Working out the Kinks with Tash the Doula
My name is Tash and I have many roles in life. I'm a doula. An herbalist. An advocate. I'm also a wife, sister, daughter, aunt, and friend. My goal is to have some real and honest conversations I just want people to know you're not alone. Personally, I went through different situations in life, feeling like I was the only one having bad thoughts, and when I finally started opening up, I realize I was one of many. Follow me on Instagram: @tashthedoula
Working out the Kinks with Tash the Doula
Breaking Financial Barriers: Ahmad's Guide to Savvy Investing and Wealth Growth
Have you ever been held back by the fear of losing when it comes to investing? Well, you're not alone. Together with my good friend Ahmad, we break down those barriers that have historically kept many in the African American community from growing their wealth. In our latest episode, we take a deep dive into the significance of investment education, drawing parallels between nurturing your finances and investing in your health and lifestyle.
Navigating the investment world can be daunting, but with the right roadmap, anyone can become a savvy investor. This episode is a treasure trove of strategies for both beginners and seasoned players, covering everything from the convenience and lessons of platforms like Stash to the sophisticated offerings of ETRADE. Ahmad and I also shed light on the common missteps in trading – think FOMO and panic selling – and how a sprinkle of patience and a dash of discipline can cook up a solid financial future.
Looking forward, we lay out a feast of future investment opportunities, from the tangibility of real estate to the growth potential of stocks and Roth IRAs. Real-world dilemmas like land development and 401(k) consolidation are on the menu, served with a side of strategic advice. Whether you're a novice investor or looking to fine-tune your portfolio, this conversation is your invitation to join us at the table of financial empowerment.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Working Out the Kings of the Podcast. Today I'm with a good friend of mine, amad. We know each other for quite some time. I think we know each other since freshman year of high school. We've had the same homeroom like every single year, so it kind of made me feel safe to have this conversation with him about investing and what exactly that is. A lot of times I think, like people, people of color you know we hear the word invest and you know it's like what we're talking about money. I don't want to talk about this. So I thought why not just have a conversation with someone who just knows a thing or two about it and kind of help walk you into that situation? So, amad, hi.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:How you doing.
Speaker 2:Doing all right.
Speaker 1:Doing good, good. So what is your thoughts about that comment on just me Like, about you know, just being black and investing, and why it seems like we kind of get shut down from that experience?
Speaker 2:So, first and foremost, I thank for the African American. In general, we come from a line of hoarding we hold on to and we hold on to and we pass down and we pass down if at all possible. The notion of taking something that you have and putting it somewhere else with the either possibility or potential of losing it, is not something that people are willing to invest in, especially, again, african Americans. Additionally, it's a knowledge factor. If it's something we don't know, we won't touch it. If it's food that somebody made and you don't know what's in it, you're not going to eat it. If you don't know where something came from, you're not going to go to it. If there's a party and you don't know who's there, you're not going.
Speaker 2:That's just how we are. Naturally, knowing about a thing makes us more inclined to do it, and there's been a wave of that lately. But also, at the same time, there have been counterpoints that kind of made people also pull back because it's like, oh, maybe I don't want to do that, maybe I don't want to get scammed, I don't want to lose my money. And while I talk about, like you know, parties and parties, events, food and things like that, losing money is a lot harder on impact than any of those things. So, yeah, that's just that genuine fear of losing time because we work hard for our money.
Speaker 1:No, that's a real answer and I think you know, especially like you know in our history, not having things being forced not to happen, it's ending we finally get like a leg up and then you have the chance of losing things. It's just like I just worked as hard, I don't want to struggle, and that's, like, I think, another issue as well, that the fact that you know we kind of struggle. So what exactly is investing?
Speaker 2:So, first off. So investing is just like the like you take your money, you find something to put it in that has the potential of growing what you have into more than what it is at the initial put in. So you put in something in $2 and it comes out $10 later Great. Just like you want to go to the gym and you work out, you gain muscle. You've invested time in your body. You want to eat better, you want to have healthier, you have a lifestyle. You invest in eating healthier food. You invest in more time with the doctor, you invest in more time looking at yourself. This leads to a better, healthier lifestyle.
