In this episode, Anna Manukyan, Certified Financial Educator and founder of Beauty Finance Group and Beautiful Wealth, breaks down why many hairdressers struggle to build long-term wealth even when they’re earning good money. She explains how mindset, habits, and financial literacy gaps keep people stuck and what it actually takes to change that.
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Key Takeaways:
🔅Making money is not the same as building wealth – Many hairdressers increase income but never translate it into long-term financial stability.
🔅Wealth is built through behavior, not income – Consistent habits around saving, spending, and investing matter more than how much you earn.
🔅Most people were never taught how money actually works – A lack of accessible financial education keeps many professionals repeating the same patterns.
🔅If you don’t keep part of what you earn, you’ll always feel behind – Building wealth starts with consistently setting money aside, even in small amounts.
🔅Lifestyle growth can quietly prevent wealth building – As income increases, spending often rises with it unless it’s managed intentionally.
🔅Your mindset shapes your financial outcomes – Shifting from short-term thinking to long-term ownership changes how you make decisions.
🔅Thinking like an investor changes everything – Viewing money as something to grow, not just spend, is a key turning point.
🔅You don’t need complexity, you need consistency – Simple, repeatable actions over time are what actually create financial progress.
RELATED LINKS
📸Follow Anna on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/amanukyan/
📸Follow Beautiful Wealth on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/beautiful.wealth
💰Check out Beauty Finance Group's Website - https://beauty.finance/home
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Anna manookian is a 27 year industry veteran.
Speaker A:She's a certified financial educator and the founder of the Beauty Finance Group and Beautiful Wealth.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the Hairdresser Strong show.
Speaker A:My name is Robert Hughes and I am your host and today I'm with Anna Manookian.
Speaker A:How you doing today, Anna?
Speaker B:I'm so good.
Speaker B:How are you?
Speaker B:Thank you for having me on, Robert.
Speaker B:I'm excited to be here.
Speaker A:I'm super excited for this conversation.
Speaker A:Thank you for coming to all the viewers and listeners out there.
Speaker A:I met Anna first at Beauty Gives Back.
Speaker A:So shout out to Maria for making that possible.
Speaker A:And then the Serious Business group are sorry.
Speaker A:And then we met this year at Serious Business and that's in New Orleans, put on by the Neil Corporation.
Speaker A:And shout out to all those folks out there, thank you so much.
Speaker A:Thank you, Deborah for making that happen.
Speaker A:Okay, so you had a breakout session and it was all about financial literacy and it was the most comprehensive financial like approach that you went into.
Speaker A:Things that I was like, oh man, I wish I would have known that before I bought all my insurance, you know, stuff like that.
Speaker A:But, but anyway, so like today we're, you're going to tell us how we can build generational wealth and become rich, right?
Speaker B:Listen, it's a part of it.
Speaker B:It's one of the things that's what everybody wants to know.
Speaker B:They hear finance, they hear money.
Speaker B:We're like, what's the quickest way to get there?
Speaker A:That's right, yeah.
Speaker A:So we're going to talk about that.
Speaker A:The quickest way to get there.
Speaker A:And, and so if you're, if you're like, if that's what you came here for to listen to or watch, then stay tuned because we're going to give you all the information that you need to know.
Speaker A:So let's, let's get into your story.
Speaker A:So Anna, how did you get into this role in financial education?
Speaker A:Because I feel like, correct me if I'm wrong, you were with Ulta when I first met you.
Speaker A:Is that not accurate?
Speaker B:It is accurate.
Speaker B:No, it is accurate.
Speaker B:I was head of education and creative for Ulta Beauty when you and I first met.
Speaker B:I've had, you know, a really fortuitous career up until this point actually.
Speaker B:So I started out when I fell in love with this industry when I was 15.
Speaker B:I started out working at a hair salon and very quickly, very, very quickly fell in love with how much money can be made and how much fun can be had and how much camaraderie there was in the salon.
Speaker B:And know Decided to go to beauty school when I was 17.
Speaker B:I finished high school early, and my intention was always to go to college, but I was like, I can do this and figure out what else I want to do with my life.
Speaker B:And, you know, you may have heard the story of me going and telling my dad, who.
Speaker B:We immigrated to the United States a few years ahead of that.
Speaker B:And I was so excited to go tell him.
Speaker B:Like, I signed myself up to be a hairdresser.
Speaker B:And he literally looked at me and said, we brought you to this country for you to cut hair.
Speaker B:How dare you embarrass the family?
Speaker B:And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker B:Hold, hold, hold my drink, dad, let me show you how successful a career in beauty can be.
Speaker B:And that's really kind of the, you know, my launch point of like, no, this could be really exceptional.
