Former Undocumented Teen Who Built Over $1M in Retirement Before 50 Now Teaches Others How to Build Wealth – Black Enterprise
Tanya Taylor is the founder and chief executive officer of Grow Your Wealth, a financial education platform that teaches professionals how to ditch bad debt and create a six or seven-figure retirement income even if they don’t have any plans in place.
Tanya is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a Master’s in Business Administration in Strategic Management. She has spent most of her 23 plus year career on Wall Street, working for or with some of the largest international banks and insurance companies in the world. She has been able to grow her retirement portfolio to over $1 million by age 48 while traveling to over 50 countries.
Tanya is no stranger to financial hardships. At 16, she graduated high school without any prospects of a job or higher education. After graduation, she boarded a flight to America, leaving her entire family in Jamaica in the hopes of escaping poverty. Seeing people living paycheck to paycheck was a sharp contrast to what she had heard about America, but she was undaunted and continued to push towards her goals of building wealth and helping others do the same.
Returning to school to get an education and to make a career
Tanya’s first goal was to get a college education. However, given her status as an undocumented resident, this opportunity would not come easy. Despite hitting many obstacles, she graduated college debt-free with multiple job offers at 25 years old. A few months before graduating college, Tanya also bought her first home, intending to use the equity to create a real estate portfolio to fund her retirement.
Shortly after purchasing her home, people she considered family took it over and mortgaged it to suit their lifestyle. They did not pay their bills on time, and sometimes not at all, ruining her credit and her chance of purchasing other properties. Recognizing that real estate may not be a viable option, she began to aggressively map out a plan for retirement that would still allow her to create a lifestyle that she and her family could enjoy.
Tanya began investing in the stock market and became proactive in managing her retirement plans
Keeping her goals in sight, Tanya co-founded a stock market investment club which she ran for about six years, and later founded a financial education club for children. In addition, after observing the hefty costs and mediocre returns that the financial planner she hired was producing, Tanya fired him and started managing her retirement plans on her own. By using her knowledge of investing in the stock market, the experience and expertise she had gained from auditing pension plans and mutual funds, and by investing in ongoing education in personal …….