Your Financial Foundation with Tanya Taylor

george grombacher 0:00
Come on one left with this is Georgie and the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Tanya Taylor. Tanya, are you ready to do this?

Unknown Speaker 0:18
Yes, I am ready. All right, let’s

george grombacher 0:20
let’s go Tonya is a CPA and MBA. She spent the last 23 years on Wall Street working with some of the largest investment banks and insurance companies. As an undocumented immigrant she arrived the United States at the age of 16. She committed to changing her life now she’s passionately helping others achieve financial independence. Tanya excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do.

Unknown Speaker 0:47
Absolutely. So um, so as you mentioned, I am an I was an undocumented immigrant way back when I came to America when I was 16. And that’s because, you know, we grew up in Jamaica, we were very poor. And my family saw that as an opportunity saw an opportunity for me to migrate to America, I came on my own. And when I came, I just wanted to change my life, I wanted to change their lives. And I figured one getting an education was a good way. And then as I did that, so went back to school, I got my accounting degree. And then I became a CPA, and subsequently got my MBA in strategic management. So that was one, I guess you could call it prong of me trying to build wealth. And the second problem was really learning how to build wealth. And I thought that was really important given where I came from, given where I wanted to go, not wanting to see my children live the way that we grew up, and then just wanting to help my family out of poverty. So I started learning wealth building at about 22. And I have kept up I started an investment club co founded with a couple of colleagues when I graduated college, so we could learn to invest in the stock market. And I also started a children’s financial education club. Later on, because I wanted children to learn about finances, because nobody seemed to learn that in school, so it was that was really important to me, from a personal perspective, and it’s just been a lifelong hobby, which I have now transitioned into a business, which I’ll talk about in a minute. But professionally, when I graduated college, I worked as auditor, I’ve worked as an analyst, I’ve worked as a unit unit, a lot of it around policies, but you name a large bank or a large insurance company, and I’ve worked with them in some capacity. And so that’s what I’ve been doing professionally as well.

george grombacher 2:35
Nice. She moved here at 16, just on your own. Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 2:42
I lived with. So I didn’t even know the people. So my family was just trying to find someone for me to stay with. And so family friend, and I lived with them until I was able to go off on my own.

george grombacher 2:54
Yes. Wow. What an experience. Yes. Would you look back on that? And you think you said that, that you have children? Could you even imagine sending your kid or perhaps you could.

Unknown Speaker 3:10
I saw my daughter is she just turned 17. My older daughter, I have two children once. And I remember when she was 16 Plus, and I thought to myself, we were both born the same month to literally I think it was August. And I was just reflecting like, oh my god, I was this age, when I moved to America on my own and had to do all of these things on my own. Because I had no family supervision per se, I literally had to just take my life in my own hands. And as much as my daughter is independent, bright, all of that I cannot begin to imagine something like that. So yeah, I guess when I came I the only thing I could think of was, how am I going to change my life? I couldn’t think about oh my god, I’m only 16 I can’t do this. So I guess perspectives.

george grombacher 4:02
Yeah, it’s such an immensely valuable thing. And it’s, it’s, it’s interesting that your daughter is around the same age and you’re like, oh my goodness, how would that work out? But she’d probably figure it out just like you did.

Unknown Speaker 4:15
She Well, she would. When put in a circumstance I think that we all just we’re gonna sink or swim. And if you want us if you want to swim, you’re gonna swim.

george grombacher 4:26
Yeah, yeah. I appreciate that. So, all right. So tell us about about I mean, obviously, spending, you know, 20 plus years on Wall Street working with these massive financial companies and banks was was really, really valuable. Your transition to doing what you’re doing now, tell us a little bit about what it is you’re doing.

