I hate bullys. As a kid people picked on me ALL THE TIME and now as a mom I’ve spent time talking to my kids about bully’s, but all kids aren’t that lucky, so I support a cause like this!

There’s a new book called, “The Flyers and The Crawlers,” which will be donated to day cares, school libraries, and anti-bullying conventions across the country. Since bullying may begin as early as preschool, author P.B. Jeffrey wants to use this story as a tool for preventing the onset of bullying in the next generation.

Let’s get this book into the hands of the children who need it most: the bully, the bullied, and the bystander.

You can donate as little as $1. The deadline is May 24th.

As a thank you for your donation, you’ll receive a downloadable coloring book and ebook of the story, you can even personalize the storybooks for your own children!!!

Click & Give!! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/498050577/the-flyers-and-the-crawlers-an-anti-bullying-book

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The interview segment I participated in on Huff Post Live last week has everyone I know talking about this concept of marrying down, and my perspective/ personal experience with pursuing love ignoring socioeconomic status. I’m so appreciative of all the support and want to thank everyone who has reached out to me to encourage me to share my story as a positive stimulus to men and women alike. Please continue to provide your feedback askcarriepink@gmail.com

While the iron is still hot I want to address this whole “marrying down” concept. I will admit when I heard the title Huff Post gave the segment about 5 minutes before going live on air I cringed a little… That is not a phrase I would ever use to describe my marriage…But there I was about to talk about it..  Thankfully the framing and string of questions from Nancy Redd wasn’t offensive at all.

Its obvious from the interview that I reject the Marrying Down description though.. and here’s why…

Marrying Down sounds sooo derogatory… And black men in particular already have enough burdens on their shoulders do we really need to add another phrase which degrades them, their efforts, their potential and their perseverance to succeed! I tell women all the time we have so much power in our relationships and in the words we choose.  That power can be used for good, ie. motivation, encouragement and discernment or it can be used for bad ie. degrading, belittling, humiliating, emasculating, nagging.. The choice is yours, you can either build or destroy.

Secondly who established this term?? When and why did it take flight? Because when male CEO’s married their female secretaries it was called marrying up… and that was a great thing for women and their future children. It was not only acceptable but almost expected because she; the secretary, was the one who was the backbone of his operation holding him down… She knew all the details, they spent a significant amount of time together everyday. Why wouldn’t he marry her!?

Then when they got married he pulled her up through the ranks, financially, socially, and academically,  exposing her to a new type of lifestyle where she was not only supposed to assimilate but thrive… Madame secretary went from Walmart to the Waldorf, from Buster Brown to Barneys without missing a beat or looking out of place. Even though she often contributed little in financial means to the household, her love, support, eye candy status and holding down the home front for his children without having her own career getting in the way was all he ever wanted and needed.

Fast forward 25 years all of a sudden now that CEO is a women its degrading to marry your mechanic?

Ladies you need to wake up and smell the gasoline! I understand that a lot has changed in male/female relationships, but did we really become that fickle along the way? Statistics tells us there are more women  in college now than ever before and getting advanced degrees to boot. Naturally that shrinks the pool of male counterparts significantly.  What I don’t understand is why so many women have failed to accept this new reality and learn to operate successfully within this new paradigm.

Welcome to modern day feminism 101.

The world has changed drastically over the past 30-40 years, where women now more than ever are the primary breadwinners in their households. The scales have tipped so dramatically in other areas of male/female relationships and although apprehensive at first women have adopted the new standard.  Many women are now comfortable asking men out on dates, paying for said dates, being first to initiate intimacy, we have even gotten crass enough to have men classified in our phones as booty calls and jumpoffs. Some women are even going the full gusto in being the ones to propose marriage and the list goes on and on with the number of ways we continue to reject traditional gender roles 9 times out of 10.

But somehow we still have retained some very traditional ideals about how marriage looks and how it operates. How can that be if everything else has changed?

