Mother’s Day 2017: One of My Mother’s Greatest Gifts, Getting Engaged, and Avoiding My Own Personal Fiscal Cliff

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Motherly Guidance

A couple of years ago when still writing for the Examiner, I wrote a sentimental tribute piece about my mother for Mother’s Day discussing everything she did for my brother and me. In short she put being a mother first above all else. Looking back at my youth I don’t remember her really partying aside from holiday celebrations at her places of employment. There were always lots of home cooked meals, togetherness, and church on Sundays, though I didn’t appreciate it at the time. There was also a lot of love and positive affirmation in our home.

Her motherly guidance continued well into my adulthood. One of her greatest gifts was given to me a couple of years ago, and I can guarantee that it isn’t a gift that you the reader would expect. It was a lifesaving gift – one that impacted our immediate family, and that helped stop me from going over my own personal “Fiscal Cliff” and falling to my demise. I’m sharing this story because I think about it often, but also so that it might help save someone else. This post will probably likewise touch someone, and maybe draw a laugh or two, or three, or four.

Fiscal Cliffs

Many of you remember the term “Fiscal Cliff” from one of President Barrack Obama’s earliest showdowns with Republicans regarding the financial future of the United States – at the time a potential massive increase in taxes and broad spending cuts. There are also be personal fiscal cliffs – situations in which a particular set of financial factors causes or threatens sudden and severe economic decline. While the sizes and scales are different, they both involve needs, wants, how items in question are going to get paid for, and the after effects.

Only those really close to me know that I was engaged to be married two or three years ago. Not being one to post my personal business all over Facebook, I initially told only a trusted few. My former fiancée will remain anonymous, and my challenge likewise will be to tell this story in the fairest way possible, without demonizing and piling on her, as it would show very little class, so wish me luck. Instead, I will focus on something my mother shared with me, and how it stayed with me as my brief engagement unfolded. There were actually a couple of quotes that stuck with me but hers was special.

Ring Sizes and Customs

“You know it’s the custom for the bride’s father and/or family to pay for the wedding,” my mother told me shortly after my fiancée accepted my proposal (which I botched by not doing the getting on one knee ritual). I didn’t know the first thing about weddings and in the previous year had to learn quickly about the “Four Cs” for picking out engagement rings: Cut, Clarity, Carat size, and Color. Depending on the woman, rings can be a really, really big deal – perhaps too big a deal in the grand scheme of things. That’s a separate discussion.

Living in two different cities, there were a lot of details my fiancée and I had to work out besides the wedding itself. We loosely mutually agreed that the ceremony should be held out in the city she was from on the Pacific coast. I think it was around that time a ballpark number for how much we would spend on the wedding emerged; $18,000 which quickly got rounded up to $20,000. The funny thing is I think I threw the number out there – not because I had dreamt of spending that amount, but because I had heard two friends say that they had spent that amount on their wedding with some help from their folks I believe.

How to Get Married

After she accepted the proposal, things went fast. Within a week, a close friend sent her a “How to Get Married” book with all of the planning and steps. There were also plans to go dress shopping in New York City just like the show Say Yes to the Dress. There is a lot I could say about what all happened next, but for the sake of keeping this focused, I’ll just say that there was a lot of deliberation over the amount to be spent. While I wanted to keep it at $20,000 or below, my fiancée lobbied to push the number upwards.

“You’re probably going to end up spending a little bit over what you set the budget at,” my mother said, which didn’t make me feel any better.

“How many people are you all inviting? The dollar amount is going to grow exponentially with the number of guests you’re inviting because you’re going to be feeding all of those people,” a close friend and fellow University of Michigan alumnus said, who had gotten married while we were all still in school. He and his wife spent a little over $10,000 of their graduate school stipends – a tremendous feat.

It’s the custom for the bride’s father or family to pay for the wedding, my mother’s words continued to roll around in my head. But whose custom was this? And what if the bride’s father or family didn’t have any money? Then what?

Eventually I started to ponder the enormity of spending $20,000 on our big day. I started thinking that it wasn’t a smart idea even though I was a federal employee with a, “good government job.” I had only recently gotten rid of my revolving consumer debt and didn’t have a substantial emergency fund in the bank, and neither did she. I had also only recently started getting the 5% matching contribution on my government Thrift Savings Plan retirement account. Furthermore, I had my eyes on buying stock, and moving into the wealthy class.

What Can One Do with $20,000?

