Breaking Financial Trauma and Building Abundance with Alejandra Rojas

Eric Brotman [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Don’t Retire Graduate, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with a purpose and with passion. I’m your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman and we’re excited to be bringing season six to our growing audience. We’ll be bringing you interviews with amazing guests every other Thursday and on alternating weeks we’re hosting a new segment called Diary of a Financial Advisor, which we know you’ll all enjoy. So please subscribe and check out our all new episodes every Thursday. Today, I am pleased to be joined by Alejandra Rojas. Alejandra is an entrepreneur, writer and founder of Brown Way to Money, a financial mentoring platform that helps women overcome financial trauma and improve their relationship with money. She’s also the host of the Brown Way to Money podcast. She provides a unique blend of financial expertise and trauma informed coaching, empowering women of color to break free from limiting beliefs and and to create financial abundance.

Eric Brotman [00:00:56]:
She delves into the emotional and psychological roots of money problems, helping women heal from past experiences and to develop a healthier, empowered relationship with their finances. I can think of nothing more important or timely. Alejandra, welcome to Don’t Retire Graduate.

Alejandra Rojas [00:01:11]:
Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here.

Eric Brotman [00:01:15]:
You know, this is, it’s such an important topic and it’s not talked about nearly enough. And it sometimes financial trauma is just like any other type of trauma. It really is something that can cause sort of the PTSD and cause relationship issues and health issues and all kinds of things. So I guess why don’t we start with how you got involved in this particular work and why it matters so much to you.

Alejandra Rojas [00:01:42]:
Yes. So I have always been passionate about finances. I was a type of little girl that would play along with my parents. Both of them are accountants, sit alone next to them and just writing checks or doing invoices like I loved everything that they did. So I went ahead and studied finances. I graduated from college from finances and went to have my first job in corporate America and doing all of these things right? But nobody, nobody told me, not on my university, not in my work, not even my parents told me, hey, there’s something that is called your relationship with money, how you face money challenges. Like there is a lot more than just study, save, increase your paycheck and all of these strategic things right? Because nobody told me that when I was making a huge amount of money on my corporate career, when I was being quote, unquote, success, successful, I ended up facing burned out and I Ended up very, very sick, reactivating an old health condition that I suffered when I was a little six years old. And that to me was like, why is happening? Like, why is this happening to me? I’m doing everything that they told me to do.

Alejandra Rojas [00:03:07]:
Like, I am literally going through the checklist and I’m checking everything and here I am losing my health because it wasn’t enough. Like I checked one box and I needed to run for the next one. And that was causing me stress and that was causing me all kind of related health related issues. And I decided to stop and start thinking, why am I doing what I’m doing? Why is it that I’m taking these financial decisions? Because, mind you, I told you I was earning a lot of money and then my debt was in increasing at the same rate or even faster. So as a, as a kind of like I had to zoom out of myself and ask myself, like, why are you doing this? And I couldn’t find an answer. Not a logical answer. I knew it was wrong. I knew that what I was doing didn’t make any strategic financial sense.

Alejandra Rojas [00:04:05]:
I felt like the huge imposter that I wasn’t being. Because I was working as a finance manager and my personal finances and my financial life was a mess. And then I started to research and I thought it must be something more, it must be something deeper than this. I found the psychology of money, I found financial trauma, I found relationship with money. And I just fell in love of understanding that there is so much more that we are not aware of and that is so much more that I couldn’t control. And by letting go of that and understanding what I could control, that was the way for me to go forward.

Eric Brotman [00:04:53]:
So you made a pivot at a relatively young age. I mean, you, you, there are a lot of people who, who do that corporate grind long enough that it does shorten their lives and it does create stress and heart issues and, and various disease and other issues. But you were a young woman. I mean, you, you, you pivoted at a point where most people would be too afraid to do that. And so I, first of all, I give you an enormous amount of credit for having the courage because that, that is a brave thing to do. But secondly, once you had discovered this line of work, the behavioral finance and psychology of money and so forth, what was next? Because you, you know, you stop getting that big paycheck, especially when you’re in financial, you know, trauma at that moment. That’s a hard combination of affairs. How did you do it?

Alejandra Rojas [00:05:42]:
Yes. So Let me answer something first. Is that the reason why I was able to make this shift so fast and to kind of change gears was because when I was 6 years old with this health condition, doctors told my parents, you have to enjoy her because she’s not going to be past eight years. So every year of my life has been like, I get to be here, like, I am enjoying this life, right? So every year up to that point had always been like, wow, I am traveling, I am like in beautiful places, I’m meeting people, I’m doing all of these things, like doctors, like, whatever. But when I face the reality that I was trading that precious thing that I have enjoyed after eight years old, that was the deadline according to doctors. I was trading it for money. I was like, this doesn’t make sense because I love to work with money as a professional, but it’s also taking my health away. I need to find a way to fix it.

Alejandra Rojas [00:06:54]:
I don’t want to change my careers. I want to find a way to fix it and enhance my life with it. So that’s why it was so easy for me to make the change, because I knew how valuable it was. I didn’t need another sickness to, or another doctor to tell me, like, you got three months or whatever. I knew that, that, that path already. But what I did after was I didn’t quit my job. And this is something that differs from other people. I didn’t quit my job.

Alejandra Rojas [00:07:24]:
I started to put financial boundaries. I changed my environment without changing my income, without changing my job. But I started to look for the next type of lifestyle that I wanted to live. So before. And one of the things that got me in a huge amount of debt was to go into the mindless happy hours of DC that every single day has a happy hour, right? And I didn’t enjoy any of that. I didn’t enjoy the company and didn’t enjoy the happy hour. I just wanted to be at home creating, because that is my son of genius. So I started to do that even in that environment.

Alejandra Rojas [00:08:05]:
Of course I lost friends. Of course the work environment became more like just working and not working and then happy hours and blah, blah, blah. But I was creating the lifestyle that I wanted to live within those conditions. And the second thing that I did was to create my out of debt plan. How I was going to tackle that and how I was and what I was going to do next. I always wanted to travel the world. Ever since my grandpa would read me stories about Venice and about New Zealand and all of that. I wanted to travel the world.

Alejandra Rojas [00:08:44]:
So my, that was the moment for me to say I want to do something meaningful with my life that doesn’t require just climbing a ladder. That doesn’t mean anything to me. So what if we have a goal of traveling the world while we pay out the debt and use all the knowledge that you have as a finance person to make it happen? And so I did within. So this happened first quarter of 2017. By the end of 2017, I was traveling. I was on my way to go to New Zealand. That was when I told my employer, like, listen, love what I do, but I cannot continue here. I need to go ahead and do what I feel I want to do as a person.

Alejandra Rojas [00:09:38]:
Because again, the same principle of I am very privileged to be here alive, enjoying his life. I don’t want to take away from that beauty and be here stuck in this office doing what I know I’m not meant to be doing.

Eric Brotman [00:09:56]:
So, a couple things because that, first of all, you’re not just brave, you’re also smart because you didn’t just quit your job and try this. You made sure that you could, could get out of the situation you were in. So that’s, that’s wise too.

Alejandra Rojas [00:10:09]:
Yeah.

Eric Brotman [00:10:09]:
You said you lost friends by virtue of changing your lifestyle. I, I would push back a little and say those people aren’t friends, those are acquaintances. Those that, that, that networking. You, you don’t lose friends over that. Your real friends will love you, come, you know, hell or high water, and they’re going to be there, you know, as you make those decisions. So I think in, in today’s day and age, in the social media era, the word friend has become really loose. Friend is someone you happen to connect with or know online. That’s not what a friend is.

Eric Brotman [00:10:40]:
So in terms of, in terms of the debt reduction plan itself, you had the knowledge and the tools to do it. Did you use any type of analytics, any type of software, any type of strategy to do that yourself, or was it just, I’m going to stop spending money and, and therefore it’s going to, I’m going to whittle this down organically. What was the strategy around paying that off?

Alejandra Rojas [00:11:04]:
Yeah, I am a big Excel girl. Everything happens because of an Excel sheet for me. So I tried, because I tried to be fancy, all fancy about, I am going to download the app and I’m going to do it this way. But what happened is because my debt was rooted on the financial trauma of me not being able to, able to understand my level of success. Let’s call it that way or the level of this lifestyle that I was living in that moment that represented for me and for my family so much of what we had seen in a long time. Because that debt was purely emotional. I will find the ways to avoid doing the up thing. I will find the ways to go on my phone and get distracted with other things.

Alejandra Rojas [00:12:00]:
But I knew that if I sit down and do my Excel and see all of the records, because I love to do bookkeeping, I will go into my bank accounts and I will see how it’s going in the most simple way. There was no way for me to avoid it. The simplest the better. It was at that moment to hack my mind that was in that emotional state. So I did that and I used the snowball method because it worked for me to have that reward. So not, not. It was not about the debt. It was about how I will hack my mind and that emotional state.

Alejandra Rojas [00:12:40]:
I needed to have that reward of, okay, I paid this. Okay, I did that.

