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April 26, 2023 10 mins

It wasn’t until she was in her 20s that Giovanna “Gigi” Gonzalez learned about the power of being intentional with her money. But once she did, she discovered she had much more control over her life. The daughter of immigrants, Gigi went on to found The First Gen Mentor, which helps first-generation students and young professionals of color entering the workplace to confidently manage their money. Here, she shares the four important tips that can help young women gain control over their finances.

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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 women'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, I'm
pleased to welcome Gigi Gonzalez, founder of the First Gen Mentor.
The First Gen Mentor helps first generation students and young
professionals of color entering the workplace confidently manage their money. Gigi,

(00:48):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Hi, Kim, thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
So tell us briefly about your personal money journey, starting
from the time you were a girl.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, well, growing up in an immigrant household, money was
not discussed at all. Any sort of conversations we ever
did hear about money was we don't have enough of it,
so don't bother us asking so from a young age,
I just learned to never bring up the topic or
to ask for any money. We used to go on vacations,

(01:17):
but usually those vacations were pretty low key, like, you know,
we'd go to the neighboring town. We'd probably grab like
lunch out of seven eleven. So that means that when
I went to college and I embarked into adulthood, I
didn't have any tools on how to navigate money, which
meant I had to go through a lot of personal
hardship surrounding money in my early twenties until I finally

(01:39):
decided to self educate in my late twenties.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
What was the big lesson that you took away early
on that you realized you could do something about.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that in my twenties, I
went through a lot of financial hardships. So to kind
of give you a little more context, is, you know,
I was caught in some bad roommate situations. I was
caught in some toxic workplaces that caused me to burn out,
and I found that the common denominator was a lack
of money. And that was incredibly frustrating to find out
because I thought, okay, well, I went to college, I

(02:07):
did the quote unquote right thing. Why am I still
struggling with money? And that's when I realized this because
I didn't know how to manage the little money.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
That I did have.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I started to self educate and I learned that
I wasn't being intentional with my money. So I was
going to work, putting in my eight hours, but I
was not tracking where that money was going. I didn't
have any goals. So once I learned how powerful it
was to be intentional with my money and how creating
those goals tracking that money, it was a complete game

(02:36):
changer for me.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Wow, I wish I'd talked to you a lot earlier.
And I think a lot of people feel that way
that they wish they had known these tips much earlier
in life. So from all of that, what are the
favorite tools that you like to use?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, So when I was going through my financial journey,
I had a lot of debt, nose savings, very minimal investments.
What really helped me stay on track was a free
app called Budget, and it was just a way to
track exactly.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Where my money was going.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
One that I would recommend as well is called Envy
and that's one that my husband currently uses and he
swears by it. He uses it all the time. That
one is not free, but it's a one time three
dollars payment.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
So I know you at one time taught money classes
or finance classes pro bono at the Why Is that
a good place to learn about finance?

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Oh? Absolutely, And the reason for that is because the
why make sure to only recruit financial professionals in the area,
So you're going to get people that actually know what
they're talking about. They've worked in finance, and on top
of that, they're donating their free time to teach others
financial literacy, which means they have a passion for financial literacy.

(03:44):
And that's exactly what you want to learn from people
who genuinely want to teach it to help others.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
So that's you now. So from your journey and from
your experience, you really became a financial expert. And we're
thrilled that you're on the show and that you're part
of this overall secret program. You have four actionable to
dos that every young woman can do. Can you tell
us what those four to dos are? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Of course. So it really boils down to these four
points when anybody is getting started. So Number one, you
first need to set goals for yourself. It's hard to
get somewhere if you don't know where you're trying to go.
So visualize what kind of lifestyle do you want to have?
What city do you want to live in? Do you
want to be able to afford vacations comfortably? Do you
want to buy a house some day? These are all

(04:26):
things that are going to require money, and the clearer
you get on what you want out a life, the
easier it's going to be to move towards those financial goals,
especially when the going gets tough. Number two, Please spend
some time understanding your relationship to money. And I say
that because we all have different experiences with money. What
comes to mind is my husband's relationship to money. You

(04:47):
know what's funny is that he's married to a financial educator,
but growing up, he had a negative relationship to money
because his parents fought about money all the time. So
even though I taught him all the ropes of the
technicalities of how works, it still wouldn't stick for him
because he had that money trauma. So it's very important
to understand if you have a negative relationship with money,

(05:07):
understand where it came from, and then try to get
some help to cope with those feelings. Thirdly, I would
encourage anybody to self educate. And this is important because
money isn't taught in school. It's usually not taught at home,
especially if you come from an immigrant background. So it's
going to be important for you to be proactive and
your financial journey and teach yourself how money works. And lastly,

