What if the real foundation of entrepreneurship is less about making money and more about mastering your mindset around it? In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, host Marcia Dawood explores how our early experiences and psychological beliefs about money shape our financial behaviors—and ultimately, our freedom to create and build. Guest Shang Saavedra, who reached retirement savings goals by age 31, shares her journey from a frugal upbringing as the child of immigrants to graduating from Harvard, thriving in management consulting, and building the Save My Cents community. She’s passionate about helping others use psychology and practical strategies to rewrite their financial stories, break the cycle of fear, and pave the way for meaningful wealth. This episode is essential listening for entrepreneurs and anyone needing a mindset reset around finances. With actionable advice on automating savings, understanding investment options, and handling financial setbacks, Shang Saavedra proves that changing how you think about money can transform your life—and your business.
What if the real foundation of entrepreneurship is less about making money and more about mastering your mindset around it? In this episode of The Angel Next Door Podcast, host Marcia Dawood explores how our early experiences and psychological beliefs about money shape our financial behaviors—and ultimately, our freedom to create and build.
Guest Shang Saavedra, who reached retirement savings goals by age 31, shares her journey from a frugal upbringing as the child of immigrants to graduating from Harvard, thriving in management consulting, and building the Save My Cents community. She’s passionate about helping others use psychology and practical strategies to rewrite their financial stories, break the cycle of fear, and pave the way for meaningful wealth.
This episode is essential listening for entrepreneurs and anyone needing a mindset reset around finances. With actionable advice on automating savings, understanding investment options, and handling financial setbacks, Shang Saavedra proves that changing how you think about money can transform your life—and your business.
To get the latest from Shang Saavedra, you can follow her below!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shangsaavedra/
https://www.instagram.com/savemycents/?hl=en
Wealth Is a Mindset: Change Your Mind, Change Your Money
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Marcia Dawood: Well, Shang, welcome to the Angel Next Door podcast.
Shang Saavedra: Thank you, Marcia, for having me. So excited to be here.
Marcia Dawood: I am so interested to talk to you. Basically, you saved for retirement by the time you were 31. You talk a lot about money and mindset, which is something I love to talk about. So start off, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got so interested in retirement savings and money and all the good things.
Shang Saavedra: Thank you. I credit a lot of my curiosity around personal finance to my immigrant parents. So we all came to the United States when I was 10 years old, lived a very frugal lifestyle, and my parents were very open about why we had to do that because we were immigrants trying to build wealth in this country. And so as a very young child, I'd always know that I wanted to make a lot of money and be financially set as an adult. And I credit that motivation to allowing me to get great education. I went to Harvard for undergrad, University of Chicago for mba and I got high paying jobs all across the country, which was a top ingredient to fuel my path to financial freedom.
Marcia Dawood: Nice. So tell us more about that. Tell us like how did you, did you go right to grad school after undergrad and then went and into these high paying jobs and that's how you started saving or what was the path?
Shang Saavedra: I had a three year break between undergrad and mba, which is pretty typical these days. So I went straight from undergrad into management consulting, which at that time was probably one of the top two industries that I could have gone into as somebody who studied economics. And thankfully, because my parents were able to pay for my college education, I started out with no student loan debt. So every cent that I could save, I saved. And I started investing very young because I had exposure to investors just around me in my network. Then I went to grad school, came out, got a higher paying job, and I just continued doing that and tried to live as simply as I could, still like a college student until I reached my around age 31.
Marcia Dawood: Wow. So tell us more about the people that you were surrounded with. How did you learn about investing? What were some of the things that really attracted you to it at such a young age?
Shang Saavedra: I was extremely lucky that at some point during college a bunch of Wall street women came on campus to encourage more undergrad women like myself to become investors. Now what they were pushing was more for people to go into finance, go into investment banking, hedge funds, et cetera, as careers. But by just having exposure to that made me realize investing is not something for what I thought would be a mostly a male kind of career. And so I took it upon myself to. To believe that once I had the money to invest, I would also invest. And that's why going into my first job, I was able to really start actively managing my own 401k, my Roth IRA, et cetera, et cetera.
