Some of the smartest people I know have pulled me aside, a little embarrassed, to ask a question they felt they should already know the answer to. What exactly is a stock? I’ve heard it from a young person in my own extended family and from celebrities who trusted me enough to be vulnerable. None of them are dumb. Nobody ever taught them, and our schools stopped teaching it a long time ago.

So this bonus episode is a crash course in the vocabulary of money, with no shame and no jargon. Income, expenses, assets, liabilities, credit, interest, compound interest, stocks, bonds, net worth, diversification. I give each one a plain definition, then connect it to a mindset shift, because a word only changes your life once you understand what it asks of you. An asset, for example, is something you own that makes you money. Your assets should work harder than you do.

You can’t win a game if you don’t know the rules, and you can’t know the rules if you don’t speak the language. That is why I call financial literacy the civil rights issue of this generation. Civil rights protected us in the streets. Silver rights open doors in the suites. Learning these words is where that journey starts, and I close with a few simple habits you can begin this month.

Money is a language, and wealth is fluency. Play this one on your commute, share it in the barbershop or the group chat, and send it to someone who never got the playbook. Once you can speak it, you can negotiate with it.

🎧 Listen now — wherever you get your podcasts, or simply click below.

Prefer to watch? The full episode is on YouTube.