(05:28):
once you've learned how money works, it's going to be
super important for you to track, monitor and adjust as needed.
Your financial journey is not going to be just reading
a couple of books or listening to a couple of
podcasts and figuring it out. It probably took me two
years to truly understand how money works, so you got
to be patient with yourself.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Well, those are great tips. Again, set your goals, understand
your own relationship to money, self educate, and then track
and adjust as necessary. You know, one of the factors
for young women, especially young women of color, is this
pay gap which doesn't seem to go away. You have
some advice about that. What is your advice?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah, So, first, I would love any young woman listening
to this recording to understand that the pay gap exists.
I'd like to walk through some cuist statistics. So, according
to lean In, women overall make sixteen percent less than
white men, and as you break this down by women
of color, the statistic does get worse. So, for example,

(06:25):
Asian women make eighty six cents for every dollar that
a white male makes. White women make seventy three cents,
Black women sixty four cents, Latinas fifty four cents, and
Native women fifty one cents.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
That's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah, and it is unfortunate, I know, at least for
latinas a number to get worse last year. So it's
important to understand that the game is very much rigged
against us from the beginning. But while we're working to
make those systemic changes at the individual level, we need
to do the best we can with our own situation.
So what we can do is we need to learn
how to negotiate. A lot of us aren't taught that

(07:02):
that's even possible. Anytime that you get some sort of
job offer, please negotiate. The recruiter is expecting you to negotiate,
So if you don't negotiate, you are leaving money on
the table. As you have this job, please document your
wins and communicate your value to your supervisor because that's
going to come real handy when you need to negotiate.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
For a raise.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
And then lastly, I wish I would have learned this
one sooner. If you do all those things and you're
still not being paid accordingly, please go where you are valued.
I wasted so much time thinking I just had to
work harder because I wasn't being recognized or compensated appropriately.
But really I was working at a place that was
never going to see my value, so it was really
a waste of my time and efforts. It is harder

(07:40):
to find those companies that truly value diverse talent, but
I can promise you they exist.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
This is amazing advice, and you know, I think a
lot of what this whole series is about, and this
whole program, to your point, is really getting the knowledge
and the information you need to then go out and
do what you have to do. Again, of course, on
a systemic level, we're all working together to change things,
but as you said, it's really important to take control
the extent that you can on an individual level. And

(08:07):
to that end, you have a new book coming out
later this year full of great money tips. Tell us
the title and what it's about.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, of course. So my upcoming book is called Gutura
in Cash Money Lessons from the First Gen mentor for
Managing Finances and Cultural Expectations. And this book was really
inspired by my own personal finance journey. So I mentioned earlier,
I wasn't taught how money works. So what I did
is I self taught myself by reading over fifty personal

(08:35):
finance books.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
But yeah, although I did learn a lot about how
money works. I learned all the technicalities of budgeting, investing,
all that good stuff, what I found were that these
ymail authors didn't account for how I'd be navigating money
as a bicultro Latina. So the problems that I would come
across is that I would use the teachings I would
get from these books, and then when I use it
with my family, I got a lot of resistance yor like, hey,

(08:57):
this isn't how we do things, or you're being selfish,
or you're being cheap, or you're being ungrateful. So I
wanted to have a book to highlight those stories and
share others how to navigate a bicultural world.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Well, we are really thrilled about this book coming out,
and I think it's going to make a huge contribution. Again,
thanks for everything you're doing for all of us, and
thanks for joining us on the show. Thank you so much,
Thanks so much, Gigi. Let's recap some of what we
learned today. First, one of the most powerful tools you

(09:28):
can have is to be intentional with your money. It's
not enough to earn a decent paycheck to truly create
your future, says Gig. You need to track where your
money's going and what you want to do with it. Second,
self educate. Read all you can on personal finance. You
can take courses at places like The Why, and watch

(09:50):
for Gigi's personal finance book coming out later this year. Finally,
a tip from Gigi to help equalize the pay gap
as you progress in your career. When you get a
job offer, always think about negotiating. If you don't, she says,
you'll probably end up leaving money on the table. I
hope you enjoyed this special five part series, Secret Money

(10:11):
Tips in partnership with Secret Deodorant on Seneca's Conversations. Thank
you for listening, and please share today's podcast episode with
others in your Life. This is Kim Azarelli, co author
of Fast Forward and co founder of Seneca Women. Seneca's
Conversations is a production of the Seneca Women podcast network
and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the

(10:33):
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