Women’s Strategies to Build Lasting Wealth

Paula: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to Chatting With the Experts, where I speak with f- fantastic women from Africa, from the Caribbean, and in the diaspora. Our topic is
Beyond Income: The Global Strategies Women Need to Build Lasting Wealth. My guest says that this topic is perfect for anyone who’s ready to improve their money mindset, protect their family, and build long-term financial freedom.
She is a transformational financial coach. She’s an international speaker and author based in Maryland. She simplifies complex topics like budgeting, retirement planning, and life insurance, as well as debt, debt management, inspiring [00:01:00] audiences to be the bank and to embrace their rich auntie life. And she was the recipient of Maryland’s Top 100 Women Award in 2025. And with that, I want to welcome Saran T. Baker to Chatting With the Experts.
Saran, I love that you inspire audiences to be the bank. Whoo, I love it.
Saran: How are you today? I’m excited to be here with you.
Paula: I’m excited to have you on as a guest. And you know what? You were the recipient of Maryland’s Top 100 Women Award. That’s so cool. Tell us about that before we get into the questions.
Saran: Oh, that is such a honor to have received that award because you have to be nominated.
Paula: Mm
Saran: … and vetted through thousands of women in Maryland who are submitted. And [00:02:00] when you go, the Daily Record really puts on an amazing event. They allow you to bring all your family and friends, and they just really celebrate women across Maryland who are contributing from social to finance, to the arts, to business, to education.
They celebrate all the different areas where women are doing everything. And when you’re in the room, you’re with women from all walks of life, all ages, and it’s a beautiful experience.
Paula: So congratulations again, ’cause this is 2026, and I’m celebrating you all over again.
Saran: Thank you.
Paula: Absolutely. So I know off-camera we talked about some of the things that we’re gonna be talking about today, and one of them is why high income does not always equal wealth.
Saran: Yeah. Yeah.
Paula: I agree with you. That’s why you’re here. You’re the expert.
Saran: Yeah. It’s one of those [00:03:00] things where, you know, you always hear people, “If I just made more money-
Paula: Mm-hmm
Saran: I’d save more, I’d pay off debt, I’d do more.” And the reality is if we can’t manage little, we can’t manage a lot. Mm-hmm. If we’re making $50,000 a year and you start making $150,000 a year, and you never learnt how to manage $50,000, you’re gonna manage that $150,000 the same way.
Mm-hmm.
Saran: Because income doesn’t equal wealth. Income is the money flow that you get coming in, but the key to it is how much do you keep? How much is not flowing out each month, but going towards strategic things for your retirement account and inve- a separate investment account, an emergency savings account, a fun day account. Like everybody says rainy day, but what about a fun account, right?
Somewhere you can have fun. But putting it into [00:04:00] accounts that allow you to build wealth, making sure you have the right types of life insurance set up, making sure that you’re streamlining different things and cutting out waste. Those type of things are really where the wealth comes in. It’s not in the amount of money, it’s in the management of it.
And when we talk about the management, the management isn’t just about spreadsheets, right? It’s about what you do when it counts, what you do when it’s crunch time, what you do when you’re put under pressure and something happens and it’s a financial decision. The decision you make in that pressure point is what matters to your money more than anything because if under pressure with your money you make bad decisions, that means you’re gonna continue to make them.
Paula: If under pressure you make bad decisions, you are going to continue to do that.
Saran: Mm-hmm.
Paula: You’re going to continue to make them. So [00:05:00] what I’m hearing in that sentence is that there’s chaos.
Saran: Yes.
Paula: Mm-hmm. And so I know one of the things you’ve talked about is how you can take, you can change or you can help people change their mindset so they go from chaos to calm.
Saran: Mm-hmm.
Paula: And in that, ultimately change your relationship with money.
Can we, let’s talk about that. How do you do that?
Saran: Oh, yeah. My favorite thing is to talk about going from chaos to calm. I’m not like everybody else. Chaos to me, I define it-
Paula: Mm …
Saran: as can’t handle any obstacle sent.
Paula: Oh, acronym here. That’s good.
Saran: Can’t handle any obstacle sent. The chaos is not that things aren’t going on, it’s that when a obstacle shows up, you either don’t have the finance, you’re not fit mentally enough to make a good decision with it, or you just haven’t put yourself in a place where you can be under pressure and make the right [00:06:00] financial decision.
