How This Disney Star Lost All Of Her Money

Order Christy Carlson’s Romano’s new book ‘Once Upon a Trainwreck” here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Once-Upon-a-Trainwreck/Christy-Carlson-Romano/9781668082218 Follow Christy here: https://linktr.ee/TheChristyCarlsonRomano Former Disney star Christy Carlson Romano reveals what really happened to her money after Even Stevens, Kim Possible, and Cadet Kelly. From making seven figures at a young age to lifestyle inflation, financial mistakes, debt, budgeting, and eventually investing in index funds, Christy joins Brian and Bo to unpack the money lessons fame never taught her. They discuss how to recover from financial mistakes, build wealth after starting over, teach kids about money, use a Roth IRA, avoid lifestyle creep, and create a healthier relationship with money—proving that a high income and true financial independence are two very different things. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reach your goals faster with our products⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Take the relationship to the next level: become a client⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with us on social media for more content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 02

  You go down to LA, you have this audition, you land this huge role. That sounds super exciting. A lot of people are gonna be in there like, I made it. But your book is Once Upon a Trainwreck. It sounds like that. It was not like, oh, everything was great and wonderful.

• 0:57Brian Preston?

  There has to be a left turn here somewhere.

• 0:59Speaker 04

  I tell my story about how I gave money to a psychic.

• 1:01Brian Preston?

  Was it like $25,000, $30,000 you gave to the psychic?

• 1:03Speaker 04

  The first time.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  The second.

• 1:05Speaker 04

  When people ask me if I would put my kids in the business, that's a no for various reasons. I think it kind of changes your childhood like forever.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Turns into a job.

• 1:12Speaker 04

  The only reason I learned how to ride a bike was because I had a callback.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  And it was a skill you had to have.

• 1:17Speaker 04

  It was a special skill on my resume.

• 1:19Brian Preston?

  What was the thing that kind of lit a firing you that you'd wanna throw two years of your life into something?

• 1:24Speaker 04

  I think it was when I got shot in the face.

• 1:28Brian Preston?

  If you're a big Disney fan like I am, man, do we have a treat for you today. Today, we have Christy Carlson-Romano.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Brian, I am so excited because it's so interesting. You've lived a life a lot of us have seen, but very few of us have experienced. And so I'm just excited to hear your story, what you learned, and specifically, how it shaped and formed how you think about personal finance.

• 1:53Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:53Brian Preston?

  By the way, you seem so normal from our conversation so far. I'm waiting to see where all the chaos is. So you're doing a good job of covering your crazy right now.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Well, they do say, "Once upon a trainwreck", so hopefully there's been some growth.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Past tense, right?

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  For folks who aren't familiar with, give a quick rundown. Like you had to give the elevator pitch. Who are you?

• 2:15Speaker 04

  Gosh, that's a really deep question. Who am I? My name is Christy Carlson-Romano. I'm an actress, now I'm an author that has a book coming out October 6. And I've been acting all my life since I was about six and a half. And I started working with Disney when I was around 14 years old and had a lot of successful TV shows and animated shows. I was Emmy nominated. I starred on Broadway when I was 19. I was the youngest Belle on Broadway for about an eight-month run. And then just kind of transitioned from child star to regular Hollywood person and then kind of dealt with a lot of the financial upheaval that a lot of child actors deal with.

• 2:56Brian Preston?

  You know, we're a financial show, but there is still so much curiosity because we've seen all the headlines of people who've fallen in the trap as child stars. And that's one of the things, I had a general curiosity when I found out we had you booked and you were so gracious to come on our show.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 3:13Brian Preston?

  It's because everybody wants to know, you know, because I'm assuming y'all made a lot of money. I mean, because these were popular shows. So you had good money coming in. We wanna hear kind of the, how it all went down and then also kind of give you the hero's journey of, how did you kind of realize, I gotta change some things and we gotta fix this as well?

• 3:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I think the assumption number one is that I made a lot of money. So Disney, when I was on it, I'm the first generation of Disney stars. Now we see Selena Gomez and we know her capital. We know her net worth, whatever. And I was the first generation, which meant that it was experimental. They didn't have a lot of programming on the channel at the time. It was mostly just concerts that were live from Magic Kingdom with the Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera. And it was sort of just an untapped resource that the Walt Disney Company did not know how to utilize yet. And so around 1999, they shot the pilot for my show called Even Stevens. And they were kind of like gearing up to launch a new era,

• 4:17Speaker 04

  which they most definitely did, as we can see.

• 4:19Brian Preston?

  I would say it was successful, too.

• 4:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I'm sort of like the first class of X-Men. And it was really a wonderful thing to be a part of. I never would have thought that, you know, here we would be today with still such reverence for the productions that I was a part of. And so I did not make a lot of money in these.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  So part of being the first class, they didn't know how to pay appropriately.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  They didn't need to because there was nothing to compare it to. Actually, the only thing to compare it to was whatever the kids were making on Nickelodeon. And now Nickelodeon was infamous and still is pretty infamous for paying scale. And scale is like $800. And then they don't even do residuals for their children actors and stuff like that. So they actually were really poorly paid over there on Nickelodeon. And we were getting, you know, modest amounts of money. So like for my first season, I was getting paid, actually, what I found out to be half of what my co-star Shia LaBeouf was making. And that was $6,000 an episode.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  And, you know, when we think about how much is taken out of that, it's pretty staggering. I think we can start there where, you know, you get 10% to your agent, 15% to your manager, 5% to a business manager, you know, 30, 35% taxes. You're making less than half of whatever it is. And then you're left to settle and live a life in Los Angeles just to be able to, you know, because I was displaced. I went from my home in Connecticut with my three other siblings to live in Los Angeles with my mom. And so, you know, you have to live there, you have to be there. And then it gets more complicated as you get more successful

• 6:04Speaker 04

  because you need a stylist or you need a publicist. I did not team up. We were really scrappy. My mom was actually audited. This was before I got a business manager. My mom had been audited about two years into the first series that I did for Disney. And I think that's why she was so scared that she was like, we need a business manager.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  But she got audited like for managing your finances, acting as your business manager?

• 6:31Speaker 04

  Correct, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I come from a very middle, middle-class Italian-American family from the East Coast. And my parents, you know, had been in bankruptcy in the past. And like, they really didn't have financial literacy in a traditional sense. I think that they were used to sort of, my father was a consultant. And so he would go from job to job. And so money was pretty inconsistent. But when we had it, we had it. And what my parents chose to do was to educate my siblings. And they all had, you know, private schools and they had the best of the best. And they were really just like a very working-class family. And so, enter me. I had already been sort of acting in New York City

• 7:15Speaker 04

  because, you know, that's what you did if you were from the East Coast and you were within a train's distance to the city. That's how you got your start. So I had been doing a lot of theater work. And theater work doesn't pay anything. But it was sort of stepping stones, right, to when I eventually ended up in Los Angeles and booked for Disney. So when I was working, what I found really interesting in discovering when I was writing my book and I had to interview my mom a bunch, was that everything that I made in order to justify me being able to take time away from my siblings, I actually paid for my own way. So I paid for my own private school education in New York City. And I paid for the trains. And I paid for anything, like any outfits that I bought for auditions and stuff like that.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  So from the jump, I was already a little bit in a deficit because I wasn't really making anything or saving anything until the Coogan account sort of activated for me when I started doing.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  For those who don't know or familiar, can you explain what a Coogan account is?

