what you paid? And I'm like, well, if I pay twelve hundred dollars for a trip that I could have gotten for six hundred dollars, then that's less money for the next trip. Like just because you make a whole lot of money, doesn't mean you should spend it wastefully, you know, So find the discounts. There's always discounts, like call and ask
you you know, you never know. You might find out that the job that you work with has, you know, gives discounts based upon like if you have like I know, Sprint does this a lot. They partner with different organizations and they will give you, like, oh, fifteen percent off your phone bill if you're an Uber driver for example.
I mean you designate like the same way I do. You designate earmark or bit of your savings every month toward travel. Yeah, that's the one thing that you like to do.
Yeah, so that's like number three. I allocate, so I live by allocations. Like it's the point where now Superman will be like when I get paid, He's like, did you do your allocation? So here are my alleyations? Right for retirement and investing for wealth. I set aside twenty percent of my total income, so we get one hundred dollars. Twenty dollars goes for retirement and investing for wealth. Those are two separate things. Retirement is to maintain the life
I have. Now, Investing for wealth is to increase the life you know that I have now my standard of living. Twenty percent goes for taxes because this is like my accountant he told me, like, you know, if you set aside twenty percent of your total income, then that should be enough. And I pay my taxes like quarterly. Five percent I set aside for debt. I still have student loans fro when I got my master's, I paid off my undergrad loans, but these masters on it the masterest.
Ten percent I donate. I really believe in giving back, so whatever, like sometimes it's a person, sometimes it's an organization, it could be a cost. So I set aside ten percent of my income to give back. Five percent I put an emergency fund. Five percent I set aside for track, and that leads me at the end with thirty five percent of my total income for life and business spending.
And so I don't always hit those allocations, Like no matter what I tell myself, I have to set aside for retirement, I have to set aside for taxes, and I have to donate. Everything else is kind of like okay, if I get to it, I get to it. So but those are things I always set aside for But my ideal allocations are that twenty percent retirement besting twenty percent, taxes, ten percent donate, five percent debt, five percent emergency fund, five percent travel, and the rest thirty five percent for
life and business. And so when I posted it, people were like, ooh, now the caveat is that this is my percentage. Then I just started doing these percentages this year. You have to ask yourself what they would look like for you. You might not travel, might not be a huge deal for you. So you're just like, you know what, I'm actually not going to set aside five percent for travel.
Maybe it's five percent for clothes. You might not have any debt, so you don't have to set aside a percentage for day, you know, and.
We should put that budget up on the tumbler. Okay, I'm saying for that, and it'd be really cool for you to look at.
Yeah. So I mean, honestly, it's just about and that's how I'm able to, like, you know, because you know, Manny, you know living this. You live in New York. So if you want to kind of like enjoy life, I think people think like budgets. Tell them no, And I'm like man my budget tells me, hell yeah.
You know, my favorite Every pay day, my favorite thing to do, The first thing I check is my savings account, and I automate. This is different for you because obviously you run your own business, and so it takes even a lot more willpower on your part because you are paying yourself and you have to have even more self control over what you spend. But for me, the biggest breakthrough, or the biggest ally for me and my spending is
auto pay and auto sorry, direct deposit. I should say where I automatically when I get paid, more than fifty percent of my income goes in some sort of savings, whether it's for my retirement or you know, future travel or my emergency fund. I'm saving up to buy a house one day, and I have money going along, and that money is completely out, like it doesn't even touch my checking account. In fact, I have it in a savings account that it's not easy for me to access.
I don't have an ATM card for it. I cannot. It would take me a few days to transfer whatever I wanted it. And that's been huge for me, and it's been a huge way for me to just like not even miss it and you think that you can't survive. Like I, it's my budget. Like, legitimately, all I have to spend every pay period is five hundred dollars. That's food, that's entertainment. That's if I want to buy a new pair of shoes, or like if I need to go
travel for the holidays. That's the money I have to spend. And it's really challenging. It's like what I was making in college.
Basically, let me hold sun. What is that?
A lot?
One? If my friend always says that whatever, I'm like, oh, I got paid today or I got a check today, She's always like, let me be a whole soun No. That's dope though, But like because like you said, telling yourself no really means telling yourself yes to other aspects of your life. I think people it's like a mindset really issue. It's like, oh, man, I have less, That's
just not true. You know, my friends would tease me and call me cheap back in the day, But then I'm like, yeah, I just spent my birthday in the Bahamas, you know, and before that I was I forgot. I mean last year for my birthday I was in I spent it in Greece and Turkey, and before that, I was in Morocco and Spain. And so that's not a no life, that's a yes life. By telling the things that don't matter to me, nah, I don't really need it.
