Girls Night #144: How to Set Yourself up for Success in Your Finances with Dominique Broadway

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Hey friends, welcome to Girls' Night. I'm Stephanie Mae Wilson, and I am so happy that you're here. Each week I have a girlfriend over and we talk through one of the biggest questions we have about our lives as women. We're talking about friendships and faith and relationships and self-confidence, about our calling in life and how to live every bit of our lives to the full. Life is so much better and easier and absolutely more fun when we navigate it together as girlfriends, and I cannot wait to get started. So friends, I am so excited about today's episode. Today we're talking about how to set yourself up for success in your finances. Now for some of you listening, you might be thinking to yourself, why are we talking about this at Girls Night? Like it doesn't totally fit. But I wanted to make sure to talk about this on our show for two reasons. One, because this is a conversation my girlfriends and I are having at our real life girls nights. And two, because for the longest time, if I'm being honest, I didn't know a thing about retirement planning or investing or my credit score or why any of that mattered. And for the longest time, I was so intimidated by all of it that instead of doing the research and trying to figure it out, I just sort of set it aside and decided that I'd worry about it later. But the thing is, our finances and our future financial planning aren't areas that we could ignore for long without there being some serious repercussions for us and for our families and for our kids and more. And so I have been finally biting the bullet I've been diving into this topic, learning all that I can, and I wanted to bring you guys along with me just in case there's anyone else out there that needs this. We know that money isn't the goal or the end-all be-all most important thing in our lives at all. But it is the kind of thing that when our finances are a mess, it tends to take the rest of our lives down with it. Have you experienced this? I think a lot of us have. We know that if we want to do the things we want to do in the world and live the life we want to live and make the impact we want to make and have the security and the safety for our families that we want to have and pursue our dreams dreams and all kinds of other things, this is something we have to figure out. So with all of that said, I'm so excited for you to meet our guest. Our guest for today's episode is Dominique Broadway. Dominique is an award-winning personal finance expert, a speaker, and the founder of Finances Demystified. She is positively brilliant. And after talking to her, I feel clear on what I need to do with my finances for the first time, like ever. The things she taught me in this episode helped all of this intimidating, confusing stuff actually make sense. Like, I actually understand the stock market now.

That's never been true before.

And I also feel so empowered. I felt so empowered after I talked to her, like I could actually do the things that she suggested. My hope is that after listening to the episode, you feel the exact same way. We can do this, friends.

We can do it together.

But before we dive in, I have a resource I wanted to make sure to share with you. Some of you guys may have heard of this before, but for others, this may be your first time hearing about it, in which case I'm so excited because I love this book and I just would love to share a copy with you. So it's called the Lipstick Gospel Devotional, and this is what it's all about. The Lipstick Gospel Devotional is a 90-day devotional to help you consistently connect with God, hearing from him, trusting his plans, and feeling his presence in your everyday life. In this devotional, we talk about how to consistently spend time with God and feel connected to him well beyond your morning quiet times, how to trust the plans God has for your life and how to figure out what those plans even are, how to step into your God-given identity, feeling truly beautiful and good enough in your skin, how to keep your faith strong in the midst of transition, uncertainty, and really hard days, how to add more joy, more delight, and even more whimsy into your everyday life, and so much more. Friends, if you are looking to grow in your faith these days, I would love to share this with you. To pick up a copy, all you have to do is go to my website.

It's stephaniewilson.com.

Again, that's stephaniewilson.com. All right, you guys ready? Let's jump in with Dominique.

Friends, I am so excited for who I'm sitting with today. I'm sitting here with my friend Dominique Broadway. I have been wanting to meet you and connect with you for so long. I am so happy to have you on the show. Thanks for being here.

Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. I'm super excited for today's conversation.

So before we dive in, can you tell us who you are, what you do, and a fun fact about yourself?

Yeah, so my name is Dominique Broadway. I'm an award-winning financial planner, personal finance expert, and the founder of Finances Demystified, which is an award-winning financial education company. So basically, I help people just get super confident about their finances so they can understand the best ways to use them so they can bring all their dreams to reality. So fun fact, fun fact would be that I am semi-obsessed with The Office. The TV show.

That is amazing. That is amazing. OK, like, what's your favorite character?

Definitely Michael Scott, but I also love Pam and Jim. And it's funny, I've been an entrepreneur now for 8 years full-time. So I started watching The Office because it was literally like having a bunch of people working with me all day long. So I would just let it play all day. And my— now my husband, who at the time was my boyfriend, he was like, Why do you watch them all day? I'm like, because they— I work with them, they're my coworker.

I love that so much, and I actually can definitely relate to that, being like, ah, like, I— you feel like you got a little water cooler conversation by not watching it, but it's just background noise, like if you were at an office. So yeah, that is amazing. I did not watch The Office when it was live. This is the story of, of me with like every show that everyone knows and quotes and stuff. But we watched it. My husband Carl is obsessed with it as well. And we watched it all the way through maybe 3 years ago. And I finally get all of the inside jokes that I haven't gotten for however long it's been. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's funny. I just understand my friends so much better now. And a lot of times, Carl will say something, and I'll have to just whisper, it's an Office reference. If you don't watch The Office, you won't understand what he's talking about. So I love that. I love that. Okay, well, so I am so excited about this conversation. We have talked about budgeting on the show before, but I'm so excited to pick your brain because there are so many different levels to our finances that we haven't talked about on Girls' Night, but that are really important. And this is something that we've— that I've been talking about with my girlfriends in our actual girls' nights, you know, figuring out what to do with our money and how to be smart with our money. Money is a really hard topic to talk about, I think, for a lot of us. But it's really important because, as we all know, so many of the things that we dream of doing in our lives— making an impact, getting to explore the world— I mean, there are just so many different things. They all require money.

They all require money. Yes.

