Cash, Charge Cards and Credit Cards - Unpacked

Summary

Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
Episode: Cash, Charge Cards and Credit Cards - Unpacked
Release Date: February 27, 2025
Host: John Hope Bryant
Produced by: The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio

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Introduction: Demystifying Financial Instruments

[02:34] John Hope Bryant opens the episode by introducing the focus on cash, charge cards, and credit cards. He emphasizes the lack of financial literacy in the Black and Brown communities, stating:

"We are not dumb and we are not stupid. It's what we don't know that we don't know that's killing us." [02:40]

Bryant sets the stage for unpacking these financial tools to empower listeners to take control of their financial futures.

The Critical State of Credit Card Debt

[04:05] Bryant highlights the alarming statistics surrounding credit card debt in the United States:

"Total credit card debt right now is about $1.2 trillion. This marks the highest balance since tracking began in 1999." [04:15]

He explains how financial illiteracy contributes to this surge, noting that many people are living beyond their means due to rising costs of living and stagnant middle-class incomes:

"Middle class incomes have not kept up with the cost of living since the 1970s." [05:30]

Financial Literacy as a Civil Rights Issue

[09:10] Bryant passionately argues that financial literacy is a fundamental civil rights issue:

"Financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. It's just as important as the right to vote." [09:15]

He connects financial stress to broader societal issues, mentioning that money-related problems are the number one cause of divorce, domestic abuse calls, and stress-related health issues:

"The number one cause for stress is money." [11:20]

Understanding the Evolution of Money

[18:35] Delving into the history of money, Bryant traces its evolution from barter systems to modern fiat currency:

• Barter Systems: Early trade required a "double coincidence of needs," which was inefficient.
• Commodity Money: Transitioned to gold, silver, shells, and livestock to facilitate easier transactions.
• Metal Coins: Standardized in 600 BCE in modern-day Turkey.
• Paper Money: Introduced by China during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century.
• Gold Standard: Dominated from the 19th to the early 20th century.
• Fiat Currency: Adopted in the 20th century, where money's value is backed by government decree.

Bryant critiques modern cryptocurrencies, emphasizing their speculative nature and lack of asset backing:

"Most cryptocurrencies have no asset base to them. They're valuable because people hype them up. It's really just speculation." [20:50]

Charge Cards vs. Credit Cards

[25:00] Bryant distinguishes between charge cards and credit cards, clarifying their functionalities and implications:

• Charge Cards: Require full payment each month. Examples include Diners Club and American Express's flagship cards. They help in disciplined spending and prevent accumulating debt.

  "If you have a choice between owing them money, not paying them, or putting them on a credit payment plan, do the latter." [29:15]

• Credit Cards: Allow revolving credit but often come with high-interest rates, leading to significant debt if not managed properly.

  "The average credit card interest rate in America is 28.6%. That means for every dollar you charge, you're paying about $0.29 in pure interest." [31:45]

The Role of Africa in the History of Money

[35:20] Bryant sheds light on Africa's pivotal role in the development of early monetary systems:

• Cowrie Shells: Widely used in West Africa as a form of currency.
• Gold Dust and Nuggets: Extensively used in the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai empires.
• Salt Bars: Valued highly in trans-Saharan trade, particularly in the Sahara and Sahel regions.
• Metal Rods: Copper, iron, and brass rods used in central and southern Africa.

He also touches on historical events like Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca, which had significant economic impacts due to his lavish distribution of gold:

"Mansa Musa's pilgrimage disrupted the Egyptian economy with his gold distribution, leading to rampant inflation." [38:50]

Practical Advice for Managing Credit and Building Wealth

[50:00] Bryant transitions to actionable strategies for listeners to manage credit effectively and build wealth:

1. Monitor Expenses: Use credit cards to track spending categories and create budgets.

   "Credit card companies will send you detailed reports that help you create a budget with cash flow management." [52:10]

2. Understand Credit Terms: Align repayment terms with financial obligations to avoid short-term debt traps.

   "Align your repayment terms with the terms of your payments. That's called cash flow management." [55:30]

3. Leverage Rewards Responsibly: Utilize credit card rewards for travel and other benefits without accumulating debt.

   "I treat credit cards like a partner in cash flow and benefits management." [57:00]

4. Build a Strong Credit Profile: Regularly check credit reports, preferably quarterly, and address any discrepancies.

   "Pull your credit at least once a quarter to ensure everything is in order." [58:25]

5. Avoid Over-Leveraging: Be cautious with margin accounts and borrowing against assets to prevent financial instability.

   "Don't get over-leveraged. It can lead to margin calls and significant financial losses." [60:45]

Conclusion: Empowering Financial Freedom

[63:00] In his closing remarks, Bryant reiterates the importance of financial literacy and encourages listeners to take proactive steps towards managing their finances:

"Sit down with your family and talk about money. There's no dumb answer. Just educate yourself and take control." [63:15]

He invites listeners to engage with his work, highlighting his books and offering resources through Operation Hope for coaching and counseling:

"Get my book 'Financial Literacy for All' and take advantage of the $1,000 one-year scholarship for coaching and counseling." [64:50]

Bryant concludes with a call to action for community engagement and financial education as tools for liberation:

"We're on for a new movement to help set our people free through financial literacy." [65:20]

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Key Takeaways

• Financial Literacy is Essential: Understanding money management is crucial for personal and community empowerment.
• Credit Card Debt is a Crisis: High-interest rates and poor financial education contribute to overwhelming debt.
• Historical Context Matters: Knowledge of the evolution of money and Africa's role provides deeper insights into current financial systems.
• Practical Management: Monitoring expenses, understanding credit terms, leveraging rewards, and building a strong credit profile are fundamental steps toward financial stability.
• Community and Education: Engaging with resources and fostering open discussions about money can lead to collective financial empowerment.

Notable Quotes

• On Financial Ignorance:
  "We are not dumb and we are not stupid. It's what we don't know that we don't know that's killing us." [02:40]

• On Credit Card Debt:
  "The average credit card interest rate in America is 28.6%. That means for every dollar you charge, you're paying about $0.29 in pure interest." [31:45]

• On Financial Literacy as a Civil Rights Issue:
  "Financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. It's just as important as the right to vote." [09:15]

• On Cash Flow Management:
  "Align your repayment terms with the terms of your payments. That's called cash flow management." [55:30]

• On Community Empowerment:
  "We're on for a new movement to help set our people free through financial literacy." [65:20]

Resources Mentioned

• Books by John Hope Bryant:

  • Financial Literacy for All
  • Up from Nothing
  • From the Memo
  • How the Poor Saved Capitalism
  • Love, Leadership, Banking Our Future

• Operation Hope:

  • Offers coaching and counseling for financial education.
  • Special Offer: $1,000 one-year scholarship for coaching and counseling. Visit Operation Hope and mention "John Bryant" to qualify.

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Note: This summary focuses exclusively on the "Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant" episode, extracting and organizing the core financial discussions presented by Bryant. Advertisements, intros, outros, and segments from other podcasts have been excluded to maintain clarity and relevance.

