ccl podcast ep 7

In this episode of Credit Chat Live, the hosts are discussing the complex relationship between women and money in honor of Women's History Month. They are joined by Keri Carbonaro, a women and wealth expert, who shares her personal journey in wealth management and how her experiences have shaped her passion for increasing financial literacy among women. Keri emphasizes the importance of educating women about finance and making smart financial decisions. She also discusses the behavioral finance issues that can affect financial decision-making and recommends resources for understanding one's money personality. I'm your co-host, Destiny White, and I'm so excited to guide you through this new chapter of Credit Chat Live. Let's get into the episode. Welcome, everyone, to Credit Chat Live. I'm Destiny White, your co-host today, and I am so happy to be joined by my co-host, Christina Roman, who is our Consumer Education and Advocacy Manager here at Experian. And we are unpacking and exploring the complex relationship between women and money today in honor of Women's History Month. So we have Keri Carbonaro, who is a women and wealth expert and advocate who is truly a trailblazer. She is an award-winning financial analyst, and she is also the co-host of Credit Chat Live. So let's get into the episode. Welcome, everyone, to Credit Chat Live. I'm Destiny White, your co-host today, and I am so happy to be joined by my co-host, and we are unpacking and exploring the complex relationship between women and money today in honor of Women's History Month. So we have Keri Carbonaro, who is a women and wealth expert and advocate who is truly a trailblazer. She is an award-winning financial advisor. She's had her own practice for the past 20 years. She's a CFP4 advisor and a six-time Investopedia Top 100 advisor and an author and just a real advocate for women. And I'm just so happy to have you here today, Keri. Yes. Well, all I want to say is that I am one of the few women ambassadors for the CFP board profession as well as one of the few women leaders within the field of wealth management for women, which is an 80-20, which 20% women, 80% men. So there's small numbers of us, but we're small but mighty. Wow. Wow. That's absolutely amazing. And I want to add that Keri has been an amazing partner for Credit Chat since I started with Experian back in 2015. We've been thrilled to have her be a part of our weekly chats. She shares so many valuable insights, and I'm truly appreciative that she dedicates her time to not only these chats but also to being here today to just share the information that we're going to share in today's conversation. Well, I consider myself first and foremost an educator. My undergraduate, it's funny, was in history teaching, and I was going to be a teacher. And then I decided I'm going to teach money instead. And so that's what I do. So everything I do is about educating, and especially educating women. So anytime you ask me to do it, I will say yes. I love that. Thank you. We're so appreciative of that. Yes. We couldn't have a more perfect yes today for this conversation. So Keri, would you be able to just share your personal journey in wealth management and how these experiences have shaped your passion for increasing financial literacy among women from the start? Sure. So I'm happy to discuss my story. So I grew up, you know, my dad was a senior executive at JPMorgan Chase. And so I was the oldest of his children, and he didn't have any sons, and we bonded over money rather than over sports. So we used to do all these incredible things. I said, we used to do take your daughter to work before there was a take your daughter to work day. Like, it didn't even exist, and he would take me to work with him at the bank. And then we did foreclosure auctions together, and I just grew up learning everything there was about money. And I just thought that everybody knew this, and I didn't even know that it wasn't a thing, that people didn't learn this from growing up. So for me, it was great. And then I went and started my career at JPMorgan Chase and Citibank and Lord Abbott. And I, you know, thought I did everything right. I graduated college with zero debt because of my upbringing and, you know, what I knew about finance. And ironically, I still got it wrong because I wound up marrying Mr. Wrong. And I almost lost all my everything. So here I was with this, you know, at 30 years old, making half a million dollars, having this incredible job on Wall Street, and I was super successful. And then, you know, enter the mistake that I made. And I paid for it dearly for about 10 years of my life, marrying Mr. Wrong and going through a terrible divorce and, you know, almost losing my business and almost losing my practice. And so I felt like if this could happen to me, somebody who has all this knowledge and all this experience, it can happen to any woman on the planet. And so that's when I first decided to write my first book, this book, The Money Queen's Guide for Women Who Want to Build Wealth and Banish Fear. And I wrote it specifically for women to tell my story about what happened wrong with me and then also what I've seen what's happened with my clients. And