Gringo's Guide To: Financial Security Through Self-Care w/ Rita Soledad Fernandez Paulino

For Financial Literacy Month, this week’s episode is with Rita-Soledad Fernández Paulino, former public school math teacher and founder of Wealth Para Todos. Soledad breaks down how she and her husband are on track to retire by 45—not through flashy schemes, but by shifting from survival mode to long-term wealth planning. We talk about the power of financial education in our communities, how Latinos can build wealth without coming from money, and why self-care isn’t just about spa days—it’s about building the life you actually want, one smart decision at a time.

Instagram: @wealthparatodos

https://wealthparatodos.com

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Let me talk about here we go, he said, he
live in life pasic ringo, where you question where you
fit in every time you mingle, they say you do
this would not that my rapin this life pasic lingo. Yes, hello,
and welcome to an episode of Life as a Gringo.
I am dramas eb of course. And man, it's it's

(00:29):
still financial literally some month. It's April. We're doing our
Tuesday episodes are based around financial literacy and trying to
take it from a bit of a different approach than
the norm. I'm really excited about today's. Yes, we've got
sold from Wealth. Bartolo's a really amazing coach, and we'll

(00:49):
get into her whole background. I think it's super relatable
and humble beginnings, and also, you know her her sort
of approach to building wealth and preparing for the future.
She takes it from a self care perspective, which I
think is amazing and unorthodox in general and counter to

(01:13):
so much of the content that we see on social
media in today's day and age. And that's sort of
what I guess my greater goal has been this month
is to not feed more and of the same nonsense
and regurgitate this toxic finance bro attitude. That is the
norm around financial literacy. But how do we humanize it?

(01:36):
How do we produce happy human beings rather than just
wealthy ones?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:40):
How do we produce happy, wealthy human beings rather than
just financially successful ones. And I love sort of the approach.
I don't want to give away too much, you know
from the conversation, but again the idea that we are
trying to build wealth and build for the future as

(02:02):
a means of taking care of ourselves and improving our lives,
not just financially, but you know, as just human beings
in general. And that's where this sort of self care
approach I think is so crucial, because it's one thing
to be wealthy, it's another to be happy, right, And
I think too often we combine the two or assume

(02:23):
that the two are you know, go together. And I think,
as we've seen with so many wealthy people who are
who go off and do crazy shit, just because they're
rich doesn't mean they're actually healthier or healthy or happy
at the end of the day. And that's actually Freudian slip.
I was I about to say, it doesn't mean they're happy,
but also doesn't mean they're healthy, right. Your mental health

(02:45):
is so crucial to being physically healthy as well. And
I'm really excited to get into this conversation with so
that that because I think it's a much needed balance
of the two that is not spoken about quite enough.
So enough for me, let's just get into this conversation

(03:05):
and we'll do as a part of Army Hinte segment.
My guest today is the founder and CEO of the
financial education community named Wealth Barratos Fernandez Barino. How you feeling,

(03:27):
I'm so good.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I'm excited to be here to talk in that on
self care with you.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yes, I'm very excited. I randomly I think from chat
GBT was a recommendation of uh of Wealth. Yeah, so
I as I was doing research for financial literacy moth,
your brand popped up. So I'm very excited. Yes, yes,
so whatever, I don't know what how it's finding you,
but something's working, right, whatever it is you're doing is working.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
That's good.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Good of course. Yeah. So, I mean I'm kind of
trying to tackle Financial Literacy Month from a bit of
a different perspective than sort of the norm cookie cutter
and even from I think some of the more toxic
mindsets behind like just get rich quick schemes almost you know,
And I think I really gravitated towards your content and

(04:18):
your philosophy and your messaging because you're sort of I
don't want to say practical because that feels almost limiting,
but it's almost real, life like tangible ways of building
wealth and putting yourself in a position to financially be
in a place that you want to be and that
is ideal for you. And it starts with the personal

(04:38):
attachment of you being a former public school teacher. I'm
the child the son of a former public school teacher myself,
so I know the struggle, I know the grind. I
know that you guys are overworked and drastically underpaid, and
I find that to be so fascinating that you've kind
of moved into this place of where you talk about

(04:59):
the idea that you're husband and you are on track
to retire at the age of forty five, and that's
for him, okay for it, but either way a dream
come true for many people. I know if my mom
had the opportunity to retire at that age, she probably
would have been quick to take it right but I
want to kind of start I guess at that point

(05:19):
right there, right because we talk about wealth, we talk
about finances, and everybody thinks about the most extreme cases
of sort of becoming some multi billionaire and you know,
investing in some stock and some crypto thing or whatever
it might be, and there are far more sort of
practical and ideal ways of going about it. I'm curious
for you starting there from that point of being a teacher.

(05:40):
How do we get to this place where you are
putting yourself on a financial track that so many people
dream about.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah. So in twenty nineteen, I got sick. I was
so thick that I had to take a medical leave
and I relied on disability checks. At that time, my
husband had his own company and he had to shut
it down. So we had two kids living in LA
The only income that we knew was going to come
in were my disability checks. And I felt so financially vulnerable.

(06:11):
And I didn't grow up like. I didn't grow up
like with a lot of many I grew up in
a houseport living in a play like. We had a house.
My mom struggled in terms of being able to maintain it,
and yet I felt so financially scared and nervous during
that time of my life. So I was thirty two
years old and I started reading personal finance books while

(06:32):
I was bedridden. I was so sick that I had
I was taking steroid shots because that the inflammation was
in my lungs and it was hard for me to
So it was like body It was hard, hard times,
and even I remember going to the doctors and still
not wanting to take time off because I had my
students and the state exams were coming around and I
was like, no, I can't leave them with a substitute

(06:54):
for the last few months of school. It was. It
was a challenging time where even then, like my self
care practices were non existent. Sure, And during that time
I started reading personal finance books and I was reading
a lot of them, and they just kind of all
said the same thing. And I had this very limiting
belief that someone with my lived experiences wouldn't be able

(07:18):
to build financial security. I would read these books and
instead of being like, oh, let me try that, I'd
be like, well, they don't live in a high class
living area. Well they don't have two kids, Well they're
not you know, they have their entrepreneurs. I'm not an
entpreneur and I could never be an entrepreneur. I'm so
busy as a teacher, you know. So I had a

(07:38):
lot of beliefs that it couldn't happened to me. And
then on social media I started to find personal finance
content creators who did look like who were who were Latinas,
who had grown up also with humble beginnings, and they
were talking about pain off lots of student alone debts,

(07:59):
how they were investing in the stock market. And I
was like, oh wait, now I can't keep my same
limity and belief that it doesn't apply to me. Now
is a mirror of like, Okay, are you going to
continue to say I can't do this because of all
the things, or are you going to try? And I said,
you know what, I'm only thirty two. Let's let's just see.