They all require money. And I think that there are so many areas of life in the world where I feel like women weren't invited to be part of it for a really long time. And that's changed in a lot of ways. But this is a— this is an area where, like, when it comes to investing, my most go-getter friends, myself included, like, we don't know very much about investing. And I think that that's a really hard thing because when we leave that portion of our lives to someone else or kind of ignore it completely, we're really missing out on a lot.

Um, yeah, yeah.

I was really inspired. Um, I'm, I, I'm gonna get this wrong. I think it was the founder of LearnVest. OK. Alexa Brandt Toble. Yes. Do you know what I'm talking about? How, like, the reason she started it?

Yeah.

I can't remember.

I think it was the exact reason she started. But I think she was trying to make basically financial planning a lot more accessible. Yeah. Yeah. So that was why she had originally started Learn Best.

And I think that it was that, like, maybe her dad passed away and her mom was like, I don't even know how to—

I have no idea what any of this is.

Mm-hmm.

And then I also have been following a couple of women you know, have just had some big changes in their lives, and they're like, I realize I don't know who my accountant is. I have no idea how to file my own taxes, or have— I have no—

there are just these huge gaps in our understanding of our money. And I am—

that was, that was very common when I used to work at, um, financial— like, when I worked at actual, like, investment firms. I used to work a lot of high net worth clients, and a lot of them were, you know, older— 50s, not older, not 50s, but like 60s, 70s. Maybe even 80s, a lot of times if their partner would die, usually their husband, they had no clue. They were like, I never came to these meetings. What do we have? What does he have? Like, really had no clue whatsoever. I feel like that's changing a lot nowadays, but traditionally, that is how it has been.

Yeah, and it's like, I mean, I still see evidence of that in my own marriage, you know? Like, I do a lot of our budget stuff, and, you know, both my husband and I work full-time, and that's really important to me. And, you know, I feel like I'm a— financially literate person for the most part, but like, I mean, I truly don't know anything about investing. So I just am really happy to have you on the show because this is an area of life that we just can't ignore or sweep under the rug or forget about or leave to somebody else. And so I want to hear from you, like, how did you get into this? How did this become important in your life?

[Speaker:DOMINIQUE_BROWDER] Yeah, so I've always been like, just like entrepreneur and into money and things like that. So I own like a bunch of different businesses, like growing up as a kid and also in high school and just really was interested in, like, once I started making money, like, how do I make it grow, right? So I had to— I remember going to my family and asking them, like, hey, can you guys teach me, like, about investing or what investments do you have? And they were just like, we don't know tons, to be honest. You know, I remember my grandfather was like, hey, I have a TSP, which is a Thrift Savings Plan, because he worked for the federal government. He was the chief of IT. For department, for the Department of Defense. And he said, look, I have this TSP, but I really don't know how it works. So he's like, you can take the statement and see if you can figure it out. So I like took his retirement statement and started doing like research and like trying to understand what a lot of this stuff meant. And that was really how it began for me. Now, obviously, I don't wanna age myself, but there was no YouTube back then. So it was just like reading a bunch of books, trying to figure it out. And I just got really intrigued with with investing as I also kind of did more research and realized it was like two ways that like rich people were building wealth, and that was through real estate and the stock market. So obviously, I was only like 16, 17 at the time. So I decided, okay, I'm going to really learn this like stock market thing. So that was really how I started. So I started teaching myself how to invest and trade when I was 16 years old. Went on to major in banking and finance at Bowie State University, which is an historically Black college. And then got my master's in financial management at the University of Maryland. And before getting my master's, I got an internship at UBS Financial Services, which is like one of the largest wealth management— more private wealth— wealth management firms in the world. They focus on like super high net worth individuals. So I had never heard of the company, to be honest, because they focus on people that have like $10, $20 million, and I didn't have that much money. At the time, right? So, you know, that was really where it began for me. And I became a licensed financial advisor while I was there. And then I, too, started being able to help people with managing their money and financial planning, investing, trading, et cetera, et cetera. So that was really like where it began for me. I kind of just threw myself into that space.

What happens— like, I feel like there's women listening who are going, OK, like, are we— should we be focusing on building wealth? Like, there's— I think that there's some sort of, like, kind of itchy feeling that a lot of us get. But what happens if we just don't engage in this conversation? Like, especially as women, like, what's at stake here?

Yeah, I mean, you can— not everyone wants to be wealthy, and that's perfectly fine. Not everyone wants financial stability, which is weird but perfectly fine, right? So even if you're not focused on just becoming the richest person in the world, right, I think I think it still makes sense to be aware of your finances, right? Even, you know, being a good steward of our finances is something that is very important, right? So they always say, like, you know, God won't bless you with more if you can't prove to him that you can do good with what you have now, right? So it's really important to, even if you don't, you're not trying to build wealth, just to make sure that you are doing well and being a good steward of what you currently have. Now, as far as building wealth, Like I said, not everyone wants to be wealthy. Being wealthy was a goal of mine always, not because I was greedy or just wanted to buy flashy, flashy things, although I do like nice things. It was more because I wanted the stability and freedom that money provided, right? And also the ability to help others. So as you just mentioned, you know, if you want to, you know, travel or start a business or do something for your family or, or just be an amazing philanthropist, right? You have to have the financial resources to do so. So it's really important for us to, you know, if your goal is to build wealth, to start figuring out how you can actually make that happen so they can support whatever your goals and dreams are, right? And you don't want to just— my other thing is like, we're going out here, we're working hard and smart for our money, right? But you can't let your money come in and just start being lazy. It has to be doing something for you. So all these dollars I'm making needs to be out here making me more money. That's how you build wealth, as simple as that, right? In a simple form. So, you know, you're going to do yourself a disservice by ignoring your finances because 9 times out of 10, if you ignore your finances, typically people wait until it's— I don't want to say too late most of the times, but most of the times it is too late to truly make a change or impact in their financial lives because you don't have time, right? And time is on our side when we start early. When you start in your 20s and 30s and 40s, time is on your side. But if you're starting like, you're like, hey, I'm— I'm 65 and I want to retire next week, I mean, next month, and I mean, sorry, next year, and I don't have anything saved, come on. It's just not realistic, right? Unless you're going to focus in on hitting the lottery. So those are some reasons why, you know, it is important and you should be thinking about this now if you're not.

