Nikita is joined by Co-Hosts of Black & Brown Make Green Podcast, Natasha & Damian Carrillo. In this episode, we learn more about their own finance story, talk about what generational wealth can mean, and discuss how to talk to your children about finances.
Nikita is joined by Co-Hosts of Black & Brown Make Green Podcast, Natasha & Damian Carrillo. In this episode, we learn more about their own finance story, talk about what generational wealth can mean, and discuss how to talk to your children about finances.
Hey, 3rd decade friends, We're happy to have you here. I'm your host Nikita Wolff, and today I'm joined by Natasha and Damian Carrillo, the co-founders of Black and Brown Make Green Podcast. In their podcast, they explore a variety of financial topics and share their knowledge and financial strategy with their audience. Today, I'm gonna be interviewing them to learn more about their story and what brought them here and see if we can get them to share some of their secrets so we can all benefit our own financial health. Thanks so much for being here with me today, you guys.
Natasha:Yeah. Thanks for having us.
Nikita:So to start us off, I'd love if you would tell us a little bit about your own financial story and how you got to where you are today with your finances.
Natasha:Yeah. So I'll take this first one. I feel like my finance story can be thought of in three separate chunks. And the first chunk is really when I was a child during my childhood. And then the second chunk is when I became an adult and I was single. And then the third chunk is when I got into a committed relationship. So I'm gonna talk about my finance story from those three angles. So dating back to when I was a child, I felt like I received a really solid financial foundation from my mom and my dad. My mom and my dad shared a lot of things about finances with me and my siblings growing up. And I was able to take that learning from my childhood and then apply it and expand on it as an adult and growing up, one of the things I was able to see was I was able to see my family move from poverty to middle class, which is really interesting thinking back on it, because I didn't know that we were in poverty at first, but I remember that my favorite meal was pork and beans and wieners. And if anybody's had pork and beans and wieners, it's probably not the best of food, but I thought it was so great. And then as an adult, one day, I was like, oh, I remember I loved this when I was a kid. And so I went and bought some pork and beans and wieners, and I was like, this doesn't taste very good. And that's kind of when I really realized, oh, we ate that because that's what was cheap and we could afford it back then. So my childhood star it with us being in that poverty standpoint, and my dad ended up getting a job in the chemical plant nearby and he was able to kinda change the trajectory of our life so that we moved into the middle class income level throughout my childhood. I was able to learn lessons from my mom and my dad about the way to handle your money. My dad had a specific budget and it had percentages for each different category. So he had a percentage that he saved for our education. He had a percentage that went to living expenses. He had a percentage that went to charitable contributions. So there were several different categories on there and he showed us that budget. And then he also was very meticulous about tracking his income and his expenses. And so I would see him every month with the checkbook and he'd be balancing the checkbook. I would see him every month with the credit card statement and my parents charged a lot of things on a credit card. And we would save every single receipt in this little envelope in my dad's room that was called"credit card" in my mom and dad's room. And so every month when the credit card bill came, he would take those receipts and then he would check and make sure that it matched onto the statement that he received. And then my mom, she was the one who really put it all together for us and helped us to see how do you put this budget into action. Because she's the one who did all the spending. So she would buy the groceries. She would buy the clothes pretty- much anything. She was responsible for purchasing it. And I remember seeing my mom, every Wednesday is when the sales ads would come out and we would get the grocery store ads from like Food King, Stanley's, Randall's- all of the local grocery stores. And then we'd look through and see who had the best price on chicken who had the best price on oranges or strawberries or whatever it was that we normally would buy. And then we would go through and we'd circle each one of them. And when I was growing up, price matching was a big deal. Or at least I thought it was a big deal because we always did it in my family. Maybe it really wasn't a big deal, but we would take those ads to Walmart and Walmart would price match any of the local stores. And so we would get the discounted prices on whatever it is we needed- whatever groceries we needed by taking those ads to Walmart and purchasing those items. And so those are some of those lessons I learned from my parents about how to manage your finances, how to have a budget and how to stick to that budget. And then I was able to take all of that learning and apply it as an adult. And one of the fortunate things for me is that I was able to graduate from college debt free. And I think a lot of adults get into that issue of take having debt as soon as they graduate from college because of loan because of credit cards. And luckily I didn't have the student loans. And then when it came to credit cards, I had already learned from my parents, like you don't spend on your credit card more than you can pay off in a month. So even though they would use a credit card to make all of their purchases at the end of the month, they would pay them in full. And so go starting off in adulthood. I already knew that getting into credit card debt was not something that I wanted to do. And then, so that kind of was the second part of my finance story as a s ingle adult. And then once I got into a committed relationship, it started to transition into more of how do I grow my money. So I really had the basics down f rom my parents of how to save and how to use the money that you have wisely. But when it came to growth, I didn't get very much of that. But once I got into a relationship with Damian that's where that started, that part of my finance story begins. And I'm gonna let Damian tell a little bit about how our finance story has come together.
