Michelle Singletary, finance columnist for The Washington Post and panelist at the 10th State of the Black Union, credits two people with catapulting her to the prestigious position of columnis for one of the nation’s premier media organs: her penny-pinching, thrifty patriarchal grandmother, who performed miracles with her minimum-wage salary; and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Singletary’s grandmother’s simplistic ways sharpened her financial acumen. Jackson, meanwhile, imbued in Singletary a much-needed dose of self-esteem when the civil rights leader visited her decrepit Baltimore elementary school, telling her she could overcome abject blight. Singletary admonished the throng present at the event in Los Angeles to adopt these two principles in order to insulate themselves against an historic recession.
“I look around and everybody is doing this; everybody is looking down. Everyone is so depressed about this great depression and recession. But you know what? You need to look up [at God],” she said to applause. “Because this will pass. We will come out of this. Question is, how will you come out of this with your money?”
Singletary implored the crowd to stop behaving like the ‘consumers,’ which they have been described as and treated like. “When you look up the word consume it means to: take away, to destroy, to squander. That’s how we define ourselves. And that’s [why] we are in the mess we’re in right now. You have to stop defining yourselves as consumers.”
Cast aside the consumer mentality and adopt another, smarter term, Singletary says. “So you have to do the ‘B-word.’ What I mean by the B-word is ‘budget.’ You have to get out of debt. You have to be accountable [for] your finances. You have to stop using the devil that’s in your wallet. It’s the credit card.”
People also need to discard frivolous thrills and trivial spending. “And if that means you have stop going out to eat, that’s what it means. If that means your kids don’t have a cell phone . my kids are 13 and 14, they don’t have a cell phone. They don’t have a job.”
And adopting these simple principles will better ensure your family’s stability, Singletary reasons. –terry shropshire
