Financial Feminist - 198. Paying off $70k of Consumer Debt and Breaking Teen Mom Stereotypes with Jazmin Higgins

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Hi Financial Feminists! I'm so excited for you to hear today's episode with Jazmin Higgins—a financial coach who turned her life around from being a teen mom at 16 to conquering $70,000 in debt and building wealth. We chat about her journey defying stereotypes, tackling financial trauma, and how she's now helping others break free from generational financial struggles. This episode will make you question what it takes to redefine your life’s trajectory when the odds are stacked against you.  Jazmin’s links: Budget with Jazmin Follow Jazmin on Instagram Read transcripts, learn more about our guests and sponsors, and get more resources at https://herfirst100k.com/financial-feminist-show-notes/198-paying-off-70k-of-consumer-debt-and-breaking-teen-mom-stereotypes-with-jazmin-higgins/ Not sure where to start on your financial journey? Take our FREE money personality quiz! https://herfirst100k.com/quiz Special thanks to our sponsors: Squarespace Go to www.squarespace.com/FFPOD to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. Masterclass Get an additional 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/FFPOD. Rocket Money Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/FFPOD. Third Love It’s time to get your Bra-blems Solved™. Use code PODCAST15 for $15 off your order at ThirdLove.com. Netsuite Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at NetSuite.com/FFPOD. Quince Get cozy in Quince's high-quality wardrobe essentials. Go to Quince.com/FFPOD for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Mint Mobile Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at Mintmobile.com/ffpod.

We were always in survival mode. Any moment that we did have money, we would spend it. Then I had credit cards that I didn't understand and since I left home early, at home we didn't talk about money anyway. So there was no education around what are the right things to do with money. Little by little we found ourselves accumulating debt but not having any type of emotion to it. So it didn't weigh us down as a bad thing or a good thing at all, but it was debt that does not help you. So unproductive debt, high interest credit cards. When we realized like, oh, there's a lot of things to pay,

it's getting out of control. A personal loan is what we would get. Hi, financial feminists. Welcome to the show. I'm really excited to see you. If you are new to the show, my name is Tori. I fight the patriarchy by making you rich. I am a New York Times speciality author and we're focused on getting more money into more women's hands. And if you're an oldie, but a goodie, you knew that already. I don't know how to start these episodes

post-election. This is going to be the last time, at least in an intro, that I talk about the aftermath. We did an entire post-election episode, so please go listen to that, that I think has a lot of my thoughts and my feelings and the way we're moving forward. But if you are at all intimate with our work, you know that we are here to give women resources to have choices and to have the best, baddest, fullest, healthiest version of their life and using money as a tool to get there. We had a really nice comment after the election come through that I want to read. It says, Tori, I'm beginning to understand the depth of how important your work is. Thank you for speaking up, leading with compassion and grace, and helping change people's lives. We need strong female leaders now more than ever.

First of all, thank you to that person. But second of all, that's what we're doing. We are educating women. We are giving them resources to better their money so that they can have more options, more choices, more freedom, more flexibility in every single aspect of their lives. And today's guest is the best embodiment of that. It's going to be a very inspirational episode. It's going to be an episode that reminds you of why this work's really fucking important. And also, hopefully make you feel a little less alone today. I'm really excited for you to hear this one.

Jasmine Higgins is a compassionate and non-judgmental financial friend. She helps clients break free from the cycle of financial struggle that is often passed down through generations. Through tailored guidance and a focus on spending behavior, she empowers clients to spend on things that align with their values and create a positive financial legacy for themselves and future generations. In this episode, Jasmine shares her story of becoming a teen mom and all of the stereotypes she overcame, especially as a Latina.

And despite many people in her life telling her that she'd never amount to anything. Boo! This is one of those episodes we love sharing because it's this real honest story of someone who not only did incredible things, like pay off $70,000 of debt and start a successful business, but also now coaches other women to do the same and find their own financial freedom. We get into her debt story, how she and her husband paid off that $70,000 of debt and the hurdles she faced along the way. We're discussing navigating government and welfare

systems, financial trauma, and how she passes that knowledge on to other women. She also briefly mentions the impacts her first 100k and our work has had on her and her journey. And it's just a really inspirational story, one that I think is always needed, but especially right now. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it. But first, a word from our sponsors. This episode of Financial Feminist is sponsored in part by Mint Mobile, Quince, NetSuite, Third Love, Rocket Money, Masterclass, and Squarespace. Mint Mobile gives you premium wireless at $15 a month with unlimited talk, text, and data on the largest 5G network.

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Visit netsuite.com slash FF pod to download a free guide and see how it can work for you. Never settle for an uncomfortable bra again. Find your perfect fit with Third Love. Visit thirdlove.com and get $15 off your order with code PODCAST15. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that tracks your spending, cancels unwanted subscriptions, and lowers your bills. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash FF POD. Learn from the best to become your best with Masterclass. Get 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com and get $15 off your order with code PODCAST15.

