Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Women & Money: The Shit We Don't Talk About!
Generational Wealth for Women of Color with Lissa Prudencio
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In this episode, we welcome Lissa Prudencio, a personal finance expert, certified financial planner, and accredited financial counselor, and the Founder of Wealth for Women of Color, who transitioned from the tech industry to finance to help women, especially women of color, learn the foundations of money and build wealth.
Lissa discusses the importance of consistently learning about finances, especially in an era where advice is abundant but often contradictory. She emphasizes the need to find financial voices that resonate with you and guide you toward informed decisions. One key topic Lissa covers is generational wealth—explaining what it is, why it’s crucial, and how to start building it.
This conversation also touches on the significance of estate planning and working with financial professionals, such as accountants and lawyers, to protect and grow your wealth. Lissa shares her experience volunteering with Savvy Ladies, a nonprofit offering financial coaching to women, and the impact it has had on her understanding of financial empowerment.
If you’re looking for practical tips to take control of their finances, including how to navigate complex financial systems and make sound financial decisions that will benefit future generations, this episode is for you!
Episode Highlights
00:17 Lissa's Career Transition to Finance
00:57 Personal Finance Journey and Lessons
05:12 Mindset Shifts and Financial Education
08:51 Challenges Faced by Women of Color
23:03 Building Generational Wealth
27:09 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Barb [00:00:00] It was fantastic to have Lissa on our podcast. She's just a gem.
Maggie: I know she is really killing it out there, just spreading the education for women especially women of color. But I am so glad that more people are out there educating and just sharing, those bite sized pieces of what needs to be done.
Barb Yeah, for sure. She started a whole new company. She doesn't come from finance. She came from more of a tech background working with Google and YouTube and realized she was making pretty good money, but she was spending a lot of it too, as she saw and just aligned herself with some friends who were talking about money and showed her some tools that they were using and got her to learning more and more about it.
And now she's teaching it, which is fantastic!
Maggie: It's almost like when we do talk about this shit, things change. I mean, she talked with the girlfriends and all of a sudden now, I mean, not all of a sudden, but she's a certified financial planner.
Barb I know she got her CFP. It's amazing. She just super smart. And I also love that like her genre is very kind and [00:01:00] helpful. Like she says, there's a lot of people who scream at you about your finances. She knows that's not her gig, but of course it's not most people's gig, but she does just a fantastic job.
She's got a great YouTube following. She's got a great Tik Tok following and she's found her people and she's helping to educate them and that's fantastic.
Maggie: So we can't wait for you to meet her. Let's get started.
Maggie: Lissa, we are so excited to have you on our podcast today. Would you take a moment and introduce yourself to our audience?
Lissa: [00:02:00] Yes, my name is Lissa Prudencio. I am a personal finance expert. This is my first interview announcing myself as a certified financial planner, and I am also an accredited financial counselor. And all of this comes after a career change from being in the tech world. So I've learned the world of finance over the last three, four years. And now, what I do is I help women, specifically women of color, learn the foundations of money and how to build wealth.
Barb: well,
Let's start there. Why did you make this change from the tech world to finance?
Barb: Because I needed it for myself, selfishly. Tell us.
Lissa: Yeah, so I spent most of my career working in tech at Google and I started making pretty good money relative to my peers pretty early on. So early mid twenties, I'm hitting six figures and I spent a lot of that money. You know, consumerism. I fell into that trap. Luckily, I was able to do certain [00:03:00] things like save up to buy a home. That home ended up being a great investment that I was able to use to pay off all my debt. But absent a little bit of luck, I probably wouldn't have gotten to a good financial standing that I am at today. And over the years, I just started to realize that most of it was because I wasn't exposed to this world of investing and what everyone else is doing with their money and why they're able to not have to work nine to five every day and sometimes more than nine to five.
So my own journey led me to read some personal finance books. And once I started really getting into it, Silly me thought I would start certified financial planner courses and it was very hard. It took me three years to complete, but I'm so glad I did it because it exposed me to so many things that I never knew existed up until now, my mid to late thirties. I had no idea this world existed.
