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Dad who grew up poor perfectly explains why it’s so hard to shake the poverty mindset

Even when you're doing well, the mindset never seems to go away.

via Blake Kasemeier, used with permission.

Blake Kasemeier and his children.

A video created by Blake Kasemeier has made a lot of people feel seen because it perfectly explains the mindset people develop when they grow up poor. But it’s not just about remembering the hard times of the past. It describes how even though Kasemeier has overcome poverty as an adult, the effects of growing up financially disadvantaged still follow him to this day.

Kasemeier tells stories on social media about parenting, grief, growing up and where they sometimes collide. He documented the loss of his mom in the 2019 podcast series “Good Grief” and has written for some of the world’s leading health and fitness brands.

The video begins with Kasemeier admitting that when he was young, he'd always save half of his food until he got home "just in case." It was a symptom of living in a financially unstable family with a single mother who had him at 23 years old. To help them get by, she occasionally wrote "hot checks" at the grocery store and blasted a Counting Crows tape to cover up any scary sounds coming out of the car.

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via Wikimedia Commons and Goalsetter

America's ethnic wealth gap is a multi-faceted problem that would take dramatic action, on multiple fronts, to overcome. One of the ways to help communities improve their economic well-being is through financial literacy.

Investopedia says there are five primary sources of financial education—families, high school, college, employers, and the military — and that education and household income are two of the biggest factors in predicting whether someone has a high level of financial literacy.

New Orleans Saints safety, two-time Super Bowl Champion, and social justice activist Malcolm Jenkins and The Malcolm Jenkins Foundation hope to help bridge the wealth gap by teaching students about investing at a young age.

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5 ways financial literacy could make your relationship better than ever.

Aside from politics and religion, what is more polarizing than money?

A 2013 survey found that money is the #1 cause of stress in a relationship.

More so than in-laws or whose turn it is to do the dishes. In fact, arguing about money is easily the top predictor of divorce. Yipes.

But, a deeper understanding of how money works can affect our lives in many surprising ways.

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It's not uncommon to hear about the financial struggles of former NFL players who, in spite of multimillion-dollar deals, are now living paycheck to paycheck.

It's easy to judge them, but that's ignoring a very real truth: Financial literacy is a privilege often afforded to the already wealthy, not the newly wealthy.

As Justin Tuck, retired Giants defensive end, told Reuters, "Look at the average NFL roster, and most players come from low-income families. They go from being 18-year-old kids with nothing to being 21-year-olds with millions of dollars. ... They get all this money all of a sudden, and they just don't know how to handle it."

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