11: Money, Enoughness, and Community Care with Women’s Personal Finance

Money choices are climate action too.

This week, Regina Moore and Angela Rozmyn from Women’s Personal Finance join me for a thoughtful, honest conversation about the overlap between money, sustainability, and community care.

We talk about spending in alignment with your values, why “enoughness” can be such a powerful mindset shift, and how boycotts and intentional choices can be forms of protest. We also explore the role community plays — not just in sharing resources, but in building resilience and pushing back on the systems that encourage overconsumption.

It’s a conversation that invites you to look at your own financial choices through a new lens and see how small, intentional shifts can add up to something bigger.

Takeaways

• The concept of “enoughness” and how it reduces overconsumption.
• Why value‑aligned spending matters and how to start thinking differently about your purchases.
• How money is tied to values, systems, and power.
• How boycotts and not spending can be powerful forms of protest.
• The role of community care and sharing in financial and climate resilience.

One Small Shift

• Regina: Go through your fridge and pantry each week, repurpose what you have, and reduce food waste.
• Angela: Have a real conversation with a neighbour — get to know them, exchange contact info, and start building that local network of care.

Resources

The Serviceberry - Robin Wall Kimmerer

Consumed - Aja Barber

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Transcript

0:00

Stop buying stuff you do not need. Starve the billionaires and save the planet. Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco-curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I'm your host, Sarah Robertson Barnes, a soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living. Each week, I'll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less, save money, and make small doable shifts that actually fit your real life. you because sustainable living doesn't have to be perfect to matter. And you don't have to do it all to make a difference. Hi friends, welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have and live a little greener, one small shift at a time. My name is Sarah and I'm so glad you're here. Before we dive in today, just a quick note, this show is listener supported. So if you're enjoying it, leaving a rating or review is a great way to help more people find it. Today I'm joined by Regina Moore and Angela Rosman, the incredibly thoughtful duo behind Women's Personal Finance and includes the space for financial education, support and solidarity. Their work sits at the intersection of money, sustainability and community care, and they're known for talking about what it really means to spend in alignment with your values. We'll be exploring money as a tool for building a better world, not just for personal freedom, but for collective care. Yeah, money is hard to talk about, but that's exactly why we have to. So let's have the conversation in a way that feels honest, hopeful, and rooted in care. So welcome to Regina and Angela from Women's Personal Finance. I've really been looking forward to this conversation since you mentioned you wanted to come on. I'm thrilled. You have created such a thoughtful space around money and values and community. And I think that's really going to resonate with a lot of folks who are trying to live more sustainably, even when the systems around that can make it feel really hard. So to start off, could you each introduce yourselves? Yeah, I'm so excited. And I'd love if you could introduce yourselves and just tell us about the work that you do at Women's Personal Finance. So hi, this is Angela, one half of Women's Personal Finance here with Regina. We are a money space, but really more of a like all the things space because money touches everything as much as we pretend or want to pretend it doesn't. And we really see money as a place where you can. a place for freedom more than for the ability to buy stuff and live a fancier external lifestyle. So while we talk about money a lot, it's more in terms of how can we live the lives that we really want and um in the best way for the planet rather than how can we individually amass as much money as we possibly can. uh Women's personal finance was started Back in 2018, when, especially in the fire community, financial independence, retire early, men and specifically like tech bros were the dominant voice in the space. And unfortunately that's still too true, but women's personal finance started from a place realizing that we needed a place to be able to talk money that was not constantly drowned out. by mansplaining and tech bros telling us how, well, if you just made $200,000 a year and saved 90 % of it, then you could retire in two years. And that's not the reality for most of us. And uh conversations really look and feel different when male voices are not centered. And so women's personal finance has really been a place where women and non-binary and trans folks have their voices heard and seen and centered uh rather than being attempting to push into the conversation. All right. Well, let's see. So I have a little bit of an interesting reason, I think, for wanting to do something that was community based with women's personal finance. When I came in in a more active way, I was already friends with Angela and I was part of the Facebook group, but not very active. I had been working on some online community building projects. as a pharmacist and I had built uh a group using Slack. I almost forgot what that platform was for a minute. With Slack that had about thousand members and was pharmacists and pharmacy students. it was a pretty interesting resource through COVID especially, which was an interesting time for lots of people navigating both work and life. uh And so I had learned some things there and had also kind of come to see that a lot of the conversations that people have online, they come together for a certain reason. They have a certain interest or in that case of my original group, it was a professional reason, but that the bulk of the conversations often had nothing to do with what the uh supposed topic or niche was. And I wanted to do more to bring people together talking about money because that was my special interest area and recognizing that we all needed better places to connect and dive deeper and form friendships. But we needed those uh those like we needed those little ways to trick ourselves into having a reason to show up. So it's. It's been really fun to work on building this space over the years. And we're really excited with where it's at now in 2025. 