From Ukraine to the United States: A Financial Planning Journey with Polina Bolotnikova

Have you ever thought about the importance of financial planning and how it differs from country to country? In our latest episode of Wealth Builders, we interview our very own Polina Bolotnikova, who moved from Ukraine to the United States two years ago.

Our conversation with Polina delves into the stark contrasts between the financial markets in Ukraine and the United States. We take a deep look at the retirement planning landscapes, pension plans, and investment options in both countries. 

But Polina's story doesn't end with finance. She shares her personal journey of overcoming language barriers, becoming more proficient in English, which is her fourth language, and living in the United States while her home country is at war.  So, sit back, tune in, and prepare to be wowed by Polina's incredible story and insights into the financial world.

Make sure to like and subscribe if you enjoyed the show!

For more information on StatonWalsh please visit, StatonWalsh


This podcast is for informational purposes only. Although the information has been gathered from sources believed to be reliable, please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information should be relied upon only when coordinated with individual professional advice. StatonWalsh and Founder’s Financial Securities do not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your tax, legal, or accounting professional regarding your individual situation.

Ryan Staton is an Investment Advisor of, and securities offered through, Founders Financial Securities, LLCMember FINRA/SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor.

Devin Walsh is an Investment Advisor of, and securities offered through, Founders Financial Securities, LLCMember FINRA/SIPC and Registered Investment Advisor.

Check the background of this firm on http://brokercheck.finra.org/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is Wealth Builders, presented by Staton Walsh, a show designed to pull back the curtain of the financial industry and bring true transparency to the forefront of conversation. On the show, we cover topics like financial education, current events and interview business leaders and industry experts, with the ultimate goal of helping listeners discover their own path to financial independence.

Devin Walsh: 0:37

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Builders. I'm pretty excited about this one. Today we have Polina Bolotnikova joining me today. She's been working with us at StatonW alsh for a year.

Polina Bolotnikova: 0:53

I don't know if I debutsch her last name there.

Devin Walsh: 0:54

I was pretty close there, but this is something I wanted to do for a while. Paulina started working with us last year as a financial planner and associate. We've just been so blessed to have her. She's brought so much talent to our team. She has a pretty cool, unique story. Coming over from Ukraine. What two years ago.

Polina Bolotnikova: 1:12

Now it's going to be two and a half. I came here in July 21.

Devin Walsh: 1:17

Okay, so I know you had some experience working overseas in the financial market and today I kind of just want to talk about what do you like about financial planning? What kind of drew you to this industry? What's different here than compared over there? How do you feel about yourself and your journey to York, pennsylvania, from Ukraine? I mean, we will start there.

Polina Bolotnikova: 1:48

I went there to school, I went there to university and actually I was getting there a psychology degree, which has nothing to do with what I'm doing right now.

Devin Walsh: 1:57

I'll tell you what psychology is. I think it's like the psychology of money. It's a great book about it. I think money is such a psychological thing, right? So I think that's almost an advantage to have in our industry as an advisor, having a psychology background.

Polina Bolotnikova: 2:11

You're definitely right, and this was probably part of the reason why I actually ended up in this field because psychology actually helped me navigating through the communication with people and when I actually started to work with people and build in the relationships, I realized that my psychology skills are just playing a significant role in all of them.

Polina Bolotnikova: 2:34

Yeah, I love that so yeah, I moved to the United States and I decided that it's the time to choose something else, because psychology is pretty interesting and intriguing and I love working with people. I'm a very sociable person and I love communicating with people. I knew that I would never be able to, for example, work in the office in my own cubicle and just work with papers and never talk to anyone. Yeah, I always need to communicate as much as possible. So it started from my experience back in Ukraine.

Polina Bolotnikova: 3:06

I was working first in sales for the financial services and then I rose up to financial advisor and that experience gave me a lot. First of all, I never even explored that field. First of all, I kind of gathered there because the COVID hit it and I wanted to try a new job and one of my friends told me that hey, there is an open position at entry level sales if you're interested in it, and that was some job that we all know what is cold calling, selling that horrible experience that everyone went through. But it gave me a lot. First of all, it gave me the understanding that I will never be cold calling for the rest of my life.

