Folks, welcome back to Modern Financial Wellness. I'm excited to welcome our guest today, Irma Neal. Irma is the founder of Onyx Rising, a change management firm focused on financial literacy, DEI and leadership development. She's the former deputy mayor of Indianapolis, former director of human services in two large urban districts. She's also an author of the book Chaos Insights to Lead through the Storm and a certified financial coach here in the second half of her career building the business Onyx Rising. We're excited to talk to her about the work that she's up to today. Irma, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it.

Likewise. So I know, like myself, you're a financial literacy, financial wellness and wellbeing enthusiast and I want to definitely spotlight for folks the work that you do at Onyx Rising. But I thought to start, you have an interesting story and journey yourself when it comes to discovering financial literacy. Along the way, would you mind taking us back a little bit to your background and your journey? What were some of your experiences or early memories about money back from your childhood?

Well, I am the oldest of eight children and we grew up in abject poverty. I mean, we were two parent family. My father worked three, two, three jobs all the time. My mother worked too. But I remember just thinking I couldn't have been any more than nine years old. I remember thinking, I'm not going to live like this when I grow up. I'm just not going to do it, you know.

And at nine years old, what were you, what were you seeing around you that made you think about that?

Well, while everybody in the neighborhood was in the same predicament financially, when you went to school and with some other friends, you could see that they were living differently. Right. And I also noticed the mindset, I have to think back about this now, but I also noticed that mindset of my father in particular is that he, if you gave him credit, he didn't connect, that that meant you had to automatically pay it back or you should pay it back or whatever. It was more about I need this, my kids need this. And so I'm going to take this now. If I can pay it back, I will, but if I can't, you know, I just can't. You know, that's just life, you know.

Yeah.

So that's how I grew up. And, and I've always loved to learn. So I saw people around me and learned from them and just, I just always knew, I don't know where it came From James. But I just always knew there was a better way.

It's kind of intuitively right. So up until 9, 10 years old, you don't think anything different. It's just your experience, your neighbors are in the same situation, so you don't think anything of it. But you get a little bit older, you start to look around, go to school, people are living a bit. Little bit different. And that.

Exactly.

That light bulb or that instinct kind of kicks on.

Exactly.

Early on. And where do you go from there? So you're 9, 10 years old. You're thinking, I'm gonna do something a little bit differently. When did you start to kind of change your own trajectory?

Well, it actually was in high school because, you know, we got the lunch money every day. My father was very good about giving us the lunch money every day for lunch. And I always saved part of mine, half mine, you know, again, not wanting to be poor, I saved some of mine. So at the end of the week, you know, I had money left over and I could buy things and do things. And, you know, so from that whole experience, I learned first the value of money, and then secondly, that even then there's a way to make it work for you, because if you save it, you can get some of the things you want. If you spend it all, you just. You just. Right back in the same place.

Right.

Yeah.

So, you know, so I put that in practice and that. I put that in practice my whole life. I was. I've been a saver my entire life.

That's pretty amazing perspective for a high schooler realizing there's some money coming in and I'm going to save. I mean, what was the lunch back then? A couple bucks a day.

Well, you know, what we got. I'm showing my age now, but, you know, I got a dollar a day, five days a week. So five dollars a week is what we got. And I ended up saving. And you know, back then, the lunches didn't cost that much either, but so I was able to save mine. Yeah.

Good for you. That's fantastic.

Yeah.

So you graduate from high school, you go on to college somewhere.

Did you have a scholarship?

Oh, good for you. Congratulations.

I went to college at. Started at Indiana State, but I was in love with my husband to be. So I actually dropped out. We got married. I got married young, we had a child, but again, I never stopped. The education and again, the whole. The whole savings habits helped us there too, because I just was always really frugal with money and making sure that we were paying the bills on time and that kind of stuff. Now, what's interesting and what I'd like for your listeners to.

To remember is I married a spender and I was a saver. Right. And like most couples, we did not have that money conversation before we got married. So there were several arguments early on about the fact that I was spending, that he was spending money and I didn't want him to. And he started calling me the penny pincher and I started calling him excessive spending for things we don't need. Right, Right. So that was one of the things we had to work through as a couple. And so I would advise anybody who's in a relationship to make sure you have that money discussion.

And if you are with a spender and you're a saver, you've got to work through that and preferably work through it before you tie the knot as opposed to afterwards.

