“Knowledge is power, but what if what you know is wrong?” suggested UMD alumna Michelle Singletary to a group of students Wednesday night at her presentation titled “Money is Power.”
The audience in Marie Mount Hall’s Maryland Room was a little stunned by the celebrated personal finance columnist’s proclamation, but soon recovered with Singletary’s explanation. She said that, at the end of everything, you want to be proud of your “financial legacy” and not the objects you leave behind.
“All that stuff is just that,” she said. “It’s going to go away.”
Singletary’s speech is part of the university’s Women’s Studies Department and Robert H. Smith School of Business’s joint lecture series “Gender, Finance, and Power.” The program, currently in its third year, aims to provide a space to work on “women’s career paths and leadership in finance, create a space for women in business and finance to share their individual career experiences,” develop a framework to “better understand the relationship between gender, finance and power,” and provide students with an opportunity to think about their own practices and potentials, according to Women’s Studies Professor Seung-Kyung Kim.
In Singletary’s case, her presentation focused mainly on fixing the debt younger generations (like ours) have, despite having more opportunities and technologies than our predecessors. For example, Singletary suggested one audience member budget her entertainment money by using the envelope system, in which she place an amount of money in a labeled envelope and spend it wisely until the next paycheck.
Senior criminal justice major Lisa Schrimsher took the presentation to heart. Originally only there as an extra credit assignment, Schrimsher walked away with so much more.
“I don’t have a lot of people in my life who can give financial advice, so it was very special, [Singletary] giving me her book and advice,” she said. “I loved it.”
With short and silly video clips, stories of her past, and multiple pleas begging the crowd not to look at her daughter, Olivia, sitting in the second row, Singletary managed to give a usually-dry topic personal touches that made it resonate all the more.
Growing up, Singletary and her four siblings were raised in Baltimore by a “cray-cray” grandmother and alcoholic grandfather, together both earning “enough to eat, but not enough to have leftovers.” That lifestyle made her frugal as she attended UMD on a full-ride scholarship, met her husband on campus, and went on to graduate with a degree in radio, television and film. It inspired her nationally-syndicated column, “The Color of Money,” which, in 2007, won Best in Business for a series.
But more than just her accomplishments and honors, Singletary said how having your finances in order can lead to a life of contentment.
A fervent volunteer at her church and two prisons near her home, Singletary shared the story of an encounter she had with an inmate she once taught. Fresh off a gig on Meet the Press, Singletary returned to the prison for a follow-up class, where the same female inmate commented on how Singletary was wearing the same outfit on the show that she wore when she first met the inmate.
“That stuff doesn’t matter to me,” she said. “She said to me, ‘I tell you that because I’m looking at you on Meet the Press, and this is a show that the President watches and members of Congress and influential people watch this show, and I saw that you had the same outfit on that you wore to teach me, a drug addict and a former prostitute.’ And that made me feel better about myself.”
“I’m content to wear what I wear,” she continued. “I’m content to drive the hooky car I drive and it doesn’t really matter to me. I have learned to be content with just enough.”
Singletary quoted one of her former employers, Oprah Winfrey, to sum up what everyone should aim for in their life and what she hoped her audience would walk away with: “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”