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What has been the single most impactful thing you've done that has grown your financial village?

Posted in:Money

I recently read the Financial Feminist, and I really want to grow my financial village this year - there is a lot of talk about the motherhood village, but I think a lot of people, particularly women, don’t really talk about the “village” it takes in terms of building financial knowledge and support, and particularly so when you live abroad and/or don't work a conventional 9-5 at a "normal" company...

So. Let's do this. What advice, apps, books, experiences, groups, suggestions, recommendations, support, systems, tools, etc, have benefited you the most with building your financial knowledge and wealth? And who's in your village? Is it family, friends, financial advisors, are you besties with your bank's customer support, do you regularly go down the reddit rabbithole, or do you just nerd out with random strangers in various fb groups and on discord servers?

Iynna·Feb 21

The FIRE movement - I am NOT FIRE at all right now (LOL new grad struggle) but I was on that path for a few years and it helped me finance a huge chunk of bschool. And truthfully, the power of compounding + paying myself first (ie. save/invest a good % of my monthly income and then use the rest for my bills and as disposable income)

CandeReynaTrckfi·Mar 11

Yayyy! I love to see other women pursuing FIRE - the whole concept is amazing and LIBERATING. It gives us the power back to plan and choose our own life adventure and time frame too, and agree with the comments below at the end of the day is all about having flexibility, making sure your daily decisions and habits are on par with your goals, being patient with the process and enjoying life too!!

Iynna·Mar 11

PERIOD thank you Candelaria for the affirmation!

Sylvia32·Feb 21

Love the idea that you can dip in and out of the FIRE movement as needed or appropriate for your season of life - was there any community or resource that helped you the most with getting started and/or while you were FIRE(ing) that you recommend checking out?

Iynna·Feb 21

Absolutely! Mr Money Moustache, So Money, Martinis and your money, and I followed the FIRE Movement on Facebook and Reddit - ultimately everyone is different but it felt like an all you can eat bufffet of ideas where I'd pick and choose what resonated the most!I also signed up for things like Personal Capital (now called Empower) to track my net worth etc.And generally tried to be as proficient as possible on personal finance as it's not something that was taught to me. I am not perfect but I feel a LOT more at ease. What do you use?

Sylvia32·Feb 21

At the moment, I use a mix of Splitwise (for tracking who pays for what) and Rocket Money (for both macro “forest” and micro “tree” views of my and my family’s finances), Chase for cc's, Schwab for checking/debit and brokerage/investments (for college, retirement, etc). I'm planning to rollover my 401k and open an IRA and start contributing to those (as both my husband and I work for non-US companies and haven't really been getting the employee match benefit since moving abroad), but even then, there's so many different IRA account types (traditional, Roth, SEP, Solo, Simple), and while I know some don't apply to us, it can still feel like a lot of noise. I also want to open some sort of (Schwab?) acct to start a "college/life launch" fund of sorts for my 2.5yo daughter. And then I want to shift my savings into an HYSA, and I've got my eye on Ally Bank for ease of linking with Schwab, there's still like 9 different account types they offer, so I'm wading through the overwhelming amount of details and options...I'm grateful to be able to ask both my family and in-laws lots of “stupid” finance questions, and have started reaching out more to financial and tax advisers (to explore the option of free consultations purely for second opinions before committing to anything more), but like I said, I think it takes a village, and sometimes I just feel very alone and insecure and like I'm drowning in what I can know and do know but yet paralyzed by what I don't know, and some days it just feels so confusing and murky, and hard to take the next step to make progress on what we're trying to do long-term, and just never knowing if it's too much, too little, or just right...I think I will come out of this on the other side (hopefully in a few weeks or months) feeling more calm and grounded and settled, but right now it just feels like I'm playing a really chaotic high stakes game of chess without really knowing how to play and all the rules!

colleenfarrell·Feb 21

Great advice. ChooseFI is also a great place to start as well. Their podcasts and weekly newsletter are so helpful in learning more about FIRE.

Iynna·Feb 21

YES - Choose FI is lit!

lainelewis·Feb 21

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but in the financial growth area, as soon as I could bills wise, I budgeted savings and took that out before I spent any "play money", like it's a bill and it helped. It helped most when I was laid off and it took me 4 months to find something. I used that to help pay the bills in the gap.

Sylvia32·Feb 22

Yes! I also try to make contributions to any savings, investments, retirement, college, etc part of what I consider my bills each month, and I agree, it really helps!

desirai3·Feb 21

YES! I am actually starting a local Personal Finance Club. The idea is to help each other with day-to-day decisions, budgeting, investing, etc. everything personal finance. I have never heard about financial villages before, but I love the sound of it! To build my financial knowledge and wealth.... I am a CPA, MBA, former Big 4, former Fortune 100 tech employee, former IRS employee.... and I came from poverty so I learned what not to do.. So I guess mine is from experience and education. I can't think of other resources that have helped me besides my own developed excel spreadsheets and systems.

alessandrapaul·Feb 22

I don't have specific advice but I highly, highly recommend Money with Katie as an educational resource! She's got a newsletter, a podcast, and is on Instagram @moneywithkatie. She also sells a digital product called a Wealth Planner that helps you keep a high-level view of your finances and progress toward your long-term goals. I've found it to be super helpful for keeping me organized and accountable! Her content is so thoughtful and always presented in a nuanced way that is still easy to understand.

