TNFG Weekly Chapter 24: The Value of Our Financial Priorities

Rule #1, Check Your Weekly Financial Priorities

TNFG Weekly is a dose of my favorite nutritional content and nuggets that are worth indulging in. Sharing Financial Wholeness through Mindset, Articles, Spirituality, Health, Food, Fitness, Books, etc.

And to be honest, it’s kinda like free-styling off of one topic.

Table of Contents

This week:

Setting financial priorities in order to avoid the most obvious outcomes. Additionally, if you are here – you are already on the path to wealth.

From Literacy to Action

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No matter how much time you’ve wasted in the past, you still have all of tomorrow. Success depends upon using it wisely by planning and setting priorities. The fact is, time is worth more than money, and by killing time we are killing our own chances for success.
DENIS WAITLEY, AUTHOR

If we understood our own value, we wouldn’t waste it.

“The median net worth of households with Black college graduates in their 30s plunged over the past three decades to less than one-tenth the net worth of their white counterparts,” the WSJ reports based on analysis of Federal Reserve data.

Most Educated, Most in Debt

I’ve been researching this issue since around 2014 and documenting my findings since 2019. With a shrug, I guess I’m happy to see that the media and data are finally catching up.

Don’t believe me check out this article that I wrote in Linkedin that went viral, “Black Men: the Death and Rebirth of the Financial Role Model”

More than 84% of college-educated Black households have student debt, owning around $44,000. On top of this, Black millennials have around $6,000 in credit card debt at +15.99%. Their fixed debt repayment starts at around $352 per month. That same amount invested for a period of 20 years at 8%, would add up to $200,288.

What’s worse is that “Net worth for Black households in their 30s fell to $8,300, compared to $50,400 three decades ago.”

By contrast, non-Black Millennials saw their median net worth grow by 17% to $138,000 during the same period. As of 2019, Black households with a college degree have an even lower net worth than white households with no college degrees. To that, the reaction is both formulaic and expected.

“Colleges have failed Black Americans!!!”

I’m here to say nope. Colleges have not failed Black Americans. All things being equal the cost of college has increased for everyone over the last 30 years. Why is that?

Lifestyle Creep and the Extended Single Life Equation

College costs, beyond the Federal blunder under the Obama-Biden Administration to take on the student loan industry as a Federal product, equals Educational cost + Lifestyle creep + Administrative Bloat. And here you thought the brochures were cool.

Most colleges today compete for the best students and for the cash value that every other student will bring. In order to entice said students, they started throwing in upgrades known broadly as the College Experience.

From expanded/expensively shiny new buildings, technology, and the gym that resembles a coliseum; I saw firsthand, in the early 2000s how colleges were restructuring with extra sprinkles for the gluttonous student lifestyle. Check out the University of Central Florida; it might as well be its own city.

Olympic-sized pools, multiple half-capacity libraries, computer labs, and server rooms; the utility upkeep alone is expensive AF.

Add into this 24hr security, WiFi, and free ice cream days; it all starts to add up on the balance sheet. And where do you suppose we pay for all of this? Student fees, voila the perfect storm of being pseudo-rich and broke at the same time. So College didn’t fail you, many failed to understand the total cost of the college experience they wanted.

A TNFG Weekly dose - We rise and fall to the value of our financial priorities. Show me your bank statement and I can show you what you love.

So what’s the Fix

We all rise and fall by the value of our priorities. If we aren’t being cognizant and present during the car ride, the cruise control is likely to go off course. It is OK to admit that we fell asleep at the wheel when it came to college and the opportunities/pitfalls that came along with the experience.

The cost is ultimately not race-specific. The best way to move FWD is to learn, adapt and re-prioritize our interests.

My Favorite Videos on Prioritizing

The Book That Changed My Relationship With Money

In this episode of the book club, Ali Abdaal is looking at Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin which looks at how we can transform our relationship with money, work, and our lives. It has been a best-selling book for nearly 3 decades and in this video, we look at a couple of the key themes including how we should define work, what is ‘enough’, and why we should equate money with life energy.