February 11, 2025 • 44 mins
Ep. 202 Carter Cofield and George Acheampong are financial experts behind Melanin Money, dedicated to helping Black entrepreneurs and professionals build lasting wealth. Together, they're building the #1 Financial Education Community Designed to serve aspiring Melanin Millionaires.
Carter Cofield is the Owner & Lead Advisor of Cofield Advisors, LLC, where he helps creative entrepreneurs take control of their finances so they can focus on their zone of genius. He’s a CPA and Personal Financial Specialist (PFS), providing a one-stop shop for tax strategy, wealth building, and financial freedom.
George Acheampong is the Founder of Capitalwize and the Melanin Millionaires Club, a financial education platform helping 100,000 people of color achieve their first million in net worth. As a Forbes contributor and award-winning wealth manager, he’s revolutionizing traditional financial advice to accelerate wealth-building for Black professionals and entrepreneurs.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Anima Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. Carter
Cofield and George Ashen Pong are financial experts dedicated to
helping black entrepreneurs and professionals build lastly wealth.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Carter Cofield is the.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Owner and the lead advisor of Cofield Advisors, where he
helps creative entrepreneurs take control of their finances so they
can focus on his own A genius, he's a CPA
and personal financial specialists, providing a one stop shop for
tax strategy, wealth building, and financial freedom. George Orson Pong
is founder of capital Wise and The Melon A Millionaire's Club,
a financial education platform helping one hundred thousand people of
(00:38):
color achieve the first million in network. As a Forest
contributor and award winning wealth manager, he's revolutionizing traditional financial
advice to accelerate wealth building for black professionals and entrepreneurs.
Together with Melon The Money, Carter and Georgia building the
number one financial education community design to serve aspiring Melon
A Millionaires. So the first one to George, but I'd
(01:01):
like to get both of you guys as inputs on
this is Do you believe first of all, that traditional
financial advice for even high income earners in marginalized communities,
black communities, minority communities, that traditional advice still doesn't work
for us. If so, why doesn't it work for people
in our communities.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, that's a great question. The reason why I don't
think that it works is because for starters, a lot
of the traditional advice in the community or in the
financial advice industry is centered around assets under management.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's like, you can't start the conversation until you have
a quarter million dollars to invest, right, And not to
say that people don't have cash on the sidelines. What
we found to be true is that our clients were
starting businesses, they were becoming successful, they did have great
cash flow, but they were very much in the beginning
phases of building wealth or didn't even know about that.
(01:58):
They should be focused on the relation of wealth, right.
And so if we're saying that I got a client
that's you know, making you know, a quarter million, half million,
or even a million plus a year, But we can't
start the conversation by wealth building because you don't have
a quarter million dollars to invest. I think that's kind
of backwards and it's kew because even when we look
at our investment philosophy. As a company, we are preaching
(02:20):
that cash flow is king right. The industry at large
is saying, hey, invest for forty years and if you
do everything right, you have a million dollars at retirement.
But we grew to understand and realize that money is
not a pool. It's a tool, right, and it's something
that needs to be used and not something that we
accumulate and look at in awe of. So that's why
(02:40):
I don't think it works for really beyond just marginalized communities,
but specifically for our communities because we don't inherit money. Typically.
We are a lot of us are first generation unwealth builders,
and most of our wealth is tied up into our
high income skill set or the business that we have,
which is a great leverage mechanism. But we just need
to not be excluded from the conversation simply because we
(03:02):
don't have a quarter million dollars sit on the sidelines.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, And Karl, I'm I'm gonna give you the same question,
but I'm gonna ask it in a different way because
I love that response from George, and so I think
about there are a lot of friends I have and
friends I'm sure that you have that make really good money,
but we still can't seem to catch up with counterparts,
non millenated counterparts, And like, what are they doing differently
with the same amount of money to make sure they're
(03:25):
accelerating a lot faster.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Yeah, this is a This is a great question because
when I worked in corporate America, I worked at one
of the big four accounting firms, and what I noticed
from a company standpoint and from helping you know, small
business owners, is that taxes is everyone's number one expense.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
So if two people both earn one hundred thousand dollars,
but one of them has, you know, has to pay
five thousand dollar taxes, but the other one has to
pay thirty thousand dollars taxes, that other person has twenty
five thousand dollars more in income every single year to invest.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:58):
So I think that one thing we reppreciate our clients
is that it's not just about how much money you make,
it's about how much money you keep.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
And I think one of the.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Easiest ways to increase your earning potential is to minimize
how much money you have to give to the to
the irs.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
And I think as a community, we are so.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
You know, where we're in the beginning phases and are
so happy about just having money that we don't think
about taxes because like, to even have disposable income is like, yo,
we made it. Okay, cool, you made to level one.
You solve the income problem. But now that you solve
the income problem, you're going to be walking into a
tax problem. So I think, at least from my standpoint,
(04:37):
helping people minimize their taxes so that they can have
more money to invest is step in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, and I'll stick with you Carter on this.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I think about people who are transitioning from employment W
two to maybe ten ninety nine or even K one,
Like they're doing something different, you know, with their revenue,
they're in their household income. They may not see that
tax refund like no normal W two employee.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So what are some what do you find.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Is hurdles that people who traditionally would get a W
two and get a refund at the beginning of the year,
middle of the year, what are hurdles they have to
get over to change how they think about taxes fundamentally,
like not super complex, but just the fundamental stuff.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Yeah, yeah, so I think that one of the best
lessons I learned, at least when I was in college,
our professor in our, in our, in our and our,
when our classes came in the room, he said, what's
the best tax refund you can get? And then everybody's
writing down different numbers, and I'm like, yo, tenenty twenty dollars,
the higher the better, and he let everybody write the
answer down and then he was like, the best tax
(05:44):
refund you can get is zero, because all the tax
refund is is you've given the irs an interest free
loan for twelve months that they got to use and
invest in whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Then they gave it back to you with no interest.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
So I think the first thing I people to understand
that the best tax rEFInd you can get is zero,
because that way it gets people to stop being excited
right about getting fifteen twenty thousand dollars back that that
was your money to begin with, right, So that's number one.
I think Number two is once you move from W
two to employee, the responsibility for taxes shifts from your
(06:19):
employer's responsibility to your responsibility, right, what some people think
is a bad thing, But with responsibility also comes control
because now that you're responsible for your ALLWN taxes, you
now have control over your tax situation, how.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Much you need to pay any given year.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
So I think once we can adopt those two mindset shifts,
we'll be better off yours.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
You know, when you go and start something like melon
the money, first, I want you to talk about what
it is. But then when you talk about it, talk
about what gaps you saw in the marketplace that said,
you know what, there's still a need here that you know,
me and car to going and fulfill this.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah. So I remember back in twenty seventeen, there's an
article that will was released that black wealth was going
to zero by twenty fifty two. And so here I was,
you know, at the time, working with a small pool
of clients who you know, I guess I had created
this echo chamber for thinking that well, surely you know,
(07:16):
people get it, and a lot more people are marching towards,
you know, this journey for building wealth, not realizing that
at large, right people still did not have an understanding
of what it took. So I knew that we had
to do something that was broader, something that was bigger,
something that was more impactful. Me and Carter actually met
at a conference in twenty nineteen, and at that conference,
(07:37):
one of the speakers was like, hey, you know, if
you can just get your firm to one hundred clients
like lifetime, right, like, you'll be good, You'll be coasting forever.
And then like I kind of heard it. I was
just like, that seems a little bit lost, Like we
got a lot more people to help, right, And then
Laul and behold, you know me and Carter. You know, again,
we didn't know each other at the time. We're walking
(07:57):
to lunch and you know, getting a financial advisor conference,
or wasn't many of us that looked like us, right,
and so you know, we just connected and he kind
of felt the same way as either the year what
I just heard. And then you know, we realized that
it was gonna be somebody had to do it. Somebody
had to say, how can we serve and reach and
impact more people? And so I do understand that some
of the limitations of a traditional advisory environment is you know,
(08:21):
staff and people and maybe you know you don't have
the infrastructure to help you know, a thousand people or
ten thousand people. So we had to get really creative
and what that looks like. So, while we do still
have an advisory firm where we are able to help
a decent amount of folks, right, we know that that's
not enough, and so that's why we decided to create
this hybrid educational model where every other month we're basically
(08:44):
doing a virtual conference where people who may meet not
in a position to hire an advisor or are curious
of an advisor's right for them, they get to learn
our top strategies over the course.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Of five days.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
And what's beautiful about that is whether they get the
chance to work with us or not, and Carter can
get the specific stat I know last year between our
master classes and our virtual conferences, I think I was
it was north of the cardonal what's the.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Number over twenty twenty thousand people last year?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Over twenty thousand people that we were that we were
able to reach, right, And so we know we didn't
have to do that. We could continue just to serve
the clients who are making multi six figures, seven figures
and continue to build our business because we still are
certain people of color, but we knew that somebody had
with credentials had to step up and say hey, look,
everybody deserves access to quality financial information, right, Because the
(09:31):
gap that we saw in the marketplace was there was,
you know, the person who was super relatable, right, who
was a financial educator, could teach you about budgeting and
saving and those are all great things, but that just
scratching the surface for someone who baby is a little
bit further along. Then on the other end of the spectrum,
we saw the person who was credible, who had all
the credentials, but was very unrelatable. Right. Maybe it was
(09:53):
a middle aged white man trying to reach you know,
a woman of color, And so we found a sweet
spot between the balance of relatability incredibility. Right, So we
have the credentials of you know, the best in class advisor,
but we have the relatability of someone who you know,
you can connect with. And that was kind of the
boid that we filled in the marketplace, and it's allowed
us to serve people at scale while still building our
(10:13):
firm behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, I want to go level deeper on this.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, Carter, there's the there's this book The Color
of Money, Mercer Beata and who in the book she
there's this line that kind of just changed my whole
perspective on black people and money, and she said, we
have not so long ago been capital and now we're
trying to learn how to manage capital. And but yeah,
(10:40):
it's crazy, like right, And it just blew everything up
about how I thought, because you know, you walk around,
you judge people for the things that they do, and
you like all this stuff that you're like, why are
we buying cars? We can't afford jewelry, And it said, like,
we can't afford But then again, we have not so
long ago been capital, and we're being asked to treat it,
you know, with it due respect. And so I think
(11:01):
about some of the financial norms that have come from
our community. Can you talk about how we break free
from those ways of thinking? And so actually maybe talk
about some of the norms that we've had, you know,
when we come up in the black household and maybe
you don't have financial conversations at the dinner table.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That's that's an issue. But how do we break free
from some of these things and actually make progress?
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Man, that's a loaded question, my brother, but a phenomenal
question at that. I think the first step is opening
up the conversation, right, because I think awareness is one
of the greatest things that we can achieve in our life.
And so if money is a taboo topic and nobody
wants to talk about it, how can we be educated
on something we're unwilling to talk about, right, So, I think,
(11:46):
you know, for me, it was don't bring money up
at the dinner table, like you know, put the money
under your mattress, because we can't trust these banks and
all these things, and sometimes we have to question our parents'
philosophies and our money. Again, they did the best that
they could with the information that they had because not
too long ago they weren't allowed to even learn about money.
(12:08):
So I think number one, it comes with just open
conversations about money. And number two, I think it needs
to come with a new level of vulnerability because I
think people don't talk about money because they're ashamed. And
if you don't know, if you are ashamed about not
knowing about something about money, if you if you if
you vocalize your lack of knowledge around.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It, it can make you feel ashamed. I think we
need to just be vulnerable about.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
Our lack of understanding, and once we know more, we
can have more. One thing is that we tell our
clients is the more that you learn, the more that
you earn. But you have to be willing to learn first.
So I think those two things really help push the
narrative forward.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You know, I want to stink with you card on
this because I think about, you know, I've been following
you on Instagram for some time and you know this,
this is one of those I'm gonna ask for a
friend question. We're doing those, and so you know, I
got a friend who owns a business, you know, and
I think about how you take these remarkable trips and
(13:08):
you know, you can go out, have great food either
the best restaurants and some of the stuff that I've
seen on your ig.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
And I'm like, then at the end, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Talking about like this trip you know was a write
off or this trip was you know whatever, Like how
like kind of break down some of these scenarios and
how you manage them.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
So the first thing I want people to understand is
that the tax code is a rule book that allows
us to win the tax game if we're willing to
learn about the tax game.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Right.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
The tax cold was created to help entrepreneurs and investors
avoid paying taxes.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
That's what That's why I was created.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
So when it comes to trips, the IRS has a
very important code section that's Code Section one sixty two A,
and it says, any expense that is both ordinary and
necessary for you to operate your business, that trip can
be tax deductible in your business. And if you think
about these big corporate companies they have they have company
retreats where they take their whole company out somewhere and
(14:03):
have a big event to improve company morale. And if
these big companies can do it, so can small business owners.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Right.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
So, if you take a trip and you decide to
bring some of your team members with you. We just
had a retreat with our team members in Turks and Kkos.
We brought our team members to this retreat in Turks
and we gained plan and strategized betweenty twenty five right.
We made sure we worked at least four hours a
day each day, we met with the entire team, We
documented the process, we took notes, we took meeting minutes,
(14:33):
we added the documents to our company book. And if
you do those things, the IRS says that trip was
ordinary and necessary to help your business grow. Due to
that fact, the flights are to that location is tax deductible.
The lodging the airbnbwy was some one hundred percent taxuductible,
and the meals that we got catered with fifty percent
tax deductible. So it just strategically thinking how can I
(14:56):
turn something about to already pay for anyway into a
taxi dodut stable expense. And one thing we train our
clients on is before you spend any money, ask yourself,
is there a way I can make this expense both
ordinary and necessary for my business. If so, we're gonna
use that business car, We're going to document the process
that we're gonna save on taxes.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So I think I was on Georgia's site doing research
for this, and there was this beautiful presidential rolex, and
I wonder, like, can can my presidential they they be
tax deductible.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Well, you know, I'm gonna try to make Carter proud
and answer this question the right way, right you got Car,
I am a watch I'm a watch guy. Actually, I've
got Carter to watch this now. And one of the
things that he told me, you know, early on, he
was like, well, you know, I know we have the
content that we focused on when it comes to you know,
helping people build wealth. He's like, but you're a watch collector.
He's like, if you want to kind of make these
(15:50):
things deductible, if you started creating content from the lens
of a collector and how your watches are an investment, right,
there could be a world where it could be a
tax deduction. Right. So I again will defer to the
resident expert on the nuanced and details on that, but
cart if you want to share a little bit more
context on if the role league can truly be tax deductible.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And I'm gonna ask something else onto that too, because
I've heard people Carter talk about I'm gonna I'm gonna
ask something because I want you to answer that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
But there's more.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And so I've heard people talk about, hey, you know,
maybe the Louis Vatian bag is not. Maybe you know,
the Cardier or the Chanelle whatever is not. But I
think about because I'm a schemer, I'm up here scheming, like, okay, but.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
What if that's what they suggested me.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
So I'm like, I'm like, what if I'm doing I'm
just doing content and it's a part of my you know,
be I gotta i gotta be presentable for the camera,
or if I'm like shooting like fictional shorts for YouTube
before Instagram, Like, but I'm playing character, now can I
go by that?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Louis va time?
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Okay, so yeah, I'll ask her.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Well if I answer Georgia, the question now'll circle back
to yours. So Ira says, if if something is in
the pursuit of income, you can rationalize that expense being
ordinary necessary. So if Rolex was to sponsor our podcast, right,
and then we were to talk about watches, the more
we talk about watches, the bigger the Rolex sponsorship is
going to be. Right, So that is a direct correlation
(17:13):
with how we can make money from advertising our watches,
so that there therefore that could make our rolex is
tax deductible because showing them in our content can help
roll Lex stroke a bigger check when it comes to
sponsoring our show. So would that's how you would write
off a Rolex the easiest, the easiest way I can
explain it.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Now. When it comes to clothing, the IRS.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Is very very very very strict and clear about THEIRS
your ability to write off clothes. They say, if you
are going to try to write off clothes, it has
to be a costume to the point where if you
were out in public again, people would stare or you
just can't wear it out of public again. So if
you were shooting a scene with a firefighter costume on
(17:53):
for your short blog blogged, then cool because if you
wore that in public, you would be laughed at. Right,
But the Louis Vaitton, the chanelle, Like, that's that's not
gonna because there's nothing ordinary about that, right, There's nothing
ordinary about a two thousand dollars jacket.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But my scene hit it's hard. This scene I'm shooting,
it just won't hit this hard.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, it looks like it might.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
But like, yeah, so I just tell people, like trying
to validate the cost of a designer purchase as a
tax deduction, there are easier ways to save on taxes
that will cost less red flax.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I like that, you know, so I want you to
go one more step in this direction. I want to
talk about vehicles for a second. Like, you know, if
I'm talking about the you know, maybe there's this range
rover and I've heard like this six thousand pounds or
nine thousand pounds rule. I'll let you touch on that
or what if it's not six thousand pounds, but I
(18:48):
want there's this really nice car, but I'm using it
for business purposes.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Majority for the major point.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Yeah, So with business vehicles, a major point I like
to communicate when I'll talk about vehicle to business owners
is that there's a common misconception that the vehicle has
to be in your business name in order for you
to deduct it on your taxes, and that that's just
not true the irs. What the IRS cares about is
do you plan on using this vehicle for business use
or not. So, if the vehicle's in your personal name,
(19:16):
but you plan to use it for business, okay, great,
we can still use it for business up to the
percentage of business use that we use. So if you
have one vehicle, it's valid that you can use a
eighty percent business in twenty percent personal.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Cool.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
That means that eighty percent of the expenses related to
that vehicle interest in your car, no car insurance, gas repairs, maintenance,
all changes, all the expenses associated with that vehicle, eighty
percent of those expenses is tax deductible.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
But you also get an expense for money you didn't spend,
which is.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
Called depreciation, which is basically saying hey that because we
know a car is a depreciating asset, We're gonna give
you a tax deduction today for your car losing value tomorrow,
And if the vehicle weighs less than six thousand pound,
the IRS will let you write right up up to
twenty thousand dollars in depreciation the first year that you
(20:05):
rented out. So you can have twenty thousand dollars of
depreciation plus another four thousand dollars in car expenses. You
can have a twenty four thousand dollars tax deduction that
year for your vehicle. Now with the six thousand pound rule,
what makes that robust and something that business ownership seek
to have is because instead of having that twenty thousand
dollars cap for depreciation, you actually get to write off
(20:26):
a percentage of the vehicle's value. So if you were
to get one hundred thousand dollars catalyt escalate, which weighs
over six thousand pounds, you would be able in twenty
twenty five, unless Donald Trump changes something at the moment,
you'll be able to write up forty thousand dollars or
forty percent of that vehicle's cost in the first year
you receive it, even if you didn't like, even if
(20:47):
you finance to put no money down. So in this case,
we went from having a twenty thousand dollars deduction to
a forty thousand dollars deduction by getting a vehicle that
weighs a little bit.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
More like that, like that, So we talked, you know
which I love talking about spending money in this way
and how to save on spending money. Let's talk about
making some money. How do we make more money? So
we can start with investing here. So people who are
listening to this and are new to investing, let's say, hey, George,
you know, you've got somebody who's got you know, five
(21:16):
thousand dollars and they don't need to touch it to live.
But it's sitting in a savings account right now, or
it's sitting under the you know, pillow to you know
Carter's earlier point, like.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
What should I be doing? Let's start. Let's start with
five thousand dollars. What should I be doing with that money?
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, you know, I'm a financial advisor, so my mind defaulses,
I want more context, but I'll make some I'll make
some assumption. So assuming you got your emergency fund, assuming
that this is truly money that you can allocate towards investing.
The way I would approach it is very straightforward.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
We teach our clients this philosophy called the Burger King
investment strategy, right, and essentially what that means is you
have to learn how to copy the cat. McDonald spends
millions of dollars a year determining where they want to
put the next McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Bur King, however, says, well, shoot, McDonald's did out the
heavy lifting. I'm just going to put my burn King
in proximity to McDonald's. The fast food is fast food, right.
Bur King knows that somebody's gonna be running late for
work and they want that. Even though they want that mcgriddoll,
they're gonna settle for the French sticks at bur King
because the line ain't is long. Right. So when you
think about that from an investing lens, right like Vanguard, Fidelity,
(22:27):
Charles Swap, all these big investment institutions, they spend tens
of millions, right, arguably hundreds of millions of dollars a
year on analyst and research to determine what investments should
go into these particular funds also known as ETFs or indexes. Right,
And I always like to explain it from the vantage
point of looking at it like a mall. Right, if
you go to your favorite mall, it has hundreds of stores,
and if one, two, five, or ten of those stores
(22:50):
you know don't do well, is the mall going to
close down? We know the mall is not going to
close down. We can understand that rationally. And it's the
same thing for the investing world. If you invest in
a Vanguard ETF has five hundred different companies in it
and three, four, or five or ten of them are underperforming,
the overall fund is still gonna be okay. Right, And
so if you just copy the right cat, ie, hit
the buy button on Vanguard's website, and you just close
(23:13):
your laptop and don't do anything else for the next
twelve months on average, Right, Well, let's just speak to
the last twelve months, your money would have made you
nearly twenty five percent, right, And so that's step one.
Just not trying to be a world of investing expert
and look at the charts, like just copy the right cat.
You need to focus if you are going to focus
some time on something focus your time on figuring out
(23:33):
how you can invest more in five thousand dollars, i e.
How can I become more valuable to the marketplace to
have more disposable income to invest versus me trying to
become a world class investor. Right. Once you do that,
there's other other levers you can pull, like looking inside
of the ETF and looking at some of the top
investments that are there and say, you know what, if
I have five thousand dollars to invest, maybe three thousand
(23:54):
I invest in the ETF, maybe two thousand. I pick
out some of the top winners. Maybe I'm investing in
Apple and video. Now, if you're watching this in real time,
you might say, maybe not in video, it just got hit.
But which is actually a great time. I was about
to say, like, yeah, I'm thinking of how they're thinking, right, yeah,
which actually is a great exactly, But more of the
(24:16):
story is picking some of those uh, you know, bigger,
bigger winners, right, They could potentially give you greater returns
than just picking the index. But that's if you have
five thousand dollars to invest, That's exactly what I would advise.
And then from there, as your investment grows. There's other
strategies that you can take advantage of that can make
more sense as you have more disposed income to invest.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, at the risk of having you say I need
more context again, I'm going to give you a statement
that my financial advisor has said to me and again
changed the way I look at money. You know, I
was talking to her about my my financial portfolio and
things like that, and I was we were talking about
the money that was in my bank account, and she
was like, true, wealth is.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Not in the bank accounts.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
And I would without giving you more context, I just
want you to speak on what that really means. We'll
start with George and then we'll have my card to
jump in on this tool.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah. Well, because of how our economy is set up, right,
of our money loses its purchasing power year over year, right,
And so even though it seems safe and you can
look at it, you can touch it, and it doesn't
decrease unless you withdraw. Every year, the money that you
have in your bank account is going to have less
purchasing power in the following year, and so you're losing
(25:28):
the ability. It's costing you more to live as time
goes on. Right, So the reason why wealth is not
created in the bank is because you're literally, quite literally
losing wealth due to inflation right when your money is
in the bank. Right. And so the way that we
hedge inflation is we put our money in investments that
we believe are going to outpace inflation, so that at
minimum we're keeping up with that and our purchasing power
(25:50):
is in decreasing. In a perfect world scenario, if your
investments are really out pacing inflation, it actually becomes cheaper
to live as time goes on, right, because if inflation
is going up at a rate of two percent two
point five percent, but your investment account is going up
at a rate of ten percent and your money's part there,
that means all things remaining constant, it costs you less
(26:11):
to live as long as you are investing your money
over time versus leaving into the bank account.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
I love that card. Anything you want to add to that.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
Well, yeah, I mean, just like, think about what helped
me conceptualize why take my money out of a bank account,
out of a saving's account if you really understand the
banking system like they're robbing you day by day. And
I think this is important for the audience to understand.
So you go to a bank, you give them ten
thousand dollars. They put it in your savings account, right,
they give you less than one percent. You open your
(26:42):
you go you to your online banking. You see it's
ten thousand dollars in your account. But the ten thousand
dollars is not actually in the bank. Right, they go
and lend your money out to somebody or betty. Yet
they lend it back to you because then you go
to the bank the next day and say, hey, can
I get a credit card? They're like, of course, we'll
give you a ten thousand dollars credit card line. And
you're like, oh my god, I got a credit call
ten thousand dollars limit. But they're gonna charge your twenty
(27:04):
four percent interest rate on that credit card, right, so
you use that card. So basically, they just gave you
your ten thousand dollars back at twenty four percent interest
when they're holding your money in a bank account at
less than one percent interest, and they're making a twenty
three percent arbitrage on you ever seen every time you
use the card. So like, once you understand that the
banks are getting rich off of having your money.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
There like you're like, well, instead of you.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
Getting rich off my money, why don't I get rich
off my money? And that's when we take our money
out of bank accounts and we put them in investingent accounts.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I want to take this a little bit of a
detour here and start with card Or on this. It's like,
for those with an irregular or entrepreneurial income, it doesn't
necessarily hit every Friday. How do we create solid financial
plans when you have that irregular It may be a decent,
you know, income, but it's not regular.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
So one of the best books I can have any
entrepreneur read see When to learn how to be a
good store over their finances is a book called profit First.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
By Mike account.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I'm actually reading that right now, dude.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
You read it every year, okay, So that book would
change the game for every entrepreneur. And basically the philosophy
that the book teaches is if you don't give your
money a destination, it will run wild, right, fact. And
so what the profit first method is You set up
separate accounts and you give these accounts different purposes. So
you have an account for income, you have an account
(28:29):
for expenses, have an account for payroll, have an account
for your own your own self as as an officer's compensation.
You have an account for taxes definitely, and as money
comes into these accounts, you separated based off of percentage.
So again in our example, if you if you have
a ten thousand dollars a month, cool, well, a portion
of that is going to go towards taxes, a portion
of that is going to go towards paying yourself, A
(28:50):
portion of that is going to go for expenses of
the business. And then you have these different buckets of
money in your business.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
And if you have a low.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
Month and you see like, okay, well my expense account
is running low, well guess what is happing you to
stop spending money right now?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Right?
Speaker 5 (29:06):
And having these different accounts set up and breaking your
money and allocating it by percentages based off versus just
having all your money hitting one account. This is the
best way that entrepreneurs can own their money and create
a system where even though it's going to be highs
and lows in the business, you still know how to
onet how your business is doing, and how to move
(29:29):
your finances going forward.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah, you know, George, so many of us specifically in
our community. You know, we grew up thinking or hearing
debt is. You know, you do as much as you
can and get out of debt. We see it purely
as a negative thing, too many of us, do you know.
I want you to talk about how how debt is
a tool and how you can be how you can
leverage debt to you know, find your way to wealth.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That's a phenomenal question. Right. So, I think when most
people think about debt, they think about it in terms
of purchasing liabilities. Right. You buy a car and five
years from now, that car is worth less than you
originally purchased it for. And you when you look at
all the payments that you made, you paid more than
you originally borrow. Right, So when you look at different
that lens, it's like why would I ever borrow? Like
(30:15):
the systems rated? But when you look at that from
the lens of leverage and say, hey, look, I'm gonna
borrow this money, but I'm gonna borrow to buy an
investment that I believe the interest that I'm gonna earn
it's gonna be greater than the interest that I'm gonna own. Right,
Simply put, if I borrow money at six percent. I
use that money to buy house, or I use that
money as a downpayment to buy a business, or I
use that money to invest in a stock market, and
(30:36):
then my returns significantly outpaced the interest that I owe.
Then it's just a game of arbitrage, similar to the bank. Right,
So it's like, Okay, well I borrowed it a six
I got twelve percent right after even I paid the
bank back, right, there's still a six percent spread on
money that wasn't mine, right, which is naturally going to
speed up your ability to build wealth because it's like
you have more money to play with that you didn't
(30:58):
originally have. When you get on the right side of
the equation and you use borrow money to build wealth
and use borrow money to invest, then it can be
a tool, and that is a tool that we can
use to catch up, right, because it's like, quite literally,
I'm using if I make one hundred thousand dollars a year,
I borrowed another fifty thousand dollars a year, meaning I've
(31:19):
increased my productivity as if I made fifty thousand on
the other fifty thousand, I got to pay it the
six percent. But however, now I've identified it. That's been
opportunities that are going to be maybe double that percentage, right,
And now that's how I'm able to compound my wealth
a lot faster. So yeah, it can one hundred percent
be a tool. Obviously, you want to do the math.
I think most people are afraid of debt. They just
don't do the math right. It's like they look at
(31:40):
it as a liability, like, oh, I'm gonna pay interest.
I don't want to pay interest. But does it matter
if what you got in return outpaces the interest that
you paid, right? And I think once you just do
the math, and that's the beautiful thing about personal finance,
you'll be able to see that debt can be an
amazing tool and accelerating your wealth building.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So what's interesting As I am reading profit for and
it led me to this question, and I'm about to
ask for I got to tee this up first. So, George,
I was reading profit first, you know, as Carter talked about.
And so I set up all these five accounts and
during that process, I was just looking through my statements
for my AMEX, you know, in a couple of other cards,
and I found seven hundred dollars of things that I
(32:19):
was spending every month that I had no use for
seven hundred dollars a month. Thing subscriptions on iTunes, you
know whatever, Like just stupid stuff, stuff that I don't
even use anymore. And I'm like, I can't believe I've
been paying seven hundred dollars a month and stuff that
I haven't even opened up. And as a financial advisor, George,
(32:44):
I want you to talk about like this concept of
money leaks, like these expenses or inefficiencies that we have
that we just are not even aware of. This car,
I'm let you cook on this car to too, I'm
let you go.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
But yeah, yeah, one thing that we have all of
our clients do is we call it a finding money exercise. Right.
It's like because what happens is, you know, you accumulate
these expenses over time, right, And if you don't have awareness,
if you're not having a money date with your money
every week where you're looking at it, you forget about
you forget about the gym membership from the gym you
(33:18):
no long ago to. You forget about the Apple iTunes
subscription that was annual and you forgot to cancel and
you still getting hit with it. Right, Those are things
that's just over time you start to accumulate all this
extra baggage, if you will, right, And so I think
awareness is the greatest lever that you have when it
comes to building wealth. We recommend our clients every week
have a money date, whether you actually have somebody view
(33:40):
it with or if it's just you and your online banking,
you have a money date where you sit down and
you review, Hey, this is what I got coming up
this week, and this is how it should go based
upon how the week went. Do I need to make
any adjustments because oftentimes people get scared about budgeting because
they think about it being restrictive. But remember this is
your life. So if you know you got friends coming
(34:01):
in town the end of the month, you want to
buy bottles, you want to go all out, well cool, Well,
then you need to in the beginning of the month, right,
make sure that you're not allocating the money towards door
dash and getting nickeled. And don I think what happens
is people don't zoom out quickly enough to figure out, like,
what do I want my life to actually look like?
This is a story I always tell when I first
(34:22):
got in the financial services industry. It was one of
my first conferences I went to, and the young lady
was like, in twenty eleven, one billion drill bits were sold.
And for those who don't know what the drill bits are,
because you're not too handy, it's a little thing you
put into a drill to maybe hang up artwork and
different things in your house. She said, of the billion
drill bits that were sold, nobody wanted a drill bit.
She said, Now, what if I told you that they
(34:44):
used the drill bits to hang artwork in office parks
and residential homes all across the country. But they didn't
necessarily want the artwork either. What they cared about is
the feeling that they got when they walked in the
room where the artwork was hung. So how does that
translate to your money? When you look at your BA account?
Do you care if it's a million dollars or one
hundred thousand or ten thousand? Not really right? Do you
(35:05):
care if it's in what type of account it is? Is
it a roth ira, is a brokerage account? You don't
really care about that. That will be the equivalent of
me walking into your house looking at a beautiful picture
and saying, man, I'm really curious of the oak wood
handle that you use on the hammer to hang that
in the nails where they steal or what they Nobody cares.
What you care about is where you're going to be
(35:25):
able to go, what you're going to be able to
do other people, that you're going to be able to help,
in the lifestyle that you're going to be able to live.
So once you can line your financial resources to that
north star budgeting and money management seems a lot more
realistic because it's not I'm just doing the adult thing
that everybody should do, which is saved and invest my money.
You're anchoring it in your values. I like to call
(35:47):
it value based spending. So when you're looking at your
expenses right you ask yourself two questions. Does this spending
align with what I say I value Number one? And
number two? Is there cost effective, more cost effective alternative?
Sometimes there might not be a cost effective alternative, but
at least asking the question put you in the right
frame of mind. Because if you look at your online
banking you see food, food, food, food, food. Any responses Well,
(36:09):
it's okay because I'm going out the bunch with the
homies and we get the fellowship, we get to have
a good time. I said, well, hold on, what you're
saying is you value the fellowship, not necessarily the food.
So maybe we can come up with more creative ways
to extract what you really want from this scenario that's
still quote unquote budget friendly. So that's the way I
think about it, hopefully answers your question.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, and card I want you to cook on this too,
because I think about that seven hundred dollars that I
already had and was spending by now clawing that back,
I just made seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like and let me just because
I wanted to have a relatability moment. We are not
above reproach here, like we still forget like I did.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
I did act as my assistant last year.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
I let's see where I spent some money last year,
because it was a fast it was a fast year.
I spent seventeen thousand dollars in ubers last year, and
I I didn't realize it because you know, Nicko Lndam,
you don't see it to the end of the year.
And I have to set myself down and say, Okay,
Carter is riding in uber seven is like that is
at worth seventeen thousand dollars fee seventeen thousand dollars for
(37:11):
you know, if not, you can use that money to
buy a car and just drive more, or give up
the car you already have and just go all in
on uber. What we can't do is have both, right,
So I just want to let people know we're not
above reproach here. We have to take our own device
at lotts and it's just understanding what do you want
your money to do for you and how do you
want it to be the tool that it can be
(37:34):
to help you grow and get towards your dreams.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Because what I did to.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
Make it more more, to make it hit home for
me is I put that seventeen thousand dollars in a
retirement calculator at ten percent for fifty years, and I
saw how much money it could have made me if
I didn't spend it. So that going in twenty twenty
five is going to make sure I don't make the
same mistake again.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So I want you to talk a little bit about
melon and money, but I want you to first start
it just talk about some tools, you know, technologies or
et ceter Both of you, guys, I want you to
do this on things that you would advise. You know,
people add you know on their phone or you know
other you know when you talk about that, you know,
financial date George like things people should be doing. What
are tools resources we should use to help us both
(38:17):
manage our money better and grow our money? You know
early capacity.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Do you want me to start first and part? Go ahead?
Go ahead, Jordan cool One one tool I think is
great to weal we were talking about money management is
Rocket Money, right, Rocket Money. But now y'all need to
be sponsoring us at this point, y'all. But Rocket Money
is a great app. Right, There's just going to give
you that visibility to know where your money's going. Do
you have a subscription that's coming up that you should
(38:45):
be canceling? And it's really gonna give you that awareness
to be able to claw back some of that money
that you can use to invest and build well. So
from a money management perspective, I think Rocket Money is
an amazing app. From an investing standpoint, I really love
an app called in One Finance because one of the
things we talked about was how do I leverage right?
You know, Debta is a tool to build well. In
One Finance is one of the most easy platforms that
(39:08):
exists where you can invest your money and they will
give you a lot of credit based upon the value
your portfolio value. Right, So if you have fifty thousand invested,
you'll give you a lot of credit for twenty five thousand,
right and for all intentsive purposes. Sometimes it depends upon
what your investments are, but conceptually speaking about fifty percent,
and so once you have a handle of your finances
and you're investing, it's like, wow, okay, now, just by
(39:31):
investing my money instead of having the money in the bank,
if I would have drawn twenty five thousand, I'm leaving
twenty five thousand dollars in there, this eroding right to inflation.
And then when I take it out, right, I got
twenty five thousand dollars to play with. I can have
my full fifty thousand, remain invested, and still get access
to twenty five thousand dollars. Right. So I strongly recommend
having an app like in one Finance and investing following
(39:52):
the Burking investment strategy that I shared earlier in the
podcast That's for money. That's a money maximizing standpoint. Now,
from a money making standpoint, if you're an entrepreneur, is
make sure you have your like quick Books or whatever
accounting app on your phone and just on a regular basis,
make sure that you're reviewing the P and L. I
think one thing that a lot of entrepreneurs shy away
from is like money making activity. Right, It's like, what
(40:14):
makes all of this easier, just to world on the
same page, what makes building wealth easier? What makes money
management easier? Like is making more money? Now, obviously you
still got to be a good steward over your money.
But one of the things that helped a lot of
my early clients out is I looked at their expends.
It's like, what can I cut? I'm like, you're honestly
not doing too bad. I was like, you need to
make more money, right, And so the same level of
awareness we need to have when it comes to spending
(40:36):
is the same level of whereas we need to have
when it comes to making money. What was the target
revenue goal for this month? Where am I at in
the first seven days? Where am I at at a
mid month? Right? And we do something in our company
called halftime report, right, like we know what our goal
is for the month. We're not waiting til the end
of the game to figure out we lost the game. Right,
so at halftime, where are we relative to the goal,
(40:57):
which obviously are You've logging into your quick books and
it's up to day. You can see that right and
you'll be able to make game time or halftime adjustments
if you will to be able to make those adjustments.
So those are least three things I would do because
I like to look at things and buckets of make
managing maximize, and so those are three tools that you
can use. It could be beneficial.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
CARDI, you can do the same thing, but also talk
about mailing and money on.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
This please, Yeah, so I'll give one of that. I'll
go with to the Maillon money conversation. I love doing
an exercise with our clients having them go to the
National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits because when you start
a business right, you most likely left your retirement plan
and your previous employer. So this website will allow you
(41:37):
to go find any other retirement plans that you might
have left behind in previous employees that you forgot about
or that you couldn't find an XYZ and then we're
able to take those old retirement plans, roll them over
into your small business retirement plan, and we can even
set it up in a way we can use some
of that money to borrow.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
We can borrow from our retirement.
Speaker 5 (41:58):
Plan, use some of that money to jump start our business,
finding all the money that we left in previous employers,
moving it over to our own self employed retirement plan
that we own, that we control and that.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
We can help grow faster.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
So that's the exercise that we do all of our
entrepreneur clients to make sure we're not leaving any money
in the past. And I think from a million and
money standpoint, we have so many tools in our in
our community to help our clients get to the next level.
And I think one of the best things that we
can do that we do for our clients is that
(42:28):
we give them one accountability to advisors that they can
work with to really help them maximize their money. But
also just giving them all the tools and resources and
things that we use for ourselves over the years to
really help them maximize their money and minimize their taxes.
And that's why, you know, all of our clients are
(42:48):
part of our mail and a Millionaire Club. Not only
are we helping them with the saving and investing part,
but helping them achieve net worth milestones. I don't think
we mentioned it earlier, but every year we having a
wart show where we celebrate our clients for hitting networth goals,
whether it's the firste hundred thousand networth, the first half
a million, their first million, their first five million, and
(43:10):
we celebrate our clients so that, in steat of money
being a taboo topic, is actually something that they're willing
to talk about, excited to talk about, because now we're
talking about different milestones that we're celebrating, hitting these wealth,
hitting these wealth markers. And I think in twenty twenty
four we helped our clients increase the networth by over
one hundred million dollars and.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
We got to celebrate with them at the award show.
Speaker 5 (43:32):
So I think it's just taking money from being a
taboo topic, and what Melon the Money is doing is
taking it and making it something.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
That's worth talking about and something that's worth celebrating.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity, Afro Tech,
The Black Effect podcast, Networking Night Hire Media. It's produced
by Morgan debonn and me Well.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Lucas with the digital production support.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
By Kate McDonald s Hurgan and Jada McGee. Special thank
you to Michael Davison Love Beech. Learn more about my
Guess of the Tech show Up is an Innovative's afrotech
dot com. The video version this episode will drop to
Black Tech Dream Money on YouTube, so'll tap in. Enjoy
your Black Tech Dream money, share us to somebody, Go
get your money.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Peace and love,
Anima Lucas and this is Black Tech, Green Money. Carter
Cofield and George Ashen Pong are financial experts dedicated to
helping black entrepreneurs and professionals build lastly wealth.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Carter Cofield is the.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Owner and the lead advisor of Cofield Advisors, where he
helps creative entrepreneurs take control of their finances so they
can focus on his own A genius, he's a CPA
and personal financial specialists, providing a one stop shop for
tax strategy, wealth building, and financial freedom. George Orson Pong
is founder of capital Wise and The Melon A Millionaire's Club,
a financial education platform helping one hundred thousand people of
(00:38):
color achieve the first million in network. As a Forest
contributor and award winning wealth manager, he's revolutionizing traditional financial
advice to accelerate wealth building for black professionals and entrepreneurs.
Together with Melon The Money, Carter and Georgia building the
number one financial education community design to serve aspiring Melon
A Millionaires. So the first one to George, but I'd
(01:01):
like to get both of you guys as inputs on
this is Do you believe first of all, that traditional
financial advice for even high income earners in marginalized communities,
black communities, minority communities, that traditional advice still doesn't work
for us. If so, why doesn't it work for people
in our communities.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Yeah, that's a great question. The reason why I don't
think that it works is because for starters, a lot
of the traditional advice in the community or in the
financial advice industry is centered around assets under management.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's like, you can't start the conversation until you have
a quarter million dollars to invest, right, And not to
say that people don't have cash on the sidelines. What
we found to be true is that our clients were
starting businesses, they were becoming successful, they did have great
cash flow, but they were very much in the beginning
phases of building wealth or didn't even know about that.
(01:58):
They should be focused on the relation of wealth, right.
And so if we're saying that I got a client
that's you know, making you know, a quarter million, half million,
or even a million plus a year, But we can't
start the conversation by wealth building because you don't have
a quarter million dollars to invest. I think that's kind
of backwards and it's kew because even when we look
at our investment philosophy. As a company, we are preaching
(02:20):
that cash flow is king right. The industry at large
is saying, hey, invest for forty years and if you
do everything right, you have a million dollars at retirement.
But we grew to understand and realize that money is
not a pool. It's a tool, right, and it's something
that needs to be used and not something that we
accumulate and look at in awe of. So that's why
(02:40):
I don't think it works for really beyond just marginalized communities,
but specifically for our communities because we don't inherit money. Typically.
We are a lot of us are first generation unwealth builders,
and most of our wealth is tied up into our
high income skill set or the business that we have,
which is a great leverage mechanism. But we just need
to not be excluded from the conversation simply because we
(03:02):
don't have a quarter million dollars sit on the sidelines.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, And Karl, I'm I'm gonna give you the same question,
but I'm gonna ask it in a different way because
I love that response from George, and so I think
about there are a lot of friends I have and
friends I'm sure that you have that make really good money,
but we still can't seem to catch up with counterparts,
non millenated counterparts, And like, what are they doing differently
with the same amount of money to make sure they're
(03:25):
accelerating a lot faster.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Yeah, this is a This is a great question because
when I worked in corporate America, I worked at one
of the big four accounting firms, and what I noticed
from a company standpoint and from helping you know, small
business owners, is that taxes is everyone's number one expense.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
So if two people both earn one hundred thousand dollars,
but one of them has, you know, has to pay
five thousand dollar taxes, but the other one has to
pay thirty thousand dollars taxes, that other person has twenty
five thousand dollars more in income every single year to invest.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Right.
Speaker 5 (03:58):
So I think that one thing we reppreciate our clients
is that it's not just about how much money you make,
it's about how much money you keep.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
And I think one of the.
Speaker 5 (04:04):
Easiest ways to increase your earning potential is to minimize
how much money you have to give to the to
the irs.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
And I think as a community, we are so.
Speaker 5 (04:17):
You know, where we're in the beginning phases and are
so happy about just having money that we don't think
about taxes because like, to even have disposable income is like, yo,
we made it. Okay, cool, you made to level one.
You solve the income problem. But now that you solve
the income problem, you're going to be walking into a
tax problem. So I think, at least from my standpoint,
(04:37):
helping people minimize their taxes so that they can have
more money to invest is step in the right direction.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, and I'll stick with you Carter on this.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
I think about people who are transitioning from employment W
two to maybe ten ninety nine or even K one,
Like they're doing something different, you know, with their revenue,
they're in their household income. They may not see that
tax refund like no normal W two employee.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So what are some what do you find.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Is hurdles that people who traditionally would get a W
two and get a refund at the beginning of the year,
middle of the year, what are hurdles they have to
get over to change how they think about taxes fundamentally,
like not super complex, but just the fundamental stuff.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Yeah, yeah, so I think that one of the best
lessons I learned, at least when I was in college,
our professor in our, in our, in our and our,
when our classes came in the room, he said, what's
the best tax refund you can get? And then everybody's
writing down different numbers, and I'm like, yo, tenenty twenty dollars,
the higher the better, and he let everybody write the
answer down and then he was like, the best tax
(05:44):
refund you can get is zero, because all the tax
refund is is you've given the irs an interest free
loan for twelve months that they got to use and
invest in whatever.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
Then they gave it back to you with no interest.
Speaker 5 (05:58):
So I think the first thing I people to understand
that the best tax rEFInd you can get is zero,
because that way it gets people to stop being excited
right about getting fifteen twenty thousand dollars back that that
was your money to begin with, right, So that's number one.
I think Number two is once you move from W
two to employee, the responsibility for taxes shifts from your
(06:19):
employer's responsibility to your responsibility, right, what some people think
is a bad thing, But with responsibility also comes control
because now that you're responsible for your ALLWN taxes, you
now have control over your tax situation, how.
Speaker 4 (06:34):
Much you need to pay any given year.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
So I think once we can adopt those two mindset shifts,
we'll be better off yours.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
You know, when you go and start something like melon
the money, first, I want you to talk about what
it is. But then when you talk about it, talk
about what gaps you saw in the marketplace that said,
you know what, there's still a need here that you know,
me and car to going and fulfill this.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah. So I remember back in twenty seventeen, there's an
article that will was released that black wealth was going
to zero by twenty fifty two. And so here I was,
you know, at the time, working with a small pool
of clients who you know, I guess I had created
this echo chamber for thinking that well, surely you know,
(07:16):
people get it, and a lot more people are marching towards,
you know, this journey for building wealth, not realizing that
at large, right people still did not have an understanding
of what it took. So I knew that we had
to do something that was broader, something that was bigger,
something that was more impactful. Me and Carter actually met
at a conference in twenty nineteen, and at that conference,
(07:37):
one of the speakers was like, hey, you know, if
you can just get your firm to one hundred clients
like lifetime, right, like, you'll be good, You'll be coasting forever.
And then like I kind of heard it. I was
just like, that seems a little bit lost, Like we
got a lot more people to help, right, And then
Laul and behold, you know me and Carter. You know, again,
we didn't know each other at the time. We're walking
(07:57):
to lunch and you know, getting a financial advisor conference,
or wasn't many of us that looked like us, right,
and so you know, we just connected and he kind
of felt the same way as either the year what
I just heard. And then you know, we realized that
it was gonna be somebody had to do it. Somebody
had to say, how can we serve and reach and
impact more people? And so I do understand that some
of the limitations of a traditional advisory environment is you know,
(08:21):
staff and people and maybe you know you don't have
the infrastructure to help you know, a thousand people or
ten thousand people. So we had to get really creative
and what that looks like. So, while we do still
have an advisory firm where we are able to help
a decent amount of folks, right, we know that that's
not enough, and so that's why we decided to create
this hybrid educational model where every other month we're basically
(08:44):
doing a virtual conference where people who may meet not
in a position to hire an advisor or are curious
of an advisor's right for them, they get to learn
our top strategies over the course.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Of five days.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
And what's beautiful about that is whether they get the
chance to work with us or not, and Carter can
get the specific stat I know last year between our
master classes and our virtual conferences, I think I was
it was north of the cardonal what's the.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
Number over twenty twenty thousand people last year?
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Over twenty thousand people that we were that we were
able to reach, right, And so we know we didn't
have to do that. We could continue just to serve
the clients who are making multi six figures, seven figures
and continue to build our business because we still are
certain people of color, but we knew that somebody had
with credentials had to step up and say hey, look,
everybody deserves access to quality financial information, right, Because the
(09:31):
gap that we saw in the marketplace was there was,
you know, the person who was super relatable, right, who
was a financial educator, could teach you about budgeting and
saving and those are all great things, but that just
scratching the surface for someone who baby is a little
bit further along. Then on the other end of the spectrum,
we saw the person who was credible, who had all
the credentials, but was very unrelatable. Right. Maybe it was
(09:53):
a middle aged white man trying to reach you know,
a woman of color, And so we found a sweet
spot between the balance of relatability incredibility. Right, So we
have the credentials of you know, the best in class advisor,
but we have the relatability of someone who you know,
you can connect with. And that was kind of the
boid that we filled in the marketplace, and it's allowed
us to serve people at scale while still building our
(10:13):
firm behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, I want to go level deeper on this.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
You know, Carter, there's the there's this book The Color
of Money, Mercer Beata and who in the book she
there's this line that kind of just changed my whole
perspective on black people and money, and she said, we
have not so long ago been capital and now we're
trying to learn how to manage capital. And but yeah,
(10:40):
it's crazy, like right, And it just blew everything up
about how I thought, because you know, you walk around,
you judge people for the things that they do, and
you like all this stuff that you're like, why are
we buying cars? We can't afford jewelry, And it said, like,
we can't afford But then again, we have not so
long ago been capital, and we're being asked to treat it,
you know, with it due respect. And so I think
(11:01):
about some of the financial norms that have come from
our community. Can you talk about how we break free
from those ways of thinking? And so actually maybe talk
about some of the norms that we've had, you know,
when we come up in the black household and maybe
you don't have financial conversations at the dinner table.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
That's that's an issue. But how do we break free
from some of these things and actually make progress?
Speaker 5 (11:25):
Man, that's a loaded question, my brother, but a phenomenal
question at that. I think the first step is opening
up the conversation, right, because I think awareness is one
of the greatest things that we can achieve in our life.
And so if money is a taboo topic and nobody
wants to talk about it, how can we be educated
on something we're unwilling to talk about, right, So, I think,
(11:46):
you know, for me, it was don't bring money up
at the dinner table, like you know, put the money
under your mattress, because we can't trust these banks and
all these things, and sometimes we have to question our parents'
philosophies and our money. Again, they did the best that
they could with the information that they had because not
too long ago they weren't allowed to even learn about money.
(12:08):
So I think number one, it comes with just open
conversations about money. And number two, I think it needs
to come with a new level of vulnerability because I
think people don't talk about money because they're ashamed. And
if you don't know, if you are ashamed about not
knowing about something about money, if you if you if
you vocalize your lack of knowledge around.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It, it can make you feel ashamed. I think we
need to just be vulnerable about.
Speaker 5 (12:33):
Our lack of understanding, and once we know more, we
can have more. One thing is that we tell our
clients is the more that you learn, the more that
you earn. But you have to be willing to learn first.
So I think those two things really help push the
narrative forward.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
You know, I want to stink with you card on
this because I think about, you know, I've been following
you on Instagram for some time and you know this,
this is one of those I'm gonna ask for a
friend question. We're doing those, and so you know, I
got a friend who owns a business, you know, and
I think about how you take these remarkable trips and
(13:08):
you know, you can go out, have great food either
the best restaurants and some of the stuff that I've
seen on your ig.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
And I'm like, then at the end, you're.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Talking about like this trip you know was a write
off or this trip was you know whatever, Like how
like kind of break down some of these scenarios and
how you manage them.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
So the first thing I want people to understand is
that the tax code is a rule book that allows
us to win the tax game if we're willing to
learn about the tax game.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Right.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
The tax cold was created to help entrepreneurs and investors
avoid paying taxes.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
That's what That's why I was created.
Speaker 5 (13:42):
So when it comes to trips, the IRS has a
very important code section that's Code Section one sixty two A,
and it says, any expense that is both ordinary and
necessary for you to operate your business, that trip can
be tax deductible in your business. And if you think
about these big corporate companies they have they have company
retreats where they take their whole company out somewhere and
(14:03):
have a big event to improve company morale. And if
these big companies can do it, so can small business owners.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Right.
Speaker 5 (14:10):
So, if you take a trip and you decide to
bring some of your team members with you. We just
had a retreat with our team members in Turks and Kkos.
We brought our team members to this retreat in Turks
and we gained plan and strategized betweenty twenty five right.
We made sure we worked at least four hours a
day each day, we met with the entire team, We
documented the process, we took notes, we took meeting minutes,
(14:33):
we added the documents to our company book. And if
you do those things, the IRS says that trip was
ordinary and necessary to help your business grow. Due to
that fact, the flights are to that location is tax deductible.
The lodging the airbnbwy was some one hundred percent taxuductible,
and the meals that we got catered with fifty percent
tax deductible. So it just strategically thinking how can I
(14:56):
turn something about to already pay for anyway into a
taxi dodut stable expense. And one thing we train our
clients on is before you spend any money, ask yourself,
is there a way I can make this expense both
ordinary and necessary for my business. If so, we're gonna
use that business car, We're going to document the process
that we're gonna save on taxes.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So I think I was on Georgia's site doing research
for this, and there was this beautiful presidential rolex, and
I wonder, like, can can my presidential they they be
tax deductible.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Well, you know, I'm gonna try to make Carter proud
and answer this question the right way, right you got Car,
I am a watch I'm a watch guy. Actually, I've
got Carter to watch this now. And one of the
things that he told me, you know, early on, he
was like, well, you know, I know we have the
content that we focused on when it comes to you know,
helping people build wealth. He's like, but you're a watch collector.
He's like, if you want to kind of make these
(15:50):
things deductible, if you started creating content from the lens
of a collector and how your watches are an investment, right,
there could be a world where it could be a
tax deduction. Right. So I again will defer to the
resident expert on the nuanced and details on that, but
cart if you want to share a little bit more
context on if the role league can truly be tax deductible.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And I'm gonna ask something else onto that too, because
I've heard people Carter talk about I'm gonna I'm gonna
ask something because I want you to answer that.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
But there's more.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And so I've heard people talk about, hey, you know,
maybe the Louis Vatian bag is not. Maybe you know,
the Cardier or the Chanelle whatever is not. But I
think about because I'm a schemer, I'm up here scheming, like, okay, but.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
What if that's what they suggested me.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
So I'm like, I'm like, what if I'm doing I'm
just doing content and it's a part of my you know,
be I gotta i gotta be presentable for the camera,
or if I'm like shooting like fictional shorts for YouTube
before Instagram, Like, but I'm playing character, now can I
go by that?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Louis va time?
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Okay, so yeah, I'll ask her.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Well if I answer Georgia, the question now'll circle back
to yours. So Ira says, if if something is in
the pursuit of income, you can rationalize that expense being
ordinary necessary. So if Rolex was to sponsor our podcast, right,
and then we were to talk about watches, the more
we talk about watches, the bigger the Rolex sponsorship is
going to be. Right, So that is a direct correlation
(17:13):
with how we can make money from advertising our watches,
so that there therefore that could make our rolex is
tax deductible because showing them in our content can help
roll Lex stroke a bigger check when it comes to
sponsoring our show. So would that's how you would write
off a Rolex the easiest, the easiest way I can
explain it.
Speaker 4 (17:28):
Now. When it comes to clothing, the IRS.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Is very very very very strict and clear about THEIRS
your ability to write off clothes. They say, if you
are going to try to write off clothes, it has
to be a costume to the point where if you
were out in public again, people would stare or you
just can't wear it out of public again. So if
you were shooting a scene with a firefighter costume on
(17:53):
for your short blog blogged, then cool because if you
wore that in public, you would be laughed at. Right,
But the Louis Vaitton, the chanelle, Like, that's that's not
gonna because there's nothing ordinary about that, right, There's nothing
ordinary about a two thousand dollars jacket.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
But my scene hit it's hard. This scene I'm shooting,
it just won't hit this hard.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, it looks like it might.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
But like, yeah, so I just tell people, like trying
to validate the cost of a designer purchase as a
tax deduction, there are easier ways to save on taxes
that will cost less red flax.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I like that, you know, so I want you to
go one more step in this direction. I want to
talk about vehicles for a second. Like, you know, if
I'm talking about the you know, maybe there's this range
rover and I've heard like this six thousand pounds or
nine thousand pounds rule. I'll let you touch on that
or what if it's not six thousand pounds, but I
(18:48):
want there's this really nice car, but I'm using it
for business purposes.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
Majority for the major point.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
Yeah, So with business vehicles, a major point I like
to communicate when I'll talk about vehicle to business owners
is that there's a common misconception that the vehicle has
to be in your business name in order for you
to deduct it on your taxes, and that that's just
not true the irs. What the IRS cares about is
do you plan on using this vehicle for business use
or not. So, if the vehicle's in your personal name,
(19:16):
but you plan to use it for business, okay, great,
we can still use it for business up to the
percentage of business use that we use. So if you
have one vehicle, it's valid that you can use a
eighty percent business in twenty percent personal.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Cool.
Speaker 5 (19:29):
That means that eighty percent of the expenses related to
that vehicle interest in your car, no car insurance, gas repairs, maintenance,
all changes, all the expenses associated with that vehicle, eighty
percent of those expenses is tax deductible.
Speaker 4 (19:42):
But you also get an expense for money you didn't spend,
which is.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
Called depreciation, which is basically saying hey that because we
know a car is a depreciating asset, We're gonna give
you a tax deduction today for your car losing value tomorrow,
And if the vehicle weighs less than six thousand pound,
the IRS will let you write right up up to
twenty thousand dollars in depreciation the first year that you
(20:05):
rented out. So you can have twenty thousand dollars of
depreciation plus another four thousand dollars in car expenses. You
can have a twenty four thousand dollars tax deduction that
year for your vehicle. Now with the six thousand pound rule,
what makes that robust and something that business ownership seek
to have is because instead of having that twenty thousand
dollars cap for depreciation, you actually get to write off
(20:26):
a percentage of the vehicle's value. So if you were
to get one hundred thousand dollars catalyt escalate, which weighs
over six thousand pounds, you would be able in twenty
twenty five, unless Donald Trump changes something at the moment,
you'll be able to write up forty thousand dollars or
forty percent of that vehicle's cost in the first year
you receive it, even if you didn't like, even if
(20:47):
you finance to put no money down. So in this case,
we went from having a twenty thousand dollars deduction to
a forty thousand dollars deduction by getting a vehicle that
weighs a little bit.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
More like that, like that, So we talked, you know
which I love talking about spending money in this way
and how to save on spending money. Let's talk about
making some money. How do we make more money? So
we can start with investing here. So people who are
listening to this and are new to investing, let's say, hey, George,
you know, you've got somebody who's got you know, five
(21:16):
thousand dollars and they don't need to touch it to live.
But it's sitting in a savings account right now, or
it's sitting under the you know, pillow to you know
Carter's earlier point, like.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
What should I be doing? Let's start. Let's start with
five thousand dollars. What should I be doing with that money?
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah, you know, I'm a financial advisor, so my mind defaulses,
I want more context, but I'll make some I'll make
some assumption. So assuming you got your emergency fund, assuming
that this is truly money that you can allocate towards investing.
The way I would approach it is very straightforward.
Speaker 4 (21:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
We teach our clients this philosophy called the Burger King
investment strategy, right, and essentially what that means is you
have to learn how to copy the cat. McDonald spends
millions of dollars a year determining where they want to
put the next McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Bur King, however, says, well, shoot, McDonald's did out the
heavy lifting. I'm just going to put my burn King
in proximity to McDonald's. The fast food is fast food, right.
Bur King knows that somebody's gonna be running late for
work and they want that. Even though they want that mcgriddoll,
they're gonna settle for the French sticks at bur King
because the line ain't is long. Right. So when you
think about that from an investing lens, right like Vanguard, Fidelity,
(22:27):
Charles Swap, all these big investment institutions, they spend tens
of millions, right, arguably hundreds of millions of dollars a
year on analyst and research to determine what investments should
go into these particular funds also known as ETFs or indexes. Right,
And I always like to explain it from the vantage
point of looking at it like a mall. Right, if
you go to your favorite mall, it has hundreds of stores,
and if one, two, five, or ten of those stores
(22:50):
you know don't do well, is the mall going to
close down? We know the mall is not going to
close down. We can understand that rationally. And it's the
same thing for the investing world. If you invest in
a Vanguard ETF has five hundred different companies in it
and three, four, or five or ten of them are underperforming,
the overall fund is still gonna be okay. Right, And
so if you just copy the right cat, ie, hit
the buy button on Vanguard's website, and you just close
(23:13):
your laptop and don't do anything else for the next
twelve months on average, Right, Well, let's just speak to
the last twelve months, your money would have made you
nearly twenty five percent, right, And so that's step one.
Just not trying to be a world of investing expert
and look at the charts, like just copy the right cat.
You need to focus if you are going to focus
some time on something focus your time on figuring out
(23:33):
how you can invest more in five thousand dollars, i e.
How can I become more valuable to the marketplace to
have more disposable income to invest versus me trying to
become a world class investor. Right. Once you do that,
there's other other levers you can pull, like looking inside
of the ETF and looking at some of the top
investments that are there and say, you know what, if
I have five thousand dollars to invest, maybe three thousand
(23:54):
I invest in the ETF, maybe two thousand. I pick
out some of the top winners. Maybe I'm investing in
Apple and video. Now, if you're watching this in real time,
you might say, maybe not in video, it just got hit.
But which is actually a great time. I was about
to say, like, yeah, I'm thinking of how they're thinking, right, yeah,
which actually is a great exactly, But more of the
(24:16):
story is picking some of those uh, you know, bigger,
bigger winners, right, They could potentially give you greater returns
than just picking the index. But that's if you have
five thousand dollars to invest, That's exactly what I would advise.
And then from there, as your investment grows. There's other
strategies that you can take advantage of that can make
more sense as you have more disposed income to invest.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, at the risk of having you say I need
more context again, I'm going to give you a statement
that my financial advisor has said to me and again
changed the way I look at money. You know, I
was talking to her about my my financial portfolio and
things like that, and I was we were talking about
the money that was in my bank account, and she
was like, true, wealth is.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Not in the bank accounts.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
And I would without giving you more context, I just
want you to speak on what that really means. We'll
start with George and then we'll have my card to
jump in on this tool.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Yeah. Well, because of how our economy is set up, right,
of our money loses its purchasing power year over year, right,
And so even though it seems safe and you can
look at it, you can touch it, and it doesn't
decrease unless you withdraw. Every year, the money that you
have in your bank account is going to have less
purchasing power in the following year, and so you're losing
(25:28):
the ability. It's costing you more to live as time
goes on. Right, So the reason why wealth is not
created in the bank is because you're literally, quite literally
losing wealth due to inflation right when your money is
in the bank. Right. And so the way that we
hedge inflation is we put our money in investments that
we believe are going to outpace inflation, so that at
minimum we're keeping up with that and our purchasing power
(25:50):
is in decreasing. In a perfect world scenario, if your
investments are really out pacing inflation, it actually becomes cheaper
to live as time goes on, right, because if inflation
is going up at a rate of two percent two
point five percent, but your investment account is going up
at a rate of ten percent and your money's part there,
that means all things remaining constant, it costs you less
(26:11):
to live as long as you are investing your money
over time versus leaving into the bank account.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
I love that card. Anything you want to add to that.
Speaker 5 (26:19):
Well, yeah, I mean, just like, think about what helped
me conceptualize why take my money out of a bank account,
out of a saving's account if you really understand the
banking system like they're robbing you day by day. And
I think this is important for the audience to understand.
So you go to a bank, you give them ten
thousand dollars. They put it in your savings account, right,
they give you less than one percent. You open your
(26:42):
you go you to your online banking. You see it's
ten thousand dollars in your account. But the ten thousand
dollars is not actually in the bank. Right, they go
and lend your money out to somebody or betty. Yet
they lend it back to you because then you go
to the bank the next day and say, hey, can
I get a credit card? They're like, of course, we'll
give you a ten thousand dollars credit card line. And
you're like, oh my god, I got a credit call
ten thousand dollars limit. But they're gonna charge your twenty
(27:04):
four percent interest rate on that credit card, right, so
you use that card. So basically, they just gave you
your ten thousand dollars back at twenty four percent interest
when they're holding your money in a bank account at
less than one percent interest, and they're making a twenty
three percent arbitrage on you ever seen every time you
use the card. So like, once you understand that the
banks are getting rich off of having your money.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
There like you're like, well, instead of you.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
Getting rich off my money, why don't I get rich
off my money? And that's when we take our money
out of bank accounts and we put them in investingent accounts.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I want to take this a little bit of a
detour here and start with card Or on this. It's like,
for those with an irregular or entrepreneurial income, it doesn't
necessarily hit every Friday. How do we create solid financial
plans when you have that irregular It may be a decent,
you know, income, but it's not regular.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (27:55):
So one of the best books I can have any
entrepreneur read see When to learn how to be a
good store over their finances is a book called profit First.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
By Mike account.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
I'm actually reading that right now, dude.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
You read it every year, okay, So that book would
change the game for every entrepreneur. And basically the philosophy
that the book teaches is if you don't give your
money a destination, it will run wild, right, fact. And
so what the profit first method is You set up
separate accounts and you give these accounts different purposes. So
you have an account for income, you have an account
(28:29):
for expenses, have an account for payroll, have an account
for your own your own self as as an officer's compensation.
You have an account for taxes definitely, and as money
comes into these accounts, you separated based off of percentage.
So again in our example, if you if you have
a ten thousand dollars a month, cool, well, a portion
of that is going to go towards taxes, a portion
of that is going to go towards paying yourself, A
(28:50):
portion of that is going to go for expenses of
the business. And then you have these different buckets of
money in your business.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
And if you have a low.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
Month and you see like, okay, well my expense account
is running low, well guess what is happing you to
stop spending money right now?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Right?
Speaker 5 (29:06):
And having these different accounts set up and breaking your
money and allocating it by percentages based off versus just
having all your money hitting one account. This is the
best way that entrepreneurs can own their money and create
a system where even though it's going to be highs
and lows in the business, you still know how to
onet how your business is doing, and how to move
(29:29):
your finances going forward.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah, you know, George, so many of us specifically in
our community. You know, we grew up thinking or hearing
debt is. You know, you do as much as you
can and get out of debt. We see it purely
as a negative thing, too many of us, do you know.
I want you to talk about how how debt is
a tool and how you can be how you can
leverage debt to you know, find your way to wealth.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
That's a phenomenal question. Right. So, I think when most
people think about debt, they think about it in terms
of purchasing liabilities. Right. You buy a car and five
years from now, that car is worth less than you
originally purchased it for. And you when you look at
all the payments that you made, you paid more than
you originally borrow. Right, So when you look at different
that lens, it's like why would I ever borrow? Like
(30:15):
the systems rated? But when you look at that from
the lens of leverage and say, hey, look, I'm gonna
borrow this money, but I'm gonna borrow to buy an
investment that I believe the interest that I'm gonna earn
it's gonna be greater than the interest that I'm gonna own. Right,
Simply put, if I borrow money at six percent. I
use that money to buy house, or I use that
money as a downpayment to buy a business, or I
use that money to invest in a stock market, and
(30:36):
then my returns significantly outpaced the interest that I owe.
Then it's just a game of arbitrage, similar to the bank. Right,
So it's like, Okay, well I borrowed it a six
I got twelve percent right after even I paid the
bank back, right, there's still a six percent spread on
money that wasn't mine, right, which is naturally going to
speed up your ability to build wealth because it's like
you have more money to play with that you didn't
(30:58):
originally have. When you get on the right side of
the equation and you use borrow money to build wealth
and use borrow money to invest, then it can be
a tool, and that is a tool that we can
use to catch up, right, because it's like, quite literally,
I'm using if I make one hundred thousand dollars a year,
I borrowed another fifty thousand dollars a year, meaning I've
(31:19):
increased my productivity as if I made fifty thousand on
the other fifty thousand, I got to pay it the
six percent. But however, now I've identified it. That's been
opportunities that are going to be maybe double that percentage, right,
And now that's how I'm able to compound my wealth
a lot faster. So yeah, it can one hundred percent
be a tool. Obviously, you want to do the math.
I think most people are afraid of debt. They just
don't do the math right. It's like they look at
(31:40):
it as a liability, like, oh, I'm gonna pay interest.
I don't want to pay interest. But does it matter
if what you got in return outpaces the interest that
you paid, right? And I think once you just do
the math, and that's the beautiful thing about personal finance,
you'll be able to see that debt can be an
amazing tool and accelerating your wealth building.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So what's interesting As I am reading profit for and
it led me to this question, and I'm about to
ask for I got to tee this up first. So, George,
I was reading profit first, you know, as Carter talked about.
And so I set up all these five accounts and
during that process, I was just looking through my statements
for my AMEX, you know, in a couple of other cards,
and I found seven hundred dollars of things that I
(32:19):
was spending every month that I had no use for
seven hundred dollars a month. Thing subscriptions on iTunes, you
know whatever, Like just stupid stuff, stuff that I don't
even use anymore. And I'm like, I can't believe I've
been paying seven hundred dollars a month and stuff that
I haven't even opened up. And as a financial advisor, George,
(32:44):
I want you to talk about like this concept of
money leaks, like these expenses or inefficiencies that we have
that we just are not even aware of. This car,
I'm let you cook on this car to too, I'm
let you go.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
But yeah, yeah, one thing that we have all of
our clients do is we call it a finding money exercise. Right.
It's like because what happens is, you know, you accumulate
these expenses over time, right, And if you don't have awareness,
if you're not having a money date with your money
every week where you're looking at it, you forget about
you forget about the gym membership from the gym you
(33:18):
no long ago to. You forget about the Apple iTunes
subscription that was annual and you forgot to cancel and
you still getting hit with it. Right, Those are things
that's just over time you start to accumulate all this
extra baggage, if you will, right, And so I think
awareness is the greatest lever that you have when it
comes to building wealth. We recommend our clients every week
have a money date, whether you actually have somebody view
(33:40):
it with or if it's just you and your online banking,
you have a money date where you sit down and
you review, Hey, this is what I got coming up
this week, and this is how it should go based
upon how the week went. Do I need to make
any adjustments because oftentimes people get scared about budgeting because
they think about it being restrictive. But remember this is
your life. So if you know you got friends coming
(34:01):
in town the end of the month, you want to
buy bottles, you want to go all out, well cool, Well,
then you need to in the beginning of the month, right,
make sure that you're not allocating the money towards door
dash and getting nickeled. And don I think what happens
is people don't zoom out quickly enough to figure out, like,
what do I want my life to actually look like?
This is a story I always tell when I first
(34:22):
got in the financial services industry. It was one of
my first conferences I went to, and the young lady
was like, in twenty eleven, one billion drill bits were sold.
And for those who don't know what the drill bits are,
because you're not too handy, it's a little thing you
put into a drill to maybe hang up artwork and
different things in your house. She said, of the billion
drill bits that were sold, nobody wanted a drill bit.
She said, Now, what if I told you that they
(34:44):
used the drill bits to hang artwork in office parks
and residential homes all across the country. But they didn't
necessarily want the artwork either. What they cared about is
the feeling that they got when they walked in the
room where the artwork was hung. So how does that
translate to your money? When you look at your BA account?
Do you care if it's a million dollars or one
hundred thousand or ten thousand? Not really right? Do you
(35:05):
care if it's in what type of account it is? Is
it a roth ira, is a brokerage account? You don't
really care about that. That will be the equivalent of
me walking into your house looking at a beautiful picture
and saying, man, I'm really curious of the oak wood
handle that you use on the hammer to hang that
in the nails where they steal or what they Nobody cares.
What you care about is where you're going to be
(35:25):
able to go, what you're going to be able to
do other people, that you're going to be able to help,
in the lifestyle that you're going to be able to live.
So once you can line your financial resources to that
north star budgeting and money management seems a lot more
realistic because it's not I'm just doing the adult thing
that everybody should do, which is saved and invest my money.
You're anchoring it in your values. I like to call
(35:47):
it value based spending. So when you're looking at your
expenses right you ask yourself two questions. Does this spending
align with what I say I value Number one? And
number two? Is there cost effective, more cost effective alternative?
Sometimes there might not be a cost effective alternative, but
at least asking the question put you in the right
frame of mind. Because if you look at your online
banking you see food, food, food, food, food. Any responses Well,
(36:09):
it's okay because I'm going out the bunch with the
homies and we get the fellowship, we get to have
a good time. I said, well, hold on, what you're
saying is you value the fellowship, not necessarily the food.
So maybe we can come up with more creative ways
to extract what you really want from this scenario that's
still quote unquote budget friendly. So that's the way I
think about it, hopefully answers your question.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah, and card I want you to cook on this too,
because I think about that seven hundred dollars that I
already had and was spending by now clawing that back,
I just made seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like and let me just because
I wanted to have a relatability moment. We are not
above reproach here, like we still forget like I did.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
I did act as my assistant last year.
Speaker 5 (36:50):
I let's see where I spent some money last year,
because it was a fast it was a fast year.
I spent seventeen thousand dollars in ubers last year, and
I I didn't realize it because you know, Nicko Lndam,
you don't see it to the end of the year.
And I have to set myself down and say, Okay,
Carter is riding in uber seven is like that is
at worth seventeen thousand dollars fee seventeen thousand dollars for
(37:11):
you know, if not, you can use that money to
buy a car and just drive more, or give up
the car you already have and just go all in
on uber. What we can't do is have both, right,
So I just want to let people know we're not
above reproach here. We have to take our own device
at lotts and it's just understanding what do you want
your money to do for you and how do you
want it to be the tool that it can be
(37:34):
to help you grow and get towards your dreams.
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Because what I did to.
Speaker 5 (37:38):
Make it more more, to make it hit home for
me is I put that seventeen thousand dollars in a
retirement calculator at ten percent for fifty years, and I
saw how much money it could have made me if
I didn't spend it. So that going in twenty twenty
five is going to make sure I don't make the
same mistake again.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So I want you to talk a little bit about
melon and money, but I want you to first start
it just talk about some tools, you know, technologies or
et ceter Both of you, guys, I want you to
do this on things that you would advise. You know,
people add you know on their phone or you know
other you know when you talk about that, you know,
financial date George like things people should be doing. What
are tools resources we should use to help us both
(38:17):
manage our money better and grow our money? You know
early capacity.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Do you want me to start first and part? Go ahead?
Go ahead, Jordan cool One one tool I think is
great to weal we were talking about money management is
Rocket Money, right, Rocket Money. But now y'all need to
be sponsoring us at this point, y'all. But Rocket Money
is a great app. Right, There's just going to give
you that visibility to know where your money's going. Do
you have a subscription that's coming up that you should
(38:45):
be canceling? And it's really gonna give you that awareness
to be able to claw back some of that money
that you can use to invest and build well. So
from a money management perspective, I think Rocket Money is
an amazing app. From an investing standpoint, I really love
an app called in One Finance because one of the
things we talked about was how do I leverage right?
You know, Debta is a tool to build well. In
One Finance is one of the most easy platforms that
(39:08):
exists where you can invest your money and they will
give you a lot of credit based upon the value
your portfolio value. Right, So if you have fifty thousand invested,
you'll give you a lot of credit for twenty five thousand,
right and for all intentsive purposes. Sometimes it depends upon
what your investments are, but conceptually speaking about fifty percent,
and so once you have a handle of your finances
and you're investing, it's like, wow, okay, now, just by
(39:31):
investing my money instead of having the money in the bank,
if I would have drawn twenty five thousand, I'm leaving
twenty five thousand dollars in there, this eroding right to inflation.
And then when I take it out, right, I got
twenty five thousand dollars to play with. I can have
my full fifty thousand, remain invested, and still get access
to twenty five thousand dollars. Right. So I strongly recommend
having an app like in one Finance and investing following
(39:52):
the Burking investment strategy that I shared earlier in the
podcast That's for money. That's a money maximizing standpoint. Now,
from a money making standpoint, if you're an entrepreneur, is
make sure you have your like quick Books or whatever
accounting app on your phone and just on a regular basis,
make sure that you're reviewing the P and L. I
think one thing that a lot of entrepreneurs shy away
from is like money making activity. Right, It's like, what
(40:14):
makes all of this easier, just to world on the
same page, what makes building wealth easier? What makes money
management easier? Like is making more money? Now, obviously you
still got to be a good steward over your money.
But one of the things that helped a lot of
my early clients out is I looked at their expends.
It's like, what can I cut? I'm like, you're honestly
not doing too bad. I was like, you need to
make more money, right, And so the same level of
awareness we need to have when it comes to spending
(40:36):
is the same level of whereas we need to have
when it comes to making money. What was the target
revenue goal for this month? Where am I at in
the first seven days? Where am I at at a
mid month? Right? And we do something in our company
called halftime report, right, like we know what our goal
is for the month. We're not waiting til the end
of the game to figure out we lost the game. Right,
so at halftime, where are we relative to the goal,
(40:57):
which obviously are You've logging into your quick books and
it's up to day. You can see that right and
you'll be able to make game time or halftime adjustments
if you will to be able to make those adjustments.
So those are least three things I would do because
I like to look at things and buckets of make
managing maximize, and so those are three tools that you
can use. It could be beneficial.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
CARDI, you can do the same thing, but also talk
about mailing and money on.
Speaker 5 (41:16):
This please, Yeah, so I'll give one of that. I'll
go with to the Maillon money conversation. I love doing
an exercise with our clients having them go to the
National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits because when you start
a business right, you most likely left your retirement plan
and your previous employer. So this website will allow you
(41:37):
to go find any other retirement plans that you might
have left behind in previous employees that you forgot about
or that you couldn't find an XYZ and then we're
able to take those old retirement plans, roll them over
into your small business retirement plan, and we can even
set it up in a way we can use some
of that money to borrow.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
We can borrow from our retirement.
Speaker 5 (41:58):
Plan, use some of that money to jump start our business,
finding all the money that we left in previous employers,
moving it over to our own self employed retirement plan
that we own, that we control and that.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
We can help grow faster.
Speaker 5 (42:07):
So that's the exercise that we do all of our
entrepreneur clients to make sure we're not leaving any money
in the past. And I think from a million and
money standpoint, we have so many tools in our in
our community to help our clients get to the next level.
And I think one of the best things that we
can do that we do for our clients is that
(42:28):
we give them one accountability to advisors that they can
work with to really help them maximize their money. But
also just giving them all the tools and resources and
things that we use for ourselves over the years to
really help them maximize their money and minimize their taxes.
And that's why, you know, all of our clients are
(42:48):
part of our mail and a Millionaire Club. Not only
are we helping them with the saving and investing part,
but helping them achieve net worth milestones. I don't think
we mentioned it earlier, but every year we having a
wart show where we celebrate our clients for hitting networth goals,
whether it's the firste hundred thousand networth, the first half
a million, their first million, their first five million, and
(43:10):
we celebrate our clients so that, in steat of money
being a taboo topic, is actually something that they're willing
to talk about, excited to talk about, because now we're
talking about different milestones that we're celebrating, hitting these wealth,
hitting these wealth markers. And I think in twenty twenty
four we helped our clients increase the networth by over
one hundred million dollars and.
Speaker 4 (43:30):
We got to celebrate with them at the award show.
Speaker 5 (43:32):
So I think it's just taking money from being a
taboo topic, and what Melon the Money is doing is
taking it and making it something.
Speaker 4 (43:39):
That's worth talking about and something that's worth celebrating.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Black Tech Green Money is a production of Blavity, Afro Tech,
The Black Effect podcast, Networking Night Hire Media. It's produced
by Morgan debonn and me Well.
Speaker 2 (43:49):
Lucas with the digital production support.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
By Kate McDonald s Hurgan and Jada McGee. Special thank
you to Michael Davison Love Beech. Learn more about my
Guess of the Tech show Up is an Innovative's afrotech
dot com. The video version this episode will drop to
Black Tech Dream Money on YouTube, so'll tap in. Enjoy
your Black Tech Dream money, share us to somebody, Go
get your money.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Peace and love,
Host
Will Lucas
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