Financial literacy expert John Hope Bryant joins The Street to explain what Americans need to do to get financially on track.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00So, how do we use financial literacy, which is the subject and the topic of your book,
00:06to level that playing field?
00:09What are we doing wrong in terms of financial literacy?
00:14What do you want to see changed?
00:16This is a beautiful question because the answer is unfortunately or fortunately very simple.
00:21What we're doing wrong is we're not doing anything right.
00:25We're not talking about money in our households.
00:26We're spending it.
00:28I had a home economics class when I was nine years old and a white banker, I say that intentionally
00:34because my first experience with a white man was positive, came in my classroom and taught
00:38me financial literacy.
00:39He was from Bank of America.
00:40He was a volunteer.
00:41He didn't want to be there.
00:42We didn't want him there.
00:45But after he came in once a week for six weeks, by the third week, he's like, you know, kids,
00:48you're not so bad.
00:49We're like, well, you're not so bad for a white dude.
00:51We're joking, but we're not building a rapport.
00:53The fourth week, I was wearing a suit just like him.
00:56The only suit I had, my Sunday suit.
00:57I was modeling him.
00:58I had a little briefcase with my dreams in it.
01:01I was selling mail order to my teachers and finally I asked him, what do you do for a
01:06living?
01:07And how'd you get rich legally?
01:08I was dead serious.
01:09He said, I'm a banker and I finance entrepreneurs.
01:12I said, I've never met a banker before.
01:15I never heard the word entrepreneur before in my life, but if it's legal and you're financing
01:18it, I'm going to be one.
01:20Now, what am I at today?
01:21I am an entrepreneur and what are we doing?
01:24I'm teaching banking principles to level the playing field for now millions of people.
01:28Now I did that.
01:29Everybody watching this can go volunteer in a classroom somewhere.
01:31Everybody watching this can teach this, take this book, go to your local school or church
01:35or wherever and teach financial literacy.
01:38And what I really want to do is I want our Congress, our Senate and our president to
01:41sign a financial literacy for all bill that will embed this key through high school.
01:47But that I'll get to in the next couple of years.
01:50Yeah, that was my next question.
01:51Do you feel that financial literacy needs to be taught in school and how and when?
01:59I'm going to go further to the DEI conversation because he were canceling DEI programs like
02:04it's going north.
02:05Well, what are you guys doing?
02:07That is the business plan for America.
02:09This is the bench for the bench strength for the playoff games of the rest of our lives
02:14are are are the folks who are everybody that we've done this to women in 1972 a woman could
02:20not get a loan without a co-signer of her husband.
02:23Not 1872 1972 a woman can get a credit card or a bank account.
02:29A white woman any woman laws were changed in 74 today women are 25 percent of our economy
02:35seven trillion dollars and we hadn't done that America be a second tier nation today.
02:43So what I'm saying is I like math because it doesn't have an opinion.
02:47We need black and brown and white and women and everybody else to be green.