Today’s Word on Money: “Ye Have Not Because Ye Invest Not”

by | Jan 9, 2017 | Opinion | 0 comments

…and ye invest not because ye spend it unto yeselves in order for the getting of temporal bling rather than the building of that which is needful to the entire body and its surrounding communities.

Okay, in plain language: Only a hand full of the millions of Black people in America with economic sufficiency do well with savings and investments, investments being the greater part of valor.

Money is not really meant to save except for having some mad cash around for a “rainy day” when it comes; other than that, money is actually made to spend, but many of us seem to have a problem with saving AND investing.

Investing in what?

Priorities that other ethnic and racial communities think are a HUGE #BFD: Taking stock of the future and investing in the stance of our own history and controlling our own narrative, and in the future of the PROPER education of our people takes cash and resources; but also the other magic bullet piece is long-term investing in the here and now by building Black businesses in our own neighborhoods and being just about as exclusive as all other races and ethnicities are. Moment of truth: The world cares as much about us as we care about each other.

Yes, we’ve heard it all before … ad nauseum, we keep hearing “Buy Black,” “Spend Black,” “Don’t let the HBCUs die” … but what does it really mean when it comes down to me, myself and my own household who lives at So’n’So’s Address in Any City, USA?

Take a look around.

We just saw a Black business fold because the owner could not sustain possibility of future advancements on Black businesses that mostly sell hair products, shea butter, essential oils, non-produced and non-agented homemade CDs, third-party multi-level marketing networks, and gift baskets.

Yes, these are not the only businesses Black people own, and they are certainly worthy ventures since we spend a lot on these products outside of our communities, BUT …

We spend on what we believe in at the moment and we absolutely believe in showing off houses, cars and sizable bank accounts-and still, no one benefits from that “wholesale” except white people.

We are often, as a community, short-sighted and limited to that materialistic scope; and in order to remain as such, we must continue to empower and enrich whites and their economic systems that fail Black America on nearly all counts.

The only place where their privileged economic systems are not a complete failure for us is when it comes to having a “job” with no pensions or little retirement assets, and fairly little to no sustainable benefits or credit-worthiness. And in white America, the only “jobs” we tend to get are the ones they don’t want, because they are typically low-paying, dead end, and futureless from the start.

If we were waiting for a brick wall to fall on our heads in order to get a clue, it done fell.

On the other hand, when it comes to money … we can’t trust each other any further than we can hoist a spit through the air and count the seconds until it hits the ground. We often rob one another blind quicker than a white person can come across town to suck it all out with a rubber hose and a siphon. We, the Black community as such, doesn’t even treat one another in business as well as we do whites, and we don’t pay what we owe when we owe it.

Yeah, yeah … “negativity” and all that I’m speaking; yet, in nearly 60 years, I haven’t seen nor witnessed one single evidentiary good result that came from “thinking positive” and “spending negative,” or from not combining positive thinking with positive investing, either.

Until we do that, “think on.” Float on.

Nothing’s going to happen that we don’t make happen, and that ALONE-when things happen that are positive-inspires and provides a base foundation for trust.

Positive thinking demands the positive action that goes along with making the positive thought a MANIFEST reality.

Is Wealth The Divine Favor of God?

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