Life throws curveballs, often when we least expect them. In this episode, we explore the importance of financial resilience in the face of unexpected events. Our guest, Tamalyn James, Founder of Tam Admin, shares her personal journey of navigating a major health crisis with limited preparation, demonstrating the creative and tenacious strategies she used to recover. A lifelong learner and self-educator, Tamalyn brings a wealth of diverse experience across multiple industries and believes adaptability and continuous growth are key to overcoming life’s challenges.
Whether you’re financially stable or just starting to build your safety net, this conversation offers actionable insights for everyone. #vlogmas
Contact Tamalyn here:
LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/eUZvdvYm
IG: https://tinyurl.com/IGTamAdmin
IG: https://tinyurl.com/IGAgingAutodidact
The Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast’s mission is to empower women to approach money confidently, reframe their financial habits, and build a future where their money is a tool for opportunity and security.
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It’s never too late to begin again—let’s make it happen!
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personal finance, financial literacy, financial freedom, financial education, sevtalksmoney, financial preparation, financial wellness, life insurance, lupus, Severine Bryan, Sev Talks Money, financial coach
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Transcript
Dr. Sev:
Hey, hey, hey, savvy squad. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money, YouTube and podcast, where we empower women to manage money confidently and create a future of financial freedom, security, and opportunity. I have a special guest with me today, and we’re going to be talking about the importance of financial resilience in the face of unexpected events. We will discuss how to manage finances during a crisis, lessons learned from unexpected challenges, and steps to prepare for future uncertainties, among other things. Our special guest is Tamalyn James, founder of Tam Admin, a business operations consulting company. Tamalyn, welcome to the podcast.
Tamalyn James:
Well, hi. Thank you for having me.
Dr. Sev:
You are very welcome. So tell us a little bit about yourself.
Tamalyn James:
Well, my name is Tamalyn James. I’m originally from South Carolina, but I’ve been in Atlanta since 2001, and I am a business operations guru.
Dr. Sev:
Okay. So I’d love to hear a little bit to preface our discussion about the financial lessons that you learn during your medical crisis. I’d love for you to tell us a little bit about the medical condition that led to some financial disruption.
Tamalyn James:
Okay. Well, I have lupus, which is an autoimmune disease and it’s a chronic illness and it’s unpredictable. I got diagnosed in 2011. I had a major illness in 2016 and 2017. And that taught me about the health, the importance of having health insurance and disability coverage. At that time, I was unemployed or underemployed and did not have good health insurance. I had no health insurance and I definitely had no disability coverage. So Fast forward to 2023 when I fell sick again from lupus.
Tamalyn James:
When I started that position at that employer, I made sure I got all the coverages, the health insurance, the aflac, the short term disability and the long term disability and the AD&D. If they got it, had it to offer, I got it. I would prefer to be overinsured versus underinsured.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah. Okay. So what would you say was your financial state when you first encountered your health condition and how did it shape your experience? Because you mentioned you were underinsured or underemployed at one point and then you got this other job and you made sure you load up on insurance. So what would you say your overall financial state was?
Tamalyn James:
Well, the difference between when I first got sick in 2016, a major sickness, and the second major sickness that started in 2023 was the employment, my rate of pay, and participating in the insurance coverages, all of them, that they had to offer in 2016. I had no savings in 2023. When things began, I had $10,000 in my savings account. That was in addition to what I had in my credit, karma and myself. All of those things that to build credit that you can also do savings accounts for PayPal. I had about 2,000 in those accounts. So 10,000 in my regular banking savings, about 2,000 in those other accounts and then my 401k. So it was night and day difference financially when this sickness came versus in 2016.
Dr. Sev:
So it sounds like in the first place you were a little bit unprepared for this pressure on your finances in the first instance. So looking back, what are some financial lessons that you think you learned from your first major health scare?