Speaker 2:We all of these things are just investing and you just need to take the time to take the knowledge and then also apply your money to the thing you want to invest in. So that can be, that can be a piggy bank method. A good friend of ours does that. Stocks, cd accounts, savings accounts, even real estate. There are multiple avenues. You can go through with research Right, I have to stress that with research, if you just if it's something you do blindly, you will get hurt. If it's something you go because you heard a word of mouth, you will get hurt Like. You may get a little lucky every now and then, but lightning no strike twice and when you plan with money you don't want to worry about lightning trying to strike it out.
Speaker 1:So, since you kind of mentioned, like the different ways that you could kind of make the money work for you, what exactly is the piggy bank method? What is it so?
Speaker 2:that's just your basic no savings account. You maybe got a bank account on the side somewhere, maybe you have a literal physical piggy bank or a folder, whatever. You take a little money, you stash away from yourself. Next paycheck, you take a little more money, you stash away from yourself. Maybe that's a dollar, maybe that's $5. Each time you grow it and you put more and more and more, oh so like a literal piggy bank.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Sounds like if there's something new.
Speaker 1:What is it?
Speaker 2:No, no, no. Like I said, a good friend of ours, your sister, explores this method to great interest and the point is basically to put over time, just build up something that you have Now. You could use the piggy bank method to actually invest. Maybe you're like I don't want to put the money I have up front right now into investing, so there's nothing wrong with saving money to the side to invest it in something later, because one of the bigger fears of investing is you just throwing money. You have right something at right now and seeing no return. And one thing you don't want to lose the money you're putting in. You don't want to lose the money's value that you put in and you also want to see your result faster. Sometimes that ain't always the case. That's more like a gambling mindset. You go to a casino, you put some money in machine or you go to a car table and your hope is that you walk away with more than you came in with. More often than not, that's not the case. So you don't want to treat investing like gambling. So with a piggy bank method, you can save up money and that's how you say all right, I want $200 to be able to do this. Put 50, 55, another 50 to the side. Eventually you have the money you need. It takes a little longer, but you also aren't losing the money that you're willing to put towards it.
Speaker 2:So CD accounts is basically like a savings account you can't touch. The purpose of these is that they have a higher interest yield than a normal savings account and that you put it some money. You may put $300 in a bank and for three, six, 12 months you can't touch that money. After that period ends, you get you like you're able to access that amount again and you get the additional interest that was on it onto it. So like it might be 10%, let's say one's 10% interest. That's being kind, being kind. You throw $300 in, you wait, you wait, you wait that time period and let's say you get $330 back. It only seems like like oh, like you waited all that time for $30, but at the same time it's like it's money you work touching. You couldn't do anything with it.
Speaker 1:It's a little more at the same time, money you didn't have to really work for either.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and then you can just take that $330. And if you want to throw it in a CD account again, wait that $330 becomes something else. The whole point of all of this is to keep manifesting interest Real estate a little more complex. That's buying property going to tug, that's a whole other thing. But typically you want to do that with either a group of people you are confident in, business-wise close friends, or yourself. There's a great deal that goes into it Finding properties, renovating properties, viewing the market timing and like trying to renovate them to get sold or to build one up to rent Right. These can be extremely profitable things. There are also extremely time consuming. So if that's not something for you, if you don't have the initial money to both put into that investment in the time, real estate might not be for you. But if it is, it can work out really well.
Speaker 2:And then we have the most basic, the one all our parents know about, the one that they might even advise the most, as a savings account. Savings accounts just have flat interest rates. You put money into it every month across the year. A little more goes in and it just keeps building up and it's kind of like a combination of a CD account and the piggyback method. You just gradually put in and you get more for and you get more for doing so.
