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When you move frequently, it can be hard to build community

Whether you’re in a military family, have a spouse or partner who travels frequently for work, or have chosen a more nomadic lifestyle, building community and a stable financial foundation can feel more complicated because of implicit bias and lack of access to resources.

We wanted to better understand the struggles of military and nomadic families, so we sat down with Lauren Taylor, founder of PCS Pay-It-Forward Inc, to learn about programs as they currently exist and what’s being done at the local and national levels to support military families.

Lauren also dives into her business as a marketing educator, talking through how she started her online business as a way to earn money as a military spouse and how she’s built an audience of 100,000 on TikTok.

What you’ll learn:

• Why the housing policies for military families are still behind

• Why it’s so hard for spouses of miltary members to find work

• How to build community through connecting with vulnerability

Lauren’s Links:

Pay-It-Forward

Instagram

TikTok

Resources:

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Transcript:

Lauren Taylor:

We are all facing the same struggles. Our families are all facing the same obstacles. And the better that we can create solutions for us by us because we’re the only ones who really understand that, the better off we’re all going to be.

Tori Dunlap:

Hello. Hello, Financial Feminist. Welcome back to the show. We are so thankful you’re here and we hope you are enjoying what feels like the official kickoff to summer in the end of May. I live in Seattle, where we’ve had a beautiful last week and a half of sun, but Juneary is coming, which is what we call of course, June, where it feels like January and it’s not summer until July 5th, but I’m hoping it might feel a little different this year.

If you are new here, welcome. My name is Tori. I am the founder of Her First $100K, obviously the host of this podcast, the author of the New York Times bestselling book also called Financial Feminist, available wherever books are sold. And I’m here to fight the patriarchy by making you rich. If you’re an oldie but a goodie, welcome back. We’re excited to see you back.

A bunch of exciting things are happening this summer, including the launch of our newly rebranded Stock Market School, which I’m super excited about. It is a year of investing education. It is live monthly coaching taught by me, the only place that I offer coaching anymore, workshops around step-by-step investing, around managing the stock market, around growing your wealth, around what is a Roth IRA and a 401(k), and how do I use them.

So, if you’re looking to get started investing, but you’re looking for a community and a person to walk you through it step-by-step, well, welcome. We’re excited to have you at Stock Market School. We got the link in our show notes.

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend, which is a time in the United States where we remember those who have bravely served and lost their lives in service to our country. We thought it would be great to talk to someone who is familiar with the military family life. And if you’ve never met anybody in the military, you might not realize how often their lives can feel tumultuous and in constant never changing mode. So, between deployments and relocations, it can be very difficult to find stability either as someone who is in the military or as a military spouse or a member of a military family.

So, we brought in Lauren Taylor to talk about her time as a military spouse and how she built a business to support military families. Lauren Taylor is a successful entrepreneur in the real estate industry. She’s the co-owner and founder of Pay It Forward Today, Inc., which is currently the fastest growing military relocation network for military families in America. Her Savvy Homebuyer education program has helped over 12,000 individuals purchase homes in the last three years.

And she specializes in organic lead generation through content marketing, and recently began to utilize her proven strategies and skills to help real estate entrepreneurs grow on TikTok.

In 2022, Taylor was recognized for her work as 125 award winner by Success Magazine and in 2023, Lauren released her first podcast entitled All In with LT that focuses on the strategy side of content creation for businesses and features high level entrepreneurs and business owners using video content to grow their brands. I follow Lauren as an expert in the online space. Her content is so helpful for anybody trying to grow an online business. So, regardless of whether you’re a military spouse, a military family or not, this is super impactful. Her work is super impactful.

And if you’re someone who just moves around a lot for your work, if you’re like a traveling nurse, if you are someone who has a lot of relocations or you’re choosing to actually move, if you have a spouse who travels often, this episode is going to be helpful for you to better understand those challenges and how to work through them. We also get into how Lauren decided to build her own business so that she could create a network and income no matter where they’re stationed next. So, again, if you’ve considered starting a small business, this episode is a great starting place. Let’s get into it.

But first, a word from our sponsors.

Lauren Taylor:

How are you doing?

Tori Dunlap:

I’m good. I’m tired, but I’m good. Yeah, I’m ready to be off for a little bit. And I was telling Kristen, I am very bad about actually taking, not only taking time off, but when I’m off I’m like, “Oh, I’ll just check this one thing.” Or I’m just in the habit of doing it of you open Instagram and then it’s like, “Oh, I can answer this question in somebody’s comment in two seconds,” and you end up, doesn’t feel like work, but it is work. And so, I am actually hoping to journal on my flight tomorrow because I’m spending the first week in Cabo, which would be fun, and I’m literally just going to be like, okay, what does this boundary actually look like? How are we going to honor these boundaries [inaudible 00:04:49]?

Lauren Taylor:

Good for you. It’s important.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s hard. It’s hard.

Lauren Taylor:

It is hard, especially because you’re called to serve. There’s so many people that you want to help. So, to not answer people questions feels like-

Tori Dunlap:

I’m obsessed with it.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah.

Tori Dunlap:

I do it for a reason. I’m obsessed with it. I love it. And it’s also like it’s draining all the time. And then I pendulum swing really hard where I’m like, “This is great.” And then I pendulum swing to, “This is awful. I’m deleting Instagram. I want no one to know anything. I am in a black hole and that’s not great.”

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah, I was telling my agents I was working with. There’s this really strange space as your business grows that it’s like you grow so fast that your business almost outgrows you and then you as a person that you’re at right now, have to catch up to where your business is and it’s this very strange, uncomfortable feeling of wanting to walk away, of wanting to just shut down completely. But that’s actually just the next phase of growth and it’s just uncomfortable.

Tori Dunlap:

Sounds about right. Cool. Thank you for psychoanalyzing me today.

Lauren Taylor:

At least it’s normal.

Tori Dunl
ap:

I’d be thinking about that for a while. Cool. Lot of time on vacation to think about that. Tell me a little bit about your background and particularly with the 2008 housing crisis, a subject we all like talking about.

Lauren Taylor:

Especially right now, everyone wants to talk about. Actually, I love talking about it because I just came into the industry of really fresh eyes. I graduated college in 2008 and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was a communications English major and I wanted to build a career. So, I got hoodwinked into a financial planning interview, group interview, which is maybe a red flag, but ultimately I went for it. I went for it and I get my financial services licenses.

And the day that I passed my life insurance exam, which was the last exam I needed to work with clients, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac got taken over by the fed and I walked into the office and it was just complete pandemonium. And I’ve never been in that environment before, nor in college I really understand the magnitude of what that actually meant.