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Coogan was an actor, a child actor, whose parents took everything from him. And then he became destitute. So in the name of him, they created these accounts for underage actors to have a portion of all of their paychecks be put away.

• 8:30Brian Preston?

  But it's not in every state either?

• 8:31Speaker 04

  It is not in every state. I would hope that it would be, but it's not.

• 8:35Brian Preston?

  I mean, I don't think it is.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  I don't think it is either. I wouldn't be surprised, unfortunately.

• 8:40Brian Preston?

  So was there a lot of credit? Or were your parents paying out of savings? Where was the money coming from if you were in a deficit?

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Uh, meaning like I feel like I view it as a deficit because I wasn't earning anything that I wasn't using to go back into my career.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Sporting herself.

• 8:55Brian Preston?

  So it was just, it was burning through it. So you, it's coming in, but then you're paying for a private school. You're paying for all this. So there's nothing being left for the future.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Nothing at that time.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Like a teenager, right? Like you're young.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  This was way younger. This was before Disney. So this was.

• 9:09Brian Preston?

  Big break came around 14?

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Yes. Yep. Exactly. Exactly.

• 9:13Brian Preston?

  And how did that happen?

• 9:13Speaker 04

  So I was, uh, let go early of a, a Broadway show called Parade. Um, Livevent went bankrupt, which was a big, um, theater production company. And we were at Lincoln Center, which is a nonprofit arts organization. And so they said, we're going to give you your whatever severance pay and you've got about a month worth of money to be able to take. And when we chose to take that money and go out to Los Angeles for what they called pilot season. Now, because of streaming, pilot season doesn't exist anymore, but pilot season used to be from about February to May, and it was when all of the new shows were being cast. So there was a, it was like a gold rush for casting opportunities. And so my mom said,

• 9:56Speaker 04

  we're taking this money. We allocated the money and we had about a month in Los Angeles. And then I had about 10 auditions and one of the last auditions I had was for Evan Stevens for Disney. And so it was really a lottery and it was a lottery mentality that I was like existing in.

• 10:12Brian Preston?

  And you're like 13 years old when this is all going on?

• 10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

• 10:15Brian Preston?

  There'd be a lot of pressure, just, you know, family, future and opportunities. You've got to make something happen.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  For sure. I think it kind of, it, it takes your childhood and it monetizes it, right? When people ask me if I would put my kids in the business, that's a no for various reasons. But also too, I think that when you put your kids in the arts, it's one thing. Like you can put your kids in the arts and enjoy the arts and they can learn to love it and they need it. We need the arts, right? But at the same time, once you put the money part of it into it, the earning and the, all of that, I think it kind of changes your childhood like forever.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Turns into a job, right? It makes it, you start work, you start your working career way earlier than most other people start their working careers.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Right. Like the only reason I learned how to ride a bike was because I had a callback for a commercial.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  And it was a skill you had to have.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  It was a special skill on my resume, you know, and roller blading and other things like that. And so, um, everything that you sort of learn to do is because you're like a multi-trick pony.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  So I'm curious. So obviously you, you know, you were acting in New York and I imagine this is a big break. You go down to LA, you, you have this audition, you land this huge role. That sounds super exciting. A lot of people are going to be in there like I, I made it.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  But your book is Once Upon a Trainwreck. It sounds like that. It was not like, oh, everything was great and wonderful.

• 11:30Brian Preston?

  There has to be a left turn here somewhere.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Where, walk us through the train wreck part. Like what was it? Cause I, I gotta believe that's a high of all highs when you land a role. I mean, you didn't know how successful it'd be, but even just landing a role in Los Angeles is a big deal, right?

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think like I'm, I, I have a lot of gratitude for the opportunities that came my way that I, I had worked for, for many years. But then there's, there's no telling if you could actually book the job. And then if you book the job, does it, the pilot actually go to series? And then if it goes to series, does it get picked up for what we had, which was 65 episodes? Um, and that was so that we could get into syndication and Disney kind of had this rule back then because they were trying to diversify their programming to only have, um, series go 65 episodes. So we were kind of told like, look, this is what you're going to get. And after that, the show would be over. Um, throughout the course of my career with Disney, I got other opportunities.

• 12:24Speaker 04

  So I was the voice, still am, um, of Kim Possible. And, um, that, that created a new income lane, you know? And it was, uh, something that we learned to negotiate even more aggressively, although it was still paid pretty low. Um, we re-upped in the second season because we knew how popular it would be. We started sniffing that like there was McDonald's toys and all these things. So we started to get a little bit more aggressive, but my mom was a team player. She was not one of those that would say, well, Chrissy's just not going to report to set unless, you know, you, you do this, which, which had happened with people like Hilary Duff and stuff like that.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  And even my co-star had, you know, there was, uh, sort of rumors that that would be the way to play hardball is just, just tell them you're not going to show up. So we were very different and we said yes to everything. And so we got Kim Possible. Then there was another movie that was very popular for, uh, the world of Disney because it starred me and Hilary Duff, who were the two major stars besides Shia on the network. And so that like blew through ratings. It was this big thing called Cadet Kelly, set in a military school. And so I sort of became this fixture of this first generation of Disney stars.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  And so that wasn't quite monetizable yet. There was no Instagram. There was no, oh, wow, I can take this and make myself have my own platform. Um, and sort of control my brand, control my name, whatnot. So you kind of just like waited for the phone to ring from Disney to see what they would ask you to do next.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  And now when you, when you said that we're signing off for 65 episodes, did you commit that all 65 of those were paid at $6,000 an episode?

• 14:05Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  Okay. So you're able to increase and change that throughout the course of recording, right?

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. And then you had residuals that were paid to you after the fact, but I did look up, um, the residual structure, which is not explained to you by SAG or anybody else when you're exiting the, the series world. But basically you go from getting, um, a very sizable residual, um, to in like the, the reruns that we had going from like 17% um, to about 1.5% in like a 10 year period. Now that's really good because you had some leeway, but if you didn't know any better and you were somebody who was financially literate, you would be like, well, I have this money and this money is going to always keep coming. And like this show is just going to keep paying me and I'll still get the money.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  And so you start to live in this fantasy world of like false.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Security.

• 14:59Speaker 04

  Security. Exactly. So I think that has a lot to do with why you see a lot of child actors sort of like spinning out of control and having debts and just like starting to lean on other facets of, of security, like drugs and alcohol. And they're just like, well, I know this will make me feel better. And so over, over the years, I think that's why we see a lot of that.

• 15:18Brian Preston?

  You did, and I don't think I'm, I'm over disclosing because I was just going through our notes and doing a little research. You had some seven figure years where you actually crossed into seven figures. What was that like?

• 15:29Speaker 04

  One in particular, when it came to Disney. So now is a different story, but.

• 15:32Brian Preston?

  Where did the money go?

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Well, what I will say is that my business manager was, was, uh, not the best. Um, I feel like we were, I was, you know, I was about 18 at the time and he tried to sit me down and explain things to me in a way that felt like a different language. And I was just glazed over. I could not understand a thing he was saying, but I sat there and I, I acted like I knew what he was talking about.

• 15:56Brian Preston?

  So no Roth IRAs were happening in all these?