Damian:So all the things that Natasha mentioned about growing up into adulthood and into our relationship, I can kind of echo a lot of that same sort of trajectory. And when we got to meeting each other, you know, she checked my credit score, I checked her credit score. We talked about what's in our bank account, which was kind of odd. I mean, we didn't really check the credit score, but we did talk about, we were very open with our finances and, you know, we stated our goals and what we wanted out of life and our plans. And we found that we're a really good fit financially. Like we've rarely ever had arguments or discussions where we diverge with our opinions on how we manage our finance or what our goals and plans are. But the crux of our relationship around finances has always been that we're open and transparent with each other and, and we voice our opinions and whatever it may be, they're valid, even if they, you know, if the other one, needs some convincing.
Nikita:Yeah. I mean, I think you guys probably did yourselves a favor by opening up that conversation early on, because imagine, you know, the arguments that ensue, when you don't know early on in your relationship that you are on a similar page. It worries me the number of people that wait to have that conversation, especially whenever money is such a leading issue in marriages falling apart and that type of thing. I think you guys did a lot of great preventative work by doing that.
Damian:Yeah, I think it's typically seen as taboo to talk about money early on. Maybe it isn't for, you know, like spending or buying things, but the, the depth of the conversations that we were having were a little bit different than any other that I'd had before with friends or family, or, just anybody I was like really open. And so was Natasha. That was really helpful.
Nikita:Yeah. I can relate to that too. Early on in my relationship with my now-husband, we also were very open about, you know, what our goals were, what our spending habits were. We both knew that the other had a propensity towards saving rather than spending all of our money. And I can't imagine not having known that going into a marriage or long term relationship. So, how do you manage your finances today and how has this changed maybe a little bit over time?
Damian:So today we're at a point in our life where we kind of retroactively look backwards, you know, last month, last couple of months and see trends emerge.This wasn't always the case. This has changed over time, but currently we record all our incoming money, you know, whether that's salary, or I work at a job where I get stocks, and that's another line item in our spreadsheet. Any side jobs that we pick up, Natasha has a couple of them here and there. We'll add another line item. And then we also track all the money that's outgoing, you know, all the bills that we pay, all the unexpected costs. Like for example, we had to fix something in our house recently, the water heater, that'll be another l ine item, unexpected costs. And then we have other things like where money moves from, f rom point A to point B. And as an example, we take money from our savings account and move it into an investment account. And we track that as well. So like we can see kind of the high level view, everything that's coming in, everything that's going out and everything that's moving around. And that's been really helpful to really reign in on bringing our goal closer to us, because now we don't have any dark shadows looming in the way that we spend money or save money. And that high level view has been very important and it's changed over time because initially whenever Natasha and I first started dating, we would track our finances similarly, but separately. And we would only tally up the outgoing money. So effectively, you know, like we have our cable bill, we have our phone bill, you know, we'd record those, and we'd know how much we get paid. And like you said, we're good savers as well. And we work from that same mentality, you know, you save more than you than you spend. And, you know, we always knew that we had a buffer and that just was a little bit immature, it was a bit immature of an u nderstanding o f t he w ay that our money is moving and to get beyond that and to get to the point t o where we can see everything coming in and going out, you know, that's been pretty helpful for us.
Natasha:Yeah. To kind of add on to that a little bit. So in the past with, with how we manage our finances, we were really focused on the spending. And I think a lot of people do that when they create a budget. The budget is focused on"what do we spend?" And that's what you're tracking. And that's what we used to track. We would track the bills and the expenses, and that was pretty much it. And over time we have started to track,"what are we saving?""How much money are we saving?" And so now we know exactly what is our savings rate per month. What is our savings rate over the entire, our year? And then we also track like investing now. So how much money are we investing each year? What's our investment rate. And so it's not just a focus on what are we spending, but it's,"how are we gonna grow this money?" Because it's not just about spending, like it's also about saving and investing, so that we can be prepared for our future as well.
