Melisa Boutin: This is part of the financial education in the community, financial wellness series / event series. I’m Melisa Boutin, the founder of Your Money Worth, a digital financial education startup, that is focused on driving the collective financial wellbeing of communities in the Caribbean and the diaspora. I am from St. Kitts, I grew up in the countryside parish of Saint John in Saint Kitts.

However, my foremothers are from Brown Pasture in Nevis, so I’m truly a Kittitian & Nevisian to the bone. My son and I moved back to St. Kitts during the [Covid-19] pandemic, and I realized that here in the Caribbean, the challenges of low financial literacy and with my background, shifting to financial education, I saw an opportunity to contribute to the solution for that.

Melisa Boutin: I’m also an author and the author of Student Loan Answers: A 7-Step Guide to Understanding Your Student Loans. That came about from my own personal journey, figuring out my Development Bank student loans and recognizing that there was not a lot of information available to borrowers. So I did self-publish that and have that as a resource for Caribbean student loan borrowers. I’m going to share my savings journey.

I did graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering. And at that time, when I graduated and I started my career, I was heavily in debt. I think almost $200,000 EC in student loan debt. And of course, as a young person who invested in higher education and starting a career, I was focused on not only starting my career, but making sure that I benefited from my investment in education and definitely in terms of my personal finance situation. I made it my business to kind of learn more about saving, paying off debt and reaching my financial goals. So at the time, when I looked at what I owned, which was nothing versus what I owed, I had about negative $200,000 EC when you took that difference; that subtraction gives you what is called your net worth, which is just the difference between what you own minus what you owe.

From there, once I went from being a college student, one of the main things I saw as an opportunity to help me save was to still live with the lower expenses that I was accustomed to when I was a college student. So, for example, if my college housing when I rented apartments with roommates was only $750, when my income increased now that I’m starting my career, I kept living with roommates in order to maximize having more money to save. The next biggest impact area in terms of saving was looking at how can I save on the cost of my largest debt, which was the student loans.

The cost of your debt is on the interest you pay over the life of the loan. So in terms of student loans, typically the repayment period is ten years. And over those ten years, every payment you make, a portion goes to pay down the amount that you originally borrowed plus the interest. The interest is what you get charged by the lending. When they set up a repayment plan, they have already determined how much interest they’re going to get over that repayment period. So over ten years, typically for a student loan, if you borrow $100,000, you’ll probably pay another hundred thousand dollars in interest over the repayment period. In order to save interest on the cost of repaying that student loan over ten years, I can save money by paying it off sooner. When you pay off a loan sooner than the original time period, you save by not having to pay the interest over those years that you are no longer paying.

So, for example, for a loan that is about $100,000 and at a 9% interest rate and you have ten years to repay, you’re paying the balance you originally borrowed and then with the 9% interest rate, you’re paying another $100,000 (plus) in interest. So…if a monthly payment is about $1,300 for every month over ten years, and you double the monthly payment, you can save about $20,000 in interest. Now, when paying off debt early, you don’t actually get that $20,000 in your hand. It’s the money that you would have had to contribute for the remaining years is what you save. So that’s another way to save even though it may not be a lump sum of cash; instead of you paying 9% interest to the lender, by you paying off early you’re earning the 9% interest. So that’s a big impact area. And the higher the interest rate on your debt, that means you’re getting that more interest or savings or return on what you put towards making extra payments. That’s the second high impact way that I did savings.

Melisa Boutin: And the third that I’m going to close with is a concept that is called “Pay Yourself First”. So whenever you get paid, whenever you get your wages, your direct deposit into your account from what you work for, you should get paid first. Starting out, I did take advantage of whenever I get paid, there’s money that’s going to my savings. Then whatever money goes to my account, I pay my bills, I pay my obligations, I pay my debts. But Melisa gets paid first. So paying yourself first is making sure everything you earn, you put aside something for yourself. Not everybody gets paid, and then you’re trying to figure out how can I have a $100 just for me to save. So I decide how much do I want to save from every paycheck. I make sure that that comes out of my paycheck automatically, and all my other bills have to be paid from what is left, and then if there’s enough room to save some more, then I save more. But off the top, the first bill that I pay is a bill that I owe to myself, which is to my savings.

