Money Mentors And Financial Freedom (with Dr. Paris Woods)

Financial freedom gets thrown around like a buzzword, but we’re not interested in vague promises. Dr. Paris Woods joins us to redefine it as agency: having control over your time, your labor, and your choices, with money as the tool that makes your life possible. That one shift changes how you budget, how you say yes or no to debt, and how you plan for the future without feeling trapped. 

Paris shares her own path from growing up in poverty in St. Louis to earning a full scholarship to Harvard, then following the “do everything right” script and still ending up broke and in debt. We talk about what she had to unlearn, how a powerful visioning exercise helped her write The Black Girl’s Guide to Financial Freedom, and why financial education is essential for real economic mobility. We also dig into why so many families stay silent about money, how early kids absorb money habits, and how honesty can break the shame cycle. 

You’ll hear practical personal finance strategies through Paris’s make, manage, multiply framework: earning, money management, and investing basics like 401(k) match, Roth IRA goals, index funds, automation, and the long game of compound interest. We also name the traps, especially how easy it is to slide into debt at 18 and how “greed plus speed equals broke” applies to today’s investing noise. If you want to become a better money mentor for younger people while building your own financial independence, this conversation will give you both the mindset and the next steps. Subscribe, share this with someone you talk money with, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

Resources:

• Instagram: @AuthorParisWoods
• Dr. Paris Woods' Website
• Freedom Ladder

Transcript

Redefining Financial Freedom

Nikita 0:00

Hey Through Decade Community, I'm your host, Nikita Wolfe, and today I am excited to introduce our guest, Dr. Paris Woods. She's a best-selling author, financial educator, and social impact leader focused on helping individuals build clarity, confidence, and long-term financial freedom. Her work bridges personal finance, education, and equity, focused on practical tools to help people make smarter money decisions earlier. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Dr. Paris Woods 0:41

Yeah, I'm super thrilled to be here.

Nikita 0:43

Okay, so Paris, whenever people hear financial freedom, they often think that it's just about making more money. How would you define it?

Dr. Paris Woods 0:52

I yeah, it's so interesting. I feel like financial freedom in some ways is an overused word. Um, and I also want to redefine it. For me, when I first started thinking about my own financial journey, I was reflecting on sort of this concept of being our ancestor's wildest dreams. And so I initially defined it as having complete control over my labor and my time, right? So I am doing work because I love it. I'm not tethered to a job, I'm not shackled to debt and having to work because I have to, but because I want to, and having then the freedom to spend my time how I like and sort of pursue my dreams and do things that are fun and exciting. So a big piece of it is the agency. And I want students to and grant, you know, young adults to have the freedom to say, okay, here's the lifestyle that I want to live. And money is not a constraint. So finances aren't preventing me from living the lifestyle that I want to live. And in its sort of most extreme version, finances are the enabler. So because of the financial choices that I'm making, I have more freedom to live this lifestyle. So money is the tool, freedom is the destination, and that's how I define financial freedom.

Nikita 2:04

I

From Poverty To A Wake Up Call

Nikita 2:05

love that perspective and the way that you kind of described that basically. So, what first made you passionate about economic mobility and financial education in general?