Barb: That's amazing. So you just passed your [00:04:00] CFP.
Lissa: I passed the exam in November and recently got certified. So brand new.
Barb: Love it. Yeah. It's interesting. We hear this story a lot where some people are struggling with their money and then they start going to the library to look more on personal finance and then they really go deep and we're like, wow, how come I never knew this stuff? Right. And we always say, because we were never taught this in school.
Right. It's just like this secret society or something when we never got in, but I'm so excited to have you on the podcast because we saw you had an amazing TikTok following. You're doing great education there. But can you tell us, I know you've like made this transition. This is always an amazing story.
Paycheck to achieving a six figure net worth. Tell us about that.
Lissa: It goes to that same story where before I was exposed to this world, I did the bare minimum, right? People at work whispered into my ear to put money into 401K. I put as little [00:05:00] as I could, but I did do it, so that started to grow. When I realized that I was not saving enough, that I was spending a lot on silly things, bottle service at the club, things like that. Like, no,
Maggie: 20s for you,
Lissa: right, early 20s.
Maggie: That's what you do with it.
Lissa: Exactly. And so had I known some of this earlier, I feel like I'd be at seven figures so much sooner. But it all goes to show that it's possible. It just takes really like breaking it down to the smallest habit and smallest steps you can take. And that's how it happened to me. can't pinpoint. an aha moment. It was just like, Oh, I read a book. They say to pay yourself first. So let me start paying myself first. My best friend and I always talk about money. She's actually my co host on our podcast. And she once told me about YNAB. You need a budget, the budgeting app. And this was four or five years ago. And once she introduced it to me, it didn't work for me at first. But I kept at it because she was really gung ho about [00:06:00] it. And then it started working for me to where I was able to really live within my means, but not feel like I was being controlled. Like I had freedom and flexibility to still live the life I wanted.
So lots of small things along the way is how I broke that paycheck to paycheck cycle. There wasn't, I can't even pinpoint when it happened. It just happened. I love that you're just like a constant learner
Maggie: Picking up wherever, you go and you hear, and you really investigate that and dive deeper into that. Because not everyone does or realizes, right away that maybe I am overspending, maybe I should assess this or have that conversation to see where I, quote unquote, should be at.
Were there any mindset shifts that happened in this journey?
Lissa:The whole thing is a mindset shift. Interestingly, the brand that I created before Wealth for Women of Color was called Shit They Don't Teach You in School. And I only had it for a couple months. I was posting content online when it quickly became clear to me that The area people resonated with was [00:07:00] personal finance because I was trying to cover finance, but also emotional intelligence, also anti racism topics.
Like I was covering so many things that we don't learn in school. It quickly became finance and along the same lines, that's when I was, picking up my own education for finance and The mindset shift that I learned was that you have to be proactive. You have to believe what's possible for you.
You also have to acknowledge the systemic inequities around us.
Barb: Yes.
Lissa: And I actually got an interesting comment recently on my YouTube where someone alluded to the victim mentality. And I haven't responded to the comment yet, but I don't think there's necessarily a victim mentality where we blame the system.And as such, we can't do anything about it because at the end of the day, we still have to believe that we can make our quality of [00:08:00] life better as individuals. And so that is the shift that I made over the course of the last decade, and I want to impart that on more women, and specifically women of color, but anyone from a marginalized group needs to learn that, like, it's possible. It just might be harder for some people.
Barb: Right. I love that. And tell us a little bit more about this business that you created for women of color. I'd love to hear more about that.
Lissa: Yes. It was tough, actually, deciding to niche down and trying to focus on a specific demographic. Mainly because as I grew my TikTok, I was getting a lot of hate comments. The algorithm has to figure out who to serve you to. So I was getting a lot of comments from people that weren't my audience.
White men in general, why just women of color? Why are you only trying to teach women of color? And so I found myself constantly having to explain, it's an exposure thing. I think if a woman in general doesn't think the stock [00:09:00] market has to do with them, if they see investing ticker symbols and they're just like, eh, that's not for me, then we're not making a welcoming environment to say, no, you should be investing too.
