Generational Wealth Built from Scratch and an Emergency Fund on a Deadline

0:00Sean Pyles:The following is a paid sponsorship, not an endorsement by NerdWallet's editorial team. Today's episode is sponsored by Bilt. You've heard me talk about Bilt as the loyalty program that lets you earn points on rent wherever you live, and they just leveled up even more. As of 2026, renters and homeowners can also earn up to 1.25x points on their housing payments. This is thanks to Bilt's three new credit cards, the Palladium Card, Obsidian Card, and Blue Card. All three can turn your housing payments, rent, or mortgage into flexible rewards. So you can choose the card that fits your lifestyle without missing out on points and exclusive benefits.

0:38Built points can be redeemed at top airlines and hotels, Amazon.com purchases, future rent payments, and so much more. Built points have also been ranked by top publications as the industry's most valuable point currency.

0:52Sean Pyles:Your housing payment is most likely your biggest expense. Make it your most rewarding. Find the card that fits your lifestyle and apply today at joinbuilt.com slash smartmoney. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash smartmoney. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. Terms and limitations apply. Subject to approval and eligibility, Built cards are issued by Column N.A., member FDIC, pursuant to license from MasterCard International Incorporated. Today's episode is sponsored by Spectrum Business. What happens when your internet drops during business hours and you're the one running the business?

1:31Say goodbye to your to-do list unless that list involved panicking and having trouble getting any actual work done.

1:37Sean Pyles:For business owners, being connected isn't a perk. It's how you take payments, talk to clients, and keep things moving. Not to mention pretty much everything else. Spectrum Business keeps businesses connected seamlessly with fast, reliable internet and advanced Wi-Fi. plus phone, TV, and mobile services if you need them. And Spectrum Business offers 100 % U.S.-based customer support 24-7 to help you stay up and running. That means you get actual help, not submit a ticket and hope for the best. Our colleague Carrie on the social media team is a Spectrum customer, and she told us that she chose Spectrum because people online kept recommending it as a reliable and affordable option for internet and phone service.

2:17She told us she was actually a little hesitant to switch at first, since she'd been using a different service for a while. But after a year with Spectrum, she's actually had a really good experience. Her phone gets strong, reliable service, and it automatically connects to Spectrum Wi-Fi everywhere.

2:33Sean Pyles:Join the millions who rely on Spectrum Business. Visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. One more time, that's spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas.

2:49Welcome to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast, where you send us your money questions and we answer them with the help of our genius nerds. I'm Elizabeth Ayola. Now, on this episode of the podcast, we'll be answering a listener's question about how to bulk up emergency savings. But first of all, we're bringing you the second half of our two-part series about first-generation wealth builders. These are the first people in their family to accumulate wealth with the goal of passing it down to future generations. In the first episode, we spoke to a couple building wealth together, but this time around, we have Grace Vandercruz.

3:24Welcome to Smart Money, Grace. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. It's a pleasure to be here. All right. So a little bit about Grace. She's the founder and managing director at Grace Global Capital LLC, which is a consulting firm that provides M &A financial advisory, restructuring and valuation to insurance executives and also to boards and also to financial regulators since 2006. Now, a fun fact that I want to share with you all about Grace is that she's also a licensed sailor. How did that happen, Grace? Two very different worlds. It is two different worlds, but some of the lessons are connected.

3:59I became a sailor through the insurance industry. I have the pleasure of developing some very deep and meaningful relationships with my clients. And one of them was a sailor out of Hamburg, Germany. And he and his wife invited me to sail with them off the coast of Sweden, sailing from Stockholm to Haparanda, which is the furthest, nordest part of Sweden. and I was sailing in his all wooden sailboat, which was a prototype of the American Cups. It was quite a spectacular, majestic picture of history. And as we were sailing, I was just fascinated with how carefully you had to observe your environment and adjust the sails.

4:51I was fascinated by the team effort it took to get the sails going. And I decided, look, I'm going to get my sailor's license when I get back to New York City. And I got my basic sailor's license and my coastal navigation license. You know, I am so afraid my deepest fear is drowning in the ocean. So I don't know that I would be brave enough to do that, but I love it. Sounds like a great experience. It is a great experience. We like to start with icebreakers from time to time. You can just tell me the first answer that comes to mind. So if your 18-year-old self inherited$100 ,000, what would you have done with it at that time and why?

