Budget or Bust

The first time home buyer class made it very clear that buying a house is a serious undertaking. After we talked about being sure that buying a house is the right decision, we then talked about budgeting. Budgeting I must confess is not one of my strong suits. Actually, I don't do it at all. I only do a mental tally of what I think I have spent, a number that I am so sure is no were near correct. I am a child of the modern age. All of my bills are paid automatically, through my bank or debited from my account using my check card. I get charged if I go in to the bank to use a teller more than twice a month. I use direct deposit for pay checks and or benefit checks. I don't even own a check book, because I right checks so rarely that it is cheaper for me to just buy a money order.

I don't budget, a fact that has hurt me more times than I care to remember. Through the years the banks have taken there tole in the form of fees and for this personal failing. My account has been in the -100 dollars a few times. My theory has always been that I never had that much money to start with, so budgeting a few hundred dollars didn't make since. But, now that I have a job a few more dollars to my name, I still don't budget.

My sentiment was echoed around the table in the first time home buyers class. Many people felt just as I did about the budgeting exercise. We were given homework one night. And it was to create a budget of our monthly expenses. We were given a sheet of paper with a whole host of items that ordinary people have to pay for every month. Every thing from rent to child care, transportation, entertainment. The instructor asked us to fill out the part of the sheet that said estimated right there in the class room. She told us to guesstimate what we spent each month, then take it home and fill in the actual amounts of what our own bills were. Now, being a single male living alone in the bachelor’s lifestyle, my expenses were no where near what other people in the class sounded like. Most of my expenses were fixed and rarely waivered from their set amounts. I don't have to pay for thing like gas, car insurance, child care, or groceries for 5 people. I don't drive, I buy a monthly bus pass. I don't have children. And I am perfectly content to eat a bowl of cereal for diner.

This budgeting exercise was quite useful, on a intellectual basis. I see the need for making an actual paper budget. And if what they say is true about my expenses tripling if I buy a house, then it will turn out to be an invaluable skill. How ever right now, I can’t seem to get myself to actually do it. It’s not hard, all it would take is a few concerted hours to sit with the bills and just do it. But, there is something that I can’t describe that gets in my way. It is the same something that gets in the way of me trying to register for classes at the community college. It is the same something that makes me put off an easy task until the very last moment. Budgeting is such an easy thing to do. My girlfriend does it. She also balances her check book on lazy Sunday afternoons. Her parents made sure she new the importance of these basic tasks. My mother never taught me how to balance a check book. I never new how much money came in or went out during the month. True, her mother is a CPA. But, I don’t think that has anything to do with the financial training she got. The question in my mind is, if you are not taught the importance of financial matters as a child, are you ever really able to master your fiancés as an adult? I say master, because that is different than doing it because you need too. Can I be master of my own finances, especially if my income ever grows and I do own a house? Will I ever be comfortable enough to sit around on a lazy Sunday afternoon and check to see if I am within budget or balance my check book? Will I ever even own a check book? Or will it be as the Notorious B.I.G put so directly “more money, more problems”. I honestly don’t know if it’s in me.

Do I really want to buy a house?

I finally went to my first home ownership/financial literacy class the other day. I had been told by people who had been through these classes before that I should expect to be the highest functioning person there. I was surprised to find a wide-ranging diverse group of 12 people and one dog. There were men and women; mostly people of color, but there was one white male. The classes were held at the Community Housing Development Corporation of North Richmond (CHDCNR). These folks seem to have done quite a lot for that community in Richmond. Not only are they providing first time home buyer and financial literacy programs, but they also have actual homes for purchase in that community. If I chose to work with them, I could do all the steps to buying a house through them. The benefits include not having to deal with strangers, but the drawback is that I would be living in Richmond, and to be totally honest, I grew up in a city like Richmond, so I have no real desire to go back.

The class itself was scheduled for two hours, 7-9pm. We started late but still ended on time. The group that participated in these classes seemed to be quite diverse. It was mostly people of color, and the age range was huge: everyone from young people in their mid 20's to older people who had been renting for most of their lives. To be honest, I found all that to be comforting. I didn't feel out of place, and the vibe of the class was pretty relaxed, something not unlike the first day of school.

The first question that was asked was, "do you really want to buy a house? If so, why?" The group started listing reasons why it was a good idea to buy a house. One reason that jumped out at me was the tax write-off incentive. What that means is that you can write-off the interest of the mortgage, not the principal, in your income taxes…up to something like 80% of it. What that boils down to is I would pay fewer taxes in April. It turns out, that owning a house can actually help you pay less tax to the government. I pay less taxes, I keep more of my money.

One other thing that we discussed at length was that if you are coming from a renter’s perspective, your monthly living expenses will probably triple. That piece of information, dropped on the class like a hundred pound weight. The realization that “if you're barely able to make it paying $1,000 a month then how are you going to handle paying $2,500??” is very sobering thought.

