How I Worked with My aunt to Get Debt Free and Take Early Retirement
In 2012, I moved back to South Africa for 2 and a half years to write "Heart, Mind & Money", get a part time job and pay off my debt.
I made the radical decision to openly share the truth of my finances with my family and anyone willing to listen. I also shared the changes I was seeing with the inner work and practical money work I was doing.
My Aunt Ray reciprocated and started sharing her finances with me. She told me about how she would go to loan sharks and how she was in debt, she even brought out her pay slip so I could see how things were not adding up.
(She is very open about this and a few people who follow me on social media have met her in real life and are shocked by how open she is and how she understands the money work deeply).
She wanted to know how to budget on her salary (she was a teacher at the time) and my response was: "This is just not enough money, so let's forget about budgeting and focus on making more money."
I was upset because what she was earning was so little compared to the amount of work she did and her years of experience teaching.
I told her how f***in the end it was that she was being made to feel like something was wrong with her and her financial skills because she couldn't stretch a small salary whilst working long hours, being a single mom and a single grandmother who often supported other family members and neighbors in need.
For me to try to force her to cut down even more would be a soul violence and unethical.
So we did a bit of trauma and mindset work because this financial conditioning (especially about saving) is a beast and actually keeps us in shame mode.
[I would later make money in 2016 teaching English in South Korea, with zero experience and no teaching degree, than my aunt made in South Africa with over 30 years experience and tons of degrees and certificates in education, but I digress. Also it's taking a lot of discipline for me not to keep digressing cos I have things to say about this].
So we focused on her becoming debt free and creating extra streams of income
The first step was to get my aunt out of debt, but the problem was she was in a vicious cycle because of loan sharks and their interest rates and how that just keeps you stuck.
Then add store cards, credit cards and a mortgage. Issa a lot.
I asked her the same question I asked Jane - what's your passion and what do you like to do?
She loves to sew and was already sewing for people and making money on the side.
So we just focused our attention on that - the sewing business.
I believe your soul is always steering you on the path of ease and abundance. Healing and a more focused strategy that aligns with what sets your soul on fire is what will change the game for you.
We agreed that she would up the number of clients she takes on and focus on alterations vs sewing whole outfits because teaching in South Africa is very demanding/time consuming and alterations often take less time, so she could take several orders in a day and get paid the same day.
Also the great thing about sewing is it's a service that requires very little start up costs as long as you have a sewing machine, needles, thread and clients you’re good to go.
So then she moved from making money a few times a month to making money daily or almost everyday (a game changer).
We agreed that she would put aside all the money from sewing and use that to pay off debt.
And of course all this time I was teaching her all the work I teach in my courses. She was learning about trauma and her trauma responses and regulating her nervous system.
Taking early retirement
The strategy worked, by 2017 my aunt wasn’t only out of debt but had paid off her mortgage on her one house, was renovating it and also renovating her main house and had moved onto building back rooms.
By 2018 the back rooms were generating an income and her story inspired Dr Miranda (aka Mizo) and I to focus the #PropertyMagicians podcast on township developments and to see property investing differently.
So if you love the # PropertyMagicians Podcast, thank Aunt Ray silently.
By the end of 2019 my aunt had taken early retirement and we didn't have to worry about her teaching during Covid.
[One day we need to talk about how we keep demanding people should risk their lives for money and have normalized this].
The back rooms were generating an income and since she had no debt, her retirement money was for her to use as she wanted and in 2022 she made some more renovations to the other house, got a new tenant, increased rent and actually subdivided the property inside so she could get another tenant.
The first thing Aunt Ray does when she meets a #MoneyMagic student goes on and on about how work changed her life and she preaches against hard work with no rest and relying on just one stream of income. She is a convert.
My aunts (I have more than one aunt hey) and cousins were some of the first people to purchase the Next Level You Journal because they have seen the work and what it does.
I am not just talking from theory, when I talk about money and the importance of increasing income and healing ancestral money trauma.
My work is grounded in reality and there are tons more such real life stories and examples from students in my courses who openly share their money shifts on the #MoneyMagicPodcast (available on iTunes, Spotify and Podbean).
I am true to this and it is why I created the #MoneyMagic course and why it is my signature course.
I am passionate about helping people check out of this abusive system that takes and takes and gives very little back and then shames the people it is taking from for not being smart enough or disciplined enough to become wealthy, when all it has done is set up hurdles and instill trauma and self doubt in them.
We cannot budget on nothing!
There is nothing fair about this system and the way we are made to glorify hard work, lack of rest, toxic work spaces, being underpaid, constantly exhausted, jeopardizing womb health.
We cannot work until retirement without ever taking a break and then make people feel bad for not being able to keep working in this system.
Our ancestors and all those that came before us have given enough to this system, there must be other ways to live and still be whole and rested.
If this is resonating with you and you're done:
Feeling powerless and overwhelmed with money, especially with making money and increasing your income
Working hard but not seeing the financial results of your work
Then I invite you to check out and register for the Money Magic course where I help women of color create a consistent stream of income of R40,000/US$2,500 or more per month by tapping into their ancestral money wisdom. You can register at this link: wealthy-money.com/moneymagic