Additionally how can you expect to find success when you classify your union as “marrying down“? Already that gives a perception of less than and do your accomplishments really make you better than? Also is this degradation and emasculation of men just a black woman thing? When I talk to my white counterparts they too have seen an increase of educated white women marrying men with less accolades, but their classification is different. The house husband phenomenon is fine by them where they continue to climb the corporate ladder and their husband runs the household! They accept this concept knowing that the balancing act between motherhood and career is much better handled with an actual parent on the home-front, instead of a nanny. How is it that they are able to put a positive spin on it and we can’t?

What makes us as educated black women so quick to accept this description to the extent where we now want to label black men with less education than us an underclass to ourselves?? Have we ARRIVED that much? Do we feel that entitled? Are our mentalities that elite?  This used to be propaganda pushed on our communities from outsiders. When did we start subscribing to the same mode of thinking internally? Especially when for many of us we are ONLY the first or second generation to even pursue college and an advanced degree..

So girl please. Marrying down?? You were the “down” 60 credits ago.

Share with your friends & Post your comments

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

xoxo, Carrie

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1. They Have Something In Common! Professional Black Women and Blue Collar Black Men
2. Why I Married Black..A response to the WSJ article, “An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage”
3. VIDEO: Marry Down To Save Race? Huff Post Live

In 2011 Professor Ralph Richard Banks wrote a thought provoking piece in the Wall Street Journal called An Interracial Fix for Black Marriage, where he says black women looking for husbands will need to start looking outside their race if they want to find a suitor equal in status and education.

That article prompted me to write a response called, Why I Married Black, an opinion piece on why its ok and at many times successful for educated black women to marry men with less education or financial status that them.

I was contacted by Huff Post Live to talk about my response to the article on the panel with Carolyn Edgar, a lawyer and blogger I admire deeply and Professor Ralph Richard Banks who’s new book, Is Marriage Just for White People is in stores now.

Let me know what you think about the segment in the comments section below, “Should Black Women Marry Down to Save Race” provided by Huff Post Archives

*UPDATE* The segment was also picked up and re-posted by AOL on Relationships! YAY!

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money.usnews.com

In the beginning of the year I as bombarded like you with posts all over Twitter, Facebook & IG about a 52 week Savings challenge, where people were planning to save a dollar based on the week number in the year. For example week 1 they save $1, week 52, they save $52. This method seems noble enough, but is entirely too blasé for me. Savings a mere $1300 by year’s end just didn’t seem to get the fire burning under my butt to save. I wanted something way more challenging, that would force me to stretch and be creative and some days even eat raman noodles (yuck)

I decided to create my own 52 Week Savings Plan, you can read more about it by clicking HERE! My goal is to save $1000 per month, for 12 months.. tax returns don’t count, bonus checks don’t count, but I’ve committed to saving $1000 out of my take home salary per month. Of course this challenge isn’t for everyone; you need one of 2 things in order to participate, an income that allows you to commit such funds OR a commitment to significantly reducing your expenses. I am currently a combination of both strategies working together, as I would assume most people who are participating in this challenge would be also.

In my particular case high income and a family also comes with lots of expenses. We have rent, a car payment, student loans, insurance, child care, groceries, cell phones etc etc etc…It all adds up and fast, especially living in NYC!  And as the primarily supporter of a family of 6 it definitely isn’t easy.

My husband took the leap last year to become self employed so he doesn’t work a traditional 9-5p anymore, as he continues to build his clients and his income, we also decided he would do school pick up to keep our older girls out of after school (an expense would which would have topped out our child care costs at over $2000 a month). So he is fully committed to being DADDY by day and Sound Engineer and DJ at night!

When deciding to create and fulfill this challenge we knew there are only 2 ways to fund our goal, increase our income or cut our expenses. Since it isn’t necessarily easy to just increase your income overnight, here’s what we did to be able to save $1000 a month with the income we already bring in.

