From $200K Debt to Building Wealth Without Sacrifice with Germaine Foley

You are listening to the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, episode number 184.

Hello my friends and welcome back to the podcast. I am so psyched for this conversation that I'm welcoming you into today. You know that I'm a sucker for a good money conversation and today's episode. Is no exception. I have the fabulous Germaine Foley with me on the podcast. Germaine is a certified life and money coach, so we have a lot in common just off the bat.

And Germaine, when she and her husband got married, they found themselves in. $200,000 of debt. They both came into their marriage with student loans, and then they added onto that credit card debt. And we're gonna go into everything today on the podcast. Germaine wants to unashamed debt the same way that I do.

She wants to make it not a big deal. You just made choices in your life because you were younger, you decided to pay things off over time. You weren't paying attention, whatever it was. But Germaine strongly believes that you don't have to go into an. All or nothing extreme bare bones budgeting situation in order to climb out of debt.

She and her husband did it $200,000. That is a big, big number, right? But she did it. They did it. They enjoyed life. They figured out which things they wanted to splurge on, and then they decided that the rest of it would go to paying off their debt, climbing out of debt, and then building wealth. This is an important conversation for anybody who thinks that she doesn't have enough time, that it's all over, that you're never gonna be able to figure it out.

This is your like hope. This is your proof that you too can figure it out. There is no shame about debt. It is just negative money, and I really want you to hear everything that Germaine has to say. So let's go into this episode.

 So welcome to the podcast, Germaine. We are so happy to have you. Thank you so much for having me, Debbie. I am so excited for this conversation. I am too. It's been a long time since I've had somebody on the podcast who talked openly about debt. I mean, a few years ago, I definitely did some interviews, but this is a conversation that.

I don't even think we can have enough of it because there is so much shame around debt, embarrassment, people hide out. And why don't you just jump in and tell our audience what was your story that got you into debt and how you pulled yourself out of it. Yeah, thanks for asking. So I always like to say it started when I was a little girl.

So I grew up in a blue collar town. My parents worked really, really hard, for me and my sisters to have the best life they could provide us, but we just didn't have a lot of money. But one of the things they did was they worked. Like I said, really hard to get us into a school district where they thought we would get a good education and then, we would be set for life.

And so on my first day of school, I walked in, I was so excited and I had on, I don't even know, it was just like normal clothes. And I looked around and I knew instantly that I was different. The kids. There, they had the latest gym shoes, the latest jeans, they had even fancy backpacks, and it was just really interesting and I instantly knew that I would never be like those kids, but I wanted to be like them.

And so I really believed that at that young age, I subconsciously just made a pact with myself that I was gonna grow up, go to college. Get a good job, make a lot of money, Uhhuh so I could buy whatever I wanted to buy. And that's exactly what I did. And when I graduated from college, my husband and I met and we were instantly six figure earners, which we thought was a lot of money.

We thought we were rich, but we also had six figures in student loans at the same time. before you go on, I wanna just go back because our. Origin stories, our childhood, right? the messages of our parents that we have to work really hard and listen, you and I are both building businesses.

It's not like we can just sit around all day and meditate on money falling down from the skies. We do work, right? We go out, put our work into the world that takes grit and resilience. But when you got into school, because my sister and I have actually talked about it. 'cause we went to school where for us in Los Angeles, there was a group of kids who would go skiing in the winter.

We didn't go skiing. I finally asked my dad once, daddy, why didn't we go skiing? He's like, he never liked it, but it was a status symbol and my sister and I both felt less than because there was this group of kids who had come back with those lift tickets right on their parkas, and we also felt different.

And we were the kids who wore clothes from Sears. I wore my older brother's hand me downs. We were middle class, we were fine. I never, ever lacked for anything. But again, those messages from our childhood are, they stay with us and we, and I love what you said, you made a pact with yourself or a vow that you were gonna do it differently.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And to your point, my parents, they took great care of us. We never needed anything. And of course, we wanted things that we couldn't always get. So, yeah, I can totally relate to that. So in school, did you continue as you went through the school system, did you continue to feel like you were different from your classmates?

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. But I will say that as I got older, like that was one of the things my parents did. for birthdays or Christmas, they made sure they was able to get us something that was a little bit more trendy. You know what I mean? So, and then when I got my first job. In high school, I used to spend it all on clothing and things like that because yeah, I felt different and I didn't wanna be different, we wanna be part of the tribe, we wanna fit in.

so my money was always spent on clothes. Soon as I got paid, even my little $67 check, I would go to the mall. Did you have in your family growing up a concept of saving? No, but my dad used to always tell me, you should save some of your money. But I don't think they saved any of their money.

