What are the ways in which all of us can be empowered as financial activists in our lives? Author Jasmine Rashid outlines eight strategies for financial activism, spanning inner work, personal financial decisions, influence over collective financial flows, and financial activism beyond money.
In this conversation Jenny and Jasmine discuss:
Resources:
[INTRO]
Jasmine Rashid: [00:00:00] When we're existing in a system that fundamentally has told us time and time again, that our, again, self worth, our sense of worthiness in a society is tied to the amount of money that we can accumulate. Again, often in very. subconscious ways that are reinforced throughout our culture. That's dramatic.
Jenny Stefanotti: That's Jasmine Rashid. She's the author of the financial activist playbook, eight strategies for everyday people to reclaim wealth and collective wellbeing. This is the Denison podcast. I'm your hosting curator, Jenny Stefanotti. In this episode, we're discussing financial activism, something very core to Denison's theory of change.
We've talked a lot about economic reform. This conversation highlights all the ways that each and every one of us can change our own behaviors. To foster an economy that's aligned with our vision of humanity flourishing in harmony with life on earth Jasmine and I explore obvious strategies like where you [00:01:00] bank what you buy and where you invest But we also get into the internal work that we can do to explore our relationships with money As well as non financial ways we can impact the economy As always, you can find show notes in the transcript for this episode on our website, becomingdenizen.com. There you can sign up for our newsletter. I bring our latest content to your inbox alongside information about virtual Denizen events, including community discussions with our podcast guests. I'm particularly excited for the session that will accompany this episode because it'll give us a chance to work together as a community to make some of the changes that we outlined in this conversation.
So if you'd like to join us for that and meet Jasmine, sign up for our newsletter or contact me directly from the website. Again, that's becoming denizen. com. All right, here's Jasmine Rashid.
[INTERVIEW]
This on one hand feels like a very overdue conversation. And on the other hand, feels just right because it builds on so many things that we've talked about on this podcast that are [00:02:00] more abstract.
We've talked so extensively about ways that we can reform. The economy or capitalism, stakeholder capitalism, long term capitalism, co op, steward, ownership, but this conversation lands a lot of the economic reform in everyday behaviors, which is really the fundamental thesis for Denizen around systems change is that.
We're all complicit by virtue of our behaviors and your book, the financial activist playbook. I'm so excited to share with everyone in this conversation, outlines comprehensively the ways in which we can think about our own behaviors to influence the financial system. So welcome Jasmine. I'm so happy to have you here.
Jasmine Rashid: Thanks, Jenny. I'm so excited for this conversation and all the things that we will get to touch on and explore together.
Jenny Stefanotti: So your book outlines eight strategies for financial activism and we'll touch on all of them in this conversation. But I wasn't expecting the first [00:03:00] strategy to be about consciousness and culture and turning inwards.
And I think that that's a piece that we tend to take for granted as our baseline. And of course, we've internalized all of these stories about money. You talk about money scripts and money stories. So tell us about that.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. So I learned about the concept of money scripts. Dr. Brad Klontz, who's a financial psychologist, talks about the ways in which all of us unconsciously are moving through the world with these fundamental ideas around money.
There's money avoidance, which is very much around. Money is the root of all evil. More money equals more problems, right? That's one particular type of script, which is very different than something like money worship, where money is the key to happiness. And it's the thing that we all need to accumulate because it hypothetically equals more freedom, right?
Money equals freedom. And then there's money vigilance, which is Personally, something that I think I was very accultured to [00:04:00] internalize is that money is meant to be saved and accumulated and like there's this inherent connection between money and anxiety. And then the last scripts that Dr. Bradclaw offers is money status.
And this is another one that I have been very attuned to in my life and seen how it affects those around me is that. Money is meant to be something that equates to unconsciously this idea of self worth.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.
Jasmine Rashid: Right? And so all of these scripts obviously touch on very different aspects of fundamental human psychology and our needs and desires.
But I really like the idea. Of money scripts as a starting point for beginning to examine the unconscious beliefs that we hold around me because it is so personal. One thing I've noticed as an only child who's very fascinated with siblings and different family structures is often the ways in which people can be a part of the same household, have the same key experiences around.
Money and [00:05:00] income grow up with the same amount of money, but have very different money scripts. And the reason is because money scripts are about so much more than the actual dollars in the bank, right? They are about, again, all of these layers that are so interconnected to identity, race, gender. So many ways in which we are moved through the world and how we see money as a tool or a detriment to our identities.
And so money scripts are a helpful starting point, I think, but definitely there's a lot more nuance that goes into actually. Understanding and unpacking our money stories. And that is something that I think requires a lot more introspection beyond just the BuzzFeed style quiz. It requires a deep exploration of our money stories.
Jenny Stefanotti: No, I really appreciated that provocation at the onset of the book that we all have these subconscious stories about money. These scripts that are running in the background that are [00:06:00] influencing how we relate to money. Just awareness of that as a starting point. You also talk about money trauma. Yeah. I think you had a comment that everyone living in a capitalist culture has money trauma, didn't you?
Isn't that in there? I do. I
Jasmine Rashid: do. And that was something that I like that it provokes for some people. It's like, yeah, obviously. And for other people, it's like, no, I don't have money trauma. Right. But when we're existing in a system that fundamentally Has told us time and time again, that our, again, self worth, our sense of worthiness in a society is tied to the amount of money that we can accumulate again, often in very subconscious ways that are reinforced throughout.
Totally. That's traumatic. Like that can be really traumatic. And I use the word trauma. There's the big T trauma, which is the singular events that define people's lives. But there's also the little T traumas that build up. And those are the aspects of having. Sustained scarcity around money or being bullied around money or having a sense of I didn't earn [00:07:00] this or I didn't desire this and I was introduced to this concept through very aptly titled the trauma of money program, which is a 17 week online.
education space that brings together this really interesting mix of people who are therapists and counselors with financial advisors and folks who are intermediaries in moving and advising wealth. And what's so interesting is that there are often so many therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists who, when they start practicing, they see this thread.
