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Transcription
Winnie Sun:
... we're proud of you for getting in schools that you want to get into but you can't go to college because remember that project we invested in in Claremont, well, the partner went bankrupt and so they're pulling us into bankruptcy. And so it's not just paying for college but we got to worry about paying the house and keeping the family together, like financially how we're going to keep this in one piece.
Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of how to be a Financial Grownup. But you know what? Being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money. But it's okay, we're going to get there together. I'm going to bring you one money story from Financial Grownup one lesson and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.
Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Financial Grownup friends, imagine if you had really financially responsible parents. They saved, they invested for your education, and then right when it was go time, the money went poof. That happened to investment advisor, Winnie Sun of Sun Group Wealth Partners and how it unfolded will keep you on the edge of your seat. Welcome, everyone to the Financial Grownup podcast. We talk to high achievers like Winnie Sun about pivotal money-related events in their lives so we can all learn from them. And we keep it short to about 15 minutes because you're busy. And with that, let's get right to Ms. Sun. Her story has a big plot-twist and stay to the end because Winnie has some great advice for up-sizing your point-score when you shop so you can travel in high style and for free, in many cases, like she does. Here is Winnie Sun.
Bobbi Rebell:
Winnie Sun, you're a Financial Grownup. Welcome to the podcast.
Winnie Sun:
Thank you so much, Bobbi. Excited to be here.
Bobbi Rebell:
Congratulations on all of your success with Sun Group Wealth Partners. You're also known as the Wealth Whisperer and of course, you were on the CNBC Financial Advisor Council which is a huge honor. You're all over the media and you're social media is amazing. I'm so excited to have you on.
Winnie Sun:
Thank you, I'm excited to be here with you.
Bobbi Rebell:
And you brought a wonderful bunny story that has a great happy ending. You were a senior in high school and your parents came to you with some shocking news.
Winnie Sun:
Yes. Yes. I was so excited about going to college. It's senior year, we're having a grad night and everything else. And I came home one day and I could tell there was something going on. I mean, there was just something going on with my parents. And my mom, I could tell, she came to talk to me. And my mom, just to give you some reference is like literally hard as nails. I mean, she's like an iron fist. I mean, she's a person that if you came home with anything less than an A or an A-plus, we would be in big, serious trouble.
Bobbi Rebell:
Right. So all of high school you're working hard. You're getting the straight As to go to a top school.
Winnie Sun:
Right. So I got into all the schools I wanted to and then she says, "I just want to let you know, we're proud of you for getting in schools that you want to get into but you can't go to college because remember that project we invested in in Claremont, well the partner went bankrupt and so they're pulling us into bankruptcy. And so It's not just paying for college but we got to worry about paying the house and keeping the family together. Like financially, how we're going to keep this in one piece." And so that was really sort of my first, big, scary financial moment.
Bobbi Rebell:
And had you had any inkling that this was such a risky project? Had you ever been involved in the family finances before?
Winnie Sun:
No, not at all. And in fact, I had zero interest in finances. It was really a project they had invested. I heard about that they were investing in this project but I didn't know my college education depended on this. They never even told me that. All I knew is that they invested in something and it would be for our future and all I needed to worry about was my grades. Because they were always really highly responsible with money. I mean, my family didn't spend money on anything. I remember going to Burger King for a 39 cent hamburger and this was like a treat. We do this maybe once a quarter. We just didn't spend money. And my parents were like incredible savers. They just invested in the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Bobbi Rebell:
This came as quite a shock. Had you had a job in high school at all? Did you have your own income in any way?
Winnie Sun:
I did. I worked all through high school. My earliest childhood memory of making money was when I was seven years old. I was selling avocados in my front yard. And then at nine years old, I was working in my parent's restaurant. I worked the cashier and I remember this because this is before really high-end equipment. And I actually memorized the tax card or tax code.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wow.
Winnie Sun:
I memorized how much sales tax was on every item, like soda or pizza. Yeah, that's what I did.
Bobbi Rebell:
So your family was hard working. They were budget minded. They were frugal.