So that's how I felt about creating wealth for women of color. I wanted it to be that as soon as you got exposed to me, you knew that this was a place for you because outside of that, if you can't get people to be proactive about their finances, how else do you get certain people to take that leap to actually take action?
Maggie: Yeah, I love that. I mean, first of all, we all need to take these actions around our finances. They all impact us. It's not something that we can just sit on, but I'm glad you're, still putting up that good fight because just serving women, we hear that so often I remember at a networking meeting this man's like, why don't you have a company called briefcases? And I was like, Oh, come on, like, I can't
Lissa: because the norm is briefcases.
Barb: Because the world.
Lissa: right? That is the norm.
Maggie: and it's just like, there's so many, women of color too. That's not [00:10:00] that niche anymore. It's not like you're serving three people. Like it's a huge, we're a huge community of just women and then women of color.
And so I'm glad you're sticking with it and not letting that social media get you down because it is a message that needs to be shared. And so, from your perspective, what are some like unique financial challenges that specifically like women of color have to overcome and face and how do we overcome some of those barriers?
Lissa: I'll give an example that I would say is a little more broadly for women in general. I remember last year my new husband and I, we went to buy a car together at a dealership, and at the time I had more of the assets for the down payment, and I also had the credit because my husband relocated here from the UK, so he's building his financial profile from scratch. He has the income because I took this leap to create my business. So my income is not where it used to be. When we went to this dealership, the sales guy just kept on directing his attention [00:11:00] to my husband. And every time he walked away, I would be like, why is he not talking to me? Like, I'm the one that has to sign the paper with you. I have to co sign this. You couldn't get it on your own at this moment because you're still building your credit. And. That, to me, is what all women face, and a man will never understand that because it doesn't happen, I won't say it won't happen to any of them. But unless something like that happens to you, you don't really understand it. And I think that goes the same for trans women. women of color. And I can't speak on all women of color. I only have the experience of an individual Filipino American child of immigrants. Whereas, black women, Hispanic women, they have different experiences in being overlooked, not trusted, not spoken to. I think that this happens and it's very invisible. So it's a hard thing to change. When I was working at Google. I was getting paid well, early twenties, living the life. There was a time where I came across a [00:12:00] spreadsheet at my job that I don't know if it's legal or not, but there was a spreadsheet where people were anonymously sharing their income, what they were making and what level they were, what position they were in. And I was getting underpaid on average 30, 000 based on my same location, geography, and I'm like, what causes that outside of like systemic issues, right? I feel like I'm working hard. I'm doing all the things. I'm working more hours than everyone. I keep getting looked at to do all the administrative things as if I'm an assistant. And, like I said, across women get this, All together, but I think there are nuances like that, that specifically women of color face that we can't see how we can't really define someone's bias against us. And so that's the hard part in terms of changing it. I think the awareness is the very most basic thing.
Awareness and empathy, as cliche as it might sound, are like the most basic things people can do to start understanding [00:13:00] that you might just not ever experience the same thing.
Lissa: As a woman or a woman of color.
Barb: And I think it's having these conversations and really listening and taking it in because we talk a lot about Equal Pay Day, which is May or March 12th or so around that time. But that's for white women. That does not represent black women, Latina women, indigenous women, which is much further into the year and people will say to me, Oh, pay gap, that doesn't really exist.
It exists.
Lissa: it exists.
Barb: I mean, your example is clearly that it exists. And so that's why women are so far behind and something that came up for me when you were talking about the tickers and women not saying, Oh, that's not for me. It's because who do we see standing in front of the tickers all the time? White men. Yep. Right.
Lissa: My friend used to work at a firm that, and she was the head of marketing there, and they wanted to rebrand their website. [00:14:00] She wanted to incorporate more diversity in the images that they selected. And She got it kicked back in a meeting. They said this doesn't look like our clientele, there were women, there were people of color, there were all, it was diverse. It was, yeah. And they had her change it. And that was like one of the, that was like her tipping point that, made her want to leave. And she eventually did, but it's that kind of thing that you don't see being talked about in the media. externally, unless you live it, you see it in a company, but usually you don't feel empowered to do anything or say anything because that could risk your job and your livelihood.
