The Red Pill or $10 Million: The Choice for Future Millionaires with Linda García
It's time for you to become a millionaire
Want to get right to this week’s podcast episode? Check out Dismantling the Toxic Latine Money Mentality with Wealth Warrior Linda García on your favorite app (or scroll down for the Apple/Spotify players).
This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see my Disclosure Policy.
As we drop into the final portion of the interview, Linda (who spent 17 years in the entertainment industry) has just talked about how Latines are represented in popular media:
as a maid cleaning someone else’s home
as a farm worker picking fruit
For why it’s important that we have more models of brown people than that, read on:
Why Representation Matters
Seeing our people as maids or picking fruit is all too often the only imagery we have of ourselves in the media—especially with the big hoopla around Florida's really shortsighted anti-immigration bill right now and how farmers are freaking the fuck out that no one is around to do the backbreaking work of picking crops! They're like, "oh, we're just kidding!"
Now more than ever, it's time we started seeing Latines out there that are the opposite of just the help. How about instead of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, we see Los Acevedos de Beverly Hills. Or set their stories somewhere else outside of East LA or El Barrio? Not that those stories aren't also important, but if all we're seeing of us, and all they’re seeing of us in the media is confirmation that Mexico or cualquier pais (translation: whichever country) isn't sending their best or that we're all just dirty beaners and wetbacks, how are we going to change the dialogue?
How are we going to believe that we are worth more? Hmm?
Back to interviewing Linda:
Paulette: It's this and that. You really take someone by the hand and walk them through what the stock market is. Here's the basic language you need to know. These are the numbers you need to pay attention to, and this is where you put your money.
You don't give specific stock picks because of course this was, you wrote this like a year ago, so the market's a little different. But it's very simple. But we've been intimidated to believe that we don't belong. It's not a language we're allowed to talk and you demystify it all the way.
So go out and get Wealth Warrior: Eight Steps for Communities of Color to Conquer the Stock Market.
Because if you are also feeling like I did when I was 18 at a top five business school and feeling like I didn't belong in that room, when I was sitting at tables with billionaires and feeling like what they're talking about is over my head…there was a reason the universe put me in these situations, and yet I still had so many money wounds blinding me to the opportunities, that I was unable to maximize those experiences.
But I'm reading this book and it's simple to just open a brokerage account [and then] decide how much money you can part with every month that you aren't going to miss. Those are the steps.
You decide in your budget, $5, $10, $25, $200. You're not gonna miss it because you would've spent it frivolously anyway. You just automate that into your brokerage account, which you also walk people through step by step. It’s genius, but it's so simple, and then it just happens.
You don't have to actively watch the stock market. This is a long term marathon, right? You say it several times. It's a long game. You're thinking about what's happening 20 years in the future. Your investment philosophy is “where are we going?” So you're looking for the companies that are going to disrupt and lead that, right?
Linda: Absolutely, yes. And I walk you through that entire mindset and I really truly tried to make it as simple as possible. I worked almost 10 years to process the stock market from my personal perspective, just like you going to business school, being really intimidated by sitting with really rich people as we were raising funds and having these types of conversations.
I felt so insecure and it's so incredible to hear folks that have read my book, or they've taken my courses, or they're in our community to hear them say
I just had a two hour conversation with this white man on the stock market and you should have seen his eyes. His eyes were popping out of his head cuz he could not believe the amount of information that I knew. And I felt so confident because I knew what I was communicating with him.
And like to hear those things. It makes me so proud because what that does to our personal psyche to be able to hold these types of conversations where before we would cower, that must completely change our journey. Imagine if you would've been much more confident in your approach with sitting with these folks and having dialogue.
I was never comfortable. I literally just working at Netflix when I worked there, working at Lionsgate when I worked there, I could literally feel a knot in my throat where I couldn't speak. I wanted to say things that I knew the room needed to hear, but all I could hear is my heart palpitations. I would start sweating and then I would walk outta that meeting having said absolutely nothing, contributed nothing. Never demonstrated my brain power, my capability, all because I felt insecure.
