Podcast 77. The Money Life Coach with Tawnya Schultz

Average Joe Finances:
0:00

Hey, how's it going everybody? So today's guest is Tawnya Schultz and she is the founder of the money life coach, an online platform, helping women learn how to budget, pay off debt, invest and leave a legacy. So after being in debt for most of her life, Tawnya decided she needed to turn her life around at the age of 34 and she aggressively paid off $28,000 of debt in a year, actually eight months. At the time, Tawnya was only making about$60,000 a year and it seemed impossible. At first she worked extra jobs and side hustles, she ended up landing a full-time role for a tech company in San Francisco, which enabled her to pay off her debt in just eight months so inspired by the way, she felt about being free of debt. Tawnya got certified as a financial life coach and founded the money life coach offering one-on-one coaching, monthly workshops, live talks and an online personal finance and budgeting course. It's called permission to spend with over eight hours of content where Tawnya teaches you her proven budgeting system for paying off debt, organizing your money and working on your money mindset and what she calls the fastest path to financial freedom. Tawnya posts, weekly videos and daily tips on Instagram and has over 70,000 followers on Tik Tok she spreads the message of taking control of your finances. No matter your age. Or how much money you make. Her mission is to empower millions of women to live debt-free and create their ultimate financial future. Now, I want to point this out. I'm not a woman, but I came across her Tik Tok profile and was immediately inspired and said, wow, I need to have Tawnya on the show. That's actually how I found her. So guys she's obviously sending out a good message because she definitely caught my attention. So Tawnya, absolutely thankful to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us today.

Tawnya Schultz:
1:47

Thanks so much. I'm so happy to be here.

Average Joe Finances:
1:48

Awesome. Hey, so I want to jump right into it you have a pretty long bio, right? So I give a pretty good description about you and how you got here. But again, it's not too detailed, right? So I want to go into a little more detail about that. So if you could share a little bit more about yourself, share your story. Like how did this all get started for you.

Tawnya Schultz:
2:05

Yeah. I think ever since I was a kid, I was interested in finance and making money and a lot of the work that I help coach others on is on their beliefs around money and things that happen in childhood. So I started to realize when I was started doing this work, that like I had a lot of things holding me back from how I was raised around money. So I young age, my parents live paycheck to paycheck. I, there was always like fighting about money and things like that. So basically at a young age, I was like, I need to make money because I need to help support, like I need to make my own money. And so I think ever since then, I was driven to learn about finance and all that. When you start to adult and go move out on your own, you start to realize stuff's more expensive than you realized you don't know how to. You never learned how to budget and credit cards are in your face. Debt is everywhere. That is normal. So for me, it was really about. And I always had this weird feeling like debt was holding me back, like debt. I wasn't meant to have debt. So it was like this confliction, because I was like I need debt for certain things. In between paychecks and certain things. Cause I wasn't set up properly financially, but I always had this like stronghold, like death's holding me back or I don't want, I don't. I want to be debt free. What really happened was I was in my early thirties and I moved in with my boyfriend and immediately I felt almost trapped or stuck because I was like, if anything happens in this relationship, I don't have my own mind. I don't have money. I don't have, I just had this all of a sudden, like awakening that started to make me feel like I want to feel empowered around money. And I don't want to feel like I have to rely on somebody else. Especially as a woman, I feel like that's really important. And just to know where my money is going in and to figure that out. So that's really came and really woke me up.

Average Joe Finances:
3:47

Right on. Yes. I was taking some notes while you were talking, and I think this is something super important that I want to point out is that you started getting interested in finances as a kid. And the reason why is because you and your family, you guys were living paycheck to paycheck. it was causing fights and arguments about money, which this is such a common thing in many middle-class homes and families like people live paycheck to paycheck. And there, there isn't really much wiggle room. And, you realize that credit cards and debt is something that can hold you back. But at the same time, it was for you to get out on your own was like a necessary evil that you had to deal with. And that probably contributed to. Racking up that $28,000 in debt that we talked about in your initial bio I guess what I want to know then is what did you do to change your mindset, to be able to like, get out of debt and just change? Because this whole thing, it's not like an easy thing that you could just flip a switch and say, okay, I'm going to pay off my debt. Now I'm going to figure this out. It just doesn't happen like that. So what was the thing that triggered you to say, okay, it's time to. Put my bootstraps on and pay off this debt and get myself to a better place financially.

Tawnya Schultz:
4:53

I would say I was already into personal development and learning about myself in all kinds of different ways, and so I, when I started having those feelings of I need to figure this out what can I do to help? What can I do to educate myself instead of playing the victim? Let me take action. So I started listening to podcasts, reading books My mom was also trying to get out of debt at the time and had been talking about Dave Ramsey and for me, which, I'm sure you talked about in the show, Dave Ramsey is really well known in the personal finance space, but I started listening to a show and I, because from what I had heard from her, I was like, is this Get out of debt scam what is this thing? You know, maybe, And I was kind of like questioning it. But hearing other people's stories that he was having on his podcast, hearing other people who add more debt than need were making less than me be able to pay off debt. I was like, what are they doing? How can I like what I was just really like, how can, what are these other people doing that I'm not doing? How are they changing their habits?

