Building Black Wealth
Most African Americans have a negative net worth as we described in the above example. Their debts exceed their assets. That is another way of saying they have no wealth. However, there are five ways African Americans can build wealth:
Develop a wealth building mission for your finances
You will spend money frivolously without a wealth building mission. A wealth building mission helps you determine preemptively how to use your money for building wealth. You will never build wealth without a clear mission for your financial life. I say this because you will not stumble upon wealth nor will it fall from the sky and hit you on the head. You must develop a plan and strategy to build wealth. Someone said if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
Once you have formulated a clear wealth building mission, you can develop a clear wealth building budget or plan. A wealth building budget or plan demonstrates your priorities. There are many ways to establish your wealth building budget, but one method is the 80/20 budget The 80/20 budget requires that you live on 80% of your take-home pay and S.I.T on the remaining 20%. The acronym S.I.T. stands for Save. Invest. Tithe. Let me illustrate: If your take-home pay is $5000 a month, you live on $4000. You tithe $500, and you save and invest the remaining $500. As you become even more discipline, you can increase to 30% or more the amount you S.I.T. on.
Develop a wealth building mindset
Two and half centuries of slavery and another 150 years systemic racism and white supremacy have had a very negative impact on the minds of African Americans. We are similar to the Children of Isreal. God got them out of slavery but couldn’t get slavery out of them. They thought, acted and behaved like slaves. Slave thinking made them useless to God and destructive toward themselves. Eventually, God allowed most to die in the wilderness. That generation never entered the Promised Land.
African Americans are not too different from Isreal. We see America as a land of oppression rather than a land of opportunity. It is the reason foreign nationals come to America, and within a generation, they are building wealth despite language and cultural barriers. We paved the way for them but fail to take full advantage of the opportunities for which we fought and died.
We must renew our minds. We must learn the secrets of Biblical and practical wealth building. Let’s get started below.
Learn and master the Biblical secrets to wealth building
God knows more about wealth building than anyone because He owns more wealth than anyone. He possesses all the wealth in His creation including the trillions of galaxies, planets, and stars. That is an immeasurable and infinite amount of wealth. In Psalm 50:10-12, God makes this declaration about His wealth:
Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee: for the world is mine, and the fullness thereof. Psalm 50:10-12
With all His wealth, God is not opposed to His children building wealth. He encourages and empowers us to do so. Reject any theology that says otherwise. Here’s proof: God said to Israel in Deuteronomy 8:17-18 (NIV), You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my handshave produced this wealth for me.” 18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today. Understanding and mastering Biblical secrets of wealth building is the first key to building wealth.
Some of the wealth building secrets in the Bible are honoring and fearing God, the blessing of Abraham, giving, tithing, working hard, character development, positive confession, healthy families and so on. These secrets provide the foundation for wealth building.