Transcript

[John O'Brien]

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[Emila]

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[John O'Brien]

Listen to leading by example executives making an impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[Emila]

Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Hey y'all, I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. When youn're Invisible is my love letter to the working class, people and immigrants who shaped me. Season two shares stories about community and being underestimated.

[Emila]

All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

We get paid to serve you, but we're made out of the same things.

[Emila]

It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the testament.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Listen to when you're in visible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

I'm Emila, host of the podcast Crumbs. For years, I had to rely on other people to tell me my story. And what I heard wasn't good. You really Last night, it felt like I lived most of my life in a blackout. I was trapped in addiction. I had to grab the lamp and smashed it against the walls. And then I decided I wanted to tell my own story. Listen to crumbs on the iHeartra app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John O'Brien]

Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Ho Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. Yo, yo, yo. This is John Hope Bryant, and this is Money and Wealth on the Black Effect Network. And I am talking about cash, money, charge cards and credit cards unpacked. I'm going to demystify all these things, you know, people who are underserved, black and brown folks who never got the memo. This is my fourth book, I think, on money. There's six in this series I've done, and the last one is Financial Literacy for all, by the way. Bestseller number one, business finance a year after publishing. Make sure you don't get that. But the book, the memo I wrote essentially said, we're not dumb and we're not stupid. It's what we don't know that we don't know that's killing us. But we think we know. No one ever told. Gave us a memo. No one ever taught us how money works. So we, we think that money is a thing. We want to. I'll get that bag. We'll get that cash. We'll get that dollar. Want to get that. Get, get that. You know, again, that bag. As if that's something. Literally, money is just simply a means of exchanging value. And we over value, no pun intended, money itself. The reality is you can run out of it, and most people who are not financially literate do. When you outflow exceeds your inflow, then your overhead will be your downfall. And that's why they call it making a living, not building a life. So you get paid, you're making a living. And typically you're only getting paid enough to subsidize the lifestyle that you have developed for yourself. Or put another way, your lifestyle tends to track how much money you make. So you got to find a way to build wealth separate from making a living. You get that? My brother, Tony Ressler taught me this lesson. He owns Atlanta Hawks and built a bunch of companies. And I'm always learning from my friends. I'm just very nosy. Hopefully they're learning a little bit from me. I'm certainly learning from them. But one day he told me, you make money during the day, John. You build wealth in your sleep. Very, very simple message, but very powerful. And it's compounding stocks, bonds, homeownership, equity, real estate in general, businesses, entrepreneurship, things that I think I personally believe education compounds. Right? So let's get into these things that no one ever taught you. And supposedly somehow we're just supposed to magically understand. And before I get into the definition of money, first let me hit you with a news flash. Total credit card debt right now because of massive financial illiteracy in this country, the biggest economy in the world, and because people have got too much month at the end of their money, they're literally living beyond their means by no fault of their own. The, you know, the rate of inflation, the rate of cost increases, the cost of living has outpaced their ability to make a living. Middle class incomes have not since World War II. Well, not World War II to be unfair, the 70s, you know, middle class incomes have not kept up with the cost of living. Of all people, by the way, it just wouldn't. Main street. Mainstream America has a headache. Black and brown folks have pneumonia, but we're all sick. And you know, it doesn't matter whether you're white, black, red, brown or yellow. Everybody wants some more green. Can I get an amen? It's the church of what's happening now and what have you done for me lately? So credit card debt we're going to again get into. I'm going to demystify and unpack all this stuff because people are just like ashamed to admit they don't understand this stuff. And I believe financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. And AI literacy is the silver rights issue. S I L V E R the civil rights issue of this generation. And I will get into what I call what I define or why I picked on civil rights as my moniker during the podcast. But credit card debt right now stands at $1.2 trillion. Again, I think financial literacy is a civil rights issue of the generation. It's just as important as the right to vote. And understanding financial literacy and understanding your credit score and managing it has a lot to do with your quality of life and whether you are at a happy camper or you end up upside down. You know the. You may or may not know this. The number one cause for divorce in America is money. Number one cause for domestic abuse calls to the police is money. Number one reason that police officers get hurt on. On the job is. Are domestic abuse calls. Number one calls for heart attacks is so says the American Heart association is stress. Number one cause for stress is money. And we don't understand money other than wanting to spend some. About 40% give or take of Americans in this country don't have $400 of their own money. Actually, yeah, $40 of their own money. Pure cash for an unplanned event. An Emergency. The number I think is generous. I think that number, that's a Federal Reserve report. But I don't think it. I think it factors in your ability to access a credit that's not your cash, that's as I'll get into it is borrowed money. I think that if you looked at just the ability to get your hands on cash like it's your money, I think the percentage is much higher. I think it's as high as 60 some odd percent. But even the Fed or Reserve number of 37, 38, 40% is shocking in the biggest economy in the world. And 70% of the biggest economy in the world, this economy, the United States of America is consumer spending. Let's go back to this credit card number because it's really important to understand why I'm unpacking all this stuff so you can take care of your like not done, not getting this. It's like there's a cancer flowing through your body. There's something affecting you. Disease could be in many cases dis ease and you don't know what it is. There's something chasing you, there's something burdening you and you don't realize what it is. It's got you burdened down, weight down. You're sitting in your car right now going yeah, that's me. And you don't know what it is. And it's this money thing and you don't understand it. And maybe you do shopping, maybe you shop for therapy sometimes because you're swiping that credit card because it makes you feel good in the short term. But then you get a sugar high, it feels good for a minute, then you get that bill, right? And so I want to empower you. I want to give you the tools to take your life back. Go to Operation Hope. Get my book Financial Literacy for all. Go to Operation Hope. Get coaching and counseling. I'll give you $1,000 one year scholarship for coaching and counseling in Operation Hope. Just tell them I sent you. Go to download the Hope and Hand app. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me get to. I'm so excited about this topic. Of course I'm already jumping around and it's. And there's so much to cover. So let me get all this in in 45 minutes or so. Again, current credit card debt in this country about 1.211 trillion. That's up from $1.166 trillion in the third quarter of 2024. This is being recorded in the in February 2025. This marks the Highest balance since tracking began of credit card debt in 1999 ever. Right? And student loan debt is about $1.7 trillion, give or take. So this is right behind it, right? And the average individual American carries a credit card balance of about $6,380. And balances are continuing to rise. Credit card Debt increased by $45 billion during the fourth quarter of 2024, a 4% rise compared to the same period the year earlier. Interest rates haven't helped. Interest rates have climbed, as we all, as we all know. But what you may not know and hold on to your seats here. The average credit card interest rate. The average credit card interest rate. The average. Not for Pookie and them. Not, not Jojo. Not, not Boo Boo in the hood. The average interest rate for credit cards in America for the Average American is 28.6%. Did you hear me? That means that for every dollar you charge on that beautiful slick credit card that was given you by that department store, pick the one you want to pick on here. That for every dollar you charge, you're paying a bait about $0.29 on, on that dollar in pure interest, right? Wow. Just think, let's let that sink in for a minute. And when we go get auto loans or go shop, you know, we often ask, certainly we go get an auto loans. What's. We don't ask. We ask what's the payment, right? And you don't ask what the payment is when there's an interest rate attached. You don't ask just what the payment is with an interest rate attached. There's a financial literacy lesson there for you. Tell everybody when you go to get a. I'll do a whole thing just on. In fact I did a thing on, on the auto business. I'll do something on getting a great car loan. That's part of this series this year. Go back and watch the episode I did with Tony Marzullo on the car business. He's somebody you can tr but oftentimes people show up in this lot. The more financially illiterate they are, the more misleading question they ask or the wrong question they ask again, what's the payment? Not what's the interest rate. And this interest rate can knock you over the head. You go to a B car lot, BFC car lot, meaning a non prime car lot and someplace that carries their own paper as they say. And you get a Mercedes from one of these bead lots. Your credit score is tore up from the flow up and they, they give you an 18 interest rate on that car. Loan on a $70,000 car right now. We're not talking about it now. We're not Talking about a $7,000 credit card balance right now. We're talking about, you know, a $70,000 automobile. And you don't. You're not driving a Mercedes, you're driving Mercedes payments. And that is an automotive bomb. It's going to explode on you while you're driving on the street. They just can't wait for you to bring that car back. Because car dealerships make their money actually not on the sales of the car. They make it on maintenance and finance. Or should I say that the finance department in the maintenance department is three businesses within most automobile dealerships. It's. It's sales, it's finance, and it's maintenance. Again, go back and watch and listen to the podcast I did on money and wealth in 2024 on this topic. It was one of the most highly rated episodes of the year, actually. Okay, it gets worse on this credit card thing. Delinquencies, credit card loan defaults have surged with over $46 billion in seriously delinquent loans. That means they chasing you, right? Just to translate that, written off in the first nine months of 2024, a 50% increase from the same period in 2023 and the highest level since 20 in 2010. That should tell you a whole lot about where we are in the financial stress that people are under and why people are making decisions that they are making. Even around the nation's politics, I think that people are just financially stressed out. And President Bill Clinton once told me something prophetic. He said, it's hard to get somebody to agree to the truth when the lie is paying your paycheck. Can I get an amen? 46% of American households held credit card debt in 2022. This is actually mostly higher middle income holders who have credit cards. By the way, credit card debt and the implications for this though of credit card debt with lower income people is actually more problematic because it's very expensive to be poor. So why is this topic important? Because if your day's not about God or love, your day's about money. Anybody heard? Follow me. You've heard me say this, that like, whatever the topic is, you can bring it back to the topic of money. Even marriages and even divorces. Like if two broke people, two hobos, are getting divorced. It's really quick. It's faster than the divorce ceremony. Right, Sorry. Faster than the marriage ceremony. The divorce ceremony is just as quick because they're broke. The only thing that keeps something going forever in the courts is because of money. You know, child support. At the end of the day, it's about money. Maintenance payments, you know, alimony, all that stuff. At the end of the day, it's arguing about this, arguing about that. But at the end of the day, it's about money. So let me now get to money.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Hey, y'all. I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. My podcast when youn're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who who shaped my life. I get to talk to a lot of people who form the backbone of our society, but who have never been interviewed before. Season 2 is all about community organizing and being underestimated.