Unknown Speaker 4:46
Yes. So what I do now is, as I said, I had this passion for teaching personal finance and one of the things that I’ve noticed over the years, even with many of my professional colleagues is that we make a good salary. And even if we don’t, we have no financial knowledge. And we have no savings for retirement. And we’re in a lot of debt. And just basic things like one of my clients that was talking to her, she joined the program. And she said, I’ve worked on Wall Street my entire life. But I just always thought that investing in the stock market was for rich people, I just never even considered the thought of it. And so I want to change their mindset and change the narrative around what you want your life to look like, in retirement, because if as of right now, you don’t even have a concrete plan for retirement, you know, that’s not good, a lot of us are in our 40s, or 50s. And we still don’t know what our retirement trajectory look like. And so my main focus is to help professionals ditch their bad debt, and really start understanding how money work. And that comes across all the different spectrums. So the ones with negative credit, learning how to repair their credit like that is actually possible. And it’s not as it’s not as hard as you think. And getting out of debt. Coming up with an emergency fund, we know that during COVID, $400, a lot of people didn’t have in their bank account. So having an emergency fund, and then really start learning how to invest, how to build your retirement portfolio, understanding what’s inside of your retirement portfolio, because a lot of people even if they have a pension plan with their company, they have no idea what’s going on with it. I have another client who she’s in her 30s, and she has all of her retirement, she had all of her retirement in a 2% Earning account, and it’s just sort of like, if you consider the rule of 72, it’s gonna take you 36 years to double that money. So how do you shift from that to really putting your money, investing it in a safe way, so that you can start building wealth, not just for you, because one of the things that I also want to change for people is that they can actually build generational wealth, not just let the buck stop with them, and not run out of money in retirement. So that’s my goal in my program, to really help people to see that.

george grombacher 7:19
It is it’s, it’s interesting, fascinating concerning that you have these colleagues that you worked with for so long at the big financial investment companies, and they didn’t even think that they were somebody who was an investor, or maybe they didn’t see themselves as somebody who’s capable of being financially successful. That mindset is, is it’s essential to get the right mindset, the right perspective, if you’re going to be financially successful.

Unknown Speaker 7:47
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s funny that you say that, because one of the first thing that I do in my program is to go through a mindset course. And it’s been invaluable for the clients that I’ve had, because a lot of men they don’t, especially us, as West Indians, we come from a background where I don’t want to generalize, but you know, where it’s, you’ve come to America, and you’ve had a good job, and that should be enough, or you’ve had a great career. So that should be enough. Like, what more do you want from that? So the idea of, I want to be rich, it’s just like blasting. It’s like, what do you mean, you want to be rich? You’re living okay? And so even with that, I want to shift that to like, why is it not okay to say I want to be be rich? Why is it not okay to say I want to travel the world. I’m on my 50 plus countries now. And I want to show people that they can do that as well, like, and so you can do your 50 plus countries, but you can also set aside this funds that you know that you’re going to be okay in retirement and that you can fund your children college. And all of that is okay.

george grombacher 8:53
Yeah, it was, it should be enough just having this job. Being here in in in the United States should be enough. And I respect it. Appreciate that. But to your point, is it is it a function of just being content with what you have, but it’s also okay to do the other additional is within reach and wanting that doesn’t mean that you’re being greedy or selfish. It’s just it’s overcoming that that mindset, and I can see where that would be hard.

Unknown Speaker 9:26
Yeah, it’s tough. And one of the things that I like to say to people is that there is enough resources, so don’t feel bad. If you have you’re taking away from someone as a matter of fact, the more that you have, I talked to them a lot about what’s beyond wealth. And if you have that you can give now you can start impacting other lives when if you don’t have enough, there isn’t much that you can do for others. So if you even just shift to start thinking that way, then then that could drive you to just say, Okay, maybe where I am is just not enough. Maybe if I do this x, I can start doing something else that could help others as well. And help me to live the lifestyle that I want. And it’s okay to want to live a certain lifestyle. Like there’s nothing wrong with that.

george grombacher 10:16
Yeah. And it is interesting that it, if that’s your perspective is if I get more, that means that somebody gets less. If that’s what you believe to be true, then that’s going to be a tough one to overcome.

Unknown Speaker 10:30
Yes, yes. And a lot of people, that’s what they think. And there’s enough resources out there, and we all can share in that resources and help others to benefit as well.

george grombacher 10:43
So ditch debt, I think that staying out of debt has got to be one of the most important financial things that we can do. And most of us Americans, and this was me, and for the majority of my 20s, using credit cards the wrong way, and being in debt and just being stupid with money, even though I worked in personal finance. It’s a trap that so many of us are falling into.

