Dating Your Money with Mina Black

Hey, girl. Welcome to the get yout Guy coaching podcast. My name is Anwar White, but you can just call me your own personal dating and relationship coach. Each week you'll hear actionable advice, tips and strategies that you can implement in your own love life. I'm talking about healing your heart, dating effectively, and understanding men so that you can, you guessed it, get your guy. Are you ready to level up your love life? All right, let's go.

I never felt the way I do without anyone but you.

Thank you so much for joining me, my loves. I have a very special guest with me today. Her name is Mina Black, and she is the CEO and founder of in the Black Financial Wellness. And I'm going to let her talk about what she does best because she is the master of all things finance, wealth, investing, angel investing, everything. And that's why I have her with me today. Mina, thank you so much for joining me. Tell the listeners exactly what you do and how you get everybody's financial life together.

Hey, thank you so much for having me. So I am a financial and business advisor and angel investor. And what we do is we work with our clients to help them get themselves in a financial position to be angel investors. And how we do that is we do it through proper financial business investment planning.

I love that. I love that. And Lord knows we all need to get our money together and have a very clear mind about it. How did you get into this?

Oh, my gosh. You know what? I think for me, honestly, it began when I left undergrad. I realized that I literally knew nothing about money, and I mean nothing about money. And I had gotten myself into a little bit of trouble in undergrad because if you may recall, many, many years ago in undergrad, way back in the early 2000s and even late 1990et, they used to allow credit card companies to come on college campuses. Yeah.

In orientation.

In orientation. You know, just introduce you to adulthood. I remember being so happy when I saw those wonderful, wonderful pamphlets and all of this free money, as I told myself, all this free money. So as a result, I ended up taking out all the credit cards. And I mean, all the credit cards.

Okay.

It was free money. And I figured, oh, if somebody's offering you something free, why not take it? You know?

Why not?

I got myself into a little bit of trouble with that. I should say a little bit. A lot of trouble with that. Because again, when you don't pay back your debt, what happens? Your credit score here in the United States goes.

And the toilet.

And the toilet. And you end up Honestly being unable to do a lot of things as a result of bad credit. Right. So one of the things I would say the best financial advice, in all honesty, the only financial advice my dad ever gave me was make sure that you enroll in your 401k. And I remember when he first said that to me, I said, I'm sorry, what is the 401k? I don't know what that means. And he said, it's a way for you to put money aside for later. Later when? What do you mean by later? Like, I'm going to explain what all of this means. So he explained to me what saving for later meant, that is saving for retirement. And he advised, he told me I should put away 20% of all my income into this 401k. Now imagine being 22 years old and being told to put money, 20% of it, all the money that you earn into a 401k or an account that.

Was not happening doesn't mean anything to me.

And I.

Oh, that's cute, Daddy.

No.

So I literally did as little as possible. I was like, okay, I'll start with 1%. You know, I did as possible. But the one thing that I will say, bless my dad, he was, he told me to open up the 4.1K. The thing that was missing is he didn't tell me what to do with it. When you set up a retirement account, you need to know what exactly you're doing with that account. You need to know how to grow that account. Putting money there is one thing, but actually growing it is a whole other thing. So I realized at that time, at that point, that through no fault of his or anybody in my family, we really didn't understand money and we didn't understand how to grow our money. So I made the wonderful decision at that time. I said, you know what? I had actually started reading personal finance finance books at that time. I said, I'm going to learn about money, going to learn how all these people that we keep seeing on tv, how do they get to where they are right now? And I said, you know what? I'm one of those people that believes that there should be a professional from each category in every family. So somebody is a doctor, somebody is an attorney, somebody should be a finance person. I raised my hand and I said, I will be that person in our family. So I actually decided to become a financial advisor as a result. And how I got into the financial advisory world was I actually literally applied for a job. And I was so young. And bless my mentor, he's still my mentor to this day. He was kind enough. He's like, you know, you're. You're cute and adorable, but I don't think you know personal finance. I was like, I don't. I know nothing. So he's like, why don't you work for me as my assistant? And I said, oh, okay. That seems interesting. The reason he was actually. He was actually saving me, because in the advisory role, if you don't pass your licenses within three months, you let go. He was looking out for me as a young person because I had just bought my own house. And he's like, okay, let's do that. I did it for two years. And then after the two years, he's like, are you ready to be an advisor? I said yes. He asked me to be his partner, actually. So I said as long as I could create my own book of business. And from that point on, I just. I was ripping and running, as my friend likes to say.

