Consultant Julie Finn loved her her consumer products strategy career and says  her employer, Deloitte, did everything possible to accommodate her lifestyle needs as a mom. So no one was more surprised  than she was when she opted for an early exit strategy. 

In Julie’s money story you will learn:

-How Julie left two major jobs but each one was a completely different exit strategy

-Julie’s strategy of applying the same financial criteria to job choices as wel do to other major financial choices like buying a home.

-How Julie’s employer, Deloitte, was family friendly and did what they could to accommodate her needs. 

-Why the decision to leave was not an obvious one

-The advice she received from mentors that led her to her life changing decision

In Julie’s money lesson you will learn:

-As well-intentioned as an employer may be- the job may not be a fit forever

-Age should not hold you back from leaving a job that is no longer the right fit for your goals and needs

-The importance of structure and planning in making a major career shift- and how to get it

In Julie’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-The importance of continuing to learn even as you progress through your career

-The value of online courses as well as coaching

-How to save money on skill building education

-Not to try to go it alone- reach and and get the right help

-How to make decisions about priorities when it comes to investing in further career education

Bobbi and Julie also talk about:

-The Working Mothers Mentor Podcast

-Julie’s career coaching for executive women

-How side hustles can help in the decision making process

-How listeners can support working moms, especially who don’t know where to get the help they need

In My Take you will learn:

-The importance of a gracious exit from a company

-Why it is important strategically to stay in touch and on good terms with co-workers and supervisors even after you leave the job

-Ways to get discounts on online education courses

Episode Links

Learn more about Julie Finn and The Working Mother’s Mentor:

Theworkingmothersmentor

Follow Julie!

Twitter @mothersmentor

Instagram @theworkingmothersmentor

Facebook The Working Mothers Mentor + join her community!

 

 

IRS info on education deductions

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc513

 

This is a quick way to determine if you can get an education credit

https://www.irs.gov/help/ita/am-i-eligible-to-claim-an-education-credit

 

Udemy https://www.udemy.com/

Coursera https://www.coursera.org/

Teachable www.teachable.com

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Transcription

Julie Finn:
You know when I took a job, in my head it was my forever job. It was, "I'm going to retire from this company." Because I had the structure, because I had the support, I had a very clear plan and I had very clear strategy in place and that made all the difference.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grown Up. With me, financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to be a Financial Grownup. You know what? Being a grown up 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 a 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. I remember my first day at my first post college job as what was called a news associate at CNBC and thinking, and this is true, "This is literally the best job on the planet. I can't believe I got the job. There's money associated. It comes every two weeks. I would literally be happy doing this job forever." I wanted it to be my forever job. I hope you guys have all had that feeling, the excitement and optimism of working somewhere you hope you can stay forever.

Bobbi Rebell:
That was Julie Finn at Deloit. She climbed her way up in the consumer product strategy field and had finally made it. They were super family friendly there. Whatever she needed, they were going to work with her to make it happen. But then, something changed. We'll get to that in a sec.

Bobbi Rebell:
But just quickly, welcome to our new listeners. So excited the show continues to be discovered and thank you to all of you regulars for sharing it. Please keep telling your friends. Word of mouth is everything. It is the best way for people to find out about our program. It matters a lot. We keep it short, as you guys know, around 15 minutes, but a lot of our listeners like to stack a few together. Think of it like flex time for podcasts.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's get to Julie. She is a business coach and host of the Working Mother's Mentor Podcast, but it was not long ago that she was in what she thought was her forever job, until we now know, it wasn't. The story gets really interesting. Here is Julie Finn.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Julie Finn. You're a Financial Grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Julie Finn:
Bobbi, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I'm excited to learn so much from you because you are a business coach and you host the Working Mother Mentors Podcast, which is very popular. I hear you have some great guests on there.

Julie Finn:
Like you.

Bobbi Rebell:
You've actually turned a lot of your life experience into things that you are teaching so many others so that's great. Congratulations on all your success.

Julie Finn:
Thank you. I really appreciate it. It's been quite a journey. It's so fulfilling to be able to do work that you love and to know that you're serving others and empowering and inspiring others so it's been fantastic.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you brought a money story with you that has to do with something that can be very delicate and really has to be handled the right way in order to have the right financial future, financial exit, I should say and that is my not so sophisticated way of saying that you're going to talk about exit strategies and the different ways that you've handled them at different points in your career. Go for it.

Julie Finn:
Yes. That's exactly right and that's funny because when you sit down and think about it, career choices, the choices to take a job or to leave a job, are really some of the most important financial decisions that we make, but we often don't frame them that way. We frame buying a house or making an investment as a financial decision, but oftentimes when we think about career, we don't think about it that way. Particularly for those of us who have made decisions around leaving jobs later in our careers. I have two big leaps. One in my 30s and one in my 40s and those are massive decisions. When I look back over those choices that I've made, it's interesting to see how I've matured and I approached it very differently when I was in my 40s than I did when I was in my 30s.

Bobbi Rebell:
So let's get specific. Tell us what happened.

Julie Finn:
So when I was in my 30s, when I was making the decision to leave a job, it was really based on the fact that I'd just had my first child. I wanted to go part-time. I wasn't able to do that. I felt backed into a corner. It wasn't a positive, happy, leave. It wasn't a leave that was planned in advance. It wasn't strategized. It was more of a leap versus fast forward about ten years. I really worked hard with the company, and it was Deloit and they were super family friendly. They tried very hard to accommodate what I needed at that stage.

Julie Finn:
What I found is that dropping to part-time, which is what my intermediate solution was, wasn't the silver bullet that I envisioned it to be. I think for a lot of working moms, we think, "Wouldn't it be great if we could have a big corporate job with full benefits and work part-time and work from home?" That for me was the holy grail. It's what I had written down on a piece of paper that's what I wanted. That's what Deloit provided for me.

Julie Finn:
The decision to leave was not an obviously one. It was a really difficult one because I had a "good job". I knew that if I was going to make a leap from a job like that, it had to be based on something really compelling pulling me, and it had to be based on a really logical strategy.

Julie Finn:
What I did this time in making that decision, is I got support. I worked with coaches. I took online courses. I went to conferences. I made sure that I surrounded myself with others who made similar decisions. I sought out support from my mentors. It made the decision a positive one and it made the transition a successful one.

Julie Finn:
I found that even though I loved my company and I had a great time, I wasn't passionate about the work and I knew there was other work I wanted to be doing. Historically, I did consumer product strategy which is great training and I got to work with a lot of great clients and great people, but what I'm passionate about is inspiring and supporting women, particularly professional women in living the big life that they are here on earth to live, to overcome the fears and the doubts, to stand in their power.

Julie Finn:
I got frustrated working with so many really smart women who would doubt themselves and who often were making trade offs when children came into the mix and they didn't really know how to handle it. That's part of the reason why I started the Working Mothers Mentor, first as the podcast, to give people inspiring stories behind the scenes of really successful people to show you not only how they juggle everything but how they made career decisions, how they built their business, and to show you the messiness, not just the shiny, glossy stuff that you often see. Then also providing actual support through programs and coaching.

Julie Finn:
So the transition from Deloit has been a really positive one.

Bobbi Rebell:
And part of the takeaway of that is as good willed and as well intentioned as the company may be, that does not mean it is your forever job.

Julie Finn:
That's exactly right and that's part of the reason why it was such a hard decision because I was already over 40. When I took a job, in my head it was my forever job. It was, "I'm going to retire from this company." So making that decision to leap into entrepreneurship in my mid 40s, for a lot of people, it's a very scary time to make any kind of massive career change.

Julie Finn:
For me, part of my tip for people, is make sure if you're making any kind of pivot or massive change that you don't try to do it unsupported and you don't try to do it unguided.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from your story of leaving Deloit for your own entrepreneurial adventure?

Julie Finn:
The real lesson is don't make any big leap of any big decision unsupported and unguided. I think when I look back over the different decisions I've made in my career, early in my career I often felt like I was winging it whereas with this leap, because I had the structure, because I had the support, I had a very clear plan and I had very clear strategy in place and that made all the difference.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about your every day money tip because that also goes along this theme but let's get very specific. What is it? What could people do?

Julie Finn:
I think it's very important for us all, all professionals whatever level you are, to continue to invest in yourself in terms of your education and your access to expertise. What I mean by that is in addition to reading books and having mentors, think about online courses, think about investing in a coach, think about going to conferences. I think for a lot of us, particularly when the busyness of family life and trying to keep our career on track, when that comes in development seems to disappear. We might do something in our company. They'll have professional development but I'm talking about you personally, things that are important for you.

Julie Finn:
For me, like I said, part of what made the decision easier is the fact that I invested. I took online courses to improve the skills where I needed. I invested in coaches to give me the confidence where I needed it, to give me the push where I needed it, to give me the guidance where I needed. The important lesson here is don't try to go it alone. Make sure that you continue to invest in yourself and that way when you are making these big decisions you're completely educated around them.

Bobbi Rebell:
Now are the ways that people who maybe tight on money can better afford these things because it can get expensive and where is the balance there? Because you're struggling to pay your bills, you want to build up things like and emergency fund so you maybe can take the leap to be an entrepreneur. How do you know how much is the right amount to spend in time and money.

Julie Finn:
That's a really great question. In terms of time, I think for a lot of us, we would say we don't have enough time. So it is about making the decision to prioritize. I think when you take a step back and look, you can certainly find maybe it's two hours a week, maybe it's for a season, maybe it's a weekend conference. It's about the prioritization, making the time.

Julie Finn:
In terms of money, we should all start to work on having a development part of our budget. Again, if you take a look at your budget and if you look at things that maybe you're spending money on, getting your nails done, or getting your hair done, or something that feels maybe a little bit less necessarily. If you took some of those resources and invested in attending a conference or working with a coach or if you can't afford a coach one on one, investing in a group coaching program. That's often a way to have access to a very seasoned, experienced coach but without having to pay the fee that you would pay for one on one attention.

Julie Finn:
I think the other thing is there are a lot of great platforms where you can access online platforms that are less expensive like Udemy, Teachable. So you can find courses for as little as $69. Some of the more sophisticated courses obviously can cost you a thousand, two thousand dollars, but you can get started with any budget.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much. So tell us more about what's going on with you, because I know you offer some of this.

Julie Finn:
Yeah. We're having a great time over at the Working Mothers Mentors. In addition to the podcast, we have a group coaching program that's launching soon. That's really designed to support women who are considering leaving their corporate jobs in order to start a business either as what a lot of people affectionately call a side hustle or to fully replace their full time income. We also offer group coaching and one on one coaching programs. The idea is really to support working moms who often feel like they're juggling so much and they don't really know where to go for support. That's really our mission.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where were you a few years ago? I needed you so much. I'm so happy that you're here now though doing all this for so many people that will really benefit from it.

Julie Finn:
Thank you so much. That's exactly why I do it. I needed me ten years ago and I needed me again three years ago and I couldn't find me and so I decided to become me. So thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Before I let you go, tell us all the social channels and where people can find you.

Julie Finn:
Our website is theworkingmothersmentor.com and that's a great hub to find out more about our coaching programs, to find out more about the podcast. The podcast also called the Working Mother's Mentor. You can certainly access on any platform where you currently listen to podcasts like your podcast. On social, you can find you on Facebook and Instagram @theworkingmothersmentor. Twitter @mothersmentor and me personally, Julie Finn, on LinkedIn.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're the best, Julie.

Julie Finn:
Thank you, Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends. So companies have a long way to go towards keeping more women in the workplace, but Julie's story at least shows real progress at some. No hard feelings, it just didn't work out.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Tip #1: If and when you leave a company, take a we from Julie and be gracious. As great as Julie's story is, sometimes we don't have the best feelings when we leave a job, and it is really tempting to let them have it, but the truth is, those former coworkers and bosses could well become the best assets you have in your future business ventures.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Tip #2: Julie mentioned the importance of investing in continuing education throughout your career. You know I'm a big fan of this. Many online courses are actually free and those that are not often go on sale. Sometimes your employer will pay for your classes. Make sure that you know if there are any requirements like getting a certain grade. If your employer does not pay, you can also often deduct education from your taxes if it meets certain criteria.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm going to leave some links in the show notes bobbirebell.com/podcast/JuliFinn. I was also leave links to some popular online course websites like Udemy, which often has sales as I mentioned, classes can be under $10 there, and Coursera which has partnerships with universities including my alma mater, Penn.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks to Julie for candidly sharing her amicable breakup. It is one thing to storm out of a job you hate. It's another to just well not be that into it anymore and leave in search of finding your true love in terms of your career.

Bobbi Rebell:
So thank you to Julie for helping us realize sometimes life isn't so clear cut and getting us one step closer to being Financial Grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

 Legendary entrepreneur Shelley Zalis, Founder and CEO of The Female Quotient, The Girls Lounge, FQ Talent and FQ Impact, knew she needed to be fearless when she started her first company Online Testing Exchange. So when her relatives offered to fund the venture, she turned down the money, choosing instead to go to outside investors. 

 

In Shelley’s money story you will learn:

-How she had an idea to disrupt the online research field

-The pivotal decision she had to make when it came to raising the million dollars she needed to get her company started

-The concerns she had about her ability to take risks with family financing

-How her strong track record and achievements in the industry allowed her relatively easy access to financing her dream company

-Examples of specific risks she was able to take because she was not emotionally connected to her funding

In Shelley’s money lesson you will learn:

-The danger of being greedy and not wanting to share equity by taking outside financing

-The importance of making bold decisions and not playing it too safe when starting and building a business

In Shelley’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-The best ways to manage giving

-Shelley’s strategy to make sure the businesses she supports get the financing they need

-How Shelley makes sure her donations are always used as she intended

Bobbi and Shelley also talk about:

-Her latest venture, The Female Quotient

-The growing components of The Female Quotient including The Girls Lounge

-How The Female Quotient evolved from the Intelligence Quotient, and then the Emotional Quotient

-Men are welcome in the Girls Lounge

-The Girls Lounge is launching permanently on university campuses in over 122 countries

-FQ Talent and FQ Impact will launch soon

In My Take you will learn:

-The way to apply Shelley’s strategy to businesses you want to support

-Strategies to gain the experience and industry respect to be able to get others to buy in to your dreams when you go looking for funding

 

Episode links

Learn more about The Female Quotient https://www.thefemalequotient.com/

Follow Shelley and The Female Quotient!

Twitter: @shelleyzalis  @wearetfq

Instagram @shelleyzalis @wearetfq

Facebook: Shelley Zalis  The Female Quotient

---

Transcription

Shelley Zalis:
I thought well if I take my husband's and my parent's money, I would be too afraid to take chances. We always say, if you're building something new, you gotta be bold and brave and willing to take risks and fail before you succeed, but failure wouldn't have been an option and I did not want to play it safe. I needed to go way out there and take some significant risk.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of 'How To Be a Financial Grown up'. But you know what? Being a grown up is really hard, especially when it comes to money, but it's okay. We're gonna get there together. I'm gonna bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, financial grownups. It sounds like a dream come true to be able to avoid outside financing when you're starting a business. Keep it in the family, right? But let's be honest, how much risk would you really take with your parents or your spouse's money? And as our guest Shelley Zalis makes very clear, you need that risk to succeed. Not all money is created equal when it comes to funding startups. Welcome everyone. The show continues to grow, so thanks to all of you who have been telling your friends. If you're new, we work on flextime here. The podcast runs about 15 minutes or so. So pretty much anyone can fit it into their schedule, but if you have more time, go ahead and binge.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. Let's talk about Shelley Zalis. I first met her or should I say I first witnessed Shelley taking total command of a room of mesmerized women about a year ago. I was fortunate to be included in a dinner that she hosted and have been in awe ever since. She is a force. She is a disruptor in the online research business with OTX, Online Testing Exchange, that was her first company and now is taking aim at equality with The Female Quotient. Here is Shelley Zalis.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Shelley Zalis, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Shelley Zalis:
Oh, thank you. I hope I never grow up though, because once you're grown up, you feel you never have the opportunity to keep learning and I learn every day. So I hope that I never grow up. I guess I'm like Peter Pan-

Bobbi Rebell:
Just financially.

Shelley Zalis:
Okay.

Bobbi Rebell:
So you can find all your youthful adventures, right?

Shelley Zalis:
I'll take it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay.

Shelley Zalis:
Perfect.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I'm a huge fan of your company. You're CEO of The Female Quotient, which of course encompasses the Girls' Lounge. Tell us just a little bit about what it is before we get to your money story.

Shelley Zalis:
Thank you. First of all, I am your greatest fan 'cause you make every conversation, whether it's complicated or easy, fun, interactive, engaging-

Bobbi Rebell:
Well thank you.

Shelley Zalis:
And with solutions for change. So thank you for doing what you do as well. The Female Quotient, the name came ... first came the Intelligence Quotient, IQ, then the Emotional Quotient EQ, now the Female Quotient, FQ. When you put women in any equation, the equation gets better so that we can start creating solutions around diversity. We say that diversity is good for business and yet we're going backwards. So The Female Quotient is in the business of equality and we have four key pillars, the Girls' Lounge. There's a boys club, why not have a girls' lounge, a place where the minority acts and feels like the majority. Men are welcome, but they come into our world with our rules and they all feel comfortable. And we will be launching a permanent Girls' Lounge on university campuses in over 122 countries. And then we'll also be launching the FQ Talent, a talent business for corporate women to bring more visibility to women doing remarkable things. And then we also have a practice of equality, helping companies become a quality fit because we can help women all we want, but if we don't rewrite the rules than women will continue to fall out in middle management or what we call the messy middle. And then the fourth is the FQ Impact, which is our giving back with generosity really to women in developing markets.

Bobbi Rebell:
All this costs money and a lot of that money came from Online Testing Exchange, which you built earlier in your career. You have a money ... Sort of share with us about a strategic decision that you made, a psychological strategic decision you made about how to finance your first business venture. Tell us your money story, Shelley.

Shelley Zalis:
I needed a million dollars because I met a 21 year old. I was doing website testing, usability testing and I thought, "What if we migrate research from offline to online?" And I said to him, "Trevor, why don't you build this for me?" I said, "But I have no money." And I said, "But the second someone gives you money, I'll give you a million dollars. So believe in me, invest in me and I will give it back in a very significant way." And so I needed a million dollars and I had two options, go to a big company and get them to buy in, or my husband and my father both agree to give me half a million dollars to realize my dream and they believed in me.

Shelley Zalis:
I thought about that. I thought well that's the easy way just to go to my family, but it was gonna be hard. My husband was just starting out in medicine. We did not have that kind of money. We would have been putting everything in our savings account into this and of course my father wanted to help out. And I thought well, if I take my husband's and my parent's money, I would be too afraid to take chances. We always say if you're building something new, you gotta be bold and brave and willing to take risks and fail before you succeed. But failure wouldn't have been an option if I had my family's option and I did not want to play it safe. I needed to go way out there and take some significant risk and so I did not take their money and I went to Nielsen and they were the first to fund me. And as soon as they said yes, I handed a 21 year old a million dollar check.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you already had a relationship with Nielsen?

Shelley Zalis:
Yep. I went to Nielsen. I said, "I have a big idea." And they said, "Great. What do you need?" I said, "I need a million dollars." And that is the check that I gave to this young man that just said yes to me, believed in me, not knowing what the results would become. But what I had was passion and purpose and an unstoppable mindset. And I went in saying, "I really want to try something new. I don't know if it's gonna work, but if it does, it's certainly gonna be a game changer." And I sold that same company three times. So they took a good risk and they also got a great reward as a result of saying yes.

Bobbi Rebell:
When you look back at those early days, do you feel that there are risks that you took? Is there a specific example you can think of, of a risk that you took that you may have been more hesitant to take had you been financed by your relatives, by your husband and your ... well really, you and your husband and your father?

Shelley Zalis:
Absolutely. The first risk I took when I got to Nielsen was I said to Nielsen, "Not only do we need to pay this young man a million dollars, but I'm going to go break into the movie business." I was very well known in the consumer packaged good business, but I decided to go after the movie business because they had two and a half minute trailers versus just 30 second spots. They tested a lot of content and they needed data within 48 hours and security was very important for them, because you could close the movie before it opens if people panned the trailer. And so I thought if I could build a system around the hardest thing possible than doing 30 second spots for products that are womb to tomb would be very simple. So I said to Nielsen, "I'm gonna go to the studios and everything they're testing offline ..." And there was a monopoly. One guy owned the research business for the movie ... for the movie industry. I said, "Everything they test offline, I want to parallel test for free online so I could calibrate the scores and build the model and build the technology that would work." And that was very risky and that was very expensive and I wouldn't have been able to take those chances if I couldn't go way out there and build the [echo system 00:08:06] very quickly by parallel testing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right. Versus if you were investing ... If you had your father's money and your husband's money, you would have been watching every penny and maybe been a lot more reluctant to do something like that.

Shelley Zalis:
I would have played it safe and if you play it safe, there's no way you'll be really the first to own something. And I always said to myself, "I need to be the first, the second and the third." The first has to come up with this big idea, but they usually lose. So if I took my father and husband's money, I probably would have lost. So the first always comes up with a big idea. You have to make the investment, but you don't reap the benefit because the second one comes in, they copy everything you did, but they don't really know what's under the hood, and the third is the sweeper. You've now built an [echo system 00:08:53], everyone is buying in. They get the money and they win.

Bobbi Rebell:
So for our listeners, what is the takeaway here? What is the lesson for them, how they can apply it to their own lives?

Shelley Zalis:
Well I think number one, don't be greedy. Like had I've taken my husband's money and my father's money, I would have ... the equity would have stayed in the family and that was the positive. But the negative was I would have been risk averse and failure would not have been an option for me, and there is no companies that succeed building something that doesn't exist if you're not willing to fail before you succeed. Number two, when you are pioneering something that's never been done before, make sure you set yourself up in your own mind that you will have freedom to color out of the lines, that you're not gonna play it safe. You've gotta be bold, you've gotta be brave, you've gotta be willing to take chances, and you do need a partner that will support that mindset.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. Let's talk about your everyday money tip now though, because it sort of flips where you're seated. Because now instead of being the one receiving the money, now you're in a position to support businesses that you believe in.

Shelley Zalis:
I once had someone come to me, they needed $100,000.00 to create a project that I thought was very worthwhile. And so of course I gave them $10,000.00 and I said, "Here's $10,000.00 towards the hundred thousand." As it turns out, they never raised the additional $90,000.00 that they needed and I never got my money back, and that really bothered me. That's hard worked money for me that I really gave to this organization to make something happen. So now I designate all of my giving and so if someone needs 100,000 and I'm planning to give 10, I will say to them, "You go get your 90,000 and I will give you the last 10 so that I know the project is a go." Or I will designate my giving. Of I'm gonna give 10,000 to something, I will buy three dogs sniffing dogs or I will buy three rehabilitation machines in Tel HaShomer Hospital or for my children's bar in Bar Mitzvahs. I said to them, "10% of what you get for your Bar Mitzvah, we're gonna give to an organization." And we built a gym for handicapped children and my kids were able to go and see that that actually happened. Because when you can see the results of your giving, you want to give more.

Shelley Zalis:
My mother always used to tell me that giving is like wearing a new pair of shoes. When you put them on the first time, it pinches but the more you wear them, the more comfortable you get. Like I just was at the MAKERS Conference recently and I met a young girl. She's 12 years old from India living in Colorado and she found a technology, a way to remove lead from water and she needed $25,000.00 for her dream and I thought, if they're asking everyone in the audience and someone says, "I'll give you 500, I'll give you a thousand." She might've ended up with 3,000 out of 25 and one, it would have been discouraging for her and two, she would not have been able to realize her dreams. If I'm gonna give, I want to know that it's gonna make a difference and help you go where you need to go.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love that. All right, Shelley. Let's talk quickly about the Girls' Lounge and The Female Quotient and what is happening in the rest of 2018.

Shelley Zalis:
Oh, thank you. So we are doing Girls' Lounge popups. It is a space, as I said before, where the minority acts and feels like the majority. A space for women to connect, collaborate, activate, change together, but more importantly to support each other and have unplugged conversations. So we have popups at pretty much every major industry. We will be rolling out on college campuses starting in September. We already opened two, but we'll be opening 200 universities at a time. We have access to 3,800 universities in 122 countries. Our FQ talent business will be launched in about three months. We are building it right now with wire frames.

Bobbi Rebell:
What will that be?

Shelley Zalis:
It will be a talent agency for senior women, placing women in keynotes. I'm just so sick of hearing that there's no women for keynote speeches-

Bobbi Rebell:
I know. I've heard that too, Shelley. It's amazing.

Shelley Zalis:
It's ridiculous. We have all the women, the women are all here. We have over 17,000 corporate women in our community that are all bad ass in their own regard with their own stories to tell. So no excuses. Sorry, not sorry. There's plenty of women. So if you don't find them, then that's just a poor excuse for not moving forward.

Bobbi Rebell:
Shelley, where can people find out more about all of this and be in touch with you and your team?

Shelley Zalis:
Thank you. You can follow us on social @shelleyzalis or @wearetfq and you can find us ... our website is The Female Quotient.

Bobbi Rebell:
Shelley, this has been amazing. Thank you so much.

Shelley Zalis:
Bobbi, you're amazing. Thank you for sharing our journey.

Bobbi Rebell:
All I can say is one day I hope I have the means to be able to make someone's dreams come true the way Shelley does. It's pretty incredible, but take her advice to heart. Financial grownup tip number one, when giving to a startup, maybe your friend is starting a business, has a page on Kickstarter. Don't be afraid to take a step back and see how they raised funds from other people first. If you wanna give something to show your support early on, well maybe make a small donation, but hold back and know what happens to your money if the project is not fully funded. Financial grownup tip number two, Shelley talks about being fearless and taking risks. But take that in the context of the fact that she already had a ton of experience in the industry. She knew what she was doing. Companies like Nielsen don't just hand you a million dollars. You need to know your stuff and have the credibility and the experience.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks so much for joining us. If you have not already, please subscribe and while you're there, make sure to go to settings and select auto downloads. You don't have to worry about missing any episodes and I want to hear your thoughts. DM on Instagram at bobbirebell1, on Twitter @bobbirebell, and of course, sign up for our newsletter more about the podcast at bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast. Shelley Zalis, truly fearless and so inspiring. Thank you Shelley 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 Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

Geometry of Wealth author Brian Portnoy invested time and money in an academic career, but made a career change that got a lot of backlash. But looking back that judgement only makes him more sure he made the right move. 

In Brian’s money story you will learn:

-How and why he made a major career change after investing years of time and money

-His candid thoughts about the field he left, and why it did not live up to his admittedly unrealistic expectations

-The financial and social reality of academic life

-How he was able to detach from external expectations of him by colleagues, family and friends

-The role long-term relationships and staying connected played in his ability to shift his career

-Why he had not been more informed before choosing his initial career

-How his life, and his happiness changed once he moved to the new and higher paying job

In Brian’s money lesson you will learn:

-If a situation doesn’t feel right, it’s better to make the change

-Trust your gut if it doesn’t feel right

-Have the courage of your convictions to move forward

In Brian’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-How giving money can create contentment

-Research shows that people who demonstrate generosity tend to be happier

-What Brian calls constructively selfish- when you tip more to someone that needs the money more than you. 

In My Take you will learn:

-My candid thoughts about not fully understanding the financial limitations of the career I chose

-Understanding not just the potential financial pay of an industry but also the culture and how that aligns with your values

Brian and Bobbi also talk about:

-Brian’s latest book “The Geometry of Wealth"

-What he means when he talks about a life of funded contentment

-How his book cuts through jargon

-The importance of defining what makes us happy before we start diving into investing

Episode Links

Learn ore about Brian at shapingwealth.com

Pick up a copy of Brian’s book: The Geometry of Wealth

Follow Brian!

Twitter @brianportnoy

LinkedIn Brian Portnoy

 

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Transcription

Brian Portnoy:
Most other people don't care. Your family cares, a few friends care, but for the most part, recognize that even if they say something negative or they put you down, they're not thinking about you before or after that conversation. They're just going on in their own life, and so you really don't owe them really any of your emotional energy.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup. 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 a 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. That was Geometry of Wealth author Brian Portnoy talking about a controversial career change he made, leaving an academic path that he had invested in both time and money, for a job in finance, and the judgment he faced by colleagues. He gets into some very candid comments that may surprise you to hear them actually said out loud. I'm curious to hear your reaction here, so please DM me after you listen and let me know what you think. On Instagram I'm @BobbiRebell1 and on Twitter @BobbiRebell.

Bobbi Rebell:
With that, let's get going. Here is Brian Portnoy. Hey Brian Portnoy, you are a financial grownup, welcome to the podcast.

Brian Portnoy:
Hi, nice to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
Congratulations on the success of your most recent book, The Geometry of Wealth.

Brian Portnoy:
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Bobbi Rebell:
And this follows by the way, your other book, Investor's Paradox. So, we're so happy to have you here, and you brought with you some great information, but before we talk more about your book and all that that offers our listeners, as you say, to live a life of funded contentment, and that has a lot to do with a big career decision that you made that was in part financially motivated, but there were other things going on as well. Tell us your story.

Brian Portnoy:
For the first roughly ten years of my career I was in academia. I earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago in political science, and I was having some success in terms of my writing, in terms of job offers from prestigious universities for tenure track positions, and on paper, everything was going really well. But I'll say that when I was honest with myself and with my fiancee at the time, I simply wasn't happy. It was a tough career.

Brian Portnoy:
Frankly from a monetary perspective, it was not lucrative. Being a graduate student, you're basically broke and then you go from being a graduate student to a professor when you're not broke per se, but you're really not making a lot of money. And the academic lifestyle involved moving around a lot, finding it hard to set roots in one place because you're looking for the right job at the right university.

Brian Portnoy:
The harder part was the expectations that others had of me that, hey, you're a smart guy and you've been working on and thinking about this for a long period of time, so to be able to go to those people, family, friends, my professors, my dissertation committee and say, "You know what, I want something different. I need something better for me," was not easy. I ended up just sort of putting a bunch of feelers out there.

Brian Portnoy:
One of them was to an old friend that I grew up with, who was working at a company called Morningstar, that some of your listeners might be familiar with. He was telling me about some of the investment research that they were doing, and even though my PhD was in political science, I was researching markets and economics as well and I found this job pretty intriguing, and I applied and I got it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did you know the kind of salaries that ... first of all, the years of investment, both in lost income and in paying tuition and then making very little money, and did you know what the end game was in terms of earning potential when you made those decisions at 21?

Brian Portnoy:
I really didn't, and I guess it's a little embarrassing to say that I didn't. But I was following my passion at the time, and so I figured, "Hey, I'm friendly with and I see the lifestyle of some of these professors, and it looks great to me." So I didn't ask any hard questions about the monetary element of it. I was on a day-to-day basis, pretty broke, and that didn't help my mood. I just hadn't given much thought to the career element. Not just the money, but the lifestyle, which was sort of moving around a lot, and frankly, the people. I'm not going to be critical of those who go into academia, many of my good friends are now senior professors all over the world. But I really wasn't enjoying sort of the social network that I found myself in.

Bobbi Rebell:
What do you mean by that?

Brian Portnoy:
I mean when I was hanging out with folks in the business world, and broadly speaking, I was having a good time, enjoying socializing. When I was hanging out with those in academia, I just didn't like the people very much. Despite the level of brilliance that you would find with folks, it was relatively narrow-minded. I just wasn't entirely comfortable.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what were the changes? You get the job at Morningstar. What were the changes in your overall life, but specifically financially, in terms of your potential and the path that you were now on? How did that change?

Brian Portnoy:
It changed significantly. Well, first of all, at that point I was married to somebody who had a very good six-figure salary. My starting salary at Morningstar I think was $41,000. This was in the year 2000. I was not pleased with that, but that's what the job offered and I wanted the job. But it was certainly about double or more, actually triple what I had been living on in graduate school. So, from that point of view, it was a step up in lifestyle. Plus I was married to somebody who had a very good job.

Brian Portnoy:
The more important thing is that I got into sort of a normal work routine in mainstream society. The lifestyle I had in academia, you set your own schedule, which sounds great. You work on whatever you want, which sounds great. But it was unstructured and frankly untethered from most everything going on in the world. It's remarkable how ignorant others can be. Something I've really taken to heart is that most other people don't care.

Brian Portnoy:
Your family cares, a few friends care, but for the most part, recognize that even if they say something negative or they put you down, they're not thinking about you before or after that conversation. They're just going on in their own life, and so you really don't owe them really any of your emotional energy.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the takeaway for our listeners from that story?

Brian Portnoy:
If you're in a situation where it just doesn't feel right, even if you're getting good reviews, even if you're making decent money, you owe it to yourself to step back and say, "Do I owe myself more than this?" And then have the courage of your convictions to push forward.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk a little bit about your everyday money tip, because it ties into the philosophy of your book, The Geometry of Wealth in that you have something you're going to suggest to people that at the moment will not make them wealthier, but it will help them lead a richer life.

Brian Portnoy:
I think we all think in different ways about the relationship between money and happiness, and whether money buys happiness. And I'll say somewhat controversially that money in some cases can buy happiness. As part of that, deeper forms of contentment in our lives are in part driven by our deliberate decisions to express gratitude to others, and to be generous. There is now a lot of research in psychology and neuroscience that shows that people who express gratitude, and people who demonstrate generosity tend to be happier.

