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You can’t be a financial journalist, expert, planner, etc., without noticing the distinct change of expression that comes over a person’s face when you say the ‘B’ word — Budget.
The very word ‘budget’ creates fear, thoughts of deprivation, and sacrifice, feelings that human beings are programmed to avoid. Unfortunately for many of us, that also means avoiding the rewards that can come with taking control of our financial lives and creating a blueprint that lays the foundation for achieving our goals.
[Related: Black Women and the Pay Gap]
Whether you call them ‘blueprints’ or ‘budgets,’ getting a clear vision of our goals is where the process begins. Click here to read Part 1 .
In addition, financial blueprints, or budgets, literally allow us to redirect our wealth to places that serve our highest values and ideas.
“Not having a budget is like going on a trip without a road-map or GPS. Budgets allow you to know where you are going financially and give you the best route to get there. Without it you will get lost,†says Ash Cash, financial expert and author of Mind Right, Money Right: 10 Laws of Financial Freedom.
Cash and I went on to discuss how to create a budget and why we have such a difficult time sticking to them.
BlackEnterprise: You say it’s important for everyone to have a financial blueprint, but particularly for Blacks. Can you elaborate?
Cash: Without getting too deep into the history of black economics, we have to realize that most Blacks have only been able to create ‘real’ wealth and financial freedom for the last 50 years – slavery lasted 223 years from 1640-1863, then reconstruction and Jim Crow laws lasted 102 years from 1863-1965. It wasn’t until the post-civil rights that we began to start seeing the tides change. With a buying power of $1.1 Trillion dollars it is important that we begin to budget in order to reclaim and build wealth in our communities. If we continue to freestyle our spending, our buying power will be taken for granted, and we will lose the true power that comes with financial freedom.
Continue reading on the next page…
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