Money & Marriage

Published Mar 14, 2024, 10:01 AM

On this episode, John talks about the financial aspect of marriage and relationships. If you don't understand the concept that 2 + 2 = 6, 8 or 10, then this episode is for you!

 

To learn more about John's Operation Hope initiative, visit: https://operationhope.org/how-we-help/credit-money-management/

 

 

Welcome the Money in Wealth with John Hobryant, a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey is John Hope Bryant. And this is Money and Wealth And the theme of this week's episode is hot. Now that's not the theme I'm talking about. The topic is hot. You guys are going to be talking about this one for a long time and nobody wants to talk about it. It's money and dating and marriage. All right, let's get at this. The first thing I want to deal with is in the trending topic of the week, this brother, you know, really decent brother. It appears he it was all over social media. Still is Ashley Brother went with his wife for dinner for one of his wife's girlfriends. And he knew, like I know all of you know, I know most of Shafer's good friends. So if I'm going to, you know, go to a surprise party whatever, I might be the one if Chase was busy to invite the rest of her crew. Right, So in this example, Chase's my wife, by the way, Chase Bryant. So in this example, this brother, I don't know the backstory, but it appears his wife's girlfriend was having a birthday. He agreed to sponsor the birthday girl and his wife. Makes perfect sense to me, makes perfect sense to you, So far right? Okay, Somehow the brother ends up inviting the girlfriends of the birthday girl to a birthday dinner. So far, so good. Right, now you know what's coming next. This is us I'm talking about. Now, I'm not picking on us, but I'm talking about a high profile Flossie. You know where I'm going. And this is for anybody, Flossy, any race, but anybody who knows a sister or brother. You know where I'm about to go, young Flossie. And I guess a little entitled Dinner's nice, it's over, and the bill comes. It's seven hundred dollars. Looks like it's about seven people at the table. And my man says, can you bring me a check? From me and the birthday girl and my wife and then of course split the rest of the check out exceptarate checks. Makes perfect sense to me. The girls go cray cray on his brother. They go absolutely nuts, what are you talking about? And somebody's filming this, I guess, because they're just filming the birthday dinner and they get all this drama. On tape. But the short version is the girls go nuts on this brother and start lecturing him, including the birthday girl. By the way, she'd be off my Christmas list for the next time around. Me and my mate would have to have separate conversations about about homegirl. So the homegirl starts lecturing the man about how he has a responsibility. Oh, this is ghetto, she says, why are you not paying for everybody else? Now I might take a little bit of abuse from the birthday girl, given that it's her birthday and somebody I guess should be paying other than her. But when the guests start talking about you're the only man at the table, what does that mean? You know, some cases, I'm my own woman, And you know, a man is not a plan or whatever the thing is. You know in some cases is respect me and so on and so forth, and so on and so on. And by the way, I'm a brother that opens doors, and my mother raised me that way. And I just offer to pay for the bill if I'm in the presence of ladies chienerally speaking anyway, But that doesn't mean that somebody should not offer to cover their own expense. I'm not your daddy, I'm not your partner, I'm not your mate, I'm not your I'm not your financial sponsor. I'm not responsible for you. Right, You're responsible for you, and you're responsible for your eats, for your meals. And yes, I you know, maybe I invite you to come to a birthday dinner, but you have dominion an agency over your own life. And just like you paid for the valet and the gas when you came to that dinner, and all the phone calls on the way to that dinner, and the phone you're using at that dinner, I don't see why you should assume that you're not paying for the dinner itself unless I volunteer to sponsor it, which is graciousness out of my own heart. But how dare you assume presume? And you know that old phrase, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me hello, But I don't know how you presume or assume anything in this situation yet alone. What responsibility is so called I have in this situation or in this case, Sorry, I'm gotting all hot now, because it's somebody who's got some means. I'm always finding that people expect I'm a pay for whatever it is, you know, going on. Maybe I'm getting a little PATSD here. But the brother here was just and he never lost as cool as you'll see, he's very, very smooth. He's very respectful even though he's being disrespected, and he holds his ground. The lady's like, you're the only man at the table. Now you need to pay for this. You're invited us. He invited you, but he didn't say I'm hosting, I'm sponsoring. It'd be a different thing to me. He says, I'm hosting you and then reneged on that. And that's not what happened. They just assumed and presumed. So that's there bad right now. I do want your opinion on this way in, But I'm telling you that's just being raised proper right. Nobody's responsible for your bills just because you're pretty and because you you're a woman, and I guess you think you're cute and all that kind of stuff, And that doesn't that doesn't mean that the guy is just responding. And this guy he said, look, he says, look, I'm taking care of my wife. That's my responsibility. And I'll even offering to take care of the birthday girl. You know, the rest of you. I thought I just told you what was going on, right, and the rest is you know, this is your bill's on you now. I guess he might have also said, if you had been nice to me, maybe I would have paid your bill. But I'm not paying. Is what you