0:00:02 - (Samantha): Hey, everyone. Welcome back to building the abundant woman. I have a amazing guest with me here today. Her name is Myrna Lane Hippolyte. She is a financial wealth strategist. She is going to talk to us about building wealth one stock at a time. So welcome, Myrna. I'm so glad you're here. Tell everyone all about you.

0:00:22 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Thank you, Samantha, for having me here. I'm really happy to be here. And as Samantha mentioned, my name is Myrna Lane Hippolyte, and I am a financial well coach, a wealth strategist, and essentially, I work with women, powerhouse women, to help them turn their amazing income into their first million dollars of net worth, even if they're new to investing in the stock market. I firmly believe that, you know, financial wellness, managing your money, should be a form of self care. Right. We often think of things like massages, pedicures, you know, Netflix and chill as form of self care. But really, managing your money can be a form of self care.

0:01:02 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): And if your financial house is not an order, I don't care what you tell me. The rest of your house is not going to be an order. So, financial wellness, having that sense of safety and security when it comes to your money, knowing that if something unexpected happens, you have funds to fall back on, and essentially living your best life, doing more than just paying bills, right. You want to live your life and do more than just pay bills.

0:01:27 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): So all of that is part of financial wellness. And that's really what I help my clients achieve, making sure that they got a handle on their money. But my specialty really is teaching women how to invest in the stock market, teaching them how to build wealth over time with the stock market. And a lot of my clients tend to be a little bit intimidated or they say, well, I'm a busy mom. I don't have time, and I'm a mom, which I forgot to mention.

0:01:55 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): I am a mom of two. I have a 19 year old daughter and a 15 year old son. So my daughter's in college right now. So that's a whole different conversation that people don't tell you about when your kid goes away, and then my son's in high school. So that that's an adventure in and of itself. But, you know, I help other moms as well build wealth, particularly when it comes to looking at their money. And I established my business because I wanted to do that and help others.

0:02:27 - (Samantha): Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I'm sure you're going through it. I'm sure with your daughter just, you know, going off to college, that's a whole new, like, change of life.

0:02:37 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yes. People don't tell you about that?

0:02:41 - (Samantha): Well, I'm sure. And that is, I'm kind of in the new part of things. I got toddlers. So, you know, that's always good to have people that are, like, ahead of you. Like, hey, you're going to want to, like, just mentally prepare for these things.

0:02:55 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yes, prepare.

0:02:57 - (Samantha): But no, I love what you do because I think that in general, women don't have the knowledge that they need to have to make these financial investments. And I think a lot of women are like, they don't know how to feel comfortable having wealth. And so I think that's a really important thing is a lot of times it's because we don't understand it. And when people break it down, make it simple, make it where we can understand, accumulate, invest all of those good things, you are just going to change so many lives by what you do. And I just can't wait to hear more about your story. So tell us, like, where did you start with this? What got you into doing this?

0:03:39 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Well, I have about 30 years of experience in the finance realm. Yeah, I know I look young, but you have about 30 years of experience in the finance realm. And I kind of learned it along the way by my different roles. Right. I used to be an equity analyst working for an investment bank. You know, the type of people who pour over the financial statements to pick, make recommendations for stocks. So it was throughout my career, really, because I'm originally from Haiti, of haitian background and the way my parents raised me, it was the trifecta of success, which is you work hard, you go to school, you go to college, and then you get a good job, that's it. You've made it after that.

0:04:23 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): That's the trifecta of success. And I'm sure that a lot of your listeners are familiar with that trifecta of success. But nobody told me how to manage my money and then moving on in life. So I kind of self taught myself through my different roles, jobs, and had my securities licenses and all that good stuff. But throughout the course of life, people like, even my mother, my friends. So they were in unions, they were in partnerships, they were out there building assets with a partner.

0:04:55 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): And then after 20 plus years of working with a partner, you turn around and the lovely, your life turns into your worst nemesis, and then you got nothing to show for it. Coming out of that 20 year union where you spent your time building assets, why? Because you weren't paying attention to what was happening. You weren't paying attention to your money. You didn't know what was happening. You weren't an active participant in those money decisions.

