Food Stamps to Financial Freedom w/ Yanely Espinal (Bestie Ep) #1013

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to had to Money. I'm Joel and I am
Mat and today we're talking food stamps to financial freedom
with Yanelli Espinal. That's right.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Our guest today has journeyed from food stamps to financial freedom,
and we're going to hear all about how she was
able to accomplish that. We are joined today by Yanelli,
who is also known as Misbe Helpful. She is the
first generation daughter of immigrants. She was born in Brooklyn,
and it didn't take her long to rack up twenty

(00:48):
thousand dollars in credit card debt before she realized that
this was not the life that she wanted to lead.
She started her career as a teacher and then parlayed
that into serving as the director of educational outreach at
next Gen Personal Finance. And now she's recently published her
first book, Mind Your Money, and she's currently actually on
a political roller coaster right across the country where she's

(01:10):
convincing lawmakers to make personal finance a high school graduation requirement.
We are excited to talk about all of that and
more today. Janellie, thank you for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Oh, thank you so much for having me. What's up guy,
I'm still excited for this conversation. I really am.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
We're stoked too. We're stoked. We we We saw you
speak in person last year at fin Con, which is
the nerdy conference that money. Yeah, ridiculous people who are
interested in money to a ridiculous for money and media
meets right, and Youanelli rocked it. She was I think
probably the best speaker of the evening for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Really.
Then when when you have the book come out, We're like, okay,

(01:47):
well it's time to get Youanelly on the show for Yeah,
it's been it's been too How have we not done this?
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
But the first first question we ask everyone who comes
on the show, you, Nelly, is what do you like
to supplore John Matt and I. We drink a lot
of craft Yeah, not a.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Lot, just the right amount. Yeah, not too much. Absolutely,
we drink expensive beers. It's something you like to spend
more than the average person on. Uh, it's something that
we we like to prioritize in the here and now,
even while we're being trying to be smart wise with
our money, save and invest for the future. But what
is that for you?

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Right? For me? I would say it's definitely getting deep tissue,
full body massages. I am like, I don't know, it's
so weird because like I'm not like you know, and
I go ma asaka or anything, like I'm not going
and having like a personalized like masseuse in my home
all day every day. But I work a lot on
my computer a lot, I exercise a lot, and I
feel like because I'm so passionate, so animated, and like

(02:43):
I use my hands to talk and I hold tension
like in my body, in my face and my neck,
my arm. So after like a really intense week, I
just feel the pressure, like the tension like in my body,
and there's nothing like a full body deep tissue massage,
like really getting the knots out of my back, super relaxed,
seeing just letting go of everything. It's almost meditative too,
because my mind's like not really thinking about anything and

(03:05):
just enjoying, you know, this moment of relaxation. And so
for an hour every month at least I try and go,
if not more than once a month, depending on how
hectic the month is. But I'll sometimes spend you know,
upwards of two hundred fifty dollars if it's like at
a fancy resort or spo or something. And if I'm
traveling to really you know, get a nice, high quality
deep tissue massage.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well that is yeah, that sounds awesome. I'm in for that.
And so you said, like, yeah, once a month or so,
which is not cheap. I will say too that that
is the only time I'm able to shut my mind off,
is like a massage, and I don't do it enough.
And so see when I do it, I shut my mind,
I fall asleep.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Yeah, it is so that do a lot of people
do fall asleep? Oh yeah, I just I don't know.
I enjoy it. I'm I'm rested, but I'm definitely.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
A week all the way.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, so yeah, you get it more off like me.
For me, it's like once every like two or three
years tops.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
No, something I'm trying to prioritize to you. I'm trying
to do.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, Joel's into the massage, just keeping back into it.
But well, okay, thank you for sharing that, you Nelly.
And by the way, yeah, two fifty I mean that's
that's a lot, so a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
That's a lot like and that's really only when I'm
like at a fancy resort or like, you know, if
I'm if I'm out traveling or something, I met a
hotel that pretty much that is like the only place
you get a massage is gonna be that price. But
for the most part, when I go to like my
local massage place, it'll be like one hundred and twenty bucks.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Okay did they did? They give you the car, but
you get like ten of them, and they like.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
I see the number of free massages I've got, and
I kind of feel bad.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
I'm like, again, I'm talking about I love it your
frequent fly You're like, you want to be frugal while you're.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Spending your money exactly, That's right.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, just because it's a splurge doesn't mean you shouldn't
be kind of smart about it.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
It's like, hey, let's still find a way to say
somebody here, but you know, let's let's kind of talk
about your your money history, and I just kind of
like your personal history a little bit.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
You start your book talking about and interaction maybe an
altercation that you had with your sister.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
You were along with her, but what.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Happened and what did you learn about money from sort
of getting this this head smack.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, So I definitely got smacked with my sister. I
describe it in the book as like she knocked on
the top of my head, like she would knock on
the door, and if my sister often did that. So
I kind of grew up in an environment where it's
you know, tough love like and not that it was
like extremely abusive or physically violent, but oftentimes get smacked
around or like you know, knuckles on the head. And
so in this case, I was in the backyard. I
was just sweeping through my chores, and my sister yelled

(05:25):
out to me in the backyard and asked me where
my mom had went. And I, you know, oftentimes mom
would go in and out of the house. My mom
was always you know, at appointments at church or you know,
parent teacher conferences or whatever kind of related to kids
or her own hobbies. But I honestly couldn't remember like
where Mom went. And so I was thinking, like, did
she go to the doctor, did she go to the
post office? Like I don't remember, And then and then

(05:46):
it hit me that she told me she was going
to an appointment at the welfare office, which she called
the fetchal fey and I in my book, I had
specifically mentioned that term because I didn't know what it was.
But later on, as an adult, I saw on paper
that she had a face to face appointment in order
to renew her food stamps, and it just I put
two and two together, and I was like, Oh, she
had been trying to pronounce face to face, but she's

(06:09):
she's saying it with her thick Dominican accent fitch a fee.
But I'm put tunes together that she was going to
an appointment at the welfare office. So I yelled that
out at the top of my lungs in the backyard,
and my sister was so upset at me that I
would yell and tell everyone on our block the you know,
our personal business and to you know, put mom's business

(06:29):
on blasts like that, and so she was really mad
at me, and I, while I didn't understand exactly why,
you know, she was so upset, I knew that it
had something to do with money. And the message, the
clear message that I got from my sister, you know,
during that incident, was that like, we don't talk about money,
We don't tell people what we have, what we don't have.
We don't tell our personal business like that, and talking
about money is more taboo and it's a private thing.