Dr. Paris Woods 2:16

I grew up in poverty. Um, I'm from the Midwest, grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, on the north side of the city, uh, to a single mother who I would say, um, despite what she lacked financially, was full of so much hope and encouragement. And she really found motherhood to be her great calling in life. So I would say I had a pretty good childhood, but the financial piece had a lingering impact on then the subsequent choices and ultimately the mistakes that I made financially. So I was lucky enough, I was a smart kid and you know, um, did really well in school. So I got a full scholarship to Harvard and, you know, so went there for undergrad and was sort of checking all the boxes, right? I'm like being a good A plus student in life. And unfortunately, that also meant sort of following some of the normal playbooks about money. So I opened credit cards to buy my school supplies and get that laptop, right? And as soon as I graduated, I went to the car dealership with my mom and bought a brand new car all on loans. I went to graduate school on loans, right? And so by the time I turned 30, I had this wake-up call. I'm thinking, okay, I did everything I thought I was supposed to do, and yet somehow I'm broke and struggling and I'm in debt, and the money piece isn't fitting the narrative or at least the vision that I would have of what I want my life to look like. So I had to go on my own financial freedom journey. I had to unlearn all the things I had been taught about money that were not working for me, and I had to learn some new principles and new approaches that helped me experience more freedom in my life. So that by the time I got laid off, which happened to me in the pandemic, I got laid off from my very first six-figure job, right? And um luckily, because of the financial journey that I had been on, it became more of a blessing than a curse. And I used that time, I finished my doctorate and I wrote a book and I sort of got to travel and had a lot, had it was like a really fun experience for me. And so I decided to write this book and document that journey that I had been on, all the mistakes I made, what I wish I did differently, and then how I was able to recover. And that became the Black Girl's Guide to Financial Freedom, me just being really transparent about my own experience in life. Um, and I think that launched sort of this initial interest in like economic mobility for myself getting out of poverty and then the lessons that I heard the long the wrong way. Um, and then you know, I spent 20 years working in college and career access, and I got to watch generations of young people sort of go through and make a lot of similar mistakes. And it just, I was like, listen, like I'm gonna write the student adaptation of this guide, and I'm gonna now dedicate myself full time to helping the next generation. Um, avoid mistakes, recover quickly, right? Like, we got to get this money piece of the equation right. And there's it's impossible. We're always telling kids all you gotta do is go to school, and then all you gotta do is get a good job. But if you don't have the financial education, then economic mobility really isn't accessible at all, right?

Nikita 5:14

It's so true. It's so true. We used to to have our core demographic, we required that people made less than 75,000 a year as an individual or 150 as a household. And we realized that there were a lot of people who were maybe single and making 85 or 105 or whatever it was, but they still spent every dollar, couldn't make ends meet, didn't have the skills, and it's like they're not um, they're not making so much money that they're immune from issues, and I don't know that there that even really exists necessarily amongst us common people at least. Um but I wanted to ask, did you always know that you wanted to write a book, or was the pandemic kind of that I should say the pandemic and the subsequent layoff, was that kind of a catalyst to pursuing that as a dream?

Dr. Paris Woods 5:58

Yeah, I so I will say as a little kid, I was definitely a little short story writer and poet, you know, poem writer. And my mom, thank goodness, she kept a little scrapbook. So I have all my little stories and things. Um, so I always have enjoyed writing and probably thought maybe one day I'll write a book, right? Like most of us. And the catalyst actually came. I was in a program that did a visioning exercise. And I talk about this in the book because it so changed the game for me, where I had to envision, and it was a philanthropy program. So we're saying, okay, as a result of my investments, what is changing about the world? What does my ideal day look like in 20 years? So I really like took this activity to heart and um came up with this 20-year vision, and it's far enough away where you can really just imagine anything, like, oh 20 years, whatever. Um and the book showed up. And so one of the things that I envisioned was that I had written a book that made a significant impact on my community and resulted in this sort of financial freedom um outcome. And so for me, that was the clarity that said, okay, well, if that is supposed to exist 20 years from now, there's probably an action step related today that you should be taking. So that was the catalyst. Um, and I that that activity was so powerful for me that it is in both books. I in both books, we have a dream chapter, and I invite folks to do a similar activity. Um, because you know, it's almost like starting a journey without a destination in mind. Like you have to come up with your own vision for what financial freedom looks like and means for you, something that's aligned with your personal values, something that really resonates and excites you to make changes in your finances. You shouldn't do things because we told you to, or because there's a checkbox, or because you feel like you should, like, that won't stick. Um, it's much more powerful to have your own compelling vision that is pulling you into these different

The Vision Exercise That Changed Everything

Dr. Paris Woods 7:46

choices. And that's exactly what happened for me.

Nikita 7:49

That's amazing. And that's so true. We talk about it in our curriculum too. If if you don't define your goal, you're not gonna reach that goal. You have to write it down and work towards it and and you know, build out the steps to get there. So that's a great way of putting

Why Families Stay Silent About Money

Nikita 8:01

it. So a lot of people grow up not really having real conversations around money in their families. Why do you think financial silence is so common in so many families?

