John Hope Bryant (2:48)
This is John Hope Bryant, and this is the Money and Wealth podcast series on iHeartRadio on the Black Effect Network. And this is a special episode, as you all know. And thank you all for making this podcast a top 50 podcast for entrepreneurship on Apple in the United States and pop top 150 on business and top 250 around the world on every continent for business and entrepreneurship. We have sparked and are sparking a movement around what I call silver rights, from civil rights to civil rights. And I believe financial literacy is a civil rights issue of this generation. I believe that AI literacy is the civil rights issue of this generation. And I believe that these two things are really future literacy for future generations and living an aspirational life. I believe that we are going to go from the streets to the suites and move from access to ownership. And that's what this podcast episode's about, is action, is making ownership actionable for the average everyday person. Some people feel, even though I tell my story over and over again, that I was homeless and I witnessed my mom and dad divorced in front of me and domestic abuse in front of me when I was 4 or 5 years old and murder in front of me when I was 6 or 7 and the death of my best friend before I was nine. All that and more. People seem to tend to not still sometimes relate to my story because they think, well, look at him now, and he's bought 700 homes. I can't relate to that. I'm trying to buy one. Well, we've got somebody with us who has bought one and did it brilliantly. And before we get into that, the reason I underscore this is I don't bring guests on often on the show. It's this is, as people know, this is typically me in conversation. So if I bring a guest on, it's a big deal. And it's typically some CEO or celebrity or whatever. And this is both a CEO and a celebrity of our community. They have made a dream real now. What kind of dream? Home ownership. I have said to you that the number one way you build wealth in America is home ownership. I have tried to underscore that 75 of our mainstream counterparts, our white friends, have bought a home and own one. I've tried to explain to you that the entire tax policy of the United States of America, the biggest economy in the world, is based around supporting home ownership. You get to write off your mortgage payment, get to write off interest, mortgage interest. You get to benefit from depreciation if it's a income producing property. And appreciation for any property is so many benefits of homeownership that you don't get as a renter. If you're a renter, you'll, you know, you'll be worth a couple hundred bucks. I, I mean like, I'm not joking, if you're a homeowner, you're, it's a couple hundred thousand dollars. It's not even close night and day difference. But most black Americans own, don't own a home. Between 40 and 44% of us own a home, less than half. But it's the easiest pathway to create wealth and generational wealth. You make money during the day, you build wealth in your sleep. But it's a daunting, overwhelming thought for most people. And if you buy a home and you buy it wrong, you end up in 2008. The 2008 mortgage crisis. It wasn't a problem with people owning a home, is a problem with people buying it wrong. If you get a toe up mortgage underneath at home, it's really like getting A is like going and buying a car with a 500 credit score. You're going to a B or C car dealership, meaning secondary in your neighborhood, selling used cars with bad financing. And that was not going to be a Mercedes you bought, it's going to be a Mercedes payments. And so if you buy a mortgage, if you get a home and that home has a structured mortgage that is subprime, as they would say, it's a bomb waiting to explode. If you get an adjustable rate loan tied to that mortgage, that, that mortgage, that adjustable rate's not going down. That is going to adjust up. And as it adjusts up, if you ask what was a payment, you bought a home. Like you shouldn't buy even a car, which is asking what's the payment? You never ask what the payment is when there's an interest rate attached. But if you got a, bought a home with six figures attached to it and asked what was the payment? And that payment was, I'm making this up fifteen hundred dollars a month. And you said okay, I can do that. And it was an adjustable rate mortgage, it's going to in all likelihood adjust over time up and in three years that payment may be double. So the house didn't change, but your finances did. And it in that situation, adjustable rate mortgages, negative amortization mortgages, which means the more money you pay, the more you owe. Every payment you make, you owe more because you're stuck on the payment, but the payment is not covering principal and interest of the agreement. And so it's negative amortization. You are literally owing more every day. So all this financial illiteracy helped to create the mortgage crisis of 2008 that really deadened a lot of people of color from buying a home and owning one. And so we want to reimagine that. We want to change that. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first can't grow except through legitimate suffering. So other people have gone through the valley for you and we have one of those people with us today. And I am going to stop talking and turn it over to one of our full financial coaches, Lester, who is going to Lester Watt, who is going to interview this wonderful lady and testimonial for Operation Hope and unpack a story that you can relate did you know.