45: Money Talk: How your upbringing and culture can impact your money decisions with Dayhanna Acosta

Today I’ve invited my good friend Dayhanna Acosta to talk to me about money mindset and how her cultural upbringing in Colombia impacts the decisions she makes and her approach to money.

Dayhanna is an e-commerce specialist. She is a Colombian-American, born in Colombia moved with her family to Puerto Rico, and then the US.

Growing up in Columbia in the ’90s was not easy. At one point, it was the most dangerous country in the world. Being successful at that time in Columbia had its price, fear for your own safety, for your family’s safety, having to hide your wealth, etc. So, while her dad was very, very successful when she was growing up, there was a lot of fear involved with her upbringing.

She lived a very privileged life, but that all came crashing down pretty quickly. During a Christmas party one year her aunt’s husband was kidnapped because of his involvement with politics, and because he was “successful and wealthy”.  That incident really marked her perception of money. That was something that she realized years later while trying to dive deep and figure out why she was making a lot of erroneous money decisions and why she always kept self-sabotaging.

“When there’s actual trauma involved with our relationship with money, the work that we have to do, goes much deeper than saying affirmations or meditating or journaling about it, it is deep work that has to happen in order for us to be able to start healing.”

– Dayhanna Acosta

There are a couple of things that Dayhanna really wants people to think about, especially if you come from a diverse background, and you have a similar upbringing:

• Don’t settle for less than what you know you’re capable of achieving
• “La costumbre es mas fuerte que el amor” (habit is stronger than love)
• You can dream and envision an incredible life for yourself, but if your day to day life is built on bad habits and comfort you’re never going to get there.
• Seek wealth, not status.

Your focus should always be on acquiring and gaining wealth, and leveraging your assets, as opposed to showing off in order to be allowed into a room. If you feel like you need to show off, in order to have a presence in any certain environment, then that is not the environment for you.

Talk about money, invest your money

Let go of those taboos that we have around having conversations about what we do with our wealth, how we use our time and our resources in order to be able to acquire more wealth.

If you want to reach out to Dayhanna, you can find her on Facebook and on Instagram

Love + magic,

Maggie