Podcast: Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights with Hank Smith
Season 3 Episode 3 Title: Empowering the City of Brotherly Love Through Financial Literacy with Nisiar Smith

Episode Transcript:

00:05 Maxine Cuffe
You’re listening to Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights with Hank Smith, a podcast by the Haverford Trust Company. On Speaking of Quality, Hank chats with authors, influencers and wealth management experts to bring a sense of clarity and calm to the complexity and stress of personal finance. And now, here’s your host, Hank Smith. 

00:28 Hank Smith
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights. I’m your host, Hank Smith, Director and Head of Investment Strategy at The Haverford Trust Company. On this podcast, we explore topics ranging from quality investing, retirement resilience, stock market trends, estate planning, small business ownership, behavioral psychology, and more. 

On today’s episode, I’m interviewing Nisiar Smith, an accomplished financial professional in Philadelphia, and founder and chairman of Philly Phinancial Literacy Week Inc., a nonprofit organization that’s devoted to improving financial literacy in underserved communities. Nisiar is passionate about helping people and businesses achieve their financial goals. Thank you so much for joining us today, Nisiar. 

1:19 Nisiar Smith
The pleasure is all mine. I’m excited to be here, and I appreciate you guys for giving me a platform to tell my story. 

1:25 Hank Smith
Well, it’s a darn good story to tell. You’re still relatively young in the financial services industry, and yet you’ve already won numerous awards both in the financial services sector, but also in the philanthropy sector and nonprofit sector. Congratulations on such a great start. Why don’t you tell our listeners how it all began and how you got into the financial services industry?

1:57 Nisiar Smith
First of all, thank you for highlighting some of those accolades. I still haven’t gotten totally used to hearing the things that you’ve accomplished read off a paper. That still hasn’t set in. I’m going to take you back to career day in high school. It was my junior year of high school, and I grew up in the inner city of Philadelphia. I come from humble beginnings. During my junior year, I was really trying to figure out who I wanted to be in the world. It was career day and I had the honor of being a career day ambassador, which meant that I got to escort the guests throughout the building and sort of give them their itinerary for the day and make sure that whatever they needed I was able to provide. 

I had the opportunity to be the ambassador for a gentleman who worked in banking. He walked in and immediately I noticed three things that stood out that inspired me to want to dig a little bit further into what he did. The first thing was he drove a Mercedes-Benz, which for me was the look of what success could be. The second was he was dressed in a suit. The third thing was there was a relatability perspective because he was a black guy in a suit driving a Mercedes, and that was not something that I was accustomed to seeing.  

Being able to see that made me think, ‘Oh, it’s possible to really go after whatever it is I want in life.’ I remember asking him, ‘What do you do?’ This is before we got into the classroom that he was going to facilitate his workshop. He said, ‘I work in commercial banking.’ I said, ‘OK, well what is commercial banking? I don’t even know what that means. What do you do?’ He said, ‘I’ll keep it very brief and short. I basically underwrite, but then also I help businesses with financing.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK. That sounds great to me. Is that how you got to drive this car and dress in this nice suit?’ He said, ‘Absolutely.’ I said, ‘I still don’t know much about what this commercial banking thing is, but if that’s what I need to do to look and drive what you drive, I want to do that.’  

He gave me a sense of hope and inspiration, and I remember him telling me to find him on LinkedIn when I graduated and he’ll help me get a career in finance, in whatever vertical I want to work in. I remember going home that day, and at the time I was only 17. I created the LinkedIn page, but I told LinkedIn that I was 18, so I lied so I could get on this platform because I wanted to find this guy. I was hellbent. I’m going to find him because there’s no way that I’m going to let that opportunity bypass me. I found him on LinkedIn, connected with him, and then immediately when I graduated, I sent him a LinkedIn message and said, ‘Hey, I just graduated high school. I’m going to attend Penn State Abington. I’m staying local to the Philadelphia area, and I would love to reconnect and sort of talk about what it looks like for me to put myself in a space that directs me to work in the field of finance.’  

He wrote me back and it just so happened that there was a rotational program that took you through each different line of business for a financial institution, and they were taking active applications for current college students. I said, ‘Whoa, this was an amazing opportunity.’ I followed through, and the rest is sort of history. That was the birth of me getting into the space of finance and really started to help me propel forward. 

