BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 187: Tiffany Aliche's 10 Financial Components to Become 'Financially Whole'

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

Tiffany Aliche is back for her third appearance on the BiggerPockets Money Show! We’ve talked to her about how to teach your children about money and climbing out from financial rock bottom, now we talk to her about making millions! If you haven’t heard from Tiffany before, we’ll catch you up on her backstory. Tiffany was doing well with money up until her mid-twenties, then she hit a few snags, and even got scammed out of $35,000 from who she calls “Jack the Thief”. She was living with her parents in her thirties and had a lower net worth at thirty than she did a sixteen. This is what she refers to as hitting her financial rock bottom. Thankfully, she had some friends who helped pull her out of her financial shame. She then went on to work hard, started putting away money in savings and investments, and now she’s running businesses making 7-figures, every month! That is no small accomplishment, but Tiffany doesn’t want to go small, she wants to go BIG! Big retirement accounts, big businesses, and big dreams! Tiffany’s current goal is to hit $10,000,000 in retirement savings by fifty, but thinks she may be able to do so before she turns forty-five. This is all accomplished through creating big visions, setting the pace for the rest of her financial life, prioritizing tasks in her life, and farming out her profitable skill sets. Tiffany’s friends say that everything she touches turns to gold, but Tiffany says “I only touch gold!”  You can get Tiffany’s new book Get Good with Money today!   In This Episode We Cover Going from financial disaster to ‘Budgetnista’ in a few years Embracing your humble beginnings and thinking of them as preparation for bigger things Farming your profitable skill sets where obvious and latent skills are found Prioritizing your daily tasks and your life as a whole Investing your wealth AND retirement And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Scott's Instagram Mindy's Twitter Check the full show notes here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/moneyshow187 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, show number 187, where we bring Tiffany Aliche back again to talk about getting good with money. From that space, I've been able to build, you know, multi-million dollar companies. From that foundational space, I've been able to go on and donate, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. From that space, I've been able to help millions of, especially women get and stay on financial track. And that's why I wrote Get Good With Money, because I wanted people to have,

access to it's not a magic trick or tool, but to access to how do I build such a strong financial foundation that I can build whatever financial house I want to moving forward. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my needs to stand just a bit closer to the razor, co-hosts Scott Trench. I almost stumbled to come up with a response to that way. That was a close shave, Mindy. That is not a close shave, Scott.

Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time in assets like real estate or start your own business or build a huge business with a huge financial goal like Tiffany. We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams. Scott, I am so excited to bring Tiffany back on. I love her story. I love the way she tells her story.

And her excitement, the way she tells her story today is just, oh, if you needed to wake me up, this will wake you up. Tiffany has some high-level goals and is crushing them at every turn. And she has written a new book called Get Good with Money, 10 simple steps to be becoming financially whole. And I really love her phrase financially whole. Financially whole doesn't mean that you are fixing one section of your finances. It means you're fixing all the sections of your finances. And Tiffany takes you step by step through the different ways that you can fix your finances to become financially whole. Yeah, this is a great, a great episode. She just got going and it was amazing. She is just a brilliant seasoned executive.

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for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Tiffany Aliche, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm always so excited to talk to you. I love that you guys have me back. Thank you so much, Mindy. Thank you, Scott. I feel like I'm a regular now.

You are, I think you're our first three-time guest. Oh, okay. Which is nice. Okay, so Tiffany, you are a master of all things, money and finance. But where your budget nista story starts, you were a financial disaster. Yes. You had a lot of shame over your situation and that caused you to withdraw from friends and basically from life. What would you say to 30-year-old Tiffany going through all of this financial

horribleness and to others who are listening who are feeling ashamed of the financial situation there? And how do you get you to stop feeling bad about a mistake that you've made? So two things. I'll say get you a Linda and I'll explain what that means and admit it. And I'll say shame is a liar. So the way I was able to go from like this secret of shame when it came to my money was that my best friend Linda who'd been trying to reach out to me for months after I'd lost my job after I'd lost all my money after I'd been scanned into $35,000 of credit card debt after I couldn't afford my mortgage and had to move back home at 30 so I was at the bottom of the bottom I remember literally looking up at the ceiling from my middle school bed saying you know you had

more money at 16 than you do at 30 right like in total I'm not talking about retirement savings pennies in my purse. It just was like shame on top of shame. So Linda called me after trying to get me on the phone for some months and I was going to pretend like everything was okay that I was just busy. But you know, your best friend knows you best. And she was like, no, what's really wrong? I burst into tears and told her I lost everything.

You know, just the like the litany of all of my financial mistakes. And she kind of was like, wait, what? That's it? And I remember thinking, I'm sorry. That's not enough trauma for. you and she was like well one welcome to credit card debt girl we've been in our 20s for the last 10 years we all have it you were the only one who avoided it so that's one two welcome to the great recession hello we all are jobless like you know and three I'm talking to you for my mother's house

where I now live as well and so I so I decided that I was like the only person in the world who were struggling through this because I felt like 30 was when you were supposed to be like your full, full grown self. So one, I always say, get you a Linda, meaning finding a safe space to share your shame. And two, it's really to share your shame. So I have a friend, and she's a coach, and she's also a therapist. And she shared with me, this is why shame is so detrimental.

It's a very dangerous emotion because shame is a liar. Shame doesn't say, hey, Tiffany, you made a mistake. Shame says, hey, Tiffany, you are a mistake. So she's like, shame is really deceptive. Shame thrives in shadow. Shame thrives in fear. Shame thrives in silence. Shame loves it when you're alone.

And the only antidote to shame is voice. And the reason why I was able to start the process of cleaning myself up financially is because I told Linda my shame and shame receded. And then I shared it some more and it receded some more. And it shared it to more and receded some more. And I have not stopped sharing my shame. You know, and I don't feel shameful about it anymore because I give voice to it. So find yourself a Linda a safe space and give your shame voice in a safe space so you can then

see the solutions that are there in front of you. I promise you they're there. How long was this going on until Linda came around and you were able to confront it? Was there a hard pivot point or was that kind of early on in the... No, it was like a year and a half, honestly. So if you're thinking to yourself like, oh, a few months, no. I would say just under two years of me, like maybe just like getting her, she'd get me on the phone

and I would talk for two minutes and pretend like I was busy or just wouldn't pick up the phone for a month. So I spent about almost two years in this kind of like funk where like I just didn't want to talk to anyone because I didn't want to admit that because I was like the go-to money girl for my friends. Until about the age of 26, I was financially perfect. Great credit score. Savings.

Budget. I was like the go-to because I learned at home. My father was a CFO and an accountant. And he really literally would have money lessons with myself and my four sisters. And so that's how I identified myself. And the thing that I identified myself as the go-to money girl and a teacher, I was an actual teacher in the classroom, those things were gone. So I didn't know who I was.

So it was just under two years that I lived in that funk until finally, you know, Linda kind of forced her way through. But now I realized that I used it as a tool. It's the reason Scott, like, why I started my group dream catchers. You know, like it's this free Facebook group. There's half a million of us in there. It's filled with Lindas because I know everyone doesn't have a Linda in their life. You know, maybe it's your mom, maybe not.

You know, maybe it's your sister. Maybe not. But if not, I wanted to create a safe space where you can get empathy, sympathy, normalization of the process and accountability. When you're going through something like this and you're thinking, oh, I can't talk to anybody because I'm so ashamed of this, that's the time to start talking to people. because like Linda said, oh, is that it? That's all you can think of. So you're just like cycling it through your head. But you're not alone.

Nobody who is listening to this has ever made a mistake that somebody else hasn't made. Like I coincidentally enough, my money mistake was also named Jack. And he's not in my life anymore. And it wasn't quite to the level that you were. but I still learned a lot. Don't give money to somebody just for their benefit. Yeah. So what Mindy's talking about is Jack the Thief.

He's inside my book. That's not his real name. His name is very unique. So I would say it. Yes, you'd be able to Google it and see that he's now sitting in federal prison. Good. Yes. And not because of what he did to me, but because he continued his scamming and decided to level

up to the federal government. And they have more resources than I do. So Jack the Thief, yes, he was. an air quote's friend and that left me $35,000 in credit card debt right before the Great Recession. So it was just like this accumulation of choices that I made that just turned into this fireball of financial messiness and drama and trauma. But I'm glad because I rose like a phoenix from the ashes and I started the budgetista and I created a movement to really help people move from, you know, financial brokenness to

financial wholeness. So in the book, you have this quote that I think is just amazing. Getting good with money is about mastering the fundamentals, not magic. And on this show, time and again, we interview people who have a boring story. But the boring stories are also the ones that are the most successful ones. And of course, it would have been fantastic to be able to invest with Jack the Thief into, he had a clothing store. Tiffany was going to fund his inventory and then she was going to get a 10% repayment on her initial investment for every month for perpetuity. Two years.

