Episode 119: The Path Towards Financial Success with Ray’Chel Wilson

Acquania Escarne 0:00

What's up y'all? Welcome back to the Purpose of Money podcast. I am your host Acquania Escarne. And today I'm super excited to have a special guest Ray'Chel Wilson

Acquania Escarne 0:17

Ray'Chel is a graduate student at Duke Divinity School right now, but she's also a serial entrepreneur, dedicated to education, and helping people get their finances together. She's an author, and we're gonna talk about her latest book. And she's also an award winning educator. So we are here today to talk about her holistic financial wellness programme. And why this is so important how she is personally impacting people of colour closing the racial and gender wealth gaps as a part of her mission. Hey, Ray'Chel, what's going on Girl How you doing? Welcome to the show.

Ray'Chel Wilson 0:54

Hey, hey, thank you for having me. Greetings from Black Wall Street.

Acquania Escarne 0:57

Yes, I love this. Right before the show, we were talking about Tulsa, Oklahoma, because as y'all know, I'm a hotel owner, and I have a hotel in El Reno, Oklahoma. And when I went to visit, I also went to go check out Tulsa, of course, because there's so much history there. So before we get into the vibe that you are setting in your hometown, I want to learn a little bit more about you and what it was like for you when you were growing up. So everyone, this is one of my signature questions. We like to talk about people's money story, because everyone has one. So tell me right now, what was your money story? What was it like for you when it came to money when you were growing up?

Ray'Chel Wilson 1:38

Yes. Well, when I think about my upbringing, I think about the quality of investing in education, I always say that I didn't grow up in the hood. But I grew up around the corner from the hood. And I mean, there were places where I wasn't supposed to cross the train tracks, right. And my parents couldn't afford to invest in stocks or bonds and things of that nature, but they did prioritize investing in my education. And that not only set me up for success later in life, and even in entrepreneurship, but also understanding that we can only get better if we invest in something that will get us better. So I'm always so grateful to my parents for investing in private schooling, and having such high quality education for me, even though they couldn't invest in some of the other things that are so popularly talked about as well. So that definitely impacted my money story and why I'm so passionate about empowering people with education, specifically financial education. Hmm,

Acquania Escarne 2:32

Yeah. And now you are doing it big. You are a certified financial education instructor. So you have some letters behind your name. Let's talk about what that really means. And how did that lead to you becoming a leading financial wellness advocate and one of Tulsa's emerging 100?

Ray'Chel Wilson 2:52

Thank you. Well, I will say that becoming a certified financial education instructor was so much more than letters for me. It was honestly all because of my students. And I attribute all of my success to them. Back when I was a teacher, that's actually what brought me to Tulsa Teach for America. I was teaching at a school where we were just founding our high school, and we only had ninth and 10th grade. And I saw in the future, that we were going to soon have a graduating class. And I wanted to be the change, I wanted to make sure that they didn't graduate like us, I wanted to make sure that they had personal finance education. So I decided to go from teaching biology to then getting certified as a certified financial education instructor to be able to create the curriculum for them. So even when it comes to my books, those came from the curriculum that I created for my students. So if it weren't for seeing those gaps in the classroom, especially teaching during the pandemic, when students couldn't afford masks and parents couldn't afford graduation caps and gowns, I wanted to be the change and create a solution that worked in the classroom, I had no intentions of monetizing it, no intentions of turning it into a book series. But I think that shows the importance of good entrepreneurship, the best entrepreneurs are the best problem solvers. It's about really seeing what problems are in the community and being a response to that. So those letters behind my name are just really detailing the experience that I had with my students and wanting to support them and their parents and build wealth for our last names.

Acquania Escarne 4:16

I love that the best entrepreneurs are problem solvers. And you are out here solving problems building wealth and educating our people. I love it. I love it. I love it. So tell us a little bit more. I love the fact that you did Teach for America, and you actually are still where you served. That's awesome. Because some people are like, give me my two years and I'm out. I'm just trying to pay off my student loans, or whatever other benefits come with that. But it's my understanding that you paid off your loans actually through investing. So tell me a little bit more about what motivated you to learn how to invest so that you can knock out your student loans.

Ray'Chel Wilson 4:56

Great question. And also thank you for sharing that context on Teach for America. I'm very grateful to have had that education award and now use it for my master's programme. But I will say that when it comes down to my paying off my student loans journey, it comes back to my money story growing up, I knew that education was important. And I knew that I had to go into college and at least based off of where I wanted to be in my career, then I knew that it was worth taking out student loans. So actually paying off my student loans first started with understanding, what is the value of this education? What is the value of this loan? What type of school am I going to? And how does their alumni network benefit me and where I want to go? Right? So I always say begin with the end in mind. Now, most of us, especially when it comes to student loans, we are already past that space of contemplating, is this a good decision? Right? So once I had already taken out the student loans, and once I was in my job, I realised this whole thing that they painted to be, you know, what's the word I want to say? They told me, you know, when you grow up, get a good job, and good job with benefits, and you'll be fine. And I'm teaching, and I'm realising that I'm not fine. I'm realising that I'm still paycheck to paycheck. So I realised that something had to give something had to change. And that's when I started my journey in investing, first with day trading, and then moving into long term investing.

Ray'Chel Wilson 6:09

And honestly, the reason that I decided to start taking those investment, investing profits and putting it towards my student loans, was because I wanted to actually grow my net worth. For those that don't know what net worth is, it's a measure to be able to assess your assets and your debts and liabilities, right. But I knew that net worth was a measure of being able to build generational wealth, right. So once I put two and two together, number one, I have a valuable education. But right now, this is holding me back from actually building more wealth for my last name I knew something had to give. So I started to educate myself, it actually cost me about 5000 hours in my first two years of learning how to invest and getting up at 2am and crazy times to be able to trade and profit and doing some trial and error and figuring out what was my investing style. What is better for me. But long story short, I was able to find success. I specifically invested in the crypto space and did it long term. So there were no rogue pools and shady businesses and things. So over two years, the assets that I invested in in the crypto space, were able to grow over 300%. So one super important lesson that I learned from that is to not be greedy, do not be greedy. When you are investing to reach a goal such as paying off your student loans, it's so very important to know once you reach that goal, exit out, like follow the plan. And so many people are not profitable number one, because they don't have the education in relation to what they're investing in or their overall strategic plan. But also, number two people get greedy. And it's just so important to know what you're going in with begin with the end in mind. And once you reach that goal, celebrate withdraw, a random play, right?

Acquania Escarne 7:45

That is so true. And I've actually had Tery Ijeoma on the on the podcast, where she is the queen of trade and travel, she has a multimillion dollar course on teachables platform where she teaches people how to trade. And she says the same thing. She says you have to have a plan, you have to have a strategy on how you when you're going to enter you have to have a strategy on when you're going to exit and you have to stick to that strategy. She even said every time she gets too excited and gets greedy. It doesn't work out. She doesn't do that anymore. But of course, when she was learning, she made those same mistakes. So I appreciate that in the real estate space. We call it an investment thesis. How often do you want to invest? How much do you want to invest? What type of investments do you want? It's sort of like having a plan. And I always tell people, you need to set these plans out before you get started because the plan is supposed to hold you accountable. And if anyone else is involved in this, they're also supposed to hold you accountable. And it always works every single time. I've even told people writing stuff down or having a plan before it happens when it comes to emergency funds is important in this for the same reason. I give this example where like me and my husband, we have to sort of outline on our for ourselves, what's an emergency for our family, because you know, every family has different things that are urgent for them. And I always share this story about how like one time I was at a conference and my water bottle leaked into my bookbag and fried my laptop. And at the time I was a freelance writer who had deadlines due on Monday, and I was at a conference on Saturday and it was an emergency for me to get a laptop ASAP. But another family would have been like, oh, well, we'll get a laptop Black Friday when it's on sale or save up for the next six months. But I didn't have that luxury and for me anything that revolves around me making more money or feeding my family is an emergency to take care of right so our emergency fund replaced the laptop within 24 hours. But another family that wouldn't have been an emergency right and so you see how having that strategy in place and having those conversations is what makes it so much easier when ish hits the fan, right because now it's like is not what do I do? It's what does the plan say? I do you know? Or even like back in the day, we used to be like, What would Jesus do? And we're like, no, it's already in the Bible. Just read it, you know.

Ray'Chel Wilson 10:12

And that's so important that you brought that up, too, because there's so many scriptures in the Bible about money. And whether you're a believer or not, whether you see it as a historic book, or a guide book, it just so important to know that, we have to begin with the end in mind. And we also have a responsibility to do good for others and support others. And we can't even give to the poor if we don't have it ourselves. So it's so important to plan to create larger, good and larger deliberative impact.

Acquania Escarne 10:36

Yes, and be a good steward over our finances. You know, I'm all about an abundant, abundant mindset. But I also think we need to be good stewards of what we have. And you'd be surprised, I think when you're able to steward over a few, you are blessed with so much more. And I've seen that time and time and time and time again. And you have to continue to, I believe, believe that God will provide because the minute you start to spiral, because you're living paycheck to paycheck, or you just lost your job, and you don't have that faith, it affects not only your mental mindset, but also your actual money, I genuinely believe it affects your money. And so like one of the things that I've done, and I've heard other entrepreneurs do, for example, is like, pay our bills, right? Pay our bills on time. Now I know you're probably thinking, why do you have to tell yourself that that's like, normal fact, everybody should do that. But I've actually had this happen to me.

Acquania Escarne 11:31

And I've had other entrepreneurs say, when they got invoices, they paid them, because as soon as they put that energy out there to give to someone who's old, whatever they're paying, right, they received more back in return. And so whenever you can approach even your bills that way, then you find yourself being abundantly receiving. And it's not always money, sometimes it's people presents blessings, opportunities, doors open. But it's that idea that like, don't try to be selfish, or hoard what you have, especially when it's due to someone else, right? If you have a bill do you should pay it, you should pay it on time, that is the professional courtesy of any business and any customer. However, you also have to understand that when you do that, it strikes something else to happen too. And I have been a huge advocate of that, even as a full entrepreneur, and when sometimes cash flow was low, like cash flow was low. But I'm like, Look, I know how to make money. So let me just go ahead and pay my team, this person, and then I kid you not every single time, every single time it comes back to me. I mean, this week alone, Virginia, I found my 2210 2022 taxes I always found in October because something always comes up. So I don't like to fall early anymore. And I didn't even know that the state of Virginia had passed a law to give back Virginia residents, money 200 If they're single 400 If they are married, and you know my husband, well, you don't know this, but my husband and I owed Virginia for 2022. So I sent the cheque in October, and they sent me twice back that cheque. A month later. You see what I'm saying? And you're just like, wow, and I didn't even know it was coming. So I want to encourage everyone, like whenever you feel, you know, anxiety about your finances, I'd say pray on it. But then also have faith that you do what you're supposed to do, and it will come back to you 234 times fold. That was a tangent. But listen, sometimes it happens that way. But I love that. I love that.

Ray'Chel Wilson 13:39

Yeah, and I would just summarise by saying when it comes to the money journey, it's about two things. And I talked about this in my first book, holistic money mindset, mental preparation for abundance. Number one, you have to know your values. And number two, you have to be discipline because it bleeds over into your entrepreneurship and it bleeds over into the other people's lives who you affect. So such wise words.

Acquania Escarne 13:57

Yes, yes. You know what, and since we're talking we didn't mention this things in the Bible about money. I actually love this because people do not realise there are certain things that are very clear in the Bible. For example, you should not cosign. I hate to tell people this all the time, should I cosign my cousin needs this or my friend needs that and they're in a bind, they can't afford it. And you know what the funny thing is, as in my spirit, I'm like, well, that's clearly in the Bible. You shouldn't cosign, you shouldn't take on other people's debt. And I have always been very vocal on my platform that my husband and I don't even cosign each other's debt. We just won't do it. We We are fortunate that we have the credit that we can do things without the other person as a cosigner, and when it comes to real estate, you can get a loan in one person's name, you can put two people on the deed so that is the way we still protect the spouse and being able to inherit the property and then we put it in a trust but in addition to that, we don't cosign on car loans, we don't cosign on credit, even credit cards, we are not joint account holders on any credit cards. It's just the way that we choose to operate our finances as a family. So we are not getting ourselves into situations we can't get out of. But the other day, a friend told me a really interesting, like she said a really interesting thing. She said, You know, if a bank is asking them to get a cosigner because they don't trust that they're going to pay back the money. Why should you? Come on? And I'm gonna leave that right there. Can you you know, off the top of your head another example of a principle that is in the Bible that we should use to govern how we handle our finances?

