Hi Financial Feminists! I’m so excited for you to hear today’s episode with Jazmin Higgins—a financial coach who turned her life around from being a teen mom at 16 to conquering $70,000 in debt and building wealth. We chat about her journey defying stereotypes, tackling financial trauma, and how she’s now helping others break free from generational financial struggles. This episode will make you question what it takes to redefine your life’s trajectory when the odds are stacked against you.
Key takeaways:
Confront financial trauma to move forward: Jazmin shares how unaddressed financial trauma and shame kept her in a cycle of debt and poor spending habits. Recognizing and confronting these emotions was crucial for her financial transformation.
- TIP: Reflect on any negative emotions or past experiences that may be affecting your financial decisions. Consider speaking with a professional or trusted advisor to work through them.
Know your numbers to take control: She emphasizes the importance of listing all debts, expenses, and income to understand your financial situation fully. This transparency allowed her to create an effective debt payoff plan.
- TIP: Sit down and itemize all your financial obligations and income sources. Use this information to create a realistic budget and identify areas where you can cut costs or increase income.
Create a goals-based budget: Jazmin advocates for a personalized budget that not only covers fixed expenses but also aligns with your personal goals and values. This approach helped her pay off $70,000 in consumer debt.
- TIP: Develop a budget that includes allocations for your essential expenses, savings goals, and discretionary spending. This ensures you’re working towards your goals while still enjoying life.
Overcome the scarcity mindset: She discusses the fear of making more money due to potential loss of government benefits or higher taxes, which can hold people back from financial growth.
- TIP: Reframe your perspective on earning more. Understand that higher income can provide greater opportunities and that taxes are a part of contributing to societal goods. Research tax strategies or consult a financial advisor to maximize your net income.
Build financial resilience through saving: To stay out of debt, Jazmin set up multiple savings accounts for different purposes, such as emergencies, travel, and future purchases. This proactive approach prevents falling back into debt.
- TIP: Establish an emergency fund and create separate savings accounts—or “sinking funds”—for specific goals. Automate contributions to these accounts to build them steadily over time.
Leverage support systems and accountability: Jazmin highlights the role of her husband in holding each other accountable during their debt payoff journey, and how she now provides that support to her clients.
- TIP: Find a trusted person or community to share your financial goals with. Accountability partners can provide encouragement and keep you on track.
Notable quotes
“When we realized we were over six figures in debt—including $70,000 in consumer debt—I asked myself, ‘Who did we think we were? Do we even make $70,000 a year?’ That was the moment we knew we had to change our approach to money.”
“Knowing your numbers is crucial. You can’t create a plan unless you understand how deep the hole is. Once we itemized all our debts and expenses, we could finally take control of our financial future.”
“I often see people afraid to earn more because they’re worried about losing benefits or paying higher taxes. But the answer isn’t to make less money—it’s to find strategies to manage the increased income effectively.”
Episode-at-a-glance
≫ 04:01 Jazmin’s early financial struggles
≫ 05:58 Teen pregnancy and financial hardships
≫ 10:16 Navigating financial trauma
≫ 19:41 Breaking the cycle of debt
≫ 25:22 The emotional journey of debt repayment
≫ 30:14 Strategies for staying out of debt
≫ 31:37 Navigating financial instability as an entrepreneur
≫ 38:31 Overcoming scarcity mindset
≫ 43:48 The importance of knowing your numbers
≫ 46:02 Budgeting for success
Jazmin’s links:
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Meet Jazmin
Jazmin is a compassionate and non-judgmental financial friend. She helps clients break free from the cycle of financial struggle that is often passed down through generations. Through tailored guidance and a focus on spending behavior, she empowers clients to spend on things that align with their values and create a positive financial legacy for themselves and future generations.
Transcript:
Jazmin Higgins::
We were always in survival mode. Any moment that we did have money, we would spend it. Then I had credit cards that I didn’t understand. And since I left home early, at home, we didn’t talk about money anyway, so there was no education around what are the right things to do with money.
Little by little we found ourselves accumulating debt but not having any type of emotion to it, so it didn’t weigh us down as a bad thing or a good thing at all. But it was debt that does not help you. So unproductive debt, high interest credit cards. When we realized, “Oh, there’s a lot of things to pay, it’s getting out of control,” a personal loan is what we would get.
Tori Dunlap:
This episode and introduction were recorded before the 2024 election.
Hi everybody. I’m not sure what mood we have. So I was just going to record this like normal. Hello. Hi. Excited to see you. I am Tori. I am a money expert. I’m a New York Times bestselling author. I host this show, which is the number one money podcast for women in the world, and we have helped over 5 million women save money, pay off debt, start investing, and start businesses. If you want a free financial plan from me to you, you can go to herfirst100k.com/quiz, answer a few questions, and we will send it to your inbox. So go to herfirst100k.com/quiz. We’ll get you a free financial plan, whether you’re trying to pay off debt, trying to save money, trying to invest, or something else.
I love this episode. So good, and from both a financial expert as well as a fan of the show and of our work. I actually met her at a speaking engagement I did at the OC Public Libraries earlier this summer.
