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I've been wanting to start my own thing for a while, but I didn't know quite how to do it. But, you know, leaving CNN was the, the sort of the push that I needed to, to put to get me to, to do it.

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Wel Welcome to Living

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not so fabulously. Well, real talk means real money with just enough flair to keep the lights on and the drama low interest.

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So David,quick question for you. When I say lemon drop, do you think of a martini or do you think of Don Lemon?Hm,

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I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe a little bit of both. I mean, sipping on a lemon drop while getting served hot takes by Don Lemon. That's kind of the way we take our politics these days, isn't it?

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Exactly, it's the only way you can get through, right? So and now I'm thirsty.Don Lemon is an award-winning journalist known for his bold reporting and unapologetic truth telling. From

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Baton Rouge to CNN primetime, he's stirred headlines as often as he's delivered them. Whether challenging power or dancing in Sag Harbor, Don brings the truth, and a little bit of glitter. Welcome to

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the show, Don Lemon.

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Hi guys, did you just say you're thirsty?Yeah, well, he's

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somewhere, right?

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No, I thought you meant like thirsty, like a thirst trap thirsty, but that's,

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that's a constant, isn't it?

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That's how are

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you guys doing?

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We're doing well. Well, thank you so much for joining us. So we're going to go on the way back machine here. Growing up in Baton Rouge, can you remember what were your earliest memories about money and you know, financial security? Well, look,

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kids don't know that they're poor. I wouldn't say I was poor, but you don't know like, you know, what your parents' financial situations.are, right? So I just thought that we were rich, right? And so, um, and then I didn't realize until I grew up and moved to New York City that like, oh, wait a minute, you were not rich. This is real wealth. But, uh, um, I, I just remember like my mom, I'm working really hard. My dad working really hard and um you know we lived we lived a great life, but um, they made us so comfortable that that we thought that we were rich. But um I quickly learned that you know once I got into the business world, and once I left Louisiana.That I'd have to, you know, create my own wealth and and hopefully generational wealth for the ones who come behind me.

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Yeah, I love that. It, it is, I, I, I really appreciate that you said your parents tried to make you feel uh like you were rich, because my parents were just the opposite, and I know for me it, it, it formed a scarcity mindset in, in my mind because I would constantly hear, we don't have money for this, we don't have money for that. And that especially during those early years, like 5 to 7 years.I constantly heard that from my parents. It really does mess with your brain. It can, yeah.

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Well, I mean, money doesn't grow on trees. I mean, I heard that like you wanted certain things. Money doesn't grow on trees or do you think I work for the light company turned some of the lights off in here, all those things are. Are you trying to like cool the whole neighborhood with the air conditioning, close the door, close the refrigerator? Yeah, I heard that.stuff, but, um, they always tried to, you know, at least take care of us, and they made us feel even though sometimes some of the things coming out of their mouths were sort of contradictory of of what they were saying, you know.

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Do you think that them trying you you kind of living in this world where you you felt rich, maybe informed you about the possibility of of being successful, that that that was within your grasp?

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Yeah, well, yes, and the thing is, so for me as a person of color growing up uh in Louisiana was different because it's the deep South, right? And there's lots of racism there. And so, um, you know, we lived in segregated neighborhoods and I lived in a neighborhood, quite frankly, that was kind of like the black Leave It to Beaver neighborhood or the black Brady Bunch neighborhood where there were you know lawns and sprinklers and that kind of thing and you know two car garages and all that.Um, so, um, you know, for me, it was quite, it was different because once I, once I left my sort of bubble of living in an all black neighborhood, which I didn't realize was segregated. I just thought, you know, blacks lived here, whites up there or whatever. I was just young. Uh, and then I went toLSU and I realized that I went to high school, rather, I got out of private school and I went to high school and I realized that, hey, you know, things are different different between you know sort of black wealth and white wealth and middle class and upper middle class and all that. But I grew up in the neighborhood thinking where folks who taught me that, hey, you're smart.And so I was used to sort of black excellence. And then you know then I started going to public school and people were like, Oh, you're pretty smart for a black guy. And I'm like, What? And they were like, Oh, your parents do pretty well for the black people. And I'm like, What? And so um and then from there I've got my initiation into the real world.

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Got you. So did you kind of rebel against those remarks? I mean, what would you say to people when they sort of compared you to that black wealth versus white wealth?