Ray'Chel Wilson 15:46

Oh, it's such a lovely question. I always think about the principle, or the parable of the sower. And that really talks about the principle of having an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. For those who are not preachers, kids, like myself are not familiar with the story. It really talks about how a rich man gave his servants some money, some gold, and one servant decided to bury the money, which is in today's terms, not investing. And there was another servant or some other servants who were able to grow their money and grow the investments, and actually make it to be profitable for the rich man or the landlord of the land owner. Right? So I would say that it's just so important that we consider every single asset that we get, whether it's physical capital, right, that actual money, whether it's social capital, right? How can we grow what God has given us. And that's what true stewardship is, being able to be trusted to hold on to something and actually make it better. And that also relates to our gifts. So I really aim to apply that parable of the sower, to my personal life, to not only my fiscal investing, if I see al fiscal investing, not physical investing, right. But also to my time, I'm a value based investor. And I do that with my calendar as well time blocking based off of my values. So that parable really can give us so many things to keep in mind when it comes to abundance, shedding that scarcity mindset, because we are not called to live in scarcity. We're called to live in abundance, but also being proactive, something that I always say in terms of when God does supernatural things. God does the super, but you must do the natural, right? We can't just ask our guides come, you know, pay my bills and let you know money flat from the sky. And all of these things if we're not aligning ourselves, internally, and we're not making sure that we're doing the work, right. I always talk about with my books, I created them. When I was a teacher when I was on a teacher's salary and one of the lowest paid states in the country. I really had to learn how to steward my money then to be able to leverage it in the way I do for myself and my businesses now. So live in abundance, shed the scarcity mindset, and it's all about growth.

Acquania Escarne 17:50

Yes, I love that. And so, one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show today was to talk about your latest book, and I'm so glad I get to highlight in the shownotes all of the books you've written, so don't worry, guys. But tell us a little bit more about your latest project. Because it's my understanding, it was a collaboration, and we are all about conflict collaboration over competition. So how did that come to be? And what is it what tell me more about this book?

Ray'Chel Wilson 18:18

Yes, the book of the hour is Money talks. And yes, this is an amazing collaborative effort. Dr. Craig Mason was able to bring together so many of us financial professionals, black men and women, really focusing on how can we empower people to close the racial wealth gap, right? My chapter is called Am I an investor, and it talks about, you know, how to shed those limiting beliefs, how to free yourself from scarcity mindset, and I talk about a story when I got my first refund check in college, and what I spent that money on and how it could have grown today, and just those silly mistakes that we make, because we don't know better, right? I know, I had a lot of financial influencers, telling me different things growing up, right. And it's so important that we actually, in this book, Money Talks, brought together the right financial influencers, to be able to share to people of all ages of life, from folks that are just beginning their education and college, for folks that are nearing retirement and in those spaces in life. So I just applaud Dr. cog Mason for bringing us all together and making it such a great collaborative work. And I'm so happy to be able to add value on the chapter of investing, Value Based Investing and really living in abundance and being smart with our investments, both physical and personal.

Acquania Escarne 19:32

I love that that's such a good initiative. And so many great people are in there, including one of my colleagues, two of my colleagues, Mark Mullen and Marcela Williams. They are the dynamic duo on my team who also does life insurance and helps clients with their investment portfolios. And I was really excited to see that they co authored a chapter because they are rockstars they're a brother and a sister, who have the started to help people along their financial journey and actually brought me along to because before I was a life insurance producer, I was a client of Mark. So I love that what they're doing what you're doing to educate people about finances, and really make sure that we can make better decisions. I wish I knew in college, maybe you would have given me some of your refund check in the club. But I'm glad that you can reflect on that experience. You know, other things they can do, I always joke about in college is when I got my first credit card, and it was at a time when the companies used to be able to come on campus and have a clipboard and offer you a t shirt in exchange for your credit. And nobody realised the value of that.