Jazmin Higgins: is a compassionate and nonjudgmental financial friend. She helps clients break free from the cycle of financial struggle that is often passed down through generations, through tailored guidance and a focus on spending behavior. She empowers clients to spend on things that align with their values and create a positive financial legacy for themselves and future generations.
In this episode, Jazmin shares her story of becoming a teen mom and all of the stereotypes she overcame, especially as a Latina, despite many people in her life telling her she’d never amount to anything. Boo. Proves you wrong, doesn’t it?
This is one of those episodes that we really love sharing because it’s like the real and honest story of someone who not only did incredible things like pay off $70,000 of debt and start a business, but also now coaches other women to do the same and find their own financial freedom. We get into her debt story, how she and her husband paid off the $70,000 of debt. And the hurdles she faced along the way, including navigating government and welfare systems, navigating financial trauma. And now, how she passes on her knowledge today to other women. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and get into it.
But first a word from our sponsors.
It is good to see you. We met spontaneously when I spoke at the OC Public Libraries. Do you want to tell that story really quick?
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. I think it was a day or two before you were going to be speaking at the public library, and I had lots of plans that day and I was like, “Wait, could this be for real?” So I had to double check signed up on Eventbrite and I was like, “Oh, this is happening.” I told my husband, he’s like, “Well, did you sign me up?” “No, let me go sign you up really quick.” So that was so exciting to have you in town, and it was close enough for me to make sure I can be there.
Tori Dunlap:
It was really nice to meet you. I did a speaking engagement at OC and then we got to meet and sign books after. And you told me a bit about your story and your work, and I was like, “Well, we got to have you on the show.” You’re a listener to the show. We ask money memories for our financial experts. So what is the first time you remember thinking about money?
Jazmin Higgins::
I was four years old and my mom and I were repackaging peanuts. I don’t know how she got her hands on this really big bag of peanuts and I was putting them in little tiny plastic bags. And I was selling them for, I think, it was a couple of quarters. But I set up my little station and it was one of those little plastic tables that you can get at the dollar store back then. I had my regular customers. So every day I would set up my little station out there. The customers, now looking back, I didn’t realize this, but there were people that lived at the hotel across, so some of these people were sex workers or drug addicts, and they would come and give me my two dimes or whatever it was, and I had a heavy flow of my clientele reselling peanuts, literally.
Tori Dunlap:
Selling peanuts to drug addicts and sex workers was your four-year-old job.
Jazmin Higgins::
That was my first money memory, but also first journey of entrepreneurship, but I didn’t realize it was entrepreneurship then of course.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, it was your first hustle. You have shared your story a bit before and we’d love to dive into your background because I think it really shapes the work that you do now. You were a teen mom who defied a lot of the common statistics to build wealth. Can you share a bit about when you found out you were pregnant and what happened next?
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. My now husband and I, we found ourselves pregnant at 16, just like the title of every freaking MTV show back then, 16 and Pregnant. We found out we were pregnant and I was already 16 and a half weeks. My body was changing, and so I think I was a junior in high school and some of my friends commented, “Dang Jazmin, you’re eating a lot.” And I took offense to it obviously, but I was like, “I’m not doing anything that is completely unusual,” except I was eating a little bit more. I told, at the time it was my boyfriend. I was like, “Hey, I’ve been getting a couple of comments. It was my third one today that I am unusually gaining weight. Somebody asked me if I was pregnant. So let’s go.”
I was stick thin. Very, very thin. Slender. I was in swim class, so I was also very fit. So in our neighborhood, there’s this Broadway where you go and there’s a bunch of shops, but there’s always these ladies that come down and they’re nurses or they’re in nurse attire and they’re always asking in Spanish, they would say, know [Spanish 00:06:32], like, “Do you want a pregnancy test?” And I would always get offended, and this time I was like, “I know where to go. Let’s just go. Somebody’s going to stop me.” And sure enough, right away, within a couple of minutes, somebody stopped me, went upstairs, and had me fill out some paperwork and I was like, “Is my mom going to find out?” That was my concern. I was like, “Is it going to go through my mom’s insurance?” So I was like, “Is there any way that I can pay so that it’s not free so that you don’t run any stuff for my mom to find out?
And they’re like, “Oh, it’s okay. We don’t do anything. It’s a free pregnancy test.” So went and as soon as they dipped the little stick, I guess it’s like the dollar store pregnancy test, it was like boom. Right away it was super pregnant. And that was the thing that the nurse said. She’s like, “Oh, you’re very pregnant. And so I start panicking and I’m like, “Okay, how do I know how far along?” She’s like, “Well, when is your last period?” I was like, “I don’t remember. I am so irregular that I don’t know when it was actually.” And she’s like, “Okay, well the only way to find out is through an ultrasound.”
And at the time, Pablo, my husband now, he’s always worked even very young. And so I was like, “Do you have the money to pay for an ultrasound?” He’s like, “How much is it?” It was 50 bucks at the time. And he’s like, “That’s all I have.” I was like perfect, divine. So he paid the 50 bucks and as soon as they put the jelly and the ultrasound, they’re like, “Oh yeah, you are going to have a boy,” without even saying, my pregnancy was so developed that they can already identify the sex, and I was freaking out.