That's, mm, yes. Okay, I've heard you talk about this before. You know, we, one of the ways when we're when we're working, when we're trying to get our like financial lives in order, when we are trying to like achieve, you know, different goals or dreams with our money, one of the things that people talk about is like side hustles. And that's become really like a really popular term and idea in the last, you know, however many years, that it's like if you want to make more money, you know, you can potentially get a different job, or, you know, I mean, you have sort of your main career, but then you also can have something on the side. But you've talked about how investing is like truly the best side hustle. And I want to hear you talk more about that.

Yeah, you know, I love— I mean, we've all had like a lot of different side hustles, right? So my thing with side hustles is a lot of times certain side hustles or side hustle is like the new fun term. But typically there used to be just like part-time jobs, right? Or something you were doing on the side that may require hours and hours and hours and hours of your time, right?

Side hustle sounds so much more fun than a part-time job.

An extra part-time job.

Side hustle.

Exactly.

So we're going to keep calling it side hustle.

But typically, that side hustle a lot of times is going to— or part-time job— it's going to require, you know, an extra 4 hours a day or da-da-da-da-da, right? And that's another— that's one of the reasons why I love investing. Because if you take the time to learn how to invest or even to learn to trade or just invest, your money can be working for you while you're out doing other things, right? So there's been times I'll look at— open up my portfolio. Maybe I'll put some trades or investments in. It's like, oh, look. I made $7,000 a day or $10,000 today, and all I've done is like chase my daughter around the house. Like, that is my definition of an amazing side hustle, right? Something where your money is constantly growing for you and growing for you at a higher rate than inflation. Because inflation, the rate, the current rate of inflation, well, the average rate of inflation is 3% a year, right? And so inflation is the amount that it costs to— the price, the increase of how much things cost every year, right? So, remember, like, maybe when we were kids, I don't know how much milk was. Maybe it was like a dollar a gallon, and now it's like $4 or $5 a gallon or something like that, right? That's an example of inflation. So if your money isn't earning at least 3% a year, it's technically losing money. Now, for a lot of people, they don't have a lot of time, right? I know, like you said, you have twin girls.

I have—

2 girls, which could almost be twins, I guess, based on that they're 2 years apart, you know, run businesses, et cetera, et cetera. We don't have tons of time to do extra things. And so that's why, for me, investing has— for me and for a lot of people— has turned into, like, just the ultimate side hustle because it doesn't require tons of time, you know?

Yeah. Yes, 100%. OK, so we're getting to the portion of the interview where I don't know what I'm talking about. Actually, well, I mean, basically this whole time we've been there. So for office reference, tell me, break investing down for me like I'm 5. Like, truly though, I have kind of tried to learn about the stock market. I still don't totally get it. And so I know that there are women listening that are like, cool, yeah, it'd be really awesome for my money to work without me or work for me, but A, I don't really have money, and so how much do we need to get started here? And then also, how?

How? Okay, so first thing is, what does it even mean to invest, right? So essentially, investing is making your money work for you. You could do this through a lot of different ways. I know we're talking about like stock market, but you could be investing in real estate, you could invest in the stock market, you can invest in cryptocurrency, you can invest in, what's the other thing, art, like, you know, little like art, or even like collectibles, right? You, every now and then you hear like, oh, so-and-so had this Lego set and now it's worth like $20,000. Like that's technically an investment, right? Maybe you bought something and now it has appreciated over time. But to go back to talking about investing in the stock market specifically, so investing is essentially, like I said, putting your money in and allowing it to work for you over time. Then there's also the concept of trading, which is also really popular, and that's making, like, more frequent transactions where I may buy something this morning and sell it today, right, or sell it this evening or sell it the next day, right? That's a quick trade to make money. But investing specifically, you don't need tons of money to start investing. You can honestly start investing with as little as $5, especially with all of these new you know, kind of like fintech companies, Robinhood, Acorns, Stash, stuff like that. You could really start investing for $5. When I started investing, I started with like $25, and I just did slow and steady, just putting my monies in. I mean, I was like 16 years old, so I didn't have tons of money, right? So just putting my money in when I got it and just buying what they call fractional shares, right? So before I talk about fractional shares, let's just talk about like what a stock is real quick, because that's like the most basic bare-bones investment you can get into. So a stock is essentially giving you share or ownership of a company, right? So you may say, let's say, do you like Apple, Stephanie? Apple company?

Yep.

So we all love Apple. It's one of my favorite companies to invest in. You could go right now and buy one share of Apple, right? I think it may be trading like $150 today. I'm actually gonna check. Let me see. So Apple is trading at $142.09. So if you wanted to see exactly what Apple was trading at, you could literally go straight to Google and just type in Apple symbol, which is AAPL, or just type in Apple stock if you don't know the symbol, and you can literally get the price of what Apple's currently trading at. So as of today, Apple's trading at $142.08. So you could go right now and buy 1 share of Apple, right? But let's say if you're like, hey, I don't have $142.10 or 8 cents to spend, It just changed. The price has changed. But I had $50. You could buy $50 worth of Apple stock. So it's kind of like how when you would go to the gas station and say, hey, I want to put $20 on pump 5. It's the same thing. You could put $50 or whatever amount you have on Apple. And that's what they call buying fractional shares. And they will give you a percentage, like, based on whatever that $50 equates to of the share. So that's literally what investing is if you kept it bare bones. Buying, investing into companies that I always say the best place to start, invest in companies that you already use. Invest in companies that you already are familiar with. It keeps it easy, right? So if I say, if I ask you right now, Stephanie, okay, you told me you like Apple. Give me a couple other companies you like. Maybe Target. Amazon. Maybe Walmart. We all know and use these companies, right?