I love that.

I learned everything that I could possibly learn about how the wealthy lives and how the wealthy operate when it comes to money.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And if anybody hears anything, Mina is in New York and, honey, there are. There's going to be a noise everywhere, so we can't do anything about that. So if you hear that, don't freak out. Now, it's interesting that you talked a little bit about your father and what he was telling you about money. Talk to me a little bit about your background with money and, like, your relationship with it. Because what I know is that we have a little bit of melanin in our skin, and there is something to be said for how we grow up in our relationship with money. So talk a little bit about your relationship and then what you see when you're working with your clients.

For me, my relationship with money, really. Now, I mentioned growing up here in the States, but I was actually born in Ghana, West Africa, and I spent the first eight years of my life literally in a small village and having, like, no access to running water or anything like that. So being a small little girl in the village, in a very, very rural environment, literally, like walking through the jungle as it were, just to go get some things. The concept of money just didn't exist. It was something that was way out there that other people had. It wasn't something that we had. And if you know anything about people that come from a different. That are immigrants to the US or any country, believe it or not, one of the things that we're taught when we were younger Is that the streets of the US In America are paved. And so I heard that, right? So at that age, I knew that gold was valuable. I knew gold was something that you should have or you should want. But I didn't know why. I didn't understand the value of gold, right? So all of that really helped shaped my understanding of what money was, I. E. Something that people have. It's something that you can get once you're in America. I'm not sure how you got. You were supposed to get once you're in America, but you magically show up. And all the streets of America were paper gold and everybody was rich, right? So as a result of that, I really developed this weird relationship with money in that it was something that one day I know I should probably have, but right now it's just not going to happen anytime soon. And as I got older and as I realized that, well, one, when I came to the U.S. the streets weren't paved with gold. That was shocking in itself. But it was something that when I got older and I came to the U.S. money was something that we didn't really talk about in my family, wasn't something we really addressed. Certainly not having regular conversations about where we were as a family. It wasn't something that my parents felt comfortable discussing with the kids. My culture is very much a kids are kids and adults are adults. So that conversation was non existent whatsoever. So it really helped shape my understanding of money in the sense that it was something that adults dealt with and the kids just kind of hung out in the background. I find that with a lot of my clients nowadays, they have this, a lot of what their views about money and how they work with money and how they treat money really carries over from how we were taught and what we learned. Not even just in conversations with our parents, but indirectly, right? If mom and dad are saying, well, you know what? We can't pay for the light bill this month, you end up feeling a certain type of way about bills as you get older, right? My dad is. He says this to me all this time, so much so that I. I joke with him. I'm gonna put it on his tombstone. His favorite saying is, right now I'm broke, all I have is a dollar, you know, so if you think about money, if you hear that your entire life think that money is something that's scarce, you start to believe money is something that you can never have enough and there is never a way to make more of it. So for me, it was really something that became ingrained And I had to work toward essentially removing from my mind. But a lot of my clients that a lot of their current money behaviors stem from their childhood. They stem from how they were taught and just what they saw in their environment.

It's really interesting that you mentioned this. And one of the other things that I've noticed is that because it is quote unquote scarce, right? Our parents actually tried to lean into it more and get us those things and use their money to buy us things. Because it is this thing that I guess maybe they don't want us to feel that it is scarce and it makes them feel good about themselves. But when I put my relationship and love lens in it, it's like we also sometimes can equate those material things and money with love, right? And so it's like, really interesting what have been your experience, either personal or professional, when it comes to like that relationship of money and the spending of it equals love.

