S1 E12: 🏳️🌈Queer Finance & Anti-Capitalist Money Strategies with River Nice
This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute mental health, financial, tax, or legal advice.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of Money Healing Club, hosts Rachel Duncan and Angie Fitzpatrick speak with River Nice, a queer financial educator specializing in anti-capitalist personal finance. They explore budgeting, investing, and retirement planning through a lens of mutual aid and harm reduction.
🗨️ “This episode is packed. I’ve had so many conversations about money and gender, but this one? It hit differently. There’s something about hearing someone name exactly what you’ve been thinking but couldn’t put into words. We dig into everything from estate planning to the ways capitalism convinces us we’re personally responsible for systemic problems. I walked away from this conversation thinking about money in an entirely new way—and I hope you do too.”— Rachel
Connect with River Nice:
River helps their clients with topics like budgeting, debt, financial emergency preparedness, investing, insurance, and planning how to afford life goals like gender transition, family planning, buying a house, and retirement in their signature 12 week program, Take Control of Your Money.
📚 Resources Mentioned:
Get your estate docs done for free! freewill.com
I'm Dead, Now What? End of Life Planner, make life easier for those you leave behind
Prisonfreefunds.org Search for Mutual Funds & EFTs for scorecards
Join a Offers & Needs Market
⏰ EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:59 | Queer Budgeting & Financial Priorities
Why traditional budgeting advice fails queer communities—and how to fix it.04:23 | Estate Planning for Chosen Families
Essential legal steps to protect LGBTQ+ families and relationships.10:57 | Ethical Investing & Harm Reduction
How to invest while minimizing harm in a capitalist system.11:36 | The Hidden Costs of Capitalism in the Stock Market
How the stock market exploits workers while enriching billionaires.14:42 | Balancing Financial Security & Social Justice
How to align personal financial goals with ethical commitments.21:07 | Why "Personal Responsibility" is a Myth
How corporations shift blame onto individuals—and what to do about it.23:58 | Alternative Retirement Planning for Queer & Nontraditional Families
How to prepare for the future without relying on broken systems.25:55 | Mutual Aid & Collective Financial Solutions
How communities can support each other financially outside capitalism.29:53 | Rethinking Philanthropy & Radical Wealth Redistribution
Why traditional philanthropy falls short—and what actually helps.36:51 | Practical Steps for Building Financial Resilience
Key takeaways and action items to implement today.42:26 | Final Thoughts & How to Work With River Nice
🎧 Your next listen:
S1: E3 Women's Relationship with Earning With Angie Fitzpatrick
💬 Join the Conversation!
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[00:00:00] -Music-
Rachel Duncan: Welcome to the Money Healing Club podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Duncan. I'm a financial therapist and art therapist, and you've come to the softest place to land in personal finance. This podcast is for education and entertainment purposes only. For help with your particular situation, please seek help from a licensed professional in mental health, taxes, and finance.
Here, we talk about all the things we don't usually say when we talk about money. Let's begin.
Y'all, I loved this episode and it's a pretty in depth one. This is where we get to have a great conversation with River Nice, who's a queer anti capitalist financial educator. We're also joined by Angie Fitzpatrick, the community program manager of the Money Healing Club. And you have heard our conversations about gender and money in previous episodes.
We cover so much here. We [00:01:00] talk about key financial topics for the queer community, the importance of estate planning for everyone with a body navigating the complexities of investing, how we've been convinced to have personal responsibility for systemic issues and the crucial and often overlooked element of community care, the ability to ask.
And the ability to give and what that really means. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did and details about how to follow River's work are included in the show notes.
-Music-
River Nice: So yeah, my name is River Nice. My pronouns are they, them. Uh, I call myself an anti capitalist financial planner, if such a thing is possible. Although these days I'm much more leaning into financial education through an anti capitalist lens than one on one financial planning.Rachel Duncan: I think it's possible because you're doing it. So it is. I think we're both creating things that haven't existed in the world and [00:02:00] there's a, you know, uh, an evolving process of, of naming what we're doing. Yeah. And I think both of us coming from this place of education and saying some things that need to be said about money.
So I would like to kick off with, what are some of the top topics that, That you feel like needs to be discussed about money, like, just in general, what do you find you spend the most time educating people on?
River Nice: Oh, great question. Um, so for my audience, which tends to be queer people in their 20s and 30s, like, uh, straight up budgeting is a big topic.
And I think that's mostly because the word budget has been used to mean kind of like, Diet. Um, and I don't want to just fuel diet culture that does so much harm to so many people. I want budget to mean directing the flow of money to what's important to you. Um, so that's a huge topic and helping people, you know, through the shame and guilt about that.[00:03:00]
Um, Another huge topic is, uh, like family stuff, family planning, family creation, uh, naming chosen family, you know, particularly for queer community, um, so it's, uh, not, not inexpensive for a lot of us in the queer community to have kids, um, and that's a big topic is, uh, not just like how do we afford having kids, but how do we set up our financial and legal lives to reflect it.
our chosen families who we want to be sharing resources with. Um, another huge one is of course, uh, gender transition for those of us that need social, legal, medical transition. That's also not inexpensive most of the time. Um, and then folks always want to know the basics, like how do I buy a house, including like, how do I want to, how can I buy a house with a group of friends or with a whole polycule?