So not only was I pregnant, but I was having a boy and I’m far along, and so they’re like, “Your due date is in August,” and I think it was late February when I found out. So I was like, “Oh my God,” it was crazy.
So brought this story up to my mom. Mom tells me first thing out of her mouth when I showed her the ultrasound pictures was, “Did you get pregnant because I had you at a young age and I was a teen mom.” It’s like it had nothing to do with her at all. It was just a teenager with too much time on their hands and wanting to grow up young, not on purpose. So that was our starting and how did we go from just being boyfriend girlfriend to about start a family.
It was scary as hell. Had no job at the time. I was freaking out and I was still a junior in high school.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, you’re 16.
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah, the next day I think it’s like my body just knew that it was pregnant, so it gave itself permission to grow and the next day I was showing. So I went from flat stomach to all of a sudden I had this big old bump. And it was overnight, literally. So weird.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and let’s talk about what that meant financially. You’re saying, “Of course. I had no job. I was 16.” Your partner is also undocumented, or at least was undocumented at the time. How did that complicate your finances? So is he 16 as well or 17? You’re both in high school at presumably. Yeah. Yeah. And he’s undocumented. You have to finish school, or do you at this point because now you have somebody else to take care of. So what is going through your head at that point and how are you navigating money?
Jazmin Higgins::
So I moved in with his family. They were renting an apartment. And the day I moved in, that was the first time we had to pay rent. So Pablo did have a couple of jobs. It was more of like a side hustle. He would work jobs or he would go sell stuff at restaurants and worked at a photo lab.
And when we found out that we were pregnant, he’s like, “Okay, I need a real job.” So because he was undocumented, he did what he knew how to do at the time was make up that you are an adult because no one would hire a 16-year-old. So he got himself fake ID. It had his name on it, but it had a different birthday. So that was the only reason why he was able to get a job was because it looked like he was 19. He put a fake age.
And no legitimate place is going to hire him because they’re going to run background check, they’re going to check HR. So he went to a really scammy, what is it, an agency, a job agency, and they gave him warehouse jobs. It was a kind of like, “Okay, your working condition, do you have work boots? Okay, here’s your first job. You got to report in an hour.” And it was not enough time for them to run legal background checks, but they eventually did.
So every time that they would run an official background check or they asked him to correct his Social Security number, which was made up, we knew he would be unemployed again.
So that cycle just continued to happen until he finally found one where I guess they were not checking. So it was kind of consistent. And he actually told them the truth and said like, “Hey, actually I am a little bit younger than you guys thought.” And so they wanted to hire him through the company. So he went to go tell them the truth and they said, “How quickly can you become documented?” Luckily, by then we were already married, so I’m talking about from 16 to somewhere around 23 years old this is how we survived. We were already married. So we filed his documentation. And within two months he had a Social Security number, a worker’s permit. So we were able to legitimize everything that we needed to do. And so they waited for him to have his paperwork, and then they actually hired him.
So that was like, how did we do it? In the meantime, it was like we had to lie. That was the way he had to do it. And for me, because I was a young mom, I knew some of the statistics actually when I was pregnant. The assistant principal sat me down and had this sorry look on his face was like, “Yeah, you’re not going to be able to go to prom.” You missed too much school. I missed school because I had just had a baby and I missed one week. And a couple of days within the first two months of school, because I had Adrian, my son on August 27th and school started August 20th, I believe, somewhere like that.
So I missed that initial first days, and I had this newborn whom I had to take to the doctor to get his first everything. So I did miss more than the 10 days. And after you miss 10 days, you cannot walk, so you’ll graduate, but you can’t walk with your peers. You cannot do prom or what is grad night. The basics, the basic high school experience. So during that communication with the assistant principal, he’s like, “Most people like you are not going to graduate, so why do you even care? Why do you even care about that stuff?” And I was like-
Tori Dunlap:
You’re like, “Of course I care. Of course I care.”
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. Well, he also told me that I will most likely live off of welfare. He also told me I wouldn’t go to college. And if I did, I’m probably not going to graduate.
Tori Dunlap:
Wow.
Jazmin Higgins::
It was a couple of things that he told me. He’s like, “Oh, you’re probably going to have your second child before you’re 19.” And he just laid it out. I walked out of there crying and I was like, yeah, I felt like I needed to quit. “Who am I fooling trying to still go to school with the baby?” That was really hard.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and who is he to tell you what your life is now? He’s basically just telling you statistics, thinking, I don’t know that it’s helpful or that it’s real talk, but it’s the most discouraging thing in the world. And it’s also there’s no empathy, there’s no understanding, there’s no empathy that you just had one of the biggest life events possible that you did not plan for. And you’re also trying to graduate, one of the biggest life events. A lot of things are happening at once, and there’s little to no empathy in that conversation. Wow.
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah, not the whole high school experience was terrible. So even though I was a pregnant junior, I had this amazing chemistry teacher who was also part owner of the local burger stand. And the class organized a baby shower for me.