Dr. Paris Woods 8:12

There is so much shame around money. I think most of us probably have some guilt over something that we did, whether we knew better or not. Um, and so it's almost a taboo in our society to talk about money. And this is something that I'm hoping to break down barriers about. Um, one of the ways that I set up the student's guide to financial freedom is having reflection questions at the end so that we can invite conversation. I think it's so powerful. You know, we've heard of folks transparently sharing salaries with one another and realizing they're leaving money on the table and having that become the motivator to then go and ask for more. And this types of this type of transparency is so powerful across the entire make, manage, multiply spectrum, which is why I teach about making money, managing money, multiplying money. Um, and so I want folks to have more transparent conversations. And it's so powerful because this is like the antithesis of what we've been taught to do, right? Like some people even think it's impolite to talk about money. Some of us have been raised that way. Um, for folks who are parents, I would remind you that the young young people are pick, they're learning about money. Like I'm talking about four or five, six, seven-year-olds are learning about money from observing us. So if we don't give language to what we're doing, then we're teaching implicitly where we could actually choose to be more explicit. So the reason why we don't talk about money is society, it's taboo, it's part of our culture, and that's something we gotta change.

Nikita 9:38

Yeah. And you talking about how, you know, a five, six, seven-year-old is watching what you're doing with your money. I think I heard the stat that like most of your money psychology is actually set by like the age of nine. Yep. Which is kind of insane because I I feel like probably the vast majority of parents aren't really having intentional money conversations, but you're right. If it's not uh explicitly conversed about, then it is implicitly uh, you know, learned about and understood. So your books um do a great job of intentionally centering communities that are typically left out of traditional financial advice. Can you talk about why that was so important to you?

Equity And The Limits Of Hand Me Downs

Dr. Paris Woods 10:14

Yeah, you know, I did some research in undergrad, um, and I was curious about how financial values get passed down. And, you know, one of the things that I noticed, I mean, we're always inheriting things, right? So I'm a big believer that communities of color, that folks from low-income backgrounds, et cetera, inherit a ton of generational wealth and navigational capital. There's so many things that we inherit. Um, unfortunately, because of the systemic barriers that have prevented our ancestors from accumulating wealth or sort of stripped wealth from those communities who were able to accumulate, we're also sort of inheriting this sort of generational lack legacy around restriction. Um, and so we have to, I want to explicitly counter that. And so, you know, if we're not getting the information from parents and grandparents and more importantly, getting money passed down because, you know, you can't budget your way out of poverty, it actually requires cash, like actual cash infusions. Then, you know, the only way to counter that is through additional knowledge and also through, you know, systemic interventions. And so I'm not a believer that as an individual we can fix every single problem, um, which is why I sort of do work in the education space and do systems change work, but I'm also not a believer that waiting for somebody to save you is gonna work. And, you know, like we're the ones we've been waiting for. You have the ability to make changes today that will affect your financial life tomorrow. And I want every young person and every parent, every family to have the tools in order to do that for themselves.

What A Real Money Mentor Does

Nikita 11:44

So something that really stood out to me in what you wrote about was the idea of adults becoming money mentors in everyday life. So, what exactly is a money mentor? And do you need to kind of have your financial stuff in order in order to be one?