I said, you know, I want women, this is what you should do in your 20s, in your 30s, in your 40s, in your 50s, in your 60s. So like decade by decade, because I know it's just something that women don't necessarily want to do. It's not something women don't wake up one day and say, I'm just going to hire a financial planner. I'm just going to get on top of this money thing. It's usually within a crisis when it comes. So women, it's a death, it's a disability, it's a divorce. It's always, you know, or losing a job loss. So it's always something that is, you know, really emotionally charged. And therefore, you know, maybe they're not thinking clearly or somebody could take advantage of them. So I always want them to be, have this knowledge when they're not in crisis. And that's something that's really important to me. Yes. And I love that. I was actually going to ask you in this conversation, you know, since you grew up with so much information, did that make it easier for you to make smart decisions or have you had those setbacks that you had to overcome? Because I know growing up, money wasn't often talked about in my household, it was more focused on get your education, get a good job, but then nothing about, okay, what do you do when you have that job and you're able to, you know, pay for retirement and all of that? How do you maximize that? We never had those conversations. So I made a lot of mistakes in my twenties that I wish if I had just had a little bit more knowledge, maybe I could have avoided. So I love that you take this proactive step. And we find often even working at Experian that people come to us at a point of pain, you know, they've ruined their credit somehow and they want to learn how to repair it, you know, how they can build it back up. But we just wish that we have so many free financial tools for them. We wish that they would access them before they hit that point. Exactly. And interestingly enough, I have to admit, I do practice what I preach. And so I have followed all my own advice and rules. So I started saving early. I had a great credit score and never ruined it. So I've done all the right things, except for, you know, marrying the wrong spouse. And so, which unfortunately is not a lesson in financial literacy, but it's still hurt and cost me a lot of money and time. And but that's OK. I mean, what you learn from it. And so, you know, it's been like this for me straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down. At one point in my life when I when I worked for my company got sold and I lost my ability to market myself and be who I am. And then now I'm back up again. So I've done it like that. So if it happened to me, everybody, there's there's no straight line up. I always say that all the time because it's just it's life. Absolutely. What goes up comes down. And it's slow always. Right. Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. But yes. But I think the knowledge, the knowledge helps and the practice helps. And also to realize sometimes, sometimes you can have the knowledge and still can't put it into practice. And I think that that's a behavioral finance issue where you almost need a not not not only a CFP, but you also might need a psychologist to understand why you're doing what you're doing. Why do you know, have the knowledge, but can't follow through? So that happens, too, to a lot of people, more and actually a lot of women as well. Wow. And that's a really good point because you get caught up in your own behaviors or your own beliefs about money and also your ability to manage money that sometimes it's hard to break those cycles. There's there's a lot. There's a thing called money scripts or your money mind or your money personality. And all of those things come into play. And if you don't even know what they are, you're just playing out scripts and you don't even like you're unconscious. So it's happening and you don't even realize it's happening. Yeah. How do you identify things like that? There's a lot of there's a lot of different ones to do on the behavioral finance side. My my girlfriend has one company called Money Habitudes, and you could go and take the test online and figure out where where you are and what you are and what makes you tick and why do you do the things you do? I think everybody should know that my old firm used to have a thing called the money mind, but it doesn't exist anymore. But that was a really nice, easy one. It was seven questions and you got to figure out, are you happiness? Are you are you fear or are you commitment? And that was a nice, simple one. But I don't think you can find that one anymore. But I would try money. Habitudes is a good one to try. And then from there, that can give you some insight into why you make the financial choices that you make and give you what behaviors need to change. Right. Yes, exactly. Well, it gives you a whole like breakdown of your personality and why you know what it's kind of like, you know, like a Myers-Briggs test or anything like that. Yeah. You know, you take a personality test and you figure out what's what's the underlying root cause of what is motivating you or making you make the decisions that you make. Absolutely. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that resource. I'm interested to check that out after the conversation. Great. Yeah, a lot of people don't think of money and financial habits as being psychological, just more of like, this is what I've been taught. This is what my mom and dad taught me. That's very important to know. Well, what's interesting as far as what your mom and dad taught you, even if they don't teach you anything, they're teaching you. Yeah. So they're teaching you good habits or bad habits or no habits. Either way, you are absorbing what your parents do or how they were or, you know, they say somebody who gets paid on Friday and then Friday would be Friday, Sunday, and everyone would go out and spend money and you get, you know, and then you and then you have in your brain, I get money, I go out and spend it and I have fun. And it's just part of like your DNA of growing up or parents fighting about money all the time. Then you're like, money is hard. We fight about money and you're playing it out with your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Carrie, those are really good points. So what what are some of the challenges that you have encountered as being a female advisor in your field? And I just I want to I really want to get into those challenges. Well, I always say the industry was built by men for men. Women are an afterthought in this in this industry. It's a 2080. It is getting better, but incredibly slow. I mean, we've gone from 20 to 23.8 in about 20 years. So it's still pretty very strong, heavy, you know, male dominated. And then the other thing that hurts us in the industry is what's called unconscious bias. And so men and women both have it. You don't realize it because, again, it's unconscious. So it's in the background. And so men, by not even on purpose, might not be looking at the woman, might not be engaging the woman if it's a couple. May, you know, say I've heard my worst is my worst example is when a man says to a woman, don't you worry your pretty head about this. I got it. You know, and this is literally done to this day. So don't I know I see your face of shock, but no, no, this is really happening even to this day. There's a lot of things like that. And so I think that, you know, they don't know what they don't know. And so what I've been doing is I've been training advisors to become more female friendly and to uncover their blind spots that they don't realize that they have just because women are going to take over the wealth in this country by 2030. We are now at one third of the nation's wealth. And by 2030, we're going to have two thirds of the nation's wealth. So it has to change. It is going to change. It's going to be forced to change. And I like to get ahead of that curve now. And so I've been one out there holding that banner saying we need to change it now. Mm hmm. So absolutely fantastic. So it's coming. It's going to happen. I hadn't seen that that about how women were going to have the majority of the wealth by 2030. That's so interesting. Can you expand a little bit more on that? Or yeah, it's well, it's interesting because it's going to be women inheriting it, earning it. It's going like so it's coming from all different all different places. It's a lot of wealth transfer, though, from parents passing spouses, passing divorces and women working. So it's a combination of all of those things. But a lot of it has to do with the wealth transfer of people passing. Yes. That's so interesting, especially like you think about the issues facing women. A lot of women, you know, they live longer than their spouse. So that makes sense. The wealth transfer from the spouse, but also, you know, they they have a lot of caregiver responsibilities placed on them, especially women that are working now. So they're high earners, but they're still expected to be the caregivers for their family. So you're seeing that concept, too. And then when you talk about unconscious bias, a younger woman like trying to make her way up on the ladder at work, there's still that bias that's like, well, she's still young. She's going to want to start a family. At what point is that going to impact her? You know, so you still see those biases in high earners. Absolutely. Well, and it's interesting because I've had where people have said to me, I've had my clients who have tried to refer me to other clients who are women and they literally said, oh, no, I don't want to work with a woman. A man can take care of me better than a woman can. Oh, wow. My dad, I've been told I've been told you'll love this one. My hair is a lot shorter than it used to be. But I think I was at with a meeting with a center of influence who was an estate planning attorney who had a trust. And the woman whose trust he managed wanted to hire me as her financial advisor. And when I met with him, I thought it was just literally a done deal because she picked me and I was going to meet him. And and he pretty much walked in and said, why is your hair so long? And I was like, what? And then he was like, you don't look like a financial planner. And I was and again, I'm like, what? I literally walked out of the meeting in tears. I mean, I just couldn't even