#dontbebrokebewoke by Adrien Salomon

For the second week in a row, I had the pleasure of speaking with a wonderful person named Danielle. I can promise you I did not plan it, it just kinda happened.

I got to talk to Danielle today, a single mother who is killing it on Youtube and Instagram with her finance videos and posts.

Throughout this process of connecting with personal finance influencers, the overwhelming theme is to build wealth for them and their kids. Talking to Maria, she brought something new to the conversation.

Y'all wanna hear more about crypto, I get it. So finally, I am bringing the the episode so many of you had been had been asking about.

Guys, you ever find yourself scrolling through Instagram seeing the same ol' stuff and you stop at something and you keep rewatching it? Well that's how I felt a few months back when I stumbled on Billy Guan Money Magic IG Page. He was using a coin with a clear glass to demonstrate something that had to do with finance. 

Jully-Alma Taveras also known online as Investing Latina, is a Plutus Award-winning bilingual (spanish) personal finance expert. She writes for publications like CNBC, Time's Next Advisor, HuffPost, and others on money topics ranging from saving to investing. On her YouTube channel, she tells money stories from the lens of a Dominican Republic-born immigrant living in New York that went from being a shopaholic to a smart spender and diligent investor. Her money philosophies have inspired thousands of women to live minimally & spend intentionally, so that they can invest more.

I don't know about y'all, but at 19, the last thing on my mind was financial literacy. Not really my fault, it is not something I even grew up thinking about, since my parents never talked to me about it. Being wise financially was never gonna be me. But that ain't Sean!

Wassup wokers! I hope you all are having a good summer.

So for today's episode I wanted to discuss Five hot stocks. I have been doing a-lot of research on individual stocks to understand the best bargain and best opportunity for more growth.

Yes folks, it happened! AMC!

You have money, you want to invest in the stock market. You've gone online and typed" stocks to invest in", with a bunch of results coming back with dozens of articles of specific stocks you should buy and hold forever, or buy in 2021, or buy now etc.

Ok Ok Ok, i am sure you are sick of hearing that the way to pay off debt and invest more is to make more money. Well you are tapped out at work, so no more raises coming there. Plus if you work 8 hours compare to 12 hours your salary does not change much if at all.

Did I get your attention with the title? Good, I think debt gets a bad rap all the time and it should with a lack of financial literacy. But what if, like everything else, you can leverage debt for good?

In today's world of investing, there are no short of brokerage options. One popular option which I think is still unknown with new investors are robo advisers. In fact robo - advisors are more popular than ever. The industry has experienced explosive growth; client assets managed by robo-advisors hit $987 billion in 2020, with the expectation of reaching $2.9 trillion worldwide by 2025.

FINALLY! I am talking Crypto today!

Getting to a place where you feel like you are getting ahead with money is a lot easier when you know where your money is going but most importantly, when you have a place for your hard earn money to go. You get paid, and you need that money to go in various places or else you will spend it all. The idea is to not be paycheck to paycheck.

For anyone starting to invest, the big ol' question of paying off debt or invest always pops up.

Ever wonder why money makes people so miserable?

We all hear about the stock market and people will say:" the market is up /down today". But what does that mean? Is every stock up or is every stock down?

When you hear the words “invest in real estate,” what comes to mind? Is it a second home, a plot of land, a rental apartment complex, or a luxury hotel? All good choice as real estate ideas.

I am happy to introduce Jemmiah A Edwards, B.S.,Jemmiah is the first guest ever on the podcast and today we are going to discuss the work she is doing to help bring financial literacy  to a variety of age groups. Jemmiah and I worked together years ago and we reconnected recently after I started the podcast and we I wanted to have her own to share her story as a single mother raising and teaching her son financial literacy. On top of that, she is building her businesses to help change how people think about money.

Today's episode is targeting folks who have the means to put their money to work but decide to leave it in their savings account due to  fear of separation, lack of knowledge or both.