Rocket Money is a personal finance app that tracks your spending, cancels unwanted subscriptions, and lowers your bills. subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash ffpod. Learn from the best to become your best with Masterclass. Get 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash ffpod. Build a beautiful website to get your message out into the world with Squarespace. Go to squarespace.com slash ffpod to save 10% off your first website or domain purchase. It's good to see you. We met spontaneously when I spoke at the OC Public Libraries. Do you want to tell that story really quick? Yeah. I think it was a day or two before you were going to be speaking at the Public Library.

I had lots of plans that day and I was like, wait, could this be for real? I had to double-check, signed up on Eventbrite and I was like, oh, this is happening. I told my husband, he's like, well, did you sign me up? No, let me go sign you up really quick. So that was so exciting to have you in town. And it was close enough

for me to make sure I can be there. It was really nice to meet you. I did a speaking engagement at OC and then we got to meet and sign books after. And you told me a bit about your story and your work. And I was like, well, we got to have you on the show. You're a listener to the show. We ask money memories for our financial experts. So what is the first time you remember thinking about money? I was four years old and we were, my mom and I were repackaging peanuts. I don't know how she got her hands on this really big bag of peanuts and I was putting them in little tiny plastic bags and I was selling them for, I think it was a couple of quarters.

But I set up my little station and it was one of those little plastic tables that you can get at the dollar store back then. I had my regular customers so every day I would set up my little station out there and the customers now looking back I didn't realize this but there were people that lived at the hotel across so there were some of these people were sex workers or drug addicts and they would come and give me my, you know, two, two dimes or whatever it was. And I had a heavy flow of my clientele reselling peanuts, literally selling peanuts to drug addicts. And sex workers was your four year old job.

That was my first money memory, but also first journey of entrepreneurship. But I didn't realize it was entrepreneurship then of course. Yeah. It was your first hustle. You have shared your story a bit before and we'd love to dive into your background because I think it really shapes the work that you do now. You were a teen mom who defied a lot of the common statistics to build wealth. Can you share a bit about when you found out you were pregnant and what happened next? Yeah. So I, my now husband and I, we found ourselves pregnant at 16, just like the title of every freaking MTV show back then, 16 and Pregnant, we found

out we were pregnant and I was already 16 and a half weeks. My body was changing. And so I was, I think I was a junior in high school and some of my friends commented like, dang Jasmine, like you're eating a lot. And you know, I took offense to it obviously, but I was like, I'm not doing anything that is completely unusual, except I was like, I'm not doing anything that is completely unusual, except I was eating a little bit more. And I told my, at the time it was my boyfriend, I was like, hey, so I've been getting a couple of comments. It was like my third one today

that I am unusually gaining weight. And somebody asked me if I was pregnant and so let's go and I was stick thin, very very thin, slender. I was in swim class so I was also very fit. So in our neighborhood there's this broadway where you go and there's a bunch of shops but there's always these ladies that come down and they're nurses or they're in nurse attire and they're always asking like in Spanish they would say like you know, ¿Quieres una prueba de embarazo? Like do you want a pregnancy test? And I would always get offended and this time I was like I know where to go. Let's just go, you know, somebody's gonna stop me and sure enough right away within a couple of minutes somebody stopped me went upstairs and Had me fill out some paperwork and I was like, is my mom gonna find out? That was my concern, right?

I was like, is they gonna go through find out? That was my concern, right? I was like, is it going to go through my parents' insurance, through my mom's insurance? So I was like, is there any way that I can pay so that it's not free, so that you don't run any stuff for my mom to find out? And they're like, oh, it's okay. We don't do anything. This is like, it's a free pregnancy test. So went and as soon as they dipped the little stick, I guess it's like the dollar store pregnancy test, it was like, dollar store pregnancy test. It was like right away. It was like super pregnant. And that was the thing that the nurse said. She's like, oh, you're very pregnant. And so I start panicking and I'm like, okay, like, how do I know how far along? She said, well, when is your last period? I was like, I don't remember. Like I'm so irregular that I don't,

I don't know when it was actually. And she's like, okay, well, the only way to find out is through an ultrasound. And at the time, Pablo, my husband now, he's always worked, even very young. And so he had, I was like, do you have the money to pay for an ultrasound? He's like, how much is it? It was 50 bucks at the time. And he's like, that's all I have. I was like, perfect, divine. So he paid the 50 bucks. And as soon as they

put the, you know, the, the jelly and the ultrasound, they're like, oh yeah, you're going to have a boy without even saying like, you know, you're well-developed. Like it was so my pregnancy was so developed that they can already identify the sex. And I was freaking out. So not only was I pregnant, but I was having a boy and I'm far along. And so they're like, you know, your due date is in August. And I think it was like late February when I found out. So I was like, oh, my God, it was crazy. So brought this story up to my mom.