20, are we in four years, I guess now four years of operation and we've formed. So yeah, it's a cool space. And we've been hearing about community as a buzzword, know, I guess really heavily for maybe the last 12 or 18 months. But I still haven't seen a lot of places really like make the jump to what that means in practice. And I think I've even seen that little bit of buzzwords start to die off. We still hear community talked about, but I'm not hearing it as strongly from a lot of the content creators because I think it's hard to make that happen um as a top-down kind of thing. And it needs to be something that's a little bit more organic. Your work is really centered on folks that haven't been centered in financial conversations, Angela, as you touched on, but do you think that it's easier to form this type of a community and you mentioned friendship and that sort of thing because it's not centered on men? I mean, definitely, ah especially in a space that is traditionally very loudly male. um Not having to fight to be heard means that you can actually... talk about things more deeply and knowing that you're not going to be dismissed or scoffed at because you're asking a question that maybe somebody else thinks you should know, uh you know, that isn't always going to be true even when you're not centering men in a conversation. But uh when you come to a community where you also have some kind of like baseline expectations of like we're on the same page for like foundational stuff, it makes it easier to have a deeper connection and community. So when we did run our large Facebook group, I didn't talk about this, but when we closed our Facebook group last December, we had 82,000 members. So it was a very large private Facebook group, which we um very intentionally decided to archive at the end of the year. But in order for people to join that space, we had entry questions that uh required them to say that they agree with uh masks, climate change, COVID, and reproductive rights for people with uteruses, which does a really good job of screening out people that are going to argue immediately. That doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other things to disagree with uh or have unhappy conversations about, but it means that you can start a conversation and not have to fight baseline facts and science and human rights. so by starting with that baseline, I think it makes it easier to have people that are at least attempting to show up. in a positive way. in a good faith way. Yeah. And we didn't have those at first. those screening questions came in after a couple years of operating, right? Like we, I think we had some kind of basic screening question that was the general, like, do you agree to the rules type of a thing? But uh it was when COVID started that we really buckled down because we noticed that things were getting so divisive online and we weren't gonna have those conversations, you know, take. the bulk of our energy in moderating a group. So we just decided it would be a really good time to try to segment out a little bit. And that it was also one of the interesting growth and reflection points for us as an organization and a business in kind of being the first place where we put our foot down a little bit about like inclusivity doesn't really mean everybody. You know, if you're going to have a space that you want to have deep conversations in, you do have to set some guidelines on there. And so that's been something that we've embraced as we've grown in trying to figure out how to navigate things and make sure that those voices that haven't had the platform do get the chance and don't get drowned out by people. There are plenty of spaces where you can learn how to start investing for retirement or building up an emergency fund, et cetera. But we want to always be one of those spaces that can talk about a spousal IRA, which in the United States is a retirement account accessible for stay at home parents. And so we talk a lot about like what that looks like if you don't earn an income and how do you protect yourself? And it's important for us to be in a community space where we don't constantly get people being like, well, but if you're not a hundred percent combined with your money and you don't just trust your like working partner a hundred percent, you're like not committed to your marriage. um you know, we're here to talk about like reality and, know, making sure that people are actually protected and um able to have those conversations without being dismissed as like unimportant or fear-mongering or, you know, like secondary. And that approach is something that I find so valuable in your work is that money is not neutral. It's tied to values and systems and power and relationships and all of that. And I think that's something that people do feel intuitively, but maybe don't have the language for when you're entering a financial space that feels very like Dave Ramsey ish. That sort of thing. It's not. like your feelings around it are not considered and the unpaid labor that people do is not considered. So I really appreciate that. That is such a loud message. That's something that appeals to me. was a stay at home mom for many years and money makes me really anxious and it's helped me to really take some confidence steps forward with that. that our financial choices really do matter. And that brings me to something that We both talk about a lot and I know we're both very passionate about and that is how sustainability and our financial choices overlap. So I'd like to talk a little bit about intentional value aligned spending. You're both very strong advocates for value-based spending, whether it's buying secondhand, local, mutual aid, asking, I really need this? How do you get people thinking about spending? differently in the first place, like when, especially when this sort of idea is really counter-cultural, it really goes against our training as good little consumers. I mean, I think there's a really clear entry point to this conversation, even though it can be complex and is still confusing because we are generally talking to people who are less than enthusiastic about our current economic system. So they're already primed to think about things a little bit differently if they're willing to engage in that conversation at all. So what I often try to do is to point out that we all have to do this money thing. It's part of our life. We don't really get to have a choice on if we deal with money right now. But where the traditional systems tend to focus is on this malignant, ever-growing, ever-accumulating attitude. And that is what most people who talk about money talk about too. It's kind of, you you get as much as you can, as long as you can, and you make it as big as you can. And we try to approach things from a different side, which is kind of ironic because we do come from this spire space, financial independence, retire early, which has a background of talking about figuring out what your retirement number is, which is... inherently a number that says what is enough. So approaching it from uh that angle, we tell people, think about how much you need to live a happy, comfortable, modest life. What does that baseline look like? And can you build your life around that and then focus on all of these other external types of uh things that matter to