LadyGang - Lady Lessons: Finances

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Financial Educator and the Budgetnista, Tiffany Aliche is here to help us understand that thing pretty much no one understands…money! Learn lots of helpful tips, tools, and tricks to get yourself investing in your future and building a solid financial portfolio as well as how to improve your credit score and what you can plan for when buying a house. Special thanks to Vince Camuto for sponsoring this series. Use offer code LADY to receive 20% off your next purchase of $75 or more at vincecamuto.com .See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey ladies, you know, we love having all of our experts on the lady gang and while all of them are Geniuses in our book. We want to remind you that sometimes advice is subjective So take what you want do your research on your own, but also enjoy the episode Well, what is this? Welcome to the lady gang Say that again Things are about to change around here each week We catch up with Hollywood's hottest girl posse Kelty Knight Becca Tobin and Jack Vanek.

Hello, hello, hello, everyone. Whoa, it's so weird. It's usually Becca doing that. Welcome to the Lady Gang, and welcome to a very special episode of the show. This summer, we've teamed up with Vince Camuto to present Lady Lessons, a five-part series here on Lady Gang. So after we wrote our book, we realized there were other topics in our lady life that we wanted to do a deeper dive into.

The upcoming curriculum includes conversations about fertility, finances, race, career, and mental health. The topics and questions you hear in this series will be community sourced, and we can't wait to hear what you think. Without further ado, on behalf of Vince Camuto, we present this week's Lady Lesson. The Lady Gang. Our guest today is an award-winning teacher of financial education and is quickly becoming America's favorite personal finance expert. She's made it her mission to empower women and provide them with access to the tools and resources needed to create a better life for themselves and their families. Through her company. How chic is this? The Budgenista. Tiffany has created a financial movement that has helped

over 800,000 women worldwide collectively save more than $100 million and pay off over $75 million in debt, purchase homes, and transform the way they think about their finances. Through her Live Richer Academy course available at her site, thebudgenista.com, she brings together over 50 financial experts teaching hundreds of courses, and the Live Richer Academy provides the knowledge, access, and community you need to be successful with your money. She's done so much more. We're going to get into that. Please welcome to the Lady Gang, Tiffany Aliche. So today is all, it's all about money. Right now is a wild time, but I think that there's so much about money that we don't understand. And one of our things with Lady Gang is we're, our girls are sort of,

you know, they've had jobs, maybe they're unemployed now, but they've, they're, they have some money to invest and they're wondering like, what are they supposed to do with this? So I'm going to open it up with my question. Okay. We'll go into all the lady gang questions. All right. So I, I have never had a typical employer, so I never had a 401k, but at the end of the year, I put my money in IRAs and Roth IRAs and I have no idea what those are and how they work. I just put the money in and I don't know what I'm doing for the best. How often can I put it in? I don't know what the hell that is. So you certainly can put your money in a Roth IRA, but if you're truly self-employed, like, so people will say, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm self-employed. I'm like, well,

so I actually work for my company, The Budgetnista. So technically I'm not actually self-employed. I'm just like, I'm an entrepreneur, but you know, but so, but if you are truly self-employed, meaning that you're not, I'm not your company, then you can actually contribute to something called a SEP. But what's so special about a SEP IRA, it's a retirement account and you are able to put significantly more in a SEP than you would like a Roth IRA. I think right now the maximum you can put in a Roth is $6,000 a year. And with a SEP, it's like, I think like 20 something thousand, so significantly more. So that's what's so great because the government understands that you're self-employed and that, you know, if you're self-employed, you've likely

had super lean years. And so it gives you a chance basically to catch up with retirement. So certainly look into a SEP. But what you don't want to do is, because I made this mistake, is that I went from self-employed to employed, but I was still contributing to my SEP. That's a no, no, no, no, no. So you don't want to do that. You definitely want to switch over to the appropriate retirement account, which would be a traditional IRA or Roth IRA. And you just leave them there? You just leave them there? Just leave it there? Well, I would tell people that to look to put your money in a mutual fund. If you don't know anything, anything, anything, you're going to put your money in a mutual fund. A mutual fund is a basket of stocks. So stocks are when you

