Kara Perez’s Debut Book “Green Money”: How To Use Your Money To Save the Planet

Jess 0:07

Hello Bitch Nation. This is Piggy AKA Jess coming to you with an exclusive interview with the one and only Kara Perez of Bravely Go. What makes it exclusive? Nobody knows, but we’re going to talk to her about her upcoming book, Green Money: How to Reduce Waste, Build Wealth, and Create a Better Future for All, which is coming out on November 13th from John Wiley and Sons. And I’m going to ask Kara all about this amazing book. I loved it. She wrote it. Kara, how are you?

Kara 0:38

I’m great, I’m thrilled to be here. Love the name Bitch Nation. Just everything’s a 10 out of 10 right now.

Jess 0:44

Great, love to hear it. Oh my gosh. First things first, you know, this book is about sustainability and using your money to create a better world, a better, a more environmental world. Why you such a tree hugger?

Kara 0:59

You know, great question. Born that way, hashtag born that way. Also #dependent upon the planet for life, as are we all. And I think it makes a lot of sense for all of us to care about where we live and our experience on the planet.

Jess 1:17

Absolutely. Yeah. We are kind of all stuck here together on this rock. So yeah, let’s make it a little cleaner. Let’s make it a little better. Will you—for those in Bitch Nation who don’t follow you and haven’t heard us extolling your virtues before, can you tell us a little bit about your background as a financial expert and how you started Bravely Go?

Kara 1:39

Yes, let’s go on a journey. So the year is 1988, I am born, everyone is excited and then we flash forward about a decade. My single mom is hella broke. She’s saying no to all the things I want to do with my life and I’m like uh, rude. I’m trying to get these name brand cereals. She’s like, if you don’t put that down, I’m going to beat your ass. Like my mom was very like, no. And so I just grew up low income in this single parent household and was very aware of—we don’t have money, that makes life hard. And then I’m the only one of my siblings to have gone to college, had to take out student loans to do so, and then graduated in 2011, which my fellow Millennials and Gen X will remember, it was not technically the Great Recession, but was very much so the aftermath of the Great Recession, right? Like companies had been slashed down to nothing. No one wanted to hire you unless you had a STEM degree and like 35 years of experience. So I remained very low income throughout my 20s, like throughout my whole 20s and still today I’m 36, I’ve never had a full time salaried job. I’m very much so that story of the Millennial who like made the gig economy work because no one would hire me.

And so when I was 25, I had my quarter life crisis like right on time, very prompt, where I was just like, oh my gosh, my student loans are ruining my life. I’m making 15k a year, 16k a year as a waitress in Austin, TX. I have to pay all my bills, like I am getting no family help. If I don’t figure out money, which has been hard my whole life, the rest of my life is going to look like this. Like there’s no way out except through. So I started getting very into personal finance and started blogging about paying off my student loans while on a very low income. And I kind of cobbled together 5 different part time jobs so that I could try and increase my income, which I did successfully from you know, $15,000 a year to $30,000 a year. Gross. Pre taxes. But I was like, I’m living large. And I blogged about it and I paid off the remainder of my student loan. So I had paid off about $30,000 in student loans and interest total in the 3 1/2 years after graduation. And then I was like, great, now I’m at zero. I’m not in the red anymore, but I still don’t have any money. So I kind of turned that attention into saving and investing and started holding events around women and money in Austin, TX because I was so into it and I loved talking about it. And things just kind of snowballed, you know, got on social media, got my own LLC, and I’m just very passionate about teaching people the language of money. And now with the book, helping people make that connection between the world we live in, the challenges of the world we live in, and how their money is a tool to not only improve their own financial lives, but the financial systems that we all live in.

Jess 4:46

Yeah, I mean, you were basically forged in the fires of adversity, which we love. Anyone who talks to us, they’re like, well, you know, my parents paid for college, so I didn’t have student loans. We’re like, whoa, whoa, that’s nice. But we we can’t do anything with you. That’s—you are not—

Kara 5:00

Cut the mic. Cut the mic.

