The Financial Conversation I Wish Someone Had With Me at 25

In Jamaica, we grew up on the Bible. And the Bible, filtered through the particular lens of how it was taught to us as children, delivered one very clear message about money. It was dangerous. It was corrupting. The love of it was evil. Rich people were suspect. Wanting too much of it was a character flaw. So most of us grew up with a complicated, half-conscious shame around money that we carried into adulthood without ever examining it.

What We Were Taught and What It Cost Us

The verse is First Timothy 6:10. The love of money is the root of all evil. But what most of us heard, stripped of context and nuance, was simpler than that. Money is bad. Do not want too much. Be grateful for what you have. Trust God and do not be greedy.

There is wisdom in that teaching. There is also a gap. Because the world does not run on gratitude alone. Rent is due. School fees are real. Medical bills do not disappear because you have faith. And if nobody teaches you how to build a relationship with money that is healthy and functional, you end up in one of two places. Either you chase it desperately because you were taught to fear not having it, or you avoid it spiritually because you were taught that wanting it makes you less righteous. Neither serves you.

At 25 I was somewhere in between. Working hard, spending freely, saving nothing, making no plan. Not because I was irresponsible by nature. Because nobody had ever sat me down and said, here is how money actually works, here is how to make it work for you, here is the difference between using money and letting money use you.

The Lie I Believed the Longest

The biggest financial lie I carried was this: if I work hard enough, things will work out. Hustle was the strategy. More hours, more effort, more grinding. And for a while it felt like it was working because the money was coming in.

What I did not understand was that income without intention is just a faster way to arrive at the same place. You can earn well and still end up broke. You can work your whole life and leave nothing behind. The missing piece was not effort. It was architecture. A plan for what the money was supposed to do.

Nobody taught me about compound interest. Nobody explained assets versus liabilities in plain language. Nobody told me that the goal was not to make money but to build a system where money made money while I slept. Those conversations did not happen at my dinner table, my church, or my school. So I had to find them on my own, much later than I should have.

What I Want My Kids to Know

I am not raising my children to chase money. I am raising them to understand it. There is a significant difference.

Chasing money is a fear response. You run after it because some part of you believes that if you stop running it will disappear. People who chase money spend their whole lives exhausted and still somehow feel like they never have enough.

Understanding money is a power position. You know what it is, what it does, what it cannot do. You use it as a tool with intention. You do not make it the measure of your worth or the source of your peace. You seek happiness first, build purpose first, and let financial abundance follow the clarity of knowing what you actually want your life to look like.

Money is not evil. The love of money above everything else, above people, above integrity, above your own soul, that is where the danger lives. But money itself is neutral. It is paper and metal and digital numbers. What it becomes depends entirely on the hands that hold it and the mind behind those hands.

Jahiem has his Finance degree. Amelia is navigating the world with an International Relations lens. Avi is ten and already asking questions about how things work. I talk to all three of them about money differently than I was talked to. Openly. Practically. Without shame. Because the conversation I never had at 25 is the one I am determined to give them while they are still young enough for it to change everything.

"Too many people spend money they have not earned to buy things they do not want to impress people they do not like."

Will Rogers