Berna Anat, author, podcaster, and financial hype woman.
Karen Santos/Karen Santos
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Karen Santos/Karen Santos
Berna Anat, author, podcaster, and financial hype woman.
Karen Santos/Karen Santos
Her description of the world of money is “hella male, hella pale and hella stale.”
who is she Berna Anat is an author, podcast host, and self-proclaimed “financial hype woman.”
- Hailing from the Bay Area, Anat is a first-generation Filipino American and the daughter of immigrants.
- She first entered the world of personal finance when she found herself with $50,000 in student loans and $12,000 in credit card debt, and resources she felt didn’t speak to the way she expressed herself. or with her life experiences.
- Anat’s approach to saving, investing and paying off debt is one that focuses on using more accessible language, and being more upfront about the systemic barriers that marginalized communities face when it comes to achieving financial security.
Anat’s book cover.
Karen Santos/HarperCollins
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Karen Santos/HarperCollins
What’s the big deal? With the release of her book, Money Out Loud. The Whole Financial Embarrassment Nobody Taught UsAnat dives into these topics and more, providing the finance education you wish you had when looking at the subject for the first time.
- Anat’s hope is to address subjects that carry shame and taboo in society, turning them into opportunities for learning, communication and improvement.
- “We’re working against a very powerful system that wants to keep us young. It wants to keep us broken. It wants to keep us easy to control. I think once we face things like the truth about capitalism, the truth about systemic discrimination, then we can be a little bit easier with ourselves. Some of that shame can dissolve because shame will only keep us quiet. Shame will only keep us isolated. And we won’t be able to harness the power of money the way we really can.”
What are you saying?
When you see a difference in diversity in the financial industry:
This is the thing that I think really made me jump into the financial space. You know, I’m in my mid-twenties with $12,000 in credit card debt, almost $50,000 in student loans. And people are like, “Oh, you just get into personal finance. Amazing. You should read this book. You should read this blog. You should listen to this podcast.”
I’m like, great. I have all my tabs open. Every single one of those tabs, every single resource, [was] by an old white man. I’m not an old white guy. And it immediately struck me that this advice they were giving was not bad. It was all solid advice mostly, but it just didn’t relate to me. Much of what they said came from a level of privilege that I have never experienced, from a level of financial ease that I do not understand as a beginner. And that’s what made me look around and go, “This doesn’t make any sense because everyone is affected by money.”
Want more about personal finance? listen Consider This on how to build your own recession tool.
On the recognition of systemic barriers in finance:
I wanted to come out right away and let people understand that there are forces at work that have been at work long before you were born, generations back, that were set against you, and your ancestors and the people who came before you. There are systems that were meant to keep many marginalized people poor, not supported, living under wages. There are so many systems in the games designed to keep you “bad on the money.” And yet we are raised, and we see so much financial education material that intends to make us believe that we are 100% of the problem. It’s our mindset. We don’t have the right budgeting apps. We never read the right advice from the straight old white man. That’s simply not true.
So, what is her advice?
- Budgeting: When you make different accounts and buckets for financial purposes, come up with different names that appeal to you. “I can’t stress enough how important it is for you to feel personally connected to your budgeting categories or your bank accounts.”
- Savings: Anat says using an online savings calculator will set you free. “You can plug in the numbers you know, and a free savings calculator will tell you exactly what it will take each month to reach your savings goal. It’s almost like a bill.”
- We celebrate: Although money is a stressful topic for many, Anat says an essential part of moving forward is celebrating your victories, which includes dancing: “I’m a big fan of the solo financial dance part. ”
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