Move Your Money Day – 5th of November
It would be the custom to discuss Guy Fawkes Night today and where we are going to have fireworks and bonfire parties.
Today 5th November, 2011 will be memorable for a different reason – it is ‘Move you Money’ day. It is part of the campaign to make banks face to their responsibility and civic duty and remind them that no institution, no structure can easily think that they are bigger than individuals. Individuals always have agency; when they enact their agency in a collective manner banks and governments have very good reasons to worry.
What is all this fuss about? Today millions of people will be taking their money out of banks. It doesn’t matter how much this money is and whether you move all of it – what is important is to send a signal about the agency of the individual and its collective power. CNNMoney is reporting that ‘…people are dumping their banks in droves…’ and that over 650,000 people have joined credit unions in the US.
My emotion is saying: ‘Go ahead! Find your nearest credit union and move your money!’
My reason is saying: ‘Be careful! Sending a signal to the bank is needed; bring the banks to their knees can be a disaster. In fact it was once – in 1929!’
Individual action and agency, I suppose, are matters of individual choice and consciousness.
I am going to look at some of the credit unions now! And I am going to have a closer look at what the peeps at Positive Money have to say about this!
Pinpoint your spending ‘blind spots’
Looking at the statistics of consumption and levels of consumer debt in the Western world there is not much doubt in my mind that most of us, most of the time spend too much money, on too many consumer items. This is how we have become over-spending, over-consumers – we eat too much, drink too much and have too much stuff. Even when this is valuable stuff! I certainly did fit the bill until very recently. Having realised this I started thinking about ways to limit consumption – my consumption, in this case. One way to do this, as I discovered, is by mastering my wants and working out what are the things I really, really value. By accident, whist doing the exercise, I also noticed that there were, what I have come to call, spending ‘blind spots’. Continue reading
Why do we get in debt?
I am still in Atlanta and although this is not my first visit it looks like I am never going to learn. Every time I come over here I check the weather forecast and because the temperature looks rather high I don’t bring a jumper. Guess how many Georgia Tech tops do I have? Today I bought another one and they don’t come cheap – just paid around $50 for a lovely, soft and warm top. But still, I could have done without spending so much on a top. So I started questioning whether I am getting back to my old ways and naturally my mind drifted towards reflecting on debt and why do people get in debt. Continue reading
On ‘financial independence’ and ‘financial health’
Something has been bugging me lately and when something is bugging me I go away, do some research, do some thinking and write it down. The question that I have been pondering is the following: what is the difference between financial independence and financial health?
Now, most literature on personal finance will have us believe that financial independence is the ultimate aspiration; that achieving financial independence is the cherry on the cake(s) of our existence, our relationship with money and our happy and secure future. So I decided, based on the reading and thinking I have been doing, to see what the main features of financial independence are and check how they compare to those of what I understand to be financial health. Continue reading