"Still want to buy a house?" the instructor asked. There was a less than enthusiastic utterance of yes from the group. Then she passed around a hand out and said "here is your homework." It was a sheet with a list of all kinds of household expenditures, and a line for what you thought you spent vs. what you actually spent. We then were asked to take it home and put down what we thought we spent per month, and then gather all the bills and receipts we could find and put down the actual amount we spent. We would go over it next week.

So, that's what I will be doing for the next few days. I will let you all know what I find out.

Keep on keeping on...

After my last post, I received a mixture of responses to my mostly stream-of-consciousness ranting about victimization. It can all be summed up in this phrase: "Keep on keeping on...you’re on the path from victim to victor.” This is all good to hear, but it is kind of like walking alone in the dark with a flash light, lighting only a few feet ahead of you, but still hearing people telling you to keep going.

I have made strides towards getting myself together in terms of this blog, work, and the wealth building journey. And it just seems like every time a take a step forward I get knocked a step back. I hear echoes of my father’s voice in my head saying the same thing. His favorite saying, when he felt the world was beating him down, was, "if not for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all." Man, that is tough to get rid of.

I think I have decided to try and stick it out. I've gone to the home ownership program orientation. They said that there were no scheduled financial literacy classes in the month of March. This is a setback, least of which is because I am writing this blog about going through these programs. I needed to get a lot of paper work together. Things like the last three months pay stubs are easy, but other things like the last three years’ tax returns are a bit harder. I have finally gotten them all together. I called today to ask what the next step was, and they said that there is a workshop scheduled for tomorrow night from 7pm-9pm. Well now, that is a problem for me. I work on week nights, from 5pm-9pm. My job and my living situation are all dependent on me being at work. This is a totally new dilemma that I have to figure out in less than a day. The workshops are a four-week program, every Tuesday in April. I've got to decide what to do. These are the things that come up on the path to creating wealth.

Am I a victim?

Am I a victim of my circumstances, or am I responsible for the situations I find myself in? I was raised by a single working-class mother in an economically depressed area of Philadelphia. In my community victims can be found everywhere you turn and look. There are victims of violence, victims of drugs and alcohol, and others are victims of racism, classism, and all the other “isms” that are out there. Now, I was born into all that, I carry the communal scars in the form of stories of hardship, struggle, and pain. My family, my friends, we all have the same stuff. So the question is, am I a victim all that?

I’ve been having some problems at work. There has been miscommunication, lack of follow up and follow through, people running around trying to do a thousand things at once, and no one listening to each other. I will take full responsibility for my share, but why is it that I now feel beaten up on by my bosses. I feel victimized, thus I now don’t want to work as hard as I’m used to. I have been at my current job for three years, and I find myself grumbling and complaining about my boss’s faults in leadership and management skills. And looking back, I hear the echoes of friends and family doing the exact same thing, for the exact same reasons. Is the victim mentality so ingrained in me that it comes out at the slightest hint of annoyance in the work place? Is the victim mentality the reason why I'm thirty years old and I haven't finished college and make less than $25,000 a year? Am I a victim of society, or am I a victim of my own mediocrity? Perhaps I'm being slightly too melodramatic. My fear is that, as I go on this path of wealth building with an ultimate goal of buying a house at the end, I will screw something up, and all the work will be for nothing. Or, I will get in my own way, and not succeed. I have hope that this will not be the case, but perhaps I have reached a plateau at this level of success.

Changing Expectations

Perseverance is said to be its own reward. And on some level, I would say my
life has been a study in perseverance. Being legally blind, I have had my
share of trials were the choices were clear. I could give up and go home, or
push through.

One thing hard as a legally blind person is finding new places I have never
been to before.

I am unable to read addresses very well, and thus I have on occasion walked
past my destination several times before figuring out that it was the right
place. Some of you may ask and rightly so, "why don't you just ask someone
if this is the right address?" The answer is simple and complex all at the
same time. But, I will sum it up like this, I hate asking for help. Call it
stubborn, call it stupid, call it whatever you want, but that is how I think
about things. This is all background to tell this particular story.

As part of my internship at WID, I decided to go through the initial steps
and programs that will in the very near future allow me to own my own home.
I chose the home buyer program at Community Housing Development Corporation
of North Richmond, or (chdcnr). They provide the needed financial literacy
and first time home-buyer certificates necessary in order to access moneys
available to me. The first step is the orientation to the programs. I found
out, that you must attend the orientation in order to be allowed to go
through workshops.

