Latino leadership luncheon/WISE



Latino leadership luncheon/WISE

Friday, Feb 8, 2008;12 pm

Greenberg Studios

201 Post Street

San Francisco

SE HABLA DINERO

Lynn Jimenez

Good afternoon. I am honored to be here with you today. I am in awe of what Women’s Initiative graduates accomplish, how hard they work, how much they grow. WISE has served the bay area for 20 years. It’s a place where women with dreams and drive get training to start and grow their business.

47 percent of those women are Latinas. After undergoing WISE’s business plan training their incomes climb by 3 thousand percent, from $216 dollars to $74 hundred dollars. Their household wealth moves from the red--minus 56 hundred dollars --into the black –to an average of 85 thousand dollars. Every one of these women is, in her own right, a minor miracle and a beacon of hope. And each deserves our respect. That’s why I am here today -- out of respect.

Respect is something I had to earn when I became KGO radio’s business reporter. KGO 810 am, is a news and talk radio station. It’s been number one for more than 28 years. Every morning I give reports on the market, the cost of money, housing, jobs, local firms, and pocketbook issues.

I translate.

When I used to listen to business reports, if I wasn’t bored—I was lost. I felt stupid. I didn’t understand the code words or how the reports applied to me. So when I took this job, I vowed I didn’t want anyone to feel bored or stupid when they listened to my reports. Which is why I go beyond the numbers.

So..every morning very early, I skid onto the options floor of the NYSE, go through wires, newspapers, faxes, the internet…touch bases with one or two of my experts, write my reports and then go on the air.

You may think that’s a lot of effort for one minute of business news each half hour. But it’s critical to put facts into context and to write clearly. It’s also a tribute to KGO radio that it believes money news and local business news is important enough for that kind of investment.

As I said, I work at the NYSE options floor, a big dark dusty cave that used to be filled with several hundred (mostly) men who didn’t hesitate to yell at one another. Now it’s filled with computers blinking at one another. Not as noisy or quite as unruly as it used to be. But I still love it.

At some point, after 17 years as a business reporter I realized it was time to use what I had learned to invest in the future. And the numbers spoke to me.

What numbers? Try these. There are 44 million Hispanics in the U.S.—more Hispanics live in the United States than Canadians live in Canada. We are the fastest growing ethnic group in the nation. Right now Latinos make up a third of California’s population, and by 2042 we will be the majority.

Our stake in the economy is large and getting larger. Right now our purchasing power is 863 billion dollars, and the Selig Center For Economic Growth predicts that by 2012 Latino purchasing power will top 1.2 trillion dollars. Until the subprime bubble burst, Hispanics’ rate of home ownership was at nearly 50 percent.

But we do more than buy things. There are more than 2 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the U.S. –one third of them are owned by Latinas. The majority are one or two person operations, but the rest provide jobs to the economy. Those firms both buy products and services, and provide them.

Corporate America will increasingly depend on Hispanics not only as consumers, but as workers. The average age in the U.S. is 36.4 years. Among Latinos, it’s 27.4 years. That means as the Boomers leave the workforce, many of their replacements will be Latinos.

And speaking of Boomers, a study released last month by Focalyst, reveals Hispanics represent ten percent of that group. But we’re younger Boomers, so we’ll be in the workforce longer. Latino Boomers live in larger households and give substantial financial support to someone outside the home.

Another finding from Focalyst: Hispanic Boomers who are U.S.-born and speak primarily English use education to further themselves, while those who use both English and Spanish tend to further themselves by being entrepreneurial.

We are making lots of progress—but we would make more progress if we, as a community, were better educated and better educated financially.

Even though we are 14 percent of the popuation, in 2002 the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute found just 7 percent of Hispanic students were enrolled at 4-year colleges. Just 12 percent of us have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 30 1/2 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

This is happening because the cost of an education rises faster than wages rise each year. It’s happening because Latino families may not have experience with applying for college, or with the financial aid process. Sallie Mae reports more than half of Latino high school graduates say they received no financial aid information before graduating.