purchase a piece of a company. And so when you have a mutual fund, you have a basket of multiple companies. So you purchase multiple companies. But I would look for an index fund, mutual fund. And so what that is, is that it follows a particular market. So there's like the S&P 500, to Dow Jones. We've heard of these markets before. So the S&P 500 is the top 500 companies that have stock in the US. So you can choose an index fund that follows the S&P 500. So that just means that when the market is up, your money is up. When the market is down, your money is down, which there's nothing wrong with that because on average, the market over the last 100 years has yielded 10% a year. That's pretty decent. That means that if you don't know anything else,

you know that over the next 10, 20 years, you're likely to see a 10% return on average, which is not a bad thing. So if you don't know how to do anything else, you can certainly do that. It's just put your stuff in a mutual fund that mimics the S&P 500 and you don't have to worry about it. If you really don't know how to do anything, anything, anything, you can actually choose something that's called a target date fund. This is especially if you have like a 401k, you work for somebody. So what that is, is that you pick your target date of retirement typically. And let's just say you're like, oh, I want to retire in 20 years. So target date funds are usually like every five years they have a date. So it's like 2025, 2030, 2040. So you pick the

actual year that's closest to your retirement year. And then you're going to put your money into this target date fund. You can also get a target date fund that is a mutual fund that follows the index. So you can look for an SEP 500, a target date fund that does that. So you're going to put your money in. And what happens is, is that every, what's so special about target date fund is the closer you get to your target date, the more conservative your money is going to automatically be invested. So that's great because you don't want to be 77 years old and be in high risk stocks that by then most of your money should be like cash, like investments, like, because that way, if something were to happen, you're not going to lose all of your

money. So a target date fund rebalances your portfolio, basically puts you in safer and safer investments the closer you get to your retirement age. So target date fund, index fund, mutual fund. Those are the three things you need to know if you don't know anything else. Question. So I have this money, it's ready to go. And you keep hearing about no fees and you go to this person and they'll do it for you. Like where's your go-to place to make sure you don't get ripped the fuck off? So great question. So this is where I say to go. So I like accounts like a Vanguard or Charles Schwab or Fidelity, because to your point, you lose a lot of money to fees. So if you want super duper, duper, duper, duper handholding, you can go to a financial advisor,

but they're going to charge you one to 2% for on top of your portfolio typically, or you can pay out of pocket, but most people don't pay out of pocket, right? So what that means is for all the money that you earn, they're going to earn a percentage on your money. One to 2% is astronomical, although it doesn't sound like a lot. That can be like $130,000 of your lifetime. Wow. But that's for people who are like, I don't know anything, but I don't suggest a financial advisor unless you have over $250,000 of investable assets, because then a financial advisor is not just making their money off of your portfolio. They're also advising you on other things. So

that's financial advisor super hand-holding then you've got things like um like a robin hood app right so this is like you're just buying stocks yourself online and you're going to do your own research and just kind of dyi and so for those of those are people who like if you're like that kind of person you're super proactive and you want to do your own research fine then most people fall someplace in the middle and that these are um uh these brokerage accounts so that is the vanguard um that is the um um uh yeah that is the Vanguard that is like the Fidelity's Charles Schwab so what's so special about them is that their fees are super low in comparison to a financial advisor so you're thinking if a financial advisor is one percent I believe when I checked last Vanguard was

like 0.09 percent so one-tenth the percentage of a financial advisor because financial advisors the more handholding you get, the more expensive it's going to be. But truthfully, like you can put your money in one of those index funds and they've done the studies over time that financial advisors are not actually beating the index funds. So it's like, you know, so it doesn't kind of make sense unless you're hiring financial advisor for more than just managing your funds. So let's just say like for me, I have a financial planner and she's a financial advisor as well. So she, she helps me like she got me the right insurance that i need to get she's helping me get my will together and find an attorney for that so she's helping like holistically my life so it makes

sense for me to hire her but if i was just like hey angelie just help me put my money someplace it's not worth it because the cost for her to do that for me is astronomical whereas i can just go to the vanguard and say put it where she would put it anyway and pay one-tenth that cost so i I tell people to go to our Vanguard, go to our Charles Schwab, go to our Fidelity, put your money in a, in a, in a, either if you're, you're doing a retirement account or a Roth IRA, or if you're not just a regular account, put your money in an, uh, a mutual fund index fund and just put your money every month in that. And you'll be better than most people.