Yeah.

So let's start investing in places we already use and frequent. So I always tell people, if you want to get started, what you should do is first make a list, okay? Maybe take a week or just look around your house and say, okay, what companies do I use? Write those companies down. Then go to Google and research all those companies. Just put in Chipotle stock, Target stock, and see what they're trading at, okay? See what the prices are, right? That can maybe help you determine how much you want to start investing with. And then you just pick a company to start investing with. So that could be Robinhood, it could be E-Trade, it could be Stash or Webull, whoever. It really doesn't matter, right? They all have zero minimums, so you're fine. Zero dollar minimums. And that's it. And then you just literally link your checking account to the brokerage firm, transfer some money over, OK? And you can decide to do like one amount. So you may say, hey, I'm going to start with $500. And then you take that and buy $500 worth of Apple stock. Or you can even say, "Hey, I want to invest X amount of dollars every month and buy Apple stock every month." You could do that as well, right? So that's literally how simple it is to start investing. Now let me just give you just a perspective of, like, the importance of investing, right? So there was this illustration— oh, I can't remember the exact number. There's an illustration, and it showed that if you had bought or had invested $1,000 into Apple, I think in, like, 2001, right, just $1,000 in 2001 and didn't add— 2001, 2010? I think it's 2001. Just put it in perspective. Don't hold me to these numbers because I can't remember exactly, but ballpark, $1,000 in 2001. By now, that $1,000 and you not adding a single other penny would be worth, I believe, over $200,000. If you had literally just— literally just invested $1,000 in Apple and never, never looked at it again. Right? Now, mind you, that's about 20 years, but most of us are over 20, right? And most of us don't have $200,000 saved.

Yeah.

Right? So just— and that's just if you only did $1,000 and never added a dollar. So that's how simple investing can be over time. Not get-rich-quick schemes, but just investing over time, just having your money work for you. Is that a— Yeah.

OK. Yeah, that's super helpful. And so it really doesn't matter what— company you buy it? Because I mean, I see like commercials for, you know, these— like, I've heard of E-Trade, I've heard of Robinhood, but there's not like sketchy ones or good ones, or—

I mean, you, you definitely want to stick with the ones that are like, you know, the ones you hear about. So like, like I said, I would recommend— like, I have accounts with Robinhood, I have accounts with Webull, I have accounts with E-Trade, I have accounts with Fidelity. Like, my daughter has accounts at Fidelity. We have accounts at Acorns. My daughter has accounts at Acorns. These are all ones that I use, right? So stick with the big companies. Don't like go to like John's little trading shop, you know, on the corner. Just start with the companies that you're familiar with, you know, you see around. But yeah, those are great places to start.

Okay, so then how do you know— we, I mean, we know that Apple has grown a ton since 2001. You know, until today. And we know that, like, I know that you— there's no— I mean, this is like the crux of the whole thing. There's no predicting. Like, no one knew at the time that Apple was going to get as big as it did. But like, how do you know? Is it like winning the lottery where it's like you just happen to be in the right place at the right time? Or is this like something that normal— will like benefit normal people who stick with it?

Does that make sense? Yeah, so it's— you don't have to— so that's the question. People are like, well, how do I know Apple is going to be successful? You don't know that Apple is going to be successful. You don't know that Amazon is going to be successful. But it's here, but it could be gone in 10 years. It could, right? So that is a risk that you take. Now, if you're not super risky, right, I'm like, hey, I'll put it all on Apple and let it rock, right? I am that type of risky investor. But if you're like, hey, I'm not 100% confident in Apple, Amazon, although I use these companies and believe in these companies, I'm not super confident in them, then I would say don't invest in individual stocks. You could do— then you would invest, I recommend investing into mutual funds, right? So mutual funds or ETFs, they're essentially the same thing. ETFs stand for exchange-traded funds, right? So they just trade more frequently than mutual funds, but they're the same thing. Mutual funds are essentially like buying an Easter basket of stocks, right? So it's literally a basket, like picture a basket, Easter basket, you're cute, you know, Easter morning, your little basket with all your toys and candies, it's the same exact thing. So inside of this Easter basket is companies. So there can be hundreds and sometimes thousands of different companies inside of a mutual fund. And people like mutual funds because it splits your money amongst all these companies. So let's say if for some reason Apple goes out of business, Amazon, Target, whoever goes out of business, you don't lose all of your money, right? Because your money is spread out, meaning your risk is spread, spread it out amongst all these companies. Okay. Now when it comes to picking, I don't want to say it's like the lottery because we use a lot of like indic— like for my trade as well. So I use a lot of like indicators and things like that, technical and fundamental analysis to make trade decisions. But I would say, if you're like, hey, I don't feel like doing no technical analysis, I ain't trying to take no investing course, you— one of the smartest things you can do is literally invest in the companies that you use. It's simple as that. OK. These are companies that you use, you believe, you trust. So there's people who literally, OK, I'm going to invest in Apple because I like Apple, and obviously it's paid off. I'm going to invest in Amazon because I get packages every day. That could pay off, right? And then even if there's companies that you don't use but you believe in, So maybe Tesla, right? Maybe you don't own a Tesla, but you're like, hey, I think the future is all electric cars, so I'm going to invest in Tesla. There you go, right? So some of this is going to be just thinking about, like, the things that you believe in and you think will be around. But if you don't feel like individually stock picking, then you can invest in mutual funds because mutual funds literally have, like, they have a fund manager. So there's a guy or girl who literally sits, and their entire job in the world is to manage this fund. Right? So they're doing all that thinking for you.

Yeah.

And making sure that this fund is on track to help you reach whatever your goals are. Okay. You know what I'm saying?

So then what do you, like, how much of your money should you be putting into, like, because I mean, if you put, if you put $25 in Apple, like, and it, and it goes under, that's not devastating.

