Sep 7, 2026
Last week's question was whether anything was flowing back into your cup. This week, Simone gets specific about the number underneath that question, the one most of us have never actually written down in full.
Simone draws a clear line between a starting number and a real one. The Black Tax Boundary Kit gave listeners a rough sense of what leaves and what stays, real and enough to begin with, but a real number means writing down everything that comes in, not the version said out loud at gatherings, and everything that goes out to family, including the parts that stopped getting counted because counting them felt disloyal. She names a pattern worth sitting with: we round the number in our own favor without meaning to, not from dishonesty but because the real number is uncomfortable, and rounding is how we avoid sitting with it, whether that means underestimating what we give or overestimating what we can actually afford to keep giving. Her core claim is direct: a plan built on a rounded number is not a plan, it is a guess wearing the clothes of a plan, and guesses tend to fail exactly when the pressure is highest. She walks through what building the real number actually involves inside the Giving Plan Workbook, income, recurring support, the one-time asks over the past year, personal savings, and the honest gap between what is being given and what can be sustainably given without a person's own future going to zero. She closes with a specific instruction: once you have the number, do not act on it right away, sit with it for a day, because it is not a verdict on how much you love your family, it is information.
This episode is for anyone who has done rough math on the black tax before but never let themselves see the full, honest number. It sets up next week's turn toward the actual conversations, what to do once the number is known.
About Simone W. Johnson-Smith About Simone W. Johnson-Smith Simone is the founder of Thrive Abroad and The Bridge Concepts, LLC, a Jamaican-born American intercultural strategist, coach, and former U.S. diplomat. She is the International Impact Book Award-winning author of Decoding America & Coming Home to Yourself: The Immigrant Experience — available in print on Amazon, and as an audiobook (ElevenLabs-narrated) on Spotify, Barnes & Noble, Rakuten Kobo, and other major retailers via InAudio — and host of this podcast, reaching listeners in over 100 countries.
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This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For guidance specific to your immigration status, consult a licensed immigration attorney. For guidance specific to your financial situation, consult a licensed financial professional.