Brian Portnoy:
I call it being constructively selfish, because when you can tip a little bit more at the restaurant where the waiter or waitress was really helpful, if you can every time you stay at a hotel, don't leave $1 or $2, leave $5 for somebody who probably needs the money more than you do, and even in a non-monetary sense, you have an Uber ride where the driver was really fantastic, make it a point to write them a review. Or if there's somebody at work or in your personal life who's really done you a solid, send them a text or call them and say, "Hey, thanks for doing that," without the expectation of reciprocity.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love that. All right, let's talk a little bit quickly about your book The Geometry of Wealth. As I mentioned, it's your second book, and it's a lot about the emotional side of investing and how to grow and stay wealthy, and get past the jargon. I mean, you talk about the fact that a lot of people in the investing industry make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Brian Portnoy:
That's right. The industry is filled with jargon and sometimes that is used deliberately to confuse people so that they can buy products or services that might not be appropriate for them. I think the biggest mistake all of us, including me, off and on for decades now, the biggest mistake that we make when it comes to our money is that we equate money with investing, and we immediately dive into the weeds, into the markets and stocks and all that kind of stuff. Which can be interesting, but very distracting.

Brian Portnoy:
The Geometry of Wealth makes the point that what we need to do is start at the beginning. And starting at the beginning is to define what really makes us happy in life. And there's a number of different nuances to that, but we should be looking to underwrite a contented life. We shouldn't be looking to just get rich, meaning just have more money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where can people find out more about you and The Geometry of Wealth: How to Shape a Life of Money and Meaning?

Brian Portnoy:
My personal website is shapingwealth.com. There you can learn more about my background. There's a link to both The Geometry of Wealth and The Investor's Paradox. That's the best place to start, and also my Twitter handle is @brianportnoy, and I'm quite active on Twitter writing about day-to-day financial decision-making.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you, Brian.

Brian Portnoy:
You're welcome.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, friends. I kind of have to take a deep breath after that, but I really admire Brian's fortitude in making a career change even after he had put so much into his academic career. Financial Grownup tip number one, when choosing a career path, find out the general cost to get there. Money and time. And the general payback. What can you expect? Sounds simple but most of us don't do it.

Bobbi Rebell:
I didn't do it, guys. I was a communications major at the University of Pennsylvania. That's not a cheap education. And while I did have what was called a concentration in the business school there, I never really mapped out and thought through what journalism paid. And you know what guys? Business news pays better than general news, in general. But journalism, not the most lucrative career.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two, Brian talked about more than money in why he wanted to leave. Industries have cultures, and sometimes those cultures are part of what makes a career attractive or not. So take that into consideration. You spend a lot of time in your career and with colleagues, so it has to be a match.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks to all of you for listening. We hope you are finding that investing the time is delivering value to you, and if it is, tell a friend, tell your relatives, tell your colleagues. Also, tell us. DM us on the social channels and learn more about the show at bobbirebell.com.

Bobbi Rebell:
Show notes can be found at bobbirebell.com/podcast/brianportnoy. In every show, it's always the same pattern, just switch out brianportnoy for the guest name, and you can find the show notes and links to everything that we talk about. And thanks to Brian for bringing us all one step closer to being Financial Grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

Modern Loss author Rebecca Soffer not only had to come to terms with losing her parents at a young age, she also had to reconcile complicated feelings about using the money she inherited after their deaths, to fund her dream home for her own growing family. 

In Rebecca’s money story you will learn:

-How she lost her mother when she was 30, and her father just a few years later

-Her conflicted feelings about the money she inherited

-How Rebecca approached managing her inheritance

-The decision to use it towards a home for her growing family

In Rebecca’s money lesson you will learn:

-Accept that receiving money from parents, or any relative after death is complicated and emotional

-It can be scary to make huge financial decisions after a loss

In Rebecca’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-How to spend less money on snacks, especially with kids

Bobbi and Rebecca also talk about

-Rebecca’s book, co-written with Gabrielle Birkner, Modern Loss

-The collection from essays from different authors offering unique but universally relatable stories

-Mindy Kaling’s reaction to the book, and how she is supporting Modern Loss

-Stephen Colbert’s role in Rebecca’s life and how his experiences influenced his decision to support the book

-The role of digital memories  on social media like Facebook, in our lives

In My Take you will learn:

-Have a plan for your social media. 

-Go to settings and set up a legacy contact

-My tips on how to avoid spending money on snacks when you are on the go

Episode Links:

Learn more about Rebecca’s platform at Modernloss.com

Order the book Modern Loss!

Follow Rebecca and Modern Loss

Instagram @modernloss

Twitter @modernloss

Facebook: Modern Loss

How to set up a legacy contact on Facebook:

Go to General Settings, click Manage account, and add a friend’s name

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Transcription

Rebecca Soffer:
I really connected this to, would my parents want me to buy this home? Would my parents want this for me? Would they think this is a waste? Is this how they'd want to take care of me? Would they want me to use it for something else? It really got into my head.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grown Up with me, certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grown Up. You know what? Being a grown up 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 a financial grown up, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, financial grown up friends. No amount of money can replace a loved one, but money does sometimes come after a loss, inheritance. Spending that money can be really complicated. Should it matter what they would want you to do? Is there a period of time that you should wait, and what if it allows you to do things you never could have done had they not passed away? In other words, it is complicated. Welcome, everyone. If you are new, glad you are joining us. You picked a really good episode. We try to keep them short, around 15 minutes, even though we hear many listeners bash them together. It's about flexibility and doing what works for you. When you subscribe, make sure to go into settings, hit auto download, automate your podcasts like you automate your bill paying, so you never miss one.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's get to our guest, Modern Loss author, Rebecca Soffer. She lost both of her parents at a relatively young age while she was a young adult working at the Stephen Colbert Show. It led her down an unexpected path. Here is Rebecca Soffer. Hey, Rebecca Soffer. You're a financial grown up. Welcome to the podcast.

Rebecca Soffer:
Thank you so much, and thank you for calling me a grown up. That feels really nice.

Bobbi Rebell:
You are very much a grown up, and we're going to talk about why and how you became a grown up before you really wanted to, which is kind of all of our stories, I think. You're also the author of one of the most talked about books of the summer. It's Modern Loss, candid conversations about grief, [inaudible 00:02:10]. I should say you're a co-author along with Gabrielle Birkner. This is a book that's being talked about by some very influential people including Mindy Kaling. I'm looking right at the front cover. It says, "I am not sure how a book about grief could also be witty and entertaining, but Modern Loss accomplishes just that." Your old boss, because you are like me, a TV veteran or survivor, however we want to put it.

Rebecca Soffer:
Refugee.

Bobbi Rebell:
Sticking with the theme here, trying to have a sense of humor. Stephen Colbert says, "Talking about loss can feel scary. These surprisingly candid and funny stories aren't about death. They're about life." I love that.

Rebecca Soffer:
I love it too.

Bobbi Rebell:
We're going to talk more about the book after your money story, but how did this come about, because you're young? You're still young.

Rebecca Soffer:
Thank you, new best friend. I would think it's safe to say that I did not grow up daydreaming about eventually co-founding a site and publication and writing a book about loss and grief in the modern age. That didn't really enter into my consciousness as a career option. I had other plans, but as it goes the universe had other plans for me. When I was 30 years old I was working in daily TV, as you mentioned, the Colbert Report, and my mother was killed in a car accident.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm so sorry.

Rebecca Soffer:
Thank you. It was terrible. It was the worst. I mean, I could talk about that for eons with you, but we don't have that much time. She was my best friend. She was my person. I had just seen her just an hour beforehand. Not only was it awful in a profound, profound loss, but I was 30. That's like the new 21, right? I really felt like a kid in many respects. It was also sudden, so I had no time to prepare for it. Then beyond that, three years later my dad died. He had a heart attack when he was traveling abroad.

Bobbi Rebell:
So sorry.

Rebecca Soffer:
Yeah, thanks. It was again, awful. It was terrible. It was isolating, and wrenching, and insanity-driving. By 34 I had no parents who were above ground. I did inherit some money because my parents did have some legal tender in their accounts, so by extension, some of that went to me. I had to figure out what to do with the portion that I could spend, when to spend it, what to spend it on, how much to spend it. The one really huge thing that I did, I went in with my husband on a down payment on a house in the Berkshires in rural Massachusetts. That sounds all nice and fancy, but the fact of the matter we lived in a one bedroom rent subsidized apartment in Manhattan, and then eventually kept living there with our one kid and our Labradoodle. It was nice and cramped.

Rebecca Soffer:
I never thought that we'd actually buy a place outside of the city in which we lived, but after my dad's death that all changed. I used part of this money that I was left, which I would have given all of my limbs to not have. I would have much rather had my parents with me to purchase this home with my husband, which was our foundation, which we were starting to create together.

Bobbi Rebell:
Do you think if you had had that money through some other means with your parents still alive you would have been able to make such a grown up decision?

Rebecca Soffer:
Absolutely, because for a couple years beforehand my husband had been saying, "Let's look at properties because interest rates are really low. I think this might be a good time to invest in something," keeping in mind that we were being very frugal with our rental in New York City. We had low overhead with regards to rent and living expenses there. I just thought we were playing around. It was fun looking at houses. It sounded like a very grown up thing to do, to purchase a home, especially when you're in New York, and you feel like you're always a kid no matter what. Only adults buy houses. That's like most people in this country go through that, but it still felt very foreign to me.

Rebecca Soffer:
After my dad died, and I put that home on the market, everything changed. I all of a sudden became very aware in a way that I had become aware after my mom died, of the fleeting nature of life, that it can go at any minutes, and that this is your one life. I was living it now. This was no dress rehearsal. This was an opportunity to start something and to create a foundation where we could build memories with our kids, with our friends, which otherwise would not have not been build in, says, their maternal grandparents' home.

Bobbi Rebell:
What's interesting is that the inheritance that allowed you to buy a house, it was the money, of course, but it was also the idea that this is your life, and you do have to grow up. You do have to be financially grown up, and that was in a way part of what happened after they passed away.

Rebecca Soffer:
Yeah. I don't think it really had entered into my mind that I would have purchased something. Also, everything is really expensive in New York. That was not in the realm of possibility in my mind. Very quickly, the need to have a sense of home became very, very, very integral to my life.

Bobbi Rebell:
What is the lesson for our listeners? How can they make this their own?

Rebecca Soffer:
When you lose your parents, and this money is from your parents, wow. It was so complicated. I really connected this to, would my parents want me to buy this home? Would my parents want this for me? Would they think this is a waste? Is this how they'd want to take care of me? Would they want me to use it for something else? It really got into my head. I also was really scared to take any huge financial action shortly after a profound loss. I didn't want it to result from strong emotions because people always say, "Don't make any big moves within the first year of a deep loss." We bought the house three or four months after my dad's death. A lot of people would say, "Wow, that seems rash," but my mom had already died. I was no stranger to this experience, so you could really argue that I was about three years into it already. I needed a foundation.

Rebecca Soffer:
I learned that even though you're making a purchase that is going to be the right thing for you, it doesn't mean that it's not a complicated, emotional experience. It is very, very hard to spend money that is inherited, very, very heard, and especially for younger people because it's not like when I was 30. You just called me a financial grown up, that's amazing. Can you please put that on my tombstone because that's not a term that's really been used in connection with me a lot. I didn't feel like a financial anything, and I really didn't feel like a grown up.

Bobbi Rebell:
You have an every day money tip that is something that many people do, but I think it's important to point out on a practical level because it's something we all think we should do. I personally, have never been great at executing it. I want you to share it with us, and I want you to tell us most importantly, how you actually execute.

Rebecca Soffer:
Yeah. Now I have a one-year-old and a four-year-old, both little boys, and they are hungry, like they are hungry. They are constantly hungry, and I constantly find myself, as soon as we leave the house, even though we have just eaten, my four-year-old will 10 seconds later say, "I'm hungry." I'm like, "How is it humanly possible for you to have more space in your stomach right now?," but he does. I constantly find myself, or had found myself, buying into purchasing the snacks from the museum we're at, or whichever entertainment based facility.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which are very expensive.

Rebecca Soffer:
Which are expensive. They're like a billion times more expensive than they should be, or the bottle of water. I spend some time a couple nights a week, it takes me 10 minutes, it's really not a big deal, putting together snacks, putting them in little Ziploc bags, separating them. I stockpile them. I have them ready every day. I take the new slew of snacks, and I bring them with me. I put them in my older son's little backpack. Wherever we are, whenever the inevitable, I'm hungry pops up, I'm like, "Great. Go into your backpack." What's really great about that is not only are there are a billion different things to choose from, but there's no arguments about, I want this. No, you can't have that. A, because it's like $20, and D because it's made of crap. He knows that anything in that bag is fair game.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk a little bit about Modern Loss. There's one part that really stood out to me that I hadn't really thought that much about, and that has to do with our digital legacy. It's a collection of essays from different authors, and then you and your co-author Gabby introduce them. Was there a conscious decision to include these digital stories, or did that just happen? What is your take on them?

Rebecca Soffer:
Yeah. It was a very conscious decision to have a dedicated chapter to the ways that grief and loss can throw a loss into our digital lives because it's very much a part of everything we do right now. It wasn't as much so 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago. My mom died in 2006, and she did not have a Facebook presence.

Bobbi Rebell:
Doesn't that make you sad? I wish my mom had a real Facebook page.

Rebecca Soffer:
Yes, it does make me sad. I always say, "If a person isn't a searchable, did they really exist?"

Bobbi Rebell:
Before I let you go, people are dying to know, how did you get Mindy Kaling involved with the book? Then also, Stephen Colbert, I know that you worked there. Can you tell us about their involvement and connection?

Rebecca Soffer:
With regards to Stephen, yes, he's my former boss. I think he's an amazing human being and very ... I think the general public, anyone who knows a lot about him knows that he suffered profound loss when he was very young. He lost very close relatives very quickly, and he gets it. He's one of those people who gets it. When I was starting to co-author this book, I reached out to him and told him all about it. He offered to write a blurb, immediately offered to support it and knew that there was a need for it. With Mindy Kaling, it was through a mutual friend, actually. She had lost her mom. I had read it in her own book and in a lot of news articles that she had lost her mom around the time, I think, that she got her TV deal for the Mindy Project. She really must understand what it's like to go through loss while you're revving up your career.I thought, who doesn't love Mindy Kaling? Everything she does it so great, and her tone is so approachable. I approached our mutual friend and asked if she would send along my request and a few chapters of the book. She agreed to support it.

Bobbi Rebell:
What's unique about this book is it's a book that you're read once, put down, and then keep coming back to. I think that's a very special thing. Where can people find out more about you, and the book, and everything else that is important to you right now?

Rebecca Soffer:
I run ModernLoss.com. It's an online publication that has hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of personal essays that are narrowly focused around different aspects of grief and loss. We're @ModernLoss on Twitter, on Instagram. We have a very active Facebook page. What I really love is we have a closed group, which has become this incredible source of support.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much, Rebecca. This has been wonderful.

Rebecca Soffer:
Thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Rebecca mentions with her usual humor that she's really sad her mom was never on Facebook, but these days social media does live on and can be a gift. Financial Grown Up tip number one, keep your social media secure, but make sure if something does happen to you, loved ones can have access to whatever you want them to. Talk to relatives, especially older ones about making plans for what they want done with their digital assets. A lot of grandparents, by the way, are on Facebook. It can be as simple as finding the right settings on a certain platform. It may also be something to include in your estate planning and in your will.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grown Up tip number two. Rebecca's money tip really hit home with me as a parent, but it can also apply to all of us in our every day lives. It's not just kids that get the munchies and get stuck buying pricey snacks. Pick a go-to food. In my case, it is often pistachios and those power bars. Keep it somewhere that is always with you for a quick pick-me-up. Totally obvious, but often not done. Maybe this is a reminder, if you already knew that. For me, it keeps me away from M&M's, sometimes. DM me your take on this and what your danger food is, if you don't have those go-to snacks with you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks for sharing this time with us. The podcast is free, but in order to grow we need your support. Reviews are amazing. Also, follow us on the social channels @bobbirebell on Twitter, @bobbirebell1 on Instagram, and Bobbi Rebell on Facebook. The shows notes for this episode are at BobbiRebell.com/podcast/rebeccasoffer along with more info on the podcast at bobbirebell.com. Thanks to Rebecca Soffer for helping us get one step closer to being financial grown ups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grown Up with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

Susie Orman Schall was financially content and lacked the motivation to rev up her writing career. Then a ’tough love’ conversation with a friend motivated her to get back to her A game. The mindset change resulted in phenomenal reviews and success for her latest novel, Subway Girls. 

In Susie’s money story you will learn:

-How Susie was not motivated by money in becoming a novelist

-The one thing a friend said that changed her perspective, and leveled up her ambition

-How Susie was able to get an agent for her third novel

-How Susie got a two-book deal for The Subway Girls

In Susie’s money lesson you will learn:

-How Susie defines success as a writer

-The change in self worth after quitting her corporate job to be a stay at home mom with three children

-Why earning money makes her feel valued

In Susie’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-Resources to get books at a lower cost, including Bookbub

Bobbi and Susie also talk about

-Susie’s latest book “The Subway Girls”

-The economic message that is a theme of “The Subway Girls”

-How Susie researched the book

-The history of the Miss Subways contest

-How Susie got the idea as a foundation for her book

In My Take you will learn:

-The importance of financial rewards in self worth

-Why having a second earner can be an important safety net even if one partner is the primary breadwinner

Episode Links

SusieSchnall.com

Get your copy of her latest book “The Subway Girls” 

Follow Susie!

On Twitter @susieschnall

On Instagram @Susieormanschnall

On Facebook Susie Orman Schnall

Check out Susie’s Balance Project interview Series!

Featured on the Balance project:

Reese Witherspoon, Sara Blakely and Sarah Michelle Gellar

BookBub

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Transcription

Susie Orman Sch:
One of the things I said was, "You know, I don't really need to make a living from this book, so it shouldn't be something that stresses me out and overwhelms me because my husband, luckily, is earning the money that our family requires." She said, "Well, what if your husband weren't earning that money? What if you had to make money? How would you approach this entire process differently?" And that was a light bulb moment for me.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How To Be a Financial Grownup. 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, grownup friends. So that was my college friend and now novelists, Susie Orman Schnall. Her new book, The Subway Girls, was named one of five inspiring career girl stories to enjoy on your commute by Buzzfeed. InStyle called Subway Girls one of 11 bucks to bury your nose in the summer, and PopSugar called it one of the summer's hottest new books. Not bad, Susie.

Bobbi Rebell:
Alright. In our interview, Susie gets very candid about the fact that she wasn't really trying that hard with her career as a novelist. She wasn't the breadwinner, so why stress? Well, you will hear why, especially if you dream of turning in your resignation to your boring office job the minute you have kids or other financial resources, and you don't have to go in and work for the money. You need to go in with your eyes open. Here is Susie Orman Schnall.

Bobbi Rebell:
Susie Orman Schnall, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Susie Orman Sch:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
And congratulations on your latest book, huge bestseller already. The Subway Girls getting rave reviews. Wait, I have to read some of these. You were named one of the most anticipated novels of summer by, this is a very long list. I'm just going to read some of them. Refinery 29, PureWow, Working Mother, PopSugar, Parade, and we could go on. I'm so proud of you. I have to tell everyone, we know each other a long time. We were actually college classmates and for one semester we were even roommates. So we've come a long way together and I'm really excited for you.

Susie Orman Sch:
Thank you. Likewise. It's wonderful that we can do this now as adults professionally, so it's a great honor to be on your show.

Bobbi Rebell:
And we also reconnected when we both decided to get into the book writing business a few years ago. You started when you had a lot on your plate already at home. You had three growing boys, a husband to take care of, a very busy life in the suburbs, and you decided to write books, and you were successful. You had a couple of very good books come out, but your motive wasn't necessarily to earn money. It was really about being fulfilled.

Bobbi Rebell:
And then one day, one of your friends said something to you that really changed your mindset and resulted in this book, which all your books are good, but this book really is a huge commercial success and has taken your career to a new level. Tell us about what that friend said and what happened.

Susie Orman Sch:
What happened with my first is I wasn't able to secure a literary agent, and so I ended up self publishing it. And then it got picked up by a small publisher, and that was really a wonderful experience for me. I really loved being with that publishing house. So for my second novel, which is called The Balance Project, I didn't even try to get an agent and go the traditional publishing route. I stayed with my publisher because I was comfortable there, they treated me really well. It was just a kind and gentle way to publish a book.

Susie Orman Sch:
And then I was talking to a friend who also happens to be a life coach, and she said something that changed my entire framework. One of the things I said was, "You know, I don't really need to make a living from this book, so it shouldn't be something that stresses me out and overwhelms me because my husband, luckily, is earning the money that our family requires." She said, "Well, what if your husband weren't earning that money? What if you had to make money? How would you approach this entire process differently?" And that was a light bulb moment for me. It kind of gave me more of a sense of urgency.

Bobbi Rebell:
So how did you then implement changes? What happened that was different?

Susie Orman Sch:
So I ended up writing the book, but instead of just opting to go with the publisher who I had been with who I still absolutely love, I went and queried the book and tried to get an agent, and I was successful. That was really one of the most wonderful professional experiences that I'd had because I knew that it was going to set me up to take me to a different level with this book. And then she put it in on submission, and I got an offer from St. Martin's Press for a two book deal.

Susie Orman Sch:
Right away, I felt like a completely different person. It gave me a validation as an author that I didn't have before. So I'm just so grateful that she made me think, well, what if? You know, stop staying in your comfort zone. Go outside of that and try something hard and something uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable because that's how you get where you want to go.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it also brought you more financial rewards.

Susie Orman Sch:
Absolutely.

Bobbi Rebell:
What is the lesson for our listeners?

Susie Orman Sch:
I think of my success in the fact that I wrote these books and they were published, and they get great response from readers. To me, that is success. That makes me feel fulfilled and I feel like I've already won. The sales of the book are kind of the icing on the cake and that is because I don't have to earn a living as an author. But I don't really want to act like I don't have to earn a living as an author because, as we all know, everything can change.

Susie Orman Sch:
I was fortunate enough, and I'll use that word "fortunate" and then I'll qualify it in a minute, that when I started having children, I was able to quit my full time job. I was working for an internet company and earning a nice living that made me feel like I had value. I stopped working so that I could be a full time stay at home mom. Unfortunately, that didn't make me feel valuable, and what I realized is that earning a paycheck is something that's important to me.

Susie Orman Sch:
I don't judge other people's choices. Stay at home mom, full time working mom, whatever people want to do is great, but I do know that for myself, earning money makes me feel valued, and feeling valued is really important. It's very hard as a full time state home mother. You don't get a lot of recognition and validation for your work, and I do call it work. And so I started freelancing very soon after I had my first son, and that led into writing the novel. But the lesson for me is that if it makes me feel a certain way, then I absolutely need to do whatever it is to make that happen for myself.

Bobbi Rebell:
Alright, let's talk about your everyday money tip because this is something that I think a lot of our listeners who love to read books will really find a lot of value in.

Susie Orman Sch:
Yeah, so I love to read books, and I find myself buying more books than I can read. Luckily now, authors give me their books and I go to the library. I'm constantly inundated by books, but one wonderful resource is called BookBub and that's B-O-O-K-B-U-B as in book, U, book. And it's a website and if you go on there and you sign up with your email address and you put down what genre books you like, then every day, you get an email with daily deals of books that are ninety nine cents or $1.99 or even free, and it's a great way to load up your Kindle with books and not spend a lot of money.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. I want to talk about Subway Girls a little bit more and about the economic message of this book because people looked at this campaign and it almost looked like a beauty pageant, but in fact, it was actually a way at the time, as I see it, an opportunity for many of these women to have economic opportunity that they might not have otherwise had.

Susie Orman Sch:
Exactly. So my novel, The Subway Girls, is historical fiction and it's based on fascinating Miss Subways Contest, which was essentially a beauty contest that took place in the New York City subway system from 1941 to 1976. So my novel is dual storyline and the 1949 story features two young females who are competing for the Miss Subways title, and then in 2018, you have a female advertising executive who's pitching the MTA, comes across the Miss Subways campaign in her research. The two story lines intersect, and that's where the fun begins.

Susie Orman Sch:
But the initial, the motivation for both of the women is to find professional success. They both are incredibly ambitious, my main character in 1949, along with my main character in 2018, and they both have different motivations and reasons why professional success is so important to them. And for both of them, it ends up that the Miss Subways Contest, even though my 2018 character doesn't actually compete for Miss Subways, but it's this contest that allows them to fulfill their ambitions.

Bobbi Rebell:
It represents economic dreams because that is a way out, especially for the character in the 1940s. That is a way to basically not "just be a housewife," which is what she was fighting against. At the time, there were very limited opportunities for women. She would have basically just worked for her father. She did have someone that wanted to marry her and she put off getting married because she wanted to do other things.

Susie Orman Sch:
Yes, Charlotte is, she was unique for her time and she didn't want to have to go only with the constraints, what the expectations were for her by society, by her family, by herself, by her professors. They all wanted something for her and she just completely butted up against that box and wanted to get out of it. She found that, for various reasons, and you'll have to read the book to find out, that the Miss Subways Contest was her ticket out.

Bobbi Rebell:
You did a lot of research for this book. What happened in terms of their career paths for these women, the ones that you were able to interview?

Susie Orman Sch:
It was amazing. A lot of them, this became a stepping stone to a career either as an entertainer, or a model, or a singer. The very first Miss Subway was Mona Freeman. In 1941, she became a big Hollywood star. I actually coordinated a reunion a couple of days ago for Miss Subways in New York City. We had about 15 Miss Subways. The earliest one was Miss Subways of 1946, and the latest one was the very last Miss Subways in 1976.

Susie Orman Sch:
I just got to hear so many stories from them about how this launched their careers. These were every day New York city girls next door, and to have this opportunity to be seen as special, and to get recognition, and then have that launch into a career, was just something that changed most of their lives.

Bobbi Rebell:
How did you first discover this and decide to write about it?

Susie Orman Sch:
I was actually driving in my car and listening to NPR and a story came on about the Miss Subways Contest and I was floored. I found it fascinating. I had worked in advertising, so that was relatable. And just this small slice of New York City history was beyond. And so I went home and I started doing research on the contest. Everything about it was fascinating to me, especially because it was rooted in this whole concept of female ambition, and women seeking their professional and personal dreams, and how this contest aided and abetted them with that. So the more research I did and I ended up interviewing former Miss Subways and hearing about their experiences, I realized that this would be a great foundation for a novel, and took it from there.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you took it very well. I loved this book. I read it in, literally, one day. I couldn't put it down, and it's truly summer beach reading at its best and more. So congratulations on all your success. Where can people learn more about you, about The Subway Girls, and how to follow you?

Susie Orman Sch:
So the best place is my website, which is susieschnall.com, and that's S-U-S-I-E-S-C-H-N-A-L-L .com. And that has all of my social media links, and links for my books, and also my Balance Project interview series, which you're featured on. That is where I interview women about work life balance, but not from the perspective that we should all be trying to achieve this perfect level of work life balance, but more revealing it for what it is, as something that's hard to be perfect and absolutely no reason why we should try.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you've had some major stars on there by the way. Do some name dropping.

Susie Orman Sch:
Okay. Reese Witherspoon has done the interview. Sara Blakely, who founded Spanx. I have the founders of The Skim. I have women from all walks of life, all different professions, and it's a really ... There are 175 interviews posted up there now, and it's a really great way to see how different women are dealing with this challenge of work life balance. I know that there's a lot of pushback about, why do we ask women about work life balance, but semantics aside, a lot of women are interested how other women are dealing with it. So this interview series gives a way for women to see that everybody's struggling with it. Everybody's making sacrifices. We're not alone in that regard.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, thank you so much, Susie. This was great.

Susie Orman Sch:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Susie was pretty candid, and I appreciate that she was honest about some things. We aren't always comfortable talking about in public and saying out loud, that she just wasn't all that into being a stay at home mom, that she didn't feel valued. She didn't feel validated until she started making money again.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number one, admit that for most of us, many of us at least, money, our paycheck, does make us feel appreciated. There's a great scene in Mad Men where the character of Peggy goes into her boss, Don Draper, and she complains that he never says thank you, and his answer of course is, "Well, that's what the money is for." If that happened today, I would hope that instead of Peggy wanting a thank you, Peggy would ask for a raise. In other words, it is okay for your work to be about the money. Bonus points for fulfillment, of course.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two. Susie talks about not being stressed out because she wasn't the breadwinner. Well, I'm glad she did get the wake up call from her friend. Twice, I have unexpectedly and temporarily, thankfully, been the primary breadwinner for my family. One time, my ex husband's job just ended after a merger, not his fault in any way. Nothing we could have seen ahead of time. Another time, my family was hit by the recession and while my husband landed very well and pretty quickly, we were both glad that I had some money coming in along with benefits like health insurance.

Bobbi Rebell:
Make the choice that is right for your family, but it's never a bad idea to have two incomes, even if one is much lower than the other. You'll be glad to have it if something happens and a lot of the time, at least once in your life, something's going to happen. Family, multiple income streams. If you are not already, please subscribe to the podcast and while you are there, manually change the settings to automatically download episodes.

Bobbi Rebell:
We put out these episodes three times a week. They're about 15 minutes, so you can easily fit one, two, or more episodes into your listening time and make it work for you. Be in touch. DM me your thoughts on the podcast @bobbirebell on Twitter, @bobbirebell1 on Instagram, and Bobbi Rebell on Facebook. To learn more about the show and get the show notes with links to everything that we talk about, go to bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast. And thank you to Susie Orman Schnall 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 Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

Influencer author Brittany Hennessy shares her strategies for getting large raises even when companies push back. Her book, Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand In the Age of Social Media, focuses on strategies for content creators to monetize influence. 

In Brittany’s story you will learn:

-Why she did not negotiate her first job offer

-The strategy she used to get a raise from $35,000 to $55,000 after just 6 months

-How she got yet another $20,000 jump in pay not long after

-Why the third time she tried to get a raise, she got a different result, and how she moved forward from there

In Brittany’s lesson you will learn: 

-How to understand your worth and be prepared to negotiate

-When to walk away

-How to look at job interviews as a two way street, and integrate that into your strategy

In Brittany’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-The importance of staying in touch and being reachable if your work demands that. 

-The consequences of not being available when an opportunity comes up

-How to put the pressure to disconnect in perspective relative to your reality

Bobbi And Brittany also talk about

-Her new book Influencer

-The four parts of Brittany’s book: Building your audience, packaging your brand, monetizing your influence and planning your future.

-The Don’t be that Girl sections of the book

-The mega influencers that Brittany interviewed for the book

-How being an influence is a lot of work, sometimes a lot more than a traditional job, with none of the financial security

-Many of the most successful influencers went years without any financial compensation

-How brands can get more transparent value working with influencers, where they see the specific impact, compared to traditional celebrities on traditional media platforms

-Brittany’s #1 piece of advice for aspiring influencers

In My Take you will learn:

-Disconnecting from technology is a good thing- but if your business is tied to being reachable- make sure you are still reachable. 

-Use apps to limit and control the amount of time wasted on social media,so you can be more productive and focus on income generating activities

 

Episode Links:

Learn more about Brittany Hennessy on her website: https://brittanyhennessy.com/

Read Brittany’s Book #Influencer!

 

Follow Brittany!

Instagram @mrsbrittanyhennessy

 

Here are some roundup articles with apps to turn off social media:

https://www.reviewed.com/smartphones/features/10-apps-that-block-social-media-so-you-can-stay-focused-and-be-more-productive

 

https://www.teensafe.com/blog/best-app-limits-social-media-time-iphones/

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apps-to-reduce-screen-time-iphone-android/

 

Reward Style

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Learn how Brittany Hennessy negotiated a 57% raise on this Financial Grownup podcast episode. http://www.bobbirebell.com/podcast/britannyhennessy

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Transcription

Brittany Hennes:
I had $50,000 for someone for eight hours of work and one Instagram post, and she just did not respond. And when she did, she was heartbroken, because $50,000 is a lot of money.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup. With me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to be a Financial Grownup. You know what? Being a grown up is really hard, especially when it comes to money, but it's okay. We're gonna get there together. I'm going to bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey grownup friends. So, I think we would all like to make $50,000 for a day's work. It almost makes that famous quote from supermodel, Linda Evangelista, the one where she says she doesn't get out of bed for less than $10,000 seem a little quaint.

Bobbi Rebell:
Apparently, according to our guest, Brittany Hennessy, at least one influencer didn't pick up the phone and missed out on $50,000. That is a very expensive missed call.

Bobbi Rebell:
Welcome everyone. Thanks for spending some time with us here at Financial Grownup. We keep it to about 15 minutes, but feel free to binge if you have a bit more time, and it would mean the world to us if you would hit that subscribe button. Go into settings and then set up automatic downloads. Automation is everything just like with investing, right?

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. Let's get to Brittany Hennessy. She is the senior director of influencer partnerships at Hearst, and she was a pioneer in the influencer field, first as a nightlife blogger, and then she worked as an influencer for brands including Bacardi, Pop Chips and The Gap, as well as having amazing assignments like ooh going enough to Germany for [inaudible 00:01:46] and hanging out with Rihanna and live tweeting about it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Her book, Influencer, is really a first. Even if you aren't in the content creator influencer world, you should definitely check it out. We're going to talk a little bit about that too. Here as Brittany Hennessy.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Brittany Hennessy. You're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Brittany Hennes:
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
Congratulations are in order. Your book, which has only been out a week, Influencer, Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media, already an Amazon bestseller, so congratulations.

Brittany Hennes:
Thank you very much.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I know you've been very busy. Tell us just a little bit about you, your background and what you've been up to. The last week or two you've been touring around with your book.

Brittany Hennes:
Yeah, I'm currently the senior director of influencer partnerships at Hearst, and here I book all of the branded content talent across all of our digital platforms and spent a lot of time working with influencers.

Brittany Hennes:
My background, for the last five years, has been in influencer marketing and just realizing that a lot of influencers were not getting the education and resources that they needed to be successful in this industry, and that's mostly because it's a new industry. There are not a lot of people who could give that sort of advice, and I love giving advice.

Bobbi Rebell:
You brought a great money story to share, and it has to do with getting paid more, which you're so good at it. So tell us.