• 15:58Speaker 04

  There was a Roth IRA. There was, like I said, there was the Coogan, which was set up for me to go to college, which I did go to college. I went to Barnard College at Columbia University, which has a hefty price tag.

• 16:08Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 16:08Speaker 04

  So everything that was in my Coogan was like the exact amount. There was several hundred thousands of dollars so that I could, I could not take loans out so I could go to college. So that was, I was set up for that. And my family, to their credit, was always big on education. Um, but in terms of, you know, any future assets or anything like that, like nothing was being sort of saved for that. There was no savings outside of the Coogan account. That was kind of considered that.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  So did anyone talk to you, like as you were having the success from like very young age, now you're like 18 years old, like parents, business managers, no one's talking to you about saving and deferring and building for the future. There was no like baseline education around that from anyone?

• 16:46Speaker 04

  No, there was much more like, how do we show a loss? How, you know, there was the S corporation.

• 16:51Brian Preston?

  Tax planning.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  It was all that. Yeah. There was no future assets. And that's one of my greatest shames, my greatest sort of like regrets is that, and, and, and really one of my biggest, uh, things that I've had to get over with my mom, who I still help financially now, but it's like, I, I just wish that she would have had the foresight to say, hey, let's get you a house. Let's get you a rental property. Let's do something. Um, that I have seen other people do over the years. Um, but it wasn't something that I guess, we didn't have a community of other child actors to talk to about this. It was, you know how we don't really talk about money, which is one of the reasons I was,

• 17:30Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm happy to talk about it now because it's like, why is it so mystified? Everybody makes it. Everybody loses it. Everyone has their own relationship to it.

• 17:37Brian Preston?

  Do you even need a car when you're in Hollywood and drive? Did you buy?

• 17:41Speaker 04

  You need a car in LA.

• 17:42Brian Preston?

  Okay. So what, what car did you get when you were 16 or 17?

• 17:45Speaker 04

  I will say that that was one of the bigger purchases. It was not a big car. The first car that I got was when I was 16. It was a red Cabriolet Volkswagen convertible.

• 17:54Brian Preston?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 04

  And we paid for it outright. I remember. And, um, it was something that I thought at the time we could afford.

• 18:02Brian Preston?

  So how long did that car last? Cause you said that my first car and I'm like, okay, cars typically last like 10, 12 years, but you're about to tell us there's an act two. Where was the next car?

• 18:09Speaker 04

  The, the act two was after a while of, you know, I basically said goodbye to my parents after a certain amount of time. So I had the car and then I ended up getting a G500. And so that was when things started to shift, but that wasn't until I was about 21.

• 18:29Brian Preston?

  Okay. See, that's what I, I, I mean, I often think it's a curse to have money too young. I mean, if we all go back, take ourselves back to high school. And, and look, I have normal high school. I can't imagine what it's like to be out in LA. Cause I remember the first time I ever went to LA. Um, I had my first $25 cheeseburger and this is before everybody else had $25 cheeseburgers. Then it was, um, and I also, I, I, you know, Range Rovers. And there were the Honda Accords out there. It was, it was just, it was very unusual. If you come from the southeast where everybody drives Hondas and Toyotas. And then you, you go out to LA and, and it's a car culture. I mean, everybody is driving, you know, the cars, living out of these cars.

• 19:09Brian Preston?

  And, and I was, I was a little shocked. So growing up around that and then being young with money, disposable money coming in.

• 19:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:15Brian Preston?

  I can see how you just fall right into that trap.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  Well, eventually too, what my CPA said to do was to buy a second car and that the second car could be a collectible car. And then I got a 72 Corvette.

• 19:29Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 19:30Speaker 04

  And I never drove it. I only let my boyfriends drive it because I was terrified of it. But it was like, you know, I don't know what I was doing with certain, certain.

• 19:38Brian Preston?

  To make it deductible?

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it was. I know. I'm saying these were things that I had the wrong guy in my corner, unfortunately. And, um.

• 19:47Brian Preston?

  Sounds like he always wanted a Corvette.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  He was a collector. Yes. No, I think that's what it was. Is he was a collector of cars as well. So he just figured, well, this is a fun thing for her to do.

• 19:57Brian Preston?

  When does, cause look, we all have heard the stories about Nickelodeon, you know, creepy stuff and other things. I imagine Disney's a more curated experience. When do drugs and the creepiness, did that stuff show up on Disney sets too? Or was that?

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Not at all.

• 20:10Brian Preston?

  That's great.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:11Brian Preston?

  But obviously. Chemicals and drugs came in somewhere. How'd that all happen?

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Um, well, let's see. I think that my relationship to drinking, I mean, I started clubbing really early. Um, you know, growing up in New York City and then having older siblings.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  What's really early?

• 20:26Speaker 04

  Like 16, you know?

• 20:28Brian Preston?

  Get into clubs at 16?

• 20:30Speaker 04

  I think.

• 20:30Brian Preston?

  If you're the right person?

• 20:31Speaker 04

  I, my, my sister got me into a few clubs when I was 16 and then I caught the bug of it. But I didn't really start going back to clubbing until I was in my freshman year of college. And so then I was at New York City and I was like 18 and I was like, let's go out and I had a fake ID. And, um, and so, yeah, I, I drank very casually most nights, like a lot of people in college do. But I think my relationship to it became progressively like as a sort of more binge drinking over the years.

• 20:58Brian Preston?

  Done?

• 20:58Speaker 04

  I don't know. I think that I'm so proud of being 10 years sober from alcohol now because just without it in my life, I'm able to have, have so much clarity. And I can't even imagine what it's like even to be like a wine mom and to like have a hangover and have to get up and take the kids to school. So.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Parenting is hard enough already.

• 21:15Speaker 04

  I know.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? It's hard enough without giving yourself some more hurdles to jump over.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  And, and I speak for a lot of millennials in that like mocktail culture and sobriety, like curious people. There, there's a lot of people out there now that I think had grown up in this millennial culture of just like shots, shots, shots. Like go clubbing and nightlife.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Songs that sound like that.

• 21:34Speaker 04

  So many songs, so many songs. The, the club culture was huge and what I will say about club culture as well is that it was the only way to be seen. So we, again, we didn't have Instagram and we didn't have.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  So you had to go out.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  You had to go out to be seen. So once I was of that age after Disney, which was around 18, um, and I was clubbing. I got back to LA after my run as Belle and I was around 21 and you, the whole thing was, well, shoot, you gotta get on a Maxim cover.

• 22:02Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  Like if you're going to be seen as a woman, you gotta have a Maxim cover. And so, um, part of me was like really itching to get on Maxim to be taken seriously.

• 22:13Brian Preston?

  And so forth. That's so crazy. And it's, you know, being a girl dad myself, the content stream, I don't, I don't think we've improved in that aspect with.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  It got way worse.

• 22:23Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  No, yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  So from young child to 18, not a ton of like financial guidance. And then even from like 18 into young adulthood, something still not a ton of financial guidance, but obviously something shifted. There was a shift at somewhere where you started like, oh, I gotta figure this out. I gotta start making better decisions. How did you get there?

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  And when did that take place?