copping not only an attitude, but a dude, all right, let me know what you think about this. It to me, this is just absolutely Craig Cray. This is just a this is just common sense, like and good manner. It's just good home training. That's what I'm talking about. It's good home training to say that I take care of myself. I cover my own bill. And if you covered, god, bless you and thank you. But don't come to me with a sense of entitlement. How a spirit of appreciation not a spirit of expectation. You have a period spirit of appreciation. I'm with you all day, all night. You're kind, You're gracious. I'll lean in and say you say, hey, I'm you know, I'm covering my piece or a Joe whatever, here's my credit card. I might then say, no, no, don't worry about that. Susanna or whatever your name is. I got you just because I you know you may have, you know, but the rest of y'all, I can't say what I'm thinking. The rest of y'all. That not offering your car, You're definitely paying for yours. All right, anyway, watch that, Listen to that. Let me know what you think. Okay, how stuff works? The money in marriage segment, this is this is going to be hot and popping. You thought that the trending topic section was hot, wait for this, right, and this is this should just be a radical movement of common sense. But whenever you involve money and emotions, it's going to be messy. And nothing is messier than a love relationship. But I think we've gotten marriage twisted. In fact, I know we have, and I'm going to unpack what marriage really is and I'm going to go through a lot of very detailed and difficult questions in this podcast. And then let's, as my friend Charlemagne, like God would say, let's discuss. And I'm honored to be on the Black Effect Network with Charlemagne, by the way, sir, on his board, and have this podcast where we can have these conversations every week. This is my ministry of finance, This is my pull pit, this is my weekly Opportunity on every Thursday. Tell your friends to subscribe to unpack the mysteries of money and wealth creation and all the stuff that you wanted to ask questions about you're curious about, and you were maybe too embarrassed, too ashamed for some reason to ask, and nobody havlunteered to tell you. You never got the memo on money. You're not dumb, and you're not stupid, you're brilliant. But it's what you don't know that you don't know. This killing you, but you think you know. And here's one example. Now I'm gonna deal with dating first and marriage. But you're dating your girlfriend, boyfriend, you're living together, your partners in a business together, your friends with intertwined finances together. Here's the rule number one that will apply to all three of these examples. I'm giving you this is the only time that maths do not make sense. Two plus two has to equal more than four. If two plus two does not equal six, eight, or ten, what are you doing? If you're not better together? What are you doing? Right? So that's the first rule is that if you're in a relationship, you have to be better together. That person has to make you better, or, to quote my friend Quincy Jones, the worst thing that being alone is wishing that you were. The four rules of financial literacy in a relationship. Now, this is when you are finances are intertwined, you're living together, and or you're married. Four rules, four components, Four places on the playing field. Place number one you can make the money and spend it. Place number two you can make the money and manage it. Place number three. This is the respective of who's where there's male or female making the money. By the way, place number three you can manage the money and spend it in accordance with the budget that you both agree on and priorities and all that stuff, and cadence meaning the process by which you spend money. But you can't just spend it. I'm gonna say that one more time. Please don't veer off the road. If you're listening to this, don't go don't flip your car. You may have to pull over and listen to this again. Hit the reverse fifteen second mark and go back because this is really basic, but almost everybody misses this. And by the way, the number one calls her divorce is money. The number one calls for domestic abuse is money. The number one calls for police injury on domestic abuse calls. It's tied to domestic abuse calls about money. The number one calls for heart attacks is stress. The number one calls for stress is money. Ninety percent of employees on the job today say their number one stressor is money. And just real talk. If you see a long, drawn out, contentious divorce proceeding, people say it's over this, and it's over that, and he did this, and she did that, and so on and so forth. But if you see a divorce is extending weeks, no months, no years, right, Unfortunately, something extended years, you can just add zeros because if it's extending weeks or months, then they're probably middle class to wealthy. If it's extending years, they're uber wealthy. But if you did broke, that thing's over in a day. If it's two broke people getting a divorce, it's like, Okay, I'm done, I'm done, tired to you, I'm tired of you. Okay, where's the paper, let me sign it. I'm out of here. If there's a long contentious divorce, I hate to tell it. I was so excited about this. I just connected two words. I hate to tell you I said, I hate to say it. I hate to say it. But that's over money. Well you say no, no, no, no, John, that's over the children. Really, there's no child support tied to the claim around the children. Are we just arguing over who's going to keep the child? Okay, don't trust me, Go look at the proceedings yourself. Ninety nine percent of the time it's who's responsible for the child, and by the way, the other person has to pay for the child's up keep. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I'm telling you the way it ti is. That's about money, Okay, alimony that's a fancy word for saying living expenses. And family court is interesting. It's the only place where it's not strictly the rule of law. Right, it's basically who does the judge in the process like favor whatever or dislike the least, and who's got the money. Now, you know it can be slightly more complicated than that, but you know, it sort of boils down to likability and you know, drawing this process out because the whole the longest draws out the machine, the you know, the lawyers, the clerks. All you're in doing is in enriching the lawyers and all the processes those folks have to get paid. And the longer this thing goes back and forth with proceedings and testimony and whatever, the more the process is eating up your net worth whatever you have between you and your spouse or farmer spouse. So this is about money. Nine times out of ten is being drawn out because it's an argument over money. Again, I'm not saying that that that's right or wrong. I'm telling you that's the way a TI is. And that's not even the topic of this. That's not even the central point of this podcasts. As it said, this is how contentious and crazy this thing is because no one talks about this. Maybe I'm the first person to break this down in this way, not emotionally, but that's the least dramatic thing probably that I'm going to say. Let me go back to the four rules again. I want to make sure you write these down. There's four rules for a successful financial literacy amongst two people working together sharing resources. Number One, the person makes the money, they have the right to make it and theoretically to spend it. It's their money, and you don't get to tell them to spend that not they can't spend their money. It's just because you're connected to them. Unless there's a pre agreement in that regard. Number two, that person can make the money and decide to manage it and not spend it. Make it invested, make it, put it on it, you know, do whatever they want with it, give it away if they want to. So as long as they're made in their family obligations making it, you can make it and spend it and launs' meeting your family obligations. And by the way you spend it irresponsibly, you may not be married very long. So this is this story. I have a friend of mine who was at that point president of a very prestigious publication. I can't say too much or you might be made a backtrack and find his name. And I was staying with him as a guest in New York because New York's very expensive and this is the early years of Operation Hope, and I needed to say money wherever I could, and so I was staying at this place. He was gracious enough to allow me to stay there, and he comes back from a meeting with a bunch of black folks. He's white, very fair minded guy, but he's not black. And he's meeting with all these black people in his offices and they're just going They're talking on and on and on and on and on about something that he didn't necessarily relate to, yet alone agree with. And so he came home to his house where I was staying, very upset and frustrated. Man, I'm listening to these people all day. I guess he forgot it was black and are just so comfortable with me. And I said, look, I'm gonna say Joe because if I say again, I'm not gonna say it's real name, because you might. You're so smart the audience, you may put two and two together there. I'm gonna call him Joe. His name is not Joe. Hey, Joe, do you like being married? He's like, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? Yes, of course I like the I like being married. But I'm telling you about this thing that happened in my office day. And they talked forever, and I, you know, I got really tired. I said, look, do you like being married? Yes? I said, Look, your wife may say something that you may think doesn't make much sense. And you sometimes may say some stuff, I'm sure do that she because you're saying something now doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense to her. But in this example, she's saying something and you don't think it makes much sense. Now you may tell her that in that moment you think that she sounds crazy or she is crazy, but sounds crazy is offensive enough. I mean, maybe she said, you know, I don't know. She just saw a horse gallivanting on the moon, she saw with her own eyes, and now she wants to go ride the horse. I'm just saying something completely ridiculous. And now that technically might mean that she was on mushrooms at that moment, or had done too much marijuana, had to should rink, or maybe she is momentarily crazy. But if you say you sound crazy, you might be technically correct, but you won't be married. You got to decide whether you want to be married or you want to be right. Those two things are different. So if you decide to make the money and spend it, that's you're right, but you may not be married very long. Make the money and manage it, Okay, that's more responsible and managing it means you're going to also take care of your shared responsibilities. And by the way, you can also if you're not the one making the money, you can manage it and under agreement with the person making it, spend it. So now you're both on the same page and you're not when your outfloks het, you're inflowed and your overhead will be your downfall. So you're not creating a stressful situation where the person comes home and they're like, what is this? I mean, why don't there's no Why isn't there no money in the account? Why is a credit card built exploding? And that's just an argument waiting to happen because they're like, I can time, I can't make it fast enough. You're always spending it, and stop it, knock it off, right, So that's going to end badly. Right again, the majority of divorces and majority of drama is money related, even though it may seem like it's another situation, and what you absolutely cannot do is just spend it. The inference there is that you're not making it and you're not managing it, and you're not communicating. You're just on fire with that credit card or checks or whatever atm withdrawals and you're just spending it. That I guarantee you is a