[Emila]

All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

I can't have more than $2,000 in my bank account or else I can't get disability benefits. They won't let you succeed. I know we get paid to serve you guys, but like, be respectful. We're made out of the same things. Bone, body, blood.

[Emila]

It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the lesson and I'm also the testament.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Listen to when you're invisible as part of the my Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

I started to live a double life when I was a teenager. Responsible and driven and wild and out of control. My head is pounding. I'm confused. I don't know why I'm in jail. It's hard to understand what hope is when you're trapped in a cycle of addiction. Addiction took me to the darkest places. I had an AK47 pointed at my head. But one night, a new door opened and I made it into the rooms of recovery. The path would have roadblocks and detours, stalls and relapses. But when I was feeling the most lost, I found hope with community and I made my way back this season. Join me on my journey through addiction and recovery. A story told in 12 steps. Listen to crumbs as part of the Mike Udura Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John O'Brien]

I'm Mark Seale.

[Mark Seal]

And I'm Nathan King.

[John O'Brien]

This is Leave the gun, take the cannoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture.

[Mark Seal]

Leave the gun, take the Cannoli is based on my co host Mark's best selling book of the same title. And on this show we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the Godfather's birthday. From start to finish, this is really.

[John O'Brien]

The first interview I've done in bed.

[Mark Seal]

We sift through innumerable accounts. 35 pages isn't very much, many of them conflicting.

[Emila]

That's nonsense.

[Mark Seal]

There were 60 pages and try to get to the truth of what really happened.

[John O'Brien]

And they said, we're finished. This is over. It's not going to work. You got to get rid of those guys.

[Mark Seal]

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Caan, Talia Shire and many others.

[John O'Brien]

Yes, that was a real horse's head.

[Mark Seal]

Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

Hey, this is Mel Reid, LPGA Tour winner and six time Ladies European Tour.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Winner and Kyra K. Dixon, NBC sports reporter and host.

[Emila]

You forgot to save all my Miss America, by the way. And we've got a new podcast, Quiet Please with Mel and Kira.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

We are bringing you spicy takes on sports and pop culture, some golf haps and interviews with incredible people who have figured out how to make golf their.

[Emila]

Superpower or just people we like. Plus tales from the road and everything in between. By the way, golf isn't just for the dads, Brads and chads.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Yeah, it's actually life's cheat code and we're not going to be quiet about it on or off the course. We're bringing on some of our friends like Michelle, we, Heather McMahon, Amanda Baliotis.

[Emila]

So if you want to keep up with us and here is yap, tune into our new podcast, Listen to Quiet.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Please with Mel and Kira, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

[John O'Brien]