Marcia Dawood: Yeah. So tell us more about that. Like when you were first introduced to the benefits of your first job and you saw that you were going to be able to have this benefit of being able to put money aside into a 401k, like, how do you think about it then? And how do you coach people today, especially younger people, on how to look at that?
Shang Saavedra: Yeah. What's the beauty of the 401k is that it's so automated. You don't even feel the money leaving your paycheck as long as you're able to live off what, you know, what remains after you invest. And because I'd gotten into that habit so young, I'd always been of the habit of you always set aside a part of your paycheck to invest towards your future. And so today, when I coach people to stop fearing saving for retirement, I start with the 401k too. Whereas a lot of other people say, let's start with the Roth ira, I go, actually, no, let's do something more automated. Let's not even have you think about it. Let's try put some part of your paycheck into your 400.
Shang Saavedra: Like, hey, we'll try it out. If for a paycheck or two, you're like, I can't do it this much. We'll pull back. But at the very least, we're going to automate that away and then focus on the rest.
Marcia Dawood: Interesting. Okay, and then so explain for our listeners, because I don't like to assume that everybody knows all of these terms, but like a Roth ira, explain what that is. And then when you got into it for the first time, and then how do you coach your clients now about it?
Shang Saavedra: Yeah, there's basically three main categories of accounts that you can use to save and invest for your future. There's accounts that are opened by your employer. There's 401k falls into that, as do other accounts like 403b, 457b, tsp. Then there's an account that you can open yourself with the primary reason of saving and investing for retirement. Like, you're not supposed to touch this money before retirement. That's called the ira. And it comes in the flavors of Traditional or Roth ira. And then there's a third bucket, which is basically a free for all account that you can use to invest for anything.
Shang Saavedra: It doesn't have to be retirement. And that's usually called a taxable brokerage, although the financial systems sometimes change the name of that account depending on who you bank with.
Marcia Dawood: Got it. All right. And so when did you come into the whole Roth ira? Explain the difference between traditional and Roth IRA too.
Shang Saavedra: Yeah. Basically my question to you is, do you think your tax rate is low now or do you think your tax rate's going to be low when you retire? For people who believe that their tax rates are likely lower when they retire, this is usually if you're in a super high earning year and you don't live off of all of your income, you think you're going to take out less income in retirement. Then those people would typically do a traditional IRA where you defer your taxes, you're going to pay your taxes on that later. If the opposite is true, you're like, I think I have a pretty good tax rate now, or I think taxes are going to go up, then you're more likely to favor a Roth ira. And for people who are just getting started, you're like, I have no idea. I'm like, I get it. Sometimes you just have no idea. Some things can split.
Shang Saavedra: Why don't you do 50, 50 and learn as you go? And I was lucky that I learned about the IRA as a high schooler, actually, because children can have an IRA if they make earned income over the summer, for example, with a job. And that's how I was able to find out about an IRA very early on in life and kind of carry that knowledge with me until I had the money to put into it.
Marcia Dawood: So what are some of the other things that you talk to younger people about related to retirement? I find that sometimes, especially younger people, they're not. They don't really. They haven't experienced compound interest, they haven't really experienced investing. So they may understand it in theory. It hasn't hit the heartstrings yet or the purse string. Right. Tell us about that.
Shang Saavedra: There's less of a focus where I say retirement and more of what would you do if worrying about money did not ever have to happen in your life anymore? So it's much more about financial freedom, financial optionality, or not fearing getting laid off because you were one of the newest hires, or your industry is getting eaten up by AI or even for people who are dating. Sometimes you just need fun to escape A really bad relationship. Right. I think all of those issues are a lot more pertinent and more relevant when you're younger. And I'd say save up for that, invest for those reasons and eventually your savings, if you don't end up using them, end up being your savings for retirement. In fact, for myself, yeah, I had a hard time in managing retirement in my 60s, but. But I did go through a period when I had a very toxic work environment and I just could not wait to get out of that toxic work environment. And that's when I realized if I save and invest for myself a lot, that I don't have to depend on a miserable work environment to fund my life.
