We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rocio Ventura a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Rocio, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often the greatest growth and the biggest wins come right after a defeat. Other times the failure serves as a lesson that’s helpful later in your journey. We’d appreciate if you could open up about a time you’ve failed.
Six years ago, we experienced financial troubles resulting from unexpected life events. We went from a two-income family to one income family. Our monthly expenses required two incomes. Shortly after, we could not afford monthly payments due to an unplanned pregnancy and job loss. We maxed out our savings, incurred debts, and got behind on bills. We opted to sell our home to prevent foreclosure and used the equity to buy land and an old RV. Once we figured out the RV was not an adequate place for children, we built a tiny house out of a shipping container. We eventually built our house. Since then, we have been working towards becoming debt-free, living below our means, contributing towards retirement and most importantly, promoting literacy on personal finances. As of 2023, I am tacking my last debt (student loan). My goal is to become debt-free by 2024. The financial despair taught me the importance of budgeting, saving, investing, and not incurring debt. Since then, I found a purpose: to inspire, educate, and encourage others to have a plan for their money.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hello! I’m Rocio | Certified Financial Coach & Life Coach
I’m a firm believer that mindset is everything!
I’m an enthusiastic cheerleader at heart who loves helping others. I love encouraging individuals to pursue ALL of their dreams! Something that has worked for me is to create a vision board & develop SMART goals.
I specialize in sharing life knowledge, budgeting tips, savings hacks, frugal practices, the importance of saving behavior, good credit, recognize opportunities for growth, etc. Based on my personal experience, encouraging individuals to have a personal finance strategy is key to turn their dreams into reality.
I immigrated to the United States when I was 15 years old. Despite the learning difficulties and the lack of mentoring, I put myself through college. I am the first person in my family to graduate from college. After a financial setback (the best learning experience), and five years of repaying debt, I am 16k away from being debt-free. My goal is to be debt-free by May 2024 (my 40th birthday).
The financial peace is possible!
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Looking back, the chances of me being “successful” were nonexistent. I had to overcome many obstacles: learning a new language, graduating from college, opening my own doors, creating my own network, being a single mother, going through post-partum depression, experiencing financial setbacks to the point of feeling hopeless.
The secret to overcome though circumstances has been to have a good, curious, and adventurous attitude!
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
Learning about financial literacy motivated me to achieve the following: to create passive income, having 4-5 sources of income, and cash-flowing stuff.
During the last five years, I paid off $140k in debt. Although it was not easy, it allowed me to become diligent with my money, my time, and my spending habits.
Once I was closer to paying everything off, I began to explore ways to generate more income so that I could contribute more money towards my retirement and to open my children’s retirement accounts. Based on the research, the only way to fund my children’s retirement account was to have my own business and then, hiring my children.
I started to consider possible kid-friendly businesses. Once I identified a possible business, I started creating a business plan. Based on the business plan, it gave me an idea of the initial capital needed to start the business. Two weeks later, I started putting money aside from every paycheck. Four months later, Tiny Pancakes Delight was born!
So far, we’ve contributed $1,600 towards my children’s retirement account.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: rozio.ventura
Image Credits
Felicia Garcia Dioany Yosuino