6:06 Hank Smith
There are so many lessons in that story. The biggest one is the follow through, and I can’t tell you how many young people we interview in college or just out of college, and we might not have an opportunity at that time. We’ll say to them, ‘Stay in touch with us, contact us quarterly, even if you’re doing nothing, stay in touch because you never know when something is going to come up.’ If you’re staying in touch, then you’re at the front of mind with people in the organization that you’re interested in. It’s a great lesson that you’re passing on. I must share a quick story. We have a 14-year relationship with the Cristo Rey School in Philadelphia that serves underprivileged children. We’re one of the founding businesses that participates in a program in which every Cristo Rey High School student spends one day a week at a company.

So, we get a group of four juniors, and we get them for one day. Originally, we were just having them file papers, refill the snack closet in the kitchen, just mindless jobs, and suddenly it clicked that we could be doing so much more for these young individuals. It’s a mix of men and women. We rotate them through all the departments at our firm, whether it’s operations, trading, trust, banking, investment management, investment research.  

From that original class from 14 years ago, there was an individual. We had him for four years – freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year. Now we just do the junior class, but he was so impressive just as a freshman and so engaging and so confident. We all said one day he’s going to be working at the Haverford Trust Company. He went to Temple, then went to work at Vanguard, and then we gave him a call and said, ‘Alright, you’ve paid your dues at Vanguard. You’re coming here to Haverford.’ He is a budding superstar. 

We’re going to get into your passion for financial literacy in a minute, but I just wanted to let you know how important that subject is to the Haverford Trust Company. Your career path in terms of work in the financial services industry has been in banking. Where do you see that going and how do you set your goals and measure yourself in terms of reaching those? 

9:17 Nisiar Smith
That’s a good question. For me, being able to continue to connect to individuals to help them fulfill their financial goals. I think about this in sort of a multilayer facet. I believe that each different period in our lives is a period to learn about who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. For me, thinking about what my goals are for the next five years in terms of my career, there’s a world where I see myself really impacting even more individuals from an athlete perspective as well.  

My mind sort of races in all these different directions because I really have a passion for wanting to see an everyday American be able to have access to economic resources and financial education. I don’t care if you have a hundred million dollars or if you have $10 in your bank account. The disparity is that each one of those individuals could have a lack of financial education, which is why you have some people that are ultra-high net worth. They’ll hire a financial advisor because they have no idea what to do and the same for the person that has $10. 

For me, it’s being able to help individuals across the spectrum of meeting them where they are from a socioeconomic level. In an ideal world, I see Philly Phinancial Literacy Week being able to continue to play its part as the village. I believe that it takes the village to do this work. It’s not one organization, it’s not one person that’s going to do it by themselves. You really have to lean on each other to get where we all ultimately want to have our country, which is to have people financially literate. 

11:15 Hank Smith
You’re the founder and the chairman of Philly Phinancial Week. Tell me the genesis of that. Clearly your passion is coming through loud and clear. I really applaud you because financial literacy is so important and it’s not taught in schools, and it should be taught in schools. Jumping ahead a little bit, I hope your vision is to bring this work you’re doing ultimately as a mandatory field of study in grade school and high school. 

12:01 Nisiar Smith
I believe that financial education to adopt a policy like that is a bipartisan thing. I’m not jumping into politics here, but that’s a bipartisan thing. It’s universally going to change the trajectory of so many lives here in America. Why are we still talking about this being a thing that’s not being adopted in our school system? To transition into your question, when I got into that vertical, the information that I was exposed to in each line of business – investment banking, commercial banking, business banking, retail banking, operations – gave me so much information. I was going home each day to tell my family. I was so excited to tell them what I just learned and how it could help change their lives, which it ultimately did. It led to my grandmother, my father, my aunt and my cousin all being able to buy a home for the first time in their lives. I started looking at how this information was changing my family’s lives, and I thought to myself, ‘Man, how many people in Philadelphia are also facing the same challenges?’ I want to do something about this. 

I grew up in a church in the middle of North Philadelphia. I remember there wasn’t much happening on the second floor of the church. We would eat up there occasionally or sit up there if there was an overflow, but there was no purpose for it. I went to the pastor and I said to her, I want to use the second floor to do financial education workshops, and she said, “It’s all you”. I have a location. That’s one dilemma I’m past. I don’t have to pay for a location to house these workshops. So I did free financial literacy workshops every single Saturday in this community. I ended up having people who were also working in the financial industry come and be a part of this because I realized that I couldn’t do this alone. I started to experience a little bit of burnout every Saturday, 9 to 11. We were at that church location going over different topics. There was a point where I was like, ‘OK, this really is going to take a village.’ I had other financial professionals, whether it was a CPA, an affordable housing counselor, a lender, come in and talk. We had some people who worked in human resources talk to people about their resume and how to position themselves for career advancement and for income advancement as well. I remember this one guy said, ‘Dude, the workshop you facilitated last week just changed my life. I had an information gap that was keeping me from getting to this point.’ 

I wanted to impact people more. I said I am not doing enough. At that time, I realized I was only touching a very small percentage of Philadelphia. I told my best friend at the time, ‘Hey, we want to do this as a Philly thing. I want to be in every section of Philadelphia doing this.’ I bootstrapped the program to say, we’re going to do a program at every rec center in Philadelphia during Philly Phinancial Literacy Week. I went a step ahead and said, ‘We’re going to get politicians involved because this is a fight and it doesn’t matter what side of the spectrum you sit on or believe in, you have an understanding that giving people access to be financially competent is a humanitarian thing more than it is anything else.’ I said this to my best friend at the time who was very instrumental in helping me bring this idea together and the birth of Philly Phinancial Literacy Week began. We had year one and we received the resolution from Philadelphia City Council, and then I received the citation award from the U.S. House of Representatives and started getting some notoriety and recognition around the program. 

This has since morphed into us being featured in Yahoo Finance and Essence Magazine, just to name a few. Being able to have partners like Investopedia, Experian Credit Bureau being a part of our programming, and then being able to really change the trajectory of people’s lives. It began to just continue to speed up and become a lot faster than I expected it to. My vision was just to do it every Saturday, to have some consistency and have people show up and change their lives that way, but once we really started expanding our reach and really tapping into the city, it really allowed us to see that. We always heard that Philadelphia is one of the poorest cities in America, but until you put your feet on the ground and actually see it for yourself, it changes your whole perspective. 

17:02 Hank Smith
In the prior season, I podcasted with the CEO of Committee of 70. The Committee of 70 is a Philadelphia-based organization that is all about teaching civics and teaching voting responsibility. And the Pennsylvania State legislature a couple of years ago mandated civics instruction in K through 12. I envision one of these days the state legislature mandating financial literacy study K through 12, and I think you’ll be at the forefront of that. I’d love to put you in touch because I think you have a lot of commonalities on this. 

17:52 Nisiar Smith
I would love that and I’m going to be on that. I’m going to be lobbying for this because this is something that should have long been addressed. There are other organizations that are out there doing the work just as well as we are. It takes a village to do this work, but I really want to see this change happen so we can shift some of the paradigms around people’s personal finances within this country to move us all forward as a human race.  

18:23 Hank Smith
It’s a Herculean task, and you might want to share with our listeners some of the statistics that are underwhelming in terms of financial literacy. I’ve got a few of them right in front of me. The percentage of people that just don’t know anything about finance. You’ve got a big task, but it’s got to start somewhere, and you clearly have a running start. 

19:00 Nisiar Smith
Empower Financial had a study that said that nearly 70% of Americans state that financial stress is one of the leading causes to them being in a depressed state. I think about 70%. That’s more than the majority of the world that is faced with this dilemma of if we’re looking at this from a psychological approach, if anyone knows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if people are not able to meet some of their basic needs of that hierarchy, you find yourself stressed out a bit, right?  

If you’re not able to afford to pay your car, your communication bills, transportation, pay for a family vacation, let alone being able to save for retirement and save in your account or invest, we’re talking about more of these more basic expenses that people are not even able to pay for. They have to choose which bill is more important, and a lot of that has to do with them not having enough information to make even more informed decisions in this world. So, I would agree that there are many studies out there and percentages that we can use to eliminate the fact that people are struggling financially. A big part of that is the illiteracy around finance.  

20:34 Hank Smith
The author Morgan Housel, who wrote a book called The Psychology of Money.  

20:40 Nisiar Smith
Psychology of Money. I know Morgan actually. We’ve chatted a lot. He has a really good quote around people expressing being a millionaire. He mentions, ‘When most people say they want to be a millionaire, what they really mean is ‘I want to spend a million dollars,’ which is literally the opposite of being a millionaire.’  

If you don’t have The Psychology of Money and you’re listening to this episode, please do yourself justice and buy the book. I’m going to tell you right now it has nothing to do with formulas or how to budget or any of that. It’s about shaping the mindset to really tackle the challenges because it does start with the mindset first.  

21:35 Hank Smith
It’s one of the most important investment books I’ve ever read. It has nothing to do with the x’s and o’s of investing – PE ratios, book value, all that kind of stuff. If investing was just a science, we would all be massively wealthy. Investing is as much a psychological art as it is a science, and I think he threw a lot of anecdotes that make that loud and clear. It should certainly be required reading for every high schooler.  

What are your next steps over the next three years with this organization that you started? 

22:34 Nisiar Smith
We want to expand our programming reach into schools. During Philly Phinancial Literacy Week, we start the week off with volunteers. We go into schools across Philadelphia to do financial literacy programming, and then we end the week with a conference for members of the community to come in and to get connected with resources. For example, last year we had a company called Wealth.com come in, and they offered free estate plans and wills for everyone that was in attendance, and I would say 90% of the people in attendance never had a will even drawn up. We are providing some of those resources. We believe that there’s a concatenated sort of alignment with resources and education. I can give you so much financial education to the point where you start to say what do I do with all of this information.  

That’s where the resource part comes in to say, ‘Your goal is to buy a home.’ We’ve given you the education. Here is a connected resource to a housing counselor that can take you through the next stages of becoming a homeowner, take you through a program that talks more than just about how do you get pre-approved, or how much money you need to save for down payment. What does it mean to be a homeowner? Most people don’t understand. We get excited about the idea of owning a home, but there are steps to that. When we think about where our organization is going to go, it’s going to continue to enhance our programming in schools and at school programs across the city of Philadelphia, and then continue to build a model of Philly Phinancial Literacy Week. We hope within the next three to five years, we’re able to show another underserved community in the United States what Philadelphia has been doing and how we can also partner with organizations there to continue to lead the work.

Again, I’m not trying to take the crystal plaque to say that I am the number one champion of financial literacy. This isn’t a race. This is sort of a team, a sense of togetherness that we need, that I think could unite our country as well. There is something that’s humanitarian, that we all have stories about how we learned various topics around personal finance, whether it was making a mistake and then learning or learning from a parent or someone that imparted wisdom on you. That’s where we see our organization in the next three to five years – expanding our program reach in schools. Also continuing to fight from legislative perspective on a policy around financial education in our school systems. 

25:16 Hank Smith 
What you’re really talking about is expanding the network of businesses, politicians and educators, and bringing them together, which you’re doing right now. Expanding that and maybe through the state and to other deserving regions. It’s going to happen. 

I have always said one of the secret sauces of the United States is philanthropy, and it isn’t just the Fords and the Rockefellers and now the Gates and the Buffetts. It’s really the average person and what they do in terms of their churches, in terms of community foundations and civic organizations. You are a living embodiment of this in terms of what you’re giving back. It truly is what separates this country from other Western developed countries. No one does philanthropy in the world like the United States. It isn’t just giving money, it’s giving time. As you talked about, you’re giving a lot of time. I want to applaud you for that.  

It’s been a pleasure having you on Speaking of Quality. Financial literacy is such an important topic, and I’m glad you could share your passion and insights with our listeners. I think you’ve left our listeners inspired to achieve their goals. If you’re interested in learning more about Philly Phinancial Week, visit phillyphinancial.org/get-involved.  

Thank you for listening to this episode of Speaking of Quality: Wealth Management Insights. Our next episode will be released shortly. In the meantime, please send suggestions or questions for me or the Haverford Trust team to marketing@haverfordquality.com. And don’t forget to subscribe, rate, review, and share this podcast. Until next time, I’m Hank Smith. Stay bullish.

27:45 Maxine Cuffe
Thanks for listening to this episode of Speaking of Quality, Wealth Management Insights with Hank Smith. To hear future episodes of speaking of quality, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about the Haverford Trust Company, please visit www.haverfordquality.com. This podcast is provided as general commentary and market overview and should not be relied upon as research a forecast or investment advice and is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt an investment strategy. Any opinions expressed are as of the date this podcast was recorded and may change at any time, and are the opinions of that commentator, not Haverford’s. Any opinion or information provided are believed by Haverford to be reliable at the time of this podcast recording, but are not necessarily all inclusive or guaranteed for accuracy. Before making any financial decisions, please consult with an investment professional.