One thing I learned while navigating life is things are happening right under your nose and you can be clueless if you not paying close attention. I know people who got rid of their apartment rent and purchased a camper RV because they cannot afford rising rent and cashed out their 401k. I know people who right now took on Amazon delivery and Uber Eats as a second job to afford the current inflation we are in.

It’s getting edgy out here and a lot of people are simply not prepared. A lot of the issues going on such as inflation, crime, homeless, and shooting at gas stations can all be traced to folks slipping and not being prepared. Even further, I would say a lot of it had a lot to do with an entitlement mentality in America that nothing will change and folks can just maintain their current status quo.

The biggest threat and concern I’m seeing is the Federal Reserve is being encouraged to repeat Paul Volcker's high-interest rate hikes to reduce inflation. What Paul Volcker did in the 1980s raising interest rates so high is he destroyed Black communities and drove a lot of Black and brown people into marginalization. This is that “Reagan years” that many people will tell you about how bad the Black community was. This is a situation we are monitoring and is a very serious situation.

But then we see job listings and paying $140,000 for someone who knows Jenkins, free software you can go to jenkins.io website right now and download to your computer to learn off YouTube. See, the problem in the world today is we have folks not willing to put in the work necessary to get from a to b. They rather have emotional opinions and viewpoints and type online their feelings than to figure out how to put food on their tables and their kids' table after they are gone. These high-paying jobs are going to go to folks who figure out what the world is demanding.

I have reached a crossroad where I’m realizing my people, my community isn’t worth it and they are not going to make it. It will be Black people who want better for themselves that will go out and get theirs. But the Black community at large – me and you are seeing firsthand the cultural and community deterioration going on in real-time. This is why I’m telling folks they have to think for themselves now and think strategically about how to move in our current times.

With the current recession looming which is what the Federal Reserve thinks is needed to lower inflation, need you to consider the following – some of these are repeat information I posted.

Create a Food Reserve. Learn to live off your food reserve for 2-weeks without having to take a trip to the grocery store. Frozen vegetables, cut up meat that is vacuum-sealed and frozen, canned fish, oatmeal, and peanut butter – avoid the carb-heavy stuff like rice and focus on complex carbs like canned beans. This will help you avoid grocery shopping dependency and save a lot of time that you can spend instead of putting in work.

Look at Content Economy. Learn to write e-books, create podcasts, create videos, and run a social media feed to attract buyers, subscribers, and advertisers. This is a big opportunity field the media won’t tell you about because they consider you a threat to their mass media programming. User-generated content is destroying mass media programming and making sizable money and attracting more consumers and this is the way to supplement your income.

Get a high-demand, high-paying job. Cloud computing, alternative energy solutions, DevOps engineer, pop-up retailer, e-commerce consultant – it’s plenty of new industries and new opportunities that involve digital transformation that you can find a nice job and be part of. Learn these industries, learn the lingo, watch YouTube videos and get that high-paying data center job.

3-Month 3% T-Bills from Treasury Direct. This is how the majority of people become wealthy – they leverage compound interest. Stocks are risky as well as crypto. But with Federal Reserve increasing the interest rate, 3% and 4% or better means you should now consider compound interest as your strategy. For every $1,000 you purchase a treasury bill, that is $30. Ok, you think that is chump change but if you did $3,000, you get $90 after 90 days. Then you throw in another $10 and buy one more T-bill and you made $3 off the $10 using your existing money – 30%. That is compound interest and how it works. It starts slow but the percentage rate of return starts to compound. This is the market now for this type of savings. Treasury Direct is the Department of Treasury website you can research yourself.

Drop Your Friends, Relationships with Expensive Habits. These are the ones that always want to go out to a nice restaurant and eat, think hanging out at Starbucks is below them, and want you to finance a Range Rover instead of taking Uber. Look, there is a time to floss and there is a time to conserve, and the real money out here knows how to do both. You got to know when it’s time to be lean and when it’s time to YOLO, this is the time to be lean. If you got people right now still trying to luxury when we got punks carjacking, mugging folks, and breaking into homes, then you need to let them go. You need the same folks who know how to be cheap when it’s time to be cheap and spend big when it’s time to spend big – that’s the real ones you need to be around.

In this current situation we in now, folks who don’t got it together going to find themselves a gig economy wage-slave, living check-to-check doing routine, thankless work at a warehouse, or filling up someone else grocery cart. They got folks out here doing service-related jobs from a mobile phone and got them thinking they are self-employed entrepreneurs. But those who learn tech skills, get into the content economy are the ones that going to be flying between Dubai and Las Vegas to enjoy their fun in the sun and owning multiple passports and multiple homes, and taking advantage of the US government's 3%-5% interest rate because now they can buy things in Euro or the Yen at a lower cost.

With that said, you should realize that there is a diverging storm brewing here with me. I’m not going to pay attention to folks who got caught up in the Tariq Nasheed or Cynthia G or Jason Black or Boyce Watkins nonsense where they are in a comment section typing LOL to a grown Black dude. I’m paying attention to the folks I know in Dubai I met, the folks doing things in Tokyo, Lisbon, or Mexico City right now – I don’t got time for clowns anymore. Besides I’m meeting some fine sistas in these new circles around the world knowing how to navigate the global economy, this brotha ain’t checking the ghetto chicks who doubted my dreams and my hustle.

It's going to be rough and you have to sit down and establish your roadmap on how to move in this current environment. No more quick scam hustles like PPP loans, jobs are going to have a layoff, all these Black-owned restaurants in Dallas and Atlanta is not going to last with high-interest loans, the VCs told these sellout cornball Black-in-tech their funding is going to dry up – you see things ain’t looking good for certain folks out here.

Put the focus on yourself and your future legacy because this is that moment in history where people make smart moves in a down economy and come out big on top.