Hey ba fam.
Please follow us on Apple Podcasts and keep our audience growing. If your iPhone recently upgraded to iOS fourteen point five, head to Apple Podcasts, search for Brown Ambition and click on the plus button in the upper right hand corner. Do that and you'll be following our show. You can also follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, or the Amazon Music app. And Android users, we didn't forget about you. You can find us on Google Podcasts.
Now have the time of my life. Okay, just kidding.
I've really miss Tiffany, but we made it, y'all, and I can't thank my guest co host enough for joining me and holding.
My hand through this period of separation.
While Tip has been on a much needed rest and recharge of AKA. I want to thank Chris Browning of Popcorn Finance, Berna and Nat from Hey Berna, Jamilas Soufran from Journey to Launch, and last but not least, Janice Torres Rodriguez from Yo Kioto Dineto Podcast for joining me this past month. Y'all.
I can't believe we made it.
I had such a good time getting to know these guys better, and I feel like I've got four new financial besties.
Already.
Now, this reference is strictly for the millennials, so boomers and gen zers, sorry, not sorry. Do y'all remember those old episodes of Saved by the Bell where they meet up at the Max and they reminisce about the school year and they look longingly at nothing in particular in the distance, and then it happens the screen goes all squiggly and you realize it's one of those episodes. A
recap of some of the best moments from the season's past. Well, here we go, Bayside Tigers, I mean, ba fam, I am about to walk down memory lane and replace some of the most memorable moments from our summer co host series. This is the greatest hits over the last month, and I hope you guys enjoy them as much as I did getting to relive some of these conversations when I'm in the co host chair. Honestly, sometimes I told Berna this when we had lunch last week.
Yeah, we like hang out now, I told her that.
Honestly, sometimes I feel like I had these conversations and I semi blackout and I have a hard time remembering. So it was really fun to walk back down memory lane. And pick out what I thought were some of the really poignant and powerful moments that I had recording with these amazing co hosts.
So sit back and.
Relax and enjoy this look back Q the Squiggly Dreamy music Cali.
Okay.
Our first trip down memory Lane starts with my conversation with the wonderful Chris Browning. He and I took a question from listener Lachine, who was asking about the difference between having a budgeting problem in an income problem. Lachine says, I just found your podcast after buying Tiffany's book, and I'm obsessed in her book, which is I will add here you guys called Get Good with Money, which you
can get at get goodwith Money dot com. It's an eight week national wait, eight week New York Times bestseller. At this point, it's insane anyway, So Lachen found us through her book. She says, in the book, Tiffany talked about determining if you have a budgeting problem or an income slash earning problem, and I think I have an earning problem. When I wanted to get y'all's opinion, I make fifty thousand dollars a year after taxes and insurance
and my retirement retirement savings. I'm left with about twenty nine hundred dollars per month. I can comfortably pay my bills, save for travel, and add money to my IRA, but that's about it. I want to save more, but there's nowhere else in my budget. I feel like I can slice and dice. What do you guys think? So, what's your take on like a budget versus an income problem?
Chris, This is a great questquestion here, and I think sometimes we do get trapped in they Okay, let's let's budget, let's cut and let's save where we can. Which is good to go through and evaluate your budget and see where you're maybe wasting money. But the only thing is you can only cut so much. If you've already you got your stuff under control, and you're really diligent with how you spend, you're going to get to a point
where you just can't cut anything else. And if you want to increase your or increase the money available to invest and do other things with, yeah, you have to make more, which is it's much harder than cutting, but it's way more impactful in the long run.
Yeah.
I mean, if you guys need to hear it here first, although I'm pretty sure we've said it before, you cannot budget your way to wealth building. You can't do it. You cannot become rich by budgeting. You can get part of the way there, certainly you can, and it's certainly a good starting point, and I think most levels you should have at least an idea of what's going in
and what's going out and what's left over. Budgeting is amazing, but it ain't going to get you there, and I think I think it definitely sounds like if you're to the point where you want to put more money away and you just don't have it and you can't. Literally you've looked at the budget and you're like, what am I gonna do? Like live in my car? You can't, you know, there's nothing else to slice and dice, like you say, so it is time to start looking at
a couple different things. I am huge about the impact your career. I'm very passionate about the impact that your career choices can have in helping you accumulate wealth. And I'm also huge on looking for additional income streams on top of, you know, outside of your nine to five job or whatever work you happen to do so that
you diversify the income streams that you have. After a year like this, it certainly feels like a lot of people were turning to side hobbies or side hustles as they say, you know, you're starting their own businesses to bring in extra money. Because it was a real kick in the ass, you know, to realize how vulnerable we all were, especially those of us who were tied to a nine to five job that either you had layoffs
sort of cut back hours. I mean, it all felt very like scary and a good reminder about the importance of having those different income streams. So, I mean, Chris, both and I You and I both have podcasts. You know, I don't think either of us is rolling in the dough from the podcast life, but especially not that you're getting all the upgraded equipment that it sounds like you're accumulating.