(06:49):
So you know, from a very young age. I think
I was probably eight or nine years old when that
happened and never remember kind of being shushed in silenced
around money.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, I feel like that is maybe not exactly the
way it played out for you. But that's that's kind
of a lesson that a lot of us learn in childhood, right,
is that money is the taboos not to be talked about.
It's like I was telling math the other day my
oldest daughter, she said, Dad, how much money do we have?
Like for real overall? And you want to entertain those
questions and have a discussion about you don't want But
a lot of parents want to shut that down yet, right,

(07:20):
and so we have what's your take on I guess
having money conversations, especially with kids. I don't think you
have any of your own yet. But but why is
it so important to open up the conversation around money
and inside of a home?

Speaker 3 (07:33):
Yeah? So actually in that same section of the book,
I talk about the reason why it's so important to
talk about this at an early age. There was actually
a study conducted with college students, and it showed that
parents who avoided talking about money predicted the worst type
of problematic credit card usage among those college students. So
they really they looked at the experiment and they broke
down the students into groups of the parents who talked

(07:54):
about money in a positive way, the parents who talked
about money in a negative way, and the parents who
avoided money talk like just never talked about money at all.
And you would think that the parents who talked about
money negatively would be the ones to pass down problematic,
you know, money behaviors to their children, but that was
not the case. They were not nearly as bad as

(08:14):
the problematic behaviors demonstrated by the students whose parents never
talked about money at all. So for me, like, and
you're right, I don't have children on my own, but
I'm the world's best auntie. You have ten nieces, and
you know I've helped them open RAWI race because Sodio
raw a race. I've found their five twenty nine plans
for their birthdays every year. I mean, I'm very involved
in sharing with them, opening and talking with them about
what I'm doing, why I'm doing it. And I think

(08:36):
that As early as kids start to ask you for
money or talk about money to you, that's the perfect
opportunity at that age to start talking to them about
the value of money, how hard it is to earn money,
and what different things you can do with money, because most,
you know, kids think, oh, you have money, you can
spend it. Then I'll realize, you know, you can spend,
you can save, you can gift, you can invest. There's
lots of different things that you can do with money.
And those lessons can be imparted on kids as young

(08:57):
as three, four or five years old.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Yeah, And if you don't talk about it, you carries
that stigma with you into your own adulthood. But aside
from children, I mean, I think there's a lot of
folks out there and they are not talking about money.
How would you recommend for folks just to make this
a part of not only their life and something that
they're interested in, but to kind of get the ball
rolling and talking about it with their friends.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah. I think with friends and family, depending on the
relationship that you have, the specific relationship that you have.
Every relationship is different, whether it's a friendship or you know,
a courtship of the romantic relationship or you know, a
mother daughter relationship. Every relationship is very is distinct an individuals.
So I would say, think about the relationship that you're
involved in and kind of match that vibe in that aura,

(09:39):
because it's really weird if you have a relationship that
you know hasn't ever really trespassed those you know, thresholds
of talking about things that are a little personal or
considered to be a little taboo, then all of a
sudden you just jump in one day at lunch like,
all right, so let's let's have about money. How much
do you have your four one K? What are your
goals for retirement? That it just seems so bizarre and
out of place. It's not going to be well received.

(10:00):
So I always tell people lead with a story and
lead from the heart. So a heartfelt story, I think
is the key to transitioning into any conversation point around money.
That again, regardless of the nature of your relationship, a
story can help with that. So in my case, talking
about my talking to my parents about retirement was was
tricky because they both, you know, were not prepared for retirement.

(10:21):
They still aren't even though they're in retirement, and their
children Luckily, they have nine children, so our big family
has been able to pull together money to help them out.
But having this conversation initially with them a few years
before my dad retired was really tough because they're going
to be defensive. They're going to feel hurt that we're
talking about something that they clearly are underprepared for, and
you know, we don't want them to feel like we're

(10:42):
blaming them, or we're judging them, or that you know,
this is their fault, or that we're ashamed or disappointed.
So what we did was I personally just told my siblings,
let's just tell them a story about a friend who
has gone through a similar experience where their parents. And
fortunately for me, I had a friend who was literally
dealing with a situation with make up a false story.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
But let me tell you this.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
It wasn't a folk that I promised. It was a
real friend. And that's why listening to podcasts like this
like this is so helpful, because you're constantly listening to
people's stories and listening to experiences from people that they're
sharing on podcasts like this, So you feel free to
use me. But I tell people all the time, just
say a story listen. I was listening to a podcast.
I heard this girl and Alie. She was talking about
her family and how her parents were not prepared for
retirement but they never really talked about it, and so

(11:30):
when it was time for her parents to retire, the
parents were assuming that the children were going to be
funding their retirement every month and paying for everything, but
the children didn't realize that was the expectation, so they
weren't prepared financially to do that, and so there was
this big clash and people weren't really on the same
page in their family, and as you could imagine, that
would lead to fighting, and that could lead to a
lot of miscommunication and all kinds of things. So instead,

(11:51):
it would have been smarter for them to talk about
it way beforehand. So I'm thinking about how that might
apply to our relationship, our family, our friendship, and how
great it would be for to start talking about these
things now. Maybe look up a couple of questions that
we could start with, and that way we prevent ourselves
from repeating the types of mistakes that you know, people
like in Nelly have made because they just didn't talk
about it before. With enough time, that's so.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Much less threatening, right, that's such a great way to
begin it as opposed to like where you at, like
what's going on with your money? And it really it
really opens up I think the so it gives somebody
the ability of the room to have the conversation as
opposed to feeling like they have to defend their position
or give a full throated answer to exactly where they
stand with their personal finances.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
Because they're nine kids, are staging an intervention, right exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
We definitely did do that. We definitely did. But the
thing is too with that, like everybody's going to agree,
everyone's going to agree that, yes, in that story, I
should have started sooner. The family should have talked about
this sooner. The expectations should have been made clear sooner.
So it's really difficult for somebody to hear that and
say no, no, no, I don't want to talk to
you about my money. Like it's very it's so visceral,

(12:58):
it's so real that it's true. Most people don't when
you come up with a story, when you start off
the bat with a story like that, you automatically all
start off on the same page of yeah, we definitely
want to prevent you know, we don't want to repeat that.
We don't want to do that. So let's be smarter.
Let's start talking more, you know, ahead of time. And
that's just an easy way to all get on the
same page.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Okay, So, speaking of stories, let's go back to your
story a little bit. You are no dummy. You went
to again, one of the finest institutions in higher education.
You went to Brown University.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
I did.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, so you're smarty pants. And for folks out there
who might wonder how someone so smart could get into
financial trouble, tell us about that. There's a Sometimes people
think IQ he equals good money habits, but no, there's
a massive disconnect there, right.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, there definitely is a disconnect, because I mean, I
remember just really loving learning. I got so lucky in
elementary school and I had a gro group of teachers
who just made me love reading. They made me love
learning through reading. And once I got past that point of,
you know, feeling like reading was a chore and not
wanting to read, like I couldn't stop, I would be
hiding under the covers with like reading my Little Babysitters