Devin Walsh: 3:49

I think a lot of people learn that early on in their careers, like hey, go pick up the phone and call 200 people you know. Or cold call, it's tough, it thickens your skin, that's for sure.

Polina Bolotnikova: 3:57

Yeah, first of all, of course, it's boosting your skill of communicating with people, finding their needs and trying to target them right away in a short conversation, even though you don't know the person and they don't even really need your services or they don't even know about your services. But another thing what it gave me I knew after that what approach I'm looking for when I'm going to seek for the future employment. And that's how we me and Statenwall kind of got together, because Statenwall's approach towards customers and the work in general it was something I always dreamed of when I was working back there.

Polina Bolotnikova: 4:35

I like my job because, it was interesting, as for me, and helping people get in financial literacy and helping people get in some experience in that and be more educated, because unfortunately in Ukraine it's not as popular and the whole system is completely different. Investing is not popular at all. The only people who are actually investing. They are mostly invested in more innovative and new fields like cryptocurrencies. Nfts and all that kind of stuff so it's not much more.

Devin Walsh: 5:06

It's not really like the United States stock market here. People don't have a retirement plan at work or invest in the S&P 500 type fund.

Polina Bolotnikova: 5:14

Yeah, there is no such thing as 401k plans or like any other types of retirement accounts. There is no such thing even like as life insurance where or, for example, the universal life insurance where you can actually adjust it to some funds like variable insurance and stuff. Such thing doesn't exist in Ukraine, for some reason.

Devin Walsh: 5:36

So interesting. I want to go back a little bit. I'm curious, I want to know more about the education system, from where you grew up in Ukraine to now where you're at Penn State. So what's that like? What's that whole experience from college, university and growing up in that education system to come over here? Your English is fantastic now, but coming over here you speak. What Four languages, I think.

Polina Bolotnikova: 6:01

Yeah, I'm fluent in four languages.

Devin Walsh: 6:03

I can barely speak English. It's amazing, but to do that and come to university here. What's the difference between like upbringing there and education in here?

Polina Bolotnikova: 6:11

So the education back in Ukraine for some reason is super old, older materials are not up to date and I mean it kind of makes sense because it's a vast Soviet Union country and even though Ukraine is moving for the past 10 years towards the European Union and more of the Western development, the post-Soviet Union mentality is still there and it's still kind of pushing everything down. So all the education was mostly about materials that were written like at the beginning of 20th century. So of course this information it is important to know, like especially when I was studying for psychology, you have to know who is Freud right and what he was writing about. But you will never learn about new opportunities right now in the psychological field, for example, or what is going on in there or what are the new inventions that came up at least last 50 years, because it's already too up to date information for them. They're using only very old information which gives you the base.

Polina Bolotnikova: 7:12

There is a lot of theoretical knowledge which gives you a very good, strong base, but it doesn't give you any practical experience. Compared to Penn State right now, I can tell that I gained so much practical experience and I gained the good knowledge based through doing something practically. For example, I already written probably like three or four business plans for different types of businesses. I did the financial report for the company I was evaluating, which is all is super important to understand in my field, for example, even for financial advice, and it is important to know the basic ratios to understand like, hey, is this fun right here, or index or stock is good to invest in? Or maybe they don't even have enough assets to cover their liabilities and this is like an empty shot.

Devin Walsh: 8:04

So over there we're talking about financial plans. It wasn't really planning. It was like you will come out one by this asset like a crypto or NFT or whatever it is, and here you see a lot more planning. Looking at the insurance is, looking at the overall cash flow, looking at looking to buy a business kind of an overall picture rather than just kind of hone in on one thing.

Polina Bolotnikova: 8:22

Yes, so here in United States it's more world standardized. If we're talking about financial field, I can actually give an great example. My grandma was working as a accountant her whole life and we had recent conversations with her about that, because I was telling her about my experience in college and what I'm doing because I can actually speak the same language. She was speaking her whole life, but then we realized that we are speaking two different languages Because when we started talking about, she's like oh yeah, I understand you're talking, this is world standardized way of like business valuation or keeping up, like the accounting stuff, because she's like we never used it. We have our system in Ukraine that we're using, that is simplified and it is just, so to say, modified for our market.