Mm-hmm. But he would say, you should save. And it was just, I did understand that. I'm like, why would I save? That's so boring. You know what I mean? It was almost like saving means depriving yourself of. Having fun today. So it never really clicked back then. Got it. It was like, I do what I say, not what I do.

Right. He wanted you to be the saver. Maybe He also thought that that was a way, but he wasn't able to express it. Our parents also weren't able to express to us 'cause they didn't have a language for money. Money conversations that happened normally didn't happen. Right. It was usually like stress or anxiety.

But my parents actually, 'cause I did save, I did have a passbook savings account back in the day, and I remember feeling very empowered, actually building my savings, you know, getting $11 for my 11th birthday for my grandparents and depositing the check in the bank account. So I actually had that.

So my story's a little bit different. but that's interesting that you felt like you had to spend it all down. Yeah, absolutely. And that followed me into adulthood. So let's fast forward, right? You and your husband got married, you both had student loans. How did you feel about those student loans, 

I knew they were there, but I didn't feel stressed by them. I figured we'll get to 'em eventually. A lot of people nowadays even think that way. They're like, you know what I mean, I might die with these. it wasn't this thing where I felt super stressed about them. I kept deferring them 'cause you could, put 'em in deference.

Right? So I kept doing that as much as possible where you don't pay until you absolutely have to. So I kept doing that, but other than that, yeah, they didn't stress me out too much, honestly. It wasn't a big deal. So explain to me, because I didn't grow up, with student loans, that's number one. And number two, because my dad, I guess this is part of our origin story.

He had a trust for all the children for education. So I know that when I went to college, it came out of the muddy that he had set aside. Methodically over time for the kids to go to college. And my older brother did not go to college, so I was the first one to tap into that. So I didn't have any worries.

 he didn't pay for any extras. I had to work in order to pay for any clothing, shoes, if I wanted to go get an ice cream, that was all on me. But I don't have this concept of student loans, which so many people have, and it's acceptable. And the government gives you really good financial conditions in terms of interest payments and things like that.

But. Deference Does, does that mean the exact same amount of money you're just deferring it to later? Or is the interest growing and did you even understand it? if it is growing. So there are two things. There's, now that I'm older, I understand what was happening. So there's two things. There's deference and there's forbearance.

Deference is, I might be mixing them up, but I believe deference is when you're in school. You can defer and defer as long as you're getting your education and there's no interest, that's accumulating. Okay. Then forbearance. So I probably was doing more, forbearance at the time and just didn't realize it.

That's where you push it off, but the interest is accruing. So I was doing a little bit of both of those things. I get it. But I think that's the problem that people run into. 'cause I talk about this, about not understanding like where my 401k was being invested and we don't know. And nobody sat us down and said, here, these are the important things you need to know about money.

So your forbearance on your student loans means it's now growing and growing and growing and you don't even underst. Stand. If you don't understand money and interest and compounding, you don't even understand why that's happening. All of a sudden, the pieces of paper come in the mail today, they probably just come by email, I imagine.

Right? And the numbers just grow and freak you out a little bit. And then they just get so big and you're just like, yeah, I don't know. And people just, I'll just pay the minimum and paying the minimum. The interest is just growing and growing and that's how people go from having maybe 50 K initially in student loans to, two, 300 k because over the years it just balloons.

Wow. So you and your husband now are married with $200,000 of student loans. yes, this was before we had our boys, which, and by the way, this has been a while. My kids are 20 and 18 now, so yes, this was before we had them, and so that's how we started our lives. we were $200,000 in debt by the time I woke up, but as soon as we started our marriage, we were a hundred K, and then we added another a hundred.

Oh, so, okay, so did the 100 to 200 K happen because of interest or were you also then adding to your debt by, I dunno, credit card bank loans? How did that happen? So a hundred K was student loans. That's our combined. Okay. And then we lived, we went, we bought the cars. this did not include our home, although we did buy a home.

We shopped. We traveled, we lived life. Yeah. So personal loans, 401k loans. we were just living it up. Like when I tell you. My money was a hot mess. It really was a hot mess. And you were like in Lala land around your money. It's like, okay, let's go travel. Let's buy all the things. Let's do it.

Why do you think you did that? Just because you had promised yourself back in as a school girl that that was going to happen? Or is it the media? Is it the people that you were working with after you got your degree? Like what was propelling you to go and spend everything and take on more debt? It was habit.

Honestly, I had never, remember when I was in high school, my $67 check, you spend it. Like I had a mindset that money was meant to be spent, that I made a lot of money in my mind. We'll figure it out later. I wanna live life I'll, I've got time to invest. I've got time to clean it all up. And honestly, it's the same stories that a lot of my clients are telling themselves today.

