Financially Inclined April 4, 2025 Transcript

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Yanely Espinal: What’s up everybody? I’m Yanely Espinal, and this is “Financially Inclined” from Marketplace. We’re sharing money lessons for living life your own way. 

There’s a lot of talk out there about living your life according to your values. But what does that mean for your money? How can you use your money to make a difference in your community? Today, I have writer and financial educator, Kara Perez, here with me to explain her take on how you can spend, save, and invest your money in ways that matter to you. As an environmentalist, her work is all about making financial choices to support a greener and more sustainable future and not sacrifice profit while doing it. She recently wrote a book called “Money for Change: How to Reduce Waste, Build Wealth, and Create a Better Future for All.” That’s why I knew she’d be the perfect person to ask about this topic. All right, let’s get into it. 

Espinal: Okay Kara, I noticed that over the past few years, it has been blowing up this trend around talking about green money, right? And investing or budgeting or things, smarter with money in terms of the environment. And so why do you feel like this shift has been happening, and especially for younger and younger generations? 

Kara Perez: I think that younger and younger generations are really living through a lot of the climate change that us on the older end of generations were simply told would happen. But now we are really seeing storms coming in way stronger. We are experiencing longer periods of drought and hotter summers. Like every summer, I feel like everyone’s like, “It didn’t used to be this hot.” 

Espinal: That’s true. 

Perez: So we’re really feeling that, we’re living through that. And so the next logical question that kids are asking is, “Well, what do we do about this, right? And what does this mean for my money?” So while I obviously want people to build financial security and to build a financial life that is flexible and works for them, I also want us all to think about, where are we going? Where are we going here? So I encourage people, especially when you’re younger, to align your money with your values because you’ve got a long timeline. 

Espinal: Yep.

Perez: So you really need to think about what makes sense for my financial life now, but what makes sense for my financial life when I’m 60, when I’m 70? ‘Cause I’m still gonna need money then, but I’m also still gonna need a planet with all of the beautiful, wonderful things that we have now. 

Espinal: Yes. When you’re talking about your money and aligning that with your values around the environment, people immediately jump to the stock market. “Oh, well, you know, when you’re investing, this is what you have to invest in companies that are green.” And it’s like, is it just limited to the stock market, though? In your work, you talk about how there’s multiple different buckets, it’s not just the stock market. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? 

Perez: Absolutely. So really when we’re talking about money, there’s four areas, right? There’s earning money, spending money, saving money and investing money. That’s pretty much all you can do with your money.

Espinal: Right.

Perez: When we think about money and we think about having an impact on the planet and on our own lives, well, you have to think about the power that your money really has. And when your dollars leave your bank account, right? When you’re Venmoing someone or when you are swiping that credit card, that’s power that you’re transferring. So who do you want to give more power to? And think about that in terms of how you earn that money, how you spend that money, where you keep it, right? Where you’re saving it, and then investing. 

Espinal: Let’s start with the spending part or the earning and spending part. Like, what are some ways in your day-to-day life? You’re 16, 17 years old, maybe you’re working at, you know, a local business in your neighborhood, or you’re working a summer job at a summer camp and you have a little bit of money and your day-to-day decisions, how can you think about those in a way that would actually allow you to kind of live like a green money lifestyle?

Perez: I encourage people to follow the environmental saying of “reduce, reuse, recycle.” If you wanna align your money with your values more and if you’re worried about making the planet better, the first step is always reduce, just like spend a little less, you know? Don’t buy five things on Temu every week, right? Or don’t click on that influencers link this week. You can click on it next week. If you are buying a lot, if a lot of money is leaving you, again, thinking about your money as power, think about reclaiming that money by simply reducing. So those are the kind of first steps I want people to take. 

Espinal: Now you mentioned banking and like where you park your money. And I feel like a lot of teenagers are starting to create accounts for the first time when they get their first job or when they start getting an allowance or come into like money from their family or whatever it is. How do you think that they should go about making a decision around which banks to park their cash? Like what factors should they consider the most? 

Perez: From an environmental point of view, you wanna think about like, what’s this bank doing with my money? Like what are you doing, because banks are businesses. And yes, one of their products that they offer you is savings accounts and checking accounts, but they as an institution are also investing in bigger projects. A lot of them are investing in fossil fuel projects. So like fracking in West Texas, right? Things like that. So look at what they can offer you. And I always tell people the easiest, the number one green money move you can make is actually not to use one of the big four banks: Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Chase. Instead use this thing called a credit union, which offers you all of the same opportunities that a bank offers, but credit unions are nonprofits that are member owned. So start there and see what your credit union offers you.

Espinal: Yeah. So when we’re talking about investing in the stock market, is it even possible to invest in a way that aligns with your environmental ethics or concerns or your environmental views, and if so, how? 