Speaker 2:It's a lot slower. The interest rates are usually a lot lower. However, there are a lot of banks that have initial introductory interest rates and stuff like that. It takes a little research to find them, but banks are always kind of doing little deals here and there. They want your money, they want to invest your money and, more importantly, they want to invest your money to hold your money, because that's how our entire system of credit loans and all of that works. If they don't have money to hold on to from AKA, like our savings accounts and stuff, they can't do the things they need to do. So they're willing to pay you to do those things, which is basically the entire system.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay. So if someone is like super green but they want to invest, how would someone start doing that? Because I feel you can go the route of having like a person who handles your account. I can't think of the main job title, that is, the finance manager or financial advisor, finance manager, financial advisor, finance broker, all of those things.
Speaker 1:However, I do know, if you have one, if you're doing things, I say, on an annual rate, then they get like a percentage of what your money is. So in the long run it can be helpful if you have no idea what you're doing but you're still kind of losing money because you're paying someone to do this for you. So if you wanted to do this by yourself, what would be the easiest route to do so?
Speaker 2:Let's see the initial. I would say if you're trying to do this absolutely by yourself, start with the internet. How to invest? Look on YouTube, check out posts online they will. They're all pretty generally helpful. I can't really give one person or the other, but they typically get you started on kind of like the same tidbits of our conversation. This right here can literally just be the bedrock of the start of someone going how do I invest and how do I start investing? It's just that easy, yeah, and some people don't even realize it, but a lot of their jobs they're already investing and they don't even know it Because they have a 401k yeah, a lot of people actually don't realize 401k is literally stock investment.
Speaker 2:You are actually paying a company that your job has set up basically finance brokers or financial advisors to invest your money and stocks long term that you can't touch for years.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's okay. Well, yeah, so because I mean I never really thought about that personally until like maybe a couple of months ago, because I was just like you know, you know your job and you know if your job provides a 401k is there. You know you get the little you know letters in the mail. I have one right now that I'm kind of looking at. That I just got because my company's going through all types of things, so they just like hey, we're swapping companies, just to let you know.
Speaker 1:But you don't really think about it because it's one of again, you don't touch it, you don't really see it, so you don't really think about it.
Speaker 2:Fun fact, you can even tell. You can even contact the people at your 401k and tell them how you want to invest and even things you want to invest in. They have a standard slate, this and this and that, but you can actually have actual conversation with them and say, hey, I know you're doing like a balanced because they're like all kind of little systems you like oh, like I'm younger, so I can afford to say, hey, be aggressive with my investments. Or like, all right, this year I see the stock market is not looking a little well, so do balance. Do balance investments with my investments and they will do that.
Speaker 2:But people don't know that because it's just kind of like something that happens during insurance time you sign a paper or you don't sign a paper. It just kind of carries over, depending on your company. You tell them how much you want to invest or you just meet them at whatever one gives you the most money long term and then you ignore it. It's just something that comes out of your paycheck. It's very important, however, especially in our current environment, that you actually know that you have those tools available to you. And if you don't know, are you unsure? Reach out to your HR department or your finance or someone in your finance department, they will answer your questions. They honestly look forward to answering your questions because they look at Excel spreadsheet all day and they would love to talk to people.
Speaker 1:So talking about like aggressive investments and stuff like I know there's these companies, or like startup companies and they're, you know, getting their way and people go oh, I agree with this technology. I want to put a whole bunch of money down. Might not be the smartest thing to do, or it could be the smartest thing to do if you really know what you're talking about. If someone is just starting exactly I've always heard you know you started with like the what is the S&P 500? Or something like that. I can be wrong, but what is the easiest way to invest where you know that your money is not going to go out the window? Okay, so, first of the easiest way to invest.