Average Joe Finances:
5:47

Yeah, that's a great question to ask yourself. So yeah of course we've talked about Dave Ramsey on the show before, that's actually part of my story too, is getting out of debt was I was following his baby steps. We followed steps one through three to get to where we're at. I don't fully follow Dave Ramsey as most real estate investors don't because. For us, debt is a necessary evil for certain things, certain investments and things like that. It's so for us, it's all about leveraging it. But for some people, like getting out of debt is like the ultimate goal and that is like the life-changing moment for them. And to be able to stay out of debt is also something that's life changing. If you don't want to own your own home or you don't want to own property, Hey, that's fine. That's your prerogative, right? But if you're out of debt and then you're able to start investing and something that's at least keeping up with or beating inflation, then you're putting yourself in a much better and safer spot towards securing your future. Now. when you flip the switch and then you've got yourself on this journey to get out of debt and to get yourself financially independent how long ago was that? And so I know it took a year, and then eight months after you got that tech job. But how long ago was that? And where are you today since getting out of debt?

Tawnya Schultz:
6:57

Yeah. So that was in 20, the end of 20 16, 20 17. Early 2017 was when I decided to go on the debt free journey and really be aggressive. Finally start committing to budgeting. Budgeting was one thing I always heard you needed to do, but never taught how to budget. So I was like, I'm going to commit to doing this finally and really get focused on where my money's going and put as much money as I can on debt and get it my whole goal, and if you listen to Dave Ramsey and other people. I want my debt to be gone fast. I don't want it to be, even take me three, five years. How, what do I need to do to pay it off? I had $28,000. So I figured out that I could, it could take me about a year, like being aggressive, but it was also realistic. I was like, it's a year. It's hard, but it's also realistic. And with the extra job, the money that I got from my new job, I was able to pay that off quick, quicker. And so within that year, I paid off the 28,000 and then saved up my emergency fund in the next six months. So for about that first year and a half, two years, I was paying off debt, saving up my emergency fund of six months. So about $25,000, $30,000 cash, which I'd never had a savings in my entire life. So that alone was a huge. Change and just amazing feeling that I had. And that's what really inspired me to start then start coaching people and then start helping people because I was like, wait, I just did this. It took me so long to figure it out. I can help accelerate this for people. That's when I started getting into coaching and really getting focused on then, like you said, the next step would be investing. I've been looking at my numbers. I was feeling behind for my age. Like how can I now get to where I want to be in five, 10 years and build wealth?

Average Joe Finances:
8:37

Yeah. That is absolutely amazing. It's funny. Cause I have a similar path, like I talked about before. We followed the baby steps and pretty much close to the same amount of debt. I think it was somewhere between 26 and 27,000 for me. And we paid that off and save $40,000 in the bank. Which to me, I couldn't believe that we were able to do that, but. The biggest thing was the discipline disciplining ourselves to really watch our spending habits, to really pay attention to every single penny that was coming out of our bank account and make sure that it all had a place to go, that we were sending those dollars to the proper home. I always like to look at, different ways of, you're employing your dollars or whatever, but you have to know where it's going. If you're just sitting here and you've got subscriptions going here and you've got this over here, or you're swiping your card to go out to eat, you're really not doing a good job paying attention. That's like the first step is really making that choice to say I'm going to discipline myself. And then the other thing that you talked about, which is huge was education, right? This is something that you've mentioned more than once now, at least twice. Talking about going a little bit back to the beginning. When you decided to start, you educated yourself, you started listening to podcasts. You start following Dave Ramsey, and stuff like that is super important. And you also said something else that absolutely drives me bananas. You said you were never taught how to budget. Isn't it amazing that we can make it all the way to adulthood and never learn how to budget. This is not something, this isn't a skill that they teach you in school. This is not something you get out of public education. Absolutely. Mind-boggling so my wife and I, we homeschool our kids. And financial literacy is actually part of their curriculum. Like we make sure they understand how to do this. We teach them how to balance a checkbook. We teach them how to make a budget. We teach them how to put 30% of their money away into savings. We teach them to put, another 10% away for charity to give away and live off of 60% of your income. That's like kind of the way that we're trying to have our kids think about money. And this was at a point where I couldn't even do that myself at the point. I think we were living off of 70%, but I wanted to be, even like really get that into my kids' heads. This is really the route you want to go. If you could do that by the time, you're my age, you'll be multimillionaires and ready to retire and just do whatever the heck you want, as long as you're staying focused on your goals. I think like you said, like education is huge and it's something that it's a decision that you have to make no matter where, what stage of life you're at right now, I don't care if you're in your forties, you can still do this,

Tawnya Schultz:
11:02

Yeah and I feel like as humans, we try to over-complicate, we try to make things complicated, more complicated than they need to be. So I feel like taking it to the basics. Living on less than you make, like simple, really simple financial principles. When you think about it living like our grandparents used to do, they used to have to save and there wasn't the debt. You couldn't use a firm and spend $20 make five payments of $5 or whatever it is now. It's crazy. It's still in our face. That debt is normal. And so it's like, how can you be different. Because it's going to keep setting you back and you're going to keep having to rely on it. Like I did in between paychecks. I'd have to put my groceries on my credit card. Cause I didn't know what was going to clear my account. And that was a part of budgeting too. Like once, okay, I'm going to have a hundred dollars for groceries every week and you budget all that out. It actually gives you freedom. The budget actually gives you freedom and allows you to spend your money without guilt and without feeling. I don't know what's going to come out on my counter, hit my accounts so.