And the fees will be super low. Right. So with the stocks, I mean, obviously with everything going on in the world right now, when everything hit, obviously I like looked at my stocks. I'm like, Oh my God, I just like lost a shit ton of money. Should we be moving our money around when it's kind of a volatile time in life? Or should we just be kind of letting things take their course? So we're going to steal a line from one of my faves, Elsa.

Let it go. So no, I'm the worst singer. So no, so it all depends. So if you are, you don't look a day over 16, but let's just say you were. Oh my God. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said on this podcast. I'm sorry. I do have like the beauty filter on zoom right now.

Let's just say you were 60 ready to retire at 65. Then I might say, Hey, you've got your money in retirement and things are really crazy right now. You might want to pull a lot of your money out of, um, you might want to pull some of your money out, not pull it actually out of the retirement account, but into safer assets. You might say, you know, I'm going to pull, I'm totally leaving stocks alone right now because it's super crazy and I'm going to need my money in the next five years. But if you're like you, 16, you have a long time to go. So long. No reason. There's no reason to be pulling money out

because remember I said over time, the stock market is going to yield on average 10% a year. So that means there's some years it's going to yield positive 50 and some years it's going to yield negative 40. But over time, it will balance out to about 10% a year. So you have time and you'll make your money back. Now, what you don't want to do is pull it out when the market is down, if you still have time, because then you lock in the loss. So imagine being on a roller coaster and you're like, okay, I love this roller coaster. It's so much fun. And then it gets to the bottom and you jump off. That means you never get a chance to experience the highs because you've jumped off so soon. It was eventually going to go back up high again. So we've had some of the

best months in the stock market you know over the last like month and some change and so imagine and when everyone was freaked out because we had like the two worst um stock market drops in history I think it was either February I think it was February or March in March people were freaking out people were pulling pull pull pull pull and then instantly the next month or two we had some of the best months in history so if you would have pulled your money out you would have missed out on all those gains and growth but so like I said it makes sense if you're older and you're ready to retire because your heart can't take it literally and figuratively, you know, but not when you have time, you know, you have time, like, you know, but you want to be mindful.

So I wouldn't, for example, Hertz, um, it's going bankrupt. So if you knew that a company that you're heavily invested in is not going to make it through the pandemic, then that would make sense to pull your money out, you know? So you want to be mindful of that. But, um, many companies are, you know, on the other end, we'll see them do better. But if you know that you are heavily invested in the industry, that's not going to be good for a very long time. Then that might be where you want to make a move. Wow. Jack, Becca, do you have anything else about your personal lives? I mean, I do. And I'm sure this is kind of, it goes along with a lot of questions that I saw on the Lady Gang Facebook group. So I'm looking to buy my first house and I have no idea

what the I'm doing with anything. Like there were so many questions on the Facebook group too, where it's like, do I put 20% down? If I have more money, do I put more? Does that help me at all? Help. So when you're looking to buy your first house, know that there are a few things you're going to look at. So if you're going to get a mortgage, they're going to look at your credit score. So you want to have a decent credit score. You want to have at least a 750. Here's why. Because if your credit score is below that, you're not going to qualify for the best interest. interest. So it might not seem like a big deal, but a difference in one point in interest, like yes, because you might pay an extra 500 bucks a month because your credit score wasn't

amazing. So you don't have to have an 850 credit score. 750 is really the beginning of perfect credit. Literally your mortgage lender will say, do you have a 740? Do you have a 750? Then you're good to go. So that's first things first, get your credit score there. So there are five components of your credit score the most two two most important components are payment history that's 35 that means do you pay those people do you pay on time so do that right second biggest component of your credit score is 30 and that is your your your um amounts owed that means what you could owe versus what you do so especially as it relates to your your credit cards so meaning like I could owe, because I have a, let's just say a $10,000 card, and my limit is $5,000 on a $10,000