But for years I sat across from clients helping them piece together their financial future. There was a lot of common themes there that have really dictated my career. A couple of them being that people had purchased homes, they felt like they signed documents they didn’t understand because they wanted to ride the rollercoaster. They didn’t ask the right questions, let alone know the questions to ask. There was a lot of responsibility on the mortgage industry and on realtors who hadn’t properly educated their clients or at least they felt like they weren’t properly educated.

And that really sat with me. But honestly, the craziest thing that came out of that time is that I would sit down with someone and be like, “Okay, what do you want to accomplish in five years? What do you accomplish 10, 15, short-term goals?” And then almost every time the number one goal, no matter what that person’s experience was, was that they wanted to be a homeowner.

They could have been upside down in their mortgage and they’re like, “Well, we’re going to figure this out and we’re going to get this settled. And then yeah, we got to start saving for our next down payment.” And that to me was really eye-opening. And I think that there’s been a shift around that in the last 10 years or 15 years or how ever long it’s been.

But that really dictated when I transitioned out of finance and I had my kid, my oldest son and my husband was military, and I was like, “Well, do I want to still do finance?” I was like, “No.” I was like, “I want to help people buy that house. I want to be on the front end of that, not on the back end of that, and maybe I can change their fate a little bit that way.”

Tori Dunlap:

Do you feel like it’s the culture of you are not “successful,” and I’m putting that in quotes, as an American unless you are a homeowner?

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah, I think there’s definitely a conversation about that. I work with a lot of real estate agents and one of the things that drives me crazy is the shaming around homeownership. If you don’t choose to purchase a home, here’s the reality is that purchasing a home is a great wealth building tool, but do you think people are just sitting around being like, “I have the money. I choose not to.” That’s a very small segment of the world.

But most other people, they’re trying to build a downpayment. We’re trying to get our credit scores in a place. We’re trying to get our student loans in a place where that’s even feasible. So, shame does not help that. It’s education. It’s support. It’s resources. It’s programs. And so, that to me is a big bone that I have to pick with our realtor community is that create resources that actually help people. Don’t shame people who are trying to do their best.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I am in that small majority that is like I am choosing to rent because it fits my lifestyle right now, but also now starting to talk. I literally have a conversation with my realtor tonight of like, “Okay, is it time we start looking more seriously?”

Lauren Taylor:

Yes. Well, I wanted to talk to you because I know your history with Dave Ramsey and there was a tweet.

Tori Dunlap:

What was the tweet? What did he tweet this time?

Lauren Taylor:

Oh, no. It was, “If you just save $100 a month for the next 40 years, you’ll have $1.7 million.” It’s his exact tweet. “You’ll have $1.7 million, so don’t tell me that you won’t be wealthy or rich.” And I’m sure at some point we can flash that across the screen, but I’m literally sitting here going back to my financial advisor days. I’m sure that you could. And I’m like, “Okay, well, inflation is 4%, so you’re going to have $1.7 million in 40 years. What does that actually worth?”

Tori Dunlap:

More than 45% of Americans over the age of 55 have nothing saved for retirement right now. So, 1.7 million, nothing to sneeze at, great amount of money. Also, that assumes you have $100 a month to save. It assumes you know how to save it and really invest it because he’s not just putting that in a savings account. And yes, 1.7 million is not going to be today’s 1.7 million, which was definitely not 30 years ago’s 1.7 million.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. So, I took it all the way. Okay, so if we have 1.7 million, we’re taking off 3% and then my brain goes to, if I were invested in the real estate, because I do both. So, I have financial investments myself that me and my husband manage, and then we also do have a couple of investment properties, which is such a blessing we’ve been able to do that. But then I go to that point and I didn’t hit the end where I could definitively prove one or the other.

But I think the important things that comes out of it is that there’s multiple ways to reach your goals, but thinking about them earlier is better than waiting because you have more runway and room for error and also room for success.

Tori Dunlap:

People will, who listen to this podcast religiously, they will have heard this so many times. Time is way more important than the amount of money when it comes to investing.

Lauren Taylor:

Absolutely.

Tori Dunlap:

Even if you just get started now and it’s like 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks one time, let’s say once every, I don’t know, year, that is still better than waiting to start when you have more money or when you are making more money or when you are … I do the misconceptions in my book. We have an entire chapter on investing and the first half is just all the miscon
ceptions, which is rich people, that’s the only people that invest. And I’m like, “No, that’s how you get rich.” Or “I have time to wait.” And I’m like, “Actually, you don’t. You don’t.” So, yeah, couldn’t agree more.

Lauren Taylor:

We need time on our side. I remember my high school teacher, gosh, I wish I remembered his name at this very moment, I’d give him a shout-out. He told us about the incredible power of compounding interest, and not only that, the Roth IRA had just come out and so he’s like, “Let me tell you about this incredible thing.” So, I’m working at Yenchim Garden. Shoutout to all my San Diego peeps. And literally making $8 an hour, but I’m trying to max out Roth IRA. That’s just always been my mindset.

Tori Dunlap:

That’s amazing.

Lauren Taylor:

But isn’t that neat, because it’s like, look, some of us don’t get that information till we’re what, 25, 30. What a blessing [inaudible 00:12:18].

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, older than that. So many people are, they’re 45 and they’re in our email being like, “I’ve never heard of a Roth IRA.” Or “No one’s ever taught me.” And that’s unfortunately totally normal.

Lauren Taylor:

Do you feel like that’s a failure of the education system because really, okay, where does that fall?

Tori Dunlap:

I mean, the answer is more complicated than that. Again, plug it, but I have a whole podcast episode with my friends who run rich and regular and we were talking about the fallacy of financial literacy, where I think we as a society think, okay, if there was a high school class about money or if there was even a college class about money, that would 100% help. But I can tell you when I was a 16-year-old learning about precalculus, I learned as much as I needed to know for the test. I hopefully aced the test. Do I remember any precalculus today? No, of course not. It’s not relevant to my life.

When you’re 16 now, it sounds like you are one of the outliers that it would help, but when you’re 16 and you hear about a Roth IRA, you are not making … I mean, some people aren’t making any money when they’re 16. I had my afterschool job. I worked at a music store and I was making, I don’t know, whatever minimum wage was, and I was putting that money in my college savings fund. And that was just to pay for college basically and to have a little bit of money to do with friends on the weekends. There was no concept of that.

I truly believe that it’s more of a systemic problem, and it’s also if you don’t have family who teaches you about money, that’s more of the issue than school. Then we get into the question of who teaches it because right now, the financial literacy that is taught in schools or churches is Dave Ramsey’s financial education, which I would argue, yes, it’s beneficial in some ways and has way bigger of a harsher, a worse impact on some people, most people.