It’s the custom for the bride’s father or family to pay for the wedding. What can one do with $20,000? One can use it as a down payment on a home (depending on the market). One can purchase a brand new car. One can invest that money and grow it. One can donate to charities and scholarship funds for needy kids. It can also simply be put away for an emergency fund for life’s inevitable calamities. It can be used to start a business of some sort. In this case it could also be spent on a one-day bonanza for friends and family who would go back to their lives afterwards.

“What you all need to do is live off of one of your incomes for a year and save the other one,” one of my mentors said when I told him that I was thinking about making the big plunge months earlier. He was an experienced entrepreneur several years my senior and had seen a lot in his life’s journey. “You all need to save $50,000 in the bank – actually black people need to have $100,000 in the bank,” he continued. “Whenever we’re jobless it takes us longer to get hired.”

We need to save $50,000 in the bank? We need to save $100,000 in the bank? In addition to my mother’s words about the bride’s family paying for the wedding, my mentor’s words also bounced around in my head. Was such a thing even possible? With proper planning and prioritization, something that experts in estate planning like Dean Godfrey can help with, and agreeing in a relationship context, absolutely it was possible. While I could see the power in doing such a thing however, I wondered how realistic it was for the particular set of circumstances I was in. My fiancée and I didn’t reside on the same planet money-wise, and in several other key ways, which gets to the being ‘equally yoked’ principal that’s often discussed when long-term relationships come up. This living off of one income for the first year advice actually wasn’t new. It was just my first time hearing it.

Michelle Singletary’s Revelation

I found out something else highly relevant to this discussion by chance in the Washington Post. It was shared by Michelle Singletary to whom I have to give the credit for citing it in her “Color of Money” column. In an article discussing finance-related topics couples should discuss before getting serious (credit scores/history for example), she cited a study by Emory Professors Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon titled A Diamond is Forever’ and Other Fairy Tales: The Relationship between Wedding Expenses and Marriage Duration. They found that couples who spent greater than $20,000 on a wedding and associated costs are 3.5 times more likely to get divorced than couples who spent $5,000 and $10,000. CNN and PBS covered this as well.

“You know Anwar, $20,000 is actually the low end for the amount spent on a wedding,” another close friend and Michigan alumnus said in the aftermath of the whole thing. That may have been true, but the question in my mind once again centered around whose role it was to pay for all of it. Was it the couple or the bride’s family? Both families? And what were the long-term consequences? Furthermore, was it sane for a couple with no inheritances, and collectively no assets, to invest that type of money in something like that?

My gut told me no, but there is something sentimental, warm and fuzzy when it comes to women, engagements, weddings and shows like Say Yes to the Dress – something that defies all logic and reason. As a man, you can easily get swept up in it all because well – it’s what many women like and what many women want to do. Many have dreamt about their ‘Big Day’ since they were little.

Retrieving Investments?

As alluded to earlier, it wasn’t exactly a stable partnership and life’s many circumstances caused the whole thing to implode. It was actually biblical in magnitude – something made for TV. I thus didn’t have to proceed down the path that was unfolding in front of me which I saw leading me over the edge of my own personal fiscal cliff onto the rocks below. No, I never got the ring back. I got that question a lot – mostly from females I shared the story with, and from one guy – a cunning salesman who was trying to get me to purchase one of his insurance products in a coffee shop one morning. I gladly told everyone no, as it paled in comparison to the money that I would’ve spent had the whole thing gone forward.

A Pakistani Wedding

About a year after my engagement imploded, a close friend got married – a Pakistani woman. I was blessed to be invited to one of the three days of their weekend long wedding celebration/ceremony. That’s right, it was three days in accordance with Pakistani culture – they do it big. The ceremony I attended was at a beautiful hall and had all the trimmings. My coworker and her husband, who was also Pakistani, were both dressed in the most immaculate costumes in accordance with their culture. He actually rode in on a pony. I looked around in amazement as all of us guests were treated like royalty.

She shared with me that her parents and the groom’s parents paid in the ballpark of $30,000 for the whole thing – that’s right $30,000. Coming from the eastside of Buffalo, that’s a lot of money, and afterwards I pondered over and over again that their parents paid for it. It was their culture and the norm in their community. They also had an abundance of stable families where their parents actually had the funds to put into that type of thing – perhaps a demonstration of Pakistani privilege.

I continued to ponder their wedding weekend. Because their parents footed the bill, they as a young couple didn’t take a huge financial hit. They were able to just continue on with their lives and build – saving into their retirement accounts, planning vacations, pondering purchasing a home, etc. They were able to start in a good place. The same was true for another friend. She and her spouse came from two stable families and themselves didn’t personally make huge investments on their big day. The bride’s diamond ring was not purchased at some extravagant store like on TV, but instead, it was passed down through the generations in the groom’s family – again a benefit of coming from a stable family. Up this point, I’ve mentioned the concept of retirement twice. To get a feel for why this is so important, I recommend reading 6 last-minute retirement planning strategies by Brian Perry.