Winnie Sun:
Yes.
Bobbi Rebell:
And they were investing for the future where they just put too much into the wrong investment at the wrong time, unfortunately.
Winnie Sun:
Exactly.
Bobbi Rebell:
And so tell us more about how that then played out.
Winnie Sun:
I decided to go to UCLA, which was local, instead of I was looking at Caltech, I was looking at Stanford. But financially, UCLA made a lot of sense because it was just about an hour and a half away from home and it was a public school. And I was excited about going there. And it also gave me an opportunity to start working right away because I had worked that summer right after the news hit senior year and then as soon as I started as a freshman at UCLA, I remember right after my first class that afternoon I made my way to the internship office to find work.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wow. And meanwhile, how were your parents recovering? What happened to them?
Winnie Sun:
Well, my mom is tough as nails, like I told you. So she got back to work. I mean, they were already in the real estate business. So my mom just ended up working that much harder and my dad helped here wherever he could. And then my job was just to not only do well in school, but just really find work. So I was juggling like two or three jobs throughout college.
Bobbi Rebell:
What kind of jobs? What jobs did you have?
Winnie Sun:
Well, I actually work access control at night which is where people want to get into dorms but you have to check their ID. So I worked the night shift. And then during the day, I'd go to class. And then I had an internship at a television show called Jones & Jury. And then I worked at an entertainment company as well. So I just did whatever I could do.
Bobbi Rebell:
Wow. You were busy.
Winnie Sun:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bobbi Rebell:
And did you then have to help your parents with their finances?
Winnie Sun:
I did. So I got student loans and all that. And then whatever money that I could ... which wasn't a lot, whatever I could then I would give to my mom and help her out. And then the rest I just had to have enough money to pay for gas to go to work or some school supplies, books and things like that, that was all my responsibility.
Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners, what is the takeaway from this story for them?
Winnie Sun:
You know, I look back and I think it was the biggest blessing that could have happened. Because when you have financial hardship, it's all about perspective. Understand that this actually makes you much stronger financially and mentally when you get older. So I look at my own kids and sometimes I feel bad because they're not going to have these sort of same experiences because that struggle is what makes us better at money and in our entrepreneur spirit. But really, understand that it's important to see our options and also to have good financial literacy and have a second opinion on what you're doing.
Bobbi Rebell:
I know you work very hard at educating so many people with all of your different media projects. One thing you are passionate about, especially as we get towards the holidays is travel and leveraging your travel points. And you're going to share some of your tips for this because we're all obsessed with points. Let's be honest, we love points. There's something about them that gives ... It's almost like playing the lottery, like what will I choose now. You feel like you've won but there are ways you can win bigger with them. So tell us, what's your everyday money tip?
Winnie Sun:
I love this. You are my people. So my biggest thing is I love like the whole work-life balancing. And people talk about it all the time but I think you really have to be mindful and I do this to the fullest extent. So yes, you and I work a ton but on my off days, and that's like weekends or any holiday, I try to take my three kids and my husband all over the world. We are like travel maniacs. And so the best way I love to travel is to travel for free and how I do that is I travel on points. A lot of people think oh, yeah, I have a points credit card and a cashback card, I do that and I hear that all the time.
Bobbi Rebell:
But it takes so long to get enough points. You have a family of five, Winnie, that's a lot of points.
Winnie Sun:
But I get a lot of points.
Bobbi Rebell:
How do you get them all?
Winnie Sun:
I might teach you some ways. Especially going to the holidays because you and I talk about this. I love this idea. Now, during the holidays, you can actually rack up points much more quickly than any time during the year. And the best way to do that is to leverage normally credit cards that give you a nice healthy points like sort of multiply on where you spend. But also take a look at where you travel on, like, for example, if you travel on certain airlines that take American or Delta or United, each of these airlines has what they call a shopping portal. And if you go to these shopping portals, it gets to the website that you want to shop at, you can actually double dip and sometimes triple dip on points meaning the credit cards will give you points for that purchase and then the airline portal will give you miles for that same exact purchase. And this could be all sort of regular companies such as Target, and Walmart, and Amazon, typical stores that you and I would shop at. It's just a matter of taking that extra step.
Winnie Sun:
So what I always say is don't shop directly on a website itself. So let's say you want to buy at Target. Instead of going to the Target website, you should always go to either the airline portal or the credit card portal and then link over to Target. Because by doing that extra step, it will take like an extra 30 seconds, you'll then get an extra level of either points or miles which adds up really quickly.
Winnie Sun:
And then once you have the points, then take a look at your credit cards because your credit cards will often do bonus deals, airline deals, or hotel deals, and you can get like sometimes up to an extra 40, 50, even 100% more on your points for the same exact purchase.
Bobbi Rebell:
Amazing. Amazing. Tell me more about what's going on with you. I know your baby right now is your LinkedIn series. Tell us more about that.
Winnie Sun:
Yes. We got really excited about doing this and I think the project happened around, my goodness, about six months ago. And we said, you know, let's try something because people don't really have all day to hear about financial tips nor do they have the interest to learn about financial tips every day. What if we made these tips no longer than 90 seconds? Would they listen? So the videos themselves are every single day on LinkedIn and they're 90 seconds. And so if you literally just watch the videos, you'll get one really meaningful financial tip every single day. And we did that every day for I think almost six months and we plan to actually continue it even more so into the new year. A lot of people have been asking us to go Saturday and Sunday which we don't go right now.
Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, my gosh.
Winnie Sun:
But I think we're going to do that. I think we're going to be that crazy.
Bobbi Rebell:
Well, I am blown away by all of this. I love seeing you on so many different media outlets. Tell us more about where else besides LinkedIn people can find you, follow you, and learn more about you.
Winnie Sun:
Well, thank you. Well, you can get free follow me on Forbes. I've been writing, contributing to them for about five years now. I do a lot of work with CMBC and I'm the regular money person on Good Day LA for those of you who are in California. But otherwise, join me on Twitter. I have actually the largest financial tweet chat every single Wednesday and we cover not only financial things but entrepreneur topic, social media marketing, all that fun stuff to give you chance to really increase what you carry in your wallet.
Bobbi Rebell:
Love it all. Thank you, Winnie.
Winnie Sun:
Thank you.
Bobbi Rebell:
Hey everyone. Love ending on such a positive note. Financial Grownup tip number one. Family sticks together. Yes, Winnie was absolutely frustrated and with good reason at how the financing for her college education fell apart. But her parents clearly love her very much and your tone of both forgiveness and being there for them when they needed her sets such a great example. Sure, things are simpler and more traditional when parents are helping their kids financially, but that doesn't preclude the value of having generations helping each other out if that's the way that things evolved.
Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two. Points tied to travel. Whether it is airlines or hotels have become a currency. Winnie likes to use her points for airplane tickets and upgrades but the possibilities are endless. In theory, we should all use that for what we get the most bang for our buck as but sometimes, there are other uses that just make sense, that just actually save us from spending actual cash. For example, this holiday season, if you have a lot of points, maybe consider buying gift cards for your favorite stores. Now, some stores within the credit card offers, some cards even run specials where you get more points than usual for certain designated retailers.
Bobbi Rebell:
So look for that. Look for the one and they're usually in market where it's normally let's say 20,000 points per this dollar amount but right now, it's going to be 25,000 points, whatever it may be. Then you could use those gift cards to buy presents for the holidays for your friends and family and not spend actual cash and certainly avoid running up credit card bills that you can't afford to pay or just kind of would rather not have. How about that one?
Bobbi Rebell:
All right. Thank you all for supporting the show. Please invite your friends to join us as well and [inaudible 00:14:14] your favorite ways to use your points. Instagram is Bobbi Rebell one, Twitter Bobbi Rebell, and you can always email us at hello@financialgrownup.com. And, of course, thank you to Winnie Sun for helping us all get one step closer to being Financial Grownups.
Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Steward and is a BRK Media production.