Dr. Paris Woods 11:58

Heck no. You know what? I so being a money mentor involves having the willingness, the courage to tell the truth. And what I find, especially when I go and speak to high school audiences, college audiences, so much of what is in the social space, in the zeitgeist when it comes to money, is these influencers who are lying, first of all, um, or sort of just telling like the fanciest, sexiest, here's how I got rich, and da-da-da-da. Right. And so we need a counter narrative that is um steeped in truth. And I think part of the reason why a lot of adults don't want to talk about money is because they feel like, well, I messed up. And what I can tell you from telling my story is that young people find like there's so much more respect. Ears are open, you could hear a pin drop when you start to tell the truth about what went wrong. That's maybe even more powerful than what went right. Here's what I did wrong. Here's what I heard that I learned wasn't true. Here's what I wish I could have done differently. I think that as opposed to being the authority on high telling people what to do, that doesn't work. That's what most adults are trying to do. It doesn't work, it doesn't work for the developmental stage of being young where you're trying to chart your own path and someone's telling you what to do. It makes you just very, very prone to want to either avoid or do the opposite. This is how brains work, right? Um, but telling the truth, I mean, that's interesting. Oh, tell me what you messed up. Oh, tell me the tea. You know what I mean? So if you want to be a money mentor, I would start there. I would say, okay, what are some lessons you had to learn the hard way? Things you would actually feel shame about. Like I shed a tear, I shed more than a tear when I wrote this book because there was it almost healed part of my journey being able to talk about the mistakes, things that I was so ashamed of, writing it down in the book. Felt good for me, and then it reaches audiences because of the authenticity. So that would be my encouragement to folks. You already are a money mentor, people are taking advantage of what they see you doing, especially if you're a parent. Um, so let's be intentional about it. Let's tell the truth and let's meet folks where they are with authenticity so they become a reliable, trusted partner. And hopefully, as young folks get older and start to realize maybe there's some wisdom here, maybe I do want to listen to you that can come back to you and be able to have these authentic, open conversations about money over the course of a lifetime. That's the real goal.

Nikita 14:15

Yeah. So, how could everyday adults, like if you have older siblings or cousins, teachers, managers, all of those people, like how can they help young people build healthy money habits?

Dr. Paris Woods 14:26

Yeah.

Make Manage Multiply Without The Hype

Dr. Paris Woods 14:27

Um, I would say we could do something in each of the make, manage, multiply categories, right? So, first of all, talking about how you make money. Like the world is full of careers that folks have never heard of, and you're probably in a career that you didn't even know existed. So just telling the truth about what it looks like to go to work every day and make money and like open up transparency about that. Um, on the manage side, this is where like all the debt mistakes that I made come in. Like, how was I mismanaging money? We know manage like managing money, I've described as like a really simple, we're just trying to spend less than we earn, create a savings cushion, and then start investing for the future. That's money management. If you can automate it, create friction, make it hard to do the things you don't want to do, make it easy to do the things you do want to do, right? That that's the key. Um, the money part is simple, it's the mindset part that's really tricky. And what does it look like? How does it feel when you have to say no to yourself? Or how does it feel um like a lot of low-income students actually supporting family members and folks are asking them for money? If you become the first in your family to graduate, you become the first in your family to make it to the middle class. There's some tough conversations ahead of you, right? And so being transparent around what's happening mentally when you're managing money, what's been hard, talk about the impulse of spending, talk about the systems you had to set up to trick yourself into doing the right things, right? Um, and then the multiply piece, I think this is the hardest because there's so much misinformation about what investing is, how it works. I'm half the time adults want to help their kids and they don't know how to help themselves. So I would say on the money mentor side, educate yourself on real, it like the the basics of investing, um, the simple path to wealth. I um talk to folks about, you know, investing in index funds, tax advantage accounts, investing in index funds as the simplest path to investing. And sort of how do you how do you ignore all the noise in the market around fast cash? And um, you know, a phrase I like to repeat that folks can put in their pocket is greed plus speed equals broke. So if you think, oh, I'm about to make a lot of money and I'm about to make it really quick, you're about to get broke really quickly. And a lot of what folks are out here talking about when it comes to investing is that, right? Is something that is fits that formula as opposed to the long, slow, uh, steady burn of building wealth over time. So I would say for money mentors, educate yourself first. You probably need to know this as much as the young people, and then repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. Create a broken record to counter all the misinformation that is so, so rampant in this space right now.

Nikita 17:04

Yeah, that's so true. I I have a handful of friends like you've been sharing that. I'm like, yeah, that's that is exactly what happened. You said it was greed plus speed equals speed.

Dr. Paris Woods 17:16

Yep.

Nikita 17:16

All right. That's gonna stick with me. So for listeners who feel like nobody mentored them, how can they break that cycle and become the person helping?

