Tiffany Aliche ’02
Posted in: Feliciano Center News
Feeling tapped out after the holiday season? Tiffany “the Budgetnista” Aliche ’02 can help get you back on the right path with your money.
Aliche, successful author and entrepreneur, gives workshops to others who want to take control of their financial lives. She connects with her students by demonstrating that nobody is perfect, but anybody who wants to learn how to control their finances and is willing to put the work into it can, in fact, get out of debt and work toward a positive financial future. One of her techniques is the use of personal stories. In one, she tells about a friend who’d asked to borrow $25,000 to start a business. Wanting to help her friend, Aliche loaned the money and opened three credit cards to cover the costs. She soon found herself $35,000 in debt. Knowing that she was the only person who could get her out of debt, Aliche budgeted and saved her way to freedom in about two years.
Teaching is something Aliche does very well. Although her major while at Montclair State was business, she found that she enjoyed working with young children and went on to earn a Master’s degree in education at Seton Hall University. She taught preschool at a Newark charter school for some time, where her coworkers took note of her strong financial skills. After her school closed, Aliche knew she still wanted to teach, and she wanted to teach the subject she was most passionate about: money management.
Aliche learned about responsible budgeting and conscientious spending decisions from her father, a Nigerian immigrant and Montclair State alumnus. Some of her favorite memories of Montclair State are spending time with her friends at the Rathskeller, affectionately referred to at “the Rat.” One of her favorite topics of study was marketing. In Dr. DiPitro’s marketing class, Aliche learned a lot of the skills she’d later employ when building her business and teaching others to manage their money.
“Business will make you cry before it makes you money,” she said. Passion is what kept her going. Her books, The One Week Budget and How to Get Out of Debt, detail her techniques for how to re-structure one’s finances to work more efficiently. The One Week Budget has gone on to become a best-seller. It recently hit #2 on Amazon’s Best Sellers list in the budgeting category! Building a business isn’t easy, but few worthwhile things are. “Work full time, and spend every minute building your business,” Aliche said of her role as lecturer and mentor as the “Budgetnista.”