(08:24):
And it has just become one thing after the other.
I mean, we paid off our student loans dip before
I turned thirty three, which was around twenty three five
hundred dollars after ten years of payments. Okay, that's still
how much we had left. Then theyved a six month
emergency fund, which was thirty thousand dollars. I learned how
to invest in the stock market, and I'm talking about

(08:46):
simple not like training stocks. Everybody just like Simpul investing
for retirement and learned to like max out our rat
diarraise and our employee retirement accounts, worked on increasing our
income dramatically, dramatically, we have the extra cash flow to
continue to build our financial security. So that's where we
are now, and we're.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Just that's beautiful. Yeah, little by little exact, and well
that's what I kind of I love that because again,
we're in social media is amazing, but we're also in
this time period of everybody's chasing like the sexy win,
like the win that looks amazing on social media, right,
but like maxing out your wroth IRA isn't very sexy
to post on social media, right, So everybody's chasing whatever

(09:27):
that big win is that they can show off. And really,
the the sustainable way to build wealth is little by
little in your own words there, and I guess let's
kind of start at the beginning, because I love you.
You're tapping into something that so many of us struggle with,
is those limiting beliefs, right, specifically from our communities where
I think, you know, we are just products of people

(09:49):
who struggled, or to your point of being house rich,
that was even just like achieving the dream, even though
you are you know, struggling and mentally stretching yourself and
burning out, just to maintain that house and to have it,
you know, it's still that's the wind, right, that's sort
of the ultimate goal. A lot of times, or like
I reference this a lot in you know, growing up,

(10:10):
my father felt like anybody who was wildly successful must
have been born into money, right, they must have had
some sort of crazy connection. And again that's a limiting
belief that I had to shed that I inherited from
from him. So I'm curious for you. You're looking yourself
in the mirror. D The excuses that you gave yourself
are no longer holding up because you're being exposed to
all these people who are doing these things that you

(10:31):
keep telling yourself you can't do. What were the first
steps then that you kind of took the little small
steps to begin to dip your toe in these waters.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Great question, and I just want to say this, I
grew up house for at this time, I didn't even
have a house I was a renter. I didn't buy
a house until later after I had learned after we
both had one hundred k invested in our retirement accountse,
which is also very against the grain because we had
been raised like, well, not my husband me, I had

(11:03):
been raised like you buy a house, that's financial security.
You buy a house that okay in terms of like
limited believes. One of the thoughts that I really struggled with,
or one of even the first steps that I had
to learn to do, was learn to budget. And so
we were viewing my finances at the money that was
coming in and how the money was going out, and

(11:23):
it was very hard for me to do that because
I was constantly going over budget, and anytime I went
over budget, I had the thought that money is meant
to be spent, and that was the thing that I
grew up hearing. So there was like, yeah, it was
kind of like I want to over budget, but that's
okay because money is meant to be spent. But if
money is always being spent and you're not following your

(11:45):
little budget, then you're not going to have the extra
cash flow to send extra payments towards that to be
able to save an emergency fund to be able to
mact that around that right, And so it took me
eight months to be able to create a budget and
actually follow the budget. And it's a lot of times
I would just stop, I would quit, and then I
be like, I'm not good at this, or you know,

(12:06):
it's because I have ADHD, or it's because I have
this calculate Oh I hate numbers. It was a math major.
I was still telling myself like, oh I hate numbers
when it came to my finances.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Yeah, I will what are like the practical give a
practical budget formula, because I think this is the This
is probably like ground level the most difficult thing that
we all struggle with. Also because it's because we work
so hard, right, It's it's easy, and it's also true
we deserve things right in this life. But at times

(12:37):
you have to have a little bit of restraint as
to when you pull the trigger on the things that
you deserve right. But that is something many of us,
myself included, We're not taught. Right. We went on the
vacation that we couldn't afford, right, and you know, stretched
out very thing and came back broke, and everybody was miserable,
you know, for the next few months or whatever it was.
But we just kept pushing and pushing, right, And when
I say we, I mean like my family growing up.

(12:58):
Now that I have a better understanding, so I'm curious,
what was like the formula that you found for budgeting
that actually stuck, that actually worked for you at that point.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
Well, one of the things I want to normalize is
even at this stage of financial security, I still go
over budget. The reason why we go over budget is
because we just don't have our plan for our money.
We didn't follow it. That's it, and it could be
something so neutral. I think the biggest struggle that a
lot of us have is we start to shame ourselves

(13:29):
and we start to be really mean to ourselves. So
then it's like we don't even want to look at
our brend and review the budget over and over again.
The biggest thing that has helped me is that now
when I look at my budget, when I create a
spending plant and I'm unable to follow, it is just numbers,
it's just data. I'm not being mean to myself, and
I'm like, okay, so I went over here Like this

(13:49):
literally happened this weekend. Literally we went over and how
much we spent on whole foods. We went over and
how much we spent, but we went under how much
we spent on costco. And so then we were just like, okay,
so now we have a little bit of money that
we could just kind of transfer over there. But then
I was like, no, we still overspent because at my
niece's birthday party, I said I was only going to
spend one hundred dollars and I spend more than a hundred.

(14:10):
So I know that this week we're operating like already
at a negative place. That means that next week, okay,
we're gonna have to like spend a little bit less.
One thing that really helped me was looking at my
spending on a weekly basis and stopped looking at my
spending just when I got paid. That was a huge
game changer. So now I'm creating a spending plan every week,

(14:32):
reviewing my finances every single week, and then I can
make little adjustments and it's never something like, oh, it's
too too much. I've also trailed and overspent. Again. I
looked at that as feedback and allowed it to let
me be a better saver for the next trip. I
let data on how we spent, like what was the

(14:52):
average amount of money spent on transportation on our hotel
or like housing right on are eating on our activities,
looked at that and so then I got better about
saving for that in the future. And when you do that,
when you start having real data and you know like
what you're real spending is like, and you're not judgmental

(15:12):
about it. You know, one thing about me is even
when we were paying off our student loansed, I still
budgeted to eat out because there's no way we were
going to cook every single meal, Like, no, it wasn't
going to happen. So I found my ways to still
eat out. And it changed. Right Like when I was
on my pay off my student loans and our income

(15:33):
was a lot less, we were eating at like a
place called Boil Loco. It's like this chicken fast food
place in La Right, So there are ways that you
can eat versus now we can order door dash and
have this wood delivered to us because we do have
that extra cashloan. But it's still the thing is that
you're always going to overspend. Sometimes it doesn't need to

(15:53):
be like, oh, you're bad.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
With money, right, right, I love what you just said
about working sort of the cheat days if you will,
into your budget, because I think that is part of
the problem. I've done this to myself where you go
cold turkey or like I've looked at my uber eats
for like a month, I was like, there's no way
in hell I need to I should be eating this
much Uber eats. I need to start cooking. I need
to start, like you know, settling, sending some time aside

(16:19):
in the day to actually sit down and cook some meals,
to not be overspending like I am for each and
every meal. But then what happens is you go too
far and you like white knuckle it, and then you're
just like miserable with the fact that you're not allowed
to now go and enjoy some of those meals that
you want to have, or just mix it up a
little bit. So I love I love the idea of saying,
like we can budget in the little pleasantries of life.