relationship that will not last. So those are ground rules. Write those down. It'll work if you apply that to your business partnerships, entangled friendships, you're dating relationships, your girlfriend boyfriend, relationships where you're sharing finances, you're certainly you're living together, anything where you're living together or you're conjoined together, and certainly marriage. Okay, I guarantee you that will make life a lot easier for you. And if you have someone who is not yet completely captured the concept of budgeting, then just give them an allocation of whatever you're going to afford and cap it like so, you're not in an argument, right, It's not bad or good, by the way, this is just you know, making things work because you know, everybody has a different role in the relationship. Traditionally, it would be said, although these roles often switch, the man turn creates a house, the woman turns it into a home. It could also be the other way around. The woman is a breadwinner, she creates a house, and the man should be trying to turn that into a home, taking the pressure off his wife. Okay, how does marriage work? Well, I sort of already just just just said a lot of that, and I'm not a marriage counselor, and that's not what this is about. This is about the money and wealth and backstory parts of this. Even though you may pick up some tricks of the trade and some cheat sheet notes, some quick notes about how you can create a less tension in your relationship. So, how does marriage work? Who should you marry? What should be part of the courting process, Thoughts on pre nupts, our marriage back contracts. These are some questions that my folks wanted to and I guess people asking questions wanted me to answer. Before I can answer or address any of that, I've got to dismiss a very very bad presumption about marriage, and this goes to mostly who should you marry? The question. We think that in Western society that marriage is romantic. It might be, but that wasn't the reason why marriage was created. The institution of marriage wasn't created nearly three thousand years before the birth of Christ, meaning before religion was introduced into the whole situation. Marriage did not originate in a romantic situation. Just very dramatic example now, but unfortunately inaccurate one. When you go to the club tonight, ladies and you see a handsome dude. Guys, you go to the club tonight and you see a beautiful woman. Oh, man, she's fine. Oh girl, he's so he's so cute. Oh he's fine. Brother, Oh she's so sexy. What's your name? Cool? Good? So far after that, after pleasantries, what's your credit score? And you think I'm kidding, I don't let it, like literally mean, what's your credit score? But I mean you got to get behind the things that are temporary, which are these looks you're observing. And here's a worse example. Brothers will go to a strip club and fall in love with a stripper, and there's nothing wrong with the stripper. She may be the most she may be the smartest person in the whole room. Because a lot of these ladies who went to college, can't afford to college, don't have wealthy parents, whatever, and go and do this thing, which I'm not judging, you know, to make extra money. Do you really think, by the way, a beautiful woman is in a strip club at two three in the morning and have some two hundred and fifty pound dudes throwing her dollar bills at three in the morning because she likes it. She's there because of the money. Real talk. So this guy, whoever the guy is, goes to a strip club, falls in lust with some woman who may have, by the way, manufactured physique and all that kind of stuff because she's trying to entice somebody. By the way, this is the whole point of this. And what better deal than to just work for tips for the night, get married, and you have a lot of brothers, very successful NBA players, NFL players, rappers, whatever, who will just fall in love with a stripper or whoever and marry them because of how they're looking. I was out with a high profile couple who was taking a high profile guy out for the night. I'm really trying to name names here, and I couldn't stick around for where they went next. Versus going to din they were going to a strip club. I couldn't go, but I wish them well. And I heard later that this person who you would know literally was so enticed by this lady he met at three in the morning, he put her on a plane the next day senator to Los Angeles, put her up for you know, he was trying to have a relationship with her. I hope it works out. Probability is that they won't. But this is the power of attraction. Now, all good, knock yourself out, you know, live the experience you want to live. But that's not the point of marriage. And yes, should you'd be attracted to each other, yes, better that than not right. But let me tell you where marriage came from. Marriage came from different places, at different spaces, with different races, at different times, for different reasons, but most of those led back to wealth and economics and power. In the Middle Ages in Europe, you had cousins and relatives who married each other. They're trying to strengthen the family bond. I think it's a very bad idea for family members to marry each other have matter relations yuck. From my perspective, you can get all kinds of medical problems and passing down to your children. But I'm just telling you that many it was a very commonplace for relatives to marry each other because they were trying to create bonds between the houses, the royal houses in Europe. That's why the bloodlines are so consistent amongst European houses. A royalty because they're all related. Now they also in some cases, in fact, in many cases, slept in different rooms. Hello, there's a presumption that you're going to sleep together today because this is a romantic situation. It wasn't a romantic situation. It was a business situation. It was about power, money, wealth, positioning in the world. Like a lot of things. Are they married relatives and they slept in separate rooms, or they didn't marry relatives, they weren't related, but they slept in different separate rooms. You still have some situations like this in places like India where it's a arranged marriage. In Asia where it's arranged marriage, you don't even know who you marry until your parents put you together. That's not about romance either. They hope you like each other, but that's not the point. It's a class structure. Let me now go to if you want to really blow your mind, check out what traditional eskimos do with guests for dinner. I'm not gonna get into all that because I can't explain in the way that it's culturally sensitive. But you just do your own research. But it's not something that you would immediately recognize as something as a traditional marital habit. You can't judge this stuff. Go to the Middle East. It gets even stranger to a Western mind. You go to the Middle East, and if people want to judge men marrying multiple women. Now, I've been to the Middle East several times. It's been over one hundred countries. I've been in an elevator with a man who was ruling over his multiple wives and one wife, and I thought that was wrong. I still think it was wrong. I still know what's wrong. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is that no different than check cashing comes from an honorable place and it's been perverted. And payday lending came from an honorable place. You don't have enough money, you have too much month at the end of your money, and so you need a advance on your paycheck to get you over troubled water. Or check cashing came from grocery stores that would write, would cast your convenience check for you, and the grocery stores figured out that it was more valuable to cast the checks that earn a two percent profit off of no expense of cashing a check for government employee for the government office that they know the check was good than the two percent or three percent of profit they're making on groceries on the shelf and having the fun one that inventory in the grocery store. So they went from a grocery store to a check casher, and then they just started expanding fees. So that went from an honorable thing to an unhonorable thing. Here's another example where something went from honorable to interesting. Where in the Middle Ages, in those periods where there's a lot of warfare in the Middle East, ten men would leave the village and two men would return, and these villages there was a lot of relationships, a lot of family in those villages, and when the two men came back, eight men were murdered or killed in battle. The two men who were left saw these women. There was no police departments, there was no military, there was no streets at night that these women were vulnerable to predators, and so in respect and dignity they gave them. Want to give the women dignity and cover by marrying them into their family and giving all of them cover, protection, security, safety in their family. That's where that originally. Is it shocking to you, by the way, shocking to me when I first found it out when I was in the Middle East and I actually asked the question versus making a presumption or assumption or worse, an accusation. And this is back. This stuff is actually multiple marriages are actually covered as I understand it, in the Qur'an. Somebody can correct me in the comments, but as I understand it, even this is covered in sections of the Quran. But it's irrelevant to this point because it actually happened initially because of warfare and not enough men to cover the women. So men married multiple women. Now, of course, some people men viewed as in a chauvinistic way, a way to rule over women, have power over them, to show how they're such big guys really are showing their small people. I'm trying to get you to understand that in many of these cases, marriage is about business in quotation marks not a business, but it's better together two plus tuotion equals six, eight or ten. Look, there are two women who funded that. I'm aware that I can think of who funded John O'Brien. Two women. I know, I know hundreds of thousands of people, But why am I married to Shae tra Bryant. I think I've ever told this story before there's two women. My mother has given me a check in money in Shadraun, I'd come back from Africa. I've known her for twenty five plush years now, Shatra I'd come back from Africa. I had bought some shon sculptures from Zimbabwe, Africa. Picasso was inspired by I call them African Picassos. And if you look at Picasso's work and you look at stone sculpture work from Zimbabwe, Africa, you will see the influence there. He found these sculptors, it was inspired by them. It took some of their designs and the rest is history. I bought some of his art, brought it home, and I think I had bought, you know, hundreds of pieces, and I didn't calculate the shipping costs, and the shipping costs coused more than the art pieces themselves. These were heavy pieces. When I got here to I lived in Los Angeles at the time. It broke me to pay the shipping bill. And back then, the highest technology you had in the early nineties I believe this was late eighties, early nineties, and I think it was a website, and so I had a website, but I had no way to market these shon of stone sculptures could do nothing. They did set around My thought I was a capitalist even then. I would sell twenty five percent to third of the inventory, pay off the rest of the inventory and all my expenses, and I'd become an art collector by having the rest of the art free and clear. Can I get an amen on that. I was very young when I was doing this. It was a great strategy, but I just hadn't thought it all the way through. So I was talking to Shaper on the phone one day and she said, ow, what's going on with you? And we were friends, and I told her I got myself into a bit of a pickle, got this great art is beautiful, and she's like, oh my god, this is great. So showed her some pictures. I think I think I had a website back then. Showed