A Big Waste of Money?

“Weddings are a big waste of money,” said a professor on my thesis committee at the University of Michigan with a look of disgust on his face. He was kind of conservative, and had homes in both Ann Arbor and Jackson Hole, Wyo. He had been around a while and had seen a lot of stuff. I didn’t understand any of it at the time so I thought he might’ve just been being an old curmudgeon. He was probably thinking that there were better things that could be done with the tens of thousands of dollars spent on weddings.

Are weddings, engagement rings, and all of the associated costs a waste of money? As with most things it depends on your point of view. That said, as a couple, before dumping tens of thousands of dollars into something like that, I think it’s important that both agree on it and ask each other several key questions. Are you going into debt for it? Have you already started building wealth individually? Can your relatives afford to kick in? Where will you two be after the festivities once everyone else has gone home? Is spending an astronomical amount of money a need or a want?

“It’s the custom for the bride’s father and or family to pay for the wedding.” I don’t know that my mother knew that her words would stay in my mind as they did. The words made more and more sense to me as I thought about them. From a logical standpoint, if I as a man have just saved for an engagement ring – a month’s salary or more, does it now make sense to dump more money into a one-day extravaganza leaving us financially exposed? For me at the time, no, it didn’t make any sense. By the way, this wasn’t the only advice my mother gave me. As a spiritual woman, there was much more. My father? He didn’t give me much of anything advice-wise. His greatest anxiety/concern was having to fly out to the west coast to attend the ceremony.

Personal Decisions

Everyone has to decide for themselves what’s right as families and cultures are different. As mentioned earlier, after a life of making financial mistakes out of ignorance, and only recently discovering some of the key secrets to wealth building such as knowing what a Net Worth was, my focus was more on savings and investments. Furthermore, having been bailed out of a couple of jams by one of my uncles for example, asking him for more money at that time felt unacceptable. The same was true for my father of whom I also decided it was unacceptable to ask for financial support of any kind at my current station in life.

For any men reading this and thinking about taking the plunge, this stuff is a big deal. Many of the ladies (not all) dream about their wedding and will even critique and mock each other over them, as I witnessed a couple of high income-professional ladies do about a peer who paid for her wedding expenses out of pocket. To cut costs, she and her fiancé wisely did things like cater their reception. He was a master chef and put in some sweat equity of his own on the food. I think they spent ~ $10,000 on the wedding, maybe a little less. Also, some ladies think a spectacular ring is owed them, and will make them feel better during those inevitable rough marital patches. Some will concede the wedding for a $20,000 or ring.

Think about your life, your goals and the long-term ramifications if you’re paying out of pocket. Be real with yourself and your partner. Determine whether or not you’re dealing in needs or wants and where you’ll be on the back end of the wedding. If the two of you can’t agree there then that should, ‘give you pause,’ as my mother would say. Interestingly my father’s second wife felt that past a certain age, there shouldn’t be any expectations for families to help pay for anything, and that’s assuming again that you had parents and families who had the means to begin with.

A $10,000 Gift for Eloping

“My friend’s father told her that he would give her a $10,000 gift if she and her fiancé eloped,” a woman in my former lab said at a recent science conference. Her friend’s father had clearly done the math in his head and projected what a wedding would cost him, and determined that $10,000 would be a fraction of that cost.

Closing Thoughts

While the majority of this story was about me I’m going to close out by going back to my mother as this post is in celebration of Mother’s Day. It was her words that stayed with me throughout this whole experience. That being said, one of the challenges to growing up is having the discernment to reconcile your parent’s experiences/beliefs and words of wisdom with your own situation as the two don’t always go together. Sometimes you do inevitably deviate from what they recommend for any number of reasons – sometimes disappointing them and even going through the hardship they tried to protect you from, and sometimes not.

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Your Net Worth, Your Gross Salary, and What They Mean

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“The interesting thing about one’s net worth is that it can’t be negotiated with one’s employer.”

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Note. The subject matter of this blog post is not new. It has been known for years by those who learned about it in their families, or who have discovered it on their own. It’s simply a discussion from my personal perspective which I think is worth visiting. The pictures displayed throughout this post are from the eastside of my hometown of Buffalo, NY. My first money lessons started there – a lot of what not to do, and they capture the essence of some of the money challenges facing my brothers and sisters in my hometown and across the country.

