My Personal Wealth Plan

Information about wealth is overwhelming sometimes. I remember when I was younger thinking that I could save my way into being wealthy. I heard that wealthy people have multiple streams of income and set my goals on getting there. Unfortunately, no one said they didn’t go to a physical job to get it! After trying to work three jobs at the same time, I realized I was not going to get rich this way. All the positions I was in were of entry-level style work and pay. Then I started to think that I would need some special talent. I would have to be an actor, athlete, inventor or some other very rare stroke of luck life would give me. Well that didn’t happen and I never felt these talents to be in my grasp. However, I realized their are many ways to get and maintain wealth. Even though my hard work was not lost, I was just in the wrong position. My physical work needed to be more mental. If we are average people, we need to work on creating or building our own skill! That is the key. then we add other incomes to aid in getting assets to pay us passively, or grow over a long period of time. Here’s my personal plan…

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Shouldn’t need to be said, but this is my personal plan. you need to do your own research on what works for you and your abilities. It is wise, before investing to have a 3-6 month emergency fund. no point in building wealth if you have to take it out because of a layoff or car repair. It is also wise to not have any outstanding debt on liabilities. No point in interest on your investment if you are paying interest on a balance. You want to be net positive on interest coming to you!

First I found my skill in transportation. This is what my family and I live on. When we needed extra money for other things, That’s when I worked another job. When my income exceeded our basic needs, that’s when I started saving in my 401K. That’s my first step. this will help build up my income in assets in the stock market. The average return of the stock market has been in the teens for over forty years. This will make sure I get growth on every dollar that I invest. Over time different employers matched my contribution in different amounts. I always tried to put in the matched amount, but more if possible. This is the basic thing I can do to grow wealth.

If your trying to grow wealth with little effort, do that simple thing of putting money into a retirement account. It can be a 401K, IRA, ROTH IRA or other tax benefiting accounts. If your self employed or your employer doesn’t have a retirement plan, there’s no excuse. Many financial platforms offer IRA’s. Just don’t save cash. With inflation, it’s like paying 4% on every dollar you leave in the bank or in your mattress! The reverse of building wealth. This can keep you barely treading water when you retire. Lets avoid doing that!

Next, I need to fix the cost of living. One thing that happens, is the cost of everything keeps going up. Even though I may get a raise, I realized that it never equals how fast everything around me is going up in price. So when I did, I decided to get a house to stop the increase on rent that happens every year. This will in turn keep a certain cost associated with shelter from rising, something we all need. I also get to keep the value of every dollar I pay down on the mortgage with the hope of property values going up over time, increasing my net worth for just owning where I stay. Next is transportation. I currently live in the Dallas, TX metroplex. Even though the city has public transportation, the suburbs I live in do not. Having a car to work and get around is a necessity in my area. To combat the cost of a car payment, I buy very affordable vehicles. I’ve paid between 3 and 14 thousand for all my vehicles cash. This way I avoid interest to the bank or car company and the insurance company, who may want me to have full coverage with a $500 deductible causing a higher premium. Instead, I can raise the deductible to what I want to pay and change some of the requirements the lean holder would impose on the car to insure they don’t lose their value in case of an accident. Also paying cash in this stage of my life with relatively low values compared to new cars; it keeps me from losing so much depreciation that a new car will incur and sell it getting back almost all I put into it! These are the ways I found to help the cost living, while keeping and potentially increasing my net worth.

With that said, owning a home is not as simple as paying the mortgage that doesn’t go up. I wish someone would have explained the maintenance that goes into it. Both my home and paid for cars have constant maintenance bills that vary and unexpected repairs. These arguably make a home and cars liabilities. However, in the long run of many years I believe these are good assets to have and to set you up for building wealth.

Now, my wealth building train has started. It’s slowly growing consistently. What can I do to help it? For the longest I assumed I would only enjoy life when I retire, because I wouldn’t make a little better than average income. I didn’t realize, Just by doing retirement accounts, I’ve added two other income sources that don’t require me punching in a clock. my 401K and IRA! They not only grow with the market, they pay dividends that are reinvested to help them grow! So, I have three income sources at this point. I invest ~15% of my income. Income is put into different categories for bills, groceries, emergencies, clothes, vacations and other expenses. Over that, any extra money will go to another account that I hope will lead to more financial growth. One is this website and media platforms I’m investing in. I buy individual stocks and crypto. Next I hope to get rental properties. I also really would like a couple of franchises I like and my own billiard hall! None of these will immediately make me wealthy. In fact they may cost a considerable amount to get going and keep running. The idea is over time they will produce more and more cash flow (income). Eventually the rental properties will be paid for and the businesses will get stable giving another source of income. The best part, my kids can inherit it! This is the plan to be wealthy!

In conclusion, this is not a sprint or jump into wealth. This is a marathon anybody can be a part of. You can follow me as I will post all updates to the plan and progress on all the platforms. My goal is to encourage everybody to make a change in becoming wealth. Pit Bull, rapper, entrepreneur said (roughly), “People always wonder how I got so lucky and successful”, he said, “hard work!”. “The harder I worked the luckier I got!” I love that! We are not promised financial success by any means. However, the harder we work the better chance of a better than average income, creating wealth for us and the ones we love. Not settling, giving up or realizing we need to pivot is the best way we can achieve our desired income. We should never thinking we know everything, because we can’t receive new information! Lets ll get on a path to wealth!

The ‘Hellcat’ Mentality

So, the other day, my oldest daughter asked me a question, or more like a statement. Now, it may be a teenager thing, but had me thinking. ‘I wish you could afford a Hellcat daddy’. I said ‘I can afford one!’ But then I actually did the math…

Now believe me, I understand this is an over-generalization. Many people that have one of the very popular Dodge vehicles may have very nice incomes to compensate for the purchase. However, I’m basing it on the average medium income in America at $58K a year. To purchase a product with a starting MSRP of around $80k and up with the Hellcat line. I’m also basing it on the individuals at my place of employment that I know for a fact do not make yearly what the vehicles purchase price is! One of which is living in an apartment! Nothing wrong with an apartment. However, the allocation of their income is being misplaced, in my opinion.

Lets start with the obvious. Even with a decent down payment, your monthly payments will be a minimum of around $1K/month! This is assuming an eight year loan, with $5K down and %5 interest. You are tying up your income from your hard work for eight years. If you make the nations average salary, that’s a quarter of your income, before taxes going to transportation (an un-needed expense). Now if that’s what you want to do, we are all grown. My goal is to make us all better than average Joe’s!

One of the ways I’ve been able to put so much in my retirement accounts, build a six month emergency fund and invest; is by keeping my transportation cost low. I have a salvaged title 2006 Impala I payed $3K cash for eight years ago! It’s my daily driver. Have I had issues over that time, of course. But I can guarantee it wasn’t $80k worth.

You might say, ‘ Well I don’t want the hassle of a used car’ or ‘ I’m just getting someone else’s problems.’ You may be absolutely correct and justified in your responses. I would argue, I don’t want to have to slave for ‘the man’ to pay for nicer transportation. Don’t get me wrong. I would love to have a vehicle like that in my future car collection. But, not at the expense of my future goals. If I tied up a quarter of my income up for transportation, another quarter for rent or mortgage, another quarter for utilities, fuel, insurance, maintenance; we leave little room for food, living and almost nothing for growing our wealth! This is not the wisest decision we can make.

Well Dang! When can I enjoy a nice Dodge Hellcat or Demon? I don’t have one, so I hate to say I don’t know exactly the best method to get you one. I do, however, have a plan to afford such a vehicle in the future. It’s not hard but it will take patience ( lots of it)!

If we were to get such a nice car, my preferred method would not be to pay for it with the income from my job. No No! we don’t need to steal it or borrow it indefinitely from a friend! I would want an added source of steady income or investment that doesn’t involve my constant effort to pay for it. This would be such things as a side hustle that I enjoy doing or a rental property. For example, the reason I’m creating these blogs and videos is because I enjoy talking, helping people with finances and other life perspectives. As, of this writing, I don’t make any money from this, but that is my goal. My income from my main job is taking care of my families needs as well as securing retirement and investment goals we have. When I make income from here It would go towards bigger investment goals and a percentage will go towards nice things. I hope this becomes my main job, so if any of this helps, please consider following and sharing!

Hand drawing Cost Benefits matrix graph concept with white marker on transparent wipe board on dark blue background.

My only other preferred method would be to have a great income compared to the vehicle. In this case the hellcat. I would need to make at least twice the price of the vehicle, which is $160K a year. In this way, I can pay the vehicle off in less than two years and still invest and save. Now this advice I derive from my favorite financial inspiration, Dave Ramsey with Ramsey Solutions. His suggestion to not have the total of all vehicles with a motor not be more than half your annual salary; or you have to be able to pay all vehicles off in less than two years. This advice frees up our wealth building tool, our income so that we can be wealthy and financially free! I love this! I just wish I could get my income up to afford nicer vehicles… But ‘this is the way’ ( The Mandalorian). Sorry love that show.

In conclusion, we are all in different places financially. So this can apply to many vehicles. It’s just that my daughter brings this to my attention, and I can’t afford a Hellcat with the guidelines I find to be wise, in my opinion. And we didn’t even touch on the insurance, likely hood of tickets or fuel cost which also increase the ownership expense in this vehicle. So I had to confess to my daughter that I couldn’t do what I thought I could because it wasn’t wise and to explain why most are probably not wise as well. If you meet these guidelines and are not feeling stressed paying your bills or worried about what the economy looks like in the future. Enjoy your Hellcat or Demon (just let me see what it feels like). I want us all to be less stressed because we had car fever. Every year there’s a new car coming out and we are not running low on awesome new features. We are running low on ways to afford groceries. So be wise and ride! Smart….

Why Money Really Is The Root Of All Evil

Why are we taught this? Is this just the absolute truth? Does this apply to Christian faiths only? If it’s evil, why do we need it for EVERYTHING?

How is it that something that can be used to feed the hungry, cloth the homeless or build hospitals and schools in third world countries looked at in such a negative light by certain people? Are you that certain person? I’ll tell you I am right now!

There are multiple types of people who believe this. The most common that I want to discuss is people that lack a substantial amount of wealth or assets and the people who actually used money in a way that can be considered evil.

The first type is troubling to me. You hear it in many different places. No mater where you are, if someone is displaying any amount of wealth or even perceived to be rich, you’ll hear phrases of hate. ‘No one needs to have that type of a car’, ‘Why do you need that big of a house?’, ‘No one should have that much money‘. The truth is they are not hating the person who has the items, they hate themselves for not acquiring it themselves! How do I know? I was one of them! When I was at one of my first jobs, I couldn’t understand how I worked so hard physically and was covered in dust everyday and had little to no savings. While other people who had on nice corporate outfits seemed to make so much money and didn’t even break a sweat to do it. Is it that they had a silver spoon in there mouths when they were born?

As a black man in America, we say things like the white man owns everything and doesn’t want to share. The man don’t want no one to come up. What man? This is not the thinking of a broke person, this is the thinking of a poor person. You may have heard Ben Carson say this and adding that it was a choice, while he was running for bid to be the president. He was highly criticized. No one taking into consideration where the hell he came up from! Look it up please if you don’t either. It was not only his mind that made a good life for him and his family as a neurological surgeon. It was his actions. When in his life could you say the man kept him from his achievements? When can you say the white man didn’t share with him? I say if I had even half the discipline and the dedication he had, I would have the same success! That wasn’t my dream and I didn’t have focus like him to get on the right path that early. I hear some people saying, ‘he’s one black man that made it, we all couldn’t, they wouldn’t allow that to happen’. Please for the love of Jesus stop saying that crap! These words are only dividers. Your dividing one race as being less than another and laying the same sad path for the future of any kid of color! If you are going to set the excuses from the start for kids, no wonder when only a few people of color make it you say that is why.

I will, however, agree with one fact that there is still a barrier to overcome in the way we achieve success. White people pushed Native Americans into concentrated areas and used Africans as slaves to build this America. That is why they can be proud of this nation, their flag and all the heritage of there forefathers. Knowing this fact tells me that they have the upper hand in society as a whole. Now take a look around you. Depending on where you are you may need to move around to see clearly. As someone who was born and raised in New Orleans (chocolate city, thanks former Mayer Ray Nagin for helping me make my point) all I mostly seen was African-Americans and how they lived. Anyone who would be considered white were mostly tourist or lived in upper middle class homes but not us. This alone created divide in my own heart along with the rap music I so enjoyed. Now that I’ve had the privilege to travel through most of the country and even a couple of other countries, My eyes are open to all things anyone, no mater your race or where you come from can make it. Because if you can bring value to someone with money, they will make sure you have value. When you hear motivational speeches talk about ‘you are only as good as the friends you have around you’, that is what they are looking for and what will happen to you if you open up to whoever that person is, no mater there race or background.

Now notice I said ‘make it’. I don’t want anyone to get confused and think I mean you too can be ballin like your favorite rapper. I too wish that I could do that. No, I mean you can have wealth and enjoy nice things but it is not going to happen worried about who has the upper hand. If you don’t have that wealth today, you can play the lottery all you want, you aren’t going to get it any time soon. But if you let your money work for you the way the wealthy people do, you won’t be able to stop from getting there. The best part about that is you can then let our kids be the next Donald Trump when you leave them your growing assets! Isn’t that the American Dream? Then go make it happen and don’t say money is evil, it’s just extra you had left over from planning so well and I’m enjoying it!

How about the people that have used money in a way that can be considered evil? Well, I think the most recent one that comes to mind is Jeffrey Epstein. He’s someone that had lots of wealth and used it to get a private island. Allegedly, there he was able to provide under age girls to other wealthy people. So, did money cause this? Did it cause him to be evil? What about R.Kelley? Do you think the money and fame caused him to be evil? What about other types of evil. Drug king pins, and the the money launderers, the money turned them, right?

Our emotions, the media and even movies make us believe these people achieved there financial dreams, then they some how ended up thinking they could pay for evil acts and get away with it. When the truth is they were evil all by themselves. The money just brought them to a status of fame. So when they fell, everyone wanted to know there life story. We know that people get sentenced to prison and labeled as pedophiles all the time. Drug king pins and other major felony violators didn’t wake up in that seat. Somewhere else in there lives they compromised moral society issues, but now because they had money, we want to say the money is the root of all evil. Dave Ramsey has said something to the effect of ‘money is a magnifier. What ever that person was good or bad at, by multiplying the money,it will multiply the good or bad they already are’.

Americans not being there for each other is the root of all evil. We must treat each other how we would want to be treated, no mater what the other person is doing. If you don’t think your stuff stinks, lets see you eat off your own toilet bowl then! We can’t control other peoples action but you can control your reaction to them.

We also need to do a better job with our kids in America. You here ‘that aint my kid’, ‘who raised them children’? No, they are your kid because if they end up in prison doing evil s@#$ with money, your tax dollars will be taking care of them in prison because WE failed to give them options and now they can only give us excuses.

So, whenever you here someone try to make a sermon quote and say ‘money is the root of all evil’, tell them you don’t believe that! Tell them money is just a brick. You can build dream homes with it, you can turn it to gravel or you can add to it. But, If someone decides to hurt someone else with it, they didn’t need a brick, they would use something else. the American Brick is not evil.

4 Keys To Be Financially Stress-free Like A Brick

After all, isn’t that what the smart piggy used, bricks? Yea, I think so, and so will we!

In order to have that life, you need to know what can stop you from getting it. We all know life is not perfect, but don’t forget neither are we! As you may have read from my previous post, I’m not into sports. However, The concept of offense and defense in sports can be related to finances. We must have a way to protect our money, as well as grow it. That’s defense and offense, in case you follow sports less than me. There’s a lot of info on how to make, invest and grow money. We get excited about these ideas and start to lay our bricks down, then realize, maybe we should have something to hold this together when a strong wind comes. So with that in mind. Lets get into it!

The first key is pretty obvious…

Spend less than you make…

That’s it, next…

Just playing, but this is important. If you find yourself with bills at the end of the month you can’t pay, you seriously need to evaluate the problem. There’s only two factors. Either your income is near or below poverty level or you spend to much in a certain area in your life. Both can be fixed with a plan and dedication. At one point in my life, with a new born and my wife( fiance at the time ) not working, I worked over 80 hours between two jobs for almost four years. No days off, no life and still no way out financially… so I thought. I’m not saying or wishing for anyone to go through that, but if anyone is serious about changing there situation, drastic measures may be what you need.

  • Income is below or at poverty level… There are way to many people trying to support a family making close to minimum wage. This income (and usually the job associated with it) is ideally for kids still in school, going to college or possibly a second income for a working family. If you are one of these people, keep doing what you must to complete the task in front of you. If you are trying to support a family, you have to take a fork in the road decision. Do I keep trying to make lemonade with sour lemons or do I add some sugar and water to this crap! If you haven’t done so already, you should be on every government program available to you in your area. However, don’t get complacent with this. Use this to your advantage to leap forward with a small business idea or help pay for school. I know a lady who was on food stamps (snap now); she made food from scratch, allowing the budget they gave her to go further. She was able to feed her house and sell plates to friends and neighbors. Now she doesn’t need the help and still sells plates for extra money. Making more money is as easy as re-selling items on Ebay, offering to clean or baby sit for someone and can be very flexible with kids tagging along (just be sure to disclose that when making deals), get creative, this is America after all! What ever you do, don’t go spend the money on anything that’s not essential to your needs. In later keys I’ll explain what to do with any extra money you can find…
  • If you make any decent amount of money, you need to be honest with me… I need you to take a look around your lifestyle. What’s there that you know you didn’t need, do to much of, or could even be a bad habit that drops the bottom line? Drive through any city and you can see what most people spend there money on. As Americans we’re obsessed with convenience. It’s supposed to make life easier that we don’t have to cook with so many types of restaurants nearby or go to a big box store for our favorite chips and ice cream. Yet the name convenience has it’s own premium built in. We know this yet we still go. So in order to fix this I suggest the envelope system. Set a reasonable amount of money you want to spend on these things every pay period and have it in cash. If you run out of cash, you don’t get anything else. The goal will be to realize how much you spend on these items and reduce or even eliminate what you are paying a premium for. If your into bars, night clubs, buying rims, new cars or anything else you might want to pay with a credit card so you don’t have to think about how much it is, STOP doing it. At the very least minimize it. Go to the club or bar when your friends want to celebrate your homeboys birthday or second marriage, not ‘ cause I got paid!’ You can find used rims, for cheap or a slightly used carat discount. Let someone else take the ‘new’ price hit and you get the real deal price of slightly used. You get the point? If your struggling with any money issues, and these are present, correct it! If this isn’t you, we need to get our hustle on. Either a second job or a side hustle. In my opinion, there are more options for women than men. Not to many people are willing to let a man babysit or clean there house, but these are two of my favorite ways to make a quick boost of income. For a quick 2 or 3 hours four times a week you could add $200 a week or $800 a month with very little overhead!!! If this can’t help your budget, you don’t need to eat out EVER!

The Next Key Is Our Defense, An Emergency Fund…

Ok, your spending less than you make, but for what, to save for that vacation? Hell NO! If you do take a trip it better be to put that extra money in the bank!

Stuff is going to happen in our life. We need a cushion to fall back on. I call it the bed made of bricks. Not really, but I’m trying to keep a theme going here. You can’t prepare for everything but you can shield yourself from the home repairs, car repairs, stuff breaking, needing replacement or even if you lose your job. In the last section we talked about earning extra income, that’s what you’ll use to build the emergency fund (E-Fund).

How much should it be? How chaotic is your life? If you seem to be losing jobs often, have a car with issues, house tearing apart, your going to want to go higher than my recommendation. To this point you may not have had a significant amount of money before, but you need to build an E-Fund at least 3 months worth of your bills and food. 6 months or more is better. For now we are still getting that foundation strong. So focus on the possible and get it done fast. When you have this your going to feel untouchable because, s&%$ you got money to take care of your problems! If your boss gets on that trip stuff, you can give’em the finger and walk out and still eat with the lights on for at least 3 months! (I wouldn’t recommend all that hard work for that, but send me a vid if you do) The main Thing with this money is now you have options. Do I find a trade school, or finish up a degree for my earning potential to rise? Maybe you have a hobby or side gig you want to see if you can make a decent living from? The foundation you are making is getting stronger to do what you want. Go for it!

The Third Key Is To Cover Your A$$!

That’s right insurance. I think we need another name for them because I’m not sure they care… did you get it? No! Don’t worry I won’t sue you.

When you get your E-Fund, even it needs protection. A simple trip to the emergency room can almost, if not totally wipe out your FU fund quickly. I spent two nights in the hospital after a motorcycle accident and just the room alone was almost $30,000! (hot tub with nurse not included, maybe in Vegas it would be, I digress) So our E-fund works in two ways: The first is any lose of income if we can’t work to keep the lights on at home; The second is to cover the deductibles with the insurance. I hate the deductibles, but I hate the full price even more.

With all that said, if you have a car you need insurance. If you have more than one vehicle or can get around fairly easy without a car I say just get liability. If you need your car if it should go down or use it for work, you need full coverage.

If you have a house, homeowners insurance is top priority, but also consider home warranties for your appliances, HVAC, plumbing and anything else you may be concerned with in the future. These appliances now a days have so many electrical parts that are very expensive. Play defense against what can drain your wallet.

The Fourth Thing…

Finally something you should want! Investing! Winning the game.

Everyone else puts disclosures in these sections, so I guess I should. I’m not an accountant, CPA or investment advisor. These are my opinions and suggestions based off my experiences and interest. Seek financial council from those smart people.

I’m going to be very general on this because each way to invest deserves its own post. Now that we have more money coming in, an E-Fund and insurance to cover our a$$, we can make the money work for us! There are so many ways to do this, but the most important thing is finding one you will like and would want to stick with.

If you are someone that doesn’t want to do that much work, the best ways are 401k’s, IRA’s, REIT’s and some bonds or CD’s for short term. Lately I’ve been getting into the Forex game, but there’s some work involved in that. These, when properly researched, can give you decent returns on you money. Meaning, your money making you money, not you working for it.

If you don’t mind putting some effort in the front end and maintenance on an ongoing investment: Real estate would be my next choice. Buying a house and renting it out or possibly flipping it. There are many ways to get into this, but it’s easier than one may think when you have money saved. Most properties go up in value and you will be paying down the value. This means your net worth will be increasing very quickly compared to the stocks and bonds mentioned above. It’s also a physical property that you control, giving you a little peace of mind that if the stock market crashes, people still need a place to live!

The last investment idea would be in a small business idea. Depending on the type of business you may be interested in the possibilities are endless. You don’t need to start with a lot of experience. You can even start by offering your services for free in exchange for references and testimonials. From dog/babysitting, cleaning homes/offices, catering, car detailing, computer repair or whatever you are confident you can do very well and don’t need expensive equipment; just offer a first time free or half off deal to your first client in exchange for them to help you grow as a reference. You can do all these part time and whenever is convenient for you! Some you can negotiate so you don’t have to travel to them and let them come to you. No commute, whats better than that? The other good thing about these things are you can scale them. If you get too busy ( in a good way) you can charge more to maximize your time with profits or plan to go ‘legit’ and rent out an office space somewhere! Know hows that for a game changer! From, ‘I’m struggling working for the man’ to ‘ Awe man, I think I need to hire someone’! If you think that running it may be more than you want to do, you can always hire a manager to do the dirty day to day grind for you while you continue with your other job and just let that business grow (your investment).

I hope these ideas can get you started on a path to what you want to build in this life. Depending on where you are, some of these things may be easier or harder than how I may have made it sound. If you really want it, I can tell you there is a way for you, you just need to keep trying and if something fails, don’t give up, try something else! There’s nothing holding you back except you. Don’t let another excuse get in your mind. The wolf will come and try to blow your house down, but when you how to lay those bricks down correctly, you’ll have the last laugh!

Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees, But You can Lay It like Bricks!

You Visualized It Already

Do you or have you watched a hip-hop music video? Chances are you have, and what’s the common theme other than the sexy dancers? Yea, MONEY! Maybe drugs, but we can discuss that in another topic. My favorite long time rapper, since I am from New Orleans, is Weezy F or Little Wayne or Carter or I don’t even know anymore. Now a days I follow christian rappers like Lecrae, Dee1 and Trip Lee. Go check them out if you don’t know who they are. Just the Wayne titles alone let you know what the songs are about; Duffle Bag, A Milli, Money On My Mind, Rich As F&%*, need I go on? These songs and videos have us imagining what we can have. You may say I know that’s not real, but you subconsciously dwell on those images. Otherwise they would not have put it in their videos. It’s rapertising (new word of the day).