Mom tells me first thing out of her mouth when I showed her the ultrasound pictures was, did you get pregnant because I had you at a young age and I was a teen mom? It's like it had nothing to do with her at all. It was just, you know, a teenager with too much time on their hands and wanting to grow up young, not on purpose. So that was our like starting and how did we go from just being boyfriend girlfriend to about to start a family? It was scary as hell had no job at the time. I was freaking out and I was still a junior in in high school Yeah, you're 16. Yeah the next day I think it's like my body just knew that it was pregnant So it gave itself permission to grow and the next day I was showing so I went from flat stomach to all of a sudden I had this big old bump and it

was like overnight, literally. So weird. Well, and let's talk about what that meant financially. You're saying, you know, of course I had no job. I was 16. Your partner is also undocumented or at least was undocumented at the time. Like, how did that complicate your finances? So you're both, is he 16 as well or 17? You're both in high school, presumably. Yeah. Yeah. And he's undocumented. You have to finish school or do you at this point? Because now you have somebody else to take care of. So like, what is going through your head at that point? and how are you navigating money? So I moved in with his family.

They were renting an apartment and the day I moved in, like that was the first time we had to pay rent. So Pablo did have a couple of jobs. It was more of like a side hustle. He would work jobs or he would go sell stuff at restaurants and worked at a photo lab. And when we found out that we were pregnant, he's like, okay, I need a real job. So because he was undocumented,

he did what he knew how to do at the time was, make up that you're an adult because no one would hire a 16 year old. So he got himself fake ID. It had his name on it, but it had a different birthday. So that was like the only reason why he was able to get a job was because it looked like he was 19. He put a fake age and no legitimate place is going to hire him because they're going to run background check. They're going to check HR. So he went to like a really scammy.

What is it like a agency, a job agency, and they gave him warehouse jobs. It was a kind of like, okay, your working condition, you know, do you have work boots? Okay, here's your first job, you got to report in an hour. And it was not enough time for them to run legal background checks, but they eventually did. So every time that they would run an official background check, or they asked him to correct his social security number, which was made up, we knew he would be unemployed again. So that cycle just continued to happen until he finally found one where I guess they were not checking. And so it was kind of consistent. And he actually told them the truth and said like, Hey, I'm actually, I'm a little bit younger than you guys thought.

And so they wanted to hire him through the company. So he went to go tell them the truth and they said, how quickly can you become documented? Luckily, by then we were already married. So I'm talking about from 16 to somewhere around 23 years old. This is how we survived. We were already married. So we filed his documentation. And within two months, he had a social security number, a worker's permit. So we were able to legitimize everything

that we needed to do. And so they waited for him to have his paperwork and then they actually hired him. So that was kind of like, how did we do it in the meantime? It was like, we had to lie. Like that was the way he had to do it. And for me, because I was a young mom, I knew some of the statistics. Actually when I was pregnant, the assistant principal sat me down and kind of had this sorry look on his face was like, yeah, you're not going to be able to go to prom. Like you miss too much school. I missed school because I had just had a baby and I missed one week and a couple of days within the first two months of school.

Cause I had Adrian, my son, on August 27th, and school started August 20th, I believe, somewhere like that. So I missed that initial first days. And I had this newborn whom I had to take to the doctor to get his first everything. So I did miss more than the 10 days. And after you miss 10 days, you cannot walk. So you won't be able to, you'll graduate,

but you can't walk with your peers. You cannot do prom or what is it like grad night? Like the basics, the basic high school experience. And so during that communication with the assistant principal, he's like, you know, most people like you are not going to graduate. So why do you even care? Like, why do you even care about that stuff? And I was like, you're like, of course I care. Like, of course I care. Yeah, well, he also told me that I will most likely, you know, live off of welfare. He also told me I wouldn't go to college

and if I did, I'm probably not gonna graduate. Wow. So it was like a couple of things that he told me. He's like, oh, you're probably gonna have your second child before you're 19. And I was like, he just laid it out. I walked out of there crying and I was like, I'm, yeah, I felt like I needed to quit. Like, who am I fooling trying to still go to school with a baby? That was really hard.

Well, and who is he to tell you what your life is now. Like, he's basically just telling you statistics, thinking, I don't know that it's helpful or that it's like real talk, but it's like, it's the most discouraging thing in the world. And it's also, there's no empathy. There's no understanding. There's no empathy that you just had one of the biggest life events possible that you did not plan for. And you're also trying to graduate one of the biggest life events. Like a lot of things are happening at once and there's little to no empathy in that conversation. Wow. Yeah. Not the whole high school experience was terrible. So even though I was a pregnant junior, I had this amazing chemistry teacher who was also part owner of the local burger stand. And the class organized

a baby shower for me. So here we have everybody from the school that either knew me or just had him as a teacher. They brought gifts and stuff. They actually had a baby shower and he brought a bunch of burgers and fries and soda from the local Tams. Thanks for sponsoring my baby shower. So what happened? 16, you have a kid, do you graduate?