So here we have everybody from the school that either knew me or just had him as a teacher. They brought gifts and stuff. They actually had a baby shower, and he brought a bunch of burgers, and fries, and soda from the local Tam’s. Thanks for sponsoring my baby shower.
Tori Dunlap:
So what happened? 16, you have a kid. Do you graduate? Your husband has a job, you’re trying to navigate that. What are the next couple years? What do those look like?
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah, so I would say about a month after we found out we’re pregnant, I moved in with him and his family. We started paying rent. I was still going to school at the time. After the conversation with the assistant principal at the time, I asked about, “What kind of services are there for pregnant teens?” And luckily because it was so common at my school, actually, it was very common in Los Angeles period in public schools. They had a parenting school.
So it was not the regular high school, but it was an adult school and only parents can participate, so either pregnant or parenting teens. And so it was a different location. So I switched over and started going there. They found out that I basically had all of my credits because I was an overachiever 9th, 10th, and 11th grade pre-pregnancy. And so I think I only had to go to school for about four hours, maybe a little bit less, and they helped pay for daycare. So early on I had my son in a daycare that was free to me. So that was one of the services I did get to take advantage of being so young and also underemployed.
And when Pablo was between jobs or he would get laid off frequently, we were scared and broke. So I walked into a welfare office and asked about food stamps, and I asked about cash aid, what would that look like? At the time, I was already 17, but I was going to school and they said, “The only way to do that since you’re not married is we have to put the father of your kid on child support.” And so I walked out of there, I was like, “I’m not going to put him on child support. I live with him, and he is working, and he is providing for the basic essentials that I need. It’s not enough. I recognize that, but how am I going to put child support on somebody who I live with?” Again, another area of no empathy. The social worker was like, “Well, that’s just the way it is.” And so I walked out of there with no Medi-Cal, no food stamps, and no cash aid.
It sucked at first because I grew up in an area where everybody was on food stamps or some form of cash benefits. So I just felt like, wow, I really need it and I can’t, so how does it actually work? So I didn’t know how the system worked.
I never went back and I went to go work as well. So I think I had two jobs at the time, but they were both part-time, so no more than 12 hours each a week. And I was also going to school. And here we are with our little baby. So that’s how we were able to support paying our rent, and our gas, and things that we needed for the baby.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, when you talk about all of this, and one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show is we were talking briefly after the event I spoke at, and you were just mentioning about how emotional money is, right? And anybody listening to the show, you know this already. But I think that shame, and trauma, and all of these things end up impacting your money and things that happen outside of your control, but also things that to your point you don’t know. You don’t know how to navigate the system. And a lot of the recurring things, it seems like you had a lot of people who were not very empathetic. You had a lot of people who were not offering you a lot of support, but then you also did have your chemistry teacher who was. So can we talk about, what is financial trauma? Can you define it for us and what might that look like for somebody listening? And then what did it look like for you?
Jazmin Higgins::
Once I did graduate from high school. Hey, broke one statistic, I was 19 and found myself pregnant again. So assistant principal was in my head all the time about things that I needed to break, but also things that it did impact my life. I think at the time, we may have been living in a garage, so we moved out from my in-laws and now we were living in somebody’s garage. It was actually my parents’ house they bought during the period where everybody was buying homes. I think it was ’06 area. And so we were living in their garage at the time.
I sought employment. I went to go work where my mom works, which is in the government. And it took about one year to actually get in. So I got hired when I was pregnant. And some of the fear or the financial trauma is if they find out I’m pregnant, they’re going to release me before I pass probation. So that having to hide pregnancy again, that didn’t go away with me even though I was already a barely adult.
So I did go to work with baggy clothes, but it was really hard to hide it. And luckily the type of job that I was able to get, there’s a lot of protections and so there’s no discrimination as far as I wouldn’t be able to pass my probation.
So that’s where I started to get a little bit more of the empathetic people in my life. I think the managers told me, “Hey, you’re going to go on maternity leave and then we’ll restart your probation when you come back, so then you can finish your term.” And they just kind of left this gap and it didn’t impact my career at all.
When I secured this job that was more stable and actually had health coverage for me, myself, and my kids, and my husband, I kind of wanted to make sure that I had that secure job for a decent amount of time. So take care of our job. The financial trauma that I experienced or how it kind of manifested itself into my life is that because we were always in survival mode, any moment that we did have money, we would spend it. And of course, then I had credit cards that I didn’t understand. And since I left home early, the whole adult part of my life, I wasn’t at home. But at home we didn’t talk about money anyway, so there was no education around what are the right things to do with money.
So little by little, we found ourselves accumulating debt but not having any type of emotion to it. So it didn’t weigh us down as a bad thing or a good thing at all, but it was debt that does not help you. So unproductive debt, high interest credit cards. When we realized, “Oh, there’s a lot of things to pay. It’s getting out of control.” A personal loan is what we would get, and then instead of paying off the credit cards, now we had a cushion that we never had before. So that ended up getting spent after a while. So it was just like this never ending cycle of occurring debt.