Oh, for two years. Okay. Well, so that's flashy and sexy and fun. But that doesn't always work out. In fact, most of the time, flashy and sexy and fun doesn't work out. And it's great to be like, Bitcoin right now is it, I don't know, $100 million an ounce or whatever, however you per coin. Clearly, I don't invest in Bitcoin.

I don't know anything about it. I don't invest in it. I'm totally cool with that. But that sounds really sexy and fun. And I think a lot of people are hesitant to jump in because it sounds, there's red flags. How do you separate fact from fiction? How do you, how many red flags are too many red flags? And, you know, is there such a thing as get rich quick?

For the most part, it is possible to get rich quick, but very rare that it's going to be you. It's like it is possible to be struck by lightning. But it's not that common. How many people do you know? They're like, oh, yeah, last week, ooh, that lightning, you know? So it is possible because there are people who, you know, when GameStop was like, you know, at its fever pitch, they put money in and pulled money out. So I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's very, it's not probable for most people.

So I don't want you to bet on the improbable. I want you to go for what's most likely to happen and navigate from that space. So I'll say that. So a red flag, one, if it seems too good to be true. Because really, you think to myself, so Jack the thief told me, hey, Tiffany invested $20,000. And at the end of two years, it's going to yield like $200,000. So $20,000 to $200,000 and two years, possible, yes, probable not so much. So if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is.

That's one. Two, if you don't feel comfortable sharing it with the people that you trust, red flag. Like, I didn't tell my father, he has a bachelor's and ex. and a master's in finance and like just like years and years and years and years as a CFO I mean I don't know anybody who knows more about money than my father he's 80 and still is like let me see a tax return this is not how you do this you know and so I didn't want to tell him because I was like la la la la la I don't want him to hate on my parade because what could he possibly know that my 20 something year old self could not have figured out so if you don't feel comfortable singing it from the rooftop to the people that you trust Houston we have a problem and then three, there are usually signs. So what Jack the Thief had me do was to pull money off of my credit card as a cash advance. And I'd never heard of that before. And so when I went to the bank to get the money, they literally sat me down for like 45

minutes quizzing me. Is someone threatening you? Are you okay? You would think I'd be like, who? This seemed like odd questions for a legal transaction. Are you sure? Because I was still a preschool teacher then. And as a preschool teacher then, we used to have to wear like nurses.

smock so we wouldn't get our clothes dirty, right? So here I was in my teddy bear nurse mok, pulling out $20,000 at the bank for my cash advance from a card I just opened. So they were looking at me like, who is this young girl? What's going on? And you would talk it was like, like, you know, caution, caution. And so those are the things. So yes, if you can't share it, if it's too good to be true and you get these kind of like little nods along the way, that seems odd. Those are red flags to really lean into. You're the only too good to be true investment out there is the house hack whereby you get you. That's where you get the 200% ROI. But you're still putting money into that house hack. That's not just I bought a house for a

dollar and it makes me a million dollars. That is a red flag. Well, so I don't think that you always have to be 100% conservative with your investing. But I think the amount that you are gambling on should be extremely small relative to your net worth. So I'm going to put Scott on the spot here because he does invest in Bitcoin. Compared to your net worth, what percentage of your money is in Bitcoin, Scott? Oh, less than a quarter of my cash position. Again, I don't think of it as an investment. I think of it as a hedge against inflation where, hey, I'm going to take,

if I'm going to have an emergency reserve of a year or two years, I have a two year emergency reserve because I wrote a book called Set for Life and Feel that it would be very embarrassing to go broke after writing such a book. I have one year, so I feel you got minus one year. And I'm like, I'm pushing for two years. My CFP is like, Tiffany, I know. So I spread that across cash, gold, and Bitcoin, just because I am worried about inflation to a certain extent.

So it's a tiny percent of my net worth is in cash, and a fraction of that is in Bitcoin. And it's not what I'm considering an investment. It's more of a alternate currency to the dollar. I guess that's how I think about it. And did you have that cash readily available, Scott, to put into Bitcoin? Or did you have to get a cash advance on a brand new credit card to fund that? Oh, that's just cash.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Purchase. Yes. Okay. And I don't say, that's not kind of snotty. I didn't say that to be like, oh, Tiffany, look what you did. But I'm saying that, like, if you don't have the cash on hand to make an investment, don't borrow money to make an investment.

I heard about people who were mortgaging their house or taking out a second loan on their house so they could buy Bitcoin. And those are the same people who know as much about it as I do, which is why I have a 0% position in Bitcoin. And it just, it hurts me to read that story about how you took out a cash advance and the bankers were like, hey, we really, like when you go and withdraw 300 bucks,

they don't ask you if you're in trouble. They don't ask you if you are being threatened. But you know, that's a red flag. I love the one. where you tell if you couldn't even tell your dad. I would have your dad on the show. Does you do podcast interviews? Well, I just want to chime in here on this with the investing piece.

You have to play to win at some point. But the time to play like that is not when you're taking out, maxing out your credit card with an investment. You would be scared to talk to your dad about, right? With that kind of stuff. It's, it's, I'm going to build a financial, a strong financial position. And then I'm going to put a small amount of chips in on a few winning bets over here. I'm going to have a consistent investing philosophy over here.

and those types of things. And by the way, like, this is going to sound, this is going to, you know, take everybody off. But I put in a lot less into Bitcoin and then I went up. And so that it became a larger percentage of my cash position. So. No, but I completely agree. And that's why I was always one of those kids. Like, you know, I didn't learn the lesson from you telling me the lesson. I'm like, the stove is hot. Are you sure? Oh, hand is sizzling. You know what, third degree burn? You are right. The stove is hot. But I'm grateful for that because what it did was it taught me, empathy and also too like it's one thing to learn financial lessons externally this is how you do this this is how you do that which is how I grew up it's another thing to work

through every financial mistake that you've made because at to your point Mindy when we first got on you said like when you read Gaker with money you were like Tiffany this is such an easy book to read no jargon because I'm speaking from a place of this is how I build my financial foundation what I want for people is the same thing and the same reason why I became a preschool teacher. I want to be the foundational teacher in your life. You know, like you're not going to stop with letter, shapes, colors, numbers, and a little bit of early reading. But if you have this strong foundation, it's the reason why I started that young, then I know that you can build any type of education and life that you want to live. So if you

have this strong financial foundation, something that I call financial wholeness, these 10 components, then you can go off and build whatever financial life that you want. And if when another recession comes or depression comes or pandemic and quarantine that I know that you have this rock solid foundation not that it can't be shaken but not easily so and you can rebuild even stronger so to me that is my role as the budgetista like I'm not going to teach you how to trade you know options I'm not going to treat teach you how to short I'm not going to I'm not saying you shouldn't do those things I'm saying after you build your strong foundation I know it's not as sexy as like what other folks talk about but I think it's critically important and it's what saved

me. You know, I am now a legit millionaire. I always tell my husband that whenever he's like, ooh, 50 cents. I don't know. I'm like, baby, you know we're millionaires right now. Right? He's like, yeah, yeah, I don't. Right. And so because, you know, so, because it's hard to absorb, but I, from that space, I've been able to build, you know, multi-million dollar companies. From that foundational space, I've been able to to go on and donate, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars from that space. I've been able to help millions of, especially women, get and stay on financial track. And that's why I wrote Gika with money, because I wanted people to have access to, it's not a magic trick or tool, but to access to how do I build such a

strong financial foundation that I can build whatever financial house I want to moving forward. Can you describe what that's financial foundation, what financial wholeness means? Mm-hmm. So financial wholeness is when these 10 components, which I'll shake, kind of like lock in together to create this strong foundation that cannot be shaken. They work together to create your biggest benefit and your richest life. And so those things are budgeting, savings, debt, credit, learning to earn so your income. Those are the first five. So that's the first layer of your foundation.

Then you've got investing for both retirement and wealth. You've got insurance so you can protect that investment and yourself. you've got creating a money team financial professionals around you you've got net worth and you've got estate planning that's the next layer so those are the five those are the 10 core steps to financial wholeness and if you master those and you can no matter what your gender is no matter how much you make and no matter what you do for a living anyone can achieve financial wholeness i just had a curiosity i'm interested in hearing more about the um i love the concept of invest for retirement invest for wealth. Can you dive into what you mean specifically by that step?

