Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / From Debt to Wealth: Making Money Work for You with Isis Perez
Transcript
- Marci (00:00) Are you interested in reaching an audience that's talking about financial literacy and having real conversations about money? If you'd like to become a sponsor for an episode, a season, or something in between of Marci Talks Money (and Life), email me at Marci@MoneyMarci.com. Looking forward to hearing from you. You got this. Marci (00:41) Hello, I am MoneyMarci. Welcome. I'm thrilled to welcome today's guest, Isis Perez. Isis is the founder of CalcFactor.com. By day Isis works as a project manager at an architectural firm. CalcFactor is a personal project born from her own story. She immigrated to the US from Cuba as a child, part of a family of six who arrived with very little. She watched her father rebuild his jewelry trade from scratch, and her mother worked factory piecework while attending night English classes. Hard work was never in question in her house. But nobody in her family had been taught what comes after saving, how to actually invest, how compounding works, or how to build wealth once you've stopped just surviving. Isis learned that the hard way by herself. Once out of college she carried real debt and lived paycheck to paycheck before she started investing, missing out on some of the most valuable early compounding years of her life. That gap is why she built Calc Factor, free, judgment free tools to give people the clarity and the math she wishes someone had handed her sooner. Welcome, Isis. Isis Perez (02:01) Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Marci (02:04) I'm thrilled to have you here and I'm looking forward to the conversation. But how did you get here? So were you the first in your family to go to college? Isis Perez (02:14) Actually, yes, from the immediate family, I definitely was. My parents came to America and they build a dream in my head what we could have here versus what we didn't have in Cuba. Over there were zero opportunities. There was no way we could move forward. So, my parents, my grandparents actually came before my parents and claimed so we had about a thirteen year wait before we were allowed to come into the state. So we flew through to Spain and then came to America. And then yes, you have to go to school, you have to study, you have to, you know, work hard and I saw it more in my father. I look back and my dad built a in a little closet. He built a put up a little piece of wood and started buying equipment to build jewelry. He was a jeweler in Cuba and he was actually quite a smart guy. Very he's no longer with us, but he built his little business out of a closet. And he literally was working night and day, seven days a week. My father was a nonstop worker. And my mom, my mom had more struggles. I think she was very smart, very detail oriented and you know, she had a hard time transitioning to this country. But she was very smart, wanted to go to school, wanted to learn and speak the language and you know, adopt and contribute to what this country was, you know, was giving to us. So from there on, yeah, I just grew. There was no options in my head. Since I was very young, I knew that I wanted to be an architect. So I was about yeah, nine or ten years old when I decided that. And that's what I pursued. But it didn't stop there. You know, I saw that with time I realized that working was, it was kind of like a platform. So you grow and that just gives you that income. But what you do afterwards makes much more of an impact in your life than sticking to just a job. The job is the day to day. But what gives you that freedom, what gives you that insurance that you'll be okay, that you will not be a burden to anyone else, it's that extra step that I think that because we come from other countries or other cultures, we were not taught. And I don't even think they teach us in schools, to be honest with you. We learn about everything except the thing that really matters the most. So yes, working is great. You know, I have nothing against it. I think we all have to study, we all have to grow, we all have to work and contribute to society, but we also have to find a way to get ourselves out of that slavery of it's stressful. If you stop working, if you get sick, what happens if your car breaks down? Those were all my deals. So I came out of college, my parents had no money and I had a huge amount of money to pay back to the government. And you know, those are the beginnings of my struggles. Marci (05:08) So your degree was in architecture. You are working as an architecture and a project manager but Isis Perez (05:14) As a project manager, yes. Marci (05:15) but your passion is in helping people to build these financial houses. Isis Perez (05:20) Yes. Marci (05:20) What made you go there other than saying, Wow, it didn't work for me and I've got to help other people or was that just that was the total starting point and you went from there? Isis Perez (05:30) You know, it I'm gonna tell you a story. There was my big turnaround, and this is a proud story. My brother who worked with my father helped at 13 years old, he learned to build jewelry with my dad. So my brother had no