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Do you know that managing your finances is more than knowing how to budget and invest? Financial wellness is a big part of living confidently with your money and not being distressed over your finances.
Because financial wellness can be one of the most significant factors in economic freedom and health, Secret Deodorant has brought financial professionals together to educate 1 million women on this topic. One of those women includes Marsha Barnes, a financial expert and founder of The Finance Bar.
BGN met with Barnes over Zoom to discuss achieving financial wellness and how more women can prioritize their finances for a happy and healthier way of life. We discussed how taking care of your financial well-being is as important as visiting the doctor, rotating your tires, and flossing.
What is financial wellness, and why is it important?
Financial wellness is the ability to live and maintain a healthy financial life. Women of color often work to survive and not thrive. Although many women seek to improve their finances, they often don’t focus on maintaining a healthy financial life, which is what financial wellness is all about.
When we, as women of color, are not financially healthy, we feel it in the workplace by way of stress, tensions, and inability to focus. We are constantly worrying about finances instead of being able to enjoy our lives.
Why is financial wellness essential for Black women?
Many women of color are overly concerned and constantly thinking about money. They often think about how to earn more money or what to do next. This constant worry is why the initiative with Secret is so helpful because it’s a multi-year initiative.
When we think about finances, we often think about them in the new year, on our birthdays, and during financial literacy month. However, financial wellness is not a one-and-done thing. We must continue to educate ourselves, and eventually, we move to action.
What are financial therapy and money disorders? How does one know if they have a money disorder?
Financial therapy evaluates and treats the cognitive, emotional, and mental aspects of financial health.
Financial literacy and education mainly focus on learning more about finances. While education is essential, it doesn’t always identify why we have specific money habits. The way we are with money may be because of trauma or not getting paid what we’re worth. It’s less about numbers and more about why you manage your money and think about it as you do.
Financial disorders are persistent and rigid patterns, such as shopping and not paying your bills. A money disorder can look like a compulsive buying disorder. Money disorders can also look like gambling disorders or hoarding. Also, being a workaholic can be a disorder because it’s this idea that you must constantly work to make money. Money disorders are linked to behaviors that are causing you harm.
What do you believe is one of the biggest barriers to financial wellness, and how can people, particularly women, overcome this barrier?
Consistent financial education has to be a resource that we are constantly applying.
Equipping women with the tools to make smart economic choices early prepares them for a stable financial life. With this initiative, Secret is doing just that by providing access to in-depth financial courses.
In addition to financial education, it’s essential to identify your financial triggers. What makes you think of money the way you do? Is it because you want to be in the same financial situation as your friends? Financial education can help, but without identifying your triggers, education alone won’t bring lasting change.
Therefore, take time to think about your mindset regarding money. Consider what you’ve been taught.
In addition, consider what you value most about money. Some examples are having more money in the bank or more free time. In addition, take control of your spending. Sometimes we spend on things we like, and we spend less money on things we love.
Lastly, embrace the financial journey. There can be a lot of financial missteps along the way. Take the financial journey in strides. As you get older, continue to think about your value system and build on your financial confidence.
In what ways can our emotions affect our finances?
Our emotions are often driven by what we’re taught growing up. Often those emotions are not how we truly feel about money. When I was younger, I thought about what kind of car I needed to drive and how I needed to look. I wanted a luxury car because I wanted a toy Barbie car when I was younger but never got it because my parents couldn’t afford it. I held onto that desire.
When I was older and began making money, I bought a luxury car to feel that void of not getting the Barbie car when I was younger. Often we want things not as adults but because we didn’t get them as a child, so we use the money to rewrite that story.
What are some simple ways to prioritize financial wellness?
Identify what you first need. What is the squeaky wheel? What is one thing you’d like to work on, such as budgeting, a positive money mindset, etc.? There are many resources to connect you with your need, but don’t try to solve all the issues simultaneously. It’s about what applies to your life right now.
Commit to learning and applying what you are learning from these resources. Starting with one is important because it helps you build a foundation. That’s how you create financial wellness, but start with that foundation and learning first. If you are building a house, education is the foundation, and making the house’s walls is similar to applying what you learn.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
I want to encourage women to visit the website for free resources. Also, insert on your calendar a date to practice financial wellness. Treat connecting with your money as a day going to the gym or getting your nails done.
Do you know that managing your finances is more than knowing how to budget and invest? Financial wellness is a big part of living confidently with your money and not being distressed over your finances.
Because financial wellness can be one of the most significant factors in economic freedom and health, Secret Deodorant has brought financial professionals together to educate 1 million women on this topic. One of those women includes Marsha Barnes, a financial expert and founder of The Finance Bar.
BGN met with Barnes over Zoom to discuss achieving financial wellness and how more women can prioritize their finances for a happy and healthier way of life. We discussed how taking care of your financial well-being is as important as visiting the doctor, rotating your tires, and flossing.
What is financial wellness, and why is it important?
Financial wellness is the ability to live and maintain a healthy financial life. Women of color often work to survive and not thrive. Although many women seek to improve their finances, they often don’t focus on maintaining a healthy financial life, which is what financial wellness is all about.
When we, as women of color, are not financially healthy, we feel it in the workplace by way of stress, tensions, and inability to focus. We are constantly worrying about finances instead of being able to enjoy our lives.
Why is financial wellness essential for Black women?
Many women of color are overly concerned and constantly thinking about money. They often think about how to earn more money or what to do next. This constant worry is why the initiative with Secret is so helpful because it’s a multi-year initiative.
When we think about finances, we often think about them in the new year, on our birthdays, and during financial literacy month. However, financial wellness is not a one-and-done thing. We must continue to educate ourselves, and eventually, we move to action.
What are financial therapy and money disorders? How does one know if they have a money disorder?
Financial therapy evaluates and treats the cognitive, emotional, and mental aspects of financial health.
Financial literacy and education mainly focus on learning more about finances. While education is essential, it doesn’t always identify why we have specific money habits. The way we are with money may be because of trauma or not getting paid what we’re worth. It’s less about numbers and more about why you manage your money and think about it as you do.
Financial disorders are persistent and rigid patterns, such as shopping and not paying your bills. A money disorder can look like a compulsive buying disorder. Money disorders can also look like gambling disorders or hoarding. Also, being a workaholic can be a disorder because it’s this idea that you must constantly work to make money. Money disorders are linked to behaviors that are causing you harm.
What do you believe is one of the biggest barriers to financial wellness, and how can people, particularly women, overcome this barrier?
Consistent financial education has to be a resource that we are constantly applying.
Equipping women with the tools to make smart economic choices early prepares them for a stable financial life. With this initiative, Secret is doing just that by providing access to in-depth financial courses.
In addition to financial education, it’s essential to identify your financial triggers. What makes you think of money the way you do? Is it because you want to be in the same financial situation as your friends? Financial education can help, but without identifying your triggers, education alone won’t bring lasting change.
Therefore, take time to think about your mindset regarding money. Consider what you’ve been taught.
In addition, consider what you value most about money. Some examples are having more money in the bank or more free time. In addition, take control of your spending. Sometimes we spend on things we like, and we spend less money on things we love.
Lastly, embrace the financial journey. There can be a lot of financial missteps along the way. Take the financial journey in strides. As you get older, continue to think about your value system and build on your financial confidence.
In what ways can our emotions affect our finances?
Our emotions are often driven by what we’re taught growing up. Often those emotions are not how we truly feel about money. When I was younger, I thought about what kind of car I needed to drive and how I needed to look. I wanted a luxury car because I wanted a toy Barbie car when I was younger but never got it because my parents couldn’t afford it. I held onto that desire.
When I was older and began making money, I bought a luxury car to feel that void of not getting the Barbie car when I was younger. Often we want things not as adults but because we didn’t get them as a child, so we use the money to rewrite that story.
What are some simple ways to prioritize financial wellness?
Identify what you first need. What is the squeaky wheel? What is one thing you’d like to work on, such as budgeting, a positive money mindset, etc.? There are many resources to connect you with your need, but don’t try to solve all the issues simultaneously. It’s about what applies to your life right now.
Commit to learning and applying what you are learning from these resources. Starting with one is important because it helps you build a foundation. That’s how you create financial wellness, but start with that foundation and learning first. If you are building a house, education is the foundation, and making the house’s walls is similar to applying what you learn.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
I want to encourage women to visit the website for free resources. Also, insert on your calendar a date to practice financial wellness. Treat connecting with your money as a day going to the gym or getting your nails done.
Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph speaks life into those close to her and the Black culture. The Emmy Award-winning thespian has been tapped to deliver the commencement speech at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences for the Spring 2023 semester.
According to Diverse Education, Ralph is a Rutgers alumna as a member of the 1972 graduating class. The report also says the Abbott Elementary actress is in the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni.
“As we celebrate the birthday of Paul Robeson, great actor, great artist, outstanding athlete, outstanding student, I’m so happy to represent his legacy as one of the first women, especially one of the first Black women, to graduate from Rutgers College. Legacy matters,” Ralph said, cited by Diverse Education.
