Episode four ninety seven, Investing for Financial Freedom, a woman's Guide with Nicole Stanley. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about investing. This is something you guys said you wanted more knowledge on, specifically investing for retirement, but then also outside of retirement accounts.
So we are going to cover both today.
With a woman talking about a woman's perspective and.
Obviously because we're women and having a woman on, we'll be talking about how important it is for women specifically to have this knowledge. But first, this episode is brought to you by YouTube, not specifically YouTube, not the company please don't sue us, but our YouTube channel at Frugal
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Yeah. So today we are talking about investing, obviously with Nicole Stanley. She is the owner and head money coach at a Rise Financial Coaching and she helps women figure out their family's net worth and improve their financial situation through investing. And we are excited to talk to her today. She's she's a kind soul and I think you guys are really.
Going to like her. Let's get into it.
Nicole, Welcome to Frugal Friends. We're so happy to have you here.
I am so excited to be here.
This is such an important conversation for us to be having, and we don't talk about it a ton on this podcast, which is also why we turn to experts to bring in just more perspective on this theme of investing, but specifically looking from the lens for women. I'm curious how you see investing strategies maybe be different for women. How much do we need to know to get it done right? What are your thoughts here?
Yeah, so I really love how financial coaching can bring a different perspective to something that's long been almost accepted as like too complicated for women. So one of the cool things about being a financial coach instead of an advisor is you get to focus more on like the education of your clients and helping them understand why investing is important, how they can find more money to invest, and then ultimately how to understand how fees work, et cetera.
And that was something that when I started my investing journey maybe about seven years ago, wasn't something that was
very popular. So when I started investing, my husband and I were making collectively fifty six thousand a year and we had our first child, and I remember like going and interviewing all of these financial advisors and kind of having them like laugh at us because of the amount that we were starting with per month and feeling like, ah, is this even worth it to get started because between you know, we were doing a few hundred dollars a month and we didn't have a ton of money in
extra you know, assets that we were rolling over since we were so young. But I look back at that time and I'm so grateful that I decided, you know, okay, we're just going to make this important, even if we feel kind of dumb doing this as like young kids
in our early twenties starting to invest. And so that's one of my main goals today when I'm teaching classes about investing for women, is helping women understand that the concept that investing is too complicated for them to understand is a little bit of a marketing technique to just kind of offload it to someone else, right, And so I think that it's never been easier to be a
woman and to start investing. And that's why I probably never shut up about telling women, you know, hey, if you think that this is too difficult for you, honestly, if you pass high school algebra, I think you can learn how to do this.
It's such a shame that we feel like we need so much to begin investing and we are told that, Like, it's so sad to me that you felt like laughed at laughed out of the office. Well they literally laughed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did just feel that way. It's what happened. Yeah, that's insane.
I'm glad you brought up the marketing piece because yeah, like financial advisors market their services, they want you to think investing is too complicated. But also like marketing for women in personal finance is so different, Like so much
of investing marketing is made with men in mind. When we reach out to investing companies, robo advisors, brokerages, they don't want to work with us because our our audience, especially fintech apps, they don't want to work with us because our audience is eighty five to ninety five percent female, and all of their marketing is directed at men. I know, because I know you can go into the back end of Facebook ads and see all the Facebook ads that
any company is running, right, and they're all directed towards men. Meanwhile, for women, anything finance related is has to do with saving money, like correct coupons, deals, rebates, those companies would like love to work with us, but we don't want to like push as much stuff. We're trying to go away from that. But so, yeah, it's just like there's
so much marketing saturated in the idea of investing. So when we overcome this, this marketing bias, this cogni bias, what, what do you think the order of operations should be for women to be investing for both working women and women who maybe stay at home spouses or parents.