It's just this, and you're stuck in this habit loop. You don't even know you're doing it until it's almost like the stress and the overwhelm. Like something happens where you're just like, okay, I can't keep living like this. And I can tell you what that was for us. yeah. This is I like to think of it like a V, right?

You go down, down, down, down, down. You hit the bottom of the V. You get so fed up, you're so stressed, you're about to like explode, like that pressure cooker that like, boom, it just explodes. And that's when you can start going up the other side of the v. And unfortunately so many people don't stop themselves.

They see the writing on the wall, but they can't hit the brakes until they hit rock bottom. I don't know why it is. It just, maybe it's the habit and the momentum and you just keep going until you hit that brick wall. So what was your brick wall? So we had a lot of brick walls, but the one that just really like.

Stunned me was when we had two kids in daycare and our daycare bill was the exact same amount as our mortgage. So if you think about the fact that money was all over the place, we were juggling bills, we were robbing Paul to pay Peter. Things were just not good financially. And then boom, here's this.

Double mortgage. And that's when I knew something had to change because I feel like I was the one, my husband wasn't as stressed about it. He wasn't as anxious and overwhelmed and concerned about it. I think he just felt that maybe we'll figure it out, or maybe he was just, Handling it differently than I was, but I knew that something had to change.

And so I went to church one day and I was literally bawling my eyes out and people probably thought that I was like feeling the spirit or something, but it wasn't that I was stressed out. And I prayed. I said, God, you gotta help me. And it's funny because my dad, he gifted like literally probably a couple of weeks later, my dad gifted me and my sisters a book.

By Dave Ramsey. It was called the Total Money Makeover, and I devoured that book. I was just like, oh my God, this is what I need. and, that's when things started to look like there was some hope for me. Yeah. Hmm. Do you think your dad knew?was he aware of your stress? Had you been talking about it?

Why do you think that, you know, obviously, you prayed, you reached out to God and then he sent your messenger, right? Which was your dad with this amazing book. But what do you think inspired your dad to actually give you that book? Honestly, I don't know, because I didn't share any of it.

And on the outside looking in, my husband and I, we were doing fine. We hid it very well. So, honestly, I don't know what inspired him. I just think it was God because I needed some help. And you know, you think that sometimes you're like, oh, I hope this some, miracle happens. But yeah, no, I needed to learn some things.

So that I could change from the inside out. And so, like I said, I devoured the book and it was very, a very easy read and it was very simple. You just cut everything out and you focus on getting out of debt and one day you'll be able to live life and. So I at first kind of pushed back a little bit, but then I was just like, you know what?

Nope, I'm willing to do whatever I need to do. So I took that idea, took the whole notion to my husband, and he again looked at me and he was like, Germaine, I know we have to change. He said, but we can't live like that. We have two little kids. We can't just give up everything that we enjoy doing. We can't just go scorched earth.

I like that. So we need to do some, yeah, we need to change, but we can't live like that. And that's when the light bulb moment went off for me when I'm like, okay. I was just kind of pondering to myself, why do we have to go this very strict? Restrictive way to get our money under control. It's like I was going all or nothing.

At one point it was, you know, nothing. I'm just gonna live and not even think about money. And now I'm trying to be like this frugal person that doesn't spend anything and doesn't do anything, which wouldn't have been sustainable for us. So I was just like, why can't I find some middle ground? Why can't I build wealth?

Which mean for me at the time, it get out of debt, get some savings, and then finally start really investing. Why can't we build wealth and still do some things that matter to us and still enjoy our lives? Still take a vacation every now and then, still let our kids, participate in their activities, still go on date nights.

Why can't we figure out a way to do both? And that was my mission, and we did it. we figured out how to do both. I think that part of it was probably the fact that you and your husband both had really high incomes, so I don't wanna say like everybody has to have a high income, but it gave you more flexibility.

There are people who are living on half of what you guys were living on and with two kids in daycare, I do wanna say that it is more challenging. I mean, you can change jobs, you can change careers, you can get a promotion. There are ways to increase your income and income. Has no limit.

 there's no ceiling on your income, but there is like a bare bones budget unless you're gonna go live off the grid in a tent somewhere, do your own fishing, and, for foraging there is a minimum like scorched earth. I love the way you say that, that, bread and water and like rice and ramen noodles, which the real extremists will talk about.

So what did you actually cut out? And you said like a vacation time to time. What, because I also talk about that like, if you wanna live a rich life or a wealthy life, it's not about having everything, it's about being intentional and deciding what are the things that are important to you. For example, my husband and I, we've never owned a car.

He has a company car, and I also have an 18-year-old and a 20-year-old by the way, but I also have six kids who are older than my 18 and 20 year olds. So with with eight kids, we would need a bus. So his five seat was the thing that took us around, took us to the supermarket. And if we needed a bigger car, we rented one or we took a taxi, it was never important for us.

