Miguel Sanchez 0:00

Welcome to the First Gen 1 0 1 podcast. Today I am joined by Elizaveta Shafir. She's a founder of Intentional Money, a service that empowers women and families to build financial clarity. And confidence on their own terms. In this conversation, Elta will share her personal journey, how she empowers others through intentional money insights into the value of education. Networking and career growth while maintaining a healthy balance along the way. These are critical conversations for the first gen community and I am excited for you to hear her perspective. Elizaveta, thank you very much for being here today.

Elizaveta Shafir 0:46

Thank you. I'm excited to have to be here.

Miguel Sanchez 0:49

I am fascinated by your experience and career. You completed a Master's degree from MIT. Currently work for a well-known technology company. It also struck me that you became financially independent from your parents by the age of 20. How did that experience shape the way you think about money?

Elizaveta Shafir 1:13

There are a lot of things that come to mind, but I will start with just with sharing the memory how when I called my mom to tell her that she doesn't need to send me money anymore, it was the last year of my undergrad. I found my first job and I was super excited that now I'll have my own money and I will be able to afford more things. But right after graduation from my undergrad, the real adult life started when I needed to rent my own place outside of student house when I needed to pay for all the expenses, not just food, but plan for life. And then that was the first time when I actually started planning beyond one month. Up until this moment, I lived like. I look at my account, I know how much money I have left. That's it. That's all I had to know. But then I started planning first for months and then at some point my planning horizon extended for a few years. When you start thinking about what is my next career move? That big vacation I want to take. Or when you start thinking about long-term relationship and family or maybe additional education, like going to grad school, that's when planning Horizon extends significantly. So I think that was the first experience with Money First start budgeting and then extend in planning horizon from months to years.

Miguel Sanchez 2:38

Do you remember what was your first paycheck when you were, when you finally realized, I can do this on my own? Do you remember how much money you made?

Elizaveta Shafir 2:47

So I was back in Russia then, so my paycheck was in Russian Robles, and it was also, my first job was a part-time job. But if I converted to dollars at that moment of time, it would probably be$300. So while

Miguel Sanchez 3:02

you were rich?

Elizaveta Shafir 3:02

Yeah, I was rich. I, it was. Again, to put it into comparison, it was approximately three times more that my mom was sending me every month. So that was a significant increase in my available resources at that time.

Miguel Sanchez 3:17

When you were saying that your mother was sending you money where were you in terms of distance?

Elizaveta Shafir 3:22

So again, I mentioned I'm from Russia. I was studying in Moscow and living in the student house by university. I'm originally from Chelyabinsk. This is a two and a half hours flight. Away from Moscow in Euros region. So we saw each other twice a year during summer break and winter break. And that's pretty much it. I lived in Moscow in the student house.

Miguel Sanchez 3:46

What did you major in? In school?

Elizaveta Shafir 3:48

My major was economics. There's foreign languages, so that was the time when I actually learned English.

Miguel Sanchez 3:55

I actually saw this on your website, that you moved to the United States with your family when you were 27, I believe that's correct. Yeah. And you mentioned having to learn the new financial culture. What was new to you in this financial culture?

Elizaveta Shafir 4:12

Oh my God, everything was new. It's actually interesting. Let me start with mentioning a few tactical details. It was just hard figuring out banking system old institutions, and there were some things which were hard to understand. For example, you cannot rent. A place without the credit history. But to start credit history, you need a credit card. To have a credit card. You need address to have address, you need to have your rental. Oftentimes you just felt that we are in this loop, which is impossible to break. And for every newcomer you have to navigate the whole system, which you have no idea how it works. No one to help. So that was hard from just purely tactical perspective. From cultural perspective. Was different. In developing and growing cultures, the idea of investment is not really popular yet because of many different reasons, historical reasons of feeling unsafe with money. That investment, if you invest money, will actually lose them maybe. Political or economical instability doesn't allow you to plan long term. No one thinks about 10, 20, 30 years, so people don't really invest money. So the first few years after I came here, if I had any money saved, it was all sitting in a checking account. That's it. Like I had, I knew nothing about investments, about planning for retirement. I remember my first job, it was in Chicago, my first day in orientation, and HR representative asks me how many percent I'm going to contribute to my 401k, and I'm looking at her, what is 401k? And she's silent. I think she has never seen a person like who honestly has never heard this word before. I'm like, I don't know what you're asking me about. And then I'm grateful to her. She told me, okay, the company matches 4%. Just put there 4%, and that's what I did. That's the best I knew at the time. I'm grateful I followed this advice, but that's how it is for newcomers, for immigrants, right? You have to really start from scratch. Then years later, I think I adopted this, thinking about long term planning, long-term investment, thinking about retirement. Also realizing that I'm responsible for my own future, not like. Government, not family, not anyone else, but it's me. So yeah. Now it's, it feels different than back then.