Money Lessons From Your Family

Life is literally a lottery and regardless of your color or nationality, one of its immutable truths is that you can’t control the family you were born into. You can’t control the parents you are born to, which likewise dictate the privileges and advantages you have access to. We often think of privilege in terms of black and white (White Privilege), but there are also black families that have privileges over other black families. The family you are born into in large part guides your start in life, the information, and the values that will dictate your early life choices – good or bad, though they don’t necessarily shape all that comes afterwards – a good thing for some.

Neither of my parents talked about what a Net Worth was when I was growing up. As described in the Big Words Blog Site Story, my mother and her siblings were first generation college students – descendants of parents who were a part of the Great Migration. My father’s situation was similar. They were children of the Civil Rights Era, and thus the big goal for them was earning college degrees and then securing stable jobs on equal footing with their white peers. That for them was winning and it was also a surpassing of their elders. For those of us born from their generation (Generation X), going to college was also expected, but what would be the next level for us? What was winning for our generation?

One’s Gross Income Vs. Their Net Worth

These days I have a lot of discussions with via text messaging with my brother Amahl, and three close friends from Hutch-Tech High School in Buffalo, NY: the twins Alim and Raheem Gaines and our other buddy, Hestin Brown. All week long we discuss topics including sports, politics, and some of the silly stuff we see in the media, on Black Twitter and on Facebook. We discuss social issues as well, particularly as they relate to the black community. We’re a “Black Male’s Support Group”, or even our own little “Think Tank”. Recently in a group dialogue that started out with a controversy regarding Tyrese Gibson’s spouse and whether she was actually black, something else much more important came up, the concept of one’s net worth.

Alim cited something he heard about listing what black men in the United States earn in terms of average gross income. I responded wondering what the breakdown was for black women and Alim on cue cited the 2010 study by Mariko Chang describing Black and Hispanic women having average net worths of only $100 and $120. I quickly pointed out that there was a difference between one’s gross income and their net worth. My brother, the eldest in our group, asked what a net worth was. For perspective, we’re all just above the age of 40. Alim and I both knew the answer and gave it. I shared that I was first introduced to the term in my late 20s, but didn’t completely grasp it until my mid-30s – very, very late in the game. I pondered the fact that my brother still hadn’t grasped it yet – not a knock on him by any means, just our life’s circumstance. I then wondered how our own life decisions would have been different had we known this important concept in our teens.

What Is Your Net Worth?

Just briefly, your net worth is the numerical difference between what you own and what you owe – your savings and your assets minus your debts and obligations (liabilities). Your savings are self-explanatory – the amount of liquid cash you have available and can access quickly. Assets can be anything from securities such as stocks, gold or silver, real estate investments, equity in your home, or profitable businesses. If you’re an employee, a major contributor to your net worth is your retirement savings – that’s if you’ve been disciplined enough (and able) to steadily set money aside, which is something that the experts at Horan Wealth Estate Planning can help you with. Debts/liabilities are self-explanatory as well. Common forms of debt are: credit cards, car notes, mortgages, home equity lines of credit, loans against your retirement savings, etc.

I only started learning about what a net worth was in my late 20s, out of curiosity and chance. Books like the Rich Dad Poor Dad talked about it, in addition to the Millionaire Next Door. In Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (FPU), the term is not explicitly addressed, but FPU’s ‘Baby Steps’ ultimately lead to a steadily increasing net worth.

A Metric Of Your Wealth

Okay, so what’s the big deal about this somewhat abstract and nebulous term that only few understand? The answer is that your net worth is a metric of your wealth which is very, very different than your gross salary. This is a critical distinction because a high gross salary doesn’t necessarily translate into a high net worth. A person or a couple can have high gross salaries and still have a negative net worth(s).

In Black America we’re often enamored and impressed with individuals who make six figures. Similar to one’s occupation, making six figures by itself can be deceptive. You would assume that a medical doctor, a lawyer, or a news anchor would be very comfortable, but not necessarily – the same is true for someone who makes six figures. Imagine if a person has a gross salary of $100,000 and their expenses are $95,000. They’re still essentially broke right? Beyond a certain point, your gross income is what Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, calls an ‘Entrance Criteria’ – an attribute that allows you entry into a club, though it isn’t a predictor of greatness. ‘Excellence Criteria’ is what separates the great from the average and the underachievers. These are the things that allow one to become wealthy in this case.

Contrary to the images we’re bombarded with in the media, the excellence criteria for building your net worth don’t necessarily involve a lavish and high consumption lifestyle, but instead being frugal and careful with one’s money. Dr. Thomas Stanley wrote extensively about this in his Millionaire Next Door series. This means that many people are chasing after the wrong things in life and not knowing it until it’s too late.