You know what I think for me and even some of my clients, we start to feel that money, being able to spend money on other people, on ourselves, means that we're worth something, that we are worthy, right? Means that that person's worthy. Imagine dating someone and then they buy you ladies diamond necklace. What is the first thing? Oh, he must really care about me.

Right, Right, exactly.

Add value to this thing and their this relationship because of what they bought us. Now imagine if that same person made you a card or made you something. We don't necessarily ascribe the same value to it, right? Because they didn't spend any money on it. Because we've been taught that money equals love. We've been taught money equals worth. And the way you show love is by spending money on people. The way you know your worth is by spending or earning a lot of money, right? And then that way when you meet someone and they're dating someone and they say, what do you do? Oh, I am this. I'm an attorney. Oh, well, you must have a lot of money, right?

Which means that you have the capability or capacity to love me a lot.

And love me lots.

Love me lots.

Yes, I know you, right? So we ascribe worth and financial value to money, financial value to love, to spending. We ascribe all of these things to money that really, if you think about it, this shouldn't be there, shouldn't be there at all, you know, but we just don't know how else to operate, if that makes sense.

Well, I think what happens naturally too is sometimes when we start to make our own money, some of that starts to go away because it's like, okay, I have all this stuff for myself. I don't necessarily need it from other people.

Talk to me a little bit about what are some of the bigger money issues you see in dating and relationships now that we're talking about men and then buying us things and all of that, Talk to me about kind of your experiences with that.

I think one of the biggest money issues, at least a few that I've seen, the biggest one, is income disparity. Right. If one partner makes more than the other, especially if it's significant, there's a tendency for a lot of tension to come into play because everything that occurs between the two people ends up always being almost a battle of egos. And I hate to say it. I hate to say it because, well, I want to take you out to dinner. Well, I don't think you should really be spending your money like that because, you know, I make more than you. You know, like, it becomes battle. Regardless of whether or not the intention of the person that's offering to do something, you end up having this feeling, this emotional attachment to money, and we bring it to the relationships, it ends up honestly rearing its ugly head in all sorts of ways. Moving in together. Who pays? Who pays for dinner? Right? And if you decide, oh, my goodness, heaven forbid you decide to have kids later on, how's that conversation going to play out? Well, mommy makes X amount of money. Well, does she? And what does daddy do? Right. Okay, okay. The kids all start to pick up on that eventually, right? So I think when it comes to the biggest challenges, the least that I've seen, it is the income disparity. It is the battle of the egos. It is things that we discuss or fail to discuss when it's time to move in together or if we decide to move in together. That's one of the biggest challenges I think a lot of couples have is we decided to move in together. All the conversations that we need to have about moving in together, okay, if we each have our own place, who's gonna move in with who? How's that decision going to be made? Right? And imagine if you're in different locations completely, like different states or different locations, that conversation can be very, very difficult. And it can be extremely difficult if you have not had an honest conversation about your finances with your partner, which, unfortunately, I notice a lot of couples don't do until literally, like, they're about to walk down the aisle. They're like, oh, what do you have? Oh, wait, let Me show you what I have and what you have. If you sum it all up, I would say it's probably the biggest challenge is an honest financial conversation with your partner. And that is something that we don't do enough of.

And when should we be having some of these conversations, right? These money conversations, who pays for what? Either in dating or in an exclusive relationship or moving in together, Some of these bigger milestones.

So if you're trying to decide bigger milestones as far as who pays for it, that's going to come out right away, right? At least even from the first date, second date, third date, that's going to come out right away.

And I just want to stop you here because I know that we're both pretty traditional and we generally want the man to pay. I did think, because you were just talking about. I'm sorry to interrupt you about the battle of egos, right. When we're thinking about both the feminine and the masculine energy, the masculine energy is about giving. Right. And so it is important to make sure that that part, if you want to be in your feminine energy, that part, that you allow your man to be in his masculine energy. I had some clients that would, like, put their credit card and slip it under the table so that if they're in a group setting, the man can seem like he's paying because she makes much more than him. I think that's a little bit extreme, but to the point, I want the women out there to be very comfortable allowing and receiving this giving that the men really want to do for them, because that's going to make them feel really great, too, regardless of whatever they make.