Dr. Paris Woods 17:27

Yeah. Um, you know, it's helpful, first of all, to like folks love to see you building from where you are. So part of it is like creating the transparency around what you're up to if there's someone you're mentoring. Um, and then the other piece too is like getting a good resource. So obviously, my books have written to be sort of actionable, step by step, just do this. It doesn't have to be hard. You can figure this out. But you know, we live in a digital world. And I, you know, back in the day when I was growing up, I had to go to the library and go to the card catalog and try to find books and resources and people to help me. Resources are all around us. So I would even, you know, I Claude is my AI bestie. So I would say if you're trying to navigate this, I would go on to Claude and anything that feels really hard right now, like, oh man, I really need to make a budget. It's gonna take forever. Upload your upload your credit card statements, your debit card statements into Claude and say, can you help? Can you make a budget for me? What gaps do you see? Right. So, like use the tools in front of you and know that you have the power. Um, you have the power to learn and then to make different choices.

Debt Traps Waiting At 18

Dr. Paris Woods 18:38

Yeah.

Nikita 18:38

What is one thing that you wish every single person learned before they turn the age of 18?

Dr. Paris Woods 18:45

Uh, the pitfalls of getting into debt. The pitfalls of getting into debt. As soon as you turn 18, you can sign a student loan, you can open a credit card. Like the debt, the debt world is waiting with bated breath, waiting for you to turn 18 so that you can start to say yes. And, you know, these decisions have repercussions for decades to come. Every 18-year-old I know raises their hand when I do presentations and wants to know how to build credit, and so everyone understands that there's such a thing as credit, and I need to get access to it. And, you know, no one's talking about the traps that are waiting when it comes to debt. And I wish everyone had that on their minds. Wait, how do I avoid getting into debt? How do I maintain my freedom? How do I actually save enough money? I want every young person to raise their hand and say, How do I save enough money so that by age 30 I don't have to work anymore and I only do it for choice, like by choice? I'm only doing what I want to do by choice. Hello, right? And you know, with the way that compound interest works, time is on your side. Every 18-year-old has that as a possibility. Um, but we're not talking enough about that. We're talking to them about how to get into debt, and it's just such a shame. So that that's like my deepest wish in life. Um, and that's why I talk about financial independence in both books because I don't think we talk about it enough.

Helping Family While Securing Yourself

Nikita 20:05

So a lot of listeners are still figuring out their finances while maybe trying to support family or younger relatives. So, how can adults balance building their own health while still also wanting to help others that they love?

Dr. Paris Woods 20:19

Yeah, this is a big one. Um, I liken it to the instructions we hear when we're on the plane. Put your mask on first before you help other people. Um, and the reason I say this is because, you know, like my mom would have laid down her life for me. She would have given up any and everything. Um unfortunately, she passed away early. She died from cancer in her early 50s. Um, and yeah, which is, you know, I tell this, I write about this story as well because it's part of the motivation I have for anything in the future that you envision, there's an action step today. Like you literally do not know how much time you have. But for most folks, that won't be the case. And, you know, you the worst case scenario is for you to spend so much of your time and money pouring it into the young people around you that by the time they're in their 20s and 30s and the peak asset accumulation ages where they should be buying homes, where they should be accelerating their savings, etc., they're spending their money taking care of you, right? And a lot of folks, that's their my retirement plan is the kids. Nope. I want you, I want to flip that on its head, and I want you to know that the most benevolent thing you can do is to get your finances in order. Get your finances in order, get your budget together, make sure you're saving for retirement so that you can be a support to this young person as they grow up and have real financial needs, real opportunities that come up, um, as opposed to the directional arrow going the opposite way. So that's why I would say put on your mask on first, get your money together first, and then do the money mentor advice that we've been giving. Like be the supportive person, educate yourself so that you're not like my mom was with me buying that car. She was with me at the stores opening the credit card. Right. Like she, we're just she didn't know any better. She's trying to be helpful. So be the helpful adult. Be the person who has the knowledge to guide this young person through some really, really critical decisions that they're gonna get to make. Um, and make sure if you have those younger folks who are building those money habits and mindsets, um, that you're helping them build positive ones. Like that, I think, is the most valuable thing you can do for the young people in your care.