Increasing Or Decreasing Your Net Worth

What are some keys to growing your Net Worth? Some of them include:

Budgeting one’s money and controlling costs – learning to run a surplus vs. a deficit;
Saving money gradually in an emergency fund, retirement and then potentially for investments and;
Carrying the least amount of debt possible.

What are some keys to keeping and maintaining a low/negative net worth? Some of them include:

Spending more than you earn – spending everything you earn;
Not saving anything and;
Carrying large amounts of debt – particularly on the things that lose value or don’t justify borrowing the money – cars, sneakers, and degrees which don’t lead to well-paying jobs.

In his Rich Dad Poor Dad series, Robert Kiyosaki actually defines wealth as the amount of time one can go without working while still being able to cover expenses.

But what are the greater implications of growing your net worth and wealth? They can position you to do things like build businesses. They can be used to donate to charities, and to give other students, for example, the chance to go to school to better themselves – something sorely needed in Black America. This is the importance of organizations like the United Negro College Fund for example. They can be used to fund political candidates and campaigns, and have a true seat at the table when national and local policy decisions are made. At the end of the day, politics is all about money right?

In Black America right now discussions, like the ones my buddies and I have, are actually taking place about the differences between having a high net worth and having a high salary – again two things which don’t necessarily correlate. One gentleman on Twitter, a Nigerian I think, who regularly beats the net worth drum often rebutting people who think they’ve made it because they’ve attained a high gross salary and have luxury items like Mercedes Benzes and BMWs. While these are prestigious toys, they gradually lose value and deceptively don’t translate into wealth.

Can You Negotiate Your Net Worth With Your Employer?

The interesting thing about one’s net worth is that it can’t be negotiated with one’s employer – it’s something that must be decided and acted upon by the individual once they understand it – like choosing to eat healthy or choosing to continue to eat an unhealthy diet. It can’t be legislated or forced upon groups of people, nor should it be. It’s a personal choice just like practicing a religion or choosing a spouse. Speaking of which, I’ve read that judges actually consider a couple’s net worth during divorces and usually just split everything down the middle – a source of tension particularly when one of the spouses hasn’t earned the assets being split.

“Tasha and Ron are living large. She’s a School Administrator and he’s a Fireman,” my mother said about couple in their 40s who are friends of the family. She was looking at their professions and what she thought their salaries were and concluded that they were winning financially.

“Actually you don’t know that, Mom,” I said in reply. “People can look like they’re making it on the outside, but without knowing their savings, their bills and their debts are, you don’t really know how they’re doing.” My response echoed Robert Kiyosaki’s books where he stated that an individual’s financial success is actually dictated by their income statement and balance sheet – two things you can’t see by looking at someone – but things banks weight highly when qualifying individuals for mortgages or business loans.

What prevents individuals from growing their net worths? Several things actually. One is ignorance. If no one ever tells you about it and you don’t stumble upon the information, you’ll never know. Secondly, personal choices prevent one from doing it. It takes discipline and drive, and many individuals lack those. As a man, if you’ve recklessly had a bunch of kids and are bogged down with child support payments, you’ll probably never get there.

If you’re a single mother also with many kids, you’ll also have a hard time getting there as well. It’s not impossible, just exponentially more difficult. In one of his videos, Dr. Boyce Watkins stated that the average cost of a child is $250,000 up until it turns 18 years of age. The other piece is that in some instances, particularly in Black America, only a handful of people in a given family get educated and earn a decent salary. Those individuals are often looked upon to take care of everyone else – a potential, “Siphoning off of the wealth,” as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson said, partially joking, at the 2015 Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference. That day he was leading a Wealth-Building panel.

Who Can Become A High Net Worth Individual?

Growing a high net worth doesn’t necessarily involve going to get a Ph.D., an M.D., a Pharm D., or a J.D. You actually don’t necessarily need a college degree to do it. It simply requires a steady stream of income, understanding debt, and priorities. This is what Dave Ramsey meant when he said, “Money is 20% knowledge and 80% behavior.”

This is also one of the key principles in Robert Kiyosaki’s Cashflow game where players must choose their profession before playing. One would think in the game that it would be easier to get out of the “Rat Race” by being one of the higher income professionals like the doctor, lawyer, or the airline pilot, but it’s actually easier as the web designer or the janitor. While they generate less gross income, they also carry less debt and have fewer bills. Their cost per child is also less than the higher income professionals.