(16:41):
You're not. It doesn't mean you cut everything out. Life
doesn't have to sort of be this sterile, miserable thing
in order for you to get your finances in order.
You just have to plan for them. Is sort of
I guess what the approach you've taken and continue.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
To take one percent, And I call them proactive self
care expenses. And when I sit down with clients to
review their budgets, the first thing we do is like,
what are your proactive self care expenses and things that
you know that you want to spend money on because
they go to your joy, to your resilience. And that's
so important because part of the work that I do
with my clients is also making sure that they increase

(17:14):
their income. And if you're feeling deprived, if you're feeling like,
you know, cranky, because you're not getting throw in your life,
you're not going to have the capacity to focus on
ways to monetize your skills.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
You're just not going to have energy.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
So instead we really focus on like, okay, what are
your proactive self care expenses, what are your fixed expenses,
your variable expensive minimum debt payment? Do we have extra
cash flow? How can we work on increasing your extra
cash flow little by little Because anything that is very
like old turkey or thinking about it as a cheap day,

(17:47):
it's not sustainable. And instead of just doing this cycle
where it's like a shame cycle versus.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
A wealtha right cycle. Yeah, and at mental part of
it is obviously incredibly important and not spoken and about
I think as often as it needs to be. Right,
Are we going to take a quick break here and
then we'll be right back. All right, we are back.
So I love that we're kind of starting with the
idea of budgeting. If we were to kind of create

(18:16):
a blueprint, right for latinos, for under served communities, those
who didn't grow up with a lot of money, you know, extra,
and have had to work their ass off their entire
life just to get by. Essentially, what is kind of
the step by step blueprint, if you will, that you
would kind of create them, create for them to improve
their finances and then essentially shift into having their financial

(18:40):
goals met and living the type of lifestyle that they
personally want to live.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yes, okay, well, first things first, everyone needs centers down
that there's levels to financial security, and so I teach
financial security as like ten different stages, with the test
stage being your work option you're working because you want
to now because you have to. A first stage being
that you can cover all of your expenses with debt,

(19:05):
that you actually have access to debt and you can
use it as a way to cover your expenses.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
In order that debt. For me, real quick break down
debt and the way that you're using it. I feel
like a lot of people hear debt immediately are like,
oh my god, debt, but there's good debt.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Well I don't. I don't even think of debt as
like good debt or bad debts versus intentional debt and
unclear right, Like, if you know you don't have the
cash reserves to buy a car outright, then you leverage debt.
You intentionally take out an auto loan to get that car.
If you know that you don't currently have the cash

(19:45):
in order to pay for school outright, and your job
doesn't cover the expenses, then you take out student loans
and you pay for it. I also say that if
you know that you are struggling health wise and it
is unsustainable for you to be working a full time
job right now you need to take part time hours,
then can you leverage a zero percent credit card to

(20:06):
pay for those expenses cover while you take care of
your health in order to eventually get to a point
where you can't work full time again. So leveraging debt,
I think is just about being intentional, and that you're
aware every time that we leverage it that we're also
creating a debt payoff plan and knowing like, oh, eventually
I'm going to pay this off.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Okay, I love it all right, so continue on. You
were talking about.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
Level yes, yes, level one. You can leverage that debt
in order to increase or to move up in terms
of the stages of financial security. I teach my clients
that they need to be in this wealth building cycle.
And the wealth building cycle consists of knowing your numbers,
doing weekly financial check ins where you know how much
money you have in your checking account, how much you've

(20:49):
charged to a credit card, seeing whether you could pay
your credit cards off in full weekly. Right, are you
putting money in savings? How are you saving not only
for like unexpected emergency, but also for planned upcoming expenses
like travel. A lot of times, like people are like,
we'll think like, oh, like you know, you just know

(21:10):
what you're going to spend money on, no matter what.
For me, I always know we're going to spend money
on my kids' birthday parties. And even when I was like, oh,
I want to like max up my rough iray, there
was this time I was like, no, you know what
if instead of spending one thousand dollars on my kids'
birthday party, then I could put in a wroth ira,
let me do that, let me not know. When it
came to my kids actual birthday, I still have the

(21:32):
birthday party. And I knew in that moment we always
need to say for the things that we know we
want to spend money on. So knowing a saving for
your sinking funds, right, that's knowing your numbers, being aware
of that. The second part of the wild building cycle
is developing your financial literacy. There is so much information

(21:53):
that if you're an immigrant or a child of immigrant,
learning how to build well, specifically in the United States,
takes a lot of intentionality, and we're not taught this,
Like it's not mandated in schools for everybody to learn
how to leverage that, how to invest in the stock market,
how to create a budget, how to get life insurance.

(22:13):
You know, like these are all things that you're going
to want to continue to develop your financial literacy. Then
focusing on increasing your income. I challenge people to work
on increasing your income by at least ten percent every
single year, not three percent, which usually our employers will
do just to keep up with inflation ten percent, because
just setting that intention and always thinking, oh, how can

(22:36):
I increase my income? What are creative ways that I
can monetize my skills without hustling, without burning out. It's
a skill, it's a skill, and it's so important that
we're always thinking about how do we increase our extra
cash flow. And then the fourth part of the wealth
building cycle is always evaluating in your money thoughts and
the beliefs and what you're telling yourself. And as you

(22:59):
move up these just a financial security, you'll find like
thoughts that served you in the past aren't going to
serve you and continue to serve you in the future,
and you're gonna have to like shud them and outgrow them.
For example, I remember growing up being told like, don't
make so much money because if you make more money,
you're just gonna have to pay more in taxes. This
is what I was told all the time. And they're

