Janice Torres (4:04)
Hola, Je vas y Mamas. Welcome to my new podcast series where I am celebrating the juggle, the hustle and the heart of ambitious mujeres who are building their dreams with while raising their families. I'm Janice Torres, host of Yo Quier Dinero, a proud Latina financial coach, serial entrepreneur, and new mommy. This series was inspired by my own journey into motherhood and the realization that being a boss and a parent isn't about choosing one over the other. It's about redefining what success looks like for us. Each week I'm bringing you unfiltered conversations, expert advice, and plenty of real talk about balancing work, familia, and everything in between. Whether you're managing boardrooms or playrooms or both, this is your space to feel inspired, seen and supported. So grab your cafecito, hit play and join the movement. We're doing it all and we're doing it our way. I will be straight up with you and say that I did not think that motherhood and my financial independence journey was compatible. And I think a lot of that has to do with the experience that I had growing up, seeing my mom basically sacrifice her own financial security and having to do things like working part time, letting go of jobs that had benefits just because they were more flexible. I was under the impression for a very long time that motherhood was not conducive to being well off financially. And I write about that in detail in Financially lit, my book. So if you haven't read that, first of all, what are you doing with your life? You can grab a copy of financiallitbook.com and I talk about all of the trauma that I had around motherhood and money. And it is one of those topics that when I've had readers reach out to me, they have been like, oh my God, you have verbalized something that I have been feeling for a very long time, but I did not know how to put in words. So if you've ever felt like this money trauma potentially around motherhood because of what you saw your mom or mothers in your circle experience, know that you're not alone and know that that does not have to be the only narrative you're listening to Yo Quiero Dinero, a personal finance podcast for the modern Latina. I'm your host, Janice Torres, Award winning Latina personal finance expert. I didn't always have my financial shit together, but when I started looking for POC friendly personal finance podcasts, I couldn't find any. And so Yoquiero Dinero was born. On this show, I'll show you how to make dinero, how to keep your dinero, and most importantly, how to make it grow. Each week I'm connecting you with the most brilliant minds in the world of money and business so you can learn about investing, entrepreneurship and building wealth. The best part? I'm dishing up all this knowledge with a sassy side of sazon. So if you're ready to be Poderosa with your dinero, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in. Before we hop into today's conversation, I want to remind you to follow us on social if you're loving this podcast and you want more community, you want to find out more about our events and all the stuff that we have going on behind the scenes. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and everywhere else you love to hang out on the Internet. If you're loving this podcast, please take a moment to leave us a review. If you listen to us on Apple, it's the easiest way to share our podcast with people that you know and love and it helps us get discovered by amazing listeners like you. So take a moment, leave us a review, share us with your friends and family. Subscribe so that you never miss an episode and make sure to check out our blog, Yokierodineropodcast.com where you can sign up for our email list and you'll never miss an episode. Plus, you get exclusive invitations to our live events, special discounts for our digital courses, and as always, our best personal finance tips and advice to help you be Poderosa with your dinero. Thanks for listening. Now let's get into the episode. Hola, mi gente. Welcome back to Jo Quiero Dinero. And as you can see, if you're watching on the lovely YouTube, your girl's got a new set. All right, we are out here celebrating year six of the podcast. I literally cannot even believe that I'm saying that. I've been a podcaster for six years and doing this full time now for almost four years. This podcast has changed my life. You guys have watched it in real time. And one of the biggest life changes that I've had as of very recently is I am a new mom. Yes. So your girl was out here fully pregnant pretty much most of 2024. Did my whole book tour. Pregnant in secret. Girl, the struggle is real. And now I've welcomed my beautiful daughter. And so today's episode is going to be about financial planning as a business owner. So this is a question that I have gotten from so many of you on the gram sliding in my DMs, asking me, like, how did you plan for your maternity leave? How do you plan for parenthood, especially when you work for yourself? So, hopefully with today's episode, I'm going to help you understand my process. Not to say that it's the only way to do it, but it is the process that has allowed me to really enjoy and immerse myself in motherhood without having to worry about finances, which is a huge thing, because let me tell you, having a baby is fucking expensive. Okay? If you guys saw the viral post that I had on Instagram threads recently, you will know that my hospital bill, not including my daughter's hospital bill, because apparently there's a whole ass bill for her that's separate from mine. But my hospital bill came up to over $97,000, and I posted that snapshot on threads. So if you want to see it, go ahead and follow me there at jokierudiero Podcast. The comments were lit up. People were wiling out. Luckily, $97,000 was not what I had to pay out of pocket, but. But it's just a reminder that, like, the healthcare system here sucks. Our country is very pro pregnancy and pro birth, but not pro mother. So, yeah, let's talk about it. All right, so first and foremost, I will be straight up with you and say that I did not think that motherhood and my financial independence journey was compatible. And I think a lot of that has to do with the experience that I had growing up seeing my mom basically, like, sacrifice her own Financial security and having to do things like working part time, letting go of jobs that had benefits just because they were more flexible. And so I was under the impression for a very long time that motherhood was not conducive to being well off financially. And I write about that in detail in Financially lit, my book. So if you haven't read that, first of all, what are you doing with your life? You can grab a copy of financiallitbook.com and I talk about all of the trauma that I had around motherhood and money. And it is one of those topics that when I've had readers