You know, you have to be clear about what you're saving for exactly. I went through a period where I had saving I had seven different savings accounts, and I don't have that many anymore. I've kind of like simplified things, but like I named each of them a different thing. Yes, it's laptop I needed to do, laptop, Costa Rica. Trip I needed to go on a vacation ended up being Puerto Rico, not Costa Rica. But you know, the idea was there, you know, like trip home for the holidays,
holidays spending, that's what I needed. That like putting an image and a name to what you're saving for, that is what because then it's harder for you to take money out of your like Grandma's Christmas present exactly.
And then too, like you said, if you can actually name so I suggest to people like Mandy said that, I would suggest you go. There's this great website me and Mandy both love called Magnify Money dot com and if you go to Magnify Money, you can kind of like peruse kind of what kind of online only banks there are and look for savings accounts there. So there's
a bunch of like online only banks. There's like Ally and like Capital one three sixty and ge Capital and a whole bunch, so you can peruse and kind of go through and look to see, you know, how they're rated, and you're gonna look for free savings and I think most savings are free, but every once in a while you might find one that charges a fee, but FDIC insured free and you want to look for savings that gives you the highest interest. You know, you earn the
highest amount of money on your money. And then you open up it's critical that's on line only, meaning there's no physical location. Because one, what that means is they don't have the overhead as a regular bank, so they're going to pass that savings onto you. And then two, it makes your money inconvenient and inconvenient money gets saved. Here's how you're at Target, which is my favorite place to waste away in my life and money. Target just makes you, like it makes you happy to be broken,
Like I'm so broke. It took all my money, and you're still smiling. So you're at Target, see something really cute and you really want it. You look at your checking account on your phone, and your checking account says nope. You look at your savings account on your phone, and your savings account says yes. And if it's at a regular bank, then you could transfer easily from your checking from your savings to your checking and spend that money,
you know. But if it's at an online only bank, it takes like two to five business days to transfer your money from your savings account at the online only bank back to your checking account at your regular bank. So unless you point on sleeping at Target for two to five business days, you're not getting that outfit or dress or whatever. Yeah. So that's one of the ways that, like, honestly, that has helped significantly. Because I'm not super disciplined. People
think like, oh, you're so disciplined. No, I just know how to throw up those like barriers for myself, like you know, your weaknesses exactly, Like I can't get to my money, never mind, I'll leave it, you know.
And that is why I unsubscribe from gaps email list and jam cruise email list all those retail Oh my god. And secretly, my sister was complaining about I love my sister, but she was complaining about like getting all these you know, like being drawn in by these email offers from this one retailer she loved. And I snuck into her email and unsubscribed.
Ooh, like I'm going to save you all this trouble.
She stops shopping there, out of sight, out of mind. Yes, I'm a little controlling though, just trying to help anyway. Yeah, I think lifestyle inflation is very toxic, and you have to Yeah, you have to keep say realistic and think small with're with your lifestyle. Like you don't have to run early before you crawl. That's really corny, but like be slow just because you get a raise, Like the average person only gets three percent raise each year. That
is not like magic Johnson money. Like you're not the car. No, that's not paying for a new car exactly.
People aren't actually seeing people be like, oh, I'll figure it out. I'm like, you know, math is universal, right, Like I've got people be like, oh, I'm making know one thousand dollars a month and my car note is eight hundred you're like, so, I guess you're not eating or sleeping anywhere. No, I'll figured it out. No, you're
not gonna figure it out. Like, there's no if you make a thousand and you're paying eight hundred towards your car, that's two hundred left over for rent, food, toiletries, groceries, just everything. It's just not possible, you know. And yeah, I just wish that people just really trusted in the science of mathematics and stop for the fact that you know one plus one, you know equals too, and you know, if you don't make enough, it's not going to magically
come up. Only time that I've seen money magically work, this is the only instance that money will magically work for you is when you have a kid. That's the only way that I've seen people say, I don't know how I was able to do it, but somehow we couldn't afford our life before. But now we have a baby, and somehow the baby is still eating.
You know, that's a human life at stake exactly.
That's the only time I see like it somehow make it way. It doesn't make its way for Puerto Rico or Cayman Islands, Like no you don't get that same magic trick for those things.
Yeah, I get these weird I get always emails from people saying, you know, like, oh, I make I make this much and I need these are my expenses, and I just earn less than what I have right now, And I'm like, at a certain point, budgeting, can we take you so far? You have to focus on growing your wealth and you have to be investing your savings.
Once you've saved enough for emergencies, you should be investing that in an account where you can actually earn enough to beat inflation, which is going to eat your money up like a little rat or like a little gerbil.
