00:00Text, Currency Conversations, Chase, Essence, three women sit around a table over brunch.
00:05Hey there, I'm Kayla Walker, Media Maven and Lifestyle Authority, and today your host for Currency Conversations,
00:11where we're getting black women comfortable talking about money.
00:15And who else to talk about the money than these women?
00:17I'm joined by Sandra Davis, who is the CEO of Sage Financial Solutions.
00:21Yes, ma'am.
00:22As well as Lynette Kalfani-Cox, the money coach.
00:26And today we are talking about the B-word, ladies.
00:30Budget and spending.
00:33I hate budgeting.
00:35I'm like, I don't want a budget.
00:37I feel like I've been working too hard.
00:39I've been doing what I'm supposed to do, and I want to spend my money the way I want to spend it.
00:42And that's human nature, honestly, because most people feel like that.
00:46I think for me, part of it is recognizing that there's no one strategy or one technique that's always going to work for you,
00:54or that, frankly, always works for everybody else either.
00:57Right.
00:57And so I think part of the key to realize is that it doesn't matter what you call it.
01:01If you want to call it a budget, managing your cash flow, a spending plan of action,
01:06if you have a strategy and it's working for you, great, you're doing just fine, I'm sure.
01:10And you're watching it, too.
01:11Right.
01:11Because I think a lot of times people will, you know, the new year, new you, right?
01:15Right.
01:16And then you do this budget thing, and you put all the numbers together, and you put it next to your exercise plan,
01:21and then two or three months in, maybe not.
01:23So it's not just enough to set it up.
01:25You have to make sure that you're doing what you said you wanted to do.
01:28So I don't have a hard and fast budget.
01:30But what I do is I put my money in categories of how I want it to flow, and then I might need to adjust.
01:37And I might need to adjust in real time.
01:39I just know that if I say yes to one thing, I'm saying no to something else.
01:43If I want to go out to dinner today, and I'm going to spend more than my allocated amount that I know that I want to do,
01:50then I know I have to make an adjustment.
01:52The budget is not about restricting myself.
01:54It's not about, oh, you can't buy that, you can't do that.
01:56It's about choosing how I allocate my resources and what I want to spend my money on.
02:01And so how does your spending throughout the month reflect that?
02:04Because I'm at that stage in my life, too, where I'm like, this is fun, this is great, gaining the money, keeping the money.
02:09But what about when I don't feel like working so that the money works for me?
02:13I actually had to change careers at 40-plus.
02:15I was actually 44 when I went back to school and got a master's in financial planning.
02:19What I had to learn was that I had not saved enough.
02:22I had to shift my thinking, I deserve to live well in my old age.
02:27And I know a lot of black women that are struggling in their elder years because they didn't know to save early.
02:35So I know I'm going to have to work well into my 70s because of what I didn't do early.
02:40So I don't do shame, I don't do, oh, I wish I had, I don't do any of that.
02:44And also just a note from that, it's never too late.
02:46You just have to start.
02:47And the idea to not have shame around wherever you are I think is really crucial.
02:53You have a budget whether you know it or not.
02:55Money comes in, money goes out.
02:56So that's why using a tool like the Chase Budget Builder can help you look at what's coming in and what's going out so you can make some decisions about what you want to be doing.
03:07And the thing is, I think a lot of times people are afraid of being in the red, right?
03:11So they're afraid of getting to the bottom of that budget and there's more month than money.
03:15I've been self-employed for 30 years.
03:17I would not be okay if I only had one income stream.
03:21So I have multiple streams.
03:22So I know what's coming in.
03:23I don't always know when it's coming in, right?
03:26So when a lot is coming in, I have to hold on for those lean months.
03:31So that rainy day fund and, you know, some people call it emergency fund.
03:34I call it a rainy day fund because the rain is always coming.
03:38The rain is always coming.
03:40And can I tell you something else?
03:42So what symbolizes that rain and why it's important to think about, you know, potentially multiple streams of income, because there could be multiple shocks to that budget.
03:51There's a lot of things that can go wrong.
03:53Divorce is one of those financial realities that a lot of us are going to go through.
03:57I was married for 13 years.
03:59It didn't work out.
04:00But I learned a lot of, frankly, painful financial lessons because I was the one who had to pay alimony and child support, you know.
04:09We had joint custody and I always had my kids with me.
04:12But because I had been an entrepreneur and I was the breadwinner in the family and my ex was a student the whole time we were married, I was paying a grip, okay, like almost seven grand a month.
04:24So if you're not careful and if you haven't planned and if you haven't saved and if you don't manage your funds appropriately, I think as women we need to be honest about that conversation.
04:35Black women often are holding it down for a lot of people.
04:39For a lot of people.
04:40Right?
04:41So our money is often not just our own.
04:44This was so good.
04:45More of us need to get together and have these currency conversations.
04:48So I'm daring you.
04:49Get your girlfriends.
04:50Talk about the money.
04:51Don't keep it a secret.
04:52We're trying to get you 20,000 black women.
04:55The more of us that are on board, the better we are.
04:58So make sure you're going to essence.com slash currency conversations, creating financial goals and making a commitment to yourself because we want you to be financially strong, sis.
05:06And use chase.com slash budget builder to help you build the budget and spend wisely because the more we know, the more we can all grow.
05:14Text.
05:14Your goals are waiting.
05:15Make the commitment today.
05:16Essence.com slash currency conversations.
05:19Chase.com slash budget builder.
05:21Currency conversations.
05:23Chase.
05:24Essence.
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