But you know, talk about like the podcast and what other what do you what do you think about different income streams and how someone could you know, bring in extra wealth.
Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm I'm a fan of doing other things and building other streams of income and businesses and just things you own on your own because one, I just enjoy the process of making something and having it something that I've created is just it's just a cool experience. It just I don't know, it makes you feel good, like, look, I've made this thing. I've put
my time and sweat into this, and it's here. So I'm definitely for finding things that you're you're passionate about, that you enjoy doing, that you see an opportunity to have a viable business doing and pursuing those because, like you said, you know, jobs are secure until they're not until something happens where they need to move on from you. You know, things could change overnight. But just like you,
I'm a huge fan of growing within your career. That was one of the biggest things that helped us get out of debt when my wife and I kind of got serious about our finances. We had about twenty seven thousand dollars in credit card debt and we were taking home like forty five thousand dollars between the two of us, which was not enough money and not especially not in southern California. It is not much.
Did you do that?
Wow? It was rough. We were living in a tiny house, a very small studio, for several years, and really we cut our budget down to like nothing, like we were not having any fun, Like nothing was getting spent that didn't need to be spent, and it still was going so slow. It was it was such a long journey. And so for me, that's what I went and I looked at, Okay, this is how much I'm making. I think at the time, I've got how much I was making by myself, but it wasn't. I clearly wasn't a lot.
What do I need to do? And so that's when I started saying, all right, what professional organizations can I join. I started joining these different groups for bookkeepers, and I would go to conferences and I would help organize as speakers, and then I would meet other people from other places, and I would find out about new openings and build up my resumes. When I applied for the next job, it's like, oh, you did all of this, Like oh yeah,
you know, you can kind of pump yourself up. And so doing things like that it allowed me to increase my income so much faster than if I would have just stayed at my one job and hoped for a nice raise, which wasn't going to gum.
What were you doing at the time. Your backgrounds in accounting.
Uh, yeah, like accounting and bookkeeping work. So at the time, I was a payroll supervisor. I was running a perill department at a school district actually, and.
You're managing paychecks and trying to get a bigger one exactly.
I would see everyone who was making more money than me and be like, all right, I need to do something about this.
That's going to be really depressed.
Were desperational?
You don't when you see some of those payeests, You're like, I don't know what these people are doing right now, but I need to make some changes and get one of these because it's.
Way more than I'm reading.
You know, it's bad if you're like jealous of a like a I don't know what kind of school teachers these were, but I'm feeling like a middle school math teacher is making more. It's like, ooh, okay.
It's time.
Yeah. I was like, because we all know teachers aren't paid that well, and I was getting paid a lot less than than the majority of teachers.
That's a crime. Yeah, I've I love that, you know. I was recently celebrating with my husband because we've really been focused on increasing our net worth, and we did the math with our planner and realized that we have increased our net worth by tenfold in the last five years.
Wow.
And I was I was sitting down and we're gonna do I'm gonna do a specific show about it. But as I was sitting through and working through, you know, how did we do this? I'll tell you one thing. It wasn't by budgeting the most significant, the biggest reasons. And I part of me almost feels a lot, or
used to feel a little, not ashamed. But I think people want to hear that we just pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and you know, we coopon clipped and we were good people and we just worked real hard. They want to hear that kind of story. But the truth is was that I was super ruthless with pursuing
new opportunities when two things were true. When I could earn significantly more and when I could challenge myself professionally, So when I could when I was offered, when I was offered I was in other jobs, and when I was offered opportunities to move to a different company. As long as the opportunity was professionally rich like I could. I was learning a new skill, I was getting to try a new position or something like that, and it
came with additional income. I was definitely willing to take it. And I was very risky with some of my career choices, and they could have gone the other way entirely, you know,
without with risk comes rewards or you know, disaster. But it was because of those choices I was able to negotiate, you know, thirty percent fifty percent raises equity in companies that I was joining, which opened me up to even additional opportunities to build wealth as long as that stock price in that company went up, which I was fortunate enough to have that happen sometimes. So like, those are the types of things that that I'm I'm ready to just be honest about it because there's.
No shame in it.
In fact, I had to do it. I'm a black woman in America, you know, like we don't make that much money. We make sixty percent of what a white man earns. So for me, I just always thought about when I went into like a salary negotiation or when I was approached by a competitor or a different company to come work for them. I really looked at that as an opportunity. It's often the best opportunity you can get to negotiate a higher salary and staying at the same place for a long time.
It ain't it, y'all. It is not it in terms of.