Damian:Yeah. And as we're recording all these items, you know, we do it very like month-by-month basically, but then periodically we'll take a look back and see what trends have emerged. For example, if we see that we're spending too much on our heating or gas costs, we'll be like, oh, we better turn the temperature down a little bit, you know, in the winter, or, you know, oh, we can't water the grass that much this month. And it helps us, it helps us shape the path forward for us. You know, we realize that we wanted to be saving more money. Probably about a year ago, right? Two years ago? And being able to track all of our information in this way has let us target something, something different than what we were previously. And then actually measuring, you know, like,"are we meeting our goal?"
Nikita:Yeah. Now, is this something that you do on a spreadsheet? Or do you have an application that you use?
Natasha:We are"spreadsheet" all the way. So we have an Excel spreadsheet that we've set up and we've tailored it to fit our needs. And so the first section of our spreadsheet kind of has all of our income on there. So, like Damian mentioned before, it's got salary, RSUs, bonus money, miscellaneous money. And then our next section is our debts. What are the debts? We have to pay our mortgage. If we had a car payment that would be on there and then what are our monthly bills that are reoccurring. So like Netflix and our cell phone bill, water bill, light bill, all of that stuff is on there. And then at the end of our spreadsheet, we have a summary of that information. And so like, we love spreadsheets. I know a lot of people do this inside of apps too, but we like to have control over our stuff. So that's how we are. We're still on the Excel game.
Damian:And our spreadsheet has gone through multiple iterations from our first one. You know, multiple iterations that sort of track our understanding of our path. Like whenever we are record our bills and our outgoing money, that's all it had. And then, you know, Natasha had this idea,"Hey, we should change it. And we should, you know, track the savings as well". And, you know, then we had a second iteration and then we just kind of keep revising as we keep having these discussions and keep getting deeper insight into what our end game is and the way that we want to approach it.
Nikita:Yeah. Do you ever look back and see one from like five years ago and just think to yourself like, oh my goodness, how did I ever use this?
Damian:Yeah, definitely. Definitely.
Natasha:Yes. Yeah.
Nikita:So jumping tracks a little bit, I wanted to talk about generational wealth. What does that mean to you and how would you define it?
Natasha:To me? Generational wealth is all of the assets that one generation passes on to the next. And I think a lot of times when people think of generational wealth, they only think of money like, oh, I got money passed down to me, but generational wealth is not just money. It's also property, or land, businesses, any valuables, and a big part that I think people miss out on is the knowledge. I think passing on knowledge as part of generational wealth is one of the biggest parts that needs to be passed on because I don't know if you have seen these studies, but there are studies out there saying families who have passed on money within two generations, the money is gone. So like the wealth passing is at an end after two generations. And I think a big part of that is because the next generations don't have that knowledge of how do we continue to grow this money. And so I think that is a big part of generational wealth as well.
Damian:And it takes a lot of understanding of what the people before you and your family have done the, the ideas they've fleshed out in the way they've set things up in order for them to succeed. And then for, you know, their future generations to succeed as well. And that's, I think the thing that gets a little bit left out is that, you know, sometimes it's hard to start a conversation with your parents or grandparents about money. I mean, it's hard to talk about money in a lot of situations with anybody, but you know, like your parents and your grandparents and their parents, you know, kind of all up and down the line, you know, they're making choices and decisions to set themselves up and then set, hopefully set their children up and you have to understand that. You know, understand where exactly am I coming from as a person? And like, what have the people before me done to help me help position myself here?
Nikita:Yeah. So how has generational wealth been passed along in your own family? Or have you guys been the recipients of generational wealth?