Tamalyn James:
Well, at that first, after the first one, I was determined to get a job that paid me commensurate with what I brought to the table. I used to take whatever job I could get as long as it wasn’t like manual labor. As long as I was in an office, I would take it and I would take a lower rate of pay. After that I began to believe in myself and I pushed myself even further and I got a position that paid me much more than I had and I got promoted to a director level. So that allowed me to save more money. I developed a habit of saving 800 every paycheck at least if I wasn’t happy, if I didn’t save 800. And I also developed a habit of putting in maximum to my 401k. So if whatever the maximum that my company would match, I made sure I exceeded it for my individual contribution.
Tamalyn James:
So all those things really helped. And I had all of those savings to all those different savings accounts automatically come out with my each pay pay cycle. So I didn’t have to think about it. It just automatically happened. And I got used to having that, that decreased net pay to my primary checking because I didn’t see the money it automatically got allocated to those other accounts.
Dr. Sev:
My personal finance heart is just so happy to hear that. Because you did two things. What you did is you realized that you are capable of more. And so you saw those position that would pay you to put you in a position that you could save more money to create a financial cushion. And not only do you get more money, because here’s the thing, people get more money, but they increase their lifestyle. But you got more money and then you sought to make sure that you had some cushion, you had some emergency funds you had, if anything were to happen, you could pull even from your retirement. It’s not recommended, but that means you had that you had your savings, so that’s something. A lesson to be learned here for those who are listening is that things will happen, emergencies will happen.
Dr. Sev:
But can you find yourself, put yourself in the position to seek opportunities that will help you to stave off the any emergencies that come or to cushion any blows that come from emergency that come down the road? You. No matter what, how much we save, sometimes it’s never enough, but if we have at least some, it will cushion that blow.
Tamalyn James:
Yes.
Dr. Sev:
Yes. Okay, so after you’ve gone through this, are there any steps, I mean, I know you mentioned that you, you maxed out your 401k, you padded your savings account, you did all of those things. Any other things that maybe you did to help you prepare for any other future health crisis?
Tamalyn James:
Well, the insurance was a big one. It always is staggering to me how many people do not have, participate in their company’s offering of disability insurance short term or long term, or if you’re self employed, getting a plan, a policy. So when I first got sick and when I came to out of the coma, other people were helping me do my, my claims to get those started. And those people just, you know, they didn’t quite do it the right way. And ultimately I had to do it all from my own hospital bed. And that helped, that helped me get my mind back because I’d done it before for other people in my family, so I knew what to do. But during that time, while I was waiting to get the first payout from those claims, I had to go into my savings. So it was diminishing rather quickly.
Tamalyn James:
And that gave me anxiety because I don’t like not having money that cushion. But then the payment started and that money came in and that money is still coming in because I got laid off from my job. I got out of the hospital in March, found out I was getting laid off at the start of August and it would be effective as of September 30th. So if it were not for that long term disability policy, I would not. Those disability policies, I would not have been able to sustain myself over the long term. So I would advise people, you know, I know insurance is scary. I used to be a licensed insurance agent. I did that for a couple of years.
Tamalyn James:
I did that after getting sick in 2016 because I wanted to know more about financial security and I wanted to know how to leverage insurance. And I would say just participate, you know, whatever the name brand you want to call it. I’m not, I’m not an AFLAC representative, But Aflac, whatever, Ltd whatever. STD, diabil, you know, disability policy, AD&D. Get it. You never know what’s going to happen to you and you have to pay your bills while you’re going through what’s happening. And I’m fortunate. I don’t have children, but I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a major medical event and not have such a plan and have loved ones to take care of dependence.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah, there are some sad stories out there. Really. There really are some sad stories out there. And you mentioned something about the fact that after this happened, you became a licensed insurance agent because you wanted to learn about the industry and you wanted to understand. And that’s a lesson for those who are listening, is you don’t have to be a financial guru, you don’t have to be a nerd about money like I am. But make it your business to learn something about money that’s going to help you live a better life. Just take just a little bit, just one day, five minutes each day. Learn something.
