Saundra Davis Talks Money Mindfulness, the Truth About Investments, and More
by Yasmine Jameelah
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May 15, 2022

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Saundra Davis Talks Money Mindfulness, the Truth About Investments, and More

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Courtesy of Saundra Davis

Saundra Davis has a remarkable way of breaking down how we experience money. As a  nationally-recognized financial coach, educator, consultant, and dynamic motivational speaker, she truly reaches people after just one conversation with her, you can find yourself reimagining your relationship with and to money. In a social climate where the words generational wealth are spoken just as frequently as the words social media, there are many people sharing their tips on how to reach financial freedom. But Davis’s work is centered on the people who are often forgotten – people in low-wealth communities, people without means, people that didn’t grow up with an understanding of wealth, people that look like us. In partnership with Chase, Black Love’s Managing Editor Yasmine Jameelah spoke with Saundra on systemic oppression, money mindfulness, investing, and what she’s taught her son about generational wealth. 

Yasmine Jameeah: I know that you are a wealth of knowledge, but how did you get into this industry?

Saundra Davis: I spent almost 30 years in the nonprofit sector, and on that journey I was finding that people were still struggling. Even if they were getting support to buy a home, go to college, or start businesses they were still struggling financially if they didn’t know how to manage their money well. They weren’t securing financial stability and more importantly, securing generational wealth and because my work is focused in the Black community, that was a major concern for me. We hear about money in the Black community but we don’t hear about money staying in the Black community. I realized there were things that people who had wealth knew that people who didn’t have wealth didn’t know. My mission was and still remains to share within our community how we can acquire, build, and transfer wealth to people who don’t have financial wealth and that’s how I became a financial behavior specialist.

Knowing better doesn’t mean doing better, we have a lot of people saying “get your money mindset right” to people with absolutely no understanding of what it means to get your money mindset right. It’s all very basic and not very helpful. For the people who are already positioned to rectify the conversation is fine, but what about the people who have experienced pain or trauma? People who have been systematically oppressed? These things keep people from thriving financially. Or people who do all the right things, go to college, buy the house, etc. and still end up financially insatiable? We don’t talk about that. Policy changes alone will not fix this, personal changes will not fix it, it has to be a combination of that. 

Yasmine Jameelah: I couldn’t agree more. Are there specific things that you stress to your clients about wealth that we all should know?

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Saundra Davis: Well at this point the being taught is not as important as the access to information. And we actually have access to the information, we just don’t focus on what the information means. For example, you can be on Facebook and see a post saying “this is how you get an estate plan” and it’s all good information – get your power of attorney, get your living trust if you need it, make sure you do a transfer on debt for beneficiaries; all of that stuff is available. But the problem is we can’t rely on anyone else to teach us that information. We have to understand if we are finding that we’re the one person in our family that everybody goes to for the loan that never gets paid back we have to ask ourselves what impact does that have on you, your wealth, and the perpetual poverty of the people you’ve paid the loan to?

At this point, with the knowledge online and free financial planning/coaching available, it’s about understanding what we don’t know, and then how to find out. I don’t think at this stage of our presence in North America, we should expect people to teach us because they never have. If it were up to the people who brought us here to teach us we’d still be in the fields not knowing how to read. But what we can say is when I look at this family that bought a business, and all of their kids worked at that business right? And some of their kids went to college and learned how to do bookkeeping, some learned management, and they built and maintained that business. We’ve got to look at those things and ask ourselves what do they know that we don’t know? How is it that every other race of people can open a business in a Black neighborhood and we can’t even get a decent grocery store? Are there systemic issues? Absolutely. Will we be able to change them? Maybe. Can we change ourselves? Absolutely. 

Yasmine Jameelah: You mentioned being the person in your family to loan. There’s often guilt that people feel when family asks to borrow money, how can you find the balance of helping your family but also not placing your own financial future in danger?

Saundra Davis: There are two things to balance. When I first became a financial planner it was the first time I said no to my family. I was 44 and I had never said no to them and I became unpopular. I would always help and then I’d always be disappointed when they didn’t keep their promise. So I had to ask myself, am I part of the problem or part of the solution? And I’ve determined that being part of the solution means I have x number of dollars that I will allow for family loans. I try to do that in the form of a family savings fund that the entire family can contribute to. This way when people borrow they know they’re borrowing money from the family, not just from me. And there are people who take advantage of that but the idea is everyone puts money in and there are also things like a sou-sou susu to change how families behave with money. 

