PACHIRA MONEY Newsletter

14th October 2020

25 minutes for your money management and mindset.

Welcome to edition 11 of this newsie! If you missed the previous ones, you can catch them here.

 

NEW HERE? How this newsie works: The aim is to share practical and actionable small steps to help you feel better and be better with money. Steady and consistent habit change. We all have a different financial situation and a unique relationship with money, so I'm targeting a varied crowd, but if everyone gets at least a little something positive out of it each week, that's great. 

 

So, whenever you feel ready to sit down and dedicate 25 minutes of your week to your financial wellbeing, let's get going...

Intention setting: "“Every time you spend money, you're casting a vote for the kind of world you want.”- Anna Lappe

25 minutes: Giving meaning to your money

This is my first newsie in a while, as I've been settling into a new life on the road. I moved into my converted campervan at the start of August to live, work and travel around Europe. I've had time to reflect on the type of content I want to share through Pachira and what I stand for when it comes to financial education and wellbeing. The crazy events of 2020 - the pandemic, wildfires, BLM, politics and those David Attenborough documentaries - have reinforced for me the need for all of us to redefine what it means to be good with money.

 

Being good with money means so much more than knowing how to make more of it. It means managing our money in a way that reflects our values and making money choices that show businesses and governments the type of future we want to live in. And we can do this without compromising our financial situation too!

Kate Raworth is a Senior Research Associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and the author of Doughnut Economics. In her Ted Talk, she talks about the social and environmental implications of the Western World prioritising financial growth above all else. “That fixation has been used to justify extreme inequalities of income and wealth coupled with unprecedented destruction of the living world.” Countries measure progress with GDP, businesses measure progress with shareholder returns and individuals measure progress with a growing bank balance and increasing salary. And we often compromise the important things in life to achieve that undefined growth - like the planet, our relationships and our values. But if we really want to feel financially fulfilled, we need to rebalance our focus, not on the amount of money itself, but on what money can bring to our lives and how we can use money as a resource to vote for positive changes we want to see in the world.

 

Take 25 minutes to reflect on how your money management reflects your values. Vegans, do you know if your pension is invested in industrial agriculture? Eco-warriors, do you know if your bank supports the fossil fuel industry? Or if your energy provider really is 100% renewable? Are you spending with organisations that are actively working towards the sustainable development goals you care about? We all have blind spots, so maybe check last month's bank statements and see how many of your transactions are values aligned and how many transactions are values compromised. And let me know what comes up for you! Where do you find yourself prioritising cheap or convenient over what really matters to you?

 

Being sustainable with our money doesn't have to be a privileged choice. There are money decisions, big and small, that are available to all of us if we want to give more meaning to our money and vote with our wallets. We can spend sustainably and cheaply, we can invest sustainable with as little as £1, and we can save sustainably for good interest rates. I'll be talking more about this with Emma Croman from Tide on IG Live this week.

The new Green Money Programme is kicking off on 2nd November. It's a four-week structured programme to transform your personal finances to do good for you and the planet. Find out more here. I'd love to have some of you on board! And to say thank you for engaging with my newsletters, here's a 25% discount code: NEWSIE. Join with a friend and I will donate £50 to ClientEarth.org. If you can't join this cohort but you believe in what I'm trying to do, I would be so grateful if you could follow the journey on instagram or share with others who might be interested. I'm also partnering with organisations to sponsor their employees to join the programme, so email me if you think your employer would be up for adding this to their staff wellbeing offering.

We all have finance tasks on our to do list: paying the bills, sending invoices, researching new accounts, reviewing our budget, opening that ISA, etc. But we often put them off until tomorrow. Finance Fridays offer one hour of free virtual coworking to dedicate time to managing your money. Hosted by Stacey, who is on hand to answer any money questions and be your money cheerleader. 

 
Join Free Finance Fridays

Thank you to those that took part in the 6 week Green Money Bootcamp challenge from Pachira x And The Future! The bootcamp is now available to buy as a pdf here.

 

If this newsie is helping with your money management and mindset, you can buy me a coffee here.

If you know someone else who might benefit from a 25-minute money management and mindset newsie, it would be great if you could forward them this email and they can subscribe here...
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