It’s important that we expand the advice to men AND women because we are more than likely to be together longer than we will be apart. Due to racial inclusion and exclusion, when you’re Black you need other Black people because that’s how we were socialized. There’s even a socialization to not be comfortable with White people that we have to un-learn. That cultural learning means we can then integrate, by choice and not necessity (which is what the Civil Rights Act did) and network into wealth.
I learned a lot from The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires.
Stage 1: Decision to Have Money
It is a conscious decision to not be poor. That means that you then have to focus on what you’re doing that’s making you poor, that is taking money away from you. Your first consideration is
STEP 1: TIME.
Measure yourself, your life, your lifetime, your ability to physically work, to mentally work, when you want to “retire”, if you even want to retire. You have to understand your own personal time frame.
I have about 50 years of health left until death. The question then hinges against, I have 40+ years to do things that amass wealth. Now I can start to dabble in and design what those things will be.
Over the past decade I’ve slowly created STEP 2: MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME.
- You can have a job yes, and sock away for 40 years into a 401k/IRA with constant rolling over of $5500 and end with over $1 million.
- Now you can buy a house, have an IRA, have a 401k and buy a two family house worth $250k, garnering $2500 a month in rent—-$30k a year.
- That’s another $1.2 million.
- Total is $2 million in IRA, rental, maybe another $1 million in cash in a 401k plus a primary home let’s say $250k and the other property $250k, $500k. $4 million. Let's say you started at 25 and sell/cash everything out at 65 with that $4 million. Even if it’s halved or accelerated by 20 years, then you end with $2 million in cash. You may have to consider your health if you live another 20 years but if you’re the kind of person who can delay gratification for 20 years by saving and being thoughtful, you’re probably someone who can take intermediate care of their health so your death will probably be a natural one, not accelerated by heart disease, diabetes, etc..
STEP 2: MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME
- A job is one stream of income.
- A job, even if it graduates to a career (3–5 years, with specific skills/expertise, ever increasing skill levels that can continue for a lifetime).
- Multiple Streams of Income mean that you have something besides your job/career.
- You might have a career and then get a part time job (which could be $18k a year that you invest into a 401k).
The question becomes how can you create another stream of income.
Streams of Income
- Purchasing stock is another stream of income—-hopefully your stock will increase in value.
- Your 401k can be another source of income because you can also take loans from it for school, hardships or to purchase real estate.
- Your IRA is another stream of income
- Now the above is suppose to be a part of your savings systems so you might want to save into them (not all your money) but a percentage 25–30% of your GROSS (before taxes) not your NET (after taxes) income.
- Insurance vehicles—-savings, generational transfer, etc.
- Taxes-controlling your tax expenditure
This is just what should be the BASICS for Black people in America. This is what we should be talking about in rap songs, on talk shows, around the dinner table, sending our kids to school to learn about because they’ve been inculcated into this language and thought process since they were children.
As early as 4 years old we should be teaching children to save, to plan for tomorrow, to have enough on hand for an emergency. Being an employee and having savings from every job, from every dollar you make should be just a natural part of our financial lives.
Imagine if from 4 years old you saved 10%, a dime, a dollar from every dollar you’ve had. It was just a natural thing to do so.
This is what the wealthy are doing. Less toys, more planning.
Intermediate Wealth Building: You must understand Taxes.
Simple for a few hundred dollars take the H&R Block Tax Preparer’s class. From there you can do taxes for a season to gain experience, make a little money and most importantly see how Taxes/Finances works. Or for free, you can do the online Tax Preparer’s certification from the IRS. I’ve done both because I knew I needed an Intermediate to Advanced understanding of taxes to maintain myself and operate a business.
No wealthy person whether worth $1 million or $1 billion doesn’t understand taxes and their position, options and loopholes. The loopholes are built for the educated not the commoner. If you want to be wealthy you will have to make the voluntary self distinction. Most people don’t make that distinction and sit at the mercy of their government and therefore never have the control, sovereignty nor cash to do anything else but sit there and give it up to the government, who is willing to take more than you should be giving.
Then you can Intermediate to Advance the Game with Entrepreneurship.
Now having gotten the basics on an automated plan, even if it’s just a few dollars a week, you can look at what your side hustle could be. I’ve had a side hustle since I was six years old, a national one by 14, my mother gave me a Tax ID number for my fourteenth birthday; I was experimenting with a large institutions money by 22. After undergrad, I went into the corporate world for the education on finance, insurance, real estate, taxes, securities, law while paralleling that with graduate studies so that I have an Intermediate to Advanced Financial Education.
Here’s what I have learned about entrepreneurship over 30 years of doing it.
- Your first idea even if it makes money won’t necessarily be your idea for life.
- It’s best if you both understand and like the work that you’re doing, but you don’t have to love it. (I didn’t love the newspaper delivery business I created at 6–7 years old…but the money bought me the action figures and comic books I wanted.)
- It teaches you to see the world as almost transparent and to start seeing deals and opportunities everywhere.
- You get better and better at the core skills and resilience even as you change what you do. That’s the true profit, not just the cash.
- Not everyone can hang with such a dynamic person, you’ll have to learn to edit your time with people who don’t think like you do and increase your time with those who do. (I personally have mentors and have paid to join a mentorship and training groups where we not only network but also analyze and evaluate each other’s businesses. No, I can't take all my family and friends to those places and yes, it’s often that I’m the one or one of few Black people there. The price of my great-grandchildren owning the company or shares in the ones that your great-grandchildren work for (at the jobs they hate because you didn’t take similar financial action this generation for them like I am for my unborn great grandchildren, is that sometimes I have to be uncomfortable or stand out. Which is a damn sight better than financial slavery hoping for a lottery win.))
- It’s fun!
STEP 3: PLAN YOUR LIFE
(Eugene Mitchell is committed to creating $50 billion dollars within the Black community through insurance protection and payouts)
Life Insurance Is One of the Keys to Black Wealth
Most people don’t plan their lives so they are only dealing with day to day, week to week, maybe as far out as a month, in terms of planning. In order to generate and control wealth you have to expand and extend your vision. From the beginning to end. I say to the end because this will involve insurance. Insurance is looking to the future, passing on a financial legacy to your children, siblings, cousins, a partner, spouse, friends.
Pass it on.
We acquire and manifest wealth when we participate in sharing and moving that wealth, as money/property, through multiple hands/generations. When we don’t we have performed the White supremacist agenda to perfection—-we have slit our own throats AND those of our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren because then every child, every new generation must start at Square One again.
Just so you could have an IPhone, a car lease and a Louis Vuitton bag—-all of those companies having no recirculated dollars back into your family, community, nor your pocket.
- Aim for $1 million dollars in an insurance policies—-singular or as (10) $100,000 polices or 20 $50,000 policies. Separate policies by relationship. One for your spouse and separate ones for your children. Another one for your living parents.
You want your life to be an enhancement to others. And your spouse, parents, children, siblings should all have policies that name you as beneficiary. For a few dollars a month, we could end the economic racial gap in one to two generations because college education (without loans), a first starter home, seed money for a business would be guaranteed for everyone in your family by the generation before and those surrounding them now and you’d be passing it to the future—-you’d be passing security to the future. That would be the truest testament you could make that Black Lives Matter.
- $1 million will cost from $800 to $1200 a month. If you subdivide then you can work out what your monthly budget is but you want to build up your policies “bank”.
- Plus you want your 401k, your IRA, your home, your rental properties with specific people listed as beneficiaries and to your decision of separation and division.
- Which means you might think your partner is better for your rental property to go to and your 401k to be divided 50/50 between your (hypothetical) 2 children
Insurance then becomes a cornerstone of your wealth, even if it takes you decades to align things and then make decisions and keep your wills and such up to date and accurate. But most wealth is transferred yet most African Americans don’t transfer.
Slavery worked well with Black people by segregating us from generation to generation—-by destroying our regard for each other.
The physical slavery, the oppression, the lack of autonomy was not the crime—-the psychic blinding to inter-generation connection and responsibility is what has permanently crippled African Americans to the Wealth Gap.
The question in your vision is you might be ready, you might think of this but your family is not, your children are too young, you don’t have a spouse, your spouse doesn’t know—-so you’re starting this out.
You might want to think about establishing a Trust—-talking to a lawyer, paying them to set up trusts that might be structured in ways that what you create doesn’t get gobbled up and used up in one generation. You can control that you’re giving to people who still have to learn about the value of your gift.
Say in a basic way you have your 401k from your job and in 20–40 years you might be able to amass $400k to $1 million.
You know that you have something else so this is what you’re looking to leave to your children. You can have a trust—-like a guidance in between the money and the beneficiaries are given the balance divided over time. Maybe $400k divided over 20 years.
You might do this for tax purposes ($10k is a non-taxed gift per year) and you don’t want to overwhelm your children and you don’t want them to foolishly try to live off of the principal—-you want them to work/earn so the money they get may not be in a lump sum enough for them to go wild with but it’s enough to cover some of tuition, a used car, help with a down-payment on a house, act as investable cash for them. Imagine if they took your $400k for 20 years and you add in another $10k, that’s well over $1 million in 20 years.
Imagine yourself getting a base $10k to $20k a year when you turned 18 until 60. Some of it would go towards your living expenses, your college tuition, buying a first home, paying basic bills as you interned or worked low pay jobs for experience.
Couple the above with a saving mentality that you are investing 10% of that money until you don’t really need it that much, then you’re investing 25% a year then 75% of the $20k a year for years and years and years on end——for your retirement, for your children, for insurance policies—-all legal—-look at that amassed wealth!
Reading this you can see the idea is a progressive envisioning of what to do, how to give, create and even multiply what you give and most importantly protect the money and the recipient.
I learned a lot from The Wealth Choice: Success Secrets of Black Millionaires.
#KylePhoenix
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