So it's this weird systemic thing that it's often hard to navigate, but that's exactly it. Like what we see the messages were being sold. I was a mass media communications major in college. So. No finance, no nothing, but I did learn a lot about the just messages that we're exposed to.
Barb: Oh, all [00:15:00] the time. I think that's another big reason why women are so far behind financially is the poor money messaging we've been given and continue to get over and over again from the media, from commercials, from advertising. It's terrible. It's like, you just have to turn that stuff off because it does terrible things to our ego, to us, to our finances, to what we feel is our ability or inability, so yeah, I mean, we really have to be what we say is financially conscious and just conscious overall as to what's coming our way and really saying, is this true? Right?
Lissa: I agree. I know I'm not the interviewer here, but do you ladies love to shop?
Barb: Yeah.
Lissa: I do too. I mean, I enjoy nice things. And I think that there is this misconception that if you love shopping, you're bad with money, right? We automatically tie these messages that you're irresponsible.
You're buying things you don't need. And I think it's not that black and white. There's lots of gray area where you can build the lifestyle you want. You can be a [00:16:00] shopper, but you can also be investing. You can also be building your portfolio. You can also be learning about new securities and assets and things like that. And I think that's the messaging we see in commercials, in television and everything it's tough. And I don't have a full solution except, empowering people on an individual level to make their changes in their own life.
Barb: And we see you doing that. On your tick tock because you're consistently educating and sharing information and we think knowledge is power and the more that you can learn and usurp that information, the better off you're going to be because you're not getting it in the school system,
Lissa: Yep.
Maggie: It's really figuring out, what you want because there's so much consumerism out there, you could buy everything. So it's figuring out, what you want, what makes you happy to do with that money because there's always something that we could spend it on. I mean, there's an endless supply of things that we can purchase.
So it's figuring out, what do we want in life and how, how do we want to take that path? Yeah. And so if, if there's someone who [00:17:00] feels not as, financially secure and want to take control of their finances, what are some first important steps for someone to get started?
Lissa: Finding people like, like you, like me, opening the door. I got a interesting comment on my YouTube recently as well, where someone was saying there's so much saturation in the finance space on the internet, right? There's so many places to learn now. There's so many people talking about things and as we know, there's good and bad, like there's good, right? There's good information. There's not so great information. And what they said specifically was like, I've been at this trying to be consistent with it for a while, but this particular video that I just watched of yours made it click for me. It's very beginner friendly. It welcomed me into it. And I think that if someone doesn't feel financially secure, it's going into this knowing that it's not a straight line that you have to be consistent with it.
You [00:18:00] might, Google how do I understand the stock market? And not understand it the first time or the first eight times. You have to find the voice that speaks to you. And that's why I think there's plenty of space for us as educators, as women in the finance space to pull more people in because we won't speak to everyone.
There will be people who like it a different way, but there's different ways To cut and package this information, so I would tell people find the voices that speak to you and find multiple voices. Don't just stick to one because it's when you listen to many that you start to learn what's more common, what's more niche, what is the norm versus what is someone's, random stock pick, right? It's learning to navigate the space and being consistent with it.
Barb: Yeah.
Maggie: I love that. There is so much information. So you do have to find what resonates with you and people who relate and are from your viewpoint. I mean, there's some people out there that I would never listen to because, I was like, that doesn't resonate to me at all, and so finding someone who [00:19:00] really does click is so important and builds that trust, and so you're more likely to take that action and follow that lead.
Lissa: It's fascinating because I don't have the personality to really be mean to people to say like, if you don't do this is what's going to happen. And for a long time I was confused about why that worked for people and it just didn't feel right to me. It felt mean. Then I realized, you know what, there's a whole spectrum of people for some people.
That's what they need. They need that kick in the butt to go do it. But for the audience I want to serve, and I want to talk to, I'm gonna do it in a more empathetic way. And I think that there's a, I don't like that mean way, but it seems to work for some people to get their stuff in gear. So, I think it's fine, it's really just finding the voice that works for you.