Your husband has a job, you're trying to navigate that. What are the next couple years? What do those look like? Yeah. So I would say about a month after we found out we're pregnant, I moved in with him and his family. We started paying rent. I was still going to school at the time. After the conversation with the assistant principal at the time, I asked about what kind of services are there for pregnant teens. And luckily, because it was so common at my time, I asked about like, you know, what kind of services are there for pregnant teens and luckily, they because it was so common at my school, actually it was very common in Los Angeles period. In public schools, they had like a parenting school. So it was not the regular high school, but it was like an adult school and only parents

can participate. So either pregnant or parenting teens. And so it was a different location. So I switched over and started going there. They found out that I basically had all of my credits because I was an overachiever, ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade, pre-pregnancy. And so I think I only had to go to school for about four hours, maybe a little bit less, and they helped pay for daycare. So early on, I had my son in a daycare that was free to me. So that was one of the services I did get to take advantage of being so young and also underemployed. And when Pablo was like between jobs or he would get laid off frequently. We were scared and broke so I walked into a welfare office and asked about food stamps and I asked about cash aid

what would that look like at the time I was already 17 but I was going to school and they said the only way to do that since you're not married is we have to put your the father of your kid on child support and so I walked out of there was like I'm not gonna put him on child support. And so I walked out of there and was like, I'm not going to put him on child support. Like I live with him and he is working and he is providing for the basic essentials that I need. It's not enough. I recognize that, but how am I going to put child support on somebody who I live with? Again, another area of no empathy, the social worker was like, well, that's just the way it is. And so I walked out of there with no Medi-Cal, no food stamps, and no cash aid.

It sucked at first because I grew up in an area where everybody was on food stamps or some form of cash benefits. So I just felt like, wow, I really need it and I can't? So how does it actually work? So I didn't know how the system worked. I never went back. And I went to go work as well. So I think I had two jobs at the time, but they were both part time, so no more than 12 hours each week. And I was also going to school. And here we are with our little baby. So that's how we were able to support paying our rent and our gas and things that we needed for the baby. Well, when you talk about all of this, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is, we were talking briefly after the event I spoke at, and you were just mentioning

about how emotional money is, right? And anybody listening to the show, you know this already. But I think that shame and trauma and all of these things end up impacting your money and things that happen outside of your control, but also things that you just you to your point, you don't know you don't know how to navigate the system. And you know, a lot of the recurring things, it seems like you had a lot of people who were not very empathetic, you had a lot of people who were not offering you

a lot of support. But then you also did have, like your chemistry teacher who was. So can we talk about like, what is financial trauma? Can you define it for us? And what might that look like for somebody listening? And then what did it look like for you? Once I did graduate from high school, hey, broke one statistic.

I was 19 and found myself pregnant again. So assistant principal like was in my head all the time about things that I needed to break, but also things that it did impact my life. I think at the time we may have been living in a garage. So we moved out from my in-laws and now we were living in somebody's garage It was actually my parents house. They bought during the period where everybody was buying homes

I think it was like oh six area and so we were living in their garage at the time. I Saw employment. I went to go work where my mom works, which is in the government and It took about one year to actually get in so So I got hired when I was pregnant. And some of the fear, the financial trauma is like if they find out I'm pregnant, they're going to release me before I pass probation. So that having to hide pregnancy again, like that didn't go away with me, even though I was already a barely adult. So I did go to work with, you know, baggy clothes, but it was really hard to hide it. And luckily the type of job that I was able to get, you know, there's a lot of protections and so there's no discrimination as far as

like I wouldn't be able to pass my probation. So that's where I started to get a little bit more of the empathetic people in my life. I think the managers told me like, hey, you know, you're going gonna go on maternity leave and then we'll restart your probation when you come back. So then you can finish your term. And they just kind of like left this gap and it didn't impact my career at all. When I secured this job that was more stable

and actually had health coverage for me, myself and my kids and my kids, and my husband. I kind of like wanted to make sure that I had that secure job for a decent amount of time. So take care of our job. The financial trauma that I experienced or how it kind of manifested itself into my life is that because we were always in survival mode,

any moment that we did have money, we would spend it. And of course, then I had credit cards that I didn't understand. And since I left home early, like the whole adult part of my life, I wasn't at home, but at home, we didn't talk about money anyway. So like there was no education around

what are the right things to do with money. So little by little, we found ourselves accumulating debt, but not having any type of emotion to it. So it didn't weigh us down as a bad thing or a good thing at all, but it was debt that does not help you. So unproductive debt, high interest credit cards, when we realized like, oh, there's a lot of things to pay,

it's getting out of control, a personal loan is what we would get. And then instead of paying off the credit cards, now we had a cushion that we never had before so that ended up getting spent after a while. So it was just like this never-ending cycle of occurring debt. Before you knew it, I was in college and on student loans, on federal student loans, and you know we look up, we're already in our 20s, So there's no excuse. Well, I felt like there was no excuse to not get the hang of things. And I had six figures in student loan debt, $70,000 in consumer debt. And it was like, how the heck? What do we do? How do we even process what's going on or how do we even know how to fix it? And luckily, by chance, I stumbled upon podcasts.

