Get Good with Money: 10 Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole: Ten Simple Steps to Becoming Financially Whole - Softcover

Tiffany The Budgetnista Aliche

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593232763 ISBN 13: 9780593232767

Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND USA TODAY BESTSELLER • A ten-step plan for finding peace, safety, and harmony with your money—no matter how big or small your goals and no matter how rocky the market might be—by the inspiring and savvy “Budgetnista.”

“No matter where you stand in your money journey, Get Good with Money has a lesson or two for you!”—Erin Lowry, bestselling author of the Broke Millennial series

Tiffany Aliche was a successful pre-school teacher with a healthy nest egg when a recession and advice from a shady advisor put her out of a job and into a huge financial hole. As she began to chart the path to her own financial rescue, the outline of her ten-step formula for attaining both financial security and peace of mind began to take shape. These principles have now helped more than one million women worldwide answer their most pressing financial questions: How to pay off debt? How to save money? How to build wealth?

Revealing this practical ten-step process for the first time in its entirety, Get Good with Money introduces the powerful concept of building wealth through financial wholeness: a realistic, achievable, and energizing alternative to get-rich-quick and over-complicated money management systems. With helpful checklists, worksheets, a tool kit of resources, and advanced advice from experts who Tiffany herself relies on (her “Budgetnista Boosters”), Get Good with Money gets crystal clear on the short-term actions that lead to long-term goals, including:

• A simple technique to determine your baseline or “noodle budget,” examine and systemize your expenses, and lay out a plan that allows you to say yes to your dreams.
• An assessment tool that helps you understand whether you have a “don't make enough” problem or a “spend too much” issue—as well as ways to fix both.
• Best practices for saving for a rainy day (aka job loss), a big-ticket item (a house, a trip, a car), and money that can be invested for your future.
• Detailed advice and action steps for taking charge of your credit score, maximizing bill-paying automation, savings and investing, and calculating your life, disability, and property insurance needs.
• Ways to protect your beneficiaries' future, and ensure that your financial wishes will stand the test of time.

An invaluable guide to cultivating good financial habits and making your money work for you, Get Good with Money will help you build a solid foundation for your life (and legacy) that’s rich in every way.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tiffany Aliche, aka "The Budgetnista," co-hosts the award-winning Brown Ambition podcast, appears as a financial expert on The Real, and runs an online school, the Live Richer Academy, through which she has taught thousands of women how to create, implement, and automate their financial plans. She has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Black Enterprise, Reader's Digest, USA Today, Ebony, Forbes, Redbook, The New York Times, Fast Company, and U.S. News & World Report and has been on the Today show, Good Morning America, and CNN. A repeat speaker at EssenceFest and The Watermark/Women's Conference, she has also taped a series of financial tips for CNBC that reaches eighty million unique viewers each month.

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Chapter 1

Before We Begin: Get to Know Financial Wholeness

Seven years after starting my business I was making more money a month than I used to make in a year teaching preschool. I had more than enough to live on and was able to dig myself out of my financial hole. I paid off the $35,000 in credit card debt that I’d accumulated from my run-in with Jack the Thief and the overpriced business course (see the introduction if you want to relive all that with me!), and I also paid off my $52,000 student loans. Once I was debt-free I was able to save almost 70% of my income and paid cash for a car (used, but certified and new to me) and a new house. The house was a foreclosure and therefore seriously discounted from what would have been the market price, but it was still a very big ticket item: $180,000. I was even able to pay off the remaining $120,000 on my parents’ mortgage. By most people’s standards, I was rolling in it!

But even though I was doing so well, I was more scared than I ever had been when I was a teacher and making so much less. In fact, despite making so much less then, I’d never been scared about handling my money at all when I was a teacher. So why was I so obsessed with having zero debt and stashing money away just in case? The short answer is that losing everything during the Great Recession had been traumatic, and I was emotionally scarred. I was living in a state of financial fear.

My own financial fears were obviously brought on by actual events—things that happened (and that I could have handled differently)—and so I felt I had a rational reason to fear financial downfall, but really it was an irrational fear of them happening again. Many people, including my former self, understandably live in financial fear based solely on the possibility of financial disaster. If the global pandemic of 2020 has taught us all anything, it’s that the unknown and unpredictable do happen—jobs and income and stability can disappear due to something simply in the air!