Maggie: I'm always like, I'm, I could be mean enough to myself. I need someone
Lissa: Right, right.
Maggie: be like, you got this girl. Cause sometimes I get the mean part myself. So let's have someone support me and be nice and tell me I'm doing great. Like that would be helpful.
Speaker 14: Absolutely, and then [00:20:00] you lose less sleep over it. You can sleep more peacefully.
Barb: You're definitely getting traction on all that you're providing your community. So tell me how else do you work with your women of color and how do you educate and how do you help them be what we say is financially fearless?
Lissa: Yeah, financially fearless. I love that by the way. I think primarily right now I've been doing it a lot through my content and free content online. I am actually working on a beginner e course that I want to make something less piecemeal. When someone drops into my TikTok or YouTube, they learn a tip here, a tip there.
And so I wanted to create something with more structure. So that's the next thing that I have in terms of helping people. I also volunteer and do some financial coaching and planning through a nonprofit called Savvy Ladies.
Barb: Oh yeah. We're partners
Lissa: Okay. So I, yeah, I volunteer with them.
So I take a couple of calls a month and that's actually the last couple of years where I've [00:21:00] gotten a ton of my experience working
directly with clients And it's in a way where I can help people no matter their income or budget level because they have a free helpline. So women can go there, ask a question, and get paired with a financial professional.
And I feel like that is where I get the most insights. I do it first and foremost to help people, but I get to collect data on understanding what people need. For example, there are a ton of questions that I'm, I don't feel comfortable picking up to work with them because I don't feel like I know enough about this topic And that is divorce. What women go through in the lead up to divorce and also the aftermath when it comes to finances. And I want to educate myself more. But I think again, like when I talk on my platforms more broadly on YouTube and my podcast, it's just to give exposure to let people know that, Hey, if you did need to ask a financial question for free, go here. Or if you like how I explained this, check out these [00:22:00] five other YouTube channels as well. So it's, I just spreading the word is how I operate so far in helping educate. So with your newly awarded
Barb: CFP, what do you hope to do with that?
Lissa: still in the works, still in the works, I have a couple of ideas and I haven't really quite landed on what I want to do yet. Part of me came across a very niche field when I was earning the certificate. Very personal to me. So I mentioned earlier, my husband is from the UK and I'm. U. S. Citizen. And across the way, as I was learning financial planning, we hit so many areas where we were like, how does that work? If you were citizens from different countries, like, can we co sign on things together? Can we like, how does this work? And so I think there's a very small growing field of cross border planning that is very niche that I'm interested [00:23:00] in. And The tough part about that is you can't really do that across different nations, right? You have to be an expert in those specific areas. So that's probably like a idea further down the line. Yeah.
Maggie: How did you two meet? I've got to ask.
Lissa: A mutual friend introduced us via email about nine, 10 years ago. And we stayed friends. He used to live in New York. I live in Los Angeles. And then he moved to London, which is where he's from in the UK. And the pandemic got us talking more and more. And then finally, when I was able to travel there, we spent some time together and we're like, Hey, let's do this thing.
So he finally moved here two years ago. And that's how it works. Really crazy. Yeah, really.
Maggie: it's, you never know when you're, in different countries how people get connected.
Lissa: Most expensive relationship I've ever had, by the way. Having to fly to London a couple times a year.
Maggie: You must really like him. Must be a priority.
Barb: I do have one last question for you [00:24:00] about generational wealth.
Lissa: Yes.
Barb: Sometimes, first of all, generational wealth is so important to build and hard to build what can you speak to that topic and how in your communities, women of color, how you help them build generational wealth.
Lissa: Well, in order to have generational wealth, which is to pass wealth down to your children, your next generation, you have to build it yourself first, right? You have to learn how it works because not only do you want to pass on the wealth to your children, you want to pass on the knowledge of how you built it, how you manage it and how you keep it. A lot of times in my community It's as simple as explaining how does generational wealth even work? How do you even pass assets from you to your children? This is a little embarrassing, but maybe not. Before I worked on getting my CFP certification, I had no clue that there was a gift estate
tax system, which comes into play when you're it's called, it's a transfer tax where [00:25:00] if you transfer assets to someone, depending on the amount that you could potentially be taxed as the giver. And a lot of people don't know this, especially in communities where your own generation hasn't even built the wealth yet to even know that exists.