That's a good question because I think that, yes, there is a marketing bias. What I also think that it's important to note that many women feel like investing is too complicated for them to understand. They also feel that investing is something that's for people who are already rich, and so if they are not wealthy, if they don't have kind of those people around them, it can be very difficult to kind of invite for them to self invite themselves to start to say, well, maybe I can
figure this out. Right. So one of the best things that I think is, you know, helpful for women is for them to know that statistically women are better investors than men. They've done studies and they've seen that we outperform men by I think it's like two or thre three percent that we outperform them in the long run. And so they're actually you know, very very well positioned
to learn about investing. The next thing is for them to kind of realize that you don't have to start investing with you know, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in the bank. You can start investing with ten dollars, which is a really radical concept, right like, because we were kind of always taught that you didn't, you know, start doing something until you had more of it to do. And I also think that many women are already investing
without them realizing it. Right, So if you have had past jobs where there's been a four to one K or a four or three B, you are already investing. And so you know, I don't think that any woman gets to say anymore while somebody else can handle that for me or I don't have to think about that. It's like if we don't learn how to do it, then the only person that suffers is us, right because we don't get the maximum you know, hard work from
our money that when it's starting to compound. And so I think that for many women, it's for them to know they're already in the game, whether or not they realize it, whether or not they want to be. You know, we all are kind of in We're all starting to invest,
whether we want to or not. And so if we could just say, well, you know what, where are the resources that I can start to learn about this on my own so that I can know what I'm invested in and what its purpose is, I think that that's ultimately going to be a huge, huge benefit to every single woman who's listening, right, regardless of if it's something that you thought of yourself before. And it's even more
important for women who aren't working. I believe to be investing because there are so many benefits to making sure that you're putting away some of your money for your future. That gives you just ultimately more choices.
Right.
That was when I started investing, was when I was a stay at home like really starting to invest, and so I think that many women can feel like, well, I don't have the extra money, but there are so many benefits to getting started anyway.
Nicole, what are some of those terms that you think when someone is kind of getting started, even if they don't have a lot of money to begin with, or they feel like, I don't actually know much about this, Like what are some of the base level terms that you think we should be aware of.
I think that the first term that I think got me the most excited with investing was first finding out how compound interests worked. So I kind of look back at my early twenties because I got married young, and my husband and I were not making a lot of money. We could kind of barely afford our wedding, and I had a lot of financial stress and anxiety around that. And so I remember when I was engaged and I
saw my first compound interest chart. It was you know of the two brothers where one starts investing at nineteen and he invests for seven years, and then his brother and then he stops investing, and then his older brother starts investing seven years later and then ends up investing for the rest of his life, and between the two brothers, you end up seeing that the younger brother, who only invested for seven years, ends up with almost a million
dollars more than his older brother, who invested like five times his amount. And that was the first time that I really had like the fire under me realizing that time was actually my best asset when it came to investing. It wasn't necessarily how much money I made or what my strategy was, but rather that I just learned the
basics to get started. And I kind of look back at that time as my million dollar mistake, because even after seeing that compound interest chart, it still took me another six years to start feeling comfortable to invest in my own And so I think for me, I didn't know the resources of where to get started, and so some really really great resource versus that started me on my journey of learning about the financial independence movement, which Jill,
I don't know, are you guys into the financial independence movement at all?
We dabble.
For sure, we are not all the way fire, but absolutely we will talk about, you know, ways to kind of achieve some levels of financial freedom in ways that makes sense for each individual.
Yeah. So for me, I grew up watching I grew up in a Puerto Rican American household and my dad was a very successful software engineer in the early two thousands, and I watched him just really fret about his own retirement most of my childhood, my adolescents, my young adult life, and so I had this innate fear in me about retirement and about this concept of being financially secure that I brought with me everywhere when it came to money. I thought about it when I was accepting my first job,
when I stayed at home. And so when I learned about the financial independence movement, that was the first time that I realized, like, wow, you know, if I can learn how to invest and how to just do so early, then and I could kind of not have those same worries that my dad had, right, like if I could learn how to prioritize it as early as possible. And so when I kind of disassociated the concept of retirement being attached to investing and use the phrase instead financial independence,
which really is the same thing. Retirement and financial independence are the same thing.
It's just a.
Much sexier word, right, And so financial independence is just when you're able to no longer have to trade your time for money, but rather your money makes you enough money that you can stop working. And so, as an early twenty mid twenty year old, I became very interested in this concept, and that's what really spurred me to get started investing and to start prioritizing it, And so
I think those two concepts. If somebody you know decides for the first time today to take a look at a compound interest calculator with their age as well as to see for them, Okay, how much money do I need to be considered financially independent? Right, that can be a really powerful concept for people to be motivated by. I see it. Like for me, it was because once I got that number, right, I knew that we needed X amount when we were going to be able to retire.