Average Joe Finances:
11:59

Absolutely. Yeah. Cause, cause you, you know what those dollars are meant for, like I said before, it's it's about employing your dollars, what you have allocated for that specific thing. So when we first started this off, I was, oh, so my wife has always been the saver. I am the spender, right? So it's a couple of, like the opposite when it comes to that. And for me, like I enjoyed going out to dinner. I enjoyed going out, like having our date nights our kids used to have this place that they used to go to called my gym that would do a parent's night out thing. And they, you dropped the kids off for three hours there. And we would go out to dinner and I said, Hey, I want to continue to be able to do that while we're trying to budget. So I was like, I want you to put money to the side specifically for that and have a budget built. So we made it so that we knew on those Friday nights when we were going to do, I think it was like once a month, we did that. But we knew exactly where we were going to go and what were we going to eat? How much it costs. And we would budget like that exact amount because we absolutely loved going this. It's cheesy. It's a place called salad works. We absolutely loved going there. We would eat like these giant salads for dinner and it was absolutely amazing. But. Something that simple. And we budgeted for that. What a difference it made because we didn't feel like we were taking away from ourselves. And I think that's like the biggest challenge that people face when they're trying to budget and get themselves to a point where they can save up money or pay off their debt. They feel like they have to sacrifice so much. But realistically, you don't have to sacrifice as much as you, you think you do, as long as you put some money to the side to do specific things and not go over that. Give yourself like a comfortable buffer. We call it fun money. So we would budget fund money. And that would be the money that we had to do certain things. If we were going to take the kids out, we want to take them out for ice cream or something like that. It comes out of that budget. So definitely think that's super important. I want to touch on one thing that you had mentioned earlier before I forget about this, because I wrote this down You had mentioned that when you got out of debt, you built up an emergency fund and you had 30 to $40,000 in there. Why did you save that much? Can you explain why it's important to have a specific amount in your emergency fund?

Tawnya Schultz:
13:59

Yeah, so I personally did, because at the time I still had inconsistent income. So I always recommend your, they say that three to six months of expenses. So three months would be, if you have a full-time job, nine to five, it's pretty standard. You're getting the same amount of money every month, three months of expenses, not income people get that mixed up a lot. So just having that chunk of money is going to help you feel like that's your personal insurance between you and life. So like things are going to come up. Last minute, travel for an emergency car repair things healthcare, some something with health that comes up. So there's so many things that can happen with finance and that's where people get into more debt. What happens is you go into more debt and that stresses you out more, then having the cash to pay for it and be like, okay, I don't have to worry about. Paying for this anymore, which I used to do with my car, but always stressing me out when something happened. So for me, I had six months, I wanted to build up six months for expenses. And that was about $25,000. And yeah, just having that amount, I would say I've used it a couple times for bigger expenses for car repairs, like a couple thousand dollar car repair that came up and little things here and there, but for the most part, when you're budgeting and really start getting intentional into doing it consistently. You can cashflow a lot of emergencies that come up. So a lot of things that happen, you can pretty much prepare. You'll have a little bit of time to say about the money or cashflow it too, but just having an emergency, especially with COVID, which has happened with people, losing their jobs, you have six months runway, you have time to look for a job or get that little bit of unemployment that just really so much stress from your life. If you have that cash.

Average Joe Finances:
15:36

Yes. Yes. We're leaving stress. That is huge. And it's funny cause you mentioned like what's going on with the pandemic. I used to always tell people to yeah, three to six months now I tell people, because of the current environment we're in six to 12 months really is, what my goal is and what I've been sharing with other people that I think they should do just because. Nothing's guaranteed. And there, if there's one thing that this pandemic showed us is just how replaceable people are and how expendable people are in their nine to five jobs. The job will continue without you, so it's a, it's something that we all have to remember and just be mindful of. Because nothing's guaranteed in life except for death and taxes. Yeah, so I, I want to rewind back a little bit, and this is a little more personal, but this is going to go back to your childhood. I want to talk about like when we go back in the past, you said that, there was family arguments and fights over money now. I know for me as a child it was always a very taboo topic to talk about money at the family, like dinner table or setting or anything like that. Do you have a similar experience? Was it always something that was very awkward and you didn't really hear people talk about, unless it was an argument regarding money?

Tawnya Schultz:
16:40

Yeah, I do. I feel like it was always a stressor and my family and my mom and dad. Had they didn't budget together. They didn't create a plan together. They would spend their money differently. And then I remember my mom being like, we're going to hide these bags from your dad. Like when we'd go shopping, didn't want them to know. And then my dad and the other side would bring home. I always, I tell the story a lot, a brand new car. I have a real memory of him buying a brand new car, coming home, all excited. And that's my, one of my first money memories was we come outside to see the car. You did what? Like starts like freaking out that there was a car that he didn't talk. That's a pretty big deal so I was immediately, like frozen that, you know, and that, that stuff gets ingrained in you as a kid and really impacts you. So I will say it, it was always a fight and a struggle. And then they eventually got divorced money was a big part of that reason as well.