In terms of salary growth, especially if you came in entry level, that is not the way to increase your income unless. I mean, you can stay there if you love your job. But then you got to start side hustling, you know, get a side business or take a hobby and start bringing in cash, you know, on top of your earnings. But loyalty does not pay in corporate America. It doesn't.
I'm proof of that.
I really had to make those big, scary leaps to get to where I am today, to get those bigger paydays.
No, I mean, I love that so much because I've seen it where in a situation no one I won't name a place so no one can figure out what I'm talking about, But that was the place.
We'll leave Chris alone. Don't get in, don't get them in trouble.
Don't get me a trouble. Please don't go research this place. But I was working at this place. There's a woman there. She was amazing at her job. She was amazing, and she just wanted She didn't I didn't think she was asking for a race, just wanted a better title than what she had. And they're like, no, we can't do that. I'm sorry, it's something so easy. They were like, no, we can't do that, but but you're great. So she's like,
you know what, all right, I'm out of here. So she left, got a better job, got the title she wanted, and got to pay raise the person they brought in to replace her. They gave the title that she wanted and more money, and it was like they could have done it all along, but it was just like, well, they think we have you here, you're not going to leave, so we're not going to do anything. And that's where you like, I mean, I agree with you one hundred percent.
That's That's the only way you're going to make these significant leaps sometimes is to define better opportunities outside of where you are, because they have no incentive to make your pay jump significantly.
And you may think that they're the nicest people. You know, they've come to your house warming parties, they gave you a nice little gift when you had a baby or you got married. It does like they're not going. It takes a lot of effort. I was that manager who really fought for raises and promotions for my people when I didn't have to because I wanted to retain them. I and there were plenty of people who just don't do that because it takes a lot of time. It
takes effort. You got to like do your research. You got a bat for people. It's just not in a lot of people's best interests to go to bat for folks. That's work. So yeah, I love that example. I mean, I hate it, but it's a really good example of what we're talking about here. Loyalty does not pay, y'all. But I want to talk a bit about before we get to the next question about starting a new business. Like I literally I'm at a point where I just
started a new business. Hello guys, I'm I'm the CEO and founder of Mandy Money Media, which is a independent content consulting firm and editing and writing business.
Yay, do I get the kind of thanks? You know, do my own thing.
After a long, well like a decade of experience, I'm striking out on my own and what's so fun for me has been doing these things. Like I filed for an LLC. It's shockingly easy to do this, y'all. You just need a little bit of money and like Google, like you just had a Google. If you go to your state's Department of Labor website or just google your state LLC, it'll have a very easy to fill out form, pick your name, give them your little coins. I had it within minutes. I got approved and got my my
LLC established, and then it's what the irs do? Did you do this yet? We get a taxpayer or an employee ID number through the i RS dot gov.
That's such an easy process. And then you don't have to give people your Social Security number either. Yeah.
I mean I think I might have to like get it, but yeah, it took. I was I was shocked. It was instantly, Oh, here's your e I N. Here you go. And once I had that EI N, what did I do? I went and got a business bank account, just did some googles to find the best one. Although I will say, I don't know if you have a business bank account or credit card yet, do you? Uh?
Yeah, I do have the credit card. I've not gone the banking route. I'm still I mean, I probably shouldn't be saying this out loud, but yeah, maybe you lessnings and personal accounts as business accounts right now.
You know, that's cool.
It depends on how you. I did learn that, you know, when I was trying to decide whether to do an LLC or work as a sole proprietor. It's very different, like in terms of how how you can commingle your personal versus professional expenses and things like that. But definitely I got a the one with my CPA and he was like, LLC is the way to go. So that's what I did. And yeah, but the EI N it took seconds. And the oh, the business bank account. What I was going to say, is I because that's I wanted.
I'm going to get paid soon, hopefully hopefully soon from clients. You know, I'm manifesting it like my husband installing his Tesla charger five months before he actually had a Tesla.
I'm going to get this.
I got a bank account through a online bank, and it was kind of hard to find a fee free business bank account. It seems like a lot of them charge They either have a minimum required balance, which I don't know if I'm gonna make I'm gonna make money, but like I can't, I can't commit right now that I'm going to be making a certain amount. Yeah, so it took a lot of comparing and contrasting, but I definitely I was able to get one. And you have to have your EI N in order to get one
set up. And then I got approved for a personal sorry, a business credit.
Card, which was exciting. So it's it.
You can do it.
And look, I'm a business who. You can't tell me nothing. I'm a business owner, right, I don't need a storefront. I'm doing it.
It's so different than what people thought of, Like what people I think we have a much different image in our head of what it takes to be a business owner. It's it's so it's such an easy process these days.
It really is.