5:33I would have invested in the stock market because the stock market has more than quadrupled since then. And my 30-year-old self invested in certain stocks in the market, and I'm looking at returns that are 3 ,000%, 5 ,000%. So I would use the time value of money to work in my favor because, as Einstein said, it's the eighth wonder of the world. and everyone who is young listening to the sound of my voice, use the compounding time value of money in your favor. It really is powerful. And I think the first time I used the compound interest calculator, I was like, wait, what? It's like magic. Just your money grows and you don't have to do anything at all.

6:21So this leads me to a question based on your answer. I want to know a bit more about your story of origin. Where did you grow up? And also, how did your primary caretakers navigate money? Because you said your 18-year-old self would have invested in the market. So does that mean you had financial knowledge at an early age? I didn't have financial knowledge at an early age, but money was wired into me at an early age. We all have our first money story. And there's an African proverb that I love, and it says, wherever the stream flows, it never forgets its source. And my source, my source of inspiration, my source of moral support is my late grandmother.

7:05One of the most treasured words she said to me was, believe beyond your limits. So we grew up in a small country in South America, Diana, and very, very limited resources, but a bountiful in love. However, my first money memory was filled with lack and not enough. And some of it was shrouded in shame and denial. And one of the things I had to learn to empower myself was to really shift my mindset regarding money, and how I think about money and how I grow my money. But first I had to account for where the origins came from and started making that conscious, deliberate, intentional shift every day in order to make my money work for me.

8:02And around what age would you say that shift happened? What was the thing that moved the needle for you? Well, several things moved the needle for me, But I had one milestone when I was in college in New York City in my undergraduate studies at Pace University in accounting, where between my second and third year, I have a family of nine, actually. I have a big family. There's seven siblings. We shared a brownstone in Brooklyn. And I came home in a June summer's day to find that our apartment was up in flames. Oh, no. And everything we considered dear and precious and memorable to us was just reduced to ashes.

8:47And we had a number of people who came to console us and render advice and aid. And all of them said the same thing to my parents, which is you're a family of nine. Why don't you split up into twos and threes? You go to different relatives and friends. And when you get yourself together, come back as family. But my late dad, who was orphaned at the age of eight, always reminded us that the saddest day of his life was when he was separated from his two brothers. And he said, there's no way we'll separate. And we realized that the only place we could stay together as a family was a New York City homeless shelter.

9:30So data began as me heading to school, just focusing on my education, ended with me walking into a homeless shelter with all of our possessions, sitting in a 13-gallon trash bag with room left to spare. And for me, it was a wake-up call, a wake-up call not only the reality of lack in my surroundings, but also the wake-up call of not having a financial safety net. But those are the moments where my grandmother's words became so real to me when she said, believe beyond your limits, because she believed that you should never plan your goals, your visions, your dreams based on your current circumstances.

10:23That's right. At our current circumstances will deceive us as far as what we can achieve. And so those were the moments where I had a reality and a shift regarding what am I going to believe? What am I going to hold dear to me and myself is that I am going to rise above this. And I wrote an article a few months ago that Black Enterprise published called From Ashes to Assets. And in the article, it talks about where do you begin when you're starting from less than zero? And why having a strategy and a plan and a vision that you're working towards is so, so important to you. Wow, that's such an inspirational story.

11:15And I'm so glad that you were able to build your life from the ground up. So now I want to hear a little bit about that journey. Why did you choose finance? Did that have something to do with you wanting to create financial security? Or was it just a topic you were really interested in? Yes, that's a great question. I majored in accounting. I took the CPA exam. I passed it. I started working for the big auditing firms. I did that for about five years before I realized that I wanted to get deeper into finance and really work on the future directions of companies and get deeply into IPOs and capital market issues like mergers and acquisitions.

11:58I went back for my MBA at the Wharton Business School, University of Penn, and that began me working on Wall Street. as life and the universe would have it. Where I worked and started to specialize very quickly was in the insurance industry. And I think it is divine purpose for me to work in the insurance industry. Why? Because I'm not only an advisor in the insurance industry, I believe in building family safety nets. I believe in families staying together healthy and safe. So I go to work with a passion for financial empowerment, a passion for company building their social meaning of helping people get on their feet, to build their wealth, to pass wealth on from one generation to the next.