Miguel Sanchez 6:56

It's interesting that you started developing the skill of planning and budgeting when you made that phone call to your mother about stop sending you money because you finally were able to. Have your own incomes, your own cashflow. But then later on when you move to the United States, now you really had to put into practice this planning. But now in the long term and highlighted. But your example of the 401k, which I'm glad that you did it when you could, that's one of the regrets that I have that I didn't start it when I should have. But that's part of learning So on the note of teaching tell us about your initiative, Intentional Money and how you help people in their financial journey.

Elizaveta Shafir 7:38

Yeah. So I've been on this journey on figuring out my own finances, basically since I was 20 as we discussed. And I was learning a lot again, budgeting, then figuring out US financial system and then learning how to plan for retirement and then figuring out investment. Then after I joined my current company, I started to get part of the compensation in RSU, so restricted stock units which is a company stock. I had to figure out. What to do with that? There was so much learning, but at the same time I realized that I love learning about this. So it wasn't a forced learning. I was actually curious. I read enormous amount of books. About the topic, listen to many podcasts, and I just accumulated so much knowledge and at some point I started sharing with friends. Like oftentimes when like dinner conversation or meet up with friends and girlfriends were becoming conversations about finances and people were asking me, Hey, how do you invest? How do you think for retirement? About retirement? How do you calculate. Whether it's better to rent a place or buy a place. And I just sharing and I started sharing my views on those things. And then at some point I realized that I could share it with more people, not just friends. A few months ago, not that long ago, back in September, I made actually a decision to make it a thing, not just a kitchen conversation. So I launched my website. I'm now offering services of one-on-one consultations. I had some online webinars. I also started teaching kids financial literacy. I also believe that if we educate children. They will grow up financially mindful adults. We as adults now have a lot of catching up to do. If we teach our kids they will grow up prepared for their adult life. So the last few months I'm focused on establishing my practice. I'm also getting my certification to become accredited financial counselor just to support my knowledge and knowing that I'm not just sharing my personal advice, but I can actually provide. Standard, like knowledge of high quality.

Miguel Sanchez 9:50

as you were learning these skills. And sharing with other people. It seems to me that not only was the knowledge and advice importance, but you realize that people were actually listening to you. And that's a great first step. Even for people who are figuring out a career, like figure out what you're good at. we'll post the link to your website on the show notes, and we'll also have it on the podcast so people can find it and reach out to you if they have more questions or they want to interact with you further on this topic. you already mentioned that you have this love for learning, but there's also a need to understand which career path. Could be the right one for you. And so for many of our first gen students, our first gen community, we are told that education is the path. You should go to school. You should earn a degree, but we don't always learn how to evaluate its costs. how should people think about education as a financial and career investment rather than just earning a credential?

