HOW’D YOU DESCRIBE YOUR MONEY MINDSET AS THE LEADER OF YOUR FAMILY?

NéAndré: Marriage can sometimes be looked at as a business decision, sure, but what’s even greater than the states involvement or divorce is the love between the husband and wife. When you love your partner enough to where you don’t care how much money they make. It’s about doing what’s best for you and her pockets and not just one person because you’ve become a unit. It’s tough to come together and compromise if you have a mindset focused on just one of you rather than you and your wife as whole. When we started our relationship, my wife and I were dating for 10 years and she was already a bit further off than I was, but she never held that over my head. I am forever grateful to her for that because it helped me realized that as men we’ve internalized pressure just to be the provider. There can be tension that lies in between that because we’re constantly trying to be the breadwinner of the entire household. Just because you’re the breadwinner doesn’t mean you have to be the only provider. You can absolutely earn more money for your family, but at the end of the day they will still rely you as a husband or father. Understanding both these dynamics, you also have to be the protector and comfortable with making the final decisions for your family. We have two incomes and my wife makes a good amount of money, so when we do our bills it’s from a monthly perspective and somethings come out of what I make and some our of what she makes. Always focusing on our expenses but also focused on living as a unit. Once we have enough money saved away, we begin to discuss making larger purchases based on those savings versus adding some monthly expenses. Regardless what decisions have to be made we always focus on having balance. That allows us to save for retirement, future income and save for our legacy.

WHY IS STYLE & NARRATIVE IMPORTANT FOR BLACK MEN?

NéAndré: Honestly self-confidence and the belief that we’re worthy has been overlooked and ignored in our communities perspective on black men. Changing the narrative is important because we still allow ourselves to live in the poorest communities, attend schools that don’t have resources and get caught up in criminal activity based on our environment. They give you what you need to be criminals and then they criminalize you for it and that has been the problem. We need to begin to understand the environment and being in it, if I don’t pay something my lights cut off. Understanding the economic advancement and that it’s supply and demand, I got the supply and I’m only going to give it if I can make money off of it, off of our communities. It’s capitalism in it’s finest and there are also legal ramifications that are tied to what our community tends to utilize to leverage itself. Changing the narrative would allow for our people to be educated on this system and all others like it, creating an opportunity to better take care of their families. I also believe that self-confidence builds itself on the entire group and says we’re at the top of the totem pole as a whole. The black community is really at the top of the total poll from one particular subset because we have 1.4 trillion dollars of buying power. What they do is group all black people together from an economic perspective and I think we need to begin to ride on that. With that buying power, we don’t have the confidence in knowing that we can begin to leverage it. Nike, Google and Apple all of them market to our communities, we just don’t understand the value that we have within that. So, I think using that opportunity and having that self-confidence is a really great tool. Having a certain level of self-confidence builds community, which then builds knowledge and that trickles down to education ending in ways to help more of our community attain wealth. When you look at yourself differently and reach a point where you flip that switch and say “hey, hold on why am I struggling?”. You are ready to understand and know why something isn’t working. Next is all about confidence and what you can do to build on yourself and add to your community. I got that confidence I know I’m supposed to be in this room in that room in that room now that I have that confidence. Black men are hustlers by nature and we’re going to get what we need and get things done. Instead of falling into being forced to hustle, we can use that confidence and find a better way.