you once you get yourself to a stable point? rather than thinking about just hoarding wealth indefinitely. And I think that's been helpful for a lot of people. Just, you know, the simplified version is the put on your own life mask first type of a thing. Get yourself stable so that you can focus on other people and other things. And that's kind of our biggest message at that point. And that ends up coming back into all of the sustainability and ecological type of. been talking a lot lately about how, People who have values that more align with ours tend to have the same issue. Problem, good problem that we have is that whenever you see suffering or you hear people who have needs right up front, you want to help. And it's really, really easy to get sucked into that. Well, I have an additional $10 right now, so somebody else needs that $10 more than me. But then... you're the one that needs the $10. So somebody else has to give you that $10 back. And our goal is really to get people to a place where we're not just sharing around that same 10 in a circle. In order to pull people out of a place of needing that level of mutual aid and like actual cash is that we need to get ourselves to a stable point where if someone needs a thousand dollars, like we're able to do the big like life moving stuff and $10. Well, you it's hard because you can tell that always somebody needs $10.$10 is not going to make a life changing situation for most anyone. And so we really want to make sure that people can actually pull themselves out of the. constant like need sharing cycle to a place where they don't need to be the ones asking that they can be the ones giving and they're the ones that are stable uh and You know once you get your money situation in a place you are okay uh you know, it's kind of like, you know, we talked about preparedness stuff too and it's like having enough food on hand if there's a big power outage or winter storm or something and the grocery stores are really picked over, you want to be the one that doesn't have to go to the grocery store because you've already done the work of preparation to have enough food at home. And so this is kind of the same thing with money that we want people to be in a stable financial footing. when there is an emergency, you're not also someone who needs to show up. that you have enough. uh Yeah. uh This the other day and I've been thinking about it a lot, which is enoughness and what enoughness means. And I get it in terms of what you've just described with your personal finances or even having enough food on hand. But what else does that word mean to you? Enoughness and how it ties into all of this, the climate, the consumption, the economy, like it's a huge concept, but it feels really simple. I know, I know how I feel about it, but what prompted you to word. It's just really stuck in my brain. So that word actually comes from Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Service Berry. So um if you haven't read it, um Regina and I both have, and we both really, really resonated with the entire thing. It's a super short read. um You can get it on Bookshop, don't get it on Amazon, um or from your local library. But the author reads it, so it's a really lovely audio book. listen or uh a very short uh read. But I think anyone who is listening to this podcast should absolutely read that book. yeah, enoughness is definitely about our money, but it's also about this stuff we have in our homes and the way that we spend our lives. It's so easy to keep moving the goal posts. And so it's something that we talk about in our community a lot is like, how do you determine what is enough based on your values and not just, well, but I could also do this new thing. So like I drive an older car um that's been paid off forever and you know, it's older and it's not super exciting, but it is absolutely enough for me. And buying a new car right now would give me no new joy, no new anything. And I think there is a lot of that stuff em or things that maybe would be slightly more comfortable. Like, yeah, if my car could, you know, be a little bit nicer, newer, comfier, maybe it would be a little nicer, but it doesn't actually give me any kind of additional value to my life. And there's a lot of that stuff where externally we would be told, well, you're doing really well, like you deserve it. You should go and get that new thing. But uh not everything can be that important to you. And so it's really important to figure out like, are, what are those things that matter? And then the rest of it, like, it's fine. Everything else can just be fine. It can be enough. We've had multiple conversations with our community and done some reflective and goal setting type exercises and trying to talk about this enoughness and uh what are we really trying to get to concept. And it's not news that most of the things that people talk about as being the things that they value don't center around the monetary value or the physical things in our lives. It tends to be time to do things that we want, the ability to be with friends and family, the ability to focus on our health, which that can get quite complicated in this era because that's also something that can be angled to be product-based. But there are these less tangible type things. And I'm a little bit weird, which probably sums up most things in my life. But I've been someone who has enjoyed, rather than thinking about accumulating, you know, obviously I have my own wealth journey and I want stability there, but I have enjoyed seeing how happy I can be with less. And I'm not a minimalist by any means. My home has, you know, art all over the walls and all kinds of stuff. I'm even, I'd probably say I'm a maximalist there. But A lot of the things that are commonly accepted as these things that we need to be comfortable um or things that we take for granted that we participate in and we do, um kind of rejecting those and seeing how simple can my life be where I still feel that I'm very fulfilled and getting a lot of joy out of it. And that also lends to being a lower cost lifestyle. not focusing like Angela mentioned on having a new car. If my joy isn't derived from um having to go on. trips every weekend and get away from my home to feel happy, et cetera. All of that makes it a lot cheaper for me to live. I don't have to work as much. That gives me more time with friends and family. That gives me time to cook and enjoy the food that I grow. it's all of these things kind of wrapped up together when I talk about enoughness um is just really focusing on what are the things that you say that you actually want and the back to the values-based living and values-based spending is how you're living and spending really reflective of those goals and those things that you want to see in your life. And with so much external programming and how easy it is to constantly compare ourselves to others, especially with the social media age, when half of that's not reflective of people's real lives anyways, it's can be a pretty