Elizaveta Shafir 11:00

We can look at it from several different angles. And first of all, I want to say that I am all fully supportive of getting education and degree and IMSL have undergrad degree and two master's degrees. And I think it's great to have this opportunity to learn and everyone should pursue it, but we need to be mindful of the choices. When you think about education, there are four things. Which I think the quality of university degree gives. First is the degree itself, right? Whether it's Bachelor or master's, it's a degree. The second is knowledge. And again, those things are not necessarily coming together, right? So degree, it's knowledge. The third thing is the university name. That's. Brand name you get now only your resume. And the fourth thing is your network and community support and access to opportunities. So if you think about these four things, they may or may not necessarily come together, but also an individual person may also not necessarily need all of them. So when choosing the school or choosing the path start with evaluating what exactly do you need? If you need a degree. Then maybe all choose the past, which is the easiest just to get a degree. If you think about the knowledge, I also think that today with all the modern AI technologists and internet, there is almost nothing you can't learn from the internet, right? So from knowledge perspective, I would say that universities of on colleges losing a little bit this appeal. But you cannot replicate or almost cannot replicate the network and community and support, right? So then you need to think about choosing the place, which will give you the access to the opportunities you are actually looking for. So like all these four dimensions they will inform the choices. But then the another thing which is important to remember that the. Education is only a step towards something you are actually going to do in life, right? It's not the end. It's a step towards your future life. So what do you want to do? Do you actually need. Degree or you just need knowledge. Or you need access to opportunities. Again, optimizing for what you actually need is important and being honest with yourself, like what you're going to do with this education. Oftentimes people pay for the degree they graduate, they have this diploma, and they have no idea what they're going to do with this. Or they realize that the profession now they're in is not even the thing they want to do going forward. Then why? So much time and money spent, right? So before actually investing money and time, it was asking yourself and think what is that I want to do? Yeah. And what do I need to get there? Now thinking about money, the kind of simple math here, the faster you can get education, the better because education. First, it costs money by itself. And if it's a 1, 2, 3, or four, or six or 10 years, obviously the longer it takes, the more money you will spend for education. But the second important piece oftentimes is underestimated is the time off work, right? Every year you're studying, if you're studying full-time is the year you're not earning. So it's basically doubling your expenses. That's why comparing options for education, it's not just, again, the degree and the university and the program, but how long does it take? Can you work during the time you are studying? Again. There also could be compromises. It can take longer for you to get your degree, but you can work in parallel or you can finish it faster by doing it full-time and then go work full-time maybe with a higher pay. So understanding this options and comparing them is very important to make the choice which is right for you and for your family. In my case, when I went to study

Miguel Sanchez 15:07

MITI

Elizaveta Shafir 15:09

went on campus just for five months. I think it's the fastest like you can actually get master's degree by being on campus. But before that, I started one and a half years online. That was a gonna, that was a huge deal, like paying just for one semester on campus and being for just half a year off work. It's the best ROI you can get from master's degree. But at the same time, it was hard to study for one and a half years online and just staying consistent and getting good grades and maintaining motivation.

Miguel Sanchez 15:46

you've highlighted some really great points. I'm just gonna summarize a few of them. And then if there's anything else you wanna add please do. This idea that there's a you should think about the degree and knowledge. They're not always mean the same thing. The network, which we'll talk about later as part of this conversation. But the thing that I wanna highlight is the the opportunity cost, right? Yeah. You spend four years in school. You are, if you going to school full time, you're foregoing four years of salary. So therefore that has to be part of your calculation that you have to make the money back at some point, right? I think that's a good point because. Nowadays, and we see this on the news and we can do searches online, that a lot of students, whether they're first gen or not, are coming out of college without finding jobs that pay them a certain salary. And so there is this con general discontent towards education because. A person might say, I just spent four years making, a little bit of money or no money, and now you're telling me that you're gonna pay me a very low salary when I made this huge investment. So I really want to highlight that point to the listeners Is. Think about the opportunity cost, think about the money that you are now making by going to school. I wanna go back on the MIT topic, unless you want to add anything else to this. How did you,'cause you mentioned, thinking through what's what degree and what knowledge do you need? How did you, what was your thought process and how did you decide that MIT was the best next step for you?

Elizaveta Shafir 17:30

I was already in United States, so I was working in Chicago and I was working in supply chain planning. So that was the field I was already for many years. And I was basically working in the same we only together so I was working in Chicago. I was doing supply chain planning and that was what I loved, and I wanted to continue doing this. But as a new immigrant, it was hard for me to aim for a higher position or a bigger company. I tried to go through interviews. I tried to apply to, again, manager position, higher position, better companies, and I could not I wasn't even invited to interviews and I realized that my resume is missing something for me to stand out. I just came to the country while I knew that I had great education and great knowledge. It didn't necessarily come out from my resume because what recruiters saw that I just came to the country. I have a little experience in the country. They see education. They don't know this universities, so they thought that maybe I'm not a good fit. So I wasn't even given a chance to come to interviews, and then I saw that going to school. In United States is the right thing for me to do. By that time, I already completed the online course, so I didn't need to start over again. I was building on top of the foundation I built before from completing the online course, which was again one and a half years of work, and I applied to him and say, I didn't wanna apply to any other schools. So it wasn't like I applied for 10 schools and got accepted. I knew that was the path for me. Again, it was five months program. It's one of the best names you can imagine from university perspective. And the program was exactly in supply chain management. So it was just a perfect match. And I applied and I got accepted, and I knew that was the path for me if I wouldn't get accepted. Probably I wouldn't go to school. Probably I would look for other ways, advance in my career probably. Again, it's hard to say what would have happened. Probably it would've had, it would've taken more time for me to get where I am now. But definitely that was a huge accelerator. Basically after half a year after access to career office support, community network, it was very easier to basically learn the job. Now I want to say dream job, but actually at that moment I wouldn't even dream about it. I think that's another huge benefit and advantage of actually going to college or getting a degree is. Being exposed. So many great things, which you wouldn't even dream about because you don't know that you can dream about them. So this idea that it just broadened your horizon so much. Yeah, I, I didn't even dream about the life I have now because I didn't know I could dream about it.

Miguel Sanchez 20:35

Having this MIT name really change how recruiters or employers looked at you. And, it might work the other way, right? If you're in the United States and you move to another country it could be the same thing. Maybe you need to, earn a degree or be certified in some way in the home country with. Their institutions. So it's about understanding the branding part, right? It's part of the, it's part of the growth. On the question of career growth, you've recognized that you needed this degree, but you also mentioned networking, What are some ways professionals, especially first gen, can start building their network?

Elizaveta Shafir 21:14

I think like I'm still learning. I think all of us have work in progress. And you also asked me before about like cultural aspect of finances. Networking also has a lot of cultural aspects. So a lot of cultures are actually not that open as American culture. But they also had to learn that. Here. It's way easier to approach people and the majority of people would be happy to help. And generally speaking, people around you or people who already achieved some level of success, or maybe they're just one step ahead of you, right? They don't need to be successful like in ever since. They just need to be one step ahead of you. They want you to succeed too, right? They want you to help. So if you are already at school there, there is career offers. So there are career fairs. So there is alum community. Every school has alumni community. Just reach out to alumni, say, I'm interested in your path. I want to learn how you get wherever you are. Because your story is inspiring. The majority of people will be happy to help and share their story. Same happens at work. If I see someone who is in the role or in the team, which looks inspiring for me or someone past who looks like the past, I would love to take, I just approach a person, like even if I don't know a person, I can just message them like, Hey, would you be willing to chat with me like for half an hour? I want to learn something from you on my part. I try to always pay it forward to someone who is still on their journey when. From when someone from MIT community or even my home country university community reaches out to me I try to always help with resources, with other connections. If it's not me who can help, maybe I know someone who can help. So just don't be afraid to reach out to people. And if they say no, that's okay. Someone will say yes. So don't be shy to ask for help. There are right people who want to help.

Miguel Sanchez 23:24

I've seen this, and I think you've seen this too, that more likely than not, people wanna help others. So even if you get a no. Like you said, if you ask five people and two tell you no or just don't respond to you, you still have to, try and keep pursuing that. So that's great advice to keep looking at those people who you admire in a way or you kinda wanna see yourself. And pursue them because they're, they wanna help. I want to sw switch gears a little bit and talk about life balance. I think a big part of career growth is and you might see this in your career. The more you advance and depending on the company you work for, it may be more demanding, right? It's with more with growing, with tenure, you get more responsibilities, and so that may affect your life balance. And life balance is one of those things that we see online and we see people talk about, I wanna have a job that has a good life balance. So I wanna ask you, what does life balance look like for you right now while you're managing a career? You have your specialized service to intentional money, studying for the A FC, doing the podcast today, and your family, how are you managing all those things to have a healthy life balance?