And like, you know, literally what is the stock market and how do I. Have a harm reduction approach to the stock market. Um, [00:04:00] stuff like that. And then it's important to me to also talk about things like insurance, not just health insurance, but like life insurance, disability insurance. Uh, but folks are, I don't know, that's like the least interesting one.
Angie Fitzpatrick: The boring, but important stuff that we know from the other side, like, Oh, it's so important, but I get that it ends up being low priority. Yeah. But, okay. So you wrap, wrap the insurance stuff in there too. Also, I'm wondering about kind of like, end of life, like estate planning and things like that. Does that I'm sure that comes up in your work, too.
River Nice: Oh, absolutely. And that's 1 of the things that I have in mind when I say, like, naming who family is to me or to us, right? Like, the estate plan is such a huge, hugely important tool to literally tell the state.
This is who family is. And this is who is not. Yeah. Um, here's who can have decision making in my life and in my family. And here's who can't
Rachel Duncan: right, right. Because we're not just talking about a will. We're talking about power of attorney, medical power of attorney, all of these things. I only recently got my estate planning documents done with [00:05:00] our family and it I was surprised how relieving it was. Actually, it was this thing that was like, it's so stupid. It's so boring. And then we did it like, wow, it really like brought up some conversations. How would we set things up for our children?
What, you know, my husband and I have very different opinions about like, the assistance we need on our last days. I'm like, wow, that was an important conversation to have. So I think you had a really good video just, just recently about like, if you are a human with a body who's over 18, was it, you need estate documents is, am I right? Yeah,
River Nice: absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the misconception there is because the, the part of the estate plan that we're most familiar with from TV is the will that a lot of us, especially younger folks are like, what do I have a bunch of debt like ? I don't need to like leave anything in my will.
But folks don't realize it is that like, who is my power of attorney? Who is my medical power of attorney? What's in my living will? Cause me as a person who takes testosterone every week, I wrote into my living will. If I'm in a coma, [00:06:00] continue to administer testosterone to me, no matter who the president is.
Like, um, and that's the important stuff. I care way less about who inherits this desk or this computer than I do about who has decision making authority and what those decisions need to be.
Yeah, I mean, estate planning is not for rich people and I think there is that misconception and, and, and I know you've shared like some, some really accessible ways to get estate planning done.,
Rachel Duncan: actually, would you mind just sharing some of that?
River Nice: Of course, freewill.com is awesome. I love that they got the URL freewill. com. That's hilarious. That is amazing.
But it's a great place to start. So for somebody whose situation is simple enough, like, you know, you don't own multiple businesses, you don't own property in multiple states, you're not worried about anyone contesting who should be the guardian of your children.
If something happens to you, like, so without those complexities, freewill. com is probably sufficient to just like, get it all done and then just make sure once you [00:07:00] write it, to take it to the notary and get it, you know, legally authorized or whatever. Notarized, I guess. Um, but even for anybody whose situation is more complex and they should be working with an estate planning attorney.
I think it'll still save you time and therefore money with the attorney who bills usually in 15 minute increments. If you go through the process on freewill. com with your people first and then take those answers to the attorney and be like, how do we make sure that XYZ doesn't Cause a problem that makes sense.
Yeah. Cheaper to edit than create. A big disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer. I'm just just a financial educator doing my best. But, um, that's that's what I've learned from my experiences and speaking to lawyers in my life.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah, it makes so much sense. And just directing folks, like, do a little prep work, have some of these decisions made.
Yeah, before going to the going to the lawyer or whatever it is. I love that. I haven't looked at that and I will definitely share that with the club.
Angie Fitzpatrick: I was just saying the other [00:08:00] day, even things like bank accounts, right? Like, you know, if something were to happen to my partner, how would I get into their bank account? We've been putting money in there together. So there are so many little pieces that we have to think about.
River Nice: Absolutely, absolutely. And that, right, that brings up, like, do, like, how are my passwords saved?
Does my partner even know where all of the things are, where things live? You know, like, um, especially, like, when I have clients that have, like, a bunch of student loans and maybe some private student loans, like, their partner might be aware that there are student loans, but do you know which website to go to, let alone what password is to get in there?
So, organizing all that stuff is absolutely part of it. There's another resource. Um, there's this like book you can buy that's called I'm Dead Now What? Oh, I've heard of this. And it's like a little planner that you can fill out with a little bit of levity, which I appreciate. Um, so you can kind of organize all that stuff.
And then as long as your people know where that book [00:09:00] is, they can get the info if they need to. But that just feels like such a kindness to me. If my loved ones have to deal with a tragedy of like me being in a coma or me being gone, I would love to remove any salt from that wound so they can just grieve without having to spend tons of time and energy on the logistics of it.
