00:00Hey there, I'm Kayla Walker, Media Maven and Lifestyle Authority, and today your host for
00:08Currency Conversations, where we're getting black women comfortable talking about money.
00:13And who else to talk about the money than these women? I'm joined by Sandra Davis,
00:17who is the CEO of Safe Financial Solutions. Yes, ma'am. As well as Lynette Kalfani-Cotts,
00:23the money coach. And today we are talking about the B word, ladies, budget and spending.
00:32I hate budgeting. I'm like, I don't want to budget. I feel like I've been working too hard. I've been
00:37doing what I'm supposed to do, and I want to spend my money the way I want to spend it.
00:41And that's human nature, honestly, because most people feel like that. I think for me,
00:45part of it is recognizing that there's no one strategy or one technique that's always going
00:52to work for you or that, frankly, always works for everybody else either. And so I think part of
00:57the key to realize is that it doesn't matter what you call it. If you want to call it a budget,
01:02managing your cash flow, a spending plan of action. If you have a strategy and it's working for you,
01:07great, you're doing just fine, I'm sure. And you're watching it too, because I think a lot of times
01:11people will, you know, the new year, new you, right? And then you do this budget thing and you put all
01:16the numbers together and you put it next to your exercise plan, and then two or three months in,
01:21maybe not. So it's not just enough to set it up. You have to make sure that you're doing what you
01:26said you wanted to do. So I don't have a hard and fast budget. But what I do is I put my money in
01:31categories of how I want it to flow. And then I might need to adjust and I might need to adjust in
01:37real time. I just know that if I say yes to one thing, I'm saying no to something else. If I want to go
01:43out to dinner today, and I'm going to spend more than my allocated amount that I know that I want to do,
01:48then I know I have to make an adjustment. The budget is not about restricting myself.
01:53It's not about, oh, you can't buy that, you can't do that. It's about choosing how I allocate my
01:58resources and what I want to spend my money on. And so how does your spending throughout the month
02:02reflect that? Because I'm at that stage in my life too, where I'm like, this is fun, this is great,
02:06gaining the money, keeping the money. But what about when I don't feel like working so that the money
02:11works for me? I actually had to change careers at 40 plus. I was actually 44 when I went back to school
02:16and got a master's in financial planning. What I had to learn was that I had not saved enough.
02:21I had to shift my thinking. I deserve to live well in my old age. And I know a lot of black women that
02:28are struggling in their elder years because they didn't know to save early. So I know I'm going to
02:35have to work well into my 70s because what I didn't do early. So I don't do shame. I don't do,
02:41oh, I wish I had. I don't do any of that. And also just to know from that, it's never too late.
02:45You just have to start. And the idea to not have shame around wherever you are,
02:49I think is really crucial. You have a budget, whether you know it or not. Money comes in,
02:54money goes out. So that's why using a tool like, you know, the Chase Budget Builder can help you
02:59look at what's coming in and what's going out. So you can make some decisions about what you want
03:04to be doing. And the thing is, I think a lot of times people are afraid of being in the red,
03:09right? So they're afraid of getting to the bottom of that budget. And there's more month than money.
03:13I've been self-employed for 30 years. I would not be okay if I only had one income stream. So I have
03:20multiple streams. So I know what's coming in. I don't always know when it's coming in, right? So
03:25when a lot is coming in, I have to hold on for those lean months. So that rainy day fund, and you
03:31know, some people call it emergency fund. I call it a rainy day fund because the rain is always coming.
03:36The rain is always coming. And can I tell you something else? What symbolizes that rain and
03:42why it's important to think about, you know, potentially multiple streams of income, because
03:47there could be multiple shocks to that budget. There's a lot of things that can go wrong.
03:52Divorce is one of those financial realities that a lot of us are going to go through.
03:56I was married for 13 years. It didn't work out. But I learned a lot of, frankly, painful
04:02financial lessons because I was the one who had to pay alimony and child support. You know,
04:08we had joint custody and always had my kids with me. But because I had been an entrepreneur and I was
04:13the breadwinner in the family and my ex was a student the whole time we were married, I was paying a
04:19grip, okay? Like almost seven grand a month. So if you're not careful and if you haven't planned and
04:26if you haven't saved and if you don't manage your funds appropriately, I think as women,
04:32we need to be honest about that conversation. Black women often are holding it down for a lot of people.
04:38For a lot of people. Right? So our money is often not just our own.
04:42This was so good. More of us need to get together and have these conversations. So I'm daring you,
04:47get your girlfriends, talk about the money. Don't keep it a secret. We're trying to get you 20,000
04:53black women. The more of us that are on board, the better we are. So make sure you're going to
04:58essence.com slash currency conversations, creating financial goals and make it a commitment to
05:02yourself because we want you to be financially strong, sis. And use chase.com slash budget builder
05:07to help you build the budget and spend wisely because the more we know, the more we can all grow.
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