How Financial Education Can Transform the Lives of Women and Their Communities with Wini Griffin

In this episode of "Nickels and Dimes: Finding Financial Freedom," host Natalie Kime welcomes guest Wini Griffin. They discuss the vital role of financial education, especially for women and single mothers. Winnie, a single mother of three and military service member, shares her transformative journey into financial literacy, sparked by a pivotal book. She emphasizes the importance of financial planning, including life insurance, to create generational wealth and stability. The episode underscores the impact of financial education on overcoming challenges and the need for proactive financial planning to secure a better future for families.

• Importance of financial education for achieving financial freedom.
• Personal stories of overcoming financial challenges, particularly for single mothers.
• The impact of financial literacy on creating generational wealth.
• The role of community in supporting financial education and literacy.
• Challenges faced by families in small towns regarding financial management.
• The effects of gentrification on long-time residents and their financial stability.
• Emotional aspects of financial management and spending habits.
• The significance of life insurance in financial planning for families.
• Encouragement for open conversations about finances and seeking help.
• The transformative power of financial knowledge in breaking cycles of financial struggle.

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Transcript

0:03

Welcome to the Nickels and Dimes Finding Financial Freedom podcast. I'm your host, Natalie Kime, and I look forward to each and every week to bringing you amazing content that will provide you with a financial education, will support you on your financial journey, and most importantly, help you to find financial freedom. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Welcome to Nickels and Dimes finding financial freedom. I'm your host, Natalie Kime, and today I am excited to have Wini Griffin join me to talk about her story, generational wealth and impacting women through financial education. I had the opportunity to meet Winnie probably 3 or 4 years ago on zoom, and then in person a few months later, and we stayed connected through social media. I had spoken at the event we met at and had sent her home with a book that talked about financial education, and she kept that book, but didn't read it for another couple of years. And then once she spent some time in that book, it just opened her mind to different opportunities out there, a passion she had for learning, first and foremost for herself, but then also how she could take that knowledge and pass it into her community in Smithville, Texas and impact generational change. So when she is a single mama of three, she is a published author. She has done a lot of different things, but one of the things I'm proudest to know about winning is she is actively in the military right now, so she is juggling being a single mama and doing all the military things, and then has recently gotten licensed and is building a business within my organization here at universal wealth, and I'm just incredibly proud of her and the impact she's already making. So, Winnie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me here, Nat. I'm super excited about this. Well, I'm excited about it too, but I'm going to start. You haven't been on the podcast before, so I'm going to start with my icebreaker question. If you could be any superhero, who would you be and why? Oh my God, uh, that's a really good question. Um, a part of me just wants to respond with Batman. Okay? And, um, I would probably be a mix between Batman and the Ant-Man. Okay, so one thing is, like, super strong, and he's a hero. Always going around saving people, fighting the villains. Um, and he can fly. I love that he can fly. It's like, you know, self transportation and then Ant-Man. He can adjust his size to any size that he needs, and so he can really reach people at different levels and maneuver into spaces that, you know, maybe it would have been hard for him to maneuver in at any other point and unlimited travel. So, um, those are my reasons for those two. I never had to think about what superhero I would be, but that is like the first that comes to my mind, so maybe it'll change in a few years. Who knows? There you go. I love that answer, though. We don't. I mean, I think most people I talked to give me an answer as like, you know, gender specific guys pick a guy and girls pick a girl. But I love that you pick them based on their characteristics or their abilities, and that you'd love to be able to do that outside of the gender connection. Um, I think those are great choices. I like both of those characters. My son and I always had a thing when he was growing up. We've always loved the superhero movies, Star Wars, like those adventure type movies. And so every time a new one comes out, we go and see it. And so I've always been a big fan of all different superheroes, X-Men, all the things. So I love that. Well, Winnie, let's start off today by just having you share a little bit about your story, your background, and then we'll take it from there. Oh yeah. So let's see, where do you want us to start? What part of the story. Because I feel like my entire life story is it's huge. And there's so much that has happened over my life that I could sit here and talk for hours and hours and hours. Well, let's start specifically with, you know why when you read that book, um, how many works did it have such an impact on you and what what part of your your story did that really hit home with? Oh, yes. Okay. So I'll say this first things first When I read that book, I was leaving my apartment that I had been in for five years. I was just a few, I think maybe six months out of having lost like my big girl job, like the top of the line corporate job that I worked in where I was making really good money. Um, I was getting ready to transition into military life. So there were so many different things going on. But before that, I always had this desire to do something more with my finances. I always had this desire to build my money somewhere, but I never, ever, ever knew where. And unfortunately, all the different programs that I worked