CPA and accounting educator Bee Nance talks about the importance of financial literacy, her new book of finance advice for kids, and her role as an accounting educator.
Transcription:
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Dan Hood
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting. Today I'm editor in chief sainthood. You know, financial literacy is one of the crucial underpinnings of financial opportunity but unfortunately, it's in very short supply. And that's a problem for everybody, but especially so for underrepresented groups of all kinds. Now, accountants and CPAs happened to be in a great position to help fight financial illiteracy And it's sort of in their professional interest as well as in the public interest for them to do so.
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Dan Hood
Here to talk about all that, as well as her upcoming book, Sunny Gets Money in particular, and financial education in general. Is Professor B, Nancy. She's a CPA with long experience in both accounting and education. B, thanks for joining us.
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Bee Nance
Yes, thanks for having me.
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Dan Hood
All right. So you have got a fascinating background and you touched on a lot of areas. You've been an educator. You've been incorporated accounting, your CPA, as we mentioned. You're an author. Tell us a little bit about that journey. How do you go from being you start as an artist until you started, you were an intern in the Big Four.
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Dan Hood
You started somewhere before then. And then you go on all this journey. Tell us a little bit about it and how you came to where you are now.
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Bee Nance
Yeah. So it's funny, I was one of those people who went into college and I loved accounting and I, you know, tried my hand at a few different ways and path through accounting at the college that I attended, you know, the Big Four was really pushed. And so I decided to well, I was accepted into an internship with Deloitte.
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Bee Nance
And so I went into that with like an open mind, open heart to receive whatever I could and loved the organization. But it still felt like something was missing work wise. So I kind of went back to the drawing board, so to speak, and tried to look into different pathways and accounting. And that's when I fell in love and found, like the government, the nonprofit side of things.
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Bee Nance
And so after I graduated, that's kind of the path that I took is first with government accounting and, you know, helping out the public housing population in the Charlotte community where I was based at the time. And then from there also like transitioning into other nonprofit work. So what I really found is that like I loved accounting, but I also liked it in the way that it allowed me to like use my accounting as a superpower to help push I a social justice platform or our mission.
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Dan Hood
I think one of the things that's cool about that particular is that for a long time there's been a conception that there's really only one career path in accounting, right? That that you go you work for the big four. You worked for them for a long time. Yeah. They make partner or you decide not to worry or you don't.
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Dan Hood
And then you move on to something else. And, you know, there's been pretty much one career path, but this opens up a ton of others. So you you went into that, that aspect. But then now you've also you have background as an educator. You've been an accounting professor for several years. You've got a YouTube channel which you put out cutting education and now you got this book coming out.
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Dan Hood
And I want to talk more about that. Why do we want to go there? What is Sunny gets money?
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Bee Nance
So Sunny Gets Money is a book about financial literacy. It's taken from the standpoint of like a ten year old, a very, you know, high upper elementary student who is given a gifted some money. And now he's like ready to spend. He's like oflike, let's go spend this money. And it's a conversation between this this child and his grandfather and his grandfather is like, whoa, whoa.
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Bee Nance
Like, we have to you know, there's some things we need to do first. And so the book is is very heavily based on my son, who his nickname is Sunny and he loves money. And so basically, the reason that this came about is just thinking about like, you know, as a rapper, as a black American, my personal experience with like financial literacy and navigating that world of how to use money and make it work for me.
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Bee Nance
But then thinking about like the broader picture of like the community as a whole and all of the things that we've had to overcome from, you know, being torn away from our wealth and you know, when we were brought here and then all of the different things that have happened since then in our community that are unfortunate. But my goal is hopefully to break some of those cycles especially where financial literacy is concerned.
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Dan Hood
Well, you know, financial literacy is huge. Oh, I shouldn't say too terribly. It's a problem for everybody right now. A huge number of people all across the country from all backgrounds are nowhere near as financial as they should be. But as you mentioned, because of some of those those wealth disparities and some of the lack of access to significant wealth generating opportunities, the big one, obviously might be the mortgage market has been an enormous wealth generator for those who have access to it, which not everybody has.