summers. And to help my father's business, he didn't go to college. And he had a full scholarship to go. and he declined that and stayed with his father and worked at nighttime at UPS. My brother built an empire of his own. He was a hustler. He built, he worked nights and days, he had businesses on the side, and my brother is independent, he's financially independent, retired at the age of 50, I believe. So he retired very young and he saw something I didn't see. Perhaps our brains were different. I'm more like my father. I'm the creative, very ADHD here and there kind of a girl. And my brother was my mom. My brother was the numbers guy, the organized one, and it's just different, different brains. Different brains. Do we see things differently. And when he said I'm retiring and he cried, he said we made it. I spoke to my financial advisor and I've made my goal and I'm good and he cried. He cried because he felt that, you know, he had reached his goal. And I was like, Wow, my goal was to be an architect. What happened to me? Marci (06:51) Ha ha Isis Perez (06:52) So, yeah, he brought this upon me, he brought this whole Like, wow, what was I doing? and then I realized, well we took different paths. You know, I had came out with dad, he was working and he was compounding and I wasn't. And I missed I think probably about twelve or thirteen years, which is a long time. But we did it, you know. you go back on and and you now you're working towards a goal a little harder than you know, you would have if you had started younger. And I said, no, this is this is not right. We have to share this information. And you know, I have a lot of friends, I have family, and I would tell you that at least sixty percent of them are not doing what they're supposed to do. And even the young ones, one of my very, very dear friends, her young daughter is working in marketing and she's like, She doesn't even want a 401K because she's like, no, I can't afford it. No, you can afford it. You can because it's not only can you afford it, but you're getting free money. And how do you get these people to see this? And that's that's the story for me now. It's like no, why are we why is our I guess I I I'm gonna say Hispanics, right? We come from outside. Why are we not learning this? Marci (08:02) Well, nobody's learning this. Isis Perez (08:03) Why is it so hard for us? Marci (08:04) This isn't just you. It isn't just people who are immigrants. It is, so many people in America and I assume in other countries as well that they just don't teach it or they're struggling and they don't see the value of even that five bucks a paycheck and how that compounds. And when you're saying you're young friends and cousins and whatever else weren't doing what they should be doing. First of all, you're young, you're talking young adults, and by not doing what they're supposed to be doing they're not investing early. It's not not working or just their focus is different, like yours was. And you only missed twelve Isis Perez (08:42) It's right, like mine was. Marci (08:44) or thirteen years. There are so many people that don't start putting away money till their forties or later, so they miss way more than twelve or thirteen years of it. Isis Perez (08:53) Yes, yes. I totally agree. So I'm not in a dark place but I do kind of miss what it could have been. And Marci (09:01) Right. Isis Perez (09:02) yeah, so, you know, It adds up, but yeah, Marci (09:06) You learned a work ethic from watching your parents. Did you grow up talking about money at all or you just saw them working and knew that work had to be part of everything without even thinking about any financial Isis Perez (09:19) Yes. Marci (09:20) aspect? Isis Perez (09:21) Well, they always tell you save for a rainy day. But saving is kind of like savers are losers, that kind of a thing. You know, putting money in a bank, you lose money. The bank takes your money, lends it out, and you're losing money because they don't give you anything for it. And even in a high yields account, I mean up today is a little bit better, but even in a high yield account, you still don't make what the valuation of the dollar is. So you're still losing money. It's important to have that high yield or create that emergency fund, but you need to take that money and start making it work for you. And I think that's what everybody should be targeting. I can't emphasize that any more than what I'm saying it, I don't know. I made it a mission, you know, everybody ever hears me is like, Why are you always because it's important. Yeah, I think it's very important. Even to our country if you think about it. Marci (10:14) Absolutely. Isis Perez (10:15) We depend on the government giving us you know, people retire thinking they're gonna get this social security. It is a burden on the country itself. But if you learn to use your own money to work for you, you are no longer part of that system. Marci (10:32) Right, and people can't live on social security alone. If you don't Isis Perez (10:35) Nope, they cannot. Marci (10:36) have your own savings, if you only get social security, you are not gonna be living very well at all. Isis Perez (10:43) Correct. I agree. Marci (10:46) When you have this debt which