Yeah.

But you also aren't going to make as much if you only put in $25. And so is there, like, as we're starting out, what's a good ballpark for—

for putting— yeah, yeah. So that's, that's a really hard question to ask. I get that question all the time, right? Because everyone's finances are totally different, right? There are some people who are like, hey, I'm gonna take $200 a month and invest it. There's some people who are going to take $20,000 a month, right? Some people are going to take $2,000. Everyone's financial situation is totally different. I always say only invest what you are comfortable with potentially losing, right? But at the same time, you can't be scared to invest because scared money don't make money. And as I mentioned earlier, inflation is 3% a year. So if you're not at least getting that, you're literally losing money. So like, example, my daughter, she's 2, right? They did like— Time magazine did like a feature on her a few months ago calling her a million-dollar toddler. So she's on track to be a millionaire by the age of 16. Although based on my new calculations, I think I've cut it down to age 13. Oh my gosh. But she's only 2, right? So I am OK with— putting all her money at risk because she's 2. If she lose it all at 5, who cares? She's 5. She has years to get it back, right? So even if you're in your 20s or 30s, sometimes you have to think about it that way, like being able to invest to make money for yourself, right? So the money that we've invested for her, you know, with investing and trading strategies, we've been able to almost triple it over the past year. Literally, she was probably able to make what a lot of people's salaries are, right? Just because we are investing. So that's why I say you can't be scared, right? But also making sure that you have your emergency fund in place. So, you know, if you're doing $25, $50 here and there, whatever, that's fine, right? You don't need to have a full emergency fund in place before you start doing that. But if you want to start taking huge lump sums, like, have that emergency fund in place. Place, you know, that 3 months or, you know, whatever that is, you know, they say at least 3 months right now because the world's kind of crazy. I would say you really want to have 6 to 12 months of like your monthly expenses just because things are just crazy. Sometimes they want to shut us down, sometimes they want to keep us open, etc., etc., right? So I think, you know, thinking about that initial amount, sit down, write a budget, figure out what your expenses are, and then determine like how much can you set aside each month. I think for a lot of people, that's a better way to do it versus throwing in a lump sum if you don't have a lump sum. You can have just as great returns by saying, committing to doing $100 a month. Yeah. Or $200 a month.

Yeah. Okay, okay, that makes sense. So what happens when, so you said if you lose, like she's 2, and if she loses all of her money right now, that's fine because she'll be able to get it back by the time she's 5, how do you, what does that mean? Like, if you're talking about like if the market tanks and then—

Yeah, like let's say, let's say, right? Like I'm a risky investor. So let's say if I put, example, let's say if I'm like, okay, I'm going to take $20,000 of her money and put it in Bitcoin and Bitcoin just completely disappears off the face of the earth. I've taken that risk because I'm still very bullish on Bitcoin, meaning I'm, I still think it's going to keep going, going. Like as in a lot of these investments. But I also feel like she's young, she has time to make up for it, right? So let's say versus if you were 64 and you were trying to retire at 65, you may not want to put all your money in Bitcoin because you need to use that money. You need to access it. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's what I mean there, meaning I can take more. I'm comfortable with taking more risks for her also because she don't have no bills, right? She's the kid. She don't have any bills. She don't have any bills or mortgage or anything to pay. But we can take that risk with her money because her time timeline is, is longer. And obviously, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. And we have, we have lofty financial goals for her, and we have to do the same for the new daughter as well. So that's, that's what I mean by that.

Okay, that makes sense. Do you recommend, like, if you have something that does well— like, let's say you do put in $500, you buy $500 of Apple stock, something good happens, and you end up— it's now worth $1,000. Do you recommend like taking that $500 out so then you're just basically like, like you, you're like playing with house money? Does that make sense?

Yeah, you're, you're treating it like we're at the casino.

I know, I'm like the one time I played like roulette or something, I'm like, okay, I have no—

I'm telling you, I don't know what I'm talking about here. I would say, so that's another it's up to you situation. So like, I know I personally, I'm focusing on growing my portfolio. So when I make money, I don't typically— if I sell something and capture the earnings, I'm not taking it out the account, right? So I have some— so there's, as I mentioned, there's investing and trading. There's some things that I literally just trade. I'm just trading them to make money, right? But then a lot of the stuff that I'm doing is investing. So I'm fine with the money going in and sitting over time. My goal is for it to grow over time. Now we have a lot of students like that, that are in our courses that literally they trade or invest in or trade, and they may take the profits every single day, right? Because they are doing this to make income, consistent income to pay their bills, you know, pay off their student loans, you know, as their income. So that just depends on you. But yeah, you're totally— you can listen, you can take your profits. But right now, my goal is long-term wealth building. Your goal may be something else. So it just depends on what your goals are. And neither one is wrong.

Okay. So how do you take your money out? Because it feels like, so this feels kind of fake. It's like you put in $500 and then you're watching like, you know, numbers change and go up on the screen. Like, well, one, is there a chance you could go like, you can lose all your money? But you can't go like negative, right?

No, if you're just doing regular like buying and selling, no.

Okay.

You could if you were shorting, but that's an advanced strategy. If you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't be doing advanced stuff. But no, you cannot lose more than what you invest. So if you invest $500 and it completely goes to crap, that's all you can lose. You can't lose more.

Okay. So then if you make more and you do want to take it out at some point, like, How do you take it out? And do you— yeah, how do you take it out?

Yeah, it's really easy. So let's say if you did buy like $500 worth of Apple stock and it went up, it went from $500 to $1,000, you would literally just go into the app. Now, and when I say the app, I want to take it back real quick. This is literally just a bank account. So investment accounts are essentially, they're just bank accounts with the ability that allow you to invest and trade them. So it literally operates like any other account. So if you wanted to take that $500 profit, you would go in, click sell for however much, however many shares you want to sell. And once the money is available, which is depending on your account, it could be immediately, could be a day or two, but you sell and then the money's sitting in cash again. And you can use that money to buy more stuff or you could just hit withdraw and get it sent back to your checking account. Or let's say if you have like a Robinhood or some of these other accounts that allow you to have a debit card, the money, you could just use the money because it's already on the, like it's a checking, it's like a checking account. [Speaker:DOMINIQUE_BROWNE] Yeah.