(14:01):
Club books, and my mom would catch me and be like,
you have to go to see give me the book. Like,
So for me, loving learning started really really early. But
one of the things I noticed is that that was
I was only able to demonstrate that passion for learning
in the academic courses that I had, I mean going
to school formerly. You know, you have these specific classes
on your roster and your schedule every year, and that's,

(14:22):
you know, that was my time to shine. That was
my opportunity to you know, show my passion for learning
and to perform right and excel academically. So because I
took classes in you know, science and social studies, English language, yards,
I took French, I took Spanish at tik Guard history.
It took so many classes, but I never ever once
got a class about money management. I never once got

(14:43):
a class about personal finance. And so I felt when
I got to college, I felt this pressure to fit
in with all of these wealthier students that were around
me that you know, I really clearly was in a
totally different lane from them. You know, my parents did
not have the money to support me, to give me
in a lot once every week, or to you know,
support me in any kind of way financially. So I

(15:03):
was working multiple jobs and you know, to pay for
my textbooks and my school supplies and buy my own laptop.
And I just couldn't come up with the money quickly enough,
no matter how many hours I worked, like working a
minimum wage job at a pizzaia on campus. It wasn't
you know, it was impossible for me to come up
with eighteen hundred dollars within a week or two of
the start of the semester. So I just went down

(15:23):
campus one day on my way to work, and you know,
saw somebody with a clipboard offering me to you know,
get a free T shirt if I signed up for
the credit card. And of course it was a student
credit card, so it was specific for students to help
you pay for your textbooks and your laptop. And it
was the perfect pitch because I literally was going through
trouble trying to figure out how it's going to come
up with money to pay for all these things. So

(15:45):
to me, it just was like, oh, at the clouds
were partying and there was this woman with this clipboard.
It was a magical clipboard, and all I had to
do was fill out this papers and boom, I was
going to be able to solve my problems. And so
I filled out the application, I got my free T shirt.
I went on my way, and two weeks later I
had a shiny plastic credit card in my campus mail
box with my name on it, and I immediately maxed

(16:06):
it out. I bought my laptop, I bought some textbooks,
and I felt so good, like I felt so proud
of myself doing that because I didn't have to bother anyone.
I didn't have to call my sisters and brothers and
ask them for money. I didn't have to bother mom
and dad knowing that they didn't have it and that
I was only going to be adding to their burden.
Because even if they said I don't have the money
right now, I knew that my dad wouldn't stop thinking

(16:28):
about it, and he'd probably have to work extra and
work harder and try to come up with money to
give me because he wouldn't stop thinking about the fact
that I needed money. So I didn't want to add
any stress to my parents already existing burden. So I,
you know, I got the credit card. I started using
it first for things that I needed, and pretty quickly
I realized just how easy it is for you to

(16:48):
swipe that credit card and just buy whatever you want.
So that's I's started to do it. I just went
to the mall and Providence Place. Mall got all my
money forever twenty one h and m you know, I
would go and shop and buy clothes and shoes, and
also it's I would say to the impact of growing
up in poverty, Like every time I asked my mom
for things or my dad for things, they would always

(17:09):
tell me, no, no, Ironedo, you know, there's no money
for that. We don't have the money for you to
get Jordan's. We don't have the money for Nikes, or
for you know, a name brand book bag or a
name brand coat. So I was constantly being told no,
that I couldn't get these things. So in college, having
a credit card and feeling more pressure than ever to
look a certain way and you know, and wear certain brands,
there was nobody there to tell me no. So I

(17:32):
racked up twenty thousand dollars of credit card debt by
the time I graduated. About a year after my college
graduation is when I finally sat down and add up
all of my credit card debt that I had and
one small student loan for a study of broad program
and it was just under twenty one thousand dollars. And
that's when I kind of realized that I had gotten
out of control. I took it too far, and I
had a real problem that I needed to figure out

(17:53):
some way, somehow to solve it.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
I've heard you speak about this before too, and just
how when you receive that credit card, it felt like
you were an official adult, right, And it's just interesting
to kind of contrast that to the lack of formality
that comes with actual financial education and so. And granted
this is back before laws were changed in credit card
companies were actually allowed to be on campus, but it's

(18:17):
interesting how there truly is. And this is maybe an
argument for some of this official sanctioned financial education that
you're pushing for in schools that we'll talk about a
little bit later on. But it's interesting how on one hand,
you had this this formality, this card sometimes and make
them out of metal now to make it feel like
you're even more.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Important, this passport into adulthood.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, in contrast to the fact that there was no
there is nothing on the syllabus, There is no sort
of class that was outline when you're just thrown to
the wolves the financial education, but so, yeah, so you
had twenty thousand dollars a little over that actually, but
what was it? Because I think there's a lot of
folks out there who can continue down that path and

(18:57):
they're not going to really change their behavior until they
somehow see the light and soil they are able to
decide that, oh my gosh, like what am I doing.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
With my life?

Speaker 2 (19:09):
What caused that change in your life?

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Was the epiphany? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (19:12):
What was that point in time that caused you to
want to completely up and how things were going?

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (19:18):
So, I mean it was the There was a book
that I read, which was Susie Ormand's Women and Money.
And before reading that book, I was sitting at my
desk running up the numbers, like putting everything into a spreadsheet,
adding everything up because I had gotten to the point
where I just I felt like an adult. I felt
like I was winning at this hashtag adulting thing.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
I was doing everything to help my parents. Every now
and then I would send them money to help them
pay a bill. You know. I had my own apartment
or I lived with a roommate, so I shared an
apartment with a roommate. I had my full time job
as a teacher, which my parents were so proud of
me for becoming a professional. In their minds, there was
really no difference between a doctor, a lawyer, and a
teacher growing up in their country, in their native country,

(20:00):
dominicaner in public, when a person becomes, specially a woman,
becomes a professional, working professional, that is the you know
utmost level of respect for you in terms of a
career path. It's becoming a professional. And so growing up,
I would always hear them say combierret te tem profession now,
you know, become a professional, makers proud So a teacher
to them was just as much as me saying I'm

(20:20):
a doctor, I'm a lawyer didn't make a difference. And
I wish I had understood the difference between the salary
of a teacher and a lawyer and a doctor, because
I may have, you know, thought a little bit more
about what I you know, what my kind of career
field was right after college. But you know, the moment
came to me looking at my bills, and I just
started crying because I was like, Okay, after I give
mommy some money that she told me she needs. Plus

(20:42):
I paid my rent, I paid off this minimums all
my credit cards for this month. I paid my bills
in my apartment, I bought a train pass, I bought
some groceries, I paid my cell phone. Like I literally
have no money left and it just doesn't make sense, right,
like they say on TikTok the mathe math in and
I got. I got so frustrated that I was like,

(21:02):
how is it possible that I went and got my
my bachelor's degree, my master's degree, man went to one
of the most prestigious schools. I got all the opportunities
that my parents never got, and I'm still in this
paycheck to paycheck cycle just like my parents. Like it
just didn't make sense. So I was just crying, and
so I started pulling up everything and just trying to
do the basic math, like I'm running, putting everything into
a spreadsheet, know how much to actually do? I? Oh,

(21:23):
why is it that I can't afford to pay for things?
And that's when I saw my PDF credit card statement,
which I had been opening that PDF every month and
literally never scrolling past the first page. I would just
look at the balance, the minimum DO and the do date.
That's it. I didn't even look at anything past that.
So I decided Okay, let me scroll past the first page,

(21:46):
and you know, that was actually pretty enlightening. I saw
a whole bunch of interest fees.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, I was like, what is this?

Speaker 3 (21:54):
The total amount charged in interest for the year was
in a little box all the way at the bottom
on the last page of my statement, and that was
a shock to me. It was thousands of dollars. I
was like, wait, what the heck is going on? How
is it possible that when I added up all the
interest on my four different credit cards, it was thousands
of dollars that I had given. I'm thinking that could
have been in my savings account. I could have been

(22:15):
giving that to Mommy and Bobby. I could have been
using that to do all whole kinds of stuff. It
could have been here in my bank account right now
to help me pay for stuff. So I just realized
that interest fees were accruing very quickly, and I knew
I didn't understand this thing called interest. So I actually,
in that moment, can I'm not even gonna lie. I
didn't know what to do. I was just so overwhelmed
and frustrated. So I went to bed and like maybe

(22:37):
a two days later after that, experience. I was in
a pharmacy. I was buying stuff at the Dwayne Read
and you know, stuff that I would always buy after work,
like wasting my money. I was buying candles and lotion trinkets,
whatever little stuff I would I would pick up on
my way home from work. And on the magazine rack
there was a book called Women and Money, and I

(22:58):
was like, you know, I'm a woman, not literally is
yesteras yesterday just crying about money? Maybe this is one
of those moments where the clouds of parties. So I
just picked up the book and I started reading the
first few pages while I was in line, and by
the time I got to the front to pay, I
just put the candles and lotions aside. I was like,
I don't want that stuff. I want this book. And
it was nine dollars and I tell people every chance

(23:21):
I get, I'm like, that was the best nine dollars
that I ever spent, because that book opened my eyes
to basics around money and just to change your relationship
with money and the way you think about money, the
way you treat money, physically lining up your bills and
straightening them out in your wallet, making you know, taking
pride and the money that you've earned, things that I
never got, you know, thought it was never exposed to.

(23:41):
And so I followed the debt repayment plan in that
book and was able to pay off the debt in
eighteen months.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Yeah, man, I love it. I love it. That's so cool. Okay,
So yeah, we talked a little bit about the math.
We also there's there's more to just getting your money
right than just math though. There's a lot of like
mindset work that needs to take place, and that doesn't
necessarily take place over night. We have some questions about
that and more than we'll get to with you, Nelly
right after this.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
All right, we hear back from the break talking with
yan Nelly Espinal and you know, let's talk about swimming
against the current. Because one line that stuck out to
me in your book was when you said that you
thought you wanted some Jordan's. You thought you wanted uggs
so that people would think that you had money. You
wanted people to perceive you a certain way. This is
less about putting together a debt plan, right like, this

(24:37):
is less about the math, and I would say this is.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Tougher to change.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
Can you speak to that for a second, for sure.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
You know.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Actually, so the book came out at the end of
May of twenty twenty three, and around that time I
was listening to a bunch of podcasts. I tuned into
your podcast that week actually, and the episode that you
all dropped it was creepy to me how similar that
episode was to my second chapter of my book, where
I talk about swimming as the current. I mean, I
think it was called Overcoming your Idiot Brain. So whoever

(25:04):
was listening, if you haven't listened to the episode, go
back to Mayo twenty twenty three and pull that up,
because it was so great, Like the examples, even the
language that you guys use was so similar, like fighting back,
like I talk about that in my book. I talk
about how every day you get up and you're like
a soldier and you have to get ready for battle
because at the moment you wake up and take your
first breath, like you're going to start to see ads

(25:25):
on social ads on Spotify, you know, add on the bus.
When you walk out of your house, you turn on
the radio, another ad everybody wants your money, And it's
like this constant game of whack a mole with a
bunch of money hungry moles, and so I put that
in my book because I truly feel like that is
why your brain is your first priority when it comes
to money, Before saving and budgeting and understanding your income

(25:47):
and your cash flow, before any of that stuff, the
brain is number one. And so I talk about swimming
against the current in the book because I feel like
for a lot of people, once you learn the math stuff,
the math is the easy part. Calculators online to automate
that mass stuff for you. You don't have to be
able to understand the compounding formula. You just pull up
a compound interest calculator and it does the math for you.

(26:07):
So the math is really easy, parper. The hard part
is the social stuff, feeling like you're not cool enough
if you don't have you know, the latest gadgets, if
you don't have you know, the nicest apartment, if you
don't have the latest sneakers or the latest perse or
whatever it is that everybody around you is posting and
talking about. If you don't have it, you fall prey
to this invisible force around you that's making you feel

(26:28):
like you're never cool enough, You're not ever going to
be good enough, and in order for you to succeed
financially and kind of fight back against a lot of
that stuff, you really have to, you know, do your
own thing. You have to swim against the current, and
you have to kind of decide that it's even though
it feels unnatural for so many of us to try
to go against a lot of that, you know, whatever's

(26:49):
common and popular. That's the only way that you're actually
gonna be able to make decisions about what you really
want your money to do for you and not what
you've been brainwashed to think that you should do with
your money. So, you know, for me, I think that's
a huge part. And you know, for me, that's why
I dedicated the whole second chapter of the book it's
called get your Mind Right, because I really think before

(27:10):
you even get into the money stuff, you really got
to start understanding these biases that you fall prey to
when you're making choices with your money, and what you
can do to fight back against those biases.

Speaker 1 (27:18):
And you say that community is a big part of
that too, right, So, like who you surround yourself with,
because it feels like they're these like flaming eras aimed
at us all the time, trying to get us up
to part from our money, and if we don't put
on that kind of armor to protect ourselves, we're going
to fork it over. So how does community and who
you like, your friends, your family, who you hang out with,
how does that impact your ability to be kind of

(27:40):
resilient to those to those calls, to those advertisers who
are trying to part you from that earn money.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
No, I love this question because for me, I'm going
to tell you the truth. My family was not really
on board with you know, they saw what I was
doing and they said it was a little too drastic,
because it's true I was. I was super frugal. Like,
once I realized what was happening with my money, I
was not playing games. I was like, I'm so serious.
It's just like committing to getting an A plus in
my physics class. Like I was like, I'm not. Yeah,

(28:07):
I was on a mission exactly. So you know, if
we would go out, I would only order something like
a very small thing in my budget, and everybody would
be trying to split the bill and I'd be like, no,
no splitting bills over here. I'm getting my own separate check.
I only spent right, I'm like, if I'm unless I'm mistaken,
this water where the lemon slice was free. So I
just was very, very frugal, and I think they started