with, all the different people that I worked with, even the financial advisors that I worked with in the past, um, nobody actually gave me any real solid tools. It was mostly like, oh, let's look at how much you owe on your credit. You know, or you know where your credit is and how much you owe, or, you know, let's look at your bills and let's think about all these other accounts that I was like, I don't I don't see the value in this for myself. You know, it was things that I could have did by myself. Um, so I met a lot of people like that. And so what I ended up doing was I spent a lot of money in places and on things that they didn't like. There was some value in the long term, right? Like I put a lot of money into my mindset and development. But it's once again things that I could have went in YouTube. Right? And so if I would have knew the things, just the most basic things that I read in that book, one, I would have paid off my debt a long time ago to me, and my kids would have had accounts set up a long time ago that would have been able to really build for us. Um, and three, like, you know, I wouldn't have put so much money into other areas, like in attempt to build businesses that were really hard to build, if I'm going to be honest. And they were just kind of more, um, existential value for lack of a better word. Um, but I would have been able to put money in places that I didn't realize I could put in where it can grow. I was I was under the impression that bank accounts in these low, high yield accounts were the only place that we can put money. Um, and then rewinding before any of this, I was the single mom who, first of all, I had my first child when I was a teenager. Like, I walked across the stage for graduation and boom, there was a baby. So I never had that transitional life where anything was done for myself, by myself, you know? So I went to school because I knew I needed to do more. I needed to earn more. And every job, every job movement that I made, every idea that I tried to turn into some kind of business, it was because I wanted to be able to build, um, more for me and my kids. And unfortunately, when we're a lot of us who take that path are going along this path of like, we want to make more and earn more. We only think in terms of earning and like many other people, I earned more. I was able to consistently, you know, every year, regardless if I had to, you know, stick with one job or move to another job, I was able to increase my earnings, increase my earnings, increase my earnings and income. Um, but I spent it all because I didn't know what to do with it from there. And it was nice to be able to spend it. Right. I was able to get better cars. I was able to. I always like to stay in places that were really cheap, because I like to spend my money on other things. I was able to travel. I was able to have all the things that me and my kids could need. I was able to give them really, really, really beautiful allowances. Even I was giving my mom an allowance to like, imagine that, right? Um, but because I lacked the actual education all those years where I was dumping extra money that I, you know, as my income went up, my, my dumping just went up as well. Like, I never had a, an efficient strategy for putting it anywhere. That meant something I was really good at saving. Um, and yeah, I just I never had it. So when I got that book and I read that book, I was like, oh, man. Huh? There's a lot that I don't know. Oh, man, I need to learn so much more. And then that's what led me back to you. I love it, I love it. Yeah. I mean, that's a really a good, uh, a good point to make. I think, you know, I talked I think it was in last week's episode. I talked about how our finances can and are so tied to the way that we see ourselves, to our self-esteem, to what we believe about ourselves. And one of the things that I talked about in that episode was as a single mom, which is something you and I have in common now, I, I did not have my son until I was 29 years old, but still struggling through my 30s. After my divorce, I had to say no a lot of the time. And so then when things shifted and I was rebuilding my income with job changes and and increasing my income like you were talking about, I found myself saying yes because I could not necessarily because I should, but it was a matter of making up for that. Um, I didn't do a lot of saying no or even really teaching my son the habits around savings that I could have in his early teen years, because I was, I was always catching up for prior lack. Is that something you feel like you've run into as a single mom with your kids, too, when it comes to spending? Because you could. Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely. 100% I spent. I did a lot because I could we were food connoisseurs because I could like my kids palates are Fantastic because we could there were no. Oh, I'm going to say no to this. I'm going to say no to that. It was like, no, I can finally do all the things that I was never able to do. I didn't grow up with a lot of money. You know, my dad passed away when I was really young, and we came with my mom, who was already struggling. And so it was like an extra expense. And so all I heard growing up was like, we don't have it, we don't have it. There's not enough, you know, there's money grow on trees and all these other things. And so when I finally got to that stage where I was earning and I was like, oh man, I'm making more than my mom made in, like, you know, a few, a couple of years combined. When I got there, I was off the hinge, I was off the leash. I was doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And no was not an option. Unless, of course, like I had spent everything that I had and then had to wait for it to regroup. But that was. Yeah. Yep, I was there. Yeah. I think that so many times, you know, if we stop and think about it and you and I, you know, we have the background. We're in this industry. We're helping people all the time. So I feel like that's part of why it's so easy for me to look back and see that. But so much of the time, the way we're managing our finances is making up for something in the past, either something that our parents weren't able to provide for us, not that we weren't parented well, we weren't loved or anything like that, but the circumstances