Jess 5:01

Cut the mic. You are not speaking to our target demographic. There you were, you know, living this life that is, I’ve heard from so many of our fellow Millennials and Gen Zers, Zoomers, if you will, and sadly, Gen Alpha, which I hear is the kids these days, they’re the little ones, you know, they’re not having it much better. So like your position as this person who has like fought tooth and nail and never forgot your values as an environmentalist and as a Latina in your community, like you are the person that so many people should be looking up to, which is why I’m so excited about your book for one thing.

Kara 5:39

Oh my gosh, thank you!

Jess 5:40

I know, I know I’m just blowing all the smoke up your ass. Well, so let’s talk about how you held true to those environmentalist values and your activism while you were building this personal finance empire and teaching others ’cause I mean really like you do it all.

Kara 6:00

Yeah. So you bring up a good point of, in our world, right, like we live in this very complex and often times compromising world. And there’s a lot of people who want to live a certain way but can’t, right? Like a lot of people are like, oh, I’d love to like move to the woods, you know, and like live on a commune. But I can’t because I gotta like, pay off my debt and I have to save for retirement and I need to have a job, right, like these are—

Jess 6:26

And I have people depending on me, yeah.

Kara 6:27

I have people depending on me, right? Or like, I can’t actually move to the woods because I have a chronic illness. I need to be near a doctor, near a hospital. Or a lot of people who are like, oh, I’d love to be a full time stay at home parent, you know. There are these financial constraints. In my case, I started bumping up against the challenges of being an environmentalist in a single use world, right? And in a world built on fossil fuels. And I was just like, yo, you know what’s crazy is that fossil fuels are ruining the planet. And also I’m hyper dependent on them. Like I gas up my car. I have to use electricity to, like, heat the house, you know, oil is in everything, oil is in plastic, plastic is everywhere. What’s happening? And that was just like a tension that I think many people feel right of I want to do this. But because of the systems, I have to do that, right, or I feel boxed in. And I had been grappling with that for a long time, just, you know, throughout college and my early adulthood of I wanna do this, but I have to do that. And then I found this subreddit called Fuck Nestle.

Jess 7:36

Yes! I love a good subreddit and I already see where this is going because spoiler alert, I’ve read your book. But fuck Nestle indeed. Go on.

Kara 7:46

And okay, and yes, I also love a good subreddit. There’s a subreddit for everything that you want. And I just stumbled across this one and it’s just a bunch of people who hate Nestle and specifically they boycott Nestle. Like they won’t buy Nestle products. And they always have these infographics of like, here’s the companies that Nestle owns. Just a reminder, you know, it’s not just the chocolate or it’s not just the water, it’s all these things. And then also they just have detailed posts of like the crimes of Nestle. You can’t go to that subreddit and leave being like, I’m a Nestle fan. You’re like, we must burn them to the ground.

Jess 8:18

Yeah, I know. It’s like I have discovered the evil empire.

Kara 8:22

Exactly, but that was the first time that it kind of like light bulb moment for me of oh my gosh, here are people who are using their economic power as individuals to put it to a company, like to put the screws to this company and I love it. And they’re not only spreading the word, but they are taking their dollars out of Nestle. And that just opened this door for me of oh my gosh, how can I withhold my money from companies I don’t like? How can I put my money into companies I do like? And being the money nerd that I am, it started with personal spending, but quickly expanded into my investments.

Which bank do I use? Like, how can I find institutions that align with my values so that I can use my money as a tool for a better world? And so I share all of that in kind of a lot of detail. People are like, girl, we get it. But I think often when people are trying to make their money more environmentally friendly, or when people are just trying to shift into a values based way of living, money often feels like an obstacle. And I really want to invite people to think of money as a tool instead of as like a wall they have to get through. It’s the ladder to get you over the wall, right? Or it’s the hammer to help you knock down that wall.

Jess 9:38

Yeah, hell yeah. Great metaphor. Well, so let’s talk a little bit more about people looking at money as an impediment in the way of their environmental activism or, you know, values and activism of any stripe. Because, you know, I’ve heard people be like, oh well, I would love to eat all organic food, but Whole Foods is more like whole paycheck. Or, you know, I would love to shop for ethically sourced clothing and whatever, but they’re so much more expensive. Tell me about in your book and in your message in general, like how do you address those concerns?