Speaker 2:Do not do not thanks for that earlier but do not go with the hype, do not go with the startup company. While they are worth, while they can potentially be worth all things it takes, it usually takes a while for them to get off the ground. So that's money just kind of sitting there. And so you know, it's a little bit of a money, just kind of sitting there. And the thing about stocks is that they can be affected, just like someone's popularity, like somebody can. One bad rumor, one thing about misinformation, one mess up, and you can lose a ton of money in a day, depending on if you're like a day trader or a normal investing trader, so someone just starting out. First off, you need to decide the type of trader you wanna be. Do you just wanna put a little money in, let it ride? Do you wanna actively every day, sit there, like maybe like eight o'clock in the morning, you start when the stock market starts and you look and you want, like you're spending money buying shares, trading shares or do you wanna be a mix of both of those things, someone who just gradually looks at the market, puts some money in, waits for something to build and then sells and then buys again, or and someone who puts a little in and lets it slide. And to say what I just said, that goes back to what you asked about what's aggressive investing. Using 401k, for an example, you tell your company I want you to invest in aggressive stocks. This means they're gonna put money, some of your money towards stocks that don't inherently pay you over time we'll get to that in a second but rather stocks that just are like rapidly growing, that they can sell, rebuy, sell, rebuy, sell, rebuy and basically this is supposed to help your 401k portfolio or, for example, if you're using it for your own to grow faster so you can do other investments. A balanced investment mixes that with growth investment. These are called dividend stocks. Now, dividend stocks are my personal favorite. I tend to like, if I'm telling anybody invest in the stock market, I will tell them go for those. Basically, you put money into a stock, don't touch it, don't do anything with it, and you just let it stay there. Just like I said the thing about banks with savings accounts where they'll hold our whole entire loan business banking program.
Speaker 2:Life, as we know it, is dependent on money being in the bank. Companies invest in you for investing in them and they will pay you, some cases maybe every six months out of a year or every three months out of a year. Some companies are even every one month out of the year A certain amount. On the dollar. It might not seem like a lot at start. You might buy one share or something and maybe you get five cents. But let's say a year from now you have 25 shares and that five cents has become something like $25. And every couple of months it's 25 and you can actually take that money and just let that keep reinvesting in the thing you're already investing in and they keep paying you for the thing you're already investing in until you're finally ready to say, hey, I have enough, let me cash out, but yeah, I like those.
Speaker 2:Also. Dividend investment can be a really great way long term to set yourself up for large passive income. Just like I said, a company pays you out. Let's say you get to a point in life where you just have a ton of a stock share and they pay you. Let's say one company pays you out monthly and it might pay you $20, $30, $40. This takes a long time, it's not instant, and you just collect it. You don't reinvest that money. Let's just say that's my. I'm basing my future income off these passive things. So every month I know $50 is coming from here, $25 is coming from there, such and such. You can build your life around or you can supplement your life around the passive income that you've built putting money somewhere else.
Speaker 1:So off the top of your head, if you know. If we don't know, that's totally okay. Could I did not access beforehand. Do you know any companies off the top of your head that offers like those dividend shares?
Speaker 2:Apple every, I believe, every six months. At&t, I believe it's every three to six months. O-realty, o-realty offers it every month. Oh, let's see Amazon Google. No way to lie, google does not offer dividend shares. Google B does offer dividend shares. Let's see what else we got. Can't think of too many right now, but I can totally send you a list for your viewers later on. That would be great.
Speaker 1:That would be great, but no, actually just the couple you gave already is pretty awesome, just like off the top of your head, so I know what I'm looking into. So, speaking of getting into different things, there's all these different companies like there's Robinhood, there's E-Trade, there's Stash Anyone that you would recommend, or you don't recommend any things that I haven't mentioned, that you know of, that people can use to start doing investments.
Speaker 2:Let's see. So Robinhood would be the easiest place to go if you're using a mobile platform like a phone, something like that, on the go. It's got a very interactive user base. They've gotten a lot better with customer service over the years. They've had a few scandals but, to be perfectly honest, it's because it's a site that deals upfront with the user.
Speaker 2:Most stock market things are like you tell a person and they tell a person. There's an entire establishment. It rarely interacts with one person to the other. So when scandals, problems, stuff like that happen, you, the person on the end, never hear of it. You'll never hear about it. So since Robinhood was so out and popular and out in the forefront, yeah, things happen. Yeah, things happen.
