WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Friday March 28th, 2014 marked the inaugural Summit On Educational Excellence For African Americans.  This PHENOMENAL event was put on by the White House Initiative For Educational Excellence For African Americans.  They partnered with Ebony Magazine (Amy DuBois Barnett) and Morehouse College (Dr. Wilson, President) to bring dynamic thought leaders to Morehouse’s Ray Charles Performing Arts Center for two days of intense conversation about how to close the achievement gap among African American Males.  Just to name a few of the heavy hitters on the panels: Dr. Arlethia Perry-Johnson, Dr. John Eaves, Al Dotson Jr., Jim Shelton, Otha Thorton, and Dr. Ivory Toldson.  There were many more!  The main moderators were Jeff Johnson ( award winning journalist) and David Johns (Executive Director of Initiative) who throughout the conference made sure the panelists gave honest direct answers that would push those of us in the audience toward action!

The topics discussed by various panels were “Challenges and Opportunities Facing Young Men of Color”, “Black Male Success in Higher Education”, “The Benefits of Education and Education Reform”, “College and Career Readiness”, “Cost and Consequence of Gun Violence”, and more.  The reason that I drove five hours down to Atlanta, GA is because after discovering @AfAmEducation on Twitter I have been engaged in their mission of closing the gap for African American Children.  More specifically their priority of increasing the number of African American students who successfully obtain a postsecondary degree, credential, or certificate that leads to a successful career.  The motivation for me traveling all over the country speaking to college students about Financial Literacy is because I know the success that comes with not just getting into college, but crossing the stage at graduation!

The first panel by far was my favorite and the reason that I wrote this blog post.  The first panel should have been titled “This Is Why We Are Here, This Is Our Future!” because on the panel were two high school students Miles Ezeilo (9th grade), Keith Slaughter (10th grade) and three college students Thabiti Stephens, Otha Thorton III, and Joshua Young.  These young men fueled my fire to bring Financial Literacy or more specifically behaving with money into the conversation at the Summit!  Although there was not a panel discussing how money behavior could alleviate or even eliminate a lot of these problems, the first panel brought it front and center.  Morehouse senior Thabiti Stephens who is an entrepreneur himself and the owner of Steps By Stephens a shoe company who donates a portion of its’ sales to help with food insecurity in the Atlanta area actually said the words “Financial Literacy” in one of his comments.  I was already going to ask a question to the panel about the importance of Financial Literacy, but once he said it I understood the need for the subject to be a part of this summit.  This young man along with the other four represent the “dreamers” I speak to across the country.  Students who have ideas that can help others in their community or around the world, but fail to bring those dreams to reality because of financial issues (debt).  Debt or irresponsibility with money could have kept StepsByStephens.com a dream and the money for the food insecure an illusion!  That is why Financial Literacy has to be a part of the conversation when talking about closing the gap and NOT the usual talk about Financial Literacy where people teach students and adults that the credit score is important and a credit card is a tool!  I am talking about showing people how to behave with money.  Showing students and their parents that when you pay off debt you can make money work for you!  When you don't owe the bank money you can save for your child’s college education, you can save for retirement, you can start that business, you can give to that charity that provides quality daycare for low income children, YOU CAN!  Those talented young men were only the beginning.