When that family member calls and says, “I need somewhere to stay,” when that family member calls and says, “I need money for ABC,” and you haven’t taken care of your necessities…
Paula: mm …
Saran: and your wants and your likes. Because one of the things that we miss with money is that we are supposed to support one another.
We are supposed to keep it moving. Money is like energy. I talk about that a lot on, on my different videos that I do. Money is energy. It’s supposed to be constantly moving. But where are you moving it to? And where is it moving through, right? And so when you wanna go from that state of chaos, of can’t handle any obstacle sent, to a state of what I call calm, which is control, abundance, legacy creation, and money mastery, when you wanna go to that place, you have to be able to notice in the moment’s time that, “Hey, wait.[00:07:00]
I’m under pressure. I think this is my only option, but maybe it’s not. Maybe I need to take a pause before I go this one direction with the finances.” And decide something when I’m in m- in a more clear state of mind. And it’s easy to talk about it, but you gotta be in practice with it on a regular basis.
When that unexpected bill comes, doing, you know, hurrying up and paying it versus making sure you have a plan for everything else if it’s a big expense. Just taking the time to really be thought out. And then when you have a systematic, automatic plan with your money where you know that every time you receive payment, money goes to certain buckets so that when there is an emergency, there’s already something set aside for it because you planned for potential emergencies.
Paula: Okay. Let’s hear this again. A [00:08:00] systematic automatic plan.
Saran: Mm-hmm.
Paula: You gotta open that up.
Saran: A systematic automation plan, right?
Paula: Automated.
Saran: You know, automation. What happens with our money is a lot of times it doesn’t go where we intend it to go because we made the plan, but then we didn’t put something in place to make it happen.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: Right? And what that looks like is if you said, “I’m gonna put 10%… I’m gonna take 10% of my earnings every time I get paid,” whether it’s weekly, biweekly, monthly, annually, whatever your pay cycle is daily, however you get paid. “I’m gonna put 10% aside for emergency fund, for investments, for retirement,” and for whatever.
Whatever, however you wanna define it, right? And you say that’s what you wanna do, but you don’t go in and automate it. And what that looks like is, did you set up a direct deposit to a separate account? Or did you set up an automatic transfer from one bank to another? [00:09:00] Do you have the checking account to the high yield savings account, the paycheck to the retirement plan, the checking account to the insurance policy, or wherever you’re putting your money.
Do you have it automatically going so you’re not thinking about it? We’ll automate paying a bill. Let them come take their money however they wanna take it. But we wanna automate creating our financial futures. And that’s where the gap comes in. And as women, I’ma lean in.
Paula: I’m leaning in with you too. Okay, both of us leaning in.
Saran: We tend to think it’s our job to save everybody.
Paula: Mm. Sister say that again. We think we are a savior.
Saran: As women, we tend to think it’s our job to save everybody with our finances, with our time, with our labor, with our food. Whatever it is, we think it’s our job to save everybody. And yes, we are supposed to serve the least of these, ’cause I am not denying that by any stretch of the imagination. But we are supposed to [00:10:00] be discerning, and we’re all supposed to know when this may not be your time to serve and when this may be that time for that person to find a way to bounce back on their own so that they can learn the lessons that you had the opportunity to learn, ’cause nobody was there to pull you up.
And that becomes the gap because we’re so caring.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: And we’re so loving of all of our family and friends. And sometimes we forget the thing that we know for sure and we know how to get done for sure, we know it because we failed at it and nobody helped us fix it.
Paula: And we learnt our lesson.
Saran: And we learned our own lesson on our own.
Paula: Yeah.
Saran: It’s a tough conversation, right?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: Because we don’t wanna see our, the people that we love struggle or hurt or go without.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: But what if that was the opportunity for them to really level up, [00:11:00] and we took that away because we saved them?
Paula: Yeah. You know, it makes me think about…
Saran: or like, or not even, or not even use the word save.
We solved it for them.
Paula: Yeah. That’s what I was about to say, is just like, you know, you think about do you teach them to fish or you give them the fish? You know? Mm-hmm. When you teach someone to fish, then they’ve got a skill for life. Mm-hmm. When you keep giving them the fish, then they don’t know how to fish.