you had from your student loans, which is not uncommon for people who graduate college, come out of of college, they've got all of this debt from that, and your first job or even your first jobs are not gonna give you a whole lot of money, putting that money away into investment is tough. It's Isis Perez (11:06) Yes. Marci (11:07) it's financially tough, it's emotionally tough because you wanna get that debt paid off, you feel like it's on top of you, you want to look toward buying a house, you want to look toward buying a car or a better car than what you have. So what are kind of the things that you can suggest that helped you or help you talk to the younger generation about how to do that when things feel so tight. Isis Perez (11:32) Well, I made mistakes, so I'm gonna tell you how I got out of mine. So I had my student loans obviously and I was actually when I came out of college I went into a small firm, which was my my dream to work for a small firm that did residential work. And so I did. I was making nine dollars and fifty cents an hour. That was my money. So you can see how long that goes. how far that goes, not much. And I had a car that was about a hundred and sixty thousand miles where the sunroof, if it rained, would actually collect the water and when you made a stop the water would you know waterfall on you. And this was my yeah, that was my car for about, three years and you know, two years. I was afraid to get into a car payment. I didn't even know how I was gonna be in the you know, in the workplace. It was a very stressful, very small firm. And you know, once I felt comfortable and I knew that I had a place in there and the salary went up, that's when I switched cars. But when I started all of this I actually did something really bad. I put a forbearance on my student loans. So I stopped paying my student loans for a little bit longer than I had to. And I got myself the car which I needed to go to work. Thirty-five miles to go, thirty five miles to come back, it's about seventy miles a day. And I needed something that was reliable to me. And I went through all that then 'cause my car kept breaking down and that started spiraling a debt because every time it broke down I took the credit card and fixed the car. And before I knew it, the credit card was eating me up. And every paycheck was completely claimed by everyone. So if it was the credit card, the rent, the phone, everything was being claimed and I had nothing left for me. So in the end I said, you know, this has to stop. the last I think was the last time I asked my brother for money and I said I'll pay you back, and he graciously gracefully helped me on that. And I went into a consumers credit company and they literally piled all my credit cards together, pushed everything into one payment, renegotiated the deal, and that gave me a little bit of a relief. And then I met my, who is today my husband and he helped me buy the new car. He gave me a down payment. So I had help. And I said I never want to be in this position ever again. So I worked towards cleaning all of it and I got out. It took me about five years probably to pay all the credit cards. and Yeah, think I think it was about five years to get all the credit cards and then, you know, you stay with the car payment and then new things come on through life. But it was such a relief getting rid of all of that. I just never want to have that kind of a burden on my back. Ever. Marci (14:26) Yeah, I'm sure. So that's nice. You went to a a credit card reorganization company and they helped you and got you into one payment. I hear so many horror stories of people who go to companies to help them reorganize their debt, renegotiate and things don't work out well for them. Things are not handled as well as they should be. So it's nice to hear a story where it did work out well. Isis Perez (14:50) I have a friend who actually is doing it and she I think things have changed from the time that I did it. I remember they compiled everything. I had to close all the credit cards, they crash your credit, so you can't use anything. And I remember yes, you paid him a small amount a month for each of the payments and which made sense to me, but it would in the end it was yeah, I went through the whole thing and I actually ended up paying a little ahead of time. Didn't give me any trouble. The person that I know, she actually can't do that, they still charge her until the end. So if she had an agreement for like 10 years or eight years, she still has to pay whatever was due to the company. I did not have that. I paid a little bit ahead of time and it was okay. So maybe things changed from back then to now. I don't know. But for me it worked out absolutely beautiful. You can actually negotiate your way out of each credit card by yourself. But it's quite a task. Marci (15:47) Right. If you've ever tried to call one of your credit card companies and first you have to sit on hold for a half hour before you get to Isis Perez (15:53) Right. Marci (15:53) a real person. But I can say that for my utilities and anybody else. It's so hard to get real people these days on the phone. Isis Perez (15:54) Yeah, it would And Yeah. absolutely. Absolutely. Marci (16:02) So you talked