Speaker 2:Stash is good as well. It throws a lot of educational information out there. So again, first time investors it's all in a little platform, all of the articles. Like if you look up a business, there might be an article about that business. Maybe you want to know more about them, maybe you want to know more about investing or types of investing. It's all there. Robinhood kind of offers it, but you get it in emails and they have like random posts, but it's usually just random things that are going on every single day in the stock market itself. So it's a lot less self-contained. So if you're looking for like an initial really start of the stock market, I think Stash would be the good place to go. If you think you're a little more comfortable enough to just kind of have basic comprehension of buying and selling things, you can move to Robinhood.
Speaker 2:Additionally cool thing these sites all offer interactive sharing things. So if you're like I'm done with Stash and I want to move to Robinhood, you can. It's just like a bank where you saying I want to take my money out of here and put it here, you can do that. Now there's a buy off and sell off of all the shares on one thing you know. Then it's bought out and like it's all moved to the other. But you can do that Important during tax time though, like if, because, like, everything you sell is taxable income. So remember that if you ever go to do that, or if you're buying, sudden selling shares in general, it's all taxable income those forms will come in your mail and you need to put that on your tax forms during that time Something people don't think about when they do that, but that's a whole another thing.
Speaker 2:Let's see eTrade. Etrade is a lot more traditional. It's a website. It's just like I'm most like logging into a bank. I think it's gotten a little more in their active over the last few years. I haven't used it in a good long time, but yeah, it's very. It's very bare bones. It's like I already know how to invest putting somebody in account, buying some shares, waiting. There's a lot less interactive help because it's just an older platform. So typically it was like your standard everyday stock trader that was using stuff like that. Not sure I'll say emerging 2020 investor, because I think that's when a lot of people deeply got invested into the stock market.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I think so, I mean we can really go outside. So it's like what else are you gonna do?
Speaker 2:Which wasn't a bad thing. It brought a lot of off the people.
Speaker 1:It did. I think it definitely made me think a little bit more about where my money is going and how I'm spending my money, Cause it wasn't as easily, I couldn't just grab it. It was like okay, now I have to sit here and think about it and comprehend the things that I'm doing, Right, so all right. Amai, when it comes to trading, have you ever had any mistakes yourself?
Speaker 2:Oh yes, low mistakes. There were the early on mistakes about fear of missing out, over investing, under investing, pulling out my money too soon because I got scared, all of those things. Earlier I said you have to know what kind of trader you wanna be, because you have to discipline your mindset for that. Let's say you put some money in and this is me saying a mistake on my account, but using as an example, you put some money into a stock and you're like, all right, yay, look at me, I invested. And you look at it tomorrow and it's dropped like 25% or something. And like you put in $50 and you have $35 and they're like, no, my money. And you're like I don't wanna lose anymore money. So you immediately sell your share to get your $35 to at least have that. And then a day later the stock goes up 75% and it's like, oh, that $50 could have been $65 or even $70 and now it's only $35.
Speaker 2:Because I got so scared of losing my money, I pulled out. I did that a ton because I was so scared early on because I didn't have the actual money I needed to invest. I was taking money that I had at that moment, putting it into something and immediately hoping for more. And that is a huge mistake, because if it goes down, you lose. If it goes up, you win. That's a 50-50 chance. You don't wanna set your life up for a 50-50 chance when it comes to money. So that's why I said put money to the side for investing and then invest. That way, if that money goes up or down, you have the time and the patience to deal with it without the worry of losing it. And again, that goes back to our biggest fear of losing money. That was a huge mistake.
Speaker 2:Another one was I was all over the crypto craze. Crypto had some huge winners, crypto had some big losers and, depending on where you were in that, you missed out or you messed up. I did both, going back to investing money you have versus investing money you've saved. I put in 2020, there's a cryptocurrency called Ethereum that was worth $400. And I had $400 worth of Ethereum, but I also had bills. So I sold my shares of Ethereum to pay some bills. Very short term cited, but bills needs to be paid, or things happen to you right now. Now, this wasn't money I had been saving, this is money I had put in and we're just like all right, I'm gonna let that ride, not realizing problems come along the way. So I took that money out and then Ethereum jumped to $900 and $1,500. Today, ethereum's valued at $2,200. That would have all come from just me letting that $400 sit there, but that was something I needed to spend because I needed money now.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Which all goes back to saving. That's why I keep coming back to it Having money to the side to invest or putting money to the side to invest that money that you know I don't want to touch it. It's just like maybe you wanted to make that CD account and you like they took that money from you and you can't touch it. You have to treat it like that, you just have to, otherwise you will get hurt. And when you get hurt you like bills coming. You start looking at it like I could take that from that and that from that and that from that and that money out there saving accounts there. All right, I'm at my bills and now you look at your savings You're like, oh shit, I don't have anything.
