7min Dinner Series
0:03
I love the story of Black wealth because to me and all of American history, it is the ultimate story of resilience, and it's never talked about that way.
0:12
There's so much power in each and every one of your stories.
0:15
We're here to share the lessons that help create the financial security.
0:20
Be the financial role models that you are.
0:27
I can't have this discussion without talking about trust in the Black community.
0:30
Who do we trust and who can we go to for sound financial advice?
0:35
I think there's often a lack of trust in financial institutions.
0:39
How do we rebuild that trust?
0:42
Transparency is critical education.
0:46
I think in order to be able to build trust, you have to have enough insight into what's happening to understand it.
0:53
We all were kind of having the same experience, but no one taught us about money.
0:57
I was in college.
0:58
I want it to be the smart girl, but I want it to be the cheap girl.
1:01
Of course, my freshman year, it's homecoming.
1:04
I got three credit cards.
1:08
That changed my relationship with money.
1:09
And I'll be honest, at one point it was a toxic relationship.
1:12
Like we were friends.
1:13
We weren't good friends.
1:16
What wealth means to me, it's the freedom to travel, to get to know people, to have your time back.
1:24
Can I relax?
1:25
Do I have to go work a job that I really don't want to work?
1:28
Can I do things that bring the community together?
1:31
Everything I learned about money came from my dad.
1:33
When he would come home, we would watch the nightly Business Report.
1:36
This was back on VCR.
1:38
Well, we called the VCR, so that was our special time.
1:43
My dad taught himself everything he knew because he wanted that security, probably because he grew up without having a whole lot.
1:49
My daddy's favorite saying is you cannot say while you're spending.
1:53
I learned about what a four O 1K was as a rookie NFL player in the Baltimore Ravens locker room after interning on Wall Street for two years after working at a hedge fund three years in high school.
2:05
Right like that.
2:06
You shouldn't have to make it to the NFL to learn what your 4O1K is.
2:09
You shouldn't have to make it to your job and your career to actually learn what a four O 1K is.
2:15
Don't expect anybody to want this more than you growing up with limited means.
2:21
In the beginning, money is kind of about security and buying things to meet your needs.
2:27
And so you get in the habit of you get money, you spend it, and then you get to the point where you have access.
2:32
But as I got older and you start to get exposure to other things, I realized, like, it's not just saving and stuffing under your mattress, right?
2:40
It's investing.
2:41
What return are you getting?
2:43
Yeah, it's compounding, right?
2:44
Because that's your friend over time, right.
2:46
So I do start to learn, OK, your money can make money for you.
2:51
My mother depends on me, my extended family depends on me.
2:56
And you start to realize I don't have a safety net.
3:00
And so that lack of a safety net, it definitely lowered my risk tolerance.
3:05
And I'd say, like, I didn't take the chance on being an entrepreneur, which is something that I would have encouraged my younger self to do.
3:12
Many of my friends, you don't necessarily look like me, had the capacity to fail because they had a safety net.
3:19
Yes.
3:19
And so they could take outside chances and succeed spectacularly or fail spectacularly and it didn't matter.
3:27
I said, So what will it take for me to get to a place of mental freedom?
3:33
And so I made a conscious decision very early to live on half my income.
3:37
And it's really easy once you get used to it.
3:39
A lot of the personal finance advice that came out of the 80s and the 90s was all about shame.
3:45
And I think that that has done a tremendous amount of damage to people's emotional psyche, financial psyche.
3:56
We're humans, we will make mistakes, we will overshoot some things, we will undershoot others, and it's going to be all good.
4:04
Part of the financial planning journey is to help people release some of that guilt, some of that obligation, some of that fear, some of that shame, so that you can feel empowered for the tools and resources that are available to help you reset.
4:24
Because that's all of us.
4:26
My dad escaped the specter of Jim Crow by going up to News New York.
4:29
I think when you grow up very poor, so six of us in a one bedroom home, there's not a whole lot that scares me.
4:37
It's the most liberating thing in the world to know that I can be scared to death, like you getting tackled and you live through it and you figured out a way through all your life experiences to get through it.
4:51
It can paralyze you or it can empower you.
4:54
Yes, it could paralyze you, but if it doesn't paralyze you, well, there's your power.
4:59
I think we got to reframe the I can't afford.
5:02
I've actually told a lot of people you can't afford not to.
5:05
I work in financial services.
5:06
I have a financial advisor.
5:08
You know, there are tools that can help people that are very inexpensive.
5:12
Most people that have accumulated wealth did it in a very boring way.
5:17
It is about save.
5:19
Take advantage of your 4O1K.
5:20
Don't be ashamed about it.
5:22
Sometimes it comes off negative of like man, like our parents didn't have these conversations with us.
5:27
Our parents didn't do these things right.
5:29
We've taken the baton and now we're running with it ourselves.
5:33
So we're processing.
5:34
I think we also got to give grace to the previous generations and look at them and be like, damn, my single mom was balancing a budget and making ends meet.
5:44
The resilience we've all talked about is amazing.
5:47
Having more and more conversations and more and more dialogues like this is going to make us all strong enough and smart enough to know what to look out for, to know when to ask questions, to know what actually exists.
6:01
Despite all working against the Black community, we're still here at these tables.
6:08
Everything is far from perfect.
6:10
It gives me hope.
6:12
When we reach a certain level, we always want to bring others with us.
6:18
Exactly.
6:18
We don't get there on our own.
6:20
What I see is this beautiful sharing, the sense of community where there is a binding thread.
6:27
We need everybody out there to have this conversation with their friends, with their family.
6:34
I'm excited because I know more and more of those conversations are taking place in our community.
6:39
And I just want to celebrate all of you and to celebrate your stories, to celebrate the shoulders that got you here.
6:45
Cheers, everybody.
6:50
I'm glad they didn't give us wine.