about the forbearance on your student loan. For people who may not know what that is, could you tell us what that was, what you had to do to go through that. Isis Perez (16:12) Yeah, of course. I just literally called them up and I said, Listen, I'm in a I'm in a spot where I can't make these payments and you put a hold on it. Now, I don't necessarily recommend that and the reason why is because you are still accruing all that interest and you know, the bill's just gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger. So by the time I picked up on it I was like, but you know, you do this new things you do things blindly. And for the moment that was the right thing for me, although for the long run it may you know, it may have hurt me financially, but it was the right thing for me to get out of what I was doing 'cause then I was able to pay things down. I also ended up having jobs on the side and used up any extra income and dumped it into the debt just 'cause debt really just stresses me out. Marci (16:57) Yeah, I think I don't know of anyone who enjoys having debt. Isis Perez (17:00) I don't know how they can live with it 'cause it's it's it chokes you. Marci (17:04) For the majority of people having debt just becomes another have to, especially when you're talking about credit card debt. I liken credit card debt for boy, I'm gonna be paying for that hamburger I had today for the next six months. And I have a few more hamburgers I want between now and then. Isis Perez (17:22) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Marci (17:25) So tell us about CalcFactor. Isis Perez (17:27) CalcFactor. So for me, so I think that there's different people. There's people like my brother who can you can talk to and immediately pick up on what this is like to do. But I think calc factor for me was about the visual part, plugging the numbers into a calculator, seeing what it could possibly do for you, playing the different scenarios, and actually that's when I saw how little can go a long way. So even putting a little amount, you know, in that calculator and watching the scale go up and see wow and then also gives you a visualization as to where you know let's say if you have small goals if this is my goal I can reach it at this it'll tell me a deadline or give me a deadline I'll you know if I if I put this much away by such and such a year I'll have this and then you start to literally see it or it becomes tangible to you. At least for me that's how I felt. For me makes a difference than just somebody telling me, just put your money away and save it. People told me that. But I said, no matter how much I put away, I'll never have that million dollars. But because you're not seeing the compounding aspect of it. Marci (18:35) Yeah, not just the compounding but the growth as you invest. Isis Perez (18:39) Right, correct. That's what made it different for me and I said this is actually good for the kids, for my son, for his kids, for his friends, for everybody. And I decided to just, you know, let me just venture into this and speak finance for everyone who has not really had the opportunity to see it in person. Marci (18:58) This is fully free it's a website and it has multiple financial calculators on it. Isis Perez (19:05) Correct, correct. You can have from mortgages to retirement. I have like a little retirement calculator where it actually breaks everything down for you. And yes, everything is free. Everything can be saved on to the device. So you can't use it simultaneously with a phone or anything like that. You don't have to leave your information in there. I do have email for kind of a loose newsletters we can do. But I do not charge for those calculators at all. Marci (19:31) So this is your passion project. Isis Perez (19:35) Yes, for now, yes. Marci (19:36) At this point in time you don't have memberships, you don't have anything, it is just a tool that's available to anybody that wants to check out and look at these numbers. Isis Perez (19:44) To use it, correct. Yes. I also have for the debt. For the debt I have two calculators side by side, the avalanche method and the snowball. And you can see side by side, 'cause again I'm the type that hey, if I have ten dollars on this credit card, I'll pay that one even though it has less, but I'll at least I got rid of that payment. So I know that the avalanche works a little better. But you can see side by side and decide what you want to do with your debt. I also have a debt tracker if you want to put it in there. And again, no one sees the number. This is between you and your device. It's saved onto your device. It's not tracked by anyone. And the information never goes with your name anyway. It's completely yours to keep. And all of this is 100% free. Marci (20:29) And did you create all these tools? Did you copy them from other websites or... Isis Perez (20:33) No. These were all created by me. I started building them based on what I needed it for me and I started you know, I still move them or I still do and add and improvise things to make them, you know, work better. Hey, how about if I add this or it like for instance if I go to the retirement account, I said I wanted to split everything down. I said don't just