So that was the most challenging chapter because I was torn like, oh, how do I share with a beginner? Maybe someone who's not a beginner, you know, my philosophy on investing. And oftentimes what I find for women in particular is they don't see retirement as investing. So I wanted to make it pointed to say, they're retirement is not, they're not saving for retirement. You're investing for retirement and it's a different different desired outcome than investing for wealth when you invest for retirement you are investing in a way to help maintain your current lifestyle from when you are no longer working so investing for retirement is for you for later investing for wealth is so you can increase your current lifestyle now and potentially leave money for your heirs so investing

for wealth is for you now and potentially for your heirs later and so no matter what you should be investing for retirement. You don't start investing for wealth until you reach certain places. Like if you have high interest debt, your bills are behind. If investing for wealth is when you are on a plane of where you have gotten yourself

to a solid financial foundation, then you can start to look for investing for wealth. But investing for retirement, I feel is mandatory because I plan to be here when I'm 80. I hope you do too. So no matter what's going on in my life right now as 40-year-old Tiffany, I need to set aside for my 80 year old self. It's so much so I gave her name. I named her Wanda. I think I mentioned that before

that like because there was a study done where they found that people are financially disassociated from their older self. They don't see themselves as their older self. I said well why not lean into it? rename your older self almost like you're talking about your grandmother or your grandfather and so I named mine Wanda's so Tiffany's job one of my main core jobs is to take care of Wanda. And so no matter what if I can't get to investing for wealth, but at the very least I need to invest for Wanda. I love that because when I was getting started on this journey, I was 23. And I was like, well, retirement is three lifetimes away.

I would never, I would not have articulated like that at the time. But I was like, that is not appealing to max out the retirement account. I want to, that's my early retirement really stood out to me as a potential, you know, thing. And it got me excited about this because I was like, oh, seven years, five years. That's much more aggressive timeline. That's more real to me. how do you kind of, once you've articulated and defined your future self, what do you kind of

recommend for somebody who's maybe in that position trying to get out of debt, trying to build that financial foundation, but how do they begin to think about what they can reap as far as wealth for now downstream? How do you balance that with the retirement investing? So once you, it's clear, you have to set goals. You tell yourself, okay, at the bare minimum, how much do I want to be living off of in retirement, setting that goal? And really, for retirement when you're when you're when you're maxing out and you're contributing to your retirement funds you pick your fund you set it and you basically set my forgetting you know then you can really lean into the fun stuff you can decide okay you know what

I would really love I remember like I was first broke newly broken I moved out of my parents house and onto my sister's couch I had this journal where I wrote all the things that I wanted to do and everything that I wanted to do as far as travel and giving and starting a business it said I would have to make three hundred thousand a year. That's what like after sharing and kind of monetizing. So that was the fun stuff like okay, well what do I need to do to make $300,000 a year because I'm currently making whatever unemployment is giving me. You know? And so I started to map out, but that to your point, Scott, that's what got me excited. With time, it didn't get me excited, but it was okay. I said it instead I forgot it,

you know, because that's the bare minimum to take care of Wanda. But I started to think, well, if I can do how well I started to think like a backwards like at the very least if I can make 500 bucks a month how do I do that once I did that well how do I make a thousand well okay well how do I make 5,000 and then slowly but surely I started to grow and you know now my companies you know make seven figures a month and so you know that's that's crazy I used to make $39,000 a year you know so to now run companies that collectively make seven figures a month it's like mind blowing and so But it started with that fun part, Scott, because that's what motivates me forward. It was like, okay, I have my initial bare basics goal.

It's running behind the scenes and let me lean into what's going to get me excited to get up every day to move toward. And so that's what I suggest for people. You know, don't leave your Wanda out there flailing. You know, I get it that it's super exciting to work on like building wealth now. But you know, that is a maybe you want that you have set aside definitely for your older set it and forget it and then and then set your your wealth goals and make them exciting and lead toward them and chart the path I love a good journal what I do

too is like I have a vision board I have like this um check that every year I updated and I'll say I remember the first one I was like one day I'm gonna make someone's gonna pay me ten thousand dollars to do budgetista and it took about two years into business and somebody hired me to do a speaking engagement and bought books or whatever and there was a check for 10,000 And so I rewrote myself a new check. It was like one day someone's going to pay me 30. And right now I think I have on there that one day someone's going to pay me like 20 million.

You know, like somehow, some way, whether it's going to be like a show that's amazing. Because I kept upping it. And it's the thing that makes me say like, go, Tiffany, go. But Wanda has been more than provided for because I cannot work from a place of anxiety about my future. So I have to set that before I can move forward with other things. And that's what I teach and get good with money. Okay. I want to talk about how you set up Wanda.

What is this, set it and forget it that you have mentioned several times. How is Wanda set up? And how did, like, you said that you figured out how much, like, what's the bare minimum for Wanda? How did you figure out what the bare minimum is? So I sat down with my CFP. And I suggest you could just sit down with yourself and decide, well, how, much money I used the you know the the rule of 25 right so I said how much money and then I added because someone I want to live a little better than like how I'm living now or at least

even more comfortable so I said how much money Tiffany you know are you wanting to spend a year when you are I told my CFP I want to hire I want to retire at 50 right well not even retire but I want to know if I didn't want to work anymore like 50 like what does that look like And so she was like, okay, so let's just say you're going to live into 100. So how much money do you have to have for 50 years of not having to work? I mean, I could technically not work now, but it wouldn't be at the lifestyle level that I'd like. And so at first I was thinking it's $100,000 a year enough. And then my husband and I went back and forth and I said, if we have no debt,

because right now we have no debt, we own our homes free and clear. I've since paid off my parents' house. I don't have my student loan debt anymore. I always say I'm debt free like a five-year-old. So I'm like, let's assume that we're going to. to maintain being debt free. And $300,000 a year, that's what we'd like to see. So we did the math of like, so what does that look like? How much money do I have to have put up to be able to withdraw, if I wanted to, up to $300,000 a year? And also considering, you have to also consider your

health insurance. Thankfully, my husband works for the city because he would have retired already, but he's got literally a couple more years and we could take that retirement with us because that's really important. Not the retirement, but take that health insurance with us, which is super important. So I didn't have to calculate our insurance costs because you want to do that as well.

And so the number that I came up with to have kind of stashed away is between like $8 to $10 million stashed away that if I had to live off that, the interest that without touching the principle that I can do so fairly comfortably. So I think Angelie at the time when I first met with her, she said seven, but now looking at it because I pushed up how much I wanted to live off of,

we pushed it up to eight. For me, my goal is to have $10 million set aside that I don't have to worry. And then I know, honestly, I'm going to over, because I'm an overachiever, I'm going to go above and beyond that. But that is my bare minimum that Wanda's like, 10 million sounds good to me. Now that might sound crazy to you listening. For you, it might be, you know, a million dollars.

But you want to do the math backwards. How much do you want to live off of when you, when do you want to stop working? How much interest on average, you know, like we don't count last year. You're looking 7 to 8% yield on average the last 30 years. You know, if you pull out no more than 4% from your portfolio, what does that amount look like? So doing that kind of math, what about health insurance? How much is that cost going to cost us? The one thing that I am slightly worried about is what is it called long term K.

insurance because there's no way to like prepay for that and honestly sometimes premiums can jump 70% year to year so that is something that like um that's why I want to have a little extra stash so you want to think about what your life looks like then doing the math backwards and then deciding okay this is what I need to set aside so I know I'm someone who needs a carrot I know what my carrot is every year that I need to put up in order to to establish that while still continuing to enjoy and live life now and so I'm very mindful of that when I take on jobs, when people ask me to speak, I look at those numbers.

Like even the way I navigate my business, I'm consolidating some businesses. I'm creating new business revenues because I know how much money I want the business to pay me, but also the people that work with me. So having that number trickles down into all the things that I do, even the way we purchased this home. I don't think this is our forever home. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, the next home likely is. we will likely keep this home and maybe rent it out because it's in a great neighborhood.

We have a second property. So these are the things when you when you create your big vision for yourself, it allows you to trickle down to the rest of your financial life and set the pace for the rest of your financial life. There are things like I negotiate harder, you know, now. I literally like I have something on my rate sheet that I used to charge $30,000 for. but looking at the goals that I wanted to hit, I was like, you know, I'm going to put 50 on there. And my spokesperson agent was like, no one's going to pay that.

