Tonya Rapley is a the millennial money expert and creator of the award winning site, My Fab Finance. In 2014 she was deemed the “New Face of Wealth Building” by Black Enterprise Magazine and featured as their cover subject.  A millennial herself, Tonya’s mission is to help millennials break the cycle of living paycheck to paycheck so that they can become financially free and do more of what they love. 

Tonya is a full-time entrepreneur and tours the country providing workshops for private and nonprofit clients. Her client list includes Fidelity Investments, Prudential, the National Endowment for Financial Education and FinCon ( the financial bloggers conference). Tonya has spoken at Bloomberg, Essence Fest, Millennial Week, PepsiCo, the Blogging While Brown Conference, BlogHer, Circle of Sisters and a host of colleges and universities.

Tonya’s fierce financial advice has appeared on US New, NY Daily New, Buzz Feed, Essence.com, The Root, Credit.com, Go Banking Rates, Reuters, Refinery29, Centric and now The ShineHard Conversation…

WHAT WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD LIKE?

Tonya: I can say I had a pretty good childhood. Both of my parents were in the military. They were career military. There was a lot of stability for my younger sister and I but there was also a lot of expectations imposed. My parents were those parents where I’d be like “But Dad, I have a job, I’m on the Dean’s List, I’m taking AP classes… ” and my Dad was like, “That’s what you’re supposed to do.” My parents always had high expectations for my sister and I but they also taught us hard work and integrity early on. Combine that with my military upbringing and living in different places, it wasn’t unusual for us to move every three to five years, I was consistently having to make new friends and consistently having to reinvent myself. Now as an adult, I understand how that has served me and it has fed my curious spirit. People ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I just wanted to be able to explore my curious nature and the things I enjoyed doing. I never wanted to be locked into one job or one place the way I saw my parents locked into their military commitment.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE PLACE WHEN YOU WERE TRAVELING AROUND AS A KID?

Tonya: Germany was amazing even though I have not been back as an adult. I want to try not to romanticize it, but I remember it being so green. Going to school there was amazing. We went on field trips every month. When we got back to the States, we moved to Oklahoma. It was the complete opposite-a dust bowl and red clay dirt. We didn’t go on field trips. When I was a kid, we went to the Brothers Grimm’s house, castles, and caves. I just remember Germany as being really clean and the people were really kind. We lived in a village right outside of Frankfurt called Zepplenheim. I’m a total dweeb so sometimes I would go on Google Earth and be like “Dad, what was the address?” and go and look at our old neighborhood. I would say Germany was my favorite place and I’m looking forward to getting back there.