CandeReynaTrckfi·Mar 11

I listed to her podcast every week!!

hyobinsung·Feb 23

- HER Money (podcast) Jean Chatzky: features a specific topic with a subject matter expert (many I ended up looking up for more specific info) and at the end of each episode she does a Money Bag excerpt featuring a real-world financial scenario submitted by a listener and she goes through giving advice, recs, and troubleshooting. I found it to be very realistic and actionable. I took a ton of notes :) - Women with Money (book) Jean Chatzky: a book that covers a person's whole financial lifetime starting with your first exposure to money and how it impacts your approach to money into adulthood all the way to retirement and beyond. Each capture provides a worksheet at the end with questions and action items to consider. I found Jean when I moved back to the U.S. after working abroad for almost a decade. She provides American POV and that's what I needed to understand all the ins and outs of how to navigate financial literacy in America. - Financial Advisors: I also tapped into connecting with several financial advisors to talk through my process and solicit specific advice as my situation changed through work and life situations. I do this annually now. - Free Financial Services: Most banks, 401(k)/IRA/Roth IRA platforms offer free consulting services to current customers. I find these tools VERY helpful even if it's as basic ask sharing "X is my financial goal for 2030, am I on the right track?". By meeting with various advisors you begin to learn how to talk about it and to ask better questions. - Financial Village: I started to bring up these topics (retirement, taxes, crypto, etc,.) with friends to find those who felt comfortable sharing. We regularly share our progress or new learnings and that's been helpful with new ideas and benchmarking. Congrats on your journey and thanks for starting this thread!

Margurite151·Feb 25

Plenty of different groups - For investors, founders, aspiring, fund managers - All Raise. For personal finance depending on focus - Dow Janes, Penny Finance, Sequin. There's also groups for daytraders too. So it all depends on your appetite for risk, where you stand in your stage of life, and goals.

niccigowing·Feb 26

Love this thread, and it's something that's on my goals list for this year - learn more about finance. So a book I would definitely recommend is Girls that Invest by Simran Kaur. She also has a podcast and a Masterclass to cover these exact topics. Additionally, if you feel comfortable I would suggest talking to your girlfriends. I'm very lucky to have some powerhouse women in my group so we're able to work through some of our decisions together. And we're all facing very different life situations - some with kids, some living overseas - so we learn a ton about what to potentially do when/if we're in that situation in the future.

aggarwal·Feb 26

I enrolled for stock trading course. They provide life time mentorship and strong telegram community channel. This channel is quite active and provides analysis related to trades. In addition, listening to different popular podcasts on FIRE and connecting with the audience there,

tamarag·Feb 26

I’ve been following @millenialindebt on IG and a few others. I’ve read Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Ramit Sethi’s book. I agree with others here. Working towards savings/investing and 0 debt to work towards FIRE will work. I’m in the first stage, more than halfway to being debt free.

KatieHong·Feb 26

Love this question! One of my goals for the upcoming year is to start getting more serious about finances (I start my years on my birthday in June.) The concept of a Financial Village and all the comments here have been amazing! While I can't share what works, I can share what I've seen related to the idea that've I've slowly been gathering in preps to building Personal Finance information. Female led Finance Book Club: @vanessaonuegbu was running a book club back in 2022 around this! I was only able to make it to a few sessions but the conversations there were so valuable because at the root of things money can be something deeply tied to how our realities are shaped.Books I've been recommended - Own it by Sallie Krawcheck, I will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi, Naked Money by Charles Wheelan (Am also currently reading RichAF by Vivian Tu as part of a personal challenge to read 1 book written by a YouTuber every month)There is no need to build from scratch: One of my favorite way of learning is doing master studies (the way artist do it). Find someone who's already doing it and emulate them in order to understand the process and why they make the decisions to build things. Artists do this all the time to learn and retain new techniques. I've been collecting personal finance type targeted ad "free courses"-that's-actually-a-marketing-lead-to-a-community/course-offer- thing and attending them whenever I can. It gives me a sense on how people communicate, the chat a way to figure out people's worries, and a study of frameworks people have developed around money. Favorite so far has been Contrarian Thinking by Codie Sanchez (more about business but related). For an example of a model-centric type of community: Dow Janes. Make the Social Media Algorithm work for you: I did this with food and fully intend to do this with finance. For the past year I've been carefully feeding my instagram follows to local foodies (only those in the city), specific likes for delivery of information, and a handful of recipes. My fyp is now one of my favorite sources of info for finding new places to eat or recipes to try. Fun tidbit is discovering how crazy the foodie scene here is: I have over 150 creators, most with a generous following, and every once in a while I find pockets of creators that have been growing independent from the rest. It's wild. And fun haha.Canadian-centered personal finance world is not as easy to find through extensive google searches so I fully intend to make the instagram/tiktok algorithm work in the background to find them for me!

VanessaChion·Feb 29

My heart is so so full, @KatieHong. .... I'm glad to hear my virtual book club was impactful! I need to restart it up, all the books I read helped me tremendously in my career and personal growth.

KatieHong·Mar 01

@vanessaonuegbu YESS! So glad to hear it 😁 My curiosity is perked too: which books our ideas stood out? The 1 book I remember finishing was the Little Book that Still Beats the Market - which I remember the consensus by everyone was that the author had the ulterior motive to sell his system BUT we still were able to get some gems because of the conversations that bubbled up after.The take away that stuck with me from that book:A benchmark for deciding whether to purchase a stock or not is to compare it to the safest investment tool, bonds. So if a bond rate is at 10% (this existed for a limited sale during COVID!) then whatever investment you make in stocks needs to have a higher yield rating because stocks riskier and not guarantied like bonds. My understanding of things has changed a lot since then, but this idea of the importance of looking at benchmarks to make decisions was so magical (and made me light up when I saw the idea "lines in the sand" in the book Lean Analytics!)=======Last thing, because this is too good not to share and something I found while on this personal finance journey. Did you know that there was a point in time when WOMEN dominated the stock market? The link below is a fascinating 23min mini documentary about this group of women, whom Wall Street call the Mrs. Watanabes : https://youtu.be/PKVUD-Se7c8?si=mrtOaL25ffturlhJ

maddietracey·Mar 09

Here are some resources I'm liking lately:- "Finance for the People" by Paco de Leon https://lnkd.in/gYnCbuZN- “Keeping Finance Personal” by Ellyce Fillmore https://lnkd.in/gq2AYiWQ- “Money Out Loud” by Berna Anat https://www.heyberna.com/- "Financial Feminist" by Tori Dunlap (free audiobook on spotify) https://lnkd.in/geFV3Dk8- "Rich AF" by Vivan Tu (free audiobook on spotify) https://lnkd.in/gBN9ZsiX

CandeReynaTrckfi·Mar 11

I'm a self-taught personal finance enthusiast and have been on this journey for over 8 years, learning everything I can to help my family and myself. Along the way, I discovered the power of FIRE and investing, which has been a game-changer. I created a personal finance platform to organize my finances and goals and recently started an Instagram community to inspire other women to take control of their money and live their best lives.Being smart with money is key to achieving financial freedom, building wealth and pursuing your dreams. Our relationship with money shapes so many aspects of our lives, from the jobs we choose to the relationships we keep. It's not about how much you earn, but how you manage what you have that makes a difference.I love sharing what I've learned on my blog, www.trckfi.com/blog, and in my weekly newsletter, Rich Reflections. Some of my favorite books are:"Girls that Invest" by Simran Kaur"Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin"Atomic Habits" by James Clear "Psychology of Money" by Morgan Housel"Rich AF" by Vivan TuThe list goes on....and I regularly listen to the Money with Katie podcast.Feel free to DM I have time and resources to share! I want every woman to reach their financial freedom and feel confident with her money situation and decisions!!

Margurite151·Mar 17

I posted earlier about all the other community groups (Penny Finance, Dow Janes, All Raise, Sequin etc.). I forgot to mention - in web3 there's a lot more women's groups then when I started like 9-10 years ago. She256 women in blockchain (technical/engineers), SheFi (non-technical), Eve Wealth (founded by an amazing ex-McKinsey employee) which is returning, then there's quite a few DAOs of investor folks (traditional and non-traditional). I think there's a lot to learn there. There's also Aura Finance (web3 ish too). Oh and you can do what I did and take one of the Series X licenses (one was to build a 100M fund) and just get the books to learn and courses and after that (whether you pass the exam or not) you'll learn more about overall finance. Daytrading videos (HumbledTrader is my fav on YouTube), there's also Real Time Trading and the Candlestick Bible. Tons of resources there outside of a gigantic google drive I got from an Asian American group of investors of everything that investment bankers take for their course work or exams (which I read and study for fun). When I'm in a jam, I re-read the basics, remember to pay off all my credit cards (if not in full at least partial payment) PER WEEK and my credit score goes up. And a long time friend works at SVB since forever who opened tons of accounts from me from Day 1, but I didn't understand it then. Just go slow, go with the pace that feels most comfortable to you. If you get frustrated or bored, just read infographics on IG and Pinterest and that'll explains some basics if you didn't understand a gigantic overload of material above from one of those sources I listed.

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