Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Woman Who Helped Over 2 Million People Fix Their Finances | Tiffany Aliche - "The Budgetnista" & NYT Bestselling Author of Get Good With Money

Transcript

Lessons - The Woman Who Helped Over 2 Million People Fix Their Finances | Tiffany Aliche - "The Budgetnista" & NYT Bestselling Author of Get Good With Money · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, discover why financial education should start early and equip people to build real independence and generational wealth.
• 0:07
  Understand how transparent, well-paid teams can strengthen a business.
• 0:10
  Explore why success should be measured by how life is lived and uncover how building wealth means little without health, happiness, and fulfillment.
• 0:26
  I also want to unpack everything that you're teaching over.
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  It's great that you're teaching it, but why don't we do a better job of teaching this in school?
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  Why is education, you know, I think education is very broken.
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  How do we fix this stuff?
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  How do we teach this stuff?
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  One of the things I was fortunate in is I work with my assemblywoman.
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  Her name is Angela B. McKnight.
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  And in 2019, I got a law passed called the Budgetnista Law.
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  And it makes financial education mandatory for middle school students.
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  Serious?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  You got a law passed?
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  Yes.
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  I didn't know that.
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  Yes.
• 1:05
  I thought you were queuing me up.
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  I was like, oh, he did his research.
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  No, I didn't get that.
• 1:09
  No, I wasn't queuing you up at all.
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  That's awesome.
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  No, I just think I always think education is broken when it comes to what we're focused on and what we teach.
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  And financial literacy is just a huge gap.
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  Yes.
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  And so for me, I thought the same.
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  And I said, you know what?
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  I used to teach financial education just on my own to my preschoolers.
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  Like, you know, because when you're little, financial education looks like service giving.
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  It looks like math.
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  It looks like this is a dollar, you know, and so like so I know what age appropriate financial education looks like.
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  And so my assemblywoman, I told her I was just so frustrated that like these kids are not learning it.
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  And she said, well, thankfully, in New Jersey, we're really early adapters for high school students.
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  So there was already a law in place for high school students.
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  And I'm like, that's awesome.
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  But it should be sooner.
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  And so I initially fought for elementary and middle school, and there was a lot of pushback.
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  So they allowed the elementary component, but we're going back for elementary, they allowed the middle school component, but we're gonna go back for elementary school because I want, at least in the state of New Jersey to start, that as soon as you start kindergarten, you're running about money.
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  So by the time you get to middle school, you're like, oh, okay, I understand a dollar and I understand savings.
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  I understand, you know, I'm giving.
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  And then middle school, oh, I understand where credit is.
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  And then high school, oh, I understand where earning is.
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  I understand where profit is and losses.
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  So by the time you get to college and you're offered all these credit cards, you're like, oh, no, no, I learned about that in fifth grade.
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  I know exactly what's happening here.
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  And so if we can make that work in New Jersey...
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  It's much harder, obviously, to get a national law passed.
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  But if we can make that work in New Jersey, what happens is oftentimes, and I've gotten this, that people will hit me up from other states and say, how'd you do it?
• 2:52
  And I'll share with them, you know, and I'll connect them to Angela.
• 2:56
  So I'm like, you know, because this legislator can then talk to your legislator and walk them through what she had to do as far as like the law was concerned.
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  And so, yeah.
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  Yeah, I just think, I don't know why it's not taught.
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  Well, here's why.
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  At first, education was a function of creating a working class.
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  Think about it this way, it's almost like the matrix.
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  Remember in the matrix you realize that like, human beings were being bred to be batteries?
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  And so I think that all the time that like, sometimes the way education is set up is for you to be a battery to the bigger system.
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  And I'm like, no, let me be Neo, we're breaking out.
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  I love that.
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  I love that.
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  That's so, that's, I love that analogy.
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  That's really smart.
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  So, you know, I'm just thinking about like my experience and I, I swear to anyone who's listening, I actually did not meet the cure up for that.
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  It's awesome.
• 3:43
  So as it is, honestly, it's just like, it's something I wanted to bring up with you because I thought you had an opinion on it.
• 3:48
  Most people that dabble in financial education do, but the reason I bring it up is because I'm pretty sure like the first time that I ever had exposure to anything financial was like somebody pitching me a credit card on a college campus.
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  Yep.
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  That's it.
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  That's about as close as financial education came to actual education.
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  But, okay, so we got the whole premise of education, I think, comes from, you're right, we're creating people to make them hit a standard, but that's it.
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  We don't need to create people that are creating generational wealth.
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  We just need them to contribute to society.
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  And contribution to society means month to month is fine for contribution to society.
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  But for the average person, that's a pretty shitty life.
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  Exactly.
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  If you look at what's happening now, the other day I went to Stop and Shop.
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  That's a big supermarket chain here in New Jersey in the Northeast.
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  And think about whatever your biggest supermarket is.
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  That's what Stop and Shop is.
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  There were two cashiers.
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  I mean, the laundry, I was like, what's happening?
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  Oh, unemployment, more.
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  People are making more staying home than they are at the stop and shop.
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  That's why they don't want you to make so much money because who will work the stop and shop?
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  Maybe employees should just pay more.
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  Exactly.
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  How to do business better.
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  That's a whole other conversation.
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  Exactly.
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  But honestly, that's one of the reasons.
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  And then I went to the Walgreens around the corner and same thing.
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  I was like, wow.
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  So when people have access to more money, they're like, no, I'm not showing up unless you can pay me a livable wage because staying home right now is more of a livable wage.
