Get Good With Money

Tiffany Aliche, a personal finance educator known as "The Budgetnista," presents a 10-step framework for achieving what she calls "financial wholeness," a state in which all aspects of one's financial life work together. She grounds her advice in her own story of financial collapse and recovery, arguing that anyone can build a strong financial foundation regardless of income level.

Aliche, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, credits her parents with instilling early financial lessons. Their "Ice Cream Day" system gave each sister a designated weekly turn to buy a treat from the ice cream truck, teaching that choices have direct financial consequences. By age 26, Aliche had saved $40,000 on a $39,000 teacher's salary (supplemented by tutoring and babysitting), held an 802 credit score, and purchased a condo. Then, in 2007, she entrusted $20,000 to an acquaintance she calls "Jack the Thief," who convinced her to open new credit cards and take cash advances to invest with him. That same week, she spent $15,000 on an overpriced online business course, plunging herself $35,000 into credit card debt. Jack disappeared with her money, and for nearly two years Aliche paid only minimum balances while searching for him.

Her situation worsened during the 2008–09 Great Recession when her nonprofit school lost its corporate funding and she was laid off. Unable to pay her mortgage, she moved back to her parents' home. A friend who rented her condo failed to pay reliably for nearly a year, forcing Aliche to drain her savings and retirement accounts. The bank eventually foreclosed. At her lowest point, she owed $52,000 in student loans, carried a $220,000 mortgage, and had $35,000 in credit card debt, with no job, no savings, and no retirement funds.

A turning point came when her friend Linda normalized Aliche's mistakes, telling her that everyone struggles with money and that financial difficulty does not make someone a bad person. This conversation freed Aliche to forgive herself and focus on solutions. She began writing down strategies she already knew and applied them to her own finances. Friends noticed her progress and asked for help, and she started coaching others for free. Her sister Lisa gave her the nickname "The Budgetnista," and the local United Way offered her a contract to teach financial classes, launching her business. She later created the Live Richer Challenge, an online curriculum that attracted 10,000 women she dubbed "Dream Catchers" and eventually grew to over 1 million participants.

Aliche distinguishes financial wholeness from financial freedom (having enough money to never work again). Even after her comeback, when she was earning more per month than she had once earned per year, she felt more financially afraid than she had as a teacher because the trauma of the recession had left her hoarding cash and avoiding investing. As a teacher, she had maintained comprehensive systems for savings, debt, credit, insurance, retirement, and emergency funds. Financial wholeness, she argues, means getting 10 fundamental areas of one's financial life into working order regardless of current income. Steps 1 through 5 cover fundamentals that create stability; steps 6 through 10 address growing and protecting wealth. Each chapter follows a three-part structure: The Plan (an overview), The Do (actionable steps), and The Review (a summary).

Step 1, budget building, treats the budget as a "Say Yes plan" that enables future goals. Readers list all income and expenses, categorize each expense by level of control (bills, utility bills, or discretionary cash), and automate finances across four accounts at three types of institutions: a brick-and-mortar bank, an online-only bank, and a credit union.

Step 2, saving, argues that savings serves two purposes: cushioning against emergencies and fueling future investment. Aliche recommends building three to six months of bare-bones expenses in an emergency fund and setting separate goal-savings targets. She introduces the "Noodle Budget," the absolute minimum one could survive on, as both a planning tool and a hardship fallback. She also warns that excess savings beyond emergency and goal targets should be invested, since money in savings accounts loses purchasing power to inflation.

Step 3 addresses debt, reframing debt management as a means to free money for wealth building. Readers catalog all debts and explore restructuring options such as negotiating lower interest rates, transferring balances, or consolidating loans. Aliche strongly cautions against refinancing federal student loans into private loans, since federal loans offer forbearance, deferral, and forgiveness options. For paydown strategy, she recommends a hybrid of the Snowball Method (smallest balances first for motivation) and the Avalanche Method (highest interest rates first for savings).

Step 4 covers credit. Aliche explains that a FICO score, the most widely used credit-scoring model (ranging from 300 to 850), reflects how well one manages borrowed money. She sets 740 as the target and walks through the five weighted factors: payment history (35%), credit utilization (30%), length of credit history (15%), credit inquiries (10%), and credit mix (10%). Her "Jump Like Jordan" strategy of placing one small recurring bill on a zero-balance card and auto-paying it monthly helped raise her own score from 547 to 750 in under two years.

Step 5 focuses on increasing income, encouraging readers to document workplace contributions in a "Brag Book" to negotiate raises before pursuing side hustles aligned with existing skills.

Step 6, the book's longest chapter, covers investing for both retirement and wealth building. For retirement, Aliche explains four account types: 401(k) plans, traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and SEP IRAs for the self-employed, recommending the Roth IRA for its superior tax benefits. She introduces the Rule of 110 for asset allocation (subtracting one's age from 110 to determine the stock percentage, with the remainder in bonds). For wealth building, she recommends index fund ETFs mirroring the S&P 500 as a low-cost entry point and advocates dollar cost averaging (investing a fixed amount at regular intervals) rather than timing the market.

Step 7 covers insurance across four categories: health (explaining high-deductible plans paired with health savings accounts, preferred provider organizations with broader provider networks and higher premiums, and health maintenance organizations with lower costs but network restrictions), life (advocating term policies over permanent whole life policies), disability (distinguishing "own-occupation" coverage, which pays benefits if one cannot perform one's specific job, from the less protective "any-occupation" coverage, which only pays benefits if one cannot work in any capacity), and property and casualty (including umbrella policies for extended liability protection).

Step 8 addresses net worth, defined as assets minus liabilities. Aliche frames net worth as a financial thermometer independent of income, illustrating with two examples: her 24-year-old self (a teacher earning $45,000 with $55,500 in net worth and zero liabilities) versus a 25-year-old attorney friend named Jennifer (earning $150,000 but carrying $123,500 in liabilities, resulting in negative net worth). She urges readers to shift from a consumer mindset to an accumulator mindset, pausing before acquiring new liabilities.

Step 9 guides readers in assembling a "Money Team." Everyone needs an accountability partner. As finances grow complex, readers may add a certified financial planner (Aliche recommends fee-only advisors, who hold a fiduciary obligation and earn no commissions), a certified public accountant, an estate planning attorney, and an insurance broker.

Step 10, estate planning, covers beneficiary designations (which supersede wills), guardianship for minor children, wills, advance directives (including a living will that specifies desired medical care if one becomes incapacitated and a durable power of attorney that grants someone authority to act on one's behalf), long-term care planning, and living trusts, which take effect during one's lifetime and help heirs avoid the probate process, the court-supervised transfer of one's estate to beneficiaries. Aliche stresses that all documents must be formally signed to be legally binding.

Aliche concludes by congratulating readers on achieving 100% financial wholeness and encouraging them to share what they have learned, asserting that giving activates abundance.