I completely agree with you. And I think you hit the nail on the head right there where you said allowing the man to be essentially the man. Right. I think a lot of us, we achieved a certain level of success in our lives. That doesn't always translate well when it comes to having that conversation about letting men be men. And you're right, I am traditional. I am old school. And I will say, I'll be the first to tell you that, you know what? If a guy wants to pay, let him pay.

Yes.

Allow him the opportunity to pay. Even if you make more. As long as you've had that conversation, if he says, hey, I got it, let him do what he wants to do. Because you saying no is really removing his agency. You're not letting him be who he needs to be. You're not letting. Allowing him to be a man as he sees it. Right. And you're taking away Something that he probably values a great deal, which is being able to, to take care of you. So allow him that opportunity.

No, I think it's a really good point. And I think that we have to allow these men to give because that is natural within their masculine energy. Okay, so let's say I am wanting to move in with someone. Talk to me about what sort of things we should be talking about in that conversation. What have you seen work best when it comes to those decisions?

So if you're looking to move into someone, one of the first things I would say is sitting down and doing the hard to heart talk about your finances. I know the hard to heart talk about actually moving in. That obviously should come first. But after you do that, have that conversation. Let's talk about our finances. The first things you need to discuss is where are you moving, Are you renting together? Are you going to buy a place together? Because if you're going to rent, regardless of whether you're renting or buying a place, you're in the U.S. you have to be very mindful of the fact that they're going to pull your credit score, right? You're going to look at your credit score and if your partner doesn't have a great credit score, well, that's going to impact your plans going forward. So make sure that you have a heart to heart conversation about all your finances. Believe it or not, it's something that I think we all be focused on one thing like, oh, we're going to move in together and then we'll figure it out as we go along. But no, start first. Begin with, okay, how are you doing financially? Let's really sit down and talk about how do you handle money, how do you feel about saving, how do you feel about spending? And if you've reached a point where you're actually deciding whether or not to move in with someone, you've probably noticed a few things here and there throughout the course about their patterns, exactly how they feel about saving, how they feel about spending, right? If somebody's always constantly like, okay, you know what, we can't go here because it's too expensive. But, well, then you start developing a narrative in your mind about how they perceive money and their relationship with money, right? So you may have an inkling already, but to make sure that everybody's on the same page, have a heart to heart conversation about where each person is financially and more importantly, where they hope to be within the next year, three years, five years. Because that's really going to determine whether or not it makes sense for you to move in together at all.

Right.

And the second most important thing is after you've determined as far as how everyone's credit is, you need to determine who's going to pay for what when you move into. Right. Are you guys to keep your account separate? Are you going to create a joint account or are you going to do both? Have, maintain.

What do you recommend?

I honestly recommend that you go ahead and do both.

Yeah.

Joint account, whereby you have your joint expenses and then each person has their own. Exactly, exactly. Because you know what, moving in together is great, but you know what, relationships end sometimes. So prepare for that.

Let's be honest about it. I'm so glad that you were talking about having really an in depth conversation about money. And I just want to offer too, that you can start to have these things, smaller conversations before you get to that point. Right. Obviously. And I tell my clients all the time, I don't want you to be asking about credit scores, things like that in the first date. No, you laugh, girl, but this is what. These are the things that happen. And I'm like, no, girl, I want you to have a lot of fun on the first couple of dates. And dates, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, I want you to get a little bit more deeper and talk about, like long term goals, like not just financial, but like social, romantic, and all of those other things. And then you can get an understanding about how he's thinking about money and what he wants to do with his money and, you know, what sort of debts he has. He might say, you know, I really want to buy a house in the next two or three years, but I got to get my student loan debt in order or whatever it may be, because Lord knows some of us have quite a bit of student loan debt that we have to deal with.

Make that mental note like, okay, exactly. He has student loan debt. What does that mean when it comes time for us to combine finances, you know, from when it comes time for us to actually really think long term about a future together. Because somebody has $500,000 worth of student loans, is that really something that you're ready to take on as a joint unit? You know, definitely that's a no, no.