just didn't allow for that. And so somehow, subconsciously, that still exists inside of us. We always say, maybe, maybe you didn't have the best relationship with your parents grown up. Not you specifically, but just in general. Maybe somebody didn't have the best relationship with their parents, or they came out of a an abusive or difficult situation at home. And so they think, I'm never going to be the parent my mom was or the parents my parents were. And so we fight so hard against becoming them. And I laugh all the time when things come out of my mouth. My son is in his 20s now, so it's not as often now, but during his teenage years, girl, the things that would come out of my mouth and instantly I could see my mom's face and I'm like, oh my gosh, right? And and not that I came out of a bad situation at all, but still just some of those things, you know, you think, oh, I'm going to do this different, or I'd get frustrated and raise my voice and whatever. And I think I said I was never going to do that. And look, none of us are perfect. We're going to figure things out on our own along the way. But I also think if you grow up in an environment where you have to go without it, it plants that seed or it drives us to spend because we can to get all the things we couldn't have before. And I also think that there's that guilt factor as a single mom, when we have to say no, we feel so guilty about not being able to provide that to our kids that then we overcompensate in the other direction, and we miss the opportunity to teach them some of the lessons that we could. So let me ask you this before reading that book, before connecting with me. And listen, you read that book, and it was probably a year that we touched base here and there, had a couple phone calls. You would ask me questions in messenger, and I'd provide you information before we really sat down. And you looked at the business opportunity here. But when you went through that information, how different from how you grew up and what you were taught, maybe at home, in school, how different was that information than what you had ever understood before? I mean, it was new. I wasn't taught anything about money. It was like in my family, finances were a secret, right? Yep. Um, nobody talked about them like I never heard my mom have a single conversation about her finances whatsoever. Um, with my dad, he was a spender, right? He was retired. He was disabled. He had extra money. We lived in a multi-family household that was paid off. And so he just, you know, he would just spend his money and buy whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. Like nobody ever talked about how it came in, where it came from, what we use it for, what we do with it. It was my money. Upbringing was all around. Either it just gets spent and we don't know anything about the source or we don't have enough of it. We don't have enough money to do this. We don't have enough money to do that. And kind of like these negative money narratives. Um, in school, you can forget about that. I don't even remember a single conversation about money in school. I mean, they taught us how to count money, you know, like your actual fiat money, how to counter nickels, pennies, dimes and quarters and dollars and stuff. But other than that, using money and applying it practically to everyday life that was relevant to us. I can't there's not a single conversation that ever stuck out in school for me, so I didn't have any money background, any money knowledge, um, growing up or in school. That information in that book was new to me. It was like, yeah, okay, this this is this real? Is this real? Yeah. Complete new. Yeah. That's how the that's the crazy thing for me too, is so much of it was new for me. And yet I had a 20 year corporate finance background. I had a college degree in accounting and finance, and I would think, are you kidding me? How do I not know this information? How do I not know how my 401 K really works? And that was really the catalyst to push me to start a business to get into this industry is because that realization is of with my background and my education. I didn't know any of this, which means the average everyday person doesn't know any of this information. And and for me, when I first started my business, I had a passion for connecting with, especially the single mom that I used to be. And that's facing that struggle, that's trying to figure out how to make enough money to cover all the bills that might not be getting child support, consistency consistently like I didn't get in the past. And so there's a lot of life lessons in there, right? I like to call it the school of hard knocks. We get whatever our parents do or don't share with us, and then most of our education comes from the school of hard knocks, the situations we find ourselves in because of whatever a divorce, being a single parent, losing a job, getting ourselves into debt because we didn't understand how to manage credit, and how that all really worked. And I know that that was one of the first conversations we had, is as you called me, and you were like, is this true? Like, like, what is this information? And where did you get this? Because I remember you held on to that book for a couple of years, and initially you didn't even remember where you got it from until you opened it up. And you saw my name in there. And so you reached out and you said, hey, is this still what you do? Like talk to me about how you're sharing this information. Talk to me about how you have a business in this world and or in this industry or the financial world. And that's really where our conversation started. And you asked a lot of questions. You were very inquisitive about how does this part work? How does that part work? And I was able to share more information. Like I said, we had a couple of zooms and then you were like, okay, and here's the thing that I love so much about your focus, your why in creating a business and sharing what you know is because you live In a small town in central Texas. There is a lot of generational ownership there. Houses and property that have passed from generation to generation in families. And the town you're in is a little bit outside of the Austin area, which is growing like crazy. This last few years, since Covid, especially, a lot of people and companies have