12:58And so I'm a deep advocate for the work that I do, not only in the insurance industry, but in the financial services industry. I personally was able to start my journey to building wealth and saving for retirement because I got a job at NerdWallet and I started educating myself about my finances and applying all the things that I'm learning. So for you and your journey as a first generation wealth builder, when did you start building your wealth and what did you start with? It started first as being an employee of a company. I graduated from grad school. My student loans, not only did I have student loans, but it was in the six-figure category.

13:36So I really had to focus on getting out of debt as quickly as I can. And one wealth building strategies when you're still building a career and working on a single source of income is to really manage carefully how you live, what kind of lifestyle you have. Make sure it aligns with your values of building wealth and you're not spending your funds in luxury items that just incurs even more debt. So one of the advice I got was live off of your salary and save your bonus. So what I did was I did live off of my salary, but instead of saving my bonus in the initial years, I used my bonus to pay off this big six-figure worth of wealth that I had incurred in my education years.

14:33So fairly quickly, within a space of four years, I was able to pay the debt off. That's impressive. Yes. And then soon thereafter, I used my wealth to buy my first, actually my second apartment in New York City. So I started with real estate, which was a significant and meaningful investment in terms of growing your wealth. And then secondly, I started to invest in the stock market, not only through my 401k plan, but my own investments were investing in the market. Two very powerful tools for building wealth. Now, one of the challenges I noticed that first generation wealth builders face, especially when they're the first in their family to start making a substantial amount of money or to start building wealth, is that they feel like they have to save and help all of their family.

15:34And sometimes that can slow down your wealth building effort. So is this something that you face? And if so, how have you navigated that? That's so, so interesting. I deal with this all the time, not only in my family, but in several families around me, particularly when you're the first. And it almost seems as if family members who are not doing as well feel that you're entitled to help them in some way, shape and form. And one of the things that everyone building wealth has to learn and have to learn it early and have to be firm on this is that there is significant power in the word no. One of the things that we all have to learn as we build wealth, particularly when we're trailblazers, pioneers, we are the first to not only build wealth, but to invest, to get a certain level of education.

16:34There's this great deal of admiration that goes your way. But there is also some resentment, jealousy, envious. And a lot of times when someone asks you for money, they're asking from a place of very unhealthy, toxic feelings around their own financial well -being. And giving them money is like putting Band-Aid on a cancer. It never ends. So the sooner you say no, the better off you will be and they will be. Is this a muscle that you had to develop or were you always good at saying no? Because I don't know about you, but I have struggled with boundaries for many years. I'm getting better at saying no now, but it's a muscle I had to build.

17:25Yes, I have struggled with boundaries as well. But fortunately, around money, I always knew that number one, I had my own pressing situation to deal with. Number two, when I earned my degrees, I really didn't ask anyone for assistance. Those were just loans I took out that I was responsible for. So there was a great deal of skin in the game that I had that I knew I needed to repay. It was my responsibility. So I had a sense of ownership over my own financial situation. And I did not see it, that same level of ownership and agency in the folks that were asking me. So it made it easier for me to say no early on.

18:15And also, I had an advice that I think I would love to share with people. And when it comes to your money, and I was working on Wall Street, one of my friends said to me, do not tell your family how much you're making. Be very careful. Don't tell your family. Don't tell your friends how much you're making. And I see this all the time. Wealth is silent. You know, wealth is quiet. Poor is noisy. You see this in neighborhoods. You see this in our environment. You go to a poor neighborhood and it's noisy, super noisy. You go to a wealthy neighborhood, they're very quiet. So it reverberates in our lifestyle and in many things that we do.

19:08I'd love to hear more about the challenges that you faced on your way to building wealth, especially maybe things like imposter syndrome or even just knowledge gaps. You know, I didn't have much in terms of imposter syndrome. One major difficulty I faced was getting a divorce. The most important decision anyone can make is who you choose for a life partner. And when I emerged from that divorce, and it's one of the most powerful things I did was walk away from a toxic relationship. But I was left bankrupt emotionally and financially and had to restart from scratch. And that is where entrepreneurship was a powerful journey for me because I called my clients who knew that I was married at the time, explained I was divorced.

20:02And actually, when I told them I was divorced, I said, look, this gives me an opportunity to focus 100 % on client service. And I'm here to tell you that I'm here to give you my all. So when you had to do it the second time around, did you use the same approach in terms of real estate and the stock market? And also, what did you do to safeguard your wealth building efforts the second time around? So the second time around, the journey was much different. It was my company that I was building. And the second time around, the skills are different. You are your brand. Every time I woke up and my feet hit the floor, I knew that I was driven by purpose.