Kara 10:13

There is this nefarious reputation that sustainability has that it’s like for the elites, it’s not for the regular people and it’s way more expensive and it’s not true. It’s just not true. Poor people, low income people, live way more sustainably than wealthy people. People with money live largely unsustainably. Think about the fact, like Kim Kardashian—I love to throw the Kardashians under the bus here—but she has like Italian marble floors in her house. And if like, they need to be cleaned by this dude that she flies in from Italy. Kim Kardashian lives in LA. Like she—

Jess 10:50

That’s ridiculous.

Kara 10:51

Exactly. And like, that’s the ability of money, right? The ability of money is to have excess and not having money means that you cannot have excess. So you are re-wearing clothes year after year, right? You’re like doing your own repairs. So when people are saying oh well, like sustainable clothing is so expensive. No, like handmade, highly skilled artisan clothing, yes, that’s going to be expensive. But if you want sustainable clothes, it’s going to be the dress that you bought five years ago that you still wear. That’s sustainable clothing.

Jess 11:24

Or it’s gonna be the dress that you bought 5 minutes ago at Goodwill that has been through 3 different homes.

Kara 11:28

Goodwill. Exactly.

Jess 11:30

Yeah, I’m so glad you put it that way because it really is, you know, when you are coming from a place of not having a lot of money and resources, you are sort of forced to get creative and really believe in that. Reuse, recycle, repurpose or no? What is it?

Kara 11:52

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Jess 11:54

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Yeah, there it is. You sort of are kind of forced into like truly living those values, which I think, you know, when you do have extra resources, you can spend less time and energy like worrying about where you’re going to get things. So you might not like take the time to make such conscientious decisions. So I love in your book, you have this great example. You were—you spent some time in Cuba. I would love for you to talk about what that experience taught you about using what is available versus, you know, spending a lot of money on getting something that’s ideal.

Kara 12:31

Man, so Cuba is fascinating and I really want to encourage especially Americans to go because going to Cuba changed me to my core, really and truly. And it’s a fascinating place where because of the US embargo, we don’t trade with Cuba, but we, meaning the United States, we also prevent other companies, countries rather, from trading with Cuba. So Cuba doesn’t have imports, right? Like we here in the United States, we’re like importing things right and left. You know, we got French cheese, we got Canadian bacon, we got all this stuff that’s coming in.

Jess 13:03

And I love both of those things.

Kara 13:05

I mean, delicious. And Cuba doesn’t. So Cuba basically has donations and what’s already on the island. So when you’re there, you start to notice people are using things not only repeatedly, but they’re using things in ways they were never meant to be used. And it is an incredible act of creativity. So when I was there, my host took me out to a rooftop bar, which was amazing. And we are looking out over the ocean and it was like 85°. It was perfect. Drinking a mojito. There’s a lot of rum in Cuba. They make their own rum, so there’s always a lot of rum going around. They call it vitamin R, and I love that. But I’m looking around and I was like, oh my gosh, the lamp covers are blenders. Like instead of having like a normal air quotes, normal lampshade, the entire patio, every single light bulb had a plastic blender over it. Because they don’t have lampshades. Like they don’t have—they can’t just be like, I’m going to run to Target and pick up a bunch of new trendy lampshades. They are under this embargo and they have to use what they have. So the owner of that bar was like, yeah, I found a bunch of blenders and this is what I used, right? And their menus were a bunch of um, I wanna say CDs. But what’s the? What’s the bigger than a CD?

Jess 14:34

Oh the records, the record cases.

