This Nurse Wants to You to be Ready to Come out of this crisis ahead - Ep. 40
Nicole and Nadia made it from growing up in public housing to working on Wall Street. They credit their mother for having the insight to expose them to different experiences, all of which paved the path for them to achieve financial independence. They honor their mother by helping others with the knowledge they’ve gained and continue to seek. We are facing some challenging economic times, the Wealth Twins are here to help you weather the storm and emerge triumphantly.
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Rule #1: The Simple Strategy for Successful Investing in Only 15 Minutes a Week!
MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel
Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required
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TRANSCRIPT:
Naseema McElroy (00:01): Hey Nurses on fire. I have a special treat for you today. We have Nicole and Nadia of the wealth, the twins joining us and they are going to show us how to get our money all the way, right. Especially during this economic downturn that we have. I am honored to have you ladies join us.
Nicole (00:26): Well thank you. We're honored to be here.
Nadia (00:29): Yes, we're honored to be here Naseema. Thank you very much and we just want to let the nurses know right now. We appreciate the work that you're doing out there and helping this country stay on its feet during this and family. So we really appreciate you guys.
Nicole (00:42): Nadia and I are both in New York and we definitely see you guys on the front line doing all you can and we're doing all we can by staying in the house.
Naseema McElroy (00:51): Okay. Hallelujah. Please stay home. I'm a home body and I like this time. I feel like I'm using this time to, you know, really love on my family and connect even though I still have to go to work. You know I still have to go to work, but it's still like, it's like the focus on being at home has really brought us closer together. So I am looking at this time as an opportunity as we will talk about how you can do that as well, especially when it comes to your money. Can you guys share a little bit about your background? How did you become the wealth twins?
Nadia (01:28): Well, Nicole and I, we grew up in a New York housing development when we were growing up and we had always told ourselves it has to be a different way of life here because there was such a struggle with money and amazing. We were using our education as a means to get ourselves out of that environment and at the same time we became very big savers. I'm mother used to give us $3 a day to go to school and we use, we used to put $1 away every day that turned into big savers when we grew up and we started teaching people around us how to do the same thing.
Nicole (02:05): Now with that, our mother was not even mentioned. She works seven days a week and she had no time off. We didn't get any holidays, winters. She was a single mom and I knew and Nadia knew that was something we did not want to do. Our mother actually worked with self, I would say to death. She passed away when we were quite young. Not that young, we were 20 but you know we were young enough that we still needed a mother. Well we both knew from then money had played a big issue in terms of just the amount of stress that she was enduring. And if we can focus some money, it would be a way for us to try to, you know, have a different lifestyle where we weren't as stressed or you know, having to work that many hours in that many days.
Naseema McElroy (02:49): Wow. Dang. That's pretty big to save a third of your income as a kid. I love that it came out of like just that drive to not be in the projects anymore and wanting something better. So from saving dollar a day, where are you guys now? Financially and how do you help others with their finances?
Nicole (03:14): So Nadia, Nadia likes to tell people I'm not really that comfortable but not in I both millionaires. Okay. And that's a combination of investing, saving and also real estate that we hold and we both have done it separately. So it's something that we have decided, okay this is something we've done together. We can teach other people. And the way we do that is that we try to break down the financial markets in a simple way and also teach people personal finance in a simple way. Now our background, which we didn't mention before Nadia and I both went to Columbia university, we both worked at Goldman Sachs. I have an MBA in financial instruments, which nine likes to say the stock market. And then from there we just kept using education and our ability to save and understand things and make it simple for people and for us to keep making more money and making the money work for us.
Naseema McElroy (04:12): Yeah, that's awesome. Woo.
Nicole (04:14): Yes. And we want to do that for others because one thing we said, we would pay it for it because we lost a mother because of that from working so hard. We said we would pay for it and teach other people so that they wouldn't have to work so hard and understand how money can help them change their life.
Nadia (04:30): Yeah, and one of the things we like to impress upon people, it's not the amount of money you make is about the money you keep and how what you do with them, money, whether you're invested in yourself and your future, your retirement, it's all about that. It's not about how much you make, it's how much you keep.
Naseema McElroy (04:47): What do you tell people that think that all like that sounds good. Like, Oh, they're millionaires, they're coming from a place of privilege. Like they can't really tell me anything. Like I don't think it's possible for me to be a millionaire.
