Harris Financial Coaching Blog

Feeling stuck with money? Sometimes, financial clarity does not come from staring harder at the numbers. It comes from stepping away long enough to breathe. In my visit to Pigeon Island in St. Lucia, hiking helped me reset when life felt heavy with work deadlines, money worries, and family responsibilities. The message was simple: when your mind is overwhelmed, your money decisions can become overwhelmed too. That is why a walk, a hike, or a few quiet minutes outside can b

Sometimes travel is not just about getting there. It is about how you feel while you are getting there. That was the biggest difference for me on our Amtrak trip from Chicago to Memphis and then on to New Orleans. For three people, we paid about $1,700 total, which came out to about $566 per person. For that price, we booked two Amtrak roomettes instead of trying to squeeze everyone into one space. That was not a small expense, so the real question is fair. Was it worth it?

Some trips are planned around transportation, hotels, restaurants, and a few attractions. Then some trips end up giving you more than you expected. Memphis was one stop on our Amtrak City of New Orleans journey from Chicago to New Orleans, but it became one of the most meaningful parts of the trip. We arrived by train, walked through places filled with music and history, and left with a deeper understanding of why Memphis is not a city you should pass through.

Train travel has a way of slowing you down before you even reach the destination. For this trip, we started in Chicago and took Amtrak’s City of New Orleans route to Memphis. This was the first leg of our journey before continuing on to New Orleans two days later. Since there were three of us, we booked two roomettes instead of one bedroom. This ride was a reminder that comfort, cost, space, and expectations all matter when deciding what type of travel experience is worth

A lot of people visit Chicago for the skyline, the food, the shopping, and the big attractions downtown. And yes, those things are worth seeing. But this trip reminded me that Chicago is much more than the postcard version. There is history here. There is culture here. There is leadership here. There is Black legacy here. For my family and me, this was not just a sightseeing trip. It was a chance to experience a side of Chicago that felt deeper, more grounded, and more rea

I read books that helped me understand Black history not as a separate topic, not as something boxed into one month, and not as something disconnected from everyday life. I read these books because history does not stay in the past. It shows up in where people live. It shows up in how schools are funded. It shows up in who gets access to jobs. It shows up in how laws are enforced. It shows up in who gets believed, who gets protected, and who has to keep proving they belong.

You can work hard, pay your bills, stay out of trouble, and still feel like your family is one emergency away from falling behind. That feeling is real for many households. It is not because Black families do not work hard enough. It is not because they do not care about money. The bigger issue is that many Black families have been trying to build wealth without the same starting point.

The United States did not become wealthy by accident. That is a hard sentence to sit with, but it is an important one. Wealth does not just appear. It is built through systems, labor, access, ownership, policy, and power. In The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Edward E. Baptist makes a clear argument: slavery was not separate from America’s economic growth. It was deeply connected to it.