And at the time, and I don't know, this is several years ago, instead of picking a podcast that my friend was sharing with me about some gossip, I ended up in the financial world. And that was the first time I ever heard the terms like debt freedom, financial freedom, you know who I'm talking about. And like, it was this one sided way of handling money, but it was the only way of handling money that I ever found out about. So I got obsessed and it was by accident. I would think it was divine. And because I got obsessed with it, you know, I start, we started getting on a budget. I was like, oh, that's what a budget is supposed to be. This is what it looks like.

This is what spending less than what we make sounds like and feels like. And so we did get super intense. We started to knock out the debt little by little. I think at the time when I listed everything that we owed, I think we had 12 different line items that are not student loans. And we were like, we've got everything. Everything you could think of. We financed

everything just because it was easier to think about the monthly payment than it is to pay a full lump sum of whatever it is. Yeah. These are the things that you see every day. But you know, for somebody who's in their early twenties, or I think I was already mid twenties, I just felt like I was lied to this whole time or I just felt like I was missing this whole piece of information that people know about, that people should know about. And so any moment that I had or every opportunity that I got, I was sharing. I was sharing with everybody, this is what you're supposed to do. And do you have a budget? And I was was picking up on the shame part so that was not helpful. So the the shame part of the you know you shouldn't have debt and you shouldn't do this and who cares

about the credit score like I was I was kind of like mimicking those same words. It was helpful in a certain way because it got other people talking about money and it was unhelpful in the way where people were embarrassed when I would come by and they were spending on anything. Whether it was, you know, productive or not, it didn't matter. Like I, like nobody wanted me around. And so I had to learn different ways and it took me a while to pick up on, you know, sometimes it's unproductive to think about debt in certain ways or be so consumed by it. There are better ways.

So I didn't stop. I kept, I continued learning and learned different voices, different methods, and the obsession never stopped and the sharing never stopped, but definitely the shame did stop. Yeah. She's not saying explicitly, but we're talking about Dave Ramsey, everybody. Like we're talking about Dave, which is so helpful, right? To many people. And it sounds like to you, and I am the first person to say that he's helped a lot of people. And it also comes with a side of deep shame and also some judgment around debt and judgment around other people spending money, or at least other people feeling like you're judging them

I wanted to call out one thing that you did though that I think is So important for the listener if you are in any kind of debt student loans credit card debt a mortgage medical debt Whatever that looks like The common thing we see and I know you see this too is that people bury their head in the sand They ostrich affected I talked about this in my book and they act like their problems don't exist. And you cannot solve the problem unless you understand how deep the hole is, right? And I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. I'm not saying this of like, you must face it, but like you cannot create a plan unless

you know what's going on. So you sat down and you listed out, what are my lines of credit right now? How much do I owe? Because you can't make a plan until you do that. So how difficult emotionally was it to get honest with yourself to say like, okay, this is a problem? And then how long did it take you to actually get to the point where you're like, I'm going to look at it? First we had to shift our mindset because we wanted to pay some debt off and we were paying everything a little extra on everything. So we never actually saw the impact of those extra payments or a little here, a little there. I think we did a road trip to go visit my grandparents.

And on that road trip, we were driving, I don't know, it was maybe 16 hours. And during the 16 hours, we were in the car, there was maybe 16 hours. And during the 16 hours, we were in the car, there was nowhere to go. And so that's where we started documenting everything that we possibly can owe. Even things that you might not consider debt, or some people that I work with don't consider debt until I bring it up, like owing phone lines. You sign up for the buy one, get one free, but you got to keep it on there. And then until it gets paid off, you can't leave that phone company. We put everything and the process of itself, it was like, once we realized that we were in over six figures, if you count my student loans and 70,000 of that alone was consumer debt,

I was like, who do we think we are? Like, we're like, do we even make 70,000 a year? Like that was just beyond, I was like, how are we going we are? Do we even make 70,000 a year? That was just beyond, I goes, how are we gonna pay this off? The budget allowed us to recognize, oh, our regular expenses, not the debt, are actually pretty low, thank goodness. We were in a low cost of living area, we were renting at the time, and we had dual income household.