Brittany Hennes:
So my money story ... My first job that I had after a long break of freelancing, and I had just taken the job at the amount, it was $35,000, and I was really happy.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tell us what the job was. What were you doing?

Brittany Hennes:
Oh it was to be ... So, I was the social media manager of a fitness chain.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay.

Brittany Hennes:
And happy to have a steady paycheck, have health insurance. And so I took the number, even though it was much lower than what I wanted, and after the first six months I realized that I can't live on this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well wait, had you tried to negotiate it at the beginning or you just took it because you just wanted to be working?

Brittany Hennes:
You know what? I knew better to negotiate, and I was scared. And so, I think that happens to a lot of people. We're afraid that if we negotiate, a company will take back the offer. And so that is a lesson I learned the hard way and quickly course corrected when I asked for my first raise.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, you did not negotiate it all when they made you your very first offer for the job?

Brittany Hennes:
I did not, and that's something I think everyone should do, and I've done every time since.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. So, let's go on. But then things get better?

Brittany Hennes:
Things get better. So, I put together a big proposal, and I asked for promotion, and I asked for a $20,000 raise, and they gave it to me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wait, wait, you asked ... Let's just slow that down. You asked for $20,000 on a $35,000 base. How did you present that case?

Brittany Hennes:
You know, I think it really was explaining what I had been doing at the company and the returns they had been seeing, because they hadn't really been a digital company at all, and I really put them on the map with social media, digital advertising, and I had the numbers to show. Like before I started working here, this is how many signups you were regenerating. This is how much revenue you are making. And in the six months I've been here, here are the new numbers. So, they more than make up for the increase I'm asking for, and unless you want to go back to not making as much money, you should give me what I'm asking for, and they took the bait.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's great. Then, you actually did it again though.

Brittany Hennes:
I did it again. Once I was grooving at that new level, I also stepped up the amount of work I was doing. I really stepped into like a brand director role, and we had an apparel line that we made. We had a radio station that we were playing in all the locations. So, really doing things that increased the brand value of the company, and that's something that translated into reviews online, into sales, into word of mouth. And again, when you can show that you're adding value, I think you should not be afraid to ask for a hefty bump. And I asked for another $20,000, and I got that as well.

Brittany Hennes:
And so I think, you know, if you're working hard and you're adding value, and you can put that on paper and quantify it real numbers, you should not be afraid to ask for more money because your job will give it to you, and if they don't, they don't appreciate you, and you probably should look for a new job anyway.

Bobbi Rebell:
What if they'd come back and said, "We agree you're worth this, but we don't have that in our budget."

Brittany Hennes:
So, that's actually what happened the third time.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, you went back for more. How far apart? It was six months for the first time, and how much between each subsequent time?

Brittany Hennes:
Six months for the first time, and then I think a year and a half for the second time because I was there for almost three years.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. And then you came back the third time.

Brittany Hennes:
And my last negotiation came at the end.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. And?

Brittany Hennes:
And they didn't have it. They said, "You know, you're great, and we don't have it." And I think you can either be able to walk away, which I was able to walk away, and I had also gotten another job offer that was for significantly more than they were paying me, so I was willing to walk away. Or, you know, if you can't, then you can look into trade offs. Like, if you can't give me X amount, can I have more vacation? Can I have a work from home day? Can I, you know, have shorter days? I think, if you really love your job, and the job is not just about the money. It's also about the work-life balance that you have.

Bobbi Rebell:
What is the lesson for our listeners when you look at a big picture in sort of a broader sense of how it can apply to our listeners' lives?

Brittany Hennes:
I think the lesson there is really when you're going into a job situation, to understand your worth and be prepared to negotiate for what you want, and also be prepared to walk away.

Brittany Hennes:
I think lots of times we're very much, "I hope they like me." And we forget that interviewing for a job is a two-way street. Of course, you're going to be able to work at this great company and all the perks that come with it, but this company is benefiting greatly because they're going to get to have you as an employee.

Bobbi Rebell:
So I want to talk about your everyday money tip because it's fascinating and brilliant, because it goes against the grain.

Bobbi Rebell:
We're in a period where a lot of people are saying, "We look at our phones too often. We need to completely detach, turn it off, put it away for a full day or whatever it is and be in the moment." But that could be very expensive and could be a money mistake. So, what's your everyday money tip?

Brittany Hennes:
My everyday money tip is don't play hard to get and definitely be present.

Brittany Hennes:
I work with a lot of influencers who, I email them, I have contracts, I have offers. Sometimes it's four or five, six figures, and they don't respond because they just didn't get around to it, and they're always heartbroken when they try and connect with me later, and the opportunity has passed them.

Brittany Hennes:
So, I think, you know, it's definitely important to disconnect and recharge, but you still need some sort of out of office-on even if it's just letting people know that you only check email twice a day, and the next time you'll check is that this time because you never know what's sitting in your inbox or in your voicemail, and you have to make sure you're ready.

Bobbi Rebell:
Without naming names, what's the worst case that this ever happened?

Brittany Hennes:
I won't name names because the poor girl's probably still traumatized by it, but I had $50,000 for someone for eight hours of work and one Instagram post, and she just did not respond. And when she did, she was heartbroken because $50,000 is a lot of money for anybody.

Brittany Hennes:
Even Warren Buffet, if you want to give him $50,000, would probably take it. Why not? It's a nice amount of money, and she could have made that doing relatively little work, you know, compared to what a lot of people have to do for $50,000, and she just wasn't there.

Bobbi Rebell:
Heartbreaking. All right, let's talk about Influencer because, as I said, I love this book, and I don't know that there's any other book out here yet that lays it all out so clearly and in such a specific way.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love your expert tips. You have throughout the book this Don't Be That Girl, which is a lot of no-BS advice for people as to what you can't do. Tell us more about the book and what went into it.

Brittany Hennes:
The book is broken out into four parts, building your audience, packaging your brand, monetizing your influence and planning your future, and it's really just giving you tips and practical advice. Like I even give email templates on if someone asks you this, you should write back this, because I think part of what makes people successful is having a formula and having some sort of standard, and influencer marketing is still so young that there really hasn't been anything that's been created that's a textbook, and that's really what I tried to write.

Brittany Hennes:
And I think my favorite part ... I really liked the icons that I interviewed eight mega influencers who were at the top of their game, but I do really like, Don't Be That Girl just because I think it's really ... I think it's really funny, and people always like horror stories, and so I had to change some details so that people aren't easily identified, but the meat of the story and how ridiculous some of the [inaudible 00:10:49], they are a hundred percent true.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah. You talk about the request that some of them put forward as if they were celebrities of a caliber that they just are not at this point, but because they live in this bubble, they believed that they are.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I think another good thing that I love about the book is that you make it very clear that they treat this like a job, and in most cases it's not even a solo job. It is a job with multiple people working on these brands. So, it may look very carefree, these beautiful photos, but in fact, they're very planned. The equipment is specific. The lighting, the filters. The other people working on it have very targeted jobs. This is work even though you say it's eight hours, for example, for $50,000 that that person missed out on. To be at the caliber where you ae being offered $50,000 for eight hours of work and an Instagram post, that person probably was working for many years very hard.

Brittany Hennes:
That's 100 percent true, and I think that's the part people miss when they, I think, are a little disgusted, might be the proper word, about how much some of these top-tier influencers are making, and a lot of these women weren't making that much money until recently, and some of them have been YouTubers, bloggers, Instagram stars for 10 years, and for the first five they made $0.

Brittany Hennes:
People just think they snap one photo and slap it on Instagram. Have you ever taken one photo of yourself? It's not perfect. You take at least five. And so, they're taking hundreds, then doing select, then editing, and that's even before they were mood boarding the clothing and the locations and getting permits, and they're ... You know, if you think of any major brand that does a photo shoot, they're doing the exact same thing just sometimes on a smaller scale.

Bobbi Rebell:
Brands can tell on a much more granular level exactly what return they're getting. So, if you were a traditional celebrity and you're in a shampoo ad on TV, they never know how many bottles of shampoo they sold. But it's much easier, somewhat, to track the impact of an influencer campaign.

Brittany Hennes:
Absolutely. Between ... Even if you just look at basic media, if you're looking at engagements, the cost per click, the cost per impression, we have those data points now because Instagram is providing them, and YouTube provides them, and then you have huge affiliate networks like Reward Style and you know, Shop Style Collective where influencers can actually see how much product they're moving because they make commission off of it.

Brittany Hennes:
And so I think Reward Style has crazy numbers that like in a very short period, they did a billion dollars worth of sales, and companies like Nordstrom, 80 percent of their mobile traffic comes from influencers.

Brittany Hennes:
And so, brands can really see the difference that influencers are making, and it's not just enough to make great content, you also have to be able to move product.

Brittany Hennes:
And the girls who are commanding six figures for a campaign, they can do both really well.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right, final question on this. Number one piece of advice for people that want to be an influencer that earns money.

Brittany Hennes:
Number one piece of advice is make sure you are in it for the right reasons. Everything is great, but everything, once it is your job, is now a job, and you may not want to get up some days, but you still have to go and shoot content. Definitely pick something that is your passion. And if you could do it and no one would pay you, you would do it anyway, because it will be a while. It can be a short while or a long while until you see real revenue from it. So, you definitely want to make sure you don't burn out before your time comes.

Bobbi Rebell:
Great Advice. Tell us where we can follow you because you are an influencer in your own right.

Brittany Hennes:
I'm on Instagram. That's my primary channel at MrsBrittanyHennessy.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love it. Thank you so much, Brittany.

Brittany Hennes:
Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, so Brittany did not hold back. Here's my take on it though. Financial grownup tip number one. There is a big trend now that we should take breaks from our technology, and that is a really good thing, but if you have a job where you need to be reachable, be reachable.

Bobbi Rebell:
One option is to use, for example, the do not disturb feature settings on your phone. So, within there, you can set it up so that the calls from one group, let's say VIPs are allowed. You can also usually set it up so that repeated calls get through. That way if someone's calling you over and over again to hand you money, like $50,000, you may notice repeated calls and eventually they will get through to you. You can also, obviously, have some kind of message on your voicemail telling people to call someone like an assistant that can reach you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial grownup tip number two. While we are talking about phone settings, one way to not make money is to always be on social media, unless of course that is literally your work. Then be on social media.

Bobbi Rebell:
There are all kinds of apps and settings that can put controls in, so you won't be distracted by all the apps on your phone, but you can leave the right things on and use the setting.

Bobbi Rebell:
So I'm going to list some roundup articles with a bunch of these, but a couple to check out are Moments, Off Time, and Freedom.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks to everyone for sharing your time with us DM me and tell me what your financial grownup tips are. I am at BobbiRebell1 on Instagram, BobbiRebell on Twitter, and Bobbi Rebell on Facebook, and you can get the show notes, for example, with the links of those articles for this episode BobbiRebell.com/podcast/BrittanyHennessy, and all of the show notes follow that same pattern where it's BobbiRebell.com/podcast, and then forward slash and the guest's name. And we have lots of great information there, including links to their books, where you can find them on social media and all that good stuff.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. Thank you for Influencer author, Brittany Hennessy, for helping us get one step closer to being financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

Entrepreneur and extreme athlete Kyle Maynard has lived a life of high achievement, so it came a shock, when a planned business venture stumbled, and he had to let 5 employees go and accept the limitations of his vision. 

In Kyle’s money story you will learn:

-How Kyle took a risk on a new venture that did not go as well as projected

-The tough decisions that he had to make to protect his assets

-Kyle's ability to come to terms with his missteps, and decision to cut his losses

-How he chose to pivot and re-think his venture

-The importance of protecting his own financial security while expanding his business

-What Kyle learned from a mentor about "the double bottom line”

-How he integrates his “no excuses” philosophy into his business ventures even when they are not living up to his expectations

In Kyle’s money lesson you will learn

-How to know when to cut your losses

-How to avoid making decisions in fear of what others will think

-Specific ways to evaluate whether or not to put more money into an investment or business ventures

In Kyle's every day money tip you will learn:

-How to prioritize the money you spend on fitness and health

-Whether supplements are worth the money

-How to get in shape when you have a low or no budget

-Why high quality food is better than supplements and shakes etc

-His take on organic foods

-If you need a $10,000 treadmill

-What Kyle was eating  (or not eating!) the day we taped the interview

In My Take you will learn:

-The importance of HOW you fail- because at some point we all do

-Why many entrepreneurs, like Kyle, and Perez Hilton do not invest all their own money in their businesses, in order to protect their assets and spread the risk.

-My tip on how to save money and eat healthier when buying fresh fruit

Episode Links

Kyle’s webpage: http://kyle-maynard.com/

Follow Kyle!

Instagram @kylemaynard

Facebook Kyle Maynard

Get a signed copy of Kyle’s book “No Excuses” !

Listen to the Perez Hilton episode where he talks about not risking your own capital that I reference in this episode! 

When should you pay up for organic fruit?

What not to buy organic- Insider

The Truth about organic produce and pesticides- The Washington Post

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Transcription

Kyle Maynard:
Just because you've put in a certain amount of money does not justify you continuing to go and put in more in the future for something that's not working so well, and so I did go in and let five of the people go on short notice.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebel, author of "How to be a financial grownup". But you know what? Being a grown-up 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 a 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. So losing a job is hard, but being the one to make those decisions and cause those job losses as a business owner is brutal. As you'll hear from the very raw sharing of an experience that is all too common for entrepreneurs, but rarely talked about so candidly, as it is by my guest, Kyle Maynard.

Bobbi Rebell:
I met him a little more than a year ago at a conference in San Francisco, and immediately needed to know more about this incredible man. I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me that I finally was able to get him on the podcast for everyone.

Bobbi Rebell:
So for those of you who don't know about Kyle Maynard. Kyle is an entrepreneur. He's a speaker. He's an author of the bestseller, "No excuses". Kyle is also an award-winning extreme athlete. He was the first man to bear crawl the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, why was he bear crawling? Because Kyle was born with a rare condition known as congenital amputation. It left him with arms that end at the elbows, and legs that end at his knees. So naturally in addition to climbing massive mountains, Kyle owns a gym, is a champion wrestler, teaches crossfit, and is a world record setting weightlifter.

Bobbi Rebell:
As you guys know, I try to keep the podcast short, so we're just going to cut off the bio there, but trust me, look him up. His accomplishments are endless. I'm so excited about this interview guys. Here is Kyle Maynard.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Kyle Maynard. You're a Financial Grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Kyle Maynard:
Hey, thank you so much Bobbi. Appreciate you having me. I don't know about this whole grownup business, but I'll go with it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, you're definitely a grownup. I've followed your adventures. So we met, we met over a year ago at a conference out in San Francisco where I got to interview you for the conference and then you were off. You've been traveling. I think you went to something like 14 countries since then, and now you've landed long enough to do this interview in San Diego where you are living a nomadic and minimalist lifestyle.

Kyle Maynard:
Yeah, that's pretty accurate. You may have some ex-girlfriends that would disagree on the grownup part, but you know.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh no. We're just doing money. We're just going to talk about money and you're a businessman. Look, you have many accomplishments, and you were a bestselling author at a very young age. You were able to make some money early on, enough to be able to invest in a home. You invested in mutual funds that was up and down. You also founded a very successful gym and that venture has done well.

Bobbi Rebell:
But now for your money story, we're going to talk about what's been going on more recently. And first of all I just want to thank you in advance, because this was not the original story that you were going to share, but you have agreed to share it I believe here for the first time, so candidly. And you had to make some very tough decisions after something, a new venture hadn't gone as well as expected. And I think it's something a lot of people will relate to and get a lot out of this story. So go for it. Kyle.

Kyle Maynard:
So I guess to start with my current career has been, as you know, traveling around giving speeches, corporate events, and you know a variety of other types of events. Like you in sort of the motivations for starting this podcast, very similar motivations. I've been wanting to go and try to find a way to go and build a business and monetize things outside of just the constant travel, and feel like there is a place to be able to go and reach people in the digital world, you know.

Kyle Maynard:
I also do have access to some amazing human beings, and really wanted to be able to harness that and be able to help other people realize more of their potential in their lives and whatever that would mean for them.

Kyle Maynard:
And I made some really aggressive hires very quickly, so I'd hired five near full time people to kind of help build out the vision for what I had set out to do with this new program. And things got pretty dramatically behind schedule and I ultimately realized the amount that was going to go and take to be able to go and get the ship righted if it worked at all, potentially might eat away at the vast majority of the savings that I'd made over the last decade or more.

Kyle Maynard:
And I had to make a very tough decision to be able to analyze the whole idea of the sunk cost fallacy. It's probably one of my favorite financial concepts. But the idea that just because you've put in a certain amount of money does not justify you continuing to go and put in more in the future for something that's not working so well.

Kyle Maynard:
And so I did go and let five of the people go on short notice quickly and ended up, give them a month to figure out what they were going to go and do next, as I felt like that was something that needed to happen. The promises and the excitement that was there and was made, I just wanted to go and do right by them, but at the same time did not want to eat away at the savings that I'd built up entirely for something that wasn't going so great.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's hard. Can you tell us more about what your vision, what kind of venture it was, and what did not happen or did happen that was not aligned with your original vision?

Kyle Maynard:
One of my financial mentors taught me this. He's the vice chairman of AOL, and he said that everything that he goes and gets into, you know, has this double bottom line aspect of purpose and profitability. That theme and that concept is something that I wanted to go and teach people that purpose and profitability. Profitability not just in their business lives, but like in every aspect of their lives.

Kyle Maynard:
And through some of my best friends that are former Navy seals, professional athletes, people that have achieved great things, wanted to be able and go and pull together from their wisdom to be able to create a program to ultimately inspire other people to go and take on these dreams, these visions.

Kyle Maynard:
And it's not dissimilar from, you know, people who have done these types of things before. You know, like the Tony Robbins style events and things like that. We wanted to go and approach it from a different angle, which is still going to happen I know down the road at some point, so I'm not going to go into the details, the specifics of what makes that so different.

Kyle Maynard:
But at the same time holding true to that message, the achievement of that no excuses mentality, which is kind of, that's the core of my messaging is like finding a way. That could be really detrimental when we try to enforce things that are not happening.

Kyle Maynard:
Things were way behind on this project and in order to like kind of pull together and unravel it, like ultimately to realize that by forcing that to happen in the nature of this project, I was going to lose the essence of what it was too, and kind of create something that was just generic that was too similar to what other people had already done too. So it was even still protecting the project at the risk of looking like an idiot. And it's okay.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it's a very grownup decision because you're also number one, protecting your financial assets that you've built up over a decade and that's something very real. But Perez Hilton, of of all people said, when you're building a business, don't always risk all your money. It's okay to take other people's money. You have to protect your own money too, and that's okay.

Kyle Maynard:
Totally. Really, I think that what it comes down to is the idea of fear and ego and looking bad and all of those things should not keep us from making the decisions that we know we need to make. So many of us go through life attached to the image of who we think that we are.

Kyle Maynard:
If we both throw in $50,000 into a business and I'm running the business, I come to you and I say, "Hey, we need to go and put in another $25,000 each". If you justify that in your head based off of the logic that you've already put in 50, it's a faulty logic.

Kyle Maynard:
The right way to make that decision would be as if I've made no investment whatsoever in that, like, would I make that $25,000 investment today. And if you answered yes, then do it and if not, then it's time to walk away from it. And ultimately what I had to go and realize is, if I were to go and make that investment for that payroll and kind of the extended runway and all that stuff, like I wouldn't make that investment today. So then ultimately I've got to make a hard choice now.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson, the takeaway for our listeners from your experience?

Kyle Maynard:
I would say it's to look at whatever the situation, whether it's a financial thing, but it could be like I said, relationship thing, health thing, whatever. Look at where things are like out of order, and frankly are we clinging to something or some idea? Because you know, we think that we've already invested so much in it, like it's a dumb idea. Or like you continue on down that path, you know, whether it's ... I talk to my sisters about that all the time and like, you know, relationships too, it's this exact same way, you know. It's like you don't date somebody just because you dated them for two years. That's not the right way to go about that decision.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right. But people do, they feel they've invested in the person, the relationship. I should stick in and that is definitely not good to do.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let me ask you how. So so you are in the fitness business and that's your everyday money tip is how to save money. What to prioritize? What's worth spending money on when you're trying to get in shape? Because you climbed mountains, Kyle, like it's pretty insane what goes on.

Kyle Maynard:
You mentioned this, but I'd owned a gym for a long time too, and actually my first company right out of the gate was a supplement company and learned a tremendous amount about that and just the whole industry. And I think a ton of stuff that we spend money on in health and fitness goes unused and wasted. The biggest thing that you can do I think in the health and fitness journey is to drastically simplify it and spend time actually doing stuff. You know, spend time on, like if you're going to spend money, spend it on getting high quality food, instead of a ton of supplements and shakes and all of that stuff. Spend it on getting real foods, decent quality stuff. If you can eat organic, great. If not, then you can still get high quality food too that's not organic, that maybe it's not going to be as ideal, but like it's going to be pretty good.

Kyle Maynard:
It's going to get you a long ways and you don't need to go in and buy a ton of crazy fitness contraptions like you can make do with simple stuff. Like everyone has access to the gym of the outdoors like and if it's super cold or super hot where you're at, then you have your bedroom, you have a space at some point. You have your body. You have you know so many ways to go and move that don't require expensive $10,000 treadmills.

Kyle Maynard:
Is it an excuse? When it comes down to it, it actually is avoidant of the real issue at hand, which is putting in work and eating high quality food.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right. So what are you eating for dinner tonight, Kyle?

Kyle Maynard:
Today, I have yet to eat anything yet. I think I'm going to go on a fasting day, and then thrown in ...

Bobbi Rebell:
Wait a second, guys. Just so you know, we're taping this. It's after noon in San Diego where Kyle is. You haven't eaten till noon. Come on.

Kyle Maynard:
Most days I don't.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're one of those morning faster people.

Kyle Maynard:
Intermittent fasting. Yeah, and also like I'll throw in a periodic like two, three, five day fast every now and then. So ...

Bobbi Rebell:
Cool. That's also not, not the purpose of it.

Kyle Maynard:
Saves money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Save some money I guess. Anyway, so everyone. So Kyle has a bunch of projects going on. but they're top secret. So Kyle's not going to tell us. So I'm just going to have Kyle tell everyone where you can find out about all of his top secret next chapter of his business venture and life adventures. Go for it, Kyle.

Kyle Maynard:
All right. You can hit me up on Instagram is probably the place that I'm a more active, Instagram and Facebook, but Instagram's like pretty much where it's at. Like I've also taken the time to be able to spend the next few months to be able to go at a little slower pace and enjoy and then gear up for some exciting stuff in the fall and the winter.

Bobbi Rebell:
And your handle is Kyle Maynard, is it Kyle Maynard, right?

Kyle Maynard:
It's just KyleMaynard.com.

Bobbi Rebell:
Kylemayard.com. Cool. All right, everyone. Check him out. Thank you Kyle.

Kyle Maynard:
Awesome. Thank you Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends. So if there is anyone whose adventures you really need to be following on Instagram, it is Kyle's. This was a serious interview, but he's a really fun guy to watch, so definitely follow him.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right, let's get down to my take. Financial Grownup tip number one. Fail, but with grace and gratitude. I did not hear one bit of pity from Kyle, and I know he really put his all into this venture, so thankfully he did not put it in all his money. There was no finger pointing. He did not blame anyone. He kept his head up.

Bobbi Rebell:
This was not the story we had planned to share. Kyle mentioned it casually as we were setting up. We planned to share something else, so it is possible, even likely, that you guys are the first ones hearing this, and that's pretty brave for Kyle because Kyle's a pretty well known guy who is known for winning, and as he says, no excuses.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two. Kyle reminds us that we can get in shape at no cost, and that rather than supplements, we can just eat good quality food. My tip buy less precut fruit to save money. So just this week, I realized my family bought a $9 container of cut up organic cantaloupe, which by the way had already gone bad that day so it wasn't even fresh and I had to return it, but $9. Oh my gosh. So first of all, easy way to save money on healthy fruits and vegetables. Cut them up yourself at home.

Bobbi Rebell:
Second, be aware of where to pay up for organic. In general, if it has a skin or an outer layer that you're not eating in general, you don't need to pay up for organic. I'll leave some links with more info in the show notes. And by the way the show notes can always be found by going to bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast and scrolling down to the episode. You can also type in bobbirebell.com/podcast and the guest's name. So in this case it would be bobbirebell.com/podcast/kylemaynard.

Bobbi Rebell:
Friends, big thank you. The show is growing. More of you are subscribing, so thank you again. Please tell your friends and all that good stuff. Social media is great, DME. Be in touch on Instagram bobbirebell1, and on Twitter @bobbirebell.

Bobbi Rebell:
And thanks to the great Kyle Maynard for helping us all get one step closer to being Financial Grownups.

Speaker 1:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

Farnoosh Torabi was underpaid and overworked as a young journalist. But a key piece of information put her on the road- albeit a rocky road- to doubling her pay.  

In Farnoosh’s story you will learn:

-What to ask your HR department to find out if you are underpaid

-Strategies to use if your pay is at the low end of the salary range for your job

-When to know it is time to look for a job outside your current company

-How to handle the big question “How much do you want to make” during job interviews

-How to turn an employers promise of a future raise, into an immediate salary bump

In Farnoosh’s lesson you will learn:

-How to most effectively advocate for yourself

-How Farnoosh was able to persevere even when she faced pushback about her compensation

-The importance of getting the information in advance of negotiations

In Farnoosh’s money tip you will learn:

-Why she advocates checking your numbers every day

-What weight and wealth management have in common

-How she uses Mint

-How checking your finances can help catch financial fraud or hackers

In My Take you will learn:

-My mothers suprising negotiating technique

-How I got a salary above my ‘reach’  range by using it

-My dad’s philosophy on how companies show appreciation

-How to handle being offered a higher title and more responsibility- without a pay bump

Episode Links:

Find out more about Farnoosh’s course “Personal Finance for Grads” on Investopedia.com by going to academy.investopedia.com and look for Personal Finance for Grads. 

Be sure to use the code FARNOOSH20 to get 20% off the $99 course lifetime access. 

Farnoosh also mentions Mint, where you can also check out her columns.

You can learn more about Farnoosh Torabi on her website http://farnoosh.tv/

 

Follower her on social media:

Twitter: @FARNOOSH

Instagram @farnooshtorabi

Facebook: www.facebook.com/FarnooshTorabi

Listen to the So Money podcast on itunes

And check out  my episode from when How to be a Financial Grownup came out!

 

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Transcription

Farnoosh Torabi:
I was in my mid 20s, wanting to get a raise at my job, kept asking over and over again to no avail. Finally, my father clued me in to this term that was really ground-breaking for me.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup. With me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to be a Financial Grownup. 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, what were the magic words my guest's father told her about? And no, they were not, "I quit," or anything like that. But I do promise you, friends, you will learn a lot about the harsh reality of trying to pry more money out of a current employer, emphasis on current.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're also going to learn a whole lot about the power of information. My guest is Farnoosh Torabi. She is a big name in the personal finance space. You probably know her as the host of the So Money podcast. She's also the author of a growing list of best-selling books, which began with the, You're So Money; Live Rich Even when You're Not, published in 2008, and her most recent, When She Makes More. She also has a red hot course on Investopedia on personal finance. What else? I'm going to ask her about it. Here is Farnoosh Torabi.

Bobbi Rebell:
Farnoosh Torabi, you are a financial grownup, and I am so excited to be chatting with you today.

Farnoosh Torabi:
I'm so glad that I earned this designation. Financial grownup, how great. Thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm so happy you're here, and you're definitely a grownup, and by the way, I have you to thank for inspiring me to do this podcast. It was something that I was thinking about for a while, and we had a little conversation in the green room at the 92nd Street Y before a conference, and that was kind of the final push that I needed. So, I am forever grateful, so thank you.

Farnoosh Torabi:
Oh my gosh. Well, I'm glad to help. I'm happy to serve. I'm in. So wonderful that you're doing this. It makes a hundred thousand percent sense.

Bobbi Rebell:
Women podcasting about personal finance is a category that we want to grow, so we're all in this together. Speaking of growing, you are moving into courses. You have a really cool new thing happening with one of my favorite websites, Investopedia.

Farnoosh Torabi:
Investopedia.com basically brought my dreams to life. I've always wanted to do a money course, but as you know, as people listening know, a course is a big project. It's not just the teaching of the course, but it's the marketing, the infrastructure, the sales, the production, and frankly, all that just made me get dizzy and not feel like at all interested. I just wanted to show up and teach.

Bobbi Rebell:
But this is where you say, "It was worth it, though."

Farnoosh Torabi:
It was worth it. Well, they came to me and they're like, "We'll do all the back end stuff if you can just show up and teach," and that was music to my ears. So, together in collaboration, we created a nine-module money course, catered to graduates, people who are just recently out of college, young adults. They're getting their first paycheck, their first real paycheck, and they want to learn how to maximize it, how to make the most of that weekly/monthly paycheck.

Farnoosh Torabi:
So, you're going to learn about how to budget, how to save, how to invest properly, how to earn more, as salaries have been stagnant for a long time, so really excited about that.

Farnoosh Torabi:
If you go to academy.investopedia.com, and you look for Personal Finance for Grads, that's the new name of the course. We ended up switching it, because we wanted it to be really specific about who we were targeting. Personal Finance for Grads. And if you use the code, FARNOOSH20, you'll get 20% off. It's just 99 bucks, but you'll get another 20 bucks off with that code, FARNOOSH20.

Bobbi Rebell:
And also, maybe a good graduation present. Just a couple of months from now, people will be graduating. It's a really good thing, even if you're not a graduate, to think about gifting to someone.

Farnoosh Torabi:
Great idea. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that plug. It's lifetime access, so whether you buy it now, or in six months, or today, you'll have it forever.

Bobbi Rebell:
Good stuff, and by the way, when I was studying for my CFP, Investopedia was my go-to destination when you're looking for some arcane financial term, they have it all there, so that's my nod to Investopedia.

Farnoosh Torabi:
Well, they're the largest resource for financial information, so makes sense that you were able to bank on their definitions.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right, no one would have some of these terms, but they have everything there, so they're a good place to check out, and get your course.

Bobbi Rebell:
But I also want to talk to you about the money story that you have brought today, because it has something that I would love to do, which is that it doubled your salary. So, tell me. How exactly did you double your salary?

Farnoosh Torabi:
I was in my mid 20s, wanting to get a raise at my job, kept asking, over and over again, to no avail. Finally, my father clued me in to this term that was really ground-breaking for me. It was what's known as your salary range or your salary band. It's information that human resources typically has at the ready to give you. They're not going to voluntarily give this to you, but it is your right to know.

Farnoosh Torabi:
So, I went to HR, because what this salary band essentially tells you, is what your employer has budgeted for your job, for your post. At the time, I was a producer. I discovered through HR that the salary band for my job at this particular new station, was anywhere from $44,000 up to $85,000/$90,000.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's a big range.

Farnoosh Torabi:
That's a big range, and guess what? I was on the very low end of that range, despite having been there going on three years, doing multiple jobs that were above and beyond my original job requirements-

Bobbi Rebell:
And they didn't just come to you and say, "You're working really hard. Let's just give you [crosstalk 00:06:09]-

Farnoosh Torabi:
No.

Bobbi Rebell:
No, really? That's shocking.

Farnoosh Torabi:
When did that ever happen? So, I was taking all the right steps, but this was gold, you know, learning actually what my company at the most, valued me at, was gold. Now, I will say that I used that in my next meeting with my boss, "Since I have some updates, I discovered that I actually can make up to, you know, $90,000 in this role. I've been here for three years. I'm still at the very low end. I'm like in the fifth percentile of this range, so I'm not saying I want to make $90,000, but I do think we could bump me up like five or ten K." And it was, "Okay, maybe when we review budgets." It wasn't like a done deal.

Farnoosh Torabi:
So, then I started to really see the handwriting on the wall, started to look outside for a new job. When I got interviews, I never forgot that salary range, and when I finally got close to a deal at this new employer, and they were talking money, they said, "How much do you want to make?" And I remembered that range, because that range was not ... Look, remember that's not just a range probably for your employer, but it's industry norms.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right, companies know what's going on in their sector.

Farnoosh Torabi:
They know what's going on, and this new job that I was interviewing for, was a step up for me, and it was a more senior position, so that range was probably not even valid, but I used it as a baseline. So I said, "I would like to make $100,000." They said, "Well, we don't have a hundred, but we can give you 80."

Bobbi Rebell:
That sounds good.

Farnoosh Torabi:
I said, "Okay, well, you know what? I really, really want a hundred," and they said, "Well, why don't we start at 80, and then in six months we'll review where you're at, and we'll discuss maybe giving you a hundred at that point."

Farnoosh Torabi:
And I'm like, "Okay. This is the time to take all the money you can." When you're in negotiations. In six months, they're not even going to remember what they said about some meeting they wanted to have with you.

Farnoosh Torabi:
So, I said, "Look, can I have 90, and then I won't bother you in six months."

Bobbi Rebell:
I like that.

Farnoosh Torabi:
And they said, "Sure," nice and clean. And you know, so effectively, I doubled my salary. I went from 45 to 90, and I owe credit to knowing that salary range.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, Farnoosh, what is the lesson from your Financial Grownup money story?

Farnoosh Torabi:
The lesson is, you have to be your biggest advocate. You have to continually be curious about what it is you're after. So, I was not going to take "No," for an answer from my boss, and I just kept exploring, and digging, and questioning, "How can I make more money?"

Farnoosh Torabi:
And I talked to my family about it. It ended up my dad was the one who told me about this salary band thing, which I had no idea about. If I hadn't told him about it, I probably wouldn't have walked into HR, and asked them for the number, so don't give up. You know, a "No," is one step closer to a "Yes." As long as you stay curious, and determined.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, let me ask you. Do you have a day-to-day money tip, an everyday thing that you can recommend to people that they can implement right away?