Marcia Dawood: Interesting. So when you're thinking and coaching people regardless of their age, like what how do you talk to them about investing and also about their mindset when it comes to. People always say, I hear a lot anyway, people saying, oh, investing is risky, or I don't really have a high risk tolerance. Like, how do you handle that?
Shang Saavedra: Yeah, I think it's really important to understand any outstanding situations or things that have happened in your life that makes you scared of risk taking. For example, I've had some people who literally had an uncle or dad who bet it all on one stock and then that stock did not do well. And then they remember that from childhood and it gives them the impression that investing's going to be. They're going to repeat whatever their dad or uncle did. For some other people, it may be that growing up you were told constantly by your parents, take the safe route, get a high paying job, don't mess it up, follow the code or whatever it is. They make a lot of money, but they really move you away from taking risk. And so whatever happened in your developing years that led you to develop this risk profile, it's important to understand it. And then I think it's really important to also have some knowledge to understand.
Shang Saavedra: Are those viewpoints that you were given when you were young still valid or not? Before the person who saw their, their influential figures lose everything on one stock. What you don't have to buy on one stock. That's the paper. Exactly. So understanding where that fear comes from then gives us the methodology or the framework for how to counteract or address those fears now in our adulthood.
Marcia Dawood: And how do you handle when you're talking to clients who have just been through something that was like very joltingly life changing, like there's a divorce, there's a death in the family, there's a sudden job loss, sudden medical Bills like those types of things.
Shang Saavedra: I would actually argue that those things, if you don't recognize how devastating they can be on your psychology, are probably the number one reason I see people flail, not fail, flail when it comes to personal finance. Divorce is probably the number one reason because it is so financially destructive. You have lawyer costs for those who have children. If you're the one taking primary custody, your home costs are still really high because you have to maintain a very large apartment or home, but now on just your own income, if that's and death of someone that you really love or separation or any kind of loss causes our brains to go into a scarce grieving state. And in that state of mind, it's actually quite difficult for our brains to have good executive function. The part of our brain that we need to engage to do well at personal finances includes skills like be analytic, risk assessing and then taking a risk when you don't have all the information available to you, thinking ahead, thinking without emotions. And that involves the cortex side of our brain. And that's exactly the part of our brain that I like to say gets injured or gets sick during times of duress.
Shang Saavedra: And so it's actually really important. And I want to emphasize to this, if you're going through a tough time in life and your personal finances are not doing well, it says nothing about you. It doesn't mean that you failed, doesn't mean that you're a bad person. But it's actually really important for you to acknowledge that this tough time in your life directly impacts your personal finances. And you just have to find ways to manage it in order for your finances to improve as well.
Marcia Dawood: So you're saying manage the mindset, manage your mental health stability, or try to get through the tough time so that you can look at your finances differently. But know that it's not your fault that this is happening. It's more like this is something you need to get through.
Shang Saavedra: Yeah, I, I've seen so many people just beat themselves up, unnecessary, just live in regret. Whereas I'm like, I'm gonna give you a budget for their therapy, for therapy, or group coaching or life coaching, whatever it is, to help you get through this. I actually shift money from other parts of the budget and say, go get help. Because you're not supposed to be going through something like this alone.
Marcia Dawood: Right. That makes so much sense. So tell us about your company, Save my sense, how that all works. And I love your tagline, which is change your mind, change your money. Love that. So tell us more.
Shang Saavedra: Yeah, that unlock, right, that psychological unlock was the driving reason for me to create this company. And the content that I put out on social media because I realized everybody else is talking about budgeting and how to pay down debts, but nobody's talking about the psychology behind it or all of the self awareness and the mind work that you need to do to get out of the current situation or to make a big change. And so when I coach people one on one, I teach classes, I do coaching, I put out content, but most of the time I'm coaching. I dive really deep into somebody's path, into what I call the root causes of your money beliefs thing. Where did they come from? How did they form? Was there something tragic or a big event recently that caused you to have these beliefs? Then using a technique that's actually pretty similar to cognitive behavioral therapy, we take these triggers head on and we reverse it. We, we use behavioral journaling, mental tools to control our emotions over time, control our reactions over time to triggers. And once that is in place, where at least my coaching clients know what they're supposed to do, then that kind of clears up your head. And then I can come in and suggest changes to the budget, suggest pathways and educate you on how to set up your retirement and then we go on from there.
