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Listen, we gotta disagree with Kermit the Frog here. It’s actually easy being green. Financial entrepreneur Kara Perez is here to show us how. She’s the author of “Money for Change: How to Reduce Waste, Build Wealth, and Create a Better Future.” Doesn’t that get you excited? Kara tells X why we should be using our personal finances to create a more sustainable world. It’s not just for the rich, either. Kara has the antidote to overconsumption, and shares why creativity can actually save you money. Plus, she talks about the power of boycotts and how to spot greenwashing.

This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures, an early-stage global investment firm backing mission-driven entrepreneurs and industry influencers working toward a fair financial system for all. Learn more at flourishventures.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Kara Pérez, X Mayo

X Mayo  01:18

Welcome back to The Dough, a podcast that’s all about saving the planet and your wallet. Just call me Captain Planet honey. Okay, y’all remember these on Captain Planet. He’s our hero. Gonna take Fauci. Okay, it was a vibe. Don’t play with me. Don’t act like he wasn’t vibe and do it. Listen. It is getting way too easy to buy things nowadays. It should not be possible for me to order some lipstick at 8pm and then for it to show up at my doorstep the next day at 5am when Little Mama said my lip gloss is popping, I know she didn’t get her L’Oreal from Jeff Bezos. I just know she didn’t also put down the Tiktok. Y’all do not need five different trays that make ice cubes in different shapes, save some eyes for the polar bears. Damn now, excessive buying doesn’t just drain our wallets. It creates waste and pollution ill. It also distracts us from standing up for a better world. Fortunately, our guest today can help us go green without going broke. Kara Pérez is the founder of Bravely Go, an award winning financial education company. Nobody knows the value of $1 like Kara, in her 20s, she worked five different part time jobs to pay off $30,000 in student loans. Even after clawing her way out of debt and successfully starting her company, she never let go of her morals. She’s the author of Money for Change, How to Reduce Waste, Build Wealth and Create a Better Future. She’s here to show us why living sustainably isn’t just for the rich. Kr ara, welcome to The Dough.

 

Kara Pérez  02:55

Oh my god, thank you so much for having me so glad to be here.

 

X Mayo  02:59

I heard that you love to go thrifting, right? Love and same now, okay, Kara, i and i know I’m late to the party. Actually, I’m not late to the party. I’m just late to maybe getting shots at the party. I’ve been at the party. I just never partook. And the party I’m talking about is the real, okay. Now I’m late to bartaking I’ve always known about, and I was just like, X, don’t go over there. You don’t need to go over there. But now that I’m at a point where I’ve made a promise to myself, because I want to be better with sustainability over consumption, I was okay, X, the three things you can purchase now, moving forward, this may change, but as of now, what I want to do this year is only buy vintage merch and limited drops, right? So it’s like, if it’s only going to be one thing, like, that’s what we need to buy. And I love vintage. I’ve been buying vintage I was a kid, so I just scored Kara a fucking vintage Gianni Versace leather. And it’s like, it’s a leather but it’s like, blazer kind of jacket, so she has, like, shoulder pads, and then it like, crosses over go detail, buckle on the side. Okay, carrot, you’re gonna love this. $745 got it on sale, 240.

 

Kara Pérez  04:17

240?

 

X Mayo  04:18

I had to, right? So I wanted to break the ice with my like, favorite thing that I just purchased that was secondhand. And I would love to know, like, what has been your favorite purchase today that you bought secondhand?

 

Kara Pérez  04:33

Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, that sounds incredible. I’m just Yes, visualizing in my head. And I’m like, late 80s, early 90s vibes. Love a shoulder pad. Gold accents, incredible. Well, like the first thing that comes to mind very recently, I just bought a used car, and it was such a journey, and it kind of sucked. Like the process of buying a car is not fun. I thought it was going to be very like, we’re test driving, like the wind is in our hair. Car, and this is amazing. And it was just like very, scammy feeling, but I love the new car. We got a two. So let me just back it up a little bit. My partner and I had a 2008 Kia spectra that was busted. It was very ugly, but it went the distance for us. And so we upgraded to a 2019 Toyota rav4 hybrid. And I’m like, we’re saving money on gas. We’re being friendlier to the planet. She’s used, but she’s new, and she’s red, which I’ve always had red cars. So I’m gonna shout out my, my 2019, rav4 right now.

