“Growing up, I was always curious. I always wanted to ask a lot of questions,” says Bobbi Rebell. She is the author of the best-selling personal finance book How to Be a Financial Grownup: Proven Advice from High Achievers on How to Live Your Dreams and Have Financial Freedom, and hosts the Financial Grownup Podcast. As an award-winning TV anchor, podcaster, columnist and Certified Financial Planner®, she always gives the advice, “Ask questions and pay attention; always listen very closely to the answers.” Learn more about where she got that advice and how it has helped her throughout her life and career.
Video Transcript:
The best advice I ever received was to ask questions and pay attention, always listen very closely to the answers.
It's very important to be brave enough to ask certain questions that are sometimes very uncomfortable. So, for example, when you get a job offer, sometimes you're so happy, that you want to just say yes. But you should always ask for something, maybe a little more money, maybe a little vacation, whatever it is. But it's hard, because you don't want to seem ungrateful.
If you're shopping, and you know that you want to buy something, and you're willing to pay that price, but there's no harm in saying, "Well, hey, is this going to go on sale next week?"
I'm Bobbi Rebell, I’m a certified financial planner, I'm also a journalist, the host of the Financial Grownup podcast, the Money in the Morning podcast, and the author of "How to be a Financial Grownup."
Growing up, I was always curious. I always wanted to ask a lot of questions, I wanted to tell stories, I wanted to basically be a journalist, but I grew up in a family with a dad that worked on Wall Street, and he, of course, wanted me to follow the money to Wall Street. And so we compromised.
I got an internship at a news network, and I learned all about the financial systems.
I learned how the stock market worked, how the fed worked, what mattered to individual people as they're learning about their money lives. From there, I became a journalist through many years.
And eventually, that came to becoming an author, becoming a podcaster, and becoming a certified financial planner so I could really bring it all together for people.
So one of the things I talk about is always asking, and always being an advocate, and always looking for what more can I do, what more can I get, and having fun with it.
Be brave enough to ask. Ask for a raise, ask for a better price. Ask how the person you're dealing with is getting paid, so you can make the right decisions. And then make sure you listen carefully to the answers.
Sometimes we are so busy in our own questions, in our own focus on ourselves, that we don't listen, and we don't pay attention.
Let there be a little bit of silence. And then, sometimes, that person will pick up on the silence and say the most brilliant thing, the most authentic thing, and that little nugget can really make a difference.
Read these 5 smart strategies for getting a raise.