So I hope that that motivates y'all and inspires you to to look at you know, if you if you're like me and you've been doing something for a long time, you know, and you realize you've got a certain set of skills that companies would pay to take advantage of or leverage you know, that's a way of like let's say I was still doing my you know, had a nine to five job, I could I could feasibly do this on the side and just bring in some extra income,
and that's the beginning again to true wealth building. So I love that Tiffany covered that in her book Get It with Money dot Com. Y'all check out the book. I love that she covered that in the book because it really is like it's the next level from just basic budgeting, really focusing on your income.
Yeah, it really is such a great idea. And you know, what I've started to discover too, is that the bar is actually very low for a lot of what people consider good work. I'm very shocked for whatever it's right in my mind, it's like people are like, if you're going to do something for a company, it's like it has to be the best thing that's ever been made.
But I've I've I'm not gonna again, I'm not going to name any companies, but I've I've witnessed some some businesses doing work that I'm like, that's all it took for you to get paid, And well, I guess I need to step it up and do some other things.
I know well in my career, I've employed people like myself, and I'm like, I know exactly how much mediocrity there is out there. I'm going to go out there and be the best and it's not going to be that hard because it's a lot of medio group. Okay, not the shade anybody. But it's a really good point. It truly is, and I yeah, I'm excited about this new journey. And thank you Lashen for your question and for checking out our podcast. I love that. All right, Next up,
we have a snippet. It was really hard to pick a favorite nugget from my conversation with Berna A. Natt, but I did think that this particular part of the conversation when we were taking a question from a listener wanting to know whether or not they shou you go for a traditional or a wroth for a one K, it really unlocked and interesting point that Berna made about this key part in our young adulting lives. So let's
check in and see how Berna tackled this topic. I was recently hired at a university and I'm trying to determine if it's better for my future self to have money taken out of my paycheck and put into my four oh one K pre.
Tax or after tax.
Wouldn't I have a tax advantage if it's taken from my paycheck after tax. Listen, there's not really a wrong answer here, and I do so, and I this is a specific question that I definitely think you know it's worth talking to a the only financial planner about because it's never just about your your four oh one K or in your case, you probably have an educator account which is like a four or three B but still similar, so you probably want to get more personalized advice than this.
But just to break it down, you know, when you contribute to a traditional four one K or traditional IRA or sorry at four oh one K, you're putting dollars in pre tax, which means you put the money in and you don't get tax until you take it out when you're old and gray or hopefully not so old and gray in retirement. And the benefit there is that your money grows tax free. It's it's wonderful. It's an incentive to get people to put money away for retirement.
The WROTH for one K is different in the sense that you pay taxes upfront, and typically what some financial advisors will say, is this is also a tax benefit. It's just a little bit more indirect because you're paying taxes now. Let's say you're earning a lower income today than you plan to be earning later when you get to retirement age. You could be saving money by paying your lower tax rate now than when you start withdrawing
from your funds later. Another benefit that I think is overlooked what the ROTH is that you can actually withdraw your contributions so it's not actually as tied up as a traditional retirement account, where like if you take an early withdrawal and it's just to pay for something or to pay off some debt, it can be tax penalties that you have to pay and then income tax on top of that on what you withdraw with a ROTH.
Like let's say you put in five thousand dollars over a couple of years you wanna, and you've gained you know, two thousand dollars on that five k, so you've got
seven k in there right now. You could arguably go in there and withdraw some of that principal amount that five thousand that you put in and pocket that without the penalties of a traditional four oh one K. But now that we got all that like jargonique goodness, mum out of the way, burna talk to me about I mean, this is like a common This is like a common you know, one of the first adulting type decisions that happened when you get a new job. For me, I
was so like ignorant about all this mess. I had a four to one K match at my first job. I was there for fifteen months, never opened, never put a dime in it, left all the money on the table.
It'd be fair.
I had no dimes to put in there. But what was what was it like for you when you start to you know, you went from freelancing to like, oh benefits like a four oh one K?
What was that like for you? And how did you decide?
Yes, actually trying to figure out what in the GD hell as a four oh one K was one of my first financial kind of Google entries. Ever, when I you know, like you said, we go through HR and orientation, they're like, here's your four oh one K. Before you could even ask like why is it even named a four oh one? And they're like, I'm onto the next and then they're like, we can't give you advice or HR or not a financial so you get very little
answers in the first place. It was amazing to find out through Googles, not the HR representatives, which typically they should be more helpful about a lot of the times they are not. It was amazing to find out that for a lot of young people, especially in your very first jobs, your four oh one K is like the first time you're actually your money is getting invested, often
invested for you, and you have no idea. Like it was many months into my job, like you said, Mandy, when I realized that money was being taken out for my four oh one K for my paychecks and things were happening to it. I guess I had like blacked out and signed papers when I enduring orientation, agreeing to something, and I didn't understand it until many months afterwards, and
like couldn't actually change things. So it was amazing to find out that, first of all, money won money was already being taken out of my paycheck what without my maybe like kind of unconsensually, without my understanding of how it happened. Two, I learned about what you just said, four o one K matching. My company was a company
that does that. They did four o one K matching, which meant when I put certain amount of money into my four oh one K, my company was like, cool, me too, Simon says, I'm going to do the same thing up to a certain degree. We love to say as financial you know, mouth holes, that's free money. That's money on the table, right, I give money, and you're I move, you move like Ludacris. I move the money and then the company says me too, unmoved the money.
