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April 5, 2023 12 mins

When she was in her 20s, Carmen Perez thought she’d always be in debt. In fact, at one time she owed $57,000. But she paid off her debts, and gained a fresh perspective. Today, the CEO and founder of the Much budgeting app and creator of the personal finance blog, Make Real Cents, shares tips on how to use debt as a tool to further your goals. As she says, "you're only one decision away from a totally different life."

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, I'm Kim Azzarelli. Welcome to this brand new season
of Seneca's Conversations. In this season, we're launching a special
five part series on young woman's financial wellness in partnership
with Secret Deodorant. It's called Secret Money Tips. We recently
hosted the Young Women's Financial Wellness Form at the New
York Stock Exchange in partnership with Secret, renowned financial experts

(00:23):
gave young women their best advice about budgeting, saving, and
investing financial empowerment one oh one. Now we're bringing that
advice to every young woman through this series. Today, we're
talking to Carmen Perez, CEO and founder of Much, a
budgeting app. Carmen is also the creator of Make Real Sense,
a personal finance blog dedicated to helping people achieve financial independence. Carmen,

(00:46):
it's great to have you on the show. Welcome, I'm
so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. Well,
we had such a wonderful time hearing your advice at
the New York Stock Exchange and we really learned so much. So, Carmen,
tell us briefly about your financial journey. What was your
experience like growing up as it related to money. Yeah,
So this is where I think, like the term financial

(01:07):
trauma comes into play, and just understanding what your relationship
with money is, and that usually happens early on. Right,
I was raising a single parent household, and while my
relationship or my mom made it seem as if, you know,
everything was fairly consistent and steady, I think by seeing her,
you know, work so much and so hard and always

(01:28):
figuring out, you know, at the end of the day,
how to make something work. I think I carried that
into my relationship with money later on in my adult life.
So you know, getting up to living paycheck to paycheck,
just maxing out every sense of my paycheck. It was
my norm and that was something I feel I took
early on as it relates to my relationship with money,

(01:49):
and just ran with it into my adulthood. So it's like,
wasn't necessarily making the best financial decisions, but I could
always figure it out and make it work somehow. What
impact did that happen? I mean, how did that help
or hurt you in the early days? Yeah, so that
was it kept me in a constant cycle of stress.
So it was a very big cycle of just rense

(02:10):
and repeat in terms of making terrible financial decisions when
I had every opportunity not to do that. But again,
in the early stages, how your relationship is with money,
it's usually formed by apparent figure. And again that's what
I took with me, and it really ended up hurting
me for a little while. You know, now I have
a great success story, right, but in the early days,

(02:32):
it kept me in a constant level of low lying stress,
constantly worrying about, you know, how to make it work.
And at one point, I understand you were in fifty
seven thousand dollars worth of debt. What led to that
and how did you turn it around? Because you turned
it around I did. Yeah, So the fifty seven thousand
dollars of debt, I think for me personally, I think
this relates for a lot of people too. Is you

(02:54):
have to hit like some type of you don't necessarily
have to, but a majority of folks are catalized by
some rock bottom. And my moment was getting sued for
my student loan and that was a thirty thousand dollars
loan within that fifty seven thousand dollars of debt. And
you know, the journey really consisted of credit card debt,
so maxing out all of my credit cards, taking on

(03:17):
student loans, but really the catalyst was getting sued. So
I had all these terrible things happened up until that point.
I had a job offer resended that had terrible credit.
I was being eighteen percent interest on my car loan
that was also included in the fifty seven thousand dollars
of debt. My taking a step back happened when I
got sued and I had no money saved, and I
instantly was, you know, catapulted into this world of having

(03:41):
to navigate my finances very quickly within a short amount
of time. And it was just like a light switch.
I woke up to the idea of like having to
not have to live under distress anymore. You know, I
was privileged enough to not have to do this, but
I was putting myself through the stress subconscious again my
relationship with money, and I had to start navigating that

(04:04):
and feeling that back. And it was layers and pall
layers of doing different things, but eventually paid off all
of that debt. Wow, congratulations, Thank you. So if there
was one thing that you would take away from that
experience that you could share with those listening. I mean
a lot of people you know have debt for different reasons.
But I think you feel that some of that debt
was good debt in the sense that it was, you know,

(04:27):
financing your education. Obviously you had to pay your medical bills.
I mean, that's just investing in yourself. But maybe some
of the habits that you had around the other debt
was sort of compounding things. What's the difference. Yeah, So
I think debt and I feel like maybe even early on,
I had a different relationship with debt. I felt like
it was normalized. Everyone has it, My mom hasn't, my
friends has it, everyone around me has it. I'm going

(04:48):
to be in debt forever. Right That was kind of
my attitude towards debt, and right now my relationship over
time has changed with debt. The way I view it is,
you know, debt is inherently a financial tool. It's not
good or bad, but how you leverage it or misuse
it can get really tricky very quickly. Right And I
look at, you know, my debt in the past, just

(05:10):
having you know, some awareness around it, as my student
loans really did help me get through college. Any other way,
I wouldn't have been able to, you know, finance my education.
I had to take out the student loans. I've bought
a home and since sold it. But that was a
good way for me to you know, invest in an
asset that could eventually you know, give me some cash
down the road, right, And we made some profit off

(05:31):
of that that sale. But on the flip side of that, right,
like my credit cards, maxing those out and perhaps having
a store credit card just wasn't I wasn't using it
in the right way or leveraging it to my advantage.
So I'll give you an example. I had an express
credit card, and I would just go in and just
max it out on you know, just normal everyday clothes,

