A Journey of Financial Discipline and Growth With Alexandra Dotcheva

Thank you for joining me today. And I'm excited to chat with you and learn more about your financial journey. Let's start with you coming over here as an immigrant and your financial struggles and how you navigated those. Thank you for having me, Dalene, on your podcast. It's an honor to be here and to converse with you, and hopefully I can contribute to your listeners. Yes, in 2000, I came to the state on, on the, in the states to the on a student release, excuse me to earn my master's and doctoral degrees in violin. And I graduated from Louisiana State University in 2007 after defended my doctoral monograph. And in 2008, see, I was employed at the time with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra as a violinist. I had been a violinist for 20 something years. And the first signs of bankruptcy started lurking because lots of orchestras started shutting down or downsizing because of the financial crisis that started in 2006. And in 2008, I did decide to put myself through nursing school, one of the hardest decisions ever, 26 years musician, no science basis, no medical basis, nothing. So I replaced my nine hour a day practice of the violin with reading the textbooks nine hours a day. Anatomy, physiology, chemistry, psychology, math, everything that that I could. The prerequisites for nursing school required before I even started the classes in 2008, because I was very unprepared, let alone vocabulary, English the scientific jargon. So I did all that, read all the books several times before the classes. There were thick, big books lots of reading, but I graduated from nursing school in 2011. And then in 2014, I became also a real estate investor. That was another learning curve that I put myself through because I wanted to be financially independent in the way the wealthy do. Passive income, less taxation, and much more opportunity for growth and independence and choices. It was very important to me after I saw how many of the nurses lived and how they were treated by the corporations that keep devouring hospital after hospital. So yeah, in a nutshell. That's amazing. Curious as to why you chose nursing. Because it was a highly demanded profession, I could find work anywhere in the world, if I chose to. Whereas when you graduate from music, if you're a musician, you may spend 15 years auditioning and not getting a full time job because you're competing against 40 to 500 people for one spot. Whereas nurses are truly needed, and it did not require another 11 years of college. To get a nursing degree. So because my bachelor's, master's and doctoral took a total of 11 years being in college and nursing was not the case. And I was at the time I was 32. I already thought I was old. I'm turning 48 next week. So this is laughable now, right? But at 32, I had nothing to show for financially and personally and professionally, and I was completely depressed. So that's why nursing, because I knew it was going to be hard, but yeah. Somehow, I remember when I was a child, I had a passion for science, biology. We studied minimal biology in the music school when I was at for 12 years as a child in Bulgaria. But I knew I might really like it and I put everything, everything that could, and it really worked out very well. Your growth you, you talk about very little science. Cause obviously you studied music. And that's an art form of itself and a science form of itself, but being able to then pivot to nursing and real estate how were your beliefs? How? How did you sustain yourself? You talked a little bit about depression, but what was able to help you to pursue it, keep going, and get to where you are today? I had been breastfed pretty much with the idea that for us, our family, our type of people, so to speak, it would be very hard or if impossible to ever become wealthy, rich, or have financial choices. So this was a, pervasive mindset that I had until 32 and I decided to turn it all around because suddenly I got very, very afraid of poverty. It was this nagging fear, anxiety, and I had to turn it into a positive factor to motivate me instead of crush me down. And I succeeded gradually. It was not a sudden process. Yes, you have these inspiring moments, but then you hit a wall with the challenges and how much knowledge you need to acquire in the time. And you try something, you don't succeed, you fall off the wall, you start climbing again. That was a process of like five years to invert my mindset and turn my life around. It's all about discipline, see that was the most positive thing I had from the violin because I started at age six and I was taught discipline, you have to practice such and such amount of hours a day or else there was no negotiation when you're in an Eastern European family of musicians. So this was positive and I said the way I applied my Practicing the violin, I'm going to play with my books, with my work, learn the skills, the mindset, and then the financial jargon and the time management was crucial because I was working nights for a year or so, when I was learning about real estate through my mentors, and it was a wild time for her. Five to 10 years until I finally stepped on my feet and I was in control. And yeah, but it was worth it every moment because you put yourself through a lot of stress and you craft your discipline and then you build resilience because the little results add up to a big result. And eventually 10 years later, you'll say, Oh, good thing I didn't give up because I will get regrets. Love now that I gave up and succumb to my, you know, poor mentality and poor mental habits. Yeah, you know, hindsight 2020 and we're so grateful of that. But that's why I think it's so important to share our successes and our journeys and our stories with people so that hopefully they don't give up on their own journey, you know, they can see, Oh, okay, she did it. I just got to keep going. It will happen, and we all make it happen in a different way. Yes, so nursing school is not cheap. It's, pricing going to college, obviously, and you took a student loan that you said was a 15 year term and you paid it off in four years. Then you also mentioned you had a 30 year home loan that you paid off in five and a half years. Would love to hear your strategies, Your baby steps, your journey on that to inspire others. Absolutely. So I learned early on from my mentors, see, I chose self made million millionaires for mentors because I wanted to be like them. I learned that it was important to buy the assets first and the personal home next. So I bought a fourplex first. That was my