And that thread is that the majority of their clients Either money plays a role in some of their trauma, or it is one of the root causes that they didn't necessarily expect they weren't necessarily trained on in their formal training to to be licensed. And so it brings together these groups to really just again, explore.
the intersection of money and trauma [00:08:00] and identity from this really beautiful approach of how do we decrease shame and increase discernment so that when we are talking about things like financial literacy, we also have the strategies to regulate our nervous system so that that information actually.
Yeah.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. No, I really loved it. You integrated that. And then on the cultural front of this strategy, the headline there is actually talking about money. The fact that we live in a culture where we don't talk freely about money. I mean, say more about the implications of that.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. I love asking people just like with curiosity, like, why don't we talk about money?
What is it? Have you ever been told, don't talk about that? Some of us have, right? Some of us have been told, no, no, no, that's taboo. That's impolite. Don't talk about that. And others of us may have a less direct approach, but have just in the ways that we've seen money not be talked about, just assume that it's not something we're supposed to talk about, right?
It is taboo. And I love to remind people that our [00:09:00] financial systems are opaque and confusing and secretive by design. At its core, financial systems in the United States in particular were designed by a very small group of landowning white men who were thinking about how to accumulate wealth and run a society and a culture in their image.
And that has led to a prevailing ideology that money, again, is something that you have to be qualified to talk about, or you have to be really equipped because it can hurt feelings, or it can be something that is dangerous, right? There's a sense of danger when we talk about money. But actually, I see the ways in which not talking about money is really dangerous because it leads to things like massive wage theft.
Yeah. And exploitation, right? People not knowing if the salary that they're making is actually on base with what the market standards are. And It also leads, on a very kind of personal level, this [00:10:00] feeling of deep loneliness, right, when you're navigating your, whether it's your taxes, or your budget, or just this feeling that so many of us feel that we're doing something wrong, can be really liberated when we just begin the conversations of naming the absurdity of so many of these systems that we operate in.
So I really try to encourage people to bring that lens of not only curiosity, but also levity in talking about money and knowing that we can actually divorce it from our personal identities and talk about in a way where we can begin to see it as a tool. And that kind of threads, like you mentioned, throughout all of the other strategies in the book.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah, it's just so interesting the way that it assigns us in a very clear way to our time, right? And the opacity serves massive wage disparity. If everybody knew what the CEOs and execs were working at corporates, what would happen? Right. Best practice would be actually have transparency. So what does that serve?
Right. So I just really appreciate it even talking about money and in doing so changing culture about money [00:11:00] is an act of financial activism.
Jasmine Rashid: Totally. Yeah.
Jenny Stefanotti: Okay. So then you have a strategy. It comes later in the book, but I want to talk about it here around budgeting. Yeah. Because this gets into what we spend our money on, how much money we spend, how much do we save of what we earn.
And so again, this provokes these deep introspections about. money. You talk about flourishing through a first principle assessment of what a baseline, like life experiences and what income you need for that. So Dennison's vision is humanity flourishing in harmony with all life on earth. And I'm actually later this week recording a conversation on human flourishing.
So it provokes this question of like what Causes are flourishing. The need to have our own inquiry and practice around lights us up. What makes us happy? What are we doing? And all these different areas of our lives. So we'll get into budgeting, but I love that you actually started with a water analogy.
Jasmine Rashid: So the analogy that I bring into the book is this hypothetical concept, which is not [00:12:00] actually super hypothetical. But. Just for the sake of the thought experiment is if all of us shared a singular water supply and we each had our own little faucets, right, and everyone has one cup that represents our needs and our sense of enough.
And there's a few things that could happen when you go in front of the faucet. Your cup is not filled at all. You try to turn the spigot on and nothing comes out and you're left with an empty cup or it's filled. a little bit, but not enough to keep you hydrated, let's say. And then there's the amount where your water is filled, the cup is full, right?
And you feel like you have enough. But then the last scenario is that you, the water keeps flowing until your cup is full and therefore it actually spills over. And that's the interesting place where a lot of us are in this place of inquiry of technically we have more resources than we need. Let's say it's through our income, but we have a few different options, right?
We can try and store that water. Again, now you're trying to see how water is a [00:13:00] metaphor for money and capital. You can store it and save it so that you're saving it for later. Maybe you're in unforeseen circumstance in the future where you're in a drought, right? You need some extra water. Or you can redistribute it.
You can tip your overflowing cup into someone else's cup who may need a little bit more. Or you can do that same exchange, but with the expectation of something in return, right? That's what we get into spending and investing. Or you can just let it. Yeah. Wastes and just fall over the sides. And so many of us, I think, aren't planning for what our income is doing.
And therefore, unintentionally we're having that flow that isn't actually going towards that much that's productive in society in that moment. Yeah. And so that's the really basic metaphor that I encourage people to think about. It's useful to have that plan of what you're doing, assuming abundance, what you're actually doing with that flow.
Jenny Stefanotti: We'll get into that in a second. But first of all, I loved that when you presented that in the book, you said 70 percent of people go around dehydrated [00:14:00] And 1 percent of people Actually drink too much water, which is kind of how income is distributed or wealth is distributed Which I found fascinating and amusing But this analogy or this point in the book brings up this very deep Question about how much is enough and I think related, but distinct, which is what's my fair share, right?
Because there might be enough that everybody has enough. Everybody has enough to make their basic needs met and then there might be more to allocate. And then what is fair share, right? And so we have all these conversations about corporate governance, innovation and reforming society, but at the root of actually implementing those designs are these deep questions.
And I'm curious how you think about them.
Jasmine Rashid: Well, I Think about them again with the same level of [00:15:00] care and understanding that these are deeply personal questions. I'd actually be super curious when you hear that concept of enough budgeting like in your personal life.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah.
Jasmine Rashid: What does enough feel like? Oh,
Jenny Stefanotti: it's so interesting.
I know you said you just listened to the conscious leadership episode that came out before this and Diana talked about one of the principles, actually one of the commitments, sorry, of conscious leadership is having a deep experience of, I have enough time, I have enough money, I have enough of all the things.
And she takes her clients through this exercise of getting very present in knowing that they have enough. But these questions of what. is enough also gets to these internalized narratives around how we live. We have this benchmark that we're comparing ourselves to relative to everyone else. So when I think about this question, I think about the cultural and consciousness shifts that need to take place to change that.