And I think understanding money and reading this book is really the foundation of the system that we live in.
That's all it is at its very core and basic level, it's understanding the system that we live in. And the more that I learn about the stock market, because I feel like I'm going to be learning this for the rest of my life, the more I understand how it really makes so many decisions in our day-to-day lives.
And I think that it's extremely powerful to understand this big decision maker, this big machine that right now only 15% of Americans are participating in. And those 15% of Americans, 90% of them are white, and 89% are the top 10% most wealthiest people in the United States.
Paulette: And the percentage of brown people, of Latines, was something like less than 1% right?
Linda: 0.5%.
Paulette: And that's insane! And all it is, is understanding this language that they speak, right? That can sound intimidating. And it's meant to! To keep us scared, to keep us low, to keep us working the machine, like we're just cogs in the machine. But when you start taking ownership of the machine by buying stocks in companies and being part of the decision making process, even if it's just passively, I heard you on a different podcast and you said that you no longer are an asset to the government when you become financially savvy.
You're an asset to yourself and to your family. And the culture, the society, patriarchy has a real vested interest in us not speaking this language. That's why it feels inaccessible to people like us.
Linda: Your social security number, your contribution to taxes, is worth so much more to the government than it is to society. When you actually begin to build the business, when you begin to understand money, you become more of an asset to your community than to the government. That's why you get so many tax breaks.
A lot of folks that don't understand the way the system works can complain that XYZ company only paid a minimal amount of taxes. But what they don't understand is that that company's actually creating opportunities and jobs for employment to a lot of members of society.
So you become a community asset. You're no longer a government asset, and here's the beauty of it. The government incentivizes you even more to become the asset towards community. And when you're not the asset towards community, and you're an asset for them, then they just suck the life out of you.
There's no other way around it other than you're exchanging your time for money. And a lot of the times we're unhappy in what we're doing for exchange in money. We sacrifice our mental health, we sacrifice our well-being, and it's really eye-opening once you start to pay attention to how this all works.
And how we can benefit from it, how our families can benefit from it. And also the importance of having folks in our community be the ones that are wealthy, not shying away from that, and what that can mean for so many of us.
When Millionaires Are Made
The next portion of the interview will include some technical terms about the potential for a recession, and all of these terms are in the glossary of Wealth Warrior. So let's do a thought exercise:
I want you to imagine that the millionaires that come out of this recession are all historically marginalized people—people of color.
Is that a difficult idea to envision? But what if it actually happened?
Paulette: You're talking about buying the dip. That's when millionaires are made and we're about to hit another recession, right?
Linda: Yeah. Right now, this time right now is when millionaires are made. We are in the prime moment in time where we will be able to look 10 years back. And I can say this with every conviction in my mind, my heart, my body, and my soul, that if you buy the book and you read it, I know for a fact and you start to implement what the book is walking you through, literally holding your hand through, 10 years from now you will be so glad that you read that book.
Because the only time the new wave of millionaires come up is right now. Which is why I'm so passionate about it, because I'm tired of the statistics that we're reading when it comes to the pay gap, when it comes to only 0.5% of the Latine community is invested. All of these statistics that anger me…I can be angry all I want, or I can try and make a difference. This is my contribution to hopefully potentially this new wave of millionaires look a lot more like us.
Paulette: Absolutely. And not just people who are in their forties, but younger. Gen Z is just getting out of college right now. I wrote a book for my niece when she was going into college. It was from that perspective of these things I wish I'd known going away to school, especially because of the culture shock and whatnot.
And the very first lesson was do not open the credit card that they are going to try to sell you on. It's gonna sound like a really great idea. It's gonna sound like free money. You do not have the financial savviness, the language skills for this, the financial literacy around this. Ignore it. Do not handicap your future for a few cheap things now.
And that is, looking back, my overarching lesson. Those money wounds were in there deep because I just kept running up credit card debt all through my twenties. The other thing I always tell her, and everybody who listens, is stuff that 401k, because you don't get that time from your twenties back.