Speaker B:This isn't just what we think about when you hear of somebody cutting hair behind the chair, right?
Speaker B:And so I went on to.
Speaker B:I worked behind the chair in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills.
Speaker B:Then I went on to be a Redken educator, because at the time, Redken was looking for educators in Southern California.
Speaker B:And I quickly fell in love with the education side of things from that journey.
Speaker B:I worked amongst many different titles over many different things with managing large creative teams.
Speaker B:I was head of education for one of the l' Oreal brands.
Speaker B:And then how I got to be, you know, essentially really crossing the bridge between beauty and finance was I led national teams and I had the privilege of working with salons all across the US and one of the things that I kept seeing, Robert, was regardless of whether it was a multimillion dollar salon that was commissioned on the east coast, or whether it was a single mother, independent hairdresser operator that was literally going into her distributor to buy color for the client that she was doing tomorrow, nobody, nobody knew what to do with the money that they were making.
Speaker B:I mean, I saw multimillion dollar hairdressers have an accident and lose it all because of one bad day.
Speaker B:And the amount of people that a, like, could not retire, were stressed about money, were making so much but not keeping any of it.
Speaker B:Had no idea about, like, what to do when they weren't physically working behind care anymore.
Speaker B:I started looking for resources back in the day to bring into the teams that I was leading for financial literacy, because I'm like, there has to be a better way.
Speaker B:And there's so much education across our industry on how to make sure the client is taken care of, how to position, you know, retail, how to Create beautiful looks behind the chair, all of those things.
Speaker B:But I'm like, there's a missing gap.
Speaker B:And so when I started to look for financial experts to come into, you know, the.
Speaker B:The l' oreal teams that I was leading at the time, I couldn't find anyone.
Speaker B:And the people that I was finding were, quite honestly, condescending, or they had a different agenda, or I would sit and meet with a financial advisor.
Speaker B:And I felt every single meeting, I felt this little coming out.
Speaker B:I was like, I feel inadequate.
Speaker B:I'm so embarrassed for not knowing these things.
Speaker B:And I was completely handicapped with, like, not knowing.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And I wasn't able to act on it.
Speaker B:And I was like, okay, well, you know, if I feel this way, what does the average hairdresser feel like?
Speaker B:If I'm successful, quote, unquote, on paper, and I still don't know this, and I feel.
Speaker B:Still feel this way, then no wonder most of us never take the action to learn.
Speaker B:And so, because I couldn't find the resources that I needed, and then I was also thinking, well, what is it that I want to do for this industry over the next 30 years that I still have to work in it at the time I decided to be the change.
Speaker B:And so I went and got my professional accreditations, I got my baseline security license.
Speaker B:I got, you know, became sort of a financial educator.
Speaker B:I even got some insurance licenses.
Speaker B:I don't sell any of those things.
Speaker A:But to be honest, how long did all that take you to do that?
Speaker B:It was a scope of about six years.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah, it was a scope of.
Speaker A:About working.
Speaker A:While you were doing that?
Speaker A:I was working.
Speaker B:I was working, traveling extensively like a fiend, getting on every red eye, having babies, doing all the things.
Speaker B:But, you know, it's really important to.
Speaker B:Because once, you know, and especially coming from an immigrant background, where it very much was a survival mindset, like, you've got enough for today, you've got enough for tomorrow.
Speaker B:You keep your money in the bank where you can see it or under your pillow.
Speaker B:You don't trust it for investments.
Speaker B:If you.
Speaker B:If you buy anything, you buy gold.
Speaker B:There was so much distress around, like, no, but really, how do.
Speaker B:Like, what's the system?
Speaker B:How do you actually create generational wealth that.
Speaker B:I think it was time really well spent.
Speaker B:And because I have the.
Speaker B:The fortune of having an industry education background, for me, my key role is to be a translator of the world of finance and what's made to be very complicated unnecessarily.
Speaker B:So to those of us who are more creatively Minded who?
Speaker B:Then I'm like, listen, you know, anytime you ask a hairdresser in my experience, let's talk about money, let's talk about finance, let's talk about numbers.
Speaker B:The number one instinct is always like, listen, I'm a creative, I'm a hairdresser.
Speaker B:I'm not, I'm not a math person.
Speaker B:And it's like, my love, if you could do a complicated color correction, if you can hold a client's hair hands while shaving their head because of an upcoming cancer battle, you've got way more emotionally Q and intelligence than the average finance bro.
Speaker B:The reason why these things are made to be complicated, it's just keep us in a cycle of paying interest on credit cards and everything else and not actually amassed wealth.
Speaker B:Once we know better, we do better, and then we could become really, really dangerous.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:But the biggest thing, you know, that I have been really trying to change the industry's mindset on is just that is the money mindset that you can do this.