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Dan Hood
So so that the literacy question there becomes even more important, right. If you've got some kind of wealth generation built up, you have a little you can afford to be a little less literate than you might be if you haven't had that chance. To build up that cushion. So it's a particularly important thing, but it's also part of this certainly gets money is also part of an organization you founded called The Rising Sun.
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Dan Hood
Tell us a little bit about that.
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Bee Nance
Yeah. So basically the way that we started this is it was just a book write last year, and April was its financial literacy month. And so during that month on my social platform, I did 30 financial literacy poems in 30 days. And, you know, after that, that was like, huh, there's something here. And so that's where the book idea came from.
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Bee Nance
And then as we started on this self-publishing journey, we realized that, okay, who's going to like, you know, hold this who? I don't want it to be like Binance is launching this book. We wanted to formally organize, and that's where we developed an LLC called The Rising Sun, which is the idea is for it to be a social enterprise that houses all different types of financial literacy products and services.
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Bee Nance
And the book is just the first product and service that we plan plan to launch. And this is a group effort with me, my husband and my son. Actually, my husband is the illustrator and the creator.
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Dan Hood
And our son, he feel about this. Is he aware of his impending fame? Is he?
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Bee Nance
Yes. He's so can it all. He loves it. He loves it. He loves seeing his face. And he was actually the first editor of the book, actually. We left. Yeah. We let him read it. And he offered some really relevant feedback, you know, from a ten year old perspective who is, you know, our audience. And, you know, it was really helpful to have him look at it actually.
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Dan Hood
Now, did he come away saying, all right, now with the contract and I need my 10% of the the sales and he's getting an agent to represent him and tough negotiator. I'm assuming now that I've read the book.
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Bee Nance
I wish I'd I would be so proud if he got to that point but that's that is the goal. The goal is also for him to be the first employee of the organization. So putting all the boxes together and shipping helping with shipping and things like that.
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Dan Hood
Right. Right, right. Well, and one of the things that's interesting about I think you said he's ten, right?
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Bee Nance
Yeah.
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Dan Hood
Yeah, I one of the great points here and he said it's never too early to start this kind of education. I mean, I you know, some people say it's too late. You should have started at five. You should have been reading him the stock tables in the womb kind of thing. But but I mean, there's a certain point of that, right?
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Dan Hood
That that is that this is the kind of habit that hopefully people start learning much, much earlier than they do now. There's a similar parallel to the desire to draw more people into account. You can't start early enough with the exposure to these sort of things. So that becomes second nature when you start kids reading it, you know, pretty early as well.
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Bee Nance
So, yeah, totally. I think that that's a big part of our goal and our mission as well as like you know, for me, I didn't learn the lessons until I was like failing at them.
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Dan Hood
You know?
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Bee Nance
And so our goal is to do that. So like with my son, financial lessons and literacy is just a part of his upbringing. And it's like learning how to talk, learning how to walk. He knows how to like manage his money yeah.
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Dan Hood
Well, you would help with it with a CPA, with his mother being a CPA, right? That would be yeah. But but even so, I mean, this is the thing. You know, we talk to CPAs who say, yeah, sure, the people in my family don't know anything about it or, you know, I've got relatives who don't know anything about it.
00;07;51;08 - 00;08;06;05
Dan Hood
The number of people who you would expect to be, you know, financially literate who aren't is a part of what makes the whole thing tarif terrifying me. We just I want to dove a little bit more into some of the lessons from the book, lessons you're helping people get from it. But I also want to quickly ask about the rising sun.
00;08;06;05 - 00;08;21;09
Dan Hood
And you mentioned other products. I mean, do you envision this going beyond, you know, is there a book for 13 year olds? Is there a book for adults or senior training for all kinds of levels? Because it really is. There's plenty of adults out there who don't know what they're doing. So I'm one of them. I can say that with confidence, but totally.
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Bee Nance
Yeah. So ideally, the book will be a conversation starter for families so, you know, we're kind of like using the the child point of view to kind of hook people, but understanding that some of the lessons in the in the book will like resonate with like the grandparents and the parents. And it's like a low pressure way of seeking this out because that's another thing is a lot of times if we don't know this is financial like knowledge is not something that we a lot of times seek out.
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Bee Nance
We just learn by doing. And so, yeah, that is the goal. But also with the book currently the book is our big piece that we're offering, but we're also doing a bundle which includes like a pouch or wallet for the young person to learn how to organize their money in a succinct way. And then also an activity book which complements the book and allows them to like go into like a deep dove into the book, answering questions like, why did Grandpa say this?
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Bee Nance
You know, and really kind of learn along with Sunny, but then also practice some of the skills that we mentioned, like tracking their money with a ledger that's included in that book.
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Dan Hood
Excellent. Which is also going to build up more account to more future accounts that they're getting into the ledger. Very cool. I want to dove more into the lessons that are specific to the book. You mentioned some of them, but maybe we'll David a little bit more into that in a second. But we have to step away for just just a brief message All right.
00;09;46;27 - 00;10;01;25
Dan Hood
And we're back. We're talking with Professor Bennett about her upcoming book, Sunny Gets Money, but also about financial literacy as a whole and how important it is now, how, frankly, not enough people have it. So let's talk about some of the lessons of the book. You mentioned some of them, but maybe dove a little bit more sort of what's the the table of contents?
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Dan Hood
What are people coming away from this with or do you hope they come away with yeah.
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Bee Nance
So the biggest lesson is about saving spending, managing money. So those are like, you know, surface level, like just important lessons. But our goal is to take it deeper. We want, you know, kids and families to have like deeper conversations around money and generational wealth. And we also want kids to dream, like make a bucket list that's part of like one of the activities that they do.
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Bee Nance
But then they'll make a bucket list and then they have to ground it in the financial piece to it. You know, we're trying to like instill like certain values and certain like just a mentality towards money about how money can be a tool and how planning to use money is so important to that tool. And I think it'll help us just like Grown-Ups reinforce to children that money does not grow on trees and everything that we want in this life.
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Bee Nance
You know, sometimes we have to have patience because it does cost a lot of money. But, you know, like it's funny because when kids start with money, they think a dollar can buy them anything. And so, you know, a big part of that is that grounding and understanding that, you know, how much things cost and how we have to tailor our desires based off of that.
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Dan Hood
Which is a good. Yeah, I mean, the notion of like they said, more people should have a bucket list with a separate column for and how much will this cost them? How do I start planning for it, saving for it? And when do I? I think that's the other thing about this, right, is when do you start saving for even the longest of long term goals?
00;11;32;21 - 00;11;54;19
Dan Hood
It's never too early to start. Start saving your start. You're planning around it. Very cool. And anyway, we talked about a lot of the things you're doing educationally. You're cutting professor, I mentioned YouTube channel with a lot of educational videos on it. You got this book coming out and that's obviously a very important topic to you. And I sort of think wondering about, you know, do you look at yourself as an accountant who educates an educator who knows something about accounting, but how do you put those two together?
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Dan Hood
And maybe we talk about a little bit as well about how that whether there should be a role for all accounts or for all CPAC.
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Bee Nance
Yeah, that's that's a great question. I think if I answered that question like five years ago, I probably would have definitely said I'm an accountant who does a little education on the side. But I think I've kind of like stepped into this role where I am an educator who knows accounting, who loves to teach accounting. My mom was an educator.
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Bee Nance
She taught like elementary school for like 25 years. So, you know, it was it was always there and a part of of my upbringing. But I think the thing about it is it's when you know something, it's like a responsibility to teach, teach what you know. And especially when I'm looking at people in my family and I see how they're not doing.
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Bee Nance
So well with managing their money. And, you know, like the pandemic brought that out a lot too, with all of the different changes and jobs and and, you know, people were in different positions and some people didn't have savings and so they weren't able to fall back on that. And so that's just something that I think has become more of a priority for me that to share what I know to help my family members and the people in my community not go through something like that again.
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Dan Hood
Makes sense. And as you say, I mean, this is certainly right if you know it you have a certain obligation to teach it. And I should say it's probably worth mentioning that the accounting profession has been aware of this for a while. In a lot of state, societies have financial literacy programs I don't know if they're big enough.
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Dan Hood
I mean, people still don't seem to know much about money. But but but they're I mean, they're aware of the need for it. And there are a lot of programs like it set out there, but there's still plenty of education to do it. And I guess one thing to talk about is, is not necessarily the responsibility to teach, but the opportunity for people to teach.