her the website It's Brian Group Africa back then, and told her my vision and she said, oh, I can help you. Huh, what do you mean you can help me? Well, you know, there's an event going on with wealthy black people mostly coming to it in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was one of the social clubs that her and her family were members of, the Dalton family. Doctor David Dalton, who to day runs the twentieth lartest black owned business in America, and his wife, missus Amy Dalton, and doctor Dalton were going this event with Schatra back then Shape Dalton and she said, look, you get me this art. I will sell enough at that event they should be paying. But this they can afford that. They are all doing well. They're judges and doctors and lawyers, and they could be paying this stuff and giving back to Africa, and then, you know, solve your problem. And I said that sounds great. When's the event next week? I said, I can't do that. I don't have the money to walk around the corner yet alone get this art to Pennsylvania from the LA. She said, I didn't ask you about any money. Here's a credit card. Just get it shipped here and we'll take care of the rest. I took her credit card. Did never take turn it yes and turn it into a no. Take yes for an answer, say yes to somebody being gracious, don't take it undue advantage of them. I planned on paying her back, but I took that credit card and I put that art on U Haul and had it shipped across the country, and then I bought a two hundred dollars plane ticket up a few bucks. I wasn't dead broke, right, just didn't have the money to market the art. And I flew across the country for a couple hundred bucks on a middle seat you know, sitting on the wing, basically on CheapTickets dot com right, and got there just in time for the event. And as I walked up here as a U haul and it's like six o'clock at night, so it's just getting dark. The events reception starting, just beginning to start this black tie event. I see these workers, and I see this beautiful site. Two him in ball gowns and a man in a tuxedo. I had never met mister and missus Dalton before in my life. This is where you know somebody's got good parents. It comes from good genes. And the parents and chaterer are unloading this art with the workers. No one asked them, they just volunteered to do it. And Chaterer's parents didn't know me from a hole in the ground. They just knew I was her friend. What humility This rule I'm about to give you is not universal. And again I'm not a marriage counselor. But I think it generally works. You want to find a good man, find a man who has a good relationship with his mother, a good woman to find a woman who has a good relationship with her dad. You can still find somebody where that doesn't apply. But this is a cheat another cheat sheet and Shakehe once told me that the first guy she fell in love with that she thought was just amazing was her father. Well, I could see where this came from, and I walked up and of course started to help them. They set the art up. They sold enough for me to pay off enough of that inventory that I was free. Shater got up so upset because she wanted to sell all the inventory that had been shipped there. She said, these folks should have bought all of this stuff they could afford it. And I said, that's very nice of you, very gracious. Got back, thank you so much. How much do I owe you? What do you mean? What do you mean? What do I mean? How much do I owe you? You don't owe me anything? What are you talking about? No, No, I owe you use X for the shipping and the workers and of course profit participation, profit sharing. You know what percentage of the profits that you want from this, I assume it at least be fifty percent. She says, no, no, no, I did this. I'm a friend. That's it. There's no other reason, boom bingo. I knew she was a different person, cut from a different cloth. Then she just did it because it's the right thing to do. Here's a good cheat sheet for a relationship. A giver and a giver exotic, A giver her to taker neurotic, A taker and a taker psychotic. I'll say that in reverse, A taker and a taker psychotic, A giver and a taker neurotic, A giver and a giver exotic. Which one do you have? Are we looking over your mate while they sleep cock eyed and blaming it on me? I'm just making it plain. So marriages came from a business situation. We want to make it all romantic. Look, most things in life in balance are pretty healthy. Alcohol taken in moderation will lower your blood pressure. Wine drugs and moderation are prescribed right. The sleeping moderation will revitalize you over sleep. That's called depression, and it will make you more tired if you're sleeping all day and all night every day. So most things in moderation are healthy and good for you. So you can have this case of making sure your partner can raise children, can mentor those kids, can run a household, can manage finances, manage your budget, help you make decisions, make make you a better person. Two plus two six eight ten two plus two egos four two plus two equals three. Meaning you're dragging this person all the way through their life and day babysitting an adult. And my opinion is going to cost you a lot. So now what by actually not answering these questions, I've actually answered a lot of these questions. How does marriage work? Who should you marry? What should be a part of the courting process? Thoughts on pre nupts. Look, I knew a friend who married a sister and he had a prenup and that person was asked to write the prenup and they wrote a bad prenup. And now this is on the front end of this relationship. They're madly in love. Whatever, So the man asked the woman to write the prenup just to show him. She was trying to show her how much he trusted. And you know how this wasn't a big deal. Was just he was trying to protect his assets and you know, formality, so on and so forth in case something happened to her or whatever or whatever, who will knows, in case things got messy. But he wanted