5 strategies a personal finance expert uses to fix her finances

• Tonya Rapley is an author and personal finance speaker, who has her own long story of building wealth.
• 10 years ago, Rapley had a credit score in the low 500 range, consumer debt, and little savings.
• She focused on financial stability, focused on careers, and started investing to get to where she is today.
• Read more from Personal Finance Insider.

Tonya Rapley is the founder and CEO of My Fab Finance, the seven-figure financial education company and lifestyle blog that she’s been building for the past eight years.

Nicknamed the “Millennial Money Expert,” Rapley often appears on stage and on television talking about financial literacy. But its current success has not come without challenges.

After leaving a physically, emotionally, and financially abusive relationship a decade ago, Rapley is determined to improve her credit score and get out of debt.

Her first goal was to increase her balance from the low 500 range to the high 600 range, and within six months she was able to improve it

Balance level

180 points, and start with other goals to build wealth. Rapley shared five strategies she’s used to transform her finances over the past decade.

1. She set actual goals and approached her finances with a plan

Rapley researched and learned about effective wealth building strategies that made sense for her current situation at the time.

“You have to decide which vehicles you are going to use to build a fortune and make a plan,” Rapley said. “Set the intention and give it your all.”

2. I focused on stability before anything else

The first things Rapley sought were complete financial stability, which for her included raising her credit score, eliminating consumer debt, and building an emergency fund of six months worth of her living expenses.

This has boosted her confidence, Rapley said, because she will now be able to weather any future financial storms — no matter what happens.

3. She picked a side hustle to supplement her income

At the time Rapley first launched My Fab Finance, she was working for a nonprofit organization in New York.

She said that once she decided she wanted to improve her financial situation, she quickly realized that her salary alone wouldn’t get her where she wanted to be.

So, I picked up a side hustle that powers photo booths at events,” Rapley said. “I was making good money doing this, which helped me start paying off some of my debts and build savings.”

This will only be Rapley’s first side hustle. After she started blogging about her wealth building journey, she began noticing the underrepresentation of minorities and millennials in the personal finance content space.

“I also felt that a lot of the financial content is geared towards people who live in low-cost living areas,” she added.

After identifying this gap, I decided to focus more on its content, and created a space to help millennials improve their relationship with money no matter where they live.

“I wanted to create a safe space for women like me to learn about money, especially if money wasn’t something they grew up talking about,” Rapley said.

With her blog gaining more and more popularity, she started earning extra income from writing and speaking about personal finance.

4. She changed her career path and negotiated compensation

Rapley has often advocated for increases in her job, but once her finances became more stable, she decided to quit that job and dedicate her career to building My Fab Finance.

At that time, she had signed a client contract through My Fab Finance which would provide her with more income than she could earn in her job over the course of a whole year.

“I didn’t feel like my job would help me make enough income to live the life I want,” she said.

An essential part of Rapley’s expansion

net value

is that she has mastered the art of negotiation, to ensure that she gets what she thinks she deserves.

“Negotiation is one of those muscles that the more you work on it, the more comfortable you feel, and the less fear you are,” she said. “I have to ask myself, what’s the worst that could happen? The best that could happen would be for me to make up for what I feel I deserve.”

5. I started investing

When Rapley’s financial situation became more comfortable, she began looking for opportunities to invest in real estate and the stock market.

“I am no longer in a state of financial crisis and can invest without fear,” she said.

Rapley said she encourages people looking to invest to research how others can grow their money — both legally and ethically — and look at the different options available to them.

“For me, it was a decision to invest my money in buying an e-commerce company, buying real estate, investing in the stock market,” she said.