card. That means I am 50% utilization. That's what I am with that card. That's too high. You want to get your utilization per card and collectively, so they look at each card individually, in the average, you really want to get under 30%. 30% is the new maximum, you know? And so the reason why is because if you are close to the max of your card then when people are going to lend to you they know that you have other finance financial responsibilities that might take precedence before you pay them but if you're like oh i'm under 30 that means you have 70 left of the card they're like oh so if if jack is like oh you know she owes us i don't have to worry like oh my gosh she also owes this person and this person so pay down your balances so one of the things i do too

to raise my credit score. This is like a little cute little trick that I figured out. So I call it my jump like Jordan. So I know LeBron, he's cute and whatever, but I grew up in the Jordan era. So this is my jump like Jordan trick. You're going to get a credit card that you have a zero balance to. If you don't, you can certainly get one for that, like, or a secured card. A secured card is when you put down your own security deposit on a card. Typically secured cards are for people who either have no credit and need to build it or have bad credit and need to fix it.

So you're going to get a credit card that has a zero balance. And then you're going to look at your cheapest bill, say, for example, Netflix, right? Or Disney Plus, no judgment. So Disney Plus, I think it's like 13 bucks a month. So I'm going to say, hey, Disney Plus, instead of me paying you from my bank account,

I'm actually going to put a credit card in the middle of the transaction. Disney Plus is going to charge my credit card every single month at $12. and then I'm going to have my bank account pay that credit card every single month, $12. When you pay off a debt in full, it's like magic. Your credit score jumps like Jordan because it's like you paid off a debt. It's like you paid off a house, a car. So it doesn't matter. It could be $5. It could be 500. It could be 500,000. The amount doesn't matter. It's the

habit of paying off a debt in full, in completion. So literally, I literally have my jump like Jordan cards. So I have two of them that I do that with, and I just leave them home. So I have Netflix on one, Disney Plus on the other, and my bank accounts pay them off in full every month, and those companies charge them every month. Now, here's the key. You don't want to pay them off too soon. So you don't want to be late. So you want to pay them off by the due date, right? But you want to pay it off after the statement date, because you want them to say, hey people who are judging she used a card so if you let's just say you charge the card you have disney plus charges a card on the 12th he paid off on the 13th that might be too soon they didn't

even get a chance to tell that you used it oh you see what i mean so the statement date is usually on the actual statement it's like the day that they issue you the statement so it will be like oh i get my statement usually around the 16th or then pay the card off on the 18th and so let's to say the due date is the 25th so just make sure you pay it off by the 25th but not before the 18th because you want someone to tell that you've used the card so if you do that that like helped my credit score jump like jordan wow that's a good good trick never knew that do we have any other like quick tricks so actually like one of my um my um my i always say my co-workers but people who work for me her name is sylvia she's like tiffany i love you look at my daughter's credit

scores is 733 her daughter's 18 her name is lauren and i was like um well first let's tell lauren let me hold something but for so second i was like that it's because sylvia did something called piggybacking and i told sylvia that she should and that's when you add someone on as an authorized user to your card so lauren literally is not responsible lauren is 18 and she didn't think know anything about credit but sylvia pays her credit card off in full every month so she was like hey daughter i'm gonna add you to the card so when i paid off it looks like we paid it off and so she's been doing that with lauren so even though lauren doesn't have access to the card she's not using the card she gets to inherit her mother's good behavior so you don't

have to be good you just have to know somebody who's good my mom did that for me it was really yeah she did it was so helpful like i had credit before i should have but it's a great way to raise your credit score when literally you don't have to do anything other than know someone now i don't suggest they call it like sometimes people will let you buy trade lines that means when you buy somebody else's good behavior on a particular card i don't suggest doing that because you want to know the person because typically you have to share your social security number so i did this for my little sister but so you're not trying to share it with like jojo down the street you know so you're going to want to do like mom dad grandma grandpa but be mindful because i had a friend of

mine. She was in her twenties and she did this with her grandma. And when she went to go get a mortgage, they were like, how do you have credit history? That's older than you. And she's like, exactly. Her grandma put her on like an old card. It was like, this card is like from like the seventies. Let's just fix that one way. I don't know. It must've been on your end. she was like i was good since birth so you just want to be mindful that the numbers make sense but yeah that's a quick way to raise your credit score love it my user piggybacking um paying off a card in full every month and honestly just paying the people what they owe them right this kind of goes along with what you're saying is that we got a lot of messages on facebook that