We had young kids who didn't need much at the time. They were in sports, but the community services were really inexpensive at the time. So when we got on the budget, we recognized there's actually extra money that we could use. I constantly had to deal with money is burning a hole in my pocket. So when I had extra money, we would spend it or we thought of like, what else can we fill in now that we have this extra money? So we had to switch the mindset of, no, actually this goes to pay off, you know, this jewelry that we decided that we really needed at the time, or, you know, it goes to pay off extra

on the card, whatever the case may be, or the 401k loan. I mean, it's in an extra check because I had that too. Everything that you could possibly think of. I had that mind shift happen between my husband and I. So we held each other accountable and that's what I think really helped is keeping each other accountable. So when there was that extra money, if I felt like, oh, I'd rather, I would much rather spend this on something cool like taking the kids to Chuck E. Cheese and my husband would be the one to like, no, we got to stick to our snowball. Like this is what we're on. We got to stay dedicated. And when it was the other way around of like, hey, like actually check out these tickets for

the Dodger game. And I'm like, I love the Dodgers too, but we actually cannot do this right now. So it was more of like the delayed gratification that we had to practice with ourselves because we technically raised ourselves from 16 till now that we're 36. So 20 years of practicing this and now we get to see the fruits of our labor. And it's like, I can't even imagine like how the heck did we get here. But if we didn't do that, then we would not be living the life as comfortably as we are now. If you're trying to grow a small business, you need a website. You need an easy-to-use, beautiful website that works without you having to have all of this knowledge about how to code. And Squarespace is the obvious choice.

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We've got it for the kids' random stuff that they ask expenses. We've got it for travel. We've got it for the kids' random stuff that they ask for. We've got it for birthdays. We've got it for Christmas. So everything that we can possibly imagine that we want to achieve, like we have to create a bucket for it if we cannot pay for it in cash at that moment. There are some things that are like very expensive. For instance, our house. Those are things that I'm not going to save up for because very expensive, for instance, our house. Those are things that I'm not going to save up for because at the time, it's going to take me decades to raise enough money to buy a house in California. So we did go through programs where we use debt responsibly to finance the biggest purchase of our life. So for the smaller things, manage your savings account, pay for

it in cash if possible at all times. And if we are going to finance, it's having the best credit score possible and negotiating the interest rate if you can, and setting up a payment plan that makes sense. Our mortgage at the time was like, this is about 25% of our income. So we know that we're not house poor. That's what we could have been had we not done it in a responsible way. One of the things you've talked about on previous podcast episodes, you had your stable government

job and you left, you quit, and you had to do a lot of work around not freaking out because of your fear of going back into instability. I think this is something all entrepreneurs struggle with, especially if you come from that background of financial instability. I think this is something all entrepreneurs struggle with, especially if you come from that background of financial instability. So how did you work through that? And then how do you help your clients and other people do that too? I cried. I felt like I was leaving a gang and I was going to get beat up. I was not going to survive. So the way I navigated it is to take a dip in income. And that's what kind of allowed me to be able to get paid for the stuff I was already doing, which is the financial literacy and educating people on finances. So I found

a job that was in my field and that was a huge pay cut. So it wasn't like a complete, you know, making almost a hundred K to just dropping to zero and let's see how it goes. I had savings, so had an emergency fund and that kind of gave me the permission to, you know, if it doesn't work out, I know I've got a year to go back and maybe have a similar position. And also I'm not at zero, so I'll still have some type of an income. And that kind of allowed me to also learn the systems and learn if this is something I want to do.

And I'm still obsessed with it now. So it was a journey. It didn't do it right away. I had to prove the concept. I don't think I would be the type of person that can just, you know, let's just see how it goes at a flip of a switch. I needed some type of proof that I can get employed,

that I can, you know, secure some type of income. And that is part of the financial trauma that I dealt with, you know, with having a mom that was the main breadwinner. And like, she never left employment. She started working there. That was her security. And till this day, you know, I still employed there. So it kind of was like, am I going to be okay? And, you know, even I still deal with those emotions of like, what happens if a client cancels? And when a client cancels, like I feel like a little heavy weight, like, it sucks.

But then I have another two clients that joined that same week. So it's like, proof. That's it. That's all I can say is I needed some proof. And how I navigate this with other clients is the exact same way is can, this is the money that you need to make in order for you to break even. This is the amount of money that you need in order for you to live the life that you want. And when your revenue is up to that part or even really close to it, or you've proven the concept, can you then let go of your nine to five? And that's what we have to

do and prove it and make sure that they have a savings account in order for them to fall back on as adjusting case. Because I understand that fear of not knowing if you're going to have revenue. So it's both. It's the prove the concept and also have a backup plan. I keep seeing the theme for you that one of the big themes is that like know your numbers, right? Like if you want to do anything when it comes to, I mean life in general, but specifically personal finance, if you want to get out of debt, you have to know how much debt you're in. If you want to do anything when it comes to, I mean, life in general, but specifically personal finance. If you want to get out of debt, you have to know how much debt you're in. If you want to quit your job and become an entrepreneur, you need to know the bare minimum amount of money you need to be making in order to do that. If you're running a business, you need

to know your numbers to know if you're hitting your goals to know if you're covering your costs. It sounds so obvious, but very few people actually know their numbers. Very few people actually sit down and get honest with themselves about where they're at. So if you're dissatisfied with your personal finances, if you're dissatisfied with where you're at in your life, and you also don't know your numbers, that is the first place to start. That hashtag by itself is know your numbers. I think in talking about you quitting your job, the other thing that comes with the instability,

especially with a government job, is you're like, oh, I'm giving up all these benefits too. Especially more stable traditional jobs like a job in the government, you're giving up your benefit, you're giving up a potential pension. For me, I had a different version of that, which was my parents doing like, what about the health insurance and what about the 401k? So when you're looking at the trauma that you're talking about, how do you find, besides knowing your numbers, how do we move past the scarcity mindset when it comes to protecting yourself in the next stage of your life?

