Bottom Lines Top Dollars

The Ladies Who Crunch pop off to talk banks! Silicon Valley Bank - Signature Bank - Credit Suisse - First Republic Bank…financial institutions are on a wild ride of their own making. This popup episode reviews how banking works, digs into the hand-waving ways risk is assessed, and touches on why any of us might care about non-big-banks collapsing and if a bank collapse is something we want to experience or not.

Much like the undead, debt can haunt and stalk you and limit what’s possible in your life - that is shitty debt. And however you got this shitty debt, which may be some bullshit: now it’s your bullshit - so now what? This episode guides you through mindsets and steps to deal with the feelings and face debt head on. You’ll learn how to understand your finances in terms of choice and how to use that framework to slay your debt and set yourself up to get ahead - so you can jump on the actions in the rest of this seasons’ episodes. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in February 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

Bottom Lines Top Dollars third season focuses on Practical Ways to Thrive in Capitalism. First - you don’t have to love work, but you don’t want to hate your life. NOW WHAT? In this episode, we explore Jobs That Don’t Suck. Specifically: what makes a job be awful and not, how to get one of these jobs, and what to think about as you’re on your way to the negotiating table for that job. This episode will be relatable if the idea that you’re going to have a job you’re going to love so much no matter what you do is a horror movie. To be clear, getting a non-suck job doesn’t mean capitalism is ok or feasible - just that you are finding a “middle ground” so you don’t live in misery, which as we all know is the punishment for not being successful and/or privileged under capitalism. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in February 2022, and edited by Erica Ricketts. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

So it's been a while huh? Well.... let us explain....  In this episode The Ladies Who Crunch talk about how sometimes shit goes a little sideways in life and we cope by doing something that only makes it worse: GHOSTING. When we ghost on part (or all) of our lives, we tend to dig ourselves a hole that is hard to climb out of. In this episode we discuss how to come back from exactly that kind of bullshit, whether that's with your friends, your collaborators or your finances (think taxes, debt and other forms of money-based-boogeymen).  Given that we ourselves are coming back from our own state of "overwhelm", we decided that we just needed to put something out there into the world in the most simple, direct and quick way possible. So this episode is actually completely uncut and un-edited, it's our full and unscripted conversation from start to finish. It's a little different than our previous episodes, but we wanted to publish fast, so here it is.  We will be returning with Season 3 in April 2022!! Until then, please send some love and say hello on social media, even just to let us know that you haven't forgotten us and that you are still excited about the show despite our recent absence. 

Listen up small business owners and future owners, this episode is for you! Having a business can directly grind against punk-credible assumptions and preferences: you’ll have to work with government systems and try to make money after all. Cuz if you fail, you [and your employees!] may have to work for The Man again. We’re here to help in this episode. Learn how to manage the Ways You Might Have to Interact with the Government as a Small Business, and How To Provide For Myself and Others Doing Something I Like Without Feeling Icky Bottom Lines Top Dollars’ 2021 season told stories from our fabulous punk youths, and examines ways of thinking about money that came from these times. Bottom Lines Top Dollars is a podcast about all the money things you suspect might be ruining your life, hosted by Hadassah Damien from Ride Free Fearless Money, and Laura Boo MacDonald, CPA. This episode was recorded in August 2021, and edited by Erica Ricketts.

In this episode the Ladies Who Crunch go deep into the dark topic of dealing with death, both that of the people you are connected to in this life and (eventually) your own. Whether you are terrified of talking about it or you’re that goth kid who loves to talk about it or you’re just that punk for whom living fast and dying young just didn’t happen (yet), this episode gets hella practical about the money issues that intersect with death: funerals, wills, settling an estate, inheritance, and that one other unavoidable aspect of live: TAXES. In this episode Hadassah and LB talk about: · What to expect if you are the person (or one of the people) responsible for handling “the arrangements” for someone who has passed away · What options you have if there’s absolutely no money available to pay for a funeral · What exactly is an “estate” (yes everyone has one, even if that is just your record collection) and how exactly does it get “settled”? · Planning for your own death, from the funeral all the way to who gets your shit, especially if you want your not-legally-bound-to-you chosen family to be recognized as your next of kin instead of your potentially problematic blood relatives · Strategies for making your passing less onerous on your loved ones, including some tips on how to make sure your funeral gets paid for · Inheritance! Both what to expect if you expect to get some and how to make sure you create some inheritance for others · Wills, wills, wills! Why you need one, how to make one, mitigating the risk of your family and friends getting into conflict about it, and some tips for adding some final fuck you’s (or I love you’s) in yours. --- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your longer-than-expected life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