Before you knew it, I was in college and on student loans, on federal student loans. And we look up, we’re already in our twenties, so there’s no excuse. Well, I felt like there was no excuse to not get the hang of things. And I had six figures in student loan debt, $70,000 in consumer debt. And it was like, “How the heck, what do we do? How do we even process what’s going on? Or how do we even know how to fix it?”
And luckily by chance, I stumbled upon podcasts. And at the time, and I don’t know, this is several years ago. Instead of picking a podcast that my friend was sharing with me about some gossip, I ended up in the financial world. And that was the first time I ever heard the terms like debt freedom, financial freedom, you know who I’m talking about. And it was this one-sided way of handling money, but it was the only way of handling money that I ever found out about.
So I got obsessed and it was by accident. I would think it was divine. And because I got obsessed with it, we started getting on a budget. I was like, “Oh, that’s what a budget is supposed to be. This is what it looks like. This is what spending less than what we make sounds like and feels like.”
And so we did get super intense. We started to knock out the debt little by little. I think at the time when I listed everything that we owed, I think we had 12 different line items that are not student loans. And we were like, “We’ve got everything. We’ve got everything you could think of.” We financed everything just because it was easier to think about the monthly payment than it is to pay a full lump sum of whatever it is.
These are the things that you see every day. But for somebody who’s in their early twenties or I think I was already mid-twenties, I just felt like I was lied to this whole time or I just felt like I was missing this whole piece of information that people know about, that people should know about.
So any moment that I had or every opportunity that I got, I was sharing. I was sharing with everybody, “This is what you’re supposed to do and do you have a budget?” And I was picking up on the shame part, so that was not helpful. So the shame part of the, you shouldn’t have debt, and you shouldn’t do this, and who cares about the credit score? I was kind of mimicking those same words.
It was helpful in a certain way because they got other people talking about money, and it was unhelpful in the way where people were embarrassed when I would come by and they were spending on anything. Whether it was productive or not, it didn’t matter. Nobody wanted me around.
And so I had to learn different ways and it took me a while to pick up on… Sometimes it’s unproductive to think about debt in certain ways or be so consumed by it. There are better ways.
So I didn’t stop. I continued learning and learned different voices, different methods. And the obsession never stopped and the sharing never stopped, but definitely the shame did stop.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. She’s not saying explicitly, but we’re talking about Dave Ramsey, everybody. We’re talking about Dave, which is so helpful to many people. And it sounds like to you, and I am the first person to say that. He’s helped a lot of people and it also comes with a side of deep shame and also some judgment around debt and judgment around other people spending money, or at least other people feeling like you’re judging them. I wanted to call out one thing that you did though that I think is so important for the listener. If you are in any kind of debt, student loans, credit card debt, a mortgage, medical debt, whatever that looks like, the common thing we see, and I know you see this too, is that people bury their head in the sand, they ostrich affect it. I talked about this in my book, and they act like their problems don’t exist. And you cannot solve the problem unless you understand how deep the hole is, right?
And I’m not saying this to make you feel bad. I’m not saying this of you must face it, but you cannot create a plan unless you know what’s going on. So you sat down and you listed out, “What are my lines of credit right now? How much do I owe?” Because you can’t make a plan until you do that. So how difficult emotionally was it to get honest with yourself to say, “Okay, this is a problem”? And then how long did it take you to actually get to the point where you’re like, “I’m going to look at it”?
Jazmin Higgins::
First we had to shift our mindset because we wanted to pay some debt off, and we were paying a little extra on everything. So we never actually saw the impact of those extra payments or a little here, a little there.
I think we did a road trip to go visit my grandparents and on that road trip we were driving, I don’t know, it was maybe 16 hours. And during the 16 hours we were in the car, there was nowhere to go. And so that’s where we started documenting everything that we possibly can owe.
Even things that you might not consider debt or some people that I work with don’t consider debt until I bring it up, like owing phone lines. You sign up for the buy one, get one free, but you got to keep it on there. And then until it gets paid off, you can’t leave that phone company. We put everything.
And the process of itself, it was like once we realized that we were in over six figures, if you count my student loans, and 70,000 of that alone was consumer debt, I was like, “Who do we think we are? Do we even make 70,000 a year?” That was just beyond. I goes, “How are we going to pay this off?” The budget allowed us to recognize, oh, our regular expenses, not the debt are actually pretty low, thank goodness. We were in a low cost of living area. We were renting at the time and we had dual income household. We had young kids who didn’t need much at the time. They were in sports, but the community services were really inexpensive at the time.
So when we got on the budget, we recognize there’s actually extra money that we could use. I constantly had to deal with money is burning a hole in my pocket. So when I had extra money, we would spend it or we thought of what else can we fill in now that we have this extra money?
So we had to switch the mindset of, “No, actually this goes to pay off this jewelry that we decided that we really needed at the time, or it goes to pay off extra on the card,” whatever the case may be, or the 401(k) loan. I mean, send an extra check. I had that too. Everything that you could possibly think of. I had that mind shift happened between my husband and I.