Ralph plays veteran kindergarten teacher Ms. Howard on the ubiquitous television show Abbott Elementary. Back in 1982, Ralph was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the Broadway play, Dreamgirls. In 2022, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that she became the second Black woman to win an Emmy. During her acceptance speech, the 66-year-old sang the lyrics to a Dianne Reeves song: “I am an endangered species, but I sing a victim’s song, I am a woman, I am an artist, and I know where my voice belongs.”
The actress also uses her voice to speak out on issues such as AIDS. As an AIDS activist, Ralph is the founding director of the Divinely Inspired Victoriously Anointed (DIVA) Foundation. She is a recipient of the Red Ribbon Award at the United Nations. She’s also the brains behind Divas Simply Singing!, which is a musical AIDS benefit show, as well as an ambassador for Jamaica’s Ministry of Health.
The commencement speech for Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences will occur on May 14.
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As our worldwide population continues to grow—we’re expected to hit 9 billion by 2040—our need and reliance on natural resources grow exponentially. Oil and coal reserves, despite being vast, are ultimately finite, and wind and solar simply aren’t efficient enough to sustain our ever-growing need for electrical power. So, two viable alternatives are hydro and nuclear power plants, and the latter is the main focal point of Oliver Stone’s new documentary titled Nuclear Now.
Shaping up to be equivalent to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Stone’s Nuclear Now takes a fundamentally different approach to answer the question of what the future holds by saying that nuclear power might be the key. While many still can’t seem to disassociate the word “nuclear” from the word “nuke,” and unfortunate events such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl do not help this public perception, Nuclear Now seeks to change that by offering an alternative, science-based view into humanity’s nuclear future.
In his latest documentary, which premiered at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival, Stone argues that nuclear power is by far the soundest replacement for fossil fuels, thereby helping fight climate change. However, the movie also makes the vital case that nuclear power has been unjustly demonized by anti-nuclear movements—which it has, and we’ll touch upon that in a minute—and that our need for low-emission power supplies is too urgent to ignore the advantages nuclear power has to offer.
Stone’s documentary makes a compelling argument that nuclear power has been demonized, first by the less-educated green activists, then by the attention-seeking media, and then further by oil companies. The perfect example of this type of demonizing of technology happened in the late 19th and early 20th century with the introduction of electrical energy. What we now take for granted and basically depend upon was portrayed by the early media as a very dangerous technology that has unknown effects and many potential dangers.
Newspapers even propagated stories that walking under an electrical lamp post posed a danger, as the electricity could jump out of the light bulb and electrocute nearby people. Admittedly, some people tried changing the light bulb with wet hands, adding more credence to this urban legend. The same thing happened with nuclear energy. Following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which effectively proved that nuclear power could be used as a “destroyer of worlds,” environmental activists associated nuclear power with nuclear weapons, pigeonholing everything related to nuclear as inherently bad.
In fact, the term “nuke-ular” was cleverly coined to associate the two, implying that the possibility of being nuked or exposed to high levels of damaging radiation is inherent in this technology. Accidents such as Chernobyl—which was a result of large-scale, systemic human error—further fueled the public’s distrust of nuclear power. But Stone’s Nuclear Now casts light on several other factors that further contributed to the public fear—the biggest of which is Big Oil, also known as the Seven Sisters.
Major oil companies piggybacked on the environmental activist’s propaganda against nuclear energy, adding that even the lowest levels of radiation are harmful to humans and may lead to any number of diseases and even death. This is, of course, false, as Stone’s Nuclear Now points out. We actually evolved to handle low levels of radiation exceptionally well, considering that we’re riding on a cosmic rock that’s constantly bombarded by various types of cosmic radiation.
Modern media and entertainment releases such as Fallout (a video game series) or Book of Eli—starring Denzel Washington—often depict the world in which human civilization descends to its lowest as the result of a nuclear catastrophe. Mankind’s fear of the things we don’t understand is a natural survival tool, and not too many people know the inner workings of nuclear chemistry and nuclear physics. And both the Seven Sisters and the anti-nuclear movement have used that lack of knowledge to further spread fear of us having to fight over scraps if we go nuclear.
The anti-nuclear movement, while well-intentioned, is wrong. By associating nuclear energy with nuclear disasters, which anyone reasonable would fight against, they’re rejecting the only form of currently accessible power generation that’s more environmentally friendly than coal. In fact, if we were to replace all coal-fired power plants with nuclear ones, we could reduce carbon emissions by around 90%. Of course, these are rough estimates, and real numbers are subject to variations associated with specific regions and circumstances.
But Big Oil’s push against nuclear is far more sinister, as the spread of misinformation has only one goal: eliminating the only power source that could effectively compete with fossil fuels for the sake of profit. Anti-nuclear environmentalist fighting against nuclear-oriented corporations are pawns in public manipulation—since everyone loves a good-natured underdog—that sway the public opinion to align with the interests of the companies that are the biggest contributors to climate change—the Seven Sisters.