• 22:43Speaker 04

  Well, so I had a relationship with somebody who was a trust fund baby and he was like, well, how much money do you have in your bank? And, um, I said, I have no idea. And this was when I was 21. And I said, I have no idea. And he's like, I think that your family is taking from you. And I was like, well, I've given them money for their mortgage and, you know, I pay my mom a salary. And I also, I also rent her apartment as a write-off that was counting as an office. And so there was all these justifications for some of this like poor decision-making, um, that I thought was just beyond me. I was like, well, the adults in my life are taking care of this and I can just focus on the art.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  And I can trust them. They're adults. They're making good decisions.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  It sounds like it makes sense. This S corp lost thing, you know, I just didn't want to know really. I pushed it away. And it felt wrong. I will tell you that. It did feel like something was wrong and it caused a great amount of anxiety in me because I started to see my relationship with my mom as it was like, you could either be my mom, my friend, or my manager, like pick one or pick two, right? And so it became like my relationship to her was very, was not very friendly. And it was just like I'd call her Sharon instead of mom. And, and it, it's sort of, uh, devolved through this relationship where he was like pressuring me to really, you know, push back on my family.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Um, which in some way I'm grateful for, uh, but in other ways it was hard because I ended up going no contact with my entire family and then getting all my money and all my things and firing her.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  How, how old was this?

• 24:16Speaker 04

  Uh, 21.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Wow. That's such a hard thing for a 21 year old to navigate.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  It was. And I was, I think I was a little emotionally, um, stunted. I don't think that I was at the same sort of emotional maturity level as kids that went through high school, like normal, you know, experiences. I think that I, I think that a lot of child actors are really mature in some ways and then really immature in other ways. And so this was, this was that life experience that I just really didn't have. And so I acquired all my money and I still had money in the Coogan account.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Was this a substantial sum? Like when you took it all back over at 21, you're like, oh, I've got, I've got a lot of money. You're like, oh, there's, there's not a ton here.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  There was, no, there was a substantial sum. I mean, because I had a book deal and a record deal. Um, and that was that year that I made the million.

• 25:04Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  Right around the same time I next to my mom out of my career.

• 25:08Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  And from there was when the train wreck started to really happen. Um, because I started going to Chanel and I started going to Ralph Lauren and I tried to.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  I make a million bucks.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:18Brian Preston?

  Pressure. And, and did you just always have this feeling it was going to continue forever? You'd always make this type of money?

• 25:23Speaker 04

  Strangely, what they told me in my, my business manager and my mom, they said, you have to assume that you're going to keep making money. And I don't know why they said that. I was hoping maybe you would know why.

• 25:36Brian Preston?

  But no, I mean, I will say, cause it's, it's funny. We see, and there's, it's all over social media. Is go buy the most expensive car, put yourself under pressure because if you're under pressure for the life you want to live, you will go make it happen. You'll manifest the life you want to live. And that's probably what they were getting at, but that is a recipe for disaster, especially cause I worked with a lot of professional athletes.

• 26:00Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:00Brian Preston?

  Another firm. I hate that mentality because if you statist, it's, it's devoid of reality. Because if you statistically look at the longevity of athletes, entertainers, it is a very short window. Now it is very rich and has a premium to it. So you have to, you're basically packing 25 to 30 years of earnings in five years. But you know, so you have to act accordingly, but it sounds like you got the exact opposite advice. Go, go spend it.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:28Brian Preston?

  Because you can always make more, which is not the way the reality of the situation is. So give us, give us the redemption side of this though, because like you said, you're going to do this clubbing. You're spending the money so you can be seen, but at some point you're like enough. This is not who I want to be or where I want to be. Where is that self-realization? Is it at the dead bottom of it or is there some, just you, you, you pulled yourself out at, at the right time? What, where, where did this, where's the story changed?

• 26:57Speaker 04

  There's a long time before I ended up turning around and it, and that ends up happening when I get pregnant with my, my first baby.

• 27:07Brian Preston?

  And what age was that?

• 27:07Speaker 04

  That was like 10 years ago.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. So 32. So from 21, you may.

• 27:12Brian Preston?

  32 was, is just.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Rough, rough. Well, not with addiction and whatnot, but I mean, addiction was there, but it wasn't.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  21, you had, you made a million bucks a year. So you're thinking you're in the.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  Not only that year, only that year. Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  I gotta believe you're thinking, holy cow.

• 27:25Brian Preston?

  Did it fall off the cliff or did you just go from a million, 700, 400? I mean, how did it drop?

• 27:29Speaker 04

  That's how it drops.

• 27:30Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  For sure. And then I think, I think within like, you know, and those are those residuals that kept coming in. And then you're saying to yourself, well, I have the residuals. So that's almost like a paycheck. Like I'm not, I don't even need to work.

• 27:40Brian Preston?

  Are those six figures at this point?

• 27:41Speaker 04

  No, those are not six figures. They're, they're like, I mean, I think they tapped out at like 20,000, you know, and then.

• 27:47Brian Preston?

  So it's not enough to sustain a lifestyle that you were basing it off of?

• 27:51Speaker 04

  No, definitely not. And I think I remember calling my brother who is in finance, shout out to him. And he also lives in Franklin.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Let's go.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  And I, and honestly, he was the only one that I could trust at the point at which I felt like I was about 23, 24 and I wasn't working. Cause mind you, Disney wasn't going to hire me anymore because I was too old to be a kid and I was too young to play the mom. So there was no casting lane for me. And again, I'm not getting on Maxim. I'm not getting, you know, certain roles. And it was hard. There was like a very big dry spell. Let's just put it that way. And it wasn't because I wasn't trying. It was because that I was dealing with other sort of emotional upheaval from the lifestyle that I'd lived, um, from a young age. So, yeah, so I called my brother and he was like, okay, I'm going to help you the best I can, but you have to live on a hundred dollars a day. A hundred dollars a day is what you can afford. And he really tried to help me with that.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  And at that point, I think I was just kind of in a really dark place and I was clubbing all the time. And, you know, in and out of really bad relationships. And, um, I was just so unhappy that I decided I would go back to college.

• 28:57Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 28:58Speaker 04

  So I'm like 24, 25 at this point and I decide I'm going to move back home. I've got very little money left from the Coogan account that I am now going to have to take a loan to go back to college. Because I've been living off of that Coogan money. Thank God for the Coogan money though. You know what I mean? Like, because that was what, what helped me. And, um, so then I moved back home for a couple of months before the semester starts. And, uh, I just am so beside myself. I'm like, I just don't know what to do. Like, I don't know what my next steps are. Maybe I'll direct. Because you know, when you're edu, when you're given this.

• 29:38Speaker 00

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• 30:32Speaker 04

  Life, you're professional at what you do. Like, you have a career in a very particular skillset. What are you supposed to do when that skillset says, okay, well, we just don't need you anymore? So, you have to say to yourself, well, what is parallel to this? I guess I could direct, or whatever. I'll go back to college for a film degree, because initially I was going for political science. And I switched gears. I tried to rebuild from there, and I did get a grant to go back to school. So, shout out to Barnard for getting a grant, a private grant, from somebody who was an alumni, who was also in the arts, and decided, they saw my file, and they were like, we're gonna give this girl a grant.

• 31:12Speaker 04

  We feel bad for her. And, so, yeah, so there was, there was that.

• 31:19Brian Preston?

  Beau, I want to make sure we're clear about something. We're financial advisors, but we're not saying everyone needs to go hire a financial advisor.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you're early in your financial journey, your dollars are almost always better off going towards your goals, rather than paying someone like us.