I was like, let's just see. Well, guess what? Someone just hit her up and they were like, yep, we want Tiffany for the 50,000. And I was like, ah, you never know. And so, but I did that because in my mind, I was thinking, hmm, I want to double what I, you know, what I invest this year because, you know, I want to hit my, seemingly, I kind of want to hit my goal by 45, not by 50. So, yeah, so I know that's a long way of saying it, Scott, but I, you know,

Basically, I like to think big picture and then trickle it down to what I need to do now to hit my goal every year. I like to hit my goal at least by the six-year mark, I mean the six-month mark, if not sooner, for setting aside. And currently my goal is I have to set aside at minimum, about $500,000 a year to hit my goal if I want to hit it before 50. So I really strive to do double that. No, I think it's an incredible amount of aggression and a huge, huge vision with those types of things. And it all came after building your foundation. And now you're just snowballing and accelerating it. If I'm listening, though, and I'm, you know, I'm probably not in, maybe not in

that category of income where you probably, if you're going to say if you're going to invest $500,000, you're going to have to earn much more than that in order to invest that and fund your lifestyle. So, but if I'm, if I'm earning like between $50,000 and $150,000 a year, let's say, how do I kind of think about that? Do you recommend that you put down that vision, that's that $8 to $10 million and $300,000 in passive income, or do you start with something smaller that's more attainable, or do you just write down exactly what you want in a great detail and figure it out? How do you kind of think about that?

I think that you should always have your big, big, big vision listed, but then chopping it down to, but what can I do now? Because, like I said, I was literally on my sister's couch and was like, I want to do all these things. $300,000 a year. That was like saying, A trillion dollars, what does that even mean? But I said that was kind of the carrot.

And so it took over 10 years for me to even be in that realm, you know? So, but I believe in having that big, big goal because you have to know where you're going. And then literally I was like, okay, we know that's the goal. Slap it on my vision board. Now, how do I make $500 a month, Tiffany? So I can rent this room because a friend of mine had found this really cute brownstone and she was renting each room out for $500 and I wanted to move off my sister's couch. So that was my goal.

How do I get my, not to say that I wasn't at the time trying to work toward the $300,000 a year when I was on my sister's couch. It was just duly noted, acknowledged. That's the big, big, big picture. But right now I would like to get my own room so I don't sleep on the couch anymore. 500 bucks a month. Then once I accomplished that, it was like, can I do 1,000? What does that look like? What do I need to do?

Once I accomplished that, Then it became, well, can I do five? What is that? Because what you'll find is that success and goals are cumulative. That if you can do, like I used to hear, I remember Warren Buffett. I think it was Jay-Z or somebody who said, like, wow, making your first million is the hardest. And Warren Buffett said, wait till you see your first billion. You know?

And so. And so, but what I found is that it actually, like, Making that first 500 to $1,000 was so hard because I didn't know how to do anything. But once you learn a thing, I was like, okay, well, making from $1,000 to $5,000, not that it wasn't hard, but I had more skills under my belt. And then from 5 to 10, I was like, okay, Tiffany, we know how to do this. Because you know what? You can either multiply your efforts or get more clever in what your efforts look like, you know?

And so I remember the first time I was like, it was so hard to get my company to $100,000 in a year. And I remember it took every last piece of brain cell that I had. But to get my company to a million dollars in a year actually wasn't as hard because I had collected so many lessons along the way. And then once I realized that, I was like, okay. Then actually, surprisingly, getting to a million dollars in a month, to me, it was actually harder to get to $100,000 in a year. Because by then, I had collected relationships.

I collected knowledge. I collected know-how. I was more savvy. And so you will find that, you know, you don't have to be as aggressive with your initial goals because those initial goals you might find actually might be harder to attain and to achieve.

But you are success as a layering like a cake. You are layering your cake and eventually you'll have the bigger cake if you just keep going. There's nothing special about me. I know people are like, what? How much does she make? I mean, I don't know if I ever had two jobs as an adult.

preschool teacher, budgetista. So literally, like just over 10 years ago, right now, around this time, I would be getting the kids ready for nap time. We'd be cleaning up from coming in from outside. And during nap time, I would be reading financial books and trying to make my life bigger than what I knew it could be. The only thing that I've seen about myself that makes me special is I am obsessively consistent.

day in, day out, day in, day out. A day does not go by that I don't work on my dream in some way. Whether it's listen to a podcast, like I have a podcast called Brown Ambition where we talk about money and career and things like that, whether it's reading a book. I'm really big now. I take a walk every day and I listen to books on Audible. Whether it's writing out my goals, whether it's journaling my dream, whether it's actually doing the actual work, whether it's talking to someone.

there are people who come to me now, Scott and Mindy, who are like, Tiffany, I remember I first met you at the supermarket and you were like, and I started this thing called budgetista and then budgetista and then like, like people who've known me for the last 10 years, I'm like, oh my God, this girl about this budgetista thing. I was obsessive about consistently pouring into my goals and dreams. You cannot lose if you just keep going. Now winning is going to look different for other different people, but you cannot lose if you never stop. And so that's what makes me special. But it's so critical to start with that foundation. Because once you have that, any other layer you build, it's just, I mean, the sky's the limit. I'm just even now just starting to awaken just how much more I'm capable of. You know, like just how much more I'm capable of.

I never, I mean, I was like an A, B kind of C student of all my sisters. I definitely was not the one with the biggest potential. I mean, my parents are shocked as hell. Let me just tell you. They are. So I always tell people who have kids, like, if you've got that wild middle kid, you leave them alone. They might turn out, you know. But yeah, I just, and for me, what really gives me great pleasure at the end of the day, I'm a teacher.

You know, like I cannot learn a thing and not teach a thing and not share a thing. And to me, that's also like maybe like a little secret sauce because when you, teach you get to learn twice so writing the book I just got even better at getting financial wholeness writing every chapter I got better at credit I got better at budget because it forced me to see it through someone's eyes who might not know how to do any of these things and so like it's just like a magical time because I'm at the beginning of the middle so just last year I felt it I said Tiffany this is the end of the beginning for you so if you think of your life as this trajectory

where you're kind of going up, you peak, and then, not to say you go down, but, you know, like any superstar or whatever, we're not listening to like, you know, Bing Crosby anymore, you know, so he peaks and he comes down and he's still an icon. But for me, I finished the beginning or the end of the beginning last year and I'm at the beginning of the middle. I have not yet peaked. And I suspect that you're listening to this. You have not yet peaked either.

The world is there's so much. awaiting you if you will build a foundation, consistently, consistently, consistently go after your dreams. And if you ask me, I believe giving back and giving Activix abundance and go back and help other people. That's the magic sauce to doing well. Yeah, I love it. I think it's what you're doing is all out. And especially at first, you were in complete command of your spending. You're still in command of your spending, I'm sure. You just have more income so you can you can lighten up a little bit. It's out I bet on the spending side. But you can complete command of your spending. You built your financial foundation or got the basics right with that. And then I think what's interesting is

you would not be able to achieve that vision in the timeline that you wanted as a teacher. And I don't mean that as a bash or anything like that. I just, I had a similar thought when I was at my old career like, hey, if I continue this, I will be a financial analyst too. And then a senior financial analyst and then finance manager and my vision will not be realized under that track. And so do you have any comments on that? Like, hey, I'm listening. I'm inspired by what Tiffany just said. And I want to go after that big vision.

But like obviously my current career track is not going to support that. I would have to make a hard pivot and take on all the risks and the all out intensity and obsession for, one decade or so in order to begin getting on the route that you're on. How do you, like, how does one begin that mental process? Because that was, that was really difficult for me, six, seven years ago. I say this, that one, don't despise humble beginnings. There's, there is no budgetista without preschool teacher, Tiffany. There just isn't. I learn to teach in that classroom. There's nothing harder than getting a three-year-old to understand what you mean, how you mean it and for them to learn a thing because you can be like, hey, we're going to learn the color

red today, red like an apple. And you're going to get a three year old that might say, what's an apple? You're like, wait, what? So now I've got to teach you an apple is a fruit. Well, what's a fruit? Oh, my goodness. So now before we can even get to the color red, we have to go back, back, back, back, back. So one, just know that where you are is preparing you for where you want to be to not despise humble

beginnings because I suspect wherever it is you're going. You can't get there without the lessons that you're currently learning where you are. That's one. Then two, farm your skill set. At the end of the day, I'm still a teacher. Like I don't, people, someone told me the other day, Tiffany, wow, you're like, what does she say? You've got the golden touch. Everything you touch turns to gold.

