Hi, I'm Kim Azzarelli. Welcome to this brand new season of Seneca's Conversations. In this season, we're launching a special five part series on young women's financial wellness in partnership with Secret Deodorant. It's called Secret Money Tips. We recently hosted the Young Women's Financial Wellness Form at the New York Stock Exchange in partnership with Secret, renowned financial experts gave young women their best advice about budgeting, saving, and
investing financial empowerment one oh one. Now we're bringing that advice to every young woman through this series. Today, I'm pleased to welcome Gigi Gonzalez, founder of the First Gen Mentor. The First Gen Mentor helps first generation students and young professionals of color entering the workplace confidently manage their money. Gigi, Welcome to the show.
Hi, Kim, thank you so much for having me on.
So tell us briefly about your personal money journey, starting from the time you were a girl.
Yeah, well, growing up in an immigrant household, money was not discussed at all. Any sort of conversations we ever did hear about money was we don't have enough of it, so don't bother us asking so from a young age, I just learned to never bring up the topic or to ask for any money. We used to go on vacations, but usually those vacations were pretty low key, like, you know, we'd go to the neighboring town. We'd probably grab like
lunch out of seven eleven. So that means that when I went to college and I embarked into adulthood, I didn't have any tools on how to navigate money, which meant I had to go through a lot of personal hardship surrounding money in my early twenties until I finally decided to self educate in my late twenties.
What was the big lesson that you took away early on that you realized you could do something about.
Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that in my twenties, I went through a lot of financial hardships. So to kind of give you a little more context, is, you know, I was caught in some bad roommate situations. I was caught in some toxic workplaces that caused me to burn out, and I found that the common denominator was a lack of money. And that was incredibly frustrating to find out because I thought, okay, well, I went to college, I did the quote unquote right thing. Why am I still
struggling with money? And that's when I realized this because I didn't know how to manage the little money.
That I did have.
So I started to self educate and I learned that I wasn't being intentional with my money. So I was going to work, putting in my eight hours, but I was not tracking where that money was going. I didn't have any goals. So once I learned how powerful it was to be intentional with my money and how creating those goals tracking that money, it was a complete game changer for me.
Wow, I wish I'd talked to you a lot earlier. And I think a lot of people feel that way that they wish they had known these tips much earlier in life. So from all of that, what are the favorite tools that you like to use?
Yeah, So when I was going through my financial journey, I had a lot of debt, nose savings, very minimal investments. What really helped me stay on track was a free app called Budget, and it was just a way to track exactly.
Where my money was going.
One that I would recommend as well is called Envy and that's one that my husband currently uses and he swears by it. He uses it all the time. That one is not free, but it's a one time three dollars payment.
So I know you at one time taught money classes or finance classes pro bono at the Why Is that a good place to learn about finance?
Oh? Absolutely, And the reason for that is because the why make sure to only recruit financial professionals in the area, So you're going to get people that actually know what they're talking about. They've worked in finance, and on top of that, they're donating their free time to teach others financial literacy, which means they have a passion for financial literacy. And that's exactly what you want to learn from people who genuinely want to teach it to help others.
So that's you now. So from your journey and from your experience, you really became a financial expert. And we're thrilled that you're on the show and that you're part of this overall secret program. You have four actionable to dos that every young woman can do. Can you tell us what those four to dos are? Yeah?
Of course. So it really boils down to these four points when anybody is getting started. So Number one, you first need to set goals for yourself. It's hard to get somewhere if you don't know where you're trying to go. So visualize what kind of lifestyle do you want to have? What city do you want to live in? Do you want to be able to afford vacations comfortably? Do you
want to buy a house some day? These are all things that are going to require money, and the clearer you get on what you want out a life, the easier it's going to be to move towards those financial goals, especially when the going gets tough. Number two, Please spend some time understanding your relationship to money. And I say that because we all have different experiences with money. What
comes to mind is my husband's relationship to money. You know what's funny is that he's married to a financial educator, but growing up, he had a negative relationship to money because his parents fought about money all the time. So even though I taught him all the ropes of the technicalities of how works, it still wouldn't stick for him
because he had that money trauma. So it's very important to understand if you have a negative relationship with money, understand where it came from, and then try to get some help to cope with those feelings. Thirdly, I would encourage anybody to self educate. And this is important because money isn't taught in school. It's usually not taught at home, especially if you come from an immigrant background. So it's going to be important for you to be proactive and
your financial journey and teach yourself how money works. And lastly, once you've learned how money works, it's going to be super important for you to track, monitor and adjust as needed. Your financial journey is not going to be just reading a couple of books or listening to a couple of podcasts and figuring it out. It probably took me two years to truly understand how money works, so you got to be patient with yourself.