Two years into my investing career, I looked at my portfolio one day and said:" how do I set up my accounts to pay less taxes in retirement?" So I started googling and Youtubing ( if that is even a word) ways to pay less taxes when I retire, and two words kept coming up over and over: ROTH IRA.

Going back to basics today discussing:

Ever asked yourself? 

Yep, last week was  crazy, exciting, unforeseen and whatever other adjectives you wanna use to describe it. I wanted to drop in your feeds a day early to discuss my thoughts on it all. Why did Gamestop and other bad companies stock skyrocket last week? What did Robinhood do and how do I feel about it? 

Where should I go to start investing? Said all new investors out there. And the answer to that is: anywhere!

When I started investing in the stock market 5 years ago, I was definitely a trader, even though I thought I was an investor. Well, I was so wrong and it cost me dearly. It cost me money, but most importantly it cost me time.

2021 is still fresh so this is a good time to look at your portfolio to see what new positions you may want to add now and hold for long term. So today I am going to talk about 5 stocks I think you should be looking into for the new year. 

2021 is here! I am sure many of you are excited to leave 2020 behind and look ahead of a new year and new opportunities. With that I want to caution you not to make some huge prediction, or resolution for the year such as, this year I am gonna lose 20 pounds! Though that may be a year end goal,  you get all excited when you starts and then by February you lose focus. You tell yourself: "I have plenty of time." But do you have plenty of time? The longer you wait to start, the more difficult it will be to get started.

Is it possible to travel the world without having to pay for anything? Yes, it just takes some time to listen to today's episode and learn this hack by using the power or credit cards.

You just got a little extra money and you want to invest in stocks that were heavily hit by the pandemic. The hope is now we have a vaccine and those stocks will explode. Let's take a look at the travel industry for example, between airlines, cruises, hotels etc, they have been battered and though many of those stocks have recovered from their march lows ( when the pandemic was declared) a lot of them still have a LONG way to go.

After 13 episodes and over 1000 downloads, I wanted to use today's episode to answer some of your important questions. Over the past 2 months, i've gotten a lot of questions and intend of spreading them out via multiple episodes, I am using today to answer your many questions.

Ever heard of a Health Savings Account or HSA? If so, I am sure you know of it as an account to help pay for your qualified medical expenses such as deductibles, copays or maybe even your eye glasses. However, did you know that the HSA is also one of the best Retirement Savings account around? Yep, it may even be better than a Roth IRA or a 401K by offering an array of tax benefits,  3 of them actually, that the others don't offer all together. In today's episode we are going to talk about these benefits, answer the question if he HSA is right for you and why you should definitely look at this account as another potential retirement account.

You have a 401k right?

When you buy a property and rent it out, you get rental income. You made an investment and for years, you are gaining appreciation on that house and some passive income without doing anything. Well unlike rental income, which requires a pretty nice chunk of money to buy the property, there are a lot less expensive and easier ways to make passive income. With just $1000, I want to share some ways to make that money work for you. I caution you however, if you are expecting to hear how that initial investment of $1000 is making you $1000 in a year, this is not it. Instead, you will learn how that relatively small investment, when invested in Stocks, Index Funds or bonds, can pay you  income just to be invested in them. How and why is what we are discuss in today's episode.

Many of us know know that having credit is important. But so many of us, don't understand how credit works. On today's episode, I will define what makes up our credit score, what are the metrics that impact the score both positively and negatively. In addition, if you don't have any credit and you want to start building credit, what are the many ways you can go about doing that. For those of us who have credit but it's poor, do not discourage. There are many ways we can work to slowly build our credit from poor to credit. On this episode, I will help us discover all those ways so that we can start fixing our credit together.