Renewable energy sources are, unfortunately, a daydreamer’s alternative, as they’re unreliable. This is best seen from an example involving Germany, which promised to forsake coal-fired and nuclear power in favor of renewables, and even publicly called out other countries—from world powers to third-world countries—for not doing the same. The most hypocritical moment was when the country imported more than 40 million tons of coal for electricity and heat generation and fired up its coal-fired plants.
And this is the main point of Stone’s Nuclear Now. Virtue-signaling by various world powers, paired with the rising middle-class culture of reducing one’s carbon footprint by employing electric cars and renewables, just offsets the problem instead of offering a viable and reasonable solution. Don’t get us wrong; going electric and recycling helps immensely. But Stone argues, and anyone sensible would agree, that it simply isn’t enough. We need to put our fears behind us and make a more significant change.
Nuclear Now has a worldwide premiere on April 28, 2023, in select US theaters and theaters in Belgium, Canada, and Denmark. It really makes a strong, sober, and, above everything else, scientific case for nuclear power, showing a future that’s nothing like the wastelands and scavenging we all seen in Fallout or Book of Eli. If presented with the opportunity to watch this film, we highly recommend it.
Snoop Dogg has never made his love for cannabis a secret. The hip-hop superstar is known for staying high all the time, and has songs and movies to prove it!
During a 2019 interview with Howard Stern, Snoop opened up about the full-time, salaried blunt and joint roller he hired to fulfill his desire for a consistent supply of pre-rolled blunts and joints daily. He even adjusted the salary to meet the growing inflation.
Last year, Ranagade PerRana came forward and revealed herself as Snoop’s professional joint rolling technician. Earning over $50,000 while working for Uncle Snoop at the time, Rana now estimates she’s rolled nearly half a million joints thus far for various A-list clients like Rihanna, Kid Cudi, J.R. Smith, Elon Musk, and countless others.
Rana secured her previous gig with Snoop in a “roll-off” between her, a Venezuelan cigar roller, and Snoop Dogg’s sound engineer and has been able to build a successful and lucrative business and brand for herself. Aside from her full-time gig rolling blunts for Hollywood’s elite, Rana launched a “Blunt Bar” business that supplies high-end events with carefully-crafted smokables, Leafly reports.
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Speaking with BLACK ENTERPRISE while celebrating 4/20 at Jimmy John’s in Long Beach, CA, by teaching enthusiasts how to roll with limited-edition JJ’s rolling papers, Rana dished on the three crucial skill sets needed to become a professional joint roller.
“First of all, you would have to understand the art of smoking,” Rana told BLACK ENTERPRISE.
“I would say that’s first and foremost because you would have to understand what your client requires of you. In the same way, if you were to be a chef and dealt with someone that had, God, forbid, like Celiac disease, you would need to understand everywhere gluten is. I think you have to know the fine art of smoking first of all.”
“I would say the other skill you have to have would be to work hard. And that is truly a skill,” she continued.
“The skill to show up and show out and not take shortcuts, that’s a real fu*king skill to have. So I have that skill. I go hard. Sleep is not something I need. Rest is for the dead. Lazy is the cousin of death. Stupid is his brother. And lying is how he ends up out of here. So, for me, I show up, I show out.”
The last skill you need, according to Rana, who describes herself as a “premier blunt roller of the planet,” stems from your upbringing and the support system you keep. The Iranian-born rolling technician believes keeping good people around could be vital in crafting pristine joints.
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“I would say the third skill is you would have to be player like Ranagade ParRana,” she boasted. “You’d have to have the parents I have maybe (a nod to her father Hamid and mom Fatima.).”
“You’d have to have the same journey I had,” she added. “I don’t know. But I would say hard work and fu*king determination is what got me here for sure.”
Rolling joints full-time could sound like a dream job to some. Salaries for the gig might not pay as high as Snoop Dogg once paid Rana. But according to ZipRecruiter, starting salaries could range from $13 to $37 an hour and, of course, depends on whether or not you reside in a state where it’s legal.
For those interested in becoming professional rolling technicians, Rana encourages you to test, explore, and do your homework.
“I would say do your research and then just try to get in where you fit in in life,” she said.
“I think life is about finding a place for yourself, finding a home, finding a path. So, if you want to get involved in certain businesses, you got to do your due diligence.”
“I think you have to figure out how the whole game works, how the setup is, who does what, what the laws are, where you live, where you’re from,” she continued. “All those things matter because you don’t want to play yourself.”