Marcia Dawood: Wow. Tell us more about that. Like how you have them work through it, the journaling, the making sure they know what the triggers are like. That's so interesting.
Shang Saavedra: Yeah. The framework, I gave it the name trigger action rewards. So I'll just use one of my appliances. In a very easy example, I have a client who's a super busy working mom. You just don't have time. And so whenever she gets stressed out or exhausted from her life, that's the trigger. Her action is that she goes online and shops, you know, goes online. I need some retail therapy right now.
Shang Saavedra: And I get it. There's a reason why it's called retail therapy because in the moment it does make you feel better to buy something for yourself. You get the package, it looks really nice. So the action is she goes online and buys something and the short term reward is that she feels a little bit better, but it's a short term reward because it doesn't allow her to reach her actual goals, which is she wants to feel rested, she wants to have more money, she wants to be less stressed. So the way that I teach her is the next time you feel that stress, that exhaustion, the after you're going to do something, address that underlying stress. So maybe you need to take a Nap or maybe work a little bit on your resume to change to a job that you might like more or a job that pays more or do a little bit of Pinterest pinning. But you don't buy something. Right.
Shang Saavedra: Whatever you can do that allows you to feel better and changes your life for the better in the long term without spending a ton of money. So we've changed her at her action. Her reward is that she also feels better. But the feeling. But it can last longer, save her more money or just works more in the long term.
Marcia Dawood: That makes so much sense. Yes, that's a. And that was a great example. Yeah. A lot of times we do tend to go toward some kind of other types of therapy. Retail therapy, latte therapy, I don't know. Ice cream therapy. You can pick.
Shang Saavedra: Coffee therapy.
Marcia Dawood: You can pick your thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's super interesting. So I know you wrote a book. Of course. I'm all about authors and boosting what they're doing. Tell us, when did you write the book? What made you think about writing the book? How long did it take you to write it? All of those types of things.
Shang Saavedra: Oh, my goodness. I never thought that I would write a book because I don't see myself as an author at all. I remember as a kid, I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be cool one day to have a book published? And that was just, like, in the back burner of my mind. Then in 2022, 23 was an ongoing conversation. One of my friends was starting up a publishing company focused on Aapi voices, Asian American Pacific Islander voices. And so she approached me and said, have you thought about writing a book? I'm like, yeah, but never seriously. The conversation evolved. Eventually, I ended up.
Shang Saavedra: I began writing a book in fall of 23, and the editing and all of that finished in summer of 24. The book came out January 25th. So at the time of recording, the book's been out for about a year. And it's called wealth as a Mindset. So, again, it's really focusing on what can we do to change our mindset so that you can invite in more wealth.
Marcia Dawood: Yes. I love that. And so what are some of the tips and tricks that you have in the book? Just to tease up what people might be reading about.
Shang Saavedra: So that trigger action, reward framework that I talked about is central to the book, but I also personalize it to the root causes of your negative money behavior. So how I've been talking about how I asked people about their childhood. Right. Actually distill it down to three personalities, so to speak. Three root causes. But you can actually relate to all three of these. And they're called feast and famine adverse events, scarce immigrant. They're just these kind of Personas that describe a common occurrence during childhood.
Shang Saavedra: Like, for example, people who grow up in feast and famine come from families who don't really stick to a budget. And they yo, yo, between spending a lot of money and going into a lot of debt, like lots of credit card debt. And then I explain how that manifests in what happens as an adult. And then we use trigger action reward to address the very problems that you experience as an adult. And then I apply that to the gamut. I apply it to saving money first, first time paying down debt. I apply to your job search, your job negotiations, and then also eventually how to invest and save for retirement.
Marcia Dawood: Amazing. So you mentioned credit card debt. I know that there are a lot of people out there, especially younger people, who get a little bit upside down or maybe a lot upside down when it comes to credit cards when they're in college. Because there's a lot of credit card companies that are sometimes predatory and going after younger people, they. They probably have good or no credit. I don't know. I guess it depends. But then they re they start thinking, oh, well, I have this credit card and I could just buy things.
Marcia Dawood: And it just goes into the ether somewhere. So how often are you seeing people that have gotten into credit card debt and think to themselves, wow, how did I get here?
Shang Saavedra: Quite often. And sometimes it creeps up on them over time. And for some people, particularly the ones going through, divorce is just one massive traumatic event that causes you to go into debt very quickly. And I still use the same kind of phrase that I use, that you are not defined by your debt. Your debt doesn't mean that you're a bad person. But we have the set and we need to figure out what to do with it. And depending on the magnitude of debt especially, I do look at the debt to income ratio and also the ability of a person to do a very quick change. If somebody can move in with their family very quickly, then that's really great.
Shang Saavedra: But then some of my clients cannot, and we have to find more drastic ways to save money. There is that really funny scene in the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic. Have you ever seen it? So it starts Isla Fisher as a person who just cannot control her shopping. But then the irony is that she becomes a newspaper columnist writing about personal finance. So she kind of lives with like double life where she is a shopaholic and she's also dealing on personal finance advice. Super fun rom com. And there's a scene where her best friend's trying to help her get out of her debt and her best friend says you need to freeze your credit card. So she literally puts it into a block of ice in her fridge.
Shang Saavedra: I get it. Right. I do a lesser version where I tell people, put your credit card in a place where you can't really see and delete your saved card information from all the online shopping where they use a debit card or going to use a cash method. But yeah, there's a scene where she cannot control herself and she runs to her freezer, gets out the block of ice and just starts hacking away at it to get to her credit card.
Marcia Dawood: Oh, that's a funny story. And that kind of shows a little bit about our mindset sometimes around spending, right?
Shang Saavedra: Yes.
Marcia Dawood: Yes. Well, this has been such an interesting conversation about all things related to saving and investing. Tell us though, before you go, a little bit more about how people at all ages can be thinking more about investing if they haven't been an investor yet, if they are still thinking that investing seems overwhelming or a little bit too far out of reach, what are some of the initial steps that they can take in order to feel more comfortable maybe, and so that they can move in that direction.
Shang Saavedra: There are some basic steps that I ask people to secure before they go on to investing. And the first tenet is actually your first investment should be with money that you don't mind losing. So I want most people to at the very least have emergency savings, like an adequate amount of emergency savings before we get into investing. Because you have to be ready for that money to not be accessible to you for many years. Because investing is pretty volatile in between. Like I acknowledge that it's not always a straight line up worth, but once you're at that point and you're ready, just start. Start with a small amount, expand, experiment, and then the more comfortable you are, then the more likely you're going to put more and more money towards it. I have this course where I teach you how to save and invest for retirement.
Shang Saavedra: The average household that goes into my course, it's like a two hour course, they come in with one saving, right? Usually when they exit, they double the amount of money they start. They invest over time.
Marcia Dawood: Wow.
Shang Saavedra: Because they realize, okay, their fears are fears you can reduce with education and it's not that hard. But you just got to look into it and see how it works. And once they realize it's not that hard. They're like, yeah, I'm going to double the amount I'm going to invest.
Marcia Dawood: Wow, you are just. You have so many resources. So we're going to put all of this in the show notes, but we just want to make sure that everybody knows just how many resources that you have out there, first of all. And then let me say them and then you'll correct me or where I've missed anything. Okay. You obviously have your book that we talked about. You have an incredible following on Instagram where you're giving lots and lots of little short snippet tips and tricks and all the things. You have a course that people can take.
Marcia Dawood: You also do private coaching where people can come to you individually and you will help them, like create an entire plan. And I just think all of these resources are so incredible. Did I miss anything?
Shang Saavedra: That's. You got it all wrapped up. That's great. Yeah.
Marcia Dawood: Awesome. And so thank you so much for coming on today and talking about this. This is such an important topic. I love to see younger people especially start their retirement savings at such a young age. Especially like if somebody were 16 or 17 years old and they were working a summer job and they started an ira. Wow. That is truly like starting at the right time and really getting that compound interest and that long term horizon working for you. So I absolutely love that.
Marcia Dawood: So thank you so much for being here today.
Shang Saavedra: Thank you so much.