Rachel Duncan: Yeah. Cool. Sounds like a great father's day gift, really?
Cause I mean, a lot of us have aging parents. And wow, I don't know these boomers don't tend to be very honest about their death or have included their adult children in like what their deal is. So that's another of my little side quests is helping a lot of my clients. Same similar age as yours. Maybe forge this conversation with their parents, because it's like, okay, if I'm going to be the one dealing with your estate or whatever, like, I just need to know some of the basics, where to go, what kind of insurances do you have in it?
It doesn't mean like, you know, airing out the underwear drawer. It's just like, I just need to know some places to go. I had a client. [00:10:00] Who's a parent, you know, died suddenly and there was a safe in the basement and no one knew how to get in there or what was in there. Okay. Nightmare, you know, like not not helpful.
River Nice: No, no. And it's it's tough to bring up the conversation because especially, uh, you know, I can't speak for all boomers, but some that I know have the, um, don't have the emotional skills to be able to feel how terrifying it is to have a mortality kind of conversation and then still be able to proceed with that conversation.
Angie Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
River Nice: So for those of us that are trying to talk to those older folks, I think we need to find the creative ways to like, bring a little levity or make it not about, not as directly about you're going to die or I want to inherit or, you know, like, It's not it, but it is just help me help you help me help us be a team here and make sure that we can handle whatever life throws at us.
Rachel Duncan: River, how do you [00:11:00] guide folks or help them with the conversation of, okay, I know I need to have more money. I know that investing is a crucial part of that, but I am really worried about what I don't want to be supporting things that I'm not behind, especially when investing and stocks feel super mysterious investing is not, you know, something that I'm trained in.
And I really kind of like direct people to other, uh, investing professionals with those questions. How do you guide that conversation? Cause I think we have a similar audience that like really want to do the right thing with their money, but are also really scared that like, have I missed out on, on investing and growing my wealth.
River Nice: Yeah, yeah, I was going to start with acknowledging how harmful the stock market is to everyone and the whole planet. Like, it's something that only exists under capitalism. Like, no other economic or social model would have something like this. It kind of is like, um, uh, just, you know. A microcosm of capitalism, but, [00:12:00] um, and what I mean by that is like the stock market.
What it is is these companies are allowing people who have enough money enough capital to buy into ownership of those companies, right? That's what buying a share of stock is. You are buying a tiny slice of ownership of some company. And then with the goal of because I have bought into ownership of this company that I have contributed nothing to making this company run better or be more useful to the world.
I just bought in. Um, now the goal is for me to make money from that. So these, like, very wealthy, like, owners and CEOs, like, the billionaires, like, they are setting themselves up to because they own the majority of a company or some giant share of a company, and then they make the ownership of that company seem valuable via the stock market, um, that is, like, inflating how much wealth the people who are already starting with money can get.
And it's all imaginary, right? Like, a share of stock is not [00:13:00] something you can eat. It can't shelter your children. It can't provide you health care. It's just this, baseball card decided is worth money. And meanwhile, the employees of these companies often are not being paid enough to live or to retire or to get healthcare.
So the employers are the ones that are actually making the companies run, actually creating value in the form of the goods and services that the companies provide, but it is only the people that are able to buy in with money they already have into ownership that then can receive extra profit from those companies.
Rachel Duncan: And the value of the company increases the less. They pay their workers. Exactly. So like if you're invested in something like Amazon, Walmart, all of these like big notorious ones, as a shareholder, you make money or you increase your profits, the more they decrease their expenses.
Yes. And keeping that margin as high as possible.
Angie Fitzpatrick: So, hold on. So, I remember seeing last year, tons of memes about, like, so and so has record profits, but why does gas cost as much? Or why does this cost this much? [00:14:00] So, what you're telling me now is that. Like, those record profits, not only is it, you know, that they're exploiting their workers, but this is also how they're attracting more investors more like stock.
Okay, it's all coming together.
Rachel Duncan: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I mean, it is. It's the fiction that we all have to believe for this to work and work. I put in, you know, air quotes,
River Nice: right? Because it because it doesn't actually. And then when the stock market crashes, the government has to bail it out, has to bail it out using the taxpayer money.
It's a mess. So when we're starting from that place of the stock market is inherently evil. That's why I use the word, the phrase harm reduction when I'm talking about it, because as much as I would love to not touch any of that with a 10 foot pole and like entirely invest my time and energy and money into stuff that actually makes things livable for most of us.
Um, I also. [00:15:00] Will be older and less able in the future. Hopefully, right? Like, I hope that I continue to live long and will be less able to work for my income later in life. And or like, I don't know how much health care is going to cost. I don't know how much like housing is going to cost 30 years from now.
So, . When I think about preparing for retirement, which to me is the main reason to care about investing. Like, obviously, yes, people will use investing as a tool to save up for stuff that's sooner, shorter term than retirement and obviously people are in different ages, different stages of closeness to retirement.