So, a few weeks ago I set out on my way to this orientation. It was held at
night (this is for working people after all) at the chdcnr offices, located
in north Richmond. Some of you reading may not know this, but as of last
year Richmond California was named in the top ten of the most dangerous
cities in the United States. Since I had never been to this part of town, I
thought I would be clever and take a cab to the orientation. I jumped on a
bus headed for a BART station, where I know there are cabs waiting. Once I
was in the cab, the trouble started. I matter of factly stated my
destination, and the driver promptly said "huh where?" I repeated my
destination and got the same response. I patiently repeated myself once
again, knowing in my head that the language barrier is always a problem, but
being annoyed all the same. After several back and forth's with the driver,
we both realized that he had no idea where this address was, and
unfortunately, I had no idea where this address was, which is why I was
taking a cab in the first place. The driver told me to wait a minute and he
jumped out. After a quick conversation with a fellow driver, he got back in
and said "I'm sorry sir, I don't go to that part of Richmond."

Unfortunately, I have run into this problem in the past. In my home town of
Philadelphia, cabs had often refused to come to my neighborhood. I knew
there was no use in arguing, but I half-heartedly tried anyway, to no avail.
By this point it was 7 minutes until the orientation was suppose to start,
and though I was less than five miles away, it might as well have been 50
miles. I suppose I could have tried to find another cab, but I was
completely disheartened a the prospect. I got out of the cab, and waited for
a bus to go back home. One of my personal creeds is "giving up is way harder
than trying". I don't give up very easily, and by the next morning I had
resolved to try again. I found out that the next orientation was to be held
in another few weeks, and I decided that come hell or whatever I was going
to go. To shorten this log story, I found myself a more reliable cab
service, and made it to the next orientation.


As with most things of this nature, I had no idea what to expect. When I
walked into the office, I met a charming young woman whose name I didn't
catch, but she bid me have a seat. Wonder of wonder, I was early, I'm never
early. One of the reason's I am never early, is because I hate waiting. I
honestly would rather be a few minutes late, than wait a few minutes. As I
waited, I tried to get a since of what this place was like, but I was
interrupted by a knock on the window. This is one of the worst positions one
could find themselves in. There I was, in a strange office, 6:30 at night,
in a dangerous neighborhood and someone was knocking on the window. Maybe I
should, and maybe I shouldn't have, but I opened the door. I was confronted
by a skinny fast talking black man. I immediately was relieved. I know these
types of men, I grew up around men just like him, and so I felt reassured by
his down to earth presence. His voice was thick with years of hard drinking
and he mumbled and slurred most of his words, but I was able to discern that
his name was slick and he felt that it was a beautiful night to be alive. I
agreed and he offered to take me over to where the orientation was to be
held. We chatted amiably enough about nothing as we walked to another
building. In the lobby, there were several old women who slick seemed to
know, and he bad me wait there with the group.

Again, these women were just like some of the women in my neighborhood
growing up. They were sitting there gossiping away about the different
people in their life. The door opened again and in walked a younger woman.
She was dressed in business casual, and intuition told me that she must be
the person who would be running the orientation. I asked, and she said
"yes". I followed her in to another larger room just off the lobby which was
set up like a classroom. There were five other people in the room already.
We nodded at each other and we got started.

Again, I didn't know what to expect, the instructor introduced herself, but
none of us there were asked to introduce ourselves to one another. She got
started and away we went to the land of numbers and terms, that once I was
able to interpolate them all, would lead me to wealth building. She handed
out bunches of hand outs, that detailed all the programs that are offered,
the ways and means of becoming or verifying your eligibility to qualify for
these programs. There is a lot to all of this. She went through it all in
about 30 minutes, but I can tell that this stuff requires a lot of time and
tons of follow through. And I will be honest, I am really going to have to
push myself to get this all done. Intellectually I know, that there is a pot
of gold on the other side, which by the way is the current picture on the
Disability Wealth Creation page on Facebook.com. I know there is a pot of
gold there, but man it feels so far away, and it seems like there are tons
of barriers and obstacles that can get in the way of reaching it. My
expectation is that it's too hard, and that I am going to get bored of all
this. If I'm going to do this for real, I am going to have to come up with
some ways to get out of my own way and get it done. I gotta figure out how
to change my own expectations and get it done.

Changing Expectations

I remember when I was a little kid, before I knew that everything was not possible; I remember sitting on the steps in front of my house with my friends looking at all the cars cruising by. It was one of our favorite summer evening past times. I grew up in the 80's, when Cadillacs and Lincolns with shiny chrome bumpers and miles of hood and trunk dominated the streets of Philadelphia. My friends and I would sit on the hot concrete steps sticky with ice cream and stinky with that peculiar little kid smell of sweat and street grime that meant we had been playing outside all day. We would point when a nice looking what we considered fancy car would come down the street, and some one of us would yell "that's my car". That meant, one day when we were all grown up, we would drive a fancy car just like the ones that cruised down our block. Even I, this visually impaired kid, though I didn't really know what that mean at the time. To all my friends, I was just "half blind". Even I would dream about being behind the wheel of a big Cadi, slowly cruising down the block, smiling at all the little kids, knowing that right then, what they wanted the most was to be in my seat.