Okay, this is making way more sense than this has ever made. And I truly am like, okay, I need to like make an account and I want to put $20 in and just like, play with it a little bit.

Yeah. And I would say, you know, I would say if you, you know, try to maybe do like $100 and just start buying stuff that you already use. And you'll also be even more excited about it because you know these companies.

Yeah.

You're like, I was just at Target and I'm a Target investor. That's cool.

Yeah.

And it makes you want to check the investments. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. OK, that is really cool.

So you said earlier, like, time being on your side. Talk to me about— that's another piece of this that I don't understand because like, I understand, I don't like— how many shares can there possibly be? And the— and does the stock market just continuously go up like forever? I don't— that's the piece that, that I don't totally understand.

Yeah, so I can't say if the stock market will go up forever. I don't know, right? But historically That is basically what has happened, right? The stock market increases over time. So there's fluctuations throughout the years, but historically, the value of things increase, or if they don't continue to increase, maybe the company goes out of business and gets acquired by another company, and then, you know, the shares are changed. But a lot of these companies that are public, they are going to continue to grow, right? But even if the prices go down, they may go back up, but historically over time, The stock market always outperforms bank accounts, a lot of times real estate. It just increases over time as the value of things go up. Okay.

And it increases faster than inflation, usually? It depends.

It depends on the company. Now, the market in general, yes. If you want to look at— so if we talk about the stock market in general, right, one great representation of, like, how the stock market is doing, meaning how are all the major companies doing collectively, is this thing called the S&P 500. You may have heard, like, oh, the S&P is up or the Dow is down, right? So the S&P 500 is— S&P stands for Standard Poor's. So it is a, like, an index. So it's an index of 500 companies, hence S&P 500. So it's literally just kind of like an index, that is doing kind of a calculation based on how these 500 companies are doing. So it gives you a good idea of how the entire stock market is moving, right? Because these are 500 of the top, of the top largest companies in the US.

Okay.

Okay. So as far as the S&P 500 has, yes, historically outperformed a lot of things. Right? You have to think about it. Think about stocks as literally investing in companies because someone's like, oh, this is confusing, but think about it. You like Target. You want to invest in Target. You like Apple. You want to invest in Apple. Apple is going to continue to grow over years just because of typical how it has been working because of inflation, they increase more products. The fourth quarter of 2020, right? Apple did like, I can't remember exactly, something like $5 billion. Yes, they did $5 billion in a quarter. And a quarter is 3 months, right? October, November, December of 2020 in a pandemic. That's one quarter, y'all. $5 billion. Not million, billion. So as you can see, now they've also proven to us that they still do well even in a pandemic. And people are financially hurting. People are still buying computers and, and, uh, phones and watches, right? Because more people are working from home. So things like that, and what we did— what I just did right there is what we would call fundamental analysis. Like, thinking about the fundamentals of the company. It's still doing well even despite the things that are going on, the macroeconomic conditions. I can get really nerdy on you, but I'm not. But you get what I'm saying, right? So it's traditional. You have to think about these— Disney, right? Disney was around when you were a little girl. They're going to be around for my little girls and your little girls. Like, they ain't going nowhere. They're growing. What did they do? Parks were not doing well, so they pivoted. Now they have Disney TV. You see what I'm saying? So these companies continue to evolve, which forces them to grow, and their stock price to grow, and their value to grow, meaning they're making money. And then what are you doing, Stephanie, because you're an investor in them? You're making money, right? So you think about it as you're investing into these companies, so that they can go and make more money for you while you do other stuff. That's the way I look at it.

Hmm, that's cool. That's really cool. Okay, well, so when you talked about the S&P 500, which now I feel like really fancy being able to say that and know what that means, there are times when the stock market like tanks and, and we see that splashed across the news and, and it's scary, and but we don't totally know why it's scary because We don't know if it impacts us, or like, well, maybe I don't have money in the stock market, so does it matter? Or like, what, what do we do when things are down and we have money in the market?

It's— so that's another one that depends on your risk tolerance. I'll tell you what I do. Like, today the stock market's down, I go and buy stuff. So for me, when the stock market is down, it's like walking into Marshalls and seeing like your favorite brand there that's never typically in Marshalls, right? Or going into, going into the end of the aisle at Target and looking for all the red tags, right? That is my definition of that. So for me, when the market's down, the stock market is on sale, but that's also because I'm a long-term investor, right? Now what you don't want to do when the stock market is like falling is just start selling all of your stuff because you're locking in your losses. Now, if you're in a situation where you're like, oh no, I can't stand these falls, then maybe you need to do that. But for most people, if you're educated, you know that when the stock market starts to fall, this, this may, there may be some great buying opportunities or opportunities for you to make money because believe it or not, what goes up must come down type of situation. That's really how the stock market goes. It's an up and down battle, right? And that's why a lot of people who are traders like myself were also able to make money more consistently every day, every week because we're able to on those like movements.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Backing up a little bit, like away from investing as women, whether we are married or single, have kids, don't have kids, are entrepreneurs or have, you know, 9-to-5 jobs where we work for a company, like what are some —things about our finances that we need to have in order, like, to just have our house together? What are some things we need to be doing? Yeah, there's a lot.