Then you get into the nuanced conversations of who teaches it, how is it funded, how is it taught? Is it taught as bootstraps narrative of if you’re not rich, that’s because you’re not working hard enough or are we talking about systemic oppression when we talk about money? So, I think yes, it would help. However, I think the fallacy is that if we just educated kids about money in school or in college, that would solve everything. And I’m like, no, not even close.

Lauren Taylor:

The thing that I love about your book and what we actually just jumped over, both you and I, the blessing that you and I had that I could take that money and put in their breath air and you could take that money in favor for college, whereas a lot of our counterparts in different parts of the country have to take that money and bring it home to feed their family.

Tori Dunlap:

Totally, 100% of privilege, 100%.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. I loved how much you talked about that in the book because I feel like that’s something that’s not discussed and it is starting from a different place. There has to be some account, some recognition or awareness around that, and then also what can we do a level of the playing field. I don’t have the right answer, but I love this becoming a conversation because it’s necessary.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, I mean, there’s no easy answer and I don’t have it, but the answer to financial equality is solving racism and solving sexism and paid family leave and higher minimum wage. And we actually just right before, I just did an episode with a woman who wrote a book called Tipped, and she was talking about this minimum wage that is, I can’t remember the word she used, and this is my own fault. But basically that there’s plenty of states that if you are a restaurant worker, you make $2 an hour as the minimum wage, and then it’s in theory adjusted with tips.

But that’s bullshit. And it has to come from systemic change and systemic alteration more than it comes from an individual person’s experience. Yes, education would be helpful, but I think it is the blanket. I think because it’s such a black or white answer that people cite it all the time of like, “Oh, we just need financial education in schools. We just need a personal finance one-on-one class in a school and that’ll solve everything.” All of these problems are nuanced, but yet folks like Dave Ramsey do not want to live in the gray because the gray is sticky and there is no answer. And instead he wants-

Lauren Taylor:

It’s hard to sell books in the gray tour.

Tori Dunlap:

I was just going to say, he wants to look like a God-like faker, who’s come down to solve everybody’s problems. He is the guru. And I’m like, I’m a financial expert. There’s plenty I think that I have to say, of course, that’s helpful. That’s reason the show exists. It’s a reason I got a book deal. I’m also not the person who’s going to be like, everything I have to say is scripture and it is the only way you can do it. It is like a diet.

He’s telling you, “Oh, if you don’t follow my system and you’re not rich, you didn’t do it correctly or you didn’t do it hard enough or you didn’t want it bad enough,” and it’s just impossible. Diets and cleanses. It’s like, oh, if you drink celery juice and only celery juice for seven days and you feel like shit, then you didn’t process it correctly or you didn’t drink it in the morning on an empty stomach.

And so, yeah, I could talk forever about this, but that’s I think the fallacy of it is it’s like I don’t remember anything from my high school class. I remember my high school English classes because I loved them and I loved my teachers, but that’s what I wanted to learn about. I don’t know how many, say 14 to even 21-year-olds are going to be like, “Yes, personal finance,” an
d especially with a curriculum that is so shame-based or even religious based.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah, absolutely.

Tori Dunlap:

I don’t know how to transition out of that. That’s my-

Lauren Taylor:

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it is the thing that gets me riled up because again, I think financial education unfortunately is a privilege and we’re trying to solve it with this one size fits all, but then it’s all of these other questions. Again, how is this funded? Who’s teaching it? What’s being taught? Because I imagine just like sex ed. It’s going to be different depending on the school, depending on the racial makeup of that school, depending on the funding of that school. It’s going to be very, very different advice. I went to Catholic school. It was abstinence only sex ed.

Lauren Taylor:

What’s sex? Yeah.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. What is it? Don’t have it. You were saying that you wanted to be on the more fun side of real estate of the anticipation and the excitement. Was it just about the experience of being able to connect with people in that way rather than being on the other side that was depressing? What got you interested in being an agent and especially transferring careers?

Lauren Taylor:

So, number one, a need. Okay, so I got married. My husband was officer in the Navy. We were living off of one income. We thought we were going to be so fine. We bought our first house, which was from an investment company, and we were represented by the agent who represented the investment company. We were talked out of using our VA home loan because it wasn’t in our best interest.

And then when we closed the deal, I called him the day after we closed and I was like, “Hey, I have a couple questions.” And he was like, “Look, this ride is over. We’re closed.” And he represented the seller, and we did get probably a deal because of that. But when it came time to, gosh, Tori, in that house, I left our heater in our pool on and we had $700 heating bill. I came down the morning and drank a cup of coffee and it was like the heating, you could see the steam coming up.

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, because it was outdoor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah.

Tori Dunlap:

We did have a cover on it. I grew up in a house with a pool and my dad is so frugal and was like, “We heat this for three days out of the year,” and then he has the cover on it. Oh, yeah. Whole thing.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. So, a $700 electric bill, a heating electric bill in Southern California was enough to really give us a financial wakeup call as a young family. And I was like, “I have to do something.” So, I decided to get my real estate license because I had that alignment. I had learned from these people I sat across from. And I was like, “I just want to educate, come from a place of service.” I learned that military people want to work with military people. And so, I was like, “I can then serve our community in this way.”

I was shopping at the Dollar Tree for Christmas and for food, and my parents would bring us Costco every other week, and that was probably a little bit more than they would care to admit at this point how much they were propping us up. And so, I got my license and I was like, “I’m going to sell one house.” And my goal, I was like, “I’m going to sell a house so we won’t have to shop at Dollar Tree and then maybe,” you’ll love this. “Maybe I’ll get to max our Roth IRA.” I was obsessed with this, evidently.

Did really well my first year. Southern California has great price points. I made $300,000 my first year and I didn’t even know that type of money existed. So, my husband was deployed when I got my license. So, he then came home to a very different … We were shopping at Dollar Tree to making great money. Now what you do.

So, during that time, I actually started a relocation program for our military families. There was just a gap in the market. There was people who are willing to help military families buy because they get a great commission check. Base housing took care of them when they were living on base housing. But if you came and you were going to rent, there was this huge gap of service.

And what happened was the FBI came out and was basically like, “Hey, there’s a lot of scams right now on Facebook marketplace, on Zillow. They didn’t have the cross referencing they did. And they’re targeting our community because you’re coming from afar. You’re feeling rushed to make a decision. It could be gone. It looks better than you think it is, and send us your deposit and it’s yours.”

And our families are showing up. And that property sold six months ago, and that was the listing votes that were reused. And there was no way we could never get your money back. And for a lot of our military families, that is their total savings. Like PCS moves cost a lot of money. They cost like five grand. That is not easy money to come by.