Unknown Speaker 11:07
Absolutely, and I, you know, unfortunately, a lot of that comes down to well, a couple of different things. One is like the lifestyle, right, we want to have a certain lifestyle. And because we want that lifestyle, but we also are not financially savvy. So we spend a lot without recognizing that if we keep taking with a credit card, right, and we’re not paying it off, interest is gonna catch up to us. We, whether we want to believe it or not, it’s going to catch up to us. But I think that if someone fully if you have a goal, and you sort of align your spending with your goals, there are things that we’re going to want to spend on regardless, and that’s okay. I usually say to people, don’t deprive yourself of the things that you love. But then identify the other things that you may be overspending on that you don’t necessarily feel that it’s in align with alignment with what you’re doing, and cut back on those things. And but because we don’t have that financial knowledge, we don’t have that financial savvy, we don’t think about, okay, what is the long term implications of us using our credit card now, we get stuck in debt, and then the cycle just continues. And a great way to break that cycle is to start with a simple thing as a budget. But most people you do a poll, most people do not have a budget, and so they do not know what they have going out versus what they have coming in. And when that simple piece of the equation doesn’t work. Everything spirals out of control.

george grombacher 12:48
So yeah, it’s it’s like an it’s it’s like a nonstarter. Yeah, so making sure that we have our head, right. But it just strikes me that, that I feel like I would be greedy or asking too much. If I had nice things for just just just to make it really simple. Yet, I’m still living beyond my means. And still consuming more than I’m earning, which I find to be that’s just an interest. It’s a perfectly human thing, that the way we engage in.

Unknown Speaker 13:22
Yeah, I mean, if you just look at just American, our consumption pattern, and just us individually, right, so when I came to this country, I was making $75 a week. And yes, it’s a way back when I had a budget, but I was able to live under $75. And so when I started making $200, I could have spent the whole $200, because it’s very easy to see all these different things that you want to do. But one of the things that I always did was that I always try to live as if I was making the same income to the extent that I can write because as life changes, your expenses are going to get higher. But I think one of the things I read this book a very, very long time ago, I think it’s the intelligent investor, I can’t remember now. But I remember this whole concept of paying yourself first and paying yourself 20%. And I realized that I was doing that. Because I needed to save to go to college, I paid for college that I didn’t have any loans when I graduated college. So when the concept came alive to me, I was thinking, oh my god, I should continue to do this because this is actually something that works. And so when you automatically take that money and just send it off to somewhere and never think about it, and if you get a new job and you develop a habit of just taking money out of your paycheck from people is their retirement plan that they use, but if you take an additional amount and just put it away, and then when you get a raise, instead of spending all of it and not getting to this pattern of spending all that you earn, it’s an easy way to say, Okay, I got a raise, I’m going to pretend like I didn’t get a $10,000 raise or $2,000 Raise, I’m going to pretend like it’s $1,000. And I’m going to take this other $1,000 in this example is $2,000. And I’m just going to put it away. And so instead of living this paycheck to paycheck cycle, we now have these funds that have been diverted elsewhere, that it’s towards our savings that we don’t have to think about, then we’re gonna think about it on the back end, because now we’re gonna learn how to make that money work for us. So you can grow faster. But that’s a great way to stop the cycle of constant continuously spending without putting anything away. Yeah, it’s such a powerful

george grombacher 15:43
thing, such a powerful thing. And, and then also, I love, I love the, the thought on every time you receive an increase in compensation, instead of just putting it all towards lifestyle, we are going to maybe increase our lifestyle a little bit, but just put the majority of it away to just savings and priorities and things like that. So yeah, shoot that very much. And that’s that,

Unknown Speaker 16:08
yes. And I just want to correct myself on the book is The Richest Man in Babylon. It’s not the intelligent investor. So yeah,

george grombacher 16:15
both both are excellent must read. So when when you’re working with somebody to, to help them break this cycle, I knew that you already touched on, I didn’t take a vow of poverty, we’re not trying to deprive ourselves of things we really love. But the reality is, we may need to take a step back. And it could be temporarily, in order to take a lot of steps forward. What is that? How do you think about how do you approach that conversation?

