Photo by: Tyler Kpakpo
MEET ECOMMJESS
I’m pretty good with money now, but like any other skill, it’s one I had to learn. When my dad suddenly passed away, we lost our only source of income, so my mom had to find a job that paid the bills for her kids without having a college degree. And that’s when she became a realtor.
I joke that I became a realtor too. I would attend listing appointments, open houses, and watch my mom draft contracts. I learned a LOT about the housing market at a super young age. But I also learned what happens when it crashes. In 2008, once again, our income vanished. So I grew up with a mindset: at any given moment, I could be minutes away from having no way to pay the bills.
My experience taught me that I could never rely on another person for income. And since neither of my parents went to college, naturally, I thought: go big or go home baby. I’m getting a doctorate.
So I went to pharmacy school. I did make six figures when I graduated, but I also accumulated nearly $200,000 in student debt.
I crash-landed into the pandemic and eventually began working in the Emergency Department. I heard patients say: “If I manage to make it out of this hospital, I have no idea how I’ll afford the bill.” In the same shift, doctors and nurses would be chatting to decompress. I’d hear: “What even is a 401(k) anyway?”
I realized, in those moments, that no one is taught anything about money.
Meanwhile, I learned the hard way that making a great salary, an ENORMOUS privilege on its own, wasn’t enough to build real wealth. My loans were eating away at my paycheck, and what money I could put into savings wasn’t doing anything. I knew I needed to learn how to invest, but I had no one to teach me. So, I decided to teach myself.
And so it began! In a very dark time, I created @ecommjess to shed light on everything I’d learned about money from the ground up — including all of my mistakes so no one else would have to make them. My source? Life experience and published literature, NOT sketchy guru garbage. Oh, and I didn’t quit my day job.
No, I’m not a Wall Street banker or a billionaire CEO, but that’s exactly my point. You don’t need a trust fund or a formal education in finance to learn about money and build real wealth, and neither did I.
Today, @ecommjess has grown into a community of more than 1 million AMAZING friends all over the world, and I’m SO happy you’re here. Together, we’ll make personal finance easy to understand and accessible to all. ♥
