About the Guest:

Myrna Lane Hippolyte is a seasoned financial wealth strategist with approximately 30 years of experience in the finance realm. Previously working as an equity analyst for an investment bank, Myrna has transitioned her extensive knowledge into her current role as a financial well coach. She is passionate about teaching individuals, especially powerhouse women, to convert their stable income into significant net worth, shaping their first million dollars through strategic stock market investments. As a mother of two, Myrna approaches financial wellbeing as a form of self-care and consistently empowers women to actively participate in their financial decisions to achieve financial security and wealth building.

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Episode Summary:

In this insightful episode of "Building the Abundant Woman," host Samantha welcomes Myrna Lane Hippolyte to explore the journey of accumulating wealth one stock at a time. The conversation dives into how women can turn their income into sustainable wealth, emphasizing the significance of financial wellness as a crucial aspect of self-care. Samantha's engaging introduction sets the scene for an enriching discussion that spans personal experiences and practical financial strategies, tailored for the modern woman looking to take control of her financial future.

Myrna shares her professional background and her mission to demystify the stock market for her clients. She highlights the importance of creating a robust savings plan, tackling debt, and the disciplined investment approach necessary to achieve financial independence. Myrna's relatable anecdotes and actionable advice provide valuable insights into optimizing savings, while her emphasis on individual investment preferences underscores the personalized nature of financial planning. This episode also spotlights client success stories, demonstrating the transformative impact of Myrna's coaching.

Key Takeaways:

• Financial wellness should be viewed as a form of self-care, and managing money contributes to a sense of security and well-being.
• Start investing with as little as $5 a day to change the trajectory of your wealth, regardless of debt and savings plans.
• Plugging money leaks from impulsive or unconscious spending can free up funds for investment and wealth building.
• Understanding your investor persona and risk preferences is crucial in making educated and comfortable investment choices.
• Discipline and mindset are foundational elements for successful financial planning and investing.

Notable Quotes:

• "Financial wellness, managing your money, should be a form of self-care… But really, managing your money can be a form of self care."
• "You can't save your way to wealth."
• "Investing preferences in the stock market are like food."
• "With as little as $5 a day, you can make a difference and change the trajectory of your wealth."
• "One of the things that I teach is really making sure that you're optimizing your savings plan."

Resources:

• Myrna Lane Hippolyte's website: Empower Financial Wellness
• Myrna Lane Hippolyte on Facebook and LinkedIn: Myrna Lane Hippolyte
• Myrna Lane Hippolyte's Instagram: @empowerfinancialwellness

Don't miss the full episode to gain deeper insights into securing your financial future and building wealth effectively. Stay tuned for more empowering content from Samantha's "Building the Abundant Woman" series.

0:00:22 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Thank you, Samantha, for having me here. I'm really happy to be here. And as Samantha mentioned, my name is Myrna Lane Hippolyte, and I am a financial well coach, a wealth strategist, and essentially, I work with women, powerhouse women, to help them turn their amazing income into their first million dollars of net worth, even if they're new to investing in the stock market. I firmly believe that, you know, financial wellness, managing your money, should be a form of self care. Right. We often think of things like massages, pedicures, you know, Netflix and chill as form of self care. But really, managing your money can be a form of self care.

0:01:27 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): So all of that is part of financial wellness. And that's really what I help my clients achieve, making sure that they got a handle on their money. But my specialty really is teaching women how to invest in the stock market, teaching them how to build wealth over time with the stock market. And a lot of my clients tend to be a little bit intimidated or they say, well, I'm a busy mom. I don't have time, and I'm a mom, which I forgot to mention.

0:02:27 - (Samantha): Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I'm sure you're going through it. I'm sure with your daughter just, you know, going off to college, that's a whole new, like, change of life.

0:02:41 - (Samantha): Well, I'm sure. And that is, I'm kind of in the new part of things. I got toddlers. So, you know, that's always good to have people that are, like, ahead of you. Like, hey, you're going to want to, like, just mentally prepare for these things.