 

X Mayo  05:34

First of all, also, I’m a fellow Toyota girlie. Okay, so you and I were Toyota girlies. Okay? We need to, we need to figure out, you know, the the Hummer girls, they have that duck thing that they do a G, there we go. Thank you, my producer, it’s a jeep. Sorry, not the Hummers. Okay, let me not disrespect the Hummer community. Okay, because, listen, they’re coming for you. They’re like, excuse you do not want to upset the Hummers. Oh, my God, imagine all those yellow busses coming down your street like you were talking shit. Scary? Yes, the Toyota girlies. We need to figure out something that we need to do. Because I have a Toyota Sequoia. She’s and she’s really vintage, like she is experienced. Um, so, yeah, so shout out to you, and I, my favorite color is red, so I can’t wait to ride in your car. I need to ride shotgun. I’ll come pick you up.

 

Kara Pérez  06:17

Okay, yeah, Toyota girlies, let’s do it.

 

X Mayo  06:19

Absolutely. That’s what Toyota girlies do. We carpool.

 

Kara Pérez  06:22

We carpool absolutely.

 

X Mayo  06:25

Because Toyotas are sustainable. Hi, hire me to be your spokesperson. Okay, so moving on, Kara, your story I really love because you’ve been a hustler since day one and same. But before we get into that, though, I want to know what your parents taught you about money. And my first question is, were you the first in your family to go to college, and did you feel fully prepared for how much debt you’d have?

 

Kara Pérez  06:48

Such a good question. And I feel like my family story is like, so American, and also super unique and exciting. But so my dad is born and raised in Dominican Republic, and then I grew up in the house that my mom grew up in. And so my mom is a townie. I’m like, I’m a townie of, like, the fourth generation on my mom’s side, and then I’m like, first gen American on my dad’s side, and my parents obviously very different background. And divorced when I was two, and the divorce was very acrimonious, and there was a lot of financial abuse, which really left my mom in a crappy situation with three kids and only working part time. So growing up, we did not learn anything about money except put that back. No, you can’t have that. No, that’s too expensive. Put that down. Don’t even touch that. That’s that. I can hear my mom saying that like, so clearly in my head. And I grew up in a very wealthy area, but not having money, so I feel like I was aware of money very early.

 

X Mayo  07:52

Ooh, that’s tough.

 

Kara Pérez  07:53

Yes, but in a way of like, oh, I don’t have what they have, you know, I would like go over my friends houses and they have pools or in these McMansions, you know, and they have like, TVs in their rooms. And I’m like, we have one TV in my house, and we all have to fight to see to like, who’s gonna get to watch Urkel this week? And my brothers want to watch wrestling, yada yada yada. So, like, actual learned lessons, I feel that there were none. And then my mom did go to college to answer your second question. And then, when, after her divorce, when we were kids, she paid for her own grad school. She did night classes and worked full time. . And then queen, real, real hustle shit, like.

 

X Mayo  08:38

With three whole kids, honey, who all need to eat. They play baseball. One do ballet. One got a spelling bee my lord.

 

Kara Pérez  08:45

Exactly yes. And I have an older brother who did not go to college, and then I went to college, and my younger brother also didn’t go to college. So I’m the only one of us three that has gone to college, and I was dead set on college, like, I didn’t care. I knew I was gonna have to take out loans. My mom made that very clear. She was like, look around you think we have college money. Like, no but I was like, I have to go to college. Like, I just have to. I couldn’t even, I’m not even sure why I was so dead set on it, but I just knew that’s what I had to do. So I was willing to take out loans. I was like, it’s gonna be totally fine. I’m actually gonna write the next Casablanca. I’m gonna win my first Oscar by 25 and I’m gonna be wealthy beyond measure. Also, you went for screenwriting.

 

X Mayo  09:30

I wanted to originally.

 

Kara Pérez  09:32

That’s what I like started. I was like, I’m gonna do film. I went to Wesleyan University, which has a very strong film department. And I was like, great. I’m gonna, like, go to Wesleyan. I’m gonna get this fancy degree, I’m gonna major in film, I’m gonna win the Oscar, and like, money is never gonna be a problem for me. And then I grow the human.

 

X Mayo  09:49

No seriously, thought the same. Oh my God, to be young. And then I love because the industry you’re talking about is the industry I’m in. And I love that. At some point you became smarter than the rest of us, and was like, actually no.