And so, that, that's living proof with me. So a lot of times I feel like I'm educating people on building wealth itself, on the basics of understanding, there's a gift tax, there's a transfer tax, there are things that you're gonna have to think of long term, like creating your estate plan? Do you have beneficiaries set on your accounts? Like a lot of smaller things, easy to check off a checklist as the very basic start to it. And another big one that I think you guys are very aligned with as well is not being afraid to spend money on using professionals. I think the more wealth you build, you have to trust that you will need an accountant. You might need lawyers. You might need other people on your team. And I see that a lot in [00:26:00] my own family and my own, communities that people don't want to spend money on that because it costs a lot. Right? It costs a lot to get a contract put together, to get a prenup, to get a estate plan. And I'm like but if you want to keep your wealth, you have to learn about these things and you have to utilize professionals for areas that you can't learn yourself. 100%. It cost more not to use
Maggie: them most of the time. And if I had to follow, I mean, God bless. I just committed with this woman to do my taxes, and not 600. And I was like, that sounds like a lot, but like for my business, I need to do it. And if I had to pay like money to the IRS, like, I don't know if I had to go sit and learn the tax code, I would spend so many more hours than just paying someone 600 bucks to do it.
You know what I mean? Like, and I
Lissa: And if you ever got audited, you ever got in trouble with taxes you need those people to ask your questions to.
Maggie: Not a chance. Yeah. So having a professional on your team to keep that wealth, having that estate plan, we think is so important. And [00:27:00] it's exciting to learn these things now that you are able to bring that generational wealth or even think about that or have that conversation because it can be very hard going paycheck to just learning some about some investments, but watching how much you can learn as you grow and these new opportunities is so exciting. So it's something, yeah, we need to keep talking about and continue to build and show how we can pass that money down.
Lissa: Yeah. I think it can be very overwhelming at first, right?
Maggie: Oh yeah,
Lissa: like, you let it, you don't even understand, like for some people, they don't understand investing yet. Yet here we are talking about estate plans and documents and there's so many things. And I think it just boils back down to expose yourself and take this next small step.
Maggie: yeah.
Barb: Yes. Small increments. It doesn't have to be overwhelming. So, yeah. And we just love, love, love the work that you're doing, the education you're putting out there. It's so important. People will pick up and they will learn from you, which is really powerful. So, kudos to you for your work, Lissa,
Lissa: Thank you. guys.
Barb: yeah. We do have one last question that we [00:28:00] ask everybody. So let us know, what does financial freedom look like to you, Lissa?
Lissa: Financial freedom to me is a new term I'm coining called a big wealth energy
Barb: Woo!
Lissa: and it has two parts to it's having the wealth so having enough to live your best quality of life but also having the mindset behind it because you know some people have tons of money out there and aren't happy and they don't know why so it's to me it's having this energy where you both have enough And you believe you have enough and you feel good about it. So that's that to me is financial freedom. Yep
Maggie: That's a good one. As I hear from so many women, like they're always afraid they won't have enough. And I know like, their advisors, like, trust me, you've got plenty stocked away.
Lissa: Let's talk about what is enough like that word yeah
Maggie: And yeah. Would you want that money to do for you? And yeah, that good feeling.
Cause, There are some people who, are not billionaires and they are happy as can [00:29:00] be, and having just enough. And that's really the joy that we're all trying to succeed and get right.
Lissa: Yes
Maggie: Awesome. Thank you for coming on today, Lissa, and sharing your expertise. It's been so fun having you on.
If anyone listening knows someone who aligns with the mission of empowerment through financial literacy, introduce them to this podcast and together we could really amplify this movement. So if you want to reach out to Lissa or follow any of her social media, of course, all of that will be in the show notes and we'll talk to everyone again soon.
Until then, be financially fearless.
