Hi, I’m Caro!

WELCOME TO THE ALIGNED MONEY MINDSET COMMUNITY!

I am on a mission to teach first-gen women of color the money management skills they need to win with money.

Have you noticed that money is one of the things that we all have in common yet no one likes to talk about it? It’s even considered taboo to talk about it. I’ve seen people visibly cringe when I start talking about money.

Growing up in a Latin household, we didn’t talk about money until it was too late. By the time my parents talked about money, it was because something happened and the conversation was always about not having enough money. There was also this unspoken rule that you couldn’t talk about money struggles because keeping up appearances was EVERYTHING. So my thoughts and feelings about money were not the best, to say the least.

My Journey

By the time I was 29 years old, I’d just had a baby, had credit card debt, student loans, and medical bills that kept trickling in. I did not know that when you have a kid, you don’t just get one bill from the hospital. I paid the hospital bill and then there were more. Everybody and their mother wants your money. The hospital, the anesthesiologist, the other doctor. The list goes on and on. I started dreading opening the mail. I would look at the mailbox and have a visceral reaction. Now I know it wasn’t about the mail, it was about what it represented. It was a constant reminder that I had lost control of my finances, I didn’t know where my money was going or how much debt I had. My finances were a hot mess and I didn’t know what to do about it

Living paycheck to paycheck became my norm and I was tired of it. This could not be my life. How was I working every day with nothing to show for it? To the point that a red light traffic ticket in the mail sent me over the edge because I didn’t have the money to pay for it without charging it to a credit card.

Wake-Up Call

I had a good salary and was getting annual raises so I was like WTF? What the fuck is going on here? If I’m making more money each year, I should have money left over at the end of each paycheck (see: lifestyle creep).

Armed with no money management skills and a deep desire to stop living paycheck to paycheck, I went down an internet rabbit hole to learn all things personal finance. That. shit. was. scary. Most of the information was old white men telling me not to buy lattes as if a $4 cup of coffee was going to solve my problem. Be fucking for real!

In the absence of any other information, I followed this advice. I went for it! I stopped eating out or doing anything fun. I did that for a while, and it felt so restrictive. I was paying off debt which felt good for a moment, but I was miserable because I was not living my life. I knew it wasn’t going to be sustainable because there were times when I would break and it was like when you’re on a strict diet and resort to binge eating after a long period of depriving yourself of the food you like. It wasn’t a good long-term solution for the life I wanted to live. I tried different things, some worked and others did not. I took what worked and created my own framework to pay off debt, save and invest.

My goal with this site and my 1:1 coaching program is to help you get unstuck with your finances and use money to build the life you want.