'cause we also live in an area with great public transportation, so we could manage without having a car. And our kids could go to school on public buses or walk. I'm a big, walk, ride your bike, do all that. What did you guys decide That this is what we're not touching. we're keeping this, this is really important.

And what did you decide that it was okay to let go of it or to do it less frequently? Yes. So this is so good because this is a process. 'cause everybody all are, everyone always wants to know, how did you do that? How did you do both? And I will say, yes, if you make a lot of money, that's fine, but even if your income is average, I feel like you can figure out how to do both.

But you have to figure out what matters to you and. That season of life. So what matters to you is going to change based on the season of life that you're in. So for us, we were in a season of life where we had a lot of debt and we had young kids and we wanted to create memories with them. My husband worked as a school principal and his job, can you imagine?

It was very stressful and he only got limited vacation, so like spring break, summer break. So we decided. That we needed to get away. We needed to just get out of town, at least once or twice a year, sometimes during spring break, sometimes during summer. And because of the season of life we were in, it wasn't the most elaborate vacations, but we still did it.

 we also looked at just our food. One of the things we were doing was just wasting money on food, right? So we were able to trim that down. We were doing a lot of eating out. So instead of eating out as much as we. We're eating out, we decided that we would do it once a week, right? So we looked at, everything was on the table.

 if we could trim, you know, insurance rates and cell phone things, we did that. But yeah, I mean, the things that really mattered to us was that we would have at least one date night a month. Our kids could do some of their activities, you know, seasonally based on what was happening with soccer or basketball.

And then that we took at least one, maybe two, depending on the year vacations. and depending on where we were financially, depending on the, caliber of those vacations. So, yeah. I have to say that one of the vacations that we took as a family when I was growing up that still lives in my mind as probably the best vacation ever as a kid was we, my dad rented an RV for a month and we went traveling around the Pacific Northwest.

It's not five star hotels. It was like a bunch of kids like squished into this camper and staying in tents overnight. But it's so much not about the caliber, as you said, like, you know, listen, now I'm a little older. Staying in a tent doesn't light me up anymore. And I did it a year and a half ago. so it's not like I'm not willing to try things, but.

For kids, they're just gonna remember that you had time together. And that's what's so important. You know, if you're the kind of person who, you're in a very high stress job and you want to take that five star, go to the hotel, do the spa, get yourself a massage, and have, and. Everything taken care of from soup to nuts.

You know, your morning coffee until your, I don't know, your drinks at night if that's gonna work for you. Okay. But we just found also as us raising a large family, that the family experience and the togetherness is happening when we're, when we're together. It doesn't have to be that kind of experience where we're spending lots of money.

We can make it happen in, in such different ways. Absolutely. My kids, they tell me to this day, their favorite vacation was when we went to Washington DC and visited all the Smithsonians And they're free. Yeah. And we took the train. They have a really great train system in the DC Virginia area. They do.

And we took the train back and forth. They loved that. We stayed in a hotel. But yeah, it was an inexpensive trip when you think about it. And they loved it, so yeah. That's great. I love the fact that they, that's the memories is what they take with them forever. And that's what they're gonna give to their kids.

Yes. I just went with my husband, a month or so ago. We went to the Grand Tetons. I, this was 50 years after I went to the Grand Tetons with my dad. In that camper. I celebrated my 12th birthday in the Grand Tetons and I just celebrated my 62nd birthday 50 years later in the Grand Tetons.

So you see it just comes around again. Yeah, because those memories live so sharply, you know, with you. Yeah. And you wanna take them with you. I was gonna say, yeah. I don't, this is why we were. Adamant about doing both, right? Because now we have these memories, like I said, my kids are 18 and 20 and we can reminisce.

We have photos. I will not change the way we got our money under control for anything. and I want everyone to hear me, like if I can figure this out. So can you, and you don't have to do it by following the very restrictive financial advice. Good for you. I love that. So what about your kids now? Are they going to college?

Do you have student loans for them or how did you do it differently? so for them, because of what we went through, I was just like, they will not have $1 in student loans. So. We started saving for them, while we were actually getting our finances together, but we really upped it once we were out of debt because you know what they say, get your own oxygen mask on first and then help others.

That's when we really started investing in their, we have something called 5 29 plans. In our state. I think each state in the US has their own, and so we are cash flowing their college. And also we have investments, so we're doing a little mixture of both. And so my oldest is about to enter his junior year.

Okay. In college. And then my 18-year-old, he's still in high school. He has one more year of high school, and then he will be going off to college as well. Nice. How did you raise your kids differently around money from how you were raised? Yeah, so my kids, it's so interesting. They are so different when it comes to money.