But when you are financially whole in the way I’ll teach you to be, you won’t have to live in fear of all that. You’ll have a plan for each area of your finances so that they are constantly working on your behalf, regardless of where you currently are in life. Financial wholeness has nothing to do with the tax bracket you’re in. Anyone, regardless of their income level or employment status—whether you’re making minimum wage or you’re a millionaire—can and should actively work toward becoming financially whole; its principles are relevant and applicable to all. Financial wholeness doesn’t stabilize just one aspect of your financial life, but all aspects of your financial life. This is why it can help you manage and sometimes even thrive during financially traumatic times.

The True Freedom of Financial Wholeness

Lots of financial advisors preach the power of financial freedom, or the idea that it’s possible to have enough money to support your lifestyle without having to work anymore. Sounds good on paper, right? But my own experience shows loud and clear that this kind of freedom won’t make you feel truly free. Despite my postrecession comeback, I was more on track financially as a teacher than I was as a burgeoning business owner earning much more. Why? Because as a teacher, I had a savings strategy, a debt payoff plan in place, a good credit score, adequate insurance for where I was in life, and I knew where my assets would go if I died (my sisters). I had an automated retirement account to which I contributed the maximum allowed each year. I had an emergency savings account and even had multiple streams of income from teaching, babysitting, and tutoring.

When I was financially free, I had a large cash reserve, but I hadn’t achieved many other critical financial pillars I needed to feel secure. I had never adjusted my insurance to cover my new way of life. I didn’t have a clear retirement plan that reflected my newfound standard of living, either. I didn’t have an updated estate plan or a way to grow and sustain wealth versus just save money. And I still didn’t have any place to go for professional financial advice. I was actually losing money because my fear kept me from investing in ways that could grow my wealth beyond my own earnings. Seriously—one financial planner I considered hiring laughed at me for having a ton of money in the bank and hardly any in my retirement account.

I was not at all a millionaire as a teacher. But I was maximizing my income and I had a clear plan in motion for each area of my finances. To repeat: I felt more secure making $39,000/year teaching preschool than I did as a business owner making more than $39,000/month. Just goes to show that a strong foundation can be built with much less than you think. And that wealth is more than just money in the bank!

The Ten Steps of Financial Wholeness

Even though I haven’t taught in a classroom in many years, I still think in terms of lesson plans and in this book it’s no different. There are ten lessons you need to learn, ten areas of your finances that need to be working in sync for you to get to financial wholeness. When all ten of these facets are in place, you’ll have a strong financial foundation—and that means it would take a lot to knock you down.

Financial wholeness is when all the aspects of your financial life are working together for your greatest good, your biggest benefit, and your richest life.

We’re going to take this a step at a time in the pages to come, but for now here’s the big picture. Here are the ten steps:

1. Budget Building: Learn how to create and semiautomate (automated transfers, bill pay, etc.) a personal budget and open the necessary checking and savings accounts to support your budget.

2. Save Like a Squirrel: Calculate your savings goal number that’s needed to meet at least three months of essential expenses for your household. Then calculate how much you need to save in each category of savings: emergency, goals, and investing. Learn how to prioritize and automate transfers to your savings accounts.

3. Dig Out of Debt: Get a clear picture of who and what you owe by writing down the components of your debt (i.e., amount owed, interest rate, due dates, etc.). Then choose a debt repayment strategy and use your bank’s online bill pay to automate your payoff plan.

4. Score High (Credit): Request your free FICO credit report and score to see where you stand. Make a list of the factors that are impacting your score and come up with a game plan to increase it to a 740 or higher.

5. Learn to Earn (Increase Your Income): List all the ways you’ve contributed value at your job in the last few years to make a good argument for a raise. Uncover your side hustle potential by making a list of the tasks you do at work, your education, and current skill set. Develop an action plan that lists what you’ll do next to increase your income.

6. Invest Like an Insider (Retirement and Wealth): Identify your retirement and wealth goals. Create and implement your investment plans with the help of your Human Resources representative, a certified financial planner, online tools, or by yourself. Commit to consistent contributions toward investing, to learn to leave it alone, and to give it opportunity to grow.

7. Get Good with Insurance: Make sure you have proper insurance coverage. That means understanding and calculating your needs around health, life, disability, property, and casualty (e.g., home and auto).

8. Grow Richish (Increase Your Net Worth): Learn how to calculate your net worth (owning more than you owe) and how to achieve,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Harmony/Rodale/Convergent
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593232763
• ISBN 13: 9780593232767
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 385
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Rodale; https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/imprints/A6/rodale-books/books; ; Attn: Andrea T Sheridan 1745 BROADWAY, 14-1; NEW YORK; NY; 10019; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar