Black Wealth Matters

Tiffany “The Budgetnista” Aliche shares her personal challenges with building wealth, all while building a multi-million dollar business. And her latest appearance on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.

She is an award-winning teacher of financial education and is quickly becoming America’s favorite, personal financial educator. The Budgetnista is also an Amazon #1 bestselling author of The One Week Budget and the Live Richer Challenge series.

Through her company, The Budgetnista, Tiffany has created a financial movement that has helped over 1 million women worldwide collectively save more than $150 million, and pay off over $100 million in debt, purchase homes and transform the way they think about their finances.

Tiffany credits her experience as a preschool teacher for 10 years in Newark, NJ for defining her purpose behind The Budgetnista: education.

In 2019, Tiffany transformed her commitment into legislation when she partnered with Assemblywoman Angela V. McKnight to write a bill that was later signed into Law A1414 (The Budgetnista Law). This law made it mandatory for financial education to be integrated into all middle schools in New Jersey.

To learn more check out thebudgetnista.com and malimore.com

We welcome entrepreneur Rachel Rodgers back to the show to talk about how business owners can go beyond the traditional lip service of “supporting” supporting Black Lives Matters and actually serving as Allies and practicing anti-racism within their companies.

Rachel is a woman of color, a mother of four and a seven-figure business owner — in that order. Rachel started her career working as a lawyer with nonprofits, federal judges and Hillary Clinton.

Rachel is founder of Million Dollar Badass, a high-level Mastermind for women looking to take their businesses from 6 to 7 figures. She firmly believes all women should desire to become millionaires – because of the profound impact a woman’s money can make on the world.

Learn more about Rachel and watch her Small Business Town Hall at HelloSeven.co

A new Northwestern University study based on data from the Federal Reserve estimates that on average for every dollar of accumulated wealth that white families have, many black families have just one cent. Our guests Talaat and Tai McNeely, founders of His and Her Money, are on a mission to help change that quotient.

The McNeely’s are Financial Educators and co-authors of Money Talks: The Ultimate Couple’s Guide To Communicating About Money. They are also the hosts of the top-rated podcast, “The His and Her Money Show” and creators of Power Couples University. Talaat and Tai McNeely (His and Her Money) have been featured in numerous publications such as Black Enterprise, FoxNews.com, MSN.com, Essence, and Business Insider.

We discuss:

To learn more visit the following sites:

The McNeeley’s Website – www.HisandHerMoney.com

Youtube – https://www.youtube.com/hisandhermoney

Community – www.PowerCouplesUniversity.com

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, 15.7% of NFL players have filed for bankruptcy within twelve years of retiring. A Sports Illustrated article reports that 78% of NFL players and 60% of NBA players face major financial challenges post retirement.

Dominique Stapleton is not only a sports agent, she is a financial educator to her clients who desperately need literacy and guidance. After working with athletes on their money through her company Stapling Success, Dominique wanted to offer her clients more. This year, she became a Certified NBA sports agent and vows to be the bridge between athlete success off and on the field.

Entrepreneur Yemi Rose is the founder of OfColor, a digital financial wellness platform focused on providing content and banking tools built around how people of color save, spend, and build our legacies differently.

We discuss the role financial services has played and continues to play in widening the racial wealth gap.Growing up in Jamaica and the differences of “being Black” there versus here in the United States.

Why we may want to rethink the expression “racial wealth gap.” Does it deserve a renaming?

How his startup OfColor will provide better access to financial tools and education to an underserved community.

Yemi has spent almost two decades at the intersection of financial services and communications/marketing focused on financial wellness, most recently as the Vice President of Financial Wellness Enterprise Initiatives with Prudential Financials’ Global Communications Group.

In this most recent role, he led the development of Prudential’s Financial Wellness Census research project, as well as “The Cut,” which focused on underserved consumers. He writes and speaks extensively on the racial wealth gap, and his writings on the subject have been published in Black Enterprise, The Root, Blavity, and Money.com.

After beginning his career as a Capital Markets Intelligence Associate for Thomson Financial, he served as an Investor Relations Director for several top-tier financial communications agencies, before moving to in-house roles. He has served as a senior executive at KPMG and BlackRock Inc., where he worked on helping them to maximize the value of their acquisitions and fintech ventures.

He holds both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degree from Cornell University. Yemi was born and raised in Jamaica, and now lives with his wife and two daughters in New Jersey.