Then it just became a game of Okay, how can I figure out how to find this extra money? So for me, I started, you know, nanning on the side. I did some side hustles, and I was motivated because I knew that, Okay, if I could put this extra
money here, then I can hit that. So at age twenty seven, my husband and I we had made fifty six thousand on average since we had gotten married, and we collectively had our first one hundred thousand saved in investment accounts, and that was what we hit when we hit coast fire, which is basically a term for those of you listening who might not have heard that before.
It's when you've saved enough money in your investment accounts and invested it that even if you never invest another dollar, you can know that you're going to retire right and you're going to be able to retire safely. And as a kid who watched my parents so much about their retirement, that hitting that achievement was I didn't realize like the stress I was carrying around in my life just not knowing if I was going to end up in that same place, wondering am I going to work till the day I die?
Yeah, it's so powerful to recognize that we can learn the skill, that there are resources available for us to understand, even if we feel completely inadequate, inept at this topic. And like you're saying, just the power of compound interest, that we can utilize that to our advantage, even if we're only bringing home, you know, sixty thousand dollars a year, that it still is possible if we start, even if
we start small, if we start early. And so I think it's really helpful to hear stories like yours of Yeah, people laugh at me, but I still kept going, compound interest is on my side. Okay, So we're listening to this and we're hearing, yeah, I want to start, I want to do something, or I want to keep going. How do you recommend women choose which accounts our best, especially for those who might be self employed or you know,
maybe stay at home. How do we go about choosing what's going to be right for us when it comes to investing.
Well, I think the first place to start is with a good education. So some of my favorite books are I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sati. Another really great book is The Simple Path to Wealth by J. L.
Collins.
And then if you are somebody who's a total numbers nerd, which I kind of am. And so another great book is called The Little Common Sense Book of Investing by John C. Bogel, who was the creator of Guard and so he writes a really great statistics book essentially like it's just an It's the whole book is a math problem, and he writes about how the average person can learn how to invest simply and get their fair share of
market returns. So I think a lot of women kind of think that if they're going to start investing, they need to learn how to be like a stock trader, and that is not the case. That's not statistically the best case for many women. So I would start with those resources because that gives you a knowledge of like, Okay, what am I going to buy in these accounts? Because many people say should I invest in my four one K?
Should I invest in my wrath ira? But it's like, you know, really what matters is what are you going to buy within those And then the second part of that is you choose which account based on the tax benefits typically and the tax consequences of being in that account. So in America, there's like if you're a US based listener, there's a couple main types of accounts. There is retirement
accounts where you pay your taxes upfront. That would be something like a roth ira, where you use after tax money. There is a there are retirement accounts and different accounts that you get to save on taxes today, so you pay before taxes and then it grows tax free, but then when you have to take it out later, you're going to pay taxes on it, whereas the first one you pay taxes today, it grows tax free and then
you can take it out without tax. And then the third option is that there is you know, the regular old investment account or a brokerage account where you use after tax money, it grows with tax consequences, and then you also pay taxes a different tax rate depending on when you take it out. So I think for many people, most of us aren't utilizing the tax benefited accounts that we have because there's certain maximums and minimum not minimums,
but there's maximums every single year. And so I think that if you're just getting started investing, one of the best things you can do is pick which tax benefited account you're going to use, and then understand what you're going to be investing in so that you can make good decisions in the long run, because I think one of the worst things that can happen to someone, I mean, I guess this isn't the worst thing. The worst thing
would be like losing a kid or something. But the one of the worst investing with takes that can happen is when you know, maybe you start investing because somebody told you told you to write, or you meet up with an advisor and they say, well, I'm going to invest it in here for you, but you don't really understand why you're that, why you're in that fund, what the fees are how it works, and so all it takes is a couple of years later, the political climate changes,
the economic climate changes, and then all of a sudden you say, oh, I want to switch what I'm doing. And I think that that's really where people end up
making bigger errors. I think about you know, I don't want to talk about anyone specifically, but I know someone in my life who, you know, they just didn't have investing education, and when they retired, they it was you know, two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight hit and because they didn't have a financial education, they ended up pulling out all of their money during that time and that really changed the rest of their retirement and
still affects them today. And so I kind of always go back to this idea of, you know, you can hire the best advisors in the world, but if you don't have a financial education, that's going to be your biggest liability. I think that's so true.
I I've always wondered when so when we are talking about retirement accounts. We live in Florida, where we only have a federal tax, we don't have a state tax.