So, I started San Diego PCS Pay It Forward. I was like, “If I can put all of these people in one space and I can maybe help solve this problem and then I can get everyone involved in it.” It’s like, this is impacts our entire community, so can we all share rentals? If you see a rental sign, who’d be willing to do a drive by to see if it’s legit? And people would post signs in the group and it just went crazy. It grew from there. It grew my team, which was wonderful.

I always tell people the Pay-It-Forward part I love because look, for every one house I sell through that program, 10 other families get the help that they need to find the house that they need. So, it’s a mutually beneficial win for us as the agent and also for our members of our military coming in.

So, we expanded that in 2018 and now we serve over 100,000 military families. And we’re super, super blessed to have the amazing community of military families who show up every single day to serve and answer questions and post rentals. And it’s really a group effort. We’re just proud to lead it.

Tori Dunlap:

That’s amazing. Well, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you for the majority of this time about especially your experience as a military spouse. And it sounds like when your husband was deployed, you were in the reality that I think plenty of military spouses are in. And when we pulled our research, military spouses overwhelmingly women, and the unemployment rate for military spouses is 22% and it has been for the past decade. So, what are some of the reasons that military spouses
have a more inflated unemployment percentage? And what was that personal experience for you like of, okay, husband’s shipping off, what is my reality? What does my day-to-day look like?

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah, so I think the primary role of the military spouse is to create stability for the family because they are gone. You can move at any moment. And there is an emotional aspect of raising a family in the military of picking your family up and moving. They don’t have lifelong friends. So, the primary role really becomes stabilizing the home and making sure that everyone is emotionally well.

I think that there’s a big gap in employment largely because of the relocation. Now, this was a lot worse I will say pre-pandemic. This was before people were open to doing remote. And so, when you walked in for an interview or when you came in for an interview and they found out you were in the service, they asked you, “Oh, how long have you been in town?” Or maybe it’s just a big military town in general, and they can see it in you. It’s a red flag for them. It’s kind of like hiring someone who’s pregnant, how long is this person going to be here? And that became the stipulation.

I’m a poor one, two, three years into training you, which is arguably what takes to train a great employee who knows their job like A to Z, and then you’re going to ship out. And that’s not 100% definite, but that’s enough fear for the employer to keep them from hiring, from choosing someone who’s going to be there longer.

Tori Dunlap:

And I think that transition is really difficult. And I imagine you have children, and so I think that in a more traditional household, if two parents work, they’re probably going to be at home at night, both of them are coming home. Was that a conscious decision of, “I’m going to run my own business to have the flexibility to stay home?”

Lauren Taylor:

One thousand percent. So, I remember one morning it was like 5:00 AM and my husband’s stumbling around the bedroom getting ready for work. I’m like, “What are you doing?” He’s literally crawling on his hands and knees. I’m like, “What is wrong with you?” And he’s like, “I think I threw out my back.” And I was like, “You can’t drive. You have to drive 45 minutes. That’s not safe.” And he’s like, “If I don’t show up, all hell breaks loose.” And so, there is not flexibility on the other side.

I envy all the military families who say like, “Oh, and then we put in for vacation.” I’m like, “We never got a vacation we put in for.” So, everyone’s experience is different. But yeah, so I wanted the flexibility. I wanted to be able to be there for my kids. I also wanted the larger income opportunity. I’m always been one of those people that I would define as works twice as hard as a, I think a lot of people say they work twice as hard, but that’s something I identified with. So, I really didn’t want to be in a place where my income was going to be limited to you get paid this per hour.

So, I was like, if I’m going to naturally apply myself, and that is something I wish more people knew about running their own business. If you’re someone who naturally applies yourself and it’s like you just feel like you’re taken for granted and then all the projects fall back on you, you really should consider starting your own business because that is the opportunity there where you are going to have those income opportunities that you just don’t have when someone’s trading you time for dollar.

Tori Dunlap:

Totally. Yeah. What financial factors are affecting military families specifically?

Lauren Taylor:

BAH, basic housing allowance.

Tori Dunlap:

Talk to me about that. What is that?

Lauren Taylor:

So, two things. We got a pay raise this year, which was super exciting. People tell you it was the greatest pay raise in a decade or two or three or whatever, and I’ll pull those statistics for every military spouse who’s about to message me and be like, “She didn’t even know the number.” Yeah. Congratulations. We got a 4% raise, the most in the last 30 years. I was like-

Tori Dunlap:

Which is crazy. That’s crazy. That’s like cost of living adjustment.

Lauren Taylor:

I know. I know. And then so we got the raise, which was great. It’s also your pay is based on your rank, so it impacts everyone differently. It’s based on your rank. It’s also based on whether or not you have kids. So, your marital status. So, there’s a lots of ins and outs of it.

Tori Dunlap:

Wait, you’re paid more if you have children?

Lauren Taylor:

You are paid more if you have dependents. So, people ask like, “Oh, why do we have all these young military people who are married?” Well, number one, if you’re in a lot of the branches, if you’re not married, you live in the barracks and you don’t get paid as much, so they will marry each other just to get out the barracks.

Tori Dunlap:

I mean, and also getting stationed together. I went to a school that had an ROTC program and there were a lot of weddings like spring semester senior year, so that they could be deployed together or go to the same training together.

Lauren Taylor:

So, there’s two pay things. There’s the basic pay and then there’s a housing allowance. So, the housing allowance is based on where you are stationed at. And so, the interesting thing about that is that there is not a global view of what that looks and feels like. Let me explain. If you complain in Southern California that last year in Los Angeles, the housing prices went up by 30%, but BAH went down by 2%. Those are not exact numbers, but there was a decrease when the housing market exploded. It just made no sense, right? They will tell you, “Well, this is a local issue. It’s decided locally. That’s not what we’re seeing everywhere.”

Tori, I don’t think that there’s someone who has a more global view of what’s happening in the military housing market than our program because we have a hundred military spouses and veterans who are tapped into every market, and I think that they rely on that as a way to not implement change across the board.

Across the board, almost every single market, we are no longer competitive. Our kids cannot go to the level quality of schools and educations that used to be able to go to five, seven years ago. And this isn’t about going to the best schools. This is about maintaining the quality of education and the areas of which our families are able to live.

Seven years ago, very possible that a family could live in a place where you’re looking
at a four or a eight or a nine or a 10 school on gradeschools.com. Now, we’re looking closer with three, fours and fives. It really depends on your area. But the basic housing allowance as well as the pay have really not kept up with what we’ve seen in the market and what we’ve seen on inflation.

