Afterword

You know, at one point I was worried—better yet, extremely terrified. It started in 2003 when my father, Lonbaye Yarnway, Sr., lost his battle to terminal prostate cancer. My world crumbled. As a kid in the inner-city streets of San Francisco, I now had to go from depending on my leader to leading myself. Experiencing this traumatic loss was my first, head-on experience with the reality of our mortality. Before his passing, I was already seen as the man of the house. When my dad had cardiac arrests, seizures, and complications from his chemotherapy, I was the one attending hospital visits and listening intently to the doctors. The paramedics would often turn to me to get information about his health. I lost my childhood. I lost the innocence that every child is born with. Then I lost my father.

There was some sunshine through those days, though. My dad, the traditional Liberian man, showed no weakness even though his blank eyes winced in pain. He shared stories and jokes and was the life of the party even as his life slowly slipped away. One of the best things that he did at this time was bringing my cousin Moses, whom I called my brother, over from Liberia. Already diagnosed with cancer, my father went to Liberia during a time of civil war. As the story goes, he was in the courtroom litigating for my brother’s visa when gunshots rang out and bullets began whizzing through the air, almost killing them as they made their way to Roberts International Airport to depart for the United States. Years later that rush out of Liberia came to haunt my brother.

In January 2015, Moses became sick. He thought nothing of it. A common stomach flu, he thought. I was in Washington, D.C., at the time, growing my practice by going door-to-door to ask people whom I did not know to do business with me. Mo, as we called him, was my biggest fan. He’d routinely send me text messages to “keep going” and “don’t quit,” and would remind me that if anyone could do this it was me. In February, Mo was hospitalized due to complications from hepatitis B, which we later discovered had progressed into liver cancer, all because he had not been able to get a vaccine when escaping Liberia.

I slept in Dulles International Airport the night that Moses passed away. There was a blizzard in Virginia and all planes where grounded. In many ways, I feel as if God, the universe, or whomever you may believe in has spared me. Having my brother, my best friend, die might have broken me. Yet the memories that I have of him give me warmth and confidence to continue the work that I do for my family, for my trusting clients, and for myself.

From these experiences, I realized one thing: We are living on borrowed time. Every day, we are getting closer to other people assessing our legacies. We are living in a mad dash toward the end. Young Money is a money book that encourages you to use your time wisely, but doing so stretches far beyond money. My prayer for you is that it does not take the experiences that I have had to endure to get you to take action, but that this book serves as that call.

I look forward to seeing the great things you do with all that is in you.