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- Shirley Brooks is the co-founder of Modern Blk Girl, a platform dedicated to wealth building for women of color.
- According to her, people often ask where to start investing and how much money to start with.
- Brooks says the first step is always to learn. Understanding more can help you deal with your fears.
- Start investing with one of the best investment apps for beginners »
When Shirley Brooks was in high school, a friend opened her computer and displayed a five-figure portfolio. “He was investing money from Bar Mitzvah. That was my introduction to investing,” Brooks told Insider.
Brooks, now 26, modern BLK girl, a digital platform dedicated to building wealth for women of color. Launched last year with her business partner Tiffany James, Modern Blk Girl’s mission is to close gender investing and the racial wealth divide, bringing half a million women of color to the stock market.
“Our goal is to encourage young people to invest and get them in the mindset, to save for their first car or for college. We want them to be ahead of the curve during their formative years,” Brooks said.
She says they are working to change this situation underrepresentation of black women in the stock market. Modern Blk Girl is an educational community that offers classes on investing. Free Teen University is her four-week accelerated financial literacy program for young women ages 14 to 19, teaching them how to invest in and operate the stock market. Each student will receive a $500 cash wallet to get her started. At the end of the year, two of her will be selected to receive her $10,000 grant to college. Every other month she selects 10 young people to participate in the program.
Modern Blk Girl has grown community members to over 150,000 and helped women of color make over $3.5 million in the stock market.
She shares some of the questions that continue to be asked by members of the community and what she has told them and women who are afraid to start investing.
Two questions she frequently asks about investing
One of the most frequently asked questions from the MBG community is “where do I start?”. Brooks says.
what is her answer? “Look around. What phones do they use? What cars do they drive? What video games do their kids play? Invest in companies you know.”
“We quickly buy expensive purses or spend money on vacations,” continues Brooks. “But we have to have an ownership mindset, not a spending mindset. Okay, if you buy a bag, if you also own stock in the company that made that bag, you’re rewarded for that purchase. There’s stock associated with everything in your life.”
Another common question is, “How much money should I start with?” Brooks says there is no standard answer to this. It really depends on the person’s financial situation. “You can start with as little as a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. I recommend using simulated trading before investing,” she says.
The first step to successful investing is learning as much as you can
Many MBG members are first-time investors, and investing wasn’t on the table when they were kids. Brooks gets it. She herself felt uneasy at first. “It was when she was investing her summer camp money in high school, but when she started working, it was a different story,” she says.
She tells those in fear that education is the best antidote to fear. She said, “Doing research and working on her work gives her confidence.” That’s how she overcame her own fears. “The Internet was my best friend,” she said, turning to sources like Yahoo, The Wall Street Journal, and CNBC.
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She also understands that investing is not a short-term play. “Patience pays off,” she said. “People mistakenly think that investing and trading will make them successful overnight. But it’s like going to school and thinking once you’ve taken a class, you’ve mastered the subject.”
Learning, she says, helps us make sense of a complex world. “Big words can lead to confusion. Industry insiders need to be able to translate concepts in a way that people can understand when teaching about the stock market. That’s why we set out. We break things down,” Brooks says.
And she added that discipline is key to successful investing. “Don’t get emotional. Working in the stock market requires emotional discipline. If you have a bad day, you may be disappointed in the short term, but in the long run it’s just one bad day.”
When she started working, there was no community that MBG provided. “We’re a family. We joke around. We’re not just about finances. This community is about spirituality and wellness. It’s a safe place to learn and share,” says Brooks.
Changing the way people think about money and investments isn’t easy, but Brooks never tires of doing good. “We remember the big picture,” she says, calling MBG’s work a blessing. “There is a purpose in what we do. There is a movement to close the gap between rich and poor between races and generations. Educating our communities will be our legacy.”
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This article was originally published in May 2022.