Devin Walsh: 9:11

So when you were over there, your first job kind of in the financial industry cold call and kind of selling things that people we didn't know when you came over here to the States, what made you continue to want to pursue financial planning? Because, since you didn't necessarily like that experience, is there something you learn from somewhere here or something you heard about the way maybe we do it differently? Or what made you kind of continue to explore the financial industry once you moved here to the United States?

Polina Bolotnikova: 9:37

One of the first reasons was I really like my job back there. I just didn't like their approach that my employer chose towards the business. And then, when I moved in here and I started studying business, I realized that the education here is so good, like there's so much stuff. If we're learning this in college, imagine doing it every day at your work. That's so exciting. And then I honestly didn't believe in myself.

Polina Bolotnikova: 10:02

First I wasn't sure that I can ever appear in financial field. And then I just talked to my parents and my stepdad just told me hey, I think you can do that. And I said I doubt that because I just started in college and my Ukrainian experience probably not going to be relevant for here because of the different regulations at all, different mentality, different people. But he's like though, if you're interested in that, it is possible. And I'm like okay, maybe, maybe I should really try it out. And when I actually found state and Walsh and we started working together, that completely changed my perspective. It started from the beginning like, when I got to the interview, was you guys?

Devin Walsh: 10:46

and that faithful day almost about a year ago. Starbucks, that's Starbucks and you know Maryland met you through one hour insurance broker and say God, meet this girl Sharp, like all right, we'll have an interview. I remember Ryan. I leave that day like all right, we got to hire her.

Polina Bolotnikova: 11:00

Yeah, that day, when we met for the interview and I was asking you questions, like I remember, my question started more robotized, so to say because I was like what is your lead generation?

Polina Bolotnikova: 11:12

What is what is like the CRM system using, like, because this is what I got used to in the company I was working for. But then, when for all my questions I received answers like oh it, we don't have a lead generation. People are approaching us because they want to get get the advice from us, they want to work with us and we want to provide the value for them. Our main goal is to provide the exact value they need, not what we need to sell them. We want to give them what they want.

Devin Walsh: 11:38

And it's all about building that relationship.

Polina Bolotnikova: 11:40

Yeah, it's all about building the relationship and long term relationship, and I was like this is exactly what I wanted from that business. This is exactly how I think this business should function, and I wish more people in Ukraine would have companies like state on walls that could help people and actually build a strong relationship that can help people pursue their financial freedom. At the end of the day, so we're a year into this.

Devin Walsh: 12:07

What did you come into this Like? What did you think financial plan was? What's the biggest thing that you didn't expect about the financial plan industry that you've now seen a year in? Like wow, I wasn't expecting that it's not just at state and wash, but financial plan in general. Like wow, it's. That's very unique the way they do it in the States compared to what I'm used to.

Polina Bolotnikova: 12:24

Well, first of all, the amount of investment options and the ways of actually saving or protecting your money or growing your wealth. I, in my head, it was always the fact that, like you go to the market there, you buy Apple stock and you wait for it to grow, this is, this is how you invest. Or again, ever since I knew I mean I knew about the commodities, I knew a little bit about indexes I never dealt with ETFs or mutual funds, for example I never knew that was a thing. I never knew that life insurance might be actually a very valuable tool in investing as well. All the reeds, all the retirement plans that was a shock for me.

Devin Walsh: 13:08

Because that's something that we've kind of really honed in on. One of the big parts of our practice is in that corporate retirement plan and space in the 401k. So I've enjoyed seeing your journey kind of picking up the knowledge on that, because that's not something you really had over in Ukraine. So in Ukraine was few working at company they have pension plans or how do they, how do people get set up in retirement?

Polina Bolotnikova: 13:26

So in Ukraine you have the pension plans from the government, so you're working for the government or you have your own business. You're paying stable. It basically works like social security. You're paying to like retirement fund all the government and then whenever you retire, there is like a special age. You cannot retire here whenever you want, like in United States. In Ukraine you have to retire based on your experience and then when you retire, government's gonna pay you monthly checks, which are usually very, very small, unfortunately.