As a kid, I nor any of my friends, had any idea what it meant to be wealthy. We did know that if you had nice cars and big gold chains you had money. And since none of the people we knew had either of those things, we inferred that we were not wealthy. Now, as a little kid this situation wasn't really a problem, as we only really wanted small things. I was partial to candy, and my idea of wealth was limited to a great bulging bag of assorted candies. To me, a dollar meant I was rich. And if I had a dollar, and my friend Pooh had a dollar, well hell, you could find us at the candy store deep in little kid concentration, parceling out the candy for maximum consumption.

Now that I am clearly no longer a kid, I have to come up some real concrete concepts as to what is wealth. It seems that the world of asset building, and financial management have some rather specific ideas as to what wealth is. I am on a path that could potentially change my life in a very significant way. Stay with me as I begin to reconcile my income, wealth ideas, and asset building with my own perceptions of that are colored by my race, class and expectations. It will be a real trip.

Brandon

Changing Expectations

Creating wealth isn't easy, and I suppose like most things getting stated is the hardest part. As part of this blog, I will be going through some of the programs that are out in the world to help facilitate that goal. To be honest, I'm not even sure what the goal is. Wealth is such a ambiguous term these days. My girlfriend asked me what do I think is wealth. Admittedly, I had to stop and really think about it. The Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary defines it as "1 : having wealth : very affluent 2 : characterized by abundance". The mental picture I have in my head when thinking of wealth is an old white man sitting in the back of his a NO A Mercedes Benz smoking a cigar while admiring his empire and with a fat bank roll in his pocket. So, it's clear to me that I associate wealth with material things.
In thinking more about this, I also have realized that I considered being rich different than being wealthy. In my mind, being rich means you live in a nice house, have two cars, and maybe make 60k a year. But you still work every day to do it. Naturally, I had to ask myself, "Do I want to be rich or do I want to be wealthy?" The answer is a resounding "I don't know". But, I think that is what I am going to be exploring and writing about over the next few months.

Please stay tuned

Changing Expectations

You know, being 30 years old is a mixed bag of emotions. For some of us, finally being out of our 20’s is a breath of fresh air. You are probably out of school and almost out of debt. Maybe you have a job that will lead to your eventual career goal. Or maybe you are like me, and you don’t have any of those things going on in your life. You feel the pressures of your impending adulthood weighing down on you like lead bars strapped around your wrists.

My name is Brandon Young, and I am a 30-year-old, six foot tall, visually impaired, bald, black male living in the San Francisco area of California. I mention all those things about myself for a reason: those are the things people notice when they first meet me. And it follows that these are the things that I am judged on; the expectations that our society places on an individual like myself are so low as to be virtually nonexistent.

As a legally blind person, the world has one set of expectations. They think either you are a musical genius or you are a useless sector of society that has no ambition except to move from the couch to the kitchen and back. As a black male from a single parent working class home, the world has a different set. Either I am supposed to be on my way to jail, in jail, or dead. Add all that together, and you basically get negative probability of success. This thought process can be summed up in a quote that my father said to me more than a few times when I was a teenager, “You’re black and you’re blind. That means you’ve already got two strikes against you.” That is a tough thing for a fifteen year old to hear. Truth be told, I believed him, and still do to this day. I feel like if I ever make one mistake, the world will say, “see, we knew all along that he was worthless, and he just proved it, who’s next?”

My life to this point has been all about defying stereotypes, or for the purposes of this article, defying expectations. I feel that stereotypes and expectations are synonymous with one another in our society. I have done things which are completely contrary to what is expected of me. As a teenager in my home town of Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to pick which high school I wanted to go to. I decided to go to W.B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences, or as we called it, "the farm school". The school district of Philadelphia did not think that was such a good idea. They did not want me to go to that school and fought to keep me out. I wanted to go to school to be a landscaper. How many low vision landscapers do you know? I, with the help of my mother who also has low vision, fought back, and eventually I was allowed to attend "the farm school". My life is full of stories just like that one which I will begin to share with all of you.

Throughout the next few months, I will be sharing my new experiences of defying expectations. Wealth building as a black male—a visually impaired black male, at that—certainly was never in the cards for me. I never thought I could, and I was never told that I could. I don't rap or sing, and I am to skinny and weigh too little to play basketball or football. I have friends and family who have done the selling drug thing, so I know where that path leads. I receive SSI, and I don't have a college degree. So being wealthy was, and still is, not something I ever expected. But apparently I am wrong and there are ways to make my own version of the American Dream come true. I will be writing over the next few months about my experiences going through a financial literacy course. Financial literacy is the way for someone like myself to begin to build wealth. I have no idea what it will be like or what to expect, but I do know wealth building is the freedom to move beyond expectations.