So we held each other accountable, and that’s what I think really helped is keeping each other accountable. So when there was that extra money, if I felt like, “Oh, I would much rather spend this on something cool, like taking the kids to Chuck E. Cheese,” and my husband would be the one to like, “No, we got to stick to our snowball. This is what we’re on.” We got to stay dedicated. And when it was the other way around of, “Hey, actually check out these tickets for the Dodger game,” and I’m like, “I love the Dodgers too, but we actually cannot do this right now.”
So it was more of the delayed gratification that we had to practice with ourselves, because we technically raised ourselves from 16 till now that we’re 36. So 20 years of practicing this and now we get to see the fruits of our labor, and it’s like I can’t even imagine, how the heck did we get here? But if we didn’t do that, then we would not be living the life as comfortably as we are now.
Tori Dunlap:
So once you get out of debt, how do you stay out of debt?
Jazmin Higgins::
Savings account is one. So setting up a savings account for the things that we wanted to purchase, like vacations. Having money go to that, travel and stuff. I have sinking funds in my savings account for everything. We had it for pet expenses, we’ve got it for travel, we’ve got it for the kids random stuff that they ask for. We’ve got it for birthdays, we’ve got it for Christmas. So everything that we can possibly imagine that we want to achieve, we have to create a bucket for it if we cannot pay for it in cash at that moment.
There are some things that are very expensive. For instance, our house. Those are things that I’m not going to save up for because at the time, it’s going to take me decades to raise enough money to buy a house in California. So we did go through programs where we use debt responsibly to finance the biggest purchase of our life.
So for the smaller things, manage your savings account, pay for it in cash if possible at all times. And if we are going to finance, it’s having the best credit score possible and negotiating the interest rate if you can, and setting up a payment plan that makes sense. Our mortgage at the time was, this is about 25% of our income. So we know that we’re not house poor. That’s what we could have been had we not done it in a responsible way.
Tori Dunlap:
One of the things you’ve talked about on previous podcast episodes, you had your stable government job. And you left, you quit, and you had to do a lot of work around not freaking out because of your fear of going back into instability. I think this is something all entrepreneurs struggle with, especially if you come from that background of financial instability. So how did you work through that and then how do you help your clients and other people do that too?
Jazmin Higgins::
I cried. I felt like I was leaving a gang and I was going to get beat up, like I was not going to survive. So the way I navigated it is to take a dip in income, and that’s what allowed me to be able to get paid for the stuff I was already doing, which is the financial literacy and educating people on finances.
So I found a job that was in my field, and that was a huge pay cut. So it wasn’t like a complete making almost 100K to just dropping to zero and let’s see how it goes. I had savings, so I had an emergency fund. And that kind of gave me the permission to, if it doesn’t work out, I know I’ve got a year to go back and maybe have a similar position. And also I’m not at zero, so I’ll still have some type of an income. And that kind of allowed me to also learn the systems and learn if this is something I want to do, and I’m still obsessed with it now.
So it was a journey. I didn’t do it right away. I had to prove the concept. I don’t think I would be the type of person that can just, “Let’s just see how it goes at a flip of a switch.” I needed some type of proof that I can get employed, that I can secure some type of income. And that is part of the financial trauma that I dealt with, with having a mom that was the main breadwinner. She never left employment, she started working there, that was her security, and to this day is still employed there. So it kind of was like, “Am I going to be okay?”
And even I still deal with those emotions of, what happens if a client cancels? And when a client cancels, I feel a little heavy weight, like it sucks. But then I have another two clients that joined that same week, so it’s like proof. That’s all I can say is I needed some proof.
And how I navigate this with other clients is the exact same way. This is the money that you need to make in order for you to break even. This is the amount of money that you need in order for you to live the life that you want. And when your revenue is up to that part or even really close to it, or you’ve proven the concept, can you then let go of your nine to five? And that’s what we have to do and prove it, and make sure that they have a savings account in order for them to fall back on as a just in case case. I understand that fear of not knowing if you’re going to have revenue. So it’s both. It’s the prove the concept and also have a backup plan.
Tori Dunlap:
I keep seeing the theme for you, that one of the big themes is that know your numbers. If you want to do anything, I mean life in general, but specifically personal finance. If you want to get out of debt, you have to know how much debt you’re in. If you want to quit your job and become an entrepreneur, you need to know the bare minimum amount of money you need to be banking in order to do that. If you’re running a business, you need to know your numbers to know if you’re hitting your goals, to know if you’re covering your costs.
It sounds so obvious, but very few people actually know their numbers. Very few people actually sit down and get honest with themselves about where they’re at. So if you’re dissatisfied with your personal finances, if you’re dissatisfied with where you’re at in your life, and you also don’t know your numbers, that is the first place to start.
Jazmin Higgins::
That hashtag by itself is know your numbers.
Tori Dunlap:
I think in talking about you quitting your job, the other thing that comes with the instability, especially with a government job is you’re like, “Oh, I’m giving up all these benefits too.” Especially more stable, traditional jobs like a job in the government. You’re giving up your benefit, you’re giving up a potential pension. For me, I had a different version of that, which was my parents doing, “What about the health insurance and what about the 401(k)?”
So when you’re looking at the trauma that you’re talking about, besides knowing your numbers, how do we move past the scarcity mindset when it comes to protecting yourself in the next stage of your life?
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. So some of those benefits that you’re talking about for me were the 401(k) match. So I had an 8% match because of the role that I was in, and my husband has a nine to five, and so we had to look at how much do the benefits cost if we go under your insurance. So we’re not completely without health insurance.
I recognize that being married and having a dual income is a huge privilege, so I need to add that to, this is another reason why I was able to let go of that job. Once we recognize that it was a little bit more expensive, but it is manageable, it’s not free anymore, and the co-pays and all of that was a little bit more expensive. It was a decision that we made amongst two people in the household.
So that’s one part is, do you have the support? What are the options? And for somebody who that I’m working with that does not have that dual income household, it’s let’s find out how much it costs to run your own health insurance as an entrepreneur or self-employed person. There are services out there that can help or that are not as expensive, but they’re still very expensive for one person to manage it.
If income is low, you could qualify for state benefits or you could qualify for some type of, at least in California, it’s Medi-Cal. Medicare in other states. At some point, you are going to out-earn your ability to qualify for the lower subsidies. And so you still need to do the research of how much is it going to cost If I’m completely on my own and I have to pay for healthcare.
I would say another privilege is being healthy. Having some type of health, knowing that the cost of health insurance is not a huge burden right now because we are healthy, everyone in my household is. So it’s a huge privilege to not have to make sure that it’s the right type of care, but that we have some type of care.
So there is privilege, and also, what happen if that were not the case? So I know that for our household it would be somewhere around 900 to $1,300 a month if we were doing it on our own, which if it does get to that point, we know that’s a budget item that we would not be able to do something else. But if that were to take us over, then we’ve got to have somebody on a nine to five or we won’t be able to quit. Both of us do this at the same time.
Tori Dunlap:
We were mentioning things like food stamps, SNAP, the benefits, the governmental benefits that don’t come with you working for the government, right? You mentioned in previous episodes and in your work that a lot of people end up sitting right on the line and not making more than a certain threshold because they’re scared of losing access to those benefits. And we see this with disability especially. You’re almost incentivized to make less in order to protect your disability insurance. What have we found or what is in your work that allows people to find that flexibility between making more money but also making sure that you’re taken care of too?
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. Often what I’ve found is there’s almost a resistance to that being the barrier of somebody going from an entrepreneur maybe barely breaking even, and then realizing that if you do hit these goals that you need to make in order to buy a house or in order to be able to not have to work every single day at my brick and mortar location, they’re given a choice.
So all you need is the information to know, what is it going to look like? Are you going to have to pay more taxes? And the answer most of the time is yes. Can you divert the taxes in other ways? Yes, that’s also a yes, but not 100%.
What I recognize is when I was talking with some people that are my clients and they’re entrepreneurs, but they’re also receiving some type of state benefit, whether it be free healthcare, I am really sensitive about the topic, especially if somebody does have underlining issues where they cannot go without their healthcare.
So what I do is I present them with the options of what it would look like and how much money they would have to make in order for them to be able to cover their own healthcare insurance. But then also comes the complication of, you will have to set money aside for taxes because you’re no longer going to be considered low income, so you’ll be up on the next tax bracket.
And sometimes, what I find out is that they’re not willing to take on that risk because they need their benefits or they need the healthcare specifically. That’s the one where I struggle with the most. And so it’s nice to have all this information, but with that information is you still have your personal choice. And I’m not going to push anybody to do anything that they don’t completely feel comfortable with.
I feel kind of sad also knowing that you are going to hold yourself back, but this is a conscious choice and a decision that you make for yourself because it makes sense for your healthcare benefits that you really need.
What I experienced growing up was people that would not get a job because then that would disqualify them for cash benefits. So while you are getting… And I know the exact amounts because I knew people intimately was like, yes, you’re getting $700 a month without having to work, but you’re missing out on even just a minimum wage job would make you double that. And then if you were to upgrade or not have a minimum wage job, you might be making three or four times that. But the fear of losing $700 is going to prevent you from making a 40 to $50,000 income a year.
They were not clients at the time. This is just some of the people that I’ve experienced in my background.
Tori Dunlap:
I see a version of it which is I’m not going to negotiate my salary because then I am making more where I’m in the next tax bracket. And I’m like, “Yeah, because you know making more money.” The answer cannot be, “I don’t want to make more money.” The same thing with a high yield savings account actually. A lot of people tell that to me. They’re like, “Well, isn’t this taxed?” And I’m like, “Yeah, because it’s income.” So is the answer I want to make a second or third source of income, or do I want to make less? It’s not a good argument? And I think also, it’s back to the scarcity mindset too of like, “Okay, I don’t want to pay more in taxes. I don’t want to lose my benefits. I don’t want to switch accounts even though I’d make a shit ton more money because then I’ll have to pay taxes.” Fun fact, you have to pay tax on any savings account. Any savings account, regardless of whether it’s a high yield savings account or not, you have to pay taxes on that interest earned, so you may as well pay taxes because you earn five times more interest.
