Don't make these financial mistakes

Life Kit

NPR

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Education, Business

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Financial educator Yanely Espinal shares her don'ts when it comes to money. Don't co-sign loans. Don't make hype-driven investments. Don't spend money you don't have. If you've been making these missteps, don't worry — Espinal has advice on how to create a path forward.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
0:05.4	RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.
0:12.1	Learn more at RWJF.org.
0:16.8	This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Mariel Segarra.
0:23.5	I want to start this episode by saying, we have all made financial mistakes.
0:28.9	Giannali Espinal is a financial educator.
0:31.5	She works at a nonprofit called NextGen Personal Finance, which is on a mission to try to get every single high school student in America guaranteed access to a semester course about personal finance. Which is on a mission to try to get every single high school student in America
0:38.6	guaranteed access to a semester course about personal finance and financial literacy.
0:43.7	Ten years ago, she was deep in credit card debt and counting down the days until she was going to
0:48.6	pay it off. In October of 2015, I was going to make my last credit card payment. So, like, October of 2015 was my mantra every day, right?
0:57.8	Like, I would wake up in 2014 to get dressed for work.
1:00.7	And I'm like, October 2015, October 2015, because I knew that was my normal start.
1:05.8	Like, I was going to be dead free on that day.
1:08.0	Yannelli wrote a book called Mind Your Money.
1:10.3	Being low-income and a daughter
1:12.1	of immigrants, I really had to learn the money system in the U.S. like by myself. And I wanted to
1:17.4	tell that story and help navigate, you know, credit scores and the stock market. One thing she's
1:22.8	learned. If you make a financial misstep, cut yourself some slack. It's okay that I made a bunch of mistakes.
1:28.6	It's okay that I thought I was J-Lo when I was 21 and I bought too many clothes and shoes. It's okay, look, the mistakes were made. I didn't really know how to approach my finances. I never had guidance. We never learn about these things. But now that I know better, I'm doing better. On this episode of Life Kit, Janelli and I are going to talk about some of the common financial mistakes she sees people make.
1:48.1	We'll break them up into three categories, borrowing money, making money on your money, and budgeting.
1:53.6	And the point of all this is not to shame you,
1:56.1	but to give you more information and help you figure out a path forward.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 3 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.