Acquania Escarne 20:44

And so I always ask people, do you think I made it rain in the club? Or do you think I paid my bills that I could afford? And it's always funny to see how the crowd, you know, answers the question when I present or speak, but I was the good one, right, I went to college with a mindset of you know, I'd already started investing in retirement by college. So when I was 16, and invested my first paycheck, I went to college with the mindset that I'm not working forever. And I'm just here to get this degree. So I was the one who took the $1,000 credit limit, and pretty much kept it under $300. On most days, except the one time I needed a new laptop. It's funny, I have all these laptops. But I needed a laptop to you know, write papers in my dorm room instead of in the library late late at night. And so I did have to use my card beyond the $300 that I was comfortable with to do that. But I spread that out over 12 months, and I had 0% interest. So don't judge me, y'all. But there are other people who might have handled it differently. I would love to learn more. So you're not just here to teach people and to get the word out about personal finance, but you're also making it more accessible to younger generations. And you know, a little birdie told me you're working on an app that is going to launch in 2024. Let's talk about that. Because I'm curious to know, how did you get into the app space? You know, what was your motivation? And what is the app going to do?

Ray'Chel Wilson 22:19

Oh, yes, thank you so much for asking, it gets me so excited. And so getting to even talk about it. Because I know that truly this is my ministry to be able to empower people to build wealth for their last names, especially first generation folks like myself for the first generation college graduate, or the first generation high earner, the first generation entrepreneur, I identify with all of that. And we didn't have these conversations that were productive about money growing up, right. So if you identify that this app is for you, and it's called the For Our Last Names app, if you're wondering, why is it called for our last names, my students always used to ask me while I was investing, well, this was and why do you invest? And I say, you know, it's not just for me, it's not just teach you it's a we can build wealth for our collective last names, right. So what the for our last names app will do is it will bridge the gap between education and investing. As I mentioned earlier, I spent 5000 hours just in the first few years of learning how to invest. And my goal is to be able to shorten that timeframe, that education gap, that learning curve for people that are new to investing. What's really great about the platform is not only will we teach you in an easy to understand and easy to apply way. But we will also provide aligned investment opportunities within the app. We also will be able to support you through your mindset because we know that behaviour change is hard and financial journeys are hard as well. So we'll be able to support through mindset as well. We really bring together ed tech, FinTech and mindset. And if you're not in the tech space, we bring together learning the ability to invest and the ability to do this along your peers along your loved ones and those you want to build wealth with. So that's a little bit about before our last names app, and how we empower people to build wealth for our last names.

Acquania Escarne 24:00

I love it. That's such a good mission, I can't wait to come out. So for now, we'll just link to all the ways to connect with you. But before we have into where we find you on social, I want to ask you our other signature question. The name of the podcast is called the Purpose of Money. So I asked all my guests this question, what is your purpose for money?

Ray'Chel Wilson 24:23

I love this question. Because money is not the source of evil as so many people say money is a tool. So I would say that my purpose for money is to use it as a tool, to use it as a tool to build bridges, to use it as a tool to liberate. There's this move of financial freedom and I do not agree with that. I believe in financial liberation. If we only use the tool of money to build ourselves a beautiful house, but we forget our brother or sister on the street or we forget our brother and sister that also has goals right? Then we are living in such restraining versions of financial freedom versus is empowering collective liberation right? So to me, the Purpose of Money is to use it as a tool to liberate others and to live in stewardship.

Acquania Escarne 25:09

All right now y'all heard it here first. Before we go, please tell all my listeners, how do they connect with you on social drop all the handles and the website?

Ray'Chel Wilson 25:19

Yes, well, as mentioned before, our last names app comes out in quarter one of next year. So you can visit us online at for our last names dot i o f o r o u r LST n a m e s dot I O. And as mentioned, I'm Raquel Wilson. You can find me on LinkedIn with that name as well. So I appreciate you so much for having me on the podcast today being able to share value to the listeners and I just pray that everyone lives in abundance and is building wealth for their lessening

Acquania Escarne 25:48

yes Amen to that and let's do it guys. Yeah, know what to do. If you liked this episode. Don't forget to like it, share it. And of course if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe so that others will know that this is out there and get all the tea. And if you are listening on Apple podcasts or wherever you like to listen to podcast don't forget to leave a five star review. We appreciate you. Until next time, guys keep building generational wealth.

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