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At first it was like kind of surprising to me because I, as I told you where I grew up in this sort of League of the Beaver where all of the black families really the professors at Southern University, which was an historically black college, um, a university in uh in Louisiana. So, um, I, you know, I was used to it and I just I I like looked at them or thought like, are you guys nuts? Did you not know this?And so after a while, I did not have to, um, you know, say anything to them. I just sort of was myself and made them get used to me. Um, and you know, there were others like me, but I, you know, the, the high school I went to, I went to private school, Catholic school until I got to high school and I was tired of going to a Catholic school. And so I went to a public high school that had just been desegregated like maybe a decade before I went.So there was lots of learning curves for everyone and this was the 80s and it had just been desegregated like in the early 70s, so.You know, it was pretty, it was weird to hear it, but then times were different then.I don't know how old you guys are. You're a lot younger than me, so you probably didn't have to deal with anything like that. So I have

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a little bit, just a little bit. So if you're just joining us, this is not so fabulously, the show where we keep it authentic, entertaining, and a little fabulous while we talk about money. We're talking.With Emmy Award winning journalist Don Lemon about some of his personal money stories. And

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if you're watching on YouTube, drop a comment below and maybe share what your experience like was as a child growing up in your household. Did your parents talk about money? And what, how did they talk about money? So, Don, I'm going to continue this idea of the way back machine. You talked, I'm sorry, you started your career in Birmingham and then moved to Philadelphia.So there's a question that I really would like to have answered. I, I think there's this, everyone has this perception that everyone on TV is like rolling in the dough. Can you give us a perspective of what it was like in those early years? What was your earning power like? I mean, to be honest, John and I live in a veryAverage neighborhood, and the woman two doors up from us is on TV in the mornings. And so I think it's kind of we we kind of have that perception, oh, you're on TV, you're you're rolling in it. Tell us a little bit about that.

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Well, not necessarily now, you know, what's happening with media. But let me just take you back. You said in Birmingham, that was my first full-time on camera job. I started in television in New York City, working for 5.an hour, which was below the poverty level in New York City. And it was, um, this is back in the early 90s and um I started as a trainee in the newsroom, basically answering phones, opening mail and you know, going to get dry cleaning or um or lunch for the loading dock for the higher ups. And so uh and it was only a six month thing. And so I lived in the in the sublet.In Queens in someone's back room, and my parents had to help me pay the rent even then. So you don't make a lot of money when you're starting out. And um and then eventually my full time, the first full time on camera job I got was, um, I did OK, but it was meager. I lived in a studio apartment in Birmingham, Alabama, and then just sort of worked my way up. But when you're in those lean years when you're starting, you really make no money.And then once you get to, you know, maybe to be an anchor in the local markets, they do very well. And then you do, you know, you get to a network where you start to make more money. But it's not, there's a difference between, as you guys know, being rich and being wealthy, right? Being able to afford to pay your bills and having a little bit extra, you know, some people would call that you know upper middle class or some folks would call that rich. But I don't, very few people become wealthy.Uh, in these in these television jobs until you get to a certain level where the air is really rarefied, you don't really make that much money in media on television. Yeah, yeah, I looked at it that's why a lot of men, that's why I'm sorry to cut you guys off. That's why a lot of especially heterosexual men who believe that they have to take care of the entire family. A lot of them don't go into this business. There are a lot of gay men in the in the business and uh and it's it's sort of saturated or populated with women.Um, sadly, unfortunately, because of how women have been treated in society, but also because, you know, people look at men traditionally in America as the breadwinners and you don't make a lot of money. It's hard to afford to be able to take care of a family, you know, children and all that when you're in, in going through the ranks in television. Yeah,

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that's. Yeah, I looked up a statistic earlier before the show. I think that the average uh nationwide for a news anchor is 45,000.In the in local markets and that is below the, the median income for the people in the United States, right? So it's not this lucrative job that all of us think. Although you did have some great opportunities, right? You ended up going on to NBC and CNN having those kind of milestones in your career. Were there any financial moves that made doing that easier?

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Um, yeah.Uh, learning to live within your means, um, and I, look, I think I came through, you know, I was lucky my timing was good because it each job I went to, I got, I, you know, I, I made more money. And so, and you have contracts, so you know how much money you're going to make. You know the minimum amount of money you're going to make. So you figure out, you get a budget and you figure out like, OK, I can say this amount of money.And then still afford to live. But I have to be honest, until I got to really to CNN, I did not have a financial advisor or anyone like that. And once I got to CNN, I started to make somewhat some real money. Then I got a financial advisor and I started to suck.money, but mostly not just like put it in the bank, but actually have real investments. And that's when you know you realize, oh, this is how people acquire accumulate wealth. This is how people get to be take themselves out of poverty.

