Question: What if I told you that financial illiteracy was the new racism and that race wasn’t a factor? What if I told you what was meant to trap a certain group of individuals has BACKFIRED and engulfed a few new racial characters?
““Financial literacy is the new racism.””
Just think about the things that enslave and entrap us all. And then ask yourself if it’s a black or white thing or a money thing ... it’s simply your call.
If you have chosen to be one sided, I beg to differ because a racial slur doesn’t quite pack the same punch as the oppression that comes with not understanding your numerical figures.
Your financial make up needs a wake up no matter your race, because the misuse of your coin can limit what you eat, how you eat, how you live, as well as limit your time and space.
Let’s talk food supply. It is estimated that a meal must travel 1500 miles before it makes it to your plate. This means that we ingest fossil fuels at a rate of 10 kilo calories of fossil fuels for every kilo calories of energy we get from food.
Not to mention - for the food to travel such distances in most cases, the food must be ultra-processed.
Shipping food by air exposes the food to 50 times the CO2 than by sea shipping, but shipping by sea is slow and because of demand there is an increasing need to ship food by more polluting means.
So, shopping in your local food chains means taking a risk of eating polluted foods when you don’t have the financial means to do otherwise.
Shopping at the farmer’s market is a healthier and wiser choice financially, more so than shopping in Publix’s , Giant or Pathmark, etc
Whole Foods boasts of organic, but not all organics are created equal, for instance:
Very often because of the distance food must travel, a lot of fruits are unripe in travel and are gassed after arrival to force the fruits to ripen faster; as opposed to getting your fruits and greens from a local farmer’s market.
It’s a combination of lack of information, health education, financial education, and financial limitations that keeps people from eating healthy.
If people don’t make enough to shop healthy, chances are they don’t have enough time either which forces them to make poor food choices, and if this is the case, they are unaware that the food they are eating is detrimental to their health.
I believe if they knew that more economical and better healthy choices existed, they would take advantage of them especially if they knew it impacted their health.
Secondly, people live in the prisons they create.
Being broke is a choice simply as deciding to buy a dress or car, as opposed to learning how to invest wisely to ensure a legacy of leaving an inheritance.
Whether you understand this or not, buying power is distinctively different from investment power.
There is a lot of hoopla about the African American community having 1.2 trillion dollars in buying power but the Latin community has 1.3 trillion and what is not stated is that whites have more than 11 times this amount.
The only difference is that they invest and plan their futures, whereas the black and brown communities live in the moment.
These are the degrees of segregation that stop us from the upward mobility across all racial lines.
If you look at the statistics it would lead you to believe that 67 percent of minorities are invested in stock, but if you look closer that is loosely through their 401Ks.
The fact is that the numbers dramatically decrease by two thirds when you look at the percentage of minorities that have individual stock brokerage accounts, which means most minorities are engaged largely in the concept of wealth building through the use of 401Ks meaning that they do not have a true idea of building wealth
Most 401Ks aren’t understood or being funded properly.
Most minorities do not have a plan for retirement or understand the first thing about planning for the end stages of life.
They lack the knowledge necessary to understand the simple differences between what good investments or less attractive investments are, or how to monitor their 401K results.
It’s simply an exercise of futility, where most watch mostly the ups and downs of the money total at the end of each monthly statement with an attitude of active avoidance due to a real ignorance or understanding of the ramifications, or what this means for their retirement because most are too busy trying to make ends meet now.
The institution of Struggle and Ignorance are a powerful tool for those who look to manipulate any financial outcome in their favor
In fact, senator Rand Paul proposed a bill that would allow Americans to use their 401Ks to pay off their student debt.
While in theory, it sounds like he is doing you a favor, but in reality he is doing you more harm than good.
Here is why.
Let’s say that you had 150,000 in your 401Ks,
And you depleted it to pay off debt and started from zero to rebuild it.
If you look at the math along with the power of compounded interest you would be in fact robbing yourself of a decent retirement.
Here’s how.
Let’s say you put away just 300 dollars monthly in your 401Ks, not counting any employer contribution up to 6 percent of your salary,
And you did so for 44 years and earned a modest 6 percent
You would have a total of $762,276.65, or $3,176.15 pretax monthly if you lived to the age of 85 and divide it by 20 years, assuming you started at 21 and retired at 65.
But if you did the same exact math starting with $150,000 in your 401K,
The total over 44 years at 6 percent with 3600 yearly or 300 a month invested into your 401Ks,
Would total $2,710,098.94
Or $11,292.08 pretax monthly, based on the same 20 year period.
The fact that you don’t understand the math or read the fine print passed in the bills suggested for the good of the people allows what I call financial racism, which attacks all races not just one.
Now when you look at the history of building wealth, there are three ways to build wealth in America
That’s either by starting a business, investing in real estate, and investing in the stock market.
The stock market has had a historical rate of return of approximately 9 percent as opposed to 3 percent in the real estate market.
20 percent of small businesses fail in their first year, 30 percent of small businesses fail in their second year, and 50 percent of small businesses fail after five years in business. Finally, 70 percent of small business owners fail in their 10th year in business.
So, picking your poison means picking your strengths when determining which path you should grow your money in.
But it is important to understand the use of your money as well as how the capitalist system works.
For example, corporations and the rich use lobbyists to enforce policy in Washington.
But you as an ordinary citizen are powerless unless you create more lawyers that protect and defend your best interest, which means you will have to gain a financial knowledge of how to grow your money to uplift the standards of the education within your own communities.
Home grown congressman and senators should be the new way to protest from the inside out.
Instead of protesting outside of the congressional buildings or the business you detest,
More minority lawyers are needed to sit in the seats of congress and senate as well as majority ownership of the companies that aren’t representing our best interest as a community, especially if you as a community are impacted or making these corporations rich.
This is where the financial racism exists because if you are unaware of how our money plays a role in the congressional process as well as the corporate structure,
You will constantly be picketing outside of the building instead of being inside of the building or boardrooms where real decisions are being made about our families and future.
We are victims to the information that offends us. So, in order to get ahead of the curve, a financial overhaul of the general populace needs to take place.
There are way too many unhappy people working in what I call the old economy or dead-end jobs when the shift to the new economy has been in flux for a while now.
A college education although good is not necessary to follow your dreams these days,
Especially in a time where most aren’t working in the fields they went to college for, not to mention they are paying through the nose for an education that they can’t use.
The thought process has to be, get an education in order to build a business or make a connection.
If not, you will be hired to build someone else’s dream, and your dreams will either die or be deferred.
Having a Financial education has to be the new wave as well as reading has to be the new past time,
Because Everything is in the books we don’t read.
Everyone should have a full education in finance, compounded interest, as well as what wasteful behavior can cost.
This is the only way to remove the financial chains that stop us from living our very best life.
Shouldn’t you eat where you like? Live where you like? And not have to choose between finances and eating healthy?
Shouldn’t you be able to raise your child and be present instead of working opposite shifts that do more damage to the relationship than good?
Time is running out and it’s the only commodity that can’t be replenished.
So, take an assessment of where you are in the financial food chain and make a change.
Because we can’t stop people from doing something, we constantly keep doing to ourselves.
The fact of the matter is there will always be some sort of racism but you don’t have to be held prisoner by it because you fell in the trap of not reading the documents they slipped beneath your noses.
Learn to work together by pooling your resources to raid the firms that commit injustices,
Meaning gaining majority stake investments in the corporations that make a lion share from the communities they violate. This is done by understanding securities and exchange filings like 13D’s.
This form is filed when a person or group takes 5 percent or more of a publicly traded corporation.
This effectively gives the person or group voting rights and can push for change in leadership when the leaders aren’t working in the best interest of the company.
When you are armed with information, taking a stand has a new meaning, because I believe that in life the only victims that are created are self-inflicted because anyone can take a stand when they know how to fight for their rights.
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