YNTR: I Quit my Bank. Am I Saving the World?

You Need to Read the New York Times’ I Quit My Bank. Am I Saving the World? by Maeve Higgins

People don’t generally talk enough about how banks work and what becomes of our money when we save, spend, borrow, and pay it back. Most banks fund the climate crisis. That means you and I fund the climate crisis. It also means we can choose to stop. Maeve Higgins’ humorous-but-oh-so-real New York Times op-ed brings us along as she muses on her months-long breakup with Chase.

I joined a credit union and posted a picture of my chopped-up Chase cards on Instagram. Suddenly, all of my friends and their friends were clamoring to know how they could do the same.

Explaining why it took so long, she details how her spending itself undermined her values, conflicted with her goals, and “took a heavy toll…”

(Maeve’s credit card) was forever putting me into Lyfts instead of letting me walk or take the train, constantly ordering food online instead of allowing me to cook, and staying up late buying too many skin-care products on Amazon. The funny thing is, walking calms me down, I like cooking, and I never worried about my skin until I started buying all those potions. It is not lost on me that the things I spent money on — the real reasons I got stuck with Chase — took a heavy toll on other people, land and animals.

She’s pragmatic that it took effort to make the change, but that the change really matters.

In a mess this big, the only right choice is to take action. It shouldn’t be hard, but it is: It took me months to leave Chase.  

Bring your loved ones together this holiday season to give #GiftsToTheFuture. Each day on the way to welcoming the new year, we'll share a little something you can do to help make it (and many years that follow) better for those you love. enough.co/gifts-to-the-future

How you earn, spend, save, and invest can grow climate solutions faster. Let's work on it together?