intense thing to try to step back and focus more on yourself and think about what really makes you happy. That's not just a reflective of what you think someone who is happy looks like culturally. uh Sarah, you and I both live in wealthier areas. it's something that this conversation is something that I have with my 10 year old quite a bit because most of his friends are from families that have well more than enough. Um, but they're also usually very busy and very overwhelmed all the time, but he'll ask me like, well, why can't we go do, you know, this such and such like my friend or why is our home so much smaller than most of my friends? And we, you know, I talked to him about a lot of the things that we choose to do. that looks different and. really talking about like, what are the things we value? And I'll ask him, well, would you like to give this thing up in order to have a bigger home? his answer is always no, is, you know, being able to realize that, uh you know, we can have a very good life, but it doesn't always look the same as everybody else's. And part of that is determining like that enoughness piece. And even when you're in a community where There never seems to be enough. uh It can definitely feel very countercultural to say, I know that all your friends are living this way, but we're not going to live that way. uh Part of it is it's summertime right now. He's in theater camp through the end of this week, but that's it as far as summer camps for him this summer. And part of it is that we live close to. our family and he's able to spend time with them. I have a flexible job that allows me to work from home on certain days. I don't work my day job on Fridays. And so there's going to be a lot of days this summer where he's just going to be able to hang at home and be a kid. And part of that is because we don't have two super high powered jobs that require us to be gone all the time and in the office all the time. So he has to be in summer camp all the time. There are always those kinds of trade-offs and we have really tried to focus on like, what are the things that give us more freedom and autonomy over our lives more than, you know, the shiny, fancy job, the shiny, fancy new home, the bigger home, the bigger car, the bigger vacation. We would rather be able to have our 10-year-old be able to spend his summer running around with the neighbor kids out in the yard and just coming back home to eat and go to bed. And to me, that is a much higher value than a lot of the typical stuff. And environmentally, it's also way superior when you're just hanging at home and picking blueberries from our bushes right now. They're like super ripe and it's great. And all the neighbor kids come up and go berry picking. So like there's a lot of joy and comfort in the like simpler days and making more money, especially when it requires you to give up all of your time doesn't, it's not worth the trade off. And this, we talk about the extracurriculars because this is one where we have had some of our massive amounts of pushback when we talk about this with like middle-class families saying that maybe your kid doesn't need, or I guess maybe, maybe I'll roll it back a little bit and talking about wants versus needs and talking about things like extracurricular activities being wants. not needs in most cases. Child care is often a need if you have your job, but a lot of these extra things that we want to do and can be enriching and all of that, we have gotten, we have, yeah, we've made people very angry over the years talking about extracurricular activities in particular. I can see that like where I live. Suburban, it's very two SUV type families and everybody, they wear their busyness like a badge of honor. You know, we have this many kids and this many activities and we're this, this, this all the time and always going somewhere. And that's not how we have chosen to live in our home either. We have both kids in soccer and that's it. That's all they do. And that's enough for us. And uh Angela and I were just chatting off Mike, uh Regina, while you were dialing in about the car thing and how I also drive a 10 year old station wagon that I don't have a car payment on. our 14 year old son had said, you know, his friends were making fun of our car. And he was kind of feeling and his feelings about that. And, know, like, are we ever going to get a new car? And we just sort of said, like, well, like, who cares? The car's paid off. It gets us where we want to go. And that's all we need. And he was just sort of like, you know, yeah, good point. And so I felt really good about that conversation because we've had so many previous conversations about buying things, about, my friends have this and that's such a common thing in parenting that like, well, my friends have this like, okay, like that doesn't move the needle for us. And we've had so many conversations about what we spend on and what we don't and why, and what we value and what's important. And I think these are really common. things that doesn't necessarily have to have all these other lenses on top of it. It's just like, just want our kids to be happy and safe and have good values when they go into the world. it's not about buying stuff is never going to bring you any of those things. Well, and on the extracurricular stuff too, and the busyness badge of honor, when we talk about sustainability stuff too, it is really hard to live a sustainable lifestyle when you are constantly on the go. when it comes to, you know, single use plastic meals and requiring all of the driving all of the time and, you know, needing to buy on Amazon because you need that, you know, quick shipping to your house because you didn't have time to, you know, walk or bike to the like local store to get the thing. The like more you have like space and a little bit more time to like. slow down, you have time to be like, okay, well, in a month, I'm going to need this thing. So we're going to stop by the thrift store a couple of times and see if we can find it there. Or I'm going to ask on my buy nothing, maybe somebody has it to share, you know, or can we be creative with something else? And when you're constantly over scheduled all the time, you don't have time to make those decisions either. It's so draining. It drains your resources. It drains your ability to be resourceful, to slow down and think about what it is that I actually need. And so I'm often asked like, what's one thing that someone can do to be more sustainable? the only thing I can ever say is like, stop buying stuff. Just stop buying stuff. And I don't mean that in a budget way or you need to stop spending money way, just in like... Yeah, not spending is really powerful. It's really powerful climate action. And that's something that you post about every day, like, yeah, didn't spend any money again today. do you see, I mean, I know that you do, but like not spending as a form of protest. 