And you want to have this detailed conversation not two or three weeks before you're going to move in with each other. Three to six months at least. About like, what that really looks like, you know what I'm saying? So that if there are financial things that you have to clear up and clean up before you come Together, someone has ample time to do that, both him and potentially you.

Absolutely. The worst time to bring up this and have this deep conversation is when you're signing the paperwork and then you're.

Like, that happens all the time.

Right.

I remember that student loan debt that I mentioned in passing. Yeah. It's actually 500,000. Like, that's going to impact your ability to actually do something. And sometimes you make it turned down because of that other person's situation.

You know, things get quite awkward after that.

What advice do you have for people that are not used to talking about money with other people? Because I think we grew up somewhat similarly. And like you were saying, your parents didn't really talk to you about money. And so you may not be comfortable or have experience really approaching these conversations and doing it in a confident manner. So what sort of advice do you have about that?

The first thing I would say is you should be comfortable talking about money to yourself. Because if you're not comfortable with actually talking about money to yourself and understanding your own individual relationship with money, then it's going to be very, very challenging to have a conversation with another person about money and sharing finances, period, over time.

So what does that look like, being comfortable with oneself about money and talking about it? Yeah.

Believe it or not, one of the things I do with my clients is called Tiny Habits, and it essentially is based on the research by this gentleman. His name is BJ Fogg. He's a Stanford professor. And it's actually a book for those of you that love books. It's called Tiny Habits and how you essentially use these tiny habits to reach your goals. And for me, what I do is for my clients, we use tiny habits plus systems to reach our goals. So to get comfortable with money, one of the first things we do is we literally go through and we do a time study to see where they're spending their time. And then we figure out where in their day we can actually have a daily money date. And what that means is every day you sit down and you actually look at your finances.

Yes.

Where's my net worth going? Is it going in the right direction? How's my cash flow doing? Right. And you do it, for example, for five minutes, maybe, after you brush your teeth. Right. That's where the tiny habit is. Immediately after doing something that you do on a regular basis anyway, right? Yes.

For those money dates, girl, you are dating men, and you are dating your money money.

Because after a while, you start getting used to not only seeing the money, that and your finances, you get comfortable with money. And that leads to better conversations with other people about. Right. It makes it. I know people like to say money's personal, which it is, right. But to make it a bit less personal, you have to actually start dating your money, as it were. And literally every day, look at it, think about the goals that you have. And then what we do is we actually create systems for us to reach those goals as part of the tiny habits. But before you reach the point where you're able to have that conversation, an honest conversation with another person, you have to become comfortable with money yourself or else it's never going to work.

Yeah, well, I can already hear the thoughts of my listeners in their heads. They'll be like, mina, girl, like every day. That's a lot, girl.

What about on a weekly or monthly? Monthly basis is that that works?

Absolutely. Weekly. The reason we do week, daily is because we want you to get in the habit of actually being able to. Because if I say, okay, let's do it monthly, for some people, they'll remember one month, and then like three months later, they're like, oh, I was supposed to do that. Right. So that's one of the reasons we do it daily. Just so that you get in the habit. After you've gotten used to being able to do it daily, then you can switch to weekly and then make it less frequent. Right. And monthly or even quarterly, because you're like, okay, I got this. You know, I know how much money I have. I know my network is going in the right direction. I know what I value when it comes to money. Some people, they say they value having nice stuff. Some people are minimalist and they're like, I don't really care for a lot of stuff. You know, something different. So you get comfortable how you feel about money and how you think about money. And it makes it a lot easier to have conversations with other people.

I love that. I think that's great.

Let's talk a little bit about more about what you do. As you are the financial and angel investor priestess.

What do you want my listeners to.

Know about wealth and investing?