Nadia (05:02): Let's take a step back. When we were on wall street, we weren't making millionaire money. Okay. That's not for everyone. Right. So when I was making, say when I first got into working, I initially was making about $40,000 right? I wasn't saving money so I wasn't making much what the thing was is that because we grew up in, I won't say poverty would cause we be at a point in our lives that we didn't like, we didn't need anything fancy, right? So we knew that money could be used as a tool and not use it to buy more materialistic things. We were raised to know, okay, this is what you can do with your money and this is what's important in your life. Right? So that is still in this a frugality, it carried over into adulthood. So instead of moving into the city and get an apartment in Manhattan, like a lot of our classmates did, we decided to move into Queens, which was much more manageable financially, and you have more space and it just worked out for us better.
Nadia (06:01): Right? So that allowed us to feed more by income, even with friends or when we were making more money. That money went into, well, when you're trying to save is having a plan for a future. One point I was saving 75% of my take home, you know, no matter when my income went up, that was like, Oh, I gotta raise more money for me to face. I didn't have to change my lifestyle because I was really focused on not seeing that lifestyle creep. I knew this is what I'd rather suffer. Now I'm young and suffer when I'm older.
Nicole (06:33): Now. Nobody likes to focus on the saving part. There's another way that we were able to get money up. I like the focus on chasing a check. I never stayed at a job that I didn't like and I always try to get a job that was paying me more. You know, I was never, I mean, we started working right around September 11th you know, in New York city. We were down there at that time and yeah, so the first thing I noticed, I saw people who had 30 years on the job lose their job the next day. From then on. I said, I will not work anywhere for 30 years and make it feel like I'm at home and get sent home that day because I was so devoted to that company when a company is not going to be devoted to me, I was only, and I told Nadia we need to be devoted to the check.
Nicole (07:23): So I made it our business to always keep learning either from people or finding ways that we were going to learn what it took the get to the next level had been getting an I series seven and 63 to go sit with the traders and start trading, had it be the go get an MBA, whatever it was to go get to that next step to get more money. We were willing to do so. We have both sides covered. We were saving and we would chase in a check to make more money and then figuring out from people that we talked to who are in our circle of finding new circles to see what to do with the money because we didn't have those people around us when we were growing up. We knew people who knew how to spend money. We didn't know anyone who knew how to invest money. Well that's a combination that we did. So anybody can do those things. I believe anyone can do it.
Naseema McElroy (08:11): Yeah, I love that. I love that. So there is two important things that I want to highlight that you just had, Nicole, is um, the first thing is you guys started from when the market was crazy. Like literally, you know, during September 11, the right on wall street, like the world was falling in on you. You were seeing a lot of people losing their jobs. This is kind of the situation that we're in right now where people overnight that had these secure jobs, ah, suddenly didn't have anything or their whole world has changed. And so they're going into a panic about their finances and they're just not prepared. They can't see the other side and seeing the opportunity. And I was told, um, I was given a webinar the other day and I was told, um, when I said, Hey, you know, you just lost your job.
Naseema McElroy (09:04): Look at, look at the opportunity in that. I was told that I was making a privileged statement and I was like, you know what, I, you know what, I am making a privileged nightmare because I see things a lot differently because of the things that I have experienced and the people that I know. And so yes, I do have a lot of privilege and that's not a negative thing. Um, but I really want people to take away from that, that despite it being a challenging time, we have to come out of this ahead. We have to come out of this taking advantage of the things that we have the readily accessible for us in order to succeed. And then the other thing that I want you guys to talk about a little bit more, or just wanting to emphasize is that nobody around you guys, when you were growing up were doing these things and you didn't have that rich daddy at a corporation or somebody showing you how to make money or somebody plugging you into something so that you had opportunities to learn how to invest in all this kind of stuff. I love what you said about how you have to change your circle of influence in order to know how to do that. So those are like two main points that I really want to emphasize because anybody can do those things. Anybody can start over. Anybody can change their circle of influence.