So that was amazing to find out. And then you get into the Okay, so what's the difference between four o one K and ira? You learn about all the things that man you just said about, like the tax differences. That's around when even if, like if you had held on to this point of like trying to learn, that's around when people's brains start to tune out and it starts to the butterfly out the window, gonna go get lunch. But they are really important differences when you're kind of
looking at things. But I think the most important thing is whichever path you choose. Sit yourself or an HR representative or if financial advisor down until you and like ask all the questions until you fully understand the differences
between the two. Don't go blindly into it like me and be like, it looks like the guy to my left, just check the box and and so it makes it that like I literally left money on the table for the first year, I left free money out of my own damn retirement account for the first year because I was just blindly following. There's so much pressure in the process.
Don't be afraid to sit down and like, ask all the damn questions, google all every single phrase, every single thing that you can so that you understand both ways. And like Mandy was saying, it's not like there's a major, giant, like big mistake difference between the two. Honestly, I don't think there really is. It's especially when to say, first sort of investing foray, but understand the crap out of it. You really, you deserve to understand the crap out of
everything happening to every dollar. And it's tiring. But until a retirement expert comes in and starts doing a dance at every like orientation, this is how we got to do it, it'll be me it.
I mean, I think they pay big, big dollars for you to come tell their employees about their benefits, which is one of like the incentives to keep them there.
I don't know why companies.
I mean literally at previous job when one of the benefits was rsu's restricted stock units literally stock in the company, and I had a staff of young people who had never so much as heard of an RSU before, and I'd have to do their performance reviews and be like, oh, and you're going to get you know, five thousand dollars worth of RSUs and they would have these blank stares
and finally I was like, do you know what this is? No, or they would say yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh it's like the thing you know, and I'm like, no, here's what it is. And then their eyes would get why. They're like, whoa, this is great, this is great. But you don't know until you ask those questions. So and a lot of people aren't like me. They don't have time, you know, they don't take the time. So definitely ask.
I was going to say, they're lucky to have an employer that's like, let me tell you exactly what it is. Because I remember learning about RSUs in my former job too and being like, this is a huge tech company with so many resources. I can't believe I have to google this shiz on my own to find out that I'm being given equity in the company. But the equity works like this, It's got all these rules. It's like, bless you and every other employer that actually looks out
for the young people like that. That's beautiful.
That's where you're saying, you know, how what is it? What is hella?
The personal finance world's hella mal hellapale, Hella stale, health stale.
Yes, that is true of businesses too.
It's really the structure is built for I think people who don't need to have a sit down and talk about RSUs because their uncle or their father or their mother, you know, their mentor tells them those types of things.
But a lot of folks, especially brown and black black people and women, you know, we don't go into the corporate world with those extra benefits and those you know, advisors and little evil parrots on our shoulders to tell us these types of things that we have to seek it out for ourselves, and companies need to do the extra work to do all that. But now I'm in my soapbox now about one of my favorite subjects, which is how businesses fail their employees.
I love that subscribe.
Yeah, but I do want to say thank you to this question and just to take it home. The only bad decision here is to not invest, to not save for retirement. That's the only bad decision you can make. And also, you know, to your point burnet about getting knowledge for me, the best thing I did at twenty four was just start saving before I even knew everything I thought I needed to know. I just did the easiest option, you know, check the box for automatic withdrawals
into a target date fund. And then I was like, cool, you're cute. I'll come back to you when I'm ready to dive in more and do more things. And that was the smartest decision I ever made, putting me on my path to a tenfold increase in my net worth over the past.
You know, decades, and I huge.
Yeah, And I just don't want people to hold themselves back because they don't think that they know enough. There are some small steps you can take today that will put you on the right path and you'll, you know, you'll accrue that knowledge over time. Just don't wait until you're you know, you can recite, and don't wait until you have to stop googling the different terms.
I still google sometimes me too, all the time. It's fine.
I mean, we aren't like raised with these pockets of knowledge in our heads, and so we have to keep relearning. We have to keep shoving them intoor heads because it doesn't come naturally to so many of us. And I love to also tell young folks like you have something that every older Hella male paial Stale investor wishes they had, and that's time. It's time you have that freakin in bags all all around you. And that's the most important
thing for retirement investing specifically. So just get or done, get her done in any which way, and confuse yourself with the terms once there's already money in the pot.
I love that. Okay, for those of y'all who've been following Brown Ambition even from the beginning, but even if you tuned in last week for the first time, I guarantee you at some point we mentioned either Husban my husband Enrique or Superman Tiffany's husband Jarelle. Now, when we first started the show, neither one of us was actually married yet, and these guys have been through it all right.
We love to talk about how Superman constantly opens the door when Tiffany's recording, or how my husband decided it would be really neat to spend one thousand dollars to get in line for a tesla when he and I just started dating and saving for our wedding. We give
these guys a lot of grief. But during my conversation with Jamila Sufront from Journey to Launch, she and I had a really wonderful sort of reflection on the importance that the partner that you choose in life can have when it comes to your own wealth building and your own career journey. So I want to take a moment to replay this segment from my conversation with Jamila from Journey to Launch.
This is so important because he was He looked at me like I was crazy, because he is a very simple man and he's very easy going.
Right.
So, and you know again, when I came to him a few years ago and I'm telling him about all these stories on podcasts I'm hearing people retiring and quitting their jobs, He's just like, really, because I don't what are we gonna do? Like, what are you talking about? And it really took some conversations to get him to
kind of see. And one of the things I always say with couples is like, don't like I had to show him one the numbers, the numbers for him, even for me, like I had to believe the numbers, meaning I had to map out, really is this possible? Will I be able to one day quit my job early? How much money can we save and invest if we aggressively do this, if we cut back, if we become more optimized in our finances, how much money can we have?
So I literally when I came home and told him the first time, he looked at me like, what are you talking about? And then over time what I did was I didn't push him to this is really important. Just because you come up with a realization or have an epiphany doesn't mean like your partner will they have
they have They're on a whole another timeline. So I respected that, but also started to show him like the numbers, Like I created this spreadsheet and it showed like if we do this, like, first of all, step back from the spreadsheet, what does a life look like now that we enjoy and what does the life look like now in like twenty years, right when the kids are this age, and like they're at the house and we can travel,
and how can we balance that now? So we started with the dream of our lives, what they are now and what we want them to be, and then we like did numbers around it, and I showed him, well, if we do this, make these changes in our finances, save and invest this much over time, we can have you know, over a million dollars in twenty years, and we can do all these things. And that started to get him excited because instead of me just saying it
and talking, he saw the numbers. And then the other thing I really was important to say was yeah, I want to do this, so I quit my job. But also, like you know, I'm the mom. I'm I'm the one giving birth and having three kids. I also have the crazy commute. See my husband his job is maybe like ten minutes away from our house. So he also knew the pressure of just like my life, and he wanted
me to be happy. And so I made sure that like own not only like we were going to pursue what I wanted, like in terms of a career or quitting my job, but what is it that you want? So I definitely we made sure that include his wants and hopes, like into what we were doing. You know, I don't really care about having a nice car. We used to have nice cars quote unquote back in the day before kids and getting a little bit more optimized
with our finances. But I say, look, if I can, I want to buy you a car, you know, Like it was things like that that got him excited. So that way we both were.
That was my way into baby. I said, save for a Tesla. Let's that's for a Tesla. Yeah, let's investing for a Tesla.
It's so important because he is a little bit more like fancier I would say, than me right, like I'm good with kind of just like bare minimum, but sometimes fancy. He's like, if I could do it fancy all the time, I would, So talking about it in that term really helped to let him know that this is a team effort.
It's not just about what Jamila wants. And also like, if I'm miserable because I'm working and driving all this time, like those whole families, is not going to be like happy, So let's work to a place that we can get to. And so he eventually got on board with that. But he's very easy going and laid back. Thank God for
that in terms of he pretty much trust me. We have the open conversations about it, and even when it came to quitting my job, because that was huge, like my income was more than half of the family's combined income, and so like it would have almost been better if I was a teacher and then he had his career because then like you know, he can kind of stay on his trajectory. But for me to walk away, it was like a big step because what does that look
like as a family. We have three kids, We have a mortgage, like, so we literally had to save up enough money to cover our expenses while journey to launch like started to you know, become more stable, and that was scary, but we did it together. We had the conversations and it's it's working out so far.
So that's no, that's wonderful. I also have always been it's so funny how the you know, in no shade to your husband. I always talk to my husband. I'm like, dude, you work for the government and you have the boogiest taste of like where do you come off with this? Like what he's like, I must he has like this very specific t shirt brand. He gets custom shirts. I'm like, I'm the one shopping in the clearance track at H and M.
But the same as you. I I we I was.