So one of the things, at least the way I like to think about wealth and investing is honestly, I do believe, I wholeheartedly believe there are three ways to actually build and create wealth in the world. The first way is to invest in paper assets or investing in a stock market. The second way is investing real estate or investing in something called REITs, real estate investment trust. And the third way is investing in businesses. And that's where like, angel investing or peer to peer lending to other business owners, business owners that are seeking funding. But if you're able to at least at a minimum, have two of those areas covered in your finances, I honestly, wholeheartedly believe you can't go wrong. And it's one of the best ways for you to actually build meaningful wealth and make meaningful progress with your wealth. Right. So the first is invest in the stock market, investing in real estate, and then investing in businesses. If you cover two out of the three, you are good and you are golden girl.

I love that. It's so simple and it's so easy to just like synthesize. Now I want you to talk about that next step for each of those specific categories, right. Stocks and investment. What is my next step?

So the first thing I would say is if you, depending on where you are financially, if you are, the first step is honestly make sure you have the emergency savings set aside. Right. And there are a number of ways for you to build emergency savings. For those of you that aren't familiar with emergency savings, it is literally the money that you need to have on hand should something go wrong, should an emergency happen. Right. And at a minimum, if you're single, you should have at least three to six months worth of your monthly living expenses set aside. And if you've taken care of the emergency savings, the next thing I would say is pay off any high interest debt that you may have. If you have high interest debt, and I don't mean all debt, you'll find some people say pay off. No, no, just anything that's high interest. And for me, anything that's high interest is like 9% or above. Okay, let's get that out of the way. Right, right. Once you've done that, the next thing I would say is let's invest in a retirement account, a retirement plan of some sort. So whether it's one through your job, if you work for, if you have a 9 to 5, or one through your own business, if you have your own business, then you can set up a small business retirement account. That's where that's the next place we want to go ahead. And actually that's where the investing in stock market comes into play. Actually start investing in the long term. We start thinking about, okay, you know what, when I am 59, 60 or 70 years old, how am I going to create my own paycheck? Right? Because after a certain period of time, you probably will not be working full time. Right. So we need to create our own paycheck. And one way to do that is making sure that we have that investment in their retirement account. Right? Yeah. After you've invested in that retirement account through your job or through your own small business, we're going to move on to the next step which is investing in a taxable account. A taxable account is just a non retirement account that we set up for ourselves that we can buy all types of investments in it. And it like stocks, bonds, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, you name it. That the reason we do that is because we want to make sure that we are taking advantage of obviously fully investing in our retirement account and maxing that out. But once we reach that limit, then what else can we do? Right. And we're going to invest in a taxable account. And then after that is where we start looking at the real estate investing. Whether we own rental properties. Right. Or we do the real estate investment trust and we become essentially a shareholder in a real estate investment trust. Right. So that's the other piece. And then lastly the last bit of that pie if you, you'll actually see one of the things I do my clients is literally all this looks like a pie is investing in the businesses. And you can invest in businesses, as I mentioned, through peer to peer lending. There's companies like Lending Club and all these other prosper that you can actually be an investor. If a business owner says hey, I need to borrow 5,000, 10,000, 50,000 and you are able to give that money to that person. Right. You get a certain amount of interest. So you become essentially a lender as a result of giving them that money. So that's the investing in business. The other way to invest in business, if you have not reached the status of being what's called an accredited angel investor, you can be a non accredited angel investor and you can invest in a small business or startup through what's known as equity crowdfunding. And you can invest as little as $100, $250 in a startup. And that for essentially giving them that money, you become a partial equity owner of that company.

I love that. Okay, so we have our emergency fund and then we have our 400k retirement savings after that and then some sort of other savings accounts like Roth IRA. I always mess that up.

Yep. @ Roth.

IRA. So you have.

IRAs. Roth IRAs. And then we move on to any taxable accounts.

Right. And so those taxable accounts, what are those? Where would I find.

Those? Sure. So those you can set up at any of the big brokerage firms or even at the discount brokerage firms. Like Charles Schwab, Fidelity Vanguard, any of the bigger brokerage firms. I was. I'm a big fan of Charles Schwab.

So.

Okay. And you can open up a. They're usually called a taxable account or a cash management.

Account.

Okay. Invest in securities, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, anything in those type of.

Accounts. And then you're saying after that, really look at real estate, either Property rental management or.

REITs. Correct. Or REEDs Real Estate Investment Trust.