Are you with me so far? Can I get an amen or at least continue on the evolution of money. This is going to start getting really sexy. Hold on a minute. The evolution of money started about 3,000 BCE, which is, I would translate that the before Christ era. There's a spiritual way of saying this and then there was a secular way of saying this. So I'll say BCE is before Christ. Some others would say it's the common era. Right? But it's a prehistoric times, before Christ. So 3,000 years before Christ. Right? People traded goods and services directly. The system was inefficient though, because it required what's called a double coincidence of once. In other words, I've got to want the same thing that you want at the same time in order for that to make any sense. And so that system existed, but then it was quickly replaced by commodity money. And these are things like gold and silver and shells and livestock as a medium of exchange because it was, you know, more asset based. And one of the problems I have with modern cryptocurrency, blockchain think is a brilliant technology, by the way, but most cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is the exception right now. They have no asset base to them. There's, there's like a gym membership that's, that's popular or something. They're valuable because people hype them up. So just never, you know, I'm not saying cryptocurrency is not real. In fact, some of it is very real. And certainly Digital currency is 100% real. Most money today is digital. I'm just saying don't invest. Don't quote, invest, because really you're speculating on the 12,000 plus cryptocurrencies that went poof and just exploded, went away thinking I'd get your money back because somebody calls it a currency. It's really just speculation. You can win big, you can lose big. Don't use your rent money back to this. Some people have made it big, by the way. But again, just know what you're doing because it's speculation. Commodity. One of my billionaire friends was at a meeting and he said if somebody could tell him how cryptocurrency goes up the value and how it goes down, he'll buy some. And no one said anything in the meeting. And so he said, oh, thank you. Commodity money between 600. Well, between 3,600 before Christ. So the years went from bigger to smaller as we get to year one in the period that was AD which is in the life of the Lord. A year in the Lord, basically after. Some will say after death, but it's after Christ's birth. Isn't it cool that Christ defines the before and after dates of the world? I think that's pretty cool. So 3000 BCE to 600 BCE societies began using these valuable commodities. All right, Then metal coins came around 600 BCE first standardized metal coin were minted in modern day Turkey. This made trading easier and more reliable. Modern money. Okay, was the seventh century in the Tang dynasty in. Hold on now. China. Yeah, China is very old. China introduced Paper money backed by precious metals, a concept that spread to Europe by the 17th century. And the gold standard, 19th century to the 20th century, many countries pegged their currencies to gold. This system lasted until the 20th century when fiat currency, government backed currency, took over. Now, before I go here, let me back up because I've just jumped over. I'm jumping over a lot of stuff, covering a lot of ground in 45 minutes. And you can, in comments and social media, you can tell me what things you want me to go deeper on. If you want to carve this out and create one separate podcast just on a topic. Right, I'll go deeper. But before gold was used as a standard in the US for money to back it, silver was. And I like silver because it's like the common man's current. It's a common man's precious metal. And silver was used all around the world, not just in the us. In fact, it was used in Africa. I'll get to that in a minute. But it was used in the US before gold was used. But then in 1971, really the present, you've had what people call fiat currency. And they say it in a sort of a sly, negative way, as if fiat currency, some negative thing. It's actually pretty gangster. The US official officially abandoned the gold standard under President Nixon today. Money's value is determined by government's decree and trust in financial institutions. And it's quote, literally backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. Now this is pretty gangster because this is the biggest economy in the world, about $29 trillion and we can issue a dollar. And by the way, it is the flight to quality to this day in the world. Don't, don't, don't, don't listen to all this noise out here by people saying there's a new currency in China. There's a new currency here, there. Russia, where Russia's currency is exploding actually. But the people keep talking about Russia. Russia is a routing error to the US economy. It's like 10% of the US economy for anybody who's really interested. So it's really not a serious threat. They just threat us, they just threaten military and all kind of other things. And they got a gangster economy. Negative connotation of gangster. Not, not the one I just used, just like North Korea's. But anyway, fiat currency is when somebody just says, hey, take me on my word. And China, Russia, all these oligarchs, all these people in these countries, the country, these countries are talking all kind of mad Madness about America, Iran, all these places, guess where their leaders and their business leaders are trying to put their money, trying to make their investments. They want US Currency and they want US Assets. America's called what's in financial terms called a flight to quality in the world. So it may change, but at the moment, and we got to make sure we're managing our debt for this country because the deficits ballooning and we're not doing a good job of managing it and investing in the biggest asset we've got for the next economic boom, which is our people. That's another podcast for another day. But at the moment, fiat currency is pretty positively stated. Gangster. We've done it. Amazing, everybody. We're, we're a quarter of the world economy and we're only, we're a fraction of the world's population. 8 billion people in the world, give or take In America's about 350 million people, give or take. So check that out. Okay, now it gets interesting. I'm going to again, I'm going to summarize these things and I'm going to go back and tell you some cool things about Africa and then some suggestions for you and tell you about me and how I use these things and in some cases, screwed it up. Charge cards. This is the first cashless credit system. All right? Now, early forms of charge cards were started in the 19th and 20th century. Wealthy individuals and businesses use credit coins and charge plates issued by retailers for store purchases. Now, I'm not this old, but I did have a charge account at the Four Seasons Hotel on Doheny or the Four Seasons at Los Angeles at Doheny or Four Seasons Los Angeles at Doheny, Beverly Hills, whatever they call it. And I, when I was 20 years old, I used to go there after I left my office and I didn't tell them, but I didn't have any money. I was going to have some money, but I didn't have the money at that time. That day I was managing cash flow as every entrepreneur does. And I was, I think it was 20 years old, 21 years old, something. And I, I used to sign a, a document, a book I would sign, I signed an invoice with my signature and they would carry the balance for me and I'd pay it off once a month. And so they would carry in, in house. My charge is on in house books. And once a month or, or once every other month I write them a check. Back then was checks and pay off the balance after I floated their money for a month. Or two, doing other things with it, like making other money. By the way, do you know that a check is nothing more than a form of removing value for those who still use checks? You know, you could take technically the back of somebody's T shirt, right? Pay to the order of. Write a routing number and a account number and a few other things that makes it legal and sign it. Pay to the order of. And you could. And technically you get into a big fight with the bank, but technically you can take that person's T shirt and go to the bank and challenge them to cash your or their T shirt. Isn't that cool? It's just pretty cool just to understand these things. Okay, so credit cards started with diners club in 1950. No, not 1850. 1950. Show you how big this economy is and how fast it's grown and why. I want you to teach financial. Treat financial literacy like it's. Like it's breathing because you've. This thing is just a wild. The world is 5 billion years old. And, you know, American is, you know, goes back to, you know, the 1600s and all this kind of stuff. But. But really like 50 trillion of the hundred. $50 trillion of asset value of. Sorry, net worth today in America was created since the year 2000. That's 20 last 25 years. That's another document, another podcast for another time. But I want you to understand how quickly this stuff compounds and builds on each other. And it can just run away from you and get away from you and you don't understand anything and you end up with $7,000 worth of credit card debt, paying 29% with too much month into your money and trying to figure out where did all your money go? With somebody smarter than you separated you from your wallet. That's what happened. So anyway, 1950, the modern charge card was launched by two entrepreneurs, allowed users to pay for meals at participating restaurants and required full payment each month. This is very important because the next credit card was created in 1958 is called the American Express. One of my favorite cards, and I have the Amex, the vaulted Amex Centurion card, the black card they call it, but you cannot apply for. They've got to give it to you. Which technically I could purchase the hotel I'm staying in or walk into a car dealership lot and put my credit card down and buy a Ferrari. Technically. But the thing about a. And so the Amex was created initially for traveling and it evolved into a much more premium product. But it was created in 1958. But it requires also you to pay the full bill in 30 days. So these two cards, Diners Club card and the American Express card are two great examples of a charge card. It's not a credit card. You must make the payment, full payment every month. So I'm not going to get you into my business but I run a very big business and I travel a lot and I will put business charges. Well, I'll put all charges on my card. I'll be reimbursed. I don't want an expense account. You don't want to do that if you're running a non profit by the way, for sure you don't want to not you don't want expense account, you want to expense report, right? So expense account, which means they just give you some money and say spend it and tell us how you spent it. I think you're asking for trouble. I have an expense report which means I put it on my own card. And then the expenses that are related to, to Operation Hope or related to Brian Group Ventures or Brian Group Advisors or Brian Group Real Estate or Promise Homes company or, or the other ventures I'm associated with, they reimburse me based on a written report that I give them of my Scott. An expense report. Okay, but I pay, but I charge a lot every month and I get reimbursed and I pay the whole bill every month. And if I really thought about where I was 20 years ago, I would have a heart attack knowing 20 years forward if I was 30 years old and I look forward to see what I'm paying for my credit card bill every month I would have a massive heart attack. But I manage it just, just fine. And I've never missed a payment. I also do this because I get points. So when I go to. If you see me in Maui or you see me in, in Turks and Caicos, I'm not paying for it. Turks and Caicos pays for itself. That's more complicated the explanation but it pays for itself. The phone, the phone bill, the airplane tickets are reward tickets. So you see me, you see me sitting, me and my wife sitting in first class going to Turks and Caicos or Maui. That was because of points Amex points. You see me in a, in a rental card points free hotels often if you see me on a non business trip, why do I stay at the same hotels versus trying to floss and stay in these boutique places? I stay in the same brands all the time because I building up my point balance. And so when I'm ready to go on vacation or whether reward my assistant Tina Ferrer or run or reward somebody on my team with vacation someplace or allow my wife to go on vacation or my family members. I don't give them cash. I can give them the points for a hotel stay and then points for rental car and then points from my amex card, which is just like cash by the way, to pay for miscellaneous. And I have points from the airlines. So I, I really treat credit cards like a partner to me in cash flow and benefits management. I could stop the podcast right there. That was a lot of benefit for you. I hope you got that. Credit cards now, the birth of revolving credit. Bank of America. This is deep now, 1958. Why are you saying, why are you mentioning bank of America? Because that's where the first credit card came from. The first revolving credit card compete, created, I believe, to compete with American Express. In 1958, the first revolving balance credit card came from bank of America. And this later became, hold on, Visa. I've got in my one or several, my wallet. You got them in your wallet. And then in 1966, the year I was born, MasterCard was born by a group of banks. They created MasterCard now, sorry, they created Master Charge, sorry, that later became MasterCard. And they created that to compete with the BankAmericard. Did you hear what I said? It was not called originally Visa. It was originally the Bank Americard that originally became Visa. And then these other bankers created this and that was created to compete with American Express, right, Which got there and American Express got their idea from the Diners Club. See how this competition in capitalism and then most best good things in life are copied. I mean Steve Jobs and Bill Gates got a lot of their brilliance from what, looking at what Xerox PARC was doing in IBM. And they don't. I, you know, just IBM. Xerox park did great things, but weren't as great marketers as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were. And likewise these, you know, Visa, MasterCard and Amex sort of have emerged as the global winners from this competitive explosion in credit cards that happen in the 20th century. Discover and other innovations arrived in the 1980s and to present. Discover entered the market in 1985 offering no annual fees and cash back rewards. Credit cards evolve with magnetic strips and chips and contactless payments. And it's still evolving, right? And of course we have debit cards and I hope you know what a debit card means, otherwise you're going to go broke. A debit card literally means it's going to debit directly out of your account. It doesn't matter if it says Visa or MasterCard on it. Those are just payment platforms and databases and systems. When you swipe that card, it's taking the money out of your account. It's not like the old days with a check where you write it and float the check for three or four days and. And you can run around trying to find the money before that check hits the bank and gets processed. And then you could put the deposit in to catch it as it's sliding in somebody. The joke was, I can't be broke. I still have checks left. That day is over. Debit card swiping is immediate.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Hey, y'all. I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. My podcast when youn're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped my life. I get to talk to a lot of people who form the backbone of our society, but who have never been interviewed before. Season 2 is all about community organizing and being underestimated.

[Emila]

All the greatest changes have happened. When a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

I can't have more than $2,000 in my bank account or else I can't get disability benefits.

[Emila]

They won't let you succeed.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

I know we get paid to serve you guys, but like, be respectful. We're made out of the same things. Bone, body, blood.

[Emila]

It's rare to have have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the lesson and I'm also the testament.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Listen to when you're invisible as part of the my Cultura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

I started to live a double life when I was a teenager. Responsible and driven and wild and out of control. My head is pounding. I'm confused. I don't know why I'm in jail. It's hard to understand what hope is when you're trapped in a cycle of addiction. Addiction took me to the darkest places. I had an AK47 pointed at my head. But one night, a new door opened and I made it into the rooms of recovery. The path would have roadblocks and detours, stalls and relapses. But when I was feeling the most lost, I found hope with community and I made my way back this season. Join me on my journey through addiction and recovery. A story told in 12 steps. Listen to crumbs as part of the Mike Galura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Mark Seal]

I'm Mark Seale And I'm Nathan King.

[John O'Brien]

This is Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture.

[Mark Seal]

Leave the Gun Take the Cannoli is based on my co host Mark's best selling book of the same title. And on this show we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the Godfather's birth. From start to finish, this is really.

[John O'Brien]

The first interview I've done in bed.

[Mark Seal]

We sift through innumerable accounts. 35 pages isn't very much, many of them conflicting.

[Emila]

That's nonsense.

[Mark Seal]

There were 60 pages and try to get to the truth of what really happened.

[John O'Brien]

And they said we're finished, this is over. Not only is not going to work, you gotta get rid of those guys. This is that.

[Mark Seal]

Leave the Gun Take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Caan, Talia Shire and many others.

[John O'Brien]

Yes, that was a real horse's head.

[Mark Seal]

Listen and subscribe to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

What if you ask two different people.

[John O'Brien]

The same set of questions?

[Emila]

Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers.

[John O'Brien]

I'm Mini Driver and I set out.

[Emila]

To explore this idea in my podcast Mini Questions.

[John O'Brien]

Over the years we have had some incredible guests.

[Emila]

People like Courteney Cox, star of the.

[John O'Brien]

Infinitely beloved sitcom Friends, EGOT winner Viola.

[Emila]

Davis and former Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair. And now Mini Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions, including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson.

[John O'Brien]

Each episode is a new person story with new lessons, new memories and new.

[Emila]

Connections to show us how we're both similar and unique. Listen to Mini questions on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John O'Brien]