(05:52):
whereas I could have used that store card to actually
build my credit in a productive way get the things
that I actually needed, which were internship clothes that I
knew that I needed, right, instead of maxing it out
on stuff that I just didn't necessarily need or was
just seeking the instant gratification around. And I personally don't think,
you know, behind clothes and jewelry and all that stuff,

(06:14):
is it bad. That's that's not it. Um. I think
it's just important to find some balance in that relationship
with debt, right right, And I love when you talk
about kind of investing in yourself in that way and
investing in your education or investing in the wardrobe you
need for your interviews, but just being a little bit
more cautious about, you know, kind of impulse purchases and
not just thinking that you can max out on everything

(06:36):
all the time. Yeah. I mean, one really interesting concept
that you have is, uh, you know, is it ever
too early to start thinking about these things. I mean,
some people listening, you know, they're just getting started. They
may not have an income yet, they could be young students,
or they just are not seeing a way out, or
they're seeing, you know, that what they're doing is really

(06:57):
small potatoes. What do you say to that? Oh? I
love that. Yeah, so the small potatoes thing, right. I thought, again,
my early thoughts throughout debt were I'm always going to
have this, I'm never gonna be able to pay this off.
But you know, similar to how we kicked off is
how you manage a little, is how you manage a lot.
I thought, you know, my salary at the time when

(07:18):
I just graduated college wasn't going to afford me enough
to be able to, you know, pay down my debt,
or wasn't going to give me the ability to start
investing in the stock market. So my thought around that
and my mentality was, oh, i'll invest win or I'll
pay down my debt win. And I think everyone's always
chasing that kind of next milestone when it whether it
becomes their career or when it comes to their money.

(07:41):
And if you aren't managing the money that you currently
have and you're making in a productive way, those skills
aren't just going to instantly turn on overnight when you
start making you know, big bucks, right, whatever you deem
that to be. It's really taking a step back understanding
your current relationship with debt. So maybe you're a newbie,
or you know you've made some mistakes in your past,

(08:04):
like I did in terms of running and maxing out
my credit card. But you take your step back examine
your relationship to really understand why am I doing the
things that I'm doing, or perhaps am I scared to
take on debt if I'm a newbie, or I see
my parents having gone into a bunch of credit card debts,
so I don't want to be like them. So again
it's it's the mindset of just because you have a little,

(08:25):
it's not small potatoes. Whether it be your income or
the amount of debt that you have. The habits that
you build now are extremely important for when you get
bigger debts in terms of let's say you're taking out
a loan to start a business or a car loan.
The habits that you're building with the small things now
will carry over into the big things later on. Well,

(08:45):
and you are such an incredible example. So you turned
it around. You say that your early habits created bad credit,
but you turned it around. Now, tell us a little
bit about what you're doing now and some of the
milestones since that low point. Yeah, so there's been so
incredible milestones after paying off my debt, and you know, again,
some of that included some really productive things, like my

(09:07):
degree and all of that. So I obviously graduated, I
went to work on Wall Street for a bit, and
that gave me the career that gave me enough money
to do the things that I needed to do so
in order to pay down my debt. But after that
I found, you know that I wasn't as passionate about
traditional finance as I originally thought. I was. So once
I paid off all my debt, the closer I got to,

(09:30):
you know, making that last payment on my debt, the
more my vision started to open and broaden. The door
started opening like wide for me. So I went on
to save a bunch of money to be able to
quit my job in finance. And then when I quit
my job, my intention was to learn how to code.
So I transition careers in my early thirties to from

(09:52):
out of a traditional finance to software engineering. So it's
possible for anyone to be able to do it. But
more importan, after changing careers into a very lucrative field
where I could potentially continue to increase my income and
have my own skill set now in terms of software engineering,
I started my own company called Much and Much is

(10:13):
a social money and management platform that for people that
struggle with money and accountability and then also access to
an awesome you know on platform money community. I love that, yeah,
that you can connect with other users and just feel
less alone. Well, I have to say, Carmen, your story
is incredibly inspiring and I learned a lot talking to
you and meeting you again. I love what you say

(10:34):
that how you manage a little is how you manage
a lot. And I think everybody can take something from
this conversation and just re examine their own relationship with
money and their own relationship with debt. And we're super
grateful for everything you're doing for us. Thank you so
much for having me on. I really really appreciate it.
And you know again, I love to leave everyone with
this quote, You're always one decision away from a totally
different life, and it's very true in my own and

(10:56):
whether that looks like relationship, or job or your money,
you're always one decision away from a totally different life.
It's great to have you on the show. Thank you,
Thank you, Carmen. Let me recap some of what we
learned today. First, the money habits that young women are
building right now matter and they'll continue to matter for

(11:16):
years to come. Even if your current income is small,
what you do with it is important because, as Carmon says,
how you manage a little is how you manage a lot. Second,
think about debt as a tool. If used properly, it
can be leveraged to improve your future. Debt allowed Carmen
to go to school, and that opened up doors to
more opportunities than she could have ever imagined. But you

(11:38):
also have to be careful not to abuse debt, as
Carmen says, and make sure that you're using debt in
the right way. Finally, it's never too late to re
examine your relationship with money and perhaps move in a
new direction, one that might be different than your parents
or your friends. As Carmen says, you're always just one
choice away from a totally different life. Join me next

(11:58):
week for more money tips for young women on our
next episode of Seneca's Conversations, Secret Money Tips in partnership
with Secret Deodorant. Thank you for listening, and please share
today's podcast episode with the others in your life. This
is Kim Azzarelli, co author of Fast Forward and co
founder of Seneca Women. Seneca's Conversations is a production of

(12:19):
the Seneca Women podcast network and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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