So yeah, I think that that’s back to this scarcity and lack of education of people just not understanding that no, this is actually a net positive thing. You’re making more money.
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah, so pay the taxes or find the tax strategy. And I’m not an accountant, but I pay for accountants. And so we found out about so many different things that I didn’t know about before. And so even having an investment account that is earmarked for retirement, that’s going to reduce your taxable income. So if you’re afraid of paying taxes on all of it now, max out the retirement accounts that you have now and defer those taxes for when you need the finances later in the future. I mean, there’s options.
Tori Dunlap:
So for the person listening who sees a lot of themselves in your story, who maybe has a lot of debt, is wondering how to get out of it, is maybe feeling that financial shame and lack of stability, what is one thing you’d say to them, but also one piece of very actionable advice that they could take away and start implementing right now?
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. I think what I struggled with the most didn’t matter what era I was in my life, whether it was the saving or the paying off debt, it was having a budget that works for you.
So the budget that I use in my coaching service is a goals-based budget. This is where you cover all of your fixed expenses or the expenses that you have to pay. Covering your four walls, covering your housing, your transportation, and then identifying what is it that you’re working toward and making room for that in your budget.
Whatever is left is yours to spend however you choose, and that would be your expenses. For most people, this is going to be whether they go to the grocery store or dine out, whatever that might look like. Entertainment or not, or personal care. It doesn’t matter what you spend your variable funds on, as long as you know that your fixed expenses are covered and you’re also working towards your goals.
That would be, I think the primary thing that I implement in my coaching service. Whether somebody is able to fund their goals or not, that’s the question, right? So if you see that you are not able to contribute to your savings account every single paycheck or every single month, then how much money do you need to make in order to make that a possibility? And this is where we talk about negotiating salary.
Most of the clients that I work with have never done that before. So we practice. We mimic, and I pretend to be the boss. We look at, when is the last time you switched jobs because you’ve been there for so long, and maybe you’ve asked for an increase in salary and it hasn’t happened? We talk about, do you have to take on a side hustle? Without burning yourself out, what is possible? What can you do? If you live in a house, can you rent out a room without sacrificing your space? There’s somebody that might need to rent out a room for a couple of months just to get you to have that wiggle room or pay off debt.
So you said this earlier, know your numbers. And that is really what you need to do is figure out your budget. How much income comes in and how much of your expenses go out, and then what’s left to spend?
Tori Dunlap:
And we’ve said this before on this show and in my book, but I want to say it again. We’re saying the word budget. Budget does not mean restriction. It does not mean rice and beans. It does not mean the reason you can’t do things. It’s the way you protect the things that are important to you and the way that you make sure that you’re protecting your financial future too. Just like you wouldn’t get in a car and start driving without knowing how much gas was in the car, right? You wouldn’t know how far you could go without running out of gas. It’s the same thing with a budget. You’re understanding your numbers and you’re getting a plan together so that you have a permission slip to spend and a permission slip to take care of yourself. It’s not about scarcity, or deprivation, or hating your life.
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah, it’s value spending.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. Jazmin, thank you for your work. Thank you for your vulnerability. Plug away my friend. Where can people find out more about you, look at your coaching services? Tell us where people can find more.
Jazmin Higgins::
Yeah. My coaching service or my company is Budget With Jazmin. So I do have my website. My one-on-one coaching is 125 a month, and I’ve had that same price for a very long time. It is a low barrier to entry. I work with clients as short as three to four months, and I’ve had people for two, three years. It just depends on how much of their finances they need to work on.
Sometimes it’s just a discovery of getting an idea of what they need to do properly. And for some people it’s the hand holding, the accountability that they really need in order to get some stuff down.
Similar to what I mentioned earlier about where me and my husband held ourselves accountable, some people don’t have that or they don’t feel comfortable with sharing their finances with somebody close to them. So I am that person. I am the financial best friend.
Tori Dunlap:
I love it. Thank you. Thanks for being here.
Jazmin Higgins::
Thank you for having me.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you to Jazmin for being here. You can follow her at BudgetWithJazmin, J-A-Z-M-I-N on Instagram or Budget With Jazmin, J-A-Z-M-I-N .com. Thank you Financial Feminist. We appreciate your support of the show. Leave a five star review, share the show.
We’re going into the new year, which is very exciting and a time of a lot of growth. And we also always see financial feminists perform really well at the top of the year because you all are trying to get your financial shit together. So you sharing the show allows us to continue doing our work around bettering y’all’s relationship with money, but also talking about how money affects women differently. So we really appreciate it. Hope you have a kick-ass rest of your day and I’ll talk to you very soon. Bye.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant, research by Sarah Sciortino, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf, marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda Leffew.
Special thanks to our team at Her First $100K, Kailyn Sprinkle, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Sasha Bonnar, Rae Wong, Elizabeth McCumber, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Ingram, and Meghan Walker, promotional graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolfe, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound.
A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, please visit financialfeministpodcast.com. If you’re confused about your personal finances and you’re wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com/quiz for a free personalized money plan.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over five million women negotiate salaries, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of over 2.1 million on Instagram and 2.4 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