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Yeah, so Americans in general struggle with lifestyle creep as our incomes grows, typically our lifestyle grows as well. And from the folks that we've worked with and and interviewed for our podcasts over the years, gay men struggle with that, especially, um, trying to prove that, you know, we were worthy despite how we were maybe treated in high school in grade school. How did you avoid that lifestyle creep and get into the mode like, all right, I'm now earning more money, I'm gonna start budgeting and

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investing.

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Oh God, I don't know if I ever got over it, but um, look, I started to, I, the thing was is that I never really had to worry because again, I was lucky and I knew how much money I was making and so my, my salary always afforded me, for the most part, afforded me the opportunity to be able to live a certain lifestyle. But um I think it's just so it's just living within your means. So, so when I worked in local, I didn't go out and buy a million dollars apartment or a million dollars home.I bought the type of home, the type of property that suited my income. And um again, the timing was different for me because people coming up now, younger people coming up, they don't get to invest in homes and property and real estate the way that we did because it's so expensive now, right? It used to be like 3 times your salary that you could, whatever the average home and now it's like 6 times your salary or something like that. I didn't reallyhave to deal with that. It was, it was always frightening to me. The first time I bought a home, I was like, I had to put out that much money. How am I going to pay this mortgage? Um, and right? And but most of it for most Americans, the biggest wealth that they accumulate is through their homes, right? Through home ownership. So that concerns me about the folks coming up now because you really can't do that. I've been lucky. So now, let's just say that everything falls apart.I can always sell. I this is my home apart my home. I can always sell this apartment and live for quite a while.And I've only been able, the only reason that I can do that is because over time I've been able to take one home and trade up to another and trade up to another and trade up to another. And so sometimes the homes that I was able to buy or live in may have been and may have been, um, how do I say this, above the salary range, but because I was able to get in that home ownership at a, you know, at at the bottom level, I was able to take that big chunk.And put it into the down payment, which made my monthlies on being able to afford a mortgage cheaper. So let's just say I'm just making up a number, that it was a $200,000 home.And you know, maybe my salary allowed me to for a $90,000 home. I could live in a $200,000 home only because I was lucky in real estate, which is how where most people have their income and their assets. I was lucky to get in at a time where it was affordable for people and then all of a sudden real estate values went.But I don't know, I don't know what happens now. I don't know how people afford to live now and to buy homes. It's crazy.

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Yeah, it's definitely challenging, but so, but thank you for sharing that strategy. Yeah,

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just a couple of points. So the reason why I did the between you and me uh thing to John was, I remember when we wrote the check for the down payment on our very first home, I was like, it was $11,000 and I said that is the largest check I've ever written in my life. And today people spend that kind of money on vacations, right? Um, but I alsoI also appreciate you're talking about this kind of moving scaling things up because I think a lot of people think, well, that I have to buy my forever home with my as my very first home, and sometimes I think that mentality prevents people from actually getting into the market.

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No, right, and look, also I'm lucky too. My husband is a real estate agent, so, you know, he knows the deals and he's like, this is a time that we should buy and this is a great place to buy because in this area, the homes are gonna go up. So I've been very um lucky uh to do that. But again,Yeah, the first, I think I forget what my first down payment was for my home and I was scared. I was like, all of that money was just draining out of my bank account and I'm like, What if this happens? What if this happens? And I mean, I was counting like the the to the penny, right? And how much but you've got to take that plunge because if you don't, you know, then you don't get to afford a home. But also, you guys know things are changing now. People feel like they don't have to buy homes. We live in a shared economy.And a lot of people are renting and there are some financial advisors that'll tell you, um, it's better to rent than to buy at certain moments, you know, in with the economy.

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100%. Please hold that thought down. We'll be right back after this quick break.Welcome back to Living Not So Fabulously. We're sitting here with journalist Don Lemon. So Don, we're gonna pivot just a little bit here. What motivated you to launch the Don Lemon show and how did you approach that from a financial planning perspective to take that kind of a gigantic, you know, career lead?