The next panel consisted of Dr. Perry-Johnson, Dr. Toldson, Dr. Shaun Harper, Dr. Bryant Marks, and Morehouse senior Timothy Spicer Jr. and their task was to discuss “Black Male Success In Higher Education.”  They debunked the common myths about African American male achievement and the true percentage of African American males in college, but what truly caught my attention was a statement made by Dr. Marks.  He said, “what HBCU’s need from alumni is to write checks!”  What made this statement so profound is that first, it’s true, but more importantly the Deputy Director of the White House Initiative On Historically Black Colleges and Universities Dr. Toldson was sitting on the same panel.  The universities that the initiative represents are in dire need for alumni to give back!  Take for example Morris Brown College which is a five minute drive away from Morehouse has at the present time 35 students enrolled and is more that $30 MILLION in debt!  The college is going to have to sell majority of its’ land to stay open!  There is also Bennett College which like Spelman College is an all female HBCU and it is in financial hot water to the point that it had to close one of it’s buildings last Fall.  There are not many all female colleges left, let alone HBCU’s that are all female so it is a situation that needs close attention.  Lastly, there is Howard University and Morgan State University who last Fall seen a drop in students because of changes in the PLUS loans.  Hundreds of students found themselves threatened with dropping out of college because they didn’t have the money to cover the balance they owed.  There were seniors in their last year who had to go home!  These are just a few examples of Higher Ed institutions that are having financial issues and HBCU’s are not alone there are institutions all over the United States going through the same thing.  If Higher Ed institutions want any alum to write a check they should show that alum while they are still in undergrad how to behave with money!  The average student loan debt that a person graduates with is now at $29,000, so these students are grabbing diplomas in red deficit ink!  They go out on their own not understanding delayed gratification which leads to more debt (car loans, house loan, credit cards, etc) and all of a sudden they are up to their eyeballs in debt and have no money to give back to their alma mater who needs it!  I am sure there are plenty of people who have been out of college for over a decade still paying back student loans.  Some critics may say “not everyone graduates with loans.”  They would be right, and I am one of those people!  I graduated debt free and still racked up $48,000 in debt because I didn’t know how to behave with money.  I paid the debt off in 2 1/2 years, but that was lost money for retirement, an emergency fund, or donations to my alma mater South Carolina State University!  An alum who is debt free is an alum who writes checks and writes BIG ONES!  

The last thing that I will touch on from the Summit is the need for more African American male teachers.  A project that Jeff Johnson one of the moderators is the Jeff Johnson Institute For Urban Development which has a goal to recruit and develop 80,000 African American male teachers in 5 years.  Throughout the Summit the same statement was being said “we need more teachers that look like our children especially the male ones.”  The great news is that more and more African American males are going into teaching, but what I fear just like with any other teacher of any race is that the amount of money that they are paid will not keep them in the profession for the long run.  Teachers have an extremely difficult job and they get paid nothing!  I’ve had numerous teachers tell me that they can not get ahead financially because of their salary.  There are groups all over the country fighting for higher teacher pay, but in the meantime show those majoring in education and those who are already teachers how to pay off debt they have and build an eight month emergency fund.  Doing this is not to take the pressure off of lawmakers to do what is right and increase pay, but it is to take the financial burden off that teacher so that they can come to class with a peace of mind and give their best to that student they love to serve!  

I know that this post was much longer than usual, but this event was to important not to show how real Financial Literacy could make a positive impact in majority of the topics discussed.  This Summit was about recognizing the issues, but it also was about ACTION!  My first action was to write this blog post and my next action is to email as many of the over 100 HBCU Presidents to discuss the importance of implementing Financial Literacy (Financial Behavior) at their institutions.  Not just to benefit their undergraduates, but also to benefit their longterm survival!

A special thank you to Dr. Wilson and Morehouse for opening your doors to this event!  A supersize THANK YOU to David Johns and EVERY individual behind the success of the White House Initiative For Educational Excellence For African Americans and @AfAmEducation!

www.Dreamgirlspeaker.com

Silently Suffering

A couple of weeks ago I attended the NACA (National Association For Campus Activities) Conference in Nashville Tennessee.  NACA is where colleges and universities from all around the country come to one place to hire performances for their campus for the upcoming semester while at the same time attending beneficial educational workshops. The campus representatives who attend are mostly students accompanied by an advisor.  This was my first National NACA so 99% of the students and student affair professionals were meeting me for the first time.  Majority of the performances that are for hire at NACA are music acts, magic acts, comedy, lecturers, etc so what I have to offer is completely different and at first not easy to understand. That is why I wear a t-shirt that says “DEBT SUCKS” on it because that is what I am about, I am about showing students that they don’t have to die in debt like so many people before them. They actually can be different from their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc and get out of debt in a few years after graduation.   I did not start off my speaking career talking to college students but I actually started speaking to individuals who were in the average age range of 40-65yrs and the common sentence spoken at the end of my presentation no matter where I was at was “where were you when I was younger?”  It was said to me so much that I decided I need to go to where the people are younger and that is when I started speaking at colleges.  I went to NACA because it is the best way to get in front of a lot of universities and colleges in one place and when you are able to interact with close to 2500 people in a few days you are able to see a disturbing trend.

