When it comes to your career rule number 1 is to ALWAYS negotiate your salary! This is honestly the easiest money you will ever make. It’s more than a few thousand dollars. If you don’t negotiate your salary when you first start a job you will be further behind financially. Annual raises are usually based on a percentage the more money you have to start out with the higher your pay raises will be, and the further ahead you will be in the long run. I didn't negotiate my first salary because I was just happy to have a job, but a few years into my career I started learning the power of negotiation, and how I should go about the awkward conversation of asking for more money and other benefits.  1.) Don’t just ask for more money because you have bills. News flash everyone does! Sell your value. What do YOU bring to the table that warrants a higher salary. Is it a recent certification or a degree? Do you bring in additional leadership experience from your community involvement? Thin...

The holidays are fast approaching, and for many it’s more of a time of anxiety rather than fun with family and friends. This season is stressful for many because family has oh so many questions and these questions can make the holiday season an extremely painful reminder of all that they have not accomplished this year. Side note getting married, and having babies is not an accomplishment. Staying married, and raising productive members of society is. Also sometimes life throws you a curve ball, and even with your best efforts marriages and children don’t turn out as planned. OK back to the post. This post is for you to share with your family members so that they understand what is appropriate to discuss as you pass the macaroni and cheese... Single Don’t Ask why I am not dating anyone. This is painful because if the person truly has a desire to be in a relationship then you just reminded them that it is yet another holiday that they are single. The person may also be content ...

      When I said this part of the vows I was thinking to myself let's not ever have poorer times. Now we are definitely nowhere close to poverty, but we have learned a lot about money management this year. Combining our finances was actually a pretty easy experience I will say that when I signed up to have my check directly deposited into OUR account, and not my own I did feel this sense of the walls closing in on me. I had this feeling mostly because this marriage thing was really real, and I no longer could hide what I was doing financially. I was now accountable to someone else. In the beginning we tithed 10% of our income to our church, paid bills, purchased flights, and vacations out of our joint account. We didn't really have a plan to pay down our debt. Throughout the first year we paid all of our bills, and paid off our wedding rings, furniture, and some other debts including all of our medical bills. Then after graduating with my masters I got the email of how m...

Throughout the last 12 months I never would have imagined that we would be in and out of emergency rooms, urgent care facilities, hospitals, and doctors offices. We blew our entire flex spending account this year because of all of the medical expenses! We really just thought we would be getting some cool new designer glasses with the money, but that didn’t happen at all! So how did we get here...? The first time that we went to urgent care I slipped and fell I was in so much pain it even hurt to sit up. On top of that Eddie also had a cyst that was causing him pain, so off to urgent care we go. Lots of x-rays later we were thankful to learn that nothing was broken I was just badly bruised. Eddie just needed some antibiotics. Well this visit was right before Christmas and while he was taking the antibiotics we head to Columbus and he forgot them on the counter.  The cyst of course came back much bigger and more painful so we went to the emergency room for them to drain it. ...

On October 1st 2016 at around 3:00 pm we said our vows having no idea what life had in store for us. The next few posts will be about the real life wedding vows, and some of our experiences with a few of the phrases. First up for better or worse. At the end of our wedding day we were on cloud 9 floating out of our reception high off of love and the perfection of our wedding day. It was everything that we had dreamed of and more. All of the saving and sacrificing made the day so worth it! Then we went from our fabulous wedding to our wonderful honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. We swam with the dolphins went to an amazing spa where we were pampered for half a day, and it was so wonderful! We even won a dance off at one of the shows at the hard rock resort! We came back from our honeymoon like if life is going to be like this together we got this! After our honeymoon we went our separate ways for 4 days Eddie flew back to D.C. and I drove to Michigan. On October 13th I went to Chica...

One thing that many people that are not married assume is that marriage is this fairy tale where you come home kiss each other, cuddle, have delicious meals, sex all the time, and this over abundance of money because of your newly combined finances. That is not true. Maybe the first week or so is like that then reality hits. Here are 5 unsexy conversations that we had to have this year. Each of these all though not fun are important to our marriage surviving and thriving. Death- I know this one sounds so terrible to think about because you are so in love and your significant other is not going anywhere anytime soon. The reality is it's a possibility. We don't know what each day holds and preparing for death is something that we started talking about before our marriage. Everyone should have life insurance policies! They don't cost that much and it protects your family if something were to happen to you. We have term life policies through Northwest Mutual for now. We also...

As we are on the cusp of being married for one full year. I must say that we learned a few things about what it takes to make this marriage thing work forever. I am thankful that during our time of dating that we were able to read a few books together about relationships. I am also thankful that during my time of being single that I did a lot of reading up on marriage because those books really helped when it came time to actually execute what we learned from those hours invested in  reading up on marriage. The lessons below are a summation of what we have collectively learned in love. Through it all our relationship has grown more than we expected. We have been tested throughout this year in every way possible and the amazing thing is that it is really only the beginning of our journey together! The Love Lessons are as follows in no particular order:   Shut Up and Pray- I don’t know how many times we have both had to do that this year. I know that I’m a trip and ‘I...

Have you landed your dream job, or were you accepted into your dream college program? Now that you have made it to that goal you are questioning if you should even be there. I know that that was my struggle stepping into each promotion and my Master’s program. I was young and insecure, and I didn’t think that I deserved it. Yes I had worked hard to get there, but for some reason I didn’t think that I deserved to be there. Often times I have found that the person that is the biggest saboteur is ourselves. We talk ourselves out of speaking up at work because we don’t think that our voice matters. Maybe you are a woman maybe you are a person of color and you think in the back of your mind that you are fulfilling some quota. This is not true! We need to stop the negative thinking. It’s that stinking thinking that holds us back from being all that we can be. We tell ourselves that we aren’t good enough and then we fulfill that prophecy because of how we think. The bible says in Proverbs 23...

In April of 2015 after about 18 months of living in the DMV area, I got the opportunity to interview for a promotion in Benton Harbor, Michigan. At the time I had been dating my then boyfriend and now husband for a year and 5 months. So I did what any logical young ambitious woman would do, and I followed my career. That month I interviewed for the job and got it! I was excited! I would be making more money and living in a cheaper location, so I would be able to set myself up better financially. Of course I was concerned about where this left my relationship, but one thing that I always said is that if it is meant to be it will work out, and if not at least I live in a new place. (I know I can be kind of harsh, and I am not even going to lie and say that I am working on it because I am not.) Anyway I had the conversation with my boyfriend Eddie and I said, so what do you think I should do. Do you know where our relationship is headed? He said, well you are right I am not your husband...

I grew up with a great example of what a home is supposed to be. Yes there is a difference between a house and a home. A house is the physical structure that people live in. A home is a place where people feel comfortable and memories are made. I was a military brat so we moved a lot growing up, but my mom always made sure that our rooms were put in place before we began school. I remember her spending countless hours throughout the years unpacking to make sure that our home was set up and properly decorated. She understood that our home environment was key to our success in the classroom and in life.  Throughout my childhood I remember our different homes being a place filled with game nights, sleepovers, and talks about life at the dinner table or on the couch. There have been many times that as young adults my sister Brandi and I have brought home people to spend the weekend in our home. Many of our friends to this day see our parents as their own. I like that our home was al...