K. Clyde Vanel, the son of haitian immigrants, learned how to manage money from watching his parents stretch their resources to raise him and his nine siblings in Queens, New York. Vanel’s mother, who cleans offices, and father, who drove a taxi and now works as a porter, were able to pay for eight children to attend Catholic school. All 10 children graduated high school and went on to college. Vanel, 31, is now a talented intellectual property attorney.
Because he went to a private Catholic school, Vanel realized the value of a quality education early on. When his parents couldn’t pay for his last two years of high school, he worked part time to pay for it himself. Vanel made the connection between education, business, and one’s ability to generate wealth. That is why he has adopted Declaration of Financial Empowerment principle No 8: to support the creation and growth of profitable, competitive black-owned enterprises.
When he was ready for law school, Vanel conducted his search like a savvy consumer. First, he made sure he scored well on his LSAT exam to attract scholarship money, then he focused on finding a school that would help him out the most financially. “A number of factors went into my decision, but it was important to me to find a school that would offer me the most scholarship money,” says Vanel.
When Boston University agreed to pay $18,000, or half of his tuition for each of the three years he’d spend in law school, Vanel decided to go there. For two years, the university paid his room and board because he was a resident advisor. This saved him about $10,000 a year. He also won two highly paid summer internships. His first summer in law school, he made between $6,000 and $8,000 working for the Air Force Judge Advocate General’s office. He spent his second summer working for intellectual property law firm Fish & Neave, and made about $30,000. At the end of his internship, the New York-based firm offered him a job upon graduation. He accepted it, with a starting salary of $125,000.
By the time he graduated law school in 2001, Vanel owed about $60,000 in student loans but he also had about $60,000 saved as a result of the scholarships he had, being a resident advisor, and his summer internships. And instead of moving back to New York and getting his own apartment, he moved back into his parents’ home and shared space with seven of his siblings.
“What I was doing was saving,” Vanel explains. His first financial goal was to invest in a home. He put $40,000 down on a $280,000, five-bedroom home in Queens in 2001. Today the house is worth $500,000, well worth the sacrifice of sleeping on his mother’s couch for a few months. “A lot of the people I worked with lived in Manhattan and their rent was more expensive than my mortgage,” he recalls.
Having a home with a garage was just what Vanel needed to accommodate his next business investments. An admirer of classic cars, he purchased a 1983 Porsche 911 SC Targa for $9,000 in 2001 and sold it two years later for $19,000. He also purchased a 1972 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow for $5,000 in a 2002 estate sale and later sold it for $22,000.
With the money from the sale of the cars, personal savings, and two lines of credit amounting to $50,000, Vanel decided he had enough to establish his own law firm. He spent the two years he worked at Fish & Neave attempting to bring in
profitable clients, but watched as other attorneys managed them. “I felt that I could do just as good a job as anybody else handling those cases, and now that I have my own firm, I’m doing just that,” he says.In fact, Vanel is determined to build his wealth through businesses, whether freelancing by fixing and selling cars or running his own law firm. Since opening The Vanel Law Firm P.C. in 2003, he has traveled the country developing his practice. Last year, the firm posted $80,000 in revenues, and Vanel says some of his clients have been so impressed with his work, that they’ve asked him to partner with them in other businesses. He currently has ownership stakes in a workforce development firm and a food distribution business.
Lending his legal expertise in exchange for a stake in a growing business is the kind of investment Vanel likes. For him, ownership matters. He notes: “As a partner in the business, I get a piece of the whole business.”
He also takes on the risk of ownership but prefers the hands-on decision making power a partner has
in building a business over the volatility of stock market investing. “I’d rather invest in something that I know, something I’m sure of,” Vanel says, “So I invest in my company; I invest in myself.”Vanel suggests the following if you want to use businesses to build wealth:
Approach your education like you’re buying a product. Search for the best opportunity and pursue grants and scholarships with vigor. “Currently, I have $70,000 in student loans outstanding,” Vanel says. “But had I not pursued scholarships, I probably would have at least $30,000 more in student loans.”
Control your spending. In a business, There are fixed costs that can’t be reduced and variable costs that can. Vanel parks his car half a mile away from his office to cut down his parking bill from $450 a month to $235 a month. He’ll also go to a fast-food restaurant “while my colleagues spend about $30, $40 a day on lunch.”
Reinvest in your company. Vanel says investments should produce solid gains, but to do that, you must place money back into the firm. Vanel has placed all his extra income into building the companies he owns a part of. “I’d rather invest, in my company, in my education and in my assets,” he says.