to make sure she was taken care of. And so he wasn't trying to take advantage of her, just saying, hey, I made this money, this wealth before I met you, right, and I'm just you know, let what let's build something. What we build together is ours, right, And she went and wrote this prenup that was no good and she knew that from Jump Street. So when they broke up, it was, you know, a series of uncomfortable conversations. And imagine how that guy felt. Right, and this could happen the other way around. By the way the households, Black households are run by women. In many cases, the woman is the one bringing in the big bucks, and it might be her that her net worth and income. I've know of a situation I can think of right now where oh, I'm thinking about a specific situation. And this was a very wealthy couple. You used to stay at their house all the time in California when I traveled there in northern California. He romanced her white couple and married her, made her feel safe, said he was this big baller. She was actually already doing very well. She bought the houses and all that stuff, and he went off and did his thing anyway. They did his thing, me, not their thing, did his thing for himself. They get a divorce and she and he takes her to the cleaners, and because ultimately it finds out he has nothing and she's the one making the money, she has to pay him alimony, even though he's the jerk in the whole situation, which clearly was a manipulation and a setup from jump. In both these situations, a person knew from day one they were manipulating the other and had intended to get in that marriage for financial gain, not because they love the other person. And this person, this lady I know, is still just retreated from social life in some ways because she's so hurt. And I get that right. So it's not about the prenup, it's about the people writing it. So you can have a situation where there is no prenup but the person's character is strong so that you don't need one, or you have a prenup because people are like, well, of course I don't want and it's not mine, and sure, so this is cool. Think about the situation with Kevin Costner recently where they had children and seemingly a great relationship and then they didn't and she went off, and it appears when I mean, I'm not saying Kevin Costner was a saint. I'm sure he was an interesting person, maybe hard to deal with, but it seems like both of them were full of drama. She went off and did her thing you fill in the blanks, and she started asking for a mint like day one, and the judge denied her, and he had and there was a prenup and the judge upheld it. I believe she still got a nice check, but it was a fraction of what she wanted every month and what she wanted in the end, and God don't like ugly, and it didn't turn out so nice for the people trying to manipulate him in that situation. But both of them are miserable now they're not. There's no winners in a divorce. It's a death right, so you can have all the money in the world, and instead doesn't guarantee you of being happy. So our marriage is bad contracts. No, they're wonderful. It's about bad people. So marriages, like money, like success, just amplifies who you really are already. If you're a good person, money success marriage just makes you a better person. If you're a bad person, you're a jerk. It just makes you a bigger jerk. Right, So as you need to do is understand the origin story. I try to lay some of that out. I don't use notes when I do this stuff, so I'm just telling you, giving you a sense of where my head is. You know, on these topics. There's probably a dozen more examples of the origins of marriage. I gave you a European example. I gave you an Indian example. I gave you an Middle Eastern example. I gave you, you know, the Western example. You're living it. And I've told you about the millennial sort of approach to this, or the young people's approach to this, which is, I don't know blinging approach to this, which is you know this almost in the moment only situation, which you don't want to make a decision in an instant that creators your life forever, and you know, you get hooked up with the wrong person with ill intent, and it will follow you forever. I mean, there are people who will target you to hook up with you, to connect you with them for life through a child, and they don't love you, they love the situation. There was another podcaster I'd lot to give him credit. I can't remember his name. At the moment, he was like, most relationships are conditional, is conditioned upon you know, do you fund me, do you sponsor me? Do you take something? And if you don't do that, then the contract's over. You know, you don't believe me. Look at what happens five years after an NFL player leaves the NFL. The contract's over. Look, don't trust me. The vast majority of marriages, the vast majority, end in divorce within five years of a professional NFL player or NBA player losing their job. Hello, So we could go on with this forever. I hope you found this valuable. I am a fan of relationships. I'm a fan of love. But love is work. Non love is laziness. Anti love is evil. Evil exists, but it's very rare. Most people are just lazy, financially lazy, spiritually lazy, intellectually lazy, emotionally lazy. They don't want to do the work, They want somebody to do it for them. And only in the dictionary does the success come before the word work because it's alphabetical. So love is work and I believe God is love. Get that love is work and I believe God is love. So why wouldn't if God separate man and woman as a spirit so that we might come together as a union to learn from each other. Because you don't grow except through constructive friction, then why wouldn't you want to be in a relationship, to have a union, to have a bond. But you need to make sure that when you connect with somebody, that person is a long term player. They're playing for the marathon, not the one hundred yard dash. They're playing for the long, long haul and not for the