Nicole (10:27): I mean this is that circle of influence I would say was from when we were very young. I was in a school, we grew up in the projects, but I went to school in a different part of Queens and we went to school, different part of Queens and we were tested and decided we were smart enough to get into the higher track classes in those classes. It was no discussion. You were going to high school, you would go into college. Whereas if you were in another school or another class, it was like, well maybe one out of 10 of you might be going to college. So having that around the same people who, Oh yeah, college is a definite, it was like, yeah, we're going to go to college now. It's just a matter of which one we're going to pick. You know, so having a circle influence from a very young age, I knew I needed to get around different people. I always needed to be around people who are trying to say, Oh yeah, that's easy. Yeah, just do it. I don't want to be around anyone that's not doing anything. And I think from a very young age we were able to see that.
Nadia (11:27): Yeah. And I think one of the things that helped us start moving from saving to adding investing to that was Nicole had a conversation with I guess a junior manager of manager that was on her desk and she said, Nicole, you'll probably like what, 21/22 and he's like, like you investing in your retirement account? And we're like, no. He's like, let me show you compounding interests, what compound interest. And you showed her a quick spreadsheet and I remember her getting on the phone and call them and she said, not it, we're getting into our 401ks right now based on the numbers that my boss has showed me. It makes no sense. You know, from that point on we started investing in a 401k. Once you started doing this and you start saying, Hey, how can I maximize this? How can I make this more efficient? So we started reading, you start speaking to other people, finding out what they're doing, but men of constantly learning and trying to approve it. Even if it's this a little bit every year they try to do it. It's even, it will work for you. Right. When we were in the investment bank, our hands are tied a lot. And what you can't actually invest, you know? So when we actually left that environment, it was like, Oh, now it's even better because we don't have those restrictions upon us.
Nicole (12:44): Yeah. And and like you were saying Naseema the same of the whole thing about people thought you were making a privilege statement. Listen, think of it as a reset and you want that reset earlier than later. And the earlier you get that lesson, the early you get to learn from it. Now if you don't learn from it and it happens to you again, now there's a problem. But it's not a privileged statement. If it happened early enough in your life, you can reset and say, I don't want this to happen again to me. What can I do? All these things are lessons. Some people don't want to see it right now. So
Naseema McElroy (13:16): I mean, it's hard. It's a hard thing to hear. You just lost your job and somebody says that like, I understand that, but at the same time, like so what? What's next and where and where are you going to be next year? If you don't make any changes, where are you going to be 10 years from now if you don't make any changes? And so, you know, take a moment, you know? Okay, you can sulk for a little while, but then like next steps, what's next?
Nadia (13:41): Well, if you look from 2000 to 2020 we've had at least three or four of these crisises that are similar, right? You had the dotcom bust, you had the September 11th you had the recession of 2007 2008 and now you'd have the pandemic. Now, it's not a question of if this never going to happen, when it's going to happen, you know? So you gotta like my thing is I always liked to prepare myself cause I don't like surprises. I'm not that person. So I rather this make sure unsecured because I don't want to endanger myself or my family if things do change, you know?
Naseema McElroy (14:17): Right, right. So what can people do right now to protect themselves for any other market downturns of what can they take advantage of during this recession or downturn or whatever crisis that we're experiencing right now so that when when it happens cause it's going to happen again, they don't end up at the bottom.
Nicole (14:39): I would say two things. One, they should realize not to become emotional. They can see history repeats itself. Okay. One, we go through these cycles a lot too. It seems like the stock market has gone up and always goes up and we know that the stock market, we do know there's a constant that the stock market fluctuates. So one, learn not to be emotional. Take the time out to just sit back, relax, and just not be emotional. Two I would say before anybody starts trading in any environment, even if you say now or later if you are already in it, you need to know about asset allocation. People like to pick stocks. People like to talk about securities, but they've shown in studies. The most important thing you can do is understand asset allocation. Now what do I mean by that? There are four main things.
Nicole (15:32): You have cash, bonds, stocks and sometimes REITs right? These are the four asset classes. The way you choose how much stocks you're going to have in the portfolio, how many bonds or what percentage of bonds you're going to have and what percent is a cash you're going to have has more influence on your outcome in terms of your money in the long run than picking stocks. So no, the power of asset allocation first and then also no, the difference between trading and investing. If you are investing and you are a passive and not trying to be a person that's trying to beat the market, which is trading mainly, then you do not have to stress out. There's a longterm game based on your asset allocation and your diversification. You should be all right. So I would say those two things. Honestly, asset allocation, understand the difference between trading and investing.
