The Weight Of Money Podcast

Small Places Grow Big Dreams

• Dontese Burtin Jr. • Episode 22

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Big dreams don’t have to die in a small town—if you pair them with a plan. We dig into the real choices behind education, money, and mobility, and why the smartest move isn’t always the fastest one. Forget the glossy salary screenshots; we break down why median numbers reflect experience you haven’t earned yet, how degrees differ in what they actually let you practice, and the traps that come from treating college like a pause button on adulthood.

We get candid about debt, credit cards, and the kind of spending that looks good online but wrecks your runway. Then we map out a better path: research demand before you enroll, build a local network that vouches for you, and create a body of work you can carry to any city. If relocation makes sense, do it with a savings cushion, a target-company list, and realistic timelines so the move feels like a strategy, not a scramble. You’ll hear how to design backup plans that protect your pride and momentum, plus a practical take on investing basics—Roth IRAs, index funds, and the habits that make future you grateful.

At the core is a mindset shift: use your current environment as a launchpad, not a limit. Start small, stack wins, and let your work ethic match your ambition. If you’ve ever wondered whether to stay, go, or pivot, this is your field guide to choosing the next right step and making it count.

If this helped you think clearer about your path, tap follow, subscribe on YouTube, and share this with someone who’s weighing a big move. Your review helps more listeners find us—drop a rating and tell us your next step.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to the Way to Money Podcast. And I'm your host with the most that may give your girlfriend a toast, Dantees. And today, I feel like since this like my you know episode in a while. It's been a while. It's been a minute, people. I know it had a lot of stuff going on. Behind the scenes, been a lot happening. Political, financial. I know a lot of things have struck the world since we last talked. But in other words, I'll just get straight to the point. I've been having this conversation with different um different people. And it's mostly like a lot of times you may have a dream or you may have a goal. I want to go to school for biochemist or science scientific engineering or whatever the case may be. But the problem is with it, you may be from a small town that really don't too many don't really too much traffic hit like that. Everybody knows everybody. And you really don't have as much you your opportunity go as far as you allow them to go. So I feel like this, I want to have a conversation about this. Have a conversation about this too. Because a lot of times people don't understand when you go to school for, when you go to school for a degree, and you have to, and you have to look within, look within yourself to be like, okay, is this gonna benefit me in my area? Is there a need for this? Is supply-demand for this? Or do I have to move in order to be able to use this degree to get what I need to get from this? But a lot of times you but a lot of times people don't really think about that until they get into a certain field or perspective and wonder why they not swimming in money or swimming in dough. That's not how the that's not how having a career works. Even if you go up and you look up a salary, and say for instance, you look up a salary for let's say a counseling psychology, and they the median salary may be 45,000 to 50,000, however much, you gotta understand these are not for for beginners, these are for people that been in there that they got their foot wet a little bit inside of the field. They have a couple years of experience in these fields. So don't let people so I feel like and don't this don't get discouraged by that either. If you actually want to do it, if you want to go to school to become something better and actually further yourself in that field or career that you, you know, that you like and stuff like that, there's nothing wrong with that. But make sure it's the smart thing to do as well. Because I feel like a lot of times, uh just even now in this day and age, going to school is like the is going to school is just seemed like the easy way out of not having to experience life. Because some people you have some, I feel like, well, what I mean by that is you have a you have a sector of people that go to college just to not go work. They go to college, not to have a job, they they still want to be on campus, going to soap parties and you know, playing ding don't dick playing ding-dong ditch on the halls, messing with teachers or whatever the case may be. You have some that's still in their mindset. And it's a lot of people out here that are afraid to grow up and face the real world. Because when you get, once you pass them doors, them school doors, you are responsible for what you do outside in your day-to-day life. Have no parent, you have no school teacher telling you to do this or do that or assign skills. It's up to you if you decide to actually want to. It's up to you if you actually decide to want to actually further yourself and make that, make that development to grow within yourself. So it's not a case in point of like, oh, it's this and that, I should be doing this. You're not guaranteed. That's them, and that's another thing. I feel like we have to stop. I feel like a lot of parents need to start being honest with their children too, as well. Not even just saying it, and I'm not putting them down. I understand you want your child to get an education and have a good job and this and that. Warn your child about taking out, taking out debt when you're in school. Taking out, like taking out student loans, taking out um, taking out unnecessary loans, just getting into credit card trouble, spending reckless money buying on buying more clothes than food, and then now you are struggling hungry college student, they can't even perform now. You you basically have to find somebody with a pack of noodles that you can look in somebody's dormant room that you can boil in somebody's dormant room. Like you don't want to be one of them kids in college that literally has no way of growing themselves as as well. So if you looking into a field or if you try, if you go in and transition it from a high schooler to a college student, please make sure you do all detailing