Understanding what a net worth is and then making the decisions to grow it is a paradigm shift and a powerful one. As with most things, we all have lives and everyone’s situations are unique. We all have relatives and friends who may not necessarily understand the decisions and temporary sacrifices being made, and thus it’s important to know your own motivations – you have to know your ‘why’.

Concluding Thoughts

Again, a net worth is not a salary that you make every year. It’s a result of spending habits and specific money choices. How often should it be calculated? One of my mentors told me that it should be calculated quarterly. If you haven’t been paying attention to it, your initial assessment may not look pretty, but it gives you a place to start from – kind of like a doctor’s checkup.

So what’s your net worth? Don’t answer that. From experience, just like your gross income, it’s best if you keep it to yourself and only share it with a trusted few if anyone at all. Money does different things to different people, and when people think you have it, it can do strange things to your relationships – your relatives and friends.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy:

• The difference between being cheap and frugal
• We should’ve bought Facebook and Bitcoin stock: An investing story
• Challenging misconceptions and stereotypes in class, household income, wealth and privilege
• What are your plans for your tax cut? Thoughts on what can be done with heavier paychecks and paying less tax
• Who will have the skills to benefit from Apple’s $350 billion investment?
• Mother’s Day 2017: One of my mother’s greatest gifts, getting engaged, and avoiding my own personal fiscal cliff

If you’ve found value here and think it would benefit others, please share it and or leave comments. To receive all of the most up to date content from the Big Words Blog Site, subscribe using the box in the right-hand column in this post and throughout the site, or add the link to my RSS feed to your feedreader. Please visit my YouTube channel entitled, Big Discussions76. Lastly follow me on Twitter at @BWArePowerful, on the Big Words Blog Site Facebook page, and on Instagram at @anwaryusef76. While my main areas of focus are Education, STEM, and Financial Literacy, there other blogs/sites I endorse which found on that particular page of my site.

Challenging Misconceptions and Stereotypes in Academic Achievement

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Early False Ideas About Race

The following piece was my second piece published on the Examiner back in November of 2012. It was based upon an actual conversation between me and my father during my youth growing up on the east side of Buffalo. Early on I developed misconceptions and stereotypes about peers from various ethnic groups and what they were and were not good at–Asians in particular.

My father challenged those stereotypes which is something that empowered me later on in life and helped change my academic paradigm and world view. The visual for this piece is a playground for young children, because at a young age before we get socialized and develop racial biases and ideas, we all start off with the same potential to learn and achieve. It’s what happens to us as we grow up in our unique environments that determine how our lives turn out, our successes, our achievements, and our failures.

Those Asian Kids are Smarter

“Those Asian kids are smarter than everyone else and they’re on the honor roll every quarter,” the son said to his father. His statement was partially true. At his school there were students of Asian descent who were on the honor roll every quarter and consistently had grade point averages of 90% or greater.

He was an average student from the inner city. Like many young people, his views of the world were shaped by what he saw in his community, his peers, the media and ignorance. His older brother and his best friend, both of whom he spent most of his time with, were not honor roll students either.

A Key Conversation About Priorities and ‘Time On Task’

The father challenged his son’s statement saying, “They’re not necessarily smarter than you; they just spend more time in their books than you do consistently after school every week.”

“A study showed that Asian students study an average of 12 hours a week or more after school. For Caucasian students the number is six hours, and for African American and Latino students the number is four hours,” the father said citing a study he had read. The study suggested that academic performance was a function of time invested, not the intelligence of one race over another.

The conversation changed the son’s educational paradigms allowing him to become an honor roll student himself later on. This true story demonstrates the importance of both parenting and mentoring. With limited experience and wisdom, young people don’t always understand the world around them and can make conclusions that aren’t accurate.

The Power of Paradigms, Parental Involvement and Socialization

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People the late Stephen Covey describes paradigms as mental road maps that guide our behaviors. These paradigms direct us and tell us how to react in certain situations. Paradigms largely influence perceptions of academic achievement.

Dr. Ralph G. Perrino, of the Northern Virginia Tutoring Service, describes in The Socialization Process and Its Impact on Children and Learning, that a student’s academic performance is influenced by family, school, peers, mass media, public opinion, work, volunteer groups and religion/spirituality. In summary, the expectations and culture students are exposed to, affects their performance.

The counties in northern Virginia, for example, are inhabited by families with highly educated parents. “These parents are willing to invest their financial resources to make sure their children do well and go to college,” said Dr. Perrino. The 90% college matriculation rate in these counties is thus a function of values and resources, and not necessarily an innate superior ability over other students such as those within the neighboring District of Columbia.