Perez: Yeah, so it definitely is, but it is a little bit more complicated to make good choices in the stock market because there’s a lot going on, right? 

Espinal: Right, it’s so complex.

Perez: We’ve got funds, we’ve got different types of funds, index funds, mutual funds, all of these things. You can pick individual companies, you can have an IRA, you can have a brokerage account, so there’s a lot of levels to it. And that can stress some people out, but I encourage people to ask themselves, “What’s the most important value to me to express financially?” Because you can care about a lot of things. You don’t have to express them all financially. And I teach this to people all the time. So I’m a big environmentalist, I love nature, I like to go out in the woods and hang out with trees. So I don’t invest in oil, coal, and gas because we know that those are really fueling the climate crisis. So pick one value that is important to you to express financially, and maybe that’s environmental, maybe that’s women-owned, maybe that’s Black-owned, whatever it is, and build your investment strategy around that, and don’t look for perfection in our very complicated financial system because that way lies madness. 

Espinal: Yeah.

Perez: So I think that’s a good way of looking at it so you can do good with your money but you’re not gonna drive yourself crazy. 

Espinal: Honestly, I do think that there’s gonna be arguments out there about, well, when you do good, you don’t do well but you talk about how like, well, that’s not necessarily true. Can you give an example of, like, where you invest somewhere and you do good and do well at the same time and it’s possible to do that?

Perez: Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, I don’t invest in oil, coal and gas. Last year, my investment, so 2023, my investments returned 17.5%. So no Exxon, no Shell, no Chevron. And I still not only beat the average annual return of 10% in the stock market, but had a great year overall, you know, I still made money. So it’s not Oh, if you’re doing the right thing, like nice guys finish last, that’s not true. That’s not true. It’s never been true really in any area of life. Kindness is not a fault. Compassion is not something you need to be embarrassed of. And being mean or being selfish is not the only path to success, right. So you can absolutely make money. 

Espinal: I love that. Okay, so when somebody’s interested in a green money lifestyle, what are the big areas where it’s most important to focus on? 

Perez: If you want to make your money greener, start with where you keep your money. And I suggest putting it in a credit union. Keep it out of these big banks that we know are funding fossil fuel projects. That’s going to be step one. That’s going to be the most powerful thing. The second is that this is going to be a journey. You’re going to be making decisions at 18, and then you’re going to make different decisions later on and that’s okay. And no one expects perfection out of your money or out of your sustainable living choices. What matters is that you try and you keep trying and you keep showing up. And then the final thing is remove perfection from your expectations. I know, especially if you’re feeling young, you’re feeling a lot of anxiety and it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Like, I don’t expect you to be perfect. No one expects you to be perfect. It’s okay if you are making mistakes as you’re learning. I mean, that’s the whole process. So don’t, don’t feel like, oh my gosh, it’s up to me to save the whole world because that’s not the case. We’re in this together, babes. 

Espinal: That’s right.

Espinal: Here are a few vocabulary words to go with today’s episode: 

Index fund – This is a low-cost group of stocks or bonds chosen based on a pre-created list of investments called an index. 

Credit union – This is a financial institution that is not for profit and serves a specific community, like a geographic area, a university, or people who work for the military. If you want to learn more about this, I recommend you check out our episode about bank accounts from Season 3. 

ESG – This stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. It’s a framework that measures a company’s sustainability and ethical impact. It’s also a category for grouping investments. 

SRI – This stands for socially responsible investments. It’s an approach to investing that takes into account social, ethical, and environmental goals. 

Values-based budgeting – This is handling your money in a way that aligns with issues that you care about.

Okay, thanks for listening to today’s episode with Kara Perez about making money decisions that align with your values. I hope this provided helpful guidance on how you can make a difference through spending, saving and investing your money intentionally. I know you got this. 

And if you have any questions for us or you want to share your own story, our email is financiallyinclined@marketplace.org.

Financially Inclined is brought to you by Marketplace from American Public Media, in collaboration with Next Gen Personal Finance. I’m your host, Yanely Espinal. Our Senior Producer is Zoë Saunders. Our Video Editor is Francesca Manto, and our Graphics Artist is Mallory Brangan. The podcast was edited by Katie Reuther. Gary O’Keefe is our Sound Engineer. Bridget Bodnar is the Director of Podcasts. Francesca Levy is the Executive Director. Neal Scarbrough is the VP & General Manager of Marketplace. Our theme music is by Wonderly.

Financially Inclined is funded in part by the Sy Syms Foundation, partnering with organizations and people working for a better and more just future since 1985. And special thanks to the Ranzetta Family Charitable Fund and Next Gen Personal Finance for continuing to support Marketplace in its work to make younger audiences smarter about the economy.