Speaker B:It doesn't have to be overly complicated, you know, far more than the average person.
Speaker B:And so when we start to think about things differently, they become so much easier to process.
Speaker A:So this is my, my, my first thought is like, I want, I love everything that you just said and I appreciate that you're, you're doing this.
Speaker A:We definitely need it.
Speaker A:So thank you for that.
Speaker A:So my first thing that comes to my mind is one, you know, we try to talk about business and finance and all that stuff, but, you know, like, something that comes up a lot is, is like the person who is struggling to like, they're like kind of paycheck to paycheck.
Speaker A:You know, I, I went into, I went in and did a guest speaker day one, this not that long ago at the Palm Trent School, the Temple School in, in Annapolis.
Speaker A: f like lost everything during: Speaker A:Like, I had to get the education to realize I shouldn't have gone to school.
Speaker A:But, like, in terms of the financial, like, return on it, like, I could have just put that money in index funds and made that same payment in index funds.
Speaker A:I'd be better off financially.
Speaker A:But like, so anyway, so I go to schools and I talk about this and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, you know, you got to pay yourself first.
Speaker A:Like, that's.
Speaker A:I think that's the only thing I had Going for me, leading up to that point where I had, like, I had more vision of, like, understanding money better.
Speaker A:Better understanding money better not understanding money, for the record.
Speaker A:And, you know, the first thing that people say is when I say, you got to pay yourself first, Even if it's $25 a paycheck, put it away, or whatever, just to build the muscle.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And they're like, yo, I need that money.
Speaker A:Like, you know, like, what do you say to that person?
Speaker B:Actually, it's.
Speaker B:It's so accurate that you say that because, you know, one of the first things, right, that you always hear is exactly that.
Speaker B:Pay yourself first.
Speaker B:No matter what book you pick up, no matter what class you take.
Speaker B:And the question that I like to ask a little bit differently of reframing that is versus saying, okay, pay yourself first.
Speaker B:Reposition it as a part of.
Speaker B:All I make is mine to keep.
Speaker B:And that comes from the book the Greatest man in Babylon.
Speaker B:I wish I could take credit for it, but when I look at, you know, getting a hundred dollars, and I'm like, okay, how much of this hundred dollars is mine to keep?
Speaker B:All right, 20 bucks.
Speaker B:Everything else, the other 80 is going to be used for paying off everybody else that I need to pay off to live my life, right?
Speaker B:But that $20 of that hundred dollars is mine.
Speaker B:That's the money that I'm going to invest.
Speaker B:That's the money.
Speaker B:Those are the seeds that I'm going to plant.
Speaker B:And so, you know, the way that we look at the mindset is so important.
Speaker B:Again, that reframing was really, really helpful for me personally, and it's helpful with the people that I.
Speaker B:That I.
Speaker B:That I work with and have the opportunity to help.
Speaker B:I think while we're in an industry where income is so inconsistent and has.
Speaker B:And historically is so inconsistent, financial behaviors are not limited to inconsistent income.
Speaker B:So when you look at, you know, every lotto winner, when you look at people like Mike Tyson, when you look at Peter Mc Hammer, for those of us who remember him, I mean, you have, you know, so many athletes who have an abundance of money at one point, and.
Speaker B:And they never.
Speaker B:They still never pay themselves first.
Speaker B:They never still keep a part of what they've made.
Speaker B:And so one of the things that I always say is never wait until the perfect time to actually keep more of what you make, whether it's $100, whether it's $50.
Speaker B:Get into the behavior of stashing away some of it.
Speaker B:Everything is.
Speaker B:The rest of it is for all of the needs that everybody else.
Speaker B:How much of it is yours and do what you can with that.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Okay, so.
Speaker A:So we.
Speaker A:I just had an idea, I just had a thought because like, I'm thinking of like at least three different people who are watching this.
Speaker A:You got the person who is maybe paycheck to paycheck a lot of the times.
Speaker A:Like and, and they may or may not have like children at home that they're providing for.
Speaker A:So I feel like that what you just shared with us was, was really for them to like build that muscle and start getting used to that.
Speaker A:And I like how you frame that.
Speaker A:I like that reframe a lot.
Speaker A:So what about.
Speaker A:There's two other people that I'm thinking of.
Speaker A:You got the person who is like, they're, they're kind of like past the beginning phases.
Speaker A:They're on the come up and they're, they're starting to bring.
Speaker A:The money's starting to come in.
Speaker A:And I like, I feel like my experience, and I'm assuming, I don't know if you had the same experience with my experience was I was making no money for a few years and then as my clientele booked, I was getting more and more money in my pocket and I started going out more and ordering drinks more and buying a shirt on Friday so I could have a new shirt to go out in.
