Mellody Hobson
speaker
238 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard May 2025
Mellody Hobson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Set a date, write it on a calendar, stick it on that refrigerator, stare at it every day and know after that day, you're not allowed to take another dollar at all. You know, it's like I used to pay for us to go out to lunch, you know, whatever it was not. It's like, mom, it's on me.
Can I give you one example? Because I love this so much. So I was living in my first apartment in Chicago, my second apartment. I had no furniture, none. And I just lived a very monastic life in this apartment.
No, not at all. And I decided, I graduated from college in 1991, and I had a goal of having a sofa in 1996. Oh, God. So it's like it's 1993, 1994. And this was the year that there was a presidential election. So I had this saying that I would say to my friends, couch in 96. So I'm getting a sofa. But I wanted a grown up sofa, not like a Jennifer's convertibles.
I wanted to go to the merchandise mart and buy a beautiful sofa. real sofa where I picked fabric and the whole thing. Where the decorators went. Exactly. And I remember it was this dangia sofa and it was expensive. And I was like, I'm just going to save for this sofa. There was nothing in my apartment. It was 850 square feet. I got that sofa. I would go visit it at lunchtime.
I felt so accomplished in buying that sofa. I can't tell you what I got from that. I bought it myself. So I worked a few miles away in Chicago. At lunchtime, I would go sit on my sofa because I was so... In the merchandise mart. No, once it got to my house and I was able to buy it in 1996. Oh, wow. It got delivered. There was nothing else in the room.
And I would just visit the sofa during the day from work. I understand that. And I was like, no one can take that away from me. I earned that sofa. Yes. I gave it away at one point. And I was like, that sofa means so much to me. I don't think I want to give it away.
Because it was, you know, it was not a, it was several thousand dollars. And, you know, it wasn't like that was something you went and did. I mean, I just saved it by a mattress. I remember calling my mom.
The mattress was $2,000, and I said to my mother, I cannot afford this. And she was like, the per diem on that mattress is nothing. My mother, who, not book smart, she's like, you're going to own the mattress for a long time, Melody. If you do the daily rate... It's nothing. And that sleep is really important to you.
Ideally, I think it's especially at your age, this is the way I did it. You want to start with a number and every year increase it. And so instead of being absolute, just having the goal that I will do better next year than I did this year, especially in the beginning, when you're starting a life, you've got a lot of stuff to buy. Right. You need knives and pots and pans and towels.
You've got the first month's rent and the security deposit. Yes. You know, all sorts of things are just real life. So I'm trying to be realistic about that. So if you could do 5%, you know, great. But in your company 401k plan, Give enough to get the match. You might not have a separate savings account outside of that.
I really want you to have, though, emergency money because you need three to six months living expenses if something goes wrong. And I've been saying this for years and years and years and years. And then when COVID happened.
Like literally people with no income and this idea that those people who had some emergency savings, it made a difference. So first save to have the emergency money, then start putting money in your 401k plan at work. And every year make a commitment that you increase it. Every time I got a raise, I raised the amount I saved.
You don't have to live in fear. You can take control of your life when it comes to money, even if you feel strapped. I've met people from every single walk of life, from... poverty and welfare to billionaire. And at every level, I found some level of waste when it comes to money. Some level. And it could be bottled water.
It could be, you know, where I'm like, if you could just pull that back, where on the margins can you get yourself in better financial shape? I remember when I was a kid, we would go to the newsstand. We loved magazines. Think about how much money you can spend on magazines. you know, we would have been better off going to the library. The magazines would have been there.
So those would be the examples of thinking through on the margins how you're living your life and how can you take control and take the fear out of this. The only way you can truly take the fear out is to have knowledge. The only way you can truly have knowledge is to read and ask questions. There's no way anyone should know this because I said we didn't learn about it in school. No, we didn't.
So unless you grew up in a family where the stock market and money is discussed. That's right. And when people talk about personal finance, I push back because that's not being financially literate. I'm not talking about how to write a check or how to read a utility bill.
I'm talking about how to think about things like compounding, how to make sure you're not walking away from free money in that 401k plan, how to make sure that you're thinking about the long term. All of those things, they can be learned and you can teach it to yourself, but you have to make the commitment to do so.
Thank you so much for having me and for being the most amazing person that you have always been. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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