But, um, for me, I'm much more interested in, okay, if I have to engage with the stock market, it's going to be so that I have more money available when I am older, even if it's not enough to do a full, like, I call it the American dream retirement. Um, cause that's not accessible to the majority of Americans.
Most of us are not going to be able to save or invest enough to have the million to 5 million [00:16:00] needed to do. A conventional American dream, quote unquote, retirement. And it's always been the case that a lot of Americans have not been able to afford it, particularly the folks that have been dealing with.
The harms of white supremacy on them, um, and all of the theft that we have done to black and indigenous communities specifically. So when I think about, okay, but I do need to put some money into the stock market in order to have some money later in life, whether that means that I get to stop working entirely, or whether it means that I can work only part time, or whether it means that that's the money that's available for a retirement home, specifically, like, whatever that looks like for me.
Um, then I want to be putting my money into things like mutual funds and ETFs that are doing less harm than others. Um, so a really great free tool is prisonfreefunds. org. Okay. I'm going to put all this in the show notes. Y'all
Angie Fitzpatrick: prison free funds.
River Nice: Dot org, okay? Mm-hmm . So if you go to prison free [00:17:00] funds.org, you can search almost any mutual fund or ETF in their little database, and they give you a scorecard, A through F.
Does this fund include companies that are literally private prisons, private border control facilities that are literally fossil fuel companies that are literally doing deforestation, um, that are civilian firearms manufacture and sales, or military weapons, manufacture and sales, um, or tobacco manufacturing and sales.
They also do a scorecard for gender equality, but I don't really trust that type of measurement because if you put a cisgender white woman in charge of the company that's doing fracking, like they're still doing fracking. How is that doing gender equality in the world? Who's measuring that? How is it measurable?
Rachel Duncan: Right. There's so many intersections. It makes me think of, we had a, a certified financial planner talk in the club and we were talking about like ESG funds. Remember Angie when Josh was talking about that? And he said that like, they have come a long way, but like, they're looking at [00:18:00] 1 aspect, right? Okay.
We've got the environmental part, blah, blah, blah. But like, You might not know all the other things. So it's, it's, it's a little tricky. Like you said, it's, we're talking about harm reduction and, maybe they're doing some good environmental stuff, but like the social stuff they're not working on. And so you have to determine your tolerance. Like is that how you think of it?
River Nice: Right. So I think about like what data points are measurable and useful and then which data points are most important to me, which is a terrible question to have to ask. Do I care more about the prison industrial complex and trying to do less harm there? Or do I care more about like the climate changing? Like, how am I supposed to answer that question? Um, but again, just thinking about what data is measurable. As opposed to like gender equality or racial equality or whatever. Um, cause we can't have those things in our capitalism anyway, but, uh, what is measurable, what is useful, what is most important to me and knowing that I'm not going to be able to be perfect and knowing [00:19:00] that if I only have a thousand dollars, 10, 000, a hundred thousand dollars, that's a fraction of a drop in the bucket of how much money is total in the stock market, right?
So instead of feeling like I need to be pure and my money needs to be not funding anything that I disagree with. That's not possible. So instead, it's just like, okay, proportional to how much impact I have as an individual, as a family, as a community with X number of dollars, I'm going to put a reasonable amount of effort into trying to reduce the harm that I am participating in.
But knowing that already the stock market is inherently evil and bad for the world, and there's no way to not touch anything that is.
Rachel Duncan: And I would, this is a guess, I don't really know this River, but like, okay, like, when we talk about ESG funds, which stands for environmental social governance, is that the G?
Yes, that, they, they are growing and changing, maybe improving, you know, it's a relatively new concept. The more interest there is in these funds, the more they will make [00:20:00] them. So, like, even if, you know, you feel like, oh, does my money make a difference? But the more we're saying to capitalism, if we're going to do this, we want it to be this way.
It will move the needle. Like these funds will get better. Hopefully more options will come up, um, as time goes on. Right.
That's the hope. That's the hope. That's the collective stuff.
Angie Fitzpatrick: Yeah, exactly. It's a systemic issue. And so we do what we can as individuals. Like you said, River to mitigate the harm that we're doing, but we also have to, yeah, we have to balance that. Like, what are the needs of myself, my family and, um, There are so many other ways to that we can push back on systems.
So I give myself grace. Sometimes. There's a Walmart down the road. They're all bad, like, I cannot spend an hour going to the other side of town to buy a small thing. So I will get this thing here today and treat the workers at this store kindly. And that's what I'm doing today. Yeah, I mean,
Rachel Duncan: they, they have the lowest prices and stuff.
So it's like, if we're looking at [00:21:00] our personal economy, and that is something you need to do for your and your family survival. I, I get it.
River Nice: I just could go on about this forever. But like, um, It also frustrates me that we have such a narrative around like, well, like vote with your dollars or like, don't spend money at places that are harmful because that puts the onus on us as the individuals who don't make enough money and have too many expenses and have too much debt instead of the billionaires that have hoarded all of the money in the world in their little kind of fake gold piles.
