Stretching Your Dollar: 'Earn Your Leisure' Podcast Hosts Talk Financial Literacy

<div class="block">&#39;Earn Your Leisure&#39; podcast hosts Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings joined &#39;Stretching Your Dollar&#39; to talk about their work in spreading financial literacy among the Black community. The duo also shared some money saving tips and talked about their upcoming festival, Invest Fest.</div>

Stretching Your Dollar

I do want to bring in two friends who launched a platform to teach financial literacy to the black community. It's called Earn Your Leisure, Raad and Troy Millions. Join me now and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on the show. So we'll start with this social poll first. Everyone wants to know how to grow their savings. Troy, what would you tell them? Uh I first would tell them to take an assessment of where they're spending right? In order to, to figure out how much you can save, you need to know where the money is going. Uh After that, I would figure out how much income I can actually take in from my job. And if I, I'm not having enough, then perhaps I need to figure out another source of whether it's from investing or partner with somebody to invest or potentially taking on another job at the time. Rashad, we see your platform illuminated there behind you. We've been discussing it. It's called Earn Your Leisure. Why did you want to launch the platform? Um Well, we thought that it would be a good time. Uh We started five years ago to democratize financial literacy and investing in business and speaking a language that uh you know, the average person can understand and do do it our way, you know, have a, a spin on it. So when we started it, it wasn't as popular as it is now on social media. As far as, you know, commentary when it comes to business investing, stock market has become very trendy now. And I think that we played a major part in that, but that was the, that was the main focus. I was a financial adviser for 12 years and I realized how little uh most people knew about finances, didn't matter how educated they were, they were still, you know, not fully equipped to, to deal with the day to day um when it comes to financial literacy and investing in business. So we thought that it would be a good idea to start a platform that would teach and encourage people Troy. When do you think is the best time to actually start the financial literacy process? It should it be taught in schools or 1000%? I think the earlier the better I come from an educational background. And so we try to teach kids as early as, as 5 to 67 with very simple lessons, right? And, and so we don't want to make something that's over their head, but happening in schools is vitally important. You know, there, there are so many subjects that, that we learned throughout our scholastic career that, you know, we probably never use after we leave school. And so that's something that we, you know, we've been very cognisant about and trying to make efforts to make financial literacy, something that's mandated, not only in New York State, but something that's fairly mandated because money was something that revolves around all of us, whether it be from a day to day student loans or having your own business. Right? And we definitely feel it now, that's for sure. I know you mentioned you're a former advisor and your own experience, what have been some of the financial lessons that have resonated most with you. Uh So I think that it's important to understand money, right? And I think a lot of people that come from working class environments um don't have a good relationship with money. They were always taught that money doesn't grow on trees or the harder you work, the more money you're gonna make. And that's actually the exact opposite. And once you fully understand how money works, so, you know, retraining the way that people think about money and, and realizing that, you know, it's not about how hard you work, it's how hard your money works for you. That's why investing is critical, that's why, you know, curving your spending is critical. You ask the question before about, you know, how to have more money and really it comes down to either budgeting or finding ways to increase your revenue. And the best combination is both right, increasing your revenue while budgeting at the same time. So this comes down to financial discipline, this comes down to actually learning how to start scalable businesses, how to invest properly. So all of these things, most people were never taught and a lot of people um are discouraged because they feel like it's over their head, it's too complicated. Uh But once you, you know, break it down for them and, and simplify it, then they actually become encouraged and, and they start investing and they start, you know, planning the future. Definitely a learning process, that's for sure. I think a lifelong learning process too, Troy, what does National Black Business Month mean to you? Uh It's important, it's a month that we know we get to highlight diversity within our communities from all walks of business, whether it be from fashion, whether it be from technology. Um and we get to do it on our own terms. And so when we, we think about it, not only do we want to recognize it for this month, but we wanna make it something that's continuous and gets recognized throughout the entire year because business is not just a monthly thing. Um So it's good that it's highlighted. Um But we wanna make sure that it's at the forefront of everybody's minds throughout the entire year. I see here that did he works with you and he said to headline your invest fest this year. What can our viewers expect? Yes. Uh So this, we have a, a festival, financial literacy business festival. Uh This year we're expecting 20,000 people in Atlanta. And we have, yeah, Sean Diddy Combs is the headliner. Robert Smith. Billionaire is also a headliner. We have Kathy Wood, we have Mike. No, we have Rich Paul. We have Maverick Carter. So a variety of different people in business and investing uh superstars of sorts. So we wanted to make it a fun festival. Even if you look at that fly, it's done in like a music festival type of field where it looks like something like you will see a Coachella or rolling loud. But this is all based around financial literacy business and investing. So that was, you know why we really became popular is that we, we made it fun. We kind of took this stuh out of finance and um invest is right in line with what we've done so far. All right guys, great stuff. Thank you for joining. That's Rasha Baal and Troy Millions.