Dr. Sev:
What is credit? What does it mean for term life insurance? Look it up, Google it, go to YouTube, look at vetted people, people who are credentialed like I am, who know what I’m talking about. You know, look at things like that and learn a little bit about the thing that you are wanting to know more about. We say we don’t have time, but we make time for what is important to us. And if our health is important, we’ll make time to learn about our health. If the things that help are, you know, will help with our health. If money is important to us. And we’re going to take a few minutes out of our day to learn something about money so we can all do like Tam Tam did and learn a little bit about the landscape that she was getting ready to maneuver in so that she will be prepared going forward. And then people can’t tell her just anything because she’s like, nope, that’s not right.
Dr. Sev:
Right.
Tamalyn James:
And I want to add to that, you know, that you know the way the health insurance, life insurance is, once you have anything that happens with your heart, it’s very hard to get insured. Same thing with cancer. So in 2016, my lupus affected my heart and it gave me congestive heart failure. Once they see that on the medical look back, it’s really hard and or expensive to get insured. So I cannot stress enough getting health insurance while you’re healthy before a major event, especially Hart, because right now I’m just, I’ll just be Frank and honest. I can’t get whole life insurance if I wanted to without paying probably five or six hundred dollars a month. I’m limited to term life and even then I’m still going to. I’m paying top dollar for my term life policies.
Tamalyn James:
So I say you can never be overinsured. You know, when your bank sends you those things, you know that you can get $20,000 in coverage for, for no additional cost. Fill out the paper and send it in and do the buy up if you want to. But you need multiple lines of coverage to cover yourself and your loved ones and especially before a major health event happens which limits you from getting whole life insurance.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah. And especially if you have children. Right, right, right. So you mentioned about someone trying to help you while you’re in hostage of hospital bed and you ended up having to really do the paperwork yourself. What role this or support did family, friends, community play in helping you navigate your financial and health challenges?
Tamalyn James:
In all honesty, my family was moral and emotional support. But as far as the technical support of doing the paperwork, I did 95% of it myself. And I’m actually grateful that it ended up that way because the second time around, the lupus went to my brain. The inflammation was my brain. I had a traumatic brain injury injury, but it was from the swelling my brain, it was major swelling. And so that meant I was dealing with the memory loss, I was dealing with the cognitive issues and I was dealing with speech. So I would call the MetLife or whoever it was about my claim or the doctors to get my, the, the medical hospital to get my records sent over and I would just start the conversation, say, hey, I have a medical, a medical injury on my brain. Could you please speak slower and have patience with me and give me time to write things down? And that’s.
Tamalyn James:
It helped me get out of. It helped heal my brain, for lack of a better phrase. It helps me having to do it myself. It helped clear up my thinking and encouraged me that I was going to get better.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah, that’s wonderful that you were able to do that. But then there are people who are not even able to do that for themselves. And it, you know, in that case, you want to make sure, as Tamalyn said, get the insurance before, while you’re healthy and before you need it. In the same way, you want to make sure you put people in place to help you navigate any medical issues because. Right. You might not be in Tamalyn’s position where she’s able, even on sickness, during her sickness, to go in and do those, do that paperwork. So you want to have somebody trusted to get a power of attorney for health decisions. Put, get that put in place.
Dr. Sev:
And I’m going to put my at the end of this session, I am going to put link the video I did on how to prepare for health and death in the event of health and death, what you need to do to prepare for anything that were to happen. So thinking about your journey, can you share a moment during that time where your creativity or your resourcefulness made a significant difference in overcoming the hurdles?
Tamalyn James:
I will say that I’m very, I’m okay with contracting my life. So you know where I’m at right now? I’m living with my brother. I just moved in this past weekend. I had a beautiful condo in Atlanta, cost me about $3,000 a month. But I knew that I needed to live smaller if I was going to get through this period. And I’m still in the thick of it of rebuilding my life. It’s just that this time around I have more confidence that I can do it because I’ve done it twice now. This is my second go round but I moved from metro Atlanta, in the city out here to Lithonia and I’m living with my brother because he was graceful enough to let me move in with him.
