Latinx Community: Building Wealth | Access & Opportunity – Morgan Stanley
Rita Soledad: Growing up, I didn’t think that someone with my background growing up in a neighborhood like my neighborhood could ever build wealth.
Beatriz Acevedo: We want to meet you at whatever stage of your financial journey. And we made it very accessible to feel like you belong in the money conversation.
Carla Harris: Welcome to Access and Opportunity, I’m your host Carla Harris and I’ve got some exciting news to share with you. Through the years we’ve told the stories of entrepreneurs, investors and change agents working to reframe the narrative and help close the funding gap for businesses led by women and people of color.
And now, we want to take it a step further. We know that the topics we’re tackling are big; they impact how we approach business, economics, policymaking and social issues. That’s why, moving forward, we’re expanding the conversation. Through the stories of individuals working to make change within their communities, we’ll provide our listeners with context about how we got here and share tangible examples of how ideas around access and opportunity are being made real every day.
So, if that all sounds good to you, stay with me — or come on and join me for the ride.
On today’s episode, we’ll take a closer look at the wealth gap through the eyes of two Latinas working to educate and empower their communities. As we know, building wealth is the cornerstone of financial planning, however it’s much harder to do when you’re at a disadvantage from the start.
This racial wealth gap has only grown over the last half century with White families seeing dramatic increases. So today we’ll speak to entrepreneur Beatriz Acevedo about her journey to spread financial literacy. But first, we’ll hear the story of Rita Soledad, who, at 33 years old, had some big news to share.
Rita Soledad: When I became debt free, I shared it on my Instagram
Carla Harris: Getting rid of debt had been Soledad’s dream for years, but now that the day had come, the reaction she got was not quite what she was expecting.
Rita Soledad: No one in my personal life said, “Congratulations,” or, “Yay!” And so I felt at that moment I must be the only one who had debt. I must be the only one who was in this financial situation.
Rita Soledad: You know, months later, I learned that that wasn’t the case, that really my loved ones also had debt. And if anything, it made them think a little bit …….