In this episode the Ladies Who Crunch reflect on the coolest and best paid jobs that we all worked (or wanted to work) in our punk days, which were all strangely gigs that involved earning tips (bartenders, strippers, fancy restaurant workers), and ask, "was that shit actually as good as we thought?" And from that starting point, we go deep into the economics of tipping cultures: the good, the bad, the inequitable! In this episode we discuss:  How jobs compensated by tips create income precarity for the worker in the present and (potentially) in the future How employers use labor models like this to off-load risk from themselves onto their workers How handing over responsibility for part of your wage to customers invokes the curse of the million bosses How racism and sexualization impact earnings more blatantly when workers receive tips How these jobs have been impacted by the economics of COVID-19, including “maskual harassment” [pull down your mask and I’ll give you a tip], lowered sales volumes and decreased tips rates. How these models of variable pay rates are being replicated throughout the economy.  ---- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your longer-than-expected life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

Under capitalism we are all supposed to be self-sufficient, competitive and selfish individuals if we want to ensure we have (more than) what we need in life. Punk culture has long defined itself in opposition to this, choosing to build up beautiful communal sand castles. But how do we continue to work towards building communal wealth with lovers, partners, friends and our overall community without falling into all the same old conflicts that led the punk houses of our youth to fall apart?  In this episode of BLTD, the Ladies Who Crunch explore tactics for creating harmonious communal financial systems instead of hostile ones --  finding the middle ground between enduring 3-hr collective consensus meetings and sacrificing one person to become the keeper of the binder bills who everyone will resent and treat really shitty. Whether your goal is to band together with friends to finally afford a home in this nutty housing bubble, to start a business or buy a car you intend to time-share with your bestie or to deeply blend your finances with a life partner (platonic or otherwise), this episode will help you get past the anxiety and learn concrete strategies for making it work.  Also included in this episode:  Memories of our own dreamy and/or drama-filled collective living experiences Discussion of why it is so hard to discuss money-stuff with others Understanding what circumstances require getting that shit in writing  Tips for healthy communications about shared finances (i.e. our version of radical candor combined with all our learnings from decades of negotiating activist consensus meetings) A deep dive into de-risking entering into financial contracts with others, from dealing with inter-personal loans to building up communal emergency funds Hot takes on what to do if despite taking all our great advice, shit still falls apart A lot of very joy-filled laughs from your hosts Hadassah & Laura Boo ---- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

How do you value your time? Especially when we’re also forced to value our labor time: does anyone really have a grasp on what “enough” money is, when it’s our lives we are trading it for? This episode grapples with ways to approach understanding whether what we are earning is "enough" (or maybe even too much?) to sustain what we want and need in life, especially if you are struggling to transition from a punk/artist/non-profit or otherwise alternative economic lifestyle to one that doesn't force you into unhealthy precarity. The Ladies Who Crunch walk you thru a bunch of different hands on activities to help you see this problem from different angles so that you can re-set your sense of monetary scale to help empower you to advocate for an income that makes more sense for you in the here and now. And yes, these activities are inclusive of both wage earners and the self-employed! This episode lays essential groundwork to shift your thinking about your income goals when you and everyone you know has always made very little, so that in future episode(s) we can tackle the issue of actualizing those goals.  Plus! In this episode you'll hear lots of punk stories and random chatter, such as: What’s the punkest thing you did to avoid spending money? When you were a dirtbag, what did you think was "a lot of money"? Is garbage picking really better than a job? How can we reframe “know your worth!” without having to financialize our every moment of time on the planet as human beings? Tips for making a realistic budget that doesn't omit important shit and results in you ending the year broke and pissed off ---- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