Automations And Catching Up Later

Nikita 22:23

Yeah. So for people who are millennials or maybe in their third decade of life, somewhere in that age range, what wealth building habits matter the most right now?

Dr. Paris Woods 22:33

Get out of debt, create a savings cushion, um, and then invest consistently. If you have a 401k at work that offers a match, you should be investing enough to get that match. If you qualify to open a Roth IRA, you should have one. You should be, I would even set a goal to see if you can max it out every year. That'd be a really good stretch goal. You can do up to $7,500 a year. That's like a pretty maybe that's a lot of money. See how much you can do. Can you do a thousand a year? Can you do $2,000? Can you do $5,000? Um, so those are the three things I would say will make the biggest difference for you in the long term is freeing yourself from debt because all the interest you're paying is taking you in the opposite direction, right? You're not making interest, you're paying interest. And so it's borrowing from your future self. So I would get spending under control so that you can get out of debt. I would get a savings cushion so that when emergencies come, because it's inevitable, whether it's a layoff, which is the biggest one, or just you know, a brute canal or something the car breaks down, to have a savings cushion to handle those emergencies and then start investing for the future.

Nikita 23:37

Yeah, one of the things that I find to be most helpful for me, because I'm in my early 30s now and I thankfully found third decade in my early 20s. So I've I'm starting to see the beauty of compound interest is just the consistency in investing. Whatever dollar amount you're able to, if you can remove the decision each month from doing it and have it just automated, that is a beautiful thing. And your future self will absolutely thank you. I feel like I could not be a bigger fan of automations. Um, so use them to your advantage. And yeah, it's it's great advice that that you come. So if somebody feels like they're coming to the game a little late, uh they haven't started investing or saving, and they're maybe nearing 30, 40, who knows, maybe more beyond that, what would you tell those people in that situation?

Dr. Paris Woods 24:29

Um, I love this question because first of all, comparison is the thief of joy, but um I would for if you're saying, oh, I'm late, I'm behind, I would say late for what and behind who. Because in reality, that the average American cannot afford a $400 emergency, is a paycheck away from being homeless, right? So um I would say have a reality check. Like remove the guilt, you're doing all right, you're right where everybody else probably is. And then let's set some reasonable goals. Um be don't become the person who can't handle the $400 emergency. So can you set a goal to save $400? Wow, that's progress, right? Now you're beating most Americans. Um, even set a goal to live. Here's a, you know, I have this um, I have something called the Freedom Ladder, which I love to get, I would love to give a copy to anyone who's listening. Um hit me up off the Paris Woods Instagram. I will send it to you. Um, as we're having this conversation, I'm like, this should be like a freebie that I just offer because it gives you some step-by-step um sort of benchmarks to where you can be. Yeah. But one of the benchmarks in our show notes if you can share it with me, that'd be perfect. Um, one of the benchmarks is to have a month's salary, a month of your expenses saved so that every month you're living on the money you brought in last month. So this gets us out of that paycheck to paycheck cycle. Um, and so I would say anyone who feels behind or sort of super worried, I would say get yourself into that position. Um, so we're beating now sort of the statistic of not being able to handle a $400 emergency or being a paycheck or two away from homelessness. If you can have a month's worth of your salary saved, then you are ahead of the majority and you can sort of celebrate and feel good about yourself. And then give yourself it sort of gives you the breathing room to set up these automations we're talking about, right? So automate saving, open up a savings account at a whole different bank, one that you can forget it exists, automate it going in there, automate those investments, automate the 401k, right? Um, make it easy for yourself to achieve the goals that you want and make it hard to do the things you don't want to do. So either folks are feel like they're behind because they haven't saved enough, or they feel behind because they're already in debt and it's having a really hard time getting out. Um, we can all we can set up some systems there too. So if you're like struggling with credit card debt, I would remove the credit cards from my wallet and I wouldn't even have it as a choice. I'm not gonna, you know, and my Amazon wallet. So I'm gonna spend cash. I'm gonna go on cash. I'm only gonna spend up out of my debit card. Like I'm gonna cut off any access to the behaviors that I don't want to continue. Um, so I would say that's another sort of lifestyle audit you can do. What are things that are make it easy for you to make hard decisions? We need to add friction there. And then what are the e the good decisions that you want to make that it's too hard to do manually and automate those, right? So make it easy to do the good things, make it hard to do the things you want to avoid.

