How to Avoid Becoming a Financially Angry Black Woman - youramericanmoney
Author: Michelle
Description: One of the media tropes that I hate is the idea of the angry black woman. But, there is definitely a reason for Black women to be angry
Date: 2022-02-14T10:00:00+00:00

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# How to Avoid Becoming a Financially Angry Black Woman

posted on 14 February, 2022

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One of the most frustrating tropes in the media about Black women is that we’re always angry. As a Black woman who knows other Black women from all over the world I find this persistent assertion exhausting and just not true. But, I also think it’s an acknowledgement by other folks that we actually have A LOT to be angry about. As a person who is focused in the personal finance space I come across numbers and data that rightfully enrages me on behalf of Black women like myself.

The fact that there’s over a 51% chance that we’ll find ourselves in financial caregiving roles, or that we’ve been encouraged to get educated which is great and are the most educated population in the US but the price is literally becoming the face of the Student Loan Crisis and it looks like the current administration won’t be passing student loan forgiveness any time soon.

Or, dealing with the statistics on the persistent pay gap and Black women’s earnings vs. White men. Of course I get angry, but instead, I’m focused on what I can control. In this episode I’m sharing tips and ideas on how to avoid becoming a financially angry Black woman and some tips, tools and resources to help us grow our income and create joy around our finances.

In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please read my disclosure here.*

## Listen to the Show

## Related Episodes

- Talking Building Black Generational Wealth With Kiersten and Julien Saunders of RIch and Regular

- Confronting My Own Financial Classism

- Bank with FAIR: A Conversation with Founder and CEO Khalid Parekh

- Refinancing for the First Time? 4 Homeowners Share Some Tips

- The Financial and Emotional Cost of Fun

## Show Resource

Want to lead a more socially equitable financial life but aren’t sure where to start? Grab my “Good Money” tool kit. A resource sharing the ins and outs of leading a socially equitable lifestyle without going broke. Grab the resource in today’s show notes or using the following link: https://michelleismoneyhungry.com/good-money

## Show notes

- Last week I was listening to a Twitter Space about applying for Grants being hosted by April Reign, creator of the viral Oscars So White hashtag from a few years ago. It was an incredible two hours of free information that many of the attendees, the majority of these listeners probably wouldn’t have had access to, or would have had to navigate around a gatekeeper to access.

- What was incredible about this space was the insane number of women who showed up as attendees but were experts in the grant space and shared their expertise without hesitation with the rest of us.

## Strategy #1 Share Your Expertise

- In fact, the expertise that these women shared was so in-depth that they changed the impact of the entire experience. Without them that Twitter space would have been good, with their input it was astounding. You can literally begin doing this today via: Twitter Spaces, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. If you’re excited about Twitter spaces you can check out the following resource that I created on how to leverage it at: https://brandbuildinglab.com/twitter-spaces

- Sharing your expertise is such an empowering feeling. There’s nothing better than helping other people out without expectation. One thing to be careful of is balancing out the time and energy that it takes to do this. I create a lot of free content that allows me to share resources, tips and ideas with others.

## Strategy #2 Share Your Resources

I love that technology has made it easier to share impactful tips, tricks and information specific to money. Before I discuss this further I do want to share a disclaimer as always, do your research. You MUST use discernment and common sense. WIth that said, I share resources all the time. This one strategy helps to counteract gatekeeping activities

- Share the communities that you join that support the financial goals that you’re working towards. If you’re interested in debt repayment there are groups for that, if you’re looking to earn more there communities for that, if you’re interested in FIRE there are groups such as Women of Color Pursuing FI

- How to find these communities:: type into the search bar what you’re looking for. You would do this in Google Search, Twitter/Facebook/etc.
  - Let people know what you’re looking for.

- Tell people how to create a mastermind group that holds you accountable to the goals you’ve set for yourself.

- If an educational resource such as Harvard’s computing classes that you can audit for free crosses my path-I share that too.

- Locally I’ve shared food resources for people needing access to nourishment.

## Lesson #3 Share Your Experiences

- By sharing your experiences you may be validating someone else’s similarly lived experience. Maybe you’re a high income earner and it feels like no one else is, you’ll be surprised to find how many people are living similar experiences.

- Also, by sharing your experience you may be expanding another person’s awareness of the challenges that you may face. I had friends who really supported me in my online business but had NO IDEA that I was having difficulties upleveling due to lack of knowledge on how to do it until I said something to them.

- Tell people how you negotiated a higher compensation package, what worked and what didn’t.

- Representation matters but so do allies! Allies, please listen to our stories and when possible help people out. And when I say Allies, I’m not just talking about White people. I”m talking about people who are in the Human Resource community and are tasked with hiring folks. One of the most upsetting stories that I heard about this year was how a woman named “Mercedes” who happens to be Black, talked about hiring a candidate $40k below the allocated budget for the role that they’d been hired for. Her reasoning, they would learn a financial lesson in the long run. How are you supposed to learn a lesson if you don’t know that you’re under negotiating your compensation?