So my oldest, he won't even buy himself socks. He walks around with. Socks that have holes in them. I'm like, throw them away, please. It's time for new ones. He was like, no, these work. And then my youngest, he just, you know, he's one that wants to spend everything that he gets every time there was a birthday every time, you know?

So I had to treat them both very differently. Yeah, I didn't just give them a cookie cutter approach. So for my oldest, I actually had to help him get comfortable with. Spending money on things that actually matter to him and not hoarding money. Mm-hmm. So just having those conversations with him, helping him to understand what money is for and that where his security really comes from and that it's okay, money comes back to you, you let it go, and it comes back.

The youngest I had to get him in a position where he's comfortable just having money, and so instead of letting him just go spend. Everything that he has. Like, okay, let's talk about spending a percentage of it. You get to spend maybe 30%, let's put the other percent in savings and the other percent, you know, somewhere else.

So just in helping them to see the beauty of compounding interest, helping them to see like, yeah, you can put it in a savings account and some should be in a savings account, but let's see what happens when we put it in an investment account. And you can see the wonders of compounding interest. So just helping them where.

Helping them see how money works, but from their own personalities and what, yeah, they were kind of leaning towards, I think it's so beautiful that you noticed. They're different personalities because I do say that my husband and I have a tendency to be more savers than spenders. And like I am one of five siblings.

We have our own eight kids. And so each one does have a difference and there is some crossover. I don't think you can make a formula like, you know. Chemical compounds, like exactly like what percentage of this or, and what percentage of that. But there is a nature and nurture element to it. Each one is gonna be born with their natural inclinations to wanna spend.

And I guess that was more you plus the fact that, you know, the way you grew up. But the fact that you had the sensitivity to treat each one like his own unique personality and help them is so beautiful that you were, that you're able to do that. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. I think it's important.

And that's just with raising kids in general, like they're just so different. Oh boy. So, yeah. Yeah. So you had this big debt that you slowly started to work on and get out of. When did you start taking money and putting it into investments to grow your wealth for the long term? Yes. So we started actually right away.

So remember how I said I read the book and. The book has very prescriptive things that you should and should not do. And that's when I had to decide, okay, what am I gonna leave and what am I gonna take? And that's when I kind of came up with my own thing. But I'm so grateful for the book 'cause it got me on the right track.

Yeah, it really did. Although I barely used much of what was in it. So one of the things we did was we just started with the match, right? So for me, my company was matching my 401k 6%. And I wasn't doing that. At first because I was just like, you know, I can't afford it because everything was going out, but I made myself get that match.

I looked at it as Free money. Yeah. Like that's a return that you cannot turn away. So even while we were deep in debt, once I got my. My money mindset, right? Mm-hmm. I started investing in my 401k, and I'm so glad I did because now, I mean, the compounding is just beautiful to see. And then my husband, he started a 4 0 3 B, right?

And so, and he gets a great retirement pension and all that, but he started investing in a 4 0 3 B once we started to get a grip on our finances. So I think this is interesting 'cause one of my aha moments with money was realizing that I had a 401k. And listen, I worked on Wall Street, I worked on a trading floor.

You would think that I would've understood this. I think I knew it's hard for me to rewind the clock. I think I knew that I had some money put away in a retirement account. I didn't know what a 401k was, and I didn't even know how it was invested. But my employer put money into that account for me.

And in Israel where I live now, employers have to put money into pension accounts. So I think that's kind of what it was like in the United States back in the day when I started there. But it's interesting to me that your employers didn't have to do that. And when did you realize that this was even an option?

Was it because of that book? Well, I knew it was an option. I just wasn't taking advantage of the option. So the way my company was structured, they didn't put money in unless you put it in. So it was a match. So up to 6% and I was just, I, you know, and when I think back, maybe I was putting in like one or 2%, like something very small and they were doing that.

But once I like really started to think about it, I was just. Adamant that I was gonna get the full mm-hmm. Match the, the full 6%. Um, and then eventually we got to a point where we were just doing the max, whatever we can do every year. So. Did your HR department? I'm just like fascinated by how this works.

'cause I know when I started working here for the government, so the HR department like sits you down and they ba basically make you just sign your life away on a bunch of papers. Like, they didn't really explain, as far as I remember, it's many years ago already, like over 30 years. But I don't remember.

Anybody explaining to me what this was and what the ramifications of signing these papers are? I mean, I look around and it's great 'cause I can get my retirement from my former, employer in like three years from now and it's gonna be a really nice cash flow. So yes, they do sit down and kind of explain, but it's not like mandatory.

It's just like, Hey, you can sign up for this and you get a match it, but you have to put in a certain amount and then we'll match it. and honestly, it's been a while. I can't remember what my first employer offered. They may have put, you know, a small percentage and without me, because I know. I've sinced rolled, you know, old 4 0 1 Ks over into IRAs.

 but my understanding was I really wasn't taking advantage of the full benefits until I really, you know, consciously made a decision that I was gonna, you know, change my financial life. Yeah, and that's something in terms of, you know, how we're taught or not taught about money that you and you start a new job and you're all like excited and your head's in the cloud and it's new people, new days, and you're more worried if you're wearing the right clothes.

And if your hair looks good, then if you're, then if you know what's going on with your paperwork and then you sort of get into your job, you wanna prove yourself and you're not even thinking about, oh, there's this money and this match and I should just go and take advantage of it. So there's so much missed opportunity because we don't understand what the money is and the compounding effect of starting as early as possible.

So you let all that matching money go. Yeah. And you think, I know my mindset was I can't afford to put away 6%, like I'm already spending almost everything I make. So it was just. I think a lot of people put it off because they don't think they can afford it or they're not getting the full match. Maybe they're just getting like 3% when they could be getting 6%.

So it's just helping people to have those mindset shifts. again, that's why I'm so passionate about Yeah. You know, talking to people about this stuff. Yeah. Do you think if anybody had actually sat you down. Explain to you compound interest. Explain to you what were the long term ramifications of you taking 6% of your income and then getting the match and they even showed you a chart so it was very visual, like infographic or something like that.

Like do you think you might have done it differently if someone had said, Hey Germaine, let's talk about this and see how it's going to affect you. It's very possible that I could have. Yeah, and you know, there's also a part of me that say, maybe not, because you know, I'm young and one of the things that I hear from my clients all the time, and I said it to myself was, I have time.

I have time to figure this out. But the truth is, time is your biggest asset when it comes to wealth building. Yes, time is your friend, and when you tell yourself that you have time, you waste time and you lose money. But maybe if someone would've said that, maybe I would have, but I could have, I could easily see myself back then in the space, the mindset space I was in, just saying, yep, I'll get, I've got time.

I'm only 25. You know what I mean? I can see myself maybe saying something like that too, but who knows? Who knows? Right? So I wrote a book, you don't know this, I don't think. So I'm gonna show you for our viewers. I wrote a book called The one K Investor, simple Smart Steps to Start Investing with a thousand dollars or less.

It's available on Amazon. You can share it with your clients. I'm not making my million dollar business out of royalties from Amazon, that's for sure. Books are not the way you make your, you build wealth unless you're JK rolling or something. but anyway. There's an example that I share inside the book.

Because that idea that we have time, and I don't, I wrote it six years ago already, so you're gonna have to forgive me if I don't remember all the details. But if you start contributing to your 401k, or that a thousand dollars a year, a hundred dollars a month, really from 25 to 30, and then you turn it off, you stop investing.

Right. Just the compounding from those five years until you get to retirement age and you're like, okay, when I get to like 35, after the kids, after whatever, then I'm gonna double my, my, investments, my contributions to my investment accounts. You're never going to catch up. The math doesn't math. No, like it's so important to get started as quickly as possible.

'cause the compounding is it's magic. It really is. It is. It's magic that you know the magic of compound interest. The eighth wonder of the world because the interest that you get on your interest, on your interest, it's so much in your favor. The sooner you get started. Like if you didn't do it yesterday.

Do it today. Yeah, a hundred percent. I always say like, the best time was 20 years ago, right? But the next best time is today. Let's start, stop playing around. Right? And, and it's so sad because so many of the thoughts that I hear is like, oh, it's too late for me. and you know how like sometimes you'll, you log into like Vanguard or Fidelity and they have these little calculators.

I think they're great, but sometime they. They discourage people, right? Because they're like, well, you need to be investing, you know, $5,000 a month in order to retire with enough money. And people are like, I can't do that. But if you just start with something, no matter where you are, no matter how old you are, because something is better than nothing.

 I did an episode recently on my show, which you're gonna be on very soon, where I just took them through some, examples of like how much you'll have, even if you're starting at 30 or 40, which you'll have by the time you're 65 versus if you do nothing, you have zero. If you do nothing, but if you do this, you'll have.

You know this by the time you're 65. So there's hope even if you didn't start at 25. There's still hope. There's always hope. And I think once you decide to focus on your money and you'll tell us like how you decided to like leave your job and go into this. But I talk about in the book, I had a client who started putting aside $2 a.

That was her commitment. $2 a day. She raised it to $3 a day, and by the time we finished working together, she'd raised it to $5 a day. So in a short period of time, just a few months, she started putting aside now $150 a day. And then we were still in touch. she lives in Australia. She had become an affiliate for one of the robo-advisors.