Melisa Boutin: So what is summer financial wellness? This is my definition, but basically using the summer period to get on top of your finances, create goals, and save to improve your financial position for the rest of the year. No matter where you are in the world, really, summer is a time for vacation, to try to be carefree, enjoyment. But it is also a good time, towards the middle of the year, before you get to the back to school season, to take stock and see how you can improve your financial situation. It doesn’t have to be a whole transformation, but just putting some thought into it. You know, if you have some goals at the beginning of the year, financial goals, or you wanted to change something about your financial situation or you had some type of life event or some type of setback that put you back financially, this can be a time to look at what your financial position is right now, create some goals, and save to really move towards improvement as you go towards the end of the year.

Melisa Boutin: What are the best ways to save money? So if you do a Google search right now, you’ll probably get like hundreds of tips of how to save, which are very valid. But the main thing about saving and improving your finances is really about, first and foremost, your mindset. So no matter what strategies you use, whether it’s have a salary reduction going directly to savings, or saving at home in a piggy bank. The first step is to decide to save and make a commitment. So like I shared in my story, when I was starting out, I made a commitment to say, well, I know I have a lot of debt, I also know that as I’m graduating from school and getting a higher paying job, I can make the decision to not get my own one bedroom apartment right after college. I can make that decision to have the same used car that I had in college that is not new and maybe have some dinks in it. Maybe a few scratches, but it’s paid off. I can decide just to delay getting a new car so that I can save.

Melisa Boutin: On Step 2, which I kind of touched on, is understanding what it takes and to prepare to make sacrifices. So my sacrifices were: I’m not going to get a nice new car and a new car loan to go with it; I am going to live below my means and live with other people. But for each person or for yourself, think about what is it going to take and what do I have to sacrifice and commit to sacrifice in order to save. The third step is to set a goal and save over the time, and the goal does not have to be large. It’s just to get you started. So, for example, a goal could be, out of the five days I go to work on a weekly basis, I buy breakfast five out of five days. So set a small goal to save over time; in this situation would be I’m going to only buy breakfast three days out of the week, and the money that I would spend on the remaining two days out of the week, I’m going to take that money because I’ve been spending it. You know, that’s my routine. But for those two days, the money that I’m not going to spend, I’m going to put that to start saving, and if that breakfast is $10 per day, I’m going to start with $20 and I’m going to try to save $100 over a few weeks by just cutting back two days out of the week. So set a goal that is achievable. You know it’s doable and then save over time. What are some other ways you think could be a small goal to save all the time?

Dominique: I like investing in the sense that I like when the money is making good interest, when I don’t have to, when I can’t put to it, and over a long period of time. So when I was a student, I had taken some of the maintenance. I didn’t need it…I stayed at home, but I invested it, and I went to university during the economic downturn. But I left it; I left the majority of it. I still have it 20 years later and it’s still accumulating interest regardless of whether I am putting money into it or not. So that’s something that I really want to do for my son as well. And I’m glad you mentioned Vanguard; I’ve been looking at Vanguard to open an investment account in the UK.

Melisa Boutin: Okay. Sounds good. And I love that you said that because to me, what I took away from what Dominique said is she has saved some money when she was in college or around that time and the decision she made is to not use it and to allow it to grow. So that’s a good example because Dominique didn’t touch that money and it was able to grow. So the money that’s invested and is getting earnings, she’s letting it basically build up itself. Go ahead Joalyn.

Joalyn: Okay. It has been hard to save because I’m a single parent. I had a life event of divorce, just like you. And since that, I keep having emergencies. So every time I try to save, an emergency pops up. And because you’re a parent, you don’t have a choice. So how do you combat something like that?

Melisa Boutin: What I would say is, whether you’re on a single income or not, if you’re in a situation where when you try to save, something always pops up. It’s good to try to set a goal to build up an emergency fund. Typically, you should have an emergency fund of at least six months of your expenses, meaning your essentials, whatever you need to pay for your children to go to school, weekly food and so on. Just put that in an inconvenient space. And you say, that is my emergency fund for when things pop up. And you know, it’s not something you’re going to make any transfers from; that’s really out of your mind for when things pop up. And because I have that thousand dollars and I got to that thousand dollar mark when something pops up, it’s not cutting off everything. Was that helpful?
Joalyn: Yes. It was the way how you put it. Yes, I like that. So I will try that for sure.

Melisa Boutin: Okay, so not enough income and don’t know where to start. So that’s very typical. Especially when you have responsibilities, you have debts, you have monthly payments. You don’t have control over what your employer is going to pay you. So not having enough income is a valid response and feeling and reality. But starting somewhere is very important on whatever income level you have right now. There are things you can do to save a little bit more. If you have debts, which account for a lot of the expense or you have to commit a lot of your income to, or it’s keeping you from saving, one thing to think about is looking at what are those debts and how much is it costing you? All things being equal, the debt with the higher interest rate is costing you more. You can approach your lender and see if they would reduce that interest rate or renegotiate the terms of the loan. So what that looks like is, if you had a ten year loan and you’ve been paying for three years, you have seven years left. You can ask the lender, listen, it’s really difficult for me to meet my own needs, is it possible to instead of me repaying this loan over the remaining seven years, can you extend the period I have to pay off and make the monthly payment lower. When you extend the time, the monthly payment usually goes down if you have the same interest rate. That’s a way to kinda add a little bit more cushion back… But I have a question.

Joalyn: Yes. Tell me if I’m wrong, but if I’m understanding it correctly with the revolving loan, you get access to credit as you pay off. So I use mine as a little emergency fund and I stopped; I paid out my other loans. This one, I know it’s a loan in case something pops up. At least you have access to credit that you don’t necessarily have to go back to the bank to apply for.

Melisa Boutin: The line of credit is a revolving loan where you’re given a certain credit limit. So you’re approved for a certain amount that you can borrow. Your monthly payment is based on how much of that limit you actually use. As you pay down, you free up more credit that you can access later.

Joalyn: The line of credit monthly payments are fixed once about a certain amount. I think that’s an amount per month.

Melisa Boutin: Okay. So you have to pay upfront. But if you don’t use any of the credit, then that money is accessible to you. You’re kind of setting up a fund with your own money to use the line of credit the way that it is now. But the overall takeaway is when you’re looking at your debt, if there’s a situation where you see that there’s some type of debt that is really affecting how much you can save for yourself, then that’s what you need to look at. Be honest, look at over the past three months. I’m going to see, like, what do I really spend on? Is there some areas I can make some small changes and start saving? As you go through that exercise, you’ll see like, okay, if I can start small here, maybe there are higher impact things that I can do. Every time you get paid, track what you’re spending it on. Monitor progress. Create a routine where every time you get paid, you’re seeing what you’re spending and trying to focus on small steps. Then see how you can shift to higher impact savings, like reorganizing debt in a way where your monthly payment goes down.

Melisa Boutin: Jeffrey asked if anyone has tried to get the Department of Education to introduce financial literacy in schools. The answer to that is the Government of St. Kitts & Nevis has already started the beginning stages of a financial literacy program called ASPIRE for all youth who are citizens from primary to tertiary age. Each eligible student will get a bank account with $500 in savings and then get $500 in shares of either National Bank or The Cable. The actual financial education component is going to roll out in September [2025], where the students will actually be taught personal finance and have financial literacy instruction within the school day and curriculum.

If no questions, I would just… um, today I am a little tired because I had a packed schedule today. There has been a launch of an investment fund that is available for Kittitians and Nevisians called the UTC Global.

Only 4% of the population in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union invests in the regional securities exchange. UTC Global Balance Fund is a mutual fund, a Collective Investment Scheme where multiple people can buy investments in the US stock market and they own them together.

It launched here in St. Kitts & Nevis today. It allows you to invest in a fund made up of US stocks and bonds and is regulated by the regional Eastern Caribbean Securities Regulatory Commission. You can actually go online and learn more about it. This is not me endorsing this fund, but I just wanted to share that I did participate in the launch meeting as an invited guest to learn more about it and that this exists here in the EC Currency Union and specifically available to people in St. Kitts & Nevis.
End

This transcript was computer-generated and edited for grammar and clarity.