Average Joe Finances:
17:32

Yeah. Yeah. I asked that because I seem to always remember that as a child. It wasn't something that was okay to talk about. Like we would have like family dinners, like at my grandmother's house on Sundays and nobody ever talked about money or what they're doing to better their situation or anything like that. It was always just very taboo. If somebody in the family had more money than someone else. It was always looked at oh you're whatever. And it kinda it's just, it's bothersome because like people in, in I guess my age group, my generation, like the older millennials, I was born in 84. This is like a typical thing and it was just a very taboo topic to talk about. And nowadays you see families like at the dinner table talking about investing and this and that. And I think what we're starting to see is like the next generation, at least like the millennials children are probably going to inherit not just inherit, but they are going to build like the next generation of millionaires and just wealth builders, because. It's not a really taboo topic anymore. It's something you hear about all the time. People talk about money talking about their finances. What can I do to get better at this and that there's podcasts on it. There's just so much information out there that you can saturate yourself with. And really just turn yourself into a sponge and absorb as much content as you can. And you really can't go wrong. So that's why when I came across, like your Tik TOK channel and stuff immediately, it brought a smile to my face. And I said, cool, this is definitely somebody I'm following. Because it's just another way to, to get that ingrained in my head. Because as you're swiping through, there's other stupid things that pop up like dance trends and this and that or whatever. And then you see a dance trend of somebody like you doing a dance trend, but talking about money and it's like, oh, ok, Got my eyes back on the prize. Again, this is what I'm actually here for. This is what I'm actually on takeout for, as I'm looking at different business profiles, right? Not all the different anime ones, because I like to watch those too. Some of them I'm a giant nerd but anyway, so it's just turn yourself into a sponge, a content sponge, and learn as much as you can. And don't be afraid to have these conversations with your family with, if you have kids have these conversations with your kids. I think that's one of the most important things is educating the youth of today on making better financial decisions. I really want to empower my children. To just do much better than me, I want to do better for myself and my family and just be a better provider, but at the same time, to get there it's some work and some effort and it's discipline. I've started multiple side hustles that have failed. I've started some side hustles that are doing well. And then staying on top of it is the important thing.. Now I want to ask you, okay. Cause now you're doing, you're a financial coach, right? So you're helping mainly women, which is fantastic. So you're helping other women, step up their financial literacy game and, learn how to be more independent and things like that. And I think that is super important and a much needed thing we need in today's society. And so with doing all that with coaching, with doing your social media production and content and things like that, what do you enjoy the most about putting this information out there and helping other people.

Tawnya Schultz:
20:25

There's so many things, but I feel like when the light bulb comes off, when I'm seeing results that my clients are having and seeing how they're impacting, how it's impacting their life long-term and how they're also impacting their families. That's pretty incredible to say, I'm not the one making the change, I'm just guiding them and giving them tools and helping them create a plan. Because most people, unfortunately like what you're talking about with the planning for your budget every other week with your wife. When you have a plan, you know what you're aiming at? Most people live their life, figuring out as they go. But if you create this plan, that's like the best thing to sing those results. And I've had a lot of my clients pay off all their debt can become completely debt free and just really focused on now knowing where their money's going and being a lot more intentional, not bouncing checks, like a lot of things that we take for granted. Some of us take for granted now that we've been now that we are debt free.