Tiffany Dufu is founder and CEO of The Cru. Their algorithm matches circles of women who collaborate to meet their personal and professional goals. She’s also the author of the bestselling book ​Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less​. According to foreword contributor Gloria Steinem, Drop the Ball is “important, path-breaking, intimate and brave.”

Tiffany and I discuss how she was able to raise $1 million for her startup when only .0006% of Black women receive tech venture funding. She also shares pivotal money memories from childhood….and also, what to make of the Girlboss movement and its recent criticisms for not being inclusive enough?

Named to Entrepreneur’s 100 Powerful Women and Fast Company’s League of Extraordinary Women, Tiffany has raised nearly $20 million toward the cause of women and girls. She was a launch team member to Lean In and was Chief Leadership Officer to Levo, one of the fastest growing millennial professional networks. Prior to that, Tiffany served as President of The White House Project, as a Major Gifts Officer at Simmons University, and as Associate Director of Development at Seattle Girls’ School.

Stephanie Vaught, J.D. is a Gen X Financial Coach and Founder of Social Money Finance, LLC. Her company specializes in teaching effective money management and helping people build a life they love.

Stephanie was born and raised in Detroit, MI. She attended Detroit Public Schools and received a B.A. from Michigan State University in 2000. In 2007, Stephanie graduated with a Juris Doctor and concentration in Litigation from Thomas M. Cooley Law School. She has spent most of her professional career in law and community advocacy.

In 2009, Stephanie developed a profound interest in personal finance – mostly based on the need to manage her own household and entrepreneurial endeavors. In 2015, Stephanie made a career shift and became a certified financial counselor. She began working with a financial nonprofit counseling and educating thousands of people across the country about financial literacy and helping them to reach their personal financial goals.

In 2018, Stephanie decided to take her financial knowledge coupled with her legal skills and experience back to a community of her peers and founded Social Money Finance, LLC. Her mission is to empower people to increase their financial literacy, challenge unproductive money habits, and improve their financial place for themselves and their family.

Dr. Nicole Garner Scott is the Atlanta-based founder of Amount Financial Services. She is dedicated to creating financial breathing room for households of underrepresented communities. She has created wide-scale programs to empower others to change their financial trajectories, focused on legacy building and generational wealth.

Dr. Scott is a sought-after speaker and received an honorary doctorate for her work in business from the Obama Association.

Together we explore some of the historical barriers to wealth that have continued to be roadblocks for people in the Black community, as well as how the financial expert community can be more sensitive and mindful when offering advice.

To learn more about Dr. Scott, please visit www.amountfinancial.com.

As a friend and accomplished journalist focusing on the topic of black identity, politics and patterns of power in America, Farnoosh catches up with Donovan Ramsey to discuss his upcoming book, When Crack Was King, which chronicles the 1980’s and 1990’s epidemic, its misperceptions and the way policing changed during those years, as well as Donovan’s own experiences with racial discrimination in graduate school and beyond. Also, they discuss the truth about what publishing pays. Donovan and Farnoosh disclose their book advances.

More about Donovan: He is called “an indispensable voice on issues of racial identity, politics, and patterns of power in America,” by American culture critic Rich Benjamin. Donovan’s commentary on racial politics during the Obama era has been featured in The New York Times and his reporting and commentary on the criminal justice system have appeared in outlets including WSJ Magazine, The Atlantic, GQ, Gawker, BuzzFeed, Vice, and Ebony, among others.

Donovan served most recently as the commentary editor at The Marshall Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning news organization dedicated to the U.S. criminal legal system. Before The Marshall Project, he worked as an editor and writer at a number of outlets including Complex, NewsOne, and NBC’s theGrio.com.

Donovan holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Morehouse College. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently completing his first book, a history of the crack cocaine epidemic for One World—an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade book publisher.

You can learn about Donovan on his website www.donovanxramsey.com and follow him on Twitter @iDXR.

Queen Latifah made her first big splash onto the music scene at age 19, with the release of her hit rap single “Ladies, First.” For the next three decades, the Newark, New Jersey native would go on to build a multi-faceted and dynamic career as a musician, actress, producer and philanthropist, blazing a trail for other Black female artists. 

I recently sat down with Queen during her press tour for The Queen Collective, her latest endeavor which provides opportunities for women of color in film to tell stories from their viewpoint. The mentoring and development program, in collaboration with Tribeca Studios and Procter and Gamble, selected two winners this year and their projects premiered on BET Networks. 

In our conversation, she shared some of the financial lessons experienced while growing up and building her business, as well as her ideas on how we can promote more equality in the workplace and close the racial wealth gap.