Farnoosh Torabi:
Implement right away. I would say check your numbers every day. Look, I don't do this all the time, but I do step on a scale quite frequently, because I want to make sure that, you know, if I had a pretty crazy weekend of eating, I can check in with myself. I keep myself accountable. Like I'm, "Okay, I've gained a few pounds. I need to be mindful of what I'm putting in my mouth this week."

Farnoosh Torabi:
Your money's the same thing. Like you might have a week or a month where you overspend. It's important to know where you're at at all times, so that you can adjust. You can continually readjust and adjust and fine-tune your finances, but you're never going to be able to do that unless you have the knowledge of where you are financially.

Farnoosh Torabi:
So, on my phone, I am constantly checking my bank balance, my credit card balance. I check my Mint app, just to see am I over-spending, under-spending? I set budget limits for myself. This maybe isn't an every-hour or an every-day thing, but it certainly should be a regular, maybe twice to five times a week kind of thing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, it's also smart to check in because there's so much hacking and fraud, that this way you spot it.

Farnoosh Torabi:
Absolutely, right. For that reason alone, you should be checking your bank account.

Bobbi Rebell:
Awesome. Thank you for all the amazing advice, and thank you for being part of this new program. We really appreciate it.

Farnoosh Torabi:
My pleasure. Thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Here's my take, guys. Part of being a financial grownup is taking advice from your parents. I'm not always the best negotiator. I'm going to toss this one to my parents, and share some advice that they have given me over the years.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup negotiating strategy number one, courtesy of Adele Rebell, the Just Keep Your Mouth Shut technique, meaning let the other person say the first number.

Bobbi Rebell:
True story, I once had a number in mind as a reach for a job. I didn't think I was going to get anywhere near that kind of money, but I kept my mouth shut, let them make the first move, and the offer came in $10,000 higher than that reach number.

Bobbi Rebell:
Then, I sat there. I was calm, cool, collected, pretended it wasn't enough money, asked for more, and you know what? I got another $5,000.

Bobbi Rebell:
Bonus tip, by the way, from my mother, the Keep Your Mouth Shut strategy can also work for losing weight. I'm a CFP, not a nutritionist, but guys, it does work, because of course you eat less food.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, back to our focus on money. Financial Grownup strategy number two, comes from my father, Arthur Rebell. Companies show love and appreciation with money. Companies may try to distract you with a fancy new title and lots of new responsibilities, but then they don't give you a meaningful raise.

Bobbi Rebell:
Imagine if you tried to pay your Visa bill by saying, "Well, my budget's tight, but I'm going to call you my Senior Global Credit Card. Yeah, not so much. Take the higher title, and say "Yes," to moving up in terms of responsibilities. That's all good, but just know, it is not the same as a raise. Companies show love through compensation, aka money. So try to keep the focus on the money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you all for the amazing feedback that we have already been getting on the program. It is truly appreciated. Please subscribe, download, share, review, rate, all that good stuff. We need it. We are a brand new podcast. All of your support means the world to us.

Bobbi Rebell:
I hope everyone enjoyed the show, and that we all got one step closer to being financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary shares a story about his mother and a secret he learned about after she passed away. The Entrepreneur, who is also behind O’Shares and O’Leary Ventures  reveals in the story how his mothers choices informed his investing style, which is heavily focused on dividends. 

He goes on to discuss the two types of investments his mother chose, including her thinking and mindset in making those choices. 

O'Leary also talks about the importance of the tax changes and why that is something that will benefit investors who follow his strategy. 

In his money tip Kevin explains how people who can’t save can find the money to get on track. He also reveals another lesson from his mother that was a bit surprise. O'Leary also shares his 90 day money test that he does with his wealthy friends to help them stay rich. 

O'Leary talks about an app that he launched  called Beanstox that allows investors to buy small dollar amounts of ETF’s and market-leading stocks. It gets people into investing without having to commit large amounts of capital up-front. 

Links to things mentioned in this episode

Kevin O’Leary’s financial literacy books the Cold Hard Truth series can be found here. 

His app to start investing can be found at Beanstox

To learn more about the companies he backs as well as his wine business and more, go to O’LEARY VENTURES

Kevin also talked about his ETF business O'Shares

In his story about his mom he spoke about Chanel and Gucci

Books I recommended in the episode: 

The Opposite of Spoiled by Ron Lieber

Smart Money Smart Kids, Raising the next generation to win with money by Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruz

Make your Kid a Money Genius even if you are not by Beth Kobliner

 

Money A-Z Scott Alan Turner

Steve Jobs, The man who thought different by Karen Blumenthal

 

I also mention Fincon which is a fantastic conference for anyone who creates content about money, 

---

Transcription

Kevin O'Leary:
The executor called me and said, "Look, your mother has kept a secret account from both of your husbands her whole life, you should come here because you're not going to be executor of this".

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grown Up, with me, Certified Financial Planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How To Be A Financial Grown Up, and you know what, being the grown up is really hard, especially when it comes to money. But it's okay, we're gonna get there together. I'm gonna bring you one money story from a financial grown up, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, welcome to this edition of Financial Grown Up, and for those of you who have not guessed yet, yes that was the voice of Kevin O'Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank. He is going to join us in just a moment to share a story about a secret, a financial lesson secret that he learned from his mother only after she passed away. It is a great story and it's gonna change your whole mindset about how you think about investing, so stick with me here. I just want to do a quick introduction to Kevin, tell you guys a little bit more about him for the maybe one or two people out there that don't know exactly who Kevin O'Leary is.

Bobbi Rebell:
He is a serial entrepreneur. He's got his own ventures including an investment company that focuses on dividend ETS. He also is in the wine business and of course, O'Leary Venture supports all the Shark Tank companies that he's invested in. Recent success of note, Plated, which he sold for a cool 300 million dollars. He's also got a really interesting app I want you guys to hear about and you will hear about it in just a moment. Here is Kevin O'Leary.

Bobbi Rebell:
Kevin O'Leary you are a financial grown up and I'm so excited you are on the podcast. Welcome.

Kevin O'Leary:
Great to be here. Thank you so much.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you are, of course, so special in my heart because you are such an advocate for financial literacy. You make it part of everything that you do, including your entrepreneurial ventures. Before we get to the financial grown up moment that you're gonna share with us, I do wanna have you tell us more about the app Beanstox. Tell us about Beanstox.

Kevin O'Leary:
You know, for the last few years I've been teaching at colleges and high schools and I've just been stunned by the fact that we teach young people in America pretty well everything about math and reading, geography, even sex education, but we never talk to them about financial literacy. We never teach them how to invest, and even when I teach graduating cohorts of engineers at places like MIT, Harvard, Notre Dame, Temple, I'm blown away that these young people going off in the workforce have never bought a stock or bonds.

Kevin O'Leary:
So, the genesis of Beanstox, and I've spelt it B-E-A-N-S-T-O-X, is an app. You download it and it allows you to buy fractional shares of your favorite stocks or exchange traded funds, which means if you only have $2 to invest, or $5, or $10 or whatever you've got, you can actually own a real share and learn about how the prices go up and down, when dividends get paid, and just to build a diversified portfolio. I find when you do that on your mobile device, you actually watch it every day. Some people go on 10 times a day, and I've just been thrilled.

Kevin O'Leary:
Hundreds of thousands of them have been downloaded now. People have set up accounts, even if they only put in 50 bucks a month, it's great to start investing because the truth about America is the average salary is $52,000 a year, and if you started investing just 10% of your income at the age of 22, by the time you're 65, if the markets do what they have done for the last 50 years, which is give you six to seven percent a year of return, you'll have 1.2 million dollars sitting in the bank for-

Bobbi Rebell:
Very nice, all right, everybody check out Beanstox now. I'm really excited for you to share your financial grown up moment money story because my mom passed away a few years ago and it's, in some ways, only in retrospect that I learned some really important lessons from her, and you learned a big lesson from your mom at that time.

Kevin O'Leary:
Yes, when she passed away, I was the older son. I'm two years older than my brother, so the executer called me and said, "Look, your mother's kept a secret account from both of her husbands her whole life, you should come here because you're now gonna be the executor of this" and when I got there, I was blown away. I mean she ... I had always wondered how she'd provided for my brother and I, her sisters, and her extended family. She always seemed to have money, and what she had done is she had done exactly that.

Kevin O'Leary:
She had put aside more than 10% of her paycheck when she was a young woman, and she invested in two types of securities. 50% of this portfolio were in large cap dividend paying stocks, and the other half were in Telco bonds, five to seven year bonds and her thinking was that nobody would ever let their phone be disconnected by not paying their bill, so she trusted Telco Company, and this portfolio, over 50 years, outperformed everybody else in the family's, so I did some research.

Kevin O'Leary:
It really changed my mind forever about investing. 70% of the returns of the stock market over the last 50 years have come from dividends, not capital appreciation, so I never buy a stock today that doesn't pay a dividend. I learned that from my mother, and her whole mantra was never spend the principle, only the interest. She was so right about that.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it's interesting because that really did inform your whole approach to investing and your whole business, when it comes to your ETF business.

Kevin O'Leary:
Yes. O'Shares is build around her philosophy. We don't have a single security in any of our O'Shares funds, including the new midcap one OUSM. The reason I'm really intrigued with midcap stocks in America today, the ones that pay dividends, is because of this tax reform. They used to pay 36% tax, now they pay 21, so their cash flows this year are going to grow up by 15 to 20% more free cash. And if you look at the Russell 2,000, which is the universe of all the small companies in America, 339 are profitable and pay tax, and they're all captured in OUSM.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow, all right so, what is the take away lesson from that story? Do you wish, for example, that you talked to your mom more about her money philosophy and what she was doing?

Kevin O'Leary:
Basically the take away story is this. When you start saving, there's two aspects to your saving. There's the principal, the money you're putting away, and then there's the interest you make off the principal, or the dividends you get if you bought a stock. What she basically said was it's okay to spend and live off the dividends and interest, but it's not okay to spend the principal, because once you spend the principal, you never get it back.

Kevin O'Leary:
The principal is what makes the money for you, so that philosophy is, you live off interest, you live off dividends, and that's how you monetize your lifestyle, but you never dip in to your principal. Some people say, well I really wanna buy a boat, I wanna buy a bigger house, I wanna buy something and I can't because I don't make enough, and they spend their principal. That always ends badly.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow, all right. Your mom was definitely a financial grown up and certainly we appreciate you sharing what she taught you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Before you go, give us a money tip for our listeners. Something that you do that maybe they can emulate that can make a difference in their financial wellbeing right now. Something they can implement today.

Kevin O'Leary:
I've learned this years and years ago, and again taught to by my mother. When you go out every day, the whole world is designed to take money from you. That's how they market and tell you to buy this or get a new latte or buy new jeans or a new pair of shoes. Every time you get tempted to buy something, and I do this even to this day, I ask myself, do I really need this thing, do I really need it because when I take it, I take my cash and I buy it, I'm basically killing those dollars in terms of them making me interest or dividends because I bought those shoes or I bought those pants or I bought whatever it was.

Kevin O'Leary:
People say to me, well I can't save 10% of my salary. I'm living paycheck to paycheck, and I always remind them what my mother said, yes you can. You buy so much crap that you don't need and anybody can look in their closet and look at all the stuff they don't wear anymore. The shoes they don't wear or the junk they bought, and so I've really, really learned, buy really good things once in a while. And I'll tell you the anecdotal story.

Kevin O'Leary:
When my mother passed away, the women in my family fought like cats or dogs because all her clothes were Channel and Gucci and really good stuff that she kept for decades, but she didn't buy any crap, and that was her lesson to me. Buy a good suit. Buy a great pair of shoes, but don't buy a bunch of junk. That way you feel good about what you own, but you save a lot of money, and I've been able to cut my spending by a ton because I don't buy crap, and because she taught me that.

Kevin O'Leary:
Even wealthy people I work with, I do this special test with them, I say get a piece of paper, just two sheets, you don't need any technology.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh no.

Kevin O'Leary:
And write down all of the things you make money from in 90 days, and all the money you spend in 90 days, and even really wealthy people outspend their income, and they learned sobering basis. That's my lesson. Do your 90 day test, but don't buy crap. You don't need it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much Kevin O'Leary. It was such a pleasure having you. We will all keep tuning in to Shark Tank and all your other ventures, thank you.

Kevin O'Leary:
Take care.

Bobbi Rebell:
I always love talking with Kevin O'Leary, he's an amazing advocate for financial literacy and such an inspiration. Here is my take and it probably won't surprise you guys. Financial grown up tip number one, talk to your parents about money, and yes, get their advice, but also try to get them to open up about what they did right and also, just as important, what they would have done differently. Get them to share their financial grown up moments, their money stories. When we're kids, our parents often shelter us from what is really going on behind the scenes in our daily lives.

Bobbi Rebell:
For example, I remember as a teenager, my family moved into a bigger and newer house. Now, I didn't think that much about it, when I saw my mom putting towels over the windows. It was a little weird, but you know parents can be weird. What I learned later on was that they had really stretched to buy the house, and they were waiting, holding off to buy the window coverings, so my mom was basically making due with what she had, and really, it was just fine, no big deal.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right, financial grown up tip number two, if and when you have kids, make a plan for how you want them to learn about money. There is no right or wrong plan here, every kid has different ways of learning and every family has different things that are right for them. Find out what works for you guys.

Bobbi Rebell:
Some resources though, I am a big fan of a book called The Opposite Of Spoiled by Ron Lieber. Another classic to check out, Smart Money, Smart Kids by Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruise, and finally, Make Your Kid A Money Genius by Beth Kobliner. Check them out. And, for fun, I was recently gifted a book at FinCon by Scott Allen Turner called Money A To Z. It was a lot of fun to read with my child, and of course, don't shy away from business stories for kids, especially as they get older.

Bobbi Rebell:
Harry is now 10 and we are reading about Steve Jobs. The actual book title if you guys wanna check it out is Steve Jobs The Man Who Thought Different. It is by Karen Blumenthal. It's opening up a lot of discussions about funding a start up and all the different things that go into a business. It's also interesting to read about Steve Jobs and all of his personal quirks, so I will leave it to you guys to see if you wanna read that book with your children or just check it out yourself.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you all for listening to Financial Grown Up. We are new and we need your support. Please subscribe to this podcast and then of course, be sure to rate and review it on iTunes and especially please share this with your friends. And until next time, I am wishing all of you financial freedom.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grown Up with Bobbi Rebell is a BRK Media production.

Fran Hauser became a financial grownup very young, helping her immigrant parents build their businesses by doing the books and serving as a liaison to clients as early as 1st grade. The author of “The Myth of the Nice Girl, Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate” now applies those early life lessons to her search for  startup investment opportunities.   

 

In Fran’s money story you will learn:

-How growing up as the english speaking daughter of Italian immigrants impacted her path to being a financial grownup

-What it was like to be preparing invoices for her parents businesses starting in 1st grade

-What she learned about risk and investment from observing her father’s strategies

-How her parents took risks despite their disadvantages, and the impact that had on her current risk tolerance

-How she integrates those skills when she considers startup investors in her current role as an early stage investor

-The specific characteristics she looks for when evaluating startups

In Fran’s money lesson you will learn:

-How to conquer fear of mistakes

-The importance of integrating kindness and respect

In Fran’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-How Fran teachers her children about money using a 5 gallon water jug

-How much they saved

-How they spent the money!

In My Take you will learn:

-The impact of saying Thank You instead of Sorry

-How the correct tone in which a message is delivered can make it more effective

Bobbi and Fran also talk about:

-Her new book The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate

-What inspired Fran to write the book after more than a decade of planning

-The unique scripts that are in the book that readers can use to execute the strategies Fran teaches

-What the Nice Girl Army is, and how you can laern more about it

-Fran’s plans now that the book has been a best seller!

Episode Links:

Learn more about Fran at her website Franhauser.com

 

Buy Fran’s book! http://www.franhauser.com/nicegirl/

 

Follow Fran!

instagram fran_hauser

twitter @fran_hauser

  

---

Transcription

Fran Hauser:
When my father was asked to go look at a job, a potential client, and give them an estimate, he wasn't able to understand the directions to actually get to the house. So I would listen in on another phone and write down the directions, and then I would go in the car to the residence, and then I would get out and I basically be the translator.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup, with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How To Be a Financial Grownup, and 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, that was author, Fran Hauser. Now, this is a very big interview for me because she is very much in demand after her book, The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love Without Becoming a Person You Hate, became a huge hit this summer. It has many of us rethinking the things that women thought we had to do to succeed. No more mean girls, and there's a lot in there for men as well. So stay with me everyone, this is not just for women listeners. Special welcome to our new listeners, if you are returning, thank you as well for your support. We keep the shows to about 15 minutes so you can easily fit it into your busy schedule, but we also release three episodes a week. So feel free to binge if you're commuting, just make sure to select auto download after you subscribe so that they'll be in your feed automatically. It's all about making it easy.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's get to Fran. After a long career in media, which included being the president of digital at Time, she is now an investor in startups, and she got a lot of the training for that from her upbringing being a very active part of her parents businesses. Here is Fran Hauser.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Fran Hauser, you are a financial grownup, welcome to the podcast.

Fran Hauser:
Hi Bobbi, great to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
Congratulations on the incredible success of your book, The Myth of the Nice Girl: Achieving a Career You Love, circled in a bright red circle, Without Becoming a Person You Hate, big X over the 'Hate' of course. Since the book's come out it's been named so many different things, including an Amazon Best Business Book of 2018, best new book by People magazine and Refinery 29, most anticipated title of April by Bustle, I mean I could just basically go on. Congratulations on all of that, Fran.

Fran Hauser:
Oh thank you. It's really been amazing, I feel so grateful.

Bobbi Rebell:
You came to us with a story that's really meaningful, because it has to do with your whole family and the money experiences that you learned growing up from your parents, in the town where my sister now lives, Mount Kisco, and you were their bookkeeper in their businesses in first grade, tell us about that.

Fran Hauser:
Yes. So my parents are Italian immigrants who moved to Mount Kisco, as you said, and like many immigrants it took a lot of courage to make this move. They were uneducated, they didn't speak the language, and they were moving to a place that was completely foreign to them. What each of my parents did have though, was a skill. So my father was a stonemason, my mother was really good at sewing, so they both started small businesses. My dad a stonemeasonry business, and my mom opened up a tailoring shop with her best friend. Being the oldest of four, they needed my help, especially when it came to communication. So when I was in first grade I was preparing all of my dad's invoices. One memory that I have is I could only add at that point in time, I couldn't multiply yet, so my aunt actually created a sales tax chart for me, so that if the monthly maintenance was $300, I could see exactly what the sales tax was, and then just add the two numbers together.

Fran Hauser:
So that was first grade, and then even in middle school I was helping my mother with marketing. So helping her come up with a logo, and getting different marketing and sales materials printed. So I got exposed to business at a very young age, and even understanding things like revenue, and expense, cashflow, you know seeing that when more cash comes in than goes out, decisions that need to be made around what to do with that extra money. It was really interested watching my dad because he took some calculated risks and invested in both commercial and residential real estate, which proved to be fruitful. I would say at a very, very, very young age I played this role of bookkeeper/marketer/general manager.

Fran Hauser:
Another vivid memory I have that I'll just share with you is when my father was asked to go look at a job, a potential client, and give them an estimate, he wasn't able to understand the directions to actually get to the house. So I would listen in on another phone and write down the directions, and then I would go in the car with him and we would actually drive to the residence together, and then I would get out and I would basically be the translator for him. So that was my childhood, pretty unconventional.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow. Very unconventional. How did you assume this role? Were there specific deliberate conversations, or did it just evolve organically as you grew up in the household?

Fran Hauser:
It really evolved organically, because I was the oldest. Really, these things just fell on me. It made sense, if something was broken, even in the house, and needed to be repaired, I would be the one to call the plumber or the contractor, and at the time it felt really hard. It was frustrating, for sure, at times because I just felt so different from all of my "American" friends, who were doing sleepovers and play dates, and I had so much more responsibility. Obviously, looking back, it was actually such an incredible experience, because I learned so much, not just about business but also about risk taking. Watching my parents, who had so much going against them, they were at such a disadvantage, but they were still able to take these risks. Whether it was building these businesses, or investing in real estate, and if you look at my career, I've taken many risks in my career. I've reinvented myself several times. I left Coca-Cola and the late nineties to go to an early stage internet company, Movie Phone. Or five years ago, I left a really comfortable job at Time Inc. to move into startup investing.

Fran Hauser:
So I haven't been afraid to take risks, and I think a lot of that comes from seeing how disadvantaged my parents were, and feeling like if they could take risks, I should be able to.

Bobbi Rebell:
I wanted to ask you, so you mentioned, and I was going to bring this up, that you now are a startup investor. How did this background in business and understanding risks, and understanding strategy and marketing, and even just the basic economics of business, how does that inform your approach as an investor now?

Fran Hauser:
So I think in a lot of ways. For starters, when I'm evaluating the entrepreneurs I'm looking at them and I'm saying, "Do they have the capacity to take risks? Will they jump in with both feet?" And I'm also looking at what kind of mindset do they have? Are they optimistic? I always felt like my parents approached every single venture with such optimism, and with an abundance mindset, and treating people kindly and with respect. So those are things that I really look for in an entrepreneur, and then the other side of it is the brass tactics operational side, which is I feel like I'm really good at looking at financials and understanding what the risks are, really getting nitpicky when it comes to the assumptions that are being used. So I feel like I can look at a PnL pretty quickly, and projected cashflows, and all that good stuff, and I'm just co comfortable. I'm so comfortable with numbers, and I'm so comfortable with looking at forecasts and really trying to make sense of it, and also understanding is there a there there?

Fran Hauser:
The other part too, I would say, is just understanding markets, understanding consumers. I think that also comes from just having spent so much time with my parents clients. So it's impacted me as an investor in so many different ways.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson then, for our listeners from this, that they can apply to their businesses, and to some degree, to their lives?

Fran Hauser:
I would say the lesson is to not be afraid to take risks, and when you do so, really approach it with a mindset of abundance and optimism, and don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to go all in and to jump in with both feet, and then also the last thing I would say, which really ties back to the book, is to treat people with kindness and respect, because I think you look at my parents who barely spoke a word of english, and they were still able to communicate through a lot of nonverbal cues, and a lot of that had to do with being charming, and being kind, and that will take you far.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah, because the book is really all about being nice, but in a strategic and smart way.

Fran Hauser:
Yes, being nice in a way where you're not a pushover, and you're not veering into people pleasing territory. It's really about how you can be both nice and strong. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, and that you bring both of those into virtually any situation at work.

Bobbi Rebell:
Alright, let's talk about your everyday money tip, because one thing that I love about this is it's very specific, and tangible, and something we can all do pretty much right away.

Fran Hauser:
Yeah, I love this. So what we do in my house is, instead of a normal piggy bank, we collect coins in a five gallon water jug. The kids love it because it's so much bigger than a piggy bank, and it's clear, so you can see the progress. The last time we cashed it in the coins were worth $4000, and it took us several years to fill it up, but it's just a really fun way to teach your kids about saving and about goals.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where do you cash it in, what's that experience like? Is it one of the machines, or do you bring it to a bank?

Fran Hauser:
It's actually hysterical because it's so heavy, so what you have to do is we put duct tape over the top of it to close it, and then we literally roll it-

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my God.

Fran Hauser:
We have to roll it down the-

Bobbi Rebell:
You could get a smaller container, Fran, you know that?

Fran Hauser:
I know, but it's part of the experience, I guess. So much fun, and then we literally bring it into the bank. The teller always has so much fun with it, because it's not something that they usually see.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what did you do with the $4000 then?

Fran Hauser:
The first time we did it my husband and I, it was actually pre-kids, so we ended up spending it on a really great spa vacation, which was great. Just the two of us.

Bobbi Rebell:
That works.

Fran Hauser:
That works, right? And now with the kids we're just starting to talk to them about, "Okay, what do we want to spend it on?" And that's also really fun, because it allows you to bat around ideas and then have something that you're really excited about, you have something to look forward to.

Bobbi Rebell:
Alright. We'll have to get an update and put it in the show notes as to where the money goes. I want to spend just a couple of minutes talking about your book, because it's had so much impact.

Fran Hauser:
Yes. The book is really my response to a question that I get asked all the time, which is, "How can you be so nice, and still be successful?" It's just a topic that I've found myself talking about quite a bit, and it's something that I really believe. Being nice, and being empathetic, and collaborative, and having an abundance mindset. All of those things have really served me well in my career. If I think about some of the bigger promotions that I received, or if I was asked to work on a really high profile project, a lot of that came back to my ability to build relationships and earn trust, and a lot of that goes back to being nice.

Fran Hauser:
So the book is really actual, I mean it's inspiring, but I think what makes it special is I am such an operator at heart that I really wanted to make sure that we filled it with tips, and techniques, and scripts. There are so many scripts for navigating sticky situations.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes, there are very specific things, because people think, "Well, this happens to me, what do I ..." they literally don't have the words. Like when someone takes credit for an idea that you had, you go into exactly what to do, which is important.

Fran Hauser:
Yes, and I have to tell you one really cool thing, just over the past week I've had three different women tell me that they all got really big raises using my advice in the book.

Bobbi Rebell:
Fantastic. And now, you're now working on this Nice Girl Army, right? That's your saying on social media, and you bring together all these different stories that relate to that.

Fran Hauser:
Yes. My Nice Girl Army is actually a group of ambassadors that I put together, probably about six to nine months ago. A lot of them are former mentees, or current mentees, they really love the message in the book, and they've really gotten behind the book. It's basically a Google group I've created where we all communicate with one another, and they've all been so helpful in promoting the book, and I think from a hashtag perspective, it's taken on this bigger movement feel to it. It's just been really fun to see women who I don't know reading the book and using that hashtag, and saying how much they love the book, and how much it's helped them.

Fran Hauser:
So I think in terms of what I'm thinking about next, it's really how do I take all of this great content that's in the book, and what else can I do with that content? So I'm just starting to think about some product extensions from the book, which is really exciting, and then still doing my day job, which is investing and advising, which is something that I've put on pause a little bit over the last few months as I've been working on the book tour. So I'm really excited to get back into that as well.

Bobbi Rebell:
Cool. Well, I want to make sure everyone can, first of all get the book if they haven't gotten it yet, but more importantly, also know where to find you and follow to get updates on all of these different projects.

Fran Hauser:
Yes, definitely. So my website is FranHauser, H-A-U-S-E-R, .com, and you can get all the information about the book and where to buy the book there. My Instagram and Twitter handle is the same, it's Fran_Hauser, and of course you can always connect with me on Linkedin as well.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Fran. I love the book, and if there's anyone out there who hasn't read it yet, please pick it up, it's wonderful, well worth investing the time. Thank you Fran.

Fran Hauser:
Thank you Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey everyone, so Fran and I really just scratched the surface in that interview, here's a little bit more wisdom from her book. Financial Grownup tip number one; one thing that Fran talks about in The Myth of the Nice Girl is the importance of how things are presented, the tone that you use in your voice. So you can be firm, and not be a pushover, and still be nice. Think about the way that you say things.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two; don't say sorry so much. Try replacing it with "Thank you." Fran points out that many women apologize of things that not only were not their fault, but also they aren't really sorry about. For example, not being able to attend an event. She would often apologize for declining an invitation, instead, she advises to simply say, "Thank you for the invitation." And say that you will not be able to attend.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you have not already, please hit that subscribe button and be in touch on Twitter, @BobbiRebell, on Instagram @BobbiRebell1, and on Facebook I am @BobbiRebell. And learn more about the show at bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast. And thank you to the wonderful Fran Hauser 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 Stewart, and is a BRK Media production.

When entrepreneurs Daniel Levine and Steven Pulver started their Fireside Conference in Canada 4 years ago, their ambition was so hot it burned through their budget, putting the conference in the red. 

In Dan and Steve’s money story you will learn:

-The backstory of their first Fireside Conference

-The key thing that they did not factor into their budget

-How they select who attends the Fireside conference, and how they believe that curation ties into their success

-The missing thing in the conference marketplace that they identified, and inspired them to create their own conference

-The personal connection they have to the location of the conference

-Where their funding came from at the start of the venture

-Why they were $30,000 in debt when the first conference ended

In Dan and Steve’s money lesson you will learn:

-Why they decided to stay on their original trajectory even though the conference lost money in year one. 

-What the data from the first conference showed them and how they leveraged the data for the future

-The role that social media played in their success, even though there was no cell phone reception (or use) at the conference

-How they monetized a very small audience by focusing on community curation

In Dan and Steve’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-Why they allocated a significant budget to in-person events to connect with their community

-The quick realization that they could have more impact on a lower budget by changing one key thing. 

-How you can apply that to your networking and marketing, or even just your friendships and personal relationships

-Why spending more money to impress people is often not effective and can sometimes dilute the potential impact

In My Take you will learn:

-How the new hit show Succession illustrated the same point as the Fireside guys- wealthy people are not impressed by expensive stuff. Just be real with them. 

-How I implement the same strategy, hosting friends and colleagues in my home, rather than taking them out for fancy impersonal dinners

-The significance of pro-actively choosing how you fund a startup

-How self-funding allows for a less painful failure, because while you lose your money, you maintain control and avoid pressure to cut losses from outside investors

Dan, Steven and Bobbi also talk about

-Dan and Steve’s entrepreneurial venture MinuteBox.com

-The next Fireside conference in September

-The speakers at the next conference will include Jordan Harbinger and Jason Calcanis

-How to get preferential consideration for the conference

 

Episode Links

Learn more about the Fireside Conference!

 

Follow them on social media!

-twitter @firesideconf, @daniellevine

-instagram @fireside_conf

 

Learn about their 2018 speakers:

Jordan Harbinger

Jason Calcanis

 

Learn more about the show I mentioned- HBO's Succession!

---

Transcription

Daniel Levine:
We didn't have a sense of when we told people that it was going to be all you can drink, what that meant on the bottom line, and we didn't really have a sense of when you do a conference in the middle of nowhere three and half hours from the closest big city, what that means when you have to start helping to arrange transportation for people.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup, with me certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How To Be a Financial Grownup, and you know what, being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money but it's okay, we're gonna get there together. I'm gonna bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes my friends, the bar tab can get pretty expensive, especially when you offer it unlimited all weekend long, and that was just the beginning for entrepreneurs, Steven Pulver and Daniel Levine when they started the Fire Side Conference in Canada four years ago. The team wanted everything to be perfect for their first experience, but perfect does not come cheap. Lots of lessons and take aways here are Steven Pulver and Daniel Levine.

Bobbi Rebell:
Daniel Levine and Steven Pulver, you're financial grown ups, welcome to the podcast.

Steven Pulver:
Thanks so much for having us.

Daniel Levine:
Pleasure to be here.

Bobbi Rebell:
You guys hold the honor of being the first team that I've had on. So this is going to be cool. We'll see how it goes.

Daniel Levine:
Thank you. We're looking forward to it.

Steven Pulver:
Hopefully no screw ups but we're looking forward to it.

Bobbi Rebell:
You guys are going to be great. Alright you are Canadian entrepreneurs and you are the brains behind a conference that I was very impressed by when I started learning about it, The Fireside Conference. It's happening for the fourth year in September, up in Canada. You're also entrepreneurs yourselves. This is a conference for entrepreneurs, you are entrepreneurs. Your company is MinuteBox, which is cloud based, software basically for law firms to help them be compliant with the various regulations in Canada but the conference is really the focus that I want to talk about here because your money story is about.

Bobbi Rebell:
So tell us what happened, this is year four. I want to hear what happened in the first year, because I think it's some that a lot of entrepreneurs and just people that have ideas about starting businesses or just managing their own finances will relate to and hopefully learn from

Steven Pulver:
For sure. It starts in 2014 when Fireside itself was born and just for your listeners to take just a 30 second overview of what Fireside is, and how it differs from a traditional conference. So Fireside at its core is an invite only retreat for entrepreneurs, founders, investors, influencers from all over the world that we invite up to a summer camp every September.

Steven Pulver:
We started our first official year in 2015. Daniel and I were looking around our community and saying there's a lot of great networking events, there's a lot of great events and things to bring the community together, but the biggest failure they all had was the inability to really bring people together on a way deeper level than just meeting in a conference hall.

Steven Pulver:
So we kind of said there's got to be a better venue that we can do a conference or an event at and we landed on this amazing summer camp where children are there all summer as a sleepover camp outside Bancroft, Ontario, Canada.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you have a personal connection, right? You have a personal connection to the camp.

Steven Pulver:
Yeah so I spent 24 years there both as a camper and staff and worked my way all the way up from counselor to head staff and eventually leadership team and helped a run a lot of the programming. So I was obviously incredibly biased. Daniel actually had attended camp Alden as well as a staff. So when we were looking at venues we were obviously both biased in knowing this was an amazing place to do this at.

Steven Pulver:
We had no video of photos of Fireside itself. When we were trying to market and spend money on ads and things like that, we literally had no real starting point. So because of that everything we were doing, we were fresh into. So we were throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, as we continue to do today, to see what would stick.

Bobbi Rebell:
Had you done any market research or anything? What was your background that made you qualified to do this?

Steven Pulver:
I think we would be completely foolish to say now that we had any form of subject matter expertise in running events, other than wanting to do something amazing.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where was you funding coming from, did you have budget, how did this come together from a financial perspective?

Daniel Levine:
So in our first year, from a financial perspective, it really came together very loosely and in an unstructured way, and hopefully not to ruin the story, but that's how we found ourselves about $30,000 in debt at the end of it. We looked at pricing and we weren't looking at pricing as a factor or breakeven. We weren't looking at it as a function necessarily of our cost. We really went into this with an, "if you build it they will come" attitude and really not having pedigrees in the areas of conferences or event management. We didn't have a sense of when we told people that it was going to be all you can drink, what that really meant on the bottom line, and we didn't really have a sense of when you do a conference in the middle of nowhere three and a half hours from the closest big city, what that means when you have start helping to arrange transportation for people.