And there’s layers to that. It’s like, let me peel back the layers of me doing a TikTok about that. And then tons of military families hitting me in the comments. I was fine when I served 15 years ago. Absolutely. Things have changed. It’s ever-changing, and it is a difficult beast to manage. I think we’ve tried to take a simplified process to fix a complicated problem, and I think that we need-

Tori Dunlap:

Like we were talking about before. Yeah.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. And we need more information around it. My agents, my ambassadors, they are so dedicated to our space. Each one of them reaches out to their housing office and they’re like, “How can I help you better understand the local market so you can … ” Because they have to submit a report every year that then impacts the BAH rates. The problem is that person sometimes isn’t really tapped into what’s happening around that base. And then there’s a disconnect between what’s happens versus what’s actually needed to be successful.

But we are doing our best. I don’t want to sound cute and all because we have some great advocates in Congress. We have a number of programs that we’ve been reaching out to.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s important to acknowledge when shit’s hard. And I feel like, again, if somebody’s listening, and this is their reality, I’ve learned with financial advice too, it’s like sometimes just the rose colored unicorn that’s shitting butterflies is not what people need to hear. It’s just like, “This is the reality. Well, I don’t necessarily have a solution.”

Lauren Taylor:

Well, that’s life. Keep it going.

Tori Dunlap:

Right, right.

Lauren Taylor:

But hey, we’re working on it. I mean, the other thing is military housing is really tough right now. A couple years ago, there started to be a lot of stories of, because they moved to privatized businesses to manage a lot of the military housing, and so there was a lot of maintenance that was going undone. A lot of mold, a lot of burst pipes, a lot of medical issues. We have a ton of class action lawsuits right now from people who have medical issues because of what was they were experiencing in base housing. And we had some focus on it from the government for a little bit of time.

And ironically, Elizabeth Warren came out and was like, “We need better accountability.” And literally that week, the barracks at Fort Bragg, which by the way is managed by the government, not managed by privatized housing, mold everywhere, people getting sick. And I’m like, “You’re right. We need better accountability from both parts. It’s not one or the other. There’s no finger pointing here.” And that’s a huge issue that we’re facing right now is that even the housing that’s provides military families, a good portion of it is not safe.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my question was going to be what can we at the individual level do to solve it? And it sounds like your business is the step or one step of trying to navigate that.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah, I think that if I had advice for a military family who was looking to relocate, the hardest thing is that they have an end date. We have to be there in six weeks, so I can’t wait anything out.

Tori Dunlap:

There’s no flexibility.

Lauren Taylor:

There’s none. And I think that maybe that’s why I’m an advocate for homeownership. I think the VA home loan is probably one of the greatest wealth building tools that’s been provided to our military families.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. That’s why I was muted when you were talking about the VA. I gasped when they were like, “Yeah, they told us not to … ” I was like, what?

Lauren Taylor:

So, let’s talk about this though, because I feel like sometimes people get talked out of it. So, you and I come from a standpoint, we know saving 15 to 20% or even 3%, even saving 3% is a massive hurdle for most people.

Tori Dunlap:

Hard. Especially, I live in Seattle, you’re in Nash. These places are so expensive. Again, I’m talking to my real estate agent tonight, and I was just like, “This is going to be interesting.” I’m like, 900,000 for a two bedroom, two bath? Okay, all right. Okay.

Lauren Taylor:

So, well, the average person has to save three and a half percent and then closing costs, so let’s say closer to five, unless they get the-

Tori Dunlap:

And then PMI if you don’t have the full 20%. Yeah.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. So, all of that takes into consideration, but what it does is creates a natural threshold for homeownership, that the majority of people, that will be the struggle the rest of their life. And the longer that they wait to purchase a home, the more difficult it becomes because they have to keep up with the rental and prices. And so, there’s not as much disposable income to save. And so, the 0% down VA home loan, I mean, you can negotiate for the seller to pay your closing costs.

A couple years ago, it was a very real thing that I was helping families buy homes in San Diego and they would get refunded their $2,000 that they had to put in as a earnest money deposit, which is incredible. But with the market shift, obviously those trends change, guys. So, everyone, that wasn’t your experience, I’m sorry.

But that’s why the VA home loan is so powerful for our military families because it removes that threshold that everyone else is facing and you don’t have to buy rurally with the US like you do with the USDA loan. So, I would just sincerely consider it as someone, if you want to control your space, even looking at potentially a long-term investment. We have families who house hack, who literally move station to station and who purchase a house and then rent it out to another military family after they leave.

I’m going to speak directly to people right now. If you have a rental near a military installation, please message our page. We have great military families who want to rent from you.

Tori Dunlap:

I love it. So, I grew up in Lakewood, Washington or Tacoma, Washington, but went to school in Lakewood. And Lakewood is where the fort base or the Joint Base Lewis-McChord Air Force Base and now Army Base is, and it was a ton of military families at my school, and they would come for a few years and typically leave. I think one thing too that is, and I imagine you have so much to say about this, is really difficult is I remember being a kid and watching new kids come in and kids leave.

And even when I was seven, eight, nine years old, realizing how hard that must be to come into a new place to navigate new friendships. And especially as a kid, I understood that. But as an adult too, you’re lacking that community. You’re lacking potentially that support. Maybe you don’t have family in the area, you probably don’t. You don’t have friends who live here. So, how can we build community or how can military families build community and how can you combat that feeling of loneliness or lack of access to resources?

Lauren Taylor:

One of my favorite things, and this was not the reason why we started this program, but the byproduct of this program, is that when new members come in, we welcome them. I always tell my ambassadors, “Look, if you walked into a party and no one says, ‘Hey, I’m so glad you’re here,’ how long would you say or how welcome would you feel?”

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, yeah, five minutes.

Lauren Taylor:

So, we welcome them. Yeah, right. “Peace out. Thanks for the invite, I guess.” And the coolest things are happening in the comments, Tori. It would be like, “Oh, my god, we went to flight school together. Oh, you guys are coming here. I’m so excited.” Tear Lauren Taylor‘s heart apart. The best pay it forward experience is watching people reconnect in our communities because they’re all run through Facebook groups. So, number one, get plugged in early and be honest about what you’re facing.

So, come from a place in the group. Now, you can do anonymous posts. You used to not be able to do that. But I would say, say what you’re facing, say, “Guys, I’m scared. My kids are struggling right now. They need friends. Who has boys five, seven, and eight.” We are all facing the same struggles. Our families are all facing the same obstacles. And the better that we can create solutions for us, by us, because we’re the only ones who really understand that, the better off we’re all going to be.

So, I always encourage people to get plugged in early and to tell people what you need. Tell people what you’re struggling with because nine times out of 10, there’s someone in the group who is willing to be that solution for you because someone else is that solution for them, or no one was that solution for them and that’s what they prayed for too.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah. As a military family, how are you navigating just knowing, okay, there is the VA loan option or there is this resource? Where do you get plugged into the financial resources or community for military families?

