Money, currency, or cash are all terms used to describe one of the most important resources known to man. Most if not all of your daily decisions involve money whether it be a digital or physical transaction. How could such an important topic simply be left off the dinner table?
Slavery was abolished hundreds of years ago, but it still has an everlasting impact on the black community. Although physical abuse was brutal is something that we can forgive as people. Now before you jump the gun, I did say that we should only forgive but certainly not forget especially those who are a part of our family tree. Physical shackles restrain the body, but mental shackles prevent progress. An inmate is in a cell but has the option to read a book or workout, which improves the mind. A prostitute is physically free, but psychologically trapped because they can’t find a better way of life. This is the best way to understand why we lack money sense.
Like many of you, I had a normal childhood that involved the usual shenanigans. That is how a boy becomes a man, which was through exploration. Parents aren’t always around, but it is the lessons that they taught you while growing up that stick. If the conversation about money does not come up, well you won’t learn about money. Investing was not introduced to me until I attended high school. Even in high school, no one explained it to me, instead all I heard was buy stocks and bonds. If being vague was a career, we could point out a lot of people that would be rich.
I understood that if you want to buy something it requires money or credit. As to how money and credit was created had never been a discussion. Do I blame my parents or our educational system? Everyone that I admired, including my parents’ earned money, but it was done through employment. Nine to five or dead-end jobs were how you made a living. I watched my folks work like there is no tomorrow, but I am only a kid who wants to play all day. There is nothing to feel guilty over because everyone had their role to play. It is not until you walk the same path you parents took, and only then reality hits.
Wall Street are two of the most popular words used daily, but yet people know very little about it. There is no secret fortress that you have to enter to discover the ways in which people use financial instruments to create wealth. I would agree that it does require time, patience, and curiosity. Notice that I did not mention intellect and that is for a good reason. We are all afraid of the unknown, but you can overcome those fears the same way our ancestors did when they learned how to read and write. A quote that will always be a part of my thinking, “it is better to be an idiot with a plan than a genius without one”.
What I do love about this era is the access we have to information. To some degree it has gotten a lot easier to learn without having a professor to lecture you. We now have dozens if not hundreds of platforms that are dedicated to teaching financial literacy. YouTube is a great platform to learn from others and I am not saying so because I have a channel. A couple of days ago, I watched a podcast about an African American woman who quit her wall street job to create a fin tech company. One of the key takeaways from the episode was that investing can only happen when you shift your mindset. Do not be discouraged from the idea of investing because you aren’t rich or neither do you work for Goldman Sachs.
The dinner table of course is just a piece of furniture that is located in the living room or apart from your kitchen. How it looks or wherever it is located throughout your place of living is not important. What is important are the topics that you discuss while you are eating with your loved ones such as finance. When you look inside someone’s home are considered successful, they always have a library of books and nice dining room table with chairs. In most black homes that bookshelf becomes storage. As for dining tables, they are primarily used only for when special guests arrive or an event. Who could have known that a simple piece of furniture can lead to financial success.
We often overlook the power of a conversation, but that is how friendships and companies are built. Everything you do starts from within because the mind controls your body. Do you remember when escaped slaves or those who were legally freed decided to return back to their slave masters. The underlying factor is that those people lacked financial literacy because they were taught how to create wealth. Remember all you know how to do is pick cotton, chop wood, cook, and clean. Slaves who chose to disobey their masters would have been raped into submission or killed.
By the end of this article, you should be convinced that you are capable of investing without a college degree. Emotional intelligence and discipline are skills that will develop overtime. Practice makes perfect and it all starts with you and your quest to create generational wealth. 80 is a nice number to live up to and it is also used as a benchmark to determine how to diversify your portfolio. What does it look like when the numbers are inversed. That’s right 08 like the financial crisis that wiped out over 44 percent of African American wealth due to subprime lending. For those who may not have a clue as to what I am saying. In your spare time take a look at a movie called Inside Job and it will answer any question you may have on this topic.
Politicians, business owners, and the elites understand the value of money and the significance of having money to work for you. What is ironic is the fact that we picked the cotton that is used to make the money we don’t seem to ever have. The creation of money can be better explained by people who sit on Forbes list each year. I do not wish to stray from the topic at hand, because it will invoke unbearable emotions. Lying is always better than telling the truth, but only in the short term. When you realize that life is long because it is relative to how you choose to live. Do us a favor and get that dining room table that will lead to your financial freedom.