Nadia (16:33): And I'll just add a third one right now. From my point of view, cash is King, right? I think that we're gonna feel a lot of fluctuations in the market. Maybe some people, some take it, some people can, but you need to have your emergency savings at least nine months, right? And if you have that and you have extra money, then you can start them. Guys, we don't want you to start investing any money that you're scared to lose, okay? But also if you have enough cash on hand and if we do roll into recession, that's your opportunity. Use that money to bring yourself up in that time because that's the timefor opportunity. Like you can get in on the bottom floor and have your money grow as the market goes back up. And I'm talking about when the stock market order real estate market, you know,
Nicole (17:18): and when it comes to the stock market, 99 both agree. We don't say jump in with both feet. We don't say try to time this market. If you want to take advantage of this market, you can do dollar cost averaging or you can set a little bit money aside in his buys securities week to week basis, month to month basis after you have done your research. But there's nobody telling you a, we're not telling you, Hey, you got $10,000 lying there, go put $10,000 in here because the rock, it turned into 5,000 okay. But have think that this is the opportunity you're not going to miss out. It's not going to turn in one day and go back up to amazing. You're not going to miss out. And I think most people think I'm gonna miss, I'm gonna miss. And they get so crazy and they are willing to just rush into the market. Take your time, get into the market so that you don't, you don't want to be out of this market. It is. You got to understand for yourself what would be worse. Me not getting into this market and listen to this opportunity or me, I missed the bottom of the market. So have you will want to say, I want to get in this market and I don't care. I'm not at the bottom or not then you need to do dollar cost averaging and keep getting in this market on a strategic basis.
Nadia (18:32): Yeah, there's more of a long term point of view because if you go into the mindset of investing because you just want to make money quick or don't, you're making yourself ripe for scam and people are going to pray upon that and you're going to lose a lot more money that way.
Nicole (18:46): Yes, yes. We'll talk about some of the predatory ways people are going to try to take advantage you, especially right now. Let's talk about like people as investors. So most people, my audience are nurses and they might not think about themselves as investors, but if you guys have a retirement fund as your job, you guys are investors right now, so I just want people to understand that you're already investing like you're already an investor, but now we want to turn you into more responsible investors. One of the things that I've seen is people thinking that because the market is so bad, they want to turn to conservative investments. Right now. They want to take all their money and their retirement funds and move them over to more conservative investments because they're scared to lose money. What do you say to those people?
Nicole (19:42): Okay, so I would say, where are you in terms of your career? Are you two years away from retiring? If not, then why are you being conservative? You're going to lose more in the long run if you didn't focus on, okay, this is a 10 year, 20 year plan. The market is going to fluctuate like I say, but it eventually goes up and if you go on to conservative, then you're going to miss the ride. When it comes to the stops rising and then don't pull your money out. You're basing it on emotions. If you want to do anything, the first thing you can do as an investor is look at your fees that you're paying in your retirement account. That's the number one thing that people don't pay attention to. Good times a bath. Those fees for two more than a lot of other things. So have you going to be, even if you just start investing and start looking at your retirement account, the first thing you need to look at before you start thinking about pulling anything out is to look at your fees.
Nadia (20:40): Yeah. My thing is also you get to look at the reason why you're investing, right? Is it for a longterm plan? Is it for yes. No, look at what's going on. I know a lot of people can't stomach what's going on. I don't even look at my accounts right now. I didn't make sure my allocation is the way I want it to be right now. And then I don't look at it because it gives you that urge to want to get out of employee on my desk is a natural instinct, you know, don't do that to yourself. Don't stress yourself out to say, look, this is my course. I'm going to stick to it. I everything will go up and down, up and down, but I'm going to stay the course right there.
Nicole (21:17): Yeah, and if you conservative by nature, then you conservative, but they'll do it out of fear because you're going to miss out on what Nadia said before about the compounding. And we want to do as much compounding and get as much as we can on that compounding as long as we can. So if you get 20 years in the game or you got 15 years, you want to focus on compounding more than being conservative and your 401K is not going to have anything crazy in it to begin with.
