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I was 14 years old inside of a bowling alley, burglarizing an arcade game, and upon exiting the building a security guard grabbed my arm, so I ran. I ran down the street and jumped on top of a fence, and when I got to the top, the weight of the 3,000 quarters in my book bag pulled me back down to the ground. When I came to, the security guard was standing over top of me and said, "Next time you little punk, steal something you can carry." I was taken to juvenile hall, and when I was released into the custody of my mother, the first words my uncle said were, "How'd you get caught?" I said, "Man, the book bag was too heavy." He said, "Man, you weren't supposed to take all the quarters." I said, "Man, they was small. What am I supposed to do?" Ten minutes later he took me to burglarize another arcade game. We needed gas money to get home. That was my life.
I grew up in Oakland, California, with my mother and members of my immediate family addicted to crack cocaine. My environment consisted of living with family friends and in homeless shelters. Oftentimes, dinner was served in bread lines and soup kitchens. The big homie told me, "This money rules the world and everything in it. In these streets, money is king, and if you follow the money, it'll lead you to the bad guy or the good guy." Soon after I committed my first crime, it was the first time that I was told that I had potential and felt like somebody believed in me. Nobody ever told me that I could be a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. I mean, how was I supposed to do that? I couldn't read, write, or spell. I was illiterate, so I always thought crime was my way to go. Then one day I was talking to somebody, and he was telling me about a robbery that we could do, and we did it.
The reality was that I was growing up in the strongest financial nation in the world, the United States of America, while I watched my mother stand in line at a blood bank to sell her blood for $40 just to try to feed her kids. She still has the needle marks on her arms to this day to show for that. So I never cared about my community, and they didn't care about my life. Everybody there was doing what they were doing to take what they wanted: the drug dealers, the robbers, the blood bank. Everybody was taking blood money. So I got mine by any means necessary. I got mine. Financial literacy really did rule the world, and I was a child slave to it, following the bad guy.
At 17 years old, I was arrested for robbery and murder, and I soon learned that finances in prison rule more than they did on the streets, so I wanted in. One day I rushed to grab the sports page of the newspaper so my cellmate could read it to me, and I accidentally picked up the business section. An old man said, "Hey, youngster, you pick stocks?" I said, "What's that?" He said, "That's the place where white folks keep all their money." It was the first time I had seen a glimpse of hope, a future. He gave me a brief description of what stocks were, but it was just a glimpse. I mean, how was I supposed to do it? I couldn't read, write, or spell. The skills I had developed no longer worked in this environment. I was trapped in a cage among predators, fighting for a freedom I never had. I was lost, tired, and out of options. So at 20 years old, I did the hardest thing I'd ever done in my life: I picked up a book. It was the most agonizing time of my life, trying to learn how to read, the ostracizing from my family and the homies. It was rough, man. It was a struggle, but little did I know I was receiving the greatest gifts I'd ever dreamed of: self-worth, knowledge, discipline.
I was so excited to be reading that I read everything I could get my hands on: candy wrappers, clothing logos, street signs, everything. I was just reading stuff. I was so excited to know how to read and how to spell. A homie came up and said, "Man, what you eating?" I said, "C-A-N-D-Y. Candy." He said, "Let me get some." I said, "No." It was awesome. For the first time in my life I could actually read, and the feeling that I got from it was amazing. Then at 22, feeling myself and feeling confident, I remembered what the OG told me, so I picked up the business section of the newspaper. I wanted to find these rich white folks, so I looked for that glimpse. As I furthered my career and taught others how to financially manage money and invest, I soon learned that I had to take responsibility for my own actions. True, I grew up in a very complex environment, but I chose to commit crimes, and I had to own up to that. I had to take responsibility for that, and I did.
I was building a curriculum that could teach incarcerated men how to manage money. Through prison employments and properly managing our lifestyle, we will provide transferable tools that we can use to manage money when we reenter society, like the majority of people did who didn't commit crimes. Then I discovered that according to MarketWatch, over 60% of the American population has under $1,000 in savings. Sports Illustrated said that over 60% of NBA players and NFL players go broke, and 40% of marital problems derive from financial issues. What the hell? You mean to tell me that people work their whole lives buying cars, clothes, homes, and material stuff, but we're living check to check? How in the world are we, as members of society, going to help incarcerated individuals reintegrate into society if they can't manage their own stuff? We're screwed. I needed a better plan, because this is not going to work out too well. So I thought I now had an obligation to meet those on the path and help, and it was crazy, because I now cared about my community. Wow, imagine that. I cared about my community.
Financial illiteracy is a disease that has crippled minorities and the lower class in our society for generations and generations, and we should be furious about that. Ask yourselves this: how can 50% of the American population be financially illiterate in a nation driven by financial prosperity? Our access to justice, our social status, living conditions, transportation, and food are all dependent on money that most people can't manage. It's crazy. It's an epidemic and a bigger danger to public safety than any other issue. According to the California Department of Corrections, over 70% of those incarcerated have committed or have been charged with money-related crimes: robberies, burglaries, fraud, larceny, extortion, and the list goes on. Check this out: a typical incarcerated person will enter the California prison system with no financial education, earn 30 cents an hour, over $800 a year, with no real expenses, and save no money. Upon his parole, he will be given $200 gate money and told, "Hey, good luck, stay out of trouble, don't come back to prison." With no meaningful preparation and no long-term financial plan, what does he do? Get a good job, or go back to the very criminal behavior that led him to prison in the first place? You taxpayers, you choose. Well, his education already chose for him, probably. So how do we cure this disease?
I co-founded a program that we call Financial Empowerment and Emotional Literacy, which we call F.E.E.L., and it teaches how to separate your emotional decisions from your financial decisions, and the four timeless rules of personal finance, the proper way: save, control your cost of living, borrow money effectively, and diversify your finances by allowing your money to work for you instead of you working for it. Incarcerated people need these life skills before we reenter society. You can't have full rehabilitation without these life skills. The idea that only professionals can invest and manage money is absolutely ridiculous, and whoever told you that is lying. A professional is a person who knows his craft better than most, and nobody knows how much money you need, have, or want better than you, which means you are the professional. Financial literacy is not a skill, ladies and gentlemen. It's a lifestyle. Financial stability is a byproduct of a proper lifestyle. A financially sound incarcerated person can become a taxpayer citizen, and a financially sound taxpayer citizen can remain one. This allows us to create a bridge between those people we influence, family and friends, and those young people who still believe that crime and money are related. So let's lose the fear and anxiety of all the big financial words and all that other nonsense you've been hearing out there, and let's get to the heart of what's been crippling our society: taking care of your responsibility to be a better life manager. Let's provide a simple, easy-to-use curriculum that gets to the heart of what financial empowerment and emotional literacy really are. Now, if you're sitting out there in the audience saying, "Oh yeah, well, that ain't me, and I don't buy it," come take my class, so I can show you how much money it costs you every time you get emotional. Thank you, guys. Thank you.