Why You No Doctor: An Asian-American Podcast

Episode 36: Shang Saavedra (@savemycents) is the voice behind the popular financial-literacy blog, Save My Cents. Having achieved financial independence at the age of 31, she aims to share her money expertise with those who need it most, empowering others to change their lives, on their own terms, for the better.
In this episode of the Why You No Doctor Podcast, Shang and Dominic take a deep dive into some of Shang's most treasured pieces of wisdom that shaped her life for the better: the abundance mindset, the act of doing it scared, and of course, the pursuit of financial independence.
Show Notes:

• 1:14 - Introduction to Shang and her work on helping others achieve financial freedom with mental health
• 2:53 - Abundance mindset — adopting a growth mindset over a fixed mindset and having agency in your narrative
• 4:39 - Being jealous about other people's success, and revising goals to improve them
• 6:04 - Shang and how she viewed intelligence as fixed, but changed her mindset to believe that grades are not a fixed indication of her success
• 9:09 - Meeting people who grew up in neighborhoods that grew up in debt and believing that debt and financial instability is normal
• 9:53 - Born in China, moving to Switzerland and the Netherlands before moving to various places in the States. Her parents' background with the Cultural Revolution and how it impacted Shang's upbringing
• 14:33 - For those with huge debt, usually there is something in their upbringing that affected their view on money. Working away from the Asian-American upbringing of being cheap and frugal
• 20:50 - Realizing the importance of frugality despite its restrictions
• 23:26 - Value based spending —discovering where your top values are and using it as a guide to spend money
• 27:50 - Do it scared but do it anyway — help people get over their fears to improve financial literacy or self-advocacy
• 33:30 - Having confidence and belief in yourself even if others' seem smart and vocalize their success
• 35:25 - Achieving FIRE at age 31 and becoming work optional, but choosing to work anyway because of other priorities
• 40:01 - What Shang spends her time on — being a mom, developing courses, and helping others on financial literacy
• 41:45 - Defining what retirement means and analyzing people's lifestyle to give people a direction on their financial health
• 44:02 - Discussing different ways to achieve financial freedom depending on who they are and their situation
• 48:28 - Favorite places Shang has been: Japan, Ireland, New Zealand, and Italy
  50:10 - How to contact Shang (Instagram) + parting words

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Episode 47: Kylie Ying (@kylieyying) is a computer engineer currently earning her Master's at MIT and creating content about coding & programming on Youtube. Kylie has always loved math, science, and engineering; her focus is working on applying machine learning to particle physics and improving the dynamical model of a self-driving car! Kylie also started her Youtube channel out of pure love and the intention of sharing her knowledge with anyone with a desire to learn about coding/programming, especially women of color.
In this episode, Kylie talks about her love for machine learning, her upbringing as an Asian woman, her experiences of being in a space dominated by white men, and her mission to create more space for women of color in her field.
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Episode 46: Esther Moon (@esthermoonstagram), plays Mrs. Oh in Minari, the Oscar-nominated film. Born in South Korea, she immigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of two. Esther decided to pursue acting later in her life and is relatively new to Hollywood. She spent the last two decades as a licensed mental health clinician; it was not until a battle with breast cancer in 2015 that she finally decided to pursue her American Dream. In this episode, Esther shares about her upbringing, reflections on her career change after her cancer diagnosis, and the importance of finding joy.

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Episode 45: Vanessa Pham (@vanessatpham) cofounded Omsom, an emerging Asian pantry staple brand that makes cooking favorite dishes with uncompromised flavors and hard-to-find ingredients possible in any home kitchen. A former consumer packaged goods management consultant at Bain & Company, Vanessa and her sister Kim, first-generation Vietnamese-Americans, created Omsom to reclaim the cultural integrity of Asian cuisines that are too often diluted in the grocery aisle. Their sauces span flavors from East Asia to South Asia, including Vietnamese lemongrass barbecue and Korean spicy bulgogi. Kim, a former head of platform at Frontline Ventures in London who was named to 2017's 30 Under 30 Europe list.
In this episode, Vanessa shares her origin story, her connection and relationship to her culture through food, and the difficulties faced by growing up as a child of Asian immigrants.

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Episode 52: Dr. Kristen Choi is a pediatric psychiatric nurse and an assistant professor at UCLA whose research focuses on mental health policy for vulnerable populations. She has published more than 30 academic articles, including several commentaries in the past few months on how the Covid-19 pandemic is affecting mental health. She was also an alumni of the Forbes 30 Under 30 List under Healthcare.
In this episode, she shares her experience on pursuing a career in mental health despite the stigma in Asian communities, what drives her behind her work, and advice she would give to young audience.

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