0:05:18 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): And so that happened to my mother. I saw it happen to my mother. It happened to friends and family. And so I really decided at the end of 2020 to start my business, empower financial wellness, so that I can help women understand what's going on with their money. Make things like investing in the stock market less intimidating so that they can understand how to build wealth and become active participants. Whether they're in that marriage where somebody else is making most of the decisions or whether they're alone, they end up divorced or without a partner and don't know what to do. I mean, as women, our lifespans are actually longer than men, right? We live our. The average lifespan is about 81 years old for a woman, and for men, it's lower than that. So at some point, as women, you're probably going to end up alone, unfortunately, and you're going to have to know what to do, whether you're single, married, divorced, widowed, whatever. You're going to have to learn what to do. And so I felt the urgency, you know, as I got into my fifties, I was like, what am I doing with my life now that one of my kids is out of the nest? I got one more left, three more years. I figured, okay, Myrna, figure out, what is your purpose? What do you want to do?

0:06:39 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): And this is kind of why I decided to do what I am doing right now, which is helping to empower women, helping them to build wealth.

0:06:47 - (Samantha): Yeah. And I think that's such a great thing, because even in a stable, loving, healthy marriage is like. I think it's still very empowering to understand, you know, how money works, how that cycle of investing, doing more than paying bills. And I think a lot of times when we don't have good financial understanding is like, then we don't have anything to pass on to our children, so then they don't have good financial understanding, and we see this next generation where it's like they're getting out on their own. They have no idea how to, like, build an emergency fund, how to set back for retirement, how to do all these things.

0:07:29 - (Samantha): And, yes, you can still, like, live and enjoy life, but, like, making those things a small priority now so they can be a bigger priority later. And I'm totally with you, is like, it's. I think we have to play an active role, like, not even just, like, within our family, but also understanding these things. So if we have somebody who's like managing our portfolio, like when they're talking to us, making sure that our money is actually working and growing and not just trusting somebody because they said they know what they're talking about.

0:08:03 - (Samantha): It's empowering and it's literacy that we need to have as we go through our lives. So that way we can make good financial decisions and then obviously pass that down. And I think that's one thing really like, that. You see, the wealthy do is they teach their children how to build wealth as where the mass. Majority of people teach their children how to make enough to pay bills. And I think we really need to reverse that to start having a, like, wealthier, financially healthier society. I mean, look at the credit card debt and things that people are into, how that's exploded.

0:08:38 - (Samantha): Like, do you have any, like, input on, like, how what you do can shift people from those things, like, you know, massive credit card debt?

0:08:46 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, first of all, one of the things that I teach is really making sure that you're optimizing your savings plan. So saving, you can't save your way to wealth. I don't care, you know, you just can't do it. But saving is a pillar, you know, of wealth. So no matter how wealthy you are, or if you live in paycheck to paycheck, you need to have money set aside. And I tell my clients that in order to get into that comfort zone, you need to have at least three to six months worth of your baseline expenses. That means that if today I say, Samantha, your sources of income are going to dry up.

0:09:27 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): There are still bills that are going to have to be paid. You might still need the Internet to go out there and get more business or apply for a job. You still need a roof over your head. You still got to eat those baseline expenses, three to six months worth of those you need to have set aside in a savings account. And the savings account that at this point generates at least 4% interest. Now, if you are not generating at least 4% interest on your money right now as I'm speaking to you, then that means you need to go to your bank and ask them what have they done for you lately and what can they do for you?

0:10:02 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yeah, and look for a high yield savings account or talk to your bank for something that's going to get 4%, because that's going to be helping you build wealth, even if it's your, your savings account, your peace of mind funds, I don't like to call them emergency funds, peace of mind funds, because emergency notes something bad's gonna happen, some emergency. Whereas peace of mind is just peace of mind. If something unexpected happens, you're good.

0:10:28 - (Samantha): You're peace of mind. Yeah. And that's what, like, my coach says this, too. She doesn't call them budget. She calls them alignment plans. And, like, how we speak over our money actually, like, dictates how it's gonna go. And so, like, I love that you said that that's not an emergency. It's a peace of mind. Because if we really start to reframe a lot of even those little things, those little foundational things, it really impacts how we, like, view money.

0:10:51 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yes, absolutely. And, you know, it's important to be able to build that first. But also, if you have debt, like you mentioned, the credit cards formulate a debt repayment plan that fits within your budget. So, yeah, budget can be considered a four letter word. I know, I know. So just think about your income tracking. However you can track your income and your expenses, if you want to call it that, however, which way you're tracking, understand that, hey, debt repayment plan needs to be part of it. How are you going to repay it when you're going to repay off, repay that debt?