(23:21):
keep point where my husband and I were, We're gonna
make about three hundred thousand dollars together, and we're like,
oh my god, there's a lot of money, Like maybe
this is it. Maybe we don't need to cheap, making
more money. Look at how much we're paying in taxes.
And my husband was like, no, let's make more money,
let's pay the taxes. And now, I mean last year

(23:44):
we reported together combined income like around seven hundred and
fifty thousand dollars. We've paid so much in taxes, but
we've also been able to buy a house. We've also
been to travel. There's so many other things. But I
had to like let go of that belief. I also
had belief regarding of being a homeowner because I had
grown a house for and I was scared of that
that I had to let go. So eval evaluating your

(24:07):
money thoughts and reflecting on what you're thinking about money
is so important as you're in this wealth building cycle.
So to recap those four things, Okay your numbers, develop
your financial literacy, increase your income, and always be aware
of your money thoughts. In order to stay in this
wealth building cycle, you have to be so intentional about

(24:28):
your self care because you're not. When you're not taking
care of yourself, when you're out of your zone of resilience,
you're not going to have the capacity to look at
your numbers. You're not going to have the capacity to
be like, oh, let me change my money thoughts. So
it's so important that you learn how to engage in
the seven types of self care.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yeah, you just touched on a lot of different things
that I think are super profound, one of which is
sort of a good problem to have. But to your point,
when you're paying too, when you feel like you actually
feel the hit of the taxes, right, and I feel
like there's a particular point, and it depends on where
you live, but I feel like around that two hundred

(25:11):
thousand dollars mark, it's sometimes the most frustrating place to
be because you're getting crushed on taxes but you and
you're not making enough where you're just really killing And
especially I live in the New York New Jersey area,
it's very expensive, so you know, to me, once I
began to start making a little bit more money and
have a really good year, it was almost incredibly deflating

(25:33):
and depressing about the fact that I still wasn't living
the lifestyle that I wanted to because of things like
taxes and all that stuff. I'm just curious how you
sort of grapped your brain around that time period and
still we're kind of working. I guess through that and
adjusting or recognizing, oh, I actually need to make X

(25:54):
amount of money more to actually have the lifestyle I want.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Yeah, I mean I remember when I did the calculation.
I was like, in order for us to buy a house,
and if we stick to this budget when it comes
to eighty nowt and this, but when it comes to
the kids' parties, all all we need to make is
three hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars, which was not much.
Which was much because you have to understand that my
last year in the classroom as a teacher, I was
making around sixty thousand dollars. Yeah, my husband was making

(26:20):
about eighty thousand dollars, So together we were like at
one hundred and forty eight. But we had two kids
living in Los Angeles, so it's it's a lot like
like where you're at, right, And I remember I did
that calculation. That calculation felt like it's impossible. How will
I give six figures? My husband was like, I could
do it. He's a software engineer. He's self taught, taught

(26:42):
himself how to code. I was like, I think I
could like job hop my way into making more money.
And I was like, oh, like I felt like insecure.
I felt so insecure that he was confident about increasing
his income, and that I felt so nervous about how
I'm going to do it. Nevertheless, he starts making more money,

(27:04):
we have to start paying more taxes. He was the
one who was really upset about it. He was like
so frustrated, And in my mind, I was like, look
at us, we actually made three hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
How in the world, Like, yes, I put it on
a vision board, but what really works? Like it was
so so I was in this place of a lot

(27:24):
of gratitude, and it was in this place of a
little bit of like frustration, resentment, and fear that it
was never going to get easier.

Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, that's the I think you just nailed it. It's
it's that thing of you, like you're it's like, how
will they say like it when it rains it pours
almost right, It's like the second you have an extra
dollar in your pocket, you get hit with another bill
or something bad happens. It is that same feeling like
we're never going to get ahead and achieve this quote
unquote American dream that we've been chasing.

Speaker 2 (27:56):
Yeah, and that's definitely that's where that he was at.
I remember, like we had made that amount of money,
but we still couldn't afford to buy a house, right,
he was like, we're still renting. We're still an apartment.
We paid four thousand, seven hundred dollars a month for
a three bedroom apartment in an area where car got
stolen like this, Like he had a lot of feelings

(28:18):
about that, and I think part of it that I
allowed him to have those feelings. He needed to process
those emotions. It was pay for him to be upset,
to feel frustrated, to feel fearful. There was a time
I was like trying to push my gratitude onto him,
and that just felt like I was gaslighting him. That's
what he said to me. Like he just got like no, no, no, no,

(28:40):
I need to have my emotions and so really allowing
yourself to be like Yang, I'm proud of myself. Yany
it's a little it's gonnen a little better, and oh
this is still so hard because I'm a first gen
wealth fielder. Like you just have to like hold space
for that and allow yourself to feel those feelings because
they're valid and it is frustrating. And it could be

(29:02):
it could be anxiety inducing to feel like, no matter what,
I'm never going to get now. Another key part is
to stop and reflect on how you're building your wealth.
For me, I was very intentional as I worked on
increasing my income to be very protective of my self
care routines. I was determined never to get as sick
as I was when I was as a teacher. Ever, again,

(29:25):
whereas my husband he was sacrificing sleep, there was times
he was sacrificing exercising, he was sacrificing hanging out with friends,
and he was putting work always ahead. And I think
that's the recipe for one burnout, but two also resentment.
You have to enjoy your journey to increasing your income
and wealth building. If not, it's not sustainable.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, yeah, No, that's a you can't hold on too
tight to the vision you have in your head of
what you want to create. I think, right, that's sort
of what I've I've learned, especially as I've gotten older,
and your body doesn't recover the way that it used to,
and it has far more demands than it did when
you were in your twenties, right, And I've recognized how
important the self care part of it of it is,

(30:08):
and also how you sometimes just can't will everything into
existence at the exact moment you want it to, and
oftentimes operating from a place of burnout. Even if you're
technically putting in the hours, they're not as they're not
quality hours most of the time. Right, They're not somebody
who's operating from a creative and energized place. It's somebody

(30:29):
who's sort of just getting by, and that's not really
doing much for you in the long run, aside from
being detrimental to your physical and mental health, which is
going to produce the opposite effect of what you want, right,
And I think that is I think a great sort
of point to bring up as well. But I guess
then we talked about it. You were talking about this
balance between gratitude but then realistically saying the budget we

(30:51):
thought that was going to work, or the number that
seems so crazy to us because of how we grew
up isn't actually that crazy in twenty twenty five in
the Greater Loss Angela's area, Right, So how do you
then find the balance between saying we need to readjust
the plan but still being grateful for the opportunities that
you've you've gotten in the goals that you're checking off