OUR PATH TO $1000 IN SAVINGS

1. We cut our cable. With technology evolving so quickly we couldn’t really understand why the price of cable kept going up. Our bill was always hovering around $115. So we bought APPLE TV for a 1 time fee of $99, buy your own here Apple TV MC572LL/A (2nd Generation) so we can stream straight from our laptops to our TV. We also got a subscription to Netflix for $8 and HULU Plus $8. New monthly cost? $16 Savings $99

2. I Brown Bag It! As the one who commutes and is away from home all day, I committed to bringing breakfast and lunch to work daily. I had already started this in 2012 with a cheat day budget every Friday of $10, but I decided to even take away my Fridays. New monthly cost? $0 Savings $50

3. We Cut Our Childcare. Our childcare costs with a new addition in the family went from $750 a month to $1050 a month to $1350 by November 2012. To slash that budget we took our big girls out of After School, our 4 year old out of private school and now we only have costs for the in-house nanny of our baby. New monthly cost? $750 Savings $600!!

Boom! $750 for savings found in the same exact budget we always had..So we haven’t hit our $1000 target yet but we plan to paying off our car payment by May 2013 which will free up the $250 we need to make our goal and there will still be extra leftover which will most likely be strategically invested!

Want to join the challenge? I created a pilot group on Facebook, called The 52 Week $12,000 Savings Challenge, <–CLICK it’s a group of 10 motivated ladies who are oh so focused on getting their finances right for 2013, it’s became a safe haven for us to talk money, debt payoff and our goals for the future! Some have accepted the challenge at half staff, meaning they are only participating at $500 a month and thus far we are all moving in the right direction and building a nice little pot for ourselves!

Could you find the money in your budget to commit to a money challenge?? What are you willing to go without?

xoxo

Carrie

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1. My 52 Week $12,000 Savings Challenge.
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For all those who think they are “Ballin”  and are spending money as fast as you can earn it, here’s a look at the current state of wealth inequality in America.

Shared from Mashable

Wake up, want to do better than this video says you are? Click to read all about my $12,000 Savings Challenge

xoxo

Carrie

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After walking around for a week looking like I stuck my hand in an electrical outlet I knew my goal this weekend was to get this mop as my mom likes to call my hair, under control. But how? As you may already know I’m a natural-hair-ista who quit the creamy crack back in 2007 (that would mean I stopped using perms/relaxers and am embracing my hair in its natural state, for those who haven’t seen Chris Rock’s movie GOOD HAIR) who swore back in October to only straighten my hair twice a year.. ok so its only March.. *shrugs shoulders* remember that post? Click HERE!

The thing is dealing with hair amongst women of any ethnicity is always an ongoing battle, those with straight limp hair want more volume, those with big hair want less volume, those with kinks want curls and those with curls want straight.. When it comes to our hair most women aren’t ever really pleased, including myself, until now.

I remember getting a keratin treatment back in 2010. You can read more about that experience here –> CLICK HERE and after that disaster I had to chop all my hair off which I did back in August 2011 Click HERE! Since that I have continued to grow my hair out, no chemicals, no nothing and refusing to let the damage of the Dominican Salon get me again, or spending an arm and a leg at the natural hair salon.  I’ve pretty much been doing nothing with my hair besides wearing it curly, but that isn’t really a good option in North East winters.

A few weeks back I bought a new ionic blow dryer from Hot Shot Tools Helen of Troy collection and had been wearing my hair in a bun everyday since, not wanting to use the flat iron or straightening comb. Of course I wanted to try the INstyler
, but was leery of spending $100 on another solution product that would potentially just go into my hair product/equipment graveyard to collect dust and never be seen again, but I knew a few folk who swore by the INStyler, one in particular is my Sorority Sister Antonette from Pretty Girl Bowrettes and well I trust her like I trust my own sister so with a deep conditioning olive oil treatment from Organic Root Stimulator in my hair I decided to drive on over to Target!(Tresemme Moisture Rich Shampoo and Conditioner were mixed to co-wash my hair )

The 1 1/4 barrel Instyler cost $97 (definitely wish I had a coupon) and the Conair hot rollers cost me $18.97. I also picked up a Frizz Away Balm. I don’t bust my brain too much when it comes to products and I only buy them one at a time.