0:11:24 - (Samantha): Yeah, I love that because I think sometimes people are like, I don't even know. You know, it's like, where do I start? And they're like, yeah, I want to build wealth. I want to do those things. But, like, man, like, what do you suggest first? Is like, building that emergency or, like, start paying down debt? Like, what's, what's the two big things that you would do before you started investing?

0:11:51 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Well, I would say build up that savings plan, but to me, it's not an either or. When it comes to investing, I think you need to have all three tracks, your savings, your repayment of debt and investing. Because Lord knows, if you got a lot of credit card debt, you don't want to wait. You don't want to wait to start to invest. Because one of the misconceptions is that people think it takes a lot of money to invest. It doesn't. With as little as $5 a day, you can make a difference and change the trajectory of your wealth, change the path for yourself, change the path for your kids. I mean, because, you know, you have a lot of mothers and listeners. I'm a mother.

0:12:29 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): I want my kids to not have to start from scratch like I did. You know, I want them to have the benefits. How many people have you known that say, okay, oh, my grandmother left me like a thousand shares of you know, merck stock when I was, like, you know, two years old, and, you know, they've got it made. They're in a much better position than if you didn't do anything at all.

0:12:50 - (Samantha): Yeah.

0:12:51 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): So starting them young and starting early is of critical importance. And so doing that, even with the little bit that you have, you go to Starbucks, right? God forbid, you know, you go get, you know, fancy double pump latte, this, that, the other. Go fancy. You're already spending five, six, seven, $8. You can just put that money aside and not go every day or skip a day and set it aside to invest.

0:13:17 - (Samantha): Yeah. And I think that's, like, a really big thing. And if anybody knows anything about my story, I am, like, the queen of I will not do anything if I don't have, like, if I don't have the money to do it. Like, I won't go get my hair done. I won't go get my nails done. I won't go get any of that stuff done if the things that I need to do, like, invest, all that kind of stuff is not done first. And, I mean, I went five years without getting my hair done.

0:13:46 - (Samantha): I went five years without getting my nails done. I went, like, I would not even sacrifice themselves. But you know what I'm saying? It's like, those priorities. So you, you know, whatever that is. Like, I don't go to Starbucks. I, you know, but for me, that was my Starbucks is like, those things were my Starbucks. And so it's like, I was willing to, like, I mean, my husband's has post, like, graduate degree, and he has student loans. And so we were like, hey, like, how minimal can we do this in order to start, like, putting back?

0:14:20 - (Samantha): And it was worth it to me to do those things, you know, for a while, because I was like, hey, like, I have two small children. Ain't nobody trying to, like, I'm not trying to impress anybody. Like, this is the time that I can really get, like, slim. And it may be different things for you. Maybe you shop too much, or maybe you, like, whatever that is. Is like you were saying is like, make sure that you're making even that $5 a day, like, be a priority.

0:14:48 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Absolutely.

0:14:50 - (Samantha): And so, yeah, so tell us, like, when people come to work with you, what does that transition look like? What? Like, do you have somebody that you could share, like, their success story with us or.

0:15:00 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Yes, I have several success stories, but one person that I'm going to really focus on is a client of mine, Sarah. And if you go to my Facebook you can definitely see, you know, all the different testimonials and success stories. But she essentially came to me. You know, she was making money, and she felt that I'm making this money, but I really don't think that I'm making the most of it, that I'm not maximizing it. I'm making some investments in my 401K, but that's essentially it.

0:15:32 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): So she came to me. She participated in one of my group coaching programs where we took a look at everything. We took a look at what she was spending. We found her own money. She didn't have to go work extra hours. It was more about finding money and plugging what I call money leaks, which tend to be some of those unconscious, impulsive type spending habits. Like, you know, you go through your statement and figure out, oh, I didn't realize I was spending that much money with Amazon.

0:15:59 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): You know, I love Amazon. It's just click, click, click. Convenience. You know, you could skip a grocery store trip with Amazon alone. So sometimes you don't realize that it's happening because it's so easy to click. Or you might have, like, Disney Plus, Hulu, Netflix, all those for the kids, and then the kids have grown, left the house, and you still got Disney plus and you're still paying for that.

0:16:19 - (Samantha): Yeah.