Speaker 2:I've done that numerous amounts of times and it sucks because I've like the advice I'm saying it sound like I've actually helped people go. Oh, like I'm out of, just like I just came back from Dubai. Sends sends a picture of like them looking at a tiger and I'm like that's dope, that's real dope. I'm so happy for you. I'm looking at a tiger stripe catwalk in front of me as I buy like a, like a, like a full for four at Wendy's and I'm just like that could have been me. But yeah so fear, fear of missing out big one. Investing money that you aren't ready to part with is another one.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's a big one.
Speaker 2:Yes, like if you're not ready to part with it, don't invest it Period. Well, you miss out probably. What? Like what you get, what you have won or lost, who knows? You didn't invest it. You can't think like that.
Speaker 2:Our generation, millennials, especially we deal with fear of missing out expressly.
Speaker 2:So someone's like this is the money, this is the money, this is the money is like oh shit, I want to be on the money to, I'm going to miss it out, and you can miss it and be perfectly fine and maybe they did well and you just need to be happy for everybody to do well, but that ain't you. The best way to invest, from my observation, is to just gradually, gradually, keep investing and then pull out, trying to win the jackpot. Don't just even statistically speaking, like when you come, when you talk about progress on anything. If you go to the gym for one week and you feel like you made a ton of progress and then you don't for like three weeks and then you go again for and you go hard again for one week, your progress is staggered. Your results are going to be slow and if you go consistently every single week and you do what you need to do, you're going to see results develop over time and become quite more defined than anything you would do in burst. Money is the same way you work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:You work for years and years to get money to live a better life. You go to work every single day and you get paid a paycheck at the end of it. That's a buildup of all of those days of work. If you can do that for somebody else, you can do it for yourself.
Speaker 1:I would say that my thoughts when they come to like starting to put money into investments is, you know, again, it's money that you're not using for like bills or anything. So I kind of think about it. The mindset is, I'm not a gambler, but if I was a gambler like if I walk into a casino and I told them I got $20 and I'm going to use this $20. If I lose it, I won't feel bad because it was slated just to gamble with. I'm not going to go to the ATM and pull out another $20. You know, I'm just going to stick to what I said and, to be fair, when I started doing small investments here and there, it made me feel comfortable with that idea.
Speaker 1:You know, just knowing that it's just like, it's just a little bit here and there. I'm not ready to put a whole foot in, but I could put a tour to, you know, at this moment. So you know, you know I used stash, I used rocket, honestly, you know, kind of just like another savings, which I will say when it comes to rocket, and do give you like the choice of do you want to like save aggressively, do you want to be moderate? Do you know? And you know, it can be a little as like $3 here or like $10 here, but it's always just a little bit by little bit.
Speaker 1:So that's the best thing Right, and it's so little that I don't even really think about it until they send me a message. I'm like oh, that's what I? Three dollars, okay. So it's just something small. I mean, of course you can get a little bit more aggressive, but that's not where I'm at in my life, so that's what I do. I mean, it's just fine, you know wherever you are, just start, you know exactly. So I mean it. But it does make me feel good just to know that oh, okay, that's a little money somewhere else for different rainy day situations, and I think that's kind of the purpose of it. You never want to just have exactly what you see in front of you, because if that's it, you know that's you know, it's kind of just not enough, not in the world that we live in right now.