Instead of feeling like, well, I shouldn't have an Amazon prime subscription, or that makes me bad. It's like, well, Amazon shouldn't be allowed to do what it's doing. It's so ubiquitous. We should have government regulating how those companies function. Capitalism would only work if I shouldn't say that capitalism would never work, but the way it's supposed to work is you're not supposed to allow monopolies and they're supposed to be [00:22:00] healthy competition between companies. Amazon got the way that it got because it under priced books so that it drove all of the independent booksellers out of business. And then it had a monopoly on that business. And then it just expanded to more and more aspects of life.
River Nice: And then it expanded to buying most of the servers that the internet runs on. Like Amazon owns most of the internet. , so. This is not I'm causing a problem because I pay 100 a year for an Amazon Prime subscription or because I order stuff or whatever I will try to reduce the harm of like, I don't ask for the one day shipping. I'm like, no, no, like, take your time. These workers, these delivery people are being given ridiculous quotas, so I do the tiny little bits that I can, and I do try to support the small local businesses when I can, because I don't want them to continue to go out of business until Amazon is the only, only option.
But it's not on us to not shop at Amazon or Walmart. It's on the people in power to stop making this impossible [00:23:00] for us.
Angie Fitzpatrick: Preach. Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel Duncan: It makes me think of, recycling and how recycling has been the corporate way of passing the buck onto consumers that it's up to us now to recycle and that if, like, the landfills and the oceans are filled with junk, it is our individual responsibility. It has been such a masterful sleight of hand and greenwashing in general, right? Like the apparently the term carbon footprint, I believe was coined by Exxon. Is that right?
River Nice: I was literally going to bring this up.
Yeah, I think it was BP. It was all of one of them. I'm sure they were all working together.
But yeah, how, Evil for those oil companies to be like, you know, what's the problem is your carbon footprint. Don't look at ours.
What is that?
Rachel Duncan: I think we need to look at this. It's like I was talking about this last night. We had a talk on on debt in the club. It's like, okay, there's so much systemic stuff.
Right about about [00:24:00] debt, but then the tools to deal with it are completely individual and you're on your own. And if you're in debt, it's your fault. It's like, we've been on this playground slide with no friction to slide into it, but it's our fault. We're sliding down the slide. there's just so many slices where this happens and hey, you're a person who listens to the news, who had an education and we want to do the right thing.
We want to take that individual responsibility. And um, oh, it's just It's so hard. It's so hard to feel both. Like, yes, I have some agency. I have some power. And like, this is not all on me. Like, this cannot be on me. This is a systemic governmental policy issue.
River Nice: Exactly. And to bring that back to retirement really quick.
Um, when I teach planning for retirement to my program, like, we, we obviously have to talk about everything we just did with, um, like, Quote unquote ethical investing or ESG investing and like the stock market 401ks and all that. But then we spend half the time, okay, how are we [00:25:00] creatively and collectively preparing to be older, preparing to be sicker, preparing for things to continue to get more expensive.
So part of retirement planning is also like having conversations with your loved ones, with people that are the same age as you, older than you, younger than you, about like, what can we set up? Are you good at mending clothes? Can you learn to grow food? Can we give each other rides? Can we share a car?
Like how can we set up stable housing? That's pretty like relatively affordable, whether we can actually buy a house or if we could develop a relationship with a landlord who's a human being and cares about my humanity and quality of life. Like there are lots of creative ways to be planning for quote unquote retirement.
Um, that is more about how do we as humans collectively care for each other and not so much about. These like, uh, conventional financial systems.
Rachel Duncan: Wow. I love that. And could you share some examples? Like, I don't know whether your own life or some stories you can share about people really creatively [00:26:00] and, um, rebelliously building community care into their aging.
I love this topic.
River Nice: I love it so much. And I get inspired by my clients all the time. Like I, I feel like I have the best job in the world because I'm like, Hey, what are we all doing about retirement? We can get creative about this. And then immediately like, Oh yeah, I'll do this. I'll do that. Um, so, I mean, my partner is literally learning to sew and to crochet and to mend clothes so that we don't have to spend money on clothes.
And so we don't have to participate as much in fast fashion throughout the rest of our lives. What else? , here in Philly, we have an apartment building for older folks that are primarily LGBTQ, um, and so they have uh, Resident driven newsletter that I signed up for so that I get to hear about, like, whose cancer treatment went well and who watched a good movie last night and whose recipe is ready to be shared with the world.
Um, and I love that and they're doing more like community events. That's like, come hang out with us. And I'm [00:27:00] like, I would love to come hang out with you. Like, how are, how are you all doing, my elders? You know, like, what can you teach me? What can I learn? What is it that you need as you are older than me so that I can prepare for that?
Rachel Duncan: Yeah. And that was built intentionally, right? That is a, that was probably a core pot of people years ago that got that started. And now it is a place that exists for people. Oh, I love that so much.
