“I saw a local news outlet doing a piece on Ashley Fox years ago when she was getting into the schools with financial investment courses,” Lisa said.
However, it was one of Ashley’s reels on Instagram about an upcoming Cash Flow Summit in September of 2023 that sealed Lisa’s interest.
“That experience was a great segue to joining [the Wealth Builders Community because my birthday is in November,” Lisa said. “I decided when I was turning 60, I was going to buy somebody's course, be on somebody's platform,” she mused.
“Happily retired” from law enforcement, Lisa had spent 25 years in policing leaving the department where she worked just outside of Philadelphia in 2021. It was through being in the Wealth Builders Community that the Passive Income Boot Camp attracted her attention as an avenue to grow passive income.
Policing was only her second career. Prior, Lisa who was born, raised, and still lives in Philadelphia, went straight to nursing school after high school, eventually becoming an operating room nurse for more than a decade before switching careers.
“Both at their core are about helping and serving others, just in very different ways,” she said.
Lisa said she was clear she wanted to have a career where the income would allow her to be self-sufficient, because she knew she “liked shopping, and things cost money.”
Fortunately, her stay-at-home mom for most of her childhood helped lay a solid foundation for her. “She was not a college-educated woman, but she was very wise. And two things that I remember her teaching me in my early 20s is don't have high credit card debt and pay your bills on time.”
For Lisa, that platform was a gift that kept on giving. “It’s from there that I springboarded the desire to learn, going to seminars or learning through online courses,” she said. “And one of the things I was really attracted to was maximizing the use of credit card points.”
Lisa said she treats credit cards like deferred cash. “I will use it to the maximum because I want to maximize points, but I pay it off in full every month so [credit card companies] don't make any money off of me.”
She is “very passionate” about sharing what she has learned along the way in her financial journey with others.
“Because we don't learn good money management skills by osmosis. You're either going to learn it from an environment, whether they're good or bad skills, or somebody is taking the time to share some information with you in a more structured way,” Lisa said. “I credit a lot of how I look at money or how I treat money to my mother.”
Having her financial goals in mind keeps her motivated and has shaped how she views success over time. “Success is not a straight arrow up. Eventually, long-term success is going upward despite the peaks and valleys that come along with it,” Lisa said.
“Knowing that nothing is a cakewalk or everybody, whatever that goal is, everybody would have it if it was easy.”
Even though she’s retired, starting a business has been Lisa’s biggest financial accomplishment within the past year. With her best friend, she started a vending machine business, using their own capital.
“Being able to draw from the gains in my brokerage accounts to help fund the purchase of some of the vending machines was a big deal for me,” Lisa said.
She describes the new business process as a “steep learning” but “fun” experience.
“Steep because although it’s not rocket science, it is important to have the machines in the right place, and the fact that it’s something totally different for both of us because she’s an educator.”
Lisa’s flexibility and adaptability, evidenced by her ability to navigate three different and challenging careers with gusto, is anchored in her spiritual beliefs.
“I serve a multidimensional God that made us to be multidimensional people. So that opens the door to always being able to learn and having the mindset that you are not limited to doing only this one thing,” Lisa said.
Lisa said she didn’t have any fears when she started investing but advises all to prepare to retire and work towards it because it’s coming.
“It's like the Fourth of July here in the U.S. that comes every year. You can either have a future that's by default or you can have one that's by design.”
By the time she was ready to retire, Lisa had been working for 36 years between nursing and policing. As it drew nearer, she said she was pushing harder to contribute to her 457 deferred compensation plan.
Lisa had done the calculations and planned but still wondered whether she had mapped it out accurately – whether she had enough. A meeting with the financial consultant that managed the organization’s deferred compensation initiative would more than quell her concerns.
“I laid out my plan to him, and he immediately alleviated any fears I had and confirmed that what I felt was going to work was absolutely going to work,” Lisa said. “I had a big smile on my heart, and nearly felt a tear come out.”
She is grateful to have reached that milestone and the opportunity to build on her future through the Wealth Builders Community. “I feel blessed and have massive gratitude that I took that step to join.”
Along the way, she also feels she has been lucky too. For example, she bought Facebook early on in 2012. “It was my first stock, and I thought it would be good because at the time everybody had a Facebook page from the local news station to Dunkin Donuts. I thought ‘it has to be successful. So, I've held it over the years and reaped the gains of still holding it since when I bought it.”
Lisa’s biggest money lesson so far has been learning about REITs because she previously had little knowledge of them.
“I just enjoy learning about REITs, the value of them, and how they're like little cash registers, almost like money machines that keeps pumping out passive income.”
Growing up the youngest of siblings who were significantly older than her to a Philadelphia firefighter father, Lisa marvels at how far she’s come since “conversations of stock investing just weren’t in the environment that I lived in.”
According to her definition of success – “setting a goal and achieving it” – Lisa is already hugely successful.
It’s a mindset that enables her to take the time to learn more about what she’s investing in and manage her expectations. “If it isn't successful, it's money. It's not like time. You're going to get more money, but you are not getting more time. So, take time to at least do some research.”
Lisa credits books such as ‘Cashflow Quadrant’ by Robert Kiyosaki and Myron Golden’s ‘Trash Man to Cash Man,’ which she considers “phenomenal,” to reinforcing her belief that one doesn’t have to own a big business to reap the financial benefits espoused in both books.
“It was eye-opening to learn how the tax laws are swayed to the right side of the quadrant where the investors and big businesses are” Lisa said. “But so much can fit under big business, whether it's affiliate marketing, network marketing and more.”
She said such insightful knowledge has had a significant impact on her over time and in her current reality.
“I've had a very blessed life. And when it comes to finances, I'm not the standard, but I will say in a minute, I am an arrow. I can point you in the right direction.”
The primary advice she has for beginner investors is that “you don't have to be a rocket scientist to have success with it. You can earn while you learn. It doesn't have to be a thing that you’ve got to have it all figured out first before you invest.”
For Lisa, jumping in is more than half the equation and a tremendous part of what it takes to be a wealth builder.
“There's no way we can save our way to wealth. You’ve got to be investing, whether it's investing in stocks or a business or real estate,” she said. “And the cool thing is you don't have to do all three. You could do two of the three and end with wealth.”