It's really interesting looking at gift economies, for example. I think that that non [00:16:00] transactional relational way of doing economics surfaces need in a way that gets bypassed in the default capitalist system. And I think that like natural kind of calibration happens in that context. But interestingly, like in my personal life, I have abundance and yet I have scarcity because of the way that we choose to live, right?
But despite. Earning quite a bit. They're still strain, but that's a choice. I mean that gets into The internalized money stories that I have money trauma from my childhood. I really appreciated that I should think about it like money trauma and investigate that my husband has his own money trauma because he grew up on The Upper East Side in Manhattan is the kid on scholarship at the private schools and then went to boarding school and then went to Yale.
I don't know if anybody went to those schools and doesn't have money trauma from the ways in which money is glorified in those environments. And so it's really interesting to think about. how trauma plays out in our own lives, in our own decisions. But yeah, I just [00:17:00] think it's a very deep kind of philosophical question to ponder in the context of this big inquiry that Denizen is about, that you're about.
But it is interesting, right? I think Charles Eisenstein talks about how most of the things that really give us fulfillment are free. Connection to nature, connection to each other, and yeah, the ways in which. Our sense of enoughness is so deeply corrupted. I think about capitalism is like a virus that corrupts culture, right?
And that's why I talk about cultural change on the podcast and looking at like, how do we shift culture away from that? So, but yeah, I also just appreciate how this part of the book brought up. How do you want to live your life? I would be happy to have less financial strain and live in a not quite nice house.
Frankly, right? And then you even have these exercises of, okay, here's my expenditures. How did I feel when I made the purchase? How do I feel about those purchases? Now people shop as a way to numb out, for example, right? I just really appreciated that you brought up that starting with these deep introspection about money, stories, money, trauma, our social contracts, [00:18:00] or how we talk about it, how we think about it, how we spend it in our own lives and being intentional about what we need and what kind of life we want to live.
And I think all those things are very much. acts of activism because we're tuning into ourselves rather than just doing what society tells us to do.
Jasmine Rashid: Right. And I think that this is such a place of full exploration for me because at the same time as being deeply philosophical about human nature and this concept of enough, it's also super practical.
It's something that you can practice on a daily basis of like, what are my needs for today? What are the fundamental needs? I need to eat. Right? There's like a bunch of options that could happen in there in terms of what I'm putting into my body. Fundamentally, I believe that there is enough that all of our needs can be met, right, like our basic needs for survival.
But also there is enough that most of our reasonable wants can be met. I really try in my practice to be descriptive but not prescriptive, because again, I'm not an expert in everyone's lived [00:19:00] reality. It's hard for me to distinguish from the outside what a reasonable want and unreasonable want is in every particular context, but things that are really ego driven, right, hypothetically, like How many billions of dollars are we spending to send this phallic object to the moon?
Probably an unreasonable want, right? Probably something that is driven by ego. But the reasonable wants are the things that bring us these moments of not only like the cheap joy and dopamine hits, but also. have some dual benefit, for example, I am shameless about, and we'll get into the different strategies, but if I'm able to purchase a product that I know is also made by someone who I really value, I really value what their business does in the world, I'm not going to feel guilt about that, even if it's a product that like I don't, Right?
Right. Like we're allowed to also have these wants and, and I think that the kind of. Well, it's a
Jenny Stefanotti: different need, right? It's the need to support businesses that align with your values.
Jasmine Rashid: Right. Yeah. And that like, especially as someone who is, [00:20:00] I'm realizing I have this unique. Privilege in that I kind of live between these different worlds as someone who is between generations.
I'm right between like Gen Z and millennial. And so I see the ways in which the younger generation has this particular consciousness and these values and. I've lived in between class and have had a lot of economic mobility in my personal life. So I understand the perspectives of folks across the class spectrum.
And I'm mixed race. I've come from very different cultures, immigrant, South Asian culture, white American, Italian American and European American culture. And I see the ways in which there is just such difference around. what brings joy and meaning into people's lives. So I'm never going to be in a position where I'm going to criticize a Black woman for spending too much on luxury items.
That's actually not the issue, right? The issue is fundamentally about this larger cultural share of why is it that first, our fundamental needs aren't getting met across the board. And [00:21:00] that, again, comes back to systems rather than individual pieces. And so, trying to move people away from the shame that, again, could be inherent in some of this introspection.
Yeah. Because often that shame can feel really paralyzing, where it's like, well, now I don't want to look at it at all, right? Like, I actually don't want to budget or look at my budget because I don't like the feelings that come up. And just giving ourselves more grace and more curiosity in that exploration and knowing that.
No one knows better about what enough is than ourselves. We are the only ones that can make that call. We of course need to listen to social movements and what's around us, but also strengthening our own internal discernment practices so that we can continue to live or deepen our living in alignment with those values.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. I mean, and interestingly, the conversation that's coming out tomorrow that will proceed this one. It's with Ashanti Kuhneni, and it's about decolonization and consciousness. And so she talks about internalized narratives and how, when we connect to our authentic self, when we connect to our spirit, we can rewrite those stories.
So I think that part is really important to the personal [00:22:00] kind of aspect of it also helps us move past those internalized narratives that just. Want us to consume more right to thrive the economy. Okay, very rich I knew that part was going to be very rich and I again wasn't expecting it So I was so excited to see that in the book.
Okay, we've introspected about our relationship with money now Let's talk about what we're actually doing with our money. I love this because all of these things that we do are implicitly endorsing something or they're voting for something else and banking I think it's kind of my favorite because of the leverage because you deposit a dollar and then that bank lends out dollars.
So if you move one dollar out of a extracted bank into a more regenerative oriented bank, there's a significant multiplier on that dollar. So where we bank is huge and so many of us bank at the big banks that invest in the fossil fuels and all of the other bad things in the world. So let's talk about banking.[00:23:00]
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. I mean, I honestly didn't think about. banking as a tool of community power building and of culture shift and world changing until I was in the midst of a large social campaign in which we realized that the banks in which we were trusting our life savings, like this money that so many of us have worked hard for, that we have this emotional tie to, we are.
letting it spend the night in these institutions that don't give an F about the types of values, even if they may say we, we believe in human rights and environmental, social and governance. The particular story that I guess radicalized me to be a little bit more excited about the possibility of banking was a divestment campaign in the summer of 20 18, in which folks may remember here in the US, there was this absolute crisis around family separation and Trump's family separation [00:24:00] policies, images of migrant children being separated from their parents, right?
People in really, really destitute conditions that look like they were kind of cobbled together overnight. And it turns out they were, like many of the institutions and the facilities in which people were being held were cobbled together overnight. And these were run by for profit private prison companies, publicly traded.
institutions in which shareholders are investing and therefore expecting a financial return. And those shareholders were our big banks. The big banks, the JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America were the ones who at the same time as having these stances for human rights were the biggest profiteers of and bankrolling this industry.
And so I was able to join with a coalition that would become known as Families Belong Together. It was over 250 organizations really led by migrant women who had experienced the horrors of being physically in these Facilities that again, how to profit, but had a [00:25:00] literal business model to lock up as many people as they could for as long as they could in the lowest cost possible.
And so the campaign that we focused on was really just bringing public awareness to the idea of it's our money that is being used to bankroll these institutions. And so therefore. We're allowed to go to our banks and ask them why they're doing this. We're allowed to protest outside the headquarters.
And that again, was the first time that I really began thinking like, Huh. If banks can also be supporting all of these industries that are harmful to our communities, how can they also be incredibly helpful in helping build the infrastructure that communities deserve? And so that's when I began exploring the history of the.
Black banking movement in the United States and how much wealth was amassed there for community benefit began looking at community banks and credit unions. And just like you said, like the magic really is in the ability to make decisions around where our dollars circulate. That is a, in my opinion, completely [00:26:00] underused strategy.
Because it doesn't require much besides where you're choosing to put your deposits like where they're literally spending the night
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah, but they spend the night there and then they can loan them out at a multiple, right? And if you listen to our second most listened to episode with Donnie McClurkin You cite in your book, I didn't know that you know him, you know, he talks about the genesis of money, that banks are lending out money, that like the debt associated with the wealth accumulation is being this fundamental flaw, but you know, again, so that money creation happening with socially minded institutions instead of extractive public institutions is huge.
And again, if you take your dollar out, there's a multiple that is doing bad in the world and you can take that out. So it's such a easy thing to do. You distinguish between credit unions, community banks, and socially responsible banks. And so just at that very quick high level, can you touch on those so listeners get a sense of it?
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah, so all kind of [00:27:00] function pretty similarly in the concept of, you know, put money in, they lend it out. The idea that you will both protect and be able at a small percentage to grow your savings. Credit unions are member owned financial cooperatives. So everyone who is a member of the credit union is the primary stakeholder, shareholder.
And credit unions provide banking services that Should prioritize community benefit over profit, which is very similar to community banks, which are again designed to prioritize community benefit over individualized profit, and they're often local or regional focus, and they will include often personalized financial services that reinvest in the regional economy.
So they might be really attuned to getting better rates for folks who are looking to open small businesses or become first time home buyers or. get a loan for affordable housing, whatever it may be, like they are intentionally trying to support that local economy. Yeah. And then socially responsible banks again can happen at [00:28:00] many different scales.
They can be physical, they could be digital only, but they again prioritize ethical lending, sustainability and social impact alongside profitability. And so again, how we're incorporating these different metrics of risk and return.
Jenny Stefanotti: It can be kind of overwhelming to make the change and make the decision.
So it's helpful if there are resources to make it easier. So we'll provide that for listeners because I think as a community, as an audience, this is something that we should all be thinking seriously about doing.
Jasmine Rashid: I also just want to flag like one of the biggest hurdles that I see for people opening up an account at one of these institutions is just the fear that customer service won't be as good or they just haven't seen it as popularized.
And it's like, Of course, like the big banks have endless budgets, hypothetically, to spend on the cool commercials and the paid advertising that tries to build trust with us. But if you actually look at their business models, like they are not designed to [00:29:00] serve the everyday bank customer. That's why they have things.
I'm talking about big banks now. That's why they have so many. overdraft fees and these things that again like aren't actually serving the members where even though these smaller institutions may not have the budgets to spend on. The flashy kind of messaging to attract people or the like highest tech mobile apps, they are the ones that are by design meant to serve community.
And so I would love to see more resourcing of these institutions to actually make them feel a little bit more. appealing, especially to digital natives who are really wanting to have that seamless user experience because that's what they've been designed to expect. So hopefully someone is working on bridging that gap.
And I know folks are, but yeah,
Jenny Stefanotti: I mean, that is generally a price that you pay, which is there's more friction in terms of the, your experience online or with deposits and getting cash. And it's a price that. Some of us are willing to pay and some of us aren't. And again, no judgment zone. You say that a lot in [00:30:00] your book, right?
Okay. You also mentioned public banking. I feel like it would be remiss to not say something about that quickly.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. So public banking is essentially government owned banks. So how do we build like more democratic models that use public funds to support local economies? community development infrastructure rather than private profit for shareholders.
And so this is a practice that is very popular throughout the world. The United States only has one publicly owned bank in North or South Dakota,
Jenny Stefanotti: North Dakota. Yeah.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. That actually has been very successful over the years. But one thing I want to quickly plug is that there are many. current legislative bills and opportunities to just even begin exploring the public banking conversation in different regions throughout the U.
S. And folks can sign on to the Friends of the Public Banking Pledge, something I mentioned in the book, just to show that there's more interest in like actually what would it take to build democratically owned banks that again are owned by and for the [00:31:00] people.
Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. No, I love that. That deserves its own episode at some point, because it's a really important conversation.
I think you could probably make the case that, again, if such a route as Donnie makes their case very clearly in that episode of problems with our economy is the way that money is created by banks with the poor profit motive, and that's how money. The genesis of money circulating through the economy, if it's a public bank, it just, it's a completely different ethos at that point, right?
We can still talk about debt and some challenges with debt, but that's another wonky conversation. Okay, let's move on to consumption. You have a no Amazon policy.
Jasmine Rashid: I do.