Saran: Yeah. And it’s not about le- and, and even in that analogy, I was debating that with someone the other day. It’s like, you can’t really teach me to fish if I’m starving, ’cause I’m gonna knock you over and I’ma bite you on the… and bite you ’cause I’m hungry, right? Yeah. But I can give you something to eat while I show you how to do it yourself.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: Right? Here’s some bread. Let me show you how I got it.
Paula: Yeah.
Saran: Let me take you here. And then when you see if they’re not willing to go learn to fish, that’s when you get to decide, “Hey, maybe this isn’t where I invest my time, efforts, energy, and money.”
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: Right? But it’s about [00:12:00] figuring out that balance, because we love so deeply, and I love that about us. And I want us to do that same amount of deep love for ourselves. And that deep love comes with also preparing ourselves for ourselves financially in the future. Because what happens here, and I know you have a, a large international audience, but what happens here in America is the woman who takes care of the household and takes care of everything and makes sure everybody else is okay, when it comes time for her to retire, she becomes dependent on the government.
Mm-hmm.
She becomes dependent on charity, and she no longer has the resources that she had because she depleted them making sure everybody else was okay.
Paula: And in some of our international um, countries or countries that are not, we don’t have that, um… What’s the word I’m looking for? [00:13:00] We don’t have government, we don’t have the social-
Saran: Mm-hmm …
Paula: um, I can’t think of the word. But anyway, we tend to depend upon our children.
Saran: Mm-hmm.
Paula: And sometimes our children cannot help you because they are like a sandwich generation.
They’ve got their own children, and they’ve got…
Saran: mm-hmm
Paula: … you. And so you’re looking to them to help, and their hands are stretched. They just can’t. Mm-hmm. So like, yeah, you know, as you say, you’re dependent upon the government, but what the government has given you is not enough because you haven’t saved sufficiently.
You haven’t put things in place for your retirement.
Saran: Correct. And at the end of the day, it’s not just about being able to retire, it’s about being self-sufficient.
Paula: Sufficient, yes.
Saran: Self-sufficient. The other thing that our women do… and I talk about this because we don’t trust enough in the financial industry. We don’t go in and get the information. And I know the reason why. I [00:14:00] sat in a workshop last week with um, some gentlemen teaching a class to, all men teaching a class to about 200 women.
Mm.
Saran: And they were glazed over like, “What is this guy talking about?” Mm-hmm. And I thought to myself, most people in the financial industry can’t even relate to the women in the audience, the issues that they have, the financial things that they’re working on. And what happens is they don’t go get the information from the person because they don’t feel like they can be seen, heard, and understood.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: And that creates a gap, right? We don’t go and learn how to invest. If you have daughters and granddaughters, start teaching them how to invest now while they’re little girls so it’s not intimidating when they become young women.
Mm-hmm.
Saran: So they learn how to trade in the different markets. I know they have stock markets and industries around the world. Teach them how to trade. Teach them how to be comfortable with numbers. Teach them how to be able to do [00:15:00] those things for themselves. And at the end of the day, it’s more about setting up something sustainable for you now that you’ll be able to count on 20 or 30 years from now.
Paula: So can you elaborate a little on what those missing pieces are?
Saran: Well, one of the number one missing pieces i- for women is we get married, and we are with the love of our lives.
Paula: Mm.
Saran: And for life, right? We’re not gonna talk about those who may or may not separate for whatever reason, but you’re together for life. The number one thing you should be doing when you decide you’re gonna be together, at engagement, not when you get married, at engagement, is you need to be putting together a life insurance plan.
Paula: Got you.
Saran: For the both of you. Mm. For the both of you. And they have life insurance around the world, so it may work slightly different in other countries, but they have it around the world.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: You wanna have that set in place [00:16:00] because the number one thing in those vows is until death do us part. So that means somebody will do part first, right?
Statistically, our husbands predecease us.
Paula: Yes.
Saran: And what happens is women be c- go into poverty because their husband’s passed away. They don’t know how to manage the money, they don’t know how bills are, are handled, and they didn’t have enough income to live without or be sustained without them. Mm-hmm.