relocated to that Central Texas area. And do you mind sharing a little bit about, with that migration into the area that's starting to expand into your small town? Some of what you're seeing that concerns you and why providing that financial education in your community specifically is so important. Absolutely. This is like my number one driver. Um, so what I'm seeing right now is as Austin expands into our space, right? One The people out here, they think it's not going to touch us. And, um, a little bit of my background, when I was in college, I did research with University of Texas in Houston, Towson University on the gentrification that was happening in Austin, Texas. And so I could I knew what to look for because I had studied it years and years and years before. And so, um, I'm here in this small town, and I'm seeing land and houses and properties that have historically belonged to certain families being occupied by people who are not even from this state. Right. Um, not only are they not from the state, but, you know, they're bringing in new houses. They're building. I'm watching the cost of housing go up like crazy. The house that, you know, people could have afford it for like 78 to $100,000, just maybe even 5 or 6 years ago in this same area is now 300 to $500,000. And the property taxes are going crazy. You know, people who there was that level of security because property taxes were so low. So they could just really just, you know, chill in grandma grandpa's house, um, or on Grandma Grandpa's property, they're being taxed out of the area that they're in. And so, you know, I'm watching more people lose their property, their land, the houses and things that were transitioned or transferred to them, or being bought out of it at a very low rate that they don't realize is extremely low, and it's not going to get them far wherever they go after this. And, um, the biggest concern for me is as somebody who this is my home, right? I like to say when I go anywhere else in the world, I get a ticket back home. Meaning we got property out here, we got acreage, and I can throw up anything whenever I need. I could throw up a tent if life got to that point right and know that it's there. So. But when I look at other people whose families are similar to mine who are losing, I'm like, where do you go and what kind of life do you live when you no longer have that because you're pushed out. Nobody left the financial means behind to continue to maintain or manage this like my my number one thing is where do you go? And I and I, when I think about it, I'm like, well, you go to the projects and somebody's hood or they build a project somewhere near you and you go get stuck in that project, and now you're in a cycle of dependency that runs deeper than anything, you know? And that kind of upsets me. But, you know, I'm driven because now that I know what I know, and I'm learning every single day that we can do something different with our finances to secure that, I'm like, hey, like y'all, we need to understand one not just looking at life insurance as something that is about death, but where are you? What are your retirement accounts look like? How are you even set yourself up for right now? But right now, how are you setting yourself up so you don't have to beg, so you don't have to go into debt, you know, so those things don't ever have to come against you in a moment when you need your life to be stable. And so, um, I'm just I'm really driven to educate my people like, hey, make sure you're setting yourself up. Make sure you're setting your family up. Make sure you're setting your kids up. So not only can you manage and maintain what you have right now, but so you can use it for whatever you need to use it for as you get older, or maybe even when you want to leave. I see, you know, people who understand it around here. I love seeing the people who understand it. Um, but I also don't love it at the same time because they don't educate anybody. That that ticks me off because it's. Like I don't share. It with you. They, they well, they don't share it. And I get it because they, they end up being land grabbers. Um, I see our neighbor across the street. He land grabs all the time, like he will not share anything because he's trying to buy up the whole block because he understands as Austin pushes out here, guess what? You want to lease your land out. You want to create a subdivision, you want to have an RV rental space or something like that. He knows how to use the land in order to make extra income. Most people do not know how to do that. Most people don't know how to use, you know, the different financial products or the property in the houses that they have that maybe they don't want to live on, maybe they don't want to maintain it. They don't even know how to use it to benefit in the long run, from the people who will be coming out here who are looking for housing that is cheaper than Austin, which is insane right now. So, um, I hope that answer your question, but yeah, that that that's what I have right now. I'm I get hot when I think about it. Hahaha I know I can, I can see your face, but listen, it's because it matters to you. It's because it matters to you. And that's one of the things we talk about in this industry and in our company specific is we have to be passionate about what we do. We have to be obsessed with creating change in our communities for our ideal clients. You know, for our I'm trying to think of the word, um, you know, our client avatar. We work with anybody and everybody, but each of us has our own kind of target market. That's what I was looking for, that we're really looking to pour into to share information with because they're their most likely the people that are in the same place of life we are. They might be the same age. They might have the same economic background, whatever that is. For me, it's the sandwich generation, which is exactly where I land, you know? And so that's my target market. And I want to have those conversations and impact change in that area for you. It's your community around you, the people that you look at every single day when you're in town and you're passing by them and you're seeing what the kinds of things that are hitting them in the face or you, like you said, because of your education, you know what's coming. It's just