put a number in there but you have your 401k's your IRAs, you have your Roths or you have your properties if you wanted to put it in there. If you own crypto you can put it in there. And now you can start seeing how everything works together and then, you know, it takes you to a coast fire calculator and it tells you what your number should be or where you should reach that. So everything kind of works together. Ideally that's what I want to do is make it visual, make it tangible for those who don't have that you know, early fight. Marci (21:29) Let me break down a coast fire calculator for people who may not know, one term at a time. Your fire number is the investment amount you need that will annually generate the income you need so that your investment will last indefinitely. At age 60, it might be that you need $2 million to generate the income you want to spend every year and you never touch that two million dollars. Your coast fire number is the number you need at a lower age so that left alone that investment will grow on its own to reach your fire number. Let's say you determine you want two million dollars in your investment account at age 60, so two million is your fire number. You determine it based on growth and income that you project on those accounts. Your coast fire number at age 30 might be $500,000 or at age 40 it might be $750,000. When you reach your coast fire number, you can theoretically live on your current income and your investment account does the rest of its work to reach that retirement number, your fire number when you reach that retirement age. Marci (22:42) You had to learn a lot of math and accounting to get these done and functioning. I know you use a lot of math in architecture, but it's don't wanna say different math 'cause the math is the same, but a different way of using it. Isis Perez (22:54) Yes. Well these calculators are made with, you know, also AI. So it's not a hundred percent all my calculations into that. I am not a a coder, so I don't know coding. But I go through, you know, the calculate the AI agents and they help you build them based on what you want and you change it and you adjust it as you need. So it's a lot of going back and forth. Marci (23:21) Okay. And have you had a lot of feedback from friends and family or even other people that have used it? Isis Perez (23:27) Yes, actually. my son's friends were all great. They came back and they gave me like even for the student loans they you know, have a student loan calculator and they said, Hey, you put in the subsidized and unsubsidized and change them and show this and so I started, you know, I took their inputs and I said, Okay, let's do this and that's how I started, you know, adding on more and more and more. Right now it's just you know, it's only four months old, so not much history in it. Marci (23:54) Okay, but you've gotten some good feedback. It's important to get that feedback. Let's talk a little bit about that real cost of missing the early investing years and what that might look like for people. Isis Perez (24:06) Well in my case I would say that I probably missed just my own numbers about seventy-nine thousand dollars. But at the cost of the at the run of the years, I think it was twelve years, if you run it from the beginning to the time that I would retire, it would have been about six hundred and forty thousand dollars extra. And that's at a seven percent compounded. So it's a lot of money, it doesn't sound like it was much, but it would have been a lot more. And then compounded with whatever I have, it would have been even more, I think. So yeah, it adds up very much so and very quickly. Actually, well not quickly, but it does kind of take off at some point. Marci (24:51) Right. Isis Perez (24:51) Once you reach a certain number, it really just takes off and that's what I want people to see because I think the image of thinking that you have to you're saving up to a million dollars and you're not saving up to a million dollars. The million literally comes after a certain amount. And then it compounds. A lot of it becomes itself, not you. And that's the missing link, I think. Marci (25:15) I agree that if you don't realize that it's going to work for itself, not just with the compounding, but with the growth, which is Isis Perez (25:22) Correct. Marci (25:23) it just takes off. What do you think is the missing link between saving and investing that people don't always understand? Isis Perez (25:34) Intimidation. I think people overthink it. And I tell you that now more than anything because I've been speaking to people that I know that are not doing it and they've asked me can you sit down and I say I'm not a financial advisor. I can tell you what I do. I can you know I recommend ETFs or simple things that are more global and less kind of like put it in and just let it go. Don't touch it, don't look back, don't look in there. If it's crashing remember it's like Macy's one day sale, you know, so just keep putting it in there, don't worry about it. It comes back. I go look, you know, and I show them the big charts and I said at the end of the day, it only goes one way. It goes up. You know, and that's what you wanna go. And so that's what I try to, you