Speaker A:And that became like, it was like a lifestyle.
Speaker A:And the lifestyle got bigger and bigger and bigger.
Speaker A:But it didn't.
Speaker A:I happened, it didn't happen overnight.
Speaker A:Like one day I woke up and I was like, yo, I've been doing this for 10 years and I make decent money.
Speaker A:I got no money in the bank, you know, so you got that person and then you got the person who.
Speaker A:They're making money, they're starting to save it, but they don't know what to do with it other than put it in CDs.
Speaker A:Can you talk to those two people now?
Speaker A:And if there's anything else you have for the other person who is kind of in the earlier stages and if there's anything else you want to add to that person, but other, other.
Speaker A:Otherwise, let's talk.
Speaker A:I want to hear what you have to say to those other two people.
Speaker B:I mean, the ones that are on the come up, listen, you're going to come up because what happens in this industry, interestingly enough, is exactly that, right?
Speaker B:Like the first five, six, five to seven years we're like hustling, we're building.
Speaker B:We maybe aren't making a lot of our money.
Speaker B:But you're like, I got my eye on the Prize.
Speaker B:I'm going to be the busy stylist.
Speaker B:I'm going to own a salon.
Speaker B:I'm going to be able to X and Y and Z.
Speaker B:And then we get there and we're like, wait, okay, A, I'm booked and busy, but I'm exhausted.
Speaker B:I'm really burned out.
Speaker B:And so we start to make.
Speaker B:Once we plateau, we actually start to make less and less money during the last 15 years of our career.
Speaker B:The reason why getting into the habit early on is never wait until you're there where you want to be mentally.
Speaker B:Of all right, I'm making multiple six figures.
Speaker B:I'm booked and busy.
Speaker B:You know, I got a new shirt every Friday, all of them, whatever that is.
Speaker B:Because it will never be enough.
Speaker B:It will never be enough.
Speaker B:You know, I kind of like to joke, you know, the, the joke, the saying that like a shark will grow to the tank of its size, so will your spending.
Speaker B:Like, if there's more, you're just going to keep doing more.
Speaker B:For most people, because it is a lifestyle, it becomes easier.
Speaker B:But we get in the habit of working for our money versus money actually working for us, regardless of what you're making.
Speaker B:So never wait until you're, you know, at that perfect place because you're never going to be there.
Speaker B:So start investing along the way again, even if it's that $25, even if it's that $50, which sounds ridiculous, but once you really learn how money grows and compound interest and all those things, when you do that for 10 years, you're like, oh, my God.
Speaker B:The other thing that's really interesting is, you know, is.
Speaker B:And so this is for all of the people.
Speaker B:It's not even just for the two that you've talked about, but is really.
Speaker B:Look at being an investor from day one versus just the consumer.
Speaker B:We're taught so much, not only in this industry, but in this country to be consumers.
Speaker B:I mean, retail numbers, look at credit card debt, it's at a record high.
Speaker B:Now with AI being so ridiculously insidious from a mind or from a consumer tracking eyeball, everything, behavior, it's easier and easier for money to literally be taken out of our wallets, right?
Speaker B:So you have to have discernment and you have to be able to make an active decision for that money to be working for you again, even if it is small amounts of time over, over the long period.
Speaker B:Think when we think about the person who's like, all right, I've made it.
Speaker B:What do I do?
Speaker B:I've got everything that I want.
Speaker B:I Have no money.
Speaker B:You know, I have no money saved in our, in my savings account.
Speaker B:Are your assets protected?
Speaker B:Like if, if you were to have an accident.
Speaker B:I had a hiking accident two years ago.
Speaker B:I'm literally having my third ankle surgery.
Speaker B:This is like the of my existence.
Speaker B:It's three months every single time that I can be standing up.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:What happens if that's you?
Speaker B:Bad things happen to good people.
Speaker B:How do you protect everything that you've built?
Speaker B:And then when you think about understanding what are the investments like, money in the bank is actually the quickest depreciating asset.
Speaker B:So for example, you may have heard me say this before, but like, let's look at the average hairdresser diet, right?
Speaker B:Starbucks.
Speaker A:Sorry, real quick, I forgot I have to do this.
Speaker A:I was told by shout out to Corey, who's like a little bit of a mentor for being a podcaster.
Speaker A:What does depreciating asset mean?
Speaker B:A depreciating asset means an asset that is going to continue to lose value.
Speaker B:And so it is.
Speaker B:You are going to be able to sell it and resell it for something.
Speaker B:But versus appreciating, versus becoming more and more and more expensive.
Speaker B:It's actually losing value every single year.