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Dan Hood
Maybe they're not going to go out and, you know, they don't have an illustrator in the house and a model you know, a great story to tell, living with them and hopefully not to not too pressing in his demands for a cut. But, you know, but even if they don't have that right, there's other opportunities for in other ways for accounts to help educate people in general.
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Bee Nance
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think some of the volunteer work that I've done in the past is just like, you know, we used to balance checkbooks. We don't do that anymore. And so there's some basic skills that come along with learning how to balance your checkbook that I've taught in in the past. Like just volunteered in the community.
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Bee Nance
And so I think it's just like those little things that we don't think about that we know. Like, I keep up with my bills in an Excel spreadsheet. Everyone doesn't do that. And so, you know, with my family, I've shared an Excel spreadsheet just so that they can keep track of their monthly bills and expenses and things like that.
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Bee Nance
So it's like the, the little things that don't take a lot of time but are second nature to us as accountants that are not for non-financial folks, right?
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Dan Hood
Well, yeah, that it's, it's terrible. I'm good to go. I, I never bounced a check book even though I was of the generation that, that was taught how to and probably need it to. But that was one of those clear differentiators between people who had their financial house in order and me or everybody else didn't have their financial house in order was did you balance your checkbook?
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Dan Hood
And the thing is that nowadays there's no need. The reason you balance your checkbook was to make sure that you're out of your outlay. You know, you could cover your outlays. Well, now it's all available online and it's much easier. So why would you? But that doesn't mean that there aren't similar sort of habits of mind we just got to figure out what the new ones are, you know, regularly checking that your direct deposit has come true, or is it just regularly reviewing your bank statement online?
00;15;14;19 - 00;15;27;27
Dan Hood
I don't know what it is, but not because I'm financially illiterate. But we got to start to figure out what those new digital habits are, what the new habits are for the 21st century, and get people paying attention to it because it's it's pretty it's pretty crucial, as you say. And the pandemic was a great example of it, right?
00;15;27;27 - 00;15;43;14
Dan Hood
People went into it not knowing what to do, not knowing the state of their finances, and not many not having a cushion, as you mentioned, that, you know, it's when the tide goes out you see who's swimming without without a bathing suit. But so I guess I guess the next trick is what do we figure out? What are the one of the next set of good habits?
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Dan Hood
Obviously, some of these, I'm sure, and and Sunny gets money but it's going to be interesting as we move forward into a much more digital, much more real time sort of world to find out what those we what's the good five things you've got to do every day to to keep your finances in order. Be curious to see.
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Dan Hood
Maybe that's the next book. Sunny can write it when we know.
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Bee Nance
I love it. I love it. Yes.
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Dan Hood
Excellent. All right. Well, this is great. And when does the book come out? Is it out yet? It's not. It's still to come out. Is that right?
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Bee Nance
Yeah. So we're currently doing our presale right now, but the official launch date of the book is April 15th. It's has some context there for accountants.
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Dan Hood
Very, very, very appropriate. It is it can they get it on Amazon or is there a specific place they should go to get it?
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Bee Nance
Currently, it's only on sale on our website. So the rising sun e-comm.
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Dan Hood
Rising and it's Sue and why.
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Bee Nance
Issue in and why. Yes, excellent.
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Dan Hood
All right, Abbi, thank you so much for joining us. Is there any final thoughts, any final thoughts you have around financial literacy or or things you wish more people knew or as there are things that make this as you look as you as you've educated people are time. Are there things you're like, wow, I just assumed everybody knew this and it turns out they know.
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Dan Hood
Well, you know, it's a thing that really surprised you most. Like, if you can only teach one thing to this.
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Bee Nance
I think it's that that hopefully we can change our mindset towards money, you know, have more positive conversations and not like reactive, oh, conversations about money. And to think about it as like it's not a scary thing. You know, once you learn it and invest in it, then then you'll feel more comfortable with it.
00;17;10;24 - 00;17;19;10
Dan Hood
All right, Professor Finance, the book is Sunny Gets Money. It's coming out April 15th. A totally appropriate day for it. We'll all keep an eye out for it. Thank you so much for joining us.
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Bee Nance
Thank you for having me.
00;17;21;14 - 00;17;32;28
Dan Hood
And thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Kellie Malone. Rate us and review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. Thanks again to our guests and thank you for listening.