Yeah. So you kind of. You fall in love and you don't think anything of it. It's the old opposites attract, Right. Both in personality oftentimes, but in our financial habits and behaviors as well, we kind of find our opposite. So that's an interesting, you know, share that you just made. What. How did you work through that and kind of get on the same page? How long did it take? Because I know for some couples it takes a while to kind of align and get through some of those challenging conversations, which oftentimes start out as fights before.

And as, you know, money is probably is the number one reason that people break up is because of the money problems in the relationship. We did a lot of talking about it, and what we ended up doing is separating our money for a time so that he could see. He would run out and he have to come ask me. So we did that thing for a time because. Because he just wasn't getting it, you know.

Yeah.

He just felt like he was supposed to be able to buy what he wanted to buy if he had the money to. And then. And then he was, you know, so it. It took a lot of conversation. It took a lot of give and take. And then when my career exploded and I started making a lot of money, then we would. He would save his. We would save his and live off of mine.

And so he saw, then, you know, how. How it was. I made sure he understood how the money was growing. And when we went to the financial advisor, we got a financial advisor, and he never. It just kind of glossed over his head. You know, everybody doesn't like numbers and finance and all this stuff. Like we do. So it just gloss over his head.

But I kept making him come, you know, go with me to see the whenever. So he, he got exposed to it and that's the way it kind of turned him around. But yeah, you know, to the day he died, I was still a penny pincher and he was the.

Yeah, yeah, it's funny.

Yeah.

So this podcast is about financial well being. I do a lot of conversations about couples and money. I didn't expect that we talk about it a little bit here in your past experience, but it's, it's interesting how often it comes up, these differences in behavior in our mindset. So I appreciate you sharing that. You touched on the financial advisor that you worked with and I'm kind of curious. You sound very much like a saver. From a very young age, you realize you need to pay your bills on time and you need to save your money. Right.

So you could do the things that you want to do. But I think you and I both know that just saving money, just putting it in the bank, that's the basics. Right. But to grow wealth over time, there's a lot more you need to expose.

Yourself to, more you need to explore. Right? Yeah.

So it sounds like, how did you get connected with that financial advisor? When did you start to get exposed to some financial literacy and education that really started to take you from a saver to somebody kind of growing wealth over time? What, what was that like?

Well, beyond the basics. I, I was a saver. Like I said in the. In you and I, you. You stated it. You don't get wealthy by just saving money. You don't. I was working at the time with IBM and I remember a email coming across the.

The desk, my desk, that said, we want you to be financially secure whether you're with IBM or not, so we're going to pay for you to have one session with a certified financial advisor. And that's where I got hooked because. And that same advisor I have to this day. Right. That's amazing because he. And what I liked about him is he didn't just invest my money. He taught me along the way what was happening. You know, the difference between.

When I found out about compound interest, boy, I just got real excited about that, you know. So that's what did it. And there are a couple of things that, that I learned that happened to me from that experience. Number one, because IBM invested in me, it created a loyalty in me about that company. Just because they did that investment in me, that actually changed my life.

Yeah. So that's an employer sponsored benefit, just like your health insurance, which is extremely valuable and your retirement plan, maybe you have a 401k back then. There's a lot of benefits that a company like an IBM is providing. But that introduction to a financial planner you just mentioned changed your life, changed the trajectory of your life. I mean, how invaluable is that benefit. Benefit that your employer provided way back when, you know.

Exactly. And that's my passion now. That's the message we're trying, Onyx is trying to get across now is that financial wellness needs to be a part of an employee benefit package. And the things that employers gain from just. It's not a high cost benefit either for you to provide the. Not just the education. Like one of the things I think I mentioned to you before is if I had a dime for every time I got the question, what's a 401k? Why do I need it? What's it mean? You know, it's the education plus the benefit, like a 401k or a health savings account or all that. Those two things combined really do change people's financial trajectory in their lives.

Yeah, you know, the, the benefit package by itself is not good enough. You have to connect the education and how it is going to impact the person in the future. Because if you're a person that's living paycheck to paycheck and they want to take $50 was way more than that. Now $250 for health care. And then on top of that they, you want to, they ask you to contribute to the 401k, you're gonna say, I can't afford all this money coming out of my check every week. So the education has got to go with the benefit package as it's being rolled out.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that's a great segue. Tell us a little bit more about Onyx Rising. Some of the programs that you have. So are there different types of employers you typically work with or just generally? Tell us a little bit about the financial education and literacy program that you facilitate for companies.

Were you surprised by that?

And it is a series. The first series, the first workshop is about envisioning the life you want. Because you and I both know if you don't change the mindset, you don't change the behavior. Right?

And that's what I love about what you guys are up to. Because I think a lot of traditional financial literacy, it's just, it's describing what you have, right? What is a 401k and what is a health savings account. And all that stuff's really, really important to have an understanding. But I think starting with the mindset is, is right place and where everybody needs to, to think about starting, which is how do I think about money? How do I feel about money? What is money for where, what am I really trying to accomplish in the future? So tell me a little bit more about that. What does that part of the process look like?

The thing is, particularly in the African American community, we're not taught about money at all. The you find out about money either from how your parents didn't manage it, which was what was in my case, or how your friends do, or you just spend, spend, spend, and you develop all these myths around money and how to deal with it. I never will forget, one of my first clients came to me and she had over $100,000 in student loan debt. And she said that the way she dealt with bills was when the bill came in, if she had the money, she'd open it and try to pay it. If she didn't, she just threw it over to the side, you know, unopened, just threw it open, open to the side. And she said, that's because I saw that's how my mother did. You know, if I don't have the money, why am I going to open it? It's just going to make me depressed. Right, right.

So it was. So you deal with all those little things that we have learned that make things worse instead of better, but we've incorporated it into our financial thinking. So you have to break that down. You know, people who are might be religious, they'll say, well, you know, money is the Root of all evil. Well, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says the love of money is the root of all evil. So we get under that and then we also have to deal with the social media part of this too. The fact that you can create any kind of image you want on social media and it not be the truth.

So it's facing the truth around your social media image. So we do a lot of that. At first. That whole session is just about mindset.

And if you don't break down some of those myths, you don't get underneath that and try to help people understand what's myth, what's real, image versus reality. It makes all the work after that really less, less effective. Right. So if you don't change the mindset, even if you know what a 401k is, you're still not going to take advantage of it the way that you should be. Right. If you don't change that.

Exactly right.

And the social media and the comparison is something that really gets me. Especially today I was reading a book, the Soul of Wealth by Daniel Crosby. I don't know if. Have you read that? So yesterday actually I got to the chapter about, or the essay about social comparison, and there was a stat in there that the top five social media accounts by followers have an average net worth of $400 million. And these are the people that we compare ourselves to right online. And it's, it's important for people to understand that what you're seeing online is number one. Those aren't your peers. And the people that have it all together, that are buying new cars and showing you the fancy houses, that is not reality, that is filtered and, and staged and, and you got to focus on what you can control and moving yourself forward on your own path.

So, yes, and one of the things we stress is everybody's at a different point in their financial journey. And so you need to have a plan that fits you. And as you said, stop comparing, comparing yourself to somebody who created an image. Even if you could look behind the screen, they probably be in debt up to the Wahazoo. You know what I mean? But so it's, it's living the life you want to live. And that first, that first session is all about, we call it visioning the life you want to live and how you want to get there. And we also teach that you can have anything you want. You just have to plan for it.

You know, you just have to have a plan to deal with it. And then we go from there to the basics is what you talked about. Budgeting, emergency fund, all the stuff that you can really get online if you, you know. But we put it in the context of your life, and that's the difference. It's not you reading something. I heard just this morning that most of the. What are they, the X generation or whatever the is, they get their financial advice from TikTok. And it goes back to what you were saying.

People creating an image that you don't know whether it's true or not.

Yeah. So this.

Go ahead, go ahead. I'm sorry.

No, you go. Sorry.

Oh, I. I was just gonna say then the third session is all about credit, because it's called let's Talk Credit. Because the credit industry has done a very good job of showing, telling you the importance of your credit score. In fact, when I go into a workshop, I'll say, how many people know their credit score? 99% of the people will raise their hand and said, I know my credit score. But then you say, do you know what it means? Do you know how it impacts your life? Then you don't get the same level of understanding on that. And we even go. What sets us apart is we even go to what the lender looks for. And I make the analogy all the time.

If you're a friend of mine and I borrow 100 and you borrow $100 from me and tell me you're going to pay it back next Friday and you don't pay it back, how does that make. How you think I'm going to feel about that?

Right?

And everybody says, oh, I know you'll be mad. I know you. Same thing with the credit. When you get credit from somebody, you are promising to pay them back, right? And so you need to, you know, so you break it down in terms that people can understand, and then it's like, oh, okay, yeah, I understand that now, you know, yeah, But. And then the honorable thing to do, if you owe me a hundred dollars and you can't pay me on Friday, the honorable thing to do is for you to come to me and say, I can't pay you, but here's what I can do, and I'll pay you. Same thing with a credit, with the creditor. It's the word. And you can negotiate those things.

