Your Relationship with Money

BOOKS

It’s Not About the Money: A Financial Game Plan for Staying Safe, Sane, and Calm in Any Economy by Brent Kessel. Brent Kessel is a co-founder of Abacus Wealth Partners. In his book, he describes the eight financial archetypes in detail, explains how they work, and provides insights into how they might help or sabotage your financial decisions. This is a great book if you were intrigued after taking the Financial Archetype Quiz and want to know more about your style.

Mind Over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders that Threaten Our Financial Health by Brad Klontz and Ted Klontz. If you think your relationship with money is having an adverse effect on your life and want more support, you can consider this book. It was written by Brad and Ted Klontz, a father and son team of pioneers in the field of financial psychology.

The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Life by Lynne Twist. Lynne Twist’s breakthrough book, suggests fundamentally rethinking our views about money. She describes the way it enters and leaves our lives as a flow, a concept that was transformational for Suzanne Andrews as described in Chapter 2.

Your Money or Your Life: 9 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Vicki Robin. First published in 1992, this book by Vicki Robin has found a home on the bookshelves of many people in the Financial Independent, Retire Early (FIRE) movement. In her book, Vicki asks you to look at how much of your life’s energy is spent pursuing money, determine whether that trade-off works for you, and consider how much is enough.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

3 Steps to Money Forgiveness. This free mini master class with Lynne Twist takes you from honoring your past money mistakes to stepping into a new mindset that can fuel your future. If you have never heard Lynne speak, you might want to take the time to listen to this video. She is always inspiring.

The Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals originated at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012. The SDGs offer a simple way to prioritize values you want to see reflected in your investments.

SDG Official Website. This United Nations site allows you to dive more deeply into each of the SDG goals, looking at each goal’s current status, why it matters, and the outcomes that are envisioned.

The SDG Tracker. The SDG Tracker provides detailed information on the world’s progress toward each of the 17 goals. Scroll down to the SDG icons and click a goal that interests you. If you prefer, UN Web TV has a short video that uses a horse-race analogy to show how and why each goal is progressing relative to the others.

Investment Lenses

When you invest with a “lens,” you are seeking to earn financial returns while addressing disparities, gaps, or issues related to a particular concern – many of which are aligned with an SDG goal or goals. Common examples are investing with a gender lens, climate change lens, social justice lens, or community lens. The resources below tell you more about each of these investment lenses. You will also learn more as you progress through Activate Your Money.

GENDER LENS INVESTING

Suzanne Biegel is a pioneer in gender-lens investing. Her website, Catalyst at Large, is a great starting point to explore this investment lens. Suzanne was instrumental in bringing Project Sage to the Wharton School of Business. This initiative tracks private debt and equity funds around the world that are supporting women.

CLIMATE CHANGE INVESTING

US|SIF, a values-aligned research and advocacy organization, released the Investing to Curb Climate Change Guide to highlight the types of investments individuals can make to address the challenges imposed by climate change. This 7-page primer is a helpful introduction.

SOCIAL JUSTICE INVESTING

An Investor’s Guide to Investing for Racial Equity. This is a short, informative article describing this lens and the types of investments that are available. It was written by Kristin Hull, founder and portfolio manager of Nia Global Solutions.

Sonya Dreizler. Sonya Dreizler is the founder of Solutions with Sonya, blogs frequently on this topic and is fostering conversations about gender and race in the financial services industry.

Adasina. Adasina was founded by Rachel Robasciotti to address social justice issues. The company is designing and delivering financial products to within this lens.

LOCAVESTING

The practice of investing locally is often called community investing or locavesting. This term was coined by Amy Cortese in her book, Locavesting. A simple web search for “community investing” will bring you to a wealth of information about this investment lens.