100%. Yeah. That's like one of the most accessible and achievable forms of protest that individuals can perform in our society. Our society runs on money. So by refusing to engage or engaging as minimally as possible, you are making a direct stand against systems that you disagree with. Yeah. And we can all, we can all do that. You we can't all show up to a protest on a Saturday. We can't all bike to work, but like we can all choose to be much more conscious about the things that we spend money on. And we still need things occasionally, but we can also choose to be much more creative in how we try to source and find those things and how flexible we are in what types of products meet our needs. Yeah. It's, it's really powerful. I mean, I know that you know this, but I haven't bought clothes in almost eight and a half years. And that's my like extra, a weirdo spot, I think. I think most of us can have at least a few of those areas where we are very radically different than other people. uh Maybe it's you don't have a car even in a more suburban area. Our longtime roommate who lived with us for about a dozen years uh didn't have a car. so that was, even as he did other things, he had that one piece that he was way more radical than most people. And for me, that's been not buying clothing. If you have that one place that you're willing to really double down and be like weird and different and radical on it absolutely like bleeds into the other parts of your life because you see how it's okay and how much your mindset shifts in that one place. And it's, I think pretty much impossible to like live that differently in one area of your life and not see how the rest of your life. reflects that as well. So the not buying clothes is something I can absolutely get behind. had to, I stopped buying like new things and then I got like a super thrifting addiction and was just over consuming at the thrift store, which kind of defeated the purpose. And so I had to, again, really examine what I was doing, why I needed that dopamine hit from buying something and that I made it like, okay, because it was at the thrift store. So that was sort of part of my mindset shift. And now not quite at the not buying anything, but I take a lot of inspiration from that. So it's definitely a lot less and I stand that's amazing. But let's talk about boycotts about not going somewhere, buying something from someplace. I know in the States and you talk about the target boycott quite a bit due to their rollback of DEI initiatives. And we'll get to that in just a sec. I just wanted to talk about a grassroots effort here in Canada that I'm not sure if you're aware of or not, but earlier in the year when the new administration came in and started basically making threats against us across the country, no one told us to do this. It was a very interesting grassroots effort I saw where people just decided to stop buying American produce. to stop buying goods made in America and to refocus efforts on buying Canadian and buying local. And it really blew my mind because I didn't think I'd ever see anything like that. And that includes traveling to the States and what have you. And I'm just really surprised because that's not something that we really do here. But I can successfully boycott Target because we don't have it anymore. They left us. But if you could, yeah, if you could talk to us about the Target boycott, Tesla is another one that we're seeing make a huge difference and how our money can really talk in that way. So we also live, both of us in the Pacific Northwest, I'm in the Seattle area. And so we actually have a lot of tourism from British Columbia. And I feel like I've actually heard more about uh Canada's boycott of the United States in like in-person conversations than I have about even like a target boycott because folks are feeling it here. Because This is summertime and usually there are a lot of Canadians that come down and visit and spend their money and they're not, and it is noticeable. So you asked if I'd heard about that and you I don't know if it's quite as noticeable across the country, but being, you know, an hour and a half, two hours from the border, it is absolutely noticeable. And, you know, people have talked about it and you know, we're Also in an area where most people are not happy with our current administration or regime uh what have you and so like it's a little hard to understand that Canadians are boycotting the entire country even if we're not happy with it, but I think there's also lot of understanding of like, yeah, I wouldn't come here either. um So as far as the target boycott though is that we get a lot of people asking questions like why Target? uh When, you know, Walmart is right there or why not Amazon? And I think there are quite a few reasons why Target. I will start out by saying that this has been a like black woman led protest and boycott with like very specific like reasons for it, not just like blanket. they're bad, but like this is specifically because of the DEI rollback. And, um you know, also, you know, they pulled a lot of their pride merchandise a couple of years ago too. you know, there's the current DEI rollback, but you know, this is not the first time that Target has backpedaled. So part of it is, you know, stating very loudly that we're not okay with companies pulling back from their commitments. em But also the fact that it's very focused on one company and one company that, you know, there's definitely this like target mom vibes of you go to target and you get your Starbucks and you, you know, get some me time by accidentally spending $300 on shit you don't need. um And so there's also this like target has acted like they don't need their consumers. And by having a very focused boycott on that company, it's really shown that, you know, over the year, the foot traffic and their sales have really plummeted. So it's really great to see that like, no, like a sustained boycott over months actually does make an impact. If you're ever feeling down, going and looking at the Target stock over the last year is a good way to cheer yourself up. But I think a big part of that too is having one business instead of saying, don't shop at Target, don't shop at Amazon, don't shop at Walmart, don't shop at Starbucks, don't shop at Home Depot, don't shop at Chick-fil-A, don't shop at... The list is very, very long by saying... Okay. Like maybe think about your spending at those places, but like, do not step into a target. Or if you're going to go into a target, like wander around, use their bathroom and leave, by focusing very specifically, it has a much better chance of success. And we are actually seeing that. You know, show up like they have taken notice. This is not just like a cutesy little. like thing that some people are doing, it's become big enough that they can't ignore it. And when a lot of people tell us, you know, well, my spending doesn't matter because I don't buy that much or, you know, I'm on a budget, so I just need to spend wherever is cheapest. This is really a place where you can see like, no, like individually, yeah, you're choices