River Nice: Cool. I love it too. Um, another really cool one. I had a client who is disabled and requires care workers on like a daily basis to come to the home and be helpful for her disability needs.
And. She is in a situation that she's not able to save anything, right? Because this country makes it very, very hard for disabled people to have or keep money. Um, so she was like, well, actually my retirement strategy is right now. I'm working on convincing the healthcare workers that helped me to unionize.
Because they're burning out too fast, so I need their work life to be better so they can provide [00:28:00] better and more sustained care to me. So if I can support them in making the union happen and improving their work lives and their quality of life, that'll have an impact on my care for the rest of my life.
Everyone wins. Everyone wins. And so she's like, look, I don't have a body or brain that can do X, Y, or Z, but I can have these conversations and I can have the emotional support and I can like educate about what it would take to make union. So that's my creative retirement planning. I thought that was one of the coolest ones.
Rachel Duncan: Oh, that is so good. I know I look around, you know, I live in like the suburbs of Denver and I'm like looking at these houses and it's like, why do we each own a lawn mower? Why do we each own a blender? Right. And we have at the Denver Tool Library, uh, which is private, and as well as our, um, regular libraries have, like, tools and stuff, yeah, there's a sewing machine at our local library, so I've gone and, like, mend this stuff there, so I don't have to deal with, like, storing a sewing machine, like, they're, this, this consumerism, consumerism is so built [00:29:00] on individualism, right, and anti community care, right, it's like, no, you, each of us needs, like, 15, like, Appliances or even more in our kitchen, something you use like once a year.
And I just, sometimes I look in our library, like someone's garage should just be dedicated to be the tool library. Right? Why aren't we doing that? But I also, I don't really, I don't know my neighbors. Well, like, I'm so part of the system where like, we each live our independent lives. I know. I don't want to bother them.
Angie Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Capitalism keeps us that way. It's so hard to. Find space for that when you have to work 40 hours a week, plus also, you know, those of us who have kids are separated from the, you know, extended kin or whoever would help us take care of our kids. So we're just, we're just all exhausted. And it's really hard to build quality community when everyone is tired.
Rachel Duncan: A note river from our our conversation last week. How to give. How [00:30:00] can we think about giving? Because I've definitely worked with clients where I have very lovingly said, I think you're donating too much. Like, I don't think you can afford the level of financial assistance you're giving.
And I really get that it comes from the right place. But I'm worried for your future, right? This kind of, this kind of conversation. How do you navigate the, um, again, why is this shifted to individuals to sponsor research and environmental causes and gender causes and all of that? Why is this on the individual?
How do you help folks navigate, like, feeling good about their own philanthropy?
River Nice: First, I want to pick the bone of the word philanthropy here. Um, there's this book called Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva, um, that really, uh, Takes apart the concept of philanthropy and why that's harmful. And he's talking about it more in like the giant industry of philanthropy, right? A very wealthy people, quote unquote, donating all this money.
And that's like, makes them a good part. Like, [00:31:00] you know, like Bill Gates having the Gates foundation instead of acknowledging the harm that just him being a billionaire is stuff like that. So ticket to heaven, yeah,
River Nice: Yep, exactly. Um, so there's all of that, but, uh, Even that relates to more of us everyday people, like I don't give out of some sense of like, well, I have more and you have less and it is like, I am so yeah, it is still kind of a ticket to heaven thing.
Like, oh, well, I will be a good person. If I just give you something that is like, there's something in there. That's like, It's normal for me to have more and you to have less, or it's like, I don't know how to phrase exactly what I'm trying to say. It
Rachel Duncan: almost, it feels like tithing.
River Nice: Yeah.
Rachel Duncan: Version of tithing where like, I'm okay because I helped in this way.
It's like we're good, like, like it's like this evening of the books. Right, but there are no books.
River Nice: And I see it a lot. Like what you're [00:32:00] saying about, like, some of my clients, some of your clients give too much. I see it a lot with, like, 22 year old white queer people who, like, have just not just realized, but, like, are grappling with it.
Yeah. White supremacy is real and I benefit from it. It's like, I went through that. I had to learn that white supremacy was real, that it existed, that I benefit from it, that my family has the money and stability we have, not just because like my dad worked hard, which he did, but also because he had so many more opportunities and he was paid more than like a woman of color would have been in his position, stuff like that.
Um, but then. That white guilt of like, Oh no, I am there for bad because I benefit from this really awful system. I can fix it by just giving away everything and making myself more pure, more of a martyr, more of a suffering in order to atone for. And I'm not saying it's exclusive. It's certainly not exclusive to [00:33:00] white people.
It's certainly not exclusive to queer people or young people, but that mentality comes up a lot and that's the, that's the group that I see it from the most out of my audience. It's just so tied to that white guilt of like, well, I'm inherently bad and I want to push back on that because I don't think that I, or you, or any of us are inherently bad people because we benefit from white supremacy.