I'm like, here's my secret. I only touch gold. Like, I don't have the golden touch. I stay in my lane. All I do is teach. I teach through podcasts. I teach through on my online school, the Liberture Academy. I teach through going live on social media.

I teach through books like Gacre with Money. I don't do anything else. You're not going to see me doing anything else other than what I know that I'm good at. And what I've been honing my skill set on for the last 20 years. I'm a really good teacher. So whatever it is that you're doing, there's either an obvious skill set that you are honing or maybe a more subtle skill set that you don't realize. I'll give you an example.

My sister was a financial analyst for like seven, eight years. She hated it. But this was a kid because she's two years younger than me. They used to bring a briefcase to third grade. She and my dad are like twins. And so she was so organized. She would iron her clothes at night in fourth grade and lay out her clothes. Her attention to detail is sickening.

So that's why as a financial analyst, although she did well, she hated it. Right. And so just recently, because with pandemic and quarantine and, and everyone losing their jobs, she was like, I told her, I was like, you know, I'm looking for a new publicist and I want to bring it in house. You know, in the meantime, can you help me? And she was like, I don't know how to be a publicist. I'm like, yeah, I know, but a lot of it's just being organized.

I just need you to pitch folks and then keep, you know, keep track of who said yes and when and what's happening and then keep track of putting it on my calendar. And she was like, I guess, I mean, but when I tell you that latent skill of highly organized anal retentivity, if you will, has made her the most incredible publicist I've ever had. I mean, the platforms that I'm on now are greater than the combined of my first nine years of business, like in the one year. I mean, Good Morning America. Today show. Cosmo, GQ, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, glamour. I just, and I'm like, how are you doing this? And she's like, She's just hyper-organized and it lends itself to this field.

And so I just share that too that you listening might think like, well, you know, I'm working, you know, maybe I'm a buyer. Maybe I'm a, you know, maybe I'm a mechanic. There might be an obvious skill set that you can hone or a latent skill set that like just below the surface that you're actually tapping into to do what you're currently doing. Tap into that and continue to mind that and something else that you can do try new things. So while you're at your job, so I used to do a lot of volunteer work. Volunteer work is not only good for your soul, but it's actually good for your heart and mind too, meaning that it was through volunteer work that I realized that I like teaching financial education. You know, because it got me to like test out like, oh, I like that because I would volunteer at the boys and girls club.

And meanwhile, I'm supposed to be like, I don't know, helping the kids draw, you know, with chalk outside. And I'm talking to the counselor and saying, and that's how you raise your credit. score. Like, or I'd be at the, you know, like, I'd be, like serving food at a homeless shelter. And then me and the person next me is serving food. I'm like, girl, that's not how you budget. You know what? After this, I'm going to, let's just lay out your budget. When even when I was a teacher during nap time, parents would come in because I was doing everyone's budget. I was helping everyone file their taxes. This is 20, 21 year old Tiffany. Literally the maintenance men used to come in. Like, they love to clean our classroom because

they would be like, you have any more tips about, um, about raising my credit score? So, but I didn't see that as like a thing. I'm like, you know, I just enjoy it. But through volunteering, I realize that there's an avenue here to take this skill set that I can pour it into this avenue. And so those, that's what I would share for someone listening that don't despise humble beginnings. What you're doing now is going to prepare you for the future to mine whatever those skills that you are developing where you currently are and ramp it up.

Ramp it up through three, volunteering to see like what else did you, you know, and volunteering it doesn't have to be a super heavy lift. It just might mean that, you know, you sit down with your sister, you know, reach out to your college roommate just to test out other interests that you might have. Because if you can creatively take your skill set and work it outside of your current environment, the sky is truly the limit for you. Honestly, the sky is truly the limit. I wish more people realize that they're living so close to ground level that they could

pick their head up at any time and breathe different air. And it's less competition up here because most people just never picked their head up and realized, wait, there's something else I can do. I mean, if the recession had not happened, I'm not like super special. The recession took my job. I would still be teaching preschool if the recession didn't say, hey, Tiffany, there's no funding for this nonprofit school where you work. Snatch. I would still be there. But thankfully that it did because it forced me to pick my head up and say, there's more out here.

And I promise you that it actually gets, I mean, it gets. It's harder the work, but it gets easier in some aspects too because there's really hardly anybody up here. So the people who are up here pull you in. I can't tell you how many people in my inbox, like the more I do, someone who's doing way better than me will say, I was waiting for you to hit this spot. Come on into the room and I'm like, wait, there's a room where everybody makes $20 million here?

Where have been? And then you hit 20 and then someone from the $50 million of your room. I just literally had a phone call with a young woman who's in her third. who makes $50 million a year in their business and through trading. And I was like, can I talk to you every week? I have a chicken or egg question here for you. So does this big vision and these like, what is my potential moving towards it aggressively? You just talked about this with so much energy and so much passion just now.

Like you clearly love it. You clearly love the journey of this. and that I think evolves rather than turns on at one moment in time. And so my question for you is chicken or egg, does this, what you bring with your passion, energy, and ambition and huge goals, is that more driven by you writing down the big vision? Or is that more driven by your day-to-day love, you love your day-to-day life and your journey? I can tell from that. You probably have hard, brutal days.

I certainly do with not quite similar, but a different way, a different line of business that I work in on day-to-day basis. But I love what I do day-to-day as well with that. What's the chicken or egg there? Is it build the day-to-day that you like that is moving, propelling you towards it, or start with the vision? For me, I think the vision starts first, meaning that for me, the thing that gets me excited above all else is to teach and to transform. And so it's that energy that you're hearing and seeing because I'm currently teaching. Like I, when I talk about I love teaching, I love teaching. Like if it wasn't this, I would be back in the classroom.

Like it's the thing that gets me up. It's the thing that gets me hyped and excited. Like when people are like, sometimes when you just said Scott that like you're super, I could tell you're super passionate. I didn't even realize. You know, I'm like, wait, really? You're passionate. Yes.

Yeah. You're being passionate. Don't worry. When I tell you earlier today, I said, you're just like, you're not. How you earlier today, I literally woke up. I had like no sleep. It was a brutal day. I was like, because, you know, with, I'm, I'm sharing the book.

I'm like, I'm doing like six interviews a day. I'm so exhausted. I am fully energized. I'm the 120% Tiffany right now because I'm currently teaching. I'm doing what I love best. And that's what fuels and makes the other things possible. Don't get me wrong. Making a lot of money, it's great, you know?

It is because it allows me to look after my family and friends. I'm not stressed. worried like I was before but it's not enough it's not enough to keep me going because if it was I would have stopped by now and be like honestly seven you have enough you really I mean you don't even you're not even going to use 300,000 dollars a year you couldn't as it is right now you could do 150 and be fine and never have to work a day in your life so it's not the money that keeps me going in the beginning it was definitely like what am I going to eat where am I going to sleep but once you get past that point something else has to fuel you and for me I'm fortunate and that I

early on as a little girl, I knew I wanted to teach. I was afraid to say it, you know? In college, I went to school for business because I didn't want to admit that I wanted to teach because I thought teaching meant brokenness. But once I realized that you can teach in a variety of ways and it was a skill set that it could take with me to different areas of life. But yeah, if you can find that thing, I mean, I know it sounds super cliche. It doesn't have to be your overall purpose.

But if you can find the thing that gives you the energy. So for some people, it's making money. Like they love to see the dough rolling in. You know, for some people, it's innovation. They love coming up with brand new ideas or whatever. What is that thing that keeps you going? And then you can tack on other things to it and take it to the top. So I've tacked on business to my passion for teaching.

You know, I've tacked on philanthropy to my passion for teaching. You know, I've tacked on growth and growing wealth for, my passion for teaching because teaching is the driver for all that I do. Like I'm going to be like 90 years old like on the front porch, you know, asking everybody to come and like listen to me run my mouth. My father used to always say meanwhile he's a chatterbox himself. Um, but he's always say that I talk too much. It wasn't that. I just, I cannot possibly know a thing without sharing a thing. Like if I know something good, I'm like, I gotta share it. And so that's, that's, why I'm so, this literally get go with money, my book is my love letter to the reader because

I pour in all the purpose, all the passion, everything that I know that has helped to set me up for the life that I'm living now into this book because like I don't hold anything back. There is no. And in this book number two, this is it. This is everything I know and feel. And if there is a book number two, it'll be new things that I've learned and felt and grown into. But yeah, so yeah, definitely the vision comes first and then the goals come later, you know, because sometimes I fly past the goal so fast. I'm like, I can't even take note of it

and some goals have taken me 10 years to achieve. And so that's not enough to keep me going. You know, 10 years to wait to achieve a goal is a long time, but the teaching keeps me going. Like you guys have like woken me up today. I definitely was like a little dead this morning, but I'm like, I'm ready. I don't think anyone could describe you as that. So your next book should be how to start a business, how to discover, how to discover your latent skills, how to discover, you know, how to make an attainable vision board. I want to make $10 million a month. Well, that's great, but you can't just say that.

