How to Build Wealth and Support Family (with Boundaries)—Especially When You’re First-Gen

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On this week’s special Rich Girl Roundtable with Berna Anat: Traditional financial advice isn’t “one size fits all,” and that’s especially true for first-gen Americans who face unique challenges around building wealth and supporting family. How are the rules different for this demographic, and how can we make conversations around money more inclusive?

Rich Girl Roundup is Money with Katie’s weekly segment where Katie and her Executive Producer Henah answer your burning money questions. Each month, we’ll put out a call for questions on her Instagram (@moneywithkatie). New episodes every week.

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Mentioned in the Episode

• Berna Anat: First-gen finance creator on Instagram, co-founder of New Dimes

• “Study: First-Generation Americans Face Unique Financial Obstacles” featuring Berna (Motley Fool)

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Katie:

Welcome back Rich people to the Rich Girl Roundtable weekly discussion of the Money with Katie Show. As always, I’m your host, Katie Gatti Tassin, and every Monday morning my executive producer Henah and I use this segment to talk through listener questions, interesting money stories in the news or in our inbox, and more casual financial topics. But before we do that, here’s a quick message from our sponsors.

Before we get into it, this week’s upcoming main episode is about American overconsumption, featuring a conversation with the brilliant Aja Barber. Alright, onto the round table. Henah, tell me what we’re doing today.

Henah:

So we have a special guest this week, Berna Anat. So this is going to be a Rich Girl Roundtable as we answer a question we’ve gotten a few times: How do I navigate money as a first-gen American? How can I support my family financially or set boundaries with my parents or siblings or extended family? And how are the money rules different for first-gen folks? So as a first-gen American myself, I thought this would make for really interesting conversation and I instantly thought of bringing burnout onto the show. So Berna, welcome.

Berna:

Thank you so much. Thank you, Katie for having me on the show. As I said earlier, I’m going to try really hard to keep my cool today, but I’m psyched to be here, especially for first-gen struggles because I do feel like I am, I wouldn’t say like the poster child, but more like the fuzzy headed mascot of first-gen financial struggles. I am a financial educator. I call myself a financial hype woman. I’ve been doing content about money things for a few years and really trying to focus on the lens of like, but how do I do this as a first-gen blank American? I’m Filipino-American, I’m a daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. My mom is from Davao, my dad is from Manila. Every Filipino person will ask me once I say that. So I have to clarify every time.

And both of my parents, none of them were in finance at all. My mom was a customer service agent at United. My dad’s a male carrier, very classic, lower middle class, suburban first-gen experience. And so becoming a financial educator was a total fluke for me. It was basically just me trying to figure out so many first-gen Americans and millennials, what is money? How do we do this when we’ve grown up? Not only not talking about it and not being taught, but actively being told to not speak about it or pursue or ask questions or figure it out. Just sort of being shoved into a box. And so my career came about by trying to learn out loud around it. And I’m psyched to be talking first-gen things because it’s the lens through which I see and complain about everything.

Henah:

So Berna, I feel like you are nailing it because I found this Motley Fool article that you were one of the main sources of about the unique challenges that first-gen Americans face. And I thought maybe Katie, if you’re cool with this, we could start with some of the statistics that first-gen Americans deal with that might be a little different than what most people are expecting if they’ve never experienced this.

And so 49% of surveyed first-generation Americans provide financial support to their family members outside of the US while 43% support family domestically. 60% of those who provide financial support to family members use more than a quarter of their monthly paycheck to do so. And 67% of respondents that their retirement planning includes providing for their parents or elders and that this creates some stress. And so that’s another episode we’re going to work on in the future. But 71% of people said that they help their parents navigate their finances, which is something that especially, and I think Berna, this applies to you as the first-gen alpha daughter, like firstborn…

Berna:

A chill just went down my spine.

Henah:

I didn’t expect some of these numbers to be so high.

Katie:

Yeah, well, as soon as you said it, I immediately went to Google. Okay, what percentage of non-first-gen young adults are providing financial support to older family members? And the whole first page of Google results that came up was white adults are more likely to receive help from older relatives. So it’s actually the money is flowing in the opposite direction for most people who are not first-gen.

Berna:

Wowza.

Katie:

This is why this conversation is so interesting and why I’m kind of hoping that I can sit back a little bit and learn from the both of you is that this is one of the first things that really surprised me when I started Money with Katie because, similar to you Berna, I was trying to learn out loud of, okay, well I’m going to figure out how personal finance works. Let’s do this together and I’ll tell y’all what I find.