It's that acknowledgement of like, okay, this system exists. We do benefit from it. We do contribute to it in conscious and unconscious ways. How are we going to interact with that for the rest of our lives? And framing it that way, instead of how do I make myself pure enough today that I am allowed to continue to exist, let's frame it as what am I going to spend my life doing to Helping to overthrow the most harmful systems and create a more equitable world, even if it's just my little corner of the world.
Once we're coming from that place, we still need to share with others, right? Like, I'm not like, don't give whatever. Um, But I want to come from more of the, [00:34:00] perspective of mutual aid. And that term is tough because I think the term then gets interpreted as still meaning charity or philanthropy or donating.
Um, the core mutual aid is that your survival and my survival are intertwined. And that's a hard concept for us to get when we've been like brainwashed by capitalism and white supremacy our whole lives, but like you were talking about with like, well, we should all just share these tools. I'm like, yeah, and we should all have public transportation instead of individual cars.
We actually, as a species, evolved because we need each other, because we use each other. Nobody's a lone wolf. We got to where we are because we all got together and were hunting and gathering, and farming, and like, um, raising the kids together. Like, that's how we evolved to where we are.
So, I need you to to be participating in society in a way that is like good for you in order for there to be a society that I can also participate in because you're good at what you're good at. I'm good at what I'm good at. And together we can [00:35:00] hopefully raise the kids and feed everybody and take care of the health needs.
So if I'm coming from that perspective, then yes, I want to be sharing resources, money, and other resources besides money. Time, brains, care, all of that. The lawnmower, the car, um, a credit score that's high so that I can co sign for somebody whose credit score is low. Um, a life insurance policy who's listed as the beneficiaries on that life insurance policy.
Like we can get creative about lots of it, right? The power of attorney and the estate, state plan. Like we could be sharing lots of these tools. But I also want to make sure that I keep saying it as sharing because I don't want to just accidentally slip right into, well, I'm white and I come from upper middle class, so I need to just give and not ask for help. Because if I'm not asking for help, I'm not vulnerably creating a connection with another human. I'm not building trust. I'm still coming from a place of the haves and the have nots and I will always be the have and you'll always be the have not and this is [00:36:00] a one way street.
Rachel Duncan: I love it. Yeah, it's like it enforces the division actually, right?
And then this like money is this intermediary, like you said, like this purity stuff and oh gosh, there's so much like religious stuff seeped into all of this.
Angie Fitzpatrick: So much. It all stems back to the Puritans.
Rachel Duncan: Exactly. Oh, well, River, I need to send you my notes. I just did on the history of debt, debtors prisons, bankruptcy, all of that. Like, this is all also very recent that, like, it's been okay to borrow and not to get your hand chopped off. Like, it's very new. So the like the awkwardness we're facing and how much has changed, uh, with, with money in the last, you know, 150 years is like, just massive
River Nice: because the billionaires sucked all the money up.
And so what does that leave us with less money, more debt,
to come back to, you were asking, you know, How to help your clients decide how much to give. So it's like, that's the mindset around it, right? Let's get away from the haves and the have [00:37:00] nots and get away from putting yourself in either category and get into what is the sharing, sharing of money, sharing of other things besides money.
But then pragmatically, I still want to decide how many dollars to put where in a month. So I look at the pie chart of where's all my money going this month and which slice should be the biggest and getting really honest with yourself. For me, shelter is the biggest slice because that's the most important thing for me to pay for is a roof over my head, a place to live, a place to work, because I am lucky enough to work from home.
So if I end up in a situation that the slice of sending money out, sharing money away from me is bigger than my shelter slice. And I'm not here to tell anybody what your priorities should be. Right. But for me, that's out of whack with my priorities. That's not feels unsafe. I mean, it's literally like, yeah, let's not get unsafe.
So, for me, again, as a white person that comes from an upper middle class background, like my. Sending money out slice and particularly sending money out to black and indigenous [00:38:00] communities, um, is bigger than my takeout slice or my travel for fun slice, because that to me is more important than those conveniences.
But I've had clients that are like, I, my disabilities are such, or my work schedule is such, or my parenting is such that takeout has to be a bigger slice. And I'm like, yeah, what is more important than putting food in you and your family's bellies? You know, I'm not here to judge how you do that. But.
Getting that really honest with yourself about which of these slices should be bigger than others can help me arrive at a number of how much money am I sending out, at least during the months that things are going well,
Rachel Duncan: right? I was just going to say, and there are seasons. Hey, if the last year, like, we weren't able to contribute in the way we typically did last year.
It was a really different year for my family financially. It's okay, right? Like, we're just, we're going along. We are all doing the best we can. Exactly. We are spending with our values and our priorities and, and our personal economy can shift, right? There could be a year where, like, you are able to, that's, it's okay.
Right? Like you said, like, let's really [00:39:00] question. This purity element, right? That's how it looks thing. And, and I think that's really there for all of us who, especially who have unearned privilege. And I think we're giving a little bit of a permission slip to untangle that a little bit, and that you can help through connection, right?