Devin Walsh: 13:57

Sounds similar to how social security kind of works. There's no really other options other than like building wealth with like people, like real estate or is there? You know there, like what's the investment options are a lot of people would go into, like things like the NFTs and the crypto over there, or most how people would save, especially the elder generation.

Polina Bolotnikova: 14:18

I would say this is just deposit in a bank, just the simple deposit in a bank, just to have it. Sometimes they don't even have the any APR compounding on it because they're like, no, I just want to have my money.

Polina Bolotnikova: 14:31

I just don't want to go into the mattress to sit in there, don't want to have money under the mattress because, again, there were some times, after the Soviet Union broke down, of instability when the currency changed. There is no more country like. We live in this country our whole life and this country doesn't exist anymore. There is the whole new currency and then they changed it a couple times. They changed the currency to coupons for some time, so people just got used to like save money as much as possible but at the same time, saving just cash might be not the smartest decision, was the way. However, some changes, so the most popular is probably going to be real estate buying. Real estate buying apartments, buying houses, buying commercial property and just rent it out.

Devin Walsh: 15:14

Interesting. So what was the biggest adjustment? Coming to America, united States, some of the perceptions you had about financial planning. So you had this perception of what is complete, two separate things the way we do financial plan to the way you brought up in Ukraine. So what's some of the things that you had to adjust your thoughts around, your thinking, to be able to implement what we do here at State Enwalsh and financial planning and overall in the United States, what are some of the things that was a hard time even getting over, some things you had to like wrap your heads around.

Polina Bolotnikova: 15:47

I think one of the most important things would be people's awareness of the importance of the financial planning and financial literacy in general.

Polina Bolotnikova: 15:57

Because, in Ukraine, people just want money and they don't want to be like millionaires or billionaires. They just want to have enough money to survive through the next day. Here, what was very surprising for me you can plan ahead. You can plan up till your retirement, which is going to be 40 years, 50 years. It's not something you can do in Ukraine. In Ukraine, you can plan maybe four months ahead, maybe two, but not really further. So that's why, when you have investments for the long term, that's something we would never look into. Or most of the times when you're looking at the financial goals in financial planning, it is all basically build in to be like a long term pass so to say and here you can actually plan ahead.

Polina Bolotnikova: 16:47

And this is. This is still something I'm wrapping my mind around because I still not get. I still cannot plan that far ahead. I'm trying to. It's just still hard to believe it in another, completely different system as credits and debts and loans in Ukraine. Taken out the loan, it's like the very last thing you want to do in your life because the rates are insanely high.

Devin Walsh: 17:09

It's like the rate over Ukraine. So right now we're all complaining about the rates in the United States, about how high they are. What's, what are rates like in Ukraine?

Polina Bolotnikova: 17:16

I wouldn't honestly compare it right now because Ukraine is in the middle of the war.

Devin Walsh: 17:20

Yeah, and I bait.

Polina Bolotnikova: 17:21

I bet their rates is much, much higher. I honestly didn't check and I don't know how is it going right now during the war.

Polina Bolotnikova: 17:28

But I bet it's pretty high and it's much harder than in the United States. And another thing that most of the time what plays a big role in Ukraine is the difference in currencies, because most of the people have to take their loan in dollars, in US dollars, and then when they took it in US dollars and, for example, it was I don't know $50,000. At that moment they took $50,000. And it was 200,000 grievance and then, because of the inflation, the same $50,000 next year, already 500,000 grievance.

Polina Bolotnikova: 18:01

And people are making money and their salary isn't really nice, so they just double their loan. So the currency difference also influences a lot the loans and debts and that's why most of the time people are taking out the loans at the very, very like downside of the last possible area of you know, everything is going bad, and that's that's.

Devin Walsh: 18:23

That's very interesting how they do it in the US dollars and that's how they use our currency to kind of do that so here over the last year. What's the one thing? What's what you've been most interested in? What's your been your favorite thing you learned about Right. Wow, I love this about the industry.