aren't going to make a difference. like when you get millions of us all doing the same thing, like we do have power. so having, having this as an example to people that like we are not powerless is I think probably the most impactful part of the target boycott. then, you know, selfishly from like an eco frugal angle. Okay. Yeah. Target is an over consumption. Like that's their whole thing. Their vibe is spending too much. You're getting there. I was waiting for this one. I was like, you know, there's, there's very specific things like Angela mentioned, like, you know, rollbacks uh on marginalized groups that Target has uh pretended to support and was very quick to drop. And oh for my ongoing interests in sustainability, uh Target has uniquely positioned itself as like a lifestyle. company and the lifestyle is hanging out in Target and spending money on shit you don't need. Can I curse on this? em I didn't even notice. That's how cool I am. So to me, it's perfect. So I like, I am all for helping and wanting to introduce people to new reasons why they might want to look at specific companies or brands, because people have very different reasons for their, their spending and different intentions on how they go about things. So, if we can bring more people in based on, you know, if they are, uh you know, upset uh and noted that they said they supported, you know, the queer community and then were really quick to take that away a few years ago. um If they noted that how they supported the black community and then how that went away really quick. That's a great way to introduce them to these concepts and help them to also break up with this company that encourages you to go there multiple times a week because you can get your coffee and you'll find a bunch of things on sale that you didn't know that you need. So it's all tied in. And I really enjoy these intersectional points of finding ways to bridge these conversations and introduce people who may never have really cared about the sustainability side of things to help them see ways that they might break a habit and then open their minds to, maybe I have been kind of roped into this over consumption type thing. I didn't need this. Where else can I go with it? So Target for me, even though like they're often looked at as like the more stylish and cool, you know, mega shopping place, Walmart isn't broadcasting that it's a place to go hang out and you're going to want to go there every week. And it's part of your weekly routine to hang out at Walmart. People tend to go to Walmart for their necessities and they've got all kinds of problems too. But they're not trying to trick you into thinking they're a cool place and it's part of your personality. So break up with brands as part of your personality. You don't need to have that. I love what you said about like just finding new ways to introduce people to the conversation because that's sort of my whole deal over here is I'm in the suburbs and shopping is a thing. And I don't know, I'm just, I've lately been really focusing on saving money as an entry point for people into a sustainable living. because they quote like eco conversation is a little more difficult to bridge. But if I can be like, Hey, you know, if you prevent food waste in these ways, you can save up to $1,300 a year on your groceries, which is a very big pain point right now. But it's just sort of like Jedi mind tricking people into entering the conversation and understanding that all of these things are tied together. And yes, your individual actions do matter because they do start to form this collective shift. So we've approached that the other side in a way, because we already talk about money. So we're trying to trick people into being sustainable when they're perhaps already uh considering that frugality can help them meet their financial goals. Or I should say that was more of our approach uh through most of our existence as women's personal finance. But I think we've kind of like lost track and the lines are just totally blurred at this point. Like we talk about both of those things very readily. I'm not sure if we're a finance uh brand or like a sustainability brand at this point. But yeah, totally. If you can just introduce one half of the concept to whatever group that is, they will often realize that there are other benefits and they might start to think about it more broadly. So however we can get people into the conversation is great. So this brings me to something else I've been thinking about a lot lately. And I saw that you were posting about it as well. And it took actually took me a while to realize there were two of you. I was just like, wow, this, this lady's just posting like crazy. I love this. And then I realized there were two. It's like, But you've been posting a lot about this lately too, which is I think there's like a lot of like, oh, well like we're cooked. So what's the point in trying, but also it's this It's the phrase like no ethical consumption under capitalism and how I'm seeing that being used, sort of tossed about in a bad faith way. a well, you can't do anything good, so why bother trying? And what do you think about that and how it's being misused and all this messiness? Yeah. Well, we did focus on that on our newsletter that just came out last week. So anybody uh who subscribes, em go read that newsletter and we'll probably throw it up on our website for the blog soon. Yeah, it is being used in a bad faith sort of way. I'll just use the umbrella term of capitalism and all its ills. It really feels like it's co-opted that and made it very... taken the meaning away. um For us, that is meant to be more of a phrase that helps those of us who are trying and recognize that we can really never do enough. And there's always another layer that we can get to, like come to terms with the fact that by nature of human society and how we live, it there are always going to be levels of things that are not ethical and are probably harmful to the environment. Not just for me, even under capitalism. I think most of the ways humans engage were a unique species in that sense. uh But more to remind you to keep going and to do what you can as you can do it, and then to tackle that next layer when you're ready. And it's been completely turned around to be used to explain why shopping at Chien and Tmoo are totally fine. And it is the most frustrating thing ever that we deal with all the time. Yeah, I've been seeing Azure Barber Truck about that a lot lately too, in terms of fast fashion. And I'm not a fashion girly, so I don't, I'm not like, I don't focus on that as much, but I just, just like, no, it's actually fine for me to do this because everything's horrible. And I just, my eyes just bug out. I don't, I don't even know what to say to that because I, I look at it sort of Regina, what you just said in terms of the best worst option. There just might not be a good option for most things, but just choose the best one that's available to you, to your budget, to your circumstances, to