Naseema McElroy (21:43): It shouldn't. It shouldn't, but, but I have seen 401ks where they drop you into a target day fund that has high expenses, higher expenses than you should be paying and that doesn't really perform as well. And so what are some ways that people can, they're like, Oh this is also confusing to me. How can people start learning about investing? What are some things that they can do? And then how do I know if I'm paying high fees?
Nicole (22:13): Okay, so one we like to start out that we are not financial advisors, we are just talking about what we've done in the past and what has worked for us. So with anything you can always move money investing and if you want more you should always give more advice whenever you can. But we are not financial investors so I just want to make that clear now when it comes to how do you know how much fees you you're paying once you get a statement? Well at least every quarter or so from your 401k. Now most people don't look at it, they just look at the top moment. Did it go up? But did it go down this quarter? Right? But in the fine print, you're going to look at something called basis points, okay? And if you can't find, you can call up your, uh, your 401k. Oh, okay.
Nicole (23:01): Fiduciary, we'll call it, right? The people that [inaudible] custodians to hold the former key account, they're going to tell you this is how many basis points you're paying, okay? And it doesn't matter if you don't know what a basis point is, this one, 150% but all you know, and all you need to know, the higher the number, the more you're paying. So they say 75 basis points, you're paying a lot, okay? So it doesn't matter if you all know what base appointed, you want the number to be as close to zero as possible, okay? So you can look at it long as statements or you can give them a call. Okay. Now when it comes to learning about investing, Nadia and I have made it a mission to teach people [inaudible] that investing does not have to be [inaudible] complicated terms. It doesn't have to be something that you need to stay away from because you don't have the time or you think is too challenging, right?
Nicole (23:54): We have simple tools that you can use on our site. We have the 25 terms. We want you to give first acclimated with the terminology. When someone says the stock market, what do they mean? You can do that by dictionary if you want. Think about, you can also look in the newspaper. You can start watching TV just to acclimate yourself with the terms. Don't watch the TV in terms of when it's telling the market's going up, the market's going down. That's meant as TV. At the end of the day, this meant for ratings. We don't want you to look at it for that. We just want you to look at it for the terms after that. Books are a great way, okay, and then from there you have Naseema. You have Nadia. Nicole, you have a whole bunch of us out here showing you from my personal experience how it is and what you can do as or individual to learn when making it. Very simple. For you to do it. Yeah, I think that that's all great. What are some things that people should avoid when they start investing? Like I'm worried about people getting taken advantage of because they're seeing all these new investors. What are some things people should look out for?
Nadia (25:04): Okay. Can I jump on this one? Cause I'm in Brooklyn, it seems to be running rampid over here and it's uh Oh the one thing you should avoid if anybody guaranteeing you a rate of return. Okay. One of the things going around, I was like, Oh, I got a guarantee with 10% return, nobody can guarantee your return. Okay. So as soon as you hear that, that should be a red flag that this may not be on the up and up. Okay. And if the person who's telling you this can explain to you more than just using buzzwords when they're explaining to you what they want you to put your money into, that's another red flag. Okay.
Nicole (25:42): Yeah. I would also say if you're a beginner, you should not go into complicated investments. I don't think you should get involved in options trading. I don't think you should get involved in Forex trading, global trading. I'm not saying you can't later on down the line, but you want to learn how to crawl before you run a marathon. All right? And as simple investments that you can do with just stock and bonds, they might not be sexy, but they're timeless. And I am all about timeless investments. This is how people become rich. We talk about how to become wealthy. If you want to have get rich quick scheme or get rich quick, it's an easy way to lose your money quicker. All right, so you want to look for timeless investments. And then if once you have experts have become an expert on that, then move on to Forex, global trading options, trading those things out there. We get the basic style first, have the foundation first and then move on.
Naseema McElroy (26:49): Do you guys have any favorite books or resources, a teacher outside of you guys' website? Cause I know you guys have amazing resources, videos, content, just all across the board as far as investing. So make sure you guys are checking out welts when it's, weathtwins.com and all of their content. There are great resources, but what books are resources outside of your stuff? Do you guys recommend?
Nadia (27:14): The one that's good for beginners is rule one investing. There's another one called Armchair investing. Armchair millionaire, it's an older book, but it's one for people who don't want to be stressed out about looking at the market every single day. It's more of a set it and forget it approach. And another one is a Tony Robbins book. Tony Robbins hope that it's very dense, but it's a money message. It's called money master the game. And he goes into a lot of detail and it's geared towards beginners. It's a very thick book, but if you take the time out and read it, I think it's a very good guide on what you should do.