Eric Brotman [00:12:45]:
So a lot of people may not know what the snowball method is. It is certainly one of the more popular ways to do debt reduction. Why don’t you share with our audience not only what that is, but how that gave you those good feels? Because that is one of the benefits of that particular strategy is you get to celebrate some successes along the way.

Alejandra Rojas [00:13:07]:
Yes, yes. So a snowball method is that you are tackling the debt. The smallest debt, the one that you can the fast, the one that you can pay the faster. That’s the one that you are going to toggle. And this is the way I used it. I was, I did my commercial debt. And this is important to say it worked for me because it was commercial debt purely. So it wasn’t my mortgage, it wasn’t student loans.

Alejandra Rojas [00:13:37]:
It was just credit card debt. It was consumer debt. And what I did was to really lay down what are the credit cards with the highest interest, what are like the amounts of the credit cards that I earn on each of them and why? What of those ones I came paid the fast, like fastest. What you find with that way is that you will put in the effort because you are very motivated to get out of debt. Right. Once you know your situation, you just want to get there like you want to get yourself out of it. Right. So when you use the snowball method, the spring that you have at the beginning to pay off debt is accomplished within the least amount of time because you are tackling that debt that you can pay faster.

Alejandra Rojas [00:14:31]:
And that gives you a dopamine release. So it’s like, I’m doing it, I’m putting it there for. And I’m doing it. Let’s continue to do this. And that was crucial for me because a lot of my environment was disappearing. Friends were going. People that I knew, let’s call it not friends, people that I knew were going away. The lifestyle that I was at that moment was changing.

Alejandra Rojas [00:14:59]:
So a lot of things were changing. I am not. It is not too complicated for me to say I’m not going to spend money on X, Y and Z anymore. I can do that easily. But if I see that a drastic change on the things that I know in my environment is happening, it can get complicated. So it was important to me to have the dopamine effect with. I am paying this debt off and this is where I’m going. I had New Zealand, which was the country I traveled after paying all of this debt.

Alejandra Rojas [00:15:35]:
I had New Zealand in my mind all the time. I had photos of New Zealand. I knew exactly what I was going to do. So every time I would go into paying off my credit card and avoiding to go out or avoiding to order that Uber or whatever it was, I would just look for pictures, what to do in New Zealand, what hike, the, I don’t know, the Hamilton Crossing and blah, blah, blah. And that was the way for me to understand the. That it was a moment on, like the emotional thing was going to go away, just was a moment in time that I was going through a situation. And by following that strategy, I was going to get there. I was going to be walking with these people that I was watching on Internet.

Eric Brotman [00:16:22]:
I love that. So let’s pivot again and talk about the work you’re doing. Because, you know, it’s one thing to get through this yourself and to motivate yourself to do it and then to share your story, but to motivate others to take this kind of action is really an empowering thing. So let’s talk about the work you’re doing professionally and a little bit about the podcast and the audience you’re aiming to reach and the ways in which you’re trying to help folks.

Alejandra Rojas [00:16:48]:
Yes. So it is one thing to do it for yourself, and it’s a completely different level to support other ones to find that way for them. What we are doing now is to support for women of color to overcome financial trauma and get that financial literacy, being out of debt and build those businesses that they want to build from a perspective that give them financial independence, because that is very important. And financial Independence for us, for me especially, is not about only the number. It’s not the 4% rule. Financial independence is a mental and emotional game. You could have all the money in your bank account, but you could be tied to your bank account emotionally and mentally as well. And to me, it is important that people that come to us understand that you have to break free from all of these little triggers that we have.

Alejandra Rojas [00:17:50]:
And as a woman of color, we not only have our financial trauma that everybody has because of experiences, because of what you hear, but also we are dealing with a generational financial trauma and we are experiencing systematic barriers that although are invisible, our family has suffered them. Maybe sometimes we have encountered these barriers and that makes even harder for us to overcome that emotional barrier and say, I need to put a structure strategy or this is how the strategy works. So in my case, it was easier for me to get over or learn how to hack my mind. And that trauma response that I was hiding, I was having with the credit card consumption because I wasn’t in the generational trauma space. A lot of women of color, the only thing that I have seen is a life where with a credit card. I remember now that I’m saying this, I remember my mom telling me one time, I just love so much my credit card because it’s the only thing that has given me possibilities in this world. And I’m like, wow, wow, mom. That’s a.

Alejandra Rojas [00:19:13]:
Yeah, that’s a huge belief. No wonder why I was such a credit card there, right?

Eric Brotman [00:19:20]:
Yeah.

Alejandra Rojas [00:19:21]:
So understanding these things, for somebody that doesn’t pay attention to that, it may be like, oh, yeah, I hear you, that will be the response. But for me, it is important that we start to identify that this is not a you problem. This is not a problem. This is not an individual problem. This is not that you are bad with money. This is not that you don’t need know how to plan your money. It is a deeper rooted thing that is going on and that we have to learn how to identify it and move from it so that you can implement the strategy that works for you, for your goals, starting with what is it that you want for your life?

Eric Brotman [00:20:10]:
So you started to answer my next question already, which is helpful because now I can frame it in a whole different way. I was going to say the difference between. The difference between dealing with some financial trauma in general, and you said there’s certain things that affect everybody. We all have the same, some of the same experiences, but there’s some things that are unique to the community. You’re Serving. And some of those are generational. Some of them might be mindset, some of them might be, you know, other types of, you call them barriers, other types of, of, of challenges. And some of that, it may be gender based, some of it may be racially based.

Eric Brotman [00:20:48]:
Some of it, there’s geography, there’s other, there’s other factors in there. What are the things that, that maybe make the community you’re serving unique from a mindset standpoint? Do you think your mother’s experience, the one she shared with you, is more common potentially in the, in the groups that you serve versus the general population? Or are you more or less serving a population that, that you identify with and feel comfortable with? What, which is the, the side of that coin that, that really created that mindset for you?

Alejandra Rojas [00:21:20]:
Yes. And the reason why we just nailed down to this, to women of color is because of the shared experiences. So the experience of my mom is experience of many mothers, of the people that we are supporting right now. So that belief goes into their belief with money. But there are so many commonalities. The way that we grew up, we grew up as a woman of color in a way, just to put you an example, one of the beliefs and everybody that we have in the community say, yeah, yeah, I know how that one it is. One of the beliefs is that you are taught not to speak up, not to say anything. Like if you have something, just be grateful for all you have and don’t speak up.

Alejandra Rojas [00:22:12]:
Don’t mess it up because you already have it. That belief is so hurtful when you have a business, because the one thing that you have to do with a business is to speak up. The one thing that you have to do to have a different reality is to speak up your mind. What do you want? But as a culturally, the way that we have been growing up to protect ourselves from, from what was happening 100 years ago when our grandparents raised our parents and so on and so forth, was to be silent. Another thing that comes to mind right now, one of the financial beliefs that can be tied to financial trauma is that we have to hold on to money as much as possible. So if you are, if you have a good job, let’s take my example, if you have a good job and you are earning a good salary, it doesn’t matter if you are dying on that salary. Hold on to it. Hold on to it, because now it’s yours.

Alejandra Rojas [00:23:22]:
Nobody can take that away. Excuse me. That belief is not helpful and creates a lot of the financial trauma. So there are certain commonalities because of history, because of way that we have been raised, because of cultural exchanges, and because of the way that we have understood our. I don’t want to say place, but the way that we have understood our interaction with the world, that makes money a different kind of object to talk about. For women of color. It is more about what money has create, that subject, what has create or what has meant for us than just being a tool for growth, which is different for other type of people. If you compare it, you see it on the stats when even being a woman, Caucasian woman, a white woman, would go and be more able to speak up and to ask for a race than a woman of color.

Alejandra Rojas [00:24:35]:
And when you see that, you start asking why this happens. And it all starts back at home when you are a leader. When one little girl was encouraged to speak up, was encouraged to be herself, was encouraged to dance and to paint herself whatever she wanted to, and the other was encouraged to be calm and collected, to not be something that people could target or something that people could talk about, because that was dangerous. So everything starts from that little girl.

Eric Brotman [00:25:12]:
It’s interesting. First of all, I’m the father of a daughter and want my daughter to be able to do anything and she is not afraid to speak up. She’s a very emotional creature, a theater kid, a talented kid, and I think a happy kid. But I think she sees opportunity everywhere as opposed to roadblocks. And partly that’s we’re doing that on purpose, but partly that just might be that her skids are greased a little bit differently than some anyway because of generations of history. And that’s just a fact. One of the things it’s interesting and I think this goes along gender lines, and I don’t know whether it goes along racial lines as well, but on gender lines, when people apply for jobs, when they see a job posting, if there are 10 things that you need to be able to do for the job and a woman can do eight or nine of them, well, she won’t apply because she’ll think, man, I’m not qualified, I can’t do them all. If a guy can do one of them, he’s like, I’ll learn the rest, I got this.

Eric Brotman [00:26:11]:
And he’ll apply. And I don’t know where that comes from, but it’s real. And so a lot of times you do, it is much more likely to have a male employee walk into your office and ask for a raise. It’s just more likely. I don’t know if that is generational. I don’t know if it’s racial, I don’t know if it’s gender based. I don’t know if it’s history, I don’t know if it’s parenting. But you’re trying to change the narrative for a lot of folks.