I was earning probably like two three x what he was earning at the at my peak earning career in you know, corporate America, so to speak. But that's so that's so funny, And it's also you know, shouts out to shout out to partners. You know, I don't put genders on and put partners who are willing to maybe maybe they have their doubts, but they just you know,
have those in the shower alone. They they support and they you know, have faith in their partners to to really bet on themselves and to take their career to a different place. That's really wonderful that he's been supportive to you, and I I appreciate you talking about the whole the values you know, and how you as a partner. I've struggled with this too, probably a little bit more
than it sounds like you did. But I was like, it was very hard for me to start to share in the values based investing, Like so for example, you know, I had no problem spending money on values or experiences that I particularly wanted to have. But when it came to a you know, if it was a car or you know, uh, I don't know, concert or something that you know, Enrique really wanted it was, it was like, hmmm, it's not really worth it. And I had to had
to learn to share in that I was. That was probably my one of the more difficult challenges for me financially and like mentally as a spouse was bringing them in and being open to you know, they're what they value and not not discounting it and making that a part of the overall plan.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's important, just like and for me, I think as growing up without really you know, I didn't have a father in my life or had father figures, I didn't really have a close relationship with them, and so I was like for me, the value based things like the simple even though I say he's fancy, like the other things that he's about, which is like family,
and he's very grounded and supportive. Like it's like one of the first signs like I saw in him, like when we first started dating years ago, that I said, like, out of all the things I want in someone, it would be the opposite of what I knew my.
Dad to be, and so I think, whatever that is.
I know some people meet people like that and they do not they don't turn out to be this way eventually.
But he that's what he is and who he is.
And so even as an entrepreneur and now, like I know, like having three kids, like he's an equal partner in the house and in parenting. I still feel like I do a little bit more, but I feel like he is as much equal as outside of my controlling self he can be in terms of how I like things done. And it's been when people say how do you do this?
Like how did you manage all that stuff when you were working and commuting and the kids, and how do you even do it now as like a business owner with the kids, It's like, well, because I leave, he's an equal partner in this, and that has a lot to do with I think how it allows me to make money and be happy, and how our household lives and how we choose to spend money. So I'm proud of the fact that I chose I chose him as my husband.
Isn't Jamila the best and shout out to her husband Woodie as well. To close out this walk down memory Lane, I chose a very special part of the conversation that I have with Janice Torres Rodriguez from the Jokio Dinero podcast. Janie is a bad ass.
First of all.
I love the way that she talks about how she built her confidence in a very male dominated world in her fields of engineering, and how she flipped all the stereotypes on their head, becoming very used to being one of the only, if not the only, female in a room. And she even talks about how she actually got used to being man's plained to the point where it became an asset to her that she could actually stomach it.
So let's round out our walk down memory lane with a look back at my conversation with Janie.
Yeah, so, as an engineer and a Latina like, I think that the career experience has definitely served me well in the sense that, like, I'm so used to being mansplained that now when it happens in like the personal finance sphere, which yes it absolutely does, Yeah, it kind of doesn't bother me. I'm just like, man, it's like, what, like we are the same, So I'm not even here to like I don't need your explanations, sir, thank you. And because that came so much from like my corporate experience.
I was usually the youngest woman in the room. I was usually the only woman of color, and there was a lot of like that, just you know that girl, that girl gets like the project that nobody else wants to work on and just gets talked down to, gets told that I'm aggressive when you know the men are
quote unquote being assertive blah blah blah. So I think from that perspective, like, I'm grateful for the fact that it gave me a thick skin, because right, I don't take any shit from anybody at this point, and I think my career has a lot to do with that.
But I think I.
Followed my father's footsteps when it comes to an engineering background, because he is an engineer as well. He works on like automating production lines for manufacturing companies, and so I always, like was surrounded by technology and curiosity in science, like that was always the vibe that was in my house. I was always wanting to find out what my dad was working on. So I think, you know, I saw him being financially successful, and I wanted to mimic that.
But then I also realized, like, after a while, I just don't care about this. This is not what lights me up. Yes, I was making great money, like I was twenty five years old, making like seventy five thousand dollars. I started making six figures before I turned thirty. And you know, the monetary aspect of it is what kept me in the field for so long, because I had all these thoughts about like, well, what the hell else am I going to do? It's actually gonna be able
to pay me this type of money. But at some point I just realized, like, I can't go through life just living with the excitement of a paycheck because it's not it's not worth it to me. I can't wake up every day with anxiety about going to work and doing something that literally just like drains me and I don't care.
