1. My Story
After serving as a financial analyst on CNN and other outlets for more than 7 years, I began to get the feeling that there was something more that I had to do after having conversations with many individuals who were struggling in their financial lives. When I say financial lives, I’m referring to the comprehensive concept and presence of money in, throughout, and over every aspect of their financial lives. To put it bluntly, most were broke and working to make ends meet, basically living paycheck-to-paycheck, or had a small (I use the term loosely) savings. I saw myself in each of these individuals and realized that if I hadn’t been thrust into the role that I was at 23, I might be right there with them trying to figure it all out, still making the costly mistakes that set me back, adding years to my sentence of financial ignorance.
I can remember the phone ringing as my mother and I sat in our modest two-bedroom apartment in Detroit about a block away from 8 Mile Road, the street that Eminem made famous in his biopic film by the same name. I could tell from the surprised look on my mother’s face the news wasn’t good. Tears began to run down her face. It definitely wasn’t good. My father had died. He lived in Chicago, and at the age of 32, had suffered a severe brain aneurysm and had slipped into a coma. One day later he was gone. My father’s passing changed my outlook on life. To understand the impact, let me rewind just a little.
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yes, black people do live in Wisconsin. I was the first and only child. My early years were very pleasant. My mother was the youngest of ten and I was the last grandbaby. I was what you might call spoiled. I can remember having a plethora of toys. Other kids always wanted to come over to play with my drum set, my new action figures, or my remote control cars. I don’t remember asking for much, but just remember having the things. This would become a regular occurrence in my life.
My parents married at 22. I was born when they were 23. They divorced not long after I was born. My mom and I moved in with her parents. They lived in a two-story duplex. My grandparents lived upstairs and a few cousins lived below. I developed a close relationship with my Grandmother, whose name was Ruby, and with my Grandfather Bennie. They were two beautiful old people in love and had been married for 50-plus years by the time I came along. They were special to me because they made me laugh and smile, showed me what true love was, and would give me whatever I asked for.
I can still remember my Grandfather stretching his cane toward me to grab my legs and pull me toward him. My Grandfather became ill, and before I knew it, he was gone. My Grandmother’s heart gave out about 9 months later. The doctors said it wasn’t a heart attack, but rather it just stopped beating. Many people believed that this was the result of losing the only love she knew. This was devastating to our family, but earth-shattering to my mother, who cared for them both and was the baby of the family. At 28, she had lost both her parents and felt lost herself. Two months later, my oldest uncle Bennie Jr. suffered a stroke and died also. My mother needed a change. She had to make a move to have a fresh start, so she decided to move us to Detroit, where she already had a brother and sister who both had families there. We packed and moved quickly. I can remember one of my going-away gifts was a T-shirt that read “Pray for me, I live in Detroit.”
Welcome to Detroit
We settled into our one-bedroom apartment, which would be our home for about a year until our two-bedroom unit would be available. The community seemed nice enough and I was still around family. I was enrolled in a school by the name of Vandenburg Elementary that was located across the expressway that was about a 20-minute walk from my home. It was a better school, from the research my mother had done than the ones in the district we lived in. It was in my mother’s sister Doris’s district, so we used her address to enroll me. The plan was for me to walk to school in the morning and then go over to my aunt and uncle’s home a few blocks from the school until my mother was able to pick me up after work. I don’t really remember what my mother actually did at that time, but I know it was sales-related. It seems as though she always did something in sales. We didn’t talk much about work, probably because it was the last thing she wanted to talk about after a long day. To be honest, it wasn’t what I was interested in discussing either. I was just elated to see her.
I Lost It Before I Got It
Not long after my father died, I began to hear my mother on the phone in the evenings saying things like, “So what happened to the money? Will he get any? Shouldn’t that go to Clyde?” Intrigued by what she was talking about, I began to listen more. From what I could hear, it seemed my father was entitled to some land not far from Memphis, Tennessee, that should have gone to his child, me. Instead, one of his sisters decided that it didn’t belong to me, so she kept the part that would have been mine. My mother was furious. It all seemed so confusing to me. She explained it to me, in the way my mother always would, as if I were a little adult, that my aunt had taken what was supposed to be mine. Not sure of how that really affected me, it still made me sad since I had learned that you didn’t take anything that wasn’t yours. I never received any part of that land, which I later found out was worth several hundred thousand dollars.
I guess this was my first bad money experience, which was totally confusing because I always thought family was there to help you, support you, and make you feel better. Now I was learning that one of my family members had taken something from me that was worth money. “Why would she do something like that?” I thought. It’s just money. Right?
What I Learned
This experience showed me that money had power. It obviously had the power to divide families and make people exhibit behaviors they may not if money weren’t involved. At the early age of 8, I was now witnessing the ugly side of this thing called money. I resented my aunt for doing this because it seemed so wrong. Little did I know that things like this happened more often than not. It was a lesson in money and life. Maybe it was good I didn’t get the money because, at the time, my money behavior which was passed down from my mother supported spending until there was none left.
It wasn’t about being rich or wealthy for me. I saw large homes on television, expensive cars going down the street, but I never put that together to mean other people were rich. It just meant they were able to get what they wanted. I lived in an apartment while my friends lived in houses. I never thought about it being not as good as the way others lived, but rather that this is just how we chose to live. Did my mother want to purchase a home for us? Maybe. I’m not sure. We didn’t discuss that. We just lived. That was home.
What Is Money for Anyway?
I’ve heard many people say they didn’t realize they were poor growing up because they were shielded or sheltered from the harsh reality of not having enough money. My first tainted view of money was that it was something made to spend. This wasn’t from a lack of mentality, but rather consumer training. My mother bought everything I wanted. She made sure I had nice stuff—toys, clothes, and everything else. When I got them, it made me feel good and made her happy to spoil me. She taught me early on to respond to the question that people would often ask, “Are you spoiled, Clyde?” to which I would respond that I was fortunate, not spoiled. I did feel complete because I got what I wanted and didn’t have to work hard to get it. I just asked for it. I did the minimum required. I think this same mentality followed me into adulthood until I was slapped with the harsh reality that good things comes to those who work hard to make their vision a reality and execute their plan.
I think I might have been 5 when I was given money by my uncles every time I visited them. They just gave me a dollar here and maybe a two-dollar bill there. On a great day, I’d get a five. No one told me what to do with the money. I had seen my mother and others use the money to buy the things they wanted or needed. At 5, there weren’t many things I needed that weren’t already provided by my mother or others, so, of course, I began to use the money to purchase things I wanted like candy, toys, and that sort of thing. (I was beginning with no plan or direction. This never ends well.) Unbeknown to me, I was creating a money mindset that was not going to be conducive to building wealth of any sort. As a matter of fact, it was the complete opposite. It was a path to use all that I had to get what I wanted.
Sure, you might say I was just a kid and that I should have fun and use the money to get things I wanted. But I still could have done that and also saved maybe 20 percent for my rainy-day fund or future fund. Think about it. If I would have been educated about the power of compound interest and just saved some of the money I was given from the time I was 5 until now, even in a low interest-bearing account, I would have had a substantial amount and a foundation to begin on. Instead, I got a mouthful of cavities from too much candy that helped build wealth for some dentist whose name I don’t even remember.
As I got older, that “easy come, easy go” mindset would prove to be the prevailing thought process that would govern my life. If I had money and wanted something, I would buy it. Or if I wanted something and didn’t have the money at the time, I would find a way to get the money to just consume that thing. It’s sad when you think about it. I was living to consume. My only strategy was to get, to have, and figure out the details along the way. My perception of money was that it was a tool to consume and nothing more.
I Thought I Was Rich
By the time I was 23, I had an income of about 200K annually. This was more money than most people I knew were making. I was a 100 percent commission mortgage banker in a small suburb of Orlando called Maitland, Florida. This is where I learned the art of sales, developed a heart to help others get from where they were to where they wanted to be, and learned that making a lot of money doesn’t make you immune to the issues that those with less have. Because it’s not what you make but how much you keep.
These lessons would prove to be instrumental to my development. At the time, I felt that I had enough money to spend. Trips to Aruba, long weekends at the beach, boats, nice cars, clothes, and all the exotic handbags my wife could carry became my reality. I was armed with a total disregard for managing money and a desire to have those things that I wasn’t exposed to. That was my driver. Although I thought I was different, separated from those with less money, I possessed the same mindset. To my surprise, it was a poverty mindset that would keep me broke no matter how much money I made.
One day I was sitting around the house in Florida, bored. I began to think about some of the clients that I had been assisting who had large credit limits but marginal credit. This was the mid-90s when as long as you had a decent credit score, a pulse, and could fog a mirror, you could get loans, credit cards, or anything else you wanted to borrow pretty easy. At the time, I had no credit cards. Everything I wanted I just paid for with cash. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I hopped on the computer and applied for a shiny new credit card online. Why not, I thought, what did I have to lose? I didn’t realize that I actually had a lot to lose. I was applying for credit just because I could. I had no plan of action and was about to do something really dumb. In what seemed like seconds, I was approved for a new credit card and, to my surprise, this new card came with a $20,000 limit. I was elated with my new tool, one I really shouldn’t have had.
My first mistake was getting a card I didn’t need, nor one I was prepared for. My second mistake was not paying attention to the interest rate. When the card came in the mail, I noticed it was one of the newer mini credit cards that could fit on my key chain. Cute, I thought. But it was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, one that I had no clue how to tame, as well as the 12 percent interest rate that came with it.
I still didn’t realize the power I truly had, and what I could have done with it only if I knew how to use it appropriately. I charged it to the point where I had so much debt that I couldn’t pay it off entirely in 1 month. The interest was building rapidly. I could have used it to build my credit, help with emergencies. I could have even used it to start a business. Instead, I used it foolishly and often. It became hard to pinpoint exactly what I had purchased by the time I had maxed out the card because I had invested in many everyday things like food, groceries, clothes, and other things that made me feel better. I used this card until the magnetic strip was fading off the back. As I continued to consume many small things with the card, I lost sight of how much I was actually spending at any period in time.
Without the physical reminder of bills or lack of bills in my wallet, I thought my supply was endless. It takes a long time to spend 20 grand is what I thought. But I was wrong. In truth, when I thought I had only $250 on small items in any given month, I actually had spent triple that, and simply not remembered because there was no accountability.
My monthly minimum payment on the card was $1,200. I can remember making the payment with little to no effort when the money was coming in rapidly, which really wasn’t helping me, because that monster called interest, that can either work for you or against you, was definitely not on my side.
Wake Up Call
As the industry shifted, and mortgage rates increased, the money began to slow, and I began to wonder how I would make the monthly payment that at one time seemed like a piece of cake. This piece of cake now became a nasty mountain of old cake I had to climb, untrained and with no gear. I was determined to get the balance paid off, but after months of low or no income and struggling to make the payments, the balance went into collections. I vowed that this would never happen again.
This would be the beginning of my change, or what I like to call my financial awakening. My eyes were opened to what money was really about. I could make the money, but if I didn’t manage the money, I would lose it fast. If I were going to ever have more than I had, I would have to do things differently. I had to separate my wants from my needs and create a plan that would help me accumulate what I desired. I had achieved a level of financial success but wasn’t prepared for it, so I lost it. I lost the opportunity to start building a substantial savings. Even worse, I had missed obtaining the security and financial independence that I now believe to be the freedom that people who possess wealth know as their reality.
I’d always wanted to be a great entrepreneur and break free from the confines of corporate America. Yet, I was thinking, “Yeah right, like that’s going to happen.”
You see, I was canceling the positive words or thoughts out with negative thinking. Although I didn’t verbalize my fear of failure, one that had a Kung Fu grip on the progression of my life, I thought it. Therefore, it was so. I was destined to remain just where I was, waiting for something amazing to happen, waiting for that email that would change my life, the phone call that would help me step out of the door, or the contract that would give me permission to take a leap of faith. I know it sounds crazy, but that was my reality or the reality I had convinced myself to live daily.
My affirmation was...
I have the ability to create wealth in abundance; I am a wealth creator.
I repeated this over 20 times a day. You might believe in affirmations and you might not. I didn’t for years, but when I began to fill my subconscious with thoughts of success instead of thinking about what I didn’t want to attract to my life, things began to become clearer. Any time I had a negative thought, which I had learned from experience was the beginning of more negative thoughts, I would soon become consumed with negative thoughts that usually kept me stuck and not able to move forward to accomplish the things that needed to be done. I was in desperate need of mentors whom I could identify with, ones who had overcome adversity and were living a purposeful life void of the lack that I was beginning to feel had become a permanent fixture in my life.