You have to figure out how you're going to do that. So how to come up with the plan, how to come up with the vision board, how to discover your latent skills, how to create a business that lives on past you. that's that's your next book i don't know if you know this i was thinking about calling it do do good no because i thought that i told myself once i reached 10 million dollars a year in business i will consider writing a book on because i just felt like that was a serious number you know and so i had in my mind i had my book name called do good how to do good work help good people make good money that that was like that name i don't know if that's what it's going to be called but that's what i told myself so if i ever do write

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I'm flipping back a second here with this, but you, a couple of things you mentioned. you said you've been obsessed with your goal, or use the word obsessed for many years, and that you're extremely consistent. Do you use any tools to track that consistency? For example, do you write down goals and track them every day? Or what is your methodology there, if any?

Yes, I am, if you could see, I am a huge notebook person. I have literally probably like four or five notebooks going. This is like one of my notebooks that I'm using now or sticky. Like literally, I am huge notebook. And if I don't have a notebook, then I will text it to myself. or slack it to myself. So what I do is I have a list of like everything that I need to do, kind of like high-end things that I need to do,

and then broken down into the, so like goals we need to accomplish, then the tasks that need to be done to do those goals, and then what tasks I really need to complete today. So usually I try to put my tasks that need to be completed today onto like a sticky, you know? Oh, you have your notebook too? Every day, print it off.

I say, here's what I'm going to do to move my goals forward. Here's what I'm going to do for chores that I just have to get. And because it's important. So I try to do the night before, you know, if not the night before, then I do it. As soon as I, like, wake up, like after I eat, I make myself a smoothie. If I'm going to exercise, I do that. But before I actually start to do work, because on the rare occasion that I just jump into it, my day is a mess. I find myself down rabbit holes.

I'm like, this is not due for two weeks. You have something that's due today. You didn't even get to it, you know? And so it's really important that, like, I would. it down, big, big vision, goals to hit that vision, tasks to hit those goals, what does today look like? And then like I said, usually I put it like on a sticky and I'll put it on my computer because I'll look and I'm like, oh, I'm supposed to, okay, I got to do that today. I have to do that today. And so by the end of the day, I look to see, is there anything that

I kind of like left outstanding? And so I'll give you an example. So this, you can't do this now, but when I first was starting my business, there was no Facebook business. There was no, you couldn't do ads. Facebook was literally just. out of the phase where you had to have an EDU in order to sign it for Facebook. And so I was using Facebook to market. No one was doing that, but I changed my name to Tiffany, my middle name to the budgetista, and then Aliche on Facebook. And I just got my first contract with the United Way.

They were paying me, I think, $3 to $500 a class once a week to teach the six-week course I'd written for them. And so I was worried because the first turnout, they did the marketing. Five people showed up. And I was like, they're not going to continue to pay me, you know, for five people. So the next time I said, can I market for you? I have my undergrad degree is business with a concentration of marketing. They said, sure.

So I used my new Tiffany the Budgetista, Aliche Facebook page, which was just my personal page. And I would push out marketing to get more people to come to the United Way classes so they could continue to pay me. But one of the things I used to do is I had like one of my homeworks every day to myself was I had to send out. 20 friend requests. So like Scott I might be like so I would literally go on Facebook and just like I would friend request Scott like Scott has like a headshot he looks like he works at a company because in my mind I thought if you work at a company maybe you'd be like hey company I see this girl Tiffany posting about financial classes we should have her here then I would go through your friend

list Scott and look at anyone that looked like they had a professional picture and be like friend friend friend and honestly one of my really like one of my best friends now Mark that's how we became best friends because I sent him a friend request because one of his friends accepted mine. And he said at one point they all sat around was like, who's Tiffany? Because they were all friends with me, but they didn't know me. And so like, I was like this little worm. You can't do this now on Facebook.

But I was like this little worm. But I did that because my thought process was, you're going to be my friend. And this is before Facebook had algorithms. It was just like, you know, it was just a true timeline. And I was going to post about what I was doing as the budgetista. And there was a potential that you're talking. church or your business or your corporation wherever you worked your school might want to hire me so i wanted to get in front of people who would say we should have her come here and so that was my homework for a year

you know every single day i had to friend 10 to 20 different people or at least send out friend requests so that's the kind of thing that i was doing it sounds so minute and nuanced but it worked you know it worked i just want to chime in that that if you are listening and you are inspired by what tiffany is saying my advice to you would be to begin with writing the vision down. Yes. And then doing some form of daily organized tracking of your goals. It doesn't have to be like a crazy thing. You don't have to spend 30 minutes on it. But like five minutes last night, I wrote down like, here's the things I need to do today the next day to move my goals forward. And I just check them off. And if it's seven o'clock at night and I haven't gotten to them yet. I spend until eight doing them. It's just like every day

I make that progress. And if you compound that for three years, you will, you will see results for sure. Yes. And so first, do you have any resources for someone looking to do that or that where they can get an example of how to begin doing that? I'm kind of thinking of any resources that I really used. Like I said, I'm really, I'm not, I don't really like planners per se because they're a little constricting for me. Like for me, I like a good looking notebook because it really motivates me to like open it up. But I also like, you know, you might want to use like an online tool where you can because also too I have really terrible handwriting. So sometimes I'm like, what does it say, Tiffany? So sometimes especially if something is very important, I will, before there was Slack because I use

Slack as an internal messaging tool that our team uses. I used to email myself the things. So that way if it was written clearly so because my handwriting is not the greatest. I don't think you have to go crazy with tools unless you're like a super techie person and you love a good tool. I would also use the notebook feature on my cell phone at times where I'd be like, okay, let me pull up my my notepad in my cell phone and send myself messages. So one trick that I'll use because I have so much flying through my head that as soon as a thing hits, I will write it or text it or whatever to. to capture it because it might be gone in the next five to ten minutes. That's critically important, especially as you get a little older.

That is critically important that, like, you know, like I was like, oh, wait, did I say Penguin Random House that thing? I will write it, even if we're in the middle of talking because I know it might not resurface for another week and then now I forgot it and it's too late. So that capturing those things, putting them somewhere. And another tip I will use is try not to have because I'm the worst at having too many places. You know, like I said, I'm like on, I have like five notebooks going, my Slack, my email. So I'm trying to consolidate to have one written component. So I try to get notebooks

that are small enough to fit in a bag so I can carry it with me no matter where I am. And then one text component. And so now I've started to use, I created a Slack channel just for myself, where I literally just call Tiffany's notes where I can just like text myself notes like, don't forget to print out the thing. Don't forget to print that poster. Don't forget to so that's what that way it's there and then at the end of the evening when I'm resetting for the next day I look at all the things like the the things prior the task prior and the task that just came up as a result of the day and then I reorganize my task for the next day to say these are your priorities this is

what three or four things that must be done three or four things would be nice to get done three or four things that like if you get them done great if not you know you have time on them and so like so that's how it looks Great. And just if you're listening, like a spiral-on-bound notebook is perfect. If you want, like I have a Microsoft Word template that I uploaded to bigger pockets. You can download those there. That starts the vision one-year, quarterly, weekly, daily goal-setting stuff. So you can customize it from there. We'll link to that in the show notes. But I highly encourage you to start that some version of this if you're listening because that's, I think, the easiest step.

And then the second thing that you said is every single day you mentioned working on my business, even if it's listening to a podcast, How much self-education are you doing, are you consuming per week? Would you say in terms of hours? I'm like, hour, hours. And the other day, I was like, Tiffany, do you listen to music? I had to literally turn on Drake just to prove I was a human being. I listened to. I mean, literally, like, if I'm taking the shower, I'm like, huh, how I built this.