(28:29):
to see that and they were maybe like a little
judgmental at first. But I knew right away that my
family because after I told them about like the books
that I had been reading and the blogs that I
was reading and the podcast I was listening to, and
these ideas that I had been exposed to, they all
just thought like, it's a little too drastic and it's
a bit too much. And it got to the point
where honestly, some of my siblings were just telling me
to shut up. They were like, we don't care about

(28:51):
the new maximum on your roth that ray increasing by
five hundred dollars this year. We don't care about that stuff.
That's your thing. And so then I was like, okay, fine,
So I decided I'm going to go online because obviously
I'm not going to change my family. I'm not going
to cancel my family, Like I love these people, and
I just have to accept that they know that I

(29:11):
would not. I was like, come on, I love these people,
but if I can't convince them that this is the
most important thing for us, then I'm just going to
have to show them and not tell them. So what
I did was I kind of just did my own thing.
Instead of subtracting people out of my life, I didn't
do that. I just added added a bunch of people
into my mindset, to my life, to my news feed
on social media. I started following a bunch of people

(29:32):
and starting to follow hashtags and just start to look
at all the content and listen to more podcasts and
just really immerse myself into the space of personal finance,
financial independence and debt repayment and you know, all these
deafree community, all this all this stuff online, which you know,
for me, helped me to feel like I had another family.
I had this other community outside of like the people

(29:52):
that I see every day and hugging kiss when i'm
you know, together with them. It doesn't have to be
the physical people in your life. It might not, and
that's okay. For me, it wasn't, but I still was
able to go online and feel like I knew these
people that you know, were kind of like, you know,
influences on me in terms of my mindset and helping
me with resources and things. But I never met really

(30:14):
any of them until honestly recently, which is wild for
me to say that I've now worked with so many
of those creators who were early influences on me. You know,
I met mister Monny Munstache. I met Pete he at
fin Con. You know, I've met so many incredible speakers.
I met Tiffany the Budget Neista at a conference for women,
and I'm just so many of these amazing early influences

(30:34):
in my life I've been able to meet and tell
them thank you so much, Like you are the reason
why I completely changed the trajectory of my life and
my future generations lives because I started to, you know,
get serious about my money. So you know, just really quickly,
if if that's not people that you love right now,
that you see every day that you hang out with,
your friends, your family, your spouse, your partner, that is okay,

(30:56):
show them. Don't feel like you have to tell them
because they might not be ready to hear it, but
when they see it, they can't deny it.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
That's that's some good advice, right quick plug for the
Hanna Money Facebook group, because that's surely ten thousand plus
people who are helping each other out and really want
to get better with their money. And it's this hive mind,
but it's also this group where there's so much support
that goes alongside of it.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
And I got a joint. I love that.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, I mean that's what we need, right, We need
the information combined with the the adda boys aut of
girls like you can do it, you got this. And
I think that that too pronged approach is just it's
crucial and it really helps a lot of people succeed.
That You need that motivation if there's nobody physically in
your life, you need that. That's the beauty of an
online community.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
This is one of the few upsides to social as Yeah,
you kind of were talking about how you're you went
pretty hard in the frugal direction, Like what are some
of the more extreme things that you may have done
to save money to get ahead, because I think at
some point in the book you mentioned something about eyebrow threading.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
I was just thinking about that.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, talk some.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
About that or tell me what that is somebody.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Two things that I did that were extreme. First was
like beauty maintenance routine and stuff with like you know,
being a girl. There's a lot of stuff and I
know that there are guys out there who also put
a lot of time and effort of money into grooming,
but it's just different with girls. Because of the pink tax,
we are targeted products and things that are so much
more expensive to stay beautiful and to look you know whatever.
And for me, a lot of that was, you know,

(32:22):
maintaining my parents, so getting haircuts, getting my nails done,
and doing my eyebrows, which for many years I was
I would go like every two weeks and spend eight
to twelve dollars to get my eyebrows waxed, you know,
and it hurts. I'm gonna live. You get used to
it after a while, but it's just part of the
name of the game. You want to be pretty on
your first date, you want to look nice, you got
you gotta put the money down to you know, keep

(32:42):
up with your beauty routine. And so when I got
really serious about my budget, I was like, Okay, this
is what I have, this is what I'm going to
spend money on. This is what I don't have, This
what I can't put money towards. And so I remember
one time I was with my family and my sisters
because I'm one of five sisters. There's nine of us total,
but four our brothers and the other four sisters, so
one of five sisters and my sisters were they were

(33:03):
just dogging me, like making fun of me, you know,
roasting me, which is their way of showing tough love.
I'll say that, but still it's still hurts sometimes. They
were just like dogging me, like, oh, you look like
free to CALLO because we got my eyebrows. My eyebrows were, yeah,
that's harsh.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Come on, come on, i had.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
Not been done for a couple of months.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
So I was like, well, you know, I was trying
to tweet them on my own, but I don't really
know how to do it. I want to mess them
up and whatever. They're like, just go spend the money,
and I'm like, well, I can't because I promised myself
I was not going to use my credit cards again
until I pay them off. And I don't have the
twelve dollars in my budget because every dollar had a
job and it was not my eyebrows this month. So
you know, I just kind of went home that night

(33:44):
and I'm thinking about that making fun of me, and
I'm like, all right, let me, let me see if
I can just figure out a way to do my
own eyebrows, it can't be that hard. So I went
on YouTube and I started looking up how to do
your own eyebrows, and a video came up about threading
your eyebrows, which I had done one time, or I
had had it done one time for my sweet sixteen party.
My sister took me to a place in Manhattan where
they thread in my eyebrows. It was like a very

(34:06):
traditional Indian eyebrow th writing place. So I always thought, like,
that's something that if you don't if that's not in
your culture, you don't know how to do it, you're
gonna like rip your eyebrows off your face. So don't
even try to do that, you know. But there was
this tutorial on YouTube, and it was it made it
seem pretty simple. You didn't have to like use your
mouth with a thread, which is what offen the traditional
way to do it looks like, so you could just

(34:28):
like make one thread loop and cross it over like
in the form of an X. And so I started
practicing it, and so I was like, Okay, I think
I could. I think I learned how to like control
which hair's eye will pluck with the thread, and so
then I did my own eyebrows, and funnily enough, now
I do my sister's eyebrows, even though they were making
fun of me, I do my mom's eyebrows. I do

(34:49):
my sister in law. A lot of my girlfriends be like,
can you do my eyebrows between visits, like I just
need to touch up, and my nieces will have me
do their eyebrows. So it's funny because I was just
I was really committed to my fluit with my budget,
and so much so that I wasn't willing to put
a twelve dollars I brought charge on my credit card
because I promised myself I wasn't going to use it.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah. No, I love that. That's you mentioned like, that's
a resolve right to say no, to say no to things,
and to find a solution outside of it, to get
a little creative. I think, Matt, that reminds me of
when you did your wife's hair at some point, what
was it called the uh oh b the layering. Matt
trained himself.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
He learned he watched a bunch of YouTube videos, Like Nelly,
I watched a few YouTube videos because it's like a
really expensive way to get your hair one hundreds of dollars. Well,
speaking of, maybe I should start my own salong because
I've cut you're you know.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
I should partner together your own thing, right, this is a.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Business plan in the making.