your access, and keep being inquisitive and keep being curious and keep drilling down and keep trying to find the next best. Yeah, I think fashion is really the place where that phrase really breaks. When we talk about you don't need to buy fast fashion, people love to say, but then you're just fat shaming people who don't have 72 different options if they don't buy fast fashion. Or you're just shaming people who can't afford to buy a new wardrobe every month. And it's like, right, that's the problem. is that we're saying that nobody should be doing these things. That being equitable is not making it so that everybody can have the overconsumptive lifestyle that people that are thin and wealthy can afford. We're saying that nobody should be doing that. And that just because you are on a limited budget and you want to have those little treats does not mean that your little bits of comfort are worth the suffering of the people that are making the fashion who are living with our mountains of cast offs, who are dealing with the like chemical runoff of the manufacturer of this stuff to say that, well, I deserve, you know, this really cute new wardrobe every month. And if you're saying I'm limited to that, then you are, you know, attacking my ability to have nice things. while at the same time completely ignoring the externalities of the fashion industry. Like clearly it's not just fashion, but that one I feel like is a very, very like visible one where people will uh ignore everything as long as they can get their cute new t-shirt uh for $5. Yeah, that's, I struggle with that so hard. Like fashion is the one where we know, we know the depths of just how trash it is all the way down and we just don't care. It feels like, least in our like hyper consumptive culture. Halls. I never want to see another hall again, as long as I live. I think I've successfully blocked most folks, but um that's... I'm only one person. So I'm glad that we're having these huge, more expansive conversations about the impact of fashion. So I wanted to end off today by talking about what's quickly becoming a through line for my show. And I think all of us talk about in general for climate action and that's community as both a form of resistance and of resilience. So m For me, that really boils down to sharing, like sharing physical things, objects, whether it's giving, know, borrowing my neighbor's wheelbarrow or giving them back some seedlings to say thank you, the whole cup of sugar thing. Like I'm really into doing that because in the suburbs, we are so isolated. They're built for convenience and not for connection. And so I'm trying to really foster that in my own neighborhood. But I'm wondering... In terms of even just like finances or any other parts that you wanted to talk about, like why is community such a necessary alternative to this bootstraps myth that we all just have to sort of figure it out on our own and take care of ourselves and not each other. oh WPF has grown out of the community vibe. And one of the things that we wanted to change the conversation about early on, um because we started very heavily focused on the financial conversations, was the idea that you need an expert to be able to succeed in your finances. uh that anybody who was going to start off doing anything before they even thought about putting $500 in their retirement account, so many people feel like they need to talk to a financial advisor or someone who's going to manage those things for them. And it makes it feel really uh out of reach for most people because that is layered with so many other types of things. How do I pick the right person? How do I know they're going to help me make the right choices, et cetera, et cetera. And we've, we've generally said, and what is it? Is it like the Pareto principle or something like, you if you can do, if you can do 80 or 90 % of things the right way. Yeah. Like 80, 20, if you can get most of it right and you do a little bit wrong. you're still way farther ahead than if you did nothing. So we wanted to bring people together to make those financial conversations uh more transparent and to let people knowledge share with each other. You know, we, we know people who are financial advisors and, and help people manage all of this stuff. And there are definitely times and places for those conversations, but most people who don't have any savings just need to start. And helping to make that a community sourced effort where we can all weigh in. also the fact that when we're talking about that as a community, we all have lots of different experiences. being able to hear feedback from a lot of different people rather than one person who you're probably paying a fairly hefty fee to can really help you make decisions that are uh going to be most impactful for your personal situation. So that's where we started from. And we have seen people do amazing things. You know, there's people moving to other countries. There's people that have retired early. There are people setting up. trusts for children and they're doing most of this by themselves with the help of supportive community to talk to. And uh it might be helpful in this area too that it's also kind of a taboo topic in most places. So a lot of people don't have a ready-made community to talk about those things with in their own families or neighborhoods. So it lends itself really well for us to the online space. But that idea can expand to lots of other things too. Because we exist in a culture where everything is bought and sold, that includes all of our knowledge, that includes, there's a lot of gatekeeping that requires money to be spent. And if we can find a way to make that more accessible by sharing freely as friends and neighbors, we're all gonna be better off for it. Well, and then, you know, the cup of sugar thing, you know, I live in a more suburban part of my city, but I have a neighborhood community that like very much shows up for each other. And kind of like Regina was saying how we're, we've ended up in a society where everything is bought and sold. means that, you know, when you need to get to the airport, you call an Uber instead of saying, Hey neighbor, can you take me to the airport? Which, you know, happens in my neighborhood. or I just need childcare for a half an hour before I can get back. but my neighbors are around so they can keep an eye on my kid. Or I need this one random tool for one task. Well, somebody actually already owns it and we don't all need to own the same thing in our houses. So it's uh a sustainability piece of like not everybody needs to own all the things, but also. a financial thing that not everybody needs to own all the things. And so, you know, it's sharing that stuff and, but it's also showing up in your community. So like that kind of stuff doesn't just happen organically. uh You need to actually show up and be a part of it. If you want to, if you want your neighbor to take your garbage cans in from the street when you're out of town, then you need to be there to help them fix their gate when it's sticking. We find that with our communities too, is that the people who get the most out of it are the ones that actually show up and put into it. so it's, so much of the community talk is like, how do I get a community, not how do I put in to be part of building that community? We've gotten so used to. just having stuff happen to us or for us or we can buy it, that it's a very different perspective to realize that like you have to show up and put in the work. You have to be a good community member in order to have a good community. Yeah, it's not going to show up on your doorstep. got to knock on the door. Yeah, you can't order that on Amazon. Yeah. I feel like we've barely scratched the surface here. So yeah, I'd love to keep going. just, this topic just deserves so much more space. So I'd love to have you on again, another time. could talk for 18 hours, I'm sure. But I do want to give you your afternoon's back. So let's move on to the very last part of the show. This is my favorite part, because I get to put you on the spot. So I call this segment, One Small Shift, and you two are very good about posting three things to do today. So I'm sure you'll have no problem, but I'd love for you to each share just one small thing that a listener can do today, whether it's money or sustainability or showing up a little differently in the world. One small thing that someone can do right now at the end of this episode. It's summer, which for me means I've got a lot of garden produce and things like that. So I'm thinking a lot about what's in my pantry and what's in my fridge right now. uh And to me, one small thing somebody can do today, but is a good practice once a week is to go through your refrigerator, look at what you need to toss out and see how you can repurpose it. It is so easy to waste a lot of food and it is something that I worked very hard to uh not do in my house. uh I am a fan of making like a minestrone type soup almost weekly. It feels like in the summer with whatever kind of excess veg is around. uh Soups are delicious and forgiving. uh So that's a big tip for me. uh is just weekly make a point to go through and see if there's a way you can find to use food before you toss it out. It sounds really simple, but uh I think we still have a lot of food waste in most households. And then maybe use that information to think a little bit more about what you are buying and if there's things that you need to cut down on and not buy as much of. Well, and that's part of, you know, the daily um three things you can do today that I share on social media. know, Regina's talking about going through your pantry or your fridge or whatever. And that's one of the ones that pops up pretty often because it's an endless um cycle of making sure you actually use your food. But the one I'm going to say for today is have a conversation with one of your neighbors. Not just a hello, how's the weather, but try and have a little bit more of a conversation and get to know them if you don't already. Maybe not today, but in the next month, get their full name, get their contact information so that if something happens in the future, you actually know who you're living around. uh feels small, it's one of those really big things. like, we really need the community resiliency piece with climate change, with like economic instability, with political instability. is extraordinarily important to know the people that like live physically around us. And so it can be hard and scary to be the one to put yourself out there, but um you know, this week, today, have a conversation with one of your neighbors. and maybe bring them some soup. You know, have a bunch of blueberry plants in our front. We've got eight bushes in our front yard that are like bursting with fruit right now. And having a front yard garden has buttoned such like an amazing community building thing because, you know, I'm like, please come into my yard and pick berries. have too many and sharing that abundance has really been a piece of having a deeper connected. very local community. And that connection can be enough. Yeah. So thank you both so much for this conversation. was... really challenging in a lot of ways, things that I'm going to be taking away, thinking about now. And I hope that the folks listening felt that as well. So for folks who want to learn more about you, connect with you, get involved in your community, definitely get on their newsletter, everyone. I'm going to put it in the show notes. It's excellent. Where should they go? Where can they find you? On all the social medias, uh generally is women SPF, which has also confused people. We are not a sunscreen brand. We will also remind you to wear uh sunscreen and protect your skin, but uh women's PF. We are most active on threads, but you can find us on all the social medias. And if you want to dive deeper with us, we do have our. great weekly newsletter and then we have two private communities for folks who really want to show up as part of WPF. Yeah, we'd love to have you if you enjoyed this conversation and want to learn more about money. Woven is our kind of entry level community. We keep that at a really accessible price point. So currently that is.$10 a month. It's on a platform that we pay for. So it's off the general feeds. It's free to check out for your first month. This is focused on uh women and non-binary people and trans people. try to make our spaces non-cis dude oriented. So just do keep that in mind. But if you are one of the cis dudes and love this, um our weekly newsletter is pretty awesome too. oh We'd love to see you and continue all of these conversations. So thank you, Sarah. Thank both so much. appreciate everything that you do and I have loved this conversation. Thank you so much. That was such a great chat with Angela and Regina from Women's Personal Finance. We covered a lot and still barely scratched the surface about how our financial choices connect to the bigger systems driving the climate crisis. I will definitely be inviting them back on as I'm sure we could chat for six hours straight. So definitely go follow them on all the things and especially make sure that you get on their weekly newsletter. It is excellent. And if you're looking for more practical tips, low waste ideas, or just want to keep the conversation going, you can find me over on sustainable in the suburbs.com. And you can also sign up for my newsletter while you're there. All of that and other ways to support the podcast are all linked for you in the show notes. Thanks again for listening. I'm so glad you're here until next time start where you are, use what you have and live a little greener. Thanks for tuning in to sustainable in the suburbs. Every small step adds up. and I'm so glad we're doing this together. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainableinthesuburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on All The Things. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have, and live a little greener.