Yes, Guy Raz, I agree, you know? Or like, literally, I'm doing dishes, bigger pockets. Oh, I never thought about it that way. you know or I'm going for a walk like for a walk I have to be mindful because I'm someone who likes to take notes so I try to listen to books that that that's hard for me to listen to books that require notes when I'm taking a walk because I'm like what do I put these notes so I really try to listen to books that notes are not necessarily required you know maybe it's more so I am elevating myself emotionally

and socially through this book I would say soft education unless it's a super packed day full of work. I dedicate an hour, maybe up to maybe even four hours of just soft education because sometimes it's just playing in the background. You know, like it's just like my niece and my nephew might be over their three and five and they're playing and I'm watching them and babysitting, but I'm listening to a podcast while they're playing, you know. So I, at least an hour, I don't know that a day doesn't go by. And sometimes it's even just daydreaming. Like, I think people underestimate the power of. of just laying in your bed or sitting on the front porch

or laying in a hammock and imagining that amazing life that you say that you want. I used to drive from, I used to live in one part of Jersey to drive to Newark to go teach preschool and Newark has a huge airport. And I would be driving because I have to be at work at 7 a.m. in the morning. So like at 6.30, 6 o'clock, the sky would still be pink

and purple and all these pretty colors. And I would day dream and pretend one day I'm going to be driving into Newark because I'm getting on a plane to go speak somewhere. So, like, even then, preschool teacher Tiffany, would be like, no, Tiffany, you're not driving to preschool. You're driving to Newark because such and such said, you have to speak. Or I love practicing my speaking engagement for, like,

awards that I have not yet won or been nominated for when I'm taking the shower. I'm like, and that I just want to thank Oprah. And I just went, like, this is me, I don't even realize like saying it out loud. And Scott, this is such a great question because I didn't, I didn't even recognize. To me, this is just normal Tiffany, but saying it out of light, I'm like, wait, do people do that? But I'm always practicing for the next big thing, even if it sounds wild and crazy, I will live in it in my head and say, even as a kid, I would live in those things in my head. Like, when I get my bike, I'm going to do this wheelie. And when I get that Barbie,

Barbie's going to do this. And then when I get that, and so I think living in your dreams helps to bring them to fruition because you've already state the claim in it. You just walk toward the place that you stake the claim. Awesome. Okay. You're talking about how you continue to learn and you continue to soft educate. And all I can hear is she sounds like Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger because those guys at their annual meeting, they say, we spend four hours a day reading newspapers.

They're looking for more information. Can Charlie and Warren rest on their laurels? They sure can. Can Tiffany rest on her laurels? Wanda's taken care of, Tiffany. Just if you did nothing ever again, Wanda would be taken care of. Wanda might not be able to live on 300,000.

She might be only at 250. She's going to have to come back on nothing. But the fact that you continue to do that just speaks to who you are as a person. And you're never, I don't know how to say this in a nice way. I mean it in a nice way. You're never going to be satisfied. You're never going to stop. You're going to continue.

But it's not for you. It's for everyone else. And when you give so freely, it comes back in just bushels. I just find joy and delight in learning. I think a good teacher is a better student. Like I love being like I love reading random books that seem like not like um uh what is that book uh it's uh Ryan Sirhan sell it like Sirhand I read that book and I got so much value I mean he's talking about selling real estate but it was like oh but there's there's always a nugget somewhere like I one of my

favorite books I'm sure everybody loves this book but it's the Alchemist by Paulo Cuelo it's one of my favorite books of all time it's a fiction book you know like the other day day I was watching this Netflix, I guess a docu-series of like tours we grew up with and how they're made, you know? And so I remember like, so I'm just watching because I was getting my hair retight end and like the guy who was doing my hair, he was watching it. So I'm like, oh, that's how Barbie was made. Oh, that's how. So they were talking about Hello Kitty. And I got an inspiration because they said, hello kitty is something called Kauai. And I'd never heard that term before. it's a term in Japanese that means cute, but not cute on a surface level, but cute on a genetic level.

Cute the way babies are cute to protect them because parents look after their kids because you've got this genetic guttural reaction to seeing the way a baby's face looks and the way babies feel and smell. It's their defense mechanism because you as a parent, I'm like, oh, my kid, my kid is so cute. So it makes you take care of your kid. This is why puppies are cuter than dogs and cats are cuter than kittens. You know, this is what evolution has created to protect babies. So they're looked after. So I never heard of Kaua. That's what Kauai means.

It doesn't mean cute. It means like cute at the deepest level possible. And I got an inspiration. And I messaged, I was on my phone. I messaged to Slack because I, as you know, I wrote a children's book called Happy Birthday Molly Moore. And I message jazz, my illustrator. I was like, we have to do Kauai.

I need you to watch this. And I did some research. And this is why I'm getting my hair done. I was like, we need to make Molly Kauai. Do you understand? But there's inspiration. I was watching Netflix. There's inspiration everywhere.

If you will see it, I'm someone to practice marketing. I will look at billboards and judge them. I'm like, yeah, see, the font is too small here. Why would they use script? I'm in my car. I can't read script that quickly. The perfect sign of all signs is the stop sign. Because one, that red, you know instantly that it's branded itself.

But it's not just that, that shape. It's a universal shape. So I'm thinking about how do I do that with my brand. And then the stop sign is bold font. Like if you look at the font and get it with money, look at that font and tell me it doesn't remind you of the stop sign. It's not coincidental because it's big, it's thick, it's bold. You can see it from miles away.

That was intentional. I stole it from the stop sign. Is it intentional that it's placed right behind? your camera. Exactly. That too. But do you see what I mean? That there's so many lessons all over.

No matter where you live, what you do for a living, you know, like if you work with kids all day and you're an eighth grade teacher, what are the kids talking about? That might be an amazing stock tip. Like, I was watching my stepdaughter Supergirl dance to musically for years. I should have got her to get me on. I was like, what is this musically? She was obsessed with it. Now it's called TikTok.

Right? I could have been a TikTok superstar if I would have jumped on early when she started. But no matter where you are, there are amazing lessons to tap into. If you will just lean in and look and listen and observe. You know, I'm not saying don't listen to music because I, like I said, Drake is my fave, you know. But I'm saying set aside time to learn and to grow and to expand. And I think was it Steve Jobs, right, that he spent time. I think it was in Japan where he learned had to calligraphy.

Is that where he, right? Yep. And so he took that like aesthetic of beauty and curved lines. And he poured that into Apple. Calligraphy into like the most, I mean, arguably one of the most transformative businesses, you know, in the entire world. You know, it seems so odd, but it's not odd. You know, what is your calligraphy?

What are you overlooking and thinking it's nothing, but it's literally everything? I love it. And I'm, you know, we're running up on time here, and this has been fantastic. I'm just trying to condense all of your energy into a few, the simplest takeaways I can for our listeners. And I think that boils down to create a vision, evolve it. I'm sure your vision is not the same now as it was when you first started. And it probably moved quite a bit for several years as you kind of refined it and kind of got going and figured out what's working and what's not. Is that right?

Correct. So I would say start with a vision, spend five minutes on it, figure out what you want, and don't be afraid to move it every week for a year. Just keep editing it, revising it, completely different in a year. Once it stops moving, you're going to be in a really good spot and make daily progress towards it with some mechanism of tracking that. And then pick up a book, read it, pick up another one, read it, listen to a podcast, listen, go and do it again and again and again, and never stop.

And you will accumulate mental models across wild, different areas of life and business, and you do not know how they will come together to serve you, but the only way you can do that is get started. That's why we ask, what's your favorite book, finance book every week. I don't care which book you start with if you're listening. Pick one. Then do that one. Start with another. If you don't like it, put it down and switch and get to another book, but just absorb, absorb, absorb for one to four hours per day while you're doing your driving or doing your chores or whatever. And after several years, you'll have 10,000 hours of across a broad variety of subjects.

There's no college does not do that. High school does not do that. You just don't, it's just a completely different education. It's, it's, and it's insurmountable. Like there's just no way,

if you don't do that, that you can make decisions on a day-to-day basis that are of the same quality level of, as Tiffany. You just can't, you can't do it without that, I don't think. And that's,

and that all stacks into compounding. It's why you're doing to do more business this year than you've done in the last nine years of your existence combined. because all that is compounding and the mental models come together in ways that allow for that decision-making that's exponentially better, not just a little bit better at each stage. Yes. Scott, are you a teacher?