Eric Brotman [00:26:39]:
So I guess in the simplest way I could ask this is how’s it going? Are you seeing, are you seeing transformational change in the families of the people you serve such that their little girls aren’t maybe going to have the same experience that you or that they did?

Alejandra Rojas [00:26:57]:
Yes. And I will say it has started with me. I have a 10 month old daughter and the reason why I have pivoted completely is because of her. I have seen and I have become so aware of what my mother tried to stop and try to change for me. And now it’s my responsibility to change for this little girl and to change the whole perspective and understanding of topics like this with money that the change already started with me, if anything. But we have seen a lot in the community. We have seen first person changes from overcoming financial anxiety. It is a real anxiety for our community when they cannot perform at their best.

Alejandra Rojas [00:27:50]:
So you see it in the workplace, when they have businesses, when they cannot do everything on the to do list because quote, unquote, the money is not going to arrive. That creates a real financial anxiety. And we have able to change that script because it’s not about the to do list. Why are we focusing in the to do list? Right. We have seen changes on pricing, which is another whole topic for women and women of color pricing. We have people on the community that have been on better prices for the last two years. If you have been in business for two years, you are not doing better pricing anymore, but why are you doing it? And that’s where we enter and start changing the narrative. More important, Eric, I need to say that we, what we have done is to create a different way.

Alejandra Rojas [00:28:46]:
And that’s why I have called it the brown way to money. It’s not about brown, black, white, whatever color is, is about understanding that traditional financial education has a gap of understanding contextual, understanding the context, understanding your financial trauma, understanding that there are experiences with money that can stop you from implementing what the financial education is about. So we have created this way so that you understand that it’s not a you problem. It is a problem that can have a solution. It is not about you. It’s not like the personal thing. It’s about a problem that we can find a solution.

Eric Brotman [00:29:40]:
I. You know, Alejandra, I Could talk to you all day. And I knew this would be impactful, and I hope people are. Are grabbing something from this and feeling inspired and spirited and maybe a little frustrated and even angry about certain things. And. And that’s okay because that can motivate people to act. How can. How can folks learn more about you, find your show and.

Eric Brotman [00:30:01]:
And get in touch with you if they’d like to work with you?

Alejandra Rojas [00:30:05]:
Absolutely. Just follow the show brand way to money. That is the best way to go. From there, you will find everything that we are doing. I think listening to these type of conversations, listening to other people’s perspectives, is the best way to break out the old molds with money and to find the new ways that will work for you.

Eric Brotman [00:30:28]:
Perfect. And I can’t let you out of the hot seat and off of this show without asking you what you want to be when you grow up. And I’m. I’m. I’m. I’m sitting here with bated breath because I sometimes try and anticipate what someone might say, and I have no idea. I have no idea what you’re about to share. So no pressure at all.

Eric Brotman [00:30:48]:
I’m ready. I’m ready for you.

Alejandra Rojas [00:30:53]:
I want to be an elephant when I grow up. I was volunteering. Yeah, I was volunteering in Zimbabwe in 2020, taking care of elephants, and I realized that I want to be them. I want to be the kind, heart, great, huge animal that is inevitable to notice. It is. You have to see them. You have to put your eyes on them. And they are not changing one bit of what they are, because you are there.

Alejandra Rojas [00:31:36]:
They are the masters of that song. And you will notice it.

Eric Brotman [00:31:42]:
That’s the most awesome answer. And I feel badly for everyone who’s ever been on this show or anyone coming next, because no one’s stopping that. That was so, so good, Alejandra. Thank you. I can’t thank you enough. I’m so glad we met when we did. We met by happen happenstance, but I knew immediately that you were somebody I wanted to know and get to know and learn from. And you’ve been very generous with your.

Eric Brotman [00:32:06]:
With your wisdom today. And I thank you for sharing with our whole audience. And I hope people got something out of this.

Alejandra Rojas [00:32:12]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Eric Brotman [00:32:15]:
I’d like to thank all of you for listening and watching today. If you enjoy our show, please subscribe, leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share it with your friends and family so they can join you on your journey to financial freedom. If you’d like to send us a topic or idea that we may discuss in a future episode of Don’t Retire Graduate, please post it on our Facebook page or tweet us. Rotman Planning we’ll be back next week with another entry in our Diary of a Financial Advisor segment and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman, reminding you. Don’t Retire Graduate securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, llc. Kestra is member finra, SIPC Investment Advisory Services offered through Kestra Advisory Services, llc. Kestra as an affiliate of Kestra is Kestra Is or Kestra as are not affiliated with Brotman Financial or any other entity discussed.