Jenny Stefanotti: I've been thinking. I have no
Jasmine Rashid: Amazon policy asterisk. Sometimes I will walk onto my partner's Amazon and order something that I need because we're humans, right?
And like, this is the water that we're swimming in, but I personally do not have an Amazon account.
Jenny Stefanotti: I'm really thinking about it with just the state of the world right now. Well, let's just talk about consumption broadly.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. So this was a really fun strategy for me to research and ideate on because I've always [00:32:00] thought about the role of conscious consumerism and how important it is, and also felt like there's a little bit of irony in trying to conscious consume our way out of overconsumption.
Just slightly better consumption is probably not. The solution to the massive extractive economy and over consumption that we have. And so trying to like right size, what is the role of personal spending in how we think about fundamentally shifting our economies? It plays a huge role, right? Often people will say like every day you can vote with your dollars.
And I think the expectation that every purchase that we make should be filtered through the lens of. our values and of larger social movements is like, again, like one of those things that could trigger shame for folks, especially for folks who just aren't at the place where they have financial resources or extra time or energy to do the research or to go find the artisan [00:33:00] version of this thing that they could easily just like one click order because they have so many other things going on in their lives.
So I never want to tell people. You shouldn't do this. You should do this, but I will always share. Here's the boycott lists, you know, that are being popularized by movement. Here's where you can understand where there are labor disputes and you don't want to cross the picket line. And so giving people, again, the agency just to be you.
Curious about what buying decisions they're making on autopilot or that are easiest for them and where they can begin to tweak How they're spending so that again when they're actually making a purchase They have that not just the dopamine hit of ooh something new and shiny, but also the okay I'm not contributing to my own demise Well,
Jenny Stefanotti: I think it's interesting right like you we have to buy groceries Are we shopping at Whole Foods, which used to be a conscious consumption decision, but no longer is?
Or are we shopping at the local co op? Or are we shopping at the farmer's market? Better yet. Right? [00:34:00] Disintermediating and supporting the local economy and less cost of getting produce from A to B. We can talk about the dynamics of developing markets. That's a lot to say there, but, you know, there are some things that we have to spend money on these things and there are relatively low friction ways to shift those dollars.
I like to think about this too, a lot in the context of. Okay, there's this desire to consume more consciously. Where's the friction? There's an information asymmetry. Like, I don't know. I'm not going to sit in aisle six and Google which laundry detergent to buy. And that's where certifications are really valuable because they define a standard for what.
A B Corp is or fair trade is, and looking at the market dynamics where you have this information asymmetry, these third party players in a non governmental player can play these really interesting role in, in shaping market dynamics by addressing that information asymmetry, defining that standard, whereas companies of course, with whatever it is, washing have incentive to manipulate through marketing messages, what they're doing when they're not actually doing it.
So third [00:35:00] party certifications as an intervention around conscious consumption is really valuable. And I get in this conversation about moral hazard, like, Oh, I'm consuming consciously. So I don't have to be politically active or, but I think that there's inherent virality around these types of things, right?
Like I'm just consuming differently and I'm going to talk about it with my friends. And so that like, again, the cultural change that's inherent in that I think is really potent and valuable as a vector there, but it's hard. I think it's like, One area of consumption at a time, right? And there's so much friction around so much and it's just painful sometimes.
And it's even like, where did I order my delivery from? And did it come in single use plastic disposable containers? And how do I feel about doing that all the time? It's a journey, but it is a journey that I would like to our audience and community take together. Right? Because I think that there is that friction.
So we've got banking, consumption and investment is a third strategy that is pretty important, [00:36:00] obviously.
Jasmine Rashid: Pretty important. Pretty big. Yeah.
Jenny Stefanotti: Most of us have retirement funds of some sort. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah, though I will say, another thing I found in researching this book was that I'm forgetting exactly what the percentage was, but a very scary amount of folks who have access to retirement plans through their employers, that have access to, like, really great matching policies, Don't know about it and don't use it because it is not something that typically at a corporate HR is particularly excited to share and make sure people are taking advantage of this, this free money towards saving.
So just wanted to highlight that, like if you are somewhere and you don't have a retirement account, but they offer it, maybe it's time to look into that and to like, make sure that your coworkers are also knowing what money is available on the table because. Yeah, there's a huge deficit in what's actually being leveraged in the retirement accounts in particular.
Yeah, this
Jenny Stefanotti: goes back to strategy one around stories and talking about money. Yeah. [00:37:00] Yeah. And you just spoke to some of us have people who are managing portfolios in the stock market or in private companies and just awareness around what those are investing in and their various degrees in which you can invest in less bad to less good.
You also speak a lot to investing in place to say a little bit about that.
Jasmine Rashid: Hmm. Yeah, I love this idea and I really think this is the future of investing is community based, place based, or line of sight investing. So right, like what's actually in our communities? And so the example that I share is about the first private investment that I made was into East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative.
I'm based here in Oakland and West Oakland in particular really has always been this hub of Black business. It was kind of known as the Harlem of the West because of its really vibrant music, arts, culture scene in the fifties through seventies. And it was an area that was completely decimated by urban renewal.
The city of Oakland, the playbook and many other [00:38:00] places around the country put a highway directly through. The 7th Street Corridor that was the economic engine. And so basically my first investment in moving to the Bay Area and becoming a member of this really vibrant community with this super rich history was just understanding that there is so much potential to revitalize and for the community to actually own, not only the buildings, that's one aspect, but also how do we own the land underneath the buildings and invest in that so that.
We're taking it in perpetuity off the speculative market because what we see is that, you know, hedge funds, private equity firms will come in and be like, cool, thanks for redeveloping this area. We're going to now gentrify it and put high rises at completely again, decimate the local community. And so the first investment that I made was into EBPREC with literally just a thousand dollars share.
I am not accredited investor. Basically the way that this offering was structured was They bought this old building that used to be Esther's [00:39:00] Orbit Room, this like really beautiful historic jazz club that was, again, really central to the neighborhood. E. B. Preck led the facilitation of buying this land and redeveloping it and, you know, construction costs.
It came out to about five million, I think, and did a direct public offering so that not only could we have, you know, the kind of usual suspects of the foundations and philanthropists be able to Buy 1, 000 shares, but even folks who are legacy residents who couldn't afford one of the shares of 1, 000 could still have a share.
