Welcome to the Bigger Pogets Money Podcast where we interview Nicole Lappen from Money Rehab and talk about rehabbing your finances.

Hello, hello, hello, my name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my financial Mr. Fixit cohost, Scott Trench.

Thanks Mindy great to be here and we're gonna hammer home a lot of financial tips today.

That was good, I like that.

Oh my god. And again. All right Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you're starting or how much you love a good dad joke.

That's right whether you want to retire early and travel the world going to make big time investments and assets like real estate start your own business or just become a little bit more financially literate.

We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.

All right Scott you know me you know I love a good rehab project and you know I love money so of course I'm gonna be in love with this show today we talked to Nicole Lappen from Money Rehab and we talk about fixing your finances getting your finances in order and all things money.

Love it it was a great episode we really learned a lot from Nicole and and what a treat to have her on the show today it was a treat before we bring in Nicole we have a new segment called the money moment where we share money hack tip or trick to help you on your financial journey today's money moment is are you done with a book or a textbook rather than donated or have a collect dust sell it create an ebay account use Facebook marketplace or go to a local use bookstore.

Do you have a money tip to share with us email money moment at bigger pockets dot com Nicole Lappen is a New York Times best selling author the host of the podcast money rehab and the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand you may have seen her as a news anchor on CNBC CNN and Bloomberg as well as a financial correspondent for morning Joe and the today show Nicole welcome to the bigger pockets money podcast I'm so excited to talk to you today.

I'm more excited Mindy thinks I'm a true having me if we're going to have an exciting off I'm going to win okay Carol it's your show you win I'm always excited about everything and I am excited about your money story let's look at where your journey with money begins whoo well I'm the least likely person to be a money expert or to have my own money together much less teach other people about money I grew up in an immigrant family so first generation American like no disability.

I was a discussion about the Wall Street Journal or stocks or bonds or any of that my family just used cash we didn't have a lot of it but that was the idea that if you didn't have money you didn't buy something and so I was super scared of all traditional money concepts my boyfriend in high school said he wanted to be a hedge fund manager and I thought he wanted to be in gardening.

So I was like the most clueless and I just needed a job and when I was 18 I was offered a job on the floor of the Chicago Merck which at the time I thought was a mall it's not a mall it's the it's a stock exchange in Chicago and I lied and said that I knew about money news and I figured it out and so what I realized is that money is language like anything else we just don't have a

reset a stone for this language growing up I didn't in my family if you guys are like me some families doing that's awesome but we don't learn this stuff in school so I learned it at the school of heart knocks and you know if you go to Wall Street you know speak the language of money you'll be confused right if you go to Japan and you

don't speak Japanese like you will be confused until you learn the language and they're like oh yeah duh all those words that I thought were so complicated like obviously I know what that means but only after you learn it how about how about the world of

personal finance did you find that that was foreign to you as well like maybe you learned corporate finance or the language of stocks and trading but maybe what did you find that

correlated personal finance or that was a separate journey in addition to that oh great question Scott totally separate journey so while I was

covering business news my personal finances were totally in shambles and I say this oh gosh 20 years later with a badge of honor but at the time I was so

embarrassed right because I was talking about money news to the world and I had a boatload of debt myself once I finally got a credit card because my family didn't

believe in debt or credit cards or mortgages or anything I went balls to the wall like racked up a bunch of credit card debt and was still saving green cash

under the sink like my parents did and yeah I had to figure out how to get out of it the hard way and once I did I came up with a little plan for myself I

said I'm never going back and when I was on those news networks talking to a lot of old rich white dudes about money which is not an editorialization

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