In 1990, I quit my lucrative corporate job to go back to Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles to work with my community. My parents are Mexican immigrants who came to the United States with the dream of having a better life for themselves. They eventually had three kids, and I am the oldest. I went to some of the best colleges in the country, getting my bachelor’s degree at UCLA and later my MBA from Claremont Graduate University. So, when I went back to Boyle Heights, I also had my Certified Financial Planner certification. With all these credentials, I thought I could just go into my community and start helping my people, teaching them all the ways I learned how to best manage their money. All they needed, I thought, was a little bit of financial literacy. But for a minute, I forgot about where I came from and forgot just how much culture impacted the decisions they were making and the mindsets they had. I could not tell them not to plan for their daughters’ quinceañeras (A quinceañera is a traditional Latin American celebration marking a girl’s 15th birthday and her transition from childhood to womanhood. It holds particular significance in Mexican, Central American, and South American cultures, and is also widely celebrated by Latino communities in the United States.) because they needed to prioritize saving for retirement. And while our culture is beautiful and rich in traditions, some of the decisions we make because of cultural beliefs could be keeping us from building intergenerational wealth. It is not just my culture where this might be a barrier but Black and Asian cultures as well.