Like she was getting an app for her phone and she was share for Acorns, or Acorn, I guess it is. She was sharing that and she was getting people to sign up and all of a sudden she was this huge advocate for investing and taking care of your money and that's. S just the, so the all or nothing mentality that you were talking about with your debt and then with your investing is what stops you from taking those little baby steps and all of a sudden you start noticing, you're like, oh.

I'd rather like save $2 today than spend it on a pair of socks. Well, that might be your son. But, like you start making conscious choices because you start understanding what it really means. You know, we wanna live today, we wanna have fun today, but you know what, when I'm 70 and 80 and 90, I also want money to take care of me.

And I'm probably not gonna be recording podcasts when I'm 90. So. Absolutely. And it's just like, and I think that's another, I love how you just said that, because that's another narrative that's out there like. Wait until retirement. What if you didn't have to wait until retirement? What if you could live now and prepare for retirement?

So it's just like this and approach, right? And I think that's what prevents so many, especially younger people from really changing and really taking care of their money. It's because they have, they think they have to give it up. They have to give up life. Yolo. You only live once. We gotta do it now. It's gonna run away from us.

Yes. And what if that was just all not true? What if you didn't have to give up your life? What if you could figure out, and I take my clients through a process to help them to really figure out what's the most important thing you wanna be doing to enjoy your life in this season? And what are your financial goals?

And let's prepare for the future. Let's build wealth at the same time. We don't have to choose. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I love the way you put that. So when did you decide that you were going to branch out and become a money coach? Wealth coach. Did you like do it as a side hustle for a while until you saw that it was actually a viable alternative?

Or did you. You know, all or nothing. Left job started this. Oh, well I still work full-time. I have a job that I absolutely love and I have a coaching business. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, I thought you were only coaching. Oh, what do you do? tell all the listeners what you do. Yeah, so I work in the pharmaceutical industry and marketing and sales and so I do that and I love it.

I've been doing that since college and I have a coaching business, that I run in the evening. So yeah, I do both. Very nice. So you used your coaching business as a way to really accelerate your wealth business, and you're making such a huge impact in the world, helping people who otherwise wouldn't have your brain and your life experience and your understanding of money.

That is so great. I love that. Thank you. Yes, yes, yes, yes. it's my passion. It, I know this is what I am here to do, and so I'm excited to do it. There's also this overlap 'cause you're doing marketing and sales and then you bring that into your business. So you're just always have, you know, your finger on the pulse of what's going on.

The new developments in marketing and sales out there in the world. Yes, and I can really help my clients too. Usually when they come to me, they already are making good money. that's a given. But of course you wanna make more. So I get to use what I know there to help them accelerate, you know, their careers, to go after promotions, raises, start additional income streams.

So yeah, we get, we do fun stuff and really just help them to see their money holistically and just to take the limits. I love how you said a couple. Minutes ago that there's really no limit to your income, and I hope people see that too. Mm-hmm. I wanna ask you, because you just said, of course, we always want more, and I believe that also.

I really believe that like if you want more and you desire more, like God gives people money. He gives people who, we have this idea that rich people are evil and greedy and they do horrible things with money, but also God gives good people money. And if we're doing good things with our money, and he'll give us more, and then we can actually use it to support our family and also allow it to support other good causes in the world, right?

Like every hospital has the name of some philanthropist on it. The hospitals didn't just like spring up by themselves. People do really good things with money. But do you run into a belief from some of your clients that, no, I can't have more. I'm not allowed to have more. Yes, absolutely. it depends on, a lot of it comes from childhood.

 sometimes it comes from a religious, standpoint where they've been taught that, you know, the root to money is the root to evil and those kinds of things. So yes, for sure. And I help them to also see the flip side. 'cause there's two sides to everything, right? We can all point to the. Evil millionaires.

Right? But we can also point to the really good ones as well. So I like to think that, to your point, that the root to all good is also money. Ooh, nice. Nice. It's the money is at the root of that too. And as far as, you know, making too much, I help. And you think, well, if I make all this money, then what about the other people?

Mm-hmm. I like to use this concept like we all get a pie. You know how, you know people say that there's a pie and we gotta get our slice of it. I like to think we all get our own pie and it's untouchable by anyone else, and we get to make the pie as small or as big as we desire it to be. And then if that's the case, then.

Me not making money or me making money isn't taking anything from anyone else. And we all get choices. Yeah, I mean, and really the, it is true because money, like if you look at it from an economics point of view, just pure boring, geeky economics, if you like, that money circulates. It moves. Like I go to the store and I buy.

Milk and eggs and bread, and then the store pays their employee, and then the employee is going to buy their shoes, and then the person at the shoe store is going to buy their clothing and they're gonna buy their electricity. And I can pay you money and you can pay me money. The same, a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars can just go back and forth and back and forth.