Nicole (27:55): I would say, uh, for me there will be three books. I actually really like one, which is a, a very easy book to read. It will be the Bogleheads Guide to investing. Okay. And will be one, a random walk down Wall street will be another one and then three, which is a little bit more dense and it's pretty hard to read cause it's about 600 pages. So if you're in quarantine like the rest of us, great time to read it would be the intelligent investor by Ben Graham. This book has been rewritten at least six times. He's proven to be true over and over again. And if you don't want to get through the whole book, they have versions where they have commentary at every chapter where they break down that chapter, the previous chapter. So even if you just read the commentaries, it is actually is a good book and I think it would definitely give you some, a good head start on how to invest.
Naseema McElroy (28:56): Love it, love it. Those are all great resources. And tell us, talk about what you guys actually do on your website, like what resources and support you guys provide specifically, um, through your platform.
Nadia (29:10): We give a lot of free information out. So Nicole and I have created a lot of content around educating people around investing because we know a lot of times the terminology is very intimidating and people feel like they're, they should be invested and they feel a little shame that they're not good. I don't want to ask those questions in a very basic question, so we put it out there on our site. We also have a free course that's a five day free investment course this for getting people up in this like spark the beginning of us to the point where we break down what a broker is, how to book your first trade, where you should probably think about they're very straight, you know, because a lot of people don't even know where to even start a myth. So they're looking at, and it's a lot easier now because a lot of apps are coming out, are they just giving people a little more information so that if you do choose to use a financial advisor, at least you're going into the conversation with knowledge on your side rather than going into a conversation with someone who could talk circles around you.
Nadia (30:12): If they're not doing something in your best interest.
Nicole (30:15): And I think Nadia and I were actually talking about this because um, we definitely appreciate what the nurses are doing. We actually have, uh, a specific page just for you guys. Where is called? Wealthtwins.com/nursesonfire where we're going to have for you the free five day course, the blue-print to investing that we said, we're going to have the 25 terms, must know terms in investing and we're also going to give you the 25 most asked questions around investing and all you have to do as Wealthtwins.com/nursesonfire. And that's just because we love Naseema. We love nurses.
Naseema McElroy (30:55): Aw, you guys are so sweet. Thank you. Thank you for that. And I know people will definitely benefit from having access to that. So thank you again. But I did want to talk about nurses in general, especially like right now, what are some things nurses should take into consideration considering we are on the front lines, a lot of us are risking our lives during this time and then we're also stressed about what's going on in the markets.
Nadia (31:25): Like I was saying earlier, I had a news article that a lot of nurses at this time have the ability to make a lot of overtime and if you are that nurse, one day you can do is make sure that if you don't have your emergency savings, fund at the level that you needed to be use this time now, so put them money in. Right. That extra money that's come in because you're working, either Israel do because you've got to own a front line. I would suggest that maybe you should have some kind of estate planning in order to, I know it's a little more bit to think about, but this time right now it's something that they should be on the forefront of a lot of people. Do. I have everything in place to take care of my family. If I cannot provide for them going forward. You know? And another thing is if you are a nurse and you are investing your 401k worrying about what you're doing on your job right now, don't worry about what's going on in your investment account. That's something that you should not be focusing on right now unless you're closer to retirement.
Nicole (32:24): Yeah, and I would say, you know, nurses, your job is to take care of others and you guys are so good at taking care of it others. But do you actually concentrate on taking care of yourself and just taking a few minutes, one of those days off that you can stop thinking about, you know, being a nurse, think about how you can manage your finances because that's another way to provide self care for you. That's what I say to people. Managing your finances is a form of self care. You get that right, you stop stressing about a lot of different areas of your life. It makes your relationships with others better. It makes your stress go down just because of money. It will help you live in a better neighborhood. It will help you take better vacations just by focusing on your money. So if you want to have some self care focus on your finances. But like Nadia said, when it comes to this market, just relax. You have other things and what we're telling you when it terms of those books that we gave you about index investing, those types of styles that we're suggesting, index investing, ETF investing, those are low maintenance investing styles. We don't want you to sit in front of the screen and watch your investments. We want to teach you how to invest where you can set it and forget it. Go back every once in a while and we balance it and I think that's something nurses can definitely use. Know how to set it, forget it, and then rebalance it when necessary.