And the really cool thing about this CPO is direct public offering was that regardless of how many shares you have, everyone has one vote in the actual governance. And so that has led to the development of this space that I think they're ultimately seeking to put in a few small businesses in the space and have kind of a revenue that will return to investors about like the 1.
5%. Which is very small, but I think for me, it's helped me rethink about my investment portfolio and like, I'm investing in [00:40:00] this place that the return on it I'm getting is not necessarily a massive financial return that's going to support my retirement. But what it will do is increase the value of my everyday life because now my neighborhood is more walkable, right?
Now I actually am like excited about going down 7th street and meeting with people and having this vibrant community that is going to. See one another and invest in one another's businesses, right? And so just again, thinking about as someone who worked for six and a half, seven years in the registered investment advisory space of this very particular form of investing, also trying to expand how we think about.
Return. Yeah, and what kind of benefits we're deriving from where we place our money.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah, I think it's really interesting to think about market dynamics and market structures because the evolution of the economy into Larger corporations that are publicly traded has led to a Dismantling of local economies that bring so much more than just the goods and [00:41:00] services that they provide.
And so both to the consumption point, buying local and to this investment point, investing locally, it supports this economic restructuring away from big homogenous companies that aren't place based culturally and don't support the local economies. I think secondarily is really important to think about the disconnect that occurs between the investor and the humans that are influenced by the investment in the dominant economic paradigm.
And so when you move to place based, there's less distance between them, RSF. Social finance, you may be familiar with them. They have some great investment vehicles. What I think is so interesting about what they do is that they will bring their investors and their borrowers into calls together to talk about what feels like an appropriate interest rate.
And they also have flexibility around terms. They recognize that [00:42:00] unexpected things happen and they're willing to consider that and renegotiate terms. They haven't had people defaulting on any of their loans. And so that humanization of investment and the connection of the investor to the borrower in these cases, I think is a really important.
Implication of this place based investment that you're speaking to also
Jasmine Rashid: totally. Yeah. I think, again, it comes back to that idea of we can't just keep disconnecting economy and culture. If like fundamentally, when we're talking about economy, we're talking about the management of home is like, right. The genesis of the word economy.
Yeah,
Jenny Stefanotti: totally.
Jasmine Rashid: What goes into a home? It's not just the transactions. It is also the relationships and totally pieces.
Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. Okay. And then the last one around our own financial flows is philanthropy, giving and receiving money.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. So much to unpack there. I know that this stood out for you too, is just the reality of if we zoom out, that the vast majority of what's considered [00:43:00] philanthropic giving and donations, it's not from foundations, it's not from these capital P philanthropists, it's not even from corporates or government, it's from everyday people, working class, middle class folks who of course are giving in ways that can be appreciated.
Counted through 501c3s and the kind of traditional metrics, but also the giving that happens in someone sending money back to their home country. It comes in the flows of, of mutual aid. And I think that what I really like to help people reimagine is just how all of us have the capacity and often already are.
Givers of financial capital, but that we also are often receivers and that very rarely are we ever going to be positioned where we're just a giver or receiver. But that is fundamentally how philanthropy has been designed, right? Big philanthropy is, is this power dynamic of philanthropy. Yeah. We give, you receive, therefore prove to us your worthiness to receive this [00:44:00] donation.
And so, yeah, I'm trying to remind people that actually it's not going to be the philanthropists who save us, right? The kind of capital P philanthropists and foundations. They're a really important part that we get to organize and build meaningful relationships with, right? In the same way that We can actually have more transparent conversations among grant recipients and borrowers, like you just talked about investing, but that they're only one piece of the kind of philanthropic infrastructure.
Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. Yeah. And that 70%, 75 percent of philanthropy is actually what we would call retail philanthropy, right? The little p philanthropy, but I think a huge fraction of that is. Churches, right? It's religious institutions. To your point, that kind of the false dichotomy between the giver and the receiver.
And you've seen in a lot of informal economies around the world for a very, very long time, things like where you pull your money together and someone gets it every month. There's ways in which we can take turns giving and receiving to address fluctuations. And if you look at the [00:45:00] dominant experience for so many Americans today where they don't have 500 in case there's some sort of emergency that spells financial catastrophe, that sort of consumption smoothing can be addressed in smaller group environments relatively easily, right?
Yeah. So providing that socialization, and I think it's actually also really interesting to think about this moment and you read the headlines and it just feels so intense and overwhelming, but I do think it is causing a strengthening of those more decentralized social safety nets. around the country.
Jasmine Rashid: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. The giving circles and the more informal ways of holding money that do have deep cultural roots and are often responsible for so many of the, especially I see in immigrant communities. It's a huge part of local economies, but it's not often visibilized for a number of reasons.
Jenny Stefanotti: And also there's more resilience in these structures.
I think
Jasmine Rashid: the resilience is also because inherent in that conversation is dignity. [00:46:00] Right. It's like the more human, like everything again, comes back to the more human view of not just about transactions, but those relationships that again, make, make our lives what they are.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. Okay. So in our own financial flows, again, that's banking, consumption, investment, and giving.
And then I want to move to. Influencing money by organizing. So how are we empowered outside of our own consumption spending patterns to influence money? Banking, for example. Let's start there.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. So a quick way to think about that is not only how you are moving your own bank accounts and deposits, but can you go to your employer or if you're at a college or university or religious institution, right?
Like where are the pools of money around you? And Where are they deposited, right? And so something that we saw actually in the summer of 2020, one of the demands from the movement for black lives was to [00:47:00] encourage these corporations who, again, it's an interesting moment to be talking about these corporations who have massively rolled back their DEI policies, but conversation for another time, but one of the strategies they use was we don't want you just donating and buying black.
We also want you to open up accounts in the black owned banks that then can. you know, these multi million dollar accounts that doesn't cost you anything, actually. It doesn't cost you anything, but you are automatically being able to now circulate those dollars to have that multiplier effect in communities that have historically been excluded from that.
So that's one way to think about influencing the bank dollars and that multiplier effect.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. And same goes for investing. And I think you see this, for example, on college campuses where there's endowments and how the endowments, there's more pressure. And I think really importantly, All of this kind of falls into like cultural change too.
