Review: Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change

Wallet Activism: How to Use Every Dollar You Spend, Earn, and Save as a Force for Change by Tanja Hester
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Hester’s first book, about retiring early, and enjoyed reading her thoughts on her family’s efforts to save and plan well enough to no longer have to maintain full time jobs. The how-to parts of that book were pretty basic, but the justifications and opinions were what I found interesting. With Hester’s newer book, “Wallet Activism”, you get a lot of detailed ideas about how to spend your personal money to try to force change in society. I grew up in a small town, and was told often by my parents to support our local businesses or they would not be there when we needed them. I get the concept. I found some of Hester’s specifics to be spot on, while some were totally out of left field, and possibly wrong. What I got out of the book was that you might decide X is right and good, and Y is wrong and evil, so you spend money in support of X. But over time you may find out that you were totally wrong, or didn’t appreciate the complexity of the situation. You’ve really got to keep thinking if you want your money to support what you (currently) think is right. For example, another reviewer mentioned her disregard for the environmental costs of flying to France. She used that segment to rail against, if I recall, Black Friday sales in France, which doesn’t have a Thanksgiving to give that day the meaning it has in the US. You get the impression that she wants change elsewhere, but not in this foreign country, which she wants frozen in a time before it could be influenced by America. Where do you draw the line when you are thinking of spending to influence? Is it right vs wrong, or is it to maintain your comfort level? Hester has thought about these issues a lot, and gives you dozens of ideas for support here. But human inability to judge our fluid and complex world suggests not diving headlong into any one of them. Moderation and reflection are key.

View all my reviews