Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change
Author: Tanja Hester
Publisher: BenBella Books
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Cover Description
How do we vote with our dollars, not just to make ourselves feel good, but to make a real difference?
Wallet Activism challenges you to rethink your financial power so can feel confident spending, earning, and saving money in ways that align with your values.
While we call the American system a democracy, capitalism is the far more powerful force in our lives. The greatest power we have—especially when political leaders won’t move quickly enough—is how we use our money: where we shop, what we buy, where we live, what institutions we entrust with our money, who we work for, and where we donate determines the trajectory of our society and our planet. While our votes and voices are essential, too, Wallet Activism helps you use your money for real impact.
It can feel overwhelming to determine “the right way” to spend: a choice that might seem beneficial to the environment may have unintended consequences that hurt people. And marketers are constantly lying to you, making it hard to know what choice is best. Wallet Activism empowers us to vote with our wallets by making sense of all the information coming at us, and teaching us to cultivate a more holistic mindset that considers the complex, interrelated ecosystems of people and the planet together, not as opposing forces.
From Tanja Hester, Our Next Life blogger and author of Work Optional, comes the mindset-shifting guide to help you put your money where your values are. Wallet Activism is not a list of dos and don’ts that will soon become outdated, nor does it call for anti-consumerist perfection.
Instead, it goes beyond simple purchasing decisions to explore:
The impacts a financial decision can have across society and the environment
How to create a personal spending philosophy based on your values
Practical questions to quickly assess the “goodness” of a product or an entity you may buy from
The ethics of earning money, choosing what foods to eat, employing others, investing responsibly, choosing where to live, and giving money away
For anyone interested in leaving the world better than you found it, Wallet Activism helps you build habits that will make your money matter.
TL;DR Review
Wallet Activism is a great book and I’m really glad I read it. It taught me new things, reminded me of others, and inspired me to make some changes.
For you if: You want to be more intentional with the things your money does and does not support.
Full Review
“The question of whether we wanted all this waste and pollution was never put up for a vote. No one has ever run for office on a platform of disposable clothing. Make no mistake: our votes matter. But changing the way things are won’t happen through our votes alone. How we spend our money matters, too.”
First of all, BIG thanks to BenBella Books, who sent me a complimentary review copy of this book after I expressed interest in reading it. I’m happy to report that I loved it just as much as I’d hoped I would!
Like its title suggests, Wallet Activism is a book about how to use your money to make a positive impact on the world. The first section is all about what it means to be a wallet activist and how to become a better judge at what kinds of decisions can make the most difference. Then the second section dives more specifically into advice for specific areas, like what food and material goods you buy, where you live, and where you bank and invest.
What makes this book especially great is how accessible all of the advice is. Tanja Hester did a fantastic job of emphasizing that something is always better than nothing, and that there’s no shame in not doing the absolute most (and that doing the absolute most probably isn’t as helpful as it seems anyway). She lists steps that can be taken at all different levels of income and wealth.
One thing that I didn’t expect was often this book focused on wallet CLIMATE activism, specifically. I think that pretty much all the advice can be applied to any area of activism, but she did pull a lot of climate-related examples. But as someone specifically looking to become a better environmental citizen, I was definitely not mad about it.
I walked away from this book armed with more knowledge and a ton of inspiration to make some changes. You should read it!