When I'm changing my financial decisions as consumers are increasingly consciously aligned, that just fundamentally changes the equation for people who don't [00:48:00] have ethics at the center of how they do business, but it's just. Good for business. Right. And so it has these sort of external factors on the market, which I think are really valuable.
And he also talked about shifting budgets.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah.
Jenny Stefanotti: Like what's happening around participatory budgeting. I just want to touch on that briefly.
Jasmine Rashid: I'm a huge participatory budgeting nerd because it again comes back to these like fundamentals of. What is our money doing in the world? And how can we begin to reclaim agency over it?
So fundamentally, participatory budgeting is like many other things, a concept that has been widely used throughout the world, and the U. S. is beginning to catch on and implement it. But it's essentially how do people have a more direct say over, for example, what their tax dollars are doing at the municipal level.
So it's, first it begins with a visibilizing of Okay, what are our tax dollars currently doing? I think, again, like the movement for Black Lives that we had this moment of people being like, Oh, that's how much is going to our local police budgets. And this tiny amount is how much is going [00:49:00] towards things like mental health crisis intervention and these other kinds of social support systems.
And so participatory budgeting, the idea of the campaigns is that invites people to directly vote. on how they would like to see budgets allocated. Often what we'll see is that it is a portion of a budget. It's a carve out. Let's say it's a million dollars that the local government says, okay, people, whoever wants to vote, come vote on how you want to see.
And we'll take that into consideration. But there are other places where they're taking a more radical approach. We don't just want a slice of the pie. We want, say, over the whole pie. Fundamentally, we want to know what all of our dollars are doing. And so that's an area of exploration that, again, I think if we were to lean more into, we would be living in a much more democratic society and is just so different from how we currently approach local budgets, which, again, is like, who has the time to actually go to the budget [00:50:00] hearings?
Like, they tend to be well intentioned, but often are The older, the whiter, the retired, you know, folks who have that extra time. So participatory budgeting for me is just about how do we, one, popularize the concepts of like, it's our money. And two, how do we actually put into campaigns that allow us to have the direct say over what it's doing?
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. No, I love that. Okay. And then your book takes us beyond money, which I really appreciated. And the first one you call handling our business. So tell us what you meant by that.
Jasmine Rashid: So this is really where I love to get creative and like picking up the designer's pen of what it actually means to either be an entrepreneur, right, where you're creating a business or you're running a business or an intrapreneur where you're existing within a business, but you have the opportunity to.
Before you even make changes, you have the opportunity to ask questions, right? And often people don't realize that that's something really powerful and just being able to say, [00:51:00] Hey, I noticed that we don't have that many socially responsible options in our employee sponsored retirement plan. What would it take to add some of those options?
Yeah. Right. So going, going to whether you're Entry level or your, it doesn't really matter where you are in the organization, but if you're able to do the mapping of like, who do I need to talk to, you don't need to have all the answers, right? Like you don't need to become like a certified expert on any of these pieces, but maybe you're just saying like, Oh, I noticed that we keep ordering our team lunch from, you know, Chipotle.
Like could we instead support the local, you know, small business that we all love and that provides us really great service. Like it's just, again. bringing that lens of curiosity and asking how you can move things differently in your workplace. So that's one part of the handling business. It's the just like understanding like that you often aren't going to be given permission explicitly to have an input on these things.
But when you're in a business, you are a part of that [00:52:00] management.
Jenny Stefanotti: And I think another really critical piece of this is Who do you work for? What are you implicitly endorsing by virtue of where you work? Right? Because there is also the strategy of quit your job. What do you think about it? These companies, if we didn't work for them and buy from them or invest in them, they just would cease to exist.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. And it's, again, this is one of those deeply personal, but kind of also universal truths of only we can discern. Can we actually leave a job and what are our financial responsibilities to our families and making sure bills are paid? But I've noticed that for myself too, there is this assumption that I don't have as much agency in where I am worthy of receiving a job.
But it is again, fundamentally, it is these companies that rely on us and our labor. And this is where for folks who don't necessarily feel like they are in a place of financial stability, where they have the agency to quit, that is where the power of collective organizing really comes in. Yeah. And knowing that the power of the people is [00:53:00] much stronger than the people in power, but you need to do the work of actual organizing.
And so in the book, I lay out strategies for just understanding what are the unions that you may be eligible to join? What are the systems of collective power? And then sometimes, like you said, you actually don't need to reform a company completely because They need you more than you need them and you could find another job that feels more values aligned.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. I think employee activism is just such a fascinating trend and leverage point when we think about this type of systemic change, but also this sort of question of where you work and can you quit goes to what we spoke to at the top of the conversation, which is can I quit or can I not quit? Right. I actually convinced my husband to quit a extraordinarily high paying corporate job because he was miserable.
And I said, this is not like, I don't value living in this house more than your fulfillment and happiness at work. And I literally convinced him to quit and we moved. And that was a [00:54:00] way of coming into more alignment with my values in my own life.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah.
Jenny Stefanotti: But it's hard to do that.
Jasmine Rashid: I always come back to the quote by the late great Alice Walker that the greatest way that people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
And again, like it's just about building a muscle of remembering. We have more free will and agency than our financial systems would like us to believe.
Jenny Stefanotti: Totally. And I grabbed your book and I opened it up and I literally have it opened up to that quote right in front of me. Cool. Magical. It's such a powerful quote and I see it in so many of the books that I'm reading these days, but it is really critical.
I mean, even if we go back to the Conscious leadership conversation that we just had in moving from this, the world is happening to me consciousness, which is a victim consciousness to a world is happening by me consciousness and in the by me, like number one commitment of conscious leadership is I am a hundred percent responsible.
This conversation is outlining all the ways in which we bear responsibility in the dominant paradigms that we're here talking about changing and it's [00:55:00] shining a light on all the ways in which we are. Giving up power that we have an agency. We have this is why this thesis for change from within. It's like this is where we Reliably have control is over ourselves other areas.
We have influence and power, but but we definitely have control over ourselves And so I love the way that this conversation Paints such a broad picture of all the ways in which we can do that with respects to influencing the economy And then the strategy that I love And I wanted to close with is you say, what does this seemingly non financial strategy have to do with financial activism?
Sort of everything. So tell us what it is and why.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. So the concept of how do we show up for one another beyond money, really asks us to take stock of all of the forms of capital and resources and And wealth right around us that go beyond just traditional finance. So that is thinking about whatever you want to call it, whether it's [00:56:00] human capital, social capital, cultural capital, it's the wealth and abundance of resources that nature gives us.
It's the capital and what's made possible through technology innovation. It's health and emotional well being, right? I think about how well being needs to be central to our redefining of wealth and well being for not just the individual, but people on the planet. And so this is where, like, I love.
reminding people again to begin taking stock and taking an asset based approach to like, what do we have personally in our communities, in our families? Like it often humans have a negativity bias of like, we do have often trauma and debt and all these burdens, but we also often have, again, these relationships.
That we know are so powerful in influencing the material conditions of our lives. And so, yeah, this strategy really talks about the ways in which we can begin visibilizing those social [00:57:00] safety nets, the ways in which there is value add beyond just what is valued by the market. And that comes back to the fundamentals of the care economy that we know is undervalued.
That comes back to, again, just all of the ways in which we are Um, making our lives full and abundant with or without the presence of financial capital.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. No, I really appreciate that. And again, the way that you outline all these other beyond the financial capital stack, human capital, physical capital, social, cultural, natural, political, technological, health, and emotional.
And this again, it helps to kind of rewrite the narratives, elucidate the abundance that's right in front of us. Just help us. Rewrite the stories of what our needs actually are. And so I just thought that was really powerful in just the ways in which it is an act of financial activism to lean into those ways of relating and value those [00:58:00] things.
And, you know, in my life, I took a lot of years where I barely worked when I, my kids were young and it's such a core part of my story. And even today I don't apologize for that. I don't apologize for. Prioritizing being a mom of three kids. I think about life as activism. That's part of the way that I think about that.
So I just I really really appreciate that you brought that in and you mentioned the offers and needs markets that Donnie does which are ways in which communities can come together and share what they need and I think really also Valuably what you spoke to you in the book around this is just the practice of asking for what we need.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. Yeah I've seen it be so transformational, not only for, again, like that transaction of people being like, I need this, and someone's like, cool, I'll give you this, right? That's an important part, but also just the empowerment that comes with naming that we all have needs, and none of us at any given [00:59:00] moment are aware of.
I guess some of us could be completely feel like we're full and we don't need anything, but that there often is an invitation that we can receive help from other folks and support and in turn raises our capacity to then give and to be able to flow whatever form of capital that is back out to others and have that really reciprocal relationship in the world.
Yeah.
Jenny Stefanotti: Yeah. I think it's really fascinating. I don't know if you've been to Burning Man, but it's a place where it is a gift economy. There is no capital that's exchanged. It is all in these other ways and it's fascinating how people do when they receive, they feel so compelled to give back, right? And there is that reciprocity instead of that transaction basis for that relationship.
So that's really powerful. And I wanted to close with rethinking income itself.
Jasmine Rashid: Yeah. What if every single person in our communities. Received the same amount of money to have their basic needs met. [01:00:00] What would change, right? I've seen some people react to that with like, Oh, there's, people are going to buy drugs and alcohol.
And it's, you know, all the classic reactions, but then when you actually look at all of the universal basic income or guaranteed income programs and pilots, what we see is that actually things like employment rates go up. When people have that little bit of stability that I didn't need to earn. this income.
I am just deserving of it by virtue of being a member of the community. It gives them not only, I think, the kind of financial basis to fill some gaps that may need to be filled, but also it gives them that kind of like sense of indignity. Like, I am a human who I know that my worth is not directly tied to my labor and my labor outputs.
And so I'm fascinated by guaranteed income programs because they work. And I think that there is just the cultural hump to get over we just need to get over the ego of you need to [01:01:00] earn every dollar that you make when we know that's not actually how the world works. The majority of wealthy folks are not actually contributing any labor to receive their income.
It is just by virtue of the capital that they already have. And so,
Jenny Stefanotti: yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. There's a quote actually on the Denison website on the hero. There's a rotating set of quotes and one of them is from Dorian Warren. From our conversation about guaranteed income, and he said something to the tune of we tend to attach dignity to wage and jobs, but what if we attach dignity to someone's personhood?
Yeah. And it is very interesting to kind of poke at this presumption that we need to work. To have our basic needs met. And what's so compelling to me about UBI is this basis around freedom. If we value freedom, do we live in a truly free society? If somebody has to work two jobs to put food on the table and put a roof over their head, they're kind of enslaved to the system that we've designed for ourselves.
And yeah, the evidence around. [01:02:00] Basic income is so fascinating and it's important to distinguish between Universal basic income which is this notion that everybody gets a check that meets their basic needs and guaranteed income Which is there's some amount of income that's guaranteed. And so a lot of these experiments around guaranteed income have been 500 1, 000 and it had these tremendous outputs.
So yeah, if we think about first principles, I think it's a very compelling intervention and you still have all the things that we talked about. Like, okay, so now we have money and it's flowing through the economy, but it's from a very different baseline. Um, so I just appreciate that you wove that into the book also.
Jasmine Rashid: There's enough to go around, I think is what, what it fundamentally comes back to. It doesn't just have to be in a moment of massive crisis where we get a stimulus check in the mail. That's one approach, but how do we make this actually a part of our culture where people are reminded that they, yeah, are a part of the society in which we do have enough and they don't need to earn their worthiness to exist here.[01:03:00]
Jenny Stefanotti: I really appreciate the breadth and depth of your book. I know there was a lot of years of work and life that went into it. And I love the way that you interweave your own personal story. It's very inspiring. I appreciate the inspiration to examine my own money trauma and what are all the further ways that I can tweak the way that my dollars are.
Allocated in the world. So thank you so much for your work. I so appreciate it. If you're joining us for this conversation
Jasmine Rashid: Thank you so much for inviting me and thanks for all of the rich conversations that you've been sharing it adds to my Resource pool of wealth that I can now share out with other folks.
So grateful for the Denison podcast for sure
[OUTRO]
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