Speaker B:Okay, so with cash, for example, if you had a thousand dollars, let's say you had a thousand dollars and you put it in your bank account 20 years ago.
Speaker B:A thousand dollars, it's an asset.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You can cash it out.
Speaker B:You can use it for things.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It has value because of inflation being 3 to 5% every single year.
Speaker B:If you kept that money in the bank for 20 years, which so many people do.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Our life savings are stashed away in an account.
Speaker B:20 years later, it would have had the value of $605 versus, versus let's say if you, you know, 20 years ago, you and I are both old enough to remember that time where an Apple was still having like lines around this, around the street of people coming, you know, people lining up.
Speaker B:If you invested a thousand dollars in Apple stock because you're like, wait a minute, how do I invest in this?
Speaker B:People are lining up.
Speaker B:I want a phone.
Speaker B:All my friends want a phone.
Speaker B:Everyone wants a phone.
Speaker B:Let me actually get a piece of Apple.
Speaker B:Let me beat an investor in it.
Speaker B:If you invested $1,000 in Apple 20 years ago, you would have had a value that account and did nothing else with it.
Speaker B:It would have grown to $110,000 if you.
Speaker A:$10,000.
Speaker B:Thousand dollars.
Speaker B:Because it would have compounded invested in compound invested.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Thousand dollars.
Speaker B:If you put it into the S&P 500, which for anybody listening, that's like, yeah, I've heard that.
Speaker B:What the heck is that?
Speaker B:I hear that all the time.
Speaker B:S&P 500 is basically the top 500 companies of the United States.
Speaker B:It's called standard and poor.
Speaker B:Is 500 nothing standard, no.
Speaker B:1 poor, 500 top U.S. companies.
Speaker B:It's considered to be like the quickest snapshot of the US Economy.
Speaker B:So you're like, what's the U.
Speaker B:S economy like?
Speaker B:The S P500 is going to be the best indicator of that.
Speaker B:If you put a thousand dollars in there 20 years ago, it would have grown to 7, $800.
Speaker B:Okay, Apple 110s and P 500, 7, 800 in your bank, depreciation of 40%.
Speaker B:$605.
Speaker B:The other part that is ridiculous is if you had that same amount on the credit card and just paid the minimum payment, because what's $1,000?
Speaker B:You're like 1,000 bucks.
Speaker B:And a credit card is basically nothing.
Speaker B:You pay the minimum payment of 20 bucks, whatever it is, to the credit card company, you would have paid them $6,000 in interest.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker B:It's wild, right?
Speaker B:And so, yeah, the reason why, like so much of.
Speaker B:So much of the finance industry, even though it's com.
Speaker B:You know, even though there's a lot of regulatory things built in to protect the client, it's not necessarily to the benefit of the banking system for us to be well informed consumers.
Speaker B:Because when we're informed, we're going to buy assets versus buy goods that are.
Speaker A:We're not worth anything.
Speaker B:We're not worth anything.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:Because imagine how much thousands of hundreds of, you know, just how ridiculously much we wind up paying in consumer credit card debt.
Speaker B:Because we don't know better.
Speaker B:And once we do, we're like, wait a minute, let me actually get a piece of the action versus just getting the product all the time.
Speaker B:So for that person, that is, you know, regardless of where you are, if you're just getting started, if you're like, no, I'm, you know, booked and busy and I'm getting burned out, or if you're looking at the last 15 years of your career and you're like, how am I gonna do this?
Speaker B:What am I gonna do?
Speaker B:Every single.
Speaker B:Get a piece of everything that you're making and figure out where it is that you're investing it.
Speaker B:Think like an investor.
Speaker B:Don't just be a consumer.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:So basically what I'm hearing is just start getting money into.
Speaker A:Into different Places.
Speaker A:Okay, how about this to be more specific?
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Not.
Speaker A:This is not financial advice.
Speaker A:If you had, and, I don't know, maybe you can give financial advice.
Speaker A:Can you give financial advice?
Speaker B:Not unless you're.
Speaker B:Not unless you're assigned clients.
Speaker B:So no.
Speaker B:So this is educational purposes, not financial advice, but yes.
Speaker A:All right, cool.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:So I want to create a hypothetical scenario.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Let's call.
Speaker A:It's Sammy, right?
Speaker A:Sammy is a stylist who is saying, hey, Anna, I. I want to.
Speaker A:I want to start investing.
Speaker A:I have started.
Speaker A:I've built up the muscle.
Speaker A:I've been putting money away, and I hear you talking about this appreciating stuff, and I feel like, you know, in my account, bank account, I'm earning like 2.25%, and in a money market account, I'm earning maybe 4%.
Speaker A:So, like, in a high yield savings account, the same.
Speaker A:But that seems like a really low.