 

Kara Pérez  10:02

You know what? I Paed on a couple of, like, student films, and I was like, Oh, I actually just don’t have the stamina.

 

X Mayo  10:07

Oh, that’s enough, honey. Pean on the student film, I would like to raise my hand and salute you. Thank you for your service. Because maybe what you had to do, I’m sure you probably did VFX and then you did special effects makeup, you had to hold the broom the boom and then make green juice all at the same time. Yes, you did.

 

Kara Pérez  10:26

It was just Yeah by my sophomore year, I was like, so I will not be writing Casablanca, but I still will obviously be very successful. I was still in, like, my doulu phase, which, like, love that for me, yes. Graduating in 2011 I always say, you know, it wasn’t technically the great recession, but it was very much so the aftermath, and it was the rise of the gig economy. So tons of jobs had been eliminated in the Great Recession and then replaced with these, like part time, no benefit jobs. And I’m 36 now, still, to this day, I’ve never had a full time salaried position with benefits, and at this point, I’m like, Will that ever happen? For me? Feels like, no, but obviously now I work for myself. But yeah, I graduated with my loans, and I didn’t honestly have a huge amount. Like, you hear these stories of people who have $100,000 in debt, $200,000 in debt, I had just over $25,000 but I graduated when I was 23 and it wasn’t until I was 30 that I earned more than $40,000 a year. Like I’ve just been very low income. I grew up a low income kid. My mom was low income with three kids. I worked all throughout college. I worked three jobs. My senior year of college, I worked all throughout my 20s, and I just like, could not crack that 50k. My 30s, you know, like, yeah, just in the last couple of years that I have made what I would consider, like a very livable wage. I So to go back to your question, I was not prepared for the impact debt would have on my life. I don’t want to stand here and say like, I’ve paid off the most debt ever, and like my story is so impressive, but it was such a struggle to pay off that amount of debt because earning has been such a challenge.

 

X Mayo  12:23

So the next part I want to talk to you about is something that I’ve been conscious of. We I touched on it at the top when we did our ice Baker, and that is personal sustainability. So you know, basically, it’s in the interest of capitalism to keep us buying more than we need. And I want to know, if you can tell myself and our listeners, how can we tell when we are over consuming and what’s the limit?

 

Kara Pérez  14:32

So over consumption is so baked into the average American lifestyle, I really don’t blame people if they are having a hard time recognizing it in their own life. And so an exercise I like to do, and I challenge people to do, is see how long you can go without spending and you’ll begin to notice, like, oh, on my way to work, I put gas in the car, and then four hours later, I went out to eat, and then five hours later, when I left work, I stopped by the grocery store, I picked up three things we need for dinner. And we have a lot of these. Like small expenses on top of we have been told in America from day one, like being wealthy is the ultimate goal, and flashing your wealth, showing off your wealth, is something you should aspire to. So then in your spare time, what are a lot of Americans doing? We’re watching hyper wealthy people over consume and we’re thinking, that’s what I need to do. I am going to hop on, she in, and I’m going to order new clothes, right? Or I’m going to upgrade my car, even though the one I have works perfectly, because this one’s better, etc, so at every turn, we’re constantly being marketed to, and we’re constantly being told more is better. So you have to, like, pull yourself out of that matrix a little bit and ask yourself, like, what am I buying? When am I buying, and how am I buying? And I really encourage people to just take those questions one at a time and just spend a couple of weeks observing. Don’t try to change anything, but just begin to notice, oh my gosh, I’m on Amazon every day, or I bought something off of Instagram four times this month. Just notice, no judgment. We’re just gathering data. Okay? We’re just on a fact finding mission here, because we can’t change anything about our lives until we understand the reality of our lives. So do that exercise of like, how often am I spending money to and then see, like, where am I spending that money? And that’s really going to highlight for people, oh my gosh, I’m at Walmart four or five times a week. And I’ve done this myself when I was actually very broke, when I was at my lowest income, earning, like, $16,000 a year, I used to spend all my free time at target because Target is cute. Target made me feel good. It’s like, well lit. It has all these beautiful colors.

 

X Mayo  16:43

I know they know how to get you they know how to get you that red. You know, I remember a marketing girl who was hosting with me at a restaurant in New York. I was like, yeah, when I move into my new place, I think I want to do like, yellow and red. Like, I love red and I want bright colors. She said, yellow makes you hungry, red makes you buy. And I was like, wait, what she said? Look it up. Look Carlos Jr, McDonald’s, Burger King, Arby’s, right? Like, yes, I know. Isn’t that crazy. Your bread, I know.  Look at everything. It all makes you buy. And you see no red in this house?

 

Kara Pérez  17:21

Yeah, I’m seeing these beautiful colors so red, yeah, seriously, and they like prey on your feelings of vulnerability.

 

X Mayo  17:30

Wait, I just got an aha moment. You bought your red car.

 

Kara Pérez  17:34

I did, I love it so much […] So it, but yeah, I would go spend all this time in Target, and they have that little like that, the like $1 bins up front. So I would always leave with something. So even at my lowest income, I was spending all my free time consuming, not creating, not building community, not learning like I was spending money I did not have in my free time. And so once you begin to notice these patterns and these forces that are like exerting upon you, then you can say, what do I need to do to change this? And what do I want to change?

 

X Mayo  18:13

But the first step is to realizing that you have a problem, right? Because, then, because to say that you want to change, you have to realize that something needs to change, right? The girl is on Tiktok when they talk about, like, guys, like, I bought something, I shouldn’t have been buying something. Or they’re like, today was a bad week. I said that I was gonna buy something and like, tomorrow will be a better week. I think knowing that other people were struggling just as much as I was really helped me, and it kind of normalized it and affirmed me, and I didn’t feel like this bad, evil, little person that was like ruining the earth and buying too much shit and making it disintegrate quicker because of what x mile is doing. So I think that that’s helpful too, to know that other people are doing it. So there’s a scripture that says we overcome by the power of testimony, and I think that that Scripture is important to be like, Okay, if x is talking about it, it’s okay. She’s done it. Oh, it’s not just me, right? And then maybe that can inspire, Spark someone to change. Um, now this might be kind of silly, but my shopaholics out there will get it. How can we? Can we? I’m gonna say this, find joy outside of shopping. Oh, even saying that, wow.

 

Kara Pérez  19:31

Okay, yes, no, it’s an amazing question. And again, like, shout out the shopaholics out there. This is not a you’re a bad person, and everything that’s wrong with the world is your fault because you can’t give up target like that’s not what we’re saying here. Yeah. Instead, what I really encourage people to do is do a quick exercise of when was the last time I had a lot of fun? When was the last time I was really enjoying myself? And then ask yourself, what were you doing? Because 90% of the time, the answer to that is, I was with my friends. I was with my family. I was on vacation. There’s, like, some sort of activity that may have a price tag associated with it, but very rarely is the answer. I was scrolling through Amazon, like, that’s the last time that I had the best time. Like, memories forever scrolling on Amazon, very rarely.

 

X Mayo  20:20

Now, if you are, if that is your, if that is you okay, because we want to support our communities, you need to go seek treatment because, because you got to get out and touch some grass, if that’s like, the last time you truly had, like, just this overwhelmingly amount of just joy that just bursted through your body. And you’re like, Oh, my God, I’m gonna journal about this. This is the best day ever. And it was scrolling through Emma’s baby. We got to get some friends. Let’s examine that.

 

Kara Pérez  20:49

We wanna yeah, that thread so once you’ve identified like, Oh, I was out to eat with my best friend and my sister. Okay, what was causing the joy in that? Was it the restaurant, maybe, or was it being with your loved ones? And then the question is, how can I do more of that thing that caused me joy for a lower price tag? So if it’s hanging out with your bestie and your sister, okay, have them over for movie night, right? Or like, let’s take a pottery class together. We’re still spending money, but what we’re focusing on is the value that adds to your life, that lights you up, that creates those amazing memories. What a lot of Americans, and specifically this is an American problem, is we focus on accumulating things, because, again, we’re trying to signal to others, like, I have a Lexus, not a Toyota, right? I have a house which girl, four bedrooms.

 

X Mayo  21:40

Girl, she Lexus, Toyota. They’re the same, okay? They are very people buy Lexus. Is because you can use Toyota parts. Okay, listen, Alexis is just a Toyota with a new wig. Stop it. Yes, stop it. Don’t do us this become a Toyota endorsed.

 

Kara Pérez  21:58

I know, seriously, we’re not sponsorship.