Students on a daily basis would walk past me, look at my shirt, and say DEBT does SUCK! Then I would speak to them one on one and quickly come to understand that their financial issues ran extremely deep and that they don’t even know where to start to get a handle of it.  A senior came up to me who was in $30,000 of debt which consisted of student loans, credit cards, and a car loan.  He said “we need you to come to our school, or better yet I just need your personal email because I need help.”  He went on to talk about he didn't know how he would pay off the debt after graduation and to make the situation more serious he had a baby on the way in June.  I met a young woman who wanted after graduation to work directly with young kids at risk and help them towards a more promising future, but she said that she would have to take a job that she didn't want to just to pay off the debt she had.  In her words “I will have to put off my dream for a few years until I can get a handle on my debt.” Another young lady stopped me in mid sentence and said “please don’t remind me of my debt.  I went to a different university before attending this one and racked up so much already.”  As she was speaking tears started to form in her eyes and I quickly told her it would be okay, but she shook her head and said “I don’t think so.”  I tried to help her in the two minutes we had to talk, but I could tell that she needed more and at this type of event that was not possible.

The examples go on and on, but the point of the stories above is that there are A LOT of students that are silently suffering because of debt and they need help, they need direction.  When I was in college which was not long ago no one cared about how much they owed because we all just said we will get to it after graduation, but these students don’t have the same care free option.  With tuition at some universities increasing as much as 40% since 2008 students are feeling the burden of debt before they graduate and to add insult to injury because of the 2008 recession the government has less money to give to universities for grants, etc.  When less money is coming in from the government then who makes up the difference in the money owed? That’s right, the student and their parents.  The good news is some universities are seeing the importance of financial literacy for their students and like the idea of someone who has been in massive debt, got out of it, and now is able to show others how to do the same. After NACA I recognized that I have to do a better job at explaining to Deans, Directors, Advisors, etc the importance of this information because there are students silently suffering and if they don’t go in the right direction they WILL BE graduates silently suffering who will be deep in debt living paycheck to paycheck and not the prosperous alumni that can give back to their alma mater.  My mission is to help as many college students as I can before they graduate so that they are able to live a life without debt.  A life without debt for these students will lead to a world that is changed for the better.

DREAM DEFERRED

Dreams are what fuel us day to day.  Dreams are there to give us hope for a better tomorrow. But what happens when those dreams are deferred? Our parents and grandparents dealt with many life situations that may have put their dreams on hold.  These life situations were unavoidable and had to be dealt with accordingly.  With our grandparents and great grandparents they were part of surviving the Great Depression so they had to do what was needed to make sure their family didn’t starve.  They may have had dreams, but priorities came first and so the dreams were deferred.  Our parents went through the civil rights era whether it was the right to be seen as an equal no matter the race or to be taken seriously in the workplace as a woman; because of these limitations dreams were sometimes forcibly deferred.  Racism kept individuals from becoming doctors, lawyers, professors, etc.  Little girls were taught that they could only go into certain professions such as teachers, secretaries, etc and that the higher paying careers should be left to men. That they should just be focused on being a great wife, mother, and glorified house cleaner.  For our parents it was prejudice that deferred the dreams of so many.

What are the reasons that dreams have been deferred for our generation?  Even though we just went through the Great Recession it definitely could not hold a torch to the Great Depression.  Although there is still racism and sexism out in the world it is nowhere near what was going on through the sixties and seventies.  Today more than ever anyone can be anything that they want to be.  There is nothing holding them back, but themselves.  Education is free and if you want to work hard no one is going to keep you from doing that.  There are so many stories about individuals who come from the most desperate situations and they go on to be highly successful people who end up helping others reach their own potential.  So what could be holding our dreams back?  The answer is complex while simple at the same time.  It is this generation’s debt vs. income ratio as well as our behavior toward money in general. 