Daniel Levine:
So it really was both a combination of not having a budget, but also really just, as you put it, not having any qualifications for doing something like this that had us at the end of a really magical two and half days turn to each other and realize that we really were not in a good financial position.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what did you spend? Give me some of the numbers, what did you spend on the conference and where, and was your revenue that you did have?

Steven Pulver:
Back then, I should say, our only revenue source was tickets. So our tickets were, Dan what was it, $300 to $500 range?

Daniel Levine:
Yeah.

Steven Pulver:
Let's say give or take $350 to $400 on average, in terms of ticket price. That was really our main source of revenue. We had a little bit of sponsorship at the time, but when we're talking about money coming in the door, we're really looking in the $20,000 to $30,000 range or just pure revenue. Now, there's a lot of costs involved, so of course things are completely dependent on the number of people that we have enter the gates of camp. So back then we were about 75 people, now we're around 400, so obviously that has changed quite a bit, but back then, alcohol was a huge cost.

Steven Pulver:
Swag, wanting to give people, for instance, under that swag category I would put whether they'd be water bottles, or [inaudible 00:06:28], or pieces like that. Food, obviously, is a huge piece. Those were the big, big, big costs, and when Dan and I looked at this and we said, "We want to create an amazing event," we didn't have budget in mind. That certainly doesn't mean we had an unlimited budget, but we were never going to sacrifice the quality of, say, the food, or the amount of food, or the amount of alcohol, or the amount of drinks, or whatever it might be, on account of our budget in that first year.

Steven Pulver:
We didn't really know where we were going with it, but kind of both said, "We're in, or we're not." And once we made that decision to go ahead, the budget, unfortunately looking back, it was really nonexistent.

Bobbi Rebell:
So where did you get the money from, the negative $30,000? Was it borrowed, were you putting it on credit cards?

Daniel Levine:
Yeah, so that was coming from our personal capital. Steven and I, we certainly didn't have $30,000 to blow away, but we were fortunate to have some savings, and we're very thankful for the support of our significant others, who saw that big bill come in at the end of the day and say that they had faith in us to really build something fantastic. And the only reason that we were able to swallow such a hit in our first year, was that we had a long term view. There's at least one component of that long term view, if not two, that were important to informing our decisions.

Daniel Levine:
One was, we knew we wanted to go larger than 60 or 75 people, we always thought that we'd be in the 300 to 400 person range. Knowing that, we also knew that our fixed costs were high, and our variable costs were quite low. So that actually was a huge point of leverage for us to look towards in future years, knowing that if we were able to focus on growing our membership and attendee base, that would end up covering our fixed costs, and since our variable costs are quite low, it wouldn't be linear and proportional, such that a 60 person conference would see us lose a similar amount of money as we would see in a 400 person conference. We always knew that if we grew enough, in future years we would be able to cover that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay. So what did you do then in year two, and what is the lesson for our listeners?

Daniel Levine:
Yeah, so two key things. One was, stay on the trajectory that we were on with our original vision. So we had to have faith in the fact, and quite honestly we could look to the spreadsheets to prove it, but we had faith in the fact that if we grew from 60 or 70 to 285, which is what we were in our second year, we would exceed those fixed costs-

Bobbi Rebell:
Which is phenomenal growth, by the way, that's amazing.

Daniel Levine:
It was. And that was something that we really didn't expect, but because we made that huge investment in the first year and put on a fantastic program, what happened on the Sunday when we came back into the city and got cell phone reception again, is our emails were filled, not just with responses from attendees, but from friends and friends of attendees who saw them tweeting and Instagraming about it, and saying, "How do I get an invite? How do I get involved?" So we were able to leverage a really amazing product into a very big growth year into our second year. So that was a very large component of being able to recoup things in our second year. But the other big factor was, we need more revenue streams. Because we knew we were going to grow, we knew we could also go after revenue streams at 285 that we couldn't go after at 60 or 70 people.

Daniel Levine:
So, for example, sponsorship, that was a brand new door that opened for us, and even though 285 is, let's say relatively small in the conference business, where you might have conferences with 10,000 or 20,000 people, we could now go to major brands and major companies and say, "We have 285 highly curated people that are industry leaders, top entrepreneurs, top individuals, we are going to give you an opportunity to do very deep and impactful experiential marketing activations with them, and as a result, these brands saw a lot of value and in turn sponsorship dollars started coming in, which supplemented the revenue that we were receiving through ticket sales.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, I think that's an important lesson for our listeners, that you weren't just taking a check from anyone. Once you were in year two you were able to have that history of the content that people wanted, and the experience that people wanted, and you could select and curate, as you say, the 285 people. So it wasn't just any 285 people, it was people that really had value to the potential sponsors.

Daniel Levine:
Precisely, and that's magnetized quite a bit over the years, and we've really seen an exponential growth in the inbound requests to join us. Whereas in our first year, we were going out and selecting, each of us, 30 or so people from our networks to really beg to come up and experience this with us. We're now going to receive over 4000 applications from people all over the world to be one of 400 people to come and join us this September.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well that's amazing, congratulations. I want to move from there to our everyday money tip, because that also has to do with something that you do that other people can emulate, that was at first a misstep, and then you found the right way to do it and it's working for you.

Steven Pulver:
At the start of this new year, 2018, we said we would start doing dinners. So we basically hand selected both current attendees, who are attending for the first time this September in 2018, alumni, other people in the community that we wanted to join us, and we'd have dinners, and we would invite people to nice restaurants, certainly not over the top fancy restaurants, but nice restaurants here in Toronto, and we did a few in Boston, and Chicago, and other places. And we would basically bring people together for a night of eating and drinking, and just a good time connecting people.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's expensive though.

Steven Pulver:
Yeah. So we found out very quickly that that's very expensive, and that was built into our budget. We knew from the beginning we'd spend maybe $2000 at dinner, and we had built that in that we were going to do a few of these. So we'd earmarked that and we knew we were going to do it, but after a few dinners we realized that this was getting expensive, despite us being ready for that expense, but it wasn't really us. We loved the fact that we were connecting with people and having great meals and great conversation, but at one point Daniel actually turned to me and said, "Why don't we just do a few barbecues? Do you think maybe we could do it at your house?" And I said, "Absolutely we can so that."

Steven Pulver:
Next thing you know we got the barbecue all ready and went to our favorite butcher shop and got burgers, and basically created a barbecue that I'm actually staring at in my living room right now, we're about to host a barbecue in a hour or so from now, and we said, "We can do barbecues. We can so five or six of these a month, at a cost of maybe $200 a barbecue, max, and bring amazing people together and have the flexibility to not spend a lot of money, but actually get way more bang for our buck."

Bobbi Rebell:
And that's something a lot of people should take to heart, because we sometimes get so busy trying to impress other people, and in fact it's often more impressive to bring someone to your home. Certainly it creates a different kind of bond, a more special and more personal bond, and it is more budget friendly.

Steven Pulver:
Right, and I think it really does go to our core too, right? As both individuals and as a business where we want to connect with people in this kind of way, as opposed to some hoity-toity kind of restaurant that is just fundamental not us.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right. So it is on brand, as they say, and speaking of that, you've got conference number four this September.

Daniel Levine:
Yeah, we now have a hard cap at 400 attendees, particularly because for us community and authentic relationship is super important to us. We're going to have incredible folks like Jordan Harbinger, from The Jordan Harbinger Show, and Jason Calicanis, who is one of the most world renowned Angel investors, coming and joining us for the weekend. Disconnecting from technology up at summer camp, sitting around the fire pit, sharing stories about business and growth and leadership, and going water skiing and rock climbing while we're at it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Sounds amazing. Alright, where can people find out more, if you even have any spots, or get on the wait list for next year?

Steven Pulver:
So, we have just opened up our final 50 application spots, those are now officially open for application, so there is still room available to apply, and I would encourage any of your amazing listeners to visit firesideconf, C-O-N-F, .com, as in conference. We are always there as well, you'll see a little chat bubble, you can say hi to us and ask us any questions, or you can feel free to apply and just let us know that you're coming from this podcast and you'll immediately jump to the top of the line.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wonderful. Thank you both.

Daniel Levine:
Our pleasure, thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, so many lessons here. Financial grownup tip number one; let's start with the guys everyday money tip, because that hits close to home. Don't assume you have to spend a ton of money to impress wealthy and successful people. The thing is, fancy people aren't impressed with fancy. There's a scene in a new show called Succession that I've been watching, where a character is trying to impress his future father-in-law, who is very wealthy. So he spends a crazy amount of money on a watch, but when he gives it to the man as a gift, he's trying to impress him remember, the fact is he is barely acknowledged, and in fact, the very wealthy future father-in-law later gives it away without much of a thought. Watching it was pretty sad, unfortunately there is some reality to that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Rich people don't need another fancy meal. Once Steven and Daniel realized this and started hosting barbecues at their own homes, they had a much better time connecting with the people that they wanted to impress. I mean, the conference is at a camp, that's who they are. They're real, they're down to earth, and they want to connect to their people in that way. It's refreshing. Not everything has to be in a five star hotel or restaurant.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial grownup tip number two. Well, the fireside conference lost about £30,000 the first year because it was self-financed. The founders remained in control and did not face pressure from outside investors. Early stage businesses that can avoid taking outside investors retain control, something Daniel and Steven seems very happy about.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you enjoyed the show, tell a friend, or share on social media. On Twitter, I am @BobbiRebell, on Instagram @BobbiRebell1, and on Facebook @BobbiRebell, and please subscribe if you have not already so you don't miss any upcoming episodes. Thank you to Steven and Daniel for your candor and openness about the challenges and rewards of starting such an ambitious conference. I'm looking forward to watching The Fireside Conference continue to grow. So thank you gentlemen 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 Stewart, and is a BRK Media production.

Perez Hilton pioneered blogging as a profession, starting with his first $5 payday from Google Adsense. The once-bankrupt Hilton has built a multi-media business on that foundation, moving into YouTube, television and his latest venture, a guest stint at Chippendales in Vegas. 

In Perez’ money story you will learn:

-How Perez first earned money as a blogger, and the size of his first payment

-How he promoted his wesite perezhilton.com when it first started, well before social media existed

-How he realized he could make money blogging

-The big life failure that happened that led to his ability to focus on and monetize his blog

-The turning point in his career as a blogger when he was able to help his family

-What Perez tells his kids about his job

-Perez’s daily schedule and how he maintains productivity

-Why Perez wakes up at 5:51 every morning

-What was Perez’s biggest payday, and how much he has made in one day

-Why he is so excited talking about Lady Gaga!!

In Perez’s money lesson you will learn:

-The big warning he has to new business owners about the pace of growth

-Why he warns startup founders not to invest all their own money in their business when they can get investors

In Perez’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-How to negotiate better rates with the people that you have been doing business with for years

-How much you can reasonably expect them to discount services

-How to leverage your social media following to get discounts on products

In my take you will learn:

-Why it is important to note that Perez Hilton wakes up everyday at 5:51 am

-The significance of his regular, reliable schedule, especially as an entrepreneur and a parent

-How he is putting time management Laura Vanderkam’s strategies to work. 

-The importance of building out a brand in an intentional and focused way

-How Perez is integrating new platforms to expand his audience from his core platform

-The video on Perez’s personal youtube channel that I am personally completely fascinated by and why. 

Perez and Bobbi also talk about:

-How he has had to re-think his finances since having three kids

-Why Perez believes in diversifying financial assets, but also focuses on real estate

-The kinds of real estate Perez believes will be the best investments and why

-Where Perez is invested right now

Episode Links:

Check out Perez’s block perezhilton.com

Subscribe to Perez’ youtube channels

His personal channel The Perez Hilton

His regular content channel Perez Hilton

Here is more info about Perez’s Chippendales show in Las Vegas!

You may also be interested in Time Management expert Laura Vanderkam’s interview. You can listen to it at bobbirebell.com/podcast/lauravanderkam

 

Follow Perez!

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/PerezHilton

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/perezhilton

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePerezHilton/

 

Listen to Perez’s podcast with Chris Booker:  http://perezhiltonpodcast.com/

Want to learn more about Perez? Check out his interview with Michael Dinich

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Transcription

Perez Hilton:
I'll get anywhere from $25,000 - $50,000 a night for two hours just to show up and promote the club. And I remember one event it was 4th of July, I was the headliner. I decided, you know what I want to have a special guest, so my special guest was Lady Gaga billed underneath me.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup, and you know what, being a grown up 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends. That was gossip blogging pioneer Perez Hilton dishing on some of his own finances and getting very candid about how much and how little other headliners really make. Perez has talked in public pretty candidly about some of his financial let's say adventures, including declaring bankruptcy and spending several hundred thousand dollars on surrogacy for his three kids. Go to his YouTube channel The Perez Hilton to hear more about that. His gossip YouTube channel is Perez Hilton, but I wanted to know more. After all, love him or hate him the guy started making money from blogging before it was a thing. And if you look at some of the ways we use social media now, like even the doodling people do on pictures and all that stuff he was doing it way ahead of us. He's made mistakes, which we talk about, but now that he's gotten older and wiser with three kids and a team that works with him, which includes by the way his mom, and his sister Perez Hilton is all about being a financial grownup. Here is Perez Hilton.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey Perez Hilton you're a financial grownup, welcome to the podcast.

Perez Hilton:
Hello, I try to be. Actually I don't even try, I am. It takes work.

Bobbi Rebell:
You very much are. Oh, come on. Yeah anyone who watches you have two YouTube channels, you have your fun gossipy one and then you have your also fun personal one. And people that watch that they know you talk about your bankruptcy, you talk about spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on surrogacy and the financial implications of that. So you are definitely, you're a grownup Perez.

Perez Hilton:
Well not even that, you know last year at the beginning of 2017 when I knew I was having a third child and that was coming it was a huge push for me to completely re haul my financial life. Meaning, overtly looking at every possible way to spend less and make more. And shorter term goals are definitely to diversify, it's a key word especially given how everything changes so quickly in entertainment, and just the world. For me though, and I may have still been at this before but I'm still trying to make it happen. And I wish I would have heard this before, I wish I would have made it a priority younger, I really want to get into real estate. Like some people want to play the stock market, some people want to invest in startups, some people want to start new businesses, some people want to let their money sit in a savings account, I want to go old school and own land. Own property. Not commercial property, I specifically want to own like a duplex or a triplex or four plex because I think that, that will only go up and it will only win.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where do you keep your assets now? Do you own your home? Do you have some stocks? Are you diversified? Because if you do everything in real estate you're not diversified and we just heard you want to be diversified.

Perez Hilton:
Yeah, no I mean I have a retirement account and I have different thing for my kid's college. I'm making all of the smart moves but instead of going heavier in the stock market, which I was advised to ... I did not listen to that advice and I'm going to go more into real estate. If I keep most of my money in real estate I don't care. I don't mind.

Bobbi Rebell:
We talked before we started taping about the first time you were able to actually monetize blogging, because you were basically the first. You were blogging before there was social media. You were blogging you were just trying to promote it on something called Friendster, which most of my listeners probably never even heard of. When did you realize you could monetize this and what was the first memory you have of receiving money for blogging?

Perez Hilton:
Well I didn't make any money for the first year plus. It was really just a hobby. Thankfully I ended up getting fired from a job that I had during that first year of blogging, which I credit to my website becoming successful. Because as a result of getting fired during that first year I was able to collect unemployment. So I didn't have to worry about feeding myself and having enough to pay rent. Thank God that happened. Sometimes a negative really is a positive. So, when I finally started making money to pay rent ...

Bobbi Rebell:
So a lot of bloggers today they make money from ads, from affiliate links, things like that. How was the first way that you made money?

Perez Hilton:
The first way that I made money, of course Google Ad Sense, was probably less than $5 but I was like, "Wow this is something exciting."

Bobbi Rebell:
$5 for something you were doing as just a fun little side thing is money, right?

Perez Hilton:
Absolutely.

Bobbi Rebell:
Was there a pivotal moment where you realized, "This is actually my ..." It's not your whole career because you do a lot more, you first of all you went to NYU, you studied acting you did a lot and you do a lot. This doesn't just come from nowhere, and I think you make it look easy but it's not as easy as you make it look. But when did you realize that this in terms of your general identity was going to be it and that there was a way to monetize this? I mean reports are you've made many millions.

Perez Hilton:
I would say that by 2007 things got to a point where I was able to and I needed to get help. And I was able to help my family by doing so. I hired my mom and my sister with me and really made it a family operation. So, I moved them from Miami to Los Angeles and they still work with me today.

Bobbi Rebell:
Awesome. And how do you think you'll explain to your kids how you earn a living? Or will it just be kind of organic as they grow up?

Perez Hilton:
Well they already understand who Perez Hilton is. They've seen me on TV many times, the many different things I've done. They've been on TV with me. Last year I did a show for the Food Network called Worst Cooks in America Celebrity Edition, which I ended up winning by the way. I was the best of the worst. They got to be part of the show and they watched it every week with me. I do a lot of talking head commentary whenever I'm on like The Talk, or The Real, or local news here in LA. My mom will always record it and make sure my kids see it. Plus I make all my YouTube videos, they're in the background hearing daddy work and seeing me work as well on my laptop on my website. So they definitely have an understanding. They know I work so hard.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well tell me about that. Do you have a schedule or do you just keep going until it gets done? How does it work?

Perez Hilton:
I just keep going until it gets done, but I wake up at 5:51 every morning. I literally start working before I even get out of bed, before I even pickup my laptop I'm able to get some work done on my phone on Instagram. It's like you have to be doing everything everywhere. And I'll work, work, work. Then I'll take my kids to school, then I'll go to gym. Then I'll come back, catch up on work, do more work. Then I'll usually have a meeting or a filming or something in the afternoon. Come back home, catch up on work, spend early evening in dad mode. Put my kids to bed after getting them their shower and all that jazz, read their nightly book. And then get more work done, catch up on emails, and then usually get to bed like 11:30 maybe. I still love what I do, 14 years later. And I'm filled with so much gratitude that I am continuing to have fun and entertain people, and get new followers through different ways. Yeah, like even in a couple of days I'm heading to Las Vegas. I'm going to be doing the Chip 'n Dale show there.

Bobbi Rebell:
That's so wild.

Perez Hilton:
That's so exciting. I'm going to be the special celebrity host of Chip 'n Dales.

Bobbi Rebell:
Do you remember your biggest payday? What can you tell us about it and most of all how it made you feel?

Perez Hilton:
I remember like 2006 - 2012 before the rise of the DJ, which is where Vegas is now. It's all about the big name DJ's. You used to have a ton of celebrities hosting club nights in Vegas. And they would just throw ridiculous amounts of money my way and everybody's way. Now you'll have celebrities host Vegas, but because I know the market so well now, and I have so many friends that work in nightlife they're paying for the Vanderpump Rule for a housewife or whomever, five maybe $10,000. If you're a celebrity like Drake or somebody of that stature they'll make tons of money, but TV personalities five to $10,000.

Bobbi Rebell:
So let me ask you, how much would you make in those days in Vegas? And what was it like?

Perez Hilton:
Yeah. Well it depends on the venue, and the time of year, and a whole bunch of variables but I would say I would get anywhere from $25,000 - $50,000 a night for two hours just to show up and promote the club. And I remember one event I had back in 2008 it was 4th of July weekend, and I was the headliner. I decided, you know what I want to have a special guest. So my special guest was Lady Gaga billed underneath me.

Bobbi Rebell:
What are the lessons, the business lessons that you've learned from going from making $5 from Google Ad Sense, to Vegas at $50,000 doing DJ stuff, to now where you've got this multi-media empire that you are growing and building to invest in real estate as we know it for your kids?

Perez Hilton:
One advice I would give somebody is don't grow too much too quickly, which is a big mistake that many companies make. I would also say ... and a lot of this is just my experience, my advice, it probably maybe goes against what traditional business people might say. I would also say if you start making a lot of money on your business do not invest it back into your business or invest some but not a lot. Ideally to grow you can grow with other people's money. That's the goal.

Bobbi Rebell:
No, that's something a lot of people do. They leverage other people's money. Maybe put some of your own skin in the game, but it's also important to have some money set aside personally for you.

Perez Hilton:
Absofreakinglutely. Yep.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yeah. All right Perez, I don't want to keep you too long. Give me an everyday money tip.

Perez Hilton:
One simple thing people that you do business with regularly, maybe your pool cleaner, or trainer at the gym, or for me I get my meals delivered from this one company. So I reached out to a lot of these people I've been very loyal to for a long time and I'm like, "Can we work anything out? Can you charge me less if I promote more?" Even if you don't have a large social media following, if you've been loyal to a company for a long time and been paying them they'll probably say, "Sure we can give you five percent off, 10% off." Any savings anywhere is good.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that. All right, where can we support you? You're heading to Vegas, I just watched your video today, you're packing everyone up. Tell us about that and everything else that you want us to be paying attention to.

Perez Hilton:
Well I am a busy dude, yeah I'm going to Vegas. I'll be staring in the Chip 'n Dales show at the Rio from July 26th through Labor Day Sunday. I've got two YouTube channels, The Perez Hilton for everything family and then Perez Hilton for everything pop culture. Of course my website. And then I've got a podcast, The Perez Hilton podcast with Chris Booker where we talk everything pop culture.

Bobbi Rebell:
It is an empire. Congratulations on it all. Thank you for doing this.

Perez Hilton:
Thank you.

Bobbi Rebell:
So Perez is a lot of fun my friends, and he kind of makes it look easy if you watch his content. But let's look at what is really going on with this business, and it is business.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number one, note that Perez casually mentions that he always wakes up at 5:51 in the morning, and that he does work before his kids get up. Getting up early is a common thread of successful self starter entrepreneur, in fact according to time management expert Laura Vanderkam who was a recent guest on this podcast the vast majority of successful executives wake up before 6:00 am on weekdays. So, go set your alarm clock and try it out.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two, I love that Perez is always trying new things, but at the same time they are things that make sense with the brand that he has created. Perez still has his blog for sure and has expanded to different vertices, but he also knows that YouTube is very important to his audience as well. And so, he is growing there. One channel that extends his traditional gossip content, but he also now wants his audience to know him as a person. And he does very candid personal videos including a strangely amazing video by the way of how he brushes his teeth and keeps them so white. Watch it, you'll find yourself watching till the end, it's mesmerizing. Silly but mesmerizing. And now he's starting the Chip 'n Dales thing in Las Vegas, so this man is fearless but it is all on brand and all designed to appeal to his audience. Perez is consistent with his content and keeps his audience engaged.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you enjoyed this show please tell a friend. The best way for us to grow and keep bringing you these great stories is by sharing. You are busy but if you have time please leave a review and hit subscribe, and keep in touch on social media. We love it when you DM us on Twitter @BobbiRebell, on Instagram at BobbiRebell1 and on Facebook at Bobbi Rebell. And a big thanks to Perez Hilton who's having a great time in his very grownup life, 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 Stuart and is a BRK Media Production.

Jane King caved in to pressure to buy an apartment with her first son on the way, but soon realized going against her gut created a lot of financial indigestion. Plus tips on how to make sure you get your bills paid on time. 

In Jane’s money story you will learn:

-Why Jane decided to buy real estate, against her gut instinct, right when her son was born

-The key consideration that Jane and her husband overlooked when buying property in that location

-The indication in the economic news stories she was reporting that was a red flag to Jane that they were headed for real estate disasters

-How falling interest rates actually created a challenge for Jane and her family

-Why Jane had to move out of the first property

In Jane’s money lesson you will learn:

-How not trusting your gut can cost you a lot of money

-How to apply that theory not just to real estate but also to buying a stock any decision

-Our instincts are often stronger than we think

In Jane’s every day money tip you will learn:

-Why Jane does all of her bill paying on Saturday

-How that creates a checks and balances system for her

-How we can apply this kind of system to our own lives

In My Take you will learn

-The importance of getting out of big mistakes before they become even worse, even if it is expensive

-How Jane leveraged a layoff into a successful business venture

We also talk about:

-How Jane took a business that was folding at her employer, and created her own entrepreneurial venture, LilaMax media. 

-Jane’s podcast about kids and money “KaChing with Jane King”

-About my side-hustle filling in for Jane doing local news updates  live from the Nasdaq MarketSite that are seen all over the United States

Episode Links

Learn more about Jane King and LilaMax media at lilamaxmedia.com

Learn more about Jane’s podcast KaChing with Jane King at https://kachingpodcast.com/

 

Follow Jane!

Twitter https://twitter.com/MarketJane

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/marketjane/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jane.king.560

---

Transcription

Jane King:
I wish I would have just trust my instinct at the time because I feel like I knew, gut, what was going on with the housing market. I don't think I understood just how deep the problems were.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup. With me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to be A Financial Grownup. 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 a Financial Grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this!

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey everyone! Today's episode features a friend I've known for more than a decade and learned a lot from and I know that you will as well. Jane King is a familiar face to so many of you because she's been anchoring local news business updates for years. First, on CNN, then on Bloomberg, and now with her entrepreneurial venture, LilaMax Media. Named after her two kids, Lila and Max.

Bobbi Rebell:
Even though her official money story has to do with a real estate flop, pay close attention to the extra story she casually slips in about launching her content syndication company, LilaMax. Previously referred to, which continues to grow at a time when so many bigger content companies are struggling. She makes it seems like no big deal, but I was there, and this Mompreneur is holing her own against some heavy competition. Here is Jane King.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey Jane King! You're a Financial Grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Jane King:
Great to be here, Bobbi, and I really loved hearing your podcast over the weekend. It's great advice out there.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, thank you, and I love your podcast, “KaChing With Jane King” and all of your entrepreneurial ventures. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jane King:
Well, right now I run a company called LilaMax Media. I'll just give you a little history of how this came to be. So, I worked for CNN. I worked for Bloomberg and then the division that I worked for at Bloomberg, in 2013, they decided to shut that down at the end of the year. So, they gave us about a six weeks notice and another guy on my time and I decided just to take it on. We started this company LilaMax Media.

Jane King:
We do broadcast of the NASDAQ Monday through Friday for local TV stations around the country and try to keep up everybody on this very interesting business news atmosphere that we have lately. Oh, my goodness!

Bobbi Rebell:
And, many of my listeners, I'm sure see you on their local morning news, so we love that.

Jane King:
Right. And, I have some great fill ins, like you!

Bobbi Rebell:
I do.

Jane King:
Good help.

Bobbi Rebell:
I do help you out. I love doing it. But, let's talk about your money story, because it has to do with something near and dear to my heart, because I have had a lot of financial security come my way because of real estate investments. You made a big real estate purchase. We were actually all pregnant together, us and a bunch of friends.

Jane King:
Yes.

Bobbi Rebell:
We had our babies all at the same time back in 2007 and we all bought real estate at that time. But, your story is a little bit different from the standard run of the mill story. Tell us what happened.

Jane King:
Well, I got caught up in that whole disaster of what we lived in 2008 and 2009. So, I was working as a financial reporter at the time and I just had this feeling that the housing market was over valued. I, you know, I had even had discussions with people. I'm like, come on, the average house is $250,000. But, the average American is only making like 45 and nothing just added up. So, I just ...

Bobbi Rebell:
Right, so logically, you went to buy a house. A home.

Jane King:
Well, so here's how this all came about. So, we had a friend who was moving and he said “Hey, how would you like to buy our apartment?” And, I was like “Oh, I really don't want to do that.” He was like “Oh, we don't have to pay commissions.” I was pregnant at the time as you mentioned. I thought “Well, gosh, it wouldn't be good for the child to have a house instead of a rental, for some reason. Even though, it kind of makes no sense.” Our accountant weighed in. Said the tax write offs were great so, we bought a home. Let's see. We closed on that in March or May of 2007, and ...

Bobbi Rebell:
So, right before Max was born?

Jane King:
Right before Max was born and at almost the exact peak of the housing market. When we closed on the home, I think they were around, just under seven percent. Like, six and a half or six point seven.

Bobbi Rebell:
Which, sounds really high right now.

Jane King:
Sounds high right now, but this was 2007. They went all the way down to three something and we just could not take advantage of that because the home values just ... the value of the appraisals were coming in too low. So ...

Bobbi Rebell:
So, your equity was not high enough to refinance?

Jane King:
That's right. So, third times a charm. Finally got that done, and of course we paid all the fees and everything in the process. But ...

Bobbi Rebell:
So, so much for saving so much on the commission.

Jane King:
So much for saving on the commission. You know, I don't know. You know, it was a co-op. We had trouble selling it because the co-op board was just ... that's another thing. I would never buy in a co-op again.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wait, let's go back to the story. So, okay, you get into the apartment. First of all, you wanted to refinance just because the rates were going lower, right?

Jane King:
Oh yeah.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay.

Jane King:
We did, but it was, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month difference.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh wow. So, your payments were high, number one. So, number two, then you're being rejected from refinancing because your equity relative to the value of the home was not a good enough ratio.

Jane King:
That's right.

Bobbi Rebell:
And then, number three, why did you want to sell? Why not, once you were able to refinance, why not just hang there?

Jane King:
Well, because it's a co-op and you can't rent it out for more than two years, so another one of those co-op rules that you have to deal with in New York City. So, we could only rent it out for two years and then we had to finally sell it. Because, we had moved to a different neighborhood and we weren't really ...

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, so why did you move then, I guess is the question. Because, you bought it in 2007, why not just live there?

Jane King:
Two things. So, one was the apartment was up by Columbia University and they were taking over the building where my husband had a business. So, we needed to find a new location for the business, and the timing of that was right at the time when my son was entering Kindergarten and the schools in that area, of course, I was pregnant at the time. I didn't even think about to ask about the schools, but the schools in that area were not good schools. So, we moved to a better district where the schools were better. My husband set up a business and, you know in the end, everything's better. But, it's just I don't know. I wish I would have just trust my instinct at the time because I feel like I knew, gut, what was going on with the housing market. I don't think I understood just how deep the problems were, but you just got to trust your gut. We know more than we think we do.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from your story?

Jane King:
Well, I would think that if you're somewhat informed about finances, trust your gut. Don't let somebody else talk you into something. Whether, it's buying an apartment or buying a stock or buying something else, you know, whatever. I would just trust your gut and really think about it, because I do think we know more instinctively than we think we do.

Bobbi Rebell:
Alright, let's talk about your every day money tip. Because, this is very basic and yet, sort of brilliant because it probably works. I mean, if it does work for you, I think it would work for a lot of our listeners.

Jane King:
Well, it's so easy. Anybody can do this. I pay all my bills on Saturday morning. It helps me keep all of my accounts in check. I know what the balances are. Nothing is ever paid late. So, I don't have any of the late fees or anything like that. I just set them down. It's part of my morning. My Saturday morning routine along with doing the laundry and doing the dishes, its I sit down and pay the bills. And, it's so easy and I think it's a great tip and anybody can do it. You can start this Saturday!

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes! Or, it can be any day of the week. The point is that you have an appointment with yourself to focus on your finances.

Jane King:
That's right. Saturday morning works well for me. Whatever day happens to work with you is good. It's just I'm a creature of routine and I find that it helps me lead a more organized life.

Bobbi Rebell:
Excellent. Alright, tell us more about what's going on with your podcast KaChing.

Jane King:
Okay. KaChing with Jane King. It's all about kids and money. It really kind of comes from the financial crisis, because I felt like people were doing irresponsible things because they didn't know. They didn't know that housing doesn't go up forever or that you can't spend more than you earn. You know, things like this, so I really decry the lack of financial education in our schools and in our society. So, I started this little podcast and we have some great guests on there. Authors, and people who come and they talk about, you know, just helping to raise kids so they're financially responsible. KaChing with Jane King.

Bobbi Rebell:
Alright everyone. Check it out. Thank you so much Jane, you're the best!

Jane King:
Thank you Bobbi! Great to see you!

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, there's a lot to take from Jane's story. The first thing though, that strikes me is this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number one: If you make a real estate mistake. Admit it and get out. Jane did that right. Holding on to something you bought. Just because you bought it, is not going to fix the problem. And yes, you could lose money, but holding on, you could lose even more money. You don't know. So, staying put is just going to add to the pain. When we drill down the key problem with the apartment, was that the schools weren't a fit for Jane's kids. The other issue was that her husband's business was losing its lease. So, by paying the price, and it was expensive, it was painful for her. But, admitting the mistake, her family was able to move to one of, if not, the best public school districts in the entire city. Her husband set up a new business, in a hot neighborhood, with great clientele, and they moved on and they prospered. Digging in their heels and hoping things would just get better would have been a mistake.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two: Let's talk about Jane's business, LilaMax Media, which produces content primarily from the NASDAQ market site. So, this is the bonus story that I mentioned at the top. Her previous employer, Bloomberg, was shutting down that line of business. She and her partner, Bob Morris, figured out a way to make the economics work with lower overhead as a smaller company. So, instead of being out of work, Jane actually became the co-founder of a business that is going strong more than four years later.

Bobbi Rebell:
She took a terrible situation and made it into an opportunity of a lifetime and yes, you can see me filling in for Jane, so DM me and say “hi” if you see me on your local news in the early hours of the morning. If you have not already hit that subscribe button, so you don't miss any upcoming episodes and be in touch. On Twitter, I am @BobbiRebell. On Instagram @BobbiRebell1. On Facebook @BobbiRebell and as I said, DM me. I love hearing your feedback on the podcast.

Bobbi Rebell:
Jane had to make some very Grownup decisions as a consequence of that against the gut real estate decision, but she did it. And, it's a great lesson. Trust your gut, and if you find yourself having made the wrong decision, get the heck out. So, thanks Jane for helping us get one step closer to being Financial Grownups.

