in the latest round of news seemingly designed to show the entire world how much it must suck to be a black american, researchers at the insight center for community economic development released a report last week showing that the median wealth for a single black woman is five dollars.

yup. you read that correctly. five bucks

“It’s rather shocking,” said Meizhu Lui, director of the Closing the Gap Initiative based in Oakland, Calif., who contributed to the report “Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America’s Future.”

“Even for those of us who have been looking at the wealth gap for a while, we were shocked and amazed at how little women of color have.”

although the story is somewhat sensationalistic —the intentionally shocking title (“study finds median wealth for single black women at $5“) paints a much bleaker picture than the actual study suggests— the results are still troubling.

even for those of us lucky enough to have degrees and decent incomes, our (and i’m saying “our” because i’m sure any study focusing on single black men would produce similar results) collective lack of wealth and appreciating assets basically ensures that any financial adversity will be accompanied by a cushion-less fall.

obviously, there are myriad political, social, racial, and economic reasons why our wealth game is stuck on “n*gga, please!”, and many of these factors are somewhat out of our control.

but, there is something completely in our control that we refuse to do, something that can help us stem the asset-less tide, something so undoubtedly advantageous and beneficial to our financial future that us not doing it borders on insanity…even if our pride tells us otherwise:

live at home

***pausing to give everyone a chance to gasp and suck their teeth after reading those three words***

you see, because most of us have had “conceive, believe, achieve, and then f*cking leave” embbeded in our heads since birth, the idea of living with your parents while grown is the complete antithesis to our (and, to be honest, many of our parents) idea of adulthood.

sh*t, i can almost imagine the “wait. there’s no way in freakin hell my masters degree ass is moving back in with my momma” face many of you are making at your monitors right now, women especially. just reading the mere suggestion that a grown-ass educated man stay at home is enough to dry more black women’s panties than maytag.

thing is, once you remove pride and the whole “living at home” stigma from the equation, you start to realize that swallowing your pride and staying with your parents for your first few working years can make much more of a positive long-term impact on you and your family’s future than you probably think.

this is where i wish i could go back in time and somehow convince marsellus wallace to give us all a pep talk when we were first thinking about leaving the crib:

“If you decide to keep living with your parents, you might feel a slight sting. That’s pride fuckin’ with you. Fuck pride! Pride only hurts, it never helps. You fight through that shit. ‘Cause four years from now, when you’re kicking it in your own crib and not some 600 square foot box you’re still wasting 1,200 bucks a month on, you gonna say to yourself, “Marcellus Wallace was right.”

seriously, though. think about how much more financially comfortable you’d be right now if you bit the bullet and stayed home for a year or two after you landed your first “real” job, and how much easier it would be to buy a house now. imagine how much more of a retirement cushion your parents would have if you were around for a couple years to help them manage their bills and expenses.

and, as much as i hate to say “white people do it” when making a point, well, generally speaking…white people do it.

there are a few reasons why most of the 28-35 year old, 35-50,000 a year white teachers, social workers, and policeman i know are homeowners with actual assets while the majority of the 50-75,000 a year advanced degreed negroes i know are currently worth less than a five dollar foot long sub, and one of them is the fact that if they (and by “they” i mean most non-black people. hispanics, asians, etc all do this as well) happen to be living in the same city as their parents, they usually don’t leave home until they’re either married, co-habitating, or able to comfortably finance a house.

i guess they all saw pulp fiction.

anyway, considering the aforementioned wealth and asset info, do you think living at home (until you’re financially ready) is a good idea, or do you think it’s still definitely a stigma-worthy and growth-stifling concept? also, would you date someone who’s made this decision?

—the champ