There is so much complaining every day on social media and out in public about how everyone hates their job.  Continuously people say “Thank God it’s Friday” and “Oh no it’s Monday” and so it is apparent that millions of people are not living their dream at least when it comes to their job.  So why don’t they just quit the job they hate so much, go after their dream, and live happily ever after?  It’s simple, they need the paycheck.  Why do they need the paycheck because they have debt that is not going to magically disappear.  There is too much debt compared to the amount of income coming in so walking away from a paying job could lead to a financial catastrophe.  Even though this is a huge problem for the individual it can be handled and this individual could still go and live out their dreams, but here is the difficult part: Behavior.  Although people want to live out their dreams, those dreams are not powerful enough to convince them to stop spending money and adding on to the debt in their life and so as a result dreams are deferred.  People go through life doing what they don’t want to just for a needed paycheck and when retirement comes they look back on their life with sadness because they spent eight hours a day, five days a week, for forty years doing something they hated. 

Dreams don’t have to be deferred anymore!  We all can make a decision today to say an interesting word to ourselves and that word is NO! NO to spending money that should be going to paying down debt.  NO to friends and family members who want us to spend money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need.  NO to working a job that is not our calling just because we need a paycheck.  It is time to take the steps needed to get out of debt so that you can live out that dream.  Do you want to help others in need, do you want to start your own charity, how about travel the world and take pictures that could change the way others look at the world?  Those dreams whatever they may be are still alive in you, but your behavior towards money has to change in order for those dreams to come to reality.  Sacrifice for that dream has to start today and although people may pressure you and even laugh at you while you are getting out of debt once you are living your dream and they are still in a job that they hate the laughter surely will stop.

My first career I use to love, but eventually it went south and I was no longer happy, but I could not quit because our family was $45,000 in debt.  I was stuck going through the motions each day just so our family debt could be paid.  I became fed up one day and decided that I had a dream and that job wasn’t it so I worked on getting out of debt and as a result life became unlimited.  When you have NO DEBT you can start to do what you want to do because you are not depending on anyone else for your livelihood.  Dreams start to come true and make room for new dreams that change the world for the better.  When retirement comes you look back on your life and can honestly say you lived a life fulfilled!  Only you can make your dreams come true!

Do you see debt as a hindrance to your dreams?

Let’s Celebrate!

April is more than a month where we get to play practical jokes on unsuspected victims, it is also designated as Financial Literacy Month!  During Financial Literacy Month there are events taking place daily that attempt to educate the public about money management.  The goal is to help both young and old realize that Financial Literacy is nothing to be afraid of, but instead embraced and conquered.  I know that your own financial life can be overwhelming at times, but hopefully I can give you a few starting points that you can implement during the last thirteen days of April.  April is just the beginning, the idea is to keep going until you master your own financial life!

Steps:

1.    List your short (3-6 months), intermediate (3-5 yrs), and long term (10-15 yrs) goals for your life on a sheet of paper and put it on your refrigerator.

2.    Open a savings account and start saving a certain amount each paycheck. Even if it is $10 just save something!

3.    Write down all your debts both small and large. (Face the fear of knowing the total)

4.    Determine how much money you have coming in (paycheck) versus how much money is going out (bills). Write it all down on a piece of paper.

5.    From that piece of paper (budget) determine which are needs and which are wants.  Determine what can be cut back or cut out.

6.    Once you figure out in your budget where you can save money start adding that extra money to your smallest debt and pay it off fast! Then repeat with the next smallest debt until all debts are eliminated.

7.    Find an accountability partner.  Someone who will encourage you to keep going when times get tough and remind you of those goals you have on your refrigerator.

I know that personal money management can be overwhelming.  It can feel like you are trying to eat an entire elephant all at once. Just remember to take one piece at a time and eventually that elephant will be completely gone.  That is why I put seven steps instead of thirteen for these last thirteen days so you can take your time and get it done by or before April 30^th.  The steps are simple all you have to do is say to yourself “I am ready to make a change for the better in my financial life” and the rest will take care of itself.  Don’t give up; complete the journey because in the end all of the financial strife that use to be a part of your life will just look like a bad dream and all that will be left is financial success!

Will you take the first step TODAY?