when, right? It's just when. But you know it's coming. And that's a really good point that a lot of times the people who have the information, who have the knowledge, don't share it because then it can it creates competition for them and Maybe not in a conscious way that he's thinking, you know, I want to be able to take advantage of everybody. I mean, sometimes, look, there's the people out there that it's absolutely that, you know, I want to cover my own, but I want to set myself up the best as possible. And they don't think beyond that to the people they could be impacting along the way. But I think that plays into the whole idea of financial education as a whole. Like, why? Why do we not have a fundamental, in-depth financial education program in our school system? Why? Why are we not enabling people to build wealth, not just build wealth, but start young, which makes building wealth a whole other conversation? Because the younger you start, the the less amount it takes to actually get you moving and create wealth. Because I always say all the time, the sooner you start, the better. Time is your best friend friend when it comes to your finances. So why aren't we teaching the youngest people in America how to create wealth? Well, to be totally honest, in a lot of situations, that means people who are in control potentially lose that control. And so you see the wealthy people using the tools that we share with our clients, you see banks using the tools that we share with our clients. And yet we didn't know it. The majority of the people we talk to don't know any of it. Sometimes we run into somebody that understands a little a little bit of a piece of that. But for you, it's providing that education so people can make the right decision, not just for their immediate family. But one of the things you said to me early on was, I want to help the people in my community who've been here for generations, and they sell their property for more money than they thought they'd ever hold in their hand or their bank account, and they think they've made it, but they didn't even know that they could negotiate to make sure that they were getting the maximum available out of what their family passed down for generations, so that they could turn around and create a different kind of generational wealth for their kids, grandkids and everybody else to come in the future. And so I love that that's where your passion is, and I love that you get fired up when you talk about it, because that should be what we say we're out here to do or to change or to impact should be what fires us up. And so I love that you you went there a little bit. You went there a little bit. Yes. Just a little bit. And can I just to add on to that last part, you were saying, you know, about people selling the property? Um, I think one thing that is an advantage of being in this industry and learning about the tools is that we understand, even if they sell it for a rate that looks good, but it's low, we understand how to help them move that money and shift it into a place that's going to help them even more and allow them to grow it. Um, one of the downsides of people getting paid money that they've never touched in their lives off of these properties is they go and they do exactly what I did when I started making a lot of money in my life. And that is we throw it into all the things that we never had before. They go buy houses that are too expensive because now they have money for the down payment, never thinking about how do I manage, maintain this or manage it going forward, go on trips, get new cars, and then it only takes a couple of years before the money's gone and then you see them and then they're in a worse position. And it's like we officially have tools. So when people do want to sell for whatever they sell it for, it's like before you run off and jump and get into an area that you can't afford or do anything like that. Let us show you how to move the money. So that way you can be safeguarded, or you can safeguard it as best you can and then go and make the other investments, then go do the other expenses. So I just I wanted to put that in there because it's a really important part, um, that I don't want to miss up on. No. And I think I'm glad you circled back to that, because it's not just when you sell the property, when you sell the home, when you make the money, what do you do next? It's also how do you best handle that transaction. Meaning are you aware of the capital gains that you might have to pay when you sell a property? There's parameters around that, that outline at what point you have to pay capital gains level taxes, which are oftentimes higher than the average person's income tax rate because you sold a property. And so that's one of the things that I think is important for people to hear is, look, if you have a business, you're getting ready to sell. If you have a home, you're getting ready to sell land, you're getting ready to sell some kind of asset that's going to bring in a second a significant amount of income above and beyond. Then before the transaction, sit down with a financial professional. If you don't have one, reach out to Winnie and you can contact the show through the show notes and reach out to sit down with us and have a conversation and find out what kind of tax exposure you have, when that when that transaction happens, and even more importantly, ways that you can potentially defer those taxes. And so you're not facing a lump sum all at once. But I think it was really important to what you said, how people will I have the money for the down payment. But I don't think beyond that to not just, hey, my income is enough to pay the payment. If I can put $100,000 on this house, I can pay the $2,000 a month mortgage or whatever the numbers are. Excuse me, but they don't think, well, but what if I lose my job in the future? Then how do I maintain that house payment? And let's be honest, today, house payments with interest rates are probably a lot more than that. I was using simple numbers there, so. even even under quoting what that reality is. Right? But if you bring home 3 to $4000 a month and you have a 2000 $502,800 house payment and you lose your job, you're in a really difficult situation. But if you're bringing only 3 to 4000 home and your house payment is two thirds to three