Welcome to Change From Your Dollars
Dear friends, family, supporters,
You may have heard me mention this last month, last year, or last decade, but my book is done. Change from Your Dollars: Stories of Personal Cause and Financial Effect will be available by summer 2023. The last few years especially, I’ve put my head down and finished it up. Thank you for your belief and enthusiasm. It made it harder to quit!
In 2016, I sent some of you a few pages of thoughts, resembling a journal entry, on how I was desperately trying to reconcile my norms and beliefs carried over from nonprofit youth work into the world of personal finance and the industry. The book is the finished product.
If this is all news to you, I included you because I either remember having a really good conversation with you about financial planning as a social justice issue, or we go way back and you might enjoy reading some personal memories that we shared.
Using my background and passion for the social sciences, I aim to reach the reader that would NOT identify as being a financial expert, is frustrated by our nation’s seeming inability to make progress on social issues, and wants to make decisions in context. So often in client meetings, we end up talking about tax deductions or investment risk tolerance, but this isn’t a “financial advice” book. For example, I use the properties of water to describe the underlying nature of money throughout. I cite patterns I’ve observed over thousands of confidential client conversations (perhaps including with you). I share my mistakes and my present-day perspective.
My aim is to:
Write a book about money for people that hate the fact we all need it and don’t want to ask their uncle the accountant about it :)
Use very personal, specific stories to illustrate the good, bad, and ugly of financial decision-making.
Reinforce the power of voting and consumer behavior (aka shopping) on our economy and policy.
Partner up and build support for a financial advising model accessible to all Americans.
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be updating you all on the book launch coming, begin writing in a weekly blog, and drop excerpts from the book itself, all here on www.changefromyourdollars.com. Please share far and wide or however you like; this project exists entirely separate from my practice.
Next blog will include a preview of the book so keep an eye out for an exclusive look!
With gratitude, Brett