## Lesson #4 Share Impactful Financial Opportunities

There are so many tools and resources to earn more or leverage someone else’s dollar. But, we don’t know what we don’t know and for many of us it could be as frustrating as not knowing where to start. Here’s how I help connect others with opportunities thoughtfully. I’ll share how I do this daily

- One of the ways that I currently earn money is by freelancing writing. One of the most frustrating parts of building that income up was finding projects that paid well and figuring out how to connect with leads consistently. I make a point of sharing freelance projects that pay over $300 on my Twitter feed. Why a minimum of $300? Because I got stuck at $200-$250 for a long time.

- I share grant and scholarship opportunities

- I share job leads

- I talk about how to attend transformative events for free or at a discount. These events could include: conferences, webinars, fun activities, etc.

## #5 Cultivate Financial Joy

I recently shared a podcast episode about the financial and emotional cost of fun. I think about all of the hard work all of my family has done and I think about the fact that many of my relatives’ opportunities to have fun were limited depending on their money and just what was going on in their life. There’s a reason why I share how to have fun for free all the time.

Here’s the thing, it’s 100% valid for Black women to be financially angry. Here are list of policy initiatives that the US declines to pass that would help not only Black women, but all citizens.

- Federal minimum leave or vacation time. People don’t realize that we don’t have a legally mandated leave. 10 days is just a suggested standard. It’s not legislated.

- Maternity and paternity leave-Western countries all over Europe and Canada have it. Only Americans fight to not have access to this policy and it makes no sense. By the way, I don’t have kids right now and I advocate for this policy-it just makes sense

- Free or inexpensive education-We’re having very valid conversations about the cost of an education and the financial long-term price that people are paying.

I could go on but I just don’t want to. Instead, I want to encourage you to do the following:

- Connect with a financial therapist if you’re finding that you have mental blocks around money. These could include:
  - Underearning
  - Feeling guilt for doing well
  - Or navigating issues connected to money and family

- Do something fun at least a minimum of once a month. Again, I share how I do a lot of things for free. But, I also will thoughtfully pay for:
  - Theater tickets
  - Basketball games
  - Trips to the mountains
  - Goat yoga
  - R&B yoga
  - The idea is to plan for these things

## Cultivate Financial Growth

- Learn about money-You don’t know what you don’t know and there’s absolutely NO JUDGMENT about that.
  - Read books
  - Take classes
  - Follow financial influencers while using your discernment around that process.

- Start investing-You can literally begin investing with one dollar. No one talks about this enough. Maybe that’s all you’ve got. It’s ok, build the investing habit over time. You’ll naturally invest more as you learn more and earn more.

- Earn more-The one financial conversation that I wish financial influencers would spend a lot more time talking about is earning more. I will say that when I was making $500 extra that made a big difference in my monthly finances. It’s not lost on me that there’s a statistic that most Americans don’t have $400 to deal with a financial emergency, so that $500 hit that threshold. Then there’s earning SIGNIFICANTLY MORE. Strategically leave old jobs and build in significant raises each time you leave an old job for a new one. This puts the power back in your hands. 3% raises if you even get them don’t work in the long-run.

- Simplify your expenses-I paid off a ton of debt and what I learned from that experience is that the less you owe, the more your money will grow. Keep your finances as simple as possible. I’m not saying don’t have debt. I’m saying keep things organized and simple.

- Apply for every scholarship or grant that comes your way and makes sense for your situation and what you’re doing. Not as many people as you think are applying for these opportunities. Even if you receive a small percentage of these opportunities, that’s money you don’t have to work for or spend and your earned income can be allocated elsewhere.

- Learn how to make money separate from your traditional 9-5-preferably online. Many employees are inadvertently giving their employer way too much power over them by not having a plan B for earning money.

- Avoid the naysayers-You know, the people who don’t believe in your vision of becoming a financially happy Black woman. Or, want to drag you into being angry all the time. I want you to channel that anger into focused, impactful action and go to a Rage room to work things out when you’re pissed off.

There are financially angry Black women in my life. I understand their anger. But, I’ve noticed that there’s a tipping point where that anger impacts how you move through the world and obviously not in a good way. I want to encourage us to be mindful of this in the same way that we talk Hashtag Black Boy/Black girl joy. The way that we try to focus and protect our children other young people around us. We Black women have to do the same for ourselves. I’ve been a financially angry Black woman and in the long-run my anger harmed me and my wallet. I don’t want that for you. Do you have suggestions on how to avoid becoming a financially angry Black woman? What’s worked for you?

## Show Affiliate

One of my favorite things to do is to find financial tools and products that make reaching your money goals easier. Qube Money is one of my favorite financial tools that I use to save towards different goals. Qube works as a digital envelope system and is paired with a Visa debit card and app. You basically transfer money into your FDIC insured account and save towards your different financial goals. That cool conference you would like to attend in the Fall, set up a Qube Money account and begin saving towards it. The charitable giving you would like to do during the holiday season, set up your Qube and start saving now. I’m a proud affiliate of Qube and think it’s a great financial tool to add to your money tool kit. Go to: https://michelleismoneyhungry.com/qubemoney to find out more.

## Resources

- How to Use Twitter Spaces to Grow Your Online Brand

- Grants for Creators

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#### Michelle

I am an obsessive foodie, but not self-righteous with it, love travel, meeting new people, helping you look good, and am freaked out by people who don't enjoying reading...something! Grab a Perrier, read my blog, feel free to drop me a line! Hope to hear from you soon.

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