Elizaveta Shafir 24:48

I would say that's not easy, but I think the secret is just doing what you love. And when I think about my intentional money project, or time with my family, this is all energizing. So that gives me energy. And this time usually flies very fast and I value this time I can actually dedicate to these areas of my life. Work is more structured. So at work we usually have less flexibility, especially if it's a work, it has certain hours which we need to be there. At the same time, it's important to not just know what you want to do. It's important to know what you do not want to do, right? And just say no to all other things and say No is hard. And again, I'm still luing and getting better. It's saying no at work as well. Like it's not just saying no in life, but. At work. The more people know you as an expert, the more requests you will get, the more projects you will get. Your manager will want to make you more things. And sometimes people joke that you just don't, you don't need to be that good at work. So don't be good. People don't know. Give you more work, right? But that's not what you're after. We actually want to be good. But then you get into this trap, you become good and people want you to work even more. So say note work is also a skill prioritizing. The kind of projects or kind of assignments which are meaningful to you as well, not just your team or the company? Again, I don't want to say that it's always possible. There is always a trade off, but still keeping focus on this is helpful. Like the win-win in life overall, not just at work happens when your internal motivation. Align with external motivation, right? If you do things that you want to do and that's the same thing that your manager wants you to do, that makes everyone happy you, it makes you productive and energized, that gives better result. The same outside of work. Other people may want you to do something. And that's always good to check. Is it the same thing that you wanna do? If it's the same thing, it's a win. If it's not the same thing, then saying no is important. And the way I try to reframe it for myself when saying no is hard is when we say no to something. It allows us to say yes to something else. That's saying yes to that version ourselves. We are becoming, and that's not just about like manual career, it's everything. If I want to say no to myself, buying that another dress. It's hard because I want this dress, yeah. But what does it actually mean that I'm saying yes to my financial independence in the future? And that makes the choice way easier. Okay. I don't use the dress. I actually want me to become financially independent. The same is, I don't know, we are going to a party and maybe I'm thinking about another glass of wine and. It's hard to say no because it's fun or I want to say yes to me being rested and full of energy tomorrow. So I have, again, energy to do all the things I want to do. So just thinking what I'm saying yes to when I say no to something else actually helps to make these decisions when it's

Miguel Sanchez 28:12

hard. All these, I, all these ideas you shared with us and I can. Tell very easily why you're a very successful person is because you have a very clear idea of of certain habits that if you apply them in different areas of your life, you are gonna live pretty well. So one of the things that you've mentioned is being a good planner understanding how. You invest your energy and you gave us some examples of how to pick a school and how to pick an education. You talked about perseverance and how to develop your network, and you gave us some examples. And this one in particular really stood out to me because discipline is such a big such a big, deal, so to speak. I can't think of a different way to say it, but discipline is really key to do all those things that you already mentioned, right? Because if you don't do it consistently, you might do it well in the beginning, but then

Elizaveta Shafir 29:11

for a short period of time. Yeah.

Miguel Sanchez 29:13

Correct. And I think the key here is being able to say no. That's what's gonna give you the discipline. To be able to carry out. I thought that was, I thought that was great. What has been your biggest lesson helping people in their financial journey?

Elizaveta Shafir 29:29

I will probably say something cliche, but it works so in that area as well, life is a marathon. And it, you cannot. Do things in small sprints. So just because today you decided to start a new life, the consistency, just consistency of small steps for a really long time, that's what makes a difference. It'll not help if you have a budget for one month and then you can't sustain it. Or if you invest once and you never invest it again, you better invest$10 every week. For the rest of your life, that's what will give you actual sustainable results. Sustain consistent and thinking long term is the best thing anyone can do.

Miguel Sanchez 30:23

And I think you have given us many great examples of how you've carried that in your life. So I appreciate this conversation. We're gonna put the the link to your website on the podcast, how can they connect with you and learn more about intentional money?

Elizaveta Shafir 30:39

First, I maintain my website, which is intentional.Money. You can read about me, my story, read my blog. I actually love writing. So you'll find a lot of thoughts there. I'm also pretty active on Instagram so you can find me on Instagram. You can also add the link to the notes. It's intentional.money_e.shafir is my name and also I'm on LinkedIn.

Miguel Sanchez 31:06

Terrific. Thank you for being here today.

Elizaveta Shafir 31:10

Thank you. Thank you for having me.