Announcer:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

High Fiving Dollars' Sarah Li Cain had a contract that said her company had to pay her medical costs, but when she got pregnant, she and her husband had to come up with a strategic plan to actually collect the cash they were owed. Plus her tips on how to make sure you get the luxuries you want in life, without feeling nickel and dime’d

In Sarah’s money story you will learn:

-The challenge Sarah faced when pregnant as a teacher in China

-How the healthcare system there required employees to pay upfront, and then fight to get re-imbursed

-The financial risk that created for Sarah and her colleagues

-How careful documentation helped to get her money back

-The technique Sarah used to negotiate with her employer and her boss for both her healthcare needs and those of her colleagues

In Sarah’s money lesson you will learn:

-That is is essential to read your contract when you take a job, and not assume it will provide things, even if it is the law.

-The importance of standing your ground when you are entitled to something. 

In Sarah’s every day money tip you will learn:

-Why she is willing to pay more for homes that have the amenities that are important to her and her family

-The importance of building in value-add activities and facilities into your home or community, so you don’t have to spend extra cash to have services and other things that you value but might not pay for on an individual basis. 

In My Take you will learn:

-The importance of documentation especially when you need to be re-imbursed by an employer

-The tools and apps I personally use for document management and scanning

-My take on lifestyle amenities where you live

-The crazy and outrageous amenities that may not be worth paying for in many cases

Episode Links

Learn more about Sarah at https://highfivingdollars.com/

Listen to her podcast with Garrett Philbin (from Be Awesome not Broke) Beyond the Dollar! https://highfivingdollars.com/podcast/

Follow Sarah Li Cain!

Twitter: @sarahlicain

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/highfivingdollars

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/sarahlicain/

 

The tools I use to  store and track documents are

Dropbox dropbox.com

 

Evernote evernote.com

The App I use to scan documents is Jotnot https://www.jotnot.com/

Here’s a fun article from curbed.com on The Most outrageous amenities in NYC apartments https://ny.curbed.com/2017/12/18/16743830/nyc-outrageous-apartment-amenities-2017

Here is one from Elledecor.com on over the top amenities

https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/fun-at-home/g14031044/over-the-top-amenities-nyc/

And here is one from Streeteasy.com on What Building Amenities to New Yorkers Want Most?

https://streeteasy.com/blog/nyc-building-amenities-top-10-most-popular/

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Transcription

Sarah Li Cain:
I don't think they really thought it through if someone were to get pregnant because I chose to go with someone who was able to speak English because I don't speak Chinese and so they were pretty expensive. I think I racked up a total about $25,000.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup. And 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends. That was holistic money coach Sarah Li Cain of the blog High Fiving Dollars and the podcast Beyond the Dollar, taking a stroll down memory lane to a financial experience she'd probably rather forget. But she got through it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Welcome everyone and thanks for taking the time to join us here at Financial Grownup. We keep the shows on the short side so you can squeeze it into your busy day. But if you have more time, or are commuting, they are also meant to be listened to a few at a time. So when you subscribe, make sure the settings are at auto download and you will get three episodes each week.

Bobbi Rebell:
Back to Sarah. Her story is truly a financial grownup one because it begins with the birth of her first child which is a big life transition in and of itself, without all the financial responsibilities that comes with it, and she had to deal with a lot of money headaches. Here is Sarah Li Cain.

Bobbi Rebell:
Sarah Li Cain, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Sarah Li Cain:
Thank you so much for having me Bobbi. I'm a big fan.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh thank you, and I am a huge fan of yours ever since we met a couple of years ago actually at FinCon, which is a conference for content creators, because you were behind High Fiving Dollar and now the new Beyond the Dollar podcast. So congratulations on all of your success.

Sarah Li Cain:
Thank you so much.

Bobbi Rebell:
You are a holistic money coach. You also as I mentioned are a financial writer, and you are also someone who has worked all over the world, which brings us to the money story that you brought with you to share because it has to do with the time that you spent in China and something momentous that happened while you were there. Tell us.

Sarah Li Cain:
Yes, so actually spent a total about eight years in China. So before I was a writer and a money coach I was a elementary school teacher at a bunch of different international schools. My very last job, my husband and I found out that were pregnant. The interesting thing was in my contract the employer actually didn't pay for healthcare. So it's the employer legally has to provide you with healthcare, and so instead of actually giving us health insurance he had a little clause at the bottom of the contract that basically said we will reimburse 100% of any healthcare cost that you incur.

Bobbi Rebell:
That sounds really good.

Sarah Li Cain:
Yeah, it does, except if you don't have the money upfront and pay for that, then it makes it very difficult. And so for some of my coworkers-

Bobbi Rebell:
So you had to front the money?

Sarah Li Cain:
Yes. For some of my coworkers it was very difficult for them, number one, the ones who have children, they had to cover all their healthcare cost, and number two, I remember one of my coworkers had ... It wasn't major surgery but it was fairly big. She actually [inaudible 00:03:28] having to borrow money to cover that, until the employer was willing to basically reimburse it.

Bobbi Rebell:
So wait. Was it a situation where you would have to pay out of pocket and then basically fight to get reimbursed?

Sarah Li Cain:
Yes, exactly. So as long you had the receipt in theory they were going to pay you back. I don't think they really thought it through if someone were to get pregnant because healthcare is fairly cheap in China, but I chose to go with someone who was able to speak English because I don't speak Chinese and so they were pretty expensive. So I think I racked up a total about $25,000 American, including the birth, including the prenatal and postnatal care.

Bobbi Rebell:
So you had to forward that money, you had to pay that, and then try to get reimbursed?

Sarah Li Cain:
Yeah. One thing I did try to do was as the receipts payments, so every month when I'd have my prenatal appointments I would just sent, forward the receipt to my ... the owner of the school. Then the principal and I sat down and I said, "Listen, you know this is going to get really expensive. I'm going forward the boss or the owner a big, big bill, probably at least 10 grand after all of my prenatal appointments. He's going to have to be very careful because he's going to make sure, like, he's going to have that money and give it me." The principal and I actually worked together and figured out a way to approach the owner and how we were ... She was going to help me get that. The principal was going to help me get that money back.

Bobbi Rebell:
Was the school which is almost an independent school that did not have big financial resources, was that part of the issue why you were worried they wouldn't have the money?

Sarah Li Cain:
Part of it was the owner was new. I think he had taken over that school maybe for about a year, and number two, he's been, and this like anecdotal evidence, I haven't directly heard him say this but he's always mentioned about try to pay as little as possible for the foreign staff as he called us, and so I kind of knew that if I slapped him with this $25,000 bill that he'd probably pretty shocked and would try to find a way out of it.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what happened?

Sarah Li Cain:
I actually added up, I predicted all the cost for the birth and everything like that and I forwarded it to my principal. Then again the principal and I sat down and we basically said, "Okay, what's the best case scenario, what's the worst case, where can we meet in the middle with him." So we kind of came up with different ways to negotiate with him. The best case was he gives all that money back to me in one go. The second the best was if he paid in installments. And the worst case he refused.

Sarah Li Cain:
But I also said, "Hey, listen, I'm a great employee," and I actually calculated how many students that I brought into the school, so it kind of proved to him that like, hey, I'm helping you make money so therefore this little $25,000 expense wasn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things. What happened then was my principal then forwarded all of this information to the owner of the school and he actually agreed and was like, "Okay, I will pay all this back, I'll reimburse you as soon as you provide all the bills."

Bobbi Rebell:
And did they?

Sarah Li Cain:
Yes. So they did try to fight us a little bit. After my son was born my husband was the one to submit all the bills and so. Then they negotiated with him and said, "Well, we can't pay all this all at once. Is there some way we can just pay you back in increments?" So they did I think pay us the money back in about five installments but we did end up getting all the money back.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, that's great. But you used this to actually make broader changes.

Sarah Li Cain:
Yeah. The funny thing was I had no idea that my principal was trying to fight for everyone to get free health insurance. Again, the owner of the school had to legally provide this. She actually ended up using the large medical bill to say to the owner, was like, "Hey, listen, what if another one of your employees gets pregnant. That's like a huge cost," and then she actually presented him with different health insurance options in China and how it ended up being cheaper. And so because of what happened with me, the entire staff actually got free health insurance afterwards.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wow. So how did you feel during this time? I mean you're pregnant, you're having to fight for all this stuff. What were your coworkers saying?

Sarah Li Cain:
It was really interesting. My coworkers didn't necessarily directly ask me about the money side of things because I think in their mind they're like, "Oh man, Sarah's really going to have to fight for this money because the owner is such a cheapskate," as they called him. I was really thankful because ... So my husband and I worked together, and so he really advocated for me when I couldn't, like when I was out on maternity leave and when I was just too tired to really say anything. So he would push me like, "No, listen, Sarah, you have to fight this," or he would go in himself and then talk to the principal which I found out later that he did, and say like, "Here, how can we negotiate all of this?" If it wasn't for his support, I probably wouldn't be able to keep pursuing the money.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners?

Sarah Li Cain:
The lesson is number one, read your contract, and number two, stand your ground. If it says in your contract that you're supposed to get something, then fight for it because it's written down, it's not a verbal contract, it's a written contract, so definitely pursue it, and get as much support as you need in order to pursue it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Looking back is there anything you would've done different yourself?

Sarah Li Cain:
No, not at all.

Bobbi Rebell:
And Sarah, that brings us to your everyday money tip which also kind of has to do with your health and wellness.

Sarah Li Cain:
Yeah. One of the things I really strive to do is that whenever my husband and I are renting a new place, or when we're looking for a new apartment, we always make sure the kind of amenities there are. We're always looking for somewhere with a gym, how easy it is to walk from let's say the supermarket or my son's preschool, if there's a swimming pool, and just anything else where we don't have to spend extra money. For example, an apartment that we just rented is actually a five minute walk to my son's preschool, it's a few minutes walk to a couple of supermarkets, it's actually closer to my husband's work, it's got a gym, it's got a swimming pool, it's got a playground for my son. So we're effectively saving thousands of dollars a year because now that I can walk with my son to preschool, I don't need a second car. I can just walk again to the supermarket when I need to. I'm saving money on membership fees, things like that.

Bobbi Rebell:
Awesome. All right, Sarah, tell us more about what you're up to. I know you have started season two of your podcast.

Sarah Li Cain:
Yeah. So Beyond the Dollar I co-host it with another money coach, Garrett Philbin. We're just having a lot of fun. We discuss a lot of issues that go literally beyond the dollar, just not practical finance tips, but more of the deeper how money really affects your well being. You can also find me in High Fiving Dollars. I talk a lot about my personal life there. If you have any questions, I love answering reader questions there as well.

Bobbi Rebell:
Awesome. Thank you Sarah.

Sarah Li Cain:
Thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that Sarah and her husband paid it forward fighting for everyone else to have real health insurance even after they had won their own battle. Financial Grownup tip number one, whenever you know you're going to need to be reimbursed, as was the case with Sarah and her husband, document everything and make sure you have backups including electronic backups. I happen to use Evernote and Dropbox for storage, and I use an app called JotNot as a mobile scanner, and from that app I can upload to the Evernote and/or Dropbox accounts.

Bobbi Rebell:
Make sure you follow up on getting reimbursed, and on bills sometimes the way that the healthcare system is set up may not be as well-run as you would necessarily expect. If you want to learn more about the dangers of what can happen if you're not on top of these things, check out my interview with Chris Browning of the Popcorn Finance podcast. Just go to bobbirebell.com/podcast/chrisbrowning.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two, let's talk about lifestyle amenities because I know Sarah's a big fan of them. She makes this a priority. There's an upside and there's a downside. If you have amenities built into your rent or your home cost, you don't have to worry that if money gets tight or you just have a lot of expenses coming up or you're feeling uneasy about your financial situation, you're not going to feel pressured to say take a break from the gym. On the other hand, they do add to your overhead in most cases and if you're not going to use certain amenities, you need to factor that in and be honest with yourself.

Bobbi Rebell:
For example, just about all of us can at least make the argument that we can make good use of a gym. We might blow it off in reality, but we can at least make the case. That might be worth paying for when you're looking for a new residence, especially if it's in a community or an apartment building that has a really nice one. But if you don't have young kids, something like a playground does not add value to your life.

Bobbi Rebell:
Those are pretty mainstream amenities, but some buildings can even have quirky amenities that sound so cool like wine cellars, relaxation lounges, climbing walls, hydrotherapy circuits, bowling allies, pet spas, and of course dog training studio, something we all look for. They are designed to wow buyers and renters, but just because something looks super cool when you're checking out the residence, doesn't mean it's something that you're going to actually use. If they deliver value for you, that's great. But some are just gimmicky and can up the prices. By the way, if you want to read about some of the crazy things happening in the amenities business, I'm going to leave a few fun articles about hot new amenities in the show notes for you guys.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you have not already hit that Subscribe button so you don't miss any upcoming episodes, remember, the episodes are short, about 15 minutes, so if you want to listen for longer, there are three new episodes every week so you can easily binge on a bunch if you have a long commute or you're just running errands and you want a little more content.

Bobbi Rebell:
Be in touch. I am on Twitter @bobbirebell, on Instagram @bobbirebell1, and on Facebook @bobbirebell, and of course DM me your feedback on the podcast. Thanks to Sarah Li Cain and her growing family for helping us get one step closer to being financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

 

Time management expert Laura Vanderkam on how she and her husband decided to pay it forward to free up time to create available time for career and business growth.  Plus behind the scenes info on how she wrote her latest bestseller “Off The Clock” and a sneak peak at her next project. 

In Laura’s money story you will learn:

-Why it has taken Laura so long to figure out the right childcare setup

-How she balances being a frugal person with the reality of her childcare needs

-The problems that emerged as her speaking and writing career began to gain more traction

-How working from home made her childcare issues more complicated

-The specific things she changed when she hired a new nanny

-Why she chose a certain schedule and the specific benefits that provided

-Specific examples of work situations where her new childcare set up allowed her to earn more money

 

In Laura’s money lesson you will learn:

-The reason Laura considers childcare an investment in your earning potential, even if you pay for it when you aren’t technically working

-The importance of going to what she called the “extra stuff’ like networking events and conferences

-Why you should sometimes pay for an extra half an hour of childcare, and what to do with that time

-The relevance of Serena Williams to the conversation and what we can learn from her recent experience missing a major milestone in her child’s life. 

In Laura’s every day money tip you will learn:

-Why handwritten notes are important in business

-How Laura has used them to increase her connection with friends and business associates

-How Laura uses that habit to connect on a personal level with her readers and fans. 

 

In My Take you will learn:

-How to use money to solve productivity challenges

-A specific way Harry Potter author JK Rowling used this strategy

-Apps and other options that can help you execute the same strategy as JK Rowling

-Why some people are late all the time

-How to not be late

We also talk about:

Laura’s new book “Off The Clock” and how she conducted the exclusive research

The importance of time perception

Laura’s Ted Talk and how we can integrate those lessons into time choices

Laura’s podcast with Sarah Hart  Unger “Best of Both Worlds” 

Her next project Juliet’s school of possibility which is a fable about Time Management

Episode Links

Learn more about Laura at her website LauraVanderkam.com

Check out her podcast “Best of Both Worlds” 

Get Laura’s book “Off The Clock!”

 

Follow Laura!

Twitter @lvanderkam

Facebook LauraVanderkamAuthor

Instagram lvanderkam

LinkedIn Laura Vanderkam

 

 

Apps for last minute discount hotels

hoteltonight.com

OneNight.com

Hotelquickly.com

 

 

---

Transcription

Laura Vanderkam:
We had a lot of snow. We could see that this huge snow system was coming into Pennsylvania. My client out in Michigan who they have this big event booked around me said, "Well, could you come out early?" The idea of being a working mom of four kids who could like suddenly go 24 hours earlier to an event overnight even though my husband was also out of town, I could do it. I could just say yes.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup, with me, certified Financial Planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of how to be a financial grownup. And 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends. So that was time management expert and prolific writer, Laura Vanderkam. Her latest book is Off The Clock, which we're going to talk about. A special welcome to our new listeners and, of course, returning ones. As you guys know, we keep it short because I'm a big believer in delivering value for your time. You can always earn more money but time is priceless and we appreciate the time that you spend with us. So we aim for about 15 minutes but you can stack a few episodes together. We do three a week. So make it work for your life. Hit subscribe, put your settings to automatically download, so you're going to have each episode without having to do any work. Go for the easy.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about time management. So interesting behind the scenes fact ... financial grownup fact here. I came very prepared for this interview with Laura Vanderkam. I was ready to be super efficient and respectful of her time but, in the true spirit of her latest book, Off The Clock, she was not in a hurry at all and, in fact, she said she had all the time in the world. How does she do that? Listen to the interview and then make the time to read her book. The time spent will literally pay for itself. Here is Off The Clock author, Laura Vanderkam.

Bobbi Rebell:
Laura Vanderkam, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Laura Vanderkam:
Thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Congratulations on your latest book. It's called, Off The Clock, Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done. I can't wait to see what your next book's going to be. Maybe I'll get a teaser out of you. What are you working on?

Laura Vanderkam:
Actually, my next book will be out in March 2019, and it's a time management staple, it's called, Juliet's School of Possibility. So, yeah, there you go.

Bobbi Rebell:
I love that.

Laura Vanderkam:
The commercial for the next one.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes, absolutely. But, in the meantime, once we finish all of your books, we also can listen to your podcast, Best of Both Worlds, which is with Sarah Hart Unger, and that's also one of my new obsessions.

Laura Vanderkam:
Yeah, we really do believe that work and family can work together, that people can succeed at both and love both. And so, that's what the podcast covers.

Bobbi Rebell:
And one thing that you guys discuss a lot beyond just time management, but time management as it pertains to kids and getting work done, and that brings us to your money story.

Laura Vanderkam:
Like many parents, it has taken me a long time to sort of figure out what the right childcare setup truly is. And, being a kind of frugal person, I didn't want to spend all that much. So it was always trying to get by on less than I probably needed for me and my husband, and you know, he travels and works long hours, and I was certainly starting to as my speaking career was starting to grow. And so, you know, it was figuring out, well, what kind of childcare do I need? And I'd always spend, you know, normal work hours, maybe eight to five. I mean, I worked from home, certainly I should be able to do that. But the problem is, we need like overnight coverage and we wouldn't have it because people would have other plans cause, hey, we're leaving at five. They'd have other things they were doing in the evening. You know, it was just difficult to make it work.

Laura Vanderkam:
So, when we were hiring a new nanny about two years ago, we decided that, well, we truly do need more hours. Let's go ahead and make the investment in doing it. And so, we hired somebody who's initial schedule was to work eight to eight, Monday through Thursday. And the upside of doing eight to eight, it's only 48 hours, right? So it's not excessive.

Bobbi Rebell:
So were you cutting out Fridays?

Laura Vanderkam:
Well, we had ... at the time there was another person working on Fridays for part-time. You know, that was the idea. It was like, you're going to have 60 hours of care, split it among two people because you don't burn one person out.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, then, you also have a backup, right?

Laura Vanderkam:
We do have a backup. Right. Yeah. So you have one full-time, one part-time. So the upside of having the evenings, I could go to networking events, like even if my husband was working late. Or, if I needed to be somewhere, I wasn't racing back and apologizing for being late. We had the evening covered. We had an extra driver for school stuff, for activities.

Bobbi Rebell:
Cause you have four kids by the way.

Laura Vanderkam:
Cause I have four small children. But the real upside has turned out to be that, when you hire someone to work eight to eight, they tend not to book stuff in the evening. So then, arranging for them to stay overnight, and we also hired somebody who was willing to do that. It was basically, pay me overtime I'll do it. Meant that there wasn't always this scrambling thing because it was relatively easy to just get that extra hours in there. And so, yes, it's expensive to have a lot of childcare and to have the availability of overnight coverage, you know, paying overtime for that. But, you know, I really see moments where it paid off.

Laura Vanderkam:
This spring, for instance, I was traveling a lot. I mean, I was giving one or two speeches a week that required travel, we had a lot of snow. One day in early March we could see that this huge snow system was coming into Pennsylvania. My client out in Michigan, who, you know, they have this big event booked around me, said, "Well, could you come out early?" You know, the idea of being a working mom of four kids who could like suddenly go 24 hours earlier to an event overnight even though my husband was also out of town, I could do it. Like I could just say yes. And that's what it has been enabling me to get like bigger ticket speaking jobs, ones that are paying more than I certainly would've imagined I could've gotten five, six years ago. And I think it's because I feel like I know I can say yes.

Laura Vanderkam:
But, you know, it's really an investment in your earning potential. And, if you're always trying to get by on less childcare than you need, then you won't say yes to the extra stuff. You won't go to that networking opportunity. You won't go to that conference. You won't maybe stay late that one night when you know your boss is going to see it and really remember it because you're trying to race out. And, over the longterm, those things really do add up. So I really like to think of childcare more as an investment than an expense. And, if you can get your head around that idea, I think you'll really start feeling like a financial grownup.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners? How can they apply it to their lives?

Laura Vanderkam:
Well, I think, take an honest assessment of what amount of childcare you have and, if possibly increasing that by a little bit would make your life a lot easier, less stressful, or enable you to pursue professional opportunities that you haven't so far. So it could be maybe an investment in life satisfaction. Maybe pay the person for an extra half hour after you get home, so you don't immediately have to race into serving everyone, making dinner, while you also have kids jumping on you cause they haven't seen you all day. Maybe that person could start dinner while you deal with the kids, right, and have some time with them.

Laura Vanderkam:
Or maybe it's just that, you know, occasionally you'd like to get stuff done a little bit later instead of racing out to make a 5 p.m. daycare pickup. Maybe you can arrange for an evening sitter just like one day a week, right? And that person covers maybe five to eight, and you can get stuff done when the office is quiet, or people see you be there late, or you go to networking events. And, you know, then you've made this investment and it will probably pay off over time.

Bobbi Rebell:
And I love that you point out those intangible things, like going to a networking event because sometimes people view that as social, but it's social, but it's really also an investment in your career to be out there with your peers. I know Serena Williams recently missed a big milestone because she was training and it can happen to any mom, no matter what. So, you can't let those hold you back from doing things that might benefit your career.

Laura Vanderkam:
SO I think this idea like rearranging your whole life to not miss anything, it's never going to happen. And, if you have more than one kid, you'll miss some stuff cause you're at the other kids stuff. And, you know, people adjust, they grow up, they learn the universe does not revolve them. It's all good.

Bobbi Rebell:
Exactly.

Laura Vanderkam:
Yeah, you know. So, it's worth doing a little bit extra sometimes.

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes. And there are other ways to bond with people outside of your family, bond with people regarding work in your professional endeavors, and that brings us to your everyday money tip, which is just genius, and I got to experience myself.

Laura Vanderkam:
Yeah. Well, this doesn't seem like a money tip but it's in line with the idea of networking and building your network, and getting to know people, and establishing these relationships, which is, send handwritten notes. This doesn't seem like a money tip but I can tell you that people are far more inclined to like you when it seems that you have bothered to establish, like put a little effort into establishing a connection with them. It's also memorable because most people don't do it.

Laura Vanderkam:
So, when I sent you my book, I included a handwritten note thanking you for your interest in it, and for being willing to take your valuable time to read it. I had a thing going on my website that I was asking people to pre-order Off The Clock, and what people did, they gave me their mailing address so I could send them a signed bookplate that they could stick in the cover when it showed up from whatever online retailer that they pre-ordered it through. You know, I'm mailing them anyway, why not send them a handwritten note? So I sent a handwritten thank you note to everybody who pre-ordered and gave me their address. And this is, you know, a lot.

Bobbi Rebell:
But you made the time because it was important to you.

Laura Vanderkam:
Because it was important. So I kept reminding myself, as I was doing it ... my hand was cramping up. I'm like, you should be so grateful that these people are willing to spend money on a product of yours sight unseen. Those are your big fans you want to connect with them, and I do want to connect with them.

Bobbi Rebell:
I just want to take another minute to talk a little bit about Off The Clock. As we mentioned, I did read it on vacation. It was great. You talk about people expand time. That was one of my favorite themes in the book. Tell us more about that theory and how people can apply it to their lives, cause that to me was the most important takeaway from this book.

Laura Vanderkam:
So, for Off The Clock, I had 900 people with full-time jobs and families track their time for a day, and then I asked them questions about how they felt about their time. So I could give people scores based on their time perception. Like did they have high time perception scores? They felt time was abundant. Or low time perception scores. They felt time was scarce, stressful, all that stuff. Compare the schedules with people who felt like they had a lot of time, people who felt they had no time.

Laura Vanderkam:
People who felt like they had the most time also spent the most time actively engaged with family and friends. So they spent the leisure time that they did have nurturing their relationships, whereas people who had the lowest time perceptions scores tended to spend their time watching TV or on social media. You know, it's not that one group had more leisure time than the other. Everyone was busy. Everyone had full-time jobs, families, but people choose to spend the time that they do have discretionary choices over in different ways. And, apparently, spending time with family and friends makes us feel very off the clock.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well said. And that's, by the way, we didn't mention your Ted Talk, which is amazing. One of the things that you point out in your Ted Talk is that, instead of just fast forwarding through commercials to save time when watching TV, you could just watch less TV. So it's pretty straight forward.

Laura Vanderkam:
The problem with writing that time management, I've seen all these articles over the years of like how to find an extra hour in the day by shaving bits of time off every day activities, and stuff like Taebo, or forward through the commercials. Save eight minutes every half hour over two hours of watching TV, you find 32 minutes to exercise. Like, come on. You're watching TV for two hours, you already had 32 minutes to exercise. Let's not fool ourselves.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. You called us all out. Tell us where people can find out more about you and all of your different ventures, podcasts, Ted Talk, books, newsletter, all of it.

Laura Vanderkam:
Yeah, come visit my website, lauravanderekam.com. That's just my name. You can learn more about my books including Off The Clock and the podcast, Best of Both Worlds. We'd love to have some of your listeners take some of the extra commutes that they're not listening to your wonderful podcast on, and come give it a listen.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love it. Thank you so much Laura.

Laura Vanderkam:
Thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends. There were so many great takeaways from that and from the book, Off The Clock. I'm going to give you a couple more here and, of course, you can check out the book and get even more.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Tip number one. Money can solve productivity problems. One of my favorite examples in the book is when Laura talks about Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling. She was writing her seventh book, [inaudible 00:12:41]. So, by this point she had financial resources to say the least. But she couldn't get any work done in her house because the window cleaner was there, and the kids were home, and the dogs were barking. And then J.K. Rowling says in this story, a light bulb went on. I can throw money at this problem. And you know what? She decamped to a hotel to finish the draft and it worked cause she was able to focus. Money solved the problem.

Bobbi Rebell:
Now, not all of us think that we have the budget to do that. I've never done that and to me it does seem extreme on the surface. However, because of the new resources that we have and we're going to give you some ideas and apps that we have access to now, there are very reasonable hotel rooms available at the last minute in our own cities, and that is something we could potentially look into when we just need to get to a place where we can focus on getting our work done, especially when we're coming up against a big deadline. So some app examples are: Hotel Tonight, One Night, and Hotel Quickly. And you can find very cheap deals in your city very often using apps like these. I'll put the links in the show notes.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you don't have a budget, maybe you have a friend with a spare bedroom. Tell them what you're up to so they don't expect you to be social, but maybe you can use that. And, if it's just a few hours that you need, of course, you can go to a coffee shop. That's always available as a resource for many people. But another option, sometimes, is to just go to your local library and just hunker down in a quiet area there and get some work done.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup Tip number two. Be a pessimist when deciding when to leave for important meetings or trips. Vanderkam discovered that people who are late, even though I think it's often inconsiderate or poor planning, really what it is, is they're optimists. They always remember the best scenario of getting to a place. So, if they're planning a trip that involves going to the airport, they might remember that it only took 15 minutes to get to the airport but, of course, what they don't remember is that was at, you know, 5 a.m. on a Sunday when no one else was going. Maybe this time they're going at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning and they don't factor in that it's going to take a lot longer. So, because they're not planning according to the worse case scenario, things go awry. So plan according to the worst case scenario and, you know what, maybe you'll get there early and you'll have extra time, and you can do something fun with that time.

Bobbi Rebell:
Big thanks to you for gifting this time to yourself to hopefully improve your life just a little thanks to the wonderful advice and wisdom from Laura Vanderkam. Please be in touch. Follow me on Twitter@bobbirebell, on Instagram@bobbirebell1, and on Facebook@bobbirebell, and DM me with your thoughts on the podcast. Laura Vanderkam is living a very financially grownup life. I got so much value from taking the time to read, Off The Clock, and I know you will too. So thank you Laura 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 Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.

Carol Roth’s father left a priceless gift when he passed. Now, she is using that to help others map out their plans for everything from their social media accounts, to their cryptocurrency and bitcoin assets, using her innovative FutureFile system. 

 

In Carol’s money story you will learn:

-How losing close members of her family and loved ones impacted her outlook on life, and on finances

-How she got a credit card at the age of 10!

-Why her dad was so concerned about preparing his children for his eventual death

-How her dad created a filing system and what it included

In Carol’s money lesson you will learn: 

-How Carol and her siblings used the file her dad created

-Exactly how much money it saved her and her family, both in actual money but also in the time they did not have to spend on estate related issues

-The mental relief the family had because of the system their dad had put in place

In Carol’s every day money tip you will learn:

-Why Carol believes no one should own depreciating assets

-How we can enjoy things like private jets without having to own them (JK)

-What kinds of investments we should be making instead of in things like cars and boats and planes

-The best use of our transportation dollars

Carol also talks about her business Futurefile.com

-Why she created it

-What it contains including not just places for wills and basic estate planning but also places to put cryptocurrency keys if you have bitcoin, and how to manage social media

In my take you will learn:

-The importance of making a plan, any plan, for when you are ill or pass away

-My experience knowing my mom’s wishes when she passed

-My take on whether you should own a car, and why I don’t fully agree with Carol

-Alternatives ways to save money if you do choose to have a car

 

EPISODE LINKS

Learn more about Carol Roth at https://www.carolroth.com/

Learn more about FutureFile at FutureFile.com

 

Follow Carol!!

Twitter @Caroljsroth

Facebook CarolJSRoth

 

Carol recommended not buying a private plane and instead using

NETJETS.com

More about Carol!

Carol Roth is the creator of the Future File® legacy planning system, “recovering” investment banker, billion-dollar dealmaker, investor, entrepreneur, business advisor, national media personality and author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Entrepreneur Equation.

Carol “plays herself on TV” weekly, having been a reality TV show judge (Mark Burnett’s America’s Greatest Makers on TBS), media contributor to outlets ranging from CNBC to Fox Business, and host of Microsoft’s Office Small Business Academy. She’s recognized internationally as a business expert and has worked with startups to the biggest companies and brands in the world on everything from strategy to content creation and marketing to billions of dollars in capital raising and transactional work.

Carol is dedicated to helping families prepare for and save time, cost and grief that comes with aging, medical issues and passing life events through her Future File products. She is a also former public company director and is a noted small business advocate. She invests in early and mid-stage companies as well.

Carol counts among her “accomplishments” having an action figure made in her own likeness, getting a standing ovation from Richard Branson and having the NFL follow her on Twitter.

 

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Transcription

Carol Roth:
He was very clear. Do not buy me the Cadillac of caskets, which I can tell you, if he had not told me that, there is no way I would have gypped out on dad in that moment. Knowing that he likes black and gold and things like that. I would have spent the money.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of "How to be a Financial Grownup." 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, that was business expert, Carol Roth. She is author of the bestseller, "The Entrepreneur Equation." You may have also caught her as a judge on the reality TV show, "America's Greatest Makers" on TBS. She's also seen a lot on TV: CNBC, Fox Business. You probably caught her. Her latest venture is called Future File. It's an idea that grew out of her own personal experiences with losing loved ones.

Bobbi Rebell:
Before we get to Carol's interview, a quick welcome to everyone. As our regulars know, we try to keep the shows short to match your busy life. But if you're traveling, commuting and have more time, feel free to binge. You can learn more about Financial Grownup at bobbirebell.com/financialgrownuppodcast where you can also sign up for our newsletter.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right, let's get to Carol because this interview was a real wake-up call for me on a lot of things that I just don't want to deal with, but Carol is a force to be reckoned with. Here is Carol Roth. Hey, Carol Roth, you're a financial grownup. Welcome to the podcast.

Carol Roth:
Bobbi, it is so great to be here and to be all grown up with you.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, thank you. It is a process for all of us, let me tell you. Many people already know you but, for those who don't, you are a big personality on TV. You are an author of the bestselling book "The Entrepreneur Equation," and you also have a business which is really an important business. We're going to talk about it a little bit more in-depth later in the show. But, it also ties into your money story because your money story led to it. Tell us your money story, Carol Roth.

Carol Roth:
This started when I was a senior in college. So I'm mourning the loss of somebody I had been in a relationship for a year and a half. I go off. I start my career, and my mom was diagnosed with leukemia. A year after that she passed, the day after her 51st birthday. So then I'm mourning these two losses. Then my stepmother, a few years later, is diagnosed with lung cancer, and she passes away at age 55. So at this point in time, my father, who despite not having a formal education, was very financially savvy. My dad was a union electrician. It was amazing. He couldn't spell banana. He spelled it bana, but he was the type of guy, he opened up a credit card for me somewhere around age 10 to establish my credit history.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wait. You got a credit card at age 10? First of all, they let you have that?

Carol Roth:
They did. Back in the day with a cosigner, as long as he co-signed on it, they didn't care, right? After we endure all these losses he says, “If something were to happen to me, and you and your sister have been through this now multiple times, if something were to happen to me, you guys wouldn't necessarily be prepared. So I'm gonna help you prepare.” Dad kept giving us pieces of paper, and the pieces of paper were, "I don't want you to spend this much money on a casket, I just want this. I don't want you to have two services. I just want a graveside service. Here's my insurance policy for this, and here's my wishes on this." Every time he'd give us a piece of paper, he'd say, "Stick it in the file."