believe that this happened to me. Like this was it's crazy. And this is today. I mean, this is like current stuff. Christina, back to what you said about the caregiving. So there's a stat where women out of the workforce taking care of children or taking care of parents or or like family members who are ill. It's not might not be parents, might be a sister or brother or an aunt or whatever. They called up the good the good daughter penalty and also taking care of children that women staying out of the workforce costs women a million dollars in net worth over their lifetime. Wow. Caregiving. Wow. Unbelievable. Yes, literally unbelievable. Yeah. That makes me wonder why isn't the load shared a little bit more equitably, you know, like it's it's very interesting. And take you back in on that a little bit. I'm wondering, Carrie, if you have any statistics on women's breadwinners and their household and we get into the topic of, you know, accumulating most of the wealth. So, yeah, I would just I would love to jump into that. I'm so excited to talk about that because I'm actually doing a presentation that invests in women, which is a industry conference. And my topic is female breadwinners. So isn't that wild? I know. And so I've been doing the history of female breadwinners and where we are and what we what we're and why it's so so a breadwinner, by the way, a female breadwinner means that you are the majority in the household. So you are the bigger share of the household or or the only share in the household. So that's what a female breadwinner means. We are now at 41 percent of households and climbing. So to be to be to show you back. So I went back to like so 1950s, there was no women working. Right. Or I mean, incredibly small numbers. Certainly no female breadwinners. I have an article from the 1950s Economics Journal of what to do when your husband comes home from work and you are supposed to look pretty and be dressed up and give him and serve him and make sure the children are quiet and create a beautiful atmosphere for him. This is the 1950s, not that long ago. So the 60s, things started to change a little bit. You know, Betty Freeman came out with the feminine mystique in 1963. They said that was the second wave of feminism. Women started to like go into the workforce and try and start to mobilize. And so that's that then you had the whole you've come a long way, baby. I don't know if you guys know what that is. That was the Virginia Slims women getting into the workforce. And that was the whole ad campaign. Then in the 70s, now, Tina, you might know this, women got the first credit cards in 1974. Yep. Oh, my goodness. We did not have credit cards before 1974. That was actually something I just learned this year. And I think I read it in your article as you had posted an article. And I was like, is that true? And I went and I looked and I was like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea. Just so recent that women were able to access credit cards. It's unbelievable. Yeah, it really is unbelievable. And so the numbers of the women in the workforce. So then in the 80s, they started to get a little bit better. There was this whole Anjali campaign. I could bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan. And that was a women bread winner. It was a big deal in the 90s. Women were it was designing women, which again, you guys probably don't know any of this, but it was like women starting to come into the workforce and having women owned businesses. And then here we are today. This is current. We've got Taylor Swift. We've got the Barbie movie. We've got. Oh, my God, we've got Claudia, Claudia Golden, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for the pay wage gap study, which I don't know if you guys knew that all this happened last year. And of course, Beyonce. So we have four incredible women happening and incredible things happening in this current year. And the number is just going to keep rising when it comes to women in the workforce and bread winning. Absolutely. Again, it's also also back to why we're going to control the wealth by 2030. Yes. And even at Experian, Jennifer Schultz took over as CEO. This is her this past year was her first year as our North America CEO. It's amazing. Yeah, that's really, really good stuff. It's really we're definitely moving in the right direction. Yes, that makes me so happy. And it also just goes into the gender norms and reshaping what the gender norms are in our society and showing these statistics that women breadwinners are climbing and it's changing the way that we should view household roles. Right. Absolutely. Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I mean, I hope that, you know, I mean, you look at some other countries who have it like equal, like the Scandinavian countries have it really equal where they have like paternal leave as well as maternal leave. And they have higher rates. They have more women breadwinners than we do. So, you know, and they also have they also have like a zero tolerance for pay wage gaps and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, other other countries are doing it. I love to hear it. We'll be right there soon. I would love to talk about what are some current common misconceptions or barriers that are preventing women from accessing financial literacy and how they can address these barriers so that we can be better prepared to manage our finances as we prepare to take over the world? Yes. So the one common misconception is that women are not good at math. And I see that all the time. I was just at a conference and there was every woman who spoke before me said, I'm not good at math. And I put and then, of course, I went up and talked about math. And so I was like, OK, guys, I know you're not good at math, but, you know, you need to learn the money thing. Like and also money and math doesn't have to be the exact same thing. Like, I'm great at, you know, I was never a trigonometry major, but I know finance like the back of my hand. So one does not equal the other. And also the whole thing that women are not good at math needs to be thrown out like garbage. Just throw it out. Right. Also, that women think that somebody else should take care of this for me. That should be thrown out as well. And I recently spoke to a high school and I asked them, the women in the room, how many people, how many of you guys think that somebody else is going to take care of this money thing for you? And about 90 percent of the hands went up. So even the young girls still think I was in a wealthy school, but still they still think that somebody else is taking care of it for them. So that's another issue. So I just want the societal norms to say women to be raised, I'm going to be responsible for my for myself. Yes. That's what where we need to go. I agree. Something that I was super grateful, even growing up in a Hispanic household, my parents always told me, you rely on nobody. You are the person that's going to be taking care of yourself. You make sure that we'll first get your education so that you can have a good job and that job will pay for your financials. Right. That was about as much as far as we got in preparing for your future financial self. But it was always that top track of you are responsible for yourself. Do not rely on anybody else. And I was always grateful for that. It's a fantastic lesson. You know, it's funny. I don't know if I was necessarily taught that. I just felt that. And so I just did it. And I just always felt like I want to be responsible for myself. Yes. And, you know, and it's a good thing to do. You know what else? The other thing I always say, financial freedom gives you choices to make life decisions the way you want. And if you are not earning money, if you have to ask for money from your husband or or wife or whatever, or if you are in like a position where you don't feel like you have the power because you don't have the money, you are definitely not able to do everything you want to do in this life. I feel like there's no limits put on yourself if you have financial freedom. Mm hmm. You can live the life that you want. Yeah. And I feel like so we often talk about financial freedom, financial freedom. You want to achieve financial freedom. Financial freedom can mean so many different things to different people. Can you give some examples of what financial freedom can mean to people just from your own interactions with your client? Sure. So to me, financial freedom is I can retire today and that's and I have enough money to do everything I want to do. I have, you know, I might have my house paid off. I might have I have my I have no debt. I have enough money to support my lifestyle with my investments. I don't have to work. Those are all to me like incredible, like weights off my shoulders, like the fact that I don't have to worry about paying a mortgage or I don't have to worry about paying a car payment or I don't have to worry that where's my next paycheck coming from? If I can create my own money from my own assets, that is freedom. Wow. I would love to get there. I will say and I and I fall into that category of women that are a little bit risk averse. So I'm not I can tell you that I need to get better at figuring out how to invest. And I would love if you could share like. Just some basic introductory tips on how to get over those kinds of fears of. So I have I have a great I have a great article for you that I wrote, which I don't know if you've seen it, but I had so many women are like this. So don't feel bad, OK? Women in general are more conservative than men. We don't because we have to work so hard for our money. We don't want to lose it. We don't we may not necessarily trust the stock market because we don't understand it. Do not feel bad. That is very, very normal. So one of one of the things that I just wrote is I. Equated, you know, what asset classes are. No, and it's OK if you don't. OK, so asset classes are different classes of stocks and bonds and different like where like, you know, you've heard the term don't put your all your eggs in one basket and how you diversify into all the different asset classes. But most people don't understand the differences between them. Right. So I put together an article why shoes as asset classes. So just like you have different shoes for different needs, you have different asset classes and I equate shoes to asset classes. Oh, OK. That's