1. How can we become comfortable talking about money?
2. How can we narrow the wealth gap that exists between men and women?
3. How can we increase our level of confidence in managing investments?
Women make better investors yet we lack the confidence to manage our investments. We also live longer than men but continue to experience a wealth gap that makes us vulnerable in retirement. So how do we fix this? How do we get women to be more comfortable talking about money and building wealth? In this episode, I sit down with Michele Baci, a savvy investor with a simple formula to help women become more confident in managing investments.
We hope you come away with the knowledge, tips, and resources to help you gain the confidence you need to build your investments and become financially independent.
Subscribe to HerCanvas today to get your answers to the questions that matter most to you, and ultimately, find the inspiration to live your best life.
1. How can we become comfortable talking about money?
2. How can we narrow the wealth gap that exists between men and women?
3. How can we increase our level of confidence in managing investments?
Women make better investors yet we lack the confidence to manage our investments. We also live longer than men but continue to experience a wealth gap that makes us vulnerable in retirement. So how do we fix this? How do we get women to be more comfortable talking about money and building wealth? In this episode, I sit down with Michele Baci, a savvy investor with a simple formula to help women become more confident in managing investments.
We hope you come away with the knowledge, tips, and resources to help you gain the confidence you need to build your investments and become financially independent.
Subscribe to HerCanvas today to get your answers to the questions that matter most to you, and ultimately, find the inspiration to live your best life.
Did you know that on average women live five years longer than men. This means that we need more money to retire comfortably. Yet a large percentage of us are still uncomfortable talking about money, continue to face a wealth gap compared to our male counterparts and lack the confidence to manage investments. So how do we become comfortable talking about money? How can we narrow the wealth gap that exists between men and women? And how can we increase our level of confidence in managing investments? We set out to answer these questions with the help of someone who has found a simple formula that works and who proves that you don't have to be a financial pro to build your investments.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:Hey, everyone, welcome to her canvas podcast, where we discuss the topics that matter most to women and help us find the inspiration to live our best lives. I'm your host[inaudible] today. I'm joined by Michelle paci. Michelle is a host of therapy roulette, a podcast which focuses on mental health in a comedic light. Michelle is also a, self-taught a savvy investor. She began investing in 2017 inspired by her decision to move cross country. By starting over in a new city, she was motivated to educate herself about investing and financial planning. She started investing with free apps that require as little as$1 to start investing and gradually worked up to opening several brokerage accounts with different goals in mind for each women make better investors. Yet we lack the confidence to manage our investments. According to a study done by Merrill Lynch. Women are as confident as men in most financial tasks like paying bills and budgeting. Actually it's 90%, 84% respectively. Yet that number drops to a whopping 52% when it comes to managing their investments. On top of that, women are just not comfortable talking about money in this same study. 61% of women were more comfortable talking about death than money. Ouch. Today we're here to change all of that. We'll be talking about the things women can do to get the confidence they need to manage the investments. Welcome to the show, Michelle. I'm so thrilled to have you on today. It's a pleasure to be here. That's a crazy statistic. You just threw out that we're more comfortable with death and talking about money. When I saw that study, I was like, okay, that is not good. We need to change. I luckily can say on the opposite way where I'm less comfortable talking about that. More comfortable talking about money too. I have to say I'm not comfortable talking about death at all, but I am comfortable talking about money. Um, maybe you can start by telling us more about your background and what led you to take charge of your financial planning.
