Catherine Bell (speaker) recounts her childhood instability and poverty (13 schools; learned to read in 8th grade), then describes how intentional self-investment helped her and her family become millionaires by age 30. She explains the financial-education system she uses with her teenage twins and in a mastermind class: they worked in fast food, she opened three bank accounts for each (checking, "save to spend", "save to invest"), and she taught an allocation rule where 20% of earnings go to save-to-spend and 20% to save-to-invest (40% total saved). She emphasizes investing early, having money "work for you," and encouraging teens to participate in real investing (notes, tax deeds, cryptocurrency). The clip ends with a call-to-action to join her class.
Questions this video answers
13 different schools.
Eighth grade.
By age 30.
Three accounts (main checking, "save to spend", "save to invest").
20% to save-to-spend and 20% to save-to-invest (40% saved total).
Chapters
Adding commas to bank accounts and collapsing timelines. This is one of my favorite, two of my favorite things to actually talk about and talk about what I've actually taught my children to do with their money as they go out into the world. This is part of the financial literacy program that we have. It is part of our mastermind class that I actually teach and teach people how to facilitate this and teach this to their families. So just to give you a little background, when I was a little girl, I actually grew up in Canada and was in and out of multiple homes, unfortunately. And my brothers and I just bounced from home to home to home to home. And I ended up going to 13 different schools and didn't actually learn how to read until I was in the eighth grade. I got through all those schools not knowing how to read because there was no consistency in my life. And so I fast forward, ended up marrying an American and came to the US and we ended up being millionaires by the time I was 30 years old. The probable predictable future of my life was not going to be that had I not actually been intentional about investing in myself, investing on what was going on here, adding some serious forgiveness in and what was going on here in my heart and what actually mattered to me and the difference I wanted to make in the world. And so when I was going through discovering more about. About who I am and what actually matters to me and what makes me tick, in my early 20s, one of the things that I learned was really important to me is that. And as a kid growing up in extreme poverty, it was very clear, you know, money, money is like oxygen. The more you have, the easier it is to breathe. And the more you have and the easier it is to breathe, the bigger the difference you can actually make in the world. And I truly believe that everybody inherently wants to make a difference in the world. And so, yes, money doesn't buy you happiness. However, it certainly gives you some serious breathing room and gives you freedom and privileges that otherwise you wouldn't have. And trust me, I know because as a kid, I could not breathe. And I could see the adults around me not be able to breathe either. Had they had more commas in their bank accounts, they would have been able to breathe. And I assert, I probably wouldn't have had the childhood that I had. So the question is, what are some of the ways that kids are able to ultimately make money, right, like teenagers. And so, like, for us, it was like, you could do lemonade stands, things like that, so kids can, you know, get jobs, obviously, they can create little side businesses like mowing lawns, cleaning cars, driveways, things like that. There's so many creative ways that kids can actually make money now. Even learning about, like cryptocurrency, I mean, that takes some serious brain power. But these kids nowadays, they have so much access to technology and I mean, it's just how fast their brains work that I would seriously work alongside of them to learn about that and encourage them to start creating and learning about investing and how all of that works and how to have their money actually work for them. So I talk to my twins about having their money work harder for them than they work for their money. And so investing is a big part of that now when they get a job, because I believe in the value of them actually having to work. My twins have both worked in the fast food industry and I love that because they have learned the value of customer service. They have learned the value of not being a butt head to people who are in customer service and being grateful for those who are out there actually serving us and the value of like providing good customer service and what that actually looks like. And so as my kids started working and brought home, you know, their little paychecks, then we immediately went down to the bank and set them up three bank accounts. So there's their main checking account, which, you know, because they were underage, I was linked to so that I could actually be managing all this with them. So there's their main checking account, then they have their savings account savings. So save to spend, and then they have their save to invest. And so what I explained to them is that for every dollar that they make, 20 cents of that dollar goes into their save to spend account and 20 cents of that dollar earned goes into their investment account. So 40% ultimately was being saved in these two accounts. Now the save to spend account is like my son wanted to buy a bike and eventually a skateboard and, you know, all sorts of fun stuff. My daughter wanted an Apple watch. So those are the things that they had to work towards and they could see the accounts growing and how, how much more they needed to be able to work and earn, to put in there, to be able to save up to buy those things. And of course, as always, you know, when they buy it, they valued it way more than when I actually bought it for them. And then their investment account, what's really cool about that is it was never, ever touched until they were ready to actually invest. And when we set that up, what was interesting is I noticed that my kids started Paying more and more attention to the conversations I was having with my investors and with everybody else in the mastermind about investing and all the different investment opportunities. And then eventually came to me and said, hey, mom, can we now invest in notes? Can we invest in tax deeds? Can we invest in cryptocurrency? All these things that we've actually been talking about and investing in ourselves. And so now they're starting to understand and really get how cool it is to have their money working harder than they actually work. Really extraordinary to have my twin teenagers involved in investing their own money and managing that and understanding what the ROI and return on investment is with all of their different little investments with money that they earned. I mean, how great is that? And there. So there. And then there, of course, they're save to spend. You know, they actually started taking more interest in saving up more money for investing than they did the actual save to spend. So that was really interesting as well. So for more information, I am teaching a class on this, on how to actually have families teach this to their teens. And then other people in their family that want to take their financial knowledge and relationship skills and everything to a whole other level and have love and affinity can be completely present inside of their family, which I will be sharing more about that and the extraordinary miracles that came out of that. So for more information, make sure that you click, like, follow, share, comment, and tell me more things that you're interested in learning about about our mastermind. More than happy to share everything that's going on. So with that, may you never awake from the American Dre.