Speaker 1 (35:39):
Right here, exactly. I'll just come in and get some
work done, but I won't be a part of it,
but hang out. Yeah. No, But I love that. I
think that that that says so much, and it's it's
so important to be willing to say no to things,
even if it's in an ideal world. Hey, at some
point I'll get I'll get there and I'll be able
to go splurge on that, but not until I've actually

(36:01):
got the cash in hand to be able to do it.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
I've got another question for you, Nell, Matt and I
we've talked on the show before. There's a lot of
actually data about how second generation immigrants tend to succeed
more than first generation immigrants and more than people, more
than Americans who are fourth fifth generation. They tend to
realize the American dream more than any other cohort. Do
you have any insight as a second generation immigrant as

(36:26):
to what the secret sauce is there, like, what is
the Yeah, what's involved? And why is it that second
generation immigrants really live the American dream more than the
rest of us?

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, I mean I would say this. I would say
that this is anecdotal, obviously because I don't have any
studies to source, but I will say there is this
emotional connection, this psychological, deeply seated mentality of a combination
of the gratitude that you have for the efforts that
your parents have put into immigrate to a whole new country.

(36:57):
They left their entire life behind, everyone they knew and loved.
They left it in their native country to come here
with the sole purpose of giving you their child a
better opportunity than the one that they had. And they
worked unforgiving immigrant jobs and worked unforgiving hours. And when
I say the word sacrifice is so underrated in immigrant community,

(37:19):
I mean truly, it is the ultimate sacrifice to leave
your comfort, your loved ones, everything you know, your way
of life for your children to have better opportunities. It
makes me want to cry right now as I talk
about it, because I know that my mom and dad
made that ultimate sacrifice for me, for me and my siblings,
and so When I think about that, there's something psychological
happening there that is, it's so powerful that you feel

(37:43):
you have to you do, not have a choice but
to make their sacrifice worthwhile. And that means that you
have to succeed. You have to find a way to succeed,
whether it's through the very traditional pathway of going to
college and getting you know, your job and having a
successful career path the more traditional way, whether it's an
alternative to the for your college pathway and you know,

(38:04):
join the military or becoming an entrepreneur or you know,
whatever that pathway looks like. It doesn't have to be
that cookie cutter, perfect for your college degree type of pathway.
But whatever it is that you do, you're doing it
with a certain level of grit and resilience that is
near too impossible to plant into someone if they don't
naturally have it. And I think a lot of children

(38:26):
of immigrants naturally have it because they've witnessed that ultimate
sacrifice that their parents have made and they're just trying
their hardest to, you know, give their parents that the
ability to say, to feel that sense of gratitude and
pride for their children.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
That's so true that makes sense. So you are a
second gen immigrant and you have that resolve. A lot
of folks they don't have that either gumption or that
grit to figure things out on their own.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
We did a whole episode about grit, by the way,
how that was like the number one ingredient in getting
better with money and how you kind of have to
like figure out how to get it.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
You really could have like co hosted that episode, I'm sure,
but a big part of getting ahead with your finances
is knowing the right stuff. In fact is there are
a lot of folks who don't have that drive to
figure it out, and sometimes it does need to be
presented in a more formal manner. And we're actually gonna
talk more about financial literacy and some of the things
that you know, you Nelly is doing to make this

(39:22):
more accessible across our country. We'll get to that right
after this.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
All right, we're back. We're still talking how to get
to financial freedom with you Nelli Espanal. Her story just
incredible and so we're so glad to have her here
and you, Nelly, it's it's not just about like how
far she's come, it's about what she's doing to help others.
Succeed as well, and you, Neale, I love your mission.
I love what you do, what you're doing with so
many hours of your work weeks to make sure that

(39:58):
other kids, Like we're talking hundreds of thousands, if not
millions of kids around the country to succeed in the future,
not just not just your ten you know, nieces and nephews,
Like we're talking your impact is being heard around around
the nation. And so let's talk about your work with
next gen personal finance and trying to bring financial literacy
to the masses, mainly mainly high schoolers. Like why is

(40:20):
that such a passion of yours?

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, I mean it's such a passion of mine because,
as I mentioned a little earlier, I know that if
I had had a formal academic course on money management,
I would have, you know, I would have had a
completely different mindset, and I think it would have really
prevented me from making so many of the mindless, reckless
mistakes that I made with money in college. And I
feel like everyone deserves a fair shot in order to

(40:44):
you know, really be able to thrive financially, or even
to just get the basics right. When I was in
my master's program for education. I remember learning about the
original intent behind creating a public school system in America,
and it was called the Great Equalizer. It was to
give everyone, no matter what your zip calle, your family background,
your ethnic origin, no matter where you come from, that

(41:06):
when you step into this public school building, you all
have an equal opportunity for success. You get an equal education,
you understand everything equally, so that when you exit you
know everyone that kind of you're on equal footing right
to then move forward. Now, obviously that's like this idealistic
utopia world where yes, we're all equal when we leave school.
What happens at home is a greater impact on your

(41:29):
life than what's happening at school. But at the very least,
if you're intending to prepare students so that they can
get a job one day and have some type of
income so they can have security for their family, then
there should be a class teaching you what the best
practices are around what to do when that money comes,
when that first pay check hits. So it's so odd

(41:49):
to me after being a student for decades in our
public school system, going off to a very prestigious college,
getting a master's degree, coming back to New York City,
becoming a teacher in that very public school system that
I attended as a child as a student, now being
on the other side in front of the classroom, seeing
that the curriculums still didn't include any financial literacy, it
just felt like, Okay, I could continue to impact my

(42:10):
thirty to forty kids every year. I could even create
content on YouTube and affect you know, a couple million
people who subscribe to my channel if I grow really big,
but my impact will still be limited versus if I
am able to change the laws and make sure that
every single teenager before they turn eighteen and graduate high
school is required to take a full semester, eighteen week

(42:32):
course diving into money management and personal finance, then no
matter what future generation, your children, your children's children, children's
children's children are going to be able to get this
because of my efforts. And that's the kind of impact
I was looking to get done in my work, not
just this surface level impact through being a social media
creator or being a teacher. Like I'm a wife, will
have always been the type of person who prioritizes being
of service to others, and I get that from my mom.