Speaker A:That, like, is there a way?
Speaker A:Like, what can I do?
Speaker A:What should I do?
Speaker A:This is a hypothetical situation.
Speaker A:What Sammy wants to know what she should do in the event.
Speaker A:Like, where should she put her money?
Speaker A:Like, what are the steps she should take and where should she put her money?
Speaker B:So a couple of things for Sammy and definitely education, not financial advice.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:You want to look at putting your money into different buckets.
Speaker B:So first is, you know, Sammy, how old are you and what's your risk tolerance of how long do you have before you're not going to be able to work for your money?
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So how many years do you have until retirement?
Speaker B:That's going to be a really big indicator of, like, where should that money go?
Speaker B:Because the older we are, the less risky we could afford to be because we've got less time for retirement, right?
Speaker B:We need to make.
Speaker B:Make sure our money is outpacing, inflation is growing for us.
Speaker B:So first, first is, do you have an individual retirement account?
Speaker B:Do you have an Roth IRA 401k?
Speaker B:Whatever your working situation, say, no, none of those.
Speaker B:Well, all right, so if you don't have any of those, what I would say if I was.
Speaker B:If I was talking to Sammy, I would say, let's look at a.
Speaker B:Setting you up a broke account, right?
Speaker B:Brokerage account is things like Charles Schwab, Vanguard, Robinhood E. Trade, all the things, right?
Speaker B:Pick one that you like.
Speaker B:Within that account, we're going to set up two accounts.
Speaker B:We're going to look at how much can you put away on a monthly basis for investments, for your future self.
Speaker B:Within that, we're going to look at your future, future Self like for retirement, what you need to be doing.
Speaker B:And then we're going to look at like the next five years, right.
Speaker B:Shorter term goals, what you're going to identify.
Speaker B:Ideally, depending on how old you are, you want to maximize your retirement contribution $7,500.
Speaker B:You know that that's its own thing within the brokerage account.
Speaker B:You want to be able to invest into assets, right.
Speaker B:Things that are, you're going to be able to sell for value later that are going to grow value in a couple of different ways.
Speaker B:The S P500 following an index like that, they're called index funds, will follow the performance of that.
Speaker B:That's going to be your stable.
Speaker B:That's going to be average returns for the last 10 years are about 13%.
Speaker B:Not going to make you a crazy amount of money, but will be more secure.
Speaker B:Does it have risk?
Speaker B:Yes, but it's tracking the overall 500 companies.
Speaker B:So it's pretty much like safety built in there.
Speaker B:The other thing that I tend to do because we're living through such a volatile time now with like so many different technologies and so many different things is it's hard to know what to pick because if I, you know, you pick Amazon, Amazon goes up and down.
Speaker B:It's hard to know like you know, you know, your, your existing large companies.
Speaker B:Kind of a trick that I use that I tell people about too.
Speaker B:Again, not financial advice is look to see what people are doing who are in large venture, who are in government, who are in politics, like members of Congress, like members of Congress.
Speaker B:So listen, I'm always like, hey Nancy Pelos, what you doing girl?
Speaker A:I want my money everywhere.
Speaker B:Nancy's no 100% right.
Speaker B:And so when you look at people like Nancy Pelosi who's actually outperformed the market and out performed most hedge funds for the lot like consistency over the last two decades.
Speaker B:I'm like, where are you putting your money?
Speaker B:What technology are you investing in?
Speaker B:Honestly, not financial advice.
Speaker B:That has really worked for me, quite honestly because I'm like if there's like a new AI company and no one else knows about it, but Nancy's buying a bunch of it.
Speaker B:Like Nancy knows some people who know some people who know some people who are making some decisions, right.
Speaker B:So there's also apps where you can do like Quiver, Quaint Wolf of Wall Street, Martin, you know, there's a lot of them where you can actually track those kinds of trades.
Speaker A:Oh, interesting.
Speaker B:To be able to look again, you have to be a self educated consumer though, especially when you are dealing with like brokerage accounts where you're not paying anybody to manage your money.
Speaker B:But with so much technology and information available to us, we're able to do so.
Speaker B:But the safest place.
Speaker B:Listen, stocks are always going to be considered risky, right?
Speaker B:Stocks are always considered pure risk.
Speaker B:Bonds are going to be considered the safest instruments.
Speaker B:But bonds are actually considered to be debt instruments.
Speaker B:So it's like you, Robert, want to build, you know, you're a city, you're a country, you want to build a road and you're like, hey, Anna, can I borrow $10,000 and I promise to give it back to you in three years time with a 5% interest.
Speaker B:Oh, Robert's good for it.
Speaker B:Sure.
Speaker B:Here's my money.