Did you go to because you, that was such a great wrap-up. No, I'm a podcaster. No, you have a teacher-spirit. And it's the reason why you have such a successful podcast, you and Mindy, because this is an extension of just education. And that was such a great, concise roundup. And I have to say, honestly, I have not had an interview like this ever. You guys pulled out things that I'm like, I don't even realize I'm doing those things. Because I just, I've known myself my whole life.

So it doesn't seem odd to me. And I'm like, I do do that. That is a really good question. Because sometimes you don't even realize like what's adding to your success. And so these are really good questions. I'm going to actually like literally, I'm like my hand is itching for my notebooks. So I can write these things down. I am not going to hold my breath in anticipation.

of you rounding out the 10 million mark. So I'll be looking on the lookout for 100 million in the next 10 years here. But before we got to the famous board, anything you want to say in wrap up here? So what I would say, I know we talked a lot of high-level things here. I hope it got you excited and expired because it's meant to. But know that the real work is done, you know, boots to the ground, daily, daily exercising of your ability to learn and to put what you learn out there by doing the work. I tell my mentees and stuff all the time.

You know, they're always like, Tiffany, what do I have to do? I'm like, the work. You've got to do the work every single day. The work is going to look different. You know, I don't love every aspect of the work. But consistent work leads to consistent results. And I'll share this one thing that my mentor shared with me. She reminded me because I was telling you.

her like, oh, it's sometimes I get so overwhelmed now, you know, it seems like just a lot. She's like, the real work is in the reaping, not the sewing. And it sounds opposite. Like, well, no, when you're sewing, you're putting all the plant, you're planting. That's a lot of work. She's like, no, no, no. Planting seeds, let's just say you're planting corn seeds. Yes, that's a lot of work.

But imagine how much more work when you actually have the corn. You've got to cut it down, suck it, clean it, sell it. So just with know this, that what you're, you're doing now, the seed planting that you're doing, it's even more work when you start to reap the harvest of all your hard work. So it's important that you take the time for the sewing because it's going to fortify you with the skill set, the knowledge, the capability to make it through the reaping. Like I am, I, the I can, if I can stop now, because I've done so much sewing and forever pick, you know, and forever pick. And I want that for you. But it starts

with day-to-day sewing. Love it. Well, let's move on to the famous four here. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests each week. Mindy, I'll let you kick it off. Well, we start off with what is your favorite finance book? My favorite finance book, Smart Women Finish Rich, by David Bach. Love it.

What was your biggest money mistake? We probably heard this one. Jake the thief. Giving a random. $20,000 from a cash advance on a brand new credit card. If you had not made that mistake, would you be the budget Nista? Would you be Tiffany Aliche making a little bit more than you did when you were a preschool teacher? A hundred thousand percent, no.

That mistake was necessary and pivotal. I wouldn't say thank you to Jake the thief, but that is definitely a good thing? Yeah. No, I'm happy for it, honestly. Because one, better me than someone else, me who had the foundation to pivot, you know. And then also, too, it taught me so many lessons that you just cannot learn from reading a book you have to live through. So I'm grateful for it.

Yeah. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? My best piece of advice for people who are just starting out is to start. most people never start. They think about it, they read about it, they dream about it, but they don't put pen to pad and to get started. So my best piece of advice, no matter what starting looks like for you, a Google search, a list made is to start.

Love it. And I recommend as a starting point, just that one paragraph, what I want my life to be like in a few years? Yes. And then just evolve it from there. It's not an hour or five hour exercise. People overthink this. What is your favorite joke to tell it parties?

I'm less of a joke teller and more like I love to just tell stories about, you know, I'm more of a storyteller, but I like to share the story of how my first financial lesson, how I was for and loved to run water. I wrote about this in the book and my dad pretended in order to get me to stop that the money used to run the water was actually the money he had to use to pay for the ice cream that I used to ask for every week. And once I realized that running water meant that I could not get ice cream, I stopped running water. So those are the types of stories I like to tell at parties. Ah, I love it. All right. Where can people find out more about you? So I am the budgetista on every social media platform, Instagram, TikTok that I don't use.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Thebudgetneeda.com. And, yeah, I'm just a budgetista everywhere. The budgetneesda.com and on all your favorite social platform. Awesome. And you just came out with this new book. Can you tell us about where to buy that and when it, when it is released? Yeah. So book comes out March 30th, 2021. So it might be out when you're listening to this already. So the book is already out. Yeah. So you can purchase it at get good with money.com. I created a toolkit that's free that comes along with the book with all of the downloadables from the book.

And even if you don't get the book, you could still go get that toolkit, although it might not make sense without the book. Yeah, get good with money, 10 simple steps to becoming financially whole. I can't wait to see you on the other side of your financial journey after you've built this amazing financial foundation so you can create the rest of your financial house. Awesome. We will link to all of that in the show notes, all of the places you can find, or as many as we can think of to find Tiffany Abbein. And, you know, your website, your book, all those, all those kind of good things, social media. And those will be at biggerpockets.com slash money show 187. If you can't remember all of those links, they'll be there for you. Tiffany, it's always a pleasure to talk to you.

I'm so excited for your book. I'm so excited just to have an hour to listen to you because your excitement is infectious. And now I'm excited to go do all the things as well. No, thank you. I appreciate that. My agent Heather said the other day that I was her cup of coffee. She's like, what am I talking to, Tiffany? That was by morning. That was great. So you're super buzzed, right, Scott. No, honestly, thank you guys. You guys have always been awesome, inviting me back over and over. And so it's a privilege and a pleasure. So thank you.

Well, we're grateful to have you back. It's always a wonderful time interviewing you and a lot of energy, a lot of passion, a lot of insight. So thank you very much. You're welcome. we will talk to you soon. Thanks, Tiffany. And I'm super excited for your book. Good luck with the sales that I know we'll just crush it. Thank you.

Okay, Scott. I got to take a breath. What did you think of the show? I think that my, I look like Robert De Niro. And my future self, I'm going to name Robert, according to her thing. And that way I can say, I'm talking to me. That's not the last time I'm going to use that joke. Okay.

I'm thrilled with that. I think it was a great episode. I think I think Tiffany was fantastic. I think she brought the energy. I think she loves everything about what she does. I think she has some big visions. I think that the great thing about this world we live in, this capitalism, I guess, is that by her going big and going after her goal, she's the only way she can get there is by helping hundreds of thousands of women be successful along the way with her group there. Check. She's already done that and she's just continuing on. One of my biggest takeaways from this is that she has not stopped learning. Even after reaching the level of success that she has attained, she's still learning and pursuing more. She called it soft education. And she said she does one to four hours a day. That's insane. That's amazing. And I really need to step up my. soft education because I'm not getting in one to four hours right now. I also love her marketing ideas. They're super outside the box, but not obnoxious and over the top. She just looks at things differently. So if you want to be like Tiffany, who is an overnight success in just 10 short years, you will have to continue to learn and grow and think outside the box. And that's so cliche, but it's also super true. You can't do the things that everybody else does and experience.

to have different results. And she doesn't do anything that anybody else is doing. And she has crushed it, absolutely crushed it in her professional career, her entrepreneurship, just by thinking slightly outside the box. Yeah. So if you want an actionable step here that I guarantee will lead you to success, write down a vision. Go to biggerpockets.com slash money show 187. And you'll see a template there. You don't have to use mine. You can Google it. There's probably way better goal setting templates. It's just one set of word documents that outline what I do every day for my goal setting. You can just download them there and check them out. And then write a vision and work towards it every single day. On top of that, invest one to four hours every single

day in learning. And I guarantee you within five to 10 years, something good will happen on that. So there you go. That's a simple advice for today for the actionable takeaway that you could do. But seriously, like I say, that tongue in cheek. But that's what I've been doing for the last seven years of my life. And I believe it's really worked for me. And I think, and you can see what it's done, what's doing for Tiffany. And it does for a lot of people with that, that simple philosophy about constant learning and just taking a few actions concretely every day towards your goals. And, you know, I miss a day here and there.

It's not like, it's not like every day, but it's, it's almost every day that I'm doing this. And that, that's where it comes from. You don't make a million dollars a minute by sitting on the couch watching TV. I would like that job. You can do that as long as you spent five minutes doing something that moves you towards your goal, like that email that needed to go out today that advances your timeline on that next deal by five weeks because you just never got around to sending the five. Like just do that and then watch TV for a few hours.

Okay, Scott, should we get out of here? Yes. Okay, I'm getting going. Yes. Thank you for listening, everybody. We appreciate you. We hope you liked this episode and made it this far. Best of luck to you.

From episode 187 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen saying, peace out, Rainbow Trout.