Right? So you wanna make sure you have in place enough money in an insurance policy so that when, not if, one of you passes away in that marriage, there’s money to sustain that person. $500,000 to a million dollars. And people like, “Why would I make…” And some people get up in arms about that when they hear me say that.
Why would I leave a $500,000, a million dollars? Because guess what? When you start to do the math on how much it [00:17:00] costs to live, if this person , l- if your loved one, someone you love, lives another 20 years, 30 years after you pass, and you divide that up You only, you divide up $500,000, you’re only talking $50,000 a year.
And that’s a low income salary in the United States.
Paula: That’s it.
Saran: Right?
Mm.
Saran: If it’s a million dollars, you need to divide that up over 30 years. That’s $100,000 in the United States. That’s still like… too much … just enough money to not to live on your own.
Paula: And we’re not putting into consideration health.
Saran: Talking about if that person’s healthy.
Paula: Yes.
Saran: If they need to pay extra money for healthcare.
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: They need to pay any type of co-payments or additional things that come along with it. And healthcare, health insurance only covers well so much. Do you need to get your house retrofitted for something? Do you need to buy a house? Yes. I mean, you know, so you, so your family has somewhere to [00:18:00] be.
So it’s really just thinking more long-term than we’ve been taught to think. And the reason we weren’t taught to think that long-term is because if you did think long-term, then you wouldn’t be put in a place economically where the system itself could charge you more for credit, the system itself could charge you more for food, clothing, shelter, and all these things.
Because we often talk about people with money for whatever the reason, but they don’t pay as much to live. It’s costly to be poor.
Paula: Sometimes.
Saran: It costs more substantially to not make or have enough money, because you’re gonna pay higher interest rates on everything. Yeah. You’re gonna have higher rent, higher utility costs.
You’re gonna, a- at least in the areas that I’m in, there’s gonna be more traffic light ticket cameras, and just different things that… proportionally … will be happening- You’re totally right … that will co- just cost [00:19:00] you more just by virtue of the fact that you don’t have money. And it’s a sad reality, but it’s almost better to hurry up and get rich in some type of way, legally of course, um, than it is to just stay poor. Or to stay financially challenged.
Paula: I want you to stress a bit more on that. Why is it that in the areas that are, um, I wanna say l of lower income, we tend to have, you know, higher rents. We tend to have, um, the grocery stores are, you know, the prices there are higher. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?
For those who are, you know, not familiar with how th- the system works.
Saran: Sometimes it’s just by virtue of it, um, when you get to those areas, you’re gonna have a lower credit score, which is what we use here in the United States to determine if you’re deemed worthy to borrow money, right? [00:20:00] Right. So if you have a lower credit score, they charge you higher interest, which means you’re gonna have less money, right?
When you go to some of the areas where the groceries are higher and the different things, it’s ’cause we have what they call food deserts- Right … here, where you don’t have access to a lot of fresh produce. You don’t have access to fresh fish, fresh meats, all the things that, um, are better for you. And then that in turn impacts your health.
Paula: Right.
Saran: When you go into certain communities that are considered impoverished, you’re gonna see more liquor stores, more fast food chain restaurants, things that aren’t necessarily the most healthy for you. But you’re not gonna see the, you know, the medi-spa where you can go and get, you know, acupuncture and stretching and, um, uh, chiropractors.
So you’re not gonna see all the things that are there to really make you feel better, the mental and the medical services. You’re gonna see a lot of fried foods [00:21:00] and the things that aren’t better for you because it ties into also the health system. So if we can keep you sick, keep you on medication, you’re gonna have a clouded mind, and you’re not gonna be able to make decisions.
That’s why when we started the conversation I talked about how are we making decisions with our finances when we’re stressed, when we’re under pressure, when we don’t really know what to do and which way to go, right? One of my one of my favorite podcasters, he talks about, you know, everybody talks about get rich quick schemes.
He’s like, “What about stay broke slow plans?”
Paula: Sure. Sure.
Saran: That’s- He’s like, “Wouldn’t you rather get rich fast?” Like, why you wanna wait?
Oh. Right?
Why wait? He’s like, he’s like, “If you can go figure out something legal, ethical, and moral to [00:22:00] do as a business that serves people.