our ladies were like i have high interest credit cards i've they've screwed themselves right like they did the thing that you're not supposed to do and they have $20,000 on a card. They pay $4,000 a month. They can never get it paid off. Should they take out a loan to pay it off? I can't afford not paying the minimum. I'm in this debt circle. So what do we do about, we got our first credit card. We got excited about it. We didn't realize we actually had to pay it back. The debt cycle. And then it becomes a cycle. It follows you your whole life. Yeah. So yeah, I would say, so if your credit score, for some people, their credit score might be decent. You might be able to get a balanced transfer card. That's literally where you get a card that is fresh. It starts with

a zero interest rate. So you could transfer it. That means, because right now, the reason why their payment is so high is because they're not just paying what they owe. They're paying what they owe plus the interest. Like at 22% sometimes. Which is crazy. Exactly. And so if you can transfer some of that to a balanced transfer card where the interest is zero, that means all of your money actually goes to what you owe. So you can try that first, but typically you have to have decent credit for a balance transfer card. So that's one. And they might not take the whole balance. So that's one. But I would look into getting a personal loan. I would go to a credit union. If you're not a member of a credit union, join one today. Because credit unions typically

are nonprofit organizations. And so what that means is that nonprofits are not there to make a profit, hence nonprofit. So their fees and their interest rates are notoriously low in comparison If you were to go to a bank or otherwise, so you can go to a credit union, see if you can borrow that lump sum of money. So instead of paying 22% interest, maybe the credit union is charging you 6%. So not that it's interest free, but at least that more of the money is going to what you owe. So it's going to be more manageable.

So that's what I would do. It is a hard, it's a hard thing. So, but if, so if you can, let's just say that you're paying the $4,000 a month and you're, you're able to, even though it's really hard, but you transfer your money to a credit union, if you can continue to pay that 4,000, way more of that money is actually going to go to the principal and it's going to go down faster. And so you'll see, so instead of paying it off in like five years, maybe you'll get it done in two and a half. Wow. That's great advice. Great advice. Okay, Jack, back to your mortgage. So where were we? Get a good interest rate?

Yeah. So one, you're wanting to get like a decent credit score, 750 or above to get a good interest rate. So that's one. Two, they're going to look at your DT, which is your debt to income ratio. That just means how much debt are you paying out in comparison to how much money are you making? So basically you want to pay your debt down because they're not wanting, like I mentioned before, they're not wanting to see someone who owes a lot of other people. So if you're making $100,000 a year and your debt is costing you $60,000 a year, they're like, you're likely not going to be able to afford to continue to pay us. So pay down your debt because that's the second most important number when they're looking to get you a mortgage. So once you have those numbers in

a decent space, then you're going to want to look for a real term and you're going to want to look for a mortgage broker. Shop around, you know, see what you can be pre-approved for. So you have your good credit score. So what I do is when I was looking for a mortgage broker, I didn't let anyone pull my credit score because every time someone pulls your credit score, you can potentially lose points. So I went to this website called credit scorecard.com. It gives you your FICO score. There's a bunch of different scores, but most lenders still use FICO. It gives you your FICO score. It's F R E E free, free, free. What you know about me? Yes. I love it. It's free. And I think it's like discover runs. I don't have a discover card, but what I like about them,

that's actually free. And even when my mortgage broker pulled my credit score, it was the only site that was exactly the same as my credit score. I was like, Oh wow, you guys are not liars. So go to credit scorecard.com, get your credit score. And as you shop with different mortgage brokers, insist that they plug in your credit score that you're giving them into their equation to figure out what's your interest rate until you decide, Hey Bob, I'm going with you. Then he can pull your credit. Like they'll tell you like, Oh no, I need to put you. No, you don't. Not for a quote, just give me a quote of what you think that my interest rate is going to be. And if you can't, I'll go someplace else. Okay. Fine. Fine. Fine. What's your credit score? It's a seven 50. You

know, then like I said, they'll, they'll pull their numbers and you'll see who's going to give you the best interest rate. Obviously the lower, the better, like right now, interest rates are at historic lows. And if you have decent credit, you can literally get a mortgage for under 3%, which is like unheard of. Literally they've never been this low before. Yeah. I think we just refinanced our house for two nine what that's like incredible i mean yeah i can only imagine what because what was it before your interest rate before i i think it was like at four that's oh my gosh i know you're saving hundreds if not thousands of dollars it's crazy it's really a and becca's doing a refinance too we're all refinancing yeah i was gonna say that this is

a nightmare no but this is the perfect time to refinance honestly because if you can lock in an interest rate of under 3%. That's unheard of. Basically you're getting your house for like what you actually paid for it. So yeah, no, absolutely. You're wanting to do that. Now, the only thing that's weird about buying a house now is that housing prices are weirdly up, even though the interest rates are weirdly down. So my concern for you, Jack, is that you might purchase a house that's not actually worth what you're paying for. Because there's not much inventory, So that drives prices up, but it doesn't keep prices up. So the last recession in 2008, I bought my house right before that recession.

I bought it for, it was a condo, a two bedroom condo, and I bought it for 220. And every once in a while, I'll go on realtor.com to see that, you know, it's been sold several times since I, since I lost it. I lost it to foreclosure because of the last recession. It's never gotten back up to 220. No one has ever paid 220. you know so i overpaid because it was right before the recession i didn't know you know that a recession was coming yeah so that'd be my only concern now is that a lot of homes are going 50

a hundred thousand dollars over asking and it's like is the home really worth that but at the same time i'm like oh i want you to lock in the rate i know it's like how do you yeah how do you level those together it's it's scary i think it's different for us because jack you're in los angeles Like you're in an urban sprawl where there's so many hat, like it is actually the, you know, the housing market in LA will continue to grow. I was going to say, if you know your market, then, you know, like, for example, Brooklyn, I'm like, it's just, it means now. Yeah.

It's, it's, it's going up and up. Everybody like people, even in Midtown are like, no, I want to live in Brooklyn since it's like a funky, cool place to live, you know? No, thanks. And so like, so you would just, so you would know your neighborhood, you know? And so it would make sense. But you just want to be mindful of that. But now, honestly, it's a good time to purchase if you can get a really good deal.

So that's what you're looking for. You're going to get your realtor. You're going to get your mortgage person. Definitely, what you're wanting to do, my father would say, he who pays the piper determines the tune. So this is what I tell to the Generation Z and millennials. I'm like, basically, whoever pays the DJ gets to determine what music he's going to play. Okay, I get that one. right so what that means is this is that your realtor is likely going to be like oh my gosh

i have a mortgage person oh my gosh i have a um an inspector oh my gosh i have a because if the if the realtor is bringing them in then who are they loyal to you or the realtor not you you know and so you're wanting to get your own inspector so that inspector is going to give you the real true tea about the house. Because if the, if the realtor brings them in, know that that realtor likely brings them in over and over and over again. And that, that inspector is not going to want to piss the realtor off by telling you like, yeah, the house is sinking. And so, this is such an interesting story because this happened to me. Really? I, this is a great, I mean, I'm going to tell this so fast because it has nothing to do with this, but I got,

I had a realtor who I love and had this, my second house I've bought, um, had a, a guy that he said, you get this guy, my inspector will come out, inspected the house. And we were like, okay. And he's like, yeah, the house is in good shape. There's like a little bit of something on the roof, like, but overall, this is a good purchase. We bought the house and we lived in it for like six months. We're like, it's just so weird.

The heat and the air conditioning only comes out of one vent. We opened the grates on the floor of the kitchen and they went to dirt. They weren't connected to anything. the fact that the inspector never noticed that or brought it to our attention is like shocking and so we had to spend like 25 grand putting in a whole new hvac and so that's the kind of thing anyway that's a different that's a house buying episode but no no but that's it's important to know those things like having the right yeah so you want to get that and then you don't always have to put 20 down you can get get a federally back loan and you could put down as little as