very first ever real estate property. We lived in one of the apartments. We first remodeled the other three. We lived for a year and a half in the old broken. front apartment of the building in the other three apartments for remodels so we can have tenants and provide the best housing and most affordable housing for them. I then started paying all the, I mean, I started paying all the student loan by the way, right off the bat with my first job. I was putting thousand to something more over some months towards the loan. Then I had little halt and then I got very motivated to use the cashflow from the rental property after all remodels to killed that student loan so I could then focus on my next rental property. Okay. So that's why it took four and a half years. Actually, it was too long. I could have done it sooner, but it after the second after the third year, I got motivated to finish it. And then in another year, I killed it. Okay. It was with the added interest, it was well over 22, 000 when I started paying it, which at the time seemed like an impossible amount of money. And then Compared to where I am today, financially, when I can pay this amount of money easily in less than two months. Okay. But at the time that was really not the case. Plus I was sponsoring myself, my mentorship with my mentors because those were online classes that weren't exactly cheap. So I budgeted for that too. But see, I'm not the type of person who feels that I have to have luxuries in life to prove some status in society. And that I inherited from my parents. Luckily. Well, I wouldn't recommend everybody to be like my parents because my mother would go without buying herself clothes for 5 to 10 years. I've done my maximum 2 to 5 years without buying myself new rags to wear because I'm proud I can still fit easily in my jeans from when I was 18, okay? But The point is you really, really have to very well determine what you need and what you want, what you must have, what you can't have, but you don't necessarily have to have right now. Okay. And I'm excellent at putting things off that I don't have to have right now. I can put it off for years until I fulfill the goal that I have. As far as asset building and cash flow, that will provide them for the little spoils I want in my life. Now to clarify, I never want to drive a Porsche. I've never been obsessed with cars, and I think that's a big handicap in the mentality of many young people and older ones that, oh, I have to have this fantastic car. No, you don't. The purpose of a car is to drive you from point A to point B to point C back to point A. If the car can do that. You're in perfect shape and you can build assets galore and then you can buy yourself whatever vehicle you want just to please yourself or reward yourself. And that's the way you affirm that you achieved something that you did major. So the student loan was really that, that happened in four years, but then the house was interesting because they leans on the house. My boyfriend bought the house. Okay. He bought the house. He took care of the expenses over the house when I bought the second asset. Second business that I built was another home here in Phoenix, a rental property. And after I got that property, I got one more rental property and then COVID hit. So in 12, from 2020 to 2021, the hardest time with the COVID and the crisis and the lockdown and everything. That's where we I managed actually to contribute enough to kill the third year household and by that time boyfriend get paid the house for three and a half years. Then I stepped in with all the cash flow from the rentals and some of my work. And two years later, five and a half years from the beginning of the loan, it was done, but it was a commitment. I also trade options. Okay. I am options trader. I do some speculative trades, which I promised myself to stop doing after the house was paid. And I kept that promise too, because you're taking a big risk. It's very sweet to do a 15, 20, 000 trade, but you are putting your money at risk. And I don't mind risks if they're geared towards a specific goal, but just for the sake of taking risk, I just think that's stupid, okay? Because I worked too hard for my money and it took me years to learn proper finances. I always had the discipline, but not necessarily the knowledge. But when you start making a lot of money, you also have to stay disciplined as to the way you're making them. And so do you really want to risk so much to prove yourself that you can do it? So there's a balance and everybody's very different with that. But You have to stick to your goals and you cannot distract yourself with some temptations and because everybody wants to take your money. Everybody, especially when you become successful, everybody wants to be your friend and they want to sell you this and this to improve your life with more. It's going, wait a minute, you know it's, You've got to engage yourself. You've got to truly stick to your plan and that's when it works. So important. Reflecting back on my journey, I realized how important my goals, and I had a short term goal that's, you know, fulfilled my family and we had joy and we had entertainment and all of that. But then the long term goal of being able to retire early. So like you were saying, you stay focused. If you really truly want your goals and you believe in yourself, I think that makes it easier. It's definitely a long game. So I know you coach people on financial discipline. Can you share a little bit about like what that looks like? How somebody can work with you and how they connect with you to do that? Yeah, I coach them on lots of things. Financial discipline is one of them. Health is a different one because of my medical background. Relationships is the third one. Yeah. But financial discipline, so we really find the difference between good debt and bad debt. Okay, so good debt is the one that you leverage with loans that you can buy properties and you can make cash flow and leverage that way. And then the money from the rents pay for the loan. Now, of course, my goal is now expanded because I'm going to pay off my, all of my properties in the next four years. So you can expand your goals, but first of all, you need to make a difference between good and bad debt. So if you're drowning in credit card debt, high interest credit card debt, we got to clear that up first, but first we examine your financial habits. Your priorities, why you stick to certain priorities and not to others. What are your financial goals? Why are they sustainable? Are they demoralizing? Are they elevating all this mindset? Because money is a very touchy subject and very emotional subject and The way people form beliefs about money stem from very deep in their childhood, their families, their, then their friends, and very likely the people they surround themselves with many of my mentees and my clients people with similar mindsets that spend money on things that really shouldn't be a priority at all. But when they become very motivated and come to me, they are willing to reevaluate what influences they accept from others and distance themselves from certain influences because you gotta stay focused on your goal. And a big time with If you don't have enough money to invest, you need to create ways to find ways to become more resourceful. Maybe learn two, three, four, five, or six more marketable skills so you can make yourself more marketable and sought after so you can make this extra income or work extra hours or both. I mean, there's so many ways to expand your means and then invest. But you build a discipline in the meantime, see, because the other thing they lean is when people work their selves to the bone, they become resentful to this whole idea that you have to work very hard and then they spoil themselves with these ridiculous things that are, again, not a necessity, but just to prove, okay, I work so I deserve this and this and this. Whereas building assets, that's a more longer term plan and you have to persevere through that plan and see the final goal and not get sidetracked. And it's easy for people to get sidetracked. Same with time management to accumulate assets and to build all that wealth. You need to manage your time very well and not get sidetracked by things that don't contribute to that goal. Money and time very close together, right? So they're hand in hand and that's what we really learned. But most people could come to me, have bad credit cards, that's, and he start there. And it's, it's interesting because you reveal certain mindsets that they aren't unaware of. And then say, Oh yeah, I really probably should change this. I said, no, no, you should, because you want to get wealthy. This habit has to be forgotten. Stop practicing that. Stop practicing this instead. So we tailored a model, we tailored the program to their needs and goals. But. Fundamentally, things are very similar with various clients. Yes, I love that. Then tell us a little bit more about your book. Why did you write it? Who's it for? Where they can find it? The book is for people who struggle with self esteem, self confidence issues, anxiety immigrants. Midlife crisis, early or later or timely, it's never timely, mine was 32 obviously crossroads in life. All these categories fit very well in the book. Also people with chronic diseases who are spending ridiculous money on health bills and cannot really fulfill anything in their lives, chronic disease reversal, financial situation reversal. wealth building, and of course, relationship prioritization, because who you hang around determines vastly your health and financial choices. In a good or bad direction or like sideways direction, and you don't go anywhere for 15 years to stay where you are. So this book, I wrote it because I struggled tremendously with self esteem and self confidence for well over 20 years. And most of it was self inflicted, but some of it was not. So when you take responsibility for your, for the way you treat yourself, when you view the world through your eyes and find where you're responsible for your worldview and how you can reverse that. That is a crucial moment that then opens the doors to everything else positive if you want in your life. And that's why I wrote the book because of my experience and everything I have done with my health relationships and finances, I never thought I could do ever because I was one of those people who would never accept any change. I was in a box, my own box between four walls, practicing and practicing every day and didn't want anything else to bother me with new ideas, new concepts. That was absurd. I wish. So the whole premise of the book is that I could do it. Anybody can do it. So, and I say this at the end of many chapters saying, okay, that seems hard now, but if I could do it, remember you can do it because I never thought I could do it. And I had these awful mental, lazy, lazy, complacent habits that I fought for years. And it worked, it works, but you gotta get on yourself. First and foremost. I love that you were able to put that in a book and share that. And I think everybody needs to realize, like I said earlier, you know, listen to other people's stories. Listen to what worked for them. That was how I got on my journey. Learning from others, seeing what they did. Exactly. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. And tailoring it for me. Like what, you know, what 10 people said, I might take a piece from all of them. or just some of them, right? And just create it for yourself, but keep going, keep going. Do you have one last piece of advice for our listeners on, you know, paying down or investing or whatever it is that they could start working on today and see success in a few years? Absolutely. Just start planning today and stick to your plan. Be very reasonable. Always estimate conservatively for your potential earnings and more liberally for your expenses, the undesired expenses. So you have enough money. And so don't spend on things. If you know what you're in debt and depending on the type of debt, because there are different types of debt, assuming that you know the difference. To eliminate the bad bet, you just have to sit and do it. You can make a plan for two years, one year, or five years, depending. And you have to be very well aware of your monthly expenses, not just estimating, estimating. You have to have actual numbers to work with, because if you don't have actual numbers, you won't have actual results. Okay. So it's, it's just that simple. It really very, very simple. And that's why I titled the book. It really is simple, a holistic approach to self confidence because there are so many steps involved in every aspect of your life is the same principle. You just apply it throughout and it works no matter what. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for your time and your words. We appreciate you being here. Thank you. And the listeners can find my book on my website, holisticselfconfidence. com. That's where the paperback is available in the U S otherwise the ebook is on the website as well as Amazon, Smashwords, Apple books, and Barnes and Noble for a very, very, very affordable price. Go show her some support and we'll see you listeners next week.