(42:54):
She's so giving and always trying to be of service,
but I wanted the service to really be the highest
impact type of service possible.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So what's interesting is like, there are even some like
pretty great folks in the personal finance space who actually
question the necessity of some of these different classes. And
so I kind of get it, because you even just
said yourself, what happens at home, it is even more
formational in the minds and in the lives of children.
But like, what would you say to someone out there
who is questioning the effectiveness of a single personal finance

(43:24):
class in high school?

Speaker 1 (43:25):
We've seen more and more of it, and it's really
disappointing to see people in the personal finance space who
know the value of the education say, oh, well, we
don't need it in high school. We don't when it's
a subject that touches every single one of our lives,
every day of our lives in perpetuity.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
Yeah, essentially, I guess what I'm asking, what's your argument against, Well,
they should just learn it on their own, whether it's
by it from their parents, or maybe they should just
learn it from a book or from a podcast.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Right, Okay, Well, actually recently I was on TikTok and
I saw a roomats at the video at the If
you don't already know, I'm sure you know him. His
book's awesome. I would teach you to be rich. His
show on Netflix How to Get Rich amazing. Now I've
reached out to him and I said, hey, I and
this is like an Instagram DM. I said, hey, I've
committed to changing your mind about financial education, and I'm

(44:09):
so serious. I am going to show you the latest
research and the movement for twenty first century relevant financial education.
I love your work and I've always plugged you. You
can see that from how many times I've tagged you.
But man, this is the number one hot take where
you are wrong and I want to help you get
on the right side of the fight. He responded to
me and said, I'm open to reading the research, and
so I sent him the research. He said, thank you

(44:30):
reading these. So he you know, it's funny because for
me posted this video where he talked about you know
why he doesn't support financial education and it kind of
went viral very quickly, obviously because he's so well known.
But he said, you know who's going to teach it?
If the banks are going to create the curriculum and
we can't even agree on basic fundamental truths in this country,
how are we going to agree on personal finance? And
then he said, kids don't care about learning about money,

(44:51):
So I want to address those points.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
First time, I was wrong on all accounts.

Speaker 3 (44:55):
I told him, I said, you're wrong. I'm gonna get you.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
On the wrong every single reason that he gave. I
was like, dude, you're wrong, Dude right and love for me.
But I told them, I was like, I got to
bring you over to our side. You got to be
on the right side of the fight. So all right,
let's address them each one. Who's going to teach it?
First of all, he said, overburdened high school teachers are
going to teach it. I can tell you right now
through my work at MGPF. It is a free, nonprofit organization,
so free curriculum, free teacher training. There's over seventy thousand,

(45:18):
close to eighty thousand teachers across the country who are
accessing the free materials. So this is not curriculum that's
created by a bank the way he mentions where it's
like pushing the bank branding on a logo on materials.
This is all free, not for profit It is all
literally like twenty first century up to date online materials,
and we have over eighty thousand teachers, close to eighty

(45:38):
thousand teachers who've created an account so that they can
access the materials for free.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
What will they take away? What will students take away?
There are national personal finance standards for financial literacy education
created by Jumpstart as well as the Council of Economic Education.
States can either choose to adopt those standards and teach
those topics, or they could create their own state specific
standards for financial literacy education and use their own state
specific standard. That's up to the state because in education
it's very much local control in our country. This is

(46:05):
not a federal issue that the president can just wave
a magic want and say everyone is required to now
learn personal finance in high school. It's a state by state,
local issue, so every state has to dictate what it
looks like and how that happens. How are they going
to get trained. We offer free teacher training at NGPF,
again not for profits, so it's not we're not pushing anything.
There's absolutely no agenda. The co founders created an endowment fund.

(46:26):
One of our co founders, Tymrans, that are created an
endowment fund. After having a lot of success as an entrepreneur,
he decided this is going to be the thing that
he wants to champion. This is where he wants to
make change and leave a legacy, and so he created
an endowment fund with tens of millions of dollars so
that we would never run out of money and be
able to continue to provide teachers with free, high quality
training and free curriculum materials as well as advocacy resources.

(46:47):
And this is how I'm able to do my job,
and this is how so many teachers are able to
teach with confidence topics like investing, topics like budgeting, like banking,
like you know, the things that are developing that they
never knew about, like buy now, pay later, or cryptocurrency.
We're yeh, at the front, forefront of the front lines,
like teaching these teachers the cutting edge information so that
they're ready to teach it and pass it on to

(47:08):
their students. So no banks and all that kind of stuff.
The thing he said about disagreeing on basic fundamental truths
in this country is actually not a lie. That's true.
There's a lot of divisiveness and depending on you know,
money is political, and there are a lot of people
that disagree with, you know, issues in personal finance. The
reason why that doesn't really affect this, though, is because
I have literally went. I've gone from Florida, where we

(47:29):
passed SB ten fifty four in twenty twenty one. The
law was successfully passed in Florida, later passed in Georgia,
then went up to Michigan, was passed in Michigan, and
also passed in Connecticut.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah, Connecticut recently, am Yeah, So.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
Since Florida, since my work in Florida, it's gone Iowa, Georgia, Michigan, Kansas,
New Hampshire, West Virginia, Indiana, Minnesota, and the most recent
being in May of twenty twenty three, Connecticut, with Louisiana
following shortly after in I would say early June twenty
twenty three. So what we're looking at is this momentum
wave of regardless if that state is considered a red
state or a blue state, or who the sponsors who

(48:06):
championed it are, or if the governor is a Democratic
governor or a Republican governor. When we look at Florida
and Michigan, two states with governors that couldn't be more opposite.
Both of those states signed the exact same financial literacy legislation.
So when you say, oh, we can't agree, we can
agree that personal finance is a fundamental, uh you know,
skill set that every student needs and deserves.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
And it's true that money has political elements, but it's
also true that a ton of personal finance can and
should be and should remain a political And I'm unbiased agree.
And when it comes to the education that's taking place
in high schools, we actually reminds me of one of
our earliest interviews. We talked with this guy, Dan Lostalle.
He was a vice president of DAN.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
I'm actually the president of the board for niche Nik.