Unknown Speaker 16:46
Yeah, so I definitely have those conversations, because those are tough conversations to have, but you will correct if someone comes to me, and they’re way over their head in debt, and they love to go on luxury vacations. And as someone who loves to travel, it’s hard to say, Oh, my God, you cannot take a trip. But the way the conversation is framed after looking at the budget and looking, how much are you bringing in? And how much are you over spending? Is okay, let’s talk about let’s so for example, let’s say we were talking about this luxury travel, let’s talk about your travel. Okay, so we may not want to take away your vacation entirely. But if you’re spending $10,000, a year on vacation, and then you still have all these other overages that you’re spending on, right. But you have identified your vacation to be the most important thing for you. Let’s think about for now until we could fix the leak in your finances, how we can reduce this from $10,000. Find deals, find ways and I actually in my program, have a way have a course on how to vacation on a budget. So let’s go through. So let’s go through and find those ways that you can still be able to travel and maybe it’s not going to be five vacation or even three vacation, maybe it’s one vacation, but this year, and possibly even next year, it’s going to be a lower budget vacation, because we don’t want to completely take that vacation away from you. And because I feel bad. If someone has something that they really, really love, and we take that away completely, then it disincentivize them from doing whatever it is that I’m encouraging them to do. So we’re going to find a way to cut that so that you can still feel that you’re doing taking your vacation, but it’s not going to be the $10,000, maybe this year is going to be 2000 or 3000. And then we’re going to, in addition to that, start looking at the other things that are not as important to you that you’ve been spending wildly on. And we’re going to start cutting those so that eventually we can increase your vacation budget back up, get stuck, we’re going to stop the bleeding, we’re going to especially if you’re not saving, we’re going to be working towards your emergency fund. Because that’s really, really critical. And figuring out how we pay your debt off while we’re starting to invest as well. So we’re looking at all the components because if you’re in your 40s, and you’re not investing, you don’t have a retirement plan, and this is like real life scenario. For clients. We’re going to be tackling all of that, but we’re going to be doing it in a very structured way in a way that makes sense. And we are going to be cutting things until we’re able to until we’re able to get it back to where you want it to be to say okay, I’m comfortable now putting away $10,000 for vacation because I have these things in place. So we come up with our roadmap, and that’s sort of how and then we work on our roadmap to make sure that it makes sense because you got to test it to see if it’s working and then tweak it as we go along.

george grombacher 19:53
I love it. That makes sense. And I imagine that helps out a lot to say okay, this is going to be temporary but You can see here a year from now, 18 months from now 24 months from now going to be able to add these things back in because we’re going to have gotten out of debt, we’re going to be on track to meet and exceed those financial goals. So it is just temporary. I love it. Yes. Tanya, that was a good one for the people are ready for your difference making tip? What do you have for

Unknown Speaker 20:19
them? Absolutely. So um, so what I would say to people like whoever is in the sound of my boys, a lot of us in America, especially now are hurting financially. And it’s like everything is inflation is super high, the stock market is spiraling out of control. The one good thing is that employment is still pretty good. And there’s a lot of entrepreneurs out there. And I would say the difference making tip is that you’ve just got to find, and I’m just going to talk from a financial perspective, because I am a financial coach is that sit down and take a look at your current financial situation. And just pick one thing that you want to change in your finances and work at it. Come up with a plan, it could be a one week plan, it could be a one month plan, it could be it could be a one year plan, but take baby steps towards it. And as you take those steps, write them down, don’t just say I’m going to do it. Because when you write it down, and you can see it, it forces you to do the work. And then as you do the work, you will start seeing the changes. And if you’re not seeing the changes, you’ll know how to adjust and to tweak in order to be able to do that. And it doesn’t matter where you are in your finances. This is something that you will be able to do. And once you start seeing that change that will spur you on to make other changes as well.

george grombacher 21:55
Well, I think that that is great stuff that definitely gets come I think that’s awesome advice. And it’s so it’s I think it’s such an easy step to skip that we need to actually write things down, take out a pen a piece of paper and actually write down what it is you’re trying to accomplish because that does just really make it real. So appreciate that. What Tony thank you so much for coming on where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Unknown Speaker 22:21
Absolutely. So they can find me at grow your wealth teknicks.com That’s my website. And they can find me on Instagram at the same site at the same name at grow your wealth teknicks And I also just recently started a top channel. Tanya talks money in there I will also share I have started sharing personal finance tip very quick, very easy, but some things that you can also use and implement in your daily lives.

george grombacher 22:50
Love it. If you enjoyed as much as I did show Tanya your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to grow your wealth 10 x.com and find her on social media and I will list all those in the notes of the show. Thanks. Good. Tanya. Thank you so much. And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai