Podcast episode 10: Juneteentth Special

This episode is a special live edition recorded at Prince William County's Juneteenth festival. A discussion on building wealth.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Discussions on this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your financial investment professional before making important investment decisions. Securities offered to registered representatives of Cambridge Investment Research Authority, a broker dealer, a member of the Federal SIPC. Advisory services to Cambridge Investment Research Advisors and Cape, a registered investment advisor. Cambridge and Innovative Financial Solutions Consulting Group LLC are not affiliated. Welcome to today's podcast episode of Money, Finance, and Investments with Mr. Will. As you can see, we're in a festive environment. That's because today is June 19th. And for those of you all who don't know what the significance of that day is, it is affectionately known as Juneteenth. So I'm here at the Prince William County Complex in support of this event. The theme is rebuilding Greenwood. So if you know anything about Greenwood, Greenwood is the name of the community in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was known as Black Wall Street. And so a part of today's environment is bringing businesses together, bringing other community resources together to network themselves in support of one another in hopes that this networking will continue, not just on this day, but here after. The podcast episode that you are about to listen to is an episode dedicated to the theme that was laid out for this event in Rebuilding Greenwood, and in particular my emphasis, of course, as a financial professional is to talk about building wealth. So I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money, Finance, and Investments with Mr. Will. What is money? Most people believe that if they have enough money, money can solve that problem. It's important to understand in session two, which we talked about what causes financial problems. Impatience. I want it and I don't want to wait.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

And now, if you're ready to live your best financial life, it's time for another dynamic episode of Money, Finance, and Investments with Mr. Will. Because money ain't the problem. What we do with it is how y'all doing today?

SPEAKER_01 3:29

How's everybody doing today? Well, so who knows what the theme of today's Juneteenth event is? Does anybody know what the theme is? Uh Black Renaissance. Um anybody else? Freedom. Freedom, somebody said freedom. So let me tell you, it's rebuilding Greenwood. Rebuilding Greenwood. So first question is what is Greenwood? Tulsa Oklahoma. Say what? Somebody's in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And what was the name that most people know that place? Black Wall Street. Black Wall Street. Yeah, Black Wall Street, exactly. Black Wall Street was in uh Tosa, Oklahoma. Now, there was a community called Greenwood. And that community was actually founded by a black entrepreneur in 1906. Now, who can tell me why that community was founded? Anybody have a guess of why the Greenwood community was founded by a black entrepreneur?

unknown 4:57

Financial empowerment is getting into what you say.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Financial empowerment.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Somebody said financial empowerment. Any other answer?

unknown 5:06

No.

SPEAKER_00 5:06

And we you didn't have anything, so we needed businesses and the whole ship, and we needed.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Okay. There was all those things alright, but there was something specific that was happening that that that that prompted that. Any anybody anybody know? He said who the land? Well, no, it wasn't because of land. It was because of the segregation that was going on. The um black community was not allowed to participate in the economy in the traditional ways that everybody else was in terms of working and earning money and running businesses and those types of things. So it was because of the segregation that uh a man by the name of O. W. Gurley, who was a black entrepreneur from Arkansas, is a history fact. So uh you can look all this up. But he bought the land uh in 1906 that was coined, that was called Greenwood, that was identified as Greenwood. He bought that land specifically for the African American community for them to establish businesses and establish an economic community to help support their lives and their livelihood. Okay, so in case you all uh ever get asked that question, now you have a little known fact about uh Black Wall Street. Now, one little question regarding Black Wall Street. Somebody came up with the name Black Wall Street, and it is a famous person, it is a famous African-American person. Anybody knows who was the person who came up with the name Black Wall Street? Not WD Boys, but your coach. Booker T. Washington, not W. D. Boys, Booker T. Washington. Booker T. Washington coined the phrase Black Wall Street. All right, so again, my name is Will Smith. I am the uh founder and CEO of Innovative Financial Solutions Consulting Group, and I am a financial planner, I do wealth management, I do retirement planning, I do financial coaching, I do debt uh elimination, uh estate planning, a variety of different services. I work with small businesses in um a variety of capacities, tax planning and business consulting, and I'm located right here in Prince Ram County, in Woodridge in Prince Ram County. Um but today I am going to talk about building wealth. So the first question is what is wealth? What's wealth? Anyone got an answer? What's wealth? He said wealth is freedom. Anybody else got an answer for what wealth is? Now that's amazing. We hear that term and use that term all the time, but we don't really think about what the actual definition of that word is.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

You got having enough money to generate money to have you live your life.

unknown 8:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

All right. Okay. Anyone got their phone? Somebody should have their phone.

unknown 8:44

They're all third of the fact.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Somebody pull out their phone and look up the definition of wealth. Google it can you. Get that real quick from it. Because in most people's minds, if you ask 20 people what is wealth, you're very possibly going to get 20 different answers. So the definition of wealth is going to vary depending on who you talk to and what their understanding is. Okay? But to keep it simple, wealth is having enough resources financially to basically live the lifestyle that you want to live independent of somebody else have to take care of you. Okay? It's just trying to keep it simple. It is having enough resources for you to live the lifestyle that you want to live without you having to have be dependent on someone else taking care of you. Okay? Now, so we can't put a number on wealth because for somebody that could be a half a million dollars and you know $15,000 a month of income.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

Now, come on, sir, you're all right. Now, most people when they think about wealth, they think about people like Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Elon Musk, you know, Bob Johnson, Michael Jordan, you know, celebrities, Yonsei V. I'm naming African-American people because there is obviously others that I can name, but we think about wealth, that's kind of what we think about. But that's not necessarily the case. Uh I know people who are who have wealth, and they're not multimillionaires in the traditional sense that you regard, you know, multimillionaire. I know an older couple who bought commercial um office uh commercial property, rented a property out, generate $20,000 or something a month worth of income, but their cash savings was not in the millions. But the amount of money that they had coming in every month allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do with their lifestyle. And they did have some assets that could have been liquidated to generate more money. But let me kind of dispel a little bit of a myth here. When people talking about home ownership and wealth, yes, home ownership does contribute, but at the end of the day, if your home is worth $2.2 million, it's not an ATM machine where you can just go in and pull money out of it and go to the grocery store, go get gas, you know, go take the family on a vacation. So the fact that you own a home that may be very valuable in itself isn't really the true essence of wealth. Because if you own a $2.5 million home with a hundred and I mean with a with a million dollars worth of equity in it, you can't just go and you know push the keypad on your on your lot and get money off. You gotta take out a mortgage on it, which means you got a debt that you gotta pay. Right? So it's a little bit misleading to incorporate a home ownership in that definition of wealth in the sense of what the way people talk about it. Right? So I kind of wanted to just spell that a little bit and uh get into so what do you need in order for you to have wealth? Pretty pretty easy question. I'm just gonna randomly come over here. It's an easy question, easy answer to the question. What do you need in order to have wealth? You need money. Money. You need money, you know. Hey man, listen, I gave you a test you couldn't fail. All right? You need money. Now, you don't have to have a job making $300,000 a year to build wealth. What you have to do is you have to understand money. And many people don't understand money, but you have to understand money. I know, and there's been public stories, so so this isn't you know breaking news, but I know of a person who worked as a custodian who became a multimillionaire. His salary was less than all of the principals and all of the superintendents and all of the you know big wig people in the school system, but by the time of retirement, he was wealthier than all of them. Because he understood something very important. He understood money and he understood how money worked, and he understood the system that we live in and how to employ his money to make his money work, right? So one of the most important things to build wealth is understanding how to make your money work. See, there's only so much work you can do. It's 24 hours in a day. And you and I'm working 24 of them, and most people don't want to work eight. So your physical ability to work is limited. But money can work 24 hours a day. If you understand money and you understand some principles like how to leverage your money, you can put your money to work where your money is working all the time. And that is a key, vital principle to building wealth. You you can be fortunate enough to have the kind of income like an athlete or entertainer, or you know, you become a business owner and you know you got a big three, four, five hundred thousand dollar uh salary. You can accumulate wealth that way, but let me give you just a simple fact. Matter of fact, let me just ask somebody, ma'am, ma'am, I'm gonna ask you a question if you don't mind. What percentage of Americans do you believe are millionaires? Regardless of ethnicity, just told her, what percentage of Americans believe in our millionaires? She said 5%. That was a great guess. Okay. The correct answer, right, that that percentage varies because some surveys don't count the money that's in retirement accounts. So if we don't count the money that's in retirement accounts, and we don't count home equity, the actual number of millionaires in the United States that are Americans is 2.3%. 2.3%. That's a very small percentage. Right? So what that means is building wealth is hard. It's not easy. And if we just use, you know, a million, becoming a millionaire, right? And a millionaire just means that the assets and the resources that you have from a cash perspective equate up to a million dollars. If we just use that as a standard, it's hard. Because only 2.3% of Americans have achieved it. It's even less when you go outside of America and you look at the rest of the world. So it's not easy. And the reason why it's not easy, because we live in a society that does not promote building wealth. We live in a society that promotes spend. We live in a society that promotes free enterprise, and free enterprise promotes spend. Spend, spend, spend. You look at your commercials. How many commercials do you see telling you to get out of debt? How many commercials do you see telling you to save money? How many commercials do you see telling you to have a budget? How many commercials do you see telling you to be financially responsible? Very, very, if any, few. The majority of the commercials and infomercials and things you see online and Instagram and Facebook and all that kind of stuff is telling you to spend your money. Listen, what do you think a payday loan is? A payday loan is don't even wait for your paycheck. You got something you want, come get some money from us that we're gonna charge you for so you can get what you so you can go spend your money that you ain't even got yet. So, you know, money is a product. And most people don't think about that. But but every time you're borrowing money, every time you borrow money, you are buying money. So I did this in the seminar years and years and years ago. If you go to buy a house and that house costs $450,000, do you have $450,000 to give to the person you buy the house from? If you don't, then you gotta go buy money. You gotta go to a financial institution and you gotta reach to their terms to buy the money that they got so that you can get this house, and then that money is expensive. You know how we know that? Because if the house costs $450,000, by the time 30 years later you finished paying for the money, you done paid $700,000. So you borrowed $450,000, but you paid $350,000 to get that $450. So money is a product. When you buy a car, that's what you're doing. You get a student loan, you buy money. So you get a payday loan, you buy money.