I actually ended up sleeping with the deep conditioner overnight and waking up at 6am to finish!

STEPS TO FIRING MY HAIR STYLIST

1. First I undid my huge bun and wet my ends, added more conditioner

2. Then I fully detangled and rinsed my hair

3. Towel dried- letting the towel soak up as much of the excess water as possible! (my hair is like a sponge. It gets wet and expands like a balloon!)

4. Fluffed towel dried hair with Olive Oil lotion from Organic Root Stimulator and Argon Oil Anti Frizz Serum

5. Next I divided my hair into 6 sections and blew it dry.

6. Starting at the nape of my neck I parted 1/4 to 1/2 sections of hair and put it through the INStyler. The smaller the section of hair the better the results. I continued for about 40 minutes until all my hair was done.

7. I pulled in my hot rollers and used them on my ends to give a little body!

8. Viola! Done! Looks like I just stepped out of the salon.

Why I love it? I am not a fan of stick straight hair.. I need bounce and flow! The INStyler provides both! Additionally I used the thermal guard which cam with the INStyler so I didn’t burn myself not even ONCE! That is also a plus!Thurdly, IT WORKED EXACTLY AS THEY SAID IT WOULD..It was works as easy as the videos make it seem. That was impressive.

Do you have an INStyler? What has been your experience with it? Do you use it in conjunction with any other straighteners?

Be sure to LIKE this post, leave a comment and share it with your peeps!

xoxo

Carrie

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My initial reaction?

Who is that?

Beyonce??? Really???

Oh you’re right it is Beyonce..

Wait. Beyonce’s on the cover of KING?

*thought bubble* How did she get that past Jay Z?

oooh..u sure this isn’t KING Magazine???

welp.. my bad.

*thought bubble* could have fooled me GQ..

It’s a little racy for me… much more Rihanna-ish that I would expect to see from Bey.. but hey.. she’s a MILF what did people expect? She was bound to bare it at some point.

xoxo

Carrie

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As if we needed another reason to love Swedish fashion retailer, H&M. From sleek budget friendly fashions to monster collaborations with leading designers, now H&M is going to help us be ultra fashionable after cleaning out our closets for 2013.  We all have items in our closet that would be better off in the trash bin don’t we? Wouldn’t it be great to take those old clothes and recycle them for cold hard cash?  Ok, not real cash… but H&M dollars are just as good! Starting this February, 2700 H&M stores in 48 markets will be launching a “Global Clothes Collecting” eco-friendly sustainability initiative. There’s no better time to take those bags of old clothes and make a donation to your local H&M store.

Find out more details on the H&M Recycling Program by clicking here –> DIVASandDORKS.com

H&M Leads the way in Sustainable Efforts for Earth Day from 3BL Media on Vimeo.

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I’ve seen so many people post on their facebook and twitter pages last week about their desire to participate in the 52 week savings challenge  where you deposit dollars into a savings account, based on the week number.. so week 1 you deposit $1 week 52, you deposit $52.

Definitely seems like an interesting concept but I can’t really call $1300 saved in 52 weeks to really be a savings plan or accomplishment. As many of you know I have a real affinity for personal finance and led an entire series of financial literacy workshops via my non-profit Pretty World Inc and since I’m naturally a competitive one and not one to walk away easily from a challenge I’ve decided to institute a financial savings challenge of my own, to the tune of $12,000.

So that’s $12,000 this year, which is $1000 a month, $500 twice a month, or $200 a week (depending on the number of weeks in a month)

Its so infrequent we discuss hard money numbers with our friends, and even less so with our co-workers, but its time we put conventional taboo aside and open up our online accounts and share those account balances to keep ourselves honest and accountable too. So the twist to this challenge? You have to show and prove that account balance every month! I created a facebook group called “The 52 week $12,000 Savings Challenge” <– Click the link to join! If you dare.