(31:12):
along the way.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, well a big thing was still focusing on increasing
our income. That was huge. It was like, okay, so
we still can't afford to buy a house, then let's
focus on increasing our income. Again. Also being intentional is
like as more money came our way, what were what
ways could we use money as a tool to support
our wellness to nurture our joy and what were the

(31:36):
ways that we were going to nurture our wellness and
our joy for free ninety nine and really like having
a like a low cost self care toolbox. So as
a parent, I know like, oh, like like I told
you in the beginning, right, like we've overspent, so the
next you the next week, we got to like really
come under. So I'm thinking for on the weekend, we're

(31:56):
going to be going to the park, we're going to
go to the library, we're going to clean the house,
all those things three ninety nine, and it's gonna be
like nicer for the home. So maybe the following week,
maybe we can go eat out at a restaurant, maybe
we could do a little bit more. But really taking
things week by week is helpful in terms of keeping

(32:17):
some expenses low so that you can continue to build
your cash reserves. Also, you want your money making money.
So as we were saving to buy a home, we
were putting At one point we had like over two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a high yield savings account.
So the moning in our in our high held savings

(32:37):
account every month was making one thousand dollars on interest.
And so that I think was also very comforting. By
looking at our at our different accounts and not only
the savings accounts but also our investment account and seeing
how our money is making us money, that felt like, Okay,
it's not all on us, Like our money's working for us.
If we can just be intentional about putting money aside,

(33:00):
then our money can actually earn us money. And that
felt a little like like a little relieving.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
All right, we'll take one more quick break and then
the rest of my conversation with so that that from
wealth batoos, all right, we are back. So you're talked
about budgeting. We've talked about trying to increase your income
by ten percent every year, right, and finding those little
extra creative ways that you can. You can do it.

(33:29):
As you guys are trying to increase your money by
ten percent, are you doing anything else? Are you beginning
to invest? I know you just mentioned obviously the savings account,
but at what point do you feel comfortable enough to
start getting a little bit aggressive and start taking some
of these quote unquote risks of investing your money into
places like the stock market?

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Oh, that was pretty quick for us, it was we
built a checking account buff And this is also in
terms of like the ten stages of financial security, right,
so in stage three is that you can maintain a
checking account buffer. And this is just money that you
keep in your checking account that's either five to twenty
five percent of your monthly expenses, and you learn to

(34:11):
have money in your checking account that you don't use.
For us, we have a twenty five percent checking account
of So for us, it's two thousand, five hundred dollars.
So if I look at my account and I see
two thousand, six hundred dollars, I'm like, oh, I only
have one hundred dollars to spend until we get that
as somebody who grew up with the thing of that

(34:34):
money is meant to be spent that was something I
had to learn. I had to learn to see money
there and respect it of like, no, that's not spending money.
That is a piece of mind money and valuing having
money set aside to just protect my peace of mind.
So that's twenty five hundred checking account buffer. Then we
also build our emergency fund sinking funds. We eliminated all

(34:56):
of our high interest debt, and then we started now
maxing out our retirement accounts because again we're working to
become more optional and want to retire at an early age.
So that means and not everyone has to do that.
Not everyone is going to well, first of all, not
everyone lives in a very high class living area, so
you probably have to max out your retirement account. Your

(35:17):
expenses aren't going to be as high. But for us,
we live in California. We're trying to live in California forever.
If it's not California as New York City, that's where
my husband, So it's like.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, we gotta have right either way, you gotta have
the money.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
And like I said, we have two kids, so for us,
it's like okay, maxing out retirement accounts. And that was
a shift for me because I have learned like, oh,
you just contribute whatever your employer matches. So my employer
matched three percent, so I was always only investing three percent,

(35:53):
and they I don't think everyone knows that there is
a maximum of how much you can contribute to a
four one K or a four h three B. And
there's also the reality that there's a lot of us
who don't even have access to employer retirement accounts, so
that we don't necessarily even know how to invest for
retirement if our employer isn't giving us a retirement account,

(36:14):
which is why we have to develop our financial literacy.
So for us, we focused on My husband had zero
dollars invested for retirement at the age of thirty two,
and one of the things that we said before we
went and bought a house is that we wanted to
make sure that he had at least one hundred thousand
dollars invested for retirement, which maxing out has employer retirement

(36:38):
account would mean, like we just had to do that
for five years. But even to get to the point
where he could max out his retirement account, we had
to increase our income. So so you see how it was
like all interconnected It's all very much related, and these
are that we just had to work on together. So
for us maxing out retirement accounts, I mean that is

(37:00):
that is a like a prerequisite to even spend me more.
And the reason why is because I like to travel. Now,
you best believe I'm gonna want to travel when my
kids are not in the house anymore. I'm like retired.
So that's why I think for me, uh, investing for
retirement is like, yeah, of course I'm going to prioritize

(37:22):
that because I see it as a form of self care.
Future me is going to want to spend on self.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Care too, right right right? No, I I love that
and you I want to rewind to something you you
touched on the what you call it the emergency fund
for your bills, specifically having an account for that, But
then you mentioned you have another account for like emergencies.
Is that is that what I heard?

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Funks? Maybe yeah, yeah, sicking funds.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, it's for things that we know that we're going
to spend money on for us, like our our repairs,
kid's birthday party, school expenses, traveling. Except this year, when
we bought the house, we decided that instead of traveling
as a family. The money that we would usually save,
we're using it to fix this house up, and so

(38:11):
it shifts. But we're always evaluating what are our sinking funds,
what are the things that we know we're gonna spend
money on, and setting automatic transfers from our checking account
to save for those things.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
I love that because it's I think a lot of people.
The general thing you hear a lot is like the
first one, having for you know, a percentages for saving
just in case something, you know, shit hits the fan
essentially right like with your bills and things like that,
but being proactive and saying I know that I'm probably
gonna get a flat tire down the road. I know
that being a homeowner, something's gonna happen, something's gonna break,

(38:45):
and I'm gonna have to get a plumber in here
to fix it. Whatever. The toilet, the sink I didn't expect.
I like that sort of more proactive mindset as well.
Is there a percentage that you put into into that
fund or how do you kind of calculate what you're
automatic withdrawal is going to be?