Linda: Yes. I talk about the credit card thing in college in the book. And when the book was first released, I was so surprised in a sense that, oh, this isn't just my story. I had so many friends being like, “I got that credit card too. I ran that credit card up too. It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I was able to have a new credit.”
It really blew my mind on how many of our experiences are so similar because it is truly a system that we're moving through.
So I love that you give that advice. And one of my really good friends was like, this is gonna be the perfect book for someone in high school because they're really going to be able to have the tools necessary to move forward. And just today I posted on my Instagram, my partner sent me a like a meme and it poses two questions:
Red pill or blue pill? Red pill, you get to go back to when you're six years old with all the knowledge you currently have. Or blue pill, you get $10 million in cash. And the moment he positioned that, I was like, “easy! Give me the red pill.”
Give me the red pill. I will go back and I know at six years old, I'll start picking up chores. I'll do knocking on doors—because back then you could do that in the eighties—knocking on doors and and ask, “how can I make money? Cutting grass?” I don't care. And I would've started investing in Disney, Coca-Cola, and McDonald's. And I know that I would've been able to make so much more than $10 million.
But it sparked this moment of, if I could go back with this knowledge…and then I sat with that deeper and thought we need to read the book so that the future has the red pill. We need to read the book so that they can be six years old understanding what the stock market can do because it is one of the vehicles that is least used.
There's three ways to build generational wealth. There's only three ways; you'll never do it from working. It's entrepreneurship, creating a business and hiring folks to work for you. Maximizing your time, right? Using your mental capacity. It is investing in real estate and it is the stock market. And the one that is least tapped into is the stock market for all the reasons that we've already mentioned on this podcast.
So imagine opening this door up for our community members to begin participating in very simple ways, like you just mentioned, non-intimidating. When Paulette tells you, I hold your hand, I really hold your hand. And I'm not gonna push you into the deep end. You know, I'm gonna have you dip your toe in the water, take a few steps down the stairs, get comfortable, eventually get you in some floaties. Eventually [you’ll] take those floaties off.
It's a process that I find I'm really passionate about and I really tried to make it very simple. I don't know if there are other women that have written specifically on the stock market. I know there's a lot of white men. I don't know if there's children of immigrants that have written on the stock market, but I write it from that perspective, and I think that's what was missing from that space.
Paulette: While you were talking, there was something I was relating back to. It was the analogy [from the book] to filling your pantry. How you need frijoles,1 you need your tortillas, you need your rice, and you need your salsa. But you start with one of those four when it comes to picking your stock, and you just fill that up until you have enough, and then you move on to the next one.
It isn't “here's 10 stocks you're gonna go invest in and spread your $5 across.” No, it's choose the one. Here's how you research it, and once you make sure that your canister of frijoles is ready, then you can move on to buying your rice. Or maybe you do your rice and your beans at the same time, whatever it is.
It was such a great analogy. You bring it right back down to the things that are just natural for us to think about buying.
Linda: Absolutely. I think the thing with that is like no one explains the stock market in that way, and so you think you have to be rich and like buy the pantry already built. Or you think you have to have one of each thing that belongs in the pantry.
And so with that analogy and the grocery store analogy, which is how I convey the stock market, I really try to make it as very simple as possible. And the way my brain works is through pictures. So for me it's: what is the end goal? The end goal is for me to be able to serve a bomb meal.
I want enough frijoles for everyone that's joining my table. I want enough tortillas, I want enough rice. I don't want one piece of broccoli, one grain of frijol, one tortilla. That’s not gonna feed anybody. You're doing a whole lot of nothing when you're doing that. And so it's staying focused, translating it to a space that's really easy for us to understand in our community.
I'm glad you enjoyed that. Thank you for sharing it.
Paulette: Yeah. I could not get enough of how simple you made it. And I remember being in sixth grade, I loved this. This is when you still looked at stocks in the newspaper. Because the internet didn't exist as it does now. And so our teacher, in order to teach us math and fractions and also probably the stock market, she was like, “you get $10, pick a stock and every week we're gonna look at it and you can track how your stock is doing.”
