For Jannese Torres, a personal finance expert, podcast host and entrepreneur, life couldn’t be better. She’s living in her dream home in Tampa Bay, has passive income rolling in and just embarked on her first national tour to promote Financially Lit!, her personal finance book.
And to think a few short years ago, she was burnt out and miserable.
Less than five years ago, Torres was living in a house she hated, stuck in a toxic marriage, working a job she didn’t love and had thousands of dollars of student loan debt in her name. Torres felt like she did everything right, but she found herself disillusioned with the American Dream she’d been sold.
It wasn’t until she turned her back on the milestones she felt she needed to achieve that she found true happiness.
“It’s never too late to make a change,” said Torres. “The first step is usually the hardest. Your only regret will be not doing it sooner.”
It can be terrifying to make big pivots in life — not to mention expensive. But staying in an unhappy situation can cost you even more. Torres knows this firsthand and wants to share the tips she wished she had when her “perfect life” was dragging her down.
When many of us approach our 30s, we begin measuring our achievements and successes against our peers’. This need for comparison combined with the pressure from our communities and society can lead us to make financial decisions that aren’t aligned with what we actually want in life, Torres said.
When Torres turned 30, she found herself buying a home in a state of autopilot. She didn’t stop to ask herself if she even wanted to buy a home. She just knew she felt behind her peers and assumed that’s what she was supposed to do.
She wasn’t even sure if she was financially ready to be a homeowner. But fear of missing out and the idea that buying a house was the next logical step convinced her to take the plunge.
“The pinnacle of success in my Puerto Rican family is to buy a home,” said Torres. “That’s how you know you’ve made it.”
After three years, she realized she was living somewhere she didn’t love, and sold the home for $10,000 less than what she bought it for.
“It was not a great financial decision in the short term, but in the long term, it definitely set me up for success,” Torres said.
Having the courage to make a choice that contradicted what society had led her to believe she should do changed her life. “Getting rid of my home was the single largest factor in me being able to pursue financial independence,” said Torres.
“The most rewarding thing is being able to pour into my relationships and prioritize my happiness and health because money is no longer a factor that controls my life.”
Torres traded in her $3,500 monthly mortgage in New Jersey for her dream rental in the Tampa Bay area for $1,600 a month. Six years later, Torres still rents and isn’t in a hurry to buy a home. She pays more than she did in 2018, but for her, it’s worth it. She enjoys the year-round nice weather and no state income tax — which is a benefit to being a self-employed high-income earner, she added.
As much as we want some life decisions to work out, they don’t always. No one enters into a marriage expecting a divorce, but that’s how many marriages end. Maintaining separate bank accounts and creating a postnuptial agreement allowed Torres to get out of her marriage financially unscathed. But it could have been much harder if she hadn’t planned ahead.
Combining finances can make sense for shared bills, but Torres recommends always having your own money set aside. It’s sage advice for anyone moving in with a partner or contemplating marriage.
“One of the advantages that I had, especially in the process of getting divorced was I always kept my finances separate.”
If you’re not sure where to start, Torres suggests growing an emergency fund in an individual savings account. This money can help you get out of a situation that’s no longer working for you. Stashing the money in a high-yield savings account can help you earn a competitive interest rate, while making it easy to access your funds when you need them.
Torres spent $55,000 in student loans to get a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and a master’s In biotechnology only to end up in a 9-to-5 corporate job that was draining her. She was making a decent salary. But the student loan debt and unfulfilling career had her questioning her choices.
At 36, she decided to go into business for herself — a big shift, but one she felt she had to try.
She didn’t jump ship from her full-time job until she had her new business set up correctly. She took her time to build up a bigger emergency fund — just in case — and looked into retirement and healthcare plans to make sure she was protected when she left her job. She also made sure to set up her business as an S-corporation so she could pay herself regular paychecks, while setting aside enough money for business costs and taxes.
And she has no regrets. “Taking the extra time to make sure that those things were in place made me feel like I built something that’s sustainable versus something for the short term,” said Torres.
Now she’s her own boss, creates her own schedule and is doing work that’s rewarding. Some days, she’s coaching clients or building a new course. Other days it’s recording podcast episodes or creating social media content. And when she needs a break, she loves that she has the freedom to book an impromptu trip.
“The most rewarding thing is being able to pour into my relationships and prioritize my happiness and health because money is no longer a factor that controls my life,” said Torres.
Although Torres encourages her followers to get out of unhappy situations as soon as they can, she also stresses taking the time you need to prepare. Planning to leave a marriage or start a small business may require saving money for several months.
Make moves in the meantime to better yourself, she said. For example, if you want to change roles at your job, think about how you can pivot without having to pay a significant amount in school costs. Are there opportunities at your current workplace to mentor in a different department or shadow someone in a career you’re interested in? Maybe you can lean on free resources online, like a free or low-cost boot camp to earn a certification.
“That could put you on a path to making a pivot without you having to go and get a whole other degree,” she added.
It’s OK if you can’t make a change immediately, but don’t be complacent. Before you know it, five to 10 years will have passed and you may be in the same situation.
You may never be 100% ready to take the plunge. But preparing as much as you can in advance can help you feel more secure, so you’re not tempted to idle in a situation that’s holding you back.
“The worst thing you can do is use money as the reason why you’re going to stay stuck in the situation,” said Torres.
MOUNT VERNON, Ill. — The Mount Vernon Township High School finance committee and school board will meet Monday, June 24. The finance committee will meet at 5:30 p.m. and the board will meet at 6 p.m.
The finance committee meeting agenda is as follows:
Mt. Vernon Township High School
FINANCE COMMITTEE MEETING
Monday, June 24, 2024
5:30 p.m.
The agenda for the board meeting is attached:
The FBI is investigating the financial dealings of Vance County’s former finance director. County manager Renee Perry confirmed the investigation to WRAL.
Katherine Bigelow was terminated in February after Perry said she misrepresented her qualifications as a CPA, or certified public accountant.
A financial audit found that Bigelow wired more than one million dollars of county funds to a company that she was affiliated with.
“The County also failed to comply with G.S. 159-28(b), which requires at least two signatures on all checks or drafts issued by a government, one being the Finance Officer or properly designated Deputy Finance Officer, and the other by another official of the local government designated for that responsibility by the governing board,” the audit reads.
The report also details several other issues, including overspending, insufficient training and lack of oversight.
“This action was able to go undetected for the time that it did due to a lack of understanding by the staff of the County in their assigned duties, and no cross-training of individuals who would have been able to provide oversight on the transactions,” according to the audit.
The audit findings were presented to the Board of Commissioners June 3 by Thompson Price Scott Adams and company.
“We finally started digging into why we weren’t getting the numbers we wanted…and the timeliness of the numbers…and the accuracy of the numbers. We began to dig into why weren’t the numbers reconciled, why weren’t they timely…which led to our discovery,” the auditor said during the meeting. “Our folks started going, ‘The answers she’s giving us are not what somebody in her position should be giving us.’”
In February, WRAL asked Perry if there have been any inconsistencies with the county’s budget, given Bigelow’s removal. Perry said there were no inconsistencies with the budget at the time.
During the June 3 meeting, the auditor said he brought those concerns to the previous county manager. Perry and other commissioners pressed him during the meeting, saying he should have relayed those concerns to her when she assumed her position in November 2023.
“We should have contacted Ms. Renee; I’m not disputing that,” the auditor said. “When she came on board, by the end of November, we should have said we need to have a conversation… Maybe I was just totally focused on getting data and not contacting management, which I will assume that responsibility.”
Another commissioner questioned the auditor about their responsibility to identify the financial issues sooner.
“Y’all been doing this since 2019, and y’all are just finding this now for 2023. Do y’all hold yourself any account for what’s going on?” they asked.
“Internally, we have done some looking. We think we did everything correctly. It’s unfortunate, but the reality is, a financial audit is not traditionally designed to pick up fraud,” the auditor said.
WRAL asked how the county is making changes to prevent a similar occurrence.
“To prevent in the future, we have internal controls in place that allow for dual signature on wire transactions. We are also working on an overhaul of our financial policies and procedures,” Perry responded via email.
The county has 60 days to provide a plan to fix the issues presented in the audit.
Bigelow previously served as the finance director since 2019. Perry also said Bigelow has died. The cause of death is unclear.
The central banks of seven Pacific island nations have signed a roadmap that commits them to working together to boost inclusive green finance (IGF) in a region highly vulnerable to climate change.
The Natadola roadmap, named after the beach resort where it was signed, was agreed by the central banks of hosts Fiji as well as Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Seychelles, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.
The document identifies regional capacity building in green finance as a priority and encourages the pooling of funding and technical expertise between countries, as well as the leveraging of technological solutions by the financial sector.
It also emphasises the need for a just transition to net zero that recognises different states’ capacity to implement policy solutions, as well as the existence of diverse needs within populations and between countries.
“These Pacific Island nations are leading the way in implementing groundbreaking IGF policies. Countries such as Fiji and Vanuatu have included disaster resilience into their regulatory frameworks,” the roadmap says.
“The Reserve Bank of Fiji has made significant strides by including green elements into surveys that assess the demand for financial services. This enabled them to comprehend the susceptibility of households and their strategies for dealing with natural catastrophes.”
The roadmap further highlights the Central Bank of Papua New Guinea’s “groundbreaking Inclusive Green Finance Policy, the first in the region, [which] includes a green taxonomy that resonates an inclusive approach to green financing wherein micro, small, and medium enterprises… are considered”.
The roadmap was signed under the auspices of the Pacific Islands Regional Initiative (PIRI) Plus, which is part of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), at the end of a four-day conference in Natadola that also included representatives of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the central banks of the Maldives and Bahamas.
The document is intended as an attempt to build on the 2017 Sharm El Sheikh Accord on green finance, which promotes a financially inclusive response to climate change in developing countries.
PIRI chair Ariff Ali, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Fiji, “emphasised that central banks play a critical role in addressing climate risk challenges, an issue acknowledged as one of the most pressing at our Pacific doorstep”, according to a statement released by the central bank.
“He underscored that central banks’ traditional mandates of price stability and financial stability are intrinsically tied to the health of our planet and that by integrating environmental considerations into macroeconomic frameworks, central banks can incentivise investments in renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure, and climate-resilient technologies.”
The AFI’s policy programmes director Eliki Boletawa meanwhile pointed to the devastating recent landslide in Papua New Guinea, which the prime minister has linked to changing weather patterns, as a sign of the urgency with which the region needs to “enhance our resilience against environmental shocks and emergencies”.
Low-lying Pacific island countries are considered extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels, with most of their populations living close to the shore.
The islands contribute less than 0.02% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but with cyclones and other extreme weather events rising in frequency and intensity, the cost of such disasters and local climate adaptation efforts has ballooned.
The Agence Française de Développement aid agency estimates that the annual cost of climate damage in the Pacific island nations stands at around 10% of their GDP, or US$1bn per year.
This page was last updated June 21, 2024
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