The Power of Financial Stability to Support Mutual Aid and Community Care

Financial Stability and Mutual Aid: A New Way to Think About Saving

If you’re here reading this and haven’t yet been turned off by our “politics” talk, you probably consider yourself a liberal, or a progressive, or a leftist. Or maybe none of those labels feel good, but you definitely want a world where people and the planet matter more than profit. 

That also means you’ve probably struggled with yourself around the whole concept of “hoarding” money for your future self when there is so much suffering around us. So today, I’m here to talk you through the reasons why I see long term savings and financial security as resistance, and something that should be a top priority, especially in our younger (<50 year old) years.

You’ve probably heard the term “put your own oxygen mask on first,” at least in terms of flying safety. It is really, really true when it comes to our money. If you are currently living paycheck to paycheck, I’m going to say something that might be a hard one to stomach: 

If you’re not even saving $100 a month, you shouldn’t be giving $10. 

If you’d be wiped out by a $1,000 emergency, then you would need one hundred of you to pool your $10 together to bail out one person’s $1,000 emergency. The goal isn’t to keep passing around that same $10 to try and keep everyone just barely afloat; the goal is to take yourself out of the circle that needs that $1,000. And someday, to be the person who can gift (or lend) $100 or $500 or more when it’s needed. But first, let’s get to a place where we’ve stabilized ourselves.

Those of us who are parents especially know the phrase “you can’t pour from an empty cup” when it comes to our time and energy. But the same is true for our money – we cannot give away what we don’t have. 

But mutual aid doesn’t just involve sacrificing our own emergency funds and retirement savings to others we see as “more deserving” of stability than ourselves. Especially when you’re younger, you likely have other things to offer your community: physical labor, intellectual skills, sharing of resources. Mutual aid looks like mowing an older neighbor’s lawn, watching a pet when a friend goes out of town, or batch cooking a meal and sharing it with someone who’s under the weather. 

If you’re thinking about mutual aid only in terms of money, you’re still trapped and thinking within a capitalist system. How can you reimagine capitalism if you’re only way of thinking about mutual aid is money? Mutual aid is mutual – meaning that some folks provide money, some shared resources (like a dehydrator – not everyone needs their own!), some their time and labor. 

If all mutual aid looks like is donating money, then it’s just charity. Yes, “just give people money” rather than making them jump through endless hoops is a very good thing. But mutual aid is not the same, and we shouldn’t be treating it as such. 

So, have I convinced you that maybe, just maybe, you deserve to be financially stable so that you can then better show up for your community? 

In a future newsletter, we’ll dig further into the how of saving and investing, but for today, let us convince you that it’s not too late. 

Let’s talk compounding. Because the younger you are, the less you need to save. While this is extra true the younger you are (compounding from age 20 to age 70 is freaking magic), it’s true even when you’re starting at 40. 

So let’s say you are forty years old and have $10,000 saved for retirement. It may feel like a hopeless waste trying to save the million dollars or more that you’ve probably heard that you’ll need. But starting right now, you have twenty seven years until age sixty seven. 27 years is a lot of time left. 

If you can find a way to contribute $500 a month – $6,000 a year – you could end up with over half a million dollars by age 67. 

Combine that with a partner, if you have one, and that’s a million dollars by retirement age. $500 absolutely may feel like a lot, especially if you’re currently just squeaking by each month, but it is a doable number for most of us. Truly. And even better? Every $50 you shave off your budget in a long term, sustainable way, the less money you need to save for retirement, because your life costs less overall.