LISTEN to The Budgetnista’s episode of ESSENCE Podcast Network’s UnBossed here:
(No) thanks to social media accessibility, there are plenty of people claiming to be experts on a range of topics with absolutely no receipts. But don’t worry, that’s not even how The Budgetnista rolls. For more than a decade, New Jersey native Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche has been teaching financial literacy with a lesson plan spliced together from her own life.
From getting scammed out of $35,000 to losing her first home to foreclosure to almost being pushed to the background of the business she created, Aliche shows us how to triumph in the face of defeat.
She has built a series of businesses to guide women on their journey toward financial freedom (and confidence), one of which, the Live Richer Academy, boasts 40,000 students and garners eight figures annually! Yes, eight figures.
With such a massive following and recent nationwide outcry against systemic oppression, Aliche is teaching all who will listen about the power of the Black dollar. And she’s fueled by her mother’s simple yet compelling advice after she was racially profiled by a corner store owner as a child:
“Why do you go there? You vote with your dollar. You’re telling them they’re allowed to treat me this way because I continue to spend money here.”
“So there’s two things that America understands, it’s violence and money,” Aliche explains to Marquita Harris, host of the UnBossed podcast.
She continues, “The African-American community has the buying power of $1.4 trillion. Imagine if we moved that money. Dreamcatchers, that’s what I call my…Beyoncé has the Beyhive, I’ve got Dreamcatchers, right? So Dreamcatchers…we need to get in formation. Imagine, of the million Dreamcatchers that are out there worldwide…I did a challenge where I taught you how to save $100, and we all decided to deposit that $100 into a Black-owned bank, right? That’s a $100 million in one day.”
Not only does The Budgetnista break down how easy it is to save money, she breaks down in under five minutes how to use the power of the collective to disrupt apathetic businesses and build up Black-owned ones.
“What if we just said, we’re switching from this bank to this bank? You can literally bankrupt a bank that doesn’t treat you right by switching your money from here to here. You think they wouldn’t listen to that?” she says.
Listen to this week’s episode of the UnBossed podcast to catch even more of Tiffany Aliche’s gems, like the following:
…WHY YOU ARE THE SECRET SAUCE IN YOUR BUSINESS
“I told her, ‘You know what? I realize that you bring a lot to the table. You’re absolutely right. But girl, I am the table. And I forgot that for a moment. You’re no longer needed.’ And it was so crazy because once she left, within the first three months business doubled…. Because I realized that my presence is what made the business do well.”
…YOUR YOUNGER SELF’S JOB IS TO LOOK AFTER YOUR OLDER SELF
“So I say, what we can do now is to prepare. First things first, you have to set aside for retirement. It is the most important thing that you can do for yourself, because God willing, we will all get old one day, and it’s your younger self’s job to look after your older self. So you need to focus on figuring out how you can set aside something for retirement, and that involves creating a budget.”
…THE BUDGETNISTA’S COMPARISON OF CREDIT SCORES AND GPAs
“Remember back in college and high school, you were like, ‘Okay, my grade point average is, dot dot dot.’ If someone were to say…how do I go raise my great point average quickly? It depends. If you’re a freshman, you just started, so you don’t have as many grades to calculate in and to average in. So a few grades, and you could raise your credit score very quickly. But if you’re already a senior, meaning you have all these grades to account for to be averaged in, then that means that the grades that you get now, you need a whole lot more As to go from a B to an A. So it’s all relative.”
You can hear The Budgetnista’s full episode of ESSENCE Podcast Network’s UnBossed on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.