We're not highly taxed, so for us, it makes a lot more sense to invest money that is, you know already been taxed, right, But for people who are in states and cities where there is not just a federal tax but also a state tax and then potentially also a city tax, do you find that it can go either way on whether you're recommending like or the number could go either way, and whether like a pre tax or a post tax retirement account could work, or because
I feel like there's just so much across the board that's like, get a roth Ira, get a wroth Ira. But is it always the best choice, especially in those highly taxed areas.
Yeah, I think that's a really good question. One. I mean, who doesn't love a roth Ira. And I don't know what part of Florida you're in, but I grew up in Florida too, So my dad always talks about the tax benefits of Florida.
Yeah, love it. You gotta love it beautiful.
So, and it's funny because I live in Massachusetts now, which is affectionately known as Taxachusetts, and so I can see the differences. My good friend, who's a CPA, so a certified public accountant, she is huge into the fact that you know, this is a divisive issue. Like if you talk to one CPA, they'll have one opinion, another one will have a different one. So it's kind of a you can make an argument for both, but she always is on the side of like I always take
the tax benefit today. You should never ever not take a tax benefit today because you can always you know, roll you can always roll over your account. That's a four to one case, so that would be a account that you use post or sorry pre tax money into. You can always roll that into a roth IRA later and pay tax, but you can do it at a time when you make less money. So most people in their thirties are making the height of what they're making, so there is a argument to say, well, you'll be
making less later, so better to pay taxes later. But all of that is really, I think where a lot of women get overwhelmed. Right. My initial advice for someone is, if you are out of high interest at if you have at least one month of cash savings, you should be investing a portion of your money every single month automatically, and it's typically going to be best to use one of the tax benefited accounts. You're not going to shoot
yourself in a foot in the foot either way. But as long as you're using the tax benefits that we have here in the US to your favor and you know what you're investing in and why, right, that's going to be what puts you ahead of the pack. Right. It's why the average American I think this year has like about four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in their retirement,
which is not enough to be able to retire. And so if you can just pick which tax advantage account you're going to use, there are always some really general rules, like you always want to take your company. If they offer you a match, you want to invest up to that match, and then after that, depending on what other benefits they have, you would then switch potentially to a
roth Ira. Some people make too much money for that and they just have to stick with the flour one K. If you're self employed, you can choose between similar accoun options that are for self employed people, a step I RAY or an individual But at the end of the day, right, what's going to make you the most money as an investor is going to be did you get yourself out of high interest stack?
Do you have at.
Least a month savings? If not, more. And then the last part is how much money are you going to put in every single month? Like that's that's a budgeting thing, and that's something I feel for many women. We're like, well, we know how to do it, right. If we want to find three to five hundred dollars to do something we want, we can find it. And so if you're able to find out how to do that with investing, you're going to be in such a better place.
Yeah.
Absolutely, time in the market is better than which tax advantage account you choose. It's all samantaic. You choose one, as long as you choose one of them. The rest is semantics. And yeah, we've always I've you know, never had a self employed retirement account. We've always had access to either a four oh and K or a roth Ira. So we've kept it as simple as possible kind of just like for that reason. So many other things can
be complicated, but this doesn't need to be. Okay, So once we feel like retirement is covered, we know how much we want to save every month, we've kind of hit that goal and we want to still be you know, we've got some extra money now and we want to be using it efficiently. Not just sitting around making point oh one percent in the checking account. Where should we look next to invest outside of retirement accounts?
I think that if you are somebody who is looking to build wealth and you're wanting to have the money to do that, I first usually like to ask, like, what are the goals associated with that? Because that really tells you where to be looking at for your investments. For some people, you know, their goal is they want to have more time with their kids, and or they want to spend less time working. Maybe they're like really
a slave to their corporate job. And so the next part of that might be starting a business, right because a business allows them to control their own hours, It allows them to you know, take better control of their time. That's obviously a very risky way because forty percent of businesses I think make it or forty percent don't make it. I don't remember which stat that is, but that's one way to build wealth. Another way is, you know, many
people look down the real estate pathway. And then the last one, which is my favorite one, is just you can use retirement accounts not just for your own retirement.