So we try to teach people that they can do that. And then the other part of it is we talk about what the lender looks for. So after that session, you could pretty much say whether I'll get the application, whether the bank or lender will approve it. Approve It. Because you know what the criteria is for.

Yeah. You understand those qualifications? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something that you said that I think is really, really important about the work that you do is not only educating, helping people with that mindset, but these types of programs to help support people, hold people accountable, help people apply it to their own lives, where they are in their journey. And there is so much information out there, so people don't need you or me to give them access to this type of information. But I think what's so valuable about what you do is the support and accountability and the one on one coaching that comes with some of your programs to, to really help people apply what's online and this information that they otherwise have access to, but actually apply, get something done in their own lives. I think a lot of people are floating around on TikTok or wherever they get the information they. And even if they have access to good information, they don't know what to do with it.

Right, exactly.

Working with somebody like you in one of these programs can be invaluable to just actually get people to apply what they, this information to their own lives. Which I think is, is one of the wonderful things about these coaching programs and literacy programs that, that companies like yours put out there.

Yeah. Is it interesting? You know, so you've had, how long have you had a relationship with your financial advisor that you met way back when at, at IBM?

It's amazing that. That you're. You're doing that. Is it rewarding for you to be able to. To give back like that? Just like this financial advisor changed, changed your life.

How do you feel it is that. That's the. That's the beauty of it. The fact that you can see people's lives change for the better because of something you shared, you know, with them so long ago. And I made it a point that this is an interesting story. I have one son, right? And he said to me one day, he had to be in his 30s, something like that. He said to me, he said, mom, you know, you taught me a lot of things. He said, but you never taught me about money.

It was like I got a gut. It was like a kick in the gut. And, you know, and I started thinking about it and I said, well, no, because I was too busy giving you stuff, you know, to stop. To stop to do it. But the next time around, we ended up. My husband and I ended up having to raise his brother's son, and we got him when he was 10. And you best believe I taught this to Dude. Everything I knew about money.

He had a bank account, he had a side business. He had all this. And then guess what he taught me about crypto. Yeah. So, you know, I guess I say that to say, you know, while you're teaching all these other people, don't forget that there are people in your house that you.

Yeah.

That need that knowledge, too. Yeah. So, yeah, it's the most rewarding part of the whole job. Yeah.

That's great. So I hope that people listening, if you're an employee, to look around at the resources that you might have that your employer is sponsoring and putting out there. Irma's example of working with a financial planner that IBM offered to her over 30 years ago that changed their lives. Onyx Rising, putting together these literacy programs. There's resources out there. There's people that can help you if you're curious and you're motivated and you ask those questions. I hope that's a takeaway for people listening, for employers. Do you have any other thoughts about that? You talked about that engagement, that loyalty, these people that you're changing their lives financially.

What's the benefit to the employer of bringing in a program like this to their business, their bottom line, their Culture. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, there, there are a lot of benefits. We actually have an employer's guide for free on our website site, which is Onyx, the number two Rise.com that talks about the money mindset and then the employer, what you gain if you bring such a program to your company. There are also tax benefits, you know, on your 401k, that's pre tax. If you got more people going in that's less, you pay out. And so there are some tax benefits to it. There are cultural benefits to it to it. There. One antidote I'll tell you is we did a series, the series for a charter school educators and there had to be about 70 plus people in the class that morning.

And the founder of the class said to me, she said, I don't understand why people don't take advantage of the 403B match that we give all the time. She says, she says hardly anybody takes, takes advantage of it. After the very first class, she came back to me and she said, you know, I had a 37% increase in the number of people signing up for the 403B program. And she said, and even after we finished, it was even more, you know, because they understood that connection. Right, right. And so that, you know that that is a big benefit to, to companies, to say nothing of how it changed their culture. I mean, you can probably tell for me that you can't say anything bad about IBM to me. Right.

That was 30 years ago that I worked with.

I'm even looking at your certification over your shoulder. You've even got it hanging on the wall in your background still.

Yeah. So there's just so many benefits. And the other part of it is the employee understands better profit and loss and the business component of profit and loss and why you can't do certain things and all that. So the more educated your, your employees are, the better employee, the better to your company. I think is, is is an easy way to say it. There's nothing but positives to financial wellness programs. Nothing but. And they don't cost this much either.

They don't cost that much to implement.