Polina Bolotnikova: 18:37

Well, I think I really enjoy insurance type of business, because that was kind of when you say that I'm like, oh my gosh, you're.

Devin Walsh: 18:44

That's the last thing anybody would ever say. Is I like the insurance side of things?

Polina Bolotnikova: 18:49

That just was the first thing I probably discovered about one of the financial planning possibilities and I was like that's so cool. It's insane how they never came up with that in my country. And it exists, and I remember we were talking about and you're like, yeah, it exists for many years. I'm like many years.

Devin Walsh: 19:05

No, they don't want insurance. I was like the mid 1800s.

Polina Bolotnikova: 19:08

Yeah, this is this is this is crazy, and I was like this is such a great tool and this makes so much sense. It's such an opportunity actually. So because I kind of started learning it first, I really enjoyed it. I really like the retirement part of business that we are doing and so far I just enjoy every single piece of this business because I'm a very curious person on my own and I love learning new stuff about everything. And so far I'm still in this mode. Even though I'm already almost one year with state and Walsh, I'm still learning something new every day and it amazes me and excites me.

Devin Walsh: 19:46

Yeah, it's a great thing I was. Industry is like I remember when my first sales manager or someone I got in this business, he was like every six months you're going to look back and say, wow, I've gotten to this level of education. Now I look back and just every six months you're looking back and learning new things. There's so much to learn. There's so many ways we can do this business. There's the insurance side of the business, there's the corporate retirement plan, there's the individual retirement plan, there's just the business planning and consulting, the individual planning and just investment only. So so many different ways to do this business, so many different ways that we can go about helping our relationships.

Devin Walsh: 20:16

So go on a personal basis, I'm so intrigued like how, what that journey was like from Ukraine obviously you left right before the war, right, You're leaving there. Come to America this is your probably third or fourth language to get here to where you are now, and just like the grit and everything you've done to get here. So what was that process of? Like come from there to here, kind of really get fluent in English, go into Penn State, a big university, learning, taking tests in English, Like what was that experience like? Because that blows my mind.

Polina Bolotnikova: 20:50

I honestly would love to tell that there's like some secret, what?

Devin Walsh: 20:54

I use. Please tell me.

Polina Bolotnikova: 20:56

Yeah, but to be honest, ever since it takes it's a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck. That's what it is. When I moved in here, I knew some English, like I could understand what people. Most of the time I could understand what people are trying to tell me.

Devin Walsh: 21:11

Not me half the time, but anybody else.

Polina Bolotnikova: 21:15

Yeah, but I had hard time talking to people I couldn't speak, and that's one of the most common problems when you're learning foreign language, because it is easy to read, like you're learning pretty fast to read and even understand people. But to start talking you have to actually think in this language and it takes time.

Devin Walsh: 21:37

Well, it's amazing because you're saying like you were almost embarrassed or afraid to talk, but now you just won a damn award for public speaking. Yeah, that's true, Tell me about that. So you went from coming over here afraid to talk afraid to talk the language because you were maybe not thinking you weren't proficient enough in English to now winning public speaking awards for your speaking and your business mindsets in college. How do you do that in two years?

Polina Bolotnikova: 22:03

But okay, honestly, yeah, when I just moved in here, I was afraid to talk. I was going everywhere with my phone to be able to translate in case I want to tell something to people. And I remember my first time when I spent time in a group of Americans it was like probably my six day in United States. I understood only 5% of what they were talking about.

Polina Bolotnikova: 22:26

And then I realized that the best thing even though I didn't really want to do that is to get out of comfort zone and push yourself out in a field where you don't understand anything. But that's the only way how you're going to learn. It's like going ice skating If you're going to read 1000 books about it, you will never learn how to do to actually do it. If you're going to put the skis on, go full couple times but then spend like couple hours on the ice ring, you're actually going to learn what to do.

Polina Bolotnikova: 22:52

So I pushed myself to go to college right away, even though I was a little bit afraid that I will not understand what's going on in classes. I was still thinking like, yes, I probably will not understand, but this is if I'm going to hear the same words all over again, I'm going to be in the same field is going to help me, and it actually actually did. After that, what helped me else I was I. I went to work to the casino, and part of it why I went to work at the casino was to communicate with as much people as possible, just to improve my communication skill and understand how to talk to people, understand different people with different accents, and they're from all over the casino.

Polina Bolotnikova: 23:36

I was the table games dealer.

Devin Walsh: 23:38

Okay, what games?

Polina Bolotnikova: 23:40

Oh my god, so many games I was licensed I'm not playing ever never playing cards with you.

Devin Walsh: 23:43

I'll get one money to yeah blackjack, roulette, bakarad, all of them. What was your favorite there?

Polina Bolotnikova: 23:49

I would say roulette to deal, blackjack to communicate with people.

Devin Walsh: 23:53

I bet that was a different, different story, different experience, everything on the casino.

Polina Bolotnikova: 23:59

But it helped me. First of all, I it helped me. The most important thing. What it helped me to do is boost my self esteem. I heard so many compliments about my accent. I met so many people that were like, oh my god, I thought you were just not from York, pennsylvania. You're maybe from I don't know Colorado.

Devin Walsh: 24:16

That's a nice Colorado accent you have there.

Polina Bolotnikova: 24:18

Yeah. But they were telling me oh, your accent is very nice and I can completely understand you, it's easy to talk to you. And I realized that my accent is not a problem and I made me feel more confident in myself when I'm talking and I just realized I just have to push myself out into this world and just put myself into very, first of all, uncomfortable positions that are going to be uncomfortable, but after I will adapt to the situation and I'm pretty adaptable I'm really gonna gain something for it. And that's exactly what happened was National Leadership Conference that I went this summer. I was choosing from different categories that I can compete in and I was sitting there and I told my professor that would be funny to compete in public speaking with my accent. And she's like, yeah, that will be funny. And I'm like, well, let's do it.

Devin Walsh: 25:10

And you beat everybody.

Polina Bolotnikova: 25:11

Yeah, yeah. Then I went to states. I placed first in states and then I went to nationals and placed second nationally.

Devin Walsh: 25:18

That's incredible. Now you're doing a podcast.

Polina Bolotnikova: 25:21

Now I'm doing a podcast Using all my skills, all the skills.

Devin Walsh: 25:24

That's. That's incredible, paulina. So what's when you look at your, the future, of your future, your vision of financial planning? When you're in your fully licensed, you're an advisor. You're helping people. Who do you want to help? You want to help people from Ukraine. Like, what have you ever thought about? Like, what's what's so, what's very important to you from this initiative to help people with what's? What's your vision there?

Polina Bolotnikova: 25:46

One of the most important things, as I considered, was helping a lot of Ukrainian people. Not only Ukrainian people. There are a lot of refugees from different countries that are coming into the United States and they have troubles adjusting to this world and, of course, financial part of their life is a very big part of their course because they are moving to the country where they don't have anything and they have to build ever since from the beginning. Even though they might be skilled, they might have a great knowledge, but they still have to learn language they have. They still have to adapt to the mentality and find out the way how to make money in here. So just because I have some knowledge and I'm fluent in some languages, yes, what language are you fluent in?

Polina Bolotnikova: 26:33

Ukrainian, German, English, apparently, and Russian.

Devin Walsh: 26:37

Okay, those four, which one? Obviously, you grew up Ukrainian, probably Russian as well, probably what was English harder to learn than like German?

Polina Bolotnikova: 26:46

No, German was much harder than English. Interesting. The grammar is much harder.

Devin Walsh: 26:51

So you guess, do you still get to use your German a lot as much anymore, or?

Polina Bolotnikova: 26:55

Not a lot, Because I was using mostly German in work. Right now I do ever since in English, and my whole life is in English. All my friends are talking English, my work is in English. Even my family speaks English.

Polina Bolotnikova: 27:08

So, I don't really use German language anymore, only when I talk to some of my friends who live back in Germany, which doesn't happen a lot, but it's still there. The knowledge is still there. But I would love to use the my language knowledge to provide the services to people who are in United States and they're struggling with English language, but they know other languages that they can communicate with and they need this time to like, adapt, learn English language, but at the same time, they already want to receive, like financial help or being able to use the financial planning as their tool before they even know English language, because I think language barrier is a very big problem for many people and I want to try to eliminate it as much as possible for people to gain the same opportunities as the people who are native English speakers.

Devin Walsh: 27:59

No, that's incredible. So what else should people know about you? And just like what you've learned so far this year and like, is there anything else you kind of before we kind of wrap up to anything else that you've really loved this year, anything else you're really kind of gravitated to, not even just in the financial planner world, but like the culture here, compared to Ukraine and some other differences that you've seen, I'm just always I'm so intrigued about. You know some of the similarities and some of the differences. Especially, you know what time it is. Bring Ukraine right now it's a hard time obviously over there.

Devin Walsh: 28:29

And so what's that transition been like to come from some place where there's this conflict going on in Ukraine right now, to come into the United States, or we're like, oh yeah, it's all good, and then you have that feeling you saw a family over there, everything else. How's that transition been like?

Polina Bolotnikova: 28:43

It's. It's hard. When the war started the first first week, I wanted to go back and my parents were hiding my passport from me Because I wanted to go back and I was thinking about going as a volunteer. But my parents didn't let me to, and I understand them why.

Devin Walsh: 29:00

Yeah, of course.

Polina Bolotnikova: 29:02

It was hard, but I feel like every immigrant basically experienced that not only immigrants, I bet Americans also experienced that. There are tough moments in your life and especially when you're away from home and you understand that that is not your home anymore, because it's different especially after war it's different. I cannot say that I feel that my home is here yet because it's still. I'm a foreigner. It's not my mentality. So you're living kind of in between, without a home, and probably this is the feeling you have to live with your whole life. But at the same time it all levels. I cannot say that it levels up, but you're trying to level. Leveling it up was the opportunities that you can gain in here. What I did.

Polina Bolotnikova: 29:42

I just realized that the thing that can save my mental health and can help me to get through all of it and continue my life is to just work as hard as possible and do everything I can to gain the max possibilities and max opportunities and advantages for me myself, my family, my friends, my country from here. So this is just just work hard. That's the only thing I can tell about this transition. It is very tough, it is very hard to go through it and it is hard mentally and physically. And ever since is new and new people, new mental. Ever since is so different. Just hard work, just hard work. That's the only thing I can tell that is going to help.

Devin Walsh: 30:22

Yeah that's amazing. It's. Hopefully, you know, with your time working with us, we can kind of help you make us feel more like your home here, staying washed and everything, but we're so lucky to have your journey over here just been. It's been crazy. It blows my mind that you come over here, grow speaking English. You are now second place nationally in a public speaking. You're picking up. Financial language is almost a different language, right?

Devin Walsh: 30:45

Everything we're doing here this whole language here now like all these acronyms, everything we're doing. So now you're creating this whole other language inside the English language around finance and says it's been incredible, we've been so lucky to have you. So what, anything else? We'll be kind of wrap up to anything else top of mind, anything else you want to comment on close with today.

Polina Bolotnikova: 31:03

Actually the one thing, last thing I wanted to mention when you talked about the financial language. That is completely different and it's true that it's like a completely stirred or whatever, forest language. And fun fact, because I one of the things how I realized that my English became really proficient, as I cannot talk about financial planning in my language anymore. I just cannot explain it. I don't know the translation of all the words that I know it in English.

Polina Bolotnikova: 31:32

I can explain how it works, but I have no clue how it translates to my language. So so far, I think I might know in English language much more than I do in my own language, which is kind of insane.

Devin Walsh: 31:44

That's wild. I feel like the English language are so many different words like what they're there, there and everything else is just so many different things like that, then like, then like the financial part of things.

Devin Walsh: 31:54

But no, this has been great. We really appreciate this time set, all those awesome interview and you like today's episode. Please make sure to like and subscribe and make sure to reach out to Paulina, introduce yourself, you know, and we're just so lucky to have you, and thank you so much, paulina, for today and that was a great interview and have a great week everybody.