There's a lot different ways that you're legally allowed to use that money, and so many people just say, well, if I'm covered to be able to retire at sixty five, well what would happen if I could retire at forty or forty five or fifty, Right, And so knowing what your goal is really can help you decide which is the best way to use that money, to use that extra money that you want to make work for you
the best, right. But I think that there I always say that there's like a million ways to make money, but not every single way is perfect. There's no like you will be successful if you do X, and you will not be successful if you do why Because you know I could start a farming business and fail. You could start one and totally rocket. The difference is our goals, our motivation, And so I think that knowing why you want to build well for what purpose can really help
you with the plan of how to get there. That.
Yeah, We've had a lot of people ask us how to invest more sustainably, and like, the first thing I come to is like, well if the next like stage most people say after the stock market is real estate, and I feel like it's it's not for everyone, and I'm finding it's not for me but I'm definitely glad we tried it and still like recommend it with that caveat, but it is a way like I have found as infuriated as I get with private equity backed like real estate, and how hard it is for people to get in
there now without some kind of backing, Like you can invest really well into your local community by being a really ethical landlord, and it's a really good way to build wealth and be kind to people. So yeah, I'm loving that aspect of It's really the only aspect that keeps me going in it, I think, do you know.
What keeps me going though? And it's got a lot of aspects to it.
And is super ethical and sustainable and kind not backed by private equity. The Bill of the week. That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams.
Maybe you've paid off.
Your mortgage, maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills, bffalo bills, Bill Clinton. This is the bill of the week, Nicole. Every week we ask our listeners or our guests to share with us their favorite bill for the week, and we would love to hear yours.
So I actually took this as your least favorite bill of the week. That's how I had prepared for this. So I mentioned at the beginning of this that we moved from Denver to or we moved to Massachusetts. So we live in Massachusetts now, which is a very high cost of living area, and we have just gotten through our first winter. Well we're not through it. We're kind
of in the midst of it. Because it's March. And if you can believe it, would you like to hear my energy bill this past month in the month of February. Who wants to hear it?
Give it to us, Give it to us.
How old is your home? Let's preface it.
So I'm going to tell you this. Okay, First thing is I rent this home because I am a landlord on my past home in Colorado, so I owned that home and then we decided to move kind of quickly because of some health stuff in my family, and we rented this house that you know is a bit older. It's from the seventies, right, yeah, seventies, And there's a very cold area in the house. It's not insulated very well. But I mean I lived in Arizona, so I know high electric costs or so I thought.
Is that so your heat is primarily primarily electric?
Well, this is the thing. Our heat is oil.
Okay.
So I'm about to give you our electric bill, our electric bill in the month of February. Get your like if just pull up those pants. This is horrible. Our electric bill was six hundred dollars. Plus we're paying home oil heating, okay, which comes out between two and three hundred dollars a month. That is the bill that I hate. This week I had budget. I'm like, you know, at the worst case, right, we're paying two three hundred dollars
a month for this home oil. Right, but we have this tiny part of our house where we've been running space heaters because it's so cold.
Oh, my goodness, six.
Hundred dollars everybody, Okay, So if you wanted to hate a bill today, I'll give you fine my electric bill for the month of February.
Oh we all hate that bill, Dang it you. It sounds like it would be worth investing in some insulation. Well you could probably spend six hundred dollars just sealing it all. Y, yeah, just throw some a pile of stuffed animals there.
All the kids stuffed animals just go in that corner and nobody lives there. There's your insulation that's red or friendly. If I own this house, it would be a different story. But thank god, I'm in this house for a year. We're finding where we're gonna buy next, and so I'm just like, it's all going.
To be okay. But I was surprised by that bill. He was not welcome.
That bill is a surprise in my head.
Now I'm not that good kind created a scenario in your house where there are I don't know how young your kids are if they have stuffed animals, but like lots of stuffed animals just in this area of the house, like all over the walls, on shelves, and they are the insulation. And it's a little creepy in my mind. But if you're a renter with kids, try it out and send me a picture and see if it is in reality as creepy as I am visioning it in my head.
I think it would be.
Yeah, if you all listening have a bill that you want to share, if it's about your least favorite bill and you just want to vent to us. If you are a person named Bill, you just want to vent about literally anything going on in your life. We can't wait to hear it. Visit Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash Bill leave it for us, And now it's time for.
The lighting around, all right, for today's vulnerability, I mean lightning round. Oh, let's talk about what was your first ever Big girl investment?