Systemic Determinants of Academic Achievement

In Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol argues that the quality of education available in any community is strongly affected by economics and politics. These two factors directly impact not only educational and neighborhood environments, but also the culture, expectations and long term goals of the parents and children within communities.

Circling back to the opening of this article, at the University of Michigan and similar research institutions, a trend started in the early 21^st Century. Many of the research labs, particularly in the biomedical sciences, were employing large populations of Asian scientists.

It wasn’t magic though. A professor noted that these scientists were “extremely hardworking, dedicated, and not concerned with things that their American counterparts are preoccupied with things such as having social lives and lots of leisure time.”

The Truth About China’s High Achievers and Others We Don’t See

“Not everyone in China is smart. Similar to America, there are a lot of people who aren’t smart and successful,” said Dr. Cheng Fang, a talented scientist from China, discussing the stereotypes about his people and his country. Simply put, some of China’s most motivated and successful families come to the United States seeking the opportunities for advancement that this country has to offer, many in the sciences, and those are the ones that are seen most often.

Interestingly, Cheng further revealed that there are no second chances in China academically. In the Asian countries if you don’t excel early in school, numerous doors and opportunities permanently slam shut. In the United States you can under achieve in the lower grade levels and still positively make something of yourself through higher education or other avenues such as the military, entrepreneurship or entertainment.

The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story Part One is available in the eBook, Hardcover and Paperback Editions

Writing a book was the genesis of my blogging and becoming a video content creator. I have published part one of my book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. It is currently available on Amazon in eBook, hardcover, and paperback formats. The paperback format is available on IngramSpark, and signed hardcover and paperback copies on my online store entitled Big Words Authors via credit payment. Payment using Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Zelle is also available. Reach out to me for further details. Finally visit the page discussing the book. Please consider visiting it to learn more about the project and see promotional content I’ve created surrounding the project.

The Difference Between Being Cheap and Frugal

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“Hell yeah I’m cheap and proud of it too. I want to save every single penny that I can! I don’t mind getting perfectly good stuff for free either. My wife’s family frequently gets rid of really good stuff, and I willingly take it.”

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The following piece was originally published on the Examiner back in December of 2013, and actually turned out to be one of my most popular compositions. It visited something very emotional; one’s money management and how it is perceived by others – families, friends, significant others, etc. It discusses how two groups of people are classified in terms of their money management; those who are cheap and those who are frugal.

It was in part inspired by the late Deborah Aguiar-Vélez, founder of Escuchame who came to my job and gave a discussion about wealth building. Prior to publishing this piece she granted me permission to use a slide from her talk as the accompanying visual for this article. Lastly it falls under my “Financial Literacy” principle.

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“The difference between envy and jealousy Anwar is that there is no malice attached to envy,” my mentor and friend Mark told me in a recent meeting. “When someone is jealous of you, you have something that they want which upsets them and they will go to great lengths to make sure you don’t have it anymore or don’t even get it in the first place. They may even go as far as to cause you harm. Envy is simply when someone wishes they had what you have with no malice attached. Envy and jealousy are two different words that most people confuse.”

Mark and I frequently have discussions like this spanning numerous areas/topics. This one reminded me of another confusion of words; the definitions of cheap and frugal, two very important concepts in the worlds of financial literacy and intelligence, and thus the basis of this article.

“Hell yeah I’m cheap and proud of it too. I want to save every single penny that I can,” a coworker named Hardy said smiling during a random conversation at work a couple of years ago. “I don’t mind getting perfectly good stuff for free either. My wife’s family frequently gets rid of really good stuff, and I willingly take it.”

“You’re proud of being cheap?” was my question to Hardy after hearing him revel in his self-diagnosis. Cheap was not a flattering word in my vernacular. The word had recently been pinned on me by a girlfriend leaving me feeling snake bitten and sickened by just hearing someone say it. This conversation with Hardy gave me a new perspective on the matter and actually made me laugh at the word.

Another word that was assigned to me years ago by another female during graduate school was frugal, which is actually an important attribute to have when you are in school but also later in life. It wasn’t exactly clear to me at that point what that word meant as my behavior was simply the recapitulation of the spending habits of my mother and father who themselves were frugal.

During Hispanic Heritage Month almost a year after my discussion with Hardy, entrepreneur Deborah Aguiar-Vélez, owner and founder of the company Escuchame visited my job and gave a really good seminar on wealth building. Much of her talk discussed sound financial decision making, living within one’s means and saving money which sound like common sense ideas but for many people are not. Interestingly a couple of her slides described the differences between being frugal and being cheap.