• 31:35Brian Preston?

  And there's no shame in just using our free stuff. We literally give away calculators, courses, and this entire show is free, because we actually want you to use it to build wealth. That is the foundation of the abundance cycle.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, the fact of the matter is, if we can help you be a successful do-it-yourself investor, that's a win in our blood. But we also know that success often makes things a lot more complex.

• 31:59Brian Preston?

  Maybe you're not feeling that complexity yet, and that's okay. But if your financial life ever gets complicated enough that you want a second set of eyes, we're right here to help. We're fee-only fiduciary advisors, legally required to work in your best interests.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Whenever that day comes, head to aboundwealth.com and check us out. Until then, go use all the free stuff.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  I actually wanted to tell you a really funny story, now that we're having some levity here. September 17th, 2008. This is a little trivia for you guys. Do you remember what happened September 17th, 2008?

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Was that Lehman, no, that wasn't, was that Lehman Brothers collapse?

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. So, I was supposed to ring the New York Stock Exchange bell.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  On that day?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Wow!

• 32:45Speaker 04

  And I missed it. I missed it. Yes, I ended up, I ended up getting stuck in traffic in Midtown and missing ringing the Stock Exchange bell. But God saved me from that one, because that was the day that the Dow dropped 490 something.

• 33:02Brian Preston?

  No, you know, that was the year the market at its lowest during 2008 was down like 52% for the year. It was catastrophic for a lot of people.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  I show up, and I go, I'm so sorry I'm late. Oh, my God, what can I do?

• 33:14Brian Preston?

  They are so not worried about that.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  They're like, we're good. We're good.

• 33:17Brian Preston?

  Like, in a normal day, we would be very nervous about this, but today...

• 33:21Speaker 04

  And I was gonna bring the coin. They still gave me the coin. I was gonna bring the coin to show you guys. I'm sorry. I still got the coin.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Send us a picture of it. That'll be awesome.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  Yes, I will, absolutely. So, you know, I think, like, I have, I had, I learned a lot, you know? I learned a lot of what not to do, of course, but unfortunately, there was other things that happened. Like, I tell my story about how I gave money to a psychic, and that was throughout this.

• 33:45Brian Preston?

  Actually, that was on your social media in the last day or two.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  It was big. It was, it was, it was a big, it was a big...

• 33:51Brian Preston?

  Was it like $25,000, $30,000 you gave to the psychic?

• 33:53Speaker 04

  The first time.

• 33:54Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  The first time?

• 33:56Speaker 04

  The first time. Yeah, the first time. And, you know, when we talk about addictions, I think, like, there was also an addiction to spending money. And my relationship to money was, was like, how does it make me feel? And there was that first time that I had a woman approach me at the stage door and say, you know, I know your future, and you're cursed.

• 34:16Brian Preston?

  She's door-to-door psychic.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, she was.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Hit him backstage.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, she was ready to go with that card. So...

• 34:21Brian Preston?

  Full solicitation.

• 34:22Speaker 04

  She knew what to do, and she targeted me, and I just ate that up. And because I, again, was sort of addicted to people, places, and things, and I was going through a breakup, I gave that woman, you know, $20,000 for an amethyst stone that never came. And I sobered up before it and was like, well, what did I, what was I thinking? And I went to my dad, and he's like, this is my fault, and I should have been in control of your career, and all these things that kind of created infighting within my family about this money that was spent. And then, cut to, like, a year later, and I was like, I need to get this crystal. So, I found another psychic. A lot of people don't know this, but I found another psychic. And I march in, and I go, I'm gonna give you $20,000, and you're gonna give me an

• 35:07Speaker 04

  amethyst that's blessed, and that's all that we're gonna do here. And I sobered up again after giving the money, and I was like, what is wrong with me?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Oh, so you did that? Like, you actually...

• 35:16Speaker 04

  I actually did it again.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  But did you get the rock?

• 35:18Speaker 04

  I didn't even, I never got a rock.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  You paid $40,000 for two rocks that you never got?

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Yes, I know.

• 35:23Brian Preston?

  Does it matter? Is it amethyst, amethyst?

• 35:25Speaker 04

  Should've gone to church and called a therapist.

• 35:28Brian Preston?

  The stone?

• 35:29Speaker 02

  I know.

• 35:30Brian Preston?

  The power is the act of persuasion to get somebody to give you or think, perceive their value in this.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  For 40 grand, I'd at least like to have the rock. You know what I mean?

• 35:38Brian Preston?

  I'd rather have the stone, the coin from September 17th to 2008 than...

• 35:44Speaker 02

  All right. Okay, so, again, you're going through these bouts.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Right, it's just this bouts, yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Up, down, up, down. This is going on.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  You're getting it.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  But at some point, it clicks, and you're like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna figure this out.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Well, at that point...

• 36:01Speaker 02

  Like, when your brother said, "Live on $100 a day," did you start living on $100 a day?

• 36:04Speaker 04

  I did, I did. I did what I could, but I think that came with a lot of shame. And it came from a place of like, well, what am I worth anymore, right? And so, I think that kind of sent me in a spiral, which led me to just go back to school. And so, I met my husband there, and, you know, my husband is a marine veteran, and he had his own relationship to money, as a lot of veterans do, with debt and stuff like that. And he was sort of like, you know, on loans, getting his degree on the GI Bill. And we kind of both met in a place where we were both like, well, what do we do with money? Like, how would we make it? Okay, we're gonna graduate. We've got, we're older now, because we're both in our

• 36:44Speaker 04

  undergrads. But we had stars in our eyes to be able to produce films, and to go back out into LA together, even if we needed roommates. We were gonna be really scrappy. And then, you know, that was really a rough time for us, you know, before we discovered this world of social media that I really am working in now. And so, there was a program called VOC Rehab, Vocational Rehabilitation. For any veterans listening to this, I strongly encourage you to look into it to get your master's degree. And he was able to qualify for that. And so, he went for screenwriting, and was getting his master's degree. Meanwhile,

• 37:24Speaker 04

  I was sort of doing all these odd jobs. I was teaching acting classes to kids in hotels. There's these, like, little pop-up shops that I would highly suggest not doing, because if you ever are getting scouted in the mall, you're not actually gonna get cast in anything.

• 37:41Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  And then, there was Comic Cons. Comic Cons have always been sort of something that I think people now are doing, but back then, it was looked down upon. And Disney initially was very anti-Comic Con, until D23, and then I think they realized that there's nothing they can do. They employ way too many people that have other jobs outside of Disney, so that Comic Cons are just something that you could do. But initially, it was looked down upon to, like, go and do Comic Cons. And then, I was wondering if I printed out the Kim Possible pictures and pictures from, you know, to sign from all these Disney shows, if I was gonna get, you know, a call from them.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Yes, and assist, or something like that.