Speaker B:You're going to pay me back with a maturity rate of 5, you know, $5,000 plus my interest or what did I say?
Speaker B:$10,000 plus my interest rate within that three years amount of time, we're good, we got a deal.
Speaker B:I know I'm going to get my money back from you regardless of what the market does.
Speaker B:Am I going to make more money?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Am I going to make less of my money?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:I'm going to get what I want, but I'm not going to make a ton of it.
Speaker B:It's gonna, it's when you're Talking about like CDs, money market accounts, it's going to be on the same piece with them.
Speaker B:So what was the person's name?
Speaker B:Sammy.
Speaker B:Sammy.
Speaker B:Sammy.
Speaker B:Sammy.
Speaker B:So Sammy, get yourself a retirement account, set that up, make sure you're good with that for long term growth, get yourself some index funds and then see what Nancy's doing.
Speaker A:Yeah, I love it, I love it, I love it.
Speaker A:Okay, so this is, this has been great.
Speaker A:I, I want to, as we come up on like, as we start approaching our time, I want to, to, to like kind of tie it off.
Speaker A:I want to kind of give you a chance to like is if there's any other.
Speaker A:I mean, I feel like this is so good.
Speaker A:I mean I, I feel like this was.
Speaker A:Personally, I feel like this is so good.
Speaker A:But is there anything other piece of advice or maybe a person that you want to talk to and offer them some food for thought?
Speaker A:And also I want you to tell us what exactly I want you to tell us about you and where to find you and what you do for like, what is it exactly that you do?
Speaker A:Obviously it's financial education.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So is there any last pieces of advice you want to, you want to tell us before we kind of wrap here?
Speaker B:Last Piece of advice is just remember, be an investor.
Speaker B:If you buy Starbucks over 20 years, you give them $27,000.
Speaker B:Or if you invest in Starbucks over 20 years, you would have had $87,000.
Speaker B:So you do the math and figure out which one you want.
Speaker B:I think remember to ask the right questions, know enough information to feel confident in what you provide to the world and be secure in if you don't know, it's totally okay and it's time to learn now if you want to continue learning.
Speaker B:One of the things that I do provide is a plethora of financial education on beautiful wealth dot com.
Speaker B:There is challenges, there's blogs, there's videos, a lot of it is for free.
Speaker B:If anybody is like no, I really want in, then there's an academy that's literally will take you from everything from mindset to investments to insurance to estate planning to all the things that you need to know.
Speaker B:And then later this year because you know, it can't just be me.
Speaker B:I'm also launching a certification course to build a team of certified financial beauty educators.
Speaker A:So nice.
Speaker B:Watch the space, lots ahead.
Speaker B:Follow along.
Speaker A:What does, what does that entail and what, what are, how do you qualify for that and what does it entail that entails?
Speaker B:So you know, I spent many years learning and so I'm actually becoming to be an accredited certifying body myself on being able to train people and certify people to teach financial literacy that go into the basics of protection, investments, budgeting, reading PNLs, looking at like time horizon, but really making that specific to the beauty industry and learning how to work with creatives who do have inconsistent income and how to help them set up for success.
Speaker A:Well, I mean like if there's somebody that's listening like myself who is interested in working with you, what does that look like?
Speaker A:Like to become one of those people?
Speaker B:To become one of those people.
Speaker B:Well, it's launching second half of this year, so if you are interested then let's exchange information and then once it's on, you'll have to go through the courses right now because there's so much teach backs involved as well.
Speaker B:I want to make sure that everyone that is, that is certified is like 100% solid on being able to deliver the information that like essentially walks the walk themselves.
Speaker B:So plan on that being about a six month process, some shadowing involved and then you know, I am a vendor across different brands across the industry.
Speaker B:So you've got to be able to teach, be prepared to teach other professionals on, on how to Live better lives and make their money work for them.
Speaker A:Sweet.
Speaker A:Sounds like opportunity right there.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:All right, so.
Speaker A:So we'll leave all of that information in the description below so you can reach out and get in touch with Anna if you have any further questions.
Speaker A:I guess the one thing I didn't ask you about is the person who.
Speaker A:Sorry to.
Speaker A:I'm.
Speaker A:I hope this is okay, but like, I feel like I have to ask you this.
Speaker A:The person who has debt.
Speaker A:Do you, do you like, what do you have to say about the person who's in debt and who's thinking about like, oh my gosh, I want, like I hear you and this is.
Speaker A:You're totally talking about me and I'm ready to make those changes.
Speaker A:What do they do have a plan?
Speaker B:I mean, quite honestly, there's not a short answer because whether you're doing.
Speaker B:Because there's so many predatory practices, debt in itself is such a predatory pract practice, right?
