In this issue: A snow day recap, why DOGE is quietly dismantling Black middle-class wealth, what we know (and don't) about Trump Accounts, and the one money move that costs you nothing but could change everything.

65 degrees Monday. Six inches of snow and zero degrees by Friday. Welcome to the Midwest, baby!

Got the snow blower out one more time and I'm officially calling it. That thing is done until next winter. Spring has to be coming!

The boys had a blast. Kids don't see inconvenience. They just see snow. Take me back to childhood, snowdays, please! Lincoln's team dominated their semifinal MSL match this week and Croix knocked out his second to last winter training session. Both of them locked in. Both of them putting in the work, haha, like they have a choice.

We're almost to the other side, hang in there folks!

For decades, federal government jobs were THE move for Black families. Not because they were glamorous. Because they were consistent. Real pay, real benefits, real retirement. A path into the middle class that didn't require knowing the right people or having the right last name. Black workers built generational stability on those jobs and they earned every bit of it.

Then DOGE showed up with a chainsaw.

Black workers make up 18.5% of the federal workforce, well above their 13% share of the overall population. The cuts started with probationary employees, the ones with the least protection. Because Black workers are underrepresented at senior federal levels, cutting from the bottom up cuts our people first. That's not a conspiracy. That's just math.

Black unemployment climbed from 6.1% to 7.5% in a single year. White unemployment moved up 0.2%. For Black women specifically, unemployment jumped 1.9% while white women barely registered a change. The cuts were heaviest at HHS, which employs 20% Black workers, and the Department of Education, which employs 30%. These weren't random. They landed exactly where our people had built careers.

This is what dismantling Black middle class wealth looks like in real time.

Receipts:

My inbox has been loud on this. Here's the honest answer: we know enough to pay attention, not enough to act yet.

Trump Accounts are tax-deferred investment accounts for children under 18, seeded with a one-time $1,000 government contribution for kids born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028. Accounts open in 2026 but contributions can't be made until after July 4, 2026.

Three things to know before you tell everybody at church:

If you have a child born in that window, filing that form is a no-brainer. Free money. Take it. But don't abandon your 529, don't stop building your own foundation, and don't let anybody sell you something off the back of the hype. Full breakdown coming after the July launch.

Receipts:

No new drop this week but tomorrow's episode is coming and you don't want to miss it. Subscribe now so it hits your feed the second it goes live.

👉 Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

Most people outside of St. Louis have never heard of Annie Turbo Malone. And that's exactly the problem.

In the early 1900s she looked around and saw a real gap. Black women had no hair products built for them, no training, no infrastructure. So she built all of it herself. One of the original beauty colleges ever founded in this country. Tens of thousands of Black women trained, not just in cosmetology but in how to run their own businesses. An independent contractor model before that term even existed.

Her campus in St. Louis wasn't just a school. It was a hub. Medical services, cafeterias, graduation halls, community events, civil rights organizing. All under one roof that she built and owned.

And she didn't do it to make a shit ton of money. She did it to give other women the tools to take care of their own families and build generational stability.

She built infrastructure. Not a hustle. Go watch this one!

👉 YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts

This Week's Move: Open a High-Yield Savings Account. This Week. Not Next Week. This Week.

Your bank is paying you somewhere between nothing and an insult to hold your money. We're talking 0.01% to 0.50%. High-yield savings accounts are sitting at 3% or higher right now. That difference compounds. That difference matters.

But the interest rate is actually the second best reason to open one.

The first reason is psychology. When your emergency savings lives in the same account as your rent, your groceries, and your impulse purchases, it will get spent. Your brain doesn't see "protected money." It just sees a number and treats it as available. Moving it somewhere separate creates a real mental boundary. The extra step it takes to transfer money out is friction that protects you from yourself. Over time it rewires how you think about saving. That is not fluff. That is behavioral finance.

Here's exactly what to do:

Be confident. In yourself!

Not the market. Not Washington. Not what everybody else thinks you should be doing with your money or your life.

You control your world. The people who build real wealth aren't always the ones with the most information. They're the ones who trusted themselves enough to act on what they knew.

Go be that person!

The Uncomfortable Truth About Money. Black-led. Built to Stay In the Black.

Reply SCATTERED if your finances feel all over the place right now. You're not alone and we can work through it.