that you can. You do you find out every single detail that you can about your Pacific field. Because if you don't, it hurts you more than it hurts anybody else. Because guess what? You the one that got to look at the teacher every day. You are the one that's paying out of your financial aid and scholarship. So that's another thing too. But I feel like when people go for small, and that's why a lot of people feel like, oh, it's hopeless. I can't never just I never get none like this because I'm in this area and all that. It's a lot of people out here struggling in other areas too. Cause just because you move to another area with more opportunities, you yeah, true enough, you may be in a job market where they may look or require you to be in or have some type of condition that you may have, uh a working condition you may have, but that don't mean you may get the job. Because you may go somewhere else, live there thinking, oh yeah, I got this job, I got this down in bag. I look this this me, this me right here, I can't just then you never then you don't get it. That's how life is. Life is full of un you know, unspecified circumstances. So we don't like to think about the bad and be pessimistic, but I feel like you gotta think about the good and the bad. But a lot of times you gotta have a backup plan too. A lot, and that's another thing where uh I feel like a lot of people who have these goals that go to school for the engineering, the the whatever, they don't have a backup plan just in case if they can't do nothing in that particular field. It's either there or nothing. Or they haven't even thought out a suitable conclusion to be like, okay, if I spend five to ten years of my life in college with a degree, and if I don't get it, what happens? Oh my life is over. I don't I don't know what to do. And now you're panicking because you feel like as though now you wasted your time to go get a degree that you can't really get none at the end, and now it's hurting you to change it. Now you don't really know how to pivot. You don't know how to change yourself, you don't know how to grow from what you're doing. So then you see how bad, you see how badly that sounds when you think about it. And imagine you straight out of college or fresh out of college, you graduated, you literally have no leeway at all. But at the same time, you thinking about, oh, they gotta take it. I got this degree and all that. You have a bachelor's, you have a bachelor's at most. At most, the most you probably can do with a bachelor's degree, and I'm gonna be so I'm gonna be 100% honest with you, and probably working at a disc, doing paperwork. 100%. You you can't you don't have enough credentials to officiate yourself in the field yet. You don't get that until you get a master's or a doctorate in certain fields. Certain fields you can't start off of like actually in the practice until you get a master's degree. Some it takes for you to actually become a doctor until you finally like start picking up certain types of work or certain types of, you know, certain types of uh programming. But it's but it's a lot I feel like as though there are people we don't look at as a just as a whole. Because I feel like a lot of times we we we do, even if you do come from a small area, small areas don't define you, they be a character. So that's the character the character that you are when you leave here. Or whenever you when you leave your small world or your small way of living and you want to go to something big, a lot of times they might not be the best benefit for you. But a lot of times you people don't know how to use their area either as a communication factor. And what I mean by that is a person may can use a person can use their area to be like, okay, let me network with these people, let me appeal to my people back home first before I go off, before I go somewhere and take it and take off and you know, maneuver around before I go share share with the world, then share it around the people in my school, then share it from the teacher, then tell the teacher to share it to their friends, or whatever the case may be. If you're doing proper networking and etiquette, you start from your base first. Because a lot of times, if you are, even if you don't get it, even though a lot of people don't come at first, you have to build, you have to build your name. You have to get your name out there, do internships, uh, go shop your resume resume around that field of jobs that may have the certain type certain type of criteria that you may be looking for. And a lot of things too, a lot of, and I understand that this may be like me shooting the bullet at you, you have to save money. You have to save money to make your dream come true, far as in not saying that, oh, you got to have a lot of money to in order for this and that. No, if you claim like you want to move or you have a a specific designated area where it's the best jobs in that particular field, uh you have to have you have to have the money for your living expenses. You can't expect to be like, oh, I'm so tired of this area, I'm it's depressing, it's boring. We don't have anything. Just get up and leave one day, then you go somewhere else, and life really hits you because now the pay is different. The pay is different, the cost of living probably is way more higher than it was when you were staying in your small town, and now you don't know what to do, and you basically borderline homeless. So it's a consequence when you move too hasty with these drastic decisions, especially the ones that attribute so much in your life, they can contribute so much in your life, they can take you to a whole nother playing field. It can either push you to the point to where you grow exponentially, or it can hurt you to the point of where everything is ruined for you. And that all depends on your mindset. Cause I have had, I like I said, I have friends as of right now, or people that I know that do have the type of hasty mindset that a lot of times being in a small area, they feel cramped, they feel supplicated. I can't do it, it's nothing to do. It's oh my god, I can't, like, it's it's too much. It's too much. And now they went to a bigger city. They either went they either went to a bigger city or they tried living somewhere for a while, they end up struggling. They end up struggling way worse than when they were when they were staying in a small town. But a lot of times these two, a lot of people are willing to put fun over survival. Let's just let be honest with ourselves. A lot of people are willing to put fun over survival. And what I mean by that, you'll rather go, where's the latest clubs, ladies this, the list that? Meanwhile, you cannot afford to stay there. You're doing that for aesthetically to look like you having a good life. Yeah, me in the club, me and twin in the club. You doing that for who? You ain't doing that for yourself, you doing that for the other people on the internet to gratify you, to make you look like, oh my God, like I want to be like her. She's living up, she doing her life, like, and she not. She behind on bills. She trying to, she parting her life away because she just trying to forget about the next day. And then she knows she got an invention notice right on her table. That be the reality that people don't see on the internet. Y'all don't know what these people are going through. Y'all don't know when the money slows up for these people because they try to throw everything with money in y'all's faces, so y'all never know. But at the same time, you can't be small brained when you're dealing with people or when you when when people are trying to sell you these ideologies and they're wrong. So, in other words, I feel like this. Coming, like I said, you being from a small town is not the end all be all. If you feel like you have to go to another area and stuff like that, you gotta save and stack your money up and find and you have to reroute yourself to be able to move somewhere without having overhead, without having all that financial overhead when you get there, like, where I'm gonna live, where I'm gonna stay, I ain't got nothing to eat. I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself. I'm I'm just out. I'm just out here just living out of my car. And a lot of people like that. They hated the small town so much, they'd rather go to another state, live in their car, have nowhere to go, or none of that. And don't get me wrong, I understand. Oh, well, there's famous people that had that type of story, and that's cool. Everybody's story is not yours. They don't even tell you, do not do what I did. Because everybody don't turn up like that, everybody don't have the the glorious Cinderella story where they have the riches and the fame and all that. They don't they don't have that. And that's a dangerous game that you're playing because you're risking taking an opportunity. Taking an opportunity is a risky and challenging decision. Trust and believe. You can either stay and be comfortable, or sometimes you can bet it all on yourself and go out there and make a name for yourself. But your work ethic has to match. If your work ethic doesn't match what you're doing, if you're outputting more than you're inputting, meaning if you're spending too much, if you're going outside and partying all the time, you're outputting too much. You're outputting too much money, too much of your time, too much of everything. You want to learn how to get into stocks. Go watch videos. You wanna learn how to go, you wanna learn how to invest into a RAT RA, how to make sure your retirement is in a good standing. So when you do turn 50, 60, you can live comfortably. You won't have to depend on Social Security, you won't have to wait on the AA uh ARP card. You won't have to depend on one of your kids to take care of you, take you to the doctor, and all that. You can be okay. So a lot of times, people, small dreams, but and just to end the episode off on other words, people small, a small town, a small town and big dreams, they don't really a small, you living in a small town with big dreams. It it literally sometimes it it does feel like I said you feel like you in a what's the saying that they may call it. Sometimes you may feel like you're a needle in a haystack, but at the same time, you have to find your way and maneuver through that as well. We all get one life, we get one experience, but if you sit and complain, talk about oh, the system is this and it's that and it's the government, you have to grow. You it's people that overcame the system and you can too. But stun your stopping stun stubbing yourself and telling yourself, I can't do it, it's hard. Why am I like this? Why is my life so hard? Why is it this and that? And I understand that everybody has their own struggles and stuff like that, but you have to still think logically, don't move off of emotion. Cause moving off of emotion can put you in a way worse decision, a way worse, a way worse life in general. It could put you in a way worse life situation than what you are living in now. And with that being said, we are wrapping up the episode. I appreciate y'all. We over 700 downloads now. We got 300 more, and we're gonna get a thousand. And I appreciate y'all. We got people from the Philippines, Hong Kong. Shout out people in Greenwood, Mississippi, India, the motherland, Africa. I appreciate all y'all for watching. And from wherever else that I didn't name, because there's a lot of different countries. And furthermore, we got a we got a bunch of episodes coming. So this is this is definitely not the end. I know I always tell y'all, I'm back, I'm back, and then it'd be like, where he at though? Like, what happened to him? Like, I didn't get ran over by a bus. I'm still here. I just had outside stuff going on. So I always think about y'all, you know, and I miss always talking to y'all because y'all actually I like the people that take and precede the information, you know. It ain't and a lot of times too, the podcast may not be for you. I may not talk about myths or drama or true crime or whatever the case may be. I may not be your everyday podcast, but I still, for the people that that I do reach, I still want you to know that it's somebody out there that cares enough, that literally get on a microphone, tell you about their experiences and other people's experiences so you can learn from them to grow. Not to keep my information to myself while everybody else is out here suffering. We live in troubled times, so the more you know, the more you grow. And make sure you follow us on Facebook, you subscribe to the YouTube page, people. Subscribe, like the video, share, comment, do all that. We try to, I'm trying to do a merch drop for y'all. Because I got some, I already have some myself. So when we get to a certain threshold, I I'll let y'all know when the merch is dropping. But in other words, people, I appreciate y'all, love y'all. Keep tuning in and till the next episode.

Contributor

Dontese Burtin Jr

Host