20:47I knew that there was a mission way beyond me that I was working towards. And it gave me a sense of fulfillment and empowerment that the first journey did not give. I guess a big component of generational wealth is the ability to transfer it across generations. So not just so that you can be financially secure, but so that future generations can be as well. So what measurements are you putting in place to ensure that, you know, wealth can transfer over? And then also, what's your goalpost? Because I don't know, how are you calculating whether I want it to pass from one generations or two generations and ensuring that money continues to compound and grow or those assets?

21:28Sure, Elizabeth, I'd like to answer the last question first. And what is my goalpost? When I plan my financial legacy, I plan it for three generations. So I plan it for 100 years from now. So how do you put those measures in place? And number one is getting the legal documents in place as soon as possible. I'm amazed at how many people do not have a will, do not have a power of attorney, or they do it in a much haphazard fashion. And I can't emphasize enough how clearly it is to just have the documents, have it current and talk about it. Second, I don't think we talk about it enough. I don't think there's enough.

22:16We don't have families that sit together as particularly families that come from a place of poverty and gradually they start building wealth. I really think they need to step back and say what? when we meet for family gatherings, this should be on the table. Let's bring finances on the table. What are our plans? What are our dreams? And how do we memorialize it in a way that it goes forward? And third, I think, is education. I think many times our children do not understand money.

22:57They I think we need much more financial literacy because in this age of AI, financial literacy ironically has declined. All very helpful points. But the last one is so important because if the people inheriting the wealth aren't educated on how to manage it, then it's easy for it to be squandered, right? Yes. All right. So I want to pivot to your future because I think People who are building wealth spend so much time, again, planning, working hard to ensure they can fund their dreams. So what does the end look like for you? Let's fast forward to 100 years because you said you wanted to pass down multiple generations.

23:38What does generational wealth look and feel like? Generation wealth for me means that, number one, because one of my main mission is to really build financial literacy, to have more people insured because we live in an underinsured world. My mission is to have one billion more people insured. Uninsured people live in areas that are subject to climate change. And one of the key pillars of building wealth is insurance. If you're not insured, you cannot build or create wealth or leave a lasting legacy. So having more people with financial safety net, I want my mission to continue way after I pass away.

24:29In terms of my family lineage, I have three children. I have 11 nieces and nephews, and many of them are interested in financial empowerment. And for those that will be entrusted in my wealth, I want to make sure that they continue the mission of education and mentorship and that they lead lives where they can invest in assets that continue to compound and use the compounding time of money in their favor. Thank you for sharing, Grace. We will include links to Grace's book and those resources in the show notes in case you want to go and download and educate yourself. Next up, we'll dig into a listener's question about how to bulk up your emergency savings.

25:19But before we get into that, maybe you are on a journey to building generational wealth and you want to know what the best assets are to start with. Or maybe you're trying to get yourself out of debt so that you can start saving more. Whatever your question is, leave us a voicemail or text us on the nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. Again, that's 901-730-N-E-R-D. All right, let's get to this episode's money question segment. That's up next. Stay with us.

25:53Sean Pyles:Today's episode is sponsored by Rula. Finding a therapist is hard enough, but finding one who actually takes your insurance, That's where most people find online therapy platforms fall short. Many don't work with insurance at all, which means you're stuck paying the full cost out of pocket or paying for an expensive monthly subscription. Rula does things differently. They partner with over 100 insurance plans, making the average copay just$15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Think about it. You use your insurance benefits to maintain your physical health, so why wouldn't you do the same for your mental health?

26:31Sean Pyles:RULA isn't just affordable, the experience is tailored around you. Other online therapy platforms might match you with the first available provider, whether or not they're the right fit. RULA considers your goals, preferences, and background to provide you with a curated list of licensed in-network therapists who are actually aligned with what you need, because they know that finding the right therapist can make all the difference. No wait lists, no frustrating back and forth. Rula makes it easy to find a mental health provider who is accepting new patients and appointments are available as soon as tomorrow.

27:02Plus, Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is helping you move forward. Go to Rula.com slash smartmoney to get started today. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash smartmoney for quality therapy that's covered by insurance. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

27:22Sean Pyles:Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just feel good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They focus on high-quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, without the luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100 % European linen pants, dresses, and tops with style starting at$32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear, and their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights.