Boycott Black Friday

The holidays are upon us. 

I tend to not much care for the religious aspects of this season (those of you who know me well know I’m exercising significant diplomacy in this description, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant), although I love the music and will play classical holiday music non-stop from now 'til Epiphany. I’m also partial to little flashing lights, which is probably a result of my ‘60s upbringing.  I dive right in to decorating the yard with luminarias and blinky stuff, and pass it off as a druidic solstice celebration just because I love how it looks. However, the fact of the matter is that holidays are mostly an excuse for gifts as far as I’m concerned. I am extremely partial to gifts. Like to give ‘em and like to get ‘em. But gifts means shopping, and shopping sits somewhere not too far below organized religion on my pet hate list.

Here's the thing: I do not want to think of y’all heading out on Black Friday and giving your money to a faceless multinational in order to satisfy your gift list. There’s a huge chunk of money changing hands between now and solstice, and it’s a prime opportunity to make a statement and vote with your wallet. These days I try and stay local whenever I can, and I am also trying to aim my dollars toward doing some good.  So here are some thoughts about how to combine putting your money in responsible places, and finding fun stuff for the folks on your list.

Shop at the gift shops of your local zoos and museums.  Memberships in same are also good (if you know your recipient isn’t already a member).  It’s also a great excuse to go to the zoo. Our zoo has lion cubs (they are 4 months old now), so it’s a really fun trip all the way around.  For the gardeners on your list, the Tucson Botanical Gardens has a wonderful gift shop (and if you live somewhere else I’ll bet your local botanical gardens does too), and the Desert Museum gift shop could easily be your only stop.

Hit your local craft shows and farmers markets. There are all kinds of wonderful seasonal items that are locally grown and/or made.  Shop with local small business people. Don't miss those small shops that sell truly unique things.

If you just can’t find local items to satisfy everyone on your list, catalogs/websites from your favorite non-profits often have cool stuff (NPR, and the Metropolitan Opera are a couple of my favorites).

Gifts that give to others are also a fine idea. Heifer International is a really cool way (www. heifer.org) but there are others as well – if you have a favorite charity there’s probably an opportunity there to give a gift in the name of someone on your list.

And this year don’t forget that we are the 99%, and if you are so moved you can gift to your local Occupy camp. We just dropped off supplies to the Occupy Tucson folks and they are most grateful.

So give thanks for what makes you smile, and vote with your wallet.

Steph

Move Your Money

I hate banks! OK, those of you who know me realize that what I actually said was “I f****  hate f**** banks.  

Not only did banks play perhaps the number one role in creating the 2008 economic disaster (in partnership with the stellar congresses who so kindly removed all those pesky regulations), and take huge amounts of our money in bailouts (how come 99% of the population isn’t considered a group that is “too big to fail”?), they are now sitting on the piles of money they received from us and not lending it to the businesses and individuals in need.

So what’s a poor consumer to do?  Stop doing business with the banks.  If only one or two of us do this, we will certainly feel better about ourselves and how we interact with the world. But if many of us do this we make a statement that can be heard outside of our own four walls.  In the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie: “…And friends they may think it's a movement.”

Moving your money is a big deal. Most of us have been with our banks for a long time. Cathy and I ended up with Wells Fargo because Southwest Savings where we started sometime in the ‘80s was bought out by a small bank, which was bought by a regional, which was bought by WF. Which is part of the problem with banks.  But although it's a big deal it can be done, and now is the time for all of us to put in the effort, make the move, and yell long and loud about why.

We started by deciding that we would not look at local banks but would only consider credit unions. Why?  Look at the prior paragraph – it’s too easy for your small local bank to end up being an appetizer for WF or BofA or some other odious institution.  Also, and equally if not more important, credit unions are non-profit and owned by their depositors, as opposed to banks that are owned by and responsible to shareholders rather than depositors, and must always be looking for ways to make money…which they can only do by charging the folks with whom they do business (that would be us) every time they...I mean we...sneeze or turn around. Also, since they are not required to squeeze a profit out of every depositor, the rates are higher and there are no fees for the regular banking services we need.

Having made the credit union only decision, we next did a search on what credit unions there are in our neighborhood (for those of you who live somewhere like Manhattan, "in our neighborhood" means within 7-8 miles from our house).  There are 5. We determined that they are all federally insured (that’s important – some are state insured and when your state is Arizona that means anything can happen). Then we put together a list of questions about products, services, fees, and business practices. I put this list into a spreadsheet and made a visit to each of the credit unions to get details on what they have to offer. I could have done this by searching their websites but I wanted to see what it is like to interact with the employees of each institution, and I really didn’t want to try and click through endless screens to find 20-odd bits of information on 5 different websites.

Based on what we discovered we narrowed the search down to 2 institutions. We then went online to the National Credit Union Administration (http://www.ncua.gov/Pages/default.aspx) and looked at each institution’s respective financials.  This was enlightening because although both of them were similar in terms of asset value, one was lending twice as much money as the other. The other had half their funds invested…guess where…in banks and other financial instruments. That made our final decision easy.

So yesterday we opened our new credit union accounts.  It will take a couple of months before we are sure that all the automatic activity has been moved over and can close the Wells Fargo accounts, but we’re on our way to being bank-free.

If you are interested in climbing on this bandwagon, here are some resources that will help you work through all the hassle:

https://www.hellowallet.com/mym/list.php This site helps you find alternative institutions in your area.

http://www.moveyourmoneyproject.org/checklist-0  Here’s a checklist of all the things you need to do and in which order.

http://www.rebuildthedream.com/move-your-money/  When you’re ready to make the change, go to this site and take the pledge – making sure your action is counted is important!

If you would like a copy of the spreadsheet we created, send me an email that includes your email address and I'd be happy to share it with you.

Finally, when you are completely moved, send a letter to your old bank and let them know what you have done. Remember part of the power that comes with voting with your wallet is publicizing your vote.

Vote with your wallet!

Steph