The Audacity of Black Wealth

One of the core elements of our legacy as Black women is making something out of nothing. Due to circumstance and historical injustice, particularly slavery, we have become famous for our ability to take leftover scraps and turn it into delicacies (just ask about the history chit’lins!). With an impressive level of resilience, we have developed a beautiful cultural legacy that we are known for around the world, but there is a tragic downside that has been overlooked. We have developed a tolerance for having just enough, for being ok with “making ends meet” and “making do” with whatever we are given. Our ability to adapt and make a “dolla out of fit’teen cent” is a beautiful legacy but one born out of necessity, not choice. It is time we have the audacity to choose a new legacy, based on what we need and what we desire for our future generations. This new legacy says we are no longer satisfied with making do with the remains, or taking a job just to pay the bills, or living in places where we do not feel safe or protected. It is time for us to build a financial legacy that gives us the power of choice and the ability to finance our dreams!
As young women, we often think it’s too early to start thinking about saving money, or put off saving until we have children, finish college, or find a “better job”. The illusion of time is what keeps many of our mothers and grandmothers still living paycheck to paycheck, wondering why they didn’t start saving before they had us and other responsibilities. Many of us come from homes where saving doesn’t seem like a real possibility, where money is tight and paying the bills is priority before saving for “the future”. If we are taught to save, we are told to do so “for a rainy day” : some imagined emergency that never seems to happen, making it even more difficult to have money sitting in savings when there are so many things we can think of spending it on right now! Many of us get our first jobs and use our whole paychecks to buy whatever the latest celebs are wearing, keep our hair and nails fresh, or just to eat out everyday: all habits that we often carry over into our adult lives. We can argue that slavery is over, but because of these short-sighted decisions about money, we enter into another kind of slavery, one that keeps us working just to fund our habits. While there is a certain immediate satisfaction that comes from looking good and enjoying the finer things in life, those choices take money out of our pocket, and do nothing to increase our cashflow in the long run.
If we continue to only think of our money in the moment, we miss out on the great opportunity to build a bigger dream for ourselves and the people we love. As women, we are the keepers of the legacy and the creators of the future. If we continue on as we have been, we will have nothing to leave for our children or communities except the pictures of how fabulous we used to be before we went broke!
According to a 2010 report entitled “Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America’s Future,” black women in prime working age between 36 – 49yrs held an average net worth of $5. To compare, white women of the same age held a net worth of $42,000. To put this in simple terms, that means if the average black working woman was to lose her job, she would only have $5 to her name after she paid off all of her bills. How do we expect to build a legacy living above our means like this? Because of our lifestyle built on credit cards and expensive taste, we are projected to be the first generation in history that is financially worse off than our parents: living paycheck to paycheck and under-prepared for any financial challenges life throws at us.
But this does not have to be the case. For us to redefine our legacy, to turn a page, it really takes as little as $20. If you saved $20 every week, starting at 18, you could have more than $10,000 saved. What could you do with $10,000 in the bank? What decisions could you make differently regarding where you went to school, where you worked, and where you lived, if you had a financial cushion of $10,000? Now imagine if on top of that $10,000, you included birthday money, graduation gifts, and increased that $20 to $30 when you start working. That $10,000 can very quickly become $50,000 or more, depending on how committed you are to building your financial legacy.
We must never think that we are too young, broke or comfortable to start thinking about building wealth or think that because our parents didn’t have it, we do not deserve to change our own circumstance. In fact, we owe it to the legacy of our mothers and grandmothers to do more with the little we have. The sooner we recognize the importance of building wealth for our families and the freedom that real wealth allows, the closer we will be to continuing the legacy our ancestors built for us. The earlier we start making smarter decisions about how we handle money, the sooner we change the decisions we can make about all of the other things that money controls.
So now that you know better, you must do better! Start by saving %10 of every dollar you get, whether it’s from a paycheck or a child support check. Open a savings account or a mutual fund that you don’t touch, no matter what. Spend 5 minutes less on Facebook and search the web for websites about investments and wealth building strategies. Most of all, have the audacity to believe that you control your financial freedom. The decisions you make now will determine whether you will make your own rules and pay your own way, or if you will spend your days miserable, working according to someone else’s rules and pay schedule. The choice is yours. I pray you have the audacity to choose freedom.

MoE Massive, whats your take? Why do you think as black woman, we struggle so much with the idea of being rich or wealthy? As a collective, why are we so sastisfied with looking like we have the finer things in lifeifebut not willing to do the work so that we can build the bank account to afford the finer things?  Talk to me!

The  article is an excerpt from a piece I wrote, published in Legends magazine ,a publication of the LadyDiva Corporation. The magazine will be available at the “Having the Audacity to Dream Young Ladies Conference” taking place this weekend in Philadelphia. For more information, please visit http://www.ladydiva.org