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, I mean it changes. It depends on our savings goals.
And by when we need the money. One of the things, like,
you know, we were saving to a twenty percent down
payment for a house for five years, and yet I
was able to afford an automatic transfer of five hundred
dollars a month. But that wasn't how we saved the

(39:22):
full money. It was being so intentional. As money came
our way, as as we got bonuses, if I had
a good year in business and I was able to
pay myself more. Right like, as money came my way,
we made sure to fill up our sinking funds first.
So even like right now, right now, like in my mind,

(39:43):
I'm like, we're short money. We're short money. And the
reason why I'm saving for short money is because we
have sinking funds that are not full filled up. We're
trying to convert our our garage to a studio so
that eventually we could run it out. Okay, we're working
on saving money for that. We also have property taxes

(40:03):
that we need to save for and a tax bill.
These are sinking funds, and I'm like thinking about money
that's going to be coming, and I'm like, oh, we
don't have all that money in place, And I'm aware
of that, and yet I do have like emergency fund savings,
I have cash reserves that I could pull from other areas.
But this is why I've been telling my husband, like,
this is a year that we're going to increase our

(40:23):
income again because buying a house came with a lot
of expenses. Yes, Or if we don't want to increase
our income, then we have to slow down on what
we choose to do with our money and be more patient.
And I think for me, it's easier to increase my
income than be patient.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
Sure, sure, but I mean to be fair, though, you
are displaying a lot of patients even in the way
you're described sort of how you guys were saving for
buying a house.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Right.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
I like the idea because I think we get this
fixed goal in mind, right, Okay, I want to buy
a house, so that's what we're we're working towards, and
we're saving towards it, and that's amazing, but we sort
of forget all the other things that are going to
come up along the way. Or I think to what
you were talking about sort of setting that thing of out. Okay,
we got to max out the retirement fund though, before

(41:15):
we go in on the big time goal. Almost right,
And I think those little goals along the way to
set yourself up that when you get the house, it's
not going to be a burden, but instead it's actually
going to be that joyous thing that you finally achieve
that you're hoping for. Is kind of what I'm taking
away from that one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
I mean, for us to buy a house, we save
twenty percent for the down payment, five percent for closing costs,
three percent maintenance fun I had cash, oh, a furniture
fun so I knew I was going to want to
buy a new furniture for this house. So I say
fifteen thousand dollars. And my husband, who was so eager
to get us out of living in an apartment, he
was the one on Zillo finding houses and sending to

(41:56):
my way, and I was like, we can't affording it.
We don't have all those cash reserves. And then at
those numbers. I was constantly looking at at the numbers,
and we did have to be patient there. And then
there came to the point where he knew, like he
was like, so living in this neighborhood is rough on
my nervous system. I want to live somewhere that I

(42:17):
don't have to worry and like always be on high alert.
And when I said that to me, I was like,
all right, that's it, We're going to really really focus
on buying this house. Ace happened. We got this house,
which was an old house, fifty year fifty year old house.
It required fixing up, but we had the cash reserves
set aside to do it, so it was like, okay,

(42:37):
we could do it.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Yeah, you were able to do it with a peace
of mind.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
I was the opposite. When I first bought my property.
I basically just saved to get the down payment and
get all the you know expenses that came with closing,
to get that done. But then I basically panicked once
I had the keys. I'm sitting in this empty house,
I'm like, fuck, I just cleared out the majority of
all all of my money to make this happen. Now

(43:02):
what I came to enjoy this, I'm walking around nervous
about what is going to happen if I'm not able to,
you know, sort of replenish those funds as quickly as
I need to. And thank God that I did, but
that those that takes a toll on your nervous system.
For having those explosive moments of anxiety, and to be honest,
it tainted the joy of buying my first property. I

(43:25):
couldn't actually fully embrace it and enjoy it because I
was living so anxious to the point of even like
expenses for brentia U Hall to bring things. I was
so worried about everything at that point, right and I
and that's just no way to live. I think at
the end of the day, right, And I think we've
sort of like I don't know. I grew up for
sure in like the that mindset of like my parents

(43:48):
would achieve these great things, but there was always a
sense of panic around it, as like I think we
bid off bar that we could chew. And if I
could do it again, I would probably wait a little
bit longer, or I would have prepared a year sooner,
or whatever it was, because I know that it's not
you don't life is not meant to have these gigantic
ups and downs as far as your emotional you know,

(44:09):
your your I don't know. Just like the toll it takes,
I can't really explain it any any other way other
than that. And I think I think most of us
operate in these moments of extreme highs and then extreme lows,
and we don't recognize the idea you're probably supposed to
a little bit more balanced than we've been brought up
or raised to see.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
You know what. I want to share this because I
was somebody who had done, like when we bought the house,
we put twenty two percent down just to make sure
that our mortgage was something that was going to still
give us extra cash flow on a monthly basis. I had,
like I said, the moving costs of furniture. Had all
this saved, we were able to do house repairs. We
move into the house, and within five days of moving

(44:50):
into the house, we had to evacuate due to wildfires
in California. And so I share that story because the
reality is is that we can only each do our
best for you that almost with the information you had
at that time, you did your best, and we have
to be able to be like, Okay, I did my best.

(45:12):
I didn't have like there's also things outside of our control.
It was outside of your control that nobody had, like
sat you down when you were in high school, that
you had like personal finance courses that they told me, like, oh,
also save for this also save for this No, like
we have to ask well acknowledge that, right, because we
could be so hard on ourselves and we could then
like that that like strictness or that judgment can cause

(45:35):
us to then be very fearful. And the reality is
is like we're all doing our best. Let's learn a
little bit more, think about the aspects of the wealth
building cycle, continue to seek out information. But that even
that is hard, right, because there's a version of me.
I didn't know what a roth iray was. There's no
way that I couldn't even googled how to max out

(45:56):
a wrath diarray because I didn't have that vocabulary. That's like,
I'm so grateful for you using this platform to talk
about personal finance because people are listening today, They're gonna
be thinking, oh, I never heard of sinking funds before.
I never heard of it account buffer. You're giving people
access to to words that then they can google, and
we need and we all need to be talking the

(46:18):
net a more. And I think that was another thing
that like they caused me to be so passionate about
sharing my own financial journey is because I was like
I just didn't know if I had knew just a
little bit more. But no one even wanted to talk
to the nettle with me because it was considered like rude, disrespectful,
like you know. But then then we don't have the

(46:40):
information we need and we can't even google it.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think for me, that's probably
the biggest takeaway from all of the conversations I've been
having this month is is sort of breaking down the
barriers just by having conversation, right, And when you begin
to have the conversation, it piques curiosity. But also when

(47:03):
you have the conversation amongst people who are from your
community or you know, and speak your language, so to speak,
it seems less scary, right, And when something feels less scary,
you're more inclined to be curious about it, and that
curiosity then leads to education. And I think, you know,
it's funny you I kind of just you know, you
start this idea of this concept of of you know,