And one of the most eye-opening things was the amount of people that I would hear from who were first-gen, who were like, well, how do I plan for my parents’ retirement? And I’m like, wait, what? You’re having to plan for your parents’ retirement? Oh, okay. I didn’t know that was a thing.

So it was definitely something that my upbringing and my experience didn’t include that at all. My parents are financially secure in sustaining themselves, and it is the opposite where if I found myself in a bad position, I know I could go to them for help. They’re not asking me for help. And I think that the pressure of that, I kind of struggled to imagine.

Berna:

Oh my gosh, a hundred percent. I’m really glad we’re talking about it because I’m on the opposite side. I’m like, I would grow up, I remember being in college and I went to USC, which is like, I’ll call it out. It’s called the University of Spoiled Children for a reason. I went there on half scholarship and half financial aid, and that was one of the first times I’d ever encountered folks who were like, oh yeah, FAFSA financial aid. I just forwarded that stuff to my dad, I just send it to my parents. Same. I was like, first of all, your parents are on email. That’s wild. Hold up. Wait, you just, they know what a forward is? That, my brain. They’ve touched the FAFSA. Are you joking? Because in a first-gen immigrant household, again, also being an alpha child, I’m doing the FAFSA, I’m signing my parents tax forms.

Henah:

What worked for my parents back home does not necessarily work here. And so we have, they’re learning too, and they’re on this learning curve with me. But FAFSA was the one example where I was like, I remember them being like, what do we have to do? What do we have to show them? How do we fill out the worm? How do you do? So everything I was doing was just sort of a shot in the dark. I don’t know hope I filled this out correctly, but great, great example.

Berna:

Yes, exactly. It was growing up first-gen, especially financially means that whether you’re seeing other people do it or not, you can’t depend on your parents in that way. I grew up never thinking like, oh, I can just fall back on my parents and they can support me financially. That’s a no. I can just ask them what’s going on financially and they can answer questions a no. You have to sort of learn how to scrap and figure things out alongside your parents a lot of the time. And it’s interesting because you grow up, you learn about the things that you didn’t know and this fascinating kind of mix of sadness and resentment and feelings of unfairness come up, you’re navigating that.

At the same time, again, I’m seeing people who are like, yeah, I can just X, Y, Z with my parents. And I’m like, so I’m realizing I’ve been carrying this backpack and other first-gen Americans have been carrying this backpack of responsibility this entire time. And a lot of the times not even realizing how heavy it is and how much you need to navigate, you’re kind of parallel pathing your life, your parents and other people that you care takes lives. And then also floating above you is like a banner in neon lights. That’s like, don’t forget, you are the cycle breaker for your whole family. No big deal.

Henah:

The American Dream.

Berna:

Yes, you were literally…

Henah:

What they’re here for.

Berna:

Exactly. A lot of the times I say I’m like, you are the product of your parents’ American dream, and it feels like the success of the next generations are on you because you are supposed to sort of get the ball rolling. And so it’s a ton of pressure. And Henah, I really appreciate that you bring up the extra special first-gen flavor of being the alpha child. So cute. A lot of the time, especially for me in Asian-American family, the daughter becomes the alpha child. And by alpha child, I mean the responsibilities typically fall to one kid. I am the youngest in my family, and so I was just telling friends recently these days, and this has taken a lot of therapy, these days I’ll be asked to make some sort of financial or house decision and I’ll be in my parents’ house, you all realize I’m the youngest. You realize that this is not how this is supposed to go.

Henah:

So you were the youngest, but they go to you because you’re the female.

Berna:

They go to me because I am think it’s because I’m the woman, mostly because I was the good child in terms of first-gen American, Asian American dream. I got the phrase.

Henah:

That happens to my husband too, where because we are the financially responsible ones, we are now tasked with the, so you’re going to take care of people or you have this figured out for all of us and we’re like, huh, we didn’t sign up for this. This was never part of what we were envisioning.

So another example that I was reflecting on was, yes, generational wealth obviously is a big piece of this, but connections too. So the kinds of connections that my friends had to land internships or their first jobs out of college, I didn’t have any of those. And I think that that’s something that goes kind of unspoken. A lot of just the kinds of legs up your parents can give you, even if it’s not money, like the literal money.

Katie:

Connections wise, I don’t actually feel as though my parents were all that helpful.