I used an instagram poll last week asking what people wanted to listen to: Credit Repair/Building or Side Hustles. Via a small margin, Side Hustles won! A lot of us have more free time now than we did pre Covid, and we want to find ways to make some extra money safely. Well there are numerous side hustles you can do from home,  from your couch, actually from your bed, that you can do TODAY, to help you make some extra money. Making money o the side is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength, it is a path to achieve financial freedom a lot quicker and in some cases, to help you retire even earlier. On this episode, I will talk about some easy side hustles that you can start today.  As always, these are just suggestions, please research these recommendations for more details AND most importantly, look for other types of side hustles. There is something for everyone out there, all you have to do is look!

So many of us are in debt and we don't even realize how we got there. To make matters worse, we struggle with how to get out of debt. Should we make more money to pay those bills? Should we spend less money? What bills should I prioritized? these are just some of the first questions we asked. The most important question in my opinion is: Do I know what my debt is? The answer to that question seems easy enough, until you start to dig and become overwhelmed with what you find and how to handle it. Starting the process to becoming debt free is exciting, daunting, scary, freeing and whatever other word you want to use. The one thing that is CLEAR, one cannot be financially independent, if you don't tackle your debt ( notice I did not say debt free).

We are all planners, you plan your day, your week, your weekend, your vacation, sometimes your kids life lol. BUT we rarely think deep in the future to retirement. I think we all know that we want to retire at a certain age right. But what is that age? And once you've reached that age, do you know how long you will live? I doubt it, but you need to plan for that, you need to plan to outlive your savings and not the other way around. On today's episode I want to help plan all the aspects of retirement such as: what is the amount you should be saving each year? What accounts are the best accounts to save for retirement? And finally, what are all the assets you should have your money in based on your time horizon?

Is there a specific amount needed to start investing? Ok, you have a little something you want to invest, how do you do that and where? One of the biggest reasons people leave money in their savings accounts instead of putting it use, is because most people don't know HOW to start. And when they've gone to the process of picking the right brokerage account, the bigger obstacle is where do I start. Should we buy individual Stocks, Mutual Funds, Index Funds, Real Estate or others? I want to help make this initial process as simple as possible, John Bogle said: "Simplicity, indeed, is the master key to financial success". Let's go there together.

Taking a small break from all the advice giving and use this episode to talk about me. I already shared on episode one, why I decided to do this podcast. So today, I wanted to share my personal story of struggle and what fueled my obsession with money, growth and preparation. I intended for this episode to be 15 mins but I guess I forgot all that has happened the past 8 years.

Investing is a crime? YES! It's a crime because of all the benefits it provides when done properly. Ok, maybe my sarcasm was a crime there with that example; but just like teaching kids about, savings, biology, chemistry and history, discussing investing early should be a prerequisite for both parents and teachers. Real Estate, Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, Art and others can all be vehicles in which one can invest in. In this episode, we will learn what it really means when we say the sooner you start the better. You can be leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, the later you start.

Remember growing up and your parents telling you to save money? Either it was for that haircut, clothes, date night or that first car as a teenager. Well we hold on to that thought through college, first full time job etc. But what we did not know or were not told, is that saving is not enough, saving on it's own won't do the ultimate job for your long term goal. To say it bluntly, keeping your money in your savings account for 10 years, is not smart. let's talk about that.

You want to save for a car, house, wedding, travel, retirement? That's easy to do once you know what you are saving for. BUT, the road ahead can be super bumpy if we do not address the one thing that slows us down. That one thing is DEBT! So in this episode dives into  the various goals you may have, what keeps you from the goal, and how you can get to that goal quicker but doing a BUDGET,

Why am I starting this podcast? Since COVID-19, I have seen more and more people saving money and sitting on that cash. I have had young adults like my 21 year old daughter ask me how can she start investing and how hard is it. I have talked to many people who are investing but either passively or with the idea of hitting it big like the lotto. And most importantly, I realized that I am closer to retirement than to my college days and I was clueless to what were the next steps.This episodes dives into myself as a late investor and how youtube, reading and old investing mistakes got me on the track to financial freedom.