(47:26):
building wealth and what are the keys and all these
different complicated avenues that you can you can take for it.
But I think in our conversations we kind of draw
to a close to me, the biggest takeaway and the
biggest sort of key and you can correct me if
I'm wrong, But it feels like mindset more than anything.
It's getting your mindset in order and correcting the thoughts

(47:50):
that don't allow you to show up as the highest
version of yourself, who is then seeking out the information
and putting in the work. I kind of feel like
that is bottom, you know, ground level is getting your
mind in order.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, And I think even to be able to get
your mind in order, you have to be so in
tune with your body because sometimes like we're going to
face resistance to letting go of beliefs because our body
is like it is not safe to think that it's
okay to invest in the stock market, It is not
safe to think that let me walk away from this

(48:24):
job and get a higher pain job. Well what if
that higher pain job ends up being toxic? Like our
mind always going to try to protect us from from
feeling unsafe, and the problem with them is that we
can get stuck in some familiarity and just because something
is familiar doesn't mean that it's safe. So recognizing when

(48:45):
your body is saying like oooh nop, this is scary,
don't do it, and learning to like calm your body
down learning to you know, ground yourself, taking deep breads,
going on a walk, understanding like how do I take
care of myself? So I could really see it's like, oh,
is this my body like just being on hyper alert
because this is something so new. And if that's the case,

(49:07):
like what information can I seek out to make my
body feel a little bit more open to learning buying
something new?

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yeah? I love that because that's probably one of the
biggest practices I've adapted, is in those moments I feel
anxious or unsure of the next step, I just kind
of do research and I just blindly will go online
and I'll watch random YouTube videos. I'll go back and
forth with chat GBT, and at the end of that process,
I feel far more relaxed and like okay with making

(49:37):
a decision, you know, or at times where I'm unsure
about my path, when I just begin to sort of
if I write it out or or again talk it
out with chat GBT, it's just getting it out of
the anxious thoughts out of my head, and then it
makes room for the ones that actually have clarity and
that are actually far more instinctual rather than fear based.

Speaker 2 (49:56):
Right, And it's also important that we have people around
us that are gone, like call us out on our
fear based thoughts, you know, and think about my times
in my circle people were like reiterating my fear based
thoughts and they were saying that, like I so somebody,
but I didn't start a podcast for years. I just

(50:16):
started one, but for years because my mom was telling me, no,
it's so dangerous, and then other people, oh, it's so
much work and everyone else. Those are thoughts that I
already had about having a podcast, but hearing it from
other people just force those thoughts. Then finally I got
to the point where you surround yourself with people who
don't have those same fear based thoughts, and you can

(50:38):
start to think about it differently. It's so important that
you have a community of people who want we'll talk
to that with you, but also people will talk to
net with you from a place of hope and possibility
versus urgency and anxiety.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Right right, Yeah, absolutely, I think that it's interesting. There's
there's farm there's a far more holistic approach to money
that then I think people realize and that's sort of
the healthier one rather than I feel like the finance
bro that we sort of see all over social media
and I love that you're bringing light to that and
that's the work that you're doing. So if people want
to work with you, I know you have wealth. It's

(51:16):
a community. There's also I think one on one coaching
right where can people kind of gain contact and tap
in if they want to know more about what you do.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Yes, I would love to hear from you. If you
heard this podcast episode, send me a DM on Instagram.
I'm also on LinkedIn and Threads. You can subscribe to
my email list. I send no emails every Tuesday and Thursday,
and I have a podcast. The podcast is called Wealth
Paratodos Financial Security through Self Care that's currently on Apple

(51:44):
and Spotify. I release episodes every Sunday. And if you want,
like after you learn more about me and you you know,
you get a taste of my style, then you could
also consider hiring me as your money and self care coach.
I work with clients one on one and I also
have a group membership program and you can find out
that everywhere. I love it.

Speaker 1 (52:06):
I love it, and definitely check out the website. There's
a lot of really like you did a great job
of being very in depth about what you do, and
I think for anybody who's looking for that kind of help,
you definitely check out the website and kind of get
a feel for the work that Saul is doing. I
think it's absolutely incredible. Thank you, Thank you, of course,
and thank you so much for hopping on. We really
do appreciate the conversation. Thank you for doing what you do,

(52:28):
thank you.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
For having me, and if y'all have questions, you reach
out to not be a stranger. The more of us
talking me out.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Of the better man. Big shout out to my guest
this week sort of from Wealth Boos. I think, don't
I kind of summarize at the end. You know, I'm
not gonna I'm we're gonna do conclusions too, because I'm
in the ring conclusions too. Let's let's touch on all
we talked about today and tie in a neat little
boat in this segment we call conclusions. Do but first

(52:56):
take a quick break and then we'll be right back
time come all right, So, I think the biggest takeaway
and it's ironic that it felt like it just hit
me in the moment. It's funny or ironic more than

(53:17):
anything that it's like groundbreaking to me. But I sort
of like, as much as I was trying to approach
this month and all of these episodes in these conversations
from a different perspective. I also went into this conversation
like this is gonna be the blueprint to building wealth
for latinos, right, And I think it was, but more

(53:39):
than practical advice, and we got a lot of it
in this conversation. The biggest thing for me is, like, ironically,
I keep using that fucking word redundantly at this point,
but it's your mindset. And again, I feel stupid even
saying that out loud because it's kind like a yeah, duh,

(54:02):
But I feel like we don't recognize it, or we
don't prioritize it, or really we don't look at it
as something you know, of substance or extreme importance as
it should be, right, Like Number one, more than anything

(54:25):
else is getting your mind in order. You can't do
anything without your your mental being in order. Right. I
think even having the best financial plan in place and oh,
I'm going to take a percentage of this and put
it into savings, to this and to that, it means
nothing if your mind is not in the right place,
Because if your mind is not in tune with yourself,

(54:49):
or your mind is operating from a place of trauma,
or is still operating in a place of self doubt
and an identity crisis. You're not going to stick to
those plans in the long run. Your mind will find
a way to sabotage, to self sabotage with old programming, right,

(55:09):
and it will listen to those naysayers, and it will
listen to the doubt, the doubting voice that you have
in your head that we all have. And you have
to address that. And I don't even simple things like
we talked about this conversation, the idea of like taking
it easy on yourself. As simple and dumb as that
sounds out loud, it's something many of us don't regularly practice.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
I've beat the shit out of myself mentally so many
times when I didn't reach my financial goals right when
I you know, ate out more than I planned on
for that week, and I've made myself feel bad about it, right,
and you know, or I've I've deprived myself of the
things that I enjoy because I told myself I don't