Tamalyn James:
Has reduced my monthly expenses by 80%. And that’s the advice I would give like don’t be attached to things and status of what people think that you should have and where you should be. Don’t be attached to that. You know your life and you know what you need to do and you know it it good things come back around again. There’ll be a time where I have another condo or house of my own that’s mine and beautiful. But for right now, I am at home where I’m at and I’m safe and I’m saving money because the goal is always to save money and stack, I call it stack that paper so that in the event when the next thing happens, should it happen again, I’m prepared again.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah, it’s funny you said that because I just completed listening to an audiobook called the Great Financial Reset by Jill Schlesinger. I hope I’m saying her last name correctly. She’s always been a financial correspondent on this on several major news network, has her own podcast and all of that and those are some of the points she brought up. If there are times when we need to downsize our living, we can be so focused on what people think we need to do and what, what People are going to think about us because of our educational background. They’re expecting you to live a certain way because of the job you have, they’re expecting you to live a certain way. But we should know because we are the authors of our own destiny. We are when it comes to our finances and we’re the ones paying the bills, not the people talking about us. Right.
Dr. Sev:
So if we can find a way to downside, you know, are living if it means moving to a different city. For me, after my divorce, I moved to a place that was. I was paying pretty much the same for my mortgage that I was paying for a mortgage for the rental. And then the other place I moved to, I was paying nearly a third of what I was paying my mortgage. And where I lived was. It was a nice area, but it was not an area that I felt comfortable living in. It was nice enough, but I know I knew I needed to rebuild my finances so I did that. And I did not care what people said because they were not going to pay my bills.
Dr. Sev:
So. Yeah, so I think you’re, you’ve done a great thing by stepping back and evaluating what do I need? What do I need at this time? Because I know what my end goal is.
Tamalyn James:
Right?
Dr. Sev:
Yes. You know your why, right? You do what you need to do to get to that end goal and to realize your why.
Tamalyn James:
Right.
Dr. Sev:
What do you think maybe financial literacy or financial education? Do you think any of that could have played if you were more versed in those areas, that it could have played a bigger role in maybe the first illness or even the second illness?
Tamalyn James:
Well, I had financial literacy. That’s, that’s the odd thing. The entire time I, I knew about money and I knew I did not want to repeat the life that I saw lived by my mother and grandmother. I knew that the thing that I did not do properly was I did not participate in the 401k and the insurance programs as I should have during that first part, that first decade and a half of my career because I was so worried about what I would bring home every week or bi weekly in a paycheck. I didn’t want to have $40 allocated to optional insurance. That was the mistake that I made. Had I done that at the start of my working, my professional career and bought into whole life insurance and kept it going, I could have borrowed against that when the health event happened. And that, that is the regret that I have because I didn’t know back then that, that this was a lacking part of my financial education.
Tamalyn James:
I didn’t know that you could borrow against your life insurance. I had no idea nobody in my life had ever done it. So. So when I learned all that, it’s like, you know, that’s why I’m just a proponent of it for people now. Before you get sick, before it happens, buy into it.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah, you said something key. Also, you talked about the fact that it wasn’t that you weren’t financially educated, it was that you didn’t do the work.
Tamalyn James:
Yes.
Dr. Sev:
And a lot of us are walking around the same way is that we know what we need to do, but we don’t do it. And I just had a session where I interviewed my daughter, and some of the things we talked about is how I’ve been on her about starting. It doesn’t matter if it’s a hundred dollars, two dollars start, you know, with a saving, with contributing to your 401k, because each year you can increase it a percent, 1%, whatever it is that you know is available to you. Your company is making all of these things available to you, so why not take advantage of it? I mean, they’re already underpaying us anyway.
Tamalyn James:
Yeah.
Dr. Sev:
So why not take advantage of all of the benefits that they are they’re making available to us? So I love that you shared that. Because again, it’s not about what we know is what we do with what we know.
Tamalyn James:
Yes.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah. All right, so any kind of words that you would like to share with our listeners?
Tamalyn James:
I would just like to say that God forbid something happened major to somebody that you care for or yourself, I would say, don’t get lost in the tragedy of what happened. And as you see your bank account going down, you can rebuild if you make some smart lessons. And sometimes you may even have to ask for sympathy from creditors. I had a plan with Milan for laser. Laser hair surgery. I was doing that, not laser hair removal. I was doing that every two weeks. And when that happened, when I got sick, you know, they were calling me in the hospital bed that in the public storage place.
Tamalyn James:
They were calling me in the hospital bed. I basically said, hey, I need help. I can’t pay this. What can we do to get me out of this contract? And I negotiated my way out of those contracts without having to pay for those. And it was all honesty. My doctor said, you have lupus. You shouldn’t be getting laser hair removal because of that light they put on you has a negative effect. I told them that.
Tamalyn James:
They tried to talk me out of it, but eventually they gave in. Same thing with the public storage contract. They made a deal with me. If I got my stuff out by a certain date, it would go, you know, it wouldn’t go to auction, and I would not be liable for the balance of whatever the auction got. And that’s, that’s what I did. I was not afraid or thought too highly of myself to basically just put it out there plain with creditors and say, hey, I don’t need this to negatively affect my credit any more than it has. What can we do to take care of it? So I would say that as well. And then also to be positive, it will get better.
Tamalyn James:
If you don’t wallow in it, it will get better.
Dr. Sev:
Yeah, I love that. Ask for help. One of the least work, least set of words in our society is, I need help.
Tamalyn James:
Right.
Dr. Sev:
For some reason, we’re, we. We hesitate to say, you know, all somebody can say, I can’t help you right. To the next person. Right, right. So you, you said something about, you know, ask for help and realize that things will get better. And I love that you say that my book is coming out very soon. It is. It’s never too late to begin again.
Tamalyn James:
Okay, that is very true. Yes, very true.
Dr. Sev:
Never. I’ve been talking about that book for two years. It’s coming out soon, but it’s never too late to begin again. So, Tam, I love to end my podcast or to wrap up the. The conversation portion with a fun question. All right, My question to you is, what would. What is something fun that you would do, talent wise, that you would do that’s unrelated to your job, unrelated to finance? What is something that, if you could do it now or learn about it, that you would do that?
Tamalyn James:
It’s not hang gliding. It’s that paragliding thing where you basically put the. You put the. The wings on your arms and you just basically let the wind push you from one mountaintop to the other. I’d love to do that.
Dr. Sev:
Oh, you’re on your own with that.
Tamalyn James:
Yeah.
Dr. Sev:
I won’t lie. You’re on your own with that one. Well, Tam, it’s been a great ple. It’s been a pleasure having you on tonight, and we may have to do this again another time. Okay, great. Thank you so much for coming on and being my guest on the Dr. Sev talks money Podcast. For those of you who are listening, you can find the doctor Sev Talks Money podcast on every podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, and many more.
Dr. Sev:
Please listen on your favorite platform and, like, follow rate the podcast be kind, be kind and comment where applicable. And of course, you can always find us on YouTube. So until next time, this is Dr. Sev saying, have a financially fit day.
Keywords
Financial resilience, financial crisis management, unexpected events, financial freedom, financial security, financial opportunity, financial disruption, medical crisis, health insurance, disability coverage, savings account, financial cushion, emergency funds, 401k contributions, insurance policies, power of attorney, financial literacy, financial education, financial recovery, creditor negotiation, lupus, chronic illness, short-term disability, long-term disability, accidental death & dismemberment (AD&D), medical expenses, credit impact, financial planning, negotiating with creditors, coping with illness, Severine Bryan, Sev Talks Money