Henah:

Sorry, Chris and Mary, I tried.

Katie:

Yeah, sorry guys. I think that the main benefit that I had was that they grew up in the US and kind of understood the dynamics of education and the school system and college admissions and things of that nature. So from a very young age, they were very focused on school and as we know, my Catholic school upbringing introduced some unfortunate geographical blind spots. But if you want to talk about papal history, I got you.

But I think that their emphasis on that and on getting scholarships and putting me in ACT prep courses so that I could get a score that would get me the full ride to college, and then having the 529 plan to cover the room and board, they understood how you play that game such that it didn’t fall on me to play it. And I think that those legs up were enough that once I was in college, they had told me, this is how people get jobs. You need to be in these, you should be in organizations demonstrating leadership qualities. This is what they’re going to care about on resumes.

It was that kind of coaching. So even though there wasn’t a literal, hey, I’m going to call my buddy at this company and pull some strings in HR, they basically put me in a position that as long as I didn’t patently fuck it up, I was able to get employed right away and have no student debt, which is kind of invaluable, honestly.

Berna:

Massively. I think on my end, networking was sort of one of the only weapons I felt like I had as first-gen because you don’t have money and you don’t have those, like you said, Katie, classic connections of like, I’m going to call up my buddy. And so those teachings though of this is how you network, this is what you set up, this is what you say, I feel like it was me, my brown friends and the university of Google, this is how we figured it out. It’s almost like it makes me think of the phrase personality hire. It’s like I needed to become the personality hire of my own life and be charming because I couldn’t get connected via the back door. And so it’s part of why I chose to go to USC. I understood that there was the Trojan network, which was like wink, wink nepotism, and I was like, lemme get a piece of that because I don’t have that naturally. Lemme charm my way into get there by my own academic means, but then learn how to network because I understood at a young age that who and how you’re connected is a lot of how you advance. If you don’t have the money, then you got to have the friends. And so it’s one of those sort of first-gen things in the toolbox that you learn to adopt.

And then later in life you learn to unpack because then it makes me think like, all right, my version of networking and building and building my nepotism network and try to get as close as possible to being nepotist, a nepo baby also is again, parallel paths with me trying to get closer to the privilege of whiteness. And then the issue of decolonizing myself, which is again a whole other podcast, but it is again, I’m glad you bring up connections. One of the non-money things we’d use to try to get ahead and get more money in the world because we see it work. It doesn’t always work for us, but we see it work.

Henah:

Yeah, I have a running joke in my family that’s like, if I need a doctor, I have everybody on hand, but if I need a connection to a job, I got nobody.

Berna:

Filipinos. It’s like nurses everywhere.

Henah:

Nurses, right.

Berna:

Everywhere.

Henah:

But do you need me take care of you?

Berna:

Oh yeah. Oh my God. Family parties, you’re good to go. But in terms of financial advice…

Henah:

So that brings up this other piece for me, which is that there’s a lot of empathy I have for my parents having left their home country knowing nothing about America, figuring it out. I’m scared to go on a two week trip by myself, and they uprooted their entire lives. And so it reminds me of that quote, your parents are living for the first time too. And so I try to extend a lot of that empathy and grace to them.

But it’s interesting, even the technology piece of this, as a millennial, my dad will text me and be like, what funds should I invest in? And I’ll be like, why don’t you just use a roboadvisor and they can do this for you, and you don’t have to ask me VTSAX or VTI or whatever. And that feels too overwhelming for them because that’s just not something that they’re used to. And so I guess I don’t know that that’s a first-gen problem, but I think that’s something that millennials and children are often also dealing with parents who might know the basics, but it’s really hard to get them used to today’s money math. Does that make sense to both of you?

Berna:

Oh, massively. It’s funny that we’re having this conversation today because I just had a little weekend hang with my parents. And that was actually before I had a phone call being like, Hey, can we come hang this weekend? As soon as I get on the phone with my mom, oh, I’m so glad you called. You need to get on the phone with dad’s insurance. He needs to figure out this veteran thing. There’s this weird thing happening with Medicare that you need to figure out. Also, my phone can’t take any more pictures. And so you need to figure that out.

Henah:

My God, classic with the phone.

Berna:

Yes, I bought this Bluetooth thing off of Temu and I can’t connect it. And so it was just like a full list of things I need to do. Oh my God. And then when I physically go to my parents’ house, they literally have, at this point, they have an inbox, a pile of mail for me to go through and they will write on the mail, ask Berna, ask Berna, ask Berna. So it’s not even like, huh, what is the technology? They’re just like, there you go, Berna. You got it. This is your job. And so.

Henah:

That’s a lot of pressure. How do you feel about knowing that you have the knowledge to help them, but also having that excess pressure and responsibility?

Berna:

Oh my gosh, it’s constant struggle. So there’s this phrase in Filipino Tagalog called “Utang na loob”, which you might’ve heard about. It translates directly to debt of the blood. It’s essentially the concept that you as a first-gen, especially as someone in the Filipino diaspora who’s moved away from the Philippines, you forever owe your family for everything that you have. And that means that you’re going to be paying them back monetarily for the rest of your life. You’re going to be paying them back emotionally for the rest of your life. And the crazy thing about utang na loob is that you can never actually fully pay it back. And so that’s always going on in my mind when I get frustrated or tired or resentful of the things that are put on me, I’m like, well, that good old first-gen immigrant guilt comes in and it’s like, well, you wouldn’t have any of these things if your parents didn’t break their freaking backs trying to assimilate and get you to a place where your English sounds good and you’re doing good at school and you can figure out how to use the internet and get scholarships.

And so it’s a constant struggle at this point. It’s this very fast ping pong play that happens in my head very silently as my mom’s going through my checklist of things that burn needs to do. I’m silent as it’s happening, but it’s this mix of gratitude, resentment, fear also for them. I’m scared for them because I’m scared for myself too and I’m figuring it out for them in parallel.

Henah:

It feels high stakes, right? Because you’re like, I can’t mess this up.

Berna:

Yes. It’s incredibly high stake. I need to get it right for me so I can get it right for my parents. And then by the way, trying to get it right for my parents, it’s not an easy conversation. It’s not like they’re sitting there like, Berna, I would love to talk about my mountains of debt and I would love to talk about my mortgage. They’re also very clogged up with the same shames and the same sort of setbacks emotionally and mentally. And so it’s a fun ride.

Henah:

So I think “my money is your money or our money” is really prevalent in first-gen because I think that you are expected to help kind of whenever. And so we’ve been asked, can you support this person’s surgery? And I’m like, sure, happy to, but will you co-sign this loan for me? I can’t do that.

So having to navigate the boundaries and figuring out what do we feel comfortable with? Where do we feel like we actually have to support? And so I know this reminds me a lot of Katie, we did the loaning money to friends conversation. I think that was one of our first ever Rich Girl Roundups. But how do you give freely without resentment? How do you build that boundary and what’s your threshold for giving? And I think that’s a slippery slope when “my money is our money” is kind of the banner above it all.

Berna:

Yes, this is where I start to dip into. I don’t necessarily tell people, I’m like, now you pull up that rugged bootstrap individualism and let those people know that my mask first before yours. Figure it out. It’s more of trying to find a balance between the two because swinging your pendulum in either direction is painful and doesn’t serve anybody.

My overall kind of philosophy on giving to friends and family is that if you can’t give it a gift, just don’t give it. That means that you don’t have it. I’ve experienced and I’ve seen other people’s experiences in lending money to friends, lending money to family and trying to figure out some way to get them to pay it back or sort of being like, I’m going to lend it and magically expect you our morals to align and you pay it back. I’ve watched people try to create arrangements like forms or legal documents and it could work, but largely, at least I’m incredibly risk averse and I really, really value my interpersonal relationships and friends and family. So for me, if I can’t give it a gift like, this is great, I have the extra money I can give it to you. Then I tell them that I don’t have it.

And I encourage people to give to their loved ones like its mutual aid. You’re sort of trusting that the investment could return, but probably not in the exact dollar amount that they give. It might not even be dollars when they do pay you back. It’s a wonderful gift, it’s a surprise, but for me it’s not an expectation because just happens so rarely that they do pay you back, to be honest. And when you are first-gen, also you are the family in the diaspora. You’re the one who made it to the other side. There’s no expectation that I’m going to get their pesos back to match my dollars for those kinds of things. It’s sort of a one-way giving. We have to though figure out the balance of what we can give from our dollars and be able to communicate that to family.

And that’s really difficult because even when I teach people how to communicate, this is what is in my monthly budget, this is what I can plan for the next six months, Christmas is coming. That’s a massive season of giving for a lot of first-gen people and being able to plan for that and being like, this is what I can give you. It still feels like no, it still feels like shameful to communicate that because again, that utang na loob teaches us, and especially women, if you’re not sacrificing until you bleed out, then you’re not doing your job. And so being able to communicate boundaries can be really difficult. Things inside of you telling you that you’re supposed to bleed out for your family, you’re supposed to give everything you’ve got because they’re suffering. It’s a fun game to play in your head.

Henah:

I’m going to India for the first time in 20 years in January for a family event. And my parents have gone recently, but because it’s a big family event, they were just telling me we need at least two check bags each because we have to bring all these gifts, we have to bring extra donations, we have to bring all these clothes.

And it just dawned on me the other ways in which there’s a lot of expectations. I mean, my husband’s family does this as well, where we will put aside, we have a box in our apartment where we put aside clothes that we can give to the family in the Philippines. But I do think that there is also that, yeah, you made it out and so now it is your responsibility to always bring a gift or to support them in some other way. No questions asked. And that’s something that my family has done and never complained about, but they never told me about until I was an adult of all these other ways. They were supporting people but never talking about it.

Katie:

Something that I wanted to ask both of you is that we talk a lot on this show about, and there’s been an allusion to this already, the American individualism, the bootstrapping this of like, well, I don’t want to now pull up my bootstraps and be like, sorry babe, you’re on your own. And I think that, I’m curious if either of you look at the cultures and communities that you’re part of and go, actually, I think they’re getting this right and I’ll call it the more classic American ideal or trope of individualism and kind of focusing on getting your mask on first and everyone else be damned. Where do you think that the cultures and communities that you’re a part of are actually where the American way of life has something to learn from the way that you’ve seen your families support one another?

Henah:

I think the first example that comes to mind is intergenerational living, I think is one place where they really get it right. And I think that’s because whether it was out of sheer necessity or just because that’s kind of the collectivist culture. We always talk about isolation being a problem in the US and loneliness, epidemics and just even the cost of living on your own. I think that that would be the number one thing. And I’ve talked to you about this Katie too, where in an Indian community, you would never put your parents in a nursing home unless it was absolutely necessary like hospice care, palliative care or something like that. But that’s just, you would never do it. And so I think in some ways it puts you in that sandwich generation of having to care for your kids and your elders. But I think in some ways that’s how it should always be. I think people are better off because of it, but that’s the number one example that comes to mind. What about you, Berna?

Berna:

I think about the idea that we’re not just trying to figure out the tactical technical financial playground of how do I get my retirement and they get my parents’ retirement and then the future kids wealth transfer retirement also sort of healing our financial mentalities together. I am unpacking my money story. I’m figuring out what my financial traumas are. I’m seeing how they pop out through my habits. I’m rewiring my habits and then I’m low key trying to do that for my parents who first of all are horrified that I’m in therapy in the first place. And so it’s difficult, but my dream is to be able to get to a place where I can give financial security or set up financial security for my parents and they can receive it. Because what I’m seeing in them is that they have, of course, because they had to snort the American dream through a straw, they had to just name it—

Katie:

Medical grade individualism.

Berna:

Right into it because if you don’t, it’s really difficult. Exactly. They said strap on bootstraps, let’s go to just do it. So because they needed to do that in order to survive and teach us to assimilate. And so I am doing a lot of, again, decolonizing brain unpacking of that that they haven’t done. So when I want, I’m getting to a place where I can financially and emotionally give to them out of joy, out of kindness, out of gratitude and out of excess. I have it to give to them. And so I don’t feel resentful that I’m bleeding out to them.

Watching them try to receive it is also very difficult because they’re like, oh, no, no, no. It’s almost like they’re watching me struggle as first-gen and their stubborn American bootstrap mentality is coming out. And so when you talk about intergenerational living henna, my mom last year kind of surprised us and she was like, it’s fine if you put us in a home. I’d rather you put us in a home because I don’t want to live off of one of my kids. That’s not why we had you. And I’m sort of like…

Henah:

Wow.

Berna:

Watching her try to swing the pendulum in the other direction for herself. And I realized that my parents also have their own unhealed receiving money mentality. And so ideally I’d like to get to a place where we’re all able to give and receive from a place of understanding and write the pendulum into the middle because I’m watching my parents scurry off in the direction of individualism and it makes it difficult for us to help. So it’s wild.

Henah:

Wow. Yeah, that’s fascinating. I think too, the way that your parents often have to unlearn a lot of things is really important too. So there are people in my life who did not have good or healthy financial habits and mostly because they were living paycheck to paycheck, they didn’t really have to think long-term or it was in America. One of our guests said, the point in America is to be over leveraged, it’s to over consume. And so you put everything on and you have debt. And so anyway, when you have that kind of lifestyle just to get by, you’re not really thinking about building future wealth for yourself. And so I think one of the things that’s been really interesting is watching people unlearn and relearn what they’ve seen in their own lives, parents included.

And I’ve talked about this on the show as well, my husband too, he grew up with people who spent probably in discretionary ways that they shouldn’t have. And then when we got together, it had to be like, I don’t think this is going to pan out very well for you in the future. So I don’t know. I think that the things that have been normalized in other cultures or even just to get by in America are things that people have to grapple with differently.

Berna:

Oh my gosh, massively. I think one of my main financial anxieties that keep me up at night about my parents is that we’re going to have to deal with their debt at some point. And by them, I mean one of my parents, I won’t call her out, not that she listens to the podcast, she know what a podcast is, but she will know spiritually that I’m talking about her and I’m going to call. She’s going—

Henah:

I feel like we should have sent our parents permission slips to be like, can we talk about all of you?

Katie:

To come through that Alexa. Berna, what are you doing?

Berna:

I’ve invoked her spirit now she’s going to text me a lot of emojis, but I, that’s something that I’ve always seen growing up is why are my parents overspending or why is one parent overspending so much when we clearly don’t have it? And it’s not like we’re talking about not having it, but I can see us not having it. I can see the financial strain. I was there when we had to file for bankruptcy amongst the 2008 housing crisis. I saw the stress, I saw all that. We didn’t talk about it, but I felt it and experienced it. So why did my mom suddenly show up with a Chanel bag and why when we go to these parties, all the other moms and aunties are flexing their latest and greatest and talking about money in a way that—

Henah:

Not the aunties.

Berna:

The aunties. None of us in this party can afford the things that we’re talking about and yet we’re flexing about it. That was a point of resentment and confusion for me for a long time. And then as we were talking about when I started to sort of unpack my money story, my sort of financial upbringing, what I learned, and also ask my parents some really key questions to find out what their money story was and what they learned, it was very clear to me that shopping and things are sort of this physical manifestation of my parents’ American dream. And it was important for them to have these symbols and to show these symbols to other family to be like, we made it look, our sacrifice was worth it. I left home for a good reason. I’m doing well. I did not make mistakes.

And so like you said, Henah before, it kind of gave me a little bit of empathy for my parents of like, they’re not overspending because they want us to fail. They’re not overspending because they don’t know how money works. They’re overspending from an emotional place just like I overspend from an emotional place. And now we keep talking about it feels like my responsibility to unpack why I do it and also unpack why they do it to try to stop the bleed, but also how do you tell a 70 plus year old woman to stop doing what she got to do and going to the outlets when this is also a woman who spent 70 years breaking her fucking ass, trying to give my family and all of her siblings a better life. Trying to sort of quote course correct for our parents without feeling like we are coming down on them like children or without showing disrespect or making them feel disrespected is a really interesting line to navigate. I’ve already tried and I see my parents sort of get defensive or this sort of intense reaction comes down, I realize, I’m like, Ooh, it’s a lot to unpack for all of us.

Katie:

I was going to ask what you both wish you saw more of in classic personal finance material or maybe what you think the biggest blind spots are. And I’m asking this because I think the co-signing a loan example is actually super indicative of where those Venn diagrams kind of overlap. This is something that requires basic financial literacy to understand what the implications of co-signing a loan are, why that is something that you should be skeptical of or proceed cautiously with. And it’s something that typically is not going to come up as much in your run of the mill personal finance advice because it’s something that I think is more common in the situations Henah that you are describing. And that’s not necessarily the type of situation that you’re often going to see covered on the Dave Ramsey show. And so I’m curious if there are other things you would point to as like, man, I really wish that you classic personal finance material dove into some of these things. This would be super helpful for people to know.

Henah:

I think mine is going to sound really pedantic, but the first few months that I even worked here, I was a taxable brokerage account, explain like I’m five. And I think when you’re first-gen or English is not even your first language, it’s really hard for people to identify solid financial practices against shady ones because there’s a lot of jargon that feels really confusing or exclusionary.

And so it took me a long time, the first couple months to be like tax advantage investing versus tax brokerage having to learn all of that. It takes time and it takes a lot of nuance. And then I think there’s a lot of things that people prey on, people who are not familiar with money to fall into whole life insurance or crypto or MLMs. And it’s very easy for me to be like, oh, I would never—but I know what to look for.

Someone who has no idea, who has very little understanding besides spending my money, making my money, they’re not always going to know that. And I think a lot of times when these first-gen families are getting settled and they’re looking for community, that’s how they get preyed upon or they’re paycheck to paycheck and they’re like, I just need a break. So they’ll try to find something that’s more get rich quick. And so I think that that’s, it’s not unique to first-gen families, but I think it is one that is a little bit harder to clearly identify sometimes. And because the Dave Ramseys of the world make it seem so cut and dry or the financial concepts are so if you just do this and this and this, you’ll be fine. It makes it seem easy when it’s not always easy or intuitive.

Berna:

Totally. Henah, you bring up a really good point of sometimes the scamming and the predatory stuff. For me, what came up was sometimes the call’s coming from inside the house. Sometimes something that a lot of folks in the Filipino-American community ask me about is how do I navigate conversations with family who they are trying to, I think they’re trying to give me financial advice or they’re trying to give the family financial advice. Turns out they’re part of an MLM and they’re trying to sell whole life insurance. Turns out they’re trying to get me to girl boss inside of the girl boss or the girl boss of the girl boss. But they’re selling.

I get emails like that too of just other folks in first-gen communities being like, I love what you do with first-gen education. I’d love to link up and talk to your community about this thing. And it’s a life insurance MLM, but you get caught up because you think you’re getting advice from someone who has best interests in mind. And so that’s something that I’ve barely, even barely scratched the surface of not just how to tell when you’re being, you’re able to get scammed by your own, but how to communicate that to people who genuinely believe that this is their job, it’s their lifeblood and they believe that they’re helping. Really fascinating.

Henah:

The other piece of this that you just brought to mind for me is that standard, like a house is the best investment you can make. Of course you want to buy a house. It is stupid to throw rent money away. And again, this is not a first-gen only thing. I think it happens with a lot of millennials whose parents were able to get homes at really affordable prices, but I think it is another one of those, the best practices that might’ve worked for you elsewhere or at another time does not necessarily mean it applies now. And I think that’s something that again, a lot of traditional financial advice kind of misses.

Berna:

I fully agree. It’s actually the next thing that I thought about was the idea of what traditional financial advice tells you, especially in terms of us first-gen millennials trying to figure out how to do things, how to make money moves for the first time that our family never has. For example, trying to look for a financial planner or a tax planner, but also feeling like these experts don’t know you and they don’t get you. I would love to see more first-gen friendly financial scripts when talking to, for example, trying to find a financial planner for the first time. You’re highly intimidated by the idea of financial planners. Your family’s never used a financial planner, and you want to know that they understand all the responsibilities that you hold without talking you out of it or shaming it.

For example, a friend of mine was trying to help her mom navigate a conversation with a financial planner for the first time, and her mom came out of the conversation super frustrated and they were talking about why. And the mom was like, I was trying to tell them that I need to budget a certain amount of money to send home every month and that that budget kind of gets bigger around the holidays. And this financial planner who was an older white man was like, why would you do that? Why don’t you, that’s so much money to be giving to your family. I think you should invest it this way instead. Or that’s an irresponsible way to budget. Basically shamed her for trying to do what she wants to do, what she wants to do with her money, what’s culturally appropriate and feels good to her. And so that kind of example will make you run screaming from professionals who could actually really help.

And so how do you build a money team that is culturally sensitive to the things that are real for you, maybe not real for other people? Also, how do you talk to your aging parents who you can tell are struggling about their retirement plan or their estate plan, but don’t want to talk to you about it? That kind of financial help that has the first-gen flavor sprinkled in and understands the cultural sensitivities and the extra parts of our budget and the extra parts of our financial baggage that need to be addressed while also navigating these systems that were never built for us. I need to see more of that.

Henah:

Berna. Oh my God, I don’t want to say it’s the first time, but it’s one of the few times that I’m like, holy shit, someone else knows exactly what I’ve experienced in my life. And thensome.