Paula: That’s right …
Saran: and you can charge them for it, and you can become wealthy doing it, why aren’t you doing it?”
Paula: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Saran: Because that’s the key. That’s the gift that you were given, is if you’re able to do it, like you, Paula, your gift is you’re spreading the word, you’re chatting with the experts, you’re bringing people in to talk about what they do.
To share that knowledge with the community. Why shouldn’t you, why shouldn’t you be paid for doing it?
Paula: Mm-hmm.
Saran: Right? And it doesn’t always mean that you’re charging a person. There’s ads, there’s affiliate marketing, there’s all these ways, there’s all these layers of ways that are absolutely ethical, absolutely legal, and absolutely moral that we can make money.
Paula: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. A- a- and you know, and that’s exactly why I bring in experts, so that we can expand our mind because there are many times we listen to things and we get that aha moment because somebody said this that you had [00:23:00] never thought of.
Saran: Mm-hmm.
Paula: And that’s because that’s, you know, that’s their expertise. They’re bringing in to you on a platform that you may not have had access to, and you listen to it and you’re like, “Wow, never thought about this. Now I can open up my mind and s- do something else-
Saran: Mm-hmm …
Paula: because I heard it on the platform-
Saran: Mm-hmm
Paula: … that gave me access.
Saran: Mm-hmm.
Paula: And that brings me to the next, to another question which is empowering women to become the CEO of their own financial lives.
I know that’s something that you do.
Mm-hmm.
Paula: Giving women an opportunity to know that, okay, knowledge is wealth. And it can start from anywhere, you know?
Saran: Yeah.
Paula: Just opening up your mind to opportunities, seeing things from a different perspective, putting yourself in places that, you know, where you can meet or have access to knowledge, to people who have access to other knowledge.
You know, we learn from each other.
Mm-hmm
Paula: So [00:24:00] how do you enable or empower women to become their own financial CEOs?
Saran: So one of the ways I do that is I do that in what I call my um, academy. I have a Commonwealth Academy. Mm-hmm. And we work through all the things that are money, right? We’re gonna … the thing is that you can never stop learning about money.
I’m in the financial industry, and I promise you, twice a week I’m taking a workshop about money. Right? Because at the end of the day, there’s so many ways to learn about it, and I encourage all women to get into a program. It doesn’t have to be mine. I’d love to have you in mine if you qualify, but it doesn’t ha- get into a program where you’re learning the basics.
You’re learning about budgeting. You’re learning about saving. Then once you kinda master that, learn about protecting yourself, making sure you have the right protection. Learn about investing. How do you move through the markets? The investment [00:25:00] field is so broad. You don’t have to be a stockbroker, um, and risk it all, per se, to be in the investing game.
Learn about the different areas of investment. Find one you’re interested in and lock in on that niche. Lock in on that small area, ’cause there’s 10, 15, 20, hundreds of ways you can get into investing, right? I know someone who she just started an investment company. She’s literally only gonna be providing um, investment opportunities for people who wanna do commercial real estate, right?
That’s a whole niche that people didn’t, may have been … I didn’t know it existed until she talked about it. She’s only gonna be financing people in commercial real estate. It doesn’t have to be the residential real estate. You don’t have to go and trade stock, trade options every day, do day trading to make money in investing.
And so find out what fits your lifestyle. When I think about investing, I’m a buy and hold investor. So I find a stock I’m interested in, I buy it, [00:26:00] and I hold it. That’s it. Literally. I just own the stock, right? Then so oversimplify it, I only buy stock in things that I already use.
Paula: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Saran: Right? I order stuff online, so I I own stock in the company that I order stuff from online. I use a cell phone, so I own stock for the company I have a cell phone with. I have a laptop and equipment that I use for my business, so I have stock in that company. So I’m not just a user, I’m an owner.
Paula: Look at that.
Saran: And the other thing is really start to teach your girls early. If you are a mother or a grandmother of a young woman, teach her to own the stock in that- purse company or outfit or whatever it is first before you get her the bag, right?
Or get her the thing. Teach her that ownership is the power versus wearing [00:27:00] it, right? If you have young ladies and they’re interested in makeup and, you know, all the great things that we have accessible to us a- as women, okay, show her how to become an owner in that company first before she becomes a consumer.