3.5%. Um, and say, so putting down too much is actually not necessarily a good thing because it actually doesn't lower your monthly, your monthly spend, your monthly, um, um, what you have to pay out as far as your mortgage. So I wouldn't, I don't necessarily know that you have to put over 20% unless you're just buying the house cash. Right. Like we bought our house cash because I was just like, look, I'm not losing my house ever again. You know? So I was just like, bam. And it was a foreclosure. So we renovated it from top to bottom, but now I don't have to worry about a mortgage. So, you know, but putting down 20% will help you avoid something called PMI, private mortgage insurance. And that is usually like one to like one and a half percent of the

cost of the home. So you might pay like an extra a hundred, 300, $400, $500, even dollars a month because you don't have 20% in equity in that house. You can, you could always refinance when you do to get rid of the PMI, but just know that not putting down 20% might lead to that. There are some loans that you can put down. You don't have to put down 20% where you can work out not having to pay PMI, but that's something that people have to be considerate of. And yeah, just go shopping, figure out exactly the kind of home that you're wanting and just start looking now and get a realtor that you feel is not going to be pushing you toward something that they're wanting you to get because it makes them more commissioned. Make sure that you feel really

comfortable with your realtor and don't be afraid to fire your realtor if they're not a good fit. Well, Tiffany, when we come back, we have a few more questions for you. We're running out of time. There's so much you're going to have to come back like a hundred more times. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back more about what we should be doing with our dollars. You're listening to the Lady Gang. Okay. So we're back. I want to ask you just a couple things. the fire movement. What do you think? Financial independence, retire early. Like, is this a fad? Is this something we should actually be into? Um, I don't think it's a fad, but sometimes it's a, it's a little extreme for me. Cause it's like beans for nine years and like, you know what I

mean? Like, so you look super, super cheap. You say, Oh, you might need for like, you know, this period of time. And then it allows you to retire when you're like 30 or 40 or like super young. Um, but oftentimes it means you're also on a budget for the rest of your life as well. and so like and for some people they're it's worth it to them like okay i'm making this money i'll live off of 25 if it's super simply for eight nine years and then you know then i've saved most of my money i've invested it and those investments will yield me say like 60 100 000 a year and so i live underneath that budget for the rest of my life which like i said it's not necessarily a bad thing it just depends on like how you want to live for me we don't want to live that way

no thank you we still want to we want to buy the shoes honey um fun the next question was how do you save money when you barely are getting by sometimes you can't and that's okay so first you have to ask yourself do i need to drop down to get my noodle on girl drop down and get your noodle on girl so this is your noodle budget your noodle budget is your if you had to eat ramen noodles budget your bare bones basic budget that means no hair done no nails done no everything did, right? And so sometimes in life that happens where you have to get down to the bare minimum. And if you're feeling like I have to at least get close to my noodle budget, then see if there's savings there. And if there's not, you're going to have to learn to earn more because you can only

save but so much. And so you're going to have to learn, are there things I can do? Am I really good at writing? Can I do copy editing? Can I be a VA on the side? Do I cook really well? Learn how to earn more if you're, if you're not able to save more. Wow. That's great advice. Um, how should you financially prepare for having your first child? Hmm. Let's meet my husband working on this right now. Um, so definitely asking yourself, like, what are your goals? Are you trying to send the baby to college? Um, are you, are you wanting to get another house? Um, so if even before you conceive you, like I've started saving, I call my husband Superman. So I literally have a savings account called super baby where i put money every month aside for super baby because you want to

speak it into existence um but i'm also thinking to myself too like okay as soon as baby is born you know i'm gonna i'm gonna put money in their custodial account like i do this for my niece and my nephew my nieces they're they're everybody's under the age of four so i set aside money for them every month in their custodial accounts these are basically investment accounts where because they're too young you know i'm the custodian of and their parents are the custodian enough, but I just add to them. So you would do that for your own baby too, ideally. And set aside like even for a super girl, my, my, my stepdaughter, she's 13. And so we pay her, we pay her $6,000 a year to work for my company. And 6,000 is the exact amount of money that you could put