Naseema McElroy (33:53): Yeah, I love it. I love it all. And it's like a quote from one of a book that I just recently read that was really good too was called a quit like a millionaire by Kristy Shen. She says that if you understand money, life is really easy, but if you don't understand money, life is hard. And so I want life to be easy for everyone. And you know, money is definitely a tool. And I think a lot of times we're taught to think that people with money are people that are wealthy, our privilege or greedy and all these things that we'd want to put a negative connotation around.
Naseema McElroy (34:29): But it's only just limiting you and your abilities. And so know that you know you deserve wealth and that wealth is something that is attainable for each and every one of you guys. And make sure you have these tools in place for not only, you put like all these tools for not only you but for your family. And so I love what you said Nadia about yeah, get your savings up right now and plan for the unexpected. Make sure you have a plan in place if this didn't show you and shake you. And I think things like this have to happen every once in a while so we can kind of get shaken out of our comfort zone and know like, yeah, life isn't guaranteed, but you can put things in place right now to protect your family. And this is a perfect time to do it.
Nadia (35:14): I think another thing is people think of money as like I think of money as a tool to give you choices with your life. Okay. Maybe you don't want to have to work every single day for the next 30 years. Make that a choice. Use the income that you have to give you a better choice, where to live and that a choice for schooling for your family a better. So the opportunities you'll take going forward. It's a tool. Don't look at it as evil. It's something that is a myth. It helps you move forward. They can also keep you down if you focus on in a negative way.
Naseema McElroy (35:50): If you ask, you know, most people what they really want out of life, like every answer you're going to get is going to boil down to freedom to choice and all those kinds of things and making sure that you have your money right is going to buy you that freedom. And so I thank you ladies for having this conversation with me. I know people in my community can definitely benefit from everything we talked about and you guys are super duper great examples of, you know, starting from having nothing to, you know, really, really blowing up. Oh one thing, Oh I did want to talk about is kind of your real estate cause we didn't talk about that at all. Okay.
Nicole (36:32): I just wanted to add one thing Naseema. When it comes to freedom, I want people to understand you don't have to be a millionaire to feel that freedom. People think it's unachievable to become a millionaire. You don't have to be a millionaire as long as you have enough money put aside that, give yourself some freedom. You have it. So you just have to decide what that number is. But it doesn't have to be $1 million. I was free at 23 when I was able to tell my first job. I'm not doing the same one and I walked out the door because I had my money straight, but I wasn't a millionaire at that time, so I just want to put that out there.
Naseema McElroy (37:09): Thank you.
Nadia (37:11): If you put it in this perspective, if you have $10 and no debt, you're already beating more than 50% of the population. Okay?
Naseema McElroy (37:18): Yes. And I love it because there's levels, there's levels of freedom. But the most of the first step is to get to a place of financial security. And then you have the option to say deuces to a job or a relationship or a situation that's not serving you. And that is freedom. Yes. You don't have to be a millionaire. Thank you Nicole for that. Yes. That's awesome. So yeah, so your real estate, how'd you guys get into real estate?
Nadia (37:45): Well, I, I had always wanted to buy real estate, but I live in New York. Right. So at one point it was just getting ridiculous. It's still at that point now it's been up and down, but I made a point this and I will buy something because most of the people in my family had never owned anything, you know? So I went into saving, like I said, 75% of my paycheck and I just put everything away. And I stayed in the same apartment for 14 years. That's it. If I moved there, I'm moving into something I own. Right. So what did allow me to do, you know, they say let's opportunity plus preparation. Me putting that money away and when the opportunity, when the market went down in the real estate market in New York, I was prepared to jump on that. So I guess I was lucky at that point.
Nadia (38:33): You know, so I was to buy a multifamily and I'm in Brooklyn, New York where I have a commercial store front on the bottom, I have three apartments that's a commercial store for us and that allows me to live mortgage free. And plus I run a business in the store right now with clothes because it was going on. But that's the way that I wanted to secure a future for my family and for my children. You know, I wanted to buy something in New York side, put away as much as I could in order to do that. And then I looked for opportunities. People think that if you can't do this,
Nicole (39:09): we also bought smart. We did not go for predatory loans. They may show, we knew what we were doing beforehand before we put our money down. And Nadia specifically went for a cashflow generating property because he thought ahead because we had gone through those questions. This is before you know what happens if we lose our jobs. So Nadia hit that one.