Average Joe Finances:
21:15

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Sometimes you can forget that. I remember when I first when we first got out of debt, and we had the money sit in the bank I would make the comment like, oh, we got enough to go buy a new car cash. And my wife would just give me that side eye like, yeah. Okay. I know. Did you hear what you just said? Shut your mouth. So things like that, but it's having a good balance between us, right? We knew we wanted that money to do renovations or anything like that on the house that we knew we wanted to buy. When we got to Hawaii. Now, fortunately being in the military, I was able to use a VA loan and put 0% down use some of that money towards closing costs, but then the rest of it, we use towards renovations and doing other things to make the house our own. And one of the awesome things is, especially with the housing market, the way it is, the house is appreciated so much. Like it's gone up in value almost $300,000. It's absolutely insane. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just it's something like that. I would've never had the opportunity for something like this. If we didn't get ourselves out of debt. And one of the things to keep that reinvigorated because sometimes you do get lost in the sauce. You start to get complacent. And what we see in the military too, is complacency kills, right? So when you start to get complacent, other things start to rack up. We had to do like a major project on the house and we had to finance some of it. And now we finance it for 0%, but that 0% is for two years. So if we don't pay attention and that thing lapses, and we hit that two year mark and we haven't paid it off,. guess what? all that interest for the two years is going to hit and we're going to get punched in the face with that. So it's very important that you're paying attention to those little things, those minor details, paying attention to dates and things like that. And one of the things we started doing when we first came out here to Hawaii, that I really like because we started this back in Virginia, we were doing the envelope method. I'm sure you've heard of that. But I wanted to do something more with, just keeping it more electronic. So we opened some more bank accounts and we started doing sinking funds, so we track all of our money. We have a fund for like car repairs and car maintenance. So there's a fund for that. We have a fund that is for, we have pets and stuff. So we have a. A vet bill fund. We have a holiday and birthday fund cause we know pretty much how much we're going to spend on everybody for their birthday. This is family too. If we're sending gift cards or anything like that, we know how much we're going to spend. And we budget that out and we know how much each month we have to put into that account. And when we're going to be making withdrawals throughout the year, cause Hey, birthday is here. And so's birthday is here, this holidays here. So we do it that way. And then we have another fund like we have so like our emergency fund, right? We have emergency savings for that. We have a fund where we put money away for investing. This is for like future things. And then we have different investment accounts, so I have Cash value life insurance policy on myself and my wife. And then we also have a joint investment account that we pretty much opened up for the kids. Cause we didn't want to do a 5 29 plan because know, if they want to go to college, they can use my GI bill. Or by the time my kids are college age, I'll be able to just pay for their college if I want to. But we have a joint investment account that we've been putting money into for them. Basically to split between the two of them when the, when they're older, like if they want to use it to put as a down payment on their first home or anything like that, I used to say that it would go towards if they get married, we could use that towards their wedding. But I think I'll probably still pay for that on my own instead. And let this be like a life starting thing for. For them starting their lives off when they move out now at the same time, I'm hoping that I've taught my kids well enough that they don't want to have this huge lavish wedding and rather do like a justice of the peace thing and have a little party, I'm down for that. Hopefully if they're paying attention to what me and their mother are teaching them, they will they'll probably say, yeah, we're probably just gonna do something small, whatever. If they even choose to get married, whatever they want to do, I really don't care. It's, it's their life, their choice. I just want to know that I've got options there to help them out and get a little bit of a headstart in life. Cause it's something that, that I never had that my wife never had. We're trying to make sure we could give them like a better start. So I've been on my own ever since, like I moved out of my house at 18 to join the Navy and haven't looked back since, and it's just been a wild ride of trying to figure out this whole adulting thing in life ever since then. I'll tell you, like you look at, some kids nowadays, they're staying, in their parent's home until they're like 30. And you see that often, but at the same time that's like the new normal thing too. And people live with their parents to help them out and things like that. So doing it at the age of 18 and never looking back, you're still really young to the world. So it's been quite an adventure so far. I can definitely say that.

Tawnya Schultz:
25:24

I was similar to I moved out right when, out of high school and moved to Southern California or to San Diego, I was already living in the California,

Average Joe Finances:
25:30

where are you from originally?,

Tawnya Schultz:
25:32

Lancaster, California. So Northwest outside the desert, the flat about an hour from LA. And then I moved to San Diego was going to go to school down there, or I did go to school down there. I started the junior college, but college for me. I knew I was going to have to pay basically on my own from, in, in high school. I was like, I just got to figure this out, but it was so ingrained in me to go to college. Academically, I liked education anyway, shocker. I know. But yeah, I wanted to go to school and go to college. I went to a junior college first, so it was more affordable. I got federal aid and then transitioned into a junior, into a university, but I knew I was gonna have to take on some student loans, but I did, I worked all throughout college and I think that's really important too. The student loan crisis, I can, we can have the whole episodes about that, but there's just a lot with the pressure of people getting, taking so much debt on it at a young age and feeling obligated to, and I feel like it's just good to show your kids. I feel like it is on the parents to educate and help show your kids. Like I can't afford help you out this much, or you should go to a junior college first. You don't have to go to a private out of state college. There's so many different ways to still go to college and still make great financial living, not having to go with that.

Average Joe Finances:
26:47

I want to talk about student loans for a little bit too, for a second, because, man, that is like the biggest scam in all of history because you have these students go into college, they get these loans and get approved for these loans that, they'll take out a six-figure loan and then they're going to graduate college and get a job paying 60,000 a year. And when all the interests, you're paying it off almost for the rest of your life. It's absolutely ridiculous, part of the problem is these a lot of these colleges and universities are, they just raise their, raising their prices too high? They're making education too expensive because they can get away with that because the banks, especially like these federal loans, they're going to keep pumping it out. And these higher amounts, because. It's a federally backed guarantee loan, so they know they're going to get it. Whatever. So it's kinda crazy if you ask me, I think student loans should be like a flat fee. Okay, if you're gonna borrow this much money, like if you're gonna borrow a hundred thousand, you have to pay back 120,000. And that's it and just be done with it. Don't sit here and charge interest over the years and things like that. That way the bank gets their money. And then some now you could argue that, they're losing money that entire time because of the fact that they're inflation every year, like this year is what 5.4% absolutely crazy. Meeting that threshold that they're losing money. Yeah, I get that. But at the same time, the whole point of a student loan is to try to help these young people, start their life and be able to pay for their education. I don't know, you can also make. Education gets paid for by the government. But a lot of people like, oh, you can't do that. That's communism, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Look, I get it. I just, I think there needs to be some type of reform to help, make it more affordable or just make it more realistic because somebody shouldn't graduate from college and have to pay these loans for 20, 30 years. Pay off their mortgage before they pay off student loans. That is absolutely crazy. So off my soap box,