know, teach them or show them. I think it's more intimidation. Where do I start? How do I look at this? And it is intimidating. There's so many ways and you know, even the applications take a little bit of time to get into. I actually have found it very much fun. I love the roller coaster. Today is a bleeding day and I'm like, I have all my little things clicking in there waiting for a certain price and this is my liquidation day. This is great. I love it. it's a day to buy and you know, while others panic you know, you pick up on whatever you can pick on and let's see what happens. I don't know. But it was intimidating at the beginning. I started with five thousand dollars and I said I'm gonna play with these myself. So I had like a little small account and then little by little was I was like got it got steady getting comfortable. I started looking at it and then it became it's it was fun. It was fun for me. Marci (27:13) An ETF or exchange traded fund is a pooled investment fund that contains multiple assets. At a basic level like a mutual fund or an index fund, it allows you to invest alongside other investors in a collection of investments rather than putting all of your eggs in one or two stocks. By choosing a particular fund, you're choosing their investment strategy. Marci (27:39) I think a lot of people don't really understand what it means to buy low and sell high because it's when it's going down that they start panicking and saying, I gotta get rid of this and Isis Perez (27:48) Mm-hmm. Pull out. Marci (27:49) they end up selling low and buying high because look, everything's going up, this is when I should buy and that can make a huge difference as well. Isis Perez (27:59) Right. And then people sell, they're like, everybody's selling, I have to sell, it's a crash. Well, it's a fear. Is the company that you're investing in failing or is it a global thing? Is it a market thing? Is it a correction? Is it a you know, a moment? So when you look at those little things and you look away, then you make your decision that way. So I don't know. But for people who are starting, I would not say start with stocks. I would say start with like an ETF, something that makes you feel a little a little more comfortable. something a little more global and start with that. And if you have your 401k's I mean that's dump in take advantage of it, take advantage of what other companies gonna give you. It's free money. there's no reason why not. And you learn to live without that money anyway. You never see it. Marci (28:45) Right. Yeah, it's free money if your company is going to match a certain amount of your retirement contribution and you're not making that retirement contribution, you're missing out on effectively a raise. Isis Perez (28:56) That's what I see people doing. But I think most companies do offer a match. Marci (29:00) Yeah, usually to about three percent, something small, but that's a three percent raise that you're leaving on the table and saying, No, I don't need that money Isis Perez (29:08) Correct, correct. Yes. Marci (29:10) Okay, well Isis, do you have anything else you'd like to mention that maybe we haven't covered? Isis Perez (29:18) Put away whatever you can. And I think that if you start small, if you think you can't because I think that now the economy is a little bit tight and everything is so expensive, start with something small automatically and a percentage of your, you could be two percent, I don't care, five percent of your earnings or two or three percent, and then increase it by a percentage every so often. You'll see that you will not miss that money. You'll learn to live with what you have and that's the truth. And of course get rid of any debt which is where you really have to start but I think that that's really basically the how to tackle the beginnings. And I've actually shared I don't know, I've shared Acorns, Acorn is an account that it's literally chump change. You start with chump change and I've shared it with my friends, I've shared it with my family. My brother actually shared that with me and I've shared it with my kid and it's exactly that. It's a little chump change. They complete the dollar for you and they invest it once it reaches five dollars. And then you can add five or ten dollars a month, or a week and you know, they keep compounding it in there. It is taxable, so it's a taxable account, it's not a retirement fund. but that one actually I shared it and people have actually captured that very nicely. And it shows you the little chart of how it grows and based on what you're investing, wait another five, ten, fifteen, twenty years what this little money could do. But those are little ways of getting in there that make a big difference at the end. Marci (30:47) Isis, thank you so much for being my guest today. We appreciate you taking the time to join us here. Isis Perez (30:53) Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Marci (30:56) And to my listeners, I will be sharing a link to Isis' information in the show notes. Please check her out. There's a lot of information that is interesting and useful on the CalcFactor site. And don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks Money (and Life).. You got this.