And the relatively low percentage of us going onto higher education has a huge negative impact on our earning power. People without a college degree earn a million and a half dollars less over their lifetimes than college graduates …on average, the Pew Hispanic Center says Latino incomes are 2/3rds that of non-Hispanic white Americans.

Our lower level of education and, in particular, financial education, impacts our ability to accumulate wealth. The Pew Hispanic Center reveals just 7 percent of Hispanic’s wealth is in 401 Ks and just 7 percent of it is invested in stocks or mutual funds. But 2/3rds of all Hispanic immigrants and an even higher percentage of Hispanics born here have credit cards!

Finally, our lack of financial education haunts us into our old age. AARP reports that 76 percent of older Hispanics rely on social security for half or more of their income. Forty-eight percent rely on it for 90 percent or more. Compelling numbers. This is not good for Hispanics or for the nation as a whole.

If our wages are lower, social security benefits are lower. If incomes are lower, our personal savings and investments are smaller.

On the other hand, more education usually leads to higher paying jobs. More financial education usually leads to better management of the money we make…and that’s why I wrote this book: ?Se Habla Dinero? The Everyday Guide To Financial Success.

It is a family guide, written in English and Spanish, page to page. As I wrote it I pictured a family around a dinner table. Abuelita speaks only Spanish. Maybe she hides her money in her mattress. Mom and dad’s English is spotty. The kids speak both languages--a kind of Spanglish--but their idea of personal money management is to get their hands on a credit card. And there they are around that table, trying to figure out how to send the oldest to college, or how to buy a home or start a small business.

The people for whom I wrote this book are just like the women who come to WISE. They’re bright, brave, hardworking people with dreams—who just lack information presented in a way they can understand. And whatever language they speak, they need to speak the language of money

Often they and we don’t know what questions to ask. Or we’re embarrassed to show ignorance. Sometimes we trust people who claim to know all the “movidas”. Too often we don’t understand the consequences of poor record-keeping or the importance of credit scores. We forget that compound interest that helps us when we save, can hurt us when we borrow.

My friend and muse for this book, Margarita, told me she always feels stressed about money—guilty, anxious. She knows she should do what her mother told her to do: save. But she just can’t seem to do it. Maybe she needs to learn how to balance the present with the future. Maybe she needs to learn that budgets are game plans, not prisons.

I wrote Se Habla Dinero to make Margarita --and the many, many other Margaritas out there – feel better. I talk about how money fits into our lives, how to control it so it doesn’t control you, about the basics—even about giving back, philanthropy.

And like so much in the Hispanic community, money is a family affair. Your kids watch your every move. They will do what you do with money, and absorb your financial fears and habits.

A friend of mine’s daughter kept nagging her mother for an expensive pair of tennis shoes. Susan just couldn’t afford them at that point, so she sat her daughter down and explained how much she made an hour and how many hours she’d have to work to buy those shoes. Her daughter got it. Then she and Elise did the math on a few other expenses, and soon Elise was a financial partner in the family.

How you handle money is how your children will handle it. We want them to achieve financial independence. We want our families and our community to be able to take advantage of the opportunities this nation offers.

And that’s not just in our community’s best interest. It’s in the nation’s --because we’re a growing part of it. If we take small steps to educate ourselves and our children about personal finance, we can unleash our enormous economic potential.

And now we come full circle. It’s important that you’re here. You are educated, you are leaders, and you are role models. Can you spare 2 hours a year for WISE? Would you be willing to give just 2 hours a year to advise and consult, to give a seminar? To go to a networking event? Your time will make a difference to the women who depend on women’s initiative to help them take control of their financial futures.

I do my job every day and I wrote this book so there will be more people like you. People who understand how to use money to build a business, get an education, pass wealth onto their families, and through philanthropy and our common Hispanic values, how to leave this world a better place. I hope to see you again…thank you for your courteous attention.

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