What interest above 10 percent is taking from you, and what it could build instead
The money is already leaving. I am going to help you catch it.
There is a mother in this country with two children and one paycheck. She owes $6,000 on a credit card. She owes $15,000 on a used car she needs to get to work. Some months, when the money comes up short, she borrows $350 until payday.
This year, the amount she pays above 10 percent interest comes to $1,455.
What she pays above the 10 percent line — one year
Credit card — $6,000 at 22.15% Above the line: $729.00(Federal Reserve G.19, accounts assessed interest, Q2 2026)
Used car — $15,000 at 11.43% Above the line: $214.50(Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market, Q1 2026)
Payday — $350 borrowed, taken back roughly ten times a year Above the line: $511.58(CFPB: the typical borrower is in debt 199 days a year; three-quarters of all payday fees come from people taking more than ten loans a year)
TOTAL: $1,455.08 a year$121 a month. $28 a week.
Every line is the balance multiplied by the rate above 10 percent. Check it yourself.
Not what she borrowed. Not what she paid back. Just the part on top. Just the extraction.
That is $121 a month. That is $28 a week. That is the car repair she has been putting off. That is paying the neighbor who watches her kids, instead of asking her to do it for free again. That is the difference between being short and not being short.
And that is the good version. If her credit is damaged, the number more than doubles. I will show you that too, and I will show you why.
The same three debts, with damaged credit
Credit card — $6,000 at 27.56% Above the line: $1,053.60(average offered rate, damaged credit)
Used car — $15,000 at 21.00% Above the line: $1,650.00(subprime tier — and 21% is the floor, not the ceiling)
Payday — $350, same as before Above the line: $511.58(unchanged — this is the point. The fee is the fee. Her credit score does not enter into it. It takes the same amount from everyone standing at that window, and everyone there is short.)
TOTAL: $3,215.18 a year
Same three debts. Same woman. Same $21,350 borrowed. She pays $1,760 more because she is already behind.
That is 2.2 times the first table. The system does not make a mistake here. It is working exactly as designed, and the design is that being poor costs money.
The 7YOC platform says one thing, and it is not complicated:
That money should build something she owns.
What that money builds
What the same drain looks like at neighborhood scale
7 households — $10,186 a year. The seed of a Nutrition Hub.
50 households — $72,754 a year. A Hub and a vehicle.
200 households — $291,016 a year. A Hub, a fleet, and people paid a wage to run it.
1,000 households in one city — $1,455,080 a year.
Each line is $1,455.08 multiplied by the number of households. That is arithmetic, not a projection.
And if those households have damaged credit — which is the more common case in the neighborhoods this is built for — every figure above roughly doubles. Seven households: $22,506. One thousand: $3,215,180.
That money is not a grant anyone is waiting on. It is leaving those homes right now, going to lenders who will never build anything on that block, hire anyone on that block, or drive down that block again.
Where the rates come from
The Federal Reserve publishes two credit card numbers. One is the average across all accounts. The other is the average on accounts that actually carry a balance. In the second quarter of 2026, the first was 20.94 percent. The second was 22.15 percent.
The gap between those two numbers is the whole story. People who can pay in full every month are averaged into the low number. They never pay interest at all. The high number belongs to the people who cannot pay it off, and it is the only number that describes her.
For borrowers with damaged credit, the average offered rate runs to 27.56 percent. That is the rate in the second table.
On used cars, the average rate is 11.43 percent, already above the line before credit score is considered at all. For a borrower with poor credit, it runs above 21 percent. I used exactly 21 percent, which is the floor, not the ceiling. Nearly a third of used-car loans now stretch beyond six years.
The switch on her car
For the lowest-tier borrowers, lenders install a device called a starter interrupter.
This is not the breathalyzer device a court orders after a drunk driving conviction. That one is a legal penalty, ordered by a judge, and it tests the driver. It is meant to keep people from dying.
A starter interrupter is different. A lender installs it. There is no judge. There is no crime. It does not test the driver at all. It tests the payment.
Miss a payment, and the lender shuts the car off from a distance. It will not start until you pay. If the money does not come fast enough, they take the car.
One device is a consequence. The other is a collections tool.
A working mother’s ability to get to her job now has a switch on it, and someone else’s hand is on the switch.
The payday trap
A two-week loan with a $15 fee per $100 borrowed works out to 391 percent.
The consumer bureau found that payday lenders do not check whether you can repay it. They do not need to. They are first in line at your bank account. The bureau wrote it down plainly: after the lender is paid, there may not be enough left for rent or groceries, so the borrower comes back for another loan.
Seventy percent take a second loan within a month. The typical borrower is in debt 199 days a year. Three-quarters of all payday fees come from people taking more than ten loans a year.
This is why payday is the largest line in both of my tables. It is the one debt where her credit score does not even matter. The fee is the fee. It takes the same amount from everyone standing at that window, and everyone there is short.
The line is 10 percent.
Above 10 percent, I call it what it is. Extraction.
That is not a radical number. In January 2026, a Republican president called for capping credit card rates at 10 percent. The idea has support in both parties. No law has passed. No cap exists. The Credit CARD Act of 2009 limits some fees. It does not cap interest at all. There is no federal ceiling.
So I am never waiting for Congress to draw the line.
I have built the engine that makes the line real for one family, then seven, then a neighborhood.
Nobody’s property is taken. Nobody is punished. No company is seized. A leak is closed, and the water fills the tank the people are already standing in.