The other part of the balance is the emotional side, and asking yourself are you using your wealth or financial resources to gain love or acceptance and if so, what is that you’re really needing? That’s what it was for me. I had to accept that I was buying love, and it was very difficult. But when I accepted that I no longer needed to do that, I said no and I was more mindful of when I loaned and why I loaned. So when I first said no to my Mom which was a big deal to say no to Mama, I said “I’m not willing to loan you the money. I have financial goals of my own, what I can do is help you learn how to save for the goals that you have.” And then I show them how to do it, and that has helped me. Now a few months ago, I had a family member who was about to be evicted. Her own fault, her own choices but I had to ask myself was I willing to let her be evicted, and I wasn’t. I made a choice with my heart open enough to say “Will I be able to not be angry with her if she doesn’t repay the loan? And I was. So those are the decisions that you have to make, to choose and don’t harbor bad feelings after. Everybody talks about mindful money but mindful money is not about knowing what my budget is. Mindful money is understanding what I do with money, I understand why I do it and I’m okay with however it turns out. And I was willing to give from a place where my ego was checked and I gave from love. 


Yasmine Jameelah: That’s a beautiful perspective to have. I want to pivot to investing for a moment. We’re all seeing advice on buying NFTs, buying property and turning it into an Airbnb or a content creation studio, etc. How do you know that you’re making the best investment decision for you?

Saundra Davis: (Laughs) Yes that’s the thing today.

Yasmine Jameealah: (Laughs) Right?! So how do you know?

Saundra Davis: You have no idea, there’s no way to know. And that’s why a plan is so important. For anyone looking to invest, I’d say start with what is the most conservative thing to cover first. For instance, how old are you now?

Yasmine Jameeah: Twenty-nine.

Saundra Davis: Okay, so at your age, if you open a life cycle fund, an ETF exchange trade and you put in $100 a month, your retirement would more likely than not be secure. Once you do that, then you say okay let me add some real estate to your portfolio. Then you can say I’m kinda liking the idea of opening an acorn or something like that and being more aggressive and getting into crypto and say I can afford to lose 100 dollars a month. Everybody loves crypto and NFTs right now, but we never know because they are trading on nothing, there’s no real underlined security. Is it working? Sure, so do Ponzi schemes — and I’m not saying they are a Ponzi schemes but don’t invest in what you don’t understand and don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. Money is emotionally charged all the time and what we can do is take in information and then we can let that information sit. You are your own best teacher, everything that you need to know is in you. There might be information that you need, but you are your expert. So if there’s an investment opportunity that you want to explore, take a moment to listen to that wise part of you, will give you all the information to decide should I explore this or not? Just because something shows up doesn’t make it an opportunity, it’s an option. You have to decide is it an opportunity or is that an obstacle. 

Yasmine Jameelah: My mother and I have discussed finances since I was very young. She was a single mother, like yourself, who always had multiple jobs and my father was a musician and an excessive spender who either had a bunch of money, or none at all. I’m sure readers can relate to watching their parents make decisions about money. How did you know what to teach your son about finances?

Courtesy of Saundra Davis

Saundra Davis: Well I am a combination of your mother and father. I worked three jobs at times taking care of my son by myself, and I am a spender. When I’m cash flush I pay absolutely no attention to savings and then I freak out when money is tight. And so what I’ve learned is that teaching information on how to budget, save, is important but what I’ve tried to teach my son is finances are an integral part of our entire lives. The same way we teach children how to brush their teeth, clean the kitchen, reading/math etc. understanding how money works should be a part of that. For us to treat money as though it’s something separate sets young people up for failure. Sets them up to believe that this one thing is different and scary. And I didn’t become a financial planner until I was 44, so I didn’t teach him any of this young but what I did teach him was to be flexible and not afraid. My son is an entrepreneur and what I’ve learned is to teach him that no choice is fatal unless you don’t learn from it. 

Every financial decision we make gives us information. It either shows us yes, let’s do this again or hey, don’t do that shit no more. Every decision is an opportunity for us to learn and that’s what I teach him and now my grandchildren. Now I’m focused on teaching them things that even I didn’t know at their age. My granddaughter is twenty three years old and I told her the same thing that I told you, get a life cycle fund and invest 100 bucks a month. Time is on your side. If you and I do the same thing every month for the next twenty years, you will have an advantage that I will never recuperate. Don’t let youth be wasted, and it doesn’t mean you can’t buy the shoes you want or the bag you want, it means prioritize your future self in the same way that you prioritize your current self. 

Saundra Davis is the founder of Sage Financial Solutions. To learn more about Saundra follow her on LinkedIn, Instagram, and visit www.sagefinancialsoulutions.org

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