Kara 14:36

Thank you. Album covers and newspapers and stuff that they had had for years that were just around. And they’re like, oh well, we’ll just use that as our menu cover instead of like the laminated plastic stuff that we have here because they don’t have laminators at Kinko’s or at like, you know, Staples or whatever it is. And that to me, I don’t want to say like, we should all live like Cubans. We should all pretend we’re under an embargo or anything like that. But I do think that we should look at sustainable living as an exercise in creativity and ask ourselves, what do I already have that works? Because when we—we do here in the United States, live in a culture that is constantly reminding you of how terrible you are, of how lacking you are, and they’re constantly trying to sell you the solution. Hey, you smell bad. You should get deodorant and you should get perfume and you should get this scented shampoo, right? Like, hey, you have bad skin. You need a 15 step skin care routine. Hey, you wanna show people you’re successful? You need a car that costs 50 grand, not a car that costs 20 grand, right? There’s always more and bigger that you can do. And ultimately, that leads us down a road where we can never be fulfilled. And I think you see that with the billionaires who are constantly trying to hoard more money. It’s like you have $100 billion, you won capitalism. Like, why?

Jess 15:56

Those bastards. Yeah like what more do you need?

Kara 15:59

Yeah, like, why do you need more? You know, so instead of trying to fill this hole that capitalism creates that really can’t be filled, I encourage people to ask themselves like, what am I satisfied with? What do I have that already works? What am I good with? And living this more creatively fulfilling and financially stable life.

Jess 16:21

I think that’s really beautiful. And I think, you know, a lot of personal finance gurus say a lot, you know, live intentionally, use your money intentionally, live by your values, spend by your values. But you’re really putting paid to that, you know, your book is all about like saying, okay, if you could buy nothing else except food for the rest of your life, how would you make things work? And I love that aspect of artistry and creativity that you put in it because it really does like, it speaks highly of the practitioners of this way of life.

And I say this, the practitioners of this way of life as if you’re a cult leader, which you’re not. But girl, if you wanted to start one.

Kara 17:03

But maybe!

Jess 17:04

I will sign up! Well, so let’s turn to sort of the other aspect of the book. We’ve talked a little bit about, you know, what people can do in their personal lives to battle this American overconsumption. But I would love to hear more about what you recommend for activism and you know, political purposes in people’s lives. The Nestle boycott was a great example, but what else do you recommend people do?

Kara 17:31

Yeah, so a big push back that those of us in the sustainable space also get frequently is, well, nothing I can do as an individual matters, right? Like it’s a systemic problem. And yeah, it is a systemic problem. But guess what? You’re a part of the system and I’m part of the system. We’re all in it, babes, okay. So that means, as it has meant for forever, that collective power creates change. And so the final chapter of the book really is exploring stories of people who have pushed for environmental protections, environmental regulations, and who have created change on a systemic level. So if that’s something that you are interested in and you’re like, I am ready for the revolution, let’s go. First of all, meet you in the streets. Let’s do this.

Jess 18:20

Let’s do it. Where’s my molotov cocktail?

Kara 18:23

Right. Exactly. Second of all, look to the people that are already doing the work, right. Look to the people who share the same passions as you and the energies that they’re putting out. So a couple of organizations that I love that are nationwide, Citizens Climate Lobby, Strong Towns. There’s a lot of organizations that are doing things like advocating for bike lanes, planting trees, advocating for legislative change, and you can be a part of that. So all you have to do, literally it’s a Google search, you know, just like look up bike lane advocacy, you know, Austin, TX or bike lane advocacy St. Louis, like wherever you are. And I promise you, someone’s already out there doing it. And now it’s just a matter of joining them. So remember that you’ll never do your best work alone and you’ll never do your most impactful work alone. It’s always going to be with other people. And when we think about all of the major social political changes that have happened just in United States history, what was it? It was groups of people, right? The civil rights movement, the suffragette movement. So being a part of the movement that’s already underway is how we as individuals use our time and power for the greater good.

