Yanely Espinal is the author of Mind Your Money and the Director of Educational Outreach at our favorite non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance. To her 58,000 youtube followers she is known as MissBeHelpful, a fin lit channel she founded in 2015 that has racked up more than 4 million views. Yanely also hosts the Financially Inclined, a podcast about "all the money lessons we wish we learned earlier."
In part 1 of this two-part interview, Yanely talks growing up in Bushwick, Brooklyn; the economic challenges she and her family faced; earning a scholarship to Brown University; and working as an elementary teacher.