Nikita 27:27

Yeah, that's uh um, I remember reading about that as a really helpful tool in the Atomic Habits book by James Clear.

Dr. Paris Woods 27:34

That's yeah, it's great. It applies to money, it's great, yeah.

Nikita 27:37

It sure does, yep.

The Transformation The Books Aim For

Nikita 27:39

So if a parent or mentor or listener buys this book for a young person, what transformation do you hope that it creates?

Dr. Paris Woods 27:46

I want a mindset transformation first and foremost. That's the way that I write. Um, because you know, part of it we talked about we've set our mindsets are pretty set from early on, and a lot of what we're doing is just automatic based on that early conditioning. So shifting our mindset about the role that money plays, what is possible in our lives, and how money can become a tool to enable that possibility is the biggest mindset shift that we can make. So, first and foremost, mindset shift for how to use money in a wise way, and then practical action steps. So, either avoiding debt, getting out of debt, making more money, because we don't talk enough about how to make money and you cannot budget your way out of poverty. It requires money. We got to talk about how to make it, how to make more while doing work that you love. Um, and then setting up the automations for money management, and then actually knowing how to invest and build wealth for the future. That full cycle is covered in the book, and it's not a long book. This is like, it's not, it's not boring, it's not meant to be a textbook, it's not meant to be inaccessible. Like, I believe we gotta make money simple, easy to implement, you know, these strategies easy to implement, and you're gonna walk away feeling like, okay, I can do this. I know what to do, I know how to do it, and actually feel motivated in order to take the action steps.

Nikita 29:03

Yeah, absolutely. If somebody listening wants both financial freedom for themselves and to become a better example for the next generation, where should they start this week?

Dr. Paris Woods 29:15

I would definitely get a copy of either book, um, The Black Girl's Guide to Financial Freedom or The Student's Guide to Financial Freedom. I would also um follow me on social media. I've like been investing in creating some really fun, engaging videos if you want sort of some visual representation of the things we've been talking about today. Um, author Paris Woods is a great place to plug in. And then like join the conversation. So like have like pick up the phone and find one person. It could be your best friend. It could be like have a conversation about money and say, hey, I, you know, like when I was getting out of debt, I had a best friend and we were, I said, let's get out of debt together, girl. And so what do we do? We found cheap, free things to do with our time. We found, you know, it's like we're supporting each other. So educate yourself and then find some sort of community, some person to be transparent and open up this conversation around money with. I think all of those are things you could execute on the next 48 hours. Go ahead and do it. Take off, tick the boxes.

Nikita 30:14

Yeah, I think everyone is scared to be the first person to have the conversation about money, but I feel like a lot of us feel relief whenever somebody brings it up and you get to have that taboo, quote unquote, conversation about money. I I've found myself in a funny place where because of my line of work, I think that I am the friend who will just who everyone knows they can actually ask the financial questions to, but it's it's like a a fun role to play because I know these are conversations that that they're not having elsewhere. And um, it's very, I don't know, it's freeing, I think, to actually have these open dialogues around money.

Dr. Paris Woods 30:50

So I love it. Same. Put writing a book about money. I'm like, give that a try. Everyone will start telling you all their things. I love it. I know everybody's business now, and it's so fun. Um, but you're right, it is cathartic cathartic. Like folks love that they can finally say the thing to me, and I'm happy to listen.

Wrap Up And Where To Connect

Nikita 31:06

Yep, a hundred percent. Well, I really appreciate your time today. I think that you had a lot of really helpful insights and your books had actionable advice. I feel like this episode has actionable advice. I will include the link to your website, your socials, and that resource that you want to share in our show notes. Thank you. And thank you again so much for being here with us today. I appreciate your time.

Dr. Paris Woods 31:25

Awesome. Fun conversation. So thanks for having me.