Lauren Taylor:

So, that one’s tough too because the military’s been very hands off. They don’t really want champion like a privatized company, and I don’t really know … So, there is a couple companies who have resources who have big names in the military community, got Navy feds, you got USAA. But beyond that, there’s not a lot of local support or resources. There is some influencers who teach specifically on military. I don’t know if I have a perfect solution for that because they’ve taken such a hands-off approach. It’s created such a gap in the market and that’s the one that we stepped in to fill with real estate.

But in terms of investing, there’s such a limited information. No one’s sitting you down to tell you about your TSP. No one’s sitting you down to tell you what you should be invested in, how much you should save.

Tori Dunlap:

I mean, when you make that point, no one’s doing that for the general civilian population either. It’s rounded back to our conversation about financial literacy, but no one’s doing that either.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah.

Lauren Taylor:

It’s hard. Yeah, it is tough. But that is, we serve a very interesting gap because we’re not a Navy Fed. We’re not USAA. And so, what a lot of people won’t know, especially if you go through one of those home buying programs, is that they charge the agent 35% of their commission-ish. Don’t send me a letter-ish, okay? But this was a big conversation for me when we expanded Pay-It-Forward, is that I didn’t want a referral model as an agent who was serving our families.

I was like, “I don’t want to charge people 30, 35%.” I don’t feel like that best serves a member. I feel like I was in a position where a very, very well-known, very, very well-known company was like, “Okay, great, and that’s just going to be 50%.” And I’m a military spouse and my husband employed and I have two babies on my hip and I’m nursing my newborn. And I’m like, what makes you think I have the capacity to help and to lead and to serve for half of what I would make if I made this relationship on my own?

So, that is something I feel like military families have to be aware of is that when you go through one of those programs, sometimes you’ll get a rebate, which is great, but I used to tell people, look, buying a house is not really the time to make money. You’re choosing an agent, god, I’m going to get so much bad feedback, but I’m here for you, guys.

You’re choosing an agent based on the recommendation of a company who’s charging that agent 35%, which means that agent has less leverage to actually help you with the transaction, which a lot of agents are willing to do. And not only that, you’re doing it for 1500 bucks. When I’m negotiating your deal, 1500 bucks is a spit in the bucket. We’re talking about 10, 20 grand. So, in terms of what a solid negotiator can do on your behalf.

So, I just would recommend that people ask, what’s the business relationship here? Is this company that you found you through, are they charging you to work with me? And how does that impact where I fall on your priorities in terms of working with, because it’s just not possible to attract top talent when you’re charging people 50% of what it takes them to live.

Tori Dunlap:

You went into real estate, which is its own way of course, of building a small business. What were some of the surprising parts about starting a small business and working for yourself, and then to make it even more granular as a military family, what are the challenges to running a business in that environment?

Lauren Taylor:

Oh, goodness. Okay. So, first of all, I think I was very good at selling houses. I was not a great business owner. That was something I had to learn. I didn’t have a business degree. So, I will tell you, I made great money my first year, and I turned to my husband and I was like, “I don’t think that was worth it.”

From the person who was shopping at Dollar Tree, I literally turned to him and was like, “Maybe I’ll just go get a $50,000 a year salary job,” because I didn’t know how to run a business. The idea of taxes terrified me. Do I payroll myself? All of that. Those things that no one talks about, that I just want to sell houses. I didn’t want to be a business owner.

Tori Dunlap:

You’re like, “I don’t know what to do when I get this money. I don’t know what to do with it.” Yeah.

Lauren Taylor:

Absolutely. So, that took a little bit of time to figure out. And that is a path I try to help new agents take is that how do you become a business owner, not just a realtor is a big transition. And there’s a lot of agents who will just live in this exhausted phase. We have a very high burnout phase because they ever move into the space of being a business owner.

Now, on the real estate side, we were only in there for seven years, so we are out. We were facing, and this is something a lot of military families face, is that my oldest sons were in previous relationship. And so, my husband was faced with, okay, if we get moved and his father is still here, then am I going to geo batch? Which means that the dad essentially moves away from the family and the mom holds down the homestead, which is a very real thing, is to keep stability in the house. I’m going to stay here and you’re going to go to Virginia. You’re going to go wherever you are. Or are we going to go to court and try to take him with us? And that’s expensive.

And when face it with that crossroad, my husband said, and this man has a heart of service. That is what he was born to do. He said, “I can’t be away from my boys and I can’t take our oldest son away from his dad. I have a very strong relationship. That is not who we are and what we want to be about.” And so, he walked, he gave us notice, and so we decided to step down and serve in a different way as a family.

So, there’s all these extra layers of running. I have families right now who their husbands get orders, but they have a booming real estate business now. So, it’s like, do I bring a spouse to help support me here or do I just, “Okay, that was great. It was really hard for the first three years. Now, I got things running. We’re just going to close up shop and move to the next place.”

Tori Dunlap:

Well, and what a sacrifice we’re asking typically women to make. And I was thinking about that as you were talking of, I mean, this is a larger conversation, again, with non-military families do, about the domestic labor that typically women do, the uncompensated emotional labor just holding down the fort. The cooking, the cleaning, the housekeeping, child-rearing and the child care taking, and then you throw in, well, my spouse is never home, and that’s literally his job.

And then if you have a business that is booming, yeah, you’re exactly right. Do I shutter it? Like the sacrifices you then have to make for your own career, for your own stability, for your own happiness in order to support this other person.

Lauren Taylor:

And here’s the other thing. A lot of people say, “Well, but then they could just quit.” And my comments where I’m like, “We’re having these struggles as a family to keep up with the inflation and the BAH and our military families are hurting,” people are like, “Well, just quit.” I’m like, “We’re contractually obligated for the next 10 year. We don’t get to quit.” You don’t get to just go get another job to get a better pay raise. You’re stuck in the system.

Tori Dunlap:

Right. Well, and I talk about that at Her First $100K all the time, which is like you have an emergency fund, so you can leave a bad situation you don’t want to be in anymore, but yeah, what if you literally can’t leave?

Lauren Taylor:

They can’t leave. Look, it’s not an easy life, but it’s also very rewarding. I feel super blessed because I’ve been able to see these problems and see these snitch, and I’m a natural problem solver. So, at least, we’ve been able to create a solution for this small sliver. And I know there’s people out there like me. I think that the growth of social media has been great for the military community because it’s allowed us to connect more.