awesome. And that will that I mean, it's so funny because one of my best friends read it and she was like, I've never understood this ever until right now. OK, this is yes. So we have to go and we need to read this article. Shoes as asset classes. I can't I'm I'm intrigued. And then and then the other thing to get women comfortable is I like I like to talk about other two other charts that I also love. One is a calendar chart and another one is an Ibbotson chart. Both of these, you can Google them and take a look online. And a calendar chart just shows you how each asset class has performed over time. And they show up in little boxes and little little like colorful boxes. So each color is a different asset class. And so you could see over time what, you know, if again, putting not putting all your eggs in one basket and having a little bit of everything, you could see what happens over time. And then the Ibbotson chart shows you exactly what's happened with the market in all the in the different asset classes from like 1920 something or 1900 to today. And you can see and it almost looks like a straight line up, which is really interesting because when you zoom out from a timing perspective, because so let's say you invest today and the market goes down 10 percent in the next six months and that's a normal correction. But people would be like, oh, my God, I just put a thousand dollars in. I lost one hundred dollars. I'm out. I can't do this. I can't lose my money. And then they sell it. Nine hundred dollars and then they never get it back. OK, but if you took and you and you zoomed out and said, I have a 10 year time horizon, you're never going to lose money in a 10 year time horizon. There's never been a period of time where people have lost money in a 10 year time horizon unless you were in a single stock that went bankrupt or a Ponzi scheme. Those are the only two ways you can lose money over a long time frame. And if you go back even more, let's say, you know, you're 30 years old and you're not retiring to 65 and you've got 35 years, 35 years time horizon. Zoom, zoom out. You can't even see those little dips. Yeah. You can't even see them. That's the financial crisis. Yeah. You get so caught up in what's going on right now and you hear all these headlines, you know, stock market not looking great. And you're like, oh, wow. Well, I'm glad I'm not a part of that right now. But if you really if you look back to your point and you look at the trend over time, you would see that maybe it's not as bad as it appears. Oh, it's not bad at all. It's literally good. It's positive. There's no there's no bad if you if you go if you go back. And then the other thing is women. Remember, I know you said earlier that, you know, how long we live. Well, let's say we retire. Let's say, you know, you retire at 60 or whatever and you're living to 100. You need to fund a retirement for 40 years. That may have been more than what you worked. Yeah. So you have to find a super long retirement because you've got a long longevity. You need to be in stock more than a man needs to be in stock because you've got a longer time horizon. So you can't afford not to be in stock is what I tell you. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I'm excited now. I'm definitely going to go research this and I've got to get into it. It's you know what? I and also I also do like the compounding interest, like the how wonderful the eighth wonder of the world is compounding interest. And if you figure out like if I even put one hundred dollars a month away at this age, you know, by the time I'm 65, how much is it going to be worth? And the numbers are incredible. If you do and you do like a stock portfolio versus if you just do cash, you'd be like, oh, I guess I don't have a lot of money. Like just do the numbers, do the math. And it's like, well, if I change your view right on the spot, I always do that with young people. I'm like, OK, well, if you're 20 and you start saving now, look how much you're going to have. Yeah. You've got time on your side. Yeah. And for some reason, it's always been easier for me to wrap my mind around that when it came to retirement, investing in my own retirement fund. It's like, oh, that makes sense. You know, it's going to compound. And so I've always I've always been able to wrap my mind around that. But for some reason, when it comes to just investing in in the market, like I've always had that barrier of like, oh, I don't know if I have enough to do that or if I'm ready or if I have enough knowledge about that. So. Well, so. So let me let me give you another suggestion on if you're going to do your retirement account. I always say to fund your retirement account first and max out your retirement fund at work first. And you don't have to do the after tax money into the stock market. That's only if you have extra money. But fully fund your 401k first and if you have extra money, then you do investing outside of that. But I always say, so be comfortable with your retirement and that's fine. You know, you may not even have to do more than that. Very interesting. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Carrie. I really like this conversation about just encouraging and empowering women to invest in their future and just invest in general and just having their own like that concept of just having your own, you know, circling back to Christina, you know, talking about go to college, get your job. That's going to give you your stability. There's more beyond that. And some of us are taught more stereotypically to go up and find that partner or find that man that has that wealth that will just take care of you for the rest of your life. And that's all you need to do. You need the right person. As you were talking about earlier, Carrie, that happened. You might fall into that mindset or that trap. We all do. We all can. Anything can happen at the end of the day. You have to have your own big goal. So let me let me give you some stats about that. So, first of all, a man is not a plan. Right. I always I always say that. Second of all, I work with clients, women clients who are widowed and divorced. So neither of them ever plan to be widowed or divorced, but they're widowed and divorced. So even if you meet Prince Charming and, you know, and by the way, that's what we're raised with those, you know, the Disney classics of meeting Prince Charming and sweeping you off your feet and, you know, whatever. I don't even you know, it's not really real anymore. But OK, so that's what we were raised on. But no, you. You're still going to be 90 percent of women, 90 percent of women are still going to be responsible for their own financial future at one point in their lives. So either, you know, you know, their parents pass and they're single, their spouse passes, they get divorced, you know, life happens. Right. And so no matter what, you should be owning it, you should be owning your own financial future. And guess what? If you meet a man and he's fantastic and he's your partner or a woman and they're your partner and then you can combine assets and then you have even more money to save. And that's great. But I would still always make sure I have my own. You know what? And your spouse is gravy. That's that's how I love it. It's as they should add to your life, enhance it. They shouldn't make a whole dish. Who's going to eat a gravy dish? Just gravy. Potatoes. That's the hard work and your investments. Love it. You know what I love about you, Kari, is you really break it down into such relatable terminology and the way you talk about money just makes it so easy to digest. And I really appreciate that. And I would love to know. I mean, I can tell that you're a fantastic financial advisor just from the way you explain things and put me so at ease just even in the way you talk about investing. Can you explain what are some characteristics that women should look for when they are wanting to work with a financial advisor that can just make it a little bit easier for them? Yes, such a good question. I believe a couple couple things that I feel really strongly about. One is they have to be board certified, which means they have to be a certified financial planner. We have about 95,000 in this country right now. The numbers have been climbing every year because anybody who's in this practice and doing this should be board certified. And so that's that's step one. Second thing is that I believe that they should be a fiduciary, which means that is that they are charging you a fee and any advice they give you is in the best interest of the client. So that means they're not selling things. They're not. You know, when you go to them and you ask what it costs, it's transparent. They tell you what it costs up front. If somebody tells you that it's free, they're not a fiduciary. And also it's not free. They're hiding the fees somewhere. Don't don't believe there's no such thing as a free lunch and nobody works for free. So if you want something for free, you're going to get something that's not for free. And that's worse than what you would if you paid for it. So that's super important. I feel like also somebody that you can ask any question to that you don't feel they don't make you feel uncomfortable to ask a question and they teach you. And that's really important so that you are learning from this relationship and it's getting making you smarter and more knowledgeable rather than them, that person taking care of it for you. You want to you want to be able to be educated and learn and learn, learn alongside with that person. And that also that that person is an advocate for you. That's really all of that is super important. And also you have to feel good about that person. If you don't feel if you know, I've had a couple of people say to me, you know, I don't like my financial planner or advisor. And I'm like, then why are you working with them? I don't know. I don't understand why you would work with somebody you don't like. I don't get it. But OK. Yeah. And they have to talk to you. I yeah, you mentioned that earlier was when you go into a room with your spouse and they just talk to them that immediately red flag, red flag, I'm out. Exactly. And it's done. It's done more often than you would like to know. Yeah. Yes, I agree. I agree. Carrie, this conversation has been absolutely inspirational and I'm just so happy that you're here to give