 

X Mayo  22:00

Hey, us, Toyota, absolutely, yeah. No, you’re correct. They would say things like, what appears to be luxurious or better or has more value, correct yeah.

 

Kara Pérez  22:09

But ultimately, like, what is the lesson that aging people and people on their deathbed say over and over and over again, like, you can’t take it with you. I wish I had worked less. I wish I had vacationed more. I wish I had spent more time with family. So really think about where you’re spending your energy, and then we can adjust the budget. Like, I have a coffee shop budget in my monthly budget because I’m in a fairly new place. I moved in July. I don’t really have a lot of friends, so something I’m doing is reaching out to people. And, you know, I just met you one time, and now I’m following up. Like, I’m not gonna say, Come over. You might not feel welcome in my house. Like it might be a little weird. So like, let’s meet in a safe, neutral place, coffee shop. It’s a low cost thing. I get to support local and I get to build my friendship, so hopefully on the fourth or fifth hang. Like, now we’re doing Movie Night, you know, now we’re going for a walk. Now we’re comfortable with each other, so I think it’s also important to remember too. Like, you may have an upfront cost to achieve a value, and then later on, the costs will subside a little bit. But really, like, if you love shopping, really examine that. Do you love fashion? So maybe you can spend a month not buying any new clothes and just trying to create new outfits with clothes you already have. So it’s not the shopping, it’s the fashion, right? Like we have to be clear about the value.

 

X Mayo  23:35

Let’s get into activism. We talked about how we as individuals can make small changes in our life, and I would love to talk about how we can pressure the government and companies to make big changes. Right now, boycotting has really been in the news. You know, it’s all the rage. People are talking about boycotting target for not standing on business about DEI. I mean, how do you feel about this as a target lover?

 

Kara Pérez  25:27

Oh my gosh. Well, a couple of things under our current economic systems, money is power, like, why does Elon Musk get to run around the White House right now, it’s because he has a lot of money.

 

X Mayo  25:38

And you do mean running around like he’s literally running around. He has a saw machine. You know? He thinks he’s saw it’s crazy.

 

Kara Pérez  25:46

Oh, this man, but his influence and power derives from his money. If he didn’t have $300 billion to his name, like Trump wouldn’t look two times at him, right? So I think we have to start there. And that reminds us that, like, okay, I don’t have $300 billion but I know like, I have 40,000 followers on Tiktok, let’s say, and if I can get half of them to not shop at Target one day. Oh, wait a second. Now, all of a sudden, all of our small little dollars are adding up. So I always tell people like you have so much power in your dollar and where you choose to spend it, or how you choose to withhold it, is very important now, under capitalism, in the US right now, we have what is called shareholder capitalism. So there’s like, the basic business cycle of like person starts business, prices their products for more than they made them for, creates profit. But we also have the stock market, and that’s where a lot of these big name people are. That’s where their wealth is based. Okay, so in 2022 I divested from fossil fuels in the stock market. I just sold any funds or any companies that were in oil, gas or coal, and then I bought funds that had excluded oil, gas or coal. So at my portfolio right now, there’s no fossil fuels. My portfolio is not perfect, but I am telling Exxon Mobil GTFO like i You are destroying the planet. I’m not down with you. Get out of here, and the more that individuals do that, the more we create a ripple effect. So when you think about advocacy and your money, it might be boycotting, it might be divesting, it might be learning to repair things so you’re not buying new as often. There’s so many ways to come at it.

 

X Mayo  27:37

How do we know when to stop boycotting, though. Kara, okay, I know this might sound like a silly question, but I’m just kind of like, okay, so we keep boycotting until everything you know that, because it’s, it’s so layered, because I’m blessed to be single with no kids, I’m not a single mother of, like, three or four, and it’s just kind of like, well, girl, Amazon is convenient. What are you going to do? Like, everybody can’t come over here. I have to do drop offs, pickups, make lunches, you know, like some stuff. So I give grace to that. But I would love to know your thoughts on, when do we know when to stop?

 

Kara Pérez  28:11

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s always a caveat here, like, personal finance is personal, you know, and I’m gonna ask the single parents to do the same thing as me, because I’m also child free by choice. Like, no, definitely not. But I always like to think about there are so many lessons in history, so we can just go back to 1965 the Montgomery bus boycotts, right? Like, shout out Rosa Parks started December 1965 went until December 1966 now that was a local boycott and a local protest to Montgomery, whereas what we’re talking about with sort of like economic blackout days right now are diffuse across the US. But that was successful because they had three demands. They were like, we want to be able to sit black people with white people on the bus. We want bus drivers to treat black people well, like politely

 

X Mayo  29:02

As humans.