• 38:16Speaker 04

  Right, like, I didn't know at that time. But Comic Cons were something that I also did. And then, yeah, I mean, it wasn't until I got pregnant that I started. A friend of mine was like, well, you know you can get free baby stuff if you post, you know, about the baby stuff. And it wasn't until then that my life completely changed. And now, this is 10 years ago, and Instagram is becoming, like, there was, there was definitely influencers, but we didn't know how much they were making. But they were making a lot. And, you know, old-school YouTubers that were also making quite a lot of money. And we decided that

• 38:59Speaker 04

  I was gonna post for free baby stuff. But then, we get a call from a company called Lamaze. They were like, we're gonna pay you $100,000 for 12 months of content. And my husband negotiated that. And he was like, I can't believe I just closed this deal. I think I'm actually good at this. I go, well, we should have you continue to do that, you know? Like, you should, you should, and then there's no commissions paid out. So, I was like, this is really something we've just stumbled on. Let's start to make content.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  It's, okay, so, you land this deal, and I'm assuming that was the first of a number of deals that are likely gonna come through. What did you guys do? Okay, now we're gonna, every check that comes in, we're gonna put some money over here.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  And we're gonna like, like mentally, how did you say, we've made money in the past, we did not save any of it. We're finally, after this drought, after this season of odd jobs, we're finally gonna start making money again. Behaviorally, what did y'all do different?

• 39:56Speaker 04

  We, I will tell you this, we had a lot of debt that we had to pay down. So that's when we, that's when we started to prioritize all of that. And we were like, okay, let's get on payment plans and.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Like car payments and credit cards?

• 40:06Speaker 04

  We had lived off the Amex until like, like until we figured this out, that we actually had a way to.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Like, how big and scary was the number?

• 40:13Speaker 04

  It was a couple, it was like $200,000.

• 40:16Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:18Brian Preston?

  So, did you go into the marriage, were you all budgeting? Are you all, I mean?

• 40:21Speaker 04

  We didn't talk about money. Yeah, we were just in love and we just, we knew that we both had these pasts.

• 40:27Brian Preston?

  Are you budgeting now?

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 40:29Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Oh, we're aggressively saving.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Something has changed 10 years ago, right?

• 40:33Speaker 04

  I promise you, I promise you, yeah, we are, we are budgeting, we are so much more savvy, where there's index funds and there's, you know.

• 40:40Brian Preston?

  Yeah, now you're, oh.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Now you're speaking the language.

• 40:42Brian Preston?

  That's exactly, you're scratching all the itches with the, with the index funds.

• 40:45Speaker 04

  I'm glad, yeah, my husband, his acumen for financial literacy has grown so much and he just dedicated himself to reading so many books so that we don't ever go back to where we were. And it's really, it's really amazing to see that my husband is, is, is just so protective of us. And, and I learned so much from him because we, there's no decision that's made that's not explained to me now in layman's terms. And we make, you know, a really good living doing what we do. And, you know, like I said, there's no commissions out and.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  It's just money in and you get to choose how you spend it and where it goes.

• 41:18Brian Preston?

  Well, social media is the wild, wild west. I mean, we know a lot of other content creators and I think that's the thing that's so unique. Because you are your own brand.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Exactly. And what we were able to do is to create a new brand for myself. So when I decided to start posting on, on YouTube was when people started to find me again. And I created this value where there was none for so many years because of nostalgia. And we tapped into this frequency of what people would want from me. We just got really scrappy and in the weeds. And of course, you know, when you have kids, things totally shift for you financially, like you're like.

• 41:57Brian Preston?

  Priorities change.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  Especially for my husband. He was just like, nope, this is, this is where we're gonna, and, and God makes a way, I guess, because it just started to hit and hit and hit. And then I grew my platform over time. And now I don't have crazy numbers compared to other Disney stars and, but what I have is a dedicated fan base of folks that are, you know, engaging with me and a very high retention rate in that regard. And so I can go viral, you know, whereas a lot of influencers can't go viral. So like, my husband's pitch to, uh, we, we, we do a lot of cold calling, cold contacting of products.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  The reach outs, the products?

• 42:36Speaker 04

  We do the reach outs directly, which is not something that I think people expect of us. And we have an individual who will find people on LinkedIn and be like really aggressive and just be like, hey, like Christie's really interested in setting up a call, are you interested? And for as many as there are out, they, they are millennials that grew up with me. And so they're excited to see that then I go and follow them on, you know, wherever they are.

• 43:00Brian Preston?

  When we reached out to you, I mean, we even had this conversation, I, I, we were like, I think Christie's actually talking to us directly.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  He's the one in the DMs.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  That was me, yeah.

• 43:08Brian Preston?

  Yeah, that's what we, we, that's what we were curious. So, I mean, that shows a commitment to kind of making this happen is that you, you know, cause it, it's one thing to talk to somebody's people and nothing wrong with that. We do that sometimes too. But there is something when you actually connect with somebody directly, it just feels a little different.

• 43:26Speaker 04

  And, and you hear these nightmare stories about influencers who really just think that they're the biggest things in the world. And like, we're not, we're not doing that. We're coming at it from a place of true collaboration and like, how can we, how can we make the best content for the product? And there's a lot of ways to, to, so whitelisting is a really added bonus that I get for brands because I have the traditional name of Hollywood and people know my name and likeness. But they're also getting a, a person who's acting as an influencer. So I, I kind of, we sell that as a package. And it, and it's very beneficial.

• 44:01Brian Preston?

  We, we, we talked before the cameras turned on, this book was a two-year endeavor?

• 44:06Speaker 04

  Yes, it was.

• 44:07Brian Preston?

  Talk to us about, what do you hope people, why did you write it? What was the thing that kind of lit a firing you to, that you'd wanna throw two years of your life into something?

• 44:15Speaker 04

  I think it was when I got shot in the face.

• 44:18Brian Preston?

  But I wasn't, look, there were things, we, we were like, should we come up with a list?

• 44:21Speaker 02

  First time that's ever come up on our show, someone said I got shot in the face.

• 44:24Brian Preston?

  We, we were like, are there, there are things that, should we bring up around Christie? And then, then we were like.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  I can hang you guys.

• 44:29Brian Preston?

  I was just over in Scotland with, with a few other couples and I had never shot sporting clays before. But I did that like probably three weeks ago. And I had, for the first time. And then when I heard, and I saw some, they, they had the pictures up on the, the monitors. How in the world did that even happen? Because like the shooting range I was at, safety was like, now this was over in Europe. So they're even at another level because they don't even like guns over there.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:55Brian Preston?

  So how does that even happen?

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Well, it's Texas. So they are a little bit looser on someone's, you know, property. And, you know, you drive out there to wherever it was, dime box, and it's, it's kind of like, it is the wild west. I got peppered by birdshot about 250 feet away. I've got, um, birdshot still in the back of my eye, a millimeter, a pencil tip away from anything critical to blind me. And I also have it in my forehead still. So I've completely done a medical miracle from what my optoplastician said. He was like, usually if a kid gets hit with a Nerf gun, I'm taking out their eye. You got shot and it was so close that it was cauterized.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  Um, so it's cleanly in there and it's just staying in there. And it's a really wild, it's a really wild story, unrelated to finances.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  You're like the 50 cent of Disney childhood stars.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  I did, I, I have been told that I need to have a rap album at some point.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Seriously, that's what, let's get this book launched out there in the world and then let's drop the rap album.

• 45:55Brian Preston?

  Somewhere else down the, because if it was that far, was somebody was shooting and you were just indirectly in the path. And they, they followed the target too far.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  They flagged, they flagged it and it was, and it was irresponsibly discharged, yeah. So it was, it was unfortunate.

• 46:10Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  As you said, that had a lot to do with you doing the book, is that?

