Bloggerbeef

Popular celebrity gossip bloggers and “friends” Funky Dineva (Quentin Latham) and ATLien (Michelle Brown) from Straight From The A, are having beef. The reason is because Brown was renting a town-home to Latham; due to payment issues, she evicted him from the property. This wouldn’t be that big of a deal (it’s life) except both are airing there differences out publicly and on their respective blogs.

We’ve touched on the situation with additional details on The Boards (Cypher Ave’s message board forums) and you can read the details here. Readers and followers of Cypher Avenue know gossip is not our angle or our foundation; which was why it wasn’t featured on our main site. The reason it’s discussed on our message boards; being honest, we know many of our readers do follow both bloggers, in addition to other websites that feature celebrity/industry gossip.

I say that because I can careless of who did or said what to who in this situation…so “why the fuck am I talking about it on our main website” you ask? Usually when we talk about controversy as it pertains to people in media, we try to dig deeper than the surface story. The recent Katt Williams / Kevin Hart post we did is an example. In this very unfortunate situation between the two bloggers, there are some “teachable moments” that I feel are being missed within the messy commentary.

Life as a full time blogger is tough. Please don’t think I’m asking you to break out the violins, because this is a chosen gig. No one forces one to be a blogger; I just want to point out the possible fiduciary short comings this profession has.

There are risks to being an entrepreneur and having, running and sustaining a business. I give props to both bloggers, regardless how successful; both made the decision to take the risks and start something for themselves that they were passionate about.

As it pertains to the eviction, if you think about it, if a person is late on their rent or mortgage, chances are they’re late on other payments as well. Evictions, late payments and debts, all impact credit/FICO scores negatively. Speaking from experience, its easy for your scored to drop but it seems hard as hell to get it to improve.

The rent on the town-home in question that the blogger was evicted from is around $1450 per month. Just putting it out there, the mortgage on my 3 bedroom town-home is under $700 per month. My partner has a large 5 bedroom home and his mortgage is lower than $1200 per month. I bring this up to say, we have to learn to live within our means. Just because you can buy it, doesn’t mean you can afford it.

Obviously as a landlord, Brown has a business (a rental property) to maintain. When rent is not received from a tenant, the landlord still has to make a payment to the mortgage holder (the bank). Latham could not make payment because clearly he was having some financial issues, which can unexpectedly happen to anyone. I’ve been there and remember the feeling of shame and hopelessness.

There are countless studies year after year that show the wealth gap between people of color and whites has been steadily increasing. The recession impacted people of color the hardiest as it pertains to employment and home forecloses and evictions. Yes many financial institutions wrote bad loans and issued higher interest rates for Black people, but many Black people still had to much house they couldn’t afford and were living check to check.

Regardless of occupation or race; people need to get in the habit of saving, investing and paying themselves first. I have been in financial troubles in my past, fired and laid off by employers but once I came out off that hump, I did my best to plan, prepare and make attempts to never be in those situations again. I took my struggles as a wake up call, sacrificed, educated myself on some basic financial principles and moved forward. Learn from the mistakes because they are opportunities for growth.

Lastly…people need to be careful with continuously making their private business public by way of social media. You never know what the end results could manifest into.