us this wealth of knowledge as we wrap up our conversation. What are some strategies or just general insights that you recommend for women listening who are looking to enhance their personal financial journey? Good. Great question. So I think that women should know their numbers and I think that's really important. And so the most important numbers that I would like them to know is what's their budget numbers. So what's coming in and what's going out every month is super important to know. If you don't know, you're definitely doing something wrong because you're probably overspending. I also want all women to know their net worth numbers. So that is your assets, which is anything that you own minus your liabilities, anything that you owe equals your net worth. And so, you know, when you're young, it could be actually negative because, you know, you don't have a lot of assets, you just got out of college, you probably have college debt. It might be I'm sure it's a negative number, but it's OK because you're going to chip away at it over time and it's going to, you know, numbers going to go like that over time. That's the number that usually goes like this over time. If you're doing the right things, it goes like that over time. So that's really important. They need to know their credit scores, another super important thing, because if they don't have good credit, it's going to cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime. So I think that that's another really important thing for women to know and manage. And with all the great tools that you guys provide, it's easy for for people to do. You know, back in the day, like I remember it like in the 80s and 90s. Nobody even knew what went into the credit score, like it was like it was like it was like, you know, the behind the scenes type thing where, you know, behind the curtain where you didn't know what was included in that. I actually went in the 90s. I actually worked for Citibank credit cards because I wanted to know what went into the FICO score and I wanted to get under the hood. And so I did a stint there for a year and a half so I could learn what went into that FICO score so I could raise my score up to like an over an over 800. But now it's like it's so simple because there's all these incredible tools that you guys provide. So people are very lucky that they can manage it effectively today. So the other thing I would say, what else for women to do? Women should also. Don't be afraid of investing and, you know, definitely read my piece on the shoes as asset classes because I think it will make sense to you. And do not neglect yourself when it comes to savings, you know, at savings, investing. Don't put others before you. You are just as important. Put yourself first. That's amazing. I love that. That's me. I really appreciate that, Carrie. Christina, I love that Carrie mentioned there's different things that experience that can help benefit a lot of people listening today. So just to wrap up our conversation, Christina, do you have a couple of resources for those listening? Yes, I have a few resources and I'm really happy that Carrie mentioned that. And to her point, when I was younger and I was trying to figure out how to get a car loan, I went and I applied and my credit was so poor that I was approved at a 19 percent interest rate. And I had no idea at the time how credit worked, how credit scores worked. And I didn't even know how to access them. And now I'm so happy to share that you can access your credit scores completely free once a month through experience. We offer free credit monitoring. And when you access your experience credit report, you get access also to your FICO score. And that comes with a list of factors that's helping or hurting your credit score. And this is a really great this is really great information to have, because if you're on the credit rebuilding process as I was and I knew exactly what was hurting my score and I knew what actions I needed to take to improve it. Now, granted, I've made a lot of mistakes in my 20s. I mentioned that I always own up to it. But just having that information is so vital and it really sets you on the path to start making positive changes in your life. So I want to reiterate that you have access to these resources, you have access to these tools. You can get it for free monthly. If you want to pay for the premium service, you can do that and you can access it for free daily. But we also have educational articles about credit. So if you're wanting to learn how credit works, how to manage your credit, as Kerry mentioned, the FICO score factors, we have articles on all of that so that you can learn and you could build your best possible credit profile. Thank you so much, Christina. And also make sure to join our weekly credit chat on every Wednesday at 12 p.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. Eastern. And thank you both so much for joining us. And I really, really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for listening to this episode of Credit Chat Live. I'm Destiny White, your co-host, signing off for now. Don't forget to subscribe and stay tuned for more. Bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai