In this video, Tasha explains how she went from making $14,000 to making six figures over the course of her career. You can use the same strategies to change your life too. Want to learn how Tasha spends her money? Check out this spending diary:
Hi i’m tasha with one big happy life on behalf of the financial diet and this is the lifestyle fix brought to you by skill share in today’s video i’m gonna be sharing with you my personal financial journey and sharing the tips that helped me go from being a single teen mom making fourteen thousand dollars a year to now an attorney making six figures so first let me
Start off by giving you some quick background about my life so i was born in south america and i came here when i was two years old with my parents neither of which graduated from high school i was pretty successful in high school but then i was wrongfully accused and kicked out of high school in my junior year and then i ended up barely graduating from high school
My grades weren’t great it was a disaster and i didn’t receive any college counseling whatsoever so i had no idea how it would be possible for me to get into college much less afford college so i ended up joining the military i wasn’t a citizen when i joined the military so even though i scored well enough to go into a lucrative career like computer programming
Or intelligence or linguistics i was limited to jobs that could be held by people who weren’t citizens so i selected legal admin because i figured well if i get out of the military at least i’ll have the skills to become a paralegal well after boot camp the military decided otherwise and put me in regular admin so i learned how to do things like write a business
Letter and fill out contracts i was making about fourteen thousand dollars a year when i became pregnant with my daughter just nine months later i was nowhere near my family i didn’t even have a car or a driver’s license and within a few months later i didn’t have a fiance either so how did i go from that point to being a lawyer earning a six-figure salary well
Number one i believed that i could do it you see a lot of people thought that i was crazy to go ahead and have a baby even though i was 18 years old by myself not making a lot of money kind of barely knowing how to be an adult myself and then being on the verge of raising a child and in fact a lot of people told me point blank i should have an abortion and that i
Was making a mistake and i was ruining my life but i knew that what i was doing was right i knew i could figure out a way to have my baby and to provide for her and to build a better life for both of us and so i believed that i could do it and i was determined to figure out what i needed to do in order to make it happen sometimes just believing in yourself is all
It takes to get you started on the path that will lead to an amazing life number two i became rock solid on my why in other words everything that i did started with my purpose my why when i think back to my 18 year old pregnant self one of the most powerful memories that i have is that constant feeling of wanting to build the best possible life that i could for my
Baby i also wanted to prove to everyone that they were wrong i was tired of being told that i wasn’t good enough and that i should stay in this box that other people wanted to put me in those two feelings wanting to be a good provider for my daughter and wanting to make everyone else eat their words really kept me motivated in what honestly seemed like an impossible
Situation at the time and even though my life is so much easier comfortable and yes very privileged now i still have that same purpose driven determination knowing your why is the key to staying focused on your goals when things get tough it’s also necessary if you want to be sure that you’re setting the right goals the goals that actually resonate with who you are
As a person and what you want out of your life so my what i wanted to make a comfortable living and i wanted to get out of the military and my why was for my daughter and for myself and to prove that i could and that everyone else was wrong number three i came up with a plan of attack for all the things that i needed to do given that i only owned my clothing and a
Radio at the time and was due to have a baby in less than six months there were a lot of things on my to-do list i had to get a driver’s license buy a car get dishes a mattress baby stuff and i was making less than $20,000 a year plus i had credit card debt and bad credit so i listed out all of the things that i needed to a calm and prioritize them then i tackled
Them one by one so first i got a driver’s license and then a car and then i moved out of the military barracks and into a really cheap place with roommates so i could start building up basic necessities like a mattress eventually i was able to move to a small furnished apartment above a bar then six months after my daughter was born i bought my first house after
I realized that i could own a house for less money than what i was paying for in rent at the time the point is that i focused on the small daily steps that i needed to take to accomplish the next most important thing and then the next thing eventually i was able to start focusing on more than one thing because i put out all of the fires and i still do the same kind
Of systematic planning in my life now except now i can create plans that are far more complex for example right now i’m continuing to build my career while also growing a successful business and focusing on increasing my personal wealth even as i’m contemplating a career shift and maybe even moving to a new state in the next few years while also raising two kids