Western narratives LOVE the “hero,” but it’s much more punk to be in touch with the reality of the many people who feel they are losing out. In this day and age, that means people who have burdensome debt. 13% of Americans expect to be in debt the rest of their lives, and most people with student loans feel confident they will never go away. This experience is in stark contrast to the methodology of leverage that wealthy individuals and well-capitalized organizations employ, using debt as cheap capital and not a life sentence. In this episode we re-imagine debt from the people’s point of view, offering three ways of dealing with debt: the “drop out and avoid,” the nihilistic “catch me if you can,” and the Debt Collective’s activist “tear it down collectively” approaches. In this episode, you’ll learn the difference between cancellation and forgiveness and how it plays into larger movements for social justice, as well as options for debt cancellation, like how Iceland responded to the 2008 crisis in a citizen-centered, people’s bailout. The Ladies Who Crunch started this episode reading The Debt Collective’s book, Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay as a jumping off point for reimagining the concept of indebtedness as immoral, and one that should be time-bound, with a guarantee of an end, and we’re indebted to their thought leadership and labor. ------- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

In this episode, the Ladies Who Crunch explore minimum wage, living wages, and the idea of maximum wages. Income inequality in the US and Canada is worse than it was in the 90s, and we were mad about it then, when we worked minimum wage jobs. Stories you’ll hear include: what minimum wages jobs we’ve had, who was the last person in your family to make minimum wage, and were they able to live off it? You’ll learn how minimum wage relates to living wages [hint: it’s lower than the basic minimum needed] and how maximum wages have been incentivized in the past, and how they show up today. If you want to learn more about how income inequality negatively impacts society, democracy, and work, check out Season 1 Ep 3, on Billionaires. ------- This episode is the first in our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

Kicking off BLTD’s second season on punk and money, Laura Boo and Hadassah go back into their punk origin stories from the 90s to analyze the time-hardened debate: is it more punk to drop out of society and not work, or to “robin hood” your employment and extract from the extractors while doing the minimum? Outsider experiences have a lot to tell us about the underbelly of our social systems, and for decades punks and other counterculture types have cultivated lives outside the work+spend til death norm. Values like anti-oppression, anticorporate, antiauthoritarian, anti-consumer, anti-globalization, and on drive this worldview. So how does someone come to this point of view? And once there, how do you meet your needs and function? The Ladies Who Crunch dive into their pasts to explore how punk identity impacted how they thought then and think today about making and spending money. --  This episode is the first in our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ---  The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

This is our final episode of Season 2 and our final journey through this season's theme of punk storytelling as a mechanism for understanding our own relationships with money. And in this episode, The Ladies Who Crunch give our dear listeners an end-of-season parting gift: A guide to building a strategy to change your life! From the lofty process of visioning all the way back down to earth-bound planning tools, this episode's goal is an old school DIY workshop for giving yourself a future after the punk paradigm of "no future" stops working for you.  Using our own experiences as punks who had "oh fuck" moments that motivated us to change our careers pretty drastically as examples, this episode is full of our hard-won wisdom about making big changes in their life. In this episode we talk deep tactics, including:  Confronting our own belief systems that may no longer be working for us so that we can make space for change Exercises and prompts to help you figure out what you do want or where to go from here, even if the only thing you know right now is what you don't want and/or that you need to get the hell out of wherever it is that you are.  How to take your (potentially boundless or messy) vision and use some of your DIY punk skills + research to frame it within reasonable boundaries and find that first foothold that will set you on your journey Discussion of how change can be have many faces, some that feel like growth and liberation and others that feel like letting go or saying goodbye Tips on what NOT to do when trying to make big changes so that you don't end up more fucked then before you even started this journey PLUS A BONUS! At the end of this episode we give you a preview of some of the episode topics that will appear in SEASON 3 (planned for fall 2021).  --- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your longer-than-expected life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

Leonard Cohen said, “the poor stay poor, the rich get rich, that’s how it goes, and everybody knows”. Well, once you know, then what?  In punk culture, there's a general understanding that the world is fucked up and unfair. But what does that actually mean? If the outcome of the game is predetermined (and you are pretty sure you are a born loser), then what do you do? Do you walk away from the table? Flip it? Set it on fire? Try to cheat? If winning this game makes you a capitalist pig but losing means you don't have enough resources to get by, is there a third option that isn't winning or losing?  In this episode of Bottom Lines Top Dollars, we go deep into confronting a key concept in punk culture that kept both of us from engaging with money for a long time: the idea that capitalism is un-winnable for most and a golden ticket for the few. And though we don't disagree with that idea, we discuss how this dichotomy can result in social norms that discourage understanding the fundamentals of money and economics and may not be helpful in finding ways to survive (both as individuals and as a world falling over the edge of crisis). You already know that both of The Ladies Who Crunch are queer punks who made careers in finance, but this episode really digs into how doing this required breaking away from the dichotomy of "drop out or sell out" to carve out new paths for ourselves. It is clear that we have more questions than answers, but this episode is all about that process of finding new ways to engage with money (& how we earn it & the stuff it buys) that allows us to personally thrive while still being in alignment with our values.    --- This episode is part of our second season. We are calling this season "Punks Not Dead and Capitalism Still Sucks" and it explores the question: how did 90s and 2000’s punk intersect with money, and what can that teach us today? What if you don’t “Live fast die young,” but have to meet needs over the course of your longer-than-expected life instead? Listeners will hear stories -- from “the punkest way I ever made money,” to “the worst minimum wage job I ever had,” to “magic bullshit I did to try to avoid working” -- as well as learn facts about how the financial systems around us operate. The show is written and produced by the Ladies Who Crunch: Queer femme artist/organizers turned financial professionals Laura and Hadassah, who explore the alternative ways of being that crafted the bedrock of who they are today to understand what they learned - and had to unlearn - from punk in order to figure out their money lives and to understand financial systems. ------- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.

In our final episode of Season 1, we take a hot minute to reflect on the year that was 2020 and what it might mean for our future. Specifically, we dig into the massive wave of grassroots and hyper-local mutual aid responses to the COVID19 crisis and how these events are both tied to a deep and rich history but also potentially to a better future. We discuss how disasters and moments of crisis can create turning points of change, and how that change grows upward from community responses rather than coming from the top down. We connect this back to tensions we see escalating between pro-democratic movements and the continuing rise of fascism backed by racism and mythological calls to go backward into a past that (actually) never existed. Throughout this episode we ask ourselves and listeners to both reflect on what we all just endured together and dream about how we can collectively respond to what is coming, potentially moving away from hyper-individualistic and competitive economies towards economies that are more caring and sustainable, based on gifting and relationship building.   - - -  The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club.  Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.  Special thanks to our researchers Ariel Federow and Handy Levine. ----

In this episode the Ladies Who Crunch open up the mail bag and answer questions sent by listeners! This episode includes:  Some great end-of-year tax tips for those who are self-employed (aka "sole proprietors")  A dive deep into the murky world of tax write offs and how they are both legit and necessary for anyone running a business and also ripe for abuse by those with the means to get away with it.  A list of book recommendations about envisioning post-capitalist worlds, alternative ways of exchange, eco-activist personal finance theories, debt forgiveness and revolutionary histories.  Psychics!  If you have questions, don't hesitate to get in touch! We plan to make Listener Mail a staple of every season :) We have also received some great ideas from listeners for entire episodes. We are currently planning season 2 so if you have anything you want us to include, get in touch!!!  ---  The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com. Special thanks to our researchers Ariel Federow and Handy Levine. ----

In this week's episode of Bottom Lines Top Dollars we discuss  a question that many punks, weirdos, leftists, environmentalists and anti-capitalists ask themselves when they become financially stable: what do I do with my extra money? Investing your excess cash is an important way to save towards retirement, but can it be done ethically? Is it possible to grow your savings without contributing to bad things in the world (massive carbon emissions, pollution, unfair and exploitative labour practices, etc).  Concerns about the ethical implications of investing your money can sometimes keep people from taking action for their own futures. In this episode we discuss all of this and some strategies you can use to feel better about what you do with your savings.   If any of these questions interest you, then you should listen to this episode: Why does investing our money scare us? What is investing and how do you do it? What are stocks and bonds and how do they make you money? What are RRSPs, IRAs, 401ks? Is investing inherently unethical? If you think of yourself as an anti-capitalist, does your participation in profit from property make complicit in all kinds of horrible shit? If you do decide to invest your money, is there a way to do so ethically? Can you use your investment money for good? To invest in green companies or push for positive change? What are impact funds or ESG funds? What is values-based investing? How do you evaluate an investment firm to know whether their funds actually meet your ethical standards? How much time and effort is required to actually invest ethically? Is it a realistic goal for the average person?  ----  The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club.  Please follow us on Instagram (@bottomlinestopdollars) and if you want to send us questions or episode ideas, email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com.  Special thanks to our researchers Ariel Federow and Handy Levine. ---- 