I never believed I was wanting to have a rapper lifestyle until I was mad at the world. I was in a dark place. while I was looking at some of Lecrae’s music, he mentioned the life style they sell us in the videos and how it could change your perception of reality. They boost how the money and fame is from the gangster lifestyle of selling drugs and robbing to get by. None of which impacts our inner-cities in a positive light to the rest of the world. Now, I’m not saying you have to be a christian to have this perspective. However, I am saying you will need a better motive than that money brick imagination. What your really after is wealth and security. Both are obtainable whether you make 20 grand or 100 grand+ a year.

First things first…

Everyone is different! What works for a college student isn’t going to work for middle aged person with three kids. They have different responsibilities. I here you saying, duh whats new? Well I’m just surprised at how many think a living wage is a certain number for everyone. No, math doesn’t work like that. Also the spending habits of the individual and the area they live in will greatly effect those factors. Lets be practical, that is why Los Angeles has a homeless problem greater than most American cities. Its multiple reasons not just, ‘Oh my gosh, like whats a man gotta do to get 50 an hour? Suck cucumbers? Let me get high first.’ Bad humor, egh get over it. They have the same problems as every other major city(drugs, mental illness, poor money management etc), the thing that sets them over the top is very high cost of living. If you took someone with a relatively low income and placed them in Monroe, LA. You’ll think they were middle class by how much of a raise they thought they were given!

Next…

Very important, is for anyone who is maturing in their financial lives, is to know thy selves weaknesses. Keep it real for a moment, at least be honest with yourself. What do know you spend money on that you really don’t need? Where do you go that you need to cut back on? I had so many when I was younger, honestly when I cut them off I think that is what depressed me. I wanted to see movies AT the movie theater when they first came out. My budget didn’t allow for that! My justification was, well I worked hard for this, I should enjoy it. Those same movies will be at a dollar or budget movie theater in a few weeks. Same movie, same screen, same actors, same sticky floors with just slight amenity differences. That’s right you could’ve had a projector in your home for the difference and pocketed the rest! But everyone yelling and booing at a non-live picture is fun. I also over spent on fast food, restaurants and trying to impress other people that I don’t even know anymore! Yeah, honesty, honestly sucks! When you realy take a look at your spending only than can you realize, ‘money doesn’t grow on a tree, but I’ve been giving my bricks of money away to everyone!’ Whats your bad money habit?

Then we have those…

‘I wish we could afford a budget movie Joe! I have food stamps and trying to make ends meet with no car’. This is truly an impoverished circumstance that makes me sad. It’s so easy to spiral down to this with some bad choices and even bad luck. However, you are still among the grateful because you are not homeless. As long as you are healthy( I will address unfortunate health issues in a later blog) there’s nothing to stop you from reaching your dreams. That’s one of those things that makes America great is the programs that we have to help you. “There not easy to get or keep Joe”. Silence, I know, I wouldn’t want them to be when my taxes are paying for them. You may feel the same way when, not if, you get on the other side. If not either way I agree with Cardie B. I don’t trust the government to take more money from me and claim your going to get it. Solutions Joe, what are they! I’ll be honest, you need to really evaluate the reason your here NOW. You will have to take everyone else you think got you here out of the picture. ‘THATS ALL YOU GOT, YOU DON’T KNOW WHO DID WHAT TO ME!’ Damn straight I don’t, and I know there is not a M%^$#@ F%^&*$% thing you can do about them! We have to work on you moving forward. Your all I care about! The brick we need in America to succeed! Now that that’s out the way. If you are not getting assistance of any kind, please seek out any in your are(especially if theirs children involved). If you can not find any government assistance next would be close family and relatives to help you out with the next task. We have to get your income up short term, long term (with a trade, schooling of some kind or my preference your own business) or preferably both. Unfortunately, this juggling act is very hard, BUT IT CAN BE DONE. I’ve seen stories and know a few people personally (men and women) that have done so. It amazes me and lets me know, when we get our stuff straight, life gets straighter. Once we get the income up, help where we need it, patience, determination and a budget is key no matter who you are!

I hope some of this inspired anyone in a position of helplessness or just someone who needs encouragement. My favorite financial person, Dave Ramsey says, ‘No matter how big, small, bright or dim, it’s light at the end of the tunnel not an oncoming train‘(paraphrased). In the comments section, let us know what issues you face and if anything said helped you to be better positioned to be an American Brick!