You know, you have to prepare yourself in that that It means investing in the IRA, you know, investing in a savings account that had a little bit of interest like these online banks we're talking about, and it means earning more and even though it seems counterintuitive, spending money on things that will increase your human capital are very important. Yeah, And when we talk about human capital, it's like Tiffany's
master's degree. You know, I wanted to go back and earn a certification in financial planning and that would help me in my professional career. It is a little money out, but it will bring more money in the future, and that's an investment worth making.
I think, yeah.
It's brand ambition. Let's do the wins.
My win this week A is what is my win? I don't know, so Manna be awesome, you go first.
I'll do my first. I wanted to call out I wanted to shout out Ava Duverne, the extraordinary director of Selma, obviously award winning Oscar winning film Selma. They won the Oscar for Best Song. I think she's in the cover of Elle magazine. Unfortunately, she's not the only cover on Elle magazine. She's like one of eight women, and I think she's one of like two women of color, including
Salma Hayek, out of these eight women. But I thought I was really cool because they're all actors, they're all models, and like she is a director. She's literally behind the camera and they yanked her out. They said, you're amazing, we're putting on the front cover and she uses the platform to talk about the need for more diversity and filmmaking. Thought that was awesome. Also, she favored my tweet on Twitter, and I like lost myself. I lost everything. I lost
all my cool. I tweeted about the commercial she did for Apple Apple Music with Taraji and with what's her face scandal?
Yeah, yeah, Olivia Poto.
Kry Washington, Yeah and married.
I'm like Olivia, So your tweet, Oh my god, I would have favored her favoriting my tweet.
I may have took it. I may have taken a screenshop.
I'm trying to think. So I had one, But I think this is gonna be a win. I don't know. It's not super brown, but it's kind of So. There's this woman who started this nonprofit called the Birthday the Birthday Party Project, where she I guess she was having a baby, her first baby, and planning it's her baby's birthday party. And I don't know how she's a party
planner by profession. Somehow, I guess she started volunteering at a homo shelter or something like that, and she realized there were all these kids who never got to experience like what it was like to have a birthday party.
And she thought, you know what, you know, I know how to plan parties, and she began planning birthday parties for children in homeless shelters and the joy on these kids' faces, Like, honestly, it just made me want to just give her all my money because it was just such a because you know, what I find, unfortunately, is I used to do a lot of volunteering with the homeless population here in Newark, and what I found was that so many times, you know,
people focus on just the essentials, because I get it, you focus on the essentials because you're like, oh, you need food, chucks or clothing, water, but they forget that you know, you're homeless, but you're human. Hello, And sometimes people forget that because they feel like, well, that's not essential,
you don't need that. But I remember volunteering at this church that used to do like game night for homeless folks on like Thursdays, and I thought, I'm like, that seems kind of wasteful until I went and I realized, like because they were trying to like maintain like not feeling like they were, you know, not human beings, you know.
And I just love the fact that she had picked up on this you know this I don't know, this project for kids and just the joy on their faces because a lot of their parents they don't I mean obviously their parents don't have it and it's not an essential item, and so it's not something that's provided for
these kids. And so the woman, I forget her name, but if you go to the Today Show dot com, they did like a whole special or whatever on her and a lot of these kids are Brown, so accounts although the woman who started it it's not brown, but whatever, she's honorary Brown. Because I think this is such an awesome idea and the joy that these kids experience for being made to feel special this one day on their birthday. Yeah, well, that has been it for Brown Ambition. I hope you
enjoyed as much as we enjoyed you. You can find us always at Brownambition dot.
Com, Brannambition podcast dot com.
Brown Ambition podcast dot com. You can find it out. You can find this at Brown Ambition on Facebook, the BA podcast on Twitter, and where can they Email us.
At Brand Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com. And next week we're going to be revealing the winners of our Brown Ambition review giveaway iTunes review giveaway. And thank you so much to everyone who's been emailing us screenshots of your review. It's awesome We've gotten your emails. We've gotten your tweets, we've gotten your Facebook comments saying how much you love the show. But it really really would be
helpful if you guys left reviews on iTunes. It helps people find us, it helps our show get more visibility in the iTunes store. That'd be awesome if you can leave a review and then take a quick screenshot. Email us at Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com, and we will be selecting winners of our burn Ambition giveaway next week on the show Can't Wait. Yeah, all right, Tiffany birthday girl?
Yes, ibut up by ConA down, Go.
Make Superman his girl cheese or whatever is on the menu for tonight.
Then it is done.
But I'm definitely gonna make him some some hugs and kitchens and snuggles.
Okay, alright, let's talk to you later, r B.
Alright, bye,