(55:58):
deserve them right now because I'm not where I want
to be financially right, and I've gone through the spectrum
of that throughout the years, or you know, sort of
having those woe is Me moments, like I'll never get
ahead no matter how hard I work, no matter you know,
how much I increase my income. There's always something happening right,

(56:18):
And it's these thoughts that you end up, you know,
peeding yourself to a point that you defeat yourself, or
you end up halting your progress only to have to
start all over again. And I think if I could
take away anything from this month and we're not, you know,
I'm gonna do a solo episode next week to kind

(56:43):
of round everything out, But it really you have to
do that inner work, you know. I think it's so
crucial to any aspect of our lives, from our finances
to our personal relationships, Like none of it be as
in sync or bring us as much fulfillment as we

(57:04):
need it to or as we want it to if
we don't have our mental in order. It's so it's
so incredibly important. And again I feel like that sounds
ridiculous or redundant or again just obvious, but we say
it's obvious, and then we go and do the complete

(57:27):
opposite of what's actually healthy for us or what actually
will put us in the best position to win. And
like a small anecdote from that, I shared, how you
know I've gone through phase I'm like, dude, I gotta
cut out eating out so much, you know, like uber eats,
and I'm ordering two meals you know, a day from there,

(57:48):
and like you do the math, and it's like I
just paid fifteen dollars extra per meal for no reason,
just because I didn't cook something, or just because I
didn't get in the car and go pick it up myself.
And I would use the excuse is like oh, I'm busy,
which I am, and all these things, and then it
would just be the cycle of like shame of like
you're not taking care of yourself or you're now you're

(58:09):
not you know, you're going over budge, you're not really
reaching your financial goals, you're wasting money, you're throwing money,
like this whole cycle of shame around these little things.
And then when I would be good at it, right
when I would be like, hey, we're going food shopping,
We're going to cook every meal, we're gonna prep I
would do all those things, but then I would be
upset or depressed because I'm like, really, I want to

(58:32):
just go and you know, grab some pasta from the
Italian place that I like down the road, like I'm
craving that it don't hit the same when I make it,
you know. And it's like you had this week where
you just worked your ass off in every aspect and
you want this one little release, but then you feel
guilty about it, and that guilt leads to you being

(58:52):
depressed about the fact that you're not a fucking billionaire
who doesn't have to think about these things, right, And
that's like, you know, I guess a small little anctote,
but that's something that could bleed into every aspect of
your life, right, and that will halt or slow down
potential progress because you're operating from this place of just

(59:15):
being miserable with life and being upset with life and
the hand that you've been dealt, and it's easy to
then get into a sort of woe is Me stage
where you are really defeating yourself at the end of
the day and you're not as energized and you're not
as excited to get after the day as you would
have been if you had a bit more of balance
in terms of working for your future but also allowing

(59:41):
yourself to have the pleasantries of life. And again, these
are simple, seemingly obvious things that so many of us
don't practice in real time. Her talking about budgeting in
the restaurant meal that she wants to have once a
week is so obvious. But I why the fuck didn't

(01:00:03):
I think of that?

Speaker 2 (01:00:04):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Why is that like, oh, my God type of thing
to me? Right? Why is that so profound? And again,
it's often these simple little things that make the world
of difference. And I know that for me in the
moments and the phases of my weeks, my days, my weeks,

(01:00:24):
my months, my years, the moments where I'm operating from
a place of excitement about life. And it doesn't have
to just be career opportunity. It doesn't have to be relationships,
it doesn't have to be any of those things. If
I'm just like, oh, man, like life is good. Life
just feels good. The more I operate from that mental place,
the better I am in my career, the more creative

(01:00:46):
I am, the better I'm showing up for my relationships,
the more fun I'm having just experiencing this thing called life.
And that's why having a plan for wealth and finances
and career our meaningless if you don't have the mental
plan to go with it, if you don't have the

(01:01:09):
positive thoughts to go with it, if you aren't doing
the work on yourself internally to go along with the tangible,
real world things that you're doing to accumulate wealth. You know, again,
you can have a million dollars sitting in the bank
and be completely miserable, right if you're not in touch
with what's going on internally. And I think that's sort

(01:01:29):
of the bigger takeaway of it all. And obviously I
love her talking about these plans for the future. I
think in a practical way, that is something we need
to get better at, you know, myself included. And I
also think the other thing is she had the bigger
idea and the bigger goal of purchasing the house, but
she also didn't allow it to blind her to what

(01:01:53):
does she need to do to purchase the house and
not be in a position of constant anxiety, right being
house rich but money poor type of mindset. And I
love that and that's something I wish I had learned,
And I kind of got a little emotional when she
sort of broke down for me and almost consoled me
and saying like, but you did the best of what

(01:02:14):
you had with the information you had at the time,
and that like felt like a relief. That felt good
to hear somebody sort of say that. And because again
I'm beating myself up in the conversations about you know,
what I did or cheapening the moment because I'm thinking

(01:02:36):
about how difficult it was once I got the property,
you know, And again that all starts with with your
mental health and your mental wealth, if you will, right.
And I think I'm talking in circles a bit, but yeah,
I think you know, in a lot of these conversations,

(01:03:00):
in all of them, as I kind of reflect on
these last four weeks in general, it all really circles
back to the secret sauce is like your mental state.
You get that in order the world opens it up
itself up for you. And obviously that's an ongoing process.

(01:03:25):
It never ends, but you get to a good and
healthy relationship with yourself internally, life really begins to open
itself up. And that's I think the journey I've been
on this last year so is getting back to that
point of like life is fun again, right, not just
white knuckling it, not working towards the goals and sacrificing

(01:03:48):
all the enjoyment, but like getting back to a place
of enjoying the process, having gratitude, and just leaving myself
open to all the joy that life has to offer,
even if it's not monetarily in the moment monetarily beneficial,
because I believe the joy it brings you will eventually
lead me down that route. But even if in the

(01:04:11):
moment it's not monetarily enjoyable, I understand that there's a
benefit to it, and I guess that's that's that's where
I'll leave it. You know, when it comes to this
this conversation today, I think I just love again. It's

(01:04:31):
like preparing for the future and becoming financially savvy and
building wealth, but doing it from a place of self care.
And I think that that's just a beautiful idea and
goal to have in mind. So again, big shout out
to our guests today, so that that from Wealth Barratolos,
go check her out. The website again has a lot
of information where her coaching or podcasts and all that stuff.

(01:04:54):
Go check everything out. I think she's an email list
on there as well. I found it to be super
helpful and I really love the mission that she's on,
so big shout out to her. With that said, i'll
catch you out on Thursday for our Thursday trans episode,
So then stay safe and we'll talk soon. Uee Life
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