Speaker 2:That is a lot of people's realities. But like, yes, you, even if it like, even if it doesn't seem like, oh, like, putting that, put in a dollar to the side, they're gonna do nothing for me, but not absolutely put that dollar to the side. That dollar will eventually become to, to, will become for you have, like it like if it's, if it's slow, it's slow, but you have to do it, because just just taking what you have and applying it to what you have right now won't do it for you later because it's right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean we're looking at times and we're looking at, like you know, not to get too off topic, but you know, like what did they call? Like you retire and you was a little off of Medicaid and everything that's.
Speaker 2:Social.
Speaker 1:Security. Yeah, that's the that's depleting right now.
Speaker 2:That's depleting. I'm not. I mean, I'm not. I don't want to be like apocalyptic about it, but I don't, even I don't think whatever our generation will have for for Social Security if it still exists by that time, because we're talking, we're talking what. Let's see what we're not. When I'm mid 30s now that's another, that's another 30 years give or take going into like retirement, I don't, for I don't foresee Social Security, if it still exists, being something.
Speaker 1:It's fundamental for us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we, we, we definitely need other avenues, other things to look into. I path needs to be built out now, earlier and later. I'm not going to say that age and worry about it. My mom, my mom's retiring next year and, for example, like her 401k she's been paying into for years but she's retiring while the stock market was literally going going as potentially going into a crash. And I'm not sure if that's your money, that's what you have. And imagine investing your entire life and that's like for us. We invest our entire life and we get to that point and that might be a market crash that year and you lose 25% of your life investment. That's a lot, it's a lot of money. So you need extra avenues, you need other ways to come, you need things to like, have set up so you can be comfortable, not just now, but in the future.
Speaker 1:So another question, because I'm just thinking of all these things what do you recommend for people to like read for they can understand like things a little bit better when it comes to finances, because you can go to Yahoo Finance, but that is like a whole different language for me.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say Yahoo Finance can be quite complex. They start using the language and stuff like that and it's just like huh, yeah, yahoo is definitely a place you go after you're comfortable with investing where you're like I wanna look up a business and do that Again. Youtube videos for beginning investors is really plentiful. If you're looking for one, tell it to like your particular ethnicity. That's there too. There are tons of black investors all over the place and they love to share knowledge. You wanna go to Twitter and look up black investments hashtag black investments, hashtag black income. You will find a wealth of knowledge. It's on Facebook as well. Yeah, all of the information is there. If you're looking for day-to-day articles, though, like I said, yahoo is probably one of your best bets. Sadly, it is quite complex sometimes, but it can be helpful once you know what to look for.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So what about you, amit? What do you plan on doing in the next few years when it comes to investments, but also, do you plan on grouping and trying to help people yourself?
Speaker 2:So earlier in 2020 and 2021, I attempted to take the things I was learning about the stock market and share them with people at large, Made a Facebook group nothing big, I wanna say, Gatt's out about 50 people. I plan on doing it again sometime. I've learned a great deal more than I did before and even then, if the people in that group I don't know if they'll watch this or not had listened to me, they should be sitting on some pretty stuff right now. But I plan on continued investments. Like I said, if you don't keep doing it, it won't grow A little real estate investment.
Speaker 2:I've been looking into stuff in New Orleans and I've already owned a lot. Building a house, however, is a lot more expensive than buying one. Didn't know that. So I'm either gonna let that land just rise in value as our priority value goes up, or I'll build something on it and rent. But that's a very 20,. We in 2023, that might be 20, 28, 20, 30 kind of thing. We're at the point in our life where you look at things in years, not months.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, yeah, I'm looking at it right here.
Speaker 2:It's like all right, in 10 years, I want this, In five years, I want this. You can't be like, oh, in six months, I want this, or if you do, it's gotta be a really short-term goal. So that'll be me. Y'all keep investing things. Like Apple, like I said, o-realty I love that company. I love getting monthly payouts that just keep reinvesting themselves and just looking at things and building out my own stock portfolio. Also looking into a Roth IRA, which is basically like a 401K, but you own that Still money you can't touch, but it also builds itself up over time. So it's kind of like double dipping in investment. But in this case it's just with you and your money tends to move from job to job that you go to, but it's always in control of someone else. I kind of like the fact that there's something I can invest in and I have control of and I can choose one to put money into it, but I still can't touch it.