Speaker 3:Sure. I am a writer and a up comedian and I've been hustling, working a lot of odd jobs in my professional life. I've only recently in the past year, uh, started working like a more regular full-time office job. So I was used to like juggling a waitressing gig or a babysitting gig, like kind of scraping together every month. And, um, when I moved cross country from New York to Los Angeles, I had been very frugal leading up to the I'd really like planned for the move. So when I got to Los Angeles, I was sitting in my new apartment and thinking like, Oh, I, I currently have a surplus of funds. And I luckily found a job immediately, a waitressing job. So I wasn't short of cash. Um, and so I was like, I have this extra money. I should learn how to make it work for me. I should start looking up how to invest rather than just sit on it in a savings account and hope that it lasts. I wanted to put it to good use because they had extra money on hand. And so just by reading internet articles and by starting a few accounts on free apps or very low cost apps, I was able to in real time learn how to invest with like dollar amounts, like under$10. You would see grow over time with these, uh, very easy to use, like very easy to educate yourself apps and I've become much more confident in the past three years, I started investing in 2017 and I've since tried to tell friends and my boyfriend's like, it's so easy to do you need is like the money that you don't need immediately, that you can stand to lose if you happen to lose on your investment. And if you can, you know, spare 10 bucks, you can get started. Yeah,
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I always say that. I think a lot of times, uh, by the way, that's great. That's a great story. I always, you know, uh, tell folks that, um, a lot of times they don't invest because they think that you have to have a lot of money to do it. And um, if you start with just a little whatever you can spend over time and in the aggregate that adds up, right. And when you think about compounding, you know, that, that, you know, it's like you're growing your money while you're sleeping. And like you said, um, you have to do it with money that you're okay to lose, right? So if it's$10 or$20, and as you go along and maybe get a better job or just have a little extra, then you can add to, you know, that, you know, to that amount,
Speaker 3:If you get like a, a hefty tax refund or get some kind of work bonus and you come into extra money, it's smart to tuck that away in an investment account and watch it grow over a year or two years, however long you plan to keep it there.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. So, um, let's dive into the questions. Um, the first question actually is to prompt. So the first question is how did you get into investing that's one? And then the second one is why did you start investing?
Speaker 3:I first got into it because I was doing decently well with money. Um, with my job, I was working in New York city as a nanny, and I had a bunch of different clients. I would nanny for. I kind of had like a steady weekly routine of, uh, nannying and getting paid on a weekly basis. And it was enough to cover my rent and groceries. And I had, you know, a couple extra hundred dollars or so every month. And I figured instead of just parking this in the savings account, my friends, um, I have, uh, like, you know, a pretty smart group of friends, I think who some of them wants to school for business. And they had recently been like talking about investing just whenever we would hang out kind of as like a side topic. And I was like, Oh, they must be investing. I should look into it. And so I did a little bit of internet research. I recommend NerdWallet. NerdWallet is a great financial website to learn about stuff like this. And from reading NerdWallet, I learned stash is a simple app to use. You can invest with like a couple dollars and acorns is a free app to use, or it might cost a dollar a month. So I started a stash account and acorns account investing like maybe$5 a month and paying$1 for the accounts. I was spending$6 on each of these accounts every month and watching my money grow in real time and adding to that, treating it like a game or some new skill, I was learning, I got really into it. And then after a few months of that, I progressed to like investing larger amounts of money, investing in more individual stocks and just doing more research learning as they went along and realizing like, as long as I had some money in savings and I had an emergency fund in case like I couldn't pay rent next month, then I could still invest whatever extra money I had that extra a hundred every month that I was luckily in surplus up.
Speaker 1:That makes sense that that's really affordable too. Like a dollar to pay a dollar to, you know, get, have an account and, and invest. That's pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 3:No, I was investing. Yeah, like less than$50 a month when I first started. And just that little amount would either grow or it would stay the same. Um, you could also like, it could go down, but you're not really losing much by investing$15.
Speaker 1:I agree. Now do do those, uh, like NerdWallet and stash. Do they have resources, like, do they guide you along?
Speaker 3:NerdWallet is like financial literacy website. They do research, um, on credit cards, investing bank accounts. So if you're looking up something related to finance in general, NerdWallet's really good. And up to date with that stuff, just to tell you what, what a bank or what investing platform might be right for you. And then staff is a good, a low cost app. I think it costs a dollar a month for the basic stash app where you can invest a few dollars and see how that money grows. And they have educational tools and they have like a little coach who can offer you advice based on the portfolio you're building. So they try to make it like appealing to beginning investors or people with no investing experience.
Speaker 1:Got it. Now, would you say how much time would you say you have to spend doing it? Like on each app,
Speaker 3:You could spend a minute doing it. You could spend like no time doing it. You could automate everything. So I would, as a nanny, I would like put the kids down for a nap or I would drop them off at their, their school. And then I would go on stash and deposit$5 and pick what sock I wanted to deposit that in. And that's it, it took a few minutes of my time. Got it.