reach out to me, they have been like, oh my God, you have verbalized something that I have been feeling for a very long time, but I did not know how to put in words. So if you've ever felt like this money trauma potentially around motherhood because of what you saw, your mom or mothers in your circle experience, know that you're not alone. I know that that does not have to be the only narrative. So I'm going to talk to you today about how I plan for my own maternity leave and just for balancing what business is going to look like, what wealth building is going to look like going forward. And just like all the things when it comes to how to now navigate this new role that I have as a mom while still not letting my financial goals and my business goals go to. So I think the first thing that makes sense to talk about is how you actually financially plan before motherhood. I knew right away that when I wanted to start a family that there were things that I needed to take into account. Things like the cost of medical care, of child care, of baby essentials, all those types of things that you need to successfully and healthily bring a child into the world. And I also needed to account for potential hidden costs like the loss of productivity when you're a business owner. There is nothing that I have experienced that feels anything close to the exhaustion of your first trimester. When I tell y', all, I don't know how I did this book tour, like, I'm not even exaggerating. I would fly in, check into the hotel, go straight to bed and start getting ready like an hour before any appearance because I was literally dying. If tiredness can be painful, I was painfully tired to the point where I would cry because of how tired I was. Like, I've never experienced anything. Not all nighters in college, not, you know, 4am Wake ups to go work out, not 90 minute commutes. Like none of it has been as fucking exhausting as the first trimester of pregnancy. Shout out to all you who understand exactly what I'm talking about. It was crazy. There are things that I literally could not do while I was pregnant and I knew there was time off that I wanted to take off after having my child. So planning for maternity leave expenses and like how I'm going to continue to pay myself and all that stuff were things that I had to really think about. So what did that look like for me? Well, I started thinking about the various options that I had to basically build a maternity fund. Now, for those of you who know my story, I am a serial entrepreneur. And so I have a lot of different income streams. I don't just have like coaching or speaking engagements or brand partnerships. Like I have close to 10 income streams at this point. And that has all been designed intentionally, not necessarily with the idea that I wanted to become a mom, but just because I want always the option to be work optional. And so when I was thinking about how am I going to continue to pay my bills, passive income was a thing that popped in my head as like the thing that I need to be focusing on the most. Right? So passive income for me comes from a couple of different sources. My food blog, delicialice.com earns over a hundred thousand dollars a year in passive income through ad revenue and through affiliates. And so I knew that was one steady source that I could rely on to fund my maternity leave. I also have multiple six figures investments that earn dividends. And I know I could pull money out of my investment accounts if I needed to. And then I also have like other ancillary income streams, like Airbnb for example, brings in at least $10,000 a year. And then the more active programs that I have, like my coaching programs, my workshops, my speaking engagements, those things I knew I wasn't going to be able to rely on as much, especially for maternity leave. So I was really focusing on the passive income that I earn and just like making sure that those systems are as robust as possible. And so incredibly, for the month of November and December 2024, which are always the biggest months of my blog income, just because as a food blogger, typically your highest income earning months are the end of the year because of the holidays. It obviously depends on what niche you're in. But I'm in traditional Puerto Rican cuisine. The holiday season for us is long as hell. And so November, December are always very fruitful financially for me. And so since I knew I was having my daughter originally in January, but we Ended up having her about three weeks early. That's a. For a whole other podcast. November and December totally like, gave me ease as far as, like, how I was going to fund my maternity leave. And the reason why is because those two months, collectively my food blog earned $35,000 between those two months. So I was like, okay, great, that's all taken care of. That's going to be fine. That's way more than I need to pay my bills. And then I ended up having like a big spurt of Airbnb bookings in January. And so there's extra thousands of dollars that have come in from income there. And I also knew that I was going to be getting a big payment for sponsored project that I've been working on for the second half of 2024. And, and so I ended up getting a multiple five figure check from that project, which I knew was coming around the time that I was going to be going into maternity leave. So I knew, like, with the income that I was anticipating having come in, I was going to be fine. And so I think it's really important from that aspect to like, know what your business does, know the seasons, know what's coming in, like your accounts payable, what's in transit, what money do you know it's coming in, and like, timing that out so that things can work out for you. And so I know my business enough to like, be able to plan financially, like, when are the optimal times to do things? Now, obviously I didn't know how quickly I was going to get pregnant, so timing could have changed. But luckily for me, like, all of this income that I knew I had coming in was also conducive to like, the time that I was going to go on maternity leave. So funding it was not going to be stressful for me. Now, one of the things that I do recommend for you to do before you give birth or even before you plan on getting pregnant is, especially if you own a business, review your medical coverage. Like, if you don't have medical coverage, review it. I was reviewing it in January of 2024. I realized that the plan that I had signed up for through the marketplace was not robust enough. And so I ended up changing in February. And I'm glad I did because I got way better coverage. I was able to max out my deductible too. So I got my money's worth from my insurance because I planned ahead and like, really made sure that all of my prenatal care, my delivery care, and postpartum care was going to be optimally covered with my insurance.