Natasha:Yeah, I would say I've definitely been the recipient and it's definitely been passed down in my family. And at first look, it may not seem that way because you know, my grandma lived in a two story house and it was built 50 years ago or something like that. And she didn't have much, so it didn't appear as if there was a lot of generational, but my dad received property once he was an adult, he received an acre and a half of land. And so did his brother, his brother lived right next door on the other acre and a half of land. And so that's generational wealth right there. Like he wouldn't have been able to go ahead and build on that land. Had he not had the land in the first place. So that was a purchase he didn't have to make. And then in my case, I, I think being gifted a debt-free college degree is part of my inheritance because a lot of people go through college and then they end up with these student loans and those student loans pay them for the entirety of their lives sometimes, or for at least 20 years of it. And so I think me being able to be gifted that by my parents, that's part of my inheritance as well as other monies that my parents have gifted me once I was able to buy a house, they were able to give me and Damian a gift towards that. And then also knowledge- like, I feel like I learned a lot from my parents about finances. And so I was ahead of the game. In some regards, once I became an adult in being able to manage my finances.
Damian:And for, for me, I also had a debt free college experience because of the setup that my parents planned for us. I have a brother and he had the same thing. And so Natasha and my stories are similar in this regard where we don't have to pay on a college loan. And it kind of begs the question, you know, like Natasha mentioned inheritance. So what's an inheritance? Andwhen do you get it? And you typically think that it's when your parents die or somebody dies, you get issued that inheritance, but generational wealth, like if you're passing something down, you have to try and figure out when it's the most optimized time to pass that down. And in our situations, being able to have a debt free college experience and to come out and, you know, step into the real world and start working like that has been immensely helpful for us because it's just a huge burden lifted from us. And we could just, you know, work and plan accordingly and have our own path and choose to make good decisions aided with the help from our parents, but it'll help us because like, we don't have that debt.
Nikita:Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I've never really thought about how inheritance timing can be optimized, but that's totally true. It is such a valuable gift to be able to go into the workforce without the looming monthly bill, especially in, I mean, it's hundreds of dollars. And in some people's cases, it's over a thousand dollars a month, depending on their degree. But yeah, it's a really great point. How do you both plan to pass on generational wealth to your own kids?
Natasha:So I think we wanna pass on all the generational wealth we can. So, we of course wanna pass on knowledge to them. We wanna pass on to them, how to invest, how to save, how to budget. And we wanna get them started early. We wanna help them set up their own custodial accounts as well while they are youth. So they can start learning"How do investment accounts work" as they're a child. And then like Damian mentioned before, like passing on generational wealth doesn't mean at the end of our lives, here's your inheritance, but we wanna pass on things throughout their lives. So we wanna gift them a debt free college, if that's the route that they take as well and just set them up, however we can. So if we have businesses or property, those are all things we would wanna pass on.
Damian:And we've started already to set up their 529 accounts for education. And that's wonderful, you know, like we continuously fill them up. So, like I said, you know, like you have to find the right moment to, you know, we could take that money, invest in ourselves. You know, we could start a business and say, I'm going to bet on myself. I'm gonna gamble on myself and my actions and my choices, and hopefully I'll succeed. Or you can say, I'm going to invest it for my children. Now let it grow. And I mean, there's a high likelihood, high degree of likelihood that it'll grow to be great and something they can use. And by the time that they need to use it, they'll have a lot of opportunities open up for them, just for the simple fact that they have it available. And that's not something that we can guarantee if we were to like start our own business, it could happen. It could happen to an even greater degree than taking that money and investing it. But, you know, you have to kind of pick and choose. And that's why we think that timing is really important in terms of investment
Nikita:Something I'm sure a lot of parents are wondering is how to go about teaching their kids about this stuff. How do you teach your own children about finances? And when did that start?
Natasha:It starts from the very beginning. And it's incorporated into your daily life because kids learn best by looking at other people. Kids learn best by looking at what their parents are doing. So it's not just us telling them this is what you need to do, but it's us showing them, how are we spending our money? When we go into the store to shop, how are we shopping? Are we choosing the most expensive things or are we choosing something that might be on sale? And we are explaining that to our child. Are we always eating out or are we also cooking at home? And there are times when we'll be out shopping and we'll be like, well, we're gonna eat at home today because we already have food made at home. Like, yes, we could stop at the restaurant, but we already have food at home. So as soon as we get home, we can just have access to that and we can save money. So it's through the everyday conversations that we start to teach them. And then also books are one of the great ways to teach about any topic. And so we read with our kids every night and we incorporate finance books into that as well.
Damian:And they're young. They're six and below.
Natasha:Yeah. We have a six year old and a one year old.