I mean, it doesn't work that way that you and I are usually just. Exchanging back and forth, but it, there's a trail of money and there's a velocity of money. It just keeps going around and around. So we can all have more when we allow ourselves to have more. So, yeah, and I think it's also important to point out those money stories about like the evil people, people who do bad.

If we look at our fairytales that we're reading to our children. Right. 101 dalmatians. the evil person is Cruella Deville. Her name has cruel in it through the stories that we just absorb them into our subconscious from when we were little. The evil people are the ones with the money, and the good people are the ones who are like long suffering.

They don't have anything. They're the Cinderellas scrubbing the floor, and the Wicked Stepmother is the one who has all the money. These are also messages that we just download and we're believing that they're true and we have to work harder to go maybe and find the good people whose names are written on the sides of the hospitals and the ambulances and the churches, and the synagogues, and the people who are, and the people who are giving money away, and they're not letting their names be shared because they wanna be anonymous.

 there's so many good things you can do with money. So, Jermaine, before we wrap up, if somebody finds herself or himself in a tight situation with money, let's even say you're in debt, a hundred, $200,000, $20,000. It doesn't matter. What do you think are the three most important steps that people should start with?

Again, it's not all or nothing, but let's get the ball roll. Rolling. What do you help people do Right in the beginning? So the first thing is to stop avoiding it. I mean, that is the biggest thing is just like avoiding it. And then it's like, you know, you can liken it to, if you have something going on in your body that you're it is constantly annoying you and you just keep ignoring it.

And you keep ignoring it. And unfortunately, finally you go to the doctor and they're like, oh man, if you would've come in when you first. Saw it, we could, you know, maybe we wouldn't need to do surgery or something like that. Yes. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uhhuh. So that's what happens with our money when we just ignore the situation.

We have this, you know, nagging stress. That is your intuition saying, let's fix this. Like we wanna do better, we wanna be better. Mm-hmm. With money. Listen to that. So stop avoiding, and I hear this all the time. I don't even know where to start, Germaine. where to start is literally. Print off the last two or three months of your spending, like your bank statements and just look at where your money's going.

And that exercise alone will be life changing. 'cause you're gonna see like, oh my God, I'm spending this much on this. There's no way. One of the things we noticed when we were first, we did this exercise when we were first getting outta debt, we found out, I found out that my husband on his way to work, he was going to seven 11.

Getting these Vitamin waters every day, paying like $3, like two to $3 per day for this. And I was just like, you know, Costco, Sam's Club, you can get a whole case of them for what you spend in like a week. And we, and it will last us a month. Like something like that. Like little things like that. So we didn't, I didn't say, you can't have these vitamin waters.

I'm like, no, we're gonna just buy them somewhere else versus you buying them individually. So things like that. We also noticed that we were eating out way too much, like three, four times a week. Okay. Now we just do it once a week, and it's a treat. We go Sundays, we go to breakfast or something like that.

So just look at where your money's going. And then I would say the third thing is to, once you do that exercise, pick one area that you just want to get a little bit better at. So maybe it's your groceries or maybe you notice that your like bills seem high, your insurance seems high, your cell phone. Make those phone calls.

Just do something like that. And I think if I can give you a fourth one, and maybe this should be the first one, is just believe and know that wherever you are right now. Change is possible and use me as inspiration. 'cause if I could change, so can you. Amazing. Thank you so much. I think that our listeners have so much to take away, besides the fact that we talked about investments.

They can go there if that's the first thing they're gonna change, but just like looking at three months of expenses, whatever it is, change is possible. There's, we're never stuck, we're never we're. We are forever. And a little bit of momentum, a little bit of focus, a little bit of intentionality will go a very long way with your money.

Thank you so much for being with me today, Germaine, and thank you to all our listeners for listening to this episode. There is so much hope in this episode. if you really are beating yourself up over the head, even if you're talking, if you're smacking yourself down saying negative things about yourself, like I want you to know.

That you're amazing. You're awesome, you're resilient. You are still trying to figure it out. That's why you're listening to this episode and there is so much possibility. I think that's really what we have to live into. The possibility that you two can figure it out. If people could figure out how to pull themselves out of like multi six figures of debt, wherever you are, you can figure it out too.

And if you need some help trying to figure it out, Germaine has a free course on her website at germainefoley.com slash wealth class, where she gives you some real step-by-step instruction on how to pull yourself out of debt, like the beginning steps that you need to take so that you can get outta the minus and start growing your net worth.

I really love helping women. Build up their net worth so they can live a beautiful, luscious, delicious life and retirement money for now, money for later. So go into the show notes, click that link, germainefoley.com/wealthclass, and get yourself on the right track with money, and I'll see you next week on the Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast.

Bye-bye for now.