💸 Have You Seen Sinners? 💸

🔍 In this Issue

• I Need Your Input

• How to Get the Best Credit Score

• Sinners Spoilers

• My Final Two Cents

• Celebrating You

Need to catch up? Read our latest issues here.

New Products Announcement

🚀 I’m Launching a Guided Workbook!

Many of you found me via my Business Insider interview, which was originally posted on LinkedIn. Since that interview went live, so many of you have had questions not just about how I manage my money, but also how I’ve managed my career. In response, I’ve decided to launch a guided workbook! This workbook will dive deeper into how I went from $40,000 to $200,000+ in total comp. It’ll also be packed with resources to help you along your career and money journey. To ensure I can make this resource as accessible to as many of you as possible, I need your input. Please complete this 1-question survey and stick around the Ed. Opal newsletter for progress and launch updates.

This Week’s Money News

👛 Wallet Watch

• 🟤 Have you designated beneficiaries on your accounts? Here’s why it’s so important

• 🟤 The credit score that gets you the best rates, and how to reach it

• 🟤 How Essence Fest is creating a $1 billion economic impact in Black communities

Have You Seen Sinners?

💸 Sinner Spoilers Ahead

I’m going to be honest: I’m not a fan of horror movies. I don’t even like gore. So when the trailers for Sinners first started circulating, I hesitated to see the film. However, as a southerner with deep ties to the Black, rural south, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see the Black south put on display in a way that didn’t center slavery. I put my big girl drawers on, bought my ticket, and headed to the theatre.

I don’t want to give too many spoilers here, but I can give you my immediate takeaways after watching the film:

1) Ryan Coogler has done it again

2) I gotta write a newsletter about this

When Smoke and Stack decided to open up a Juke Joint in the Mississippi Delta, I had my reservations. Buying from a white man in that era seemed like a total setup (and it was), but I was so excited and heartened at the ambition to create a safe haven for Black folks - a type of freedom that the twins had traveled the world attempting to find. I found their attempt to come back home and build freedom brave and incredibly determined. They had no trouble finding patrons. Folks poured into the Juke Joint and readily spent money. There was one problem, though: the patrons were spending what Smoke referred to as ‘plantation money’. But what was the problem with plantation money, and why was Smoke so irate at Stack and Annie for accepting it at the bar?

💰 What Was Plantation Money?
After the Civil War, many plantation owners, especially in the South, began paying Black sharecroppers and laborers in scrip or tokens rather than legal U.S. currency. Plantation money earned through sharecropping and mining could only be spent at plantation company stores and shops, not in the broader economy. This currency was deeply racialized and rooted in preserving white economic control post-Emancipation.

How Plantation Money Harmed Black Americans
Plantation money kept Black Americans in the cycle of enslavement. Without appropriate legal tender, Black folks were locked into living, buying, and working on the plantations. Historians’ summarization paraphrased from firsthand accounts in the WPA Slave Narratives and historical analyses by Tera W. Hunter and Edward E. Baptist recalled: “You worked for them, you lived in their house, and you could only buy from their store. You never really left the plantation.”

Here are the three main ways plantation money harmed the Black community.  

1️⃣ Plantation Money Prevented Financial Independence

• Because they often weren’t paid in real money, sharecroppers couldn’t save real money, build credit, or buy land.

• Since plantation money (also known as ‘scrip’ or ‘notes’) wasn’t legal tender, Black families couldn’t accumulate wealth, invest, or pass anything of value on to the next generation.

• Black women, especially, who often managed household purchases, were trapped in a closed system with inflated prices and zero bargaining power. In a time before women could legally gain access to banking or credit without male representation, Black women were doubly trapped.

2️⃣ Plantation Money Created a Closed Economic Loop of Exploitation

• Scrip was only accepted at the plantation store, where prices were often double or triple fair market value.

• This meant Black families were frequently forced into perpetual debt, borrowing against future wages to eat or buy necessities.

3️⃣ Plantation Money Reproduced the Conditions of Slavery

• Slavery legally ended after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, but plantation money was one way of ensuring that economic control remained intact for white men.

• For Black women, who were often denied other employment or education, this meant continuing subjugation without even the legal rights that came with real wages.

• Unlike white laborers in similar systems, Black women faced added layers of racial and gendered violence and had fewer avenues of legal recourse (remember - plantation money wasn’t even a legally recognized tender).

Given all of this, you can see why Smoke was frustrated with the plantation money payment. Without real currency, the twins wouldn’t have enough to keep the Juke Joint running (which Smoke calculated).

The setting and time of Sinners could easily lead one to assume that plantation money was a thing of a long-gone past. The truth is, plantation money remained in circulation into the 1950s. The passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 set a pivotal tone for the gradual ending of this exploitative system. It took over a decade for plantation money to fall out of circulation entirely. Even still, the fall of plantation money meant the rise of predatory lending, banking, and other anti-Black operations focused on limited Black economic mobility.

Vocab, Mindfulness, and Quick Facts

💰 My Final Two Cents

💬 Money Vocabulary:
Debt: Debt is used by many individuals and companies to make large purchases that they could not afford under other circumstances. Unless the lender forgives a debt, it must be paid back, typically with added interest. Read more here.

🧘🏾‍♀️ Mindful Money Prompt:
Have you revisited your money goals for this year? Which goals have you already achieved? Which ones are on track? How will you celebrate your progress so far?

📠 Money Quick Fact:
Credit scores are relatively new to financial systems. The first official credit reporting agency began in 1841. Here’s a brief history of credit scores.

Celebration Syndicate

🎉 Celebrating You

Did you get a higher-paying job, pay off a credit card, or meet a savings goal? No matter what your money accomplishment is, we want to celebrate you! Share your money wins here for a chance to have them featured in future newsletters and on Ed. Opal socials!