Nationwide — Tanya Taylor is the Founder & CEO of Grow Your Wealth, a financial education platform that teaches professionals how to ditch bad debt and create a 6 or 7-figure retirement income even if they don’t have any plans in place.
Tanya is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an MBA in Strategic Management. She has spent most of her 23+ 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 6 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 finance, Tanya saw her portfolio grow.
Tanya keenly set savings goals and deadlines and contributed the maximum to her retirement portfolio annually. She also invested in individual stocks, which generally provided higher returns. These simple strategies allowed her to grow her retirement portfolio to over $1 million by age 48.
Teaching financial literacy has been a big part of her life for over two decades
Keeping true to her promise of helping others to build wealth, Tanya aligned herself with various organizations and taught students, families, and small business owners about personal finance and wealth-building. Upon observing the impact of the pandemic on many families, particularly Black families, Tanya decided to create the Grow Your Wealth financial education platform to teach professionals how to ditch bad debt and create a 6-7 figure retirement income even if they don’t have any plans in place.
Her 23+ years of experience on Wall Street, coupled with her extensive knowledge of personal finance and tax planning allows her to meet each person exactly where they are on their financial journey. Within the first 15 days of the program, her clients can remove the anxiety and fear around money and retirement and create their custom roadmap which they can immediately begin implementing.
With the proper tools in place, Tanya has been able to live her dream of traveling the world. She has traveled to 50+ countries and almost 30 states, taking her children to almost 30 of those countries with her.
As Tanya puts it, anyone has the power to transform their financial life. Having the right tools will give you the confidence to take action and change your financial future.