Yeah, yeah, it's good all around for everybody involved. So again, I think a big takeaway in talking with you is if you're an employee or if you're an individual with an employer to look around, what are the benefits that are currently offered? If you're a business and you're not offering a wellness program, financial wellness or literacy program, reach out to Onyx Rising or Irma or, or anybody else. Let's just lift, lift people up by educating everybody and, and we're all going to be better off for it. So anything else, Irma, you'd like to let us know about related to the programs? You have any workshops coming up? Is there anything else we should let people, make people aware of before we let you go?

Well, yeah, we're open to doing workshops all the time. We do it for companies. The company pays our fee for doing the workshops or bringing them in. We do small groups with people whose credit is compromised, shall we say, and they need some individual help in getting their credit on track. We don't sell any financial products. We are not affiliated with any financial group we do that on.

So it's not a funnel. At the end of the program.

We educate, we try to change lives through education. We do great follow up once you deal with us. And so it's all about just making life better for people who have not had the chance or the opportunity to learn how money works. And, and if, and some of them will be like you and me, they'll love it and they'll just keep on learning and then they'll teach somebody else and it's just good all the way around.

Yeah, absolutely. The. Mention the website one more time.

It's onyx2rising.com onyx2rise onyx the number2rise.com and we've got our money mindset quiz on there where you can see if you're holding any of those myths about money that may be inhibiting your financial success. And there's a guide on there for employers who want to bring the program to their business. And we, we do all types, all businesses. We, we do small business. And of course our passion is to help the minority communities, underserved and people of color, you know, because we don't have access to that information all the time like others do. But the one thing about money, it, it'll work for anybody. It doesn't care what color you are.

It won't discriminate. Right. If you understand it.

Yeah, that's right. If you understand it, you can make it work, you know.

Amazing. Yeah, that's an awesome way to kind of wrap up our conversation. Irma, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I think the work that you guys are doing at Onyx is, is amazing. I encourage people out there to check out onyx2rise.com Take that mindset quiz. That is a good activity for anybody that's interested in figuring out if they have some of These, These mindset myths and beliefs about money. One last couple of questions before we let you go that I try to talk to everybody about or ask everyone. This is a show about financial well being.

So when you hear that term, financial well being, or having a sense of financial well being, what does that mean to you? Does anything come to mind when you think about that term?

Yeah, when I think of financial well being, I think of freedom. I think it's the freedom to. To move the way you want to. To have the things that make you happy, to make the memories that make life worthwhile. Right. So we live in a big, beautiful country, a big beautiful world. You know, financial wellness allows you to experience all these different things. The different cultures, different, different countries, different, different.

I mean, even in the US we just live in a beautiful place. And financial wellness allows you to do that. It also is a hedge against the bad things that happen. You know, the. I tell the story that my husband was killed in a car accident.

Sorry to hear that.

He and we were married for 47 years before he. He passed. But the. The fact that I had. That we were in a financially well situation when he passed allowed me to keep on living and not having to sell the house or the car or anything to. To get through it. And that's such a huge, huge relief. Huge burden.

Get out of here.

Is actually sitting in, I mean, my dining room. Actually sitting in my dining room. And I say, okay, who would have ever thought that that was one of the things I had to guard against financially was a car showing up in my house. But because we had made the preparation, ended up getting the house rebuilt. The front of the house had to be rebuilt. It got rebuilt better than it was before. I like it better now than it was before. And my out of pocket was.

Ended up being nothing after I got restitution from the person who ran into the house. Yeah.

So a little unexpected remodeling that you were happy with at the end. Yeah, at the end.

Right. It's just we never know what life's going to throw at us.

Right.

You know, we just don't know. Right.

Well, I love what you shared about freedom, you know, protection against those risks that happen. You know, we're not just talking about what is a 401k. We're talking about freedom and flexibility and security and, you know, big, big, you know, things that, that encompass this idea of financial well being. And again, I think your, your literacy programs and the work that you do go a long way to help people down that road and on that path. So, Irma, Neal, it's always a pleasure to see you and talk with you and, and we really appreciate your time.

All right. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. You are my favorite people.

Oh, well, thank you for saying that. And everybody, if you listen to the show and you enjoyed what you heard, you can head over to modern financial wellness.com where you'll see this episode. We'll have links to Onyx Rising and some of the questionnaires or the Money mindset quiz and things like that at your fingertips. And don't forget to like and subscribe and do all that fun stuff. And we appreciate you and we'll talk to you next time. Thanks again. Thanks again for listening to this episode. A quick note, although I do hope that the information that we talked about was helpful, in no way is anything discussed on the podcast to be taken as specific financial advice.

Please consult your own advisors and do your own research when you're making important financial decisions.