Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Money Smart Latina! My name is Athena and I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself and my new site, Money Smart Latina, where Latinas and finance meet.

Although I’ve been consistently blogging since 2007, I didn’t dip into personal finances until I was a broke college student in 2009, trying to live off of $900 a month. I had been on my own since being orphaned when I was 15 only to be going down mayday in college. I was struggling to put together money for that semester and keep my head above water.

Flash forward to 2014, and I am currently working on my second degree in Criminology at Arizona State University. My part-time job at a nationally non-profit has helped establish a career I love and I can now bring over 11 years of non-profit experiences even though I’m not 30 yet. And not only did I just pay off braces that have cost me well over $6,000, thousands of medical debt paid off and a car that was paid for in cash. Did I also mention I’m the first one in my family to graduate from college with an associates in Criminal Justice?

Even though hard work and persistence has helped me succeed, I was always left wanting more. I came from a household that wasn’t financially savvy and becoming orphaned at such a young age meant I had to learn a lot about being a grown up the hard way, aka, lots of debt and hard financial lessons. And even though there was a lot of personal finance bloggers out there and still is, there is definitely not enough about personal finance for Latinas such as myself, which has been proven to me by working with youth in generational poverty that look and sound just like me. I want to change that.

And so, without further ado, the idea for Money Smart Latina was born. I want to help not only young adults and millennials learn about money but I want to make sure the Latinas have a resource too. On this site, we’ll be covering everything you need to know from college and career, saving and debt, retirement and investing, and budget living, with a sprinkle of sass and memoirs thrown in. I couldn’t blog about it if I haven’t lived and boy have I lived it.

Welcome to Money Smart Latina, where Latinas and finance meet!