0:02:57 - (Samantha): But no, I love what you do because I think that in general, women don't have the knowledge that they need to have to make these financial investments. And I think a lot of women are like, they don't know how to feel comfortable having wealth. And so I think that's a really important thing is a lot of times it's because we don't understand it. And when people break it down, make it simple, make it where we can understand, accumulate, invest all of those good things, you are just going to change so many lives by what you do. And I just can't wait to hear more about your story. So tell us, like, where did you start with this? What got you into doing this?

0:04:23 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): That's the trifecta of success. And I'm sure that a lot of your listeners are familiar with that trifecta of success. But nobody told me how to manage my money and then moving on in life. So I kind of self taught myself through my different roles, jobs, and had my securities licenses and all that good stuff. But throughout the course of life, people like, even my mother, my friends. So they were in unions, they were in partnerships, they were out there building assets with a partner.

0:05:18 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): And so that happened to my mother. I saw it happen to my mother. It happened to friends and family. And so I really decided at the end of 2020 to start my business, empower financial wellness, so that I can help women understand what's going on with their money. Make things like investing in the stock market less intimidating so that they can understand how to build wealth and become active participants. Whether they're in that marriage where somebody else is making most of the decisions or whether they're alone, they end up divorced or without a partner and don't know what to do. I mean, as women, our lifespans are actually longer than men, right? We live our. The average lifespan is about 81 years old for a woman, and for men, it's lower than that. So at some point, as women, you're probably going to end up alone, unfortunately, and you're going to have to know what to do, whether you're single, married, divorced, widowed, whatever. You're going to have to learn what to do. And so I felt the urgency, you know, as I got into my fifties, I was like, what am I doing with my life now that one of my kids is out of the nest? I got one more left, three more years. I figured, okay, Myrna, figure out, what is your purpose? What do you want to do?

0:06:47 - (Samantha): Yeah. And I think that's such a great thing, because even in a stable, loving, healthy marriage is like. I think it's still very empowering to understand, you know, how money works, how that cycle of investing, doing more than paying bills. And I think a lot of times when we don't have good financial understanding is like, then we don't have anything to pass on to our children, so then they don't have good financial understanding, and we see this next generation where it's like they're getting out on their own. They have no idea how to, like, build an emergency fund, how to set back for retirement, how to do all these things.

0:08:03 - (Samantha): It's empowering and it's literacy that we need to have as we go through our lives. So that way we can make good financial decisions and then obviously pass that down. And I think that's one thing really like, that. You see, the wealthy do is they teach their children how to build wealth as where the mass. Majority of people teach their children how to make enough to pay bills. And I think we really need to reverse that to start having a, like, wealthier, financially healthier society. I mean, look at the credit card debt and things that people are into, how that's exploded.

0:08:46 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, first of all, one of the things that I teach is really making sure that you're optimizing your savings plan. So saving, you can't save your way to wealth. I don't care, you know, you just can't do it. But saving is a pillar, you know, of wealth. So no matter how wealthy you are, or if you live in paycheck to paycheck, you need to have money set aside. And I tell my clients that in order to get into that comfort zone, you need to have at least three to six months worth of your baseline expenses. That means that if today I say, Samantha, your sources of income are going to dry up.

0:10:02 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yeah, and look for a high yield savings account or talk to your bank for something that's going to get 4%, because that's going to be helping you build wealth, even if it's your, your savings account, your peace of mind funds, I don't like to call them emergency funds, peace of mind funds, because emergency notes something bad's gonna happen, some emergency. Whereas peace of mind is just peace of mind. If something unexpected happens, you're good.

0:10:51 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yes, absolutely. And, you know, it's important to be able to build that first. But also, if you have debt, like you mentioned, the credit cards formulate a debt repayment plan that fits within your budget. So, yeah, budget can be considered a four letter word. I know, I know. So just think about your income tracking. However you can track your income and your expenses, if you want to call it that, however, which way you're tracking, understand that, hey, debt repayment plan needs to be part of it. How are you going to repay it when you're going to repay off, repay that debt?

0:11:51 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Well, I would say build up that savings plan, but to me, it's not an either or. When it comes to investing, I think you need to have all three tracks, your savings, your repayment of debt and investing. Because Lord knows, if you got a lot of credit card debt, you don't want to wait. You don't want to wait to start to invest. Because one of the misconceptions is that people think it takes a lot of money to invest. It doesn't. With as little as $5 a day, you can make a difference and change the trajectory of your wealth, change the path for yourself, change the path for your kids. I mean, because, you know, you have a lot of mothers and listeners. I'm a mother.

0:12:50 - (Samantha): Yeah.

0:13:17 - (Samantha): Yeah. And I think that's, like, a really big thing. And if anybody knows anything about my story, I am, like, the queen of I will not do anything if I don't have, like, if I don't have the money to do it. Like, I won't go get my hair done. I won't go get my nails done. I won't go get any of that stuff done if the things that I need to do, like, invest, all that kind of stuff is not done first. And, I mean, I went five years without getting my hair done.

0:14:20 - (Samantha): And it was worth it to me to do those things, you know, for a while, because I was like, hey, like, I have two small children. Ain't nobody trying to, like, I'm not trying to impress anybody. Like, this is the time that I can really get, like, slim. And it may be different things for you. Maybe you shop too much, or maybe you, like, whatever that is. Is like you were saying is like, make sure that you're making even that $5 a day, like, be a priority.

0:14:50 - (Samantha): And so, yeah, so tell us, like, when people come to work with you, what does that transition look like? What? Like, do you have somebody that you could share, like, their success story with us or.

0:15:32 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): So she came to me. She participated in one of my group coaching programs where we took a look at everything. We took a look at what she was spending. We found her own money. She didn't have to go work extra hours. It was more about finding money and plugging what I call money leaks, which tend to be some of those unconscious, impulsive type spending habits. Like, you know, you go through your statement and figure out, oh, I didn't realize I was spending that much money with Amazon.

0:16:19 - (Samantha): Yeah.

0:17:09 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Get her finances together right where she realized where she was spending her money, and she didn't have, like, all this excess money and credit cards galore. She was able to trim that down and able to get more discipline when it came to her money and really helping her see that overall picture and discipline and putting in a budget which included, you know, a fun, really account, because a lot of times when we budget, we don't think about the fun part.

0:18:10 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Investing preferences in the stock market are like food, right? Because some people like spicy food, some people are allergic to seafood. Some people, you know, are vegan, etcetera. The same way, like the stock market. Because if you're that type of person, where you going to take to the bed, if the market goes down 10% and you see your portfolio going down, you're going to take to the bed and be all depressed. There are certain investments that are not for you. Whereas if you're that type of person, that's like, okay, you're all gung ho. You see, it's a long term perspective.

0:19:07 - (Samantha): Yes.

0:19:10 - (Samantha): Yeah, like, that discipline is key is, like, when you have, when you work with somebody like you and you have great strategy, great insight, all those things, but the discipline comes from you. Like, you can tell your clients, hey, like, this is best case for you, but they ultimately have to have the discipline to do that. And I think that is perfect because you said that several times, and I was like, it's always the discipline that gets us.

0:19:37 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): But it's also the mindset, too, Samantha, because if you go into it and you think, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to be able to do it, it's not going to happen. Right. Whereas if you come in with the attitudes like yeah, I've got this. Then there's a much, you know, bigger transformation when you think that you've got it. Because I have clients. For example, I had a client. She was, like, 60 years old, never invested in the stock market, but she was like, myrna, after hearing you, I know it's not too late for me. And she invested, and from September to today, was able to generate a 16% return on her portfolio.

0:20:16 - (Samantha): Wow, that's amazing. You are so amazing. Like, that is so cool. Look at these women's lives that you are changing. So if this woman listening in right now and she's like, yeah, I need all of that help. Like, where can she find you? Where can she get connected with you to start, like, making some better investment moves? Being confident in that, too, as well.

0:21:02 - (Samantha): All right? And all of that will be linked up in the show notes, guys. So you can click through there, you can find her and get connected with her. I'm just so glad, like, this is why I love bringing on amazing women, so you guys can be more supported in every area, because I think that not only is abundant, like, abundance isn't just financial, it's learning that mindset, that discipline, that the things we love about motherhood, like, as me and her are both. We're both mothers, and we're doing these things right alongside having very abundant motherhoods as well. And so that's the wonderful part of why we do this. So that way you can be encouraged, you can go out, you can find the resources.

0:21:55 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Thanks for having me.