Seven questions limitless answers Origins of Money in the world Money in its early forms originated in Mesopotamia. I gotta say that slowly or modern day hold on Iraq again around 3000 BCE before Christ and the Sumerians and the Babylonians developed one of the first recorded monetary systems using silver. Hello. Remember I told you that in grain as units of exchange, they use standardized weights of silver shekels they call it and stored grains to facilitate trade. Moving beyond barter now as all these pieces starting to right try to link together. All right, now let's fast forward now. I want to cover a lot of history now in a short period of time I hope you're enjoying this. Let's talk about Africa. Africa played a significant role in the history of money. I don't know how people are talking about Africans are dumb or stupid or lazy. I don't know where they get that from. Africa is the biggest, the most, the biggest untapped natural resource in the world to this very day is the African continent. The first human being walked upright in Africa. I'm going to do a whole podcast on this, really inspired by the black space genius, Neil Tyson, I think is his name, where we talked about DNA and all that stuff. So I'm going to do a separate podcast on that. But Africans were geniuses and they were involved in the early development of money. They both were in early trade systems and the development of early currencies. And specifically before coined money, African civilizations used commodity money. And this starts like in 300, the year 300, after crisis, death. So the first one that you should know about is cowrie shells. They were used widely in West Africa. Cowrie were one of the most recognizable forms of currency for centuries. Then gold dust and nuggets used extensively in West Africa, particularly in the Ghana, Mali and Songhai empires. That's around 300 to 1600 common era or after AD right after Christ's death. Salt bars. Yes, I said salt. Salt bars in the. By the way, everybody's saying capitalism's evil. And you know, we get people deal with capitalism and free enterprise and money since the beginning of time. Right? The Bible talks more about money than any one thing. Hello. I think over 2000 references. The only time Jesus got upset is when he turned over the tables of the money changers in the Bible. So like get with this system because it's gotten with you whether you like it or not. Like this. Again, this is as important as the right to vote. It's almost as important as breathing. I want to relieve your stress, move you from a surviving mindset. This is my book. Up from nothing to a thriving mindset to a winning and building mindset. That means that all this stuff is important. Salt bars. In the trans Saharan trade, salt was so valuable that it was used as currency, particularly in the Sahara and Sahel areas. Copper, iron and brass rods. Many African societies use metal as a form of currency, especially in central and south in southern Africa, the gold trade. West Africa was a major supplier of gold to the Mediterranean in European economies from 800 to year 1500. Did you hear me? It gets deeper. Empires like Ghana and Mali and Songhai controlled vast gold mines and traded with North African Merchants influencing global markets. This one's a famous example from the 14th century. The Mansa. Mansa Musa. The root. What a cool name. Mansa Musa. We got, you know, don't go naming your child Mansa Musa now, right? I want to be able to get a job, right? Mansa Musa. That wasn't a good joke. Sorry. The ruler of mali in the 14th century famously disrupted the Egyptian economy with his lavish distribution of gold during the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. Just completely tow up. The inflation ran amok because he was just distributing. He was intentionally distributing his riches everywhere and inflating everything around them. Today, we'd say, let's say it's like 25% inflation, all right, where we're arguing about 2 and 4 and 5% inflation in America. African kingdoms and the use of coinage. Some African civilizations minted their own coins, by the way. The US did the same thing. I'll get to that in a minute. The. The Aksumite empire, which is modern day Ethiopia and Eritrea, by the way. You know, those people, those two groups are related, right? They had been war with each other. It was for the longest. It was two cousins fighting Eritrea and Ethiopia. You look at them, you're like, y'all the same people. What's. What's going on? Okay. Anyway. The Aksumite empire produced gold, silver and bronze coins as early as 270 CE. This is the common era after Christ's death. The sultanite of Kilwa, modern day Tanzania. I've been to about African African countries. Tanzania is fantastic. They minted their own coins in the 11th to the 14th century, facilitating Indian ocean trade. African gold was a primary driver of the European renaissance financial system. The gold from west Africa supplied European mints and helped finance banking families like the Medici in Italy. You heard all about the Medici. You don't hear about where they got their gold from. That backdoored their new monetary and financial system and credit system. It was from Africa. Portuguese, Dutch and British traders established commercial relationships with African kingdoms. I'm about to get a little controversial here, but it's just the facts. Exchanging goods, firearms, textiles for gold, ivory, and slaves. Yes, Black Africans were also in the slave trade. They didn't know they were pushing them off, Sending them off to dang on American transgressions and world horror. But you got folks to the coast somehow. And that's a whole nother story for another time. I will do a special piece this year on Africa. Okay? So there's good capitalism, by the way, and bad capitalism. Good capitalism is where I benefit and somebody else benefits more. And bad capitalism is where I benefit. Somebody else pays a price for it. Slavery is an example of bad capitalism. Am I going too far? Am I going too fast, going too far with you? I hope not, because we've covered a lot of ground so far and we're heading in here to the home stretch. Okay, let's talk about the US and then we'll start talking about how entrepreneurs and business people can use good credit. And some examples for you. The development of money and currency and credit in the United States has undergone significant transformation since the colonial era, shaping the nation's economic landscape in 1619. A company, not a government, by the way, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, by the way. Do you know that the first democracy was a company? Do you know the first government was a corporation in America? Don't, don't trust me on any of this. Check it out yourself. The 1600s, the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And I just like throwing this in just because it's gonna just fry your brain. And somebody said what? What did he say? Like, go deeper on that. The word white, the racial word white completely made up. It. It's not real. After 5 billion years in the world, 4 billion years of organism life, 200 million years of Neanderthal life, a couple hundred million years of modern human being life, 3000 years of life in the Enlightenment post Christ. The word white was created about 400 years ago, just in North America for political power and economic reasons. And white people and black people used to be friends when they were both indentured servants. Again, it was all about money. And I'll deal with that when I deal with my podcast on slavery that I'm going to do, which is going to be non emotional. Just the facts. So the Massachusetts Bay Colony issued the first paper money in the United American colonies to fund military expeditions. Right. All right, that was 1619. In 1775, during the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress began issuing their own currency. They were called Continentals. But they went too far and they became counterfeited and they printed too much of it. It severely depreciated and it became worthless basically by the end of the war. So in 1785, there was a first attempt to create an official currency by the continental Congress. In 1792, there was a Coinage act introducing basically denominations and standards. There was a free banking era now between 1837, 1863, where basically everybody just did their own thing. So you had again, I love picking on Boo Boo and Pookie. And then. But you had you Know, the corner store. You had individual banks, you had individual companies. Think about a car dealership issuing their own currency, their own, you know, cities and states issued their own currency. Was wild. It's crazy. It was no, you know, super. It was just a wildcat era. It was like no supervision whatsoever. And you should, you know, for, for, for, for. For. For kissing. Kissing and giggles. Go buy some old currency and frame it put on your wall. Some of it will be worth a lot of money at some point. Sorry. 1863, after the Civil War, there was a National Banks act that tried to make sense out of this chaotic currency and create some standardization. And then you had the National Banking Act. The National Banking act was followed by the Federal Reserve in 1913, established the Federal Reserve System as a central bank for the United States, aiming to provide a safe and more flexible monetary and financial system. That's just 1913. And then. I've already talked to you now, brought you up to speed to the evolution of credit. I talked about, you know, shopkeepers extending their own credit book, their own. Keeping their own books on a ledger, which is what I did with Four Seasons Hotel. I talked about the 1950s and credit cards. And the Franklin national bank of Long island issued the first modern credit card. Well, B of A might argue with them, but it's actually probably true. In 1951, 1958, issued that fancier card. I've already mentioned the car that happened in 19. It was a lot of people competing for credit at this. No punitive for credit. By the way, the word credit comes from the Latin root word credito, which basically means credibility. And I've already talked about the modern credit era. Okay, so now I brought you up to speed and let me now talk about businesses and entrepreneurs in the use of credit and talk about you. So I'm a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur also. Those two things are different. Businessman or businesswoman has a standard business plan. And an entrepreneur is crazy like me. And create something out of whole cloth that's completely new and different and never been done before. And oftentimes we, you know, we don't. When we're starting, we don't have backers. We don't have. You come from the hood. Where I came from, you don't have backers. So I use Pep Boys for my auto expenses. I used Sears credit card. When I needed to buy office supplies and furniture and some clothes, I used Radio Shack. You guys remember that? For my computers and my electronics and my mobile phone, I had a phone that was like a brick that went over my shoulder. It weighed like 30 pounds and it was like 45 cents a minute. It was analog phone calls before digital cellular phone calls. You guys remember this? It was 45 cents a minute. And the phone itself cost 3 to $5,000 to $10,000, depending on your brand, your model. I remember I was thinking, I used to have a credit a phone in my car at a 1967 Mustang in the hood. And I couldn't afford a mobile phone. But you could go to Radio Shack and buy a fake mobile phone kit, which was a fake phone receiver, a cord that would go under the dashboard, a fake antenna. Remember the antenna that had the swirls on it? Yes. There were actual antennas for anybody who's a millennial. And the antenna would go on the. You tape it, two sided tape go on your windshield. And sometimes you really want to show you were a big baller. You had two antennas on your car, four antennas. You saw brothers with six antennas in the car. You people have big. They would drill holes in the car, would put huge antennas. The bigger your antenna, supposedly the more power you had. A lot of stuff which is like me, just profile. I remember one day I had a date in the car and I was driving down the street and I was turning the corner, supposedly was on the phone profiling and moved the wrong direction and the cord popped out from under the dashboard, hit me in the head. So, yeah, that had nothing to do with the story, but I use credit cards episodically to facilitate the different things I needed because I didn't have any, any equity capital. So just so you know, capital is debt and equity. So equity is, you know, money that you own that's either you've gotten yourself or somebody invested with you that equity, you don't have to make payments on it. That's equity. Debt is a form of obligation. It's also capital, but is a form of obligated capital. You have to pay it back and there's typically payments tied to it. I'll do lines of credit, things like that in another podcast. But oftentimes, if you're from the hood, you don't have equity and you don't have inherited wealth and you don't have wealthy parents. At least nobody down there will give you any of their shekels. See their shekels. We're using these phrases today. We know where it comes from. Give me some shekels, man. You got some shekels. And so if you're in from the hood and you have bad credit, one of the Reasons that people in the hood have these underground businesses is they're going to pookie and them Luigi or whatever around the corner and getting very expensive debt as a loan and only can pay back this loan that's 30, 80, 100% interest sometimes is with illegal enterprises. So they're matching the expensive debt with illegal ways to pay it back. And you reduce your, you increase your credit score, you increase your financial fluency. You can now go to the bank and get prime credit and disengage in a regular business that will actually live, allow you to live and it will last a lifetime. Versus these businesses tied to illegal activity. There's probation, prison, parole or death tied to it. So businesses, if you have a choice, get a business credit card. But I use a personal credit card and just assign it to business purposes. I would encourage you to understand the difference between a credit card and a charge card when you get these cards. Because if you get an American Express card in business and you've got an invoice that's that doesn't pay for 60 or 90 days based on terms, but you have a credit, a charge card that requires you to pay back in 30 days and you're putting this expense. So here's one lesson in business don't. You don't want to typically finance long term equity with short term debt. You don't want to finance something that's a long term obligation with a short term credit facility that requires payments. Right now I know I'm covering a lot in a short period of time, but you're smart. I know you can get this. You can also hit replay and play it over and over again and take notes until you get it. Get all your buddies together, ladies together, get your girls together and have a conversation about this and talk about it amongst yourself. There's no dumb here. There's no dumb answer. Nobody taught you this stuff, so how could there be a wrong answer? Just what you have didn't know, right? So you want to align up your terms of your repayment with the terms of your payments. That's the easiest way I can. And that's called cash flow management.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Hey y'all, I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. My podcast when youn're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people in immigrants. Immigrants who shaped my life. I get to talk to a lot of people who form the backbone of our society, but who have never been interviewed before. Season 2 is all about community organizing and being underestimated.