Okay, I'm here. Would you like to know every big Girl?
Yes, guest of honor?
Okay, okay, So I share this because this was probably one of the best days of my life. Okay, But so the year is twenty twenty. Okay, ooh, set the stage. The year is twenty twenty. And I had been investing just like a regular old girly does, a few hundred bucks a month, and I had a large emergency fund,
a little too large. And so when the stock market crashed, when COVID hit, right, I this sounds so horrible, but I was so excited, okay, because I knew stocks were on sale, and I knew that statistically the market always comes back. It's gonna be fine, right, But I had never done like a self managed trade before, like on the website, because at that time, I still had an advisor who was doing it. But I was like, I am going to buy more right now. Okay, that's what
I'm gonna do. I'm so excited to do it. But my dad and I have very different investing theologies or like methodologies. He is a stock trader, I'm not. And but I had to call my dad, okay, because my dad knows how to work the website and I didn't. Okay, which website?
Was it?
Fidelity? Like that one was the better one?
Dang?
Yeah? Yeah? And so I call my dad okay, and my dad and I'm like, Dad, I'm gonna invest in extra couple thousand dollars because the stock market's down and I don't know what buttons to press, okay, And my dad is like, Okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna wake up when the market wakes up, right because again, my dad's like a classic stock trader. And we wake up in the morning and I call my dad and my husband's on with me, you know, and
we purchased our first you know. It was again a really easy kind of situation because we weren't planning to sell it. We still hold those stocks today. But just to purchase it on my own and to make a big transaction. And I remember I couldn't even like sleep the night before. I was so excited. I just couldn't
believe that I was going to do this right. And so I just remember that day being so fun, and you know, me talking to my dad and being like, because it's confusing, right, these websites are made for people who do this professionally, and I was making again, a
very simple transaction. But I remember just how delighted I felt like, I felt so powerful, and that was really what pushed me down the path of saying, you know, let me see how I can do this a little more right, let me see how I can figure out how to invest in diversified low cost market funds like and do it on my own to save. And that was really the beginning of it. And so the market went down, I invested more money, so I didn't stop investing.
I was not trying to time the market. I just knew it was an opportunity, and I decided to put more money in and the market recovered maybe a week later, and I remember just being like, that was fun. That was so fun. It was like a little drug, which makes me it makes me sound like a crazy person. Okay, but I just remember, you know, it's like it made me feel like Warren Buffett. I mean, granted I wasn't investing that much money, but I felt like Warren Buffett. Okay, yeah,
that's it. I felt like, h.
When you can understand the stock market because of the research and the knowledge and the skills that you've built. Yeah, you feel like I really understand this and I can do it. And that's the kind of power and confidence that we can all have when we can understand and what is very understandable. Just we've not been given all the tools to enter into that world. But that's so exciting for me. Not nearly as cool as yours, although I felt so accomplished. Was opening are my roth Ira.
I think it's a great like one of those check like big life checkboxes, you know, like even larger than completing the to do list. But okay, I know that this is something that I need to be doing, and I'm finally at a place where I feel like I can be investing monthly in this Still not a ton, but that felt so good to know this is something that I should do and I finally did it? What about you, Jen? So my.
Fun investing story, I think would be I got to invest in an IPS which is an initial public offering, and they're very rare that you get to be that regular people get to get in on IPOs. But essentially the IPO is theoretically the lowest value that a stock will have, so you can get in and like, you know, make a good game. You got to hold it for
so long. Yeah, but we have been Airbnb hosts since twenty seventeen, so when Airbnb went public, they gave the opportunity for their hosts to invest in their IPO and it is still to this day the only single stock that I own. And it was just a couple thousand dollars and it has more than doubled. So yeah, but I was like, I am, I feel very cool, Like investing in an.
Eye that is very cool.
Yeah, that's super cool.
I remember seeing I think the CEO of Bumble when her company went public and it went on the market. She rang the bell I think of the Nasdaq with her toddler on her hip, and I was like, that's it. That is it, you know, like just being able to do something cool and like historic like that.
M hmmm, yeah, that's cool, we can do it. Thank you so much, Nicole for this really helpful and just strengthening message and encouragement to just keep digging in, start investing now. If people want more from you or can they find that.
Yeah, if you are listening to this and you say to yourself, I would love to learn more from a coach, learn more resources. You can follow us on Instagram. Our handle is Arise dot financial, dot coaching. We put on free investing classes just for women all the time because our goal is to dmail to find investing for women.