Yeah. So some of those benefits that you're talking about for me were the 401k match. So I had an 8% match because of the role that I was in and my husband has a nine to five. And so we had to look at how much do the benefits cost if we go under your insurance. So we're not completely without health insurance. I recognize that being married and having a dual income is a huge privilege. So I need to add you know, being married and having a dual income is a huge privilege. So I need to add that to this is another reason why I was able to let go of that job. Once we recognize that it was a little bit more expensive but it is manageable, it's not free anymore. And you

know, the co-pays and all of that was a little bit more expensive. It was a decision that we made amongst two people in the household. So that's one part is, do you have the support? What are the options? And for somebody who that I'm working with that does not have that dual income household, it's let's find out how much it costs to run your own health insurance as an entrepreneur

or self-employed person. There are services out there that can help or that are not as expensive, but they're still very expensive for one person to manage it. person. There are services out there that can help or that are not as expensive, but they're still very expensive for one person to manage it. If income is low, you could qualify for state benefits or you could qualify for some type of, at least in California, it's Medicare in other states. At some point, you're going to out-earn your ability to qualify for the lower subsidies. And so you still need to do the

research of how much is it going to cost if I'm completely on my own and I have to pay for health care. I would say another privilege is being healthy, right? Having some type of health, knowing that the cost of health insurance is not a huge burden right now because we are healthy, everyone in my household is. So it's a huge privilege to not have to make sure that it's the right type of care, but that we have some type of care. So there is privilege and also what would happen if that were not the case.

So I know that for our household, it would be somewhere around 900 to $1,300 a month if we were doing it on our own, which if it does get to that point, we know that's a budget item that we would not be able to do something else. But if that were to take us over, then we've got to have somebody on a nine to five or we won't be able to quit. Both of us do this at the same time. We were mentioning things like food stamps, SNAP, the sort of benefits, you know, for

the governmental benefits that don't come with you working for the government, right? You mentioned in previous episodes and in your work that a lot of people end up sitting right on the line and not making more than a certain threshold because they're scared of losing access to those benefits. And we see this with disability especially, like you're almost incentivized to make less in order to protect your disability insurance. What have we found or what is in your work

that allows people to find that flexibility between making more money, but also making sure that you're taken care of too? Yeah, often what I found is there's almost a resistance to that being the barrier of them going, somebody going from an entrepreneur, maybe barely breaking even, and then realizing that if you do hit these goals that you need to make in order to buy a house or in order to You know be able to not have to work every single day at my brick-and-mortar location They're given a choice. So all you need is the information to know. What is it going to look like? Are you going to have to?

Pay more taxes and the answer most of the time is yes. Can you divert the taxes in other ways? Yes, that's also a yes, but not 100%. What I recognize is when I was talking with some people that are my clients and they're entrepreneurs, but they're also receiving some type of state benefit, whether it be free healthcare. I'm really sensitive about the topic,

especially if somebody does have underlining issues where they cannot go without their healthcare. I am really sensitive about the topic, especially if somebody does have underlining issues where they cannot go without their healthcare. So what I do is I present them with the options of what it would look like and how much money they would have to make in order for them to be able to cover their own healthcare insurance. But then also comes the complication of like you will have to set money aside for taxes because you're no longer going to be considered low income. So you'll be up on the next tax bracket. And sometimes what I find out is that they're not willing to take on that risk because they need their benefits

or they need the healthcare. Specifically, that's the one where I struggle with the most. And so it's nice to have all this information, but with that information is you still have your personal choice. And I'm not going to push anybody to do anything that they don't completely feel comfortable with. I feel kind of sad also knowing that you're going to hold yourself back, but this is a conscious choice and a decision that you make for yourself because it makes sense for your healthcare benefits that you really

need. What I experienced growing up was people that would not get a job because then that would disqualify them for cash benefits. So while you're getting, and I know the exact amounts because I knew people intimately, was like, yes, you're getting $700 a month without having to work, but you're missing out on even just a minimum wage job would make you double that. And then if you were to upgrade or not have a minimum wage job,

you might be making three or four times that, but the fear of losing $700 is going to prevent you from making a $40,000 to $50,000 income a year. So they were not clients at the time. This is just some of the people that I've experienced in my background. I see a version of it, which is I'm not going to negotiate my salary because then I am making more where I'm in the next tax bracket. And I'm like, yeah, because you're making more money. Like, the answer cannot be I don't want to make more money. Same thing with high yield savings account. Actually, a lot of people tell it to me. They're like, well, isn't this taxed? And I'm like, yeah, because it's

income. So is the answer, I want to make a second or third source of income, or do I want to make less so that I, it's just, it's not a good argument. And I think it's also, it's back to like the scarcity mindset too, of like, okay, I don't want to pay more in taxes. I don't want to lose my benefits. I don't want to like switch accounts, even though I'd make a shit ton more money. Because then I'll have to pay taxes. Fun fact, you have to pay tax on any savings account. Yeah.

