Lessons - Fix The Money Education Gap | Tiffany Aliche - The Budgetnista

In this lessons episode, learn why traditional education fails to teach financial literacy and how that impacts your financial future. Discover the key principles of building wealth. The importance of paying people well and why true financial success goes beyond just making more money, gain insights on designing a life that prioritizes freedom, stability, and long-term happiness. Everything that you're teaching over, it's great that you're teaching it, but why don't we do a better job of teaching this in school? Why is it like, why is education, you know, I think education is very broken. How do we fix this stuff? How do we teach this other? One of the names I was fortunate in is so I worked with my assembly woman. Her name is Angela D. McKnight and in 2019, I got the law passed called the Budget East of Law. It makes financial education mandatory for middle school students. You got a lot passed. Yes, I didn't know that. I thought you were queuing me up. I was like, oh, he did his research, did I got him? No, I didn't get that. No, that, oh, I wasn't queuing you up at all. No, I just think I always think education is broken when it comes to what we're focused on and what we teach and financial literacy is just a huge gap. Yes, and so for me, I thought the same and that said, you know what, I used to teach financial education just on my own to my preschoolers, like, you know, because when you're little financial education looks like service giving, it looks like math, it looks like this is a dollar, you know, and so like, so I know what age appropriate financial education looks like and so my assembly woman I told her I was just so frustrated that like these kids are not learning it. And she said, well, thankfully in New Jersey, we were really early adapters for high school students. So there was already a law in place for high school students and I'm like, that's awesome, but it should be sooner. And so I initially far for elementary and middle school and there was a lot of pushback. So they allowed the elementary component, but we're going back for element for they allowed the middle school component, but we're going to go back for elementary school because I want at least in the state of New Jersey, the star that as soon as you start kindergarten, you're running about money. So by the time you get to middle school, you're like, oh, okay, I understand a dollar and I understand savings, I understand, you know, I'm giving and then middle school, oh, I understand where credit is and then high school, oh, I understand where earning is, I understand where profit is at losses. So by the time you get to college and you're offered all these credit cards, you're like, oh, no, no, I learned about that in fifth grade. I know exactly what's happening here. And so if we can make that work in New Jersey, it's much harder obviously to get a national law passed, but if we can work make that work in New Jersey, what happens is oftentimes and I've gotten this that people will hit me up from other states and say, how'd you do it? And I'll share with them, you know, now connect them to Angela. So I'm like, you know, because this legislator can then talk to your legislator and walk them through what she had to do as far as like the law was concerned. And so yeah, I just think I don't know why it's not taught. Well, here's why at first, education was a function of creating a working class. Think about it this way. It's almost like the matrix. Remember in the matrix, you realize that like human beings were being break to be batteries. And so like, I think that all the time that like sometimes the way education is set up is for you to be a battery to the bigger system. And I'm like, no, let me be neo. We're breaking out. We're breaking out. I love that. I love that. That's so that's I love that analogy. That's really smart. So you know, I just think about like my experience and I sort of anyone who's listening actually did not make a cure for that. It's awesome. So as it is honestly, it's just like, it's something I wanted to bring up with you because I thought you had an opinion on it. And most people that dabble in financial education do. But the reason I bring it out is because I'm pretty sure like the first time that I ever had exposure to anything financial was like somebody pitching me a credit card on the college campus. Yeah. That's it. That's about as close as financial education came to actual education. But okay, so we got we got we got the whole the whole premise of education. I think it comes from you right. This is we're creating people to make them hit a standard, but that's it. We don't need to create people that are creating generational wealth. We just need to contribute to society. And contribution to society means a month a month is fine for contribution to society. But for the average person, that's a pretty city life. Exactly. If you like look at it, look at what's happening now. The other day, I went to a shopping shop. That's a big supermarket chain here in New Jersey and the Northeast. And they it's think about whatever your biggest supermarket is. That's what stoppage shop is. There were two past years. I mean, the laundry where I was like, what's heck? Unemployment more. The people are making more staying home than they are at the stoppage shop. That's why they don't want you to make so much money because who would work the stoppage shop. And maybe employees should just pay more. Exactly. You're out how to do business better. That's a whole other conversation. Exactly. You know, but honestly, that's why the reason. And then I went to the wall grains around the corner and same thing. It was like, wow. So when people have access to more money, they're like, no, I'm not showing up unless you can pay me a livable ways because staying home right now is more of a livable way. And even like the way I developed a budgetista, I only grow to the capacity that we can pay well. You know, like in the beginning, it was really hard. I didn't have much money. I remember like the most I could pay, I was like, look, all I could do is $9 an hour. But we're transparent with our numbers. Everybody gets to see our numbers. No matter whether you're customer support or the COL here are numbers. Here is for company, our size. We really don't want to have more than 33% of your, I'll say your income going toward payroll because that you get a little shaky as far as like how solid your company is. So we're at 33%. And so as we do better, we increase. Now, what's so great about it is that I don't follow traditional rules where it's like, oh, you know, once a year, I'm like, no, if we're doing better and it's like a consistent do better. And it's I see that this is where we are now. And it's three months later, we're increasing. You know, like I've had I've given, I remember like I called them my lead team. I've given $20,000 raises. Like, you know, what? You know, we like, we really banded together six months since the new year. We have taken the business to the next level. So we're going from 60 to 80 now. And they're like, wait, what? And they're like, are we allowed to do that? I see I never worked with corporate America other than like, you know, one on two internships as a team. It's going to screw someone up who's so's worked for men in big company. That's not how we do. Tiffany, I know like, well, let's check with the CFO. Like, do we have our schizek we do? But people don't need to do that. I'm like, well, is it a Leo's is like, no, I'm like, well, then let's bump them up. And now on the team, the literally there are people on the team that started me three years ago, making nine thousand hours and make six figures now within three years. Because I believe that you pay people well, you might not always be able to in the beginning, but let it not be because you're trying to hold on to all the money for yourself. But we pay people really well. We don't have turn around really at the budgetista. We pay people well, we treat people well, we operate from a space of integrity and transparency. And as a result, that's why we're able to give so, so much to our audience. That's why you see such an amazing community because they feel taken care of because the team has been taken care of. Amazing. So these are just all best best practices for building a business. I'm trying to think what else or some other interesting things. We spoke a little bit about financial education, entrepreneurial lessons. Let me check my notes and see if anything else that I want to want to go and do. Was there anything else that while I'm looking at this, was there anything else that's top of mind for you that financial education, and how we pay people, employment, anything else that you would stop in mind? Well, this is not as much financial education as the lesson that I've been learning lately is to really ask yourself, not so much what do you want, but how do you want? How do you want to live? Because I had been broke broke like 30 year old Tiffany had less money than 12 year old Tiffany broke. I have been like, you know, just a step above broke preschool teacher Tiffany making, you know, $39,000 a year, but really that's like next to nothing especially in the jersey. I had been somewhere in the middle where my business was making six figures and I have been where I am now where my personal network is seven figures of my business makes eight figures a year. So I have been not every stage because I have not been, you know, a hundred million dollars but it's kind. So the thing that I have realized and observed is that past a certain amount of money, the money doesn't enhance anything. Once I was able like the house that I live in now, my husband now were able to purchase it cash and I was able to in that same year to pay off my parents mortgage and we send them money every month. I was able to also pay off my student loan debt. You know, we were able to get a rental property and paid for a cash. We were able to purchase our cars and paid for a cash. So my husband and I are debt-free like my nephew Roman. Like we have, we're debt-free like a toddler, although he's unfodler. Debt-free like a big boy, that's what we told him. You're a big boy now. Debt-free is like right now, but the more money that comes in once I got the stability part down, the more money that came in, it did not really affect my day-to-day life. You know, so I really have to ask myself, what is it how do I really want to live? So I want, you should be considering that now. I want you to assume that you will grow wealth, especially if you're a business owner, assume that eventually with time and effort and personal investment that your business is going to grow and yet you're going to grow wealth, but how will it meet you? I wanted to meet you healthy, happy, whole, and wealthy, because I myself almost lost sight of that. I just recently came back from a six-week hiatus just to recenter and say, keep me where are we headed? Are we just working to work and to work? Like where are we headed? I think not enough business people talk about that because so many of my friends who have businesses are miserable. You've literally left corporate America because you say it was miserable there, only to recreate the misery in your own business. And so I'm just here to kind of like give you a forecast for it. I am, you know, for those of you who are just starting out, see me as what potentially can be in your future and say, how do I want to meet myself there and make sure to keep that in mind with how you grow your business? I think that's not set enough because everybody wants to talk about profit and loss and money and this and that, but you know, you don't want to have all those things and then have a heart attack and then what? You know? Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.