00:00I'm from Ghana and as a child of African descent we've been just taught go to
00:07school get a good education do whatever you got to do to just make it work and
00:10then you know for me that was student loans and credit card debt and I didn't
00:15pay for any of my schooling out of pocket so you can imagine how much debt
00:20that is. I'm currently a doctoral student so I've been in school for a very long
00:25time and still paying a lot of loans although the good thing is I took care of
00:28the credit card debt having an account a buddy has been really invaluable for me
00:40Angela is my accountability partner yes I mean the colorful lives podcast having to
00:45come every week and say here's what I've accomplished here's what I'm trying to do
00:49and have just somebody to bounce ideas off of definitely works not only should it
00:54be somebody that can inspire you and kind of counterbalance whatever it is that you
00:58have going on but then it makes you feel like the pressure of I'm gonna see Amina
01:02and I have to have something to tell her that I've done to work toward my goal and
01:07it makes you really do it and the fact that she can give me advice and even
01:10refer me to people that's been really helpful and great. I didn't realize how
01:14important it was like I'm that person that where they say like oh check on your
01:17strong friend you know the one that's always doing good because I'm that person
01:20that wants to mentor everybody support everybody and then like I look back and I'm
01:24like wait but what have I done for myself today and I realized I'm like you know I
01:28really should have accountability partners in like my different area focus
01:31areas as well. So Ellen I wonder if you also put some thought to how do you save
01:36to make sure that you're protecting yourself and planning for that rainy day
01:41as well as your future by considering something like a money market account
01:45where you'll get a much better interest rate than you would on a standard
01:48savings account it'll give you that flexibility and that liquidity to get the
01:52funds whenever you'd like but it'll make sure that you're also balancing that
01:56scale of reducing debt while also saving for the future. I wasn't dividing up my
02:02money and actually I didn't even have myself on the payroll how crazy is that
02:05because at one point I I went from making a certain amount of money to a lot more and
02:10put me in a different tax bracket to where you're like okay well now you need to be an
02:14S Corp and I'm like what's that? I don't know what these things are but then I think I just
02:18have never thought about those little small steps and I know we were talking about
02:21making those smaller goals to get to a larger one and I can think about that
02:25when it comes to like my visions but when it comes to finances again it was
02:28just always something I would run from and I'm like why am I running from you?
02:31If you have tasks that you don't like doing or that you are not the expert in
02:34you have to find a way to outsource them. It is sometimes hard to not feel like
02:38you're the expert and one of the best things that I did was you know do just
02:42that like have someone that manages it for me monthly and at tax time because
02:46they're gonna identify things that I just don't know enough about to make sure that I'm not only
02:50protecting the business but finding ways to help save money. Spend a little money to save a lot more.
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