Tawnya Schultz:
28:30

no, I'm the same way. I post a lot about student loans because I have strong opinions on them as well, but yeah, the average person pays off their student loan and 21.1 years, I just read it. So you're going to graduate and then have a loan you're paying off. And even if the average student loan debt is around 37,000, right now you pay that off in 20 years. You're paying about 10, depending on your payment, 10,000 or more in interest, if not more. So you have to be really mindful, but I do think there are options that people. Think about, and people go straight to I just want to go to university right away. And I feel like that's where the education does come from the parent to help guide that decision and not just make it on the street on the, of course the kid's going to be like, I want to go to. Some school across the country, why wouldn't he, and party or whatever it is, but it's I got out of school with, I think just under 15,010 to 15,000 of student loan debt that I was able to pay off pretty quickly. But I did. Then the thing about student loan debt, that's tricky is. It's free money. As a student, you're thinking like, I don't got to pay this back. Like it's a weird mindset shift because some of that money doesn't exactly have to go towards paying for your tuition. Like a lot of that too, that student loan money can go towards your housing and different expenses,

Average Joe Finances:
29:46

living expenses and stuff.

Tawnya Schultz:
29:48

Yeah. So it's a tricky thing that happens, but I don't think it should be illegal to let these kids sign. Much amount of money. I think it's, I don't know why that's not.

Average Joe Finances:
29:58

Yeah, there, there needs to be some type of reform there. A hundred percent. Look I do believe Hey, if you take out a loan, you got to pay it back. Like we shouldn't just wipe out debt, but at the same time, if we did wipe out half of the student loan debt, all the banks that are going to get this debt wiped from them have already made that money back. And then some in the interest that they had been collecting over the years. I don't think it really hurting people too bad. But at the same time you're going to help out like this next generation to be in a better spot where, they can be good tax, paying citizens and help the economy out. And help stimulate the economy because that's less money that they're putting towards debt and more money that they can throw back into the economy. Everyone's got their opinion and mindset on that and I try to stay away from all that stuff on this podcast. But, student loan debt is a very important topic for a lot of my listeners, because a lot of them here have gone to college and they're trying to figure out how to pay that off. And for the most part, most people will want to pay off their other debts first, before they pay off student loan debt, because it's usually a generally a lower interest rate. But the credit cards are sitting here like 17, 18 to 26%, of course you want to pay those off first. You went to your debt snowball, some, sometimes it's just, it's really wild when you got to prioritize how these things go, and then you realize why I'm still paying on this loan. 15 years later, this is insane.

Tawnya Schultz:
31:09

Yeah. And what am I going to school for? And of course what's the percentage of 60% of people don't use their degree or whatever that percentage is like more than. Yeah, it's just insane.

Average Joe Finances:
31:18

Okay. So I want to ask you this then, right? Because if somebody is going to go to college and get a degree and let's say they're not able to use it, why is it important? If somebody is in a nine to five job, why is it important to try to start? I'm not trying to start, but to start like a side hustle and really force it to work, really make it work. Why is something like that so important,

Tawnya Schultz:
31:39

I think there's just so much opportunity right now, online. Money doing so many different things. Gary V who is a big follower, big celebrity, I guess on social media, he talks about, just going to garage sales and marshals and flipping stuff on eBay. Like pretty simple things that can make you a side hustle. It doesn't have to be starting some business and having to spend all this money on. You can do so many things being scrappy and not having to invest a lot to get things off the ground. And I feel like there's a lot of opportunity to just be like, Hey, what do I like doing? Or not just like, how can I make tens of thousands of dollars a month, maybe it's like, Hey, how can I make an extra $500 a month? Or like a little bit more to help either accelerate your debt or maybe that does eventually become your full-time job. But I feel like the opportunity right now with social media is incredible. You just, if you just pick something and go all in on it and stop switching, trying different things, give that enough time to grow and build. And if it doesn't work, then try something else. But yeah, the opportunity is amazing.

Average Joe Finances:
32:40

A hundred percent agree with that. As a matter of fact, that's probably gonna be the trailer for this episode right there. What you just talked about, especially with like social media and just these other opportunities to present themselves. There, there's so many things out there that you can do to make a little extra money on the side. I had a guest on my show a long time ago that talked about, he had an eBay side hustle selling sneakers. He would go and resell sneakers or find sneakers for cheap at like Marshall's and things like that. And sell them. And he put his kids through college with that, like they graduated, they got their degree with no student loan debt because of this side hustle that he did with selling sneakers. So it's absolutely amazing the things you could do and just, again, you have to want to do it. You have to have that bug or that, that mindset, you, can't not, everyone's going to wake up and be like, oh, I'm going to go start a side hustle and make some extra cash and pay off. Some people can't do that. They have to rely on their discipline and being able to pay off, on their own. But at the same time, there, there really is a lot of opportunity out there for people that are listening right now to go out and start something. There's definitely things out there. And if it's, if you start something up and it's not working out and you find that you're losing money or you're not making enough to where it's enjoyable, then stop and try something else. You don't have to sit here and kill yourself on a side hustle. I've done that before. Like I started some. I had to drop shipping business and it started off pretty good. And then it started to tank and I said, I don't want to do this no more. So I stopped, I've even flipped websites before too. I built a website from scratch and e-commerce store. Got a really good domain name and. I sold it on a website called Flippa and I made a profit. I know it's a nice profit too, for a startup site. I had no stats. I had no sales. I had nothing. I said, Hey, I built this. It's ready to go. Whoever wants it. Here's the price. And I got exactly what I asked for it, which was absolutely amazing to me. Now it took I think it was on Flippa for seven months before somebody. Even bit. But at the same time, I wasn't even expecting, and I totally forgot about it. All of a sudden I got an email saying, Hey, I want to buy your website. And I'm like, sweet. I forgot I had that on there. Which was really cool. So I had to go and renew the because I had stopped paying the monthly Shopify fees, so I had to go and renew everything, turned it back on, make sure all my products were still there. And then turn it over to this guy. So it was man, that was a pretty fun experience for sure. There's so many things you can do.

