I
am a nameless, faceless child. I am a statistic. I am lumped together with
other children like myself who receive free, or reduced, lunch. I am often
referred to as the disadvantaged, the high-risk, the needy, the underprivileged,
or simply – the poor. I am given a free turkey at Thanksgiving and a new
unwrapped toy at Christmas and then forgotten; once again out of sight, out of
mind. Who am I? I am the child who lives below the poverty line and because of
this little is expected of me when it comes to academic success. I have learned,
however, that when little is expected even less is given.
Who am I? I am that adult child who
never learned that I had the power to build wealth, save for a rainy day,
become a homeowner or live without the stress of overwhelming debt. I was set
free to make my way through life’s ups and downs without the benefit of basic
financial information. I stepped into what I thought was the real world with my
tassel turned and my diploma in hand, only to awake and find myself shackled in
Plato’s Cave.
I jumped headfirst into debt without
a clue of how the money game is played. I was young and naïve. I exchanged my
financial freedom for a “free” t-shirt, and by applying for credit cards at the
checkout lines in order to “save” 10%. I was totally unaware of the financial
price I would eventually pay for what I thought were harmless acts. I had opened
a floodgate and one credit card became two, two became four, and before I knew it,
I had more debt than income; I was drowning.
I
could no longer afford the minimum monthly payments and the collection calls began
each morning. High interest rates and added fees replaced the free t-shirts and
that so called 10% savings. I had been subconsciously seduced into making
financial decisions in a matter of seconds that would negatively impact my life
for decades.
Who am I? I am a member of the
working poor. I was conditioned to blindly follow the yellow brick road through
the tunnel of debt. The “fake it until you make-it, the keeping up with The
Joneses and the I’ll worry about the future when it gets here” programming was
nothing more than clever marketing tactics. The shop now pay later propaganda
fooled me into believing that I was living the American Dream.
I have learned, the hard way, that it was my lack of
basic financial knowledge that put me on the path to debt and a life of paycheck-to-paycheck
living. We can no longer wait for our political saver to take office, our
employer to give us a life changing pay raise, or our tax refund to get us out
of financial chaos. We are smarter than we think. With a little financial information,
we can begin to rethink our spending, saving and investing choices.
Who am I? My name is Lucille Tyler Baldwin. I am the author and
publisher of the series Financially Fabulous Divas, which
includes Sick and Tired of Being Broke, In the Driver's Seat, Creating
Wealth and Women of Color Handling Their Business and Creating Wealth.
My mission
is to educate and empower women, who, like myself, never learned we could
create wealth and live without the stress of debt. An African proverb says, “If
you educate a woman you educate a nation.” Ladies let’s get educated.
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