 

Kara Pérez  29:03

As humans, thank you. And we want black bus drivers to be employed on predominantly black roots. So those were their goals, and once they achieved those goals, the boycott stopped. So I think again, when it’s a big, diffuse thing, you kind of get to set your own rules. February 28 2025, Day of economic protest. So one day. So the busy people, the single moms, the disabled people, maybe they can participate one day. And then the other 364, they can’t okay, totally fine for people like me, like, I’m white AF, you know, I don’t have kids. I work predominantly from home. I can extend my boycott of Target and Walmart and Amazon, because I have a lot of privilege. And so look at your life, look at your capabilities for these big events. But then if there’s something happening in your local community, like, what is. Version of the Montgomery bus boycott. Is there something happening in your town that has very clear goals and a timeline you can participate on until those goals are achieved? So for big protests, I think this is kind of like the pro and con of social media. We see something, we share something, and we’re like, yeah, oh my gosh, it’s exciting, but I really encourage people to start local with their activism, because you’re going to get a lot more support, and it can be a lot more cohesive and clear around, when do we start? When do we stop?

 

X Mayo  30:34

And also, too, I want to bring up the point about the Montgomery bus boycott. I don’t believe, because this is America, I don’t believe that the Montgomery Bus Boycott the black people that we got those things because people started seeing us as human. We got those things because their money started being affected. So they were forced, right money. So money talks and money has power, as you mentioned here, and so and as you said, like boycotting, like you telling Exxon GTFO, like that holds power. So, as you know, Kara, we all still need to buy things, right? We can’t just, you know, hand sew all of our clothes, because I wouldn’t have time to make this podcast, right? I wish I knew how to make a bra. I think maybe I should, because the $500 I mean, it’s getting crazy, you know. So I think there’s a real desire, you know, for a company that you can trust. Companies are catching on, that consumers want them to be ethical and safe for the environment. How can we tell when a company is lying to us about how green their practices are, or greenwashing, as it’s called?

 

Kara Pérez  31:37

Yeah, there’s definitely a couple of resources I will shout out here as you SOW, S, O, W, fantastic organization that can help you look from a financial perspective at where a company or where a fund in the stock market. What’s it involved in like? Is it involved in private prisons? Is it involved in oil, coal and gas. That’s a fantastic place to go to. If you’re looking at your investments, and you own VTSAX, which is a very popular index fund, you can go and see like, what’s actually in here when it comes to production. Unfortunately, we live in a very complex world, like most products that most Americans are using are like pulled out of the ground in South America, then shipped over to China to be assembled and then shipped over to the United States to be sold. So when we think about that from a climate perspective or a sustainability perspective, like, just the fact that we had to move things around so much huge emissions, like huge emissions right there, let alone sales practice or economic goal of that company. So again, like, it’s, and I talk about this in my book, like the goal is not perfection. The goal is simply better. So like, if you like, I have a friend who lives in small town Vermont. Her town has like, 300 people, and there’s no major cousins. It’s zoned

 

X Mayo  33:15

Because that’s just all my cousins. I’m just like, wow.

 

Kara Pérez  33:18

I know. And it’s really far north. It’s like, very close to the Canadian border, and there’s, like, no, she has to use Amazon, because there’s very few others, like even local stores. I mean, there’s just not enough people to support, like, a big, thriving economy, the way that LA has 900 different restaurants, a lot of them locally owned, right? There’s just not enough people to create that diverse economy. So do I blame her? No, absolutely not. I think what it comes back down to is really assessing your needs. Do you need to spend $300 at she in this month? Or do you just kind of want to and then saying, okay, here’s what I’ve decided I need? I do need a new pair of boots. Can I get those, like, as close to home as possible? Can I get them with no plastic involved, like, when it comes to assessing the sustainability of a purchase you’re making? I encourage people to look for, like, fair trade through these third party platforms that kind of assess companies, but you can just very easily drive yourself crazy going down that route, because we do live in such a complex world. Is really my big push here. So give yourself grace and just try to keep it as local as possible. Is where I would say honestly.

