1. Welcome to Spend, Donate, Invest!
This past year has made the inequality in our society even more blaringly obvious than it was before. A lot of us are grappling with our own role in the current movements towards a more just society. More people have hit the streets to protest, more people have shown up to the polls to vote, and that begs the question...what other sources of power do we have to improve the world around us?
That’s where this podcast comes in. When this idea first came about in the fall of 2020, the focus was initially on donations. This is an area of research I’ve always found interesting. I’m the person that likes to read the annual reports to places that I’m thinking about donating to. About once a year, I like to ask my colleagues, my friends and family where they are donating. And a lot of the time, the response is usually "...uh, I usually just donate wherever someone asks me to." Which is fine, but it made me think, why not share the research I’m doing anyway.
I started to take questions on what folks would like me to cover in the podcast, and someone asked a great question about impact investing- how can we invest in a way that aligns more with our values. And that’s when the lightbulb went off: there’s more to doing good with our money than donating, there’s where we invest our money, and also where we spend it.
Let’s talk about all of these things. So far, some really interesting questions have already come in. I’ll share a few of them as a sneak peek for what we’ll be discussing this season:
* How to get started donating money a little more strategically even if you’re not a millionaire.
* What are the pros and cons of socially responsible investing?
* How to spend more responsibility when you just can’t give up those perfectly golden waffle fries from the restaurant that has values that are literally opposed to yours.
The questions so far have been fascinating! If you want to send yours in, feel free to send it in to spenddonateinvest@gmail.com
So here's the thing. Inequality is baked into capitalism. Or at least in the version of capitalism that we are operating within. In the United States, our country’s wealth was created through genocide of Native Americans, enslavement of Africans, exploitation of immigrant labor. So for the resulting harms(hunger, poverty, housing shortages, the harm to our planet, and all of the -isms racism, sexism, ableism, and all of the phobias)- the best solution to achieve dramatic change for all of these harms is to overhaul the entire system. Institutional change is necessary- our governments, our schools, our justice system, our private sector. We will have to push for these institutional changes because nobody’s coming to save us. But at the same time, it can also be true that our individual changes can make a difference. Where we spend our money, where we stash it, where we donate it, where we invest it. This is what we discuss here on this podcast. What incremental changes can we make in our daily lives with our money?
When this idea first came about in the fall of 2020, the focus was initially on donations. This is an area of research I’ve always found interesting. I’m the person that likes to read the annual reports to places that I’m thinking about donating to. About once a year, I like to ask my colleagues, my friends and family where they are donating. And a lot of the time, the response is “...uh, I usually just donate wherever someone asks me to.” Which is fine, but it made me think, why not share the research I’m doing anyway.
I started to take questions on what folks would like me to cover in the podcast, and someone asked a great question about impact investing- how can we invest in a way that aligns more with our values. And that’s when the lightbulb went off: there’s more to doing good with our money than donating, there’s where we invest our money, and also where we spend it.
Let’s talk about all of these things. So far, some really interesting questions have already come in. I’ll share a few of them as a sneak peek for what we’ll be discussing this season:
- How to get started donating money a little more strategically even if you’re not a millionaire.
- What are the pros and cons of socially responsible investing?
- How to spend more responsibility when you just can’t give up those perfectly golden waffle fries from the restaurant that has values that are literally opposed to yours.
The questions so far have been fascinating! If you want to send yours in, feel free to send it in to spenddonateinvest@gmail.com
To support the show visit buymeacoffee.com/spenddonate
