Your Bank is Not Your Friend: Where You Save Matters

Trust, Power, and the Black Dollar

We’ve been told to work hard, play by the rules, and trust the system. That if we just save our money and stay disciplined, the American Dream will reward us. But what happens when the very system we’re told to trust was never built to serve us?

The financial system in America has a long, documented history of excluding and exploiting Black communities, from denying home loans and small business funding, to outright redlining entire neighborhoods and robbing Black families of generational wealth. These weren’t accidents. They were strategies.

And yet, despite this legacy, many of us continue to deposit our dollars into the same institutions that either ignored our grandparents or actively profited from their oppression. The same institutions that offer us predatory loans or none at all when apply for auto loans, mortgages or credit cards. Why? Because we’ve been conditioned to see big banks as safe, neutral, and trustworthy. But they’re not neutral, and they’re definitely not working in our favor.

Here’s the truth: where you save your money is where you build power. Your deposits don’t just sit there. Banks use your money to invest, fund, and fuel economic growth…for someone. If your bank isn’t investing in your community, it’s making money off your community.

This isn’t just about savings accounts. It’s about strategy, intention, and liberation. Because your bank is not your friend. And it’s time we start acting like it.

The History of Banking and Black Exclusion

To understand why “where you save matters,” we have to confront the reality that America’s banking system was never built with Black people in mind, and often even built against us.

1. Post-Emancipation: Locked Out from the Start

After emancipation, formerly enslaved Black Americans were eager to participate in the economy as free people. But freedom without access to capital is a setup. The Freedman’s Bank, created in 1865 to serve newly freed Black citizens, collapsed just nine years later, due in large part to gross mismanagement and fraud by white trustees. Over 61,000 depositors lost roughly $3 million (the equivalent of billions today). This early betrayal planted a deep mistrust of financial institutions, and for good reason.

2. Redlining and the Housing Divide

In the 20th century, the federal government and private banks collaborated on one of the most devastating forms of economic exclusion: redlining. Black neighborhoods were deemed “too risky” for investment, resulting in widespread denial of home loans and business credit. Meanwhile, white families received low-interest loans that allowed them to build wealth through property ownership—wealth that would be passed down for generations.

This wasn’t a mistake. It was policy. It shaped our neighborhoods, our schools, and our futures.

3. The Modern-Day Continuation

Even today, Black consumers face higher interest rates, higher denial rates for loans, and fewer banking services in our neighborhoods. Predatory lending and banking deserts are still very real. While the language may have changed, the outcomes haven’t: Black communities are still being economically suffocated.

So when we ask, “Why does it matter where you save?” it’s because traditional banks have rarely—if ever—worked to empower Black communities. More often, they’ve extracted from them.

What Banking Black Really Means

When you bank Black, your money stays in your community longer. That means:

• More loans for Black homeowners, business owners, and students.

• More investment in neighborhoods that are usually overlooked.

• More control over our economic destiny.

Black-owned banks often understand the specific challenges of Black borrowers and are more likely to take a relationship-based approach to lending. They see us—not just our credit scores.

2. Circulating the Dollar Where It Counts

The average lifespan of a dollar in the Black community is just 6 hours. Compare that to 20 days in some Asian communities. That gap doesn’t exist because we don’t have money. It exists because our money doesn’t stay with us.

Banking with institutions that reinvest in Black people is one way to start closing that gap.

3. It’s Not Charity—It’s Strategy

Let’s be clear: Banking Black is not about feel-good symbolism. It’s about building the infrastructure for group economics. When our money works for us, we don’t just survive. We scale.

We can fund our own schools. Finance our own developments. Build our own safety nets.

Final Word: Build with Intention

Make no mistake about it. This isn’t just about where you put your money. It’s about where you place your trust, your power, your future.

If the financial institutions we’ve been told to trust have a legacy of locking us out, then it’s time to stop knocking on their doors. It’s time to build our own.

We don’t need approval to empower ourselves.

We don’t need permission to protect our wealth.

And we definitely don’t need to keep feeding systems that have historically drained us.

Saving Black is saving Black—because every dollar is a seed. When we plant it in our own soil, we grow legacies. We build institutions. We reclaim the wealth we were never supposed to have.

So the next time you check your balance, ask yourself: Is your bank balancing with you or just off you?

It’s time to bank with intention. Save with strategy. And circulate with purpose.