The climate crisis is here and it is scary as hell. So scary that it is tempting to close your eyes (and maybe even scroll past this episode). But please don't do that. Instead, let the Ladies Who Crunch walk you through where those feelings of climate despair, grief and nihilism come from, strategies for facing them (surprisingly similar to strategies for facing down your personal finance fears) and concrete actions you can take to use your personal economic power to fight climate change.  Questions we ask in this episode include: What is climate nihilism and how does it keep us from taking action? Why does climate change make us feel hopeless? How is this similar to how we feel about our personal finances? What are some strategies for combating nihilism or hopelessness? How much time do we have to act and what kind of impacts are we likely to feel if we don't act now? Who are the major emitters of greenhouse gases? Do your personal consumer choices actually make a difference? What are some political and economic actions you can take to address climate change?  How can you leverage your purchasing power to hit carbon emission reduction goals?  --- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Special thanks to our researchers Ariel Federow and Handy Levine. ----

The Black Lives movement and other grassroots movements for racial justice have worked tireless to push the issue of reparations for descendants of enslaved people into the spotlight of American politics. In the last year the issue has been hotly debated with some insisting on their necessity and others disqualifying them as impractical or impossible. In most instances when politicians or others don't support reparations, it is for issues of economic impracticality. And this is where the Ladies Who Crunch step into the debate.   In this episode we ask: What are reparations? What is their purpose and goal? How do they come to be enacted? How do we measure or value reparations? Is it better to measure the original harm or the outcome of that harm? What possible forms can reparations take, both monetary and non-monetary? How have reparations been valued and implemented in the past? Must reparations include direct cash payments or can they be entirely composed of in-kind or non-monetary elements such as land, educational programs, employment opportunities, commemorative projects and political representation? How can the government fund reparations? What kind of economic challenges do we face when figuring out how to fund and implement reparations on a nation-state level? Are there other levels at which reparations can occur? Are "individual" or "inter-personal" reparations groups online really engaged in a reparations project or is it something else? Is backlash (race or class war) an inevitable externality of reparations like "The Watchmen" envisioned or can the financial composition of reparations avoid this outcome? Can we truly repair harm through reparations? Can capitalism ever truly address the historical harms of war, colonialism, genocide and other forms of systemic violence?  From inflation to baby bonds and modern monetary theory to  programs to tax profiteers, this episode of Bottom Lines Top Dollars digs deep into the money issues of reparations so that you can engage meaningfully with anyone who tries to end the debate at "that's not economically viable". We try to hit as many points as we can, but we know what we could always go deeper or say more. If you have more questions or want us to come back and address any specific issues discussed in this podcast in more detail, please let us know! Email us at bottomlinestopdollars@gmail.com or find us on FB, IG or Twitter! We will be doing a listener mail episode at the end of the season and we are also taking suggestions for topics to cover in season 2 (spring 2021)!  Although we dig into the issue of reparations from the perspective of accounting, finance and economics, if you are interested in delving into the legal and political issues, please check out our detailed show notes on our website. We have compiled a list of links to podcasts and articles that can fill days on end! Go to ladieswhocrunch.club to dive in!  --- The Ladies Who Crunch are Hadassah Damien and Laura Boo. More information about us and this podcast can be found at ladieswhocrunch.club. Special thanks to our researchers Ariel Federow and Handy Levine. ---- CW - During this podcast we reference various instances of violence and trauma that have resulted in reparations and we discuss how pain and suffering of survivors have been measured economically in the past, which could be painful or difficult to hear. 

The Ladies Who Crunch unexpectedly took the weekend off to rest, feel joy and experience relief after an extra stressful week of election uncertainty. We usually record an episode every weekend, but we were busy dancing in the streets, so we will release our next full length episode next Wednesday Nov 18th. In the meantime, we recorded this mid-season micro episode in which we discuss listener mail, what the second half of season 1 will contain and give you a couple recommendations of what other podcasts you should be checking out! Sorry to take this unscheduled break folks, but please remember, taking rest when you need it and feeling joy when it comes is pretty much as radical and anti-capitalist as it gets!