Mrs. Vélez eloquently described being frugal as:

Living within your means
Careful management of anything valuable which expends nothing unnecessarily, and applies what is used to a profitable purpose
Finding ways to save money
A conscious decision and you are therefore in control of your actions towards a goal

That slide was followed up with a description of what frugal is not:

Cheapness
Meanness
Bizarre behavior
Suffering
Difficult

Her talk helped me to see that there is in fact nothing wrong with being frugal, and re-enforced why it’s a good idea to be this way versus the alternatives; impulsive, frivolous and wasteful. My discussions with Hardy described above and Mrs. Velez’s seminar also reminded me that labels and titles that we assign to each other are often subject to one’s point of view.

Though this post was written partially in a humorous way, these are important and serious lessons for everyone, especially in our society which actively promotes consumerism to all economic classes poor and rich, and attaches self-worth to material objects and luxuries of all kinds.

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The Benefits and Challenges of Using Articulate Speech: Early Lessons on Culture, Education and Perception

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“Why do you use those big words all of the time?”

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The following article was my inaugural submission for the Examiner back in November of 2012, and it’s very appropriate for my inaugural post on the Big Words Blog Site. It hit upon one of the main themes of this site; the use of articulate speech. One of the major rules for contributing to the Examiner was not writing in the first person point of view, something the publication policed very closely. Hence in the piece, I’m not referring to myself directly.

Using Big Words

“Why do you use those big words all of the time?” a middle school student was asked by his classmates in the late 1980s. It was a diverse school, but these particular students were from the east side of Buffalo, for the most part, consisted of African American families.

Articulate speech, and big words were normal in his home. Both of his parents were college educated. His mother encouraged learning professional skills such as using proper typing techniques, though the importance of such skills were not well understood at the time by her sons. There were also plenty of books to read in the house. Public speaking was also encouraged at Sunday School every week at church.

Using big words helped him to earn his Ph.D. from a world renowned university. They allowed him to make very technical presentations, publish research articles, and to present himself well on job interviews.

As a scientist within the federal government, he made decisions that affected the health of the entire United States population. Articulate speech, the use of big words, and proper grammar were a part of his job performance; whether it was setting new policies, preparing documents, making presentations, and even collaborating with colleagues in foreign nations.

Articulate Speech

Ultimately being a major part of his success, his articulate speech caused difficulties throughout his life, particularly as a youth where it made him stand out from his peers, causing him to be perceived as different. He later found that being different was actually okay. As an adult, people continued to form opinions about him, positive or negative, based upon the way that he spoke. Nevertheless, his articulate speech ultimately opened several doors for him as he grew older.

The United States faces several challenges in the 21st century, one being the competition with other countries in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). A strong command of the English language is key for success in these fields. Asia’s brightest scientists, for example, spend considerable time and energy learning the English language in order to establish their careers in the United States.

Speaking and writing often go hand in hand. In his book, Inside American Education, Thomas Sowell writes that the educational system in the United States needs to get back to the basics of teaching children how to read, write and how to do mathematics. The late Dr. Joseph Fail, Jr., of Johnson C. Smith University, published numerous articles encouraging students to be able to write effectively, particularly students of color.

Big Words and Race

In some communities speaking articulately is viewed as speaking proper or ‘white’. It also represents not having ‘street credibility’, which can be very important at an early age and even in adulthood, depending upon the social circle. This can be devastating for young people, ultimately locking them out of opportunities later in life.

In the Rich Dad Poor Dad series by Robert Kiyosaki, several compelling arguments are made for expanding one’s vocabulary, and ultimately speaking correctly. Even though financial literacy is the focus of the book, the importance of words is discussed as well. Robert eloquently describes words as important tools that unlock doors to life’s multiple possibilities.

Young people (and adults) need encouragement to the extent that a large vocabulary and articulate speech are valuable assets. They need affirmations that it is okay to read books and to speak well, even though it may make them feel different than their peers. They need confirmation that having a strong command of the English language is important in that it creates opportunities, opens doors, and builds bridges no matter what the professional field or discipline.

The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story Part One is available in the eBook, Hardcover and Paperback Editions

Writing a book was the genesis of my blogging and becoming a video content creator. I have published part one of my book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. It is currently available on Amazon in eBook, hardcover, and paperback formats. The paperback format is available on IngramSpark, and signed hardcover and paperback copies on my online store entitled Big Words Authors via credit payment. Payment using Cash App, PayPal, Venmo and Zelle are also available. Reach out to me for further details. Finally visit the page discussing the book. Please consider visiting it to learn more about the project and see promotional content I’ve created surrounding the project.