And if you want more individual help, like let's say you've been budgeting, you've been doing it and you feel like you can't find the extra money to get out of debt to finally start saving, and you say, you know, maybe maybe it's time for me to hire a financial coach. Consider us. You can always apply to work with us. We offer a free consult and we can talk about if we're a good fit to help you reach your financial goals.
Cool. Thanks so much, Nicole.
Thank you so much for coming on the show, Nicole.
Thank you for having me longtime dream.
All right, that was fun. I think it's really helpful to hear just more and more perspectives and voices about investing that can help to lower the barrier of entry
push away some of the stigma around it. I mean, I know, for me, I still feel inept in this category, and I got to wonder how much of that has to do with being socialized as a female and just kind of in general not totally entrusted or welcomed into this space or believed that this is information that I should hold rather than maybe you know, the men holding
this information. And so I think anytime we can talk with somebody who can break it down in an understandable way, in an approachable way, and an encouraging way to know we can do this regardless of what income level we may find ourselves at, that it's never too late or too early to begin, and we can really see a big difference in our financial landscape as a result. Yeah.
I hope this episode made spark some questions, more specific questions that we can get into. So if so, definitely head to our YouTube channel and click on one of the Sunday resets. There's going to be a link to leave a listener question and leave your question in there if you have a more specific question that we didn't answer in this episode, because we would love to get into more investing topics and answer really specific questions to
give you some strategies. Obviously we can't answer like personal like we need to actually know you and your situation things, but we will try to get as specific as we can speaking to a national and international audience.
Well, thanks so much everyone for listening, for being here. We hope it was helpful for you. We also are so appreciative of the kind reviews that you're leaving for us on our book by What you Love without Going Broke, like this one from Tuhana says, can't get enough five stars. I can't get enough of this book. I have the audiobook and listened in the car every chance I got. Now I want to take notes, so I bought the Kindle to start my new journey again. I wish they
would make this a college senior year must reach. I love that. I want to start a book a slash podcast club in my area, but I have not heard back from anyone in the community on Facebook. I am open to it. You both have inspired me in so many ways. I have always been a couponor but lost some of my hope and strength because of the medical issues and frustration. Wow, I'm so glad that this has been a bright spot in your journey.
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See you next time.
Gorugle Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. We have some exciting new things coming in April.
Yeah, we do.
I'm so excited. Two of them. I'll talk about one. The first one that's coming up the first Monday of April. It's called the Weekly Money Move. So it is a new thing that we are starting. You should go follow it Weekly Money Move on Instagram. We're gonna be sending it out on the friend letter on Mondays and on that Instagram page on Mondays, something you can do every single week to either stay on top of or organize
your finances. So if you've been in this game for a while, you still need to be doing annual checks on a lot of things, and it can come sometimes get overwhelming, like there's so many things you need to keep track of that you can just ignore them because you're like, I'm a I'm AARTI in this.
I'm fine.
No, But we're going to organize you for you and tell you what to check every week. And if you're feeling overwhelmed because you are not organized and you don't have anything here, we are with the step by step every week, one thing to do, and I'm very excited to get started on Monday.
You know what, I realize I need. It sounds like I'm queuing up the bill of the week. I'm not bite size, bite bite sized things. Just bite size. Give it to me, bite size, make it manageable. Cut it up for me before you hand it to me, is the thing. Don't chew it up. I don't I'm not a bird. Cut it up, but just these Okay, if I can do this five minute thing, this ten minute thing. I'm on track, and you're gonna keep serving me those
bite sized pieces. It's what I want. It's what I want in learning about like proper new attrition or exercise or like sometimes these these bigger topics feel so overwhelming and she's like, yeah, but like what do I do real time right? Agible thing? So we don't have it covered for you on like all the other parts, but we're going to do the financial part.
Yeah, we're not giving you something new every day. We're not going to overwhelm you with a deluge.
But no one wants a delusion. No bite yes, right, you know what else is bite size? Again? Not my own self queuing up sushi. Sushi. Sushi is bite size.
Yeah, and we will be having our annual planning meeting with sushi today.
That's exciting. That's coming up. That is exciting. Yeah. Okay, well, okay, get the friend letter, follow us on Instagram.
Bye.
So yeah,