I do like this note that you said about investing in specialized self-care and funding it as seriously as other things…

Berna:

I would love to explain. So one project I’m really excited about right now that I’m building with a couple of co-founders, it’s called New Dimes, and it’s basically a company based around the concept of if we’ve got the basics covered, how do we go further and build out the blueprint of this map that doesn’t exist? And the first-gen flavor we’re trying to put into typical financial advice is things like investing in specialized self-care. Who I have in mind for that is like I’m thinking of other first-gen Filipino American millennials, the nurses, the doctors, the engineers, the people who did it quote unquote did it. But they’re so tied to the utang na loob that the whole budget is going towards caretaking. None of it is going towards caring for themselves. None of it is going towards their mental health resources. How do we unpack that ang and be able to then have that reflect in our finances, to fund our self-care and take it as seriously and fund it as seriously as then caretaking, caring for elders, sending money back home, creating a budget around that.

If you’re living in intergenerational household and you become a caretaker, what does it look like to fund that? Things like we talk about at New Dimes in vivo wealth transfer, the idea that if you have excess wealth as a first-gen and you’re experiencing the kind of wealth your family never has, typical advice is like hoard it till you die. Invest, invest, invest, and then make a plan for the money to move when you’re dead in the ground.

What if we didn’t do that? What if we pushed that a little and didn’t hoard it, but shared it and transferred that wealth around while we were alive so that people don’t have to wait until we’re dead to benefit? And then also, can we take also that excess that we’re all experiencing, some of us are experiencing for the first time, fun, progressive causes, get into mutual aid, explore community care in a way that is financially sound to all of us.

These are all things that you don’t find in typical financial advice. And I think what’s really inspiring, especially from my other co-founders at New Dimes is they’re always putting at the forefront that our financial freedom and our collective freedom includes us too. It’s not just getting older generations more free. It’s not just getting our communities more free. We are part of that freedom vision we deserve to be invested in as well. We deserve the feelings of retirement or joy or happiness and harmony. Now, for ourselves. I think as first-gen, we cut ourselves out of the picture a lot and we don’t want to do that anymore.

Henah:

I think your point about mutual aid is really well taken because doing this for one another benefits everybody. And so I really like that that’s a piece of this that you’re thinking about.

Katie:

I just am really grateful to both of you for sharing your experiences and talking about how we can all do a better job of making these conversations more beneficial and more inclusive and more wide ranging. So thank you both.

Henah:

Thank you for letting me hijack this Rich Girl Roundtable to have Berna and I talk so much about this, but [Berna] you had this really powerful quote. It was in the Motley Fool article, which I’ll share in the show notes, but you said, “What got me into investing was repeatedly hearing from BIPOC financial creators who I can trust that while budgeting, saving and getting your credit together are all important. When we talk about wealth that will live past you, wealth that will exceed what you’ve accomplished, the kind of wealth that other families have been enjoying for generations on generations, they didn’t get there by budgeting and saving and getting a good credit score. They got there from investing.”

And I think that the work that both you and Katie are doing, and even the guests that we had on this past couple of weeks, they said, my parents were Americans, first-gen American. I thought I could only get rich through wage labor. And I’m realizing that that’s not the case, and that’s something I didn’t know until I started here a couple of years ago.

And so I think the fact that we’re having these conversations is just opening up so many avenues for other people to talk about it. And so I’m just really grateful to the both of you for giving us the space to do so and doing it loudly and proudly. I know, Berna, your book is amazing. Your channel’s amazing. I guess if you want to tell everybody where to find you, I would love for us to blast you too.

Berna:

I’m so psyched that this has become more of normalize as part of the conversation, and it’s not just sort of like finances with a special little wink for first-gen. I was just looking it up. There’s 20 million first-gen Americans and all of us are looking at the same sort of standard financial advice and being like, well, if it reflect me, then either I’m doing this wrong or I don’t belong here, or the experts know something that I don’t. And so it kind of makes this retreat back into our cave.

And so I’m really grateful for the opportunity to speak with folks also who can hold the conversation sensitively; it’s really, really beautiful and I’m really grateful to be here and I’m like, you can come find me at @heyberna, on all the things on the most obnoxious on Instagram, we’re also building some cool stuff at @new_dimes for New Dimes. That’s where we’re having all these sort of next gen, first-gen wealth building stuff. But I’m real obnoxious all over the internet. Come get me.

Katie:

That’s all for this week’s Rich Girl Roundtable. A big thank you again to Berna for joining and to Henah for facilitating, and we will see you on Wednesday to talk about over consumption and what we think might be a possible antidote to overspending and amassing way too much stuff.