Well, those are great tips. Again, set your goals, understand your own relationship to money, self educate, and then track and adjust as necessary. You know, one of the factors for young women, especially young women of color, is this pay gap which doesn't seem to go away. You have some advice about that. What is your advice?
Yeah, So, first, I would love any young woman listening to this recording to understand that the pay gap exists. I'd like to walk through some cuist statistics. So, according to lean In, women overall make sixteen percent less than white men, and as you break this down by women of color, the statistic does get worse. So, for example, Asian women make eighty six cents for every dollar that
a white male makes. White women make seventy three cents, Black women sixty four cents, Latinas fifty four cents, and Native women fifty one cents.
That's unbelievable.
Yeah, and it is unfortunate, I know, at least for latinas a number to get worse last year. So it's important to understand that the game is very much rigged against us from the beginning. But while we're working to make those systemic changes at the individual level, we need to do the best we can with our own situation. So what we can do is we need to learn how to negotiate. A lot of us aren't taught that that's even possible. Anytime that you get some sort of
job offer, please negotiate. The recruiter is expecting you to negotiate, So if you don't negotiate, you are leaving money on the table. As you have this job, please document your wins and communicate your value to your supervisor because that's going to come real handy when you need to negotiate.
For a raise.
And then lastly, I wish I would have learned this one sooner. If you do all those things and you're still not being paid accordingly, please go where you are valued. I wasted so much time thinking I just had to work harder because I wasn't being recognized or compensated appropriately. But really I was working at a place that was never going to see my value, so it was really
a waste of my time and efforts. It is harder to find those companies that truly value diverse talent, but I can promise you they exist.
This is amazing advice, and you know, I think a lot of what this whole series is about, and this whole program, to your point, is really getting the knowledge and the information you need to then go out and do what you have to do. Again, of course, on a systemic level, we're all working together to change things, but as you said, it's really important to take control the extent that you can on an individual level. And to that end, you have a new book coming out
later this year full of great money tips. Tell us the title and what it's about.
Yeah, of course. So my upcoming book is called Gutura in Cash Money Lessons from the First Gen mentor for Managing Finances and Cultural Expectations. And this book was really inspired by my own personal finance journey. So I mentioned earlier, I wasn't taught how money works. So what I did is I self taught myself by reading over fifty personal finance books.
Wow.
But yeah, although I did learn a lot about how money works. I learned all the technicalities of budgeting, investing, all that good stuff, what I found were that these ymail authors didn't account for how I'd be navigating money as a bicultro Latina. So the problems that I would come across is that I would use the teachings I would get from these books, and then when I use it with my family, I got a lot of resistance yor like, hey, this isn't how we do things, or you're being selfish,
or you're being cheap, or you're being ungrateful. So I wanted to have a book to highlight those stories and share others how to navigate a bicultural world.
Well, we are really thrilled about this book coming out, and I think it's going to make a huge contribution. Again, thanks for everything you're doing for all of us, and thanks for joining us on the show. Thank you so much, Thanks so much, Gigi. Let's recap some of what we learned today. First, one of the most powerful tools you can have is to be intentional with your money. It's not enough to earn a decent paycheck to truly create your future, says Gig. You need to track where your
money's going and what you want to do with it. Second, self educate. Read all you can on personal finance. You can take courses at places like The Why, and watch for Gigi's personal finance book coming out later this year. Finally, a tip from Gigi to help equalize the pay gap as you progress in your career. When you get a job offer, always think about negotiating. If you don't, she says,
you'll probably end up leaving money on the table. I hope you enjoyed this special five part series, Secret Money Tips in partnership with Secret Deodorant on Seneca's Conversations. Thank you for listening, and please share today's podcast episode with others in your Life. This is Kim Azarelli, co author of Fast Forward and co founder of Seneca Women. Seneca's Conversations is a production of the Seneca Women podcast network
and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,