Speaker B:Where like, it's literally like walking on quicksand because that money is the debt is building debt very quickly against you.
Speaker B:There are organizations that will try to.
Speaker B:And the amount of DMS I get on this is actually kind of, is kind of scary.
Speaker B:That will be like, listen, we'll get rid of all of your debt.
Speaker B:We'll work with your credit cards.
Speaker B:You know, you're going to pay us this fee, we're going to get you half of the debt.
Speaker B:And then it completely messes up the person's credit.
Speaker B:So don't do that.
Speaker B:There's a couple of ways.
Speaker B:Unfortunately, there's not an outside of filing bankruptcy.
Speaker B:There's not an easy way of getting out of debt and bankruptcy is not an easy situation.
Speaker B:So I don't recommend that.
Speaker B:You can try to pay it off using things like the snowball method, right, where you're basically have a strategy.
Speaker B:You're, you're like, you got a budget, you're paying it off.
Speaker B:Or some people do take actually a personal loan that's at a lower percentage rate, they pay that off and then they're debt free.
Speaker B:But the thing is, is that you have to look at the numbers and you have to have discipline.
Speaker B:Facing the debt is going to be the biggest challenge, quite honestly, because it is so predatory and there's so much shame or shame around it that the amount of people that are like, listen, I'm not even looking at it.
Speaker B:I'd rather go swimming with sharks than like line up all of my credit cards and, and like look at what I owe.
Speaker B:You're not alone in that that's set up that way intentionally.
Speaker B:So people actually just pay the minimum payments to get the amount of like compound interest for the credit card.
Speaker B:So get out of your head about it.
Speaker B:Make a list.
Speaker B:Find a way to have a plan to attack the debt.
Speaker B:Either do again snowball method or if it's an.
Speaker B:If it works.
Speaker B:The other part, the other thing that sometimes does work is people ask if, you know, I get an offer for a credit card company, it's zero interest for 18 months.
Speaker B:Is that a good thing to do?
Speaker B:Oftentimes you do wind up a percentage of paying up, you know, 2, 2 to 5% sometimes of the fee.
Speaker B:If that's something you're going to do, it works for you.
Speaker B:If you're disciplined, if it's 18 months, literally split up the payments 18 months to the penny because otherwise they can charge you that 26% on a lot of the balance even before that.
Speaker B:And that's how they get you.
Speaker B:So the biggest thing is going to be facing it and, and having discipline.
Speaker B:The other thing that I didn't say is, you know, there's so much information again, like with all the books, with all the trainings, everything else.
Speaker B:I do have a guide that's seven steps to Money Master that goes into all of the basics that can be downloaded over a beautiful wealth.com too.
Speaker B:And that's a super comprehensive, quick resource like Cliff Notes of all the many things that we need to know.
Speaker A:Nice.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Okay, I, and I, I Sorry, I have one more question.
Speaker A:The person who's in debt.
Speaker A:It's a follow up question.
Speaker A:The person who's in debt.
Speaker A:What?
Speaker A:I feel like this is kind of like, I mean controversial is probably the wrong word, but with folks that are professional financial educators, advisors and planners, I feel like they don't like this when I say this.
Speaker A:So I'm curious to know when you, what, how you feel, what do you think about the person who's in debt that like they should pay themselves first or should they put all their money into paying off the like, is it a linear thing or should diversification is
Speaker B:going to be important in all the things.
Speaker B:I think diversification never put all your eggs in one basket in any way, shape or reform.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker B:So I think, because what happens if you put every single penny that you have into paying off debt and you've got no cushion, you've got no investments, you have nothing, right?
Speaker B:What happens the minute that there's an emergency, your kid falls down, knocks out a tooth, you have $1,200 with the dentist where are you going?
Speaker B:You're going straight back into debt, right?
Speaker B:So looking at it might take you six months longer, but you have more cushion.
Speaker B:You have to diversify the money that you have, even if it's, again, $1,000.
Speaker B:Like, how do you split it up in a way that you're still having different jobs for those different dollars?
Speaker A:Love it.
Speaker A:I love it.
Speaker A:I'm like that because that's my stance, and I'm so happy to hear that.
Speaker A:Okay, so thank you so much.
Speaker A:This has been amazing, and I look forward to talking to you again in the future.
Speaker A:I also look forward to seeing more of what you're doing for everybody.
Speaker A:Everybody.
Speaker A:Check out the links in the description below.
Speaker A:Head on over to her site and get in contact with her if you're in that position.
Speaker A:Also, you said you had free resources on your site.
Speaker B:Tons of free resources over at beautifulwealth.
Speaker B:Com.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:All right, well, until next time.
Speaker A:See you.
Speaker B:See ya.
Speaker B:Bye.