Today's video is focused on a topic that is truly near and dear to my heart.

We are talking about having a money routine. Now, I am a financial educator who doesn't really like to use the word good and bad when it comes to money because all of us come to money from different places.

We have different backgrounds, different privileges, different goals, different amounts of money. And all of that plays into [music] how we use money and what we use money for. So, I don't like to say that this is a good thing to do with money or this is a bad thing to do with money, but I will say that having a regular money routine is one of the best things that you can do for yourself and your relationship to [music] money.

As I've talked about throughout this series, I grew up low income and I was low income throughout my entire 20s. It wasn't until I was 30 years old that I earned $50,000 a year. [music] And I've never had a full-time salaried positions with benefits like a 401k or employer sponsored healthcare. And the thing that changed my [music] life in the most literal and what I would consider the most important sense is sitting down and tracking my spending and making a budget.

Because as Jay-Z said, >> when I was 25, I decided to get really serious about my money because money frankly was ruining [music] my life. I had student loan debt that felt unconquerable. I really and truly felt like I would be buried [music] with my Sally May paperwork.

I didn't know anything about investing. I didn't know what an HYSA was. But the one thing that I did know [music] was that if I sat down and looked at my numbers, they would tell me something.

Now, I'm not here to tell you that you can budget your way out of systemic poverty. But [music] I am here to tell you that if you want to make any kind of change to your financial life, you have to know what you're working with first.