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Well, one CNN gave me the boot.But I had been wanting to, I've been wanting to start my own thing for a while, and I, I had been seeing the way media was going and I, um, again, I've been lucky enough to be in media for a while and to be able to accumulate some um wealth, butOwning a business and starting a business is really, really expensive. There are a lot there's lots of overhead overhead. I've never had employees before. You got to pay salaries, you got to pay health insurance, you have to, you know, pay studio costs and all kinds of things. So, um,Uh, I was able to, to be, I was fortunate enough to be able to have my own seed money, and not everyone can do that. So again, I understand that I am, I have a privilege in a certain way that I can do that. But, um, so I realized it's like, you know what, I can either just sit and not work for a while or possibly forever, to be honest. And I said, you know, I don't want to do that. And so now I've invested um money into the business andUh, when you start, you make a lot of mistakes. I think I spent way too much money in the beginning on doing things that I didn't necessarily need, but you see, you live and you learn.And and that's, and that's what happens in business. So you learn to I've learned to scale the business, um, to the, you know, to a place where it is, uh, affordable, practical, and profitable, and that takes a while. So that was, I had been wanting to start my own thing for a while, but I didn't know quite how to do it. But you know, leaving CNN was the the sort of the push that I needed to to to get me to to do it.

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So sometimes, you know, what seems like a mistake or a failure or whatever however you want to define it, is is your biggest opportunity.

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Yeah, look, I, I don't say, look, it depends on a mistake or a failure or whatever, but, um, I look at everything as an opportunity. Um, sometimes you're just, you know, God or the universe will say you need to move on. This is not, you don't need to be here. They just kick you out and, and then you figure, you figure out what to do. But I think people can either get stuck in, you know, and become bitter or mad and say, oh my gosh, how dare them do they do this to me or you can say, you know what?Now what do I do with this opportunity that I'm presented with? And um that's what I did. And I chose, especially the election was also a major motivator for me because I wanted to have a voice and impact in the election. And um so on and I said, even if I just get to do that until after the election, then I'm totally fine with that. And so it just so happens that I did it during the election.And people started tuning in and they're like, oh my God, your man on the street stuff is great. I watch your YouTube show, the memberships and the um and the subscribers subscriptions like grew, and I'm like, oh well, this is happening, this is better than I thought. But here's the catch, if you're doing this independent media thing, which a lot of folks will have to do.Um, is that, um, you, you need sponsors and advertisers to stay afloat. And they, many advertisers do not like to advertise around politics and news because it's they feel it's not brand fake. I think it's crazy. You got to take a stand, as we were talking about with businesses, etc. corporations as it as it relates to um.Um, Pride Month and all of that. But eventually, um, you know, I became too big for advertisers and sponsors to ignore, and so now they, they're signing on and, you know, so we're getting sponsors and advertisers, so you just have to keep on trucking.So yeah, so I, this is an opportunity for me.

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I love that June is Pride Month. It's also World ride in DC this month. Um, so what would you give uh when you look at the LGBT community, especially with what we're going through right now, what would you give as one piece of financial advice that you would think everyone should, should, uh, should try to do?Whether it's personal or business.

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So and you're talking about specifically for members of the LGBTQ plus community, to the gays, um, look, I would say, um, just very simple advice, save some money, put some money away, invest in your money, don't invest in in in the market if you can, um, andDon't try to keep up with the Joneses. We always try to keep up with the Joneses, and everybody's out there, they're buying, and they're fabulous, and they're doing. They love luxury and all of that.Um, I am not one thing that has saved me is that I don't really care about luxury. I don't care about brands. I love, of course, do I love to look at a beautiful Louis Vuitton bag and all of that? Do I love Ames, um, you know, do I love, um, all right, uh-huh, I love all of that. I love it, you know what I love more than that? I love opening up my phone and going, oh, look at my bank account, huh.So I don't have to have a name brand or a label on my back and I don't have to go out and drink or stay at the same hotels as you or make sure that I have an Uber. I ride the subway, I'll jump on a taxi, I'll get on a city bike. And so I would just say, just, you know, don't worry. People who actually have money don't do those things.I would say just save your money. Do not try to keep up with the Joneses. If other people, if they don't like what you're wearing, they don't have to wear it. If other people don't like your little one bedroom apartment, a studio apartment. There be jealous of my bank account and don't worry about.

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I did not have fashion tips on my bingo card from.

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But invest in your home. Invest in your home, invest in your business, invest in yourself. Don't invest in things, just things because don't like, oh, I have to have a people, I have to have a beautiful crossbody designer bag. I don't, I don't really care.

22:04 spk_1

Oh nice, nice, yeah.Well, thank you for joining us. Did that answer your question

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really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for

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joining us today. We really appreciate it.

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You guys are great. I love it.Thank you, thank you.

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Definitely. If you like what you see, scan the QR code and follow Yahoo Finance podcast for more videos and expert insights because when you do, you feel a little bit more financially empowered too. And until next time, stay fabulous.

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This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.