Ten, 15 years ago when no one was on Facebook, you didn’t see those connections. You really were on an island. And you did not know who was there until you got there. So, that’s a really new phenomenon for our community. And so, watching, seeing how that evolves into these networks of support is also a really neat place to be.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, and speaking of social media, you had this great quote that, “Likes and follows will not feed my family.” Can you elaborate on that and why? It’s just a really important thing to keep in mind.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. So, after a group Pay-It-Forward, which has been so successful on Facebook, I stumbled across TikTok and I was a big consumer for quite some time. And then December 2nd of 2021, I was like, “I might give this a go,” and group rather quickly, 100,000 followers, which is awesome. Nothing compared to you, but the standards that you set, Tori, are hard to reach. But we grew fast and-

Tori Dunlap:

It was very fast for us too, and it’s something that we’re constantly struggling with. So, that’s kind, but also TikTok is both the best part of my business and the worst part of our business. Yeah.

Lauren Taylor:

Yes. And especially in the real estate community. Apologies saying realtors are listening, but we’re a little bit of an ego-driven community if you haven’t gotten to know us. There’s a good portion of us who don’t necessarily know how to develop client relationships without telling people how great we are all the time, versus just serving and creating solutions and programs that actually solve problems.

And so, when I start talking to agents and they’d be like, “Oh, I want to grow my community. I want to grow my following. I want to start bringing clients in through this process.” They’d be like, “Okay, great. How quickly can I get to 10,000 followers?” Or they would buy 10,000 followers. And I’m like, “That’s a number that means nothing. It means zero things other than your ego.”

I was actually working with one of my agents in San Diego last week, and she had great, great one-liner just like that. She’s like, “Look, I am less interested in how it looks. I’m more interested in making money.” And I just feel
like if we came from a place of service and a place of value, the likes and followers come. That’s how I’ve always worked on all of my programs, whether it’s PCS Pay-It-Forward, give the people what they actually need. Solve their problem.

Tori Dunlap:

I say serve before you sell. That’s my thing is serve before you sell.

Lauren Taylor:

Yes.

Tori Dunlap:

Always, always, always.

Lauren Taylor:

And even now, this last month I decided, oh, I’m going to do this on Instagram. I hit 30,000 followers last night on Instagram. Super exciting. But people are like, “What’s the secret?” I’m like, “Let’s just watch all the videos. I’ve been telling you exactly what the secrets are. This is it.”

Tori Dunlap:

This is so funny. Classic. We’re in a simulation. Literally, somebody asked me yesterday. I did a LinkedIn thing of if you had 60 minutes to ask me any question you wanted, what would you ask? And somebody was like, “How did you build this business? Or how did you learn? Because you didn’t go to school for finance. You didn’t go to school for business.” And I’m like, “I watched other people. People give you masterclass in how to create businesses by them running their own businesses.” And now these are all colleagues of mine.

Ramit Sethi, I’ve been watching his business for years. Jenna Kutcher, Tiffany, Aliche, all of these people who I would watch and be like, “Oh, they put their sales pages. They’ve structured them this way, and oh, they have the button there. Oh, and that’s the copy they use on the button. Interesting.” Or, “Oh, this person put together an Instagram caption like this, and oh, I see that CTA at the end, a call to action at the end. Interesting.” People are giving you MBAs for free. You just have to watch. You just have to watch what’s happening. Yes.

Lauren Taylor:

No, I have a video, not going super viral this week, but I was trying to explain to people, because I’m not that colors behind you, I’m not the overly produced. I’m literally text on screen bringing value.

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, I’m showing up, I am in no makeup and I got a Timothée Chalamet cardboard cutout behind me. That’s what we’re doing.

Lauren Taylor:

It’s authentic. And this is the year of the anti-influencer guys. So, if you think you have to be something you don’t, just come in and be who you are. But I tell people all the time, you don’t have to be this produced version of yourself. You just have to show up and be who you are. And there’s this natural gap in the market for who you are. But it takes time to show up as that person. So, I always recommend when someone’s starting to post three to four small videos a day. I’m not talking YouTube videos. I’m talking like 10-second videos here.

And because in video one and two, you show up as a person that you think other people want to see. You show up as the person that you think someone wants to buy a house from, that you think someone wants to hire as a financial advisor. In videos three or four, you stop caring as much and you start showing up as you, and that’s the person I want to see.

And it takes time for people to get to that space. But then once you find that natural gap, the market’s waiting for you. Like you. You felt a perfectly natural gap and the market was waiting for you just to step into it. Imagine if you didn’t have the courage to do that, how sad that would’ve been.

Tori Dunlap:

Well, let’s talk about that for a second. This is the military spouse, military family aside, anybody who’s trying to build a business, the thing I hear, and I’m sure you hear all the time, is “There’s somebody doing that already. So, I’m not going to.” And yeah, there’s been plenty of people. I’m not the first person to talk about financial feminism. I’m not the first person to dunk on Dave Ramsey. However, I think I’m the best at it. Most of our advice in the personal finance community is just the same advice, tweaked slightly to talk to a certain group.

But you’re exactly right. If I had sat this one out because, “Oh, there’s plenty of photographers, why would I take photos? There’s plenty of writers.” I think it was Jannese who came on, Yo Quiero Dinero, who we had on the show, and she was like, “Go to the bread aisle.”

Lauren Taylor:

Go to the toothpaste aisle.

Tori Dunlap:

Right. How many brands of bread are there? And then there’s English muffins and bagels, and there’s six different kinds of bagels. So, if you’re that person who’s out there and who’s like, “There’s already somebody doing it.” No, there’s not. There’s not.

Lauren Taylor:

Well, I can legitimately, confidently say that I did something first and it sucked. So, can we tell that story? So, one of the thing things that we used to do and our agents still do, is we do virtual house hunting. So, my agents will sometimes do 360 walkthroughs of properties because we’re buying houses from across the country, and sometimes we can’t fly out and see them ourselves. So, it becomes listing pictures are a specific angle. They’re going to sometimes be positioned to market the home. That’s what they are. So, this is the authentic, no filter view of these properties.

And I saw some lady in San Diego who was on the news, and it was like she sold a house via FaceTime, which is just a very basic level virtual house hunting. And my agents have been doing that for a long time. They had been doing these long distance showings using their phone, and then we use 360 cameras. And so, I built an entire software called Savvy House Hunting, which still exists today, which is an incredible portal where you can share. I don’t own anymore. But an incredible portal where you can share live 360 walkthroughs of property, so you can actually see what it’s like to be in that home.

Do you know how difficult it is to explain to someone something that’s never existed before? The reason why so many people are doing it is because there’s a need for it.