Like, maybe I can't, maybe I'm not in a place to donate to that cause, but I would love to connect you with that. You know, I, I like doing that. I like connecting people, right? Like, okay, if I'm not able to donate right now, I will connect people to each other, for example, or connect to resources or something like that.
And right that that is part of this. Hey, there are a lot of ways to help. I've actually shared with Angie when I feel like, God, there's so many causes I want to help and be a part of, but, like, the 1 that I really could put some time into is changing the TABOR laws in the state of Colorado. The tax laws that have demolished our public school system.
And it's, it's through this whole taper thing. Anyway, like, gosh, if I were to really get down to it and it would be right, that is like the much less sexy, [00:40:00] like, boring crap that I feel is hurting my community the most. And then that would be the top down thing that. I could see getting being a part of and that I could really help like my skills.
Right. And then there could be other causes that someone else is really good at helping. So, you know, I do think it's like, it's okay to pick your cause and really and do the best you can with that. And that's all right.
River Nice: And to remember always that 1 of the things that you can be doing to like contribute to your community is asking for help from someone else and extending that trust and extending that vulnerability like that.
Asking someone for help in in money in anything is an offering of trust and vulnerability to the community. And that is. Just as valuable when we are trying to build relationships that will actually take better care of everyone.
Angie Fitzpatrick: There's a lovely nonprofit and I'll link to it in the show notes. Um, they have a program called offers and needs and every quarter, do you know offers and needs?
I just [00:41:00] love the concept already as you already know it. Yeah. And it's this big zoom call and they put you into rooms and there's a strict framework you list three things you can offer and three things that you need and you do three rounds. So it's like first it's like obvious and then you really drill down like I guess I could also like if anyone wants to learn Spanish, it's kind of cool.
Like, at the last round is the most interesting of like, what someone could like, really like some funny little thing and then they make a big spreadsheet. You can follow up with the people. It's so cool. And I think there's, there are people doing some very cool stuff around that and utilizing the internet for what.
You know, the best part of it, which is to connect us to people who we wouldn't otherwise be connected to. So that's so cool.
Angie Fitzpatrick: I was going to say, given this political moment, there's a lot of conversation about what can I do? And, I mean, I'm getting a lot of advertising asking me for my money, but I'm also seeing some really cool things coming out of these mutual aid organizations.
You know, loose on organization, but, like, folks were saying, hey, you know, what else you could do? [00:42:00] You could make art and post it around town, encouraging people to, like, have faith or keep hope or, you know, resist. So, yeah, I would encourage folks to to just look at the multitude of ways that you can show up for community, um, and do it in a way that, again, reflects the season you're in.
Rachel Duncan: Highlight someone else's work, right? Connect someone to each, you know, two people to each other that you think could really benefit. Like, yeah, there's so many ways.
Well, River, I have a last question. I, of course, I could talk with you forever and ever, and I want to live in a commune with you.
Okay. Retirement plans. Um, okay. So a question I like asking, uh, members of the club is if you could picture your money as a creature. Real or imagined, what is your first intuitive hit? If you wouldn't mind sharing.
River Nice: I know you're going to ask and it's still hard. Okay, first intuitive. It's a puppy. It's a puppy that's just like so [00:43:00] excited and so energetic and Doesn't know where to put the energy.
And so I'm just gently and lovingly no, no over here. Okay. Well, you need this. Okay. You need some attention. Okay. Over here. All right. It's nap time. Love that.
Rachel Duncan: You love that. And if you were to give that puppy something, it needs to feel complete. What's your first intuitive hit of that?
River Nice: Oh, I snuggle. Yeah, that is beautiful. I really feel this nurturing relationship you have with, with your work, with your money, with your people, with your clients.
Rachel Duncan: Um, do you have any specific offers or anything you would like to share with people about what you're, what you're working on right now?
River Nice: Oh yeah, absolutely. Um, my favorite thing that I do is my Take Control of Your Money program, which is a 12 week small group program where I teach all the basics of personal finance, but through this kind of anti capitalist, mutual aid focused lens.
Um, I run it three times a year and the next we're going to start is in April of 2025, and then we'll do it again in late summer. [00:44:00] Um, so come check that out. And if anybody is interested in the program, it doesn't know if it's the right fit for them. I'm happy to do just a free quick conversation to check if it is actually the right fit for you.
Rachel Duncan: I have loved this conversation and getting to know you better and your work. I will link to all of River's offerings in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the Money Healing Club podcast.
River Nice: Thank you so much, Rachel and Angie, for having me. This has been great.
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Thanks for listening to the Money Healing Club podcast. You can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes at moneyhealingclub.com/podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, you'd probably really love my free email course on curbing impulse spending with compassion and mindfulness.
Check it out at moneyhealingclub.com/ challenge. Do you have a question about how financial therapy might help you? Leave me a voicemail at moneyhealingclub. com. And I might answer your question in a future episode of the [00:45:00] pod. We are in this together and I really appreciate it.
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