It all started when a coworker of mine and I were chatting about how different our mindset is to that of our parents. We considered a much more patient generation, like obsessed with instant gratification like us. They renovated their house maybe once in 30 years, and drove their cars until they couldn’t drive anymore!  We couldn’t even recall our mothers coming home from the “mall” happy and laden with bag from a much deserved and overdue personal shopping spree!

We are such a disposable generation… If we see something we want we buy it.. Even if we don’t need it… we trade in perfectly good cars, surround ourselves with tons of “stuff” and renovate something, anything, in our overpriced, undersized, apartments every summer.

If our laptop or iphone breaks we immediately buy a new one… companies nowadays makes it more advantageous cost wise to do so, rather than fix it.. but not my parents washing machine, they’ve had the same one since the 1980′s and when something goes wrong, my dad tinkers with it until it’s up and running again. (wish I could say the same about the dryer)

Our inability to fix things plays into our spend spend spend mental as well. We don’t plan major purchases, we put them on our credit cards, today, American Express preferably. But in our parents day major purchased were not taken lightly because debit cards didn’t exist.They.. *gasp* dare I say it.. saved for major purchases.. nooo not that! lol yes.. that.

There was no “balling out” or “popping bottles” in the club for the average American either.

Another thing my coworker and I both acknowledged is that we each make more money than either of our parents did at the height of their careers but we still weren’t in a position with liquid cash where we felt comfortable. Sure we had health insurance, life insurance and were both contributing 15% to our 403b’s but cash on hand was clearly just a management issue, well a mismanagement issue…She’s 32 and single and I’m 32 married with 4 kids.. her eating out bill per month matched my grocery bill for a family a six per month.. Talk about a reality check for her on where her money was going. And Me? Well oftentimes I watch money trickle away frivolously through the evil creatures who live in my debit card… and what are they spending my money on? I don’t know!

We both felt like we had nothing of significance to show for our money.. And our annual raises were going to nought. I said, you know we really need to challenge ourselves.. Hence the $12,000 challenge was born.

Remember when I participated in the Pretty Girls Rock Dresses challenge back in 2010?

Every week throughout that challenge I had to prove I wore 3 skirts or dresses for the week by posting pics of myself in the PGRD’s FB group..Thats the same accountability I intend to bring to this challenge.. Those who pursue the challenge with me will be sharing a monthly screenshot of them meeting their $1000 commitment and I will be sharing mine with them to prove I met my goal as well. In our private fb group.

Sure its scary, unconventional and taboo but guess what? At the end of the year when we’re looking at $12,000 each staring us in the face it will all be worth it and along the way the unique /creative ways we will ensure we achieve our goal will also make us all the wiser to things we can really do without.

So the challenge is simple.. Request to join our facebook group here and commit to saving $12,000 this year.. That’s $1,000 a month… Or $500 twice a month or $200-250 a week… Hold yourself accountable by posting a screenshot of your account balance every month and join us for checkpoints along the way to keep each other motivated on our progress..

The rules?

Set a budget- real one!, if you don’t have one email me for a template! ASKCARRIEPINK@Gmail.com

Make your savings come out first

Give yourself a cash allowance every pay period.. and when it’s gone, its gone..DoNotTouchYourSavings!

Refrain from using your debit card for cash purchases

Check your accounts daily… I love LEARNVEST and their founder Alexa Von Trobel lives by The Money Minute! <— Click to learn more about it! I live by it too!

They say you are financially equivalent to your 5 closest friends? Well I guess at the end of this those of us who decide to embark on this challenge will all be

Also if to commit but know $12,000 is absolutely impossible for you based on pure mathematics, Then join us in the half challenge! Same concept, method, and strategy with half the results. Stick your flag in a challenge to conquer $6000 by years end!

Also check in here at CarriePink.com during the journey as I will be posting advice, tips and resources to keep us all on track… Ready set go!

Happppy Financial New Year!!

xoxo

Carrie

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