At 16, she left Jamaica to U.S. with $100. Now she teaches Americans how to build wealth after doing same

Meet Tanya Taylor. She is the founder and CEO of Grow Your Wealth, a financial education platform that teaches professionals how to ditch bad debt and create a six or seven-figure retirement income even if they do not have any plan in place. Prior to starting the platform, Taylor, who is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an MBA in Strategic Management, had spent most of her over 23-year career on Wall Street.

There, she worked with some of the best international banks and insurance companies in the world. Taylor was able to grow her retirement portfolio to over $1 million by age 48 while traveling to over 50 countries.

Building a million-dollar retirement portfolio did not come easy for Taylor as she had to start life from scratch considering her background. At age 16, she migrated to the USA from Jamaica in search of greener pastures. She arrived in the U.S. with just $100.

What she saw in America did not represent the rosy picture that was painted to her about America. Nonetheless, she remained hopeful and kept her goal of building wealth and helping others as well. Her weekly salary of less than $150 working full time was what she used to pay her bills, help her family back home, and pay her tuition.

After graduating from junior college, she ended up on the Upper West side of Manhattan where she worked as a live-in babysitter, making $200 per week. And according to her, this gave her the opportunity to see how the wealthy lived, and seeing the disparity between her community and the wealth, she vowed to create her own wealth and help others do the same.

“I saved everything I could, invested in a class that would take me a year later, out of the world of babysitting and on to the mergers and acquisition floor of Goldman Sachs,” she said. “There I was exposed to the different career possibilities and a step further toward my dreams. While working full time, I returned to school full time to earn my bachelor’s degree. Now making almost 4 times as much as I did, I continued to live the same lifestyle, and saved everything else I earned,” she said.

Prior to graduating from college, Taylor had bought her first home, hoping to use the equity to create a real estate portfolio to fund her retirement. She was also a co-owner of a small business. However, the house was taken from her by people who thought their help came with a lifetime of repayment from her and used the facility for mortgaging to fund their lifestyle.

This affected her stellar credit and continued through her adult life although she never paid her bills late. “I continued to push towards achieving my dream of real estate ownership, but finally gave up after an incident that could have been tragic,” she said.

To make matters worse, the small business she co-owned was also sold at a profit and she never saw a dollar of her investment back.

After many challenges, she co-founded a stock market investment club, running it for about six years. Later, Taylor founded a financial education club for children. She also started managing her retirement plans on her own. In no time, she saw her portfolio grow.

Before 50, she had grown her retirement portfolio to seven figures. To help others do the same and make wise financial decisions, she decided to create the Grow Your Wealth financial education platform.

“I have had bad credit, high interest credit cards, and no savings,” she told Daily Scanner. “I recall on several occasions having to choose between buying basic necessities or eating and having to go hungry.  The fact is that I have been there, and I know that it doesn’t feel good. But I also know that there are tools that can create change once you are motivated to change.”