Growing up, Jannese Torres only saw the men in her family making financial decisions.

“The women managed the day-to-day budget and made sure all the bills got paid, but the men were the ones who had the ‘grown-up’ conversations,” she said. Financial products were something to be feared – her parents had gone into credit card debt in their 20s, forcing them to file for bankruptcy.

When Torres became a mother last year, she knew she wanted something different for her daughter. “My whole goal is making sure that she has as many options as possible, because I didn’t have that for myself,” said Torres, 40, host of the popular Yo Quiero Dinero podcast and author of Financially Lit!: The Modern Latina’s Guide to Level Up Your Dinero & Become Financially Poderosa.

According to Torres, her 15-month-old daughter has accumulated roughly $13,000 in accounts including a 529 college savings account (which has tax advantages similar to a retirement account), a brokerage investment account and Roth IRA (which she can access when she comes of age). That last one is restricted to income-earners, but the toddler’s got that covered, too: when she’s featured in Torres’s social media content, she earns a $625 modeling fee. Torres estimates that if she puts aside $2,000 per month for the next 17 years, her daughter will be a millionaire by the time she’s 18.

Now she’s telling her 100,000 followers how they can set their kids up for financial success too.

A self-described “first-gen kid who didn’t learn shit about money”, Torres was raised in a Puerto Rican family in New Jersey. She became interested in personal finance in her 20s, when she was laid off from a job as a medical device engineer and started a food blog that started bringing in some income.

As she read up on the Fire (financial independence/retire early) movement, she found a dearth of Latina voices. So she started talking about it. Today, Torres covers self-employment and building generational wealth, but also topics like Puerto Rican tax laws and defunding ICE – hot-button issues that have an outsized impact on the Latino community.

Torres spoke with the Guardian about the state of her daughter’s savings, why saving actually comes down to earning more, and the worst financial advice she’s ever been given.

You became a mom last year. What’s your approach to your daughter’s finances?

The goal is to just have different pools of money set aside for a variety of purposes, whether she wants to buy her first home when she graduates from high school or she wants to start a business or she wants to pay for college. My whole goal is making sure that she has as many options as possible, because I didn’t have that for myself.

What are the biggest barriers for parents setting aside money for their kids?

Lack of awareness is a barrier for a lot of people. Parenthood is all-consuming and these things can fall by the wayside. But it’s important, because we know the power of compound interest when you start young – if I had started investing with my first camp counselor job at 14, I probably could have had a seven-figure net worth by the time I was 30.

One thing I find, especially around the 529 accounts, is anxiety around worrying your kid won’t want to go to college. I like to remind people that you don’t just have to use it for a university degree. You can use it for technical school, private high schools, trade school. And also, as of 2024, you’re able to roll over up to $35,000 into an IRA for your child. There are so many ways you can repurpose the money, including for another child.

I was personally thrilled when I found out that you can have friends and family send contributions to a 529 account. Everybody’s been really excited and supportive of that, and then you have this collective energy around setting up the next generation for success.

You’ve said that the savings you’re building for your daughter could grow to more than $1m by the time she’s 18, using a monthly investment of $2,000. Is this kind of savings realistic for most families?

The cost of living and costs of childcare have continued to increase. So, [for many families] even finding an extra $50 to $100 a month to put into one of these accounts can feel super prohibitive. But when we look at the ability to have friends and family contribute, I think that makes it less of a burden. Knowing this can be a group project is important.

I like to remind folks something is better than nothing. Especially if you come from a background where you didn’t have any financial help and had to take on that student debt. Just think about removing even a quarter of that stress for the next generation.

When you talk about college savings being a group project, how do you talk about that with your family? Do you think the approach is different for the Latino community?

We are a very community-driven culture, but at the same time, there is this lack of understanding of these investment accounts. Older folks, especially, kind of want to see something tangible with their money. Real estate is such a powerful thing in our community; it’s seen as the pinnacle of wealth-building, because you can see the house, whereas the concept of buying shares in a company doesn’t make a lot of sense to people unless you’re in that world of finance.

For my daughter, I’ve had to explain to people: toys collect dust. She outgrows clothes. There’s always going to be a new trend. But just knowing how impactful $50,000 of student loans were in my own personal journey – it took me almost 15 years to pay them off – I think about everything I could have done if I didn’t have that to deal with. I try to remind folks of how powerful this can be as a gift. I remind them, she knows you love her even if you don’t give her a physical gift every holiday.

What is your best tip for building savings?

It’s easy to tell people to save, but for me, what’s been really powerful is learning how to earn extra money. When I was working my corporate job, I was making over $100,000 a year, and I still had a [content creation] side hustle. Not only was it a fun way to express my creative passions, but it also brought in an extra $2,000 to $3,000 a month to throw at my student loan debt.

There’s only so much you can cut out of your budget until it becomes unsustainable. Then you have to learn how to make extra money.

You’ve written about having several income streams, including a rental property in Puerto Rico and teaching a Zumba class. Is having a side hustle realistic for everyone?

I think anybody who wants to can do it. There are some people who don’t want to deal with any of the stuff that comes with running that kind of business. If that’s your mindset, obviously this is not for you. But if you are a naturally curious person, if you have high-value skills you can market, I think anybody can do it.

You don’t have to build a whole business. There’s the gig economy and sites like Fiverr and Upwork and places where you can find freelance work easily. It just takes a level of “I’m going to figure it out” energy.

What is the worst piece of money advice you’ve ever been given?

“Don’t get a credit card, because they’ll ruin your life.” That was the lesson my parents shared, because they went crazy with credit cards in their 20s and ended up having to file for bankruptcy.

I had the fear of God instilled in me when it came to credit cards until I realized there’s this whole other world of travel rewards: being able to upgrade flights and book free hotels. I’ve gone from being terrified of credit cards to only paying my bills with credit cards. I think you should be curious and learn how these products work and use them to your advantage. For example, my daughter already has a credit score, because I put her as an authorized user on my card. So, she can have an 800 credit score to get her first apartment when she’s ready.

[Editor’s note: Adding a child or teen as an authorized user on your credit card can give them a head start on building credit – but any negative activity, like late payments, will affect their credit score too.]

What is a piece of conventional wisdom about personal finance that drives you crazy?

That you need to be debt free before you start investing. Not many of us can finance a six-figure degree or home on our own. Debt is a reality of our world. If you wait until you’re debt free to invest, you’ll probably never start. And we know that the most powerful thing you can have is time in the market.

Obviously you want to tackle things that are making life more difficult, like high-interest rate credit card debt, but when it comes to student loans and mortgages, you don’t need to wait until you’re debt free to start investing. That’s probably the worst thing you can do.

What money lessons do you wish you had learned earlier and are determined to pass on to your daughter?

When I was growing up, I saw that the men in the family made the financial decisions. The women managed the day-to-day budget and made sure all the bills got paid, but the men were the ones who had the “grown-up” conversations. I’m now realizing I have all of the capability to do that and show my daughter she can be the breadwinner, she can make all the money, and women are just as capable.

I’ll teach her how to use money as a tool, and to know that money doesn’t do anything you don’t tell it to do. As long as you give it good instructions, it’s going to do good things.