fourths of that, even though you put a bunch of money down, you bought a house that was so big, you still have that kind of payment. Can you even maintain the day to day as if you have a job? And so you're right. It's one of those snap things that a lot of people do. They come into money and they think, oh, I'm gonna buy that that dream house, or I'm going to buy that. Maybe it's not the ultimate dream house, but I'm going to buy that house outside of my means, because I don't even understand what my means are. And that's where that basic comfort, uh, financial conversation and education comes in is to understand exactly where you really are. Most people are closer than they think they are to the goals that they have, or at least strategically putting some some things in place or making a couple of tweaks to what they're doing to be consistently moving in the direction of those goals. And it just comes down to having a conversation and giving some information to somebody that literally can change their life. So I want to ask you, with some of those conversations that you're having in your community, are you feeling like you're able to share the information and and get it to the people who who need it? I know not everybody's always receptive to that, and a lot of times they think I know what I'm doing or this has been handed down forever and ever. I've got this. But do you feel like there is an openness to learn in your community, or is that one of the challenges that you face? It is a slow growing openness, and I've learned in small towns because everybody knows everybody. So everybody knows your past, your present. They know everything that's going on in your life. And so you really have to prove yourself right. And the way that you prove yourself in these kinds of areas is you start with just one person who's willing to listen, and that one person will eventually talk to another person. And you just keep talking to people. You keep talking about it in your public spaces. And that does bring more people in with interest. Right? And so as I talk to more people and as I'm able to make it through the process with more people to where they actually get to do the financial checkup and they see where they are and their mind goes, dang, I didn't know I was there in a good direction or, you know, not so good direction. Then they start talking to other people. And so, um, I would say up front, being a small town, no. Right. Especially since I don't have a financial background like this is not my background originally. Um, there's a level of like, ah, we're going to watch you. But the more that I talk to people, the more it's like, okay, girl, you know, they just get closer and closer and closer, and then we're starting to have more conversations, which is where I'm at now, where I am blessed to be having more and more conversations with people in my immediate town and within my immediate family network of people who are from this town or touched by it in some way, shape or form. And so, yeah, it's a slow roll. Yeah, but it's growing. And that's important because I imagine in small town where everybody knows everybody, everybody thinks they know everybody's business. They're like, oh, the last thing I'm putting out to somebody in this community is my financial business. Oh yeah. Right. So that's something else you have to overcome is not just create a track record or a history of people can trust, you know what you're doing, but can they trust you that their business isn't going to get just run around town? Absolutely. And that's one of the areas we have. The opportunity when we talk to people is to make sure they understand, you know, all of your information is confidential. We're licensed by the state and the Federal Insurance Commission. We are required to keep that information. And I think one of the other things briefly to touch on there, too, is I've run into people who are good friends of mine and they're, they're like, uh, and I'll say, look, if you're not comfortable sharing your financial information with me, that is totally okay. Let me connect you with one of my business partners, and you can work directly with them, because at the end of the day, I want you to get the information, and I want you to see the opportunities that are there for you and your family. I am happy to take myself out of the equation so you feel more comfortable sharing that information. And just because my business partner does not mean I'm still going to see that information. Right? Right. So when somebody refers something to me, I go through their detailed the information privately with them, and that's never shared with the other person without their permission. And so there's ways that we can help people where if you feel uncomfortable with that aspect, ask if you know somebody in your area and you'd like to sit down, but you're uncomfortable with that piece, your business getting out there or somebody you know really well, knowing everything about your financial situation, good, bad or indifferent. Then ask them if they can connect you to somebody that isn't them, right? Yeah. Somebody outside, maybe the immediate community. Because most companies out there like ours, people have multiple business partners. And so that's an easy thing for Winnie and I to do, is put people in a place where they feel like they feel comfortable having those conversations. But I know you touched earlier as we kind of get ready to wrap this down, I want to circle back. You mentioned just briefly that when you were younger, your dad passed away and, you know, didn't have life insurance. And so you went to live with your mom. And her financial situation was completely different than your dad's had been. Can you share a little bit about the impact that had on you and the importance of life insurance for you, especially when it comes to being a mom of three kids? Yeah, absolutely. Um, so I will I will make this disclaimer. My dad, uh, if you did have life insurance, which I remember him showing me things when I was a kid, just briefly it it went to somebody who did not use it wisely on us, which is a whole nother conversation about making sure that you take the proper beneficiaries who you can, you know, you know that they will do what they're supposed to do with it. Um, but coming to my mom's place, it was a total change in lifestyle, like the quality of life that I had when I was with my dad and we were living in a big city too. Um, that was almost 100% gone away. I was a musician, so I played the bass violin. I could no longer play that. It was way too expensive out here for me to even get into that. I was a museum kid. I always like to be in museums. Um, in fact, I knew how to navigate the whole city by myself. It was like wild. Um, but when I came with my mom, it was like I lost access to the quality of life that I once had. And that sucked. Because what do you have? What do you do when you're a kid who loses access to a quality of life that kept you, you know, relatively stable? All the things that get you in trouble, right? You tend to go and try to make that for yourself. You try to recreate it, you know, in some way, shape or form, and it's not always possible. And I want to be blunt, I was when I was a kid because of that shift and quality of life and what we were able to afford, like with my dad, if I needed something, we just go to the store and we get it. But my mom would if I needed something. That was not always the case, and I know she was doing her best with what she had at that time. And she wasn't she wasn't planning for that. You know, my older siblings who were with her, they were graduating high school. I was still a kid. So she was, you know, preparing for empty nest and then boom, you know, she she she got me, um, and I was demanding I was living, I would say like, a relatively nice, bougie ish kind of lifestyle. Um, and so I was like, I was getting in trouble. I had I got into financial trouble and I wanted to help people this part, too. I got into financial trouble as a teenager. I learned how to write a check, and I understood, like real quick, that you could write a check even without having money there. I didn't have a job that paid enough to cover all those expenses. I didn't understand what that meant, so I was writing checks. Then I was like, oh wow, they're giving me money, right? Hot checks. I understand it nowadays at this age. What was happening? Um, and then I was hanging out with my friends who, if we wanted clothes, and my mom was like, oh, we don't have any money for that. We weren't the five finger kid, okay, five finger kid. kit. And so I was trying to recreate that. I was trying to maintain that lifestyle that I once had. It's embarrassing to go from a lifestyle where, you know, one, you're you're living in this beautiful community, this beautiful neighborhood. Um, you don't have to want for anything. And then two, you come to the small country town where you're in, like the the. I can't say it's the hood because that doesn't really exist out here, but it's, like, kind of project, kind of community. Low income, can't afford anything. Like you resort to some wild things. And so why it's important for me to have insurance on myself and make sure my kids have that for themselves is because I don't want them to lose the quality of life that they have. In fact, when I leave this earth, if I leave while they're still young, I want their quality of life, the quality of care that they get to be way better than what I was able to give them when I was here on this earth. Um, and it's that simple. That simple. I love that because you added a piece on the air. The end there. That is not something that. I don't usually get choked up about something that my guests say. Yeah, we talk a lot about wanting our our loved ones, whether it's a spouse, kids, in my case, my parents live with me. If something were to happen to me, I would want them all to be able to maintain, um, the life that they have today. But what not a lot of people talk about that. You just hit home with a mic drop moment was you don't want your kids to just keep having what they have today. You want them to have more than because you were willing to do the work while you were here to make sure that they could. And I think that most parents probably would agree with that in that moment. You said it. It just hit me so hard. I never talked about it that way, but that's exactly what it is. It's not about putting a silver spoon in our kids mouths, but we want them to have opportunities that we struggled to even provide while we were here. But if we just do a little bit and I'm not even going to call it extra if we take the responsibility, I mean, we, we, we ensure our homes because we have to we ensure our cars because we have to we have medical insurance because kind of we have to. Right. Same kind of thing. But we're not required to have life insurance. And yet you're also not required to have insurance on your cell phone. But I bet 90% of the people listening to this have it. Did you know if you start in your 20s or 30s, you can get life insurance with living benefits for maybe 2030 bucks a month? I mean, we'd have to run an exact quote, but that's how inexpensive it is. Cut out one Starbucks run a week. Yeah, but your life is worth there's not a price. There's not a price on replacing somebody's life. And yet our cell phone we paid$1,000 for. We'll will pay that ten bucks a month, but we won't pay the 20 or 30 on our own life. And and granted, sometimes it's because we believe we have forever. But even if you do have forever, even if you are lucky enough to live to 100 years old and still be healthy and functioning, you can't get life insurance at 90 when you start to feel like you're declining. No. And so get it. Get it when you're younger, get it when it's really inexpensive, and then without putting out a whole lot extra, you're able to change your family's life. You're able to actually improve upon maybe what you can provide to them. And I think that would hit home for a lot of single parents in general that might listen to this episode. And so I appreciate you sharing that. I think it was a really important, um, point to make. And like I said, I don't I don't usually get thrown off by something that hits. But that similarity we have of being single moms and wanting the best for children, and feeling like in ways we had to fight for everything we had and falling on our faces and getting it wrong and picking up the pieces right. All those things along the way like that, just it almost took my breath away for a second to have you say it that way. And so I appreciate you being that vulnerable about your background and what it was like as a kid for you when everything you knew was flipped upside down. Um, and you're exactly right. That's not something I experienced. And so to have you share the ways that you tried to replace what now was gone that weren't necessarily the best things, but that those are the kind of things that happen. Those are the reasons behind a lot of things that that can go off the rails and relationships can fall apart and you can face all kinds of issues. Um, but I'm, I'm incredibly proud and grateful that you join me on this episode today when I have a ton of respect for you. I always have since I first met you. Her book happens to be a believe in the bookcase behind me somewhere. Probably if I remember the color of the cover, I think it's somewhere over here. Right? With the pink. Yeah. Yep. Yes, there it is, right there. So, um, I've always had a ton of respect for you, and I always felt connected with you, which is why we followed each other on social media and kept in touch with the different things we were working on. And so I'm super grateful that that book sat in your house for long enough until you were ready to receive the message for yourself, but also that you reached out to me. Um, you you push me to be better in life, um, but also in business. And so I'm proud and happy to be running alongside you in this business. And I'm really proud. One of the things that Winnie did just this weekend was exactly what she just talked about. She put life insurance in place not only for herself, but on each of her children that give them ability to have their life protected should they die too soon, God forbid their health protected, should they run into some kind of illness, and even more importantly, an opportunity to build wealth in a way that doesn't doesn't exist in a lot of our lives, but especially in your background and your history. And so I'm super proud of you. From the first time you came into this business, you said, here's my plan. This is what I want to do for my kids. And as soon as those pieces fell in place that you were waiting for, that's what you did. You picked up the phone and you said, hey, I'm ready. I'm ready to put these policies in place. When do you have time? And so I'm incredibly proud of you and that legacy that you're creating with your own product, but also the example that you're teaching to your kids. And I know that that example is happening because just last week you were going to go spend some time with your son, and it meant you were going to miss one of our company calls. And he said, no, mom, I want you to be on the call. You and I can hang out anytime. And that means that you're having those conversations. That means that your kids understand how important this is to you, for your family at home, but also for your community. And so, again, just thank you for being here today. Any last thought you want to share before we jump off? Yes. First of all, thank you, Natalie, for having me here. This is beautiful. Um, it's a conversation that needs to be had even more, especially amongst the community of women who are similar to single moms who we hit, we miss, we. We rise, we fall. Um, the last word that I want to give this is going to be a little personal to the the single moms out there who still get refund checks. Okay. This is I want to do this to y'all. Take your refund check and commit it to your life, into your kid's life by investing it. Don't invest all of it because I know you want to use them to do whatever is important for you, or something that you've been waiting for, or maybe fixing things that you need to fix. Um, but take a big portion of it and run it into some products for you and your kids that are going to protect y'all for the rest of y'all's lives, that are going to allow you all to build in way that you're not going to be able to build anywhere else, and that are going to ensure that in the event that you pass away or they pass away, you have everything you need. And the last thing is that it'll ensure that if you get chronically critically or terminally ill or one of them does, and we see this happen all the time, life is unpredictable. Everybody will be protected. Y'all will be okay. You'll be able to handle that. You'll be able to take care of that. Just do it for you. Do it for your kids. It will change your life, and it will change your heart. And it will change your mind and the level of safety and insecurity that you feel will increase automatically. I believe it wholeheartedly. That's why I did it for me and my kids. And I want other single moms out there and even maybe low income earning families or middle income earning families. Anybody who receives a refund who's never, ever done this, I want y'all to do it too. Just do it. That's it. I love it. Yeah. Repurpose some of that tax refund into into changing the future for your family when you work. Where can people find or follow you? You can find me at winning with Winnie on Instagram. And Winnie is spell Winnie the Winning with Winnie. And you can find me on Facebook at Winnie Mika Griffin. Um, and yeah, those are my two predominant places. Come jump on board. I'm going to be putting out more content for everybody. So that way people can continue to understand what we're doing, why we're doing it, and why they should get on board too. Don't just sit back and get the products to get on board, because we get to change people's lives in ways that we never imagined. Absolutely. I agree, and trust me, if you follow Winnie, she makes financial education fun. I love the way that you share the messages that you do, so keep doing that. And again, thanks for being here today. I think this this message is important in general, but I think it's especially important during International Women's Month. There are so many women out there in all different kinds of situations that I think that can take something, some sort of nugget or something of importance from our conversation today. So I just want to thank those of you who joined us today for nickels and dimes. I'm your host, Natalie Kime, and I look forward to continuing to bring you amazing content each week that will educate you, support you, and most importantly, help you to find financial freedom. I look forward to having you listen again next week. And until then, take care and stay safe.