• 46:13Speaker 04

  I think so. I think, I think that, you know, certain life crises like that happen. And, you know, I had already been in talks for the book proposal, um, but at the same time, it felt like more than ever a time for me to leave something behind for my daughters. So a big part of this book, after every chapter, is a letter to my daughters. And so it, it is chronological and in the first person voice, um, but it changes, the voice changes as I get older. And it becomes a very different person throughout. So you're almost rooting for me, but you're also kind of like screaming at the pages. Um, and every chapter that has the dear girls kind of creates this like lighter side to, to show that like, I'm okay now.

• 46:58Speaker 04

  And there's a lot that I've learned from each chapter of this book. Um, and so I, I think that this is just, it's a legacy book for me. This isn't just about a celeb memoir tell-all. This is much more about breaking cycles and what I can leave to my daughters.

• 47:13Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  So obviously you guys have young children in the home and you think about your money story. When you think about how you're gonna teach them about money and how you're gonna share lessons with them, what's that gonna look like? Like, when are you gonna start those conversations and how are you guys gonna think through that type of communication?

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing we gotta do is get them to earn some money.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 47:36Speaker 04

  You know, I think they need an allowance, you know, they're, they're nine and seven. And I think that they're at the perfect age to start doing chores for money. And I think from there, we'll probably open up some sort of an ATM card for them and, um, and discuss spending. And I think that there, there's some really great systems out there where it's like the piggy bank, you know, what is that, one piggy bank where it's like save?

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Give, save, spend.

• 47:59Speaker 04

  Yes, give, save, spend. Yeah. And I think it's also important to teach them to give back.

• 48:03Brian Preston?

  Always. Now, look, you, you are the extreme side because you, you are actually out there supporting your family. What, if we went more conventional, I'll go ahead and help, help you with something that I've, I've shared with my oldest daughter. And we talked to a lot of our clients' kids because sometimes growing up with resources can be just as much of a curse as somebody who grew up dirt poor is because you don't know what you don't know. And then you, you get to adulthood and you're in the shadow of this success that your parents might've had. And, and, you know, so your kids might have some of the, the struggles. The best thing I can say, put your kids to work at something public facing as soon as they're like 16, whether it's fast food.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  Oh, service.

• 48:42Brian Preston?

  Grocery stores, something, so.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  But it can serve the public.

• 48:45Brian Preston?

  Because here's the thing you want, you want them to get access to the public so they can realize how crazy the people of the world are. And you learn how to develop the skills to, to do that. I think working at Hardee's all through high school, dealing with the crazy people in the drive-through and at the front counter was so good because if you can make this person happy, you're probably, this is a skill set that's gonna serve you whether you're in accounting or engineering or teaching or in entertainment even, because you, you will be a student of how people are. And then as soon as they're making that money, prime the pump as the parent and like help them fund that custodial Roth IRA or a savings account. Cause if, if, if we could've whispered in your ear back when you, you got cast at 14,

• 49:29Brian Preston?

  imagine if not only did you, if you had the Coogan account, but then you were funding, you know, 15, 20% of this for the future, it's a completely different conversation. I mean, you've created your own success outside of that, but would've, should've, could've for the next generation to pay it forward. It'd been pretty powerful stuff.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And I think it also really speaks to giving your, your children a sense of value, you know, a confidence that is, is not really.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  You can't teach them that. I mean, you can show them love, but you're showing them financial love, which is a very different relationship.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  What age do you want your girls to read the book at?

• 50:09Speaker 04

  Fifteen or sixteen.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Let them get a little bit older and then have them read it.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  When someone picks up the book and they read it for the very first time, what's the thing you hope they walk away with?

• 50:18Speaker 04

  The feedback I've gotten so far is that it's very relatable, which is ironic because there's a lot of really random stories in there.

• 50:26Speaker 02

  So few people have actually experienced that.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I've gotten a lot of, a lot of women have told me that it's a very relatable story for them. But I think even if, if it's a man that's reading it, I think that they can, you know, I don't know, I hope that they learn something about humanity and how everybody has their own journey and that you shouldn't give up on them and that people change.

• 50:51Brian Preston?

  Well, storytelling can be a very valuable teaching method. And that's why I know you've loaded it up with stories. And I think that that's, that's, that's a very approachable way. Cause look, it's a natural human nature. We all do comparison where we're like, would I do that? Would I have fallen into that trap?

• 51:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:06Brian Preston?

  So I think if you, you being so honest, probably is going to be disarming, but also invite people to then hopefully learn something from it as well. Cause that's what, and you probably have, and look, your book is coming out, was it October 8?

• 51:19Speaker 04

  October 6.

• 51:19Brian Preston?

  October 6.

• 51:20Speaker 04

  It's okay.

• 51:21Brian Preston?

  But you're probably, cause we are so close now, how's the insecurity? I mean, are you feeling like, are people gonna like this?

• 51:28Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I'm looking at those, I'm looking at those preorder numbers. I'm, I'm doing this full, as you know, like the book marketing is its own thing and I'm here and I'm, I'm having these conversations for the first time. This is my first financial podcast I've ever been on. So hopefully I'm not doing it.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  You've done wonderful.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  Did I really?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:47Speaker 04

  Okay, good. I said numbers and things.

• 51:49Brian Preston?

  You're saying numbers. I mean, you're so honest about it. I love the transparency.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Good. I mean, look, I think that I'm just, I'm too old to not be honest about stuff. That's how I feel. And that's maybe why I ended up doing the book is cause, you know, people aren't talking about money. They're not necessarily talking about the gritty parts of their journeys, especially folks that have been in my, in my shoes. And so I'm proud of the journey and I'm proud of the authenticity that the book represents.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  All right. You've got, you've got so much experience and you've lived such a wild life and seen all these things. We thought it'd be fun to play a little game. And what we're gonna do is I'm gonna read a sentence. I just want you to finish the sentence. Whatever comes, whatever comes to mind, whatever you think about, this isn't super hard, but it's just some interesting insight, I think that you have. Are you okay with that? Is that fair?

• 52:35Speaker 04

  I'll give it a shot.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  All right. Here's, here's an easy one that I think won't be too hard. The biggest money mistake that people in Hollywood make is?

• 52:44Speaker 04

  Not investing wisely.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Not investing wisely. Do they invest poorly or they not invest at all?

• 52:49Speaker 04

  They don't invest at all.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Would you say it's pretty common? Even these people out there that are making gazillions of dollars and spending, like most, most of those folks that look like lifestyles of the rich and famous are actually broke as a joke? Is that probably a true statement for Hollywoodites?

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  When it comes to money, in all of the experience you've had, from being a very, very young child actor, all the way till now, what's been your proudest money moment?

• 53:13Speaker 04

  I would say that Lamaze deal that I got told you guys about.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Her social media deal.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would say that.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Even more than the year where you made a million, and I think that's so, that's so poignant. It's not the year that you made the most money. It's not the year that you were shopping on Rodeo. It's not the year that you went and bought the fancy car. It was, hey, we hustled and we did this thing and we created this opportunity and we saw this opportunity and we seized it. And that one thing has now led to what's a pretty exciting place right now.

• 53:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  I love that. All right. I've got another, I've got another question for you.

• 53:45Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  If you're up for this, all right? One thing I hope my kids understand about money is blank.

• 53:53Speaker 04

  That it's unrelated to their self-worth.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Oh, that it's, that money is nothing more than a tool.

• 53:57Brian Preston?