Carol Roth:
So we had this running joke that we had this death file. We go okay, dad, whatever. We just continually collected information. As I said, my dad wasn't formally educated. So, low and behold, five years ago in May, my sister calls me on the phone and is like, "Carol, you know that file that dad has? Grab it and meet me at the hospital. He has been in a freak accident."

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, wow. This is just a paper file. This is not in any kind of cloud storage, on the computer, nothing?

Carol Roth:
No, this is literally a hard copy, accordion file folder with backs of envelopes, paper plates, envelopes, policies, wishes, this kind of amalgamation of information. Oh, and also keys, we had keys to his car, keys to security-

Bobbi Rebell:
So he made copies of the keys for everything?

Carol Roth:
Yes, everything.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay.

Carol Roth:
Copies of everything, hard copies. So I literally, physically grabbed this file, Bobbi, and I run to the hospital. He had been in this horrible accident, and he was completely out of it, bleeding on the brain. They said, "Do you want us to operate?" We went through, said, "Okay, what does Dad say about this? Okay, Dad says that yes, he wants you to operate." So they went ahead and operated. When he came out, he just never recovered. He was just basically brain dead and being kept alive by machines. So we pull out the piece of paper, including the power-of-attorney that said that we have the authorization to make these decisions. Then we pull out the wishes that Dad had. Dad had said if we've gone through a relevant number of tests and we've gotten a few opinions and everybody's come to the same conclusion that the machines are keeping him alive, to pull the plug. We followed Dad's instructions, and obviously he did not make it. Then we had to go through laying the body to rest within a few days, all of the services and wrapping up his personal affairs.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what are the lessons for our listeners from your story?

Carol Roth:
The benefits that we got that you can get if you preplan is that we saved a lifetime of burden, which is priceless. I don't have to walk around shouldering did I make the right decision in this particular scenario? Should I have gotten another opinion? Because my dad had talked through it, he had written it down, I knew what his wishes were, You can't put a financial price on that. That is priceless.

Carol Roth:
The second thing, from a financial standpoint, is we saved more than 10000 tangible dollars, Bobbi. I'm not even joking. End-of-life costs, what people don't realize, are so incredibly expensive. Average just funeral and burial is $8500. Cremation with a funeral service is close to $7000. So just by going through this, we saved more than $10000, and then the five figures that we did end up spending on all of these sort of end-of-life things, he had put end-of-life insurance in place. So it's something that we didn't have to come up with that money or go into his estate and try and figure that out. So there's a tangible dollar savings.

Bobbi Rebell:
What's the money that you did not spend? Did you not have a funeral that he didn't want? What money did you save because of knowing his wishes?

Carol Roth:
So we saved money on the casket. If you go with a Cadillac of caskets, it could be 6500. It could be $9500. You can get one at Costco for $600. So he was very clear. Do not buy me the Cadillac of caskets, which I can tell you, if he had not told me that, there is no way I would have gypped out on dad in that moment. Knowing that he likes black and gold and things like that, I would have spent the money. So he told us not to do that. He told us to only have a graveside service. So instead of going into the funeral home and having the whole spiel there and then moving everybody to graveside and having a second spiel there, he didn't want that. He said just do the graveside. He didn't want flowers. He didn't want accoutrements. He didn't want programs.

Carol Roth:
Then I'm Jewish, so we do something called sitting shiva, which is similar to sort of visitation in the Christian religion. For that, he said, "Go to our clubhouse. Do it just the day of. Just have this and that and the other thing." By the instructions that he put out, we saved money there. So when we added it all up, it was well into the five figures. Then, as I said, we ended up spending five figures on stuff on top of that, but just the five figures of savings was incredible.

Carol Roth:
Then the other cost that is an indirect cost but was so incredibly valuable is he saved me hundreds of hours of time. If you look at how much I make in an hour, that's tangibly multiple six figures. So 200 at least, maybe 300, hours in trying to track down all of his accounts, all of his policies, making sure that we had everything, trying to find things like that safety deposit box key, making sure that he didn't have a treasure hunt for us somewhere where there was money hidden that we didn't know about. That's real money. I know people don't think of it that way. Sometimes people don't think of their time as money, but there is a true, tangible money cost associated with it.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. You also brought with you a money tip. Awkwardly switching topics, but this has to do with depreciating assets, not investing in things that are going to go down in value.

Carol Roth:
Right. So basically, if it drives, floats or flies, you don't want to own it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Wait. So I shouldn't aspire to get my private jet?

Carol Roth:
No, buy a NetJet card because when you have an asset, something that quote, unquote "invest in," that decreases in value every time you use it, that's not the kind of investment that you want to be making. But if you have a car and you're living in the city or you're living somewhere else and you don't drive that often, or maybe you're a multiple car household and you have an extra car that you really can do without, sell it. Because the amount of money that you have tied up in that car plus ongoing maintenance plus the cost of gas plus the cost of insurance, you have to license it every year, and some places you have to pay for parking, it's a huge amount of wasted money. We have so many options for transportation now. You have these on-demand services like Uber and Lyft. Obviously, taxis are becoming more competitive because of that. If you do need to go somewhere for a couple of days, you have rental car agencies that will actually deliver the car to you.

Carol Roth:
So if you go through and you write down how much it's going to cost you to take those couple of Ubers and maybe to rent the car a couple of times a year and you add all that up versus how much money that you're spending invested in that car and all of these other maintenance items and you compare the two, I guarantee you there will be no comparison.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right. I do want to talk about your latest project because it came from these experiences with loved ones. It's called Future File, and it's genius. So please tell us a little bit about it.

Carol Roth:
When we told people our story, the feedback was so often, "I need to do that for my parents or grandparents." Or "I need to do that for my spouse." Or "I need to do that for myself. I don't know what's going on in the household." Or "We've got kids." So we took this prototype that our dad created for us, and we created a full kit called Future File at futurefile.com. It's basically a roadmap that walks you through everything you need to organize all of your wishes and information for either aging, passing or other family emergencies. So if somebody has a stroke or your house is burning down or whatever it is, it's one location that literally has access to everything you could possibly need. It helps you organize your wills and your powers-of-attorney. Also, your social media wishes, the budgeting that we talked about for long-term care, aging care, end of life. Even a place to put your cryptocurrency keys if you have bitcoin.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, wow. I know because you could have that, and then no one can get to it.

Carol Roth:
Well, that's the thing.

Bobbi Rebell:
They have to know.

Carol Roth:
Literally, it's not like a bank account that eventually, after hours and hours and hours and showing death certificates and going through probate, that you can access. If somebody doesn't have those keys, it's lost forever. So we didn't want to create any barriers to people doing this, so there's no subscription model. It's one-time. It's just under a hundred bucks.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh, wow, that's it? That's amazing.

Carol Roth:
Yeah, if you listen to the story and you understand those burdens, it makes sense. So do it. Prepare yourself, prepare your family, and you'll help us give that gift that our father gave to us to you and your family.

Bobbi Rebell:
Where can people find out more about you and Future File?

Carol Roth:
Yes. So Future File, go to futurefile.com. Tons of information there. The best place to find me, especially if you have a little bit of an odd and off-color sense of humor, is on Twitter at caroljsroth.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love it. Thank you, Carol.

Carol Roth:
Thanks so much, Bobbi.

Bobbi Rebell:
So that was pretty heavy stuff but important to hear. I personally would prefer to just live in denial, but if we're going to be grownups, it's going to catch up to us sooner or later.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number one. I think Carol did a great job getting her point across. No plan is actually a burden on your survivors. So make a plan. Include traditional assets, but also, if you can, leave instructions for the less tangible things. Try to envision the kind of decisions that will be made if you would pass or if you were very ill. If you don't want to decide for them, empower them to make the decision that they think is best without worrying about what you would think. When my mom passed, she was very specific about a few things for my dad and for me and for my siblings, and that gave us all comfort and the freedom to know she was okay with our choices.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two. Carol talked a lot about getting rid of cars. So here's the thing. She may be right financially, but let's face it, for some people, it's just part of their lifestyle. It's like asking someone whose only joy is that latte to give up their latte. They need to cut something different. You can find a workaround. So in this case, maybe cut expenses that are related to the car or the asset that is depreciating. One option, renegotiate your insurance. Shop around. Consolidating your insurance can also be a way to lower the cost. Also, if you park in a garage, maybe you can park on the street. Can you renegotiate the garage fee? Is there a tax break associated with the garage if you are resident? We get that here in New York City. If you park at work, can your company reimburse or subsidize the parking? For those of us who have private jets, for example, we know fuel is getting more expensive. One way to pare back costs ... okay, I was just kidding about the whole private jet thing. Anyway, moving on.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks to all of you for supporting the show. Hit subscribe if you can, and we'd love reviews and feedback. So thank you in advance if you can squeeze that into your day. Let's all try to find time soon to make a future file. Thank you, Carol Roth, 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 Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

Tom Corley grew up in financial turmoil but after studying the wealthy was able to copy their habits and make his money dreams into a reality. 

In Tom’s money story you will learn:

-How Tom’s childhood money disappointments created poor money habits in his early adulthood

-The specific things Tom’s parents did that created financial instability for Tom and his siblings

-Why his graduation party was cancelled because of his parents’ financial troubles

-How he was unable buy a car and to rent an apartment as a young adult again, because of his parents financial needs

-The emotional component of his financial challenges early in his life

-How a client inspired him to do the research that became “Rich Habits"

In Tom’s money lesson you will learn:

-The impact of your parents money habits on your own money habits

-The importance of avoiding “want spending" driven by envy

-How you can change those habits

-Why changing only two or three habits can change your life

-Tom’s habit that he does every day on his way to work to re-inforce gratitude

In Tom’s every day money tip

-Why successful people keep track of other people’s birthdays

-How calling them on their birthday makes a meaningful impact

-Why to avoid the birthday wish on social media

-The connection between the Happy Birthday habit and why it will help you prosper through genuine friendships

 

In My Take you will learn:

-How to move past parents who have poor money habits

-The advice Tony Robbins offers to people who get a rough start in life, as he did

-How my new friend Ramit Sethi uses birthdays as a way to connect with friends and get "Birthday Wisdom"

Episode Links:

Tom’s website: www.richhabits.net

Follow Tom!

Twitter: @RichHabits

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/thomas.c.corley.3

Learn more about Rich Neighbor, Poor Neighbor

 

Get Tom’s books including "Rich Habits, Poor Habits" and "Change Your Habits, Change Your Life” and “Rich Kids"

 

Tom is also writing a book called “The Other Side of Cancer”. Learn more about the Ashely Lauren Foundation which helps families struggling with pediatric cancer. 

 

Also mentioned in the episode:

Tony Robbins

David Bach

Ramit Sethi

 

More about Tom Corley: 

CBS Nightly News Interview: http://richhabits.net/cbs-news-rich-habits-interview-with-lisa-hughes/

Dave Ramsey Interview:http://richhabits.net/dave-ramsey-rich-habits-tom-corley/ 

SUCCESS Magazine Interviews: http://shar.es/1HKwDe      http://shar.es/1HK95w

USA Today Article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/02/22/credit-dotcom-credit-card-habits/23545023/ 

 

Tom Corley is an internationally recognized authority on habits and wealth creation.

Tom has spoken alongside Richard Branson, Robin Sharma, Dr. Daniel Amen and many other notable speakers.

In Tom’s five-year study of the rich and poor he identified over 300 daily habits that separated the “haves” from the “have nots.” Tom is s bestselling author and award winning author. His books include: Rich Habits, Rich Kids and Change Your Habits Change Your Life and Rich Habits Poor Habits.

Tom has appeared on or in CBS Evening News, The Dave Ramsey Show, CNN, MSN Money, USA Today, the Huffington Post, Marketplace Money SUCCESS Magazine, Inc. Magazine, Money Magazine, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, Fast Company Magazine, Epoca Magazine (Brazil’s largest weekly) and thousands of other media outlets in the U.S. and 25 other countries. Tom is a frequent contributor to Business Insider, CNBC, SUCCESS Magazine and Credit.com.

Tom is also a CPA, CFP and holds a Master’s Degree in Taxation and heads a top financial firm in New Jersey

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Transcription

Tom Corley:
I told all my friends that I'm having a graduation party, I told them the date, and a couple of weeks before the party date I just let my mother know, and she said, "We can't have a party, we don't have any money." I said, "Yeah, I know, I saved $200." That night my father came into my room and he said, "You know what, I hate to do this to you, but we need the money."

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup, with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How To Be a Financial Grownup, and 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my faith on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, friends, if you feel a big knot in your stomach from that clip you just heard from our guest today, I'm right there with you, this was a tough one. But it's also an important story, so I hope you stick with us. Welcome, everyone. As our regular listeners know, while we try to keep the mood light, we also get real here on the Financial Grownup podcast, and we listen and we learn from others' experiences. So my guests are brave and they reveal very personal financial stories sometimes, in the hopes that it will make your lives better, our lives better.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tom Corley is the author of a number of bestselling books including Rich Habits, and it was inspired by his devastating childhood experiences, but also how you can change your habits and have financial freedom. This really goes to the heart of what we try to do here. Here is Tom Corley.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey, Tom Corley, you are our financial grownup, welcome to the podcast.

Tom Corley:
Hi, Bobbi, thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm so excited to have you because you are the author of Rich Habits, and we all need to develop rich habits for sure.

Tom Corley:
Yeah, I spent five years doing research on the daily habits of rich people and poor people, gathered three hundred and forty something data points, and decided to incorporate some of them, the most important keystone habits, into my book Rich Habits, which has become very popular around the world.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well, you're being very modest, it's been a huge bestseller, and you've been on everything from Dave Ramsey to the CBS Evening News, literally you've been all over the place, and I know that the book has helped so many people, so thank you for that. Also I'm going to thank you in advance for sharing what's a very sensitive money story having to do with your upbringing and the poor habits that you learned from your father. Tell us more.

Tom Corley:
Yeah, so I actually have two stories that I'll try and be as concise as possible. So you know, we were rich and then we were poor. My father's business went under when I was aged nine, it's a complicated story, but it was really random bad luck. Anyway, from the age of nine until, I guess, I left the house, we were poor.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you had a big household, by the way.

Tom Corley:
We had 11 in our family, so we were constantly worried. Our home was in foreclosure, as least as far as I can remember, four times. So we were worried about being homeless. I remember I used to shovel snow and mow lawns, and I spent the whole year doing that, saved money, saved $200, because in the 8th grade I wanted to have a graduation party. I told all my friends who I wanted to come that I'm having a graduation party. I told them the date. A couple of weeks before the party date, I just my mother know, just to make sure it was okay, and she said, "We can't have a party, we don't have any money." I said, "Yeah, I know. I saved $200." Well, that night my father came into my room and he said, "You know what, I hate to do this to you, but we need the money, because I have bills that I have to pay or they'll shut off my electricity, our phones, or whatever." So I handed him the money.

Tom Corley:
The second story was when I was 23 and I had just been working for about a year. I was still living at home, but I was trying to get ready to leave home. So I saved about $5,000, I wanted to buy a car, and use whatever was left to put down on a rental, an apartment somewhere. Somebody in my family found out about it, and my father approached me a couple of days later and said, "You know, we need that $5,000 to pay our real estate taxes. They're in the process of foreclosing on our house again." So I had to give up that $5,000.

Tom Corley:
So what I learned from those two experiences, which were very emotional experiences to me, was, don't save, if you save, somebody will take it. I was young when I learned those lessons, so they stayed with me in my adult life. And it wasn't until really I did my Rich Habits research that I realized I had this horrific poor habit of not saving, and it was emotion based, which most habits are.

Bobbi Rebell:
What even started the idea of doing Rich Habits research?

Tom Corley:
When I took over my CPA firm here from my predecessor, I had a small business client in the auto body business, he had inherited the business from his father and over the course of 20 years he found himself with cashflow issues. He asked me, "What are your successful clients doing that I'm not doing?" Then he started crying because he couldn't make payroll that week, and basically he was going out of business.

Tom Corley:
So I started doing research, I couldn't find anything other than The Millionaire Next Door, that didn't help me really, it wasn't specific enough. So I said, "You know what? I'm going to do my own research." I interviewed 361 rich people and poor people, find out what the rich do and what the poor do, and I didn't know I was doing a habit study, I just was trying to uncover the truth, why are some people rich and why are some people poor? What I wanted to do, Bobbi, was find out what they did from the minute they put their feet on the floor in the morning to the minute they put their head on the pillow at night. So that's kind of what started me on that research.

Bobbi Rebell:
Did you talk to your dad about this at all?

Tom Corley:
No. My dad passed away in 2013, and he was always one of my biggest cheerleaders, but we never really saw eye to eye on a lot of things. I did everything a good son is supposed to do to help my father, and he loved me, you know, we just didn't have that kind of relationship.

Bobbi Rebell:
You never talked to him about your feelings when the money was taken from you after saving it?

Tom Corley:
No. I couldn't do that to him. I know, he was older, why burden him with that? I just felt, this is something that I don't ever want him to know about.

Bobbi Rebell:
For our listeners, what is the takeaway from your story?

Tom Corley:
Well, the takeaway is this: I was able to turn things around, thanks to my Rich Habits research, I started saving, started putting money into my 401(k), and other things. Whether you are aware of it or not, you have certain good habits and bad habits, I call them rich habits and poor habits, that are the result of your upbringing. They primarily are from your parents. So if you are, like I was, not saving any money, and maybe have debt, credit card debt, there's a very good likelihood that that has something to do with your upbringing, and some habits that you forged in your childhood that stayed with you in your adult life. The good news is that I'm evidence you can change your habits, and not only am I evidence, I have 177 self-made millionaires that are proof that once you change your habits, you change your life.

Tom Corley:
So there's light at the end of the tunnel here for anyone, doesn't matter if you're poor or stuck in the middle class. You can change your habits, and it only takes two or three habits to change your life.

Bobbi Rebell:
So give us some habits.

Tom Corley:
So many people struggle with savings, right? If you really peel that onion, what's the reason why they just can't save? In many cases, especially in America, it's the keeping up with the Jones's mindset, it's, my friend bought a BMW, or leased a BMW, my other friend, or someone I know, or colleague just got a really nice house. So you supersize your life. I call it want spending. What drives want spending is envy. Envy is a negative emotion. What shuts down the want spending is turning the fuel off for your want spending, which is turning off your envy. How do you do that? You shift your mindset from negative to positive by, instead of being envious, be grateful for what you have.

Tom Corley:
What I do every day, every morning on my commute to work, is, I sit in my car as I'm driving and I say, "What are three things that went right yesterday with my life, that I'm grateful for?" I spend about 10 minutes thinking about it and going over it. It's an amazing thing, Bobbi, but it completely makes you positive. Gratitude is the gateway to positivity, it's a domino effect. So it's not just, "Oh, all of a sudden I have this gratitude, positive mental outlook." You have a completely changed mental outlook, everything, you start seeing the glass half full, you start seeing the good in life, the good in people. It's amazing when you start treating people as valuable instead of finding the flaws and the faults in them, they respond, and next thing you know you've got these powerful relationships with people that you didn't have before, all because of a shift in your mindset.

Bobbi Rebell:
Tom, for your everyday money tip, I think you're going to win the most original, and should I just wish you a happy birthday even though I don't even know when your birthday is, but I just want to say happy birthday.

Tom Corley:
Thank you, Bobbi, I appreciate that. It wasn't long ago, June 12th. The happy birthday call was one of the things that I uncovered that the self-made millionaires did. All you do is just call people, you don't tweet them, you don't Facebook them, no social media interaction here, you're calling them on the phone, just to wish them a happy birthday. The amazing thing is, when you call somebody on their birthday, guess what, you're going to probably be one of three or four phone calls that they receive. Here's the really cool thing, Bobbi, I found, because I've been tracking this since I uncovered it in 2007, 25% of the people that you call on your birthday will reciprocate, so it's called the reciprocal happy birthday call, that really takes your relationship off life support, takes it to another level.

Bobbi Rebell:
And especially, you mentioned, not social media and that kind of thing, taking it in a different medium really differentiates you.

Tom Corley:
Yeah, look, you want to stand out. If you're going to just be saying "happy birthday" on Facebook, you don't stand out, because the herd is doing that. You want to step outside the herd. What do people outside the herd do? They make happy birthday calls. It's going to emotionalize your relationship. Why is that important to making money? Because the people that really help you open doors, they might be on board of directors with you on nonprofits, they might be other successful people, well, these are the people you want to be making the happy birthday calls to, they're going to remember you, it's going to improve your relationship, strengthen it, and now you're going to start to develop friendships with these people.

Bobbi Rebell:
Love it. Tell us more about what you're up to this summer and into fall, and where people can learn more about you, Tom.

Tom Corley:
Sure. So I've got a book, Rich Neighbor, Poor Neighbor, that I'm just about wrapping up. I'm going to be traveling to Vietnam for a couple of speaking engagements. I'm also going to start work on a book called The Other Side of Cancer. So I've got a few things in the pipeline this summer.

Bobbi Rebell:
What prompted that, Tom?

Tom Corley:
I'm the president of The Ashley Lauren Foundation. We help families who are struggling with pediatric cancer. So if you found out your child had cancer, we step in to help you financially, emotionally, all different sorts of things. We've bailed people out where they were almost homeless because cancer costs money to fight that fight. We've kept people in their homes just by paying their mortgage and paying their rent. So growing up poor, that means a lot to me, because we didn't really have anybody to help us, so I'm going to write a book and proceeds are going to go to The Ashley Lauren Foundation, and it's going to be an upbeat book about how some of the kids who survived cancer went on to become doctors, lawyers, and other things.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right, well keep us posted on that, and I'll make sure to have you send me some links that we can put in the show notes, and people can learn more about it. Thank you so much, Tom.

Tom Corley:
Thank you, Bobbi, I appreciate it.

Bobbi Rebell:
So, can't thank Tom enough for sharing such a candid and raw story. I truly hope none of you have had to go through that kind of, not just financial devastation, but the toll that it takes on the relationship with your parents and how you view them and how you relate to them.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number one: as much as our parents set the foundation for our financial perspectives, if you get a bad deal, like Tom, you can move past it. In addition to Tom's books, there are other resources to check out. As our regulars know, I'm a big fan, for example, of Tony Robbins, who was kind enough to support my book, How To Be a Financial Grownup, by contributing the foreword. Tony is a big believer in owning your own situation. Whatever happened in the past with your parents, in your childhood, whatever, look forward, you're an adult, be a financial grownup, and move past anything your parents may have done that you feel hurt you financially. Almost all our parents are well intentioned and really do try their best. Maybe try to teach them what you learn places like here, and from Tom Horley or from Tony Robbins.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two: let's talk about those birthday wishes. I recently met Ramit Sethi at a dinner party that he co-hosted with my friend, David [Bock 00:13:50], Episode 1, by the way, guys, if you want to go back. You guys may know Ramit as the author of the book, I Can Teach You To Be Rich. So I follow him now on social media. It was recently Ramit's birthday, and he said that when his friends have birthdays he reaches out, and he asks them to share birthday wisdom with him. So maybe that's something that we can all do when we reach out and call them, as Tom suggested.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks to all of you for joining us. This was an emotional one, but that's okay, it was also honest. If you have not, please hit that subscribe button, and follow us on social media, on Twitter @BobbiRebell, and on Instagram @BobbiRebell1. Thanks to Tom Corley 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 Stewart, and is a BRK Media production.

 

Newlywed Hilary Hendershott CFP® found herself with a limited cash flow after launching her own financial advisory firm, and started using her husband’s credit cards to make up the difference. What she considered to be a money secret she was keeping from her new husband, she discovered actually wasn’t, but was the catalyst that brought them together to discuss their finances as a married unit.

 

In Hilary’s money story you will learn:

-How as newlyweds, Hilary and her husband set up their finances

-The unseen pitfall that caught them both off guard

-Why Hilary considered spending money on her husband’s credit cards a “secret”

-What happened when she revealed her actions

 

In Hilary’s money lesson you will learn:

-Specifically what Hilary would do now in the same situation

-The exact questions you should be asking if your financial partners- romantic or otherwise

-Ways to motivate yourself to be financially open even in uncomfortable situations

In Hilary’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-Why she is against buying service plans from auto dealerships

-The tactics they use to get you to buy the plans and how to flag them

-How to find alternative options to keeping you car properly maintained

-How Hilary got burned at auto dealerships

In my take you will learn:

-The importance of discussing cashflow, not just revenue

-Why taking ownership of your actions is the key to finding solutions

-The biggest danger of not talking about credit card bills with your partner

-How identity theft can be more of a threat if multiple people use the same credit card account

EPISODE LINKS

Learn more about Hilary Hendershott and the Profit Boss® Radio Podcast

https://www.hilaryhendershott.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/hilarythecfp

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/profitbossradio

 

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Transcription

Hilary Hendersh:
I don't know if I'd found one of his credit cards laying around, or it was a credit card that I was using, or using intermittently. Well anyway, I started using this credit card to live off of. And this went on for months, and every time I pulled it out I felt like I was cheating or lying or stealing or something, but I was doing this thing that I didn't have agreement to do.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup. With me certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How to be a Financial Grownup. And 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 a financial grownup, one lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, so if you spend your significant other's money and you don't actively tell them that you are spending that money is that cheating? I'll let you guys be the judge.

Bobbi Rebell:
Quick welcome to our newest listeners and welcome back to everyone else. Hit that subscribe button while you are there. We do three short episodes a week to fit your schedule. Each episode delivers a money story from a high achiever, a lesson in takeaway so you can apply it to your own life, and an every day money tip to help you save and have more money. If you've got more than about 15 minutes feel free to binge, get a few lessons in a row.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, now to our guest, Hilary Hendershott. In addition to being the real deal, a certified financial planner who has been named one of Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors she also hosts the Profit Boss Radio podcast, which I highly recommend. I'm going to be a guest on a future episode likely in the fall. She is also relatively newlywed but regrets keeping a secret from her new husband, or did she? Here is Hilary Hendershott.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey Hilary Hendershott you're a financial grownup, welcome to the podcast.

Hilary Hendersh:
Thank you so much.

Bobbi Rebell:
And congratulations, you are one of Investopedia's Top 100 Financial Advisors, quiet an honor.

Hilary Hendersh:
Isn't that cool? Yeah, I'm honored to be ranked.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you are a certified financial planner, which we know is serious business, and of course your hit podcast Profit Boss Radio podcast, which I am huge fan of. So, welcome.

Hilary Hendersh:
Thank you so much, I'm really happy to be a financial grownup today.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you brought with you a great story and a very interesting one with a little bit of a plot twist. You were apparently using your husband's credit cards without his knowledge, but there's a lot more of the story, tell us.

Hilary Hendersh:
So for many years I worked for my father's financial planning for about 15 years. I went out on my own in 2014, so I took my clients and I formed a registered investment advisory firm. So here I am, I'm a bootstrapping entrepreneur and my husband was very generous, he said, "Of course, don't pay yourself for a while." And I think any of you who've started a business you understand you just really feel like all that dry kindling needs to go back onto fan the flames of the fire that is your new business. So I was not drawing an income from my business.

Bobbi Rebell:
And you were relatively newlywed, correct?

Hilary Hendersh:
We got married in 2013, yes so we were newlyweds. My husband had his own banking system, I had my own banking system we didn't join accounts, so I had separate checking account from him. So, I didn't think about the fact that we had set this scenario up where there was no money coming into the account that I was spending from. And so, I get to the end like I didn't want to go below $1,000 in this account, but there's no money coming in. I'm like, "What am I going to do now?" Well I happen to ... I don't know if I'd found one of his credit cards laying around or it was a credit card that I was using or using intermittently. Well anyway, I started using this credit card to live off of. And this went on for months, and every time I pulled it out I felt like I was cheating, or lying, or stealing, or something, but I was doing this thing that I didn't have agreement to do. And finally I was like, "I have to come clean honey, I've been spending on your credit card to live."

Hilary Hendersh:
And he said, "I know."

Bobbi Rebell:
So wait, but you didn't tell him and you thought he didn't know. I was about to ask you, wait who's paying these bills? Doesn't he look at the bills? So the people have auto pay.

Hilary Hendersh:
Well he was.

Bobbi Rebell:
People have auto pay.

Hilary Hendersh:
No, he paid the bills and I just thought maybe he wasn't paying attention. I don't know that he combs the transactions at a detailed level. It wasn't like the portal was accounting for this is Hilary's card versus this is your card. I don't know what I thought, I was just in denial. I think I just probably wishing and hoping that my surreptitious little activities were not being found out by him. But of course, we're married it's all joint assets anyway, but it was just the fact that I hadn't asked him or gotten approval, it wasn't what we had planned. It wasn't what we said would happen. And I said to him, "How in the world were we designed? How did you think I was going to get money? How was money ever going to come into my accounts?"

Hilary Hendersh:
And he said something about me taking profit distributions from my business.

Hilary Hendersh:
And I said, "But I wasn't taking money out of the business." He and I just had very different expectations of what was happening from a cashflow management perspective, but it was very cool that he gave me a very soft landing, because when I did say, "I've been using your credit card to live."

Hilary Hendersh:
And he said, "I know."

Bobbi Rebell:
Awe that's so nice. So then how did it evolve? What system did you put in place?

Hilary Hendersh:
Well now I'm on payroll.

Bobbi Rebell:
Right, but I mean did you just say, "Well okay, we'll continue this"? Or did you just merge your accounts then? Or did it just continue where you were just still using his credit card but you guys were open about it?

Hilary Hendersh:
I think a little bit of both. I think he like wrote me a check for $20,000 or something so I had money in my checking account. And then we did create a joint account so I changed my bank over to his bank, and now I'm on payroll from the business. So, our personal finances evolved and grew, but we really should have been spending from the same bank account before that. But, yeah so we just kind of dealt with it step-by-step.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what is the lesson for our listeners from that? What is their takeaway?

Hilary Hendersh:
I think it's really common at the beginning of starting a business for someone's spouse to financially support them. And if you're going to do that you just want to be clear where's the pool of funds that you're actually spending from? And you want to be I think in communication, how much can I spend and have us still be on track for our plan? What is your expectation here? I think the problem was that Robert and I just didn't fully talk through the plan. What saved me was my need to be ... I really am fundamentally an honest person. I'm like, "Uh I need to come clean here." But being open and transparent communication with your partner, your spouse is your financial partner. And so, being able to talk about that really helps.

Bobbi Rebell:
And it sounds like he is really supportive of the business.

Hilary Hendersh:
Oh tremendously. I could not have done it without him. Yeah, absolutely.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right, I want to talk about your money tip because it is something that so many people don't even think twice about, they just assume it's the best thing to do, but maybe not always.

Hilary Hendersh:
Yeah, so when you buy a car from a dealership they give you this schedule of appointments that you're supposed to be on for maintenance and tune-ups, that's a major profit center for those dealerships, those maintenance garages, or fix it places. So, I just went on Yelp and I found a four and a half star local mechanic and we take our cars there. I don't think I've had more than about $100 in maintenance costs over the last seven to eight years. One time I could literally hear the brake discs grinding on each other and I brought the car in thinking I was going to spend ... I had mentally budgeted like $1,000. I was like, "Maybe it'll be like $700 but I don't want to be disappointed, so I'll mentally budget $1,000."

Hilary Hendersh:
The guy said, "I'm going to retool it, it costs $49." It's like I can't spend money at this place if I try to, so that's my tip.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what do you think goes on that people are always feeling like they have to go the dealerships? And full disclosure, when we bought our car we did pre-pay for a maintenance plan. And so, we are locked in because we've paid for it, to our dealer.

Hilary Hendersh:
It's just a problem of information and education. A lot of people in my world, I see come into my office with things inside their investment portfolio that they don't understand, or aren't good for them, or have hidden fees. And under the hood of the car is the same thing. I myself, I know nothing about vehicles. And so, you want to trust dealer just sold you your car. You've been sitting with them all Saturday afternoon and they say, "This is your maintenance schedule."

Hilary Hendersh:
And you don't want to have to think, "Well I'm being taken advantage of or there's a way I can get it for a quarter of the cost." But you know these are huge profit centers for the dealerships and in my experience is I feel that I've been personally taken advantage of because I didn't know what to say or what to ask for.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well what happened at the dealer that you got burned?

Hilary Hendersh:
I think getting really high ticket maintenance bills. Having to do things like, "Well, we removed the rotor," or whatever.

Hilary Hendersh:
And then you go, "Okay can I see the part?" Because somebody tells you that in order to be a critical consumer you need to ask for your old parts.

Hilary Hendersh:
And they go, "Well, it's already at the dump," or whatever. Just signs of lack of credibility. And it's been so long since I've been to a dealership that I definitely am not going to remember the details, but just the fact of my maintenance costs went from several thousand dollars a year to under $100.

Bobbi Rebell:
Great advice. All right, before I let you go, tell me a little more about Profit Boss Radio and your mission, and a little bit about the show, and where people can find you.

Hilary Hendersh:
Yes, so Profit Boss Radio is your wealth mastermind. So, I take all the best of what I've learned over 18 years as a certified financial planner. I do solo shows on technical topics like, how to debunk economic doomsayers. You know those articles that always say, "The stock market's going to fall. The stock market's a huge bubble." I pull those articles apart and talk through every line item of them so that you understand how to think about and what to do about them when you read them. We've had finance experts such as David Bach and Dan Ariely on the show. I interview everyday entrepreneurs and even some really incredible everyday women, so not media experts but women who have done just remarkable things in their own financial life. I interviewed a single mom, she was left with no money and three kids, she had literally no income and now she owns a major clothing studio and online business living in the house of her dreams having paid cash for all of her kid's college. She was just an incredible interview. So lots of different kinds of topics. The show is designed to empower you financially to take control of your money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well I am a huge fan of the podcast and of you. Where can people find you and follow you?