Nikita:Oh, great. What are some of your favorite finance books for children?
Natasha:Some of our favorite finance books for children, there is one by Tiffany Aliche called"Molly Moore". And that one's really great because it's talking about the kid on her birthday and getting all these presents and then her not having anyone to play with it because there's too many presents in the room. Everyone had to go outside. And so she's kind of learning that lesson of, it's not just about the things we have, but it's about the people who are around us too. And how can we share what we have as well? And then another one that we like is called"King Kyron's generational wealth building activity book", and it has like word search activities and like fill in the blank, all these different little things that our six year old really loves. And there's some stuff in there that is above his level, but he really loved that book. And he's like, mom, can you make me one of those?
Nikita:I love that.
Natasha:And so like any little books like that, that we can find, we like to share with him
Damian:Earlier, whenever we were talking about introducing our kids to this, we also do things like call'em over, when we're working on the spreadsheet or we're, you know, doing our work, like our, our work to improve our finances. We'll be like, look what we're doing. This is a spreadsheet and, you know, you type in a number here and, you know, the formulas will change all these other numbers. And that's how we track our finance, you know, just so he sees there's this thing that exists. And I mean, obviously he's not gonna understand it, but he'll know it's there. And it's an available tool
Natasha:And you never know what they're gonna pick up on.
Nikita:Yeah. So the plan is for him to be fully proficient in Excel by the age of 10. Right?
Damian:I think he can do it. I think he can do it.
Nikita:Do you have any resources that you use or you plan on using to teach your children about finances?
Natasha:I think we've mentioned some of them, the books that we have talked about already, and then we have some other books as well. I can't remember the title of all of them, but, uh, they are books that are tailored towards children on how to make a million dollars, how to save and invest. And these things do exist. So if you search on a bookstore website, then you'll be able to find some, and those are some of the things that we're gonna be sharing with him. And like one of the things he he's really into art. And so he has made all of these different art paintings. And so we've talked about, well, you know, what you could do with those art paintings, you could set them up outside and you could put a price on them and you could sell them. And so he's getting these ideas of, I can create my own businesses as well. So we, we share in that way as well.
Damian:His current thing is to bring rocks from school home, and his plan is to sell them. He's trying to find, you know, a gem and he's just bringing random rocks and he thinks he's gonna sell'em.
Natasha:He thinks they're valuable.
Damian:He's really looking for those. He's looking high and low.
Nikita:Got a little entrepreneur on your hands. That's awesome. So to wrap up our conversation, I want to end with this last question and I want each of you to answer it. How would you describe your financial philosophy?
Natasha:This is a really good question. And one that Damian and I have both been talking about recently, and my inspiration comes from an author named Michael Pollan. And Michael Pollan wrote this book titled"In Defense of Food". And he was also involved in this documentary called"Food Inc." And it's really about like what type of foods we should be eating. And he summed up his philosophy on food in seven simple words. He said,"eat food, not too much, mostly plants". And for whatever reason, that pops up in my head when I was thinking about, well, what is our financial philosophy? What is our way of approaching finances? And so we came up with seven simple words as well, and they are"spend money, not too much, invest wisely". And we feel like that encompasses the purpose of money. So the first part of that is spend money. Like the purpose of money is for you to spend it. So yes, we are going to spend this money. And then the next part kind of keeps it all in balance. Not too much, like we're gonna spend money, but we're not gonna spend too much of it. We're also going to save it and we're gonna invest it. And that's where the last part comes in, invest wisely. And you wanna invest in things for growth, invest in things that have long term growing power. And so that's our financial philosophy spend money, not too much invest wisely.
Nikita:I love that.
Damian:And you, you asked us, you asked me to answer as well, and I'm going to show you the power of having a good person on a team and being a member of a good team. And just say,"ditto" We've been talking about this for so long that it's how hard to decouple our thoughts.
Nikita:That's fair- I experience that, too.
Damian:Yeah. And we're so similar in the way that we approach it, that, you know, Natasha will come up with a catchy phrase, like"spend money, not too much, invest wisely". And I'm like,"oh yeah, I like that". So I really like that. And I think that really is a good summary of my approach as well.
Nikita:Thanks for tuning in, we hope you enjoyed this podcast. Please rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. We hope you all have a great week and as Natasha and Damian say,"let's make green together.