About I'm setting with that for a moment because I want people. You don't You guys don't have to do it. There's another way. There's another way. You mentioned therapy earlier. Now I talk to my husband about therapy because I've been in therapy ever since I got pregnant a couple of years ago. I just knew it's well, first of all, I know, it's really hard to find a therapist that you jive with. And I was, I was looking for therapists before you know, better help and talk space and
all these new apps and stuff. But I whenever I kind of bring it up, I can feel the air in the room changed around. My husband and his family their Dominican American and you know, first generation in this country, and there's just there's a bit of a stigma about it. It's very much like not from him, but like from some of his extended family. You know, why won't you just talk to God about that? And by the way, I come from a very uh southern Black family in Atlanta, and it's the same damn thing.
It's like, oh no, we talked to Jesus when we have problems.
We know what.
So what was that like for you?
Was it easy for you to turn to therapy in your journey or did you have did you have any like internalized stigmas against it as well?
I definitely had internalized stigmas. My husband went to therapy before I did, and so I actually followed his example because mental health was something that was very common in his family, like to talk about and I was the complete opposite. So he actually gave me like the courage to even pursue this. And you know, at some point I wanted to talk about it to my family too, And when I first told them, of course, they're just like, girl, like, what do you have to complain about? Like, you have
a perfect life, get over it. Your anxiety is made up, blah blah blah. But at some point, you know, you kind of have to just brush that stuff aside and realize, like, your feelings are your feelings. You don't need somebody else to validate them, and if you need help, like, that's what it's there for. So whoever approves or doesn't, they got to get over that shit because it has nothing to do with you.
I love that your husband.
I've never heard an anecdote from someone saying my my male partner, my husband encouraged me to get into therapy. I want to hear more stories like that. I think that's amazing. Yeah, okay, well we don't have that much time, but I want to. So we haven't even gotten to YO. But before her, you've lived like twelve lives in the past decade. It feels like, but you you didn't start
with jokto di Nato while you were working. You've launched your food blog, right, Delish Delights, which is to this day one of your ten income sources, which we're gonna talk to Genie about how she has ten streams of income, which is like major goals, But talk to me about Delish Delights how it is making money for you today. And then when did you pivot from food blogging to money blogging and money advice?
Yeah, so the food blog is definitely like a creative outlet that I started because of this frustration that I had around my career. I had a typical quarter life crisis where I'm like I wake up, like I'm like twenty seven years old.
What the hell is my life?
Like why is this the thing that we all have to do? Like why do we just have to go to work every day and work till we're sixty five and then like go and enjoy life. So I was convinced that like maybe I should just quit my job and go to culinary school and I'm going to be like, you know, Gordon Rams or something. But then I realized, okay, wait, so I'm gonna take like a massive pay cup because
we all know the restaurant industry doesn't pay. I'm going to get into more student loans debt when I'm still paying off like my master's degree. Hold on, maybe this is not the route to go. So then I discovered
the world of online blogging. So I started finding websites like skinny Taste dot com and The Pioneer Woman, and I realized, oh, this love of cooking that I have can actually be something that I can do from home and I can create like this website, and maybe I can actually monetize this, and so I dove in like head first. I created my blog. I started sharing recipes.
Every day.
I was like, you know, my husband would come home, I'd be like on top of the kitchen table, like taking pictures every dish in the you know, kitchen sink, all the pots would be used. And then I got laid off like six months after I started the blog and have this free time to myself to really just pretend like what would it be like if I was a self employed person making a living off of a
food blog. So I took the opportunity to take some courses in food blogging, which was just becoming like a thing that people were actually teaching you how to do that you could actually make money on. And I started implementing what I was learning into my journey as a blogger.
And so here we are, like eight years later. I started monetizing the blog maybe two years after I started it, because those two years were basically a huge learning curve where I was starting to understand, like how you actually monetize a brand that you create online. And eight years later, the blog is earning anywhere from ten to fifteen thousand dollars a month in passive income from ads, from traffic that is coming to my website. I reach about four
million visitors a year now with my website. Thank y'all so much for rocking with me this past month during our summer co host series. I missed TIF She will be back next week, so check out our episode coming up next week on July. Let me look at my calendar, because y'all know, mom brain is a real affliction. July fourteenth, we are back with a fresh episode with Tiffany. She is going to be back in the co host chair. I cannot wait.
But again, thank you so much to our listeners for rocking with me this past month and to our co host, Chris Berna, Janie Jamila. Thank y'all so so much from the bottom of my heart for joining me and opening up about your financial journeys.
They have been.
Inspiring, hilarious, thought provoking. I can't wait. Can't wait for you guys to catch up and listen to all of them. Check out our podcast wherever you get them Apple podcasts, Google podcast, Amazon podcasts, oh Lord, Stitcher, tune in, wherever you want to get them. Check out these episodes, and don't forget to hit us up on Instagram. Let us know what you liked about an episode. Send us your questions,
y'all know we love to answer them. We are at Brown Ambition Podcast on Instagram, so tweet us at the BA podcast or send us an email where Brown Ambition Podcast at gmail dot com.