  I like it. That's all right. We love saying that.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  I love that. That's fantastic.

• 54:00Brian Preston?

  Also, you know, just kind of adding to that, I always try to tell or encourage people, don't let your kids' best days financially be while they're living with you. You know, leave some room for them to have some success in their own life. That's why I always like, in my neighborhood, I'm amazed at how many people buy their kids really nice cars when they turn sixteen.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  Sixteen-year-old.

• 54:20Brian Preston?

  I think that's a disaster.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, our neighborhood too, by the way.

• 54:22Brian Preston?

  It's a disaster. I mean, I'd much rather, I made my daughter, and I think it's been, she, she did the whole buy half of the car. So it was a 14-year-old used car.

• 54:31Speaker 04

  So she bought half the car and then you bought half the car?

• 54:34Brian Preston?

  And then she drove that until all the way through, she was probably halfway through college before we

• 54:38Speaker 04

  Smart.

• 54:39Brian Preston?

  helped up. It got into some, the safety, when the front headlights no longer work that well, but okay, probably time for us to work on upgrading.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Well, since you asked, and our kids are the same age, I'm gonna tell you what I plan on doing for my kid's car. Cause I think the buy half is great, but I have a better idea. It's just a little one-up. And I think you should do this. We're gonna do a third, a third, a third. So my kid's gonna put up a third of the cost. Me and my wife will put up a third of the cost. And then I'm actually gonna loan my kid the final third and have them make payments to me.

• 55:07Speaker 04

  Smart.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  It'll be something reasonable. So like, if the car payment's a hundred bucks a month, if you want to be able to drive your car and have your keys this month, you gotta go out there and babysit or work your job or whatever the thing is to get that hundred dollars. Cause I want them to recognize that's the way the real world works. If you want to be able to do things, you have to be willing to sacrifice your time, go earn a wage and be able to do that. So that's another take that, cause our kids are the same age.

• 55:29Speaker 04

  Where do they get the first third from?

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Well, right now they're saving, like my oldest daughter, she's 11. We just started, she just started her own little business.

• 55:36Brian Preston?

  You got a trash business.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  It's a trash can valet business. So she went and knocked on doors and I gave her this little like sales pitch to do. And she has seven neighbors in the neighborhood that every Thursday she goes and gets her trash can, pulls it out of the street, trash comes Friday morning and then she pulls it back. So they never think about it again. It already happens.

• 55:51Brian Preston?

  It's a pretty good business.

• 55:52Speaker 04

  It's a great business.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  And so every month.

• 55:53Brian Preston?

  I might be, especially if a cute little girl comes up and asks me, I'd probably be willing to be persuaded.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  I even gave her, I even gave her a joke. Like I, I had, it was a, it was a, it was a tight little set that she did. And she crushed it.

• 56:03Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  And so that's where she's building up her money right now.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  Oh, is it my turn to ask you questions?

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:09Brian Preston?

  Welcome to put us under the spot.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  If someone suddenly made an extra million dollars, they should.

• 56:16Brian Preston?

  I mean, look, I think we all have to have a little fun. So I think you should probably take 10%, go, go do something fun with that. But then the rest of the, the rest of the money, create a plan for it that will actually last beyond just this moment in time.

• 56:34Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  We actually have a great resource and system we built called the Financial Order of Operations, where there's like a nine-step process of what do I do with my next dollar? And I think if someone came into a million bucks, obviously you wanna chisel off some fun money. But then I would have them do an assessment of where am I in the financial order? And how can I use this to go begin filling in the rest of those pieces?

• 56:52Brian Preston?

  I'm like good time uncle and you just actually gave the real answer.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  Wow, I just thought it'd be helpful to answer the question right.

• 56:57Speaker 04

  I liked it. It was a spectrum. It was a spectrum. Okay, let's see. The biggest sign someone is actually wealthy is?

• 57:05Speaker 02

  Ooh, they don't try to look wealthy.

• 57:06Brian Preston?

  Well, here, here's my thing though. Actually, I'll, I'll put something to this. If you can be at the gym at two or three in the afternoon, that's probably somebody who owns their time. I mean, seriously, that's a flex. Because owning your time is the biggest flex. It's not the car you drive. It's not the watch. It's when people are doing things because they wanna do them.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  I think one of the best ways to tell somebody actually has money, in my experience, is they tend to be the people that aren't trying to show you how much money they have.

• 57:32Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  The people who are talking about the beach house they just bought, or talking about the car they just bought, or wearing this fancy watches, or whatever that thing may be, oftentimes I find that those are the hardest fakers. They may look really good. All of those things are not signs that they have money. They're signs that they spent money.

• 57:48Brian Preston?

  Spending money.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. Okay. I love that. The financial hill I will die on is?

• 57:54Speaker 02

  I will die on the hill.

• 57:57Brian Preston?

  Oh, I got, yeah, I got one.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  That you cannot borrow your way to wealth. I think so many people think I'm just gonna debt, debt, debt. I'll worry about it later, worry about it later, procrastinate, I rack up $200,000 of credit card bills. You know, that kind of thing just happens. The hill I'll die on is that if you cannot control yourself on living on less than you make, you'll have a hard time ever being wealthy.

• 58:19Brian Preston?

  My hill I'll die on is that anybody, I mean, literally anybody who figures it out before the age of 40 can be successful. I mean, I, you've written a book of mistakes. I've written a book of mistakes. And you don't have to be perfect. But if you'll just take a little bit of today and start making good decisions, you can build the ripple effect of what it can do for you in the future is huge. And that's why I know we live in a society right now where there's a lot of telling you, you can't, you can't, you can't. And I just, I'm on the other side of that. I think that there, we need to be a positive voice telling young people, yes, there's, there are negatives, things are more expensive, but just a little bit of something will build something pretty tremendous in the future.

• 58:59Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 59:00Speaker 02

  Christie, if people want to find you, if they wanna stay up to date with what you do, obviously they need to go pick up a copy of the book. But in addition to that, how can they stay connected to you?

• 59:09Speaker 04

  I mean, I am everywhere. I'm on Instagram. I'm on TikTok. I'm on YouTube.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Is it your name? Is that how they find you?

• 59:15Speaker 04

  Yes. It's the Christy Carlson Romano on Instagram, Christy Carlson Romano on TikTok and as well as YouTube.

• 59:23Brian Preston?

  Christie, we've had a blast. You know, you said we're your first financial show. So thank you for coming on that. Hopefully we, we're not too nerdy. We're a little nerdy, but not too nerdy.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  Not at all.

• 59:34Brian Preston?

  And that's what I hope that somebody, you know, who, who, cause we're hoping also this cross pollination of when we release your show, that some of your people will see our stuff, our people will obviously see your stuff. And we can show how just, back to the point of optimism, is everybody makes mistakes. But man, oh man, is there a redemption story waiting to just burst out like a butterfly? And you have, you've shared yours with us today and we feel inspired. And I just thank you for coming on. Thanks for the opportunity. You were so polite when we reached out to even see if you were interested in this opportunity while we were traveling in Austin. So thank you for being so generous with your time with us today.

• 1:00:10Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with the securities, laws, and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through The Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss. Stonefire naan is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion. I put out stonefire naan with dips at every dinner party.

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  I make naan grilled cheese when my daughter has friends over. I use stonefire naan to reward the humans who do my bidding.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

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