Speaker 1:All right. Oh, that kind of reminds me you might not know the answer to this, and that's also okay, Cause I was let's try the internet like listen to you. I remember I worked at a job some years ago and it was a 401K, but I left the job and I've worked plenty of jobs since then.
Speaker 2:So I was wondering.
Speaker 1:I was like, how do I get in contact with that company to make sure that the money from that 401K is like it's with the one I have now? And as I said that there was this little, on that day I was on Instagram and there was this app called Beagle and it was like Beagle makes sure all your money's together. And I was just like, oh, you've been listening. But also I was just like I've never heard of this. I didn't want to use it. So I was like how does one make sure that if they have money in other companies, that they're able to put it with what they have now? Do you know?
Speaker 2:As far as that one goes, I don't. To my knowledge, typically that money when you leave a company is supposed to be given to you as a part of, like, a bank account or something like that, and it's supposed to like stay somewhere. That, like it's still acts like a 401K, or maybe it's just direct money, but you're not supposed to spend that money. You're supposed to like either put it in to another like 401K when you move a company, or there's supposed to be a transfer process between one bank and another. I know you're supposed to contact them If that's not the case on that part, I'm just I'm a little green, but I know it's very.
Speaker 2:It's very conversational based with like between departments where you're at now and where you used to be, because it's still your money at the end of the day and it's owed to you, so it's owed to be invested. So if, like they, you think you have money out there somewhere from an old job or something, you contact the finance department. They should be able to look into that for you. They're obligated to even like it doesn't matter if you don't work there anymore. They're obligated for your money when it comes to that, the app you talked about. So there's actually a lot of these now and, like I think I'm using I think I'm using one right now called Rocket. Basically, what it does is like you log into all of the things that you use Netflix, hulu, all of those things and it tracks your monthly payouts, your like your investments, to thank your bills and at the end of the month, or maybe like at the end of the week, it says hey, you spent this much on food.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, I know I have Rocket, that I do know, but I never actually put my 401K on there. But maybe I should.
Speaker 2:I'm about to say, if you can, I think there's a metric for it. But honestly, at the end of the day, you should always be able to go see a 401K site and, if there is a site, or call them and ask them hey, how much have my investments grown this year, percentage wise?
Speaker 1:All right, you so smart, I'm gonna do some things. I'm gonna do all right, you do all right. So if anyone had any questions, how can they reach you?
Speaker 2:You can find me on Instagram at AJheart88. You can find me on Facebook at Amaya Jackson. Also, if they just want to reach out to you and you give them my name, you can do that.
Speaker 1:You can, yeah, but I will do that if someone asks. But just thank you for taking some time and going over everything with us when it comes to investing. Like I'm really appreciative of that because I mean, yes, I was a part of your group but I admit I was definitely one of the ones who read everything like, oh, that sounds great, and then we just chicken out and do nothing. But I'm at a space now where I do feel a little bit more comfortable with just having, I wanna say, disposable income, but some money that I can put to the side and just be like I'm okay investing this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a very age-based thing too. You get more comfortable doing things with money the older you get. I think when you're younger you do random frivolous young stuff with money new clothes, shoes and stuff like that. But at this point it's like I bought a house, I'm looking on Amazon at tables and shit, right. It's just you're a lot more comfortable with larger spending at more solid things. And yeah, it comes at different ages for all of us. But I think the closer you get to your 30s and you keep going through those 30s, we're not gonna say at what point of those 30s.
Speaker 1:Because everyone's different.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, all right. Well, thank you again, guys. I hope you got something out of this. If not, I'm sorry, but I do hope you did get something out of this, because this is a long and firm point for anyone, whether it's like where to start investing, or whether it's oh, I can start using other websites other than the one I'm on, because I don't comfortable with it, or just even literally buying a piggy bank and just putting money to the side. So thank you for all of those things and, again, I hope y'all have a good day. So bye, you're waving. They can't see you wave.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 1:All right, say bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:There you go.