Any savings account, regardless of whether it's a high yield savings account or not, you have to pay taxes on that interest earned. So you may as well pay taxes because you earn five times more interest. So yeah, I think that that's back to the scarcity of just and lack of education of people just not understanding that like, no, this is actually a net positive thing. You're making more money. Yeah. So pay the taxes or find the tax strategy. And I'm not an accountant, but I pay for accountants. And so we found out about so many different things that I didn't know about before. And so even having an investment account that is earmarked for retirement, like that's going

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Stop wasting money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash ffpod. That's rocketmoney.com slash ffpod, rocketmoney.com slash ffpod. So for the person listening who sees a lot of themselves in your story, who maybe has a lot of debt, is wondering how to get out of it, is maybe feeling that financial shame and lack of stability. What is one thing you'd say to them, but also one piece of very actionable advice that they could take away and start implementing right now? Yeah, I think what I struggled with the most,

what didn't matter what era I was in my life, whether it was the saving or the paying off debt, it was having a budget that works for you. So the budget that I use in my coaching service is a goals-based budget. This is where you cover all of your fixed expenses or the expenses that you have to pay, right? Covering your four walls, covering your housing, your transportation, and then identifying what is it that you're working toward and making room for that in your budget. Whatever is left is yours to spend however you choose. And that would be your variable expenses.

For most people, this is going to be whether they go to the grocery store or dine out, whatever that might look like, entertainment or not, or personal care. It doesn't matter what you spend your variable funds on as long as you know that your fixed expenses are covered and you're also working towards your goals. That would be, I think, the primary thing that I implement in my coaching service. Whether somebody is able to fund their goals or not, that's the question, right? So if you see that you are not able to contribute to your savings account every single paycheck or every single month, then how much money do you need to make in order to make that a possibility? And this is where we talk about negotiating salary.

Most of the clients that I work with have never done that before. So we practice, we mimic, and I pretend to be the boss. We look at when is the last time you switched jobs because you've been there for so long and maybe you've asked for an increase in salary and it hasn't happened. We talk about, do you have to take on a side hustle without burning yourself out? What is possible? What can you do? If you live in a house, can you rent out a room without sacrificing your space?

There's somebody that might need to rent out a room for a couple of months just to get you to have that wiggle room or pay off debt. So you said this earlier, know your numbers and that is really what you need to do is figure out your budget. How much income comes in and how much of your expenses go out and then what's left to spend. And we've said this before on the show and in my book, but I want to say it again. We're saying the word budget. Budget does not mean restriction. It does not mean rice and bands. It does not mean the reason you can't do things. It's the way you protect the things that are important to you and the way that you make sure that you're protecting your

financial future too. Just like you wouldn't get in the car and start driving without knowing how much gas was in the car, right? You wouldn't know how far you could go without running out of gas. It's the same thing with a budget. You're understanding your numbers and you're getting a plan together so that you have a permission slip to spend and a permission slip to take care of yourself. It's not about scarcity or deprivation or hating your life. Yeah, it's value spending. Totally. Jasmine, thank you for your work. Thank you for your vulnerability. Plug away, my friend. Where can people find out more about you? Look at your coaching services.

Tell us where people can find more. Yeah, my coaching service or my company is Budget with Jasmine. So I do have my website. My one-on-one coaching is $125 a month, and I've had that same price for a very long time. It is a kind of like a low barrier to entry. I work with clients as short as three to four months, and I've had people for two, three years.

It just depends on how much of their finances they need to work on. Sometimes it's just a discovery of kind of getting an idea of what they need to do properly. And for some people, it's the hand holding the accountability that they really need in order to get some stuff down. Similar to what I mentioned earlier about where me and my husband held ourselves accountable. Some people don't have that or they don't feel comfortable with sharing their finances with somebody close to them. So I am that person.

I am the financial best friend. I love it. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Thank you for having me Thank you to Jasmine for joining us you can find her at budget with Jasmine J-a-z-m-i-n on Instagram or budget with Jasmine calm Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here financial feminists. We're gonna continue doing our work We're gonna continue showing up for you all. We're going to continue having deep, honest conversations about how we can use money as a tool, as our best form of protest. We appreciate you

sharing our work. Now more than ever, I think women need this kind of work. They need to know the resources that are available to them. So if you can share the show with your friends, with your community, we really appreciate it. Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristin Fields and Tamesha Grant. Research by Sarah Shortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf,

marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda LeFeu. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100K, Kaylen Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmakeva, Taylor Cho, Sasha Bonar, Ray Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Karonen, Darrell Ann Ingman, and Megan Walker. Promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100k community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100k, our guests, and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan.