Saving money and investing it properly is tough. It is hard to know where to take your money to make the most of it. Fortunately, FIERCE is here with another chat with a money queen to make sure that you get the most of your money.

Jully-Alma Taveras is here to help you reach your money-saving goals.

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Saving money is tough. How much should you set aside? Where do you keep it to make sure it is safe? When should you start? Taveras started Investing Latina two years ago to help people figure out the best way to start their savings journey. There are a lot of things to save for from retirement to big purchases to emergencies. Here is some of what Taveras had to say when our very own Sam sat down with her.

Sam: “Let’s talk about savings. What would you recommend people do to start saving today?”

Jully-Alma Taveras: “Savings is kind of the beginning of it all, right? It’s kind of where we start laying down the bricks and foundation to our financial house. When I say laying down bricks, that’s really what I mean. I mean that they are small and heavy but they build up. That’s exactly how you have to think about how you start saving. It really starts small. Nobody starts with $10,000 in their savings account. Nobody. Everybody starts putting in $25 per week. Fifty dollars per month. Whatever it is that you can do. You have to be able to just kind of put it aside.

“I always recommend using a savings account first. Your core savings account at a bank that you can easily access if you needed to access your savings and then having a bulb of savings to a high-yield saving account so that you can also use the technology that exists right now with high-yield savings accounts. You can have little envelopes so you are saving for designated things. You can save for specific goals.

“I think that when it comes to savings, you really do have to set a big goal for yourself, and then you kind of start working backward. Then you’re like, ‘Okay. My goal is to save $10,000 in 2021. That’s what I want to get to. I want to be able to have my 1,000 immediate little emergency need savings account with just $1,000 and then I want to have the rest into a high-yield savings account where I can really start building my money confidence. That’s what happens when we start saving money.”

S: “One of the things I know that we started chatting about was high-yield savings accounts. Can you go into some more details about what exactly that is for everyone?”

JAT: “When we talk about a high-yield savings account, it really is a way for you to put savings into a bank or institution, or nowadays it’s really just an app sometimes. You put it in a place,  secure place that’s FDIC-insured place, where you can get a higher interest rate than what typical savings accounts offer. When you open up a checking account, you’re automatically, or usually going to get the option of opening a savings account with our bank. The retail banks that we typically use, the ones that we can walk into, that we can have ATM cards you can easily access and have teller access are usually positioning themselves where they offer retail services.

“What happens with that is that they don’t give you a lot for holding onto your money. They’ll offer something like a free checking account or a free savings account. They won’t charge you for it depending on what category you’re in, especially teens or if you are in school. You can definitely get a free checking account. But, they won’t give a higher interest rate than likely .02 percent. What a high-yield savings account offers is a higher interest rate. These are usually with banks that you don’t normally see as you walk down Main Street in your neighborhood. We aren’t talking about the Chases the TD Banks the Citi Banks, right? These banks that we know and are familiar with because we see them on Main Street. We see them in our neighborhoods. They’re not typically going to have a high-yield savings account. They want you to just use their services, their savings accounts, and their checking accounts. That’s it and they’re just going to be happy holding on to your money while you transact and do what you have to do with your money.

“With high-yield savings accounts, those are typically going to be with banks that don’t have retail stores. Some examples are Marcus by Goldman Sachs. SoFi, which is one of my favorites because of the tech that they’ve implemented in their app and their website. Ally Bank. These are banks that we typically won’t see actual physical banks of but they do exist online.

“What they do, mechanically, just so you kind of understand what happens when you put money into a high-yield savings account, is truly, they’re actually, putting all of our money together and they’re kind of investing our money behind the scenes. That’s what happens. You have the security of your digitized dollars and you will never lose it because it’s not an investment account.

“That’s basically what’s happening. Just so you know. You can feel safe that your money is there. It’s FDIC insured or it is completely insured up to the $250,000. That’s typically what we get insurance on. Then you also make a little extra so you make a couple of dollars every month.”

Taveras has so much more to say about saving and investing. Watch the full video below!

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READ: In The First Episode Of FIERCE’s ‘Money Moves,’ We Explore The All-Important Budget

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It seemed that many Cuban’s hopes for greater freedom of expression – particularly in the art world – seems to have been dashed again. In less than 24 hours after apparently agreeing to meet several demands from dissident artists, the government broke at least three of the five agreements in had made.

Freedom of expression is a hot topic in Cuba, where the communist regime severely limits what artists can say and produce.

But even more rare: public protest. That’s what makes these recent marches in Havana so important, the island hasn’t seen anything like it in decades. And as almost on script, the Cuban government flipped on its public reaction to the growing movement, instead blaming it on “U.S. imperialism” and foreign intervention.

Cuban officials have completely condemned the protest movement in a full 180º change of attitude.

Keep the pressure on!! For this many people to protest in Cuba is HUGE. #cubalibre #TodosSomosSanIsidro Artists say Cuba government agrees to dialogue, tolerance https://t.co/Qpp6XT93iC

— Melissa Fumero (@melissafumero) December 1, 2020

Over the weekend, Cuba saw unprecedented protests led by dissident artists and creatives – known as the San Isidro movement – seeking greater freedom of expression. And although it seemed early on that the group may have made progress (the government agreed to several concessions), those hopes went up in flames as the government launched an all-out rhetorical assault.

Shortly after the meeting between protesters and officials, the protest came to a peaceful end with leaders thinking they achieved what they had set out to do, and with a meeting to discuss the issues further.

But just hours later the government called in the top U.S. diplomat on the island, charge de affairs Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, for a scolding over “grave interference in Cuba’s internal affairs” as state television ran a 90-minute special attacking members of the protest group and broadcasting visuals of their interactions with U.S. diplomats and Miami exiles.

“Sovereign Cuba accepts no interference … The revolutionary ones will fight back,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in one of a series of Twitter posts accusing the San Isidro movement of being a “reality show” on social media created by “U.S. imperialists.”

What originally seemed like progress now seems like business as usual for the communist regime.

It seemed, at least for a few short hours, that there was a real chance at bolstering artistic freedom in Cuba. The group of protesters, known as the San Isidro movement, gathered outside the culture ministry, leading Fernando Rojas, the deputy culture minister, to invite in a group of 30 of them. The meeting lasted for more than four hours, those present have said, and resulted in a promise of greater freedoms for artists.

Writer Katherine Bisquet told the press afterward that there had been a “truce for independent spaces” where activists could meet and talk, and that further discussions were promised.

“I cannot emphasize enough that this kind of public protest, with hundreds of people standing outside a ministry for 14 hours, is unprecedented,” Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco told Artnet News. “The fact that government officials conceded to a meeting is in itself a victory for the artists and a sign of weakness on the part of the government.”

The government had also agreed to urgently review the case of a detained member of the San Isidro crew and a rapper sentenced this month to eight months in jail on charges of contempt. It also agreed to ensure independent artists in the future were not harassed.

Cuban officials blamed the U.S. for stirring up dissent.

Shortly after the government launched a verbal assault on the group, it also accused the U.S. of helping them. Officials at the Foreign Ministry summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Chargé d’Affaires Timothy Zuñiga-Brown, and complained about U.S. “intervention.”

At Sunday’s rally, Díaz Canel said that “Trumpistas” (referring to the Trump administration) and the “anti-Cuban mafia that are now ‘Trumpistas'” (referring to Cuban American Trump supporters in Miami) “had on their agenda that before the year ends, the revolutions of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have to fall.”

Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, tweeted Sunday: “We support the Cuban people in their struggle for liberty and echo calls for the Cuban government to release peaceful protestors. The Cuban people must be allowed to exercise the universal right to freedom of expression.”

Thanks to an imploding economy in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, Cuba is experiencing an unprecedented crisis.

Cuba is going through dire shortages in food and basic goods amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has practically halted tourism to the island, on top of the Trump administration’s harsh sanctions.

Against that backdrop, García said, “I think the government should think about these things and view dialogue as a valid option to avoid a major disaster.”

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