0:16:20 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Does that make sense? You got to analyze that. Or that gym membership where you said, oh, yeah, you signed up in January, now it's May, you never went, and you're still holding on to hope that you're going to go. You got to get rid of that. So plugging those money leaks. She was able to do that, my client, and then move into a point where she was investing monthly with a regular cadence. And then she decided to join my investing circle, which is a monthly membership where women can kind of come in and learn more about investing. And she was investing at a regular cadence and understood what she needed to do to make her own investment decisions, because before, she didn't really know what she should be looking at and her mutual funds, what she should be looking at in her stocks. And so she was able to do that and grow her portfolio by a factor of $33,000, which is no small feat.

0:17:09 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Get her finances together right where she realized where she was spending her money, and she didn't have, like, all this excess money and credit cards galore. She was able to trim that down and able to get more discipline when it came to her money and really helping her see that overall picture and discipline and putting in a budget which included, you know, a fun, really account, because a lot of times when we budget, we don't think about the fun part.

0:17:37 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): You need fun in your life. You need joy. So the things that bring you joy, you got to put that in the budget. Once you put in the budget, you know, you don't have to worry about it. And so worked with my client. She was able to, you know, amass all these funds and make good gains in her portfolio because we were able to identify what's her investor Persona. So when I say investor Persona, that means, hey, Samantha, you might want to be invested in one thing, and I may think, hey, I'm invested in something else. We may not be invested in the same thing.

0:18:10 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Investing preferences in the stock market are like food, right? Because some people like spicy food, some people are allergic to seafood. Some people, you know, are vegan, etcetera. The same way, like the stock market. Because if you're that type of person, where you going to take to the bed, if the market goes down 10% and you see your portfolio going down, you're going to take to the bed and be all depressed. There are certain investments that are not for you. Whereas if you're that type of person, that's like, okay, you're all gung ho. You see, it's a long term perspective.

0:18:39 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): You might have. You might say, okay, let me double down and pick up some more. When the market goes down at 10%, so people have different preferences. So my client, Sarah, she was able to identify what her risks preference was, her investor Persona, and was able to build up her portfolio by a factor of 33,000 in, like, a year. Wow. Which wouldn't have never happened if, you know, she hadn't gone through my program and hadn't realized that she needed to instill certain discipline along the way.

0:19:07 - (Samantha): Yes.

0:19:07 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): And the power of investing in the stock market.

0:19:10 - (Samantha): Yeah, like, that discipline is key is, like, when you have, when you work with somebody like you and you have great strategy, great insight, all those things, but the discipline comes from you. Like, you can tell your clients, hey, like, this is best case for you, but they ultimately have to have the discipline to do that. And I think that is perfect because you said that several times, and I was like, it's always the discipline that gets us.

0:19:36 - (Samantha): And discipline.

0:19:37 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): But it's also the mindset, too, Samantha, because if you go into it and you think, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to be able to do it, it's not going to happen. Right. Whereas if you come in with the attitudes like yeah, I've got this. Then there's a much, you know, bigger transformation when you think that you've got it. Because I have clients. For example, I had a client. She was, like, 60 years old, never invested in the stock market, but she was like, myrna, after hearing you, I know it's not too late for me. And she invested, and from September to today, was able to generate a 16% return on her portfolio.

0:20:11 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Someone who had never invested in her life and didn't know what the heck she was doing until she took my group coaching program.

0:20:16 - (Samantha): Wow, that's amazing. You are so amazing. Like, that is so cool. Look at these women's lives that you are changing. So if this woman listening in right now and she's like, yeah, I need all of that help. Like, where can she find you? Where can she get connected with you to start, like, making some better investment moves? Being confident in that, too, as well.

0:20:41 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Well, I have a website. My company website is empowerfinancialwellness.com, and I can also be reached on Facebook and LinkedIn under my name, Myrnalane Hippolyte. Those are my two main places. I'm also on Instagram. My Instagram handle is empower financial wellness.

0:21:02 - (Samantha): All right? And all of that will be linked up in the show notes, guys. So you can click through there, you can find her and get connected with her. I'm just so glad, like, this is why I love bringing on amazing women, so you guys can be more supported in every area, because I think that not only is abundant, like, abundance isn't just financial, it's learning that mindset, that discipline, that the things we love about motherhood, like, as me and her are both. We're both mothers, and we're doing these things right alongside having very abundant motherhoods as well. And so that's the wonderful part of why we do this. So that way you can be encouraged, you can go out, you can find the resources.

0:21:43 - (Samantha): There are so many amazing women out there that are ready to help you and get you pointed in the right direction. So, Myrna, thank you so much for being on today, and we will see everyone next time.

0:21:55 - (Myrna Lane Hippolyte): Thanks for having me.