But everything was measured in eighths of a dollar. So you had to learn what five eights of a dollar was and make all of these conversions. And that was a little hard, but I remember taking my ruler, looking for IBM, that was my stock. And I don't know what happened to that or why I abandoned that, or like, why didn't I buy the stock when I had the chance?
Why? Because then it started to feel like I wasn't allowed. That was not something that was meant for me. And that is a false belief. That's just another one of those money wounds that we've inherited or somehow been nurtured to believe, and that's bullshit. That is part of the toxicity and bullshit of our culture that I'm here to help dismantle, and that's why you're here to discuss it. Because your book really does dismantle all of this toxic bullshit around investing money.
The Book Signing
If you listen to the actual audio, you’ll notice that Linda becomes a little emotional here probably because this is her life's work, her vocation. And even though she's done a whole speaking circuit about it on multiple shows, I'm sure every author feels vulnerable about what is their baby.
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of the book and how it breaks everything down. It's such a fast and really delightful, easy read because it's also a great story. It's part memoir. You remember how my guest Rena said she wanted her book to feel like it was a conversation over a bottle of rosé? Consider this one like hanging out con tu bestie y tomando cafecito (translation: with your bestie and a cup of coffee).
Now get ready for some chisme! Because what Linda is about to reveal about her book signing in Los Angeles is appalling and yet still not at all surprising when it comes to brown people in white spaces.
To set the scene, Linda had at least 200 people at her signing. 200! On a Tuesday, night this woman came with an entire wealth warrior army. And Barnes and Noble was not ready for it.
Here’s the story:
Linda: I can genuinely feel how the book has made you excited. I can genuinely feel how easy the book was for you to grasp and just to know that my intentions are manifest means so much to me.
And I think for me, you going to the book signing, and waiting that long without yet having read the book, is also telling on like the calling that I feel and how the universe is orchestrating for people to feel called to be present in spaces.
You know what's really interesting about that book signing is that I was questioned. First of all, we really had to stand our ground on getting that book signing with the people that were organizing it.
And one of the first questions was, "do you think you can at least get 25 people there?" And I remember questioning myself because sometimes people have the power, especially white people, when they question what you're doing, they have the power to make you question yourself.
And I had one of those moments and I had to shake myself out of that and push for what I saw, the vision I saw in my head. And take it a step further. I was like, “we're gonna hire mariachi and I'm serenading everyone.”
Paulette: When we saw the mariachi walking in, it was a mic drop moment.
Linda: Truly, it was important for me to serenade everyone that came to share that experience. It's so emotional because we've been kept out of these systems intentionally. And you know, one of the things my daughter told me was like, I am so in awe of you going into what is technically, “a library,” what should be a quiet place and showing up in your authentic, loud self.
Paulette: And yet not like disturbing anything either. We went upstairs to get a drink while stuff was happening because we were in the back of the line and we knew it was gonna be a while for us. And you know, they play music in the background. And it just became this beautiful background music, but it was background music by brown people for brown people.
And that's what was so beautiful in that moment because Glendale—the Americana—is not a place where people without money hang out. It is beautiful. It's a beautiful space to walk around, but it's an expensive experience. You had all of these people there appreciating the concert that was happening inside Barnes and Noble. I feel like you just smashed down so many barriers and were like, this is how Mexicanas, Chicanas, first-gen Latinas do a book signing. So this is now your expectation.
“Can I bring 25 people? Can you put down enough seats?”
Linda: Yeah, exactly. That's the real question. Can you put more than 25 chairs? Exactly.
Inner Child Work for Childfree Latines
Paulette: One last question for you. What do you think about life insurance? Is that a worthwhile investment vehicle?
Linda: So I wanna be really clear in that I don't know enough about life insurance and I didn't wanna add it to the book cuz there are, Paulette is asking because I did integrate other wealth building vehicles that we can use. I just didn't wanna overcomplicate it with something that I didn't feel comfortable speaking on myself.