About Black Reparations
Let me say this plainly, because it matters and because I am not going to be vague about it.
The case for Black reparations is its own argument. It has its own history, its own advocates, and its own claim. This plan does not settle it, pay it, or speak for it.
What I will not do is let this be used to change the subject. That trade has been offered before, and it has never been offered in good faith. If someone tells you that you have to pick, look at who is asking and what they have paid.
This plan does not ask her what she is before it closes the leak. Neither do I.
If you are working on Black reparations, I am not your competition.
Why I call it reparations
Because a wrong was done, and it is still being done, and it is owed.
Not for something that happened in a century nobody in this room lived through. For what happened to her last month, and what will happen again in fourteen days.
This country already knows how to do this. When the banks were in trouble, it moved $443.5 billion to stabilize them within weeks. Nobody called that socialism. Nobody asked the banks to prove they deserved it. It was called stabilizing an institution.
I am asking a plain question:
When does a household count as an institution?
I am answering that question myself. It counts now.
This plan is for every American under $100,000 a year who is being drained. White, Latino, Native, Asian, Black, rural, city, young, old. The financial drain does not check your box before it takes your money.
What you can do today
Not someday. Not when the money arrives. Today, tonight, this week. These five things cost nothing but your time, and each one is the actual work.
1. Read this plan with the people you love. Sit down with them. Do the arithmetic on your own kitchen table. Take what you owe. Multiply it by your rate. Then multiply what you owe by ten percent. Subtract the second number from the first.The difference is what is being taken. Do it for your sister. Do it for your neighbor. The number stops being a statistic the moment it has your name on it.
2. Host a Wednesday night dinner. One table. Whoever comes. This is where it starts, every time. Not a meeting. A meal. People tell the truth over food in a way they never will in a folding chair under a fluorescent light.
3. Survey your community. Walk it. Ask people what they are paying and what they are missing. Ask what already works. Do not rebuild what is working. Find out what is already strong before you propose a single thing.
4. Identify the power structures where you live. Who actually decides things on your block? Not who holds the title. Who do people listen to? Faith institutions. The barbershop and the beauty shop. The bodega and the corner store. The woman everybody calls first. Find her. She is the beginning of your seven.
5. Find the help that is already there. Local government. Nonprofits. Food banks, community land trusts, credit unions, mutual aid groups, the county extension office. Call 211. Somebody near you is already combating this. Find them.
Five steps. No money. No permission. Nobody is coming to do this for you, and nobody has to.
Where I actually am
I am going to be honest with you, because being honest with you is the entire point.
There is no Hub you can walk into tomorrow morning. It is being built, in public, with the numbers showing.
Right now, it is me. One person. I built this ledger; I am standing on it, and I am not going to pretend I have a movement when I do not. That is why this page says “I,” not “we.”
Tulsa is the first pilot. Seven households, one neighborhood, one public budget, one scorecard, six months of results published, whether they are good or bad, is the goal. From there: Chicago, North Carolina, and Las Vegas. Three more places, on both coasts and in the middle, because the financial drain runs everywhere and the proof has to run everywhere too.
What exists today is the plan, the arithmetic, and the five steps above. That is enough to start. People have built more from less.
I will never tell you a door is open when it is not. That is what the people taking your money do.
The ask
I am not asking for a number so large it cannot be pictured.
I am asking for one year of what the lenders are already taking from seven households in one neighborhood.
$10,186.
That is the seed. One Hub. Seven families. One public budget. One scorecard. Six months of honest numbers.
If it works, the neighborhood keeps the $10,186 next year, and the year after, and it compounds into the thing they own.
If it does not work, I say so out loud, and everyone can see exactly why.
A small honest report beats a large fake promise.
What this is not
This is not a replacement for voting. It never will be. People served and are still serving to protect that vote, and this work exists to help restore a country where the vote means what it is supposed to mean. Vote. Vote through every barrier they put in front of you. Then come build.
This is not charity. She is not receiving anything. She is keeping what was already hers.
Who runs this
I built it. I am not going to run it.
This platform is designed to be led by women, and the seven-person teams default to women leads. That is not a gesture. It is architecture. I am the builder and the lightning rod. Someone else is the operator, and she has neither volunteered nor been hired yet.
If that is you, write to me.
connect@sevenyearsofchange.org
Sources: Federal Reserve G.19 Consumer Credit, Q2 2026 — accounts assessed interest 22.15%, all accounts 20.94%. Experian State of the Automotive Finance Market, Q1 2026 — average used vehicle rate 11.43%, subprime tier above 21%. Reported average offered rate for damaged credit, 27.56%. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, payday and deposit advance findings. U.S. Department of the Treasury, TARP disbursement, $443.5 billion. All figures verified July 2026. Every number above can be rebuilt from the rates named here with a calculator.
VERIFICATION RECORD
Checked against live sources, July 20, 2026:
Figure
Status
22.15% credit card, accounts assessed interest, Q2 2026
Confirmed, Fed G.19
20.94% credit card, all accounts, Q2 2026
Confirmed, Fed G.19
$1,455.08 total, good credit
Arithmetic verified
$72,754 / $291,016 / $1,455,080 scaling
Exact to the penny
$3,215.18 damaged credit, "more than doubles"
2.21× — accurate
391% payday APR ($15 per $100, two weeks)
Standard calculation
Next Federal Reserve G.19 release: August 7, 2026 — after the August 2 event. These figures are stable through your date. Recheck after August 7 before any reprint.
Seven Years of Change. sevenyearsofchange.org