Tawnya Schultz:
34:52

Yeah. I didn't even know about anything like that. So it's like, when you're educating yourself, when you're listening to podcasts and you hear things and things recognize what is this thing? Hey, maybe I should look into it. If you're called to do something like for me, When I got out of debt, I was really called to coach. Like, how could I then step into that and start putting myself out there on social media? I didn't have clients yet, but I was just starting creating content. Cause I'm like, people are going to see it and all, eventually I want to do a course, which I ended up creating and do the one-on-one coaching. But it, you just never know. I would just say, listen to those callings or those things when you see them and get creative. There's just write down a list of things, like all the things that you could try to do. And with COVID I know there is a lot of random work out there that people are looking for. So there's an opportunity for sure.

Average Joe Finances:
35:41

I was doing Uber on the side, like on the weekends, like before I was podcasting I would do Uber on the weekends. And actually I picked up one guy one time that actually does a lot of the tourist stuff for the island out here. So they got a company out here and they do all their little marketing and they have luaus and all these other things. And he said, Hey man, he's If you want, we can go swing by my shop real quick. I'll get you a bunch of pamphlets and things like that. And anybody that you send to me each time somebody buys something, I'll throw 20 bucks your way. Oh, okay. So I got a bunch of the pamphlets. I stuck it in the back of my car, like in the little backseat thing. And as I picked up people from the airport, cause that's what I used to mostly do. I used to get up because I would do it on the weekends.

I'd get up at 4:
36:19

30 in the morning because I'm used to getting up early and I would go out on a Saturday and a Sunday.

4:
36:24

30 in the morning until about noon. And I would just do drives back and forth to the airport and I would pick people up and they'd be like, oh, Hey, what do you know about this luau, you think this is good? I was like, yeah. Hey, call my buddy. Here's his number? He'll get you set up. And so I was not only getting paid to drive these people to their hotel. But if they sign up for any of those things, I would get Venmo 20 bucks, which was really cool. So that became a whole different side hustle. And then of course when I came back from my brother's wedding in March of 2020, I flew back from Texas. Cause that's where the wedding was. And like the world ended and I'm like I am not doing Uber. I'm not picking people up. It's just not worth the risk. So I stopped and I haven't done it since. But that was like a neat little thing. There's little things that you could do to just add on. To that experience. So I was making money from Uber, but I was also making this little side hustle cash from being an affiliate for this guy. And promoting his stuff. I've seen other Uber drivers out there, like this is one guy on YouTube that I love watching some of his stuff. Sometimes he does karaoke and his car and he gives you a microphone. You get in the car, there's a song book. He tells you to pick a song and as you're driving to the destination, he'll throw on the music and you can sing your heart away. Now. I can tell you, he's not really making money from that, but you know what he is getting, I guarantee you that they're leaving that car happy. They're probably giving him much better tips than they would give like another Uber driver. And on top of that, he's got content now for social media channel, which has a large following on his YouTube channel. And. And that is now monetized. So it's all these things that kind of talk to each other. So there's just so much you can do today. And like you said, social media is huge and you've got to take advantage of it. I don't have a huge TikTok following. I just got started on, but I could already tell you I'm getting podcasts downloads and podcasts listens from that platform because I can see the referral. I could see where people click the link from. I could see where they came from and if they're coming from my links page, it's most likely because that was what they clicked on from a tick tock, because that's one of the places where I have it there are no, my Instagram. That's pretty cool.

Tawnya Schultz:
38:16

Yeah. That's been one of my biggest drivers this last year. Once I got on TikTok , it hasn't even been a year. And yeah, I'll say from people opting into my email list and then finding. So I've had a lot, I would say the majority of my income actually coming from TikTok that way. And then also now making videos for other people, for affiliates or brand marketing for other companies that are approaching me to create content for them.

Average Joe Finances:
38:40

That's fantastic. Well done. Yeah. So I do the same thing with my podcast right now. So once my podcasts hit like a certain threshold, I've people have reached out to me to do sponsorships.. I have affiliates too, that I, I'll do commercials and stuff for, so as people, click that stuff they do through mine, it's like a little bit, little side income, which is great. But the way I look at is all the stuff that I make from the podcast. I just reinvest into the podcast. I've used it to buy equipment. I've used the, to hire the editing team that I use to actually edit the episodes. So all of this is just very self-sufficient and it's not really something I have to spend money on and worry about, which is really cool.