Speaker 1 (48:50):
Dan is one of the favorite, our favorite guests we've
ever had because he took this outside of the box
approach to teaching kids and and and actually finding ways
to attach work to income and then and they're putting
money in these kids hand so they could actually not
just learn the principles, but then put them into action
and so it's practical. I feel like people like you
and Dan are on the front lines of this of
this fight, and we support you all the way. And

(49:12):
anybody who says that personal finance education in school is
a waste of time.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
Doesn't know what they're talking Not only do not know
what they're talking about, but they haven't been inside of
a school recently. I can tell you that because if
I go into these schools consistently and frequently for my work,
and the students light up. When I hear people say
kids don't care about learning personal finance until it's relevant
to them, I'm like, do you know what it's like
to be sixteen years old and get your driver's license
and actually be looking for a car loan and comparing

(49:38):
car loan car insurance rates? Do you know what it's
like to be seventeen and want to open your first
custodio rop that rate because you just got your first
job and you're excited and you want to learn about
this and not have any adult in your life or
class in school teaching you about these things.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
It's practical in life changing, and it's.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Applicable immediately when you are a junior or senior in
high school. So if you're about to fill out your
fav SEL form and you're learning it and then you
go do it right away, how can something be more
applicable and more immediately beneficial than that. So I just
think when people talk about these things, it's usually the
people who are the furthest away from the actual classrooms,
who are the least qualified to talk about this, that

(50:13):
are the loudest.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yeah no, you're so true. Yeah on. And there's a
whole lot of other things that we forget that we
learned in high school, and this is one of those
things that you're going to remember. You're going to remember
a buzz accent, and even if you don't put in
a natal right away, you're going to be like, years
later you make wait a second, I heard the compound.
Oh yeah, okay, yes, that's right. You're going to hear
one other thing that's going to trigger something.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
There's a big difference between learning these things that third
and fourth grade versus like what you're saying in high
school when it's immediately applicable thought. And that's what we're
talking about here. I don't know of any teenager who's
entering adulthood who isn't concerned at all about money. It's
something that they went more of and so teaching them
how to handle it properly I think needs to happen you, Nellie.

(50:55):
We are so glad that you that this is a
charge of a movement that you're leading, uh.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Thirty more states to go.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Yes, but your book, your book, Mind your Money, that's
a part of this as well for anybody who just
wants to learn more and who isn't getting this kind
of information at their school.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Where can folks learn more about you and find your book?

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Yes, So if you want to follow along with me
on social media, it's at miss bee helpful. That's anywhere Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok,
miss be helpful, m I s s be helpful. And
then for all things related to my book, a chapter, list,
details about it, buying it, mind your moneybook dot com.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Awesome you, Nelick, thanks so much for joining us. We
really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Thank you guys. This is great, all.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Right, Matt you gotta love you, gotta love you, Nelly good.
Just such a good conversation, What an interesting story, what
a but and just someone who who puts their money
where their mouth is like she is. She is living
the life and putting into action all the things she
believes on a big scale. So I love what she's
up to. What was your big takeaway from this conversation.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
She shared a lot about her own personal story, right,
And what I love was when she was talking about
specifically how to get family or friends on board, and
she was essentially she was she said like, don't tell
them about it necessarily, but show them, and she was
talking about how you kind of start with the heart,
you share a story with them. Essentially, what I was
gathering from that was that she what it's important to

(52:18):
do is to be vulnerable, and I think when you
are able to do that, you're able to kind of
maybe tear down any defenses that there might be with
whoever it is that you're trying to talk about money with. So, yeah,
that's my quick takeaway. Be vulnerable if you're trying to
talk to others about personal finances.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
But yeah, you said you find find new friends, don't
dit your old ones, find some new ones if you
need some other advice and encouragement.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
Think that's the silver lining to social media, which there's
not a whole lot of bright sides to social media.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
You know that totally is one, and you don't want
to cancel people in your life, whether they have different
political views, different money views, whatever it is for any reason.
But yeah, you also might need to find people who
are supportive of you in this new endeavor if you're
trying to get your money together too. One of the things
she said at one point she met, she said every
dollar had a job when she was talking about her budget,
and she was talking about the resolve to ensure that,
like she didn't put any purchases on that credit card

(53:10):
while she was paying it off. And I think that
mental fortitude is a part, yeah, of actually being able
to get the job done and getting straight with your money,
getting digging yourself out of the hole so you can
start to kind of build the mountain to move forward.
And so yeah, I love that she had that, like
that fortitude to say, not even a twelve dollars charge

(53:30):
goes on this credit card, I'm gonna do without. And
I think that's for people who are in a hole
right now. It's we're not all a deprivation mentality. That's
not our jam, But for some people at certain places
in their personal finance journey, deprivation is necessary, right in
order to for a time be able to juici your

(53:51):
ability to make progress. That's what you, Nelly did. And
now guess what if she wants to do. She go
get that massage every single week if she wants, which
is great because she's made so much progress. I think
it's just important for people to hear It's like, it
doesn't have to be all deprivation all the time, but
sometimes for a period, it's going to take a little
more of that intentional effort and a little bit of
saying no to yourself the things that you want and

(54:11):
d I wind it, figuring out a way to get
around it, be creative.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
There are still ways that you can do it. Yeah,
it's not just about the dollars and cents and the
money that she was able to save, but it's also
just a mindset thing and how she was able to
prove to herself, not only not only to herself, but
also do her family that like, no, no, no, I'm
not playing it. I'm like, this is something that I'm
going to get after and it takes sometimes a principled
stand like that in order to move the needle. But Joe,
let's talk about the beer you and I enjoyed during

(54:35):
this episode.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
This was a code.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Breaker, a West Coast ipa by Trademark Brewing. What were
your thoughts on this one?

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Buddy, never had anything by this brewer before. Yeah, I
thought it was really good. It's West Coast. IPAs are
not typically my fave, but I really like this one.
It was like with you, maybe somewhat tank, but it
wasn't as bitter, it wasn't a little more juicy p Yeah. Yeah, yeah,
he's a good middle of the road West Coast, not
too hot in that direction.

Speaker 4 (55:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
So we've been drinking a lot of East Coast or
New England Hazy's. And one of the great things about
West Coast Ipe's you don't have to worry about the sediment.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
You know, that's true. You and I.

Speaker 2 (55:10):
Actually this wasn't even on the show. This you and
Emily the family came over and we're enjoying a beer
and it had a decent amount of sediment and some
of you know, I was kind of swirling the can
ups that way, we both because a lot of times
it's that hop bite that you find in that settlement.

Speaker 1 (55:25):
It's like hop bits. I don't like eating a little
bit of a pepper, like a hot pepper, you know,
and you just get that concentrated on.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Swirl and making sure that you and I both have
this equal amounts of sediment.

Speaker 1 (55:35):
Because that's flavor. But yeah, you gotta worry about that.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
When it comes to a West Coast ipa, you pour
it perfectly clear, delicious, refreshing. This one specifically had some
stone fruit I see, which I feel like definitely stood
out as.

Speaker 1 (55:46):
We were enjoying it. But yeah, glad you and I.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Got to enjoy a trademark beer. But Joe, that's going
to be it for this episode. We'll make sure to
link to some of the different resources we talked about,
and specifically where you can learn more about you Nelly
find her book, and.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
If you're a teacher, you can link We'll link to
some of those next gen personal finance resources. They are
at the forefront of encouraging and promoting financial literacy in schools,
and you might be able to partner with Yellen Ian
Ellie to bring financial education to your state. If you're
a teacher, you can advocate for that, which is cool.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
So there is real momentum behind what it is that
they're doing. But Buddy, that's going to be it for
this episode until next time. Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out,

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Joel Larsgaard

Matthew Altmix

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