in a Roth IRA. So super girls already, she doesn't get any money really in her hand, but we're putting that money toward her Roth IRA. She's only 13. By the time she's 30, you know, she can have maybe a few hundred thousand dollars set aside for her retirement account. And she's not even ready to retire yet. So making those pre-plans. So start by saving and asking yourself where and how do you want to live when baby gets here? Set aside for that. But you don't have to be pregnant to start saving. I would start saving now. My parents do something for my niece and nephew. Pretty much it's like a tax break. There's some sort of account for college that they don't get taxed on the money. 529? Yes, that's it. So is that something that's also good? Which one do

you prefer? So the 529 is great, especially if you know for sure that you really want this kid to go to school because you can also use 529s now, not just for college, but they're letting people use it for daycare, for other schooling, for private school. So because they knew that college, these days, who knows? So when you put your money in a 529, you're right. It's you save on taxes. It's, it's, you don't have to pay taxes on that money that you've set aside in that 529 plan. For me, I opted out of doing a 529 for Supergirl because I was like, I don't know what college is going to look like. I rather this custodial plan. So I don't get the tax benefit, but, um, she can use that money. However she likes, you know, like if we're not here

anymore. Um, so instead I want to set up like when she's 21, she would get this. If something happened to her father and I, when she's 25, she would get this. When she's 30, she would get this because if I was 21, you gave me tons of money. I would totally trick it up. So we don't want that for her. That is so true. Our very last question, Tiffany is, and I think it's a really good one to end on the best thing to do with your money. Once you start making a little decent salary and they said, should I pay off credit cards, pay off my student loans, get a certain amount in savings, invest in the stock market, save for a house, buy life insurance. What are the highest to lowest priorities? First things first, retirement, retirement, retirement. So I've named my old

lady self. Her name is Wanda. Wanda's having a good time. Yes. So first things first, you got to take care of Wanda because Wanda's not trying to work at 80. Hello, that's your job. It's your younger self's job to look after your older self. So Wanda first. Second, budget for real life. How am I living now? Let me pay my bills, yada, yada, yada, right? Then third, yes, certainly lean into your debt, but your high cost debt. So that is your credit card debt. That's debt that has double digit interest because that's expensive debt. Third, is that third? No, fourth, then start investing. So there's two types of investing. There's investing for retirement, that's for Wanda, that's mandatory. Then there's investing for wealth. So once you have gotten rid of your

high cost debt, don't wait to get debt free to start investing for wealth. So start investing for wealth once that high cost debt is gone, because you can make, remember we said in the market, you can make 10%. So if you can make 10% and if your debt is costing you 20 and you're only going to make 10% in the market, hell, I'll get rid of the debt. No, right. Yes. But if your debt is costing you, say like your mortgage or your student loans costing you 5%, but you can make 10 in the market, well, start investing because you can offset the loss of your debt. So fourth is like start investing for wealth, whether that looks like starting a business, investing in real estate, joining the market. Like I said, you can just do a mutual fund simultaneously while you're

paying down your less expensive debt. So let's just say you have an extra 500 bucks a month. You might put 250 towards your less expensive debt and then 250 toward investing for wealth. Investing for wealth is to improve your current lifestyle and to leave a legacy. Investing for retirement means you're going to be able to maintain your current lifestyle. People will always be like, ooh, when I retire, I'm going to be on an island. I'm like, are you on an island now are you well you're not gonna be on the island right unless you also invest for wealth retirement is to maintain your current lifestyle you guys we gotta make more podcasts tiffany um is amazing the budget nista you can visit her at

the budget nista.com right now or at her instagram which is also the budget nista this class that she has this live richer Academy looks incredible. And I saw on your links, the links are right there to follow along. If you've, uh, thought that she sounded like your cup of tea, as far as getting your money straight, I recommend going and purchasing that class. Um, and we're going to have you back a million times. Congratulations. Um, on all of your success, you were fat. I was telling you before I started your fabulous on queer. I, we loved you so much. Um, and, uh, We weren't here for a long time, but we were here for a good time. Thanks for listening, and make sure to rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

We have new episodes of Lady Gang every Tuesday and Thursday. Follow us on social media at TheLadyGang. Follow us personally at Kelty, most importantly, at Becca, and at Jack Vanek. The Lady Gang Network is produced by Will Sterling, Steve Delamater, Kirsten Woodward, and Elizabeth Baquet. Thanks for rating and reviewing wherever you get your podcasts and tune in for new episodes every single week.