The Background Story
The Background Story
In 2004, a phone call came in to the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants. Someone was looking for a speaker to address a group of women in a drug rehabilitation program at Integrity House in Newark. It seemed like a great opportunity — a CPA with expertise in personal financial planning could share important information with people facing major financial challenges.
A presentation was scheduled. The CPA spoke for two hours. There might have been a PowerPoint. There might have been some handouts. And there was one person in the room who came away with a clear sense of what was really needed: more basics, more interaction, more classroom time. No one-shot deals.
That person was Ridge Kennedy — a writer and public relations specialist at the Society. Not an accountant. But someone who had spent years interviewing financial professionals and writing about their recommendations for taking care of money.
About a year later, Ridge returned to Integrity House and began leading “The Money Class” — a six-session Saturday program for men in a halfway house setting, small groups of eight to ten at a time. The content drew from ideas suggested by the staff, from interviews with professional financial planners, and from a book that several of those planners remembered warmly: The Richest Man in Babylon, a collection of financial parables written in the 1920s by George S. Clason.
The men in those classes taught Ridge as much as he taught them. He learned about the financial realities of life on the outside for people who had been incarcerated. He saw firsthand the gap between what conventional financial education offered and what these men actually needed.
Then life intervened. The program at Integrity House ended. But the experience and the lessons stayed.
At some point, the idea of writing a story occurred to him. He was familiar with The Richest Man in Babylon and its financial parables set in 5000 BC. But would those kinds of stories resonate with the men he had met? He didn’t think so. What about setting a story in the present day, in a contemporary American city? Call the city “New Babylon”?
About ten years later, he started writing. Several drafts and several versions of The Rules later, aided by the revolution in print-on-demand publishing, The Richest Man in New Babylon was published in 2020. As Ridge completed the book, he realized what it was: the book he wished he’d had when he was trying to lead The Money Class.
The first real test came at the North Central Correctional Institution in Gardner, Massachusetts. A corrections educator read the book, believed in it, and created a pilot class. The men who participated gave the program strong reviews. The feedback confirmed what Ridge had believed: that this material connects with the people it was written for.
Since then, the program has continued to develop. A workbook and leader’s guide were created. A second book — The No B.S. Rules for Taking Care of Your Money — was written to provide a direct, practical companion to the story. An audiobook is in production. And the Financial Wisdom Foundation is being established to bring these materials to corrections education and reentry programs across the country.
About the Author
Ridge Kennedy was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas — then moved to Philadelphia, Columbus, Indianapolis, Tokyo, Bangkok, Fort Smith again, Indianapolis again, Cleveland, and Mentor, Ohio before going off to high school in New Hampshire. No, he wasn’t a military brat. His parents were in the newspaper business.
After majoring in speech and theatre in college, Ridge taught theatre at Hiram College and Bucknell University, then went into the family business — newspapers and communications. His career has spanned journalism, teaching, marketing, public relations, and the arts. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Arts from UC Davis and has designed more than thirty university and regional theatrical productions.
Ridge is also a folk artist — a dance caller and song leader who believes in the power of participatory arts to help strangers become friends. He lives at Hedgehog House in West Orange, New Jersey, with his wife Jane.
His work on Financial Wisdom is a not-for-profit effort to address the challenges faced by people — disproportionately men of color — who have been incarcerated in the United States. But The Rules described in his books can be applied by anyone, anywhere. That ticks the “income inequality” checkbox on Ridge’s worry list, too.
More than you want to know about Ridge Kennedy here.