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  And even like the way I developed the budget needs to, I only grow to the capacity that we can pay well.
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  You know, like in the beginning, it was really hard.
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  I didn't have much money.
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  I remember like the most I could pay.
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  I was like, look, all I could do is $9 an hour.
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  But we're transparent with our numbers.
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  Like everybody gets to see our numbers.
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  And no matter whether your customer support or the COO hear our numbers.
• 5:48
  Here is for a company our size, we really, you really don't want to have more than 33% of your, of say your, your, your income going toward payroll because then you get a little shaky as far as like your, how solid your company is.
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  So we're at 33%.
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  And so as we do better, we increase.
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  Now, what's so great about it is that.
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  I don't follow traditional rules where it's like, oh, you know, once a year we're better.
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  I'm like, no, if we're doing better and it's like a consistent do better and it's, I see that this is where we are now and it's three months later, we're increasing.
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  You know, like I've had, I've given, I remember like I called them my lead team.
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  I've given $20,000 raises like, you know what?
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  You know, we like, we really banded together six months into the new year.
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  We have taken the business to the next level.
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  So we're going from 60 to 80 now.
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  And they're like, wait, what?
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  And they're like, are we allowed to do that?
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  See, I never worked in corporate America other than one or two internships as a team.
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  I was going to screw someone up who's worked from a big company.
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  That's not how we do it.
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  Tiffany.
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  And I'm like, well, let's check with the CFO.
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  Do we have her?
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  She's like, we do.
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  But...
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  People don't usually do that.
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  I'm like, well, is it illegal?
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  She's like, no.
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  I'm like, well, then let's bump them up.
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  And now on the team, literally there are people on the team that started me three years ago making $9,000 an hour and make six figures now.
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  Within three years, because I believe that you pay people well.
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  You might not always be able to in the beginning, but let it not be because you're trying to hold on to all the money for yourself.
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  But we pay people really well.
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  We don't have turnaround, really, at the budgetista.
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  We pay people well.
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  We treat people well.
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  We operate from a space of integrity and transparency.
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  And as a result, that's why we're able to give so much to our audience.
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  That's why you see such an amazing community because they feel taken care of because the team is being taken care of.
• 7:37
  Amazing.
• 7:37
  So these are just all best practices for building a business.
• 7:42
  I'm trying to think what else, what were some other interesting things?
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  We spoke a little bit about financial education, entrepreneurial lessons.
• 7:49
  Let me check my notes and see if there's anything else that I wanted to go into.
• 7:53
  Was there anything else that, while I'm looking at this, was there anything else that's top of mind for you that financial education, how we pay people, employment, anything else that's top of mind?
• 8:07
  Well, this is not like as much financial education as like the lesson that I've been learning lately is to really ask yourself, not so much what do you want, but how do you want?
• 8:20
  Like, how do you want to live?
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  Because I have been broke, broke, like...
• 8:25
  30-year-old Tiffany, you know, had less money than 12-year-old Tiffany, bro.
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  I have been, like, you know, just a step above, bro.
• 8:32
  Preschool teacher Tiffany making, you know, $39,000 a year, but really that's, like, next to nothing, especially in New Jersey.
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  I have been somewhere in the middle where my business was making six figures, and I have been where I am now where my personal net worth is seven figures, and my business makes eight figures a year.
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  So I have been not every stage because I have not been, you know, $100 million, but it's kind.
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  So the thing that I have realized and observed is that past a certain amount of money, the money doesn't enhance anything.
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  Once I was able, like the house that I live in now, my husband and I were able to purchase it cash.
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  And I was able to, in that same year, to pay off my parents' mortgage.
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  And we send them money every month.
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  I was able to also pay off my student loan debt.
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  You know, we were able to get a rental property and pay for it cash.
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  We were able to purchase our cars and pay for it cash.
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  So my husband and I are debt-free like my nephew, Roman.
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  Like we have, we're debt-free like a toddler, although he's not a toddler.
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  Debt-free like a big boy.
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  That's what we told Roman.
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  You're a big boy now.
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  Debt-free like, right now.
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  But the more money that comes in, once I got the stability part down, the more money that came in, it did not really affect my day to day life.
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  You know, so I really had to ask myself, what is it?
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  How do I really want to live?
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  So I want you should be considering that now.
• 9:59
  I want you to assume that you will grow wealth.
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  Especially if you're a business owner, assume that eventually with time and effort and personal investment that your business is going to grow and yet you're going to grow wealth.
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  But how will it meet you?
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  I wanted to meet you healthy, happy, whole and wealthy because I myself almost lost sight of that.
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  I just recently came back from a six week hiatus just to recenter and say, Tiffany, where are we headed?
• 10:26
  Yeah.
• 10:27
  Are we just working to work and to work and to work like we're like, where are we headed?
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  I think not enough business people talk about that because so many of my friends who have businesses are miserable.
• 10:36
  You literally left corporate America because you said it was miserable there only to recreate the misery in your own business.
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  And so I'm just here to kind of like give you like a forecast for like I am, you know, for those of you who are just starting out.
• 10:50
  See me as what potentially can be in your future and say, how do I want to meet myself there?
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  And make sure to keep that in mind with how you grow your business.
• 10:59
  I think that's not said enough because everybody wants to talk about profit and loss and money and this and that.
• 11:03
  But, you know, you don't want to have all those things and then have a heart attack.
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  And then what?
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  you know?
• 11:08
  Thanks for tuning in.
• 11:09
  If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.
• 11:14
  And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
• 11:19
  See you in the next one.