Paula: Emphasize that please, Saran. Yeah. Before you buy the bag or buy the makeup or the, the shoe, the designer shoe, own the stock. That’s what you’re saying.
Saran: That’s right. A- Because company ownership over product ownership is more important. I had a friend of mine say to me a couple years ago, they’re like, “Oh, you don’t own XYZ bag.”
I said, “No, I don’t own the bag.” They’re like, “Well, I don’t understand how, you know, you’ve a- accomplished this or that and you don’t have XYZ bag.” And I said, “But I have the stock.” And they were like, “But you don’t have the bag.” I’m like, “The stock was cheaper.” [00:28:00] and the stock was better, right? The stock was more reasonably priced, and it was better for me. And so when I go get the bag I literally, I mean, I own shares in
Paula: Hmm. That is gold. That is gold. Oh my gosh.
Saran: So I technically will be almost giving back to myself because I’m contributing to the bottom line.
Paula: Absolutely …
Saran: of my company for that quarter, because I decided to own the stock first
Paula: Saran, that is… we can end on that note because you have said it all.
That’s what we need to teach our girls. Before you buy the product, buy the stock, because you are investing in yourself. Even when you do go buy it, you’re buying your own product. Yeah. Can’t go wrong with that, right? Mm-hmm.
Saran: Correct. I mean, we’re using a platform here, right? That we’re speaking [00:29:00] on.
Paula: Mm-hmm
Saran: We could buy stock in it.
Paula: Why not?
Saran: You can use it. I mean, because you can either just be a user or you can be a user and an owner.
Paula: Absolutely.
Saran: Or you could just be an owner and don’t ever use it.
Paula: True. And watch the stock go up.
Saran: Yeah.
Paula: Hmm. I love it. I love it. All right. So we know we have people in the audience who would love to hear more about you, how they can become… the the longest journey starts with the first step, so how they can start becoming millionaires. Ha ha ha ha. Becoming the CEO of their own financial lives, in other words. If they wanted to get in touch with you, Saran, how can they do that? Whoever’s listening or viewing this on YouTube, where can they find you?
Saran: Well, I’m on YouTube also. Okay. You can find me @saranbaker on YouTube. But you can also, find me on Instagram @therealsaranbaker. You can find me on Facebook on my business page, [00:30:00] STB Financial Services. And if you are ready to start your journey, you can join my next cohort. Um, I have a upcoming boot camp in the next couple of weeks.
You can go to joinsuran.com/save. Um, and make sure you put in the keyword Paula so I know you came from Paula. And you can join that community and come into that space where we’re teaching you the right mindset to get to the million, because you can’t be a millionaire until you know it in your mind first.
Because we get it wrong when we say seeing is believing. The reality is it’s the opposite. Believing is seeing, because we have to have faith first before we can see it. Yeah. But if we don’t ever have the faith, we never will see it
Paula: Yep. Absolutely right. The things we don’t see, those are the ones that are permanent.
Mm-hmm. Such [00:31:00] is the word of God.
Mm-hmm.
Paula: So for those of you who are watching this online or are in the audience and haven’t yet had a chance to go to YouTube, we’d love for you to watch this episode when it comes out on my YouTube channel, which is Chatting With The Experts. You’ll see this episode and all the other women experts who have been on Chatting With The Experts.
I’m also on LinkedIn. My business page there is Chatting With The Experts, or you can go to my profile, Paula Okonneh. I’m on Facebook. My business page there is Chatting With The Experts. And on Instagram, my handle there is @chat_experts_podcast.
And if you’d like to be a guest on the show, reach out to me on my website, which is chattingwiththeexperts.com. Thank you so much, Saran, for dropping that nugget, I [00:32:00] wanna say, if you wanna be an ex- not an expert, well, of course, if you wanna be an expert, you can be on this show.
But if you wanna be a millionaire, invest in the stock of the designer bags, the designer shoes, the designer dresses. Buy stocks there, and then you too can be that millionaire. All right? So now let’s open up the floor to all those who joined us, and they can ask you the questions that, I say this every week, the questions I forgot to ask or I just didn’t remember to ask you.
Thank you so much for being a guest on Chatting With The Experts.