[Emila]

All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks. Let's do something about it.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

I can't have more than $2,000 in my bank account or else I can't get disability benefits they want. They won't let you succeed. I know we get paid to serve you guys, but like, be respectful. We're made out of the same things. Bone, body, blood.

[Emila]

It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the lesson and I'm also the testament.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Listen to when you're invisible as part of the my cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Emila]

I started to live a double life when I was a teenager. Responsible and driven and wild and out of control. My head is pounding. I'm confused. I don't know why I'm in jail. It's hard to understand what hope is when you're trapped in a cycle of addiction. Addiction took me to the darkest places. I had an AK47 pointed at my head. But one night a new door opened and I made it into the rooms of recovery. The path would have roadblocks and detours, stalls and relapses. But when I was feeling the most lost, I found hope with community and I made my way back. This season, join me on my journey through addiction and recovery. A story told in 12 steps. Listen to crams as part of the Mike Gulura Podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John O'Brien]

I'm Mark Seal.

[Mark Seal]

And I'm Nathan King.

[John O'Brien]

This is Leave the gun, take the Cannoli. The five families did not want us to shoot that picture.

[Mark Seal]

Leave the gun take the Cannoli is based on my co host Mark's best selling book of the same title. And on this show we call upon his years of research to help unpack the story behind the Godfather's birth. From start to finish, this is really.

[John O'Brien]

The first interview I've done in bed.

[Mark Seal]

We sift through innumerable accounts.

[John O'Brien]

35 pages isn't very much.

[Mark Seal]

Many of them conflicting.

[Emila]

That's nonsense.

[Mark Seal]

There were 60 pages and try to get to the truth of what really happened.

[John O'Brien]

And they said we're finished. This is over. It only stop going to work. Try to get rid of those guys.

[Mark Seal]

Leave the gun take the Cannoli features new and archival interviews with Francis Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Evans, James Caan, Talia Shire and many others.

[John O'Brien]

Yes, that was a real horse's head.

[Mark Seal]

Listen and subscribe to Leave the gun, Take the Cannoli on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

Hey, this is Mel Reid, LPGA Tour winner and six time Ladies European Tour.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Winner and Kyra K. Dixon, NBC sports reporter and host.

[Emila]

You forgot to say warmer. Miss America, by the way. And we've got a new podcast, Quiet Please with Mel and Kira.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

We are bringing you spicy takes on sports and pop culture, some golf haps and interviews with incredible people who have figured out how to make golf their.

[Emila]

Superpower or just people we like, plus tales from the road and everything in between. By the way, golf isn't just for the dads, brads and chads.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Yeah, it's actually life's cheat code and we're not going to be quiet about it on or off the course. We're bringing on some of our friends like Michelle We, Heather McMahon, Amanda Baliotis.

[Emila]

So if you want to keep up with us and here's Yap, tune into.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Our new podcast, listen to Quiet Please with Mel and Kira, an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. You can find us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.