But I do think that there is a really big opportunity with life insurance in terms of you can borrow money against it if you need to. And of course it also protects your assets. It's definitely a tool that is used. There's no millionaires or billionaires that are not using life insurance to protect their assets.
So yeah, I think that it's an important component as well as building trusts, and looking at other forms of building generational wealth that we should all be looking at for sure.
Paulette: Linda, this has been such a great conversation. I'm super stoked we were able to make this happen. You are the first Latina mom I've had on the show that isn't my mom. So thank you for breaking that barrier here. Thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom with me and with everybody who is gonna go now buy the book.
I just cannot get enough. The part where you talk about your son crying because the robber, he was so sad that the guy robbing the store didn't have access to the stock market and didn't know that he could generate wealth that way. The innocence in that.
But also the value that he now has, like this is just normal for him. He was born into a world where we have a Black president and brown people invest in the stock market. His horizon is so much less cluttered by these barriers than ours are.
Linda: 1000%. I live so much vicariously through him. I do a lot of inner child healing just by watching his perspective on this space. And he's testament to the book, he's testament to the work and what the book can do. I'm watching it firsthand with him. And it's incredible to witness versus where my daughter had a completely different perspective, she's going through the mind shift with me, and at least she's not in her thirties [or] in her forties.
Well, she's about to be in her thirties, but at least she went through the mindset movement journey in her late twenties. So it's been really interesting. I got to see how the two generations are going to be so much different in terms of the amount of information that they're even available to withhold at that age. The fact that he understood, he saw a problem and understood how to solve the problem.
Paulette: That's amazing. You created that. You created the environment for him to know that. It's not part of the normal education at school because again, it's basically indoctrination. To trade your time for money, like you were saying.
And so this is an important extracurricular. Oh, you had also mentioned on a different podcast that your daughter wrote a book for children about money. Will you please plug that? Because you talked about doing your own inner healing work while reading it. And this is really important for childfree people because we have to parent ourselves.
Linda: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yes. The name of the book is My Stock Market Workbook. You can purchase it on Amazon. We self-published. My daughter had this incredible idea for the book and so I invested into her. And to show how investing pays off, I got my returns on my investment. It ended up to be a really great investment for me.
She produced this workbook that is Montessori style. My daughter owns a school, which is incredible to say, she's actually an owner of a Montessori school! And she created this book with her students in mind in that it's just very simple Montessori style, familiarizing yourself with words on the stock market.
And what we started to find was so many community members that were adults purchasing the book for themselves and highlighting, “I did inner child work.” And I [decided] to borrow that and do that inner child work for myself. And I started coloring the book and yeah, it was a really profound experience for myself. And to know that my daughter brought me this experience too, it was a full circle moment.
Paulette: What else is going to enhance your vida más chévere?
Linda: Well, we are currently in the final stages of finally, after two years, a new podcast. So I'm gonna get back on the microphone and it's going to be very beneficial. I'm gonna do two episodes per week, and one episode is going to consist of basically me sharing really quick news, concentrated news, quick digestible news, and explain what's going on. Especially right now during the economy that we have. I think it's gonna be really beneficial.
And then we're also going to have guests, where we go over their money wounds and their stories and their growth and their trajectory and how they were able to overcome their own personal money wounds and what we can learn from them.
Paulette: Okay, Linda. Well thank you so much for your time today. Is there anything else that you wanna say while we have you?
Linda: No, just follow us on social media. My Instagram is Luz Warrior and our community's Instagram is In Luz We Trust. We share stock market news. I like to share a lot of money mindset information and so I'd love to have you as part of our community there.
Find Linda online at:
To get the full show notes, and an episode transcript, go to PauletteErato.com.
Catch up on the rest of this conversation with these posts:
Listen on Apple:
Listen on Spotify:
Find Linda online at:
To get the full show notes, and an episode transcript, go to PauletteErato.com.
The program I use to transcribe these interviews has a problem with dual languages, so it doesn’t translate Spanglish well at all. Frijoles becomes “free Hollis,” which is now an inside joke for us in this community. Thanks for playing along!