Tori Dunlap:

We’re having that experience with our investing education platform because it’s the hybrid of a bunch of different things. And I’m like, yes, you can invest on it, but also we’re not just dumping you in. You get to be guided about how to invest. And people are like, “Oh, so it’s an app and I can get it in the App Store.” And I’m like, “No, not yet. Not exactly.” Yeah. It’s like Duolingo meets Headspace, but also meets a live workshop. Yeah, it’s very difficult to describe.

Lauren Taylor:

Everyone
wants to be an innovator. Believe me, when you go consumer education, you have to describe to someone how this is new and different. It is very difficult. So, even an inventor. But when you’re looking at a space, I do think it is difficult to create something out of nothing. It is easier to create something better of something already exist.

I wasn’t the first person who created a military relocation network. I saw the gaps and the problems that the current networks created and had, and then we did it differently to fill those gaps. And of course, we have now competitors coming around who are trying to fill the gaps that maybe they think we have, but there is more than enough people who need to be served. How many billions of people in this world?

And the other thing is is that, sorry, this is where I ramble and I even did a post about this. I was worried about rambling, but we’re just going to keep going with it. People come on these platforms and they want millions of views and millions of views and millions of views in reality, like a hundred clients will change your life. We don’t need million views. We don’t need it.

Tori Dunlap:

And also the people who do get a million views have no idea what to do once they’ve gotten it, which I will do in a whole upper episode. But our most viral video was a seven million viewed video, and I think three or four million of that came in the first week. From that one video in one week, we got 100,000 email subscribers.

Lauren Taylor:

That’s amazing.

Tori Dunlap:

Because we knew what to do with virality. It wasn’t just like, “It’s fun.” It was like, “Okay, this is fun.” And we’ve set up a system to be able to support it.

Lauren Taylor:

So, I had one of my agents who were working on her business, and she had a video go viral on TikTok three weeks ago. We just started working together four weeks ago. She had a video go viral. It must have been two weeks ago, hit 4.6 million views, had 2000 leads and is booked out till June. And when she called me, she was like, “What do I do?” I was like, “Get your link in bio. And now, the training is already up. Get it in now. You capture as much information possible. And by the way, if they’re booked at June, they’re not going to show up. We need to get them in the next 30 days or they’re gone.”

So, we need to increase our service, otherwise they’re gone. It’s great that we created the relationship, but no one’s going to-

Tori Dunlap:

Because they want it now.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. To get that information for June. So, do we go to a webinar? Do we go to a training panel? But yeah, the ability to know what to do, how to capture, and then grow from there, and then turn those views into paying clients and paying your mortgage and feeding your family, which I’d like to remind people, that’s the only thing we’re here to do is feed our families. It’s not about buying a Lamborghini. It’s hard. It’s an art.

Tori Dunlap:

That’d be fun though.

Lauren Taylor:

Yeah. I’d rather rent one. You’re going to buy a Lamborghini, Tori? That’s your vibe?

Tori Dunlap:

No, I’m going to buy a Mustang.

Lauren Taylor:

Okay, good. Go for it. Whatever makes you happy. Whatever brings you joy.

Tori Dunlap:

It’s hard though because in Seattle, it’s so impractical, but I have now been in two different warm locations in the past two years where I’ve rented a Mustang, and it was like my soul came into being and I was like, “All right.” Kristen knows. Kristen drove around with me in it, but I love it. It’s like an extension of my personality and I’m like, “I think this is what I need to do at some point.”

Lauren Taylor:

So, one of the things I love to do with our agents, I think that you’ve found this, is that you have to be able to make money at what you do for a living, but you also have to be able to have joy. What you just described there is absolute joy, and sometimes it’s not money-making activity. It’s a joy making activity. But when you put the two together, you find a deep amount of purpose and then you can show up every single day. And it doesn’t feel like you’re working.

But you and I are both very practical people. We will almost always choose to put in our Roth IRA versus buying a Mustang. But when you are disciplined and you do something where you have purpose, where you show up every single day because it doesn’t feel like a job, you get the luxury of investing in things that are just joyful. So, you should not feel bad about it. I absolutely love it. If you don’t do it, you’re setting a bad example for your following. I’m going to challenge you.

Tori Dunlap:

Kate, because it feels, yeah, even to me is it’s like it’s a guilty purchase. It’s ridiculous. It’s completely impractical.

Lauren Taylor:

Should I get your book out? Where’s the chapter about where women feel bad about buying things?

Tori Dunlap:

Yes. Oh, I’m well aware. I am my own little thesis. No, but I mean, we can have a whole hour-long discussion about this and we will wrap this up in a second. But you never feel like you’re doing enough. And it’s also, as women, you are ashamed to no matter what you do. So, you may as well just do whatever the fuck you want.

Lauren Taylor:

That’s very true.

Tori Dunlap:

Yeah.

Lauren Taylor:

Also, if you come from the intention of truly wanting to serve people and help people grow, you will always give more than you get. I mean, there are millions of people that you have changed their life. You deserve this.

Tori Dunlap:

Oh, thank you. Right back at you. So, tell us about Pay-It-Forward.

Lauren Taylor:

So, PCS Pay-It-Forward, you can find us on Facebook. Go to the page, find your local community. I have incredible agents who are waiting their help. We call them ambassadors. They are all military spouses and veterans. They will go the extra mile for you to help you find your home. Whether you buy, sell, or rent, go
into base housing. It does not matter. We’re here to help make things just a little bit easier.

Tori Dunlap:

I love it. And where can people find you?

Lauren Taylor:

You can find me @likelaurentaylor on both TikTok and Instagram. I love to connect if there’s any way I can ever help you. I love the messages. So, if there’s anything I ever do to make your life a little bit easier, I do tons of training. So, send me the topic. I’m sure I have an hour-long training on it, and then I’ll send it to you.

Tori Dunlap:

I love it. Thanks for being here.

Lauren Taylor:

You’re so welcome. Thank you for having me.

Tori Dunlap:

Thank you again to Lauren for joining us for this episode. If you have friends or family in the military, please share this episode and honestly, all of our episodes in our show with them. This show continues to go on because of your support and listens and shares. And a reminder, if you’re interested in joining our Stock Market School, our exclusive community that teaches you step by step how to invest, you can do so at the link in our show notes. Thanks again for joining us. Make sure to check out the show notes for more information on Lauren and all of our amazing guests. Thanks for being here, Financial Feminist. We appreciate it and we’ll catch you later.

Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist at Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Cherise Wade, Alena Helzer, Paulina Isaac, Sophia Cohen, Kahlil Dumas, Elizabeth McCumber, Beth Bowen, and Amanda Leffew. Research by Ariel Johnson. Audio Engineering by Austin Fields. 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 team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com or follow us on Instagram, @financialfeministpodcast.