Speaker 1:So, so for, for anyone who doesn't have a lot of time, they can't use that as an excuse that, Hey, I don't have time to do it. Anybody can actually make the time because you don't need that much time to get it done.
Speaker 3:Right. I mean, it, I think it helps to do some research, especially if you are investing a larger amount of money than$5. So do your research, but ultimately you're going to invest your money. It's either going to grow. You'll, it'll get reduced or it'll stay the same. Hopefully it grows over time. If you're parking it there for, for like a couple of months, a couple of years. Got it.
Speaker 1:I know now how true or do you have to lose right now? How often do you check in on your investments? Cause that's the other thing, I always say that once you invest your money, you just can't leave it in there and not, you know, monitor to see what's happening. How often would you say you check in to see how your investments are doing?
Speaker 3:It really depends on how much free time I have, because if I, if I'm not like as busy in my work day or my every like day to day life, I would check in more often, maybe once a week just cause I do, I do try to be like somewhat active. Whereas I'm watching my, watching my individual stocks and like checking my portfolio, seeing how it's doing. But for the average investor, I would say you can check in once a year. And that's plenty, especially if you're not doing high-risk moves, you're not investing in some brand new company that might fail, but like a more stable company like Apple or like a blue chip, that's been around a long time. Um, checking your investments once a year is like the average for most people. Got it. One
Speaker 1:Of the philosophies I have, um, since you were talking about what kind of stocks is I have this philosophy is that if you're using it and all your friends are using it and your friends, friends, and your family and everybody is using it, um, you don't need to be a savvy investor to know that that's a good stock. And especially if you do a little bit of your research and, and learn a little bit more about the company, um, a lot of times you can't go wrong. Right. Um, so I think there are tricks out there that can remove the intimidation factor where you think, Oh my gosh, I have to know so much about finance and investing to be able to jump in, but really you don't,
Speaker 3:It can be intimidating, especially like, as I look up articles based on certain stock picks, like there's so much breakdown analysis, there's a lot of like crunching numbers that goes, but I'm not crunchy any numbers other than, yeah. Is this a good company? Do I believe in their products? Do I know people using the product? Yes. Then I usually invest, like, I'll read a couple articles and get a general vibe of it. Like, do they think it's a good pick or are they not sure? And then I, I invest accordingly, but I don't, I don't sit there like developing my own charts. I just kind of like passively read a few things and have a good feeling. And I am investing like extra money. This is not money. I'm trying to send a kid to college with, or, you know, buy a house with this is like my, you know, money to play with and hope it grows. And if it doesn't grow, I'm young, you know, I'm 30 years old. I don't have a family to raise. So if I lose it tomorrow, hopefully it gets, I get it back at some point, but it's not a huge deal to me. So I'm like, I play with like a decent level of risk, but I also, I invest for the longterm. So I invest in a company and I, I want it to stay there for a long time.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. You brought up a good point about, you know, age and taking into consideration your level of risk based off of how old you are. So if you're younger, you can take on more risk. And if you're older than you need to be a little bit more conservative because you don't have as much time to make a correction, anything happens, right?
Speaker 3:You want to access that money, you know, when you're nearing retirement or for some purpose. Whereas for me, I'm like, ah, I have no idea what I'm going to use this money for probably retirement. I have, I have time to waste and play around with it.
Speaker 1:So the other question I have is when would you recommend, and this is a good segue because we were talking about age. When would you recommend someone to start investing?
Speaker 3:I would say today, like, just start today. Um, especially if you have like, like if you have$5 that you don't mind losing, so invest in one of the free apps or the low cost apps like acorns or stash, Robinhood is another free app and you can invest dollar amounts. You can buy fractional shares of companies. You don't have to buy a whole share of Tesla. You can buy a fraction of Tesla for example, or something like that. But ultimately you should start investing when you have the money to spare. So if you don't, if you have already a good emergency fund or any set away for like something that, that may happen, like say you get in a car crash, God forbid, or, you know, your house catches fire and you need$600 tomorrow. You have that in an emergency savings account somewhere. But if you have that money already tucked away and you have an extra, you know, surplus in your checking account, go ahead and invest that. Yeah,
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I was just thinking, as you were saying that, that, you know, even for like high school students, for instance, um, or if you're even younger than that, and you're getting a, uh, a stipend every month from your parents or from your, sometimes your aunt will give you some money or your grandparents would give you some money. It's actually a good idea to start.
Speaker 3:If you're a relative, gives you like a Christmas gift every year for a hundred dollars, it's smart to learn how to invest that a hundred dollars because it will become a hundred thousand, you know, at some point, if you keep with that plan of, Oh, I'm going to invest my a hundred dollar Christmas gift every year, pretty exponentially over time.
Speaker 1:Right. And I do believe that financial planning should be taught earlier. I think that it, we just miss an opportunity to start early, because like you said, if there are resources out there to help you actually manage the investments yourself, no matter how young you are, especially if you have money that, like we said, if it's not a big deal for you to lose a little bit here and there, and you're young, it's a good way to learn.
Speaker 3:I agree. You just want to make sure you do the research before you start. So you don't, uh, trust the wrong person or the wrong financial planner with your money, but that's why reading something like NerdWallet or some kind of legitimate financial resource can point you in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Okay. So let's get into, uh, some tips. So what are some of the actionable tips you can share with our listeners today to get them started?
Speaker 3:I would say, um, if you don't already automate your savings by tucking a certain amount away every month or so into your savings account, I would start doing that. It's an automatic transfer from your checking into your savings, whether it's, you know,$5,$10, small amounts that really adds up and then you can, Oh, I have this extra, whatever it is, amount of money in my savings account. I don't need it anytime soon, I could invest that at very low costs in an app or a brokerage account, like TD Ameritrade or E-Trade, they both have very low costs to opening a brokerage account. And then you can get started investing with, you know, very little amounts of money that you have.
Speaker 1:I agree. I believe automation is everything because you forget about,
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was doing research for this podcast and one of the tips is like the best way to raise capital is I automatically deducting from your paycheck and transferring it. That's the account money you don't even see missing from your paycheck. It's already taken out and put in some other account for you.
Speaker 1:Exactly. And when you budget, you don't even think about that money you budget with whatever is leftover.
Speaker 3:Think about like when you order pizza and you tip the pizza delivery person a few bucks, like, do you notice that$3,$5 is missing? No. So why not put that in an investment account and work for yourself while also tipping the piece of back office?
Speaker 1:I would say that is probably one of the biggest tips. If anybody should take anything out of this is automate, automate, automate your savings.
Speaker 3:Yes. And I would say also just read as much as you can or listen to YouTube videos, whatever your preferred method of learning or educational resources. There's so much out there on the internet. And if you're looking up something that you know is a real website with like practical advice, I don't know about, there's some weird subreddits out there. So I've known about those, but I'm definitely going off of like NerdWallet talking to your friends and family who, you know, are pretty savvy with money. That's a good way to get a lot of tips too.
Speaker 1:That's true. And I would like to add to that there are a lot of investment firms now, not a lot, but upcoming that, that are actually industry that I actually targeted towards women and women investors. One of them is Ellevest. I don't know if you're aware of Elvis, but they have some really great free resources. Um, yeah. And, uh, one of the things that I read about is, you know, how every time people tell you, don't go buy a cup of Starbucks. You need,
Speaker 3:If you become a millionaire,
Speaker 1:It's like, go get a Starbucks coffee. Okay. That is not going to build you. Buying Starbucks is not going to keep you from building wealth. You know, there's a lot needier, a lot of, uh, better advice out there, investment advice out there for other than don't buy coffee. I thought, um, I thought that was really great. And I would say podcasts to podcasts are great for, and there are so many about financial investment, including what we're doing today, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I've gotten into a few financial podcasts over the years. It does help build your knowledge, your confidence, just listening to other people's personal stories or other people's advice. Yeah,
Speaker 1:I agree. And one of the things I've I've done also is following them on social. Like I follow Elvis stones on Instagram and I also subscribe to their newsletter and they just have a wealth of information. So when you're bored or you have a few minutes to spare or you're standing in line at the grocery store, it's just so easy to pull it up and be like, Oh, I didn't know about that. And sometimes, uh, they give you the information in snippets, so it doesn't feel
Speaker 3:That's great. Yeah. I'd never have looked into L myself, but I know a family, like a cousin of mine uses it and I've heard really good reviews about it. So it's doing good work, especially if it's targeting women who might not be as confident to go to lunch and investing.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. Okay. So we're going back to our last question and we already touched on it because we were talking about, uh, some of the resources that, uh, women can tap into. So are there other resources and tools that you can think of that you can share with us today that women can tap into to gain that confidence they need to invest?
Speaker 3:Well, like you were saying with reading the newsletter from Ellevest or reading some of their snippets, like just reading that stuff when it comes across your desk or your inbox or the news headlines, when you see something about money, finances saving, why not read it, skim it, maybe it's stuff you already know. But even if you already know these things, it could reinforce it in your, in your mind. And you can, like, it could be the motivation for you to put it to work. I always try to read up on like, whatever finance topics I come across. And I would say, talk to people, open the conversation, especially if you are a female and you might have a lot of female friends or family members talk to them about money. Cause women don't talk to each other about money enough. And that's why we get paid 80 cents on the dollar for every dollar manmade. You have to be open about it because you're not going to learn anything. If you don't talk about it or ask questions,
Speaker 1:I completely agree. And the other thing I want to add to that is don't be afraid to ask, you know, I always say the worst that can ever happen is for someone to say no, but if you come, you know, to the table, armed with your data and, um, to support, why you asking for more money, it's highly unlikely. Someone's going to say no, and this, they just don't want to pay you. Right. It doesn't hurt to ask.
Speaker 3:It doesn't hurt at all. If anything, you'll open the negotiation.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Um, is there anything else you would like to add to that before we close out?
Speaker 3:I would say if you want to get into investing, do a little bit of research and then just start, like, if you have an hour in the morning before work, or, you know, if you have an hour of your day read up on how to invest and then the next day go do it, it doesn't take a lot of work. It doesn't take a lot of money and it's really going to help you in the long run. So stop waiting around and just do it.
Speaker 1:I agree. That's a great way for us to end. Well, thank you so much, Michelle, for joining us today and share your amazing insights on how we can gain the confidence we need to manage our investments. I really appreciate your time.
Speaker 3:Of course, it was my pleasure. So, so nice talking to you.
Speaker 1:Oh, before you go, if our listeners want to learn more, how can they get in touch with you? Cause you know, they might have some questions.
Speaker 3:Of course. Yeah. You can find me on social media. On Instagram. I'm at Michelle with what? L B a C I comedy, Michelle botchy comedy. And on Twitter, I'm Michele with one L E ACI, just Michelle bace. Um, you can listen to my podcast therapy relapse and just find me on the internet. I'm always happy to talk, you know, BME and we'll talk about money.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And I have to tell everybody, I did listen to your podcast therapy roulette, and I thought it was great.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you. I it's a new project and I'm super excited about it and I love the podcasting universe. So it's so nice to be a part of it.
Speaker 1:I do too. And hopefully, maybe the next time we'll have a session where we'll talk about what you do with your podcast, because I think it's really great what you're doing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That'd be awesome. And it's a blend of mental health and comedy trying to bring more of both into your life. So I love it. And it's been a great passion project so far, and I'm so glad you're doing your podcast too.
Speaker 1:Yes. It's a passion project. That's uh, was a long time coming. So it's exciting to be in this universe, like you said.
Speaker 3:Yes. And you're empowering women, which is one of the best goals out there.
Speaker 1:Absolutely my passion in life. But
Speaker 3:Thanks. Thanks,
Speaker 1:Michelle. Um, again, thank you for coming on. Hopefully we'll we'll have you on another time.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I hope to talk again soon. All right. Have a good one.
Speaker 4:Your investments does not have to be intimidating by educating yourself. Finding low cost apps to get you started taking your level of risk into consideration. Automating your savings, asking questions and making the time you'll be well on your way to gaining the confidence you need to build your investments. That's all for our show today. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, and Pandora. One to learn more about how to build your investments and wealth. Check out a personal finance coffee and cash blog post on gap. use.com. Also don't forget to connect with our Facebook community at gab news women to continue this conversation and many more along the way until next time, stay safe and find the inspiration to live your best life.
Speaker 2:[inaudible].