And when I say a lot, not to, like, make it seem overwhelming, but there's a lot of things you want to make sure you're thinking about. You know, even, you know, especially as a woman, if you're a mom or even not, you know, having your life insurance together. Having life insurance in place is really important. So one is life insurance. Also, just making sure that you're, you know, not having— not carrying tons of debt because debt can be really expensive. Like, debt is literally costing you money, right? So if it's costing you money, then that means that money is not necessarily— may not necessarily be working for you, right? Unless you're using it, using that debt in a strategic way to make more money, right? So life insurance, making sure we're not having too much debt, making sure we have good credit. Credit is really important as well because the lower your credit score is, you know, your credit score is essentially like your, I like to say, your adult GPA, right? And it literally is telling people, other people, how good or bad you are doing with your finances, right? And so making sure we have a healthy credit score, also making sure that we have some sort of plan in place for our money to be working for us because we cannot just have our money coming in and sitting in these, in these like savings accounts because savings accounts nowadays are paying like 0.1 or 0.01%, which is like a penny a month or something, right, depending on how much you have in there. So that's another thing, having some sort of plan in place to make your money work for you. And then thinking about retirement, right? Nobody wants to work forever, right? If— or if you do work forever, you want it to be because you want to, not because you have to. That's when things aren't great. So retirement term, especially I would say for our age bracket, has has changed because back in the day, like my grandparents, like, oh, you work till, you know, I think they worked till they're like in their late 50s and then they retired and they got this like nice pension and blah, blah, blah, right? Most people for our age, we're not getting that. Social Security may or may not be around. A lot of companies, you know, don't have pensions anymore. So you have to figure out how you're going to get your own retirement plans in place. But more importantly, how can you create multiple streams of income for yourself that can last? Throughout retirement, right? Depending on the lifestyle you want. So those are some of the things that people should be— well, a lot of the things that people should be thinking about, you know, as you're thinking, as you're considering like, how do I make the best financial moves for myself? Like, all those things need to be in place.

Yeah. What do you mean streams of income that can be working for you long term? Yeah. So if that's—

that goes back to investing, right? So a lot of the things that I'm doing now, like myself individually and with my husband, we're investing in not just the markets, but also even in businesses, real estate that will continue to create income for us, right? So maybe, you know, investing in something like, okay, maybe this one thing will generate $3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 a month in income, right? You know, indefinitely, as long as this— as long as the business is around, or as long as the real estate's around, right? Or maybe the real estate's going to increase in value and we can sell it for a larger sum later, which will supplement our financial lives later. You get what I'm saying? So thinking now about the future and putting some of those streams in place now that it's like, OK, you know, this can pay us now, but it will also continue to pay us later. And also these additional streams that we're making now, we can use to make more money, right? So really making more money in these times we're living in is really what it's about, right? Because a lot of financial experts are like, oh, you just need to cut back here and cut back there. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes a lot of people do need to cut back. But for most people, there is nowhere else to cut back, right? They've cut back as far as they can. So now what do we do? For me, I think that more women should really focus on, how can I make more money? How can I increase my revenue? Because you can only cut back for so long, right? And a lot of times people cut back so low that they're not even happy anymore, right? Because it's like, I may— I work, but I can't do anything because I've had to cut back. So I want more women to start thinking about building wealth, not from a greedy Scrooge McDuck, you know, angle, but as a way for you to give yours— to empower yourself and give you the freedom, the financial freedom, the time freedom or what, you know, the philanthropy, whatever it is that you want to do, you know, think about it that way.

I really love that. That was going to be the next thing I was going to ask you. I want to ask you really quickly about credit score because I realized in the last, I don't know, year or so that like I don't totally know what all the factors are that go— like, I feel like at some point someone told me that that carrying a balance on your credit card or something like that was how you build credit, which like, I don't know, that makes me nervous and uncomfortable because that's debt. And anyway, what factors into— well, first of all, why does our credit score matter? Like, how does this— how is it going to— what's it going to impact? And then what are a couple of things we can do to increase our credit score?

Yeah, so our credit score is important because like I mentioned earlier, it is— it's like your adult GPA, right? It tells potential lenders— excuse me— if you, basically, if you manage your money well or not, is really what they're telling— what it's telling them. So it's important because it can allow you to, one, be able to get a job because some jobs require you to have good credit. Also to, you know, buy a home, buy a car, obviously rent an apartment, you know, get credit cards, etc., etc., right? So you want to make sure your credit's good so that you can do those things. And then when you can do those things, Having good credit also allows you to be able to do them at cheaper rates. So if you have bad credit, it may cost like, I may buy a car and you may buy a car. Let's say if I have bad credit, you have good credit, we might buy the same exact car and your car payment may be $600 a month and mine may be $900 a month just because my credit is not as great, right? So having bad credit can also cost you more money. And as I said earlier, you don't want to pay more for stuff when you could pay less because that money should be working for you somewhere else, right? So that's some of the reasons why you want to have good credit. Also, too, having good credit can allow you to leverage some of the bank's money to make more money, right? If you want to Airbnb a house on the part-time or, you know, on the side, or, you know, invest in other types of real estate or invest in— I know I have friends who buy cars and put them on Turo or You know what I mean? She was able to leverage her credit to do that, right? There's so many different ways you can get creative without having to pay cash for everything and leveraging other people's money to make money. A few of the factors that make up your credit score, one is definitely like how much you owe, right? So I know you mentioned, you know, they say that the best way to, you know, increase your credit score is, or yeah, build your credit is to carry a balance. You don't necessarily have to carry a balance. I know I pay my credit cards off every single month. Yeah. But if you— let's say if you have a line of credit that's $1,000 and you keep it at $900, that looks bad, right? You're using 90% of it. So you really want to keep your amounts owed really like 30% or less. So if you're carrying a balance, make sure it's a small balance, right, if you just want to carry one. And then the other part is like payment history. So how much, you know, are you paying your bills? Not how much, but are you paying your bills on time? Do you have a lot of missed payments? Things like that is another large factor. Those are probably two of the largest factors of your credit report, like how much you owe and, you know, in relation to your credit limits, and then are you paying your bills on time, etc., etc. And then there's like how long you've had credit history, like your credit history. So if you're younger, you don't have a lot of credit history, you know, or if you start building your credit late is another factor. I think one of the other ones is like the type of debt that you're using. So some debts are considered better debts than others, right? So like credit card debt isn't necessarily always the best debt, especially if you're keeping your credit cards maxed out versus maybe having a mortgage or actually even student loans, right? Because they figure like these are things that supposedly can help you make money, right? Or grow your income. So those are some of the factors. And as far as cleaning up your credit or increasing your credit, You know, if your credit score is just like bad, you know, it's kind of— you need to figure out why it's bad. Is it bad because you, like, didn't pay your bills on time, things of that nature? You know, you keep your credit cards maxed out. You know, that's a simple fix. If you keep your credit cards maxed out, if you're able to afford to pay them down or pay them off, that will literally boost your score, like, super quick. You can jump 20, 30 points possibly sometimes if you're just able to pay your debts down. As far as if you have like just missed tons of payments, those hurt a lot. So I would recommend just starting to pay your bills on time. And you can even call some of your lenders sometime and ask them if they can remove some of your late payments or missed payments if you have like a real reason why, you know, that happened. But yeah, those are some of the best ways to really like just quickly boost your credit score. Also, if you have like, like debt that you have defaulted on, that you just did not pay, you know, calling your creditors and asking them how you can possibly negotiate to pay that debt off, right? So sometimes you can really negotiate the debt down, like to pay them back 50% of what you originally owed in full. It's what they call— it's called a— damn, I forgot what it's called, the term. But basically, the— basically, what is it called? Oh man, the name is escaping me. But essentially all you're doing is saying, hey, I would like to pay this off in full in exchange— pay for delete, that's what it's called. So paying off the debt for a certain amount in exchange for them deleting it off your credit report, which can be a huge boost as well. So those are some of the ways that you can like clean up your credit as well, you know, if you're in that situation or if you're just starting to build it from scratch.

Yeah. Okay. That is super helpful. And I think, I don't know who told me the thing about carrying a balance, but I like knowing that you pay yours off totally every month. I do the same thing. It just, cause I think it really easily gets out of hand if you are just messing around with it like that. Um, but that's really good to know that it's, they're looking for it. I mean, it makes sense if you were going to loan someone some money, you want to know that they pay back the people that have already loaned the money. Like that makes a lot of sense. So just paying your bills on time and keeping the amount of debt you have low, that will help a lot. And that makes a lot of sense about like the car payment thing, that having your car payment be significantly more expensive because you have bad credit, like that's—

nobody wants that. Yeah, and mortgages too. Like it costs a lot of money to— it's expensive to have bad credit. I'll say that.

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Okay.

I know that the women listening are like, I, I mean, I know for me I'm feeling a lot more empowered and excited and like this is a lot more doable. For women who want to do a deeper dive on this, can you just tell us about a handful of your resources? Like just plug them because I know that we're gonna have women coming to being like, cool, okay, I want to take the next step.

Yeah, for sure. We'll definitely just go to, um, financesdemystified.com. We have tons of like blogs and stuff like that that you can read, but we also have an investing masterclass that we host that's really, really good, like, just really goes a lot deeper into investing and like how it works and like how you can actually get started. You can find the link to that on financesdemystified.com or on investingdemystified.com. Or you could just go straight to my Instagram, Dominique Broadway, and all the links are there as well. We have tons of amazing, just free content coming out. We're doing a really large summit to really empower more women to start building wealth and thinking from a wealth mindset and removing a lot of those money blocks that a lot of us have. Great things coming out. I'm actually giving away a lot of money soon in some challenges. So definitely just make sure you go and check us out on Finance Demystified and Dominique Broadway as well. I love that. I love that.

Can you give us just like one last piece of encouragement? Like, for the women listening who are like, yes, I'm in, but I'm also still a little bit scared or a little bit intimidated or— I mean, honestly, I think that probably there are more women that are feeling weird about caring about this right now, if that makes sense. And so just any last, like, piece of encouragement, I would love it.

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting one. That's, that's not one I hear as much. I don't know if it's people I'm around, but I feel like we're like all day about investing and building wealth and stuff like that. So I would say just first of all, um, You're allowed to have the desire to be wealthy. Then I would say, you know, if that's something that you want to do, and if it's not building wealth, but just putting yourself in a better financial situation, take the first step. Don't be scared, right? Don't let fear get into your heart. As we always say, faith and fear cannot reside in the same heart. So you have to pick one. So I have chosen faith in all that I do. I do not let fear. Reside because I have faith that things will always work out the way they're supposed to be. So with that being said, take the first step. Start with $25, $50, whatever amount of dollars it is when it comes to investing, but take your finances very seriously. And like I said, we're allowed to want to build wealth if that's something that we desire. So, you know, you're working hard for this money. Make sure that you are allowing your money or putting your money in situations to go out and work hard for you as well. I love that.

Thank you so much, Dominique. I'm so grateful to— I just, I love the work that you're doing, and I'm so grateful. I feel like you really broke it down for us today. So thanks. Thank you.

I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

Friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have you here at Girls Night. Before you go, I would love it if you would do two quick things. The first is to subscribe. Subscribing to the podcast is the best way to make sure you never miss an episode. It's also a way easier way to listen because it's a way of sort of bookmarking the podcast. You never have to go looking for it again. Your app will just automatically download the next episode when a new one's released. The other thing is that it would mean so much to me if you would take a quick second to leave a rating and a review for the podcast. The way that iTunes knows to suggest the podcast to new people is by the ratings and the reviews. That's how we invite new friends to our girls' nights. So would you do me a huge favor and take just a quick second to leave a rating and a quick comment about how you like the podcast so far? It would help us out so much. And thank you to all of you who've left all of those beautiful 5-star reviews already. I can't tell you how much it means to me. Hi friends, that's all we have for today, but we'll be back next week with another episode of Girls' Night. I'll see you then.

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