Hilary Hendersh:
If you have room in your podcast lineup check out Profit Boss Radio wherever you find your podcast online. You can find me HilaryHendershott.com and that is Hilary with one l and Hendershott with two t's.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much, this was amazing.

Hilary Hendersh:
Thank you so much for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay everyone here is my take. The first year's of any relationship that merges finances romantic or not is always challenging. Financial Grownup Tip #1, Hilary did talk to her new husband about the fact that she would not have income in the early stages of her business, but then she didn't follow up with exactly how the cashflow would work. So it was an incomplete discussion. Don't assume that your partner is making the leap to the next step. While Hilary takes ownership of her actions and feels she should have told him she was spending on his account, and she should have, why didn't he point out the charges to her? Because here's the really alarming thing about this story, given that he did not ask her or anyone about the charges that were appearing on his bill, how did he know that they were not unauthorized charges from strangers, and that his credit card and/or identity had not been compromised?

Bobbi Rebell:
So Financial Grownup Tip #2, if more than one person in your family is using a credit card or even a debit card you need to really be communicating. So taking it beyond the spouse example, maybe to build credit you put your teenage child on a credit card, or some people may give a caregiver a debit card to pay for expenses for a child. Make sure that person is giving you receipts or at the very least communicating what their buying. You may assume that because for example, they shop at Walmart every charge from Walmart is legit and is theirs, but a smart thief might make charges at places you already shop thus avoiding detection. Just think about it.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you all for spending some time with us. Feel free to binge a little and check out some other episodes. Learn more about Financial Grownup at BobbiRebell.com/FinancialGrownupPodcast and do follow us on social media. I am on Twitter @BobbiRebell and on Instagram at Bobbi Rebell 1.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hilary's relationship with her hubby is still going strong as is her growing financial advisory business. Be sure to check out Profit Boss Radio for more great insights from Hilary, and thank you to my friend for bringing us all one step closer to being Financial Grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stuart and is a BRK Media production.

Author Cristina Alger wrote her first book, The Darlings as a side hustle while working 120 hours a week as a lawyer. When she ditched the day job to write full time, Cristina also walked away from the pricey perks.  But the author of The Bankers Wife, quickly found herself with the time to create better benefits for herself and her family. 

 

Cristina Alger is a lifelong New Yorker. A graduate of Harvard College and NYU Law School, she worked as a financial analyst and a corporate attorney before becoming a writer. Her third novel, THE BANKER'S WIFE, will be published on July 3 by Penguin Random House. She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

 

In Cristina’s money story you will learn: 

-How and why she came to work in finance after college even though she had been an English major and says she had no financial skills

-How and why she wrote the Darlings while working 120 hours a week as a corporate lawyer, often on the road

-How she got the book published

-How she had to adjust her budget and spending lifestyle when she left her corporate job to write fulltime

-Specific examples of the changes she made to lower her spending, but make up for it with time

In Cristina’s money lesson you will learn:

-How at her corporate job Cristina had to use money to make up for the lack of time she had

-How as a writer, Cristina now has time to make up for the lack of steady paycheck

-The specific current changes Cristina makes in her every day life to improve the quality of her family time and her overall lifestyle

In Cristina’s everyday money tip you will learn:

-How Cristina and her husband have disrupted the common advice to hire babysitters and go out in order to really have a date night as parents of young children

-Exactly what they do to protect the time, and to focus on each other, not distractions around their home

-Ideas for how you can create time in your life for special moments - without spending more money than you would like. 

-Other benefits from at-home date nights, including avoiding all the stress and to-do list of setting up the going-out date night!

About  how Cristina researched her book “The Bankers Wife”

-She learned about Geneva as a child visiting her uncle

-As an ex-pat she was fascinated by the glamorous and mysterious world of   swiss banking and offshore banking

-She is fascinated by the Panama Papers and used them for ideas. They were leaked while she was writing the book in the summer of 2016, 

-Another case that inspired her was that of whistelblower Bradley Birkenfeld, who exposed how UBS helped ultra-wealthy Americans commit billions in tax fraud.

-Birkenfeld went to prison for 30 months, but when he got out he got $104 million from the IRS as a whistleblowers fee!

In my take you will learn:

-How to find the time to do what you love, even if you feel like you are too busy

-How to determine if in fact you should not try to find the time- because ultimately it’s not that important to you, or not realistic during this phase of your life. 

-Ways to come to terms with your actual priorities not being what you think they SHOULD be. 

-The difference between side hustles for enjoyment, and side hustles for pay. 

-Ways to approach  and re-think the pressure from friends and family to have a formal ‘date night’ when you really do have other financial needs- or the planning of the date night is creating stress. 

 

EPISODE LINKS:

Learn more about Cristina Alger and her other books at her website:

CristinaAlger.com where you can also buy her book. 

Follow Cristina!

Facebook: @AuthorCristinaAlger

Instagram: cristina.alger

Twitter: CristinaAlger

Here are some great articles about the Panama Papers: 

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/

NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/us/panama-papers.html

The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/panama-papers

Wired: https://www.wired.com/2016/04/reporters-pulled-off-panama-papers-biggest-leak-whistleblower-history/

Here is more about Bradley Birkenfeld.

https://lucifersbanker.com! 

You can read more about him in his book: https://lucifersbanker.com/books/lucifers-banker/overview/

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Transcription

Cristina Alger:
There was a salad place in basement of my loft apartment, we used to go everyday for lunch and you'd spend 30 dollars on a salad and kind of not think anything of it, and a lot of times we'd expense it to the firm and you can't do that anymore.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grown Up with my, certified financial planner Bobbi Rebell, author of How to be a Financial Grown Up, but you know what, being a grown up 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 a financial grown up, a lesson, and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, the glam life of an entrepreneur, you can work from the beach, but you also need to watch out for those 30 dollar a day salads because that expense account has sailed away. Welcome everyone, so glad you are here, we have a great guest today in novelist Cristina Alger, whose latest book the financial thriller, The Bankers Wife, kept me up all weekend, I could not put it down until the very last page and it was a good ending. The book is fiction but also very realistic, taking us into the secretive world of Swiss banking and chock full of villains, if you can figure out who exactly are the villains. You can really tell that in Cristina's background in banking and law as well as growing up in a family that worked in finance, gave her insights into this actually really crazy world that we haven't seen before in a novel, at least not that I'm aware of.

Bobbi Rebell:
This book takes you on quite the adventure. Alger wrote her first book, The Darlings, as a side hustle while working 120 hours a week, when she ditched the day job though to write full time Cristina also walked away from those pricey perks and she had to learn to be quite the financial grown up, you're going to love this story. Here is Cristina Alger. Hey Cristina Alger, you're a financial grown up, welcome to the podcast.

Cristina Alger:
Thank you, thank you for having me.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you so much for taking over my weekend, I spent the weekend reading your new book, I got a sneak peak at it, The Bankers Wife. We're going to talk more about it after your money story, but just high level, give us a little sneak peak?

Cristina Alger:
Well the bankers wife is a thriller and it's set sort of in Europe and New York and it's about a woman who is an ex pat, an American ex pat living in Geneva, and her husband is a private banker and he goes missing on a private plane, and she goes in search of him. It's really kind of a fun fast paced thriller that kind of takes you through the world of off shore banking.

Bobbi Rebell:
So we love that, a money thriller, and to get to the point where you are giving us this wonderful novel, and by the way it's your third novel, you had to leave your corporate job and become your own boss and that involved some big money decisions of your own. Nothing quite as dramatic as what goes on in The Bankers Wife, trust me, this book goes there, but lets hear about your life and your money story?

Cristina Alger:
Yeah, when I graduated in college, I was an English major, I had no actual marketable skills and I went to work at Goldman Sachs.

Bobbi Rebell:
Okay, let me just correct that, you must have had some skills to get a job at Goldman Sachs, but go on.

Cristina Alger:
Well I had no financial skills and I grew up in a family where both my mom and my father worked in finance, I had never taken economics, I had never taken accounting, my dad passed away when I was a senior in college.

Bobbi Rebell:
I'm sorry.

Cristina Alger:
And I sort of realized that I had to start paying my own bills and so I decided to take the highest paying job I could get, which was a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs and they were one of the few banks that were hiring people out of undergrad who did not have a finance background, so I took that job and I sort of stuck with that through my 20's. I went to law school and when I came out of ... I became a corporate lawyer because I had spent these two years at Goldman Sachs learning how to be a financial analyst. So I spent about 10 years doing finance in sort of various roles and I wrote The Darlings really as a passion project, I wrote it while I was working as a lawyer and ...

Bobbi Rebell:
So let me just ... so it was a side hustle, was it intended to make money or just ... it was just a project?

Cristina Alger:
No, it was just a project, I never thought it would get published ... actually even intended for it to see the light of day. I sent it to a writer friend of mine who asked, so are you still writing, are you still working on sort of creative projects, and so I sent this to her and she sent it to her agent, and her agent called me and said I really like this, do you want to publish it. I thought oh wow, I don't know if I have the time to do that, so I sort of hemmed and hawed about it ...

Bobbi Rebell:
And the economics, I mean I don't know what the advance was but you're in a job that you've said you're in for the money and now I mean it's a first time novel, it might pay well but probably not the same?

Cristina Alger:
No, and it's funny, being a lawyer and being a novelist are complete opposites. I mean being a lawyer is such a consistent steady job, you know you're really paid salary, it's a salary based job, the bonuses are not huge, and it's just a very consistent job. You sort of stay there, you keep your head down, you work hard and you get paid very well and you have great benefits and it's a very conservative kind of risk averse job. Obviously being a writer is the exact opposite, you get paid in kind of these lump sums, you never know when you're going to get paid next, there are no benefits, so ... it's a huge transition.

Bobbi Rebell:
So how did you make that transition?

Cristina Alger:
So we took the book to auction, it actually did really well at auction and we sold it for a fairly large advance, but it was a big leap for me. It was really stressful, it was hard in the beginning to figure out how to be my own boss and how to kind of manage my budget given that I wasn't getting a consistent salary.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what did you do, what was it like?

Cristina Alger:
I set up a budget that would carry me through the next year and I really stuck to it. In fact, every month I was sort of coming under my budget because I was so scared that I would run out of money.

Bobbi Rebell:
So give us an example of something maybe that you would have done in your lawyer life financially and you weren't doing anymore as a novelist, year one?

Cristina Alger:
Okay, yeah. Well the first thing and the most obvious thing that I actually ... and this is the change that I will never go back, I stopped doing take out. I just stopped, I now cook lunch and dinner, I bring my lunch to work if I'm going somewhere. I mean New York is sort of dangerous because there's so many quick lunch options and dinner options around but it's expensive, it adds up. So there was this salad place in the basement of my loft apartment, we used to go every day for lunch and you'd spend 30 dollars on a salad and kind of not think anything of it. A lot of times we'd expense it to the firm and you can't do that anymore, so I had to get much more organized about doing meal planning and grocery shopping and ... but I also had more time, so I actually really enjoy cooking and that's something that my husband and I do a lot together and my kids and I now do it together. So it's been actually a really positive change, but we save a lot of money as a family by not really eating out very much.

Cristina Alger:
We almost never do take out, so that's one thing. Then another is that I don't take cabs anywhere, I was always in a rush when I was at my law firm and I was always traveling around the city. I literally can't remember the last time I took a cab, I walk everywhere, I take the subway, my kids love the bus, that's a huge cost savings. I also realized that I don't have to dry clean my clothes the way I did when I was a lawyer, when I was a lawyer I was wearing a suit every day and I would honestly throw things in the dry cleaning bin because I was just too lazy to think about it and ...

Bobbi Rebell:
And busy, you were working 120 hours a week.

Cristina Alger:
I know. Then you know, I was a lot more conscious about going out with friends at night and the money I was spending on entertainment and that kind of thing.

Bobbi Rebell:
What is the lesson then for our listeners, what's their take away from this?

Cristina Alger:
One of the thing that I realize is when you work these very intense corporate jobs, you're spending money to create time, and that goes away when you cease to have a job that takes over your whole life. So a lot of the things that I was spending money on I realized didn't actually bring me any joy, they were just ... I was spending money to save time. So I was paying for a housekeeper, I was paying for transportation as I said, I was paying for take out, and all these things really what I was buying was time because I was so busy that I couldn't ... I didn't have the time to go grocery shopping and sit out on a Sunday and plan out what I was going to eat for the whole week and when you get back some of that time and you reclaim that time, you can actually save a lot of money because you're not making decisions kind of on the fly based on what's the most convenient thing to do right then.

Bobbi Rebell:
Let's talk about your everyday money tip because it's kind of along the same theme and it's really about date night with your husband.

Cristina Alger:
Yes.

Bobbi Rebell:
Because now you're married, when The Darlings came along you were single, and when The Bankers Wife comes along now you are married.

Cristina Alger:
I am, I am, we have started doing date night at home and we cook a really nice elaborate dinner and we light candles, we set the table, and my husband brings me flowers, a date at home and it's really nice. Sometimes we'll watch a show or a movie on the couch and we'll drink wine and sort of do whatever we would do at a restaurant, but at home. We save money because it's just infinitely cheaper to eat at home but we also save on babysitting and sort of the mental gymnastics of getting a babysitter, so ... we just find it so much easier to be like okay, Thursday night we're doing it. It makes a big difference when you set the table and you use real silver wear and you're not sort of shoving food in your mouth because you have to put your kids down in the next 30 minutes.

Cristina Alger:
So we kind of make a production of it and it's nice, it's really romantic and my husband actually has now started to cook with me, which is fun. It's a fun different kind of date night so I highly recommend it.

Bobbi Rebell:
So lets talk about The Bankers Wife because I told you this beforehand, I chose to read this rather than watch The Handmaids Tale, which is basically huge, if anyone's every watched The Handmaids Tale, I could not put this book down. I read it in a day and a half, there's a lot of things that happen that at least I didn't see coming at all but make total sense in hindsight, you're like of course, but they don't make sense. Tell us about how you even came up with this idea, did you know about this world, did you know about things like this without getting to into the details, were you witness to this?

Cristina Alger:
I did, you know, I did because ... well I sort of have in two ways. One is the book is set in Geneva and my uncle actually lives in Geneva and so as a child we would spent a lot of time visiting him there and I always thought the ex pat world there was just so glamorous and it's sort of mysterious and ... I just thought it would always be a fabulous sort of setting for a novel. I became really fascinated with the Panama Papers Case, which is the data leak that came out of a Panamanian law firm that did a lot of business with these off shore banks. In the summer of 2016 when I was writing this book the Panama papers had just leaked out and they were all over the news and I'm sort of a nerdy financial news junky, and I just couldn't get enough of this case.

Cristina Alger:
I thought it was so fascinating that someone from inside this law firm had leaked all this really confidential information and it occurred to me that there was this whole world of banking that exists completely outside any sort of regulatory body and it's ... for the ultra rich and it's all operated in kind of numbered bank accounts, and no one knows who owns the numbered bank accounts and it's super shady. It amazed me that there's trillions of dollars in this sort of off shore banking system that exists and all the different people that can be involved, there are drug cartels that store their money, there's Presidents, there are all kinds of people. There was another case I did a lot of research on and it's this man named Bradley Burkenfeld who is an American private banker at UBS, United Bank of Switzerland, and he was a whistleblower.

Cristina Alger:
He ended up ... this is such a crazy story. He knew what he was doing, you know, that he was helping a lot of people evade taxes by having Americans bank at UBS and he knew what he was doing was illegal and he sort of saw the writing on the wall and he ended up becoming a whistleblower for the IRS, and he gave over a lot of confidential information from inside the bank to the DOJ and the IRS. They ended up prosecuting him anyway, so he went to jail.

Bobbi Rebell:
Oh my gosh, really?

Cristina Alger:
Yes, for aiding and embedding, tax evasion, and then he walks out of prison and the IRS awards him I think 114 million dollars because ...

Bobbi Rebell:
The finders fee.

Cristina Alger:
Whistleblower, yes. So it's a totally insane story.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well I think you have another best seller on your hands, so congratulations.

Cristina Alger:
Thank you so much, that's so kind.

Bobbi Rebell:
And where can people find out more about you?

Cristina Alger:
Well you can always go to my website, so it's Cristinaalger.com, it's Cristinaalger.com, and also on Penguin Random House they have pages on all the different authors and the books available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, so ...

Bobbi Rebell:
And to follow you on all your social channels.

Cristina Alger:
Yes, definitely, I'm all over the place.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thank you Cristina.

Cristina Alger:
No, thank you, it was such a pleasure.

Bobbi Rebell:
So I'm still kind of trying to process how Cristina found the time to write while working 120 hours a week, but therein lies the takeaway, financial grown up tip number 1, if you want to do something you love you will find the time because you won't be able to stop yourself. Notice I didn't say it will necessarily pay, separate topics, whether that project will pay, but Cristina wrote her first book as a way to relax and cope with the stress of her job. As it happens, the book was also really good and she was able to turn it into a profitable project, but that has nothing to do with the fact that she was finding the time while working 120 hours a week. So the next time you feel you don't have time for a project, just think about Cristina and finding those pockets of time in that crazy week. If it feels like it's a chore and you're struggling, maybe it's okay to decide not to do it and do other things or maybe you don't time for anything else, that's okay.

Bobbi Rebell:
So rather than beat yourself up and feel bad about it, just say in this phase of my life I'm not going to do it because I don't have the time and it's not giving me enough joy that I'm going to find a way to make the time, it's okay. Financial grown up tip number 2, we get so many messages these days that we need to build in that date night with our significant other and commit money so that it sticks. When my husband and I had our son, we were told pre-schedule a baby sitter every Saturday night so we were forced to have a date night because things come up otherwise, this way we put money on it, we were going. I have to tell you, paying someone money to sit in our house watching TV while our son slept so we could go to a restaurant, maybe spend money on a taxi to get there, to spend more money for the meal then.

Bobbi Rebell:
It doesn't always work for everyone and sometimes the idea that you're spending all this money puts a lot of pressure on you. Also maybe the money just isn't there for that, maybe your priority is saving for something else, maybe it's paying down debt, maybe that's where your priority is right now and you can make ... and it was great that Cristina pointed this out, you can make a date night at home. Yes, it is absolutely easier to blow off if you haven't made this commitment, but Cristina's example really was telling. The little things are important, her husbands bringing her flowers, they really set the table, that makes a difference. I'm going to try it, maybe you guys can too.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you are enjoying the promos and want one for yourself or your business, follow me on social media and share them, I'm going to be choosing a winner soon and it could be you to get a promo made for you or your business. I am on Twitter @BobbiRebell, on Instagram and BobbiRebell1 and on Facebook my author page is @BobbiRebell. Also, love it when you guys DM me and share your thoughts on the show and also suggest guests that you would like to see on Financial Grown Up. Everyone, go out and get Cristina Alger's new book, The Bankers Wife, it is the perfect summer read and thank you Cristina for sharing all your money saving tips and advice and experiences and helping us all get one step closer to being financial grown ups.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grown Up with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media production.

TV and theater producer Jenna Segal had a dramatic financial shock as a child. Now as a financial grownup, Jenna takes her cue from that experience to make sure the creative ambition of her productions is in line with financial realities. 

In Jenna’s money story you will learn:

-How Jenna had to adjust her life growing up when her parents financial situation experienced a big change

-The impact big changes in the U.S. economy and the fashion industry had on her family

-How Jenna managed multiple income streams and side hustles as a teen

-Why the happy birthday song at Bennigans shares a special place in Jenna’s heart

-The specific strategies Jenna used to balance her schoolwork with her many jobs and internships

-How Jenna leveraged her background watching the numbers to move into her career as a broadway, tv and film producer

-The factors Jenna takes into consideration when putting together a production to balance creativity with financial responsibility

-Why we are talking about my cousin Robin and coding

In Jenna’s money lesson you will learn:

-How to take life experiences and translate them into skills for your career

-How to balance desire for creativity in any project, with the financial realities

-How to actually use creativity on projects as a solution to budget challenges

In Jenna’s every day money tip you will learn:

-Why Jenna always has $2,000 available for emergencies

-The strategy she used to manage living paycheck to paycheck in one of her first jobs

In my take you will learn:

-The difference between an emergency fund and a get out of town fund

-What to do if you do not have the resources the fund an emergency fund in the near term

Episode Links

Look for new information coming soon about Jenna’s projects including the plan she is producing fall 2018 at her website SegalNYC.com

Learn about Jenna’s new content projects aimed at women- and get on the newsletter at gatherertv.com

Read more about Jenna Segal!

Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/gigi-back-on-broadway-thanks-to-jenna-segal-a-rookie-producer-1426785748

Playbill: http://www.playbill.com/person/jenna-segal-vault-0000125916

Follow Jenna!!

Twitter @JennaKatzSegal

Instagram @JennaSegal

Facebook: JKSegal

---

Transcription

Jenna Segal:
She'd throw me the codes for the budgets and I would be able to look at each bill and really get to understand what it was costing for the networks to do what they were doing. That's what gave me the ability to do the job that I wound up getting at MTV, because I understood the cost of production and how to move money around, how to budget, figure out how to make a projection work on the amount of money that we had to work with.

Bobbi Rebell:
You're listening to Financial Grownup with me, certified financial planner, Bobbi Rebell, author of How to Be a Financial Grownup and you know what? Being a grownup is really hard, especially when it comes to money.

Bobbi Rebell:
But it's okay. We're going to get there together. I'm going to bring you one money story from a financial grownup, one lesson and then my take on how you can make it your own. We got this.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey friends, that was film, TV and theater producer, Jenna Segal talking show business number crunching. Welcome everyone to the show, if you have not already, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any upcoming episodes.

Bobbi Rebell:
If you are new to the show, great to have you. As our returning listeners know, we keep the episodes short because we know you're busy. About 15 minutes, just give you a story, little context, something to think about, a take away, and an everyday money tip.

Bobbi Rebell:
Of course, if you have more time, listen to a few episodes. All right, let's get back to today's money story. Jenna Segal's long list of productions include, Gigi on Broadway starring Vanessa Hudgens, the recent revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, hope I said that correctly, as well as the off Broadway show, What We're Up Against.

Bobbi Rebell:
She has also had stints at Viacom including MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as in news. Places like CNN and CNBC, whereas you will here, she worked for my cousin Robin. Hey Robin.

Bobbi Rebell:
Also, no matter how fabulous this show is, you're going to learn from Jenna, there is still math and a lot of people that have to get paid. If you can't crunch the numbers, the show does not go on. Jenna Segal got her ambition early on and it amped up, when as a teen her family had some big financial drama.

Bobbi Rebell:
Now her career, still has drama just also comedy, mystery, love stories and all that showbiz stuff. Here is Jenna Segal.

Bobbi Rebell:
Hey Jenna Segal, you're our financial grownup, welcome to the podcast.

Jenna Segal:
Hey Bobbi, how are you? It's so exciting to be on.

Bobbi Rebell:
I am excited to have you because you have so many interesting projects. You are the head of Segal NYC which is Broadway Production company, you're also a TV producer and you've got a number of projects going on right now. I have convinced you to give us a little sneak peak on one project, tell us a little about that very famous person you're working on a project about.

Jenna Segal:
Yes, I'm so excited. I am working with Daryl Roth on a brand new play called Gloria. Which is about the one and only Gloria Steinem. It is going to be at the Daryl Roth theater downtown in New York City in the fall.

Bobbi Rebell:
Very cool. I want to hear more about some other projects you're working on but first let's do your money story. It is something that unfortunately many people can relate to and that is when a parent loses a job. You were just 16, tell us what happened.

Jenna Segal:
When I was 16, I grew up in New Jersey and just kind of a regular existence. My dad had a great job working in the fashion industry and the whole industry, much like today, went through a major transition. The entire industry of the middle man started falling apart because Target and Walmart were doing networking, going directly to factories all around the world to find people to manufacture their goods.

Jenna Segal:
Financially for our family it was just a major, major change.

Bobbi Rebell:
So what did that mean for you? What was the changes for you?

Jenna Segal:
Well it just meant that money wasn't coming easily anymore. And at a certain point, it also meant that my college education wasn't as secure as I had thought. I wasn't getting a car when I turned 17, I was sharing a car with my dad where I would drop him off so he could go into New York City. And I would pick him up at the end of the day.

Jenna Segal:
But it especially meant that I went out and I had always loved working but started, instead of doing you know one job that was babysitting after school, I went out and got three jobs. So I worked on the weekends at the local bagel store where I'd get there at five o'clock in the morning and Saturdays and Sundays I would talk to the first people in at five and make their bagels and go through the soccer lines and everything else.

Jenna Segal:
Making sure everyone got what they needed and then I would hostess at night at Finnegan's which was a-

Bobbi Rebell:
I loved Finnegan's.

Jenna Segal:
Of course. I still know the Happy Birthday song.

Bobbi Rebell:
I also grew up in New Jersey of course though.

Jenna Segal:
Yes totally. And I was able to do obvioulsy similar things there. And I also worked at Little Ceaser's when it first opened until I just couldn't take it anymore because I smelled so much like pizza. And I was a nanny after school for a single mother, not my Freshman year of college but starting my Sophomore year of college, I continued really doing that as well.

Jenna Segal:
Trying to take all of my classes in two days and then I started working at CNN five days a week. At first for an unpaid internship and then hostessing at night. But it really was a wonderful experience because it changed how I viewed being able to support myself.

Bobbi Rebell:
So now you're a Broadway producer. Having this background with the needing to earn money in that kind of situation, do you look at budget items differently, would you spend differently?

Jenna Segal:
Oh totally. When I look at Broadway, every single aspect of what you're doing has to relate to the return. And then it has to relate to the artistic integrity of the piece that you're doing. I would say even at MTV, where I started in the 90s in Los Angeles, it was always about taking whatever the budget was, being able to respect the artistic integrity of the director or the writer. And make sure to get them what they wanted visually but how to do that within the parameters of what financially needed to be achieved.

Jenna Segal:
And that's always a really huge challenge I think for many people who get out of film school and budgeting is generally not significantly taught there. And I have always felt that for creative people, having that ability to understand the parameters around a budget, especially for large corporations who have real risk assessment needs.

Jenna Segal:
And cannot just go out and shoot without permits and know that they're not going to majorly get in trouble or use music that hasn't been cleared. And just take the risk that they're not going to pay for it or have somebody come in and not have insurance for those people to make sure that if they get hurt, they don't take the risk and have that actor or that camera person or the audio person not have backup. So that if they get hurt, you're able to financially take care of them and not wind up getting sued and having it put you into major financial jeopardy as an independent producer.

Jenna Segal:
All of those things are what I'm thinking about all the time.

Bobbi Rebell:
There's a lot of economics behind the scenes, I mean pun intended.

Jenna Segal:
Yes, 100 percent. I started in political talk shows in Washington D.C. with actually, I completely forgot about this, your cousin Robin [inaudible 00:08:06].

Bobbi Rebell:
Yes, hey Robin.

Jenna Segal:
The absolute best producers I have ever worked with, incredibly smart. But Robin loved the creative and she hated the financial piece. And the best thing that Robin ever did for me and my production career and I credit her for this all the time. Is that Robin threw the bills at me. And she said, "You deal with this. You code it."

Jenna Segal:
And coding is, in the networks or really in any company that you work for, it's a way of accounting for each individual expenditure you have so that when they put it through the massively gigantic books in the big picture, they're able to understand what they're spending on everything.

Jenna Segal:
And so she'd throw me the codes for the budgets and I would be able to look at each bill and really get to understand what it was costing for the networks to do what they were doing. That's what gave me to the ability to do the job that I wound up getting at MTV in its heyday.

Jenna Segal:
Because I understood the costs of production and how to move money around, how to budget, how to figure out how to make a production work on the amount of money that we had to work with.

Jenna Segal:
(Music)

Bobbi Rebell:
What is the lesson for our listeners from this?

Jenna Segal:
I think the most important lesson is to make sure to key into where you're real financial acumen is. And that could come from any kind of experience in your life. See why that moment resonated for you and how you can move that moment forward for what you're doing at work or what you're doing in your home.

Jenna Segal:
Look at your finances and figure out how you can make happen what you want to make happen, even if you have a minimal amount of money to do it.

Bobbi Rebell:
And even if you're in a creative field, I mean one thing that I notice is that you know, even the creative people need to understand the economics behind that creation.

Jenna Segal:
Oh 100 percent. And what I like to say is that I, what my real skill set wound being is that I am an excellent translator. Through my experiences, I was able to understand financial people and understand what they were getting at and why they were getting at why you could or couldn't spend money on something.

Jenna Segal:
And I was able to talk to creative people and explain to them why we did or didn't have the money to do what they wanted to do but how we could creatively come up with a solution for how to get what they wanted in a different way within the money that we had. And I think that lacking often creates the best creativity for how to find creative ways out of a situation.

Bobbi Rebell:
All right so Jenna, what is your money tip?

Jenna Segal:
Pick a number and create an emergency fund. When I was leaving Washington or decided I wanted to leave for Washington to move out to LA to begin working outside of political talk shows, I worked in a job where I only got paid once a month. And it really taught me how to budget wisely over the course of the month because of course I was living paycheck to paycheck.

Jenna Segal:
Knowing that I was going to get money at the end of the month, it made me think about how I could save to get to the 2000 dollars that I thought that I needed to get out to LA. And ever since then, I always make sure to have 2000 dollars in the bank at all times as my getaway car so to speak.

Jenna Segal:
Because I always feel that as long as I have that 2000 dollars in the bank, I can just change and-

Bobbi Rebell:
Get somewhere, right. So it's not a traditional emergency fund where if you lost your income source, you would have six months to live on. It's a get out-of-town fund, basically.

Jenna Segal:
It's a get out, yes exactly. Which is why I call it an emergency fund. It's not-

Bobbi Rebell:
Exactly, but it's not, I don't want our regular listeners to be confused with these same kind of emergency fund that's like for if you're in dire straights, this is your get out of town.

Jenna Segal:
Yes.

Bobbi Rebell:
Like yeah. Literally like quick cash fund.

Jenna Segal:
Literally I need to change my life tomorrow, I have this money.

Bobbi Rebell:
Awesome. Well you have a great life right now because you have so many amazing projects going on. Tell us what's going on with Segal NYC and you have another big thing that's happening the fall of 2018, I think.

Jenna Segal:
Yes. With Segal NYC, we're going to be producing the fall, Gloria as I mentioned. And then other projects that are brewing in the background and then I have also started with a partner, Gatherer Entertainment which is going to be a digital network for women. And we have a really fun newsletter at Gatherer TV dot com. If you're interested.

Jenna Segal:
But it's all really exciting and there is not-

Bobbi Rebell:
What kinds of projects are you going to have?

Jenna Segal:
On Gatherer, it's going to be everything from unscripted shows to scripted but all in the original stuff that we're going to be doing is all going to be in shorter form. And we're working with really talented writers, some with names you know and some who don't. Focusing on women, the world that women live in right now.

Jenna Segal:
And really things that are going to be instrumental to them in their lives that aren't necessarily being talked about.

Bobbi Rebell:
That sounds mysterious. All right I can't wait.

Jenna Segal:
I think it's unveiling the mysteries.

Bobbi Rebell:
That was a good tease, Jenna, good job. All right, where can people learn more about you and about Segal NYC and Gatherer and so on?

Jenna Segal:
Sure so Segal NYC, it is Segal NYC dot com, Gatherer is Gatherer TV dot com. And then I am on Twitter at JennaKatzSegal and Facebook and Instagram. Although I don't use Instagram as much. I know I really have to get on it but I just haven't gotten there yet.

Bobbi Rebell:
Well I think you'll get there and you have great things happening and coming so thank you Jenna Segal.

Jenna Segal:
Thank you so much. It was so good talking to you.

Bobbi Rebell:
(Music)

Bobbi Rebell:
Such a fun interview, can't wait to go see Jenna and Daryl Roth's Gloria production in the fall.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number one, Jenna worked as a teen in multiple jobs because she had to. But it's also often a great learning experience for teens to work just because they get exposed to the universal basics of being an employee. Show up on time, be reliable, follow directions, all that stuff.

Bobbi Rebell:
It can also motivate teens not just to work hard, but also smart. And to have the best career that they can. I know having to memorize the price of every baked good at the Wycoff Bakery in New Jersey as a teen definitely motivated me. And I know my future in food service.

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup tip number two, emergency fund. So Jenna talked about having 2000 dollars as an emergency fund. We then, renamed it the get out-of-town fund. She basically was talking about money to buy a plane ticket and have a little spending money if you got to go. But as we also mentioned, everyone actually also needs what we traditionally call an emergency fund in case your income stops for some reason.

Bobbi Rebell:
So in a perfect world, it would be about six months, more or less depending on if you are a single person, then you might need a little more. If you have double income, you might need less because the odds of losing both incomes at once are lower.

Bobbi Rebell:
Now if that is not a reality right now and it's not for a lot of people, let's be honest about it, if you don't have it, here is a plan B. See if you can at least get a line of credit that could be available to you. The catch is, you need to get the line of the credit ahead of time, as in now when you don't need it. If you're not using it and you don't take money out, you're not paying any interest so it's okay.

Bobbi Rebell:
But then you have it so you can tap into that money if you do have an emergency at much lower rates than say a credit card. And that's really important because right now we are in a rising rate environment.

Bobbi Rebell:
Thanks to everyone for joining us for another great Financial Grownup Podcast episode. To stay up to date on episodes and also catch our fun promo videos, follow me on social media. At bobbierebell on Twitter, at bobbirebell1 on Instagram, my page on Facebook is Bobbi Rebell. And I'm also working on that YouTube page so check it out and please subscribe, I would love your support.

Bobbi Rebell:
Jenna's start continues to rise in large part because she keeps a nice balance between the show and the business, so thank you Jenna for sharing with us and helping us all get one step closer to being financial grownups.

Bobbi Rebell:
(Music)

Bobbi Rebell:
Financial Grownup with Bobbi Rebell is edited and produced by Steve Stewart and is a BRK Media Production.