short sell. They are a win win, not win lose. They are a giver and a giver, not a taker and a giver meaning you, because that will end badly. You want exotic A giver and a giver is exotic. You want to thus go through the process of marriage counseling. If you have to talk to a pastor, if you have to talk to a marriage counselor, if you have to upset that twice because I want to emphasize it. Talk to yourself. Whatever decision you make emotionally is a bad decision. Hello, Whatever decision you make purely emotionally is a bad decision. Just be thoughtful about it. And if somebody really loves you, they're not going to run away because you're not making a decision in this instant, or making a decision irrationally, or because you want to just simply protect what you've built your whole life and not put it at risk. Because you have fallen in love with somebody, you think you have a un reasonable about it right, and you would never want to hurt somebody you love. So if a relationship doesn't work out, you should want them to be good when you are done, particularly if they're raising your children. Why would you want to penalize somebody raising your children. You're penalizing your child. And please never use your children as pongs and negotiating points between relationships. And stop all this baby daddy and baby I'm not getting off way off script now, but stop all this baby daddy and baby mama stuff. Nobody, no kid wants to think that they are baby daddy situation of mommy daddy. I can't get this out of my mouth straight. I'm so frustrated about it. You want a mother and a father, you want parents? Hello? Can I get an amen? No, baby daddy, no, baby mama. I don't know what that is you want. This is my mother and this is my father. These are my parents, and they love me whole and complete. My mother told me she loved me when Nita Smith, God bless her, God rest her soul, and God bless her. So she told me every day, I love you. She told me, I love you every day of my life. There's nothing more powerful than a child being told they're loved by their parent. Nothing. So there's a difference between being broken being poor. Being broken is economic. Being poor is a disabling frame of mind, a depressed condition of your spirit. EMA's vow never ever ever to be poor again. That is the ethos of Operation Hope to this very day, by the way, come to Operation Hope for counseling, for financial counseling as part of that marriage counseling at marriage AD marriage planning process. Because you want to buy a home, you want to make investments, you want to build together. You want to build together that's what you want to be, that's what you want to do. You want to build together. You're not building together, then what are you doing? You can be single and just date each other, like if you're not building something, what are you doing? You don't have to be marriages because you're a madically attracted to somebody and that cannot be the only criteria. Can me get off my horse here? Start riding another one? An award this one out fan question. Samantha Soupei s A M T h E. Underscore s Upe from Instagram says, just move from Detroit to Chicago. Rental rates are crazy? How should I prep my budget carefully? Is the answer? Yeah, Detroit is going to have a lower cost of living than Chicago by by far. The further you get away from the from the Senate of Chicago, the further get away from the center of enterprise business activity, the cheaper the rental rates are going to be. Also, you want to think about maybe you had an your own apartment or your own house that you rented in Detroit, but when you get to Chicago, you may want to think about an apartment or an efficiency suite. You may want to have roommates, you may get a house and then and then get creative and do an airbnb situation on some of the rooms of the home, having somebody else to pay the bills for you. Similar it's like the reverse of a roommate. Well, it's actually the business version of a roommate. Go to operation hope they will help you create a budget. You don't want to spend more if you can than a thirty eree income on your housing. My father spent a half of our income on housing. So poor and struggling families sometimes because they have less complicated life. Sometimes it can work if you really are thoughtful about your bills, to spend half of your income on housing. But you know, my family has a lot of other expenses, so housing cannot be the overwhelming expense. But a but when I was coming up, we were a lower income and housing was the most expensive thing we had in our house. And we didn't have multiple cars and all that stuff. We had a house and we had a car. So my father made that a work, but it was handed hand combat every month. So don't feel bad if you're just struggling here, but you need to trip pull every trick of the trade out of the toolbox. Earn income tax credit. If you're making less than sixty thousand dollars a year, you got a check coming to you from the federal government. If you're living in Detroit and you're a teacher and you moved to Chicago and you make thirty eight thousand dollars a year, you're going to need to have be creative about housing. And if you have three children when you'd made that move, you're going to also be able to get a check back from the federal government of about sixty five hundred dollars. And if you never filed EITC, it's retroactive for three years, so there's now almost twenty thousand dollars as a starting point for your new life in Chicago. Go to Operation to Hope to explain how to do all of that for you, and good luck. This is John O'Brien. This is Money and Wealth. This was a firecracker of an episode. I'm sure you're many things at the moment, but you're on board. I'm out. 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 shows. The dep

Money & Wealth With John Hope Bryant

John Hope Bryant- successful entrepreneur, executive and philanthropist –will dispense his trademark 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 64 clip(s)