Tawnya Schultz:
39:12

Yeah. I think it depends on what you want to do that side hustle for. You're making the point where, I just want to put this content out there, like for you on your podcast, I just want to meet cool people and get this information out to the world. People like me. Hello? Just getting but no, for real, then you can just, yeah, it's paying for itself. Like you said, like maybe you're not making like tens of thousands a month, but Hey, it's, I'm putting myself out there. I'm I love what I'm doing. And other people are like, I just want to make money so that I can pay off debt faster that I can save for a vacation or whatever it is. So I like to be clear on where you're going as well, and not

Average Joe Finances:
39:46

just I'm in a pretty good spot in life right now where I'm not too worried about expenses or money or things like that. So the whole reason why I started this show was to try to help other people get to the same level, get themselves out of debt, get themselves to a spot where they can start investing, and things like that. And th that's been one of the most rewarding things is sure I get thousands of downloads, right? When people listen to my show, which is awesome. But the thing that impacts me the most is when I get like a DM or a message saying, Hey, I listened to this episode and I thought that was really awesome. Or, Hey, this changed my life. Things like that is like the most moving thing to me. And that's the most rewarding thing. So it's a, it's quite amazing. The impact you can make on people just for having a conversation like. I'm doing something I love right now, sitting here have a conversation with you. I love to talk, I love to talk about money. I love to talk about like how you can better yourself mindset and things like that. And you do too, right? That's what you do with your social media content creation. And so here's just the two of us sitting here and having an awesome conversation and hopefully somebody can get something out of it and decide to make that step today to try to change their life. And it's just something like that. That's just so impactful. I would like to ask you for our listeners here. Because we do talk about like finances and getting out of debt and everything else. So we talked about the whole getting out of debt piece, but is there anything, like in particular that you personally invest in like any, are you in the stock market, do you invest in real estate or do you invest in businesses like, such as your social media and things like that? What are some of the things you do to start building your passive income streams?

Tawnya Schultz:
41:16

Yeah, I'll say for now. All the money that I make for my coaching does go back into the majority of it goes back into my business. And then I also have still a full-time job in marketing and doing creative for a health and life coaching company. So it, it all works together, which is great. And it's, they, we also do online courses. And what I do with that is obviously I invest now about 30 to 40 actually. Yeah, probably one of my paychecks a month, maybe always almost 50 percent. In mutual funds and ETFs in the stock market. So I have a financial advisor I work with and that's where I'm really focused on is getting that number. I haven't invested in real estate or anything yet. And I will, I feel like that's a plan eventually, but for now I have goals on getting that to a certain number which now it's a little bit over a hundred thousand, which was a really exciting milestone for me this year. And then. Yeah, building that up while I'm still on the younger side and being able for that money to grow for me long-term is like my main goal,

Average Joe Finances:
42:16

Fantastic. Yeah. That's a great main goal to have. I just want to say Tawnya to you, just congratulations on your success so far. You've really come a long way from what I've seen on, the videos you produce and then your website is absolutely gorgeous. It's amazing. It looks great. I can definitely tell you put a lot of work into that and a lot of passion or hired somebody who's really good at it. Obviously, you know what you're doing, you care about what you're doing. You care about the product, you care about the image that you're putting out there, people. And that's super important because there's a lot of people that just they'll just throw stuff out there and be like, oh yeah, I'm a coach, or I could do this, I could do that, but they're not really in it in it you know what I'm saying? You've lived that life. You've lived that struggle and you're able to, use your experiences both personal and professional now. What you've learned from other people. And you can use that to help benefit other people. And that's super huge. I just want to say again, congratulations. And then I also want to say, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with me today. I have to ask you one more question. It's the most important question of all. We're sitting here having an awesome conversation. And I know that there's, my listeners are probably sitting here saying, Hey, where do I find more information about Tawnya, where what's our TikTok? We need to know more so with that being said, where can people find more information about you? What is your website? And then if any social media profiles or anything like that, you'd like to share with us, please let us know.

Tawnya Schultz:
43:34

Yeah. So I will say that I do focus on helping women, but I do have male clients and males have taken my course as well. So I am open to all, any gender, all genders. And I am also found at themoneylifecoach.com. So that's where my main website is. My social media is my name, Tawnya Schultz. I'm sure it will be posted here. It's a little bit tricky of a spelling, but Tawnya Schultz or the money life coach, you can find me on Tik TOK and on Instagram is where I post mostly.

Average Joe Finances:
44:01

Fantastic. Yes. And we will have all of those links in the show notes. So if you're driving, don't sit here and try to write that down, focus on the road and make sure, you can check the show notes later, copy and paste it, click it, whatever you gotta do, I'll make it easy for you. You can find everything on Tawnya and find out more about her by checking out her website. And I highly recommend if you have TikTok, I know it can be addicting sometimes. And sometimes people just delete it because they waste away watching so many videos on there, but I'm telling you right now, if there's a channel that you need to follow, so you can keep your mind in the right place. Definitely follow Tawnya, check out everything she's doing. It's absolutely awesome. Her story's awesome. Again, Tawnya, like I said before, I'm humbled and thankful that you you said yes to coming on the show. And I really appreciate you having this conversation with me today.

Tawnya Schultz:
44:47

Yeah, this was great. Anytime I'd love to come back soon.

Average Joe Finances:
44:49

All right. Absolutely. All right. You take care and we're we're out of here.