One of whom is technically homeschooled / in college so yes i have managed to figure out how to plan all of those things all at once number four i used debt to help me get ahead now debt gets this really bad rap but i leveraged debt so many times on my journey to help me get where i am today that i can’t talk about how i built a six-figure income without talking
About how debt helped me do it i use debt to buy my car my first mattress my first three living room set and later my college and law school education if i had had to pay for those things out of pocket the struggle would have been overwhelming and i most likely wouldn’t be where i am right now after i had my daughter i knew i wanted to get out of the military and
So i decided to start taking college classes but i was a single mom making 20-something thousand dollars a year paying for daycare not getting child support and had no family nearby while also working a full-time job so that meant online courses or nothing cuz i couldn’t afford a babysitter so i took out a loan with dell bought my first computer and paid $50 a
Month towards it until it was paid off i put my daughter to sleep in our bedroom yes we shared a one-bedroom apartment at the time then i spent a few hours working on my college courses before waking up and doing it all over again the next day and i got straight a’s that financed computer helped me get started with college which ultimately set me up for success
As an attorney number five i always did my own due diligence i mentioned before that i had zero guidance through this whole process my parents weren’t particularly active in my life i didn’t have any friends i basically knew no one who could help me figure out how to get where i wanted to go at this point i still didn’t even know exactly what career i wanted to
Pursue all i knew was that it had to make a lot of money and that i needed to get out of the military when my contract was up i thought about being a doctor but i thought it would take too long so i settled on nursing but i didn’t really enjoy it eventually i settled on becoming a lawyer and after doing some research i realized that graduating from a top law school
Would make it easier for me to get a high paying job i set a goal to get into one of the top three law schools in the country yale harvard or stanford of course everyone thought that i was crazy when i told them about it but again i ignored them and instead i did a lot of research i read books i spent a lot of time in online forums to learn all about how to get
Into these top schools i spent six months working on my essays i self studied for the lsat because i couldn’t afford to take a prep course i busted my butt to maintain a high gpa even though i was working two part-time jobs while going to school full-time because i wanted to give myself every possible chance to achieve the goal i’d set for myself and i did end up
Getting into harvard and stanford and yale in addition to receiving substantial merit-based scholarships from other schools the point is that i didn’t wait for someone else to tell me how i could make something work for me i did my own research and i figured out how to make it happen number 6 i had some help along the way while my success is a direct result of a
Lot drive on my part i also did have some help along the way i did eventually get married and i was married through most of undergrad and all of law-school having someone else there in the trenches with me and cheering me on really did help i also have an uncle and an aunt who paid for my law school applications to yale harvard and stanford i almost didn’t apply
Because i couldn’t afford it but they believed in me and they gave me the money i also had a professor who mentored me in college he was the first person after my then husband who supported me he truly believed that i could change the world he pushed me to dream bigger and to work harder of course i also had my daughter alexis who has always been my number one
Cheerleader she still motivates me to really push my boundaries and to try new things because i want to show her what’s possible i also have an incredibly supportive partner in joseph we support each other in our life and career goals which means that we’ve done things like moved to three different states over the past seven years so that we could each advance
In our careers now that i’ve shared a bit about how important self-driven learning was to my financial journey let’s talk about a great resource to help you on that front skillshare skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in design business technology and more premium membership gives you unlimited access to high-quality classes on
Essential topics so you can improve your skills unlock new opportunities and do the work you love looking to increase your productivity so you can focus on the things that matter check out mike vardy ‘he’s class on creating productivity habits that stick click the link in the description box to join the millions of students already learning on skillshare today and
Take advantage of a special offer just for tfd viewers the first 500 visitors will get two months of unlimited access to over 25,000 classes for free act now so you don’t miss out and start learning today thank you so much for watching this episode of the lifestyle fix and i will see you next friday for an all-new episode bye you
Transcribed from video
How I Went from Making $14,000 to Six Figures | The Lifestyle Fix By The Financial Diet