Nadia (39:30): Yup. Working on wall street, working on wall street. You learned that, I don't know, you'll either learn or you'll find out quickly that your job is not permanent, especially in times like this. So I was working on wall street when I started, was very young and I saw people like really nervous about their mortgage payments and about the high bills. And I said, I don't want that to be me. So I made sure when I bought this building I will be able to pay it with one income and not depend on the tenant rent to pay for my copper. And if they did pay for it even better because it allows me to save them know. So that's the mindset I went in when I purchased my myself.
Naseema McElroy (40:09): So did you guys both by the [inaudible] property together or you do the or real estate? Oh, it's all separate. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Nicole (40:16): So I, I live out in the suburbs. I had already had a family when I was deciding to buy a place, but I knew I was looking for a two family. Same reason. My job was never secure. I, and I tell people the job is the riskiest thing you can have because you don't control. When did he get the big, I'll let you go whenever they want to, you know? So it was my job to find things I can help. Yeah, no what I could control. So I said, look, I was used to living in a building. Well then I can do a two family house. I have people helping me pay the mortgage and then it takes some stress off of us. And I do have some property outside the country, but those are just longterm investment properties that hopefully will pay off.
Naseema McElroy (41:02): Awesome. Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. Cause a lot of people. I feel like there's going to be a lot of opportunities also during this time to get into real estate right now. That's another thing to be ready for cash wise.
Nadia (41:17): That's what I say, cash is King. If you have the cash on you and you have your credit right now, base will give you that money because eventually they're done. The credit is going to seize them. You know they're gonna be more stringent about who can borrow money. If you put in a good position now you can really capitalize on the opportunities are going to come out of the time. I'm not trying to sound like like you know what happy about it is more of like here's an opportunity. It's a dark time right now, but you have to look at the silver lining and look at this way to help move yourself forward.
Nicole (41:52): Yeah. This is a time to generate wealth. Is it a chime that those way it was too expensive to get into these areas that are well, creating opportunities now is the time. Six months from now is going to be the time. So get your money and your credit, right?
Naseema McElroy (42:09): [inaudible] yup. Yup. I love it. I love it. All right you guys. So I just want to wrap up by you guys sharing how people can get in contact with you. Um, again, reiterate, you'll have resources over at welathtwins.com/nursesonfire.
Nicole (42:26): Yeah, you can actually see that Nicole was better looking at Nadia. If you go on, what if you go on YouTube type in well twins and you're going to see us, you know,
Nadia (42:38): if you want to look up directly, it's a youtube.com/wealthtwin and we have a, we just started the channel in January. We have a couple of couple of videos up. We're getting better every day and now we're gonna start pushing more beginner videos for people to sort of vet. Cause we know a lot of people want to take this time out of the side of it and they're hungry for information and we just want to be able to put those in bite sized pieces and take out the jargon and make it understandable for the average person.
Nicole (43:09): Yeah. So our videos are pretty light in terms of um, terminology. We break down everything that we say and we make it interesting and educational at the same time. I would say I agree.
Naseema McElroy (43:22): We try to find different ways to reach the people. That's all we want to pay it forward. I love it. I love it. And I just want to again reiterate the fact that yes, these are challenging times, but you know, we do have to look at the silver lining. We do have to look at what opportunities we can take advantage of right now so that we come out of this ahead and we can help other people and bring other people up with us in the process. And if Nadia and Nicole can do it, coming out of the New York projects to millionaires. So can we, and again, you don't have to be a millionaire, you just have to be able to unlock some level of freedom in your life. And so that's what this is all about. So thank you so much, Nadia and Nicole, this is so fun. My first, my first twin interview.
Nicole (44:15): Well, feel free you so that, that means you get good luck. You know that, right?
Naseema McElroy (44:19): Yeah, it's been, and good luck. That's awesome. As long as I don't have twins, Oh, I'll be [inaudible] my mother nuts. That's where it's are definitely a blessing. And yes, I am honored to have you guys, so thank you again. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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