Jess 19:37

Well said. And I wanted to—to anybody who’s kind of like doubting what you just said there. I do want to point out like we can point to one of the major environmental catastrophes of the 90s was the hole in the ozone layer, which is anyone talking about how to stop the hole in the ozone layer anymore? No, they’re not because we stopped the growth of that hole in the ozone layer and we have started to repair the ozone layer. It was climate activists and people just like you and me who made a big stink about it and pressured world governments to put their money and their resources towards fixing the ozone layer. And we can do that again with other climate based and environmental problems that are happening. But we have to put our money where our mouth is. We have to, you know, put butts in seats and feet on streets and use our—no, but we have to, you know, use our time, our resources, and our money to make that change happen. And I think that your book is a great sort of primer for where people can start with that. Speaking of where people can start, where can they find you online, Kara?

Kara 20:48

Oh my gosh, everywhere. I’m very Googleable is what I always tell people. So obviously it is Green Money is the name of the book. So if you type that into Google, it’ll come up on Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, if you want to support an indie bookstore. And then I—

Jess 21:05

And we do.

Kara 21:06

We always do, right. Actually my publisher, this is a little tea—my publisher got a little upset ‘cause she was like, hey, I see that you keep using the Bookshop link, which is like so great, but we really need you to push the Amazon link because they use Amazon to like base the print run.

Jess 21:25

They do, they do. And I get that as a publishing professional. But here at Bitch Nation where we say if you want to eat the rich, stop feeding Amazon, we’re going to push that Bookshop.org link. We’re going to push Indiebound. We’re even going to push Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore. So in all of your other media interviews, you can push the Amazon link. But here we’re going to say look for Green Money by Kara Perez on Indiebound and Bookshop.org and find her on Bravely Go. Kara, I have one more deeply hard hitting journalistic question for you, and that is if this interview has inspired someone in Bitch Nation to use their money for the forces of environmentalist good, where should they start?

Kara 22:15

I’m gonna give a two-part answer. If you’re like, okay, I’m really just starting at like negative numbers here. I don’t know anything about this. I would encourage you to think about what is an issue that’s near and dear to your heart, because environmentalism and environmental justice encompasses a lot of things. We’re talking about food justice. We’re talking about clean air, clean water. We’re talking about like land back. There’s a lot that goes into that. So find something that’s passionate for you and just start learning more about that and become really fluent in the issues and the people involved in the history of it. And for me, that was recycling. When I first got into environmentalism as an adult, I was really into recycling because I thought recycling was the answer to all our problems. Turns out it’s not, but I wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t started looking into it. So just understand that becoming informed is a huge step forward.

And then once you’re feeling informed and you’re really ready for action, I want to encourage you to try and go one day without a car. If you live in New York, that might be easier, but for pretty much the rest of the United States, it’s hard to go without a car. And that will radicalize you real quick. And will also show you how deeply our world is built for things that are not humans, like the fact that a lot of cities don’t have sidewalks, that they don’t have even just like curb cuts. If there is a sidewalk, there isn’t a curb cut, which is where the curb opens. And it’s that like smooth part that meets the road. Yeah. For wheelchair users, like a lot of sidewalks don’t have that. And it will help you see, oh my gosh, I actually live in a really—I live in a world that’s very hostile to me getting around unless I opt into having a car. And I just think that’s a really good exercise for people to have their minds blown. And so I would say do your research and then try and go one day without a car where you’re not just like staying at home. You’re like, I’m trying to run errands without this car and see how easy or how difficult that is for you.

Jess 24:31

I love that. That’s great advice, and as a noted car hater, I thoroughly endorse it. Attentive members of Bitch Nation will know that I walk almost everywhere and I grumble and complain every time I have to drive, despite living in a major city where I shouldn’t have to. I love my bus pass.

The book, once again, is Green Money: How To Reduce Waste, Build Wealth, and Create a Better Future for All. You can see the gorgeous cover art over Kara’s shoulder. Thank you so much, Kara. Everyone should pre-order her book on Indiebound or bookshop.org or yes, Amazon.com before the book comes out on November 13th. Kara, thank you so much for joining us.

Kara 25:12

Thank you for having me and Bitch Nation, I can just tell that you are all smart and beautiful people. So shout out y’all.

Jess 25:19

 It’s true. And they have great taste.

Kara 25:21

I knew it. I just knew, I could feel that.

Jess 25:24

Beautiful. Kara, thank you so much.