 

X Mayo  34:38

Yes, or learn how to make boots bucha. Just do it real quick. I real quick. Let’s go, yes, no, I’m with you. I’m single and child free by choice. I’m like, Honey, what I have so many hobbies, so many things, and I’m so excited to do. And obviously we’re joking, you know, we have to say that you never know what part they’re gonna clip. You know? No, and then I’m like, wow, Kara and X told me that if I want a shoe fucking make it No. I’m just joking. We do need a hot tip before you go. And I’ve truly enjoyed speaking to you. You have such a great voice. I want you to read the Bible to me, what is a personal finance habit people can start doing tomorrow to start being sustainable.

 

Kara Pérez  35:21

Start asking people if you can borrow something instead of buying new. I’m a huge fan of borrowing. I have borrowed dresses from my aunts to wear to weddings instead of buying new. I borrowed a ladder from my neighbor to clean out my gutters. Instead of always thinking I need to buy that, just shoot a text to a friend, a neighbor, a family member. Hey, you got a gardening tool? You got an extra book, blah, just ask, because that’s immediately going to be more sustainable.

 

X Mayo  35:51

Oh my god, I’m that’s really good. Wow, Kara, drag me. Oh my god, drag me at the end of the pod. Wow, we started out so nice and sweet, and we ended with a dragon. No, read me, please. No, I just thought about that. As soon as you said that, I was like, Wow, I was just about to buy this new acrylic ladder, and they do it in custom colors. You see how I have a very colorful fun house here? And I was like, okay, I want to get it in purple. It’s gonna be lilac. It’s gonna be pretty. And, no, I don’t need to. And I literally know someone who has a ladder right now, and it’s like, girl, are you always on ladders? Like, why do you need a ladder? Like, are you just always just, is that how you watch TV? Just stand on a ladder? Like, do you eat up there? Like, what the fuck so yes, thank you so much. Kara, that was a great tip that I’m actually going to use today. So you have given us so much information. I want to say thank you. And I want to know where should people be following you on social media?

 

Kara Pérez  36:47

Yes, I am on Tiktok, Instagram, Threads and YouTube @webravelygo. It’s a little wonky. We Bravely Go. You just type in Kara Perez on Google. I’m very Google able. My picture of me will come right up, don’t worry. And then my website is bravelygo.co not.com bravelygo.co and that has a lot of free articles all about sustainable living, sustainable investing, budgeting, debt payoff. So if you’re looking for long form content, check out the blog.

 

X Mayo  37:21

Yes, and also, she felt to mention, but I’m gonna mention, buy her book. Hello, money for change, how to reduce waste, build wealth and create a better future. AKA, make your boots. That’s my pitch to add. That’s your reaction added. Yes, thank you so much for joining me on my pod. You have been wonderful and lovely, and I can’t wait to see you and your Toyota outside.

 

Kara Pérez  37:45

Oh my gosh, I’m coming to get you right now.  See you soon.

 

X Mayo  37:48

Bye, baby.

 

X Mayo  37:49

Okay, y’all you heard Kara and her beautiful audiobook voice. There is life beyond shopping. I know it’s crazy, because, you know, I love me a good rug. But this episode has me rethinking my habits. I’m not saying I’m gonna start making my own rugs, but like, can you imagine rugs by X? I’m a rug dealer. Hello, yes, they would be so colorful and soft, I’d be a rug making machine. I mean, wouldn’t you buy it alone? Anyways my new business aside, the antidote to over consumption is creativity and sustainability, and you don’t need a lot of money to do it. In fact, it could save you money instead of buying new could you get it used? Could you borrow it? Or could you and the homies figure out how to pull your resources? And of course, we gotta hold these corporations and our governments accountable. Your money is your power, so where you spend your money should align with your values. Don’t give up your power. Stay strong everyone, bye.  The Dough is a Lemonada original. I’m your host X Mayo.  This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures.  This series is presented by the Margaret Casey Foundation. Our producers are Tiffany Bui, and Dani Matias. Kristen Lepore is our senior producer.  Mix and Sound Design by Bobby Woody. Original Music by Pat Mesiti Miller. Jackie Danziger is our Vice President of narrative content.  Executive Producers include me X Mayo, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.  Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review.  You can follow me on IG  @80dollarsandasuitcase and Lemonada @lemonadamedia across all social platforms, follow The Dough wherever you get your podcast or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.