[John O'Brien]

Benefits I've already talked about reward benefits. That's a big reason why I use credit cards. I also like using credit cards because it allows me to monitor my expenses. Because credit card companies will send you detailed, particularly amex will send you detailed printouts of which categories of spending. They'll help you basically create a budget with cash flow management. It allows you to also monitor employee expenses. And my suggestion is you look at these expenses every week, no less than every month. Right? You should pull your credit at least once a quarter. I think you should pay every month. I look at my credit report every couple days on the outside. If you do this the right way, doing a business credit card will help you allow ultimately get a business credit facility, a business credit line. I want you to be mindful of fees and interest rates, which I've talked about already. And I want you to make sure you're complying with the law when you're using all these facilities. And I remember that Al Capone, who's a famed or infamous gangster, they couldn't catch him on murder and mayhem, but they got him for tax evasion. I'd rather owe my mother money. God rest your soul, and owe the federal government a dime. They, they ain't playing you don't, you don't want to use you want hardcore interest rate payments. Check oh, the owe the IRS some money and see how painful it is, how much interest they're charging. And they're not trying to hurt you, they're trying to discourage you from having them as a lender. They want to be the lender. The IRS wants to be the lender of last resort. But if you have a choice between a payment arrangement with, with irs, which they become now, they become your credit facility, your credit, your. Your credit card, that's not a charge card, that's a credit card in an example, because you want payments that are monthly. If you have choice between owing them money, not paying them, or putting them on a credit payment plan, do the latter. Do not blow them off, even if it's very painful. And I've done it. I've owed them money, I've had payment plans and had to pay them back. But it was a time value of money. Time value, opportunity, cost of money. Write that down. Time value, opportunity, cost of money. And you mix and match the credit card or the credit line or your cash is available with the credit facility that you have. I'm gonna give you a little bit of a rich person's twist here. There is a credit facility, by the way, that is the bank of you. Now, I don't want you going crazy with this, all right? I want you to come to me telling me that, oh, John, you gave me bad advice. This is a sophisticated thing I'm about to tell you. I want you ultimately to get. I want you to do 401k, all right? With your employer. If your employer is giving you employee matches, free money, take as much money as there is available, matches to the maximum. I want you to get your earned income tax credit from the federal government. I want you to do all that stuff. I want you to buy a house, I want you to have a will and an insurance plan, all that stuff, right? Life, a term or whole life insurance policy, so on and so forth, right? I want you to use credit cards and charge cards responsibly. Okay, Good. I want you to open a stock account and do it conservatively, right? No fancy stuff. Don't invest in cryptocurrency and call that traditional conservative investing. It's not, it's speculation. There's a place in your portfolio for it, but it should be no more than 10% in my opinion. When you get a stock account with strong assets in it, not flaky stuff. Let's assume you have a stock account now that has $10,000 balance. I'm just picking a number, right? You can get what's called a margin account. Once you're there and you have an established relationship with your brokerage, you can get a margin account against your marketable securities that's in that account. And you can borrow from the bank of you up to x percent, 50% to 70% depending on the securities in the account and how marketable they are, how institutional they are, right? Blue chip they call it. So if you have a $100,000 securities account, this is not your 401k. This is a, this is you're investing in the stock market, right? You have a hunt an account valued at a hundred thousand dollars. In this example, you could borrow from yourself at typically better rates than the bank, up to $70,000. In that example you got to pay it back. And here's the downside. If those stocks ever go down to a concerning point, let's say the easy example here is they go down. Let's say you have a hundred thousand dollar account and you borrow $50,000 against that for whatever business or home purchase. By the way, it's your money, do as you will. And by the way, you get to write off the cost of the debt on your own bank of you account, off your taxes sometimes. Check with your tax pro. Don't say that John Bryant told you this. Your tax pro anybody situation is different. But in this example, you owe 50, $50,000 against $100,000 margin account. Okay, this is, this is your stock, so this is your money you're borrowing against yourself. You want to pay that back, so you want to plan to pay that back. If you don't pay it back and if that stock portfolio you got was flaky and that value goes down to, I'm making it up now $65,000 versus 100,000. I don't think this would happen, but it might. There could be what's called a margin call where they say, look, you're over leveraged, you've got to now pay off this $50,000. We're uncomfortable that your value's now gone from 100,000 down to $60,000. This happened in Silicon Valley by the way, all the time with these startup companies where the stock goes up to a billion, that goes down to 100 million. The person's done a lot of this lifestyle purchase stuff and they got a credit line of $200 million against a billion dollars of stock and now it's only worth, I'm making this up $150 million wor they're upside down. The bank goes and takes all their stuff. I don't want that happening to you. So don't get over leveraged. But it is a tool. All right. This is John O'Brien. I'm tired of hearing myself talk. This was an exciting episode. Let me know what you learned, whether this is valuable, let me know what I missed out or what else you wanted to know and I'll do it on the app. The next episode or one of them coming up. I do listen to all of your comments and suggestions. I do read the comments myself. Between all my business activities and traveling. I love you very much. I want you to win. This is the Silver rights movement. S I L V E R From the streets to the sweets. This is John O'Brien. This is Money and wealth. Go get my book bestseller Financial literacy for all. The book before that up from nothing. The book from that, the money. I'm sorry, the memo, how the Pork saved Capitalism. Love leadership banking our future. But I really think you should get financial literacy for all and sit down with your family and talk about money. I want you to go take this thousand dollar offer I've given you of a one year coaching credit with Operation Hope to get your credit score right, get your budget right, get your life right, take control of your life. Tell them I sent you. What else do I want to give you? Oh, some advice. Go tell all your friends to follow. Money and wealth. It's growing like nobody's business. And we're on for a new movement to help set our people free through financial literacy. That's my rap. It's like Jay Z said in his 444 album, this is a million dollars worth of game for $9.99. This is none.99 because it didn't cost you a dime. Just my time. All right. Love and light, John. Hope I'm Money and wealth with John O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite show. In a world of economic uncertainty and workplace transformation, learn to lead by example from visionary C suite executives like Shannon Schuyler of PwC and Will Pearson of iHeartMedia.

[Emila]

The good teacher explains the great teacher inspires. Don't always leave your team to do the work that's been the most important part of how to lead by example.

[John O'Brien]

Listen to leading by example executives making an impact on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your Podcasts hey y'all.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

I'm Maria Fernanda Diaz. When youn're Invisible is my love letter to the working class people and immigrants who shaped me. Season 2 shares stories about community and being underestimated.

[Emila]

All the greatest changes have happened when a couple of people said, this sucks, let's do something about it.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

We get paid to serve you, but we're made out of the same things.

[Emila]

It's rare to have black male teachers. Sometimes I am the testament.

[Maria Fernanda Diaz]

Listen to when you're Invisible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Emila]

I'm Emila, host of the podcast Crumbs. For years I had to rely on other people to tell me my story, and what I heard wasn't good. You really? Last night it felt like I lived most of my life in a blackout. I was trapped in addiction. I had to grab the lamp and smashed it against the walls. And then I decided I wanted to tell my own story. Listen to crumbs on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John O'Brien]

Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This past season on my podcast, here's the thing, I spoke with more actors, musicians, policymakers and so many other fascinating people like writer and actor Dan Aykroyd. I love writing more than anything. You're left alone. You know, you do three hours in the morning, you write three hours in the afternoon. Go pick up a kid from school and write at night. And after nine hours you come out with seven pages and then you're moving on. And actor and comedian Jack McBrayer.

[Emila]

The most important aspect is the collaboration with people that I like, I trust are talented. That has been the most amazing gift to me about this crazy business that we've chosen. Meeting these people who have such diverse talents and you're able to create something together.

[John O'Brien]

Listen to here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.